Edit0r’s Bloog

I’ve been watching Lexx a lot recently. It’s a science-fantasy-space-opera doodad about these fugitives who steal a ship (a living ship!) and are on the run from a evil oppressive Orwellian empire based on fear and religion. It bears more than a little striking resemblance to Farscape, which is a science-fantasy-space-opera doodad about these fugitives who steal a ship (a living ship!) and are on the run from an evil oppressive Orwellian empire based on fear and sexual innuendo. But anyhoos, yes it rocks. Go watch it. Go on, all of you. Scoot!

Out on it’s arse

I’ve finally decided that enough is enough with the prototype media centre PC. I’m selling it on eBay here if anyone is interested. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, and it’s pretty much unused. I just can’t get the ATI hardware in it working with Linux. If you put Windows Media Centre Edition onto it, it’ll do you quite well. Also, the spec has been significantly improved since I wrote the article in November. You can see all the details on the auction. It was fun putting this machine together, if your definition of fun is being stressed out by faulty components and incompatibilities. Still, I’m sad to see it go. I’ll be putting together another one soon, and this time I’ll have the sense to buy nVidia parts as well as more money to through at it. I shall build my empire slowly, but surely…

Change of course

Some of you may have heard that I’m taking the rest of this year out. This isn’t concrete yet, but the reason is that I want to change my degree to computer science instead of physics. I really should have done this when I was applying to Edinburg, as it means I’ll be behind another year. I think it’s for the best though, as if I work from now until September, I’ll actually have enough money to study next year.

I was sitting on the bog the other day, as you do, and suddenly thought “holy shit, I should update my bloog”.

Sorry it’s been so long since an update, I sometimes forget that this site gets literally two hits a month. Anyhoos, a lot has happened since my last post, but I’ll try not to ramble on

The bike got a new back wheel, courtesy of Miss. Speed-Racer (though I think the frame is still a bit bent); Christmas sucked; and I’ve decided to become a vegetarian. Also, I learned that for the last six years I’ve been spelling vegetarian wrong.

Christmas

Since the first item in this triplet has had a whole bloog entry about it, let’s deal with the second two in turn. As many of you may know, Sarah goes away to Belgium for Christmas every year to see her relatives from her mum’s side. I gather she doesn’t think too much of the country, but still goes because it’s the only time she gets to see those relatives. I went with her last year, and thought it was pretty amazing, if only to hear about 20 Belgians rattling on to my fiancée in Flemmish while she responded in English. That and playing Fretten (a card game) with the three witches*, but I digress.

This Christmas, I was planning on going with her so that I could impress her family with my very basic understanding of Dutch (and play Fretten). Alas, work very much got in the way, and I wasn’t allowed to take time off over the Christmas period. This upset me greatly, but at least I’d get to have a good long stay with my parents. Then I remembered: the bunnies needed someone to stay and look after them. So shit, I thought, I’ll just have to go for Christmas day and as the morning of Boxing day. So I phoned my dear mother (*bitchcough*) to ask for a lift down (there is no public transport on Christmas day). Since she hadn’t seen me in a while, I thought she’d be more than happy to give me a lift. No such luck. She decided to be all stubborn and nasty and declined to give me a lift. Also, it really wasn’t good weather for the motorbike, so I couldn’t ask my dad.

I’ll give you an idea of what Christmas 2007 was like for me: I was stuck in my flat. Everyone I knew were with their families. I hadn’t bought anything to eat since I thought I’d be at my parents house. I didn’t even get to give/receive presents as Sarah and I opened ours before she left. This might sound like the saddest thing in the world to some people (and don’t get me wrong, it was a bit depressing), but it was more of an inconvenience to me. I don’t generally like the Christmas period (bah! Humbug!), but I do like being with people and having food that consists of something other than packet noodles. Hopefully, next year will be better, and I hope I get to go to Belgium again.

