Month: March 2005

– I hate politics.
– I hate not being able to say what I think.
– I like nights out with good people.
– I don’t like not knowing how to build better relationships…indeed friendships with some of said people.
– I dislike not knowing what to say.
– I dislike knowing what to say but not knowing how.

I had to stop reading my book on the tube on the way home for fear of crying. I’ve stood in these spots, I’ve walked these streets and these heroes. These great great men and women stood there too, and then they died there.

I just don’t have the words.

At least it’s Thursday. The week has gone by pretty quickly. Which is good, I like 4 day weeks. I’m hoping for a big improvement around here next week, on Monday we move back to the main office out of the rented hell hole we have been in for about 9 months. In fact, we are going back to the desks we had just before we moved. So that’s good news, at the very least we should be all feeling a whole lot healthier.

I’m fighting with MySQL and Fedora Core 3. It should all be running but the system doesn’t even want to acknowledge it’s very presence. Annoying. Painful on my eyes too, I’m running through a switch box so I can’t actaully get correct drivers up and running so hello flickerville. I have a horrible powerpoint I have to review today and the very thought just makes my eyes hurt even more. Ugh.

Just one of those days I guess. I don’t quite know why but it seems to be gloomy all around.

I bought an iPod last night. 40gb photo version. To cut a long story short, my discman and a couple of CDs were stolen just after I had coffee with a friend. Of course they were the new CDs I had bought on Saturday and brought into work luckily enough to import so I have copies of them. About £40 worth of CDs and a broken shitty old discman. Insurance should cover it all. It makes me smile a little to think how happy they’ll be to have gotten away with a couple of old Irish folk music cds. Anyway my flatmate is off home to the US next week. I had planned on getting her to bring me an iPod back thus saving a good few quid because of stupidly high prices in the UK. But that would mean it would be 3 weeks before I had anything to listen to going to and from work and indeed anywhere else. So figuring the money I would save getting it from the US would be the cost of the CDs and a new discman again, I went to HMV

Apple are *so* good at design. Even opening the box was a thing of beauty so well laid out and put together, much kudos to them for that. I’ve filled it with 33gb now today between my work computer and my home computer. Quite impressed by the photo part. I only threw on a couple to see what it was like and it’s good quality, as good as what I see on my digital camera when I take one. So that’s cool. But it’s just a music player and that’s all it will ever be for me.

At this point tho, I would to state: THIEVING CUNTS!

Apparently carrying a camera all the time is freaky. I’m not using it as much as I’d like but it is there in my pocket anytime I do want to. Always handy for those kodak moments etc.

I managed to find away around my reading block too. I went to Borders and after a good 20 minutes moping around the fiction I hit upon history. So I’m reading Tim Pat Coogan’s 1916: The Easter Rising. He’s a great author and easily the foremost on modern Irish History. I’ve read several of his books to date and always enjoyed them. I also picked up Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories From A Warzone as the cover caught my eye and it sounded interesting. So hopefully those two will get me back into the mood and I’ll get going again. I really wish I had not gotten that Richard Morgan preview, I’d have loved to pick it up last night or the time before and get stuck into it. Ah well.

Tonight, pool with the lads. It should be fun and so far we still have most people going along.

Flexibility.

It’s a big word. It’s used around here alot these days. We are having alot of internal talks on flexible working hours and work life balance and stuff like that. The most inflexible flexible working hours was introduced an hour ago, you could change your start time to be within a 2 hour period but you had to do it every day. So there was no way to say come in and leave an hour earlier on a Thursday if you wanted to do a course or anything like that. So pretty useless in my opinion anyway. But it’s getting better, lots more talking about it and it sounds like it might actually become a little more flexible which would be good.

The other way it’s been talked about or indeed around is the actual work. As far as I’m concerned you have to be flexible, you have to be able to give and take. You don’t just do exactly what it says on the piece of the paper and you fucking well don’t sit around and do nothing until you get that piece of paper. That really pisses me off. It then can become a nightmare to actually do anything and move forward and it wastes my time and everyone else’s time. I really hate it. CYA, bollocks just do your fucking job, it’s not up to me to tell you what that is, you know what it is and you know how to do it, so just fucking do it. Slightly annoyed by that one there as you may be able to tell.

Good morning world.

It’s a grey Tuesday morning, yesterday turned into a session in the pub, and I’m stuck in work here. For some reason I’m in a really good mood! It was a good weekend overall. Not too busy but not as quiet as I had thought. So a recap.

Thursday. Well it kicked off in the pub for a leaving lunch at midday. That really carried on across multiple pubs until around 1am. So it was a good day. I was in a foul mood (and worse, not even realising) by around 7pm. I have no idea why but anyway. Overall a good day with some funny moments.

So Friday was quiet. A wander to Camden for a few comics and that was really it. Played some games and read for a while. I managed to get KOTOR 2 working again thanks to some tips on editing a saved game on a forum and that was good. So almost finished with that one and it’s fun. I like it lots.

