MEMORY:DUMP

'These people are mad, I tell you! They're completely bananas!'

2008-07-27T10:34:00.003+01:00

For anyone interested in the music for that new Seat Ibiza advert known as both 'Perfection requires a touch of madness' or 'Madhouse' or whatever....

It *isn't* Frontier Pyschiatrist by The Avalanches - not a remix, not the original, nada, zip. Anyone who *does* say it is obviously hasn't heard it since it was out. Song of The Salesman is wrong on this, trust me.

Actually, it's a comissioned piece specifically for SEAT, which they have named as called 'Madhouse'. You won't be able to find it. Give up, and just rant at the advertising company until they finally release it (like the VW advert featuring the remix of 'Singin' in the Rain, which wasn't meant to be released until all the DJs pleaded for it). Sorry.

SOURCE: HMV.com - Lists the track as 'Commissioned piece for Seat - Madhouse'

'Mr. Horrible, Mr. Horrible. Telephone call for Mr. Horrible!' - They Might Be Giants, 'Someone Keeps Moving My Chair'

2008-07-14T11:58:00.002+01:00

In case you haven't been in the loop, Joss Whedon's got a project released tomorrow called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

It's a full budget affair telling the story of evil genius Dr. Horrible (played by Neil Patrick Harris) in his attempts to overthrow the world - much to the chagrin of superhero Captain Hammer (played by Nathan Fillion - ohhhh yes).

(Click here for the trailer)

However, unlike Joss' previous projects:

a) it's a Whedon Bros. affair, so Jed and Zack Whedon are helping on this one;
b) it's being shown completely online; and
c) it's 100% musical (unlike Buffy, which was about 0.69% a musical).

The first episode is being released on the 15th of July, the second on the 17th and the final episode on the 19th of July - but get your skates on! It all goes away again after the 20th!

So check it out at Dr. Horrible.com from the 15th or prepare yourself with the free comic at Dark Horse Presents....

'Is it us or it that's messed up?'

2008-05-13T18:01:00.003+01:00

The key to producing a successful product advert is to promote the brand and make people *want* what you're selling. Under no circumstances should an advert make people go 'oh, god, no!' and actually people regret their purchases.

So behold, the brand new PlayStation 3 advert, an advert so terrible it's been classified NSFW. And rightly so - no-one should see this advert, but you *will* look, oh yes, you will. This is more horrific than the original Xbox advert, more worrying than a Benetton advert, very much less terrible than a shock site.

But to make this a choice you've made yourself, I leave you with a simple link to it.

The most horrifying PS3 advert ever (via Gizmodo)

...and don't say I didn't warn you.

'Wooahahahhh.. love hurrrrtss..' - Nazareth, Love Hurts

2008-05-09T14:10:00.003+01:00

Whilst I really should be revising, I took a little time out to catch up on what Yahtzee Crosshaw of Zero Punctuation had to say about... well, games mostly. But during a piece where he responds to all the people who said that he was wrong about SSBB and cite things he didn't actually say, he summed up the 'console war' quite beautifully.

The section in question is from 3:47 onwards - I *would* cut it out like a paper-man chain but apparently the people at The Escapist would prefer people to embed them like good little copyright-abiding people:

(Click here if you are Planeting or RSS ~~leeching~~ feeding).

WARNING regarding Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3)

2008-05-08T18:12:00.005+01:00

Quick heads up to anybody using an AMD (or other non-Intel brand) processor. If you have used a University or self-made XP-SP2 CD then you may have a horrific constant blue-screen-of-death approach to starting your computer which prevents you from even booting into safe mode.

The Microsoft-given response is 'don't install it' which is all well and good but you blatently already *have* installed it else you wouldn't be looking for the solution to the problem, would you?

UPDATE: Well, the stop error (the one I had was a 0x0000007e STOP error with no real description of what was wrong) is caused by one of three things:

1) You've got a sysprep'd disc, which is actually unlikely thinking about it, as sysprep is more of a 'disc image' than a 'installation'.
2) The installer has made a mess of your GDI32 driver.
3) You've got a slightly dodgy driver somewhere.
4) You have some slightly dodgy hardware somewhere.
5) You've got a RAID driver installed.
6) You're trying to install it on a computer with some kind of Christian Magic in it.
7) You just happen to be passing the computer at the time.

The main solutions are here:
Aumha.net
or by simply typing '0x000007e xp sp3 bsod' or words akin to that into Google.

However, personally after trying several of those, I took the coward's way out: I found the XP+SP2 install disc, clicked repair, gave it half an hour to revert back to the previous version and vowed not to install SP3. Problem solved.

UPDATE 2: Finally, somebody has produced a nice little script that fixes the problem. Get it here(ish), follow the instructions and be a happy AMD-loving bunny.

'It's like... none more black' - Spinal Tap

2008-03-28T09:44:00.002Z

OK, so after having a good rant with the people at Microsoft about the rubbish quality of the Visual Studio 2008 installer and a set of circumstances meaning I can't install it without re-installing Windows first, they sent me a lovely collection of DreamSpark goodies.

Now, I really shouldn't complain about free stuff - free is free after all, However, an issue I must raise which is fairly important.

In this day and age, you should not - under any circumstances - produce a uniformly black (bar 2 lines of white writing) SHINY mousemat. Why do I say this? Simple. The greater majority of new mice are optical. Optical mice aren't made very happy by uniformly black shiny mousemats. Such things make optical mice flip out and not work. Remember this in future.

Oh, and I'd have stumped up the cash for a domain name for your DreamSpark campaign - https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com is not a particularly exciting domain for any promotion.

"You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?"

2008-03-18T13:32:00.001Z

Now that HD-DVD is dead and Zavvi have started pulling their stock from the shelves (probably in preparation for companies to re-release on BluRay), the BluRay coalition have given all the true-and-faithful users a "present".

According to PriceGrabber (and reported by Gizmodo), post-war the price of BluRay players has now returned to last-years prices, now they don't have to worry about the 'pesky competition'. Same applies to BluRay discs, up to their original prices.

Also, unlike with DVD (and HD-DVD), cheap Chinese machine manufacturers have now been denied the licenses to produce low-cost players.

Regarding the PS3 - it's bitterly ironic that whilst consumers are lauding over the recent popularity gains for the console (which many are putting down to BluRay), this is pulling away from where Sony gets it's money from - selling games. It's all well and good selling the console at cost (and previously at a serious markdown) but the billions in development costs have to be written off by the number of games sales. Currently, the US market shows there are 17 X360 releases in the top 50 (of which 7 are exclusive) vs 7 PS3 releases (of which, um, none are). Even the current 'walk off the shelves' games are struggling (such as Guitar Hero III and Rock Band).

Back when the console was announced (at the collective gasp figure of $599), each console had to have 13 games bought with it before it would even break even and start paying off their development debts (this is judged with the $800 parts cost minus approx. $15 of income to Sony on each game). Nowadays, they are finally making money after removing as much of the console they can without preventing it working properly and firing many of the key instigators of the PlayStation lineage (including the head creator of all three consoles, the key marketer and several high-up directors).

Whilst I feel that the PS3 should succeed, in a way I feel it deserves 'the third place' that was coined in those famous PlayStation2 adverts. The direness of their advertising (the console CANNOT think for itself and CANNOT predict what you are intending to do), the way they have treated their third-party developers is abysmal, the arrogance of their market team - believing that everyone will buy it on brand alone rather than actually doing something better than the competition, ramming BluRay up peoples behinds and telling them it's for their own good....

it is shiny though.

How to protect your Windows box - don't password it

2008-03-06T15:53:00.002Z

Well, Microsoft have advised that to protect your computer from remote attacks, you're better off not setting a password at all rather than setting a weak one.

Madness? Well, there is a reason.

Turns out, if you set a blank password, Windows will disable all remote access to your machine - and thus if you set your password to 'password' or 'abc123' then you're at a greater risk.

[[via Digital Inspiration]]

At least he wasn't eaten by a grue

2008-03-05T12:19:00.003Z

Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons and thus being the father of all role-playing games, has died aged 69.

He'd been suffering from a long term illness since having a close call with a heart attack in 2004.

A moment's silence.... followed by the rolling of the highest sided dice you can find.

Want to dance like a robot?

2008-03-05T11:53:00.004Z

Then you'll have to beat these guys, Dance Crew "U-Min":

Click here, if you can't see it

And yes, I know that it's actually an advert for hip Japanese Clothing brand UniQlo, but hey.

Best. Comment. Ever.

2008-02-21T16:03:00.001Z

It made me laugh that a comment for a song on Last.fm stated:

"Good to see I'm not the only person who tagged this song CORRECTLY. :D"

The song in question? Why, it was The Flaming Lips with 'What Is The Light? (An untested hypothesis suggesting that the
chemical (in our brains) by which we are able to experience the
sensation of being in love is the same chemical that caused the "Big Bang" that was the birth of the accelerating universe)' from their seminal album 'The Soft Bulletin'!

However, if you search on Amazon (and the like) you won't see it like that - oh no! - because you only saw their full titles if you opened the case.

If you want to see the other wacky names for the songs (not like you care) look no further than The Flaming Lips' own site:

http://www.flaminglips.com

where you can also find out about such things as the album that requires 4 hi-fis to listen to correctly and a series of concerts entitled 'The Park Lot Experiments' and 'The Boombox Experiments' - concerts where the audience of 50-odd each have a cassette of sounds which have to be played under instruction... weirdness.

After hours of trying to find out why my program didn't work...

2008-02-11T23:17:00.001Z

... it turns out that onclick does not have a captial C.

'How can a Planet be closed?'

2008-02-11T18:07:00.001Z

Planet Rock is to detune and fade away as it's parent company GCap is to kill it off, along with The Jazz.

Instead, they will be pumping the amount of advertising onto Captial FM - the runt of the popular radio station litter.

I'm sure this will hit Ben the hardest, as it's the only radio station he listens to... :P

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7238444.stm

Whoever created this video....

2008-01-17T14:00:00.001Z

...I so, so want to meet them, as it's both bonkers and just so absolutely cheery and whilst it's a fairly negative song it still cheered me up:

:

Oddly disturbing

2008-01-09T10:00:00.001Z

Here's a case of understanding song lyrics by their context:

1) 'Rule The World' by Take That is the closing credits song for Stardust and, as far as I am aware, was written for the movie.
2) Stardust is a fantasy film partially about a fallen star (as in, thing in the sky - not celebrity) which has taken the form of a woman played by Claire Danes.
3) The chorus of Rule The World is:
"You and me, we can ride on a star"

Now, this either implies that the lead characters are intending to ride a second star-woman, or that him and another person are going to ride Claire Danes.

All we really know is that star-women can't fly (as implied by the movie) so it wasn't for transportation or literally flying through the sky, and that they *did* have lots of kids at the end...

New desktop

2007-11-30T11:04:00.000Z

I've just switched desktop backgrounds, based on a blog post made by Michael Salamon which captures the sentiments of the populous beautifully:

Feel free to adapt this to how you see fit, as I know it's in no ways perfect.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the morons of the internet

2007-11-25T18:36:00.001Z

Right, correct me if I'm wrong but say you went into a record shop for an old album and found that it hadn't been released on CD yet. Would you blame the shop for the fact the record company hadn't released it? No? Good - this proves you're not incompetent.

So why do people believe that by iTunes not having something available (for example: Frank Zappa albums) means it's blatently Apple's fault for this? Surely they realise that the music isn't provided by Apple but by record companies who put songs up?

Maybe I'm just being too logical.

/* You are not expected to understand this */

2007-11-06T09:51:00.000Z

Can somebody please explain to me why there are students in this world who turn up to lectures that do not require you to sign an attendance sheet just to open up their laptop and read news, chat to their mates, write e-mail, play WoW, etc.

Surely it's both a waste of their and everybody else's time?

Oh, and if you don't understand the title, I'll point you at Cloanto t-shirts.

'Boing, boing, boing, boing boingboinboingngngng' - Aphex Twin, 'Bucephalus Bouncing Ball'

2007-10-24T10:05:00.001+01:00

UPDATE 2: Actually, after trying the new driver, it's is hopelessly finickity and slow - so I'd actually still recommend sticking with the Ubuntu-restricted drivers and XGL.

UPDATE: D'oh! No sooner had I typed this post than AMD/ATI release a driver that supports the default AIGLX. Oh well, if you don't want to wait for it to propagate then use the walkthrough below.

I'm sorry for the flurry of Ubuntu-related posts at the moment, but some people are aware I've re-installed Ubuntu 7.10 because the upgrade path left me with a few features not set up correctly - and as such I'm in the process of putting things back the way they were.

Today, I'm going to be discussing Desktop Effects (courtesy of Compiz Fusion, which is usually enabled by default on nVidia (and a few other) graphics cards) which gives you a faster graphical interface, lots of sleek graphical effects (like fast desktop switching, transparencies, fade ins, fade outs, etc. as well as the illustrious 'wobbly windows' effect) However, with higher-spec ATI Radeon graphics cards (the criss-crossing leader of 3D graphics with nVidia), you find that when you try and turn on Desktop effects you get a nasty little pop-up telling you that your card doesn't do that.

Lies, all lies, I tell you! With a few simple steps you can get it going - and for the love of all things popular I can't understand why Canonical (developers of Ubuntu) didn't bother to detect your graphics card and install these if it spotted an ATI Radeon card, especially as it's so simple to sort.

NOTE: The following instructions will only work if you've installed the 'ristricted' proprietary graphics card drivers - you should be using them anyway as the open-source drivers in Ubuntu are currently pants. Oh, and also this is for Ubuntu 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon - other versions are a touch more tricky to get going.

This is what you do:

1) Go to System>>Administration>>Synaptic Package Manager (as in, follow the menu at the top of the screen through system, then Administration, then click on... you get the drift). You'll need to type in your administration (root) password as you are going into the guts.
2) Search (by either clicking Edit>>Search or hitting the Control+F keys) for xserver-xgl. When it appears, left-click the empty box on the left of the name and select 'Mark for Installation' from the drop-down list that appears.
3) Click the 'Apply' button (it's got a checkmark/tick on it).
4) Log-out or restart your computer - either way is good.
5) When you're logged-back in, go to System>>Preferences>>Appearance, choose the Visual Effects tab and select either Normal or Extra from the options.
6) Close that window and hey, presto! Desktop Effects!

Now, Ubuntu by default only allows you to select their sets of effects - so you can't install new effects or customise the effects used. If you wish to do that to, go back into the Synaptic Package Manager and install the compizconfig-settings-manager using the same principles as above. This adds an extra icon to the Visual Effects (called Custom) and adds 'Advanced Desktop Effects Settings' to the Preferences.

BE WARNED THOUGH - meddling with the effects or selecting a difficult one (like Reflect, apparently) can leave your computer very, very, very slow or almost unusable - so keep in mind that if you do anything to keep the settings window OPEN because else you'll be there for ages trying to turn the things back off again. This, I think, is the flaw with using xserver-XGL - it isn't quite as powerful as the default one.

"I'm impressed... when that gorilla pounds the desk I fall to bits'

2007-10-22T12:21:00.000+01:00

Maybe I'm just easily impressed, but the latest version of Wine not only runs Office 97 (though I have the feeling it did for some time but not noticed), but also does this:

Will people stop complaining? Probably not - but I'll test whether it syncs stuff once I find my iPod cable..

'Kicking, Screaming, Gucci little piggy'...

2007-10-12T12:23:00.000+01:00

A button (read: badge) manufacturing company in the US has supposedly spent $1000 on Radiohead's new album 'In Rainbows' "in support of Radiohead's "silent" effort to revolutionize the music industry."

(the press release about it is here: http://www.purebuttons.com/pr/)

However, on the face of it, they actually spent £99.99 on the digital download and £400 on 10 copies of the limited edition 'Discbox' containing lots of goodies and stuff.

Here is the comment I made on their site, which is likely to be excluded from their moderated commenting system, so just in case I thought I would share with you:

'OK - a few things:

1) What has your 'offer of goodwill' got to do with buttons? (or badges)

2) Why are you supporting digital downloads when your web site features badges stating 'f*ck the whales, save the CD!'

3) The third paragraph of your press statement (the one beginning 'Entertainment on the whole is invaluable') is a totally preposterous statement - you are claiming that without a change in the entertainment industry there would be NO entertainment. You obviously fail to comprehend that since the dawn of man there has been forms of entertainment and nothing can take that away (except 'entertainment' itself). The world of 'entertainment' as you put it is less than 200 years old - records over 130, radio over 100, the walkman just over 30, so what exactly makes you think that these things in themselves make entertainment? What exactly makes you think that the record companies have a say over our lives?

4) Your actions are not helping anybody - in fact, you've only proved to many that in your eyes it's all a gimmick and a bandwagon that must be jumped on for the benefit of no-one apart from the 10 lucky punters who'll get the discboxes which will only go up in value. A good businessman should always be able to see the profit in any action - as this gesture is in no way going to profit you selling buttons, it most definitely will profit you in the long term with their resale value - it is, after all, a very limited item.

5) The discboxes are custom made and cost money to produce for the band, and so as such their is less profit to be made in them than the digital downloads. So why on earth did you not give your $1000 for downloads rather than $200? Surely if this was a true gesture and to your word, you would have bought only the download - unless, of course, statement 4 was true. In which case, it was not a gesture, but a means to profiting yourselves.

6) Radiohead still have a recording contract with Parlophone, part of EMI (one of the big 4 record companies) They are highly regarded for their 'screw the system' artistic approach to marketing, but at the end of the day, they wouldn't exist to this great a degree without the record company giving them the cash at the start to make their early records. All that this 'stunt' does is do a free online promo, just like many other bands have done - except, of course, that they have made money from it rather than having to spend any. This is very good for the record company, at the end of the day.'

'She wants money money money money money...'

2007-10-07T13:08:00.000+01:00

Well, Sony have announced their new low cost 40GB PS3, which loses 2 USB ports, memory card support and - oddly, since it was software-based, PlayStation and PS2 support.

And the cost? 399 euros, which is 100 euros less than the 60GB option. According to the Sony execs is 'very reasonable'...

However, a quick money conversion makes it £279 - only £20 less than the XBOX 360 Elite with it's XBox support, 120GB hard drive and much better gaming selection. So, I ask again Sony, what are you playing at?

Anyway, have a double bill of videos from They Might Be Giants' new album, The Else (Planet users, please go onto the real blog to view them):

The Mesopotamians:

I'm Impressed:

For anyone who cares:

2007-10-03T11:12:00.000+01:00

The music from the Saab 9-3 advert (that one about Scandinavian design) is Through Your Eyes by Nina Kinert. (Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80b2PIJofpI)

The music from the Pizza Hut 'Photo Frames' advert is Escribeme Pronto by Mexican Institute of Sound. (listen here: http://users.telenet.be/laonda/songs/escribemepronto.mp3)

The music from the Fiat Grande Punto advert (with the equalizer city) is Fire Like This by Hardknox (not to be confused with the metal band Hardknox who seem to be populating Last.fm). (listen here: http://hosegnaasio.planet.ee/muusika/firelikethis.mp3)

Any others people want to know?

On a side note: it's interesting when you have two bands with the same name - for example Wildchild (DJ Wildchild)'s Last.fm page (he who created the original Renegade Master, and sadly passed away before it became the commercial success we now know) is populated by some no-talent who feels it's OK to colonize such a prestigious name. It's kind of sickening in a way, if probably unintentional.

'And I just hope that you can forgive us...' - Manic Street Preachers, Everything Must Go

2007-09-18T11:37:00.000+01:00

I feel a bit like a media whore right this second, but the following deal is, unfortunately, very very good.

Microsoft are offering all students a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for £12.95 (1 year) or £38.95 (perpetual license - i.e.: forever) - usually the software costs £599.99.

In case you're interested, that's Word, Excel, Outlook (with Business Contact Manager), Powerpoint, Groove (collaboration software), Publisher, OneNote (notetaking software), Infopath (form building software) and Access. Supposedly (although not mentioned on the promotion site) it also includes Accounting Express. The only thing missing is Communicator - which you won't need if you've got an IM client already.

Interestingly, Visio is no longer part of Office - instead it's part of Visual Studio.

Anyway, the site is here: http://www.theultimatesteal.co.uk/ - I'm sorely tempted.

UPDATE: I feel that an update is required to answer all of Ben's questions/statements that he posted about in response to this on his blog.

1) I don't feel that Office Ultimate is worth the regular price that of £599.99 - £150-£200 maybe, but I feel it is not well-written enough to warrant such a high price tag. As I mentioned in the comments to this post Adobe software is feature complete enough to have a price tag this big, but not Office. Microsoft are being exceptionally greedy.

2) OpenOffice, whilst excellent for it's £0 price tag, is not as good as it's Microsoft Office conterparts. It's too buggy, too incomplete and too slow to be an 100% replacement. I've even stopped using it on my laptop because it just peeved me off too much (instead I use the excellent Bean for my word processing - I am yet to find a good free spreadsheet replacement, however).

3) Writer and Calc are, sadly, not as good as Word and Excel. Whilst everyone is irritated by the paradigm shift that has occurred with 2007, I feel that OpenOffice is far too complicated underneath to find things easily (mostly because I'm so used to where I would find it in most other office applications is somewhere completely different in OO). Also Calc has no ability to draw diagrams of overlapping data (which the developers aren't bothered in fixing any time soon). Impress is OK, but doesn't offer everything I want. Draw is totally uninspiring.

4) This deserves it's own point. Base is the most hideous and incomplete database system I have ever, EVER used. To mention it in the same breath as Access is a joke. Admittedly I haven't tried it recently, but the last time I did it (3-4 months ago) I vowed never, ever again. Access is perfectly good for most locally-based jobs - although admittedly I have been consistently irritated by the copy of Access 2000 that wasn't patched up-to-date and thus did some totally stupid things. Ben, if you can recommend a better visual database system for local use, please let me know. Likewise regarding programs better than Publisher.

