The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

First off, I have to suggest that you check out the latest post on my mum's blog here.  She's written about my adventures with the Royal Mail, where one of my parcels was intercepted and sent to Belfast.  If I disappear suddenly, know that the security services have acted.

Secondly, if you're reading it right now (as in when I've just posted it), you have but a handful of minutes to get to http://www.twitch.tv/el_pinata and join in with the very funny and entertaining retro gaming "Garlic Bread Monday" live stream by Scott Tumilty.  Go now.

Still reading?

Okay then!

Inspiring is a word that I worry is used far too often.  And more often than not, in some sort of "fluffy" context.

"Oh my, isn't that sunrise inspiring!"
"Ooh! That mirror is so inspiring!"
"Man, that hot coffee kick is really inspiring!"

I am generally cynical when it comes to inspiration.  If you want to do something, do it.  Be aware that whatever it is - writing a book, getting your dream job, running a marathon, swimming the English Channel - is probably not going to be quite as wonderful as you imagine.  Writing a book is a long hard slog.  Your dream job might not work out to be as great as you think.  And the hours spent training for a marathon or swimming the channel aren't all going to be wonderfully joyous.

But that's not to say that you shouldn't try.  Do try, try with all your heart.  Because the one thing you otherwise get stuck with is regrets.

Anyhow, I have to say that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is inspiring.  The Ben Stiller film is actually the second remake of the original 1939 story by James Thurber, and looks at an introvert forced to go outside of his comfort zone and travel the world in search of a photograph.  It is really very good (despite mixed reviews) and well worth watching.  Special mention has to go to Ben Stiller and his acting in the lead role - you would hardly credit that it is the same person playing the character from beginning to end, such is the change in his personality.  It's been out a little while now, so if you want to catch it in the cinemas, go soon.

Working Out

So, I finished off my workout Thursday night with ten minutes on the treadmill.  For most of it I was just walking along, with a bit of a steep incline, but just walking, but then for the last maybe 2 minutes I trebled the speed and ran like a mad bugger.

When I came off one of the personal trainers said that even he couldn't have done what I just did.

I was too embarrassed to admit that I'd only run so fast because "Thunderbirds Are Go" by Busted had come over my earphones.

Man, I love that song.

Gym

I tried to go to the gym tonight.

But my gear hadn't been washed.

So I'm on the computer.

With beer.




Things sometimes work out quite well.

How did you change over Christmas?

Myself - I became a fan of Doctor Who.

For someone who considers himself a geek, one thing I've never really been into was Doctor Who.  I've watched the odd episode, certainly, but it's never been a show that I would plan to sit down and watch, just something that, if there was nothing else on, could kill an hour for me.

And over Christmas, when I had some spare time to kill, there was a full afternoon of Doctor Who episodes on.

I have come to the conclusion that Matt Smith is awesome.

Apart from Doctor Who, I've been playing two games on my phone a lot - Clash of Clans from Supercell, and Hill Climb Racing from Fingersoft.

Clash of Clans is a strategy game where you build a town up, building gold mines, walls, resource stores, cannons and the like to defend yourself, whilst also recruiting fighters to go and loot other towns.  As you get better at looting towns, and at defending your own town, you gain trophies, which make it more likely that you'll be attacked by better players - and that you'll get the chance to fight them back!  It's a very engaging free to play game and well worth a try.

One of the nice features of Clash of Clans is the "Revenge" button - after someone attacks your town, you can hit this button, and rather than the game automatically matching you with a town to attack, it gives you the chance to get your revenge upon them.

I was attracted to Clash of Clans firstly by the advert which is very funny - watch it below!

Hill Climb Racing, meanwhile, is a game where you drive a variety of vehicles over a number of landscapes, trying to cover as much distance as possible, whilst picking up coins on the way that you can use to upgrade your vehicles, as well as unlocking new landscapes and new vehicles.  Vehicles go from the mundane (jeep) to the cool (monster truck / racing car) to the bizarre (tank / tourist bus), as do the landscapes (fancy driving on the Moon?)

For a very simplistic game - you have two controls, an accelerator and a brake - it is very engaging and challenging.  The landscapes are quite tough and you'll soon realise that putting your foot down is an unwise approach if you don't want to attempt balancing a car on your head (not recommended if you want to keep your neck in one piece).  However, the temptation of additional coins by carrying out tricks, like jumping into the air and flipping your car over is often too enticing to resist.  Again, I'd strongly recommend giving this one a try.  Be warned though - you never get used to the noise of your neck breaking as a car crushes it - and this happens a lot!

Having Lunch in Waitrose

I've talked in the past about taking my gran shopping, but I wanted to write a little more about lunch.

We generally go to Waitrose for lunch - actually, skip the word generally - we always go to Waitrose for lunch, except for perhaps once or twice a year when Waitrose has so annoyed my gran (probably by not giving her a receipt) that we go to McDonalds one week.

So, we go round Waitrose and buy some cat food, and then we separate - I, to pay for the cat food (2 boxes of Gourmet Ocean Delicacies), and my gran to locate a table in the cafe.

Ideally, we get one of the tables alongside the tills, because there's lots of space to get to them and my gran doesn't have to worry about her mobility scooter getting in anyones way.

Once I've got her seated (as mentioned before, seated means sat right on the very edge of her chair) and equipped with a selection of two newspapers/magazines - ideally one of which will be the Express for her, and the other the Independent for me - I'll go to tackle the most dangerous part of the shop.

The Waitrose Cafe Queue.

No one gives an inch in the queue to get served at the cafe.  I've had older ladies nudging me in the back because I've not moved to take up an millimetre of space that opened up in front of me a second ago.

