@rstein I paid them some money after they hit their target just because I thought it was a good idea :)
Also, think I have been brainwashed by American coffee franchises to expect a massive vat when I order a large coffee.
Found a table easily in Caffe Gusto. On the other hand, with these prices, I can see why there are tables free.
Lovely chilly day. Heading out for lunch to try my new hoodie out for warmth-level.
@bertpalmer Yeah, but explosive boobytraps are illegal :)
Goodness. Can I be bothered to get on the exercise bike today?
Hmm. Either my translation’s wrong, or this couple are eating fresh goldfinches for lunch.
Have bought carrot cake. Will now do homework in order to earn the privilege of eating it.
Just bought a digital photo frame for a Christmas present. These things are really cute!
Oooh, it’s a grey, uninspiring day out there. Just the motivation for tidying the house, then finding a warm cafe to do my homework in.
Drinking coffee & listening to Babyshambles. And thus I wake up enough to do stuff.
Think I might get around to watching Fight Club tonight.
If I go to bed now, maybe my Saturday won’t be as wasted as normal…
God. While I was disappointed by paltry discounts for UK’s “Black Friday”, at least it meant nobody got crushed to death. http://is.gd/9qzf
Once again I find myself in Cabot Circus with no great inclination to buy anything.
In other news, I have “Springtime for Hitler” stuck in my head. It’s all @Ihnatko’s fault.
Hmm. So, the Black Friday deals in the UK Apple Store could be summarised as “about 5% off a few things”. Oh well.
Another week, another set of new grammatical rules to learn. If I had a month between lessons, I might have time to memorise them. *sigh*
@FTWM
@goswoppit is that what you call gifts for people you don’t like?
@ahnlak Send the penguins my love, and if you see any polar bears, tell them they’ve been reading too many Christmas cards ;)
Another study deriding today’s kids’ education. Now let’s see those 1960’s kids subscribe to a YouTube feed in Google Reader.
@sean_robbins Mmmph. Mrrrp. Bishopy-thing to bicycle four. Zzz. ?
@bobbyllew Just shut your eyes and think of its youth-restoring properties :)
@KellyJanner Not as odd as the guy who spreads catfood on your hall floor.
@Phooto On the other hand, I just bought a mini sewing machine from Woolies, and it’s fab. First time I’ve not had to queue to get out, mind
@Phooto Big company buys MFI. “Hang on a minute! This company’s all in bits! And we don’t understand the instructions!” etc. etc.
@JockotheRocks Not that I’d say “no” to working out there for a while. Maybe as a computer programmer for a yacht club :)
@JockotheRocks Just for personal use. My dad lives in Crete, plus I’ve like the place. And learning a language keeps my brain working…
In LinkedIn’s list of people’s connections, your name gets a “you” badge next to it. If you _need_ that, should you _be_ on the Internet?
(And yes, I am suddenly talkative, as only someone who’s relieved to be back speaking a language they actually _know_ can be…)
@davidpatrick But it always turns out to be the zoologist who did it!
@floyduk Yes, pretty horrific. We have a few developers from Mumbai working over here, sure they’ll be pretty shocked tomorrow.
@davidpatrick No, your neighbour’s just gone on holiday and stopped stealing your WiFi :)
Holy crap. It’s not really “reading” if you have to look up every other word in a dictionary, is it? Greek not going well.
Gah. I definitely need a better Greek dictionary.
Wow. Haven’t seen a single reviewer yet who doesn’t hate the Blackberrry Storm. Anyway. I should be working, shouldn’t I?
Yay! Got my savings back from Icesave. Now to find a better investment. Anyone out there selling a bridge?
@bertpalmer Sorry; already gone! They gave a spare licence away to all their existing customers, so there may be others to be had…
@thelightroomlab Cool. DM me a name and email address for the licence and and I’ll sort it out.
I have one 1passwd licence to give away as part of Agile’s Thanksgiving celebrations — any takers?
Okay. Powernap, exercise, dinner, Greek practice, read, bed.
@Phooto I quit after a few years; mostly seemed to be politics and pub quizzes, but that might’ve been my local groups…
Phombie (n): brainless human-like creature that stumbles down the street getting in your way while looking at a mobile communication device.
Jesus. AIR update, Safari & Windows patches, Firefox plugin upgrades, WordPress fix. Geekery feels like a full-time commitment today.
@irishbelle2001 A month!? Argh! I hadn’t noticed.
Still getting distracted by fantasticcontraption. Must do some homework at some point. http://is.gd/904k
@RBLevin @johnwilliams I had the same thing once; had to delete all flickr _and_ yahoo cookies from Safari and start from scratch.
@macworld’s website registration form requires you to enter a zip code, but doesn’t recognise non-US postal codes. Grr.
