Scott’s Flickr pics
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Scott’s blog
Musings on a world I am no longer sure about
coo
it’s all gone live. Rah!
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God. Christmas an all that shit.
It’s all over at last. Bwahaha. So I’m back to Freakcitying like a bastard (still corrupting data in the database...I can either sift through it all or upsize, upsizing seems the sensible solution. So, whilst on the whole keeping compatibility, I’m coding like a bastard changing all the sql so it works for sql server. A tricky thing to do, but probably worth it.
Friday: left work early. Wandered about on Oxford St. Phoned Chris and arranged to meet up sometime this week. Bought wrapping paper. Bought a chavvy fan for the PC (there’s no HDD light, so I bought an LED fan that doubles as HDD light 
) Home via the offy for my last drink of the year.
TJ got back, accidentally got drunk. Ordered a cab for the Swan, but it took 45 mins to get the mile or so it had to travel so ignored it when it arrived as 30 mins drinking time wasn’t really worth it. Hunger struck at about 4am so defrosted chicken bits in microwave and deep fat fried them.
Up on Saturday without too much of a headache. Freakcitied a bit until I had to run off and pick up the video camera I bought from eBay for £34. So, hauled my butt off to Croydon. Trams are fun. They’re like baby DLR trains. But wider.
Picked up the video camera, having got very lost. Accidentally fell into Ikea by mistake on the way home and bought lots of silly things that I didn’t really need. Candles, bedclothes, a slatted blind for photography. Candle holders. More candles. Pillows. Pot pourri. Cardboard bolt together boxes. Giggle.
Home, open the door to find smoke billowing out at me. And a grinning TJ on the sofa. He’d tried this thing called “cooking” that he’d heard about. Basically copying me, but forgetting that he’d deep fried the chicken until it was black. And he’d left the fat on the gas too, but I didn’t find that out until much later. Thank christ on a bike I’d bought pot pourri. Frowned a bit and settled down to watch Cold Comfort Farm which had arrived that morning. Silly 
Christmas day was cool. Opened prezzies, a vibrating pillow from Dee, a set of towels from Nanna and Grandpops. Pottered about a bit, wrapped presents, ate bacon, cursed Teej for having done weird things to it (frozen bacon doesn’t like me). Freakcitied. Chatted to Danny, Chris, Nikki, Owen, family, etc. Biked off to Owen’s at about 3:30 where we watched some Heroes and ate loads of yummy food cooked by Jen. Doctor Who was a giggle. Pauline dying was silly. Little Britain was (apparently) funny once. Played with breaking Owen’s PC a bit. Headed home.
Chatted with Danny for an hour or so before bed. In billions of pillows. Heh.
Today I’ve freakcitied and that’s about it. Bought pointless shit from Somerfields and peered at pointless tat in Woolies but that’s all so far. Lloyd’s on his way over because I demand Lloydcuddles. And I’m washing up a bit. How exciting!
Found my handsfree kit and just found my bluetooth thingy so am all happy
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Yay.
Oliver’s puter is working rather nicely now. Figured it may be dying because of lack of airflow at the back. So we went shopping to a lovely little PC shop on London Road. Who’d have thought there’d be PCs in Leigh on Sea? Bought him a new silent CPU cooler with blue shiny LEDs and two case fans with blue shiny LEDs too. Boshin. He’s happy coz it’s “pretty” (if I hadn’t spent the last 4 hours staring at breasts on his calendar I’d be worried) and I’m happy coz it works right
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Bah continued
...painstakingly exported all the data to text files, created a brand new database and reimported all the data. So the site all works again and is far less broken. Yay. Stupid phone, not letting me type all that at once
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Bah
So I’ve been firefighting access all morning. Doh. The database decided yesterday that it couldn’t be bothered to work right and would instead die totally if you tried to update it (so editing a forum post corrupted the entire thing). Tried downloading it and repairing it, hence yesterday’s downtime, and it seemed ok after that. However, it died again at about 3am. Bah. And I had an uncharacteristic layin so didn’t notice until 11. Bah and thrice bah. So I downloaded the damaged file, repaired it...
