Andrzej's Adoxography

Who wants to party?

2006-09-19T20:32:16Z

House party preparations are going well, viz:

(Clicky for large, label-legible image)

I've also got 19 alcoholic jellies setting in the fridge. But not your usual vodka - here we have Aftershock and raspberry. The vodka is currently being funnelled through a watermelon, to make fruit as nature intended (you know - alcoholic, but without having to wait for fermentation).

All go for Saturday... :)

Cocktails request

2006-09-15T20:23:39Z

Hello everyone,

As you should now yourselves be presently aware of, my grammar sucks. Also I'm having a housewarming next weekend and it's pretty much turn up if you fancy and bring who you want. Anyway, I shall be the one wearing a suit and recapturing my halcyon days by dispensing a variety of yummy cocktails. I haven't relived the glory of the legendary Cocktail Kit since wicker_girl's house party a good two or three years ago.

To this end, I am taking requests. Cocktails involve lots of ingredients and spirits are pretty pricey, so I can't provide absolutely everything like a professional bar can. As a result, I want everyone to request their favourite cocktail(s), and I will do my best to get hold of the required ingredients so that I can mix them up on the night. I'm prepared to put a goodly sum of money towards the night being a success, and a large proportion of that towards cocktails, so there's a very high chance that if you ask for something you'll be able to get it. Just throw ideas at me, anyway.

Muchas Gracias.

Current Requests:
Vodka Mojito (apparently rum conjures memories of stolen kisses in a golf course bunker
White Russian
Brain Tumour
Snowball

Saturday goodness

2006-09-09T19:05:14Z

Today I have exploited the pleasant weather with ken_ners to actually get out and about. The first port of call was a post box - I sold (or rather, my brother sold one my behalf) my old motorbike yesterday for £280, but lo and behold the V5 was up here with me. The buyer turned out to be OK about it, so all should work out well.

After that, off to Primark to see if I could find a decent summery long-sleeved shirt. I couldn't. I did pick up a nice shirt-like T-shirt though. Then Modern Art Oxford to see the new exhibition. It was pretty decent; the tea and coffee afterwards kept that theme going (I had no idea a cafe viennoise had squirty cream and chocolate!). With our thirst abated, hunger then took over and after a trip to M&S we were on our way to the University Parks for a tasty, if small, picnic of sandwiches, olives and falafels.

The next idea for fun was a trip to Boswells - I suggested it in so far as "let's see what we can buy that's fun", although Ken thought it was the trip itself that was meant to be fun. As it turned out, we were both right - cookshops are unintentionally enjoyable places. We also bumped into our neighbour and had a good neighbourly chat about sharing internet and gardens and stuff. There was a decent haul from Boswells, including an egg brush, a honey dripper thing and the Scotland Yard board game.

Finally home, where I discovered I had given myself chemical burns with shampoo (ahh, so that's what that pain was) and was mothered by Ken - i.e. given sweet tea and hugs. All good. And now a relaxing evening in store which may involve one or more pints at the really rather nice, and incredibly local, Kite.

Before I forget, does anybody have any recommendations on the best cocktail bar in Oxford? My thoughts are Little Clarendon St way, either The Duke of Cambridge or The Beat Cafe (if it's still open - not sure)... any offers?

Update your LJ

2006-09-05T12:23:36Z

Hi all. Since it's hard to post when you haven't posted recently (as I keep finding out when I bring up the Update page but can't quite manage to write an entry), I thought I'd get that out of the way. So here be a pseudo-entry that may have no value whatsoever other than allowing me to post trivial things in future. Which despite what you might think is actually good news... ;)

So recent events include

Moving into the new house. 40 Mill Street, down Botley way, and there's a housewarming that people can just roll up to. It's a nice house for the price, already feeling cosy and home-like and should be even better when designergall and resiak make their way down in the next few weeks.
Saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and wasn't particularly impressed. It was OK, but I dunno, it seemed like a series of vaguely interesting events rather than a good story. Plus there was too much ridiculousness.
Saw Jonathan Creek and found it very good. ken_ners is to blame for that one.
Feeling vaguely popular for once, what with multiple people staying over in our spare room (well, we have three right now!) and nights out with others.
Enjoying The Order of the Stick a lot
Occasionally doing both squash and Aikido despite intending to make both regular occurrences. Hmm...
Good old-fashioned full-time work.

