Today

I had a far more light hearted blog post that I was planning to write tonight.  That one will show up in a couple of days, but right now it doesn't feel right to write something like that.

At the time of writing, about six hours ago some form of attack took place in Westminster in the heart of London.  I'm not going to go into depth about it because, although there are lots of stories flying around right now, I suspect it's going to take a little time at least before the facts about today become clear.

I'm not going to go into the details either of why it happened or the motivations behind it, but just to say that it's a sad day.  The injuries and fatalities arising from the attack are deeply saddening, and putting whatever reasoning the attacker had to one side, it is truly dreadful to go out with the intention of hurting others.

I'm sure that I'm wrong, but the world seems more dangerous nowadays, at least compared to when I was young (or perhaps I didn't pay as much attention to the news at the time, or the danger was elsewhere).

I've been to London a few times, mainly for work, and I like it (although it's certainly different to where I live).  It's busy and there's always something happening.  I don't feel a desire to live and work there now, but looking back to when I was younger and single I wonder about how things would have gone if I had spent some years working in the capital.  I love experiencing some of the iconic elements of London - Big Ben (which is actually Elizabeth Tower, Big Ben is just the name of the bell), the London Eye, Marble Arch... and the parks!  You wouldn't believe that you can be right in the middle of London and feel like you're miles away from any traffic, but stand in the middle of Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens on a sunny day and you'd fool yourself that you're in a country park somewhere.

I've been fortunate enough to venture inside the Palace of Westminster once, and it's a fantastic building, full of history and yet very much a wholly active heart of government.

I've rambled a little with this post, but I think that's what is needed. We'll see in the news in the upcoming days and weeks more analysis about this attack, and the motivation behind it. For now - go give your loved ones a hug.

Water, Burritos, and Train Drivers chatting in Selby

So, I was in London yesterday.

The day started off with a touch of bloody-mindedness.  Before getting the train I stopped in at WH Smith to grab a bottle of water.  I selected my favoured bottle (the cheapest one I could find, which was fairly small - good to put in my bag), and went to the checkout to pay.  The guy at the checkout, kindly trying to save me some money, advised me that the bottle of water would be £1.49, and I could buy a copy of the Telegraph for £1.40, which came with a free, bigger, bottle of water.

I'm afraid my bloody-mindedness reared its head at this point, because:
a) I had already spent several seconds of my life choosing a bottle of water, and I didn't want that time to have been wasted, and;
b) I don't read the Telegraph.

I don't actually have anything against the Telegraph, except that it's a broadsheet i.e. really big when you open it, which is fine at home on a weekend when you can spread it over a large table, but totally useless when you're under some sort of space restriction (like being on a train).

The train journey both ways was fine, I got some work done which was good, the meeting in London was useful and interesting (although for some reason there was a toilet roll jammed between two of the legs supporting my table - I never did work out why), and, most importantly, I got to King's Cross station in time to get a burrito.

There's a place called Benito's Hat at Kings Cross station in London, I understand that they have a number of places open across central London but I've only ever experienced the one at Kings Cross. The food is absolutely excellent with the burritos being the best I've ever tasted - whenever I see burritos on the menu at places I'm eating I always try them, but they're never as good as the ones at Benito's Hat.

(In fact in general Kings Cross is a great place to get fed, I'd recommend Wasabi and Leon too)

I also got a free bottle of Lipton's iced tea from someone them handing out on the way to the train, so I was very pleased.

An excellent way to start a train journey.

On the way back, one of the stations stopped at was Selby.  Selby is a town roughly in the middle of Yorkshire, situated such that you can probably get to most cities within the county from Selby within an hour.  It has some decent shows on at the Town Hall, and I bought a car from Selby.  That's pretty much everything I know about the place.

Actually, there is one other thing about Selby.  At Selby train station, the train drivers stand outside their trains and chat.

I don't know why this is so remarkable, but it is.  I never see train drivers out of their trains just chatting anywhere else.  At smaller stations the trains never stop, and I guess at bigger stations the drivers perhaps have a break room or somewhere that they go when taking a break?  I have absolutely no problem with them having a break - indeed I doubt that it is up to them anyway, it'll be that the train has got to Selby (probably from Leeds, stopping at all the little villages on the way), and it isn't due to return towards Leeds for a while.

