Of all the things your life would not be complete without knowing, this has to appear way, way down the list.
Nonetheless, we should all point and laugh at Paul, Bryn, and Adam that this 60-something year-old man managed to score within a shorter time frame than they had. When you take everything into account, this is quite an achievement.
Paul; Bryn; Adam – next stop: celibacy!
On a related note, we’ve all promised to help these three get laid sometime this year. Updates to follow.
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As most of my fellow Aberites know, I’ve actually been back in Aberystwyth for a few days, but have been typically drunk (celebrating getting back, then celebrating Kit’s engagement to Fiona, then celebrating New Year, then having a video night – and it’s the first Troma Night of the new year tonight: can my liver take it?).
When I’ve not been drunk, I’ve been playing Sim City 4: Rush Hour (good, but don’t buy it just for the U-Drive-It features, they’re not so good) and Civilization III: Conquests (very good; adds a lot of great new features to the game – slightly pissed-off that I bought Play The World and Conquests supercedes everything in it; ah well). The former I got with Christmas money, the latter a present from Claire (For Christmas, or my birthday? I’m not sure, but hey!)
Other notable Christmas gifts recieved include:
Claire and I are leaving Aberystwyth for Norfolk! Off to spend Christmas with her folks before heading up to Preston on Boxing Day to be with my family.
Have barely begun wrapping presents. For that matter, I still haven’t had delivered my mum’s present. Or one of Claire’s. Damned freaky postmen. Or something.
In any case, I’ll be in and out of internet access (well, technically, I’ve now put my Psion 5mx back into active service, which, combined with my funky GPRS mobile phone, puts me online ‘everywhere’, but hey: I think I’ve downloaded a telnet client so wherever I go I *theoretically* have e-mail access… we’ll see).
I’ll drop a blog entry or two while I’m gone.
In the meantime: Merry Christmas, y’all.
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If you haven’t already read it, take a look at The Right To Read, a very short story written in 1997 and updated in 2002 – it’ll only take you a few minutes to read; it’s not ‘techie’ (anybody would understand it!), and it is relevant. The kind of things that are expressed in the story – while futuristic (and facist) sounding now, are being put into effect… slowly, quietly… by companies such as Sony, Phillips, Apple, and Microsoft: not to mention the manufactors of CDs and DVDs.
It’s been circulating the ‘net for years, but recent events such as InterTrust’s Universal Digital Rights Management System (report: The Register), which they claim will be ready within 6 months, and Microsoft’s ongoing work on the ‘Palladium’ project (report: BBC News) – topical events which mark the beginning of what could be the most important thing ever to happen in the history of copyright law, computing, and freedom of information.
So, go on – go read… [the remainder of this post, and three comments, have been lost]
How frustrating is it to write 5 CDs for clients, only to discover an error in some SQL scripts on them that mean that they won’t work outside of the development LAN… <grr>
It’s the world rebalancing the good and bad things, I guess. Making up for last night’s wild rampant sex tour of the flat (starting on the couch, finishing on the bed… without need for re-entry). Damn, we were horny.
I’d better fix these SQL scripts. Ooh: office Christmas dinner this evening! That’s something to look forward to.
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If you’re going to spend (at an absolute minimum – and probably closer to four times the amount) $350 on a series of banner advertisements promoting your service, to be displayed inside a popular ad-sponsored piece of software, you’ll check your spelling, right? Right? Look at this:
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Sometimes I really do feel that Christians should be banned from the internet. They should certainly be disallowed from writing web pages – other than the Christians, I’ve never seen a group of people who have – within their own group – broken every single rule of good web site design. Well… except if you consider GeoCities-users a group of their own.
As if this page, which scrolls on and on, haslarge numbers of images linked from other sites, and using a (badly) tiled background image, isn’t bad enough, I’ve seen:
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And a good Troma Night it was, too. The usual people came – surprising how few of them had gone back to their families for Christmas, yet – although Liz didn’t bring Tom, and, as we decided last week, this undoubtedly spells the end for their relationship. Maybe Troma Nighters should only date other Troma Nighters. Perhaps we should fix Liz up with Bryn (I would suggest Adam, but based on a conversation I had with Liz on Tuesday night, I don’t think that ‘Strokey’ Adam could handle her).
Totoro was fantastic, as ever. We also watched Pitch Black, which was cool for a virtually unheard-of Hollywood title, followed by another of Miyazaki’s fantastic animated films – this time one I hadn’t seen (but had wanted to),… [the rest of this post is lost]
Claire, Peter and I gatecrashed a friend-of-a-friend’s house party last night, and ate all of their Pringles. One of the housemates’ music collections was fab: all the best of the Goo Goo Dolls, 3 Doors Down, Nirvana… and some weird (but actually quite good) Welsh rock band.
(Is Welsh Rock a genre? Or just something you buy on the prom at Aberystwyth?)
Must start my Christmas shopping.
[Edit: Came home from the party with an irresistible urge to listen to Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’. Weird.]
