Dom Davis (The Blog)

Chronologically I may well be heading towards middle age but inside I feel more 25¹ and I will fight growing old with every step. Becoming a dad isn’t mutually exclusive to this, I shall simple be a cool dad (or, from the perspective of Nubbin, and possibly The Zozo, an embarrassing one ). To this end I have procured for myself a baby changing bag from Yada Dada,, a company that provides stylish changing bags for the “Urban Parent²“. The bag has pockets for everything, a washable changing mat and looks like a normal messenger bag. What more could you want?

Sadly I was just a little too proud of my new bag. The Zozo asked to see it and I dashed upstairs to collect it. After donning my swish new toy I stood tall and proud and walked out of the bedroom.

*WHAM*

Our house is old and built in a time when people were shorter. 6 foot high door frames were fine in those days. I’m 6’1″ which, if I forget to duck, is just enough to give myself a nasty whack. Normally I remember and naturally bob as I enter into rooms. Occasionally I forget. This time I forgot and was moving at speed. For the second time this year I saw stars. That was yesterday morning. I’ve still got a splitting headache

¹I was going to say “mentally I feel 25″ but I suspect many people would argue that, like most men, mentally I’ve progressed no further than about 11.

²Those of you who read my old blog may remember the Urban Geek bag I had, so there is a theme here.

Back in my London commuting days I, like the majority of people, used a cheap plastic holder for my ticket. These things lasted about a month, although their life could be extended to nearly 3 months with care and judicious use of gaffer tape. A holder would be given to you by whichever transportation company was in charge of fleecing you to use their cattle trucks whenever you handed over the vast sums of money demanded for a season ticket which would set you up initially. Subsequent holders could be obtained as branded freebies every so often at the major stations. These you would horde and use as your current holder split down the spine.

About 5 years ago I discovered that UBS did branded leather holders. These 3 pocket holders were rigid, sturdy and swanky and I Wanted One. Sadly I had no idea how you went about procuring one. It seems they were given out to a department I wasn’t in as a one off. Not helpful.

I scoured the Internet searching for something similar but was only able to find flimsy two pocket holders that didn’t protect a ticket in your pocket at all well. Then, 4 years ago, I struck lucky. The team I was in at the time was small, only loosely associated with any larger groups and lead a nomadic life as we got shuffled from desk to desk while they refurbished our office and reorganised teams. During one of these moves I found the holy grail: a brand new, and seemingly unclaimed leather UBS railcard holder. Needless to say it became claimed there and then.

Since then my ticket holder has done sterling service, however, sadly it’s finally suffering the same fate as it’s plastic brethren. There is now a split that runs half the length of one of the spines and the other spine is about to start splitting. I’ve no idea how long it will hold out before bits detach entirely but I think it is time to source a new one.

Originally this was going to be a plea to everyone asking where I might find such a rare beast, after all, I had no luck looking last time I wanted one, however, a quick search of the internetwebs has brought up a number of potential hits which means I may be able to source something similar. Still, if you know of any good quality railcard holder vendors let me know, just in case it turns out the ones I’ve found are crap.

My new headphones arrived yesterday. This was very exciting as, over the past three years, I have become accustomed to the sound quality of my SE530s and my backup headphones were not cutting the mustard, or indeed any condiment.

Shure no longer make the SE530s so I’ve had to upgrade to the SE535s. These feature detachable cables which means if the cables break (which they do) you just get new ones without having to replace the phenomenally expensive ear buds.

In order to provide some versatility to the cable arrangement the old SE530s had a very short cable from the buds and you could attach various lengths of cable to this or, as in my case, the iPhone mic adapter. Since you can swap out the entire cable on the SE535s Shure have dispensed with the old adapters. Sadly this means that the default cable doesn’t control my iPhone, can’t be used for calls and is a bit long for my tastes. That said there are dedicated iPhone cables with an online mic and control buttons. I have these on order.

