Page 366 – Dan Q

Banks

It seems that NatWest now only open during the hours at which I am at work. Yet somehow I’m expected to deposit my paycheque. This makes no sense.

Mostly, I’ve been watching Futurama and drinking good beer. On Saturday, Claire and I went up to a forest North of Dolgellau and ate sandwiches and failed to find climbable trees. And I twisted my ankle. In any case, after a week of working late and coming home to evenings with everybody-in-Aber-I-know, it was good to spend some time alone with her.

I should be coding Three Rings, or Kit will shout at me. Better get on.

Science Graduates Earn More, Live Longer, Smoke Less

This report by the BBC, published yesterday, gives evidence that we science/engineering graduates live longer than our artsy opposite numbers. Made my day.

Helpless – Post Script

Yawny morning.

Got to sleep eventually. Basically, my friend’s problems can’t be solved by anybody but themselves. I’m going to offer to be there, be supportive, and to help them in any way they can, but in the end, what’s troubling them can’t be solved by anybody else. Will try to get a chance to speak to them later today.

For now, however, I have a deadline to wage war with.

Helpless

I can’t sleep.

For the last week or so, I’ve talked a little every day or two with a really good friend of mine who is, unfortunately, going through some problems at the moment. They’d been quite understating and evasive about talking about them at length until yesterday, when they suddenly revealed to me quite how difficult they’re finding their life, of late.

What scared me more than how bad their situation is is that I honestly don’t know what I can do or say to help them. I’ve tried everything I can think of and it’s beginning to upset me that I don’t know what else to try.

I still can’t sleep.

Grindstone

Claire called me up at work to taunt me about the fact that I’m working late. Well; okay, she didn’t, but she night as well have, because I’m still at the office, slogging away at a chunk of Bovini for a deadline tomorrow, not making much progress, and I only spoke to the client earlier today about how things look like they could go okay… (moral: never get optimistic with clients)

Anyway; to cut a long story short, I don’t expect to get out of here any time soon, and it sounds like everybody’s having a great time without me. <sob>

I want to go home.

Idea Of The Day From Alex And Dan I

Wouldn’t the world be so much better a place if Brits had to go through some kind of vetting procedure – a test of sorts – before they were permitted to go on holiday to Ibiza?

An example extract from an interview might be:

Interviewer : Question twelve: if you were to be granted passage to go to Ibiza, how would you spend your time there?
Applicant : I’d dress up as a girl, go out with my mates, get completely wrecked, make unwanted advances towards women, and take the piss out of the locals.
Interviewer : Okay… I’m afraid we’re going to have to decline your application. Have you considered Antarctica?

Andy’s Party And Other Happenings Up North

This is my third and final attempt to write this journal entry without something terrible happing that causes me to lose it in it’s entirety.

Spent a long weekend (Friday to Tuesday) in the North-West of England, firstly at Andy’s party, then later visiting my folks in Preston, with Claire. Details follow…

ANDY’S PARTY
The weekend started at Andy’s 21st birthday party, in Bury/Bolton/somewhere-in-that-whole-Northern-Greater-Manchester-area. It was an absolutely fantastic party, with beer flowing freely down our chins and onto the floor, interspersed only with drinking other things, including but not limited to helium from a great quantity of balloons we shouldn’t have been left near. Now that other people I know are passing the great 21-barrier, I don’t feel quite so old (at 22).

Andy’s speech was beautiful and heartbreaking. The food was great. The company was even better. It was great to see folks who I’d not seen since the end of term (and, in some cases, who I won’t see again for some time). Later, we retired to Andy’s house and lounged around drinking and talking until approaching 5am (I, sadly, fell asleep at about 3:30, as Claire had some hours before).

You can read other accounts of Andy’s party here, and here, and here too. And yes, I know it’s bad practice to make a list of links like this, but I don’t care: this is my third attempt at this entry, okay?

