Technology and randomness, since 2002
Things that have happened in my life
We’re a married couple now. It was a bit of an exhausting day, but we both had a really good time, as did our guests – hopefully! I didn’t take any photos myself (the above is lifted from a friend’s Facebook album) so it’ll be a while before we see the rest of them. Christine looked absolutely beautiful.
So we’re Mr and Mrs Turner now, and I have a ring on my finger which is going to take some getting used to. Today we’re having a rest and then tomorrow we’re off to Paris.
Tonight will be the last night that Christine and I spend together as an unmarried couple. Tomorrow night we will spend the traditional night apart – me at my parents, and her with her bridesmaid at the hotel, and then the next time I see her she will be coming down the aisle on Saturday.
We’re pretty much there with preparations. We have the flowers (which are silk), I’ve got my suit, and Christine’s got her dress. We just need to take things to the venue tomorrow, and then wait for everyone to turn up the day after. As such, we’re not too stressed out about things as – touch wood – there aren’t too many big things that could go wrong at this point.
Anyhow, the next time I blog (apart from any automated posts like Delicious links), I’ll have a shiny ring on my finger. See you all soon.
It’s time once again for my ‘annual review’ of how the past year has gone for me – you can also read 2011, 2010 and 2009.
2012 started in our flat, with friends. For once, Christine and I managed to stay living in the same place all year after finally finding a flat together that didn’t have any problems.
The first weekend of January was spent in Newcastle, with short visits to Carlisle and Tynemouth as part of a two week break from work. As odd as it may seem to go on ‘holiday’ to Newcastle, we were able to find enough things to do to keep ourselves occupied and it was a cheap and enjoyable holiday.
Later in January we had a family meal and what is, to date, the most expensive restaurant I’ve ever been to – Gaucho in Leeds. The food was very good, but it’ll be a long time before we can afford to go there again. We also visited the Hebden Bridge Picture House, a lovely community-run independent cinema, I spent a day finding geocaches on the Spen Valley Greenway, and we had a nice afternoon at Manor Heath Park in Halifax.
In February we booked our wedding, which will take place in May 2013. This was followed by visits to a couple of wedding fairs, where we prompted multiple times to surrender our contact details for freebies, competition entries and all sorts. We also managed a trip to Ikea without a car, and instead using buses and walking. It’s possible but I wouldn’t recommend it. And I went to see one of my favourite bands, Alestorm, at The Well in Leeds, which has sadly now closed down.
February was 29 days long in 2012 but I spent the extra day ill in bed.
In March we went to the closest thing Leeds has to a zoo – Tropical World in Roundhay Park. It’s not very big, but then it’s not expensive either and there’s quite a variety of animals there. This month’s live entertainment came in the form of Fascinating Aïda who had a minor YouTube hit with Cheap Flights, a sketch about the experience of travelling with a certain notorious low-cost Irish airline. Our group, consisting largely of students, probably made up the youngest members of the audience but it was really good nonetheless.
Along with seemingly half of the internet, I discovered Draw Something in March. After playing it almost religiously for a few weeks, after a while I lost interest and I’ve since deleted it off my phone. I’m guessing quite a few other people did too.
March ended at my first visit to Bettakultcha – one of three trips this year.
In April I took part in Hidden Bradford‘s #bradfordphotoaday – or rather attempted; I only managed 12 pictures over the 30 days. Outside of Bradford we went to Meadowhall for a shopping trip and I had my first experience at a garra rufa fish spa, which, to be honest, was rather underwhelming. Last year this was all the rage but we were one of only a few customers when we were there.
I responded to the Home Office’s Equal Civil Marriage consultation – pleasingly, it was announced this December that in response the government would also allow religious same sex marriage for those organisations that wanted it. Hopefully this will become law in a couple of years.
We saw two live comedy gigs in the same week – Mitch Benn at the wonderful City Varieties in Leeds (although we did turn up a day early…) and Robin Ince at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield; yes, the same Robin Ince we saw three times last year.
In May we visited Newby Hall for a day out around the gardens. I returned to the gym after a 10 week absence; however, I would later have another long, and indeed ongoing absence in the winter months. I suppose it’ll have to be a New Year’s Resolution for 2013.
More live stand-up comedy came in the form of Dara Ó Briain and Paul Merton, both at the Victoria Theatre in Halifax, and both very good in their own way with Merton’s show including various improvised sketches.
