Helen's Journal

I was visited yesterday by a cold-call charity fundraiser who seemed so pathetic that I quite wanted to get cross with him for not giving me proper amounts of grief about fobbing him off. In the end though he seemed so pathetic that I didn't have the heart.

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I surprised myself somewhat this morning by telling a woman off who was using her mobile phone in a mobile free carriage!. She had already taken one call, and made one, before I said anything just as she was about to make a second. I was further surprised when she didn't become terribly apologetic but replied "Yes, I know. Sorry. I'll just be two minutes" in the tones of one who known all along but thought she was above such things. "Hmph," I thought and went meekly away but she did at least then stop so perhaps I'd done some good. I've taken to sitting in the quiet carriage in the mornings as I do appreciate the difference between that and the ones with the mobile phone calls. Plus it is the end carriage so generally a bit emptier than the others too.

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For anybody who has seen the Heavy metal umlaut article on Wikipedia or who is just interested in Wikipedia in general, I offer you: Heavy metal umlaut: the movie (a Flash screencast with audio).

Jon Udell, the person who did that, has now taken to offering screencasts as well as text blog entries. I wonder if it will catch on.

After not having been to the cinema for ages and ages and ages, I have been to the cinema twice in the last week and, as ever in those circumstances, was reminded of how much I enjoy it. Winchester cinema's has been showing various things I've not been interested in recently but they're about to start a better period I think so I must keep an eye on what's on and see what I can get to.

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Seen yesterday on a girl's T-shirt:

Cleavage
Under
Development
Definately
Loves
Encouragement

It's probably lucky I'm not her target market as cuddling her was not my immediate reaction. It would have been nice to have been able to think of something cutting to say to her ("definately lacks education"?) but I doubt she'd have appreciated my point anyway.

As spotted on Thursday on the BBC2 Arts programme The Culture Show, an incredible footbridge which curls up by designer Thomas Hetherwick. They showed it moving on the TV and it did look very impressive and even the still images on the website look good. As it's just next to Paddington Station, it should be fairly easy to go and see it in action even, only I can't see a way of finding out when it would actually be active.

I've recently finished reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, kindly lent to me by fivemack. I did quite enjoy it but at the same time I was a bit put off by how much it seemed to be taking it for granted that I would think it was wonderful. OK so it's got Byron in it and Wellington and fairies and lots of footnotes[1] but I'm afraid that doesn't automatically make it a work of genius. I did quite like the alternate history and thought bits of it were quite novel whilst also playing on some classic fairy motifs. On the other hand it didn't end particularly well I thought, more being one of those books which just stopped rather than coming to any proper resolution.

It also didn't hold up very well under what I have gradually come to codify as my Three Rules of Magic, which are some basic requirements I feel any fictional system of magic should at least try and achieve.

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[1] and too often they were bloody annoying when she put something in them she could quite easily, if not better, have included in the text itself or else just left out.

I sometimes wonder why I even bother to pretend I keep this up to date. I read but somehow never seem to post.

So, lets see how far past my catch up I can get this time.

I was introduced to Shogi, Japanese chess, last week (hmmm, the second Japanese reference in as many weeks but by complete coincidence). Well, 'introduced' is a bit of a strong word seeing as none of us actually knew how to play it, 'discovered' might be a better phrase. One of my friends had been sent a set by a Japanese friend of hers along with minimal instructions on the game. We all had quite an interesting time even before we'd started trying to play it by trying to work out how one played it from what we'd been given.

We did also try and play a game, which didn't go too badly, but looking back on it, I think I actually preferred the puzzle of working out how to play than the puzzle of playing it. I'm not quite sure why that was, perhaps because neither of us were good enough at playing Shogi, or even normal chess, to do more than pick up pieces and just randomly put them somewhere which seemed legal and see what transpired. The working out the rules puzzle seemed rather better defined, even if we did turn out to have gone a bit wrong.

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Courtesy of work feeling in a particularly generous mood (and I'm sure they'll make up for it soon), I got to spend a day on the water last week being team-y with the group I've been working with over the summer by trying some sailing and windsurfing. As I could have predicted in advance, I was horribly bad at the windsurfing, having no real sense of balance and no arm muscles to speak of to haul the sail out of the water whenever I overbalanced and/or it fell in. Even after having spent most of the afternoon attempting it (interspersed with stretches of having to paddle the contraption back against the wind whenever I drifted too far over in the wrong direction), I never even felt that I was working out how it was meant to work, let alone actually getting anywhere with it. Perhaps not entirely unconnected with the above, I must say that I don't think windsurfing is a particularly enjoyable activity.

The sailing though was quite fun. We were each given our own little boat (yes, the ones that are designed for small children to learn in), about 5 minutes worth of instructions and then sent out to go backwards and forwards across the wind from buoy to buoy while the instructor zoomed around in a power boat giving us advice. I can't say I was astoundingly good at that either but it was easy enough to be manageable and I got to the stage where I could at least feel that I knew what I should be doing even if it didn't always work in practice. It probably helped that it was a nice sunny day of course with some wind but not too much but I would definitely be prepared to do that again. Plus it helped that it was on work's time and money.