Monday 27th February 2006
I want an acoustic guitar. I originally got rid of mine as I wanted an electric as the strings were softer and easier to fret, as this was when I started learning barre chords. Now though, I miss the sound of an acoustic guitar. I've been playing songs like Wonderwall, and Good Riddance/Time Of Your Life a lot lately. Fundamentally pretty basic songs, but songs that still sound really good, and are fun to play.
I might have to head back to the nice music shop in Guildford this weekend. I just want something cheap and wooden, with six strings. Something that I can easily take out places for a sing-a-long (I do of course mean friends houses, not busking around tube stations). Hmm.
Would buying a black one just be re-enforcing the box that I put myself in, where everying about me is black, or does anyone else think they look nice?
*update* Been looking on ebay, and I've made my mind up. I want a blue one. Blue ones uh... sound better. Yes.
Saturday 25th February 2006
Watching 8 Out Of 10 Cats earlier... and I decided that a night down the pub with Vic Reeves and Jimmy Carr would possibly be the greatest thing ever. I was laughing so much at Vic Reeves' idea to build a ladder to the moon, with the money they've spent on Wembly.
While watching that though, it did seem to me like Kelly Osbourne and Richard what's-his-name were a bit left out. Not quite up to par with the rest of them, so far as being funny goes. The two times Kelly Osbourne spoke up she managed to make them all go silent, which in a way was funny in itself. Was nice to see her cute round face on TV again though. It had been a while.
I need to go to bed now... as I've got to get up early ish to go to Reading tomorrow. My car has cancer and I'm going to get a bit of it fixed... I'll leave you with the necessary Friends quote.
Ross: So, Dr. Green, how's the old boat.
Dr. Green: They found rust. You know what rust does to a boat?
Ross: It gives it a nice antiquey look.
Dr. Green: Rust, is boat cancer, Ross.
Ross: Wow. I'm sorry, when I was a kid I lost a bike to that.
Tuesday 21st February 2006
Song: Brand New & Safety In Numbers - Am I Wrong?
I had a good weekend... So naturally I assume you all want to know about it.
On Saturday I was up at 6:50am for a tire appointment. Wont say much about this, seemed to be going well at first, but in the end there was a bit of hassle and shitty customer service which left me in a bit of a bad mood. Probably due to being underslept.
So anyway, by early afternoon I'm back and just had lunch, and I head off to Rob's house where I am going to take part in a few hours of Micro Machines V3 on the playstation. I sincerely hope you've all played this game at some point in your life... It's just so great! The particularly great thing about this was that Rob has a several feet wide projector screen in his tiny room, complimented by surround sound.
After a few hours of that (I lost, sadly) we turned our focus to the main point of our afternoon. We were going to be playing more with our wireless cracking stuff. In the end we didn't actually achieve anything... But he did buy an antenna that we were planning on jimmy-rigging onto his network card. Ultimately we didn't have much luck, but it did give us an excuse to go to Maplin. Just what every man needs. In the end we had pizza, and then we were heading off to Dale's place for poker and general hanging out...
It had been a few weeks since I'd seen this group of friends and I've always felt pretty welcome there so thought it'd be pretty good. Marc and Rob were planning on staying the night, but I wanted to come home to my own bed for a nice night's sleep, expecting to leave by midnight, maybe 1am at the latest. In the end, Rob and I left at about 5am. Due to unforseen circumstances he wasn't going to be staying the night anymore, so 22 hours after waking up I was back in my car on the way to Frimley taking him home.
Anyway... It had just been such a great night. I've never been a fan of house parties, and this wasn't really one... But at the sane time there seemed too many people to just be a normal evening undeserving of a better title. It just seemed ideal. Had a really nice chat with Zoe, someone I met through that group. Considering I barely know her she was incredibly open, which was nice... And we were talking about her first impressions of me (first met her on New Years eve). I'm always curious about what people think about me, so it was so nice to get a 100% frank review of initial impressions and how I've changed over the last two months of knowing her. She was also completely spot on. At first I was quite stand off-ish. I didn't know half the people there on NYE, and I'm quite shy and quiet most of the time anyway... But over time she said I seemed to be more relaxed and open and stuff... I don't know now I was waaay too tired by this point to be able to remember any quotes. I just remember leaving, thinking that was one of the most genuinely enjoyable conversations that I have ever had.
