Last week I and a few friends bade farewell to another one of our friends as he returned to the land of the long white cloud. We'd met up in Victoria station, which doesn't sound too glamourous I know, but trust me the bar in the Thistle Hotel in the station really is pretty good. Head and shoulders above any of the other pubs and bars in the immediate vicinity of the station. Highly recommended.

After some time, we retired to a local Lebanese restaurant, Noura where we enjoyed a fabulous meal and enjoyed each other's company. After we'd eaten, I leant back in my seat and reflected on my friends. We'd gone to the same school, and stayed friends ever since. I remarked at the time how impressed I was that I was sat in a fine restaurant with a talented author and photographer, a historian and a scientist.

The funny thing was I'd never really thought about them in those terms before. But as I thought about that, I felt both humbled and inspired that all three had followed their passions and interests thoroughout their lives and still pursue them as adults and I have no doubt will continue to do so for the rest of their days. I felt humbled as we talked about this, as one of them mentioned that it would be sad to go through your life and not leave anything behind to show you'd once lived. At the same time, in some small way I felt inspired to follow my own passions myself. I suppose this blog in a way is a step in the right direction, but I feel quite sure there's a whole creative side to me bubbling under the surface wanting to break out. It's never too late.

So here's to you chaps. Keep up the good work and keep doing what you love.

Regular readers of my blog if they haven't seen me lately might be wondering how I'm doing after my unexpected trip to hospital.

The answer is pretty good. On Friday, I thought I'd give myself a little work out, so seeing as the weather was good, I got up earlyish (for a day off) to do my usual route to Epping, but with the express aim of doing it quickly to see if I was feeling better. And I have to say it went pretty well, and I felt better than ever. The weather was great, I was in a great mood and the air smelt wonderful. And I was going at quite a pace that I think I got to Highams Park in record time, despite the mud, which makes walking fast a little problematic.

In fact, I practically skipped up a small incline, between the trees, such was my enthusiasm. Which was then tempered by the painful pinging of one of my muscles in my lower back. I don't know, you get one thing sorted and another thing goes wrong. But I thought it was better to carry on, which I did. But by the time I got to Epping station about 4 hours later, my back and legs were complaining.

The good news is that my chest felt fine though, which was what I set out to reassure myself of. So that was good. But it got better, as I was meeting up with the guys from work for a night out at a Greek restaurant. The meal wasn't bad, but I didn't much want to get involved with the slightly naff disco afterwards (it doesn't help when you're not drinking). Fortunately, the pain in my back prevented me from getting involved. What a shame.

After that, a few of us went to Langleys for Jon's birthday. Now admittedly I was sober and I did turn up at about 11.30, but boy that place is nasty. It actually smelt of sick. The service was poor, and even the glasses weren't clean. Absoultely disgusting. I will never set foot in that place again. Bad back or no bad back.

I'm beginning to think this was a mistake calling this track of the week....

Jam and Spoon were a influential German electronic act. They were Rolf Ellmer and Markus Löffel who was otherwise known as Mark Spoon. Spoon was also a DJ. They had a certain amount of mainstream success in the mid nineties with primarily their Album Tripomatic Fairytailes and the Singles Stella and Right in the Night.

The track Follow Me was a B-Side to "Right in the Night". For me, "Right in the Night" summed up a lot of what was bad about Euro dance/techno/whatever. But it did pretty well, despite its cheesiness.

Thankfully, Follow Me was something else. It's a track that sometimes doesn't know what it is. It starts with a fairly bit of generic sounding bit of Euro dance with the slighly annoying lyric being repeated, but once it gets going it settles down into a fairly stripped down techno track losing the chart friendly melody that could well have ruined it. At this point, it's more Detroit than Berlin, running at about 140bpm. About half way through, the techno sound dies to be replaced by some fairly expansive and lush chords as the sound turns a bit more ravey.

And then all hell breaks loose as the track then erupts in to (what for me at the time, I think 1994) the mother of all breakdowns. The tempo rises to about 180, and the sound once more descends into something else, a little more acidy (at this point I really should mention I really am hopeless at describing dance music genres), before dying away into the chords we heard first in the middle of the track.

When I hear this track it always takes me back to one night, myself and Rob ventured to the legendary Orbit @ The After Dark club in Morley near Leeds in probably about 1993. Mark Spoon was DJing that night. And the place absolutely rocked. We didn't have a car, so it was a bit of a mission getting there, so it was a bit of a one off, but made all the more memorable as it was at the time one of the best Techno venues in the world.

Tragically, Spoon died in 2006 of a heart attack aged 39. He's fondly remembered by a large number of people around the world, so for that one night in Morley and a lifetime of enjoying your music Mark, I thank you.

Well, I think it's time for the obligatory rant about PCs and technology from this Software Developer, Architect or whatever.

