30 Oct 2007
Zum
Woo hoo. New lens for me camera.
Here are 2 photies taken from the same place of the same thing one at one extreme of zum and the other at the other:
Ooh I like this lens.
Have fun.
29 Oct 2007
Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!
Did I mention that it winds me up when people give dodgy advice out?
There was a thread on the WJF forums about someone or other having wrist pains. They decided to discuss this on the new episode of JoJ (see the forums for the link).
This is where I get grumpy. This is at least the second time they’ve discussed this sort of topic and the second time they’ve talked utter cack about it. To quote Mitchell and Webb: “You may not know a great deal about this but you surely ‘reckon’ something. Come on, what do you reckon?” That seems to be the attitude here.
You can’t tell people stuff about stuff you actually know nothing about. You just can’t do it. OK maybe you can but don’t expect to get away with it.
So it starts with “I hear a lot of jugglers complaining about sore wrists, shoulders etc. Seriously I’m a huge advocate of the whole warming up thing”. Arrrgh!! Banging my head into a wall here. Flexibility is good yes but whether you warm up or not is irrelevant anyway and certainly is if you insist on overworking or having a weird pattern (eg flappy wrists).
Thankfully they didn’t discuss that god awful “wrist stretches for jugglers” video that someone posted in response. I watched that one through my hands with a “oh my god, I can’t believe people think this” thought in my head. Please just don’t, ok?
But the lassie does show some stretches (very briefly) and then explains that she broke her arm when she was younger and they told her to do those stretches. So the same treatment for loosening up a wrist after a break is the same as a warm-up routine then? Apparently. And then “I never have problems unless it’s combat related or soreness related”. So what’s “soreness” if not “pain”? It’s surely the same thing.
Not all wrist pains are the same thing going wrong. Not all treatments, preventions or techniques will be the same or appropriate for everyone. That’s what an assessment is for; to differentiate this stuff.
Many wrist problems are defined as “over-use” but even within that there are different problems with different solutions.
But they move on: she does gymnastics so has strong wrists. He says “well if you do that sort of thing then you don’t need to worry about this stuff.” So apparently gymnasts don’t get wrist injury and pain. That’s a bit like saying builders and gardeners have strong backs so don’t get back injury or pain. Total rubbish.
It’s sad. They clearly mean well and are sympathetic to the original poster and want to tell him (and us) something useful. But it’s not their topic. It’s not what they do. It’s hearsay, poorly informed opinion and nothing more.
I sort of want to go on and put some truths up there. But on the other hand I don’t really want to go on the JoJ show.
A wee bit of german
I made a decision, this weekend, to cycle to work as often as possible. The plan is a combination of actually getting some exercise and giving me time to listen to stuff.
So what to listen to? I tend to stay away from noisy music on my commute purely for safety reasons but I do listen to comedy shows as I can pretty much always hear what’s going on around me as well.
Well I played with iTunes as well this weekend and decided to go podcast mad. Downloaded and heard loads of em.
Incidentally is there a rule that says comedy podcasts must be just awfully unfunny? Seems to be a constant.
Anyway I thought I’d combine the 2 things and listen to some podcasts on my way to work. I can’t have the horribly complex sceptic and scientific ones ‘cos I’d be thinking too hard about what I was hearing.
So I’ve plumped for the “learn german” ones. There seem to be loads of them. One is hilarious. It’s called Daily Phrase (or some such) and it’s a short few minutes learning just one or two phrases. The host is wonderful. She’s a Scottish lady with a really clear and slow speaking voice. The odd Scottishisms are grand as well; “och let’s go back a wee while” with the whooshing sound where the “wh” is.
I’ve just got to one where she’s got some feedback and it’s been negative about her accent and speed of speaking. Unbelievable. Never heard such a clear teacher.
Mind you if I carry on with it I may be quite good at telling people that I speak no german. That seems to be the final aim of the podcast.
Marvellous.
Have fun.
26 Oct 2007
I don’t understand
There’s a good news story doing the rounds at the mo. Hurrah you’d think. But no there’s a problem. But the problem seems unreasonably unfounded and a little bit bizarre.
The story is about the vaccine that protects against HPV which is a huge risk factor for cervical cancer. Now to get the best effect the deal is that the vaccine should be given to girls before they have sex for the first time. So the plan is to dole it out to girls when they’re around 11 or 12.
So far so reasonable, what’s the problem?
Well there seem to be some folk who think that giving girls this “before they have sex for the first time” means that it’s tacit approval to have sex immediately after having the vaccine.
Now I’m really confused. What part of “you need to have this before you have sex for the first time” implies “now you must have sex, preferably before you’re ready and certainly before the age of consent”?
There is just no way I can get that meaning from the plan.
Very strange.
Have fun.
Weirdly annoying
2 things today.
One: I’ve got no bloody internet at home again. Hence no presence online yesterday. Still it gave me an incentive to go shopping.
Two: Our admin lady is off sick this week. If you don’t know, we have 1 person manning our phones so if she’s off we have no way for people to contact us either for making/cancelling appointments or just for queries. So we have an answerphone that’ll sub when things are bad by saying that there is no-one to answer the phone and please phone back whenever. So I did a new message saying to phone back on Friday 26th. I even checked it to make sure it worked and sounded right.
