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MARCH 2004 |
28th March 2004
Met Markus early in Leicester Square and talked for a while. We went over to Wagamama for an awesome late lunch and Jon managed to get in to join us just before his food got cold. We walked over to Putney Bridge in time to see the start of the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race. Got to meet one of Markus's house mates there and I took some photos and a video clip of the start of the race... which I can't find on my laptop anymore! Dammit, I think they may have been deleted during some aggressive housekeeping of my temp directory on my laptop. I should really get in the habit of sorting photos and moving them to my fileserver quickly. Anyway, the boat race was actually quite a bit less exciting than I thought it would be. It looked close at the beginning and then during a clash of oars Oxford started having some serious problems while Cambridge stormed ahead leaving Oxford in their wake.
Jon and I chilled out with Markus & his mate for a while before heading back home. Met Sladen very briefly outside Baker Street station to say Hi as he was nearby. We messed about on his Brompton folding bike for a little while. I took a great video clip of unfolding the bike and riding it away in less than 15 seconds... which I can't find! Argh! Dammit, a little bit of carelessness with files and now I'm quite frustrated.
Track of the day: Tricky - Excess
20th March 2004
Cycled over to meet Martin this evening. Got to his house and the howling of the wind outside got me thinking. "Dude... lets make a kite".
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The kite rocked. It was fairly big, caught lots of air so it had a lot of thrust. It didn't fall apart easily either, I was quite suprised how long it lasted before dying. It was well balanced and stable in the air too. The main problem was the lack of lift. The thrust would definately have got it to rise if we managed to direct its power a bit. We adjusted the strings, cut holes in some of the bags in strategic places while in the park but it wasn't really enough. I think our holes may have been too big possibly. Next time we should think more about this bit.
Track of the day: Lamb - Little Things
19th March 2004
I have all these grand plans for learning new web stuff, making these pages XML with Cocoon serverside XML to XHTML translation. Put my log and photo database in a MySQL database to neaten things up a little... but in reality when do I have the time? I can't even get around to finishing the Xbox hacking tutorial that I was supposed to do last month. Ah, well, its just the way it goes. I'll stop moaning about it now.
Track of the day: Travis - Slide Show
17th March 2004
Rolling about some 35x3 100M SWA cable today. I laugh at all you people who need to go to the gym.
Track of the day: The Beatniks - Une Femme Nest Pas Un Homme (Aphex Twin Mix)
6th March 2004
Got to work in the morning to find masses of police tape cornering off the High Street just off from our shop. There was a shooting last night and they had cornered off everything from our shop down to White Hart Lane. The police tape was tied to our railings as we were just on the boundry of where the road was blocked off, it took a little bit of persuading to get the police to move the tape next door so we can get on with our day. Apparantly there was a car chase, which would explain the detectives going over a green Vauxhall Cavalier just outside. These things always make me wonder, what the hell is wrong with some people.
Lately I really haven't been getting much sleep. Got up at about 4am this morning for no particular reason, and when I tried going back to sleep, I only managed a light nap before it was time to get back up again. Every night, its always not satisfying. Sometimes I have to get up when I am very much in deep sleep, sometimes when I do get up I just want to go back in. This leaves me in a semi-zombie state for a while which quickly passes but then I really feel the need for sleep through the day if I don't keep myself busy. At about 5-6pm I can often be seen yawning away or falling asleep on a desk and getting up in a short while with a magazine or something stuck to my face. Its horrible. Then to top it all off, when I do get to bed, I can't always get to sleep. This is crazy.
Went to pick up some breakfast food at the supermarket today (Sainsburys in Tottenham is the worst supermarket I've ever been to by the way, they have very little choice, almost no rotation of the products they stock and they simply don't have anything nice in there most of the time). Went in, picked up a couple of things and was on the way out when I just happened to walk past a shelf of CDs and my eye caught the new Zero 7 album When It Falls. It was just a reflex reaction, my left arm automatically reached out, took the CD case and put it in my basket next to the wholemeal muffins and cottage cheese. It was only when I actually looked at the case when I got back that I spotted a 'this CD is copy protected' label. This copy protection nonsense could be a problem for me as I always rip my CDs to my fileserver encoded as FLAC to be listened to on any computer in the house, and put the disc away safely. Luckily, it was some stupid technology that doesn't really work, and cdparanoia copied the CD to my fileserver with no problems at all. Anyway, having only really heard the album once, its clear that its a bit of a classic along the lines of Simple Things which is no bad thing. I love it.
Track of the day: Herbaliser - Good Girl Gone Bad
5th March 2004
Track of the day: Lostprophets - The Fake Sound of Progress
3rd March 2004
Ah, haven't written anything here for quite a while. Still working pretty long hours at my dads shop, no time for anything really. Its very tiring, I really need more sleep and I'm yawning as I write this. I haven't really spent much time on my computer either, just basically reading comics and checking my mail in the morning for 10 minutes. Getting pretty bored.
I got Project Gothem Racing 2 for the Xbox and Colin McRae Rally 4 too. Its sooo much fun in PGR2 racing through Edinburgh in a Lotus Exige on Princes Street and past Arthurs Seat. Reminds me of the time Sid & I spent a weekend there.
On Saturday I went to see a friend in Congleton with Jon and Jo. Had a great time, it was good to see people again. On the way there and back I got to ride the latest Virgin trains which lean around corners. They are indeed very fast, and extremely comfortable. I wish I knew there would be power sockets by the seats, I would have taken my laptop and messed about for 3hrs, I could have finished writing my Modifying the Xbox Howto that I still haven't done. Could have charged up my camera too. Ah well.
This log isn't really like most people's blogs. I've been a bit weary of expressing feelings and stuff here over the past few years, its more just what I've been doing really. I'm not quite sure whether this makes it boring to read and cold. I think maybe it does - I may gradually change the kind of content here. I was thinking "Who reads this junk anyway?" but I think thats not really the point, I think maybe its not worth reading 'cos its junk. Hopefully I can get some more time to myself and write something better once in a while.
Talking about website stuff, my SMS gadget still works, although Orange have changed some of their systems so now the messages you can send are really short and take about 5 minutes to get to my phone. Anyway, its still a lot of fun and I really love to receive little cute messages from people all over the world who stumble through here.
Track of the day: Herbaliser - Something Wicked