And now that's that out of the way. I have been reading peoples' journals from time to time but I guess I missed about 50% of entries so my worldview is not entirely up-to-date!

dtsazza @ 2006-07-13T13:40:00

2006-07-13T12:50:33Z

Going to Wales for a week, although wonderful for leisure and relaxation (see ken_ners' pictures), doesn't help with the already sporadic internet presence. Neither did coming back to find that in a convoluted story of corporate ineptitude that I don't completely understand, we lost both our phone line and internet access at home. The phone's back now (with a different company) but so far as I can tell broadband can't be back for a few weeks.

Thus it's all dialup and handshaking, and speeds measured in single-figure kilobytes per second. It lets my parents check their business email and do critical stuff, but frankly it's no good for leisure activities so I haven't even bothered to hook up my box to the connection. Ah well.

Asides from the holiday, there be not that much to report. I've been reading copious amounts recently, including:

Jerome's Three Men In A Boat
Hardy's The Return of the ~~King~~ Native
Adolphe
Leviathan
Three Men On The Bummel (when my train back took 5 hours - and I read basically the whole thing in that time)
Payne's The Rights Of Man

Recently though, Final Fantasy VIII has been stealing all my leisure hours. Woe is me. :)

Happy Birthday Me!

2006-06-12T10:21:55Z

I am now the ripe old age of 23. This was celebrated by ken_ners and myself having chocolate croissants for breakfast this morning, while opening a rather sizeable pile of presents.

The weekend was most excellent, a big thank you to everyone who made it to the picnic! I had a wonderful time; possibly writeup and pictures to follow when I can pull everything together.

Today I have been learning about the Monkeysphere - an incredibly accurate concept presented amusingly. Sorry about the pop-under ads!

Loose Change

2006-06-08T21:36:20Z

I've just finished watching Loose Change with ken_ners. It's a conspiracy-theory film about 9-11, but really well done, and the result of careful assessment and copious evidence rather than the ravings of a tin-foil hat wearing loony.

When you gather all the information in one place, it all becomes so obvious. And as the guy says at the end - ask questions, demand answers. Share this film with people you know, get the word around. Take the time to watch it, and then let others know.

The Da Vinci Code

2006-06-08T13:02:48Z

Right, so I did go and see The Da Vinci Code last night, with ken_ners and designergall. And it turned out to be better than expected. I'll note now that I haven't read the book, so don't have that to compare it to, but as a standalone film it was rather entertaining, and as worth £6.80 as a film is likely to be... Plus I was impressed by the amount of accurate French and Latin, and while the translations were generally right, some of the exact wording used was interesting.

I've been informed that the ending is radically different from the book, and it does seem like it's a crazy departure for what was otherwise a quite faithful adaptation. It is interesting, though, in the kind of "what do we do now" sense - OK, so Sophie is the heir of Christ; so what? Obviously there's the whole being-evidence-to-overthrow-the-church thing, but that aside, she's been Sophie all her life, and thought of herself as such; does her heritage really make her any different? Plus the walking on water thing was really cute. :)

If any of you have ever heard me complain about how the syntax of English is dreadful ("need more brackets!"), you'll be either pleased or horrified to discover that I have become aware of Lojban (LOZH-ban), an artificial language that, amongst other things, aims to remove unwanted ambiguity. In other words, you can still be ambiguous if you wish (in order to tell a story, use poetic license or just plain lie), but it's a deliberate choice - and it's unambiguous that you're being deliberately ambiguous. I'd never thought of that and always assumed ambiguity was a trade-off between accuracy and artistic license.

Also, despite the fact it was originally created to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, one of the really interesting aspects (IMHO, of course) is the potential for speech recognition. One of the major problems of current speech recognition is merely parsing the sound waves into words - but as well as an unambiguous grammer, Lojban has unambiguous sounds, such that there's never any doubt where one word ends and another begins, or how it's spelt.

This means a computer can take a sound clip of someone speaking Lojban and, assuming the sound quality is adequate, turn it with 100% success rate into the spoken phrase (correctly spelt and everything, even for words it doesn't know). When you couple that with the unambiguous grammar, it should be able to easily understand the phrase too. It's a really exciting concept for voice recognition/automation, and bringing about the whole Star Trek speaking-to-the-ship thing.

