It’s late, in fact thanks to the clocks moving forward one hour from GMT to BST, it’s nearly three o’clock in the morning and I’m still awake.

Going to bed early was one of the things I was supposed to be doing for Lent, and I was doing well with until this week. I’m not sure what went wrong but I was unable to sleep early in the week and as a result, I went to sleep later and woke up later each day.

I did have a bit of bad news last week, but it’s not to blame as it didn’t happen until later in the week. As for the nature of the bad news, I shall keep that to myself as it’s not really my place to broadcasts these things. Let me just say that it’s sad news for my family.

I haven’t blogged for a bit. I’ve even missed some weekend links, which are usually easy to knock up, but I have been doing a lot of work on ObscureInternet. Last week saw eight new posts in six days, a brand new expensive and time consuming new forum, and the new design is nearly complete (although there are some really horrible bits I’m fighting with). I can see a new golden age for ObscureInternet coming soon.

Right, I’m going to try and sleep now, I’ll blog again in a couple of days.

I just wrote a deep heart felt, really breakthrough blog post on in Wordmobi and then because of it’s fucking shitty interface the post was cancelled. I’m going to do all my mobile blogging in the Opera Mobile browser from now on. In the meantime imagine this was a really great post.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me, but when don’t I always say that? Well, this time it is especially true.  I’ve been traveling the country with work again, this time to City of Norwich. There is a big possibility of more trips in the future. Of course with more trips comes more works, but it beats the alternative.

I spent most of my time on the train (It’s a five hour, three train tip) and in the office, so I didn’t get much a chance to check Norwich itself out, but it seems nice enough. I was staying in the Holiday Inn Norwich City which is actually in the corner of Norwich’s football stadium, but I got a room facing the road rather than the pitch, not that there was any football on that night anyway.

I’ve also been productive at home.  I’ve got up with my email, facebook, and twitter messages.thanks in part to threadsy a snazzy little program which gives you access to all of them from one page. This means I’ve got up with a load of outstanding task and I can spend a bit more time on ObscureInternet. Which I’ve been advertising again thanks to a free Google Adwords voucher.

Finally, I’m it’s the four week of lent so a little update my fasting.

• Tea – I’ve stuck to having only one cup of Tea at breakfast time. This is still a major achievement for me.
• Fizzy Pop – Had a single glass of Coke with a meal while I was out today.
• Sweets/Chocolate – None since the last update.
• Downloading Crap – FAILED! This one was just too hard.
• Naughty Films – I never would touch such evil things anyway, so no problem, especially as the hotel didn’t have wireless.
• Staying up Late – Still going to bed early every night.
• Chips –FAILED!  Let’s forget about this one.

There is still ages to go. Lent 40 days not including Sundays, you figure it out.

A couple of things for you, firstly I’ve got a new blog called  crappyremix about my progress towards deliberately making some of the worst c64 Remixes ever.

Secondly a little update my lent fasting.

• Tea – I’ve stuck to having only one cup of Tea at breakfast time. This is a major achievement for me.
• Fizzy Pop – Not touched any pop despite being teased by Cherry Lucazade a couple of times
• Sweets/Chocolate – Had a one little sweet, as I forgot I was off them, but other than that nothing.
• Downloading Crap – This one hasn’t gone so well. I wanted to keep the downloading to the weekend, but haven’t managed it.
• Naughty Films – I never would touch such evil things anyway, so no problem.
• Staying up Late – Doing well with this have gone to bed early (by my usually standards) every night.
• Chips – Had some in the Town on Saturday, well nobody is prefect.

The family has been supportive, and by supportive I mean they’ve been asking me to make Tea and sending me to shop to buy them chocolate.

It’s the time of year that Christians, and a few non-believers like myself, indulge a large amount of pancakes and then see if they can give up something they like for forty days.

I have no shortage of things to give up for, and I’ve even been given some suggestions (shared by the person named in the brackets)

• Tea – Well I can’t give up Tea completely, but I could try and cut it down to one cup a day.
• Fizzy Pop (John) – I don’t drink pop that often, so I’ll go for this.
• Sweets/Chocolate – I have the occasional Chocolate, but I can go without.
• Downloading Crap – Will I can’t go with downloading my crap, but I can keep it to the weekends.
• Naughty Films – I never would touch such evil things anyway.
• Staying up Late – Yeah, I need to knock the late nights on the head anyway
• Chips (pramblingpaul) – Well, they are very bad for me, so why not?
• Internet/Computer (darren) – Absolutely no chance.
• Sarcasm (matthewthompson) – Again absolutely no chance (I did try, but only lasted a few hours)
• Procrastination (Bill) – I wish I could give this one up.
• Cheese (lonewolfrepose) – Why? I like cheese to much to give it up, also it’s in most of the stuff I eat.
• Transformers (jim) – They are all boxed up and hidden away anyway. I think the terrible films ruined them for me.
• Pointless exercises in self improvement that last a few days under a religious justification. (Pete) – NEVER!!!

