Finally got around to joining and then getting to the gym this morning. So I am now tired and vaguely cheerful while quietly ignoring how much I am going to hurt tomorrow.

Had a nice weekend. The weather was really nice so I decided to spend a couple of hours wandering around taking photos. The light wasn't great as it was around midday that I was out but some of them are ok. Mike came over from Leeds for lunch at a good little veggie cafe here in Manchester then we wandered back through town looking for somewhere that wasn't full for a beer and ended up at our apartment. For the evening Zak and I went to see a dance/show based on the Indian epic The Mahabharata. Some of it was ok but apparently modern dance is just another term for formation walking which kind of took any excitement to be had out of the whole affair. The music, by Nitin Sawney, was pretty good, though. After that went to Canal St. and had a beer sat outside, by the canal. All very European. Sunday decided not to do much except get the shopping done and play some PS2. Final Fantasy XII for those who are interested.

Been a very GTD heavy week. Really enjoyed listening to the podcast with Merlin Mann and David Allen mentioned a couple of posts back and have now tricked out my filofax for proper GTD use. I'd never really gotten to grips with how the filofax could be organised and it's been a very organic process. Still not entirely happy with it but it's definitely getting there. A couple of interesting comments that pinged in my mind were that can take two years for GTD to really take hold. The other was to remember that it's as easy to fall back on to GTD as to fall off.
The other GTD-related observation I have for the week is in the use of place labels. That is, organising next actions by location or person: Stuff I want to ask my boss goes on an @boss list. I started consciously doing this a few weeks ago because I need to be in regular contact with several people who are not based at the same site as me and it was a convenient way of organising. Of course, this is not some new GTD thing, it's always been there but I just never had a great need to do it before. And now that I've recognised it I can start implementing this in other ways. So if I have a bunch of phonecalls to make they go on an @phone list, or websites on an @internet list.
Went to see Pirates 3 this week. It was all right, better than the second one. I feel about it much as I did Spiderman 3. It's a fun film, not art. Bad reviews come along because it's supposed to match some ridiculous artistic ideal that it's not really striving for. The main problem with it is that it's just a bit too silly and the macguffins are generally poorly explained and come across as just plot devices we're supposed to suck up without questioning. Which is ok unless you're remotely tempted to ask yourself, erm, why did that just happen?

Heftier stars are more likely to host planets - space - 29 May 2007 - New Scientist Space
Reading this article it struck me that, while we have long supposed that other stars must have their own solar systems, we are now in a position where we know it to be true and we have photos of them. That's pretty awesome.

Now that I am taking the bus to work I have time to catch up on all those podcasts that I've been hearing about. There are plenty out there and I'm slowly making my way through ones that have caught my eyes, from award-nominated SF short stories, through Zen, to intellectual discussions about just about anything.
Today I started listening to one I've been wanting to hear for a while: discussions on GTD between Merlin Mann and David Allen. I heard the first two today on my way home and they really got me thinking about my current GTD implementation. The second episode looked at how things can leak out of the system when reviews are not properly done and longer-term goals are not looked at leading to a kind of background level of stress or distrust of the system and this really struck a chord. Since starting work I have been pretty rigorous about getting my system together and keeping it going there and that has meant that I do feel pretty on top of all that. This, in GTD terminology, is all runway stuff, things that are directly in front of me that need dealing with now. However that hasn't left me feeling less stressed or helped me come to terms with stuff going on outside the system. Something I haven't really done before is use the system for long-term goals and things that I want to do with my life in the future, like making progress with my writing. In short it is time for me to get through the book and conduct a serious review. I'm looking forward to seeing what it throws out.

David came over yesterday evening so we went for a meal in Chinatown (not bad, generous portions, but not awesome) and then on to check out some Futuresonic events.

edit The MySpace page for the live act we saw: http://www.myspace.com/denisjones (Thanks David)

No blog posts recently as I moved into my new apartment a three weeks ago and it has taken me this long to get broadband set up. My own fault for going with BT who have been rubbish. You'd think it would be easy to do something that they specialise in and do hundreds of times a day. They messed up setting up my phone line too. Now they want to charge me... I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry but have decided to wait a couple of days before calling to discuss everything with them again. Although what's the point? They don't care about their quality of service.

Which has been a major grumble for the past few weeks but also about my only one. Work is going well, the new apartment (just near Picadilly station) is very nice and things are trundling along nicely. I even managed to install Feisty on my laptop, despite more than a few problems with my ATI graphics card, and have now got it all more or less setup how I want it. (verdict - the ATI card thing is a real pain, some things are a bit easier but overall not a great deal of difference from Edgy, especially as I already had many of the new features already installed).

So, quick rundown of what's been happening: Went to Leeds got drunk, came back, went to Leeds again to see sister, work, work, work, work and saw Sunshine at cinema, work, Soo and Ant came over and we got drunk, felt terrible, parents came over for roast dinner, work, work, work and saw Spiderman 3, work and watched Pan's labyrinth on DVD (thanks Soo!).

Work is going well and I am enjoying the job. It's quite nice to be able to get my teeth into some of this stuff again and the feedback has been positive too. Sunshine was pretty good, really enjoyed it and glad I went to see it at the cinema because the vision of the sun is religious in the way it is used. There's a bit of a shift in tone at the end away from character that is a little disappointing though. Spiderman was better than I'd expected from some of the reviews and basically no better or worse than the others in the series. Pan's Labyrinth is really cool. Hard to believe it's from the same director who brought the world Hellboy (a film I enjoyed but came out of the cinema with no desire to see again. Feel maybe I should now, just to check).

While at Stell's birthday do a couple of weeks ago Ant and I found out that Damo Suzuki, ex-lead singer with Can, was playing at a pub in Huddersfield over the Easter weekend. So, after helping my dad with various bits of DIY, drove over there to see it on Saturday night. First up was a psychedelic band which was pretty nice. Next came a band who produced a sound very similar to white noise for half an hour. Damo looked like he was sleeping through it all sat at the cd table until he bounced up to the stage to create an hour and a half of inspired audio lunacy. At one point I thought my brain was melting.
Went back to Anthony's after that and had a beer to relax. Sunday had a roast dinner at my aunt's, which was cool because we do not have an oven at the moment and roasting or baking anything is impossible.
Monday finished off installing the window sill my dad (with a bit of help from me) had put together for the front room and headed back to Huddersfield to meet up with David and Ant for a 9 mile walk in the rain and mist over some good Yorkshire moorland. Fantastic stuff.
All of which set me up quite nicely for today when I started my new job. Walked from the station to the mill where the office is, with my legs slightly aching from yesterday, for a gentle day of introductions and a look at the project I'll be working on. So far it all seems ok although there are a couple of things that need sorting, like access to Subversion, but the work itself looks like it's going to be interesting. It will be pretty challenging and the hours are quite long too, especially with the journey from my parents' house, but that should all be easier when we (hopefully) get an apartment in Manchester centre.
The journey home was a bit of a nightmare tonight. Got on the Metro with a lot of United fans going to tonight's match against Roma only to have it stop after one station because of a failed tram ahead. This meant waiting to be told to get off for twenty minutes and then getting the bus home making the total travel time back about 2 hours. Hopefully the next few days will go a little easier.