After just shy of 5 years on Twitter, I posted my 10,000th tweet. Hopefully some time in 2013 Twitter will let me download all of my tweets (it’s been promised and is gradually rolling out) so I can see how embarrassing I was in the early days. I also took out an Audible subscription, and listened to a grand total of two books before cancelling it.
We made more wedding progress – we formally gave notice to marry and arranged our photographer. Christine also bought her dress.
May is my birthday month, and I spent quite a bit of it on a train down to London, for a short stay with friends. Whilst there we saw Matilda The Musical, visited London Zoo to do the bits we missed in 2010, called in at the humorously-named Horniman Museum and strolled around Kew Gardens. We picked a good weekend to go – the weather was nice and London was all decked out for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee with Union Flags draped everywhere. A stark contrast to the actual Jubilee weekend when it rained heavily.
June, by contrast, was much less eventful. Christine and I spent a long weekend in the Yorkshire Dales National Park with several friends, and I went to RailFest at the National Railway Museum in York for a geeky train-related day out. Despite this, I managed to blog something pretty much every day in June.
July brought with a visit to the Royal Armouries in Leeds, which despite being quite local and free I’ve not visited properly for several years. There was also a weekend in Blackpool, including my visit to a nightclub in several years and a day out at Blackpool Zoo; counting Tropical World in Leeds, this was zoo visit 3 of 4 this year.
At home I upgraded my Mac to Mountain Lion, which was a largely uneventful process which made minor changes. I suppose you could call it the most underwhelming update to OS X in its history but then it was also by far the cheapest.
The Calder Valley, where I live, was hit by very serious flooding – the worst for many years – in July. We weren’t directly affected, living as we do in a flat several storeys up, but the towns of Hebden Bridge, Todmorden and Mylthomroyd further up the valley were badly hit.
And right at the end of July I discovered a song called ‘Gangnam Style’ by Psy, stating on Facebook that it was South Korea’s answer to LMFAO. I didn’t expect it to have over a billion views by the end of year and be a number one single in many countries including the UK.
In August we went to Halifax Agricultural Show again, after the Great Yorkshire Show was cancelled due to the aforementioned bad weather. I also paid passive attention to the Olympic and Paralympic Games in London, mainly because they were on whilst I was in the gym, but also because Team GB did very well this year coming third overall.
Not a lot else happened in August as it’s always a very busy time at work – this year saw a 13 day period where I was at work every day including two consecutive Sundays.
The past couple of years has seen us spending the first weekend in September at Bingley Music Live, but a lacklustre line-up, increase in ticket prices and last year’s awkwardness when trying to get home put us off. Instead we stayed in our home town for the annual Rushbearing festival where a cart of rushes is pulled between the various churches and pubs of the town over two days. It was quite a lot of fun, actually.
September also featured a day out at the RHS Garden at Harlow Carr – it wasn’t the nicest weather but I enjoyed it. This is coming from someone who doesn’t really ‘do’ gardening.
Live entertainment was for the unexpectedly brilliant Frisky and Mannish, at the Alhambra Studio Theatre in Bradford which I ashamedly visited for the first time despite living in or near Bradford for 10 years. Frisky and Mannish sadly aren’t currently touring, bar one rescheduled date in Portsmouth in February, which is a shame because they were utterly brilliant. Their YouTube videos do not do them justice.
The fourth and latest World of Warcraft expansion came out, although massive server queues (over an hour) meant that it was really October before I was able to play it. I’m not sure if it’s my favourite expansion ever (I loved Wrath of the Lich King) but it’s better than the previous Cataclysm expansion. There’s enough to do at maximum level to keep me logging in regularly, which is a nice change.
Finally, in late September, I replaced my iPhone 4, which was having major battery problems, with a brand new iPhone 5. It was a few days late, and wasn’t the model I originally ordered, but meant that I got the 64 GB model for the price of the 16 GB one, which was nice. Christine also upgraded from a Samsung Galaxy S to a Galaxy S III which she much prefers.
October saw Bradford’s new City Park illuminated on an evening with some really nice light sculptures, so I took a few photos. We also made more wedding progress – I arrange suit hire for myself, my best man and ushers, and we chose the all-important wedding cake.
There was another weekend away – this time to Chester. I’d never been, but Christine went a couple of years ago. It’s a really lovely city with lots of character – and I say that as someone who spent 18 years living in York. We also had a day out at Chester Zoo whilst we were there – our fourth and final zoo visit. And we spent Saturday night drinking cocktails in a swanky hotel bar to celebrate three years of being together.