Another really nice part of the conversation, detracting the attention from myself momentarily, was when a slightly drunk Rob came over and joined in with us. The really nice thing about this was that Zoe had only met him earlier that night. So we were discussing how he came across and how he felt about it all, etc. Then Zoe went off once she realised some people were taking off their clothes (strip dice? I dunno...) so Rob and I continued talking, about our first impressions of each other. We did eventually get Zoe back but the conversation never quite made it back to how it was before.
In the end, there was no more beer, and it was nearly 5am so I decided we should call it a day. I got home by about 5:30 and woke up early Sunday afternoon. I then proceeded to fail to do anything particularly productive for the rest of the day.
Sunday 19th February 2006
Song: Kelly Clarkson - Because Of You
FAO: Firefox users.
There was a thing recently, where one of the Firefox developers anounced that a big complaint about Firefox slowness might actually not be a bug, but is actually a feature. This outlandish claim had me giggling for a moment as I thought that's worse than anything Microsoft could come out with... But I read the article anyway.
Basically, the situation is this: There actually is a feature which is a *huge* eater of memory. It might not be such a problem for most people who just use their web browser for 30 mins then close it, but many people like myself have their browsers open for several days at a time and it just gets stupid.
The article is here. If you do have a problem with Firefox slowing everything else down and just generally being slow... I would recommend changing the browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers option. I've set mine to 0, but accepted the potential slowdowns that came with it. Maybe most people would want to set it to 1, or maybe for some people 2. The default setting of -1 though is evidently not as ideal as they'd perhaps hoped. Anyway... If you use Firefox, read the article and have a chat with me if it makes no sense but you want some of your memory back.
Friday 17th February 2006
Song: Feeling Left Out - Telephone Wires
The internet is a strange thing... For some reason there's a large number of internet using GnR fans who think that this picture of my friend is going to be the cover for GnR's new album.
There's a whole thread about it, here. It's also on another GnR forum somewhere. She claims she doesn't know how it started... But it is quite amusing, none the less.
Sunday 12th February 2006
Quite an interesting weekend... Saturday begun with a planned engagement involving my father and some manual labour. My car's handbrake has been useless for longer than I've had the car. Recently I got stuck on a steep ramp in a mutlistorey car park. I sat for a few seconds on the clutch with it nicely burning away with me being veeery careful about what my feet were doing. I was completely on the ramp and there was a car behind. The car in front showed no signs of moving. "Oh shit", was something along the lines of what I was thinking. Eventually I gave in and put my foot on the brake and pulled the handbrake up as high as my pathetic weak arm could manage. I carefully came off the foot brake and immediately start rolling back. So I put my foot back on the brake and begin to panic. I was now closer to the car behind and had an unfortunate situation in my memory of a time before when I had to pull away on a hill from using the foot brake. Anyway, by this time the car in front was about to move. So there I was, with hand brake on, foot brake on, and I have to get going. Incredibly, bringing this story to it's anti climax, I pulled away with no problem. Biting point ready, right foot very quickly move pedals, give it some beans, bring clutch up a bit to hold it, hand brake off, and we're away! So it wasn't *that* bad in the end. But it was a helpful reminder to tell my dad it needs fixing...
So anyway, that's one paragraph wasted on a story. So Saturday my dad gets on the case as I look on trying to increase my understanding of how the brakes and handbrake work. We agreed to swap the front and rear wheels for the benefit of having more tread on the front ones. In doing so my dad noticed the pads on my front brakes were worn unevenly with one side nearly knackered. So... We go and get some more brake pads. Aaanyway, I left him about 5:30 ish as I was off to a party. More on this a few paragraphs down.
Sunday afternoon when I get up my dad's talking about nipples and there's a crisis. He's got this other knackered bit off one of my front brakes, but in doing so broke it and it can't go back on. So now I had no brakes at all. We then called a few people we knew to see if they had one and eventually he found one. The day went on and we kept trying to get them working but something wasn't feeling right. My dad was pretty sure we'd got all the air out of the pipes by now, and we went for a test drive. He drove first, and said they didn't feel right still. Pedal was too low. We filled up with petrol and I was then to drive home as I was more used to how they used to feel. Woah! I was very scared. It felt like I had no brakes at all. They were there, and did work but the pedal was nearly all the way to the floor. So we came home and got back to work.
