Argh

I use Adblock on my computers and hardly ever watch TV, so when I encounter adverts I absolutely detest them. Not quite to the point of actually having an allergic reaction like Cayce Pollard in Pattern Recognition, but nearly...

I hate cars and driving

Yesterday on the way into town to Rob and Em's for their housewarming, I had a bump in the car. I was turning right into Morrisons, perhaps a little sharply and a guy pulled out too far and slammed into my rear wheelarch and wheel. The wheel took the brunt of it and needs to be replaced but while the arch is a bit caved in, it's not too bad. His bumper was badly scuffed and some panels came off it. We exchanged details but since I already have a spare wheel I don't really need to worry about it.

The housewarming at Rob and Em's was a great success. All the room in their garden meant everyone they invited could hang out with the greatest of ease and there was loads of food and drink. Kat had suggested clubbing together to get them a barbecue which was much appreciated and worked really well. So it was a great evening, lots of fun and stuff and in my case accidentally swearing at Rob's Mum and farting in people's general direction. There's a reason I don't drink very often. I had the D50 with me so we got LOADS of pictures, although when I can to look at them before I had to delete quite a lot of them. Still got some good ones though.

This morning helped them to clean up and had some sausages and stuff before I came home. I had to drive gently as the tyre was bulging suspiciously on the damaged wheel. I've now removed it and found the spare wheel, ready to get that sorted out tomorrow. Did some strimming outside but got tired.

At last the weekend

It's been a long week, annoyingly so for a week of only three days. As Andy pointed out, we probably assumed the three days would fly past but that wasn't the case.

Yesterday was one of those days where I wanted to bang my head against the wall, then I rationalised this and decided I wanted to bang someone else's head against the wall. After work though, things got better as I went to Rob and Em's to meet up with them and Jane and Wes, and we had epic home made toad in the hole, before we all piled into Rob's car to go and watch Thor in the cinema. I knew nothing about it, hadn't even heard of the graphic novels before the film was announced, so I didn't know what to expect at all. It was good though, really quite enjoyed it.

Today was more of the same in work, not very productive because nobody was in. I dropped the Alienware at Rob's so they could watch movies on it, then went to drop the car off at the garage before walking up to the office. Picked up the car to find the service wasn't too bad, but they'd had to replace the lower suspension arms on both sides. Joy. Then it was off to Rob and Em's again and we pigged out on chips from the good fish and chip shop. Not sure what is going on later on this evening but there might be pub and stuff. I'm feeling pretty tired at the moment though so who knows.

Tomorrow it is of course the anti-royal wedding day at Rob and Em's. Basically loads of people bringing stuff to fling on a barbecue and deliberately ignore the TV.

Happy days. I've been listening to Labyrinth der Sinne by Tanzwut solidly since it arrived the other day and it's bloody great. Definitely my favourite album by them. There's a new one out in September.

Update: decided to come home because it was like someone had flipped a switch, I just suddenly felt catastrophically tired and I thought I'd be better off saving my energy for tomorrow.

Giant day of meh

The only highlight of today was taking a very large pyrex jug and making the biggest cup of tea I have ever had. It was nice. And took some nice pictures of the Alienware using the camera settings to show the lighting. Other than that...well, meh.

Also I hate having to do processes on the backup system manually that should be done automatically. Not fun.

Bikes are fun

Went to my Dad's today. After the usual coffee and scones in the morning, we headed over to Halfords to get some new bits for my bike. We got some nice new squashy grips for the handlebars, and some bars to mount at the ends because I thought it might be nice to be able to change the position of my wrists from time to time as they were aching after the ride yesterday.

Once we started to pull it apart though we got ambitious and decided to change the handlebars entirely for the ones from my cousin's old bike, which are the sort of retro ones where they curve up. This went OK but we had to to put the gear shifters in a less than ideal place so, while it feels much better, not sure how long it will stay like that. What I might do is get a longer stem and put a new flat bar on it.

We adjusted the front derailleur so it now goes into top gear better, and sorted out the brakes which were all over the place yesterday.

Also the front tyre was being crap and not sitting on the rim properly even though it was supposedly the right size for the wheel, so we changed it for one that my Dad had spare. It's a touring tyre so quite skinny compared to the one that was on it. The rear was OK so we left that one alone. Due to all these new somewhat mismatched parts it looks a bit of a mongrel now, but it works OK.

Once I got home I took it for a little mile long jaunt and it went really well. The raised handlebars are brilliant, making it much more comfortable. The 8 miles yesterday were relatively flat so again I struggled a bit on the hills but it wasn't too bad really. Felt good after it though.

Exercise is fun until later on

Yesterday was a good day all round. I spent the morning playing more of Portal 2 until the 'possibly something stupid' turned up, which took me most of the afternoon to set up and configure.

After that it was back to Portal 2 and then down to Rob and Em's for a Chinese fat fest, which was delicious, and then a trip to the pub with Rob, Andy and Maz. We went to a nice pub that was pleasantly quiet, and played dreadful pool, took negative pictures of each other and chatted until...well, not very late, but it was a good evening.

Today Rob, Em and I took the bikes up to the Brenig. It was fun to see the contrast between their shiny new bikes and my ancient and battered Diamond Back. We cycled from the rear car park to the visitor centre, where we had ice creams and a curious thing by Ginster that I'd bought called a Cornish Bara, and then we headed back. It was really good fun, all of us really enjoyed it. The bikes all behaved, even my old heap managed to engage top gear a couple of times, and at one point Rob and I had a granny gears race which was absolutely hiliarious as the low gearing on mine meant I had to pedal at the speed of light. The weather was bright and sunny with a healthy breeze so it all worked out well. The distance was about 8 miles in the end, which isn't bad.

Got home and obviously the exercise took a toll on me as a couple of hours ago I came over crushingly tired and had to take a nap, which is very unlike me and I had a strange dream about playing GTA but then it wasn't GTA but real and I had a fight with a woman who reversed her Range Rover into the Focus.

Ah well. Anyway, the 'something stupid' is an Alienware M11x laptop. I bought it to replace both the Acer Ferrari and the Acer 5535, as it is more powerful and more solidly built than both, but still a reasonable size. With the glowing keyboard, grills and logos, I guess the Alienware could be seen as even more ostentatious than the bright red Acer Ferrari, but at least the lights can be switched off and it becomes rather more discrete except for the alien heads. I like the way the eyes of the power button alien head are the hard drive activity though, that's nice.

It's a great machine. It has the same reassuringly sturdy feel as a Mac laptop. It's the original version with a Core 2 Duo CPU which runs at 1.3ghz normally but can be overclocked in the BIOS to 1.7ghz. It's the graphics cards that are the interesting part. In normal use it has standard Intel integrated graphics to save power, but if you need to, you can switch to a Nvidia graphics card with 1gb dedicated memory. I'm that impressed with the M11x that I'm quite seriously thinking about an M15x or the behemoth M17x to replace the Acer 7741g but they are both considerably more expensive than the 'budget' M11x.

The Acers the Alienware is replacing have just been listed on Ebay but I've realised the end time is on the 29th. Oh well, hopefully it won't matter.

Portal 2 and a HUGE chair

After burning my old armchair that I had discovered was hideous, I was in a quandary this morning. With a shiny new copy of Portal 2 in my possession since yesterday evening, I wanted to spend today playing it. But I didn't have a chair, so I set off early to find one. And so I did. However, my spatial awareness failed me. The chair that looked quite a reasonable size in the shop turned out to be of epic proportions. The first inkling of doubt arose when it took up pretty much the entire rear of the Focus with the seats down. Getting it up the narrow stairs and around the corners and doors at home was an absolute nightmare and now it's actually in the room, it pretty much dominates it. Oh well, at least it's really comfy.

Anyway, armed with new chair, snacks, Coke (diet, cherry) and a freshly charged controller, I set off into Portal 2. I played it for quite some time until I got to a part I couldn't figure out, but then I heard a crash of thunder and scampered around whimpering and unplugging things. By the time the thunder went away I didn't feel like carrying on. It's good though...really good.

Yesterday I booked the car in for a service next Thursday as I can't remember how many thousands of miles it's overdue for one, and the suspension has started knocking. It's making exactly the same sound as it did last year but from the other side and that time it was the anti-roll bar link. I don't remember it being that expensive so hopefully it's the same thing.

Wait, what, four days off?

The backup system upgrade was completed successfully today. It was up and running by the end of yesterday and it was left to do the usual overnight processes to see how it would get on. I woke up early this morning and fretted about it for a little while until I couldn't stand it any more and went in to office much earlier than usual to see if it was all right. Fortunately, everything was fine, only a few little niggles to sort out. Unsurprisingly, given the huge boost in spec over the old server, it powered through the daily admin tasks, and everything is so much faster.

Still, it was quite a relief when the consultant left. I didn't realise until it was all done how tense I was during the process and I just felt a great weight lift from me. I did have to modify the schedules to take into account nobody will be taking tapes out tomorrow and Monday so I guess that's something else I can worry about, but hey.

Because of all that, it was only today that it really dawned on me that there's two four day weekends coming up. Nice.

Badminton was great this evening. The Hagg had gone on holiday and as always when she isn't there, it was a really good evening. I got some black spaghetti from the deli and Rob got some crayfish tails, which combined into a rather tasty pre-badminton meal.

I think I've done something stupid, but will have to wait until Saturday to find out.

Insertion

So today was spent with an external consultant doing the upgrade to the backup system in work. I had to be present as the normal guy has been signed off sick for two weeks, great timing as always. It was fairly interesting but because I've been so busy with my normal workload it was quite difficult to keep up with all the stuff that's been going on with the upgrade. Also management haven't seen fit to send us on any training on this new version, despite there being many changes including a totally different database. Oh well.

Not much else. Really tired this evening again, no idea why. Walked the dog, did some more work on the laptops. Got three up and running with hard drives and installed Ubuntu on them with reasonable success. Have ordered a load of sticky feet to put on the ones that are missing them.

