Gah, Monday

Today was warm, and annoying, and just typically Monday. Strangely enough, after my lack of sleep, I was able to get through the day easily enough, and feel OK even now.

Work was fairly routine, although my test machine in work came in very handy (a not very old laptop with a smashed screen that nobody wanted) which runs various VMWare virtual machines. It's useful for testing software issues as the virtual machines can be broken utterly, and then restored with a single click.

The office was typically warm and uncomfortable, and so I was tempted to get drinks from the cold can machine. Sadly the new one is crap and only has five drinks, and Fanta Zero isn't one of them. So Diet Coke it was. To make things worse, I (voluntarily!) had a Pot Noodle for lunch, mainly to get revenge on my colleage who had some sort of revolting pasta cup thing. It was actually WORSE than a Pot Noodle! So a nutritionally horrific day, all in all, though I did manage to avoid the hypocritical vending machine. Why hypocritical? Because they keep trying to promote healthy eating and then stick a vending machine in the building full of chocolate and crisps.

There was a massive chemical explosion in Crewe, and some guys I used to work with were working 500m away from it. They kept sending camera phone pictures of fireballs and smoke - scary stuff. More about this here.

Hair...getting bigger...wilder...more...powerful...nearly...ALIVE...

Currently listening to 'This Love' from the Pantera album 'Vulgar Display of Power'. I got this album when I was about 13, when it was first released. It was the first album I got that wasn't an Iron Maiden one, and it blew my mind. It is a stunning album.

Now it's playing 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Iron Maiden, which is another track that really had an effect on me. It's an epic 13 minutes long, and really, really good. That came from the 'Powerslave' album.

Just had a VERY weird experience...I was searching in Google Images for a picture of a smashed LCD. I went through a few pages, and a picture of a Land Rover 101" Forward Control came up. Curious as to how this could possibly be relevant, I clicked on it - and was greeted with my very own blog. As in this page. How utterly weird. I think it's because I linked to a page on a 4x4 site and also mentioned the Xbox 360 looking good on an LCD, and the word smashed was there too when I referred to a laptop with a broken screen (the one mentioned above in fact). How utterly bizarre and very circular and strange. Google works in mysterious ways.

The joy of ragdoll physics

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ctNrAaqtu5A

This link is responsible for my reinforced desire to get an Xbox 360. It's great when games let you just try stuff out and have fun in the world and see what happens. The amount of fun you can have just playing around with the game engine is great. And then if you get bored of that, hey, you could go and do a mission or something...

GTA is a good example of this type of game, and Saint's Row looks like it has taken a lot of inspiration from GTA in that regard. I wasn't planning to get an Xbox 360 until October - when GTA 4 comes out. But there are now several games that I really want to play on it. However the point is pretty much moot at the moment as I have a trip to Madrid coming up along with car tax and the Discovery has it's MOT in May. Oh well, we'll see how it goes.

Isn't it weird how you can get preoccupied with THINGS. I would like to get an Xbox 360, and some upgrades for this computer, I have several guitars and basses that I'd like various parts for, and I'd like one of those electro-acoustic mandolins that look like a mini guitar. Sometimes you just need to sit back and take stock of things and see what's really important. It's odd when it happens though, you kind of sit there and it's like a strange transcendental (is that a word?) experience, and you see things almost from outside. Very odd.

The big problem for me these days is the Internet has made it just so damn easy to buy things. You can find pretty much anything you want, and with a few clicks, it's yours. You just sit and wait for it to arrive, and in the meantime, browse for more stuff to buy. It's absolutely insane. Previously you'd actually have to go somewhere to buy something, and by the time you had, you could think about whether you actually needed it or not.

I realised a couple of weeks ago that I was spending a LOT of time just browsing Ebay for anything, old computers, bass parts, guitars, stuff like that. I realised that having the Internet accessible anywhere was a Bad Thing. Sometimes I'd just lie in bed and look at the Internet on a laptop. It's not a good thing. I mean there's a lot of great stuff out there, but it's easy to just follow link after link after link, and before you know it, hours have passed.

As a result of this realisation, I've decomissioned all my wireless enabled laptops, and forced myself to make this desktop computer the only one I use for Internet access. Hopefully then I can wean myself off the giant information flow from the Internet's vast electronic teat.

I feel a purge coming on. Sometimes you just need to get rid of some stuff that you don't need or want. Years ago the drummer in a band I was in did it. He gave away pretty much ALL of his posessions and said he felt much better for it. Mind you, he did cut himself an awful lot. You could play tic-tac-toe on his arm with all the scars. Oh well. I know I've managed to accumulate a lot of stuff that seemed important at the time but doesn't really now. Odd how your perceptions change like that.

This video is just amazing, I had no idea that you could do this kind of stuff on a ukulele. Tiny instruments like the mandolin and ukulele are quite appealing after the bass guitar because you can make insane reaches. I love my mandolin, I only know two chords on it and I can't play any real tunes on it yet, but it's insanely fun to just play around on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSkP3uym5k&