Geoff’s Blog

Nike Human Race

I signed up to the Nike Human Race last night.

So on August 31st this year I will get to run with 29,999 other people for 10km around Wembley, I signed up in wave 3 so if anyone wants to run with me let me know I think it will be more fun running with someone else. There is also some special concert being held in advance of the run I which is a nice bonus.

I chose to support the WWF as my charity since I’m drawn to any environmental causes over other potentials. I’m not out to seek sponsorship though its just a portion of my entrance fee goes to the WWF. I’ll also get a red nike t-shirt with my runner number on it and apparently a medal when I finish it, like a proper sportsperson.

I had wanted to try the Nike Run London event a couple of years ago when they were running during a night but I wasn’t living in the city at the time. I missed out on the one they did in 2006 between the north and south Londoners due to work but I still see people running in the orange south london shirts when I go running around Hammersmith/Putney.

I’m also inspired by my friend Nikki who is planning to run a half Marathon this year. If I can get myself running 5km more than once a week in preparation for this run then maybe I’ll look into doing a half Marathon next year. I managed a run last night shortly after signing up but tonight I seem to have lost the motivation, hopefully I’ll go for a run after sleeping most of the day. I really need to step up my running since I have started combining doritos with salsa dip on my night shifts. One big bag of cool original corn chips ‘for sharing’ devoured by myself over 2 nights can’t be good for me.

Posted in Running | 2 Comments »

Listing things

Not made a post for some time. That is how a lot of my older blog posts started out so I’m not going to dwell on it. I haven’t managed to progress my career much either, I planned to study for a CCNA qualification but I haven’t found the motivation to move past the first chapter.

For a quick summary of what has happened I am resorting to the list format. Observe -

• Went to a leaving party of a good friend (Tony) and past housemate who is currently travelling around Australia meeting new friends and soap opera actors. Feb 22nd.
• Went to a Birthday party (Anh) where I listened to various excuses from people who were no longer going to Glastonbury. Danced until late and then got unnecessarily irritable when I went one stop further than I needed to on the night bus home. Mar 15th.
• Found a place to live. Slightly smaller than Earlsfield but cheaper and not too far away. Moved into that place and closed accounts with the old flat. Apr 1st.
• Trip to Islington to watch a friend’s (Will) band play. Apr 3rd.
• Celebrate a school friends (Ruth) birthday at a house party also met another guy called Geoff. It was a fun party. Apr 5th.
• Ordered a new phone, contract was coming to an end so I have switched back to a Nokia and still trying to get used to the space key being in a different place than on the Sony Ericssons. Apr 15th.
• Grand Theft Auto IV was released and I picked it up before my night shift the day after it was released, managed to spend a lot of my free time playing it so that I finished the story exactly a month after the game was released. There is still a lot more for me to explore, I haven’t even touched the multiplayer features. Apr 30th.
• On a particularly warm weekend I was invited to a barbeque where I got to play with some fire and admire the new garden landscaping at the hostesse’s house (Nikki). We also played ‘Taboo’ where you have to describe a series of words and phrases without using the listed words, think of it like a wordy version of pictionary lots of fun. May 5th.
• Part one of a birthday celebration for Nikki, a table had been reserved at Mish Mash bar in Clapham. After stocking up on a variety of cocktails during the happy hour spent what I can remember of the night taking photos, dancing and spending money on even more drinks. May 17th.
• I booked my car in for a service and was there first thing in the morning. As always seems to happen various problems were found which resulted in the cost ballooning from the original quote to well over triple.  I didn’t get it back until 3 days after putting it in. May 19th
• Picked up a meal and show deal on lastminute.com and enjoyed a relaxed meal at myBar Bloomsbury before seeing ‘We Will Rock You’ at the Dominion theatre. A fun musical set in the future where unapproved music is banned and it is illegal to own a musical instrument, all the songs involved are by Queen. May 19th
• Part two of Nikki’s birthday celebration to accommodate her friends who couldn’t travel that far south of the Thames. This time located to Bar Kick in Shoreditch, had a couple of drinks before switching to soft drinks and played foosball and took photos for most of the night. May 22nd.
• Rock Band game was delivered a rhythm game involving a drum kit, guitar and microphone so you can make a band with some friends. Spent so long hearing how much better it was than guitar hero which I loved so that should keep me entertained during the British summertime. May 23rd.
• Drove my newly serviced car through central London picked up Nikki, Sheron and Deidre and then drove up to the Lake District and put up tents in the dark for the bank holiday weekend. May 23rd.
• Got up early, drove to the bottom of Scafell Pike and then climbed to the top of said pike, the highest mountain in England. Climbed back down and got shouted at by a farmer when we took a wrong turn and ended up in his field rather than on the public path. Back to the campsite we walked to the village pub and then made a small campfire to enjoy until it got dark. May 24th.
• Went to the Go Ape high wire assault course, enjoying various zip lines and tarzan swinging moments strapped into a safety harness. Followed this up with some afternoon tea and bought food for a barbeque. Enjoyed building a bigger fire, getting the instant barbeques going and cooking sausages and marshmallows on sticks. May 25th.
• Cooked breakfast on a barbeque then drove back to London. May 26th.
• Went to see Maximo Park play at the Kentish town forum. Maximo Park are great, would have preferred standing tickets but its not like I would have been organised enough to sort out tickets myself. May 28th.
• Found out there was a Rock Band event at the HMV on Oxford Street. Played the game with some guys who were much better than me and we spent a good part of the day milling around playing the game and entering the competition to win a trip to Ibiza. The competition is touring the UK and is being judged by Maximo Park. Jun 5th.
• After hearing a couple of internet friends getting more and more excited about going to see Foo Fighters at Wembley I was pleased to get the opportunity to join the fun. One of the friends had found themselves with a couple of spare standing tickets and after hastily arranging a day of work I snapped them up. A little rushed on the day I didn’t actually get to meet either of my internet friends but did meet a friendly guy in the crowd who after I gave him £10 he duly returned with a couple of beers and change. The concert itself was fantastic and as far as I could tell the whole crowd loved it. The show finished up with surprise guests Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones joining Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins. Fantastic night and even managed to get all the way back from Wembley to Tooting before the Tubes closed. Jun 7th.