So I’m giving up a few things and reducing some others. Lets see how long this lasts, do you think I will be able to manage the full 40 days for any of them?

You may have noticed this rather dramatic image. However don’t fear, I’m not acting out for the attention (well, at least not anymore than normal). It’s just a little note to say I’m going to be reducing the amount of time I spend on the internet, as I want to prioritise other areas of my life.  I’m going to try and manage my internet time more effectively so hopefully you won’t see a big change in the number of blogs posts.

One thing I want to be doing more is hitting the town on a Saturday night, and this I’ve been arranging nights out with my old mates. They are particularly hard bunch to pin down, but we enjoyed a great night out together and the end on last month. I’d forgotten my camera, so sadly I’ve got no pictures, but it was a really great night. We’ve got another night out planned for the end of this month.

I’ve recently knocked out some new ObscureInternet Posts, including a new three part scam baiter. Part one is available now and the next couple of parts will be up in the next two weeks.

Gaming wise, after playing Saints Row 2 almost to death (I’m about 82% complete, but all the stuff that’s left isn’t as fun as the rest so I’ll leave it for now) I’ve picked up a couple of new (and more importantly cheap) PS3 games, they are GTA IV and Metal Gear Solid 4: Cut scenes of the Patriots. Conor bought himself Lego Indiana Jones 2 for the PS3 and we also got Let’s Dance but I haven’t had a proper go of it yet.

The Animex International Festival of Animation and Computer Games is again taking place at Teesside University, and as part of this Conor got two tickets to see UP and the Cineworld in the town.

While we were at Cineworld we bumped into Darth Vader and  a few other Star Wars characters and I even managed to say the ‘Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?’ line and it was in context as he was about the same height as me.

The film itself was brilliant and despite seeing it in 2010 it is definitely my movie of 2009 (beating even District 9) and my been getting old and sentimental but those scenes at the beginning of the movie really got to me, also Russell is awesome.

You know what? Writing blog posts is rubbish, it’s such a bloody chore that I’ve got about 425 things I’d rather do, including wash the dishes, and that’s without really thinking about it, I could come up a few thousand more things I would rather do if I thought about it for another minute or so.

However, since I’m upset over Scribbler not updating mercuryvapour (and deleting a load of old posts) it would hypocritical of me not to do a proper personal blog post once in a while.

“So, what has happened since I last did a proper update?” I hear none of you ask. Well the answer is if you are bothered to read on the following is (in no particular order);

Built a Snowman

As the country ground to it’s annual halt because of a little snow earlier this month, I happy plodded along working from home. However as the old saying goes; When God gives you Lemons snow, you squeeze them in that fuckers eyes make snowmen.

Note the hat (mine) and the six pack (not mine).

Upgraded the PC

I finally ordered new parts for the Desktop PC as I’d manage to scrape up enough money and because the old parts were so knackered the PC was crashing to a Blue Screen of death on a daily basis.

The PC build (and reinstall of Windows 7) was as easy as Lemon Pie (like they say, when God gives you Lemons, you squeeze them in that fuckers eyes make Lemon Pie) the only slightly problem was my complete ignorance of the existence of SATA power cables. I had to pop out to computer shop to buy one, which was pretty stupid as later when examining my spares box, I found I three of them. I just didn’t know what they were when I put them in there.

PC runs like a dream now, I can actually have more than four tabs open in Chrome without the PC breaking down like a Eurostar train in a winter snowfall.

Read some books

Got a started on my Christmas books by reading through Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn, which is laugh out loud funny (a rare thing for me), The Twenty Guiding Principles of Karate and Eric Bischoff’s Controversy Creates Cash, which I download read on the ebook reader (it still gets used, and I still love it) after watching Bischoff and Hogan’s return to Monday Night Wrestling with TNA.

I’m currently reading Charlie Brooker’s Dawn of the Dumb, and it’s every bit as funny Screen Burn.