Hokay. Exercise bike, weekly review, pick better photo selection for my embryonic photo portfolio website, fix said website in IE. Bed.
Finally got transparent PNGs working in bloody IE6. Will people please stop using this archaic piece of crud? Please?
@hayles No idea, but I must now register “ladsalads.com” as a healthy cooking site for blokes.
Talking to my dad. Well, I say “talking”; mostly I’m just saying “mmm” and nodding down the phone.
@brownstudies if it’s easy, you’re doing it wrong.
Hmm. Watched Top Gear while on exercise bike, then had a coffee. Don’t tell me it’s time to go to bed now!? *bounce*
Right. That’s someone @tweetbomb‘d. Now time for some exercise.
@hotdogsladies I’m always tempted to put fake signs on empty zoo cages. “Madagascan Stealth Rhino”, “Transparent Jumping Meerkats”…
One page of translation done. Stopping before my brain explodes.
Damn you, Greek! Why do you keep your ‘Z’ near the front of your alphabet, you awkward language?
Ensconsed in Boston Tea Party with Greek homework, dictionary and large latte. I may be some time.
http://twitpic.com/njex - Deck the halls with boughs of holly…
@jacintuk Know what you mean. Don’t remember who told me about fantasticcontraption.com, but they’ve wasted hours of my life so far…
Off to a cafe to get started on my Greek assessed coursework.
Listening to The Clash and gradually waking up.
@hayles I’ve seen good snow once in ten years in Bristol :( This is the reason I go snowboarding: I’m not adventurous , I just miss snow!
And, dammit, all my twitter friends are tweeting about their snow, and I have none. It never snows properly in Bristol! Grr!
Morning all! It’s a bright day in Bristol, with big white fluffy clouds. I’m not entirely awake yet, but I have high hopes :)
@tweetbomb It’s always possible :)
Reading @sitepointdotcom’s The Art and Science of CSS. One of the most concentrated sources of user-friendly, relevant CSS advice I’ve seen.
Just realised I was going out to lunch. With money. That I earned. From doing photography. Which was huge fun. This is how life should be…
Doing some web design. Can we just take the next three hours of swearing about IE-fscking-6 as read, so I don’t have to bother tweeting?
@danwtmoon Nah, I find physical separation between the work and play machines makes it easier to resist slacking off :)
Right. Have set up a work PC and a play PC for the day. Find it best to do that and then never run email/twitter/netnewswire on the work PC.
@davidpatrick Glad to be of service :)
@davidpatrick Hmm. Don’t know Bridge, but I fixed that in Lightroom by using camera profiles; might give you a clue. http://is.gd/8ybB
@pjakobs I’ve got a Nokia, but I could pretend if it would make you happy?
@talkie_tim Shouldn’t be too long now. I’m now in the five-day wait to actually get the money. PS: Have you seen “keming”? http://is.gd/1no
@mkelso00 Ta for the follow. SitePoint has good article on creating PHP CMS: http://is.gd/8xU5, plus their DB-Driven Website book is good.
@bobbyllew Cool; will listen out for you on Loose Ends.
Today, I don’t think I actually _have_ to do anything for anyone else. Time for a selfish day of learning more about web design, I think.
*Yawn* Right, time for bed. Well, okay, it was time for bed about an hour ago, but I got distracted by Eddie Izzard after the IT Crowd…
Oooh! New The IT Crowd, Channel 4, right now!
@sean_robbins difficult to explain! It’s a bit like zen deportment training, with NLP thrown in. See, told you it was difficult to explain.
@DaveHamilton Angry? Impatient? Legal problems? Try the new all-in-one LawyerBat[tm], and deliver your writs with satisfying violence…
Just back from the pub. And for the second time this month — and the second time ever — have been paid for my photography. Cool.
Going to a pub to meet a rock band. This could get messy.
@hayles That’s not good. Last time I turned up to Temple Meads and found a film crew there, it took seven hours to get to work. In Swindon.
Another Friday, another Alexander Technique lesson.
@Artoo_UK Kavey’s idea of shopping throughout the year does work, but it’s difficult to stick to the discipline!
@bobbyllew very common problem. Hate Christmas shopping. Makes me feel dreadful every time.
@Phooto sorry to hear about your tosser/car interface issue. Glad everything was insured.
OS X keyboard tip of the day: holding down “shift” with the volume up/down buttons will silence the volume-change beeping.
@sarahlane And all the maps just say “Peril! Here be MX records!”
@talkie_tim Just completed the claim process for my Icesave account. That’s the last time I choose a bank based on their typography.
http://twitpic.com/mvqc - Nice colours tonight.
I’m now using both Windows and Firefox just often enough that each of them downloads updates and restarts every single time I fire it up.
On my way to work, listening to the Mac Geek Gab.
Removing earbuds/I walk through cold November/With more connection.
@pjakobs can I get a USB key with a Linux distro on it from a nearby vending machine?
