Scott’s blog
Musings on a world I am no longer sure about
hur
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Working too much...
Much better quality, innit? Worked too late — finished around 9:30. Urgh. Lots done though, which was quite good. David leaves tomorrow, I’m off tomorrow so we were just trying to get stuff finished off. Reckon it might work too...
Decided I didn’t want to go straight home so popped to Retro where I discovered Harry being slightly tipsy. Followed him upstairs and said hello to the rest of ’em. Roddy turned up and we all went for food.
Wagammmmamas. Had the same as usual. Crap waiter, made excuses not to leave a tip. Ollie paid for most of my dinner as Barclays were being strange about when they update their accounts again. Odd people.
Got the fastest bus home in the world, failed to get into Chariots on acccount of Barclays declining my card (grr) even though technically I’d been paid. Went home. Sat online chatting to Chris for much too long...woops.
Another Chris. There are startling similarities. Was talking to him about the other Chris and was kinda spooked. Said “christ, I’ll be really scared if you tell me you play piano”. “I do” he said.
Heh. Ah well. We’ll see what happens with everything lifewise. I’m tired of doors closing, I’m opening some new ones.
Inside my skin I’m dying.
My revelation for the day.
Went out at lunch and tried to buy an airbed/pump and batteries at Argos with absolutely NO success at all. So sulked and went to Computer Exchange and bought a camera instead. Or so I thought...
Special offer as it was in bad shape, Casio Exilim EX-Z3 - £78. Got back to the office and put it on charge to discover that inside the camera case was a *second* one. Crap sales guy obviously gave me the display model too or something. Two cameras for £78? Bargain! Sold as seen has its advantages 
It’s a teeny bit thicker than the MobiDV cam but the rest of the dimensions are smaller and its body is metal. Feels nicer. Picture quality isn’t half bad either considering it’s only 3.2meg and I’m used to my SLR. It’s small enough to take out with me but gorgeous too. Impressed so far 
Back display’s fucking huge! See my flickr for more bits of it.
Will blog more later, too much work to do right now
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shiny.
Good mood so far today. Managed to get lots of bits of css done yesterday, was an interesting day.
Lots of people running around like headless chickens as David, my line manager, leaves on Friday. Greg wandered over to one of the programmers near me and informed him that as David was leaving he’d requested that his leaving gift be that Greg strangle this guy in front of everyone. Mirth.
More CSS tomfoolery. Nearly done now. Back to fiddling with Java and XMLC, which is way more fun.
decided to sauna after work. Met a guy called Nat there who I’ve been chatting to on gaydar for years. Was nice to meet him at last. Talent was awful though. Think I’ll bring my own next time.
So no fun for me. Hmph. Came home to a flurry of FC posts about random shit. Have decided that the website’s like a kettle. If I don’t watch it, people use it
Pete contacted me to let me know FC was about to appear in ScotsGay. Scary.
Chatted to some people. Earlier in the day I’d got raffik to join. He’s dirrrrty, so I put him on the filth group. Yay. Nice to see he was keeping it up. Fnarr.
At last I think I’ve solved the problem with messages randomly fading out and not coming back. Need to fiddle and see if it works in Safari.
2 more days at work then camptastic!
133 OVER MY FRICKEN LIMIT THIS MORNING. Can someone lend me £140 until tomorrow morning? 
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Late again.
""Celebrating the queen’s birthday by putting her face on our cover in a thinly veiled attempt to sell more of our excreable rag
Got sidetracked by doing things to freakcity. I should really not touch it in the morning. Burnt pizza too. Not sure what’s worse, burning it or eating it at 8am. Work yesterday was bitty. Grr. Hate it when there’s not quite little enough to do to be a slacker but not enough to do to actually be interested. Stayed until 7. Bleh and double bleh.
Texted Stephen to see if he wanted to go fo a drink some time and catch up. He replied with “I’m free now, where do you want to meet?”
Went to Retro and had a drink, chatted about all the things that have happened in the last 5 years or so since we’d chatted properly. He still keeps in touch with some of the guys from Digital Architecture. Our boss at the time, a guy called Owen (or pixie, as fruitbat liked to call him), is aparently living in France now and was last seen doing a tour of the uk, presenting one of those personal saviour type “this is how I changed my life” talk things. Hur. I’d not buy a used car off the man at any rate
Stephen had a look through some of my photos on the T3 and was very impressed. He’s a freelance photographer and reckons I should build a portfolio and try and get work doing photography. I’m gnna give it a go I think. He really seemed to like my portrait work.
Lloyd arrived at Retro too as he had a travelcard and was bored. He seemed fairly impressed with Stephen’s awsomeness. Left Retro at about 9:30 (Stephen had done an all nighter the night before and was shattered) and I headed home. Chatted to some people before bed. At 1:30am. Woops. Today will be a coffee++ day
2 days until payday. 3 until camping. Yay. Should be quite a few people 
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Weekender.
Blogging on the move with a crufty old Palm Wireless Keyboard Friday — finished work shockingly late at about 7pm. XMLC was being a bitch and I abandoned it at the point where it was rewriting my Javascript and helpfully escaping all the quotes. Grr.
