Thursday, 28 November, 2002
Insert Witty Title Here
One of the things that kind of annoys me about this blogging programme - but not enough to actually do anything about, you understand - is that I spend ages thinking up 'witty titles' for each section, but no-one sees them unless they add a comment or look at the archives. So, I had a thought. Took me long enough but I finally got there. I'll add manually at the top! Now I just need to check that html for making stuff bold works.
(Clicks on 'Preview before posting' and then comes back...)
Yes! It does! Hoorah for me!
Posted by stephen @ 09:52 AM GMT [Link]
I found this at the Ninth Art Delphi Forum (The url for the forum is here but to read anything you need to sign up and it's only really semi-worth doing, even for me...
'Just because it's amazing: this is the facade of Dave Eggers' community writing center for children in San Francisco, designed by Chris Ware and purporting to "depict the parallel development of humans and their efforts at and motivations for communication, spoken and written":
"It’s a very complex mural, and requires its most devoted viewers to study it for about an hour, from the middle of Valenica Street, by far the best vantage point."'
Just thought I'd post it, because I like Chris Ware a lot. In a kind of really depressed way.
Posted by stephen @ 09:39 AM GMT [Link]
Tuesday, 26 November, 2002
I've had work to do. What a bloody cheek! That's not why I come to ... er... work.
I had a really good weekend beforehand, though. It was very busy and extremely intellectual and stuff like that.
Friday evening, I went to the Screen on the Green to see Bowling for Columbine. It was an amazing film, fascinating, chilling, funny - in a kind of disbelieving, if you don't laugh, you'll cry kind of a way - and fairly emotionally draining. Essentially, it is about gun control in the US, but there is so much more to it than that. It opens up to examine the psyche of a country that has over 11000 gun-related deaths every year. It is a brilliant mix of library footage (for example, security camera footage of the Columbine massacre) and original documentary film (Michael Moore taking two of the survivors of Columbine to K-Mart HQ to return bullets - that were bought from there - still lodged inside their bodies).
After that we needed sustenance. So, we went two doors up from there to a little restaurant called Tartuf which is a place that specialises in 'tarte flambee' which is essentially a French pizza, with a really thin base (Candy likens it to matzo) instead of a tomato sauce, it is covered in yogurt and onion and whatever else - bacon, asparagus, chorizo etc. The sweet version doesn't have the onion on it. Obviously.
On Saturday, Jean and Roger were in town. I went with them to the National Portrait Gallery to see an exhibition of photos of crime writers, one of whom was the estimable Mr Brenchley. I also finally got up to the very top floor and saw all the really old portraits, including Jean and Chaz's fave Richard III. There was also a really good one, which was essentially a comic strip, telling the life of someone or other. Unfortunately, I can't remember who it was, so I can't add a link. Which is a bit crap. Maybe Jean'll read this and be able to tell me. Jean?
Saturday night, Becca and Pat came over and we watched The Muppet Show. As you do...
Sunday morning, Becca, Pat and I went to the Bodyworlds exhibition. Which was fascinating. It wasn't at all gory or bloodthirsty. It was extremely educational, dry almost. It was nice seeing children walking around - "That was where you broke your wrist..." If I had any problems with it, it was in the posed (basketball player, polevaulter, 'mystical') bodies. These were a bit sensationalistic - the posters showing them almost put me off going - and tended to merely repeat what I had already seen elsewhere in the exhibition, and usually with more information and better views of the parts. They were, however, a relatively small proportion of the whole thing. One thing that I discovered that I didn't know before was the thickness of nerves. I sort of thought that they were all tiny little thread-like things, but lots of them were really thick ropes. This is, of course, because it was lots of nerves all wrapped together (which is, come to think of it, how a rope is made from lots of threads...) but it just had never hit me before that they were like that. Another thing was that it brought home strongly how many different ailments there are that can kill you. It's a miracle that we're all still alive! And I'm ever so glad I don't smoke, after seeing several black (literally) lungs. Although I don't suppose breathing this what-Londoner's-laughably-call air doesn't help a lot, either...
The Fantasy Centre got back to me yesterday, saying that they didn't want the books I wanted to sell them. Bastards.
After work (in half an hour) I have to go and get the DVD's I ordered from Amazon. Hoorah! Lots of good stuff to watch. Or is that yet more...?
Posted by stephen @ 04:01 PM GMT [Link]
Thursday, 21 November, 2002
In the words of Billy Shakespeare: "The rain it raineth ev'ryday." Although I suspect that it was a traditional folk song that he just imported wholesale into the play (Much Ado About Nothing? I should probably go and look on Google, but I can't be bothered.) I'm damp. Damp calves, especially. Not especially cold, but definitely damp.
On a different note, I've just put a new page up on the main website. Once you see it, I'm sure you'll agree with me that it is the most useful and informative page I've put up yet. It'll answer all those vague, nagging questions that I know have plaguing you for ages.