I’ve never been a huge fan of self checkout machines. Personally I work on the premise that a percentage of my food cost goes to pay the cashier and that by doing their job for them I should be reaping a saving of that percentage. There’s also the fact that you’re not quite sure if you’re going to do it right. It’s probably because I buy a lot of the freshly prepared stuff which isn’t exactly 200g that I’m forever seeking the assistance of someone to reset the machine due to the weight being wrong. Anyway, today I also found out that, apparently, I was queuing wrong too.

I’ve always been lead to believe that ones joins a queue at the rear and I assumed that this held true for all queues but not, it would seem, the self checkout queue in Morrisons today. The shop was heaving and given I didn’t have much to buy I figured I’d go join the queue to brave the self service machines. There’s one queue that feeds four machines. There were three people queueing so I stood behind them. The next bloke to come along decided, since the person at the front of the queue had left a gap between him and the first two checkouts, that the queue was null and void and could be ignored thus he could insinuate himself at the front of it. Well, I say insinuate, it was more brazenly push in then glare at everyone behind as if to chastise them for queuing incorrectly and daring anyone to say anything. We didn’t. We’re British.

Thankfully the queue jumper only had two items and, once at his checkout he summoned the man overseeing the checkouts in a not so polite manner and demanded that he scan the items through as the queue jumper ‘had no idea how to work this idiot machine’. A few minutes later and I was able to go up to a checkout and start scanning my items. Midway through and I was aware of two people stood very close behind me. When I turned to look I discovered a couple who had decided they were going to queue at the machine and loom over me. I ignored them for a few seconds but felt I had to say something when they started fishing items out of my basket and handing them to me. Apparently they were being ‘helpful’ and allowing me to ‘empty my basket quicker’ so they could put their basket on the little shelf. I told them thanks, but no thanks and perhaps they’d like to go wait in the queue. They informed me they were happy where they were so I was reduced to the last recourse available to me… going slow.

As luck would have it the last two items in my basket were loose apples. I selected the fresh produce button, selected apples and was greeted by a display of 20. I knew exactly what type of apples they were, but I still had the odd couple invading my personal space so I politely asked the guy overseeing the checkouts if he could go check what type of apple they were to ensure I entered the right ones. I think he had worked out what was going on because he dutifully took the apples and went to go check taking a reasonable amount of time over it and driving the couple behind me insane. I just stood there smiling in amongst the tutting and sighing.Finally, however, the checkout attendant had to return and I was forced to log the apples and put them in my bag. I chose card payment, popped my card in the reader and then stopped. I was helpfully informed by my attendant couple that the machine was waiting for my PIN and I helpfully informed them that I would not be entering it until they were no longer hovering over me. It took them at least a minute to work out I wasn’t kidding. Finally they backed off and I paid.

The instant my card was out of the machine they had swooped. The lady was now frantically trying to scan her first item and the bloke had two more in his hands ready to go. That they had to wait for my receipt to be printed before they could start was causing them visible discomfort. The irony being that by the time I’d left and they got started at least 4 people had been through on the other tills and they’d have paid and been gone. That said the irony wasn’t enough for me and if anyone tries that with me at the supermarket again I think I’ll swing for them.

Since it’s now December we can happily start talking about Christmas¹ and preparations for same² without fear of jumping the gun³. This weekend, given we are only a few weeks before Christmas⁴, it was time to go purchase a tree and erect it in the living room.

Now, if we’re going to do Christmas, we’re going to do it properly. No gaudy fake tree for us resplendent with fibre optic lights, fake snow and pre-decorated, oh no. We want a real, honest to God, hand decorated, needle shedding live tree. We had one last year and we were not about to sully Little Cottage with fakery this year. There was, unfortunately, a tiny problem.

Last years tree wasn’t the largest in the world and required some rearranging of the living room to accommodate it. Since then we’ve rammed more furniture into the room to house the mice and ever growing arachnid collection. Careful examination of the room and much careful planning later we managed to free up some space… about 400cm square… on the windowsill. Still, this isn’t the end of the world, the tree would just have to be… diminutive.