I've taken the week off with pretty much the only aim to get up to speed with a few bits and pieces that I don't have the chance to at work, such as .Net 3.5, Orcas, the MVP framework and all that good stuff. But I've been up against a brick wall of broken computers like you wouldn't believe.

First off I ran against problems with the Windows Update. I've got a dual boot XP/Vista machine. My Vista PC is a 64 Bit one, and I keep the XP one for games and anything that won't work on 64 Bit (such as my version of Nero). So I did both. I should have learnt never ever to download drivers from Microsoft. Apart from having all sorts of difficulties updating my XP machine (for some bizarre reasons the .Net Updates kept failing), one driver update totally trashed it and blue screened it on log on. It turns out it was the Soundblaster Driver I had updated. But this took some time to sort out. I needed this machine in order to burn the VS2008 disk I had downloaded so I had no option but to get this done.

So, once this was done I thought I'd do something crazy like backup my main data disk. It's about 150GB - Raid 1. But I thought it would be good to get an offline backup. So, I'm using Vista, and I'm sure I'd read somewhere that the backup for Vista was going to change my life. It did but what a pile of pony it is. I won't dwell on it but I think it's a real step backwards.

I left it running over night. And then my machine hung. Again. Now, in fairness it's been doing that for some time. So, as part of this job I thought I'd sort this little conundrum out. Again, and lots of experiments with PCI settings and burning a new BIOS. cutting a long story short, it turns out that the driver (isn't it always a flaming driver) was at fault. So off I went to the ASRock website and downloaded more drivers. And quite apart from vista constantly getting in my way, I thought I'd sort it out. But whatever I did I couldn't get it working satisfactory, so I eventually gave up and de-activated my RAID to do the backup (I thought this was wise - take a backup before re-establishing the mirror).

Oh, and this little chestnut managed to waste another hour.

The backup ended up taking nearly 7 hours. Rendering my machine fairly inoperable at the time. But the backup completed, and I'm guessing it's backed everything up - but I may well revert to robocopy, just to be sure it backs up everything.

The backup completed, so all I needed to do was to reinstall the driver software for my Raid device right? Yep. All looked good. So I was going to have a productive day today. So, I logged on, put some tunes on, and... and... "what the hell is that?". Every time I moved or scrolled a window, the sound juddered. I couldn't believe it. I'd managed to update my PC - backup my data and update my RAID drivers, and now my sound drivers were screwed. Never mind. Off to creative to update them.

It didn't work. It really sounded like there was some conflict going on, so off I went back to the BIOS and changed a lot of PCI/AGP settings. It didn't do much good. But I was glad I sorted out my XP build, as I confirmed that this wasn't having the same problem. So it wasn't a BIOS issue. So, maybe it was the graphics driver that was conflicting. So uninstall the RAID drivers. Unistall the Graphics drivers (which is harder than it sounds) and then off to NVidia for the lates Vista 64 Forceware update.

That then corrupted my graphics. I forgot about that. It always does. It seems to me that only the default Vista driver for the 7600GT works. Not even the NVidia or Microsoft updates work. So I put this back. And there was no judder on the sound. Good. Then I reinstalled the Chipset/RAID software from ASRock. The Judder returned.

This was getting irritating now. Luckily I had another option - I downloaded more drivers from VIA (it's a VIA chipset). But they wouldn't install. So back to uninstalling and installing everything in the right order - and - it worked...

So how long has this little exercise taken? 3 days. I repeat. 3 days. I really have no idea why its so difficult and I shudder to think what people not in the industry (or PC World employees for that matter, they're much the same thing) would have made of it.

But in the end - it's all down to drivers. Drivers are the root of all unstability in Windows. They always have been. Microsoft have gone to great lengths in XP SP2 and Vista to try and address this. But almost every problem I ran into was caused by drivers. If you've made it to the end of this article and you are a windows user the moral of the story is to be very careful when updating drivers. Make sure you know what you're doing (I didn't!). And make sure you're well backed up should it go wrong. And most importantly, only update them if you have to. And save yourself 3 days of pain.

I saw this on Amy's Blog. So I tried it..

RULES:
1. Put your MP3 player/ iPod on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" You say?
Higher than the Sun (Primal Scream)

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?
Helpless (Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Turquoise Hexagon Sun (Boards of Canada)

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Man on the Moon (Sugar)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
It's all too much (The Beatles)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Cracker Jack (Ol Dirty Bastard)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons (Pixies)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Scared of Girls (Placebo)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Year 2000 Non Compliance (Mogwai)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Refuge (when it's cold outside) [John Legend]

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Staralfur (Sigur Ros)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Lord Let it rain down on Me (Spiritualised)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
One Man's Fear (Lo Fidelity All Stars)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Everyone's a VIP to Someone (The Go! Team)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Get Out of my House (The Streets)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST??
Survival (Nightmares on Wax)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
God Only Knows (Beach Boys)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
You can't do it right (Deep Purple)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR FRIENDS?
Fresh Pair of Panties On (Snoop Dogg)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Everybody's Stalking (Badly Drawn Boy)

It's not often you find yourself hooked up to a heart monitor, wearing an oxygen mask staring up at the lights in the resuscitation area in hospital. But that's where I found myself on Wednesday night, bewildered and somewhat concerned about my health. I don't want to end up there again. Well, not for a long while anyway.