Recovering From A Shock

Pardon me, but I'm recovering from a shock.

Today I was in London for a meeting, to this end I had to take the train to get there (I could have walked, but apparently it's 57 hours which is a little long).  So I prepared for the train by spending the two days prior to the trip gathering every coin I could find, in the hope that I might have enough acceptable change for the parking.

When I say acceptable change, I know full well that, depending on the machine, the time of day, the weather, the colour of my shirt and so on, the machine may not accept some of the coins.  The other day I found one that absolutely refused to accept 50p's.  Typically it will be the last coin that it rejects, the one that you need to put in the machine to get to the magic total - which is never a straightforward figure like £6, it's £8.26 and the machine won't give change so you have to ensure that you carry the amount of change a sub-post office typically holds in the hopes that you can get a ticket - so you end up frantically finding a newspaper shop or something and buying a paper to get some more coins.

Now, sometimes you can pay by credit card, or even by phone (although that seems to me faintly aberrant, as if you're calling a premium rate phone number typically found towards the back of a newspaper), but these options are not by any stretch of the imagination universal, which is why I make sure that I have a good five kilograms of change with me at any time, just in case I should have to park a car.  After all, the prices for parking increase repeatedly and the £7.20 of change you've scraped together based on last weeks prices might not be enough this week.

Today, however, today... I was amazed.

The price for parking had reduced.  Yes readers, it had actually gone down, and to a sensible figure - £5 exactly, no need for coppers or tiny 5p pieces.  I was in a good mood.

Anyway London was very nice, the weather was great and while most of the time was spent travelling I did get a opportunity while walking to and from the meeting to take a few snaps:

In Hyde Park I think.  I didn't spot that bird until I uploaded the photo.  I think I've just photographed it at a funny moment, because although it looks as though it's just been shot, I didn't hear a splash.

Another in Hyde Park.  I never realised just how big the park is - it's massive.

On Millbank it appears that a Barclays bike has stumbled into Santander territory.  I didn't hang around to watch what happened to it, for all I know I might have been next.

A post where I talk like a pirate that finds London really expensive

Ahoy!!

Well, ayeterday I went t' London for work. This isn't a regular occurrence (I don't normally live or work in London, and it's about 4 hours away on t' train) so it made a nice change, albeit bein' a long day. I was thar for a couple o' meetin's/events, which included an evenin' seminar which was held in a room o' a bar (this sounds like "I went drinkin'" which isn't t' case, thar was some really good presentations, but it was in a bar, hence t' rest o' t' story)

So, I got thar a little early. I be always paranoid about bein' late anywhere, and it be not unusual for me t' be anythin' up t' 30 minutes early, just in case I get delayed, for example by traffic, or simply by gettin' lost - which happens far too often t' be believable.

I got t' t' place about twenty minutes before t' seminar was due t' start, and didn't immediately see anyone that I knew. Decidin' that I had obviously arrived before t' organisers, I decided t' order a pint t' occupy me until they showed up.

"A pint o' Peroni, please" I told t' chap behind t' bar, who went t' t' far end o' t' bar t' use t' pump thar. Now Peroni glasses be relatively thin and long compared t' a traditional pint glass, and when he started fillin' two glasses I couldn't quite tell whether he was pourin' two pints, or two half-pints - maybe he was out o' pint glasses, I mused.

It turned out that he had misheard me and poured me two full pints, I'm not entirely aye how t' word "A" could be understood as "Two" but then again I do have a Yorkshire accent which could have made me hard t' understand. I decided that I would probably get through two pints in t' course o' t' evenin', and rather than cause a fuss I would just pay for t' two, which came t' a total o' £7 (about $11).

I gave t' barman a £20 note (for US readers that's around $32), and bein' an upmarket type o' place he put me change on a little dish, and sat it down in fore o' me. "Thanks" I said, pickin' t' change up. T' barman looked surprised. "Oh," he said, "Did you want your change?" A small part o' me wishes that I had released t' rant swellin' within me, which went somethin' like this:

Aye, thank you, I would like me change, I don't expect t' spend £20 on two pints o' grog, and I particularly don't expect t' give someone who was slow t' serve me (when I was t' only person at t' bar) and got me order wrong a 285% tip!!

