Friday 26th May 2006
Song: Frank Turner - Dancing Queen
Yesterday, it seemed to be summer... So I decided I shouldn't waste the evening in. So myself, Matt and my brother headed off to Pirbright with my basketball. Shortly after we got there, some other people turned up with a frisbee. Actually Matt kept insisting that it was actually an aerobie, which I learned was a frisbee with a hole. Fair enough... So we were then a bit jealous with our silly bouncing sphere... These guys had a flying disk, gliding elegantly through the air.
So, off to Sainsburys we set. I didn't even realise Sainsburys sold frisbees, but there you go. They also had a skipping rope which I really wanted. Also, they had a bat and ball to play rounders or whatever, but the bat was padded quite heavily, so naturally Matt thought we should all get one to hit each other with. In the end, we left with just a frisbee. It set us back 39 pence... Can't complain really.
While standing in the queue to buy it, we were spotted by an old teacher from Brooklands College (who all three of us had back in the day) so that was quite nice. She didn't seem too impressed as I proudly said, "We're buying a frisbee" with a smile on my face. "You haven't changed...", came her reply. I was hurt. So we had a quick chat about how bad uni has been, and she was saying about how hard it is to find work experience places for the students at college, and that was about it really. We bought our frisbee, and she went off to shop.
So anyway, back to the field we go... Very excited with our new toy. Unfortunately, we were in for a bit of a dissapointment. The thing was bloody hard to control, and I was having particular trouble catching it on the rare occasions it was thrown well to me. Quite disheartening. Eventually though I worked it out how to throw it properly (these things should come with a manual)... So I gave a quick explanation and suddenly it was all working! We were all throwing it straight the majority of the time, and catching it too! Shame the ground was a bit damp from the recent rain, but there we go. For what it was, it was pretty good fun. So naturally since we were there we then had to walk over to the swings. From here Matt pretty much took his life into his own hands, and I left feeling quite sick. Perhaps we should have stuck with the frisbee.
So, if you're feeling bored during the inevitable common period of unemployment between uni and work that we're all approaching... Come play frisbee!
Thursday 25th May 2006
Song: Angels And Airwaves - Distraction
Obi Wan goes to buy a car. If you're not a Star Wars (like myself), I do think it's still pretty amusing anyway. The jokes are pretty obvious. My brother tells me that in the actual Star Wars they're trying to go to a place called "Alderan". That should explain one joke that otherwise seems a bit random.
It looks like this was done for real on completely unspecting people, based on those bemused looks we see at the end.
Tuesday 23rd May 2006
Song: Angels And Airwaves - Distraction
The Steve Wagon failed it's MOT. This makes me sad.
I'm not really suprised, to be honest... I am however suprised about why it failed. I've gotta replace the nearside track rod end (passenger side steering bit), and the rear brake hoses. This isn't too much of a problem for most people, but due to some circumstances I won't elaborate on here, I expect this is going to be a bit of trouble...
Monday 22nd May 2006
Song: Easyworld - A Lot Of Miles From Home
Coolest game in the world. Ideal for if you're bored at work. Don't give up after just a few tries, as it takes while to get the hang of it. Once you've got the hang of it though, you'll find yourself getting to level 2 (which is 500 m) everytime. My personal best so far, 2008 m.
Monday 22nd May 2006
It's been a good day. :)
My legs really, really ache.
Sunday 21st May 2006
Song: Taking Back Sunday - I Am Fred Astaire
Check out this bad boy:
I've spent every night since Monday with Rob. (One night actually was at the pub, not working on this). With that said, nearly all of it was done yesterday. I went there around midday... Two pizzas, several cups of tea, and a few games of the original Worms later, we were ready for a test run.
The picture is showing my average miles per galon, which is strangely high. To be fair though most of the journey that that reading was from was spent below 2,000 RPM in fifth gear.
The main excitement about this really, is that the car was never made with a trip computer. It was never an optional extra or anything... So it's pretty cool that it works at all. Basically what it is, is the trip computer from a Mondeo (£30 on ebay, bargin) and completey wired up by hand. Amazingly also, it actually fits in the car quite well. The only dissapointment was that it has an option to show how many miles you can drive with the fuel that's left in the tank... But unfortunately we couldn't get that going. To fix it, we'd need to drop the petrol tank out of the bottom of the car, and replace the thing that tells the car this information. I'm not *quite* enthusiastic about this enough to want to take the fuel tank out my car... Unfortunately though, I think Rob was that enthusiastic.
Anyway, in a bit I'm going to head down to Southampton, going to see Taking Back Sunday with Mary, Andrea, Tara, and Mac. Not sure if there's anyone else with us... Should see if my MPG drops when speeding down the M3. :)
It's been a good week... I don't think I've ever been in such a good mood for a *whole* week before. And I've got tomorrow off work, to make things even better!
Thursday 18th May 2006
Song: David Ford - State Of The Union
Today, someone took a picture of me in the restaurant at work. I wasn't sure what was going on as it was a bit out of the blue. Then he came and had a chat with us, turns out he's taking pictures for the next issue of that magazine at work.
