Argh

I use Adblock on my computers and hardly ever watch TV, so when I encounter adverts I absolutely detest them. Not quite to the point of actually having an allergic reaction like Cayce Pollard in Pattern Recognition, but nearly...

I hate cars and driving

Yesterday on the way into town to Rob and Em's for their housewarming, I had a bump in the car. I was turning right into Morrisons, perhaps a little sharply and a guy pulled out too far and slammed into my rear wheelarch and wheel. The wheel took the brunt of it and needs to be replaced but while the arch is a bit caved in, it's not too bad. His bumper was badly scuffed and some panels came off it. We exchanged details but since I already have a spare wheel I don't really need to worry about it.

The housewarming at Rob and Em's was a great success. All the room in their garden meant everyone they invited could hang out with the greatest of ease and there was loads of food and drink. Kat had suggested clubbing together to get them a barbecue which was much appreciated and worked really well. So it was a great evening, lots of fun and stuff and in my case accidentally swearing at Rob's Mum and farting in people's general direction. There's a reason I don't drink very often. I had the D50 with me so we got LOADS of pictures, although when I can to look at them before I had to delete quite a lot of them. Still got some good ones though.

This morning helped them to clean up and had some sausages and stuff before I came home. I had to drive gently as the tyre was bulging suspiciously on the damaged wheel. I've now removed it and found the spare wheel, ready to get that sorted out tomorrow. Did some strimming outside but got tired.

At last the weekend

It's been a long week, annoyingly so for a week of only three days. As Andy pointed out, we probably assumed the three days would fly past but that wasn't the case.

Yesterday was one of those days where I wanted to bang my head against the wall, then I rationalised this and decided I wanted to bang someone else's head against the wall. After work though, things got better as I went to Rob and Em's to meet up with them and Jane and Wes, and we had epic home made toad in the hole, before we all piled into Rob's car to go and watch Thor in the cinema. I knew nothing about it, hadn't even heard of the graphic novels before the film was announced, so I didn't know what to expect at all. It was good though, really quite enjoyed it.

Today was more of the same in work, not very productive because nobody was in. I dropped the Alienware at Rob's so they could watch movies on it, then went to drop the car off at the garage before walking up to the office. Picked up the car to find the service wasn't too bad, but they'd had to replace the lower suspension arms on both sides. Joy. Then it was off to Rob and Em's again and we pigged out on chips from the good fish and chip shop. Not sure what is going on later on this evening but there might be pub and stuff. I'm feeling pretty tired at the moment though so who knows.

Tomorrow it is of course the anti-royal wedding day at Rob and Em's. Basically loads of people bringing stuff to fling on a barbecue and deliberately ignore the TV.

Happy days. I've been listening to Labyrinth der Sinne by Tanzwut solidly since it arrived the other day and it's bloody great. Definitely my favourite album by them. There's a new one out in September.

Update: decided to come home because it was like someone had flipped a switch, I just suddenly felt catastrophically tired and I thought I'd be better off saving my energy for tomorrow.

Giant day of meh

The only highlight of today was taking a very large pyrex jug and making the biggest cup of tea I have ever had. It was nice. And took some nice pictures of the Alienware using the camera settings to show the lighting. Other than that...well, meh.

Also I hate having to do processes on the backup system manually that should be done automatically. Not fun.

Bikes are fun

Went to my Dad's today. After the usual coffee and scones in the morning, we headed over to Halfords to get some new bits for my bike. We got some nice new squashy grips for the handlebars, and some bars to mount at the ends because I thought it might be nice to be able to change the position of my wrists from time to time as they were aching after the ride yesterday.

Once we started to pull it apart though we got ambitious and decided to change the handlebars entirely for the ones from my cousin's old bike, which are the sort of retro ones where they curve up. This went OK but we had to to put the gear shifters in a less than ideal place so, while it feels much better, not sure how long it will stay like that. What I might do is get a longer stem and put a new flat bar on it.

We adjusted the front derailleur so it now goes into top gear better, and sorted out the brakes which were all over the place yesterday.