So it has been a pretty busy few months, and I already have tickets to see Will play again and Glastonbury at the end of this month. Maybe then I can resist the lure of GTA IV and Rock Band and get some serious CCNA studying done…

Posted in Events, Xbox 360 | No Comments »

Flatshare Hunting

At the end of March my housemates and I will all be abandoning the property that has been home for the past couple of years. We are also basically heading our seperate ways which is a shame but I’m confident we will still keep in close contact. Since most of our arrangements for doing things recently have been almost exclusively email/facebook based I can’t imagine why that wouldn’t continue. Anyway I started this post to talk about my moving possibilities so without further ado…

After some frantic searching for a flatshare to move into, I’m pretty confident that I’m not going to be homeless at the end of March. Of the 3 places I have seen, one was a little more expensive than I really wanted, especially since it was still being done up. As converted office space it had a lot of room, the bedrooms and bathrooms were clustered together near the entrance but it had a massive kitchen/living area. Imagine a large open plan office and you get an idea of the space, the kitchen was along the back wall with a couple of chairs a TV and some other furniture placed around the living area. I could imagine moving various furniture I have in the flat bean bags and shelves full of DVD’s would probably help make the area feel more homely. The guy who had placed the ad was one of the people I would be sharing with and as he showed me around he seemed perfectly likeable so I’m sure we would get on, I didn’t get the opportunity to meet the girl who I would be sharing with though. The bathroom wasn’t very big but perfectly adequate and with only 3 people sharing shouldn’t be much trouble. The room I’d move into would be furnished, this is something I am accepting of most flatshares which is a bit of a shame since I have loads of furniture myself. It came with a double bed and a whole wall was taken up with included wardrobe space, apart from that though the room wasn’t really expansive and would get cluttered with my computer and TV set up although I may have been able to arrange to move my computer into the living area. The location is ideal slightly closer to work than I currently am and within easy walking distance to all the shops and supermarket. It is available this weekend which is a really early for me but the guy placing the ad seemed to think mid month move in might be possible. Since it was the first place I saw I wanted to check out a few other properties to make sure I wasn’t just getting carried away.

Second place was curiously close to Wandsworth Southside but in an area I hadn’t explored, close to a large park and one street away from an underground station. It was also a bargain, not much more than I am paying at the moment (I have accepted I won’t get any cheaper than I’m currently paying). Better yet the move in date is mid March which would stop me stressing early and give me plenty of moving leeway. The house had a nice sized living room leading through to a normal sized kitchen and I think there was a small garden too although that isn’t one of my must have requirements. Much more homely feel than the office property but not much space to add any more furniture. This ad had caught my eye since it would be sharing with ‘three lovely ladies’ and unlike most hadn’t specified female flatmate preferred, I only briefly met one of the ladies since the girl showing me round was the one who would be moving out. Heading upstairs to the room I was impressed with the space, a bed fit nicely in the corner and there was space in the window area that would suit for my television and various games. One side of the room had a chest of drawers with a cupboard built into the wall above it and there was another wardrobe built into the wall next to this. The bathroom was a little small and desperately needed the ceiling repainted, my guide assured me this was being done by the landlady soon but I wasn’t that concerned, if I got the place I’d probably offer to paint it myself. Despite only being the second place I had seen I was sure to register my interest but wanted to make sure the ‘three lovely ladies’ wouldn’t mind sharing with a lovely young man. If they aren’t against the idea I’ll look forward to meeting them all hopefully soon and arrange a deposit. In the meantime I’m still checking out places.

