Back

Back in Wales. Course is all done. It was actually really good and a lot of things about AIX make a lot more sense. It's enough not like 'real' Unix or Linux to be annoying though. It would be a real help if I could get hold of an RS/6000 or Pseries to play with but they don't seem to be very easy to get hold of. Sun machines for example are readily available on Ebay.

Yesterday was a bit annoying. I took the DLR to Canary Wharf, intending to get the Jubilee line back to the centre. Partly to see Canary Wharf and partly because I'd never been on the DLR (a bit of me is still a train geek). But by the time I got there and had a look around, the Jubilee had shut down following a power failure. So I had to cram myself back onto the DLR with the thousands of others trying to escape Canary Wharf and get back to where I started. After all that it was quite late and so I ended up back near King's Cross and got a burger and chips in a fish and chip shop that had a restaurant in the back. Pretty decent too.

Today I wandered round a bit more and had a look at the music shops in Denmark Street. I played a Dean Rhapsody 12-string bass which was awesome, shook my head at a ridiculous 6-necked guitar/bass which took up an entire window and watched someone who looked very familiar for some reason play a genuine 60's Fender Bass IV which sounded absolutely amazing. After that had a look at Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden before heading up to Euston and getting the train back. It left on time and actually arrived ten minutes early. Amazing. Both journeys were completely trouble free and both times I was in the shop carriage, which was handy.

The replacement stove was installed while I was away although we can't light it until Sunday so things can dry out. It's a lot smaller than the old one and a lot more complicated. We'll see. Also the people left a pile of bricks in front of the doorstep from when they were trying to get the old Rayburn out, and when I went out in the dark I fell right over them. My hand is killing me.

I could attach a photo to this because I took a few in London but I can't be bothered to get the memory card out of my phone which is downstairs on charge.

Speedtyping, rumbling sounds and a bouzouki

The bloke who was sat next to me for a while has to be the fastest one finger typist I have ever seen. I can't decide if his skill with the his right index finger is to be admired, or whether he should be ridiculed for not learning to type properly.

An Underground line must go under here, it's very loud indeed, and it still smells of dog. Still, £1 for an hour of Internet access on a reasonably decent computer isn't bad, especially as the hotel charges £3.50 for half an hour of access to their wi-fi.

One thing I saw today was one of the Hobgoblin music shops which specialises in mainly acoustic folky instruments. There were the usual acoustic guitars, mandolins, ukuleles, etc, but they had bouzoukis, several of those bandurria things from Spain and those weird giant guitar like things. They even a couple of one-string objects that looked almost like a Whamola but with a giant trumpet thing sticking out. No idea what on earth they were but they looked interesting.

I had a quick go on a Blue Moon Diamond Bouzouki which proved the point that I should have got a bouzouki instead of a mandolin. The scale length was just right and it was nice to play but still had that interesting dual-string sound. If I'd had the £100 it cost and had some way of getting it home which didn't involve underground trains and things, I might have bought it. I think I'll sell the mandolin, I never really play it as it's too small and fiddly after the bass.

Crazy London

Decided that I'm not going to do much this evening. The Underground and traffic seem to be madly busy for some reason. I've even had a burger from McDonald's because it was nearby.

Typing this in an Internet cafe thing near the hotel, that for some reason smells of dog. A lot. Rather like the Fiat Uno I had a long time ago which always smelled of dog.

Chinatown

After wandering around a bit last night I ended up in Chinatown to be confronted with a bewildering array of restaurants and places to eat. In fact there was so much choice that I nearly ended up throwing it all in and getting a McDonalds. But I found a place which did a buffet so I gave that a go. It wasn't all you can eat as you could only go up twice, but it had a decent selection and you could put as much as you wanted on a plate. The food was pretty good too and also got a pot of tea. They had the biggest onion rings I've ever seen.

Also found the Nokia store which was interesting. It is obviously a copy of the Apple store but I was the only one in there, making it a little creepy. But it was nice to finally see a working E90 which is a stunning device. But for £600 it better had be. I also liked the N810 which isn't a phone but more a portable tablet device. Quite interesting and it runs Linux. That's £340 though and the older N800, which is fairly similar, is much cheaper and in some ways more versatile.

I've noticed I'm sneezing rather a lot since I came to London. Not sure why but the black snot has returned. Cities are fun but they can't be good for you. Also trying to resist the urge to shop and buy things that I can't afford. I'd like to get a Badass bridge for the fretless but they're £55. I've got one on my other bass but I bought that in the US so it was only £30.

We support your socks life

Ok I have been here for half an hour and not seen anyone else keep their iPod in a sock. Also wondered why a guy next to me was waving at his MacBook and it turned out he had a video chat open to his kids. Technology keeps catching me out.

Hungry. Going to find some food.

Can't keep away

Back in the Apple Store once again. Sounds like I'm addicted to the place but the truth is that you can sit down and it has free wifi. It's actually quite quiet at the moment. Not sure what to do for lunch but saw a greasy Chinese just now that looked half decent so might the that a go. Typing this on the touch. Can you tell?

not in the mood to do anything this evening but the hotel room is too depressing to just sit in.

Feh.

Dyslexic?

Just saw the RAF flyby from the roof - very cool as we were nearly directly underneath.

I think I must be dyslexic or something, just had to type a horrible volume identifer which looked something like this 0057h57538ecdcbe000000000000000 and got it wrong twice, l for a 1 and 6 for a b. I know I have problems with numbers though, put a group of more than 4 or 5 and my head starts to swim.

Things

Misread the box in the Apple store, the charger did include the docking cable. Still a bit expensive at £20 but it can also be used to charge the Shuffle and also anything else that uses USB to charge, so it could be quite handy to have.

Spent yesterday evening wandering around. Visited a shop in Camden called the Bass Gallery where I saw some incredibly nice basses, many Fenders and things, a simply stunning Fodera and some other customs, an original Steinberger and something that I didn't know what it was but was apparently sculpted out of a single piece of wood. Later on I happened to come out of the Underground right next to Big Ben just as it chimed 8 o'clock - very impressive. It's always much bigger than I think it is. Went across the bridge and past the London Eye and got some caramelised peanuts on the way, very tasty.

Staying near King's Cross has some benefits, it seems to have a ludicrous number of places to eat nearby. I went to an Italian and got Gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce. Pretty good but the sauce wasn't as tasty as when Rob made it.

wow

OK, so I forgot the charger for the Touch. No prob, I thought. But the Apple store only has a wall charger for USB for £20 but the dock cable is £15. Holy crap. Also, oddly enough, they don't have any 3rd party solutions.

Bah.

Stuff

Course is good. MacBook Air - just put a black keyboard in a MacBook and you're basically there other than the thickness.

Coffee break

Journey down yesterday was fine, no train problems and two seats to myself all the way from Crewe to London. All good. Hotel is not bad, room is a bit small and oppressive but is quiet and I slept OK. I can't believe how many places there are to eat around King's Cross. St Pancras looks impressive so will definitely have to take a look at some point.

I was really tired last night so didn't do much except sit in bed watching Top Gear, eating Oreos and playing on the PSP.

Itemised

1) Someone left in work so I have a new site. The day he left it had a network switch failure and I had to rebuild a PC. His leaving do was in a Thai place in Mold. The starter was spectacular, the main meal less so. Good evening all round though, with 14 people attending.

2) Car service was a little pricy but comprehensive and required. It still needs a speedo cable though.

3) Fretless bass arrived. Cosmetically challenged (body is made from 5 bits of wood) but it sounds great and is really nice to play, probably because other than being fretless, the neck is exactly the same as my main bass.

4) London tomorrow. Bah.

5) Went for a drive today with no particular destination in mind. Something I used to quite a lot when I was unemployed. Just get in the car and deliberately get lost. Satnavs are cheap now but while I'd really like one, it's not something I'd really use enough to justify getting one.

6) The Colour Of Magic is on Sky One right now. I wasn't convinced when they made the Hogfather and so far I really don't like this either. It's probably because I've read the book so often my vision of it is firmly implanted in my head, and also because I can't fucking stand David Jason and he plays Rincewind completely and totally wrong.

