Aarrrrgh!!

I am, at this moment, absolutely apopleptic with rage.
Seriously, I've got a headache and my hands are shaking with anger.

It all started when I went to sync my iPaq with my computer, to transfer the files from my PDA to my computer.
The plug went in. Nothing. No beep, no activesync.
I tried several more times, giving it the Eddie Izzard style "Cannot detect device? [holding ipaq up to the monitor] IT'S HERE!!!"

I uninstalled activesync, reinstalled it, restarted my computer several times, did several hard resets of the ipaq, losing all my data in the process, and still it wouldn't detect it.
This went on for an hour at which point the stylus got stuck inside the ipaq, and wouldn't budge.
After ten minutes of trying to free it, I lost my patience and launched the ipaq across the room into the wall (I have a habit of doing that).

I picked up the device and the now-free stylus, and turned it back on.
No touch screen. The touchscreen had stopped working.

I disassembled and reassembled the device several times, each time hearing the stupidly deafeningly loud beep as it reset itself. I lost patience with it and dropped the defunct pile of circuit boards at my feet, as I started searching ebay for a replacement.

Bingo!
Ipaq, spares repairs, needs new screen £0.99, 3 minutes to go.
I searched for a new screen - £5.99.

Fantastic, brand new PDA for £6, awesome way to go.

I counted down, and prepared to pounce, placing a bid of £10 on the ipaq.
with about 20 seconds to go, the screen went blank, and then went to the "please log in" screen.
I was halfway through my loudest "AAAAGGGHHHHH" to date, when I realised that the stupid thing wasn't even autofilling my log in details, so I had to type them in myself.

I finally managed to get back to the item, to find "Item won for 99p".
By someone else.

I went downstairs to say hi to my mum and enlighten her about the afternoon's events. I turned on the ipaq to demonstrate how it was no longer working, and even as I was jabbing the screen saying "Look, it doesn't work!!!" the happy little crosshairs on the screen were following my touches, saying "calibrating screen".

I feel like crying now, not out of sadness or anything, just out of sheer angry frustration. I've got an ipaq that does work, doesn't work, well it officially doesn't work yet it does.
And it still won't sync.
And it's eaten my stylus again.

Aaagh :(.

EDIT: And now a picture of a large parrot has appeared on the screen of my ipaq.
What. The. Hell.
I'm officially so angry I'm hallucinating, what the hell is a picture of a parrot doing on my ipaq?!

UPILOQLY

(A cross between an update, an epilogue, and a soliloquy)

I am now feeling quite considerably more calm. A fairly laid back four hour shift served to calm ny nerves - the opposite effect to the one it usually has - and I now feel quite a lot better (despite the fact that I left my bag containing all my tips at work - arrgh!). I brought my stricken ipaq back, and took it to bits again, and I've finally figured out what the problem is. Without going into detail, one of the "Flexible-Flat Cables" that connects the touchscreen to the motherboard has split, so the screen is effectively unplugged from the main board. This is not something I can fix, so my trusty Ipaq is I'm sad to say, defunct. It was a very useful gadget, I took it everywhere with me, and my frequent insistence that every little job I had to do was noted down on there, every appointment, reference number and birthday/anniversary, meant that it basically turned me from a disorganised loony into an organised loony, joined at the hip, dexter's lab style, with some sparkly shiny technological gizmo. So I've ordered another one. A nice sparkly modern one. It doesn't have the sleek curves of "my" Ipaq, and the screen is (slightly!) smaller, but it is more sparkly, more modern, AND you can upgrade the memory on it which for me is a big plus. So let's bid a teary goodbye to old Ipaq, and welcome the new one :-).

Epi-Epilogue:

Apparently the Parrot I saw was not a hallucination (in my furious state of mind, it wouldn't have surprised me if it was!). It is in fact something coded into the software, to entertain and calm the user, during what is actually a hardware memory problem. It's basically there to distract you from the fact that something has gone horribly badly wrong.
A very attractive creature it was, red and green and blue, very nice :-).

Here are some pictures - my old iPaq, and my new Ipaq.
Sorry about the huge image size - for some reason I can't figure out how to make linked images small like you can with uploaded ones.

Why do I write this blog?

A question which I've occasionally been asked, one that I have to admit to not really pondering that much.

The "Blogsphere" as it is known, is inhabited by many thousands of individuals, each with their own little online kingdom, their own agendas, each blog with its own purpose.

There are as many different examples as there are different bloggers, as everyone will want to keep his/her own blog for a personal and officially unique reason.
Amongst the blogs that I've visited recently, some want to write about politics, using their blogs as long in-depth political commentaries. Others want to recommend exotic places to eat, and review the food they sell. Some are nothing more than page after page of "I went to the shop/swimming pool/bowling alley today, it was fun".

And as with anything else that contains a degree of variety, people uninvolved in blogging will pick and choose things about blogging that they don't like, and latch onto them like a jack russell latches onto your leg.

"On the street, the mad loonies can shout out their beliefs, and they'll generally get laughed at. On the internet, they will find people to listen".


"She spouts the pointless minutae of her life, hoping to generate some surrogate sense of self worth, by using the internet to convince herself that people care what colour bedspread she just bought".

I suppose both statements are broadly true, if a little cruel. Bloggers - myself included - have all been guilty at one time or another, of posting crap. I refer you to some of my more drunken posts if you're not already convinced.

But the statements above are symptomatic of what happens when any normal opinionated human being, sees something that doesn't fit in with his/her world view. The little gears in their minds turning, with the words "if they wrote this for my benefit, they didn't do a very good job" flashing through their subconcious. A little natural self indulgence on the part of every reader, in the time honoured lolcat style, "this is/is not relevant to my interests". Rarely does it seem to occur to anyone however, whether the blog they're criticising is actually written for their benefit, or not.

Before anyone accuses me of sounding defensive, I haven't as far as I'm aware, had my own personal blog criticised or attacked. So why am I writing this?

Perhaps I am feeling a little defensive, and I want to cover my back.
Or perhaps I am angry at the treatment of bloggers elsewhere, and want to speak up on their behalf... Perhaps not.
Maybe I just want to explain, as if explanation was needed, why this blog is here, so I could maybe indemnify myself against future criticism, weilding this entry as a longwinded "don't like it, don't read it" caveat.

I suppose on reflection, it's likely to be a combination of the former and the latter. Not so much my second reason at all - at the risk of sounding cruel, there really are blogs out there that don't serve their intended purpose, because they actually are being misused by people who really do want the world to comment on their new soap is, and last night's choice of dinner.

But I suspect those blogs are fewer in number than people make out.

I write this blog for a variety of reasons.
Most importantly, I write it for the same reason I take photographs, for the same reason I buy souvenirs, or for the same reason that at Christmas/Birthday, I go everywhere with a video camera.

90% of my reason for writing this blog, is purely selfish. I write it because I want to keep a record of the years as they pass, because with the ability to include photos and videos, this blog is far superior to any paper diary.

It acts as a kind of moderate safety net I suppose. Should I become unhappy or worried for whatever reason, if I'm so inclined, I can read back through my life to other similar occasions, and read forward from there so I can see week by week how things improve and return to normal.

As a two-way safeguard, when I am upset, I can read about happier times and cheer myself up. Conversley, when I am happy, I can make myself even happier by reading back and seeing just how far I've come.

Preserved as words on a page, are feelings;

• The warm rosy excitement on Christmas eve.
• The happiness at the family celebration meal we had at my brother's birthday.
• The fear and nervousness before my trip to have my tooth out.
• The excitement at our trip to Twin Lake's amusement park.
• The sense of victory, and accomplishment, as I passed the assessments during Army selection.