Posted by stephen @ 08:43 AM GMT [Link]
Wednesday, 20 November, 2002
I got the boot discs (or is it disks? I can never remember which is English and which is American.) yesterday. So, I am very happy to report that the computer is now working (just about) as advertised once again. The only problem I have now is in trying to get the archived mail from the cd-rom back into Outlook. Outlook doesn't seem to like the file, no matter what I do with it. I don't suppose it's the end of the world if I can't get it back, but it's a bit of a pain. There are some emails of which I'd like to have a copy, and some I hadn't read. Mainly it's the copies of all the registration information that I need. I've emailed Microsoft to see if they can suggest a solution. Any suggestions from the audience gladly appreciated.
When I got back online yesterday, I had something like 125 emails waiting for me. And, of those 125, there were a grand total of 3 that were actually something I wanted to read. The rest were mailing list stuff, that I'll get round to reading at some point. I'm ever so popular! I really need to write emails to more people...
I've got another meeting today, so I'm all togged up in my suit today. Which is nice. I'm not wearing my tie yet, cos I hate it.
Posted by stephen @ 09:01 AM GMT [Link]
Tuesday, 19 November, 2002
I've just been reading stuff about Eddie Izzard, mainly from the brilliant fansite Cake Or Death. It is actually better than the official page - more up to date and with more information on it. (For example, whilst Izzard.com talks about the upcoming Circle DVD, CorD has reviews of it and interviews that were printed yesterday!)
Anyway, one of the articles I was reading was fascinating, saying so much about crossdressing and his feelings about it. As I was reading it, I was mentally nodding, going 'yes, that's true', 'yes, I agree with that', 'absolutely'. So, I thought that I'd put up some excerpts from it here. If you want to read the whole thing go here and look down the frame on the left hand side, it's quite a way down, but there are lots of other equally interesting articles, many of which cover similar ground.
++++++++
Of make-up, men and fantasies
Interview by Ginny Dougary (from The Times 17/2/00)
...
What would I have made of Eddie, for instance, if I had come across him when he was studying accountancy at Sheffield University?
He says he was a slob in a camel coat who didn't give a flying monkey's about his appearance. "I didn't really bother buying clothes because I felt that everything somehow looked wrong on me."
...
"I mean, the whole thing of coming out as transvestite is a big key to how I work. Because the - arrrgh - amount of guts it takes to come out, and what I or any person who does come out has to go through - it's tough. And it's so visual as a TV and you get so much flak and you look such a mess initially in the frumpy transvestite phase when you're not out enough to say 'I wonder what this would look like?', which is what a normal boy or girl or man or woman would do."
Before we get into the grittiest of the nitty-gritty about what makes a TV tick - or, at any rate this TV - I feel that something must be cleared up. At which point, may I suggest that readers of a delicate disposition STOP READING NOW - after which warning if you do cancel your subscription to The Times we will know that you have been unable to resist temptation.
Right. Now if all of us women fancy Eddie, it is likely that somewhere down the line some of us must have imagined what it would be like to be physically entwined with him. And once one goes down that route, inevitably what enters one's mind is the penis-type thing. And so Eddie, I ask, do you use your penis penetratively? A question, incidentally, that I do not recollect ever having asked a man before, interviewee or otherwise. Perhaps being with someone who has to be brave every day of his life has an emboldening effect. And mercifully, he doesn't bat a (smokey grey and kohl-lined) eyelid.
Yes, he says, he does, "if the other woman is into the penis but if not, fine." I had always understood that transvestites were heterosexual men who simply had a fetish - a word Eddie dislikes, as I am to discover - for women's clothing. Transsexuals, on the other hand, were men who felt they were a woman trapped inside the wrong body, men who loathed their maleness and saw their penis as a constant physical rebuke.
But Eddie says TVs and TSs are on exactly the same path, it is just that the latter are farther down it. Until recently he described himself as a heterosexual, but got fed up with journalists writing that he insists on calling himself hetero, as though it were a mask for his gayness (he has never attempted to go to bed with a man) and drag queens accusing him of being a liar. Male lesbian, he thinks, fits the bill and avoids any suggestion that he is distancing himself from other sexual minorities.
But does he, like transsexuals, hate his penis? "The penis is immaterial," he says, which certainly sets him apart from the way most men view their equipment. "I don't think it's at all an aesthecically pleasing thing. I don't think, 'Heyyy, this penis, Gahhd, I'd like to put it on the mantelpiece. Isn't it hard, I venture, to use the penis in a feminine way? "Er, yes," he says. "So that's probably why we don't want penises. I've got breast envy."
You'd like a bosom? "Oh yeah. Just like teenage girls or some women think 'Oh, I wish I was bigger'. That's exactly what's going on with me." Have you ever tried putting a false bosom in? "I have and I did and I do," he says. So would you rather have a bosom than a penis? "Um. I've never done the either/or choice but, yeah." I don't understand, I say.