So, if they decide to go ahead with that, I could be making two appearances in it... My fame will be shortlived though, as it comes out about the time I leave, heh.
Anyway, am supposed to be working at the moment...
Sunday 14th May 2006
Song: Pink - The One That Got Away
So, nearly one whole year after making my search referrals page log MSN and Yahoo as well as Google, I discover an error in the code. When I detect a referal, before sticking it in my database, I first run a query to see if that search term is already in there. If that returns something, I don't bother adding it again. This was fine when I was only doing Google, but I didn't alter that query when adding MSN and Yahoo stuff.
So if someone searched for something on Google bringing them here, and then the same thing on MSN bringing them here, the second one didn't get saved as it already found the search term. Even though it was actually from a different place. So that got fixed, which then caused a PHP problem to surface.
I quite like my entirely DIY solution for a website, even if it's a bit less than perfect behind the scenes. :)
One day I plan to not be rubbish with databases.
Saturday 13th May 2006
Michelle won The Apprentice. Horray! :)
It was a terribly exciting final episode, oh yes. Kind'a felt sorry for Michelle when Paul and Syed completely destroyed any hope she had of making the most profit. As usual though, he did seem to be on a roll with some great ideas, and as normal he ended up achieving nothing.
I completely agreed with his idea of getting an Aston Martin, parking it somewhere and letting people come to them. People like Aston Martin's, so would walk over to see what's going on. Then after that anyone walking by who doesn't care about the car, might be curious about why there's a crowd of people. I also thought it was pretty good that he asked a few people how much they would be prepared to pay for the night. But, in the end, there was no car, and there were no sales... Eventually when the rush of ticket sales took place, they were stupidly cheap, much lower than what people had said they'd be prepared to pay!
The "You're fired" programme afterwards I thought was pretty good, too. I normally don't see it, as I switch over to Desperate Housewives, but saw this weeks one, and thought it was pretty good. With all the fired people in the audience, and bringing Sir Alan out for a chat too. The only dissapointment I found was that Michelle had over done her hair a bit. I much preferred her plainer style... But that might just be me.
In other news, I spent about 90 minutes yesterday at work with a photographer having my picture taken, with my guitar. I'm going to be on the front cover of the next issue of this magazine that gets printed and distributed at work, internally (UK only, I think). I really don't like having my picture taken, especially when having to look a bit RAWK!
Monday 8th May 2006
Song: Taking Back Sunday - Spin
It's official, I'm a David Ford, top fan. See.
Also, while we're at it... I am apparently the biggest Frank Turner fan that last.fm has to offer. Look! :)
Sunday 7th May 2006
Song: Kelly Clarkson - Beautiful Disaster
I was playing with mud earlier. It was fun. I was in Maplins yesterday (a shop that no man can resist) and they had this kit to use mud to power an electric clock. I was very curious about this... Didn't really think it was worth spending £5 on though, since all the kit required was that you put mud in the pots. It wasn't really very DIY. So I made a note of the ghetto setup in the picture, and today had a go at it myself.
Basically, there's two pots of normal, damp mud. You then need three bits of wire. You put one wire going between them, and then have another wire coming out of each going to the thing on the curcuit that you want to power. For the sake of testing whether or not this actually works, I just used a trusty multimeter to measure voltage. Amazingly, it does actually work. At one point I managed to get 0.5V out of it (that's a third of a single AA battery, heh), but I did something then after that I was only able to get it at 0.2V ish, but it was consistent, so I was happy. So then I got the tiny bulb out of a torch and tried to stick that into my circuit. But it did not light. I was most upset. So next I added an AA battery to my circuit by connecting the positive pot of mud to the negative of the battery. So, now I was getting just over 1.5V, as confirmed by the multimeter. The battery alone was a used one so was only pushing out about 1.3V by itself, and the mud was giving the extra 0.2V. I'd tested and the battery alone was able to light the bulb, so I figured with my mud power too, it should be a bit brighter. But, it didn't work, and I don't know why, and that was really annoying me. I checked several times that I'd got all my positives and negatives the right way round, and the multimeter kept telling me that I had around 1.5V... So if anyone can offer any insight as to why my mud and battery wasn't able to light the bulb, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm going to look in to this more, I think. Also want to know how to get the most out of my mud. Everyone keeps telling me about potatos and lemons, but I think mud's a far more exciting thing to get electricity from. Though to be fair I suppose a lemon powered clock would be kind'a cool too.
This begs the question, could I chain a potato, a lemon, and two pots of mud in series to give me even more power?
The other thing I want to know, is would a metal scratch plate on an electric guitar be too ridiculous? I've got a Squire Strat, for those who don't know, and it's plain black. The body and scratchplate are both black, and I was thinking it was time for a change. I have a friend who does metal work for a living, and said he could make one... I did look on ebay for one, but because I got the Tom Delonge guitar, a normal strat scratchplate won't fit. I've only got one dual coil pickup, and one knob for volume. No tone or pickup selector.
