Tom's Bits

Things I’d Like To Forget

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There are a great number of things I’d like to erase from my mind. Many of them very small, some rather significant. Why do I want to do this? Because they still cause me discomfort in some manner. With many of these it’s a case of needing to love and forgive myself (a long journey), with some it’s just a thought, a glimpse of awkwardness, mostly in social situations. Should I really just accept and embrace these instead?

Strangely, there’s one social faux pas I couldn’t care less about forgetting. That’ll come later.

Making Money From the Web – Or, “When I Met a Porn Webmaster in Soho”

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Back in 2001 I had an interview with Investors In People as some sort of webby person. Amazing employer, by the way, they really seemed to practice what they preached. Anyway, there I was in London. I’d finished my interview, I think I’d done a spot of shopping, and was sitting in a Cafe Nero in Soho before meeting up with my then lovely fiancee (now lovely wife). I was of course substantially younger then, and as I had an interview, looked pretty damn smart.

So, sitting in the coffee shop, watching people go by. A man sits next to me, after struggling a little with the two mops he has. He swears about them “It’s <something I can’t remember> without these two fucking mops”, and has what I recall to be a slightly clipped Australian accent. We converse, and somehow (possibly following on from talking about my interview?), the conversation turns to web pages and sites. He reveals that the he makes serious money from the web. How? Porn. He runs a couple of porn sites and has the money routed through the US. In the end I have to leave to meet my fiancee, and he wishes me the best of luck.

Questions:

  • I’ve always suspected he was trying to pick me up. Is this vanity, suspicion, or a good bet?
  • Why do I think the sites were gay, I’m not sure he said they were? Is it because of the location and my thoughts about his motives?
  • When he wished me luck, I believe it was actually about my fiancee. Is this likely to be true? Why would he? Did he think I was making her up to get away?

If he had been trying to pick me up, it wouldn’t have been the first time… that happened on my 21st birthday, but is a completely different story and will come later…

Dress To Impress

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Walking to work through London recently I saw a young lady (probably in her twenties), relatively well presented, but the entire effect was spoiled by her t-shirt having “DRESS TO IMPRESS” emblazoned over the front. Really? Is this her idea of dressing to impress? Am I really showing my age here?

Guys And Dolls – A Beginning

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So the King and I has finished, and the next production will be Guys and Dolls. No kids in this production so the rehearsals should be more fluid. The downsides to having no children are that they do bring in audience, and they can be fun to work with (even if they are noisy).

What will I audition for? I’m not good enough for Sky Masterson or Nathan Detroit (not being over-modest here, I’m really not… yet), but I hope to be good enough for Nicely Nicely, even though it’s a little high for me. I may well not be the best for it (or even fit the director’s vision), so am totally prepared to get far less. If Benny Southstreet (?) is also up for audition I’ll go for that too to show willing. Ultimately I’m after lines and a significant bit of song – being in “Got The Horse Right Here”, the three part number at the beginning would be great!

I’ll need to cultivate a New York accent, which is rather a challenge. My US accents are pretty shoddy at best, and not at all fixed to one location. I’ll need to practice this a lot to be comfortable (and confident) enough in audition.

King and I – End Of The Show

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I’ve just finished a week’s run of The King And I, with my local AmDram company. The journey was hard, as the rehearsals seemed to lack consistency, particularly in the dances . I did get rather bored, as while I had lines (hurrah!) they weren’t that frequent so I spent a lot of time just sitting around. So what made it good then?

  • The tech and dress rehearsals. There weren’t insanely inspiring, but our director didn’t labour any points in her notes at the end. She knew we could do the things we messed up, which certainly gave me some confidence.
  • The costumes. My costume wasn’t all I’d hoped for (a late cast change meant the costume I’d originally been assigned went to someone else), but overall, the costumes were gorgeous.
  • The sets. Utterly beautiful. Our previous production had been Oklahoma!, which had comparatively minimalist sets, and these were anything but. Colourful, luscious almost.
  • The cast and crew. I’m really lucky to have worked with such nice people. I didn’t get the part I wanted (they even left that part uncast after my audition!), but I quickly found that the man eventually playing that part was not only a genuinely nice person, but also a really good actor. His last major scene (Kralahome and Anna, “I wish you had never come to Siam”) was incredibly powerful, and a painful delight to experience. The rest of the cast were simply brilliant, as were the crew who supported us, from make up and props, through to stage, sound and lighting. I’m lucky to work with this bunch.
  • The band. I really watching a performance with a live band, and performing to one is just as good.