Went to Retro but there were no seats and I wasn’t feeling barish and Owen wasn’t out an stuff, so headed off again after about 10 minutes or so. 4 days until camping, can’t wait
Headed home where I removed Thursday night’s dinner from the microwave (hur) and proceeded to fiddle with Fedora on Novak until I got compiz working. TJ was impressed because of the wobbly windows.
1 month until X III
stayed up until 6am getting fedora working right on Pixel.
Noticed on Saturday that something’s now fucked in video playback. We can have sound and 2 frames a second using Xvidix or 24 frames a second and white noise using Xshlm. Wah! Will fiddle another time I guess.
Played with bits of freakcity, mostly bug fixing. Chatted to a few people online too. It was gorgeously sunny so I decided to don shorts and tshirt, take my camera and go a wandering round London (see my flickr for more). I was planning on picking up an airbed but sadly failed to realise the best place I could look would be Argos until a day later. Woolies did however have some lovely solar powered LED lights that I’m tempted to get for about a fiver.
Got the 15 to the Strand, wandered up through Covent Garden and took a few photos. There was a random woman on stage singing, she appeared to be quite happy doing this, so I’m assuming it was planned. Watched the patrons of the Punch and Judy being entertained by Punch and Judy. Guessing by the amount of British flags about that this might have been part of some sort of St George’s Day ritual. Someone should make us a better flag, ours is a bit rubbish. urbanian’s version of the Union Jack may provide some kind of inspiration.
Walked through to Soho. Stopped in a music shop on Charing Cross Road to try an buy an “A” string for my violin, but alas they were out of stock. Bah. Have texted Nikki to see if she’s got one.
Wandered round the arse of Soho, to Oxford Circus. Cashed a cheque in case I need money in my account this week. Bleh. Hopefully this month coming’ll be easier on my wallet. Not sure however as British Gas are being fuckwits. They now claim I owe them £100ish. Last week they owed me £30ish. Comedy. I’ll do the maths later, I have the meter readings.
Wandered down through backstreets, snapping away. Headed to Soho Sq where I saw Log enjoying the sun. Headed to Old Compton St where I bumped into James — he’s back from the States and had a fun time. Lots of duty free fags. He was unimpressed with Drew being on the sofa, those two really don’t get on, bless.
Wandered down to the park by Embankment whose name I can never remember and took lots of photies of flowers. Got the bus home.
Stopped off in Poplar park on the way. I never even realised it was there! Took pics.
Got home and cooked Spaghetti Bolognaise. Seasoned with a glass of red wine from a bottle TJ had passed out on whilst drinking. Was yummy
Not seen the new Doctor Who yet, might do tonight.
Watched some of Batman but was knackered so went to bed via flickr and all the pics I took.
Sunday I was up fairly early.Tidied a bit and then set about making a new theme for Freakcity based very loosely around a common layout used by lots of open source type people for their blogs. Possibly should have thought that over a little bearing in mind lots of these sites use Ruby on Rails and now it looks a bit thingboxish layout wise. Although of course I didn’t notice until I’d done it. Ah well. The graphics are fun. Not done a tiled background in aaaaages.
Bugfixed lots of stuff, rearra
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Oooh...
It’s pretty, but it’s also a bit late to be up on a schoolnight. I is nawty :S
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Pretty pretty
Pretty pretty walls. It’s sunny. At lunch I had to visit Oxford Circus so went for a wander through the arse end of Soho to the forrin exchange place by the station. Walking through Carnaby Street, sun in the sky, it’s lovely. I love London, I just don’t get to see enough of it.
Wandered past a shop (I think it was called Canvas) where all the walls are scribbled on in marker pen. Very cool.
Sexy cyclists zooming around topless are also cool.
Went to the bank and paid stuff in. Should do me until Monday at any rate. Now I just have to worry about the no electricity issue...
Sun has gone byebye now. It’ll get slowly greyer and more miserable until it gets dark. Then it might rain.
We’re in the middle of a huge drought. Water intensive industry is told to use as much as it needs, we’re told to save water. Coca Cola is still manufactured (it uses 4x the amount of water to make coke), cars are still manufactured, lawns go brown and prices go up.
That’s our solution to everything. Put the price up. Deprive the poor of something, don’t inconvenience the rich.
The rich won’t notice the gas shortage. The rich weren’t dying this winter because they couldn’t afford to heat their homes.
Remind me to move country soon?
I pray for the rain. I hope it comes. I hope it wipes out the smell of the petrol and the nicotine. I want to smell wet grass again.
River is definitely in order later. River and possibly some tea.
I fancy champagne on a boat on the Thames. One can dream?
Charles made a “moving tribute to Queen” according to the Evading Standards billboards today. I didn’t realise he was so upset about Freddie’s death...
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hur.
“u are a complete asshole babes, and manners u need a lot of” That told me then!
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wooyay
My Crappy Bus. (Small).JPG Finished a big chunk of work and learnt a few things too. I’m on exit controllers today, should be a right giggle.
