Interesting weekend

Epic post coming up...

Friday night was the first badminton night of this year. And it really highlighted how I let myself go over Christmas. After the first game, I was destroyed. It was fun, especially the games with Will, but it was totally exhausting. At the end, my legs were all stiff and weird. The pub afterwards was good though. Got to get back into the dog walks and exercise again though. I hadn't realised how much good it was doing me until I stopped. While I think it's shallow to solely aim to be aesthetically pleasing, it would be nice to be in better shape.

Saturday morning saw Rob, Em, Vicky, Will, Andy and I piling into cars to go walking in Llanfairfechan, or more specifically, Nant Y Pandy (!). We eventually found the actual walk after some trudging around being lost, and it was good fun other than the occasional disagreement about rivers and stepping stones. We went quite far up a river which flowed down a nature reserve, and got a good view down towards the coast and towards Anglesey. Above is a picture of everyone on the Skipping Bridge, so named because Will felt compelled to skip across it.

After that, it was back to Rob and Em's for Tiger Woods Golf, a couple of episodes of The Mighty Boosh, general chitchat and a couple of pints in the Rugby and Social Club across the road. The Newcastle/Man U game was on, which we successfully ignored, but there was an amusing argument from some people there who wanted to watch rugby and were miffed that football was being showed in a rugby club.

Finally we all met up with Caroline and Rob from badminton for an Indian, which was pretty good. They do excellent food there. I had my traditional Butter Chicken. Will had Chicken Tikka Masala, which may be a British dish, and not really Indian, but it was really good. Despite claims of being stuffed, quite a few people had dessert, and I was the only one that didn't get the kids one with a toy, instead opting for a Bailey's Cheescake - mmmmm.

Today was much more relaxed, lay in bed reading until midday and then got up to watch a couple of DVDs. First was Borat which I'd never seen before. It's OK, and has genuinely funny moments and some make you curl your toes with embarrassment. I think it lost it's way about half way through and never really got back on track. Then I watched Men in Black, which I haven't seen for ages. It was a decent enough film but the sequel was horrendous. Then I went on a YouTube run, it's amazing how you can get lost in it. Just keep clicking related videos and then it's suddenly hours later. The same can happen with Flickr.

Rediscovered Poison by Alice Cooper, which is a really good track. I just love it when the guitar kicks in at the beginning and when it all kicks in a the end. This is an interesting but slightly sacrilegious cover by Groove Coverage which is somehow oddly compelling. The video is a bit cliched but has some nice imagery and it gets better after a few listens.

Need a haircut, it's getting big and scary again.

It's been a smelly day, lots of aromatic Indian farts. I'm sat here in a pool of stench. Pretty bad.

My iBook's screen is continuing to deteriorate. The only thing it handles now is my photos, but it is excruciatingly slow due to a 600mhz processor and USB 1.1. Need an alternative but since everything is in iPhoto, that could be difficult.

Finally managed to make use of the workspaces in Ubuntu. Normally you'd get four separate ones but I only get two, which each cover the 2850x1024 desktop that both screens combine to create. One has the Internet stuff (Firefox and Thunderbird, etc) and the other has creative things (OpenOffice, GIMP, VMWare Windows XP box, etc).

Machine running warm, fans going insane. I think it's because I've had my heater on so the room has got rather warm and it's running a lot of stuff, including Windows XP in a VMWare session. If you'd told me a couple of years ago that my main computing needs would be being met by a Dell Precision and a Dell Optiplex, I'd have told you to go away in no uncertain terms. How times change.

Fun fun fun. Work tomorrow. Ultra feckity bah.