A fun week

It's been an OK week in work. It was certainly made interesting by Steve being there. It was fun to hang out and chat but weird with it being in my very familiar workplace. Good though.

Yesterday evening it was burgers at Rob and Em's with Steve before we all headed to badminton. Thankfully the She-Hag was on holiday so it was really nice and relaxed.

Nice quiet evening today watching DS9 and chilling with an old Sharp PC-1350 I found the other day, one of those wide pocket computers of the early 80s that looks like a calculator on steroids. It needed new batteries so I picked some up and had a play. It can be used as a calculator or can be programmed in Basic, which is nice. These things tend to be a little collectible so it might be worth chucking it on the bay.

Tomorrow, epic Star Wars Bluray marathon (III, IV, V and VI) with guys from work then rugby on Sunday morning.

Put more clear coat on the bike frame, looks good, but needs more.

Turfed

Monday was a good day, welcoming Steve back from the USA to the UK with rugby first thing in the morning, and then introducing him to James for D&D in the evening. It was great fun.

In the afternoon, Rob and I played the Portal 2 co-op missions, although there was quite a lot more than we expected so we didn't finish them all. It was really good fun though. After our brains cried for mercy, we fired up Saints Row 2 and had some fun with the crazy cheats.

Other than that this week has been uneventful except for Steve starting work in my office today, a slightly surreal but welcome experience. Em and I took him on a mini tour around Ruthin at lunchtime to show him the places to get lunch and things.

Went to the gym yesterday evening and tonight, felt good for doing so as I was able to do the exercises normally at last. I think I'm finally getting over the cold although I still have a slight cough. I always do after a cold though. I sometimes wonder if that should worry me.

Gusty

Not much to report last week. Went to the gym on Friday evening after work for the first time in a while, although I had to turn down the effort level on the machines.

Yesterday was my Mum's birthday so did a few things and took her out for an Indian meal, which was good. King Prawn Passanda with peshwari naan, absolutely stunning.

Today walked up Moel Famau with Steve from work. Originally it was going to be a few but only us two could make it. It was a nice clear day although a bit overcast, and astonishingly windy. Once at the Jubilee tower the wind was ridiculous. Poor Sandy had his ears and lips fluttering in the wind. We met a woman with an adopted greyhound which was a brindle but with opposite colours to Sandy, which was nice. We took some pictures and admired the view before heading back down, encountering some nutter who was running up.

After that I watched some more DS9 and indulged myself in Hackers. I know why people hate it but it's a nice slice of the 90s and I always find it fun to try identify the various machines they use and laugh at attempts at referencing the technology of the era. But it's entertaining and has a stonking soundtrack, so why the hell not. I've always wanted a camouflage laptop thanks to this movie.

Day off tomorrow. Rugby, Portal 2 and D&D, what more could you ask for?

Managed to flog the Acer 7741g and the HP DV7 on Ebay, which is good. I think my triad of Alienware machines should satisfy my computing needs for a while now.

Still snot

Felt OK yesterday morning but by the evening felt pretty crappy again, which was frustrating as I'd been hoping to go to the gym as D&D wasn't on. Better today but still a bit snotted up.

Started Game of Thrones that Rob lent me on the weekend, think it's going to be quite a read.

Fox News can fuck off and so can all the ignorant bigoted fucks who think it's actual news.

Just found out today about the Silent Hill HD Collection that's coming out. I really enjoyed the first two games but this only has 2 and 3 and some other thing. Might be worth a look though.

Stupid virus

Yesterday was the beer festival in Denbigh, which I always go to to be sociable. It was a decent sized crowd this year with Jane and Wez up from Kent and their friends. I tasted several foul things that claimed to be drinks but did enjoy the curry and chilli that the cafe had. I found that chicken curry goes suprisingly well with nachoes instead of rice although the woman did give me an odd look. Afterwards had a Chinese with Andy and Maz and we had a look at some photos. By the end of the day it had taken it's toll and I was feeling pretty rough again.

