Clever Tricks, Awesome Treats

Minor note: I'd like to dedicate this post to Lexi, who has been in my thoughts in a fond (non-romantic) way all day :-))

First things first. That is, in quasi-reverse chronological order.

Happy Halloween, to all my American buddies, who are, I believe, busy preparing for/celebrating Halloween. Getting ready to have a cool time with beer, fireworks, costumes, music, and all sorts of cool stuff.

My mephew came round earlier to show me this year's halloween costume - he went out with a cute little Frankenstein costume. With a laser sword. Odd, but you know what kids are like.

Unfortunately, I had to go into work today, so I wasn't able to go round trick or treating with the little guy. But that didn't stop me having a fantastic night.

The day was grey, and turning greyer and spooker as the minutes passed. Many families had already spent lots of effort decorating their houses with posters, spooky pictures, simulated spiderwebs, animated skeletons and the ever-present pumpkins - some of which were really well made.

In a cheerful (and slightly apprehensive, to be honest - my job is driving, and though I consider myself to be a good rider (no serious accidents in 5 years - long may it continue), the idea of riding down streets packed with kids still made me uneasy) mood, I wandered off to work, with the appropriate mood music: Tune 1, Tune 2. Just to get me into the halloween spirit :D.

Work started as being absolutely dead, but fast became jam packed with orders and demands. Eventually I ended up venturing out into the halloween night, light in all parts, by the spooky (almost) full moon, the fireworks, and oddly this year, lots of peace lanterns.

I had a moment, when I was delivering to a housing estate nearby, and I had the hugest grin on my face, what was there was fantastic. Every single house, more or less, was decorated with loads of spiderwebs, posters, etc etc, and the pumpkins there were fantastic. Behind the sound of kids clamouring from one house to the next, the happy conversation between their parents, or the ever-present "trick or treat", was the ominous and creepy and yet fantastically brilliant sound of spooky music - pre-recorded screams, evil laughs, flapping of bats' wings, creaking doors etc, played by a dozen different houses to add atmosphere to the night, which again, was punctuated by the flash and bang of fireworks, and the smell of the smoke they made.

And kids, there were. Dozens of the little guys and girls in varying costumes, most carrying cute little pumpkin-buckets for their treats, or light-up skulls, or magic wands, swords, wizard's staves, or rubber bats, all followed closely by their parents, some of whom were in costumes themselves.

I guess the sight of so many people having fun at the same time, many of those having worked to make it even more fun for everyone else, well. I haven't been that cheerful for a good long while. I must be growing up. I wasn't even joining in, and yet, just watching these folks have a good time was enough to make me feel like I was doing it myself - enjoying halloween by proxy, if you like.

And plenty of places that I went to were the same. I ended up becoming involved, with customers offering me sweets and candy in leiu of monetary tips (I made a grand total of £1.05 tonight, AND a pocket full of haribo , lollipops and chocolate buttons), or kids clamouring at my arrival (pizza scooters seem to hold a special place in the heart of young kids, don't know why. Shame that it turns to resentment or aggression as they get older, but that's another story).

For my part, I'd snaffled a few lollipops on my way out the door, and I'd surrepticiously find out whether the kids that answered the door had been out trick-or-treating.
If their mums said anything along the lines of "we've not had the time" or "we've had homework to do", a lollipop would suddenly work its way into the lil' kid's possession.

I spose I can call it my little contribution :).

Everyone was in a good mood, the atmosphere was fantastic, and as the night wore on, the adults began to have their own fun. Crowds appearing outside pubs, dressed in a variety of costumes, including one bunch who had dressed as the Ghostbusters. Unfortunately, none of them were IC3, which was a shame cos one of the Ghostbusters (Ernie Hudson/Winston Zeddemore) is.
Not to worry, the relevant "ghostbuster" ended up wandering around in full blackface. Thankfully, Harry Connick Jr. was nowhere to be seen, or he'd have got stuck in embarrasing his country on his self-righteous behalf. The jackass is no more qualified to be the spokesman of a nation than I am. Though he did point out the differences in how far political correctness has got it's teeth into the UK/US compared to Aus and other countries.

This continued for hours, even as the smoke from all the fireworks descended like a fog (as it does), gving the night air a ghostly ethereal and very appropriately spooky atmosphere, and still the partying continued - hey, it's 25 past 11 here, the partying I guess is very very much alive in the clubs, who will no doubt be hosting their own halloween parties :D.

I ended up going home, after stopping and buying some beer, walking home to the sound of fireworks, and my earlier Halloween mood music :D. The surreal image of a police van on the corner with its occupants intently talking to witches, warlocks and demons was shrugged off as nothing more than an excess of Halloween spirit on their (the partygoers) part :-).

So now I'm here with my beer, music and whatnot.

PART TWO - OTHER STUFF

My card arrived yesterday. The bloody delivery guy woke me at 8am, and bleary-eyed I stumbled downstairs, wrapped in a bedsheet, and with my slippers on the wrong feet. And then the guy complained when I signed the wrong box on his form.
Bloody hell, I'd been asleep 60 seconds prior to this encounter!

But I had the card, and all thoughts of how tired I was went out of the window. [Skipping a load of unneccessary detail here] I very carefully inserted the card (though as it wouldn't go in without a fight, it wasn't as carefully as I would have liked), and powered the machine on.

Over a week of hopes was riding on this single piece of hardware. Over a week of swearing, shouting, feeling trapped in a room that - when my computer was running - was a room high in a tower, with windows onto the world in every wall, but had been turned into a dingy basement with nothing but bricks to look at ever since my computer went down, everything was riding on this card.

The bios flickered on the screen, artefact-free.
Replaced by a windows login screen.
In 1680x1050.

ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGH!!!!!!!!!! It works!!!
And it continues to work!

Within ten minutes, my sound drivers were installed, and I was back on the internet.

Good progress, and I accomplished in twenty minutes, with the right knowledge (anyone detect a pattern here) what I had failed to accomplish in ten days of trial and error.
So sue me. I'm not bloody psychic.

So what have I gained from ten days of swearing, shouting and generally feeling as if (a fairly major) part of my world had been turned upside-down?

I've gained 276mb of graphics memory - upgrading from 620 to 896mb.
I've gained 140gb of hard drive space, having fitted an IDE drive for the sole purpose of installing an OS on.
I've spent nearly £160.

But. My computer's ever only failed on me completely, once. And if £160 keeps it going for another two years, I'll consider it a small price to pay.

My documents are safe, everything is there. The drive is intact, and my memories are there waiting for me to dust them off again.

What else.

My nephew's lil christmas present turned up the same day my computer died. It seems to do its job surprisingly well. The interface is a bit jaggy, and it's impossible to convert videos to run on it, but hopefully I'll figure it out between now and Christmas.

FINALLY, I am celebrating (a few days late!) NASA's successful launch of Ares I-X. I firmly believed that it was going to be today, as it happens, they cheated and launched it a couple of days ago. Either way, the launch was a good success, which is pretty good. So ehy, let's get the beer in :D.

Here are some tunes for you to listen to. They're quite cheerful and quite nice.

Looks like American 80's music - it's not ;)
Rings a few twenty-year old bells.

Here are some sparkly pictures, in no particular order, that all have some degree of relevance to recent blog posts.

One of them is the wheel in Hyde Park, London. Another is the wheel in Sheffield. See the resemblance? ;-)

EDIT: 03:15AM My mom appeared through my door for the first time in over a week, with a big grin on her face.
To my pleasant surprise, she told me that it is good to hear my tica-taka-tacking on my keyboard again.
Yeah I guess I was a little silent while my computer was dead.

Still, it's nice to have people say nice things about you for a change :-).

And here finally, is a lovely Halloween tune for you.
And Another.

And finally who can forget the man himself!!!

Another episode!! :-D.

Only for the kids, these days!!! :-D.


:)

Not scary, as such, but magical all the same :).

Awesome :D.

The light at the end of the tunnel...

