In the shade of a willow

On being well read

2010-04-06T01:47:00.003+02:00

So today my boyfriend linked me to http://1morechapter.com/1percent/ and we have decided to undertake the challenge. Except that! I have read 26 of the 1001 books in the free (I am too poor to fork out for the huger list) excel spreadsheet downloadable here. 26 is 2% of the total 1294 books to read before you die (or whatever) so I have decided to undertake a new challenge.

I pledge to read 5% of the full 1294 books to read before you die. That is 65 books in total. I pledge to do so before April 2011. Should be a fun year...

Anyways. The list of books I shall read is as follows:

The Rainbow
Women in Love
A Farewell to Arms
American Psycho
Atonement
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Cold Comfort Farm
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Doctor Faustus
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Far From the Madding Crowd
Frankenstein
Gone With the Wind
Gormenghast
Great Expectations
Gulliver's Travels
Life of Pi
Lord of the Flies
Love in the time of Cholera
Middlemarch
Oliver Twist
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Tarzan
The 39 steps
The Cider House Rules
The Count of Monte-Cristo
The English Patient
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Handmaid's Tale
The Maltese Falcon
The Reader
The Satanic Verses
The Shining
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
The Thousand and One Nights
The Three Musketeers
The Time Machine
The Wasp Factory
Wild Swans

These are from a cut down list of roughly 80 and included books that I've heard of, been told I ought to read, know I ought to read, know I ought to have read and plain old books that are already on my bookshelf.

Those are all in alphabetical order save the first two as they come under the category of 'books that are on my bookshelf'. Wish me luck. I reckon I ought to be reading a book every two weeks to finish by next April and I shall endeavour to review each book before starting the next.

Tarrah xx

Magic...duh!

2010-01-30T13:45:00.002+01:00

So I deemed it time for a new post lest I forget again for months at a time.

The subject of today's post is: duh moments. I'm reading a book by Tamora Pierce for the umpteenth time, I love them, there are a few things wrong with them but they're great nonetheless. And the time-period she has set her books in is similar to the one I want to set mine in. And she mentioned 'homework by candlelight'. Now, I've worked by candlelight and it is a pain in the BUM. You need a good number of candles to get anything done be it work, reading or making lasagne. Seriously. So that reminded me that *my* characters would have to do work by candlelight. Damn. And then I remembered there was magic in my story so...why not have lights that work by magic? Brilliantly simple and, I suppose, so very obvious. I need to work out the specifics and I'm sure it won't actually come up in the book that often -if ever- but *I* need to know.

Any duh moments when writing you'd like to share?

Willow xx

I'm BACK!

2009-12-09T21:21:00.003+01:00

It's true, months and months later, I have finally gotten round to returning to blogging, just in time to wish y'all a very merry Christmas.

Uhm, news, I am back in Britain, Wales specifically and loving it! Back at University, applying for jobs, doing assignments (honest!) and working around my lectures at Millets - an outdoor shop. It's fun and it's so good to be home.

I could list loads of reasons for having disappeared but you don't want to hear it, suffice to say, I'm glad I'm back ^_^

Tell me your news. I've missed you guys...

Oh oh! Shout out to/for/about Marilyn Brant over at Brant Flakes who has had a book published, will be getting another published next year and is in the process of writing a third. I am so chuffed for her! Her first book According to Jane is on Amazon, and on my Amazon wishlist (and has been since it was first available for pre-order) ready for some Christmas money to buy it for me ;)

Love love love.
I promise not to wait eight months before posting again ;)
xxxxxx

Big news!

2009-04-01T20:00:00.002+02:00

That's right! I have amaaaazing news. So you might have noticed if you're a reader of this blog that I am somewhat unhappy with my life in the Netherlands. I don't talk about it much but it might have come across... Lol, like I don't bitch about it a lot. I'm sorry about that btw. Anyways. So my contract was for 12 months meaning I had to stay until the end of June. But that's CHANGED! Yeah baby, due to a number of reasons that haven't been explained to me plus the fact I mentioned I was quite homesick I get to go home on 26th April! Woohoo! I am so unbelievably chuffed hehehehe.

In other news I finished a story! OK, so it was one of those sub-ops and was *definitely* written to a deadline which is less great but all two of my readers enjoyed it soooo...Whatever. I submitted it about eleven pm my time last night which is about five their time and I haven't heard back yet I doubt I will for a while. I'm not really sure how these things go. It's a story for Circlet Press, this e-book in particular so I'll let you know if I get e-published or not!

Fun times ^_^

Whooooooooa it's been a long time

2009-03-20T08:58:00.004+01:00

So, as you might have noticed I haven't blogged in a while. I decided to give up on that whole blogging once a day thing because I realised that I had nothing interesting to say anymore. I was always tired when I was writing the post and it just wasn't working. Unfortunately *now* I managed to forget to blog *ever* Sooooooo here goes a MAHUSIVE catch up!

Testing week went well, version 24 of the company project was released. Yar for them.

MY PROJECT WAS RELEASED!!!! Seriously this time. It is actually actually actually out there. In the big wide world. I'm *so* proud. And it's nice to think that, given that I have firmly decided to leave this business behind, I have left something out there in this field that people are really using. And not just that, this technology is, I'm told, really quite desirable so the company having it available might well just have been the deciding factor in people using it. It's not the same as some interns projects that never see the light of day or aren't used widely but mine...Is really out there. Yay for me.

I have been lazy on the book-writing front too, so! I decided to write some stories from some sub-ops Paperback Writer mentioned. They're very *very* different from my story but I figured they might get me back in the writing frame of mind, plus then I can write some stuff and get some feedback on it, even if it's just "No thanks that's not what we're looking for" I haven't got my heart completely set on being in their (e-)book though I'd be immensely proud of myself if they did print it. But it's good practice and thinking in other genres is quite fun.

Oh, and the lovely Marilyn actually commented on a post to ask how thing were going *sends Marilyn a hug* specifically to do with my website. So here it is: http://faeryforest.co.uk/ Slightly different from before lol I'm working to work on the "theme" as Drupal calls it. You can use a whole bunch of set themes or there are configurable ones. So I decided to get one of those so I can fiddle with it, make it my own. I'd encourage any readers I might have to sign up so you can join in the forums or something but a) nothing much is going on and b) I'm not sure how much you'd have to discuss with 18 yr old computer science students in Wales! But hey, it'd be nice if you wanted to :)

I guess those are the big things, people are coming to visit me soon though, my mother is coming today and my boyfriend and some friends are coming over easter!

The weather's turned lovely over here which is nice, I've made some fun cakes, I made brownies last week - yum!

I should go - work time and all that jazz!

Love love love.

Maybe I'll write more often again. *sigh*

P.S. Happy Equinox every one

Testing week

2009-02-24T23:57:00.002+01:00

It's begun! Not testing my stuff, no that'd be far too easy. Nope, yet another testing run for visible. Seriously, sometimes I wonder who designed this. There are so many illogical wtf moments it's ridiculous. But anyway, testing means not working and not working means not thinking so let's hope the rest of the week is taken up with testing ^_^

Other than that, not much going on! My friend wants me to scan my face... I declined!

Night.

Catch up

2009-02-23T23:23:00.003+01:00

Oh dear. It happened again. Mass distraction. Mmmkay.

So, Saturday. Fragalot came over \o/ I overslept, was almost late and then his train was delayed. For an hour ¬_¬ But meh. It's all good. I finally went in a little restaurant that had often looked tempting but I don't eat by myself so I'd never gone in - amazing pancakes! They were so yummy. Then we mooched around and finally got to the square where we were supposed to be meeting the others. And there were skateboarders <3 But then my camera died out of the blue. I hope it's just the battery or I'm so screwed and so gutted. I love my camera, it can't be broke :S But Fragalot took some cool pics so it's all good in the end. We also went to see Yes Man. Such a good film. Jim Carey is an excellent actor methinks. I mean, I think he goes over-board on the weird faces/noises things that he does. But without them he wouldn't be Jim Carey so...

Sunday... Electricity went out, a fuse blew or something. I can turn back on all the fuses except for the wired lights. Meh... cooking by candle light is fun ¬_¬

Work still blows. Talked to Dad today though he has fun skiing! And is going again next week... Ugh, I want SNOW!

Have been encouraged to take up writing again. I shouldn't have abandoned it really. So yeah, maybe I'll get some done... I hope so. I like my story!

Night night.

Yup, too good

2009-02-21T00:23:00.002+01:00

Bleugh, it was a long hard day today. Authentication (no, I won't explain ;) ) still didn't work and my glorious loving boss decided to a) ask me to do stuff b) make me change stuff c) suggest things that would be nice THEN DO THEM WITHOUT TELLING ME So, yeah, ugh. And instead of a late night I decided to just leave. At six.

So I got home, reheated some food from last night. Drank an 89 cent small bottle of smirnoff ice, had some ice cream. And it's all good.

I also took one of those Jung psychology test things: http://similarminds.com/jung.html It was quite interesting. I took a similar test earlier but it came out with a result that was only half "me" this one however, is all me. Not all *of* me, there are some bits that are still present in other "results" but there wasn't anything I would disagree with. So that was cool. Check it out, see what you came up with. The similarminds site has its own "profile" page for each Jung-type but there are also fairly good descriptions here - that's linked to my Type. INFP. Sounds a bit wishy-washy but hey. Not everyone gets to share a psychology type with Shakespeare, ET and the Virgin Mary :P

I took the BBC brain-sex quiz too. I've taken it before, three or more years ago now. I have a 100% asexual brain! Woo! I think... Anyway, if you fancy having a go and don't feel totally embarrassed about the results post them up ^_^

Night night.

Too good to be true

2009-02-19T01:08:00.004+01:00

Well it would have been wouldn't it? I knew it and it was. *sigh* I almost blogged yesterday but I forgot to hit the right button. Anyway I was having testing issues which Sietse fixed, followed swiftly by authentication issues. Not yet fixed. And then! Coding changes. Bye bye 20th February release. Probably... That or a late night >_< *sigh* fun fun fun. And all that jazz.

I was chatting to my new Italian housemate again today. She's so lovely ^_^ The only down side is that she's so chatty and I wanted to come back and talk to welp and people. She distracted me a bit from that needless to say. But it's ok really hehehe.

Ummmm. I've been playing with adding stuff to my website. I actually have a proper home page and stuff now! www.faeryforest.co.uk heeheehee.

Bed time...

Problem resolutions...

2009-02-18T00:09:00.003+01:00

That's right! Problem semi-solved ^_^ The work one that is. Sietse came over and pair-programmed with me for a couple of hours. Again it was one of those "Let's change everything" jobs. But as it was only really the XML he changed and it was all made up anyway I didn't much care... But yes. Just a bit of tweaking, some testing, integration with Ewout's stuff and... we might have a release! Though I'm trying not to get my hopes up, seeing as the releases have never worked out before.

Speaking of releases - testing fun next week for VIZ >_< *sigh*

On a cool note though. Through a legal aliens e-mail someone had posted about wanting artists and photographers to help make e-cards as part of her new business. Just donate some of pictures (fully credited) to put on e-cards that managers can send to employees, she's trying to battle the "bad manager" issues that are often existent. It's a really cool idea I think and as I haven't much else to do with the photos other than put them on flickr and dA I figured I may as well put them to good use ^_^

That's pretty much it. Might hang up my rose to dry actually.

Night x

Meh

2009-02-17T00:37:00.002+01:00

Bad day at work today. Just... people being arses. 115 days left \o/ Gods I hate it. I have that deadline tomorrow. Though I do think I'll be able to make it I just don't much want to go in. I'm starting think it's not really worth making cake for them either. I mean. Some of them appreciate it but on the whole... I dunno. Yeah. Just a bad day. Yeuch.

On the upside there's another photo meet up on Saturday *and* my belgian friends is probably coming so that should make it more interesting ^_^ I'm going to use colour film this time. Twenty euros a film (developing) is a bit much and as I get to pay for three more on thursday... I'll be feeling a tad poor!

Bleugh...

Happy Valentine's Day... and all that jazz

2009-02-15T01:27:00.004+01:00

As I wished you all yesterday, I hope you all spent today exactly as you wanted. Within reason, I mean, if you wanted to spend the day with Johnny Depp (I don't blame you if you did!) then I hope this day managed to live up to slightly more realistic expectations ;)

Today was better that I thought it was going to be. I have a boyfriend, of sorts... We met on t'internet through a teacher as he goes to my university - so it's not just a random internet relationship! It's been quite a whirlwind to be honest! But yes, so we've been officially together ten days. Needless to say given that he's in Wales and I'm in Rotterdam I wasn't expecting anything. I really wasn't. So when I got woken up at the godawful hour of 9:30 ;) - hey! it's Saturday - opening the door to a lady holding a rose was quite possibly the most pleasant surprise that can turn up at 9:30 on a Saturday. Unless it was himself - that would have been pretty good too! Lazy person that I am I washed up a bottle to put the rose into, trimmed the stem etc. and went back to bed! When I got up two hours later I promptly took pictures of it ^_^

I didn't do much else today. I meant to go into town to buy a usb wireless majig for my computer but decided to stay in and talk to Welp instead. Which means I have to go out shopping tomorrow funfunfun! But then I will have internet and can put my computer online and maybe, just maybe, it'll work...

Go Wales in the rugby! Hehe, being French and English and going to Uni in Wales gives me a fifty per cent chance of supporting a team that wins the Six Nations! Wales are looking good so far for another Grand Slam this year which would be amazing.

More art stuff

2009-02-14T02:23:00.003+01:00

So there are *more* photos up on my flickr account. And then I decided that they were going to drive me crazy - looking at black and white photos from the same trip over and over so I've put up some drawings instead. Fun times. To be fair I'm kind of cheating. I haven't done any proper drawing for a while so these are all kind of old. Hopefully I might do some more drawing but I'm not banking on it! I really need to organise my art work - I've photos and drawings all over the place, it's getting a bit ridiculous. Another trip to Blokker to buy boxes maybe? Hehehe. It might be a good idea actually. Given that I haul stuff everywhere. Some of these drawings are oh, five years old, if not more, and yeah they've travelled everywhere with me. Finally being immortalised! I'm clearly going to have a house with an attic that I can convert into an "Art space" then put all my art work or the art of friends/relatives all over the walls. It can be attached to my dream dark room and photography studio ;)

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. I hope you all get to spend it exactly as you wish, or near enough ^_^ xx

Halo!

2009-02-13T02:01:00.002+01:00

Hehe, so I *finally* went back to Ewout's and played some more Halo. I didn't do quite as well as last time but it's been like a month since I played so I figure I'm excused. I wasn't totally useless either so it's all good.

More photos going up ^_^ There were some less interesting ones at the end of the first film (all of which is now up) but the second one is more promising so hopefully cooler photos will be up in the next couple of days!

Nada mucho mas... xx

FOSDEM and photos

2009-02-12T00:32:00.002+01:00

So, um, yes. Last weekend I went to FOSDEM, it was lots of fun. We had great weather on the Friday (no lectures) so we walked around Brussels taking photos. Brussels is a beautiful city I thought. Sure it's got some down points, what city doesn't? But I thought on the whole it was very very pretty. When I get my films back (next week) I'll show you...

