Why oh why must everybody have a blog?

The Flaming Lips

2006-11-10T00:45:00.000+00:00

Very very very good.
But I am sad because I wanted to take a spacegirl home with me.

The encore was inspired. Magnificent. And Wayne was smiling nearly as
much as the crowd.

equilibrium

2006-10-29T15:09:00.000+00:00

knocking back ibuprofen with pepsi - not quite what the health experts
and my mother meant when they suggested that I need "a balanced diet".

Whatever works though.

hello from eastern europe

2006-10-02T20:02:00.000+00:00

yes, hello from Eastern Europe. Somewhere.

Somewhere where the rich are isolated from the poor in 4* completely
over-the-top skiing on the doorstep luxury.

I wonder what this place was like ten or twenty years ago.

Today, the food and drink are plentiful and the cars Mercedes. What
brings thousands and thousands of workers to the UK . . .

bt suck

2006-09-17T14:43:00.000+00:00

Did you know that a postcode can change part way through a single building?

I didn't.

Made getting a phone line impossible. Grrr.

I caved in.

2006-09-09T15:23:00.000+00:00

I'm at work. Again.

At least driving a Transit van around was fun. I'd got my hugely
inconsiderate last-second lane changing habits up to speed just in
time to give it back to the hire people.

Got my eye on one of those super long wheelbase Mercedes efforts for
the next time - could do some real damage with one of them . . .

packing.

2006-09-08T18:55:00.000+00:00

Packing fucking sucks.
Question to readers: Can I get away with defying my soon-to-be phd
supervisor who is unreasonably expecting me to present some stuff that
I haven't written on monday morning?

I think I can take him...

boxes.

2006-09-06T20:41:00.000+00:00

I have my whole life to pack away. Tonight.

Taping the flattened cardboard boxes together is more fun.

Not getting me closer to emptying this room though.

Nor is going to the pub . . .

coffeetime

2006-09-06T10:40:00.000+00:00

academics would never get through the day without a strategic coffee
break. Two of them in fact.

While serving no obvious purpose the whole group would fall apart without it.

Today's random topic was the efficiency of trains versus cars and
proposals to eliminate the crazy prices of Virgin Trains - i.e. some
competition.

This somehow led onto the illusive idea of the paperless office -
something that we're a long long way from attaining. Something that
we're a long way from *wanting*.

E-books? No thanks.

Its been way overdue

2006-09-05T21:38:00.000+00:00

Its been way overdue but finally I'm moving to a decent apartment.
Right in the city center and all shiny.

I'm too old for student crap now.

The problem is that after a 51 weeks here I just can't imagine
managing to pack all this stuff back into a van.

It seems insurmountable - mostly that's because I just keep going and
watching television instead of boxing things up!

Similarly my thesis - it took me two hours to write the first
paragraph this afternoon I'm sure. I think I'll go crazy if I have to
carry on reading technical design reports...

On a point of information - I'm trying out email posting. Might make
it a little safer to blog from work.

Using the internet

2006-08-23T20:26:00.000+00:00

It was said to me the other day:

I only use 1/8th of what the internet is for.

Is the internet really *for* something? Its capable of an unimaginably large number of things and millions and millions of people use it for different things every second of every day; but its purpose?

I think that if you connect to the web and you communicate with someone then you've done all that you're expected to do with the service. All that we should ever be expected to do in fact.

Everything else is a bonus. Everything else is for free.

macbook pro

2006-08-04T22:54:00.000+00:00

I held one of these things in my hands the other day. I must have one.

MUHAHAHAHA

2006-07-30T18:32:00.000+00:00

YES! You son of a whore piece of software....

I have your factor four error. Now, I will kill you.

*continues quietly mumbling to self while frantically writing bash scripts...*

style

2006-07-24T22:19:00.000+00:00

if only I had the white linen suit and deck shoes to go with it...

hardware

2006-07-17T20:33:00.000+00:00

I have a small room. My window doesn't open very far and I'm at the top of the building.

Its cool outside now but sat at my desk with a computer blowing hot air out, a lamp on so I can see, two flat screens and a hifi in the corner - its nearing 29 degrees in here.

Arrrrrggg.

Heart - redux

2006-06-22T21:58:00.000+00:00

A Mike commented on my earlier post "Heart" - showing a picture of a lover's message painted on a roof top in London.

... for twenty years.

Why did you do what you did?
I still don't understand why.

- Mike

I'd like to thank Mike for stopping by. I can belive that whatever happened would eat away at all involved - I'm glad I was able to help let some of that out.

There are moments in life where we all sit and wonder why? We are, after all, human - and prone to doing undefendable things.

I call on my few readers - ask your questions. They eat away at us - leaving us only questioning ourselves because the real prompt has long since departed your life.

I still think about you. Why did you leave things where we couldn't go back?

hey!

2006-06-05T22:22:00.000+00:00

Youtube really is viral.

I just heard a Pixies BBC session from 1988 or so on the radio. It made me think of "Hey!".

god's next army

2006-06-05T20:01:00.000+00:00

I've just watched Channel 4's documentary "God's Next Army". Its backed with a website at channel4.com/believe.

