Friends

[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]

Below are the 25 most recent friends journal entries:

November 15th, 2009
02:21 am alaimacerc [Link]	Gravity 1, Defiance 0 I was just starting to get somewhat into Defying Gravity, despite having missed the first couple of eps, and the extent of the "soap opera is space" -- almost a given, that last. But I'm a bit put off by the realization that the fact that half the crew is going a bit kooky is not, in fact, a study of the isolating and confining effects of long-duration space travel, but that there's Big Secret Stuff going on; the sheer extent to which they're milking the sex/relationshippy stuff; and, the fact it's not just been cancelled in the States, but cancelled-so-hard-they're-not-even-showing-the-final-eps... before the BBC started showing any of them, in fact. It's far from the first time a British channel has done that; one can only hope they get 'em at a steep discount. On a very minor point, I was a bit surprised that the setting was the 2050s. From the "look", I'd assumed it was much nearer-future. (Which would have been, and to some extent indeed is, something of a novelty, as most media SF seems to flip-flop between "far future 'sufficiently advanced tech'" stuff and "present day with single, startling point-of-departure".) Current Mood: disappointed Current Music: Bombay Bicycle Club, on only slightly-breaking-up MTV2 Tags: defying gravity, that guy from first edition and band of, tv sf (Leave a comment)
November 14th, 2009
06:45 pm omentide [Link]	Feels like I've not done much But sometimes, at weekends, this is good. I have completed most of the housework that I do on a weekly basis. All that remains is one small fishtank (1.5 bucket change) and washing the kitchen floor. I have nearly finished crocheting a hat. I would like to have it finished in time for the cold weather but I may make it a bit longer than the one in the pattern in order to cover my ears. It is black and red. Then I may start trying to knit socks. Oya said that, in Turkey, in winter, the women do crafts. She showed me the waistcoats she was making for her sister's children who will be visiting her from Australia. So I am doing crafts as it is winter. To a very limiited extent. Today we took delivery of some more wine. And a windsheild for Ashley's Dragstar. I was a bit worried about the redelivery of the windshield (it was bought on ebay, from Germany) as we'd had to re-arrange it on line for today and we didn't get a receipt email. Managed to track it though and it arrived about two minutes before the deadline of the 09:00 to 13:00 slot. Ashley has now fitted it. My parents are coming over at 19:00. My mother wants to try Wii Fit before deciding whether she wants to buy one. They are picking Jacob up first and then taking us out to dinner in Hatch End. Some of the new wine is chilling ready for them. The whole wine thing has been strange. When we last went to Majestic we couldn't get any Goldwater. OK, Goldwater is not precisely a cheap wine but we don't drink a lot of wine and we do enjoy Goldwater. It's a Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc - very dry and greenfruit and minerally with a hint of grass. So we bought some other high-end Kiwi Sauvignons, some of which are OK, but none of which are a patch on Goldwater. Then Goldwater became available so we bought some of that. Years and years ago (before we moved into this flat) we used to buy a Sauvignon Blanc called Fumees Blanc from one of the supermarkets. Then they stopped doing it. We tried to source it elsewhere and failed. Now Majestic are doing it. This necessitated a second order. I think we now have enough wine to last us till we emigrate. Maybe you'll all have to come round and help us finish it before we go! (Leave a comment)
02:46 pm omentide [Link]	The darker side of fish keeping I have mentioned before that the number of tetras in my large tank has been decreasing. Today I found one without a tail. It was still alive. I took the decision to euthanise it. It was unable to swim properly and looking very stressed out. I like the little tetras and they are from the same biotope as the rest of the fish in that tank, but it's obviously cruel to mix them up with the Diadema (who probably prey upon them in nature). May be replacing (well, reinforcing) them with a somewhat larger type of tetra. Maybe some penguin tetras - they're 6 - 8 cm whereas my little black neons are only 4 cm. Or maybe revert to the black phantoms though those are also a little small and very nippable. I do like the x-ray tetra and the lemon tetra but they are also smallish, though not so small as the black neons. Hmmm. What to do? (Leave a comment)