Speaking of which!! I've done it! I have scanned and uploaded some piccies ^_^

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amethystwillow

So the black and white ones are from the UPC and there will be more to come. The other ones are older and stuff, bleh. But yay! I have some up! Only... 9 more films to go... that were developed in Rotterdam >_< It's an undertaking lol.

But yes, FOSDEM was great, it was nice seeing some people from Aber and meeting some new people. I learnt some stuff too... I also drank beer! Proper Belgian beer. It was lush! I got really rather drunk, much fun was had!

I had a meeting with Peter K today which was less bad than I thought it was going to be but I've still come out of it with two deadlines ¬_¬ but I thought I was going to get majorly told off and I wasn't so it's all good.

People might be coming to visit me over Easter! Fun fun fun. Things are pretty good anyways :) Except that people at work suck and/or are leaving. *sigh* some things never change though that's just the way life is I guess.

Night night x

Excuses time

2009-02-11T00:52:00.000+01:00

Ok so, I was away Friday and Saturday, as I said. Then I forgot on Sunday and my internet was broken yesterday.

I've been playing with my scanner today so it's late. A complete update tomorrow ^_^

Night all x

T'was the night before FOSDEM..

2009-02-05T23:47:00.003+01:00

..and all through the house, the Kate monster was sewing. But then! She finished! Woop woop. And now she's going to bed! *Before* midnight... roughly ^_^

Bleh

2009-02-03T23:50:00.002+01:00

Dull day at work, again.

But I got to get my photos! They're very pretty and very expensive :S I now know what some of my spare cash will be going on... Still, they're pretty awesome so I'm chuffed ^_^

Not really got much else to say I don't think...

2009-02-02T23:50:00.002+01:00

I don't have a good title for today really. I just tried to get my vista license 'cos the boys at work said I wouldn't have to download it I could just get the license. But, unsurprisingly perhaps, they were wrong. This is what happens when people who have bugger all knowledge of what you have to do try and help you. ¬_¬

Ah well, seems I do have to download it and now it's late and I haven't - whoops! Bah! It's my computer, I've already gotten it weeks ahead of schedule so it can wait I guess.

I'm on the verge of an actual breakthrough at work. I may have managed to solve the problem I've been working on for a long long time. And it's not just because I've been spending too much time on IRC. The problem with code you haven't written and only half understand is that it takes a looooooooong time to unravel. But I think I might have done it!

I'm still not done with my sewing either :S Gonna have to speed up a bit!

Hmmm Welp ^^

Do Nothing Sunday

2009-02-01T21:17:00.002+01:00

I had planned on setting up my computer today. I really had! But then the place where I download it from - legally! - was down for maintenance. So I still haven't got a fully functioning computer *sigh*

On the upside Welp and I confirmed the fact that we liked each other - woo!! Unfortunately now we're even more down about the fact that we can't see each other at FOSDEM. *gutted*

I'm going to try and restart meditating and that kind of thing again. I don't remember why I stopped, forgot probably. So there, another compulsory objective!

Nothing much else to report.

Night night xx

P.S. Woo!

Buggrit!

2009-02-01T01:26:00.003+01:00

I forgot *again* This is not going well...

So yesterday was JB's last day at work. I'm really going to miss him, he was one of the few always-lovely guys at work. But he's getting paid more and I think he'll be happier so that's all good.

Not much else happened. Welp started walking! He's on crutches now and very mobile it seems! He may even not have to go back to another hospital, just straight home or back to Aber as he so wishes.

The IRC channel #fresher was "usurped" by #42. Basically we encouraged everyone to move over to the new one due to the fact that not everyone on the channel was a fresher *and* all the freshers on it wouldn't be next year!

This time next week I'll be at FOSDEM! I wish Welp was going to be there :( I *might* have a small crush on him >_>

My black and white photos from last week aren't done yet, they should be ready on Tuesday. On the up(?) side. I now own a scanner. A non-cheap one, eeks! But still, it means I can scan all my pictures in - woo!

Tomorrow is D-Day... Download-Day. Tomorrow I *will* sort out my computer, I *will* do it. This is getting ridiculous. And now I don't have an excuse because I have an extension cable. A black one. Yes, I did specifically buy a black one, even if it possibly cost more. Yes... I have issues! But otherwise it wouldn't match!

I finished Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs. I think I'm getting soppier, I got a little teary at the end lol. It was very good though a little too much "OMG he's dead! Oh... no... wait, he's still alive!" going on but that's not really a big problem lol. I think I might start on one of the nice hard backs tonight.

My website is closer to being set up. I still have to create a fireFTP account (I think) and then I can upload proper HTML files. Then my website will be truly my own! I also found some people to do an online "book club" type thing with so I'm going to work out how to fix up that forum thing. For the other online book club we might be reading Fight Club, Catcher in the Rye or Brave New World. I loved Brave New World but I haven't read either of the others, I'm quite looking forward to this months. Perhaps if I've gotten the forum up in time I'll set it for our book club too. Or maybe just review it ^^

Night night xx

P.S. *big* crush...

The way of the pin

2009-01-29T23:45:00.004+01:00

So yeah, I called up my step-mother this morning, she's nurse you see. And she said I needed to go to the hospital, which scared me not a little! So I went to work to find someone to go to hospital with me and they said that I should call up my GP first so that then I wouldn't have to sit in A&E forever! I started calling the GP and couldn't get through for more than an hour and my stomach is getting pretty painful by this point so I go tell my boss who then rings them up and gets through immediately. Of course. Anyway doc says don't go to the hospital, come see me... in two and a half hours... So in the meantime I am told to eat some Ontbijtkoek which should wrap round the pin and stop it spiking me and help me pass it etc. I go to the doctor and he said "Yeeeeeeah, it'll be fine, you'll just have to wait". So at the end of the day I was completely right to just let it get on with it! Lol, but this way I didn't have to do much work so that was cool!

Not much else is happening. Still talking to people on IRC and one of the guys that I'm going to meet at FOSDEM is being fairly flirty with me so my inner flirt is responding. And my friend told me he was a little jealous bless him lol. But I explained that I couldn't help it and I think he was a bit mollified lol.

Night night

Wednesday

2009-01-29T00:25:00.002+01:00

Nothing much happened today. The canal outside work is freezing over. Oh! And I swallowed a sewing pin!

I was making my friend's bag and I was holding a couple of pins in my mouth, as you do, but then I stabbed my leg and inhaled... Yeah, not sure if I should see someone about it or not, I don't often swallow much stuff I'm not supposed to! We'll see what happens I guess!

Ummm not much else. Found other reasons to dislike Sietse, so it goes.

Realised that I might actually have finished one bit of coding though it wasn't specifically a part I was supposed to do yet. I may have to do more code moving etc. Bleugh

Night night

Oh noes!

2009-01-27T23:53:00.002+01:00

I almost posted last night but I was distracted before I clicked the Publish button then closed Firefox without clicking it - d'oh!

So, yesterday: I got my screen! (It's so shiny) I also got fabric to turn into goodie bags for FOSDEM. It's going to be lots of fun.

I cleared all my desk and wiped it down and plugged my computer together (the externals) then I realised I'd left my power-cable at work... Ah well, I haven't actually turned it on today either, just never did lol. I'll turn it on tomorrow hehehehe.

I finished my prototype drawstring gift bag, it's pretty darn cool actually! I'm now making my friend's one then I'll get on with making my other friend's then mine :D They're easier to make than stockings ^^ You don't need to bother with a pattern for one thing.

Nothing much else is happening, work is being crappy again but I'm making lots of new aber friends so it's all good.

Oh! My friend had his skin graft yesterday and it all went well apparently, hopefully he'll be back in aber by the end of the week :D

Night night

Vintage Black and White

2009-01-26T00:39:00.002+01:00

Today was photo shoot day! Here's the link to the pictures that have been uploaded so far, not sure when mine will make it up, developing and scanning yet to be done! It was really good fun and we had beautiful weather.

Very sleepy now - bed time!

And again

2009-01-25T00:51:00.003+01:00

It's been a bad week for blogging. This is technically my blog for the 24th but it's late *again* So what happened this week? I made a new friend! He was supposed to be going to this FOSDEM conference with some Aber people and we were gonna meet there, but then he had his leg horrible broken and is gonna have crutches for six months so, yeah, he ain't coming! But he encouraged me to join the Aber IRC chatroom and I have since made lotsa new friends :)

Whoops got distracted...

So yeah - geeky conference, geeky friends :)

Work was going OK, didn't do much on Wednesday, felt sick on Thursday then I get in on Friday and decide to check out some of our test tracking numbers as I do about once a week, just to see what's going on. Turns out DHL have very kindly completely changed their layout which means the screenscraping isn't going to work. I still have no idea how to start deploying on my local machine again and besides I just changed the whole freaking setup so I'd have to check out an older edition which sucks ass. So I emailed the DHL people about their API and it seems that they're changing that too so I've upped the JIRA issue priority and maybe I'll get on that thought I still need to finish the REST stuff - nyark!

Photography tomorrow!! Woop woop! I'm looking forward to it thought I think it might be wet, real wet. So I'll keep an eye for emails - see if it gets called off - I don't want to turn up by myself!

Over the next few days I have a new sewing project. My injured friend would like us to bring him back lots of freebies so I'm going to make him a bag! There was the possibility of a book-bag style bag but I figured he'd never really use it so I'm going to make him a - much simpler - drawstring bag. It seems pretty easy hehe, maybe I'll make a dinky one first then make him a bigger one to hold all the free stuff :D

Ummm... it's ten past two, g'night! xx

I did it again...

2009-01-20T22:51:00.003+01:00

Yup, turned off the computer before I blogged - whoops!

So I did a major recycling run for work today, about three crates of paper and *lots* of boxes. It wasn't fun. But I learnt one thing; never get personalised stationery. At least, not if you're a company and so you'll get lots in at one time. Then change your logo. I'm so glad it was recycling because there must have been hundreds and hundreds of pages of unused company-logo paper. It was such a waste but then it's not like it can go back in the printer. It was so sad :(

Hum hum hum what else? Oh! I'm going to a totally geeky conference in Brussels on the 6th of February woo! It's all about OpenSource development and stuff. Should be good! Hopefully at least Matthias will come with me and maybe Ewout too. I asked everyone else via email but they haven't gotten back to me so whatever! We'll see what happens...

I'm sure I should have more to say... Just a short one it is!

Confusion

2009-01-18T23:01:00.002+01:00

Yeah, I'm confused right now. You know how, when you're on your dashboard, there's a little counter that says how many posts you've... posted? Mine says 79 but I only have 64 "year in posts" tagged posts and five posts prior to that. I think I may have mis-tagged a couple since I started because I have more posts since I started the daily posting than are tagged as such. But only two. so that gets me to 71. Eight posts seems a pretty big discrepancy... Do comments count as posts? This is my theory but I'm not sure!

Anyway yeah, so that's confusing. Also I think the whole internet is on the blink, either I or various of my friends are signing in and out of msn. Now if we were all in the same place it'd be different. Obviously it's not possible but it's a scarily amusing theory.

Oh! I promised reviews! Bother, I have a few stacked up now. In reverse order then:

The Andromeda Strain
I thought this was great, very tense, I swear only read it half properly because I wanted to find out what happened. Very "scary" in the it-could-happen kind of scary way. If you're in to sci-fi I do recommend it! Having said that the ending was a bit of a let down. Given all the tension and the unknowns that people had to deal with and the bizarre and crazy deaths and stuff I thought something at least "vaguely" catastrophic was gonna happen. There were often times when it was mentioned that "It was 48 hours before he realised his mistake" as if this mistake was somehow crucial. Which it was... sort of. At least you thought so. Hopefully I haven't given away too much to make it not worth the read lol!

The Great Gatsby
This was an... odd story. It was, frustrating mostly, it didn't really seem to have much of a point to it I must admit. Some of the scenes were very interestingly described but yeah, not overly interesting. There were many occasions when dramatic stuff could happen, but something else half as dramatic happened instead. There were a couple of really big things but they weren't given due attention. I kinda ended up disliking the narrator for being so... non-committal about certain situations. And he has a vague love interest that fizzles out, most of the book just fizzled. That's how I felt it went anyways.

Argh! There was a third one I was supposed to give you but I've forgotten it!

I was slightly annoyed over something to do with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I was the first one to finish it in my online book club but that's fine 'cos I can just make a thread for the book and start talking. So I wrote a great big long post about the things I felt were interesting, what was important. All that jazz. And the next person to finish - and possibly the only person who will read the story - said "My friends say I'm a robot".

Now, OK, this forum is a bit of a weird one. It's pretty eclectic and that comment isn't particularly out of place. But *she's* the person who set up the book club so we could discuss books and that's *all* she has to say about this one? OK, so I wrote a *lot* about that book but fine, ignore what I wrote! Write your own stuff, talk about the book at least. But no, that was her *only* comment. ARGH! People are frustrating! *looks miffed*

Cook shop!!

2009-01-17T22:57:00.002+01:00

I finally finally made it to the cook shop *does little dance* it's so cool! I was so impressed. I may have to go back there and buy more stuff at a later date - woop! I got me a loaf tin and a pie dish and! what must be the most awesome piece of bakeware ever - an expandable cookie sheet! It's in two parts that can be slid apart or together to make a different length sheet. I have a real big oven at work so I can stretch it out and probably will have a smaller one at uni so I can have a shorter tray. I'm so chuffed with it it's untrue!

I went to a photography shop today. There's another photography meet-up next sunday (ugh) with the theme being "vintage black and white". Naturally, in this digital day and age, that could pose quite a problem for afilm photographer like me. Not many places sell black and white film these days let alone develop it. But! Foto Klein to the (slightly expensive) rescue! Not only do they have a huge stock of black and white film *but* they develop it, in three days! There was a little shop in Cambridge, near the station that did black and white development in three hours but not many people used their services so they had bugger all else to do. Great shop; I hope it's still there. But as regards the rest of the world I don't really have high hopes for speedy black and white film development so three days is awesome!

I just watched Panic Room. A very very good movie I felt, I got really tense during it I must say. It really draws you into the action. It was also very well filmed. There were lots of "going through the floorboards" type moments which were well handled. Yeah, really good film.

That's all I can think of to say now. I'm sleeeeeeeeeeeepy!

Night night xx

To bed!

2009-01-16T21:33:00.001+01:00

That's right, I'm going to bed. But I have to post heehee.

Night night!

Riding Whales?

2009-01-15T23:32:00.001+01:00

This should be another quick one really. Posting late again, you'd think I'd learn!

Computer update: it's HERE! And built! And works! And has Vista on it... Hmmm less good ;) But it's all put together, OS installed and I have my new mouse and keyboard but I can't get the screen I want till next week :( Still! Yippee! Hehehehe. I bring it home tomorrow probably. We put it together at work and now that everything is installed the only thing I need to change is the monitor and I can do that here. Though I really need to tidy my desk!!