Stand-up comedians once again entertained us this month, with two in the same week – Marcus Brigstocke at City Varieties, and then Andi Osho at the Alhambra Studio. Marcus was brilliant, and Andi wasn’t bad although her humour would work better in London in my opinion.
Finally, at the end of the month, I installed Windows 8 Pro on my Mac, which was an interesting experience to say the least.
In November I donated blood for the first time, and found that I have one of the more rare blood groups, which means that I’m likely to be called up for more donations quite frequently in future. I already have my next appointment booked for 2013; as a man, I can give every 3 months.
At work, I joined a trade union. I’m lucky to work at an organisation that recognises unions for all staff and should any problems arise, I’ll have more backup.
In the middle of the month we went to Northallerton, and popped into Betty’s, meaning that we have now visited every branch of Betty’s. We didn’t have a meal there but did buy some treats from the shop.
We made another London visit, this time to see the Cabinet War Rooms where Winston Churchill led the UK’s forces during the second world war. It’s a good museum, if rather dark, claustrophobic and on the pricey side.
Once again, stand-up comedy was on the agenda – this time a ‘work in progress’ gig by Sarah Millican ahead of her full tour next year. We saw her last tour show last year and it was ace, and this was just as good. Even though a couple of jokes feel flat (which is to be expected at such gigs) she was absolutely hilarious. Less hilarious was trying to get home from Leeds at 11pm on a Sunday night by public transport.
We went to visit family in Oxfordshire in December, which included a frankly scary visit to Bicester Village where we bought very little.
Christmas this year was at our flat – the first year where I haven’t spent it with my family. Work schedules and trying to organise two sets of parents got the better of us, but we still had a nice, albeit quite and more sober, time. And we’re planning to spend New Year’s Eve in Blackpool with friends.
Which bring us to now. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this, as it’s taken me the best part of three hours to write and I’m not feeling very well at present (typical me to be ill when I’m off work). I’ve also probably forgotten a few things as I’ve been utterly crap when it comes to uploading photos from day outs to Flickr, making it harder to remember what we did, but Facebook and Foursquare between them have been useful aids.
I hope that you had a great 2012, and I wish you a fun and prosperous 2013. It’s certainly going to be a big year for us, with the wedding on the horizon.
On Tuesday, I donated a pint of blood, for the first time.
It’s been something that I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time. I’m already an organ donor (I carry a card around which shows that I give consent for my organs to be used in transplants after my death), but until now I’ve never given blood.
I couldn’t donate throughout much of 2007 and 2008, as I had been on high-strength steroid tablets due to flare-ups with my asthma and my overnight stay in hospital in November 2007. But although I’ve been okay since then, I admit that I’ve simply never got around to it, even when there have been donation sessions at work.
My big worry was that it would hurt. And it did – a bit. For me the worst bit was the needle being inserted at the start; the pain was similar to when I’ve had vaccinations but lasted a little longer. However, once it was in, it was okay – a little uncomfortable, but not painful, and it was done after around 10-15 minutes. All in all, I was there for about an hour, due to me being a new donor and needing a slightly longer medical check first.
Afterwards, the site where the needle went in was a little tender for a few hours, but I didn’t receive any bruising and there was just a small red dot when I took the bandage off.
I’ve already booked another appointment, for mid-March next year, to donate my second pint. If you want to give blood, you can find details at blood.org.uk – the NHS needs a constant supply of blood and so if you are healthy and can spare the time I’d urge you to do it.
I’m back home now, after my various travels. As well as going to London last week, I spent the weekend with Christine and some friends from university in a bunk barn in the western Yorkshire Dales, near the Howgill Fells (a range of hills on the western border of the Yorkshire Dales National Park).
Thanks to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, we got not one, but two public holidays in a row, so yesterday was spent in the lovely town of Keswick (pictured above) and on Latrigg, a hill overlooking it. As for today, I was in York for RailFest 2012 at the National Railway Museum – and I’ll be blogging about that visit tomorrow.
Photos will be forthcoming, but I have quite a backlog of pictures to upload from earlier on in May – I’ve just put up the latest set from the May Day bank holiday weekend in York, which are mostly pictures of owls, as it happens. Hopefully the rest will appear there shortly – as I’ve mentioned, I took over 200 in London alone, and nearly another 100 since.
It’s my birthday again today. I now only have two years of my twenties left. I’ll be spending it in London.
