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Haha. I'm the biggest geek. I'll get to the point now because you'll probably stop reading after this. I've made it so that when we make a phone call on either of our cordless phones or when a call comes in, it automatically fades the music/TV/whatever volume down and when the call ends, it fades it back up again. Why? BECAUSE I CAN.
I've used Asterisk for this. That's the software I was paid to set up a few years ago to create a joint phone exchange between London and Shanghai. I resisted the temptation to install it at home for a long time because I already had a VoIP phone and they're prone to problems enough as it is. Having said that, until our router died, the phone was actually very reliable. Rather than replace the router, I set up this PC as the router and that did lead to the occasional breakage but I've since ironed out some of the glitches so it has been behaving a bit better lately. Since the phone now relies on the PC regardless, I figured there'd be little harm in adding Asterisk to the mix. Asterisk itself is pretty solid, it's just things like flaky graphics drivers that tend to cause problems.
I didn't install Asterisk just to do this nifty volume thing though. I'm not that bad. (-; Marna recently acquired a new toy. I say acquired because I'm the one who signed up for it. It's a Nokia E71 on a contract from 3 for £20 a month. The phone has every bell and whistle you can think of and the contract allows free unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls. I think this is an excellent deal but while Skype is very popular these days, I think there are relatively few people who use it as a conventional phone and so I suspect that most people won't take advantage of it for practical reasons. I, for one, don't like being chained to my PC by a headset. I can do better than that though. Skype has traditionally been quite a closed system and I haven't been its biggest fan for that reason but lately, it's started to open up a bit. Skype themselves are introducing Skype for SIP and Digium are introducing Skype for Asterisk. These are aimed at businesses though and will probably cost a packet. In the free world, there is something called Skypiax. This allows Asterisk to integrate with the regular Skype client. It's a bit clunky but I have got it working here. That means, Marna can call our regular phone for free and vice-versa. In fact, anyone on Skype can call us for free. One annoyance is that Skype has to be started before Asterisk but a little tinkering with the code will fix that.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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| Subject: | [LJ2ME] Packing light |
| Time: | 11:38 pm. |
| Mood: | Light. | | Music: | Kula Shaker - Strangefolk. |
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So here I am again, all alone, waiting for that train to London. I have my headphones this time though so no eerie silence.
Despite that, I've packed even lighter than last time. No jacket. Just jeans, t-shirt, wallet, tickets, phone, Bluetooth headphones, USB cable to charge the phone, USB cable to charge the headphones and my USB stick with Puppy Linux on. :-D Heh there goes a guy with a bag. points and laughs... in my mind I did forget to print out my hotel reservation but even that's not a problem. I can print it at the office. We're going on holiday to Whitby at the end of the month. I promise I'll pack more like a normal person then. :-P
It's been glorious weather these past few days. I've been wearing shorts and on Sunday, I even took the time to paint the railings. I'm totally not a DIY guy (yet) but I just wanted an excuse to go outside. The net was down that morning. It must have been trying to tell me something but it was actually Marna who complained about it the most. I need to paint the steps next.
On the train now. I was most dismayed to find that they hadn't provided a toothbrush kit this time. A threat to my minimal packing ways! Thankfully you can still get one on request. Now I have one. Yay. They don't provide the cornflakes breakfast anymore either but I won't miss that. Instead you can get the first class breakfast for £4. Woo! By the way, getting completely naked on a train feels very weird.
Recent news. It was my birthday and our first wedding anniversary on the 24th. We didn't do anything to celebrate, mainly because Marna was working that day. We were going to eat out the next day but we'll wait till Whitby instead. I did suprise her with a delivery of flowers to her work though. For once, she hadn't asked for then beforehand and she was truly suprised. They're beautiful and still going strong. Many thanks once again to Hazel's Flower Shop.
Speaking of local businesses, our friend's family farm, where we get our mince and sausages, is selling up. I'm really gutted about that because I love their produce and have told many people about it. I gather it's due to the recession and that really pisses me off. Globalisation can fuck off. I hope the other stalls at the farmer's market haven't been affected. Brigg Farm was actually one of its founders.
Other news. Marna finally had her JET exam today. She's not sure how it went but I've got my fingers crossed. We won't know the result for another 12 weeks though, which is a bit crap.
