Articles – Page 116

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.

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.

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.

Troma Night VI pictures

Photos from Troma Night VI, at which we watched Surf Nazis Must Die, Real Time, and 28 Days Later, presented without further context:

Also a video of Paul performing our traditional starting activity – throwing a sponge from the window:

Troma Night V pictures

Photos from Troma Night V, at which we watched Les Mémés Cannibales (Rabid Grannies), Citizen Toxie : The Toxic Avenger Part 4, and Monty Python and The Quest For The Holy Grail, presented without further context:

Also a video of Paul telling Mark about Enter the Matrix:

May Ball 2003

These images were shared here in hindsight, on 25 May 2019.

Hollywood Pizza Menu

Easter Break

I’m sitting doing some work on a web site for one of our clients, and Reb (you know, the ex-girlfriend) sends me another text message:

you around for easter? xx

As it happens, I won’t be. I could go visit my family for Easter, but this would result in two things happening:

My family would eat lots of chocolate, and I wouldn’t, on account of the fact that if I did my head would explode and I would die horribley.
I’d have to meet up with Reb.

I think I’ll stay in Aberystwyth. I’ve got heaps of work to do, anyway.

Kit and I ate at Burger King this evening, and each had one of their fantastic new special offer “Tex-Mex” burgers. They’re like their quarter-pounders, but with spicy cheese and spicy relish and… fresh jalapeno peppers instead of gherkins. Sweet.

Spent most of the evening playing the Alpha test of YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates, which seems to occupy most of my time and probably my internet bandwidth at the moment. Ho hum.

Chasing The Paycheck

What with unavailable accountants and worse, I’ve not been able to get my paycheque until today – a week later than expected. I have £2.50, half a loaf of bread, a tin of beans, and a packet of super noodles to live on until my cheque is cashed. I don’t think that Sainsbury’s Recipe Finder quite understood me when I explained my situation, on account of it suggesting the following:

Cowboy Baked Beans
Prep and cook time: 30 mins to 1 hour
Serves: 6-8
Ingredients: 25g butter, 1 large onion, chopped finely, 1 clove garlic (optional), crushed, 2.5cm piece fresh root ginger, crushed, 1 each green and red pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped, 2 carrots, diced, 30ml vinegar, 60ml clear honey, 5ml Worcestershire sauce, 900g baked beans (hah! I only have a 450g can of baked beans anyway), 125g streaky bacon, sliced.

If you want the full recipe, go visit Sainsbury’s Recipe Finder.

In the end, Kit and I celebrated my paycheck by buying a heap of interesting looking ingredients from Somerfield, and made ourselves some cheesy garlic bread, a smokey-mince and pork tomato sauce with pasta-thingy, and some cheesecake. Then ate most of it. Fab.

It’s amazing what a little money will do for you. Last night we ate corned beef on toast.

Claire Goes To Norfolk

My love, Claire, disappeared to Norfolk today. I won’t see her for a week. My horniness is going to be unmeasurable within days. Hmm… I wonder how much a prostitute costs around here?

A quick search on PunterNet UK (a prostitute review site) doesn’t find any ladies for hire in Aberystwyth. That’s disgraceful. I think I should write to the government and get a ‘job creation scheme’ underway here. Yet again this coast of Wales is left in a rut. Gutted.

Threw my hand on the bed and ***** it, instead.

A Message From Reb

I received an interesting text message from my ex-girlfriend Reb today. It read:

I was thinking, you know how you used to say i could have your diaries when you died. can i still? not that i wish you dead or anything, i was just wondering.

Yeh; sure – it sounds like you love me to pieces, my dear. This, interestingly, is the latest in a short string of text messages, including one that asked if I had any pornographic videos (I asked why she wanted to know, to which she didn’t respond), and one which asked if I ever missed talking to her (I responded to say “Rarely, and briefly.”).

And let’s just get this straight: “not that i wish you dead or anything”. What kind of person says something like that? I’m not sure whether I’m to be scared or amused!

What’s going on in her mind? Suggestions welcome.

April Fools Day

April Fools Day has always been an oppertunity for me to get back at the ineffective dickheads that are the management of Penbryn Hall at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. This year was no exception. Building upon the success of my last big prank, Penbryn-Hall.co.uk, a spoof ‘official’ site which almost got me expelled from the hall, this year I worked with Kit, Bryn and Claire in order to cause yet more chaos.

We had a plan in mind already, but when Penbryn sent out the following message on the internal e-mail system, we couldn’t help but pounce on an oppertunity:

From: Eiryls Evans <eee@aber.ac.uk>
Date: 28/03/2003 13:46
To: hall-penb-4@aber.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Maintenance Checks

Dear Student

On Tuesday 1st and Wednesday 2nd April, Mark and I will be doing a maintenance inspection in student rooms.

This will involve checking for repairs and lights which are not working.
We will be starting in Block 1 at 10.30 am

If you have any problems e.g. desk lamp not working and would like a new bulb, please call at Reception.

Margaret Woodliff
Deputy Manager

A few things immediatley stand out in this e-mail. One is that the name at the bottom is not the same name as the person it appears to come from. A second is that it is not provided in Welsh, and is therefore in contravention of the University’s billingual policy…

…the third, and stupidest of the lot, is that they arranged to do room inspections on the first of April.

So, we thought… all we have to do is spread some more convincing (not difficult, considering) counter-publicity, stating that this e-mail was actually a student prank, and that there will not be any room inspections after all. We could even go so far as to state that we suspect that this e-mail may be the prelude to an attempt to gain unauthorised access to student’s study bedrooms. Mayhem in the making.

We came up with a poster that expressed pretty much this, and stuck copies up all over the hall. And it worked! People were absolutely convinced that our posters were real and the real e-mail was the hoax. In the end, the management had to spend their Sunday walking round from room-to-room knocking on student’s doors and assuring them that the e-mail was the genuine article. Oh; how I laughed.

The poster is available to download as an Adobe Acrobat file, below.

Download The Poster
Adobe Acrobat (PDF); 22KB.
The actual poster which was put up around Penbryn Hall for April Fools Day 2003.