November 13th, 2009
10:13 pm alaimacerc [Link]	"This Insane Photo Destroyed a Camera Lens" Cheap at half the price! linky Current Mood: mad sciencey Tags: delta iv heavy, photos, rocket launches (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
06:44 pm omentide [Link]	I have had a long day Pretty certain that I failed my Access exam. Questions are worth 5% each. Pass mark is 75%. Didn't even hit the last three questions. Couldn't work out how to make a combo box in a form display the record specified within the combo box. Had predicted problems with calculated controls in various parts of reports. Messed up making many:many connections.... Odd, really, these are the very issues I was concerned about last night (except for the combo box one - I didn't even know you could make a combo box that did that). The rest, I think, I got right. Though I'm bound to have dropped a mark or two somewhere. This isn't a borderline thing like with the Excel. I failed. Poo. Well, at least it is the weekend now. (Leave a comment)
12:50 pm fluffworld [Link]	RANT - Marketing – the selling thing. My beer mat informs me that Victoria Bitter has a new slogan. Also on my writing blog at Snarkzilla, feel free to comment there and make me look interesting. There’s even a POLL! Victoria Bitter - VB to its friends, of which it has very few publicly - is a beer. An iconic Australian beer, if by you iconic you mean “yeah mate, it’s Aussie as, but I don’t drink it coz it’s shit”. Except they do. It’s cheap and cheerful and accounts for a third of the pre-packaged beers sales in Australia. Note that pre-packaged bit. You’d bring a VB home to quench your thirst, but you wouldn’t order it in the pub. Drinking VB is a bit like sleeping with your ex. It’s not really classy, but everyone has done it when there was nothing else available. Especially if they were already drunk and it was just hanging about at a party. It’s okay to drink, provided no one knows. Their long standing slogan, which said VB was “for a hard-earned thirst” was at least evocative in that it reflected the product. VB is for a hard-earned thirst, because dying of semi-dehydration is one of things that makes its bland yet acidic taste semi-palatable. It’s a slogan that has served VB well, with its phenomenal sales despite being universally derided as a shit beer that isn’t even actually a bitter. But they’re dropping it. From now on VB shall be known as – the drinking beer. I’m sorry, what? Honestly, what genius came up with this slogan? How much did they pay some marketeer to take five seconds off complaining that on Twitter that their iPhone won’t work to come up with this particular gem? Can I have their job? I’ve always loved stating the obvious in a condescending fashion and I can come up with all sorts of things right now. Nescafe – the drinking coffee. Oxygen – the breathing gas. Myers – the shopping shop. Quickly, someone get me a medal, because that’s three award-winning campaigns right there. Of course it’s the drinking beer. ALL beers are the drinking beer. What the hell else do you do with them? You don’t market a brand by saying it can do thing it’s meant to, unless you can claim other products don’t do it as well. What, the other beers are dehydrated? Made of sawdust and glass chips? Contain acid and dead flies? Are currently on fucking fire? What? Every beer is the drinking beer. Unless you are the premium luxury brand in your niche, you can’t claim ownership of the need without looking like a total twat. (And even then, you look a tad twatty, but hey, label bunnies just love that posh twat look.) All beers are for drinking. How does this differentiate your product from all the others? What the hell are they for? You can split hairs and suggest while YOUR beer is for drinking, the other beers still have space to pick a niche – they could be the quaffing beer, or the sipping beer, or the peeing like a racehorse beer, or the beer that comes back up easy, but you are just being full of crap. It’s not “modern”, it’s not “pared-down” or “simplistic” or “a return to base values”; it’s lazy, it’s stupid and it shows your product has nothing to offer. And the annoying thing is, with a little modification it could have been a slogan that captured the essence of Victoria Bitter and what it means to Australia. VB - the drinking when there is nothing else to drink beer. VB - the “it was free at the party” beer. The “It’s only 10am, and I’m already at a happy hour” beer, the “I drink tinnies on my lunchbreak” beer, the “this is my child support I am drinking” beer. But no. Instead we get a slogan as bland as the beer itself. Which – despite and to spite the slogan - I won’t be drinking. Unless, you know, there’s nothing else. Or it’s free at a party. Or I’m too drunk to notice. Current Mood: RANTASTIC Tags: rant (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