More Marna news. She's had a couple of photoshoots. The first was at the North Inch, followed by a trip all the way to Blair Atholl, where Marna grew up. I'd never been there before because it's a village in the middle of nowhere but the highland scenery took my breath away. The food I ate at the water mill, where they make flour the old fashioned way, was also to die for. I took some bread home with me and they have a stall at the farmers market. Yay! Unfortunately the weather wasn't too great that day but they still got some good shots. We'll be getting the best one done on an A3 canvas.
The second shoot was with a different photographer in Dundee. I didn't go along but we've seen some me the shots already. Rather than her usual gothic look, these have been done in babydoll style. They're great! Because me that, it looks like Marna might be modelling clothes for a new alternative shop that just opened.
I've got a bit more to say but I'm getting tired now. Night!
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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Marna's been buying a lot of clothes lately, mainly for her modelling.
M: I need a new wardrobe.
J: Uhh?
M: I do! It's practically overflowing.
J: Oooh. You mean an actual wardrobe, not a "wardrobe".
M: Haha. Yeah, I need a wardrobe for my "wardrobe"!
Obviously we did the whole "air quotes" thing. And yes, you probably just imagined me doing air quotes for those quotes too. XD
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, April 30th, 2009
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| Subject: | [LJ2ME] |
| Time: | 12:31 am. |
| Mood: |  drunk. |
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Oh dear. I'm more drunk than I've been in a little while. How do I know this? The doner kebab and chips was a pretty sure sign.
Simon was pretty drunk too though. I'd been telling people that he's one of the only guys I'd kissed (on the cheek) because he's just that awesome. Well tonight he took our relationship to a whole new level by kissing me on the lips. I didn't know what to say except what I just said. He then kissed me again. How bizarre. This is a first (and second) for me. It wasn't half as bad as I expected.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
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| Subject: | [LJ2ME] Sleeper Train |
| Time: | 10:53 pm. |
| Mood: | nervous. |
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I'm on my way to London again. This time I'm getting the sleeper train, which is a relatively new thing in Britain. I've only used one in France before.
I'm the only bastard here, bar the odd station guard. This is made more eerie by the fact that Perth's station is about four times bigger than it needs to be. A sign of how things have changed.
I'm nervous because last time I went down on my own, everything in the house including the phone stopped working and Marna and I ended up having a blazing row about it. Just before I left, the wireless stopped working as it sometimes does. I'm praying that it'll fix itself in the morning. It might.
On a brighter note, Marna's work has improved immensely since the departure of a certain manager. The new manager is really nice and actually knows what she's doing. Furthermore, word of Marna's unrivalled ability to sell Leo diamonds (she's known as the Leo Queen) has reached head office and she was paid a visit by the head of the company, who insisted that she visit the other stores to show them how she does it. She's also been entered for the JET exam at the last minute. This could really boost her career. The previous manager didn't think Marna could do it. The new manager thinks she can do it, even with a fraction of the usual study time. The results of the practice tests suggests she's right. I'm really proud me her. :)
I'm on the train now. It's really nice! I'm seriously impressed. Each cabin has its own sink and they give you a toothbrush and soap and stuff. Shame I couldn't get a bed on the way back, only a recliner. The only thing I would add is a power socket for laptops and such but I haven't brought one with me anyway.
Back to the awesomeness that is Marna. I can't remember what triggered it but she suddenly decided to do some casual modelling. I've taken many shots of her in the past but she's switched the focus from witchery to gothicness. She's bought lots of beautiful gothic clothing, the sort of stuff I wish she'd wear in public, and she's been frequently demanding that I spend some time getting some good shots of her. I'm no pro though so she's registered at a networking site for models and photographers and she's already had a lot of interest. Her first proper photo shoot is next week. She won't be paid any money since it's just for a portfolio but she will get a CD and an A3 print. She doesn't really care about that though, she just enjoys dressing up and looking sexy. She already looks hot at any given moment and she looks really hot in my shots so she'll be scorching in these. This is just the beginning. Who knows? She may make a little money while she's at it.
Alice and Simon are returning from their Asian travels right at this moment. They've been away almost a year and it's been quite an adventure. They're staying in London for a few days so I'll be seeing them tonight and tomorrow night. Then on Monday, they'll be coming to visit us for a week. I can't wait.
Oh well. Gonna get some kip now.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
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| Subject: | [LJ2ME] The Checklist |
| Time: | 10:42 pm. |
| Mood: | tired. | | Music: | Silence. |
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You've not really heard from me in a while. A lot has happened. When Katrina visited us with Rob recently, she said she was too busy enjoying her life to write about it. I would say the same. But here I am.
