Dom Davis (The Blog)

So let’s give you an idea of what it’s like to live with my brain and show you what I have to deal with on an almost constant basis. This morning, as I disembarked from the train at Norwich station I thought to myself “Thursday!”, as one does when gearing oneself up for the working day ahead.

This thought rolled around for a while before dislodging some random factoid regarding the naming of the week days and was replaced with “Thor’s Day”, that is, the day named after the Norse god Thor. For some reason this factoid irritated me. “Why”, I thought to myself, “why does Thor get a day?”

At this point a flood of tangential thoughts ensued. Half remembered details of Norse mythology were marshalled in defence of the name; the fact that other gods, such as Freya were also given days; and simply that the week days were named long ago which means their roots had lost much of their meaning, and is also evident in the degradation in pronunciation and spelling. What stood out for me in this cacophony of internal monolog was that Thor had a big hammer. This quickly joined forces with the notion that he was probably over compensating for something and simply added to my ire over his having a day named after him; logic and evidence be damned.

From there is was but a short hop to deciding that I too should have a day. After all, I am the third most important person I know (after Willow and The Zozo) and, since there are 7 days in every week I should easily get a look in. Me, being me, voiced my concern over Thor having his own day, his overcompensating the hammer and my demands for my own day on Facebook. It was here that I first named the day and saw it written down: Domsday.

Upon seeing Domsday I was instantly reminded of “doomsday” and, noting how Thursday was in fact a derivation of Thor’s Day I wondered if my own day might similarly suffer from a deviation from the initial spelling. Could it not be, I surmised, that Doomsday was derived from Dom’s Day and that I already had a day?

Further examination of this postulation had me thinking that not for me some common or garden, run-of-the-mill weekday that was simply churned out once every 7 days with more significance placed upon things happening on the day than the day itself. No, I had the most important of days: I had the last day. After my day there are no more days. Ever.

This addendum to my train of though, and initial complaint was posted as a comment to my Facebook status. In order that I might drive home the victory that I had achieved of one of the more senior Norse gods I felt it necessary to end the missive, in capital letters: IN YOUR FACE, THOR!

While my initial irritation was not with her, and while I did not explicitly state it, it should also be noted that my train of thought also bested Freya, another god. Having, as I had, gained the better of two gods, albeit rather old ones who, in the case of Thor at least, are not really actively worshiped any more, in the space of time it took me to disembark the train, negotiate the ticket barrier and exit the station, I was able to replace the annoyance I had felt with a feeling of jubilation and triumph which placed a smile in my face and a spring in my step.

And so it is that I headed to work, completely and happily oblivious to the fact that my daydreaming and bizarre thought processes had caused me to forget to send my usual morning text to The Zozo wishing her a good day and expressing my love for her, usually via the shorthand notation of x’s for kisses. This failure of memory on my part allowed me to unwittingly clutch defeat from the jaws of victory without even knowing it.

As such the moral of the story is this: do not take on the gods, no matter how old or minor in today’s pantheon, you will lose. #LFMF

One of the big features of the iPhone 4S is Siri, the voice enabled personal assistant. Siri understands natural language, so the marketing goes, and you can use it to perform a number of functions on the iPhone. Sounds great, and from the videos and reports I’ve seen it works great too. So what about in practice with my voice?

Well let’s start with actually using Siri: I can either press and hold the home button on the phone, press and hold the home button on my headphones or hold the unlocked phone to my ear. I then speak my request… which has me running into my first hurdle; I just feel like a complete twonk talking to my phone and saying “Text my wife, say ‘Do we need anything from the shops’”. Nope, I’ll be getting the phone out and typing that thank you very much.

Next up comes how well it actually works. At home last night I started playing with Siri and seeing how well it did things.

“Zoe is my wife”
“Would you like me to add Mrs Zoe Davis as your wife?”
“Yes”
“OK, I’ve added that relationship”
My wife’s contact details are then shown from my address book.

So far so good.

“Text my wife, say ‘testing’”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know who your wife is”

WTF?

“Who is my wife?”
“I do not who who Mrs Zoe Davis is”

???

Repeated fiddling with my contacts and setting my spouse manually didn’t seem to have any effect. Not good. Still, I guess I can just say “Text Zoe”, not as good, but at least it works.

What about reminders? I need to look for my old iPhone 3 so I can box it and get it ready to go to its next home.

