February 2005 Archives

I was going to post a couple of wacky ebay auctions here, like the guy who was selling a genuine Texas snowball, or the "two invitations to a wedding I don't want to attend", but it looks like someone else has cornered the market as far as collecting weird ebay auctions goes. Better luck finding a new bandwagon next time.

Changing the subject completely, it looks like Paris Hilton's mobile address book has been hacked into. I found a page yesterday which listed all the numbers, but it's not there any more. I did, however, manage to save the page before it got taken down, so if anyone out there wants Christina Aguilera's or Eminem's phone numbers, let me know.

Maybe I should put the phone numbers on eBay?

If you hear or read a name you've never come across before, do you build up a mental image of what that person might be like? Have you ever tried doing this with the fake names you get on spam emails?

Gravy Q. Wrongheadedly - the most accident-prone person who ever existed. He's been known to cause the death of three cats and a small vole while bending down to put his slippers on (don't ask, it's a long story)

Sagging S. Workmanship - a sad Sid James lookalike who can be found leaning on a shovel by the side of a hole in the road he's been digging for the last 40 years. Has been known to follow a certain Mr Wrongheadedly in the hope of getting some work cleaning up the mess.

Omnipotent R. Calais - the winner of the 2005 "Ego the size of a planet" award. The choice of winner came as a complete surpise to everyone except the winner himself. Obviously.

Lefty I. Edgewise - Lefty can sell anything to anybody. Twice. He sold a sky-diving course to a Mr G.Q.Wrongheadedly, and a garden shed for a Mr O.R.Calais to keep his ego in. Being the superior salesman he his, Lefty managed to sell Mr Calais the only shed that was available, which happened to belong to Mohawk J. Scurviest at the time. Mr Scurviest was also sold as part of the deal, Mr Calais apparently believing the premise that when he put his ego into the shed for safe-keeping, he'd need someone to stay in there to massage it for him while he was away. Mr Scurviest will be paid in tins of fifty-year-old extremely mature and rather rare corned beef, which Lefty also managed to offload onto Mr Calais for the bargain price of 1800 quid to be left in a locker at Victoria Station and the promise of some sexual favours from Mrs Edgewise. Who may or may not exist.

Mohawk J. Scurviest - pirate gardener (retired). Currently part-time ego masseur.

I don't watch that many advertisements on television. I either fast-forward them if I'm watching a video (and the only thing I'm taping at the moment is the repeats of the first series of Six Feet Under on Channel 4, and that's only because I never watched them the first time round. I'm glad I caught it this time round - I never knew what I was missing!) or I tend to channel-hop while the ads are on. And with only 5 channels to choose from, that doesn't take long.

But there's usually one ad per year which catches my attention. Last year it was the Honda ad and this year it's the ad for the new Golf. It's very clever, a computer-generated version of Gene Kelly doing an updated dance routine to "Singing in the Rain"; the tagline for the advertising campaign is "the orginal, updated".

But - and this is a big but - the ad is so clever I don't take my eyes off Gene Kelly. I've seen the ad a few times now and it was only the last time that I saw it I actually took my eyes off the dancer and looked at the car. I thought the whole point of advertising was to get me to look at the product being advertised. Or maybe it's just to get the product into my head. So in that respect I don't think the advert works. I remember the ad, but only because it's a clever piece of film-making, not because I notice the car or anything. But then again I am very aware that VW have a new Golf out. So maybe it does work, after all.

Still won't make me go out and buy one, though.

in my own inimitable fashion, of course!

Last night I had one of the most vivid dreams I've ever had in my life. It was so vivid that I can remember it now. Usually I'm aware that I've dreamt something, but it's usually gone from my memory about 10 minutes after I've woken up.

This dream was set in New York, a place I've never visited. It's evening, and the streets are fairly deserted. I have a very strong feeling that tonight is going to be the end of the world, and for some reason I want to spend it in a music shop, listening to cd's and chilling out with the other customers. But the shop is closed (unusual for New York, even if the end of the world is nigh), so I reverse a bus into the doors to get in. A lady tries to stop me getting into the shop, but I tell her the world is going to end tonight and she can come back and arrest me in the morning if she wants to. She seems happy enough with this line of reasoning, and walks away. A few people follow me into the store, and since I don't know how long we have until the end of the world, I suggest that we all pick a couple of favourite cd's and listen to a few songs off each one. While I'm choosing cd's I look around and see that some prople have items they wish to purchase and are queueing up at the tills. I notice a box set of dvd's on the shelf labelled "World Sporting Events 1950 - 2050".

