Author Archives: Matt

Neglected++

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I’m getting fed up with this.  Every so often I come and have a look at my site to make sure it’s still there and hasn’t been hacked again, and I see the same old front page, with the same post that’s been sat there for 160 days.  I think it’s made worse by the fact that, essentially, it’s a post stating that the previous post was a load of rubbish.

Oh well.  I’m here again now, and feeling like I should be doing more.

The first step is quite obvious; I need to start posting again.  Blogs are being squeezed out thanks to the likes of Facebook and Twitter.  140 characters is, apparently, enough room to get most ideas across, so what’s the point of writing out a whole blog?  Well, for me, it’s about writing.  I like writing – I like getting points across and I like the idea of expanding on an idea and bringing it to a conclusion.  I like the idea, but I’m not very practised at actually doing it.

That’s where this old blog comes in.

I have a few ideas for things I’d like to write about.  I’m not sure how many of them will actually be of any interest to anyone, but I think – and hope – that the act of writing them and publishing them here will both inspire me and lend them some kind of importance.  It’s easy to dismiss things as ‘good enough’ when no-one is going to read what you write.

So, if I’ve popped into your RSS reader for the first time in the best part of 5 and a half months, or you do actually visit the actual site once in a while (and laugh at the rubbish post that’s greeted you for all that time), stay tuned.  There should be an actual, content-laden update soon.  I just need to reach a few conclusions for my half-cocked ideas, and convince myself that they’re ideas worth sharing…

Formula 1 2010

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Well, I got that a bit wrong, didn’t I?

I’ve really enjoyed the 2010 F1 season so far, and it’s shaping up nicely for an exciting showdown. Whilst Mr Schumacher hasn’t quite lived up to expectations (apart from that move against Barrichello in Hungary), the rest of the protagonists have all played their part, and with 5 races left the top 5 drivers are within one race win of each other. Fantastic stuff.

So, I unreservedly take back my somewhat scathing previous post, and admit that maybe, just this once, the clever people in charge of F1 might just have got it more right than I gave them credit for. Who’d a thunk it?

So, who reckons Jenson’s going to have a storming end to the season and make it back-to-back championships? It’d be nice, wouldn’t it?

Does the ‘F’ stand for ‘Fail’?

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Formula One. The pinnacle of motorsport. The best drivers, racing in the most advance racing cars in the world, on the best racetracks we have to offer. And this season, wow – what an exciting prospect. 4 former world champions; 2 of them racing for the same team! Michael Schumacher coming back after his short break. New teams, new rules. What more could a fan ask for?

Sigh.

3 and a bit years ago I bemoaned the lack of excitement in Formula One, and offered a few ideas to jazz things up a bit. Maybe someone read my blog back then afterall, as most of my ideas seem to have found their way into the rulebook (except the reverse grids… is that just BTCC?) Bernie even stole my ‘one point for a win’ idea and rebadged it ‘medals’, before he ran out of brave pills. And it got better. The racing did seem to improve. There were proper exciting races and tight championships going down to the last corner of the last lap of the last race of the season.

And now they’ve gone and broken it again. Just one race into the new season, Alonso says races are going to be decided in qualifying and on the first lap of the race. Schumacher says the first race was fun but dull, and he’s right about the dull part.  Apart from a couple of glimmers of overtaking from the new boys, Webber’s overfilled oil tank, and Vettel’s cracked exhaust, nothing happened. The Ferraris held together, Hamilton picked off the lame Vettel, and 49 laps of mediocrity passed in a little under 100 minutes.

So, what to do?  Well, I’m afraid I’m out of ideas (sorry Bernie).  I suppose things might get better in Australia – at least there might be some discernible crowd in attendance to give things a sense of occasion.  Maybe a shorter track will mean more racing opportunities.  Maybe Webber will put a show on for his fairdinkum mates.  Maybe Lewis and Schumacher will get to go at it hammer and tongs, wheel to wheel.

I remain hopeful, but can’t help feeling that we’re in for a pretty yawnful year on the track.  It’s a sad state of affairs when you find yourself hoping for some off-track scandals just to keep the interest levels up.

So, come on you clever F1 guys.  Please think of something to keep us watching.

Survival

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It’s Sunday evening, which must mean we’ve managed to survive another weekend – yay for us :-)

Saturday was the usual mix of swimming, shopping and a little housework. Oh, with a certain 9-year-old’s birthday party thrown in for good measure. I’m not particularly secretive about the fact that I dislike these events, but this one wasn’t really that bad. The kids all behaved themselves, and I actually managed to learn a few of their names and have something approaching conversations with them. Well, OK, it was food time and they told me what sandwich they wanted, but that’s progress for me.

Today was time for more shopping (for Mrs H anyway, I stayed home and marshalled our little darlings), a walk, and then (a delectable) Sunday Roast with the in-laws.

Oh yes – these walks. We’re surprising ourselves with this. Since our trip to the Lake District, we’ve been taking ourselves off for weekly walks. We’ve invested in 3 Landranger OS maps (178, 179 and 189, fact fans), and spend 5 minutes on Saturday evening deciding on a suitable spot, and then 2 or 3 hours on Sunday walking. Surprisingly, we’re enjoying it. More surprisingly, with the weather not looking too promising this morning, we still headed out, and we still had fun. Who’d a thunk it?

If you want to keep tabs on where we’ve been and what we’ve seen, there’s a new link over there on the right with the oh-so-imaginative title of ‘Walks‘. It takes you to a section of this site where I’m trying to record where we go along with any notes and comments and so on. The Google maps with overlays of our routes are nothing clever on my part – they come from Everytrail.com, a site that lets you upload GPS tracks from a variety of sources (I use my lovely phone).

Now… I’m being told I’m only typing here to avoid jumping on the Wii Fit thingie to be told how fat I am.  It’s true, but I can delay no longer…