| Miscellany |
[May. 2nd, 2008|10:36 am] |
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| Life is good |
[Aug. 7th, 2007|12:42 am] |
I've just spent a week on a canal boat (from Calcutt Boats). I think I was quite good at the helm by the end of it. We covered many miles, watched a lot of Stargate and moored up in Ansty one evening, where we saw Shrek the Third and caught up with ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) philstoneman. I like my life in Cambridge enough to have very high standards for holidays, but I could imagine doing something like this one again in the future (mosquito infestation notwithstanding; next time there will be netting on the windows, dammit).
Yesterday, I went to London and saw elise, robert_jones and realdoll. We picked blackberries and we they cooked with them. The results were delicious (and I'm not normally enthusiastic about blackberries). We talked and watched Black Books. It was a good silly idea.
Today I celebrated having been in my job for a year, by the local custom of bringing in enough cake and other sweetbreads to give all my colleagues heart attacks. Fortunately, that didn't happen: I'm in the enviable position of having cow-orkers I actually like. Relatedly, shameless-pluggishly, we're still looking for a few good software engineers to work on our shiny products (such as ZXTM GLB), and I'd recommend it even if there wasn't a finder's fee. Details.
The fact that a year has passed since I started there, frankly, scares the arbitrary noun out of me. I remember when years stretched out interminably (a time best approximated by "before university"). I attribute the fact that they no longer do partly to age (a year being a decreasing proportion of my life so far) and partly to the truism that time flies when you're having fun: I have been, both in and outside work. Sometimes I wish I had more time for more people, those I used to and/or would like to know better, but other than that, I wouldn't change a thing.
I know a lot of wonderful people. Thank you, all of you. |
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| Recommendations |
[Jul. 8th, 2007|02:36 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  pleased | ] |
- The French market on Parker's Piece, if it's still there. Mmmmm, cheese.
- The Northfield Farm trailer, also on Parker's Piece.
- Ditsch, at the corner of Fitzroy Street and Jesus Terrace, which I'm very glad is still there, despite gerald_duck worrying for a while after it opened that it wasn't doing very well.
- Die Hard 4.0. Ridiculous technology but, as with the rest of the series, Bruce Willis makes the film worth seeing.
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| Offered without context |
[Mar. 20th, 2007|11:04 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  tired | ] |
- Greenfield Shores politics appears to have become even more, um, innnnnnteresting. I hope House Lyrus remains at a safe distance from it.
- Ocelot \O"ce*lot\, n.
- Metasyntactic marsupial.1
- I have the dubious honour of allegedly having the best wrist action in GothSoc.
1 (I know it's actually a feline.) |
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| And now, back to… not being busy? |
[Feb. 16th, 2007|09:45 am] |
The Mikado is finally at an end. I feel a mixture of relief that I'm free of the slightly crazy rehearsal schedule, and sadness that I won't be performing it again, at least not with the same cast or in quite the same way. It's been wonderful, though, and I can only hope I have time for the May week show. There was a G&S get-together last night at Bella Italia, which was great fun: an evening filled with laughter, as it often is with them.
The day after the last performance, I did that most obvious of relaxing, stress-free, simple things: drove to London to see a concert, of crazy German a capella, having agreed to distribute tickets to my group and having not passed any on in advance. I do wonder about my logic sometimes… but I'm glad I did, even if it was perhaps not quite on a par with last year (though that may be because it was quite similar and I'd seen it before, or because I was more worn out and thus able to understand slightly less of it). This year, they handed out translation sheets to those who raised their hands to say their German wasn't up to scratch. Of course I didn't, but then occasionally found myself looking at Susan's. *looks sheepish* In any case, with the aid of that sheet, here is a partial set list:
( More Wise Guys stuff )
Now I must get to work, so I'll leave you with ( a couple of bad filks about the Mikado get-out and after-show party ) |
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| Iolanthe |
[Oct. 24th, 2006|12:33 am] |
I'll be performing in the chorus of peers for G&S soc's production of Iolanthe, or The Peer And The Peri, by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. The show provisionally runs from Wednesday 29th November to Saturday 2nd December; the society website ought to have more information nearer the time.
In other news, work… continues apace, is the appropriate phrase, I think. This wouldn't be a problem, except that I almost never get to sleep at a sensible time. I'm still very much enjoying it though; indeed, I can think of no way in which I'd rather earn a living. On the first aid front, I am now theoretically qualified to be unsupervised on duty, albeit somewhat in need of revision, so I don't intend to exercise that capability any time soon. In Maelstrom, if this downtime goes according to plan, my character should be wearing and selling armour of his own manufacture at the next event. He wouldn't be much of an armourer if he didn't. Last but not least, I shall be gothy tomorrow later today, as I haven't been to the full evening's events for far too long.
