It’s been a damn long time coming, but I’ve finally uploaded some more pictures to my gallery. A grand total of six from the Guildford town cycle race. The best ones I think, and one more from my skiing holiday.
As always the link on the right will take you there. Enjoy!!
If you’ve got any comments about the pictures, pop them in this post ‘cos the gallery only allows users to add comments, which is damn annoying.
Looking at the ‘dashboard’ for my blog here, the number of comments I have is over double the number of posts I’ve written. While this does include comments that I’ve written this does make me feel that this blog, that started life as a random experiment, is successful.
Admittedly I don’t know the comment to post ratio of other blogs, if anyone does and wants to share, please do, I’d be very interested.
It wasn’t long ago that I was thinking that I’d like more to do at work. Just idle thoughts, thinking that with more to do I’d be less likely to get distracted. Probably more of an excuse to myself for every time that I found myself staring out the window thinking about photography. Needless to say I didn’t tell anyone about this un-natural urge to get more work.
Strangely though, by some mystical act of karma, it was only about a week later that I got more work to do, then more, then even more…
Now I’m in charge of writing the documentation, writing the software, and writing the hardware for the current project I’m on. If the idea of writing hardware confuses you then just be glad that I didn’t drop the acronym VHDL into the post! Then you would probably have to nod and smile, pretending that those letters actually mean something to you. You may perhaps start wondering why technical professions use acronyms so much and whether you can think so something amusing that VHDL might mean. It’s entirely possible that you’d have got as far as ‘Very Dangerous’ when you quickly tune back into my words to find that AHDL and RAM have also cropped up. At this point you will probably find it all too much, make some vauge excuse about a dog and leave. Quickly.
Believe me I’ve seen it happen, and that’s why I’m always a bit vauge about my job when someone asks me what I do for a living.
…It’s not that I’m complaining about having more work, in fact getting extra responsibility was one of the prominent reasons for getting a new job! That and finding a job where I actually understand what’s going on and don’t have to ask for help every day.
It’s just come as a bit of a shock!
I’ve taken the plunge and got some mouthwash. My first two times (last night and this morning) weren’t one hundred percent successful. Swilling’s not a problem, it’s the gargling thats letting me down. First time, mouthwash everywhere, second time, I’m quite sure I accidently swallowed half of it.
Another problem I have with the whole ritual is the beginning, the initiation if you like. Once I’ve measured out the ‘shot’ of mouthwash, it takes presnece of mind not to down it. Force of habit.
I’m going to persevere though, may as well seeing as I’ve got a whole bottle of the stuff.
It must have been about a month since this happened, but better late than never.
…
I was making my sandwiches for work in the evening in the normal manner, (bread, butter, filling, you know the drill) when my housemates came back from one of their performances. One of them asked me what I was doing (duh). Then proceded to exclaim ‘You don’t need four slices of bread’ or something along those lines.
Now bear in mind that I’ve been making sandwiches for work for a hell of a long time now. I was pretty incensed, how dare she tell me how much I should eat etc etc rant and so on.
A few days later however I was curious, “it is hot hot summer after all, perhaps I don’t need ‘four‘ slices of bread” I thought.
So in a daring experiment I tried just two slices of bread. Expecting to come home hungry and vindicated.
Strange thing is, it made no difference at all.
I mean at all
No more hungry, no more tired, no loss of weight (a good thing in my case). Nothing.
Mysterious… really makes me want to know where the hell those other two slices of bread were going.
Just recently I had a bit of a problem in my mouth. Some kind of swelling near the back where you might expect wisdom teeth to be. To take action against this I brushed my teeth more thoroughly.
This seemed to work. I was also tempeted to start using mouthwash but didn’t.
Here is my question: Do you use mouthwash?
Do you actually notice the difference and if so in what way. If it’s merely a fresher breath experience then I’ll probably not bother, but if you find that you get noticably cleaner teeth I may well have to give it a go.