Besides which, as a linguist-cum-computer scientist I have to say it's the best language I've ever seen.

This is an update

2006-06-06T22:40:28Z

I've somehow managed to find a way of passing my time that doesn't involve playing computer games. Not quite sure how I managed that one (or exactly what it is), but that's a good thing, I guess. Looking back, it's probably The Count Of Monte Cristo that's done it - I have been reading that book a lot recently. And damn good it is too. I have about one hundred and fifty pages left; by my reckoning I'll have it finished at the weekend sometime.

The weekend is also my birthday party, to which you're all invited (just in case you missed my previous post). I've even got together enough to deface a perfectly nice picture and create a Facebook event for it. Though I still haven't had enough foresight to arrange it at a time that doesn't clash with the England game, tut tut.

Last weekend was spent up in Chesterfield, taking a homesick ken_ners back to visit her parents, and very nice it was too. My new bike was behaving itself, doing the trip up in 150 minutes and back in 130, making it well worthwhile nipping up for the weekend. Twas a weekend of flying saucer barbeques, sunburnt forearms, sparklers by tilly-lamps, boating accidents, ice cream, knitting, ideosyncratic bookshops, and reading the ubiquituous CoMC. Yet in spite of all that, it all went by at a welcome sedate pace, so was a relaxing weekend before the return to work. Relaxing but busy - surely the way that weekends should be?

This evening I went to circuit training at the University gym for the second week in a row. They work you hard, that's for sure, but it's well worth it. I still have a very long way to go, but I'm already feeling the improvement. Not just in the fitness - I've always found exercise to be very settling for the mind too, and circuits are no exception. Ken came last week too, but had a sudden attack of the laziness this week after it turned out that Becca wasn't coming either. Weaklings ;)

I've also taken action to fix my crime-damaged bike (the engine no longer turns on when the ignition is switched to OFF - this is good!) and the boring financial jiggery-pokery that no-one actual cares about (possibly myself included) but that's a weight off the chest to get done. It's all going well.

Film tomorrow (Da Vince code, probably - and yes I know, but I'm going to see it anyway). No <lj-cut>s tonight.

Woostock

2006-05-28T16:45:21Z

Today I missed a good IMSoc football. Oh yes. But I did get to drink Pimms on Worcester lawn, so all was not lost. For it was Woostock, Worcester college's attempt to emulate Wadstock, which itself is an imitation of a larger festival - safe to say, it wasn't very big indeed. In fact, the main stage consisted of a chair and a music stand. But they were serving free Pimms, sandwiches and cake, and since even the sun itself came out over Worcester for an afternoon it was well worth being out for. The music was... nice, though it seemed to be more about the atmosphere than the performers themselves. Still, from tiny acorns...

ken_ners introduced me to the (vaguely) Yorkshire breakfast of egg and beans on oatcakes, which was great. We've also stocked up on copious amounts of vegetables, beans and lentils since she's starting a 3-week (IIRC) detox diet tomorrow - I say this is a good thing, though it took a little juggling to get it all to fit in, on and around our little mini-fridge.

Work is going really well, as I'm sure you're all thrilled to hear! Friday was especially good, with lots of little things that made me realise how I actually am starting to know what I'm talking about - being able to solve a senior consultant's problem was especially good. I'm getting more in the mindset of a professional software developer too, which may or may not be a good thing.

Bank holiday tomorrow (as I found out on Friday), and I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. Apparently, according to my colleagues, I "have to think of something good to do" and "can't just sit and play computer games all day." OK, fine... Luckily ms_zoe finishes exams tomorrow, so I can actually be there to see her out and celebrate. Hopefully the rain can hold off for another day...

In A Different Light

2006-05-21T11:44:36Z

Yesterday I popped back to Basingstoke to check up on my parents (or was it vice-versa? I forget), and got to catch up with all the gossip down there. These including Terry unfortunately not getting a job he was going for, us having a new high-quality fence (as well as other garden plans) and how Janina's manager is holding her back for fear of being shown up herself. Then I got to read The Independant and The Mail, and reminded myself how and why the former is vastly superior.