Today has been quiet and unproductive, done little more than finish DS9 season 2 and start season 3. Still feeling fairly crappy but should be OK for work tomorrow, although not perhaps for the gym as I had hoped since there isn't any D&D.

Was thinking back to the days of analogue satellite TV in the very early 90s, when we had Sky but also a load of German channels including RTL. Two shows really stick out in my mind. Bitte Lachen which was basically You've Been Framed, and Tutti Frutti. That was a weird game show that involved lots of scantily dressed women who got their tits out for no apparent reason at certain points and two contestants that had to strip at the end if they lost. I still have no idea what the hell was going on even after reading the Wikipedia article. Very odd indeed.

Bleh again

Tuesday was the day of feeling rough witha dry cough. Wednesday was the day of fever and gritty eyeballs. Thursday was the day of snot. Friday was the day of coughing.

I felt much better this morning but was coughing nearly continuously so I didn't think that would be appreciated in work.

Bah. No idea where this came from. I've barely left my bed in three days, let alone the house.

Nearly finished the second season of DS9. Steadily improving, still a couple of stinkers in there but also some really good ones.

Urgh

Had two days of feeling like utter shite, snotting, sneezing and sweating. Wasn't able to do go into work, and did little else but read and consume bad comfort food.

D&D was fun on Monday, wasn't much of a combat go this time, but it did lead to Ed having some hilarious interactions with a barman.

A curious day

This morning it was off to Rob's armed with snacks to watch the rugby. It was frustrating, Wales really should have won. Bacon baps for half-time and I made the pleasing discovery that mango chutney goes well with bacon. Then it was several episodes of the latest Futurama series with snacks before I came home. The new episodes are kind of weird actually, funny, but they are going to some disturbing places...

Had a look at the back wheel on the Puch to make sure it was aligned properly but was put off taking it for an actual ride due to wind and rain.

I watched the latest episode of Torchwood on iPlayer but haven't done much else really, just chilled.

Was tempted to reinstall the Sims 3, which I haven't played since I sold the Acer laptop I used to run it on, but couldn't be arsed, even though it's fun to torture then. My favourite was to have one man having a happy and successful life, with a room containing some other people and a fridge, linked to the main house but sealed off with windows. They had nothing to do but eat and piss and shit themselves and watch the one having a good life. Or the house with a hydrophobic guy who had every room in his house linked by swimming pools, that was hilarious.

Just found my MP3 of the Monty on the Run theme tune on the C64. Rob Hubbard was a bloody genius when it came to getting sounds out of the SID chip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93nIljXpqUY

The Glider Rider one isn't bad either:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSO6OapnO2I

Can't believe 9/11 was 10 years ago.

DNF

I downloaded the Duke Nukem Forever demo through Steam on the M17x and played it for about ten minutes before deciding it was shit and uninstalling it. It was good to give the machine a workout though. The fans spin up quite fast when it's under load but it's quite tolerable.

I put the first can of clearcoat on the bike. It looks OK but needs more, but there's another can in the post.

Went to the gym at lunchtime, which was ace as it was completely deserted.

Flumpd

A slow but not totally unproductive day. Went to the gym after work which went OK and I felt great afterwards. Still having trouble sorting my diet out but I think the gym is starting to have an effect. I wish that

a) I wasn't scared of treadmills
b) I could run

because there are more of them than any other machine. There was a guy running on one this evening and he made barely any noise at all, whereas if I try and run on one it's like an elephant clumping along. It's probably my weight but I don't know how some people run so lightly.

Finished DS9 season one this evening which came as a bit of a surprise as I didn't realise I was that close to the end. It was a lot better than I remembered it being. Yes there were some crap episodes but it picked up towards the end, and the last few were pretty good. It had a better start than TNG I reckon.

Fender are releasing a Kurt Cobain signature Jaguar. It looks quite cool I suppose if you like Jaguars (I'm not a fan) but it seems rather against the idealogy of Nirvana given how they destroyed guitars all the time and Kurt hated the being famous part of it all. What I'm more worried about is that it's being release in time for the 20th anniversary of Nevermind. WTF!!!!!

