Disaster! Disaster!

Just spent two days in Birmingham assisting with disaster recovery testing. Not very interesting, it basically amounts to loading all the tapes into a library down there and restoring the systems back onto test boxes and seeing if they work. It was quite dull, and some worked, some didn't. So far anyway. I came back today but some people are there all week and some are coming and going. It was quite interesting at the place though, they have absolute shedloads of equipment, so they can match what your systems are.

Got a lift there with a guy from work who has an elderly but very comfortable BMW 518i and then got a train back this evening. The trains were OK. I'm still not sure if I got the one I was supposed to from Crewe, but it still stopped at Rhyl so that was fine. One taxi ride later I was retrieving my car. I bought a book in New Street Station (huge, intimidating and incomprehensible) called 'A Spot of Bother' by Mark Haddon. I'm about half way through and it's quite odd. He also wrote 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time', which was interesting.

I forgot to mention that I saw a shining example of utter stupidity on Sunday. Not far from home is a village with very dodgy crossroads. It has one road that joins at a very sharp angle, and a lot of people tend to treat it like a slip road and barely look before pulling out. Well, I was coming along and some guy in a new red Vectra pulled out without looking, while putting on his seatbelt. Luckily nothing was coming the other way so I was able to go round him while blaring my horn and he absolutely shat himself and nearly went into the wall trying to get out of my way. The best part is that if I'd hit him, he wouldn't have had his seat belt on. Mind you, I have rarely seen anyone look so terrified so perhaps he learnt his lesson.

Back to work tomorrow. Boo.

Test Drive Wisdom

Things I have learnt about Hawaii.

1) In Hawaii, all high powered sports cars are indestructible, do not need maintenance and never run out of fuel.

2) You can test drive any car you desire, including unique prototypes, even when wearing shorts, flip flops and a tank top.

3) On a test drive, you will be accompanied by a woman, who will remain completely unphased by being driven into walls, other cars, or the sea.

4) Hitch-hikers are very ungrateful, demanding to be driven to their destinations at 100mph+ and will get out and walk if you drive too slowly.

5) Women go shopping and become tired when trying to carry their goods home and so try to scrounge a lift. However they will often only accept a lift in one particular car, such as a Jaguar E-type. Also, like hitch-hikers, they demand high-speed journeys.

6) The police will fine you for any collisions, but you will never be arrested or jailed.

However, there's something to be said for blasting down a long, straight road in a McLaren F1 at 200mph with Ride of the Valkyries blasting out the stereo.

I haven't played Viva Pinata yet. However I did come across some old Lego men in a drawer which prompted some experimentation.

Rude Scrabble and brum brum

Last night was good, Andy and I went to Rob and Em's to eat pancakes with ice cream and play Scrabble. The pancakes were cooked with flair by Andy and Rob and were a distinct success. Oddly though, they weren't enough and we had to go out and get Cat Poo and Chips from the Chinese round the corner. It was really good too. Note, Cat Poo is our name for the Crispy Beef Strips because well, they look like cat poo.

The Scrabble was OK. The second game was a bit poor even with the 20 point bonus for swearwords. Possibley the best game like this was some time last year when Em managed to put 'quim' on a triple word score, which earned her an insane amount of points. The final board for that game can be seen in the attached image.

Today I went to Rhyl and took a look at the car boots as the weather was good. Nothing particularly interesting so I went into the Games Exchange and had a look at the Xbox 360 games. I picked up Test Drive Unlimited and Viva Pinata. So far I've only played Test Drive Unlimited and it's quite decent. The cars are good but the various people in the game are right in the Uncanny Valley. Especially the woman who sits in the car with you when you test drive a car. While I was in the Games Exchange, some guy from GameStation came in and it was quite interesting. They seem to have a friendly rivalry going on between them. I quite like GameStation, mainly because they have a nice retro thing going on. When I looked in there, they had a load of stuff for the Neo Geo Pocket, a really underrated handheld.

