Making amends...

...for having horrible posting habits. OK so yesterday I wasn't actually connected to the internet but the day before I was merely tired. However today I am awake so I shall attempt to do some catch-up!

Christmas Day: absolutely wonderful for the most part, apart from my aunt trying to kill me by enforced spacehopping. She decided that afternoon exercise was the perfect thing to follow up Christmas lunch. I thought it sounded like a nice idea until I noticed the spacehopper and by then it was too late! I fell over twice, I was so surprised it wasn't more! I felt like death afterwards - never again! Though I kept my cracker-hat on the whole way round, I was very proud! But I love seeing my family and it's been so great.

Boxing Day: my *real* aunt and uncle came over - I spent Christmas Day with step family - with their three girls and it was so good to see them all again. Ruth (my step-mum) had mentioned that the younger cousins often don't hang out with the two younger kids so they get a bit ignored. But that didn't really this time around. And as I mentioned we played Charades. One of my favourite games I should think, real good fun and when there's 11 people playing it's much more interesting!

Saturday: I went to the birthday party of a friend I've known since I was born. I mostly hung out with her crazy uni friends though 'cos she was playing a perfect hostess but they were good fun so it was a laugh :)

Sunday: hung out with Josh and his giiiiiiiiiiiiirlfriend. Finally discovered that Waterstones has surpassed Borders in my esteem. Borders has begun to fail me sadly, just before Christmas it had either no copies or not the right copies of books by three different authors and then on Sunday I found out that they've moved the Mind, Body and Spirit section from a really big section to about three bookshelves which are completely disorganised. It's so tempting to go in and sercretly organise them! We then went to Waterstones which had a nice big MBS section plus one of the books I wanted - and a whole girl/vampire section within the horror section! What more could you want?

OH! And I went to starbucks!!!!! And it was goooooooooooood :D

Monday: Did bugger all really, fell out with Dad because he's got leftover stress from dealing with my brother so I told him that wasn't fair and let slip that I hated Holland. Not good. But we patched things up as best you can when you have to leave in fifteen minutes to go to the other parent's house for three days. We also had "Christmas" at my mum's which was lovely, I got a shmexy camera bag :D:D And a whole bunch of cook books and some pagan books so I'm totally chuffed. My mum and her partner liked their presents too so I'm very glad!

Today: Went to see my Nan in Derby. She's fair crazy, in the not-actually-lost-any-sense way you know? We went to lunch at a nice restaurant and - for some reason - talked a helluva lot about Josh's sex life. Which was weird. Still it was a laugh and she took it all in her stride and now she's going to tell my Uncle Kevin that we talked about it and soon it'll go through the whole family mwahahaha. I also got to see pictures of my little baby cousin. She's just seven months old now and quite a cutie!

Can't guarantee a post tomorrow but we shall see! I think that is a fair round up, I do mean to get back into the swing of posting daily but I always knew it'd be tough to keep it up over Christmas so there we go.

Have lovely New Years everybody. Night night x

Not much to say

So yeah, I didn't post yesterday 'cos I was hanging out with my cousins and sister so I wasn't alone to blog. And now I'm really knackered so this won't be a useful one either. Suffice to say that my aunt, uncle and cousins came over yesterday and we had a lot of fun. We played Charades! I love that game! They went today and I went to my friend Holly's birthday party where I talked to lots of her uni friends. Then I came home, posted on the forum and I'm going to go to bed. Very short stuff today!

xx

Merry Christmas! (Obviously)

So yeah, merry christmas. I've had mine by now and it was wonderful. I love having a big family, I really do, warms my heart it does. But yes good times. I hope everyone whose Christmas Days are over had fab ones and anyone who is just starting or in the middle of theirs has a good day too.

Tomorrow more family is coming so that's going to be hectic and fun!

Still ill sadly, some things are better but now my ears feel like they're filling up... which is weird.

Night night xx

365 sleeps till Christmas! ;) Hahaha

Sooooo nearly forgot to post

Being at home is doing something to me, I'm getting lazier by the second...

Finished the stockings though! Yippee! That's pretty much all I did today apart from feel sorry for myself with illness, and wrap presents. AND! My brother brought me back a frappuccino! Life is good again :D I'm going into town tomorrow morning I may have to go to starbucks. Maybe I'll even sneak some cheesecake back home mwahahahahaha

Two sleeps till Christmas!

Round up

This will be, as mentioned, a review of the last 72 hours because I didn't post very interestingly on Saturday.

Ummm so, ferry ride was cool. I met a guy, well he came over to talk to me and we hung out for the better part of the journey. He had been driving around Europe in his motorhome for the last six months! He's visited 18 countries and apparently he and his friend are sick of the sight of each other! He's a recovering stammerer so we had a really interesting conversation about that, he knows Gareth Gates hehehe. We played cards and just chatted and it really passed the time.

Sunday I got some presents for my boyfriend and then went to my Mum's for her Christmas party. Will (my bf) came, it was so good to see him. I don't know when I will see him again though :( My friend Henry also came and it was great to see him too. The party was really good fun. As is the nature of "young 'uns" we soon found another room and started doing non-grown up talking things. Like playing card games. A very card filled weekend. Great fun!

Today I got up very late, did the last bit of my Christmas shopping, met some of my brother's weird friends, hugged my younger siblings (haven't seen them for four months) and decorated the Christmas tree. It was fab. Tomorrow is baby-sitting I think. *sigh* my brother is going to hang out with his gf in town and bring me back a frappuccino :D It might be my only starbucks of the season!

Night night guys.

THREE sleeps till Christmas! xx

Hooooome

That's all I have to say really lol. Oh and I probably won't post tomorrow as I won't take my laptop to my mum's for one night so... bad Kate for failing in her 365 days of posting. Meh... home! But yes I'll post on Monday and review the weekend :D

Almost home!

That's right, less than 24 hours and I will be in my own bed. Y'all are probably sick of hearing me talk about it but it's my blog and I don't care I'm afraid!

We had the work party today. It was OK, I spent quite a while hanging out in the kitchen with people I knew rather than mingling. I also horrified a colleague when I told him I didn't go out much because I didn't want to go out alone. He's going to take me to the Irish Pub and I think this will make things better... I'm not sure though! But anyways, seems like I have friends now, which is weird. But good! It's nice to know :) I also made friends with the girlfriend of another colleague. She's humourously (sp?) bitchy to the other guy, quite good fun really hehehe.