12:20 am omentide [Link]	More Mundanely Tomorrow I take the last exam in my Advanced ECDL. Access. I did OK on the mock exam last week (85%, pass mark being 75%). I think I have sorted out how to connect tables one to many, one to one and many to many (though the last of those continues to confuse me with its junction tables and everything). I think I can manage calculated fields in report footers (if I'm lucky and in the right mood), same goes for sub forms. Though I have a horrible tendency to fail to make grouped reports and the calculated fields that go in various bits of them work properly.... Problem is, I don't have time to do the practice exercises at work and I no longer have Access 2003 at home as, when I got this computer, I installed Office 2007 (which, as an NHS employee, I got cheap and legal). (Leave a comment)
November 12th, 2009
08:52 pm omentide [Link]	Karma, Kismet, Will, Desire If you can rise up to where all these are One and learn to understand their workings and manipulate. That is the foundation of my faith. That is what I call Magick. If you can believe that everything is, in one sense or another choice, then, by Magick you can change it. I can say that. But I am not where the earthquake is Nor the landslide nor the hurricane Nor the cholera, typhoon or typhoid Malaria, famine, war or flood. (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
November 11th, 2009
12:14 am omentide [Link]	A long day Today I left home at 06:40 and got into work at 07:30. Public transport was kind to me. The meeting didn't actually start til 08:00 but I left when I had to leave in order to stand a good chance of getting there on time. Got on the hopper bus at 10:30, in further meetings from 12:00 till about 13:00 (allowed to leave early on the grounds of having already stayed late after work to watch that presentation), then 14:00 till about 16:15. Worked till 5:30 then totally failed to catch a bus to meet up with friends in Westfield. I waited ages for the bus (6 min bus ride) then, shortly after I decided to walk, 2 came along at once. I would have caught the second one at the corner had not a cyclist decided to run a red light. We met up and decided that we did not really need a glass of champagne at £9:00 a shot. Instead we decided to head for dinner. After a brief wander and conversation we opted to try Wahaca. And it was one excellent choice. A shared starter of very good tortilla chips and salsa, main course, shared desert of churros, coffees and a couple of drinks each came to £22 each, including a tip. Everyone was delighted with what they ordered and my pork pibi was incredibly delicious (and fairly seriously picante). It came with black beans and a bowl of rice. I didn't find the rice very genuinely Mexican but it did taste nice. By the time we left there was a sizeable queue of people waiting for tables. The other restaurants nearby were remarkably full for a Tuesday night, but none of the others had queues. They do little taster menus but I suspect those get very costly very quickly. A bit like sushi or a tapas bar. I would certainly recommend going but, unless you're starting very early, it might be sensible to book. Central line was experiencing delays on the way home so I didn't get back till gone 10. (Leave a comment)
November 10th, 2009
10:01 pm sarklor [Link]	Stuff. This morning I managed to turn my neck enough to make it crack for the first time in a week. And my god, it felt good. At this point I can move my head every way but up. That's not bad. Of course being unable to straighten up properly is not doing my shoulders any good. I could do with a week's worth of backrubs. Still, I'm healing up pretty quick, all things considered. I should be able to proudly display the nasty looking incision wound to the world in a few more days. Perhaps it'll even leave a sexy new scar (as if I need any more scars). Tomorrow I get to go on a trip to Galway. It'll be great to get out of the house. I know convalescence is necessary, but I'm getting some serious cabin fever out here in the sticks. It'll be good to meet some folks and pop into Wired (Which had to delay opening for a day because of parts not arriving). Hopefully, and I must admit it's a big "hopefully" right now, I'll be able to go to Dominicon. I put myself down for a place with the WARPS folks, but if a day or two in Galway takes enough out of me I'll have to stay at home another while. Either way, I should be back in Cork next week. I quite miss the place right now. I haven't really been home since Gaelcon. (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