Also the front tyre was being crap and not sitting on the rim properly even though it was supposedly the right size for the wheel, so we changed it for one that my Dad had spare. It's a touring tyre so quite skinny compared to the one that was on it. The rear was OK so we left that one alone. Due to all these new somewhat mismatched parts it looks a bit of a mongrel now, but it works OK.

Once I got home I took it for a little mile long jaunt and it went really well. The raised handlebars are brilliant, making it much more comfortable. The 8 miles yesterday were relatively flat so again I struggled a bit on the hills but it wasn't too bad really. Felt good after it though.

Exercise is fun until later on

Yesterday was a good day all round. I spent the morning playing more of Portal 2 until the 'possibly something stupid' turned up, which took me most of the afternoon to set up and configure.

After that it was back to Portal 2 and then down to Rob and Em's for a Chinese fat fest, which was delicious, and then a trip to the pub with Rob, Andy and Maz. We went to a nice pub that was pleasantly quiet, and played dreadful pool, took negative pictures of each other and chatted until...well, not very late, but it was a good evening.

Today Rob, Em and I took the bikes up to the Brenig. It was fun to see the contrast between their shiny new bikes and my ancient and battered Diamond Back. We cycled from the rear car park to the visitor centre, where we had ice creams and a curious thing by Ginster that I'd bought called a Cornish Bara, and then we headed back. It was really good fun, all of us really enjoyed it. The bikes all behaved, even my old heap managed to engage top gear a couple of times, and at one point Rob and I had a granny gears race which was absolutely hiliarious as the low gearing on mine meant I had to pedal at the speed of light. The weather was bright and sunny with a healthy breeze so it all worked out well. The distance was about 8 miles in the end, which isn't bad.

Got home and obviously the exercise took a toll on me as a couple of hours ago I came over crushingly tired and had to take a nap, which is very unlike me and I had a strange dream about playing GTA but then it wasn't GTA but real and I had a fight with a woman who reversed her Range Rover into the Focus.

Ah well. Anyway, the 'something stupid' is an Alienware M11x laptop. I bought it to replace both the Acer Ferrari and the Acer 5535, as it is more powerful and more solidly built than both, but still a reasonable size. With the glowing keyboard, grills and logos, I guess the Alienware could be seen as even more ostentatious than the bright red Acer Ferrari, but at least the lights can be switched off and it becomes rather more discrete except for the alien heads. I like the way the eyes of the power button alien head are the hard drive activity though, that's nice.

It's a great machine. It has the same reassuringly sturdy feel as a Mac laptop. It's the original version with a Core 2 Duo CPU which runs at 1.3ghz normally but can be overclocked in the BIOS to 1.7ghz. It's the graphics cards that are the interesting part. In normal use it has standard Intel integrated graphics to save power, but if you need to, you can switch to a Nvidia graphics card with 1gb dedicated memory. I'm that impressed with the M11x that I'm quite seriously thinking about an M15x or the behemoth M17x to replace the Acer 7741g but they are both considerably more expensive than the 'budget' M11x.

The Acers the Alienware is replacing have just been listed on Ebay but I've realised the end time is on the 29th. Oh well, hopefully it won't matter.

Portal 2 and a HUGE chair

After burning my old armchair that I had discovered was hideous, I was in a quandary this morning. With a shiny new copy of Portal 2 in my possession since yesterday evening, I wanted to spend today playing it. But I didn't have a chair, so I set off early to find one. And so I did. However, my spatial awareness failed me. The chair that looked quite a reasonable size in the shop turned out to be of epic proportions. The first inkling of doubt arose when it took up pretty much the entire rear of the Focus with the seats down. Getting it up the narrow stairs and around the corners and doors at home was an absolute nightmare and now it's actually in the room, it pretty much dominates it. Oh well, at least it's really comfy.

Anyway, armed with new chair, snacks, Coke (diet, cherry) and a freshly charged controller, I set off into Portal 2. I played it for quite some time until I got to a part I couldn't figure out, but then I heard a crash of thunder and scampered around whimpering and unplugging things. By the time the thunder went away I didn't feel like carrying on. It's good though...really good.

