Berlin

So it was off back to Berlin last weekend, with Rob in tow instead of my cousin who obviously can't travel due to chemotherapy.

Friday

The flight was late on in the day but we still set off quite early and took a stroll around Rob's old haunts in Liverpool, which was fun. The weather wasn't great though but we had a look around some book places and Forbidden Planet which is always nice.

The flight was delayed by about 40 minutes which was a bit annoying as the flight was so late in the first place but was otherwise uneventful. Once we got out of the airport we got a bit confuzzled with the S-bahn but eventually got to the right stop after changing trains three times in as many stops. Possibly a side effect of the ongoing troubles with the S-bahn.

Saturday

We had a stroll around Alexanderplatz first thing in the morning where we found several interesting shops in a small shopping centre. One was an alcohol shop where Rob saw many rare and interesting items, a shop specialising in old DDR stuff, and a pound shop type affair which had some odd things.

After that it was off to meet up with Amogharatna to head off to the trade fair for the half marathon where he would register and get his number. This was well worth doing as it took place in the old Tempelhof airport. It closed in late 2008 and this kind of thing is the only way to get a look inside these days. It was pretty cool to see the old building which is very impressive.

Lunch consisted of currywurst from Curry 36 on the Mehringdamm, which is reputedly the best in Berlin. It was pretty damn good, that's for sure. After that we wandered around a bit until Amogharatna had to leaves. Rob and I had a good long walk including the length of the Tiergarten before deciding to head off and find supper after a break in the hotel. We started out at the House of 100 Beers, where we had a couple of drinks and then found a nice Italian place on Oranienburger Strasse, which was good. After that we had some more drinks in an Irish bar in the Hackesher Markt station, before finding a much quieter and nice little pub by Alexanderplatz.

Sunday

I woke up and didn't feel well at all due to a cold. Rob wasn't well after a late night session with some Germans playing Dopplekopf and so neither of us made a huge breakfast.

Amogharatna met up with me at 9 and we headed off to Alexanderplatz to meet his friend Harald who was also running the half marathon. Having found him, we headed off to where everyone else was getting ready and putting their clothes and things into bags for safe keeping. Nothing like hanging out with 22,000 runners to make you feel fat and inadequate, that's for sure. I saw Amogharatna and Harald off to the start which was a bit of a mistake as I had then had to fight my way back through the heaving crowds.

After having a look at the route for the marathon, I got on the train and headed off to a few places to watch it, first was the Tiergarten S-bahn station, and then the Ku'damm U-bahn station. That one was pretty good as I saw most of the field go through. Annoyingly I didn't see Amogharatna go past, but I did see Harald. I found out later that Amogharatna was in front of Harald so I must have missed him.

Once the marathon was done I met up with Amogharatna, Claudia and another friend of his for lunch at an Italian place. It was somewhere I hadn't been before so I had a little trouble finding it but it was a good place and it was a good meal. We headed back to the vicinity of the hotel where Amogharatna and Claudia dropped me off at the hotel, and then Rob and I went out for some supper and a stroll. Food was from the Flying Table which was typically excellent.

Monday

I was still suffering rather but Rob was better so we headed off to the Reichstag to try and get up the dome. There were some people there already but as we headed across the lawn a bus full of tourists pulled up so we legged it to get in front of them. This worked and the roof and dome were quite empty when we got there. It was a fairly clear day so we had a good view from the top of the dome and roof. It doesn't look too high from outside but it's pretty good.

After that we had a wander round the government quarter and then headed off to Treptower Park to have a look at the Soviet memorial there, which is really huge and impressive. This was followed by a visit to the rather underwhelming currywurst museum. I then returned back to the hotel for break, only stopping off at Alexanderplatz to find a geocache there. I had a pretty good idea where it was when a German family turned up looking for it and one of the kids grabbed it and ran off, so I had to politely ask if I could sign the logbook.

That evening we went to a restaurant not far from the hotel which was pretty good. This was followed by a stroll around the Ku'damm in the dark which was good although it took some lengthy train rides to get to and from it.

Tuesday

We met up again with Amogharatna in the morning and had a walk around Unter den Linden before walking down to the awesome Fassbender & Rausch chocolate shop for lunch, which was excellent. After this we walked around a bit more but I was really starting to feel tired and rough so we took an earlier train to the airport and got ourselves through security. The flight was uneventful again other than the weather being lovely when we left Germany and then horrible in Liverpool.

Double neck rocks

The bottom neck of the double neck was not looking good, the strings were a mile off the frets and it really looked like something had gone wrong. So off came the neck, a shim went into the pocket and the neck went back on with new strings. And now it's absolutely perfect. It plays nicely, sounds really, really good and just needs a bit of intonation. Amazing.

The top neck still needs a new set of flatwounds. The only ones I had spare were missing the G-string and are horrible, really tight and not smooth. A new set is on order.

The Kent Armstrong Hot Vintage P pickups were quite cheap as pickups go, but they really sound good. Very good sound from both necks, which is great. Also, they came with ridiculously long wires so I didn't have to extend the wires from the upper one, so that made life easier.

I've ordered a pair of knobs for it which are more in keeping with the Precision Bass styling, but other than that, it's basically done now. Aginst all the odds, the damn thing actually works. It's playable, sounds good, looks good and is hopefully quite unique. I might strip the finish from the lower headstock so they match better but that's not really essential.

I have a feeling though that the finish is quite soft and won't take much abuse. But that's not really a problem, if it picks up marks from being used it gives it some credibility. After all Fender sells a range of basses which come with wear from the factory for more money, and I've already written about the Jaco Pastorius tribute bass which comes with a ridiculous amount of wear.

Hurrah.

Another geeky day

It's been a rather geeky day to be honest. Spent the morning doing some work on a couple of my laptops.

The Toughbook CF-18 was treated to a new 160gb hard drive which is faster and quieter. The D630 was pulled apart and checked over to see why it blue screens occasionally. Put new thermal gunk on the CPU and chipset and will see how it goes. It's not the RAM as I put the DIMMs into another machine and that one has no issues with them. The old but nice D800 was stripped down and had thermal gunk applied to the processor before it was reassembled with a new keyboard and set up with a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10 on the 40gb hard drive out of the Toughbook. It now has a German language operating system and keyboard, which is proving interesting. One side effect is that every single word I write in English is highlighted as a spelling error...

While doing all this, watched some classic 80's movies - The Fly, Wargames and Robocop.

In the evening, put the doubleneck back together as the paint was dry. It went back OK and the new pickups sound good. It does however need new strings and a good setup, but so far it looks quite promising. Unfortunately there's an area on the end of the body where I managed to not get any paint. It's not too visible but is still really annoying.

A full day

The rest of the week in work was very meh. The wall has dried out and looks great, which is awesome. Took a load of crap to the tip as well.

Did some overtime today, basically just patching in some data connections for PCs that had moved into my floor of the building. After that it was off to Rob's for the rest of the day for rugby. It was a fun day, enlivened by snacks and various things, and recovering a CD I had found from ten years ago which turned out to be a compilation with a lot of tracks that I'd given up for lost. It barely played in the car, but a CD drive was able to rip the tracks perfectly. It's an interesting snapshot of when my life was very different.

Up to Night Watch in the Discworld reread. Can't remember much about this one, so it's new again.

Wall painted

Finally painted the wall and it went OK, much easier than I thought. I borrowed a paint roller on a long handle from a guy in work and it made all the difference. I was able to do almost the whole thing with that and then a small foam pad thing to touch up the rest. So now the room is blue with one pale yellow wall and part of the roof, and it looks OK. So now I just need to wait for it to dry and then I can start putting stuff back in and then start sorting out the other end of the room.

Nurrrrrgh

I am glad I have a job, and grateful that I have a consistent, regular salary. But sometimes, I really do despair at some things that go on.

It's been a conflicted week. I've exercised well, and feel all the better for it, but at the same time, have not eaten particularly well. Well, OK, I've eaten like shit. Next week, I'll try to keep up the exercise and eat well too. Oddly though, the skin on my face is near perfect at the moment, which kind of rules out stress after this week, and I don't think I've avoided any particular food.

The new Kent Armstrong pickups have turned up for the double neck, which is exciting, but it's still not properly dry. It'll be a while yet I think. I need to sort out the room first as the plaster is pretty much dry and so I just need to start painting the wall and then perhaps get back to some semblance of normality.

Car tax due this month, completely forgot about it until the letter came. Arse. Got some new stickers for the holes in the back bumper, two Welsh flags. Managed to put them on OK although there's a couple of wrinkles, but they look good. Also because I had to clean the bumper where they went, ended up cleaning the whole car. Took the crappy hubcaps off because they look shit and got in the way of the valves. I've always preferred bare steel wheels if I can't have alloys.

Going to badminton tonight and then it's off to Kirkham tomorrow to see my cousin.

Blaaaargh

Had two bad days in work again, ended today in a rage and exited the building in a glorious tantrum of slammed doors although felt rather ridiculous afterward when I calmed down again.

Went to the gym yesterday evening and did a good workout, felt great after and slept really well. Went again today though didn't do everything but still feel good.

I saw a bonkers deal on Italia bass necks on Ebay where they were selling off spare parts so ended up with four of them. Italia makes modern versions of the somewhat tackily styled basses and guitars that were so common in the 60s. Two of the necks are quite normal ones that look fairly similar to a normal Fender type neck. One of those can go on the paint experiment bass body. The other two necks are a bit more weird with two-a-side headstocks and a pearloid finish. I'm planning on putting these on the next double neck although one will have to be properly defretted, and it will be interesting painting it. Still working out the design and not sure where to get the wood from.

Not much else to report, bunged some more stuff on Ebay.

Weather lovely but cold

Yesterday was a great day. Went out to do some caching in the morning as it was the perfect weather for it with a perfectly clear sky. Miscalculated the time though so I only picked up a couple before heading to Rob and Em's for D&D.

The D&D session with Steve and Kara was awesome. This time it was set outside using hand drawn maps and it worked so well. We played for four and a half hours but it really didn't feel like it. We also ate vast amount of crisps, dip, and chocolate and then a pizza.

Today has also been an epic fail - supposed to be a gym night but went caching with someone from work and remembered I had to get chips for my Mum after she had an eye appointment, and went slightly overboard. So I feel really guilty right now.