Anyway, we now have them fixed. New pads on the front, a working handbrake for the back, a new boost of life has been put in my battery, new registration plates, and a bit more air in the tires. Best of all, my dad did agree with me for insurance and car buying plans for this coming year of insurance. I get to keep the 1.8L machine that's done over 98,500. My dad actually complimented on it while driving... said for a car that's done 98,000 miles it's actually pretty good. Woo!
So, anyway... Saturday night. I knew before going out that this wasn't going to be a normal student's 21st birthday party. Mainly because the reason this particular student was at uni was to learn, and not to get wasted and laid. Yes my dear readers, this party seemed like the sort of thing that I would enjoy from start to finish. I was not dissapointed. Matt got drunk, which is never a bad thing (as Andrea may remember). There were about four other guitarists of mixed ability there, and I spent about half an hour or more discussing metal bands I like with people I don't know. Yes indeed, this was a nice evening. Had a particularly good chat with one other guy there who I liked. As our conversations went on I grew more and more confident in my guitar playing ability, even without either of us holding a guitar. It was a very inspiring conversation which made me feel like I was doing very well for someone who's never had a lesson, nor has anyone to ask questions to when he gets stuck. Would be nice to meet up with this guy again with guitar in hand. Whether or not this will happen is yet to be seen. You see, he lives on the other side of the M25. If you put the M25 on a clockface, he's at about 1 o'clock. I suppose we're roughly at 8.
One thing I did leave thinking though, was that I am in need of a guitar buddy. I'm good enough now to be able to play a fair number of songs to an average level. What I need is a local guitar buddy who is my superior to give my guidance on those cloudy days. I also need to force myself to learn scales. I'm going to make myself to do a wheel of fifths everytime I play. Every day would be nice. Mainly because I need to get my left hand to be more nimble. It's getting pretty good now at landing on chord shapes nice and quickly... But when it comes to doing little melodies I'm pretty useless.
So glorious search engines of the world wide web, do your magic and find me some friends. You've led people here who have been looking for transvestites, Camberly jobs, pirate chat up lines, and uhm, "i need fucked". Now bring me a guitar buddy in Surrey.
Richard, I haven't forgotten you! We need to make specific plans... And you need to provide me with a free parking space near where you live. :)
Tuesday 7th February 2006
So today I had a visit at work from a lecturer from uni. He obviously came to discuss how my placement is going, but I wont get into that for several reasons. He seemed to quite like Sun on the whole, which was nice. Another one backing Schwartz's consideration of GPL'ing Solaris (who isn't?). Anyway... Final year project.
I can't remember if I mentioned this before, so apologies if this is old news. Basically he's proposed a FYP for me, whereby I shall make a program to view 3D cancer cells over time. When I spoke to him last year about it, he mentioned Cancer Research UK. I'm not sure what their involvement in it is, but presumably they're supplying real data to the uni, and any useful developments the uni make will go back to them.
So anyway... I was told he'd like it made in QT. I've always shrugged off QT as being a KDE thing and never looked at it (also the licence thing that I never got involved in). But what I didn't realise is that it's quite nicely cross platform, and when the apps are run, they take the look and feel of their native OS. That is on a Mac they look nice and behave nicely; on Linux they look average and behave however you want them to; and on Windows they look ugly and behave horribly. Just what we've all come to love about our preferred desktop. :D
Anyway... So he basically wants a 3D image viewer, no idea how to do that. Oh and he wants to add in an element of time too, uhm... No idea how to do that. He wants it in QT? Oh yeah I've never done that before... All that considered, this project looks very exciting indeed.
Before I go back to uni I want to be at a place where I can whip up a small QT program in no time at all. I don't want to waste a month of project time dicking about with trying to make a button appear on the screen.
Oh, the images... So since there isn't a file format (that I know of) that will let you store 3D images, he said they come in a series of slices. So basically it's a bunch of 2D images that when layered next to each other, make up the 3D picture. They're coming as TIFF's, and apparently QImage doesn't support that right kind'a TIFF that we need. So we're going to be linking in libtiff, which hopefully wont be too hard.