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Meeple
<<azuzazzyzx.livejournal.com/110768.html <== coolies
picasaweb.google.com/brianrubin/BrowmcoatBackupBashFriday <== picktchores
picasaweb.google.com/brianrubin/BrowncoatBackupBashSaturday <== morepicktchores>>
Got muchos bits of freakcity done. I have avatars, polls, comments, blogs and the diary left to finish.
Acquired www.quul.net - this will be amazing. When I get time.
Refactored the forums so the message display chunk becomes a component. Will simplify it some more and then deploy it, possibly in a way that it’ll be able to serve as a blogs thing too.
Met up with Dom for lunch yesterday, yummy Waga fun and then went to the Quebec for drinks (I figured it’d amuse him as he’d not been there before).
Got tickets to go see James Masters at the Union Chapel in May.
Cycled to work this morning whilst feeling like death. Failed to run footle over so simply waved at him instead as I zoomed past him at Holborn. And by zoomed I mean I was travelling at at least 10 miles an hour.
Dune the directors cut arrived. It’s shiny. I may watch it soon.
Have Thursday off as Danny breaks up on Wednesday and might come visit.
Jen’s xmas prezzie arrived. I’m buying her one as I didn’t last year. Hopefully she’ll not buy me one this year and we’ll be even
Owen’s is MIA. Damn monkeys. I’m sure it’ll turn up.
My laptop hard drive exploded. Well. Ish. Started making clanky noises and then bluescreened. So I decided I should possibly probably maybe press the “buy new HD” button on eBay. 60gig lappy HD, 5400rpm, £39 inc VAT+Postage (which was a tenner). Dead chuffed.
LOOK. I CAN MAKE REALLY BIG TEXT NOW! although that’ll probably only work in the new code on beta.
Changed the quotes formatting thing a bit so it’s a touch more robust. Changed the hilite code too to use a look ahead expression, something that both myself and Owen were rather surprised works in ASP classic. Guessing the Jscript engine got an upgrade somewhere along the way...
I was going to show you a really cool broken version and an unbroken version but I’ve forgotten how I did it. Bah.
My moonlighting as a casting director seems to be going well. 44 email applications. And I’ve emailed the person who’s meant to be getting them all but no! They don’t want to hear from me. Or are incapable of replying. Fucktards
*leaks a bit of wee*
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Hm
Just saw that the PM is about to go to brussels. i have a bad feeling about this. In other news. Must watch Pan’s Labrynth
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Damn. Wrong country. /Again/
<
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BBB...
So there’s this TV show. Didn’t really take off over here, on account of it never being broadcast on terrestrial television. Called Firefly. Some people thought it might be good, so took to acquiring it as it was broadcast on le Fox network, me included. It carried on for a few episodes, each one cementing the goodness of what we were watching in our hearts. And then rumours abound of its imminent cancellation. We can’t believe that something that good is going to be cancelled, we’re in awe at the stupidity of Fox network executives.
But in the end it’s cancelled. It’s creator, Joss, is heartbroken and vows to find another arena to tell the story. It’s fans take on the moniker “Browncoats” and set about spreading the word. They convince Fox to release DVDs of the entire show, including unaired episodes and in the correct order (they were originally aired out of order and with the pilot shown last). The DVDs sell millions. Firefly sits at #1 in Amazon’s bestsellers list for weeks. Joss works out a deal to make a movie and it is good. Critically acclaimed and sells well on DVD, however, doesn’t do quite enough trade at the cinema to make it commercially viable to create a sequel.
A company called Booster Events decides to create a convention for Firefly fans. The Big Damn Flanvention. as our characters are the Big Damn Heroes, and Nathan Fillion is occasionally an arse and accidentally called the fans “flans” in a video interview once. And it stuck.