01:22 pm coffee_lifeform [Link]	( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) Current Location: At work, Silvermills Current Mood: tired Tags: pcb, whining (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
03:14 pm fluffworld [Link]	It's days like this I miss being a carnie. I'm looking out the window at the blue sky, and wishing I was in the dry inland outback where the warm breezes blow eucalyptus oil through the air and the car throws up red dust in your wake. No air-con, no airfreshener, just an open window and rock and roll on the radio, on the way to the next gig. Sleeping under the stars in a swag, up at dawn and brown from working outside all day. So, anyone reckon that there’s a book in a girl quitting her job and deciding to travel all around and inland Australia on a motor bike? paws at window and pines Where would you rather be today? Current Mood: wistful (11 comments \| Leave a comment)
November 9th, 2009
11:06 pm omentide [Link]	By Popular Demand I review the Wii Fit Plus I have one and I think it was worth getting. If you use the Wii Fit at all. ( Here are the new features that I find useful: ) (Leave a comment)
09:46 pm alaimacerc [Link]	Chiesel! RTE News had a report about using "cheese manufacturing byproducts" -- essentially whey, I think -- as a biofuel. Class idea. CO2-neutral(ish), doesn't (directly) compete with the food supply, but most crucially of all, sounds intensely silly. Visions of Green Bay/other Wisconsin sports fans in "cheesehead" hats, Wheelly Big Cheese fighting robots, etc. (OK, technically the pathway is to produce ethanol, not biodiesel, but "chiesel" was too much to resist. Current Mood: amused (and congested) Current Music: Tears for Fears, "The Hurting", on _Starter for 10_ Tags: bad puns, biofuel (Leave a comment)
02:48 am alaimacerc [Link]	band.config(), Opus 1.5 Really enjoyable Abbey Road this week. ( Bloc Party... ) Current Mood: sleepy Tags: band.config, bloc party, live at abbey road (Leave a comment)
November 8th, 2009
10:56 pm alaimacerc [Link]	Back to Awled Claves and Paw Ridge Back in Caaark. ( Mission pretty much entirely successful... ) Current Mood: cheerful Current Music: "Biffy Clyro Takeover" (!) on MTV2 Tags: biffy clyro, birthdays, travel (Leave a comment)
11:24 pm omentide [Link]	Cross Posting more Available Games The sale continues. Some of this stuff is very old. Some of this stuff is very, very rare. Board and war games After the Holocaust (SPI 1977) Mint condition, unused. Counters not punched out Cosmic Encounter (Games Workshop 1986) Extremely good condition – virtually unused Diplomacy (Games Research Inc 1971) Extremely good condition – virtually unused Dune (Avalon Hill 1979) Extremely good condition – virtually unused Grunt (SPI 1971) Some damage to box. Contents in very good condition Jerusalem (Simulations Design Corp 1975) Good condition Mayday (GDW 1980) Extremely good condition – contents virtually unused Organized Crime (Koplow Games 1974) Some damage to box. Contents in very good condition Outreach (SPI 1976) Mint condition, unused. Counters not punched out Russian Civil War (SPI 1976) Some damage to box. Contents in very good condition Sinai (SPI 1973) Some damage to box. Contents in very good condition Sorcerer (SPI 1975) Some damage to box. Contents extremely good condition The old RPG stuff D&D white box set (TSR 1974) Some damage to box. Contents in extremely good condition D&D basic set (TSR 1979) Some damage to box. Contents in extremely good condition D&D red box set (TSR 1983) Light damage to box. Contents in extremely good condition Empire of the Petal Throne TSR 1975) Some damage to box. Contents in extremely good condition and Assorted AD&D stuff all in extremely good condition Pictures here If you're interested, make us a sensible offer. This stuff needs to go but we are not in a hurry. (7 comments \| Leave a comment)
November 7th, 2009
09:20 pm omentide [Link]	Contentious question Why do women wear make up? (51 comments \| Leave a comment)
November 6th, 2009
