Month: August 2002

I’m tired, I have a headache and I don’t feel like typing. Updates later after I sleep.

The last weekend in October sees the release of the first season of Due South in a DVD box set.
Is this good news? Oh yes this is good news, very good news.

blah blah blah.

That was a long afternoon. Headed into town around 3ish to do some shopping. Went to Forbidden Planet for the first time in a while, picked up a few comics, notables Bulletproof Monk by Michael Avon Oeming and Badlands by Steven Grant. Hit Comic showcase and the notables there were A Contract with God which is actually going to be my first introduction to Will Eisner so I’m looking forward to that. I also broke down and picked up the Powers Scriptbook by Brian Michael Bendis and art by the aforementioned Michael Avon Oeming. The rest is pretty much pure candy and popcorn reading, a JLA collection, the first Nightwing trade, some X-Men and Batman: Haunted Knight by the usually top team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale.

Hit Virgin Megastores music sale aswell for a very eclectic selection, older albums from David Gray, Guns N’ Roses, Bon Jovi (x2), Tina Arena, Tori Amos, Bob Dylan and the recent Jimi Hendrix special Voodoo Child. That lot should keep me going for a while and was a total of 8 albums for fifty odd quid.

Met up with Pat in Starbucks and we went to see about a movie. There was nothing in the main cinemas we wanted to see so we checked the PCC on chance. They are running a bank holiday weekend special of horror/thriller movies and one later that night sounded interesting. So we went to see One Hour Photo. Staring Robin Williams as a photo technician at a Wal Mart type shop who becomes a little too involved with the family of one of the customers of his shop. Its a pretty tense thriller with a real standout performance from Robin Willaims. It’s worth remembering he has been nominated at the Oscars on four occasions and won on one of those. All in all a pretty solid movie with a decent ending.

As part of this festival, they are showing Dark Water, a movie from the director and the author of Ring a smash hit from Japan a couple of years ago. I’ve still not seen this but I have heard many good things about it and am indeed heading over to Play to order it now. So that is the plan for tomorrow night with a couple of the lads.

Its worth adding something to the past couple of entries. I laughed a lot yesterday. Thanks guys.

I know it may seem kinda pretentious but I’ve started trying to title every post with a song name or lyric. For this post I have to break with the trend. Last night was a strange and funny night. We hit the pub after work to have a congratulatory pint. Not many of us but a good group and even some people who don’t usually join us.

No names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Some backstory is probably good at this point, John is my team-mate, we both work for Dave. A while ago John, Iain and myself were talking and I don’t remember exactly how we got onto the topic but we were talking about porn. Anyways as it turned out John had some interesting thoughts on porn. Simply he had his own thoughts on what hard-core porn was and what soft-core porn was. John is of the opinion that anything which isn’t hard-core hard-core is in fact soft-core. Bear in mind we were talking about this in the middle of the technology floor so we left it till a later date.

So last night Iain was down the pub with us (drinking beer to look butch…) and he asked John if he ad decided what the definitions were. So the line that completely floored us, I never ever thought I would hear these words from John were that hard-core porn is “triple penetration and a dog”.

Uh huh.

The conversation was moving onto hookers and orgies, I can only imagine what nuggets of wisdom John will share on them but we sensibly moved onto another topic, music.

Anyways some more backstory, John bought a new phone a few weeks ago. It’s one of the nice new Nokias. It came with a red cover. Iain being Iain decided to mess with John’s head a little and he told him it was a very gay phone and that anyone with a red phone had to be gay. This got us a couple of minutes laughing…but John didn’t take it too well. So much so a couple of days later he bought a new cover for the phone a “straight steel” cover. Unfortunately the buttons were still red and it does indeed look camp as fuck. So knowing that he wasn’t taking the humour very well lead to only one thing.

It got ramped up BIGTIME. There were pretty much comments daily and the phone acquired a nickname of gayphone. The operators logo was changed to gayphone and various other things were done. It was all really funny and a lot of people got in on the joke. After a couple of weeks John just gave up, he had to roll with it and big respect to the man, he did. So anyways last night we were out in the pub and we were telling the story of gay phone to some people and he was showing it around. I don’t know exactly how it happened but all of a sudden John and Iain and a couple of others are heading off to The Two Brewers.

I’ve head a lot about this place over the past couple of years, its a gay cabaret bar / night club that Iain spends a lot of time at. Myself and a couple of others had already decided to head into town and get some drinks in Soho. So we split up at that point with the possibility of meeting up again later. Into town we went and we hit a smallish little pub just off Shaftsbury Avenue. After a couple of pints both of the guys I was with were ready to call it a night. Pat had been travelling a lot the day before and was tired and Andy had some stuff to do. So we headed home. It was about 10 when I got back here. The Two Brewers is about 2 miles from my place and I figured what the hell, I may aswell make a night out of it. So I dropped off my stuff and grabbed a bus.

Got in there around 11ish. £3 in for the night is certainly better than the £15 I paid for the Fridge a couple of weeks ago. Met up with the guys and some of Iain’s friends in there and spend the next couple of hours drinking and talking. Ended up making a fool out of my self on the dance floor later on in the night too (joy). All in all a good night was had, and watching John trying to chat up some women who just weren’t available to him was fun.