After that I hung out with Casper (not the friendly ghost) and discussed books and movies for at least an hour. I'm fairly sure he's my hero. He's the one who lent me Ender's Game for which I shall forever be in his debt! So overall it was a good time but not particularly because it was a party! There was drunken singing and guitar hero going on which was less fun! I left early so I could do some packing which is *blatantly* not happening now, *sigh* Well, not much of it at least. Probably do a whirlwind scourge of stuff but it's definitely bedtime!

6 sleeps till Christmas!

Book butchering

I think I'm mentally worn out by my philosophical musings of yesterday hehe. I did actually feel rough this morning, though I sincerely doubt it's related, and so stayed off work again. I emailed my boss too to explain, gently I hope, and politely the beef I had with him because tomorrow is my last day for two weeks and we're having a work party so I figured there might not be much time. He does still want to talk to me about it but I think he understands how upset I was with him so that's good. Also it means that I didn't rant at him and so probably won't tomorrow either! So we'll see how that goes.

48 hours till I'm home! And I haven't packed :S I'm *so* bad at packing it's untrue. But I did get off my arse and do another load of laundry so at least when I *do* pack (two hours before I leave) I'll have lots of clean clothes! I'm glad that I bought most Christmas presents online and sent them home or guaranteed I would have left them here. I should make sure I pack the other stockings and my writing pad, maybe I'll go do that as soon as I'm done writing! It'd be awful to not have those with me!

I was talking with some friends, discussing the New Moon movie. It will be the sequel to Twilight. I haven't seen it yet and apparently to people who haven't read the books it's godawful, to discerning fans it's not up to scratch and to screaming fangirls it OMG has Rob Pattinson OMG he's so drool worthy me, bite me Edward, I love you so much Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Or something. Considering myself a discerning fan of the books, as in they're great to read but don't really expect depth and do expect some mormon undertones. Some of which aren't bad in some ways but some could, and have been, misinterpreted.

I have one specific response to a scene from the movie that has caused a lot of outcry it seems. Apparently just after Bella is almost attacked (and rescued by said vampire hunk Edward) her dad gives her a bottle of pepper spray and she rolls her eyes as if to say "I have a hunky hardcore man, what do I need to be able to defend myself for?" I would not be at all surprised if that's what happened and how it looked. Unfortunately in the book, in the scene where she's about to be attacked she's actually running through the limited self-defence she *does* know and lamenting the fact that her pepper spray is in a bag at home. So I think the movie scene was a nod to that but managed to mess it up and completely switch the meaning around.

Movie adaptations these days are so hit and miss. Especially Twilight I think, I think there was definitely a "jump on the money-making bandwagon" edge to the producers when they bought the rights. I'm sure it was a similar plan with Harry Potter but luckily they got directors and/or screenwriters that wanted to keep true to the books. I'm not dissing Catherine Hardwicke but it seems to me that what little depth there was to the books was wiped out. This left behind a controlling boyfriend and ummm that's it?

Oh! That was another scene that someone mentioned, the fact that he disconnects her battery or something. Now her father did that in one of the books to stop her from sneaking out and yes, Edward did it once too. Edward did it in the second book but I believe the scene was brought forward, as were the werewolves. (Which is downright stupid as far as I'm concerned) And so Edward disconnected her battery so that she wouldn't go see her friend, a very young werewolf who he believes would have issues with his temper and could become a werewolf any second and severely injure her. Also, surprisingly?, vampires and werewolves don't get on in the books. So he was trying to stop her from going to the enemy camp where she could get hurt. I don't know how much of this carried over to the movie, not enough obviously. Sure it was a bit controlling of him, but in that annoying "best interests at heart" way. Rather than wanker-tastic.

Anyway for the next movie they have hire Chris Weitz. Who quite frankly I will diss. He is the guy who made Golden Compass. As far as a movie story goes it's fine as an adaption goes it's an abomination. They screwed up the Harry Potter movies in little ways, cut out bits that fans think should be left in but we could still go see them for the fun of a dramatisation of our beloved books. But they butchered Northern Lights. The books are beautiful, beautifully meaningful and beautifully written. They deserve to become Penguin Classics much more than Dracula which is kinda boring if I'm honest. They're so deep, fantastic, a wonderful concept and amazingly researched. Amazing. And the movie was a travesty. All of that depth was sucked out till it really was just a kid's story. Not a story that can be enjoyed on so many levels. Plus they screwed up the ending. They ended it with Lyra and Roger flying off into the sky instead of going to see her father and accidentally allowing Roger to be killed for her father's own ends and her following him into the new world (literally). So thus far we have an alive Roger. Will they hide his death - one quick flashback so we don't scare the kiddies - will they start the movie with it? Or will they just get rid of it? Keep him alive and safe? I hope against hope that it's not the latter, otherwise why would they go to the world of the dead? How would they meet the dead people and set them free and if they don't go to the world of the dead then maybe the movies will have a happy ending. Which kinda defies the point... it still makes me cry, the ending does.

So goodness knows what will happen when they let him loose on New Moon. I suppose it could go two ways. Either he can butcher New Moon like Northern Lights. Or, because New Moon is so much *less* deep, will it be less butcherable? Who knows, but we've come up with a fun drinking game to get us through it if it's awful. So that's good. Every cloud...

Another big unexpected talk. Sorry if there were any spoilers in there but Northern Lights came out years ago and I fully believe you should have read them by now. Everyone should, in the world! Only I think they'll probably be on a fair few banned lists *sigh*

Seven sleeps till Christmas!! Hehehehehe

Late night blogging and Communism

It seems to be happening more and more these days. I get more distracted despite the fact that I'm not doing anything. Very odd. But anyways.

Work was interesting today Ewout had a meeting with his supervisors out of which came the decision that he needs to do coding, OK I realise that his internship plan says he probably should but now I'm unofficially off coding duty. And it sucks ass to be honest. Ewout is great, he really is. But... my project really isn't my baby anymore, when we working together it was fine but now someone else is going to be changing stuff without me. So very - ugh! PLUS! There's a possibility that he might be doing some google location integration with it, later on. Which was my frigging idea anyway! And it would be so interesting, such a head banging challenge. But we don't know for sure, and I'm totally not blaming him not in the slightest. And I guess I can't blame the supervisors either it's just so darn unfair. And yes I know the universe is like that, does that mean I can't rant? I think not.