After getting back at half eight, I was whisked away to In A Different Light at the natural history museum, by ken_ners, designergall, Becca and Bryony. The evening was really impressive, and after a ten-minute wander we decided to get a beer and watch the film (Two Thousand Leagues Under The Sea) - but just like with actual lectures, you're not allowed to drink beer in the lecture theatre. Arse. Instead we wandered around the upper balcony, where we found out such fascinating facts as that 99.93% of insect species have wings.

After a little while we popped into the fluorescent rocks room (quite good, but not all that) then the flourescent insects room - much better, and I got to hold a really cute millipede! They feel strange, a bit like pins and needles, but they're surprisingly lovable, especially when they get scared and curl up into a ball! designergall held a stick insect that was disguising itself as a leaf, and all went well into it decided to go into a Kung Fu pose (according to the keeper it was actually Tai Chi) - I haven't seen many martial art leaves around lately...

Finally we had a half-hour wander around the Pitt Rivers' Museum by torchlight. I especially liked the fact that we had to wind up our own torches! Educational and exercise, who can argue with that? Well, except for the best part in the whole museum... see, there's this bottle that supposedly contains a witch, and there be "a spot 'o bother if e'er she gets out", so they ask visiting children to fill out little slips detailing how they'd get the witch back in the bottle. These range from the sublime to the ridiculous. My favourite is "I'd put a piece of paper in a glass bottle saying 'World Domination Plan for witches'" - genius! There are several that consist of merely pictures of witches, more still that somehow refer to using the mummy (or his sarcophagus) to scare her back in, and a few more original ones. Some of my favourites are "I would put a boomerang on the edge of the bottle then trap her in the bottle", "I would throw a bottle of water at her so she shrinks then put her in the bottle" and the unnecessarily violent "My friend would bite her and knock her out", "The totem pole would fall on her and crush her", and "you could get a poison to kill her". Kids of today, honestly...

Yesterday was my introduction to the delights of Fopp, and five CDs the better, I can confirm that it is in fact fantastic. As are some of the smaller shops on Little Clarendon Street, especially the chinese crafts one.

Miss ken_ners and I just had a rather interesting talk about who would win in a fair fight (no weapons, in a moderately sized, e.g. 30' square, steel cage) between a man and a kimono dragon. Apparently they eat people occasionally, but I maintain that if you kick their faces in they won't be so eager. Then again, they have sharp claws, leathery skin, are apparently faster and more agile than humans and have poisonous saliva (though this doesn't take effect for a few days so doesn't come into this discussion). We got there by considering humans vs. dogs and humans vs. wolves, so... discuss.

Post again

2006-05-19T07:33:21Z

Since my last post you can take it as read that most ofmy time has been spent working. I mean, work's pretty cool and all (as these things go at least) but by golly, does it eat up your time. Ah well, I wouldn't be able to get a Platinum Plus credit card otherwise. In fact, I probably shouldn't be able to get one anyway, but there you go - consumer credit these days, marvellous.

I did have a couple of days off last week - but that was simply so I could take a motorbike training course and finally get rid of those L plates (note: the "getting rid of" is purely figurative, as they fell off some time in March and I never got round to replacing them)! Getting up an hour earlier on my 'days off' was a small price to pay for one and a half rather enjoyable days of training, followed by the test itself and a pass with 4 minors. After I'd got over the nerves (during which I hit the kerb :/), the test itself was rather enjoyable as we took a nice route along country lanes in the afternoon sunshine. As if I needed reminding, it showed me why it was worth taking the test in the first place (and paying some £240 for the course).

Afterwards we headed back to Abingdon from the Leighton Buzzard test centre, and I managed to finish off the bike transaction I'd started earlier in the week - I had a nice big bike lined up for if(when) I passed. And I do mean big... it's a Honda Deauville, 52-reg, really good condition with a pannier on the back, and it set me back £3300, which is a bit of a bargain really.

I've had a fair chance to test it out too, as I took ken_ners to Bangor over the weekend so we could visit her friend from home at his Prifysgol. I figured beforehand that the 212-mile journey would take about three and a half hours, and we set off after I got home from work on the Friday at around 6:10pm. Some time around 9, when we were sitting soaked in a service station near Birmingham, it became evident that my estimate was off by rather a long way. And while the pace didn't pick up, at least the weather did, so it was a rather enjoyable hour or two through Wales on the A55, to finally arrive at a quarter to one. Ah well. The next day was pretty good, with headbanging to Queen in the car follwed by a trip down to the pub and culminating in one rather large barbecue/house party with fire poi and Under The Bridge sung in a Beastie Boys style. Sunday meant breakfast and then setting off once more for Oxford - with expectations a little more realistic this time, we set off at a leisurely pace and I found it was a fun journey through twisting coastal roads in Wales.