“Remind me to find my phone on saturday”
“I’m sorry Dom, I do not have a number for you”

Er….

“New reminder for Saturday”
“Ok, I’m setting up a new reminder for Saturday, what would you like it to say?”
“Find my phone”
“OK, I’ve set that up for 9am on Saturday”
“Change time of reminder to 11am”
“I’m sorry, I can’t change the time of the reminder”

Great…

“what is the stock price for Barclays?”
“The stock price for Berkley closed at £230″
“What’s is the stick price for BAR Clays?”
“The stock price for Barclays PLC is £180.50″

Close, except the stock price is 180.5p, oops.

Voice controls for iPod playback are still there, but I really don’t see the point. Compare and contrast:

*Press and hold button* “Play” *Pause while the command is processed* “Playing”

With

*Click button once* (With headphones)
*Doubleclick home button* *Press play* (With the phone in my hand)

OK, I can tell it to play a specific track, artist or play list but since I can’t pronounce half the artists I listen to how the hell is Siri going to cope?

I can see it being useful for quick reminders (much more so when the API is released and it’s integrated with things like my shopping list program) and possibly while driving… except it needs a 3G signal when on the move and I live in Norfolk.

As a final note, I was going to dictate this using Siri, but sadly it translates my saying Siri as “silly” and I figured the amount of correcting would be too much to bother with. I should also point out the responses are from memory so they may not be quite word perfect.

~/o I’m getting married in the morning¹! / Ding dong! The bells are gonna chime² / Pull out the stopper³! / Let’s have a whopper⁴! / But get me to the church⁵ on time⁶! o/~

So yes, hideously inaccurate ditty, but I do, indeed get married in a about 28 hours.

When we booked everything we figured that, since the wedding was in the afternoon, and given we were there for two nights, we’d have time for relaxing walks around Cley (it’s a beautiful area), few photographs and a bit of exploring the area. The day before and I think we’ve realised the reality will not allow for said walks. It’ll be dark by the time we get there tonight, tomorrow will be a tad busy from start to finish (it would appear weddings are a bit more involved than pitch up), Sunday we have to check out by 10, finish packing and drive to London.

That’s not to say we’ll be rushing about like headless chickens. The wedding preparation has been remarkably stress free and The Zozo hasn’t turned into bridezilla once. I think it helps that she hasn’t been planning this since the age of 11. As far as I’m concerned all that really matters is we’re both there. Everything else is just a bonus.

I am also a little amused that tradition dictates that people wish us luck. Every time someone says “good luck” I’m put in mind of me telling the story of the marriage some years down the line and saying “so, I just happened to be stood in Cley Windmill one day with a registrar when in walks Zo, which was a stroke of luck because we were able to get married” Enormously grateful as we are for the luck I think we’ll save that for getting a free upgrade on our flight and instead rely on planning for the wedding

Anyway, I’ve got a days work to get through. Blogging may or may not happen for the next 2 weeks. I’d assume not. In the interim can I recommend xkcd for your funnies and TV Tropes to pass the time. Be warned, TV tropes can lead you on wiki walks that can last hours, if not days

¹ Afternoon actually
² No bells
³ Cork. We are not heathens here, spade’s a spade and all that.
⁴ Actually a canapé reception with a small, informal sit-down meal afterwards. No idea where the nearest Burger King is, so no whoppers, not even a double bacon cheese whopper
⁵ No church
⁶ We’re staying at the venue the night before so arriving late will be a feat

For reasons I’d rather not go into on a public forum this morning left me so angry I was shaking. It’s home time and I’m still pretty pissed off, however, I have a remedy for that.

Say what you will about Mr Clarkson and his chums but I find Top Gear to be hysterically funny (I will probably agree with every complaint you raise about them, only I find these things good things). The Zozo, unfortunately, does not, so in order to avoid inflicting it on her I have the latest series on my iPhone (yes, I know, it’s taken me a while to get round to it).

45 minutes (the length of the train journey, unfortunately not long enough to take in an entire episode) of Clarkson shouting “Power!!!” while driving something ridiculous, May trying to be sophisticated in the face of the other two and failing and Hammond reversing into May all the time is guaranteed to put a smile on my face and mean I’m not in my current killer mood when I get home. In the olden days I would have just sat on the train listening to angry music and seething. Isn’t modern technology grand

People handle grief differently. I tend to be very private with my grief getting through the more public parts of the day by listening to very loud, very aggressive music and eating crap. Since I couldn’t be there I marked my grandmothers funeral today by stuffing my face with one of those individually wrapped portions of Cadburys Fruit and Nut (the 200 gram one so it’s more than 1 mouthful).