Loud cars are only acceptable if they are actually powerful, a Saxo with a 1.0 litre engine and a loud exhaust is pointless. Whilst in Rhyl I walked past a Maserati as the owner started it. What a noise...it was amazing. Bizarrely enough that exact same car was available to test drive in the game, which was fun. The engine sound was spot on too.

I also picked up I, Robot on DVD for £3. It's not really all that good, and nothing like a proper Asimov story. It has elements from Little Lost Robot in parts, but on the whole it's not all that good.

Hideous work days

Yesterday and today in work were hell on toast. Thanks to an untested security program being deployed on the network, s significant number of machines went down. Because of this I spent far too long trying to sort them out. It was really annoying.

I spent this evening around at my sister's house. I haven't seen her in a while. A few weeks ago I got a message from her saying she and her husband were splitting up and then another saying they were trying to work things out. They are still together at the moment but she seems to have changed rather. It was a good evening, we went out and got Chinese food, watched some awful TV and looked at each other's photos of recent events. She was interested in the ones from Berlin in March because she couldn't make it there. All in all it was a really good evening.

Other than that, not much to report. I slept like crap last night, woke up at about 2:00am and couldn't sleep until about 4:30am. The Discovery had it's exhaust done, 77 quid all in, which isn't too bad. It is significantly quieter now.

It's nearly the weekend. I can't wait. Then I'm down in Birmingham for 2 days doing Disaster Recovery testing. Should be a laff.

Life is not a malfunction (but that depends on your point of view)

One of the Johnny 5 robots from Short Circuit was on Ebay. Full size and complete. Amazing. For some reason the auction was cancelled, but some cool pics are here. There are rumours of a remake using CGI. That would be disastrous. Part of the appeal of the old films is that there actually is a real live (well, not quite) robot in all the scenes. I always wanted one of the toy robots from Short Circuit 2. Interestingly the Wikipedia article indicates that Short Circuit was supposed to be a dark thriller with the robot as a villain. That could have been interesting. 'My name's Johnny 5, motherfucker!' *zap*

Also I hate Rubik's Cubes. I can get so far using the layer method and then invariably screw it up trying to do the last layer. Bloody things. Here's someone solving one in 12.30 seconds. Here's the same guy solving a 5x5x5 cube. I have one of these too, but I hate that even more than the normal one. The 2x2x2 is trickier than you'd think, but he can do that quickly too.

Currently listening to 'Whole Lotta Rosie' by AC/DC from the AC/DC Live album. Absolutely amazing track. I think I've mentioned this before, but every time I hear this track, I want a Gibson SG and the ability to play it like Angus Young.

Houses and exhaust pipes and a heck of a lot of water

Work was typical. Not much to say really.

Went to see a house that someone I used to work with bought with her fiance. It's a 3 bedroom semi in the middle of Ruthin. It's really nice, or it will be with a little work. It used to be owned by an elderly lady and you can tell. But it's completely sound and very roomy. I think it set them back just over £135,000. By far the best thing in it was a newspaper from 1987, where we found an enthralling review of the new MG Montego! The property pages were unbelievably depressing, a house like that one was a mere £24,000.

Also headed up to the friendly neighbourhood Land Rover specialist. Luckily they have a suitable exhaust section in stock for £48, which isn't bad. It's going in on Thursday morning to have that sorted out. Also managed to blag some brake fluid to top up the reservoir. I also really need to get it clean underneath and put on some underseal, but the weather really isn't helping.

The sheep are back on our fields, annoyingly. They make noises, and cough like people, and mean that The Dog can't chase rabbits in case he decides sheep are more fun. Also the gates have to be closed.

And that's about it for today other than the ludicrous floods that don't seem to be going away. It's insane! It's interesting how the BBC Have Your Say page about the floods rapidly degenerated into two basic arguments - South vs North and 4x4 drivers vs everyone else.

The pic is of a car that made me chuckle, it's a MkII Golf with a VR6 engine, chameleon paint and a roof chop. It's been vandalised and is therefore cheap. Looks funny though.