5) Outlook, whilst uncaring about other mail clients, is a DAMN good calendar system - I've been using it at work over the last 4 months and it's absolutely brilliant in regards of tying everybody's calendars together. Also, it means I can actually use my phone for keeping track of my appointments (trying to juggle between iCal and my phone meant I ended up missing a test - to which I vowed never again).

6) The best version of Publisher was 97, and Microsoft have yet to get it back. The one thing that truly annoys me, however, is the horrible lack of backwards-compatibility to previous versions. However, if I need to quickly knock up a poster, I have used Publisher at Uni and found it perfectly good for the job. I've tried open-source systems in the past but they suffer from the 'GIMP effect' - too many coders, not enough designers. The thing is though, it ain't no Illustrator.

7) Groove: I can understand it being useful for group-work - not useful if you're a complete loner when it comes to projects. Also, probably useless in most situations a student will find themselves in.

and 8) OneNote would only be useful if you're crap at taking notes (else I'd just recommend typing them up straight into a word processor). However, seeing as I *AM* crap at taking notes, I'd be willing to give it a shot.

Don't get me wrong, though. I'm a huge advocate of open-sourceness. I have the utmost praise for OO. However, there is a very good reason why I said it was a good deal, and that's because it is. OpenOffice is a good program in a sub-£50 market - and very good if you can't afford Office. However, with Office at that low a price there is no option - I would recommend Office Ultimate at this cost for any student out there who uses Windows XP or Vista on a reasonable spec machine. For Linux users, no point - the compatibility with Wine just isn't there. Mac users, not certain but I understand that iWork & iLife are much better packages pound-for-pound versus Office:mac.

That, however, is the biggest stumbling block for me - no Mac option. If there was a Mac option on this 'giveaway' I'd be even more interested seeing as my lappy is one - and as such it'd be useful for doing uni work at uni. In the meantime, it looks like I'll just have to reinstall OpenOffice (or NeoOffice).

Sorry, Ben, but unfortunately I think you're wrong - and for someone that doesn't even use OpenOffice (or remotely equivalent software, let alone a GUI most of the time) I think you're not the greatest person to criticise.

For you... an uncomfortable silence.

2007-09-17T17:28:00.000+01:00

I've wanted to blog about this advert for months, but I've kept forgetting:

(Planet users: Click here to view)

I just can't describe it - all you need to know is it's an advert for the game Viva Piñata - and is one of the most unrelated adverts for a game I've ever come across.... really.

'Shut up and go to sleep!' - Ryan Adams, Nuclear

2007-09-16T01:04:00.000+01:00

...two posts in one day? I must be going mad!

However, something caught my interest whilst wandering around the net which I must mention (seeing that no-one else in the world seems to care).

E11b, a 'numbers station' in Poland sent out a huge transmission on the 5th of September - commonly it sends out sets of 33 numbers (mostly just 'null' numerical numbers, ie: 12345 67890). On that day, it sent out 204!

I wonder what's going on that demands this much traffic?

http://www.simonmason.karoo.net/page137.htm

'Disappear into mercury, there's a dark premonition that an accident will happen' - The Auteurs

2007-09-16T00:10:00.000+01:00

Colin McRae has been killed in a helicopter accident along with his son and two other people.

One of his friends was quoted as saying: "It's so ironic that he should die in a helicopter crash when he had competed and had brushed with death so many times as a rally driver."

Rest in peace.

http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/article2461339.ece

'Isn't it ironic... don'tyathink?'

2007-09-14T20:42:00.000+01:00

I find a weird sense of irony to the cover art of Hard-Fi's latest single. In a bid to be 'oh, look at us, we're so anti-establishment' they've emblazoned the slogan 'Expensive Black and White Photo of Band. Not Available' on the cover art.

However, if you visit the Hard-Fi section of iTunes, you find a great big expensive 'almost' black and white photo of the band along with several others.

Maybe it isn't ironic at all, but merely depressing that somebody was paid thousands of pounds for that tosh of a cover.

Harry Potter and the pointless wait in a queue

2007-07-22T09:24:00.000+01:00

I don't really understand fanboys. I can comprehend how some people will queue for over 6 hours to buy something that is of extremely limited stock - tickets to one-off gigs, possibly meeting someone you idolise, etc.

What I don't comprehend is people waiting over 48 hours in a queue for something that is not intending to go out of stock, where you will not get anything extra for your wait, and because you have been sleeping 'rough' for over 2 days means that you'll either not concentrate the first time you attempt to enjoy it or have to go home and sleep before you start, which negates the point of that long wait in queue because you could have just popped out and bought it the next morning.

For I have a copy of the latest Harry Potter book, for less than Waterstones was selling it, and I purchased it without going out of my way in any shape or form. Which leaves me begging the question - why camp out outside a bookshop for days where all they are holding is a midnight opening with no extra bells or whistles, when you can spend days doing far more exciting things and then wander into a shop and buy it?

Also, I do not comprehend some 'technology-savvy' users who download photos of a stolen copy of the book and then copy the whole thing out (which would take hours of their time), when they could buy a copy for about 2 hours worth of work in a exceedingly low-paid job.

On a side note though: I was a little gutted that people who camped out for a PS3 in London got £2000-worth of LCD TV. Shame that the console itself depreciates in value faster than a stone, and that I have no intention of getting one until they are almost dead in the water anyway (read: a good couple of years).

Oh dear, Tim won't be happy.

2007-07-13T18:40:00.000+01:00

Delphi has been listed in the "12 Coding Languages that Never took off" on one of the leading developer sites:

http://www.softwaredeveloper.com/features/ghosts-in-machine-071207/

Along with it are ColdFusion, VMRL, SMIL and 'brainf*ck'.

I have probably now lost my faith in UK religious leaders

2007-07-02T19:05:00.000+01:00

Floods are judgment on society, say bishops:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/01/nflood201.xml

According to senior Church of England bishops, the floods that ravaged the UK over the last month are 'God's judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society'

One bishop even said that they were due to 'laws that have undermined marriage, including the introduction of pro-gay legislation'.

This is in defiance with the fact that this ravaged land also included farmers without insurance who's crops have been destroyed, people who are ecologically positive, are heterosexual and do not live a particularly extravagant lifestyle. It's almost like saying that God smites people who have done nothing wrong.

This kind of stuff really gets my goat. It's bad enough that people in high positions can be so unethical as to spout this gibberish, but they are completely ignoring the fact that the Church of England was created as a way of breaking marriage vows by one of the most decadent and morally perverted kings in history, Henry the Eighth. I pity this arrogant, bigoted, closed minded bunch of incompetents for believing what they were saying is just and true to what their Church is grounded on.

I hope you all get flooded, you bastards.

Interesting fact of the day: Why onions make you cry

2007-07-01T18:15:00.000+01:00

Some of the stuff in onions contains sulphur. When you cut an onion, the cells which contain the sulphur are broken apart, triggering enzymes which release the sulphur as a gas.

When this suplhur reaches your eye, it reacts with the water in there to make sulphuric acid.

Which stings. Lots. In turn, this makes you cry - turning you into a big sissy.

The only proper solutions are:

1) Chill the onion - this can prevent the enzymes from going off.
2) Use a sharp knife - this can reduce the amount of damage to the cells.
3) Have good ventilation.

Ah, the wonders of Open University freebies.

This weeks irritating things:

2007-06-08T21:47:00.000+01:00

Here are two things that have got on my goat of late:

1) I realise, after a health kick, that most tins of chopped tomatoes (a fruit that already can be quite sour) come complete with citric acid making it even more sour. In a bid to find a can that didn't, we (that is, me and Chrissey) found out about Sainsbury's So Organic Chopped Tomatoes - they are about 5p more expensive than the regular own-brand ones, but are far, far more delicious - sweet and wonderful. I'm never buying citric-ised tomatoes ever again. I was going to give away the couple of tins left of regular ones, but instead I'll probably use them as weights - waste not!

2) Kelly Jones from the Stereophonics really can't write lyrics. I thought that it went all downhill on their third album 'Just Enough Education to Perform' and their pile of tripe songs 'Nice to Be Out' (essentially a list of famous places he'd been to), 'Have A Nice Day' (a song all about a surly cab driver that hates them and has a crap job, but yet still tells them to 'Have a nice day') and Vegas Two Times (about going to Vegas, spending time there and losing money, then promptly running out of time and having to go). All this to Jones' piss-poor lyrics that lack so much eloquence that it's almost like he'd stopped bothering to learn new words once he'd turned 12. Apparently, however, it started earlier than that.

Look at their second, and most popular album 'Performance and Cocktails', more importantly the track 'She takes her Clothes Off' - a lovely ditty about a 43-year old woman, former beauty pageant winner who gets into 'nude modeling', likes dancing and kills herself over either an upset guy or a beheaded guy (it doesn't define which). Apparently, her feet had also swollen up. Yes, really. All this to such 'fantastic' rhymes as "she got the nickname Portabubble Joan.
They found her dead, dead as nails at home". Hmph.

...and yet more

2007-06-02T21:21:00.000+01:00

This is a video I've wanted to post for a long time, but keep forgetting about it. Have some Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip:

(for Planet viewers, click here)

'A rush and a push and the land we stand on is ours!' - The Smiths

2007-06-01T23:09:00.000+01:00

Well, after a bit of 'Graphic Equalizer' on Vocal Presence (Boost), a smidgen of Dynamic Range Processing (Vocal Limit, -26thresh, +16db) and several Normalizations/Normalisations... the podcast is ready.

Called LOGin, it's Dan, Me and Ben ranting about current news, our loves and hates and our tea of choice.

I would say more, but it's late... just go to podcast.termisoc.org or listen to the podcast straight away here - TermiSoc_Login_01.mp3.

Comic Strip of the Day!

2007-05-16T11:23:00.000+01:00

Today, I am mostly reading:

Sequential Art:
http://www.collectedcurios.com/sequentialart.html

That is all.

'My head feels like a pig's shat in it!' - Withnail, Withnail and I

2007-05-15T12:41:00.000+01:00

Well, I've just watched 'that' Panorama video.

I can understand the premise of the programme was just to find out something about this rather secretive organisation to understand it better, but it turned out that John Sweeney was facing a brick wall. Whilst he tried to ask fairly 'hot potato' questions which were vitally important to understand it better, like 'Why do people believe you're a cult, and what are your feelings?' and instead ended up being constantly tailed by Scientologists just trying to discredit everyone he talked to and following him.

They even tried to close him down after he did what happens at most celebrity interviews: he asked the same questions to each person. For that, they pulled all the interviews saying that the BBC could not show their responses.

I also watched the Church of Scientology's 'BBC Panorama Exposed' to try and get an unbiased opinion of the situation. Turns out, the Scientology video actually suffers from that terrible fate that falls on most American-based journalism: the edit. Frustratingly, their video did exactly what it claimed the BBC were doing, which was telling non-factual information and not showing everything clear as day, unlike the Panorama report that avoided any falsehoods for the sake of fulfilment. Even their website is full of half-truths and 'spin'.

It has, however, made me immensely curious as to how those stress-test machines work.

If you're interested, the Panorama documentary is available here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/programmes/panorama/default.stm

and the Church of Scientology 'Panorama Exposed' video is here:
http://www.bbcpanorama-exposed.org/watch-the-video-documentary.php

...and the title? Oh, I finally got around to watching 'Withnail and I', and if you haven't watched it already I recommend you do.

I've acquired a shiny thing

2007-04-14T01:25:00.000+01:00

I wouldn't have bothered blogging about this, except they've given me a nice sticker to put places, so here you go:

Joost, in case you don't know, is a free TV-over-the-internet system. A bit like all these VoD things that are popping up everywhere, except all in one place and for free. It's very lovely. And also, I've just discovered the wonderous TV programme that is 'The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle... and Friends', a children's TV show in the same sort of style as 'The Pink Panther Show' (lots of shorts in one programme) yet something completely different. I'm actually impressed I've never seen it on British TV (especially when five went through that spate of showing little-shown American cartoons like George of The Jungle and the spin-off Wacky Races cartoon (Penelope Pitstop).

Anyway, you may as well try and beta it yourself - note at the moment it's only supports Windows and Intel Macs.

Edit: it appears my fairly long blarg (aka previous post) regarding the new Opera browser for Wii has wandered off somewhere. I may have to retype that at some point. Oh well.

The writing's on the wall, the ceiling, the floor... this is why you don't keep kids unattended

2007-04-04T11:42:00.000+01:00

Anyway, have George Orwell's 5 Rules for Effective Writing:

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

Warning to the wise

2007-04-02T00:07:00.000+01:00

There appears to be a rather nasty bug in Vista which, if viewed using Internet Explorer or Vista Mail, can kill your computer.

Apparently, it's a problem in the Animated Cursors system which, if a malicious animated cursor is viewed, can send Vista into a constant crashing state.

More details here:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-Vista-Suicide-Courtesy-of-McAfee-50761.shtml

and now you know.

'Verrrry interesting.... not very funny, but verrrry interesting.'

2007-03-30T09:37:00.000+01:00

Tis part 2 of 'random funny things'.

Garfield with the speech bubbles removed.

Yes, I know it's old, but I found it in my bookmarks.

'Start looking at The Object... I want you to keep looking at The Object...'

2007-03-29T11:51:00.000+01:00

I have a sudden compulsion to do a 'something funny I found' post.

So I shall:

Note: Interestingly, Planet doesn't support Youtube embeds, so you'll have to go to my blog to see it or click here

Breaking news - PS3's backwards compatibility funked!

2007-02-23T15:16:00.000Z

Well, this is just bleeding typical. Sony are having fun kicking the dog that is Europe, but now apparently (according to the press document) the PlayStation3 will only play a 'limited selection of PS2 games' due to various cost-saving issues on the part of Sony where the EU consoles have had a few of the chips removed - in case you didn't know, the PS3 costs over £100 more to manufacture than they are selling it at. Apparently, this is due to be a whole lot worse than in the US & Japan, where 98% of games work perfectly (after several firmware upgrades due to shoddy graphics).

This is on top of the £425 price tag, delayed release and all the other crap that's wrong with the system.

I think I shall wait until Sony goes bust before I buy one (ooh, PS3 for only £29 if I wait 3 years? I'll buy it!)

More info at Kotaku.com.

'Hate to say I told you so, alright? Do believe I told you so, and it's all over you know...'

2007-02-23T12:27:00.000Z

Well, I can hardly say I'm surprised - The Pirate Bay Abandons plans for a sovereign nation. Reasons stated include potentially poor bandwidth limit and also that they are happy and love Sweden. In conclusion, after taking everybody's money, their reason for starting this venture was purely to name a country 'The Pirate Bay' and see it on Google Maps.

I can hardly say I'm shocked by this news. Only Monday I was discussing with Gemma and Co. about the pluses and minuses of both their plans for a nation and the general ethos of The Pirate Bay itself. I do have a deep concern that a storm may come at some point - possibly a change in Swedish law - that means they are no longer protected. It may have been wise to jump ship to another country, but I feel it isn't the answer when this all (potentially) breaks. The corporate world doesn't love The Pirate Bay, sadly.

Anyway, I've been feeling a touch better today - I even attended a tutorial, unlike yesterday - and hope to be well by the time Chrissey's M&D come round on Sunday. I miss my own parents. I want to call them, but in the evenings I get wrapped up in stuff and so I miss the opportunity. *sigh*

A few days ago I gave my Sega Saturn a disassemble-and-clean. It was an absolute state inside due to the previous owner's apparently 40-a-day smoking habit and house full of spiders (I don't know this for certain, of course). I took a load of pictures - as you do - so I may put them up at some point. All I know is that an arcade-perfect conversion of Out Run is very addictive!

On Wednesday we went to see Hot Fuzz, the new action-comedy from Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright (Spaced & Shaun of the Dead). And damn, is it funny. Seriously, we watched it and will probably go and watch it again. Be prepared though, it does have a few grizzly bits. Most definitely 5 stars.

'Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?' 'Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.'

2007-02-22T13:21:00.000Z

Wow, two posts within a week? That's pretty damn shocking, I can tell you. It's mostly because I feel cobblers and yet am wide awake and thus see no point lying in bed all day. I'm feeling a bit better, so thanks for asking. Oh, you didn't? Well, screw you!

Anyway, I think I fancy writing a bit of a thing about me and Chrissey's trip to London last week to see "Game On", a videogaming exhibition covering everything from the 'brown box' up to the Wii & PS3. It is running until the 25th of February at the Science Museum.

The usual thing happened: booked tickets, went to train station, missed train by 3 minutes, found we'd forgotten railcards, got railcards, went back to train station, caught train an hour later, train conductor didn't ask to see railcard - that kind of thing.

The exhibition itself is something akin to a combination of a museum (everything in little plastic boxes with little cards giving you a description) and an arcade (because you got to play on nearly all of them!)

They had an exhaustive list of computers, arcade machines and consoles, including several I'd heard about but never seen (for example: the PC Engine, the FM Towns, the Nintendo Famicom, etc. Mostly the Japanese consoles). Also, they had every single genre of game there - RPG, Strategy, Beat-em-up, Shoot-em-up, Text Adventure, you name it!

Sounds fun, eh? Especially for us two.

...but me and Chrissey were both disappointed. Why? Because it was equally lacking things we felt were important.

They had all these games, but there was no real description of why they were so important to the development of computer games overall.
They had a real Galaxian cabinet, but didn't go to the effort of telling you that it was the first arcade machine to use colour.
They had 'Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy' but didn't mention how important Infocom (it's developers) were to adventure gaming.

There was a few sections with information on, but they were fairly broad reaching, very much written for a casual gamer, and not very informative (a section about the history of Nintendo was squeezed onto a piece of card the size of a DVD case). Take into account that many of the visitors were mid-thirties white men going 'Oh wow! I remember one of these!' and you realise that trying to target kids with lots of games and very little content isn't really going to work.

We actually encountered a few kids in the ticket queue and there was a slideshow on a TV outside the exhibit:

Kid: 'Oh! A GameCube - that's so old! That's so lame.'
Chrissey: 'Do you realise you're going to an exhibit about old and retro games? You're going to be so disappointed!'

It was more depressing when Chrissey turned to me afterwards and said 'I learnt more from what you were saying than the actual exhibit'.

Another problem was the fact that there was so many games that as you were playing you felt time ticking away from you, and thus didn't really get a feel for any of them. Games aren't really designed for such short-handedness.

Also, I mentioned the Wii and the PS3 - you could only play on them if you had a special ticket. Shockingly, the queue for the Wii was bigger. I did happen to watch someone playing Motorstorm on the PS3, it actually looks fairly impressive - I think the X360 does have a fight on it's hands, albeit a pointless one. The PS3 *is* the more powerful console, but noting the PS2 is the least powerful and the most popular, I think it'll be the exclusives that make a console, and the X360 has a whole lot of them. (On a side note, the price of a X360 Core edition is £149 at Play.com - the PS3 is retailing in March for £425)

Finally, and most frustratingly (this is Chrissey pointing this one out too), it was laid out completely wrong. As you may know, Chrissey has got a degree in Archaeology and spent a lot of time working in the layout of exhibitions. The whole thing is so badly done. The way they have sectioned the whole thing is in the different 'types' of games - kids games, strategy, platformers and the like, all in their different sections. Except the sections weren't very well marked out at all, and I'd bet you most people wouldn't have noticed. Also, unless I'm wrong, wouldn't it have been sensible to, say, have some sort of timeline where you start at the early consoles and games and went up to the latest and greatest. It was truly badly horrifically laid out, and after wandering back and forth for our alloted time we couldn't wait to leave, sadly.

Maybe it was just we knew too much in the field (though most of my knowledge comes from Retro Gamer). Maybe this wasn't the exhibit we hoped for. Maybe the fact that we actually encountered this exhibit in 2002 whilst on our gap holiday (and decided to skip it) and have been waiting until it came back to the UK to see it has given it a status it could never live up to made it disappointing. Or maybe it was the fact I wanted a sodding guidebook to tell me anything about why these games were here would have made our trip complete.

Anyway, after traipsing around for a couple of hours after and giving up because everything's so flaming expensive, we came home.

Anyway, if my rant hasn't put you off - the tickets for the event are timed (you get 1 and a half hours in the exhibit, which kind of makes sense due to popularity and the willingness for some to never leave if given the chance) and are available on the Science Museum website.

Today, I became a Fonero...

2007-02-19T15:41:00.000Z

Well, if you remember a few weeks ago Skippy told everyone about how to get a free Wireless Router/AP via a company called FON - and have a combined private network and public network!

Well, mine just magically appeared in the corridor this afternoon. I do say magically as I was expecting someone to ring the doorbell or something, but it just 'turned up' in the hall. *shrug*

Anyway, after about 20 minutes or so of 'configuring' - that is, 2 minutes plugging it in and 18 minutes trying to figure out a new name and password - I now have a wireless connection. Hurrah!

And... shockingly enough... it's quite good.

In the package (which was nicely boxed up) you get:
* A nice 54b/g combined router in white, running OpenWrt (apparently) and with support for a multitude of encryption methods, built in DHCP etc. etc.
* Plug (obviously)
* uberthin white network cable
* Full-colour Quick Installation Guide (in 4 languages)
* Documentation CD (annoyingly, only works properly in Windows - but it's mostly PDFs)
* A couple of FON stickers

Set-up was quite easy, just a case of plugging it in and turning it on - it was set up correctly by default. Also, as I found out, you can set how much bandwidth other FON users can suck. Another slight annoyance is that they tell you in the QIG that you have to use the remote web site for all the setting up, when in fact the case is that you can alter settings locally too - and it took a little digging to find out the username and password for it. But hey, it didn't take too much effort. And it basically has all the features you'd expect from a wireless router of the day: port forwarding, privacy settings, b/g controls, etc. etc. And it's small, white, shiny and natty too!

One thing that did baffle me was the user classification system. By default, you are classed as an Alien on the FON website. This means you can get onto the internet via any FON router you encounter, but you have to pay a set figure per day for that. This applies to anyone who doesn't have a FON router and thus isn't really helping out the community.