The flat is finally approaching an acceptable state, except for the contents of the kitchen. I don't even have tea at the moment, which clearly Won't Do. Proper hospitality, and all that. I'm terrified of getting it to a state which I can actually declare finished, because I'm sure it would then instantly disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable (such as Clive's current house trouble). |
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| Mid-holiday blogging |
[Jul. 26th, 2006|02:49 pm] |
This week, oi 'ave mostly: ( sailed. )
Maelstrom write-up to follow later (hello, house_lyrus). Summary: Greenfield Shores got mobbed, but death isn't the impediment it used to be, and my second character was at my first character's wake, which was an interesting experience. I'll definitely be there for the next event. :-) |
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| ObObservations |
[Jul. 4th, 2006|12:53 pm] |
- The party was wonderful; I met many lovely people, most of whose usernames I remembered for long enough to friend them. *waves and hugpiles all round as wanted* :-)
- Monday night pizza and post-pizza games are also a lot of fun.
- The time I left myself before starting work is disappearing at an alarming, accelerating rate.
- It's way too hot! *melts*
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| Vale Festival |
[Jun. 7th, 2006|01:29 am] |
Not bad, as these things go. It was relatively quiet from a first aid point of view. I still haven't treated anyone. I was very nearly the one to put a plaster on someone, but as I was the one holding the PRFs, having just filled one in, someone else got that dubious honour. :-p
For those who don't know what a PRF is, it's an A3 form that needs filling in for every patient we treat. Even if we only put a plaster on them. The following is a regular occurence: "Hi, I've scratched my finger a bit." "Ok, don't worry, I'll just get you a plaster." "Thanks. Can I go now?" "Er, not quite, we just need your name and address, your GP's name and address, I need to fill in the rest of it, everyone involved has to sign this form, then we need to give you the carbon copy of it." "But it's only a plaster!" "Yes. I know. :-(" This is one of the few annoying things about first aid.
Afterwards, I managed to get to the St. John social at Pizza Express in Leamington, which was fun. I talked to people I'd only really seen on courses (which are always fairly fast-paced in LINKS (student) units). I was even persuaded to join them at a club, at least to check that that was still not my sort of thing. So off we went, except that the group gradually evaporated (with much daft faffing and indecision) down to five people. None of us could really be bothered either at that point. It turned out that it had been useful for me to hang around until that point, though, because the others were all Coventry people and would all have been stranded in Leamington had I not given them a lift. My driving music collection, drawn as it is from a mixture of animé/film themes, random acoustic folky things and of course the Wise Guys, provoked interesting reactions. :-) |
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| Arrrrrrrrrrrr |
[Jun. 5th, 2006|11:54 am] |
Well, I didn't get the part, but to be quite honest, that's a relief at this point. I went to my first full run-through yesterday (missed the previous one, my bad) and there were all sorts of bits for Samuel to do; I think I'm going to have enough trouble as J Random Pirate, Esq. It's all side-splittingly good fun though. If you're coming to see it (good seats still available for the Stratford performance), look out for me towards the end of the Major General's song. Ceilidh folks might also appreciate the finale of Act I. :-)
Speaking of ceilidhs, I can't make the one this evening in Leamington (the rehearsal is full cast after all). |
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| The Pirates of Spencer Park, or, Coventry has green bits |
[May. 10th, 2006|04:44 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  giggly | ] |
As I haven't actually announced this here yet: Warwick Student Opera is performing Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, or, The Slave of Duty, and I'm in the chorus (unnamed pirates/police). It should be great fun for those who like G&S, and there are four performances to choose from (16th-19th June). Incidentally, they're still looking for more male chorus members, so do contact them if that interests you.
I mention it now because I just cycled past one of the performance locations: on the way to the memorial park, Spencer Park (or at least, Spencer Recreation Ground, says the sign) seems to be the smaller bit of greenery to the north by the railway line. It was good to get some exercise and to cycle around the memorial park, which I think I've visited about twice in the four years I've been in the Coventry area. Oops. It's about as pretty as Coventry gets (with the possible exception of the cathedral ruins) and it's where an LJ picnic would be if it were here. Yes, I know I already mentioned that a couple of times, but, well, people, new people, picnic… these things make me happy. :-) |
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| Do(ug)h! |
[Jan. 31st, 2006|02:13 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  creative | ] |
That's approximately what I can smell at the moment, because there's a loaf being baked downstairs. Yay for breadmakers. :-)
In other news, one of my less important new year's resolutions was to post to LJ more. Um, oops? So, without further ado, some things I don't think I've mentioned here: I've joined Chorus (warning, site mostly out of date) as a tenor, and anyone who really wants to hear me attempt the last movement of Beethoven's 9th can do so on Thursday evening at 20:00, at All Saints Parish Church, Leamington. There's also the Fauré Requiem on campus in March.