Like jewels in a display case, all those days, with their memories, their feelings, their fears and their hopes, are there arrayed for me to look at, to re-experience in my mind, how I felt on every single one.
All at once can I remember where I was going, what I was doing, who I was with. The music, the sound, the sights and smells of every single one of those days, and I can sit here, and relive each and every one of those days, and feel, for a time, just how I felt at the time.

I have photos, many photos, and videos too. I can see exactly what I did, from the viewpoint of myself doing it at the time. I suppose for me, the past isn't past at all. It's merely stored away, in its own little entry, with a few paragraphs and some pictures. Just waiting for me to dust off the box, open it and look inside again.

Happiness is only a box away.
I think I'll carry on opening them from time to time

And I suppose, that in a rather worrying kind of way, this blog serves as a safety net. To paraphrase Spike Milligan (again - I've used this quite elsewhere) "What is it about the past that is so compelling? Is it that with the present so dismal, and the future uncertain, the past welcomes us with open arms, to happier times?".

I'm not an unhappy person by any means, far from it. I have a lot to look forward to. And maybe I can record that, for posterity, for my future self, at the time.
But only after I've taken care to enjoy each day, for the reality of what it is, right here, right now, to be recorded, but never to happen again.

I make it sound like I live for the past, but that, is a mistake which I am careful never to make, because the present is the desk on which the pages of the past are written.

The better you live your days, the better your future.
But almost as important, The happier your memories.

May you all have a good day, and many such days to come. And may you all record them to share with others, as I do. Because feelings and memories make you who you are.

And I rather like who I am.

I leave you with a picture.
Have fun.

Fly away, be free!

You bloody stupid RC Helicopter.

On Tuesday, I went to the town center to go and do my BARB test again.
I got there, in true me fashion, just in time, and having got into the deserted office just in time, ended up sitting for the next 20 minutes, while various sergeants came in, asked our names and went out again.

If I haven't already explained, I finally went to the army carreers office to tell them I now felt ready to do the final stage of selection. Of course, since like an idiot, I'd not been in touch with them for a while, they cancelled my application.

So I started a new one - the BARB being the second part of said application. The first consisting of reams of paperwork wanting to know everything from how often I exercised, to whether I thought pepsi was better than coca cola. Well, mostly.

Anyways, we got taken down to the testing room, and signed in for the tests.
"Please tick this box to say you have read and understood the introduction and sample questions booklet".

"Uhm, I haven't been given one".

Bugger I remembered being given one last time. I explained that no I'd not been given a booklet, yes I have seen one before (back in 2007 I think). Yes I was okay to do the test, and if my results were lower as a result of not having revised, then so be it.

So I started the test. And despite the semi broken touchscreen that only let you press one of the answers if you touched it in the right exact place every time, the incredibly uncomfortable headphones that seemed to give me a headache, and the fact that every once in a while, my finger would go and tap the answer to a question even as my mind was saying "no that's the wrong answer", I think it went okay.

Eventually, the tests finished, and we sat and waited.
I had a little interview with the sergeant afterwards, and it turned out my BARB score this time round, was 76. It was 87 last year. Bleh.
But hey, I've just found out the average score is around the mid forties, and the sergeant himself told me that I had a "very high score" so hey, I rock!

We went through the list of jobs I was eligible to do, which was most of them. I still put Tank crew as my first choice, but my second and third seem to be a punch up between Armourer, Air Dispatcher, and Vehicle Mechanic. One of them is going to have to go.

After leaving the AFCO with more forms to fill out, I went to the local store to trade in my little remote control UFO (the one I got for christmas, that stopped working) for a new one. They didn't have another UFO so I paid extra and got a little RC helicopter instead. Only a tiny little one.

Anyway, wednesday morning, I went out to take it for a test flight. No breeze, and it was nice and quiet, so off we went.
The helicopter lifted off slowly, then started leaning to the side as a slight tiny breeze picked up. The helicopter climbed further, at which point I realised - half with a laugh and half in horror - that it was disobeying my commands. It climbed even further, the little rotors whirring away, until it was too high to land in the garden, then too high to land in the gutter, then too high to land on the roof.
Up it went, over the roof, and I lost sight of it as it disappeared :(.
After an hour of searching six gardens, I didn't find it :(.

So meh, that's no good. I'm now helicopterless.

Still, I managed to sell my horrible little 8500 graphics card for the princely sum of £19. plus £6 postage.

Maybe I can use the money to buy this.

Have fun.

Birthdays, Beer and Heat Sinks...

I've had a cool week, my nephew's been up to see me a lot, so we've spent a lot of time together.
His latest thing which he likes doing, is playing "That train game". Yep, he gets dressed in his finest "Train driver's Gear" (wrapping himself in blankets) and we fire up TRS2006 (Screenshot from my system, here).
Why did I buy that game? Am I a train spotter? No way! However, there's no way I'm gonna look at a machine like the Union Pacific Big Boy locomotive, with its 6,290 Horsepower designed to pull over 3300 tons (over 600 of which are the locomotive and tender!), at speeds of up to 80mph, and not be impressed.
My nephew loves the game - whether at the controls of Big Boy (which we still haven't learned how to do "Hill Starts" in yet) or at the controls of an ICE train, my nephew is determined to (in his own words) "Set the world record!", but also stop the passengers from "getting angry". It's incredibly cute.

It's thanks to my awesomely incredible new graphics card that I've been able to reinstall graphics intensive games like this (okay, so trainz's graphics aren't that incredible - it's a 3 year old game though). From the games I've played so far, the card is incredible, and will easily take anything that the games industry can throw at it.

Like Crysis for example. (Game trailer here)

Crysis was released all the way back in 2007, to widespread criticism. It wasn't a bad game, far from it. But it was one of the first games designed for DirectX 10, if memory serves, and at the time, none but the very latest - and most expensive - graphics cards, would run it well. Gamers complained that their systems weren't up to the task. Only a monster computer could play it.

Lucky for me that I've got an 8800GTS.

Crysis, without a word of exaggeration, is a breathtakingly beautiful, absolutely incredible beast of a game. It makes games like Doom 3 and Prey look outdated and ugly (not surprising - both games share the same engine).
The game looks absolutely incredible. Plants wave in the breeze, water ripples gently, flocks of seabirds make their slow way across the beach, leaving only footprints. Even when the weather turns bad, the game is still beautiful, as tornados tear buildings to pieces, flinging wreckage through the air.

Spot an enemy soldier, and he opens fire. Return fire, and he'll take cover behind a tree. Not a problem, as the tree will splinter and collapse as you empty more and more ammo into it. If you're lucky, you can even catch him underneath it, as it collapses.
His friends come to aid him, screaming towards you in a pickup truck. No problem. Shoot out one or two tyres, and watch as the vehicle loses control, cartwheeling off the road and through the air, before hitting the ground and bursting into flames.

Out of ammo but still feeling destructive? Pick up anything and everything, from laptop computers, to watermelons to beer bottles, and throw them through the air, watching as they smash against the wall. Who needs to crowbar a crate open when you can smash it against the ground?
Pick up a chickens, even a couple of chickens, for crying out loud, and they will carry on clucking and looking around, while you walk about holding the damn things.

Fight the enemy with rifles, grenades, even with vehicle mounted machine guns, or tanks. Run across a picture perfect tropical beach, over the deck of an aircraft carrier, or through a dead and frozen wilderness. Fly through zero gravity alien environments, fighting all manner of enemies, both human, and alien, from the size of a soldier, to the size of a warship!