...
"Men - and disagree with me whenever you want - are stimulated visually. If women do the black dress, the high heels and the lippy, men go, 'Hey! Wow!' And it could be the same woman they haven't paid any attention to. The woman could be a complete bimbo and have no conversation and the man could be very articulate but still - Bam! - would wish to shag. Women? Not so much. They're stimultated more by . . ." Touch? "Touch and also personality. By a bloke who might be a curious-looking bloke. So the key points are the triggers. OK?" OK thus far.
"Now let me stay on the point because I think this is a bit of a breakthrough in explaining things. So TVs have an urge to be a woman. They're at home and they get the clothes and the make-up right and maybe they'll turn the lights down low so that the look is good, and they'll say 'Hey right, I look like a woman.' But then this two-step effect happens. Because they get visually stimulated - like clockwork - just like all men do. They have created this sexy image that they are then attracted to."
So it's masturbatory? "Yes, absolutely." So it's "I love . . . me"? "No. It's 'I love that image'. What they'd prefer to do is to make love to another woman and have lesbian sex. They'd like to be a woman and make love to another woman." Right, still with him, just about.
What I still find quite hard to understand is the clothing. In the past you have said that your desire sometimes to wear a provocative skirt rather than boring old trousers is no different from the way a woman dresses to please herself. But isn't the relationship of the transvestite with the actual gear eroticised? And if so, this is not the way most women relate to their wardrobe. He says he has watched women, something he does a lot, and has noticed the way that they will stroke a new pair of boots and though they are obviously not getting wildly turned on, they will say 'I love the feel of this. It makes me feel sexy.'
But it's not the same thing, is it Eddie? He says there are no sexy men's clothes apart from, say, a leather thong. Men's satin dressing gowns? "You find those wildly erotic?" he says, with disbelief. "There's nothing sensual or sexy for men. Male lingerie does not exist. Stockings do not exist. Socks are not going to get you going, 'Hey maaan, great socks, let's go!'
"Women have this vast variety of lingerie, stockings and tights and different patterns, and shoes, with different-sized heels, in red and black, and skirts - short, long, with slits - push-the-boob things . . . there's so much around in women's things that is erotic.
While men have: shirt shirt shirt jumper shirt jumper jacket jumper shirt jacket trousers trousers short trousers trousers flat shoes."
He says that while women wearing men's clothes confers on them a certain sort of power - and cites Marlene Dietrich as an example - men attack other men for wearing women's clothes because it is seen as a weakness: "And it's seen as being weak because they equate the clothing with being female, and female equals weak - which is wrong, because women have strong and weak characters, and so do men."
I say that part of the problem with transvestism is that there is an image of shame and humiliation and solitariness, and husbands ejaculating over their wives' clothing, and it's not a very attractive image. "Mmm. Absolutely." And then you come along and mix it and match it and have this very male way of being and it's no longer seen as something pathetic. "It's because it's out and knitted into society," he says thoughtfully.
...
It is only towards the end of our conversation, and almost by chance, that I finally find an image for transvestism that works for me. I ask Eddie whether the erotic nature of transvestism isn't essentially narcissistic, and he reminds me that when Narcissus fell in love with his image in the water he didn't know that the face staring back at him was his own. And there's the key, I think. The transvestite at his most private, most sexually engaged, is actually disengaged from himself. He looks at his femaleness from the outside, rather than feeling it from within. And if that splitting of oneself is fundamental to your make-up, it might explain why there are other areas of detachment as well.
...
At the end of the interview, Eddie says that what you need to do is to look at everybody's fantasies and line them all up and only then can you see what is normal and what is not. "Who doesn't have fantasies?" he asks. I don't think I do. "Actually, I've heard other women say that." Don't have time to...
"So you don't really have fantasies?" he asks softly. Not really. "You should get some," he breathes. Because they're fun? "Yeaaaahhh."
+++++++++
I was trying to think of something to say at the end here, but I think it stands up for itself and doesn't really need me to add anything. I feel a little like I'm baring my soul, especially with some of the stuff at the end there, when it starts getting rather more sexual. But anyway, I've been wanting to add more stuff to the site about my dressing for a long time (this is the first 'Ellen' authored journal entry!!!) and this seems like a reasonably interesting thing to do. I'd be interested to hear what people (all the thousands who are reading my journal daily...) think of this, from both tv's and non-tv's.
Posted by ellen @ 02:41 PM GMT [Link]
I've just received a chain-letter-ish email. Rather than forward it to everyone I know, or, indeed, delete it immediately, I thought I'd post it here, because it's really rather funny.
> Hello, my name is Sean, (not his real name) I suffer from the guilt of not
> forwarding 50 billion f*cking chain letters sent to
> me by people who actually believe that if you send them on, a poor
> 6-year-old girl in Arkansas with a breast on her forehead and an ear
> growing on her a*se will be able to raise enough money to s*it?
