CDE

Spider eyes

2006-05-07T12:59:00.001Z

I was closing a window and saw this little guy wandering around the dusty paintwork.

Look into the eyes, not around the eyes, the eyes, and you're under...

He was about the size of a 10p coin, but courtesy of my trusty Canon A620 I was able to get a closer look. Nothing more to say on the topic really, he's wandering around the garden now. I'll never see all those lovely eyes again...

Fish eyes

2006-05-07T12:59:00.000Z

Enough eBaying, I'm going to need a support group at this rate. This time it's a semi fish eye lens.

Who says cats are pretty?

I'm not planning on taking solely stupid shots, but this seemed a good place to start.

Between Bananas and Brains

2006-04-13T09:00:00.000Z

Having not wanted to bring personal information into this blog, I've realised that it's hard to write anything without revealing something.

So, given the fact that only some people close to me know that this is my blog, I'm happy enough to mention things that are not good conversation starters, but might actually be useful information.

Thus we come to 5-HTP, and depression. To cut a tiresome story short, I spent some time on various antidepressants several years ago, and I am aware that depression can creep back at any time. I am also aware that it erodes motivation both directly and inderectly - through poor sleep, eating less and so on, so with plenty of work to do at the moment I figured I should avoid any problems rather than wait for them to surface.

5-HTP is essentially the chemical that your body creates in the interim stage between ingesting tryptophan (eat more bananas) and creating the resulant serotonin (for happy brains). By synthesising this halfway house for consumption, the serotonin production process is accelerated and the dosage can be more accurately assessed.

My first few nights taking these capsules (which always float when you try to wash them down, so you have to be extra determined to rap the benefits) involved some of the most vivid dreams I have had in a long time. for three nights, in order, my dreams were weird, then great, then awful-but-felt-normal-at-the-time. Then I forgot to take it for a couple of nights, so much for motivation...

If I ever manage a regular routine and feel the need to extol the virtues or sound a warning about your friendly neighbourhood 5-hydroxytryptophan, you might see more about it here. In the meantime, expect the usual mix of square photos and mundane daily life. I really should get a flickr account or something.

Uninterrupted

2006-04-05T11:05:00.000Z

Again, eBay gives new meaning to life. Actually, it just gave me a new perspective on my consumerism...

You see, I now have a UPS. Not a shipping company, an Uninterruptible Power Supply. This is not because I run equipment off a generator (as its previous owner did), afraid that I might forget to fill the tank. This is because of those times when a windy day has led to some kind of disturbance on the power lines round where I live, making me lose a significant amount of work on my PC.

But the new perspective is this: The UPS cost £15. Postage cost another £15. And somehow, through computer knowledge, I have on occasion been "worth" about £30 per hour. So if I were to forget to save my work for an hour, then have a power cut, this device will have paid for itself.

Of course that depends on what I was doing, nobody pays me to play Black & White 2 or to meticulously organise my files & emails.

Still, wouldn't it be great to be the only person playing a god game diring a power cut...?

Gandalf

2006-03-28T15:38:00.000Z

After my partner of over 12 years decided to point out that I had a daft-looking, small patch of white beard, I made the mistake of pointing it out to a friend, whose immediate reaction was "Ha! Gandalf...!". Apparently he just wanted to be the first to call me that.

Pigment, why have you forsaken me?

This may be the best motivator yet for me to bother shaving regularly, since I have spent about a decade arguing "no, that's just stubble" in the face of beard accusations. I admit that 5-day-shadow is not traditionally called stubble, but since I have never tried (by shaping, planning or fertilising my facial hair) to have a beard, I feel I can claim to have never had a beard.

As for the photo above, that's just stubble.

Paper Anniversary

2006-03-24T18:36:00.000Z

A year ago, my brother got married. Which was weird. But which was great too - and after a year of flights across the atlantic, houes moves and sometimes frenzied blog posting, his new life appears to have settled down a bit.

So congratulations to him and my sister-in-law (which also sounds weird!), and hell, while we're at it, congratulations to anyone else who's reading this from the comfort of a decent relationship!

Nothing more, nothing less, love is the best...

