A childish day

Felt better today other than the coughing and lack of sleep from the night before. I think somehow my body clock has been reset so I'm worried that I won't sleep tonight either. I'm in work tomorrow so I hope that doesn't happen and I don't want to be sleepy at Rob and Em's tomorrow for New Year's Eve.

Spent today tidying up my room a little. It's a lot better now.

Today was a childish day for the following reasons:

1) I watched Short Circuit, which I LOVED as a child.
2) I got my Lego out and made a three wheeled car.
3) I started re-reading Swallows and Amazons.
4) I played with a few of the 24 Psion Series 3as that I own.

Can't sleep revisited

Once again I am unable to sleep. Possibly due to the late night last night and a very pointless day doing nothing other than play with the PowerBook 1400 again. I also discovered that my PowerBook G3 (FireWire) was actually not dead after all, which is a big yay as it is still the best machine I've come across for music programs. The sound system in it is ridiculously better than any PC I've yet encountered and that sad truth was making me start to consider finding an old PowerBook G4 for that purpose. Now that the Intel transition is complete, the old PowerPC machines are dropping in price.

The weather was horrific today so I didn't get a chance to go out. I hate myself right now. I'm a lazy bastard who hasn't taken any exercise in weeks and eaten like shit as well. Before I went to London I was eating reasonably healthily, walking the dog each day and taking other exercise too, and oddly enough I felt really good for it and slept really well. Since I stopped doing that regularly after coming back from London, I feel lethargic and unmotivated. Got to start again come January, which given the apathetic state of mind I'm, is going to be a bundle of joy.

I know it's Christmas time but that really isn't an excuse.

I feel like shite

It's stupid o'clock. I feel like utter shite, full of snot, lightheaded and pounding head of pain. Why is this cold dragging on so? Also the Idiot Hound is on my bed, but I don't really mind. He may be an angular and pointy presence, but he's keeping my feet warm. Life would be easier in many ways if he was a whippet and half the size but he can't help his birth. Wouldn't change him for anything.

Pakistan is about to explode according to the BBC. I have a bad feeling about this.

Fecking colds. And no you silly iPod, I did mean fecking. Yet if I type decking, you prompt for fecking!!!! Should stop now, talking to your devices is probably a bad sign. Right, iPod?

iPod?

Hello?

Electric cars

One thing I saw in London was a G-wiz electric car. I remember being mildly impressed at the way it pulled up in front of me outside the Russell Square tube station on an empty road and then accelerated away with only a quiet whirr.

And then I saw this.

Wow.

That's pretty bad. And Jeremy Clarkson drove one into a table at 40mph and what happened? The same thing, except that time the batteries exploded acid all over the place.

I think there are two reasons why electric cars haven't taken off - first, the big oil companies stifle their development and second, all of the production ones have so far been shit. Except the Tesla Roadster, but that does cost ludicrous amounts of money.

Funking it up

Pakistan's future looks very uncertain now.

Here's a hint, if you are using an iPod touch to write something in one tab of Safari and switch to another tab, don't expect what you wrote in the first tab to be there when you switch back to it. I just lost a fair bit of blog post by doing that. The gist of it is below.

First day back in work. Unsurprisingly the offices were nearly deserted and it was spookily quiet. On the plus side this meant I was able to get quite a lot done today. I left a little early and went round to Will's, bass in hand, where he and Rob were making music.

They had just finished a track when I got there and we quickly started another one. While Rob wrote lyrics in his encoded handwriting, Will set up a beat which I overlaid with a funked up slap bass line which Will accompanied with random guitar noodlings. Sounded quite good and then it was ready for Rob's vocal contribution. Just needs Will to sit down and mix the tracks together properly.

Whether anything will ever live up to the blasphemous success of Mary Poppins Whore Hour remains to be seen. We didn't stay very long after that though, Rob had to go home and cook and both Will and I have been suffering from a cold and felt too crappy. Will seems to have had it worse though.

First time I've used the Squier bass in anger with the various mods and it actually sounded pretty decent, though the fresh strings put on it yesterday undoubtedly helped.

Coughing well today. My throat is killing me.

Retro laptopping

Had a look through the stack of old laptops I seem to have accumulated and had a play with some of them and set aside others for scrapping.

First was a PowerBook 540. Now this was a truly kickass machine in it's time - 68040 processors, stereo speakers, built-in Ethernet, and they were also the first ever laptops with trackpads. They also looked good with a curvy swooping case. Mine has 12mb RAM, a 250mb hard drive, a mono TFT screen and runs Mac OS 8.1. It still works fine, but the screen has a fault where it'll start to fade from the corners inward, which is really weird. After about an hour or so, it's basically unusable. With the built in Ethernet, it can browse the Internet, but it is really very slow. My blog took about a minute to load and looked a bit weird.

After that, I hacked up a Toshiba power supply and used it to fire up an old Tadpole SPARCbook 2. Now this truly is an orphaned machine, I've never seen another one except in a museum. Tadpole built laptop equivalents of high-end Sun Unix workstations in the 90's, and this is one of the very earliest. It has a 40mhz SPARC processor, 32mb RAM, a colour TFT screen and I'm guessing a 250mb SCSI hard drive and probably cost a vast sum when it was new. While it does still power up and drops into the ROM monitor, it won't boot and the display constantly rolls, as though it's lost vertical hold. I did discover after a bit of research that it needs 18v rather than the 15v from the Toshiba PSU, but a brief test with a 19v Fujitsu PSU did the same thing.

There is very little useful information about this machine on the Internet, and the chances of getting it running again are slim. It needs a special version of SunOS to install and boot from and the SCSI connector is non-standard. Theoretically it would be possible to install it via a network boot, but with the display problem, it's not worth trying to hunt down the necessary software. Shame really, it's built like a tank, and it's certainly something different and it would be fun to play with old-school Unix. But it's just too different from a normal SPARC machine - the later SPARCbook 3 was much more like a normal Sun machine and is therefore easier to get running.

Finally I tried my PowerBook 180, an older machine than the 540. I've always had a soft spot for the 1x0 PowerBooks, being big and square. This one has the maximum 14mb RAM and a 33mhz 68030. But this time it wouldn't start for some reason. It showed a cursor which moved, but didn't want to load the OS. Annoying. I'd like to get it running as is pretty clean and has the weirdness of a SCSI-Ethernet adaptor.

I once again admired the sleek beauty of an early titanium PowerBook G4 and lamented the dead motherboard which prevents it being used. It is otherwise intact, although I stole the keytops for my iBook, and the hard drive is long gone. But the motherboard is truly fried and I can't find a cheap enough replacement to justify it, especially as the 512mb RAM in it is fried too.

I nearly started stripping the Proliant today, but I just couldn't be arsed. It's so big and heavy. It needs to go though and so does a lot of other crap. There's a big all-in-one Power Mac 5500/275 which I'd bin, except it's the black model which is apparently rare. There's a LOT of other crap that can go though.

Can't sleep!

Woke up about an hour ago with a blocked nose dripping horrible fluids, and can't get back to sleep. Feel utterly awake and alert. How annoying.

Nose is clearish now but still has that annoying burning sensation. Still dripping though. Various aches.

Feck. I thought I was getting better yesterday but obviously not. Left nostril totally blocked but then it is much smaller than my right one due to a deviated septum, relic of being rescusitated when I was born.

Christmas Day

Updating blog from phone at my Dad's house. So far all has gone well. I didn't sleep well and so am feeling rather tired and crappy. Shame as the weather is beautiful and it would be perfect weather for walking the dog.

Say what you like about the iPhone or iPod touch, using the on screen keyboard is easier than typing on the phone.

Illness and Tron

Felt like crap all day yesterday with a snotty cold, but not too bad today. So didn't do much at all. Just chilled with the occasional DVD. Watched the weirdness that is Tron today. The Master Control Program freaked me out the first time I saw it and it still unsettles me today.

Eaten a shedload of macadamia and cashew nuts so I feel slightly sick. Bah.

Once again it is Christmas tomorrow. Going to have lunch with my Dad and then evening meal with my Mum. Should be fun. Not hugely fussed about it though, I'm looking forward to New Years Eve more.

Ridiculous filenames

People really need to be more careful when naming files. Over the last couple of weeks I encountered these gems:

ASSQUEST.DOC - a questionnaire
SIMSPERM.DOC - documentation about software permissions.