When you get a router you have two options: you can be a Linus (who gives away internet for free and gets free internet wherever they roam - any money earned goes back into giving away more routers), or a Bill (who doesn't get free roaming, but does get to snag 50% of the money that any Aliens spend using their router). Simple, eh?

I very much like the way the 'stub' aerial can be switched for something with a bit more 'oomph' as it has a generic fitting.

Anyway, I'm off to enjoy being wireless. Bye for now.

Oh, I almost forgot! If Fon are still celebrating their first birthday, you can get your free router from: http://www.fon.com/1yearold/ - else if anyone's interested I have a free invitation for a free one! If you can't be bothered with asking, FON routers are available for £20ish. And, if you can't be bothered to get a router (and you have a Linksys or Buffalo router already) you might be able to install the FON firmware and enjoy the benefits of being a Fonero!

And, finally, the reason why I haven't blogged recently is that 'New' Blogger is still a little buggy, and the Dashboard Widget I usually use is up the spout (sigh).

"Well, don't be sad... 'cos 2 out of 3 ain't bad..."

2007-02-08T13:32:00.000Z

...or so said my iPod about 5 minutes before my Java test. But what does it know? 78% is better than 2 out of 3!

Yes, I have succumbed to owning one of those terrible beasties - trend-setting and all that. At least I don't use the pack-in earbuds just yet, I like my discreteness. Anyway, that was one of the multiple prezzies I got for my birthday on Sunday (thanks M&D!).

Also in my pile of stuff:
* The Feeling - 12 Stops and Home
* NiGHTS Into Dreams... (Saturn)
* The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (NGC) + NGC-GBA cable
* Wii Play + Controller (Wii, obviously)

Also, £20 from my Aunt Susan & Uncle Michael, so thanks to them too.

Also, we tried out the Baba Indian Restaurant on Bretonside. If you know me, I (and the bunch) go to The Ganges across the road (mostly because *certain people* think it's cheaper because it's half price, but it's also twice as expensive). Go there, it's goooooo-oood (only if you're not sad enough to only eat the same curry. every. single. time.), and at £20 a head (including 2 bottles of beer each), you can't really complain.

Anyway, I'll blog about Frag Fests and birthday cakes and so on soon. Watch the skies!

Cake or biscuit?

2007-02-07T16:45:00.000Z

A few small things of note:

1) There was a LAN Party on Saturday, I hope to blog about it soon.
2) I had a birthday on Sunday, M&D visited, I hope to blog about it soon.
3) Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to people about DRM and the future of music (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/), I'll likely comment on it soon, although it's well worth a read.
4) Jaffa Cakes, when left as an open packet in a cupboard for a couple of months, turn into biscuits. I rest my case.

'Let them know you realise that life moves fast, it's hard to make the good things last...'

2006-12-20T10:22:00.000Z

My grandfather died on Sunday. He was 90 (which, as my father keeps telling me, is a ripe old age).

It's funny how life goes. One night you're laughing and having fun with your friends. The next night you're a wreck, confused and infuriated at the loss of a loved one. Even odder was the way that I sent him a card the night before, and was discussing with Chrissey what to get him for Christmas.

It's odd... I feel kind of numb to the whole situation now. I'm sure that, come January when we say our goodbyes, I'll be falling apart. I'm just glad that the whole family got together in the summer to celebrate his birthday.

In the end, though, he had a very good life and I just want to thank him for being a great granddad. Ta.

Bad Optical Illusions

2006-12-03T00:45:00.000Z

There's something definitely wrong with these illusions. Can you see them?

#1 - Which line is longer, the top line or the bottom line?

#2 - Look at the pink lines - do they appear curved?

#3 - How many black dots can you see?

#4 - Look carefully at the centre of the circle.
Can you see Jesus?

#5 - "The Impossible Box"

#6 - Look carefully at this image.
Can you see a shape between the Pacmen?

Courtesy of KingSuperSpecial of B3ta.

How to waste a bucket of time

2006-12-02T15:35:00.000Z

Did you know that most of the time on the web is wasted trying to hunt down something you've seen before and can't remember for the life of you remember what it's called?

I've certainly found that out over the past 40 minutes. Whilst taking a break from my horribly busy work schedule, I decided that I would spend one of my 'free iTunes song' vouchers on something. I had a browse, but couldn't find anything in particular I wanted.

Then, I remembered about a french song I heard on the radio months ago, and remembered even more vividly that I'd watched the incredibly weird video for it, involving some blue wool crawling around and trying desperately to knit round the singer until she was cocooned in it. So, I started Googling.

I tried:
music video blue string
music video "blue wool" jumper
french singer blue jumper
music video entangled in blue wool
even leading up to:
"music video" blue wool crawling around knitting a sweater which she becomes trapped in

Really.

After lots of jumping around angrily and not wanting to go back to work until I found it, I realised that I'd seen it on the web site Video-C. However, the search engine on their site really, really sucks. Seriously. It'll tell you a couple of popular videos, but unless you know the exact name of the artist you're looking for, you're screwed.

It didn't occur to me that the easiest way would be to go back to Google and type: french site:video-c.co.uk for another 10 minutes because, seeing as it was a British site, it was unlikely to use the term 'french' that often. After scouring lots and lots of pages of search results I spotted it, played it, and then I realised that the song was actually fairly pap (I'd listened to it on loop at some point and appear to be sick to death of it - don't ask).

Oh well. In case, like me, you were looking for a music video involving a french female singer and lots of crawling about blue wool, here's Camille - Ta Douleur.

Right, back to work.

UPDATE: On review, it's not *that* pap, but I don't really want to buy it as much as I probably used to. Also, I spent my iTunes voucher on Regina Spektor's "On The Radio" instead. Here's the video.

All our representatives are busy...

2006-10-11T15:14:00.000+01:00

Hold music on the British Gas hotline: 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World' by Tears for Fears.

Roundabout-sort-of-way

2006-09-30T01:25:00.000+01:00

Here's a description I saw for a recent Windows Update:

'A problem has been identified in Filter Manager that can prevent you from installing updates from Windows update. You can help protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.'

Right, so what would you do if your computer actually suffered from this bug? Surely if you can't install the update to correct the fault due to the fault, so you'd have to install the Windows Update to fix it. But in turn you couldn't install the update due to the fault, etc.

My head hurts now.

In other news, me and Chrissey have moved in to our new pad high up above the town (in a literal sense). She's popped home for the weekend (something I will be doing tomorrow), and she picked exactly the right day, as about 9pm this evening the electricity meter - which I note we're having replaced soon - ran out of credit whilst I was cooking me dinner. Cue me fumbling around for the charge key using my phone as a light, removing aforementioned dinner from oven, losing charge key on counter, finding charge key underneath said dinner, wandering around Mutley Plain for a shop with a WORKING PayPoint machine, charging key up twice for fear that the value on the meter was below 'emergency money', wandering back to find no lightbulb above the electricity meter - forcing me to use afforemented mobile as light, spending 5 minutes fiddling with the meter as the key failed to work, and eventually - after 9 or 10 attempts - getting the accursed key to work and thus my electricity to come on again. The whole thing took over half an hour, by which time my dinner had gone cold and I had to heat it all over again. Hopefully £10 will last us until we get the sodding thing replaced with a regular meter.

I've just downloaded a DVD of Vista after recieving my key from Microsoft (cue much crucifixing of fingers and so on), but decided not to install it as my partitions need sorting. Plus, I don't want to break GRUB again.

Some wise words from Banksy

2006-09-03T21:40:00.000+01:00

"People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access."

Severence unpaid

2006-09-03T18:09:00.000+01:00

A few days back, I happened to catch Severence with a group of friends. I didn't intend to see it, but my cinema-working friend had blagged us some free tickets so I thought it would be worth a shot.

Essentially it's a comedy horror (more comedy than horror: I would probably say even more than Shaun of The Dead which always makes me feel depressed at the end). The storyline is about a group of office workers who, after having a few problems with a coach driver who doesn't speak English and a manager who doesn't speak Hungarian, get stranded in the middle of nowhere. Apart from their accomodation being a bit run down, they just can't get along with each other. But that's the least of their worries after they start seeing people lurking in the forest.

I wasn't really expecting to enjoy this (seeing as I was being dragged along by a horror obsessive) but I found it was well worth a watch. 4 stars.

In other news: I had some summer work to complete for Media Arts (despite me changing over to Computing). After 3 or 4 weeks of sitting in my office at home, I finally got it done and sent off. Hopefully, it'll break the 40% boundary so I can start my Uni life proper.

Finally, I found out that the track featured on the Orange animal package adverts (you know, the one that goes 'yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. I need an empire to overthrow') is by a bloke calling himself 'Final Fantasy' and named the track 'Adventure.exe' (taken from the album 'Final Fantasy has a good home'). He has also made an album called 'He Poos Clouds' all about the 'eight schools of magic in Dungeons & Dragons' and named after a song about being sexually attracted to Link from Zelda. Riiiiiight.

I'm moving down to Plymouth with my girly in 2 weeks, so hopefully everything will be back to normal by then. See you later!

Again, more proof online tests are cobblers

2006-09-02T01:40:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks back I took a geekiness test and a nerdiness test (just because everyone else in TermiSoc was taking them).

I scored 100% on Geekiness, thus making me a Geek God.
I scored 90-something% on Nerdiness, making me a Nerd God.

So.... for comparison I found a Loser test. And the results are:

So I'm 100% Geek, but rated 20% loser - thus 'Totally Cool Geek God'. I need to get a badge printed up.

Oh, for the love of...

2006-08-08T22:45:00.000+01:00

So, in TermiSoc tradition, a contest was waged:

So...

and

To be honest, this probably conludes that these two tests are a load of crap.

hmm... though I am the President of the University's Computing Society, who spent a lot of time thinking of new ways to make us sound less geeky and nerdy....

/me buys slide rule and lab coat.

Quality parenting, that

2006-05-30T22:27:00.000+01:00

To the woman parked in a silver Vauxhall Astra outside a Spar in Plymouth: playing Kelis' 'Caught Out There (I Hate You So Much Right Now)' at high volume with your little kids slumped in the back covering their ears and looking unhappy - that does not count as responsible parenting, no matter how much designer clothing you are wearing.

What was behind Apple & Intel? - a short 'discussion'

2006-05-30T01:07:00.000+01:00

So, as everyone knows, or at least everyone relating to IT knows, Apple have almost completed their switch from PowerPC-based chips to x86 (except for the PowerMac, which is likely to be known as the Mac Pro come switchover judging by their recent trademarking, and the XServe). The big question is why *did* they switch over?

The official Apple line for the switchover last year was down to heat and power consumption. Lots of heat and power consumption. The big reasoning behind why the iBook and PowerBook stayed at G4 whilst the Power Mac was a G5 (and had the potential to go higher) was because the amount of power required to run it and the amount of heat given off meant that it was virtually impossible without running out of battery too quickly to be to Apple standards. As I sit here, I can see that my iBook G4 1.33 has a 45W power supply. It has been rumoured that to run a G5 chip in an iBook would have required a double-size power brick (akin to the size of the XBox360's PSU) The Intel Core Duo chip was a more powerful chip and gave off less heat per Mhz combined with Watt per Mhz. Also, it's widely accepted that Apple had been developing an X86-based version of both Darwin (Apple's kernel) and Quartz (the window manager) for at least a donkey or two before they announced a Mac that supported them.

Also, as recently proved by Boot Camp, there was also an ulterior motive of Apple's to tread on Dell's toes and try and take over the PC business market, as the big problem with Apple users is that they couldn't efficiently use Windows software with PowerPC chips. Even worse, when the x86 Macs came along, it turned out the Windows bootstrap was COMPLETELY incompatible due to the new standard of bootloader used by Macs (called EFI, it isn't important what it stands for). Many people think that Apple and Microsoft are competitors, but that is absolute bullhonky. Microsoft is a software developer, Apple is a hardware developer. Yes MacOS feels like a competitor to Windows, but without some serious code hacking doesn't "do" PC. For the greater majority, the only way to get MacOS on a machine is to buy a Mac. By giving Macs an x86 core, they opened up a market for users to have one computer running both operating systems rather than having to switch over all the time.

The big question is: was that the only reason for Apple's decision?

Apple's announcement last year shocked more than a few: big-time Mac developer Adobe have still yet to make Universal binaries for their major product Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.). The official release date is claimed to be around the 'second quarter of 2007'. It appears that they were more than a little taken aback by this move to Intel, which may show a possible rush job by Apple on the idea. Because of such a delay in this particular product, it may well be the reason why the Mac Pro is still yet to materialise. It's sounds like bad planning on the part of Apple, waiting on the Crusoe chip? Possibly, but there may be more behind the choice than meets the eye.

Say Apple wanted to increase it's product base. For years, Apple have been buying out companies and rebranding them. Take for example Logic. Highly successful audio editing and mixing product produced by EMagic which grew out of it's Atari ST roots onto Macs in the 90s, and bought out in 2002 by Apple. Final Cut Pro, a piece of software built by the creators of Adobe Premiere for Macromedia. Macromedia change directions, Apple buys product instead. Topple Adobe's previously steady market, putting Apple in the leagues of Avid (one of the biggest names in NLE software). Say Apple wanted to buy Adobe. Makes sense, seeing Adobe is one of the biggest names in Mac software development. However, Adobe is currently buying out reasonably big fish (it's last merger was with the aforementioned Macromedia) and thus have a lot of capital to throw around. They wouldn't want to be bought out with the price of stock they must have. However, say you wanted to reduce the cost of that stock. The best way would be to do something that frightens the traders, like say: putting the codebase to one of the most major pieces of software they sell on hold whilst all the programmers rewrite it. If Apple get the Mac Pro out the door before Adobe have a chance to complete their code crossover, and maybe release a product that does much of what Adobe's products do... Apple may end up rebranding Photoshop, and possibly tieing it to their platform much like they did with Final Cut. You can sense there is conflict between the two. Take Apple's Aperture vs. Adobe's upcoming Lightroom. Shake vs. After Effects. Soundtrack Pro vs. Audition (technically, Audition was another 'off the shelf' buyout by Adobe). Adobe are trying to hold onto the PC share, which is probably the best idea for Adobe at this current time. It's fairly unlikely that Apple would buy out Adobe entirely, but for buying more stock in a company that is highly ranked the time may be now while they're still getting their boots on.

There have been a few that have claimed that Apple's move to x86 was to create a better chance of cross-compatibility with Windows codebases. Essentially, that's again a load of bullhonky. Sure, it's now running on the same chips as Windows boxes, but it's a bit like saying you can fit bits of sand buggy in your car because it's got four wheels. The closest comparison to OSX is either BSD or Linux, BSD being the closer of the two. Last time I checked, there wasn't a whole load of consumer products for BSD. Combined with the fact that any software has to run in the X11 compatibility layer without major changes makes the whole idea an insignificant point in the grand scheme of things, and when you've got people like Sun claiming that the X11 version of OpenOffice for Mac should be made the official port because 'people don't mind it running like that' I think there's unlikely to be a lot of new ports of software just because the chip has changed.

An interesting issue that has sprung out of the rollout of the change was Intel's reaction to Apple's advertising of the Intel iMac. If you've forgotten, the voiceover for the new ad went something like: "For years, the Intel chip has been trapped inside PCs. Inside dull little boxes, dutifully doing dull little tasks when it could have been doing so much more".... and so on. This strategy was interesting. It felt almost like putting a proverbial nail in both Intel and Dell at the same time, combined with Intel's CEO turning up in that 'bunny suit'. The first thing that noticeably happened was Dell stopped supporting Intel all the way and switched it's higher-end products to AMD. Admittedly, it took a little time for this to happen (well, it would do with the amount of production and R&D they do each day), but they are now changing over. The situation could have been a lot worse, but Intel took the right decision in getting the wording of later versions of the Apple ad changed, minimising damage. Also during this time Intel were criticised for their 'high temperature output and high power consumption' according to many a data server owner. What followed was more servers with AMD chips inside. This also puts a bit of an odd twist on the reasoning behind Apple's move to Intel. If AMD are lauded for their lower consumption and lower heat per Mhz, then why go with Intel? Another big debacle no-one appears to be talking about is that the PowerMac has a 64-bit option, yet so far we've seen only 32-bit chips from Intel Macs. AMD is also famous for being the first with the x86_64 (AMD64) instruction set, which Intel has been forced to copy as they didn't get their chip out the door. Noting also that adding an Intel chip has hiked the price of a Mac, yet AMD chips tend to be lower cost....

May there be a possibility that Apple is pulling the wool over Intel's eyes? Maybe a brand change is on the cards, but by 'making' Dell (a former major buyer of Intel chips) and many other manufacturers switch to AMD, by the debacle regarding power and heat, and so on, if Apple pulled out of a deal with Intel and switched to AMD - that may well kill Intel off. To be honest, this idea is more than unlikely, but it may well mean lower cost chips from Intel.... we hope. The more likely reasoning behind a choice in Intel was purely that they could offer the product in high demand that other manufacturers couldn't.

Another interesting twist in the tail in the Apple-Intel story is that of PA Semi, a chip start-up that is set to produce high-performance, low-power PowerPC chips in 2007 (the first chip to go into testing this year is a 7W 2Ghz dual core in Autumn 2006. As a comparison, Apple's Core Duo runs at around 21-25W). This company was in talks for months before, all of a sudden, Apple decided to go with Intel chips. This came as a shock to PA Semi as they thought the deal was all but signed. There has been tossed up the thought that Apple couldn't wait that long for a chip, but maybe all is not over between Apple and them. It's does seem a little madness, changing your complete codebase instead of waiting that little bit longer, but more likely than not it wasn't just a decision of timeframe. I would have thought that waiting until 2007 before changing manufacturers would have been the worst idea on the cards, because it would mean their product line would have stagnated by now.

It does seem a little bit of a shame that Macs have essentially becoming expensive PCs running proprietary software, but in the end people buy an Apple for an Apple. High build quality, robust OS (though to say it's not without it's faults, but then again it would be impossible to build a one-size fits all system. Why do you think there are so many Linux distros?). To be honest, I would use my Apple more if it had a bit more brunt behind it. Even with a gig of RAM it still grinds to a halt on websites (Sports Relief being a perfect example), so my 3 year old £700 2800+ PC is still my weapon of choice. However, I have often used my laptop over my PC without need to, so obviously it has some attracting power to it!

Finally, a word on the whine. People have complained about the whining sound MacBook Pros make when they get toasty and the fan turns on. Unfortunately, I have to point this out to you. My iBook G4 makes whining sounds whenever it gets too hot, especially when I'm using it sitting on my bed (a fantastic source of poor airflow and heat absorption). It's a problem no-one who's used G4-based laptops have mentioned. Do you know why? Because it's such a rare occasion when it happens that most Mac owners think 'ooh, it's getting a little toasty' and move it onto a desk until it's cooled down. Unfortunately, the Intel chip has not solved the problem of heat, that whiny fan is coming on during normal use, and THAT'S the problem. Blame that new chip, because Apple's cooling has not changed.

Now, I'm not saying here that the future of Apple is to switch to AMD chips, buy out Adobe, kill off Dell and Intel, and take on global domination. That wasn't the point of arguing these in any particular direction. I'm more saying that Apple is in a very VERY strong position from a hardware and software standpoint. They've got more bargaining chips to play with than they've probably had since 1984 (I can almost hear a bunch of Mac fanboys now clammering to type 'What about such and such', or 'haven't you forgotten this and that?'). Looking at current market share, I know that it's gone down in the years that have passed, but there is a blatent reason for that. Apple is just one manufacturer vs. every PC manufacturer and builder out there. It would be tough for a gain in interest, especially in comparison to the Mac Clone era of the early 90s which hiked the market share tenfold. The only thing stopping them from regaining their market is price. Apple's products are not cheap, but with the position they are in, they are sure to be able to cut their costs. This may well mean even more cost cuts on the PC market (though it's up to you whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing).

So, at the end of the day, Apple is becoming the biggest name in hardware, and that's got to be good for those on both sides of the fence (well, except maybe IBM's chip division, but they're still smiling when it comes to consoles!).

Someone doesn't want you to read this

2006-05-29T04:55:00.000+01:00

I am supporting Amnesty International UK in a scheme called Irrepressible, a call for information freedom on the net. You should too.

Just click the banner for more information, or reload this page to read another bit of information that has been censored on the internet.

Oh dear lord!

2006-05-10T09:12:00.000+01:00

Right, I've *finally* completed the last piece of coursework for this year. Hurrah!

Now I've just got to stick the bits needing to be stuck into my workbook, stick the work in a folder, stick the folder in the office, stick the office in the ground, stick the ground on the Earth, stick the Earth in a higher orbit, stick the higher orbit in a greater plane of existance, and stick existance on the wall next to my Back To The Future poster.

Oh, and then go see Chrissey. :)

We Start Fires in the rain!

2006-03-30T20:09:00.000+01:00

We Start Fires are a new(ish) band from Darlington who sound like Elastica and have a line up very similar to Elastica (2 female guitarists, 1 female bassist, 1 male drummer).

But don't let that stop you from enjoying them like a new band. They do sound very very good, they are wholly positive and (hopefully) they won't lose their freedom when they get signed to a bigun agency. I'm sure that the NME are probably wetting themselves in anticipation of a major record deal just to ditch them in 6 months for some hip new unsigned band.

But no worries. They're doing very well, I hope to see them in Bristol and may well buy them up when the opportunity comes.

Oh, and the reference? I happened to be watching their SXSW appearance on BBC2's The Culture Show. Outdoor show, heavy downpour, you get the drift.

Meanwhile, I've got a fancy new feature on me lappytop. It's a Blogger widget. Horray for blogging on demand!

Suprise! You are a dependant obsessive-compulsive!

2005-12-02T03:42:00.000Z

Decided to take one of those silly personality tests online, and here are the results:

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Personality Disorder:	Low
Schizoid Personality Disorder:	Low
Schizotypal Personality Disorder:	Low
Antisocial Personality Disorder:	Low
Borderline Personality Disorder:	Low
Histrionic Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Narcissistic Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Avoidant Personality Disorder:	Low
Dependent Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	Moderate
-- Take the Personality Disorder Test -- -- Personality Disorder Info --

I'm suprised, myself. Does everyone else see me as a narissistic histrionic dependant obsessive-compulsive?