This game is incredible, incredible, incredible. I cannot overstate that enough. If you have what you consider to be a modern powerful system, put it to the test - for crysis' sake, go out and buy this game!

Another game I've bought is Sins of a Solar Empire, this time a 4X RTS game.
Pick an empire, and lead it to dominance, through a beautifully realised 3d universe, filled with planets, black holes, stars, wormholes, asteroids and plasma storms.
It didn't make as big an impression on me as Crysis, because it's not as beautiful.
But, it's still a pretty damn good game. Field dozens of ships, from small fighters, to immense battlecruisers as you take over the galaxy.
Put simply, the game is kinda a cross between C&C, Homeworld 2 and Master of Orion 3.

Back to my nephew - this week has featured the lil guy's 5th birthday. Yep, he's getting old now.
My sis and I took the opportunity to decorate his bedroom with a new sparkly shiny ceiling covered in glow in the dark stars. The family visited, my nephew went through his presents, and all was well and nice :).
Today was the day of his party. We rented the local church hall - a surprisingly modern building despite the medieval mindset that gave it its original purpose, and decorated the place with balloons and suchlike.
My sis spent a ton of money she didn't have on food, and also on hiring an entertainer.
Billy Bodkins, a local children's entertainer, turned up and got set up, and the kids started arriving.
And everyone had an awesome time. Billy did a fantastic job of keeping the kids entertained, even some of the adults (no, not me, hehehe) got involved, and my nephew seemed thoroughly happy with his party. He got even more cool gifts, and he got to hang out with his friends.

Even I had a pretty good time, what with the nice food and everyone having a nice time. Despite my batteries playing silly buggers, leading to me juggling a dozen batteries between my little camera and my flashgun, I managed to get a nice record of the events too.

So yeah, it's been a pretty good week. For everyone.

I'm now off to get pissed and play Prostreet. Have fun folks!

And here is a rather sparkly picture of my awesome computeryness, complete with new graphics card.

Temporal Fluctuations...

Note: This one is a bit of a weird one, because I'm incredibly tired. It seems to me that everyone has two voices inside them - their own voice, and the voice of reason. Because I am so tired, for some reason - aha ha ha - not only am I talking what is mostly nonsense, but the voice of reason is sticking its unwelcome nose in things too. As a result, this is a very jumbled blog entry, and may be hard to follow at times Apologies in advance. Read on, Mcdonalds Filet-o-fish [what?]

So I pick up my Ipaq to put someone's phone number/address in it.
My eyes stop at the top of the screen. "Thursday, February 19th".

Hang on a second!

With a horrifying feeling in my stomach, I realise that I've once again messed up my days, and today is Thursday, not Wednesday.
But I've just got back from work, and I'm sure I had that shift down as "work, wednesday".
Or maybe I got confused and today really is thursday!
Which means that when I wake up it will be friday! Which means the day after tomorrow, I'm working!

This sucks! I was looking forward to two days off!!!

I frantically search the news sites. BBC news says "Thursday, Feb 19th". What the hell?! Where have my two days off gone?! I've actually lost an entire day!
Sky news says "Wednesday, Feb 18th". Hmm.

You see folks, I came home about an hour ago, at about half past midnight, completely blind to the fact that "this" shift actually started yesterday and finished in the early hours of today.
After over 24 years of living on this planet, my brain forgot that the date changes at 00:00.
I actually forgot midnight is where "today" becomes "yesterday".

Despite this, I managed to successfully complete a five and a half hour shift, operating a motor vehicle in light to moderate traffic, counting out small change, and generally being competent at my job, which admittedly, isn't too demanding.

I suspect what Scott Adams said is right. To paraphrase what he said, people aren't born idiots (though they sometimes die idiots). Idiots are simply regular people, and like all regular people, they move into and out of idiocy, often up to several times a day, without even realising it.

A few minutes ago while I was frantically searching the news trying to find where my missing day went, I was an idiot. Yet in the six hours that preceded it, I managed to complete my shift without mowing down innocent kittens/pedestrians etc, and then managed to walk from work to my house, without any dramas whatsoever.

Maybe "the stupid" is something you actually can catch.

So what else has happened? Well, I've been challenged by someone to go round the back of our shop into an alleyway to fight him. I refused for several reasons, among them the fact that I don't want a criminal record, and I also don't like fighting, but chief among them was the fact that this gobby little shite couldn't have been older than 11.

I'm serious. He couldn't have been older than eleven years old, and he actually asked me, a 12 and a half stone (79 kilos) 6 foot tall 24 year old, for a fight. He wasn't joking either.

I mean what the hell is wrong with people?!

He scarpered after I pointed out the CCTV cameras covering the side of our shop and the alleyway, but not before he remarked in a rather upset and hurt way that "do you think I'm scared of them?"
I mean bloody hell, when I was at school I figured out that the easiest way to get the "bad lads" off your back was to become mates with the bad lads. Admittedly, while I ended up subsequently nearly getting thrown out of school, the "bad lads" didn't seem anywhere near as bad as I had initially believed, and actually turned into pretty decent mates. Even if one or two of them still needed an eye keeping on them from time to time.
Among these lads were one or two that had been excluded from school once or twice, but bloody hell, I never met anyone as gobby or downright shitty as this spotty little kid. Are kids these days really worse than kids of yesteryear? Is it actually true that every generation is worse than the one before it? I'm beginning to wonder.

Oh well, he's prolly asleep under his Captain Scarlet blankets now.
The little prick. Ahem.

Moving on, because I don't want to devote any more thought to this... kid... I've had a bumper week!

After I got the house meticulously tidy, my parents arrived back from Paris bearing lots of souveniers (sp), including a rather nice and shiny/incredibly insubstantial and cheaply made keyring of the Eiffel Tower, bought apparently, for 30 euro cents, from an illegal immigrant of suspected north african heritage.
They also bought me a rather nice jumper/sweater, again with an illustration depicting the Eiffel Tower, along with the text "Paris" (in case you're slightly thick) and below, "France" in case I ever meet Dubya and he doesn't want to have to ask what's on my sweater.

Now admittedly, both gifts in and of themselves scream "I went to france, and I brought these back to prove how windswept and exotic I am! Look at me I've been abroad!"

BUT

They were both gifts, bought in France, by my parents, for me, because they thought I'd like them. And that, chief among a couple of reasons, is why I do. Because (at risk of sounding so incredibly saccharine that you'll want to put your finger (just the one, apparently) down your throat), sometimes it really is, perhaps not so much the thought, or lack thereof, but the intention to please, and cheer, and make happy, that counts, and that my rents bought me this stuff because they want to make me happy, not because I asked them to fetch me a sweater or whatever :-).

The sweater is actually very high quality - it's very dense fabric, which means not only is it very comfortable, but it's very warm too [reality check, why the f*ck are you sitting up at 02:09 telling people how warm your sweater is?]. So I'll use it as my indoor sweater for when it gets cold inside.
The Eiffel Tower keyring, I will put with my other cheaply made souveneir keyring, which my parents gave me when they went to Lago di Garda (anyone who tries to look for phallic imagery in the lake is not only sick, but wrong. It doesn't look anything like a penis. No, really, it doesn't).

Where I'm going with this, (and most importantly) is that they also brought me back some duty free. "Oooo, cheap cigarettes" you cry. No, I don't smoke. (I used to, which means I occasionally wish I did smoke so I could have one and stop feeling like I've got a hole in my head, but no, thanks to *very* occasional NRT I'm 6 months smoke free :-)) "Cheap booze?" No, you can get that here. 8 cans for I think £5.
No!
They got me... duty free toblerone! A special gold extreme super death turbo XL edition, apparently, and this one is a huge kickass beast of a toblerone, weighing in at not far off a pound (400g actually).