Today I also read Animal Farm (all in one day - very short book) as part of the forum book club. I understand a lot more of it than I did when I was eleven! My teacher made up this ridiculous scheme of making everyone read a bit, but he'd set a complex layout to make sure everyone was paying attention. And we were, but not to the book, how I ever wrote a (semi) decent essay on that book I'll never know.

It's much more interesting now though. It really gives me a better (though still limited) understanding of the Russian Revolution etc. I mean obviously Napolean (the pig(Stalin)) was a bit iffy from the start but Snowball (Trotsky) really wasn't, he was really enthusiastic about the equality thing, probably an idealist but then, which communists aren't? Communism is a lovely theory but it just won't work until we completely change our nature. And it's interesting to wonder whether, had Snowball not been run off the farm, if he'd stayed, he would have been courrupted too. By virtue of being a pig, more intelligent and able to read and write he's already in the "more respected" party (shall we say) of all the equal individuals. And it would be nice to think that he wouldn't have been corrupted too but after all, even from the first days the pigs took a few liberties - the milk and stuff. But would he have stayed at that level? Would he have realise how evil Napolean was, tried to overthrow him but in succeeding might he not have had to take up the leadership of the comrades himself? And then, with his new found leadership would he have still be all about equality?

And therein lies the issue. There's no way of finding out sensibly. I mean sure, we could cause a whole bunch of revolutions just to see but that's a bit of a waste! For every equality-first potential leader there are thousands who merely think that they're good enough. And for everyone of those there's one or two who have no delusions and just want power however they can get it.

Can anyone say for sure that the power wouldn't go to their head, even a little? How many dictatorships started out with a man backed by some people just trying to make things better? Franco didn't even want to take up the reins, he believed in the Spanish Revolution but he had the leadership thrust upon him in some ways. And look what happened. Did life get better? Maybe some bits did and others got worse. And the problem with leaders of the revolution is that the power goes to their head, but *all* the power, over a whole country goes to their head. No wonder they don't want to let it go. No wonder they choose to become dictators for life, even if it doesn't actually help the people they were trying to save. Now were they inherently bad men? Corrupted or corruptible?

Personally I dislike buying banners or posters or w/e that have symbols or mottos I don't understand on, in case someone asks me about it and I have to admit I'm ignorant! But there's a lot of Che Guevara merchandise out there and so I looked him up one day. And, I might be misinterpreting this, it seems to me that he was a revolutionary - vive la revolution! - and he helped lead a revolution. He helped overthrow the corrupt cuban leader, he died in the process I believe. And who replaced this corrupt leader? Fidel Castro. So Che Guevara - the great revolutionary, man of the people - helped to put in power a man with whom many countries won't trade with. They've had two economic collapses? (Do correct me if I'm wrong, please please do) I had some friends went to Cuba and apparently they have free schools for the arts and things and some other nice stuff. Almost fifty years later. But it hasn't always been so wonderful in between. Is that what Che Guevara had in mind? Should you still support him and wear his merchandise just because he was a revolutionary? Should you give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he didn't envision dictatorship, trade embargoes and economic decline? Probably. But does that mean you should still go around advertising something you don't understand? Probably not. Is it even what Fidel Castro wanted? Did he think "I'm going to lead a revolution, pretend to all my fellow cubans that I'm a good man and then the minute I grasp the power from Batista's hands, I'll do with this country whatever I please?" I hope not. Otherwise that man is a *very* good liar.

That was a more thoughtful post than I thought it was going to be...

Night all. 8 sleeps till Christmas!

Aliens, pirates.. and... stuff

Sorry, it's quite late so this will be a distracted/potentially incoherent post.

Aliens then. I went to see The Day The Earth Stood Still today as I mentioned yesterday. It was quite good, not as good as I thought it would be based on my friends hype about it. But quite good. He said Keanu Reeves was born for the role and I guess he was, in a stark emotionless alien kinda way. I'm not trying to be harsh but I'm sure you know what I mean. He played it very well though and some of the ideas were kinda awesome. But the ending was kind of a let-down...

/*Spoilers*/
Basically the aliens come to earth to save it from us. And so Keanu Reeves starts the process which will eliminate human beings. He changes his mind 'cos he sees us being able to love and stuff and so they leave. There's a bit with John Cleese where they talk about how it is only on the brink of destruction that a species can finally try to evolve. Cleese says: this *is* our brink, don't take it away from us. So Keanu Reeves later decides that they won't take it away. But it just seemed to me that surely they should *tell* the humans why they'd been allowed to live.

It just seems to me that humans considered the possibility that they might be on the brink of destruction because they thought aliens were attacking. They didn't realise, nor were they told, that they were destroying themselves and the planet. So they certainly wouldn't understand why they were being left alive, it seems to me that a cliché "We are watching, fix your planet or next time we come we *will* destroy you" would make a lot more sense in the situation. Instead the sphere that Keanu Reeves arrived on (and misc other ones) just upped and left. Some of the defence people guessed what might happen but they didn't know for sure.

*AND* The Earth didn't really stand still.

A mini ben & jerry's ice cream tub gave me a paper cut and now I have a pirate plaster/band-aid.

Ummm... my mic works again :D So podcasting some point in the vague future - as usual ;)
9 sleeps till Christmas!!!!

The great outdoors...

OK, false adverstising, this isn't about the outdoors at all, well not from a nature perspective anyway. No, this is to pay homage to the fact that *I* am going out this week... THREE times. That's right ladies and gentlemen the recluse is leaving the belfry... or whatever. I say "out" I'm going to the movies tomorrow, going to hang out with Ewout and his friend at his friend's house and eat pizza and play XBox games and then also go to the work party. But seeing as, though it's a party, it's being held at the office so I'm not really going out to at all I'm not sure if it counts. Anyways, I will count it just... because. And actually I'm going out/partying four times this week 'cos my mum is having a party too. Hooray for interaction of an unforced nature! Also at my mum's party I get to see a uni friend of mine who is actually working in Cambridge and my boyfriend will be coming too!

Back to the stockings, breaking news that it is, I have just bent the seams slightly and now it fits huzzah! I'm almost done - squee! That's a noise of happiness by the way.

