wow

OK, so I forgot the charger for the Touch. No prob, I thought. But the Apple store only has a wall charger for USB for £20 but the dock cable is £15. Holy crap. Also, oddly enough, they don't have any 3rd party solutions.

Bah.

Stuff

Course is good. MacBook Air - just put a black keyboard in a MacBook and you're basically there other than the thickness.

Coffee break

Journey down yesterday was fine, no train problems and two seats to myself all the way from Crewe to London. All good. Hotel is not bad, room is a bit small and oppressive but is quiet and I slept OK. I can't believe how many places there are to eat around King's Cross. St Pancras looks impressive so will definitely have to take a look at some point.

I was really tired last night so didn't do much except sit in bed watching Top Gear, eating Oreos and playing on the PSP.

Itemised

1) Someone left in work so I have a new site. The day he left it had a network switch failure and I had to rebuild a PC. His leaving do was in a Thai place in Mold. The starter was spectacular, the main meal less so. Good evening all round though, with 14 people attending.

2) Car service was a little pricy but comprehensive and required. It still needs a speedo cable though.

3) Fretless bass arrived. Cosmetically challenged (body is made from 5 bits of wood) but it sounds great and is really nice to play, probably because other than being fretless, the neck is exactly the same as my main bass.

4) London tomorrow. Bah.

5) Went for a drive today with no particular destination in mind. Something I used to quite a lot when I was unemployed. Just get in the car and deliberately get lost. Satnavs are cheap now but while I'd really like one, it's not something I'd really use enough to justify getting one.

6) The Colour Of Magic is on Sky One right now. I wasn't convinced when they made the Hogfather and so far I really don't like this either. It's probably because I've read the book so often my vision of it is firmly implanted in my head, and also because I can't fucking stand David Jason and he plays Rincewind completely and totally wrong.

Random things

The AX is going in for a complete service tomorrow, including a timing belt and tensioner. It might cost a bit but it needs doing as I don't have any history with it. Still getting used to it but I'm getting more reconciled to driving it. For something so small, it's surprisingly comfortable. But one thing I noticed the other day was that when we all arrived in Snowdonia, once I got out, I had to stretch to iron out all the kinks. Never had that in the Discovery, not even after the 7 hour drive to Cornwall in 2006.

Nothing else to report really. It's been a quiet few days. At least at home, work has been...interesting.

You might remember the Telecaster guitar I was putting together last year. Well I lost interest in that because I don't like guitars, too many strings too close together. So I got rid of the nice neck, but I still had the body. As an experiment I put a bass neck on top of it to see what it would look like. The neck isn't the one it would have as it's been messed with when I was going to build an 8-string. A short-scale neck would be nicer too but you don't really see them as often for sale.

So the plan would be basically the same, maple neck and all black hardware. The problem is that the pickup routes are too small to accept bass pickups and the neck pocket is too small too. I don't have the skills to sort those out so I need to find someone local who is good with a router. Also any parts will have to be cheap due to the supposed Year of Thriftiness.

A great day all round

First thing was selling the Discovery. The guy called up at the appointed time to say he was in the village and so I went down to meet him. I had intended to run them up in the AX but they said their Vauxhall Zafira would be fine. But they looked rather shaken when they got to the top of the track as apparently it had grounded out a number of times.

The guy was rather happy with the Discovery and said it was better than he had expected. So after we'd done the V5 and he'd given me the cash, off he went. It was a bit sad seeing it drive away for the last time but it's for the best I think. It's actually rather a relief to not have to worry about the upcoming MOT. Mind you the speedo in the AX stopped working the other day and the exhaust is blowing so I'm not entirely free of car worries just yet.

Later on, met up with Will, Vicky and one of Will's old school friends called Ben and went for a walk near Snowdon. We went up a cool path with waterfalls, streams and old stone houses. The scenery was really spectacular and other than occasionally being pelted with stinging hail, it wasn't bad at all. Vicky slipped at one point and pulled a muscle but other than that it was fine. We got up to where snow was still on the ground and were going along a rather steep edge when suddenly the wind and hail got really strong, so we turned back, or rather Vicky and I decided we weren't going any further and eventually Will and Ben came back.