This, I took upstairs along with my other gifts, as well as my Garnet. (read below if remotely interested)
See ,when I first started my gem collection, I lost one of the larger stones I had at the time, which was a rather nice garnet, down the back of the recliner. So, over a year later, I'm sat in the living room with my tea, about to watch TV, and I can't get comfortable, because the recliner won't recline. "Bugger this" I think, and after 20 minutes poking, prodding and eventually, brute force, I get the thing to work again. At which point I notice a small object on the floor - my garnet, after a year of being nestled in the recliner, has actually appeared again, yay!

My brother finally came with my birthday present too. A super sparkly and incredibly (compared to the graphics card that I have (have? where is it? Oh hell I don't know where I put it) just replaced) powerful Geforce 8800GTS. 620mb of graphics ram, onboard PhysX support, a big sparkly super uber card, with a super powerful GPU, with a cooler so big it's got its own fan, heatpipes, and a damn fairing over the thing! Yummy.

So I eventually managed to get the thing fitted, and for the first time in a year, I've been able to play some of my favourite games including: Unreal Tournament 3 (BIG picture warning - yes the graphics DO look like that!!!), Silent Hunter 4, NFS Prostreet, NFS Most Wanted, X3 Reunion, Rainbow Six - Vegas, and many many more etc.
I haven't reinstalled Doom 3, because frankly, it scares the feck out of me.

So now, after the events and completely random stuff depicted up there ^^^ somewhere, I'm now completely exhausted. I'm tired, and thanks to the misplaced self discipline that forces me to concentrate on this blog until it's finished, I'm also incredibly thirsty.

So here are some vaguely relevant pics. Look at the size of the 8800 compared to the weedy lil 8400! Look at the size of that massive massive toblerone! :-)

And I still haven't bloody got round to putting those details in my Ipaq...

The following day...

I never did get round to finishing my blog yesterday, so I'll do it here.

Well. My family have a nice little routine where every thursday, my mum and dad go out to the pub for a meal with my grandad. It brings them all a little closer and they seem to enjoy it so that's pretty cool.
Now I had semi high hopes for my brifday meal this year, because last year we went to the boardwalk and everyone from the family was invited. Turns out this time, no one had been invited, and not only that, but we weren't actually going to the boardwalk.

Nope, because my dad didn't want to have two pub meals in two days, he moved the family night out with grandad forward a day, invited me along to their night out, and called it "my" birthday meal. Sounds a bit like cheating to me, and neither me or my sis (who with my eternal gratitude, having moved out of the house, now helpfully fights my corner against any shite my parents try to subject me to while I'm stuck here) were impressed.

That aside, I looked through the menu skeptically (gammon, fish, etc, NO burgers, NO pizza), and figured that hey, it's a free meal, so I should be gracious. Talk started, we all ordered beer, and the evening got nicer.

I started with soup, and bread that looked like it was covered in coconut.
And actually, it was pretty damn awesome. The soup was great.

The only thing that annoys me is that places like this seem to pride themselves on giving you the coldest block of butter ever, which means that you're an idiot if you think you can spread it onto your bread - noooo, you try that and you'll just end up with breadcrumbs everywhere and about 37 bits of bread.

Next, came the lasagne. And it was absolutely incredible. Loads of mozzerella, it was fantastic, really tasty, really nice and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm done with similes and suchlike so I'm not going to dedicate a paragraph to reviewing this lasagne, but it was seriously fantastic lasagne. Loads of cheese and lots of flavour and suchlike.

Finally, I figured I'd push my luck and order the Chocolate brownie for desert.
And it was incredible and other words to that effect. A nice hot brownie, with white chocolate ice cream (that's white chocolate flavoured, not coloured) with white chocolate chips in, on top, as well as normal chocolate sauce.

The whole meal was pretty bloody good, and yeah, it wasn't at my favourite restaurant, but hey it was free, it was damn good food, and I got beer too!

I got home incredibly tired, having stopped at the offy with the intention of getting smashed on my birthday night. I got home, cracked open a can, and swiftly fell asleep...

I woke at about 1am today, figured that while 1am was too early to end a pissup, it was way too late to start one. So I went to bed.

So I've had a sedentary day. My Bro came round with the good news that he wants to give me an Nvidia 8800GT (or GTX - hard to read the label when it's inside a case that is woefully opaque - not like mine) - as my brifday pressie. My sis, helpfully and loyally arguing my corner, surmised that I wouldn't want a hand-me-down pressie, and demanded more.

Of course, I accepted at first offer, with a huge grin. Come on, the 8800GT has got to be better than this piece of shit 8500GT thing that I've got going on in my case. Saved me at least £30 anyways :-).

So yeah, the day gets better.
My parents are now asleep after a few hours of running round like loonies. Seems they're off to paris at 4am, for a nice valentines/anniversary (sp) treat, so I hope they have a good time :-).

In the meantime, I've noticed with astonishment, that my dad has actually physically slipped a couple of extra cans of beer into my birthday alcohol stash! So I'm off to take advantage of that kindness, and here's a nice cold beer to you lot, whatever you may be doing :-).

Have a nice day!

You can listen to my playlist here (It's all bouncebouncebouncebounce music :D):

Joey Riot - "Holdin' On"
Joey Riot - "The Power Within"
Organ Donors - "Blackout"
Ruboy Vs Tampa & R Klos - "La Nina Mechanica" (only available on CD, not on youtube, sorry!)(bizarre comment somewhere in here)

And other similar tunes :).

Happy Brifday to Meeeee

God, 24. I'm getting old now.
That's alright though, so is everyone I went to school with. Buwahahaha!

Celebrations, if they can be described as such, started last night. After a lovely tasty but rather lamby (new word)Lamb Hotpot, my mum went out and brought in the brifday cake :-).

Quite a nice brifday cake too - Roulette flavoured apparently, decorated with little bullets (rounds actually) made of icing. The cake came with a little game on the pack - the game ends when someone eats the bullet "with the spicy surprise".

Guess who commented that "hey this tastes like it's got chilli powder in it!"
Besides, chilli goes quite well in chocolate and icing and stuff, believe it or not.

My sister very nicely got me a new t-shirt, which was really good :). Looks pretty cool and is comfy to wear - I'll try not to get cake all over it.

Some other birthday pressies arrived too. I was bored a few days ago so decided to buy some sparkly bits for my computer. Nothing too expensively sparkly, just a couple of neons and an LED thing.
The LED thing in retrospect was a complete waste of cash, because although it does exactly as it was supposed to - spotlighting components inside the PC - any illumination it casts is completely obliterated by the two supernova-bright neon/cold cathode/whatever tubes.

I interrupt the flow of text to bring some vaguely sparkly pictures :).

And my dad has interrupted the flow of me, to tell me with about 5 seconds notice that we are apparently going out.
Oh well. I'll update this when I get back I spose.

Anniversary!

Okay, not quite, technically the anniversary isn't until the ninth, but:

It's my birthday on the 11th and I don't want to have 2 parties in 3 days...
I'm working on the ninth...
I'm busy every day apart from today, and I don't know what else I'm working next week...
...soooooo...

Just like HM the Queen has two birthdays, the "Official" one and the "Other" one, my camera has three:

• The day it was constructed (which I don't know).
• The day it was bought by me (which I do know, but which it is not possible for me to celebrate annually).
• Or the day on which I have the spare time to go to the shops, get some alkyhol, and have lots to drink and have a generally cheery time, look through my photos, chat with mates and generally accept that my camera is, after nearly a year and over 4000 photos, very much a good friend.