> Do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give you,
> and everyone to whom you send "his" email, $1000? How stupid are
> you ?
>
> Ooooh, looky here! If I scroll down this page and make a wish,
> I'll get laid by every good looking person in the magazine!"
> What a load of cr&p .
>
> Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my house and
> sodomize me in my sleep for not continuing a chain that was started by
> Peter in 5 AD and brought to the USA by midget pilgrims on the Mayflower.
> F*ck them.
>
> Show a little intelligence and think about what you're actually
> contributing to by sending out these forwards. Chances are, it's
> your own unpopularity. The point being? If you get some chain letter
> that's threatening to leave you shagless or luckless for the rest of your
> life, f*ck it off by deleting it.
>
> If it's funny, send it on. Don't piss people off by making them feel
> guilty about a leper in Botswana with no teeth who has been tied
> to a dead elephant for 27 years and whose only salvation is the 5 cents
> per letter he'll receive if you forward this email.
>
> Oh, by the way all you idiots out there...NO COMPANY HAS ANY
> WAY OF TRACKING E-MAIL OUTSIDE THEIR SYSTEM -NO, NOT EVEN
> MICROSOFT!!! THERE IS NO SUCH TECHNOLOGY - YET!!!!!! .
> Now forward this to everyone you know. Otherwise, tomorrow morning
> your underwear will turn carnivorous and will consume your genitals.
Considering the number of crap emails I get sent to me - I'm STILL getting those idiotic Nigerian/Botswanan/Other African State 'I need details of your bank account to get millions of dollars out of my country' emails. Honestly, don't people know we know about these things? This, by the way, is one of my favourite anti-virus myths/hoaxes etc sites, along with Snopes.com. Yes, I am sad enough to have favourite anti-virus websites...
Posted by stephen @ 11:54 AM GMT [Link]
Last night, I spent money. Again. This is becoming a habit. It's all Candy's fault, of course. If she had arrived at the N1 centre at the exact same moment that I had, she would have been able to prevent me going into Borders and buying stuff.
It's all good stuff though. Firstly, there is Eddie Izzard's new DVD Circle. It is, of course very funny. On the cover, there is a pic of Eddie wearing (very nice) lingerie. I have been trying to decide if it's a picture of his head superimposed on someone else's body. Because, if it isn't, I'm very jealous!
A slight aside here - Roger has just come in and said the whole area is being cordoned off outside because of a suspected bomb. This makes me slightly nervous. For obvious reasons.
Anyway, before we all get evacuated... the other stuff I bought was The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett, Wicked Game by Chris Isaak - a pressie for Candy, cos she's lovely and the latest SFX Special Edition magazine, which looks quite interesting and had some very silly Buffy Christmas cards, which may, or, indeed, may not, get sent to people.
Anyway, the reason I was waiting in Borders for Candy, thus necessitating all this purchasing, was that we went to the cinema last night to see Donnie Darko. It is a good film. Although there is a 'but' to that. We spent a lot of time last night trying to work out what the 'but' is. The film is not obvious in any way - is it a story about a paranoid delusional who finally flips? Is it about someone who is getting visits from someone or something in the future? I don't know. We both think part of the problem was that the ending was not very satisfactory. If Donnie did what it seems he did (and I'm not going to say what it was) then it didn't seem to be the 'right' thing to do and would end up causing more problems than it would prevent. It's actually, really difficult to talk about the film in anyway without giving anything anyway. In a way, its failure is the opposite to Vanilla Skies. In VS, the ending is totally screwed by the audience being told exactly what it was all about with all other possible explanations ruled out. In DD there are too many explanantions. So, all in all, good but not perfect...
By the way, the end of the IMDB review of Donnie Darko says 'If you enjoyed this film, then we recommend: Planet of the Apes (2001)'. To which I reply: "huh???"
I should probably get on with some work. I do actually have some...
Posted by stephen @ 09:26 AM GMT [Link]
Friday, 15 November, 2002
Lots has happened this week, which is the main reason why I haven's posted anything here for a while. I've been too busy doing to write about it.
Firstly, there was a big Sector 1 Team Event on Wednesday and Thursday. It was, essentially, a big get together for everyone to get to know each other and to find out what everyone else sees as the problems that we have and to try and come up with at least somevague solutions. I had a really good time and got to know a lot more people than I had previously known. I can even remember a lot of names, which shows how much impact it had on me! The Thursday session was a lot harder than the Wednesday one, mainly, I think due to the vast majority of people having fairly major hang overs. I went to bed at 1.15 or so in the morning and there were still people there. Some of whom were really, seriously blasted. And that was with the bar closing at midnight! Most people, it seems, got to bed at some point between 2 and 2.30, making me the total wuss. (Is that how you spell that word?)