Played with the HTC Magic phone tonight. Enabled data on it which was a mistake as it promptly blew a quid trying to sync over it, ouch. However at least it's there if I need it now. Vodafone actually have a PAYG plan with free data and texts if you top up a certain amount each month, might look into that.

Arrival

Ended up taking the dog for a walk which was nice in the sunshine.

My armchair ate an SD card I dropped and while I was trying to find the card I realised how collapsed and manky the armchair was so I tore it apart to retrieve the card and then burnt what was left.

Then played through the new Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2. It was a bit of an odd one. While playing it through I quite enjoyed it but then looking back it didn't really feel like the traditional Mass Effect experience. I guess that could have been the point though. But that's it now until Mass Effect 3. I've made a pact with myself to avoid future trailers for ME3 though, as I read that the ones for ME2 contained loads of spoilers.

I also completed my third playthrough of ME1 and imported the same into ME2. It's interesting playing it as a different class as it changes how it plays quite a bit.

Just realised Saints Row The Third (as it's called now) will probably come out at around the same time as ME3, so that means this winter should be quite busy.

Portal 2 out soon, can't wait for that.

Geektactular

Yesterday was a fairly lazy but good day. Woke up and didn't realy feel like doing much so fooled around in Mass Effect for a bit. In the afternoon went down to Andy's for a chat and to look at Olympic tickets. After a look at it we decided on our original plan and have put that on, which is quite weird to think it's actually booked now.

After that we met up with Rob and Em and Rob and Caroline for a meal in the Asia place in Denbigh. Really good, thoroughly enjoyed it. After that we went to a pub that had been recently done up and had a few drinks and the usual bizarre chats. Good fun all round.

Today is looking nice outside so I'm determined to get outside and do some exercise.

Have intermittently been playing with the laptops I bought. Nearly all of them work, only two or three have any serious faults. I just need to find a good source of hard drives and replace the optical drives on a couple of them.

Fecking tiredness

It's been a fairly weird week. Work has been reasonably OK.

Badminton last night was good, more people than there's been for quite some time which was good as it meant a good variety and we had some really good games. Somehow, I managed to really pull the bicep in my left arm even though I play right handed. Weird. It's still hurting now. Also Rob made epic gorgonzola gnocchi.

I took the bike out on Wednesday which was a rather humiliating reminder of my fitness level. I think it's going to take some practise before I can ride the six miles to work and back. Glad the bike works OK, although I need to adjust the front chainset still and I think it could do with higher handlebars.

I've been feeling tired all week, not sure why. Just shattered in the evenings.

Got a power supply for one of the project laptops, a Thinkpad T30. I really like IBM laptops, the build quality is top notch and they just feel good. The only thing I really dislike is that they put the 'fn' key in the bottom left corner instead of 'Ctrl' which is just wrong. Naughty. The T30 works OK but needs a hard drive and one of the memory slots is bad - a known fault. I haven't encountered many Thinkpads since Lenovo took over production of them but they seem nice.

Rob and Em gave me their old TV which died. After popping the back off I saw what I expected - faulty capacitors. Two had burst and one was bulging. Capacitors are stupid cheap so I've ordered some of the right type and will have a go at fixing it. If not, then a power supply board is relatively cheap on Ebay.

It's been a lazy evening. Fired up Soul Calibur IV for the first time in probably two years and had fun creating a crazy monacled purple guy but when it came to actually playing the game, got angry and turned it off. Did a bit of my latest Mass Effect character but got a little bored. Did however download the new DLC for Mass Effect 2, so will do that over the weekend at some point.

Decided I wanted to get the two Tanzwut albums I haven't got but they aren't available for download so I've ordered the CDs. Not sure quite why I like Tanzwut so much. I was trying to explain them to a guy in work and the best I could come up with was 'Think Rammstein with bagpipes and a hint of electronica.' Good stuff though. This is the current track I really like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T82H82e3js

Rargh

A fairly typical day in work.

Went around to a colleague's sister's house to have a look at her PC and sort it out. Needed some more RAM and new AV, easy enough but the machine was pretty old and not a great one to start with.

Got home and a couple of bits had turned up for the laptops so I've got two of them up and running, a HP with lots of blue LEDs and a rather dull RM. Installing Ubuntu on them as a test as it runs well on slightly older hardware like this. The main thing that's annoying is that half the machines are missing the feet underneath, which is bad because it means the vents could be blocked. I don't get why this happens so much.

Feeling really tired this evening, like I did last night. Not sure why. Possible lack of exercise maybe? Not sure.

Flanger

Sunday was good. Sorted out the car a bit in the morning and dragged my bike out of the shed. I was able to extract it from the embrace of the turbo trainer, cleaned the crap off it, pumped up the tyres, oiled the chain and then took it up and down the front. Amazingly it still works fine. I think if I'm going to try riding a bike properly I'll use this one for now even though I've had it since I was 15. The only thing I think it could do with is higher handlebars as they feel a bit low and they've gone rusty.

Then went to Rob and Em's to do more proofreading of one of Rob's writings. This time he sent me the raw text, I printed it out and scrawled on it in red pen, and then we sat down together and went through it. This approach works really well although it is slow. We had rewards for completing pages such as Pringles and teacakes. After this eventually palled, I went home followed by Rob and Em and we took Sandy for a walk in the sunshine.

Today was OK in work, a fairly productive day but I got depressed and pissed off round about lunchtime for no reason that I could discern. Oh well.

The second batch of laptops turned up today. Another couple of Toshibas including a rather pretty little Portege M100 and a whopping huge fat Pentium 4 Satellite, an equally fat Tiny, a sleek Thinkpad and a rather boring Dell. All of them power up to some degree and a couple have issues, for example the M100 has a bad LCD cable and the Thinkpad a bad RAM slot. But so far it looks fairly promising. So I spent some time playing with them before taking Sandy for a walk in the wind and occasional rain.

Watched Taken this evening after being lent it by Rob weeks ago and putting it underneath something. Weird film. Not sure if I enjoyed it or not, but I think on whole I did.

Quiet day

Nice quiet day mostly spent at my Dad's. We went through the pictures and videos from Berlin and chilled out. I went out and got a new stereo for the car, one which includes both aux and USB inputs, with iPod support. The stupid Ripspeed piece of shite I had before worked but had a gimpy aux input arrangement and idiotic controls.

Had a look at bikes. If it's going to be lugged in and out of my carI need one that is going to be lighter and more manageable but at the same time I haven't got much cash to drop on one. There's a few options that I'm keeping an eye on. While in Halfords my Dad and I saw some quite nice ones but he said going second hand would save quite a bit and he's got the tools and expertise to strip them down and fix any issues. I did look at some bare frames as he's got all the bits to build one up but that could be fraught with problems. Did see a rather nice road bike with carbon frame that was very light though, shame it was £999. Now that I'm mianly based in a single office that is 6 miles from home, I could conceivably ride a bike to work quite regularly, especially since the office has a shower.

Darren told me of someone he knows who is looking for a bass player and gave me his number but I've chickened out of calling so far because it's been so long since I had to play in that kind of setting, or indeed in front of anyone. I can make cheerful noises with a drum machine but that's not really the same.

Berlin overview

Day 1

Flights from Liverpool were fine. Once again Pauline and I managed to arrive in the car park at exactly the same time, astonishing! It was great as we were able to park next to each other. The trip through the new security area was pleasant as the airport was pretty quiet, so it was all good. The outward flight was fine and we got to Berlin without any problems. We took the double-decker airport express as usual to Alexanderplatz and the usual U5 trip to the hotel Once checked in, we met up with Amogharatna and Claudia at the Flying Table for a meal. It's hard to explain how much we were looking forward to this, especially Pauline who was supposed to be doing the half marathon last year but couldn't go due to her cancer treatment. We didn't linger long and retired to bed relatively early after the travelling.

Day 2

We woke up and left the hotel in search of food. At first we were at a bit of a loss and sat by a fountain in Alexanderplatz. It was quite funny to have spent so long looking forward to the trip and then end up sat there not sure what to do first. After a while we decided to head to the Hauptbahnhof, get some food and wander past the Reichstag to the Tiergarten. This we did, and we got delicious wraps from there and ate them in the park. We had intended to aim for Potsdamer Platz, but took a completely bizarre route that took us through the embassies in totally the wrong direction, then we took a random road to avoid a demonstation and eventually figured out we had emerged by the Zoologischer Garten station.

By this time we were hungry again so we went to a highly recommended pizza place not far from the hotel which was excellent and then had a rest. After that we headed out to the Stadtmitte U-bahn stop to go to Fassbender & Rausch to get presents for people and wandered up to the end of Friedrichstrasse to meet Amogharatna at DaDa, possibly the best purveyors of falafel in the city - and it fucking rocks. It was stunning. After that we went for a wander and saw the curious underground shopping place that links Friedrichstrasse to another place and back to Stadtmitte.

Day Three

We went in search of breakfast and took a nice long walk down a random road. We took a long and circuitous route across the mainline railways and eventually ended up at the Warshauer Strasse U-bahn station. Handily this is also the location of the East Side Gallery and the Oberbaumbrucke, so we had a good look at those before getting a U1 train. Due to maintenance work it terminated only a few stops later at Kotbusser Tor which was fine for us. The train had two drivers as it shuttled back and forth, we saw it pulling back out with the driver reading a paper in the back end, which was amusing.

Went to the Turkish market which was interesting. Saw a lot of cool things and got some rather nice crispy thin pastry snacks, very good but a bit greasy. Was hoping to find wasabi and chilli peanuts and wasabi cheese but no luck this time.

At this point we needed a rest again so we headed to the Hermanstrasse S-bahn station and got on a Ringbahn train - a trip round the ring takes exactly an hour and you can see a fair bit from there, so it was nice. After that we went into Tempelhof park and lay around on the grass for a bit, although it was quite cold, and then walked up and down the runways before meeting Amogharatna at the half-marathon show in the terminal buildings. There was a lot to see and Pauline got new running shoes, but sadly no cheap finisher shirts from previous marathons this time, which was a shame. Amogharatna signed up for the Potsdam half marathon while there, nutter that he is!

