“Alan looks like someone who skinned some guy and is wearing the face.”
I want to know the cleverness of my readers so all of you have a go at this
What’s your scores?
[edit: Wordpress has just been updated and the "recent comments" bit on my browser is not working. Does it work with you?]
[edit 2: As soon as I posted the previous edit it seemed to start working. One to keep an eye on I reckon.]
I may have mentioned that I quite like Charlie Brooker’s work.
I’ve just been watching his latest episode of Screenwipe and it’ll remain with me for ages. Most notably for hearing Konnie Huq describe how she does a wee before then leading a bunch of men to wee on a hill to the strains of inspiring music.
What an episode!
I love December. It’s a month full of wonders.
Highlights include it being cold, it being wet, it being dark, crappy Christmas music in every shop, crappy Christmas lights outside every lower class filth’s house for a month, and no doubt more I can’t be bothered to think about any more.
Last year I had a good trip to South Africa and returned to a burgled house. Clurb had her bike nicked as well.
This year P&C have had a brick thrown through their window and I’ve now managed to get myself a fracture at my elbow (radial head).
Really not best happy.
Bad end of year.
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Edit: what happened:
I was standing on the end of a rola-bola facing some people whilst chatting. Someone then stood on the other end in an attempt to balance the board. The first I knew about it was when I went flying and landed on my left arm. It did hurt rather a lot but I didn’t think anything was broken as my hand didn’t go numb.
But this morning I made it to work but couldn’t put any pressure through my left arm. One of the doctors I work with more or less insisted I go to A&E. Quick trip there and a couple of xrays later I have confirmed fracture.
So now I’m off work at least 3 weeks. This is seriously annoying. I have teaching to do. I’m supposed to be interviewing next week. And patients won’t be getting seen. Until it’s mended I can’t drive either.
Damn.
Work do this evening.
Not much to tell. Nando’s and then ice skating.
Photos here.
“It’s rare in human history that a billionth of anything has been shipped by one company,” said Logitech’s general manager Rory Dooley.
Indeed.
One might even expect carrying a billionth of something to be logistically harder than carrying a billion of something.
Today hasn’t been a good one.
Started in a filthy mood after very little sleep. Wednesdays are long days for me too. Loads of patients, bang bang bang one after the other.
I was so tired that I did seriously consider going home at lunchtime.
But I stuck it out.
I’d driven as well, normally I’d cycle as my German class is tonight.
But after toying with the idea of skipping the lesson to get more sleep I decided to go after all.
Drove through horrible traffic and at ridiculously slow speeds only to find that there’s no parking at the uni tonight. Assumedly because of this.
So to try and find a parking space anywhere near.
Failed.
So I gave up and came home only to hit even worse traffic.
So I’ve been an hour getting home in traffic I’ve not experienced since I lived in London to find a cold house and no company after what was, again, a spectacularly shit day.
Right then. I’m planning to go to Leeds on the 6th and then to this Birmingham market on the 7th.
Who fancies tagging along (to either)?
Hurrah! Fillums were watched last night.
We had the usual group round for fire, fillums and pizza. And a good evening was had.
We have a stack of dvds still to watch and we decided that people should pick their first 2 preferred ones and the most popular were chosen.
First up was “Innocence“. A mightily creepy little thing about a school full of young girls. At first there are no adults, just girls with a hierarchy based on age. We follow Iris from when she arrives (bizarrely in a locked coffin) and is then shown around a bit. There are restrictions such as not being allowed to leave the grounds. One or two of the girls do try, one dies and another just disappears.
The school seems to be there to teach these girls two things. The main one is dancing. There are ballet classes for all of the students. The other subject is biology.
Every night the elder girls all go away from the house and aren’t allowed to say why. Young Iris follows one day and we see things get a bit more disturbing.
We finish by following one of the girls as she graduates out of the school.
This movie was really very creepy. Loads of symbolism, quite a lot of discomforting images (one girl enjoying tasting blood rather too much, plenty of long damp tunnels, another girl being “chosen” to be removed from the school by the dodgy headmistress in a sort of talent and beauty contest, and the final image is of one girl standing opposite one of the first boys we see, in a fountain with a huge frothy plume of spurting water between them).
One comment I made at the end was “I wonder if this was made by a primary school teacher” as one of the teachers says to the graduater “You’ll soon forget us” with the sound of bitterness in her voice. And then someone else chimed in with “I wonder if it was made by a paedophile“.
It was a good fillum but not what you’d call “fun”.
And I knew I’d seen the ballet teacher somewhere before.
So after creepy and just a bit “wrong” we moved onto good old ghost story territory with “Ghost Game“.
This one is about a reality show that’s a cross between Survivor, Ghostwatch and Derren Brown’s Seance. This kids have to survive in a creepy old PoW camp, that was host to one of the worst wartime atrocities, without bolting in terror. The rather obvious twist in the fillum is that the ghosts are real rather than imagined or dreamt up tricks by the crew.
There’s no real sub-plot to note just a traditional “who will survive?” game to play as you watch. Will it be the fat girl (”She’s too fat to die”), how about the cynical one who is trying to prove it’s all a set-up, or possibly the cheeky lad who’s trying to get off with the model?