Now this may sound very materialistic, or sentimental, but while I am "celebrating the anniversary" of having bought my camera, it is all very tongue in cheek and I haven't been putting up balloons or posters or inviting people to parties or anything. It is basically a camera-based excuse for a nice pissup. My camera is looking nice and sparkly, having been cleaned inside and out, and is temporarily sporting some sparkly ribbon decoration for the occasion. The camera will eventually be replaced of course, but for now, it's fairly new and we've had a very successful year together.

So the alkyhol is chilling in the fridge, I am chilling in my room, and all is well, generally.

So I'm off to go and drink a lot. If I do update the blog I'll probably be drunkenly ranting, so it's best not to pay too much attention to me. Still, here are some of my favourite photos that I've taken over the last year with the D200. They might not be technically perfect, nor artistically sound, but I think they're some of my better ones, and I like them :-).



Oh, and as a final note, my little finger mouse came today. Is it as cool as it looked? Yes, it is. If a little fiddly at first.

You have to love the Engrish on the back though: Picture below. Oh, and of course, here is my camera "dressed" for the occasion :p.

Never mind dark, I prefer white....

I'm sat here with the hugest ever grin on my face. After a few days of weather warnings, the clouds opened last night and we had our first genuine blizzardy type "can't-go-outside-you'll-get-snow-in-your-face" snow last night, and even before it went dark, it was settling on the roads and rooftops, roof sides, and roof bottoms.
It also settled on other things like sheep's ears, paper bags and bus stops, but we don't have any of those round here, so I noticed only the roofs. And the roads obviously.

Now, For some reason, I like snow. People I talk to have expressed the opinion that snow is one thing people never really tend to grow out of. People I don't talk to generally don't express opinions to me, unless they're standing under a sign with "the end is nigh" on it (like one bloke did for 20 odd years before realising that the end wasn't in fact nigh, hadn't been nigh at any point in those 20 years, and sodded off home to a new life free of insanity. What am I talking about? I don't know.

After watching the snow get higher and higher through the night, I was pleasantly surprised to wake this morning to find it still snowing, and everything covered in two or three inches of snow. Out came the camera, and out we went :).

[09:47 - it is now snowing very heavily and visibility is minimal! - this is awesome!]

It was really weird walking out and about in the snow, it covered everything (as you'd expect), and this was that crunchy squeaky perfect kind of snow that makes excellent snowballs. There was hardly anyone else about, and I just went round, slippety sliding taking photos of everything snow related, like snow covered fields, trees and missing golf balls. The little frozen tracks of some small animal, most likely a squirrel, criscrossed the path, and apart from a few dog walkers and the odd photographer, I had the whole park, and its snow, to myself.

Was really nice :).
I'll carry on with the blog once I've done some other things...

Revenge of the Dark Side...

I'm sitting here rather nervously, surrounded by a circuit boards, miniature LCD displays, tiny bits of plastic and a few screws.

Having got bored of the knackered scuffed and scratched "I am old" finish of my Ipaq, I've decided to give it a bit of a facelift. Originally I had bought some yellow spray and some spray lacquer, to get a nice finish on it, but when neither shop I went to was able to furnish me with white primer (one was out of stock, the other was CLOSED (on a wednesday afternoon!), I decided to use black as a primer and spray (lots of coats of) yellow over that before lacquering it.

Having carefully taken the Ipaq to bits, a process that took about 20 rather nervous and painstaking minutes, the sprayed halves of the case are now downstairs drying from a rather-too-thick coat of Games Workshop's finest "Chaos Black".

In the meantime I'm sat here wondering if I can put the thing back together, and if I can, will it work again.

So hey.

21:26: Jesus and Mary on a pogo stick! Where to begin. Sometime chronologically after the events depicted in the last paragraph is always a good start.

The paint dried surprisingly quicky with an unintended (but not unpleasant) speckly finish, on top of which went a couple of coats of lacquer. The remainder ended up on my hands, which wasn't particularly nice.

But, time came to put the thing back together, and it actually went together again pretty easily. Just a case of "follow the instructions in reverse order", and I was clipping the case closed five minutes later.

All was well, until the stylus got jammed inside the thing. I took it apart to unjam it (a task made difficult by the fact that you CAN'T take it apart while the stylus is inside it), and succeeded in extricating the stylus.

Then I noticed that the center selector button control whatsit was jamming frequently. This turned out to be caused by me seating one of the springs that supported it, in the (slightly!) wrong position.

Finally, after having it back together for an hour, I'd stopped shaking with frustration and was reflecting on the fact that "I preferred it in Silver". At this point, the paint started flaking off. Not happy.

I took the thing apart to scrape the paint off it, realising that I'd rather have a silver Ipaq than a black one where the silver showed through every little scratch and scuff. This took about half an hour, during which time, while delicately trying to bend one of the buttons into place, thinking it was metal when it wasn't, I snapped it.

Snapped button fixed, I reassembled the device, and it stayed whole until the stylus got jammed again. Took it apart, cleaned the stylus housing, sprayed some WD40 down there, and put it back together.
This time, the thing crashed on the startup screen. Solution? Reseat the battery...

Tedious? Yes, it was, several hours of it!!! You got off light!

Fast forward...

The Ipaq is now sitting on my desk, fully functional, in its nice lovely silver trim. After about 5 hours of arsing about, I've got a half empty can of lacquer, I've emptied the can of Chaos Black that I've had for ages, and I've accomplished the square root of fcuk all.

But hey, I've also got a fully functioning Ipaq. Things could have been worse.

In other news, my nephew's been coming round to stay the night for the past few days, which is really cool. I love the lil guy to bits, and he loves me to help him on his DS with "scrungebob" and various other platformers, all featuring an aray of anthropomorphic sponges, starfish, rats, et al.
What with tonight's arsing about, I didn't get round to spending nearly as much time with him as I should have. I've already promised him a surprise (banana custard with jelly) next time he stays over :-), as some kind of compensation/guilt reducing measure :p.

As for the rest of today, the time before everything went to ratshit, my mate Nick picked me up and eventually after travelling through Leeds for a while, we ended up at what is proudly dubbed by its staff "Leeds Bradford International Airport". We were only there for a quick look around, to see if there were any official vantage points for photography (using unofficial vantage points tends to result in you getting the knee of an airport police officer in the small of your back).

Nothing, at all. Admittedly you can get fairly close to the smaller aircraft (as in, you could throw a stone and crack the canopy of one), by parking up at the flight training school on the opposite side of the runway, but as for official viewing places, nothing at all.
And that lack of anything had clearly inspired the rest of the airport.
For an international airport, Leeds Bradford (EGNM) is nothing more than a couple of buildings on a field in the middle of feck-all-nowhereland. It's the sort of place that they'd film The Vicar of Dibley, if there wasn't an international airport there. Yeadon (the surrounding village, from which the airport took its original name) is not a big place. BUT - I noted - Yeadon lake DOES have a viewing platform, where the airport next door, doesn't.

But that's okay, because yesterday, we were at Manchester airport - the second (if I remember correctly) busiest airport in the UK.

NOT set in the middle of nowhere, NOT hard to find, and where you DON'T see an aircraft every 20 minutes if you're lucky, Manchester is the much better photographer's place, and it was there that I managed to take a good 200 odd photos of the day's business, which was pretty cool. It was bitterly cold, but the low sun and the clear wintry sky made the light incredible. The snow on the Pennines in the background made the whole scene even more picturesque.