Measurements in hand we headed to Homebase for to buy Christmas. As can be imagined Homebase was geared up for supplying many variations on Christmas, with trees of all shapes, sizes and levels of tackyness, including 3 sizes of diminutive real tree: the tiny (less than 6″), the small (1ft) and the not so small (2ft) each in it’s own pot and, for the two larger sizes, pre-decorated. We went for a 1ft tree, bought it a nice red pot to hide the plastic pot the tree was in and then bought some tinsel strips and little baubles to replace the existing decorations and make it our own. Job done.

Gift storage “under” the tree will be handled by simply moving the heater Christmas eve and putting the presents on the floor under the windowsill. The lights… well, we just trailed them over the mirror above the fire.

¹ Please note that this blog will not be masking the fact that it’s Christmas. There will be no “happy holidays” euphemisms and certainly no “happy happy!” which can only have come to being when the fundamentalist PC brigade discovered some people work over the “holiday period” and therefore it can’t be referred to as a holiday for fear of offending anyone. Incidentally I’m waiting for them to realise that not everyone is happy over December so I can watch them disappear up their own arseholes trying to come up with a new euphemism to bandy about.

² Beyond prudent early purchasing of presents which The Zozo seems to have sorted for me already.

³ We are, after all, onto the 6th window in the advent calendar.

⁴ For the anal among you, I am well aware that historically you’re supposed to erect and decorate the tree on Christmas eve but I’m getting into the spirit of the mass consumerism version of Christmas brought to us by Coca-cola Inc.⁵, not the Christian slant on a pagan festival.

⁵ A company who invented Santa as we know him and who’s advert all but hails the start of Christmas but who daren’t actually say “Christmas is coming”. There is a deep, deep irony in there.

The shoes I wear to the gym (and the occasional game of squash) are now over 2 years old. Probably nearer 3. They are, to put it mildly, falling to bits. Since I’m now regularly back at the gym I figured it was time to treat myself to some new shoes. As I do intend to play squash again I decided court shoes were in order (I never wear my gym shoes outside) so it was off to the Internet to the best purveyor of sporting goods I know: John Lewis. I very quickly found a pair of snazzy looking Nike Air which I made a note of and took with me to the actual shop, my track record with shoe shopping online not being great. There I was served by a maths genius who told me they were 10% off in the sale so were now £40 not £50. Not one to pass up an extra £5 off I grabbed them and ran.

Today is the first day I’ve worn them to the gym and I’m pleased to announce my performance with my jazzy new shoes is… worse! 22 minutes into my normal 30 minute cross trainer workout I had to bail and hit the cooldown button. I’m also only attempting 20 minutes on the bike. To be fair last week I dialled the strength down on the machines a bit to ease myself back into it but I hadn’t realised I was that out of shape. I’m also a bit worried about the pins and needles I get on the bike after 10 minutes or so.

The good news is that, despite last weeks diet of lard, I lost a lb… or my shoes are a lb lighter.

When the iPhone first came out over here o2, who were the only carrier selling the phone, had a special iPhone tariff with an unlimited data plan. Unlike most unlimited data plans the iPhone one really was unlimited. Not unlimited within the boundaries of a fair use policy, not unlimited up to a fixed hard limit; true unlimited means unlimited all you can eat data usage. They made quite a big thing of this. Of course back then there wasn’t much the iPhone could do to hurt o2s data networks. It was web browsing, email and a little bit of YouTube on 3G networks and wifi.

Fast forward a few years and the iPhone can now play live TV over the airwaves. People have even been tethering their laptops to them (even though they’re not supposed to, naughty people!). The result is that o2 were finding that some people were abusing the unlimited means unlimited contracts rather more than they were meant to. Of course, being a phone company they have one or two tricks up their sleeve.

“Want a shiny new iPhone 4? Don’t want to pay full price? No matter, here is a nice, subsidised phone with a shiny new 18 month contract and limited data plan.”