Not much else to report. The bike frame still looks good. I'm going to put the clearcoat on tomorrow and then it's a case of letting it dry for a good month or so, preferably longer. Still, that gives me the time to get a list of parts I need to make it into a fixed gear, basically a pair of wheels, crankset and chain really.

Noticed the Galaxy S had hit about 40% battery so checked how long it had been since it was charged and was slightly gobsmacked to see that it had been nearly five days. Amazing. The new battery usage page is great as it shows when things like the screen and wifi have been used and what the phone signal has been like.

Had a go on the 8-string bass. I absolutely love it. The doubled strings make such a nice sound, except perhaps the unwound octave G-string which is a little harsh. I've got quite adept at playing just the bass strings which means it can also sound like a normal bass. If I had lots of spare cash, I'd strip it down, give it a new finish, replace the pickups and electronics and put the spare Schaller 8-string bridge on it. I still have fond memories of seeing a Dean Rhapsody 12-string bass in Chester, same idea but two octave strings. It sounded astonishing and wasn't too hard to play. Sadly it was £475, no way could I justify that.

A slow day

Today was very slow and tedious. Went to the gym after work, which was good. I felt decent for going although food today wasn't bad. I noticed my heart rate seems to have lowered rather since I started going again although it's still high enough to be good.

The S/PDIF adapter came for the M15x. It's made by someone called Fanmusic which doesn't bode well. But it's got a sturdy metal case and has a USB B port on one end and an RCA connector on the other. Since the 360 is already using the optical input on my amp, it would have been a bit of a faff for the M15x to use optical too so this device is perfect. I can now finally retire the HP DV7 and stick it on Ebay although goodness knows what it's worth. The beefy graphics card in the M15x means that iPlayer and full-screen video plays smoothly. The HP wasn't bad but it struggled slightly if a lot happened at once.

Got shat on

Work was unremarkable but productive.

After work I felt like doing some exercise so went to the gym. The weather was so horrible I knew I wouldn't do any at home. Was nearly killed by a lunatic in a Renault Laguna on a narrow road on the way home and then got up the track to find some lost idiot in a van had been up and ruined it at the top. Annoying.

Today is the first day in quite some time I've not had a fizzy sugar laden drink.

Went and checked the bike frame and found the swallows haven't gone yet. Fortunately my protection for the frame has worked, but one of them managed to shit on me as I went inside, little fucker.

Fired up GTAIV for the first time in a while since I had deleted anything to do with it a while back and thought I'd see how it was from the beginning. The answer: shit.

It's frustrating - the city and setting are good, and the car driving is great, but the characters and the attempt to make it gritty and realistic are such a dismal fail when there's still the funny radio stations and adverts. And the characters are shit. I hate Nico and his hypocritical angst over the people he killed in the past yet all the people who die in the missions don't matter, I hate his fucking cousin and the way he phones every 30 seconds to go and look at big American titties, I hate Brucie the steroid fucktard, and it's just. Not. Fun.

The Lost and Damned was even worse, taking part in the activities of a bunch of evil fucktard bikers with no redeeming features, bunch of wank. The Ballad of Gay Tony was a step towards GTA of old but wasn't enough to redeem itself.

Let's just say I can't wait for the next Saints Row game. I got far more enjoyment out of Saints Row 2 than I ever did out of GTAIV. It's stupid, crude, obnoxious and childish, and it is quite, quite brilliant.

Ignoble failure

Work wasn't too bad except for an incredibly frustrating afternoon doing crap. I have come to realise how much more I prefer to work with back-end systems rather than the desktop side. After nearly seven years I'm finding it a bit wearying.

It was my turn to be crap in D&D. I didn't kill anyone and I managed to roll a 20 and get a good look at a door. I saw that it was a good tough door, made of solid oak, nice and thick, with strong iron hinges, etc, and totally failed to notice the poison trap built into the door handle that crippled me for a round. Shortly after that I watched Rob the minotaur dive heroically into a building that was engulfed in flames to rescue some kids and take horrible damage and pain, only for me to realise too late that I was carrying a Robe of Defying Flames. Embarrassing. I was able to magically throw it over him, but even so...