Getting home on the Thursday evening was interesting, what with the firefighters strike causing the tube drivers to refuse to work all over the place. The centre of London was very, very full. Even more full than usual, in fact. In the end, I managed to catch a bus fairly quickly, but I was all set up for walking from Gosh! back home. I'm glad I didn't in the end, though, cos I was totally knackered. And I'm still pretty tired, actually. I refer you back to my wuss comment.
This morning, I was in to work late, because I had to go to the post office to pick up a package. It's the DVD's of Buffy Season 1 that I got from E-Bay. I don't remember if I said anything about this, but I won an E-Bay auction to get Buffy Season 1 - as it is now unavailable new from anywhere - and it has arrived. Hoorah! We're actually in the process of watching Season 3 again at the moment. We'll be watching Graduation Day Pt.s1 & 2 (the season 3 closing episodes with the Mayor changing into a demon and stuff) tonight. After which, we will get back to Season 1. We've decided that one of the things we are going to splash out on when we sell the house is the rest of the Buffy and Angel DVD's that are still outstanding (that's season 4 & 5 of the Buffster and 1 & 2 of Angel. Although 6 and 3 respectively should be out soon as well). I'm just a Buff-Buying Madman! But, hell, it's good stuff.
Anyway, that's why it is now 4.30pm and I haven't left.
The other thing I did last night - other than watching Buffy - was to kill my computer. This was not intentional, let me assure you. I have talked a little about the problems I've been having with it elsewhere. The latest problem I had was that various wizards and things in Office didn't work. I wrote to Microsoft (after HP said 'This has nothing to do with us...') and they got back to me asking for more info. While checking out what they wanted to know I had to start up in 'Safe Mode' and it froze. Which, let's face it, is VERY safe. And now it won't start up. It gets to an initial screen telling me that the last time the PC was started it was shut down wrongly and how do I want to start up this time? And then goes on it's merry way for a few seconds before shutting down and restarting and going back to that initial screen. I think it's all to do with the re-install and something going wrong there (and if it did then it's HP's fauly, cos I did everything they told me to do...) But, at the moment, it's going to be back to the old PC and whinging to HP. Although, fortunately, I don't have to do it on the 60p/minute line, because I went into a HP 'Centre of Excellence' shop which is just down the road from C&G and they gave me a London phone number to ring. Which is good.
The other thing I did at lunch time (apart from go to Boots for eye drops, cos the whole rhinitis/asthma thing seems to be affecting my eyes now as well and making them itch a lot...) was to get a sudden Book Buying Urge. So, I had to go to the local branch of Books Etc. and sate the desire. I bought Stupid White Men (which was the book I actually went in to get and I think I may have got the final copy of it in the shop.) However, that was in the 3 for 2 offer. And I saw Carter Beats The Devil, which I had been intending to buy for months, basically since I started at Borders, was also in the offer. So, that was 2. I decided on The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy as my third one, because he's a bloody good writer and I haven't read enough of him. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of looking in the SF section, where I saw the latest Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction which is one of the absolute must buys of the SF literary year (and had a story in by Simon Ings...) so I absolutely had to buy it as well, of course. Well, I haven't bought a lot of books recently. And these will all be good 'uns. So that's all right, then.
I spoke to McKeags, the solicitors who are selling the flat for me, this afternoon, and found out that they are about to send out the draft contract for us to sign. So that's going ahead nicely. My mom also finally managed to get the burglar alarm fixed, after the buyer set it off. So, we should be sorted fairly soon then. Which is a good thing. A very good thing, indeed.
Posted by stephen @ 04:48 PM GMT [Link]
Monday, 11 November, 2002
Chaz Brenchley has a new journal up at his website. Anything of Chaz'z is worth reading, so I highly recommend it. Reading his 'non-fiction' (mainly the journal and the columns he writes for some magazine or other and which are re-produced on the website, somewhere) always brings a silly smile to my face, because Chaz writes this stuff in the exact same way he speaks and I can hear it in my head in his voice.
Speaking of which, I've just finished 'Time Again' by Chaz writing as Carol Trent. It's a truly bizarre novel. Crap plotline (it's a real Mills and Boon style romance) with vague shades of mystery that suddenly turns a hard left into real horror and bloodletting and has a serious downer of an ending! It's very, very early Chaz (and thank you Jean for letting me borrow it) but you can see a lot of the style that came through in the work he wrote subsequently. And he mentions the Chalet School novels.
Actually, Chaz is mentioned in Neil Gaiman's journal today. And it's in the context of an email from Jean which is even better. Seven degrees of Neil Gaiman gets even closer. I'll meet him one day. At which point, I'll melt into a puddle of goo and total fanboyishness. But, hey, who cares?
Posted by stephen @ 11:27 AM GMT [Link]
I actually had something which vaguely reminded me of a social life this weekend. It was very strange. But rather nice. I really must do it more often.