Also Craig now has a blog. Hurrah!

Rob's birthday lunch

In order to celebrate Rob's 30th, there was a meal in the Crown Bard. It was pretty decent with various people there, mainly Em's family and some friends. Presents were given, including a big barrel for Rob to put the contents of his new homebrew kit from Em in. It was given a name that I can't remember, but started with a C. Andy and I went halfs on a big bottle of the new Bailey's Creme Caramel, which both Rob and Em like.

So yeah, it was good, lots of nice chatting about stuff, flicking of beer mats, and a lot of nice food. All good. When we left I found that someone had considerately parked right next to the Discovery so I had to get in through the back door. The owners of the car then suddenly appeared and drove away. Annoying. And then, just as we drove out of the pub, it rained. 'Rained' isn't a strong enough word to describe it though - within seconds the road was inches deep in water. The wipers were on fast, and it wasn't coping. This was bad. But Rob and Em and family were walking home. The timing couldn't have been worse! But then three minutes later it stopped, completely. Bizarre. Amazingly the sunroof didn't leak much, I got dripped on slightly but that was it.

With the rear silencer missing, the Discovery is a little noisier, but not so that you'd really notice. That old 200 Tdi is so noisy anyway, you can't tell. If the middle silencer (yes, it has two!) was gone as well, THEN it would be noisy. Oh well.

Not right

Ever wanted to eat a hamburger with 100 burgers in it? No? Thought not.

These guys did. The worst part is, as they point out, the hideous, hideous cheese.

The End

Just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Not going to say anything about it until everyone I know who wants to read it has done.

Kind of weird to think that's it.

Just found out how to set my time zone so the posting times are correct. It only took five months.

%$&^($%"(*!!!!

Hatred and Badminton 2.0

OK, here we go again. That certain person was there at badminton again, the same one as in this post. My God she is just unbearable. Everything I said before still stands, but now she has this astonishing desire to hit the shuttle right into your face. I have difficulties with hitting the shuttle if it comes right at me, the instinct to duck and cover usually takes priority. But it wasn't just me she was doing it to. If you accidentally send it at someone's face, fair enough, you apologise and probably laugh about it. But to constantly, unendingly send it at your opponents face every damn time, is just annoying. It's annoying because her aim (unfortunately) is pretty good.

She'll thank you after a game if she has won, if not, nothing. If you're on her side, and you lose, then she'll ignore you utterly. I hadn't really noticed this or the face shots thing until Em pointed it out, but then it became really apparent.

The whole point of badminton (and any game) is to have fun. If you play badly, it's no big deal. Basically everyone else there plays for fun and when shots go wrong or something happens, then everyone laughs and it's all in good humour. But when she's playing, nope, it's all in anger. Yes, she'll sometimes laugh or joke, but it's always forced and fake.

Enough, I can't go on about this poison woman any more.

I just listened to that Alkonost song again, and it's really good. Cheered me up again. The video is cack though.

Literature, Society and Creative Writing...

...is what my Mum graduated in today. It was a good day, the ceremony was at 11:00am in Bangor Uni, and was quite long but reasonably tolerable. The harp recital in the middle went on too long though. Oddly enough the whole thing was streamed over the Internet, which allowed my Dad to watch from our house, where he was watching the dog. The ceremony was followed by a small do in the Department of Lifelong Learning where we ate a lot of free sandwiches and crisps, and watched a seagull standing outside the window looking at the food and becoming more and more demented.

After that, there was still some time to go before we put my uncle and aunt on a train, so we went down and looked at the Menai Strait. There's a great long pier that goes right out over it and that was really good. It was quite breezy but the sun was out. There were loads of boats out sailing as it was perfect weather for it. After that we went to the station through awful traffic, before parking up in Lidl so I could take a quick look in a guitar shop. It's one of those places which has great stuff but is ludicrously overpriced. Finally, we came home to see how my Dad had got on with the Idiot Hound. Fortunately he behaved himself all day (the dog), so that was good.