In justification o' t' barman t' bar was starboard in t' middle o' London's financial sector and I could quite imagine that they will have people go in thar with oodles o' doubloons who wouldn't blink an eyelid at spendin' several thousand pounds in a night.

That, however, be not me.

You may be wonderin' why this blog post be in Pirate-speak. Well, today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Do head over t' t' website at http://www.talklikeapirate.com/ t' see what's goin' on, and make aye t' take part too! I must admit that I have been lazy and not written all o' this text meself in Pirate-language, I have used a handy translator courtesy o' Trevor Sehrer, which can be found at http://www.talklikeapirate.com/translator.html

Shiver me timbers!

If you want to hear about other times I was in London and paid over the odds for beer (plus was told that my name is Brian) check out my Adventures in London post!

30000 views, egg waffles, tube strikes and YouTube Challenge 2!

Firstly, I shall blow my own trumpet - I have made an achievement logo for myself to mark something...

Yes, thank you to everyone who has read my blog, shared it, subscribe to it, all that gubbins, thank you.

What else?  Well, I made a video on my YouTube channel about egg waffles...

And, keeping up to date with the hot topics I was in London today, and there was a tube strike on.  This was mainly disconcerting, as I was slightly worried that I wouldn't get to my conference (and back again) in time, but it did have two positives:

a) A lot of people decided not to travel to London, so the train had plenty of space - hi to the seven very nice ladies who cracked open the Bucks Fizz on the way down and had a picnic in the train (and offered it to total strangers such as me!) before spending a day in the capital, and;

b) At Kings Cross there was a big queue to get through the ticket barriers into the underground, and like any good English person there's not much I like more than an unexpected queue!  It moved quite quickly as well which cheered me up no end.

True to my country, I love being mildly inconvenienced - it makes you feel as though you've achieved something by merely overcoming the slight challenge.

Anyway, onto my YouTube challenges, which is what I wanted to blog about today.

So, I set myself a bunch of challenges to improve my YouTube videos and channel in 2014, with the first one being to improve my home page, my artwork, all that gubbins.

Well, some of that has actually been done! I have refreshed my artwork (although it is still really bad - I need someone with some sort of talent for artwork and that can understand the YouTube template for channel art to help me!  If you have some graphics skills and fancy volunteering let me know!)

I've also started using custom thumbnails for my videos, and you know what - they actually work! They do attract more attention which is great. Plus I made a new channel ad (which also is queued up in the free YouTube Fan Finder programme) so hopefully that will attract more attention too.

If that wasn't enough, I've also learned how to use Audacity to improve the audio on my videos, so fingers crossed there should be a lot less static on my videos in the future.

Time for Challenge 2 in my list of video challenges, and that is to watch other YouTubers! So I'm going to watch as many YouTubers as I possibly can. If you have any channels you particularly recommend, please put them in the comments, or if you want to mention your own channel, do that too!

Finally, I very much hope you've been enjoying my series of interviews with YouTube folk, the last one went live at the weekend, and featured the brilliant Brutall - if you haven't seen his stuff yet go check him out now, you will become addicted to one (if not all) of his video series!

Adventures in London

I'm typing this post having just got home, bottle of Lambrini open and devouring a bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk with Jelly Popping Candy Shells (well worth a try although my other half hates them), unwinding from the last thirty hours or so.

I've been in London at a work conference (which was very good) and it's been an adventure.

Firstly, the train.  I love how train companies (I assume all do it, maybe its just my local operator) take the idea of assigning seats by carriage (identified by letter) and then by a number corresponding to a seat in that carriage.

And then throw a twist in.

You get a seat number along the lines of "C 09 F" - C meaning carriage C, 09 meaning seat 9, and F which means Front or Back (depending on which way the seat is facing), and it's this last letter that mixes it all up.

Because although they have the numbers printed on the walls of the carriage, the only way to know if 9 is 9F or 9B is by checking the small card reservation note stuck into the top of the seat, which isn't always the easiest thing to do when you're having to lean over someone already seated to do it and you've got about twenty people stuck behind you waiting for you to sit down so they can find their own seats.