In other news, used the funds from recent Ebay sales and ordered the pickups for the double neck, Kent Armstrong Hot Vintage Precision style ones, which should be nice. Will definitely need some new strings for it. The fretted neck will have my favourite Ernie Ball Super Slinkys but the fretless neck will need flatwounds and I'm never quite sure what to get when it comes to those.

I have a new relative (nearly)

The week in work was possibly the most annoying and miserable I have ever had in this job and if next week is anything like it, I'm going to take a flexi day. I've got enough now for nearly two days.

Today was interesting, went to Derby with my Mum to see her brother. I won't lie, I find him and his family a bit tiresome because he's a minister and they are all devout Christians, and he's also a bit...well, weird. Anyway, the reason we were going was to meet a guy who it is almost certain is my Mum and her brother's cousin. He's 70 now and decided to try and find out the details of his birth family and quite quickly came across people where he was born who put him in touch with my family.

It's a bit murky but he seems to be the illegitimate child of their uncle, born in Ireland in 1940. He was taken away from his mother by the nuns and then fostered by someone who relocated to England. He's lived in London ever since. The records aren't great back then though and the nuns wouldn't tell him his father's name over the phone as there's a lot of issues about this, so he has to go and see them in person in June and have counselling and everything. It does seem very likely though. He's got some resemblance to members of my Mum's family and seems to have inherited the trait for practicality and handiness that seems to have been a characteristic of them. So I (almost certainly) have a new 2nd cousin, who seems like a nice guy and has the thickest cockney accent I've ever heard.

Fun times. Tomorrow it's a change of scene as it's off to Rob and Em for the long awaited second session of D&D.

Acorn experiments continue, the Risc PC is now running RISC OS 4 with a 206mhz StrongARM CPU (which I paid £1 for about 10 years ago) and a 20gb hard drive. It's pretty cool, just need to get some stuff sorted out. Also was able to take an image of the Risc PC hard drive with all my old A310 stuff and connect it to an emulator on the PC, so that was really cool.

Doubleneck still drying nicely. Managed to flog some more things on Ebay so might be able to get the pickups and strings earlier than I thought.

Horrific day

Work even worse. Had enough. Ate like shit also.

Had a great geeky evening though. Dug out my Acorn Risc PC that I got for a fiver at a car boot and fired it up to find it will works fine. Great machines, amazingly expandable and RISC OS still feels quite snappy and cool, although very quirky now.

The best thing I managed to do was extract the IDE interface out of my Archimedes 310 and attach it's 105mb hard drive to the Risc PC and transfer the contents to the 510mb drive in the Risc PC. The reason for that was that while the 310 still probably works, I don't have a monitor cable for it. The Risc PC let me view the contents of the 310 drive and there's so much stuff on there I'd forgotten about, a real nostalgic look back. RISC OS is still being developed amazingly, up to version 5.2 or something now, still running on ARM processors and based in ROM. It's so weird to think that the 8mhz ARM2 in my old 310 is the direct ancestor of all the ARM processors used in mobile phones and other devices.

AAARGH

Week not improving.

Took the dog for a walk which was great and calmed me down after work. Met a guy who has the cutest puppy you can imagine, some sort of terrier, and he was really funny with Sandy. It's OK though as Sandy is surprisingly good with little dogs and always seems to know to be gentle with them.

The doubleneck clearcoat is drying nicely. It seems to have come out better than the first body although there is a run on the top horn. Not too bad though and it might be able to polish it out once it's dried properly.

Watched Terminator Salvation, not a particularly good film. Thought the effects and actions scenes were OK though. They did an interesting job on bringing back Arnie for the T-800 even if it was a bit creepy.

Argh, work

Had an appalling day in work, just argh all round.

Found the paint had dried on the doubleneck so putting the clear coat on now. Looks exactly the same as the previous body so that's good. Can't wait to put it all back together although if I'm going to splurge on new pickups and strings that'll definitely have to wait until payday unless I have another flukey sale on Ebay.

Since the paint worked out well, it's made me think about refinishing my Squier Jazz, as I don't particularly like the sunburst finish and the body isn't made of particularly nice pieces of wood. Also because it lacks a scratchplate, it would look pretty good in that chameleon paint. It plays so nicely though I don't want to take it apart.

Weekend

Friday was spent with Andy, Rob and the usual gang watching the rugby in the local pub. It was a good evening, made slightly more interesting by there being a whole load of people from the last company I worked for including someone who left before I was made redundant. Wales didn't win but otherwise it was a good evening.

Yesterday was off to Crewe for a Wii night with the people I used to work with. It was a good evening, although calling it a Wii night was a bit wrong as the hosts now have a PS3 as well and it was that which saw all the action. First there was a mixture of Rock Band and some retro gaming (including nearly completing Streets of Rage on the Megadrive collection), then yet more Rock Band, and then after a Chinese feast, everyone settled down to watch the new Star Trek movie on Bluray before finally retiring to bed. This morning it was up for an excellent fried breakfast, before heading back home.

Spent the rest of the day not doing much due to tiredness. Played around on the laptop and watched half of Terminator Salvation before getting bored. Also found the black base coat on the double neck body had dried so put the colour coat on. Looks identical to the other body so far, so it should look OK.

Listed some more retro computer stuff on Ebay and for the first time had rather a weird feeling about doing it. Collecting retro computers and stuff has been something I've done since my mid-teens and to now start clearing it all out is making me feel rather strange. Been in a weird mood the last couple of days though, so who knows.

I got some new clippers last week and so was able to shave my head again yesterday morning, what a great feeling it was. I'm not used to having any hair growth at all so it was nice to get rid of it.

Crap

Sometimes, the idea of getting a one way ticket to somewhere new and just leaving everything behind seems so damned appealing.

Red Bull chaos

Felt really tired in work in the morning so when I went out for lunch, picked up a can of Red Bull. I did have my doubts as to whether this was a good idea or not but it did get me going for the afternoon, but the comedown wasn't good.

Really tired this evening now, but about to have a nice shower as the water has finally unfrozen.

Wish the plaster would dry in the wall, want to paint it and get the room done. The double neck seems to be drying nicely, shouldn't be too long before I can smooth the primer off and put the black base coat on.

Hair is getting too long but my clippers died. Need new ones, bah. I hate my hair now, it's so shit. It's disappearing but in a really stupid way.

Caved in and put the money from Ebay into a Toughbook CF-18, the convertible tablet one. It's a cheap one that's seen plenty of action judging by the wear on it but it works fine. It's frustrating that Panasonic make the hardware top notch but their support for drivers and things is absolutely atrocious. I tried XP on it, but had issues. Windows 7 was even worse, and so now it's got Ubuntu 9.10 on it as it installed and everything works straightaway. The only thing which is proving a bit annoying is screen rotation - doable with a bit of shell scripting though. It could do with some more RAM and possibly a bigger faster hard drive, but otherwise is nice.

Tried several creams on my face, and all they seem to do is make the flaky bits that come off soft, so that's not really very helpful. I think I'm going to have to see the doctor about it, as it's getting really annoying and disgusting.

Brrr

Car one solid piece of ice this morning, really bloody cold.

Frustrating and annoying day in work, not hugely productive and due to a completely ridiculous issue with payroll details, unable to put a laptop in for a new starter as there were no login details, and so I ended up being hassled three times by different people about it, even though it wasn't my fault.

Can't wait for one site to close down and go away but it's been apparently closing every Easter for the last three years. While attempting to locate someone's dead backup server, I found a different mysterious server tucked away in a room humming away to itself. Someone had mentioned it to me before wondering what it was and what it did, turned out it's the Notes server. It's now redundant so it might be captured and put to better use - i.e, replacing the dead backup server which shows no signs of life at all.

Went to the gym again, had a good session although there's only two cross trainers and one was broken so didn't get to go on that frustratingly. Did everything else though so feel OK. I love the weights machines there, really easy to use.

Lazy day

Quite a lazy day. The morning was spent playing some more Halo 3 with Rob and Will as Rob's copy of Stories from Liberty City hadn't turned up. Halo is a frustrating game, sometimes it really is so blatantly obvious that it's a very linear game and the last level of Halo 3 is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

The rest of the day was a bit lazy really, just flobbed around and didn't do much. Read some stuff and fooled around on the CPC emulator again.

The three Ebay auctions ended. I got £57 for the Acorn Atom, £19 for the Toshiba HX-10 and £22.50 for the Z88. Not too shabby really. Made a profit on them all, even the Z88 which I think I paid £15 for originally. I did have a slight hope that the Atom might turn out to be one of those freak auctions where it went for a ridiculous amount, but since I'm sure I only paid a quid for it, £57 isn't half bad. There's still a lot more I can put on there but I'm running out of things like boxes and bubblewrap. It feels great to be finally clearing out all the crap though, just need to have the resolve to not get more crap instead.

Snow is still here although quite a lot of it has melted.

The primer seems to be drying nicely on the double neck although it'll need some smoothing before the paint goes on. Really looking forward to getting it painted and all back together. Going to cost a little though as it'll need the new pickups and two new sets of strings. Then it'll be time to start on the next one...maybe. I think the double neck idea works OK but it would be nice to have a more ergonomically designed body, but then that raises questions of wood, power tools, etc.

Still achy from the gym yesterday, but in a good way.

It's begun

Yesterday was a fairly stressful day but was over surprisingly quickly. Had a good time at badminton in the evening, although for some reason the floor was really slippery. I thought it was my shoes at first but other people commented on it too. In one match I fell over and slid under the net which was embarrassing, though funny.

Read the latest volume of The Boys that Rob lent me. Just when you think it can't get any more outrageous...well. Still good though.

Snow today. Annoying, but it was crappy slushy stuff and it didn't stop me getting back home after going out. I went to get some primer for the doubleneck body, some shopping and to do my first proper workout at the gym. Saturday lunchtime is obviously a good time to go as there was barely anyone there, which was great.

Pulled the doubleneck apart again, which didn't take long. It's now having the primer put on which is going OK. By the time it comes to reassembling it, it will be payday so I think I'll get a new pair of pickups for it - the ones I was using before weren't very good. Think I'm going to strip the paint off the headstock of the fretted neck too so they match better but that's not too urgent. Also found a guy who will make custom decals and I wondered about getting one made up, but wasn't sure what it could read - then the obvious hit me - 'The DoubleL'. Well, perhaps not, but it would be fun.