Right, the reason I'm posting so late is 'cos I was watching a movie. The Whale Rider to be specific. Quite a sweet movie, kinda predictable but it was more moving than I thought it was going to be, less cheesy, I felt. Which was nice :) Um yeah, it's not a funfun movie though but it's not a deep thought one either. It's nice but I can't think of a way to define a decent viewing time. You know, you have pick-me-up movies and he-just-dumped-me ones and one where you're laughing all the time so you're in the mood for a funny one, or you want action or romance. And clearly it's not any of those. But it's a nice movie if you can't think of something else to watch, or you're not in the mood for any other genre. And of course when you want to watch it too! Don't get me wrong, it's just kinda - unclassifiable!

Night night! I'll do reviews over the weekend methinks. Friday tomorrow!!

Just a quick one - in theory

2009-01-14T23:47:00.002+01:00

So just this should be just a quick blog 'cos it's late and I'm tired and I swear I've messed up in this sentence so many times that I really need to go to bed! But! In the spirit of trying to blog every day but having failed miserably recently I came online solely to blog - yay for remembering.

Nothing much has happened today, Sietse reckons my computer parts might be here by the end of the week which means going to buy a screen/keyboard/mouse tomorrow. Fun fun fun!

I got an e-mail about another Rotterdam Photography Collective group outing - Vintage Black and White. And I've found somewhere that might sell black and white film and develop it - I'm so happy ^^ Should be lots of fun.

I went to Jeremy's (Ewout's friend) house today to play xbox games - we played Halo and I didn't suck! OK, comparatively speaking, I did. But I actually killed some people and I've gotten the hang of running around and moving my head/view at the same time. Pretty useful skills I must say. I might actually be vaguely good by the end of my time here - woo, accomplishment.

I had some musings that I thought of earlier which would, in my normal way, probably have become a full-blown essay but that I will instead summarise due to afore-mentioned sleepiness.

I was thinking about language and about how there are so many acronym words going around these days: omg, lol, wtf, ftw being just a few examples. I thought about how the written word was actually created based on speech. And now what we say often becomes written, "doing a delia" "chav" and "asbo" being new words/phrases entered into the English dictionary in the last few years. So speech becomes written words, and I was wondering how long it would be before written words became speech. "Asbo" is a fairly good example. Technically and A.S.B.O. is an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (or something) but it became an acronym and now just a word just in everyday speech. But will people start actually saying "wtf" as in w.t.f.? Or o.m.g. I wonder... A lot of these acronym-phrases have come from the gaming community and some of their words *have* leaked into everyday speech, if only amongst, well, the gaming/nerdy community - n00b being an example. N00b means a newbie but has now become a regular word, though it hasn't yet been dictionarified - which *should* be a word ;) But will these acronyms become proper words too?

It was an interesting thought and occupied me for much of the journey to Ewout's house. I don't really have an answer. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't. But if it does, remember, you heard the theory here first ;)

Night night xx

You get what you wish for...

2009-01-13T23:33:00.003+01:00

So I've been begging for some work to do... mentally, not out loud. And today I got it! It's not nearly as fun as the stuff Ewout is doing but it's should be interesting. It's pretty simple but then might lead to a whole restructure - yes, another one! But it's stuff to do.

I've finally decided on my computer screen and I think I will just get a keyboard and mouse here in the Netherlands then if I want a better keyboard I can get one when I go home. That or I'll get a real nice one but just reassign the keys so it works like an english one :D I'd have to get some little stickers or something but that's all for the future!

I've been in a bad mood all day but it's finally been shifted just by conversation with good friends which is nice. I talked to a couple of dutch guys and they're lovely but it just doesn't work as well as with friends you have a connection with you know?

Thank goodness for well-known friends.

And for ones that don't say "Have you bought a screen yet? Don't get that one, that brand are crap, well fine then! Get that screen. Have you bought it yet? Have you bought WoW yet? I want my zebra!"

*Willow bangs her head on the table* arrrrrrrrrgh ::brain malfunction::

But now I am feeling more chipper and I'm going to play xbox games again tomorrow woop woop! I'm so awful but hopefully after six months I will be fairly decent then I can play against my housemates! I won't win but I might actually do OK, that'll be good enough for me :)

Oh oh! I'm reading The Andromeda Strain so expect a review soon and I also just finished The Great Gatsby at the weekend so I'll review that soon too :)

Night night xx

Very late blogging - but I don't care! =D

2009-01-12T23:01:00.004+01:00

It's been a loooong time since I last posted it. There are various reasons but I cba to list them because they're not very interesting!

News news news then...

I've officially registered to live at a house with three of my friends when I get back to Aberystwyth, I'm so chuffed! I can't wait! We have it from the sixth of June so theoretically I can move in whenever! Or carry the odd thing over and stay there for a few days. It's going to be so cool! *runs round in circle* yippee!

I ordered parts today for the computer I've been thinking about buying for goodness knows how long! I'm not entirely sure when they're coming but fairly soon and then I'm going to put it together in the office. It has light up fans and things lol. I firmly believe that the first self-built computer anyone ever builds needs to have lights! Just because it's so fabulously cliché hehe. Anyway yeah so I've got the computer on order and I have to order the outside bits now. I can order a mouse but not a keyboard from amazon, well, to be delivered to the Netherlands. Very frustrating. And I'm trying desperately to get hold of a screen. PC Pro reviewed one that looks awesome - can I find it in the shops here? No. The ones I can find - do they have a review? No. *sigh* but it's going to be sexy and be a 22" TFT when I find it - woop woop!

Yay for being a geek ^^

I finished "One with the Night" which Marilyn Brant over at Brant Flakes sent me as part of our Christmas book exchange. It was good fun, some interesting additions to vampire lore which would make vampires even cooler! There was quite a bit of "I like him but look he doesn't like me" and "I like her but she shouldn't like me I'm evil" going on which got a little frustrating by the time you're five sixths of the way through and it's like GET TOGETHER ALREADY! Hehehe but then it felt a little unfinished because they were on a "What shall we do now?" precipice and the response was "Whatever you want *gazes into the future* we have all the time in the world" which is nice but I'm obsessed with resolved endings.

I think I would have screamed if JK Rowling hadn't put that epilogue in! It wasn't such an issue in Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn because they'd talked repeatedly about a future so even they had the same precipice (almost exactly those words actually) you did vaguely know what was going to happen. Not like with HP when you weren't even sure he was going to live!

You all know how my book is going to end now. With a nice happily ever after resolved ending. I mean I'm sure there'll be twists and turns and "who will survive?" questions etc. But at least one of the characters has to survive... or they all have to die I guess, that'd be a pretty resolved ending!

Rant time briefly: oh my god! New msn is so... ugh!! It's just... weird! *And* I had to reinstall msg plus! Which was easy but frustrating *sigh*

Loving: Fall Out Boy - Folie a Deux. Amazing album. I've been listening to it since Saturday!

Night night xx

Almost the weekend

2009-01-08T23:47:00.002+01:00

I know, I've been back less than one week and I already want to be off work again... Surely there are people in the world who love their jobs, if you are one of those people please tell me! If no-one responds I won't take it as confirmation that there aren't people who like their jobs, don't worry.

We had another testing day at work today. I've come to realise I quite like doing software testing, it's mostly easy and lots of people join in so it means there's a lot of conversation going on. There are a couple of tables posted on an internal wiki page so you can tick the ones you've done that passed or put crosses next to the ones that failed. It was a good day for the most part.

This evening I went to hang out with Ewout and his friends. They're pretty nice people. Quite a mixed bunch actually. One of the guys, Frank, is one of those sweet "I'm not emo!" kids and a huuuuuuuuuge prude. Which is fun because the other guys aren't, to varying degrees. It was good fun. I played Halo... And sucked ass, major amounts of ass. But I knew I would so at least I didn't let myself down!

Tomorrow I go to kookpunt! *Finally* I get to go play in the big cookery shop :D I hope I don't buy too much stuff... Fun fun fun though. Tomorrow I also have to make a cake again. I don't know what it will be, probably something from my sexy new recipe book ^^ When I get my site up and running I will have a separate recipes section and promise for months on end that I'll update it, honest I will, and just as you give up hope I'll write up billions of recipes hehehe. Which reminds me! I found my own, hand-written recipe book, with my recipe for super awesome unbaked chocolate cheesecake. I'm so happy!

Beeeeed time! x

Snow and art and hobs...

2009-01-08T00:24:00.003+01:00

Right, so I totally forgot to post yesterday, I wish I had one of these excuses but I really don't sadly.

Not much happened that I can remember... The canal outside the office was *completely* frozen over, real thick ice too so people were skating on it and then we had snow today. Snow! It was so pretty, I brought my camera to work in the hope of getting some photos. I lucked out; it was lovely and sunny during my lunch break. I went and took lots of photos and then my colleague had brought his skates in to work so I took a couple of him skating too. Who knows if they'll be any good.

Oh! So my daddy told me over the holidays that to pass the time I should create some kind of online my-wishlist app. People would be able to log in and create their own wishlists, of whatever they wanted. Kind of like the Amazon one but for everything. So I spent time at work planning what would go on that. I've registered two domains but haven't got proper hosting for them yet so I might try another provider, so there's nothing there yet sadly. But when something turns up, even without wishlist I shall post it here. I've decided that I might as well make a whole web site and then have the application be one part of it. This also means that I have the option of creating a web-based app for my dissertation and already having somewhere to put it!

Anyway so I want to put some art on it, y'know, to make it pretty. I've decided on doing some photomanipulation 'cos it's the only kind of art I can really do to any decent extent. Besides, if I'm using deviantArt stock (which I am) I have a guarantee of starting out with decent images! So I'm messing around with that at the moment, I need to download some kind of decent photo editing software. The GIMP frustrates me! I'm thinking of downloading a free trial of Paint Shop Pro seeing as I'm planning on getting a new computer so I don't want to buy it and then do various things to be able to put it on the new PC but if I just use a free trial it may well last long enough for me to do some interesting things! I'll post links to any pictures I make here as well. They'll be of faeries ;) Hehehehe.

I finished Hob's Bargain by Patricia Briggs yesterday. It was good fun though at the end I thought there couldn't be enough pages to actually conclude the story so I probably finished it off in a hurry to find out what would happen and if it would all fit! It did :) I'd quite like to meet a Hob you know, he seemed like quite a friendly creature :) Now to read one of the other billions of books I dragged back with me :D

Night night x

Words then and reviews

2009-01-05T22:51:00.003+01:00

I just found my way on to a blog, through a blog link on a blog that I found as a link to another blog... Or something! Ahh the ways of the web these days, life can be more interesting if you don't know how you got there. I mean, in the long term you need to know where you've been, it's part of who you are, your identity, but in the short term randomly stumbling across things can be good fun. This from the girl who is a self-professed recluse... E-stumbling then I guess it'll have to be. Which is fun too. I follow one blog and from that I found out about another blog. But I can't remember how I got to the original blog apart from through a list of comments on someone else's blog! And I only went to look because she mentioned starbucks and her blog is named after her favourite starbucks drink! Kristi, if you're reading this - that's you! I was in a starbucks deprived place that day!

So then, e-stumbling is fun, and I stumbled upon the Murderati blog which looks nothing less than intriguing I must say! I've only read the first post but already I'm interested. Oh sweet words... I like to think of myself as a lesser word nerd and I do sometimes get carried away while reading the dictionary I admit but this was a great post and, I'm afraid, I may have to subject you to a similar post in the near future when I go on a binge heehee. I love words, I love knowing about them, how they're made, where they're from, how really peculiar they are and how their peculiarity changes depending on your state of well-being. Haven't you ever had a moment when perhaps you're feeling a bit tired and you say something and you realise it's an odd word but you never would have noticed otherwise? Same goes for being drunk I guess or in fact just any state, depending on your mood then. For example, I was exhausted this morning, really tired. I know, I know, I shouldn't have slept all day yesterday yada yada, but so I was talking with my friend about feeling asleep and I just had this moment of thinking "sleep is a really fricking weird word". Now that I'm marginally more awake and I realise it isn't, not really, just a regular everyday word. Which given they're all made up is saying something. I need to buy me a thesaurus...

Um um um, I've completely lost my train of thought now... Oh well, I'll talk about something different. I may have mentioned before, vaguely, that I am part of an online "book club". I'm a member of a forum and we just have a book that's set for a certain month and whoever remembers to find out what it is, reads it and then we discuss it. So it's slightly more loose than a regular book club but seeing as we're on different continents I guess that's a given. Anyway, I just finished reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It's actually for the end of the month but again that's the other benefit - you can just read the book when you have the time! Or when you can nick it off your dad...

It was a really interesting book, it's the one on which Bladerunner is based, I really enjoyed it. It was one of those make-you-think books that doesn't actually let you know you''re thinking until after you've read it. I found this out when I wrote up my review for the book club. I didn't have much to say beforehand and, as you've seen me do, words just flowed out of my fingers tips and spread across the page. If only that were the case every time I tried writing. That'd be neat! But then it'd just be a stream of conciousness book and only certain, more intellectually refined, people should do that. I'd literally just be talking to myself which isn't cool... unless it's on a blog?

See? Distractions again... In some ways the book was primarily centred around the idea of empathy, I think. There are other issues, many of them, but empathy was a key concept and could be found in the other issues.

Possibly my favourite "discussion" or issue was based on intelligence and how it was related to empathy. For you see the book is set at some point after the so-called World War Terminus. There's some kind of weird dust that has killed most of the animals and a good deal of people have emigrated to colony worlds. And there are androids. This dust has also affected some of the people, rendering them "chicken-heads" which is just a vague term for anyone with an IQ lower than some determined level. So, on earth, we have humans, chicken-heads and escaped androids who killed people in order to get to earth (and who the hero human has to kill). There are a few occasions where the key characters come into contact with various animals, both real and electric. Electric ones are around for people who can't afford real ones. And the characters' reactions are noted. Isidore, the chicken-head, is the most empathic, he feels for every living thing, even spiders. Deckard, the human, is very empathic though in a different way it seems. He believes in the beauty, sanctity and magnificence of animals, all animals to be fair, but mostly he just ones to own one, to take part and share in the joy that comes from owning one of the few animals left in existence. It's not enough for him to know they exist, he wants one, that makes him sound totally selfish but he's not. And then there are the androids. Particularly in this case androids with a Nexus-6 type brain - which means the top level of android at the time of writing ;). These beings are organic, highly intelligent, have needs and desires like another human being. But they're incapable of empathy. They cannot understand the interest humans have in living things. They literally pull apart Nature's work (the spider) to work out whether it really needs eight legs. Science isn't everything, intelligence isn't everything. If we become too intelligent will we forfeit our humanity? That may not be what Philip K. Dick is asking but it seems an interesting question nonetheless.

There you go... the fingers just type, I had no idea what I was going to say today and yet again words just happened!

Back in Holland

2009-01-04T23:56:00.002+01:00

Almost forgot to post again, bad habits turned up over the holidays apparently!

Umm so yes, I caught the ferry back and it was a really nice crossing, really calm, I know 'cos I was awake for most of it sadly. Not sure why, just couldn't sleep. So I slept most of today instead - yay!

Yesterday not much happened just packing so this is a distinctly uninteresting post lol but I have to get back into the good habits ;)

Night all x

A mixed-up couple of days

2009-01-03T00:44:00.004+01:00

Yeah so today had been pretty mixed. I read the whole of Lynn Viehl's Master of Shadows - really really good. I read the whole thing in an afternoon I was so hooked. I also have finished reading the Vampire Academy book I bought by Richelle Mead also very very good.