Nothing bad's happened. For once, I've managed to completely escape from work on a brief trip to Edinburgh with my wife.
Wife. I still get this strange feeling when I say that word like I'm not really old enough to say it. I wish I'd told you about the wedding in some detail but the moment has passed now.
It rained. And then some. I was nervous as hell. But when I turned to face my bride, I really was blown away. It's the one moment in your life that you desperately want to live up to your wildest dreams so that when you say those magic words, you can say them without one shred of doubt in your mind. I'd never been so sure of anything. Marna was a goddess. And that's all you need to know.
Today, we went to see Marley and Me. It's supposed to be about a dog but I thought it was about life as much as anything. It got me thinking. The girl had her life checklist. I've joked a couple of times lately about how I've been ticking off the boxes. Find beautiful girl. Check. Get married. Check. Buy a house. Check. Oh yeah. We bought a house.
It's a truely wonderful place. A 60s build so it's solid and spacious. It's also in a good location. We got it at a great price. The fact that I'm self-employed and the financial crisis made things look uncertain for a while but my grandparents made sure it happened. Instead of a mortgage, we're paying them back. With things the way they are, I can't say enough how grateful I am for this. Their generosity is certainly not lost on me.
So coming back to that list... what's next? It's not "find a good job" because I already have that covered. Work is going swimmingly. I launched the new findsyou.com recently. It's running well and my recent meeting in London was so good, they want me down there once a month. There's talk of a big salary very soon and I even have Kevin working under me now.
The next thing on that list is the one we've been pestered about since the day we (literally) tied the knot. Kids. That film had three births and boy, did it make me broody. I've been excited about having a kid since before I met Marna but I didn't want one straight away. Straight away has passed now so when? I'd been telling people two years. That seemed reasonable. But that was six months ago. One and a half years to go?
This scares me somewhat. I guess I still have insecurities about the nature of my work. Touch wood, that will soon change. It's not something you set a date for though. One day, it'll probably just feel right. I needn't worry either. People just manage somehow, don't they? They simply have to.
I do talk to Marna about this stuff sometimes but I'm scared to talk about it too much because talking leads to doing. That's how we got engaged. One day, we were playfully talking about it. The next, we'd bought a ring.
At least I'm doing this list in the right order. It is a numbered list, you know. ;-)
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Comments: Read 8 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, October 12th, 2008
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I've just returned from a business trip to Manchester. When I caught the local bus from here to the Park & Ride, I found myself sat adjacent to a guy wearing a hoodie with "Hollister, Southern California" emblazoned across it. Small world. I'm afraid, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) alva_michael and cenee, that I'm not in the habit of asking random people about their clothing.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, September 22nd, 2008
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This entry won't be interesting for many of you but it's mainly just to tell the world that it is possible to PXE boot BartPE when it is built from an OEM installation of Windows XP Professional SP3. There are pages saying that it works with SP2 but no one has mentioned SP3. It took me most of the weekend to get it to work but that was mainly because I was new to slipstreaming and PE Builder was not uppercasing the filenames like it should. I used the excellent RyanVM Integrator to do the slipstreaming. Don't enable the "optimize" setting because this seemed to cause problems for me. Maybe it was something else in the end but I would leave it disabled to be on the safe side. I fixed the filename case problem with a quick and dirty Ruby script. Finally, as the guide states, you do still need to fetch ramdisk.sys from Windows Server 2003 SP1, as well as the other files it mentions.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, August 10th, 2008
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This weekend, I found myself with much more free time than usual. In a spectacular display of uncharacteristic behaviour, I decided I would do my taxes a mere six months early. The truth is that if I want to apply for a mortgage then I'll need to have my finances in order and the only time that happens is when I do my taxes. I also figured it would make me feel better to get them done and out the way. Funny that. After last year's bill of £3.42, I didn't even consider what this year's might be.
£2762.70. And because you pay half again in advance for the following year, they actually want me to pay £4144.05 by the end of January. Ouch? At first I thought there must be some mistake. It had been a relatively good year and I had made £10k more than the previous year but surely that didn't justify this kind of jump? I wanted to call my Dad, who happens to be the Deputy Comptroller of Income Tax in Jersey, but he was busy sailing the stormy seas between France and Jersey. After thinking about it a bit more though, I gradually came to the horrible realisation that it was about right. My net profit the previous year had only just been above the personal allowance, hence the very small bill. This time, my net profit was £15k. Minus the personal allowance is about £10k. 20% (the basic rate of tax) of that is £2000. Plus about £800 in Class 4 NICs, which is 8% of my net profit after the first £5500 or thereabouts. That gives a grand total of around £2800. Cue pained facial expression.