Forward to the next morning and I get an urgent email from a colleague saying that one of her patients was spitting blood because he’d phoned us only to get a message saying that the lines would be closed until January! Ludicrousness if you ask me. But I phoned the number (I was at a different site) and not only did the message say January it wasn’t me saying it. It sounded like a temp we had about 2 years ago. Something very strange was going on here. Luckily another colleague was on site to change it again but I still have no clue what on earth went on with that message. How come it changed? And how come it reverted to a message from 2 years ago (ish)? How bizarre.
Have fun.
PS Seems like I’ve come across as angry and intemperate on GatFor according to one poster. I wonder how he got that idea?
More returns
Someone responded again with no substantive points. Here’s their reply in full :
“What incentive would one have to debate your points when you assume that Christians must follow the Old Testament? It’s a false assumption. Honestly, I’m not going to debate you either way, but just a thought. “
Red rag to a bull:
So you ARE saying that Christians can ignore the 10 Commandments then? So what’s all the fuss about not being allowed to put the 10 commandments in public places in the US then? Surely it’s not the jewish lobby that are calling for this. Every time I see it on the news it’s some hyper-grumpy christian.
Oh yes and this business about creationism (oh sorry silly me “intelligent design”). It always seems to be christians getting all grumpy about it. But the creation story, I’m not sure if you know this, is in the Old Testament. You saying that it’s wrong? There are an awful lot of christians who’ll have a fight with you about that if that is what you’re saying.
The same goes for the hatred of gays. The bit that informs us that it’s wrong is in the Old Testament (same bit as eating prawns remember) and this is referred to by christians arguing for the “treatment” of gay people. I heard a christian on TV arguing that cutting the number of gay people was “self preservation” and that America was turning into a modern day Sodom and Gemorrah. Thus god in his infinite mercy and justice would destroy the place just as he did in the err Old Testament. Are all these people wrong?
When it comes to incentive, well? How about trying to explain your point of view with logic and reasoning so I can understand your viewpoint. If you ignore the Old Testament there are shed loads of rules and beliefs that go out the window. Do you ignore all of these or just some of them? If some of them how have you come to the decisions as to which ones to follow and which to ignore?
Back to my other substantive point which still hasn’t been answered: Am I going to hell for not believing? Do I have to be terrified into submission by some unseen and unknowable force if I want to save my hide from eternal fire? Or should just being quite a nice guy who doesn’t lie (ok so her bum actually did look big in that dress, but I wanted a quiet evening), cheat, steal, kill etc, be enough.
How come god, as this super all powerful being needs supplicants? If he’s so great surely he should be above needing that sort of sycophantic fawning.
Hey if it’s all true and I meet him then I’ll give him kudos for the creation thing. Somehow I doubt I’ll have to. Shame he picked humans as top species though.
Have fun.
24 Oct 2007
Return volley
I got annoyed by the responses to that thread in GatFor that I mentioned a while back. Some bloke mentioned that all those rules for life were from the Torah, not the New Testament therefore not applicable to christians. First I’ve heard of it. Anyway here’s my response (and it’s toned down a bit from my original splurge of typing).
“The Torah was written to the Jews, whereas the New Testament was a series of books and letters to the Gentiles.”
Ah right so we can ignore the rules and tenets of the Old Testament then? Cool. So we’ll start by kicking out the 10 Commandments shall we?
The hypocrisy of certain religious people infuriates me. They pick the bits they agree with and ignore the bits they see as not relevant. Pathetic hypocrites.
If you believe the bible is the true word of God then bloody listen to it and don’t cherry pick. Huddle up with a bunch of equally deluded folk and call it a religion. You can use some discussion time to justify to yourselves why you insist that gays are bad (says so in the old testament), the 10 commandments are good (says so in the old testament) and eating prawns is acceptable (err the opposite of what it says in the old testament). But never mind the contradiction and hypocrisy, more than one of you thinks it so it must be true.
And why has no devout christian responded to any of the substantive points in my original post? Typical arguing technique is to ignore such points and witter about minor issues such as “which bit of the bible we’re going to ignore today” (only to come back to the same bit of the bible later to justify some other bigotry and ignorance).
Tell me, why I as an athiest am going to burn in hell? Tell me how you could deal with that when you’re in heaven knowing that me and other people who are basically good and decent people will be burning for an eternity. Will you feel smug? Hardly a christian feeling is it? Will you feel sorry for me? If so then that’s not right either, you’re supposed to be having a whale of a time up there. God’s supposed to be infinitely forgiving and just isn’t he? Where’s the fairness and justice there then? Fine deity that is, perfectly happy to damn people for eternity simply for not believing what seem to be fairy stories designed to keep people compliant. Not sure that’s the sort of being I want to venerate. Too much of a callous bastard if you ask me. I look forward to hearing some substantive answers.
Have fun.
Wonder if I’ll get me banned?
Have fun.
23 Oct 2007
Wuh?
OK who put this
on my webspace then?
I certainly don’t recall me doing so.
Seems I may have to tighten up some controls.
Sigh.