I went to see Twilight yesterday!!

It was... alright. Not nearly as dreadful as I thought it was going to be though I did have a lot of issues with it lol. I'm in two minds as to whether to post them here. I wrote them all down in a forum post but perhaps I won't bore you with them ;) Anyway yeah, it was OK really, I didn't expect brilliance and I didn't get it so I wasn't let down by any means.

Today I got up late, did some reading, had the hugest fight with my brother about he's a lazy, ignorant, self-centred, self-loathing hunk of miserable attitude and how him being all those things was hindering him and pissing off all the people who wanted to help him, vaguely got through to him and got him to do some work. God it was a big fight and I doubt it's made any long-term difference but we'll see.

On a darker note I also broke up with my boyfriend. I'd been thinking for the last couple of weeks that actually, no matter how much I loved him we weren't really right for each other. We'd have found that out eventually anyway no doubt but it seemed like seeing as we were so far away anyway there wasn't much holding us together so it seemed ridiculous to hold on to a thing that I knew wasn't right. Sucks though. I found out that he had sort of been thinking the same things but hadn't wanted to say anything. So at least he doesn't hate me! Every cloud...

Tomorrow it's back to the joys of Holland uggggggggh. But still with any luck the supermarket with have the little chocolate not-quite-profiteroles that are so yummy and I can go back to my routine of spending Sundays ignoring the outside world so long as I have something tasty on the inside world ;)

Probably can't post tomorrow as I don't know when I'll be able to go online, I get on my ferry at some late time in the evening. So we'll see what happens.

Night night.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T02:47:00.002+01:00

Um yeah! I hope you all have great New Years Parties. I went to a great one where there were a whole bunch of people I haven't seen for three or so years, I'd forgotten how much fun they were. We used to go to school together, they were all in the year below me or more and they're fair lovely. A damn sight better than the girls in my year it would seem, but I really need to start getting over that. I realised that they weren't very good friends years ago but somehow it still hurts when they forget me yet again. Maybe that shall be my New Year's Resolution, to move on. One of them anyway!

Another one is to keep to my regime that I started in stages back in October or so of the little chocolate and lots of writing.

And perhaps another one should be to take advantage of the fact I live on the continent and actually go places. I don't like to go places by myself much, it scares me somehow and, let's face it, I'm kind of lazy! But the fact of the matter is I might regret not taking the time to go places when I could. I don't think I'd regret it for a while but once I get back to England I have to go off to uni again and then get a job and who knows if I'll have the time or money to go places but little day trips and over-nighters would let me see a whole bunch of places. So that's my next resolution.

Here's hoping I keep them! The first one should be easy 'cos I've started trying already, the second one shouldn't be too hard because I did it before I came home so I should be able to continue. The last one will be hard because it will actually require me to find some get-up-and-go from somewhere and to overcome my... fear? Well not quite the right word but it's 2am so never mind! Overcome my issues with going places alone anyway. But we shall see what happens!

Have a wonderful celebration of the New Year and I wish you all the best for 2009. May you keep your resolutions, may your heart, health and home be safe and strong and may any hardships you have faced in 2008 be overcome and may you not get too many more! I shan't wish you an interesting life, I believe that's been called a curse ;)

Night night x

Making amends...

2008-12-31T00:40:00.003+01:00

...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

2008-12-28T02:43:00.003+01:00

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)

2008-12-25T23:34:00.004+01:00

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

2008-12-24T00:17:00.001+01:00

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

2008-12-22T23:38:00.002+01:00

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

2008-12-21T00:24:00.002+01:00

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!

2008-12-20T00:02:00.002+01:00

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

2008-12-18T22:48:00.004+01:00

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

2008-12-18T00:07:00.003+01:00

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

2008-12-16T23:41:00.004+01:00

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...

2008-12-15T22:47:00.003+01:00

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

2008-12-14T21:19:00.002+01:00

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

2008-12-14T00:35:00.002+01:00

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?

2008-12-12T23:12:00.003+01:00

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

2008-12-11T22:31:00.002+01:00

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!

2008-12-10T22:42:00.002+01:00

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

2008-12-08T23:00:00.010+01:00

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

2008-12-07T23:39:00.003+01:00

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?

2008-12-06T23:31:00.003+01:00

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

2008-12-05T23:09:00.002+01:00

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

2008-12-04T23:12:00.002+01:00

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...

2008-12-03T22:24:00.002+01:00

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

2008-12-02T22:49:00.002+01:00

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...

2008-12-01T23:12:00.002+01:00

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'...

Failure

2008-11-30T21:36:00.003+01:00

Unfortunately but somewhat unsurprisingly I have done no writing. It's not going very well really, everytime I tried to think about what to write next I started thinking about other books - not good. I think I'm going to have to be strict with myself. Set aside a slot of time everyday in which I have to do some writing and have a goal X number of words in said time slot. It's the only way. Well, probably not the only way, but the most efficient way that I can see.

I started making my brother's stocking today so it's ready to be lined too. I was thinking about giving it a little turnover at the top but I have to make sure that the lining doesn't clash too much with the gold on the fabric. Also I need to learn how to read patterns better. I just had to do a demonstration to myself so I could understand the instructions perfectly, I couldn't understand why I needed a slipstich opening for the lining. But now I do, although I don't need it 'cos the lining is the same on both sides so I needn't bother with all that complicated stuff - yay!

I finished my book this morning so yet again I'm down to having nothing to read, *dies* Oooh but I've just found out that the good bookstore in Rotterdam is open till nine from Wednesday - yippee! I can buy that PHP book and some interesting fiction ones too with any luck. I was considering leaving work early but now I can just go straight after huzzah.

I love book shops. I could spend ages in them, I have in fact, and not just in the Starbucks. That's why I like the Borders in Cambridge: it has a starbucks *and* they obviously don't pay their staff enough so they don't come round and bother you 'cos they just don't care. Or maybe Borders knows that people don't like to be bothered in bookshops. This might hold true for other shops but I don't generally go in to other shops. I actually don't... how worrying is that? But then, I don't really buy anything except books. Though I do hate it when, on the few times I go into clothes stores, the staff are always so pushy, if you've been there longer than five minutes they come and ask if they can help. It's like No if I needed help I would a) look lost/confused and/or b) have come looking for you. Since I am still in the trouser section, you have twenty racks of trousers and I'm not looking lost it's probably a safe bet that I do *not* need help.

But maybe that's just me.

I probably have more to say but I can't think what it is except: we had snow today! And: 25 days till Christmas! And: good night.

The Covenant or Why I'm annoyed at Blogger

2008-11-29T21:22:00.003+01:00

I wrote a nice long post yesterday and I'm so sure it was posted - apparently not. I'm more than a little miffed, if only because now I have a black mark on my record for posting everyday - at least the other times: no internet, were valid reasons and now! *sigh*

So I did just watch the Covenant, it wasn't at all scary but it wasn't supposed to be. It was an interesting story but not as well explained as it could have been. They mentioned 'Darklings' a couple of times but there's no real explanation of what one is except that people who use magic can make them out of dead people. And that's all deduced. They seemed like a really cool idea for giving the good guys the idea that something odd was going on but there wasn't enough depth which kinda wasted it. There's some internal battles between the four members of the good gang, just your average jealous/over emotional/sparring type stuff but again it could have been explained better or just not been there. On the whole though it was interesting. Although I'm biased, any movie about paganism that isn't slanderous or crap I'm sure to like. And not only was it about paganism, it was also about Salem paganism. I love Salem, the witchcraft stuff always intrigued me, even before I became a pagan and it was there that I bought the book that put me on this path. I have a soft spot for Salem. So yeah, Salem and Massachusetts witchcraft is right up my street, as it were.

I want to go back there, I haven't been for, oh, only four years which given that I live in England isn't really that long a time. But I want to go back with money and possibly by myself or rather not with my mum's friend and her kids, lovely as they are. But then if I go with money I'd be tempted to buy far too many things! Bumper stickers for my non-existent car, cool throws for my non-existent sofa etc. etc. Money slips through my fingers like you wouldn't believe.

Speaking of money and ways to get it... I emailed one of my lecturers at uni a month or so ago, maybe longer, to ask if they had any jobs going - for my internship. They said no at the time but apparently he mentioned it to a company manager who was at their annual 'let's give the kids proper interview practice' outward bound weekend. The guy got back to them wanting to know if I still wanted a job so my supervisor called me up at work yesterday to see how I was doing. It sounds great but at first I wasn't sure, no reason why I wasn't sure but anyway. Now the more I think about it the more I want to go, I realised the only thing that I really care about in this country is my project and now that I've got it to a finish as it were - there's expansion and improvements that can happen but it's reached its first goal - I don't mind leaving it behind. We've got the lovely new intern who could theoretically pick up the ropes. I just feel bad 'cos Peter (my job supervisor) is my dad's friend and that by leaving I'll be failing him, and my dad to a certain extent. The other thing is that I'm not as unhappy as I was then, I've, I dunno, become used to the situation. I still don't much like it here and when you realise that aside from your project the things you're going to miss are the stationery shop, the fabric shop and the movie store perhaps you should start worrying. But does being able to tolerate the hole in which you live enough justification not to leave? I don't think so, and even if my flat is worse, even if my job is worse I'll still be closer to home, closer to my friends and closer to my boyfriend. I doubt the place I'd live would be worse - this place is a hole. And it's not so much my job that I hate, it's some of the people, so I guess the people could be as bad/worse but I have to believe they won't be. I used to be in two minds about leaving; I knew I couldn't leave to go back to uni, that'd be quitting but I wasn't sure what moving to another job might mean, on that side of things. I think I've said this before but I'm a quitter by nature and so I wanted to stick this out to prove to myself that I could. That's one of the reasons I didn't want to go back to uni - that and I had *no* idea what to do for my dissertation (I definitely need another eight months to figure that out) but moving on to another job? Is that quitting? I'm not sure. I'm sticking out the industrial year but I haven't put up with the job. But then when the job starts to make you feel like shit, is it worth sticking to? are you still a coward and a wimp if you run away? Tough questions.

Well in the light of those decisions plus the fact that I spent two hours distracting my brother trying to persuade him not to leave home on of which I also spent on the phone to my mother talking to her about my brother's issues. I didn't tell all of them, I'm not a taddle-tale, but when it comes to desperate situations I told them enough of what he was feeling. To be honest he's brought most of this upon himself and my parents couldn't *be* more supportive. More than that he knows he's brought it on himself. Which is why he wants to leave of course: it's not getting better and he's only hurting them by staying. It's only a couple of steps away from "maybe if I left completely, forever, they'd be happier" and other morbid thoughts, but luckily he's too lazy to jump off a bridge and I don't think he's nearly that depressed so we should be good. But I'm a fairly empathetic person I like to think, and I've been told, and Josh and I get on well, he always listens to me. Most of what I say goes in one ear and out the other, but he does listen. And I can get away with saying things simply because I'm not a parent - some things are just harder to take from parents, including piano lessons. But because I'm on the same level as him, family tree wise, we've a different bond and I get frustrated in a different way which means I can have some distance from the situation which improves perspective. So I can talk to my mum and be completely sympathetic all the while gaining clues as to what to tell my brother how he can improve the situation. He's completely unmotivated - about everything. And I think that's what's currently getting to my parents most. He's not working hard enough at school which is always irritating but he can't get off his arse to look for a saturday job either, it's almost like he's zombified from what I can tell. It's gotten to the point that if he even offered to do the washing up or feed the cats my mum would be overjoyed. I only learnt this last night and duly passed on the message in such a way that he wouldn't know I'd talked to her about him! I then talked to my dad on skype today, about unimportant things mostly and then I said I had to go and he said OK and then said "I'm sorry about the stress from Josh last night" and I said it was OK, he's my brother bla bla bla. But then he has a despairing moment, they're really at a loss with him. And I don't mind in the slightest, anything I can say or do to help, I will, but it just seemed amusing that this despair and need to talk about it came straight after he apologised about the stress I just endured from Josh! Parents eh? Who'd have 'em? I can't wait till I'm back for Christmas, I'm going to drag Josh round town and get him to apply to some jobs (I'll feed him Starbucks hot chocolate to make up for the dragging) and I'll talk to him and hope that some of it stays in his brain! And maybe things will get a tiny bit better.

I just realised I meant to start that paragraph with "In the light of those decisions and all the family stress, I gave up my chocolate veto and had ice cream at dinner" but instead I did my rambling thing. So yes, ice cream for tea, that doesn't mean the chocolate veto is off, oh no, back on again from, well, now. But as long as lapses are lapses and don't become the norm, then you know you're in control.

I got a card from my grandma today, she said she'd love to have a stocking, that it'd be good fun. Which is great only now I've realised that the colours of my current stocking are perfect for her but the pattern on the material for Josh's is also perfect for her. So I'm thinking that I will go to the fabric shop, buy that combined colour/pattern fabric (which they had when I was there) and probably buy myself so different fabric - 'cos I can't possibly have the same colour as my grandma. Josh and she will have different style stockings so it doesn't matter that the pattern is the same (hopefully).

So I'm going to make up Josh's stocking tomorrow and DO SOME WRITING! Oh and buy a book on PHP so that I'm vaguely knowledge 'ere I have an interview with that guy from the company.

Good night.

Noooooooooooo

2008-11-29T15:24:00.003+01:00

It didn't publish my post - I thought it did, it said it had, I'm sure it said it had *cries* I'll just have to make up a longer one tonight. I'm so annoyed.

My Sassy Girl

2008-11-27T21:11:00.002+01:00

So it would appear that all I'm really doing these days is watching movies and reviewing them - which is cool. I do need to get writing again though, I'm kind of in a rut. There's not a day goes by really that I don't think about my story but plenty of days go by without me writing it - which is not cool. I shall endeavour to write some this weekend, be it scenelets, storyboards, character padding-out or full blown chapters - this weekend I will write. And finish my brother's stocking ;)

Back to the movie then. 'My Sassy Girl' is a remake of a Japanese movie with probably the same name but in Japanese. I read a lot of reviews about it and most people bitched that it wasn't as good as the original and the Americans are always re-making stuff and doing it badly. Well whatever, I haven't seen the Japanese version and I probably won't. You know why? Because this movie was great. I loved it and I don't need to see a better version 'cos I'm quite happy with this one. It's about a boy who saves a girl from (possibly) getting killed on the subway - she was leaning over the railings - she turns out to be drunk and so he carries her and puts her on a bench. He decides he can't leave her there and carries her back to his place - still passed out. She turns out to be a drunken, semi-crazy, slightly violent, impulsive(in good & bad ways), demanding, funny, charming, laughing woman and he falls head over heels for her and in her own special way she shows us that she might feel the same about him, but we're not 100% sure. Difficulties ensue and are overcome. A very sweet funny movie but if you've seen the original don't tell me off for settling with the American remake - I don't care :P I thought it was excellent. Do rent it or buy, it's lovely.