A tiny laptop and a huge Transformer

The thriftiness is being dispelled somewhat by the Christmas influence. I think I mentioned the Masterpiece Optimus Prime recently. Well, I found a cheap second hand one on Ebay. Cheap because it is used and is missing a finger, it's also the US version which has battle damage and the cut-off smokestacks. Despite that, it's undeniably impressive. It stands a foot tall in robot mode and is amazingly detailed, making it a bitch to transform. It kind of makes up for never actually having the original Optimus Prime as a child. I did have Ultra Magnus, which was actually identical except it was white, but it wasn't quite the same. There's even a Masterpiece Ultra Magnus, which is just a repaint of the Optimus Prime one, and is just as cool. There is a fairly similar sized model of the new Movie Optimus Prime, which looks quite cool. But it just lacks the style of the original.

I spent some time today playing with my Toshiba Libretto 50CT. It's a very old laptop, being only a Pentium 75mhz with 32mb RAM. But the appealing thing is that it is very, very small, only just larger than a VHS tape. When it came out in about 1996 (I think), it was very expensive. But being a computer, of course, it depreciated reasonably quickly and I got this rather beat up one a couple of years ago and dig it out every now and again to play with. Originally it ran Windows 95 but now it runs a stripped down Debian Linux install, and runs it quite well. Discovered it can run an RDP session to my XP machine with acceptable performance which was a slightly surreal sight. It's nice to go back to a bare minimum machine - my new phone has a faster processor and more memory than the Libretto, which is quite worrying.

Weird thing you can get in Sainsbury's - dark chocolate with chilli in it. It's a Mexican thing and is actually really nice. It's not spicy as such when you reach the chilli, rather you get a curious sensation of warmth. Very intriguing.

One thing I'm trying to summon up the energy to do is get rid of my Compaq Proliant 5500 server. I bought it a couple of years ago and pimped it out with quad Pentium Pro 200mhz CPUs, 640mb RAM and blue LEDs in the SCSI drive trays. It ran pretty nicely for something so old.

Sadly something in it has died and it won't power up any more. It is enormous and heavy and takes up a LOT of room. I need to strip out all the useful parts (basically the blue LEDs...) and scrap it. It's just one of the many things that I don't need or want any more.

A great night out

Last day of work was meh. However tonight was a great night out with myself, Rob and Em, Andy, Will, Vicky and captain Caroline from badminton and her husband Rob. We started out at the top of St Asaph and worked our way through several pubs. It was pretty good all round.

Would type more but I'm tired.

Meh

Today was a boring day other than building a rather lovely Dell Precision laptop for a CAD user. It had a 15" 1680x1050 screen which was one of the most beautifully clear and sharp screens I've ever seen.

While I was in Woolies picking up some stuff for Christmas, I came across a small Optimus Prime figure for £3, so I thought I'd get it. It's actually quite cool even if it is from the movie. The best one has to be the Masterpiece Optimus Prime. My colleague has one and it looks perfect in both robot and truck mode, and every single joint is articulated, even the fingers. It does cost about £90 though.

Mario Galaxy has crossed the line where it becomes so hard it's not fun any more. I sold Arsearsein's Creed to someone in work because I hate it utterly. Not doing so well with the gaming at the moment.

A fat day and Windows

My department had a meeting today, and we clubbed together to get a buffet, which was really good. I had three piece of a particularly good chocolate cake, and then found that another department in the building had got the same buffet, so had another piece of the cake.

The Shuffle crashed today. It was playing Metallica happily enough in the car, and then died with the disco lights of death (flashing green and orange). Not a good sign. iTunes refused to touch it, saying it was corrupted and then it failed to restore it to default settings. I downloaded the iPod Reset Utility, which worked after a few tries, and some stupidity from the Optiplex. So it's now full of music again and appears to be working fine. A bit of a relief as quite often they don't return from the dead if you get the disco lights.

Watched the Smooth Criminal segment from Moonwalker on YouTube. Actually quite good, but it's funny how much of a bastard he is. He attacks several people and vapourises one, and then forces the hapless people to join in his ankle destroying dancing before going mad with a machine gun. What a great example for kids, eh? Also the song is actually about a woman who has been attacked by a hit man.

Here is a rant about Windows:

The interface is inconsistent and allows applications to grab focus at any time, incredibly annoying if you have stuff running in the background. The layout of the system files is a complete mess and the registry is just a massive, huge ball-ache. Application installation is a total farce, with installers and uninstallers that hardly ever work properly, spreading files all over the place and adding registry keys galore. How many times have I clicked 'Remove...' in Add/Remove Programs to be told 'The uninstall file is corrupted/lost/broken' and then having no way to tidily remove the program.

One of my biggest gripes is drive letters. This is an example: if I plug a card reader with four slots into a Mac, nothing appears until you insert a card, whereupon an icon will appear with the card's name. Insert another card, you get another icon.

On Windows, when you connect the reader, you get FOUR identically named drives with four separate letters. You then have to choose the drives at random to find the one with the card in it. I don't know how enterprise systems running Windows handle it with massive amounts of disks, but it can't be pretty. Drive letters were fine when it was MS-DOS and all you had were floppies and hard drives but in this day and age of network drives and vast storage? Get real.

Windows is a sloppy and kludgy operating system. Don't get me wrong, XP SP2 is a world away from the horrors of Windows 98 and ME, but it's still fundamentally broken in so many ways. Just because it's become the de facto standard does NOT mean it's great. Linux isn't the answer just yet, but it's getting better and my experiences with Gutsy on this machine have been excellent). Mac OS X may have it's own flaws, but it has a much more consistent interface and handles drives and applications much, much better than Windows, something it inherited from the old Mac OS.

Ah...now I feel better.

Christmas

Not sure why, but I'm sick of Christmas this year. Perhaps it's the constant stream of desperate requests for Wiis and DSs on the work noticeboard from people eager not to disappoint their children, and the near total commercialisation of a religious holiday which has lost it's meaning to most people. Not that I ever gave a toss about that side of it. I remember thinking in primary school when we had to do the nativity play that it was a load of nonsense, which is a bit weird really. Lifelong cynic, I guess.

I remember having great Christmases at a friend's house when we were quite young. His mother is German, so there was a strong influence from her on it. They opened their presents on Christmas Eve, had an enormous tree with real chocolates hanging off it, and there was always a massive gingerbread house covered in sweets. Awesome. It always seemed more homely somehow than the traditional Christmas at home. Oh well.

Experimented with Blender today. It's a free 3D program that is very powerful but I find totally incomprehensible. I'm working through the tutorials though and some of it is starting to make sense.

First day of work with the N93. It's big but does fit OK in my pocket with my work phone. The torch function of the flash LED comes in useful.

Worth a listen.

Soup

It was the soup fest round at Will's today. Basically a day each December to celebrate the joys of soup. It was a typical day, everyone sitting around eating soup, cake and chocolate and talking. Also encountered the ridiculous cat which sits there looking cute and just asking to be petted, whereupon it will attack with every claw it has. My favourite soup today was the spicy butternut squash and apple soup.

It's cold today, and annoyingly the ground stayed solid all day long. Also I just encountered a MASSIVE spider in my room, which escaped

I hate Christmas.

A pleasant surprise

I just dug out the mini-SD adaptor that came with the N93 and found a 2gb card in it. The only one mentioned in the listing was the standard 128mb that comes with the phone, so I'm guessing they forgot it was there.

I might be tempted to contact the seller, but they're only worth £10 these days so it's hardly worth it. There wasn't anything on it.

During the dog walk this morning, experimented with the camera. When viewed on a computer, the pics are pretty good, but the colours are a little washed out compared to my 'real' camera and if you zoom in, there's more than normal artefacting. But it's OK for something built into a phone. The video is pretty decent, it can capture at 640x480 at 30fps.

Supernova

This is really cool: Vela Supernova Remnant (& more) Wide-Field One Gigapixel Interactive Image

Memory leak?

Can you guess at what point I killed Firefox?

A work do and a new phone

It was the ICT Christmas do last night. It was held at a nearby hotel and was a 70's/80's themed 'Boogie Night'. It was actually quite good. Fancy dress was the order of the day and I was one of only two scrooges not dressed up. However fortunately I did have my Superman T-shirt on so that was enough to redeem me. The meal was a sort of Chinese buffet thing, but there was salad as well, so people ended up with random plates full of fried rice and sweet and sour pork, along with beetroot, potato salad and BBQ sauce. Odd but interesting. It was a good evening and the secret Santa presents were a big success. Perhaps the oddest was a piece of toffee which contained an apparently edible real scorpion. Two guys bravely ate it but lost their appetite when they actually reached the scorpion.

New phone time. My faithful Nokia 7610 has well and truly earned it's retirement. In the two and a half years I've owned it, it's been dropped quite often, covered in wine, kicked across a concrete floor into a wall, covered in mud and various items of food, and not a single thing has ever gone wrong. It had a new shell earlier this year but other than that, never needed anything. It is the most solid, reliable phone I have ever encountered. If the keypad hadn't finally started to fail, I'd have simply bought a new battery for it.