Ohh. Approaching 60,000 views on Flickr. Maybe I should start taking photos of sixes and zeros and make a collage to mark the occasion…
@JButtitta Thanks. Like the idea of replacing my elderly Graphire with a Bamboo at some point, but looking for a stopgap mouse for now…
My exercise bike fodder for tonight: Genesis of the Daleks.
Time to get on the exercise bike before my last shred of motivation disappears for the evening.
@Phooto I do like it, and Wacom support is generally awesome, but I need my displays to sleep without me remembering to do anything.
@Phooto Have a Wacom Graphire mouse now, in fact. It annoys me because I have to take the mouse off the tablet for the Mac to sleep properly
Hmm. Should I worry that Facebook is showing me adverts for the “Philips Intimate Massager”?
Anyone got a recommendation for a good Mac mouse? Must have two buttons + scroll, not be an Apple product, and be left/right-hand swappable.
RIght. Exercise done. Greek practice done. Off to bed with me.
@Twitterrific I find hardly anything lacking in the current Mac version — please don’t move too far from the nice, clean, simple interface!
Finally trying to go through everyone’s photos from the RAF Hendon GTG.
Being amazed, yet again, by the quality of Spinvox voicemail transcription.
Fantastic grammar win on the FAIL blog today: http://tinyurl.com/6ll9sm
@jacintuk lots of my friends seem to be going down with WotLK. Is it anything like MRSA?
@bexxi That’s a fantastic idea, and I’ve been having it repeatedly for the last hour. I’ll make it in the end…
Favourite photo from today’s rainy day shoot: http://tinyurl.com/6fu8e2
@nyssapod Not sure you should start them on jalfrezi that early :)
@MelKirk That’s a selling point? Bet it’s covered in cooties.
Blech. And to think it started out like a nice day out there. Now to wring my clothes out and get warm again.
Have “eaten my frog” for the day. Greek practice done, now on to the rest of the Stuff To Do.
Trying to use my mouse left-handed to see if it reduces discomfort in my back. So far I’d rather have the discomfort.
Feel slightly guilty, eating kippers within view of my fish tank.
@foxc Live word counts are hard to come by. For writing anything on my Mac, I use Scrivener, then paste it into a word processor for format.
Wow. Getting up, going out an having lunch was so tiring I had to have a nap. Guess I had a more energy-sucking week than I thought.
@zenhabits’ Lazy Man’s Guide to Getting Things Done is a great description of the way I aspire to work http://is.gd/7493
How the heck did I unfollow @Phooto? Must’ve been when I was playing with Tweetdeck… Sorry Simon!
http://twitpic.com/lwcn - Currently eating a lady boy :-)
Random observation: YouTube videos of Airwolf should probably only be watched in Firefox.
@jacintuk I was thinking of setting up a hanging system in here after I next redecorate, for easy hanging/quick picture changing.
Am treating myself to an episode of House and an evening off after this busy week.
@jacintuk (a) This one: http://is.gd/7wnm. Looked surprisingly good very big. (b) Are all the furniture & paintings back? Should soften it.
Cool. Delivered some photos from yesterday’s shoot this morning. Baristas liked one so much it’s now printed out A1 size & hanging in window
Ooh. Mud-like harbour was a indeed a portent. Water level too high for ferries to fit under bridge. Will walk last half.
An unsettled morning. The harbour like mud, a chill wind, and the gulls cawing in the west. But the boat is here for me now.
Right. Off to bed, and with the odd artificial help that is pzizz, hopefully off to sleep, too.
@brownstudies In this case, unfortunately, I am the client! Mind you, the only reason I’m still up is due to slaving for a different client.
Dammit. One day I’ll learn to test my website changes properly. Why do I always figure out I broke something when it’s past bedtime already?
Now I need to do some tidying up, sort out the colour balance, denoise as best I can and whittle them down a bit more.
Quick preview of the picks from this morning’s (overcast and rainy, unfortunately) ten minute photo shoot http://is.gd/7oUp
Gah. Must remember to leave space for a frame to cover the outer edges of a photo when I print…
Right. Greek lesson done, printer paper bought, photos processed, now for some printing.
Hmm. Another person laid off today. Wonder if they’ll get around to the people I actually dislike before they get around to me…
Busy evening ahead. Have to get bunch of photos processed and printed for tomorrow. Oh, and Greek evening class. And exercise. Gah.
@hackery String? String? Lucky bastard. When I were a lad, my dad ‘ad to shout ones and zeroes out t’window across the moor.
@Ihnatko Oh, thank goodness. If there was one film in production that I didn’t want them to break, it was Watchmen.
Aha. I’m back. And I withdraw the stern look I gave my new router; looks like every other Demon customer got kicked out for a while, too…
Hmm. The router and the ADSL bit itself are fine. But the other end doesn’t seem to be connected to Demon. Hmm.