Keine Lust - Rammstein in fat suits!

In Extremo are another interesting German Folk Metal band. Vollmond and This Corrosion are both good. This one from Megaherz has a video that looks like something Voldo from Soul Calibur would do if he had to make a music video. How about some Russion operatic folk metal by Alkonost? Actually really good.

Unix and a big meal

Today was my Unix day. Well, mainly Unix but tape backups too. It's a complex system, trying to work out why it doesn't like a certain tape, and where it thinks it is compared to where it actually is, can be tricky. The tape library is quite fun though, watching it move tapes around is entertaining and the way it picks up and spits tapes out is quite funny.

After work, met up with my Mum and my aunt and uncle, as my Mum is graduating tomorrow. So we're all going to Bangor to watch, which means another day off work. Yay. We picked them up from the little hotel in Trefnant and went to the Brookhouse Mill in Denbigh for a meal. I had some vegetarian meal which was quite nice, followed by a really good chocolate fudge cake. Also embarassingly ran into the owner of the company that I used to work for, who made 13 other people and I redundant in November 2004.

Another Rammstein video, called Stripped. Apparently a cover of a Depeche Mode song, and has a video made up of footage from the film Olympia. Controversial because it was filmed at the Olympics which took place in Germany while Hitler was in power.

And following on from my post about Real Men liking Robocop, here's a list of why Real Men love the Fifth Element.

Payday tomorrow too, hurrah.

ULTRA GAN!

While on the way up from Cardiff yesterday, I bought a copy of Games TM to read. I only got a chance to glance at it today though, and there was a feature on Grand Theft Auto IV. Being a huge fan of the GTA series, this was quite interesting. From the sound of it, the whole thing has been completely reengineered. Things like escaping the police, getting missions, and even colliding with people on the pavement are much better. Also if the graphics are anything like the images in the magazine, it should look amazing too.

So yeah, a bit excited. The GAN is kicking in again. Rob, Will and I went through this last year, in anticipation of the Wii launch. In case you are wondering what GAN is, it was spawned during a chat session with Will. You know if you're really excited about something, and you have uncontrollable movements? It was like a typed version of that. Initially it was just 'ULTRA GAN!' but as the moment drew closer and the anticipation peaked, a whole dictionary of GAN phases were built up:

GAN = the anticipation that something longed for isn't far away.

ULTRA GAN = GAN, but more so.

FANYGAN = the sensation that the something may be thwarted.

YANGAN = the knowledge that you won't be disappointed. Can shift suddenly between this and FANYGAN.

PIKGAN = even though the event is quite close really, it still feels a long time.

CLACKGAN = when you hit yourself over the head with a wooden spoon from ganning too much.

GLOONGAN = making yourself mentally ill from all the GAN going on.

NIDGAN = a result of GLOONGAN, where you say things like 'BIG MASSIVE HARD GAN IN MY MOUTH SPRAYING Wii UNTIL I CHOKE!!!', which scares your friends away.

ZENGAN = Getting close, and somehow you pass through the excitement and anticipation into a strange calm state.

TRENCHGAN = When the ZENGAN wears off, and the risk of GLOONGAN, CLACKGAN and perhaps even NIDGAN starts to grow again.

I was inspired by the night in Cardiff to listen to 'No Limits' by 2Unlimited. Before I am pelted with rocks, let me explain. Back when it was new in the early 90's, I was a rigid metalhead, if it didn't have distorted guitars, I didn't want to know. Anything else was regarded with disgust. Well, since then, I have expanded my musical tastes. So I listened to that track all the way through for the first time ever with an open mind. And well, OK, it's pretty bad. It's repetitive, the singing and rapping are annoying and it is just not very good.

Given that I had a day off today, I achieved pretty much nothing. I was quite tired most of the day. I did however clean off the iBook, having realised that it had rather a lot of gunk on the trackpad and wristrests. Also realised that there was a ridiculous amount of crap in my mailbox, which I went through and sorted out.

