Two-faced
Posted: Thu 27 January, 2005 Filed under: General, News Leave a comment »And of course, even on the anniversary of the liberation of Aushwitz, there’s still the stories of false imprisonment. The four UK people who’ve been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay for three years without charge or court hearing have come back to the UK, and been released by UK police with no charge.
So how do Blair and Bush manage to go to Auschwitz at all? No, their crime isn’t genocide, but it is still imprisonment of foreign nationals for no reason other than rumour.
The difference is scale.
Anniversary of Liberation
Posted: Thu 27 January, 2005 Filed under: General, News 4 Comments »Sixty years ago today, Aushwitz was finally liberated by Soviet troops. At least 1.1 million people died in this one camp. Today, world leaders are going to be there to mark the occasion.
The BBC has some pictures of existence in Auschwitz and also a fairly good history page regarding Genocide under the Nazis. Also, the camp is now a museum, to show people what the place was like.
This type of thing should never be forgotten – this was more than six million people dying because of a racist policy. Holocaust Memorial Day is supposed to remind us that it shouldn’t ever happen again – but of course it does.
10,000
Posted: Tue 25 January, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, General, Health, Resolutions 1 Comment »Today, Gordon’s talking about pedometers, and how many steps people walk in a day. As it’s something that’s good to do as part of the healthy thing, I thought I’d have a quick count-up of the main part of my walking each day.
Thanks to the B&Q delivery (still cocked up, but less cocked-up than it was) I was able to count my walk to and from work. just for this post (He lies, in a fit of “look what I do for you people” pique) It works out as roughly 2,100 steps, although I’ll be verifying that tonight. So assuming I walk both to and from work (I do most of the time, but occasionally get a lift from Herself) just the walk nets me approximately 4,000ish paces. Not bad considering that the average is only 3,000 per day, and that doesn’t take into account the walking I do around the house and office, at lunchtime, or when we take Hundus for a walk. So I reckon that on a normal day I probably average about 5,500-6,000steps – possibly more, but I doubt I break the 7,000 on average.
What interested me more was my walking speed – those 2,100 paces took me approximately 20 minutes. That’s 105 steps per minute, or 1.75 per second. Fairly fast, I’d say.
CLI
Posted: Mon 24 January, 2005 Filed under: General 2 Comments »While I’m at work, I try to have a bit of a policy when it comes to my mobile phone. Thanks to CLI, it displays who’s calling. Well, except when the call is coming from an office, or from behind a switchboard, in which case it displays “Private Number” or somesuch guff.
If I can see who’s calling, I’ll normally answer the phone. Seems pretty simple. If I don’t know, I don’t answer it – the phone redirects to the answering service after four rings anyway, so it’s no problem.
However, CLI appears to have passed a lot of people by – particularly those who call from offices or from behind switchboards. So the moronic twunts just ring off when they hear the answerphone message, and thus I’ve keck-all chance of calling them back.
What is it that is so bloody difficult and mentally challenging about recording a message?
Thoughts on Weight
Posted: Mon 24 January, 2005 Filed under: General, Health 2 Comments »I’ve never been small – I’m 6’4″, and tend to average around 20-21stone. (Gordon wrote some thoughts about this earlier this month) I don’t (normally) see myself as “fat” – I’ve got a 50″ chest, which isn’t fat, it’s bone structure. I know, we’ve all heard the “I’m not fat, I’m big-boned” excuse a thousand times, but at some point it does have some veracity.
I know I need to lose some weight – and, as detailed below, it’s beginning to happen. But when I look at what Weightwatchers recommend as my target weight, I can’t really do anything but laugh.
Start Weight : 20st 10.0lb
10% Goal : 18st 9.0lb
Weight Goal : 11st 9.9lb
11st 10lb?!? Now that’s going to be impressive – losing half my body weight. Meanwhile, back in reality…
Quite honestly, I simply don’t think it’s possible for me to lose that much weight. I’ll be happy with 16 or 17 stone – even that I think only borders on feasible. We’ll see. But eleven stone on a 6’4″ frame with a 50″ chest? It’s not going to happen.
Upgrading Health
Posted: Mon 24 January, 2005 Filed under: General, Health, Resolutions 2 Comments »Since the start of this year, I’ve been working a bit on general health and fitness. The first part of that was to start losing some weight. As of yesterday, I’ve lost nearly a stone in weight in three weeks, which I reckon is pretty good. I’m working on losing it sensibly, rather than any crash-dieting or whatever.
The next part of it starts this week. Over the weekend we joined up with a local gym, and the initiation initial consultation is going to be on Thursday. We may go in the meantime just for a tryout, but having visited it before Christmas I pretty much know what to expect.
There’s still a long way to go – including a visit to the GP, and a thyroid test. (It runs in the family, so it’s best to see how I’m doing on that score) There’s also a plan to buy a bike, which should be interesting as I haven’t ridden one regularly in about eight years.
Still, it’s all working so far, and it’ll be interesting to see how things go.
Time Flies
Posted: Fri 21 January, 2005 Filed under: General, Travel Leave a comment »Isn’t it hard to believe that we’re already three weeks into 2005. Where’s it all gone?
I find that if I look back and actually take stock of what I’ve done in that time, I’ve got through one hell of a lot of stuff. But at the same time it only feels like yesterday that we were seeing in the New Year.
This weekend is going to be the first in ’05 where we’re not travelling up to Manchester in order to sort out house etc. There’s still a lot to do, but for the first time this year it doesn’t involve travelling all over the place. This is a Very Good Thing, if slightly novel.
I finally feel like I’m kind of settled again – and able to sit down a bit and take a deep breath and some down time. Of course, I bet it won’t happen quite like that, but it’s a nice concept.