Well, this evening I managed to see the final film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and I didn’t even get mugged or anything! I think this was partially due to the two big, burley security guards standing at the entrance.
Anyway, onto a review of the film…
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What’s been happening, dear reader?
Well, last weekend I visited Graham, Rachel and little Christopher Hartland, down Farnborough way. T’was a fun weekend with various other people popping in and drinking tea.
Other news, I got a ticket this evening for tomorrow’s inaugural showing at the new multiplex which has opened about a mile away, next to the Kassam Stadium. The good news is that the film on offer is Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. The not so good aspect of the cinema is that this evening it had a couple of groups of adolescents on bikes loudly joking about robbing people. Not really the best thing to have to instill a friendly and fun-filled air to the place.
I’ve posted a message on the multiplex’s web site feedback page stating that this sort of thing isn’t likely to increase the numbers of people paying money to see films and that it may be a good idea to have a security guard on duty to stop this sort of thing from happening.
Entish
To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
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Those who are jittering worried about their fix of the Bullet talker, the back-up system is running on euclid.lingula.org.uk with the usual telnet or ssh access and the same account names of demo or guest.
Yesterday’s data move went well and I was out of work by just gone 2pm. However, as soon as i got through the door at home I realised that I’d left my bag in my office. So, after I ate a sandwich for lunch, I had to drive back into work and collect it, and then drive straight back out again. It only took 45 minutes in total, but this was enough time for the Sun to go down. This was the time I had planned to use on the way home to wash my car. Oh well.
Anyway, today at work has mostly been a holding pattern after yesterday’s changes and this evening’s system shutdown. A bit boring really, especially as most people are away.
At 5pm May, my colleague, and myself started shutting things down and switching them off at the wall. It took an hour. Anyway, that’s all done. I’ve just got to worry about the correct order to power things up tomorrow afternoon now.
I would have a morning off tomorrow as the department is now closed if it weren’t for the Sun Technology Day in the Computing Labs, so if anything I have to get up slightly earlier.
Oh well.
Here am I sitting in the coffee house part of Border’s in Oxford sipping a tall café latté and eating a chelsea bun and typing this on my Tréo waiting for data to copy from one disc to another at work.
How techological can this be?
Well, it’s the weedend, or rather the end of one.
This is the last weekend I have free until after Christmas. Next weekend I’m working moving data from one disk to a set of others.. User’s home directories and the local software.
The week after that I’m visiting the Hartlands down in Yately. And the following weekend I travel back down to Cornwall for a couple of weeks.
So, what have I been up to this weekend? Well, yesterday was merely a shopping day. I found a useful place for generic clothing at reasonable prices.. Matalan. Other than that (and the half an hour it took to get out of the car park (I really hate the John Allen Centre car park)) I didn’t get up to much. I was fighting off a building sinus headache all day, which was annoying.
Today’s been pretty productive. I’ve cleared out to a certain degree my cupboard under the stairs. Enough, at least, to modify the shelving and clear enough space for the 4 draw filing cabinet I should be getting tomorrow. I’ve also managed to replace both front and rear brake blocks on my bike, which were near total failure.
This evening I’ve been flying about on X-Plane testing the global scenery. To be honest, I was a little disappointed with this part of the program. There’s some correlation between its world and this, but it’s very slight. Definitely not enough to fully navigate by. The landmarks aren’t really up to scratch for a start. London’s rather small, with few houses and when did they install a cooling tower in Camden? Oh, and who stole Didcot power station!
It’s a pitty that the program doesn’t use a good DEM and some low-res landsat imagry, which should be reasonably cheap these days.
I’ve just got home from the very first (and probably last) black tie dinner I’ve ever been to.
My impression? It’s the same as any other dinner except you have to dress up in a suit and a poncy bow tie.
Maybe it’s ‘cos I don’t drink, but I seemed be having a lot less fun than other people there and didn’t feel the urge to go to the seedy night club across the road from where we had the meal.
I just feel detached and not at all part of the whole social world out there.
Oh well. Time to brush my teeth and go to bed. Maybe things will look brighter in the morning.
Blurgh. Horrid weather. I spent hours yesterday wandering around Oxford city centre in the rain looking for clothes. Specifically, seeing as I’m going to the Geology Society dinner on Tuesday I needed a suit which could pretend to be a dinner suit for the night but also to be a normal suit for other duties. I was also looking to see if any shops sold generic t-shirts at a resonable price.
Anyway, my SAAB umbrella did its thing and kept me dry. On the search front, it was a mixed success. I managed to find a suit. However, it was only in Moss Bros. that I could actually find any suits of my size (36-short) as other outlets such as Alders, Debenhams etc. all started their sizes at 38-regular or even 40-regular. Clothes shops obviously only cater for something like the 50 percentile of the population. However, I do now have a suit, from Moss Bros. and it cost £99.
On the t-shirt front, it was a total failure. The designer brands have won, totally. Nowhere could I find any shops selling non-designer t-shirts for exhorbitant amounts of money. What happened to the boxes of t-shirts costing about £15-£20? I think I’ll have to join the Matalan store system and look there for reasonably priced clothes. How can they charge £25 for a t-shirt when you can buy a properly tailored suit for £99?
Hmm.. it’s still gloomy and raining… I wish it would stop.