Month: May 2004

I am home, I am sitting in front of my computer and I’m tired. It was overall an excellent weekend so a quick run through of the days.

Friday
– Driving down wasn’t too bad. We only got caught up in a tailback once but it was enough to add an hour to the journey. Got there and met up with everyone and spent the night drinking. Started off in the nice cheap t and then onto way too expensive Novatel. I managed to spend around £80 in the bar in less than 5 hours. That curtailed my round buying for the rest of the weekend! Kept going till about 3.30. Got back to the hotel room to find an iron and an ironing board sitting outside our door. Tim denied all knowledge of this but told tales of a lady banging on a door down the corridor in her underwear. We stole some linen from around a corner and everyone had space to sleep just fine. Lawrence read us stories from the bible…until I a) kicked him and b) turned off the light.

Saturday
– Started badly. There were a whole lot of hungover people gathered in the pub from early, for a cheap breakfast of course. I had sampled the hotel breakfast that morning and tho it was pretty bad, it was free and had meat and pastries (what a combination) and so was fine. Wandered around the con for a while. Bought some nice things and some of the usual spandex filth. That evening we moved into Bristol to look for somewhere to have dinner. We ended up in Pizza Hut, which while it was fine and fed us hot pizza, was not the intended plan. Funny how we could not get a table for 13 at 9.00 on a Saturday night. The other group managed to pretty well. Anyway then it was back to the Novatel for a fairly restrained nights drinking.

Sunday
– A quiet day…mainly. We went to the pub at 11.00 to get some breakfast. The hotel breakfast was a great improvement on Sunday and I was fairly happy with it. We were still in the pub around 8.00 that night with most of us taking trips into the comic festival or just wandering around.

Then it got less quiet. A large group of us was at the bar ordering drinks/food when there was a riot. No, really. I got hit with what seemed to be a pretty full pint and covered in beer. Luckily the glass only hit my back and didn’t break till it reached the ground but nevertheless we all moved pretty fast. Glass and furniture was flying around and we were right at the back of the pub (imagine that!) behind all of the rioters. They appeared to be moving towards us and we dashed for the disabled toilets were we attempted to hide 20 people for about a minute until I remembered there was a fire exit a few feet away. We legged it out there to find the other half of the V pouring out a fire exit on the other side of the building.

In news that should shock no-one, we had lost Lawrence. A search party was lead back in for him until he rang to say he had been in the toilet, came back out into the main bar and not realised anything was happening until he noticed we were gone…so he walked straight out through it.

Anyway a quick shower was in order and then off to the Novatel bar where most people were making up for the quiet Saturday night we had. It got really messy and there are internet posts to prove it. Whomever comes up with a method to ensure people are not allowed to post on the internet while drunk, will become a very rich man. Let’s not even mention the drugs. So a very late one off to bed.

Monday
– A nice easy drive home, no delays on route and good time all around. A quick check on the interwebnet and then I had to get some sleep. I went to do some reading but was just falling asleep so decided not to fight it. I’m still feeling fucked and as I was smoking last night, I feel really really shit and am loosing my voice. Yay.

