Wad of boringness

Writer's Block: Bump In The Night
Ooooh, a writer's block feature. Very nice.

Probably the scariest moment (where I've had trouble sleeping) was when I watched the Ring with Clare when I lived in Balham.

I had a bedroom in a shared house and we went to see the Ring at the cinema (as I've kind of already said). So in the room I had a television opposite the bed (it was a big room, and there was no shared living room), and while Clare was sleeping pleasantly away I just couldn't avoid looking at the TV.

Took me at least a couple of hours to get to sleep. Not had that since, despite watching a couple more horror movies. I even knew it was irrational, but sometimes when you're trying to sleep your mind just runs away with you.

Current Mood: scared

Moving...
I haven't posted for ages (and I really really mean to), but just for now, we have exchanged and will soon have a new house all to ourselves.

Current Mood: accomplished

Bloody price gougers...
Wow, just found out that Amazon have put up the price of all of their discworld books from £4 to £5.59!

Glad I bought them at Asda now.

Blah blah blah blah
Well, I haven't updated for well, a long time, so I thought I might put up some random things.

Still waiting for our house to complete, and probably will be for a bit. We wanted to purchase this house a while ago, and we asked the sellers and they said that they were buying an empty house. Aha, we thought - in by Christmas.

The current situation however is totally different. That fell through (apparently not quite *that* empty) and the sellers didn't want to sell until March or later. They then switched to a different seller who was willing to move out into rented. Except that when they'd started the process off with these new sellers, they changed their mind. And in fact, they're now looking for a house and have been since early December. They still haven't found one. Our sellers are also looking for an alternative house. It's about as frustrating as you can get and I'm tempted to just give up and rent, even though I'd effectively be writing off some £700.

Clare and I are still trying to plan our first holiday abroad since Clare got her passport - we were originally considering Hungary, but it's difficult to know where to start. I've never really arranged everything while going abroad, I think my family have always gone for package deals, and when I've gone abroad on my own I've always gone to stay with somebody. Trying to find a hotel or a cottage and arrange everything and figure out how much it is going to cost is a right royal pain in the bum.

Almost finished reading every Discworld book written by Terry Pratchett - I managed to pick up the last 6 in paperback (still waiting for Thud to come out in paperback) from Asda for about £4 each (same price as Amazon). Have just finished 'The Truth' and am getting stuck into 'Thief of Time'. I now need to find a new author to absorb - maybe something more sci-fi like - tempted to read through all of the John Wyndham books.

( nerdy stuff )

Current Mood: frustrated

Random Update
So I've been a bit lax in posting. So a brief update

Our Tivo went kaboom. We knew it was coming, but we weren't quite expecting it. We could have fixed it by replacing the hard drive, but we've been planning (and saving) for this event for a while, and as our television has been going as well, we went on a bit of a binge, and wound up with a new "mini" PC and a 36 inch Panasonic CRT television.

The television is lovely - shows look gorgeous on it. The PC is a bit more annoying - ATI's Linux TV-Out support is not as good as it should be. Also we accidently got the wrong processor to start with - we got a Celeron D which runs very hot, so the PC runs very loud. We ended up getting a new one off of ebay which runs a lot cooler. Also had to get various things set up in advance just to make sure that it would work properly. Still, it's a work in progress and all.

Am stuck taking ridiculous numbers of days off over Christmas as I haven't taken them all year. Am planning on improving upon the situation next year by taking more holidays! The house is going slowly as per usual, nothing much is happening - we're hoping that it will all begin to accelerate next year as we want to go to Hungary and either want it done or not done by then! (preferably before I guess)

Anyway, back to the A-team...

Current Mood: bored

Housey house house
Hrm, various updates

Have decided to buy a house in Sevenoaks. Picked a niceish 2 bed house in the outskirts(ish) and are now on the road to purchasing it. Quite a bit closer to London, but not miles away from where we are at the moment. Seems quite nice, bags of potential etc etc :)

Repurchased a DS to replace my lost one, but I'm now trying to avoid spending a fortune on games, at least until my birthday comes around.

Sure there's more, but I can't think what!

Current Mood: tired

How many titles are there with "long time no post"
So, given the subject, a lot has happened in the last couple of months or so.

Some twat in London pinched my DS (about two months ago). Still have to get around to getting a replacement. Obviously not deliriously happy, but such is life.

Work is boring, nothing exciting happening

Trying to relearn Haskell (slowly) and just generally try and learn some new things.

Read the new Harry Potter - not bad, better constructed than Phoenix. She needs to write more of them and faster!

Looking at maybe moving house to a proper house that I own (oooooh)

oooh, look, a jedi
well, long time no post.

