Have a go at the parallel parking game – let’s so how good you lot are. I’ve managed to beat the rest
of the folks at work with a stunning score of 87.72, parking in 5.7 seconds flat… not bad for the only non-driver!
Kind: Articles
Scaring Creditors
Following up my earlier post on my financial situation and the various stresses it was causing me, comes better news. I had a conversation today with Direct Legal & Collections – one of my happy little creditors, which I’d been dreading, but it actually went far better than I’d have hoped… I think I scared them…
Dan’s Repayment Calculation Assessment
DL&C Rep: What’s the value of your mortgage?
Dan: I don’t own any property.
DL&C Rep: Oh! So you’re renting?
Dan: Yup.
DL&C Rep: Do you have a partner?
Dan: Yes.
DL&C Rep: And what do they work as?
Dan: She’s a full-time student, dependent upon my contributions to rent and bills.
DL&C Rep: Umm… do you own a car?
Dan: Nope.
DL&C Rep: Right… umm… <sounds of key-pressing>
And so they offered me a nice low-interest, trickle-repayment rate that suits me more-than-fine. Wonderful. All because they’d somehow been lending me money in the first place under the assumption that I had some kind of security. Heh. I think I terrified her somewhat.
Right: that’s my finances sorted out. Now back to the rest of my life…
Money, Money, Money (Or The Lack Thereof)
A thought for current undergrads – do not underestimate the size of your debt. As a newly-graduate, I’ve had the oppertunity to step back and look at the size of my debt… or; to put it another way – the amount my income will be sapped for the next quarter of my life.
Not that I’m in a bad position, mind. I’ve walked out of my degree and straight into a job – and a job I like. I’ll be on a three-month ‘probationary period’ of a less-than great income before I get a nice, beefy income, afterwards. Actually, that’s a little bit arsey – I think a three month probationary period for a new full-time graduate employee is a little unfair when that employee has been working for the company part-time (and vacations) for the last two and a quarter years. I’ll have words with my boss about that when he comes back from holiday next week.
Nonetheless: I sat down today and drew up a spreadsheet detailing all of my different creditors and the money I’m to pay them, and it’s quite horrifying. It’ll be a lot less horrifying come the end of October – when I recieve my first paycheck under my non-‘probationary’ salary – but for now, it’s somewhat daunting. I might do well to investigate these ‘graduate loans’ that NatWest keep telling me about – if I could lump all my nasty interest-gathering debts (as opposed to my nice, non-interest-gathering debts, like my overdraft and my student loan) into a neat pile (along with a couple of hundred pounds extra with which to make repayments for the next three months), I could pay it off in a meaningful manner over the next five years. Sadly, I doubt they’ll be too keen on the idea when they actually take the time to look back over my account history.
On the up-side, though, financially, I’m developing a web site ‘Peter Huntley Ltd.’ which I’m hoping to be able to deploy the first version of this weekend. Which is very definately a Good Thing.
God Violates Intel Trademark
It’s all news, today! Lots of fascinating little stories and nothing about me. I mean, who’s blog is it anyway?
According to The Register, the authoritive source on such matters, God may have infringed upon Intel’s intellectual property. Only moderately funny, but nice and geeky.
In other news, I hear that AMD are planning to release a new dual-processor board designed to accomodate two older Athlon chips, optomised for playing 80s music on MP3. They’re calling it the Duron Duron.
Singing Flowers
Remember those silly plastic flowers that danced? Well, here’s the next inevitable step: a Japanese inventor has developed a device that can be buried in a plant pot and uses vibration to cause the leaves of plant therein to oscillate as speakers.
Grow your own speakers. Yay.
Personally, I’d have far too much fun burying such a device under a friend’s vegetable patch, on a long (buried or otherwise concealed) cable, and have his plants ‘talk back’ to him when he talks to them. Where can I get one?
Reb, Hell, And Unreal Tournament 2004
After I saw Faye’s weblog post about her own design for hell, I couldn’t help but leave an anonymous comment. If you’ve ever met Reb, my ex-girlfriend from a few years back, perhaps you’ll appreciate.