Random things

The AX is going in for a complete service tomorrow, including a timing belt and tensioner. It might cost a bit but it needs doing as I don't have any history with it. Still getting used to it but I'm getting more reconciled to driving it. For something so small, it's surprisingly comfortable. But one thing I noticed the other day was that when we all arrived in Snowdonia, once I got out, I had to stretch to iron out all the kinks. Never had that in the Discovery, not even after the 7 hour drive to Cornwall in 2006.

Nothing else to report really. It's been a quiet few days. At least at home, work has been...interesting.

You might remember the Telecaster guitar I was putting together last year. Well I lost interest in that because I don't like guitars, too many strings too close together. So I got rid of the nice neck, but I still had the body. As an experiment I put a bass neck on top of it to see what it would look like. The neck isn't the one it would have as it's been messed with when I was going to build an 8-string. A short-scale neck would be nicer too but you don't really see them as often for sale.

So the plan would be basically the same, maple neck and all black hardware. The problem is that the pickup routes are too small to accept bass pickups and the neck pocket is too small too. I don't have the skills to sort those out so I need to find someone local who is good with a router. Also any parts will have to be cheap due to the supposed Year of Thriftiness.

A great day all round

First thing was selling the Discovery. The guy called up at the appointed time to say he was in the village and so I went down to meet him. I had intended to run them up in the AX but they said their Vauxhall Zafira would be fine. But they looked rather shaken when they got to the top of the track as apparently it had grounded out a number of times.

The guy was rather happy with the Discovery and said it was better than he had expected. So after we'd done the V5 and he'd given me the cash, off he went. It was a bit sad seeing it drive away for the last time but it's for the best I think. It's actually rather a relief to not have to worry about the upcoming MOT. Mind you the speedo in the AX stopped working the other day and the exhaust is blowing so I'm not entirely free of car worries just yet.

Later on, met up with Will, Vicky and one of Will's old school friends called Ben and went for a walk near Snowdon. We went up a cool path with waterfalls, streams and old stone houses. The scenery was really spectacular and other than occasionally being pelted with stinging hail, it wasn't bad at all. Vicky slipped at one point and pulled a muscle but other than that it was fine. We got up to where snow was still on the ground and were going along a rather steep edge when suddenly the wind and hail got really strong, so we turned back, or rather Vicky and I decided we weren't going any further and eventually Will and Ben came back.

On the way back to Ruthin to drop off Ben, we stopped at a cafe in Betws Y Coed where they do really nice hot chocolate. You basically get a mug of hot milk and a cube of chocolate on a stick and you swirl it round until the chocolate has melted. Really nice. Then after dropping Ben off, we picked up Chinese and ate it round at Will's.

The only bad things today were paying a completely ridiculous £1.18 per litre for diesel at the Shell garage in Denbigh and finally losing the lense cap from the N93, which I knew was going to happen at some point.

Work tomorrow. Bah.

HDRlarity

Not a productive day. Watched DVDs again, ate, and played with basses and things.

Took the string off the one-string bass and put several coats of ultra-tough varnish on the fingerboard like I did on the defretted Encore. Hopefully that will stop the string gouging into the wood and might make it sound better. It still needs a pickup of some sort. I might see about putting the pickups back on from the Whamola and attaching them properly this time. I think it needs a new string too, the one on it is totally dead. Also found that the defretted Encore sounds quite good through an Ableton Live ping-pong delay, and can make some interesting sounds if you slap it.

In the evening had a play with Photomatix on Will's recommendation, which is one of those programs that lets you make cool HDR photographs. I played around with some photos after making different versions in GIMP. Certainly interesting to play with and it can cause some very weird side effects. Like the one that Will did of me that made the eczema on my nose look like some pustulent infected sore.

A picture

This picture serves two purposes. First to show you what my new car looks like, and second, to explain why Will and I aren't going to the first car boot sale of the year in Rhyl this morning.

Driv3r hilarity

The police in GTAIII, Vice City and San Andreas might not be the brightest of sparks, but they look like geniuses compared to the police in Driv3r. Mind you the questionable physics of the game don't help. And this is without the general glitchiness of the game. I was messing around in it before and a car shot backwards out of a building and disappeared into the road!

Watch the first part of this to see what I mean.

Steampunk laptop

This is really well put together.

A decadent day

Today basically consisted of eating crisps, playing games and watching a couple of DVDs, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Fight Club. Played some Super Mario Galaxy, which was surprisingly easy to get back into after not playing it for a while. Great game. I also had a go on Driv3r again. Not because it's a good game but because there are so many glitches in it that they become the main focus of the game and cause some hilarious replays.

Dug out my crappy fretless and had a play with it. To be fair it doesn't sound too bad but I really didn't do a good job ripping out the frets and the strings make peculiar buzzing sounds here and there. Also the bass was a cheap and crappy Encore to start with so that doesn't help and the neck is too thick too.

Jaco Pastorius solo. He definitely had a unique style, put it that way.

I need to be careful or I'll turn into the lazy slobby person I was this time last year and I don't want that. At all. Though it's probably too late. Damn I suck.

You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake

OK. Patapon. I understand the concept and gameplay, and the graphics and animation are great and have the same appeal as Loco Roco. But I'm finding it VERY hard to get into. It took me about six tries to get past the second level. Basically you tap out a command (advance, attack, etc) in four beats, and they chant the command you've beat while carrying it out, but I don't know why I can't get it. If I don't get the hang of it soon, it'll be traded for something else.

I had a catastrophic lapse today. That was discovering a Squier Vintage Modified Fretless Jazz Bass on Ebay. I've been after a decent fretless to replace my crappy home-made fretless for some time. There are some ultra cheap but undoubtedly crappy acoustic basses on Ebay which areavailable as a fretless, but I've played the Squier and I know I like it. So yeah, I ended up buying the Squier. Year of thriftiness my arse. At least it was a heck of a lot cheaper than a new one. Thank fuck I've at least got a car now which merely sips diesel as though it were a fine wine, to be savoured and drawn out as long as possible, rather than drinking it all down in one go and clamouring drunkenly for more. Probably not the best way to describe the difference in fuel economy between the AX and the Discovery but that's what it feels like.

Either this laptop (Toshiba Satellite A40) has got scratches on the screen or somehow there are hairs inside the LCD panel. I know I don't treat this laptop very well and it bears the scars to show it, but things like that on the screen really bother me. Damn it.

That quote from Fight Club is becoming strangely relevant here: "The things you own end up owning you." Damn that's a good film, I think I'll watch it this weekend sometime.

The Rayburn is officially scrap and to replace it we're getting a much smaller stove which is built solely for central heating. Rayburns are so expensive it's just not possible to justify one, particularly as the old one was so rarely used for cooking. Not that the smaller stove is all that cheap.

Work, stuff and a rather weird film

One day, I promise, I'll come home and write a blog entry where I actually had a good day in work. I mean it. But it won't be today or this week, or probably next week either.

Went to watch a film called The Cottage with Will, Vicky and one of Vicky's friends who I've shamefully forgotten the name of. It was quite good and I'm certain I would have enjoyed it more than 10,000 BC or whatever it's called. Also saw some banal trailers.

The AX handled quite well with four people in it and interestingly the ride was much smoother.

Patapon has arrived, but I'll give it a go tomorrow. Didn't have the time today. Looking forward to it as it's had great reviews and it's been a long time since I got a new game for the PSP.

Shock to the System

Bored this evening so I decided I was going to get System Shock running, somehow, on my main machine. It's an old DOS game so it wasn't just going to run without some fiddling. It's hard enough to get them running on Windows, let alone Linux.

System Shock was way ahead of it's time and it has many decent features. It ran nicely on my Pentium 100mhz machine with 48mb RAM but it couldn't handle the 640x480 mode very well if I remember right. I always used to turn the combat off as I preferred to just go through the storyline and puzzles. I never played System Shock 2 but they went on to develop BioShock, which shares many characteristics with the old games and is just as good.

First I put DOSBox on which lets you run many DOS games on Windows or Linux, but the System Shock installer complained and wouldn't run, saying it needed to be run from the CD.

After that, I created a VMWare machine with 32mb RAM and a 400mb hard drive and installed DOS from a Windows 98 boot disk. After quite a bit of fiddling, it worked, but while the game ran pretty much perfectly, I couldn't get it to produce any sound. VMWare sound emulation is pretty minimal and doesn't seem to work under DOS at all. Then again this is the server version so you might expect that but from what I've read the workstation version isn't great either.