I took the opportunity this weekend while Clare was cleaning our car to watch the entire original Star Wars trilogy (she's very thorough). It's not bad for a 25+ year old movie. A lot of people whinge bitterly about Return of the Jedi, but I found it to be pretty good (well, excluding the Ewoks, but videos have a fast forward button for a reason).

Also been working quite hard at work. I'm at a fairly annoying stage, as most of my major functionality is done (well, at least until other people get some bits and bobs done), so I'm now looking out for new things to do. I want to work some more on my project, but I just need the time and energy (both of which are in short supply at the moment)

Managed to complete Yoshi's Island while I was at Clare's parents, and almost complete Mario and Luigi (I have a feeling I'm on the last boss of it), so I'm kinda thinking what to play next (so far I think I want to play Golden Sun and Ocarina of Time (again))

I've started cycling to work after picking up a cheapish bike for about £40 or so from a large Woolies. I can manage to cycle in and back, but I end up fairly sweaty. My coworkers still invite me out to lunch, so I'm not that bad, and I feel a lot better which is definitely a plus.

Now I just need to book some time off for some serious amounts of slobbing in front of the television and catching up on lots of TV.

Current Mood: sweaty

So, it's kinda horror/porn then
Lots of stuff has happened, so I'll randomly go over them.

I got a bike (wooo). Unfortunately, I haven't actually assembled it yet - still stuck on the front wheel. It makes bike shop prices seem fairly reasonable. I can't easily store it inside, so I've got a crappy chain (the bike cost £35 - so I'm not going to spend £20+ on a bolt for it), and I'm going to try and attach it to the drain pipe.

Other than that, have mostly been working. Not quite in crunch time yet, but I can see it coming. We've got a proper release coming at the end of this month (or a beta at least), and there's a fair amount of spit and polish to do, although most of the core work is done. I've been trying to get back into working on my project, but I keep hitting a brick wall of being far too lazy to work on it.

Everytime I go to Imperial, or in fact, near to a university, I have the strong desire to do a PHD. I'm not ready yet (I want to actually get my project started and read some papers in some areas, and just generally get into the zone), but I'm thinking that when my Futureroute fun finishes at some point in the future, a PHD would be good, and would perhaps permit me to get promoted without becoming a manager.

At the moment our floor is covered in videos galore, as Clare has taken it upon herself to buy up most of the videos in the area that are on ebay. Have got a fair number of good films, 8 X-files box sets, and some films in the "horror/porn" category. Hopefully they won't be here for long as I can't see our rug anymore.

Oh, and the third Dr Who episode seems quite good - I wish I was able to watch a show the entire way through though without constantly making use of the big yellow button on the tivo remote :)

Current Mood: artistic
Current Music: Dr Who theme tune

Chartwell
As we're going to be doing lots of dog sitting for my mum over the next couple of months, she kindly offered to buy us membership to the national trust (it's not that expensive as we're still under 25). After failing to buy it off their broken website (which said we were too old, as the programmer obviously couldn't count), we ended up buying it when we went to Chartwell which is quite near to us.

It's a beautiful house and garden (and day to see them!), and filled with interesting stuff about Churchill - I couldn't believe how old he was when he was prime minister for the second time (or all of the stuff he got involved in, or the fact that he brought in a minimum wage amongst other things). The grounds are lovely - incredibly well maintained - although the flowers will probably look better during Summer as none of the roses were out which was a shame.

One interesting thing - we went to see Churchill's paintings (he did stacks of them in his spare time), and I asked (as you do), if I could photograph them, and (as you would expect) was told no "due to copyright reasons". Which made me think - under the current law - stuff that Churchill did at age 20 (say, in 1890 odd) will be under copyright until 2040. So anybody who saw Churchill make a speech back then won't (obviously) be alive to see it enter the public domain, but neither will their children, nor their children's children, nor probably their children's children's children.

Anyway, now I need to figure out how to beat this evil level of San Andreas :)

umm, yeah
Anyway, random stuff

Got a new car (well, old car) - a Peugeot 306. It's nice, but it makes you realise that Diesels are a lot more fuel efficient. Especially with petrol going up at it's current rate :(

Bought Polarium for the DS as well - however, unfortunately it now means that I have to try and pry the DS off of Clare. Clare got me San Andreas as a pressie which I've been playing too. I need to get back to playing a couple of games I've not played for ages, like Metroid and Burnout