So I'm going to see The Day The Earth Stood Still tomorrow - look here for my non-technical, was-it-good-fun? review tomorrow night :D

Night night xx

10 sleeps till Christmas!!!

I made a new anti-recluse tag for all the posts detailing the fact that I went outside ;) I'm not actually *that* bad but it seemed like a lark!

Nada mucho ha pasando

Sorry, it felt like a spanish title day. For those of you who don't read/understand spanish - nothing much has happened. I stayed in bed late of course, finished the lining for my grandmother's stocking, found it was too big and my mother called.

Mothers, wonderful, fabulous, stressful. "You will email Will won't you?" "Yes mum." "Because I need to know soon" "I will do it" "It's important that you do" Bless her. I love her, I really do but it's like - yes, you asked me to do it, either I will forget or I won't but asking me to do it more than once isn't going to guarantee that I won't. But in this situation, seeing as it was about my boyfriend and, more importantly, about *seeing* my boyfriend, it's unlikely that I would forget... Never mind, we love them eh?

I'm rather annoyed about the lining thing though. This is what happens when they tell you to use the same pattern for the lining as for the stocking! *sigh* But I'm too inexperienced to think that I could cut out a smaller piece of fabric that was exactly the right shape so I copied what I was supposed to do and - lo and behold! - it was too big. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to fix it. It's a shame though because the stitching is really quite neat - for me anyways! Which might be one of the reasons it doesn't fit... Because it's actually the proper shape! But it's not the entire reason so never mind.

Anyway, as my friend Pokey would say "tootles" Night night.

11 sleeps till Christmas!

Mmmmmmm Saturday

Well as per usual Saturday was my doing nothing day. If you're a regular here you'll realise that last Saturday was a freak occurrence in that I went out, I went shopping, I went clothes shopping and I had fun. OK you might not completely know my issues with clothes shopping or at least I've probably mentioned that I dislike clothes shops. But today I'm back on form with the whole getting out of bed at one thing!

It's interesting actually. I have epilepsy due to over-tiredness as I mentioned on Wednesday I think. And yet, unfortunately, I do not sleep well. Seriously, I don't. I rarely sleep through the night (again I think I mentioned this way back when) and I used to never be able to sleep late. Ever. It used to be that I couldn't sleep past ten even on a Saturday/Sunday. When I was uni in the first year this didn't really change, even with the later nights I kept I woke up at the same time and got *more* tired. The second year I was able to sleep later but now being in Holland, I can sleep till three! Which probably isn't healthy but it's such a novelty hehehe. I wonder why though. The depressed person in me says it's because then I spend less time in Holland if I'm asleep and it's a defence mechanism but I'm almost entirely sure that's not the answer!

Speaking of lack of sleep though, it's happened a lot this week. Whoops. I keep staying up late for no particular reason, except today when I watched a movie. It's almost like the end of term actually when all your good habits - going to lectures on time, doing school work - just kinda fall apart in the whole happiness of Christmas coming up. Maybe that's just me though!

So, Saturday movie review time. I just watched Premonition. It was one of those DVDs that I bought when I was compulsory shopping for other things - or just forcing myself out of the flat - and so I went to the movie store and bought three for 25 euros or something. So far I haven't done too badly - My Sassy Girl was another of these and as I've said, it's awesome! So Premonition could have gone either way given the situation I bought it in; not knowing what the hell it was about 'cos the blurb was in Dutch. But my luck held. It was a very interesting movie, very nicely done I felt, even if it was about a woman who thought her husband was dead... But yes, I thought it was great actually. Sandra Bullock played it very well, really portraying what the situation would be like - she does crazy/disbelieving/paranoid and scared brilliantly. I would like to point out at this juncture, if I haven't before, that I am crap at deciding which movies were good or bad. Well, I know a truly awful movie when I see it and I know a fabulous movie too. But unless it bummed out big time mostly I think most movies are OK to great. So if you ever disagree with a review feel free to say so as I probably have poor taste and you'll be more likely to tell me a movie was crap than that it was unseen excellence!

I started making the lining for my grandmother's stocking today. I had bought some more golden coloured material that wasn't actually lining material a couple of weeks ago and it's somewhat fray-crazy. It's one of those ones where the edges just start falling apart but so far it's staying together so let's all hope that continues. Otherwise it'll have to be gone over with a real sewing machine which will just take all my pride out of it. Yes, the stitching's not great and yes, they're slightly wonky but I made them all by hand and damnit I'm proud of myself - yay me! Or something.

Anyways it's five to one (see??) so I'm off to bed!

12 sleeps till Christmas!

Books, cakes and... is anything else required?

So yes, the weird cheesecake was very yummy though it's definitely getting a base next time. Baseless things are just poor imitations of real, and important, things - like accusations. Sorry, that's not actually my joke, my colleague sort of said it and it seemed too lame to pass up! Anyway yes, it was pretty good though I don't think it was my best thus far. I shall make my unbaked version and compare ;)

Books! I am participating in the book exchange as suggested by Robin, a person I only heard of through Kristi - because she blogged about his book exchanged... Circles within circles - or something. Anyways, I am now an exchange partner with Marilyn and because I'm terrifically efficient (for once) I have decided on, paid for and shipped the book she's getting. I love you Amazon! It was tough deciding though, which is why I suddenly noticed it was five past eleven, I was distracted by comparing books. I seized upon the idea of Tom Holt - who I have slandered recently I know but he will always be a love of my life so... whatever! And then I wasn't sure which one I should send, then I wasn't sure if I should send any of them but I was so trapped in the genre (of wacked-out fantasy comedy fiction) that I couldn't think of anything else. But then I did so it's all good :D

Still on the book topic; I am currently reading "Gargoyle". Yes I bought it 'cos it looked pretty. Actually I also read the back - just other authors' comments - but not the inside which is where the actual outline was... D'oh! Anyways I started reading it and it was, uhm, dragging a bit. Kinda all over the place (intentionally) and there was *far* too graphic a description of burns. I read a few reviews online, some raving the others... not so much. So I was not particularly looking forward to the next installment (I read before I go to bed) and it was really great actually. I don't know if my hopes had been trodden down or I'd gotten past the point of no return and realised that I didn't want to but I really enjoyed it. So it's going well. Very very weird though. But I think I understand why the word "redemptive" was used so often in the reviews! Actually I should have saved for my looooooong ferry trip back home! Ah well, I'll just have to buy another book ;)

Work was... weird. Ewout and I decided to do some coding and finished a whole bunch in one go. Shockingly fast. But we can't test it 'cos for some reason the server that's running it is trying to run a method that hasn't existed for a month and never existed in the class that's being run. If you understood that I'm sure you can feel my pain, if not consider yourself lucky :D Anyway so that was stressful and weird, then the test server went down and then the production server flushed our current live database, not great! But we had cake which made it better! Still, if we test our code and it works then Ewout is going to have a very short internship. We haven't much else to do except reproducing the same stuff again and again and if we can do it in about three hours (including panicking about the weirdness) then we're going to power through the rest of the carriers like nobody's business. Of course we still need better test data and stuff but certainly with FedEx we shouldn't have many issues because they just use a table - incredibly simple to parse!

