Category: Personal

Stuff happening in my life

Москва

Did he find a keyboard that does Russian? Or did he copy and paste from Wikipedia?

I did find a keyboard but I’m too lazy to write properly, so I copied and pasted.

Рщдн агсл Ш зкуыыув еру цкщтп лун сщьиштфешщтю!!!

We’re in a restaurant (ресторан) in Moscow. There is a computer built into every booth with which you order your food. When you’ve ordered it then let’s you browse the Internet for free. The menu ordering system uses Flash and if you right click and click “About Macromedia Flash…” it opens a new browser window and takes you to Macromedia; you don’t have to order anything to browse. The food looked great so we ordered anyway (there is a human element to the security system anyway. He’s sat at the door with a shaven head looking menacing).

I came across a squat toilet today but luckily I only needed the urinal. The whole squatting thing makes sense but is no doubt difficult the first few times. It’s the wiping that worries me: no toilet paper. Put it this way, left handed people have no friends in Russia.

Mooscow

We saw cows in Moscow. We’re leaving Moscow for St. Petersburg tonight, on a 8 hour overnight train. We saw dead Lenin, which would be a good name for a band.

I was going to write the title of this post in Russian, but ironically this keyboard (in an Internet cafe) is qwerty only.

I’ll probably write more when I get back. Or I might not.

Also, you can’t be sure whether I actually wrote this from Russia or I queued it up before I left like the last post. That’s a bit of mystery for you; spice things up a bit.

Can’t get to my mobile answer-phone messages or my e-mail, so if you need me send me a text.

Ghost posting

I’m currently on holiday in Russia. I wrote this post last Saturday night and made my bloggy software not display it until today (Monday).

If my plane crashed and I died then this post will be a bit disconcerting. I probably went to hell, but don’t worry: all my friends will be here one day. Could someone please feed the cats.

Criminal Robin Cook dead

Throughout his politcal career Robin Cook repeatedly attacked the opposition for their inhumane foreign policy, yet perpertrated the same crimes the moment his party took power. He has an about turn at the last minute, resigning over the illegal war in Iraq, then dies and suddenly he’s remembered as an angel of integrity. The guy was no better than the rest of them: catering to power and profit at the expense of human rights and lives.

Creative Commons Licensing

I’ve now licensed the text of this blog under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License. This means everyone is free to copy, distribute and display it but they must attribute it to me. They can even make commercial use of the work.

They can’t alter or transform any of it though. It is mostly just my opinions anyway, I don’t think it would be useful for people to change what I think willy-nilly (they should at least have to invest in a large network of propaganda devices to do this (Hi Tony))

All of my photography is now licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License, which means anyone can pretty much do what they like with it, but they much attribute it to me.

My explanations of these licenses are just a rough summary, they are not legally binding in any way. Follow the links for a more complete summary, and from there the full legal crap.

You can read more about free culture at the Creative Commons website. You can even use the nice wizard thing to choose which license you want.

Strange noises last night in Armley

At around 0350 this (Sunday) morning I half awoke to a very strange sound. It was loud and sounded to be coming from out on the street. I looked at the clock and misread it as 3150, so assumed I was having a lucid dream. Louisa woke too and I mentioned the dream noise, and she told me she heard it too, so I decided that I was definitely awake. At this point, the sound repeated itself. It was an metallicy almost alien noise. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it. It was ungodly. It sounded perhaps like 5 road sweepers with metal brushes driving close to a row of parked cars. Or the Terminator having rough sex with a robotic pig. It repeated a few times, sounding very much like the source of it was moving around the estate, away from us.
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Mouse trap

On my way over to the park near where I work this lunchtime, I noticed something dart into the bushes. Stopping to look I noticed it was a mouse. Another mouse a few feet down was less self-concious and was gnawing on a nut or something. So I crouched down to watch. Living with four cats it’s rare to crouch down next to a mouse that hasn’t had all its limbs chewed off and its intestines spread around.

It was at this point, with me crouched next to the bushes close to the entrance at work, that my boss, and his boss, and some important visitors walked by. They later told me they just explained I did stuff with Linux security and the visitors understood completely.

They asked me later what I was up to, but I was worried that if I told them that they’d assume we had an infestation and call some professional rodent murders (as apposed to hobbyist rodent murders like our cats) so I lied. I told them I was checking for child wireless network hackers.

We put down pringle can traps.

My first computer

I always thought my first computer was a Texas Instruments TI99 computer (cassette *and* cartridge loaded). It was with that I learnt how to code basic when I was 7 or 8 or something. Well after seeing The Journey Robot I realized that BigTrak was actually my first computer.

You could program BigTrak with up to 16 instructions before setting it off, and it would execute them. Say forward for 5 seconds, turn, forward for 10 seconds, fire phasers etc. (or something like that, I don’t remember it fully). I’d love to play with it again, but they are rather rare now I hear.

half man half biscuit gig

We saw Half Man Half Biscuit last night at the Cockpit in Leeds. Great stuff. It’s wonderful to hear NON-American cultural references that I don’t understand for a change. Incomplete unordered set list follows:

  • Corgi registered friends
  • Vatican broadside
  • Fuckin’ ell it’s Fred Titmus
  • 24 hour garage people
  • The Len Ganley stance
  • Four skinny indie kids
  • 99% of gargoyles look like Bob Todd
  • Bob Wilson, anchor man
  • Cover of Help me Rhonda

And as Louisa said, I too liked that their stage “costumes” looked like they had all been bought at Matalan.

Scotland photoblog

We’re back from our weekend in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. It wasn’t very sunny until today, but it was warm and at least it didn’t rain. I took some photos, which I’ll share soon in a gallery. For now here is a few selections in the form of a photo blog. Just to clarify though, Scotland is not home to a large Meerkat and Macaw population. As far as we could see, they do not roam the small towns and villiages digging holes and chirping “hello”s respectively. There are just nice photos I took at Galloway wildlife park in Kirkcudbright.

photo of a meerkat
photo of a macaw

boobiesAlso, I purchased a new extreme wide angle lens (fish eye). You’ve probably seen them used to take photos of skateboarders and, um, perhaps rollerbladers. I plan to use it to do more interesting things, mainly as I don’t know any skateboarders. As a first start I present to you the following sample shot taken in Scotland.

Who are you

I found that a bunch of people at my new work have found my blog and read the terrible things I say here. A lesser person than I might now take care in that which he writes. Lucky for me I’m not a lesser person than myself.

Anyway, I realised I don’t know who reads this blog. I know of a few people, like my girlfriend (mostly to check the spelling and gramer), my Mum, probably not my Dad (me being a “commie bastard”) and some random friends (when they run out of Google news links and/or marijuana) . The Googlebot also reads it a lot. This is a testament to the gargantuan interest my whiney dribbley writing generates. Actually, for all I know, Karl Rove might read this, along with BA Baracus, my new neighbours and the ghost of Richard Whiteley.

Assuming you read this crap once in a while, and you’re able to type (this probably excludes the ghost of Richard Whiteley), then tell me who you are. Leave a comment on this post, or drop me a line. If you want to remain anonymous (how exciting) then just say hi and don’t say who you are, though I can probably track you down using my elite internets skillz (mostly google) though I “promise” not to.

Some of you may have noticed I have nothing better to do than this on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Well done.