We went back to the hotel for a rest and then went out to a new Vietnamese place called Tonkin that Claudia had had a flyer about. It was really, really nice although I ordered at random since there was no english. The only word I knew was Ente, duck, but fortunately it was delicious.

Day Four

After not liking Potsdam a couple of years ago, we decided to give it another go. We got the train there and stopped off at the Wannsee on the way there. We saw the Wannsee Conference house on the map and walked there but it was rather longer than it looked. It was not good in there. It's a beautiful building but going inside is weird and creepy. We were able to get a bus back to the S-bahn and then headed into Potsdam.

Well, epic fail at this point. We thought we got a tram that took us to a big nice park but instead it sodded off to the suburbs and we got off and got the other one back. Then found the Brandenburg Gate (small one) and sat around there before heading back into Berlin. So no, we still don't like Potsdam. We got a regional train back to the city which was loads faster and one of the lovely double deckers.

Day Five

The day of the marathon. It was hot. Very hot. We started out at the beginning of the race and watched the various events kick off, which was great to watch. The inline skaters were amazing as they set off, incredible to watch, then there was the wheelchairs and the runners themselves. We went and got the train and watched them go past the Tiergarten station, the Ku'damm and the corner of Kochstrasse and Friedrichstrasse. This time we spotted Amogharatna and I was able to use the paparazzi mode on the camera to get some good pics of him going past, which was great.

Back to the hotel for a rest and then we met up again with Amogharatna and Claudia, heading to a nearby Indian place we went to originally. Very good food and we had curious bread that was all swelled up like a balloon, but delicious. Then along the road for ice creams in a curious square that was ludicrously peaceful given it was only a block from the six lane madness that is Frankfurter Allee. By this time everyone was feeling tired, especially Amogharatna understandably so we headed back to our respective homes.

That evening I went out and had a look at the nightlife, which was really entertaining and had a great time, won't go into details but really enjoyed myself.

Day Six

We headed out in an entirely new direction to have a look at the Olympic Stadium, which is well worth looking at as it's a good example of 40's architecture, and then took the S-bahn to Spandau. It was interesting to be somewhere that was so far out of the city and it had it's own feel that was really nice. We wandered around there for a bit until we got onto a train and headed back to the city to meet up with Amogharatna for evening meal. We went to a place that specialised in vegetarian burgers and I had a Mexican style one. Vegetarian it might have been, but it was one of the best burgers I have ever had. Really good. After that went to an ice cream place and went our separate ways.

That's basically it for Berlin. It was fucking great. One thing I did was try out a 3DS. Didn't like it. I could see the 3D OK but it made my eyes just feel...wrong. Now though I've read that turning the 3D down helps but I still don't think I'll like it. Shame as it looked pretty good otherwise. The AR game Face Raiders was surprisingly good fun too.

I've decided to try and put the stuff I've learnt about laptop repair to good use and have bought a load of untested laptops off Ebay. The first batch has arrived and out of five, four of them power up with no problem and should work fine once I've sourced some more RAM and hard drives for them, and then I'll put them back on Ebay. All are a few years old from the Pentium M era but they are still servicable machines. Two Toshibas, one HP, one Compaq and an RM, all of which run happily from the same PSU - looks like they standardised laptop power connectors when I wasn't looking! The best one, typically, is the one that doesn't power up, but it does show some signs of life so perhaps all is not lost, and it's a good source of parts if nothing else.

Glad it's the weekend. Off to Rob and Em's in a bit for a meal with them and Andy and Maz and to once again coo over Carter, the lovely white cat Rob and Em adopted unexpectedly while I was away.

Badminton was ace yesterday. There's a new guy who is really good. The last game of the match saw The Hagg team up with him against Rob and Em, obviously expecting to win but she played like a donkey with three arses. She got so frustrated she actually dropped the F-bomb which was absolutely hilarious.

Argh

Back to work - although it wasn't too bad it still made the trip and everything that happened seem almost like a dream.

Ran out of time today to write up full account of Berlin trip.

Watched another episode of Band of Brothers.

Back

Back from Berlin today. It was a fucking brilliant trip, gutted to have to come back to be honest. Full update coming soon.

Stuff

Went out and got some stuff this morning including euros for Berlin, then had a bonfire with a load of crap that had accumulated, good fun.

Watched another episode of Band of Brothers, did some admin work on the computers including making sure the backups were up to date and did some more of my renegade Shepard. He's got to the point where he has glowing eyes and looks like a fucking Terminator, which made it all the more jarring when he had a tender conversation with an alien who he is falling in love with. You'd have thought people would comment on the glowing rents in his skin and the glowing eyes but nope, nobody even seems to notice.

Holidays

Not a bad day in work before my holiday, got my jobs to the lowest level they've been this year, and got loads done so was able to leave a little early with a clear conscience.

Lazy evening today although had a tantrum and a tidy up.

Finished ME1 with my alternate Shepard. Somehow completed it in ten hours less than the first time round, but at a higher level, which seems odd.

Tired now.

Fat bastard badminton

Fairly uneventful week. Today was good though. Spent the morning doing Unix which was good, and then had a *long* lunch break having a really nice meal at Annie's in Ruthin in the sunshine before heading out to do some geocaching. It was fairly successful although as usual I got scratched and we found several small bogs, not good in work shoes.

This evening Rob, Em and I went to Pizza Hut before badminton to consume approximately our own body weight in pizza because Rob had a voucher to get a free pizza. It was delicious but did compromise our ability to play badminton. Even so it was a fun evening.

Really tired now, it's been a good but long day.

A good weekend

Yesterday was a good day. The morning and early afternoon were spent hanging out with my Dad. After that, made my way over to Andy's where we watched rugby and had Chinese before heading over to Rob and Em's for the last game, Wales vs France, which didn't go very well. Fun evening though.

Today went on an epic geocaching hunt with Andrea from work and another cacher. They got the ones in the village that I already had and we got some new ones. Then there was a new series that went live on Tuesday, which was great. 10 caches in a great circle around a hill, with a secret 11th cache that could only be found by retrieving the coordinates in bits from three of the previous 10. Really good series though, very well thought out.

The mysterious entry yesterday was because I had finally caved in and bought a Kindle, and I was playing with the web browser. It's pretty decent and the clarity of the e-ink screen is really nice. I'd love a laptop with an e-ink display just for typing stuff out on. It'll be interesting to see if they can eventually sort out the refresh rate issue and make it colour. I guess at this point it's at the same state as early LCD technology, like those old laptops with mono screens that lost the pointer if it moved too fast.

My new renegade game in ME2 is going well. I'm actually quite enjoying the experience. It's not so much about just being a twat, rather being very ruthless to get the mission going at any cost although there is plenty of opportunity to rude and inconsiderate for no real reason. The renegade scars are pretty cool too. So far they are all sunken in and there's red points of light glowing in his irises but it should get a lot worse as the game progresses.

test

This is very strange.

Fibre fun or not

A slightly frustrating Unix day today because the backup system is being moved to a new server which involves all sorts of shenanigans with the database and all sorts. It's a real nightmare and rather above my level of knowledge, particularly as nobody thinks it might be an idea to go on a course with IBM to cover the details of the migration and the differences between the old and new versions. Annoying as the new version uses a completely different database structure.

Plus a lot of today was getting the new server to talk to the SAN so I got to feed a few orange fibre cables under the floor but didn't really have a clue why as I've never had much to do with it. Oh well. SAN technology is one thing I'd really like to learn more about but not really something I could get equipment at home to play with.

Had a 'rest' day from exercise, due to chips for lunch to comfort Em after it looks like they're going to fuck her over regarding her secondment, and cake for someone's birthday. Cabbaged out with my renegade Shepard in ME2. It's actually quite good fun choosing the renegade options. They're not as twatty as I expected, just rather more forceful and inconsiderate in some cases. It's made amusing by him prancing around in pink armour.

Giant week of meh

Work and stuff been fairly dull this week, not much going on at all really.

However have been eating relatively well and done quite a bit of exercise, so feeling rather better in that regard. New trainers working out very well indeed.

At the risk of still sounding hopelessly obsessed with the games, I completed an important mission yesterday in ME1 with my alternate Shepard, and started a new game tonight of ME2. Reimported my paragon Shepard from ME1 but made him into a vanguard instead of an adept and playing it so that something went wrong when they brought him back from the dead so he's now a twat. Wasn't sure at first how easy it would be to choose the renegade options all the time, but it's not actually too bad. Some of the renegade options are actually pretty cool. Also should be interesting to see what my Shepard looks like with the hideous renegade scarring and glowing eyes.

Watched another episode of Band of Brothers tonight. It's really pretty good. Can't quite not see David Schwimmer as Ross though.

Had the issue of my media playing HP DV7 having no real remote control so I found a thing called a Rii keyboard. It's a dinky little wireless keyboard with a trackpad, which works superbly.

Blam, kablooey

Didn't do all that much yesterday until the evening when I went round to Ed and Kat's. We ate pizza and watched Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Very strange film. Think it deserves a rewatching. Also ate chocolate so the exercise I did earlier in the day was completely negated.

Today went and dug bits of the track out where my car was catching and repaired the car door yet again. I watched another episode of Band of Brothers, and then settled down to play ME2 again. After I deleted some of my saves a little while back to get the DLC done, it was bugging me that the game was sat there unfinished. I found there was still some more DLC to be done, so I did that before progressing with the main game. I've kicked off the last mission but I've done it a little differently this time so will have to see how it goes.

The music in both ME games is bloody good too, really adds to the atmosphere. For some reason I really like this track which is featured in the lower level of the Afterlife club in the Omega station. It reminds me also of the mission where Shepard dances like an idiot which brought me to near hysterics when I saw it the first time.

Track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsN8FxYpxTc
Idiot dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSAUa3QY-kE

Oops, forgot to update

Forgot to update. Been a fairly decent week outside of work.

New shoes = ace. Really comfortable. Managed to eat pretty well until yesterday, when it was birthday cake in work and cheesy chips with a can of evil Coke for lunch. Today not much better.