After another go in DOSBox, I was able to trick the installer to get it to install and run and it actually isn't bad. It stutters every now and again especially in the Cyberspace sequences. I might try it on one of the sub-1ghz laptops I have knocking about.

There was a particularly unpleasant experience in work this morning. Had to move a user's PC away from a desk where the roof had leaked. It smelled absolutely disgusting, like someone had puked there. Incredibly the guy didn't want his PC moved as he didn't see the point, seemingly immune to the stench.

More car things

Didn't do much in the morning. This afternoon took my Mum to pick up her new car and unload all the crap out of the broken one. The new car is a Citroen Berlingo Multispace. It's pretty nice, and seems largely the same as the Peugeot Partner van we have in work.

After that, got a new front wiper blade for the AX and went to a scrapyard in search of a rear left light (the original was cracked) and a sun visor for the driver's side. They had the light but not the sun visor. I've done over 100 miles in it now and the fuel gauge seems to have barely moved, although it is hard to tell as it's one of those silly ones that changes depending if you're going uphill or downhill, or even round a corner.

Restrung the 8-string bass after getting the strings back from my Dad. It was a little fiddly as the piccolo strings had the same size ball ends as the bass strings, so they nearly don't fit into the holes. That combined with the cretinous bridge design made it really fiddly to get them installed properly. Fortunately it was worth it as it sounds really good now, but I'd almost forgotten how tricky it was to play.

Spielmannsfluch

I took the AX into town and checked the tyre pressures and got a paper. I removed the hubcaps that were on it because they got in the way of the valves, and discovered that it has only three nuts per wheel. I'd forgotten that Citroen did that. I'm getting used to driving it but I'm really missing the sheer visibility that you had from the Discovery. But I do like that it cost £30 to fill up with diesel and after doing 50 miles, the fuel gauge hasn't moved from the top at all.

Also transferred the aux input cable to the AX to allow the Shuffle to be plugged in. I wasn't sure at first how to get the cable back out of the dashboard from the stereo, but I melted a hole in the dashboard with a soldering iron. Found that the ashtray makes a good place for the Shuffle to sit. Annoyingly I wasn't able to use the decent speakers from the Discovery as they are too small but the ones in there aren't actually too bad.

Did some digging around on the track because there's a couple of bits where the AX grounds out. I hate doing this, it's all stony making it really hard to dig with a shovel. Also found that the stream which is causing problems actually emerges from a spring which is actually in one of the ruts. I had thought it was coming out from the field and then flowing onto the track. This complicates things rather as I was hoping to find a way to redirect the water.

A side effect of the digging was that I realised how lax I've been over the last few months with exercise. I'm sure I've put on weight and I've got no energy. I need to get back into the routine I had going last October before I went to London.

Didn't do much else, watched Terminator 2 and 3 and currently listening to the In Extremo Live DVD, hence the title.

Might get Patapon for the PSP, seems like a fun game. I think the last game I got for the PSP was Me & My Katamari, and that was probably over a year ago.

Forgot to mention that I did my first blog entry on 13th March 2007. Scary how quickly that year has gone by...

Image is of a DEC MicroVAX II for no real reason other than I saw one once in a computer shop being used as a stool.

Failblog

Best thing ever.

Rugby!

Well, today was certainly interesting. We watched three games of rugby round at Andy's and while the first two games were rather crappy, the Wales vs France game was pretty decent. Well, Wales won, so obviously!

I'm getting used to the AX. It's a nippy little thing round town, the engine has rather more poke than I expected from a 1.5 diesel. It does feel a little underpowered on the open road though and I think it'll struggle with more people in it. When I was driving home from Andy's, it was raining really hard but the single wiper coped fine.

The Discovery is on Ebay. I discovered that it had more tax than I thought, it actually expires in April, not March, so that's good.

New car

Well, I did it, I bought a new car. So I'm sure you're wondering what mighty chariot would the Double L choose? What could possibly follow the Discovery?

Well, remember how this is the Year of Thriftiness? Yeah, that kind of precludes anything big, fast, or heavy. The car I ended up with is a red M-reg Citroen AX 1.5 diesel.

I can see you shaking your head. A Citroen? After the nightmare that was the Xsara? But after a rather fruitless hunt, my Dad and I went a place which had several affordable cars. For some reason nowhere seems to do cheap cars any more, nowhere had anything under £1000. The closest we could find was a really crappy Toyota for £200.

However this place had a few cars listed on the Internet and they had a white Nissan Micra listed which had a reasonable MOT. But when we looked at it, there was some rust building up at the back and underneath. They also had two Clios, one of which had major rust on the rear arches and neither had much MOT. So they pointed out a J-reg Polo and this AX, both of which had fresh MOTs. The Polo was smelly and strange, and it just didn't seem right somehow.

So, not expecting much, we took the AX out and found it drove quite well. It's reasonably solid, has no rust around the body, the interior isn't bad and though the panels have faded in places and it has a fair amount of scratches and dents, it's in reasonable shape. The engine is a 1.5 diesel, which should hopefully use no fuel at all and the mileage is just over 70,000. So I ended up buying it and taxing it for 12 months. By the time the MOT and tax run out I hope to have sorted out my finances enough to get a decent car. Also the insurance payments have dropped dramatically now I've transferred it to the AX.

My nice Alpine stereo slotted into the AX and connected up immediately with no issues, but it felt like I was ripping the heart out of the Discovery. I know it's silly to get attached to things, but I'm really going to miss that old beast, even though it's been a financial disaster.

Also the new octave strings for the 8-string bass finally arrived, but I left them in my Dad's car! Damn!

Cars and why I hate them, reprieve

Weekend was good, Saturday consisted of a rugby, food, drink and play-doh fest at Rob and Em's with Will and Vicky which was excellent fun. We all crashed over at Rob's and then we went for a big breakfast at a nearby cafe. All good stuff. The rest of Sunday was taken quite casually, just watching the first Indiana Jones film in preparation for the fourth one coming out.

I've seen a few cars for sale. One was an L-reg Peugeot 106 1.4 diesel but that didn't seem quite right and sold immediately anyway. I'd rather get something that isn't quite so synonymous with boy racers. There's a place nearby that has a few cars for £500 or so and I'm going to have a look there on Friday as I forgot I'd booked Friday and Monday as holiday - hurrah!

The Discovery started making the occasional graunching noise when going round right hand bends and I found the exhaust seems to be hanging down and fouling the rear axle. But as it's going on Ebay any minute now I can't be bothered looking at it. Also the gearbox is starting to crunch into 1st and 2nd when cold and to be quite honest, I'll be glad to see it go. It's been a good two years, but I've had enough of the sheer costs involved of running the thing, and diesel has gone up to £1.12 in the local Morrisons.

But then my Mum's car made a strange noise so she took it to the garage. They found the rear wheel was about to fall off and was rubbing on the body. This combined with the new steering rack it needs, would cost over £1000 - just not worth repairing. So she's got her eye on a 52-reg Berlingo.

So there we have it.

Wrongness, laptop surgery and cars

What's wrong with this picture? The gigantic lip? The AK-47? Or the jarring juxtaposition of the iPod? It's got to be a posed photograph, but it's interesting nontheless.

Had a funny moment in work where I was combining an immaculate laptop with a fried motherboard with one that had a good motherboard but a damaged screen and other parts. I merrily ripped both laptops to pieces while dealing with helpdesk calls when I suddenly realised I was surrounded with countless bits of laptop, a forest of screws, and not much idea which parts were from which one. But after a while I got it all back together, and I had a nice clean laptop that booted successfully. However the celebrations were cut short when I found the trackpad didn't work, but I know where it connects and it's quite easy to check. I've built a couple of Frankenstein laptops like this out of the scrap pile and they always come in useful for something. Even the head of ICT uses one for presentations.

Cars. I've been scouring Ebay, Auto Trader and various other places every night this week and I'm sick of it. But I've got a couple of possibilities and dilemmas. A P-reg Fiesta with no history for £500, or an L-reg Clio with a year's MOT and plenty of documented work done over the last 15,000 miles for £375? Which would be better? I don't know.