Also if you don’t use mouthwash, why not?
It is a question I was going to pose to my friends but I thought I’d open it up to the wider forum that is the internet (or my friends but without the cost of a phone call).
As I mentioned earlier, my laptop now works. Credit goes to my dad for finding the answer to the problem and I feel compelled to explain it here as apparently the answer is very difficult to find.
At the moment I don’t know where the solution is, if I did then I would link to it (if you know, let me know).
So, enough beating around the bush, to the explanation.
First, the problem:
When pressing the power button on the laptop, the power light comes on for about two seconds, then the hard disk light flashes and the power light goes off. No booting, no whir of fans, nothing.
The solution:
You need new RAM, the old stuff has packed up. Quite a simple solution really.
My excuse for not finding this out is that before my laptop ‘died’ it was having hard drive problems, so of course I assumed that was the problem when it stopped working. The fact that it didn’t even get into the BIOS and no longer displayed the helpful ‘Boot device not found’ message should really have alerted me to further possibilities.
Truth be told I was kinda looking for a good excuse to build a spangly new machine anyway. Now I’ve got the best of both worlds!!
Bonanza!
… well, nothing really.
I had hoped to celebrate my expected return to blogging with an insightful, interesting and stimulating post on why 666 is considered ‘the number of the beast’.
Well after a bit of searching around it seems that this well know ‘fact’ is actually the most tenuous half-reference you could imagine. Infact I hereby demote the fact to ‘mumbo jumbo’.
There are I think three references to the number 666 in the bible (if several different websites are to be believed). Two describe the devils size (60 cubics high and 600 pounds or some such), and the otherone has something to do with someones sons.
People that care are even beginning to think that the devils number is in fact 616.
There are some numerology websites that suggest 777 is gods number (seven is good for some reason) and therefore 666 is the number of a imperfect man (being one short on all accounts).
‘If thats the case then sign me up’ I say, seeing as the expectation of being anything other than imperfect is not something I could bear.
So, not insightful, probably not interesting and highly unlikely to be stimulating.
At least the only way is up!!!
Well my new computer is build, and controversially, my old one is fixed.
So with luck blogging output can increase.
Although the onset of World of Warcraft addiction may slow the trend.
Also software and hardware configurations still need to be finalised on both machines.
But, not long now!!
Well it had to happen eventually. Both my writting about it and the actual event itself I suppose.
I have to admit that hearing about the terrorist attacks in London was quite a strange experience for me, at the time it just seemed slightly surreal and that was about it. The reality of the event was not really at that moving for me, people die all the time and harsh as it may sound, I treated this event in the same way that I treat many world problems: Mild indifference.
Then however, a change occured, on my way home from work. Instead of listening my my usual musicall selection I was listening to radio 4. The descriptions of the seemingly smooth operation of the emergency sevices plans for such events stired something in me. A sense of pride I suspect. National pride. At the way the British people coped with the explosions.
That was what moved me, not the horror of the event itself but the reaction to the event by the people involved in the event. This is, I think, the first time that a major historical event has occured and the internet has been a major source of information (for me anyway). Of course there are all the usual news sites and they are pretty much the same as reading the paper or watching the news, only quicker. But add to that the more personal accounts, un-edited and bluntly frank in their accounts, these blog entries were a totally different way off looking at the event.
This is an excellent example, so good infact that I found it through the bbc news website. Reading it you get a brief glimpse into the atmosphere of the blitz, or more specifically ‘the blitz spirit’.
Some excellent quotes from this account (in my opinion) I have coppied here, although I would strongly recommend you read the whole thing yourself.
Silence decended on the carriage apart from people choking and coughing, then someone near me quipped, “Well, at least we got the Olympics!”
I called work, told them my train had exploded and said I was covered in all this black, icky stuff, so I was going home to get a bath. They said, “So we’ll see you around lunchtime, then?” Yeah. Right.
Brilliant.
randomtask 