Month: June 2003

Backup and support is always a good thing and sometimes it would be really nice. I want to be in Paris. Dave is off there for a few days on Wednesday and having been thinking about it since reading up on my week way back then, I really want to go back.

Gollum’s speech at the MTV movie awards is just fucking awesome. Check it out here.

9 years ago today I was on a ferry to France on a school exchange. I was very seasick, a lot of people were. It was not a good crossing. I did go and watch Philadelphia in the cinema and made a great effort not to actually throw up. But I enjoyed the movie and survived.

9 years ago tomorrow, I was in Paris for the first time and I was up the Eiffel Tower. We had lunch in McDonalds and I bought my family some souvenirs. Over the next 10 days I would attend school there, visit the Science Museum which I loved and manged to get back to only once since then and generally see some sights. I remember loving the banks of the Seine and all that area. Looking back it was a lovely place to go walking in and I want to go back and just wander around. I really should get around to actually doing some French lessons and get back to speaking standard.

As you may have gathered I actually looked through some of my old diaries when I found them as I was cleaning this afternoon. It was going really well, I got a hell of alot done. But as soon as I started to move the furniture it all went to hell. I have now given up for the day and will have a bash again tomorrow. It’s not all that bad…I just need to restock a couple of shelves and stack some other shit away. I think I have a bit more space as hoped, certainly there is enough for another two shelves which was the point of the exercise. I’m just hoping my flatmate does not come home tonight so I don’t have to clear the landing. It’s almost like an obstacle course.

I hate banks, more precisely I hate English banks. Tidying away all my statements and letters and all that stuff today really rams it home. Not only do they not want to know you until you have lived at a fixed address for three years (which I now have) they charge massive rates for high service. I forgot about a cheque I wrote last month and didn’t leave enough in my chequeing account. Luckily enough I have a guarantee card so they honoured the cheque, but of course they charged me £25 for card misuse. I don’t believe for a single second that is the actual cost of the admin. fee, I suspect that does not even enter the pence range. At the start of the year when a transfer I made to another account didn’t actually go through for well over a month do I get to charge them a fee? Hell no, I don’t even get a reason why. Bastards.

Listening to The Bends right now. I picked up NME Originals: Radiohead yesterday and it’s pretty much 15 years worth of interviews and reviews under one spine. Working my way through it had me really really wanting to listen to this again, so I am.

Oh I watched Superman last night and really really enjoyed it. It’s been a hell of a long time since I saw it and I had forgotten how good it actually is. I shall have to pick up Superman II sometime soon. I would be watching V this evening and a few moments later I am in fact watching the original mini-series. Thoroughly great show. I didn’t know that creator Kenneth Johnson also had a hand in creating Alien Nation and according to the IMDB V: The Second Generation is in production. That could be very cool!

I’ve been doing some cleaning this evening. I want to rearrange some furniture in my room to see if I can get a little more space so before that I wanted to clean and actually sort some stuff. So far I’m doing well. I’ve got a full black sack to throw out of stuff I had sorted away to keep previously so that’s good.

In the process I found some old photos. They are from a night out on the town in Toronto from probably 3 years ago next week. That was a really good night and the last time I saw and indeed spoke to some of the people in the photos was that very night. Some good memories from that time.

Gah, so it now turns out that something I spent about 4 weeks worrying about was NEVER a problem in the first fucking place. Fuck.

– The internet as it is 5 years ago would have changed a lot of things for me I think.
– It’s interesting how some people change and how other people don’t change.
– Blogger seems top be down so I guess I’ll be saving in notepad for a while.
– There isn’t even anything on in the cinema I want to go and see this weekend. I’m half thinking about going to see The Secretary but it’s not on in a cinema within walking distance and right now I don’t feel like travelling. Might change my mind later.
– Forums are typically weekend quiet, no work to slack off of takes a lot of people away.
– Looks like a bit of sunshine around but not all that much.
– Rereading Bone at the mo, it’s all good fun.
– Do you trust your friends? Are they worthy of that trust? Are you sure?
– oooooohhh I could do a new layout but of course I have no wysiwyg tools installed since I re did the pc and I hate working in tables in plain html. I really should sort this machine out. I have over 20mb of email to download.
– Some news sites really suck. Services which just take content from others are shit and even worse if they don’t credit them.
– Actually there will have to be going out today. I suddenly fancy a hotdog and milkshake. So perhaps a trip to the book shop to pick up the sequel to Revelation Space followed by some food would be good.
– I’m really not in a reading mood today tho and actually I haven’t been in a good while. I’m tending to only read these days while I’m commuting to and from work. Not good.
– Damn, that last sentence had me stopping and thinking. It’s still a little strange even after 3 years to think that I actually have a proper job and a desk and phone and a place to commute to and from. Strange huh?
– I will get back into writing soonish rather than just going with lots of points, but it’s easier these days. I did write an entry last night but I wasn’t happy with it in anyway so it got pulled. It was really badly written and you know that’s bad given the shite that goes up here on a daily basis
– ah ah ah, you fell into my arms
– Just lost a game of chess on Yahoo quite badly. 3 moves in a row containing 3 stupid mistakes in a row. Fuck.