To carry on a long tradition, a list:
– I hate Bristol, I really really really don’t like it. I know my way around it fairly well and I was wandering through it on Saturday afternoon and I just don’t like it.
– I got some nice books from Top Shelf and am looking forward to getting into them. Reports to follow I’m sure.
– It would be really nice if some people would stop being so self-centred for just a few minutes. The degree varies a lot of course but some people just really need to get over themselves. Of course a lot of people don’t realised how bad they are being at it. I know someone who lost so many friends because she just couldn’t see (or hear) what she was doing to her friends. It was a pretty bad situation for a long long time and in the end people just gave up. Not an easy thing when you are talking years and years of friendships but there came a point where I for one just didn’t want to be around her and nothing I did over a long year to try and be there helped. It sucked. Anyway a little side-tracked there.
– I like my own company, I always have. Having little or no time to myself over the weekend go to me by Sunday evening. It was nothing at all that anyone did, I just needed to go off and have some time. So I did. Went off to the hotel room and sat on my bed reading for 90 minutes or so. I felt so much better for it when I got back into the pub later on.
– Oh yes, Jamie’s band weren’t bad at all. Typically the V sat there abusing Jamie through out with repeated calls for him to strip and chants of “seven minutes”. It was good fun 🙂
– Do you ever just not want to know how people from your past are? I almost made a phone call but I just found myself not really wanting to. There was a certain bit of laziness there as it would have taken a lot of effort to meet up (and indeed I failed to meet up with someone else who I did ring!) and a little more than that, there was not wanting to run into certain situations which I was perhaps expecting.
– I’m listening to some live Sigur Ros and it’s beautiful.
– It was really good to meet some people at last and Bristol was easily made by the people there (the visitors, not the rioting cunts). Good to chat with people that I don’t normally talk to that much too.
– Some divides down the middle over Lying in the Gutters on Saturday night. If you publish something in a magazine, no-one should have a problem with someone reading it out. Context yes, as was strongly pointed out to me last night is important but at the end of the day, it’s published work. I am very unimpressed with the first reaction being “yes I know it’s crap, I did it as a favour for a friend”.
– Complete side-step, AICN has some details up on the Donnie Darko Directors Cut. A day of releaser for sure, and one that looks like will have me sobbing through the ending.
– Tekken 3(?) was awesome fun last night. Cripple beach ball was just so WRONG! Tempers flared and crotches were bit but it was great fun.
– Oh yes, I forgot. YAY for a new issue of Strangehaven!!
– The V managed to not only find but purchase two issues of a mid-late 80’s (?) comic book series written and drawn by the one and only Chuck Austin. Called Strips, it was a porno comic. Stupidly bad which various body parts moving and bending in directions they just should not be going in. It provided massive entertainment for us all and will feature in LITG shortly with some luck.
– Tomorrow, I have an early morning appointment. I have to be out of my flat before 7.30. Only an hour earlier than usual really but I’m already shattered. As soon as I decide I have nothing better to add to this, I’m off to bed.
– This week, The Pixies on Wednesday and Thursday and Download from Friday through to Monday. Extra sleep required before all that. Cannot wait for The Pixies, it was a topic of conversation all weekend and lots of excited people gearing up for it.
– Oh yes apparently haircuts are worthy of blogging, so yes I no longer have any long hair. It was getting to me and had been for a couple of months. No idea what to do with it now, but the general consensus has been pretty good.
– It’s amazing what you can learn from a single phonecall received in error.
– Oh further comedy from the hotel room. Lawrence was disposing of the extra linen we had stolen on Sunday morning. We walked out the door to spot them dropped in the middle of the corridor about 5 days down.

Right, I have to go and get some sleep now, I think that’s enough for tonight.

Away to Bristol.

Back Monday.

Live Journal just ate a really nerdy post a moment ago. So I’m going to take this chance to type it out again 🙂

I’ve spent the past couple of days either in work or in Eve. Unfortunately Eve isn’t a lovely young lady but ya know.

So anyway it’s now ONLY WAR! There is no ceasefire and it has all kicked off big time. When I logged on, I was docked in my usual berth, however the system was controlled by a large enemy force. Thanks to our scouts we got them clear of the station and flew an Interceptor with double MWD straight through a mine field, clearing it so that a not small amount of battleships (BS) could undock and retake the system. Retake it we did!!

I spent some time the other night commanding a fleet of about 35 ships. We had a whole load of firepower, at least 20 battleships and the rest were support ships. We were regrouping after a night of harsh losses and enemy forces deep inside our space. It ended up in a little bit of blob wars for a while, both fleets sitting in neighbouring systems trying to get the deepest red blob for number of ships in space. We had about 10 extra ships and the numbers in BS too. So we moved to a jumpgate, we could afford to loose a couple of ships on the way in and we would too, they were setup perfectly for defence. Of course as soon as we got our armour tanked ships and EEW ready to jump, they ran. Our numbers were close on 2 on 1 at that stage and they ran.

It was a shame, it would have been a glorious fight and we were certainly quite disappointed about not getting to engage. So we had to settle for hunting down as many as we could and clearing much of our space. We got a few kills in along the way but by about 1am it was time to go and sleep. More as soon as I get home tonight.