However instead I got a new phone. As can be seen in the image above, compared to the 7610, it's huge and complex. It's a Nokia N93, the device where Nokia went mad and included absolutely everything in a single device. It has a fast CPU, a 3mp camera with 3x optical zoom, a VGA camera in the lid, a 320x240 display, wi-fi, TV output and a weird folding, twisting shell design. Compared to the 7610 it feels flimsy and plasticky, but we'll see how it holds up. It's amazing how fast these things depreciate - 18 months ago, this was the absolute high-end of Nokia's line-up, but I got it for a fraction of the original off-contract price.

Hurtling through cake and space

Safari just crashed on the Touch. It does this quite frequently. Not really an issue unless you're writing a blog post...

Not much to report. My faithful Nokia 7610 has started to have issues with the keypad, which combined with the rapidly dying battery have led me to hunt for a suitable replacement. Steps have already been taken and I'll update when appropriate. No, it's not a iPhone. The issue I have is how to move the 580 notes that are held in the Notes program to the new device. I did move the notepad.dat file to the 7610 from my N-gage but they ran the same version of the OS.

Work do tomorrow and it's fancy dress. I'm going as someone from the background of the Terminator who coincidentally looks just like me in my normal clothes...
Low battery, better publish this now!

A sad and lonely day

It was a strange day today. I didn't do all that much. The weather was crappy in the morning so I just read books and lounged around. After lunch it looked a little better, so I took the dog for a walk. It was quite eventful, we met three people on horses, yet another uncontrolled dog, and some gimp on a dirt bike who couldn't get the thing moving without stalling. It took him about 20 tries. Quite funny.

After that, listened to some music and tried to play Mario Galaxy. However the toughness to fun ratio has increased dramatically and I got angry and turned it off. I did however play with the Mii Contest Channel, which is fun. I've submitted a Mii for the new competition 'Someone stuck in the 70's'. Also had a look at the top Miis of the day and found there were two with penises on their face and one with breasts. Oh dear.

Also experimented with the free VMWare server and now I have a fully working activated Windows XP virtual machine. It seems to run quite nicely. Perhaps not as quick as it would on the actual hardware, but certainly well enough. To help with speed, I put the machine on a separate hard drive from the real OS, which may help.

So yeah, a geeky and also slightly depressing day, for reasons I can't really fathom.

Work tomorrow. Bah.

Play-doh, poker and chocolate orange cake

Will and I met up with Rob and Em, before taking a trip into town. The goal? To buy some Play-doh and some poker chips. The reasoning for the Play-doh? Being avid and vigorous Pictionary fans, the concept of Rapidough appealed where instead of drawing, you model with clay. However, rather than drop £25 on the actual game, we reasoned that a £5 tub of Play-doh would be more fun. We also got a nice set of poker chips for cheap as well.

Upon return to Rob and Em's house, Rob spent some time teaching myself, Will and later Vicky to play poker. It was actually really good fun, though I can see how it would be difficult to become a true master of it. This was followed by a session of Play-doh madness. Basically we took it in turns to suggest something and the other four would have to model it. Perhaps the most hilarious were an angel, Concorde, a tractor, Stephen Hawking and a lifelike penis. The Play-doh had that typical marzipan-like smell.

This was followed by epic pizza, more poker and a game of Cheat, which was mainly to laugh at Will who is notoriously bad at that game.

Em also made a marbled Chocolate Orange cake, which was absolutely amazing.

Slightly incoherent, but it's late. What a great day though.

Maybe you shouldn’t have accidentally destroyed the entire cosmos then, you giant regal fuck.

6 biggest arseholes in gaming, and I wholeheartedly agree with the first one, having played Me & My Katamari on the PSP. And don't even mention Tom Nook to me.

Jiggle

Work: pointless.
Badminton: shite.
Self-esteem: non-existent.

Remind me why I bother.

Wet? Just a little.

We had a meeting today and our manager made us do one of those annoying team building exercises. But it was interesting, I found that one of my colleagues has a silver grade in ballroom dancing, another can solve a Rubik's Cube in under a minute and yet another wasn't born in Wales (shock, horror!)

I left home this evening to go to badminton, and it rained. It rained a lot. The roads were horrendous, I kept having to go through puddles which made the alternator light come on and the steering heavy as various belts slipped. All fun fun. After all that, badminton was quite entertaining, though I played like complete pants in the last two games, annoyingly.

All men are fools and what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got.

No brakes

Got into the car today to go to work and as soon as I pressed the brake pedal, it did very little to stop the vehicle, which was quite worrying. Subsequent investigation showed that a branch from a gorse bush that blew out in front of me last night had jammed itself between the axle and chassis, severing the brake lines. I was able to use the low ratio gears to get it safely to the bottom of the track, from where it was subsequently retrieved and repaired by the local Land Rover gurus. It wasn't a big repair, but the labour was pricey.

Didn't get much done in work. It was a somewhat strange day.

In the evening, it dawned on me that the 2.5gb RAM in this machine would probably allow VMWare to run another OS nicely. So I downloaded and installed the free VMWare Server, which installed painlessly. It now has a virtual copy of Windows 2000 Advanced Server installed, which actually runs rather well. So that could be fun to play with. Just need more disk space in this machine, 20gb is not enough and I'm running out quickly. This combined with the ever-present RDP connection to my MP3 playing box means I have a rather busy desktop now. Hmm, if I popped another graphics card in, I could have another monitor perhaps...

London broke me

Ever since I got back from London I have been really bad about exercise and eating less crap. I think it coincided with the clock change and a general phase of crappy weather. Now I feel really lethargic and crap and I'm sure it's the lack of exercise. But it's really hard to get back into it when the weather is cold and wet and windy, and the evenings are dark and intimidating. Oh well.

Nothing reported over the last couple days because nothing happened. Had a real fright today as I had to shut down one of the test Unix machines (one of several virtual machines) and as I did so, I lost connection to the web based system manager, making me think I'd somehow shut down four producton systems at the same time. Really worrying moment.

Oh well. That's about it.

Unusual Pringles, Galaxy and family

Went and cleaned the car this morning, which always gets me odd looks. I get 10 minutes on the jetwash and spent about 2 minutes cleaning the top and then the rest of the time cleaning the mud from underneath.

After that, walked the dog and got some more stars in Mario Galaxy. Still enjoying it, though it's getting quite tough now. But you don't get fed up because it keeps you motivated with new things. Also had a couple of packets of Pringles that Steve and Kara brought me from the USA. One was Ranch, which I love but you can't get in this country, and another interesting flavour called Loaded Baked Potato. It was actually quite nice, and did a passable imitation of a jacket potato with butter and cheese.

Then went to meet up with my brother and sister and their families for a meal. It was a great evening all round. One thing that seems to define the genes on my Dad's side is a slightly twisted sense of humour, and whenever we get together, there are always some slightly odd conversations. Also it was good to see my nieces again, one of whom is heavily pregnant. I'm really not very good at keeping in touch with my family but when I have a good time with them like today, it kind of motivates me to try harder. Got some good photos too, so will get them uploaded at some point.

Hilarity, weirdness, Wii and Dismember

Work was an annoying day.

After work, picked up Will, Steve and Kara for a meal and drinks in the pub with Rob and Em. We had a decent meal and lots of drinks, and were entertained by the internet enabled jukebox which claimed to have 2 million tracks available. Steve stumped it on his first go, but I found 'Dismembered' by Dismember, which actually got switched off half way through by the bar staff - boo.

After that we headed round to Rob and Em's for an evening of homebrew beer, general conversation, Tiger Woods golf on the Wii, hilarity, photographs of hypercheeks, Wispas, and various YouTube videos. It was a superb evening, and a good time was had by all. I would type more but it's late and I'm tired. I do have photos though.

Must sleep.

Too much computers and Red Bull

After spending all day faffing around trying to troubleshoot that weird network issue and things, I spent the evening rebuilding the MP3 playing Optiplex with a 120gb hard drive. It went OK and I was able to get it running quite well.

Yesterday found that Morrisons was doing a 12-pack of Red Bull for about £7, which is cheap. Not a good thing though.

Examined my finances again. Next year is going to have to be very lean.

8-string Rickenbacker

This went for a grand on Ebay. I've never been so tempted to increase my debt so much. 8-string Ricks are rare, and I've never seen one in that colour. Amazing.