Is not apparently to be found anywhere on my new graphics card.
For some reason, they didn't put one on it. What they did put on it, was 1.4 billion transistors, 216 processor cores, and 896mb of graphics memory.

CHAPTER 1.5 THE BORING COMPUTER BIT:

Well, I've made some progress with my computer, as you may have guessed. The SATA hard drives simply wouldn't talk to the BIOS, so I've taken them out, temporarily replacing them with an old 140Gb IDE drive from my old computer. See, this is why you should keep stuff around.

So I've now got an operating system, and a file/directory structure. My computer is now capable of saving files, accessing them, and moving them around. It can also run some programs, system stability permitting.
It sounds incredibly basic, but a few days ago, it wouldn't even try to load any files, or programs. Unable to see a hard drive, the computer just caught itself in an endless loop, POSTing again and again.

So where does my GPU come into all this?

Well, it seems that the system instability is caused... bla bla bla - I tried to explain what was wrong before realising that I still actually don't quite know.

My current graphics card is not happy, and it certainly isn't fully functional. With artefacts appearing all over the screen, the indicators point to it being physically damaged, whether by overcurrent, static discharge or other factors.
Windows, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that the device wasn't working at full spec, and has therefore disabled it completely (eh?), resulting in knock-on effects that seem to indicate that my monitor can't talk to my computer, because its only contact with the computer is a damaged piece of hardware.

AND NOW WE RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULAR PROGRAMMING

Regardless of all the above stuff, I've ordered a replacement for my card, and hopefully it should be with me tomorrow. Hopefully it will fix the problem, and hopefully, after getting my computer working again tomorrow, I can spend saturday morning setting it up, copying my old files back to it, and spend saturday night having a beer or ten, listening to music, reading the news, watching TV Shack, chatting with my mates etc etc, on my own computer, for the first time in over a week.

So, what else have I been up to? Well, yesterday I went to town with my mum to look at Christmas presents. While admittedly, my computery problems have taken the edge off my enthusiasm for Christmas slightly, I'm sure this is only temporary, and indeed, we had a nice time yesterday browsing round the shops, looking at all sorts of lovely Christmas gifts I'm looking forward to buying - despite my budgetary problems - in the next 4-6 weeks.

Sheffield's skyline has changed since I last ventured there, with the addition of a huge wheel . Quite a familiar one too. In fact, if you compare the pictures (I'll upload yesterday's sometime when I've got my computer working again), you'll see that the wheel that now sits in Sheffield, is identical to the wheel that we saw in Hyde Park in London, last winter (EDIT: 19:18. The wheel is in fact identical to the wheel that sits in Hyde Park - it's owned by the same company and presumably is made to the same design as the other wheels owned by the company, which stand in several cities including Perth, Copenhagen and Ostsee-Reise. Amusingly, the wheel that I saw in operation in Hyde Park last december, is apparently due to open December 2009, according to the website - maybe they move it there every winter - sounds like a lot of work to me)!

So, all that aside, I guess I'll get on with tidying up, my room has suffered a bit, becoming filled with cables and all sorts of clothes and whatnot, so I guess it's time to fix it.

Oh well, off I go :-).

PS: We're going to do the Christmas Pudding tonight, so let's see if I can shoot some of my first Christmas 2009 videos tonight :-).

More Ballcocks...

Well, what to say.
My system is still crippled, I'm making (very!) slow headway, eliminating the problems that can reasonably be eliminated (Without having a whole extra computer to test things out on!) as time goes on.

Unfortunately, things haven't progressed as quickly as I'd like, and my awesome machine is still down for the count. My documents appear to be safe [grabs a load of chipboard - it'll have to do] but the system is still very opposed to the idea of running anything other than the command prompt.

Still, the more time passes, the closer it is until I get my system working again, I guess.

Meh, still not good.

Ballcocks...

Well, the upgrade to the new OS didn't go as planned.

After sorting my display issues I spent some time installing some new software.
After a short but interminable time, my sister came to pick me up.

Yep, my lil nephew, in his quest to get his very own Karate suit, has decided to start Karate club. Cool, by the time he's my age, he'll be a black belt in kicking ass.

So I went along, took the little MP3 player WHICH ARRIVED TODAY (more when my computer isn't crippled) to show my sister, and off we went, sitting about while my nephew practiced being a superhero/did karate.

When I got back I took a few awesome photos, my nephew's first day in his new Karate Suit.
Unfortunately, the dreaded graphics problem reappeared, and even two frantic hours with a mate, screwing about with drivers and whatnot didn't fix the issue.
Just as I was about to reformat, the computer suddenly started again, perfectly, and smiling sweetly (again), my computer ushered me into 1680x1050 goodness.

Unfortunately this was short lived. Less than half an hour after settling in for a good night's internetting, my display suddenly turned into striped bars of random colour, and the computer restarted itself. And when it did, the crippled graphics were back.

I've since reformatted, reinstalled new drivers, it doesn't make a difference.
I was horrified to think (and convinced at one point) that my Graphics Card had given up the ghost, but now I'm not so sure.

Seems this OS is having teething problems, the same as all other new OSes do.

Shame that it's not likely to be sorted out in the near future.

Still, if my computer dies, it'd give me 8 hours extra per day to just live my life.
But I hope it doesn't. I've got things to do, yeah?

Laters...

Welcome to the 90s!

Okay, so having done a lot of stuff last night, reformatting and whatnot, I've learned a couple of things.

• Just because an OS installs to F:\ doesn't mean that there aren't important files on C:\ that shouldn't be thrown in the recycle bin...
• If you turn something off and on again enough times, things generally fix themselves. This may have been a secondary factor.
• 16 (or whatever) million colours at 1680x1050 is something that only happens when your equipment is working properly.

I woke up eager to carry on with reinstalling everything, only to be met with the horrific vision of a 16 colour login screen. Confirming my worst fears, I logged in to be met with a 1990s 16 colour world, where not only was everything not displayed properly, but it was not displayed properly, in 640x480 16 colour. A scary vision, for a dude with an 8800GTS card humming away in his computer.

What did I do to fix it? I don't know. I reinstalled my GPU Drivers (which I've just noticed, with a sly laugh) have installed themselves to C:\Nvidia (one of the directories I deleted yesterday!) and restarted my computer. No better, still 16 colours. So I tried to download new monitor drivers, and instead almost ended up downloading some russian hacker's "automatic driver wizard" whatever program. I think I cancelled the install - difficult when the cancel button was displayed as a white button with white text on a white background, and shut down in disgust.

I did a full cold boot (from shutdown) and for some reason, the computer - I swear if computers could smile sweetly, this one did - booted up in full 1680x1050 glory.

So the answers to my new questions are:

• With the OS on F:\, are the files on C:\ redundant and un-needed?: No, absolutely not. For some reason, my computer now wants to spread its important files across two partitions.
• Is it irresponsible to delete things if you don't know what they do?: That depends. On the face of it, of course it bloody is. However, I was going to reformat the entire physical disk (but to my shame, still haven't found out how to do it!) so I figured that any and all files were ultimately redundant.
• What are you going to do now: I'm going to cut my losses and stop fecking around. My system is now working properly *grabs hold of the nearest wooden object* so I'm going to leave all the important stuff as it is.

And eventually, when my bloody nephew's bloody parcel actually finally turns up, I'm going to crack on with getting that sorted for him. Assuming it doesn't actually get delivered on Christmas Day. Now that would be ironic.

In a really crappy way.

Have fun.

The Early Bird... Well, 7:40ish

is currently sat on a TV antenna across the street, preening himself and bobbing his tail around like some kind of rear-mounted magic wand. I wonder if, like Dogbert, he signals at things by pointing to them with his tail...

As Dracula (portrayed by Leslie Nielsen) would say, "I cannot be up during the daytime, what is happening".

Yes, having happily gone to bed at 4am, with a predicted midday rise (day off), I was mildly (!) annoyed to be shouted to get up at 6:20am. And so, with that horrible dizzy/slightly nauseous/weak/gritty eyes feeling you get from prematurely interrupting a sleep cycle, I wandered downstairs to grab my tools, to assist my dad in retrieving the snapped-off end of his office key, from inside his office lock.