On the way back to Ruthin to drop off Ben, we stopped at a cafe in Betws Y Coed where they do really nice hot chocolate. You basically get a mug of hot milk and a cube of chocolate on a stick and you swirl it round until the chocolate has melted. Really nice. Then after dropping Ben off, we picked up Chinese and ate it round at Will's.

The only bad things today were paying a completely ridiculous £1.18 per litre for diesel at the Shell garage in Denbigh and finally losing the lense cap from the N93, which I knew was going to happen at some point.

Work tomorrow. Bah.

HDRlarity

Not a productive day. Watched DVDs again, ate, and played with basses and things.

Took the string off the one-string bass and put several coats of ultra-tough varnish on the fingerboard like I did on the defretted Encore. Hopefully that will stop the string gouging into the wood and might make it sound better. It still needs a pickup of some sort. I might see about putting the pickups back on from the Whamola and attaching them properly this time. I think it needs a new string too, the one on it is totally dead. Also found that the defretted Encore sounds quite good through an Ableton Live ping-pong delay, and can make some interesting sounds if you slap it.

In the evening had a play with Photomatix on Will's recommendation, which is one of those programs that lets you make cool HDR photographs. I played around with some photos after making different versions in GIMP. Certainly interesting to play with and it can cause some very weird side effects. Like the one that Will did of me that made the eczema on my nose look like some pustulent infected sore.

A picture

This picture serves two purposes. First to show you what my new car looks like, and second, to explain why Will and I aren't going to the first car boot sale of the year in Rhyl this morning.

Driv3r hilarity

The police in GTAIII, Vice City and San Andreas might not be the brightest of sparks, but they look like geniuses compared to the police in Driv3r. Mind you the questionable physics of the game don't help. And this is without the general glitchiness of the game. I was messing around in it before and a car shot backwards out of a building and disappeared into the road!

Watch the first part of this to see what I mean.

Steampunk laptop

This is really well put together.

A decadent day

Today basically consisted of eating crisps, playing games and watching a couple of DVDs, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Fight Club. Played some Super Mario Galaxy, which was surprisingly easy to get back into after not playing it for a while. Great game. I also had a go on Driv3r again. Not because it's a good game but because there are so many glitches in it that they become the main focus of the game and cause some hilarious replays.

Dug out my crappy fretless and had a play with it. To be fair it doesn't sound too bad but I really didn't do a good job ripping out the frets and the strings make peculiar buzzing sounds here and there. Also the bass was a cheap and crappy Encore to start with so that doesn't help and the neck is too thick too.

Jaco Pastorius solo. He definitely had a unique style, put it that way.

I need to be careful or I'll turn into the lazy slobby person I was this time last year and I don't want that. At all. Though it's probably too late. Damn I suck.

You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake

OK. Patapon. I understand the concept and gameplay, and the graphics and animation are great and have the same appeal as Loco Roco. But I'm finding it VERY hard to get into. It took me about six tries to get past the second level. Basically you tap out a command (advance, attack, etc) in four beats, and they chant the command you've beat while carrying it out, but I don't know why I can't get it. If I don't get the hang of it soon, it'll be traded for something else.

I had a catastrophic lapse today. That was discovering a Squier Vintage Modified Fretless Jazz Bass on Ebay. I've been after a decent fretless to replace my crappy home-made fretless for some time. There are some ultra cheap but undoubtedly crappy acoustic basses on Ebay which areavailable as a fretless, but I've played the Squier and I know I like it. So yeah, I ended up buying the Squier. Year of thriftiness my arse. At least it was a heck of a lot cheaper than a new one. Thank fuck I've at least got a car now which merely sips diesel as though it were a fine wine, to be savoured and drawn out as long as possible, rather than drinking it all down in one go and clamouring drunkenly for more. Probably not the best way to describe the difference in fuel economy between the AX and the Discovery but that's what it feels like.