Typing this on the little CF-M34 Toughbook again. It's not often I come across a machine that can justifiably be described as 'cute' but this is it. It's small, compact, perfectly proportioned and has a carrying handle. I wish it was a later version of it though, later ones had faster processors and less weird RAM issues. Quite impressed that the battery still holds a good charge though.

Plaster in room drying nicely. Can't wait until I can paint the wall and get the room back together.

Found a site online that has the complete run of Zoids comics, which is proving quite interesting and I remember some of it but not all. I loved the Zoids toys as a kid, absolutely fantastic.

Fat day

Due to various reasons, for lunch, myself and two colleagues went to the brilliant Spaven's sweet shop in Ruthin and indulged in pancakes. I had two with chocolate spread and marshmallows - beautiful. Otherwise work was a bit meh.

The Atom is up to £25 with 11 bids and 19 watchers - not bad, think I paid a quid for it. The HX-10 and Z88 also have bids, which is nice.

Plaster is drying nicely, can't wait to be able to start painting the wall and getting the room back to normal. Then need to do the other half of the room, although there's not quite so much crap there. Still needs tidying up though.

Went to Thursday badminton for the first time in ages, which was good. Had some pretty energetic games but probably not enough to offset the pancakes. Oh well.

Sod

The HX-10 and the Atom have bids already, and quite a few watchers, especially on the Atom. Should be interesting to see how much they go for. Payday tomorrow. Still undecided about getting the data recovery done on the SD card, although if the computer sell for enough, it all helps.

Did my proper gym induction yesterday.

Had a bad moment where I nearly bought a Stagg pointy metal bass with a damaged headstock, but came to my senses. Last thing I need right now is another project bass.

Watched more BSG Season 3, really liking it.

Tired, dispirited. Work is deterioriating again. Just seems so damned pointless sometimes. Feel the same way tonight, can't be motivated to do anything in particular.

Room fixed (almost)

Well, the roof is sorted out and the wall plastered. The room already feels warmer because of the new insulation in that corner. The plaster needs to dry for a while and then the wall will need to be painted.

Finally got the Commodore stuff sent off. Listed some more stuff on Ebay, a Toshiba HX-10 MSX computer, an Acorn Atom and a Cambridge Z88. Not expecting to get much for them but it all helps and it's nice to reclaim the space. Still loads more to go yet.

Of the three SPs, I still couldn't get the backlit one to display, and the black frontlit one had a water damaged motherboard that worked but had issues. So I moved the good motherboard from pink one into the black one. Now playing Wario Land II on it, which is an excellent game. I had the original black and white version way back when but now got the colour version. Really good game. I never played the third one on the Game Boy Color but did have Wario Land 4 on the Advance.

The paint has arrived for the doubleneck. Just can't quite face taking it all apart yet and also need to get some primer for it. Tempted to dismantle the pink SP and try giving that a coating of the paint at the same time.

Clearout

So many things turn up when you have a clearout. Found the remnants of a DS from when I built one out of two broken ones, and lots of other things. Got a big pile of stuff to put on Ebay and had a nice bonfire with some various things and some failed bass projects. When I move stuff back in the room will be laid out differently so it will hopefully be easier to keep clean. I'm absolutely determined now not to be so stupid when it comes to impulsively buying crap, for both financial reasons and this reason.

Despite moving a load of stuff, haven't found where the damned mice are lurking. I hate them, they figured out how to get in and out of my industrial humane mouse trap. It's getting to the point where I'm thinking about getting more lethal traps but I hate the aftermath.

Got a battery for the SPs - all three power up and work but the backlit one doesn't display anything - argh! When I've got the room sorted out I'll have a look inside - perhaps a loose connection. Even with just a white screen though, the display quality is much better than the standard SP.

Decided to get a geocoin, called a World Traveller. I'm going to release it and see if it can actually travel anywhere. It's activated now fine so it just needs to be put in a cache somewhere. The problem is with these things is that they look so nice people tend to keep them. Still haven't found the bloody GPS though. I've got the charger and USB cable but where it's gone, I've got no idea. I have found other interesting things though:

A blue PlayStation - one of the developer models
A 233mhz Wallstreet PowerBook G3
Several Macintosh Plus keyboards and mice
A 486 laptop that looks like a clone of PowerBooks of that era, to the point of having SCSI
The remains of several old Dell PII laptops that gradually disintegrated as I used them, so I'd constantly be shuffling parts around and rebuilding them into a working machine. I used them to play the Sims if I remember rightly. Dell stuff is ridiculously better these days.
My old GameBoy Camera, which still has the pictures I took with it, some over ten years ago

Fun week

Work has been better this week and I've got tomorrow off. Not a day of leisure unfortunately, need to empty my room so the wall can be replastered. Nightmare. Good chance to have a sort out and rearrange stuff though. Might even find the f**king GPS.

Very intrigued by the idea of geocoins and travel bugs, things that you put in geocaches to get people to move them from cache to cache. For example I could drop one in a cache in Berlin with a mission to get back to Wales and see if it makes it back. I've logged discoveries of a few (where you see them but don't take them) and taken two that I need to move on to other caches.

Decided that I really fancied a good retro gaming sesh on some old Game Boy games but I don't have a decent one. The SP was definitely the highlight of the range - I absolutely adored my SP but I traded it and all the games I had for it to get my original DS.

However, having decided on an SP, I wanted to get the later backlit one with a better screen. After some research I found it never seemed to have been released in the UK, so I didn't hold up much hope of finding one. Then I came across a job lot of three SPs on Ebay for £15, which included decent pictures - one of them was the AGS-101 model with the improved screen. It's very worn but seems OK but none of the three had batteries so I haven't been able to test them yet. The other two are the standard ones. One is pink, bleh. Might be a candidate for a repaint if I get bored enough.

My cousin is doing well but will need three sessions of chemo and some radiotherapy too, urgh. Think the prognosis is good though.

Scavenged a load of boxes for the Commodore stuff I just sold on Ebay. Got £70 for it but the guy lives in Kent and wants to send a courier. Oh well.

Arse burgers

Torn

OK, so I've heard from a company who think they can recover the data from the damaged 8gb SD card. Now, it's just a case of trying to justify the cost of doing it. I think I know why it happened too, I've got a bad habit of constantly removing the card from the E90 and putting it into a card reader rather than just hooking up the Mini USB and I can only imagine that's put stress on the card. SanDisk have a 5 year warranty on them but that doesn't include any form of data recovery.

Oh well. I'm going to have a think about it. Serves me right if I do have to pay for it - given that one of my duties in work is to assist with the backup system I should have kept more on top of it. I do it with my various other machines, damn it. If I do go ahead and do it, it basically means putting the paint bass on hold for another month and perhaps not starting to paint the doubleneck. Bugger and balls.

Still haven't found my GPS either, what a pain. I HATE it when you move something to somewhere safe and then can't remember where that was. I'm worried now that I've actually lost it somewhere outside the house.

Just found a Sharp PC-1350 which I completely forgot I had. Seems like quite a cool little thing, although it needs new batteries. Oooh, and a Game Boy Pocket with a copy of Faceball 2000, a weird little game in full 3D, awesome. I played a few good games on the old Game Boy, the Wario Land series in particular were excellent games. Hmm, wonder if I've still got any of the old games around.

Oh yeah, and the big fat DSi XL looks hilarious - a giant DS which Nintendo won't admit is for old people. I'd have one though, if it makes it easier on the eyes then I'm all for it.

Argh

Long day, lots of walking, lots of caches found. Very tired now. Night caching was interesting and pretty cool.

Catastrophe though, at some point in the evening the 8gb MicroSD card in my E90 got corrupted, and nothing will read it any more. Recovery software sees every sector on the card as bad, which indicates the controller on the card has failed. What is really annoying is that I set up a backup system for it but hadn't done it since September. Balls! Took some great pics today too in the mist. It might be possible to send it off to a company to pull it apart and read the flash chip directly but it would probably be expensive. Really annoyed with myself, only the other day I was thinking it was about time I backed it up again. Not too fussed about most of the stuff on there but there was a lot of images on there.

Weekend

Finally the weekend, what a hellish week.

Tomorrow = a geocaching event type thing which unfortunately conflicts with the first rugby games of the Six Nations, a terrible miscalculation on my part as I can't spent the day watching them with Andy and Maz - sorry guys.

Tired after badminton, was feeling really down and depressed before I went but feel much better now. Still gutted about tomorrow though.

The bass body is drying nicely so I've brought it into the house to continue. Looks decent. Probably going to put black hardware on it so as not to distract from the paint.

My cousin is home from the hospital and doing really well, so that's good news.

My skin has been really bad this week, facial dandruff and spots and things all going on, which is really annoying. Perhaps it was the stress in work that caused it to flare up rather than food, which is an intriguing possibility, although rather more difficult to try and avoid.

Fuck it all.

One of those days.

More Ebay stuff

Unix guy is back in on Monday, hopefully will make work more tolerable, still got loads to do but it will be a relief to not have to worry about the Unix machines and backup system.

Listed a load of old Commodore stuff on Ebay, a huge lot of it. A couple of Amigas and a lot of 8-bite stuff. Hopefully someone will be able to make use of it as I don't want to trash it, but who knows. Ebay can be quite unpredictable as to what will sell and for how much.

Clear coat still drying, but looks good.

In a weird place at the moment, think I've managed to piss someone off but I can't imagine how or why and it's really bothering me.

Not a particularly good day. Flexi balance improving, should have a couple of hours of credit after being negative since about November.

Tired, depressed and not motivated to do anything about weight, fitness, work, or anything really. No point.

Chameleon paint 2

OK, forget what I said about the chameleon paint being subtle. After a few more coats were applied the effect was much more pronounced. I fucked up a little though by bringing it in from the shed too soon after applying the last coat, and it got some condensation on it which made it a bit misty. It had dried by this evening though and so I was able to give it a bit of a polish and that made it look better. Started putting the clear coat on and it looks really nice, hopefully it will dry like that without too much hassle. Quite amazed that it came out so well.

I wish I'd kept some of the paint aside and done the headstock of the neck at the same time but I can always do that in the future. I'm not sure the neck is going to look quite right on it as it has a maple fingerboard but it's the only one I have spare and I can't afford to buy a new one for it.