Moving on to a third place with another nice cheap price this time located further from work but still in the reach of a couple of buses in Tooting Broadway. The ad had the place listed for move in this weekend but also said it had en suite so I was keen to see the place. Literally 2 minutes from the Northern line station would be very handy for getting into town and visiting one of my friends who lives in Clapham and I have seen precious little of since moving to London. A large detached house with a small entrance hall and I was greeted by the friendly face of the girl who would be moving out. Down a short hallway into a large open plan living room / kitchen which reminds me a little of the setup in my old university halls just with leather furniture. There was a small oustide area which I was shown but it just had a car belonging to one of the housemates parked in it and not much more space. There was another bedroom on the ground floor in the hallway and some storage space under the stairs. Heading upstairs there was another room above the bedroom downstairs and then I got to see the room available. She mentioned there was another bedroom down the upstairs hallway and a bathroom that two of the housemates shared. The room available had a double bed tucked into the corner with a standing wardrobe, desk and chest of drawers in front of the window. Unfortunately these seemed to take up basically all of the floorspace. The desk wouldn’t be staying, shame since I could use a desk its the chest of drawers and wardrobe I’d want to replace. The en-suite was no lie though, with a power shower and toilet it was a very appealing but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the house was far more student-y than I was after. Coupled with the very early move in date and the apparent success I had so far I decided it wasn’t the room for me but thanked her very much for her time.

So of the three places I have seen so far I apparently am easily impressed. I don’t feel I am scraping the bottom of the barrel by any means, each place has had its benefits and drawbacks. I don’t doubt I would get on with any people I move in with but I would prefer a sociable environment and that did seem to be a little lacking from the last property I viewed. If I only had a week left to decide then I would have snapped up a cheap room with ensuite and the spacious living area but as it is I am waiting to hear back from the second place and am happy to carry on looking if that falls though. It’s all pretty exciting really and I’m looking forward to making some new friends. For the next couple of weeks I feel I can relax a little and search out the most appealing properties rather than chasing every listing that looks vaguely interesting.

Posted in Life | No Comments »

The Internet

Seem to have had a particularly interesting few weeks of discovering new things on the internet.

Google Reader Which lets me view all the sites I try to keep up with most regularly in one handy place. For those not familiar with RSS feeds, its like email from all your favourite websites and no spam.

SarcasticMom which is for the most part very funny and the photos are brilliant and the kid Braden just looks cute, although he has the mind of an evil genious which also appeals.

Karoon’s and Lauren’s blogs since they have both started filling out their blogs again too.

Kotaku is a gaming related site that I have seen a few articles on before but have been checking basically whenever I get on the internet nowadays, and it is though this site that I found that sarcasticmom site, how crazy is the internet?

StuffWhitePeopleLike which is about stuff that white people like.

March 14th apparently a very significant day and with a nice link to detailed instructions on how to suck cock.

There were lots of other sites too but these kind of stood out the most and I thought they deserved special mention, I’ll probably add the individual bloggers to the right hand side of this page sometime soon.

Posted in Websites | No Comments »

Run Boy Run

Since my last blog entry I have completed 2 more runs

One in the middle of last week and one I finished about an hour ago. Both runs were a bit over 3 miles in around 30 minutes, one around Earlsfield and the second near work.

I might even run again tommorrow night, to try and prepare myself for the super marathon of drinking planned for Friday night when T is having a leaving do before flying off to Aus to travel.

My progress so far is encouraging too so with a little more perseverance maybe I can have the kind of body that famous models and actors have (but not the actor slash models or models slash actors these are the pure breeds I’m talking about). I suppose I’ll have to do more toning for that though. Check me out using all the lingo I’m turning into one of those healthy people Stephen Fry has been writing about in the book I have been reading.

Posted in Running | No Comments »

Running out of excuses

Went for a run this morning. I had been getting quite good at running towards the end of last year but around the middle of November I stopped due to a cold. It was also getting absolutely freezing and I may have been pushing myself a little too hard to reach my goal of 30 miles in 30 days.

