Mr Blobby

Well, this week has been catastrophic, return of shit food, Coke, and no exercise. Not good.

I didn't go to badminton last night as I took my Mum to see Reginald D Hunter in Venue Cymru. I'd never heard of him before and was slightly bewildered as to why my Mum wanted to see him. He was supported by an astonishingly crude Australian guy who would have been funny for about five minutes, but after thirty minutes his constant use of the word 'fuck' as near punctuation did get a bit wearing. The main act was OK, he has some funny material, even if he did have some curious reverse racism going on, and rather a lot of toilet humour. At the end though, he went off into some sort of rant about how the government and corporations are using the media to keep men and women scared and desperate to control them. I could see his point but it was presented in a strange way that was really offputting. I've seen this kind of attitude before and it was similarly disturbing.

No real progress in work. Tired of the backup system. I like it but hate the stupid issues with it.

Was hoping to do the gym this evening but failed, utterly. I felt tired due to the late night last night, which I suppose is fair enough but it was embarrassing as I went to Morrisons and was caught by both Andy and someone from work with mini pork pies, peanuts and a can of Jack Daniels Coke. I only get the JD stuff because the taste reminds me instantly of Berlin, usually regret it after though.

The guitar stuff I listed on Ebay nearly all sold, which is good.

Lazy and fat

So far it has been a curious week. D&D on Monday was good fun although we made the unfortunate discovery that Ed's character had been reduced to a charred skeleton and we had pissed off a huge, evil black dragon by killing it's young and forming the skin into parachutes. Yeah. This somehow also prompted a discussion of an undead skeletal hamster, which I argued would be useless as it would try to store food in the cheeks it didn't have any more. The chilli I made turned out well and was enjoyed by all which was nice. Even Em had some for lunch yesterday as there was plenty left over.

Work has been frustrating. The backup system had several issues yesterday which required three restarts, and I found today that one of the LEDs in my work laptop screen has failed, so it has a big dark patch in one corner. I'll have to log a warranty call tomorrow. I was trying to work out a way of getting them to put a 1600x900 display in there intead of the crappy 1366x768 one but I don't think I can. There's a nasty cold going round, hope it's the one I've already had, really don't want to catch one now.

Played Dragon Age again yesterday evening and really enjoyed it. It's a curious game as I find it hard to sit down and fire it up but when I do, I really do like it. Also Steve in work has lent me the new Deus Ex game for the 360, so looking forward to trying that out.
Started DS9 series 5, which is shaping up well.

The week has not been good for exercise or eating well so far. Boo.

Epic meat

Today has been quiet. Lazy morning before heading into town to get ingredients to make chilli for D&D tomorrow, which took some time as I had to do it in two batches because of a relatively small pan. And I think there might be rather a lot. Oh well.

Not done much the rest of the day except nurse my wrist after the water butt incident yesterday (that sounds bad) and finish off season 4 of DS9, which was pretty decent. I remembered how it ended but not all the details, so it was really good.

Listed a bunch of stuff on Ebay to pay for the Vintage SG which I am still really happy with. The setup needs tweaking though as there's some fret buzz.

Last week was a bit of a fail in terms of exercise and food so unsurprisingly my weight is exactly the same as last Sunday.

Didn't start well.

Today did not start well. I stood in a giant dog turd in my slippers, and accidentally knocked the water butt over when I was trying to clean them. Unfortunately, since it's about the same age as me it split and water went EVERYWHERE.

I went out to Mold to look at guitars as I'd already seen the one I thought would be nice, a Vintage VS6 which is a copy of a Gibson SG. Much cheaper but gets really good reviews. Unfortunately the shop in Mold had one and after I played it, it came home with me, even though it's black and I think SGs should only be cherry red. Still, at least it's a bit less of an Angus Young wannabe. It's so much better than the frankensteined things I've been faffing with for years. Also it sounds great standard so I'm not going to start pulling to bits.

I'll put the bits of my old ones on Ebay to try and get some cash back, and I think I need to rationalise the basses a bit too. The Ashbory can go, while it's fun, the silicone strings are such a pain in the arse I just can't be bothered.

On the way home, stopped off at Rob and Em's to pick up some more of their spare hardcore for the track. Rob came back with me and we did some work on the track, filling in some holes and unclogging a water channel. It made quite a difference and stood up to being driven over a few times, which was good.

Grrr

Did some more stuff in Dragon Age. Got straight back into it, goodness knows why I haven't played since about July. I really like it, although really I prefer the sci-fi setting of Mass Effect.

The poor old dog seems to have been traumatised by an evil fly or something since he won't settle down unless I let him crash on my bed. Silly boy. It was his 9th birthday yesterday, unreal.