I'm steeling myself for driving round in a shed. I think I've mentioned before that I have psychological difficulties with cars, and unless I'm in something big that I can perceive as safe, I get paranoid and angry. So it's going to be somewhat of a test, and I only hope I have the strength of mind to pass it. I think as long as I can get a half-decent stereo in it, that'll be a big help as then you can just cruise and enjoy the tunes.

This is from the Facebook terms of service: "When we are notified that a user has died, we will generally, but are not obligated to, keep the user's account active under a special memorialized status for a period of time determined by us to allow other users to post and view comments."

Odd. Still not too happy about Facebook.

No point

Not a particularly good day. Spent some time rebuilding an old machine and getting new ones ready and then we had a meeting. Found that one of my colleagues is leaving so his sites will have to be covered.

Played badminton this evening but it wasn't particularly good. Haven't played for a couple of weeks and it shows. I'm despairing of getting back into a reasonably healthy eating and exercise routine and hating myself for it.

Also I'm feeling quite bitter and resentful for various reasons which I won't go into.

This thing about the iPhone and iPod touch devkit is cool, looks like it has lots of potential - Super Monkey Ball on the thing with the accelerometer? Spore? Can't wait.

Got a bottle of vodka with vanilla pods in it and it smells fantastic after only a week and a half. By my birthday in May, it should be really nice.

Does anyone read this? At all?

Vans, boxes, computers, greyhounds, fat

Work today basically consisted of shifting a load of equipment from one site to another. Thankfully the new ICT van can fit a whole load more than the old one. It's a Peugeot Partner which drives really well. So after all the exertions I feel quite tired now.

Called the UK greyhound stud registry today and gave them the hound's tattoo. They were able to give me his date of birth (20th October 2002), his parents names and the last registered owner. He doesn't have a racing name because he never raced, though I found he has a brother and sister who have raced. Interesting stuff. I'm just glad to know his exact age though.

You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) - the metal version! Quite good.

Been a right fat bastard over the last couple of weeks and eaten like crap. Sure I've put on weight, but finding it difficult to be disciplined. Pissing me off.

Toughbook upgrade and car woes

Went to have another look at a car I was quite interested in, a tidy 1999 VW built Skoda Felicia, only to find it had been sold yesterday. Oh well. They tried to interest me in a white R-reg Rover but it was too big, and you can't get the parts these days. Had another look on the Interwebs this evening and found a couple of other possibilities. A 106 in Wrexham and a Seat Arosa 1.0 which looked great but was in Wolverhampton.

This was annoying though as I was hoping the Skoda was OK and I could have had it sorted by the end of the week, especially as diesel is now £1.11 in the local Morrisons. What. The. Fuck.

Put Windows XP on the Toughbook, as the 2000 install was a 30 day trial version. I did try a Compaq Windows 2000 CD but that failed, so I installed XP Home using a code from a crappy smashed up Acer laptop. Much to my surprise, it actually activated, so that's all good. Doesn't run too badly with the 192mb RAM, surprisingly. I tried replacing the 128mb DIMM in it with a 256mb one but it still only recognised 192mb RAM - bah! Also the touchscreen driver which worked fine on 2000 doesn't work on XP, strangely, or at least I haven't got it to work yet.

One thing that's interesting about it is that it has a modem installed in a MiniPCI slot, which could be possibly be replaced with a wireless card. This however then raises the question of an antenna, and I'm not sure if the Ethernet port is linked to the PCI card or not.

If it bleeds, we can kill it

My admission last Friday in work that I had never seen Predator caused much outrage and disbelief. I don't know why I'd never seen it. So a guy brought both Predator 1 and 2 in on DVD. I've just watched Predator and thought it was really good, also I was really impressed with the effects considering it's 21 years old. Also it was made when Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't all that annoying.

Not sure about watching the sequel, not heard good things and then they went and made AVP which pretty much ruined both Alien and Predator.

It snowed while I was watching the film. There's actually quite a lot of it, but it's slushy and melty already. Typical that it would snow when I'm quite anxious to get rid of the Discovery.

A fat and painful weekend

Yesterday was pretty good. Went out looking at cars first thing and found one possibility. Then took the dog for a walk for the first time in ages but became aware of a slight ache in various parts of my body, particularly my right thigh and my shoulders and upper arms. These aches became worse and I realised that the antics of the Audi 80 caused various muscle pulls and things.

The afternoon yesterday consisted of a huge geekfest in the Flyattic, with long sessions of Halo 3, Flatout, Portal, Def Jam Vendetta, Rocky and other things. Also ate a LOAD of crap because I brought snacks and went rather overboard. Also plugged the Whamola into Will's fearsome system and it made some very interesting noises. Vicky also had her Eee which was really cool.

Today was spent in Preston, sorting out my cousin with a wireless router. But with the various aches amplified for some reason, I spent the day feeling like a virtual cripple. I was limping everywhere with pain in my foot and legs, and my shoulders were pretty bad too.

My cousin has cable internet from Virgin, something I hadn't encountered before so I was quite anxious that I'd bought the right equipment for her. But it all plugged in perfectly and worked fine once I'd configured the router for maximum wireless security. Once that was all set up and working, we went out for a massive lunch in a nearby Beefeater, which was really good.

Feeling tired now.

Diesel is £1.09 in Morrisons! Insanity.

A very cute cat on a treadmill. Funny.

I was looking up greyhound tattoo information today to try and work out how hold the hound is, but couldn't figure it out. All I know is that he was puppy 4 of the litter. However there is a number you can call to check the greyhound stud registry and they can tell you the date of birth and racing name, but not the racing history. Might give it a call as it would be nice to know his exact age and birthday.

The last journey of the Audi 80

That car was trouble when I was driving it, and I should have guessed it wouldn't leave without a fight. And my God, it gave a good one.

The guy was supposed to be coming in a recovery truck to get the Audi at about 6:00pm. By then though, it was raining, very windy and dark. I assumed by about 6:40pm that he wasn't going to come and settled down for the evening. But then at about 7:10pm he rang, saying he was coming up to where we agreed to meet.

So I head down in the Discovery and take him up to where the Audi is parked, as his truck is far too large to make it up the track. He has a look and says that he's happy to freewheel it down the track, following me in the Discovery so we can tow it if it stops. So he gets in, and I head off down the track. I realise he isn't following, and reverse back up. He asks where the keys are as the steering lock has come on.

That's my fault, I genuinely had thought they were in it. I dash into the house and get the keys and we try again. This time I head off down the track and once again, he doesn't follow, although I'm sure the Audi starts to move. I head back up and find that he has gone head on into a fence post because the steering lock jammed. He doesn't seem hugely fussed and asks if I have a hammer. While I'm looking for one, he borrows my wheelbrace and viciously attacks the dashboard. By the time I've found the hammer, the steering column is a shattered ruin, and he proceeds to absolutely pound the steering lock until it breaks up and he can steer. This takes some time - for the first time ever I curse German build quality. By the time the steering lock finally releases, there's nothing left of the instruments or the dashboard and fragments litter the seats and floor.

We push the car off the fencepost, which involved me holding the car still by myself while he quickly put the handbrake on, and try yet again. I was going quite quickly down the track but all I saw was the torch he was using to see where the car was going get closer and closer. Worried he was going to hit me, I accelerated and glanced at the speedo - 30mph down the track. I've never done anything like that speed on it for obvious reasons. On the flat bit the Audi slows down and I relax but then we hit the steepest part. I accelerate again and I hurtle round the corner at the bottom, hanging on for dear life as the Audi follows close behind. But it slows to a stop on the gentle slope up to where the recovery truck was parked. I suggest we pushed it up but he confidently said he'd reverse the truck up to where the Audi had stopped.

I watch in unbelievable tension as he manoeuvres the enormous truck past two of my neighbours houses and cars, with inches to spare. I was terrified that he'd hit a wall or a car and I'd have to explain what had happened. But his skills are honed and soon the truck is in place and the ramp lowered.

