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Well, as per my meta-goal 101 – Do 100 day updates, here is the Day 200 update.

Not much movement really….

The Good:-
66 – Via Ferrata in Italy
I go on Friday, cant wait.

82 – Visit Egypt
I go in October for 2 weeks, 1 week cruise – 1 week sun and as much archaeology as I can get!

94 – Go to Edinburgh festival
Will fly over for a weekend in Aug, let me know if you are interested in joining

28 – Drive Offroad
Going back to Dubai in December when it cools off, will be driving a mates Hummer in the desert.

75 – Watch SICP, do exercises from book
Did half when visiting Germany from Den Haag a few weeks ago, mind bending but wonderful stuff.

72 – Read “Winning Ways”
Inspired by Martin Gardners death, I did half of the first book when I had some downtime in Manchester. First bit of new Maths in ages and it felt great. See Games of No Chance for more fun.

8 – Read all the VSIs
Read Vikings, Human Prehistory, Memory, Archaeology, Evolution, maybe more – i need to get tactical and create a master list.

13 – Release 303 books on bookcrossing.com
Tasked my long suffering mother with labeling them all, need to teach her how to register them then release them. Still need to sort out the Crossing Zone in Liverpool too.

48 – Create a backblaze storage pod
They are getting made soon, due on the 28th

The Bad:-
5 – Lose 2 stone
Got half way Jan/Feb, might have taken a step back living away again… Correctable though!

19 – Blog on average once a week
Way off, need to blog furiously to catch up.

The Almost Had:-
22 – Spend 3 months in another country
Spent two in Holland (Den Haag / The Hague) working for ING.

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Well, it has been an interesting few months, in brief:

• Went to Libya to work for a big telco
• Went to Oklahoma for a mates wedding then drove 2000 miles (or rather, made my girlfriend drive 2000 miles as I lost my driving licence…), visited 5 states and two national parks to see ancestral pueblo people sites
• Moved to Den Haag (The Hague) for 2 months to work on INGs Next-Gen data center
• About to move to Camden for the next bit of work

Not much movement on 101 goals, planned Egypt in October and Via Ferrata next week. Behind on learning goals though have done half of SICP in one mind bending train journey!

I kind of feel my life has been on hold the last 6 weeks I have been in Holland and am really looking forward to being back in the UK (though perhaps could have done with more of a break in between)

Expect more jollys to get planned before the end of the year (VMworld, Citrix Synergy, War Horse, Japan and Edinburgh all sounding fun at the moment), perhaps I’ll find time to blog about some of the cool shit at the NGDC and my US trip.

Tom

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I was just over at a good friends in Leeds and mentioned my 101 goals and needing to tick some off and if he could help me make some jam sometime.

We got straight down to making lemon curd (not a jam, but my goals – my rules) and it was seriously yummer, recipe below.

Lemon Curd

4 medium-sized lemons
100g (4oz) butter
1/2kg (1lb) sugar
4 beaten eggs

• Scrub Lemons, grate rinds, squeeze out juice
• Place juice and rind in double saucepan over low heat and slowly add sugar and butter.
• Cook, stirring, until all the butter and sugar melt
• Add eggs and cook, stirring, untill the curd is thick enough to coat a spoon.
• Pour into small jars and seal with waxed disks or paraffin wax.
• Cover and store in cupboard for one month, fridge for 3 months, freezer for 9 months.

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I saw The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre on Saturday. It is an interesting little theatre underground in Picadilly Circus with quite a history

The show itself was great, really playful with the staging and the 4th wall. They used Shadow Play for the mountaintop chase and biplane crash, lots of funny scene changes and played with theatrical conventions (though at times it was a bit slapstick). A weak point were a few references to other Hitchcock movies (though I loved the cameo as that was much more subtle)

I remember that I meant to blog a while ago about the best bit of theatre I’ve seen in a while, an adaptation of my favourite PG Wodehouse book, Summer Lightning. It was at the Theatre By The Lake in Keswick and was absolutely amazing, they are a really superb regional theatre and I hope to see a whole run by them as one of my 101 goals in 1001 days.

I also went to see The Caretaker recently at Trafalgar Studios, a strangly cosy venue for Pinter. It started in Liverpool at the Everyman and I was sad to have missed it but they seem to have maintained momentum with it, Jonathan Pryce is really excellent and well supported by a great cast.