I noticed that the new hangar for Concorde is nearly completed. Though looking at it, under construction, seeing this incredible work of engineering, an aircraft with performance that far surpasses airliners designed more than 30 years after it left the drawing board, I couldn't help but find it a bit depressing. As I said to Nick, "there's a bird that doesn't belong in a cage".
As he said to me "You should write that down". Heh.
There was the story of an aircraft that deserved far better than it ever got.

Other than that, not much to report. I've finally ordered a replacement stylus for the tablet (an aftermarked one that DOESN'T have fits), and the new replacement battery has allowed me to use the tablet just like any laptop. So yeah, cool :). My 1gb of ram turned up, but it doesn't fit, so it has been relisted. Bleah.

But hey, anyways.

I'll leave you with a random assortment of pictures that bear a vague relevance to the past day or so..

PS: Ever get a tune that gets stuck in your head and you end up listening to it over and over again?
This is this week's "my tune".
PS PS: This is also this week's "my tune", as well as this". And "this" one.

More Technological Gizmos

...Or something.

Well, I've had a good week on the technology front. My Ipaq now works pretty well (even if the on-screen keyboard is a bit hit-and-miss), I'm getting to grips with my video camera, and even the tablet has been behaving itself recently.

With the exception of the stylus, which had this problem, where it would click on things as you held it above the screen, whether you wanted it to or not.
In retrospect and with the benefit of hindsight, this seems to be because the little metal contact in the front was loose, and was free to move backwards and forwards semi-independently of the stylus tip itself. How do I know? Let's not delve any further into that shall we?

Anyway, according to the forums I frequent, this is apparently a design flaw common to the TC1000 stylii (is that even a word?) and therefore replacing the stylus with a new one would not fix the issue.

What would fix the issue is an aftermarket stylus made by another company, and such stylii (there I go again) are available on ebay, for what works out at like £35. Hmm, I think I'll leave it a bit.

So I've gone for a solution that fixes the issue, without being a stylus, but while still being a sparkly input device. I spent the grand total of £1.99 (not wanting to waste money fixing a problem Compaq created) by buying one of these finger mice doodahs.

Quite sparkly and cool, and I think it suits the tablet quite well, because a strange non-standard computer demands a strange non-standard input device.
I've also bought a little foam mat thingie for resting the computer on, so I've got something to use as a "mouse mat" when I'm out and about with the camera. Should be pretty cool. One other thing I've bought, to offset the tablet's third and final problem, is two 512mb memory modules. The TC1000 has always had novelty value, but it seems even when it was released, its performance lagged behind its competitors. These days, it's nothing short of woefully underpowered. With that in mind, I've managed to score two memory SODIMMS to rectify the problem, giving the tablet a total of 1gb of ram, which while still not stellar, is no longer miserably poor. Apparently you have to partially disassemble the tablet to reach one of the memory slots, so wait for the photos and the "I broke it" (or more hopefully, the "It works!") blog post here. I'm still waiting for the damn battery to turn up. Meh. [EDIT: 10:37AM - it has arrived in this morning's post]

Things have been progressing on the car front (did he say car?) as well, with me going as far as to get insurance quotes for different cars.
What brought it on was a mate of mine saying "oh hai (that's real life internet patois that is!), btw I've got a '94 Mazda MX5 for £1200 if you want it".

"Woo!" I thought, "A total hairdresser's car for just over a grand". But I've been a fan of Need for Speed too long to ever look at a car in stock trim as anything other than a blank canvas. "A grand for the car" I thought, and another grand or two to get it looking like this".
Okay, some new wheels, (BBS RR of course!), a decent bodykit, a window tinting kit, and a decent spoiler later, and I'd have a decent looking car.

With the soundtrack to the various Need for Speed games blasting out over my speakers, I happily searched round sites looking for wheels, new tyres, carbon spoilers etc etc. I daydreamed happily about warm summer nights in donny, the night air filled with tyre smoke, and the roar of engines, hundreds of faces illuminated by the glow of underbody neons and headlights, music thumping out of a dozen different cars, and me putting the finishing touches on a fully sorted and thoroughly sexy carbon spoiler, while bystanders walked past my car, muttering comments of admiration (Look, admittedly this sounds like a bit of an automotive fantasy, but why should it be so unrealistic? I've been doing the bike equivalent ever since I got the RS). I'd be able to cruise around with my mate in the other seat, bask in the warmth of my A Pillar Gauges, and listen to the lovely exhaust note of my now quite handsome ride.

I was very excited. Throw some money at the MX5, and I could actually end up with a decent looking car.

A decent looking hairdresser's car. Meh.
I started going off the idea even before my mate told me it was an automatic (which horrified me). What's the bloody point of a rear-wheel-drive automatic? It's like training the perfect athlete and then getting him hopelessly drunk before the big race. "How the hell do you do burnouts in an automatic?" the Boi Racer in me asked. I wasn't pleased with the answer.

Anyway, time to go shopping for insurance quotes, courtesy of Gocompare, an insurance comparison site, which searches millions of insurers. Except it doesn't; due to circumstances beyond GC's control, 80% of the insurers it searched on my behalf had turned their servers off before going home for the evening. Evidently loads of vacant middle managers took their respective bosses' requests to "turn everything off before you leave" a little too literally. This gave me a screen full of "We are sorry, we are not able to connect to this insurer" or something along those lines.

Fair enough, still 20% of lots of insurers to sift through. 95% of those insurers said variously: "What, he wants a sports car, at 23? hahahaha" "He's not had his car licence a year yet and he wants a sports car? hahahaha" and other things along those lines.
Surprisingly, two insurers did come back with quotes, the best of which was provided by theaa.com. "Okay" they said, "we'll insure you". "23 years old, not had car licence for a year, but you're stupid enough to want a sports car for your first car (We'll come to this in a second). Okay, we'll insure you. £3288.50, Third Party Only". Hmm.

Why do I want a sports car as my first car? Well, the Mazda isn't what I'd call a sports car, in it's stock trim, it's a matter of how cruel I'm feeling as to whether I'd call it a heterosexual male's car, if you want to press the issue, but an R34 Skyline it isn't. In my eyes, in my own private little world where everyone drives R34's, RX7's, Supras, Celicas, 350Z's etc that are modded to the nth degree, I was just as likely to get giggled at in an unmodified mx5 as I would be in a stock KIA Picanto (apparently "a gorgeousa smalla car, weev five doors").
Of course I figured that expecting to get insured in an R34 or RX7 (neither of which I could afford even if I COULD get insured for them) would be asking to get laughed at by the insurance company, so I figured I'd go for the middle ground, and get something that wasn't an f reg fiesta, but wasn't quite as expensive as a Le Mans Quattro.

Of course, the insurer's idea of the middle ground, was quite different to my idea. In a world where the roads are full of white van men, lovely (but quite blind and stupid) old women with their weekly hairnets and dogfood, and fast food delivery guys with a questionable grasp of English, anything that wasn't a rusting old bucket with a top speed restricted by its blowing exhaust and the (deaf, by now) squirrel living in the airbox, was classed as high risk.

I searched for other cars. I looked around and the insurance quotes were still (but not quite as) nuts. Peugeot 206 1.9 GTI? £1,300 TPO, to you, sir. Well at least it's not three grand, and (get this) the 206 has a bigger engine.

So what am I going to do? Have I given up on the idea of a nice car?
Well no. But I have given up on the idea of owning one while I'm working <20 hours a week in a £5.75/hour job.

Assuming I don't get in the army, I'm going to see if I can find another job with better wages, then I'll look into the situation again. If I do get into the army, well, £16,000 a year wages?

I'll buy the RX7, one or two companies will insure me TPO in one (for just under £4000/year).
Come on, it's a huge expense, but then, aren't all cars?

Anyway, I'm off to sit about and be generally docile for the day. Might go for my run later.

