You can count on me

Not wishing to tempt fate, as this is written in advance of publication, I'm still apparently alive, and would like to wish a happy 2009 to you all by continuing to spout my inane drivel for as long as my arthritic fingers are able to bash away at the keys.

To begin the year, a subject which is a personal favourite (though not so with some sections of my readership) and a statistical update. I was successful in completing 100 posts for this last year, to go with the 100 in the truncated year in which I started blogging. I am worryingly satisfied with the symmetry of this, but there you go. There could be worse things to be obsessive about, I guess.

I have had less success with my Flickr photos and Twitter posts, where I currently stand at 889 and 736 respectively. It feels important for me to complete rounded numbers for each site where I am able to control the result myself (the - pathetically small - number of hits on this blog for example, would be exempt from this rounding requirement) so I will see where I am before the year turns and try and stop at an appropriate point.

I'm never going to reach 1,000 pictures on Flickr, and I almost feel reluctant to go beyond 900 now. Another point which is nagging at me is that there are several sets of numbers for the Flickr account, depending on who is accessing it. Although I see 889 photos, the public see less (534) those in my family (882) and those of my friends (779) all see different totals.

As for the sublime Twitter, it seems unlikely (I'm no Chris Applegate or Stephen Fry) that I will even get to 800 tweets, so may opt to stop at 750, though even that seems optimistic right now.

A relatively new kid on the block for me is YouTube, where I have posted 60 vids in total, though again, a large majority of these are not available for all to see.

All in all, it's been an average year, speaking from an internet profile point of view, with some encouraging stats on my Flickr pics but a disappointingly low response level on the blog. I know that I have had less time to lavish on my posts, so that may go some way to explaining things. In any case, I still harbour fantasies of being able to Kottke-ise my life, despite the worrying world financial situation, an dlook forward to that life on the beach with a wireless iMac, a panama hat and a pipe. Here's to 2009.

Drummers drumming

Brother, here we go again.

I am launching a moderately ambitious writing and numeric project for the festive season.

There are 12 posts to go before I reach 200 (100 for last year and 100 for this - neat, eh?) and a famous festive tune which fits quite nicely with the remainder of posts for the year. I am also aiming (without much anticipation of success) to achieve 2,000 songs in my iTunes library, 1,000 pics on my Flickr account and 1,000 Twitter tweets by the end of 2008. Wish me luck!

Here's a starter for 12 - drummers. Bernard Matthews has been unnecessarily twizzling around my head, especially after watching Dubya on the White House lawn, but my thoughts turn instead to the fine art of banging the skins.

Drummers have been close to my heart for many years, blessed as I am with no musical ability whatsoever. I was bitten by the Phil Collins bug early on, and kept a cushion 'drum kit' in my room as a young teen, thrapping away to Supper's Ready on the Dansette. The sticks were two inexplicable short and thick bamboo rods (one would often see long and thin ones, let's face it) which somehow found their way into the house. They would routinely be launched into the imaginary audiences who sat and watched my scintillating solos come to a crashing crescendo.

I once took the stool in a garage performance - with Thee Cybermen - of Sub-Mission and though unwatched it was among the greatest experiences of my life.

So, here's a festive shout to all of those mad people who keep us in the groove:

Ginger Baker, John Bonham, Sheila E, Mitch Mitchell, Mongo Santamaria and all the others. Bang on!

Vinegar strokes

Amidst all the talk of foundations shaking in Wall Street and in the Square Mile, I thought it would be nice to escape for a while to the fantasy land of Wii, where it has been interesting to read about the lawsuit in regard to the motion detection technology so beloved of fat families throughout the developed world. I am a late adopter of the fabulous fun to be had from this thang, and am defiantly retro in my undying love of Mario Kart, which I remember from the SNES days and nights wasted (oh yeah!) in Old Street.

I have a mobile phone with its own motion sensing (from the Sony website, I quote: "It's all in your moves. With Shake control, you select a song from your playlist randomly at the flick of your wrist") capabilities - a Sony Ericsson W580i - which is, on the whole, rubbish (battery life is very poor, and I feel like a 13 year old carrying it around) but which nevertheless has an interesting feature. It detects motion. After a few simple configurations (much simpler than setting up a cycle computer) you can work out your walking or running speed and the phone then monitors your activity. It calculates the number of steps and miles walked or run and the quantity of calories burned, has the capability of downloading to CSV, and even awards you medals. Fantastic! I have a silver for being a 'Wanderer' and a gold for 'Round the World', but so far the 'Fitness' and 'Jogger' sections have remained medal free.

I have developed a habit of watching the counter as I walk - just to verify the accuracy of the metrics. There are some irritations, but on the whole it seems to be reasonably on the button. I like it when the counter clicks on as I walk, and have even been known to increase my pace to see what effect this has, but sometimes the thing just freezes. Yesterday, for example, the counter reached 11,107 steps, and so I slowed to a stop, desperately trying to make it hit 11,111, but it stuck there, 4 steps back! I walked a little, then restarted the application, but was infuriated to see that it had jumped straight to 11,115.

I don't know how the phone detects motion, and I have spent the odd evening in the kitchen furiously pumping my arms back and forth to see if and how it registers that. Natch, one thing leads to another, and I thought that there ought to be a masturbation setting on the phone. I'd be sure to get a gold medal at least.