Yesterday I booked the car in for a service next Thursday as I can't remember how many thousands of miles it's overdue for one, and the suspension has started knocking. It's making exactly the same sound as it did last year but from the other side and that time it was the anti-roll bar link. I don't remember it being that expensive so hopefully it's the same thing.

Wait, what, four days off?

The backup system upgrade was completed successfully today. It was up and running by the end of yesterday and it was left to do the usual overnight processes to see how it would get on. I woke up early this morning and fretted about it for a little while until I couldn't stand it any more and went in to office much earlier than usual to see if it was all right. Fortunately, everything was fine, only a few little niggles to sort out. Unsurprisingly, given the huge boost in spec over the old server, it powered through the daily admin tasks, and everything is so much faster.

Still, it was quite a relief when the consultant left. I didn't realise until it was all done how tense I was during the process and I just felt a great weight lift from me. I did have to modify the schedules to take into account nobody will be taking tapes out tomorrow and Monday so I guess that's something else I can worry about, but hey.

Because of all that, it was only today that it really dawned on me that there's two four day weekends coming up. Nice.

Badminton was great this evening. The Hagg had gone on holiday and as always when she isn't there, it was a really good evening. I got some black spaghetti from the deli and Rob got some crayfish tails, which combined into a rather tasty pre-badminton meal.

I think I've done something stupid, but will have to wait until Saturday to find out.

Insertion

So today was spent with an external consultant doing the upgrade to the backup system in work. I had to be present as the normal guy has been signed off sick for two weeks, great timing as always. It was fairly interesting but because I've been so busy with my normal workload it was quite difficult to keep up with all the stuff that's been going on with the upgrade. Also management haven't seen fit to send us on any training on this new version, despite there being many changes including a totally different database. Oh well.

Not much else. Really tired this evening again, no idea why. Walked the dog, did some more work on the laptops. Got three up and running with hard drives and installed Ubuntu on them with reasonable success. Have ordered a load of sticky feet to put on the ones that are missing them.

Played with the HTC Magic phone tonight. Enabled data on it which was a mistake as it promptly blew a quid trying to sync over it, ouch. However at least it's there if I need it now. Vodafone actually have a PAYG plan with free data and texts if you top up a certain amount each month, might look into that.

Arrival

Ended up taking the dog for a walk which was nice in the sunshine.

My armchair ate an SD card I dropped and while I was trying to find the card I realised how collapsed and manky the armchair was so I tore it apart to retrieve the card and then burnt what was left.

Then played through the new Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2. It was a bit of an odd one. While playing it through I quite enjoyed it but then looking back it didn't really feel like the traditional Mass Effect experience. I guess that could have been the point though. But that's it now until Mass Effect 3. I've made a pact with myself to avoid future trailers for ME3 though, as I read that the ones for ME2 contained loads of spoilers.

I also completed my third playthrough of ME1 and imported the same into ME2. It's interesting playing it as a different class as it changes how it plays quite a bit.

Just realised Saints Row The Third (as it's called now) will probably come out at around the same time as ME3, so that means this winter should be quite busy.

Portal 2 out soon, can't wait for that.

Geektactular

Yesterday was a fairly lazy but good day. Woke up and didn't realy feel like doing much so fooled around in Mass Effect for a bit. In the afternoon went down to Andy's for a chat and to look at Olympic tickets. After a look at it we decided on our original plan and have put that on, which is quite weird to think it's actually booked now.

After that we met up with Rob and Em and Rob and Caroline for a meal in the Asia place in Denbigh. Really good, thoroughly enjoyed it. After that we went to a pub that had been recently done up and had a few drinks and the usual bizarre chats. Good fun all round.

Today is looking nice outside so I'm determined to get outside and do some exercise.

Have intermittently been playing with the laptops I bought. Nearly all of them work, only two or three have any serious faults. I just need to find a good source of hard drives and replace the optical drives on a couple of them.

Fecking tiredness

It's been a fairly weird week. Work has been reasonably OK.

Badminton last night was good, more people than there's been for quite some time which was good as it meant a good variety and we had some really good games. Somehow, I managed to really pull the bicep in my left arm even though I play right handed. Weird. It's still hurting now. Also Rob made epic gorgonzola gnocchi.