The bad points?

  • Stressful rehearsals, particularly toward the end. I was better off than the female cast who I understand encountered a number of last minute changes which weren’t easy to deal with.
  • Noisy rehearsals. Working with two teams of great kids (we need two due to licensing) can get noisy, which I found wearing.
  • The fact it ended! I want more!

Thanks – My Teachers

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Oh, my poor poor teachers. How did you cope with me? I was a pretty clever young lad (seriously, I was a “gifted child”), but I was lazy, particularly as I got older. I coasted, and was pretty arrogant about it. What is the reward in teaching such a child? A child with promise, but no apparent will to try. All those teachers, I thank you for trying, offering me help which I was frankly too daft to truly accept. I may come back to this later…

Thanks – Dervla Murphy

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Derva Murphy is an inspiration, and I’m so glad she’s undertaken the frankly daft journeys she did. The most amazing travel book I’ve ever read is her wonderful “Where The Indus Is Young”, where she describes her often perilous and arguably irresponsible journey through the upper stretches of the Indus in the winter with her 5 year old daughter, Rachel. They confronted dangerous river crossings, lack of food, cold, showing a beautiful human warmth and strength throughout. Thanks for being who you are, and for letting us into your life.

Starting Puppet

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I’ve started using Puppet at last. I first heard of it a good three years ago (I reckon), but didn’t believe it was suitable for my then environment. This of course was wrong, it’s pretty good for any environment. I’d come to understand this when I asked one of my team a year or so later to spend a week doing nothing at all other than looking into Puppet. I wish I’d called him out when he declared it too difficult to implement “because it required a separate server”. I’ve now started putting Puppet into production and have the luxury of knowing I can get a LDAP server in place and providing LDAP services to my Department from bare metal in under ten minutes (depending on machine performance of course). I started with the real basics (distributing autofs files), moved on to a basic service (OMD – basically a nagios-type service), and will next get DHCP working (easy) and will work on Apache (not too bad) and Plone (could be horrendous) later. All in all, Puppet is wonderful, and a must for any *nix sysadmin who wants to save time and effort.

An Unusual Ice Skating Injury

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I’m not a brilliant, or even a very competent ice skater, having skated somewhat fewer than ten times in all my years. Still, I do enjoy venturing out onto the ice, and it’s been made far easier since being shown how to lace my boots properly. The big issue is that I’ve always been scared of injury. It used to be a fear of having my fingers sliced should I fall over, but since falling a year or so ago and hurting my knee, resulting in a general ache even now, it’s the falling itself that worries me – after all, these slightly aged bones and sinews don’t heal as well as they used to.

The last time I skated (quite recently, on my daughter’s 11th birthday), I managed to injure myself in rather an unusual manner. Not when I fell over, as I didn’t land on my knees at all, I somehow managed to execute a lovely roll over one shoulder. Clearly highly hazardous for other skaters, but the rink was nearly empty, and to be honest I can’t claim to have rolled that way on purpose. I only wish I did have the presence of mind to do such a thing!

My Unusual Injury all comes back to lacing my boots properly. I was really quite firm about getting the ankle part nice and tight, and relaced/tightened my boots a few times over the course of the two-plus hours on the ice. This is where it went wrong. The last time I tightened my boots I pulled a chunk of skin off the side/inside of the first knuckle of my left index finger. Evidently I’d been a little too assiduous in tightening and managed to cause a blister there, which was consequently pulled off. I also have sore points on the other fingers where the laces rubbed – the other index finger, and both little fingers. My wife and daughter were somewhat amazed I managed to do this. Somehow, I’m not.

Note to self – when making a vinaigrette for supper it’s best not to splash wine vinegar onto an open would. It hurts a little.