The event sells out. An amazing time is had by all. There’s some grumbling about organisation, and how the organisers seem to just want to throw the event so they can hang out with the cast. But overall, people have an amazing time, 8 of the 9 main cast members attend, Joss surprises everyone by appearing as well, unscheduled. The whole weekend becomes talked about and there is much love.
""After a question about who was the actor’s favorite male Firefly character went nowhere, Sean rephrased it to if you couldn’t be your own character, which one would you like to play. ‘I pick Jayne,’ said Sean definitively, which made Adam laugh. Then Nathan jumped in with, ’I’d play Wash, only funny.’ Then, playing off Alan and the crowd’s reaction, ‘Sorry... funnier.’ To which Alan remarked, ’I’d play Mal, only not gay.... okay, less gay.’""
So the Big Damn Flanvention II is planned. Same people (Booster Events), same timeframe (2nd weekend in December). It sells out (again) even though the ticket prices are huge. ($750ish for a top ticket, $350 for a weekend pass). People prepare to descend upon SoCal and all is good. Or is it?
Booster Events put on two badly attended conventions, and there’s a little disquiet about them. They’re not anything to do with Firefly/Serenity though, so fans mostly ignore the gossip...until...
With less than two weeks to go until the sold out Flanvention II, Booster Events make an announcement on their public website:
<
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gurgle.
So I had yesterday off work. And I sorta feel better for it. I also managed to sleep reasonably well, dodgy hallucinations aside. Then again, I always do that when ill, so that’s a lot more melodramatic than it sounded.
It’s my turn to pay for Danny to come visit me, so I’m going to post him some cash in a christmas card and keep my fingers, legs and eyes crossed it arrives in time for him to be able to use it on Saturday. He’s apparently got to be back on Sunday so won’t be staying over, but still...it’ll be nice to see him and huggle him lots.
However. He’s going to a party Friday night...I can so see all of this going horribly wrong...
Last day of work today for a week. Going to (hopefully) finish freakcity, build my godson’s PC and hope it all works ok, possibly even write some music. Definitely not doing Scotland though as I’m far too poor. Yarg.
Although by far too poor I do actually just mean “not got a spare 100”. Heh.
Didn’t bike today as I feel rough as fuck. I sound very sexy though. Ahem. Or like someone with advanced throat cancer at least. So was late (thanks, bus!) and hungry. I had a craving for flaming hot monster munch on the way in. Perhaps I am pregnant after all?
Yesterday I bought 12 mince pies. Today there are none left. Whoops 
I’m considering giving the smileys a bit of a clean and polish. And adding some more MSN ones. God help me!
It’s all going to be so amazingly cool when it’s finished.
I bought the domain name quul.net yesterday. I’m thinking about making it an elitist clique. Not yet sure. Might just use it for all my stuff and retire ethosuk.org.uk - not sure. Suggestions on a postcard please?
I think I’ve also worked out why the strange logging out bug occurs. I think it happens when you’ve got freakcity open in two places. What *should* happen is it should log you out of the old one when you log in to the new one...but I guess that’s not happening at the moment. Do I dare check information in the DB every page load? Will it kill it? Should I do it some other way? Who can say!
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I...
...appear to have found a rendering bug in IE7 I also didn’t go to work. I just couldn’t face it. Bleh! I’d better feel better by the weekend or I’m sulking...
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1 comment.
urgle
www.londonist.com/archives/2006/12/londonist_live_21.php
I am apparently the first person in the UK to review them. So fuck you, NME 
Jesus. I feel like shit, but I can’t really have time off — I have Friday-Thursday booked as holiday and it’ll look mighty suspicious.
cunt0rs.
My innertube was not Slime. It was well and truly flat. Fortunately, our designer at work appears to be running a sideline in cycle accessories and sold me a new innertube for £2. And I managed to change it, using the wheel’s own quick release lever as a rudimentary spoon to flip the tyre off.
Sometimes I rock.
Cycled wobblily home - my front tyre when not very inflated feels dodgy as fuck. Took me an hour as I daren’t go at any speed on it at all.
Finished (pretty much) all my funky stuff to do with invisible media players controlled by javascript. Yay.