It was good and scary. Job done.
And it has to be said that these 2 brought the average quality back up to somewhere near “good”. We’ve seen some shockingly poor movies in recent sessions and these were a marked change.
Well done them.
Seems there’s a new page up on’t nets.
Here it is: here.
I’ve had a look at the warming up bit, as you’d all expect I’m sure. I can’t comment on the rest of it though. Not my line.
Anyway just for your entertainment here’s my ranty review (with some fairer comments at the end):
[edit: just had a chat with the guy who put the site up. More later.]
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Page 1 - “Warming up promotes the body’s natural oil to libircate the joints, ligaments and tendons as well as prepare muscles to fire at appropriate times.”
What the hell is “natural oil”? Ligaments and tendons don’t need “libircating”. Muscles fire when they’re supposed to whether or not you’ve spend 10 minutes moving random parts of your body randomly.
P2: Never heard the ring idea before, interesting idea if a little vague as to why it’s useful.
P3: Wrist circles? Why?
P4: Ankles circles? Really why? If you’re after stopping ankle inversion injury then you want your lower leg muscles to be stiff not relaxed.
P5: page 3 and 4 repeated. Waste of time.
P6: Circling neck is a really bloody stupid idea. Very rare but would you be happy to learn that someone who’d read your advice has had a stroke? If you must do neck exercises then standard advice is to do side flexion separately from rotation and extension. I never suggest forward flexion/extension exercises anyway, not even as a treatment modality.
P7: Doesn’t really do anything.
P8: Overworks the muscle most likely to be overworking in the body anyway. Certainly as far as the jugglers are concerned.
P9: No diff to P8
P10: Can’t see any benefit there.
P11: Same as P10.
P12: Harmless.
P13: Good general exercise. Not specifically a warm-up thing.
P14: No idea what this is doing. The elbow is a hinge so any “circles” are down to shoulder movements.
P15: Poi.
P16: POI!
P17: Ooh Betty.
P18: ???
P19: Yes it’s a rec fem stretch (only 1 of the quads, the other 3 aren’t affected). Why only a count of 10? How may reps? Why specifically as a warm-up? Why not hamstrings and gastroc stretches as well? I have plenty flexible rec fems but my hams are shockingly tight, why should I do this stretch whilst ignoring stretches I should be doing?
P20: Now my energy has leached away.
P21: Is this suggesting flexing and then moving? Way to injure your back!
General:
What’s with the “Do 10 of these” comments? How’s that the magic number?
Just, no.
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So there you have it. Not impressed.
Now to be somewhat fairer.
Apart from the 2 exercises that I reckon are potentially dangerous there isn’t too much to get too wound up about.
So what to do instead (if anything):
If you must waste time failing to protect yourself from injury (or in one or two cases actually increasing the risk) then run about a bit and play some games then start slowly with what you’re doing. That’s it, there’s not much you can do to prevent injury except by getting a personal assessment of how you move and what might be problematic about your movement now or in the future, and then doing the exercises to change that, then making sure that you follow the safety rules for the kit you’re using, and not arsing around when you should be paying attention, and making sure the kit is up to scratch, and not doing the same training day after day, and doing conditioning training daily to allow your body to cope with physical stress, and so on. 10 mins of random exercise is all very well but doesn’t protect you.
Repeat lecture now over.
And another thing!
What’s with this general “you must be warm to avoid injury” nonsense? Just seen this article showing injury rates were higher in summer than in winter. Pfft.
EXTRA!: As mentioned earlier I’ve just been chatting to the author of the page. So what to add?
OK the tone of this review is grumpy. That’ll be me writing then. I did state that the review was ranty and regular readers will know my thoughts on this subject.
Let’s talk about the goal of the site. It’s for training people who don’t have great access to teachers and schools and may not speak english. A sound objective. I’d imagine they’d also not have great access to much in the way of medical care. In this case the idea was to create something memorable and visual for them to remember. I’d say 21 pages is too long particularly for younger participants. So definitely drop the neck rolls and back flex exercises and shorten the rest.
Into what?
Tricky. It always is when trying to plan for teaching people you can’t see beforehand. And it would change depending on what you wanted from it.
So I’ll answer it in 2 ways.
What are you after? Conditioning exercises or a warm-up? I’m not a believer that warm ups do much physically so pretty much anything you want if you feel you must. Running around a bit, jumping around too. That’ll get your heart-rate up and muscles warm. It’ll be a giggle for children too if you incorporate some playing into this bit. Make it fun and kids’ll run forever.
Conditioning. Depends again on what’s needed. Are you talking about people on a long course or occasional participants? For those on long courses you want to be looking at strength and flexibility exercises as a daily thing even if the course isn’t daily. Teach them stretches and strength exercises to do and ask them to actually do them. Improves their ability and reduces injury.
For occasional participants then you’re looking at just giving them a good time. Warm-ups won’t significantly reduce their risk of problems. They’ll ache anyway just because what they are doing is new for their bodies.
I’m tired now and may write more tomorrow. Have fun.