Sometimes I'm inside the shop wandering round, and sometimes I'm the square outside, watching the skies and waiting for the apocalypse. I can see other people in great detail, also wandering round. I'm aware of the clothes they are wearing but not the expressions on their faces. Some people are in black and white, including a small group of soldiers. As I walk past them I get the feeling they are World War I soldiers, and I overhear someone saying "He looks exactly like he did in his self-portrait."

At one point I'm back in the record shop and I look out of the window to see volcanic lava and molten rocks leaping into the air on the other side of the square. "This is it," I think, "it's ending now." Very calmly, I walk out to the square to watch. Some people are driving away from the eruption, and I briefly think about throwing myself in front of one of the cars or trucks to avoid getting burned up. "Ah well, time to have a cigarette," I say to myself.

So there I am, sitting on some steps which lead up to a statue of someone or something, in the middle of this unnamed square in New York, watching a volcanic eruption take place probably less than half a mile away, calmly smoking a rolled-up cigarette. It's getting light now, so maybe my estimation of the apocalypse was slightly off.

I look around and see two guys dressed in batman costumes on the roof of the record shop trying to get people to dance along to an old Sweet record.

The volcanic eruption ends. There is carnage and desruction everywhere, although the world still exists. And at this point, I woke up.

I'd like you to imagine, if you would, that every time you wanted to read a library book, you'd have to write a request for it on a postcard, put your return address on it and post it to the library. The library (which is probably on the other side of the world) would receive your request, get the book, copy it onto postcards and post them back to you, one by one. The postcards are all numbered so that when you receive them you can put them back into the right order and read your book. If you wanted to see a photo of the author, then you'd have to write another request to the library, post it, and wait for the picture to come back on another series of postcards. You'd then have to put them back together like a jigsaw puzzle in order to see the picture.

This is pretty much what happens every time you request a web page and see it on your browser. Every second of every day billions of packets of data are whizzing along cables buried under roads and under the sea, carrying little bits of information to millions of computers all over the world. Some are earmarked for web browsers, some for email programs, some for chat programs and so on. Each packet holds about the same amount of data you'd be able to get onto an average postcard, and that includes the address it's being sent to and the address it's coming from.

This is pretty much how the internet works. It's an amazing achievement of research, development, technological advancement, implementation, training and acceptance. What's even more amazing than all that, in my opinion, is that everyone takes it all for granted, and uses it every day without paying the slightest bit of attention to what is going on, and moaning and groaning when it doesn't work. How many people reading this have felt that losing their email connection (at home or at work) is as debilitating as losing a limb? Just ten years ago internet connectivity was hideously slow and expensive by today's standards, and very few people had access to it. Nowadays it's seen as a standard utility to be provided in our homes just like electricity and water.

So next time you feel like complaining if your internet connection stops working, think how amazing it is that it works at all.

(For more information, read this and this)

I haven't quite given up on the idea of upgrading my home cinema speakers. I've managed to find a different set, which are apparently better respected than the Bose ones I was thinking about earlier in the week. However these (and the Bose speakers) have an active (powered) subwoofer, and the amp I'm using at the moment doesn't have an output for an active sub. So if I were to get the best out of the new speakers - and there's no point buying them if I'm not going to use them properly - I'd have to upgrade the amp as well. Which of course bumps the price up.

I bought my original hi-fi 15 years ago. It consisted of an amplifier, cd player, cassette deck and a pair of speakers. The cd player gave up the ghost a few years ago and was replaced, but I'm still using the original cassette deck and speakers on my main system, and the amplifier in my bedroom system. Ten years ago I upgraded the amplifier to a home cinema model and bought a passive subwoofer, a centre speaker and a pair of rear speakers. So everything I have is at least ten years old, and to be fair, it's all still going strong. It's just a bit big and bulky now.

I don't think the system I have at the moment sounds as good as it could for the following reasons: I have a passive sub, not an active one, and I can't really tell that it's there. I can't feel the low bass rumble it's supposed to produce, and never have felt it really. The front and rear speakers are from different manufacturers, so the sound they produce is not tonally balanced. The amplifier is Dolby Pro-Logic, so I'm only listening to that and not listening to a proper 5.1 surround system.