Twenty-Nine

2006-03-22T09:56:00.000Z

So what exactly are 29-year-olds meant to feel like?

Darwinia, complete for the second time

2006-03-13T13:11:00.000Z

There is a game called Darwinia, which very few people seem to have taken notice of. If the world had any sense, people would be flocking to the website to buy it for Windows, Linux or Macintosh. Having just completed it for the second time, still finding it a joy to play, I can't recommend it enough.

Resurrecting souls from dead virii as Darwinians. Obviously.

Of course some people don't seem to like paying for games, which reminds me of a blog post I read in which a UK resident was reflecting on The Excellent Game Psychonauts by Double Fine Productions, about a year before its European release. OK, so that game took an excessive amount of time to cross the Atlantic, but we all know deep down that buying from retail outlets (or directly from the creators when possible) really does support producers of games, music or whatever.

How can I claim this moral high ground between eBay binges? I tend to go for rare & out of print items, or the kind of mediocre games that aren't worth full price even as budget releases, made by companies who should be forced to rethink their policy of reworking old game engines with even older characters for the sake of a 10-game series.

So go on, buy Darwinia. Imagine Populous: The Beginning in a Tron-like world, only with some excellent music (unlike Populous) and a compelling storyline (unlike Tron...).

Trying to avoid puns involving "Joseph"

2006-03-11T12:58:00.000Z

One for the ornithologists - I saw a Starling today.

Photo by me!

Due to not wanting this blog to be heavily identifiable, I won't say where, but it was in the carpark to a branch of Argos, in the UK.

Somewhere coastal.

10 years searching

2006-03-11T11:39:00.000Z

Another eBay triumph.

Where have you been all my life?

Now 10 years may be a bit of an exaggeration, I found out in 1995 that this CD was out of print, after buying Gilt by Machines Of Loving Grace, then looking online for more about the band. The web was all shiny and new, but had far fewer shops back then and I couldn't find their debut CD anywhere.

So who are they? You know, Machines Of Loving Grace... They dis the second track on the soundtrack to The Crow. Their 2nd album, Concentration was out at the time. It had a person wrapped in barbed wier on the cover.

No? Fine...

So anyway, I'm sure you're so excited that you want to know how it sounds.

It's basically like a shorter version of Concentration with lower production values - what did you expect? It's a mix of their later work and some evil twin of Depeche Mode.

Only Depeche Mode from the right era, so that would be an electro-industrial-ish version of Violator.

Only "electro-industrial-ish" from the same era, so that would be a similar sound to Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine.

Somehow, that actually comes close as a description. if you like your half-hour albums more rock than electro, go and buy The May Queens. It's great. But has nothing to do with this post.

More appetising ingredients

2006-03-11T10:11:00.000Z

So this time I am eating sodium nitrite, which is both an intestinal relaxant and an antidote to Cyanide poisoning, I have the luxury of wondering if there are any chicken bones in my already-unappetising lunch, and I am eating cornfour.

(At least this contains nothing I can't pronounce)

Which presumably is a form of cornflour, famed for being weird when mixed with water, and in this case it seems to attack the "L" key on standard keyboards. Cornfour indeed.

If I had a fatal Cornflour allergy, I'd sue them, right after I was resurrected in an elaborate ritual or a secret (and equally elaborate) underground laboratory.

Fresh, locally farmed...

2006-03-10T10:11:00.000Z

On the label of a sandwich proudly claiming that ingredients are locally sourced in the West Country where possible, I can't help wondering how many Xantham Gum and Guar Gum farms there are in the UK.

Delicious and nutritious?

Apparently they are gluten substitutes. I'd rather the gluten, and anyone on a gluten-free diet can take my word that they wouldn't be missing much if this particular sandwich was off-limits...

And "Non-Brewed Condiment"? Give me regular vinegar! I'm not the only person to be left confused, horrified or bewildered by this particular substitution of traditional, recogniseable food with Mystery Additive X.

So what's my point? I could, and should, put together a few pence worth of bread, cheese, pickle-of-my-choice and anything else I actually want, rather than pay £3 for this bizarre concoction.