I also sorted my music collection today. I had loads of music I'd pilfered off a friend a couple of years ago and it's been sat on my hard drive in badly named albums with useless titles since then. So I sorted that out; the songs mostly had artists and albums so it wasn't too hard really, just lengthy. But yeah now I can listen to all the music in windows media player which somehow knows the names of all the tracks and I'll change all the names appropriately and then I'll put them in iTunes and it'll be sorted!

Anyway, enough of the geeking out. Possibly dinner time, I forgot to make myself some *again* and then bed. Night night.

13 sleeps till Christmas!

Weird cheesecake

So today I made a white chocolate cheesecake and it didn't mention a base, I didn't think about this till I was prepping the cake tin at which point I was like: "Whoa... what!?" Seriously, biscuit-baseless cheesecake? Unfortunately I didn't have enough biscuits so baseless it will be, I'm still surprised though. I mean I know that it's possible, in theory, maybe even yummy - but why *not* have a biscuit base? We shall see tomorrow. It looks naked somehow though...

I had another one of those days that makes you go "Only X more days/weeks/months/years before I'm out of here forever!" One of the senior guys asked me why I had various data in a certain place, why I hadn't asked my sysadmin to put them in. I didn't even know I had a sysadmin... I'm basically making this up as I go along so I didn't know not to put something there or that I should have duplicates of this - 'cos no-one has told me! So I was just sitting there as he was asking me questions going "I DON'T KNOW!" (in my head). Luckily Matthias was assigned to help me so we're fixed AND deployed! That's right. We're live. www.visiblelogistics.com kids, for all your order management needs. Or something!

Turns out *I* am my sysadmin ¬_¬

I finished my grandmother's stocking! But I can't find my camera cable so I'll look it up at the weekend and will *finally* post the photos. And I need to get lining!

14 sleeps till Christmas! xx

Ranting!

Whoops! I completely forgot to post last night *sigh* I even had stuff to say!

So, yes, yesterday I stayed at home again because I couldn't sleep all of the night before due to self-induced ridiculous paranoia so I slept all day instead. When I got up there was a decidedly snotty email from my supervisor telling me that even though I said "I'm too tired to function" I should still come into the office, if I'm tired then come in late and leave late instead.

So I'm going to have words with him on Friday/Monday.

I have epilepsy you see, due to stress and over-tiredness. Now that's normally my throw-away line, I tell people I have epilepsy and they say "oh, with the bright lights and stuff?" and I say "No, due to stress and over-tiredness". So I've gotten pretty casual about saying it over the years but you'd have thought that even a little bit of the concept "over-tiredness" would manage to filter through his mind such that when I say I'm tired that means tired *in a bad way*. I'm sure even you, casual reader, who have no experience or aquaintance with my condition can probably guess that it's not good when I say I'm tired? Perhaps not, let me continue therefore: the kind of tired that people have in the evenings, when they start thinking about going to bed - I have, every minute of every day and will have for the rest of my life no doubt. I'm sure you're keeping up with me here, "too tired to function" means (due to my condition) "I will not be well if I try to function" see now I thought that the connection would logically follow but it would appear not. Even a man who was on msn to my dad while I was having a fit on the phone to my dad has managed not to comprehend what this means. Admittedly I didn't tell my dad that I felt ill/tired enough to have a fit because he needed me to be awake, so maybe he didn't connect the dots then. But still "over-tiredness leads to fits" surely means that when I say "I'm too tired" one can assume that if I try to exert myself I could have a fit!?

So I'm going to have a little chat with him, no interruptions, and really tell him what this means. Because how *dare* he tell me that if I don't need to see a GP I'm not sick? I *am* sick, when I applied to university epilepsy constituted "A disability you cannot see" so what gives him the right make me feel like shit by denying what's wrong with me?

Wanker.

Other than that not much has happened. Went back to work today, continued doing research because we *still* have fuck all to do.

*sigh*

15 sleeps till Christmas!!

Actual podcasting

So today I didn't go to work - yay! I was feeling kinda rough and tired so I emailed work and went to bed. Next time I looked at the time it was quarter to two - boy am I glad I stayed in bed!

I finished reading Terry Pratchett's Nation. It's an excellent book. Truly fabulous. You almost wish it were true. All I'm going to say is: read it.

The podcasting didn't really work out. Turns out you have to pay for that PowerGramo thing if you want to call people not on Skype. Which meant I spent half an hour trying to buy the thing but it wouldn't work. And then people's internets kept getting in the way. But it was good fun, even if they googled me... Less fun!

Nggggh, bed time.

Books and Norse Gods, amongst other things

I just rented the Italian Job - the new one. I think it's an excellent movie. I need to get a copy all of my own but the delivery is crap this time of year so rental it is.

Yet another Sunday has come and gone when I did bugger all. Good fun really, I started making my Grandma's stocking but it's not done yet so I won't take photos till all three are finished. I'm going to take a picture of them next to some regular sized socks so you can see the difference.

They're pretty frigging big to be honest. If they do turn out to be loads bigger than the kids then, well actually I'll probably giggle, but it's not like I expect more or anything. Hell, I'm 20 years old, I shouldn't be getting stocking presents by rights! But we do get stocking presents, or at least I hope we do - by we I mean me and my brother 20 and 18 respectively. My brother probably can expect stocking pressies as he's only technically an adult so I can't be the only one left out! It'd be unfair! Besides, it'd ruin Christmas!

