Christopher Hamilton

So Derek Riordan returns to Easter Road. I was unsure about it when I heard the rumours a few days ago, but the more I think about it the happier I am. He was a player who scored 61 goals in three seasons for Hibs before he jumped ship along the M8. Hopefully he’s going to bring a cutting edge to the club again this season as the current strikers, though very good, especially Fletcher, just aren’t getting the job done at the moment.

I’ll be very interested to see how the fans react to him, but then Murray who left in a much worse scenario has been warmly welcomed back because of the effort he puts in. If he keeps himself out of trouble, which shouldn’t be hard since he’s banned from every night club in Edinburgh, and can return to his goal scoring ways I have a feeling he’ll be embraced by even the most serious of doubters.

I just spent the weekend doing an email system migration at work. From the looks of things today everything went well, and there have been no major issues. Except of course to my general well being. I’m shattered. Having to use your brain all weekend for eleven hours at a time, and make sure you make no mistakes, coupled with a couple of boozy nights to wind down is certainly a recipe for trouble.

With a poker night arranged for Friday, I won both tournaments we played, that ended at what I think was 4am Saturday started very slowly and took me several cups of strong coffee to get going at all. I left work at 9.30 that evening and was fit for nothing but sitting on the sofa watching tv.

Sunday was a little better. I was fresher and most of the difficult work had been carried out on the Saturday. I left the office at about 6pm to finish off the rest of the configuration remotely, only to discover that it wouldn’t work. So I dragged myself back into the office and slogged away until just after 8pm.

When I finished up I was in need of a wind down drink but had already given up my ticket to Princes Street Gardens for the fireworks. So I met up with my friend Darcie, and caught a blues band that her uncle played in at The SpiegelTent. The evening turned into a pretty drunken mess with us ending up at Whistle Binkies on South Bridge listening to, from what I remember, a couple of pretty crap bands. I think I left around 2am and staggered my way home. Only to get up early and head back into the office.

The users stress tested the system and excluding a couple of little glitches, everything went very smoothly. I even got the bonus of the Chief Exec telling me that he’d have a word with my boss about getting me some time back, I normally get nothing for these things, so that brightened me up a little.

The last hour or so of my work day today saw me flagging drastically. So much so that instead of cooking the dinner I had planned, I bought a curry from the takeaway at the end of the street. Grabbed the bottle of wine I decanted yesterday and sat myself on the sofa. Most of the wine is gone, just like my energy and it won;t be long before we’re both done this evening.

I’m going to sleep very soundly tonight.

Well this is a paragraph, from The Register, I honestly never though I’d read:

Be afraid, be very afraid - Sony has asked West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin to write a movie about how internet superphenomenon Facebook was spawned, and by way of research he’s waded straight in with a group page down at the social networking website.

I’m not entirely sure how a movie about the creation of Facebook would work. It’s clearly going to need to focus on the creators rather than the product, but it’s not a story I ever really imagined being transformed into a movie. It’s not the most transfixing of tales.

Guy and his friends create web app. People sign up and use it. emmm……… office productivity plummets…. The End.

I’m a big fan of Aaron Sorkin, so in that respect it will be interesting to see how he tackles the project. I just can’t imagine how it’s going to be good though.

In three short weeks we’ll all be leaving our current flat behind, and moving into a three bedroom flat instead. One of the guys has decided to head of to Oz for a year, which leaves the remaining three of us to find somewhere new. This is going to be the third move this year for me. It’s not something I like doing, but this time I’m really excited about it.

I may have found the perfect new flat for us to move into, and my excitement was justified when the guys saw it and absolutely loved it when they saw it. We do have one sticking point to getting it though. I saw the place on my own on Thursday, then the other guys came along to a viewing I’d set up on Friday evening. Unfortunately there were a couple of other groups there viewing it at the same time, and at least one of them seemed keen on the place.

So tomorrow morning I’m going to be calling the letting agent just before they open, leaving a voicemail to say we’re really interested in the flat, and that one of the other guys is going to call when they open to discuss a holding fee.