He asks me to steer the Audi onto the ramp as it's winched up - I agree with perhaps a little sadness - my last ever journey in the car. But then the driver's door refuses to open, forcing me to get in the passenger side, as if the car was having a final joke on me. He tightens the winch and I release the handbrake and take the transmission out of Park. The Audi is dragged slowly and unceromoniously onto the truck, making horrible grinding sounds all the way. It only dawned on me later that I hadn't actually checked the gearbox was in Neutral - I have a feeling it was maybe in Reverse, hence the hideous noises.

With the Audi loaded, and the V5 handed over, surely that was the end of the farce this had become? Nope, while he was turning off towards the village, two cars came from opposite directions. Now, this is a very quiet, largely single track rural road, and the odds of two cars meeting at this particular junction are quite remote. The odds of them meeting when there is a big fuck-off recovery truck blocking the road along with my car parked slightly awkwardly? Probably astronomically low.

God knows what the people in the cars thought. One of them was a rather nice Jaguar XJ6 whose owners I know by sight and there was me was pissing myself with laughter on the side of the road at the sheer ridiculous nature of the situation.

Finally, I was able to get back in the car and comfort the rather shaken dog, who had just had several rather strange trips up and down the track in the back of the Discovery.

I must give all credit the guy who came to take the Audi away. He was quite young, very Welsh, and he completely had a sense of humour about the whole thing. To be fair, he could have turned around at any point and said he couldn't do it. I can't imagine what it must have been like, hurtling down the track in a car with no brakes, impossibly heavy steering, no lights and a flat tyre.

So that's the somewhat strange tale of the Audi 80 and it's last journey.

Cars cars cars

Today I finally arranged for a scrappy to take away my old Audi 80. It's a 1982 model, with a 1.6 litre engine and a three speed automatic gearbox. It wasn't a bad car and in surprisingly solid condition, but due to the low gearing it used a lot of fuel, and wasn't particularly nice to drive because it had ultra cheap tyres which gave it no grip. It was replaced in November 2004 by my Mum's old Citroen Xsara, which actually gave a LOT more trouble than the Audi ever did.

Rather optimistically, I informed the guy that I'd have it at the bottom of the track tomorrow evening, assuming I'd be able to get it to start. However much to my dismay, despite plenty of electricity from the Discovery over jump leads, the engine turned over but wouldn't fire. But as the throttle also stuck full on this is probably a good thing, with it being an auto. However, it did actually freewheel forward a bit which is good as I thought it had become embedded in the ground in the year or so since it last moved. So I'll have to give the guy a call tomorrow and say it's a bit more complicated now.

Also cleaned out all the rubbish that was in it. But amongst the rubbish, I found two full cans of oil, a full can of WD40 and a copy of the LostProphets second album which I'd given up for lost. Wow, just goes to show. Also the driver's footwell was full of water, not a good sign. The above picture from a couple of years ago actually makes it look rather tidy - this was because I'd washed it in an attempt to sell it as a restoration project. Now it looks rather mouldier and shed-like.

Kind of weird to listen to the LostProphets album again. Brings to mind driving down to Branston for a week in my old job to provide on-site support at one of the sites. It was the only CD I had so I listened to it solidly the whole time.

Also found the three remaining hubcabs from the old Pimpmobile which I'd kept, almost as if to prove that it was real...

Stuff

This is a really interesting article and is definitely worth a read.

I've psyched myself up to get rid of the Discovery. I need to do it soon and quickly before I relapse and decide to keep it. I'm fairly sure I'm going to sell it as it is now.

Also I need to exercise properly again. I've not walked the dog properly since the big walk a week and a half ago and I've eaten like crap too. Bah.

Discovery work

I went through the invoices and built up a list of the work the Discovery has had since I owned it. The list is shorter than I thought it would be, bold items are the more expensive ones. But the amount it's all cost is...wrong. Much as I hate the thought, I need a cheaper car. ASAP.

Before I owned it, it also had the rear floor replaced in November 2005.

5/2/08: Front offside wheel bearing

17/01/08: Handbrake disassembled and greased

16/01/08: Left track rod end replaced and steering wheel aligned

5/12/07: Rear offside brake pipe replaced

22/10/07: Towball installed

17/10/07: Tighten wheel bearings and tracking

26/07/07: Rear silencer replaced

21/05/07: Full service and MOT, welded at rear end.

29/03/07: Offside electric mirror replaced

26/01/07: Replacement fuel filler cap (left it at petrol station)

13/12/06: Replacement timing belt and tensioner installed, along with door light switch.

27/09/06: Replacement viscous unit fitted to radiator fan

07/09/06: Replacement drop joint from power steering box fitted

04/07/06: Lift pump in fuel tank replaced, windscreen wiper motor replaced

17/08/06: Oil change, gearstick bush, replacement gearstick knob (to eliminate rattling from gearstick), replacement 7th seat installed

6/7/06: Two new rear tyres

19/06/06: Replacement master cylinder

23/06/06: Replacement clutch and U/J installed

24/05/06: Replacement front offside suspension turret and shock absorber

23/05/06: Replacement offside electric window motor

30/03/06: Two new front tyres

23/03/06: Full service including timing belt, tensioner, middle exhaust, front brake disks and pads

Cittern

A guy built an electric cittern, and I think it sounds amazing. It seems that dual coursed instruments sound quite interesting when distorted, my mandolin and 8-string bass both had something different when put through an effect like that.

Argh!

Living in the country has downsides. We're not on mains water, we have a coal-fired Rayburn and to get to the house needs something with ground clearance. There's fences to keep in shape, plants to keep in check, and the list goes on.

But today the Rayburn sprung a leak. On the inside, putting out the fire and creating a sizable puddle. I've just spent 20 minutes taking out the wet coal and ashes in huge, disgusting handfuls. Bah.

ARGH!

It's 50 years old and weighs enough to mean that moving it takes six people. Can it be repaired? I really, really hope so, preferably without moving it...

Also trying to work out how the largely home-made plumbing system actually works enough to stop the water going to it was rather a challenge. It was all put together when I was about 10 and nobody thought to write down where it all goes.

Wow

I know the wind turbines near us have giant disk brakes to stop them if necessary, but it had never occurred to me what would happen if the brake failed and one of them went too fast...

Rugby, crisps, rugby, cottage pie, rugby, cake

Spent the afternoon and evening at Rob and Caroline's with Rob and Em, Will and Vicky and Andy. Watched the three games that were on, ate a vast amount of Pringles, tortillas, cottage pie and cake, and then finished off the evening with a game of poker, though by then some people, including myself, were too tired to take part.

Also watched some poor bastard footballer having his foot broken off, which was seriously unpleasant. They actually showed it on the late news and it was horrific.

So, all in all, a great day.

It works

Finally, at last, the touch screen is working on the Toughbook. I tried the XP driver and that worked fine. It's not quite as good as it could be, for some rason in the middle of the screen there is a gap between the layer and the screen itself, so you have to press quite hard for it to work. But work it does.

KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED

Fecking hell. I got the Toughbook CF-34M running Windows 2000 Advanced Server because I've never got the touchscreen working under Linux, and it doesn't seem at all possible it ever will. Windows took a LONG time to install, as it doesn't have a CDROM so I had to make the drive bootable into DOS on another machine and then copy the i386 folder from the CD to the disk and run the installer from there. I tried this method with Windows XP once before and it failed for some reason, this time it actually worked.

But the touchscreen drivers (once I found them, damn Panasonic and it's crap website) cause Windows 2000 to die with a BSOD - argh!

Somewhat to my surprise, Windows 2000 is quite sprightly on this machine, given it's humble specs (PIII 400mhz, 192mb RAM, 20gb HD).

Incidentally, the image is of a Toughbook CF-M34 which was hit by a bullet while being carried by a soldier in Irag. It didn't go all the way through and so saved his life. They don't lie when they say these things are strong...

Update: removed touchscreen driver and installed the latest updates and it's running like a champ.

It's the weekend!

It's the weekend at last, after an astonishingly frustrating and annoying week.

Didn't do much this evening. Didn't even go to badminton. Partly because I feel really tired, partly because nobody else seemed inclined to go either.

Pretty much all I did this evening was indulge in an orgy of geekery, messing around with various laptops including the little Toughbook (see one abused here), and listening to some C64 music.

Found the BBC iPlayer works fine on Linux for streaming but the download bit is still Windows only.