In other news, I spent far too much of the weekend playing the demo of Unreal Tournament 2004. I haven’t had so much fun with the demo of a computer game since about 1999 (I never have time for demos any more). Wow… it really is something stunning. They’ve really put a lot of work into making it accessible by anybody, too – the hardware specifications aren’t so horrible, and it’ll run on Windows, Linux, or MacOS X! Hell; it doesn’t even require a 3D card (although I wouldn’t like to try it without one!). It’s a doddle to get it running on a network (Bryn and I had a couple of LAN games – driving a tank right into an enemy base with one of you sat on the top with a minigun is sooo much fun), it’s fast and furious, and relies heavily on teamwork. It’s just fab. Have ordered a copy from Amazon.
Scatmania, Version 2
Welcome to Scatmania, Version 2!
After my disasterous data loss the other day, I decided to take the oppertunity to redesign Scatmania into something altogether better-suited to the purpose (i.e. doesn’t use a silly flat-file system). And here it is (well; unless you’re reading this through LiveJournal).
I’ll be graduating this afternoon, which will mostly involve standing around in silly robes while a man talks bollocks in Welsh. After this, I’ll be going out for a meal with my folks, who’ll be visiting for the occassion.
On an unrelated note, does anybody want to join Claire, Bryn, Paul and I on a trip to Alton Towers, some weekday during September (taking advantage of the cheap rates and lack of schoolchildren that’s available at that time of year)? Date to be confirmed, but if you want in, drop us a message or leave a comment.
Scatmania.org Coming Back
Yay!
However, working from backups, I have no record of posts ocurring between Sat 29th Nov 2003 at 4:08 pm, and Tue 2nd Jan 2004 at 01:33 pm, when my blog started posting duplicates LiveJournal, too. Even there, I don’t have a backup of anything but what LiveJournal has.
If, for whatever reason, somebody’s taken screengrabs or saved pages from Scatmania, could they e-mail them to me ASAP, or leave a comment here. It’d be great not to have to try to recover things from memory.
Thanks in advance.
Suz. And Naivety.
Just been having on online chat with Suz:
(15:53:41) Dan: It [an online weather forecast on a web site I run] says we should expect a wet weekend, clearing up for an overcast week.
(15:53:54) Suz: and who puts it on the web site?
(15:53:59) Dan: The BBC.
(15:53:59) Suz: i always thought it was paul
(15:54:02) Suz: oh
(15:54:06) Dan: No – it’s taken from the BBC, who take it from the MET office.
(15:54:11) Dan: It’s entirely automatic.
(15:54:28) Suz: oh i see. i wondered why paul had the time or botherdness to do it
Sweet that she thought that Paul was spending about an hour a week keeping an online calendar up-to-date manually.
Photos From Malawi
[this post was lost during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004]
[an image in this post was recovered on Thursday 30th December 2004]
Here’s some photos of my trip to Malawi, as the group have now started uploading photos to me at last!
Dan looks down on Lake Malawi.
Dan on the descent.
Two baboons, at Vwasa National Park.
Livingstonia Hospital: This woman and her baby have both been diagnosed with AIDS
Thanks to ARVs, the woman’s condition is improving. Her baby cannot be treated and will die.
Beautiful waterfall, on a river running from Livingstonia to Lake Malawi.
Will post more when I can be bothered. Meanwhile, photos are continuously being uploaded to Scatmania’s Malawi Album [update: link killed 2006]
Live Music, Anyone?
[the image in this post was lost during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004]
[the image in this post was recovered on Thursday 30th December 2004]
Sounds like an excuse to lounge on soggy grass and drink real ale if ever I heard one. Yay….
How To Make Invisibility Paint
(shamelessly stolen from http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/sbos18.htm)
How To Make Invisibility Paint
If you put invisibility paint on anything, it turns it invisible. Here’s how to make invisibility paint:
Start by taking a large tin, which must be able to hold enough paint to fill it. Take one ordinary apple (or, if you don’t have an ordinary apple, a doughnut-shaped one). Chop it up and put it in the tin.