The new place, if we get it, is such a huge improvement over the flat we currently live in. The bedrooms are large, the living room is a decent size, it has one of the biggest kitchens I’ve ever seen, and it unbelievably has two bathrooms. No more queueing up to have a shower in the morning.

So hopefully as of tomorrow morning I’ll have a new place to live, and I can forget about the stress of flat hunting. Then in three weeks, we get to move into a place where we are all much more comfortable. I can hardly wait.

My friend Rob and I went out to see Iain Banks at the Edinburgh Book Festival last night. It was the first time either of us had seen him at the festival, and we were both excited about going after just reading his latest book, “Matter”.

We weren’t disappointed.

Last year we went to see William Gibson, where he discussed his book, did a reading, and then took questions from the crowd. This year the format was almost exactly the same, with the exception of the reading, Iain Banks didn’t do one. Instead he sat on stage being interviewed about his books and career, and being extremely funny and charming. He talked about his dual personality in the literary world, with his mainstream fiction versus his science fiction novels. He discussed the big ideas behind his novels, and the approach he takes to them.

After about half an hour of being interviewed on stage, he took some questions from the crowd. There were the usual in depth questions about his works, which when answered gave a great insight into the way he looks at the world. There was the obligatory person who mentioned they tried to write themselves, and asked a question regarding the craft. The advice he gave here was superb. I’d heard some of it before, but there were a few gems where I turned to Rob and we’d both have that “That makes so much sense, why hadn’t I thought of that before?” look on our faces. That alone is worth going to see authors at the book festival. Those pieces of information that they’ve gained from their experience is almost always invaluable. There were a few funny questions that had hugely entertaining answers, as well as some serious points behind them.

One thing I paid great attention to was when he discussed the difference between writing novels and writing screenplays. Especially when he talked about how it is usually more difficult for authors to write screenplays, than it is for screenwriters to write novels. With novel writing there is much more control, and exposition. It takes a certain mentality to give up some of that control, and to also think in such visual terms.

It really was a highly entertaining evening, and I’m pretty sure I’ll go back to see him next year, after reading more of his work. Now I’m of to look at the Book Festival Web Site to see if I can find a ticket to anyone else this weekend.

With my dodgy ankle playing all kinds of havoc with my plans for last week I found myself at a bit of a loose end most of the time. I sat around in our living room, one foot up on the coffee table with an ice pack strapped to it, one hand clasping the freezer chilled can of lager and The Wire playing on the TV in front of me.

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Let me stop and say this. If you haven’t seen The Wire, (or if you’re in the ever decreasing few who have no idea what I’m talking about), go onto your local Amazon, and do yourself the biggest favour you could ever do. In fact, here’s some links to save you looking for it - The Wire : Complete HBO Season 1, The Wire: Complete HBO Season 2, The Wire: Complete HBO Season 3, The Wire: Complete HBO Season 4, The Wire: Complete HBO Season 5

Greatest TV Show Ever Made.

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So instead of going to the cinema to see The Dark Knight, I had to sit on my sofa and relax. As the week progressed and walking became easier I shifted from the sofa to the pub, with taxi’s in between the two. To say my week was unproductive would be a major understatement. It’s not as though I sat around feeling sorry for myself, it was a really fun week, and I got to go out with a few friends I hadn’t expected to get the chance to see again for a while.

I did have a few projects I wanted to complete, some writing I wanted to start, and to get some research for another writing project I’m looking into out of the way. As of a earlier this evening I’d completed exactly none of that. I made the conscious effort tonight to come straight home, cook dinner, and then sit at my desk getting things done. So far so good. I’m slightly ahead in one writing project, and I’ve started some of the research I wanted to get done. So tonight has been far more productive than all of last week, and a damn sight less painful.

