Dan Q
Come join us on the beach for fire and beer, if you’re still in Aber!…
In related news, I hear that some folks have been arrested on suspicion of being behind the Half-Life 2 code thefts. Maybe Valve were waiting for the arrest to be made so they could get their code back. =o)
This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.
This repost was published in hindsight, on 11 March 2019.
Ruth wrote:
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Dan’s journal appears to be broken.
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If Haydn had patented “a symphony, characterised by that sound is produced [ in extended sonata form ]”, Mozart would have been in trouble.
Click Here — Sign The Petition
Just thought I’d share that link with you. This is something which could eventually affect the way we all use computers. To those of you who don’t recognise these images or have no idea what I’m on about, I urge you to read about the issue of software patenting in Europe.
Thanks for listening.
…the client calls up and says, “I’m not sure if this is a bug… or a feature… but -”
Bovini is fucking scary these days.
I went to the doctor this morning to discuss the side-effects of the lariam tablets. I’d made the appointment just a week ago, when I was still having weird mood swings and not being able to sleep, like, at all. Since my last tablet, though, last Tuesday, I’ve been pretty much fine: nothing worse than the weird dreams, which I can cope with. I kept the appointment anyway.
“What I really want to know is,” I told the doctor, “Are the bad side effects – the ones I had in the first week – likely to come back? Is lariam one of those things that, if you get your body attuned to it, it’ll be fine from then on… or is it somewhat more random and unpredictable?”
“All I can say,” replied the doctor, and here’s the best line in the entire dialogue, “Is that if it were me, I wouldn’t be taking lariam.”
Lovely. Thanks, doc.
In any case, he’s agreed to write a prescription for a more expensive but less-controversial drug, which I can collect later in the week if my third pill (tomorrow) makes me go weird again. He seemed quite keen to switch me to it immediately, but I’ve opted to give lariam a go for a little longer yet.
Watched Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind last night with Claire and Paul. It’s an absolutely stunning film (currently ranking at #49 in the IMDB’s top 250 films list), a must-see! Go watch it! But try to know as little as you can about it before you do; it’ll only improve the expeirence.
In other news, the U.S. patent system is a joke. Seen this patent for “Method of exercising a cat”?
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
The Register have this story and photo, taken in Aberystwyth: can anybody identify the woman in the picture?…
[picture removed]
So Paul, Claire and I are in The Flat. Paul’s reading, I’m coding, and Claire is playing the piano. It’s half past eleven. The doorbell rings.
Who could that be? None of us are expecting anybody, and most of the folks we know have already left town to be with their families, etc. I go downstairs and open the door. A confused-looking young man smelling of beer looks in at me, confused.
“What’s the piano?” he asks.
“It’s a long instrument with lots of keys, but that’s not important right now,” I reply. Somehow this humour is lost on him. “It’s my girlfriend,” I continue, “She’s playing the piano upstairs.”
“Oh,” he says, “Tell her she’s very good.”
So I did.
Random.
Perhaps the most disturbing dream yet since I started on this weird medication. And I promise you that if you know the people starring in it, you’ll be scared, too…
Warning: Sexually Explicit Content – You Have Been Warned
I only remember fragments of the dream, but two particular images stand out:
Just thought I’d share those images with you so you know what my head’s going through. Fucking weird.
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
Feel rotten. And I’m supposed to be back at work, today. Called in sick, especially apologetically.
Had another lariam-induced mood swing yesterday, and became especially grotty to people, so went and excluded myself from them for awhile. I’ve made an appointment to see the doctor next Monday, pre-emptively: if these side-effects don’t get any better by then (I’ll be taking more of the drug today) I’ll ask about switching to one of the alternative meds. After all, as margi said, if I’m becoming intolerable in quiet company with friends, what am I likely to be like under the African sun with strangers.
And if today’s pill brings everything into line, I can cancel my appointment. Winner.
In other news, as promised, below is a picture of my beard in it’s new “Ming The Merciless” (Flash Gordon, for those of you with no film culture) configuration. And yes, I mean the 1936 one:
[picture removed]
It’s really quite scary to look at the original Flash Gordon and realise that…
Claire and I came up with the following definition:
Quamplicated [adj.] – being or relating to a thought about something on your person or some sensation that, by nature of thinking about it, alters the target of the thought.
All of last week I’ve been seeing people who are leaving. Yeh, I know, I ought to be used that by now, but it seems somehow more final now I’m graduating, too. I’ll still not-see them just as much, but in this case it feels like it’s my doing or something. I don’t know…
…in any case, my head’s full of Cambrian cocktails: we had a gathering in their party room, upstairs, and ate vodka jelly. We played kiddy games and drank adult drinks. Then we played adult games. Ahem.
Can anybody else remember which subspecies of camel is which? Or where the word ‘lesbian’ comes from? Fascinating.
I feel funny. And I have less beard (and so look less like a coconut).
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[more of this post was recovered on Friday 24 November 2017]
Another weird dream last night. Surprisingly similar ‘cast’ to some previous ones.
Some friends and I, and my mum, are driving in a silver SUV-like thing to a hill in what looks like the lake district. The hill is tall and long, with steep sides – not unlike Wernside – and is covered with lush grass. We’re going to play hide-and-seek. I’m hunting first. But this hide-and-seek game is different from most – each player has to take a llama with them (on a lead), and the hunter can use his llama to track the other llamas (and by proxy, their owners). Llamas apparently have an amazing sense of smell, and can identify each other by it over vast distances.
My llama is called Molly, and we start to climb the bank on one side of the hill, to try to find the others. As Molly sniffs the air, she feeds back information to a device I’m carrying, which projects a heads-up-display onto my retina. This shows me the direction that the other llamas are in. It points out the direction of a llama called Mike. That’s Claire’s llama, I remember, and follow it. I find Claire and her llama in a cave, and we continue hunting together.
The next person I find is my mother. …
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
Want to see me do my impression of a coconut?
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