Lol, anyway less pretend whinging. They are big though, I should have gotten a smaller pattern - they'd take me less long to make! I'm starting to worry about whether or not they're gonna hold anything, whether they're strong enough. As I've said before I don't sew much so I have no illusions about how good it is, but I've never had the strength tested so this is gonna be interesting. I'm gonna line them first then fill them with stuff till I get worried, if they turn out to be a bit flimsy then maybe I'll go over the stitching with my step-mother's sewing machine at home. Hopefully that'll help.

I came up with a simple but ingenious solution to my curtain problem. My curtains - if you sewed them together down the middle, turned them on their side and then cut them back up the new middle - would fit my windows perfectly. However the person who made them obviously cut the wrong part of the material; they are too narrow and too long. As such my computer chair was always getting scrunched up in them, because my desk is by the window. By window I mean french doors, only less glamourous/pretty/nice. And so, after months of being completely pissed off at whoever made the bloody things (and who put one on back to front ¬_¬ ) I realised that if I just safety pinned up the bottom the problem would go away! Which made me feel pretty daft for not thinking of it about five months ago, but there we go.

Books then, I finished 'Barking' it had some more twists and turns, still pretty good, still not my favourite.

Then I was telling my friend what I thought of Beedle the Bard and I told him that despite what I'd said he still needed to own it, like owning the Silmarillion even if you can't understand the bloody thing. In theory just owning things because you should doesn't make sense to me but when it comes to books it's a whole different story - besides I'm a collections person. I have all the Harry Potter books. But I also want to collect them in as many foreign languages as I can theoretically read - so I won't get them in Dutch or German or Swedish - but I do want them in French, Spanish, Italian and... Latin and Greek, I'm a nerd, I admit it. And so I have the sexy black matching set of the Lord of the Rings including The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. I already own the Hobbit and the Silmarillion (sort of, I accidentally nicked it from the school library) but it was a birthday present and I think they're simply beautiful. If I were never going to read The Silmarillion then I probably wouldn't have asked for it but I have tried and I'll probably try again thus justifying owning it.

So, on to Norse Gods, when I mentioned the Silmarillion he said he couldn't understand it either - I didn't try hard I admit - we couldn't get our heads round all the names. And I said it reminded me of the Ring Cycle - the one by Wagner. Before you get into your heads that I'm a cultured opera goer I'll clear that up. I have read a book, Tom Holt incidentally, to do with various Norse Gods and the ring and belt of Brunnhilde. It was very interesting and, being written by Tom Holt, very funny. I'm kind of an admirer of people who know more about various other religions, the Norse ones, Celtic, Roman, Greek etc. I'm quite interested in them myself, but in that easily distracted way or the "I'd love to buy a book and learn more about that, maybe when I have more money..." rather than actually getting down and doing something about it. Luckily for me I manage to read books whereby I accumulate vague knowledge of the matters of interest to me - through fiction of course. And so I read that book (Odds and Gods I believe) and then I read The Whale Rider much more recently, I don't remember if I mentioned it on here, if I did I probably said something like: very interesting, kinda dull. But it had more about the Norse people and about the Huns, really cool stuff too. I'm rambling, I just realised, oh well.

Anyway, I was reading about the Ring Cycle on wikipedia because I knew my friend wouldn't know what it was so I thought I'd read up on it so I could pretend to be vaguely more knowledgeable ;) And it seems I was right, in a way. Though the Silmarillion, and indeed the Lord of the Rings, is probably influenced by the *actual* Norse gods rather than the opera, I wasn't far off the mark. A cursed ring and all that jazz. Plus a full complement of dragons + treasure, people with lots of names, lots of people with similar names and probably great amounts of drinking along the way. That encompasses all of Tolkein's stuff by the way, well the similarities between them anyway. Of course, dragons + treasure is a well established myth, before or after Fafnir (the norse one) I'm not sure. So Tolkein probably didn't borrow that specifically, the ring stuff might have been more influenced, who knows. I would like to say that I'm not bashing him for taking the idea from somewhere else or any such nonsense. He was a legendary writer and all writers are influenced by most things, in fact a lot of sci-fi/fantasy apparently can be passed off as reproducing one of about four classic works, one of which is - of course - the Lord of the Rings.

So even if he did pilfer the Ring, as it were, doesn't matter, he's created a whole following of his own - who gives a damn? But it *is* interesting to actually locate where influences came from. I have loooooooads in my book, just little things that I've picked up here and there, most writers I've read will have a tiny mark or so on it somewhere. Not that people can necessarily see it, but I know it's there and I'm not ashamed. I think what's more shameful would be to say that what you've written is 100% completely original, no influence from anyone. Partly 'cos it's a lie. The only person who can say that is someone who grew up completely alone. Then their only influence is themselves. Because even if other authors haven't influenced you, the world has, society has, your mother has. Fact of life.

Umm, I have a headache and I'm out of musings. Night night. 18 sleeps till Christmas

Shopping, writing and podcasting?

OK, so only one of those activities is actually completed. Shopping I don't actually object to but today, horror of horrors, it was clothes shopping to be done. My step-mother wants me to look nice on Christmas day, which is theoretically not hard but I don't have many nice clothes really, or at least not matching ones so I had to go shopping. I had looked in the windows of Esprit on Wednesday and there were some nice things so I went in today. To be honest I get scared in clothes shops. I generally dress kinda lazily, unfitting jeans and a jumper and I'm cool, so when I go in clothes shops I feel like the nice clean pretty assistants are looking down their noses at me. So I panic. I couldn't really find the nice things I'd seen in the window, or if I did I couldn't tell they were the same. But then I found that they sold black cords. It was so comforting that I calmed right down! And I have some nice stuff... I might even go back next week. I bought about five things and the expense scared me out of buying anything else but there's a pair of sexy looking jeans and maybe - shock! - a skirt.

Today I have done some more writing, over my 100 words I think but it's kind of in flux as to when/whether I'm going to continue tonight. We may or may not be podcasting in a bit and even if we're not I may well be falling sleep!