– I’m still really pleased and honoured.
– The day got better when I got home to find my Glastonbury ticket waiting.
– Marilyn Manson on Jonathan Ross was interesting. He seems like a top bloke.
– Pub talk was interesting, we talked about Northern Ireland…it’s a subject in work these days. One which could get tricky soon.
– I need a suit and shoes.
– I love Fridays.
– I’m happy to see people getting exactly what they deserve. I’m sure that will haunt me, but I am.
– Overheard conversations can be interesting to say the least. I don’t think I like my desk.
– Fuck, there are bored people out there.
– My plans for the weekend include some sleeping late, some reading, some television and some gaming with of course healthy (or indeed unhealthy) dose of the interwebnet.
– There is what has turned into quite a fascinating thread on Sk8J, what’s the difference between a hooker, a call girl and an escort?
– When I don’t blog something because I don’t think it will interest readers, I’m giving up blogging.
– Good habits are hard to change, bad habits are harder to change.
– Caught up with Iain over lunch today for the first time in a while. It was good.
– God, I miss Clinton. The world we live in today is nothing like it was when he was US President.
– I’m so not in the mood to take any shit right now. I’m not really in the mood for much, saying that.
– It’s interesting the things we do…or more so the places we go when we are bored compared to the places we choose to go to more often.
– I’m screaming for music right now. You might not be able to hear it, but I am.
– It’s amazing how much useless crap we remember. I’d love to dump the trivia and all that shite and replace it with something I could use and abuse.
– 3 Leaf have some great hiring criteria: here
– I hope to finish Revelation Space over the weekend.
– I also hope not to finish Revelation Space over the weekend.
– Balance is important, no really it is. Style is also at times important.
– Text speak (txt spk) is possibly going to become of the great joys in my life. This scares me a lot. Still sacrifices must be made.
– Perhaps there will be some CD sorting over the weekend. There are a couple of things lying around I would like to get in order.
– I actually went to the post office today to send stuff twice! This is a good thing.
– gah bored.
– I want to see Ichi The Killer, might be a Blockbuster job tomorrow.
– sleep now.

And so it begins. About 30 minutes ago we actually kicked off the next project. We have a client, we have the code and we can actually start to localise it. It’s about time. It will still be quietish for a few more weeks I reckon. This afternoon is just have a play, use it for a few hours and see how she runs. So far so good. Nothing major wrong at first sight.

My machine in here is completly fucked. I’ve been asking for an upgrade for sometime now and getting nowhere and it’s just not working for me. I’ll be asking louder next week.

I just got the formal wedding invitation to a couple of friends. Wow. The groom to be has been one of my best friends since I moved over to London and I’m sitting here not only delighted to be invited as it’s going to be a really small wedding but very honoured too.

God I’m mellowing in my old age. The fact that I have to a) buy and b) wear a suit doesn’t even bother me.

– What if what is isn’t true?
– Animatrix is very hit and miss. Good animation…good concepts…bad stories.
– Some more pool after work tonight and a lot less beer. It was fun.
– St. Anger live works a little better.
– Something I noted on my PDA a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to remember to try and expand on came back to me today. I’ll touch back on it at some stage in the future…maybe. Emotion by absence
– A sense of community is a good thing.
– Nothing ever really goes to plan.
– One giant vicious circle of fire.

St. Anger is blasting out my headphones at the moment. I headed up to Hammersmith at lunch time to pick it up. So far, so-so. It’s ok, but it seems to be missing something. I am only 4 tracks in and I’m waiting for it to just come together. I really like the fact that the bonus dvd it comes with contains the entire album live. That’s a nice little bonus. Pretty so-so overall I think, I am looking forward to listening to the tracks on the live DVD, the stuff sounded so much better live last weekend.

Movie tonight I think, last night turned into a late night down the pub with lots of beer and lots of pool playing. It was a good night but lead to a rough morning today. So tonight I want to take it easy and turning something on the tube while grabbing some good music sounds about right. I have no idea why I just typed all of that. I picked up The Animatrix at lunch time too so of course I’ll be sat in front of the tv all night.

Still bored, so quite glad to have something to listen to anyway.

– whoa deja vu

– Switched into AOL radio for a bit and just got Tori Amos’s Cornflake girl. I hated this song when it first came out but now it just works. She’s one of those artists I really have to be in the right mood to listen to but when I am, she has some great stuff.

– I thought it was a really quiet afternoon and was quite happy to have not recieved any email. However this sounded a little strange. I get over 100 a day and none for 4 hours is unusual. I then found out that my email program had crashed about 4 hours ago but had not closed or shown a message. One quick exit and back in saw several folders fill up with new email. Luckily nothing urgent and nothing I have to respond to anytime soonish.

– You know what is a good word? I’ll tell you, odd is a good word. Odd, lots of things are odd, people in particular are odd. Some more than others of course. The odd couple is a phrase I like too. I don’t really mean it in the couple sense tho, it’s just a way to describe two people together in anyway which doesn’t seem to fit.