A bit of finesse (which is difficult when there's a domestic dispute going on right next to you; "taking a cold-bore shot in the heat of combat, is like a surgeon performing open-heart surgery, with a boxing match raging around him" - Richard Macowicz - Tehehe) later, and with the right tools, I managed to do in 2 minutes what ahem, other people, with the wrong tools, had not managed to do in 20.

So a bit of sodding around later, and that little drama was sorted, leaving me wide awake (ish), with the sun making its way above the horizon. The only sound was the traffic on the nearby motorway, over which my mind helpfully played a rather "quiet sunrise-y" tune (my god, what is going on with that woman's hair!!!) :-).

I must admit to feeling very slightly schitzophrenic at times (no not really! But you get what I mean) - My mind seems to be a helpful counterpart, with tis own opinions and whatnot. It's great being able to solicit advice from yourself. But hey, I guess everyone does that. I hope :-).

So now I'm up, I'm going to spend a little while sodding about with my computer and whatnot, preparing for in depth (but vaguely routine) maintenance.

Perhaps I shouldn't have drunk the cup of coffee my mum left as she toddled off out of the door.
One thing I did notice though, Christmas seems to be in full flow on QVC - Today is "craft day special" or something, and is filled with various christmassy things...

I've got to go now, got to sod about with computery things. I'm going to go back to bed later I guess (hard to go back to bed earlier!), and with some luck the doorbell will wake me as the postman delivers my long awaited parcel.

Gingerbread Men!

17:00: Well, my sister is over here, with her mobile hairdresser due to arrive shortly (for some reason, presumably so my mum can get her hair done at the same time), and my ickle nephew has turned up too.

And we've certainly got a lot to get through. He wants to make ickle halloween gingerbread men with me (he's pounding up the stairs at this very moment), wants to write his christmas list, and I'm gonna take him through ebay to see if there's anything he fancies for christmas :).

Back later!

18:32: We've been making biscuits for about 90 minutes, and now I'm helping the little guy write his name in sprinkles on one of them :D. Much finesse is required :D.
19:20: Despite finding out that the little dude has toddled off with the (brand new) aerial for my r/c helicopter remote control (which I am none too happy about but hey, I'm not gonna sulk about it) the little dude and I are now surfing ebay for Xmas pressie ideas :).

22:14: Right, give me some time to fix everything he's broken, tidy everything he's messed up, and generally wind down and take a deep breath and I'll be with you/me :-).

23:04: Right, everything's just about back to normal. The Demeter, my huge lego spaceship that I built for him, once suffering from a shattered forward hull has now been repaired. The wings have been completely rebuilt too since they were a little fiddly after weeks of repeated repairs :-).

Well, he turned up bearing ghost cookies (gingerbread men in the shape of flying ghosts), and for 90 minutes or so, we (he decorated them while I eventually got on with the washing up) had a great time decorating them, first with the bits included with the kit, then with a pack of marshmallows I found, and finally with some strawberry icing that I made, which despite having the consistency of silly putty and the musty cloyingly sweet taste that only pure icing sugar can provide, was described as "very nice" after I liberally spiked it with red food colouring and strawberry flavouring.

My ickle nephew of course, spent more time eating the icing than he did decorating the cookies, but in the end, we ended up with five yummy halloween cookies, including one which rather impressively bore his name, thanks to some finesse with some sprinkles and a pair of tweezers.

After the cookies were finished, (and I temporarily removed my watched items, including some presents from "my ebay"), the little dude and I went online searching for christmas presents that he might like. I guess no one will be surprised to hear that the little guy wanted this, that, those, these, some of them, and everything in between, but I was pleasantly reassured when he told me (without any prompting) that he wanted an ipod.

Now normally anyone buying presents would be horrified by this, as they're not the cheapest of things, but I noticed how much the little guy liked watching dilbert on my ipod, and had decided to get him something similar (but much cheaper) to watch videos on, for himself. I settled for a cheap chinese knockoff for several reasons to do with cost of purchase/possible replacement, and the convenient fact that at 5, until I explained it to him, he didn't know the difference between an Ipod and a phone, much less between an ipod and an ipod ripoff cunningly designed to look like an ipod. Hey if that sounds callous, look at it this way. I can put the £50 or maybe £60 that I've saved by getting one of those "works just like" chinese ones that I've been so careful to avoid in the past, that I can put that money now towards buying him something lese that he wants as well. If I'd have gone genuine, it would have been either or :-).

So we had a nice time, browsing lots of present shops online, looking at things it'd be nice to buy etc, while the little guy happily sang along with some of the christmas songs I'd put on to get him in the mood. It was nice, even if the lil guy did get hyper every now and then.
Enough about this I suppose, I'll let you get on with whatever you were getting on with. But first, some pictures :-).

October... complete with extra wildlife.

I woke up to the most homely smell, that of vegetables cooking downstairs. It puts me in mind of winter days, where the kitchen is the warmest room in the house, where the cold outside makes the windows steam up, and where Christmas is only a few weeks away. It's a nice smell, and it's making me hungry.

20:02: Well, after a lovely meal of gammon with vegetables, roast potatoes, onion sauce and gravy, I'm now looking forward to my yummy fruit trifle. Yay!

I've been doing more bouncing around ebay looking for cool pressies to buy people, and I've found a couple of interesting things. More about these later in the year I suppose.

So what else have I been up to? Bugger all really :-).

But I did have the strangest experience a couple of days ago.

Walking home from work on saturday, about 11pm, I'm there eating pizza and minding my own business, and I'm walking up the road, on the other side of which is a small square field, with a huge tree in the middle of it.

Under the tree I notice something watching me intently. Initially I think it's a cat, but as it wanders towards me, I can see by its tail that it's not. As I cross to the other side of the road The road was well lit with street lights, with just a narrow line of shadow cast by a telegraph (I guess they're called utility poles these days) pole.

The animal, stops in its tracks, pausing for a second, before (and I think this is fantastic) walking in a straight line following this 30cm wide shadow almost the way to me, on the basis that if he stays in the shadow, maybe I won't see him.

I'm amazed - it's the first time I've ever ever seen a fox - for that's what he is - up this close. They're normally pretty timid creatures, and I've only ever seen them before as a flash of tail as they run into the trees, or as a reflection of light in their eyes, just before they run off, but this guy is being bold as brass, slinking along furtively, but intentley, towards me :-).

I'm stood about watching the fox skulk around and I wonder if I can have a closer look at him. I think to myself;

"What do foxes eat?"
"Anything"
"But what do they like to eat"
"Meat"

So I grab some ham and pork off my pizza and gently so as not to startle the animal, place it on the ground, taking a few steps back. This guy furtively looks around, takesa a few steps towards it, has another quick glance, sniffs the meat and starts eating. All this maybe 3 or 4 meters from me!

I repeat this another couple of times, as the fox starts following me around. Eventually, he decides to wander across the road, and with a quick and final flash of his tail, he disappears over and behind a wall into somebody's garden :-).

what a beautiful creature though, and a completely weird experience.

Not my photo. I wish I had my camera with me, but I'm not going to carry it about on the off chance that I find something to take pictures of while I'm out and about.

Well, I'm gonna carry on searching for xmas presents and whatnot, so I guess I'll be in touch soon .

Have fun.

Ink and Incapability

The title would be referring to the temporary writer's block that had me stumped for a title for a few minutes, a couple of seconds ago. Still, I turned the problem into the solution expertly, and once again have bent reality to my will. Go me!

Ahem.

I walked to work the other day, enjoying the weather, which recently has been very hot and very sunny (followed by very cold completely cloudless nights). Even as I walked to work in shades and a T shirt, neighbours were hapilly talking about how lovely the weather is for the back end of September.