Basically I'm just trying to justify the expense to myself. Each year I seem to be able to make one big purchase. In 2002 I bought a tv and dvd player. In 2003 I bought a camcorder. In 2004 I bought a digital camera and upgraded the PC. This looks like a good candidate for 2005's major electronic purchase! Plus, the hi-fi shop I've found offer 12 months interest free credit....... so why shouldn't I do it?

There's nothing wrong with upgrading part of a hi-fi system every ten years, is there?

I had an email today from the company that hosts one of my web sites telling me that a new top level domain, .IN, was becoming available. This got me thinking about some interesting domain names that could be used....

www.get-the-beers.in
www.come-on.in
www.ill-have-a-g.in
www.sharks-f.in
www.get-some.in
www.you-put-your-left-arm-out-you-put-your-left-arm.in
www.rin-tin-t.in
www.the-doctor-is.in
www.are-you-sitting-comfortably-then-well-beg.in
www.insert-a.co.in

Then again, maybe not!

from bash.org:

<sp4nk> I once knew this guy who kept a dream journal.
<sp4nk> Some little spiral notebook he'd keep by his bed.
<martyr> haha nice
<sp4nk> I'd get waken up in the middle of the night and find him writing shit in it. At 3 AM.
<sp4nk> Told me it was so he could remember the lucid dreams he had the following morning.
<sp4nk> So one night at about 1, I decided to have a look.
<sp4nk> As I suspected, full of shit about meeting dead people and flying across the Atlantic Ocean.
<sp4nk> He was asleep at the time, of course.
<sp4nk> So I grabbed a pencil and made my own entry.
<martyr> ROFL
<sp4nk> Something along the lines of: OH MY GOD I WANT YOUR BLOOD SATAN PLEASE LIBERATE ME FROM MY WRETCHED LIFE
<sp4nk> I swear, he was shaking the rest of that day
------------------------------------

If you're not familiar with internet chat abbreviations, you need to know that asl stands for age/sex/location. It's a greeting guaranteed to get you ignored 95% of the time.

<THE_RAVEN> asl?
<BlackstarII> 41/m/neverland
<BlackstarII> wanna sleep over?

Of course, the other 5% gets you a sarcastic answer.

------------------------------------

<BoTGoD> In the wet season, when my house lies at the eye of a particularly savage thunderstorm storm, lightning all around and power out, i like to masturbate - it makes me feel like i am thor.

------------------------------------

One of these quotes made me chuckle, one made me smile, and one made me laugh out loud. I'll leave you to guess which one is which.

I had a bright idea today. Instead of worrying about where to put all my speakers when (if) I rearrange all the furniture in my living room, why don't I get some tiny speakers that won't take up much space? I knew Bose did some, so I looked at their site and found this little set. "Perfect," I thought, "that'll do me."

Until I did some more research and found out how much they cost. Now, I know I place sound quality pretty high on the list of "must-have's" for a home cinema system, but it's not that high on the list, thank you very much.

Back to the drawing board.

Hollingworth Lake, on a grey Sunday lunchtime. I went for a walk round the lake with my sister-in-law and niece, hoping to do a couple of circuits. We'd been round the lake before, and always thought it was about three, three and a half miles, something like that. We were very disappointed today to find that it was only 2.3 miles, so we've had to downgrade the trip round the lake from "had a good workout" to "had a mild stroll". In the end my niece didn't want to go round again, so we only did the one circuit. Ah well, better than nowt, anyroad. Click on the image for a full (189k) version.