I don't really *need* a new one, to be fair... but I fancied having a white scratchplate, and also a cleaner one without so many scratches (yeah I know that's kind'a the point (the clue's in the name)). One thing I'm very afraid of is taking it apart and then not being able to get the pickup back in exactly the right place. This may be a baseless fear, but I'm not sure how it attaches. My understanding though is that the distance between the strings and pickups can effect the sound, as the current generated by the magnet is altered. Not something I really want to mess about with.
The other thing that I don't need but want is a new iPod. I've got an old skool 20GB third gen one. The one with the row of four buttons under the screen, and a wheel that's just a wheel and not a circle of buttons too. I kind'a like the new ones though, much slimmer, and colour screens and all. However, I don't really have a need for one. The one and only actual fault with my current iPod is the white tubing on the headphone cable split by the Y-piece bit, and I was a bit worried too much stress would break the actual wires. So I've patched that with some attractive black insulation tape (it looks dreadful), but I really like the headphones so I was happy to have them look a bit shitter. Aside from that though, I can't really justify a need for a new one. I did realise last night though that I've only got 3GB left on it, so I might use that as my excuse. I need more space. I can get some discount from the Apple store through work (Sun and Apple I think are informally friends), so I'm also quite tempted to get hold of one before I leave Sun.
Now it's bed time, as I'd like to see if I can actually get to work and be at my desk by 9am. I hope it's sunny tomorrow. :-)
Wednesday 3rd May 2006
Alright, don't like Paul anymore.
*edit*
Oh good, he's gone. :)
Yay for Michelle!
Wednesday 3rd May 2006
Song: Kelly Clarkson - Since You've Been Gone
Actually the correct title for this song is, "Since U Been Gone", but I'm not 12, so that's not what I want to call it there. Infact, I even changed the ID3 tag on the MP3, heh. She couldn't even get make it "U've". Oh well...
So anyway, The Apprentice update. I'm now all caught up on the whole series. Here's my opinion on each of the remaining four.
Ansell Henry - Seems like a nice enough bloke... He likes a bit of fun, I've noticed. He has no hesitation to put on a silly outfit and wave around a bit of bread, pretending to be Italian. Has a first name for a surname, I like that. To be honest, I've not really seen him excel at anything in particular... But he doesn't seem hugely shit at anything either, which is probably why he's got as far as he has.
Ruth Badger - She seems very serious about the whole deal. She's probably the most deserving of the job. She also has an animal for a surname. At first I wasn't sure about her, but after talking to Mary and then watching all the episodes again it seems she is a badass seller. She could probably sell a blind man some glasses. But, she's really nice about it... She's not all pushy and bullies people into buying stuff, she just comes across as very confident and seems to make the potential buyer feel good. Quite some way from Syed's approach, heh.
Paul Tulip - He has a flower for a surname, awesome. He seems to be very charming. I expect he could talk his way out of anything, but also very much not like Syed's style. He has some charm which seems to work on anyone. I remember on the Topshop one, when he went outside at the end of the day to try and get people in off the street. He was just so good! Approached these two girls who were on their way to one of their job leaving dos, and managed to talk them in to buying a coat. If I remember correctly he also talked some other girl who was wearing a coat, into buying a coat. Maybe girls just like coats, I'm not sure... But again he wasn't pushy at all, he was just charming, and kept talking to the people.
Michelle Dewberry - Not actually sure what she's best at, like Ansell. She just seems fairly average at everything. She is however, very pretty, and I really like her, so I want her to win anyway. She has drawn on eyebrows, swears a lot but only where appropriate, and has an outfit for every occasion... an overall winner in my books.
Right, well that passed about 15 minutes... Uh, what else? Oh, Desperate Housewives! My short term memory is without a doubt degrading drastically and each week when I go to watch it I find that I actually have no idea what happened last week. I expect it will be good though!
The other thing I wanted to mention, was Vordeman's big brain game, or whatever the hell it's called. I saw it for the first time last night, and really enjoyed it. For those who've not seen it, it's basically a show that is full of questioned designed to test all the different parts of your brain. I'm pleased to say I got all the logic questions right. Here are some:
How many bricks does it take to complete a building made completely out of bricks?
Uh, so like I said my memory's terrible, that's all I can remember. Incidentally there's a round for memory too, which I didn't do *too* badly on, to be fair. Amusingly though, I actually can't remember what other rounds there were. I guess this is what years of abstaining from alcohol and drugs does to you.
Anyway, I'd recommend it to anyone who likes TV shows that require the use of their brain. I think it's next on, on Sky One (possibly Sky Two) on Thursday. Watch!
Tuesday 2nd May 2006
Song: Busted - Why
So, it's probably not very professional, it probably wont make any difference and I expect someone who knows about marketing will tell you it's a bad idea... But Apple have made some adverts comparing them to PCs. Watch them!
The iLife one was my favourite.
"I have some very cool apps that are bundled with me"
"Like, what've you got?"
"Calculator"
"That's Cool... Anything else?"
"Clock"
"Sounds like hours of fun"
"Yep, yep..."