Gah. My ADSL seems to have died.
@russelldavies Eat the remote wallet. That’ll teach ‘em.
Tired and low on energy. Think I’ll take an evening off the exercise and have a quiet-ish night.
@jacintuk Actually, there’s a thought; the designer of Unique Sentence probably has a unique sentience…
@chriswebb On checking, I’m not sure that’s a fully confirmed start date, but it’s from a usually-reliable source :)
@chriswebb Brand new series of The IT Crowd starts 21st November 10pm Channel 4.
Right. Greek done. Now all I need is to invent a machine to put the cover back on the quilt and I can go to bed.
Right. Greek practice time, before it’s too late.
Several of my friends who I thought were in stable relationships have just split up. Maybe I’ve not been paying enough attention.
@davidpatrick Kewl. No idea if it’s any good — I don’t do Flash — but it’s got to be worth a scan in the newsagents to see :)
@davidpatrick Not online, but .net magazine started a Flash portfolio series in the November issue, if that’s any help.
Right, there we go. Should now only get “Contact Us” mail on uniquesentence.com from humans or smart robots. Hey, I’ll talk to either.
Implementing reCAPTCHA to stop dumb robots emailing me. I don’t mind so much if smart robots email me, at least that’s some kind of progress
Ahh, so what I needed to prevent screen blanker kicking in while watching iPlayer was on OSX was Caffeine http://tinyurl.com/2nzfzv
Bristol’s Millennium Square used to be pleasant. Now they’ve installed a blaring TV and it’s like walking through someone else’s living room
@Artoo_UK you could buy a couple of exercise balls and pretend to be Leo Laporte :-)
Wow. Electrician turned up on time for quote. Did I forget making a deal with the devil recently?
Just taken my first practical step towards keeping hold of my money during the recession: sewed up the hole in my trouser pocket.
Time to get on the exercise bike before I lose the last of today’s small ration of energy.
Trying out the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
@Delicious How I would love a way of deleting a tag from a bookmark with one click. Would really help when knocking links off my “todo” list
Motivation time: If I get my weekly review done, I can go to a cafe for lunch.
@sean_robbins We need a name for them. “Basil Dis-Exposition”, perhaps?
Holy heck. That is the most astonishing bug I’ve ever seen in a mobile phone. Hope G1 dev team are blushing. http://is.gd/6F5X
Just processed my Rainbow Warrior pictures. Now have a sudden urge to read Neal Stephenson’s Zodiac again.
Feeling quite apathetic today.
Right. That’s my relaxing morning off over with. Now on with the Stuff To Do.
@ahnlak Aha. I use the fabulous Spinvox for voice-to-text transcription. I’m also trialling their voicemail service, which is working well.
Someone told me it would be grey and rainy today. They lied. Think I’ll move most of the indoor chores to tomorrow.
So far today have created a to-do list and done two things that aren’t on the to-do list. Think my system may be failing me.
Hmm. Can’t develop in Lightroom. “An error occurred when attempting to change modules”. Nice and helpful there, Adobe…
@MelKirk I’m not surprised. Sounds like some sort of koan to me.
@ahnlak what’s up with Flickr?
@johnfbraun Aha! Cool, so your earlier problems meant it worked by the time I got around to using it for the first time :)
@johnfbraun PS: twitpic upload just worked fine for me in Safari on my iMac — weren’t you having problems?
@Twitterrific is either going for really geeky marketing, or its advertising has broken for me… http://twitpic.com/kctz
http://twitpic.com/kctz - Is this a particularly geeky advert, or is it just broken?
No Flickr meet for me tonight. Too late in from Greek, too tired, too much to do. Gah. Definitely need evening off.
Either I’m too tired to tie my shoelaces properly, or some wag coated them in Teflon when I wasn’t looking.
V. tired. Heading home for nap before evening class.
@davidpatrick I’ve got OpenOffice, but I hardly ever need to use it. I use Numbers for small home spreadsheet stuff; it’s cute and usable.
@Phooto I don’t mind the GIMP under X too much, but it’ll take a native build to get tablet pressure-sensitivity working, which would be fab
@bexxi aww, thanks!
@pjakobs because Windows wants other things to be compatible with *it*, not the other way around.
Forgot to set alarm. One and a half hours late out of bed. Twenty minutes late out of the door. Could be there’s some slack in my routine.
Started sorting through the photos from Hendon, looking for my picks.
Fantastic. Genesis of the Daleks on its way from LoveFilm. That’ll keep me going on the exercise bike for a while…
Nap: check. Exercise: check. Dinner: check. Lunch for tomorrow: check. Spooks watched: check. Okay, time for Greek.
Con: I have six months left to run on my phone contract. Pro: There might be a phone I really want out by then.