Yep, just as the hottest (one of the hottest, at least!) day of the year was way back, abnormally early, in april, it seems the hot weather has continued, more or less, right through September, even as the trees shed their leaves, and sycamore seeds whirl from the sky almost as a precursor to the snow that will follow. Once again, another year seems to be growing old.

Which leads me to make the astonishing announcement that I have, as of a few hours ago, purchased my first Christmas Present! As shocking as this might seem, if you read back, you'll notice that I started buying presents about this time last year, as well.

So about this present. Well. It's sparkly, different, very cool, and in fact is so cool that I'm going to have a quick look at it to er, check the contents, and to make sure everything works and stuff. Yes, that's right :-).

But it's not arrived yet, so hey :).



My Ipod parts on the other hand, did finally arrive, and so I set to work replacing the shell/clickwheel of the ipod. Youtube tutorial videos had made it clear that replacing the case is simple enough, but to replace the clickwheel the entire thing has to come to bits. I guess the most worrying part was having to prise the main board off the frame, since it was held in place only by glue (!)

The whole thing took about an hour, and was simple enough really, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't relieved when the 2 halfs of the case finally locked together with a satisfying click. And my Ipod? Well now it looks new. Yay!

One other thing I did, was to copy my family's favourite christmas tape (we've always used one particular christmas tape for years and years) to MP3 so now I can carry those old tunes about with me. Once done, I went to search for other tapes to copy, and in the process I found lots of stuff I thought I no longer owned. Old talismans, pendants, postcards from mates I haven't seen for years, lots of stuff with a very high sentimental value.

When I was a kid, my sister and I used to fight over who got to keep the extremely long receipts we got from the checkouts at christmas food shopping. I found a few of them in a box under my bed, dated 2001 and 2002, and just for old time's sake went to show my dad.
Disappointingly, all he did was question why I should want to keep "rubbish".

My sister and I are very different in that regard - If I don't have a damn good reason to throw something away, I generally keep it, especially if it has sentimental value.
My sister on the other hand, likes to throw stuff away the second she can't instantly come up with a good reason not to. She attatches no sentimental value to anything, and seems to value a possession based strictly on its utility. Efficient, but rather cold, I think.
I guess I now see where she gets it from. Still, one man's junk is another man's treasure, as they say, and as freudian/homoerotic as that sounds, I'm inclined to agree.

So yeah. Not much else to go on about relaly layley, so I'll leave it here. while I lay back and daydream about what other presents I'd like to buy :-).

Byeeeee.

Ahh Memories...

Ahem.

I noticed that despite the year winding on, the weather has been fairly civil, with no real rain to speak of. And so, by virtue of its very normality, the weather, or lack thereof, went completely unheeded by me, and pretty much by everyone that I speak to regularly.

A couple of days ago however, we had one very warm very beautiful day. The sun was out and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The slight breeze was cool but not cold, and even a few birds could be seen wobbling in the branches of the trees, which themselves barely moved (Of course they barely moved. When did you last see trees walking about)?

It seemed to be a perfectly pleasant if somewhat cool summer day.

the day that followed, was nondescript, nothing more than a marker on the path from Summer to Autumn. And today? Overcast, cool, with a little rain cooling everything down.

Yes, it seems that September has been struggling to stamp its mark on the year, and is even now trying to point out that it's not summer anymore. And so, as I heed these signals, my mind turns to the future. And to the past.

Why am I writing like a second year English Student? I don't know :).

No, it's that time of year, where the dreaded C word begins to creep slowly but inexorably into conversation, and even as I start planning how to handle Christmas 2009, searching ebay for presents, decorations and other acoutrements, I'm looking back with tinsel-tinted spectacles to last year's Christmas. An event which went pretty well, by all standards actually.

Why do this so early though? It's only September!
Because, I only earn about £50 a week, which is only very slightly more than you get paid for being unemployed. Therefore I have to look ahead in order to be able to make sure I have the finances that I need. I already have an idea what I want to buy one person (if they don't go and get it themselves in the months ahead) .

So, what about the recent past, the last couple of weeks.
Well, despite what the dentist said, relief was two or three days wait after my visit to the practice, not exactly the instant fix she promised me, but hey, everyone's entitled to make a mistake every now and again. I couldn't diagnose, much less treat jaw problems, so I should shut my mouth. Aha. Ha. Ha. Etc.

Eventually, the pain, if not the swelling died down, so the whole issue is a lot less thorny than it was before. I'm still reluctant to talk about having my tooth out, so for that reason I'm going to move on and talk about something else.

My Ipod, having been rebuilt the day before halloween 2007 is once again looking like an absolute dog's dinner, and having been dropped a few times, has bangs, scratches, dints, dents, dings and things all over it. In order to put this right, I've bought some new bits for it. Not only a new faceplate, in black again, but a new rear case, and a new clickwheel.
Having got bored with the white clickwheel though, I've ordered a lovely red one this time, meaning that my Ipod should look something like this when it's finished.

I haven't bothered buying the "U2 Autographed" rear case, because I stopped liking that arch-idiot Bono (and anything he touched, participated in or talked about) once he became conceited, narcissistic, and arrogant enough (he was always conceited and narcissistic, but he crossed the threshold at some point in the indeterminate past) to stop being a musician and to try his hand at getting us to all give money to Africa instead, like some kind of second rate Bob Geldof, but without the stupidly annoying offspring.

I'm not in favour of poverty, obviously, but while I'm not going to go into my views in detail on here, what I am going to say is that firstly, if he wanted loads of money to go to Africa, he should pay out of his own extremely full pocket instead of moaning about Africa's problems every opportunity he gets, like some kind of unofficial spokesman for the entire continent, to the point where U2 fans everywhere are made to feel crap for not selling their own property to raise money.
Secondly, he's conveniently forgetting the fact that a huge majority of aid that goes to Africa ends up going directly into the equally extremely full pockets of the leaders of these impoverished countries, who then go to spend said money on AK47s, RPGs, BMWs, gold plated bathroom fixings, champagne, works of art, and whore parties, a wide variety of hedonistic and fun things, that conveniently don't include anything to do with providing food, water, or shelter, for the poor of the country.
Still, I've no doubt that he's going to try to buy/adopt a small malawi orphan at some point, since that seems to be the fashionable thing to do these days.

So to ignore that little rant, suffice it to say, I don't want to be associated with that, and for that reason, the U2 signatures stay off the back of my ipod, thankyou very much.
But black and red does look cool :-). I've also bought a plastic shield thing to stick to the front of it to make suire it continues to look cool.
I've been waiting on both for about ten days, not particularly happy about that. Hmm.

So, what else have I been up to.
Well, going one better than pulling my camera off my desk, I managed to drop it 3 foot onto concrete a few days ago. Damaged? YES!
The little battery latch thing came loose and had to be superglued back on. That's it really.
No lasting effects, but it was... interesting... at the time.

Still, there you go.

My little Traser keyring turned up, and has since spent its time being generally sparkly, which is good. A bit expensive at £8.50 but then it's going to stay lit for the next 10 years, so hey :).

And that's it really, nothing else much to report. I spend more and more time looking on ebay for (Hmm, a firetruck has just gone down the road with lights flashing, wonder what's happening) christmassy stuff, and as the time creeps closer towards us, I've no doubt that I'm eventually going to have to start spending money on it.

So hey :).

Little Clarification

One thing that I will say, that I should clarify rather, having been reminded by the fire service zooming down the road, is the meaning of my comments a few weeks back;

"But tonight, seeing the wheels turning smoothly, first the crime/injury, then the ambulance and the police response, I guess it gave me a little more faith in our emergency services.

Nice one, lads"

It occured to me that the other day, that these comments could be seen as expressing - at worst - pleasant surprise in seeing our Emergency Services doing their jobs effectively and efficiently, and therefore give people the impression that I don't have a lot of respect for or trust in those Emergency services.