The other thing I love is the reservations.

On my train down to London pretty much every seat in the carriage had a reservation card, including the one next to mine.  I assume (because it's not inexpensive to travel from Hull to London - less so however when I'm travelling as it's off-peak) that if you've reserved a seat you're going to use it.

Now when I bought my rucksack I (not having a carriage to hand to test it) wasn't aware that it's slightly too big to fit in the overhead shelf on a train, and although they do remind you "Do not leave baggage on seats" I must admit I prefer to keep hold of my bag rather than leave it at the end of the carriage in the baggage bit.

So as a result, at every stop on the way my stress mounts up as more people board the train, who may have reserved the seat that my bag is occupying.  Fortunately no one has (or they're too polite to ask me to move my trespassing bag) so I make it down to London still in ownership of my bag.

Here's comes my G4C plug - Tuesday night I met with Matt Armitage, chair of the national G4C (Generation For Change) board.  Basically had a great meeting, good talk about G4C and how different regions have different challenges, and was very useful for me (hopefully Matt got something out of it too).

So after meeting Matt, I headed for my hotel.

Now my hotel, although certainly not a seven star extravaganza such as Burj Al Arab, was quite a decent place, being in the heart of London, so I was prepared to have a reasonable overnight stay there, perhaps expecting it to be a tad nicer than some of the places I've experienced in the past (although thinking about it for £10 a night what do you expect).

So I went in, and queued up to check in.  Now this took quite a while, the staff at the checkout desks obviously go into plenty of detail when helping you so although it was annoying because it was getting on for 9 o'clock at night and all I really wanted was a shower, I comforted myself with the fact that I'd get a decent service when it was my turn (and tried to ignore the VIP / Special Club Hotel desk thing at the side of the normal check in where people were fast-tracked).

Eventually they got to me, I gave them my reservation details, and they dished out an electronic key and useful information.

I headed up to the sixth floor where my room was, eventually found my room as only every other corridor had signs pointing you where to go, and tried the key.

It didn't work.

Tried again.

Still nothing.

I went back downstairs, queued up a second time, possibly even longer than the first time, and again was seen.  The hotel chappie apologised, fixed the key, and gave it back.

Back up to the sixth floor.

Back to the room.

Straight in this time.  And I was impressed.  The room was lovely.

 "Yes, this'll do nicely," I'm thinking, "a bit of a shower and then maybe a beer..." my train of thought was interrupted as I walked through to where the bed was.
 Unless the hotel provided a complimentary service of a bag and clothes, and spread them out on the bed for you, I was in someone elses room.

 Back downstairs.

 Queued up a third time.  I'm starting to get a little annoyed.  As I was waiting who I presume was a manager of some sort was asking the people waiting if they were checking in, I explained the situation and she apologised (but didn't take me to one of the empty desks and sort me out or anything crazy like that)

 Got up to the reception guy, who was now possibly wondering if I was about to strike him.
 "The key works!" I assured him, "it's just that someone already has that room."
 Which appeared to blow his mind.
 And the mind of his supervisor.
 "So why aren't you happy with your room?" his supervisor inquired.
 "I'm very happy with the room," I explained, "it's just that someone else is already in it."

 I get assigned a room on the tenth floor.

 This time I get to the room, I get inside, everything is fine.  The room is empty of objects except for those owned by the hotel and those owned by me, it's all good.

 I decide to have a well-earned shower.

 I can't work out how to work the bath shower.  The bath has a shower attachment on a hose, but I can't see where I fix it to use it as a shower and I can't work out how to turn it on.
 Fine - I'll have a bath.
 Why is it that hotels never provide anything to wash your hair with?  I don't mean shampoo (of which there is plenty, despite the fact that I always bring my own), I mean a jug or some kind of container to allow you to rinse your hair with.  We (as I'm sure many people do) at home have a measuring jug just for washing your hair with.  I've often wondered why John Lewis or one of these nice home shops don't sell fancy containers for ten pounds that are fluorescent and made out of space-age plastic that is friendly to dolphins or made out of old car tyres or something, specifically for the purpose of rinsing your hair.
 I have my bath.
 As I get out my bath, something across the room catches my eye.
 It is a shower cabin.