Think I've reverted back to a materialistic state of mind, keep having silly ideas, like replacing my home built guitars with a decent one and starting a new bass project. Not good. If anything I need to get more stuff listed on Ebay.

The 306 knocking could be caused by worn shock absorber bushes but that means replacing the shocks. I hope it isn't too much. Given the punishment it takes on the track, I think it is worth doing, and getting the suspension checked out in general.

Slow...down...

For some reason today was the slowest Friday of all time. The morning started well with the now traditional bacon baps, but then it was really slow. The unhealthiness didn't improve with chcolate either. Then, after all that I decided I couldn't be arsed with the gym.

I am going to sit down this evening with chilli and cheese and a DS9 episode and then play Dragon Age for the first time in months. Then I can start on Alan Wake that I got cheap from Steve in work. I've not had time off work for some time and I really just want to take a week off to play games but due to the situation in work it's not easy. I want to replay Bioshock, perhaps restart Bioshock 2 and then of course Saint's Row 3 is out any minute now.

I realised on the way home that I've had the 306 three months and haven't spent any money on it other than diesel. I think it's going to need some attention to the rear suspension as I think it's got some worn bushes back there causing knocking, and the exhaust has been blowing ever since I got it. And the electrical woes. But it's probably not worth dropping loads of cash on it due to the rather shed-like appearance.

No real plans for the weekend really.

Healthy fail

Yesterday evening was Steve's leaving do at the Chinese. He must have made quite an impression to get a leaving do after two and a half weeks. The venue was the Prosperity in Rhuddlan, which was excellent as always. The seven of us had the banquet, which worked out really well.

Today was a bit frustrating as I went into work to find that the update to the backup system failed to do anything at all to help with the problems.

Badminton was OK this evening, after playing so well last week I was quite shit tonight but it was still fun. In one game however I was playing with Rob and accidentally came up behind him while he was taking a shot and very nearly took a nasty smack to my gentleman's area, as it was it twinged for a bit.

Still enjoying the Vaio P. It's a great little thing. The performance is a little slow compared to the machines I am used to but that's OK. Disabling a few of the background services and switching to the classic Windows theme helped hugely though.

The screen resolution is really rather too high, but I've got used to it. For such a tiny machine though, the keyboard is great with my only complaint being the tiny right shift key. Even that isn't too much of a problem and is actually helping me to learn not to depend on the right shift key so much.

A nice touch is that since I put the SSD in, it's completely silent, as there's no fan. This bothered me a little at first, but it stays reasonably cool even under load. Also it's the first laptop I've seen in a long time that wasn't made in China, actually made in Japan.

Solid state

I wasn't really in the mood for faffing about but I got the SSD into the P fine. It worked first go but I botched the trackpoint connections so I had to get the keyboard off again. For a machine that Sony said isn't user servicable it comes apart surprisingly easily. The worst part is getting the keyboard and trackpoint connections in becuase there is so little room. I've reinstalled Windows 7 and it's updating itself. Not sure if the SSD will give much improvement over the old hard drive due to the PATA interface, but the lack of moving parts will make up for that. The SSD was thinner than the hard drive so I resorted to a pad of folded tissue to stop it moving about. With soldered CPU and RAM, the hard drive is the only thing that can be changed on the P, although the CPU can be slightly overclocked. The Atom is so wimpy though it's not going to make that much difference.

Perhaps I should have been a watchmaker or something. Taking fiddly laptops apart doesn't phase me in the slightest, in fact I quite enjoy it. Unless it's a MacBook. The worst repair I've ever done was to swap a keyboard on a MacBook. It seemed specially designed to be awkward and fiddly. It was one of the first generation ones so I don't know if the new ones are any better, but I wouldn't have thought so.

Chilli

Today was a somewhat frustrating day in work, not so much because of the stuff I was doing, but the general atmosphere. I left early to go to the gym only to realise I had forgotten my stuff. So I went and got the stuff to make chilli and came home.

The Vaio P has finished the many updates it needed and appears to be working OK. However, I now have a 32gb SSD I can put in it, so I'm going to do that and rebuild it again. Removing the small, fragile and slow 1.8" hard drive will make it a much more suitable machine for moving around and things.

Not much else going on. Still been eating reasonably well so that's a bonus.

Tiny tiny tiny

Well, today was a good day. The backup system didn't do anything too terrible, and I managed to avoid the vending machine and not drink Coke, so I felt good all day long. Cereal for breakfast, a salad filled bap for lunch and squash. I think it definitely helped my state of mind.

D&D this evening. It was a ghastly battle, and then suddenly everyone except me was hurled into a deep pit, and I was left to fight two skeletons, a skeleton mage, a giant spider that could teleport all by myself. It was difficult. But we managed to get it back until it got too late to continue.