Veggie Andrew

My family are probably the world’s biggest meat eaters. I was brought up loving meat, so you can imagine how hard it is for me to suddenly find myself disgusted by my favourite food. I used to be a vegetarian before I met Sarah, but she convinced me to give up that silliness**. I guess one of the main reasons I became one before was to impress Charlotte, my then-girlfriend, but after we broke up I still clung on this oddity. Recently, though, I’ve been put off by meat. Sarah was given a book for Christmas entitled Cow, which amongst other things gives an account of the domestication of these animals through the ages. She read a few paragraphs to me from the part where they describe the modern method of killing cows, and I think that is what started this whole thing off. It wasn’t a conscious decision, and at the time the book didn’t faze me. It still doesn’t much. It’s just that every time I try and eat meat now I just get… put off. It’s like suddenly imagining your mother naked when you’re masturbating: the more you try not to think about it, the more it’s gonna creep up on you and slap you in the face/cock.

This all happened last week or so, and on Saturday-just-past I decided to become a vegetarian again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of these hippies who thinks no-one should eat meat and tries to feed others their opinion like a chainsaw to the face. No, I just personally find meat off-putting. Those of you who know me well enough should be thinking how strange that sentence seems coming from me. Needless to say, Sarah very much takes exception to my new-found eating habits. Her views on the subject are very extreme; she is basically the anti-vegetarian. That said, things could be worse. I mean, I’m still in a relationship with her. Hopefully this will work out for the best. Maybe it’s just a phase. Who knows?

I’ll leave you with a snipped of MSN goodness from my dear brother:

thomas: why you vegy again?
thomas: ?
Andrew: i just find meat offputting
Andrew: 2 secs, I’ve almost finished blooging about it
thomas: dont worry, i eat enough of if for 2
thomas: well, more like 6
Andrew: heh
Andrew: yes, I know

*No disrespect is meant to Sarah’s mum and aunts here. They just seemed very much like the witches coven from the Discworld books: Sarah’s mum is the maiden (Magrat Garlick), Tante Emelda is the mother (Nanny Ogg), and Tante Clare is the hag (Granny Weatherwax). It all makes sense if you’ve played Fretten with them.

**It took her a day and a half to get me to deviate from a way of life I’d followed for three years. She truly is an amazing woman.

Stupidity

I am a very stupid person at times. These times are at night, usually on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, twice on each. You see, I cycle almost everywhere, my limit being a radius of the distance from Marchmont to Corstorphine (about 5 miles). This was all hunky dory in the Summer when there was lots of light for most of the day, but now the daylight hours are fewer and I have to cycle to work three evenings a week. Being the stupid and forgetful person I am, I haven’t been using bike lights at night, and neither have I been wearing a helmet. This is very stupid.

I was reminded of this stupidity last Wednesday as I was approaching work. I was going round a mini roundabout when a previously stationary car started accelerating, while I was passing directly in front of it! It hit the back wheel of my bike side-on and knocked me clean off. Fortunately, the only injury I sustained was a graze on my leg from the sprocket digging into my leg. Unfortunately the bike was not so lucky. The back wheel needs replacing, but the lass who hit me is paying for it, so I guess everything’s okay. It could have been a lot worse if I was going ever-so-slightly slower. So remember this kids, and always wear lights and a helmet at night!

Lighters

I love fire way too much. After the fiasco trying to light fireworks on a very windy bonfire night, I decided to get a windproof lighter. I opted for an incredibly hot, blue flamed Turboflame lighter instead of a Zippo because, well… they’re cooler! I ordered the Turbostick model on eBay, but failed to realise that it was too big to fit in my pocket. I sold it to Otherandrew and bought myself one of the GX7 models. Nice flame, but crap cap, and completely unsuitable for keeping in a junked out pocket. I gave this one to my brother, who is probably burning my parents’ house down as we speak.

Next I decided to go for the Phoenix model. This is probably the most aesthetically pleasing Turboflame out there. Absolutely gorgeous design. One snag though: instead of having a precise 1300C flame, it had a more spread out, colder, but more wind resistant flame (due to a strip of catalytic platinum).