Fat fat fat

Oh dear God, when will my fat binge stop? I've been eating pasties and cake for the last two weeks with the occasional geek fest which invariably includes vast amounts of crisps, dip, pizza and sweets. Then this evening went to a newish Chinese restaurant with some guys from work for a meal. It was really good but the pudding was a highly unhealthy chocolate concoction. I think I have put on weight over the last couple of weeks. Mind you, it's that time of year again, the urge to do less exercise and eat more has definitely kicked in. It's really hard to get motivated to walk the dog and take other exercise when it's dark and cold and wet.

Other than that it was a frustrating day. Some machine was generating huge amounts of traffic on one of the networks, slowing everything to a crawl. Very annoying as we couldn't work it out at all.

The last episodes of Heroes are on right now, being recorded by my Mum. I had to steer clear because of the returning from the Chinese after the first one started. I'm listening to The Great Southern Trendkill by Pantera to block the sound of the TV from downstairs. To be honest, I rather dislike the shouty vocals on this album, but I've always been really into Dimebag Darrell's guitar sound. Absolutely astonishing stuff. I can't play guitar, too many strings too close together, but if I could, the ones I'd like to be able to play like are Dimebag Darrell and Angus Young of AC/DC.

The Dean ML signatures made in his name after he was shot are very, very metal, but I've always quite liked them. I saw a basic Dean ML bass for $200 while visiting Steve and Kara in January and I was quite tempted to bring it back as it was pretty good for the price, but the logistics were a bit much.

219mph on a public road

Urm, OK, this kind of thing is fun in Burnout and other games, but someone should tell these guys that driving at 219mph on a real road with actual traffic is a bit of a cockish thing to do.

Uneventful day today. Had a go on a simulator of an Underground train, rather dull but much funnier if you don't bother to close the doors and hurtle through stations at top speed.

Computers piss me off

I just spent a few minutes putting some parts into my MP3 playing Dell Optiplex. I upped the RAM to 512mb and found a suitable laptop style DVD/CDRW drive that would fit in it. However, it all went horribly wrong.

The USB card suddenly stopped working with the Code 10 errors that took days to resolve last time. Unplugging it left the BIOS without any power due to the dead battery so it lost all the settings yet again. The replacement DVD/CDRW drive I put in didn't work, and then a horrible smell of burning filled the room as the accidentally unplugged laptop style floppy drive cable shorted out against the metal case. Fortunately no damage was done to anything important, and I never use the floppy anyway so the burnt out cable isn't a problem.

However, after a tantrum, I discovered the DVD/CDRW drive issue was down to just having not pushed the connector in hard enough, and the USB card mysteriously started working again. Just weird. It seems OK again now, so time to put it back where it was and see if it behaves over RDP. Now I just need to work out how to get the tiny 20gb hard drive upgraded without disturbing anything. Ghosting the partition to another drive might work, perhaps. Dunno.

Given that I actually work with computers, it's odd how frustrating I find them. Windows in particular does some very peculiar things on occasion.

Edit: Took the RAM out, it didn't like it and crashed, and now the FUCKING USB CARD is not working again! For crying out loud!

Further edit: The hard drive has bad blocks and is probably about to fail. I hate hard drives, they are so unreliable. Can't wait until solid-state drives become cheap enough to afford.

Sloganising

(19:25:20) DoubleL: I'd Walk a Mile for a Snot.
(19:25:24) William: Lipsmackin' Thirstquenchin' Acetastin' Motivatin' Goodbuzzin' Cooltalkin' Highwalkin' Fastlivin' Evergivin' Coolfizzin' Massive Cocks.
(19:25:43) DoubleL: Penis - The Appetizer!
(19:25:49) William: The Dirt says Hot, The Label says Massive Cocks.
(19:26:11) William: They Drink Big Smelly Flaps In The Congo.
(19:26:14) DoubleL: Poppin' Fresh Ejaculate.
(19:26:32) DoubleL: Two Hours of Faeces in Just Two Calories.
(19:26:41) William: I Can't Believe I Ate The Whole Old Mans Nappy.
(19:27:02) DoubleL: The Smegma that Smiles Back.
(19:27:13) DoubleL: It's Just For Me And My Pustule.
(19:27:20) William: Is Grandmas Anus Cream In You?
(19:27:30) DoubleL: Bulbous Hemorrhoids - It Does a Body Good.
(19:28:00) DoubleL: Beware of Expensive Diarrhoea.
(19:28:19) DoubleL: Diarrhoea Really Satisfies.
(19:28:37) DoubleL: It Makes Your Diarrhoea Smack.
(19:28:46) DoubleL: Nobody Better Lay a Finger on my Diarrhoea.
(19:29:09) DoubleL: You Can't Get Quicker Than a Slippery Genitals Fitter.
(19:29:24) DoubleL: Let The Slippery Genitals Take The Strain.
(19:29:33) William: Hope It's Pussy Chips, It's Pussy Chips, We Hope It's Pussy Chips...
(19:32:05) DoubleL: A Pubic Hair Is Forever.
(19:32:11) William: Wait Till We Get Our Herpes On You.
(19:32:17) DoubleL: You Press the Pubic Hair, We Do the Rest.
(19:32:35) DoubleL: All Flatulence, All The Time.
(19:32:51) DoubleL: Designed for Flatulence, Engineered to Last.
(19:35:19) William: There's First Love, and There's Anus Love.
(19:35:30) DoubleL: The Biggest Inflated Titties Pennies Can Buy.
(19:35:51) DoubleL: You Can Be Sure of Inflated Titties.
(19:36:05) DoubleL: I Want My Infected Boil.
(19:36:08) William: Please Don't Squeeze The Ballsack.
(19:36:23) DoubleL: I'd Like to Buy the World an Infected Boil.
(19:36:36) DoubleL: Built Scrotum Tough.
(19:36:42) William: Only The Crumbliest Flakiest Ballsack.
(19:36:42) DoubleL: Nothing Comes Between Me And My Scrotum.
(19:36:51) DoubleL: You'll Wonder Where the Yellow Went, When You Brush Your Teeth with Scrotum.
(19:37:02) DoubleL: Crunch All You Want. We'll Make Scrotum.
(19:37:14) DoubleL: The Best Part of Waking Up is Scrotum in Your Cup.

Try it here.

Acting drunk, and seeing my nephew off to the army

Yesterday was another Heroes fest. Rob, Em, Vicky and I went into Andy's house and watched the remaining episodes of Heroes that we needed to catch up on. Only two left, and they're being shown on Wednesday. I'm actually out with some people from work at a meal, so I'll have to leave my Mum with detailed instructions to record them. She has a monopoly of the TV all the time, so it's only fair that she can record something for me for once.

The day was also enlivened by lots of alcohol (except for the drivers, Em and myself) and Andy's home-made lemon cake, the fairly horrific Wales vs South Africa game and some totally random conversations. It's interesting how you can kind of adopt the mindset of someone drunk and join in the inane conversation. Some of the stuff was so random (and indeed disgusting) that it can't be repeated here. The perpetrator knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Today I played some more Mario Galaxy (up to 60 stars) and went to my sister's house. My nephew is going off to the army tomorrow and after his basic training, will be going to Afghanistan round about September time. Bit weird though, he was born when I was 10 and I remember it well. Scary that he's now taller than me. He seems to be quite calm about the whole business, but then he's always had a chirpy optimistic view of the world and gets on with pretty much everyone, so hopefully he'll be fine.Several of my brother-in-law's relations came round to wish him well too, so it became quite a gathering. Even my brother called from Berlin to speak to him.

Next weekend, my other brother and his wife are coming up. I saw them in March in Berlin, but I haven't seen my nieces for a while, so it'll be good to see them again. One of them is due to give birth to a girl in January, causing much dismay to the future grandfather and great-grandfather (not because of the actual pregnancy, but the being a grandfather part). Not to mention the future great-uncles and great-aunt. It sounds so old somehow to be a great-uncle.

Image is from Superdickery, cited as the best use of shapeshifting powers ever. I have to agree.

I need a pair of Hot Slags

By now you are probably confused, so let me explain. The Hot Slags in question are guitar pickups. Despite my attempts at thriftiness and saving, I still have the urge to tinker with things.

So I'm stripping the pickups and electronics out of my Squier Strat and replacing them as a long-term project. I was looking at some IronGear pickups which are called, yes, Hot Slags.

Not all that interesting, but I thought it would be a funny title for a blog post.

