Author: davebushe

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.

“The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was trying and failing to explain some thoughts on the push and pull of information to someone via email yesterday. It stuck in my mind a lot and I was thinking about it for most of last night. I had decided to write another email today to try and explain it and then to use that email as the cornerstone for a posting.

The email is gone and I think I made sense. I don’t think I’ve managed to get everything that I wanted down onto the screen but I got distracted. I wanted to check that I was using the word meme appropriately. I tend to use it in an internet email/LJ/forum context and I wasn’t sure that it was reflected as such. So a quick Google for the definition lead me to scrolling down the answers page and hitting the Wikipedia entry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

And man did that throw some new thoughts into the mix. Starting with the quote from Mr. Emerson above. That first line hits pretty hard. Is it writing to understand and to turn a key? It sure seems to be at sometimes. Sometimes it’s even meant to be. It doesn’t always work but it’s worked at the important times so I’m sticking with it.

Scrolling down a little more, it goes into “language as a virus” and other such thoughts. To be honest, I’m not currently sitting comfortably enough to do anything more than skim the entry at this point. I’ve heard the phrase, I think I know what it means, at the least I know what I think it means but I can’t take that any further right now. It just seemed worth noting. It ties into writing to understand so well, so a topic to come back to at some stage.

***

On a complete side note. For some reason I’ve been coming back to two Beatles tracks the past couple of days. Penny Lane and Eleanor Rigby. The latter is easily my favourite Beatles track. I’ve alot of time for a few of their tracks, overall I think they are overrated but I do admit that I didn’t (and still don’t) see the impact that they had on the world so I can let some of it slide. Anyway those two are the soundtracks to this post.

Dylan on the otherhand I see the impact of almost everywhere I look. So much owed to a single man. I really hope that Never Ending Tour hits the UK again soon. That will be a go every night without a fucking doubt. There isn’t anything posted for after April, although a new album does have to be recorded, there seems to be a whole lot of time to go and do some tours of the rest of the world. You know I think I’d try and do some Dublin dates there too.

I’ve just installed my first ever Linux system. I should have done it years ago but I’ve only now actually got a reason for it. So it’s running on an old box on my desk for a proof of concept type thing for a little while. No, I’m not just running command line. My terminal-fu is week. Next up a purl upgrade and some Apache and then it’ll all be set and ready to go. Looking forward to getting to play with it. It’s nice to have something, nevermind something new to do. Not knowing quite enough to know exactly what I am doing is however, annoying. I don’t get why I can’t create a folder in usr/share when I have already su. It’s causing a slight bit of hassle. But it’s fun to work on and the multiple workspace is beautiful, so very beautiful. I thought Windows was bad for having to run updates after a reinstall but this has 211 outstanding updates. Ouch. I’m not sure the box is stable enough to do all that.

4 day week, 4 day weekend, 4 day week. This makes me happy. I have no major plans for the weekend. Well I say that now but it’s actually all falling together nicely. Friday I’m going to walk Regents Canal (subject to weather) and some more Regents Park to take some photos. I hope to have some company and find a nice pub somewhere for a quiet lunch. This should be a good day. Saturday is Mr. Watson’s birthday and there shall be drinks. Sunday may perhaps be more of the some. I like the idea of a quiet enough one in the Big Chill Bar. I shall see how that one goes. Monday is gaming. A few of the lads are coming around and we’ll be playing some Halo and indeed whatever else we think of. So not so quiet after all.

It always seems to be 4pm when I come to actually post in blogger. This has been going in a variety of ways since early this morning. There was a CoH post first, then onto Linux, then the first piece. And now it’s all rolled into one.

I also just removed the del.ico.us stuff as I wasn’t really using it. I may use the space to expand the quotes which I draw on so much around here. I have to do something soon, it’s been an ongoing nag at myself for a while now.

***

Nerdy CoH stuff follows

Last night I did the Terra Volta Respec trial…again. This time I did it with my level 24 Defender. I wasn’t planning on it, but I got a tell asking me if I wanted to give it a try. I was about to say no, but the tell said they had a full team and were ready to go. So I figured what the fuck and went for it.

We slaughtered it. Less than 90 minutes and minimal deaths. 2 stupidly on the first mish in TV, by people not paying attention and then just a couple towards the reactor. So I got most of the way to 25, I kept everyone alive most of the time and I have a respec which I don’t really need just now. I’m not sure what to put in there. I’m thinking about opening Stealth and dumping Manoeuvres. I’m pretty much pure defense, I cannot solo anything. I have two attacks, neither are slotted. I guess there is the option of rounding out a little but I prefer to play this one as support. I considered respeccing out Recall Friend and Resurrect in order to get up to phase shift, but I think those are two of the most important parts of my defender. Someone falls in battle, I have them back on their feet in seconds and going strong. So many times I’ve TP’d someone just as they are about to die and had my heal queued. So I’m going to keep them and maybe just open up stealth a little more. I’ll save the respec for a while I think.

Anyway it seemed way too easy. I should have thought to check what the slider was at. I do want to do it again with my main, not sure what I to do with him either but I um, I want the badge.

So after that I spent some time in The Hollows. I was playing a new alt in there the night before and I was in way over my head but it being The Hollows there were lots of other heroes around and they came to my rescue more than once. So I figured I would do the same for a while. A speedster healer can cover a whole lot of ground around the main areas pretty quick and save a lot of lives. So that was fun. I’ve seen many a team decimated trying to get to a mish in there so it’s good to sometimes get a helping hand or indeed a helping TP. I’ll probably do that again for a while tonight.

And now home.

Said to me on the phone now.

“Sometimes I think I should just go work in McDonalds”

Oh I’m missing you
I’d give all for the price of a flight
Oh I’m missing you
under Piccadilly’s neon

Missing You
Christy Moore

10.54 this morning, the reason for Friday’s problems dropped into my outbox. And of course it’s related to something we had dismissed and of course it now makes perfect sense.

Bastards.