On Saturday, we went to Camden (Which absolutely has to be said Caaaaamden). The market wasn't as horrid as we thought it was going to be. We think everyone was at the Lord Mayor's Parade. Which worked for us. We had nice food - tartiflette - this recipe isn't quite right, but it's the only one I could find quickly using Google that was in English - and crepes. Some enterprising person was also selling mulled apple juice as well as mulled wine. And it was bloody lovely. I also bought Candy some jewellery! Which she wanted! It's a gorgeous sterling silver Celtic design ring and it's really, really nice. I bought it for our 12th Anniversary, which is this Thursday (So you have plenty of time now to rush out and buy us pressies and cards and things!). And, even better, she's worn it ever since - okay, yesterday - and hasn't had an allergic reaction to it. Hoorah!
On Saturday night, Candy and I went to see our friends Geoff and Emma (whom we met through Quentin and Marian) who live in the Quaker Friends House in Egham. Which is out to the west of London. Getting there was a pain. Arsenal were playing at home (against Newcastle, apparently. Although I don't know who won. I've just found out - 1-0 to Arse apparently - thank you Rob.) and we got to the Tube station just as they were letting out. So, of course, they cancelled several trains. So, we thought 'bugger this' and went to get the North London Line overland train. Which took ages to arrive. Things were not looking good.
Anyway, eventually we got to Candy's parents place and nicked the car, as we do so often. And then we hit the traffic on the A40. Which was not fun.
I was feeling somewhat annoyed by this point - a state not helped by the fact that my PC is playing up at the moment. Problems with Access and DLL's. I think I need to re-re-reinstall Windows. Bum - but my annoyance was relieved somewhat by playing They Might Be Giant's "Brand New Album for 1990" Flood. Which is lots of fun and why I have been going around singing "Everybody wants a rock to tie a piece of string around..." and indeed "Everybody wants prosthetic foreheads on their real heads..." Which are, I think you'll agree, words of wisdom to live by.
Anyway, we eventually got to Emma and Geoff's and had a very nice time. There were several other people there - although I can't remember any of their names (apart from Helen - and I can remember her name because a little boy who was also there was having a lot of difficulty working out her name and kept asking 'What's your name?' for about 2 minutes. I think he thought she was saying 'hello'...)
Everybody had been instructed to bring a bottle, a firework that goes 'phut', a sparkler, a story and their favourite CD. We took some wine and some apple juice, a firework that went bang, fell over and started shooting out to the sides - although, fortunately, not actually towards anyone, coloured sparklers, 'The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish' by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean which went down very well. Candy chose Elephant Elements which is really silly. The CD was my 'soundtrack' compilation to an unfinished story called "I Wish I Could Be Like...". Considering everyone else seemed to have brought folk and classical, and this contains The Jam, Nirvana, PWEI and the Prodigy, it seemed a little out of place. But it went down well. Or at least, no one demanded it's removal and Geoff's sister liked it, she was singing along to The Pixies and The Wedding Present. So that's good.
On Sunday evening, we had Candy's oldest friend, Caf and her partner, Amber, over for dinner. Candy made a delicious vegetable lasagne and a pancake cake. The latter of which is essentially lots of pancakes piled one on top of the other with creme fraiche and jam sandwiched in between. And it is as deliciously wonderful as it sounds.
It was really good seeing Caf and Amber again, because we don't see them enough. Caf seems to be one of these people who is permanently busy. Or maybe she just doesn't like us and couldn't come up with an excuse to get out of seeing us this time...
Pity I'm back at work again. Oh well, it's a short week this week. Wednesday and Thursday are 'Sector Training Days' at some conference centre in the middle of nowhere. It's either going to be fun or a truly hideous experience. I'm reserving judgement...
Posted by stephen @ 11:23 AM GMT [Link]
Thursday, 7 November, 2002
This is rather funny. I've only read the cat ones at the moment. I'm sure the dog ones will cause dog owners to giggle in the same way as I did about the cat ones. Or maybe it's just cat owners who laugh at these things. I dunno...
Posted by stephen @ 01:51 PM GMT [Link]
It has taken me a long time to wake up this morning. Even now, my brain is still only in first gear. There is not a lot happening to wake me up today, either. Considering I was in bed by about 10.30 last night, this is all a bit crap. I feel worse today after about 7 hours sleep than I felt yesterday after 4 1/2 hours.
What has woken me up is emailing Neil. I didn't really say a lot to him, other than to demand news and disparage his taste in films - he said that he kind of enjoyed XXX - that appealed to the child in him - and I told him it was a crap film. He'll probably never speak to me again!
Posted by stephen @ 11:08 AM GMT [Link]
Wednesday, 6 November, 2002
It's wet this morning. And windy. And I've discovered that my brolly doesn't have any sort of force field to keep the rain away from my lower extremities. I have damp knees. Which is not great. It could be worse, they could be really wet. It just feels a bit chilly, really. They'll dry soon enough, it's fairly warm in here.
