So, on the bottom of my MSN app, there’s the following ad:
“Are you a Polo (R) Sucker or Cruncher. Take the test to find out!”
Leaving aside the unforgivable exclusion of a question mark (yes, I’m a grammar nazi), I suggest that people who need to take a test to find out if they suck or crunch a Polo shouldn’t be out in public on their own 
Not that my opinion counts for anything (apart from at the ballot box), but here’s how I see things at the moment:
I’m a bit dismayed that the coalition is acting like the last Government, but I believe this is down to the LibDem influence. Never mind, a quick email to my MP via WriteToThem may garner a response 
Well, I best share this as it looks very funny. It’s got that chap out of The Hangover in it, and some guy called Robert Downey Jr. The latter has to get to the birth of his son by the due date, and the former is “helping” him get there.
Looks good, hopefully it’s more Hangover 2 than the official Hangover sequel, which I really don’t think is necessary.
H/T to FirstShowing.net
Well, I had my final Prednisolone 5mg tablet yesterday, so that’s a milestone of sorts. I was decreasing my does by 5mg a day, and have really been enjoying the lack of feeling sick and I’m feeling less anxious. I’m seeing the doc again tomorrow, and we’ll take it from there.
I’m still feeling a bit shaky and anxious, but I guess that will take a while to wear off, and hopefully there’s no “coming off” (ooh-er) side-effects.
My face has definitely responded to the steroid treatment, but it’s not back to normal yet, something that could take another nine months or so, seeing as the facial nerve re-grows at about one millimetre a day. But at least it re-grows Apparently, the B range of vitamins helps, which I’m already taking.
Stay tuned for more updates
So, made good use of my time off today to recuperate in a cinema. I’ve been wanting to see The Other Guys since I saw a trailer, and it had a few good reviews, and the price was right – £4.90 for a digital projected film? Cheap at half the price
To sum up the plot, the two “hero” cops of the NYPD (played briefly by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson) are, er, removed from service and the other guys, the guys who do their paperwork, need to step up and fill the missing places. Well, one of them does – Hoitz (played by Mark Wahlberg) is a very angry cop, desperate to prove himself and a bit of a mess. He drags his partner, Gamble (played by Will Ferrell) into an investigation sparked by Gamble’s boring investigation into scaffolding permits, and it escalates from there.
This is not a buddy-buddy movie – Hoitz hates Gamble (and most other guys), has no problem telling him to his face, but Gamble is able to respond in his own way. Obviously, the pair warm to each other a la Lethal Weapon but with more laughs.
The film takes a rapid-fire approach to the humour, and there are some great, great lines in there. A favourite is Hoitz’s disparaging remark about Gamble’s Prius: “I feel like I’m driving around in a vagina”. The poor Prius comes in for far worse though.
Mark Wahlberg, no stranger to gritty drama and hard-nosed characters, plays the comedic role well, and makes it work. His frustration at his partner, his job, his life easily comes out but never seems like exposition. Will Ferrell, who can be samey at times, is reined in here and is far more funny as a result. As someone else said, he plays Gamble as his usual man-child character with a few quirks – he’s a babe magnet, which confuses and consternates Hoitz, and provides a great scene when Hoitz meets Gamble’s wife, played by Eva Mendez. Speaking of whom, she’s really funny in her screen-time, but again, comes across as a real character and not just a comic foil. The same can be said for Michael Keaton, who is just excellent in his role as the police captain – again, lots of good, quick one-liners from him.
The comedy does slow a bit towards the end of the film, but it allows the characters the necessary time to establish the situation and Show Growth ™. The end of the film is suitably bombastic and a great ride. Speaking of the end of the film, stay for the credits, as it explains what a Ponzi scheme is (involved in the film), and details about US financial bail-outs, CEO remuneration, etc. – it’s quite educational.
Overall, I’ll give it 8 / 10, a very funny comedy 
Coming Soon: I saw trailers for The Town, which looks excellent, and RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous) which looks like a lot of fun, so they’re on the “to watch” list.