Went to Nuneaton over the weekend to see Clare's parents. Picked up loads of neat junk - got Super Turrican, Super R-Type, Super Mario-Kart and Sensible Soccer for the Super Nintendo, Railroad Tycoon for the Dreamcast, Hail to the thief (I keep meaning to buy it, but the "we won't allow you to use this unless you use the original CD" label really pissed me off (given that I pretty much have to rip CDs to listen to music at work and I also listen to them on mp3 players), but it appears that this rips okay at work (it was only a fiver anyway, so I wasn't that fussed). Also picked up an album by that fabulous Finnish pop group Nylonbeat :)

Must take some time off work so I can bum around and play games (and watch some of the kiddy movies I have like Flight of the navigator, Who framed roger rabbit, Jumanji etc etc)

Current Mood: bunged up
Current Music: Nylonbeat - Satasen Leinen

DS DS DS...
Warning, some nerdiness ahead..

Anyway, so the DS. Kinda fun

Got 29 odd stars on Mario (I have been doing other things, and I suck at games). I've managed to get Mario and Luigi, and I've used a fair few faqs, but then I just do that sort of thing.

I have two dead pixels on it, one red, one blue, so I am waiting for Nintendo to have stock so that I can return it, although at the moment it doesn't really bother me at all. Great fun, need to play with it more.

Work is interesting - went up to London today to help debug some code that is written by one of our suppliers. Scary stuff - it's well written, but insanely dense code - takes a while to figure out what's happening.

We're busy trying to obtain a new car at the moment, which worries me a little - I don't really enjoy dealing with cars given my recent past (as such).

Current Mood: annoyed

Got me a DS
So I actually (finally!) received my DS.

It's pretty ugly (the SP is nicer looking). But the screens are very nice and very clear.

Mario 64 looks very good. The screenshots don't do it justice because they're blown up far too much. When you're looking at it on that screen it looks amazing. Far far better than the washed out N64 one.

It's quite different too, being Yoshi weirds things up.

The controls aren't fantastic, and I can see why this has dropped it's score.

The standard cursors only make you walk slowly, the X key then makes you run. This is awful because the default is pretty much running in this game, and the fact that it's X and not L just makes it hard to use. I've played a fair amount of Mario using an emulator with cursor keys and a running default works a LOT better.

The stylus isn't appalling to use, but it takes time to get used to it. After a while the thumb strap feels fairly natural although it's still possible to make mistakes.

The Warioware demo is good, very entertaining, Clare's favourite I would say.

The Metroid demo is okay, although I'm not quite *that* used to it. Planning on getting more aquainted with it over time.

GBA games are cool, you can flip the screen that the game is displayed upon (although why you would is beyond me)

Not had to charge it yet - not really going to have time to play it before tomorrow.

Oh, the T-shirt says "Touch me" on the front, which is a little disturbing

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: That London Underground song

Nintendo DS. Woo
So, as Nintendo are letting 3000 of it's top fans (ie, people who actually visit nintendo europe's fairly crappy website), buy a DS for merely £130 (with Mario 64 DS).

So I went for it. Yes, I might be mad, but I don't yet have an SP, and so this will give me a backlight at least (and save me some money on batteries)

New year jazz
So, brief update.

(Warning, I play games. I'm boring that way)

Got lots of neat Xmas pressies:

Paper Mario 2 (Purty)
Metroid Prime 2 (Very purty. Horrible menus)
Pikmin 2 (Still too hard for me. Maybe I should just behave like a WW1 general)
Broken Sword III (Not played much of this)
Zelda : Minish Cap (Good fun actually)
Prince of Persia (Quite cool, nicely done)
Skies of Arcadia Legends (Like the DC one. Too many bloody random battles)

Of course, despite that, I realised that I have to complete the prequels to the many sequels that I had, so am currently working on actually completing Metroid Prime (the first one)

Christmas Day itself was interesting - went round to my sisters and saw most of her extended family (so tons of kids running around), and just generally milled around. Didn't really feel like Christmas, but maybe I'm getting too old. Had a fairly relaxing time. I think I have enough games for a very long time.

I didn't mention it last year, but I still have loads of holiday left, because they couldn't accomodate me actually having some. Not sure how they're planning to compensate me, but as I had very little warning about taking vacation days, I'm hoping that it will be vacation. I have a lot of stuff to do (mostly the above list), and it's always fun to take random days off.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Unbelievable Truth - Settle Down

Oooooh, shiny
So, lots of stuff in the past month. As you can tell, I'm updating as frequently as ever.

The company I work for works with a chap from Imperial who works in the bioinformatics department (well, is the head of). Of course, we don't do bioinformatics, but good technology can be used for pretty much anything if you want to.

So, for Christmas, I wandered up to a free party (note, the important part was free), ostensibly to talk to him, but I thought it would be nice to visit Imperial again.