I really can't complain. No doubt most of you pay something in the same region. Many of you will see it in smaller amounts at the end of each pay slip though. I think seeing it in one unexpectedly large sum is what really hit me the most. It's also the fact that this year has been really shitty for work so far and I did have my heart set on buying a house before the end of the year. This will wipe out both my savings and my hopes of that happening. That hope may be revived if the new client I'm starting on tomorrow turns out to be a winner. I'm not celebrating just yet because, as I said, work this year has just been one big string of disappointments.
I do have the option of lowering the amount of tax I have to pay in advance but I figure if I do that in order to buy a house, it'll just come back to bite me in the ass later. I certainly don't want to end up in a mess over mortgage repayments. Then I'd REALLY be screwed. On the other hand, it might be worth it if I can buy a house sooner before the prices start going up again. I'd rather play it safe though.
I wouldn't have posted all the actual amounts but I'm hoping that someone intelligent like kermitbantam will come along and tell me "Don't be silly, chewi, you've obviously made a mistake here." But he'll probably say something more like "Don't be silly, chewi, you're lucky it's not twice as much. That bloody Red Gordon and his Darling puppet..."
If there really is a mistake, it will probably be found this week because I asked my Dad to check it and he said he would pass it on to the guy in the office who deals with UK tax. Knowing my luck, I probably filled it out perfectly. Meh.
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Comments: Read 23 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
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Behold! The amazing Windows Vista! Marvel as it takes a minute to tell you that it will take 20 minutes to unzip a perfectly ordinary 17MB zip file! Why even consider using Linux when it doesn't have a pretty animation? Who cares if it only takes 8 seconds* to perform the exact same operation!?
Oh and for the record, this installation of Vista is barely a day old.
UPDATE: When I wrote this, I didn't think it would actually take 20 minutes. It didn't. It took 35. That beggars belief. Normally I would chalk this up to some simple bug rather than an inherent design flaw but the fact that such an obvious bug made it into the final release and the fact that I've seen this sort of thing so much in Vista makes me think otherwise. Maybe they've fixed it in SP1 but I don't know because, like many people, I haven't been able to install it. And people wonder why I can't take Microsoft seriously.
* I told Linux to time it.
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Ugh. I must have been to the loo over 50 times in the past couple of days. I've been horribly ill since Thursday evening. I feel like my abdomen is going to burst and I need the loo once or twice every hour. Occasionally I feel quite nauseous. I spent half of Friday in bed. I'd suspect something serious if Marna hadn't had a similar thing earlier in the week. Thanks, honey! We think she caught it from her Mum, who caught it from the hospital because she works there and there was some bug doing the rounds. This is most unlike me as I hardly ever get ill. A sniffle once in a while, that's about it. It's just as well I work from home but I don't think I can take much more of this.
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Comments: Read 12 or Add Your Own.
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Okay, so we're married. Now what?
"Hey, wait a minute there, Chewi!"
Oh. Yeah. The wedding. It was perfect. :D We've been back a week now but we had the Scottish celebration last night so it's still been all go, which is why I haven't had a chance to write about it yet. Will do soon, I promise!
Last night was great but it seems we stepped into a big puddle of bad luck this morning. We woke up to find out new silk bed cover (not the one from Katrina!) ripped. Oh well. Shit happens. Then Marna reported that the bathroom mushrooms were back. She said they were huge. They're not really but the fact that we have any at all beggars belief after all the work the landlord had done to sort them out. She then came across a massive spider in the bathroom. And then, she noticed that the washing machine is leaking. This is on top of recent visitations from mice (we still have traps laid) and the overwhelming feeling that this flat is about to burst now that we have all these wedding presents and nowhere to put them all. Marna was quite blunt. "I can't stand this flat anymore. We need to move."
We've lived here for a year now. I really like the area and problems aside, it's a really nice flat, but even I'm thinking it's about time we bought a place. I looked into this quite a bit a month ago when Stella offered to sell us her flat. Her place is wonderful but the wedding was imminent, Marna hadn't started her new job yet and my £7,000 from The Flex hadn't come through so it just wasn't the right time. She finally sold the place last week.