Black Crusade

Well, the Black Crusade was certainly interesting. Five bands in six hours, all full-on metal. I went with Ally and his mate Stu, who drove. We headed to Manchester at about 1:30 and got there an hour before the doors opened. We got some Chinese which was really nice, but Stu and I had the chilli chicken, which was very hot. Good though. And then we headed in. It was weird, being amongst the oldest there and the three of us were in the minority, not wearing some band t-shirt or having piercings or tattoos. Ally was wearing a white t-shirt so he was easy to find in the sea of black. We got a spot by the mixing desk in the middle of the arena, which was pretty decent. I got stuck next to a bunch of weirdos watching the England game on their phones, which was entertaining when they lost. Also one of them kept flashing around an iPhone, which he hilariously dropped face down onto a filthy piece of chewing gum on the floor. Also I kept standing on something squashy which turned out to be a Machine Head t-shirt one of them had bought for £30 or so which I had then trodden thoroughly into the beer soaked floor.

Shadows Fall were loud and not that great. Arch Enemy were pretty good although the woman's shouty vocals were a bit much. I was expecting to enjoy DragonForce more than I did but their guitar wankery based songs didn't go down very well and were pretty tedious. The last bands were Trivium and Machine Head, both of whom were really good.

I'm not sure which band the picture is of, but that person doing the devil horns did it just at the right moment, and I thought it summed up the evening quite well.

I quite enjoyed it, although it was seriously loud. Full-on metal isn't really my thing these days and I'm more into the AC/DC style of rock, but I did have a good time. I was worried about going as crowds bother me, but I stayed well clear of the pit and it was fine.

Today went round to my Dad's and had a look at his wife's new car. She got an ex-demo Mercedes C200 Kompressor, which she got with basically every extra you can imagine for the price of a basic model. It even has the sat-nav which is a £2000 option. It works really well and I was able to plot a route to my brother's apartment in Berlin and to the hotel we stayed in at Madrid. The stereo also has iPod integration and we tested the iPod Touch on it. It worked perfectly and even displays the song on the little display in the middle of the speedo. It was a bit embarassing as the first song it played was 'Fucking Hostile' by Pantera.

We had a look at my wipers and had dismantled quite a lot of it before realising we didn't actually have to. Oh well, it was interesting to see how the mechanism worked, and we cleaned it all up and greased it. One is a little off, but at least they both work OK now.

There was very nearly a disaster too. I had left my Discovery at the end of their driveway so it was out of the way. My Dad forgot it was there, and reversed at top speed towards it in his new Fabia. Fortunately my frantic cries of 'STOP!' got through and he braked, inches from collision. His rear bumper probably wouldn't have stood much of a chance against my towbar, so that was lucky.

Black Crusade

Just got back from the Black Crusade. It was good, and also LOUD. Full report tomorrow.

50 Stars and counting

Up to 50 stars in Super Mario Galaxy. I think other stuff happened today...but I can't remember...must get more stars...

Games, rugby and food

Spent most of yesterday in a rugby club with Rob,Em, Andy and Vicky, Em's sister. In theory we were watching Rugby but most of the time there was spent talking about various things. This was then followed by an epic Chinese meal and a nostalgia fest of old kids shows off YouTube. Highlights were SuperTed (HOW camp is Skeleton) and the Rainbow Twangers episode.

Today walked the dog which was really annoying. If you have two very excitable dogs, you keep them on a lead right? Not this guy we met while trying to get out the way of a madman in a Volvo who hurtled in a junction without looking. This black shaggy thing suddenly shot across the road and went for the hound. All he was doing was sniffing but he did it so aggressively that my dog was terrified. Then the Volvo moron reversed unexpectedly and things got even worse. The guy with the two insane dogs was very apologetic but I still think he is a fool. I've had the hound attacked before by out of control dogs with idiot owners. Annoying.

Then spent the day playing Galaxy for a rather long time. I've got back to where we were the other day and found a couple of secrets along the way. Superb game. It's inspired me to dig out my copy of New Super Mario Bros on the DS. Work tomorrow. Boo. But have got Wed and Thu off as going to see the Black Crusade in Manchester. Should be fun.

Sleepy now.

Too much?

Time spent playing Super Mario Galaxy today: 9 hours. That doesn't include the time spent on Assassin's Creed (about an hour and a half), Portal (at least 45 minutes) and Tiger Wood (at least 20 minutes).

Needless to say, my head is somewhat babbled right now.

Honestly though, Super Mario Galaxy is amazing. I am actually relishing having to play my copy again for 9 hours to get where Will, Rob and I got to today. Plus, the two player mode, while not full two player, works well enough to make it fun for two people to play. It is the defining game for the Wii, rather like Super Mario 64 defined the N64.

Super Mario Assassin

So we are taking a break from the wonderful world of Super Mario Galaxy by attempting to complete the inordinately hard tutorial for tiger Woods Golf. It works but seems to be incredibly hard. Assassin's Creed? Yeah well. It looked like it was going to be al period but unfortunately it has a gimpy Matrix style futuristic storyline involving genetic memory, which drove Rob to tears of anger. When it was actuallly in the game though, it was pretty playable. Spent some time playing the Portal game out of the Orange Box, which is genius.

But Mario Galaxy is awesome. It is a total joy to play, looks fantastic, and is just awesome. Unlike Tiger Wood, which actually seems broken as it is so hard.

Incidentally, I got £55 for the six games I traded, which wasn't too bad. We went to GameStation in the end which as worth it for the two trained chimps behind the counter. We also got rather a lot of crisps. Definitely try the Honey Barbecue and Sweet Chilli Kettle Chips.

Got that slightly disorientated feeling I get when concentrating too hard on a game I really like, not felt like that for a while. This has got to be the longest thing I have ever typed in one go on the iPod Touch.

Tiger Woods is hard. Actually rather like real golf, which kind of makes it not fun. Give me Mario Golf or Wii Sports any time. Also Mario Golf has cool treehouse courses and things. Rob and Will are getting frustrated, the tension is high and the language ripe.

cue mass hilarity at discovering the face editor in Toget Woods has a field called "Nostril Detail". Worrying. Will's golfer is a fat, scarred squat ugly man with a hideous face and horribe teeth. Reminds me of Second Life where we set out to make our characters as ugly as possible to go against the norm of tall beautiful people.

I don't want to play it at all.

Randomness and Galaxy GAN

Frustrating and busy day today in work. For the first time ever I came very close to losing my rag completely with a user. Fortunately it was resolved easily enough but it was a very tense moment.

Badminton was OK, but frustrating. I know I can pull off some good shots on occasion but I'm still shit at being in the right place when it matters. This is why I tend to prefer singles, but never really get a chance to play it.

Super Mario Galaxy is out tomorrow and Assassin's Creed, which I'm getting despite mixed reviews. Will and I are calling the day 'Super Mario Assassin' but Rob is going to have to call it 'Super Mario Wood' as he seems intent on getting the new Tiger Woods golf game for the Wii.

I'm going to trade the following Xbox 360 and Wii games:

Excite Truck: Fun, but repetitive after a while and I never really got into it.

Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam: Actually a really good game but I got as far as I could and got frustrated. Probably the only Tony Hawk game I actually really enjoyed since Tony Hawk 3 on the PS2.

Rayman Raving Rabbids: It was OK until Wario Ware: Smooth Moves came out which was better all ro und and more fun.

Test Drive Unlimited: OK but boring after you've painted your fifth Lamborghini in tasteless colours and multiplayer is just your typical Xbox Live crap, being insulted by 12 year olds in Enzo Ferraris.

Gears of War: It was undoubtedly a good game and looked incredible. But the campaign was too sh ort, I don't like the control system and the multiplayer sucks (IMHO).

Viva Pinata: Oddly enough I bought this game and never actually played it. I am determined to one day...but not just right now. Also there is a DS version coming out.

After years of (allegedly) playing the bass, I can finally manage to come close to playing Iron Maiden bass lines. Steve Harris has a fairly unique way of playing and I've found it quite hard to get the hang of it. But it's worth it. He's the reason my dream bass has always been a Fender Precision Bass.

Say what you like about Iron Maiden, but I've liked them since I was 10 years old and was lent the Powerslave album. The first album I ever bought for myself was their debut album. My proudest moment was getting an enormous poster cover for the 'Can I Play with Madness' single. Why? Because my Mum thought it was the most revolting thing she'd ever seen and refused to come into my room when it was up on the wall. You can see it above. I still think it's an awesome image.

Icky sticky mud, yuck

Need to underseal the Discovery. But it's rather intimidating. It needs to be completely clean and dry before applying Waxoyl or something, but given that I live up a muddy, wet track it's not easy. I did look into getting it done professionally and there's a company called BeforeNAfter which is quite highly recommended. The catch is that it would cost about £460 for the Discovery, which I can't afford and is about half of what the vehicle is worth anyway, though you could argue that having it done would increase it's value.

Oh well. I think the best idea would be to get it steam cleaned underneath and then take it to my Dad's and do it there on top of a huge tarpaulin or something. While I'm at it, the engine could do with a clean and the axles aren't too pretty either.