Financial slipup is a Sony Vaio P. I don't normally rate Sony laptops, but what they do well is the slightly crazy experimental stuff like the handheld UX range and the tiny P series. It's bloody small and has a ludicrous 8" 1600x768 display. Not the most powerful of machines with a 1.3ghz Atom, 2gb RAM and a 60gb 1.8" hard drive, but it'll be fun to play with and if I get bored of it I could probably flip it for what I paid for it, which was a fraction of the original retail price.

Bah France

Yesterday was an OK day. It was Steve's last day and also Fat Friday with giant bacon baps, which is always good. Steve bravely went for the full house, basically a full breakfast in a bap, while I stuck to my normal sausage and egg. After work, went to the gym where I ment my sister and her boyfriend, and also saw Andy. I forgot my gym trousers so had to work out in my work trousers, embarrassing. Good workout though. Then I went to see the Unix guy who I've been covering as he needed a couple of things he'd left in the office. He's still suffering with his back and due to what appears to be staggering incompetence by the NHS doesn't have a clue what's going to happen.

Then it was down to Andy's for one of the most tense and astonishing matches of rugby I have ever seen. I'm not a massive fan and mainly go just to be sociable and hang out with friends, but even I was inclined to gloom around and mutter 'we was robbed' afterwards.

The weather has been astonishing today. I've not seen a sky so clear since the volcano that grounded all the aircraft, and I took Sandy for a walk to enjoy it. Did some work on the track and also brought the bike frame out to see what it looked like in the sunshine - nice! It looks pretty good except for the occasional hair stuck in the clear coat but that can be sorted out. It seems pretty dry but I'll leave it a while yet before trying to build it up again. Also watched a rather ghastly DS9 episode with Bashir pretending to be James Bond. Also watched the last two episodes of this series of Doctor Who, only to realise I missed the first episode of this group of them. Argh.

Back to Denbigh in a bit for Andy's birthday meal at the Italian, can't wait.

I need to sit down and actually have a look at what I eat because I think I've been in denial for quite some time. Also need some scales because I have no idea what I actually weigh at the moment. I don't really want to know but I need to so I've got some idea what I'm doing.

A few days

The week has been fairly standard. D&D on Monday which was fun but we didn't have Ed there which was a shame. Steve is settling in well though.

There really isn't much else to report. Work has been meh, the backup system is still the bane of my existence since the consultant came in yesterday and said he'd never seen it do what ours is doing. So he's taking low-level trace and will consult with IBM. The day wasn't helped by my cutting out Coke after a week of 3 cans a day binging, leading to a massive caffeine crash and a pounding headache.

This month was going well financially until I fucked up today but I might be able to turn it around and profit from it. Not sure yet.

Up to season 4 of Deep Space 9. Sisko has shaved his head so this is where it starts to get good. Really enjoyed it so far.

Finished Game of Thrones over the weekend. A very long and complicated read but good as it kept you guessing. I expected more to get sorted out by the end of the book though. I've heard good things about the TV series.

The creator of the original Unix has died. Shame. I have a bit of an affinity with Linux, having used it since about 1995, and more recently AIX on the IBM RS/6000.

Badminton tonight was really good. I actually feel justified in saying that I played pretty damn well, surprising myself and others. I think it's the first signs of the gym helping - I don't think I've actually lost any weight yet, but my legs seem to be stronger, helping me to get around the court and manuever better.

My racket is starting to show signs of its age. I bought it as consolation to myself for being made redundant in November 2004, so it's done really well. The frame is chipped and worn and the strings are starting to fray, and the extra layer of grip tape to make the handle fatter is held on with duct tape, but it still feels good. I think I'd rather get it restrung if the strings do go as it just feels nice.

While out at badminton I left my iPod touch being updated to iOS 5 which seems to have gone smoothly despite the many reports of it failing or people having trouble with it.

Wales kicking bottom

Off to Rob's again for more rugby at 8:30am this morning. Really good fun since it was a great match and Wales kicked bottom. Very nice, and then bacon baps, scorio. After bacon baps we started to catch up on the England/France game but I had to go to the post office and post the ebay stuff and then head to my Dad's.

Spent some time working on Jean's laptop only to find the hard drive was dying. She'd already decided she wanted a smaller laptop however so I started working on that instead. The old one is going to have a new hard drive anyway. Went to PC World in Llandudno and spotted a curious object I hadn't seen before. It was from Samsung and like a giant version of my phone. It turns out it's the Galaxy S Wifi 5.0 and is basically the same but with no phone hardware and a 5" screen. Interesting.

Didn't really do much else. Here's a Tour de France cyclist colliding with a dog. The dog seems unfazed.