Well I managed to excuse myself for all of December because of it being cold. Got through January again because it was cold and I was suffering from the man flu. It got to February and I decided it would be best to wait until after Chinese new year, because y’know it could be a resolution. Since it was Chinese new year on the 7th and this was my first night shift since then, I felt obliged to start up my fitness regime once again.

1.73miles in 15min 31s which is about the speed I was getting back in November, so I’m pretty happy with that. (Measurements courtesy of my iPod Nano equipped with the Nike+ sensor)

It was a shorter run than I normally complete but I decided it was best to ease back into it, although I won’t be able to run tomorrow night lest I leave the office completely unattended.

I suppose technically I could run when I get back from work but I’m not sure thats something I want to do a great idea, will have to wait and see if my body complains about this mornings run when I wake up this evening.

Posted in Gadgets, Running | No Comments »

Lonely and Scared

Decided the other day I wanted to go see a film on one of my days off during the day. Checked the listings and found that a film called ‘Taking Liberties’ was on. Not really heard of it before but it sounded interesting enough for daytime viewing, apparently it came out just after Tony Blair stepped down as PM. Cineworld seems to put lots of films on during the day on Tuesdays to add a bit more variety and give people another chance to catch movies they might have missed. So middle of the day I headed out to watch the film on my own, well normal people are working during the day so who would I invite?
The film is basically showing examples of how the English government has been writing laws to combat terrorism and how those laws errode some of the basic civil liberties. For starters it talks about how Adolf Hitler took power after a terrorist set fire to the Reichstag, at this point I was worried the film was going to continue this train of thought and just bash Tony Blair. It carried on to talk about how Hitler basically stripped the people of their rights so the government had total control. At the end of the War Churchill is credited as setting up laws to ensure people have control over the government and not the other way around. The film then works through the subjects, right to protest, free speech, privacy, detention without trial, extradition and torture.

It made quite an impact really, for some reason the ending message that if we don’t try to change things until they start happenning to us then it’s going to be too late. The worry now is that since the government have managed to get the various anti-terrorism laws passed at what point will we be able to say the ‘War on Terror’ is over you can all have your civil liberties back now? The whole war on terror has always sounded like such a stupid idea to me anyway, the terrorist is someone willing to die for what they believe in and one persons terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter how can anyone go to war against any number of unconnected individuals?

Saying that I don’t think that going to war with Iraq was the worst thing ever. Saddam Hussein was running a government the people feared, lets not forget the celebrations in Iraq when Saddam was captured. The problem as I see it was there was never a strategy to settle the country afterwards and get the troops out and the diplomats in, and lets not forget that the war was started without UN approval which just undermines the power that was given to that body in the first place.

Hmm bit of a heavy post this one, almost a rant. Normal sercice will resume soon.

Posted in Movies | No Comments »

January Summary

Well after the tremendous start to the year this blog seemed to fall down dead. Part of the reason is I have been very busy the other part is I am just that lazy. Regardless I will attempt to quickly sum up what has been keeping me busy this month.

On the 4th I managed to drag myself out of bed and headed out for my pre-planned birthday drinking at The Roxy in town. Always had fun in the past and despite feeling tired and having not eaten properly after getting some kind of random illness I had a great time. Loads of people turned up but I ended up making my way home a little earlier than planned since I was just so tired. Thanks to everyone who made it.

I spent the next few days recovering from my illnes and even took a day off work to try and get myself 100% better before starting the next lot of shifts.

I got a date for my interview for the job I wanted to move into at work, it was on the 16th so I spent a lot of the time before then trying to get in a bit of Linux studying, fiddling with a spare computer at work and downloading the latest Fedora operating system, and starting to read a giant book. Probably not very interesting to a lot of you out there but I was enjoying learning something new after such a long period of basically going through the motions.

The 16th happened to also be D’s birthday but since it was a work night she didn’t plan a big night out, I treated to her at a meal at a restaurant she chose, Cafe Pacifico in Covent Garden.

Very nice restaurant tucked away down a little side street, with a variety of Mexican food, it was very busy when we arrived and with a recommendation from the waitress we set ourselves up with a pitcher of the fruit margheritas, very tasty and went very well with the food. I’ll have to try the fajitas next time I visit they always look so appealing when brought out sizzling on those little black skillets.

The interview I thought had gone ok, even though it was an internal application I was still very nervous in the first part, and my technical knowledge of networking was no-where near good enough probably because I’ll normally plug everything together and only look deeper at the networking if it doesn’t work as expected. The second part was a little troubleshooting exercise and although I managed to diagnose the problem in the end I went through all possible problems first rather than asking when it last worked and what had changed since then. The rest of that part of the interview really just felt like a chat which is quite a good sign.