My freakbag is full and by my side. Slightly more in it than my coat can carry, just enough for fun. Libby comes out to play too
Am going to fix linux on her, with a lightweight WM she should be much faster.
Popped into Retro after work to see Lloyd and Nich. Still get the feeling Lloyd is trying to set us up or something but it’s probably just him.
Went to Halfway and bumped into Bear and Martin. Justin turned up and loaned me “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” - I shall probably start it on the bus home.
Ran away from Halfway as soon as someone started singing “Jim’ll fix it”. Retro karaoke it’s not...
Home to my freakbag and TJ with a bit of money for me. Cooked dinner (Tesco Macaroni cheese ready meal, reduced for quick sale). Forgot about it entirely. It’s probably still sat in the oven. No wonder I’m hungry.
Ate chocolate pud.
Someone signed in — wasn’t expecting it. Kinda threw me 
Spose it means he thinks of me from time to time too.
Feel shitty, need to get away from everything. Next weekend can’t come quick enough. Suspect I’ll be on my own, looking at stars. Shiny. Need more friends who are just there for me. And fewer who think they know what’s best for me.
Quiet weekend. No money, nothing to do, fuck all on my oyster. River, I think.
If TJ manages more rent, we’re off to CXR to buy a violin string.
Almost finished the moderators bit of groups. Am going to ask plucker if there’s anything he’d like to see in the forums. There’s still a load of configurable stuff in there with no UI. I could give group owners the power to suspend threads for example, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Hm.
Traffic is shit. Gonna be late. Ken should never have extended the CC west. Now thousands of bored housewives have a license to drive in the zone...
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Yay!
Freakbag, modelled by world famous pornstar Steven Paige (Small).JPG My freakbag arrived today Innit gorjus!
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Hm.
I am possibly late, possibly due to me playing with my new broadbeans. Almost double the upload speed!
Sad geekery aside, I’ve decided I want a Palm T|X.
Sad geekery aside, shiny Javascript works everywhere in the new work thing. Still didn’t finish until 7 though.
Bought cheap stuff for dinner at work. However, got sidetracked by cheap Somerfields on the way home, so had cookies and chicken instead.
Forums code already a mess. Think I’ll rewrite it at some point soonish.
Watched Chronicles of Riddick — not as bad as I’d thought it’d be from the reviews. Surprised to find Alexa Davalos in it (she played Gwen in Angel). Pretty spaceships, nice to see a genuinely new idea in their design.
Recognised one of the (very 80s) bad guys - turns out he’s Ëomer in Lord of the Rings. Scary! And Iman was Big Tim from Requiem for a Dream.
Apparently the directors’ cut is less confusing. Must see it, although the plot didn’t seem confusing to me at all.
Bed at 11ish, woke up at the right time for a change too.
On the tube as I’m shockingly late. Just enough money on my Oyster to do it.
“Are you worried by thinning hair? I was.” claims Cheryl Baker in a poster opposite for “Nourkin” (whatever the fuck that is). What next?
“Do piles get you down? I know mine did” by Ricky Gervais?
“Tired of endlessly trimming your pubic bush? I know I am” by Carol Vodaphone?
Jesus.
On emergency leccy credit. Someone’d better acquire some cash soon or it’ll be a cold dark weekend for us...
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Ooh...
MAN GIVES BIRTH! Forgot to mention. I accidentally upset some Labour politicians on Monday. Got a leaflet through the door from them so opened the door to chuck it in the recycle bin. I’m guessing they’d pressed the (non functioning) doorbell because they were all stood there expectantly. So I just popped the leaflet in the recycle bin and shut the door, politely, in their faces
I’m so mean. But still, they were politicians...
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I..............
Look and feel better...with TAMPAX! (Small).JPG ...just ran for the bus. God I’m unfit.
Lots done yesterday. Plus I booked the campsite and confirmed my holiday too. My line manager is going to work for the people who hired me for my first fulltime job in London. Spooky!
Drew moved in temporarily.
Finished groups (almost) this morning. Have to enable admins, the rest works.
Going to do that at lunch I think.
Thank crunchie it’s Wednesday.
Arranged a paid photoshoot with a 45 year old SAM who then asked if I’d be alright with him being naked. I told him I’d not look. He then asked if I’d help “arrange the display”. Yeuch.
Muchos tired.
Chatted briefly with Owen, his first day went well. Arranged to take over one of his flickr groups.
Looked at Windypops pics. Looks like they had fun.
Lloyd had a feeling about something and called to make sure I was ok. I assumed it’d be Owen. Drew assumed it’d be James. Oddness.
Think James is back this week. Meant to be XXLing with him on Saturday. If someone pays me some rent, grr.
Can’t stop yawning 
Tonight, rice and fish and muchos coffee.
Tomorrow (or more likely some time today) 8mb broadband.
Next week — THE VERLD!
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Gah!
Some fucker’s put an ad on Gumtree using my email address for “Camden Crawl” tickets. I got bored of replying to random people after the first 10 or so. Bah 
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Looooooooong weekend
...and I did pretty much fuck all. TJ in his “drought period” so no money. It happens every month at around the same time but he never seems to realise or prepare for it. If he was a farmer he’d starve during winter
So I got loads of bits of freakcity done.