I'll start at the beginning. I played in a Inter Regulatory Body football tournament a week ago last Wednesday. I played in goal as usual. It was a fantastic evening. The football was good and it gave me a chance to catch up with old friends. And we did pretty well. I think our team's average age must have been about 35, which meant we were probably lacking in a bit of youth over the other teams. But we got to the semi finals where we met the GMC. Oh how we wanted to beat them. Even though as a regulatory body the NMC is (we think) the biggest such body in the world, it always seems to me that we sometimes live in the shadow of them. So there was a bit of an edge to the match. So obviously it didn't help that we quickly conceded two tame goals. It was uphill from there, but there was some fight left in us. After conceding a third we got one back, and tried to force our way back into the game. But they caught us on the break. They fired a shot to my left which I dived for and got my fingers to, but unfortunately the ball went in.

But I'd hurt myself. I'd taken a hefty blow to my left hand side, and I remember feeling the judder of pain. But it's a man's game right? So I got up and carried on, and the score finished at 4-1. But the pain didn't go away. I put that down to either muscular damage or a cracked rib. Over the next few days it seemed to get worse. But the worrying thing was that it felt worse when I was walking. Then last wednesday, I walked my usual 10-15 minutes to the tube, and I was struggling for breath. And it didn't stop when I got on the tube. In fact, I only felt better after I'd been at work for a few minutes.

So it was with a certain sense of trepidation that I set off home that night, and I found the same thing. My chest felt painful, and I was struggling to breath again. It was scary on the tube, as for the first time I can remember I had to sit down. Standing wasn't an option. Anyway - I made it home eventually, and I thought about what to do. I was going to see the GP in the morning, but I checked the NHS direct website to see what they had to say about my symptoms.

The interaction went something like this:

"Chest Pain?" Yes.
"Breathing Difficulties?" Yes.
"Phone 999. Now. We mean it. Now."

Oh dear. That looked serious. I checked it again. Maybe I'd made a mistake.

I hadn't.

I didn't dial 999, but I got a taxi, and off I went to Newham General not knowing what to expect. I think the triage system favours people with my symptoms as I didn't wait long with the usual bunch of nutters you find at night in an A&E department. It didn't take me long to be hooked up to an ECG machine for initial assessment. It got worse when the nurse took more and more readings "just so the doctors can be sure". Oh. My. God. Shit shit shit. What was happening?

After about half hour, I found myself in the resuscitation area. This was beginning to look serious. I was wired up to the heart monitor. Constant observation. Then came the oxygen mask. I really thought this was looking bad at this stage. I talked to some nurses, and to a doctor. They took blood tests. Lots of them. And Chest X Rays. They prodded, listened and talked. And all the time I couldn't begin to imagine what was going on.

After what seemed a life time, the doctor spoke with me. She told me that she thought it was most likely damage to my rib cage. I asked her why I was struggling for breath though. She told me she didn't know. Then she went off to ask the medical registrar.

Bugger. The registrar? Basically she was unsure. After a long while she told me that she'd need to take some more tests, and they moved me from Resus to an area called Clinical Decision Unit. This was better, but it was an area for observation where they collect data to work out if you're ill enough to get admitted. So it was back to the ECG, and back to more blood tests.

And then at 6 in the morning, I was discharged. I was fine. They'd found nothing. My tests apparently were "unremarkable" apart from inverted T waves in AVF whatever that means. But the medical registrar was unconcerned. Thank God. The only thing that they had found was that my blood oxygen level was down, which at least confirmed my breathing difficulties and dizzy episodes. They told me to take it up with my GP.

So - it turns out that my problems were relatively benign. I'd most probably damaged my ribcage which was causing pain, which meant that my breathing was much shallower, causing me to try and breathe more adding to my chest pain. It also transpires I was catching a cold again, so my breathing capacity was much reduced. My GP also told me that rib injuries generally peak in terms of pain 7-10 days after they occur. Whether that's true or not I don't know, but at least I've got nothing to worry about.

Still, in a way it's been a bit of a blessing. I was told once more that my blood pressure is higher than it should be. The nurse in the CDU asked me about it, and I told her I kind of knew about it, but I'd not really done much about it. "Wise move", she muttered as she walked off. She's got a point though. It's about time I got on top of it. Which gives me all the more reason to lose the weight I'd set out to last year. If I need any more motivation than casting my mind back to being in the emergency ward then I don't know what else will persuade me.

