Furthermore: January 2007

January 31, 2007

Tuesday

I had an amazingly productive day on Tuesday - I got up about 6.30 and went running, then spent the morning at work fixing a problem that had been bugging me for several days.

I took the afternoon off, did a bit of shopping and then went to CB2 to meet the MySociety people to see what I could help them with. They were very friendly, so we had a good chat, and Tom put me in touch with Richard Pope who’s hopefully going to help me get going with a screenscraper for his planning applications website.

After I left there I bought some food for tea, then headed home to eat and help put the girls to bed. Then back out to the Alexandra Arms to host the Cambridge Amnesty group’s letter writing evening. Fortunately for me I had been given a bunch of template letters by a friend in the Blackheath and Greenwich group, so we were able to use those to write about 20 letters between the five of us.

Still managed to get home in time for a reasonably early night.

January 20, 2007

Not blogging but running

Not a lot to say at the moment I guess. I am thinking of porting this site to Wordpress (that is, I’ve done it, except the style sheets, but I can’t be bothered to finish) so maybe that’s why I’m reluctant to post here - it’s the Furthermore-original-flavour epilogue.

Anyway, running is going well - I did just over 17 miles today, in just under 3 hours, so that’s about a 10m15s per mile. For some reason the 17 mile run had become something of a source of anxiety. I’ve never run that far before, and I was afraid I was going to screw it up I guess. As it was, the weather was nice, and I even managed to get on the road before 8am so I was back just before 11. Here’s the route - the section by the river up to Baits Bite, and then Milton Country Park was very nice. Running back down Milton Road, not so much.

January 6, 2007

Running this morning

I did my longest run ever so far this morning - just under 15 miles. Took me about 2 hours 40, which is a bit slower than I’d like. Conditions were okay when I set off, but my hands started to get really cold after about an hour - I think I need some thin gloves that I can take to prevent it as this has happened a few times now. I find if I take my normal gloves my hands get too hot, and the gloves are too bulky to easily put in my waist bag.

It rained too in the latter half of the run, and I finished the circuit by going round Nine Wells, so there was quite a lot of muddy ground to cover. Bit of a slog to be honest, but I feel good now I’ve done it. I’m going to aim for 17 miles in a couple of weeks time, and that should pull me back just ahead of the schedule in Galloway, and give me some slack in case I lose more time later on in the year.

January 2, 2007

Torchwood

We watched the Torchwood finale last night, and I think that’s it for me and Torchwood. Much as I love Mr Barrowman, the penultimate part jumped the shark during his snog with the doomed airman. We got the point already - can the writers not express a subtle emotion without smacking us over the head with it?

The last one was even worse - pure self indulgence by the writers. There’s a scene where Capt Jack berates his team for all being idiots, and for a moment I thought there might be an explanation why the whiny, hysterical fools had been recruited to their positions of global importance. But no, it was just more emo wank before they brought on the demon that they’d already shown us in the trailer. Then the whole sorry mess finally dragged itself to its obvious conclusion.

What annoys me is that it has moments of brilliance, and that the same people who seem so able in Doctor Who, seem to lose all sense of characterisation and ability to write a good plot as soon as the constraints of a family drama are relaxed.