You don’t notice it as a car driver so much but I was surprised to find that while out and about on my Bandit that, on the whole, other bikers will give you a little nod as they pass by on the other side of the road. That little nod is acknowledgement that I am now part of a biking fraternity (and sorority too I suppose, although I ain’t nobodys sister, fool!) and that we are the privileged few who know what it’s like to expose ourselves to the elements and embrace the freedom of the road and that two wheels are better than four. Or something. To be honest, the nods of other bikers remind me more of the subtle acknowledgement that the Spacemonkeys in Fight Club used to give each other and I sometimes wonder whether I’ve taken the first step into some vast, global, subversive conspiracy that will rise up and challenge governments and the status quo. Then again, my helmet maybe squeezing my head a little too tightly.

The general consensus seems to be that I’m having a midlife crisis. My wife ventured out to the pub last weekend and was asked by our village friends whether that was, in fact the case as they unanimously felt it had to be. I’m not surprised - man with wife, kid, labrador and sensible diesel estate buys big, black, two wheeled monster can only be an aberration that comes about as a result of hitting that midlife crisis road hump. As one pointed out, I’m hardly biker material. They have might a point

You see, the truth of it is that I probably wouldn’t get as many nods from the other bikers if they knew that I am constantly on the verge of soiling my pants any time I go over about 40 miles per hour. For me, the adrenalin rush of being out on the open road, crouching over a throbbing engine and opening the throttle as far as it will go is surpressed and diluted by the tangy cordial of vulnerability and fear, compounded by the knowledge that if this were a speeder bike from Return of the Jedi, rather than being somebody with the Jedi reflexes of Luke Skywalker, I’m far more likely to be one of the anonymous biker scouts who ends up as a flaming fireball after crashing at 200mph into a tree. Or at least I would be if I could face getting the damn thing up to 60mph any time soon. I’m not so much born to be wild as born to be oh so very mild.

The real truth of it is that I’m not new to this brave, new two wheeled world. I learnt to ride motorbikes when I was about 8 or 9 years old, starting out on a 250cc trials bike. 250 is twice the size of engine that used to be considered a learner bike back then. My parents were keen bikers, both qualified instructors and used to race classic bikes. Parts of my childhood were spent accompanying them to the Isle of Man TT Races (which, coincidentally, was where I first saw Return of the Jedi back in 1983) and travelling the length of breadth of country, going to various meets and watching them race. Despite all this, I was never hugely ‘into’ motorbikes or cars for that matter - I prefer feet to wheels - but even so, I took and passed my test about 15 years ago, just before the CBT was introduced. I haven’t actually ridden a bike since then.

So, on the surface of it, putting this down to a midlife crisis and attempting to regain a little of the freedom of my childhood seems to pretty much describe the situation. As it happens, there were far more practical considerations behind this purchase than just an impulse buy. I’ve just started a new contract which is in a location that is entirely uncommutable from where I live (unless I fancy a train ride into London and then all the way back out again). A second car was mooted until my wife, of all people, suggested getting a bike as it would be, on the whole, cheaper to run and quite probably be quicker on the type of roads I’m travelling on. We discussed it, investigated the options, worked out the expenses, made a few calls and now I am once again, a biker. So far the commuting has gone well and I can now go faster than 40mph without wearing adult nappies.

Midlife crisis? The bike isn’t it. What the hell do you think all that Tough Guy/Mountain Marathon/Hellrunner crap is all about?

Something I do want to do this year is upgrade my PC which is something I get around to doing every couple of years or so. This year I won’t necessarily be relegating my old PC parts to the loft as I think I’m going to finally need to set up a dedicated server for work. (I tried doing this before but never really needed to but now that I’m working for myself and considering I’ve spent the last couple of months working from home with both server software and client software running on the same machine, it’s more of a consideration.)

Of course, the big event this year has been the release of MS Vista and however else I look at it, I know that I’m going to be upgrading to it at some point. That point is probably later rather than sooner (i.e. whenever SP1 comes out). Not being a techie, I couldn’t really give a stuff about Linux or Ubuntu (?) or whatever and as a gamer I’m not going to Mac. Actually, as a professional non-techie techie type I’m more or less limited to staying on Windows as that’s the technology I spend most of the time working with. But my current rig isn’t going to support Vista. More importantly, it isn’t going to support games running with the new CryEngine technology. (Is this important? Take a look at this technology vid (video launcher in little box on right of article) and tell me it isn’t!) Hell, I can’t even run LOTRO on anything other than the lowest settings at the moment so an upgrade is definitely on the cards.

Building a new PC has got to start from a central point and that point for me is likely to be graphics card. What ever else, I’m going to need a DX10 capable graphics processor (possibly 2) and this is likely to need a PCI-Express slot so a new motherboard is also needed. Next is choice of CPU. Well, it would be foolish to go for anything less than dual core these days and quad core will probably be the best choice but they’re extortionately expensive at the moment.

Fortunately, this is all just dreaming and speculation. For a start, there aren’t many DX10 video cards around at the moment although there are bound to be more in a couple of months time. With luck the price of a quad-core CPU will have dropped too (although obviously there will still be a premium price to pay for a high-end one) and I’ll probably have to round it all off with the purchase of a couple of 250Gb HDDs to give me, what, half a terabyte of storage I think? The sad thing is that a 250Gb drive is only about 60-70 quid these days. RAM is also going to be necessary - will have to double what I’ve got to 2Gb. From what I’ve read, there’s a pecularity with Vista (one of many) that means that any more than 2Gb is next to useless as it doesn’t make the best of it or something but I’ll have to investigate more.