Personally, I feel definitely dependant on occasion. But such is life.

The light you see at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of a fast approaching train

2005-11-08T01:52:00.000Z

Overhearing a conversation on a train yesterday:

'My brother is a right stoner. The other day, I hear he's started rolling-up with Trill. You know, the budgie seed. Apparently, someone told him that there are marujuana seeds in it, so now everytime he rolls up, he sticks some Trill in there...'

Are kids getting dumber these days, or is it my imagination?

'Sometimes you gorra turn it off and you gotta walk away, and then sometimes you gotta say this is gonna be the day.' Grandaddy - Pull The Curtains

2005-10-22T07:42:00.000+01:00

Hello to everyone once more. Sorry it's taken me nearly half a year to write this post, but you have to understand how much you miss when you don't have broadband at home. Anyway, how are you? I hope you're keeping well. I'm OK, apart from falling under the deadly virus that is Fresher's Flu (the result of what happens when you draw people from all across the world to enjoy other culture's germs). Chris (housemate and all-round lovely musician-type person) said to me recently that it won't be bird flu that'll kill us all, it'll be migrating students...

So yes, the reason why I appear to be up so early on a Saturday morning is all down to a book; a book I've been avidly reading since I got it. It's 'Yes Man' by Danny Wallace, a recount of what happens if, after saying no to far too many things, you suddenly decide to say Yes. To everything. And anything. No... really. How else would you explain taking hallucinagenic drugs, purchasing a Amazing Penis Patch via e-mail, and almost getting beaten up for staring at somebody's girlfriend? And so the reason why I am up at 6am is all down to not being able to put it down for the last third of the book. I'm not going to recount the best stories from it, or tell you gags, or anything. I don't need to. Just read the blurb (and probably ignore the price tag) and then buy it. Simple as that. It is by far the best book I've read in the whole year. 10 stars out of 5, 100 out of 50. This book is just incredible. Please please please buy it, or if you can't afford it, find a friend, a library, or an unsuspecting Japanese tourist to borrow it off of.

There is a very good reason why I'm smothering this book in praise though, because it's made me think. I don't know how, but in the past few months I've grown sarcastic and negative about life. Possibly not my own life, but maybe giving sneering comments to anything or anyone I have a say about. If you have been in contact with any of my negative comments, I apologise. The last year at Uni has really put a strain on my mental wellbeing (due to discussions about my own personal failings I don't particularly need to get into right now), and I actually felt myself going a little uncontrolled in my mind, like I was starting to break down. Reading my first blog posts, I can really see that now (especially that one about feeling the sickness coming, or something like that). However, Danny's mentality to positiveness has made me realise that I am no longer the positive spirit I was in '03. I too should be saying yes to more things. I don't know whether that's possible though, because being positive also adds an air of 'free-spiritedness' to my life which I cannot possess in most cases, because that leads back to the dark place of non-timekeeping which seems to float around me like one of those dark clouds which has an A4 sheet sellotaped to it with 'MISERY' written on in fat permanent marker. They are not good clouds. Plus, after failing to organise TermiSoc socials properly on two occasions, I feel that there are far too many geeks in this world who go with the flow and so are not useful when asking "What do you want to do now?"

Oh, I'll figure it out, but I've just got to not hold myself back. Except if it involves over £1000 in cash to complete. Then I really should say no.

Anyway, life appears to be going a lot more smoothly, though I am a little shocked that already I have proper marked coursework to be handed in in less than two weeks. Where does all the time go? And, more importantly, WHY does all the time go? I mean, why is it so easy to lose time down the sofa as if it was loose change in a pair of stupidly loose trousers. You know the pair. Yes, the ones you hide behind the jumpers, to pretend you haven't got them. No, not the crushed purple suede ones. Yes, them shiny ones your mum thought would look good, so bought them for £4.99 when she went out shopping. Without your consent. The same time she bought that knitted wool cardigan, despite her knowing you hate wool because it makes you itch.

Actually, a better metaphor would be: Why is that time is like change? You only have it in the small denominations, because you keep spending the big coins on burgers so when you get to the till of life and society, you find you've only got the tupenny bits, and there's always a big queue behind you, pushing and shoving you to get a move on because there's not enough cashiers on staff at the moment, and you don't feel you have time to count out your coppers, and they're pushing you and shouting and complaining and the cashier is tutting at you and you panic and run out the store leaving your purchases behind in the blind confusion! Or something.

Anyway, I suppose I'd better have some breakfast, I feel the sun is coming up and so I should make the most of my day. Bye for now!

Everything will be alright in the morning

2005-10-14T13:20:00.000+01:00

Hurrah! After a fatal hard-drive crash on the server that hosts all the images for this blog, everything's back on and alive again.

I'll be blogging again soon!

"Warning: Product may contain small parts and functional sharp points." - Taken from Pizza Hut packaging

2005-05-09T09:00:00.000+01:00

Hello hello hello to another rant, this time (hopefully) with full colour pictures! Why? To make my point more clear and to break up my long chats about randomness, giving people a better link to what I'm talking about.

Quite a lot has happened since I last put fingers to keyboard (which now has no feet due to a freak keyboard moving accident ie: I have no idea where the foot has gone), so let's play catch-up!

Right, so I haven't told you about anything since I got back.... hmmm..... This is a little difficult then, so I'll try to be as brief as possible. First up, I realise I missed out a film I'd seen before I returned to uni. Me and Chrissey saw Hitch, that new comedic-romance film starring Will Smith.

Basically, it tells the story of Alex Hitchens (played by Smith), a 'love' consultant who tries to teach men how to get on the first rung of the ladder of a relationship. Trouble is when he falls for gossip columnist Sara (played by Eva Mendes), he can't get any higher off the first rung without falling off and having to start again. As they say in the business, hilarity ensues. To be honest, I was very impressed by this film. I expected a slushy bout of nonsense, and what I got was a genuinely funny film. I think this is the first role I've seen Will Smith play where he's just playing himself for a very long time (possibly even his days as The Fresh Prince). It's almost like he's acting the side of him that makes his music; smooth, cool and funky.

I think that this is a great film for taking your gal out to, as it contains enough amusement so you both enjoy it, but enough slushiness to get some good ol' fashioned cuddling. 4 stars.

Anyway, just recapping what's happened since my last post. Well, I got my personal story handed in on time, had a disasterous piece for an art exhibition (just to explain why: nothing went right, and it downgraded from a full sized art piece with built-in display and jazziness to just another video being displayed on a big projector. At some point, I may let you see it. Thus, I also finished my course for the year.

Also, at some point in this mess, I got a start on designing the new Goulds website, which is a bit like trying to convert the bible into Swahili whilst you only know the word 'hello' in that language, and never really believed in the bible. If you get my drift. To be honest I only 3/4 believe the bible, as I believe that it was, of course, written by humans and not the devine spirit, and then translated into a language that didn't exist at the time. Thus, I feel that some of it is part 'lost in the translation' and part written by people who believed they were being told the devine information, when in fact it was their imagination. Take Genesis for example. This suffers from both parts of my statement.

1) It contains mis-translations, like the 7 periods being mis-translated as 'days'. Later scientific proof states that it is 7 periods of about 1/4 of a million years IIRC; and

2) that the person who wrote it may have been suffering heatstroke, and so believed that the lord was telling him this great true story.

I wish I didn't have to be branded as a Christian sometimes. The term Christian is far too generic in my opinion to state your beliefs. For a start, I am not a 'happy clappy' (though I have been to evangelist churches on 2-3 occasions in my life; they are very 'uplifting', if that's the correct word), I don't believe the same things as my parents when it comes to religion; especially in regards to churches (I believe in the part of the Bible that states that a church is just a building, and that your faith is what counts), I have my own beliefs; but because I believe that there was a guy called Jesus Christ who could easily have been the son of God (because, let's be honest here, the Bible states that we are the sons and daughters of God), I am immediately branded a Christian. I wish I didn't have to be branded by religion. I want to one day be able to write 'independent' as my belief. Now that would be cool.

Actually, speaking of being able to write 'independent', tonight is the count of the UK's general election (for everyone who doesn't live round here, that's when the Prime Minister is elected. Happens every 4 years, and tends to be a very one-sided affair. Currently, Labour (and the current prime minister) Tony Blair has 105 seats (3 lost since 2001), Conservative (and the forever smirking Michael Howard) have 12, (gained 3 since 2001), and the Liberal Democrats (and 'honest' Charles Kennedy) have 8 (lost 1 since 2001). This is changing as I type, so I'll keep summing up every so often. The winner has to get 324 seats to win the election (there are 646 seats in Parliament up for grabs). Currently, I'm sitting here feeling bitter because I was unable to vote because no registration forms turned up, and I was too late for getting a postal vote for back home. Hmph. It's not like I'm expecting a huge difference in either Plymouth or Portishead to be so close that there is 1 vote in it. Plymouth is a Lib Dem hotspot, and Portishead is Conservative. Very Conservative.

{Days pass}

Anyway, I digress. Labour won, if you didn't know. Oh, and Michael Howard of the Conservatives has decided to quit. Whether that's because he lost, we'll never know. All we know is that in 4 years, there has been 4 leaders of the Conservatives.

My computer has started crashing for no apparent reason. Maybe it's a wiring fault. I'll check that out at some point.

I wonder what the world would be like without labels. I know the human brain enjoys labelling things, categorising everything we see into little boxes. But what if we didn't? What if we made it non-PC to categorise people. Would that break barriers of race, religion, creed? Chrissey knows plain well my current thoughts on equality. That feminism is a part-failure because whilst men still dominate some fields of business, some women are getting paid more than men just for being women. And, more importantly, that hiring has become a case of quotas. 'We'll have to hire her; not because she's better for the job, but because there are too many men in our office and we'll be lynched for not being fair.' This, capped with a discussion on 'Loose Women' on how women should be allowed to play men's sports has made me think. Now, my thoughts on this is to scrap feminism. It has sadly turned putrid in my opinion. If a woman isn't employed in a role now, it's sexist.

So, how about a new movement? Not a masculinist movement, that would be a leap off the beaten track. How about, a movement of equality? A movement not to say 'we're being discriminated' but to say 'we're all equal'. That, in my opinion, would be a step in the right direction. Instead of grading someone on their sex, grade them on their skills. Instead of saying 'you can't compete', grade them on their physical ability. How strong they are, how fast they can run. How about that for categorisation? No longer would roles be dominated by sex. Sex should be irrelevent. A good example is a case from the last Winter-X Games. One of the women was so good in her field, they put her with the men to make fair competition. And what with women wanting to play men's games (one case in point is women playing in future golf tournaments) sex is less and less important.

I think one thing that will have to be key to this equation is people's gender. Just a quick biology and sex ed session here for the confused:

Sex defines their physical sexual make-up (whether you have a penis or a vagina, basically).
Gender defines your mental sexuality (whether masculine or feminine), your personal behaviour, how you act, etc.

Basically, people's gender is an important thing to sexuality and personality. A person's sex is less and less important, especially with the new political-correctness gay, lesbian and bi-sexuality has gained in the past 20 years. Your gender is what makes you attractive to the opposite gender. In most relationships, there is a masculine and a feminine element, even some cases of half-and-halfship, whether both partners hold elements to both genders. Anyway, without gender, relationships would probably be fruitless and worthless, and so cannot be lost. Meanwhile, just imagine what would happen if sex was no longer relevant? Everyone would have the same opportunities, regardless of which way fate threw you before you were born. Girls wouldn't be shyed away from hard labour roles as a child, boys wouldn't be instantly pushed off from stereotypically female roles, such as nursing, handicrafts, and so on.

But why should equality be limited to sex? Race is also a barrier in the world, and the same symptoms occur. Race has become a quota of people that should be employed. Equality could wipe racism out. Heck, equality could wash out all of society's borders, leaving just the human race. Now, if only people would believe it would work, then the world would be a happier place to be. But maybe, as Chrissey says, I'm a dreamer. That stereotypes in the home would still occur. But you have to remember that in 50 years, roles in society have changed dramatically. Maybe, if we sow the seeds today, in 50 years time society will have changed for the proverbial better.

Anyway, I'll tell you all about my life another time, only because if I keep rambling, then everyone will have fallen asleep before I get any further. I'll do a write up of my antics, films I've seen, my eye operation, and so on, by the end of the week. Bye for now.

'Get back from me, hypocracy!'- The 3 Spirit, Hypocracy

2005-04-17T01:45:00.000+01:00

Hello to everyone once more. It is I, back in this funny little room with the dodgy central heating and mould that would make your gran get out the bio-chem suit.

To begin with, a starter for 10: what do you think of the new site design? I tried to match the colour scheme of my site, but going for a header which would say 'MEMORY: DUMP' to me. Comments go towards the bottom.

Erk! Speaking of site design, I *really* need to get around to writing the new Gould's site. Well, I say writing the Gould's site, I am supposed to be implementing a checkout system onto their current site. Admittedly, I hate the design of their current site (the kid who wrote it had a serious fetish for unnessecary animated gifs, tables and Firefox-breaking graphics) but I'm not being paid to criticise. So, a phone call to them tomorrow and let them know I've got a project for uni to complete and that I'll be finishing it for next weekend and that should be OK.

Anyways, how are you? Personally, I am slightly under the weather from various things attacking me like, erm, things that enjoy attacking people when their not noticing, possibly midgies. That's irrelevant. Actually, I'll get back to you tomorrow, as I am starting to feel knacked.

(time passes... Rich goes to bed....)
(two days later)

Oh, hello! Sorry, completely forgot about you. I do apologise.

Anyway, the last month has passed by very carefully and quietly, and so it's almost like it never happened. Cor blimey, I never realised some of the songs I actually own. 'Need You Tonight' by INXS and 'Friday I'm In Love' by The Cure. Now that makes me happy!

So yeah, for the first week I was enjoying being back. Ended up seeing Robots, ending up in Weston-Super-Mare instead of bowling, ended up doing randomness, ending up doing paid work, and generally just enjoying being home.

As for Robots, it's alright. Tells a story a bit like a cross between Dick Whittington, the latter half of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, and Star Wars. Not as stark and new as Ice Age (and, sadly, I hear Ice Age 2 is on the way, the heathens) but still entertaining. As with Shrek 2, there has been dubs of some of the roles in the film for the UK edition (with 'celebrities' more famous than the original ones in the UK. None of the main characters, mind, just some of the minor ones), with the immortal Terry Wogan taking a role! I'll give it 3 stars, because it's no classic but it's entertaining enough. More entertaining than Shark Tale (which I think was a bit crap, and a follow-on from Disney's success with Finding Nemo, and so only deserves 2 stars IMHO). You might be thinking, why compare Shark Tale to Finding Nemo, when they're totally different? Well, I'll explain. When a film board are deciding on a new film, they don't go 'oh, let's make a rip-off of Finding Nemo cos it's popular'. That would cause a lawsuit. Instead, they go 'Finding Nemo is popular, is there any 'fishy'-kind of scripts we can use?' And now you see the connection.

The second week was taken up by work. Work, work and yet more work; all of the paid persuasion. When I'm not out crimefighting and serving justice to wrongdoers, I work at GfK Martin Hamblin (a well paid, but occasionally mindnumbing telephone market researching job based in Nailsea, about 5-10 miles out from the very edge of Bristol). It's alright, gives me lots of time to draw pretty pictures whilst complete strangers shout obscenities down the phone at me for calling them out of the blue whilst they were eating a perfectly delicious dinner which has been perfectly ruined by my call. Oh, and that, at the same time, they were watching a cruicial England World Cup game and because of spending a stupid amount of time shouting at me, they have missed 5 cruicial goals. Oh, and to never call again. Fine, I won't. But you could have saved time telling me that first rather than spending the time telling me why you don't want to talk.

Oh, and a word of advice to anybody who hangs up when a market research calls rather than just saying you'd rather not take part. You, my friends, come across to most market researchers as the most stuck up bunch of people we could ever speak to. It's nice to say 'No, I'd rather not. Bye!' (which is annoying, but I don't feel like ringing them back to rant at them) rather than slamming the phone down without a word. By doing this, you are actually a) not letting us know you don't want to take part, and therefore risking another phone call in a weeks time, rather than not getting rung again for this survey; and b) coming across as someone who would rather waste his life away watching pointless TV programmes about the downfall of society rather than helping a kind stranger for 3 minutes who is just doing his job. You obviously fail to understand that market researchers are not trying to give you 'the hard sell'. If you tell them you're not interested, they'll thank you and go away, rather than trying to keep you on the line. If you try this for once in your sodding lives, you'll realise that we would be glad to be spoken to as a real person, rather than treated than as the kind of scum that would break into your house, steal your valuables and kill your dog. Just hanging up is comparable to someone perfectly normal who says 'Excuse me...' in the street to you, and you turn around and kick their teeth in to shut them up. *takes medication*

Anyway, so I spent the majority of the week having abuse hurled at me by random strangers. Oh, and spending time with Chrissey, but anyone who is interested in anything we did has seriously got to get outside :P

The third week, I did some work on editing one of my films together for a project to be shown the Tuesday just gone. Just to give you a bit of background: this is the project I was filming before I left (and of which I spoke about in my last post). It's all about the personal story of a breakup between an ex-girlfriend and me. I set it in the style of someone addressing the audience about what happened, and what was happening, and what was going to happen. And to be honest, even though I had to keep stopping the editing because it got too depressing to do, it resulted in what I believe to be the best film I've ever edited together. It protrays almost perfectly my original intention. I would watch it again right now, but I don't have it with me (I'll tell you why in a mo).

Disaster almost struck on the Saturday because, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get the damn software to output the film in letterbox 4:3 back to MiniDV tape (MiniDV is a type of digital video tape used in camcorders, in case you didn't know, and is highly popular with budget filmmakers). Eventually, I gave up on the Sunday attempting to get it back in the right format, and so decided to simply output it as the original 16:9 anamorphic footage (that's the squished-up video that you get on widescreen TV and DVDs to make the most of the screen) and then turn it to 4:3 letterbox (black barred) at uni. But, even then, the computer had other ideas. Every time I tried to copy it back to tape, it got so far through it before speeding through by 30 seconds for no reason whatsoever apart from the fact that the software sucks. I hope to replace this software when I finish Uni, just unable to afford anything better due to my studenthood.

Anyway, I eventually got a vaguely alright copy out of the machine (when I say vaguely, I mean that it didn't fast-forward, more just constantly stuttered with the frames, but it's better than nothing). As I know that if I get enough time, then I could get the job done in 10 minutes. Bit of a close shave, really, as it had to be shown to an audience the next morning. But suprisingly, it *did* only take 5 minutes, and the video was ready for the showing by 9am.

Also, during that last week of university-freedom, I filmed all the required parts to my other film project (well, I call it a film project. Actually, it's a piece for an art exhibit I'm making. It's based on the subject of memory, and will feature a artistic film and image. I'll show you it once it's done, which'll be Tuesday or Wednesday, probably. :) I roped Kristian (the only friend I have who's a BBC regular, and is frequently appearing in the background to Casualty. Last Christmas, he played a reasonably major part in a period case study about some scientist or something. Why don't you ask him?) to do some footage for me. He played the main character, followed by Chrissey (my favourite lady) as a minor speaking role, and then a bunch of friends who happened to be available for the other, more populated scene. It turned out quite nice, admittedly I didn't get hardly as much filming as I wanted to do, but luckily due to the nature of this project, I just required any old home video footage to complete it.

Anyway, I'll continue telling you more tomorrow. I have to discuss with Chris (my flatmate) the finer points of schondeling (the act of beating someone to death with their own shoes. This concept was coined by the roadie in Wayne's World 2, and given a word by Grace (another of my mates from back home) in 2001 on some message board that sadly no longer exists.) Night Night.

'Peaches! Peaches!' Not here, try another castle.

2005-03-21T06:12:00.000Z

I'm taking a break from packing up to return to my internet-challenged home back in good ol' North Somerset, and so I thought I'd better leave a parting gift before my return here in about 3 weeks.

Wow, how my days have been compressed since last week. Things seem to be running at an ultra-fast pace, and so it comes as no suprise I have enough things to fill a whole post. Let's start proceedings with the trivial.

The Crazy Frog and the newly introduced 'censored' square. I feel reasonably to blame for this. For anyone in the UK, the Crazy Frog was the bane of our televisual existence. For anyone outside the UK, there's probably much head scratching about what the hell I'm talking about. So, I'll explain. The 'Crazy Frog' is an animation called The Annoying Thing created by a 'crazy german' called Erik Wernquist, with 'sound' by Daniel Malmedahl. (You can see it at turboforce3d.com if you feel the need to go through this torture). Now, with a name like 'That Annoying Thing' it would be ringing alarm bells in most advertising companies for the category 'DO NOT USE'. But no, it was bought by the mobile ringtone market to create a 'wacky' ringtone. Then, a company named Jamster! decided "Hey, wouldn't it be a good idea to make mobile ringtone 'stars' by filling every crevice of ad-break with our advertisments?". At the time, however, only one ringtone existed that could be used to flood the market - the animation now rebranded as 'Crazy Frog'. What this meant to the poor British consumer is that you hear this same ringtone about 4 times in each 2-and-a-half-minute advert break between programming, twice as much during 'primetime' and nearly-24/7 on most music channels. To be honest, I think if this was only a couple of days, that would have been fine, or maybe even 3 days. But to have this going on permanently between December and February is plain rediculous. Now, as far as I am aware, there were multitudes of complaints to the broadcasting companies and regulators about the excessive usage of this, but no-one seemed to want to listen.