I wish Javascript was threadsafe
Actually, I just thought of a way around that...possibly...
Finished the themes. No more “freakcity beta” logos. Made dark the prettiest again, although I still prefer Day. It’s the jellybeans, see?
One day I’ll answer for it. One day, when Dan eventually gets out of prison, I’ll have to explain to him that I squandered his jellybeans making my website pretty. I hope he can forgive me...
Tom rejoined gaydar. He just couldn’t stay away. Must get around to meeting him, he’s funny.
Drew came over Friday. There’s some weird shit going on there. I suspect I’m in for a rough ride and about to end up in the middle of things I don’t want to be in the middle of. Oh well, such is life.
Mum and Andy became Freakcity’s 1000th member as a gestalt entity called redvacman. Coolness
Chatted to them on Saturday (they sent me an easter card — I don’t know why people bother), also talked to Nikki yesterday, we’re almost definitely going to do Amsterdam in the summer. Might see if David wants to tag along and see his mum. Nikki won’t arrive on the campsite until Saturday morning now apparently.
Watched Doctor Who. Annoying, whiny doctor and far too many plotholes. All the reasons why scifi can be awful wrapped in one episode. But the characters were reasonably well written, aside from that. Plus Billie Piper “acted”, which was frankly shocking. And the end was almost touching too. Then again, Ep1 of Season 27 was as bad.
Acquired Aeon Flux, not watched it yet though.
Spent much of the weekend attempting to get an Xgl based linux desktop configuration working. There’s a Kororaa live CD out there that shows off this incredible new technology. It’s amazing eyecandy. Windows that wobble. Transparency. Antialiased WMs, desktop rotating instead of switching. So cool! Failed to get it to work right on Gentoo (compile error in Cairo, the new funky graphics engine for x) and on FC5 (computer says no). Bah. Have instructions on how to do it using Umbongo so might try later. Originally tried it by installing Kororaa, but there appears to be a bug in my net driver (rt2500) that means if your kernel is SMP or preemptible it hangs as soon as you bring up the interface. Which is annoying as the stock kororaa kernel is both, and the liveCD doesn’t include the sources so I can’t rebuild it all. Well, not at least until I’ve worked out slightly more gentoo than I currently know anyways.
Yay, the policemen who killed Jean Charles De Menezes have been cleared! So if you want to kill foreigners with impunity, join the Met!
*sigh*
Chatted to Bill and Dave online a bit yesterday, then, as the sun got low in the sky, decided to go to the Thames Barrier to take pictures. And then City Airport. And then Poplar. Hehe. Got back at 10ish, recycled dinner with added flat yorkshires.
TJ downloaded porn of himself, the sick fuck
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Bah.
No eggs in the post. No-one loves me
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yay!
Hi from CafePress.com! We have shipped your package to: Scott van Looy XX Xxxxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx London, London EXX XXX UNITED KINGDOM This package contains: 1 x freakbag Your package is sent via UPS Mail Innovations International. Tracking is not available for this shipping method. If you have any questions, please contact our Customer Service Department: - On the Web at www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/. - Phone toll-free at 1-877-809-1659 Thanks! CafePress.com This is an automated e-mail. Please do not respond.
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Some things die
The writing’s on the path. (Small).JPG Much of yesterday was spent making javascripty DOM stuff, a welcome change from the monotony of Javay DOM stuff. Owen agreed to help with SQL Server. I agreed to pay him in gin.
My phone returned — Three claim it’s not faulty but water damaged. Not impressed, think I’d remember showering with it. Ah well, it’s only cosmetic. Unfortunately my SIM was at home in a safe place. Or so I thought...so couldn’t use it.
Not *too* many bugs in the new FC code, which was nice. Been thinking about new designs - going to try and make some very striking themes and then have the front page randomly pick one before you log in. Possibly. Or a dropdown.
Left work at just before 7. Justin had a mini USB dongle, which is apparently mac compatible, going spare. TJ has been looking for one for ages, so met J after work at the Bankside gallery to grab it. He’d invited me to a private showing of some very cool stuff (Redwire did their rather sexy website )-- decided to walk it along the South Bank as it was a pretty day. Arrived with time to spare, found J, grabbed dongle and then wandered about looking at pretty things. See my photoblog for piccies. Was offered wine, declined and went for OJ — Justin enquired as to why I didn’t have wine and I told him, can’t believe I’ve not seen him in that long...
Wandered to St Paul’s after Gallery fun. Was dark and beautiful. I can always feel the power and grandeur more when it’s dark. It was lovely, like bathing in honey. Or some other shite cliché. Bus home, realised I’d walked about 1/3 of the distance home by walking to Bankside, must walk the full distance some time.
Tried hard to get the lovely dongly thing to work on TJs mac but to no avail. Also upgraded Slackware on my PC (Pixel - named after The Cat Who Walks Through Walls) and downloaded 2.6.16.5 and slackware-latest. Left it all doing things overnight.