07:36 pm omentide [Link]	It's been a busy week And next week doesn't look as if it will be much easier. There are three major big pieces of work I'm involved in to some extent or other. One deadlines Monday (functionally today, but the meeting is Monday afternoon), on on 12th Nov and the other on 15th. These all involve slightly different sets of people who all need data etc. and don't really have a clear view of what each other are doing. This leaves me feeling fairly liable to snap at people who want me to do stuff they should be able to do for themselves (you know, it takes as long to send me an email asking me to do something as it does to do it yourself). And the routine work does not stop at all. Tonight at around 17:00 I get a flurry of emails from someone who wants to meet me on Monday (no time specified) presumably on site X. I'm planning to be on site Y (I gave him the ext. I will most likely be on there) where the meeting referred to earlier in this para is taking place at 14:00. And I have bad data for that meeting. Mainly because it was only requested/agreed yesterday and there was a limit to what could feasibly be done. It's not data I can pull myself. One of the people who can pull it is a temp and needed some support, the other is very senior but suddenly got other, more urgent, demands upon her time. So, if this consultant wants to talk to me about the work I need to help him finish by mid-month, he's going to have to do it by phone... On Wednesday a load of us went out for dinner at Zizi's in Paddington. All I can say is 'don't'. Service was terrible and my pizza was cold (waited ages for it). Though, as it was only £10 for two courses, you can't really grumble. It was a girls' night out. Not really my scene but it was a good crowd and I got to hear some really interesting stories about eating goats head(s) in a tiny village built on sand in Nigeria. My new computer and new phone continue to be shiney. I like the wii fit plus. Though I may not do any tonight. Currently awaiting a Sainsburys delivery. Today I took my ECDL Advanced Access Mock paper which I passed. I also heard that I passed the Excel I had to resit. That was good. Ashley came to see me at work to pick up the piece of paper that told us that his ebay item (some really nice boots) had been left at the post office. We thought it was the sorting office which is easy for me to visit on the way into work but it wasn't and the post office doesn't open till 09:00. Anyway, he noticed (and mentioned) that I still have a load of scoliosis in my spine, but utterly failed to notice that I had my hair cut. My colleagues (both male and female) expressed surprise that he had survived this but, honestly, why should I care? Yesterday I activated my physiotherapy referral. I should get an appointment in about 13 weeks. (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
02:55 am alaimacerc [Link]	Taking part's what counts... Full of cold virus for the last two days. Scampering through the east end of Glesgae soaked in sweat probably didn't help with that. Doesn't help with the post-gig hearing loss, either: was way too close to the stage-left/house-right main speakers on Tuesday. (On Monday, I swear the crowd seemed louder than the band where I was, about halfway back and in the centre.) Still, all very much worth it. Lots of fun meeting up with Bifffans in the 13th Note beforehand: only realized after the fact that BC had actually played the 13th Note several times, around ten years ago, before their first album. In other news, why is Countryfile (of all things) more adventurous in its musical selection (Bat for Lashes; Foals) than so-called music radio? (RTE Radio 2, please stand up -- and hang your head in shame.) Current Mood: ah-choo! Tags: biffy clyro, colds, ruminations (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
November 5th, 2009
01:40 pm sarklor [Link]	Well, it's not as bad as last time. I can still speak, swallow, laugh and breathe without painkillers. Can't really move my neck or right shoulder without straining the operating area, so I'm spending my days hunched over in a Quasimodo-esque state. Well, a quasi-Quasimodo-esque state, but that's rather a mouthful. The anaesthetic made me throw up, that wasn't fun. And my leg remained numb until the day after, which was an odd feeling. I really don't see what all the fuss is about regarding morphine. I don't think it did all that much for me that a shot of Difene to the left buttock didn't also achieve. And the nurses were not unkind to the eye this time around. In any case, that's the last obvious remnant of ill health in my body for the moment. Whether it comes up with another surprise remains to be seen. But I think I've managed to stick to my new year's resolution of not letting anything get in the way of enjoying 2009. Recovery shall continue in the family home. The broadband connection has improved to almost useful speeds since I was here last time, so I won't go totally mad. I hope to be able to travel back into Galway to visit a couple of people by the end of the week, and there's no way in hell I'm missing the reopening of Wired on Tuesday. (Leave a comment)