Tonight with a bit of luck I get to go on the offence. We have plans, yes, yes we do.

Anyway that’s the end of the horribly nerdy part. Got my train tickets for Glastonbury sorted today and everything is all set for Download too. Bristol this weekend is looking more and more like it’s gonna be a hell of a lot of fun. Shame I can’t get some ONLY WAR in down there at the same time. Just have to make sure I have my ship somewhere safe and my skills going strong.

Minor success in work today. Finished off a small project which has been hanging around for a long time now. It wasn’t anything that major to fix, but it was awkward and required me to get some others to do stuff too which I hate. Actually on the whole today has been a good day. I’ve had exactly the response I wanted to every email I’ve sent and solved some issues.

And as the V has just reminded me, this day next week I’ll be off to see The Pixies. In fact right about now I’ll be running around very excited about it.

It’s not the best Monday morning ever. I guess it’s not the worst either. Some work stuff seems to have kicked off while I was away end of last week and it’s completely ignored any of the input I had in it a while ago leaving me having to point out that it won’t work like that and here is why. It’s the latter part I hate. I’m not very good at doing it. I’ve already had an email back from someone who plainly didn’t read and understand my email in the first place. It wasn’t a very nice email either unfortunately.

Thanks to Iain for this link: TLF Poem of the Day first thing this morning. This was of course the first place I had looked for the poem above and it’s not there but still.

I don’t know about the rest of you but when I was in school we had to study Shakespeare and classic literature and poetry and I still can’t quite figure out why. In my case it was King Lear, Romeo and Juliet for Shakespeare, Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars for an Irish play and Bronte’s Wuthering Heights for classic lit. Poets included Yeats of course, Kavenagh, Dickinson and a few others. Some of these I enjoyed. I hated the actual studying of them. I’m a fast reader and I was always way ahead of the class. I still don’t get alot of the actual study. I wonder if it was suppose to train us to look for meaning in things we would read in future. I certainly didn’t instil in me a love for any of them. I should read more Shakespeare at some stage but I don’t know if I ever will. Poetry I’m not a big fan of, I know what I like but it’s rare. I do keep meaning to buy a book of Yeats but never got around to it. Someday I guess.

Bit of a side-track there I guess. I finished Absolution Gap late last night and overall I enjoyed it. It didn’t feel as much of a story as the previous books, it was really two which tied in together for the last third of the book. I *loved* the Epilogue. Set years and years down the line, it tells the end of the war in two and a half pages and it tells it well. Each of the books tell a small, sometimes major story in the war against the Inhibitors but by no means does it tell the story of the war. There is so much scope outside the books which is covered so well in so few pages. Anyway enjoyed it.

When I was coming back from Dublin I was fairly tight on money. I wasn’t sure how much I had left to get me through to the end of the month and I had not got that many Euro on me. But I was in the bookshop and there was a book on the shelf which just looked so fascinating I had to buy it. Two Sides of the Moon by David Scott and Alexei Leonov. Leonov was the first man to walk in space and Scott commanded numerous missions, he also became the seventh man to walk on the moon. It’s as fascinating as it looks. I may have to sit down and actually put some reading time into it.

I didn’t have the best weekend in Eve ever. Flying a Frigate straight into a smartbombing Megathron at MWD speed was not the best idea in the world. I did recognise this and try and turn but I was moving too fast. I had just completed a trip to Empire too so I was carrying skill packs on the way back. Lost these of course. Still it was fun. Some minor PVP action for an hour. We had the numbers on our side and were hitting hard and hitting well but after about a minute the agressor realised that we were Xetic and held fire. Shame! However it looks like that while I slept my Alliance has gone to war. Another Alliance tried to send a ship through our space despite this being prohibited under terms of our NAP and so after several warnings, they were met with force and destroyed. This seems to have escalated and CA have declared war on us. From the sounds of it, the first few small battles have been won by us. Seems we had enough people online to defend and to show our teeth by invading. Guess what I’ll be doing tonight!

Yesterday while on the tube I saw a poem from “Poems on the Underground” which I really liked. “Once”, after Pushkin by Carol Rumens. It was just a verse but it was so beautiful and really reflected how I feel about certain things. I’ve been unable to find it on the web, I just wanted to post it.

