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A NY Times article asks why exercise doesn't lead to weight loss. A good question. I know that no exercise leads to weight gain, that's for damned sure.

Thanks again to Blue's News.

For years, I've been playing drums to amuse myself. Playing along to others' music is great fun, and it's better than not playing at all. However, now I need to play live, and whilst singing lead, and as with any skill there comes a point where you have to start taking it seriously in order to improve. With the drums, that can mean only one thing:

Drill. More drill. Then some drill.

This is my drumkit

Getting the kit setup right is taking forever, especially since I've started playing an acoustic drumkit at rehearsals. (Life's too short to cart the TD-12K plus extras around.) It needs to be set so that I can switch smoothly between kits. At the studios I have a badly-tuned, uncared-for Mapex kit, which has size-mismatched, barely-tunable toms on annoying, difficult-to-set brackets. I'm having to take in more and more of my own hardware to deal with it.

Meanwhile, at home I've had to make more space so I can set the TD-12K up as I want it, rather than the only way in which it fits. Playing 45 mins a day is ok, but I'm doing three-hour stints at times right now, and having a badly set kit is painful.

There are many like it, but this one is mine

Actually, there aren't many like mine, at least not that I've seen at gigs. Certainly not at rehearsal studios. It's a slightly jarring transition from crisp-sounding, predictable V-Drums, to crappy-sounding acoustic, as well as never quite getting the positions right. It's a shame, because it's another thing to concentrate on, when I have enough to think about already.

I must master it as I must master my life

Having to sing makes drumming a lot harder. Essentially, because I'm not a very good singer, when I'm singing the drums have to be on autopilot. Sometimes this is easy, when the beat is simple and the lyrics follow a somewhat normal rock pattern. Sometimes, it's incredibly hard, when the lyrics cut across the beat, or the beat has all sorts of accents in funny places.

I think that's enough of the Rifleman's Creed.

There really is no substitute for just doing the rudiments. So, whereas previously I might just have put an album on and challenged my fitness, now I sit with a metronome and a stopwatch, and crank out steady notes on various parts of the kit for a set length of time, to build strength. It's tedious, but it works. And it hurts. I need to do it, because the fact is I'm a bit shy. I need to know that it's all in order before I do this stuff live, otherwise I'll be tight with self-doubt, and I won't enjoy it. If it's not fun, what's the point?

So: Drill some more.

Ok, it's a fair cop - there is a good and rather obvious reason why companies give no feedback after interviews, especially companies from more litigious cultures than Britain. It just didn't occur to me at the time that it might be because they don't want to get sued for saying the wrong thing.

I still think it's a lousy policy. It's possible to give constructive feedback without being discriminatory, assuming of course (as I am assuming here) that discrimination isn't the reason. I can see why it's not allowed though - policy decrees coming from legal don't normally make allowance for social graces.

Of course, in my career I've become somewhat familiar with overzealous legal people making life difficult for everyone; it's really very easy for me to just transfer the blame straight to Counsel. I know they won't mind, or even notice.

I little while ago I was asked by Google to apply for a job. I learned today that I didn't get it. I was pretty excited about the idea of working there, and now I'm rather disconsolate about not getting in. It's not wholly unexpected, I flubbed parts of the interviews, but I thought I did ok. Apparently not ok enough.

Lots of others have written in expansive detail about their experiences, but instead I'm going to honour their (Google's) request to not discuss the interview process. I make one exception: They refused point blank to say why they said 'no' - it 'wasn't company policy'.

This isn't a question of policy. It's a question of politeness. I put a lot of time and trouble into the process, took time out of my work to travel abroad to see them, and quietly waited weeks for their recruitment person got back from holiday before getting refused. It's bad enough to not get the gig. To then be unable to get any explanation as to why is just plain rude.

I'm not trying to shoot the messenger here - if that really is the company policy, then it's the policy that sucks, and not the person following it. Still, I expected better. I am gutted I didn't get in; and I think it's a crying shame that my last experience of dealing with a great company like Google is to feel arrogantly dismissed.

The laser printer gets it, apparently.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/apr/24/gordon-brown-angry

I'm with Broon on this. Laser printers always deserve it.

Since it wouldn't do for me to be wholly positive about something: NASA Embarks on Epic Delay

The story itself is pretty interesting. The reason I'm linking to it is the fact that they say, without fanfare, that during the hijack, one of the hostages emailed his mother to tell her about it! I find that incredible. This guy's on a ship at sea, being held hostage, and he can send email. I couldn't send email from Dublin Airport last week, despite having a laptop + mobile broadband and a Blackberry.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/15/pirates-fail-ship-hijack

How much harder it will be to write good sea stories if people have connectivity during a hijack. Starbuck could have emailed the other shipowners and had them chill Ahab the fuck out, without unnecessary bloodshed. Denzel Washington could have emailed someone and asked if he still needed to launch the nukes, obviating an uncomfortable confrontation with Gene Hackman.

Still, I suppose it does make other stories possible. Hostages could use their iPhones to direct airstrikes. Hollywood gold!

I've been sick all week. The doctor said I'm in 'bronchitis territory', whatever that means. It's been crap.

I work as a software developer/engineer/whatever. Actually, I'm not really a programmer, I'm a systems administrator who can code. Most of the time, it's pretty mundane stuff. I'm told I'm very good at it, and I'm quite well paid for it. All the same, it's not often very exciting.

Sometimes it is, though. I've been working, working really hard all day. I've been fighting to make an automated self-test pass. It's been a long struggle, finding the problem, identifying the source, building the necessary tools to fix it, packaging and installing the tools, and finally re-running the test suite.

Still mundane, I'm sure most people will think. On the contrary, at least from my perspective: When that test said 'success', I was cheering like I'd just scored the tournament-winning mawashi-geri jodan (roundhouse kick to the head) in the national championships. It was a really, really good feeling, and my current job doesn't allow me to feel it often enough.

I fought the machine, and the machine fought back hard. In the end, I won. I know that most would have given up, or not even tried. Many wouldn't have even understood there was a problem to be solved. Today I reminded myself that there's a reason I do this stuff - because there is a challenge to be found, if one's standards are high enough; and that I can meet that challenge head-on.

A good day.

In the Curry's Digital in Oxford yesterday, a couple approached an LCD television. It was showing a nature documentary at the time.

Man: "That's lovely that is, look at that picture quality. I can see that in the lounge."

Woman: "Awww! Penguins!"