Have fun!

Farewell Tinsley Towers...

I've been spending more time than I should, chatting with pals, talking about the demolition of the Tinsley Towers. And I spose the message that I've come away, carrying is a positive one.

Damned if I know how I am supposed to translate the destruction of two beloved landmarks into a message of human love and survivability, at 2:23 am, after the benefit of several beers.

Well let me give you bastards a god damned guess.
I think the demolition of the towers was a fu...

*whoa, wait, i'm being censored*

Okay. Christ. Not five months into the new landscape and life has gone on like they were never there. Two huge bigass cooling towers, they came down just like that and life has basically said "whoa the towers have come down, I'm gonna cry for 0.5 seconds, and the get on with cooking the chicken nuggets for my kids before they burn!".

And what is there to learn from all this?
Ostensibly? fcuk all. It's 2:26am on a sunday morning. I'm surrounded by empty beercans, and I'd like to think that maybe, just maybe, by talking about the towers, I'm giving them a better sendoff than the thousand explosion-whores that surrounded me that night.

I'd like to pretend that I'm feeling sorry for my Yorkshire Brethren, when fact is, that I'm missing mr Salt and Pepper (the two cooling towers) because, I dunno.
They were a kind of demarkation line between the north and the south, you know.

You pass the towers heading south and it's like

"Welcome to the south, the home of Chesterfield, Mansfield, cheap nottinghamshire youths who want to pretend that they're Yorkshire lads, they want it so bad that they'll stop you in the street and braaaappppp your ass.

You pass it heading north and it's like "Welcome to the real world, the world where people don't have to elbow each other in the face to make their point, the fact where it's considered normal to not live in a greasy cardboard box, just vacated by some greasy illegal tapas waiter called "jose".

In any case, it's not quite the anniversarry of the towers coming down, and already I'm listening to tunes and thinking about those big fat concrete bastards, and marvelling at both myself and my fellow man.

Only homo sapiens could attach an emotional value to feck knows how many tons of inert concrete, and only homo sapiens, could mourn the permenant disfiguration of said arrangement of concrete.
And I include myself in this, because I was plenty upset by the towers coming down.

anyways.

Here's some more pics of the towers again.









And now we've got that out of the waym I'd like to introduce you folks to Herr Garth Brooks.

And this rather cheery video. Why? Because Garth Brooks generally puts me in a cheery mood, because he doesn't give me an age complex like most other contemparory musicians do.
Indeed, to my astonishment, Mr Brooks here, wasn't a TN born musician, nore was he born a few months before I came into the world. No, 23 years my Senior, mr Brooks seems to have done pretty well for himself. So there's hope for us all.

coming from OH instead. Scary that, when I was a kid, the best buddy I ever had, Ryon, came from OH.
I still wish I knew where that damn kid was. The best damned soulmate any stupid teenager could ask for.

Garth Brooks has always been cheerful as far as I'm concerned. "Ain't goin down till the sun comes up" would pound through my headphones as my RS lifted its front wheel, the exhausts screaming, ready for another run across the Yorkshire TT. The only way to listen to that tune is at 12,000rpm at 110mph Buwahahaha.

Ahem.

So I kinda look on the whole thing as a positve thing. Wonderfully vague eh?

Nah.
Shit happens in life, things always balance em out, eventually.
The cooling towers are gone, hey. They made more on an impact in their last year than they did in their previous 70 years standing.

Life is life, and life goes on, until it ends, folks.
May it not end for any of you, for a good while yet :D.

I'll leave you with the best drinking tune ever :)

Peace.

Freezing Cold

Is how it's been for the past few days, with a cold spell plunging pretty much the entire country into the minuses. Roads, cars, and grass are all covered in a scintillating layer of thick frost. Frozen solid, even puddles ceased to be an inconvenience, becoming instead, a bloody hazard.

And out in the middle of it last night, was me, buzzing about, here there and everywhere. Slippety-sliding about on roads that resembled glass, losing all feeling in my fingers/toes, and generally shivering my arse off.

I had a couple of scares, notably when the wheels decided they wanted to go in directions other than straight forwards, but apart from that, and the aforementioned cold (which was enough to cover my scoot in ice while I was riding it) it was a pretty uneventful shift.

The walk back was amazing though. Everything covered in this frost made the entire place look as if it was made from frosted glass. Tree trunks, their branches, and every individual blade of grass shone as if illuminated from within, and the moon, complete with halo, was the brightest I had ever seen. Even the sky - at midnight - seemed to glow.

I've got to repeat the whole thing tonight, as I'm on the exact same shift.

In other news, the tablet PC is now working at close to 100%. Windows XP has been upgraded to service pack 2 and the majority of software I've installed (memory permitting) works just fine.
I've ordered the new batteries for both the TC1000 and the Ipaq, the total being some £40, and they should hopefully be here before long. The internet is no longer a problem. We couldn't get the internal wi-fi working, so my dad and I have skipped the entire issue by installing a PCMCIA network adaptor in the spare card slot, and we're using that instead, having disabled the internal adaptor.

The tablet sorely needs a memory upgrade, as at the moment, it will only run videos in windows media player at some 4 or 5 frames a second. Not an auspicious beginning, but something that can be fixed. Again, at a price.

But hey, is time to be going now. I want some time to myself before I have to go to work and freeze my arse off, again.

"Holy freaking S***"

...Is a politely edited version of the first words out of my mouth when I discovered that the adaptor that has JUST arrived (after being ordered on the 26th) actually fits both my docking station and my tablet PC.

About bloody time!

On a related note, my Ipaq - ha haha, yes, you've guessed it - needs another battery.
Turns out "Paq" is korean for "Battery", and "Com" is Korean for "Faulty".

"Compaq" as a company was given its name to suggest to consumers that as all its products were shipped out with dead batteries, they would end up paying much much less overall, than competitors that used fully charged ones. I can see the adverts now.

"Did you know that over an electronic device's ten-year life cycle, it spends 9 years turned off doing nothing?

Don't pay money for excess charge that you don't need!

Our method guaruntees zero software problems over the entire life of the product!"

Still, now I'm off to rearrange my desk. Now I've got to fit two computers on it.

National Presents Day...

Or so you'd think - I got lots of pressies at Christmas, and today I got even more!
No cards or anything but that's because the ponly person who celebrates National Presents Day so far is me :-).

After a fairly sedentary past few days (if you don't count me going into work on my day off, and THEN finishing later than I originally said I would) I woke up bright and early-ish in the afternoon (having already woken in the morning, realising I had nothing pressing to do, and rolling down the hill, across the streem and back to sleep (eh?)). I was in a fairly cheerful and relatively productive mood, and so after a while of sitting about, productively doing nothing, I decided to get my hair cut.

The cold hit me as soon as I opened the door. Absolutely freezing, and it's been like this for the past few days, with temperatures in parts of the UK now occasionally reaching below minus ten (if this's global warming, then we should all pat ourselves on the back for helping to prevent an ice age. just imagine what it would be like if we hadn't dumped all that shi'ite into the atmosphere), it was bitterly cold.

But, quite pleasant. A bright sun shone low on the horizon, illuminating the few cirrus that were sticking around, having decided they were outnumbered by the dozen or so visible contrails, that extended in all directions for many, many miles above my head.
The wind blew, and with it came the biting cold, but it was mostly silent and still.
A few people here and there, not many though, even the roads seemed quiet.

I turned into the local park, remembering back to a time in weather very similar to this, in that exact spot, when I had walked down that same path in extreme pain. I count myself lucky, to no longer be in that pain. I remember writing about it here (the entry also includes that brief Alastair Reynolds review, KB).
Funny, it didn't feel like nearly a year had gone by.