Either this laptop (Toshiba Satellite A40) has got scratches on the screen or somehow there are hairs inside the LCD panel. I know I don't treat this laptop very well and it bears the scars to show it, but things like that on the screen really bother me. Damn it.

That quote from Fight Club is becoming strangely relevant here: "The things you own end up owning you." Damn that's a good film, I think I'll watch it this weekend sometime.

The Rayburn is officially scrap and to replace it we're getting a much smaller stove which is built solely for central heating. Rayburns are so expensive it's just not possible to justify one, particularly as the old one was so rarely used for cooking. Not that the smaller stove is all that cheap.

Work, stuff and a rather weird film

One day, I promise, I'll come home and write a blog entry where I actually had a good day in work. I mean it. But it won't be today or this week, or probably next week either.

Went to watch a film called The Cottage with Will, Vicky and one of Vicky's friends who I've shamefully forgotten the name of. It was quite good and I'm certain I would have enjoyed it more than 10,000 BC or whatever it's called. Also saw some banal trailers.

The AX handled quite well with four people in it and interestingly the ride was much smoother.

Patapon has arrived, but I'll give it a go tomorrow. Didn't have the time today. Looking forward to it as it's had great reviews and it's been a long time since I got a new game for the PSP.

Shock to the System

Bored this evening so I decided I was going to get System Shock running, somehow, on my main machine. It's an old DOS game so it wasn't just going to run without some fiddling. It's hard enough to get them running on Windows, let alone Linux.

System Shock was way ahead of it's time and it has many decent features. It ran nicely on my Pentium 100mhz machine with 48mb RAM but it couldn't handle the 640x480 mode very well if I remember right. I always used to turn the combat off as I preferred to just go through the storyline and puzzles. I never played System Shock 2 but they went on to develop BioShock, which shares many characteristics with the old games and is just as good.

First I put DOSBox on which lets you run many DOS games on Windows or Linux, but the System Shock installer complained and wouldn't run, saying it needed to be run from the CD.

After that, I created a VMWare machine with 32mb RAM and a 400mb hard drive and installed DOS from a Windows 98 boot disk. After quite a bit of fiddling, it worked, but while the game ran pretty much perfectly, I couldn't get it to produce any sound. VMWare sound emulation is pretty minimal and doesn't seem to work under DOS at all. Then again this is the server version so you might expect that but from what I've read the workstation version isn't great either.

After another go in DOSBox, I was able to trick the installer to get it to install and run and it actually isn't bad. It stutters every now and again especially in the Cyberspace sequences. I might try it on one of the sub-1ghz laptops I have knocking about.

There was a particularly unpleasant experience in work this morning. Had to move a user's PC away from a desk where the roof had leaked. It smelled absolutely disgusting, like someone had puked there. Incredibly the guy didn't want his PC moved as he didn't see the point, seemingly immune to the stench.

More car things

Didn't do much in the morning. This afternoon took my Mum to pick up her new car and unload all the crap out of the broken one. The new car is a Citroen Berlingo Multispace. It's pretty nice, and seems largely the same as the Peugeot Partner van we have in work.

After that, got a new front wiper blade for the AX and went to a scrapyard in search of a rear left light (the original was cracked) and a sun visor for the driver's side. They had the light but not the sun visor. I've done over 100 miles in it now and the fuel gauge seems to have barely moved, although it is hard to tell as it's one of those silly ones that changes depending if you're going uphill or downhill, or even round a corner.

Restrung the 8-string bass after getting the strings back from my Dad. It was a little fiddly as the piccolo strings had the same size ball ends as the bass strings, so they nearly don't fit into the holes. That combined with the cretinous bridge design made it really fiddly to get them installed properly. Fortunately it was worth it as it sounds really good now, but I'd almost forgotten how tricky it was to play.

Spielmannsfluch

I took the AX into town and checked the tyre pressures and got a paper. I removed the hubcaps that were on it because they got in the way of the valves, and discovered that it has only three nuts per wheel. I'd forgotten that Citroen did that. I'm getting used to driving it but I'm really missing the sheer visibility that you had from the Discovery. But I do like that it cost £30 to fill up with diesel and after doing 50 miles, the fuel gauge hasn't moved from the top at all.