Podcasting! Today could be the actual big, real first one. Fun stuff! But one of the guys is in NY this week so he only finished work about forty minutes ago so we'll see what happens. (No podcast today *sigh*)

Other news: I bought The Tales of Beedle the Bard today. I'd already read all the stories off Amazon of course but I obviously *had* to have the actual book. The 'commentary' by Dumbledore wasn't *quite* what I had expected. Especially because it shows no sign of his own quest for the Deathly Hallows, in fact he rather poo-poohs them and all who search for them/believe the legends. Now this was "written" approximately 18 months before he was killed. I presume, but I'm not sure, that he was already in possession of the Elder Wand at this time, he knew of Harry's father's Invisibility Cloak (and had done for 18 years) and at least 11 months before he died he possessed the Stone of Resurrection. Not to mention the fact that he'd believed in the Hallows since he was a young man (about 18 or so). The fact that he would be so condescending about the whole thing seemed out of character I felt. He may well have seen the error of his ways and realised that his quest had been in vain but that doesn't mean that he didn't believe in them. Anyway, I *had* to own it, just because, and the money's going to charity so it's all good. Maybe I'll read them to my kids along with other fairy stories lol!

I'm also currently reading "Barking" by Tom Holt. I do love Tom Holt, he's very witty and writes great stories though this one is not my favourite. All his stories are amusing, all the way though, and they always have laugh out loud moments. The best one so far is a vegetarian-becoming-an-omnivore being given salami and not being told what it was but when he saw a ...log(?)... of salami believing he was eating daschund. Very very funny, classic Tom Holt. But yes not my *favourite* thus far. There are lots of excellent little tie-ins between books though, not between actually characters but with made up characters, or little cameo roles. Great stuff. Actually I've just realised that I've waxed lyrical about Tom Holt before while reading Earth, Air, Fire and Custard. This book is better than that, which sounds harsh... Whoops, any way it is. Tom Holt if you're reading this I really do love your work, just those ones less so. I'm nice really! Lol.

I also bought 'Nation' by Terry Pratchett. I shouldn't be allowed money, it just gets turned into books. And disappears even more quickly in this wretched country where books are incredibly expensive - extra tax or something I'm told. A hardback copy of InkHeart will be 35 odd euros compare with £13!!!! OK so they have to import them I guess but that's just extortionate!

Anyway, I have books! And clothes to make my stepmother happy! And some new material to make my grandma a stocking - it's got Christmas trees on it. I'm not a person who goes in for big patterns generally but this one really appealed to me so hopefully it will appeal to her too! Maybe I actually take some photos of the as-yet unlined stockings tomorrow and post them. Once I've made my grandma's of course. I bought some new fabric that felt like lining but isn't and so is probably going to fray more and make a mess, but it's more golden so should match better. We'll see.

19 sleeps till christmas ;)

Pre-emptive, as it were

This is a pre-writing post because it's late so I'm going to curl up on sofa and just listen to music then when I turn my computer off I don't have anything else to do.

It turns out that the podcast that we did yesterday managed to only record my part in the conversation ¬_¬ If you ever want to record Skype calls I would suggest PowerGramo if you download the standard version it's free and sure has everything I need it to for podcasts. I've just tested it an luckily it *does* manage to record everyone in the call! Very easy to use, you can write in-call memos to yourself, export them as MP3 files (and others) and with MP3 you can set the 'Artist', 'Album' and 'Genre' which for a podcast is kind of a lark but not particularly necessary otherwise!

Turns out the screencast we did yesterday wasn't quite good enough. It was one of those "It's really great, I like what you did there and the voices and length are great... but-" Ugh, such is life I guess. So we spent today re-editing that version to get it into press-release shape and now we get to make a shiny new one next week - to cover the same topic. A shiny, polished, proper data, finished version. Still, we've had four days of wrestling with the bloody software with any luck the next one will take merely two days!

Ahhh I'm listening to one of my favourite songs by a musician named Colin Reid - Crimes Against Music Pt. It's simply excellent. Crap - I just spent about twenty minutes creating his wikipedia page. And I still don't know precisely which instruments are on the track. Just piano, guitar and drums. I only know the album Tilt but it's excellent, all acoustic guitar plus other tracks but somewhat eclective. Not coherent perhaps but it flows well I feel. I'll never forget seeing him at the Cambridge Folk Festival, apparently it was seven years ago! Doesn't time fly?

Right, I'm all sleepy and distracted now so I'm gonna go do my writing though I feel perhaps I won't churn out lots tonight - it being ten to twelve and all.

20 sleeps till Christmas!

Talking... and more talking

Todaaaaay, we finished the video - we did it! We fricking did it! *AND* we did the voiceover! We're so cool. And finished, thank crap. I do think I sounded weird though but I know everyone thinks that! I'm also doing a podcast later - in the next twenty minutes or so, crazy! It should be lots of fun, it's with a couple of wacky friends of mine so it's all good.

I did more story writing today, only 200 words or so but that's 'cos I got disrupted, by the people I'm doing the podcast with. But that's OK 'cos means I have some actual structure for tomorrow. This was another new scene 'cos last night's one has some good ideas but ones that need thought and as I promised writing not thinking I shall sort out those thoughts at the weekend so I can finish the scene. This new one comes a few days/weeks after the other one. I'm back on my happy writing wave now.

Sometimes it's easy to get down and then everything feels like too much work and that first kick in the arse is the hardest. But then it's great when you get past it. I was the same a few weeks ago with being social. I was really down and antisocial and it was just easier to avoid everyone and pretend I wasn't around. But I slipped up I think and someone found me online - one of my best friends actually - and so we talked and I remembered that actually social interaction isn't terrible! I still mostly hide away but I talk to my friend and my brother and one of my podcasting friends and that's more 'cos they're the only people that I'm interested in than because I'm still 100% antisocial - honest!

It snowed today, *lots* it was amazing. It didn't stick much but in a couple of places it did and it had that magic crushing/crunching feeling beneath your feet, it was so great.

I broke the no-chocolate ban again this weekend. The video making was becoming stressful and my colleague was needing some too. I got my favourite Milka Amavel praline god-made conoction and some Cote D'Or milk chocolate which was surprisingly not great. I haven't that brand in a while but I remember it being fairly good but I was kinda disappointed. Oh well, it did the job and I will endeavour not to have chocolate at the weekend but I can't make any promises!

21 more sleeps till Christmas!

Story...