Work improved slightly today so that was good.

Edit: Had a good look at the neck I was going to use and it's actually got issues so will look into a replacement next payday. Gives it plenty of time for the clearcoat to dry anyway.

Chameleon paint

Work is a bit of a nightmare at the moment. If it's a case of sink or swim I'm definitely floundering at the moment.

The black coat on the bass body had dried when I got home so started putting on the chameleon paint layer. The effect is quite subtle but it looks really nice. Should be great when it's all put together. I've got all the parts for it already except the electronics and pickup. To make life easier it's going to have an active EMG pickup and circuit which comes all prewired although it'll be a bit pricey. Definitely a case of making sure it plays well before actually ordering the electronics.

As the paint looks like it's going to be a success, I need to look into getting the doubleneck done. The big downside is of course taking the whole damn thing apart again, which will be a bit of a pain. Also I need to order more paint as it will take more than a normal body and I can't afford to do it this month so I'll have to see how that goes.

Going to watch a film in a minute, just not sure which.

Geeky weekend

Friday evening was spent going to Wrexham to watch the rugby league game against Leeds. I'm not familiar with league but it's easier to follow and I actually found the game quite enjoyable. What was less enjoyable was the atmosphere of the crowd, it was much more akin to a football crowd and the chanting and thumping and general abuse directed at the referee and teams was not fun at all. It kind of put me off the whole league experience really.

Yesterday was a peculiar day, spent much of it with a frustrating and annoying pain in my chest which I couldn't identify. It had been building up a bit on Friday but got worse yesterday. I was naturally a bit concerned but all the guides said that if it was anything heart or lung related I would have other symptoms. So I hoped it was a pulled muscle or something and let it be, and today it has gone, so hopefully that's all it was.

Went to Mold to the music shops and picked up a bass effects unit. I've wanted one for ages and the one I bought was reasonably cheap. It's got some interesting sounds and can play drum loops too, which is ideal. I've hooked up all the basses to it and got some great sounds but the best was undoubtedly the fretless neck on the doubleneck. Absolutely awesome with a bit of overdrive and flanger.

The car journey also let me try out the new Shuffle - works as expected and the design makes it easier to use one handed without looking in the car, so that's perfect. Not sure what to do with the old one but if nothing else it can be used as a 1gb pendrive.

Today was spent watching yet more Battlestar Galactica and putting the black base coat on the experimental paint bass. The paint was so horrible that I had to take the body out to the shed to spray it as the fumes were unbearable and I had to leave it out there for some time before bringing it back into the house to dry. It looks OK so far, although the primer wasn't all that smooth even after going over it with wire wool to get rid of the worst parts. From what I read though a slightly rough finish works better with the chameleon paint so we'll see how it goes.

Also rebuilt my old Toughbook CF-M34, which I've had for a few years. It's a tiny little laptop but fully ruggedised. It has humble specs, being a PIII 400mhz with upgraded 256mb RAM and a 40gb hard drive. However, it is a surprisingly usable machine and is appealingly cute, if that makes sense. I put Windows 2000 on it as previous experiments with XP and Linux didn't work very well and 2000 is the one version that seems to allow everything to work.

Things like Firefox and other apps are surprisingly usable on it, and I finally got the touchscreen working after a lot of fiddling around with the drivers. The modern equivalent of the CF-M34 is the CF-18 and CF-19, which are about the same size but have tablet functionality. The older ones are becoming cheap but not quite cheap enough yet. I'd love to get one though - these rugged little machines are ideal for travelling.

Back to work tomorrow, hope it lets up a bit after last week, it was a bit of a nightmare to be honest.

Up to Carpe Jugulum in the Discworld reread. Enjoying them so far, it's been so long since I read most of them that there's new stuff each time.

Hacked off

I admit this is coming from someone who has never smoked but I can't understand how a woman, who is 72 years old, obese, borderline diabetic, has high blood pressure, never exercises and has to take dozens of pills every morning can't see that smoking is a really stupid thing to do. Also the house stinks of it and I've got a cough that won't go away.

It's times like this I wish I hadn't fucked up so badly and had my own place, preferably far away.

Random

My cousin's liver, blood and bone tests came back clear, so that's good news, but she's still going to have to have the masectomy.

Apple's released the iPad, which is a gigantic letdown in my opinion. Rather than an Atom based Mac capable of running OS X or Windows 7 with a multi-touch display, it's just a giant iPod touch, nothing more. Same platform, same software, same limitations and iTunes lockdown. I just don't really see the point of it. Steve Jobs did his best, but it just seems to be a solution in search of problem. Oh well, I'm sure it will sell and there'll be plenty of copycat products from everyone else.

Watched some more Battlestar Galactica. Season 2 is pretty good so far, and one thing I like about it is that it doesn't shy away from some quite gritty storylines. Good stuff.

Found a cheap iPod Shuffle 2nd generation for the car. Belkin make an adapter for the newest one that gives it a normal headphone socket and the buttons to control it but I think the whole idea of it is just so stupid I can't make myself buy one. The 2nd gen one will be fine for what I need it for.

Facebook is really flaky recently, I've lost count of the 'Ooops, something went wrong' messages I've had over the last week or so.

Feeling really tired today, was supposed to be going to the gym this evening but need to sort out a new programme and just didn't really feel up to it.

Need to practise German more, been letting it slip recently.

Things can change in an instant

Wow, how things can suddenly change. Found out yesterday that my cousin who I went to Berlin with has breast cancer, and the Unix guy in work is off sick for three weeks. My cousin is going in for tests for the next day or so and then gets the results on Friday. It's definitely going to need a masectomy though - what a nightmare. After the surgery it's going to mean six weeks of convalescence and she's not going to be able to do much at all during that time.

The Unix guy was in the middle of sorting out the high school server backups, quite a large and urgent project as the old servers need to be backed up, but at the same time, are about to be replaced with new ones. I've been drafted in to help with that. Also three of the virtual Unix machines are playing up since a power cut over the weekend, and I can't work out why. Fortunately they are only two test machines but it's a pain not knowing what the problem is. I'm going to dig out my home AIX machine to play with networking, but if it's a problem with the hypervisor or something I can't test that on it.

Fun weekend

Saturday consisted of spending much of the day round at my Dad's, as my cousin was visiting. We set him off on the Pier-to-Pier 10k from Llandudno to Colwyn Bay with a lot of other nutters. To be honest, I'd love to be able to something like that but I'm just not built to be a runner. The evening was spent with Andy and Maz, eating a rather delicious curry with suitable accessories, ice cream, and watching Charlie Brooker and some of those police chase programs, good fun.

Today was spent getting back into Battlestar Galactica Season 2 with a vengeance after a long break since about November or so, while in between episodes going to put coats of primer on the bass body being used in the great paint experiment. I put several coats of primer on it before the can ran out and it looks OK. It'll need some smoothing before I start putting the chameleon paint on it. There's three cans for that, a black base coat, the colour coat and the clear coat. I hope there's going to be enough - I think I'll need two complete sets of it if i'm going to do the double neck in it. The plan is to build the experimental body into a working bass even if the paint doesn't work out, to try out active EMG electronics. This is the first time I've tried to paint a bass body properly without just splurging paint all over it in a great mess so we'll see how it goes.

Watched six episodes of BSG and it's really rather good and surprisingly easy to get back into after the long break. I was quite surprised when it was first broadcast and people said it was good, but I've really enjoyed it.

The naff car stereo is still working OK and the overly bright display was cured by putting parcel tape over it. Makes it look rather shit in the daylight but since I'm just using the Aux input it doesn't display anything useful anyway. Also replaced the door card but still can't work out what happened to the speaker wiring - looks like someone just ripped the speaker out, wiring and all. It's possible to get a complete new wiring loom for the door but installing it would be rather a hassle. Bah. Annoyingly my faithful iPod Shuffle has developed an annoying fault with the headphone socket where the plug has to be pulled slightly out to get a proper signal. It's getting on for five years old now though, so it's done quite well. Still holds a good charge too, so it's frustrating that what is probably quite a simple fault can't be repaired.

Ups and downs

A weird week of ups and downs, flitting from wild optimism and hope to downright bitterness and depression. Today was the tipping point, had a surprisingly good day in work, and then decided to go to badminton, which was absolutely brilliant.

There were only 10 there so I had several games with the same three guys, and we didn't swap sides or anything. The guy I was playing with has a style that somehow works with mine and we did quite well. Absolutely shattered now and I can feel the ache in my right arm. I haven't been since about the end of November so I was quite pleased at how well I played. Feeling more motivated now to get some decent exercise.

Decided I needed a car stereo with aux in so ended up getting one off a guy in work. It's a bit of a silly one and quite naff really, but it has a good sound and plenty of inputs and works well. The only hassle is that it's stupidly bright when it's dark which is really distracting.

Cars, Apple, everything, people suck

Focus is misfiring and the temperature gauge isn't reading correctly.

Apple make very pretty things but they are truly the epitome of the mindset where if it breaks, buy a new one, which I really despise. I've genuinely had it with Apple now, I just can't be fucked with that mindset and the elitist crap any more. This all came about because I picked up an iPod mini to use in the car, and changing the battery was an unnecessarily difficult and tedious experience and is pretty much impossible to do without damaging the case.

Oh well. I suppose I'm fairly unusual in that I like to tinker and repair things, every one of my main computers was a discarded faulty unit which I've repaired. This evening I'm going to try the copper sheet mod on the Precision M65 to see if that helps the GPU cooling. Cos that's just how great my life is. Woo fucking hoo.

Times change, people change, sometimes it can be a real fucking bitch when you realise suddenly just how much.

Fleh

A fairly productive day in work, and for once I didn't go home in a towering rage. It's going to be a good long while of early starts though, what with illness in December and then the weather, my flexi balance is about minus 9 hours which is a real pain.

Went to the gym after work, which was OK. It's going to take some getting used to and I think I'm probably going to start heading there in the evening rather than directly after work. Did have quite a healthy food day though, got low fat chicken and fruit and stuff for lunch and successfully avoided the evil vending machine and drank only water. Not sure if it's that but I feel much better this evening after all the weeks of eating crap.

Setting up an Acer laptop for someone, and the amount of shite preinstalled by Acer was ridiculous. It has a dual-core Pentium with 4gb RAM, running Windows 7 and out of the box it was hobbled by the sheer amount of crap installed. After clearing it out, it runs a lot better.