Having given it a few moments thought after going to bed last night, it becomes very obvious why a play has a greater effect. Indeed it was pretty stupid not to realise it instantly. Unlike a movie or anything else you want to compare it to, in the theatre you are actually watching people. So when something descends into violence, it’s not on a big screen a 20 feet away from you, it’s two people doing their best to make it look real 6 feet in front of you. Not a small or a subtle difference really. I have no idea how I can describe the play. Several people have asked me in work if it was good or if I enjoyed it. I can’t say I enjoyed it, I don’t think I’m meant to be able to say that I enjoyed it. The performances were excellent, the dialogue in places felt stilted but maybe it was meant to be.

I had to collect the tickets before the show from up in Shaftesbury Avenue, right opposite the Forbidden Planet megastore. Having finished Eagle book 4 over the weekend I dropped in looking for book 5 which was unfortunately out of stock. Heading back down towards Leicester Square I stopped by the newish book/cd/dvd store that I can never remember the name of but has always got reasonable prices on everything. I figured the new Ash album was worth a few quid and was quite impressed to see the bonus live CD actually contained 14 tracks. Good stuff there.

A few weeks ago, I sent my sister an email. She’s in Dublin finishing up college at the moment but is due to move to Japan in about a months time. She did a year of college there and has a job set up with one of the local governments. Anyway various bands often do Japan only albums, Radiohead have notably done so for a good while. A couple of months ago, they released a Japan only compilation of live, remixes and b-sides and I wanted a copy. It was not available for export and while Amazon.com had it, they wanted over $40 for it at the time. So I figured I’d get her to have a friend pick it up or wait till she actually got back there. Anyway I was very pleased to see stacks of it on sale in this music store. First track was recorded at a gig I was at in London last year. I always like getting tracks like that. One of my favourite and certainly most played cds is a high quality bootleg of a Sigur Ros gig I was at early last year. Couple of quid more than normal albums but quite happy to pay £12 for it. And seen as I was at it, the Pixies recent live DVD. Really really looking forward to their gigs in a couple of weeks time.

Sad to report that the latest Alastair Reynolds isn’t hold my attention as much as the first 3 books. It’s missing that something which drew me into the others. I think it’s characters, there isn’t really a strong main character in this one (yet) and after having such strong characters coming through right from the start in all his prior books that it’s just not sitting right. By no means is this going to put me off finishin it, but it’s not driving me to sit down and read it. I’ve found myself slipping off to comics as I head to bed rather than my current novel. However it’s possibly not worth noting that I have named all of my ships in Eve after various lighthuggers throughout the novels.

Ok I found something about the new blogger which I *really* like, the search function. It’s Google doing what Google do best and it’s something that I’ve been wanting for a long time. Having just cross posted my last couple of entries there I really should just look at that code which awatson gave me to push blogger into here. Or indeed move to WordPress as discussed on Sk8J. Something to sort tonight I think. Should be a quiet one, maybe a catch up with the lads round here after work. It’s been a couple of weeks since I managed to make it out. It’s working out really nicely now. I have not had a full week in the office for a month and that’s going to continue for another 3 weeks. Just the way I like it.

Also on the good news front (for me anyway), my Thursday night work commitments are over for at least the near future so I should actually be able to make the V drinks in the Fitz on a regular basis and plan on being there from tomorrow evening.

I should go do some work now. I have to figure out why something works perfectly on dev and falls right over as soon as it touches production.

Google News is one of the best examples of smart thinking on the net in recent years. It’s very very simple and fills a gap very nicely. I find myself using it a hell of a lot.

So this afternoon I wanted to see what the latest reviews for Oleanna had been. So off to Google News. At the time, the top result was the Guardian from a few days ago and the text snippet with it was “When David Mamet’s Oleanna opened in London in 1992 at the Royal Court Theatre, the violence of audiences’ response to the play made headlines.” I pretty much laughed it off, things like that don’t tend to affect me. It’s rare that a movie or play gets to me, a song is much more likely to.

