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Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
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Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
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For reasons I can't remember now, I was thinking about Harrock House the other day. It's a manor house style building in East Sussex. I don't know if it was actually a manor house or not. Information about its history seems surprisingly scarce on the web. It used to be owned by my school, and there were school trips to stay in the house, and visit the sights in the surrounding area. I guess I was probably there in 1983 or so. Anyway, that led me to look up information about the house, which in turn led me to a facebook page for Old Owenians, where it was mentioned that the school is approaching its 400th year. I hadn't really thought about it before, but at the time the school was established, Shakespeare was still alive, the English Civil War was still some way off, as was the great fire of London, and the Mayflower had yet to set sail for the New World.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
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Sunday, October 18th, 2009
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| Subject: | Fame |
| Time: | 11:42 pm. |
| Mood: |  tired. | | Music: | Wolf -- "Whisky psycho hellions". |
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Being asked for your autograph is a strange experience. I've had to sign mine several times over the last few years, initially at the drag strip. But it occurred to me this afternoon that I've signed more autographs due to my quilting than I have due to my racing. It's a strange world...
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Monday, October 12th, 2009
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Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
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I have no phone. Its battery ballooned. Furthermore, the spare battery I had is refusing to charge, so I'm currently without a mobile phone. But the thing is, it's surprisingly liberating. I have long despised the telephone. It's an instrument of the devil. This is mostly because I'm not great at holding a conversation. I struggle to think of things to say. I'm really enjoying not being contactable at will. I feels as though a weight has been lifted from my shoulders (one that I didn't realise was there in the first place). Carphone Warehouse not only don't have a new battery for me, but they can't even order one[1]. I've ordered one from a mail order place on the net, and it will no doubt arrive in a few days. But even when it arrives, I'm considering using my phone less. I suspect I'll still take it with me when I'm out and about. But I may well have it turned off much of the time. I like the feeling of freedom.
[1] What's that about? It's not as if it's a prehistoric phone. Sometimes I despair at the increasingly disposable nature of the consumer electronics market.
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Monday, October 5th, 2009
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Taken from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ajax
01. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper at their LiveJournal.
02. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!
03. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on.
Anyway, here's mine. You can click on it to see it full size:
Why am I using it? Because it's wide. There's a company called 9X Media that makes multiple monitor display systems, and they made a selection of free extra wide images available for download on their web site, so that people with large displays would be able to have a sensible backdrop, without having to scale up a smaller image. This is one of their older ones, which doesn't seem to be available any more. I tweaked it in GIMP to change the colours from the original brown to something a bit more pleasing to the eye.
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Friday, October 2nd, 2009
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http://lwn.net/Articles/354860/
Sometimes you can really appreciate living in a world that isn't 100% driven by a company's bottom line. Can you imagine the uproar if Gates, Balmer or Jobs had come out with a comment like that? Yaaay Linus.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, October 1st, 2009
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So some while back, digital_eye mentioned that she was playing Block Star on Facebook. It was a Tetris-a-like game. She claimed to be good at it, and doubted that I'd be able to beat her score. Now I'm not normally one who rises to the bait of such challenges, but in this case, I'd been playing Tetris pretty much since she was born. I was reasonably confident. So created a throwaway Facebook account to play the game. Sure enough, I beat her score. But then they took away Block Star, and replaced it with an officially licensed version called Tetris Friends. That was rubbish, though, and not worth playing, so I gave up on it, and didn't return to Facebook again (maybe it's just me, but I don't get the appeal -- it's sort of like LJ but the user interface is 10 times worse).
Anyway, fast forward a year or so, and out of the blue, I got a friend request for my Facebook account. And then another. And now, somewhat unexpectedly, I have several Facebook friends. So, errrr.... hi!
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Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
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Let me rephrase that. Public transport works just fine. But only in some areas. I get the tube into work every day[1]. Yes, there are a few problems every now and then, but by and large, it gets me where I need to go, reliably and for a reasonable price. But yesterday, I needed to get to March in Cambridgeshire, by train. No problem, I thought. So I looked at the National Rail journey planner, and then I recoiled in horror at the cost. 60 quid to travel 80 miles? That's ridiculous. It would have been cheaper to drive there than to take the train. To put that into perspective, I'm not talking about driving there in an ordinary car, but in my 7.6l race car, which isn't exactly the most fuel efficient vehicle on the planet. It would have been quicker, too. It ended up taking me 4 hours from when I left work to when I arrived in March.
I like the idea of public transport. In theory, it's a great idea. But it seems that in reality, it's just not realistic to expect people to use it. Next time, I'll go by car/bike.
[1] Recently, at least. The parts have arrived, and my bike should be back on the road later this week. Yaaay.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, September 24th, 2009
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Monday, September 21st, 2009
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This weekend, I needed to go to Nottingham. Ferret had the road car, my
race car isn't particularly practical to take on that sort of journey,
and my bike is in for repairs. Nothing major, but I guess it's going to
become an ever more common problem with an old bike, in that the parts
are proving hard to find. In this case, something as trivial as fork
seals -- they're now ordered and should be here in the next day or two,
but it wasn't in time for the weekend. So my mechanic, Doug, offered to
lend me his bike.
The bike turned out to be a Suzuki Bandit N1200. Or rather, a somewhat
modified one. I don't know the full extent of the changes, but at the
very least, it has the fairing removed and a set of straight handlebars
for a streetfighter look. It also has some performance mods. Anyway, the
net result is a bike very different from my normal ride. The bars and
the position of the pegs and clutch and brake levers mean the riding
position is leaning much further forward than I'm used to. The clutch
requires you to be superman. It's not too bad on the open road. Indeed,
it's actively good, with nice crisp gear changes. But when you're stuck
in traffic around town, it's really not pleasant, and your left hand
rapidly aches. The bike has bucketloads of power, and in particular,
torque. It's all too easy to lift the front wheel from a set of traffic
lights, even when you're not trying, and it just keeps on pulling all
the way up through the gears. The steering is incredibly direct, and
the brakes are out of this world compared to what I'm used to.
Wikipedia claims it has a reputation for being a hooligan's bike, and
it's not hard to see why. It's fair to say that it's quite a bit quicker
than my Magna. It's not particularly comfortable to ride, though, and
I certainly couldn't commute to work on it as I do at the moment. But
the bit where you open the throttle and find yourself in the next county
with a huge grin on your face? Yeah, I like that bit...
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Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
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That's it. I've had enough. The Royal Mail can't come to an end soon enough. Privatise the whole thing, lay off all the staff (who seem universally inept) and start again from scratch. It's the only way to be sure (in this instance, taking off and nuking the site from orbit probably isn't practical).
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, September 4th, 2009
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I went to Sainbury's yesterday, and went through the self service tills. Once you get past the intensely annoying "unexpected item in bagging area" warnings, they're actually pretty good, and generally speed up the process of paying for your goods and getting out of the shop. Then when it came time to pay, I realised I only had a Scottish £10 note on me. I resigned myself to it failing horribly, and having to call a member of staff to manually authorise it. But no, I put it in the machine, it recognised it without problems, gave me the appropriate change and that was that. I really wasn't expecting it to be that painless. It's increasingly rare for machines to work the way they should these days, so it's always nice when you find one that does.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
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Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
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Monday, August 31st, 2009
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Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
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Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
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Why is the world populated almost entirely with utterly inept morons?
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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mellow.
annoyed.
content.
blank.
drained.
depressed.