Also, some silly ideas: GPS + GPRS + a J2ME application I've yet to write + Google Maps API = my position, regularly updated, on a web page. For no particular reason other than that it'd be fun to do. :-) There was another one tenuously related to this, but I forget (not just this; in general, I forget).
Some slightly less silly ideas: my cursework (I hope) in which Nokia still suck (the Bluetooth transmission problem), even after a firmware upgrade, which I finally got from Communicaid (and which shouldn't have taken this long). I shall try a few more ideas, but have established that it's only this phone (or only Series 80), and frankly can't be bothered to spend too much more time on that, since it'll run on a couple of suitable phones that other project members have.
Finally, ( the car kit shenanigans ).
And now, bread! :-D |
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| A two-handed post |
[Dec. 3rd, 2005|01:00 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  relieved | ] |
They now think it's just a bad sprain. I've actually been encouraged to type, and given another appointment in 2 weeks which I'm to cancel if I think I've completely recovered before then. w00t! :-)
Also, any Linux users who tried Gizmo and couldn't sign in (timeout or error about MediaEngine::init()), they've posted a new version which works. Though ljvoicepost goes to a broken voicemail system, which I guess means it's too busy. Waaah. Expect to hear voice posts from me after they fix that. :-) |
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| A fun weekend |
[Jun. 6th, 2005|11:38 am] |
| [ | Mood |
| | sleepy | ] |
Thursday: some cards arrived (squee!), and in the evening I took some housemates and my neighbour Chrissy to Pizza Hut. Having just eaten far too much pizza, obviously the only sensible thing to do next was to go to a ceilidh (ta for transport planarplatypus), which was fun, even if we did make a lot of silly mistakes. Arrived back at HoG and gave johnaldis crash space because…
Friday: …we needed to catch the 0923 to get to Sheffield to see nightshade37. She gave me an LED torch for my birthday (yay, batbeltage) and we wandered the shops for a bit before going to a lecture on nanotechnology, which was definitely worth seeing. That evening, tired as we all were, the only sensible thing to do next was to go to… another ceilidh. Actually a contra-ceilidh, a faster-paced variant which flows more immediately from one move to the next. Good fun as long as you manage to keep up, or at least do something vaguely similar to what the others in your set are doing. The interval music wasn't bad either. Crash-landing into our respective beds, we agreed to get up at 8, or some equally silly time, in order to get to Alton Towers (with several of Jenny's hall-mates) nice and early.
Saturday: ha. Oh well. We still arrived not too long after opening, and covered everything we wanted to over the course of the day. ( geekery and poll about queueing )
Sunday: helped clear out some of Jenny's stuff. This is the problem with enormous rooms at uni, they rapidly become full of cruft, and then when you have to vacate for the hols so the uni can rent out your room to others, you suddenly have a mammoth transportation task on your hands. I'll not have this problem myself, because I'm staying put again this summer. In any case I seem to acquire less cruft than others, and not just because I have a smaller room. I'm not entirely sure why. Arrived back in Coventry, watched some Dr Who with John and Jenny to give them a break before continuing their journey (they were going about another 2h30 to Crayford that evening). Collapsed. |
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| cmb does *exercise!* |
[Mar. 31st, 2005|06:47 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  silly | ] |
From Thursday to Sunday, I was in the Lake District, with my dad, my aunt, and her family. This mostly involved climbing hills, looking around a bit, and climbing down again, which is actually more interesting than it sounds. Also, geek as I am, it allowed me phone reception at the top, which wasn't possible at the hotel (NSFAnyone with eyes. Oh how it sucks. The hotel itself was quite good though.)
We went:
- Friday (map)
- from Gatesgarth, up Fleetwith Pike, had lunch by Blackbeck Tarn, up onto Hay Stacks, and, um, sort of chickened out at this point and went down the front of High Crag over to Peggy's Bridge
- Saturday (map)
- from Glenridding, up Mire's Beck and Grisedale Brow (I think), onto Striding Edge (very busy, strangely enough) with an intermittently cloud-covered view down to Red Tarn, up to the top of Helvellyn, down Swirral Edge, and then from Red Tarn following Red Tarn Beck back
- Sunday (map)
- ...what we *wanted* to do was follow the path NW from that yellow road to Pike of Blisco. I think we ended up wandering about a fair bit and climbing most of Black Crag while we were at it. We never did see anything that really qualified as a path. Then we went down near Red Tarn (a different one) and across somewhere near Long Scar, managing to lose Peter on the way because he was a muppet and wandered off, responding to "wave if you're Peter" by turning and not waving.
By the end of that I was a bit shattered. Since then I've been at the parents', but I'm going back tomorrow morning (Friday) because I *seriously* need to get going with revision.