It's weird having only one wiper. It's like there's something wrong with your left eye. So it needs that fixing (which I can do), a track rod end and the steering wheel straightened. Also the springs still need replacing and the gearbox/transfer box main shaft is clunking. But hopefully that'll keep going until it's up to at least 150,000 miles. If it starts jumping out of gear, then I'll worry.

Got rained on while walking the dog, annoyingly. It was fairly repulsive today, cold, windy and wet.

The pic is of a cyclops and when I first saw this at about 7 years old, it scared the shit out of me. I still don't like it now.

Tiredness

Woke up early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, which was annoying. Then when I was defrosting the car, I accidentally hit the wipers while the windscreen was still frozen. The driver's side wiper went, but the other didn't. Now it just sits at the bottom of the windscreen and twitches occasionally. I was hoping to take a look at it after work but was thwarted by the Mystery of the Missing Socket Set. I hope it doesn't rain before I can fix it.

Played with the new Mii contest channel on the Wii. Looks quite fun, or it will be when it's properly running. Also dug out Amplitude for the PS2, a rhythm action game I got bored of rather quickly last year because while it's a good game, the button combos are a bit crap. It's fun to mess with though.

Feh. That sums up the day pretty much. The Monorail Cat always makes me giggle. Also LOLCODE is awesome.

Trumpets of Depression

Friday was meh, had a dull day in work and then went to badminton and just hated every minute of it. For some reason I wasn't in the mood. The pub afterwards was OK though.

Saturday was better, met up with some old work colleagues, one of whom is going home to China for ever. That was good and if I ever want to visit Beijing, I know I've got somewhere to crash (seriously!). After that went to Andy's to join him, Rob and Em in a mad Heroes fest. I missed the first few episodes but we watched so many I picked up fairly quickly what was going on. I think there's about four left, so that should be interesting. It's a pretty good series.

Today was a fairly useless day. Weather was treacherously changable so didn't walk the dog, but did take him for a run and play. In the last few months he seems to have realised how to be playful, which is nice, as he's always been a bit of a serious minded creature.

Also played around with my crappy Squier Strat and made some atrocious noises because it won't stay in tune, but then it did only cost £15 from a car boot sale and needs some new machine heads. Then watched some DVDs and read the trade paperback Chronicles of Wormwood. Probably not recommended if you're religious (like most of Garth Ennis' stuff) but I really liked it.

Didn't achieve anything else other than realising that if just specified the width (480) when ripping the DVD, the height is worked out for you and it then displays OK on the iPod. It should also work on the PSP as the screen is the same width, but less height (touch=320, PSP=272).

The iPhone is out. If it wasn't so ludicrously expensive to get one (£270 for the phone plus £35 for 18 months on O2) in the UK, it might have been the first thing to tempt me away from Nokia. Interesting that in France it's illegal to not sell an unlocked version of a phone.

I have rediscovered the joys of Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes, the greatest cereal of all time. Also the Wispa has returned, cue dancing girls and orgies in the streets.

Soup, stuff and touch video

Work was not notable. Except I went to to the delicatessen which does great sandwiches. At this time of year though, they also do nice soup and I had some of the Cream of Vegetable. It's really tasty and you get a bread roll with it. Superb.

This evening I experimented with a program called Handbrake that Steve told me about. It lets you rip DVDs into formats suitable for playing on iPods and things. I used the Linux version which operates solely from the command line. Even then it was a simple matter to rip a DVD into the 480x320 resolution of the iPod touch. The resultant file was small and looked great on the device itself. The first test was Rubber Johnny, as it's only short and was only 48mb. The next test was Star Wars Episode III which squidged into a 1.1gb file. It worked, but the aspect ratio wasn't right, so it was stretched. Played OK though.

I'm really happy with the Touch. I just wish I could have got the 16gb version and I'm sure there'll be a 32gb version when flash prices drop. If I could afford it, I'd certainly pick one up if it came out.

Cinema

Went to the cinema with Rob, Em and Will, preceded by a visit to Pizza Hut. Amazingly the meal was OK, on time and correct. Service at Pizza Hut can be patchy so that was a nice change. Maybe it's because they seem to pick their staff on looks rather than competence. The film we went to see was Elizabeth. It wasn't dreadful, but had a lot of montages and things that made it drag rather. Also Clive Owen was dreadful.

Other than that, a fairly uneventful day. Nothing else springs to mind as being blog worthy. Tired now and the touch keyboard is a bit of a pain for much typing...

Underground

Work was meh. This evening was meh, cold and dark.

The Jubilee line trains make that interesting sound that always reminds me of holidays, because there are similar sounding trains on the Madrid and Berlin Metros. I'm not sure what that sound actually is, but I like it. The Washington DC Metro made a similar sound, but it was a thin hum.

While you're appreciating the sound the trains make, how about having a dinner party on the train? Wish I'd seen something like that on the Underground rather than the usual boring miserable commuters.

Got the 16th November off for Super Mario Galaxy - hurrah! I think that may be payday and if it is, I'm hoping to pick up a copy of Assassin's Creed at the same time.

Flying V Ukulele. Maybe the coolest thing I've seen today, which is a little sad.

Bang!!!!!

Went round with Will to Rob and Em's after work and had some of the vast vat of chilli that Rob made, along with some of Em's fantastic home made rolls. The went to the huge bonfire opposite Sainsbury's. It was really good too, absolutely enormous and with really good fireworks. We were also kept entertained by a woman behind us who kept saying things like "It's all gunpowder this, there's no electronics". Em and I had a ritual toffee apple though it should really be called a Red Sugar and Crap Apple. All good fun. After that watched some QI before going our separate ways.

Work was OK after a week away, much to my surprise. So that was nice.

Portmanteau

Did nothing yesterday. The weather was crap, the mood oppressive and I just didn't do anything much. Was also tired after the ultra-crappy trip back from London.

Actually I did spent some time downloading album covers to install in iTunes so that the coverflow mode on the iPod touch looked better. That's quite a nice feature, it's like flicking through a CD collection now. I'm quite happy with it. At the moment it's a competent music player and internet browser, and hopefully now that Apple will be releasing an SDK in February, some decent software will come out.

Today went to up where that house was being built and saw the assembled timber frame. It's pretty cool, about 10 metres square and like a tall bungalow. Now that the frame is up it makes more sense. Should be great when it's finished but there's still a lot of work to be done and the planning department of the council love throwing spanners in the works.

Other than that I completed Halo 3 today (sorry Rob, I got impatient). Just like the first game, some levels are amazing, and some are utter pants. The two worst were a Flood ship and the final Warthog dash, which was utter, utter shite. It played like something out of a PS1 game or something. So there. Halo 3 does have good moments and the multiplayer is excellent. But the campaign was lacking, just like Halo and Halo 2.

Back

The course finished at half twelve or thereabouts, so I wandered around a bit before trying to get a train. It was a good course to be fair.

I happened to go into a guitar shop in Denmark Street just as they had a load of guitars come in. I'd been in there before and examined a 1960's Gibson EB-2 (£2,500) and a 1960's Precision Bass in Candy Apple Red (£1995). Not the most expensive, one place there had an immaculate 1963 Strat for £27,500.

So they had some great stuff in there. But as they unpacked this load of guitars, I watched in amazement as vintage Les Pauls were briefly examined and put carelessly on stands, along with a couple of vintage Jazz Basses, and even a Mustang and MusicMaster.

But then they unpacked a black Rickenbacker 4003 (just like the pic above). One of my objectives for this week in London was to play one and so far I hadn't found one. So I asked the guy if I could have a go on it. He quickly hooked it up to a massive amp and left me to it. And wow. This has been one of those things where I was worried that I'd hyped it to myself so much that the real thing would be a big let-down.

But what an instrument. It felt right in every conceivable way, the shape, weight, style, the neck, the sound, everything. It wasn't perfect, the pickup switch was a little wobbly and the E string was too quiet (easy fixes), but what a bass. Oddly enough they unpacked two exactly the same except one was fretless, though I didn't try that one. Also in another place I had a quick go on an example of the tiny rubber stringed Ashbory bass, and in the same place, a full scale double bass, which was interesting.

I didn't inquire as to the price of the 4003. They are not all that common in the UK, and command a huge premium. The answer would have just depressed me anyway.

The train back from Euston was a nightmare. I didn't get a seat until Crewe.

It's odd to be back. Despite my complaints, I'd sort of got used to London. I did take my camera, but as I didn't really do anything touristy, I didn't actually take any pictures.

My feet are killing me. My work shoes suck for walking around in and I've done a hell of a lot of that over the last few days.

