OK, so what have I been doing recently?

Well, the weekend before last I went down to Yately and visited Rachel, Graham and Christopher. On the Saturday we travelled through the falling snow to a rain forest.. OK, it was “The Living Rainforest” attraction just outside Newbury but still, it was strange going through the snow to get there. I’m sure I’ll post one or two pictures to show it off. It was a fun day taking photos, meeting local photographers and getting a lusting for a nice pistol-grip, omnidirectional head attachment for camera tripods. Rachel wants one too.

The Sunday was quite quiet though an unexpected visit by Bob and Jos for tea was fun. Then I went home myself.

In the week I bought from Amazon Half-Life 2 and pre-ordered the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Extended Edition but then the evil one-click got me and I bought Shrek 2 as well. Oh well. 🙂

My new computer at work arrived and is nice and fast. 🙂

Friday evening was spent in the company of Grim, Holly and Matt as we met up to see The Incredibles. Here’s a quick review: Go see it! It’s brilliant. I hope there aren’t any spoilers there.

The weekend started out a bit expensively. I went to the local All Formats Computer Fair as I wanted to get a cheap webcam. Unfortunately, although my wallet was strong my will was weak and I came out with not only the cheap webcam (£12) but also a USB2 memory card reader (£19), 160GB hard disk and a graphic card (£149 for the two)!

The rest of the weekend was basically spent installing the goodies and playing Half-Life 2.

Nothing happened yesterday, really. However, tonight I’m off to the Oxford University Polar Society end of term skating and dinner (ok, pub + food). It should be fun.

Not a wholey eventful day.

Basically, I watched “I, Robot” before lunch. I was pleasantly surprised by it. Let’s say that the trailer didn’t do it justice. It was a lot more thought provoking that I thought it might be. However, anyone who didn’t get that it was Viki what dunn it by the middle of the film obviously hasn’t watched “Tron” and “2001” enough. There were definite shades of HAL in some of the robotic characters as well as some of the back plot from “Tron.” Overall, for a Hollywood film, not too bad.

The only other accomplishment today was finally finishing Unreal II. OK. So, it took me about 2 years in total, but that was mainly cos I’d give up for many months at a time when I got stuck. Still, the propensity of mega bosses at the end was rather a let-down, as was the revelation that the boss of the rangers was the bad guy AND then the character you’re playing shoots him in cold blood during a cut scene. Talk about linear play and not allowing the player to actually mold the story at all. They could at least have had multiple endings at that point and left it to the player to decide what was done.

The rest of the evening was a bit dull as there was nothing on telly, really.

Previous entry.

OK, so i didn’t tap on his window, that was for comic effect. However, I was held up so inconveniently as Jaques Chirac rushed through in his black motorcade with Met diplomatic protection squad officers in tow.

What a pain.

I was held up on The Plain roundabout and yet again on Parks Road. I wish those world leaders would just keep out the way, along with the film crews. I’m not sure which is worse, Harry Potter or Bill Clinton.

In the manner of the Late Peter Cook’s E.L.Whisty…

I was cycling in this morning, as you do, when this big limosine turns up flanked by police motorcycles. They stopped right in front of me and made me stop as well. So, I knocked on the window to tell the person inside what I thought of this and he wound down the window.

And guess who it was.

It was bloody Jaques Chirac!

I thought I’d give him a piece of my mind so I said to him, “Jaques”, well we’re on first name terms you see, I said “Jaques, what do you think you’re doing holding me up in the morning? You world leaders are all the bloody same, going around causing traffic jams without a thought for anyone else.”

Well, he didn’t say very much of course, he was too embarassed. So he just drove off and caused traffic jams down the road.

Weekend exploits

Well, this weekend is not a busy weekend. Nothing special has been planned, which, I must say, is probably a good thing as I need to recharge my sleep batteries.

So, what HAVE I done today?

Well, for much of it I was in work doing something I could never do during the week, namely clearing up/out my office. I also re-arranged the office a little in preparation for the arrival of my new machine. Seeing as the monitor should arrive a lot sooner and it’s an LCD screen, this will allow a far different arrangement of things. However, this isn’t due until the beginning of next week, so for the next few days I’m going to be very cramped with the old large CRT monitor in the new arrangement. Anyway, it shouldn’t be a problem for long.

Once the new Sun W2100z arrives in the next few weeks I’ll ship out the old frankenstein Athlon box and have that as the main machine. I should be able to connect both the W2100z and the Ultra 10 to the new monitor’s two inputs so that should cut the monitor count by one as well.

So, after the 3 hour clear up it was off to Sainsbury’s and thence home. After lunch I’m not sure what I did as I was one minute sitting in my comfy chair and the next I knew it was an hour or so later. I told you I needed a sleep recharge.

Grim and Holly get married.

It’s been a rather fun but exhausting weekend.

Saturday I was up early (for a Saturday morning) for the drive up to Matfen Hall, just outside Newcastle. After a long journey, including an interesting time trying to pay for petrol after the station’s tills crashed, I got there at about 2pm.

I later met up with and went off to Hexam in search of Daffy Duck socks.. A quest we failed.

The first night’s event was a rather pleasant meal.

Sunday started with a rather nice, relaxed cooked breakfast followed by a walk around the grounds. This was followed by a quiet tea in the conservatory with alecmrss, sleipnir_ and alonella. sleipnir_ and I then wandered over to the Black Bull pub for lunch. They didn’t actually have sandwiches on the menu but instead rustled up roast beef sarnies from the roast beef dinner they were serving, and very nice they were too. They seemed a nice lot in the pub though a bit absent minded as I kept having to ask them to take money for their wares. It’s a wonder they keep in business.

By this time it was about 1pm and time for me to get ready for the main event of the day, the wedding.

It’s probably easiest to describe the rest of the day in pictures, which you can see here. However, the quick version is:-

  • Met up.
  • Had drinks.
  • Grim and Holly were wed.
  • I went elsewhere to transmit the pictures to junk
  • Photos
  • Food
  • PARTY!!!
  • Bed.

Yesterday I had another lovely cooked breakfast, talked to Grim’s parents, uncle and aunt before saying my goodbyes. It was then a very long journey home as I went via the Vindolanda Roman fort then then a journey to Carlisle and home via Ullswater and Windermere. That was a long journey, having started out at 10:30am I finally reached home at 6:45pm. I slept well last night.