Journal Entries
Hopefully not lost for words...
Posted Sep 29, 2006
I'll be doing my first ever full match on-air commentary tomorrow. Brentford v Yeovil Town, live from Griffin Park on BBC Somerset Sound 1566AM. I'm looking forward to it, but a bit nervous.
I've done lots of off-air commentating over the last year - where BBC London would record me but only use it when there'd been a goal, so when you're doing that you don't have to commentate during the dull bits when nobody looks like scoring.
Equally, I'll have a pundit alongside me, which I've never had before. It shares a lot of the load - it's quite hard to carry an entire 90 minutes on your own.
It's one of those situations where the component parts are nothing I've not done before, it's just a question of putting it all together for the first time.
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Latest reply: Sep 29, 2006
Bye Bye Barnet
Posted Sep 18, 2006
I'm 31 now and the hair on the top of my head has been on the way out for quite some time - it's at least three years since it first started to recede and make me worry about getting old. Then I realised I wasn't 21 any more anyway so I might as well look it, and it stopped bothering me, even though it started thinning as well as receding. I settled on trimming it pretty short (giving it a full Grade One or 2 every now and then) and then on New Year's Eve, I quite cheerfully shaved the whole lot off right down to nothing and went to a football-themed fancy dress party as Pierluigi Collina.
And then it grew back. More than I expected, and thicker as well. So I decided to have one last bash at growing a mop-like indie fringe like I had in the early 90s.
Of course, if you've got thinning hair, the longer you grow it the more bald you look. So I think I'm about to abandon any attempts at 'proper' coiffure and from now on it's going to short and neat for the rest of my life, as long as it's there in any form. All I request is that everybody refrains from calling me Kojak or offering me lollipops.
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Latest reply: Sep 18, 2006
Battling With The Time Sink
Posted Sep 10, 2006
I suspect I might be asking the wrong people here, but...
Is there any way of making sure the time you spend on a computer is productive? It's very hard to avoid using the thing, it's pretty much essential for a lot of things that I do. But once it's turned on, if I finish what I'm doing, or get bored, or have a delay in whatever I turned it on for, I always start looking for something else to do that involves the computer rather than just something else to do.
So I end up spending a lot of time playing Championship Manager, or just browsing the Internet looking at crap.
The damn thing's like a magnet. My laptop sits on the table in my lounge, demanding to be attended to. And I'd be lost without it - it's an invaluable research tool for work, I've discovered a whole heap of stuff about Somerset and the local music scene here that would have taken years to discover in real life, and I've got a lot of music loaded up on it so I much prefer to use the laptop than my hi-fi to play stuff on.
In the three or four weeks it took me to get internet access after moving into the flat, I was pretty lost and kept having to nip back to work of an evening to use the computers there - particularly for all the moving house and settling in a new area-y things like changing addresses with banks and utilities and phone companies and all that jazz.
But I've realised that in that internet-free time, I was doing a lot more stuff like listening to the radio, reading books and newspapers, sorting out the flat, watching DVDs, and going out running and cycling and exploring my new surroundings. You know, the other ways of filling up non-work time. And I suspect I might have been happier then.
Hmm. Any thoughts, people?
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Latest reply: Sep 10, 2006
In The City There's A Thousand Things I Want To Say To You...
Posted Sep 9, 2006
I spoke to Rick Buckler yesterday morning. 
And last night I saw him play a gig with this band he's started, called The Gift, and they do an entire set of Jam songs. It was utterly brilliant - well worth a two and a half hour round trip to Frome.
Then I had four hours sleep and had to be telephoned to get me to wake up and come and output the breakfast show...
Now I'm off to Yeovil Town v Nottingham Forest. It's not a bad old life.
Anyway, what I wonder is, seeing as The Gift do have one of the original members of The Jam in their line-up, does that make them a tribute band or not?
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Latest reply: Sep 9, 2006
An Invention
Posted Aug 26, 2006
Based mainly on the advice in the Map Room of the Geographical Society - I invented this (<./>A13955817</.>
initially for myself, as a guideline for the entry on Taunton I'm about to try and write because I'm a bit out of practice and at the very least I thought I could take my own advice. But what do you guys make of it? It strikes me that it could be a pretty useful resource as a starting point for people new to h2g2 who want to write an entry about their home town (or wherever) but of course the potential downside is that we could see a proliferation of similar identikit entries.
But hopefully there is enough scope for individuality within the framework that that wouldn't happen.
What d'you reckon, chaps and chapesses?
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Latest reply: Aug 26, 2006
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