Dad raised the subject last night. I told him I'm not quite financially secure enough just now. He said he'd help to stump up a deposit but it's not the deposit I'm worried about. Still, Marna's settled into her new job amazingly well and she's more confident about buying now, which in turn makes me more confident. I'm sitting on the verge of four amazing business opportunities. One of them has to work out, right? I'm crossing all those fingers. Not getting that money from The Flex was quite a blow for me but Kevin's in the same boat and we've agreed that if nothing materialises tomorrow, we're going to take this to the Small Claims Court. That'll help.
Market-wise, it is probably a good time to buy in Perth. With the help of the Beeb, I've been keeping an eye on prices here and across the country. Until the last quarter, Perth's prices were among the fastest rising in the whole of the UK. Despite that, they are still relatively low, considering how nice a place it is. That steep rise totally changed in the last quarter when prices fell by 10%. This was a result of the market slump and was reflected right across the country. The fact that the prices here are still quite low, combined with the fact that they were rising fast when the market was healthy means that they probably won't go much lower and may well rise again in the future. That's my take on it anyway.
Perthshire has a great property search site called PSPC, which I've just been using to see what's available. I'm really not sure what I can afford since it depends on so many factors and I probably won't have much idea until I go to see a mortgage lender. I won't do that until I have completed last year's income tax return because, being self-employed, I need three years books. For the moment, I am assuming an upper limit of £115,000. There are some very nice places around at that price. Maybe I'm being a bit optimistic there but Dani also found a nice one at £79,000.
I just spoke to Glen, Marna's Dad. He thinks we should wait because Marna's still stressed from the wedding and she's making rash decisions as a result. I think he's right about her being stressed but I'm still very interested in buying anyway. I should probably wait until one of these deals works out but I'd like to at least start looking now.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, April 17th, 2008
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Phew! At around 4pm today, my hard drive started acting up. It would occasionally pause for about 30 seconds, effectively freezing the system during that time. By the fourth time this happened, I was getting seriously worried so I immediately took a new incremental backup. That went without a hitch and I was able to breathe much easier. It seemed as though the problem only occurred when writing to the drive. I tried the latest kernel but that didn't fix it. I saw a post by some guy that said loose SATA cables are a fairly common problem. It seemed like a long shot but it was worth a try. And what do you know. I reinserted the cable and everything's been fine since. Touch wood and all that.
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Comments: Read 16 or Add Your Own.
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We largely escaped the recent storm up here in Scotland. Pa was concerned about the Ecrehous. Before it hit, I said that if any place gets damaged, it'll be the blue hut. It's a tiny, isolated place and made of wood. I kinda feel like I cursed it. It was totally flattened. That wasn't all. A shed across the other side was also demolished. Some places lost windows and one place lost an entire wall. Once they were open to the elements, the damage inside was pretty unforgiving. As for our place, it got off very lightly. It was flooded, as I suspect every other place was, but that was all. The whole thing reminds me of The Three Little Pigs.
I'm quite shocked because I don't recall damage of this magnitude ever occurring out there since I've been around. That blue hut had been there for as long as I could remember. Now it's just not there anymore and all I see is a void where the hut used to be. I could kick up a fuss about global warming but I won't. While I do believe that global warming may one day have a devastating affect on the Ecrehous, I think this was just a freak occurrence - the combination of an unusually high tide and unusually high winds.
( See the pictures... )
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
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| Time: | 9:58 pm. |
| Mood: |  good. |
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Hello everybody.
So I did get my new computer to work the day after making my last entry. It didn't start working until I took the motherboard out of the case and ran it on top of a cardboard box. I'd never done that before. I couldn't believe it when it fired up. I put it down to a grounding problem, one of the causes cited on the ASUS forums. But it turned out to be something else entirely. It wasn't until I started putting it back in the case that I figured out what the problem was. The RESET SWITCH!?! For some bizarre reason, connecting the reset switch prevents it from starting up. It shouldn't matter which way round I connect and, indeed, it makes no difference. Simply connecting it at all causes the problem. I don't know whether the problem is with the motherboard or the case. My bet is on the motherboard! My last machine didn't have a reset switch so I'm just coping without one this time around.