Hm, a thought has just occured to me. If I link to libtiff, that means I *have* to licence my program under the GPL, right? Or is libtiff under the LGPL? Or does that only apply to static linking? Mac, Tor, anyone know?
Anyway, I'm just babbling about my FYP when I should be sleeping. I'll keep you all updated with it as it progresses! :)
Monday 6th February 2006
Song: Kelly Clarkson - Gone
Richard, I've just been reading your site. You are a very funny man... Now, talk to me on MSN at some point. We need to catch up.
Btw, I'll be your sleep deprivation buddy. Drugs scare me, but all natural hallucinations sound like fun.
Sunday 5th February 2006
Song: The Ataris - The Saddest Song
I feel I'm somewhere between 3 to 6 months (maybe more?) late, but I'm getting into the American Idiot album. My interest was sparked a while back when I heard the album tells a story. I kept seeing bits on VH1 with them talking about certain tracks and stuff, and never really listened to it. Anyway, the other day I copied it back off my iPod onto my computer against Apple's wishes (on my Mac, not sure of an elegant way to do it on Windows). Then sat listening to it and reading all the lyrics, and tried to piece in bits of the story that I knew from the TV and working out what was going on. I really like the idea of a whole album telling a story. The last time I got involved in working out characters in a story from music was Marilyn Manson. Except being the perhaps slightly jumbled person that he is, his story spanned three albums written at different times, and the story didn't flow in order of each track and each album. However, characters and themes did just about remain present. Of course to Manson this was all "art", whereas I'm sure Green Day are happy to call theirs an album. Anyway... Quite liking the album.
In other news, Death Wish Live was scary. That slightly insane man from Monday and Friday nearly died on Monday, and well... Nearly died on Friday too. Rest of the week wasn't quite as exciting to be honest. Though the man who ate the lightbulb did impress me a bit. But on Friday I was a bit scared when matey took so long to surface!
New series of Rock School. I've managed to get my mum and Marc into it, which is nice. I think a lot of people shrug it off for whatever reason, but it does seem to carry an entertainment value, alongside the all the music stuff. I'd recommend everyone watches at least one episode.
I watched the IT Crowd on Friday too. I'd seen the pilot already and thought it was average. Not spectacular, but not complete crap either. Little things were nice like the RTFM t-shirt, and some sticker about fair use on their door. However the stereotypical IT people were exaggerated sooo much it got annoying. There were a few good lines though. Can't remember the exact quote, but something like:
"So did you hit if off?"
"What exactly do you mean?"
"Did she keep talking to you after you fixed her computer?"
"No."
Dude with the little afro though was a bit too stupid for my liking. Funny to overplay the geekiness? Maybe. But adding stupidity doesn't really work.
I've got a visit at work from someone from uni on Tuesday, should go alright. There's a few things I want to talk to him about, and I've also got to work out who he's going to talk to and when. With having kind'a two managers, one being in a different country, and this visitor has got two other people to see at Sun I'm not sure how the timing's going to work out. I'm sure it'll be alright though.
So I got a Catatonia song book off ebay today. It's for piano, vocal and guitar... A guitar tab book would be nice too but I don't think they ever actually made one. Will be nice to hopefully play "My Selfish Gene" on piano though. Such a gorgeous song.
Wednesday 1st February 2006
Song: The Ataris - My Reply
Last night I listened to The Used's debut album, and I've not heard it in absolutely ages. I can't explain it, but that album just makes me happy. It has some unexplainable magic! I sincerely hope I'm still listening to it in 15 years time.
Been watching Death Wish Live this week. Monday was really scary, and got some complaints apparently. Wont go into it as it's late and I want to go to bed, but basically it went wrong... Last night was absolutely rubbish. Two Welsh guys dicking about with some animals and not really doing anything that remotely lives up to the "Death Wish" name. Tonight was good again though... It was the guy laying on the bed of nails being driven over by a 4x4 car as seen in the adverts. Except the adverts were all jokey like and but this thing tonight was actually real. Some things on that programme are a bit cringe-worthy but for those who can stomach it, I would recommend watching the rest of the week.
Earlier today I'd planned to write a huuge update for this as it's been so long. But by the time I've come to write it, it's gone 11:30 and I want sleep. Hopefully another update should be soon.