Add a soft nutshell, a silver-looking cobweb, three white onions, a piece of paper with “Deely Bo” written on it, a pinch of September sunlight (or two pinches of August sunlight), and a sugar pencil. Blue sugar pencils are best.
At this point, you should say, “Star of stars, so far and faint, help me with this see-through paint.” You have to say it out loud, no matter how stupid it makes you look, because the paint will know if you haven’t.
Next, you crush a moth and put that in the tin, then add a slug’s eye-stalks, a snake’s skin, a tree, and the sting from a poisonous cat.
And I’m sorry about this, but you also have to add a drop of your own blood. A friend’s blood just won’t do, no matter how much of it you can get.
Three months earlier, you should have ordered from your local blacksmith a small hammer with the metal bit shaped like a pear. Hit the side of the tin seventy-seven times with this hammer. Ignore any grown-ups who complain about the noise.
Lastly, fill the tin to the brim with some nice, fresh milk.
Mix everything together with a large spoon, and bake it for two hours in hot snow.
And that’s all there is to it! Invisibility paint!
Remember, invisibility pain makes things disappear completely. Whatever it gets on will turn invisible straight away. Be careful!
Now you know how to make invisibility paint. I’ll let you figure out how to find the tin once the mixture is ready.
Lariam Dream The Fifth
[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]
Wierder than all the rest, this dream’s insane. Perhaps it’s time to be thankful that I only remember fragments of it. The bits I remember, in an order that seems to make sense in hindsight.
I’m travelling by car – down the A1, South, towards Leeds. Somebody is driving, but I’m not sure who. There are two other passengers: one is Claire, and the other is Not Claire. I don’t understand why I’m transporting both of them, but apparently I need them for something important in Preston.
We arrive at Preston, and go to my mum’s house. (recurring theme, anybody? – what’s going on in my head) I leave Claire and Not Claire there, and excuse myself.
I find myself at some kind of crypt, made with red bricks and with a black slate roof. (this particular building featured in a dream once before, when I was in primary school) I go inside, and find a dead horse inside a coffin. (spacial awareness was somewhat screwed by this point) The ghost of the horse was here, I knew, and, concentrating on it, I was able to see ‘through it’s eyes’ that it was looking over my shoulder at the body. And then, something else: I could see …
A Selection Of News Items From Around The World
[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]
Here’s some stuff I found interesting this weekend:
Swedish health workers, in an effort to stem the growing cases of chlamydia among young people, have launched a ‘condom ambulance [BBC News]. If you find yourself ‘caught short’ in Sweden, just give them a bell and they’ll rush around to your house with a pack-of-three, for the equivelent cost of about £4.
Chinese researchers have used a carbon nanotube [Wikipedia] as a filament in a new, experimental light bulb [The Register]. This bulb emits more light and works at a lower threshold than tungsten at the same voltage, and was still functioning fine after being switched on and off 5000 times. The future of lighting?
And finally, researchers from Hebrew University in Israel may have found a solution to the problems associated with passwords. As it stands, ‘secure’ passwords are hard to remember, and often find themselves written down, whereas insecure ones can be cracker. Plus, for real security, passwords should be …
Fucking Car Alarm
Somebody’s parked a car opposite our house and left it there, last night. It keeps on setting off it’s own alarm (a noisy horn-and-siren affair) – about once ever two hours, for about a quarter of an hour during the night. This morning, it’s been consistently going off for the last half hour: it keeps being deactivated, but then coming back on again. Does anybody know how to break in to and deactivate one of these things?
In other news, I bumped into Matt a last week, who some of you may remember as going out with Ceris (the scary) and having lived in Ty Isa with folks like Kit and, briefly, Paul. Anyway, we were catching up, and he revealed that shortly after Kit left (Matt didn’t know that I knew Paul), somebody tipped off Enviromental Services about the state of the house, and they’ve since all evicted by the council. It’s fun to know things.