I'm working up my courage to watch the Covenant, it sounds pretty awesome but then I properly looked at the back of the box and there's a scary-faced guy. I don't normally get scared by movies, it takes a lot to scare me. But I do get freaked out/grossed out and shocked quite easily. The scariest film I've ever seen was the Blair Witch Project. I hasten to add that I was 11 or so, it was freaky because you never knew what was happening and because it was so real, so 'potentially' real I guess you'd say. Saw I (that's as far as I got) horrified me but didn't scare me. I haven't seen the Scream movies. Oh! 13 Ghosts, that scared me a bit and Long Time Dead - but in a shivers up your spine kinda way and not much more. The Bone Collector - when I first watched that I did get scared actually, we were at a friend's house and we slept with skewers next to our sleeping bags. OK so that's the other movie that really got to me but I've seen it more recently and it's not as bad as I remembered. But this movie could scare me, or I'll just worry about it and be totally let down - that's a likely possibility too. Watch this space, I may watch it this weekend when I can stay up and have nightmares and not be late for work ;)

I did the testing of my program today - yay! There weren't any actual bugs which was nice. Stuff that needed to be changed, although only 'cos I'd forgotten to change the test lol. I also found a brand new status for UPS orders which had me stumped for a while before I realised I wasn't read the error output right lol! Fixed that. So yay - production tomorrow or next week perhaps. Fun fun fun.

It's cake day tomorrow and I have *no* idea what I'm going to make. I'm not sure if we're still on the break from chocolate or not so I'm not going to make a chocolate one just in case. Hopefully my student loan will come through soon and I can buy more recipe books :D There's a Classic 1000 Cakes and Bakes book (part of the series) which looks amazing and is first on my list.

*Sigh* I think my housemate has people round, there goes my early night.

Love, actually

2008-11-26T22:33:00.002+01:00

It's such a good movie, I know it's kind of a Christmas movie but it's great! Less than a month till Christmas anyway :D I better start buying presents! And finish making those stockings hehehe. I think I will take some photos when I'm done and link to them on here, proof that I finished a project! A project that involved sewing no less.

Love Actually has a great soundtrack as well, I think. Great fun! Heh, my thinking's all disjointed today.

Work was not particularly interesting but I haven't anything else to talk about at the moment. We deployed my project, it was piss-easy. I thought it was going to be complex and special but no, just a command line version of "go". Major let-down there, let me tell you. Still, it's done and we can do testing on the morrow - hooray! Talked to Evout more, I remain firm in my thoughts that he's a sweetie. Matthias is starting to irritate me though but again it goes back to the standards thing in some ways. Some people work and teach differently. He seems to be very much a "I won't give you much of a hint, work it out" kind of person and I just can't learn like that. But then he'll do simple things like move one of my files around, not tell me he's done it then spout command line commands at me so that *I* have to update the ruddy thing then tells me he was suprised I didn't know the command he told me. I am a Windows person, always have been and probably always will be. I never used SVN till I freakin' got here, never deployed anything, never updated anything on the command line why the hell should I know the commands for doing things to svn on the command line!?

And that's just not how I'd teach someone. *Or* How I'd get them to update something. I'd tell them what I'd done, why I'd done it and tell them what they needed to do to make it work. Argh! He's so frustrating.

I won't have these problems when I set up my cafe hehehe. It started out as such a foolish idea, the "what I'd do if I won a million (or more) pounds" way to while away Databases lectures. It's going to be excellent. I'm going to make lots of cakes - making cakes at work is just practice ;) and do drinks like in Starbucks, all interesting kinds of tea and coffee. But also the regular stuff, I know a fair few people who've complained 'cos you can't get "tea" in Starbucks. I will fix that! Ooooh I don't think I mentioned last time the extension that this cafe might undergo. The ultimate plan, sort of, is to have a cafe which is attached to a jazz bar - ideally a subterranean jazz bar, 'cos it sounds cool. But yes, then I'd own the cafe and the jazz bar. I have a cousin who's a pianist and singer so I could probably rope her in a couple of times, a guy at uni is also a pianist and has almost exactly the same dream, he was talking about it over our end of year dinner and I told him it was exactly what I wanted to do too! Fun stuff. I have another cousin who loves the idea of having a cafe/restaurant but also wants to travel to actually find the people to buy food from or the people that the food comes from, he wants to do that and have a place to send stuff back to. So I selflessly suggested that I could run the cafe in his absence ;) I have *another* friend who's not sure anymore he's in the right business (a guy on my course) and is falling more and more in love with photography so maybe we'll send him off with my cousin and we can put their pictures up all over the cafe. I'd love to do it, I really would.

Oh! I had an idea earlier: IMDB should set up an IBDB - Internet Book DataBase. Unless there's one already? Maybe, I cba to check right now. But it'd be a great idea. It could work almost exactly the same as the IMDB but with authors and books etc. and then any books that were turned into movies they could link to the IMDB and vice versa. I think it's a great idea, but then people who have ideas often think that. Who knows? Maybe I'll email them... lol.

Back to book for in the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. Not the best it's true, there's a fanfic that had a much more interesting ending tbh. But it's her series she *has* to finish it the way that feels right to her. Nothing can or should change that. I do remember that someone got the book early and posted "spoilers" and we thought they were completely ridiculous, 'she'd never do that' we thought to ourselves. I was at work, reading the book online. I would normally object to doing this - reading a typed up version of the book, next to stealing - but my copy was paid for and in the post so it wasn't really like she lost out! And I swear I went into shock when I read the first bit of possible spoilers because that meant all the others were true too. It was an awful moment! But hey, the book's finished the way she felt it should be finished and that's all there is to it really.

Night.

Pirates and their standards

2008-11-25T22:26:00.002+01:00

Ahhh and the marathon is over. Does it actually count as a marathon if it's done in three stages? Probably not but seeing as it's the best I can do on week days it'll have to do. I do so love Jack. And the bit with his father! Inspired.

It has come to my attention recently that people treat me differently than I would like to think I treat them (I noticed a while ago but more so recently) it's the little things... like the fact that I bought a frying pan 2 1/2 months ago and it was pilfered by the people in the other house (because they thought it belonged to the owner of these two houses) and there's a girl in this house who know the girl who "borrowed" it. And I've asked this girl a couple of times if she could get her friend to give it backk but they still haven't. So I'm despairing slightly, I don't like to ask again because she might feel I'm nagging and then I'd feel bad but it's been two months now and I'm fucking annoyed. And I just wouldn't do that, if it were my friend I'd nag them till they gave it back and if I had borrowed it, well I wouldn't have without asking first, but if I had and I then hadn't given it back immediately as soon as my friend asked me I'd like to think that I'd give it back. I'm an incredibly forgetful person but two months - when it's for someone else - is a very long time.

And it makes you wonder; is it fair to judge other people by our own standards? I mean, there aren't a set bunch of standards - apart from the ten commandments and variations thereof and of course laws. But the standards which you base all of your own actions on and which others base *their* actions on, they're very fluid so is it fair? But if you don't base them on any standards then anyone can get away with anything in theory. So what do you do? This wouldn't be a problem if you were a wanker and had low standards because anyone who did what you would do or better would be a "great" person but if, like me apparently, you had fairly high standards, how is it fair to judge someone? Should there be a cut off point? Take this frying pan thing - is 4 weeks long enough to give them the benefit of the doubt or should it be more? or less? To be honest I think that two months is probably long enough and seeing as I'm hoping to move out (though I haven't organised haggling with my colleague) I don't think I can feel too bad about having a minor go at my housemate to give me the bloody thing back, am I right? Give it back or give me the ten euros it cost, I don't bloody care. If I'd thought it was a lost hope I would have given up by now and bought a new one but because I have misplaced hope in people I really do think they'll give it back - so I haven't gotten round to it *sigh*

Maybe I'm more tolerant of things than I should be so people just take advantage. Or maybe the girl who borrowed it is also forgetful. Or maybe she's selfish. Or maybe a combination of all three

I got some work done today - yippee! Though not as much as I'd hoped because disaster struck! Well not really. We have an internal online phone/address book type thing and it was my job when I started to make it better. And it was working on the database/server it was on but it seems that an unfinished (perhaps) version was deployed onto the main server and now it's all broken and stuff. Next to everything that I added in - functionality wise - doesn't work but all of the technical bits that ought to be used are still there. A 'tag' form for example. You're supposed to check a bunch of boxes for the people you want to tag and the boxes are there and the form is there but trying to use them doesn't work. It's very bizarre. And worse than that, I can't get at the relevant files for some unknown reason! Very frustrating. But I got to chat to my supervisor about various future-and-stuff things and also - though he might resent me for it - got Evout the intern some work to do. He's an intern like and probably older than me so I don't feel I can tell him what to do because we're equals but also I don't really know what I'm supposed to do and there's not much in that for him to share with me so I thought I'd tell our joint supervisor to help him out. I hope it worked and that he doesn't hate me, he seems to be doing OK. I like him, he seems like a sweetie :)

Oh! I don't think I mentioned this yesterday - I found out I have to do a voiceover for a screencast demo of some product functionality. I'm going to giggle so much, or put on an over dramatised voice, it's going to be silly. Oh dear.

With any luck this will actually post - it's telling me the autosave failed and there's an error so I'm going to copy this before I post and see what happens!

Whoops, forgot the title... oh well.

2008-11-24T22:35:00.004+01:00

Today was the second installment of my Pirates marathon. You know how sometimes you feel in the mood to watch something but you can't put your finger on it but none of your other movies fit? I kinda had that, I love the Pirates movies, but I just wasn't in the right mood but then I watched them - and it's great :D I think this one was the silliest somehow, what with giant cages, rolling mill wheel fights, Norrington covered in mud, stupidly dramatic lines - "Sorry, Mr. Turner... but he's RIGHT! Arrrr!" (Again from Norrington). Yes, silliness abounds in this one but it's still pretty good, the movie can carry it but it's *soooooo* obvious that this is a two parter. And I mean that's OK but you know that all of the climaxes in this one are not equal to whatever the biggy is in the next one! But that's OK 'cos I get to watch it tomorrow - woop woop!

My flatmate is being wretched again. Apparently it's too noisy, I have turned down my music for him already but for whatever reason the movie/speaker sound doesn't sync up very well so I have to have it quite loud to hear most of the speaking and then fifteen minutes before the end he comes and tells me if I could turn it down (I didn't realise it was only fifteen minutes otherwise I would have told him to sod off) and he does it in this just urgh patient patronising way you know the "I'm sorry, I'm sorry to be asking this again" while in his heart he's going "But if you bloody kept it down I wouldn't have to ask you over and over again, I'm not sorry you wench" *sigh* There's a great episode in FRIENDS where Ross movies in with Joey and Chandler and he does a similar thing. I have all the discs but I'm not going to check and it's not on youtube either...

I was looking for the episode on surfthechannel when "Antivirus 2009" started trying to download itself! It minimised my browser and gave me a pop-up to which I said "cancel" then tried to go back to the right page and it did it again! So I closed the tab mwahahahaha. Um so yeah, can't find the episode there either - sorry! But that was odd.

Um um um, it's a monday and I posted yesterday so there's not much that happened today of interest. I managed to get bugger all done at work today (not entirely true) because some of the things that my supervisor told me to do I didn't know how to do and he managed to never respond when I asked him if I should do (relevant) things that I knew how to do. *sigh* plus the fact that I have a, no doubt bored and confused, intern that's supposed to be working with me and he's got fuck all to do either. Well he has school stuff he can do but project-wise? Nada. It's like I told him: slacking while you're supposed to be working is... not OK per se but y'know, slacking because actually you have nothing to do is surprisingly frustrating. I think I said that last week... wow, I don't think I've done any real work at *all* over the last couple of weeks... I hope they don't notice, I feel bad now. Meh, I'm sure I'll survive, I'm actually keen to be working right now, I love my project, I'm so proud of it - if it were anthropomorphised it'd be a well trained puppy - because I do often want to pat it on the head when it does things right. I know it's because I programmed them properly but still, well done program :)

Sleep time...

Pirates and Dragons and Vampires - oh my!

2008-11-23T22:00:00.005+01:00

It *actually* snowed today, the whole afternoon - it was excellent! I love the snow, only now I'm pining for mountains and skis, not good when you're trapped in damp holland I can tell you. *sigh* I don't know when I'll next be able to go skiing to be honest and I miss it so. Not for a couple of years I don't doubt. Maybe I'll start saving now and then I'll have a big savings fund and I can go for a couple of weeks - that'd be lovely :D Sadly it's raining now which will take away all the snow. There go my hopes of it snowing so much that I won't be able to walk to work - not that that would ever happen! A girl can dream...

I started my Pirates marathon today. I'm not someone who can stay up late so due to lazing around most of the morning and early afternoon I only got around to watching one movie so I'll spread them out like I did with LotR - yippee! And Johnny Depp is just as luscious. I can't wait till I can afford a really big screen (I only have a laptop these days) and then I can watch it and see him better :D A lot of people didn't like the second one and certainly not the third. They didn't get the third one which confused me, I thought it was completely comprehensible. And the beginning! So dramatic. Loved it.

It turns out that the guy I had thought I was making dinner with only thought he was giving me cheese. Which is weird because the way he talked yesterday about "it could be a yes but it might turn to a no later" doesn't really sound like not being able to put cheese in someone's fridge. But whatever, strange boy. He did give me cheese and I did get to make cauliflower cheese. It's pretty good with Grana Padano, like it was with Parmigiano, but somehow it's just not perfect. I think it's the lack of Cheddar. I'm a bizarre cheddar fan, I don't like it in sandwiches unless I'm really in the mood for it - give me brie anyday - but I love it in things or on things. Mashed potato, lasagne, pasta, cauliflower cheese - wherever you can use cheese I'd use cheddar. It's the most delicious thing. There's an excellent brand called Colliers, a welsh cheddar, and it's fantastic. A proper gritty cheddar, the cheaper the cheddar the milder and the softer it gets till it's like Gouda (ugh) and if you go past that stage then it's practically blasphemy to cheddar *and* to cheese. I may have been a poor student but I never scrimped on cheddar :D I made mash yesterday (I may have said) and this time it was with Parmigiano but it's just not the same, of course it needed a little bit of mustard in it to make it perfect but it was as good as you can get here.

I talk about food too much methinks. Just think how bad it'll be when I'm back in civilised England with real supermarkets. I'm going to hug the first one I go to I swear. And possibly the first Starbucks though it's less easy to hug a Starbucks!

In my final year at uni I'm hoping to live with some good friends of mine and then hopefully I'll cook more - more and better food. It's so easy to not buy proper food when you only feed yourself. And by improper food I mean fresh pasta and pasta sauces, chicken nuggets only appear when I'm really down. I do eat too much garlic bread though, I'm going to try to cut down. I don't believe in diets, I think they're stupid but I feel a bit too chubby and so, because I eat more chocolate/ice cream/garlic bread than I should, I intend to reduce my intake thereof. I tried that in the second month I was here - the first month was appalling - but it didn't work out from halfway through the third month I think. I got down again and the chocolate and chicken nuggets started making appearances. But now I'm riding a high, well, a higher low and I'm going to seize the day. I have had my first chocolate free week since I got here, I'm very proud. And seeing as I'm banning myself from eating chocolate during the week there's little cause for transgression next week. Though I may have to make up for yesterday's low fat strawberry cheesecake fiasco!