But there was life in the park. Crows hopped about warily, waddling like black chickens. The odd dog walker (and a couple of less odd ones) were visible in the distance. As I walked past one of them, absentmindedly watching her pick up a rubber ring from her dog - a rather large but evidently very playful brown type - and to the dog's obvious delight, throw it into the distance, I noted just how great a turn of speed that dog had, and I noticed how skilled it was at catching the ring even as it rolled away at high speed. At least here in this park, someone seemed well adjusted and happy with their lot, regardless of the troubles of the world.

I got to the barbers though, and eventually I got seen. While I reflected on how I'd been unfortunate enough to inherit my mum's hairline, I noted with some alarm that this person was going back and forth over the same area of my head, and my hair there was getting shorter and shorter. I'd never had a "bad" haircut and I certainly didn't want one then, but I was pleased to note a few minutes later that it didn't look that bad.
Right, job jobbed, I'll go back next year.

I returned home, back through the park, pleased to see the woman and her dog were still there, that that that little part of the world, was still ticking along nicely, and happily. I stopped at the local chippy to get one of my car crash meals.

Sitting with my meal and a nice cold coke at home, I took in the latest Dr Ashen videos (1 2 3), before playing some more with my tablet PC.

See, I've discovered that while the adaptor that I need (18.5V - I ordered it on the 26th!) is the one designed for the tablet, with a little (reversible) adapting (aha-ha-haha) my mum's 20V laptop adaptor can be made to fit (!) both the docking station and the tablet itself.

With this, I've been able to not only get the tablet doing something resembling normal operation, but I've been able to get most of the software onto it.
What I haven't been able to do, is fix the problem with the stylus being a pain in the arse (some have suggested that a new (difficult to find) battery may be required). Not to worry, I'm learning to use the stylus sparingly, and am actually enjoying using the tablet. Great Stuff.

However another thing that I've not been able to do, is get the wi-fi to kick in. I'm trying to join the local house network, and the tablet is now simultaneously advising that;

A. it doesn't have an IP address or a Mac address, and that it has no internal network hardware. (according to ipconfig)
B. I am now connected to a local network I have never heard of. (according to internet connection bubble).
C. I do not have access to the Internets (Internets Exploder)
D. I am connected to a wireless network (wireless network status light).

Very irritating. Especially since I need service pack 2 to run the majority of the software I've put on the tablet. Still.

Later, I was graced by the jolly bringer of gifts, or my mate Nick (the dude who randomly gave me lots of camera equipment for nothing) who had kindly come round to bring back my software CD so that I could finish shoving the software on the tablet (see above).
However, he had once again come bearing gifts, and while politely refusing a cuppa, dumped a second camera bag of free loot on the kitchen side.

We had a chat, I showed him around the bat cave (my room), and we generally chilled out.
Eventually though, he had to go (on pain of getting shouted at by his mrs) and I took an opportunity to check out the latest goodies.

Yep, he has given me, completely randomly (fantastically welcome and very appreciated though) both a JVC Video Recorder (as in camcorder, not VCR player) and a Compaq Ipaq 3600. Okay, so it's not exactly a D3 and a Hi-Def movie rig, but who cares, it's cool gadgets, they do cool things, and most of all, they do it for free. So very appreciated nick, keep the gadgets coming :D.

Seriously though, we're looking at going scouting for other places to do some shooting, and Nick figured some new kit might come in handy, so hey.
The camcorder is charged, the ipaq is (still! how long does it take?!) charging.
And now after a bout of late night photography and blog writing, I'm kinda tired.
So here's the pictures, and I'm gonna get to bed :-).

Have fun!

Rory - What's in a name?

Like many other people, I have my own little habits, that as with everyone else, are quite cute, if a little bizarre and inexplicable at times. One of these is my Rory.
Rory, as pictured here, is a large drinking vessel that evades description. It's one of those novelty cup things.
I vaguely remember getting it from Primrose Valley a few years ago, paying something silly like £4 for it, complete with pepsi, on the basis that you get a cool cup and free refills.
It holds about 750ml though, so see how many free refills you get before you start feeling ill. Or before you start shaking.

"Rory" is therefore the noun for the cup/thing, on the basis that it has no other description. Hence phrases like "I'm going to get a Rory". "I'm going to refill my Rory".

Rory is also a verb. If you can drink a drink, you can Rory a Rory.
So there, for everyone who wanted to know (which is more than a few since everyone seems to lose the thread when Rory is mentioned), is the answer to the mystery of the rory.

In other news, I've made some progress on the Tablet PC, if only enough to consider dumping the whole thing in the nearest river. I can now get the thing to turn on and boot, but I can't get past the administrator password, and I can't reinstall windows to get rid of this, because even if I had the disc, I don't have a power lead for the base unit, which is the only part of the computer with a CD drive.

"Don't you have an adaptor?" you ask. Yes, I do. For the tablet itself. Having taken the base unit apart to confirm my suspicions, I can confirm that the base unit and the tablet itself use DIFFERENT FECKING SIZES of adaptors, and one that fits the tablet, is way too big to fit the base station. Who's bright bloody idea was that.

That and the fact that the stylus is playing silly buggers.
In a bizarre twist on the theme of "touch screen", this one is a NO-touch screen. I.e. you don't have to touch the fecking screen with the stylus for it to go selecting and clicking on whatever the hell is within 2 inches of the tip of the damn thing, whether you touch the screen or not. Interesting.

It's certainly a sparkly and interesting little bit of kit, and does have the potential to be quite useful. But if things keep going like this, it's only going to be useful for proping up a table with one leg shorter than the rest, because right now, after 20 minutes of staring at a "did you forget your password" bubble, I've half a mind to shove this in a cupboard and forget about it. It's not that it's too difficult or too uneconomical to repair, because it isn't.
It's because it's pissed me off.

Grrr.

That adaptor had better fecking turn up. I've been waiting six days for the goddamn thing.

Grr, not happy.

My mum's gone out, and I've asked her to fetch the CD on the way back.
It would be oh-so-wonderful if she could fetch something resembling a useful adaptor too :).

EDIT: Right.
The tablet stylus thingie problem is apparently common to that model, and something I'll have to get used to. Fair enough, it beats leaving scratches all over the screen anyway. Why did they put a depressable tip on it then???

There's no solution for the adaptor problem, other than for the guys at the shipping company to pull their fecking fingers out and ship the backstard thing to me.

And breathe...

So it seems there's not actually anything wrong with the unit whatsoever, and all my problems are caused by me flying off the handle at having to wait for an adaptor I ordered nearly a week ago. But i'm pretty certain that if one adaptor fits the tablet, it won't fit the base unit. The connections are 2mm apart in size. What a stupid thing to have done during the design phase.

I'm off to get something tasty to eat. And to put this tablet away until that adaptor arrives.

Hi there, 2009!

Wow. 25 minutes into 2009 and MSN's on the blink, the sky news website is so full to capacity you can hardly navigate on it, seems like everyone is trying to do the same thing at once.

For my part, now that my computer is playing silly buggers, I'm going to sit and chill out for not very long, before possibly getting some Christmas Pudding, and having a shower and an early night.

Got to be up early tomorrow/today/whatever.
Well, I haven't, but I'd like to be :).

EDIT: This blog says that I wrote this on the 31st of December.
I actually finished it about two minutes ago, at 36 minutes past midnight, on the morning of January First, 2009.

I don't know how to set the bloody time zone and it's annoying me.

EDIT EDIT: I just fixed it after getting off my digital bum and doing something about it.

Have fun!