The ankle/foot is healing very nicely thank you. I’m not shuffling around like an Igor any more, and I can actually uses stairs again. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I ice packed the thing like crazy, and avoided doing anything that put unnecessary pressure on it for a few days. By around Thursday evening/Friday morning I was able to walk on it properly. It still hurt like a bastard but strength was returning to it. Now it’s still a little sore, and it tightens up quite a bit by the end of the day. So when that happens I’ve been stretching it out gently to loosen it up. It’s a very similar feeling to when I completely screwed my other foot growing up playing football. I did the dumb fuck thing by playing on it for six months because my form peaked just as it happened, (I was a goalkeeper so there wasn’t too much running, and I did play pretty damn well for a while there), but the one thing I learned was how to look after it to recover it after every game. I don’t recommend this method for anyone else. For being a fairly smart guy, I can be as dumb as a bucket of bricks some time.

I do think the period of complete inaction may have helped me though. Apart from the “not-able-to-walk-properly” frustration I let my brain kick back and recharge. I feel much fresher for it, and I think in the long run that is going to hugely benefit my attitude to all the projects I’m trying to juggle, and in the long run make them better than they would have been without the rest.

Does that mean I’m advocating going to the pub every night for a week and getting completely tanked… well…

Yes I think it does.

Girlfriend meets Sister for the first time after a year and a half = slightly nervous me

Yes I’ve been with my Girlfriend for a year and a half and it’s the first member of my family she’s met. In fairness to me, I wasn’t the one who delayed it.

It appears as though it went well. We had a good evening sitting in one of my favourite bars drinking, chatting, and generally enjoying each others company. Well I assume that’s what happened. I powered through my first beer, and the night mellowed out for me a little after that. I haven’t spoken to either of them about the evening yet but I’m pretty sure I would have heard about it if there were any major issues. Not ones for keeping their opinions hidden those two.

So yeah, they met. The world didn’t end. I got drunk. It’s all good

On Tuesday evening I play five a side football with guys from work, and a few other Ad Agencies around Edinburgh.

Tonight, with about five minutes remaining, I was involved in a very clumsy tackle by one of the guys on the other team. Essentially, we were both running full speed, and I had the ball on my right foot. I moved it over to my left as the other guy, my friend Andrew, was coming in from the right to try to make the tackle. As he came charging in, he went through my right ankle, twisting it almost completely 180 degrees, before falling onto it as it snapped back around. As I was hit, I fell and was spun around, landing on my back and slammed my head off the hardwood flooring.

Normally the fact that my head had bounced of the floor would have caused me some concern, but with the excruciating stabbing pain in my ankle, the serious effort to not throw up, and the concern that I’d broken something over riding everything else, it was forgotten about until I was asked a few minutes later if my head was ok. It is. There isn’t even a bump.

My ankle however is fucked.

It wasn’t broken thankfully. I realised almost straight away that whatever damage has been inflicted, the pain was different than a break. I haven’t been to a doctor, or the hospital, yet and I’m not sure if I will but I suppose that depends on how it feels tomorrow.

At the moment, I can’t put any weight on it at all, it hurts like hell, and I’m sure that if I hadn’t sat with an ice pack on it for about three hours it would be twice it’s normal size. That still might happen while I sleep. That’s assuming I can get to sleep. Did I mention it hurts like hell.

I have a feeling I’m not going to be able to play any football for quite some time, and that walking is going to prove to be a slow painful experience.

I’m exhausted but I can’t seem to fall asleep.

I’ve spent the last couple of hours trying to write the first draft of the first post on the new SSDC. I know what I want to say, but I’m struggling to articulate the post properly. I think that’s the reason I’m having issues sleeping. My brain is trying to piece it all together and get it up on the site.

Normally I wouldn’t really worry about it, but the site has been down for so long now that I really want to get going properly and make it as good as I possibly can. I think I’m going to have to set a deadline for the site going live again. If I don’t I’ll worry that the first post isn’t right or that I have to start writing the next one almost straight away. I’ll spend so much time trying to make sure it’s exactly right, that I’ll never post the damn thing.

I enjoy sleeping far too much for it to be interrupted with this kind of thing. I think I need to switch the laptop off, and just force myself to go to sleep now. Hopefully that’d going to work.

I finally got around to setting up a friend feed account today. It was something I’d been meaning to setup for a while, but always forgot. Darcie and I were talking about it yesterday and it prompted me to actually do something about it.

I’ll add the link into the Contact page with the others, but if you want to subscribe to me over there, my public feed can be found here.