After buying my new bike I had a little excitement (so to speak) when my old one was nicked. I'd parked it just outside the house where I keep my current bike, but after coming back from work one day it had disappeared! I duly phoned the police - not cos I thought they'd be able to do anything, but because I wanted the crime figures to be accurate (I don't believe crime's going down, so the more crimes I report the less likely they'll be able to massage the figures into something they like). However, I got a call on Tuesday saying they'd found my bike near Port Meadow, and that it seemed to be in working order. It got recovered to sodding Culham though, and as well as the recovery company charging me £105 for the privilege, I have to go pick it up today else I'll be charged £12 a day storage. Hmmm - who's the bigger theif here? Still, if I get it fixed up I should be able to sell it for £500+, so it's a net gain at least.

And looking at the time, I should really head off now if I'm to make my train and not be hideously late for work. Until the next sporadic update, adeiu.

That'll teach 'em

2006-04-18T21:26:03Z

Having just watched it on TV (I was going to give the channel, but realised I don't know. It had ads, so was probably ITV) it filled me with happiness. I'm not sure why exactly - I think it was seeing the kids actually kept in check, taught manners, science and culture at the same time. Though of course one thing they couldn't do is hit or cane the children, which was a bit of a shame as it took away their 'nuclear option'. Given that it was even more impressive hold they manage to keep bad behaviour in check. The program also exposed for the blatant gulf it is, the gap between GCSEs of today and exams of yesteryear - bollocks are standards improving (though we knew that).

It's quite sad, though - I think the main reason it made me happy is that it vindicated my unwavering belief that the old-school (no pun intended) ways were much more conducive not just to educating children academically, but turning them into better people. You can see it happening. And yet, nothing's going to come of it. It's just going to be a novelty for television's sake, a few hours of "Ooh, isn't that interesting" before it gets lost in the quagmire of all that's gone before and doubtless will come after it. Reinstating the old-style schools (and, more importantly, teachers - with the same powers as before) could make a massive positive different to our society, but it won't happen. We'll likely go on with these Foundation schools, that ditch the 'outdated old methods' and have 'learning facilitators' instead of teachers in order to underperform even the failing schools that they replaced.

That'll teach them, sure - but it won't teach our leaders, or more importantly, the people that choose the leaders. Such a shame.

CPU comparison

2006-02-28T15:06:18Z

Anyone thinking of buying a new CPU in the near future? I've been a fan of AMD pretty much since their first Athlons came out, and heard about their challenging Intel to a "dual-core dual" - a challenge Intel wouldn't take up.

And now I can see why. Food for thought, it would seem...

20 today

2006-02-16T10:32:07Z

Happy birthday to ken_ners!

Smoking Ban

2006-02-15T09:59:09Z

MPs voted on Tuesday by a margin of 200 votes to impose a ban on smoking in all enclosed spaces, despite months of wrangling over the issue.

Opponents say the ban is an infringement of civil liberties.

Surely not having a ban is also an infringement of my civil liberties to be able to go about my business without someone blowing smoke in my face? I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think smokers have the right to smoke to the extent that it doesn't affect others. It's like the Wiccan Rede, "An' it harm none, do as ye will". But by the same token, if it does harm people, you don't have a "civil liberty" to do it any more. And to a fairly large extent, the definition of harm is down to the (non-smoking) person in question. It seems that these so-called civil liberties are just another term for being selfish, viz. "I have a civil liberty to do whatever I feel like".

As you may have guessed, I'm glad the total ban got passed.

Kebab Horror!

2006-02-15T00:12:02Z

Honestly, I tell my girlfriend that I have a nice restaurant lined up for valentines dinner, and when we get there she orders a kebab! What's become of the world?