And everyone has their My Waitrose cards on their tray.

Everyone.

I don't know why, because all you do with the My Waitrose card(s), to claim your free drinks, is when you get to the till, you hand them to the till operator.  There's no need to display them on their tray, and yet we all do.

Perhaps it's to prove that we belong.  Yes, I am an overweight gentleman adorned with a pair of jeans and a Space Invaders T-Shirt, but I have a My Waitrose card, therefore I may stay.

They do a damn fine panini though, I must admit.

YouTube proposal...

Hi,

Got a bit of a proposal for fellow YouTubers...

Last year I took part in something called the YouTube Creator Academy.  Basically you watched a load of videos about making the most of your YouTube channel, and made you do certain things, like make an introduction video for your channel, and interact with other creators.  I really really enjoyed it, especially the interaction with others - it made me watch videos and channel that normally I never would, and broadened my horizons and made new contacts ("contacts" = basically an allegedly cooler way of saying "friends")

So, I'm planning to set a series video challenges for myself to do over the next few weeks and months on my YouTube channel, and it occurred to me to ask if anyone else would like to get in on the action - I could administer the same challenges that I'm doing for other people, and maybe work together on some stuff (one challenge for example I want to set myself is one week to do a collaboration - which obviously requires at least one other YouTuber!)

I should stress that I am a complete amateur at videos (which should be obvious for anyone who has seen my channel!) so I'm not looking at running these challenges because I'm an expert, it's just that I'm going to do them myself so if anyone else wants to join in, let me know as I don't mind organising things.

If people are up for it please drop me an email at mike.raven@gmail.com and in a couple of weeks we'll make a start!  I'll probably be running the challenges using a Google+ community so you will need a Google account to get involved.

Happy New Year!

Happy new year, one and all.  I hope 2014 brings you all of the things that you want.

I wasn't keen on 2013, I seem to remember from the last new year.  I didn't like it as a number, I think it was the '3' in it, as I was quite happy with 2012.  But that is all behind us, and we venture forth into a new year!

To celebrate the coming of 2014, I made a video of predictions - a group of people very kindly submitted questions for answering (special thanks to Scott Tumilty, Geek & Sundry Vlogger for his), so if you really want to know the answers to the deep, life-changing questions... this video isn't for you.  On the other hand if you want to know if I'm going to buy someone else a bacon sandwich, check the video out.

Don't worry about the glow in my eyes, it's purely down to the mystical powers of the Pyramid of Mystery, and not bad lighting.  Honest.

New years resolution?  Well for me, to lose weight.  I'm not going to worry about it this week while I'm off work and the house is still full of chocolate, but once that's out of the way, I'm hitting the gym again.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have an unfeasibly large marshmallow to eat.

Told you.

2014 Predictions offered!

If you'd like a prediction for 2014, email me at mike.raven@gmail.com - I'm making a video tonight!

At this time of year...

...why do we do such strange things?

Eat pate - not paste out of a jar, but pate out of a pack.  Because pate is posher.  And what is the difference between pate and paste?

Lumps.

Pate has lumps in - sorry, texture, I mean to say "it's textured".

Textured with little chunks of fat that gross you out despite the many other things you've already engorged on over the Christmas period.

But you still eat it.

Eat too much chocolate - for eleven months of the year, there isn't such a thing as too much chocolate.  I could happily devour one of those large bars of Cadburys in a single sitting without batting an eyelid.  But at Christmas?  Suddenly some kind of "chocolate limit" kicks in, and despite the piles of tasty-looking Roses and Quality Street sitting there, all I really want is a cracker.

Weird Digestive Crackers - speaking of crackers, what is the deal with those strange digestive-type crackers that you get in boxes of crackers?  They're like a digestive biscuit, and kind of sweet which really messes up the taste explosion of the cheese piled upon it.

Weird digestive cracker AND lumpy pate?!?

Ring people at midnight - this doesn't happen so much now that I'm getting older, but we ring people at midnight on New Years Eve, to wish them "Happy New Year".  This is often made more difficult by the fact that one, or both, parties may be at some kind of social event (be it a party at home, a night club, or a bowling alley) so hearing someone on the phone isn't easy at the best of times.  And because so many people are ringing or texting "Happy New Year" all at the same time, the phone networks crash.

Ringing people at midnight is odd, isn't it?  If anyone rang me at any other time of year at midnight, I'd assume someone had died or was in hospital, or at the very least had got the wrong number and really wanted a pizza delivering asap.

Eat Danish Butter Cookies - I don't actually mind eating them that much, but I wouldn't buy a tin myself.  Except at Christmas, when one (if not two) tins of butter cookies appear in the house as if by magic.

Gold Chocolate Coins - At any other time in the year I could see myself struggling to remove a minute piece of chocolate from a foil casing, because I eat stuff that's bad for me.  But when do we get them?  At Christmas.  When the house is already full of chocolate and other sweeties.

Mmm. Sweeties.

You can always tell that you're out of all other chocolate when you start on the gold coins, and when you do resort to the chocolate coins you'll start with the biggest ones, the ones that look like a big two euro coin, because you get more chocolate for the effort spent penetrating the foil.  But all too soon you end up with just a stack of small, old five pence sized chocolate coins left, and the misery that settles around you as you work your way through these builds up to replace the depression thrown off at the beginning of the holidays.

While I'm blogging, I have a new video uploaded to my YouTube channel - my son loves counting and spelling songs, so I made a counting video, and used a xylophone to provide the tunes.

And Rocked. Out.