As I said last time, kermitbantam and opalfruits came to visit. It was ages ago now but bleh. =P I really enjoyed their stay. We went out to Wetherspoons for the evening and then again for lunch the following day. Ellie helped me buy a Valentine's present for Marna. They also had a taste of Chef Chewi's cooking, including my (in)famous Chili Willies. That got a big thumbs up, though I was shocked to discover that Ellie does not like rice. I didn't know whether to be more shocked that someone like Ellie simply doesn't like it or that I never knew until now. We ate at an Indian place in Newcastle once but I guess I didn't notice. Oh and we drank some lovely wine. If you're ever buying wine from Asda and happen to see "what Philippa thinks", put it back on the shelf and pick up something that doesn't taste like vomit. I wasn't overly keen on the "chunky" flavours.
Things are looking good on the wedding front. Nearly everything is sorted. I was a little disappointed that certain people could not make it, particular people in Jersey who I just assumed would be able to come. Still, we've boosted the numbers to make up for it.
The wedding gift list has been a small drama due to disagreements about how it should be done, disagreements about what should be on it and me not really getting round to sorting it out until now. We're doing it through Amazon and one problem I've encountered is that it says "This product has been discontinued" next to items that are only available through private sellers. This is extremely misleading and everyone who's seen the list so far has asked me about it. I spoke to Amazon about it on the phone today. I was greeted with a foreign accent and at first I thought I'd been put through to India. That would be just typical. But no. A few words later, I realised it was Irish! The woman was extremely helpful and totally agreed that the wording was not only misleading but basically wrong. She said that she'd contact the technical team about it to get it fixed as soon as possible. I'm not sure how long it will take but I'll just have to put a note at the top of the list in the meantime. I hope they do fix it. Fingers crossed.
The wedding dress has been more or less sorted for ages now. It's actually my attire that's caused all the problems. In case you haven't heard, I'll be wearing a kilt. :D I'm really looking forward to that. We had a hell of a job getting the tartan I wanted in the right size though. It's a very popular tartan that is pretty much sold out everywhere that doesn't cost a fortune. They had to get the bigger size and then get it adjusted but they didn't half make a fuss about it. When we went back after the first adjustment, it didn't feel any different and they claimed I'd lost weight. I was pretty bloody sure that I hadn't and we think they were telling porkies. Fortunately, they really had adjusted it the time after that and so I was finally able to take the thing home. I'm not allowed to lose any weight, which I'm a little upset about because I had planned to. Maybe I'll wrap something round my waist to pad me out a bit but I probably won't lose any anyway!
I started playing Deus Ex 2: Invisible War a few days ago and I'm seriously enjoying it. Armed with an ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO, I am able to play it at 1280x1024 with many fancy settings enabled such as bloom and 4x anti-aliasing. It ran like molasses on most systems when it came out so it's just as well I waited. I've also managed to fix one of the game's biggest irritations - the massively huge "learn to read with Deus Ex" text! Who knows why they made it so big on the PC version when it is so incredibly easy to change. I figured this out myself. To my knowledge, no one else has done this. All I had to do was add a few lines to my user.ini file.
[FontMappings]
HudFont12__D=DX2_Font,0.5,0.80
HUD_Convo__D=DX2_Font,0.4,1.0
HudFont16__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
HUD_HelpText__D=DX2_Font,0.5,0.80
HUD_Inventory__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
SmallFont10__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
MediumFont16__D=DX2_Font,0.5,0.80
HUD_CornerHelpText__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.8
HudFont14__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
HUD_DataLink__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
HUD_SmallText__D=DX2_Font,0.4,0.80
Problem solved! I also didn't like how the game shows subtitles during cinematic sequences even when you have subtitles turned off. I figured out how to disable this but unfortunately it causes the game to get stuck after you select what you're going to say. Even hitting escape doesn't work. I guess this isn't a bug as such since they didn't really intend for you to do that but I have seen some other strange bugs. Just before leaving Seattle, I tried returning to Club Vox. As soon as I entered, I got a ticking off from the Omar. I went to find out why and found the Omar trader dead. I hadn't killed him but they seemed to think I had! Luckily, I didn't need to go to the club anyway. I also saw a multitool that I couldn't pick up floating in midair outside Mako Ballistics, and I caught a glimpse of several phantom multitools at once on another level. Weird. The game itself is superb though. It's not as gripping as its predecessor but I think things are only just starting to hot up so I'm reserving judgement for now.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
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kermitbantam and opalfruits came to stay at the weekend. It was lovely. But I'll write more about that when I'm not hunched over the old laptop and cursing the qwerty keyboard layout.