Got stuck in b3ta for a bit last night. Most entertained.
0IofSmP4Zp9F2CPFfgtaMrQ5G5kcO32B5zXNcZDjhi5MuWlo62oh1jY94aupqB0sxHHTLGlGpMSt5hc7rN!mkHTGfdUhIruvkMJX*BIHER1Ep3UlsHcTNM/ceiling%20mast%20copy.jpg
And my favourite...
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owwwy
27 new emails, all of which in response to a casting call from Sick Puppy Productions...my inbox is overflowing with arty B&W pictures of all american 16yr olds...and I didn’t even do it on purpose! Wah!
So, I legged it round to Evans Cycles on Thursday lunchtime to try and purchase one of their finest wheels.
“Hi, I need a new wheel. A spoke in my back wheel broke. But I dont’ have that much cash at the moment”
“Starting from about £55. Back cluster for £15.”
“Oh. So £80 then?”
“You’ll need a new chain too...£12”
“OK, G’bye xxx”
Why is it that whenever I go to Evans Cycles I get the impression that they just don’t want anyone to distract them from the paper?
Walked to Cycle Surgery instead.
“Hi, I need a new wheel, a spoke in my back wheel broke...but I don’t have that much cash at the moment...”
“Oh. You might be able to fix it if it’s just a spoke”
“Nah, it actually tore out of the rim.”
“Oh right, I get you...oops. Hang on, let me have a look. I think we have some wheels at £40...”
wanders off
“Yep, We have this, and the back cluster’ll be £25”
“So £65 then. How easy are they to fit?”
“Oh, dead easy. Give me a moment, I’ll do it for you...”
I like actually going to places where they see you as a person as opposed to an annoyance.
So, back home Thursday evening for a fun bike dismemberment and retool. My bike is all happy again and smiley and stuff because it loves me. Chatted to Danny a bit and then bedded. Unfortunately not with him, as he lives 100 miles away. Bah. And he called me a ladyboy coz I was cooking, cheeky cunt =P
Off to work Friday, got some amazingly cool javascript written that talks to either quicktime or media player and makes it invisibly play stuff in a standards compliant object tag without need of an embed tag or any hacky javascript to make it work. In all browsers (cept Opera, but that’s shit anyway) on all platforms. And any platform it doesn’t work on, or if the browser doesn’t have a media playing plugin, well. It just opens the sound in whatever default player the OS has installed. Well chuffed. Especially about the standards compliant object tag, as I wasn’t sure it was possible.
Back home at sensible o’clock for a change (having worked until 8pm the night before). My Fry and Laurie Season 3 DVD arrived, so we whacked that on and sniggered muchly. Especially the “I stooped to pick a buttercup. Why people leave buttocks lying around, I’ve no idea” line. Which was so immensely unexpected I almost gave birth and TJ has been trying to replicate it when drunk ever since. Chatted to Danny a bit (I seem to have accidentally used all my free minutes in about 5 days...whoops. Fortunately I was able to change priceplan just in time for christmas... ). Sunin arrived and we Tescoated. I (in keeping with my tradition to buy silly things whenever we midnight Tesco) bought a bluetooth headset for £15. Headed home with lots of dead animal. But no snacks. D’oh. Fiddled with little bits of FC and then bedded.
I’m determined to get every single last niggle out of the themes and the site before I go live. My original plan was to go live on Saturday, but this proved impossible as I still have a fair bit to do to the thing before I finish. So I’ve put it back a week, I’ll try and make it work then.
Up at 7am on Saturday to wake Danny so he’d remember to get on a bus. Long and elaborate plot to get him to London which would have worked correctly if it wasn’t for the blue rinse brigade wanting to go to London for Shopping. Bah.
Plan:
Hammersmith at 10:30 to meet Danny.
Home at 11:30
Shag like bunnies
Leave with gays at 2 to get to...
...Somerset House for 3
Ice Skate (or, more accurately, watch)
Pizza Express at 6
Richard’s at 8
Ho