Edit: map links fixed to use mapsize=big. Oops. |
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| A fun weekend :-) |
[Mar. 23rd, 2005|12:33 am] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  happy | ] |
Friday: met tea_cantata in Huntingdon. Went to the film night at hers with a few other people; it was Ferris Bueller's Day Off and some interesting bits of Eddie Izzard in french. Avec une araignée. :-) Crashed upon the decadent!couch, thanks womble2.
Saturday: wandered various places, including meeting some Debian people, which was fun. Ended up at Steve McIntyre's for the evening, and due to being in the right place at the right time, I am now one of the founding members of the Debian UK Society. Of course, that's not a meaningful entity and only exists in order for Debian to have a UK bank account, but still, it amuses me. Crashed at the youth hostel. An incident on the way in (late) drew my attention to the fact that they use a maglock. Why oh why does everybody do this? DCS internal doors too. They are ridiculously easy to defeat with a small amount of force, as si1entdave has insisted on demonstrating several times. I suppose you can still detect that the door has been opened, but that's not overly reassuring.
Sunday: wandered some more. Spent much of the day noticing that various places were closed. Browsed bookshops, music shops, et cetera. Acquired Bicentennial Man on DVD, which made me happy, for it is a good film, managing to be interesting on some philosophical level, funny, and heartwarming. Yes, I know, I'm possible overly sentimental. *looks embarrassed and hides* ...crashed at the youth hostel again. They do good breakfasts, by the way. The whole thing is £17 a night all in, and the only complaint I have is that there are always one or two people snoring. Can't be helped really.
Monday: went to a few of the places that had been closed. Bought a sustain pedal for my keyboard, and a book of 50 songs. Promptly left town before I spent any more money. :-p
Edit: oh, and I had a haircut. My hair is no longer in front of my eyes. :-) |
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| Happy New Year |
[Jan. 1st, 2005|12:45 am] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  disappointed | ] |
Resolutions:
- Read more
- Get good at the piano again (this should help)
- Update: ...and get to lectures more often. Missed two already, not a good start.
I'll probably add to this later. |
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| Well that was all just a little silly |
[Dec. 22nd, 2004|02:15 am] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  bouncy | ] |
What started as a quick visit to join people for a few hours became a delayed visit (thank you lack of rail-replacement buses and uninformed staff at MK and a freezing 30min change in Bedford), which was nonetheless great fun, for 2 days. Found nattie, went to the Regal with lizzie and friends, chatted a bit, was approved of I think (yay), was plotted at, got a haircut, coffee with nattie, found DrWatson's present, lurked at a Debian gathering for a bit, stayed at YHA, found nattie and dave (lurking variety), watched Phantom of the Opera (film version, good but has minor changes) with lizzie, went to the Carlton, caught the very last train (no really, the only thing on the departure boards of Birmingham New Street by the time I was there), got back, panicked about phpBB a bit, and *collapsed*.
Muchly fun though. :-) |
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| High-Risibility Clothing Must Be Worn |
[Dec. 6th, 2004|01:05 am] |
| [ | Mood |
| | sleepy | ] |
I've just been at the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales for the weekend with si1entdave, nightshade37, Nugent (currently a person of no account here) and planarplatypus (although he was somewhere completely different on Permanent Way, i.e. track maintenance, whereas I was with Signalling and Telecomms). *eyes light up* It was fun... I didn't end up actually doing very much in the end, although I learnt a lot. I'm told this would be very different if there'd been a larger working party happening. During the course of the weekend we:
- Donned excessive high-vis stuff. I don't think I've ever seen anyone more orange than dave was...
- Had the obligatory site induction and safety lecture, in my case, given by dave and thus entertaining (summary: there are Big Chunky Things here that people make trains with. Many of them can kill you. Be sensible.)
- Put up a clock in one of the large work rooms at Boston Lodge. This involved getting a cable to it around a cable tray near the roof, with dave occasionally crawling on it to do so. "Er, dave, you know you said we should tell people if they're doing Health & Safety naughtinesses?"
- Looked around the telephone exchange room, including dave explaining the inner workings of most of it. It's a Strowger exchange with links to about 6 other stations, and its own clock system involving two pendulums, various bits of electronics, the signal from the Rugby atomic clock, and correction of that for lag due to the speed of light. This is what the clock we added is connected to.
- Looked at circuit diagrams for parts of the phone exchange and a few phones. The phones at least I could get a vaguely complete understanding of, because there isn't much to them.
- Visited a couple of other sites on the phone network. It was kind of cool to see what equipment the test calls we'd made earlier bouncing around the network had actually gone through.
- Oh, and there was pubbage on the Saturday evening at Y Ring in Llanfrothen. Food was a little slow, but worth the wait.
In short: very, very shiny, and I'll be going back there for more weekends now and then. I think the next convenient one is in February some time. Now I am tired and must go and fall over. Good night everyone :-) |
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relaxed
thankful
exhausted
recumbent
mellow