Also transferred the aux input cable to the AX to allow the Shuffle to be plugged in. I wasn't sure at first how to get the cable back out of the dashboard from the stereo, but I melted a hole in the dashboard with a soldering iron. Found that the ashtray makes a good place for the Shuffle to sit. Annoyingly I wasn't able to use the decent speakers from the Discovery as they are too small but the ones in there aren't actually too bad.

Did some digging around on the track because there's a couple of bits where the AX grounds out. I hate doing this, it's all stony making it really hard to dig with a shovel. Also found that the stream which is causing problems actually emerges from a spring which is actually in one of the ruts. I had thought it was coming out from the field and then flowing onto the track. This complicates things rather as I was hoping to find a way to redirect the water.

A side effect of the digging was that I realised how lax I've been over the last few months with exercise. I'm sure I've put on weight and I've got no energy. I need to get back into the routine I had going last October before I went to London.

Didn't do much else, watched Terminator 2 and 3 and currently listening to the In Extremo Live DVD, hence the title.

Might get Patapon for the PSP, seems like a fun game. I think the last game I got for the PSP was Me & My Katamari, and that was probably over a year ago.

Forgot to mention that I did my first blog entry on 13th March 2007. Scary how quickly that year has gone by...

Image is of a DEC MicroVAX II for no real reason other than I saw one once in a computer shop being used as a stool.

Failblog

Best thing ever.

Rugby!

Well, today was certainly interesting. We watched three games of rugby round at Andy's and while the first two games were rather crappy, the Wales vs France game was pretty decent. Well, Wales won, so obviously!

I'm getting used to the AX. It's a nippy little thing round town, the engine has rather more poke than I expected from a 1.5 diesel. It does feel a little underpowered on the open road though and I think it'll struggle with more people in it. When I was driving home from Andy's, it was raining really hard but the single wiper coped fine.

The Discovery is on Ebay. I discovered that it had more tax than I thought, it actually expires in April, not March, so that's good.

New car

Well, I did it, I bought a new car. So I'm sure you're wondering what mighty chariot would the Double L choose? What could possibly follow the Discovery?

Well, remember how this is the Year of Thriftiness? Yeah, that kind of precludes anything big, fast, or heavy. The car I ended up with is a red M-reg Citroen AX 1.5 diesel.

I can see you shaking your head. A Citroen? After the nightmare that was the Xsara? But after a rather fruitless hunt, my Dad and I went a place which had several affordable cars. For some reason nowhere seems to do cheap cars any more, nowhere had anything under £1000. The closest we could find was a really crappy Toyota for £200.

However this place had a few cars listed on the Internet and they had a white Nissan Micra listed which had a reasonable MOT. But when we looked at it, there was some rust building up at the back and underneath. They also had two Clios, one of which had major rust on the rear arches and neither had much MOT. So they pointed out a J-reg Polo and this AX, both of which had fresh MOTs. The Polo was smelly and strange, and it just didn't seem right somehow.

So, not expecting much, we took the AX out and found it drove quite well. It's reasonably solid, has no rust around the body, the interior isn't bad and though the panels have faded in places and it has a fair amount of scratches and dents, it's in reasonable shape. The engine is a 1.5 diesel, which should hopefully use no fuel at all and the mileage is just over 70,000. So I ended up buying it and taxing it for 12 months. By the time the MOT and tax run out I hope to have sorted out my finances enough to get a decent car. Also the insurance payments have dropped dramatically now I've transferred it to the AX.

My nice Alpine stereo slotted into the AX and connected up immediately with no issues, but it felt like I was ripping the heart out of the Discovery. I know it's silly to get attached to things, but I'm really going to miss that old beast, even though it's been a financial disaster.

Also the new octave strings for the 8-string bass finally arrived, but I left them in my Dad's car! Damn!

