I believe I am a day away from getting my mobile updated. Hopefully to something which will let me take pretty pictures and everything. I know if you really know your stuff, you can send it to websites automatically, along with text. Hmmmmm, I wonder if I can get that going?
One day I really will take over the world etc etc
I only slept through the important bits of the Tour de France coverage last night, so that was okay then. Will try and get to see more tonight, looks like it is going to be a good day. Currently reading a book on corruption in football, which is a real eye-opener, especially when it comes to ex-Chelsea chairmen and ex-England managers.
No new countries to wave to today, almost disappointed. Ah well, at least the world isn’t using all my bandwidth. Must try to garden tonight, want to get my lawn and all that looking a bit more tidy. Will post a pic of it in all its glory if I remember.
Did manage to get a bit of garden clearing done. One bag at a time, I’ll get there. I also want more house plant, cactii and bonsai agogo is the plan. I have a repotting system in mind. Such things occupy my mind sometimes…
Good weekend, seeing rellies, drinking lots, seeing mates, it being hot (and rainy, being england). Very mellow. Yesterday saw my first Austrian visitor, although I don’t think they hung around for long *waves anyway*.
Tour de France is up and running, waiting to see if this is the crowning of Lance Armstrong as the greatest cyclist ever, or the rise of the young knight Tyler Hamilton. My sense of history wants Armstrong to win, my realism says Hamilton. It could well be a truly great battle regardless.
As you can see above, I really just a frustrated sports writer. One day I will have my dream of a column in the Observer Sports Magazine.
Grim day, but weather may change yet. Had my first Israeli visitor last night *waves*. I find this stuff fascinating, all the little bits of traffic I get from around the world that I never knew was going on. I check my stats every morning, its great fun.
for a geek anyways
Onwards and upwards.Writing perl and sql today, couple of projects to chug along with. More coffee first though
Running reports, diving onto here whilst I wait. Grim day outside, boding a soaking for me at some stage I’ll wager. Can’t wait for that. Finished Soul Caliber 2 last night, or at least the Weapon Master Mode, where I have been devoting a fair bit of gaming. Moving on now to Zelda – Ocarina of Time on the GC, N64 game moved onto the GC, plays beautifully thus far. Probably will do a little work on the site tonight. Interesting that since I’ve moved it, I can see much better stats for who visits here. I’ve already seen visitors from the states and japan (waves). Some may be search engine robots, some may be real. But its interesting nonetheless.
You can’t read this just yet, its not on the site. In a day or two, the switch of hosting will have worked, and you will be reading this. But just not yet. Moved to a proper web host, got a control panel with all sorts of wonderous and fantastic options to try out. Will have a play shortly.
What am I doing now? Why, thanks for asking. Reading lots of techie stuff, trying to be a developer. Books on database theory. Joy. But important to do.
Trying to write as well. Got some elements of a story I am noodling around with (thats a technical term, I’m not going to explain it to you). Nothing worthy of showing just yet, but will do when there is
Also playing a lot of Soul Caliber 2. Great game, but will be one of the people I end up suing over a terminal case of RSI in about 10 years. Best fighting game ever. Delivers where DOA and Tekken have been failing in the last few years.
Life is pretty good at the moment, could do with being less fat, other than that, can’t complain at all.
Am now a programmer! Am learning perl and python, htmldb, how to use linux properly, all sorts of mad stuff (well in techie terms anyway, its not like taking opium and shagging your nanny mad). Mind you, on the downside I am still fat. Going to learn lots of stuff and try and lose at least a bit of weight.
Just read a fantastic paragraph: The African American World Reference states that ” soul is a return to black music’s roots – gospel and blues. The style is marked by searing vocal intensity, use of church-rooted call-and-response, and extravagant melisma. If in the 1950s (Ray) Charles was the first to secularize pure gospel songs, that transformation realized its full flowering in the work of Aretha Franklin”.
Don’t know why, but reading that makes me feel happy
Well, feels like I am properly into a new year, back into work now. Joy of beautiful joys. Anyway, I am all new year positive, full of plans to forget by next week. Have been working on learning to write japanese, a little mishaped rectangular box is the japanese for mouth. See, almost there now.