Fabulous meal - I met one of our old lecturers (Kyrsia Broda), who taught first year logic (and although I sucked insanely hard at logic always helped us in tutorials with the problems). I also popped in to see Sophia and her gaggle of RAs and Phd students (most of whom I know from my last year there). Had a good natter with her about things she was working on and life in general.

Finally, popped in to see the director of studies (who, I'm impressed, remembered me). Had a good chat to her as well.

All in all, marvellous. Only downside is that now I'd quite like to do a Phd myself, but I think that'll have to wait until I have the mental energy :)

Current Mood: creative

mmm, tools
No, not George Bush.

But, Ratchets!

Went out today and bought Ratchet and Clank 2. I got Ratchet and Clank 3 for my birthday, so I now own all of them (muahahaha). Also got Burnout 3 (which is incredibly addictive, but, to be honest, sucks online compared to PGR2).

Other than that, in life related thingies.

Our boiler buggered up last Friday. It was finally fixed properly fixed today, 8 days later. We've had sporadic heating/hot water availability, and had to wait in for engineers 3 times. Plumbers really do have it made. I think I went for the wrong job.

I've got a fair amount of time off left. In fact, over half (11 and a half days). So this will lead to a fairly interesting December. I'm going to try and complete both Ratchets if I can. And possibly also work on my project, which is continuously on the back burner because I'm lazy. Plus I think Clare and I are going to go to a couple of nice places while everybody else is toiling in work. MUAHAHAHAHAHA

(sorry)

Current Mood: crazy
Current Music: Superhero - Ani Difranco

THERE ARE THREE LANES DAMMIT
So, long time, was too busy to post.

I fear this entry will have an undercurrent of "I'm a computer game playing nerd", liberally sprinkled through it.

Worked a little more on my pet nerdy project, started playing Grand Theft Auto again (both III and Vice City). Have actually got better at these games, and have managed to open out most of the critical areas, although have completed relatively little of the game (I can't drive in the games any better than I apparently can in real life)

Went up to see Clare's parents over the weekend. Was quite good - saw the sequel to Bridget Jone's diary. Pretty much like the first one, kinda entertaining, definitely not a downer film. I want to see the Incredibles next - looks like great fun, I'm going to try and drag Clare to it. While watching 'Casualty' (well, I wasn't, obviously), I managed to get past a bit of Mario and Luigi I'd got stuck on. (Must complete that...)

On Sunday, we went down to town and I managed to pick up Final Fantasy:Crystal Chronicles for £22 (with cable), so that's not too bad, and when we got home, somebody had kindly (well, for £30...) sent us Paper Mario (the first N64y one), so I'm all RPGd out.

Anyway. So heading home, we decided to try out the M1 rather than the backroads as usual.

Why is it that nobody ever strays into any lane other than the middle lane or fast lane?

There are THREE LANES. YOU ARE MEANT TO DRIVE IN THE LEFT HAND ONE. THE OTHER (ONE/TWO/THREE) ARE CALLED "OVERTAKING LANES" FOR A REASON. ARGH

Other than that, a pretty good trip.

Current Mood: annoyed

Ouch
So the Sky box started putting up an irritating "your batteries are about to expire, you should change them" message (which is very irritating because the Tivo obviously doesn't look at it), so I dug out the two remaining duracells in the house and slapped them in, and found my hand covered in gunk.

Joy to the world, the batteries that Sky had kindly provided me had leaked.

After washing it off my hands (which were already reacting a little), I had to scrub it off before putting the batteries back in. Grrr

Current Mood: annoyed

Binka has three houses
I'm going to post something about our holiday when I get round to it, anyway, I thought I'd mention something about 'our' cat.

A month ago (or thereabouts), we got adopted by a ginger cat (very cute) who we've named 'Ginge'. Now we don't know who his owner is, and we're pretty sure he has a home to go to as he looks quite well fed and generally well looked after.

Now ginge spends an immense amount of time with us (he might come in at 6 and leave when we turf him out at 10.30), and when we got back from holiday we noticed that he developed a small wound as there was blood on his fur by the neck.

So the next day he came in and it looks a lot worse. I guessed that the fur has been shaved so that it's not much worse, but it just looks it.

So a little bit later there's a knock on the door and somebody comes to the door holding Ginge and asks if it's our cat. I say no (worried it might be the actual owner!), but it turns out it's another family he's adopted who's worried about the wound on his neck!

Still, he doesn't seem to be in a lot of distress over his 'wound' - lying comfortably on Clare's lap at the moment occasionally sharpening his claws into her knees.

I might put a picture up later if I put up some Cornwall ones.

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