The dongle works on the Mac, however the driver utils are fucking awful (*uncheck* “radio on” to turn the radio on?) and it wouldn’t connect. Am going to see if anyone’s ported wlantools to OSX - then I’ll amaze and astound TJ by making it work from the command line.
Late to bed, woke up at 6:30 again. New kernel (installed). Tried compiling the beta of th rt2x00 driver for my wifi card — it failed. Downloaded a CVS version from 4 days ago and was shocked to see it work fine. Upgraded the Nvidia driver too. Shiny. Going to see if interdev runs under wine.
Last night and today I’ve had a strong feeling that something’s coming. I feel like a surfer, poised, ready to hit the wave. Something good. Something positive. Time will tell...
The writing’s on the path
Lost,
You turn away,
Not sure where,
Not sure how,
Direction and purpose,
Lost
Still you travel,
But you don’t see it,
Still you grow,
But into what.
Stagnation kills you,
Pushing them away,
Because it’s simpler,
To be alone
The writing on the path
Under your feet
Your head in the clouds
You never see
The writing on the path
Down by the earth
Down on the level
Down, the natural state.
The writing on the path
Makes the world a wonder
See it through the eyes
Of a child once more.
Expect nothing
And be contantly surprised
Or expect the world
And be constantly dismayed
The rest is up to you
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I am naughty...
Scott on tour! (Small).JPG Unfortunately for everyone I had time last night to build more freakcity. Heh. I also did something with my fabulous cafépress store and designed some things, including a rather lovely messenger bag which I bought
Finished the forums. Made quorn fillets in a white wine and pepper sauce. Went to bed at about 2am. Whoops.
Up at 6:30 - put everything live. Will watch it fall over from work when I get there. Eventually. Oops. Going to add in “group inviting” tonight
Eclipse tell me I’ll be regraded by the 20th.
Short of cash. Will write to Barclays and see if I can be refunded.
Going to polish themes and blogs next on FC.
So. Groups. Freakcity Stuff. More info about us. Banner ads. Online indicators. Myriad bug fixes. Not bad for a point release.
Installed Trac on Novak for bug tracking. Going to add FC to CVS on there too, should make things easier for Jeff.
Going to make some nicer banner ads too when I next have my design head on.
Slightly different route to work today as I’m hideously late (left flat at 9:30 — oops!), so on the District line from Bow Road to see if it’s any quicker...
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What is The Matrix?
Novak, now with 4, yes, that’s right, you count ’em, FOUR hard drives attached... Lots done at werk. Ate toast, drank cawfee, that kinda thing. Managed to finally fix a bug that’d been annoying us for fucking ever. Wading through 1490 lines of code to find a
Groups going well. Almost finished. Wrote a chunk this morning before getting on this bus I’m on. I can now see who has requested to join a group but haven’t written the code to actually join them yet. As ever, it’s going around in my head and will continue to do so until it works in the correct way
Home. Added rice to last night’s left over delivery chinese rice to make enough for 2 mountains (am crap at making enough rice, always get too much). Defrosted 2x chicken thighs, put milk (run out, oops — so milk splash and water) and cornflour, mushroom stock (reduced to stock cubes! The shame!) and white wine in a pan to make a sauce, poured it over chicken and (frozen) cauliflower and put it in the oven for 1 hour. Whilst I listened to Skin’s rather excellent new album, which arrived in the post yesterday
Watched some Angel with dinner. Which had turned out quite well
Did some CSS stuff to FC for a few hours before bed. Decided on toast but accidentally set fire to it. So being me, I flickred photos of it, then put it out. Heh.
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wah!
...sent my phone off to be fix0red. It’s buggered, stripes on screen and crap battery doing strange things like being full one minute and empty the next. 3 business days after they receive it I should get it back. That’ll be Friday I hope.
And I’m hoping I can get all my contacts back on to the fucking thing. I trust SonyEricsson about as far as I could dropkick a llama.
I feel naked without it. Even though no-one ever calls or texts
Just ordered an upgrade to my ADSL as well, 8mbps. Let’s see if it all works.
Wonder if my green frog modem can handle that kinda speed?
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Weekendness
Bizarre artwork in the Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design window Friday I went straight home after work - feeling mingy and crap. Did bits of FC and chatted to people. Bed quite late, but hey. Mogs was working so flat to myself
Started upsizing to SQL Server.
Bed lateish and then up at 6:30 on Saturday for more FC and a general tidy up. Finished OGGing my MP3 collection. Shiny. Skin’s new album should arrive today some time, got a Play confirmation it’d been posted.
Arranged CDs alphabetically. I appear to have some of Owen’s boyband CDs too. Oops.
Sorted my DVDs so TV was in its own shelf, giving me more space for films. Will post on Freakcity a list of VHSes I’m getting rid of, including such scifi classics as Sphere and Total Recall as well as Season 5 of Babylon 5 - all 11 videos.
Continued upsizing. My overnight job had failed.
Am skeptical bout the SQL Server that comes free with my hosting — it took 5 hours to import the forum posts — surely it should be a tad quicker than that?