I did it! I got my arse in gear and wrote 728 words! Go me, they're from (if the story stays as a trilogy) somewhere in the last book, if not the first chapter. I'm sure writing writing non-linearly across a potential trilogy is a bad idea but I just wasn't able to get into the beginning stuff. It's going to need some editing because though all narrative I was making up the story a sentence or two in advance. I like the direction the story took though. It's pretty good. Interesting too :D Yay for having your hand controlled by a story rather than over thinking things :D

Other interesting stuff happened probably today. iMovies has become one of the banes of my existence - along with FedEx - by being obtuse, weird and difficult. If you have a Mac and ever decide to buy Snapz Pro X to do screencasts with which you can edit in iMovie ALWAYS set the file type to something other than the default. You do it when saving, change it from Animation to MPeg 4 or whatever you want. Otherwise iMovie thinks that it is protected content and won't export it. Well... it will, it exports a movie that's all black - not very useful you can imagine. So now we need to do the screencast all over again. And Evout and I are finally giving up on finding test data, we've found some numbers and now we're just going to get coding 'cos five or six days of googling stuff can actually drive you mad. But anyway - things are actually *happening* at work now; coding, screencast stuff and pedro is going to force Matthias to condescend to helping me deploy the bloody program.

Ummmmm. Nothing else to say except 22 more sleeps till Christmas! And snow tomorrow hopefully. xx

Snow, burns and reputations

Snow because... I was discussing skiing with some people on a forum and then had "Let it snow" in my head all day. And it's going to snow again on Thursday - yay!

I burnt myself on my oven today... twice... again. Admittedly only one of them hurts but it hurts quite a bit. I have one of those ovens in a box like a microwave. Which is the daftest thing. I would rather have a smaller room than that oven. Because, from what I gather, Rotterdam is big on apartment living. But often the kitchens I've seen have been small, no more than "galley kitchens". A colleague of mine doesn't even have an oven. What he cooks chips in I don't know... ;) But, thinking about this more as I go along, I guess it must be a product of their culture in some ways. In britain the hearth was very much a focal point of the home and food is a big thing in Britain so kitchens have stayed fairly big. But in Holland maybe they don't have the same kind of history that attaches them to their kitchen so much. It's a shame. I love cooking and I love my familys' big kitchens with a dining table in so we all hang out and talk and stuff. And it's something I definitely want to have in my house, a really big kitchen where there can be food making and eating and entertaining and kids can do their home work. Really keep the kitchen as the centre of my home.

Plus then I'll have an eight hob four door beast of an oven and won't burn myself all over my hands while trying to take cauliflower cheese out of the fricking thing.

Reputations then. I was telling my friend how I thought that everyone should live in Holland for a couple of months, proper living there - not in hotels. Because then all the people who loved it could stay and it would give everyone else an appreciation of how wonderful Britain is. He said it's probably a "Grass is always greener" situation and he might be right to a certain extent. I still think this is more than that though. Well, maybe I'm loving Britain a *little* bit more than is justifiable and perhaps I'm propping it up on a pedestal. Regardless. Holland is not for me.

So my friend says that England sucks (he's welsh) and I asked him why he thought that it was just England that sucked and he said the Wales rocks and it was England that was letting the side down. He said it had a bad reputation. For a whole bunch of things. Which I thought was unfair. OK so it has a bad rep for the big things like "being America's lap dog" - which was Britain not England FYI Mr. Welshie - but there are lots of good things about England (and Britain) and those are the things that I think sit in other people's subconcious.

The cities, the beauty (which he also contested), tea, scones, marmalade, rowing, hills, Cricket (even when we suck) Harry Potter! But these are things, I think, that are conjured to mind when people mention England. They might be wrong - not everywhere is beautiful, not all the cities are cool - but they are there.

Let's do some other countries shall we?

France:
Bad Reputation: poncy snobby elitists
Actual subconcious things that spring to mind: cheese, wine, healthy, Paris, mediterranean summers.

America:
Bad Reputation: George Bush (it's going to take a while to get that stain out I'm afraid)
Subconcious things: Liberty, space, diversity, snow (just me), Starbucks

Not to mention all the other things that an individual might think of :-

People: Stephen Hawking, The Beatles, Voltaire, Daguerre, Nicholas Flamel, Martin Luther King, George Washington
Places: London but also Southwold or Great Yarmouth, Paris, Carcassonne, Toulouse, Washington, Salem, Forks WA (Read Twilight ;) )
Things: Wellingtons, stamps, pasteurisation, the metric system, the light bulb and sticky tape apparently - Go Team USA!
Food: fish and chips, sandwiches, cheese, raw steak, chocolate chip cookies

So you see - despite some major bad reputations - it really is the little things that matter.

Good night.

Chocolates...

Happy first of December my dears - it's almost Christmas time! I love Christmas and I will have no groaning about it in the comments if you please :D

I found out I got my student loan in yesterday so I have spent lots of money :S On other people's Christmas presents - in my defence. I may have spent a bit on me but... well it's my money and I don't care. I did put a big lump in my savings accounts before I started spending so it's not *wasting* per se ;)

I've done 4 and 2 halves worth of Christmas shopping already which I'm very proud of! I just bought my best friend what may just be the most amazing present in the world. Or at least, we thought so. Thorntons now do Alphabet Truffles you can write your own message in truffles. Mess around with it - the letters are actually photos of truffles so you can see what your message will be like. It's amazing! Well, fairly simple really but seeing as I am sending my friend a fun christmas message we think it's hilarious!

I also came across this website a little while ago: http://www.iloveyoumorethanchocolate.co.uk/Default.aspx which I think you'll agree is quite the best name for a chocolate web site you could imagine! They have great looking chocolate, cute creations and some chocolately phrases ranging from the simple: 'Mine Mine Mine Mine Mine Yours' to 'Feeling Stressed? Indulge'.

Anyway yes, lots of chocolate and despite, accidentally, breaking my no-chocolate-during-the-week ban (someone put it in my hand and it went in my mouth before I remembered) I intend to keep a calm head about all this chocolate and merely buy it for other people - aren't I good?

In light of what I said yesterday about enforced writing I have decided it will be the next activity to be phased into the regime. I can manage (normally) no chocolate on weekdays and so now we need something else to manage.

At least five days a week I will do some writing. I will write at least 100 words every one of those five days. More is, of course, allowed.

I know I know, it's only 100 words but at the rate I'm going it's better than nothing - literally. And hopefully that'll get me back into it and I can up the amount. And it's to be five separate days mind. No storing it up for the weekend - no no no. Not allowed.

There are probably other things I should say but I can't think what they are and it's half eleven so I'm offskiing which is obviously the present participle of 'offski'...