And my computer is back up. Roger spent ages (far too long, really - for which I am extremely grateful) last night searching the web on my behalf and eventually came up with an answer, which the HP helpdesk also did this morning, but a lot less efficiently and without the pleasantness that comes of talking to your friends. Even if this conversation seemed to consist mainly of long silences punctuated with 'ah yes, how about...' Once I'd persuaded the PC that it did have an Operating System, honest, I had to get it back to the position it was basically in - although with probably less software that I don't use on it - the day before. This wasn't too much of a problem, some programmes had been deleted (most notably Office - which I had to reinstall twice before it worked properly. Which was annoying) whilst others hadn't. It looks like all my files are still there, so I don't have the hassle of copying them from disk, so that's good. The biggest problem was remembering my email logon and password. Neither of which were obvious and only one of which I had a note. Eventually I remembered though. The whole operation (so far - it's not quite complete, I have to reinstall the Service Pack thingy. Thank God I bought a CD Rom of that. Trying to download it from the net again would have been a complete pain in the arse.) took about three hours. Which wouldn't have been a problem had I started it 7.00. However, I didn't start it until about 10.30. So I'm a little tired this morning.
This afternoon, I'm going to see Roger (from work, not friend Roger...) talk to a bunch of Brewers about the right way to write an exam question. That should be exciting...
Posted by stephen @ 09:00 AM GMT [Link]
Tuesday, 5 November, 2002
I came across this list while reading this months SFX magazine...
The only one I didn't know was Thurston Howell III. Who is, apparently, from Gilligan's Island. We live and learn.
Posted by stephen @ 01:35 PM GMT [Link]
I've just discovered that REM has never had a UK #1 single. I always thought that Shiny Happy People got there. But apparently, it only got #6. I am crushed, I tell you, Crushed!!!
Oh, and the correct url for the voting thing - if you are interested - is this one.
Posted by stephen @ 11:08 AM GMT [Link]
Last night, Candy was having a problem with the computer at home. She kept trying to look at clip art using Word so she could make pretty things for her students. Unfortunately, it kept crashing.
Last week, I got an error message saying something along the lines of 'Various files to run Windows are corrupted, please insert your Windows XP CD-Rom to fix them'. I e-mailed Hewlett Packard, as I didn't have a CD of Windows XP. They emailed me back to say that my PC had the contents of the CD ROM saved on a 'hidden partition' and that I needed to run a 'non-destructive system restore' programme to fix the problem.
Thinking the two problems may be connected, I did this last night - after backing up all my important files and documents, thank god - except for my bookmarks. However, the non-destructive system restore programme managed to destroy my system. After it had completed, I got a message saying 'The system is not fully installed. Re-run set up.' Which I couldn't do because there was never an option to do this. Needless to say, I was a little annoyed. I have emailed HP - after talking to a human who said that I actually had to ring a premium rate number, which rather annoyed me, because I was 'just following instructions' from them. We'll see what happens now.
However, and this is the really great thing... I was sent an automatic reply email to my email and it included a link to a site if you needed to call them. I thought I'd try it. This is what I got:
HPScreen
Two random things.
Last night, walking home, I saw that the Post Office were advertising 'Lord Of The Rings' stamps. Win £100,000 or something if you find the One Ring in your pack of stamps. This set me to thinking - I do a lot of that, as you will see - and that thinking led me to this thought: Surely, it would be more lucky to NOT get the One Ring in your pack of stamps? I mean, it's not as if Frodo had a good time of it when he got hold of it, was it? "Don't get the One Ring and win!" may not be as exciting a slogan, but it certainly has more of the sense of Tolkien's ideas behind it. The same goes for packets of 'Lord of The Rings Jelly Rings' I saw on sale in a shop (but didn't buy, you'll be glad to know...). Two problems with this one - firstly, there is the aforementioned problem of Orcs, evil Wizards and various Nasties trying to get their hands on you because of your ownership of the Ring. Secondly, a packet of One Rings? Isn't this ever so slightly tautologous?
The other random thing. I was working TO work this morning (can you see a pattern forming?) and I saw an ad for a website where you could vote for your favourite No.1 single of all time to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Official Singles Chart. This set me to thinking of what my choice would be. Bohemian Rhapsody? Shiny Happy People? Dizzy? Then it hit me. Of Course: "There's No One Quite Like Grandma" by The St Winifred's Girls School Choir! I'm trying to find a photo of the delightfully cute, adenoidally challenged little girl who fronted this popular Beat Combo, but I'm not having much success. Dammit!
Found one....
Ain't she cute?