I did catch the recent translation of Medea by Tom Paulin in Liverpool. I love the Northern Broadsides, they are among the best Shakespeare I have seen when they did the Wars of the Roses a few years ago so it was good to see them do something else.

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I have decided on a kind of hyper-resolution for the new year, 101 goals in 1001 days.
I have a mindmap of the ones I have settled on so far and have started working on some of them already.

To follow (allowing me to tick off some of the meta-goals):

Success criteria for each
Divide them up into “Sustained Effort”, “1-off” and “Requires Break” to make sure I don’t overextend myself. I plan on taking roughly quarterly 1 or 2 week breaks to try and do these tasks. For the sustained ones I need progress metrics, am I on track to complete in the time given?

The actual 101 things!
Need to settle on the actual 101 things, most are on there but it’s still a bit fluid.

As one of my goals is to blog more, you should be hearing more from me in 2010.

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I have been meaning to blog for ages about a site I use called Goodreads. It is really excellent, I signed up ages ago and cant remember exactly how I found it but I think it might have been a Rails app. Anyway, it is a fairly simple idea, log what books you read (or want to), rate them and share reviews with others, I am on there as thattommyhall. What convinced me to use it was the really stellar monthly emails with interviews with authors and picks of books with a certain theme.

I have been playing with my new HTC Hero and there is a Google Android app that can scan books and add them to the (easilly overlooked) My Library section of Google Books. While the app is good, there is no feeling of community there really. Orkut does not seem to have taken off and they released Wave today but I dont know if they can really get a feeling of community in their apps. I love the stuff they put out, use gmail and docs in particular pretty much constantly but think facebook, flickr and lots of other sites somehow seem to get more of a communtity vibe, perhaps it’s even the google branding – it all looks the same.

Anyway, I have things to do today, if anyone gets an invite to Wave and wants to send me one, please do.

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It’s been ages since I blogged as I have been mad busy in work though a lot has happened recently.

I have:

• Left thebigword
• Packed up my house
• Sold/Gave away most of my possessions (keeping only books and my PC, as my friend Ben said “proves you are principally concerned with knowledge”)
• Left Leeds
• Gone to India
• Returned (earlier than planned but refreshed and excited about the future)
• Set up a limited company to go contracting
• Started plotting a move to London
• Begun making big lifestyle changes – drinking less, eating better and training for the Paris Marathon, a triathlon and a return to India for some Hardcore Mountaineering next year

All is well in TomLand, expect more posts now I’m not so sillybusy!

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Last weekend I went down to London again for a Christmas jolly with some great old uni friends, it was a lovely weekend, good wholesome fun.

On the Saturday I went to see the Wallace Collection while some girlies shopped on Kensington Highstreet (where the sales are apparently excellent but I’m not sure I could have tolerated a moment). There was an Osbert Lancaster exhibit there that was great, alongside the permanent collection which is excellent. I had never heard of him before but hes is definitely worth investigating, the blurb on the wall described him as a dandy aesthete, something I have always considered myself.

In the nighttime we watched the 1951 Scrooge with Alastair Sim in an incredible private cinema, ate nice food, got a little squiffy (port was involved you will be surprised to learn)

On the Sunday we went to see the Babylon exhibit in the British Museum and I returned to Leeds feeling tired but ace. Babylon has appeared in art of all forms, not least a few Jazz numbers.

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I was in London a few weeks ago and saw the wonderful exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts.

I have been interested in Byzantine history since a historian friend at university described how they were essentially the eastern Roman empire, called themselves Romans, spoke Greek, were Christian and survived well into the Middle Ages. As ever, wikipedia has a good introduction to the topic.

Off to London again next weekend, going to see the Babylon exhibit at the British Museum and have a lovely Christmas celebration with some good old friends.

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I went a few weeks ago to see BodyWorlds at the Museum of Science and Industry (mosi) in Manchester.

I have only just had chance to get the pics off my phone and am amazed at how well they came out.

   
All one body, look at the shared foot.

This was the highlight for me, what incredible musculature.

This is amazing, enough features remain with just the blood vessels that you could probably recognise him if you knew him in life.

 
Either a real life visible human or a macabre newtons cradle.

It was a great day out.

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