And that was that. My choices where keep my £25/month iPhone simplicity contract with it’s unlimited data plan which, under the terms of the contract, cold easily get written out at any time, and pay something like £600 for a phone. Or I could give o2 £35/month, give up my unlimited data and pay nearer £200. It doesn’t rake a marks genius to work out the best option here. (Not getting an iPhone 4 was not an option. This is me we’re talking about.)

o2 did soften the blow. For the first few months they were giving an introductory offer when we could still have unlimited data, but after that it’s onto the capped tariffs we go.

A few days ago I got a text stating that my freebie unlimited period was over. I would now be capped at 500Mb/month and please could I restart my phone. o2 were quick to assure me that they would let me know if I hit 80% of my data allowance and kindly let me know I could buy a bigger allowance for more money. I was then informed that last month I’d used less than half my allowance.

This last nugget of information was not quite as useful as they might have thought given I also spent half the month in Borneo with my data connection turned off (the kind offer of £6/Mb in roaming charges wasn’t to my taste).

With absolutely no idea how much data I’m ingesting I’ll be spending this month being a bit frugal and checking my usage on the website. Next month I’ll remember to reset the usage monitor on the phone

Given I tend to listen to fairly alternative stuff it can make finding new music a bit challenging. I can’t get recommendations off my friends, the radio doesn’t play anything remotely close to the genres I like and I no longer go clubbing very often (which was a great source of new bands).

As with most things in life my problem is one that can be solved by the Internet, in this case with last.fm. Bung in an artist or genre you like and it creates your own personalised radio station with similar tracks for your listening pleasure. Links through to iTunes let you purchase any tracks you like and sample other music by the same artist.

One particular track that took my fancy was only to be found on a pretty obscure compilation. Figuring there might be some hidden gems on the rest of the album I bought the whole thing. A wise purchase as it turned out.

One of the tracks that I rated highly on this new album claimed to be Bring Me Violence by Tactical Sekt. Now I’m a bit anal with music and like to have it rated, correctly tagged and resplendent with lyrics so I decide to grab the track lyrics off the web and then investigate Tactical Sekt in more depth.

It’s here I hit a brick wall. It’s not that I couldn’t find the lyrics, it’s that they were completely different. A quick visit to YouTube confirmed that this wasn’t so much a remix but a completely different song. I left it at that and went in search of other artists on the album who were less problematic.

Yesterday during lunch the song popped onto my iPod and I decided to go all out and pin down this track once and for all. Armed with Google I plugged in a quoted search using great chunks of the lyrics. Google returned a result, but for a different band and song entirely: Existence by Solitary Experiments.

Off to iTunes again, turns out that this track is also on the compilation. My search stalled here. I only had part of the album on my phone so I couldn’t tell if it was on the version I’d downloaded.

Fast forward to last night where I was able to sit down in front of the desktop with my master music library and continue the investigation.

First things first, Existence was on the album I had and it was the track before Bring Me Violence. Next I asked Shezam to identify the tracks for me. No luck, too obscure. My next trick was to find Bring me violence on YouTube and compare it against both tracks in iTunes. Bingo! What claimed to be Existence was in fact Bring Me Violence. The track names had been transposed by whoever put the album on iTunes. A further check confirmed the song I like was indeed a heavily remixes version of Existence. Meta data updated I could now rest easy and can now go and instigate Solitary Experiments to see if they have any other ditties I might enjoy.

Shame I hadn’t worked this out before my stag do. The music was such that it would have fitted in nicely if I’d been able to request it. Next time maybe

I’ve always been an avid computer gamer, from Elite and Repton on old 8bit home computers (BBC Micro in my case) to X3 and Starcraft 2 on modern 64bit multi core behemoths. It was actually gaming that got me into programming. Back in the days of yore games would often come as printed listings you entered by hand. In those days the game descriptions were works of art that would raise expectations far beyond what a few hours entering code could achieve. One particular listing which was supposed to be for a lunar lander type game took me a week to enter and when I’d finished it didn’t work. 2 years later I finally fixed it and taught myself to program while I was at it.