I got my 10 metre DVI cable to hook the M15x up to the screen on the other end of the room, and it works fine. Digital signalling is nice, it either works or it doesn't, and if it works there is no loss of quality. Also the graphics card in the M15x handles iPlayer better so there's no juddering and things that could happen on the old HP. I just need the SPDIF audio adapter and cable and then it's good to go.

Today is the first day in ages I've eaten reasonably well except for some crisps in D&D, and I feel a LOT better for it. Hurrah.

So...many...colours

Went to the gym this morning. It wasn't a good session for some reason, felt like I was struggling the whole time, but did everything except the rower. Something wasn't right,not sure why. Hope I'm back to normal next time.

Finally put the colour coat on the bike frame. There was enough in the can to do three complete coats. I had a bad moment where I thought it had gone all patchy but that was only while it was starting to dry. After an hour or so it looked fine. Just need to let this coat dry for a while and then time for the clearcoat, which is when it should start to look really good. After that it'll need to dry for at least a month. I know flip paint is regarded as a bit chavvy, but I really like it.

"I'm the Doctor. Who are you?" "Bond. James Bond."

I was woken up at about 4am this morning by a weird dream that ended like a nightmare. It was a curious and interesting combination of Doctor Who, James Bond and Silent Hill. I don't remember much about it but Amy Pond, the Doctor and Bond (in Daniel Craig form) were working together to stop some evil plot by some Silent Hill-esque monstrosites. They looked like corpses wrapped in mouldy blankets, staying perfectly upright under the surface of the sea. I remember they were plotting world domination but not why or how. What woke me up was following Bond into the sea and experiencing the full horror of them. At one point there was a cow-sized sentient toad that used sign language to communicate, but I can't remember if it was evil or not. Fucking weird dream but really, really vivid. It took me ages to get back to sleep after it.

First thing this morning Amy and Huw came up to get apples and damsons. We found there were four trees that I'd forgotten about that were absolutely covered in damsons so we ended up with a ludicrous amount of them. The mutant apple tree also provided the usual bonkers amount of them. We managed to get this done before the rain hit.

After that I stripped down the M15x to install the Bluray drive. It wasn't as bad as I expected, but there were a lot of screws and layers. It's a much more complicated design than normal Dell laptops, but quite a sensible one and very solid. The drive is a sod to get to because it's a slot-loader and is hidden deep inside the chassis. I got it done eventually, and it works fine. Despite only having a lowly Core i3, the machine runs pretty well. I suppose I could pop an i5 or an i7 in there, but not much point really.

I was going to do the colour coat on the bike frame but I realised I hadn't put quite enough black on the rear part of the frame. Fortunately I had enough black left in the can to finish it off but need that to dry now.

After that, didn't really do much. Set up some more stuff on the M15x and watched some more DS9 and the latest Torchwood episode on iPlayer. It's got more interesting now but we'll see...

Bamps

Yesterday was unremarkable except for badminton where me, Rob and Em had two fantastic games and managed to ignore the hag except for her incessant babbling.

Today was not good. Despite sleeping well I felt very strangely tired and then I had to help shift three rack servers, eight astonishingly heavy drive trays and two full-size AS/400 units and their accompanying drive towers. Afterward I felt completely shattered and it only got worse during the afternoon. The plan to go to the gym went out of the window and I had a big lie down before heading to Rob and Em's to meet up with them and Rob and Caroline to go to the pub. However, with the realisation that it was a football night, we just ended up sitting around chatting which was very nice indeed.

Glad it's the weekend. I have no plans except to pick the apples tomorrow morning with Amy and then put the colour coat on the bike frame. Beyond that, no plans other than to get some work done on the M15x, get the necessary software on there and if I can summon up the patience, strip it down to get the Bluray drive in there.