I know that whatever happens (and given recent v. expensive purchases) this PC won’t be in my possession for sometime. But I have to write about it as I keep finding myself looking at all the component shops and doing price comparisons on Kelkoo. It’s a dangerous habit I tell you. Dangerous and expensive. I should stick to diving!

Such a descriptive title.

I have a load of posts going around in my head - some about recent happenings (both personal and current affairs), some about past happenings (what did happen up a scottish mountain in October and just how good were Nine Inch Nails in March?) and some about future events (consider this due warning that I may be asking you to open your hearts, minds and, more importantly, wallets!)

But I’m not sure I can be arsed.

Also there’s half a redesign sitting on my machine that would be finished if only redesigning a template were a little more like playing an MMO. By the time I’m finished working (my work being designing websites) I just want to chill out and play games. Especially now that “Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar” (aka SimHobbit) is ‘unofficially live’ and that I’ve met up with lots of old SWG guildmates and we’re having a right old laugh. (So apologies to Endie for not doing a write up about my impressions of EVE just yet!)

And there’s the little matter of vroom vrooming around on my Big Throbbing Beast (as Mrs D. is wont to call it - she is referring to the motorcycle by the way!)

So all in all I’ll just say “Back soon!”

Ford Mondeo? Honda Civic? Seat summatortutha?

I don’t think so!

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Lyle got himself a new car.

Gordon got himself a new car.

Matt got himself a new car (but I was too busy admiring his new t-shirt to remember about his car. Also he hasn’t talked about nearly half as much as the other two!)

QE is driving a not so new hire car.

I’m feeling a little left out.

Amends must I make.

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007

Not a lot more to say.

I wonder what Kilgore Trout thinks of it all?

A quick followup:

Unreliable Witness says it better than I can.

Keen to take part but not so keen on having a sheriff’s badge? Use the Blog Advisory System! (via Gordon)

A quick history lesson:

March 26th Kathy Sierra (original post here), a Blogger Of Technological Issues, was threatened “with violence and sex” (sic). And then they sent death threats. The comments and images that were posted about her were a sure sign that someone had too much time on their hands. Now, whether or not they were actually meant as death threats or were simply someone going too far and crossing the line into bullying and unpleasantness is not up for discussion here. And it would be churlish for me to suggest that Ms Sierra was being oversensitive as it was understandably very upsetting for her (although I don’t get the impression from what she wrote that it crossed the line into sending intimidating personal emails or harrassment outside of a public forum of the kind that Rachel North recently suffered.)

March 27th The BBC post a news item on their technology news page about the incident.

March 28th Tim O’Reilly, a Blogger of Technological Issues calls for a Code of Conduct for bloggers, saying that it could be time to “formalise blogging behaviour”. In other news, Dragon, a Blogger of Not Much In Particular, slams his head against a wall in despair although this largely goes unreported by the mainstream media.

April 10th Tim O’Reilly, a Blogger of Technological Issues, publishes a Draft Blogger’s Code Of Conduct which is also reported by the BBC and which more or less says that blogs should come with a content advisory warning. This is hardly original and, in fact, some of us were putting content warnings on our blogs over two years ago although I doubt it’s exactly the sort of thing that the earnest, do-gooder Mr O’Reilly was hoping for. On the plus side, his version comes with a cute little sheriff’s badge too and isn’t American-centric in anyway, whatsoever, at all, no it isn’t, honest guv.

It strikes me as timely that this should all happen during the Easter period, a little under 2000 years since one man stood up and said “Hey guys! Let’s all be nice to each other!”. Let’s have a quick look at what we’ve learned in the intervening two millennia? Are we being nice to each other? No. Are we united in peace, harmony and vegetarian goulash? No. Have we stopped being materialistic and take only what we need while sharing with those less fortunate and more hungry than ourselves? Have we bollocks!

Let’s take a moment and assess the situation.

32AD: One man stood up for what he believed in and told people that being nasty was wrong and that they should love their neighbour. Then he got nailed to a tree for his trouble. A religion sprang up around his teachings and has subsequently become the dominant religion of the world. This didn’t stop people from carrying on being nasty to each other.

2007AD: One man stood up for what he believed in and told people that being nasty was wrong and that they should love their blogging neighbour.

A brief glance a the trackbacks and comments on his draft code see most people (mis)quoting Treasure of the Sierra Madre (see new slugline at top of page), Rage Against The Machine (”Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!”) or the Spice Girls (“If you wannabe my lover…” “Who do you think you are?”). I’ll add to that list a paraphrased Monty Python quote: “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very silly boy!” It doesn’t look like many people are taking the idea at all seriously and, in fact, most are ridiculing Timbo quite openly.

Still, could be worse. He could have been nailed to a tree.

S

d. Zack Snyder
w. Zack Snyder: based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel
s. Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West, David Wenham

I didn’t like 300. I’d go so far as to say that I hated it. In fact I was absolutely fucking disgusted by the whole film. It wasn’t the violence though nor the poetic liberties that they took with the historical accuracies of the film (more of which in a moment) nor the fact that the entire film was computer generated. No. It’s much more straight forward than that. What riled me beyond belief about this film was the fact that I had to sit through the best part of two hours watching a group of 40 something actors who were lean, toned and sporting the type of six pack I have always aspired to. They were so ripped that you could just about see every individual fibre of every single muscle. Not only that but the character’s attitude towards excellence, towards their imminent death and towards loyalty, ambition, family values and standing up for what is good and right made me feel about as small as a gnat’s dick and more cowardly than Dick Cheney dodging his draft call up.
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A jetsetting life is not what it’s cracked up to be. 21 hours after I got up this morning I can finally go to bed.

No doubt I will be woken up in 4 hours by a-coughin’ and a-wheezin’, plague ridden son. I wonder if I can pretend to be dead.