Happy Halloween

Although I saw some groups of trick and treaters in my neighborhood on the way home today, no one called at my house.  This is the advantage of living at the edge of my neighborhood, hidden from the road and where there isn't a sidewalk.  I didn't even need to pretend I wasn't home.  However, it looked like I wasn't home anyway since I was suffering from a power outage most of this evening.  I wasn't even sure I would be able to write and post this blog.  All my neighbors looked like they had power, so I think it was just me affected.  And so very worried that it might be ages until it got fixed - but fortunately heard them working on the poles on the road outside my place not too long after I had reported the outage, and the power has just come back on.  So that's a relief.  However, it became abundantly clear that I am totally inadequately prepared for losing power in the future for any length of time - I need to buy some candles and suchlike. 

Wasteful Expenditure

Since getting my PS4, I've hardly used it for playing games on.  At all.  So that's been several years.  Yet here I am having just bought 2 new games - God of War, and Red Dead Redemption 2.  Why?  Perhaps I got sold on the rave reviews they've both been getting.  Perhaps I've seen too many ads for both games and I'm a sucker.  Perhaps it's because I've been talking video games recently with a few guys at work.  Either way, I hope these games don't just collect dust on the shelf.  But I also hope I don't end up spending every spare hour I've got vegging out on my sofa playing these games.  But hey, I guess I'm doing that anyway watching films and telly!   

Choke Artist

Another table tennis match today.  Another classic choke job from me against my nemesis – I lost a lot of points early, and could never recover.  Anxious, tightened up, couldn’t play with power or precision.  Totally disappointing, utterly predictable.  Our team lost anyway regardless of my result (though I certainly didn’t help), so once again I maintain my sad record of having never won any kind of trophy in sports.  Extremely dispiriting.  I think I need to buy myself a participation trophy or something.  Getting very down on myself, this could be a long week.  It certainly won’t involve playing any more table tennis – I need a break from it.

I recorded the Spurs-Man City game and watched it this evening, 3 observations: (1) I really like Man City's purple/orange kit, (2) American football has absolutely ruined the Wembley pitch, (3) Spurs will not challenge for the title this year.

Palace 2-2 Arsenal

Not a bad result against a team in form, but still have my concerns about Palace.  Despite 2 penalties today, not scoring enough - and if you don't score you won't win.  And a bit of a brutal stretch of games coming up - Chelsea, Spurs and Man United.  I don't see many points there, and the distinct possibility of Palace slipping into the bottom 3.  Fortunately there are plenty of other bad teams in the Premier League, but this season looks like its going to turn into another fraught relegation struggle.  I remain worried.

A New Low

This is the kind of sh*t that they've started airing in ad breaks now:

Unbelievable.

Bohemian Rhapsody

I've seen the trailers for Bohemian Rhapsody and got excited at the possibility of going to the cinema to watch it and sing along with the rest of the audience to all the classic tunes.  And then the early reviews have come in.  To put it politely, they are mixed.  Not much to the film apart from the music and apparently great portrayal of Freddie Mercury.  So I suspect I won't bother going.  Indeed, I haven't been to the cinema for ages - I can't even remember the last time I went out to watch a film.  There was a time when I used to go every week.  Now, I am much more inclined to watch a film at home unless it is really recommended to see it on a big IMAX screen.  But with the over-saturation of superhero and franchise movies, there really isn't much worth watching nowadays.  Which is a real shame.     

Old Dog

I encountered an expression that I had never heard before in my 40+ years of existence until today – camel case.  “The practice of writing compound words or phrases such that each work or abbreviation in the middle of the phrase begins with a capital letter, with no intervening spaces or punctuation”.  So the next time you write “iPhone”, you can say that this is an example of camel case.  You can thank me later.