The right sidebar now displays my latest tweets, thanks to Rick’s Twitter for WordPress plugin. It was simple to install and configure, and you can use it in-page or as a widget.
I’ve also changed the colour of my links, which necessitated a big of jiggery-pokery with CSS, been a while since I’ve done that
Seeing as I’ve had some time off recently and I’m a Bit Of A Geek, I’ve spent most of it in front of the computer
I use Internet Explorer 8 as my browser of choice, although I do also use Firefox as well for the excellent Firebug and Web Developer Toolber plugins, they really help with web development. Anyway, I have a number of sites I visit on a daily basis (Twitter, Facebook, Daily Telegraph, etc.), and I use have them in each tab.
When I start my daily browsing, I’m so lazy that I can’t be bothered to create a new tab and click each link from the Favourites bar, so I’ve found a way to kind of automate it. Instead of setting IE8′s home page to whatever you have set it to, set it to about:tabs. Then, when the browser launches, just click the Reopen Last Browsing Session link on the page. Hey presto, all your tabs get populated as they were when you last closed your browser. Obviously you need some open tabs to start with Incidentally, use Ctrl+Q to access Quick Tabs, a visual representation of which tabs you have open, then pick a tab or hit Esc to close.
As I spend a lot of time in Google Reader (the RSS feed reader), I like to view it full-screen to maximise reading space. This is achieved by hitting two keys on the keyboard: F11 (in IE8) to go full-screen in the browser, and then f in Google Reader just to get the reading pane. These keys toggle, naturally. If you like keyboard shortcuts (who doesn’t?), just hit ? in Google Reader to get a pop-up, overlayed list of all the shortcuts you can use, e.g. s, l, j, k for star, like, next, previous respectively.
Hope this helps
As previously mentioned, I’m now seeing a bit of improvement. I can just about pronounce my Bs and Ps normally now, and there’s a lot more movement in my face. My mouth is still affected when I try to smile, and I still can’t curl my lip up, so no snarling for me
As I’m reducing my prednisolone steroid dosage, my weight is coming back down as well. I’m looking forward to when I can start exercising again, I’ll be defnitely back on the treadmill trying to get under 12st. Now that I’ve (almost) left my job in Mansfield, I won’t be able to go the excellent Body and Soul gym there, so I guess I’ll be doing bodyweight workouts until I join a gym in Nottingham (if time in my work day allows for a work-out).
And yes, the prednisolone and not doing anything during the day is really affecting my sleep – I was up at 3.30am. Never mind, day of rest today
If you’re a reader of my blog, you’ll know that I’ve been on a couple of PKA Kickboxing on kicking and power combos hosted by Scott Adkins. He’s a very talented and hard-working martial artist and all-round nice guy, even if he doesn’t like the way I throw my hooks
Giangrosso, owner of the Scott Adkins Fanz site and forum has put together a showcase reel for Scott, which contains clips from Wolverine, Black Mask 2, Undisputed 2 and 3, and much more; it’s well worth a watch
Actually, it’s sucking a bit less now. Over the last few days, I’ve been able to move my face muscles a bit. I still can’t blink my left eye, but I can kind of “scrunch” it up. My left cheek can now move about a bit, but my mouth is still pretty much frozen (no winning smile still). That said, I do seem to be speaking a bit better as I can form my Bs and Ps a bit better.
I’m still signed off work as I’m still on the rather unpleasant steroids (lots of ‘roid rage, which isn’t good), but I have been told by my GP to start reducing the dose, so that’s also good news.
Not much else to report, apart from The Dark Knight was fantastic, I should have seen it earlier!
A while ago, Scott Guthrie (Product Manager of the .NET Framework) tweeted a link to James Hare’s “C#/.NET Five Little Wonders That Make Code Better (1 of 3)”. James has since published parts 2 and 3, and I provide the links below as a handy reference:
C#/.NET Five Little Wonders That Make Code Better (1 of 3)
C#/.NET Five Little Wonders That Make Code Better (2 of 3)
C#/.NET Five Little Wonders That Make Code Better (3 of 3)
The tips are short, well-written and cover items such as the null coalescing operator, the StopWatch class, object / collection initialisers, a talk on the use of var and (LINQ) extension methods.