Cars and why I hate them, reprieve

Weekend was good, Saturday consisted of a rugby, food, drink and play-doh fest at Rob and Em's with Will and Vicky which was excellent fun. We all crashed over at Rob's and then we went for a big breakfast at a nearby cafe. All good stuff. The rest of Sunday was taken quite casually, just watching the first Indiana Jones film in preparation for the fourth one coming out.

I've seen a few cars for sale. One was an L-reg Peugeot 106 1.4 diesel but that didn't seem quite right and sold immediately anyway. I'd rather get something that isn't quite so synonymous with boy racers. There's a place nearby that has a few cars for £500 or so and I'm going to have a look there on Friday as I forgot I'd booked Friday and Monday as holiday - hurrah!

The Discovery started making the occasional graunching noise when going round right hand bends and I found the exhaust seems to be hanging down and fouling the rear axle. But as it's going on Ebay any minute now I can't be bothered looking at it. Also the gearbox is starting to crunch into 1st and 2nd when cold and to be quite honest, I'll be glad to see it go. It's been a good two years, but I've had enough of the sheer costs involved of running the thing, and diesel has gone up to £1.12 in the local Morrisons.

But then my Mum's car made a strange noise so she took it to the garage. They found the rear wheel was about to fall off and was rubbing on the body. This combined with the new steering rack it needs, would cost over £1000 - just not worth repairing. So she's got her eye on a 52-reg Berlingo.

So there we have it.

Wrongness, laptop surgery and cars

What's wrong with this picture? The gigantic lip? The AK-47? Or the jarring juxtaposition of the iPod? It's got to be a posed photograph, but it's interesting nontheless.

Had a funny moment in work where I was combining an immaculate laptop with a fried motherboard with one that had a good motherboard but a damaged screen and other parts. I merrily ripped both laptops to pieces while dealing with helpdesk calls when I suddenly realised I was surrounded with countless bits of laptop, a forest of screws, and not much idea which parts were from which one. But after a while I got it all back together, and I had a nice clean laptop that booted successfully. However the celebrations were cut short when I found the trackpad didn't work, but I know where it connects and it's quite easy to check. I've built a couple of Frankenstein laptops like this out of the scrap pile and they always come in useful for something. Even the head of ICT uses one for presentations.

Cars. I've been scouring Ebay, Auto Trader and various other places every night this week and I'm sick of it. But I've got a couple of possibilities and dilemmas. A P-reg Fiesta with no history for £500, or an L-reg Clio with a year's MOT and plenty of documented work done over the last 15,000 miles for £375? Which would be better? I don't know.

I'm steeling myself for driving round in a shed. I think I've mentioned before that I have psychological difficulties with cars, and unless I'm in something big that I can perceive as safe, I get paranoid and angry. So it's going to be somewhat of a test, and I only hope I have the strength of mind to pass it. I think as long as I can get a half-decent stereo in it, that'll be a big help as then you can just cruise and enjoy the tunes.

This is from the Facebook terms of service: "When we are notified that a user has died, we will generally, but are not obligated to, keep the user's account active under a special memorialized status for a period of time determined by us to allow other users to post and view comments."

Odd. Still not too happy about Facebook.

No point

Not a particularly good day. Spent some time rebuilding an old machine and getting new ones ready and then we had a meeting. Found that one of my colleagues is leaving so his sites will have to be covered.

Played badminton this evening but it wasn't particularly good. Haven't played for a couple of weeks and it shows. I'm despairing of getting back into a reasonably healthy eating and exercise routine and hating myself for it.

Also I'm feeling quite bitter and resentful for various reasons which I won't go into.

This thing about the iPhone and iPod touch devkit is cool, looks like it has lots of potential - Super Monkey Ball on the thing with the accelerometer? Spore? Can't wait.

Got a bottle of vodka with vanilla pods in it and it smells fantastic after only a week and a half. By my birthday in May, it should be really nice.

Does anyone read this? At all?

Vans, boxes, computers, greyhounds, fat

Work today basically consisted of shifting a load of equipment from one site to another. Thankfully the new ICT van can fit a whole load more than the old one. It's a Peugeot Partner which drives really well. So after all the exertions I feel quite tired now.