The following morning, we played Mario Party 4, and Claire won!!! With a hangover, no less. This is her first time as the ‘Party Star’, and she seemed glad of it: as my entries on 30th June and 7th July, among others, show, I have a bad case of winning whenever I play. This was, I believe, the first time I’ve ever not won. I came second. Barely. ;-)

MY FAMILY
After this, Claire and I continued to Preston to meet my mum, my sisters, and my gran, who’s visiting from Hartlepool. I hadn’t seen my gran in about a year, and it was good to see her again… although she still insists – most strangely, somewhat favouritistically, and at least slightly tactlessly, that of her two children and five grandchildren, I am the ‘favourite’ – the ‘special one’, as she puts it – old people, eh? [photo removed]

Played lots of Super Monkey Ball 2 and Mario Party 4. Sarah, the elder of my two younger sisters, and the self-dubbed ‘white sheep of the family’, is getting to be really good at the former. Spent a great deal of time at the pub. Watched “Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas”, a very well animated and clever cartoon feature film from Dreamworks, with an all-star voice cast. Apart from some confusion over the motivation of the evil goddess Erin, and a little over-frequency of ‘saw it coming’ (probably less of an issue for the children at whom the film is targeted), this is a very good film.

Back in Aber now, and have loads of work to do before a deadline on Friday. Better get on with it.

Safe Road Use Of Elephants

Aside from the main point of this article, I found it most amusing to find that state-run Indian elephants are fitted with reflectors ‘in an attempt to prevent road accidents’. What does it take to accidentally crash into an elephant?

Thursday Afternoon

Good progress at work today, easily catching up on the things I didn’t get done yesterday on account of having been at the Royal Welsh Show.

AbNib is proving itself popular, but I’m still not happy with it: there are a load of really cool features I’d like to add, yet. But that’s a job for another day. I’ll be up in Lancashire this weekend for Andy‘s party and to visit my folks, so I can’t do it then, either.

Claire’s gotten herself temporarily sterilized with a fantastic hyperdermic full of progesterone and with the aid of the nice people at Aberystwyth Family Planning Clinic. Woo and indeed hoo. She’s (theoretically) a lot less likely to forget to have an injection every three months than she is to forget to take the pill: something she’s demonstrated herself to be very proficient at.

I’ve been excessivley stressed for the last 48 or so hours. I think it’s mostly a result of having no money and my paycheque still being a week away, and having to live off my credit card in the meantime (which I don’t like doing). Also that my crisp-wound in my mouth from the other day has developed into a spot which would probably heal faster and hurt less if I could stop playing with it, but I can’t. And that I’m not making nearly as much coding progress on Three Rings as I should be.

I have a strange urge to go for a long walk in the rain this evening. I hope it rains.

Royal Welsh Show

I’m writing this from the (badly-protected: just had to go to a page with a particularly funky JavaScript to break out of their front-end browser) BBC Wales bus at the Royal Welsh Show, where Alex and I are working on behalf of SmartData.

Suppose I’d better get back to work and let these kiddies have the ‘net connection back…

AbNib

I’m almost ready to launch AbNib (main site may be down during development, but try the temporary mirror), a site dedicated to the weblogs of Aberites: people who live in or love Aberystwyth.

There are some funky new and cool features to come. But this is a weblog-community in the making.

Rock on.

AbNib

As this article from the BBC and this article on icWales states,Aberystwyth is getting a sex shop (you can confirm it for yourselves by checking the pink banner at the top of the official web site.

That’ll save me spending so much on mail order goods.

De Funk?

I’ve been celebrating my new-found freedom [removed link] by letting myself post to De’s forums. For those of you who aren’t following this little campaign, I really hurt him about a year ago, and he decided to hate me but not tell me why, and asked me not to contact him. So I didn’t, until I realised what an arse he was, not long ago.

I feel good.

Uninteresting Blogging

I really hate uninteresting blogs. The kind which consists of a single entry every week or two, and every time it states “Sorry I haven’t made any updates recently. (insert excuse here) I’ve not been up to much recently anyway.” Every week! Sad but true.

That rant aside, here’s a fantastic example of exactly what I’m talking about.

Dark Side Of The Moon

Spent last night in a dark room with Paul, Kit and Claire, listening to a DTS-encoded 5.1 surround sound version of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side Of The Moon”. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve heard in a long while. The sound quality was unbelievable – the patterns moved and shifted around and through us. Quite stunning. I felt my heart rate change several times to match the beat

Nobody’s updated their web journal in several days except Kit. That makes my work morning a little boring.

We have a new guy working for us – Daniel – a school leaver who’ll be helping us for the summer. Alex and I are trying to get him talking, without any luck yet.

Suppose I’d better get on with some work, now.

Update (20th March 2012) – crosslinks:

Paul’s post about getting to use his DTS system
Kit’s post about the experience of listening to Dark Side of the Moon with us