London

Things I like about London

The Tube, you can get anywhere on it.
Shops, you can get anything and I've seen several dream basses in the flesh.
Food, shop carefully and you can get bargains, got an all-you-can-eat Thai buffet for £6.50, and it wasn't bad either.
Loads of things to do.
Mix of cultures.
It stays awake into the late evening.

Things I dislike about London

The Tube, noisy, smelly, hot, and horrible when busy.
The Jubilee line gets a special mention because at 8:20am it's hideous.
So many people (which admittedly is the definition of a city)
Regent Street, full of expensive shops with shallow people buying branded stuff like iPods and Lacoste.
Snot shouldn't be black.

It's fun to visit but I wouldn't want to live here.

Cool

This MacBook is running Leopard...cool overload...

Yay, real computer

OK, the Apple Store is insane. It's nearly 8:00pm and the place is absolutely packed. I finally found a MacBook which wasn't being used. The place is scary, it's like some insane cult. It's just mad. You come in here and it's genuinely technology porn. You can't help wanting some of the oh-so-beautiful machinery.

And the iPod touch is sensational. I just spent half an hour browsing the web on one. The interface works so well it's mad. Now that Apple has said they are releasing an SDK in February, I can only imagine the apps that people will create. Imagine a multi-touch Kaoss pad or something like that. The only way that would possibly be cooler is if they released a multi-touch Mac Tablet. The Nokia N800 does basically the same stuff, and runs Linux, and can take SD cards, and has loads of apps out for it, and so-on. But it just hasn't got that sheer design beauty that you get with Apple stuff. I have to admit I think this MacBook is pretty damn nice too.

Anyway, London is treating me well, the Tube has been OK so far except for the Jubilee line this morning. The queues were so bad that five trains went past before I was able to get on and squidge myself into a strangers armpit. Yummy. Luckily I was only going one stop. This evening after the course finished, found an all-you-can-eat Thai buffet for £8.00 including a very nice cup of green tea. I think I should leave the Apple Store before I buy something I can't afford. In fact it may already be too late. My old iPod 3G has a duff battery and can't be charged via USB... OH FUCK IT.

I originally was going to count November and December of 2007 as part of '2008 - The Year of Thriftiness' but I don't think I'll be able to. Damn it! I am such a cock.

Blogging on an iPod touch

OK, this is being thumbtyped on an iPod touch. This thing is beautiful. Also the Regent Street Apple store is terrifying! London is mad. More will come when I can get to a realcomputer

London and a flying dumpster

Off to London in a few hours. Taking DS, camera and laptop, but not sure I'll be able to get on wi-fi. Oh well, we'll see.

And this looks hilariously fun in Halo 3:

That new car smell...

Well, due to one thing and another, my Dad's wife replaced her Mercedes C-class with a BMW 320i a few weeks ago. Nice, but due to a weird seat design, it does her back in and has to go. So we went looking at the Land Rover Freelander 2 as a possible alternative. I was never that keen on the old Freelander, it always looked to me like a miserable bulldog or something. Also it was the vehicle where Land Rover truly sold out to the soft-roader market. However, the new one looks far better and is apparently a massively improved vehicle.

The showroom was quite nice with a couple of Range Rover Sports, a full price Range Rover and a Discovery 3. All very nice, but I was far more interested in the lovely metallic grey Defender pickup. It may have a new dashboard and a new Ford 2.4 diesel engine, but it's the same old look that hasn't changed since the 1958 Series II. The chassis and coil sprung suspension are the same as the original Range Rover which dates back to 1970. It's an absolute classic vehicle. I was actually after a Defender but found early Discoverys were cheaper and more comfortable.

The Freelander 2 was nice though. She sat in one which had the electric seats which she wanted, and then drove another one which had the diesel engine and an automatic gearbox. In motion, it's quiet, refined and feels like a tall car. Not bad, and a world away from my old Discovery. The new Range Rover and Discovery have excellent off-road ability, not sure about the Freelander but it should have some.

I don't like car showrooms. It's just the way that those new cars sit there, gleaming and shining with that new car smell. The salesmen waiting to greet you with their best sales talk also annoy me. But there was still something about it. It was just that feeling that if I was earning more money, it could be me signing my life away for that shiny new car. This persisted throughout the test drive, the shiny interior with no scratches, marks, dents or smells. The perfect handling and the odometer reading only a couple of thousand miles.

Then we got back to my Dad's house and reality returned. The Discovery may be everything the Freelander 2 is not, but it's mine, and it's paid for.

Incidentally, my Dad's got one of the new Skoda Fabias, the one they made out of cake for that advert. It's a really nice car, the only fault is the slightly gruff noise from the three cylinder 1.2 litre engine.

Saw a nice V-reg Mercedes S320 for sale. Apart from the engine size and being right-hand drive, it was very similar to the S500 Rob and I drove in Atlanta earlier this year. Stunning cars. Cheap at £8000.

Quick and dirty

Summary of today:

1) Cake day in work for charity, which includes my colleagues incredible brownies. Fat but oh so tasty.

2) Last day in work before London, surprisingly went OK.

3) Got a haircut, which has made my hair civilised again.

4) Badminton was OK, had some good games, some bad. Pub after the game was good.

Dull

Anyone else noticed that this blog has started to follow a simple formula? Start with a whinge about work, followed by some pointless geekery about computers, badminton, basses or cars, and then some pathetic thought of the day and perhaps a link to something equally geeky or pointless.

Dull dull fucking dull.

Wow, I'm boring even myself, how bad is that.

Leopard is out any minute now. I'd be excited about it if I had anything that could run it. Still, I'm sure I'll get to check it out in London next week, and also take a look at the iPod touch and the iPhone.

My 8-string bass is getting a lot of play time recently. It make such a nice sound, and you can do quite a few things with it. I think I made a mistake with the strings on it though,, they were very cheap and sound like arse. The bass strings are just normal strings, but it's the octave strings that are tricky to find. So if I can afford it, new strings will be nice. I'd like to replace the bridge and electronics but not sure if it's worth doing.

Will has his priorities straight

...random stuff...
(18:20:30) DoubleL: Yeah
(18:20:44) William: holy crap
(18:20:46) William: i forgo
(18:20:49) William: i have metroid
(18:20:53) DoubleL: Bye then.
(18:20:55) William: going to play now
(18:20:56) William: hahahaha
(18:20:57) William: sorry
(18:20:59) William: haha
(18:20:59) DoubleL: Heh
(18:21:04) William: laterz dude

His monolithic rod Kurtis

For the first time ever, my primary mail address is getting spam. No idea how that's happened, but it started yesterday. Trying to think what I've done that might cause it.

Bah.

Warren Ellis is a genius

Just read some more chapters of Crooked Little Vein, and I ended up giggling so hysterically I had to put it down.

God, that actually hurt.

Also managed to get Ableton Live running on my MP3 playing Optiplex. It runs quite well and the amazing Asio4All driver lets the crappy Intel AC'97 sound card work with practically no latency. Great stuff.

Also listened to a rather scary but interesting track by Will, which is really good.

Great Balls of Cheese

Work was fairly dismal. I was helping the Unix guy upgrade one of the virtual AIX machines when the console lost connection in the middle of an upgrade and wouldn't come back, leaving it basically buggered. Great. I had to leave it with him as I had to go for an eye blood flow test. The pressure in my eyes has gone down and the blood flow improved by 10%, which is apparently good. My eyes stabilised enough to do a proper test and showed that my right eye is slightly worse and my left eye is rather better. Can't afford new glases just yet though, and I need to get a copy of my prescription.

Made a weird pasta thing this evening with noodles and a peculiar sauce made mostly of cheese. It turned out quite nice.

Rob lent me Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. I didn't realise he wrote normal books as well as graphic novels. Only read the first chapter so far, but it's definitely his style, and looking pretty good.

Car tax this month. Boo. At least you can do it online now, which makes it far easier than trying to find your insurance and MOT and queuing up at the post office.

BUH-URRRRRRRRRRRRP!

I love this one. His face in the second panel cracks me up every time I see it.

Trial by Fire

In my 12 years of driving, I have never towed a trailer. Not even a little one. So when a friend who is building a house asked me to help him move some timber for the house he is building, I agreed with a little trepidation. They have a rough farm track rather like ours and he'd broken his parents VW van by towing the first load up there. with it.

First I had to actually attach a towball to the Discovery, which was easy done by my local Land Rover gurus. I was also pleased (and surprised) that all the electrics actually worked.

The trailer was pretty massive and more than doubled the length of the Discovery. You could feel it there when it was empty, and it was rather disconcerting at first. Just when I thought I was getting used to it, four tons of timber were loaded and things got interesting. It was HEAVY, and also stuck a good six feet out of the back as well. Fortunately the trailer had it's own brakes and the Discovery easily coped. It was an interesting journey as the usual bouncy ride became wallowy and sedate. The most worrying part of the journey was going down a 1in 4 hill, but that wasn't too bad, we just jammed it in 1st gear and used the engine to brake.