My D630 which now has the boxed copy of Windows 7 on it was being a pain, saying the product code was incorrect for ages and that I'd have to call Microsoft to sort it out. Then today, after the activation period expired, it activated perfectly. What the hell? That's one nice thing about basically every other OS, none of this activation crap.

Bleurgh

One of those days, busy, but dull, and not very productive.

Up to Jingo in the Discworld marathon, having just read Hogfather. That's one of the best ones as it some of the best scenes for Death, the Wizards and Hex, and it's just really good.

Found a brilliant German phrase: 'Er macht einen Donnerschlag aus einem Furz'. Translates as 'He's making a thunderclap out of a fart', or making a mountain out of a molehill.

Back to normality, sort of

Last night was Maz's birthday bash, basically consisting of a mini pub crawl around Denbigh. It was a good evening all round, the only let down being the chippy closing early and Andy's awkward neighbours blocking my car in.

The snow has pretty much melted overnight, a huge relief. Spent most of the day at my Dad's in the house that they have now moved back to, but has been much altered so it's not really the same. Took the crap Ford stereo out of the Focus and fitted my ancient Sony one in using a cheap adapter. It's ten years old, and was originally bought to fit into my Fiat Cinquecento but after that it was moved into several cars before spending several years in Rob's old 205. Annoyingly it doesn't like CD-RWs, which is a bit of a pain.

Still need to fix the door, the local scrappy had a door card but it was the wrong colour, so I've ordered one off (inevitably) Ebay.

After that, came home and found the body for the paint experiment bass had arrived. Attempted to fit a neck to it, unwisely as I was feeling tired and quick to anger, so I had to give up as it was being remarkably awkward. I have however got hopefully all the stuff I need, such as various grades of sandpaper, primer, etc. It's going to be a dismal failure, but hey.

Got the new tube of Arctic Silver 5 for the Precision M65, but still awaiting the copper sheet so I can try the method of putting a copper shim between the GPU and heatsink to improve the heat transfer, to see if that stop the thermal shutdowns it suffers from if the GPU overheats.

In a weird state of mind, fluctuating between optimism and hope and depression. It's not good.

Bah

Got the car up to the track but on the way pulled too hard on the door and it fell to bits so it needs a new interior panel. Bah.

We have water

It has thawed slightly, but the track is still impassable. The water has finally unfrozen though, although I took a towel and shampoo in and made use of the shower in County Hall, which is a bit of a mystery as to why it's there at all. It worked though.

Didn't go to badminton tonight but was tempted. Got to start exercising soon, it's been really bad recently.

Hate snow

Snowed all day. Didn't stick at work but it had at home. Tired of it now.

Not much else to report, just been a dull day at work and a lazy pointless evening.

Smell

Weather not improving. Snow on track unchanged although most roads are clear now. Very windy today, not helping matters.

Had epic lunch in work, a panini from the deli with brie, cranberry and salami. Absolutely stunning.

Up to Hogfather in the Discworld reread, what a great book. I'd forgotten how good it was. I hated the TV versions they did of that and the Colour of Magic though, what a load of crap they were. Mind you I fully admit I've read the Discworld books so many times that I have my own very definite ideas about what it should look like. Same with Lord of the Rings, although that was better. Also David Jason as Rincewind? Really? That really didn't sit right with me.

Tired. Bored. Pissed off at being stuck at home without water. Need a shower.

German is complicated but fun.

Have ordered another of the bodies that the double neck was made of. I've got enough spare parts to build it up into a complete bass, so I'm going to follow the exact process I did to build the doubleneck and then strip it back down and paint the body, to see if I can do it decently. If all goes well, will order more of the paint and do the doubleneck body. Not particularly looking forward to pulling it to bits again but it will need some sort of finish on the body eventually.

Need to list more crap on Ebay but don't want to until the weather has sorted out in case it cocks up postage. Boo.

Not convinced this Precision M65 is quite happy yet. The Nvidia GPU still gets very hot if it's asked to do too much. Tempted to try the copper mod, where a small shim of copper is placed between the heatsink and the top of the chip to make better contact and improve heat transfer. Might be worth a go as I think the heatsink wasn't making proper contact with the chip, causing the original thermal shutdown issues, and the thermal paste I added (Arctic Silver 5) is helping but it's not quite right. Either that or get a motherboard from the Precision M4300 which has the Santa Rosa chipset and can handle 4gb RAM properly. The 32gb OCZ SSD is working OK though, not the fastest SSD around but it seems quite responsive and snappy. Still not quite the time for SSD yet, give it another year or so.

Face itching, haven't shaved in ages due to lack of water.

A pointless day

Snow still here. No need to go out, so didn't. Spent the day mostly in front of the 360. Played through the rest of Halo 3, except for the STUPID bit in the Flood ship, and did a bit on more on GTA Gay Tony. Watched Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run) as well, which is a great film and was a good way to try and pick up some more German. Also ate like crap and smell because I've not been able to have a shower in ages, although I've made sure there's enough water to have one tomorrow morning.

Looked back at a few things and it's scary how much time has passed. I've been working at the council for five years, for example. It's true what they say, time passes faster as you get older.

Gah

Snow still here. Had to go into town to get urgently needed supplies, not fun as Morrisons was heaving. Then had to carry it all up the track. Living off convenience food at the moment as trying to generate less washing up due to no water. Flushing toilet with buckets from the spring outside and haven't showered in days. Had enough now. Diet and exercise appalling. Have put new year resolutions on hold until weather sorts itself out.

Didn't do much else today. Watched District 9 on DVD, quite enjoyed it. Played through quite a lot of Halo 3 due to boredom. Reasonably fun but it still seems to me that the Master Chief feels so slow to get around, particularly outside.

Got some chameleon flip paint off Ebay, consists of base coat, colour coat and clear coat. Still need to get decent sandpaper and some primer though. I was going to do a laptop in it but I'm thinking about getting another of the cheap bodies I made the doubleneck out of, and painting that in it. Then if that works, do the doubleneck body. I'm still quite amazed at how well the doubleneck actually turned out, given that it was done on the cheap. It would be nice to do one with a custom shaped body to make it smaller and more ergonomic, but the problem is getting hold of a slab of wood big enough.

WiBrain

It has a stupid name, looks like an 80's reject and is unspeakably hideous, but somehow this UMPC looks strangely compelling...

Snow still not melting, also I'm a fat bastard

Snow situation unchanged. Stressful day on helpdesk, took 20 minutes to sort out the 1500 or so messages in my inbox into the appropriate folders and then found 10 calls had suddenly appeared.

Fat lunch, wanted to go to the new chip shop in Denbigh but it was closed. Ended up going to the Chinese instead, and had chip and onion rings with sweet and sour sauce. Except I didn't appreciate the scale of the onion rings - they were gigantic, about the size of an average saucer, and there were six of them. Very nice though. Also been naughty and had some full-fat Coke.

Really wanted to go to badminton tonight but I can't face the track twice again, especially not in the dark. Just had to walk up it with two heavy bags of shopping - not fun. Not sure what to do instead.

Snow snow go away

Snow not melted at all. Car completely frozen this morning, inside and out.

Had one of those moments when I said I hadn't seen something to be greeted with gasps of horror and exclamations of 'What?!'. In this case it was the original Planet of the Apes. So I've now seen it. Pretty good I thought.

Snow and cold and snow and cold

New Year's Resolution #98: Update this thing more often.

Christmas was OK, split the day between the parents as usual. Got the soldering iron I needed. New Year's Eve was good, spent at Em's parents with the usual gang. Good time had by all, but I felt slightly odd that evening and the next few days confirmed why as I came down with a cough and a head full of snot.

It's been snowy and cold for a number of days now, leading to yet more traipsing up and down the track. We had to leave work early yesterday due to snow and while I thought I had a rough time, it was nothing compared to people's experiences in apparently more civilised areas. I was able to make it to work today, although the roads were pretty bad with a layer of slippery slushy stuff. The Focus had previously shown itself to be pathetic in snow, sliding all over the place with no grip at all. Fortunately it had four new tyres on Monday and they've made a massive difference to how it handles in difficult conditions. It's still no 4x4 though, and this time of year I really miss the Discovery.

Not much else to report really. Difficult month financially, need to put some more stuff on Ebay and get rid of more crap. Eaten badly the last couple of days after a good start on Monday. When you have to carry it half a mile up the track and have limited water supplies it's best to get easy, convenient food that doesn't need too much cooking and doesn't generate too much washing up.

The double neck is basically done at last, all wired up with the help of a nice diagram and the new soldering iron. It does however need new pickups. The ones in it are cheap, and one is much louder than the other. Come next payday I'll get a matched pair and install them. After that the only thing left is to put a finish of some kind on the body and shield the cavities.

Need to stop getting computer and bass stuff I don't need. If my bass and computing needs can't be met by six laptops and four basses (including the doubleneck), then that's just stupid. Also the retro computing stuff needs to go. I'm not really fussed any more about collecting it and it never gets used. Interesting item I did get recently though is a 32gb OCZ SSD which went into one of the Dells. It's running Windows 7 at the moment and it's pretty responsive. Can't wait until SSDs finally become mainstream.

Saw Avatar in 3D. Unoriginal plot and characters, but the CGI was absolutely amazing, and it's very well made. I liked the 3D but would probably have enjoyed the film just as much without it to be honest. Definitely one to watch in the cinema though. That night was the busiest I've ever seen the Llandudno cinema, and Will and I had to go to a later showing than we had planned. We subsequently found that Tesco is very boring.

Been playing the Sims 3 a fair bit. It's not bad, much like the previous games but with a few things added in. I'm finding it much more fun to have insane or evil Sims, which have far more interesting quirks and do quite peculiar things if left to their own devices. It still lets you do fun things like wall up neighbours and stuff like that, which is good, and you can also bring people back as ghosts. I've got a married couple where one is living and the other a ghost, which is quite weird.

Wasn't too convinced by the end of Gavin and Stacey to be honest, or the whole third series really. Just wasn't the same as the first or second series. Also wasn't too convinced by the Doctor Who special.