Started reading Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale, which isn't bad.

Can you believe there's a game for the PlayStation called 'Irritating Stick'?

Cardiff

Rob's stag do was pretty decent. The journey there was a bit of a drag though. It was supposed to be a direct train journey from Rhyl to Cardiff, but engineering works on the line meant that we had to get a bus from Shrewsbury to Hereford. This took a lot longer than we thought as the only road seems to be a narrow, twisty thing which would be tricky in a car, let alone a hulking bus. This combined with heat and a psycho bus driver led to a rather worrying journey. He had problems spotting roundabouts until he was nearly on top of them, which then resulted in the slamming on of the digital brakes. We called them that as they only seemed to have two states, on and off, which was quite worrying, especially as he also had problems stopping when the traffic in front had stopped. Also the gearbox made horrible noises.

Anyway, we arrived in Cardiff and the pub crawl began after we dumped our stuff in the hotel room. First though, food was required. Rob wanted to eat at a Chiquito Mexican restaurant, but there was a ludicrous wait, so this plan was scrapped. Most of us got chips from a place called 'The Chippy'. They had battered Turkey kebabs behind the counter, so I tried one. It was really, really nice too.

After that, we hit several pubs, drank a lot and basically enjoyed the rather active Cardiff nightlife. The one place that did stand out was The Goat Major, which is right next to Cardiff Castle. That was fun. The night ended in a place which had music so loud the speakers couldn't cope and so it was distorted horribly. As if 2 Unlimited wasn't bad enough already. Ed and I really don't go for that sort of thing so we sat at a table with hands over our ears, having a conversation by typing notes on our mobile phones and showing them to each other while everyone else had fun on the dance floor. The only entertainment there was some guy who was so self-obsessed, he'd start to dance, and then stop and admire himself in the mirror.

After that place, everyone kind of split up a bit and went back to the hotel in groups. The Travelodge was right on one of the main roads and above a club, and so there were LOADS of people outside and it was really noisy. Still slept OK though.

The train journey back was uneventful, and rather dull on the whole. But all in all it was a good night out and Rob said he had a brilliant time, which is all that matters.

My head feels weird...

Forgot to publish last night's post before shutting the machine down. Doh.

Summary:

Work was dull, other than a gimpy Novell error.
Had a haircut, and my head feels weird.
Rammstein videos seem quite popular, here's an Ice Age one. Worth watching as the lip syncing is well done.
It's Rob's stag do today in Cardiff.

An unexpected detour

A colleague and I had to go to Llandrindod Wells to go to a conference thing about Citrix and other joys. All well and good until we got hopelessly lost halfway there. However we eventually found our way via a very scenic route and made it there fashionably late. It was reasonably interesting, and the lunch was good, and you even got a free backpack. The journey back was uneventful on the whole.

Lots of exciting news from E3. The Wii Zapper has been announced, Wii Fit and Also Mario Kart Wii, all of which look great. Especially Wii Fit with the sensor pad it uses. Might look into getting that and trying to lose some weight.

In other news the PSP has had a redesign to make it thinner and load games quicker, but otherwise looks identical. Not much incentive to upgrade, especially as it has firmware 4.00 which is surely designed to prevent homebrew even more.

This is quite cool, a desktop management program being used to deploy network boot images of various operating systems to 150 PCs and controlling each one at the same time. Must have taken a while to set it up but the effect is quite impressive with 150 machines rebooting at the same time.

Got some new slippers. My old ones were falling apart and they are a bit of a necessity on slate floors if you don't want to have freezing feet.