Posted by stephen @ 10:44 AM GMT [Link]
Monday, 4 November, 2002
If you saw the comment made by 'anonymous' (embarrassed@countdown.com) to my previous missive on the subject of British tv shows, then you will have become aware that Countdown is actually a French invention. I think that what made it uniquely British is the addition of Richard Whiteley and - occasionally - Richard Stilgoe. However, I looked at the link that Anon gave me. It's in French. I can just about read it and, as far as I could tell gave no hint that it was actually originally French. It just seemed to be an online version of Countdown, with the only actual reference to the show being that it was a game of numbers and letters "suit le fonctionnement du célèbre jeu télévisé". Anyway, I thought I'd run it througha translation programme. Not for any accuracy, just because they are usually a giggle. So, I did the Google one and it came up with this:
"Figures and letters I - the figures and the letters This play of the figures and the letters follows the operation of the famous television game. Two players clash in six tests: four of letters and two of figures. The winner will be that which will have accumulated the most points. A history file will safeguard possibly the results of the part. II - Environment... The figures and the letters were written for a Unix waiter in a Pascal. They function only in text mode. For those which have a graphic environment, it will thus not be very interesting but for the others (student at the university for example), celà contributes to spend time. III - Extracts III - Description of the files the file jeu.tar.gz is to be downloaded. One will need then the décompresser then the désarchiver. That will be done in the following way: user@servor > gunzip jeu.tar.gz user@servor > tar xvf jeu.tar You will obtain after these operations the following files: jeu.exe: the achievable one. Not inevitably compatible with your system. jeu.p: the source code. Will allow to generate with your Pascal compiler another achievable. lettres.txt: file used by the play. chiffres.txt: fichire used by the play."
I like the idea of a Unix Waiter. Well, I suppose waiters do wear penguin suits... And I imagine this would apply to those in "a Pascal" as well. I then had a look at Babelfish and discovered that it wasn't what I thought it was... The small print says that they are "not affiliated with AltaVista Babel Fish machine translation services." Which makes me wonder if either one would have some sort of case for infringement of copyright. Although how either one could copyright the name (which Babelfish.com appears to have done...) when it's a Douglas Adams invention (Which, again, Babelfish.com doesn't seem to acknowledge in anyway whatsoever) I don't know.
Anyway, the AltaVista Babelfish translation seems to be essentially the same as the Google one, but actually translates the page rather than having to paste the text into a box, so the translation actually looks like the page rather than just a block of text. Exciting stuff, eh?
Posted by stephen @ 11:25 AM GMT [Link]
I had a very lazy weekend this weekend. I did stuff but not a huge amount of it.
The major thing I did was fiddling with database Stuff (which deserves capitalisation, I feel...). It involved trying to get database information online, which, once I worked out how to do it wasn't too hard. Unfortunately, it appears that only it is only accessible from my computer, which is a bugger, as I kind of wanted it to be available on any PC. Back to the drawing board, I think, although what I'm going to do, I'm not entirely certain.
Other than that, I really didn't do a lot. I added a bit to my database, tidied the house up - it was still a complete tip after dumping everything we brought down from Newcastle last weekend - and read Goldfish by Brian Michael Bendis. This is a graphic novel, one of his early ones, from the current writer of some of my favourite comic books (Ultimate Spider-Man, Daredevil, Powers and Alias). This is the stuff he started with and you can see where he's going - especially with Powers and Alias - DD and USM less so, but the dialogue is still there. He's probably the best writer of comics dialogue since Garth Ennis. It was a good week for comics this week, in fact - I missed getting them the week before with going up to Newcastle, so I had a big haul this week.
I was just about to book a ticket to Durham, Newcastle and Wooler at the end of the month, but I've just discovered that I've left my wallet at home. Which is a bugger. Oh well. That's all my plans for the day out of the window. I have a couple of quid, but that's not enough to buy the latest issue of SFX or send off some stuff to my Dad. Bum. Lucky I brought some lunch with me, really.
I've just been checking Amazon to see if I can get a link for you to rush and buy Goldfish (which you can't from Amazon. So go to your local comic shop and get it, instead) and discovered that they are offering Free Delivery for the next month or so on orders over £40 or so. I have two orders of around this level (Buffy Season One and LOTR:FOTR, Spider-Man and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones) although the Buffy one doesn't quite make it. I may have to add something to the order to get it over that level. There are lots of things I could add - Elv1s, Stupid White Men by Michael Moore (I should be going to see him next month - he's doing a talk in support of Bowling For Columbine and this book, so I should probably read it beforehand), Fire by Bendis (which, surprisingly comes up as his no.1 book on Amazon, rather than Spidey, Daredevil or Powers, which is what I would have thought would be the one.) I have, in fact, gone for Fire - as it was the cheapest one that would take me over the limit. This is a good thing... Now, I just have to wait and see if either one is unavailable. I have a feeling that Buffy may well be. We'll see. And...don't forget, if you are buying anything through Amazon - get it through the link on the front page or with this link! (Yes, it's cheap advertising, but at least it doesn't pop up or anything...)