Stat attack

Some time ago, I posted a piece about my online presence. I think it's time to update the numbers, in light of the fact that the blog anniversary, is in a little over 3 weeks. So, up to this moment, I:

Have posted 141 times to this blog. Last count, there were 4125 hits recorded, which is pretty pathetic, so I would like to send out a request to all my friends to see if I can reach the 5000 mark for the 25th of June.

Have updated on Twitter 263 times

Have 1680 songs in my iTunes library

Am storing 1451 pictures on my external hard drive

Have put 346 pics on Flickr and 252 on Zooomr

Have contributed 3 posts, 32 comments to MeFi, 1 posts and 3 comments to MetaTalk, 4 questions and 8 answers to Ask MeFi and have been favourited 12 times
Have posted 35 comments to CiF
Have posted 23 videos to YouTube
Have edited 4 sections of Wikipedia

Nelson

Something of an admission. I currently have 1111 songs in my iTunes library.

Clearly, this is a googolplex away from the ideal, and I am on a lonely road and I am travelling, travelling, etc...

However, the last thing I want to do is fuck with the gods, know what I mean?

Should I stand on one leg for a while?

Not embarrassed

You might be thinking that I have an unhealthy interest in Spurs, especially as I'm a City fan. You might be right, if you think that football is in itself an unhealthy interest. In which case, I don't think we have a lot in common.

The history of our two teams has been intriguingly woven together on both the public and private level for me. I lived in Tottenham for some years, and have a great deal of happy memories from my time there. Many of my friends are Spurs fans, and I have been to the ground more than I have been to both Maine Road and Eastlands put together. I've been in director's boxes there twice.

There is of course the iconic two legged FA Cup final of 1981, with Ricky Villa's wonder goal and so many more incidents besides. And there have been other games of titanic struggle and heroic endeavour. Up to this point in time, I would say it has been a story of two honest teams who have never achieved (perhaps because of that honesty) the success they would seem to merit.

In addition to that, there is also the link of shambolic management which we share. The other night in the pub, we were trying to work out how many managers our teams have had since the early 70s (which is when we started to get into football, so it's not an entirely arbitrary timescale) I was sure that City had had more managers than Spurs, but I was proved wrong. Here is the data:

SPURS

1. 11/09/74-23/06/76 - Terry Neill
2. 14/07/76-25/06/84 - Keith Burkinshaw
3. 25/06/84-13/05/86 - Peter Shreeves
4. 16/05/86-23/10/87 - David Pleat
5. 28/11/87-30/06/91 - Terry Venables
6. 23/07/91-15/05/92 - Peter Shreeves (again)
7. 27/05/92-19/06/93 - Doug Livermore (who?)
8. 19/06/93-01/11/94 - Ossie Ardiles
9. 01/11/94-15/11/94 - Steve Perryman (two weeks!)
10. 15/11/94-19/11/97 - Gerry Francis
11. 19/11/97-05/09/98 - Christian Gross (snigger)
12. 07/09/98-01/10/98 - David Pleat (again) and Chris Hughton
13. 01/10/98-16/03/01 - George Graham (oh dear)
14. 16/03/01-02/04/01 - David Pleat (again!!)
15. 02/04/01-21/09/03 - Glenn Hoddle
16. 21/09/03-03/06/04 - Yes, it's David Pleat again...
17. 03/06/04-05/11/04 - Jacques Santini
18. 05/11/04-26/10/07 - Martin Jol (sob)
19. 26/10/07-29/10/07 - Clive Allen
20. 29/10/07-???????? - Juande Ramos

That makes 20.

CITY

1. 12/04/74-01/01/79 - Tony Book
2. 16/07/79-01/10/80 - Malcolm Allison (again, though pre-dates this list)
3. 01/10/80-03/02/83 - John Bond
4. 03/02/83-07/06/83 - John Benson (must admit, his dazzling reign passed me by)
5. 30/06/83-22/09/86 - Billy McNeill
6. 01/10/86-01/05/87 - Jimmy Frizzell
7. 01/05/87-30/11/89 - Mel Machin
8. 06/12/89-05/11/90 - Howard Kendall (what is it with us and Toffees?)
9. 15/11/90-26/08-93 - Peter Reid
10. 26/08/93-28/08-93 - Tony Book (again - 2 days!)
11. 28/08/93-16/05/95 - Brian Horton (tenacious little sod)
12. 02/07/95-27/08/96 - Alan Ball
13. 06/10/96-16/11/96 - Steve Coppell (who do you think you are, Arsene fuckin' Wenger?)
14. 08/11/96-29/12/96 - Phil Neal
15. 29/12/96-17/02/98 - Frank Clark
16. 18/02/98-21/05/01 - Joe Royle (ex-player, still a fuckin Toffee)
17. 24/05/01-11/03/05 - Kevin Keegan (I would luv it)
18. 11/03/05-14/05/07 - Stuart Pearce (fuck this and fuck that, fuckin you're a fucker...)
19. 06/07/07-???????? - Sven-Goran Eriksson

That's nineteen. Close.

As of now, our chairman is on the run from a Thai court order and Sven will stay only as long as it interests him. And of course, as my old friend so eloquently sums it up, there is last Saturday. But Spurs...
On and on it goes.