Just loaded up Second Life for the first time in a while. First it complained, saying I needed to update it, and the automatic update failed as soon as I tried. After updating manually and logging in, it threw me out saying the region I was in had logged me out. After logging in again, while trying to find somewhere else, my camera view suddenly hurtled in the sky and stuck there, and I was unable to move or teleport. So I quit, thinking if I go back in yet again, all will be well. But no, it informs me snottily that my login failed and I won't be allowed back in for five minutes. So basically it was punishing me for glitches and bugs that were not my fault. Once the 5 minutes were up, login worked, and then my character appeared on a random beach. Tried to teleport somewhere, which failed and then the avatar vanished. The ground vanished and that was it. No movement, no nothing, just some disembodied conversation from people somewhere nearby. Quit/reload and again, the account is disabled for five minutes. What a load of cack.

An unfortunate rabbit and Rammstein

A gory experience this evening...the Idiot Hound unexpectedly caught a rabbit. I don't mind him chasing rabbits so long as I can see where he goes. When he was fresh from the rescue centre, he caught loads, but since then he seems to have become more interested in the chase than the kill. It's good exercise for him as well. But today he did catch one. It was breathtaking to watch him chasing it but then he caught it and killed it immediately.

Anyway, I expected that he'd play with it and get bored and leave it, like he used to. Unfortunately he actually ate the whole thing. He wouldn't let me get near him to take him away from it so I just had to leave him to it, and wait for him to finish. It was rather gory and I have an unpleasant image of the rabbit's ears sticking out of the side of his mouth as he finished it off.

And of course half an hour later he threw it all up again on his bed. Argh! I'm not as squeamish as I used to be, but urgh, what a mess. Oh well, I suppose he had a blast, it's what his breeding and training have made him and I don't think the urge to chase and kill small furry things will ever leave him. Anyway, it's a good thing, there are FAR too many rabbits running around at the moment.

I'm just glad now he has the sense to NOT go running off while on the lead, he nearly took my arm off a few times in the early days.

Lesson learnt today the hard way. If you are setting up a cron job on AIX, don't accidentally type crontab -r instead of crontab -e or you'll obliterate the whole cron schedule. Typically Unix doesn't even warn you either. Yay backups!

Some Rammstein videos, which are always entertaining although probably not safe for work:

Amerika, which is interesting
Sonne, Snow White is scary
Rosenrot, which is weird
Mein Teil, weirder and based on the Armin Meiwes cannibal case.

Then there's Du Hast, which is the first Rammstein song I ever heard and is on the Matrix soundtrack, and Engel, which is my all time favourite Rammstein song. The English version is a little weird though, and so is the English version of Du Hast. Doesn't sound right...

And finally the Winnie the Pooh version of Ich Will, which is genius!

Or how about some Eisbrecher, with Vergissmeinnicht, an amazing song.

Meh

Backups are boring and complicated. Unfortunately they are necessary.

Wrecking ball on the loose.

PS3 price is cut in the USA. It now costs the equivalent of £250. In this country it costs £425.

A nice bass video. Sounds best through good speakers or headphones.

A 'grah' day

Today, if I was asked, could be summed up in one word: 'Grah'.

Work was normal, typical day really. Once again people neglected to tell me anything about new starters or office moves, and then wondered why I was annoyed.

Took the dog for a walk, it rained. Didn't get too wet but it wasn't nice.

Spent most of the day with a mild but annoying headache and a sense of exhaustion for some strange reason. Also my nose is still bright red from Saturday and is peeling too.

A strang experience this evening. I went to put my trainers on when I was taking the dog out, and found that one of them had several unskinned peanuts in it. I haven't eaten peanuts like this for ages, and my Mum doesn't like peanuts at all, so where the hell did they come from? Perhaps a squirrel nicked them from a bird feeder and was looking for somewhere to put them?

The only good thing that happened today was that I remembered the bass line for Lithium which I haven't played for many years. Having said that, I haven't listened to Nevermind for a long time either.

BBQ and a crappy car boot

Firefox just crashed. Bah.

Yesterday involved taking the dog out for an early morning work, checking the oil in the Discovery, and going to a BBQ at Em's parent's house. The dog walk went well, the oil check...not so well. I accidentally put too much in and so I had to go underneath and drain some out again. This would have been relatively easy except that the drain plug was so tight I had to go right underneath and brace my whole body against the front wheel to even move it. This was right after I'd just had a shower and clean clothes. Bah!