As this news story from the BBC relates, a certain Alan Shirkey from Aberdeen was this week given a life ban on driving, as well as a £300 fine and a year’s probation.
He’d started learning to drive over a decade ago, but then stopped. Then, on the day in question – 10 years after he’d last been in a car and with only a provisional license – he drove (without L-plates or supervision, and with no insurance whatsoever) towards Perth. He stopped to fill his car up at a petrol station, and then left without paying. Realising his mistake, he began to reverse back down the dual carriageway, colliding with several cars as he went, and injuring several people. When he was arrested, he refused to give a urine sample.
And they only fined him £300?!?
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I haven’t done any yet.
I’ll start tommorow. Better call my mum and get some tips on what my sisters are into this year. Becky’s typically quite easy – she usually just wants the most violent computer game released in the last three months – but Sarah, who’s desires are driven by the fluctuations of what is and what is-not fashionable at any particular time (“That is so last week! Nobody listens to clip-hop any more!”)
Claire and I are going to be spending Christmas (and a couple of days before) with Claire’s dad. Then we’ll travel all the way up the country – with her dad in tow – on Boxing Day to spend the weekend with my family. We’ll be back in Aberystwyth in time for New Year. And then I suppose I’d better start revising.
For the benefit mostly of myself (this is a convenient look-up point), but also just to show you all, my exam timetable for this semester appears at the bottom of this post…
Only three exams! Woo. I feel moderately confident enough about them – although I’ll need to knuckle down and read up a lot of formal notation stuff for the SE33010 exam. I’ve also got an assignment to do for my Professional … [the rest of this post, and one comment, are lost]
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People keep getting together. Kate and Leu, Tom and Liz (now with a journal!), and now: Sian and Andy. Must be something in the water. The latter pair (and the one I most recently heard about) is the most unexpected, and the middle one the most blatant. Sian and Andy???
Well, best of luck to them anyway: a long-distance relationship isn’t necessarily easy, but I’m sure that Sian knows that by now anyway.
I’ve challenged Paul to find the link between Tonari no Totoro, which we’ll be watching next Troma Night, and Troma. There is a link, and it’s a lot less complicated than he’s looking for. He has until Saturday before I tell him anyway.
I tried to send an e-mail to a load of people the other day, telling them about something I’ll later tell to one other person. Unfortunately I accidentally emailed the other person at the same time (was thinking about them … [the rest of this post, and one comment, are lost]
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Ran out of food, ran out of alcohol: a disgrace from a planning perspective.
On the other hand; we watched…
After this, Liz and her new boyfriend Tom left. Just like Probably Bob, the last boyfriend she brought to Troma Night did, also before the end. It’ll never last.
As I promised a few days ago, I called Orange today to complain that I hadn’t ever received the two messages for which I’ve had the cost refunded. The first couple of people said that there was nothing that they could do, but a lot of harassment and a few calls later, and I persuaded them to send me the latter of the two messages, which is apparently a Christmas greeting.
A few minutes later, my phone beeped to let me know that a new message had been received. A new multimedia message. The body of which was as follows:
You
have received a Multimedia Message, which your handset unfortunately
cannot support. Please refer to the accompanying text message and follow
the instructions to view the message from the web.
Did I miss something here?
Shall I ring them up and complain again?
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They must die.
My alarm clock has an interesting featurette. The design is, on the hole, like many similar mains-powered radio alarm clocks. It has a button for “Time Set”, and one for “Alarm Set”, and buttons for “Hour” and “Minute”, respectively. To set the time, you hold down the “Time Set” button – which is deliberately small and well-concealed to make sure you don’t press it by accident – and use the “Hour” and “Minute” buttons. To set the alarm, you hold down the “Alarm Set” button and use the “Hour” and “Minute” buttons.
Anyway; the featurette I mentioned is that if you are setting the alarm, say, and you release the “Alarm Set” button before you release the “Hour” or “Minute” buttons, the clock immediately adds an hour or a minute to it’s time, respectively.
So, when I – tired and using only one hand and the least effort I could manage – set my alarm last night, I didn’t even notice that I’d managed to put forward the time on the clock face by two hours. When my alarm woke me this morning at what I thought was 8:15am (but was actually 6:15am), I was completely exhausted. So I reset the alarm to 8:45 (actually 6:45) and … [the rest of this post is lost]
Today, Orange sent me a text message apologising for charging me for two picture messages earlier this year, and have apparently credited me 80p as a gesture of compensation. The Register reports that this has happened to others, too, but I can’t help but feel that Orange’s mistake is even larger than they thought it was – I never received these picture messages in the first place!
I’m tempted to call them and complain that I didn’t ever receive the two picture messages for which I’m having my money refunded, but as I’m not even sure that I was charged for them, either (can’t see it on my bill), I’ll probably lose me free 80p if I do. Decisions, decisions.
In other news, comment-heavy discussion on the difference between Christianity and Islam on Alec’s LiveJournal [link updated to use Web Archive, which still holds a copy]. Take a look.