Finally, I bought myself one of these bad boys: the Turbo2. This model sports two jets of bloody hot blowtorch, and has a sensible cap. Suffice to say, I used up the meagre amount of gas supplied in it within an hour of removing the thing from its packaging, but I’m going to buy a refill later today. Maybe a new error page is in order: server down due to fire…

Bunnybloog!

Sarah has been absolutely amazing and made a bloog for our bunnies! It’s incredibly cute and you should check it out. Seriosuly, dooo eeet! Now!

Also, check out Albany Power Exchange. It’s a site all about BDSM and Master/slave relationships in general. Extremely interesting reading, especially the part about total power exchange. Ach, a slave can dream. I’m gonna go fetch my collar…

I was reading through some utterly didactic poetry recently, written a few years ago by a friend who shall remain unnamed. If you want to know the sort of thing I’m talking about, go onto a random MySpace profile and take a look at some of the terrible Emo poetry some people come up with*. In light of this, I wrote a poem of my own. Don’t lay into me about being hypocritical. It’s meant to be Ironic.

To Lie Upon the Bed One Maketh

Little Johnny, sitting bored
Decided he would open Word
And make a literary beast
On which his MySpace friends would feast.

To start off, Johnny thought, he would
Compare to blood all that he could
And use black, shady, darkened pictures
To show his sad internal fixtures

Eventually, his epic done,
He posted it, so he could stun
His friends with his imagination
And cure his dull web prose stagnation

But lo! What tragic fate occurred:
His Enemies had somehow heard
That he had posted sullen verses
Which were now prone to jaunts and curses.

You read my rhyme now head the warning:
Your published works are there for scorning
And if you have thoughts on the shelf
Please, just keep them to yourself.

*I feel I should mention that this is an extremely broad, sweeping statement. There are many good writers on MySpace, you just need to know where to look.

Server outage

So, all my sites went down last night. I found out this morning when Sarah received an e-mail from her forum app (SMF, a brilliant wee app I highly recommend). Upon investigating further, I found that MySQL had decided to die. Attempts to resuscitate it were unsuccessful, and a quick dmesg informed me that the server had 2.7MB of physical memory free, and no swap.

Oh dear…

Glancing at top, I saw that there were many many Apache, MySQL and PHP processes open and consuming tons of memory. After some daemon genocide, my coup of memory (physical and virtual) was successful, and I was able to start serving sites again. Just how Apache et al. managed to gobble up about 700MB of memory is something of a mystery at the moment. Investigation continues…

A trip to Fife

I went to my parents house on Friday night and stayed over till Saturday morning. This really sucked, as I wanted to stay longer, but work prohibited me from doing so. Quite an uneventful visit this time, but I was introduced to a few new things. Firstly, SmartWater. This amazing little liquid was supplied by Allianz, the company who insure my cello. Basically, it’s a UV fluorescent liquid with a unique “fingerprint” marker, and is used to track stolen goods and deter thieves (with the appropriate “touch this and die!” stickers).

The second introduction was to the lovely Ravi, a fur from somewhere (New York? She’s gonna chew me out over this, I swear…) in America. My brother talks to her on Skype a lot, and they seem to be into each other quite well (no, not like that! Honestly, you and your dirty minds). I suppose it’s kinda like things between me and Rosy, they’re good friends and make each other happy. If either had the money, they’d be over visiting the other in a snap, I bet. In case you were wondering, her character is a vixen.

So, now we come onto the third item on my 3-wide list. Elfen Lied. This is an excellent anime I like almost as much as Full Metal Alchemist. It has the most amazing song on the opening titles, sort of a gregorian chant style thingme, which I’ve been playing on the piano. So yes, go and watch it. Yes, you. Go on. Or I’ll set Ravi on you. You do not want that.

I’ve got more to say, but right now my brain be fried from labs. Remind me to talk about lighters next time.