Yet I’m sitting at my own computer now in the safety of my front room and my stomach is still churning. Powerful stuff.
*cross posting from LJ for a bit

Of late I’ve not felt like writing very much. I do, invariably at 1 or 2 am when I’m having trouble sleeping and thoughts float all around the place. I always think to myself that I must write them down the next day but then it never happens. Occasionally I drag myself out of bed and go and type for a while, but I really have to be having trouble sleeping for that to happen.

I strongly dislike the new Blogger, it’s taken something which was a fairly powerful tool and neutered it. Sure all of the information and functionality is still there but you have to go and look for it, it’s not the nice intuitive interface it use to be. In the days when AOL is moving away from it’s wall gardened and providing more advanced options, should anyone be stepping backwards?

I was chatting with Ciaran on IM this morning and LJ was a topic. (I don’t know how to link up the user names yet so I doubt that will have worked). I was also talking to my flatmate about it the other night and both mentioned the community aspect of it. It’s certainly a bonus and something perhaps which might make me use this for a while. Anyway a few days testing won’t hurt.

I’m off to see David Mamet’s Oleanna tonight. I’m looking forward to it a whole lot. Theatre is only something I really paid attention to over the past year or so and to be quite honest I haven’t seen much since then. I saw We Will Rock You over the weekend. My dad was in London and Queen are about the only musical overlap we have (tho Dylan should be in there I guess). We got some cheap tickets in Leicester Square on Saturday morning which I was very pleased for. There was no way I was paying over £100 for two tickets so when we got 2 for £50 for the matinee, I was quite happy. It was the first musical I’ve been to, not counting stuff I was dragged to as a kid) and it was really really good. It’s certainly not sold me on them in general, a huge amount of my enjoyment was due to it being Queen and the way they slotted in the songs and changed a few lyrics to fit.

*cross posting from LJ for a bit

It’s been a very long week and I’m off to bed shortly. Fairly early for myself, I want to be asleep by 11 if possible. It’s also been an excellent week.

I’ll go off onto a tangent here for a second, I really don’t like this new blogger. I don’t remember what I last posted about or if I’m about to go and cover something I already did. I use to be able to just look down and see the past few posts, now I cannot. It has also gone and broken my permalinks and the new comments don’t work. This could well be the push that I need to use something else.

So to recap a few things quickly

– Conference in Dublin was excellent. We’ve come out of it with massive steps forward in relationships with other countries. This is a very good thing.
– Dublin in general was excellent. I had a number of good nights out, one of them spoiled by a minor case of food posioning, but still a good night with good company.
– Had a good weekend with my Dad this weekend. We got some tickets to the Queen musical; We Will Rock You. We had wanted to see, but was listed as sold out or way too expensive (£110 for 2 tickets) from a booth in Lecister Square for £50 for 2. It was excellent. I didn’t enjoy the first 10 minutes but when it really got going it was excellent. It’s started off a big theatre going kick too. I’ve got two plays booked for this week including Oleana which I’ve been wanting to see for a while now.
– Ate out alot over the past week, the best probably being Belgos in Chalk Farm last night. Good food, good beer and good service. Done a hell of a lot of walking it seems, nothing major but lots and lots of locally coming and going.
– Booked myself a ticket for the London Fleadh next month too. Dylan is the headliner and while I think he has lost it alot in later years, I still have to go and see him. It’s just a day, in Finsbury Park and comes in nicely after the Chilli Peppers. That makes 2 festivals, 2 all day music events and 2 gigs next month. Damn it’s gonna be a good one.
– Work took a major turn for the better on Friday and I actually have a goal now and something that I hope to motivate myself to nicely. Shall see as the week goes along.
– Alot of catch up watching this weekend too. Angel doesn’t seem to be building up to all that much which is a shame but The Shield is having a great season and 24 has really picked up.
– Bristol is now all sorted, the hotel is booked. Tho I should not have drunken conversations with people about who is doing what. Still, all sorted in the end. Looking forward to it a good bit now.
– Not quite making my 11pm bedtime tonight but close enough I guess.

As the mood strikes me over the new few days I’ll go into more detail.

We Will Rock You was excellent, I have to go and listen to some Queen and now!