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OK, it’s been a while, but with good reason. I’ve had a few things to contend with: being ill, being very busy with work, and dealing with one of the biggest decisions I’ve ever made.

I decided a few weeks ago that it would be better for my cat if he went and lived somewhere else. I’ve had him for about three and a half years, and he was the best thing in my life. He was affectionate, he was fun, he was a reason to get up when I was feeling hungover, or just like I couldn’t be bothered – he could always be bothered eating, so miaowed you into a guilt trip that got you out of bed.

We’ve been through a lot together; he only ever got outside when I was at home, so that when he came back I was there in case he needed to be rushed off to the vet – which happened on a few occasions! His last vet trip was because he appeared to have been knocked down – he came limping in one night, with his front right paw pouring with blood, and in a lot of pain. Unfortunately for him, this incident meant he was kept indoors for around ten weeks. He was at the vet every couple of days to get his cast off the leg (which was broken) and to get his wounds cleaned and dressed. When he seemed well enough to get back outside (which in him mind was about ten minutes after he’d come back from the first vet visit…), I let him out.

As it had been quite a few weeks, it seemed that in that time a new tom cat had appeared on the scene around where I live. And even though Treacle had been here for over three years, this new tom thought that this was his territory. He and Treacle didn’t really get on (fighting viciously whenever I let him out), to the point that I started to keep him in again.

With no reason to be kept in, he wasn’t very happy. He wanted to be out there, even if it meant getting into fights all the time. But I figured he’d had enough of the vet for a while, so didn’t want him getting injured, and so he was housebound again.

Every morning I’d go to work, and eventually I’d come home, and he’d be there. Sitting by the door, waiting on me coming in. But I knew, he was desperate to get back outside.

I eventually took the decision to see about getting him re-homed. I made some enquiries about this, and after a few weeks Treacle was fostered, while they tried to find him a new permanent home. It took a week for someone to come and see him and immediately decide they wanted him, and I’m glad to say that he now lives in a house with nothing but fields out the back, and has a cat-flap that will allow him to come and go as he pleases.

I miss him a lot. The house is so quiet without him padding about, and I definitely miss the company; the affection; his personality. But I know I did the right thing…for him. This was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, and I didn’t do it for me, I did it for him.

I’m sure he’ll be happy where he is – in reality all he needs is love, care, attention, food, and to get outside to play. He’ll get all of these things where he is now. As much as I loved him, I wasn’t able to give him all of these things any more.

Thanks for everything Treacle, you will be missed.

Great. I’m crying. Again.

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Ever had one of those days when nothing seems to be going you way?

Today was one such day for me. I knew it was going to be bad, I don’t know why.

When I got to the office and started my up my laptop, it threw up some warnings about suspicious behaviour from our corporate Anti-Virus system. That was my cue to flatten the thing and start again. It’s good to do this now and again with Windows as it’s such a shit operating system, and I had been looking for that final push to do this for a few weeks.

So I went ahead and backed up the important files I needed, and then re-installed Windows on the laptop. I then spent most of the day getting it back into working order, moving back my files and preferences for various bits of software, downloading updates etc. A total waste of a day, which didn’t put me in the best of moods.

However, I got to about 6pm and decided to leave the office and head home. My plan was to continue to work on the laptop and hopefully have it fully up and ready for use tomorrow for a full day’s catch-up at work. I lifted my mug off my desk and took it to wash it. I dried it, and headed back to my office, and somehow (I’ve no idea how) managed to drop the mug, which smashed into bits. I know it’s just a mug, but I really liked that mug, and it had an element of sentimental value for me, for reasons I won’t mention here.

That just about summed up how my day had gone. Here’s hoping for a better tomorrow.

I’m off to look at mugs online, see if I can find something that I like…

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For the World Cup in 2006, I ran an online game where players had to guess the scores for the matches played in the group stages. It’s a game that I’m sure goes on in many workplaces; it just gives a little extra interest to the competition, especially as Scotland failed to qualify.

We certainly had played it before at my workplace (it was Euro 2004), but it was ran by one of my workmates, all done on paper. We were each given a sheet with a list of the group stage matches, and we had to fill in our guesses at what the scores would be and then give the sheets back to him (keeping a copy obviously). As the matches were played, the guy running the game had to manually check everyone’s score sheets and award points appropriately, and then produce a new leaderboard sheet to post up on the notice boards in the building, so that everyone playing knew where they stood in the points table.

For the World Cup in 2006, I decided that I would run the game (the guy that did it in 2004 had since left), but I didn’t fancy all the work of manually checking everybody’s scores and awarding points etc. So I decided that I’d write an online version, where players could register and input their scores online, and as the results of the group stage matches were known all I had to do was enter them in an administrator interface, and my software would run through the database checking the result against everybody’s scores and awarding points automatically. I ended up with 60 registered players* and once a result was known, the leaderboard and awarded points were automatically updated in seconds.

I was quite happy with how the game went, the software was pretty stable, and the only reasonably difficult part was the scoring algorithm to award the points (there where three possible outcomes for points – 0, 1 or 3). My one problem was that the game was limited in who was able to play: in order to play, you had to pay a £2 entry fee, and this was the issue. The fact that you had to somehow get your £2 physically to me meant that you had to know me personally; or know someone that knew me personally. I’ll just say now that all of the money taken as entry fees was used as prize money – I didn’t make a penny out of running the game.

So, I’m thinking of running the game again for the Euro 2008 tournament, but I’d like to offer an online payment option, so that people could play without actually having a connection to me. I’m not sure how feasible this is, but hopefully it’s an option available to me. I’m just about to start writing the code for the game (much of it I will be able to re-use from 2006, but some of it I want to write differently), so I’ll see what options are available to me.

*There were 60 registered players on the site, but some people were registered more than once to have a better chance.

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Recently talking of things being “like riding a bike”, I also recently started playing my guitar again, as frequently as I did when I started to learn it years ago. I used to play every single day, for at least an hour, and quite often for longer. I built up a decent repertoire of songs that I played, and learned most of them off by heart (didn’t need the tabs).

I’ve never actually stopped playing, just that it had become a very infrequent activity, even though one of my guitars is constantly accessible as it sits on a stand in the corner of my living room. On the rare occasion when I did pick it up and play, it was a very small subset of the songs that I knew that I played on it.

Playing it much more frequently now means I need more things to play, as it gets very boring playing the same songs over and over again. So, I dug out the big box I have with all of the various tabs that I had collected years ago, and started to flick through them: cue lots of “oh aye, remember that one!”

What I find remarkable here though, is that just getting a reminder of a song that I used to play on the guitar (eg. Strong Enough by Sheryl Crow) and a quick look at the tab to see where it starts is enough. It just sort of comes back to me – my hand just moves from shape to shape without me even thinking about it. Songs that I haven’t played in six or seven years, played from start to finish without any bother.

Maybe my memory isn’t as bad as I thought it had become!

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