Weekend hurrah

The week progressed much as expected. Work was meh, and the backup system broke even more incomprehensibly. It's so frustrating.

Badminton with Rob, Em and Steve was good last night, except for her turning up again after another holiday. Argh.

The old Nokia 9000 went for £50, the Sharp pocket computer for £40. Not bad, I paid a tenner for each.

More clear

Been on edge today, really touchy and quick to anger, not sure why. Still coughing.

The bike frame had some more coats of clear, looks good.

Apparently iOS 5 can function without the use of a Mac or a PC out of the box. Well, that's nice. It just means then that everything on an iOS device used this way MUST come from Apple, no more ripped CDs or DVDs, and obviously the apps already have to. Total control. The new version of OS X has an iOS style interface option, and full-screen applications. Full-screen applications? What the fuck? The last time I used a full-screen application on a full-sized computer was when I was using DOS! Nice to see that iOS 5 rips off the notification area from Android too.

A while back I was quite evangelical about the Mac and to a degree, Linux, as alternatives to Windows. But back in those days, Apple was different. It was downtrodden, a humble company which made genuinely better machines that had only a small group of followers. Looking back though, it was a bit cult-like, looking down on others and feeling superior to them and I wonder why it was so important to me...

Now though, I don't recognise that company any more. I dislike the iOS platform intensely due to the total control Apple has over it. They want it so they control absolutely everything on the device, and iOS 5 and iCloud is a step towards that. I don't think the Mac has long left, it'll just become a glorified iOS device with perhaps the Mac Pro remaining for people to develop apps on. It's not a coincidence that Apple killed the old MacBook and made the cheapest Mac laptop the £850 MacBook Air. They want people to buy iPads instead.

The thing that is so bloody frustrating is that what Apple does, everyone else copies. So if the idea of totally locked down computing is made acceptable by Apple because their stuff is so pwetty, then it will become the norm. I'm still highly dubious that business and enterprise computing will be affected much, but at home, very possibly.

I can see the point that the devices will probably be reliable, less prone to malware and won't be so easy to destroy by people clicking on the wrong thing or going to the wrong sites, etc. But there's no choice, if iOS had a basic and advanced mode, then I wouldn't mind so much. And don't mention jailbreaking.

It seems that before too long, you'll have the Eloi with their iPads, playing their touchy feely games and watching cats falling into bathtubs, not giving a thought to the Morlocks slaving away in the vast datacentres, keeping the back-end servers and network infrastructure running.

I think this is what it feels like to become old. I've been interested in computers for so long that I might have lost my ability to keep up with the changes that are coming and I'm adopting the 'Get off my lawn you kids!' mentality. But since my main computers are 'immature' and 'childish' Alienwares, perhaps not. Hah.

Oh, and Linux? After years of experimentation with it, I've come to the reluctant conclusion that I don't think it'll ever make it to the desktop. It absolutely rocks on servers, and as the basis of Android, but on a regular PC? No. Too many distributions that aren't compatible with each other, with different interfaces and too many hardware niggles. Ubuntu nearly got it right, until they fucked it up with the Unity interface. Unless they put Android on PCs and do it right...

Developed a bit of a taste for Nachtmahr, not sure why.

Weather collapse

The weather finally deteriorated after a very hot week.

It was down to Rob's at 9am to watch the Wales - Fiji match with him, Andy, Jane and Em after she woke up, which was great since Wales did really well. Afterwards it was bacon baps, delicious.

Following that, I went to the gym. Sunday lunchtime is a good time to go as it's practically deserted. I think I need to extend my programme a bit since it has become almost easy. I really need to get some scales as at the moment I have no idea what I weigh.

The rest of the day was spent catching up on Doctor Who in iPlayer and listing some things on Ebay that I've had lying around for ages, the Sharp PC-1350, a Nokia 9000 Communicator and a weird Chinese-English translator that someone gave me a couple of years ago.

After having shaving trouble for years with Gillette stuff, I invested in a Merkur razor a little while back, a big old fashioned heavy thing that takes old-school razor blades. It's a lot harder to use but the results are better since I can get a half-decent shave without having to go against the grain like I did with the Fusion, which messed my skin up. That combined with remembering to put moisturiser on and cleaning my glasses more often seems to have made my face better than it has been in ages, yay.

Why, George?

Spent the day with a couple of guys from work watching the new Bluray release of the real Star Wars trilogy. I am not going to go on a huge upset rant about the changes, except to say that most of them don't make any difference and are completely pointless. Especially the terrifying, demonic Ewok, which in itself seems stupid because they went to the effort of making the one that Leia meets have eyelids, and terrifying eyes, but not any of the others.

Gimpy.