I mean, £3? I could buy a block of cheese, a loaf of bread, a jar of pickle and some paper plates, and feed a few starving students or local homeless people with that. But I'll probably just buy more "convenience" food...

10395 rpm

2006-03-06T14:02:00.000Z

I have this problem with eBay, which I'm sure some people can relate to. Sometimes I see things, and didn't even know they existed before, then a week later I have one in my house.

This has taken the form of music (rare CDs, band side-projects), low-profile games (Taito Legends for the Xbox) and random other things, but this time it was the Powerball Pro.

It's "Professional".

Don't laugh. Yet.

This thing has a gyroscope in it, which is automatically cool to anyone who studied physics, and by spinning the innards then rotating your wrist the gyroscope accelerates, pulling outwards with (up to) 40lbs of force. It is marketed as "250Hz", so that's presumably 15000rpm, though some oddly competitive types have got theirs over 16000rpm (it remembers your "high score").

I've barely broken the 10000 mark (see title!) but I'm more interested in whether or not a few minutes a day will actually improve any muscles. Perhaps, if I need to hand-whisk some pancake batter in 10 seconds whilst my elbows act as the mid-point for a tug-of war, I will have improved some useful muscles.

In the meantime it just feels weird, like my forearms have been working out without telling me.
If I find myself able to break an egg with my bare hands, you'll be the first to know.

Could've been a contender

2006-02-26T16:34:00.000Z

I have cats. Cats have accidents. Cats also have fights...

You should see the other guy...

So this is what came home today. He's fine, but at this point he had pretty much cleaned out an eyeful of blood. To start with it was like something from 28 Days Later, or any other situation with blood-filled eyes. Still, the source of the blood has been identified as near the eye, not in the eye, so here's hoping that he keeps clean and heals up fast.

Last week the other cat fell 20 feet from a tree, but this blog didn't exist, so I didn't tell you. he was also fine, which is impressive considering how he broke his rear leg a few months ago, jumping less than a metre to play with a feather.

I don't usually count cat lives, but these two have got through plenty of their 18 so far...

Pop a cap in your AGP

2006-02-23T10:23:00.000Z

Most blogs start with a working PC. Or a working Macintosh, of course. I was using the term to refer to a Personal Computer (remember when things weren't so specific? How soon until "PC" becomes a trademark of Dell or Microsoft?), but this one is a little different.

This is being posted from someone else's computer, because my Windows box died. A couple of days ago it refused to boot, and after a previous shoddy upgrade job had left me with no internal speaker I couldn't check the beeps to see what POST errors were happening.

And with nothing on the monitor I was blinded, as well as deafened, when trying to diagnose the issue.

Guessing that the blackness and failed boot could all come from a dead graphics card, I borrowed an old machine from a friend to cannibalise parts.

I figured I had 2 scenarios:

The whole machine was dead, and my failure to back up in the last month would get me sacked or killed
The graphics card was dead, and I could swap it out to get running again
OK, so it could have been somewhere in between, leading to a day of building hybrid machines until something booted OK.

The culprits - they look more domed in real life!

Thankfully it was scenario 2, and the borrowed machine's card enabled me to boot and backup everything. The old NVidia GeForce2 MX200 (ahem) had bulging capacitors, not yet leaking but visibly domed, so I presume this could be linked to the death. I'm fairly sure having it in a cold room hasn't helped either, and the recent temperature drop (near freezing outside, no central heating in that room) could explain the timing of this failure in terms of thermal stress caused by powering on cold components.

Anyway, a new PC has been ordered (the old one was part 4½, part 7½ years old!), and all is well. If you plan to buy a custom PC in the UK, leave a comment and I can recommend a company who would give us both a free game in their recommendation scheme... Now I have to decide how to keep this new one warmer, at least spring is on the way...

Obligatory first message

2006-02-23T09:58:00.000Z

So it's a blog.

Nothing special there, and perhaps there will be nothing special here, ever. I guess that's in the eye of the beholder. Anyway, you know what to expect, another person's writings from times when something else should have been happening, but it seemed like a good idea to prevaricate.

Stick around, it might get better...