12:10 am alaimacerc [Link]	Barrowlands, Tuesday "Bodies in Flight" played! Also "Liberate the Illiterate". James speaks! More than once! Could he be easing his way into something of a spokesbassist role? Current Mood: Biffier than Thou Tags: biffy clyro, gigs, glasgow (Leave a comment)
November 4th, 2009
11:01 pm alaimacerc [Link]	Barrowlands, Monday I can has heard "Jaggy Snake" played live. Current Mood: Biffiest Tags: biffy clyro, gigs, glasgow (Leave a comment)
November 3rd, 2009
09:37 pm omentide [Link]	November - just November I am not writing a novel in a month. I am not growing a moustache (though I have three friends wanting sponsorship for Movember and need to decide who to sponsor). I have not made a commitment to post to LJ every day. But I did take a nice photo of the trees on my way to work today. This is the big tree in front of the church that is between our estate and the station. > (Leave a comment)
11:41 am fluffworld [Link]	On Kind regards and correct writing - RANT Crossposted from my writing blog at sadhbh.blogspot.com KR, he says. Right there at the end of the email he sent looking to introduce his PR firm. Just before his name. KR. I have no idea what it means. Keith Richards? Keep Right? Keep Rocking? And then it dawns on me. “KR” is short for Kind Regards. This man, this abomination of a PR man who is looking to make a good first impression on me and my firm, not ONLY uses the most fatuous and over-gentrified closing since “Yours most humbly affectionate” bit the dust in the sixteenth century but he can’t even be arsed to write it all. Kind regards is foul enough. Victorian and stilted in its vagueness and yet capable of starting an arms race of affection. Someone signs “Kind regards”, and then someone has to beat them with “KindEST regards” and the whole thing gets totally out of control with “My most kind regards” and “Yours with the kindest of regards” and “Prostrating my most humble self on your bidet to offer the very kindest of my kind regards”. Or the person who tries to play the strong silent type and writes merely “Regards” with no indication of how kind they are. And exactly how kind are the regards? Would you donate your house to me, or just a few bucks for a coffee? Do they have no monetary element redeemable? Are we talking pouring your cup of tea on me if I was on fire, or saying “I hope the burns get better soon” as I am carted screaming in agony into the ambulance? Kind regards. Could you vague that up for me a bit? For added Victorian style – because nothing says polite like a group of people who used to encase their privates in metal to prevent “self abuse” – you can for no apparent reason capitalise everything. “Kind Regards.” It’s especially good if you wrongly put a capital R on regards but forget to put a capital on your own damned name. Or just dispense with the piddling matters of letter altogether and go with “KR”. How informal! How, well, how little like you even care slightly about the opinion of your reader. In fact, why not just close your email with “Yeah, whatever”? I’m sorry, we’re being modern now - that mean disregarding the most basic of niceties and ease of reading – let’s use “YW”. Nothing says “can’t be arsed” like not bothering to finish your words. Or not. Look, I have had it up to here with clever buggers from PR and marketing telling the world that correct grammar and capitalisation are “dated”, that we should be mixing it up with txtspk outside of texts. The first purpose of writing something is not to be funky, but to be readable. You are writing so other people can understand what you have said. Ignore PR twatboy in the corner desperately trying to justify his consultancy fee by spewing turdery and write correctly. Have the courage to make it look like your company is smart enough to master basic communication. Capitalise correctly. Use punctuation. Go fecking crazy; care about your customers’ reading experience. Or prepare to have people take one look at your garbage and conclude you are morons who can’t be trusted with a keyboard, let alone a PR budget. My response? TL;DR* Too Long; Didn’t Read Current Mood: enraged Tags: rant (16 comments \| Leave a comment)

[<< Previous 25 entries]

Customize

Advertisement