As you're probably aware, the posts on this blog do not represent the opinions or views of any entity other than myself, which means I can bloody well say what I want and tough luck if people happen not to like it. But I do want to point out that not only do I have absolute trust in and respect for our emergency services, but I also feel proud to have those hardworking guys and girls in my neighbourhood.
We'd all be lost without 'em, so let's all give it up for our firefighters, police officers, EMTs/Paramedics etc, and the new Yorkshire Air Ambulance guys, with their shiny and awesome new #2 helicopter :-).

Cheers people, all the best :-).

Eee, by gum...

:(.

It seems that even when it's closed, my mouth is getting me into trouble.
A small swelling of my gums at the back of my mouth has since turned into a larger swelling, with associated discomfort (for discomfort read: "Not being able to sleep or eat properly because it hurts too much".

And that's it. No further details available at the moment, I've had the issue for a couple of days and while it hasn't got any worse, despite me starting on low-level (available without prescription) painkillers and antiseptic mouthwashes (Corsodyl/Chlorohexidine - which is available without prescription in the UK but not the US - eek!) it hasn't got any better either.

Eventually, I phoned the local clinic (having been spurred into action by a sudden (and temporary) sharp increase in pain yesterday. Their advice? "Phone the dentist". Fair enough I spose, but if you're a regular reader of the blog and you've got a decent memory, you'll remember I've seen so much of my dentist that I may as well be married to one.

Nevertheless, I found myself reluctantly phoning the NHS dentist, who (despite what the newspapers (both in the UK and the US) are fond of saying about the NHS) have sorted out an appointment for me to have a quick checkup, which is in about 50 minutes.

Is this the start of another long saga of me getting victimised/treated with long sharp instruments? Let's hope not.

But last night, when I should have been celebrating England's recent (and very effective!) win, Instead I was sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, rationing pain killers and generally having naps to try and recover from my pain-induced lack of sleep (3 hours in the last 30, up until that point).

So let's see what happens. I'll let you know more when I get back.

17:44

Right, I've been to the dentist. The problem was pretty much as I'd expected (informed opinion, aided by medical/NHS websites (don't self-diagnose, it's naughty!)), my gum was being irritated by "foreign bodies" in my mouth.
However, it's a bit more involved than that. Apparently, stress causes swelling of the gums (I've not heard that one before), and as the gum swelled over my wisdom tooth, it trapped food between the surface of the tooth and itself. Food doing what food will after a few days of being trapped in a warm damp environment, started turning into interesting chemicals which lots of interesting bacteria started eating.

My gum didn't like being in contact with at all, hence the pain and inflammation.
So after giving this "gap" a quick wash with some antiseptic stuff (more Corsodyl I think), they prescribed me with some antibiotics, which will persuade the interesting bacteria to stop being interesting and start being dead (hey, i'm all for "good bacteria", but these little sods have had me in quite a lot of pain! Payback!).

My dentist has warned me that eveb after succesful treatment, there's nothing to stop this situation reoccuring, and that I should have the aformentioned wisdom tooth removed.

Hmm, I'll have to think about whether I want that to happen or not.

Still, I've got some medicines to get through, so I'd best get started. I'm going to try and eat something in a bit.

Ciao :-)

Stones, Suzuki and Sambuca...

The moon is looking very spectacular tonight. 3 quarter moon, and it's that lovely pinkish orange colour. I would have taken a photo - okay, I took several. I would have displayed a photo - but my camera's autofocus isn't infallible and the moon behind clouds just kinda tripped it up.

So what's been happening...

In my usual disordered A to C to B to E and then D way, let's see.

I've enjoyed my week of freedom away from the parents, especially considering that they phoned much much less than I expected they would. Despite this, I've looked after the place pretty well, and nothing's collapsed, caught fire, or being blown away in a tornado (yes we do get them - not large ones (depends whether you'd call an F2 tornado large), but we do get them).

I whiled away the lazy days, going to work, coming back, listening to loud music, getting pissed (drunk) and generally doing what I wanted when I wanted. Of course, all good things come to an end, and even though during the week I'd missed the company of my parents, as soon as they phoned me to say they'd be back in a couple of hours, my freedom suddenly became incredibly precious.

Still, they came back, and once they'd gone to bed out came the beer.

Not much has really changed since then. I'd been struck by the idea of finally actually really selling my bike and getting a new one. But it seems that the old lession of "never try to sell anything to a friend" proved itself spectacularly wise, as said friend and I quickly developed animosities that turned into arguments and insults, with accusations of dishonesty Exaggerations, truths, half truths, and lies disguised as truths flew back and forth...

...officially, said "friend" is now seeing whether he can afford my bike.
Unofficially, I think he's wasting my time.

Shame. I really fancied a new ride.

As for tonight, well. Sodding hell.
I'd been complaining to my boss for months that they shouldn't be sending us into dodgy areas, sending us to areas full of feral kids, graffiti, dogshit, and shuttered up houses.

But hey, an order is an order so off we go.

Last night, a guy was shot dead about 4 miles from here, which I spose would be worrying, but we have a couple of areas round here that aren't such great pleaces to live in.

One thing threw me for a loop last night though.
I arived in the "hood" where the dude was shot, looking around, noting the lack of shutters on the windows, the lack of graffitti etc, and I thought "well it doesn't look like it, but I spose technically, this is a "hood".

Anyway, I ended up on my way back from the area, cheerfully looking forward to my beer.
On the way back, I saw a couple of random spotty teenagers flick something into the road, and thought nothing of it.

Seconds later, with a shark *CRACK*, one that I more felt than heard, I might add, something hit me on the side of the head (helmet).

That fcuking stone.
A stone, must have been. bounced off my lid.

First thing I did was to slam the anchors (brakes) on, and half turn in the road, as I stared at these two kids.

I honestly was not sure what to say I felt. Anger? No, kids will be kids. Disbelief? No, kids will be kids. I'm not sure.

I stared at these two lads walking up the road, trying to figure out what I was possibly going to say to them.

In the absence of anything better to do, after ten seconds of watching them calmly walk up the road, I rode off.

Initially I was absolutely furious, shaking, if not from the cold then from the anger. How dare these two wankers throw stones at me, just because they've nothing better to do.

Then the voice of reason kicked in. "Chill out mate, you're a pizza boi, and pizza bois are fair game".

By the time I got back to the store, I was laughing. Yes, I was angry, but it wasn't an attack on me, I'd never met these two lads, how could it have been. It was an attack on pizza boys. And your stereotypical pizza boy is a thick as fcuk 17 year old lad who wants a bit of extra cash for his weed.

Upon reflection, I sincerely wish I'd gone back to congratulate these lads on their awesome shot. I was moving at 30mph, and they still managed to bounce a rock off my head. What's that, if not a good shot.

I got back to the shop and clocked out. Time to go home.
But I wasn't the only one on the receiving end, it seems. I walked out to see my mates having a smoke break, and across the road, surrounded by maybe 50 people, was a guy on the ground.

No one was sure whether he'd been bottled, or glassed, or whether he'd just been knocked out, but whatever, he was down for the count.

Someone had phoned the services, as before we even saw it, an ambulance and a paramedic were on the scene dealing with it.
5 minutes later, the police showed up, and so for me, it was hometime.

Let's give credit to our emergency services though eh?
some stuff had gone off outside the store, and before we knew it had happened, first the ambulance and paramedic, and then the police, were there to pick up the pieces.

In another country, the guy's fate would have depended on his medical insurance. Here, in the UK, thanks to the much maligned NHS, this guy will be treated, free of charge, and released when he's good to go.

Here, the police have turned up to calm things down, and make sure he's ok.

The UK has its shittyness, sometimes, the crap the government comes out with beggars belief.

But tonight, seeing the wheels turning smoothly, first the crime/injury, then the ambulance and the police response, I guess it gave me a little more faith in our emergency services.

Nice one, lads.

EPILOGUE: It turned out that it wasn't a drunken attack that put this guy on the floor, it was a hit and run, by two jackasses on an illegal pit-bike. Rumours circulated that the guy was killed outright, but according to an official press release, he's "critical" but still alive.
As for these off road wankers, we've had an upsurge recently in illegal motorcyclists, and despite police efforts, they're still riding about the local estates...
The police helicopter has been about quite a lot recently though, so let's see what comes of it.