On the 19th when I had finished my next set of shifts I went out with D and met up with some of her friends, we had drinks at the Porterhouse in Covent Garden and then took taxis to Cosmo Bar up near Farringdon. The Porterhouse was very busy and mainly a lot of walkways which somehow worked as there were plenty of small alcoves for friends to group in. Cosmo Bar was also a lot of fun, there was a smallish seating area overlooking a small square dancefloor almost adjacent to a bar, basically everything seemed to fit into such a small space and still work incredibly well, I only realised there was a whole additional club area downstairs near the end of the night.

The next time I was back in work I found out I had not gotten the job, citing that I seemed nervous in the interview and to brush up on my Networking knowledge. Taking that on board I spent the next few days learning about subnetting which was the nature of the quiz in the first interview. At the end of that lot of shifts I popped home to see my family who hadn’t seen me since before my birthday and I was able to claim Half Life 2 : The Orange Box as my birthday present from my little sister. Only spent one night there and then back to London got some shopping and made plans with D to watch films and go to the cinema.

Off to see Sweeney Todd any minute now, seen lots of other films and played lots of games during January too but I’ll summarise those another time.

Posted in Events, Interview, Work | No Comments »

Birthday fun

So it was my birthday on the second, I spent the first 8 hours of it at work but at least I had a couple of presents to open. I’m looking forward to getting a chunk of time to sit and play Mass Effect, I had great fun playing both the Knights of the Old Republic games and am hoping for more of the same.

After the fun of opening the presents I managed to stay awake for the remainder of my shift which is pretty good considering almost nothing happened and I had the unenviable joy of working by myself. A short drive home and I was soon fast asleep until the middle of the afternoon and preparing myself to finish my birthday with another night shift working on my own again. Normally I don’t mind, its quiet and I’m more than capable of dealing with whatever this job throws at me since I am able to prioritise tasks. Today though I appear to have been struck down with man flu. By that I mean, my face feels hot and my body feels cold and to top it off my throat is sore and I have no cough sweets to hand. Had there been someone else here I’m sure I would have made my way home at least 6 hours ago. That to anyone who knows me is testament to just how ill I feel, I haven’t had a day off work ill for a couple of years now. I am sort of proud of that but then since there isn’t any monetary benefit for me being healthy I sometimes feel like a bit of a sucker.

On a more upbeat note I haven’t got to work again until Monday and have plans to properly celebrate my birthday on Friday at the Roxy. Lots of my friends sent me happy birthday messages and one even pointed out that it was still my birthday where she lives thanks to the time difference across the atlantic. Soon I will go home, drink a couple of litres of sainsbury’s smoothie which was on offer the other day for the bargain price of 99p, then sleep all day I am confident that will cure me of what ails me, if not I do have some ice cream that will probably make me at least feel better.

Games wise I finished Assassins Creed on the 31st before the party and have been going back to complete the investigations I missed out and hunt down Templars to assassinate and flags to collect. That’ll keep me revisting the game for a little while yet. I have also been enjoying the video/cartoon reviews of Zero Punctuation that I heard about on on of Major Nelson’s podcasts. Yes that’s right I’m going to link to websites that I visit from time to time, I enjoy them so why shouldn’t you.

Posted in Birthday, Xbox 360 | No Comments »

Happy No Years!

So it’s a new year and I decided in my infinite wisdom to create a new blog about things I have been up to and have it in a little more accessible location than my old myspace blog.

For a bit of an introduction I work in IT, enjoy watching films and playing games particularly on the xbox 360 at the moment. I currently live in London, went to Uni in Brighton and my parent’s live in Luton.

So to kick things off I spent new years eve at a great friends house party close to my place in London and after a few rounds of the drinking games 21 and the name game we all celebrated the new year and then danced and drank the early hours of the morning away. By 5 in the morning the number of unconcious people was outnumbering the conscious so we all headed home for some much needed rest.

I didn’t get up until 6pm and made some bolognese to go with a couple of plates of pasta and shared it with D the girl I have been seeing. I then dropped her home on the way into work. Yep first day of the year and I’m already in work.

I haven’t yet decided how regularly I’ll be updating this blog, if I can manage a quick update a day then I may do that, but I’ll probably just pop on talk about films I have seen, games I have been playing and anything significant going on. On that note its my birthday tomorrow so I’ll update with all the exciting things I’m sure will happen between now and this time tomorrow.

Posted in Introduction | No Comments »