TJ came home and gave me a huge chunk of cash. Unfortunately a day late, I went hideously overdrawn and got charged £30, but hey.
Went hatstand shopping. Failed.
Ended up in Stratford, he bought a memory stick and battery charger for his Cybershot camera, then we shopped at Morrissons. Headed home.
Bored. Drew (a friend of mine from waaay back) started chatting. Apparently he is about to be made homeless and wanted help. Arranged to pop to the Stag and see him. Mogs also had to pick his dry cleaning up from the hotel so came along too as he was just as bored.
Took the DLR to Tower, but were foiled by it being rubbish, so got off at Shadwell and walked the rest of the way. St Katharine’s dock twinkling in the dark.
Admired ships. Sniggered at Waitrose trying to be posh in the shell of a Morrissons.
Got to the hotel and asked the steadily more exasperated concierge for the dry cleaning. “Guest is looking for his laundry. Housekeeping? Somebody talk to me?!” — eventually acquired said laundry, apparently it’d been undercharged by £4 and so housekeeping made TJ pay for their mistake. My brother’d have been livid if that was at his hotel.
Wandered to Tower Hill in the rain. Forced to get a tube as no buses seemed to go near Victoria. Eventually found the Stag and chatted to Drew. Introduced him to TJ. He asked if we were together (*snigger*) and I said “no”. He said “but you wanna be?” Looked at TJ, smirked and replied “no!”.
He’s going to come stay for a bit until he sorts something out. TJ was mightily amused by Drew’s boss and his bitch tits. Sat around and drank. Drew informed us his boss fancied TJ, who looked horrified.
Decided to go to the Swan (TJ is easy after 3 pints and half a bottle of Merlot). Bumped into Kieran — tho that was sort of planned as he said he might go — as well as lazpac who introduced me to the rest of his household ("this is my landlord, he used to be a whore" — “Oh, this is my flatmate, he still is...” hilarity). The Swan is dire on Saturdays. The Swan is dire when sober, and there’s only so much diet coke you can drink. The combination of the two, vile. Mullets everywhere as well as fag hags. The floodgates open from Essex and they all arrive, to have a great night in “London”. Bless.
We wandered through the dance floor to try and escape the teeming hordes but the garden was shut (too cold) and so we couldn’t get out Pointed at a man and said “Look, I found Nemo.” Took TJ about 5 minutes to get it, at which point he sniggered lots. Well, if you’re fat, you really shouldn’t wear horizontal stripes. Certainly not ones that match the colourscheme of a clownfish...
I have no idea why, but Essex faghags are all ugly, fat and about 4ft9. I suspect because the pretty tall girls a
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Righty...
We’re now on a much faster box. Everything should be quicker. We also now have a bigger DB capability and 2.5x more bandwidth to use up per month
Soo...I shall attempt the upsizing to SQL server some time over the weekend. Beta will start running as a seperate DB for testing, and I’ll finish groups at the same time. Hopefully by the end of the weekend I’ll have everything running gorgeously on the beta and we can see how much faster this baby goes!
Already, searches are far quicker, as are the forums etc.
DNS will finish propogating some time tomorrow, then everyone’ll be able to see it again
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Hm.
They have Johnny Vaughn in the lifts at Covent Garden now. And somehow he sounds almost exactly like Robert Elms. Cunning use of “celebrity”.
Snowed under at work, splitting my time between 3 people. Fun!
Left the office at 7:30 (ugh) to go to Owen’s leaving do but felt exceptionally ming, so left again. Cancelled Tom too — hope the gig went ok. No money, couldn’t afford to get in. Owed money. Fucked off. Gone overdrawn by 44 quid today — more bills. Very pissed off about it all. I’ll be charged 25 quid for the privilege too. And get another black mark on my account history, thus preventing me from being able to lower the rates on my loans. If I don’t magically get 44 quid by 4:30
I predict I won’t be able to meet Tom tonight due to cashflow too. Grr. I refuse to borrow *more* to cover someone elses shortcomings.
Home by 9:30ish, ate potatos and beef and cheescake left over from last night. Noticed that SteveDSD deleted himself. Odd. Decided to sort out the deletion stuff — created a “dead users” table, the site deletes everything (inc messages, which I should change) and puts the primary image, the username and the uid in the dead users table, so dead people show up in forums with a name and a crossed out pic. I also remove user images from the file system, which I wasn’t, fuck only knows why...
So I wrote something to collect all the currently used image names in an array and delete the ones that weren’t in it. Which spanks the server so much I’ve not yet got it to work. Fun.
Am I the only person shallow enough to want every single boy on the Emporio Armani bus pants ad?
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Thank fuck it’s Thursday.
Work got a little hectic. That and irritating certain self important people on a certain website took up much of my Wednesday. bump and deev told me off a bit.
Work was split between playing with the callflow editor tree, updating the UI code for the videomail themes so it’s XHTML (grr. If we updated XMLC we’d not need to) and helping modify old code I wrote to do more stuff in the new theme.
Everyone’s spirits seemed much higher, which was good.
Oooh. My old flat appears to have net curtains now...