I really want to be able to tell you how awesome my new PC is but unfortunately it will not POST. This is the first stage of the boot process. The diagnostic display simply says CPU INIT. A search quickly tells you that this message is the dreaded curse of the ASUS Striker Extreme, the motherboard in question. There is no single cause and the suggested remedies include such anecdotal advice as raindancing. It is an expensive and very lavish motherboard but is infamous for this particular problem. It also wasn't the board of my choosing, I simply bought it second-hand from Echo, who had never used it before. Many report success after leaving the CMOS battery out for a couple of hours. That hasn't worked for me but some advise leaving it longer so I'm going to leave it overnight. If it still doesn't work, I'll try putting in my old Pentium 4 to see if that wakes it up. If that doesn't work, I'll cry. )-':
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, February 4th, 2008
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There's been some big shake ups on the work front lately.
Mine and Andrew's initial impressions of Nick Thatcher, which led to him being dubbed "Nasty Nick" as opposed to "Nice Nick" Lankester, turned out to be true. He started making some crazy suggestions and decisions, including scrapping Ruby on Rails in favour of PHP. Now I'll be the first to admit that I don't like PHP much but I won't claim that the site couldn't be written in it. It could. However, now is certainly not the time to be talking about effectively starting the site again from scratch. That's already happened twice. I didn't agree with his assertion that Rails developers are expensive. They are but that's because they're good, not because they use Rails. With Rails off the agenda, he also wanted to let Kevin go at the end of January, despite the fact that Kevin has been one of the key people in driving the site forward since December. After discussing everything with Ryan, he took charge, discovered that none of the London team particularly liked Nick either and set about getting him sacked just before receiving his resignation. He had, in fact, resigned for a totally unrelated reason. Talk about timing.
This was all too little, too late for me though. Even with Nick out of the way, the simple fact was that I'd had enough. This project has been dragging on for over a year and a half, far longer than even I expected. Ryan pleaded with me (oh what it is to be wanted!) and he might have won me over if I hadn't already secured another big client.
That's right. Marna had feared that I would be out of work for weeks, maybe even months, and with the wedding coming up, she wasn't entirely supportive of my decision to leave. But before she even had a chance to walk into town and tell her mother about it, I picked up the phone and hooked a big fish. Chewi has contacts, you see. You've probably forgotten but I wrote an entry back in early December, stating that Matt Appleton had offered me a job. It was still up for grabs and grab it I did. I can't say too much about it at the moment but the key words are photo booths and more money.
I did consider working half time for both clients, at least in the short term. Ryan was cool with this. Matt wasn't. But the good news is that Matt doesn't need me until March. This will give me a chance to train up some new developers (assuming we can find some!) so that the project may continue. In this way, I hope to make an amicable exit that my conscience can live with. I don't like leaving people in the lurch.
As if all this weren't enough, I was contacted by three other clients in the space of a week. Firstly, Richard wants me to create a client database. I don't normally charge Richard in the same way I charge a regular client. In fact, I rarely charge him at all because he's a friend. This particular task will actually take a couple of days though so I've decided to make an exception this time. I then got an unexpected call from Zulfi of Thackerays. This was a nice surprise because I thought he'd given up on me due to my being too busy to help him on the previous occasion. It's pretty much a textbook Rails site and he only needs some minor adjustments made so I've taken this up. And finally, today I got a text message from "Nice Nick" Lankester, informing me that he's in Thailand right now but would it be possible for me to do some work for Freehydrate. Again, it's only minor stuff so I've taken this on too. To say that I'm in demand would be an understatement!
I have also been summoned to a meeting in London this Thursday and Friday to try and convince Michael, the man with the money, that The Flex only needs a couple of months more work to get it into a launchable state. I've not met him before but I gather he's very unreliable and not technically-minded. That and the fact that I would be arguing the point for a project I'm leaving at the end of the month would make for quite an uncomfortable meeting. (Un)fortunately, at such short notice, the cost of getting down there is astronomical and even though I wouldn't be paying, it really isn't worth anyone's expense. The overnight Megabus would only cost £30 but I really couldn't face that this week, especially since kermitbantam and opalfruits are coming to visit on Saturday. Not that they're a handful, you understand. =P Consequently, I will present myself at the meeting in pixelated form by webcam instead.