Trying to approach the new decade with optimism and hope about many things, not entirely sure how successful I'll be. Sorting out my finances is still the thing I really want to do, but might take some time. Really need to get going to the gym properly, first was foiled by illness in December and now because of the wretched snow.

Up to Feet of Clay in the epic Discworld reread marathon. One of the ones I really enjoyed, probably because of the similarity of the golems to robots. Also got another German book and a decent dictionary to try and help learn some more. I've also built a Latitude D800 out of parts and it's running Windows Vista in German, which is fun. It's a nice machine, but it has a 1920x1200 15" display, which is ridiculous really. Running at the native resolution, things are absolutely tiny, which is understandable given that 24" monitors typically run at that resolution.

Current music is the album Cult by Apocalyptica. Stunning music. Just wish I could listen to it in the car, but the stereo died the other day and wouldn't read any CDs, not even pressed ones. What a pain. I've got a spare stereo, but I need a fascia adapter and cables, as Ford use a weird size.

Shaved my head again. I don't do it very often but it's nice when it's freshly done, all smooth. Shame it grows back so quickly.

Computers and random shite

Not much to report really. Cold though as there's a big hole in my roof where a builder is repairing it after it leaked a lot. It's been doing it for years where it meets the chimney.

Sold a lot more crap on Ebay and reshuffled my computers again. My main machine is now a Dell Latitude D630 with a 2ghz Core 2 Duo and 4gb RAM. Still using the Inspiron 9400 for games and things that need a graphics card. The Eee 900 and the Dell Mini 9 are gone, never used them as the keyboards were crap. The desktop PC I built a while back is going too, I find laptops much more suitable. There's also a Latitude D800 with a 1920x1200 display being gradually rebuilt and a Precision M65 with a random shutdown issue.

So yeah, Dell stuff. I know the stories about Dell, and I used to be a hater. But my rationale is that I like tinkering with machines, stripping them down and rebuilding them, and Dell stuff is plentiful and cheap. The consumer stuff is a bit crap but the business machines are much better and those are what I get. It does what I need it to, and when Windows pisses me off I can switch to Linux.

I did consider a MacBook but they hold their prices too well, and I can't bring myself to buy a machine that would cost a lot more, probably have inferior hardware, and a smaller glossy screen. I mean people are still paying £200 for old iBooks with 600mhz processors, which seems ludicrous to me. Yeah, there's the nice feeling that comes with owning an Apple machine, seeing how beautifully it's designed and thought out but that's not enough any more. Reliability? Yeah, well, my old iMac ran hot and my iBook had a hard drive failure. Also, I'm really not liking the way modern Apple stuff tends to be designed as sealed units, for example iPods and the MacBook Air.

Of course I'm approaching this with my probably rather specialist 'buy broken ones and make a working machine out of them' approach but it works for me. Buying a Latitude with a faulty motherboard and getting a new motherboard and rebuilding it is probably a silly way to get a laptop but I enjoy the challenge especially if it can be upgraded and hot-rodded at the same time.

Other things, the Focus is still leaking water in, but I think I know where, just need to have a look at it, and it needs a set of tyres. Work is meh, life in general a bit depressing. Despite feeling a lot better, haven't been to the gym properly yet, and when I played badminton last night it nearly killed me, so not quite there yet. Got bollocked by the dentist again for the state of my gums today, thought I was brushing right but apparently not.

Just finished watching Gavin and Stacey all the way through on DVD, thought I was going to hate it but it's actually pretty good, well written.

Sick of Christmas already, bah humbug.

Sod it all.

Bad week. Feel rough, work bad, car needs work, etc, etc. Can't play badminton or go to the gym due to looking after the dog. Tired and listless due to lack of sleep.

Ebay, car woes and work

Not a good week in work for various reasons, including a total screwup by payroll that saw everyone being paid a day late. Not good at all. Many people caught out by it. There's a new head of the department starting soon, which may or may not be a good thing. Interesting times ahead.

Sold a few more things on Ebay, including the Merc, which should be going today if the buyer can find the place. The cash is going towards the bits that the Focus needs, the blowing exhaust, a battery, the noise from the suspension and four new tyres - the ones on it are shit and the fronts are the wrong size.

One thing that I don't like about the Focus is that the little 14" wheels, which look too small and crap. I saw a nice set of 16" Mondeo wheels which would fit that had been painted anthracite grey which would have looked very nice on it, but no chance for such frivolous things for the forseeable future.

The house is going to have some work done this coming week, due to roof leaks. The useless chimney on one end is coming off and the roof extended over where it was. The weather has been really stupid recently but not as bad as some places on the news.

Typing this on my Dell Mini 9 which is a great little machine with only two flaws, the glossy screen, and a rather stupidly designed keyboard. It was recently treated to an SSD upgrade to 16gb which allowed it to run Windows 7 but it's currently on Ubuntu 9.10 which runs very well on it. It originally shipped with Windows XP.

Hips, Berlin, burly men with odd shaped balls, cars, and Ebay

Really got out of the habit of updating this thing in the last few months.

Finally know what is wrong with my hips, although it's not a problem as such. The physio reckons I've got hyper-mobile hip joints which means certain muscles in that area have to work harder than usual, hence the pain if I walk a long distance. Physio isn't the answer, instead he said I need to go to the gym and build up core muscle in that area. So I've signed up for the local gym, as it's a good reason to go and goodness knows I need to do something about my weight. When I used to go to the gym back in 2001 my weight was about 12 stone, now it's over 14.

Went back to Berlin again at the end of October with my cousin, had a great time. The weather was a bit grey and cold, and the first two days were rather dismal, but we still had a good time. The skies cleared on the third day so we finally got a chance to head up to the top of the Fernsehturm and after that the weather stayed clear, just rather cold. Also did a little bit of geocaching, only got two, but it's nice to have some international ones in my list. Picked up a little bit more German, which is always interesting. The issues with the S-bahn seemed to be under control while we were there and on one day we just wanted to sit down for a while so we got on an S-bahn train going around the Ringbahn, and did a complete loop. It took about an hour and was quite interesting. Probably going back at the end of March as my cousin and brother want to do the Berlin half-marathon. It would be nice if I could persuade my Dad to come but I don't think he will.

The weekend just gone was off to Cardiff for the Wales/New Zealand rugby game, which was great. We all piled into Rob's car and drove down on the Saturday morning. The trip was relatively uneventful except for hotel car park when a speedbump snapped the exhaust. The game was pretty good and this time we went back to Cardiff Bay rather than go into town and squidge into a pub with thousands of other people. This worked out quite well as we had a relaxed and leisurely meal in Chiquito before retiring. The next day the RAC put a temporary fix on the exhaust and we had a brief wander around the town before heading back.

Not much else to report. After I did the pickguards for the doubleneck, had a go at wiring it, but got stuck. Need to have another go after a nice guy on a bass forum drew me a diagram on how to wire the switch to select between the pickups. Once that's working, it'll need a finish on the body. I'm still planning on putting a new neck on my main Squier Jazz Bass and moving the neck off that to the lower position on the doubleneck as it will match the upper one more and make it look and feel better to play. Was watching a nice neck off a Squier 70's Jazz Bass with blocks and binding on Ebay but it went for too much so the plan now is to get a new Fender licensed Mighty Mite neck as they are affordable but really good for the price. Not sure when I can afford it though.

Up to Reaper Man in the epic Discworld reread marathon, which is quite a good one. Moving Pictures was also decent and I'd forgotten how good Guards! Guards! was.

Got a cold, was sent home from work early yesterday and didn't go in today. It's been the coughing stage today so hopefully will be OK tomorrow. Very frustrating as I was supposed to have the induction in the gym last night and my performance appraisal today.

The Focus is still going OK and gets about 380-400 miles to a full tank of fuel, which isn't too bad. I really wanted a diesel but the petrol one was much nicer overall to drive, not least because the diesel engine was an old-fashioned engine which was really noisy. It has a nice gearshift which has helped as I really have grown fond of automatics. There are automatic Focuses but they aren't very common and there weren't any around at a price I could afford. I did test drive a cheap Astra 1.4 auto but the gearbox was knackered.

The exhaust started blowing last week though - what the fuck is it with me and exhausts?! There's a few other things I need to sort too, a sidelight bulb, the cigarette lighter won't power the satnav and one of the rear tyres looks like a really shitty remould, and I don't do those. The AX had remoulds on the front when I got it and after the tread started to come off one when I was driving, I decided that I don't like them. All will have to wait till payday though.

The track has had the middle scraped off, which has allowed me to bring the Pimpmobile II up to the house, but that quickly showed another reason why I can't keep it. It's absolutely hopeless up there. It can't cope with mud at all and just ends up spinning its wheels pointlessly during the most simple of maneuvers. Just turning it round was a nightmare and at one point I genuinely thought it was irretrievably stuck in the most awkward place possible. My old W123 coped much better, it had much higher ground clearance and I think its manual gearbox helped.

Got the new GTA, Stories from Liberty City. I've already played The Lost and Damned, but the new one, The Ballad of Gay Tony, is more fun, feeling more like the old Vice City and San Andreas days. Done a few missions in it, and it's quite interesting, though some can be frustrating as always. It's hard to adapt back to the GTA way of playing sometimes.

Stuck more things on Ebay, the Eee PC 900, which I don't use any more, and my small collection of WonderSwan stuff. Wasn't expecting much from the WonderSwan auction but there's 5 people watching it, so who knows. The Pimpmobile is back on there too, it really needs to go.

Feh

Car is OK, more economical and nice to drive, but doesn't feel as planted on the road, particular at motorway speeds.

Double neck coming along but having problems with wiring. Hate cutting pickguards too. Next time I'll pay someone to building the fucking thing.

Installed final version of Windows 7 on PC, seems OK. Running 64-bit version with 4gb RAM, runs really well. Awaiting Ubuntu 9.10 so I can dual-boot.

New Rammstein album is really good.

Dispirited and pissed off.

Out with the old, in with the new

The beast awakens

Got the now double neck body back, and wow, it's amazing. The guy did such a good job at joining the two bodies. I've so far attached the necks and installed the bridges and strung it up for the first time. It's big, very big, but definitely quite playable. I even installed strap buttons to see how it felt on a strap and it's actually not bad at all.

It needs a good setup, the electrics, and then some sort of finish applied to the body but so far it's looking pretty good.

