Month: December 2002

The universe most definatly has a sense of humour, there is no longer any doubt about that at all.

Today was not bad, started off well catching up with a couple of people. Had lunch with the same people and quite enjoyed it. Headed back to the office and did a little work before being sent off at 3. Good to catch up with some people.

Good to get a couple of things out of the way too, I just hope it was not too late.

Year in review? bollocks. I just could not be arsed. There were high points, there were low points. 2002 is over, bring on 2003.

This is a pretty stunning concept.
Stigmergy and the World-Wide Web (via Evhead)
“The World-Wide Web is human stigmergy. The web and it’s ability to let anyone read anything and also to write back to that environment allows stigmeric communication between humans.”

stuff:

Giant sea fossil unearthed
The creature, which measures 20 metres (65 ft) from nose to tail, was discovered by German and Mexican palaeontologists.

A Grieving Dad Takes His Own Vengeance
Yay vigilantes!

Dave Barry gets to the bottom of 2002

The Key and Stupid web moments of 2002.

The most overhyped and underreported American stories of the year.

Requiem for the Pay Phone.

Right, I have no idea how it is going. I guess it is along the lines of what I think I can do. I am waiting to get an email back. I think I should go to bed tho, seen as I have to go to work in the morning. Of course I don’t feel like it (going to bed or going to work), but I have stuff to do and people to see.

Although I can take it from the not so subtle hint I just got in a one line im that I should be in bed asleep by now.

I just re-read Judd Winick’s Pedro and Me. It still drags me close to tears in several places. It is also worth noting it is strangely one of the most uplifting books I have.

Cha ching. I love it when a plan comes together.

Sorted out one of my shelves today, the graphic novels and trade paperbacks are now pretty much on a one shelf…if a little over flowing. Watched a lot of the extras for The Godfather box set and enjoyed them a lot.

Went for a walk this morning in the rain. I hadn’t thought it was as bad as it was, but it was. I wasn’t in the mood to come back here so I sheltered and watched the river for 40 minutes or so. Been a strange day musically. Started off with the rather excellent Vanilla Sky soundtrack and have moved onto and stuck with Bjork’s Greatest Hits. In places its quite freaky but overall some really great stuff. I missed her completely until this. A couple of songs she had released were vaguely ok, never enough for me to listen to anymore. Not even sure why I picked this album up, could just be the recent trend of buying stuff like it for the sake of seeing what it is like, but certainly in this case a winner.

Note: These are some thoughts over 5ish hours.

I got some cleaning done, not as much as needs to be done but maybe about half of it. I’m watching The Godfather Part II and other than that have no real plans for the night.

Not sure on what to do tomorrow. Might hit the movies and finally get to see Bowling for Columbine. Have to get up early anyway.

The internet seems dead tonight, there aren’t many people online and the message boards are completely quiet and not many updates to anywhere else I frequent. So now I have moved onto The Godfather Part III.

*sigh*. I don’t know, I just don’t know. I guess there are times I just don’t know when to stop. I don’t know why.

“Never let anyone know what you are thinking.” Don Corleone. Some good words of advice there. Although perhaps there are times and there are places when it can be taken a little too far and perhaps that is something worth thinking about. It is also not the best case to put some things off. There are things which have to come to pass, and nothing you can do will change that. So knowing that they will come to pass, and not being ready for their passing is just a little stupid. At the end of the day, something has to be done and if you leave it too late, then you also have to take the consequences of inaction.

So a new year is almost upon us and so far its not looking like it will start very well. But there are of course highlights…or at least I hope there will be. Couple of things planned for mid to late January and from around then things should start to pick up. Or at least some things should either stop being problems or become problems of a lower magnitude.

I’ve just noticed that my typing is a hell of a lot better than I thought. I wasn’t even watching the screen, I was watching the movie and a couple of sentences came out pretty much perfect…until I needed a q and then got lost for a moment. Things change I guess. I remember doing some typing courses when I was in school and I had the same problem then which I have now. I can’t spell very well. So usually I spell check my posts, but I’ve been a little lax in that lately. Guess it didn’t seem that important. I shall work on it. Spell checkers are wonderful inventions. Unfortunately my grammar is particularly bad and the checker isn’t very good at picking things like that up.

I was told recently that I seemed distracted. I wonder, perhaps I have been, perhaps I am. I don’t think so. Well, see that’s not quite true, I guess I have been distracted, but perhaps simply not being very talkative.

I have way too much crap and not enough space for any of it.

I got a call from a friend just after 4 yesterday wondering if I as up to anything and if not did I fancy meeting up? I wasn’t doing anything and I was literally in the process of getting ready to go out and find something to do, I said yes. So met up in Waxys and a mini pub crawl began. It was not a bad night at all, had a lot of fun and have some stuff planned for the new year. The hangover this morning however was not good. I woke up around 8 with quite a headache so had a couple of pills and went back to sleep. I feel much better now.

I have some tips on how to improve the night-time photos with my camera so I might head out later and give it a try. Of course that depends on the rain, but we shall see. Other than that I don’t know what to do. I should really do some cleaning but I can rarely get into the mood to actually do it and I need more shelves to have a hope of sorting everything out. Still I can always find a movie, stick it on and sit down to sort out some stuff.

Fuck. I now have no choice but to make a phonecall.

Strange morning. I woke up convinced I was a) late for work and b) hadn’t done some stuff before a deadline. There was a slight moment of panic and then I realised it was only Saturday and I should go back to sleep. So I did.

Got up lateish and haven’t really done much since then. I had this urge to watch a movie at around 3am last night but couldn’t find exactly what I wanted. I must have lent out my copy of Almost Famous. Which then led to me to the thought that I could go out and see if the special edition was going cheap in the sale and then the thoughts went onwards from there.

Roll on March is all I can say. If I’m lucky February will sort itself out but we shall just have to wait and see.

The reason I wanted to watch Almost Famous last night (other than it is a good movie which I like a lot) was some thoughts about fame actually. It was a line from the trailer for 8 Mile which after seeing the ad on tv last night hit me; “they’re calling your name”. hmm I need some time to put these thoughts into some sort of order as it is just not happening right now.

British Pathe has put more than 3,500 hours of its old newsreels online…”They’re treating their customers like customers, not criminals. It’s not surprising that they’re thriving,”
A Peek at History, Piracy-Free

One of the trailers before the movie this morning was for 8 Mile, the semi-autobiographical Eminem flick. This isn’t something that I had any particular interest in. I will admit to owning one of his albums and quite liking some of his music but the movie wasn’t something I was planning on going to see. I did notice with some surprise that when it came out in the US, it was quite a big hit. It topped the box office for a few weeks on release. After seeing the trailer this morning I get that and I’m left planning on seeing it. I don’t quite know why, well I could hazard a couple of guesses, but I’m gonna go see this.

So anyway The Two Towers second time round. I don’t think I have all that much more to add. It really is an awesome film and it lost nothing the second time around. The day cannot come soon enough when the DVD set of all three movies comes out. There will be marathon viewing sessions.

Went for a walk down the river this afternoon for about an hour. Time to think I guess, but I wasn’t doing much of that. Took some more photos, one of which I think is quite good. Make with the clicky for a large version.