Cameras, Scameras, and Pizza

Eek. I woke up to a cloudy day. Nothing serious, and even as I ambled downstairs, the weather brightened. The sun came out, and it began to look like we were in for another nice day again.

After sitting about for a while, I decided to expand my portfolio a bit, picking out and printing my best/favourite photographs, and sticking them in a binder. After a bit of thought I managed to arrange four A4 photos in an A3 display book, by sticking two of them, one above the other, to a piece of card, and then sticking another two, one above the other, to the reverse. These four I then slotted into one of the plastic wallets in the display book.

Which was great until some dirt got in between the wallet and the photos, which muckied them up.
After a short time of swearing, reprinting, remounting and redirtying the photos, I gave it up as a bad job and decided to save my (expensive - thanks grandad) photo paper by keeping the slightly dirty (as in, have dirt on them, not dirty as in woman-not-wearing-any-clothes) photos I had already printed.

After a short time, my sister phoned, in true "sister" fashion, asking for my immediate help in the next five minutes, and any plans I had for today, be damned.
Of course me being the nice person that I am, and being completely used to this, agreed to help. A process which involved taking photos of the outside and inside of two houses which my sister and her friend are trying to get someone interested in.

So I spent a while wandering round taking pretty pictures and generally having a rather good time. Despite my nephew's (cute, then annoying, then boring) inability to understand that photos without him in it did actually and could actually exist :-).

Eventually though, we came home and shortly after, it was time for me to go to work.
Work started out extremely slowly. Very little to do, and no deliveries to speak of.

Eventually though, I was sent on my way with a delivery, and on my way over the bridge noticed something rather unpleasant. Well, in purpose if not appearance.

A very shiny and colourful but very spiteful and condescending "safety camera" van. Without going into detail, "Safety cameras" in this country have been widely discredited, and the only aspect of road safety despised nearly as much as them is the fact that there are some people who insist that they are there for the right reasons, in a perfectly detestable self righteous "well I don't break the law, so anyone who does should be punished" type way.

I ponder as to the success of the day's fishing (for the crew of the van, that is), and eventually arrive at my destination. During my conversation with the customer, I accidentally *ahem* let it slip that there is a camera at xyz location, right after the bridge sign, pointing south etc etc. "Just in case you're going out tonight".

The customer responded that he was in fact going out tonight, and would also actually be passing that way. I tell him his order comes to £16.46, as he gives me a £20.
I start fumbling for change, at which point he tells me to keep the change, as I've probably just saved him a £30 ticket :-D. Woo! £3.54 as a tip - that's a new record, and a fairly respectable amount for a night's total.

With a cheerful tune in my mind, I ride slowly back to the store, and approach the van's location. Normally I ride to the left of the road allowing people to overtake my slow vehicle, but this time I'm very pointedly in the right-third of my lane (we drive on the left in the UK) preventing all the traffic behind me from overtaking. Sure it must have been annoying for them, but I reckon the penny dropped when they saw the scamera van :-).

I cheerfully arrive back at work and continue with my shift.
Within an hour of the camera being spotted, a local "car meet" and half the city's taxi drivers were aware of the scamera's precise location. Loose talk costs money (ill-gotten money that should, by all wrongs, belong to the "safety camera partnership"), and all that lot. Oops, I'll have to do a better job of keeping it to myself in future.

I'd been refusing to finish my shift early, as I wanted the money, despite the absolute lack of activity. However, as the addresses of the next few deliveries appeared on screen, including the addresses of a few places in the less salubrious parts of town, I changed my mind. I said to my manager that I'd clock off early in return for "nom nom". After explaining that I wanted free food, he agreed, and I clocked off.

While my food was in the oven, I checked my account and went to the off licence/liqor store. I chatted with the staff for a while and finally bought my beer.
I checked the receipt later on, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that my beer £2.99 for 4 cans, x 2, plus £2.00 per can, again x2, plus some other items, (about £3 of chocolates and stuff), about £13.00 approx (I suck at maths) came to - according to the off licence's card machine, just over £5, which was duly debited from my account.
Seems their card machine sucks at maths too.

Did I report it?
I've already done my good deeds for today (the camera/speed camera thing). I felt entitled to be a bit of a bastard.

So now I'm drinking my extremely cheap beer, and eating my extremely cheap chocolate, and chilling out. £8 won't put the shop out of business. I work in retail, I should know :-).

But yeah. A very good day.

Enjoy :-).

Gelato, Cappucino, Minestrone, Gondolas...

3:15AM

...and other things.

Yep, looks like my parents are shortly going to be off on their wonderful holiday to Italy, and I'm sure will have a lovely time :-). For my part, I'm sitting here trying to keep my room cool (actually getting it cool in the first place might be a good start), and wishing I'd put my coca cola in the fridge earlier so I could have a nice cold drink of it now.

Come to think of it, Ice cubes are an age old invention... Hmm...

3:24AM

Having returned, in true "me" fashion with both a hot drink, and a nice cold drink of terminally one dimensional coca cola (with half an ice cube tray inserted), I seem to be doing not-much other than wandering round trying not to get in the way, and alternately wishing my parents would sod off so I could have a bit of peace, and chatting to them because I'm already beginning to miss them, when they haven't even gone yet.

It's odd that even as the world sleeps, the moon is high above, and the stars are out twinkling in their twinkly nuclear fusion type way, it feels many hours later than it is, with an otherwise quiet early morning punctuated by the sound of hair dryers, the smell of perfume, and endless questions about the location of things.

I've fixed the "lake garda" tags to the suitcases, helpfully removing last year's "paris" ones.
It was a close thing :-).

With 15 minutes to go, amid complaints of "this should have been done bloody ages ago", courtesy of my dad, who has ordered the taxi for actually about the same time as last year, which is still earlier than it needs to be, for some reason.

Tension is beginning to increase a little as all the final preperations are being made, with 10 minutes to go everything is just about sorted, and the taxi should be on his way :-).

I've asked my parents to bring me another little "baby alcohol" (small bottles of alcohol! Not alcohol for babies!!) tub/collection/thingiewhatsit, so I can do my alcoholic advent calendar type thing again this christmas :-).

04:04: and now I'm off to escort my parents away :-). Not all the way to Italy, sadly :-(.

And off they go. They're gone now, and I'm already feeling quite lonely :-(.

Still, time for a cold drink and stuff I guess. Then a nice shower, and time to make my bed and go to spleep :-).

Hedge Trimmers, Doggies, and Import Duty.

Wow what a day.
It kinda started at 00:01 yesterday morning, when I crawled into bed. Or climbed in. Whatever. I didn't climb in because my bed is only 2 feet off the floor. I didn't jump in because the frame is already broken in one corner, and I didn't levitate in because despite what my parents might say, I haven't been possessed.
Maybe I insinuated myself into my bed, though generally I only really insinuate myself into other peoples'. Given the complexity of my bed, with more layers than a sponge cake in an earthquake, and four pillows, perhaps we could say that I installed myself in my bed, and configured myself appropriately.

Now I am one of these people, I can't drift off to sleep without listening to some form of background noise, lest I get caught in my own thoughts and never return to sanity. Historically, I used to listen to the radio, though the "we'll bring you more news as the story develops" or the odd interesting program on the radio frequently served to keep me awake, rather than do the opposite, so I switched to listening to videos on the TV. Turn the brightness/contrast way way down and it may as well be a radio, with your own choice of programming :-).

So it was that I drifted off while halfheartedly listening to Eddie Izzard bemoaning the lack of taxis in San Francisco ("And when you do get in, they don't know where they're going. I just said 'get in the back, I'll drive'"). I managed to forego the dreams I've been having recently, which while not nightmares or even really disturbing, are moderately depressing.