Roll on Saturday.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, January 12th, 2008
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I've filed my tax return. I've had it since last summer and it was due at the end of the month so that's a weight off my mind. It came to a whopping £3.42. Haha. I'd gladly have given twice as much if it meant I didn't have to fill in the bloody form. I didn't even have to pay anything last time because I made a loss that year. This year was particularly tricky because I realised that I'd totally misunderstood how to calculate my capital allowances last year and consequently had to make an adjustment with an explanatory note. It's useful having an income tax manager as a Dad even if he only really knows Jersey's tax system! This year could have been even more awkward if I'd earned more than £1 of interest in my bank account. My account is based in Jersey, which makes it an offshore account, something that the government has nightmares about. Fortunately (in this particular case!), the account was overdrawn for most of that year so I only garnered 24p of interest. If it had been more than £1, I would have had to fill in the "foreign" section of the form, which isn't available online. I would have had to fill in a paper form instead. Scary. If the interest comes to more than £1 next year, I'll ask them whether I can just include it under "other" because filling out a paper form just for £3 of bank interest seems a bit excessive.
In other news, Echo very generously gave us his old GameCube for Christmas and we've been playing Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and Phantasy Star Online.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, December 23rd, 2007
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| Subject: | I did it... |
| Time: | 10:58 pm. |
| Mood: |  indescribable. | | Music: | Nobuo Uematsu - Aria Di Mezzo Carattere. |
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I did it. I really did it. It's only taken me eight years. I just finished Final Fantasy VIII. I bought it on the very day it came out back in 1999 and played most of the way through it in a very short time. Because I was in such a rush to progress through the story, I didn't level up enough and got stuck at the battle with Adel at the beginning of disc 4, which is known for being a particularly tricky point in the game. The fact is that FFVIII is not a game you can rush. Those who take their time generally find it quite easy but if you rush it like I did, you end up paying for it later.
I played it on and off during those past eight years, desperately trying to attain higher levels, better weapons and more GFs. I even started it again at one point but still got stuck in the same place. I eventually consulted some online guides. I didn't use them extensively, only when I needed to locate some of the more obscure things in the game and, heaven knows, there's plenty of those. I eventually secured a foothold and things quickly started to turn around. I think the real turning point was when I attained Tonberry. After that, everything suddenly became much easier. In fact, I managed to defeat Bahamut, work my way right through the Underwater Research Facility, defeat Ultima Weapon and progress all the way to the end without dying once (by that, I mean game over), except when I paid Omega Weapon a visit out of curiosity. I don't think I'll bother taking the time to defeat him since I have better things to do. As I expected, the final battle wasn't too tough but it was quite a lot longer than I expected, even by Final Fantasy standards. One funny point to mention is that the finishing blow was "Angelo Cannon" of all things. The dog took her down! :D
What amazes me the most is that despite posting at Final Fantasy forums for very many years (Aura isn't one anymore but it's still full of Final Fantasy nuts), I've never had a clue about the ending. Not one. I'm really pleased about that, especially since it was very different to what I was expecting. It wasn't as exciting as VII's ending but it was heart-warming and I liked it very much.
The whole thing has left me feeling very strange. Suddenly seeing so much new stuff from a game that really captivated me after eight whole years is a wonderful feeling. It almost felt like a sequel, though I suppose I shouldn't say that too loud because it's one of the only games in the series that Square hasn't fucked around with since its release! It obviously hasn't had the same impact that VII had on me but that feeling is still there. I imagine I'll have the game on my mind for a little while. I hope so.
So this now means that I've finished VI, VII and VIII. I always said I'd finish VIII before trying any of the later ones and I kept my word. I'm not sure which one I'll try next, I'm thinking either IX or XII (X sucks, XI is online) but I doubt I'll have time to get too far into another one soon anyway.
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Comments: Read 10 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, December 15th, 2007
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Marna asked me yesterday if there was any way she could enter text into the computer by handwriting. Back when I first met him, Richard Gilmore gave me a cheap graphics tablet to play with but I never really got it to work properly. Well last night, I persevered with success. I then installed an amazing little program called CellWriter, which turns your handwriting into text. It's perfect! I never knew such a thing existed for Linux. You just spend a few minutes training it and off you go. It's very easy, intuitive and surprisingly accurate. It no doubt helps that I don't write joined up normally. In case you haven't guessed, I've written this whole entry with it. I'll stick to typing, of course, but nevertheless I'm very impressed.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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amused.
grumpy.
frustrated.
sick.
relieved.
disappointed.