At the turn of the year, I really thought it was going to be a good year for me. For a brief moment this January I thought perhaps not. But now - in a strange way I'm more convinced than ever. I'm now looking forward to the rest of the year more than ever.

This isn't really a review of the film as I don't think I'm up to writing a decent film review. What I can say about it though is that it's not often that I watch a film that is as good as the book it's based on. But I do think in this case it's true. It's beautifully shot, and is incredibly moving. The cinematography brings Afghanistan alive just as the prose in the book did before it. The soundtrack is superb. I whole heartedly recommend it.

As I was watching the credits - I was thinking about the comparative value of what I pay for. I paid nearly 12 quid to watch this movie. I paid 10 quid to watch the football yesterday. What was better value I thought? I came to the conclusion that this was a stupid question. They are so far apart in the way that I am entertained.

What appeals to me for the football is complex yet astonishingly simple. Theres a lot of different emotions that a fan will go through especially on a day like yesterday, especially as it was a long journey to an away match. Theres the anticipation, the banter, the excitement, and the chat about the game and past performances on the way up. The sounds and smells of a football match, and the excitement of walking in. The singing. The shouting. The cheering and the inevitable moaning. Then there's the long journey home. But what it really boils down to is spending time with your mates. And hopefully meeting new ones. And if there's some decent football to watch so much the better. And it's difficult to put a price on that. Whcih is why some people will pay a lot of money following their team I think.

The movie was a completely different experience. I'd spent the day with a friend, and after she left, I decided to go see the movie as I want to watch it and I thought rather than try and persuade someone to go with me (which I think is a little bit silly seeing as you're sat in the dark and you can't talk) I'd go and see it on my own. It was once again an emotional experience, far less a visceral one, but a much more engaging intellectual one. Not that I'm saying that this film is intellectual or high brow. My point is that film and football engage with very different parts of me, much as music does as well. Which means I think it's a rather pointless exercise comparing the value of one to the other.

Mind you I'd not hesitate in recommending "The Kite Runner" to anyone. I think I'd struggle to do the same for the Barnsley game next week.

As with a lot of people at the moment, I'm keeping it quite quiet after Christmas. I fancied reading a book when I went to bed the other night but I don't have one to read.

So does anyone have any suggestions? Let me know...

It's been an exciting week being a QPR fan. Just today we've signed 3 new players on permanent contracts, and all of them quality additions to the club. We know they'll be more. Add that to the quality loan signings we have, then the future really does begin to look good. To sum it all up, someone on a QPR mailing list said this:

Today has been like Christmas Day used to be when you were aged 8!.

It really is that good. You don't know whats going to happen next. If someone had said to me at the start of the season that we would be talked of as "the richest club in the world" I'd have said they were bonkers. But it's happened to our club, and we're all so excited about this signing or that signing, rumours of signings, new stadium, whether we can beat Chelsea in the cup. And what's more we've started to play decent football and win matches. Un bloody believable.

But and this is a big but, like other supporters of less fashionable clubs, we all have our reasons for being supporters. For me, I'm never ashamed to say I grew up following Arsenal, but not being from a football family, I never went to a game. My first real experience of watching football was after university when I started going to QPR. And what struck me most about the club was it's identity, and its real feeling of being a proper family club. There's been good times, but in my time there it's been mostly bad. But through it all there's always been that feeling of togetherness around the club and in the ground. I'm sure its a feeling common to a lot of football fans. And we're all scared that this essential part of our club is going to be lost.

And the sad thing is, I do believe it will be lost in the long run. Flavio Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone and Lakshmi Mittal are no fools. They're not in this for the love. They're not going to accept anything less than success. And I believe it will come at a price. And that price can be seen down the road at Chelsea. You see it every time you walk down a street in the country with Chelsea "fans" every where. You see it on the tube on match day with the fans in hats and scarves and flags and all the other paraphernalia of a glory hunting fan. And the more success we see the more we'll see this happen to us. Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of proper Chelsea fans out there. There always will be. But their voices, their identity, their place as the soul of the club has become diminished. And the club becomes villified. It happened to Man U before them. It's going to happen elsewhere in the future.

It doesn't have to happen to us. I don't believe for one moment that Liverpool football club will sell it's soul to the American Dollar. We have no need to lose our club to the seducing smell of our new owners money. Of course we want the investment. Of course we love Gigi De Canio, Bernie and Flavio (and Lakshmi as well now). Of course we want to do well. And win the league (beating Liverpool into second would be nice!). And play in Europe. And play stunning football every week. But we need as a club and fans to stick together and remember why we loved our club through the bad times (and even some good times).

So to all of us out there supporting our club today - let's all hope we can all be proud of the club we love today and fondly remember those days when we were sh*t. And then chuckle as we lift the European cup.

U R'sssss!