I'm sitting here and the third book in the Twilight series is by my elbow, I'm so gutted I can't go see the movie - I promised my friend that I would wait to see it till I came back from Holland for Christmas only now I'm regretting it somewhat 'cos I am *desperate* to see it. But, I will keep my promise, of course if she gets dragged into seeing it I won't begrudge her even for a second and I will promptly catch the first showing I can and hunker down for two hours of bliss. I didn't think much of Rob Pattinson as Cedric Diggory, he wasn't particularly interesting, let alone particularly hot but he is (to quote a Rachel Giese article I found somewhere online) "scruffilicious" as Edward in Twilight. Of course being in love with the character he plays might have something to do with it... I definitely want to steal the cardboard cut outs from the movie theatre now!

A lot of people have bitched about the books, about the mediocrity of Meyer's writing and I must say it's not the best, it's definitely not up there with the classics but then, I've read Dracula and Frankenstein and they were dull! In fact I'm not sure I've gotten round to finishing Frankenstein... They're excellent stories but appalling books, it's no wonder they've been turned into movies again and again. But Meyer's books, thought not phenomenally written, are also excellent stories with the addition of being readable and re-readable. This is the fourth time I've read them since I bought the first one in June. And aside from one terrible sentence in the first book about tidepools: "The bouquets of brilliant anemones undulated ceaselessly in the invisible current" - those words blatantly came from the thesaurus function in Word. No self-respecting 17 year old would use those altogether in one sentence. But they're pretty evocative, they're descriptive enough to set the scene but you're able to add in your own flourishes. There are some occasions where, I can't remember exactly, certain things don't match up, job scheduling and time sounding like it's going fast but actually only a week's gone by, but they seem to be traps that most writers fall into.

J.K. Rowling I think was very good at that, it's almost as though she had a week by week planner just for each of her books, which wouldn't surprise me, she's a very efficient writer, she knows everything about her characters, and that's the way it should be. I spent *hours* reading up on mammals and reptiles and dinosaurs and breeding habits so that I could know exactly how my dragons function, there's not magic in my story's world so I needed to know those things. They're the things that won't turn up in the book, who needs to know them? But I will know them and that makes me happy. One day when I'm rich and famous and go to fantasy book conferences (which is never going to happen if I don't get my arse in gear) maybe some geeky kids will come up and ask "But how do your dragons stay in the air?" And I will be able to tell them, that's all I need. I live in fear of a Galaxy Quest situation (well not really as I don't have spaceships), but believing your story is just a story and only knowing that much detail doesn't mean someone else will treat it the same way. Take Stephenie Meyer for example, her biological explanations didn't quite add up and the thing is, if she'd either said nothing or researched it more there wouldn't be an issue, but because she said "Oh yeah, well it would work like this" she essentially contradicted herself and confused the rest of us - not good. And then I do think she said "It's just a story" and it's like yeah, sure it's just a story, but that doesn't give you the right to talk bollocks. That was one of the things that drove me to researching my dragons (though I would have done anyway probably) - because I needed to know and I needed it to be logical and semi-sane and above all, theoretically possible. But maybe that's just me. Seriously though, rent Galaxy Quest - excellent movie.

Night all.

Coyotes and snow

2008-11-22T23:12:00.002+01:00

It snowed today! At least... I think it did. I was outside when it was hailing and I heard it rain but when I went out later there was snow on all the cars. But that could still be the leftover hail... Never mind - I love snow! Love love love. And we're due real snow tomorrow, yippee!

I went shopping today, I bought some fabric from the fabric shop and am now the proud owner (maker) of half a christmas stocking - woop! That is, it's a whole stocking but I have to line it yet so it's only half done. It's so pretty, hand stitched and everything, only took me four hours... When it's all done maybe I'll take a picture. I'm very proud of my sewing on this occasion because I don't sew much, at all, except for making a pair of wings once... It was for an art project - he's very handsome no? Well it's only a back, based on my handsome little brother. Whose photoshopped, tattoed, back is in the art section too.

I just watched Coyote Ugly today, I've seen it before a looooooooong time ago, which is probably why I don't remember the huge sex scene in the middle! What is with that!? Still, it was good fun as I remember :) It had lots of trailers - including Pirates of the Caribbean. I'm going to have a pirates marathon tomorrow methinks. How yummy is Johnny Depp? *melts* I remember when I went to see the first Pirates movie, at the cinema, I was fifteen and I was sitting there with my dad and my brother looking up at Johnny Depp thinking "This guy must be as old as my dad. Plus he's got dreadlocks and is dirty and stuff. Why do I think he'd goddamn gorgeous, this isn't right, it's too weird. But look how pretty..." Lol. He's five years younger than my dad so I guess that makes it OK right? I have lots and lots of DVDs a fair few of which have Johnny Depp in them. My DVD collection, when organised, is sorted by genre where each genre sort of flows into the next. There's a Johnny Depp section. Finding Neverland and Chocolat on one end, Pirates in the middle merging into Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, then just Tim Burton and out the other side into animation. But yes, an actual Johnny Depp section. I'm debating whether or not to get a calendar but I think that would be too weird. Give me faeries and kittens instead :D

I bought yet more movies today. I'm very very bad, I buy too many movies. The selection today just proves how odd my housemates last year thought I was. I had moved all my DVDs in and was going to get more stuff and they sneaked a look at my movies to guage what kind of person I was and they were thoroughly bewildered - I had chick flicks next to action movies (this was before they were sorted). They decided I was cool :D So today I bought Coyote Ugly, Love Actually and The Covenant. It looked interesting and by that I mean I looked at the picture and saw it was made by the people who made Underworld - my third and fourth favourite films. I would have read the back but it's all in Dutch but I looked it up on IMDB, sounds pretty fun :) So yes, a rom com, a fantasy scary dramatic type and Coyote Ugly which I can't really define!

Nothing much else interesting happened. I got stood up for a stay at home dinner making with my house mate. How sad can you get? I asked him this morning if he wanted to make cauliflower cheese with me later (he has the hugest block of Grana Padano to use up) and he said "maybe" that he'd like to say yes but it might change to a no. I thought, fair enough, he'll come tell me later. It's half past eight when I finally give up. *sigh* So I made up for it with B&J low-fat Strawberry Cheesecake 'cos I couldn't see their regular Peace of Cake one. It's nasty. Well, it's made with oatmeal cookies which aren't offensive in themselves it just means you have chewy flakey bits and it doesn't soften properly either. Not good. Which surprised me, I didn't think they could make bad ice cream, they have flavours I don't approve of but this was icky. Their low-fat chocolate fudge brownie on the other hand may actually be better than the regular version. I shall have a taste test and post the results ;)

That's all really, I have stocking lining and creation lined up for tomorrow as well as the Pirates marathon - woop! Hehehehe, I just decided to create a Johnny Depp label - for the hell of it.

Time flies...

2008-11-21T22:19:00.002+01:00

It really does. I'm going through that weird situation where the hours seem endless and the days seem endless and everyday you think "is it Friday yet?" but then before you know it *is* Friday.

Unfortunately I was only given real work to do yesterday and today so I was having unproductive endless hours before then, oh well.

I got to work on one of the things I was assigned yesterday before realising I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I'd been told to do something and so I interpreted that vaguely and set to work but this morning I realised that my supervisor might have meant me to do A or B or both and he might not know that I could already do A so did he want me to do B now? Luckily my other supervisor came in about this time and I told him my issue and he said "never mind about that for now let's talk about other stuff" (sort of) so now my project is all better documented and it might be going into production! I'm so happy, it's been my baby for two months and now it's deemed ready for people to use - real actual live people rather than myself hitting the 'go' button every so often. He also (through some task-management software) made me the project leader of my project. OK so there's only me and the other new intern on the project and yes I still have two supervisors but I don't care - I'm a leader, I'm special! Lol. I'm also easily pleased...

I was right, the lemon cheesecake was divine. Having been treated to four and a half months of cake (one a week) my colleagues have become fairly discerning but they *loved* this one. One guy said he'd be quite happy if I made it every week for the next seven and a half months! It was so yummy. *finds recipe* Here we go: Master recipe for a rich and creamy cheesecake I did the lemon "twist" that's defined later on but added the juice of half a lemon because it didn't taste lemony enough to me :D Be sure to blend it in well though, no curdling if you please :)

So yes, I think I'm getting the knack of baked cheesecakes and the starbucks one is perhaps within my reach! And then when I win the lottery, pack all this office software job stuff in and set up my hip london cafe I can park it right next to a Starbucks and see what happens! Seeing as mine will be made by hand from scratch I think I'll win... But maybe I won't set up right next to the Starbucks, I may have won the lottery but I don't need an ego or budget hit that big from the word go.

We hung out at the office pretty late today, Peter (my supervisor) was giving a short presentation as a practice for one he's doing at... a software conference that I've forgotten the name of. Possibly DeVoxx but that might have been last month - whoops! But it was pretty cool, there was a random guy there who was a friend of Peter's friend and had 6000 points on Stack Overflow which was his only reason for visiting - Peter is an SO convert with a whopping 1800 points and wanted to talk to the best apparently. It's 99% software questions so if you don't know or don't care it's not for you, I have refused to go on it seeing as it has taken in more than half of our emloyees and it'd probably be one of those things you have to create an account for, forget the password to and never use again.

Evout (the new intern) was back in the office today and he seems like a complete sweetie. He complained about the weather which also makes him my personal hero - I've been banned from weather sites at work and so now I just (have to) refrain from almost all weather commentary! I think I'm going to like working with him though I pity him... We've decided to move the project into production that probably means less coding on the things that won't be used in the release but more fun deploying it (which I don't know how to do) and testing it (which is boring). I don't know what I'm going to do about testing. I have to write all these tests and sometimes you're supposed to write tests that makes sure your program fails but the benefit of writing a program all by yourself with next to no supervisor coming in (and then being told off for not going to them) is that you think about how to make sure it doesn't break and the only person who needs to know is you. So there's no communication problems and you can just add in all kinds of failure checks and then when they say "Well customers might forget to do X" you can get rid of your little checks and turn them into one (or two, or three) bigger ones. So I have no idea how to make this fail at all!

Time for bed methinks

Outer Space

2008-11-20T22:04:00.003+01:00

So today I was reading paperback writer's latest post which was very very funny in itself and then I nosed through the comments and came across one about Galaxy Zoo 2. It's like a useful procrastination tool - why aren't you working? I'm helping scientists decide the shapes of galaxies. Oh... (Your conversation with your boss) It's great stuff! And the best thing is that they've got loads of people looking at the same pictures so you can just tell them what you think you see and then they make the comparisons - easy as pie! Mmmm pie.

I have to make a Boston Cream Pie soon I've decided. I used to live in Boston and it's definitely where I'd move to if I lived in America and Boston Cream Donuts are by far the best donuts ever. I dislike spelling it "donuts" but I feel that American doughnuts are, somehow, made differently and actually are a slightly different breed of pastry that the ones we have over here. But yes apart from sugar-glazed chocolate donuts, Boston Cream ones are the best *ever* and so I'd like to make a Boston Cream Pie one day. I'm not sure if that's before or after I try to recreate the Starbucks blueberry cheesecake. It's the yummiest! And seeing as how I've been without Starbucks cheesecake since August and generally without Starbucks since June (and, apart from brief trips to England, will still be without till next June) I think it's high time I start trying to make that cheesecake. I've been building up to it though. Before I got to Holland I made only one kind of cheesecake, an absolutely divine no-bake chocolate cheesecake. But since I've gotten here I have made three baked cheesecakes and I must be doing something right, I haven't had a single crack. The chocolate baileys one was also divine I must say. I'm going to have to print out all the good recipes and put them in a folder methinks. Today I made a lemon baked cheesecake that should be pretty darn good. So next step could be blueberry cheesecake with streusel topping - yippee! I'm not sure if I posted the link to the baileys cheesecake... It was so delicious!

So yes, at work I managed to not do work by making cake and then my supervisor told me he didn't have anymore test data for me at the moment, why don't I do these other things? And I almost jumped for joy - I never thought I'd be so happy to be given work lol. But I feel like I've been slacking and it's all the worse for being unintentional!

I founf out about another flat today, owned/leased by my friend which sounds luscious and possibly very expensive *sigh*

I wonder whether, after you've been blogging for a while, you start writing more interesting blogs, or more restrained ones. Take this blog for example. All I do is natter on about things that are interesting to me and things that are happening. So it's just my general musings - an online diary as it were. But then I have no readers so then I don't have to adhere to anyone's desires about what my blog should be about. I can just write up posts about nothing till I get bored of the sound of the keys clicking. But perhaps, when you get more readers or just when you've been doing this longer, the need for talking about your day drifts away. Or maybe that's why some people have two blogs, a diary type one and a more-focussed one. I already have two lol. But that was because I created a "work" one so I could put it on my LinkedIn profile which I was told I had to have. It's like a business facebook without the fun bits. Anyway so whatever work/computer related musings I have can go on there. The non-whiny bits anyway. I also wonder if every new blogger wonders this.

Ummm, the problem with posting this late (half ten) is that I've always forgotten by now the things that happened during the day that might be interesting! Although I do think today was a boring day generally speaking. This is a roundabout way of saying I've probably run out of things to say.

Pictures!

2008-11-20T00:25:00.002+01:00

Whoa I just got worried because I knew I had posted yesterday but Blogger was telling me I last posted on the 18th and I'm looking at my computer clock and it's telling me it's the 20th... And then I realised it's past midnight - doh!

I finally did some work on my story - I've written a proper story board. Normally I start writing one and go too in depth into one section, but now I really have a proper outline (plus all those in depth bits) so that's good.

As to the title, my friend invited me to join this facebook group. I don't know if anyone reading this has facebook but hey if you do, join and upload your pictures from around the world. I think it's a really neat idea and I shall be spamming my friends into joining. Actually that's not true, I hate group invite spam, I specifically pick people who I think might actually respond! Or get a kick out of it or w/e. Anyway so I got to look at lots of old photos which is always great - I should take more! And I should also get them put on CD, I am retro and have a film camera which means if I want pictures on my laptop I have to pay much more *sigh* or buy tons of batteries for my digital camera which eats them.

In fact I'm even more retro, I still have and use a sony CD walkman INSTEAD of an MP3 player. Although it might be time to retire the walkman (I've had it ten or so years) because I like to listen to music on the way to and from work and the CD keeps skipping *sigh*

What else happened today? I'm still desperately trying to fill up my day while not knowing actually what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. Actually that's not true, I'm supposed to be working on expanding my project but I don't have any test data so I can't really do that, the intern I'm supposed to be grooming still has 'flu, but believes he'll be back tomorrow - which will fill up my day, explaining all my code etc. But thereafter I'm at a loss. I'm going to have to 'fess up soon I can tell.

Oh! I booked my journey home for Christmas - I'm going hoooome *does happy dance* and I'm going for two weeks which cuts the duration of my stay in Holland down from 7 1/2 months to just 7 - whoopdefrickindoo.