Monday was pancakes with Andy and Maz which was great. Really enjoyed them and introduced Andy to the joys of Nutella, which when combined with ice cream on a pancake is really delicious.

Fixed my neighbours laptop, in return he's going to cut me out a bass body. I've got a plan to build an Ashbory bass in the shape of a Dean ML. I've got a bridge with piezo pickups in it, and he's got a huge slab of elm which should be pretty when it's all cut to size and shaped.

Thursday badminton was pretty decent as was the week before as She-Hagg was not there, so it was good fun. I did manage to get in the way of Rob as he smashed a shot and it hit me right on the pointy bit of my elbow and it really hurt. Kept getting twinges for the rest of the evening.

Sold the motorbike on Ebay. The guy came to collect it tonight and fortunately had a nice big Transit to put it in as it wouldn't start. Sad to see it go but I think it was about to need a shitload of work which I didn't have the expertise to do. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

Did a bit more of my ME1 guy. I managed to unlock four missions I missed the first time round by having a techy guy in the squad, so that was fun and interesting. Still trying to work out when I can get around to finishing ME2 again, including the remaining DLC I haven't done yet. It's a bit of an undertaking and I need to take time to prepare myself.

Flibble

Feeling better today.

Went to Chester this morning to get new trainers. There's a triathlon shop that does all the gait analysis stuff. The guy was very thorough and made me try on six pairs before he was happy that the fit was good. Ended up with some Mizuno ones which are quite possibly the most comfortable shoes I've ever had. Hilariously the guy was really impressed with my battered old Asics, apparently they were very good in their day. I had to explain that they were my Dad's cast offs. He also optimistically gave me a leaflet about the Chester marathon in October.

Looked in Back Alley Music and saw a Dean Baby ML in metallic purple. I've always liked the shape of the ML and the colour was nicely at at odds with the rather metal shape. Very cool. It was relatively cheap too, but managed to resist tempation, don't play guitar enough to justify it and I don't think the shape works when it's a bass as it becomes much too long to be sensible.

Found a new Currys/PC World there too, where they had a few nice things. Once again admired the e-ink screen of a Kindle, and also had a look at the Advent Vega tablet which runs Android 2.2. Looks like quite a decent device and half the price of an iPad, but again, what use is it really?

Finally got around to stripping down the HP DV7 laptop. I replaced the noisy CPU fan, which was underneath literally every other component in the machine, necessitating a total stripdown. Also regunked the heatsink with my favourite Arctic Silver 5. Due to the design of the machine, this meant removing about 40 screws to get it apart, and I'm proud to say that once the machine was back together, not one screw was left over. Also replaced the Bluray drive with a new slot-loading one as the original died. Got lucky with the replacement drive - someone on Ebay was selling it cheap because they thought it was just a DVD writer. Once back together the machine works perfectly.

Watching Band of Brothers on Bluray borrowed from Amy. Only two episodes in but it's pretty good so far.

After that carried on my semi-evil character in Mass Effect 1 after not playing either of them in a week. I think when you dream about nothing else it's a sign you've played it too much. Once again ended up earning more paragon points than renegade, but never mind.

Fuck it all

Fuck it all.

32gb RAM

This morning was interesting. We hooked up a new AIX server, a Power 720 and had the great ceremonial turning on. Except it didn't fire up. We found after that there was a bracket that we should have removed from the power supply before plugging it all in. Eventually it fired up, and we tried install a mksysb of the old machine on it, which didn't work, but we know why so we can try it again on Thursday. It's a quad-core Power7 with 32gb RAM and will have shedloads of storage attached via the SAN - I think there's 16tb of space but the disks are going to be mirrored, so only 8tb will be available to the system.

Went to the gym last night, and when I went it was nearly empty which was nice. Today walked the dog after work. A bit chilly but nice. Had quite a large wrap for lunch though, containing falafel and humous, delicious but probably rather unhealthy.

Not doing much this evening except checking out a laptop for a guy in work which I think had a faulty hard drive. Swapped it out for a spare and it seems to be running quite well for an elderlyish machine.

Rob has lent me the new Culture book by Iain M Banks - Surface Detail. I'm looking forward to it with some apprehension because while his books are great, it's always a major commitment to start reading one.

New glasses are absolutely spot on with the prescription. I'm amazed at how well I can see with them on, but I'm still adjusting to how they sit on my face as they don't have the same type of nose piece and I think the arms might need tweaking.

ME2 DLC done

Downloaded the DLC and got it done. I'm always cynical about DLC, but this time it was well worth it. The two big ones are absolutely epic, and the thief one was pretty good too. I also got the one where you can visit the wreck of the original ship from the first game, but that was really sad, seeing it all smashed up and having to recover the dog tags of the dead crew before putting up a monument.

So now I just need to finish it again.

New glasses are fine. They fit OK but my ears aren't used to them so are complaining a bit, but they'll settle down.

Rugby fun

Yesterday everyone went to Rob and Em's new house for the rugby. Really good day, not least because in their new house there's more room so people can fit in more comfortably. Had snacks and Chinese which is always good.

Woke up today feeling basically 100% for the first time since I got that cold, so I'm going to celebrate by crashing out in front of the Xbox. Makes no sense I guess but the weather outside is horrible. While my ME1 new Shepard is playing through quite nicely (although not as evil as I'd hoped), I've deleted my ME2 saves back to a certain point and set the Xbox to download the DLC while I go to Rhyl to get my new glasses.

Not much else going on really.

Moving day

Today was the day that Rob and Em moved into the new house. It went pretty much swimmingly and it was inspiring to see how everyone rallied round and did everything they could to get all the stuff moved with the minimum of hassle. Nobody complained at all, it was absolutely superb. Even Rob's Mum did her part by feeding the troops in between loads of stuff.

Their new house is great, a good size bungalow with nicely sized rooms, and an epic garden. It's so great that at last Rob and Em have got the house they deserve.

Tired now, it's been a long and busy day!

Exercise is good for you, right?

A fairly uneventful day, mostly building machines including some nice Precision M4500 laptops. I've cleared 28 jobs this week, making my stack look a bit more reasonable.

This evening went to Rob and Em's for the last badminton night before they move. We got Chinese for the last time, and headed out to badminton. We were all still suffering slightly from our colds, so Rob and Em left a bit early. I stayed for a couple more games which I basically sucked at because I kept coughing and didn't feel well. At one point, I went too energetically for a shot and nearly threw up all the Chinese. Managed to avoid it, but had a huge coughing fit. Embarrassing.

Foot improved

Foot better, still slightly painful if I stand on it wrong but at least now I'm not hobbling around. Legs rather achy though after helping to remove at least eight redundant drive drawers from the racks in work, very heavy things. Workload still high but improving gradually.

My new Shepard is proving to be annoyingly good even though I'm trying to make him evil. He has punched a reporter in the face because he didn't like her questions and any time he can try to talk his way out of a fight, he just pulls his gun out and starts firing, but even so, still has more paragon points than renegade. Having said that, I've found quite a few things that I didn't find the first time round, so that's fun.

Watched the Scream trilogy again, finished the third one day which I'd never seen. Thought it was rather strange, but quite enjoyable. Also watched the first episode of Band of Brothers, which looks pretty good.

Car brakes sorted yesterday, but they were more knackered than I thought - £286. Ouch! They feel a bit spongy at the moment, but they'll be fine when bedded in.

What the hell is wrong with my foot?

My foot still hurt all day today, very painful to walk on. It looks absolutely fine, but there's a spot on the left side that is hideously painful if I put any pressure on it. It got bad enough that I saw the doctor this evening after work and he wasn't sure what it is. He prescribed me some anti-inflammatories and to go back if it didn't go away.

Work was a bit hellish after my week off, but cleared down quite a lot of stuff. Tomorrow I'm involved in the new server and stuff for the backup system, should be fun if my foot is still playing up.

Car goes in tomorrow for the brakes. Normally I'd drop it at the garage and walk back up to the top of town to the office, but fortunately I'm getting a lift to Ruthin from a colleague.

Watched BeetleJuice this evening, another film that caused gasps of horror when I said I hadn't seen it. Was a bit underwhelmed to be honest. After that did a bit more ME1 which is standing up very well to a replay, primarily because I can make different decisions and see how they play out. Still equal in terms of paragon and renegade points though, oddly.

Back to work

Went to my Dad's yesterday for much of the day and then last night it was another Wii night with the ex-Proact gang, which was fun as always. One of them has moved to Gibraltar for work for six months, but he was able to attend through the magic of Skype, which worked surprisingly well.

It hasn't been the most productive week off. Not been particularly good for exercise due to weather and generally still feeling quite rough after the cold, and my obsession with Mass Effect 2 meant I didn't really get much else done. I've still got the DLC to download for Mass Effect 2, as I forgot to get it before I started the game, but unlike the first game, you can carry on after the final mission so I can still play it through with my original character.

Have started ME1 with a fresh Shepard, this one is a Vanguard and is being rather crappy to people. My approach so far is that he's being nice to his crew but shitty to everyone else, which means at the moment he has equal paragon and renegade points. I got the nose and chin right this time, but he's got huge and unruly eyebrows, which help him look rather evil.

Back to work tomorrow. Despite it not being a hugely productive week, I haven't really thought about work at all so I'm feeling quite laid back about it, but we'll see how long that lasts.

Spent all day with a bad left foot, agony if I step on it the wrong way. No idea why.

ME2 Complete

Completed Mass Effect 2 this evening. Logged 42 hours on it. I think a lot of that was me being overly OCD about exploring the galaxy, but on the plus side I was very prepared for the last mission. Absolutely epic game. Mass Effect 3 is due towards the end of the year, going to be a long wait. There is DLC for Mass Effect 2 and it came with a code to download it, so I might do that.

When I imported my save from the first game, I thought you couldn't adjust your character's appearance, but Rob said you could so I must have missed the option. It would have been nice to sort out his stupid chin. Oh well, never mind, it's a good, strong heroic chin...really, it is.