New 2gb iPod Shuffle. I might get one if/when my 1st gen 1gb model dies.

Time

Odd how things can suddenly remind you of time passing by. One of the first things I had to do in my current job was unpack and sign in the new Samsung laptops we were getting at the time. As I'd unpack each shiny laptop and prepare it to be imaged and sent off to the users, I'd wonder what kind of life it would have, what it would be used for, and it's eventual fate.

The thing is that these are now out of warranty and some have already entered the scrap pile with various issues. Very worrying indeed.

This week isn't getting any better

Two more nights of generally crappy sleep and depressingly frustrating days in work are making this a week to despise.

Got to work today later than I wanted to as I came across two cars which had had a head-on collision on a very nasty tight blind bend on a single track road. I knew one of the guys and his mobile had gone flat so I let him use mine to call the insurance company. Both cars (a 1998 Volvo and a brand new Focus) were pretty badly damaged, but the Volvo had taken the brunt of it. From what I could tell the Focus had been going too fast and braked, with it's front left corner had gone right into the middle of the Volvos front end.

Played Wii Tennis and it docked me skill points even though I won every match, fucking thing. Then played a bit of Half-Life 2 but the 360 pissed me off after I left it paused for a bit and then when I unpaused it, the game would freeze for a few seconds, continue, freeze, etc. Stupid. Then tried to play some bass and gave up because it was just shit.

Feeling really lethargic and just can't be arsed doing anything at all, which I hate.

Found this page about Denbigh railway station. I'd never seen any pictures of it before, so it's quite interesting to actually see what it looked like. I wish it was still there, I like trains (though not excessively, I hasten to add).

Oh dear

Another bad day. Again inexplicably tired and various annoying things in work.

Vegged out in front of DVDs tonight armed with a big pack of Kettle Chips, however these were made from sweet potatoes and were really nice. Watched The Truman Show and half of Team America.

Updated my laptop to Windows XP Service Pack 3, the RC2 version. Not sure why, I was bored.

Also sat down and made a list of games I'd like to get for my various systems. Since I don't play games as much as I used to I tend to be a lot more picky than I was.

No sleep makes DoubleL tired and cross

Slept like crap last night. Woke up at about 0200 and couldn't sleep until about 0530. But then had weird, creepy dreams and woke up again at 0800 feeling horrendous.

Not good, compounded by a frustrating day in work. I gave up any pretense of trying to maintain a healthy diet and had a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast, three sandwiches for lunch with a can of Red Bull and chips in the evening. Today was a disaster in pretty much every sense.

The BBC iPlayer seems to work as expected but Windows is still favoured over Mac or Linux however.

Got the normal strings for the 8-string but the octave strings are out of stock from the one place that has them available to order in the UK, could take 7-10 days. Argh!

A stressed and worrisome day

Monday mornings are usually quite dreadful, only made worse by the days after bank holiday weekends. Today was especially bad as tripped circuit breakers meant downed servers (one terminally) and phone switches, meaning it was an interesting morning.

The rest of the day was reasonably OK.

Spent the evening not doing much. I felt like I should have walked the dog but I've been tired all day and really didn't feel up to it, probably a result of yesterday's exertions. It was a great walk though.

Played around bit on my defretted Encore bass. Given that it's a very cheap crappy bass which had the frets mercilessly removed, the slots filled and then varnished over, it actually sounds quite reasonable. I think it needs different strings though. Still, I think it will do until I can save up to get a better fretless.

Payday today. I hate it, I always get over excited that I have money and can afford various things. One thing I did order was order the strings for the 8-string bass, which I had decided to do anyway. It looks a bit pathetic with just three strings, after I took the remaining octave strings off and put it's A string on the whamola.

I happened to fill the Discovery up with diesel next to someone who works in the building I look after. When we went in to pay, she was absolutely flabberghasted when it came to £59. She said she'd cry if she had to pay that amount each time to fill it up. And to be honest, she's got a point.

Listening to At War With Satan by Venom, who are so silly.

A world where anything is possible...

All around me were tall, beautiful people. All had bronzed skin and perfect figures. The room was large and the people were in varying states of undress. Some were even naked, walking freely amongst all the others. Some people had tattoos covering their bodies, while some even had large, unlikely wings attached to their backs. Some people were reclining on the various pieces of furniture scattered around the room, enjoying a quiet private chat. Some were kissing, while yet more were engaging in more intimate activities, right there in front of the crowds, seemingly uncaring about the extremely public place they were in.

Suddenly the peaceful, gently erotic atmostphere was shattered. A loud mooing sound came echoing from the entrance to the room and I could see people scattering in horror. As the sound came closer, I saw to my disbelief, a black and white cow being mounted by a buffalo. Disturbingly, the animals were floating ten feet above the ground, and they were coming in my direction. As the path cleared, I could see two small creatures. One appeared to be in a wheelchair, wearing an unlikely combination of tie-dye trousers and tiger striped vest. The other, a black skirt and skimpy top and high heels which didn't fit it's grossly enlarged feet. Both were hideously ugly, short and squat with hugely deformed facial features and twisted limbs. But the real horror was that they were undoubtedly human. As they came nearer, I was appalled to see that through some accident of birth, the wheelchair bound creature had it's genitals attached to it's face.

As they stopped in front of me, I recoiled. Partly in disgust at their appearance, partly because the cow and buffalo were hovering inches from my head, which I realised were actually attached somehow to the creature in the wheelchair, although I couldn't see any means of support. The mooing was devastatingly loud and all around me I could see people questioning what was happening. Some were angry that the atmosphere had been disturbed.

But then then situation became even more bizarre. The creature in the black dress suddenly threw itself onto the ground and spasmed wildly, as though it was having some sort of siezure. Despite that though, it gave a cackling laugh as the creature in the wheelchair joined it on the ground, both of them twisting and jerking crazily. I shouted out and backed away as the cow and buffalo somehow echoed the movements of the wheelchair bound creature, hurtling wildly through the air. This seemed to bring more cackling laughs from the ghastly creatures, and caused even more disturbance to the atmosphere of the room.

A small crowd had gathered round them, watching the peculiar antics. As suddenly as they had both started spasming, both the creatures suddenly stood quietly, looking around themselves curiously. They seemed to communicate telepathically, and then without warning, vanished in a small swirl of white particles. They had gone, nobody knew where. Rather to my surprise, the room returned to normal quite quickly, with only some brief mutterings of 'griefers'.

As I walked towards a pretty woman who was looking in my direction, I could only muse that a world where anything is possible is not necessarily a good thing...

Oh dear

Making your Second Life character ugly is very entertaining. But if you think this is bad, you should should see it in a skimpy black dress...

A long walk

Went out with Rob, Em, Andy, Will, Vicky and Rob and Caroline from badminton for a nice long walk today. It was from Llangynhafal to Cilcain, over the top. The weather was brilliant, perfectly clear and sunny but with a nice cool breeze. We had two dogs, Sparks with Rob and Caroline, and I took the hound. The views from the top weren't great as it was quite hazy but that didn't really make any difference.

After reaching Cilcain we stopped at at pub and had some refreshing drinks before heading back to where we'd left the cars by a different route. We saw a number of things on the way, including a burnt out Vauxhall Astra and a hot air balloon, plus many, many people.

We stopped twice for picnics, with people having been told to bring certain goods. Rob and Caroline had quiche, Rob and Em had rolls with various fillings, Will and Vicky had fruit salad, Andy had crisps and I had doughnuts, cookies and Jaffa Cakes.

All good.

I've stiffened up now and I can't imagine what I'll be like tomorrow.

Oddly enough, the area we walked over has got a very high resolution image on Google Maps, unusual for North Wales.

Hmm. A better day.

This is the second attempt at this post as I changed the appearance of KDE and somehow it completely crashed Firefox.

Yesterday was a peculiar day. I had a rather vivid dream just before I woke up in the morning, which I won't go into. But it completely threw me and left me rather upset.

Work didn't help. In the morning I was trying to troubleshoot a HP laser printer and removed the paper pickup rollers from both the printer and the extra tray. However, when I tried to put them back in, I somehow managed to break the mechanism on both trays, leaving neither of the rollers working. This led to much cursing as I tried to put the mechanism back together so the printer would be able to pick up paper again. Eventually my colleague and I got it working again by methods and tools which would certainly be frowned upon by HP engineers. It actually got to the point where I had to go and take a picture of a working printer to see where a certain part went.