As I only get to do this once every four years, here’s the obligatory leap day post (see also posts from 2008 and 2004). I’ve not been able to any leaping today, or anything much at all actually as I’ve been ill with gastroenteritis since yesterday. I’m starting to feel better but almost all of yesterday was spent in bed.
The photo for this post is of a Steampunk recreation of K-9 from Doctor Who, called K-1909, currently on show as part of a Steampunk exhibition at the Bradford Industrial Museum. You should go – it’s free to get in, and runs until early May.
As with the past two years, I’m going to take a few moments of your time to review the goings on of the past twelve months.
January started with a trip to Blackpool – despite going to Blackpool regularly in 2010, this would be our only trip now that Christine and I both live in Yorkshire – to see friends and visit Blackpool Zoo again. We also had a flat-warming party with friends, despite it being almost two months after we’d moved in. Blogging wise, January was a quiet month – I only posted twice: a quick guide to restarting frozen iOS apps and my ninth blogiversary.
In February I managed 9 posts, or a post every 3 days, where I wrote about which web browsers university students use, the rise of Serco and the first in an irregular series of posts called Foursquare Thursday. Back in the real world, Christine and I had a day out at MOSI – the Museum of Science and Industry – in Manchester.
March brought the first of our two short breaks – four nights in Edinburgh. This included visits to Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh Zoo (you may have noticed that we both like visiting zoos), Surgeon’s Hall Museum, Museum on the Mound, Museum of Scotland and some casual sightseeing and shopping. Back at home, we saw the musical Spamalot in Bradford, and I replaced the hard drive in Christine’s laptop after some worrying startup problems.
On the blog, I made the first major change to the content management system for this site in over 8 years, abandoning Movable Type for Melody, which was a community fork of MT. This turned out to be the first of two major changes. Content-wise I wrote about enabling hardware acceleration in Firefox, which remains one of the most popular posts on the blog, and the start of the 30 Day Song Challenge, which saw me post about a new song (almost) every day right into April.
April was quite a big month – we moved flats again, after encountering problems in the previous one. Thankfully we’ve had no such issues in this one and are still happy there 9 months on, which is good as moving twice in 5 months is not fun. Trust me. Especially when you have problems getting the phone line moved across, although to BT’s credit it’s working fine now and we have very good speeds, despite being in a small semi-rural town.
April also brought unseasonably good weather, so we made day trips to Sheffield and Hebden Bridge, as well as some time in York over the Easter weekend. I concluded the 30 day song challenge and stated why I was voting Yes in the AV referendum (remember that?).
Naturally, as we had a new flat, we needed another flat warming party, which came in early May, shortly followed by a trip to Manchester to see Uncaged Monkeys at the O2 Apollo. May was also my birthday, which was celebrated with a trip to the Victoria Theatre in Halifax to see Ed Byrne (who was painfully funny). And the second of our two short breaks saw us in London for four nights, staying in a Premier Inn in Collier’s Wood to keep costs down. This time, our itinerary included being in the audience for a recording of Jo Brand’s Big Splash at the Hackney Empire (free tickets), Covent Garden, the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL, watching Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre, shopping on Carnaby Street, Camden Lock Market, the Natural History Museum, V&A Museum and a trip out to Greenwich.
On the blog it was another month. March’s move to Melody had left me underwhelmed so I made a much bigger change and switched to WordPress. 7 months on and Melody has only had one minor update, whereas WordPress has had two point releases with new features, and overall I’m much happier with WordPress.
In June, more day trips followed, including a visit to West Yorkshire’s only commercial vineyard (probably) at Leventhorpe and the newly opened Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield, plus a weekend spent walking in the Yorkshire Dales. Christine and I also went with friends to see Avenue Q when it came to Bradford – I’d seen it a few years previously but Christine hadn’t. On the blog, there were several entries about changes to the blog and general tweaking as I adjusted to the new CMS.
Despite having walked past a gym on the way to work every day since November, it wasn’t until July that Christine and I finally joined a gym. 5 months on and we’ve been generally going once or twice a week, although I’ve only been once this month (December) due to being either busy or unwell. It has improved my overall body tone, stamina and reduced my asthma symptoms, but hasn’t really shifted much of the excess fat around my waist. This Christmas’ excesses and lack of exercise will have only exacerbated that, so a new year’s resolution will be more time in the gym.