Bought a RFQS Tesco Finest chunk of beef for dinner for about £3. Also bumped into Dave in Tesco. He asked me how the photography stuff had worked out. Told him I’d be doing the shoot tomorrow (today). He told me to show him the results.
Back to the office and I get a text cancelling the shoot. Typical! Kinda handy though as I was triple booked. Whoops! So it’s Owen’s leaving do tonight, then rush off to Islington for The Patty Winters Show at 10. Should be entertaining
Left almost on time, arrived home to discover my Ulysses 31 DVD had arrived.
Phoned Mumsie. She’s hoping to come down over Easter at some point, stay over in a Hilton and go back the next day. She was telling me about Shaun too — apparently she thought he was in Spain on Mothers’ day when he turned up and surprised her. Sounded really sweet of him. So unlike my lil brother, hehe.
Did some bits on FreakCity whilst cooking. Beef with shallots (no red wine. Poo!), roast spuds, cauliflower and yorkshires. 6 each *cackle* — dished up (white wine spicy gravy that worked okish) and settled down to watch Ulysses. Damn I must have had a strange childhood.
More FC then bed. Finally finished OGGing everything too. Slept badly and woke up at 6:15. Bah. Did more freakcity.
I still have the theme from Starship Troopers going round my head. Grr.
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I was bored.
Mr Cunt! ...so I made "Mr Cunt"
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"Like a pale moon in a sunny sky, death gazes down as I pass by..."
snigger Work is starting to irritate me now. Patchy and being managed by a programmer who is way too busy to manage anyone. Maybe I’ll jump ship too — not sure. There was training offered, but it was offered in December and there’s been no sign of it. Shite sickness policy of only allowing 5 days ill a year means ill people in the office and everyone getting ill. No bonus, pension, perks and only 20 days holiday too. Other than the boss getting people drunk on occasion. Maybe I’d be better off elsewhere? Think I’ll sit on the fence a little longer and see if we get any of our big contracts.
Left work and bussed to the sauna to spend my last £10 looking at ugly people. Bah. Sat next to a masturbating skeleton for a bit, which was disturbing. I thought men lost their sex drive as they got older? Poor thing could barely get up and down the stairs. Wonder if any saunas have Stannah stairlifts?
They were playing Starship Troopers and most people seemed to be watching that. Then Kill Bill. Loud. Tricky doing stuff in the dark with people when all you can hear over the porn grunts is Uma Thurman screaming.
Almost missed the bus back. Fewer mad people on it this week. Phew.
Going to write a message wrapper function for FreakCity I think. And some form of admin interface. All the code in the back end exists to suspend users\threads, and whilst I’m not likely to use it, it might be useful *not* to have to write it when I need it.
Also need to finish groups
There’s apparently a bug that stops you signing up using Opera, which Saint found yesterday when he joined — think it might be linked to the problems Sunin’s been having in MS PIE and Opera Mobile too. Started work on the mobile site over the weekend — will do more of that too. Sainty’s apparently been having a horrible time of it. I’d hug him if he did that kinda thing...
Chatted to Tom a bit, he apologised for standing me up and we pencilled Friday in at Retro as a possibility.
Also texted James to see if he’s back from Ireland. He’s not yet, back next week, hopefully will see him then.
Bus home from the sauna was quicker than usual. There’s something nice about sitting right at the front of the top deck of an empty double decker bus, in the dark — nose pressed up against the glass. Almost feels like flying.
Have you ever flown in your dreams? A feeling so intense, so real, but so totally unlike anything in this world. Where does it come from?
Uh oh. New bus route involves a bus only barriered entrance to Great Tower Street off of Byward Street (Tower of London). And we’ve been sat at the lights waiting for the barrier to move for 5 minutes. It just stays down. TechnologyFAIL. Or possible DriverFAIL, I can hear him on the phone now...
...and now it’s worked. 10 minutes wasted. So much for getting to work punctually. Urg. So much traffic.
Changing from the 133 from Streatham to the 15 to Poplar involves getting off on London Bridge and walking to Cannon Street. There are loads of roadworks going on and someone had just left a load of streetlights laying on the footpath. So wished I had a van at that point.
Home at 11 and failed to manage an early night Munched RFQS kievs (will EU regulations dictate that they can only be made in Kiev? Will we end up with shitloads of “kiev style chicken in breadcrumbs”?) and chatted some to Will (an ex freak) on MSN. Sorta slept ok. More awake than I was.
Weighed meself this morning. Have lost weight again. Yay!
Spent the morning before work deleting bits from the Rio so I could squeeze more CDs on. Deleted most of Anastacia as she’s a whiny bitch (with a fantastic voice, but still...). Deleted Rufus Wainright, he writes like he read about love and pain in the Readers’ Digest once whilst taking a dump in his parent
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Hm.
There’s an annoying clicking coming from my Karma. Am a little concerned that the hard drive might be on the way out. Still, it’s relatively easy to replace them if it’s not under warranty. And I believe it is under warranty still anyways...
Erk. Having checked, it’s under warranty for the next 4 days.
March 9th 2005 was the purchase date.