Hmmmmm, a bit of writing should really be the order of the day for the year. A new story or two would be very good. Along with everything else. Perhaps I should write a story in japanese. Running before I can walk sounds good.
Had a result over xmas, revived my old computer as a linux box. Using Knoppix at the moment to boot from cd, but am presently downloading debian, which is the full os that knoppix is derived from. All I need for it at the moment is a wireless lan card, which should be about 40 notes. Means I can use the internet without a big long cable running downstairs (at the moment it is stuffed down the side of my spare bed). Also means I can safely start to learn a bit more about linux without trashing my main pc, which is no bad thing.
things wot I have been playing recently include: the Who wants to be a millionaire dvd. which was quite a suprise, very well put together. Beautiful simplistic design, which a lot of games makers could learn from. Okay, to be fair it is basically a quiz where you are picking one of four answers, but it is so straightforward, anyone can pick it up and play it with the minimum of difficulty. If they bring out a sequel I will definitely have it. Also had a go at eyetoy:groove, which is the first dancing game for eyetoy. Its beautifully done, but a lot more fun if you have any sense of rhythm or timing. I fail on both counts.
watched over the chrimbo period some stuff including the Dave Spikey dvd, which is one of the best stand-up routines i have seen in a long time, ricky gervais animals, which wasn’t as good, Ghost World, which I have seen before, and still love, the extras on the Spinal Tap dvd, which are basically an extra hour of the film, very worthwhile, includes Billy Crystal explaining his mime waiter service “Shut up and Eat!”.
Really feel the need to sort out me garden. it was kind of underloved last year, and really needs some work doing on it to make it look vaguely respectable. Its going to take a fair bit of effort, but I would like somewhere nice to sit out in the summer this year. There may be some before and progress pics to come soon I suspect. Got a nice little camera for xmas which will be put to use for such things. Even does video, but I suspect a five minute silent opus entitled “My garden past and present” could possibly be something approaching overkill. Wouldn’t rule it out yet.
Smoking and losing weight are on the to do list too. Would really like to finish the year under fifteen stone for the first time in, well, a long time, and knocking the smoking on the head would not hurt on this could, make me a bit more eager to exercise. I shall hold off on any commitment to getting back into cycling until I’ve got somewhere with the first two, but I would like to. When I was younger (cue up the hovis music) I really used to love getting out into the countryside on my bike. Even in my early twenties, before life’s ravages started to catch me up, I once cycled along the ridgeway from Swindon down to Avebury, and back. Awesome summers day, all on my own, just working my way slowly and surely through the countryside. Do miss that, and clearly it would be no bad thing for me to be physically capable of doing it again. Loved the feeling of freedom you get on a bike.
Have been trying to get rid of things. If you know me, you will know that I can have the tendancy to be the king of all hoarders, and its something that has to stop so we have space to move around our house. There are some things I can’t do without, like my collection of Daredevil comics (currently have a quarter of all that have ever been printed. Will, at some stage, return to building that one up). But do need the space. So have been removing junk from my filing cabinet, looking at old video tapes and throwing away anything not worth keeping. Did find citys of fire (the basis for reservoir dogs) and audition, a hong kong and a japanese movie respectively that definitely need viewings. Also my old tape of The King of Comedy, which I think is just one of the most perfect films ever, beautiful script with a great twist at the end of it. Must watch that again, that one has been years since I watched it.
I also think a scanner would be a very good thing, I have masses of scraps of paper and letters and newspaper clippings that I don’t want to lose, but could do without lugging through my life. You can get a nice little Canon scanner for about 40 notes that would do the job perfectly.
Obviously work is taxing me really hard today, going on what I have managed to write since I got in 😉
Think that by proxy from setting up my old pc with linux, I stand to learn a bit more about that this year. It can be quite a fiddly thing to learn, but very beneficial, as I can only see companies moving over to it more and more. Other things for the year ahead are camera phones, quite fancy getting set up with one of those. The Nokia 6600 looks quite decent, except for it using a proprietory memory card rather than an sd card, which would have been nice. At some stage this year Apple are threatening to bring out a £70 ipod with a small hard disk, which will certainly be worth a look. We should hear more about the PSP, sony’s handheld competitor to the gameboy, and the N5, nintendo’s as yet unknown piece of hardware. Will be looking out for all of these with interest myself.