1000th post. Scary.

Still coughing

Still coughing every now and again, was woken by a coughing fit at 5am this morning.

Not really been a good couple of days for achieving anything useful. Tonight was good, went to Rob and Ems but we didn't go to badminton as they both had the same cold that I have had and Em was still suffering. Instead just had a pasta thing with pork and apple sausages and stilton, really nice.

Still powering through Mass Effect 2. I'm not sure how much I've got left to do. Somewhat bewildered at Shepard's sex appeal, every woman in the game is throwing themselves at him even the one that would presumably die from a mere touch from him. Found he can get drunk in a bar and pass out, to wake up in the toilets, and while doing a side quest, found he (hilariously) can't dance. Plenty of nice touches like that. The character development is really good in this one, not so much Shepard, but all the others he picks up.

One more day of holiday and then the weekend, and then work again. Oh well.

Disconnected

A fairly uneventful day. Went into town to get the car booked in to have the brakes looked at. It's not stopping as well as it should be, the front brakes are grinding and the handbrake comes up to the top again. It's going in next Tuesday.

Didn't do much else, except, yes, play Mass Effect 2. Still progressing through nicely. There's some interesting characters coming into it, including a heavily tattooed woman who is a complete psycho, although you find out why and it's understandable. While talking to her I seem to have triggered a romance with her, which is proving to be quite interesting because of her many issues about basically everything.

Cold day

It was cold today. Took the dog for a walk and got rained on and shifted some more of the soil that was moved by the floods.

Watched Top Gear on iPlayer. Normally I skip the star in the car bit but not this one as it was Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, classic.

Didn't do much else, except, inevitably, play more ME2. Still enjoying it, like the character development in this one. Had a couple of glitches, got stuck on the ship standing on some guy's head and had to reload, and then another hilarious one where a dead guy got stuck in a door that opened out of the floor so each time the door opened he'd get lifted into the air. Got a video of that one.

Out of curiosity found some German versions of the Mass Effect cutscenes on Youtube. Interesting, but had the slight issue that to me, my version of Shepard is the definitive one, so it just feels wrong and strange. I had the same issue with Saints Row 2.

Nice lazy day.

Truly obsessed

Have logged 13 hours on ME2 since about 6pm last night.

Obsessed? Just a little. It's just so fucking epic I can't stop wanting to see what happens next, and my OCD about exploring means I have to do every side-quest I possibly can before progressing the main missions. I love the way there's so many little details that carry forward from the previous game too. I can only imagine what the third one is going to be like - lets hope they don't fuck it up.

Having just been told by Rob you can get T-shirts and things with Shepard's N7 logo on them, I'm sorely tempted, but it might be a bit wrong for an overweight IT geek to wear them. Would be interesting to see if anyone got the reference though.

Lame? Maybe. I'm on holiday now though and I can use my spare time how I want. If I was to sit down and start reading Lord of the Rings, or even watching all the extended movies it would probably take about the same amount of time.

I have to admit I've been putting off stuff I had planned to do - replacing the fan in the DV7, stuff like that, but I've got all week to get that shit done.

I am going to try and book the car in to have the front brakes done tomorrow and I need to go to the gym and do some digging on the track after it got wrecked by the floods last weekend. So I'm aiming to not play ME2 quite so much in the next few days...

In other news, Nokia has jumped into bed with Microsoft, something I never expected, and will probably doom the company to irrelevance. I can understand how it happened, given that Symbian has so rapidly becoming outclassed, but why not Android? Given Nokia was making a Linux based OS already with MeeGo, Android would have seemed more logical. Intel just got royally shafted too, since it was working on MeeGo too.

ME2

It took a while to get into Mass Effect 2 because it's quite different, but well into it now.

Bizarrely, I think it just referenced Saints Row 2. At the beginning of Saints Row 2, your character has just escaped from jail and someone says to him that they thought he was dead. He says 'Yeah, I've been getting that a lot,' and scratches the back of his head. Just now, someone said the same thing to Shepard, he said the same thing in reply and scratched the back of his head in exactly the same way.

How strange. Perhaps just co-incidence.

Fly and be free!

At last this week is over. Been very busy in work trying to clear more jobs down before I'm off next week, but with limited success. I'm going to try and not think about work at all, but who knows what I'll come back to.

Obsession with Mass Effect continues. The version I got had a bonus disk with various documentaries and things, and also the DLC that came out for it. I didn't realise this or I'd have installed it before I started the game. I've installed it now and I'm going to delete the saves back to a certain point and replay the last part of the game with the DLC.

I was thinking about going somewhere next week but my finances are shaky and the front brakes grinding on the car, so I don't think I will. Also it's not much fun by yourself.

Instead I'm going to get Mass Effect 2 - and I'm going to trade in Fable 3 for it. After experiencing Mass Effect, I've realised that Fable 3 is a very shallow experience, overly dumbed down, clumsy and childish. And as I've said before, I always find sci-fi much more enjoyable than fantasy. I still think Fable 2 was pretty good but they fucked up that last one.

Rules will apply though - I must take exercise every day regardless of the progress of the game, and I must also do some geocaching, and take the bike out.

I'm going to have to look into getting a bigger hard drive for the Xbox, but it's hard to swallow the cost of a standard drive in a non-standard casing. That's one thing the PS3 got right, being able to chuck any standard laptop drive in, even an SSD.

Best game ever, maybe

Completed Mass Effect this evening. Logged about 30 hours on it since I bought it on Saturday. Insane. I've never been drawn into a game so completely before, perhaps because I played it most while I was ill with a cold, and it kept me from sitting around and feeling miserable. I can't find fault with anything about it, the only things really being the occasional loading being disguised by elevators, and quite often textures would appear a good second after everything else.

I finished it as a good person overall except a couple of decisions that were bad. My character also ended up making it with the blue alien in the end, although as he has the scariest smile in the world I'm surprised she didn't slug him in the face and leg it.

The sequel is supposed to be just as good but I'm going to leave that for a bit. Apparently you can load your save from the first one and carry on with the same character and decisions you made in the first one. Mind you, does that mean I have to stare at my character's ridiculous nose for another 30 hours? You'd have thought they'd have plastic surgery in the future...

Work wasn't great, did some more jobs, more came in, oh well.

Feeling OK today but my ears are playing up a bit and I'm coughing well. I don't think I'll be going to badminton tomorrow, but they can't complain as The Arse Faced Woman is the one who brought the cold to the meal last week.

Ouchy coughy

Had a surprisingly good nights sleep last night but woke up more snot and painful coughing bouts so spent the day at home again. Managed to venture outside into the sunshine to let the dog have a run which is better than yesterday as the wind made me cough.

Played some more Mass Effect. What a game, simply stunning. It's just so well put together, the story is well written and progresses nicely, and there's always things to do to build up experience and stuff if you get bored of the main story. Also the RPG elements are nicely done, and mostly handle themselves, which is nice if you're not into the micro-management side of things. The only thing I can at all criticise is the planets are possibly a bit samey and the characters sometime stray alarmingly towards the uncanny valley, but perhaps that was just my character's questionable nose and chin. I must be near the end now as I've just unlocked the Paramour achievement, which came suddenly and unexpectedly (no pun intended, hah).

Wish I was better so I could start exercising again, feel really crappy now as I haven't been to the gym or walked the dog properly due to the weather and now illness. Excuses, excuses...

Ill

Not well. Sneezing and snotting all day and generally feeling out of it. Had to phone sick to work, would have been no point going in.

Did play some more Mass Effect when I eventually emerged from my pit of despair. It's rare that I get grabbed by a game like this. I think it's another case of the character customisation making it somehow easier to connect with everything your character does. So far he's still being good. Also I think I've managed to initiate both of the romance subplots with two other characters, not quite sure what's going to happen there when they both find out, hah.

Not sure if I'll be better for work tomorrow. I really hope so as I'm off next week and I really need to get the more urgent jobs and things out of the way.

Mass Effect overdose

Woke up this morning feeling shite, definitely got a cold. Really didn't feel like doing much so fired up the Xbox and overdosed on Mass Effect and Lemsip capsules.

I don't normally like RPG style games but this one has enough of a decent plot and action to make it worthwhile, and I like the variety of things you have to do. So far I've been doing loads of the side quests which is good for building up the skills and experience. The bit I thought I would hate is the conversations where you have to select what to say next, but I've actually grown to quite like going through it. So far my character has been pretty nice to everyone except for some incident in the first chapter. I wish it was possible to change the character appearance after you start the game though. Also keep hearing voices I recognise such as Marina Sirtis and Seth Green.

Didn't do much else except go outside and briefly attempt to sort out the water flow issues. There must have been some ludicrous rain in the night as the stream that goes under the car parking area overflowed and gouged a shallow trench across.

Arse

Definitely got a cold or something, feel crap.

New glasses are OK for long distance stuff but crap for computer use. There's a weird prism effect that crops up if looking in anything other than almost straight ahead, which when using a computer screen is really noticeable and makes my eyes hurt. I guess it's because of the thinner lenses. Suppose I'll have to go back to the fucking shop AGAIN and see if they can explain it. It's annoying because my vision is better when looking straight ahead at distant things, and the prescription must be better than my old glasses as I can feel my eyes working together much better.

Annoying as I initially just wanted new pairs of my old glasses but they don't do them any more.

From high to low

Woke up this morning feeling much better after yesterday being so awful.

Went to Rhyl and got my new glasses. Taking some time to adjust to them because they are smaller and lighter so don't feel as secure as the old ones, and the prescription feels very different. I can certainly see better but it's taking some time to adjust.

Also picked up a copy of Mass Effect after everyone I know who has played it has raved about it. The only time I played it before was with Will, and that was only to make the most hideous character possible and laugh at the cutscenes. The character creator is pretty good and I set up the usual character I tend to create except I forgot to set the skin colour so he's going round looking like a pale ghost. Oh well. I've played it for a couple of hours and made some progress. Initially I thought I was going to hate it because of the whole selecting what to say thing, but I got used to it. I've done loads of the side quests and it's turning out to be fairly good. It looks like you can be good or evil but so far my character is earning more good points than bad points.