Well worth a read
As you can probably tell, I’ve altered the layout of the blog a bit, thanks to the excellent Arras Theme from Melvin Lee.
It’s just what I’m looking for, highly configurable, works very well with WordPress widgets, I don’t know how much time he’s put into it, but it’s very, very good.
Just need to sort out my page titles though, as my blog’s name disappears from the front of the page… Ah, maybe
Note that the tweet button has gone from individual posts, but I’ll work on that…
The news that the HMRC has totally ballsed up millions of people’s tax should come as no surprise. Briefly, 4.3 million people have overpaid their tax and are due a refund, and 1.4 million people have not paid enough.
Whilst it’s nice to be owed a refund, spare a thought for the 1.4 million who are being asked, nay, demanded to repay an average of £1,400 or so. It’s not really up to them to decide whether to repay it or not, as HMRC will be taking it directly from their salary. This is, of course, only affecting the middle classes who actually work for a living instead of sponging off the state.
There was some talk about HMRC taking control of tax collection directly, i.e. bypassing the employer, but this total cock-up clearly demonstrates their incompetence and reason why they shouldn’t be even left to run a whelk stall.
Add to that the news that 1 in 5 tax records could be incorrect, and the HMRC look even more “not fit for purpose” (a rare link to The Independent there )
The Telegraph View on the matter gets right to the heart of the question: “The crisis raises a wider point about the degradation of institutions of which this country was once justifiably proud”. Or, in plainer terms, when did we all go to pot? What happened to pride in a job well done? Or even just a job done? The gross incompetence of the HMRC lays bare the UK’s lacksadaisical approach to work, which is shocking.
The coalition government has taken the wrong stance by blaming the previous Labour government, which is a complete cop-out. The money should not be reclaimed from those who owe, as it was HMRC at fault. The new computer system will no doubt be blamed, but as some chap on Sky News said, people operate computers. Perhaps that’s where the problem lies: people rely too much on computers these days to do their thinking for them, and don’t bother to check what they’re actually doing.
Needless to say, the overbearing, big-brother style bullying tactics of the HMRC (“pay up or else”) will make a lot of people nervous, but there is some good news: As Anna Raccoon details in her take on this, the information in this Daily Mail article shows that it might be possible to tell the taxman where to go, so have a read.
It really is hard to be surprised any more about how truly awful the public sector is these days, but this slow-building story has finally hit the front pages and people’s doormats, requesting monies when we’re still in a recession and probably heading for another one. It is just wrong for the HMRC to be demanding money at a time like this when it was their cock-up. The HMRC really need to have the auditors sent in, the head should be sacked, the tax system vastly simplified (no more tax credits, simple bands, nice and easy) and the hundreds (thousands?) of incompetents (not a spelling mistake) be placed in jobs where their skills are more apt, like staring out of a window.
Well, it sucks because thanks to the steroids, I was awake at 4am with a mind racing (slight hysteria?) and hunger and feeling sick. There’s been no improvement in the droop (of my face, thank you) and my eye was rather bad yesterday.
On the plus side, my son had a good first day at secondary school yesterday, so that helped
I’ll blog more later, got a lot to get off my chest…
Well, maybe I’m getting used to the Predinsolone steroid (60mg a day, max dose) as I didn’t have any panic / anxiety attacks today, which was nice. I did have a shock when I weighed myself however: I’ve gained 4.5lb since starting the pills on Friday – what what?! How the hell?
According to a nurse friend of mine, weight gain is a side-effect of them, but as previously mentioned, I’m trying to cut down on the food intake. That said, I have a packet of Blockbuster Vanilla Fudge next to me that has oddly become empty :-s
Ah well, best get to bed, freakin’ eye that doesn’t close is killing me… Maybe I should drink the eyedrops and spray the artificial saliva in my eye instead
