Saturday evening…

So, what am I doing here sitting at my desk at work?

Well, I’m certainly not working, that’s for sure.

In
fact I’m attempting to create a gallery of pitcures on a web page and it’s
far more convenient to transport the pictures here on a ZIP disk than spend
days uploading them via the modem. It’s also far simpler to play with the
images and things locally than over a slow modem link.

I’m not using
the Gallery PHP script things ‘cos our web server won’t run it (it needs
the rewrite module and we have this disabled and we don’t allow user CGI
scripting for security reasons. So, I’m using the KDE 3.0 thumbnail stuff
and then re-writing the page produced by that.

You can have a look at the results here and here.

Anyway, what’s been happening this week?

Well,
I’ve been very busy witht he department opendays, Wednesday was the teachers
openday and thursday & friday were the student ones. It would have helped
if the whole design and installation hadn’t happened on tuesday afternoon,
so I had to stay ’til 8pm to get the machiens moved, in place, reconfigured
etc. ready for the wednesday morning.

Wednesday evening was spent
at the departmental not-the-undergraduate-annual-dinner, which isn’t actually
annual yet as this was the first one.. quite fun.

The rest of the week has been a bit of a blur due to lack of sleep from tuesday wednesday etc. Oh well.

Anyway, enjoy the photos.. all made using my new camera, of course.

Nought in particular

I’ve been meaning to update my journal and had things to say but not the time to type them in. Now I have the time I can’t remember what I wanted to say.. typical, eh?

New camera.. woohoo!

Well, it’s been an eventful couple of days.

Firstly, while cycling home last night I was hit from behind by another cyclist (I was stationary). This managed to break both front and rear wheels, the front caliper and the saddle. The bloke who did this says he’s going to pay for the repairs.. seeing as the repair cost £131 I’m not sure how this will go down.

I’ve got my matress.. It arrived at 13:45. I did manage to get home in time dispite being on my back-up bike and the bed shop not phoning me to tell me when they were going to deliver.. I had to phone them to find out instead.

I’ve got my new camera!!!! 😉

I had to go up to the courier’s offices to do so, but that’s only about 1.5 miles away so it wasn’t a problem.

Anyway, first light on the camera produced these shots though they have suffered a bit of aliasing witht he basic software I used to downsize them to 1024×770 pixels. I’ll have to find some better software.

It’s going to take me a whole to learn all the functions as there are SO many different modes of operation.

Stuff..

Let’s see.. what wild and radical things have I been up to.

Well,
other than ordering a new digital camera, failing to get a local shop to
lower thier price for the camera and going and hanging out with some friends
on Sunday, not a lot.

I did spend a lot of yesterday in an e-mail
conversation with the sales people at www.berridgemail.co.uk trying to get
my credit card details to work and finally had to phone up my credit card
company to sort it out. (The credit card company wanted me to authorised
the payment before they let it through but didn’t want to bother phoning
me or anything!)

Anyway, it means that by Thursday I should have my
new Fuji
Finepix S602 Zoom
camera. Securicor will try to deliver it to my
house tomorrow but I won’t be there, so I’ll ave to get it redirected to
work on Thursday. Anyway, I’m happy.. I got the camera at £200 less than
list price and £140 less than Morris Photographic would sell it to me for
(and they boasted that they were £10 cheaper than Jessop’s).

Actually,
seeing as I’m going to have to stay at home for part of tomorrow to allow
the delivery of my new matress I’ve ordered, I might get the camera tomorrow.
You never know. (My old matress is a flimsy, cheap thing and all the padding
has fallen through the springs, so it’s all springs and no padding.. I’m

currently using a couple of blankets to cushion it.. it’ll be SO nice to
sleep on a nice matress again!)

PS.

I forgot to add the obligatory geek toy! geek toy! bit. 🙂

Oooo.. toys..

Well, I have a feeling that I might be having an urge to buy a digital camera soon. I think it’s about time the things have settled down and become mature enough technology.

I’ve had a look around and the Fuji FinePix S602 Zoom looks very attractive.. it’s brand new and is an improved model of one of the better reviewed digital cameras recently.

What I’ve missed since I’ve not had access to my dad’s Practika SLR. The cheap, £50 Panasonic instamatic I’ve had for 10 years just doesn’t cut it when it comes to proper photography as it’s point and click with no control, plus no through the lens viewfinder.

I’ve found the camera being sold for about £540 but will probably need a bigger smartmedia or microdrive for it to be properly usable.

Anyone got a padded cell?

I’ve
come to a conclusion I’m going through a bit of a foot-in-mouth disease,
at least on LiveJournal when commenting in some other journals.

So
as to not cause more faux pas I’ve decided that I should remove those people
who’s journals I’ve accidently said things others have thought were offensive
from my friends list so that I don’t feel tempted to comment in them.

This
decision was mostly due to an incident last week which I’m still pretty angry
about where someone wrongly extrapolated an impersonal, tongue in cheek comment
and took it personally. It’s also to do with a number of other incidents.

For those people I de-friend on here, please dont take this as a personal affront, I still like you.

PS. Smiddly, if you’re reading this, sorry for cluttering up your journal a number of times.

(Almost) weekly update

Seeing as I’ve not got LiveLizard working satisfactorally there’s no real reason why I shouldn’t update my journal.

Let’s see, what’s happened since last time I typed..

Friday
morning at work was punctuated by a paniced call.. “Could you come down to
the lecture theatre and fix the projector so it works with the video? Help!”
Yes, you guessed it, they wanted the digital projector set up as a big telly
for the world cup match. After some soldering of plugs and changing the projector
from NTSC to Auto mode, everythign worked fine. Seeing as everyone else was
watching the match I decided to tag along. For a football match, it was reasonably
entertaining. I did pop out to get my baguette in the middle of the first
half and heard the goal being scored on the radio in the shop.