After feeling OK for most of the day, I now have a strange feeling I'm going to get a cold. I hope it is just a cold and not flu as someone in work has had flu recently. I can't imagine what will happen to my jobs list if I'm off sick.

Zombie

Didn't sleep last night, possibly due to large amounts of food consumed. Result was about three hours sleep resulting in feeling like a zombie all day.

It's stupidly windy today, hasn't let up at all.

Workload still crap in work. Had some help of a colleague today to try and get some jobs out of the way which was good but it's still out of hand. I can't stop worrying about it now and all I seem to get all the time is hassle from people asking why stuff hasn't been done.

HP DV7 now has docking station with a real HP power supply, which allows it to be connected to the amp with SP/DIF. Not quite configured right yet. Windows can output surround sound but the media player didn't want to for whatever reason.

Went to pub to watch rugby this evening but felt so tired that I couldn't cope with the noise and excitement so came home at half-time. Feel absolutely fucked but not sleepy. Can't stop thinking about stuff, including work.

Superb evening

Work = poo except for trying to put two 10k SCSI hard drives, a SATA hard drive and a tape drive into a Dell workstation which ran hot so I opened the case and pointed a desk fan at it. Much to my surprise, it made quite a difference.

This evening went to a meal hosted by a woman at the Rhuddlan badminton club. The club usually goes out for a meal every so often, but this time, she suggested she cook for everyone and we'd donate to a charity instead. It was a great evening, she's an amazing cook and everything was wonderful. It was also a good chance for everyone to sit around and chat and also play Pass the Pigs. I also had a piece of Stilton cheese by itself for the first time ever. I've had it in things but not by itself. It was really nice too, tastes so different from the awful smell.

Really windy today, when I went out in the evening I considered turning round because it was so awful.

Fecking water

Went into work to find my jobs list had expanded to the point where it was so bad that I passed the usual point of angst and rage and simply shrugged and sighed. All I can do is just plug away at it and if I get complaints direct them at management.

Water unfroze so I could have a shower. Then the toilet cistern broken.

The car is running much better now the exhaust is fixed and seems to be using less petrol although now I'm driving like an old woman by keeping the revs down. Seems to be working, last tank of fuel it got about 120 miles to half a tank, this time it's up to 190. Hurrah.

Flimpple

Sunday was fairly pointless.

Yesterday was a bit rubbish too, didn't really do much after work.

Today did some stuff with the LED torch and the camera. I painted round more of the car with light and it looked fairly decent. Also my missing SD card turned up after having gone through the wash and ironed in my shirt pocket.

The car went in to have the new wing put on, and they were also able to realign the tailgate, which is now fitting much better and hopefully won't leak now when there's windy rain.

Fun day

Spent most of the day with Rob and Em. First Rob and went through some proofreading I'd done for him. Normally I leave it with him but this time we went through it together, and it worked really well. Being able to explain my reasoning for changing something was good and sometimes we'd change it again or rewrite bits entirely. All good except it took two hours to do three pages of twenty-seven. Oh well.

After that we went into town to have lunch and to pick up some things and also so I could see how Specsavers had fucked up my new glasses. Turns out that the frames I'd ordered didn't take my prescription with standard lenses, even though the woman said they would. The manager tried to say it was my fault but I didn't have any of that. I don't mind paying extra for the thinner lenses, just wish they'd got it right the first time.

After that we sat and watched a film called Salt, which was quite strange and basically consisted of a scarily skeletal Angelina Jolie charging round blowing stuff up. It wasn't too bad.

Lazy evening. Also it's cold.

Wait, what?

Fable 3 was quite fun for a while, charging round making people like you so you could defeat your evil tyrant brother. And then, after short and easy battle, you've defeated him and are suddenly king. Then you find out that some evil dark is going to consume the country in exactly a year's time and it's now up to you to sort it out. So basically you can either spend some money to do up the country and make people happy but then they will die, or you can save money to build an army to defeat the dark but in doing so make everyone hate you. Also there's some git who now hassles you to make decisions on tax regulations, castle decorations and other things. Great.

It's like the Kobayashi Maru all over again. I'd done the same as Fable 2, been generally good with a slight hint of menace. I'm somewhat doubtful that my property empire will pay for the battle so I think the populace is fucked. Oh well.

Blampy week

It's been an odd week. Work has been continuously busy and very stressful, and most days I've come home in no fit state to do anything except blurge in front of a DVD or the Xbox.

Got the car fixed on Monday afternoon. It took a little while but I took The Algebraist by Iain M Banks which I'm still ploughing through. At least the car now feels good again. I hate it when the car is loud, makes it feel slower. One curious thing, nobody seemed to notice my rather loud car, except for hoody wearing chavs who would spin around to see if it was one of their boy racer pals. How odd.

On Wednesday I took my sister's new laptop around to hers and we had a good chat and catch up. I tried to imply subtly she should look after it a bit better than the previous one...

Not much else. No badminton due to Rob and Em doing stuff. Met up with Amy and Simon from my last workplace for a farewell lunch before Simon heads off to Gibraltar with his company. Embarrassingly I got Gibraltar confused with Guernsey for some reason which led to a thoroughly confusing conversation for a few minutes.

Did some light painting and stencilling this evening. The stencil worked OK but the light painting was more of a success. The best was where I drew around the car with an LED torch, that came out really well.

I hate cars

Took the car to be looked at and it's gone at the front end. There's a flexible bit after the manifold and it's that which has gone. Annoyingly it's all one piece so it all needs to be replaced, expensive. It's going in tomorrow afternoon for that to be done.

After that watched Eastern Promises which was really good, wasn't sure if it was my type of film but I thought it was great. Not really what you expect from the premise.

Took the dog out for a walk, which was good, and then took the bike out. For some reason it was a complete sod to start today, had to jump it off the Focus again and even then it took ages to get it going. Once it evenntually started though it went fine.

Didn't do much else except listen to music and build a new Asus laptop for my sister to replace her old broken HP which I recently flogged on Ebay.

Success

The overtime this morning was pretty pointless, we were done in an hour and a half. After that, went to Rhyl and ordered new glasses, and managed to find a HDMI to DVI adapter for the HP.

Got home and attempted to fit the new wing to the car, but it was a pain so gave up and will get someone to do it who actually knows what they're doing.

Watched Inception on Bluray. Such a good film, even on a repeat viewing. It looked good, but not really sure if the Bluray makes all that much difference. The copy I got included a DVD too, so I suppose I could compare if I get bored enough. The HP is hooked up to the amp using standard stereo at the moment, which worked pretty well. I will look into the possibility of getting a digital audio signal out of it, but annoyingly that might require more hardware. The other thing that would be nice is a remote, and I know some HP DV series laptops came with a small remote that slotted into the ExpressCard slot but I don't know if this one did.

Decided to scrap the VirtualBox machine and just share out the second hard drive using Windows, seemed a bit silly really to have all that when it can just do it anyway.

Off to Maz's birthday meal in a bit, can't wait.

RARGH week

Work = dreadful, and I'm doing more overtime tomorrow morning, which I really don't want to do. Oh well.

Decided the Latitude D400 has got a bit past it when it comes to running as my MP3 player as I wanted to try playing video from a machine attached to the 23" monitor I use instead of a TV. The D400 does have DVI via the dock but it just hasn't got the graphics poke to play any meaningful form of video.

So the cunning plan is replace it with a HP DV7-1103ea laptop bought with Ebay proceeds. It's a big fat thing with gobbets of tasteless chrome and white LEDs, a 17" screen, a dual-core Turion, 4gb RAM, 250gb hard drive and, most importantly, a Bluray drive. The idea is to get a HDMI to DVI adapter to hook it up to the screen and some sort of digital audio connection to the surround amp. The second part was to stick a spare second 250gb hard drive in it (dual bays rule) and set up a VirtualBox machine on it to replace the FreeNAS VM on the Atom server, which I can then get rid of. The Atom machine hasn't been used for much beyond that as the 7741g can do virtualisation much faster.

So far the HP is working OK. It's missing the battery, the case is a little battered and the screen is a bit dim, but none of those matter for what it will be used for. I've rebuilt it with a fresh install of Windows 7 and it plays Blurays quite happily. The VirtualBox and FreeNAS setup went fine with the only real issue being that file transfers to it are rather slower than to the ESXi VM, even though the HP is using gigabit. Not sure why, but perhaps VirtualBox only emulates a 100mb network card. Shouldn't matter too much though.

The HP is running a little hot, but I know Turions tend to anyway from my experiences with the Acer 5535, so it might be normal, and getting at the CPU to clean out and regunk the heatsink might be a pain from what I read. When I played a Bluray, it stayed quite cool as I think most of the work is done by the graphics chip.

Went to the gym twice, did a good walk, and played badminton all this week, so I'm feeling good about that, but less good about the fairly poor diet. But never mind. Tomorrow is bound to be bad, as it's Maz's birthday meal in the new Asia restaurant in Denbigh. I've had a takeaway from there and it was great, so I'm really looking forward to that. Also going to order new glasses, get a haircut (first time in ages) and go to the gym.

Still can't summon up the courage to run on a treadmill. I'm happy enough walking on one, but I'm scared of running on it. It's probably got something to do with when one cut out on me at full speed in Rhyl a few years ago.

Building cars using genetic algorithms, quite fun to watch:

http://megaswf.com/serve/102223/

After getting the latest Oomph! album Monster and liking it, I got the previous one, GlaubeLiebeTod, which is pretty good. Sort of industrial type stuff.

Possessed pocket

Work was decidedly meh today, but not quite as bad as previous days.

Took the dog for a walk after work and remembered to try out the Cardio Trainer app for Android. If you go for a run or walk it uses the GPS to work out how far you've gone and how many calories you've used. It worked quite well but I didn't realise it would speak information every minute so I would get a voice emerging from my pocket telling me how fast I was walking or how far I'd gone. Quite cool though and it seemed fairly accurate. It was a bloody cold walk though. Also I went in my wellies which was a bad idea as I almost got blisters.