Cripes. Maybe I’ll talk to the nice people at the shop thing.
However, apparently if I have the spare cash, I can buy a 60gb Hitachi drive for it and “upgrade” it if I’m careful. It’s the kind of thing I’d do for kicks anyways, being the kinda person who buys a Libby and overclocks it. So I might do it
...after I buy the camera...
Work was dull and crap. Left on time as I couldn’t face any more brokenness. Grr.
Home via Somerfields and “White Fish” for 68p. Bargain dinner (again). White fish+Rice+Sweetcorn. Mmm.
Got home to discover most of my Play order had arrived. Matrix ultimate edition thingy was outstanding. We watched Final Flight of the Osiris, then Matrix Reloaded. Then the making of. Was very very impressed with how they did the freeway scene.
Tired so went to bed earlyish. Did no FC at all. Bleh. Require a good night’s sleep and my throat fucking off I think.
Used up all the space on my Karma this morning, bunging the new OGGs on it. Oopsie. Maybe I *will* go for the new drive after all
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Shite.
Had a brainwave on the bus about a web address I wanted and the type of company I’d make with it. Gah. 27 is my lucky number (I was born on 27th Sept, can’t get much luckier than that. 27 = threecubed. So I thought I could make an IT consultancy business called threecubed - and that it would be a really cool name and everything.
Just looked up www.threecubed.com — not only does someone own it, but they’ve come up with exactly the same fucking idea as me.
Shite website though. Grr.
Ate shit throughout the weekend. Didn’t lose any more weight, didn’t put any on either...ho hum.
Time for health foods
cuntycuntcunt. Time to think of a better web idea too
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Meep!
In da hood. Friday I ran away before getting dragged to the Roundhouse for a leaving do. Got to Retro at 7ish - hung about outside as it’s infinitely preferable to inside on a Friday night. Bear was there and said hello. Danny, Lloyd, Owen turned up. O was only there for a bit, as he had a birthday party to go to, so I walked with him through Soho to the Welly. Told him that every Friday at Retro seems a waste — we need to play in new places, find new people.
Thursday I have a photoshoot. I forgot I’m supposed to be at Owen’s leaving do. So will try and do both. Friday he invited me to Starkers.
Sauntered slowly back to Retro via CXR to discover shitloads of thingboxers littering the bar. I’d forgotten that a load of them were doing Popstarz that night.
Fortunately, John, Jack, Sal and a load of other freaks were there too. Jack was pissed. Sal was sober. Tarrant was there.
I asked Rob if he was Swanning and he said he was doing Duckie’s birthday. Grr. I’d forgotten about that. *sigh*
Tom texted to say he’d come down and then texted at 10:45 to say he’d been waylaid and wouldn’t make it. Sunin arrived at 11:15 to ferry myself, Sal and John back to the flat, via an unexpectedly very closed Tesco at Bow.
Back to the flat, put on MCoG but they all looked at me funny so we opted for Carnivàle instead. Stayed up too late
Saturday I was up early and putting together the groups stuff. Didn’t get the front end finished though. Was silly with the extra info bits on the profile.
Decided to do something with the mountain of mail for other people we’d acquired. Most of which was from the Inland Revenue and addressed to many names at my address. I suspect the nice man who lived there before me might have been being a touch nawty
So wrote “not known at this address” all over all of it, opened one that didn’t have a return address, but did happen to be an A4 envelope, just the right size for my tenancy agreement. Considered drawing the recycled symbol on it in biro but thought better of it.
Sunin wanted prescription sunglasses, I wanted new clothes and John wanted a lift home, so we went to Barking and ate lots of unhealthyness, I bought a hoodie and cargo pants. John tried to make me get a Hawaiian shirt. Looked at glasses too, but there was nothing nice.
Decided it’d be amusing to go to Lakeside in my hoodie and see if they banned me. They didn’t
Loads of totty. Sunin remarked on the huge number of gays there, I pointed out to him that they were straight Essex boys who worship at the altar of Sir Becks and that they just mimic him. Not sure what that says about Becks...
Fuck all nice sunglasses. Got cookies and diet coke from M&S. Sunin got voddie. Headed home. Via a now open Tesco at Bow. Bought cheap chicken, OJ with which to tempt Lloyd over with and cranberry for Sunin to drink the litre of voddie with. And 15,000 eggs and some milk as I taught TJ how to make pancakes
Home, and I wrote more Freakcity. Cooked chicken in white wine and pepper sauce, which all went hideously wrong but somehow tasted ok. Mogs went to work. Lloyd arrived. Watched telly of some description, but forget what. Got Sunin’s wifi working (there was a digit wrong in my key. Woops!). Bed earlyish coz I was knackered.
Up early on Sunday — decided to validate all of freakcity against the W3C checker. Mostly it was fine, I fixed a few bugs too. Also fixed an annoying IE6 bug with the footer, it now works correctly.
I still recommend that people use firefox for the site as it’s faster.
Decided on brekkie at Canary Wharf. In ma hoodie. Wasn’t banned from there either
Had a lovely (if small) fryup — Sunin needed it more than me though as he was hungover -