My dad does this Christmas newsletter thing every year and for the last couple of years - ever since he wrote in my section "Kate didn't do well in her exams but hopefully she'll still get into uni" (git) - I've been writing my own section and having to provide a photo which, seeing as I was at work, meant trawling through facebook photos... Never a good thing, facebook photos are ones that other people put up of you, when do they take them? on trips out. When you're at uni and you're going out where are you going? to the pub. So what are you like in these photos? drunk... Luckily I don't do many *embarassing* things when I'm drunk but it's just not the face you want to show dozens of foreign cousins if you know what I mean? But I did find a couple of very good ones (among a huge amount of average to bad ones) and now I get extra chocolate for having finished my section and providing a photo first - yippee! Anyway that was the second bit of photo stuff.

I love photography, I'm hopefully getting camera kit for Christmas - a flash gun and a lush camera bag. I'm so chuffed. And when I go back to Aber I can start up the black and white photography courses again - yay! It's not photography so much as developing films and photos - which is the best bit in some ways. Every time I develop a picture it makes me happy! Lol, so easily amused. Tell me about you favourite photo/photo taking experience/place to take photos of :) I'd love to know.

Night night.

Back to blog

2008-11-18T22:59:00.003+01:00

Woop! I'm back. And my excuses are: on Sunday I managed to forget *shock* I was planning on going to bed and I thought "ah! Must blog" and then I picked up some stuff to put it away and turned off my computer and as it was shutting down realised I hadn't posted yet - my first real failure thus far. Yesterday the internet was down again.

Um what's happened? Sunday was not very interesting, I wanted to go to the fabric shop to get some fabric to make the stockings with but it wasn't open - 'cos it was sunday. *sigh* Yesterday we got the new intern, he seems quite nice, quiet and possibly more of a slacker than I was! He's on the phone fairly often, at least when I was slacking I tried to make it non-obvious what I was doing! He's going to be working with me on my project. I'm not sure how I feel about that. As I said he's nice and I'm sure it'll be good to finally have someone to work with but... it's my baby, I wrote it all by myself, mostly from scratch, I had some people who helped me but they only made it better, they didn't really write whole parts of it and now this guy's coming in and is going to write whole sections by himself. *sigh* But then I'm sure that's just me being selfish again.

Today was more of the same really, did some testing, put up with the traitor being back in the office. I hate the way he talks to me so familiarly, we did used to be good friends but it's like he just doesn't realise that he might have hurt me in the slightest, I've never met anyone like that before and I know I'm not supposed to hold grudges but I just want to make him see that I'm mad at him, I haven't had a real chance to vent yet, except here. But then maybe I'm malicious lol.

I have read Emma and finished Mansfield Park by Ms. Austen. I'm... still not sure how I feel about them, they're great stories, I think I'm in the wrong place for them, they were a bit slow though. I feel so sorry for Mr. Crawford in Mansfield Park in a way. Obviously he should never end up with Fanny but I did feel bad for how it all turned out for him. And Emma! Oh my goodness, Emma! What a wench she is in the beginning, of course she starts to repent and that's when she realises that she's in love with Mr. Knightley but still, making Harriet turn down Mr. Martin having never met him and asusming him to be a coarse peasant was just so - ugh! Which I'm sure is the point but still! I get far too involved sometimes methinks... Anyway, I've decided to let up on the Austen for now and instead I'm reading the Twilight Saga again. Oh dear, they're just so delicious to read, all that first romance stuff with Edward makes you feel like you're in your own first relationship the whole "is he looking, is he looking, don't stare oh my gosh I can't believe he's looking at me" nonsense is actually quite yummy and I can't help but be in love with Edward Cullen, it's just not possible! I'm missing my Tamora Pierce books though, fiercely. You can't get them anywhere cheaply - it's shocking! Even Amazon don't have that good a stock and I can't navigate round the Borders web site for the life of me.

Ah well. Soon be home time, I was looking up the ferries today - £73 it's going to cost me, for the *whole* journey (return) including a cabin for the night on the return and breakfast - isn't it amazing!? I was going to have to fork out nearly £200 to fly, if not more, I can't believe it! It's not great for short visits but for the two weeks it's perfect!

Also - www.xkcd.com = love. Read any of them, read all of them! Damn it took three goes to get this right, it kept adding extra linky bits in - weird.

Right it's gone eleven and I have some serious Edward time to... I mean sleeping, yes, sleeping that's what I'm going to do!

Moooooovies

2008-11-15T23:12:00.003+01:00

So today was a fairly nice day, I managed to not get up till half twelve which is weird for me, no matter how tired I am I normally can't sleep past ten. Naturally I managed to still feel tired when I woke up - don't you hate that? So I didn't manage to do anything constructive till three when I went food shopping. Yay for me... Or something.

Than I came back and my boyfriend was online, yippee! So we talked lots and then I watched Ella Enchanted and ate ice cream. All in all, very good. I do love that movie, it's so wonderful and simple. I like the Princess Diaries movies too :) I haven't read the books though which are completely different I believe. Michael continues in the story rather than being forgotten like in the movies. But still, good, easy fun.

Amazon sent me an email today, they often do, but this one I paid attention to, ummm for no particular reason lol. It was just an advert one about Christmas ideas for movies or something, it seemed worth looking at even if only briefly. There were some good movies on there, lots of rom-coms. I feel the need to stock up on those. I think one of the problems with people my age is that we hear about all of the real classics: Pretty Woman, When Harry met Sally, While You were Sleeping etc. but I don't really know anyone who's watched them, anyone my age anyways. So I think I shall ask for lots of them for christmas i.e. put them onmy amazon wishlist. Because quite frankly, you can never have too many chick flicks. Even if they are simple and trashy, doesn't matter!

But I was shocked, for all their three or four pages of Christmas kids movies they didn't have "Santa Clause: the movie" which is not one of those crappy ones with Tim Allen in. No, the best Santa movie of all time, the one with Dudley Moore from 1985. It's the best one and next to nobody has seen it. And the santa is a proper santa. My favourite Christmas movie ever, better even than the Muppet's Christmas Carol but it's a close run thing ;) My kids will be watching that movie every Christmas, for as long as they're in my house! Once they exist of course. And then, when they leave but come back for Christmas they will still have to watch it! I say "have to" I will probably be watching it so if they're in the house no doubt they will watch it. I won't force them of course. But yes it's the best and I really don't know anyone who's seen it. It has Dudley Moore as an elf and John Lithgow as a heartless, money-loving, toy making crazy man. What more could you want? There's also flying reindeer, spoilt children making friends with poor children, lack of belief and a bemused Santa. If that doesn't make it a fab Christmas movie I don't know what will!

Night all.

Nerves...

2008-11-14T22:45:00.004+01:00

So today I had to do a presentation about my project at work. It was terrifying. It wasn't helped by the fact that though I had prepared slides I'd tried to write myself notes and hadn't had any time to practice them :S Then my supervisor was being kind of a wanker and didn't show me how to set up anything - I'd never done it before. And OK so technically that wasn't wankerish it was just the way he was doing it. I got it mostly set up but it was weirdly zoomed in so when he came down he told everyone that they were an hour early (it was supposed to be at 5 not 4) and that I need to do something to the secondary display (wtf!?) and then he left again! And the thing is I had sent round an email on, oh, Tuesday maybe saying that it was at four because although one person had told me I should do it at five, like other presentations, all the ones I'd been to had been at four. And it's like - you could have told me then that I was wrong! Humph. So he's not off the hook about that but I did find out that he'd had a "difference of opinion" with one of our colleagues and I think he had been upset all day. Unfortunately this guy lives outside Nice so it's one of those situations where even if you wouldn't shout at each other you still can't vent your anger as much as if they were there. So he was more than a little stressed. And once the presentation started he was smiling and happy so it's all good really. It went well, so I'm told, I thought I spoke too fast and it was over quicker even than I had imagined. But there were good questions at the end, some leading to thoughts on the software product as a whole and not just my little bit so that was cool.

I made the chocolate meringue cake again 'cos it is *divine* and I might be making flapjacks soon, next week possibly. Though the idea makes me nervous, they can go wrong so easily I guess. My mum always made sticky yet really crunchy ones and the first one was yummy and after that it was a bit like hard work. She's stopped baking at all really now, it's so sad. My parents may be divorced but my dad still maintains she makes the best cherry cake :D Well, made, I guess that would have to be! Maybe if we have a christmas party I'll ask her to bake something, maybe I'll bake something too! Yay for cakes :D

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm not much else to say, I just watched Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights. I love that movie, I love the cuban/latin music. And Diego Luna?? Yum! If you watch it for the first time, or after a while, the first time you see him it's like "So? He's not that special" and then, for me at least, I think the first time you seem him dancing, or maybe later, it's just a droolfest. I wish I could dance like that, and with him. Though I'd settle for my boyfriend of course ;)

I just remembered, I sent an email round work this week asking for some days off over christmas and no-one's said "No! You must say here!" so hopefully I'll get two weeks off. I can't wait to go home! I love Christmas so much lol. And, if I get my act together, I'll have made new stockings for me and my brother, woop woop. I shall go buy some fabric tomorrow! Yippee! Hehehe.

Guilt

2008-11-13T22:39:00.002+01:00

I'll give you a brief outline of my current situation: I am an intern in Holland, my boyfriend has just graduated and lives just outside London. So, to the crux of the matter. I'm not quite jealous or resentful or anything but... he just has so many friends and always doing stuff on the weekends, I just kinda wish that he couldn't function quite so well without me. Which is totally selfish I know. But, but, ahhh I have no redemption. It's only made worse by the fact that I'm so down here - because I don't have him or my family, let alone any friends. So I think that probably makes it worse. Not only is he coping so fantastically but I'm barely coping at all *sigh* What's a girl to do?

Nothing no doubt, just like I have nothing of note to say today. I meant to sit down and write but I was feeling selfish and unhappy and really sleepy. So I had a nap instead.

Oh! One thing happened today. Due to a variety of reasons I managed to be the first one at the office and so when I unlocked the door the little alarm box made a peeping sound because I had to enter an alarm code - only I didn't know mine. I tried to remember the emergency one I had been told to no avail so the most awful noise started. I tried to phone my supervisor but he didn't pick up, another guy but only got his voicemail and yet another guy before gritting my teeth and calling the boss! Only he didn't give me a code in the end anyway. So the other intern rings the bell - he doesn't have a key *or* alarm code. And he comes in, on the phone to my supervisor! Who tells us the proper code and saves the day! Still - a very nerve-wracking 25 minutes! I thought the alarm people were going to turn up and ask me questions that I couldn't answer and arrest me or something. Well not really but I did panic, I'd been living in vague fear of that day ever since I got my alarm code - and promptly forgot it. And it was exactly as scary as I suspected it would be.

Reviews...

2008-11-12T22:46:00.002+01:00

I just read a good post about how everyone's a critic and it's a well articulated, well put together article about what any decent reader/writer/movie watcher/director/critic knows. And one thing really resonated with me. He talks about how blogs are taking over the universe... well they're a big sphere of influence these days and one of the reasons it "Because the Internet doesn't require accountability, they write things they'd never say face-to-face, which makes them cowards as well." And I think that's so true. And I certainly try, generally, to not trash anything I don't like. I can't help but trash A Clockwork Orange for example but that's because all its depth and meaning were lost on me due to two consecutive monday 10 o'clock lectures enforced watching of it. I'm sure if you watched it at your own leisure it'd be a great, moving, thoughtful, philosophical movie. But personally? I'm mentally scarred and it almost ruined "Singing in the rain" for me! But even there when I talk about it to other people I state the situations in which I watched it and most people agree that it might not be conducive to understanding! I asked my not-quite-step dad the other day what he thought of The Shining (which I also watched on a Monday at 10) and he said he didn't think he'd ever finished it. And to me it just wasn't scary, I didn't get it. Maybe that's why we were shown movies at that time, to try and strip away all emotions that might normally be associated with them - no fear etc. Who knows? So anyways in any review I give here in future, not that I'm going to be influencing the wide world, but as good practice, I will attempt to never trash a movie or book and if it really is a one-star situation, all opinions are relative so I will attempt to explain mine.

Now with that good plan out of the way what other news? Well I still failing in the getting down of story on paper but I'm resolving issues in my head, getting to know my characters better etc. I meant to force myself to write all evening but I just bought the complete works of Jane Austen and I'm tearing through Mansfield Park - don't you just loathe Mrs. Norris? Ms. Austen was excellent at writing thoroughly despiseable characters! Or maybe I just get too into it, I'm very right and wrong when it comes to books and movies - the baddies are bad and the goodies are good. I only half forgave Snape at the end of the Deathly Hallows - OK so he loved Harry's mother etc. but he was still a wanker quite frankly! Or is that just me?

Speaking of reviews therefore, I also just finished reading The Magician by Michael Scott. It's the sequel to The Alchemyst which was released last year and they're great fun. They're YA books I guess or maybe younger, perhaps, whatever they're enjoyable. Not as in depth as the only other series of books that I know that mention Nicholas Flamel (Harry Potter) but very interesting and there's so much myth and legend come to life in them that I can't help but love them. They follow the journey of Sophie and Josh Newman, 15 yr old twins who are discovered to possibly be the twins of an ancient legend put down in the Book of Abraham the Mage. Flamel and his wife find these twins and believes that their powers must be Awakened in order to save the world etc. The only issue I have with the books is that I thought they were going to be a trilogy but they're a sextet with one book being released a year so I have to wait till 2012 till I know what happens. And OK so it was six years between when I first started reading Harry Potter and when it finished but, though great, these books aren't as in depth and lucious as the HP books and they don't have quite the same re-readability. I actually read the last book twice in the three days after it came out because we were staying with my uncle and I didn't have anything else to read! But yes, great fun.

Night night.

What?? No title?

2008-11-11T22:52:00.003+01:00

Um, yes, no appropriate title because I appear to have gotten drunk on orange juice and I'm not sure how...

Anyways: news, I didn't update on saturday/sunday/monday because the internet was down. I still haven't done much writing so it's not like I had much to talk about. Now the internet is back but the gas stove appears to be not working - cake for dinner it is. That's right, there's still cake left from Friday, well no, I just ate the last piece but w/e.

Umm in other stuff I went to a fabric shop in Rotterdam on Saturday and have finally found heaven in brocade form. I used to work in the haberdashery section of a department store and before that in a costume shop that sold fabric so even the thought of a fabric shop tempted me. And this one was a beast! It was five times the size of those two combined and on three floors! *drools* It was so pretty. I got the pattern I wanted - I want to make Christmas stockings for my brother and I because we don't have proper ones at my dad's for various reasons. So if I get my act together and makes these we'll have amazing ones :D

I also went to see Quantum of Solace on Saturday. It may have knocked Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire off the top spot for records on opening day in the UK but I bet the kids didn't feel as disappointed as I did after. It didn't seem very coherent, rather like me in these blogs, there was no resolution of any of the storylines from the previous movie just the beginning of new ones. Because it seems that unlike the original series which were a collection of stories about a character these are a series that actually links together. So my advice, watch it sure, but rent it three days before the next one comes out. You should watch it for sure but don't pay money to go see it at the cinema unless it's just as cheap I guess. Overall, I'm sad :( But I finished watching LotR this Sunday which is always fun :) I'm glad I did, it always feels like it's going to be so hard to really watch them but then I'm always glad when I do, hurrah!