I’ve eaten a lot of crap this week so the diet should probably begin again in ernest tomorrow. That said, I am a lot happier with my shape these days and I did notice the other day that I had the body of an Athlete¹ so that’s OK.

¹ OK, so maybe not the body of an athlete, but I do have the feet of an athlete at least… OK, OK, I have athletes foot. Happy now?

So despite my nice
letter I’m not entirely sure we won the £10 million on offer last night, which is a shame. One could do a lot with £10 million. Still, it could just be that they don’t phone¹ until later I’m the day.

My next plan is to put in a request for lottery funding into a study on how having a wedding dowry of £10 million can affect a couples lives. Given the amount that seems to get spent on other pointless pieces of pointless research I can’t see how it can fail…

…but just in case it does I’m going to lodge an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights stating that forcing me to wake up early, leave The Zozo and go into work to earn a living must surely contravene a whole host of human rights. And let’s face it, at the end of the day that’s what this is about. Stupid alarms

¹From what I understand if you win big via direct debit they don’t send the “Good news about your account” email (which after faffing about logging in and trying to work out what the good news is invariably turns out to be that you’ve won £10) and call you instead.

Dear Camelot,

If you note your financial records for the past 12 months or so The Zozo and I have been furnishing you with regular payments via direct debit to enter into your Lotto games.

You may also remember that, according to the terms and conditions, that if millions of us promise to give you money you promise to randomly distribute some of that money back to us in wildly disproportionate amounts. You also promise to give some of it to charity so you look good while you promise to keep the remainder to line your pockets. Good scam, wish I’d thought of it.

Anyhoos, we feel that we’ve been rather missed out in terms of receiving our share of the winnings having netted one (1) £10 win while playing. I can’t remember if we play the same numbers, or random numbers each game (you’ll have to check the account) but if you could see to it that we win the jackpot tonight that would be super.

Love and kisses,

Dom and Zozo

They say there is a fine line between genius and insanity. I know exactly which side of the line I fall. Last night I had a particularly vivid dream where I was in a large supermarket inspecting the new brand of reduced calorie butter alternative from Walls (yes, the sausage makers) called either “Yeah But…” or “So But…” (the exact name escapes me). For some reason this new spread was in the cheese section which lead me to enquire with a minion as to why it wasn’t with the other spreads. His response was vague, something to do with how they categorised things, but he also made reference to there being much more space in the cheese section now that the celebrity cheeses had been moved to cosmetics.

It seems that in my dream world the celebs have saturated the clothing, accessory and perfume market and moved onto selling us cheese endorsed by them. You can imagine blokes running around before Christmas trying to get their wife/girlfriend underwear by Kyle, perfume by Avril and cheddar by Jordan. True genius! Or insanity, you decide

One of the doohickies I have set up on this blog gives me the top search results used to find it. I’m used to seeing odd, funny, inane and downright weird stuff in there, especially with the old blog.

The top 3 items in the list (we buy any car lyrics; nxea; and spread betting 10p per point) are all easily explained.

Number 4 is “jif lemon” “kidney stones”. Given the way Google works the quotes mean the searcher was looking for two exact phrases. Given my love of pancakes in general and Jif Lemon day in particular added to my predilection to hatch kidney stones you can see why they ended up here. Makes you wonder what they were looking for, perhaps trying to find out if Jif Lemon causes kidney stones (unlikely to be the sole cause), maybe Jif Lemon tastes nice with kidney stones. Who knows.

Which brings us to item 5: “my foot” “x-ray” “nail polish” “blog”. remembering how we specify phrase matches with Google this means our visitor was looking for 4, fairly specific terms and wound up on my blog. Needless to say, I was intrigued. My ramblings are many and varied but I’m not sure that little lot has come up an any one post (prior to today). Of course, I had to Google it and, what do you know, first result . Clicking on the result takes you to the life at home category list which helps explain how I managed to hit all the search terms. Still, just goes to show that with Google, as with so many things in life: random shit in, random shit out