New Ogg player

2006-02-14T13:53:55Z

designergall's recent entry somehow managed to remind/persuade me that I did in fact want a digital audio player (I keep wanting to call them portable media players, but that tends to imply video too). In theory, I didn't want anything fancy but I really like cool things so I wasn't likely to settle for just a 256Mb mp3 thingy. My list of essential features was

Not an iPod
Support for Ogg Vorbis
OS-agnosticism, if not full-blown Linux support
'Decent' battery life
Scan within a track (some players I've seen, admittedly on phones, don't have this!)

but I was picky enough to hold out for

FLAC support
FM Radio
Recording ability
Remote
Open source/easily upgradeable firmware
Other coolness

After trying (and failing) to track down someone still selling the Neuros II, I came across the rather wonderful Cowon iAUDIO M3. With upgradeable firmware in Linux, and the ability to display text files (which I think is really useful), and a very nice remote, I was sold.

And shortly afterwards, so was a reconditioned 20Gb unit via Amazon, for £90. Bargain.

Robots In Disguise

2006-02-13T13:23:51Z

Anyone remember Transformers? It seems it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy...

Mew @ Fez Club

2006-02-13T09:21:35Z

So last night, ken_ners, resiak and myself headed down to Reading to catch Mew playing the Fez Club. After a minor detour to the wonderfully-named Gun Street, the first thing that struck me was how impressive the decor is. The club is owned by (I believe) the same people who own Po Na Na's in Oxford, and has the same theme, but with those extra touches that really make the difference. Especially in the VIP area, which was open to the public for the gig; wood panelling, actual palm trees and other exotic plants, and the whole terracotta mediterranean theme. Very nice place, and it'd be interesting to go there for a club night.

First up were The Perishers, from Sweden. Although, until a recent Google, I thought they were called The Parachutes because of their accent... anyway, rather good for a support - nothing astounding, but some solid tunes and reasonable stage presence. The singer didn't look particularly old, and apparently they've been going for eight years now, so he must have been pretty baby-faced back in the day... Just before their last song they announced that there were 20 EPs going for free at the merch stall - cue a fair few people leaving the gig to go get them. I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing, but giving people an incentive to go away and not hear your last song is an interesting strategy! :)

Cue a half-hour or so of soundmen fiddling in the dark (ahem). Mew's entrance was impressive, with the drummer sneaking onstage, and suddenly laying down the beat for Special at the same time as a burst from the stage lights hit the stage - not unlike a brief firework display. Then we had a walk-on, each member adding an extra layer to the extended intro, which worked so well (especially with the funky bassline). And boy, was it loud. The Manics, louder than war? Pah, that was nothing compared to Mew last night. For a band I've never really thought of as a loud, rocky band they really pulled off that effect without losing the soulfulness in their music, it was wonderful. Plus you got their videos (as funky as ever), pole-dancing jokes and the last song dedicated to the guy that signed them (who was apparently at the gig). And all the best songs. Excellent.

--

In other news, I can see why bootcut jeans are so called, as opposed to slipper-cut jeans... :) And my ear (yep, just the right one, oddly) is still ringing from last night. Anyone know the science behind that?

T-shirt making, redux

2006-02-07T13:30:01Z

T-shirt making last night was pretty good - vast quantities of food (something like £95 worth) and drink, and a decent amount of people (20 or so). I finally finished my Happy Penguin T-shirt (he's now declared to be such), and even had time left over to make him a tiny baseball cap/wheelbarrow/wok/sledge/pelota bat, and a Steyr Aug (that one wasn't so versatile). The standard of T-shirts was surprisingly high, with Ken making a fantastic Firefly shirt with actual Chinese lettering, and Zoie eventually winning with her pink and yellow baby giraffe number. Pictures to either be uploaded or linked to, as and when.

Nethack is coming along nicely too, and I've almost got version 0.01α working. :) But Enemy Territory is still making persistant demands on my time - and ET: Quakewars looks fantastic (though probably not as free).

Back to work!

Pub Golf pictures up on Facebook

2006-02-05T02:18:55Z

Thanks to the wonders of the untraceability of Herald-format email addresses, I now have a Facebook. And I've put up 60 of the pictures I took at the IMSoc pub golf, which people may wish to steal and use in official capacities (if you want the higher-res originals, let me know). Let me know if there's anyone's names I've missed out, and friend me if I missed you out (likely given the little time I've spent sorting it out).

Off to bed now. Lots of Civ, ET and chocolate today, so thank goodness for swimming tomorrow. And in a bizarrely-placed update, my bonsai tree that none of you knew about now has two shoots, so that's at least half of the seeds that have germinated into trees! Excitement (for varying degrees of excitement).