I took the bike out on Wednesday which was a rather humiliating reminder of my fitness level. I think it's going to take some practise before I can ride the six miles to work and back. Glad the bike works OK, although I need to adjust the front chainset still and I think it could do with higher handlebars.

I've been feeling tired all week, not sure why. Just shattered in the evenings.

Got a power supply for one of the project laptops, a Thinkpad T30. I really like IBM laptops, the build quality is top notch and they just feel good. The only thing I really dislike is that they put the 'fn' key in the bottom left corner instead of 'Ctrl' which is just wrong. Naughty. The T30 works OK but needs a hard drive and one of the memory slots is bad - a known fault. I haven't encountered many Thinkpads since Lenovo took over production of them but they seem nice.

Rob and Em gave me their old TV which died. After popping the back off I saw what I expected - faulty capacitors. Two had burst and one was bulging. Capacitors are stupid cheap so I've ordered some of the right type and will have a go at fixing it. If not, then a power supply board is relatively cheap on Ebay.

It's been a lazy evening. Fired up Soul Calibur IV for the first time in probably two years and had fun creating a crazy monacled purple guy but when it came to actually playing the game, got angry and turned it off. Did a bit of my latest Mass Effect character but got a little bored. Did however download the new DLC for Mass Effect 2, so will do that over the weekend at some point.

Decided I wanted to get the two Tanzwut albums I haven't got but they aren't available for download so I've ordered the CDs. Not sure quite why I like Tanzwut so much. I was trying to explain them to a guy in work and the best I could come up with was 'Think Rammstein with bagpipes and a hint of electronica.' Good stuff though. This is the current track I really like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T82H82e3js

Rargh

A fairly typical day in work.

Went around to a colleague's sister's house to have a look at her PC and sort it out. Needed some more RAM and new AV, easy enough but the machine was pretty old and not a great one to start with.

Got home and a couple of bits had turned up for the laptops so I've got two of them up and running, a HP with lots of blue LEDs and a rather dull RM. Installing Ubuntu on them as a test as it runs well on slightly older hardware like this. The main thing that's annoying is that half the machines are missing the feet underneath, which is bad because it means the vents could be blocked. I don't get why this happens so much.

Feeling really tired this evening, like I did last night. Not sure why. Possible lack of exercise maybe? Not sure.

Flanger

Sunday was good. Sorted out the car a bit in the morning and dragged my bike out of the shed. I was able to extract it from the embrace of the turbo trainer, cleaned the crap off it, pumped up the tyres, oiled the chain and then took it up and down the front. Amazingly it still works fine. I think if I'm going to try riding a bike properly I'll use this one for now even though I've had it since I was 15. The only thing I think it could do with is higher handlebars as they feel a bit low and they've gone rusty.

Then went to Rob and Em's to do more proofreading of one of Rob's writings. This time he sent me the raw text, I printed it out and scrawled on it in red pen, and then we sat down together and went through it. This approach works really well although it is slow. We had rewards for completing pages such as Pringles and teacakes. After this eventually palled, I went home followed by Rob and Em and we took Sandy for a walk in the sunshine.

Today was OK in work, a fairly productive day but I got depressed and pissed off round about lunchtime for no reason that I could discern. Oh well.

The second batch of laptops turned up today. Another couple of Toshibas including a rather pretty little Portege M100 and a whopping huge fat Pentium 4 Satellite, an equally fat Tiny, a sleek Thinkpad and a rather boring Dell. All of them power up to some degree and a couple have issues, for example the M100 has a bad LCD cable and the Thinkpad a bad RAM slot. But so far it looks fairly promising. So I spent some time playing with them before taking Sandy for a walk in the wind and occasional rain.

Watched Taken this evening after being lent it by Rob weeks ago and putting it underneath something. Weird film. Not sure if I enjoyed it or not, but I think on whole I did.

Quiet day

Nice quiet day mostly spent at my Dad's. We went through the pictures and videos from Berlin and chilled out. I went out and got a new stereo for the car, one which includes both aux and USB inputs, with iPod support. The stupid Ripspeed piece of shite I had before worked but had a gimpy aux input arrangement and idiotic controls.