The BBQ was great. It was a good day all round, the sun was hot, the drinks were cold, and the food was plentiful. The burgers and steak were really good, but I think we all overdosed on Doritos.

Today wasn't too bad, Will, Lorna and I went to the big car boot in Rhyl. Despite the gloomy overcast weather, it was quite big, and we spent some time wandering around. The only thing of any interest was what looked like an electrotherapy machine, which can be used to gently short-circuit and overload electronics. But it wasn't clear what it was, so we left it. Later on I took the dog for a walk after an aborted attempt where ludicrous hail suddenly started falling.

Oddly enough we encountered three women in a Hyundai Coupe who passed us on the way down the village, and then deliberately waited for us. The reason being one of them had just lost a whippet who was very similar to the Idiot Hound in every way except for size and wanted to take a look at him. Fortunately he's a patient creature on the whole and the three women cooing over him didn't phase him much, even when the women who lost the whippet grabbed him in a big hug.

Watched some bits of Artificial Intelligence this afternoon. It has good parts in it, but the whole film is a bit of a drag. I got it for £2 on DVD about three years ago and had never watched any of it.

Someone discovered that Lego men heads fit onto LEDs. So you can make them have scary glowing eyes. When I saw this I imagined a RAID array or something wired up so all the activity LEDs were Lego men with flickering eyes. But then I am a hapless geek.

I very briefly experimented with a couple of old Windows CE devices, a Sharp HC-4100 and an Ericsson MC12 (rebadged HP 320LX), running Windows CE 2.0 and 1.0 respectively. Odd machines. I was hoping to get them on the network, but the PCMCIA card I had didn't fit. Oh well. Not sure what I'd do with them on the network anyway.

Fat Bastard day

Well, earlier this week I decided I was going to try and eat reasonably healthily this week to try and counteract the Chinese we ate last Sunday. That plan went down the toilet mid-week where there was cake in work. And then today I was doing my Unix day and someone said the fateful words 'Who fancies some chips?'. Next thing six of us are all heading down the road to the chippy. Then there was a Twix out of the machine.

Oh well. Tomorrow will probably be just as bad, due to there being a BBQ.

Microsoft has also finally admitted that the Xbox 360 is shit, and the previous standard one year warranty has been extended to three years. Yay!

Poomniklapon

It rained again, and once again I found a puddle in my driver's seat. A guy in work reckoned if you smear Vaseline around the sunroof seal it'll stop it leaking. As I really don't want to have to dismantle the roof, I tried it out this evening.

For the first time in AGES I sat down and had a play with Bryce. It's a fun program, but not as good as a 'real' 3D program, such as Lightwave. I used Lightwave back in college, and I really like it. Sadly it's very expensive. The main problem with Bryce is that it isn't really geared towards modelling things, so making anything that isn't based around its default objects is quite hard and involves a lot of faffing around with booleans and stuff.

Anyway, my attempt to build a pretty, artistic bridge between two hills was a rather dismal failure, so I started again and ended up with epic platforms above an ocean. Just need to put something on them now, but not sure what.

I hate Ebay. I saw a Shine SB-56 6-string bass sat there with a starting bid of £50 with no bids and 10 minutes left, which was very cheap. Before I knew what I was doing, I'd put a bid on it and spend the next few minutes trying to justify it (the low B could come in useful, etc). With 16 seconds to go, I was still the high bidder but then refreshed to find that fortunately someone had put £51 on it and won it. Hurrah. I think I'm going to block Ebay on my router and throw away the password.

Who remembers Wesley Crusher from The Next Generation? Remember how he pretty much was the Jar Jar Binks of the Star Trek world? Wil Wheaton who played him has grown up into a geek who writes lots of interesting things, such as this list of books you must have read if you are a geek. I'm not as geeky as I thought, having only read 3 of the 5. His blog is pretty good too.