Theory Test

2006-01-28T11:15:33Z

This morning I had my motorbike theory test. I thought it was a bit pointless to have a test considering that I'd done my Category B (car) test and had four years of driving experience, but... Anyway, I made my point by getting 35/35 in abuot four minutes. Ha! :) Then there was the hazrd perception malarky, which although a good concept is a little flawed in execution (I got zeroed on one question for "random clicking", when a lorry was pulling out in front of me). I got my pass though, which is good enough for me.

If anyone fancies taking a motorbike theory test in the next year or so, I have a book full of all the official questions and answers that you can have. I found it really helpful for weeding out those tricky questions, and I don't need it any more so I'm happy for it to go to a more needy home.

New job => New Bike

2006-01-05T22:49:58Z

Ooh, where to begin? Last update was just before going to ken_ners' for Christmas, which was Very Nice Indeed. Well worth the trip up, even though it meant not spending Christmas day with my own family. Still, that's growing up for you - and we had a fake Christmas on my return on the 28th so that was all good!

My new job started on the 3rd - whilst I was quite enjoying being on my new salary, that was more in the abstract, status sense - I was also quite enjoying not actually doing anything to earn it! Still, getting out of the house and having something take up large parts of my day is pretty refreshing; I'm sure anyone who's gone to university (especially Oxford, with its long breaks) knows what I'm talking about by the end of the holidays. It's a good job, very challenging project but then that's the way I like 'em, and a good team. Hopefully I'm making a good impression.

And now for the big news, I have my very own bike, and it all happened so fast too... Yesterday, I found out about Aztec Bikes on my lunch hour, and that it was open till 7; popped in after work at half six, and bought a whole bundle of kit (and had a chat with the very nice people who run it); saw an advert for a Yamaha TZR125; phoned up and went round to look that evening; and bought the bike, having withdrawn the cash en-route (with the help of my parents). All quite surprising considering how long I'd been trying to sort things out with absolutely no progress. And today, I got insured. The whole caboodle was amazingly cheap:

Kit - £410, for leather jacket and bottoms, gloves, boots, helmet, lock + general accessories
Bike - £650
Insurance - £162 for the year :)
======
Total - £1222

I'm not riding it to work just yet, since I'll get eaten alive on the A34 in the dark, what with my 4 hours riding experience. Though I'm taking it out every night for a spin and getting used to it rather quickly. Pictures up when I take them (I am a proud owner really!).

I did it! Oh boy, I found the cheese!

2005-12-19T12:53:54Z

On the subject of that blonde joke, I found out where the trail ends... It actually loops back on itself after a bit, so it is kinda infinite - though the loop isn't big enough that you wouldn't notice. At this point I'd like to clarify that I did this out of curiousity as opposed to extreme blondenes... :)

Anyway, we have (starting from me, obviously - and hover over to see the date of posting):

dtsazza
resiak
frodomorris
clarkcox3
nirvanadonna
karma_silenced
shortmessage (in cacklefannery)
drcoreym
jackola
crschmidt
mendel
andrewducker
samverick
mistressxenobia (annoying link that makes a new window, grrrr)
laurapink
fuzzyduck
ribbitrules
mixmastermario (in boredom_strikes)
elfiepike
ktnb81
stoptocheer
dmlaenker
shawnj
theferrett - at which stage he links back to samverick at number 13, closing the loop.

Looking at the dates, the actual jump in links is by mistressxenobia, who in an post on 12 July 2003 links to a post created nearly a year later. If you read the comments on her post, it seems this is because her original chain stopped existing, probably when someone deleted their journal. Because of this, we also get andrewducker (14 Jul 03) linking to samverick (12 Jul 03), and then lots of 14 Jul posts later in the chain. In fact, I'd love to see where the original chain went to, since there's a vast number of posts on the 14th July, and the earliest date we can link to is the 12th. It seems to have spread quite quickly then, but with the links dead there's no way to see who originally started it, what *they* linked to, and when that was. Bugger.

Still, comments report that people are noticing the loop quite quickly (it's only 12 links, and if a userpic catches your eye, you'll notice it next time round). With this in mind, I'm going to comment on theferrett's journal, asking that he links back higher up the chain. If anyone's linked to me, let me know and I'll point him to your entry instead.

This is silly. :)