So it wasn't a good start to the day. It didn't really get better and my mood just deteriorated. Looking back, I shouldn't have gone to badminton or the pub last night, I don't think I was good company for anyone at that point and I didn't play particularly well at badminton so that didn't help either.

Today was better but that dream is still freaking me out a bit. It's not often I have a dream that has such a profound effect on me.

I went to my Dad's this morning and we headed into Llandudno to pick up a few things. We got a sidelight bulb for the Discovery, which was rather more difficult to install than I remember. But it eventually went in and back together. Also checked the oil and things.

There's a music shop there which I vaguely recalled having a Squier Fretless Jazz Bass, which I blogged about recently. It was still there so I tried it out. It wasn't a particularly good one when I looked at it, with fingerboard damage from the roundwound strings and a body made out of FIVE pieces of wood. But it played really well, sounded good and just felt right. They wanted £280 for it but they're £210 online. If it had been in better condition I might have seen if they'd have taken less for it but I'd rather get a new one if/when I can afford it. I definitely want one though, it was really easy to play and I absolutely love the different sound you get from a fretless. If I get one, it's going to have black tapewound strings as they are kind to fingerboard and fingerips, don't squeak when you slide, and look good too.

Also went to a couple of garages and saw a Panda 4x4 and a Jimny close up. Quite like both of them to be honest, the Panda is nice and high and is very clean underneath. The Jimny is really like a miniature Discovery, the basic design and construction is exactly the same and it's actually much less toylike close up. Neither is particularly roomy though.

However both of them were brand new and therefore completely out of my price range. The Panda has a 1.2 litre engine and is group 2 insurance while the Jimny has a 1.3 litre and is group 7 insurance. Also it is quite heavy for its size so it's not as economical as you'd expect. The cheapest Panda 4x4 I've seen is £5000 for an 04 reg model so that would definitely require finance, but Jimnys have been around a lot longer so they can be had quite cheap. Also there are automatic Jimnys which certainly have an appeal after the notchy, difficult gearbox in the Discovery, which I'm heartily sick of now.

Still, something to think about anyway. Of course, I haven't driven either of them yet...

F

Sometimes, the world can just FUCK OFF.

Valentines Day can fuck off too.

Subsurface modelling

I suddenly found myself able to understand subsurface modeling in Blender. so I've made a couple of bits of car. Probably the ugliest wheel of all time though.

Laced with depression

Not a good day. Frustrating and somewhat demoralising meeting in the morning, followed by an afternoon of 'what's the point?' meaningless tasks. One of those introspective, somewhat miserable days where I wonder if I'm somehow mentally damaged. In fact, if I am, I blame school. I had a bad time in school and I think it broke me in several important ways.

I don't know how much longer I can go on like this.

Jeremy. Not really listened to this before, but it's really good and the intro is a 12-string bass. And now I hate myself for caring more that it's a 12-string bass on the intro than it being a good song.

Eyesore?

I came over a hill on the way home from work and saw this. I immediately stopped and took a picture. It was such a clear evening that it was really striking to see the wind turbines silhouetted against the skyline. The picture isn't that great, but you get the idea.

Ran into a guy I was in a band with many years. We used to hang out a lot back in 2000/2001 but I haven't seen much of him over the last few years. Strangely we always seem to run into each other when I'm in a hurry to get somewhere. But we did manage to have a quick chat and swap mobile numbers.

A weird experience the other day. I fired up GTA III. I haven't played it for quite some time but when I got my PS2, I played it absolutely non stop. I know Liberty City as well as some of the towns round here. So it was a somewhat bizarre experience going round it again. The environments and the radio stations filled me with a deep sense of nostalgia, as if I was going back to somewhere I'd been and connected with on some sort of emotional level. It was rather frightening that a video game was generating these feelings, to be honest.

Another evening where I couldn't get motivated to do anything. Not sure why I'm so lethargic these days. I did however take the dog for a walk, which was decent.

Currently listening to Sonic Firestorm by DragonForce. I still like the album, even if they weren't very impressive live.

Nutella and supercomputers

Walked the dog yesterday but didn't today as I felt a bit crappy. Cold has mostly gone but still a bit snotty.

Blade servers are scary things. Look at them one way and they're an impressive way to fit 14 servers into 7 units of rack space. But look at them another way and they also make a rather effective vacuum cleaner, picking up all the dust they possibly can due to the ludicrous and noisy airflow needed to keep 28 Xeon processors cool.

This is a cool site where they are running several old-school mainframes and supercomputers, including a Cray Y-MP which you can actually log into. A really cool idea. Some of the old supercomputers looked really cool. Cray always made nice looking machines, like the Cray-2 with the waterfall cooling system (seen in image above), or the Thinking Machines CM-5 with the array of LEDs showing the status of the processors.

I know Nutella is basically pretty bad for you, being chocolate flavoured lard, but it's so nice! Lunch today was a wrap from the delicatessen with salad and falafel, which was really nice. Also they are doing the strange crisps which are strawberry, sweet chilli and white wine flavour. They're really nice, despite the weird mix of things.

Drumsticks are much cheaper than I expected so I ordered some, but they haven't arrived yet. When they do, I'll record a sample of the whamola. Possibly thinking that it's too small though. Might need to look into making a longer one and finding a double bass string from somewhere. I think that would give you more control over the tension of the string.

Humiliation

How to humiliate yourself in front of thousands of people.

Non Whamola stuff

So other stuff that happened today.

I left home this morning to go and wash the car and pick up a few things, and a mile away I was enveloped in fog. This was present right down the coast. When I came home, I emerged from the fog again, very weird.

When going to investigate why our water pump wasn't, I found the bones and fur from a fox which had expired nearby. I'm glad I hadn't gone down there while it was still decaying. That could have been unpleasant. It's lower skeleton was actually still quite intact and it's tail was still there, oddly.

We had pancakes due to not having them on Tuesday. Rather than the traditional lemon juice, I had them with lime juice. Different but tasty.

The weather was great today but I didn't feel up to taking the dog for a walk. But I did go round the fields a couple of times with him.

Whamola spanky panky

I was too curious to see what the Whamola would sound like so I stripped the pickups off the 1-string bass and applied them to the Whamola, using the old duct tape approach. I then connected it to my Optiplex running Ableton Live to run it through some effects. As you can see I attached the pickups in a slightly unorthodox way but I couldn't think of any other way that wouldn't leave them vulnerable to being hit by the string.

And it is just too fun. In the absence of drumsticks, I've just beaten the crap out of it with a screwdriver causing many strange booming sounds. Also quite by accident, I found that if you pluck the string where it goes over the top of the body to the tuner, it makes high pitched sounds which resonate with the main string, with a quite disturbing effect.

There is no point putting a fingerboard on it because it would be destroyed by the string. I can see now why most of these things are made of metal.

Whamola v2: Success!

While watching the rugby (England are shit!) on the Internet, I had another go at the whamola after retrieving the parts from the field where I had hurled them in rage. Inevitably the main parts came from the gradually diminishing futon.

This time the revised handle design worked, and it is actually playable. However it still needs some kind of pickup and I'd like to put a fingerboard on it as if you tighten the string right up, it could potentially be played like a normal bass. It also needs a stand to be played upright as it's rather small. Most whamolas seem to be scaled to double bass size. I

I've discovered if you play it on the stairs, the whole staircase amplifies the sound, which is rather intriguing.

Whamola v1: failure

First attempt to build Whamola failed. The handle was too flimsy and couldn't have held the tension of a bass string.

Later in the day

Well, the day was good. Wales beat Scotland, and after the rugby, astonishingly we didn't have a takeaway. Rob and Andy made a bacon and spinach pasta thing, which when priced out, came to £1 each. Cheaper and healthier than a Chinese or Indian.

After that, we had a poker session. I'm still basically shit at poker, but it's good fun. After Em and Andy stripped everyone of their chips, they fought a bitter battle until Andy finally won.

I can't afford £210 for a Squier fretless bass. However, I might be able to spare £20. Hmm. Could that allow me to buy enough parts to build a Whamola?