 (As an aside, this is all being written post-trip because I can't work the keyboard on my fiancee's Kindle Fire to save my life.  It has bizarre predictive software built in, and it doesn't recognise swearing.  My tablet (a rather nice Samsung Galaxy) is at home because it's loaded up with videos for my son.  The things parents do for their kids!)

(As another aside, I have this massive wine glass which is great.  You can fit half a bottle of Lambrini in it.  I've emptied it once and am now putting the second bottle of my bottle of Lambrini in it.

Why Lambrini?  It's got a low alcohol content and I really fancy some wine.  I'm drinking in total 5.6 units, which although it is higher than the recommended daily maximum, I justify this by the fact that I'm only going to drink three days this week and usually once drink once a week, when I'm having my weekly gaming session with Dusty)

 I've changed clothes, it's about half past 9, and I'm now starting to feel a little bit more human.  Although I need to head for bed in an hour or so, I could grab a beer beforehand, I think.
 The phone rings. I answer it with the ever useful "Hello?".  A somewhat stern voice responds.
 "Hello sir.  You have left your bag and your clothes in another room.".  My heart sinks a little.
 "No, I haven't.  I have one bag and it's with me."
 "Yes you have sir.  The concierge has been in and found a map with your name on it."
 This amuses me.  Okay, let's play, I think to myself.
 "What's my name then?" I challenge the caller.
 "I'm sorry sir?"
 "What's my name?"
 "One moment sir... Brian..."
 "No.", I cut him off abruptly. "My name is Michael Raven." I tell the guy firmly.
 I don't use my full first name often.  I prefer Mike.  A usual comment I'll use is that if you want to tell me off then use Michael because you can put more venom into Michael. Try it if you like.  Repeat after me...
 MY-KULL!!!
 See?
 The hotel person then goes with "How do you spell that sir?"
 Again, something that 99% of the time I don't mind.  But because I'm already tired and frustrated, this also annoys me.  Michael is not an unusual name.  I am given to believe (both history and religion are not strong topics for me) that it came from Hebrew and features in the Bible.  Many countries use it, or a variation of it.
 And I don't feel that Raven is that ridiculously hard to spell either.  It might not be the most common surname, but it isn't that rare, and is, I feel, a fairly easy one to work out.
 I spell my name for the sake of completeness. The hotel person apologises and finally hangs up.
 To round the night off I head for the bar and get stung by purchasing a small bottle of Stella Artois for £4.95.  Reading a menu later I discover that it is actually £4.40, but with a 12.5% tip automatically included.

 I might have been tempted to leave the tip off this time.

 Final note on the hotel - NO BISCUITS IN THE HOTEL ROOM.  Seriously?!?  Even in a basic hotel, a little pack with two biscuits in is a given.  Shocking.

  The conference I attended I won't linger on except to say that it was very good (very interesting discussion about Project Bank Accounts and if you ever want a chat about them please feel free to get in touch) but it did include plenty of breaks for networking.

 I've been trying to work out if I'm an introvert or an extrovert.  In the past I've always considered myself introvert, but then when I get to do a presentation or an event I enjoy getting up in front of the group and doing my piece, which sounds very much like extrovert behaviour to me.

 But I really hate networking.

 I don't mean that.  I like talking to people, of course I do.  It's nice to talk to people.  And I've got a lot of value out of networking.  But going up to someone I don't know and starting a conversation I find extremely difficult.  Instead I find myself circling the room, glass of water in hand, eyeing up various exhibits for a while, before retreating to consider the artwork adorning the walls.  Thinking about it, it's actually quite similar to how I act in a nightclub, although the water would be replaced with a cola.  I guess it's something I need to work on.

 Last mention for the post is about London.  Everyone is rushing and vaguely cross in London, they all need to be somewhere 5 minutes ago.  The exception today being the group of French teenagers I came across somewhere in the underground, one of which burst out saying "Oh my god I saw Harry Potter!" - I presume he didn't mean me, although I have been referred to as the bespectacled wizard in the past I would have thought that the beard would have resolved that problem.

 On the way home I was actually cheered up on the train by seeing someone walk down the carriage in a Hull hoodie.

 It's not all bad is it?