I heard someone describe the previews as "biased and angering". This was a very carefully produced film that documented students preparing to attend and working at Patrick Henry College.

From wikipedia:

"Patrick Henry College, or PHC, is an unaccredited private Christian Protestant college that focuses on teaching classical liberal arts and government, located in Purcellville, Virginia. It is the first college in America founded specifically for Christian home-schooled students. It is well-known for its extreme conservatism and evangelical christian ethos, including creationism, pro-gun rights and anti-abortionism. It has also been criticised for a heavily pro-republican bias."

The film allowed the children to speak for themselves. What they said scared me. What they said made me pity them. These home-schooled children were actively kept away from the rest of society by their parents - for fear they might be contaminated. After all, what's worse than the crime on an idea?

One of the lecturers at the college even says "after spending so much time and care on my child should I just dump them on Princeton or Yale?".

I would argue that a person who truly believes in what is right can only benefit from meeting new ideas and people - to be allowed to think for ourselves is probably our greatest freedom - it must be protected. That these parents should take it away from their children is cruel. What else but cruelty could drive a child of eleven to begin crying and between wails protest the need to pray and change her sinful ways?

Very early on we heard an extremely telling phrase from an 18 year old boy while he worked at the local butcher's shop making sausages:

"God did work on the cross to save sinners like me"

This was from a boy who wakes up, does his school work, works at the butcher's, goes home to work, helps clean his father's church, and probably works some more. He really believes that he is a sinner, that he needs "saving".

I hate that idea. Hate it.

I strongly urge you to watch this documentary if you can and to be wary of these people. They are growing in number and in power, they believe in "one nation under God" - and, it would seem, they are willing to remove anything that doesn't quite fit in with their vision.

finished and yet it never ends

2006-06-03T21:54:00.000+00:00

I can't remember the last time I took a day off. I've been working weekends for a long long time. The stress of exams is over but I fear that they might have been the easy bit.

Now I'll be stuck infront of 19inches of LCD screen for many hours a day with a "yes or no" to funding hanging over me.

I think I need something to brighten my very dull office. Which is probably the reason i'm hugely attracted to the idea presented at Lifehacker - switch your office chair for an exercise ball. "You can bounce when you're happy!"

Happy would be nice.

one down

2006-05-28T12:53:00.000+00:00

one down. one to go.
For fun and interesting things you really should be looking elsewhere for the moment.
My suggestion - head across the Atlantic - see Danielley.

I really am neglecting this poor old blog

2006-05-07T11:23:00.000+00:00

anyways, I'm at work - with an invisible gun in my back held by my supervisor - it continues to scare me how many people are here at the weekend or at crazy hours.

We get paid poorly and put in extra hours . . .

I can hear the builders outside, but I know they're getting double-time.

I'm still getting the wrong answers.

friday sunshine

2006-04-21T17:09:00.000+00:00

A beer garden, my kingdom for a beer garden . . .

debt

2006-04-19T18:44:00.000+00:00

I knew that China had been funding the US economy by buying dollars but 265 billion?!?

That is completely ridiculous. The US's trade deficit has doubled between years ending Dec 2002 and Dec 2005.

The numbers for US debt are staggering. Thousands of billions of dollars.

How could Bush possibly win votes a second time?

Heart

2006-04-10T08:58:00.000+00:00

Super Size Me?

2006-04-06T22:55:00.000+00:00

I just sat and watched the last half of "Super Size Me" on channel4.

I was eating "Revels" chocolate and drinking a can of pepsi. I wasn't even hungry.

I don't eat well and I don't do enough exercise, or any at all at the moment. I weigh about 150 pounds. That's 70kg. I'm 5 foot 9 maybe.

A working day is fueled with breakfast cereal and then coke at some point in the morning - just(!) enough sugar to get me to lunch. If I have a big lunch I crash completely after thirty mins or so. If I have a small lunch I spend the whole afternoon eating. Chocolate most likely.

I often get headaches early in the day at the weekend - probably because I don't start the morning with coke.

I can not go two days without chocolate.

I am getting older.

I think I need fewer of these:

and more of this:

I didn't finish my pepsi or my chocolate.

The Boat Race 2006

2006-04-02T15:59:00.000+00:00

Cambridge were so soft. Complete bollocks.

weak.

What wasn't on the coverage is how scary Oxford's coach "Bowden" is. Very. That helps.
Also... good work on broadcasting Oxford cox's call to his crew "let's fucking take them down" or words to that effect :)

AWESOME!

In fact I was reminded of when my mate rowed for Isis a couple of years ago, and won. He said they'd gone out on the water "to destroy the tabs". That's what happened today. Oxford

destroyed

them.

From Channel4 News' "Snowmail":

Blue is the colour
=================================================
Oxford have won the boat race and it wasn't just their team colours that were dark blue.

They got off in fiery form, what with their cox swearing loudly on nationwide teatime TV about the supposedly inadequate manhood of their opponents.

As our chief sub, Felicity Spector (Somerville 1985-9) observed, what was wrong with a rousing hurrah of "Good luck chaps"? We'll have the flavour of the day, courtesy of a well placed bleep.

A shorter show tonight so don't be late. See you at 7.45pm

Samira