Friday
night I spent a whole lot too much time talking at the departmental happy
hour. I didn’t get to leave until about 7:45, far too late to go do my weekly
shopping at Sainsbury’s in preparation for my trip to Liverpool on Saturday..

Saturday
morning I got up half an hour earlier than normal to get ready and pack fro
my trip up to see Lindsey in Crosby. I finally managed to start off at 9am,
getting to her place by about 12:30pm. I managed to stop off at one of the
services on the M6 to “powder my nose” and to buy Lindsey a birthday card.

Upon
arrival I was greeted by a cup of weak, milky tea. Lindsey likes to show
the teabag to the hot water from the other side of the room.. It’s that weak!

After
a little time chatting and drinking tea, we set off for Woolworth’s to get
the two disposable BBQ’s (one meat and one veggie) and some cheese slices.
After we got back to her place we waited around for all the other people
to arrive. I think Matthew was the first, followed by various other people
including Clive.

Anyway. Of the male guests there, only myself and
Jim were not ex-boyfriends of Lindsey. This made for an interesting evening
where the various ex’s ganged up and teased Lindsey and the various current
girlfriends ganged up with Lindsey to tease back.

Much fun was had..
followed by going to bed. I had been given a half deflated airbed to sleep
on, which I couldn’t pump up futher because Jim had borrowed my footpump
as he’d left an importnt part of his back in Aberystwyth. Oh well.

Anyway
at just before 4am I get a knock ont he door and Lindsey asks if I’d like
to go see the sun rise.. I said ok.. so we all trundled off down to the sand
dunes on the coast where we watched swifts swarm, larks lark about and kestrels
hunt. Unfortunately, because it was cloudy we merely saw the clouds get lighter
rather than a sunrise.

So, it was back to bed at 5am and up again at 10.

General
tea drinking and breakfast eating ensued until Matthew and myself were asked
to leave at midday as Lindsey needed a bath and a sleep before she recorded
things in the afternoon.

I popped over to Mel’s place to recover my
footpump. It would have helped if I’d have the right house number in my records,
but eventually I found the house. The cat tried to show me the right house
but I didn’t recognise the cat. In the end Eddie found me instead.

As
it turns out it was fortuitous that I had popped around as Mel had made a
roast chicken lunch but all those she had made it for had decided to leave.
Jim & Katrin because they needed to get back home before the shops closed
and Clive and Pepsi because Pepsi wasn’t feeling well. So, I got to have
a rather nice lunch . 🙂

The journey home was panctuated by stops
at various services to pee and drink coffee (The Costa’s Coffee place at
Knutsford services doesn’t know how to make a latte by the way). Oh, and
a detour from Junction 11 to Junction 7 on A roads to avoid stationary traffic.

I
got home, flaked out and finally went to bed at 9pm.. sleeping through ’til
8am.. 30 minutes late, but it doesn’t matter really.

Yesterday wass a NULL day, really.

Today,
nothing exciting has happened yet, though I’ve been invited by a 4th year
undergrad to help her celebrate finishing her exams along with her boyfriend
and other friends this evening, starting at 4:30. That might be fun.

Testing LiveLizard

I’ve
just downloaded and installed the LiveLizard Mozilla plug-in to see how good
it is as a an entry system for LiveJournal entries.

If it works it’sll make updating the journal from work a heck of a lot easier!

It’s been a while…

Well, actually a week since my last entry. Let’s see what’s happened.

Friday evening my parents arrived from Cornwall, I was nicely fed and watered. We then watched one of my DVD’s. (I can’t remember which one.)

Saturday was spent driving up to my Nan and Uncle’s place in Ilkeston, Derbyshire to visit them and then driving home again. My Nan seemed rather more gaunt, deaf and somewhat more forgetful than when I last visited. She’s 98. My Uncle, who’s my mum’s younger brother lives with her and is, if anything, less spritely. he shuffles about at such a slow speed. My Nan seems to do more of the house work than he does even though she’s got failing eyesight on top of the deafness and forgetfulness.

Sunday morning and early afternoon were nothing special other than having a nice roast lunch. Later in the afternoon my Aunt & Uncle from Enfield (northern edge of the London conurbation) arrived. (They are my dad’s elder brother and his wife.) There was much talking followed by a very traditional tea of old-fashioned salad (lettuce, beetroot, tomato, cheese, white sliced bread, pork pies) and then we watched another of my DVD’s (In the Line of Fire). They left at about 8pm.

Monday morning was pretty lazy. In the early afternoon we went off to B&Q in Abingdon to get some paint and other supplies so as to repaint my front and side doors. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t brilliant so we couldn’t do much other than rub down the paint on the side door. Oh, and in the evening we watched another DVD.. I can’t remember which.

Tuesday was spent doing house things such as painting the side door, building a support for my apple tree, pruning the bramble and cutting down a blackthorn bush which a bird had planted rather too close to the house. In the evening, you guessed it, it was DVD watching again (The Fifth Element).

My parents left yesterday morning, taking my old telly with tham as it’s newer than my older Sony telly they have been using which is slowly dying. It was also back to work.. and then the weather decided it didn’t like me at all and REALLY poured down in time for me to cycle home and get drenched. Oh well.

Today’s been pretty uneventful.

So, that’s it.. you’re now up to date.

I must try to arrange with people to go see Spiderman when it properly comes out next week.