Riding along in my automobile

So, the Pimpmobile II had the exahust sorted and goes better now. It's still OK except now the passenger side front window has gone as well. It still works but judders at the top and makes loud noises so there's obviously something amiss.

Work has been hell on toast the last couple of weeks and that's all I need to say about that.

Last weekend was spent doing some more geocaching and things. This weekend I headed up to see my cousin who lives in Kirkham near Preston. She moved into a new house a few months ago and it's really nice, a small bungalow that is ideal for her. We went out for a nice long walk in the afternoon and took in some geocaches and saw Kirkham and the surrounding countryside. It's quite a nice place. That evening we had a really nice Italian meal.

Today I drove back down from Kirkham and met up with the usual gang for another walk which yes, included some geocaches. This was less successful as it was around Rhyl and it just confirmed that it is a complete dive. After we got back it was epic Chinese meal takeaway time before everyone headed off.

Can't wait for Berlin at the end of the month. Sometimes it's just so damned tempting to book a one-way ticket...

Started a new bass project, a double neck. Got two cheap Precision bass style bodies off Ebay which are currently with a friendly neighbourhood carpenter being cut into pieces and glued together. I've already got most of the parts including the two necks, one fretted, one fretless. I need a pickup for one of the necks and the various parts to wire it up but I'm not too fussed about that until the body and necks are mated together. It's definitely going to be big, but as the bodies are light bassword, it shouldn't be outrageously heavy.

Work tomorrow. Argh.

Heh

The grace and dignity of the Pimpmobile II is somewhat ruined when the exhaust sounds like someone shaking coins in a tin can when you accelerate.

Got rid of lots of stuff and feel good about it, lots more to go yet though.

Cars and cats

So, the Pimpmobile's rattles and sounds were getting a bit much and I took it to a local garage to get it up on the ramp to see what was going on. I already knew the rear heat shield was loose and they said it wasn't needed and ripped it off. Then they gave the catalytic converters a thump and all became clear - they are ancient, and basically completely fubared. The internal components of the cats are loose and rattling, hence all the peculiar sounds and the loud clacking noise when accelerating hard. They quoted £135 for a new front pipe and cats which is actually pretty good. Going to get it done as it's really bloody annoying. Also some git has scraped the passenger side rear door and arch, which is annoying. Also got a rear light to replace the broken one.

Traingasm and stuff

Weekend was good. One of the now traditional Chinese/Wii night meetups with the people from the company I used to work for. The guy who normally hosts it has moved to Crewe so we ended up going there and staying the night. Their house is in the middle of a load of identical terraces but it's really nice inside, with nice high ceilings and big windows making the rooms feel airy.

It was a good day on Saturday, we got there early enough to go over to the Crewe Heritage Centre with lots of old trains. It was really good, and it was great to see the APT prototype, looking much better with a nice fresh coat of paint. There were lots of old trains and in a surprising move in this day and age, no signs saying keep off so we quite happily examined old steam and diesel engines. We also found a set of points that we tried out, unfortunately after setting them to the other direction, the lever suddenly stopped working and flopped pointlessly back and forth, so we beat a hasty retreat from there. Don't think they used them much though.

The evening was spent in the usual way, plenty of food, Wii action and general nonsense. The next morning everyone awoke in various states of tiredness but were soon brought awake by copious amounts of bacon, sausage, egg and crumpets.

Work wasn't good today, one of those days where everything I touched seem to turn to disaster. I had to move some data and phone points and all was going fine when until I suddenly realised I had six phone cables hanging out disconnected and had no idea which went where. Embarassing as I had to then call someone from each line so I could find out what number it was. Fortunately I hadn't unplugged anything crucial so it wasn't too bad.

Ever since Denbigh badminton started, my shoulder has been giving me pain and it's proving very irritating. I can feel the muscle in my shoulder that is the problem and if I lift my arm in a certain way it's really painful.

Got a cheapo GPS and did my first geocache on Friday. It was good fun and took me down a road not far from my house that I've very rarely been down, and it turned out there was a lot of interesting and lovely scenery, a friendly horse and some very nice views down the Vale of Clwyd.

Still loving the 6 string bass. I don't know why but it really feels easy and natural to play, something about the shape of the neck just feels right. It's wide but I can reach all the strings no problem. I have noticed that I don't use the highest string much, if at all, but it still feels more natural to play than the 5 string I had a couple of years ago.

Sold a lot of stuff. The white Flying V bass has gone, two Nokia tablets, the Precision workstation and the DSi. Only now do I look back at the last decade or so and realise how pointlessly materialistic my outlook on life was. Problem is I'm not sure how to move on, change things, before it's too late.

Poo.

This is probably my most listened track at the moment: Alkohol by Eisbrecher. They're sort of like Rammstein but with electronic stuff mixed in. One nice thing is they put translations of the lyrics on the website. I think I actually prefer Eisbrecher over Rammstein but the stuff I've heard from the forthcoming Rammstein album sounds pretty good.

Walkies

Last week was almost entirely not memorable. The weekend was good, Saturday was spent out with some work colleagues doing some geocaching which they are really into. It was a great walk, looping around the Dyserth/Meliden/Prestatyn area. We saw loads of things I had never realised were there and found loads of caches. It was really interesting.

The evening was spent watching Iron Man round at Will's with copious amounts of pizza and snacks, which was good. I really like Iron Man. I'm not familiar with the original comic but it's one of the better superhero movies out there.

Sunday was spent doing the beat the bounds in St Asaph which was OK other than the route taking in a large number of decidedly dog-unfriendly stiles so we had to lift and manhandle the poor dog over them. Fortunately he's a patient creature and simply looked resigned to his fate as he was hoisted over.

Silence

I swapped out the PSU in the Atom for an older one that draws air out of the case and out of the back and has a control to set the fan speed. As the Atom runs so cool it doesn't need any other fans and it's possible to set the speed of the PSU fans to the lowest setting. It now runs in almost blissful silence, which is nice. The chipset heatsink has a little fan attached which whines a bit but I'm not sure if disconnecting that would be a good idea. Anyway it's still better than the previous PSU, a cheapo one that was annoyingly loud.

The trailer is out for the next GTA IV pack, and if it lives up to the trailer at all, this is what I wanted GTA IV to be like in the first place.

PCs are fun to build

Not much going on recently other than an attempt to rationalise my computer setup. I had an urge to build a PC so I ended up getting some parts to put into a battered but working case I had. A short shopping spree later and I had an Asus motherboard, an AMD Phenom x3 triple core processor, 4gb RAM and a new hard drive, which I cheerfully put into the battered case. A spanner was thrown in the works by the power supply not having SATA connectors so I was unable to use the new hard drive. So I gave in and bought a new shiny case which had a power supply in it. It's a pretty quick machine, even using the onboard graphics chip. At the moment it's running the RC version of Windows 7 which installed without needing any additional drivers, it got them all by itself.

It then dawned on me that I could replace the Dell Precision 450 that has been running as a VMware ESXi server for the past year or so. Because of the hassle of shutting down the four or five virtual machines that it constantly ran, I tended to leave it on all the time, not ideal as it's quite a big power hungry machine. I ended up getting another case and installing an ASRock Atom motherboard. The Atom is more commonly seen in netbooks but this motherboard has the dual-core Atom 330. Due to funds running low I had to put 2gb of the RAM from the Phenom into it and used a spare 120gb laptop SATA hard drive to get it up and running. At first it didn't look like ESXi was going to like the Atom as it kept dying with the PSoD (Purple Screen of Death) as soon as there was anything running with any load. Uncertain as to the cause, I tried turning off Hyperthreading in the BIOS and it's been stable ever since. It's currently running a single FreeNAS VM with a wodge of disk space as a network store.

The plan now is to get some faster RAM for the Phenom motherboard, and transfer the remaining 2gb to the Atom board. Then get a better power supply and a proper graphics card for the Phenom and a network card for the Atom that will let it run ESXi 4 which is 64-bit, and perhaps a bigger hard drive.

Weekend

It's been a fairly busy week. Yesterday it was the Rhuddlan badminton club meal, which was in a Chinese restaurant this time. The food there is excellent, so that was good. I've pretty much undone the exercise I've done this week in one go as I had sweet and sour crispy chicken followed by a huge piece of chocolate fudge cake. Then today was an epic fail too as it was chips again for lunch, second Friday in a row and once again the fire alarm got stuck on during the midday test so again it was seething hoardes of confusion.

Not sure what I'm doing this weekend, everyone seems to be off doing things so I'll probably take the chance to see my Dad tomorrow and get some more tidying out of the way.

Got the latest Eisbrecher album, Sunde, which is really good. Well, if you like that sort of thing at least. I really liked their first two albums, and this is just as good. It's also quite appropriate for the hulking beast of German engineering that is the Pimpmobile II. Any album that includes a track that starts 'This...is...DEUTSCH' followed by a Speak & Spell croaking 'That is right' is worth a listen in my book.

Otherwise things are much the same. The 6 string bass is really cool, much easier to play than I expected and sounds quite decent. It's very solidly built but I don't like the electronics so I might swap them out at some point, and perhaps the pickups too. Q-tuner pickups are very interesting and look like nothing else with the huge coils visible through the transparent shell, but they are quite pricey.

I found an old ZX81 underneath a load of old cables. It's been around for a while, think I got it at a radio rally for £1. I'm pretty sure it actually worked last time I tried it. It's amazing how minimalist it is, yet it kick-started the computing revolution in the UK, and they sold 1.5 million of them. I find it quite impressive what people managed to get out of it though. It was slightly tempting to dig out a power supply and leads and see if it still works but instead I downloaded an emulator that is pretty much perfect, to the point where you can even emulate the dodgy TV signals.

Spent half an hour or so dismantling BlackBerrys while doing helpdesk calls. One was savaged by a dog and had a cracked case and screen while two others had dodgy trackballs. I got one working by moving the good trackball from the damaged one to the better of the other two and managed to clean out the other trackball, so I ended up with two good ones that might be suitable for reissue.

Bleh

Tired and crappy over the last week or so, not sure why.

Car needed new exhaust unexpectedly but now goes OK, needs various bits but nothing too critical.

New Eisbrecher album is good.

D&D works well over Skype.

Nothing else.

Bored.

Tired.

Things and more things and stuff

Well, been lazy and not updated this in a while. It's been nearly a month. Interesting things that have happened include a trip to Berlin, a replacement car and various work related stress.

