Monthly Archives: December 2014

The End of It

This is the last post of 2014. When 2015 comes around it will feel, once again, like a new period of hope. Then, before you can look round, you realise it’s February and you’ve already failed to keep up with any new year’s resolutions.

This blog is my success this year. I have posted on it every week. I think one or two posts were a little late but the average was one a week. I didn’t however manage to start doing You Tube. With that I was doing the classic thing of the procrastinator – waiting for the right time and thus never doing it.

Exercise is another slight fail. I went to the gym for a while, I joined in June, but lately I haven’t been using it so much. To be honest I live too far from the gym. It takes three hours to do a one hour gym session. That’s when you factor in the train journey, waiting for the train, showering, and going to and from the station. I realised though that if that is the case I could just go for a walk for a couple of hours. Two hours of walking would probably equal the exercise of half an hour on a rowing machine.

For the new year I’m not sure I want to codify my resolutions. One thing I have thought about is learning to drive.

Leaning to drive has never been a priority to me. Until the beginning of this year I was within cycling distance of anywhere I wanted to be. Now I live further away and have to rely on trains. That is fine most of the time. The only exceptions are: Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, the occasional Sunday, and when I want to be out later than the last train. Having a car would be more convenient. If you leave five minutes late, when getting a train, you miss the train and have to wait for the next one. If going by car you can basically stay five minutes late.

The idea of learning to drive though is rather terrifying. I might just be better off putting some money aside to afford a taxi now and then.

And I know I say this every year but finishing my novel is a priority too.

Happy New Year!

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Best Sci-Fi Characters of All Time

This will be my last post before Christmas. I don’t want to talk about Christmas.

The other day the BFI uploaded its picks for ‘The Best Sci-Fi Characters of All Time.‘ At the top of the list was The Doctor.  This to me is no great surprise. Doctor Who is probably the most versatile science fiction that exists. You can tell any story you can imagine in that universe.

What did surprise me was that Kerr Avon was number 4. This is not because I don’t like the character but rather because I’ve always thought as Blake’s 7 to be a little obscure.

For Star Trek Mr Spock was the highest ranked at number 10. Spock is certainly the most iconic of all Star Trek characters. For me he was always more interesting a character than Kirk. When watching TOS I always wonder why Spock isn’t in charge.

Babylon 5 was well represented too with: G’Kar, Londo Mollari, Susan Ivanova, Captain John Sheridan, Delenn (twice), Alfred Bester, Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, Lyta Alexander, and Michael Garibaldi.

For Stargate SG-1 we have the whole team with the exception of Cameron Mitchell, which I can understand, and Teal’c which I can’t.

So who would my top ten be? Well I’m going to limit myself to names on their list…

  1. The Doctor
  2. Ambassador G’kar
  3. Captain Benjamin Sisko
  4. Ambassador Spock
  5. Captain Picard
  6. Ambassador Londo Mollari
  7. Brigadier General Jack O’Neill
  8. Ambassador Delenn
  9. Colonel Samantha Carter
  10. Admiral William Adama

There are many others I could mention. I may put together my own list of 100 names.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Best of the Season.

See you on the other side.

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Less Than Two Weeks!

It’s time for the cliffhanger music to play. Next week will be my last post before Christmas. Unfortunately Christmas will be a little different this year. I have to work over Christmas week. I get Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off but, for all intents and purposes, it will be an ordinary week. Presents are bought, though not yet wrapped, so I guess I’m ready.

I mentioned last week about the grotto at work. There was something not quite right about it that I couldn’t quite put my finger on – now I know. Some of the songs are not the proper versions.

This is great:

The version at the grotto not so good. Insistently I don’t think the economical implications of this have been considered.

To be honest I’m becoming a bit of a Scrooge lately. I’ve passed from childhood excitement, to adult apathy, and landed on a slight dislike. Only a slight dislike mind you.

Christmas will be strange this year. Working Boxing Day is not fun.

The above shows it could be worse.

Every year we, as in society, talk about the new year being a signer of a change. “This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.” (Douglas Adams – The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.)

It would be nice to believe that 2015 will be the year of peace. It won’t be of course but its nice to dream.

I might at least be able to make it a great year for myself. At the very least I’d like to encourage a few more green pieces of paper my way.

I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Best of the Season, Happy New Year, and any other celebration that may be coming up – and lets try to make 2015 a fantastic year.

Peace and long life.

Live long and prosper.

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Father Christmas

There was a grotto at work yesterday. It was right next to the area I work. I started to feel just a bit more Christmasy. Only a bit mind you. I do still have a bit of a humbug approach to Christmas but that shell was pierced just a tad.

The grotto was playing music all the day. There was the obvious tunes like Stop the Cavalry and Mary’s Boy Child. The former is a favorite of  mine and latter… well the less said about it the better. They also played Baby One More Time and Rollercoaster. What do they have to do with Christmas?

The grotto also had very few tunes in total – they repeated all day.

I don’t remember exactly how old I was why I stopped believing in Father Christmas. I do remember being in Primary School and talking to a girl who’d already figured it out. I actually thought she was silly and remember coming up with a fairly cogent argument: ‘Father Christmas must exist. How could my parents afford to buy two sets of presents?’ Apparently I thought a man with flying reindeer, who would have to travel several times the speed of sound, was more believable than that mum and dad had managed to save a bit more!

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