It looked like there would be no hope for the mental state of the UK. Then, back in January (the 20th, in fact) I had what they call 'a cunning plan'. For I had noted something which the 'Crazy Frog' could be pulled up for. The 'frog', in case you hadn't noticed, has a penis. Not a very big penis, mind you, but a penis all the same. More importantly, I felt it breached the 'Mull O' Kintyre' test (a Channel 4 test guideline for preventing erect penises on film, where a penis is not permitted if it's more erect than the Mull Of Kintyre). And so, a quick trip to the Advertising Standards Agency website and bang! One complaint about how a slighty erect penis should not be permitted before the watershed, and how it should be only shown at night (aka: when this advertising would not be commercially profitable). However, I felt that a solitary complaint was probably not enough to sway opinion, and so I hired the good ol' help of B3ta.com and it's members. They too have an issue with the repeatedness of the advert, and soon, a few people too drew offence to the Crazy Frog's genitalia. And of course, the TermiSoc people were dragged into the fray.

Fast forward to the 3rd of February. I recieve an e-mail with a link to Reuters news. We hit the headlines! Admittedly, it was a loss, the complaint was not upheld, and so it went away. I recieved a nice letter from the ASA on the 4th (my birthday, in fact) stating that there 'were insufficient grounds to uphold [my] complaint'. Oh well, not really a suprise to be honest, but hopefully enough of a statement to make Jamster think twice about their advertising strategy.

Now, skip forward to last week. Sitting in the student union on Thursday (St. Patrick's day), MTV Hits on the big screen, as usual. Now, something made me look up at the annoying crazy frog advert, only to spot something awry. Wait.... THERE'S A BLACK BOX ON THAT FROG! Strike a light if I haven't caused a little black square to censor the little guy's nads! Now, luckily I had company in the form of my house-mate Chris (who already knew about the escapades), and so he called for a congratulatory toast.

So, my apologies to Jamster (neé Jamba! neé Lorena Medianagentur GmbH) and Zed, to Erik, to everybody I annoyed and affected, and to all the people that are now frustrated by the Crazy Frog now having a censor. But boy, do I grin every time I think of it! Plus, I wonder how much Erik got for allowing this to occur, when Jamster have made approx. £18 million from that single animation.

Wow. That's the first time I've ever emptied a drink into my keyboard. Luckily, it was just Diet Coke so it won't get too sticky and manky.

Anyway, speaking of St. Patrick's Day, the reason why we were in the Student's Union was because me and Chris had planned to meet Lana and Kat (the two girls the TermiSoc met at the Constantine preview) to celebrate the Irishness of it all. Sadly, Kat wasn't drinking, and so Lana was drinking for the both of them, and then for a third who couldn't make it due to work constraints. To be perfectly honest, she did a damn fine job of not losing her head (though she later confessed to not remembering about 5-15 minutes of that night). The night took us from the Student's Union (where the cards came out and the games began, until we were pushed out by the increasing volume of the place). Later, I got my first experience of The Nowhere Inn.

The Nowhere Inn is a Fullers-owned pub hidden between Radnor and Pilgrim Halls. From the outside, it looks like a matchbox with some very furboding frosted windows. It looks like the kind of place you'd find a pentagram on in 'American Warewolf in London'. Step inside, and you are treated to the friendliest and cosiest pub in Plymouth. The sign outside doesn't lie, either; it does indeed have the best, and strangest, jukebox in nearbyness. I'm pretty certain it belted out David Bowie, followed by Pixies, followed by They Might Be Giants. Apparently, someone visiting from the US said that it's the kind of place that deserves to be anywhere else, and that Plymouth didn't deserve this, the best pub he'd ever been in. So please, if you ever get the oppertunity, go to this pub. It's certainly one of the greatest pubs in the country bar none. If you're heading this way and need directions, just e-mail me.

Anyway, on from there to the Schiving Scholar, a student pub where you really do stick to the carpet. It's definitely a comedown from the Nowhere Inn. Eventually, Lana got a claustrophobic feeling and had to go outside. Somehow, all three of us ended up lying on the grass outside Gilwell Hall and staring up at the trees as they spun round us in a hazy, alcohol-filled bubble. It was chilled, like the feeling you get after an especially-good gig. Lana said it felt like being a teenager, a feeling she claims she never found the opportunity to act out properly. I know what she means. It's like all those days you are supposed to have as a 15-year old, playing out on the sea-front, consuming vast quantities of cider, and chilling out. Except, of course, I never got that opportunity at that age, being a 16-year old stuck in a tiny village outside Yorkshire. All that changed when I moved, of course, when I actually found friendship with a group of people in sixth-form, and was able to live some experiences I'd only heard other people talk about (the greatest of these being the week away in Cornwall with 5 other people during the hot summer of 2002. Bodyboarding and beaching every day, having plenty of laughs at night, and having the kind of time many dream of. Sheer bliss. I wish I could do it again someday, but I feel the chance for another oppertunity is getting further and further away as I get older). I can't remember what we talked about, and frankly it doesn't matter, but it ranks highly on fun things that have occured randomly. Anyway, soon after that, we headed back to the pub, basically said our goodnights, and that was it. Oh, apart from she almost lost her bag, but it was only a case of being left on the grass. And of course, Chris 'losing' his wallet, going on for about 15 minutes about how his life was so sh*t, and how nothing goes right, only to find it in his pocket about half an hour later in a pocket he hadn't checked. Dumbass :P

Friday, finished off all the filming and voice-overs for my personal story film project. Again, I was astounded by the quality of the actress Harley had found for the part. Juliette actually is Harley's equivilent of Chris in the way she was 'just' living in the same house as him. She is, however, a professional stage-actress, unlike Chris who did GCSE Drama and left it at that. To be honest, she was the equivilent of a Managing Director for a company applying for a post of teaboy. Her talent was probably wasted on such a minute part, although I suppose she could be seen as a 'supporting actress'! Still, she did the lines so well, in exactly the style I told her to do them. It was astounding. Anyway, hopefully I'll get time to cut the film before I get back. That's a point, I don't know her surname! That's going to be a problem. Note to self: must ring Harley tomorrow and get her name. Oh, and ring landlord about getting heating fixed over holidays; not that it's very important now the days are getting warmer, but because it's a pain when it gets cold.

Saturday, decided that since it was sunny, we should take full opportunity to go down the Hoe. The Hoe, in case you are wondering, is the sea-front in Plymouth. It features the stripy Drake's Lighthouse, the landmark of Plymouth. Also, it's the best place to go to get ice-cream :D We (that is me, Chris, Lana and random girl I never caught the name of, and have forgotten at present) found a café that looked out onto the sea (called The Terrace) which was reasonably pleasant, if stupidly pricey. I'm sorry, but £1 for a can of Tango?

Anyway, we took a wander, including attempted 'moonwalking' on a beachy bit below the café, and eventually ended up in The Admiral McBride Pub, which is off the Marina. Supposedly one of the oldest pubs in Plymouth, it offers a quiet drink where others offer annoying loud drinks. A pint of John Smiths and 2 packets of peanuts later, we decided it would be cheaper to buy some beer and head off to a suitable location. That beer was Caffrey's, the location was Lana's house; because it was closer; and the food was majoritally chocolate-flavoured. We played games, viewed bizarre viral internet stuff, and finished off by watching The Sixth Sense, which I fell asleep half way through in.

Sunday, I awoke and was pleasantly suprised to find I didn't have a crick in my neck, despite sleeping on the sofa. After having some lunch, and watching back-to-back episodes of 'Police Squad!' (classic!), me and Chris headed home, arriving at exactly the same time we left the previous day. Started packing, and now I'm here, semi-packed (waiting for clothes to dry), and perfectly looking forward to going home, seeing my parents, seeing my Chrissey (who I've been missing a ginormous amount over the past weeks, especially after I started feeling ill last week), seeing Hazel; despite the fact she'll probably be unimpressed to see me; see all my friends back home, and chill out whilst doing work. *sigh*

Oh, and reclaiming a shed-load of money. *double sigh*

Never mind, I suppose it has to be done. Anyway, must go check on washing, pack, etc. So if you don't hear from me for a while, have a good Easter, have a nice rest from work, and I'll catch you on the other side. Bye!

'Let them know you realize that life goes fast, it's hard to make the good things last' - The Flaming Lips - Do You Realize???

2005-03-16T10:20:00.000Z

I think Gem is right about the whole 'not updating very regularly' thing, noting it's been a fortnight since I let the world know my feelings. But to look on the B-side, I note that I've spent longer lengths not writing anything (May to September, for instance).

I feel a little shattered after drinking too much coffee and not being able to sleep soundly. *sigh* My fault I suppose, but the advantage is that I spend less time oversleeping :-P Also, it means I can bring another installment of my life to you!

Man, I sometimes forget how good 'Back in the USSR' by The Beatles is. I have been converting my CDs to AAC format (Advanced Audio codec, I believe, which is based off MPEG-4 technology). The advantage of AAC is that it I can get higher quality music, but with less space taken up. Good for me.

Hmmm... I wonder when someone will work out a Super Audio CD solution for computers. It drives me bonkers that I have 'Dark Side of The Moon' by Pink Floyd, but can't yet experience the quadrophonic beauty of it's original music. I do recall reading something about it in relation to next-generation DVD-ROM drivers Oh well, I'll just have to wait and see.

Anyway, what have I been up to in the past fortnight?

Well, I've been watching all the episodes of Nathan Barley (top series partly made by the creator of many weird radio and TV programmes, Chris Morris) and Look Around You (a very tongue-in-cheek micktake of 70s 'Tomorrow's World') that I'd previously missed. Good start to the week. I'm currently trawling through My Life In Film, a 6-part comedy series starring Kris Marshall (of My Family's Nick fame). The story revolves around a struggling filmmaker called Art (played by Marshall), and his life imitating various famous films. It's quite entertaining so far.

Also, I encountered the first episode of the new series of 'Doctor Who' that got leaked by either a Canadian TV company or a post-effects studio, nobody can be certain. {spoilers-beware} In any case, I didn't watch this rough edit of this first episode, entitled 'Rose' after the Doctor's new assistant. Nor did I see the 'Autons' reappear (called Liquid Plastic by the Doctor, trying to explain it to his assistant), or even see Rose's boyfriend being consumed by an angry wheelie-bin. I especially didn't encounter any footage of London being terrorised by killer shop-dummies, or anything involving the new tardis interior. So I can't tell you how incredible this will be, especially since I can't claim to be a fan of Doctor Who at all, just as an average member of the public. I can't give the episode 5 stars, can't tell you that Christopher Eccelston makes a highly entertaining character, that Billie Piper can actually act, or that Russell T. Davies has done a fine job. I can, however, tell you the series starts on BBC One on Saturday the 26th of March at 7pm, and you must at least give the first episode the chance. People outside the UK, just hunt through the listings, you may find it. {end of spoilers}

So far I've gone through 37 albums and counting on the 'ripping' front. And yes, they are my albums; I just keep a copy on my computer because I rotate my CDs between home and Uni, and so I don't always have tracks I want to listen to with me.

Ahhh, there's nothing like breakfast for clearing your head in the morning. It's one of those meals which, done properly, can make the morning more bearable. It's also, unfortunately, the one I'm most likely to miss due to what they call 'poor time management' in Uni. It's what I like to call 'waking up after your alarm clock's been going off for 30 minutes'. Today, I'm going for the classic cereal and toast combination (though sadly without the orange juice, because I am poor and slightly forgetful when I get down the shops).

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah.

Filming for both mine and Harley's (who's my group mate) Personal Story film projects are going well. The project centres around a story about something that happened in your life. I decided to focus on an unfortunately messy breakup between me and my ex-girlfriend (which, in retrospect, I would have done in a snip if I knew then what a loving, caring, amazing girlfriend I would still have almost 3 years down the line). In the past few years, I've been living down the fact that I actually broke the heart of my ex and not having a suitable medium in which to tell my half of the story (which few people know). A 2-minute preview of the films both gave positive results. All the lecturers who were there were astounded at the acting. Little did they know I was equally astounded by Chris' (my house mate) acting ability. I just said to him a week ago 'Fancy acting for my film?', he said yes, and then when he actually did it: Blimey! It was almost as if my personal story was his. I will be forever indebted to Chris for this. Hopefully, I can get the thing finished before the end of term.

Speaking of films, I ended up with some preview tickets to 'Constantine'. So, grabbing a load of people from The TermiSoc, we wandered (well, got a lift), to the cinema, and then patiently queued for the special screening. During this period, the conversation fell onto the topic of the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie. The two girls on the opposite side of the flimsy queue-penning barriers started nattering about it too. Soon, a conversation began. All the single TermiSoc guys lined up for a converse with the attractive yet mentally geeky women. Gem looked on, unimpressed. Anyway, I'm getting distracted.

'Constantine' (based off the comic 'Hellblazer', apparently) is a dark action/theological thriller, cross-bred with dark spiritual debate. But don't attempt to connect this to The Matrix. Yes, it stars Keanu Reeves and contains action and possible philosophical debate, but it's a bit like trying to compare Meet The Parents to East Is East. They both contain stuff about families, and they are both comedies, but they are set in totally different locations and feature totally different concepts and situations. Anyone who does try to compare this film to The Matrix is probably trying way too hard and should be beaten down at any cost.

To be perfectly honest with you, I wasn't expecting much from this film. The trailer portrayed it to a market of action-junkies, with no plot points revealed. Whoever made this trailer should be hung from the gallows for a poor portrayal of the film. The film revolves around a 'excorcist' named John Constantine. He spends the majority of his life rounding up angels and demons who have 'illegally' traversed onto the Earth. He's not doing this for kicks though, he's trying to buy his way back into God's good books, securing a place in heaven, after seeing Hell for real and realising to himself 'I've got to not end up there'. Then one day, something weird starts to happen. Hell's nastiest demons are trying their best to get onto the Earth, and a totally devout catholic has just committed suicide (when suicide would get any catholic a one-way ticket to the burning-hotness). So, he has to work out what on Earth is going on and what he can do to stop it.

Now, I know Johnny Mnemonic was dire and quite a lot of people didn't enjoy the last two Matrixes; although I find them just as good as the first one, but that's another story; but I think that this is the best film I've seen either Reeves or Rachel Weisz in for quite some time. That's why I'm giving it 4 stars out of 5. Go see it, for your own sake. Oh, and on a side-note, seeing as quite a lot of critics couldn't understand The Matrix, it's unsuprising they'll immediately hate it because it has a parting connection to the trilogy.

I really don't understand the concept of 'Copy Protected' CDs. In what way are they Copy Protected? So far I have made copies of Turin Brakes' 'Ether Song'and The Thrills' 'So Much for The City'; both with Copy Protection warnings on, both having normal-sounding MP3s and AACs on my PC. Maybe the majority of these have the warning labels, but no real 'meat' to them, just a low-grade copy supplied on the disc for the computer illiterate and the easily scared.

Ooh, funky. On the bottom of U2's latest album 'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb' is etched (in the centre coding section) the words 'Miss You Sugar'. I haven't seen many albums with a secret message written in the 'matrix' of a CD (it was quite common in the good ol' vinyl days, but CDs are usually mastered by someone professional so there is not much opportunity for a band to wander into the pressing plant and etch a message on the master copies). This isn't the first time I've seen a message on this part (I do recall a couple of less commercial CDs with ominous messages written on the inner spiral). But what does it mean? One possibility is it is referring to Brendan Robert Hewson, Bono's father, who died in 2001 from cancer. The album is dedicated to him (as seen in the liner notes). It could, less dramatically, refer to an Oxfam photo-shoot he did where he was covered in sugar to raise awareness for unfair trade in third world countries. Or, slightly more obsurely, it could relate to what's written in this post. I would say that may be the truth, if I wasn't laughing so much at the vague stab in the dark '"Sugar" is often a cryptic nickname for God' is. Unless someone can prove me wrong, then I'll stop laughing. :-P

Anyway, I think I'll wander off for now, as I have things to do, people to see, websites to create. Bye for now.

Brain melting beats, played by a number of disjointed mind-ferrymen.

2005-03-01T18:42:00.000Z

I have taken a break from research for my 2000 word essay to write this blog, so don't shoot me if it's a little messed and illegible.

Research, if you could call it that, is going badly. The books I need to read are not in the university, and so I have been forced to trawl the Googlesphere for information, combined with anything in the Wikipedia, etc.

Gem complained to me (in a way) that I don't update often enough for her. I do apologise if I don't post often enough, but that is just a fact of life that I, for the majority of the time, don't have anything interesting to write. Actually, that's a lie, it's just I don't feel like writing some of the time. *sigh*

The last week or so has been full to the brim, in a way. Tuesday the 22nd was the AGM of the Univeristy's Student Union, which me, Gem, Ben, and Skip turned up to so we could vote on a motion to start the Radio Station officially (this also means that money and space will be on the cards at last), which passed without any rejections. Apart from that it was mostly a snoozefest. :P

Wednesday, I did some stuff in the daytime and then hopped on a train to go see Chrissey (mostly because she'd bought tickets to Rebecca, starring Nigel Havers, info further on). Wednesday night, we went to Pizza Hut (annoyingly, I wasn't particularly hungry), and had some good ol' fashioned Italian :D . We then tried to go see a film, only to find tosh on at the Odeon, and we couldn't be bothered to try any of the other cinemas (it's a distance thing). Shame that.

Thursday, Chrissey had some lectures, and so we headed off to the campus and whilst she did all her stuff, I sat in the café-type place and read the book I was trying to finish The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks (an incredible book about how the human mind can break, entertaining and well worth reading even if you don't know the first thing about neurology - like me), and also do some work on, well, my work!

Later, we went to Union Films, which is the Southampton Univeristy's Film Society. Unlike most film societies, however, UF has it's own film projectors, it's own 300-seat cinema in the union, and DTS :) Saw The Grudge, a a film by Takashi Shimizu starring Sarah-Michelle Gellar. It was an alright horror film, some blatant "oh that's going to happen" moments, but worth seeing. Bizarrely enough about this film, this is the 3rd making of the film, by the same director! It's all rather confusing, really. Anyway, I give it 3 stars, because it does what it set out to do.

Friday, Chrissey had a lecture about grave-robbing and looting to supply antiquities for the art market, and whether it was right or not. (You can read more about another lecture on the subject here).

Afterwards, after visiting the extensive Oxfam Music Shop, where I ended up buying Moby's 18, and a couple of other CDs I can't remember the name of right now.

Friday night was spent watching Interview With The Vampire, which I had never seen before, and I'll give 4 stars to. We were going to watch Queen of The Damned as well(a kind of sequel to Interview with The Vampire), but time marched on.

Saturday, we had a bit of a lazy day, went to Maplin in the afternoon to see about getting a media computer case (as in, a case that could be used for a Media PC), due to the last case in the Plymouth store being badly scrathed and them being reluctant to give me a discount. Found that another branch in Sotton had one, so reserved it and Chrissey might pick it up for me so I can finish it in the hols.

Then, we went to Bella Italia (because, with theatre tickets for The Mayflower, you get a complimentary bottle of wine) and had some damn fine Italian-type food. I like Bella Italia, it's just a shame they don't have a restaurant in Plymouth. The service was resonably appalling today, however, having to wait 3/4s of a hour between starter and main course. It wasn't particularly busy, either. We didn't have time for desert and our garlic bread went cold waiting. Oh well.

Anyway, finally we saw Rebecca, as I mentioned at the start of this post. It's the story of Maxim De Winter and his new wife Beatrice. Well, sort of. Really it's the story of what happens when you marry a man with a wife who died under suspicious circumstances. Oh, and have a large house where your housekeeper is obsessed with the afforementioned dead wife. I can imagine this being a very good story. However, in this play, the majority of the tale is lost to a spartan (to say the least) stage set and a slightly wooden act. I feel I missed out on something in the experience. Also, as the play drew to it's final conclusion, bits of the play started disappearing, I think. The majority of it had a straightforward feel to it, but the end occured all too sudden and all too out of the blue, with very little reasoning or statement of what was truly going on, covered up by some very bizarre statements. I think this was partly down to the lack of scenery, which made it difficult to judge exactly where things were happening. Maybe I should read the book. :/ Me and Chrissey put down it's woodenness and lack of real depth down to the last play we saw being 'Mercury Fur', but reading other people's comments on it, I think it wasn't just us.

Sunday, again, was chilled. Chrissey made a fantastic roast for us, and watched Cool Runnings, which apparently (again) I haven't seen before. I'll give it 3 1/2 stars.

And then I came home, back to my stone cold room. *sigh*. I miss Chrissey, and now I won't see her until the holidays. :(

Anyway, back here, the TermiSoc AGM was raring to go, so that happened at 6:30PM. Much was discussed (you can read about it here), Ryan of ex-president fame turned up, and all were happy. Oh, and my fridge grew half a pizza for me. How nice of it :D

Somewhere during Sunday and Monday night, my computer also learnt about torrenting and got the first two episodes of Nathan Barley. I'm glad it learned how to do that otherwise I would never have seen it due to the innumerable (partly down to the amount of generated smoke blocking my view of them) troop of potheads who congregate in my front room on a daily basis and watch nature programs. This is because their drug-addled heads are not able to cope with anything more visually challenging. Just try and get two stoned teenagers to watch 'Moulin Rouge' and you'll see what two terrified individuals, rocking gently in their haze because the images are too fast, really looks like! [note: may have a greater effect in the UK, due to films running a frame-per-second faster on television]). Next up is the 3rd episode and 'Bodyshock: The Man Who slept for 19 Years', the story of a 19-year old who ended up in a car-crash in 1984 and awoke last summer. God Bless UKNova.com!

Anyway, the majority of my day today has been filled up with work and me writing blog. So now everything's up to date, I'll stop prattling. Bye for now! :D

'Nazis??? Where have they come from...? I'm all lost again', Duchess - Mercury Fur

2005-02-21T14:48:00.000Z

My head is spinning gently right this second. I've been up all night again making sure all the bits of a website I'm working on are correct and right so that it is ready for today. The website in question is www.voteforkris.co.uk, a site to promote the current Finance and Comms Officer of the Student Union into getting a second term. I know you may be thinking why on earth I'd be setting up a site completely randomly and out of the blue. Well, Kris Talikowski is the bloke who is trying to get Plymouth Uni's radio station up and running, and as it's best to try and keep the useful union officers in power, then we said we'd help by building a web site. And oh widgits, just as I said that I've realised I've missed something out. Back soon.