And at 3am I woke up.
And rolled over and went back to sleep.
Except I didn't. For two hours I tossed, turned, revolved completely, and adopted every position I'd ever heard of, from the recovery position, to the brace position recommended by airlines, through the wide and varied positions described in some indian book I'd never heard of, and then some.

Somehow, after two interminable hot, uncomfortable, boring and quite frankly angering hours, I got to sleep.

Eventually I woke up again. First at seven, then at 9, then at 12:30.
And before I knew it we were off to my sister's house to help with her garden.

This portion of the day proceeded vaguely to plan, apart from the tome in the garden that I watched with horrified fascination, the power cable for the Hedge Trimmer drifting closer and closer to the whirring blades. In less time than it takes for a nerve impulse to travel from my brain to my hand, to either release the trigger, or jerk the cable away, a dozen seperate thoughts, including "oh no, here we go", "oh look what I'm about to do" and "I hope I don't get electrocuted" flashed through my mind, right before the whirring of the blades, punctuated with a brief pop and a flash, came to a halt, the almost completely severed cable jammed between two of the teeth.

A sheepish apology to the owner later, we were off to my dad's (this house) to get it fixed.

At the top of our road, coming the opposite way, but also turning down our road, was a UPS van.
Now I received an email from the company in china telling me I should be "receivings my deliverings in approximately five daysings"and that it was being shipped UPS, but I shrugged off the possibility that it would be my lens. It was only monday, and they only shipped it on saturday.

But the van followed us down to my house, and though I watched with sinking heart as he drove past our place to the bottom of the road, I cheered right up when I saw him do a U turn and park more or less directly opposite.

Getting out of the van he told me that not only did he have a parcel for me, but that he'd been already this morning and no one was in. Except me but I'm a heavy sleeper, despite the earth shatteringly loud doorbell.

He also told me I had some money to pay him before he could give it me.

See, the UK has this thing called Value Added Tax. I don't pretend to know the ins and outs but generally, the UK government have decided that it'd be a great money maker if a percentage of every retail purchase by anyone anywhere in the UK went to the government's coffers. As a result, every item in catalogues or whatever has two prices in the UK; What it actually costs, and what it costs once the government have stuffed an additional cut in their wallet.

Because I imported the lens, buying it from a business that neither paid VAT to the UK government, nor charged their customers VAT, I was instead subject to the government's plan B: Everyone who buys something out of the country, without VAT, and expects to be allowed to use their purchase in this country, has to give the government a cut anyway. Except this time it's called "Import Duty" which to all intents and purposes amounts to the same thing.

UPS had nicely paid the import duty on my behalf, and less nicely, charged me upon delivery. In addition to paying £390 for the lens, I then had to give UPS some cash to repay them.

"How much?" I asked him. "Fifty pounds, sixty pence" he replied.
I think my response was more or less "FUUUUUUUUUUUU".

After failing to find my chequebook (which is probably out of date now anyway, and if not, is still A. misplaced, and B. probably lining some mouse's comfortable nest, I convinced the guy to wait while I ran to the store to get some cash. "Even better" he says, "I'll meet you there".

I get there, running to the store and see him pull up. I duck inside and run out a couple of minutes later with the money. A quick farewell and I'm back home playing with my lovely lens :-). In true "man" style, the box and instruction manual get flung on the table, and I disappear off upstairs with the lens.

An hour later, we're back at my sister's, cutting more hedges. This time, it's my sis that breaks the hedge trimmer, when during cutting something, the trimmer suddenly emits a high sing-song whining noise, before my sister turns it off.

Pulling it off the branches, something's definitely broken. The motor still whirs but the teeth don't move anymore.

It's not had a good day, that hedge trimmer.

Still, mine's not been bad at all :-).

Some photos :-).

Twin Lakes, Tokina, and Tiredness...

Yikes, lots of stuff to get through.
Yep, I'm gearing up for a nice relaxing week next week. I've only got two shifts (not at my request), so the five hours overtime I've put in this week ought to stand me in good stead, financially. My parents are off on their holiday at the end of next week, off to italy again, so it looks like I'll be looking after theplace while they're gone. Good stuff.

Well, I am financially solvent again. The huge lurking financial burden of the new lens has disappeared. Yep, that's right, as of yesterday, I am now the proud owner of a Tokina 11-16 F2.8 etc etc lens (video review here). I am also the proud owner of a 14" Zildjian Oriental China Trash (a cymbal), which I have in fact been the proud owner of for a while.
I did put it up on ebay, but for some bizarre reason, while drum retailers are having no trouble selling theirs for £170-£220, no one wanted to pay more than £65 for mine. Which is odd because it's in excellent condition and generally very sparkly.
Still, I didn't really want to get rid of it, so I spose I can now go back to proud-owning it.

So, what else have I been up to. Well, we finally went along to Twin Lakes again, which was pretty cool. I ended up back about 90 minutes late for my shift (despite my repeated warnings to my sis that we were gonna be late - bleh) but they took it in good stead and didn't complain.

The place hasn't changed. It's still awesome, still a fantastic mixture of ball pools, slides, rope bridges, swinging ropes, spinny floor pads, spinning poles, climbing nets, rafts, pedalos, mock-up western villages (complete with heavy rain), pirate ships, little zoos etc etc... My nephew and co, me included, ran around the place, me with my sparkly new camera. The video quality is awesome. Unfortunately, it also takes up just under 4.6gb So I've got to burn the lot to a dvd.

Not to worry, I'm looking forward to backing everything up on my computer before reinstalling everything. Time for a clean sweep - it's not had one for a while. Time to clean out the cobwebs, I feel. To this end, I've won/sniped an 80gb SATA hard drive. £9.50 for an 80Gb drive. Can't complain, hey!

Not much else to report really. Work goes on as normal. Home goes on as normal, though the place is pretty tidy what with the rents getting ready to sod off to italy.
Bleh, that's it really.

I'm off to drink my celebration beer (just the one this time, yikes!) and then to go to beer :-).

Here are a few pics for you :-). (The people featured in the photos are not my family. If they are your family and you want their faces edited out of the photos, leave a comment and I'll do that for you :-) ).

Maybe I should go into business...

Chapter one: Ebayness

I have been spending hours and hours on ebay recently. Since playing with that little tamron lens, I've been taken with the idea of getting a wide angle lens for my camera, and I figured there were a few things that I wasn't using, so up they went.

Days later, and I've raised a few hundred quid, I'm (still - see below) almost at the point where I can buy the lens, and things are going well.

Admittedly I'm running round like a headless chicken to and from the post office, and my ebay seller's fees are not far off three-figure sums. I'm reasonably stressed trying to keep on top of everything, what with setting reserves, finding boxes (which I'm beginning to run out of), and things like that, but I'm sure after the miniature furore has died down, the effort will be worth it. As I write this, there are only a couple of auctions still open, so hopefully once they're done, I have only to ship those two items and await the (hopefully!) positive feedback, pay the fees off, and we can draw a line under the whole thing and move on. With a few hundred quid more in the pocket than before.

Halfway through my selling spree, I decided I had gone to so much effort to make money, and I hadn't (despite being on track to exceed the cost of the new lens by a wide margin) really got anything in return (the money just sits unused staring at me, etc). I fancied a new digicam on account of the fact that my old one now seems to enjoy eating batteries (maybe it was just the batteries that were getting knackered, in retrospect) and besides, I just fancied something cool.

So I decided to buy an awesome little piece of kit, the Canon SD780IS (as it's known in America - over here it's called the IXUS100IS (I think)). An awesome little digicam, 12 megapixels of fun, complete with a beautiful 2 and a half inch screen and High-Def (well, 720P) video recording, all contained within the smallest compact camera body I've ever seen on the market. Look at the photo. The thing it's resting on is a (credit-card sized) membership card of mine. That's how small the camera is. It's a tiny little thing. It even has an optical viewfinder, though being no bigger than 6mm by 5mm, the viewfinder is extremly squinty to use, it does come in useful from time to time.
I ordered the camera last saturday (having paid £10 for fast delivery) and after a few days of waiting at the window looking for the post van (seeing it twice drive down the road to someone else's house, and then up again out of sight), I got woken up at 9am on friday by the stupidly loud doorbell, pressed by a very nice man who wanted to give me a camera. You'll notice that I said the SD780 was the American name of the camera. You'll also notice my camera is an SD780. Yep, it's a grey import, I do believe, so if it does go wrong, well...
I just get in touch with the seller, who has included a one year warranty with it.
Why did I buy a grey import? Simple. To buy the camera over here would be £230. To buy a grey import from ebay, was £180. A substantial saving, and after having a very long play with the camera, let me assure you that it is absolutely top notch, even if the paperwork doesn't add up :-).