Also in July I started playing World of Warcraft again – well, I’ve been paying my subscription continually for five years but had lost interest – which included moving a couple of my characters to a new server. Whilst this has meant I’ve been able to play with more of my friends, unfortunately it happens to be one of the most popular EU servers with queues of up to 20 minutes to join at peak times. I also upgraded my Mac to Lion, WordPress 3.2 came out and I joined Google+. Offline, I went to the Yorkshire Show for the first time in a few years, and Christine and I went to Hebden Bridge to see Robin Ince do his Bad Book Club show, who we’d also seen in May at Uncaged Monkeys. I’d see him again in December too. Not that I’m obsessed or anything.
August, by comparison to the months that preceded it, was uneventful bar me being very busy at work, as usual for that time of year. We spent an afternoon at the Halifax Show, which was somewhat smaller than the Yorkshire Show but still good fun, and I went on a walk over the hills from Hebden Bridge to Marsden. In regular shoes, I might add – which led to some impressive blisters on my feet. This wasn’t deliberate – in the rush to leave I forgot to wear my hiking boots. I also started Geocaching, which I’m still finding fun although I’ve now found all of the caches in easy reach of Halifax, Sowerby Bridge and Bradford so future finds will have to be further afield.
As with last year, Christine and I started September by going to Bingley Music Live. This was the only major thing we did that month, as once again I was rather busy at work, although I managed a few further geocache finds. On the blog, I changed the theme to the one you see now. I’ll probably stick with it for now but may adjust the colour scheme sometime. On the job front, my contract at work was made permanent – and thus became the first permanent job I’ve ever had. After several years of uncertainty (see 2009), this is very welcome.
And then came October. By far the biggest news of the month, and indeed the year, was that Christine and I got engaged. We’ve been together as a couple for two years, and it was just the right time to do it. The wedding is likely to be in 2013, and although we have talked about it we haven’t yet sorted a venue or a date. Those are jobs for next year.
October also brought a trip to Saltaire and Salt’s Mill, and quite a bit of drinking in Huddersfield, on a pub crawl and subsequently an Oktoberfest beer festival. I also upgraded my iPhone, now over a year old, to iOS 5.
In November, I went to a live gig and three comedy shows. The gig was for the band Within Temptation – arguably my favourite band right now, and their show in Manchester was absolutely amazing. It was their first UK tour for several years and this was one of only four nights in the UK, so as you can imagine it sold out weeks in advance – we bought our tickets around 6 months in advance. Thankfully there’s a chance they’ll be back this way next year; if you like their music, please go and see them as they put on an excellent show. As for comedy, I saw comedians Sarah Millican, Chris Ramsey and Milton Jones, all of which were very good. Chris Ramsey has done many gigs at the university over the past three years and is finally getting his deserved share of the limelight – I’d recommend seeing him if you get the chance.
I also attempted Movember, although cheated a little by growing a goatee beard, rather than just a moustache. It lasted until the evening of November 30th, and I’m glad to see the back of it. Christine started blogging again, this time about her recipes.
And to December. As mentioned I spent some time feeling ill – it was just a cold but it hit both Christine and I like a fully-loaded freight train and saw me taking a rare day off work on sick leave. My dad passed his Canon EOS 450D down to me, so I had a new camera to play with, which I took on a wet afternoon at Lotherton Hall Bird Garden. We also went back to Manchester to see Uncaged Monkeys again, which was great apart from a rather sub-standard stay in a Travelodge.
Christmas, as usual, was spent in York. Christine went back to Sowerby Bridge today, as she’s working; I’m here for another couple of days.
So that’s 2011. It’s been a good year on the whole – we visited some nice places, saw some brilliant shows and took our relationship to the next level. Later on, I’ll write about what 2012 will have in store.
It’s now been a year since Christine and I moved in together in Sowerby Bridge. It’s also therefore a year since I moved out of Bradford, where I’d spent most of the previous 8 years. We like the town – it’s small, relatively quiet (apart from the main street) and full of interesting pubs and restaurants, of which some we still haven’t been to yet. It’s also an easy commute for both us to get to walk, and has good public transport links with regular trains and buses, so we haven’t felt isolated.
Although the first flat we moved into didn’t work out, we’ve had no problems with the second one that we moved into in April – and it ended up being cheaper, larger and generally nicer than the first one, all things considered. We’re hoping to stay in the flat for some time to come, after which we’ll probably look at buying a house rather than renting as we do at the moment.
This year has also seen us build upon our relationship, going from being 65 miles apart and generally only seeing each other at weekends, to living together and ultimately becoming engaged last month. Living together has worked well – Christine’s a great cook, and so whilst she does most of the meals I’m happy to do other bits of housework.
So here’s to another year of living together.