Had a look at bikes. If it's going to be lugged in and out of my carI need one that is going to be lighter and more manageable but at the same time I haven't got much cash to drop on one. There's a few options that I'm keeping an eye on. While in Halfords my Dad and I saw some quite nice ones but he said going second hand would save quite a bit and he's got the tools and expertise to strip them down and fix any issues. I did look at some bare frames as he's got all the bits to build one up but that could be fraught with problems. Did see a rather nice road bike with carbon frame that was very light though, shame it was £999. Now that I'm mianly based in a single office that is 6 miles from home, I could conceivably ride a bike to work quite regularly, especially since the office has a shower.

Darren told me of someone he knows who is looking for a bass player and gave me his number but I've chickened out of calling so far because it's been so long since I had to play in that kind of setting, or indeed in front of anyone. I can make cheerful noises with a drum machine but that's not really the same.

Berlin overview

Day 1

Flights from Liverpool were fine. Once again Pauline and I managed to arrive in the car park at exactly the same time, astonishing! It was great as we were able to park next to each other. The trip through the new security area was pleasant as the airport was pretty quiet, so it was all good. The outward flight was fine and we got to Berlin without any problems. We took the double-decker airport express as usual to Alexanderplatz and the usual U5 trip to the hotel Once checked in, we met up with Amogharatna and Claudia at the Flying Table for a meal. It's hard to explain how much we were looking forward to this, especially Pauline who was supposed to be doing the half marathon last year but couldn't go due to her cancer treatment. We didn't linger long and retired to bed relatively early after the travelling.

Day 2

We woke up and left the hotel in search of food. At first we were at a bit of a loss and sat by a fountain in Alexanderplatz. It was quite funny to have spent so long looking forward to the trip and then end up sat there not sure what to do first. After a while we decided to head to the Hauptbahnhof, get some food and wander past the Reichstag to the Tiergarten. This we did, and we got delicious wraps from there and ate them in the park. We had intended to aim for Potsdamer Platz, but took a completely bizarre route that took us through the embassies in totally the wrong direction, then we took a random road to avoid a demonstation and eventually figured out we had emerged by the Zoologischer Garten station.

By this time we were hungry again so we went to a highly recommended pizza place not far from the hotel which was excellent and then had a rest. After that we headed out to the Stadtmitte U-bahn stop to go to Fassbender & Rausch to get presents for people and wandered up to the end of Friedrichstrasse to meet Amogharatna at DaDa, possibly the best purveyors of falafel in the city - and it fucking rocks. It was stunning. After that we went for a wander and saw the curious underground shopping place that links Friedrichstrasse to another place and back to Stadtmitte.

Day Three

We went in search of breakfast and took a nice long walk down a random road. We took a long and circuitous route across the mainline railways and eventually ended up at the Warshauer Strasse U-bahn station. Handily this is also the location of the East Side Gallery and the Oberbaumbrucke, so we had a good look at those before getting a U1 train. Due to maintenance work it terminated only a few stops later at Kotbusser Tor which was fine for us. The train had two drivers as it shuttled back and forth, we saw it pulling back out with the driver reading a paper in the back end, which was amusing.

Went to the Turkish market which was interesting. Saw a lot of cool things and got some rather nice crispy thin pastry snacks, very good but a bit greasy. Was hoping to find wasabi and chilli peanuts and wasabi cheese but no luck this time.

At this point we needed a rest again so we headed to the Hermanstrasse S-bahn station and got on a Ringbahn train - a trip round the ring takes exactly an hour and you can see a fair bit from there, so it was nice. After that we went into Tempelhof park and lay around on the grass for a bit, although it was quite cold, and then walked up and down the runways before meeting Amogharatna at the half-marathon show in the terminal buildings. There was a lot to see and Pauline got new running shoes, but sadly no cheap finisher shirts from previous marathons this time, which was a shame. Amogharatna signed up for the Potsdam half marathon while there, nutter that he is!

