June 2003 Archives

Practical Joke Of The Week

Am pulling off a fantastic one against my girlfriend, Claire. On Friday, our landlord arrived with a plumber to replace the leaky taps in our bathroom. The new taps are very similar in design, but significantly taller. I didn’t tell Claire that we have them.

Yesterday – Saturday – night, after washing her hands, she remarked “This is going to sound really weird… but have those taps changed?” I played it cool – after all, these were the same taps we’ve always had, aren’t they? She keeps looking at them in an odd way every time she walks past the bathroom.

Claire’s birthday tomorrow.

Half-Life 2

Pre-ordered Half-Life 2 from Amazon for £25 this evening. Sweet.

Makes You Feel Stupid

Don’t you feel really stupid when you plan to go via somewhere on the way to somewhere else, and completely forget about it. I managed that this morning: I’d put some keys in to get cut at the hardware shop around the corner from where I live, gone and bought my lunch from Somerfield, then returned home. When I went to work, past the shop, I forgot entirely to pick up the keys, until I got about a third of the way to the office and had to turn back. D’oh!

One of Claire’s birthday presents – being delivered by post – hasn’t arrived yet, and her birthday’s on Monday. Must remember to phone the company today and find out what’s happened to it. Can’t say what it is, here, ‘cos she reads this page, too.

Keep having to give my work colleague PHP tips so that he stands a chance of writing the website of Borth Surf Club. Looking at the web site so far, I can’t help but feel that it’s not PHP tips I should be giving him, but basic design pointers! Like not putting the title of the page as “Untitled Document”, for one. Here’s a chunk of code I just lifted out of the web site:

             

For the non-techies out there, I’ll explain what this bit of code does. It prints seven empty paragraphs. Exciting, eh?

I’ll resist strangling him with my keyboard cable on account of the fact that I believe that there is some hope for him, yet. We’ll see.

Anyway, better get some work done…

U.W.A. Professor Dies At ‘Massage’ Parlour

I laughed.

[picture rem0ved]

The chap pictured above, a certain Dr. Williams, professor in economics and astronomy, was found dead this morning at a massage parlour in Cardiff (full story here). Just out of curiosity, I looked up the parlour in question. sexywales.com reports it as follows:

A Touch Of Class Massage
112 Woodville Road, Cardiff
029 2023 6880

It turns out that one has to go all the way to Cardiff to get a good prostitute. I’ve looked on PunterNet UK, and I can’t find any reviews in Aberystwyth at all! It anybody knows of any working girls in Aber, please submit them to PunterNet, as they seem to be lacking!

Anyway; that naughty issue aside, I’ll get back to work.

A Violent Evening In

Spent yesterday evening drinking and playing Cel Damage with Bryn, Kit and Claire. Cel Damage is a stupidly fun game on the Nintendo GameCube in which up to four players drive cartoon cars around a zany landscape attempting to kill one another in bizzare ways, such as chopping with axes, harpooning, tricking into falling down Acme Portable Holes, burning, shredding, chainsawing, flattening, chaingunning… It’s a lot of fun. Like MarioKart, but with an attitude problem.

Stayed up too late and, as a result, woke up late this morning. Will get into the office yet. But first I oughtta dig up some clothes from the heaps I still haven’t unpacked since laundry day.

In other news: Bryn managed to find a place to live in Aber for his industry year, and Paul – another friend, this time a hat-wearing Troma-freak – may also have found somewhere here. Updates to follow.

How To Fix A Flat Car Battery For Beginners

Unfortunatley my plans for a nice relaxed evening over a pint were delayed somewhat by having to help to fix Claire’s car, first. In a fantastic display of sense she’d left the headlights on on Sunday night, and all through Monday, and so by Tuesday the battery was very, very dead.

So she, Bryn, Kit and I stood in a cold and rainy car park, trying to remove Bryn’s car battery to get Claire’s car going, then switch back to her battery while it’s running so we could charge it with a nice long drive. But no such luck: the considerate engineers at Vauxhall decided that to remove the battery you must either (a) own a spanner with a neck width about the size of a human hair or (b) remove the engine first.

Thankfully I was able to persuade a taxi driver at the nearby rank to drive around with some jump leads and get her going. Suddenly this made things a lot easier.

In brighter news, Bryn got offered a year in industry placement with the National Library of Wales, which means that he, too, will be living in Aberystwyth for the summer.

Secret Site Launch

Happy with my new weblog, I’m launching it now. And, just out of curiosity, I’m not going to tell anybody about it, and see how long it takes people to notice.

Yes; I really am ‘just odd like that’.

Anyway – that’s enough goofing around on the internet at work for me… I’m off to goof around on the internet at home, interrupted only by a pint with Claire, Kit and Bryn, and a look at Kit’s newly-cleaned fish tanks. What an exciting life I lead.

Scatmania Launched

Well; I finally did it. I finally got myself a weblog. After weeks of peer pressure by such friends as Paul, Alec, and Kit with their shiny LiveJournals, I decided to have one of my own.

Just to remind anybody who doesn’t already know that this isn’t, technically, my first weblog. My first one ran from 1998 to 1999 – before the term ‘blog’ was coined, and before it became fashionable to ramble on about yourself online. The “Avatar Diary”, on my old, old web site, was a source of perpetual interest from all kinds of people for some time. Well; until I got a scary cyberstalker (really, it scared me, and very little does), and then I packed it in.

I suppose now I’d better get something more productive done. I’m not getting paid for this.

Review of Enter the Matrix (PC)

This review originally appeared on Amazon. See more reviews by Dan.

Enter the Matrix (PC), Video Game

Rating: ⭐⭐

Released Five Months Too Soon

As a professional software developer (and an avid fan of The Matrix), I can tell you what went wrong with this game: it was released too soon! While great in principle – and a fantastic idea – it is let down terribly by the fact that it looks and feels like it’s been released early in order to meet the film’s release date.

It needs another five months work to be of release standard. While it has some cool features, it’s buggy as hell, has some major user interface issues, and some graphical and AI glitches. I’d love to think that they’ll release an update patch to fix these, but as their primary market is console owners, I sadly doubt that this will happen.

I bought my copy on the day of it’s release. I’ll be selling it as soon as I find someone to palm it off onto.