Right, where was I? Oh yeah, web site.

I am slowly learning more and more PHP (aka: web site programming language, rather than HTML which is just a way of getting internet browsers understanding what the hell you're babbling about) through no fault of my own, purely just fixing broken code and writing new stuff. It's weird that I know as much as I do, as I have made no real conscious effort to learn it. :P

Anyways, what have I been up to, apart from that? Oh, Chrissey came over for the weekend, mostly to see a play called 'Mercury Fur' (currently playing at the Drum Theatre, Plymouth) which has been bigged up left, right and centre round here. And well deserved it was too. Basically, it's set in the boroughs of London (which has, in a relatively short space of time become lawless and violent) the story of two brothers and their 'team' who set up parties for expensive clients wishing to live out their darkest fantasies. However, they soon realise that this party isn't so they can stay safe for another week, but a party to stay alive for another day.

I apologise if that description's very vague, but I don't want to give too much of the story away. But it's incredibly good (as long as you don't mind violence and swearing for the sake of art). I'm very surprised by how little they were charging for tickets (£6 for concessions and students; £10 for everyone else). I really want to see it again it was so good. Seriously, any 18-30 year old who isn't easily disturbed/offended should see this. It's a very youthy play I think, but it's damn good. Go see it. No, I don't care if you're in LA. Come over to Plymouth, United Kingdom, and see it (It finishes here on the 26th of February). Or, if you don't want to trek that far, then it's on at The Menier Chocolate Factory in London between the 1st and the 27th of March. I've given it 4 1/2 stars (it lost a small amount for a little too much racist-ish swearing for everyone to handle, in fact one person left about half way through),

Also, Chrissey & I went to see Ocean's Twelve (and no, I haven't seen either version of Ocean's Eleven). It was alright, I suppose. In my opinion it spent far too much time (about 10-15 minutes) at the start showing how Terry Benedict (played by Andy Garcia) turned up at everyone's residences to spoil their fun. I suppose, yes, it had to show how they spent the money, but to be honest, the majority of them could be summed up with just words. Far too long was spent going 'Wow, somebody cameoing' for my liking, and Chrissey (who *had* seen Ocean's Eleven) said it lacked the correlation of story that the first one had, and also several of the 11's expertise were not used at all, making them a little redundant (apart from just to provide a sequel). Apparently, I have just found out the reason for this. The script was originally destined to be a John Woo-fronted film called 'Honor Among Thieves'. When Warner Bros. decided they wanted a sequel to Ocean's Eleven, instead of writing a new story, simply got the writer to re-hash it into this film. That would explain the weak points then! I'll give the film 2 1/2 stars, sadly. This is purely because it's an average film with too many dire points for me to survive with.

Apart from that, I've had an average week. The TermiSoc Annual General Meeting is coming up. Ben is going for Tech Officer, standing down from Secretary. Skippy is applying to be Secretary. I think we'll make sure he runs all his paperwork through spellchecks and punctuation checkers first though, because (admittedly, I'll let him off because it's not his fault), he has a couple of internal issues. I think I'll feel more relaxed about him going for the position if he proves himself with the Radio station. Meanwhile, I'm feeling kind of depressed that Gem is wandering off (though hopefully, she'll be able to get a job at UPSU, or open up Codename:TenForward (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more). I wonder if she's serious about that? If so, I'd love to help, seeing as I want to open up businesses when I get the opportunity. Also, Dan is going for a year-long work-placement, which means that I'm going to be the only one left that is in the same position as last year. Also, I don't know who can replace Dan as he's the one that stopped us from squandering all our memberships on replacing all our servers :D

I hope that some members get interested. I'm worried that we'll be forced to hire someone random again, like Tempy *shudder*. Tempy, in case I have never mentioned it before, was the "ghoul" of the exec team, because he was appointed Secretary after "losing" the previous one due to some Computing Services issues. Oh wait, that was Skippy. Bugger. He's thought we'd forgotten about that. And we had. Hmm... This isn't good. I'm going to get many many quiet words I believe. *sigh* Oh well.

Anyway, Tempy never turned up. Ever. Even when he said he would turn up, he didn't. So, we fired him. But, of course, we never saw him and so therefore we couldn't tell him he'd been fired. Then the Tempy Mk. II appeared which has been much more reliable (Tempy Mk. II is a chair, by the way, which ever since the Fresher's Fair, has had Tempy's t-shirt hung on it. It became so regular that I think it/he may apply for a post next year on the exec. And I'll be suprised if it/he's less reliable than the real Tempy. :D

Anyway, I feel I've been typing for a donkey, and so I must go off and do stuff. Bye for now.

'I love you, but I'm scared of f*cking up...' The Research - I Love You But

2005-02-14T13:53:00.000Z

I feel I've had a very long period of time since I've both written and completed a blog entry which actually made it onto the internet. At some point, I'll make an effort to wrap up the unfinished ones and increase the amount of 'stoof' that's 'ere.

Anyway, on with life. I've just had some very, very crazy days.

First, the trip to London, which you'll hear about here, or in a blog entry still to be posted. That was pretty nutty, partly due to the complete lack of sleep which gave everything that went wrong a hilarious new twist. Try going without sleep for a while and then attempt to do something incredibly dumb that only a person with extreme sleep deprivation would think of (for example, try and catch a train to London at 00:20 with no place to be once you get there).

Then, towards the end of January, we saw Oldboy at the Plymouth Arts Centre. I wasn't sure what to expect, and so was incredibly suprised and amazed by it's content. I must admit it was a fantastic film, and if you ever get the opportunity I reccommend you see it.

Next, I spent almost a week and a half with my darling Chrissey, which has never happened before (I mean, her or I spending that length of time with each other at our University locations). This was all down to her uni working on a semester basis with only enough exams to cover two days, giving her a spare week for her to come visit. Those were good days, and it was sad to see her leave (although, bizarrely enough, she's coming back this weekend :) )

During that period, I celebrated my birthday on the 4th by seeing a band called Warren Suicide(who signed a poster for me, thanks guys and gal!). They were, I concluded, a bit like Brian Molko (the lead singer of Placebo) singing on a Prodigy cover of a Depeche Mode track with Duke Erikson of Garbage playing in the background. And they were damn good. 'Butcher Boy' never sounded so good. Many thanks for that night, if you happen to trawl this out of Google. It's just a shame there were only the 4 of us who appeared to be enjoying it.

Saturday, my parents came over to wish me a happy birthday, go out for a meal, and give me a 21st birthday present: an iBook! I'm a happy bunny now!

Sunday, Chrissey goes home :( But go to the National Marine Aquarium with my parents, and the fish and sea-mammals distract me for a while. Spend the night playing with my computer.

Monday, don't wake up in time for important meeting with the optometrist (for those who don't know me, I annoyingly suffer from what can only best be described as a 'squint', a purely cosmetic problem which means that I never look like the direction I'm looking, which can be problematic when you're trying to hold a conversation, or order from a bar). Got annoyed with myself when the secretary said I couldn't have another one until mid-March, but a bit later got a call saying I could have it the next week. Phew! Saved me bacon!

Tuesday, saw House of Flying Daggers back to back with Garden State for a Termisoc Social. I know, you're thinking 'What an odd combination!'. Well, I recall from previous conversations people wanted to see Flying Daggers (although I'd already seen it), and so took them to see that, but also wanted to break the habit of seeing depressing movies and so I thought comedy would do the trick. Garden State was really, really good. I'm glad that as a society, we see plenty of quality films. One annoyance about the Plymouth Arts Centre is that one of their projectors runs too fast, and so for the advert reel and second-half of both movies the voices were a bit 'squeeky'. They don't listen though. I may have to warn them I'll stop bring the society there if they don't fix it, which means they lose about 8-10 customers a showing (or about 10% of the audience).

Friday, went out for curry. Accidentally forgot to invite Chris, and Skip wanted to go and collect for RAG, the charitable side of the Student Union. Oh well. Went up to the Mutley Spice, feeling totally underdressed, huge bag in tow, and ready to be currylised. After stuffing ourselves, we wandered to the Voodoo Lounge, had a solitary drink, and then headed off to Riley's to play some pool. About 1:30, wandered home and fell asleep in a heap.

Now, Saturday was the oddest of them all. Woke up a bit late, so got to do less than planned, but had time to get ready for the Anti-Valentine's Ball at the Student Union. Dress code: Black or bondage. I voted Gothic. So, after wandering into The Attic to get laughed at by 'shoppers' (due to me wearing a big cream fleece, trendy Jeans and trendy trainers), I had a wander, couldn't find anything of quality, and so ended up buying a 'Death to The Pixies' t-shirt and some black hair colour. (I find it a little bizarre that I've bought a Pixies t-shirt about 16 years since I started listening to them, and especially 14 years after they 'broke up'). Skip called me over to be 'made up', and so I adhered to the call. I got Gothed up to the nines with velvet tunic, white face paint, eye-liner in the style of Alex de Large from A Clockwork Orange, and black lipstick.

So, heading off to Uni after a pit-stop at a Chip Shop (oh, their faces!), we ended up in the SU. Needless to say we got off to a bad start. Maybe it was partly because we appeared to be the only people to carry out this simple instruction (though two bondaged figures did appear later on), or maybe because the first location we sat in was the chart and cheese night. Think about it, five wraith-like characters huddled in the corner of a room playing r'n'b and hip-hop. You see what I mean?

Anyway, we did find the correct room in the end (although problems with other people's attire were still noticable). So, after a short time, on came the bands:

1.) 3 Spirit - A band comprised of people who have a tendancy to make loud, bangy noises in my house on a lazy Sunday afternoon. They played quite well, with Will sounding like a young Adam Duritz. The only issue is they still sound like they need a bit more practice, with Tom a little floundering. Possibly investing in a metronome may help his timing a little. Oh, and also not having intros that are a different speed to the tune. It just sounds wrong.

2.) Eleven Lives Left - The kind of band you think you have heard on the radio many many times. A mix of heavy rock, Stereophonic-esque pop and The Who. Good stuff, absolutely nothing to fault, apart from the distinct lack of roadies selling stuff at the back. Hmph!

3.) The Nacho Eating Poncho Monsters - The kind of band to get a load of drunken students whipped up into a frenzy. Top stuff.

But here's where even the setlist goes awry. Because, rather than a band to tip the now raring-to-go students into a full blown mash-up, we get:

4.) The Research - A band hailing from Wakefield, and recently plonked onto At Large Records (associates with EMI), they mix the bittersweet electro-pop of Granddaddy and Fonda 500 with heavy beats etc. taken straight from a punkesque environment. In other words, they are undefinable and damn good! Tracks like 'I Love You, But' and 'She's Not Leaving' are fine tracks and I'm suprised if they don't get snapped up and air-played. The issue, however, is with the support for them. The other bands built up the wrong mood for this sort of music, so it left the poor drunken students disillusioned and confused, and also caused it to look like they were getting a poor reception. Damn you UPSU! Russell, Georgia and Sarah, keep up the good work. I know you will.

To cap the story off, Gem won the competition for best dressed, and so got a discount for either a piercing or a tatoo! Doesn't seem like her style, but you shouldn't let it go to waste, so vote piercing! :)

Last night, finally got around to watching 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. Crazily weird film that. Very good, but crazily weird. I don't know whether to be scared that we could live in an Orwellian society or glad that this is the closest we're probably going to get. The line of the film which got me (which almost became the title of this post) was, of course, "If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever." I do now, however, get all the in-jokes of Brazil. :D

Oh, and now, now I am wasting time trying not to think about an upcoming essay I have to write where the document I read on the subject sent my head reeling and caused me to do all this typing. Oh dear. And now it's lunchtime. I have to go buy some tickets and get a bag for my laptop, so for now, I bid you farewell.

And yes, I *will* put up those missing posts.

"I can't go back in there. It's all hating faces that I have to chop up with a machete!"

2005-01-31T00:26:00.000Z

I find it strange that I type often yet unoften into this thing I call a blog. I don't see it as one, more a way to vent my spleen. Or something. :-/

Anyways, things that have happened recently:

* Saw piles of films: I Heart Huckabees, Oldboy, House Of Flying Daggers, Assault on Precinct 13, etc.

* Went to London (story coming in a mo)

* Planned coursework.

* and so on.

And, rating those films;

* I Heart Huckabees - If you like twisted humour (eg: Adaptation) then you'll love it! 4 stars!
* Old Boy - Dark, brooding, and totally enjoyable, but rather violent. 4 stars!
* Flying Daggers - Better than Crouching Tiger, good for what it is, but a little too airy fairy. 3 stars
* Assualt on Precinct 13 - Actiony mind dribble. Entertaining. 3 1/2 stars.

Meanwhile, going to London was a barrel of laughs IMHO. It was so entertaining it should have been a film. You can read about some of it here: http://wiki.termisoc.org/index.php/2005/01/26_-_The_Greater_London_Adventure

But right now I'm too tired to be wiki-ing, so I'll leave it at that.

'You think Frank wants you? Mutton dressed as laaaaaamb?'

2005-01-21T02:48:00.000Z

OK, I'm going to try to write this thing in two stages. One just before I go to bed, and then I'll do the other half tomorrow. It's only because I think I won't write too much now, but I want to get some stuff written whilst it's still in my head.

So what have I been up to then? Good question, and one I'll get to once I know where I was last time I wrote.

Blimey! Has it really been that short ago, but yet feel like it was a million years have passed? Maybe because I've been doing so much over the past few weeks. So let's begin now.

On the 9th, I moved back south to good ol' Plym of Mouth to re-start Uni, feeling refreshed and with a clear mind.

Lectures re-started on the 10th, finding that all my lectures are compressed into 2 days (meaning, yeah I work from 10am till 5:30pm without a planned break on a Monday, but I get Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off! Good swap, eh? :)

Work is progressing with turning TermiSoc into a society the union can be proud of, instead of the bane of their existance. A recent count of number of current projects was in the range of 10-15. Now, that may sound like lots of projects to be doing, but because it's spread over several people, it isn't a lot of work.

Jesus, I sometimes forget how damn good 'Mr. Brightside' by The Killers is. Especially listening to it on headphones, cranked up. It's a perfect tale of going home and imagining what your girlfriend could be up to. A perfect combo track to this would be 'Monday Morning, 5:19' by Rialto, which is a song about getting concerned his girlfriend isn't picking up the phone, and believes she's currently making love to somebody in the back of a car. Nice. Hmph, nothing quite gets me into the same mood on the album. Flick over to good ol' 'Ziggy Stardust'. Bliss.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. Plenty of projects to do then. I'm back onto the coke again... sorry, Pepsi Max (for a change). So, apart from Termisoc, thoughts about future media projects keep wandering through my mind. I have so many ideas right this second. I have to do an exhibition in April :O Well, not a whole presentation, but I have to do a piece for a presentation, so to keep my grades up, I'll produce two. Also, I have pieces on 'Information Warfare' and an essay to write, as well as a internet site on a real space. Sound familiar? It does to me, especially after doing the Concrete Carbuncle site. *sigh* Never mind, I'll just do something incredibly artsy for a change. GRRR! Peeing desk keeps falling apart on me. If anyone can remember, I was 'sans keyboard desk' for a while, which resulted in my broken '0' key. Now, both are fixed, apart from the desk occasionally splays and causes the keyboard shelf to drop off it's bracket and bang on my leg. I'll have to get around to glueing it at some point.

Oooh, meeting with Lorna Dallas tomorrow. Lorna is the lass who tries to aid Termisoc as best she can in liasoning with the money side of UPSU. We/I need to speak to her about both the LAN Party project (hopefully happening 9th of March) and our MAME Arcade machine project. The Arcade machine idea is a little dubious, because we need to assess it's a)legality, and b) possibility of running it for cash (be it for us or UPSU).

Anyway, probably going to go to bed now. Night for now

Update 21/01/05 - Oh well, just remembered I had to finish this off, but so tired. I think I'll write another entry another time, so goodnight everybody... *thunk*

zzz

zzz

zzz

'I know, let's take a Winston Break!' 'Gee Fred, I dunno...'

2005-01-03T23:34:00.000Z

Have you ever felt like a particular thing is unimportant until you find it's gone (or more specifically, doesn't work anymore)? I'm feeling that right now about the 0 key on my keyboard. You wouldn't believe how many times I've tried to press the darn thing in the 10 minutes I've been on the computer. Obviously, it must have gotten broken in a dropping incident (caused by me breaking the keyboard bit on my desk at Uni). *sigh* It's a shame really, I was just about to spraypaint my computer the colour of my keyboard (it's a shade of purple, if you must know).

I just went to see a play. The most wonderfully produced play I've seen in many many years. It's an adaptation of 'The Secret Garden', playing at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol. I went out of that performance feeling both a)12 again, b)like I was back at school, watching A-Level students act out plays (due to the feel of the theatre), and c) like I'd lived the show. Words cannot describe how INCREDIBLE this play was. I do WHOLELY recommend it if you're in the area. It runs until the 17th of January I believe. Details here. Also, the theatre itself is basically an open space, with only 250 seats placed around the 'stage'. Half of the floor was covered in REAL grass and cobbles! And the performance, the players, and it all was FANTASTIC. If anyone from the Tobacco Factory is reading this, I wish to congratulate all of you for the greatness of this, everyone who made it possible, and you are the best theatre in the whole of the area in my opinion. Thank you once more.

Also, in the same building, but just around the corner, there is a restaurant called Teohs (Review here), which serves Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, Thai and their own specialities. This place is absolutely perfect for those who want fast, inexpensive, quality food before the performance. The food is quality stuff, although they failed to serve us the Prawn Crackers we ordered, but I would seriously recommend it to anyone who likes their Asian cuisine.

Speaking of Asia, after The Secret Garden, they had the cast getting donations for their Asian Disaster Fund Appeal (monies raised will be split between Oxfam and the British Red Cross). So far they've raised over £1,600 in the past week. My heart does go out to anyone who has lost someone to this tragedy (claimed to be nearly the biggest recorded natural disaster in history). I feel ashamed for the human race that we can't be so kind all the time to others around the world. My bro's still missing a friend who lives in Thailand, so hopefully he'll get in touch soon. If anyone out there knows if Jazz Pagent is still around, tell him to get in touch with Peat and Jo Jeffery. Thanks.

To be honest, things like this make everything else feel pale in comparison. Even that huge dent in my car feels like nothing in comparison. Every day I'm feeling that I'm glad I'm still alive, as is everyone I care for. However, this won't stop me from getting the damage assessed at a local garage. The one problem I face is my little poot-poot isn't worth very much, and so there's probably no point claiming on the insurance, because it'll be an instant write-off according to them. :( I like my car, I wish I cared for it more often, but then again, I'm not here that often. I still need to finish T-Cutting it. Basically, I got a quarter way there. Then I'll buy it a lovely car cover for it to sleep under whilst I am away. :)

I'm sorry, I have a condition where I believe inanimate objects have feelings. But I take great pride in discussing the happiness or sadness of our non-living ancestors.

I feel like I should do something creative once I have drunk some more caffinated beverage. As anyone who has read this blog further than most should know, caffinated beverage makes the world turn, and I think that people who drink Decaffinated products must have a very tired and dull life. Please correct me if I am wrong, though, as I don't think I could survive purely on Caffeine-free Diet Coke for the rest of my life. I think I might take up that Special K challenge when I get back to Uni, the one about dropping a jeans' size. That would be nice. I'd love to be a 31-32 again, rather than a 34-36.

SHUT UP YOU STUPID THING! Sorry, just cursing my phone and it's infinitesimally small battery life (a mere 1/2 a day, if you're lucky). My phone is getting old methinks. Strange how that can be, seeing as I've only owned it for about 13 months, I think. No wait, 25 months. Oh. That might explain it then. At some point, I'll get round to sticking that replacement battery in. Just it'll take 13 hours or so to get settled in. I'll do that before I head back down south for term.

Anyway, I think I should get on with something. Chat to you later!

'I don't care what the world has to say, you should know that I love you, I love you, I love you to death' - Squeeze, 'Heaven Knows'

2005-01-03T01:53:00.000Z

Well, here I am at the end of my big update day. Typed up all my words from Thurs and Fri, and now I can say all the things I wanted to say now.

New Years was fun, ended up just chilling round at Mark's, playing all manner of games on a multitude of consoles, drinking Malibu, watching the Hootenanny on telly, letting off some 3 year old fireworks in the back garden (they've been kicking around and going from party to party :P ), and generally enjoying ourselves in a quiet sort of way.

We ended up playing:

Prince Of Persia (SNES) - I had just bought it for Chrissey after swapping the GBA version of Legend Of Zelda
Final Fantasy II (PSX) - 47 hours of play, and we're still too weak to kill the Emperor!
Starwing (SNES) - Chrissey got to Mission 4 of Easy, me and Mark only got to Mission 1 :(
Zelda - Ocarina of Time (N64) - Just started it again, so collected the sword and shield.
Sonic 3 and Knuckles - After completing Sonic 1, 2 and 3 in the summer, this was the next one to try and complete. Did a couple of zones.

Fell asleep on Mark's sofa, woken up an hour later by Chrissey, who was sleeping on the floor, wanting to sleep on the sofa after being cold, and then finding myself on the floor instead! *grumph* :P Went to Chrissey's 12:30ish.

When we got to Chrissey's, played some Super Mario World (SNES), after losing all our save data whilst on the last world in the summer, watched Bruce Almighty (3 stars, but only because it's one of the better Jim Carrey films), fell asleep twice, had ANOTHER christmas dinner after her parents bought a 26-pound turkey for £6 because it was post-Christmas. Imagine how much 26 pounds of turkey looks like! To me, it looked like something from a Tudor banquet. Cuddled up to my girl at night, and dreamed of a day when we live together.