Saturday. Strange strange day. I decided at around 1pm I’d go for a walk along Regents Canal and take some photos. I had been planning on doing it sometime over the weekend but then it struck me that I had to go out for a walk. I stopped at about 5.30 when I reached the pub for the party that evening. I don’t know why and I wasn’t even that deeply lost in thought but I was just walking and walking. I walked to Little Venice which was a big disappointment, not living up to it’s name at all, then onto Paddington, Nothing Hill Gate, Bayswater, Queensway into Hyde Park down to Marble Arch. I did at this stage stop in HMV to pick up a couple of things, I needed some more music to keep me going strong and then I carried on around Charring Cross Road, Covent Garden, TCR (stopping for a pint in The Ship) and then back to Oxford Circus. It was a really nice day, the sun was shining and it was warm and I just walked. I was a little tired after all that unsurprisingly. It was then a quiet enough night with a few people out for Alastair’s birthday. Finished up in The Scream around 12 and then home. A good day.

Sunday. Again quiet, not a huge amount done other than fucking around on the computer. A couple of drinks in the Washington with my flatmate and that was that. Chilled.

Monday. Well a couple of the lads were coming around to play some games for the afternoon… but the sun was shining so we adjourned to Steeles for some nice outside sitting and some dinner. That finished up around 10.30 and was quite a session. A good night with good company. A nice rounding off to a long weekend.

It feels like it’s been so much longer than 4 days. I actually feel refreshed. That’s a good thing to be able to say in my book. It won’t last in this place but ya know I can enjoy it this morning. Still while it lasts!

Lots of music over the weekend. I’ve been getting some stuff from proper and “favoured” stores. Lots and lots of Irish music. I finally picked up a couple of the Planxty albums I’m missing and I’ve been testing out some other stuff via the joy of the internet. Lots of live stuff, always always good.

There are a couple of tunes doing it for me a whole lot right at the moment and they are very separate things. Dakota by Stereophonics which is just a decent rock tune with an intro and some lyrics I like. The second is hitting a lot harder, it’s intro, for just a few seconds it takes me somewhere else. It’s a wistful little intro and it just sums up a sense of loss perfectly. It’s a great great piece.

Sometimes I’m not sure I recognise myself, a few years ago I’d never have thought to listen to any of this, it was so not my thing. Strange how things change as time goes along.

Post Secret. I’ve mentioned this before and I probably will again. I love it. It’s a wonderful site and it hits sometimes. It’s such a smart simple idea and sometimes it’s so much easier to get that secret out to someone but at the same time to have it still be a secret. A sense of freedom I guess. Sometimes it’s just nice to tell someone. Great great site, I love it.

Along the same lines So there is another wonderful site. Not always the easiest thing in the world to read but another damn good, simple, idea very well done. Both of these are part of what reminds me about the joy of the internet.

Tonight I’m meeting a friend for coffee, tomorrow I’m playing pool with the lads from work, Thursday is the usual V and then it’s almost like it’s the weekend already!

I had no idea that Bob Dylan had recorded a version of Arthur McBride! It’s fairly different lyrics from the Planxty version but it’s very much the same song. The joys of the internet!

So I’ve been meaning to get typing for days. I’ve had some nights sitting in a draft since late on Thursday night where I spent pretty much the entire walk from Camden to my flat working on them. And yet despite all the time in the world since then I’ve not managed to sit and type.

And it appears that tonight isn’t going to be the night either.

Stuff is coming soon. I’m working on it.

I may have even had a revelation.

How fucking cool is this? I’ll come back to it in the morning I hope. The potential for changing life in there is quite astounding…and scary.

***

Kiss and tell

Your body could replace Bluetooth as the new data transfer format of choice. Paul Rubens reports

Thursday March 17, 2005
The Guardian

Your body could soon be the backbone of a broadband personal data network linking your mobile phone or MP3 player to a cordless headset, your digital camera to a PC or printer, and all the gadgets you carry around to each other.

These personal area networks are already possible using radio-based technologies, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, or just plain old cables to connect devices. But NTT, the Japanese communications company, has developed a technology called RedTacton, which it claims can send data over the surface of the skin at speeds of up to 2Mbps – equivalent to a fast broadband data connection.

More in link

Comics these days are shit right? DC and Marvel blah blah House of Crisis etc etc.

Well, if the whole Countdown thing does turn out to be a way around the original Crisis and that is Barry Allen Batman is holding on the cover of #1, I’m going to end up buying the whole damn thing.

I blame Amanda Pays for my Barry Allen nerd love. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

There will more then likely be more nerding on this soon. However the nerding will never ever reach this level.

I found this site today: Blog Binders. I actually clicked it as an ad on another site. Sometimes internet advertising works. I love it. It’s such a simple idea. I’m fairly sure I’m going to follow through on it pretty soon. I have diaries for about 6 years from the 90s and I quite like the idea of being able to add the last few years to them for my sake. I think I’d find myself looking back more often if I were to do that. Seems fairly reasonable pricewise and I like the site.