Techy stuff: 1/1000sec, F4.5, 1:02pm

I want to reorganise the living room so that I have more space in it because I feel it's too cluttered what with the huge black wall units my ex and I bought when we got our first flat which looked fine in there but are too overbearing now since all the furniture in the room is black and the walls are white and it looks way too stark and in-your-face so I think I should put some posters up on the walls to relieve the monotony and the home cinema system means that the TV has to be in the middle of a wall with the speakers either side of it and the sofa directly opposite so I'm watching the screen dead centre and the sound is all around me but I think if I can get rid of one of the wall units and move the tv into the corner then I'd have more space in the room but where would I put the speakers and the ironing board is propped up against one of the wall units and has been for months and months becuase I do my ironing in the lounge while watching TV or listening to a cd or something and also because it's the warmest room in the house since the central heating broke and I never bothered to get it fixed so now I just heat the room I'm in and the kitchen is always freezing but it would make more sense to keep the ironing board in there but then I can't listen to any music while I'm ironing unless I put some speakers in the kitchen and drive them from the main hi-fi amp in the lounge but then I've got to find somewhere to route the speaker cables through so it would make more sense to put the amp nearer to the kitchen which is one of the reasons why I want to reorganise the living room in the first place but if I put the ironing board in the kitchen then the only place to store it is in the alcove under the stairs and I keep the bike there rather than in the shed because it means the bike won't get rusty over winter and it's also not going to get stolen if it's kept in the house so I've been thinking about putting a hook in the ceiling and hanging the bike off it when I'm not riding it at least it will get it out of the way a bit and then I can move the tumble dryer over to the other side of the room and free up some space near the back door which will certainly make it easier to get the bike in and out of the house and oh my god there's far too much to think about here and I definately need to change something in my life but I don't know where to start.

Today was a good day. I took the day off work, a personal day carried forward from last year, and boy does it feel great waking up at 8am on a weekday knowing I don't have to jump out of bed straight away.

My new fridge-freezer arrived, not too early, not too late, and whatever damage it had on it to deserve being in the "seconds" auction is unnoticeable. As long as it keeps the food cold, that's good enough for me. I swapped the doors round so they hinge on the left instead of the right. I never got round to doing that with the old fridge-freezer, so I always had to walk round the door every time I wanted to get something out of it.

I've decided to start de-junking my life, starting by de-junking my house. I'd collected a lot of old timber and bits of mdf from my old bedroom at my parents house over christmas, and since I found I didn't have a use for very much of it, most of it went to the tip this afternoon. Swiftly followed by a bunch of other crap that I'd built up over the years. My living room is looking a lot more like a living room now, and not like the set of Scrapheap Challenge. Still a long way to go, though.

Had a meeting with my solicitor in the afternoon to see if I can do anything about getting my ex off my back for a bit. There may not be much I can do to change the current situation, but I left feeling chirpy anyway :-)

And just to round the day off I had a surprise visit from my brother and sister-in-law. I was busy on the computer upstairs and didn't hear them knocking. I did, however, hear the phone ring. When I picked it up I heard a shivering voice utter "Open the door, we're freezing out here!". Maybe I should invest in a doorbell, heheh. If I'd had the stereo on upstairs I wouldn't have even heard the phone...

So, a good day from start to finish. I could do with more days like today.

You know it's getting bad when you actually have to start reading your own blog to find out if those few random notes you made during your lunch break and emailed to yourself at home actually made it into a post. And since these particular random notes haven't yet made it into a post, I thought I'd sort them out and promote them to "fully-fledged blog entry" right now. Or tomorrow, if I don't get this finished tonight. Or indeed yesterday, which it probably will have been by the time you're reading this. Or was. Technically I'm writing this tomorrow, since it's past midnight and I'm going to backdate the entry when I post it just to make it look like I wrote something on the first of the month. In my mind it's still today no matter what the time is. It only turns into tomorrow once I've been to bed, slept and woken up again. You can imagine how confused I get if I stay awake all night, something I haven't done in years and years and years. I've probably pulled an all-nighter about three times in my life (all the other times I've tried it I've dozed off at about six or seven a.m.) so going by my logic I'm still on the 28th of January, since those three days never turned into tomorrow. Or something.

Anyway, the notes I made in my lunch break? Boring drivel, something about how much good quality television there is at the moment, and how it's all on Channel 4, and what am I paying my TV licence for if I never watch anything on the BBC? Well, almost nothing. I can't find anything to watch on BBC1 these days, and on BBC2 I only watch Top Gear repeats and Never Mind The Buzzcocks. On channel 4 I'm watching ER, Shameless, Brat Camp, Desperate Housewives, Anatomy For Beginners (excellent but far too short) and a few other bits and pieces.

Now tell me, would you rather have read me waffling on about tv programmes, or trying to unravel the space-time continuum in the early hours of the morning? Or is it the late hours of the evening? Only you can decide - to vote for the early hours of the morning, call 09011 123123, and to vote for the late hours of the evening call 09011 123124. Calls cost 10p, none of which goes to charity.

I think I need to get out more.