MacBooks rule

Typing this on Will's MacBook round at Andy's. I really, really like it. Absolutely brilliant machine.

Hurrah for rugby, random conversation and Internet access.

Rephulum of Hugliture

Didn't feel too bad this morning so went to work. It wasn't too bad, and I got quite a bit of stuff done in the morning. But after going to another office for a meeting, I found myself flagging quite rapidly and I went home a bit early.

Gah.

I was supposed to be going to my Dad's tomorrow morning but I have called it off to avoid giving them the Vile Plague. Also there is rugby on again at Andy's but I'll see how I feel about that one.

Once again I'm being tempting to spend some of my savings. My defretted Encore bass is a bit shit and so I'd like to get a Squier fretless Jazz Bass. They're about £210 and for the price are supposed to be really good. Probably the best fretless I've ever played was the Fender Jaco Pastorius tribute Jazz Bass, but then that was priced at something like $4000 so you'd hope so. It was the one that is reliced at the factory so it looks like the actual bass he used. I remember Kara asking why it was so expensive when it looked like a beat up piece of crap...

Nose is feeling more clogged by the minute. Don't want to go to bed as that'll make it much worse. Bah!

50 commercial programs and their open source alternatives.

Urgh

Loaded up with drugs, feeling a bit better now. I emerged from my pit to have another Pot Noodle and watch the Top Gear African episode. Absolutely brilliant.

Pain

My head hurts. But not a normal headache. This doesn't seem to be a normal cold, my nose is not all that snotty, but my entire head is aching. Especially my upper teeth for some reason.

Didn't feel like doing anything but lie in my pit and read and occasionally groan loudly, but I finally emerged and had my appetite awakened by, of all things, a Pot Noodle. Not even the all-time classic Chicken and Mushroom, but the Chow Mein.

I think it's serious...

My first sick day off work in just under a year, oddly enough for the same thing.

I hate colds

Mucus all around and somehow my actual jaws are aching.

Not well

Definitely got a cold, feel like absolute crap.

Cloverfield and a cold

Short entry today. Woke up this morning with a tickly cough, which was odd. I didn't think much of it until about mid-afternoon when I started to get that odd feeling inside my nose which always precludes a cold. Feck.

Saw Cloverfield tonight. Really enjoyed it.

Thingys

Things are a bit more cheerful since the last post, when I was feeling a bit down. I am however determined to get rid the crap I don't use, which is rather a lot. One thing is a load of Megadrive stuff I had and put on the noticeboard in work. Nobody's offered me anything for it so I might just put it up for nothing. At this point I don't actually care all that much about selling stuff, I just want to get rid of it.

Got the car back today. The grinding and droning was indeed the right front wheel bearing, which had collapsed. It was still an expensive repair at £192 though. I felt better about the car after this, but I made the mistake of parking it facing uphill in the work car park, which let the sunroof leak quite badly as it rained quite hard. I normally have a bin bag in the car but it had gone missing for some reason, so I had to sit on my coat. This actually highlighted how much the driver's seat sags.

I like the Discovery, I really do. It was my dream car when I was in my early 20's and I never thought I'd actually own and drive one. But the sheer expense of running it is a massive drag on my finances. I'll get it through the next MOT and then we'll see. Diesel prices are just not funny any more, to the point where it might actually be cheaper to run an LPG converted V8 one. But it's also group 12 insurance and £200 a year tax.

I am still intrigued by the idea of making a proper one string bass. I'm idly looking at the prices of suitably sized chunks of maple and mahogany, but at the moment I'm rather poor. Also it might be difficult to cut things with the tools I have. But hey, it's nice to dream and it's fun drawing pictures of what it might look like.

Other than that it's been a cold, rainy and rather unpleasant day.

State of Mind (Kernel panic: Fatal exception)

Worried about car. Doubting myself for ever buying the damn thing. Is it really sensible to depend on a vehicle that's only a few months off being able to legally drink in the UK (18 years), often requires usually expensive repairs and parts, requires £60 of diesel to fill the tank, and is insurance group 12? Plus in the two years I've had it, it really has eaten quite a lot of money. I've made some pretty stupid (and expensive) choices in cars over the last few years (The Pimpmobile, 1982 Audi 80 and the Shitroën Xsara were all very silly mistakes)

Lonely. (this excellent song by Type O Negative seems appropriate, skip to 5:00 if you get bored and ignore the video which apparently was made by some rabid fans of the guitarist)

Anti-materialistic. Why the HELL have I spent so much time and, let's admit it, money, on old computer equipment, which I rarely use, and am now too lazy to get rid of? Example: from where I am sitting now, I can see 28 laptops. Of these, three, possibly four are in regular use.

Unmotivated. I want to lose some weight, do some work on the house and track, but I somehow never manage to get around to it.

Uncreative. People say I can write, and I know I have a half-decent grasp of the English language. But I haven't written anything worth reading for a long time. My bass spasms are fun but I know I'm not musically gifted. I like drawing but I can't. I haven't made anything in a 3D program for nearly a year.

Rugby, alcohol, random gossip and excessive flatulence

Rob, Em, Will, Vicky and I all piled into Andy's house on Saturday, bringing with us pizza, drinks, sweets and general good humour. First we sat down and watched the Ireland vs Italy game which wasn't particularly enthralling. After that, we started drinking and watched the Wales game while consuming the large amount of pizza we had brought. It seemed quite hopeless until the last 15 minutes and the mood was gloomy. But then, amazingly, it all turned round and Wales actually won. Those last few minutes where they were in the lead were possibly the most intense I have ever seen. It was amazing when they finally won.

After that, we headed up through town for a pub crawl, starting a the bottom of town and working our way up. We hit various pubs of varying quality, the worst being an overly full place with sweaty people singing karaoke, which personally, I regard as some bizarre method of self-torture and humiliation. The last place was a strange small club which I didn't know existed, despite having walked past it probably thousands of times.

Finally, we grabbed some burgers and kebabs before power walking back to Andy's house due to the urinal needs of one of our party. Following that, we retired to bed, five of us occupying Andy's living room. It was, shall we say, a flatulent night, probably caused by lots of gassy beer and crappy food. Quite often there would be an outbreak of gas, followed by muffled snorts and giggles from around the room. I don't care what people say, farting is funny.

Next day we emerged and headed out to a new café for breakfast. It was quite a new place with a motorbike theme, being next to quite a large bike dealer. The food was pretty excellent and this was followed by rather a long walk around town. It was actually pretty interesting. I've driven through the place many, many times, but this doesn't give you the chance to see the various little details of the town. We saw many interesting things, little alcoves of houses, and all sorts. It was really good and the refreshing breeze perked us all up a bit.

This was then followed by the Scotland vs France game, which was a bit disappointing. Scotland lost pretty badly and didn't do themselves any favours.

But all in all, a great weekend.

Just need to see what is up with the car. I drove around a bit yesterday morning, and while the grinding noises haven't come back, there is a definite drone and perhaps even a vibration from somewhere. I'm fairly sure it's the front axle. Strangely though, it doesn't do it when freewheeling, only when in gear and because of the engine noise, it's hard to listen out for anything. Probably the front differential, which is undoubtedly expensive to replace.

I hate it when shit like this happens with cars. I start to lose confidence in it.

Strange Grinding Sounds

Work was OK, got a few things done.

Badminton was good, think I played reasonably well. Once again I found myself more willing to throw myself around the court, which can only be a good thing. Pub afterwards was good and when we came out it was sleeting.

Strange thing on the way home (in the snowish stuff). The Discovery made a strange grinding sound from somewhere. It seemed as if something was dragging on the ground but all looked normal when I stopped and had a look. But when I moved off again, there it was and if you freewheeled very slowly, there was a slight jerking to accompany the sounds. At one point it was almost like the right front wheel was braking by itself. Again I looked, but couldn't see anything apparently wrong, so I carried on. And the sound went away. I even stopped on a hill, and freewheeled slowly with the engine off, and it was completely silent.

Strange. I'll have to see how it is tomorrow. It's probably something expensive like the front differential or something ghastly.

Massive letdown

Where is the snow?! I was expecting epic frozen drifts.

Bah.