New Year, New Template

I've just been reminded that I haven't posted here since the end of August.  Somehow, with a new baby, and a job that's been taking up loads of time, I haven't got around to it.  But it's a new year, so here's an attempt at a fresh start.

Zachary is now 5 months old.  So, to celebrate, here's a picture.

Work has been insanely busy.  I've been technical lead on a project to move our company's middleware infrastructure from OC4J to Weblogic.  If you know what that means, well done!  If you know how to tune Weblogic for scalability, give me a ring!

I've also been doing stuff with RAODS (www.plazatheatre.com).  I've got a small part in their upcoming production of Ladies Day and I'm doing sound design for Frozen (which is coming up much sooner than I'd anticipated. Yikes).

And, of course, I've been blogging far too little.  Hopefully that will change this year.

See you in 6 months!

Wallop! Get in!

Dum-de-dum!  Another far-too-long stretch of time since I last blogged.  Well, as it's December 31st I may as well make one of those oh-so-pointless New Year resolutions and say that I will try to blog every day in 2011.  Who knows, there may even be something for me to write about?

Usually, at this time of year, I do a round-up of what's been going on in my odd little world over the past 12 months.  But the last year feels like as if we've been in suspended animation, waiting for things to move on, and so a full review would be, for me, a teeny bit depressing.

In brief, 2010's highlights were:

• My last stage performance with Ottershaw Players in the Farrago (Feb).
• My last show with Ottershaw Players (stage manager for And Then There Were None in June).
• Joining CATS for Cinderella (Oct).
• NODA Summer School (Aug).
• Finally selling our house in Aldershot (Jul - Dec).
• Moving down into the countryside (Dec).

In between those highlights were lots of frustrations and worries.  My Dad's health problems weren't the least of these, but we're very glad that he's now making good progress.

Anyway, hey ho, and all that.  

This month, we've finally moved down to Over Wallop, which is in Hampshire, between Andover and Salisbury.  My 50 minute drive to work (usually well over the speed limit) is replaced by a sedate 15 minute drive.  So that should save me at least £300 in diesel every month.  And we no longer have a huge, unaffordable mortgage hanging over our heads.  Granted, we also have no savings and made next-to-nothing on the house sale, so I've got no idea when we'll be able to afford to buy somewhere else.

Overall though, we're ending 2010 in a much more positive and happier state than we started it.

Remembering Johnny

Some more memories of Johnny and stuff I've come across while we've been sorting out the wheat from the chaff at the house he shared with my late Nan for over 35 years:

• While I knew he was a keen rifleman, I didn't realise how good he was. For a spell in the 1970s he won at least 12 trophies at Epsom Rifle Club and was good enough to win free entries into three national newspapers' open championships.

• I was wrong about the MG - he didn't prang it in the '60s. The car he crashed on the A23 (on a stretch of road now covered by Gatwick Airport) was written off. The MG was bought in 1962 (for £423) and used until the late '60s when it was put into storage in Tommy Crossley's garage. Tommy was Johnny's best friend and lived two doors down when they were kids.
  
  
• He built a canoe (and "pinched" a pair of paddles) which he soon overturned in a deep part of the river, nearly drowining himself.
  
  
• In the early 1950s he would go to the pictures, with his mates or alone, 4 or 5 times a week. But then, so did lots of people back then. There were more cinemas and more films back then!
  
  
• Johnny was a good harmonica player and played in bands in his time. We've found 4 Hohner Chromonica harmonicas, in various states of repair - I'm sure that at least 2 of them are playable.
  
  
• His work as a cartographer for the Overseas Development Administration demanded great accuracy and attention to detail. This spilled over to his love for graphic design, typefaces and cartooning. We found dozens, maybe a couple of hundred, sheets of paper and cardboard covered (sometimes literally) with doodles, sketches, designs and hand-drawn and painted lettering - most of it so well done that it would be taken for Letraset at first glance, but then you notice the construction lines underneath. Some sketches seem to indicate that he had a small sideline, maybe unpaid, in sign-writing and designing business cards or adverts for businesses.
  
  
• For around 3 years in the mid-1960s, Johnny was a member of Lasham Gliding Club and he learned to fly gliders.
  
  
• We uncovered a notebook with some handwritten notes that seem to read like a memoir. Some parts are obviously autobiographical. Some could be fictional. But they are written in an easy, almost informal style, but with a real sense of flair and poetry. It's impossible to tell when they were written, or if he ever intended to write more. If only he'd shown them to someone - the talent he had for writing shines through. I'll reproduce parts of it here soon.

This is all random stuff now, much of which I had no idea about before this sad week. The one thing I don't really know - and haven't found any clues about - is what sort of music he liked. I would have thought he'd be a rock'n'roller, but Dad doesn't seem to think so. All their records were stolen at a party, so there's no clues to go on - unless we manage to dig something up tomorrow.