We went back to the hotel for a rest and then went out to a new Vietnamese place called Tonkin that Claudia had had a flyer about. It was really, really nice although I ordered at random since there was no english. The only word I knew was Ente, duck, but fortunately it was delicious.

Day Four

After not liking Potsdam a couple of years ago, we decided to give it another go. We got the train there and stopped off at the Wannsee on the way there. We saw the Wannsee Conference house on the map and walked there but it was rather longer than it looked. It was not good in there. It's a beautiful building but going inside is weird and creepy. We were able to get a bus back to the S-bahn and then headed into Potsdam.

Well, epic fail at this point. We thought we got a tram that took us to a big nice park but instead it sodded off to the suburbs and we got off and got the other one back. Then found the Brandenburg Gate (small one) and sat around there before heading back into Berlin. So no, we still don't like Potsdam. We got a regional train back to the city which was loads faster and one of the lovely double deckers.

Day Five

The day of the marathon. It was hot. Very hot. We started out at the beginning of the race and watched the various events kick off, which was great to watch. The inline skaters were amazing as they set off, incredible to watch, then there was the wheelchairs and the runners themselves. We went and got the train and watched them go past the Tiergarten station, the Ku'damm and the corner of Kochstrasse and Friedrichstrasse. This time we spotted Amogharatna and I was able to use the paparazzi mode on the camera to get some good pics of him going past, which was great.

Back to the hotel for a rest and then we met up again with Amogharatna and Claudia, heading to a nearby Indian place we went to originally. Very good food and we had curious bread that was all swelled up like a balloon, but delicious. Then along the road for ice creams in a curious square that was ludicrously peaceful given it was only a block from the six lane madness that is Frankfurter Allee. By this time everyone was feeling tired, especially Amogharatna understandably so we headed back to our respective homes.

That evening I went out and had a look at the nightlife, which was really entertaining and had a great time, won't go into details but really enjoyed myself.

Day Six

We headed out in an entirely new direction to have a look at the Olympic Stadium, which is well worth looking at as it's a good example of 40's architecture, and then took the S-bahn to Spandau. It was interesting to be somewhere that was so far out of the city and it had it's own feel that was really nice. We wandered around there for a bit until we got onto a train and headed back to the city to meet up with Amogharatna for evening meal. We went to a place that specialised in vegetarian burgers and I had a Mexican style one. Vegetarian it might have been, but it was one of the best burgers I have ever had. Really good. After that went to an ice cream place and went our separate ways.

That's basically it for Berlin. It was fucking great. One thing I did was try out a 3DS. Didn't like it. I could see the 3D OK but it made my eyes just feel...wrong. Now though I've read that turning the 3D down helps but I still don't think I'll like it. Shame as it looked pretty good otherwise. The AR game Face Raiders was surprisingly good fun too.

I've decided to try and put the stuff I've learnt about laptop repair to good use and have bought a load of untested laptops off Ebay. The first batch has arrived and out of five, four of them power up with no problem and should work fine once I've sourced some more RAM and hard drives for them, and then I'll put them back on Ebay. All are a few years old from the Pentium M era but they are still servicable machines. Two Toshibas, one HP, one Compaq and an RM, all of which run happily from the same PSU - looks like they standardised laptop power connectors when I wasn't looking! The best one, typically, is the one that doesn't power up, but it does show some signs of life so perhaps all is not lost, and it's a good source of parts if nothing else.

Glad it's the weekend. Off to Rob and Em's in a bit for a meal with them and Andy and Maz and to once again coo over Carter, the lovely white cat Rob and Em adopted unexpectedly while I was away.

Badminton was ace yesterday. There's a new guy who is really good. The last game of the match saw The Hagg team up with him against Rob and Em, obviously expecting to win but she played like a donkey with three arses. She got so frustrated she actually dropped the F-bomb which was absolutely hilarious.

Argh

Back to work - although it wasn't too bad it still made the trip and everything that happened seem almost like a dream.

Ran out of time today to write up full account of Berlin trip.

Watched another episode of Band of Brothers.

Back

Back from Berlin today. It was a fucking brilliant trip, gutted to have to come back to be honest. Full update coming soon.