Chris Worfolk's Blog

What do the greats have to say on the subject? Adam Rutherford reminded me of this inspirational message:

For me however, the entire message of life is much better encapsulated in these two lines:

1. You are reading this.

For 2-14, please see 1.

I would go into a lecture about how much time we are all wasting on BuzzFeed, but quite frankly I have a lot of BuzzFeed articles to get through so I just do not have time to write that right now.

Ubisoft have just released the R.E.M. song pack. Irritatingly, rather than just posting the news when you load up the screen, they have also put the songs in my song list. They are right at the top when I order it by recommended songs. But selecting them just takes you to the store and asks you for money. Shameless.

Also I continue to be angry at Mark Knopfler. He has no respect for his fans. Look at this:

Green Day are a band that respect their fans. You learn one shape and you can pretty much play their entire discography. But look at this video! No guitar pick. Not even just strumming, but random flicks as well as plucks! How is anyone who is not a guitar-playing robot supposed to do that?

A friend recommended that I read “How to be a Bad Christian: … And a Better Human Being” by David Tomlinson. So I did. His message seems to be that organised religion is not really relevant or useful, it is all about loving Jesus. Meanwhile, he works as a vicar.

He started a church in a pub, called Holy Joe’s, that is pretty cool.

Overall, I did not find it the most interesting read however. I do not think the book was really aimed at me. I think it was aimed at Christians who do not go to church and generally feel guilty that they do not practice actively enough. For them, it would probably be quite an enjoyable read.

Yesterday I rocked so hard that one of my guitar strings exploded.

Luckily I had another set of strings ready so thanks to a few YouTube videos, and a bit of help from Chris when I one of the balls got jammed in the bridge, I managed to re-string it.

Here is the video:

And part 2:

The new strings are pretty cool. They feel about the same as the old one, but they produce a slightly different sound. In the case of the low E string, it really produces a notably different sound.

Also they are far more visible. When people said that strings dulled over time, I was assuming they meant sound-wise. But the new strings are are clearly much easier to see when I am looking at them than they were before, probably because they have more of a shine to them.

Last month, Leeds United announced a partnership with the San Francisco 49ers. It was a strategic alliance to discuss plans across the operations of both clubs including marketing, technology, merchandise, and more.

The 49ers will bring their experience as a market leader in the NFL. Meanwhile Leeds will bring all the things they are good at. Not sure what that is exactly. Perhaps given the rising tension between the 49ers and the Seahawks, San Fran want to know how to do football hooliganism properly.

Luckily, I’m already ahead of the game…

I recently finished the Sherlock Holmes novel, “The Sign of Four”. It was along the same lines as A Study in Scarlet in that it was a reasonably enjoyable read, but not as good as I had hoped.

I find the TV series Sherlock far better than the books. The novels are just a bit boring in comparison. Once I have suspended by disbelief as to how clever Sherlock could be, he might as well be insanely brilliant (as he is in the TV show) rather than rather brilliant as he is in the novels.

A common theme between the two novels I have read is that the mystery does not actually take up that much of a novel. But during the explanation, it will suddenly go into a huge back story that goes on for ages.

Finally, I also found the end a bit of a let down. I did not actually feel like anything was resolved. On balance, I enjoyed it more than I did the first novel though, so I am hoping it will continue to get better and better.

It is always good to really challenge your beliefs when you can, so last night I tried to put aside any biases I hold and read through the Green Party manifesto.

I had previously written them off as sexists who support homoeopathy. Taking a look at their manifesto they talk a lot of sense though.

Here is what I like:

• They make the case that inequality is bad for everyone (I have a blog post coming on this)
• They want to reduce government borrowing
• They aim for a 35 hour working week
• Not increasing the rate of corporation tax for small businesses
• Ensuring the NHS is entirely publicly run
• Get rid of academies and free schools
• Treat drug abuse as a health issue rather than a crime
• Ending religious opt-outs of equality legislation
• Reformation of the House of Lords

Here is what I do not like:

• Their plan to pay for their pension plan is based on removing the tax incentives for people to pay into private pensions
• Increased tax on fuels including its introduction on aviation fuel
• Significant restrictions on air travel
• Supporting the Post Office which is an appallingly-run and non-essential organisation that we can afford to and should let fail
• So-called “business protection zones” to stop supermarkets
• Removing the internal market from the NHS
• Decentralise the NHS – they claim they can do it without it becoming a postcode lottery, but I am not convinced
• Complementary therapies being available on the NHS
• End mixed-sex accommodation in hospitals – why? Surely the Greens should be gender progressive?
• Provide funding for women’s refuges (but not men)
• Provide funding to tackle violence against women (but not men)
• Forcing companies to hire women onto their boards
• Reducing the voting age to 16
• Move towards a written bill of rights
• Oppose nuclear power
• Reduce motorway speed limits to 55mph
• Support organic food and oppose GM food

I was originally going to end this blog post with something like this:

There is certainly plenty in their I dislike. But the question is, do they talk less nonsense than the other political parties? I think it is quite possible that they actually do.

However, on reading through the list I have just made, there really is some unscientific stuff in there. So I don’t really know where to go with this ending now…

People often talk about SMART targets. Inevitably people talk about how achievable and realistic are basically the same thing. The reason is that this is actually a common misconception about the acronym.

To understand it, we need to put it on context. SMART targets were originally developed for business and therefore that is the background that they are placed in the context of.

There are a number of alternatives for SMART and I will go through them below.

Assignable
Rather than achievable (because we already have realistic), you can have assignable. Who will do it? Can we give it someone and have them take ownership of it?

Agreed
How about agreed instead? This is useful for when setting performance goals in a business environment. A target is not SMART if either the manager or the employee is unhappy with it – it has to be agreed.

Relevant
We can also leave A as achievable and change the R from realistic to something else. How about relevant? Again, very useful in a business context and probably very relevant for your personal goals too. Why is this target is important? What is the motivation for doing it?

Conclusion
Those are just a few of the alternatives to SMART. Wikipedia has done a good job of cataloging all the alternatives. Personally I like relevant for setting personal goals.

I have a new found respect for Green Day. Yes, their songs are composed almost entirely of power chords. But have you ever tried to hold the power chord shape for five minutes straight? Oh my god it hurts so much! Barre chords hurt a bit. But not like this. I physically do not have the strength in my hands to get all the way through Oh Love.

I start missing chords by the end of the song because my hands just are not strong enough to keep going. I have tried to end every session with the song to build up my strength.

Speaking of barre chords, I had a fucking F today! I am still missing a lot of Cs and I do not think I have managed to hit an A yet. But F is very slightly in the bag.

I really knocked my mastery percentage in some songs today. I do not know how. I started with My Own Summer by Deftones and apparently got an accuracy of 69%. There is no way that happened. I think I hit about 10% of notes. I am not convinced the game can tell the difference between a wrong note on Eb tuning…