Sometimes life just isn’t fair. Naming no names, within 10 minutes of being there not only has one of our party pulled but he is waiting to leave and go for a night of passion. He was very good, he wouldn’t go off and have fun because he had brought John and I there and wasn’t going to go off and leave us. That lasted about 2 hours of us telling him to go away and enjoy and then he did.

Music wasn’t bad actually, it was typical night club big beat music, the kind of music you just cannot stand still to…and the kind that after a few drinks you just have to move to. The less said about that the better.

On a related note. I love strobe lights. I love the effect they give off. The white pulsing light which just slows down time amazes me. It’s something I’ve always loved and seeing it is just stunning. When you add in some fast loud music it just becomes something else, a force of its own. I love looking around and being able to see clearly in slow motion. It rocks, it just plain rocks.

***

I brought home a cd with some of my live MP3s from work so I’m sitting on my couch typing and listening to the Stereophonics Local Boy in the Photograph from a festival sometime. I’m gonna head out soon, into town to pick up some stuff and catch a movie later tonight aswell. I also have to go and ring the ticket line, one of the guys from work is gonna see Garbage aswell on Thursday so I have to sort out a ticket.

That’s all folks.

You have to be paranoid. It is a requirement where I work. I don’t go 10 feet down the floor to talk to someone without locking my computers..ok I’m not usually that pushed about my Mac, but I will be now.

Aside from it being common sense not to leave an account with any access rights available, nevermind an account with lots of rights. Its far more a case of I don’t trust any of the fuckers with my email and buddy list available. Usually its just a case of some dirty messages being sent to someone or a few choice words being sent. It can get interesting if say it is done with someone you have an interesting relationship with…ie you like them a lot or you can’t stand them.

So I always always always lock my Windows machine. I will always be locking my Mac after todays events.

Dave’s Mac is now pink and in Dutch and John’s is now set to Chinese

Personally I find this quite funny and I look forward to seeing the reactions when they reboot and notice the changes.

You see every once in a while, it’s not paranoia, they really are out to get you. The bastards.

This was the only realistic outcome but I for one am glad to see it. BT have lost their challenge to a number of US ISPS over fees for hyperlinks.

El Reg has the details here

I for one am happy to see this move. The UK went the same way as the US going on two years and it wasn’t a great idea.
AOL Revives Focus on Creating Original Content

A mere few months ago I dreaded conference calls, I was nervous and unsure. These days it is a whole other story. While I don’t quite look forward to them, I enjoy them once I get there and I’m pretty much doing a lot of the talking on them from our end.

Today’s call was pretty great. About 10 minutes into it…and bearing in mind this was the call to end all calls…well not all calls but to end a project we had a problem. It was a stressful moment. John was standing up calling to Dave a few desks across that he needed to start talking. We left it for a moment while Dave spoke to someone to confirm it was not an issue.

He came back on the call and did just that. Man what a feeling. I don’t think I managed to quite mute myself before my reaction but it was a simple “yes!”. It is officially done, we made the milestone and I have a client under my belt. It is a good feeling. Three years ago I was unemployed looking for a job. Two years ago I was starting off in London learning and loving it. One year ago I was doing the same job and hating it. Today I’m loving my job and instead of working on content I’ve just finished my first client.

How fucking cool is that?

Next milestone kicks off properly in the morning and fuck I can tell you I’m not going to make any of the same mistakes I made this time around. While I certainly hope there won’t be any, I am sure I will make new and interesting mistakes but they will not be the fucking same ones.

***
So tonight we weren’t all free to go out and celebrate we’ll have a couple fo drinks tomorrow I imagine and then a proper something in a couple of weeks. So I headed into town, it is new comic day after all. A few bits and pieces, Breakfast After Noon by Andi Watson, the second part of DC’s Our World At War and the Ultimate Marvel Team-Up hardcover. It now ranks as the most expensive comic I own at £29.99 but its a whole 17 issues of Bendis with artwork from the best there is in the business today. Considering each issue would retail for just under £3 and this is an oversized hardback I am more than happy. I also picked up two more Sandman volumes in hardback, The Doll’s House and A Game of You. I am very glad tomorrow is payday.

After the shopping I was walking towards my bus stop and I was passing Waxys. It occurred to me that a drink was in order so I went in. A couple of nice quiet pints sitting at the bar worked really well. Then I was feeling hungry so a hot-dog with fries from Ed’s just across the road called out.
***

And now a request please. I’ve been buying some books over the past week to store up and I’ve got about ten so far. I’m looking for something specific. I want crime novels, the darker the better. I would welcome and appreciate any suggestions you might have, be it a book or an author, I would love to hear from you. Drop me a mail: daveATdavebusheDOTnet. Thank you 🙂

And finally I had to laugh. There was a story on AOL News, that Justin Timberlake’s grandmother complained he was distracted by going out with Britney Spears. The mind boggles…

American movie, recording and software executives could be prohibited from entering Australia or extradited to face criminal charges if a copyright protection bill before the US Congress passes into law.
The Age: Copyright bill will create vigilantes

Fucking A.