Had a play with the 7741g. Found a utility that monitors the i7 and tells you what the CPU is doing. I was surprised how often it would overclock if one core was being hammered, up to 2.8ghz but it stayed relatively cool. When Intel first announced the TurboBoost thing, I thought it sounded stupid but it makes more sense seeing it working. The extra RAM and the i7 really have helped VirtualBox though, the VMs feel like they're running on the native hardware. The only other upgrades I could do now are a 7200rpm hard drive and possibly a Bluray optical drive, but they are hardly necessary.

Booked flight to Berlin at the end of March to go over for the half-marathon which Amogharatna is running. Really looking forward to it.

Shaky legs

After the laptop upgrade success, I went to the gym for the first time in ages. It was really good in the end, and I feel good afterwards.I can see why they say exercise is therapeutic as I was feeling rather crap after work but feel much better now.

Laptop still running OK. The i7 is idling at about 40 degrees which isn't bad. It did get a little warm when I ran a stress test that maxed it out completely but I doubt that will ever happen under normal use.

The Great Experiment

The weekend was good, my cousin Pauline and Amogharatna were both staying over at my Dad's so I spent Saturday and Sunday morning hanging out there with them. It was a good day, with a great lunch and lots of conversation and things. We watched Dinner for One three times, once the original, once in colour, and once in Lego. Very funny. Also did some long exposure stuff.

After some consultation on a forum with someone who knew intimate details about the BIOS, I decided to order a quad Core i7-720m for my 7741g laptop as I was pondering last week. It arrived today.

Getting at the CPU socket was rather troublesome because of the way it's mounted. It's actually on the underside of the motherboard so the whole thing has to come apart and the motherboard removed. Also, once it was all in bits, the somewhat fragile Acer build quality was evident. But I got it in, put my favoured Actic Silver 5 thermal paste on the heatsinks and fired it up. And there it was in the BIOS - Intel Core i7-720. Once back together, Windows 7 installed some new drivers and rebooted. A quick check showed 8 processor graphs in Task Manager as the i7 does hyperthreading.

In terms of clock speed, the i7 is actually slower than the i3 it replaced, 1.6ghz vs 2.1ghz. But the two extra physical cores are worth it, and if one core is maxed out, it can use the TurboBoost feature to speed up that core, something the i3 lacked. It also seems to run cooler than the i3, even with all four cores at full load.

So far, the experiment is looking like a success, so I don't feel quite so bad about ripping apart a laptop that was only a few months old and voiding the warranty. Also I might be able to sell the old CPU and get some cash back.

ARSE

Good:

Upgraded 7741g to 8gb RAM, big boost to virtual machine performance. It should also be possible to replace the dual-core Core i3 for a quad-core i7. Tempting...very tempting.
Only bottleneck now is the hard drive, a 5400rpm 500gb drive. Shame it doesn't have dual hard drive bays like some 17" laptops.
Have hopefully sold my old iPod touch to someone in work.

Bad:

Work is shit, hate it right now.
Haven't eaten well this week at all.
Car has issues.
- Exhaust now very noisy indeed, but nothing hanging down that I can see.
- Chequered wing kicked in by persons unknown, severely dented and indicator smashed. Not sure if if can be pulled out or not. Tempted to try with the floor tile lifter in work.
- Brakes noisy and not performing as well as they should.

Fable fun

A fairly OK, if busy day in work and nearly had a furious row with someone from another council who was having a strop about not being able to use our network. I had to seriously count to ten and calm down before I responded to her infuriating comments.

Played Fable III with Will for a bit this evening, which was good fun. Did some more missions and gave him a shitload of gold as I was earning quite a lot through the properties I'd bought. It's making a bit more sense now.

He's dead

Felt better today although had a cough. Work wasn't too bad.

Got home and watched Akira on DVD, which I've had for years but never actually watched before. what a weird film, some really fucked up stuff in it. Can see why it's a cult favourite though.

After that played RE5 with Rob again, and got the final battle done. The ending was OK. Great game.

Fun things and possible flu or chest infection

Today was basically spent sorting out the aftermath of the work on Saturday. It went OK and there weren't that many problems in the end. The main issues were getting people printing and a couple of telephone issues.

Still don't feel well. When it came to lunch I didn't fancy anything at all, which is unusual for me. I ate half a sandwich but felt like I was going to throw up. Some Mini Eggs did settle my stomach in the end though. Spent the evening in bed mostly.

Someone in work was selling a new generation iPod touch so I picked it up. It's pretty good, with much snappier performance and the 960x640 screen is very impressive. The camera isn't too bad and the new OS is nice. I played through a few levels of Angry Birds which is fun but I'm not sure it deserves the massive hype. The screen is vey responsive too

Watched a couple of clips of Stromberg, the German version of The Office. Kind of weird to see a German guy who looks nothing like Ricky Gervais copying David Brent's mannerisms and behaviour.

Die Wesker, die, you stupid arrogant fuck!

More RE5 with Rob this morning. We were hoping to finish it, but we had to stop just before the big final chapter, we might have done it if we hadn't kept getting stuck and worked up on things that turned out to be relatively simple. It's really good fun and I like the way it has an updated feel but still some of the elements of the original game.

After that went into town with the dog and took him for a walk on the way back. I hadn't anticipated the freeze last night though, as every road that the sun hadn't reached was covered in a lethal sheet of ice which made things interesting.

Watched the first series of The Office on DVD, ten years late. I didn't expect to like it but oddly I did, it's really funny and has the occasional deep moment. Also listened to the radio on iPlayer for the first time in years, to catch I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, which is just so stupidly funny. I didn't know Jack Dee was hosting it now and he was pretty funny to be fair.

Fecking exhausts

It was overtime this morning to work for another office move. It went OK and we got chips for lunch, which was welcome but didn't help with the healthy eating. On the way home, the Focus exhaust suddenly got quite loud. It's been blowing quietly for a little while now, but now it's quite a bit louder. Arse.

Failed to go the gym this afternoon as I didn't realise the opening times had changed so I got there ten minutes after it had shut. So spent the rest of the afternoon and evening cabbaging out. Not feeling very good this evening though, coughing a bit and my chest is feeling odd. Hope I'm not becoming ill again, that would be really annoying.

Back to the grindstone

Work has been OK this week, but today was a bit stressful. It's got busy again after a couple of days which seemed relatively quiet. Got office moves coming up so that means overtime on Saturday, but at least it means a bit of extra cash.

Badminton started today but I had to leave work late to get a document done and I didn't have my stuff. Ended up having dinner with Rob and Em but didn't go to badminton. I got some freaky (and delicious) pasta from the deli in Ruthin. Not quite as freaky as the black spaghetti, which I was tempted to get but wasn't sure about. I think I will next week.

I've eaten fairly well this week and reactivated my gym membership last night and had a look at the new machines. It seems pretty good. I'm going to go properly tomorrow evening. Also haven't had any Coke at all since New Years Eve, so that's got to be good. I think just cutting out the vending machine snacks and Coke will be a big start in sorting out my shitty eating habits.

Not much else to report. Put a 1.13ghz processor in the C810 to replace the 866mhz that was in there. Not sure if it'll make much difference though. I've had it apart so many times now I can do it blindfold almost.

Tried doing star trails the other night with the camera by leaving it outside with the shutter open for half an hour or so. It did work but I think the ISO was too low so it didn't really pick up much. I've pointed it at a different area of the sky to try it again.

The DVD arrived from Germany. All good except that it doesn't have English subtitles. Or any subtitles. Kind of defeats the point really. Not sure why I just assumed it would have subtitles. Oh well. I'll see if I can find the script and translate it using Google or something.

I still maintain Adblock is the absolute best thing ever made for Internet use. It's only when I fire up Firefox without it installed that I realise just how much of a difference it makes.

Flingel

Another day of not doing much although I felt quite a bit better.

Rob and I had yet another session of RE5 this morning and were joined by Em who I think watched in bewilderment and dismay before getting bored. We were hoping to finish it today but there's still a few chapters left although the big twist has been revealed.

Other than that, spent much of the day setting up an identical clone of my Latitude C810 writing machine, using a broken one which had a loose screen and a bad optical drive. It's now in the same state as my primary one except it has a 1ghz CPU that came out of another machine. The primary one will shortly be receiving a CPU upgrade too, although I doubt it'll make much difference.

Found out that Iron Maiden had a collection of their B sides which I had never heard before. I had no idea that they had covered things like My Generation, Johnny B Goode and stuff by Led Zeppelin and such like. Some of it is pretty good too.

Back to work tomorrow. Kind of wish I'd done more with my holidays now, but never mind. Going to go to the gym tomorrow lunchtime as well to sort out my membership and stuff. They've changed their programmes so I need to do that or cancel it. I was going to go last week but wasn't able to due to the pump shenanigans and illness.

Blurgh

Cold kicked in with a vengeance today. Rob and I had another session of RE5 this morning which was good fun but I sneezed and snorted snot through most of it so I felt bad for Rob having to listen to it. We got through quite a few levels. Definitely a wise investment for just £6.

After that retired to bed and spent much of the day there reading. Only went out when it got dark to do some more steel wool shots with the new remote for the camera and the tripod. Experimented with opening the shutter after the wool is lit and spinning, which worked quite well.

One more day of freedom and then back to work. Boo.

The Nintendo 3DS looks quite interesting. I've read quite a lot about it and it gets some impressive write ups from people who have seen the preproduction models. Should be interesting to see what it's like.

Took the bike out the other day. I jump started it from the Focus as it was a pain to bump start it. It started up fine after the usual choke faffing. It was quite funny how much faster it turned over from the more powerful battery in the Focus. It's going to need some attention though as some of the chrome has started to go on the rear springs and the forks, and the exhaust has rusted through in a couple of places. I found a site that does Gilera spares and they wanted £390 for an original exhaust. Seems bonkers as it has the same engine as a Honda CG125 for which an exhaust is about £60. One of those should fit at the engine end, not sure about the other end.