I like Berlin. It's a really interesting place with a lot of things going on. The atmosphere of the place is still very different from a typical city. It may have been 20 years since the city was reunited, but it still has quite a distinctly split personality. This was my third visit and I went with my cousin, who had never been. It was a fantastic trip. We spent quite a lot of time hanging out with my brother and just wandering around taking in the sights. The hotel was in the east, happily near a station on the U5, so we were able to get around very easily. I like the language too, we picked up a few useful phrases, and at one point I was even able to direct a native Berliner who didn't speak English to a nearby U-bahn station, although admittedly by saying one word and pointing.

Saw the 5-episode Torchwood miniseries on iPlayer and really liked it. The first two series were interesting but it was trying too hard to be Doctor Who for adults. The second series did improve though and they seem to have got it right with the last one.

I had a 6-string bass a few years ago and couldn't play it, and recently I picked up a cheap Shine one. It's absolutely brilliant. The electrics are a bit crappy but the body and neck are great, so I'm planning on rewiring it and possibly replacing the pickups. The neck is very wide but I can play this one. For some reason, a 6-string feels more right than a 5-string which you'd expect to be the natural progression from a 4-string. But I did the 5-string thing and didn't like it, though that might have been the bass itself.

I've been trying to work out what makes my skin so flaky and hideous every now and again. The prime suspect at the moment is dairy, although now I'm not completely sure. I suppose the best thing would to be tested properly but I'm not sure how to go about it. Last time I saw the doctor I mentioned it and they weren't particularly helpful. Also had an eye test yesterday and need new glasses. The optician I've been seeing since I was 8 is retiring, which is a bit gutting as he knows the history of my somewhat peculiar eyesight.

The Vectra, nice as it was, had a lot of issues coming up and despite it being a nice car, when the gearbox started to graunch into gear, enough was enough. I spotted an automatic 1993 Mercedes W124 220E for sale in Cheshire and went to have a look. After a test drive I put a deposit down on it and picked it up yesterday. It's cosmetically a bit shabby but mechanically seems to be fine. There are some issues, the exhaust had a slight blow which has become worse suddenly and the driver's window won't move and a couple of other things. It's a basic model without many toys and cloth seats but the interior looks brand new.

I've always wanted another Merc since my old W123 200. It's much like the old one to drive too, not a quick car but comfortable and relaxing, helped by the old-school autobox. Running costs remain to be seen. However, when I changed the insurance, there was no difference from the Vectra. It cost a little more to fill the tank than the Vectra but it looks like it should get about the same mileage to the a tank. The autobox has Standard and Economy modes and so far I've been quite happy leaving it in the Economy setting. It's actually quite quick if you use the kickdown but it's much more a gentle cruiser than anything else, though they did make a 500E with a 5-litre V8. I'd have liked a diesel one; they came in 5-cylinder 2.5 litre and 6-cylinder 3.0 litre versions but they aren't very common compared to the petrols.

I can see why people dislike autos but I've developed a bit of a taste for them. After a while driving it you learn when it's going to change gear and how it's going to behave in different situations.

Work has been busy. Lots of things coming in and going on, and making it hard to keep on top of the jobs. Every time I seem to get my job level down again a load more come in.

After not seeing Watchmen in the cinema, we saw it on DVD last week. It was interesting. I was quite impressed at how well they'd stuck to the book but it felt very long and drawn out, probably because of that. There were some good bits, Rorschach was great, and some bits were a bit less good. OK, excruciating (owl ship shagging). I wasn't sure about Dr Manhattan at all, the look just didn't seem right.

Weekend of fun

Friday night was spent with the gang at Caroline and Rob's, first having a rather tasty BBQ (lamb burgers and kebabs FTW!) , being entertained by their demented cat which climbs the apple tree and shakes apples onto your head, and then having a fest of Red Dwarf episodes. All good fun.

Saturday was spent round at my Dad's, as my cousin had come down from Preston. It was a good day, enlivened by a trip to Llandudno for a shopping trip. While my Dad's wife and my cousin went off to the shops, my Dad and I went to a video game shop and a music shop. I picked up a cheap copy of Dead Space for the 360 and lusted after a rather nice MTD bass which was pretty cheap at £280 - perhaps it was cheap due to the tasteless lime green strings that were on it.

Sunday was spent assembling my latest parts bass (a white Jazz type thing) before settling down to a good long session of Dead Space. I was tempted to get itwhen it first came out, and at £10, I thought it would be worth a go. It's a pretty decent game, though not very original in plot. The gameplay is pretty much like Bioshock in space with creatures from Silent Hill. It has some good ideas though, such as areas in vacuum and zero gravity and it ties in well with the story. I've done three chapters or so and it's decent so far.

Enough of the Michael Jackson crap already. I don't CARE about his brain being left out to dry while he's being buried in a gold coffin.

Handed arse on plate

So a few days of really quite warm weather. Normally cause for celebration but not when you're in offices without air conditioning. Also, when the air conditioning dies in the server room, this is a bad thing. Oh well.

The car had the other new tyre and the tracking done by a gibbon at ATS. The last guy was quite good, this one was an arse. It seems pretty much the same but now I'm really paranoid about the tracking, as I know the rough track can throw it off.

Badminton this evening. Despite the heat it was good fun and Em and I had a great match where She Who Doth Take It Too Seriously had her arsed handed to her on a plate. It was great, she gets so angry when she is losing, and at one point she threw her racket on the floor. Oh, sorry, no, she 'dropped' it. Heh. Her trademark smashes into her opponents face all went straight back to her, it was truly a thing of beauty.

I've been trying to eat well this week and did OK apart from a sandwich at lunchtime, a Mars bar and a bit of Coke. The one thing I've really avoided is dairy stuff and my skin seems better, although I don't know if it's the sun or that.

Learn how to echolocate. Could be a great party trick.

Broken car and excessive heat

So, if paying £140 for the exhaust wasn't enough, this morning I became aware of a strange steering issue on the way to work. Investigation showed that there was a puncture in the nearside front tyre, caused by a huge splinter of wood. Annoyingly the tyre was unrepairable. The tyre was replaced, but the garage had a look at the other tyres and found that the other front tyre had no tread on the inside. So, on the weekend it'll need to go in for the tracking and yet another new tyre.

Bah.

It's also damned hot. I wouldn't mind but it's really muggy, need a really good thunderstorm to come along and clean up the air.

Watched the first episode of the new Top Gear series. It was pretty good. Shame the steam engine didn't win the race though, but it wasn't far behind. Amazing thing.

This is very cool.

Fun and things and stuff and noise

Yesterday was Vicky's birthday so we all met up at Andy's to watch the start of the F1 qualifying before heading up to the pub to watch the Lions game in the pub. This would have been better if they had won, but oh well.

After that it was back down to Andy's before heading off to Rhyl. Unfortunately I didn't take into account the weight of five people and the metal thing in the middle of Andy's driveway for the gate. It caught underneath and snapped the exhaust clean in half. Unfortunately this meant the car was now completely unsilenced, and was unbelievably loud. Not the first time I've had this experience.

We headed off to Rhyl which was very embarrassing due to the loud noise scaring people, dogs and small children. Fortunately there were no police about, so that was OK. The evening was pretty good with lots of people, gossip and drink and then a really good meal. Finally though Andy and I had to head back. Word had got about of the Car of Death (tm) and a small crowd gathered to watch us roar away. It was even worse with the engine cold and there were a few backfires too. I dropped Andy off and got home OK, although coming up the track was a worry as what was left of the exhaust kept bouncing up and down and smacking the floor.

So today I took it down to Lobitos on the coast road and they said it will be £120 for the part as the whole front end needs replacing and it includes the cat. Oh well.

Haven't done much else today, took the neck off the fretless bass and put it back on properly as it wasn't quite right and put new strings on it, and about to sit down and watch some more Monty Python.

BBQ excess

The weekend was decent with a nice long BBQ at Rob and Caroline's, consisting of lots of talk, food and the usual things. All good fun.

Other than that watched Monty Python, a documentary about Iron Maiden's tour from last year, experimented with two old and battered Tablet PCs (one is now running XP Tablet Edition, the other FreeNAS) and not really much else.

Back in work today, fun fun fun. Trying to eat healthily again, today went reasonably well. I've made it through the day without a single sip of Coke, which is good given how bad I've been over the last couple of months, well, since London really.

Nothing

Nothing.

Lost cows

Work was again busy but quite productive today.

It looked like it was going to be a grim evening so I settled down with a book and a web browser displaying live updates from the Apple conference. This however got boring and I found the weather was looking better so I took the dog out for a walk. It was very quiet, didn't see a single person until about half way round, when I got asked three times by seperate groups of people if I'd seen six cows that had somehow escaped. I hadn't.

Still unmotivated.

Feh

Nothing particularly interesting this week. Work was busy busy busy. The weather was also excellent until typically it rained most of Saturday.

Yesterday was another Wii night with ex Proact people, always good fun. Plenty of food, Wii gamage and general stuff.

Today was my Dad's birthday so we went to Ruthin Castle for food. Pretty good. His wife had arranged for my cousin and I to appear unexpectedly which was a success.

Been playing on the DS a bit, and trying to summon up the energy to sort out the mess in my room which is now ridiculous. Can't see the point though. It's starting to remind me of my flat in Bath which was a festering pit of loneliness and despair.

10 things

1) Office fires are bad, especially when the people in said office have saved their work to their local hard drives and not the network.

2) It's been very hot. I wish the air conditioning worked in the Vectra but it just makes the air coming out of the vents smell slightly instead of making it cold.

3) Good Omens is a damned good book.

4) Why does every other dog have to attack our greyhound on sight? I'm developing a serious hatred of labradors in particular because of this.

5) The Vectra is running much better and stops better too with the new manifold gasket and rear discs and pads fitted on Saturday.

6) Coke is evil. The drink that is, although I'm sure the drug must be pretty bad too.

7) I have little to no self control when it comes to vintage Unix hardware.

8) Cardiff is populated entirely with promiscuous bisexuals and aliens, according to Torchwood.

9) Drug dealing is fun and productive in GTA Chinatown Wars.

10) Soul Calibur 4 is worth it just for the sheer hilarity of giving Voldo an afro, a Tyrolean hat and a monacle.