It all went a little downhill from there. Woke up late, decided to head home only to find someone had put a HUGE dent in the side of my car. Due to the distinct lack of paint on the dent, it's 95% likely it was reversed into. All fingers point at the guy who lives across the road in the big people carrier. After asking him whether he'd seen anything, he went distinctly pale and started jabbering how his wife was in hospital. But "apparently" he hadn't seen anything. Hmm... Anyway, there's not much I could do about it today, with most companies being still shut for New Years. So, I'll get it sorted tomorrow.

'What Would You Do?' by City High just passed through my random playlist. I sometimes forget how some pop tracks can be quite powerful, but are lost in the drown of commercial radio.

My Playstation is still borked. It's down to a duff part in the CD pickup. So, I'm planning on carefully soldering a new lens onto the system (apparently, it's a part that's the first to go wrong due to cheap parts used at Sony). I found the bag of bits in my drawer at 10, by which time I lost the will to do it tonight, so I'll do it tomorrow. Thinking about it, I really should have brought back my box of 10 consoles I bought off eBay, which I could be refurbishing to sell on this holiday, but instead left at Uni (which in retrospect was a stoopid idea). Oh well, just have to leave it 'til term-time.

I must discuss with my parents about getting my eye-op. For those who don't know me, I have a 'turn in my eye'; a condition which means I only look through one eye at a time, meaning that the other tends to wander off of it's own accord. This really only affects me properly when I'm tired, meaning quite literally I can't look people straight in the eyes! It doesn't affect my sight, just messes up conversation, grabbing a barman/maid's attention, and most importantly photographs :( It's purely cosmetic, but it does affect me, especially as the president of a society, wanting to be an entreprenaur later in life! One other issue is I'm still covered by my father's company health insurance until I'm 21, so if I want to get it done, February's my deadline to start the ball rolling.

'The Simpsons' has really gone downhill. I happened to catch a 'new' episode on Sky about Bart going blind and accidentally mooning the US flag. After being arrested for being traitors and being put on Alkatraz, they escape, go to France, only to return as immigrants. A hopeless episode, even it's political satire was tired, worn and overdone. I'm just glad they stopped Futurama in a way. Only Fox could cancel a fantastic series, only to run The Simpsons into the ground. They even did the same with Buffy, forcing Joss Whedon to do 1 more series than he wanted to, yet cancelled the great Firefly.

Anyway, I think most people have gotten bored listening to my ramblings, so I'm off to do something else. Guternacht :P

Oh, and hi to superflywebpimp, my first ever commentor! Don't worry, the techy stuff hurts my head too!

Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz

2004-12-31T14:20:00.000Z

Mmm... I like coffee :) It aids the tired market researcher in his or her quest to survive 7 1/2 hours of mind-numbing boredom that is this project; the same project, in fact, as yesterday. But hey, it's not everyday you get paid 5.25 an hour to press the 'Y' key once every 4 minutes!

I've really got to start learning a new skill before I go back to Uni. It's either going to be C or Bass Guitar. Hmmm.... C..... Bass Guitar...... C....... Bass Guitar.....

I think both will be handy, and I'll probabky learn both eventually. But with C, I can take it to Uni as well. With Bass, I can't. However, I may get more enjoyment out of learning the bass than learning C. *shrug*

I haven't yet made any plans (as such) for New Years. Talk about leaving it to the last minute! Well, I'll explain.
A mate from home (Kelly) has her birthday falling on New Year's, so every year she throws a gargantuan party. Trouble is, the party invitations usually exclude another mate of mine (Mark). I went to Kel's last year (mostly because of Mark's girlfriend at the time who would rather be mopey than enjoy herself). This year, on the other hand, I'd like to spend time with the Markster, but nothing is planned. Therefore, I'll find out at 5 (when I finish work, hurrah!).

I think I'm getting better at drawing than I was. The sketches in my notebook are looking better than the first ones I did.

I wonder if a tune can be developed out of answering machines? I'm sure it's possible, but will it be any good? Who knows?

Ooh er, they're 'volentarily' laying off people for the day on my project. This means that they want us to leave to save everyone wasting the companies money by being here and not getting interviews. It'll turn compulsory methinks...

Yep, time has been called on the day. 2.15. bargain! :) I shall spend the day in town then, and browse the shops, exchange a present I bought for Chrissey which she got multiple times (in different formats), and then enjoy New Year's. Hurrah!

Scribble Scribble Scribble

2004-12-30T17:00:00.000Z

I'm sitting at my desk at GfK Martin Hamblin, kind of bored waiting for a market research interview to come through. Unfortunately, it's on a job where 99% of the numbers are off for Christmas, so I just get plenty of confused auto-switchboards being unable to find a suitable person and so getting into eternal loops, answer machines that the office is shut but should be open on the hours you are calling at, fax machines which 'shout' so much it makes my head hurt, and 'Greensleeves'. The other 1% are available to talk but won't because it's Christmas, think I'm trying to sell them something but are not interested, or just plain bored receptionists who wouldn't connect you for love nor money usually, but are doubly annoying because they are the only ones there. Just had my final break, so now it's the long, hard stretch of 1 and a 1/2 hours!

I'm writing this on my notepad which I'll copy up later. I have actually written a blog since my last one, but stupidly left it back in Plymouth. *sigh*

Anyway, Christmas was entertaining. I got back to good ol' 'Britsol' on Saturday evening, did crazy amounts of shopping until Thursday, wrapped for the majority of the available time on Friday (actually, thinking about it, I spent most of the time visiting Chrissey. Oh how I love her), celebrated Christmas with my parents, ate plenty of food, then on Monday visited my biggest brother and his girlfriend (Matt & Clare) in York, then on Tuesday 'till Wednesday night saw my other (middle) brother and me sis-in-law (Peat & Jo) in Colchester. Muchos fun was had overall.

Oh gawwwwd I'm so bored!

20 minutes has passed, and yet feel it's been 4 days. So far I've listened to almost 100 different exchanges & answering machines in the past 2 hours. I've spoken to only 5 real people. 2 have been receptionists, 3 people have refused (curses!). That's all in the past 2 and a bit hours. Trouble is, I've been here on the 'machine' since 9am. 9AM! And I was shattered even then! I really wish I had tried for that job at the local computer shop. Oh well, never mind. There's not much I can do about it now.

Oh great, now it's starting to repeat itself again. That's the 4th loop of machines so far! My head is aching more and more the louder those accursed robots shout. Oh good, 126 so far; almost beaten my record for number of purely automated devices contacted in a single shift. Also, the 250 I've contacted for all day is not a bad record... :(

Argh! The numbers have gone round within 5 minutes! *thumps head on table*

Anyway, for Christmas I got:

The Killers 'Hot Fuss' CD
The Beautiful South 'Miaow' CD (with the original cover art design - very rare :D )
Private Eye Annual
A hooded jumper
Return of The King Special Edition DVD
The Bourne Identity DVD
Join Me' by Danny Wallace
lots of bits & pieces, like chocolate and racing snails
Pleasantville DVD
The Virgin Suicides DVD (very good film by the director of Lost in Translation)

and...

A SPACEHOPPER!

Peat & Jo have a tendancy to buy bizarre (but incredibly good) presents. One year, they bought me a 'Star Wars Sith Attack Droid' which fired foam discs which you hit with a humming plastic lightsabre. I kinda wore the batteries out. :P

This notebook is full of very random images, I must put them on my new, PHP-powered PottyMouth V2! Admittedly, the code still doesn't do everything I required from it (e.g.: you can't get it to list the name of the file, or description as yet), but I didn't want to waste a database on it, so I'm happy enough. I even got GD to write me some logo headers! :O (GD, in case you didn't know, is a program which can draw, write text, and manipulate graphics on demand, using PHP code.)

Oh good, only 15 minutes left to go! My brain was starting to melt, that was all. Almost 160 machines in 3 hours. Anyway, I think I'll have to stop now. Catch you all later!

"I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it..."

2004-11-30T02:05:00.000Z

Oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man I can't believe how good I'm feeling, how confident I am in Termisoc, the projects, everything. I feel like things have the potential to go really well!

OK, brief sum up of everything that's happened in the past 6 hours:

1) Went to a tutorial on Digital Cinema, which got me really excited by the concept of owning a cinema with Chrissey, showing old films, everything we really want for a future plan,

2) Ben said 'oh the deadline is Saturday, so we haven't got much time' (in regards to the deadline for applications for the inital trials of Digital Cinema projectors), which got me thinking about Termisoc running a digital cinema (co-operated by UPSU and possibly the filmsoc),

3) Gem mentioned the concept of, instead of Skippy's nice but expensive idea of a server farm (or a Beowulf cluster), running a BOINC server which could devote processing time to anybody's projects (be it CGI rendering, mathematical problems, building a better processor, etc.),

4) Ben also mentioned the idea of him building his own distro of Linux, based on various systems he likes in various other distros, but without the annoying niggles. This developed into a concept of a Termisoc Linux, which would include a package management system based on a BZIP2-compressed x86-pre-compile with an XML installation page inside. Also, a concept for a three-tiered installation system where you can choose a fully-automatic install (for those who are new to computing and want it all done for them), a guided install (which will tell you what each setting does as you go through), and a manual install (which is for the experts and people too deep in Linux to care about what anything does anymore).

also, 5) a toaster with LDRs inside, assessing how brown your bread is, rather than how hot and long it's toasted for; and more bizarrely, a solenoid-based heating element which can write messages on your toast, even going as far as having a BHOS (a Bread Heating Operating System) and network card!

Currently, I'm piling up lots of info on Digital Cinema and BOINC in an effort to have something to present to the exec tomorrow at 12. Oh, and also do something as preparation for the filmmaking meeting I have at 1pm. Eep!

I really hope we can get in to this Cinema trial thing. If we didn't, I'd only feel a little dissapointed, as all it means is we'd (that's me and Chrissey, I mean) will have to wait until we have our cinema to dabble with :P

I can't believe that me, Ben and Gem spent a good 3 hours on the sofas just chatting through ideas, and talking about random stuff! And aaaaahhhhhhmylegjustfellasleep!

*jumps around and shakes leg wildly*

Ahh, that's better. Blimey, it's a bit nippy. I'll put a jumper on if I plan to stay up any much longer :( Ah, how handy. There's one by my chair. *pulls on jumper*. Mmm, toasty.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, plans. I'm still working on Mediaspace, if Dan is reading. All I have to do is finish the template and write what is required, otherwise we'll never get it done. Also, I/we will need to write a document which people can sign if they want to donate equipment. It'll generally state that Termisoc is now the owner of the piece of equipment and so the person no longer holds any rights to the usage of the box (albeit any current member privileges that they would have normally). That'll sort out any problems which may arise hopefully. Maybe we should write one for cash donations too whilst we're at it. Speaking of which, I have to take a look at all our current documents and make sure they're all up to date. I know the security policy isn't, so I'll have to take a look at them at some point.

SuSE's now back up and running on my system. I won't switch over from Windows just yet (not until I can get a new KDE so I can run later versions of AmaroK).

OK, so now I feel more depressed than I thought I would. Turns out, the 'Digital Cinema Network' is only applicable to theatrical cinemas, and if we wanted to apply for 'non-theatrical' status, we should have done it in October.... *sigh*. Guess I'll have to break the news to the guys tomorrow :( Never mind, we've still got BOINC and the Linux system we can cover.

Oh good, there's nothing that can't be done with BOINC that we can't do (theoretically). Runs on Linux, uses MySQL, PHP, etc. All good.

Anyway, I think bed is on the cards. So goodnight world.

Haven't seen Rich for 3 weeks

2004-11-25T23:51:00.000Z

I'm bored. I got in about quarter to eleven and have been playing Bejewelled 2 ever since which means over an hour, sigh.

I miss Rich, but hey, I'm seeing him tomorrow and I can't wait. Stupid seminar thing means I can't catch a train till 4:30, grrr. We have to write our christmas lists as an assignment, christmas lists! I haven't even started thinking about Christmas Shopping yet, it isn't even December. I do know I have considerably less money to spend on christmas shopping than I did thismorning though.

Let me explain. It was my friend Amy's 21st birthday the other day and today she was having an Ann Summers party to which we were all invited. Well I managed to spend alot of money I don't really have on... well lets just say something pretty, something kinky and something down right dirty! I think Rich will be well impressed... shhhh,... don't ruin the supprise.

I was possibly thinking about arranging one with my girl mates in Portishead at some point...

*train of thought crosses points*

I suggested to Rich that we make each other stockings this year, you know, loads of little prezzies in a sock. I miss stockings, my mum and dad stopped doing stockingd for me when I was 15. Rich said he got one when he was 18!! I don't know a grown man getting stockings from his mum and dad? *shakes head* *giggles*

I probably ought to start thinking about Christmas shopping. I am planning at the moment to do everything the week before christmas when I am back in Portishead, probably in Broadmead, its easier to find a bargain there than at Cribbs Causeway.

Got to go, fresh new day tomorrow.

"You only stop talking, when you're sleeping" - Kathryn Williams, Soul To Feet

2004-11-12T05:17:00.000Z

Wow, this is the first time when I've tried to go as fast as I can home in order to write things down before they are forgotten, lost in the ether of the mind.

I think it may have something to do with this eclectic feel to the night that occurs on misty, late nights. The way that the warmth is still there, combined with the lightness caused by stray water molecules bouncing the amber streetlights everywhere. It makes it feel like a Mediterranian city in the middle of summer. I love nights like these. It takes the mind back to good times, makes you feel more content with the world.

Maybe it's also the post-tired feeling you get which is making me feel this way. So, you may ask, why have I only just got in the door at 4:15am? Well, I'll sum up the night in easy steps.

1. Went out at 7pm and played a few games of pool.
2. Caught the 8.50 showing of 'Man On Fire' at the cinema.
3. Had a bottle of Corona and a pint of Boddingtons at the local pub, and chatted for hours about all sorts of things.
4. Got kicked out of the bar at closing time, continued discussion until 3:45, when I decided to leave Dan's.
5. Got back here.

Argh... so many things I want to write and yet I'm already yawning...

I've really enjoyed tonight, it's been really entertaining, thought-provoking, etc. Talking to Dan, Ben and Gem makes such a good night. I feel like I've never sat down and talked trash for such a long time (excluding with Chrissey, who I could talk to for hours on the telephone, and almost did tonight if it hadn't been for the arrival at afforementioned pub). We have to do that more often.

'Man On Fire' was a fantastic film, if incredibly dark and depressing in places. The cinematography, sound, editing, story, the works were all incredible. It did lose out in the end though. Felt too much like the ending just occurred, rather than being fully led up to. Shame really, seeing as they spent good hour just getting to know the characters. I won't be suprised if the girl in it grows up to be a famous actress someday. Sorry, actor. I personally don't understand what is the point of now referring to women as 'actors' rather than 'actresses'. Actor, in my opinion, always feels too masculine to me. It's sharp. Oh well, I suppose it's the feminist's loss. Feminism is getting to be a pain in the ass nowadays, sadly. The divide between women and men (I personally believe) can possibly be no closer without destroying all senses of gender, turning us into androgynous, sexless beings. *sigh*

Recently, I have spent far too much on albums. Well, actually, that's kind of a lie. I haven't spent a lot on albums in the past 3 weeks (in fact, just £26 I recall); however, I have bought a lot of CDs with that £26. About 9 albums and 1 single I think. Which is good in a way.

The room is still a mess. Tomorrow, I will start the task of doing all the things I must do. So many things to do. I want to do them all at once, get them over with, but instead I end up not deciding what to do and doing none of them. It's the way of the world I think.

I'm missing Chrissey, as always. I tend to miss every aspect of her at the same time, which is saddening. Her eyes, her smile, her talk, her cuddles, everything. I suppose it's for the best though, otherwise I'd be doing even less than I'm doing now. Probably not, but love takes up so much of your life. Personally, I wouldn't trade this feeling for the world though.

I have to come to a conclusion about whether I should sleep and risk not getting up for my lectures, or not sleeping and risk missing my lecture.( :P )

I must admit, this album I'm listening to is *really* good: Little Black Numbers by Kathryn Williams. I belive she won the Mercury in 1999. This was post that, I believe *checks*.

Nope, my mistake. This album was shortlisted 2000, but Badly Drawn Boy's 'The Hour of Bewilderbeast' won it. I do find it interesting that 'The Streets' have been nominated twice, yet neither time have won it. The Mercury's don't *really* count for anything though, apart from showing you can make an album that's artistically different. I suppose that is right, in a way. The Mercury is designed primarily as an arts prize, unlike the Brits or the Grammys or anything like that. It's special, even though some albums can be a little 'tosh'.

Ooh, my stomach's feeling icky. I think I haven't fed it right today. Oh well, not much I can do about it now. Give my teeth a clean, nice, shiny, minty.

I must admit, that Dan, Ben, Gem and me did decide some random things:

First album bought: Dan - Travis 'The Man Who'; Me - Spin Doctors 'Pocket Full Of Kryptonite'; Ben - Ozzy Osbourne 'No More Tears'; Gem - Oasis '(What's The Story?) Morning Glory'

Worst album owned: Dan - Britney Spears 'In The Zone' (given as a present); Ben - Guns And Roses 'Appetite For Destruction' (admittedly, he doesn't buy that many CDs so his collection doesn't really have anything bad in it); Gem - First two Spice Girls Albums

Best Green Day Album: 'Dookie'

Best Green Day Track: 1st - 'Basket Case', with 'Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)' a VERY close second

Best track on RHCP's 'Californication': 'Scar Tissue', with 'Otherside' coming close.

Best Queen track: 'Killer Queen'

Best REM album: 'Automatic For The People'

Best serious Jim Carey Films: 1st 'Eternal Sunshine', 2nd 'Man On The Moon', 3rd 'Truman Show'

Best Charlie Kaufman Films: 1st 'Eternal Sunshine', 2nd 'Adaptation', 3rd 'Being John Malkovich'

Electric Six: One Hit Wonders (of a sort)
The Darkness: Vastly Overrated
Franz Ferdinand: Not Overrated, probably didn't deserve Mercury

We also got onto the subject of Red Dwarf series, but we couldn't decide the best one, so gave up.

I must admit, a few new ideas for Termisoc appeared in the pipes as well:

* Cyber Café with Termisoc computers running Web, etc.
* Increase in membership costs next year (poss. £4 members, £15-£20 clubsocs)
* All projects to be finished by end of year
* Mass club campaigning (flyers, posters, etc.) - January onwards.
* LAN party before Christmas, even if it's Wireless-only
* Pizza nights
* More movie socials...
* and many other things my brain can't cope with at this moment in time.

I need to get those parcels tomorrow/today. Otherwise, they could be shipped back, and I'd be an unhappy bunny :(

I find it ironic that the only track on my computer by Elliot Smith is 'Pictures Of Me', a song about hating being famous (ironic because that's probably what drove him to suicide).

I think I'd better stop writing, otherwise this entry will get rediculously long and 'the man' will try to put me down. Oh well.

"Contains your Recommended Daily Intake of Chunks" - Advert for Ben & Jerry's

2004-11-09T02:02:00.000Z

Got back from a 12 1/2 hour train journey that should have only taken 5 hours by car. I'm not complaining though, I could easily have been on the train that took 7 lives, including 5 passengers. I shudder at the thought. Every 4 weeks, I take that train. Admittedly, I am never on it at the point where the crash happened, and yesterday, I, in all likelihood, would never have ended up on that train, but still, it does make you think. A split-second is all it takes.

The CD has stopped. The eerie silence left by the lack of Fatboy Slim's 'Better Living Through Chemistry' is making me feel odd. I don't know why. Maybe I expect to hear something which I'm not.

In any case, I think more music is required to fill this bizarre inky void which has come over the room. I think Aphex Twin's 'Come To Daddy' is in reach, so I may as well stick that on. Out comes Soulwax's 'Any Minute Now' out the CD changer, in goes bizarre electronica. Turn it down, skip Daddy Mix, lovely.

I really need to get a sensible amount of sleep. I either sleep too long or sleep too little, either way it's bad for me.

I'm suprised by the amount of time it takes me to write these mind-blargs. Already within one sentence, I'm through 1 track of the EP. Bizarre that.

Just finished 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' for the nth time. It doesn't seem to be a book that sticks in my mind too well, and I always have this sense of lacking at the end of it, like it doesn't feel like you've reached the end when you do.

I might have to turn this off, it's disturbing me in my current frame of mind. Instead, flick to Computer mode on HiFi, dig out Bernard Butler's 'People Move On' (an incredibly indestinct and chilled album, I must admit) from the pile of albums I didn't bring down but are handily on MP3, and calm. Argh! I think I hear MP3 rot!

Why does MP3 rot occur (also known as drunken MP3s, only with it occuring after time, rather than due to a crummy download), I wonder? That shimmeryness that can occur when the data starts corrupting? This appears to have only started since I converted to NTFS and WindowsXP. Skip says he was having a similar problem on his collection (though his is mostly 'acquired', so I have no sympathy). Maybe a Microsoft ploy to get people on to secure WMAs :P

I need Coke. Or Dr. Pepper. That combination of caffeine and sugars which keeps me motivated. Also, the hunger is moving in. Admittedly, I haven't had that much to eat in the past day, maybe that has something to do with it. I've just noticed that Bernard Butler's 'You Just Know' has a similar chord sequence to Mull Historical Society's 'Watching Xanadu'. Hmm. I'm at least 62% certain that this came out pre-Mull Historical's first album, though. Sigh.

And that's it for this burst of installment. Tune in again sometime for more blarg from me, The MooseBlaster. God's speed, men.

"I'm getting older and older and older, and always a little further out of the way" - Counting Crows - August And Everything After

2004-11-04T02:58:00.000Z

My head is hurting. I have no idea why, as I have done too little to really make it hurt. Maybe I shouldn't have tried working out Gentoo. :P

Turning the lights down improves the situation slightly. It makes it feel more secure in here, surrounded by the trash and CDs and boxes my life is currently throwing around at me. It's not as untidy as it was last time it got in a mess. It feels more like the way my mind feels. A little messy, a little chaotic, but encapsulated and homely.