Fast forward 15 years and I was at the peak of my gaming. I had a rabid World of Warcraft addiction (that stuff is digital crack!) and would think nothing of dropping 5 grand a year on hardware to keep ahead of the curve. Thankfully the fact I could program had landed me a job that could fund that level of expenditure. During that time there was never any doubt if a game would run on my computer. It was a given that I’d get a rock solid 60fps with all the settings to maximum. I even had the hole in my wallet to prove it.

These days I’m slightly less cutting edge with my gaming. My iPhone gets used as a gaming platform more than my big computer, laptop, ps3 and wii combined. I just lack the time (and, in part the inclination) to play as many computer games as I used to and lack the cash to throw at staying on the bleeding edge. That said I still enjoy a few hours a week on my big games machine at weekends when Zo is at work (and many hours on the iPhone when she’s not :S ) and I’m beginning to find myself in a quandary.

When I say big machine I mean big. My budget when buying it was astronomical, not least because of the monitors. These beasties are both a blessing and a curse. They were bought for photo and video editing and, for that, they’re fantastic. Unfortunately in the machines secondary role as a games platform they’re a pain. It all boils down to frame rates. A nice 1080P widescreen 19″ monitor runs at 1920×1080 so at 60 frames per second you’re moving roughly 124.5 million pixels about per second. On my monitors it’s closer to 246 million. I need double the processing power just to match the smaller screen. Add a graphics card that, despite being the best Apple offered at the time, was a generation out of date compared to what I’d be putting in a custom PC gaming rig and you end up with a machine that struggles with modern games unless I turn the settings down.

Recently Apple announced the new shiny i7 MacPros which came with, among other things, current generation graphics cards. Even better these cards will run in my machine. For £300 I could breath another couple of years of quality gaming life into the machine, and when you consider In the past I’ve paid over double that for a single card, and put two of them in a machine, its quite a reasonable price. Once again, though, my monitors are being a pain.

With the number of pixels that need to be driven I need a special type of output on the card. Two in fact, one for each monitor. Driving two monitors is quite hard work for the card, very few people actually need two of these outputs and newer outputs are being pushed by Apple so, for whatever reason, Apple and/or the card manufacturers have stopped putting two of the outputs I need on the cards, replacing the second with something that is useless to me. Now, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to buy a shiny new card and plug one monitor into it and leave the second monitor plugged into the old card. But this might not work. And I may need to by 2 cards. All of a sudden my £300 cost, which I could probably sell stuff to raise, might become £600. Not so easy to cover.

I guess I’d better start ebaying stuff

It turns out Camden doesn’t do mornings at all on a weekday so I buggered off to other parts of London to perform errands, see friends and eat food. Recharged and refreshed from a lovely meal I didn’t pay for (the tastiest kind) involving raw dead fish, no rice and some very tasty chops I returned to Camden in the afternoon to find it alive and kicking.

First stop Cyberdog to spend far too much on tshirts for Saturday (couldn’t decide which I wanted, got two), and to wonder what The Zozo would look like in some of the girlie tee’s they do (hint: damn hot!). Pressing purchases done I then set about looking for a present for The Zozo, and some hoodies for me, all the while wishing The Zozo was with me because there’s a load of clothes I’d love to have bought her (or at least seen her in ). In the end I settled for a bizarre hand made animal thing for The Zozo because I’m always worried about buying the wrong size with clothes. I also located a couple of hoodies for the stag do which were appropriately alternative yet suitable for general wear should the claims of “high quality” actually turn out to be true and they last for any length of time.

Having handed over more money than I’m comfortable admitting for very few goods (at least the stall holders in the market are cheerful about ripping you off) I headed to Lock 17 by the lock to remind my body what alcohol is (I won’t be drinking too much on Saturday but it’s still going to be a bit of a shock to the system so best to cushion that), check my email (to conserve battery I’ve had my phone running in a low power mode and been quietly downloading emails over a slower connection during the day to read at my leisure later) and blog about the day (resplendent with many unnecessary sentences in parenthesis making a single line last a paragraph) while waiting for The Zozo to finish her exams.

By my watch she’ll be done in 5 minutes which gives me enough time to finish my drink, toddle over to London Zoo and meet her before heading out for dinner with her.

All in all a good, if expensive day