Called the UK greyhound stud registry today and gave them the hound's tattoo. They were able to give me his date of birth (20th October 2002), his parents names and the last registered owner. He doesn't have a racing name because he never raced, though I found he has a brother and sister who have raced. Interesting stuff. I'm just glad to know his exact age though.

You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) - the metal version! Quite good.

Been a right fat bastard over the last couple of weeks and eaten like crap. Sure I've put on weight, but finding it difficult to be disciplined. Pissing me off.

Toughbook upgrade and car woes

Went to have another look at a car I was quite interested in, a tidy 1999 VW built Skoda Felicia, only to find it had been sold yesterday. Oh well. They tried to interest me in a white R-reg Rover but it was too big, and you can't get the parts these days. Had another look on the Interwebs this evening and found a couple of other possibilities. A 106 in Wrexham and a Seat Arosa 1.0 which looked great but was in Wolverhampton.

This was annoying though as I was hoping the Skoda was OK and I could have had it sorted by the end of the week, especially as diesel is now £1.11 in the local Morrisons. What. The. Fuck.

Put Windows XP on the Toughbook, as the 2000 install was a 30 day trial version. I did try a Compaq Windows 2000 CD but that failed, so I installed XP Home using a code from a crappy smashed up Acer laptop. Much to my surprise, it actually activated, so that's all good. Doesn't run too badly with the 192mb RAM, surprisingly. I tried replacing the 128mb DIMM in it with a 256mb one but it still only recognised 192mb RAM - bah! Also the touchscreen driver which worked fine on 2000 doesn't work on XP, strangely, or at least I haven't got it to work yet.

One thing that's interesting about it is that it has a modem installed in a MiniPCI slot, which could be possibly be replaced with a wireless card. This however then raises the question of an antenna, and I'm not sure if the Ethernet port is linked to the PCI card or not.

If it bleeds, we can kill it

My admission last Friday in work that I had never seen Predator caused much outrage and disbelief. I don't know why I'd never seen it. So a guy brought both Predator 1 and 2 in on DVD. I've just watched Predator and thought it was really good, also I was really impressed with the effects considering it's 21 years old. Also it was made when Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't all that annoying.

Not sure about watching the sequel, not heard good things and then they went and made AVP which pretty much ruined both Alien and Predator.

It snowed while I was watching the film. There's actually quite a lot of it, but it's slushy and melty already. Typical that it would snow when I'm quite anxious to get rid of the Discovery.

A fat and painful weekend

Yesterday was pretty good. Went out looking at cars first thing and found one possibility. Then took the dog for a walk for the first time in ages but became aware of a slight ache in various parts of my body, particularly my right thigh and my shoulders and upper arms. These aches became worse and I realised that the antics of the Audi 80 caused various muscle pulls and things.

The afternoon yesterday consisted of a huge geekfest in the Flyattic, with long sessions of Halo 3, Flatout, Portal, Def Jam Vendetta, Rocky and other things. Also ate a LOAD of crap because I brought snacks and went rather overboard. Also plugged the Whamola into Will's fearsome system and it made some very interesting noises. Vicky also had her Eee which was really cool.

Today was spent in Preston, sorting out my cousin with a wireless router. But with the various aches amplified for some reason, I spent the day feeling like a virtual cripple. I was limping everywhere with pain in my foot and legs, and my shoulders were pretty bad too.

My cousin has cable internet from Virgin, something I hadn't encountered before so I was quite anxious that I'd bought the right equipment for her. But it all plugged in perfectly and worked fine once I'd configured the router for maximum wireless security. Once that was all set up and working, we went out for a massive lunch in a nearby Beefeater, which was really good.

Feeling tired now.

Diesel is £1.09 in Morrisons! Insanity.

A very cute cat on a treadmill. Funny.

I was looking up greyhound tattoo information today to try and work out how hold the hound is, but couldn't figure it out. All I know is that he was puppy 4 of the litter. However there is a number you can call to check the greyhound stud registry and they can tell you the date of birth and racing name, but not the racing history. Might give it a call as it would be nice to know his exact age and birthday.