Or perhaps I should stick it on Ebay and look for a Honda XR125, which would be so much more suitable for where I live.

New year, same shit?

Spent quite a lot of time yesterday and today playing Resident Evil 5 with Rob over Xbox Live. We've got quite far into it, and it's been really fun. It does a good job of breaking up the zombie killing action with puzzles and other things, and it has a decent plot. Can't believe Rob was able to get two copies of it for £6 each.

Last night was round at Rob and Ems. Originally quite a few people were due to go but due to some being ill and others being unable to make it, there weren't that many. In a way this worked as it became a more cosy event and everyone had a good time. I didn't stay long after midnight as I was feeling rough again. As I drove out of Rhyl I got flashed by some drunken guy who was dancing around a pedestrian crossing in a bra and panties.

Played a bit more Fable III. I'm not sure if I like it or not yet. They've messed with it too much. Apparently they tried to simplify it to get rid of all the menus from the last game, but it's gone too far in the other direction, making a lot of stuff less flexible. The story is OK though, although it's veering rather too much to the 'take something to somewhere for someone so they like you' type of quests. But we'll see.

Watched the first Resident Evil movie too, which was mindlessly entertaining. There's a bit where they use a train to travel to the Hive, and I thought the station looked familiar somehow. Turns out it was filmed in the unfinished station for the U55 in Berlin, which I've been in.

Tired now after the late finish last night.

Violence and lust

Yesterday went to my Dad's to see him and had Christmas lunch with him and Jean. It was really nice, and good to finally have a Christmas lunch at last. Also finally picked up a tripod for the D50 which came in useful as Will and I went out taking photographs in the afternoon. We went to the beach and took a few shots of a curious robotic lighthouse keeper, before trying to do some steel wool shots. Sadly while I now have the right wool, the battery had gone flat so it wouldn't light most of the time.

In the evening we played a bit of Fable III on Xbox Live. It seems much like the previous one but with quite a few changes and an interesting plot. Not sure all the changes are for the better though, as the interaction with people doesn't seem as flexible, and I think the hand-holding thing is a bit stupid. As I did in the last game I've started building up a property empire.

Feeling a bit rough today, like I'm coming down with something.

Went to town first thing today to go to the bank. Shortly after I got home my phone reminded me that I was supposed to go to the gym to sort out the new programmes and things. By that time though I was sat in the armchair playing Resident Evil 5 over Xbox Live with Rob, surrounded by Monster Munch, Mini Rolls and Coke. We played it for a considerable amount of time, and got a few chapters out of the way. Not sure if I'd have enjoyed it much at all by myself, but as a co-op experience, it's pretty good fun, although frustrating in places.

Didn't really do much else today. I finally got a Mini ITX case for the Atom based VMware server, which is great because it takes up much less room, and it was silly to have a tiny motherboard in a full size case. One thing I hadn't considered was the network card that the machine needed as ESXi doesn't support the onboard network card. My solution was to get a flexible PCI extender lead that extends the PCI slot and relocate the network card. It's a bit kludgy but it works. That combined with a nice little 8-port gigabit switch means my desk has far more room on it which is useful.

House in a state, the dog puked on his bed last night and it smells and due to ongoing problems with the water, it can't be washed, and also I'm running out of clothes. The water seems to be a problem with the pipe, which might take some considerable time to resolve. Oh well.

Another lazy day

Another lazy day but I'm on holiday.

Spent much of the day playing on the DS, which I had left in a corner since about April. I had a play on Super Scribblenauts,which is pretty good fun. Then had a go on WarioWare DIY. Pretty much the same as the previous Wario games with the twist that it has a whole load of tools that allow you to make your own minigames. The tools are fairly basic, but you can do quite a lot with them, and other than the limited sound effects, you're pretty much free to make whatever graphics and behaviour you want. Cue loads of rude/violent games. Hah. Good fun though.

Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHc9Q8G1EyM&

If I used my DS more I'd love to get DSi XL as I'm sure I'd find the bigger screens easier to use but they're still quite pricey. The 3DS is due out in March - definitely reserving judgement on that until I've seen one running in person.

I've been trying to find a particular German film on DVD for ages but had no success. It never occurred to me that I could use my Amazon UK credentials on the German site and just order it directly from there. Tried it today and it worked.

Snow now basically gone but the water still didn't pump up today, although it did push some ice through the pipe.

If you ever played Animal Crossing, read this:

http://lparchive.org/Animal-Crossing/Update%201/

A good day

There was a bit of a thaw today so I was able to go out and get some shopping and get the car up the track. It was still a little bad at the bottom but did eventually get up. The water didn't pump up though, annoyingly. I really need a shower.

Something really unexpected this morning. My HTC Magic told me there was a system update, which actually turned out to be Android 2.2.1. When I got the phone it had Android 1.6 on it, and when I looked into it, the general consensus was that it would never be updated to anything higher. But kudos to Vodafone for finally getting it sorted. A lot of people said that the Magic wouldn't run 2.2 very well because it has a relatively slow processor and a low amount of RAM. But it seems fine to me once it had sorted itself out after the first boot. There's quite a lot of stuff updated, but the main thing that is noticable is a new and very swish Gallery app, and the fact that it now supports multi-touch. It's pretty much made it feel like a new phone.

This evening it was Caroline's 40th birthday bash, which was fancy dress and you had to be something that started with C A or Z. I did have a look around the house but couldn't find anything to go as, so I just went in a festive red top. It was a great evening, lots of good food and gossip and so-on. Perhaps the most worrying was Rob P and Rob T swapping clothes and appearance, which was really uncanny in Rob P's case.

Weird

Just had a dream about discovering a railway from Ruthin to somewhere and then getting it restored and then someone driving one of those little shunting steam engines with a Porsche 911 body on the track. How strange.

Fun fun

So Christmas was a bit of a bust really, due to the weather barely any presents had arrived in time, and we didn't have any special food. Spent the day doing sod all really, although I did have a clearout and a bonfire, which was fun.

Today pretty much the same. Didn't feel like going out anywhere, so spazzed out. Had a look at some of the trailers for Portal 2, which looks like it should be pretty good. The teaser trailer surprised me with the idea of it, but it looks like it'll be a lot of fun. Can't wait for it to be released, but that's April now.

Caroline's birthday party coming up, supposed to dress up as something starting with c, a or z. No idea what though. Will have to have a think tomorrow.

Singular Notable Ovular Whales

Sunny today, no real melting though. Went to town this morning to post an Ebay sale and pick up some bits and pieces. Roads are a bit better but things like car parks were a nightmare. Also shop floors all covered in water and shit. I thought it would be busier than it was though, which was a bit of a relief.

Not really done much else today. Tried to start the bike up and it ran briefly but then stopped and the battery was too flat to get it going again. I'm sure it'll get going with a bump start when the weather is better. Took the dog out for a play in the snow which was fun.

Finally got the latest Iron Maiden album as it was just £3 on Amazon.

Looking forward to going to Andy and Maz's tonight, should be fun.

Stupid Necrophiliac Orwellian Wenches

More snow overnight although it didn't freeze. The roads were bloody awful though. When going to work I found myself going downhill through 8" snow that hadn't been touched. Fortunately, the Focus coped pretty well, and I made it to work fine. Not everyone did but it was another fairly productive day and I was able to have a shower, which was great.

Just finished reading Selling Hitler by Robert Harris, about the Hitler diaries. What an utterly crazy story, so many flukes and errors. It's the first time I'd actually really read about them, previously it was only when they were mentioned in Adrian Mole's diary where of course he passionately believes they are real and then loses a bet to Pandora over it.

Watched Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, the latest Kevin Smith film I've got. It's a great film if you've seen and like his other stuff. The ending always gets me with all the old characters coming back, and the last shot of Kevin Smith and Jason Miewes is great when they're pretty much just being themselves, and Smith is gobsmacked about it all.

Other than that just played around the basses for bit and fooled around on the C810 writing some stuff.

The Clansman by Iron Maiden is one of the few good songs from the Blaze Bayley era, and it sounds much better when Bruce Dickinson sings it.

Flimbles

Still snow. More came today. Track and water unchanged. Fairly productive day in work.

Fairly pointless evening, finished rebuilding the C810 and got it back to the state it was in before the last drive failed. Also put Artic Silver 5 on the heatsink, dropping the CPU temperature by over 20 degrees. The heatsink isn't big but has two fans, which reach over 11,000rpm when forced to run at full speed, which is bonkers compared to the most which seem to run at about 4-5000rpm maximum.

Might seem weird to put all this effort into an 8 year old laptop but like I've said before, it has a fantastic keyboard. I discovered that while it has the same mechanism as most laptop keyboards, the actual scissor bits under each key are substantial metal rather than plastic, which is presumably why the keys have such a great feel. It feels fairly similar to the Alphasmart keyboards, and even beats the old IBM Thinkpads for feel in my opinion.

This is worth watching just for the surreal sight of a full-size train going down the middle of a street: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-E67fiYLXQ&feature=related

Desperate for a shower, going to take towel and shampoo into work tomorrow so I can take one there. Also had pizza for supper three days in a row, getting slightly tired of it now.

On a Kevin Smith marathon although my copy of Clerks wouldn't play, seemed to have been one of those cases where the DVD had deteriorated. Watching Dogma at the moment after finishing Chasing Amy.

Rargh

Still snow. No water. Work was OK, except for discovering there'd been office moves in one of my sites that nobody had bothered telling me about so people are without phones and expect me to drop everything to sort it out. Never mind that this is my last week before holidays and I had tried to plan it out properly. Nearly had a rage moment but didn't feel up to it.

Fairly average day at work. Got some more steel wool but this stuff isn't as good, doesn't burn as well. Did get some OK shots though, but nothing spectacular.

Rebuilding the C810 with another hard drive, but sometimes I get the feeling a machine is fighting. It kept doing strange things like fail to format the drive during the setup process, or failing to detect any drives at all. After pulling the damn thing completely to bits I took out the optical drive and replaced that with a generic spare, and it was fine ever since.