Chapter Two: The New Lens

As I say, I've been struck on getting a wide angle lens for the camera (which camera!? Er, my D200). I've been doing some more reading around, and as cool and sparkly as the little tamron lens seems, its competitor, the Tokina 11-16mm F2.8 seems to edge it in three very important areas. One, the tokina is built out of higher quality materials and is substantially more sturdy. Two, the tokina lens is absolutely razor sharp, where as the tamron is a bit fuzzy by comparison. And three, the tokina is a much faster lens than the tamron, being a professional standard F2.8.

Sorry for the mumbo jumbo there, read the links if you're interested in learning what I'm talking on about, if you're not, suffice it to say that the Tokina lens is substantially better than the Tamron lens. It's more expensive, but I've decided that I intend to stretch to the cost.

So that's settled, hopefully I'll have it soon.

What else have I been up to? Not much. Another trip to Manchester, which was pretty good.
This time, they redirected the planes down to the runway nearest the beer garden, so I was running round like a headless chicken trying to take photos of them zooming off to various places.

So yeah.
I'm knackered, so I'll leave you to it :).
Have fun!

Canines, Nephews and Sticky Labels...

I'm concentrating on having a good night, which makes blogging a little difficult. Still I soldier on.
Yes, after getting back into the swing of things, fitness wise, I'm sitting in my nice arm room, with finest beer, having just eaten a lovely (well, a bit overdone) fish and chip supper, listening to tunes and wandering around the internets, which is now a singular noun rather than a plural.

I woke up several times this morning to what is probably the nicest feeling on earth - that of discovering that you've woken up early, and you're free to go back to bed. Eventually though, the time came to go to an interview at the AFCO in town, just to confirm that I was happy with my job choices and ready to proceed. Eventually, despite being subjected to a personal space invasion by some woman or other, and having to listen to the ramblings of an unemployed feckwit who left his last job because he became violent when he didn't receive something or other that he felt he was entitled to, I arrived in town still sane, and after a reasonably nice breakfast made my way to the AFCO.

I got there in good time, and was seen fairly quickly, only to be told that the interview had in fact been cancelled, as some more paperwork came to light. My recruiter was good enough to ask if we could skip it, and after being told no, we got through it all with a minimum of fuss and effort.

I was feeling cheery on the way back home so I popped into a shop I don't normally freqent.
Jessops, a national chain of camera specialists, have suffered from a somewhat poor standing with me, after I went into one of their stores (Meadowhall - this was a few years ago so the staff there are probably completely different people now) asking for advice, and was practically told to either buy the item, or not buy it, from a disinterested and apathetic member of staff.
Me being the sort of person I am, I didn't make a fuss and simply bought the item, swearing under my breath never to visit one of their shops again.
However, in a camera created daze, I wandered into the Sheffield branch of jessops to have a look about, and spent a short time staring lovingly at various lenses and bits of kit.

I had a chat behind the guy with the counter, who to my (unfairly held, in retrospect) surprise turned out to be polite and friendly. After a short chat about filters, I decided that this guy was doing his job well enough for me to end my unofficial boycott of the place, and bought two sparkly new filters for my lenses :-).

I then decided to push my luck a little, and after a while of looking at various lenses, came across a little rising star. The Tamron SP AF 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 DiII LD Aspherical (IF) - to give it its full name, is an ultrawide lens designed for cameras like mine, and it feels like a little gem. As the guy was kind enough to get it out of the basement, and put it on a camera for me to look at and play around with for myself, I've found that the optical quality is good (The review says it's poor, but then the review says that the 18-105 is poor, and I've found that a cracking little lens), and the build quality is great. Everything fits together well, the lens is compact, but not light, and feels well put together. The guy behind the counter even accompanied me out into the street so I could see what it was like in the real world, instead of inside a dark shop.

I was going to get the Tokina 11-16 lens, as it allegedly has higher optical quality, and higher build quality. However, at £429, it's also £90 more expensive, and that's £90 I don't really want to throw at it.

But I loved the tamron, and the time I spent in the shop chatting to the guy behind the counter about pretty much everything, photography related, has convinced me to put the three year old grudge I've had against Jessops to rest, which is good - I don't like animosity.
I found that Jessops will print my photos in A3 for me too, and even up to A0 if I want to step up to the price. I don't have that kinda room in my bedroom, but A3 is good!

So, what else have I been up to?
Well, in the past week or so, the dog came to stay. For six days. My family, being the mostly "busy" type of people (busy in the way that only people who don't like walking dogs can be) that they are, the care of the dog seemed to fall pretty much solely to me.

After a few days my nephew comes to stay as well. He's apparently solely under my care. Great! No one asked me if I would help, or even if I was busy or able to help, I get the impression he was dumped at my bedroom door with a "here, take care of him" shouted after him.

The three days went fairly quickly though, and through it all, the sun shone and shone.
One time, I took them both out for a big long "mystical trek" round the local housing estate, through all the "secret passages" (alleyways) and everything.
We spent a good 90 minutes out, before we took a little detour down to my mate's old house.
Nothing special about it, a house opposite a patch of grass surrounded by trees and the stream.
But it was weird, the last time I walked down that road must have been ten years ago. Almost everything was exactly as it was when I was a kid. I wasn't sure whether to feel happy that it hadn't changed with time, or sad that both he (my pal) and I had.

We forded the stream though, and walked back up to the park. After a brief session of chasing the dog around the new bike track (during which time I learned that bike tracks are best suited to bikes, and during which time the dog learned not to run down hills too fast for me to keep up (as her paws parted company with the floor and left her swinging by her neck - eek!).

Eventually, we went off to the park where we stayed for a while before disappearing off home.

The days passed interminably, as I tried to keep both the nephew and the dog in check without getting too disgruntled at the sudden and complete loss of my personal space/time.

Eventually though, and after one occasion where my nephew opened a shop (by sticking adhesive price labels over everything in sight), it was time for them to leave, and after a protracted goodbye, I had my life back to myself again - woo! I've always said, kids and animals are great, as long as you can hand them back to their owners when you've had enough.

Yesterday though, I found occasion to be at my sis's house, trimming the grass and the trees, and getting on with those other summery jobs. My time there coincided with the Wimbledon final, and as we sat out in the sun, my sister brought the TV outside for us to watch the tennis in the garden... It was surreal, but a fairly laid back day.

Though it's nice to have my personal space back, and I'd like to keep it for a while longer.

As the scorching heat of last week fades away to be replaced by leaden skies and rolling thunder, I'm sat wondering if those five or six perfect days were all the summer we are going to get this year.

Hopefully not, eh? Let's hope summer continues to be as beautiful as it has been.

EDIT: As a little surprise pressie, I have here a couple of tunes that I should have thrown in with "Back on Track" a few entries down the page. Some music to keep us company on our journey to Strensall.

Enter Shikari - Juggernaut

and

Kaiser Chiefs - Never Miss A Beat - with the best song lyrics in the world ever.

"What do you want for tea?"
"I want crisps"

The customary pictures :-) Nothing exciting this time round :-P.

Epilogue: 8th July.

That Enter Shikari tune, while originally well liked by me, has fast worn out its welcome. Over the course of a few days, the tune reinvented itself as a musical bout of talentless screaming egotistical U2 "let's-save-the-world" tree planting construction opposing yoghurt weaving hippie nonsense.
So that's that then.