I had to reverse it twice, but managed reasonably OK. It's rather weird at first, you basically have to do everything against your normal instincts.

So yay, I can now tow a trailer.

Rugby final last night. Not too interesting though it was mildly amusing to watch Percy Montgomery hurtling over a barrier into a TV camera.

This is an archive of every Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.

Frustration, fat and a geeky book

Work was annoying. Why is it so hard to explain to people the dangers of sharing passwords?

This evening went out with a meal with some people I used to work with. Went to Elements, a place that does all you can eat Chinese. It's actually pretty good and they have a grill where you choose what you want and they cook it for you, which is excellent. After that we went to Borders (at 9:45pm) where I bought a very geeky book called 'The Fender Bass: An Illustrated History'.

Are you feeling Gutsy?

Woohoo, Ubuntu 7.10 aka Gutsy Gibbon is officially out! My installation date from an early Alpha version and kept up to date. It's been rock solid right up to the official version. It's not given me any trouble whatsoever, only getting the Nvidia drivers working was a pain at the beginning.

Work today wasn't too bad, got to visit a few sites I'd never been to before. Got quite a bit done to help out a colleague, though I was thwarted by the refurbished office which doesn't have a lift, making it difficult to get enormous printers up to the first floor. It does however have a dumbwaiter, but as it's four feet off the ground and quite small, it's not all that useful. Also it's scary and I don't like it.

Went to Rob and Em's from the office and enjoyed a very nice pasta with bacon, cheese and spices, before heading off to badminton. It was OK, but I played like shite.

As it is payday today, I ordered some Ernie Ball Power Slinky strings for the Peavey 5-string. The B string is 135 gauge, which is quite huge. Should be interesting!

Flamponio

Steve Jobs has posted a message on the Apple website saying an SDK will be out in February for the iPhone. Presumably that includes the iPod touch as well. Fun fun fun. Nokia has announced the N810 which is another updated version of the original 770 tablet. It's not a phone, but this one includes a keyboard. It runs on Linux and there's loads of apps out for these models.

Work is crap at the moment. It's insanely busy in the north of the county so I'm working there tomorrow. Not really a problem but I got a crapload of jobs today too. Bah.

The Discovery had the wheel bearings and tracking sorted out, which is good. It does however need a track rod end and then the steering wheel lined up again, but that's not a big deal. Also the tyre that had the tread rubbed off on the edge should be OK for a couple of months at least. Had a lift today in a colleague's 1997/98 BMW 316i coupe. Never been in one before and it was really nice. Felt a little claustrophobic though as the roof line is quite low.

Help

Covered helpdesk today for a guy who is away on his honeymoon. It was a nightmare, calls came in thick and fast all day and then just as the final hour of the day broke, it got worse. More helpdesk calls, jobs, e-mails and people all descended on me at once and I literally had to hold my hands in the air and tell everyone trying to talk to me to shut the hell up. It was not an easy day.

After the failure to get to my eye test yesterday, I've got a new appointment next Tuesday, so I've got that afternoon off.

Nokia has demonstrated a new touch interface based on the Series 60 platform. Given that Apple has big influence on technology, despite a small market share, this isn't surprising, despite the iPhone being a bag of crap. Well, actually a handheld running OS X could be insanely cool if it wasn't locked down like a bastard. 3rd party apps would make all the difference, but like the Sony and the PSP, Apple is doing everything it can to stop it.

Also, who the FUCK wants a toothbrush that plays music into your mouth?! Who comes up with this shit?

Stupid day

I had today off work to get a follow up test on my eyes. However, that didn't happen. I set off to Wrexham, but didn't get very far as I realised the Discovery's brakes were being odd. The pedal felt hard and only worked properly if you revved the engine quite hard. Didn't want to drive it like that so I took it (carefully) to the Land Rover gurus up the road. One look was all it took for them to identify a split hose from the vacuum pump and it took a few seconds to fix. Brakes are back to normal now. They also identified the scrubbed front tyre as a tracking or wheel bearing issue, which they are going to check out on Wednesday. I think the tyre will have to be replaced though, the tread is just too worn on the left side. Bah. Anyway, got a new appointment at the optician next Monday and also visiting the doctor that morning to talk about food allergies.

Took some stuff to the tip, part of an ongoing attempt to clear out the spare room downstairs. Used to be my Dad's room before he left and now it's just full of crap.

Also played some Halo 3 with Will, which wasn't too bad. For some reason I wasn't on form today which Will found frustrating, especially when I drove off the same cliff three times in a row. Still, it was entertaining enough. This was followed by a long session of Canis Canem Edit, where I got some more missions out of the way. Then tried to play Wii Sports and Wario Ware but got frustrated. Also made the discovery that the cheap batteries that Rob put in one of my remotes had leaked.

While googling for stuff on Rammstein, somehow came across a forum called the Stormfront White Nationalist Community (Wikipedia). Some of the crap being spouted on it is just sick and it seems worryingly busy as well. Absolutely in-fucking-sane.

4tb hard drives are coming up. Sounds dodgy to me. I still think the 1tb drives are bad enough, how do you back that much data up? I'd rather have a smaller solid state drive.

Can't sleep

Been awake since four. Bah.

Pic is of a Rickenbacker 4003 in Blueburst, a colour I've never seen before. It's absolutely stunning. I've played a 4001 (largely the same) in a guitar shop in Washington DC, but I was frightened of it as it was a 60's model and worth a lot of money, so I didn't really try it out properly. Rickenbackers are expensive in the UK, even second hand, as they're only made in the USA. Even a totally stripped one with no hardware and a cracked neck is over £500 on Ebay. Anyone who tries to make copies, like the absurdly named Rockinbetter by Tokai, are usually shut down by Rickenbacker pretty quickly, as they are fiercely protective of the design.

Just gone downstairs for a pee and found the dog had made an incredible mess. A LAKE of piss, one huge sloppy aromatic turd and lots of small hard turds scattered about. Lovely.

Stuff and things

Didn't do much this morning. Played some bass and listened to some music. Then went to Andy's for 2:30pm to play some games and watch the rugby. Andy was still a bit under the weather after a wild night out to celebrate his 28th birthday* so Rob and I played some more Halo 3 and got another level out of the way. It was fun but a bit annoying in some parts where a tank killed us a ludicrous number of times. Then after Andy woke up a bit, we spent some time playing around in the Forge mode. We don't actually try and kill each other, we just play with things like the Banshees and teleporters and stuff like that.

We had already agreed that we were going to get a Chinese when Will came round, so we got a 4 person banquet. This amounted to rather a lot of food and so by the way the the rugby came round, we were all rather stuffed. It was pretty good though and the chicken and sweetcorn soup was really tasty.

So yeah, a good day overall.

Never been particularly impressed with Vauxhall cars, but the one I have always liked is the Calibra. Yeah, it's just a pretty Cavalier, but it looks amazing, even ten years after they stopped making them. They're cheap now, but that means that all the boy racers are buying them and ruining them with bodykits. My sister had one identical to the one in the picture, and it was a great car.

*Actually 30th but we pretend to believe him when he says 28th.

Firing up the old PS2

It must be said that since I got my Wii and 360, the PS2 has been sadly neglected. Mainly because there wasn't a spare power socket for it and so it had to share the power cable with my practice amp. However with the Optiplex now storing my MP3s on the internal hard drive rather than an external one, I was able to plug in the PS2. Impressively, after about 6 months unplugged, the clock was only half an hour out. I used to think the PS2 was noisy, but after the roaring behemoth of the 360, it's fans are like a gentle breeze.

The main game I was last playing on the PS2 was Canis Canem Edit. Will, Rob and I went and got this on the day of release last year, and it's an excellent game. It's basically GTA in a school, but what makes it work is all the little details. I remember the hilarity when in the first few seconds of playing, Will pressed the wrong button and smacked a girl, incurring the wrath of the headmaster's secretary and having to escape. This is like when we first played GTA: San Andreas and failed the impossibly easy first mission because a Spitfire dropped out of the sky and exploded, killing the guy who was trying to show us where to get pizza.

One of the fun aspects of Canis Canem Edit is goading girls into fighting by kissing one after the other. The same works if you use the controversial 'warm tea' feature where you can kiss some boys, if you get them jealous, they beat the the living shit out of each other which is far funnier.

There's going to be a version of this game coming out on the Wii and Xbox 360 and I'm quite tempted to pick it up again and play it through again. I'm at about 52% complete at the moment.