Stuff Happens

A round-up of news and views:

Doctor Who. How disappointing was that?! Eh?! Setting up everything for a load of shock and awe, then paying off none of it. My biggest question is: Why did the daleks bother landing on Earth and exterminating a load of people when all they needed was to get the planet in the right place to create their "Reality Bomb" weapon? And don't say it's because they needed guinea-pigs to test the weapon on - they could just have pointed the ray-gun thing at another planet somewhere... But it's typically sloppy writing. Now whenever we're told "sorry, I'm going to wipe your memory/exile you to another dimension and you will never, never, ever see me again" we'll just remember this episode and conclude that it's just not true.

Rafa Nadal. AKA Dogtanian. How good was that?! Eh?! I haven't watched the Wimbledon men's final for a few years, but that was fantastic. And the record 6 consecutive victories, held by, yes, an Englishman, is still secure. Rule Britannia! :-)

Lewis Hamilton. How good was that?! Eh?! Massa might not be out in front on his own anymore, but I think he should have had some bonus points for those very graceful pirouhettes that he kept executing. I tried spinning my car around while driving in a straight line this morning and I just couldn't do it.

Peter Crouch. Apropos of nothing else, I read today that the Liverpool footballer is "poised" for a move to Portsmouth. They always say "poised" when a footballer is going to change clubs. It makes me imagine the player waiting just inside the door, in a semi-stooped, er, crouch, waiting to bolt out to freedom.

Still Here!

Thanks to Mima for the Mwah! Award. I know I'm probably supposed to pass it on, so my Mum and sister can have the award too.

It's been a bit quiet here recently - sorry about that. Two weeks off between jobs and I've just been lazing about doing not very much, so I haven't had much to tell you!

We've done the first weekend of our Farrago. Mum took some pics of the dress rehearsal. It's gone down quite well so far, which is good and should make some cash for the group so we can put on the play in the summer.

I have to put together the Players' newsletter today, as well as sorting out some household chores, so I'll sign off now.

Oh, but before I go, spare a thought for Dave "Delmonti" Dawson who's going into hospital tomorrow for his hip-replacement op. Good luck chum!

Why Is This News?

Apparently a private school in Brighton is teaching pupils basic etiquette and table manners.

Which is fine. But I don't understand why it is news!

I'm pretty sure that by the time I was, oh, 5 years old I knew that the knife went on the right, the fork on the left and the spoon at the top, because we ate meals at home and we used cutlery to eat it. We didn't have servants, or tablecloths (not every day), nor grand 8-course dinners, but you don't need that to learn how to lay a table, do you?

OK, nowadays lots of people eat convenience foods and TV dinners and take-aways, but surely not so many that even in a posh school for spoiled brats whose parents are rolling in it need teaching about cutlery?

When I was at school, admittedly over 25 years ago now, Home Economics was a mandatory subject at age 12 or 13, or so. In that class we learned how to make simple cooked meals, how to wash-up, how to iron shirts, etc, etc. Just in case our families were total slobs who didn't care about bringing up their kids properly. My school was a very run-of-the-mill, suburban comprehensive, not a stuck-up school for the kids of stockbrokers and bankers, yet it appears to have provided me, free and gratis, with an education to rival that of a modern, fee-paying educational giant.

Either the parents of kids at Brighton College are being ripped-off, or the rest of the country's schools really are bloody awful if they don't bother teaching such basic skills.

God. I've just read this back and it looks like it belongs in the Daily Mail...

Keep Up

It's been a bit quiet here of late. Unfortunately I've slipped out of the habit of blogging every day. Sometimes it's just very tough to actually come up with a topic to write about - and I never had a backlog of posts in reserve, as I think some people have.

I've also had a vague feeling of depression recently. Nothing big or dramatic, just enough to prevent me having any good ideas. I reckon it's probably caused by my dissatisfaction with work (nothing new there then!) and November, which always feels like the darkest, dingiest and most depressing month of the year to me.

On the other hand I have managed to do some positive things. Along with doing some design for next year's play, I've started work on a design for a new website for the Ottershaw Players.

This is the old one. And this is the new one.

Obviously it doesn't have much content yet. And if people (i.e. the group's members) like it, I'll install WordPress on our server which means I will be able to get the look and feel just right. The free WordPress site is very good and pretty close, but the navigation needs fixing up.

But some feedback on the design would be good.

Names

I see that Jordan and Peter André have named their new daughter 'Princess Tiaamii'. Right. We'll take them both much more seriously now, won't we!

If I ever have a son, I shall be calling him 'Raylord'. It's a name I thought I discovered when looking through old birth records, though in fact it was just 'Raymond' and was a bit smudged. Raylord, however, is a fantastic name. It's a bit futuristic (like ray-gun) and a bit royal (it's got 'lord' in it - which is a bit religious too, I suppose) and it's wholly original.

Yes, Raylord Moore, my future offspring. With a strong manly name like that, there's absolutely no chance of him being called "Gaylord" or "Raymongo" or something cruel by the other kids at school, is there?

Of course, my heart is so set on Raylord that I've no idea what to do if we had a girl baby instead. It's a toss-up between somethign sophisticated like 'Sauvignon' ('Sovie' for short) or something pretty like 'Geranium'...

Edit:

Damn! I've just Googled for Raylord and there are a few people with that name out there. If it's not unique then I don't want to use it.

Mind you - one of the people I found was called Raylord Focker. True!