My room is slowly becoming my space. As the days are passing, I'm feeling more and more like this is home. I should really have a little throwing away day though, because no matter how welcoming the gentle chaos is, there is stuff that's lying on my floor which needs to be trashed. *sigh* I'll get round to it at some point.

I'm slowly feeling like I'm getting on top of all my work, and that I can sleep a little sounder. I'm feeling good tonight. I don't know why. Maybe it's the warm lulling me into a relaxed state of mind. It's still full of words, but at least they are words that are just flowing, rather than forcing themselves out, trying to jump through my fingers and onto the printed screen.

The presidency, I feel, is going well. I do feel as if the exec team (including myself, of course) are doing a lot better a job than last year's team. Last year, it felt more like Dave and Ryan couldn't be bothered anymore. It's a shame really. This year, however, I do believe that people are pulling their weight in the team. Skippy, although I have a go at him constantly (I always feel really bad posthumously that I do that, I really must apologise to him), is doing a fantastic job arranging all these things for the society without asking.

Also, Dan is being an absolute star in the Treasury department, as well as acting as a part-secretary and co-ordinator. He did a fantastic job with the presentations, making sure that they didn't go over people's heads. Also, he's a great right-hand man. I couldn't ask for a better person to help.

Gem is a great lass, she does know her sh*t. I'm a little concerned that sometimes she thinks I'm talking down to her (occasionally, she gets this look accross her face as if she wants me to shut up, it's kind of un-nerving).

Dan Ca was a git for not EVER turning up to a meeting. I do like the way no-one has seen him since last term. I'm glad he got kicked out in a way. I have no real patience for timewasters.

Personally, I think Ben's going to have it easy this year. As we've got used to not having a secretary, he'll probably end up just being another member of the exec team. I believe these role names mean nothing anymore anyway, as we all do each other's jobs. This might all change next year, with Dan on his work placement.

I think Nat and Tamsyn will broaden our socials a little (maybe). They have some good ideas, though I'm not sure whether all their ideas are particularly relevant, as quite a few people in the society aren't clubbers really, but hey, it's a change I suppose.

I should really work out how Dave is compromising these boxes. chkrootkit is running, so maybe it'll pick up something.

The chill has come. My happiness is ebbing, possibly because the tiredness is setting in (as always).

I must admit that Chrissey sounds really optimistic about this 'opening a cinema' idea. It's making me feel a little optimistic too (shock-horror!).

Tomorrow I'll do something artistic, maybe cover my walls with more adverts and posters. Right now I'm too tired. Tomorrow, I'll finish off the video project, write it up, and it's done. Till then world, goodnight.

That was freaky.... Mixer.exe clocking up over 100MB of memory. I must check that out. (End Process). Well, nothing's happened, so it may be a lovely virii. Anyway, as I said, goodnight.

They called me Mr. Glass

2004-10-28T03:28:00.000+01:00

Hot buttered toast is the ultimate in foods to drag the imagination into overload. I suddenly feel deep regret that I have eaten it, because I was just about to go to bed and now my brain is full of words once more. They itch and scratch, wanting to get out. They keep me awake at night. Either that or the high dosages of caffeine that the average student ingests daily. I prefer the former. It feels more artistic. *smiles*

My speakers have packed up again. It's starting to get a right pain. I have to keep waggling the wires all the time to get noise. Break in the cable it seems.

The room around me is dark, enclosing me in a cucoon of dim glow from the monitor. I love the way it feels like you're hiding away when it's dark. Wrapping up in duvet improves the effect of course, especially due to the nights getting colder. It's really weird, I'm starting to feel more and more like I am writing to an audience rather than random spoutings for my own benefit. Stop it. Stop it now.

The fear has ebbed now. That weird fear that prevented me from feeling happy for many weeks. I feel things are settled. Well, as settled as they can possibly be.

I feel my toes are slowly getting colder as the night draws on and the warmth of the day is slowly starting to dissapate into the amber street light glow. This is crazy, my mind is full of words. Full of words that are so mixed together they don't make sense, like Bruce Nolan in Bruce Almighty. WOW! IS IT GETTING LOUD IN HERE!

The gentle buzz of the fans are calming. I've really got to invest in a chair. I'm probably going to get a flat behind if I keep sitting on my case every time I want to use the computer. No wonder I've been spending a minute amount of time in the house.

I've really got to get some excercise. I feel not a whole lot better than last month, when I promised myself I would go to the Gym. Oh, how promises take a tumble when they are inside your head. Promises to other people are different, because you are expected by somebody else to carry out that promise. When it's in your head, you only have a little voice nagging you all day.

I'm still recovering slowly after John Peel's death. It's a shock, and I don't think it's truly sunk in that he's gone. As I joked to Dan the other night: 'Let's celebrate his memory by getting a turntable, buying an obscure record and then playing it at the wrong speed.'

No-one should be afraid of death, but equally no-one should be afraid of life. As everyone always tells you 'you have to live your life to the full and the way you want to'. I like the principle of: Do what you want to do, because tomorrow you could be hit by a bus and then that'll be the end of your life. All that'll happen is wherever you end up, you'll be saying to yourself 'Oh, I wish I'd done that.' It's too late, get over it.

I like that principle. It's good and it works. It's just a shame I can't live up to my own expectations. I procrastinate. I don't make the most of my life. I hate myself for it. The rain is starting to blow at the window. I shiver at the concept of the cold wet day that the sound will generate for tomorrow by it's mere presence at this moment in time. I can feel the grey clouds looming above, even though I don't even have my curtains open. Sensory perception and all that jazz. The sound of the rain blowing against the window is an 'earcon' for greyness, cold, windy, damp, and above all, sodden. The world is a crisp pile of cartridge paper and the rain will turn it into a damp, soggy mess. The writing made up of signposts and graffiti, the coffee stains are of leaf-mulch, and the lines are just the tears and rips caused by everyday life. The rain will turn it all into a pulp of dark mush, where the lines are blurred, the coffee washes away down into the drains, the graffiti remains however, much like permanent marker, and will still remain when the pages dry into the warped configuration of the world. Still legible, but altogether more difficult.

But as they say, tomorrow's another day. Yes, another day less for you to exist. Make your mark, otherwise you'll be washing away with the coffee and the stains when your pages float away.

'Punk is not dead, it's merely decaying where it stands' - Adapted from t-shirt slogan

2004-10-12T02:24:00.000+01:00

Emptiness is a fearful thing. That will to do something creative, only not having the ideas to do it. It's taunted me since the start of this whole period of rambling, and it still does to this day. Blankness hits me wave upon wave like I'm a tiny fishing boat caught in a tsunami in the Pacific. As always, the tiredness hits me second, like the swell of a thousand sleep-filled nights crashing down on me, forcing me to join them. I don't see the point of sleep anymore. I fall asleep tired, I wake up tired, I'm late because I sleep. Maybe I shouldn't sleep, maybe insomnia is the cure to all my problems....

Nah, don't be daft. Insomnia, though it may solve problems shorthand, it has future consequences. Consequences my brain doesn't want to comprehend right now.

I like the way these ramblings are starting to go. They feel less like a log of my life (which the average diary tries to keep track of; I have enough hassle keeping track of my life still being lived, let alone having to recall what happened in my day to a printed word. If something happens that is of deadly importance, I'll write it down. Otherwise, I feel it becomes another document in my increasing messes of paper.

My mental chaos I feel is expanding out from my being into this room. As we speak, chaos reigns. The bed is unhappy being chained together with sheets, and spends the majority of it's existance wriggling out of it's cream pyjamas, exposing it's nakedness to all who come by. It's like the man in the nursing home who spends the majority of his caged life trying to throw off the shackles of the nurses' society; a hippy who feels that expressionism is the way to go, his brain addled with the chemicals he feasted upon for the majority of his life until he now no longer knows reality from his own twisted perspective on things.

Yes, that's what my bed is like. It's spent too many years being a student-digs bed and has become addled on marijuana fumes and now things going 'au naturelle' is the way to go. Or it could be the matress being to thick. Hmm.....

I love the way that society has made anarchy (in British terms) a fashion statement. No longer do people dress punk to be anti-politics, anti-war, anti-style. They dress punk as purely a 'scoiety telling me what to do' thing, a niche market which fashion has written the textbook for, filling our screens with formulaic angsty teenagers and teams of manufactured rock bands. It's so ironic.

I don't know what to do with my life anymore. It's a shame. I once felt I didn't know what to do with my life, next I formulated ideas and future plans, but now that world feels further away than ever.

I think I'd better start sleeping, the perfect drug to life. Otherwise, I won't get up for my lectures. So goodnight world once more. See you on the other side.

*zzz*

It's kicking in. I can feel it.

2004-10-08T12:42:00.000+01:00

The sickness is coming, the disease. It's in me right now and there's nothing I can do. Why today? Why of all days is an illness deciding to manifest itself in me. My frame wants to vomit, but I do not. The mind is being seperated from the body in a way. I still feel in control, but yet I feel completely out of control.
My mind is full of images. Photographs, paintings, art. Not my own, but art from books, papers, magazines, advertising. It's reminding me I should be somewhere else. Doing something else. Thinking about it deteriorates my condition. I hate the way that I cannot think of anything else. I want to sleep, hide from the world right now. Pretend I'm not here so people can't see me.
I'm glad I'm having this mid-term crisis right at the start of it in a way. It's gets my fear, my inadequacies as a student out the way. I wish sometimes that it didn't affect me like this. I understand now that the sickness, the fear, the prickling sensation in the back of my neck, the shivering, the anguish and the depression are all one and the same.
I'm starting to notice that my mind is slowly becoming less like my own. I'm changing mentally. I'll read these passages back and be able to remember what I was feeling, and yet people will struggle to comprehend it. Oh god, I'm becoming one of them.... I'm becoming an art student.
I feel that if I let myself go and be changed, then I fear I'll start seeing the world differently. That I'll start hanging round in trendy arty places, start discussing what writers were thinking when they wrote a certain passage in a book and why, etc. etc. blah blah blah.
The colour printer apparently has 'FIERY' as a fault. Should that be 'FIREY'? If so, I fear for my safety as I do not want to be printing something and then a jet of flame gets produced.
I'm still feeling like I have a form of food poisoning. Maybe it is that. *dies*

Nah, maybe not *alives*
I'm feeling no better. I hope that Chrissey's OK. She sounded like she was in a huge amount of pain. I just hope that there's nothing wrong. Oh well.

The boredom is setting in.

2004-10-06T00:53:00.000+01:00

Over the past few days, I have been trying (with great effort) to make music. The trouble is, I can't get a good basis for the noise. A starting point, a reference node, a chaos piece.
My music of previous has been formulaic, repetitive, *dull*. I want a change. I just want to be creative. My brain yearns for something to do, it's weird. I just want to do something that makes me happy, content, etc.

I should buy a chair. The floor is rather uncomfortable to sit upon, and I'm sure it's playing hell with my neck. Trouble is, the bed is too far away for me to read the screen properly.

Oh wait, I can just change the resolution to make words bigger. Aah, that's a bit better. :) I wish this bed cover would stay on, it's getting annoying. This room is annoying. The lack of internet is annoying, the lack of chair is annoying, the lack of happiness is annoying. Why do I feel annoyed all of a sudden? Lack of sugar possibly. Coke is required.

Things aren't flowing as well as they once did. Money is an issue for the first time in my student life. Once my loan clears, I'll be happier. I wish I hadn't lost that cheque. It's probably somewhere in this room. I need to decorate this place, maybe I should be doing that rather than wasting my time sitting here splurging out my mind onto a white screen. I'll do it tomorrow. No lectures, plenty of time. Get up early, that's the plan. I won't though. I have this tendency to snooze until I need to get up. Snooze. What a perculiar word. One of those words which doesn't look like English. Maybe it's an Americanism. Maybe in the UK it should be called Snoose. No, that doesn't look right either. My mouse is flashing, it's starting to bug me. *sigh*. Maybe I should lay back and thing of nothing. Yes, nothing is good.

Will I ever use that fan? It's the wrong weather, surely?
I'll stick it on anyway, circulate the air.
Christ, it's noisy. Refreshing though.... brrrrrr....... *shiver*
Off again, I suppose.
Hmm... reverse. That's better. Not cold, just refreshing. That sounds like an advert for that old drink... "Something Ice". What was it? Never mind, it'll come back to me. Mentholly goodness. That's it, a reverse fan is like menthol. Not cold, but refreshing.
Hmmm, chewing gum is a good idea. I've got some somewhere.
"Chew on this...", how hilarious (*fake mental laugh*). Nice gum though. Shame it loses it's flavour so quickly. No wonder they usually come foil wrapped. 12:13. No, wait. 23:31. I should really change that clock. I miss the internet. I think I have withdrawl symptoms. No wonder I've been chomping on mints for weeks! Ahh, there goes the chewing gum flavour. Damn. Oh well, I'll keep chewing anyway, as I have nowhere to put it right now. Must get a bin soon. It would reduce the oodles of crap on my floor.

I miss Chrissey too much. I ache for her every day. Twice as much when I see a Couple. Every beautiful girl who passes by makes me think of her. Her smile, her eyes, her. I must have some sort of locking device when it comes to women. I could not cheat on her even if I tried. It makes me happy in a way, prevents me from doing something stupid that I would regret. Even when drunk, the lock is still in effect. Thanks brain. *Your brain thanks you*.

I need to tidy (as always). I need to clean the house up. I need to work out what to make for food this weekend. Hmm.

emie. awia upside down. Like Sega backwards in ageS. Upside down ebaZ. No wait, S upside down is still S. So to ebaS. Hmm, E-Bass. Fishing sim. Or music prog. *shrug*

This bed is comfy. Maybe sleep is a good idea. Tiredness is weird. I don't understand it.

Read back. So mixed up my mind is. Tossing and turning as if it wants to do something but doesn't know yet and so instead just wants sleep. Ampersands are weird. Oxymorons are people obsessed with spot cleansers. My window is covered in condensation.

What are SSH-keys? Research starts now. Whatever it is, that Termisoc Root hacker seems to be manipulating them. Who knows...? Soundcard not making sounds. Reboot.

*system rebooted 23:55*

Rambling on a Train

2004-05-03T17:30:00.000+01:00

Sitting on the train, going back to Southampton. Just spent a long weekend with Rich in Plymouth. Had a great time.

I miss having him around, he's great company. He said the other day as we walked back from the cinema that he liked having me as a companion. I know what he means. Just having him around to talk to and share things with is nice. I think we will always be this comfortable around each other.

We went to see "Eternal Sunshine of the Spottless Mind" yesterday, and on the way home we were talking and we decided that neither of us had any bad memories of each other. I like that feeling...

...Wow thats alot of very white houses...

...sorry got distracted there. I was saying I like the way I have no bad memories of Rich, we've never had a fight, never said anything hateful or anything. I hope it stays like that, I think it will.
We also saw "Secret Window", that was on the saturday afternoon. It was quite good. It was adapted from a Stephen King novel and there have been some really crap adaptations of Stephen King novels in the past...

...hmmm, I wonder what the final score in the snooker final was, I wonder if it has finished for that matter...

...like "Dreamcatcher", and "Thinner" although I didn't think "Dreamcatcher" was that bad. But yes, "Secret Window" was ok, it was better than some but not as good as others. What else did we do?,, Spent a lot of money, we did that, I think we ate out every meal time, Friday I ate on the train, Saturday we had lunch at Pizza Hut, dinner at Subway, then Sunday we had lunch at Subway, dinner at Pizza Express and today we had dinner at the Roundabout, but we did have lunch in, well brunch anyway. But whatever the count it cost quite a bit.

We also went to Riley's to play pool and I got myself a membership for £5, which was nice. We played four games on one of the hire tables and I beat Rich 3-1, tee hee. We were both really bad. I like playing pool. I think Rich and I will definitely get a pool table when we're older and have the space for one...

...does that man over there keep giving me looks? Hmmm, maybe it's just me, I can't imagine I am doing anything to disturb him...

...ooh, are we coming up to a station? I guess its Totness next...

These train journeys are always so long. I had a bit of a fiasco on the way here, you see I only decided to come about...

...ooh, moving again...

...3 hours before I got on the train. I had a dedline moved back you see and it meant I didn't really need to be in Southampton so I basically ran home, stopped at the post office to send dads birthday card and present, ran the rest of the way home and called Rich. He eventually said ok and I threw some stuff in a bag and went to the train station. However I must have dropped my railcard in the room as it was gone at the station and I had to pay an extra £15 for my tickets. Oh well, its my own fault. But that was just the start of it. I then went and got on the wrong train, got off as soon as I realised, at Bittern, and caught the next one back, which wasted an hour. Finally on the right train I had to change at Westbury, but the connecting train was late and I had to hang around for ages. The second train was really crowded too, mostly with drunk people consoling themselves about the delay with drink. Some people eh!

But that was about the last of the problems. Rich was nearly on time to the station but not quite. I forgive him though, he had been spontaneously cleaning his room for me...

...the windows on this train are really filthy...

...Anyway, I think I have had enough of typing now...

...uh oh, next stop Newton Abbott, I'm sitting in a seat reserved from Newton Abbott, I better put my lap top away incase I have to move.

Thoughts of a nosey girlfriend

2004-03-23T15:35:00.001Z

I'm sorry.

I got back after we went to the pub for lunch and your computer was buzzing and saying "Go on, take a look, you know you want to." And it giggled like mutly out of wacky races.

Anyway,.. I took a look at My Documents and was intrigued by your rants from a constantly ticking mind.

So I looked

and I read

and I'm sorry

please forgive me, I love you

And then I had this naughty little thought that I should leave you a little message to find (although I am way to impatient to hide it properly, I will save it on the desk top)

I love you sweetie, and I love your mind. I wish you could show me every image and thought and idea that flashes up behind those beautiful soft brown eyes that make me squggle so. Its hard though isn't it. I used to write alot when I was younger but I could never do justice to my visions and so I abandoned each idea in turn and tried again. Maybe oneday I will be able to say what I really want to say. For now I have stopped trying in favour of facts and reality (but it is not so much fun I think).

Don't you stop trying. You have the chance to find a way. To find a way of printing your thoughts into the world as it were.

I read that rant and it made me realise just how clever and creative you really are. That 3am (or whatever) was so articulate and wonderful. It was like I could read your thoughts as they had entered your head. So what if you can't find the words to talk or the tools to draw, the ideas and the ability is there in your head and you have a lifetime to find a way of setting it free.

And your stomach is not bloated and overweight. And no arguing. a, a, a,.. I am putting my foot down *thud* so there.

I love you.

p.s. Vultures?

You are not really there

2004-03-22T03:03:00.000Z

Words are playing on my mind again.
Long words, short words, dark words.
The tiredness is setting in, but I don't want to sleep, not yet.
I didn't get my fill of the day, stuff to be done. Well, stuff SHOULD be done.
Sometimes, I wish I was a good designer. A designer of brilliant things.
Wonderful things. Worldwidely fantastic things.
But something tries to hold me back,
my imagination is being prevented from spilling out onto the page by not filling my potential time. Instead, I sit and download crap. Sometimes not even good crap.
Actually, I lie. Sometimes it's very good crap. Quality sh*t.
I should unplug it. Disconnect myself from this... fantasy isn't the word.... imaginary tether that stops me from being creative myself.

Maybe I should write something.
But write what?
A speech. To whom?
A play, maybe. Nah, I don't want thespians debating over who is the better actor who played the part of 'Ben The helpful shovel seller'.
A book. Maybe a book. Books are like magic dust to some people, myself included.
Trouble is, writing a book usually means that it gets shovelled to the back behind the videos. Nobody wants to read anymore. As Tom once said, 'reading is for stupid people'.
Of course, he was merely referring to the context that people who are dyslexic usually have higher IQs, and so technically reading is indeed for stupid people. Einstein was dyslexic.
However, I think that's the only person I know who came to some genius and was well known for his ailment.
Anyway, all that ends up to good books (not to say *my* book would be a good book) is that they get picked apart by Literature students, like... not eagles... erm.... think of other birds of prey... erm... pigeons?
No, that's not right. Erm... seagulls... damn brain!
It'll come back to me. Hawks. That'll do, like hawks feasting on the bloody carcass of some dead animal, picking it apart with their sharp claws and beady eyes and highlighters and pencils.

Maybe not a book then. One day, maybe a book, but not now.
Maybe a film script. I'm pretty certain that's been kicking around up there in my brain for eons. I never got past the intro. I should have thought more about it. Someday I'll have a good script idea, probably a comedy. But never mind. Tomorrow is another day. Well, actually, in 6 hours time it'll be another day. Another day where I go to lectures, do my work, come back here and think of a great idea.
Then go on B3ta and forget it all.

Maybe drawing is the key. But no scanner and no tablet means that it doesn't go much further than scribblings on a page, which then get lost in the great heap of stuff overshadowing my desk. My brain has stopped talking. Instead, it's listening to the incessant hum of the fans and the rumble coming from my cupboard. I have no idea what the rumble is. I think I will investigate it now.

I don't have the right screwdriver. Oh well.
My previous creative efforts are lying crumpled on the floor, nestling between the clothes lieing therein.

My chair no longer fits by my desk until I remove the clothes that occupy the space where it once was. My brain is too tired now. My body is getting too hot to think. Many of these things are trying to prevent me from typing. My bloated, overweight stomach moans at me to go to bed. Just sleep. You'll feel bright and perky come 8am, where you'll get up, get dressed, go fix the incredibly unstable server in the Babbage Building, go to lectures, eat, go swimming, take some pictures of the tumble-down shopping centre which is being destroyed by the hungry, obsessive diggers and their power-crazy drivers.

You need to shut off the internet. Use it only when required. Don't go on sites for no purpose.

From now on, only go on:

Your mail.
Oobtube (you don't want to drop out of the scene).
Any sites you require for information.

DO NOT go on eBay, stupidvideos, and the like.

You are permitted to go on B3ta once daily. No re-checking and F5ing.

Today, as in later, you need to wash your clothes, tidy, do some work on stuff you need to be doing.

Go to sleep, little one.
Go to sleep.