Still listening to the Trivium album. It took a couple of listens, but it's grown on me now, there are some excellent tracks on it.

Also Windows Media Player is one of the worst pieces of fetid buttock shite I have ever encountered.

Nothing to report

Today was not an interesting day in any way, shape or form other than it being someone's birthday in work so cakes aplenty. I had to get some anti-cake at lunchtime (melon chunks).

The house price situation is so insane even a cave sells for £100,000.

Also someone changed his middle name to Megatron.

A wet dog and a boring film

The hound had his bath today. He really doesn't like it at all. In fact, he did something he very rarely does. He actually sat down when I was trying to persuade him to get into the bath. It's probably only the third time I've ever seen him sit (greyhounds aren't built for sitting) and every time he's done it, it was due to stress or worry. To be fair, he doesn't struggle or fight when he's bathed, he just has to be moved gently but firmly towards the bath and then lifted in one foot at a time.

After he got out of the bath, I took him for a walk to dry off, which was fairly dull. Fortunately it didn't rain, though it came quite close.

I got 'The Crusade' by Trivium. I got the album they did before this one, and it was quite good. What persuaded me to get this one was that the singer actually sings instead of screaming. Having listened to a couple of tracks, it is very reminiscent of early Metallica, which can't be a bad thing.

The attached image is of a terrifying bass. It is a double neck 7-string made by Conklin, a custom maker of guitars and basses. The top neck is fretted and the bottom is fretless, and the top of the body has got many different woods. It's absolutely amazing to look at, but it must be a bear to play. A simple 1951 Fender Precision Reissue would suit me fine - four strings, one pickup and two knobs. I did experiment briefly with a 6-string bass last year, but it wasn't really my thing and I traded it for my current Squier Precision. I wish now I'd just bought the Squier without trading the 6-string, it could have been useful.

Contrary to a few posts back, I had some sort of brain implosion and watched the Matrix Reloaded. Well, I say watched, it was on in the background for a while as I did other things. There are the faintest glimmerings of a good film in there. I like some of the ideas behind the talky talky bits, but they are expressed so boringly and some of the action bits are so over the top. And what is the point of the rave/orgy bit? Some of the music is quite good though.

Not sure if I can face the next one. What it needs is for the guy who did the Phantom Edit to get rid of ALL the shite from Reloaded and Revolutions and make it into one, compact, decent film.

Oh well

The weather was truly stupid today. Went out with the dog in the rain because I had had enough of not going out, and was resigned to getting wet. Typically it stopped raining after a while and the sun came out and then I was too hot in my coat. Also the Idiot Hound may have fleas again, which means it's bath time for him. You have to lift him in one foot at a time, but to be fair he doesn't struggle or fight.

This was a good idea, an online version of that game where you tell a story by saying a word in turn. Unfortunately someone submitted it to Digg, so it's gone rather strange. It's quite funny in it's incoherent obscenity though. Unedited version here, and the edited version here. A quick sample:

"Elvis is transforming into a banana shaped like a banana . Banana banana hammock ThisIsYourBossGetBackToWork OkSorryBoss. "

Or:

"Anyways, how old is my dog WilliamShatner when he warps through my pajamas . However you might enjoy Linux because it is is is is is is is is is is is is is CCCCOMBOBREAKER WIN! WIN! WIN! Anyway I love my my NINTENDOSIXTYFOUR! FUCKYEAH!"

Or even:

"She protested when the nasty taste reached her mouth and she looked amazed at the huge throbbing monster in my pants . Wow! She screamed as she bounced on my trampoline . After a while she died again and again and again and kevinrose died too. "

I found my HP 95lx today, which was fun. I got it in New York 2 years ago, apparently brand new old stock. I binned the box and manuals to save weight coming home, but the machine is in good nick. I always quite liked the HP lx series. As a miniaturised PC, they were an interesting contrast to the Psion Series 3 range which was designed to be a portable machine from the ground up. I suppose the modern equivalent is the OQO or Sony UX series, a full PC crammed into a tiny case.