Sort out my New years Resolutions

I’ve sorted out a my New years Resolutions for this year, they are the usual goals (stop being fat, do some work, have a life, etc), but this year I’m going to be smarter (no pun intended SMART goal fans), I’ve broken these goals into Monthly and Weekly targets which are documented and updated on a weekly basis. I’m also having a weekly meetings with a friend in which discuss, track and verbally commit to our weekly goals.

Also as mentioned previously the ObscureInternet forum, is has new a lose weight and get fit subforum, which is going very well at the moment.

Played Saints Row 2 on the PS3 far to much

I went out bought a game for the PS3 that I could play, this games was Saints Row 2 as it was a cheap and came highly recommended from my friends at the insideoutcast podcast. It’s definitely a lot of fun, and I’ve managed to knocked up almost 50 hours playing time in the last month alone.

Did some boring Internet stuff

I’ve done a fair amount of blogging this month, this will be my twenty post which is probably a new record for this blog, (look in up in the Archive, I can’t be arsed to). Last months myleene-klass-and-jonathan-shalit-are-full-of-shit post got an amazing response. It had a recording number of readers, was retweeted a lot, and was linked to by some pretty great blogs. I may do more of these ranting about real world stuff in future.

I’ve discovered Windows Live Writer, which I’m using to write this post. The drag and drop features are superb for things like images, and I imagine I will be using this a lot for future ObscureInternet posts.

Speaking of ObscureInternet, I’m still working on a new design, and looking at kicking off with some new articles shortly.

Nowt else interesting.

So that’s pretty much what I’ve been getting up to since new year, dull isn’t it. I’ll just rap this up by saying this post took about a day to write, so I hope you enjoy it.

Like I did this time last year, I have been looking back over the last twelve months of my life to see what has changed.

It’s been a very dull year, and so disappointingly I’ve come to conclusion that did last year, what was that very little has changed and I have not made any significant progress in a many areas of my life.  For this to happen two years in a row is a very very bad thing.

All these things must change in 2010!

The progress I made in 2008 with Fitness, was pretty much destroyed last year,  and thus I’ve gained quite a bit of weight and I am in much worse shape and fitness that I was a year ago.

The only highlights of this completely unremarkable year that I can remember include;

• Starting 40 Things to do before I’m 40.
• Starting to really use Twitter effectively and got in contact with some great people.
• Visted Legoland (again).
• Blogged more with Music Monday, Courage Wolf Wednesday, and Weekend Links post.
• Got my voice on a podcast.
• Both my sister and mother moving back home to Middlesbrough.
• Going to a couple of weddings, included that of my good friend Anthony Putson.
• Conor being on the Radio

Finally here is 2009 in somewhat random photos.

All these things must change in 2010!

I’ve not written a proper personal post in a while. I chose to blame twitter, like Pete says in his Twitter is Shit Post,  it certainly can seriously damage your blog output. Anyway, take the following post as my apologies.

Today was my first day back at both work and Karate after a nice two week Christmas Holiday. This was my first time I’d taken holidays over Christmas for four years. It was nice having two weeks off, and I’m thinking it would be good to do this again next years.

We had a nice Christmas, Conor’s big present this year was a Playstation 3 and several games, however like we did with his Wii a couple of years ago we left this present until last. He was over the moon with it and the games that came with it.

Little Big Planet is the game he has wanted since it came out, and is the main reason we got him the console. It pretty much is the perfect game for him, so much so it couldn’t have been created with him in mind, he just loves spending hours making up his own levels. Lego Rock Band is great fun, and I must say rocking out while playing Ghostbusters and Final Countdown on an plastic guitar (on the easy level) is an experience everyone that should partaken in at least. EyePet is one of those virtual pets things, but thanks to the PS EyeCam it looks like it’s in your room next to you, a find it very annoying but he likes it.

Now if you are worrying about the poor old Wii, don’t as it isn’t getting Neglected as he also got the New Super Mario Brother Wii, which he has been playing with his mother. I’ve avoid playing it with them so far, as I don’t think the neighbours should have to listen to three people arguing over who should have got that mushroom.

Speaking of the Wii, I got the new Wii Fit Plus and some other Wii Fit related items, including Yoga mat, wrist bands and a pedometer.This will help in the new year, as a soon to be finished blog post will reveal.

Anyway, I’ve got a few pictures of some of the presents I was lucky enough to recieve (and probably not deserve) this year. This little fella was a present that will help keep my desk and PC clean.

I also got the following books from my Amazon wish list.

and these books as they were on sale in WHSmiths.

I’ve lost my thread a bit, however this post is now large enough to post, so it will have to do. In summary Christmas Holidays are good.