Nothing much has been happening at work, I've been doing testing, drawing diagrams, re-writing my article and rejoicing in the fact that the callous traitorous git that works in my office a) isn't here this week and b) got told off last week for being too harsh in general and especially to me. Apparently he and my other supervisor gave *very* different accounts of what passed on Thursday - hmmmm.

Uhhhh I think that's all my news, no real story update *sigh* I need to be kicked in the bum about this! Night...

Cakes, cakes, cakes... and Lord of the Rings!

2008-11-07T22:40:00.004+01:00

That's right. Today I made a chocolate butter cake and though it was very nice it was very heavy. I won't serve it again for a party of less than sixteen people! If you do have a party for sixteen or more people however and you want to fill them up - this is the cake for you! A couple of comments though. Buy a bigger mixing bowl. No, really, buy one. Especially if you're mixing by hand, in which case ensure you have industrial electric hand mixers. The amount of batter is extreme, I had a fairly good sized bowl (I thought) and when I was done doing all the additions it was barely a centimetre from the top. So unless you have one of those ubiquitous ceramic mixing bowls, buy a bigger one. I don't even know if it'd fit in one of those nice Kenwood mixers! But it *is* very tasty. At one point, I think when you've added the milk it gets a weird texture, like you get the first time you try to make icing and it all separates out? But then you add more flour and it's fine and dandy. Tasting the mixture just before it went in the oven it did taste a bit floury but it turned out OK :) Ummmm, really wait till the cake is completely cold to put the icing on, I was too hasty and bits of cake and icing were going everywhere! Not the prettiest cake I've ever made I can tell you. Which reminds me of my promise: to actually put links to the cakes I've made so far. So here they are

Comments then. Delia's Lemon Meringue Pie was tasty but she said you could eat it warm and I found it was far too soupy so I'd definitely let it set next time. The carrot cake, for me, wasn't quite interesting and flavoursome enough but everyone else loved it so who am I to complain? The Irish Cream Chocolate Cheesecake was, um, divine. It was so delicious. I did up the amount of alcohol which meant that you could taste it (rather than it being a hint) but it still managed to be slightly subtle and a balancing not dominating flavour. The meringue cake was excellent, I've made Nigella's lemon version which was yummy so I wasn't surprised when this turned out great, voted best so far I think. The brownie cake was very tasty too though I might double the amount so that people can have taller but slimmer pieces - it was essentially a round brownie, which is no bad thing but I think it would be better that way. There was also a Kahlua and Oreo Cheesecake which was also delicious but they've taken it off the website, I think I have the printout somewhere so if I find it I will definitely be writing that one up!

On a non-food subject. I'm watching Lord of the Rings again. I love these movies but I only have the extended editions so I don't watch them very often, you have to be in the right mood I think, be able to put up with Frodo's wimpiness. I'm still in love with Legolas even though he's poncy - I don't care! But it seemed to me while watching them that, as I mentioned yesterday about real-life in stories, some of the things that happen just *wouldn't* happen, even in a fairy tale dwarf mine. There wouldn't be a three foot wide bridge crossing a huge chasm with no railings - dwarves aren't that surefooted. The cave troll will not automatically be able to single out the most important member of a quest. It wouldn't happen. I think that's one of the reasons I like the Tamora Pierce books. Yes the heroines often end up being the ones fighting the danger but that's because they're the only ones there, only ones good enough or the only ones stupid enough to face it head on! And there sure aren't any stupidly narrow bridges and the only time one of them got singled out was when the beast was magicked to do so. That's my two cents anyway and if I *ever* get farther on my book any quests that occur will not involve such foolish things! On the upside I did mostly finish writing the heroine's last first kiss. It has rain and romance and humour - what more could you want? It is going to be marginally cliché but I had a hugely romantic first first kiss so why shouldn't she? Well it was a romantic situation anyway, we were both 13 and so he had a wet hoover thang going on. But apart from that...

Night night.

Eleventh Day Blues

2008-11-06T22:50:00.002+01:00

Not a great day today. I'd been feeling a bit rough most of the day and then I go for a code review (of my project code) and I feel worse and worse and I tell them I feel a bit iffy but I think it will go away so I don't ask to stop, but it gets worse and then one of the guys reviewing gets all sarcastic at me. And so then I'm sitting on the floor feeling like I'm going to have a fit (I'm epileptic) and also panicking because I think I'm going to have a fit and he has the audacity to still be a wanker even after I've told him I feel like I'm going to have a fit *and* I'm having a panic attack. Then he storms out! And tells my co-worker something along the lines of "Kate didn't look very happy" and didn't even ask me how I was when I made it back to the office. Now, though I *am* a needy person, I don't think it's unfair of me to expect someone to say "Are you ok?" when he's seen me in that state? Maybe I'm too quick to judge, just because I'm not a heartless git doesn't mean everyone else isn't, right? And to think yesterday I was planning on retracting any rude statements I'd made because I do dislike putting bad vibes out into the world, karma and all that jazz. But I'm sorry it just bugs me and seeing as I only write in my diary once a year or so, you guys are going to have to put up with the rants! I just don't understand how someone can be so completely fucking unfeeling. Whatever. Rant partially over.

Apart from that not much else happened today. I continued planning the heroine's first kiss with her hero (not one *the* heroes) which is fun 'cos you get to plan all romantic type stuff :D I decided against it being her first and only love, life doesn't happen like that, I mean life doesn't much happen like it does in the book, mythical creatures and stuff, but some things ought to correspond to "real life" having said that - she's still going to get a whopper of a romantic kiss 'cos hey, it's a story and I can do what I like :P Funfunfun.

Elections and Bonfires and Bond

2008-11-05T23:09:00.003+01:00

So woop woop for Barack Obama! I lied in my blog, accidentally, I stayed up - till three in the morning, ugh, boy was I ruing it today! But it was good fun, watching all the online stuff, watching the count go up - I can't believe Missouri (?) and N.C. still haven't called, it must be real close, or they're all so tired and they know the race is won so they're catnapping, I wouldn't blame them! As I said I'm tired and that's just from watching, it must have been a long day for everyone - kudos for surviving!

So. Bonfires. I just read this article by the bbc which was interesting in a vague sort of way. I'm sorry to be harsh but he's been judged and nothing anyone says is going to change that. I can understand changing the verdict for a man who was wrongly executed these days. The family will need some kind of peace and rest, having fought for that person, striving to prove their innocence. But it seems to me it's too late for Mr. Garnet. And at the end of the day, whether he was executed or released he would have gone to the pearly gates and been judged there anyways. That most certainly doesn't mean I condone bad behaviour on any level, I just mean that he's already gone through them or not, let him be, it doesn't make a difference any more. There's no real impact. Now if someone told us, and could prove, that Jesus or Buddha was involved THEN that might be worth listening to... Know what I'm saying?

But anyways, some of the comments bothered me, about how it was a barbarous tradition and we should be celebrating the Celtic New Year now that we're all tolerant and stuff. And the thing is, we may be tolerant and stuff but that doesn't mean we're going to start celebrating other people's festivals. The people that call Hallowe'en the Celtic New Year are the people who only have their facts half right. Those couple of days are celebrated the world over as a festival to celebrate those who have passed on, it has long been recognised as a time when "the veil between the worlds is thin" it really is a day of ghoulies and ghosties *and* it's New Year, but a Pagan one not necessarily a Celtic one. And we'll certainly never have people celebrating pagan festivals (knowingly anyway) if they don't accept where they (the celebrants) come from. It's a pet peeve of mine. I don't mind Christianity per se, I think it's made the world what it is today, which is not a wholly bad one to be honest. OK, ok, there was a lot of killing and shit like that but hell every religion does that, it's not really personal. And I don't even mind (anymore) that they stole other people's religious festivals and made them their own, again the Romans did that, it's a cunning tactic. No, what bothers me is that they don't believe it, they don't even know and they certainly don't accept that that's what happened. They (mostly) really truly believe that Jesus died on Easter Friday and was born 25th December. And it's just not true, we don't really know when he was born but it's a nice coincidence that lots of Sun Gods were born around then. And if he died on Easter Friday then why does it move every year? I told my step-mother this, last year I think, that Easter is celebrated on the first sunday after the first full moon after the equinox and she actually said: "but that's so pagan" And it's like "uhhhh yeah" Easter is a Pagan fertility festival dedicated to, celtic-wise, Eostre (or some variation) that's where the name comes from, that's where the womanly hormone oestrogen comes from, deal with it. And I think if we're going to live in a truly tolerant world people should be able to tolerate the history of their own religions because that might just make them more accepting of others. There are lots of pagan evangelicals out there who'd like to blame all Christians, or Catholics mostly, for the inquisition or the witch hunts and it's just not fair, the people these days didn't do it and there's only a select few who want to burn and torture people but mostly they're good, honest people, striving to look after themselves and each other and I sure ain't going to argue with that.

Back to Bonfire Night, Bonfire Night is a celebration, a celebration of triumph over "terrorism" which is a somewhat overused phrase these days but what the heck. Now it's a symbolic effigy, a symbol of that triumph, which is no bad thing. Now we have a truly english festival (pagan and celtic ones aside) that everyone in the country *does* celebrate, even if it's unknowingly ironically, it's a chance to get together and it's not way overcommericalised so it's nice - pretty lights, big fire - it's all good.

But hey, tell me what you think.

On a much lighter note, I'm going to see the new Bond movie this Saturday - woop woop! It's supposed to be good but not as good as the first Daniel Craig one so it's a must-see but not a must-see-again-in-less-than-3-weeks, or so my boyfriend tells me. So I did just have a date with Daniel Craig as Bond the first time round, to remember it and all that jazz and the Bond movies really are good. Pierce Brosnan I always thought would be "my Bond" you know, the one you always think of, partly 'cos he was the only Bond there was when I was growing up but now I've seen them all and it can't be denied that Sean Connery is legendary! But Daniel Craig is none too shabby and I'm glad that they're not going over old ground and just covering up what was there before: the SC years, the PB, the Timothy Dalton and Roger Moore etc. They may have been more frivolous but I'm glad they're not being swept under the rug. I tell you something else though, even though I'm not into the big built men like DC seems to be and he's only really handsome in the rugged way he's just so... phwoar! I think that's the only way to describe it. There are a lot of hot actors in the world today and a lot of them are irrepressibly sexy and they just make you swoon or give you a bad case of the "yummy yummy give me NOW"s but there were a couple of scenes where it was just like, I dunno, *drool* or something lol. And speaking as a pretty boy lover, that's saying something! Is that just me?

Anyway long, long, loooooooooong post. Night night

Cloud nine?

2008-11-04T23:36:00.002+01:00

I'm getting better at this title malarkey...

Ummm, so what happened today? Nothing much really, did a lot of studying of Wikipedia pages, I think I've done most of the reforms on my project but I just wasn't feeling alive enough to call for a review so I read Wikipedia almost all day - on the important stuff of course, not just trawling through it for amusing reads ;) I've also spent most of the afternoon and evening periodically checking the BBC live updater thing that updates every few minutes or so with a new comment or tweet or email or blog post from randomers or actual bits of news from correspondants. Apparently we're looking at a 2am (GMT) wind down which is three o'clock for me which I just can't face unfortunately, I'd love to stay up and pay attention but I'm too old now lol! OK so not old but you don't need to know my issues to know that I can't stay up till 3 on a work morning! Anyway so tomorrow we'll wake up... actually around afternoon teatime most of the votes will be counted and stuff and we'll know who's probably president. And the face of America will change and the world will change.

It has to be said that, though GWB was a pillock and did some terrible terrible things while in office, he sure made America even more important, though that might also be because I was twelve when he was first elected and didn't really get politics! But still I mean, the changing of hands of the british government didn't make nearly as many ripples even in our country let alone the world and we're still one of the big guys right? I guess that's 'cos we all knew Brown was going to take over for like a year in advance so when it actually happened no-one really noticed.

The other thing is that Americans are so patriotic - it's amazing. The way things are run is somewhat simpler: do you want this man as president? yes/no How about this other man yes/no? Etc. whereas in England you vote for your local candidate and based on how many of each party get in the leader of that party is the new prime minister, or some such. Whereas you know exactly who you're voting for and the candidates really come round, they interact with everyone and you get to take a nice long look at them and their position and decide. But people in Britain are much more lazy I guess and we just don't care really. And I've certainly never seen much hype about it, you get flyers and that's kind of it, but again that might be 'cos I've only been able to vote for two years and I've been in Wales most of the time so I didn't know what was going on either there *or* at home! But I'm real impressed by the Americans and at how they've turned out to show their support and I'm sure they know that they're not only changing America but they're changing the world. I just hope it goes the right way!

In other news... I watched Catch Me If You Can just now, good fun. Christopher Walken scares me though, I'm not sure why, he just does. Maybe because I've only mostly seen him in movies where he's the bad guy: Mike from Stepford Wives (robot), Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow and a bond villain. But he freaks me out! I've just noticed that they're thinking of making an Italian Job II this being the sequel to the 2003 one - L.A. Heist, not the '60s one. It's going to be called the Brazilian Job. Is it just me or is that an awful *awful* name. It sounds like the waxing job of essentially the same name. Now I'm sure it will be good fun, I thought the L.A. Heist was fun tbh and I'm glad it wasn't a remake of the original but Brazilian Job, really!? Terrible.

As usual I've managed to talk for ages about nothing. Still no book work though I did start dreaming about their first kiss, then it turned into a dream about mice in the office. And then the vermin guys came to work today - talk about prophetic!

Better than God?

2008-11-03T21:16:00.002+01:00

Ok... not really 'cos he built a world in seven days but I'm just proud of myself for having remembered to do this everyday and now I'm on the eighth day - I really am *that* bad at sticking to things *sigh*

So I just watched Bride and Prejudice, what a silly movie that is. Good fun though, it reminds me I haven't read Jane Austen in a very long time, those are the books I can read over the next week hopefully. They're classics, they might even be on sale in the Netherlands, fingers crossed.

Work was... kinda hard today. There's a guy at work who I got on really well with when I started, he really helped me out. And he's mostly nice and helpful but it turns out he's been spying on me for my mentors (I know I mentioned this before) and it just gets to me that he can be so nice and friendly but be such an utter wanker. Maybe that's just guys though? Hehehe.

Still no work on the book :S I know I haven't a deadline but I feel lazy! I fell asleep before getting anywhere last night so it's an early night for tonight with some writing or plotting or SOMETHING before I go to bed! I did a survey on my favourite forum yesterday, asking people about their first kiss or best kiss perhaps. I had a really romantic one personally but I'm not sure how to write it in a book! Well, it's more about getting them *to* the situation where they might kiss that's the hard part. So if anyone would like to tell me their most romantic/best kiss I'd be more than grateful.

I think that's all for now, oh and happy voting tomorrow Americans!

Seventh Day Rant

2008-11-02T22:04:00.002+01:00

So I'm reading Paperback Writer's blog (it's very good) and she's talking about first lines, which is helpful to say the least. And someone commented with a link to The Top 10 Most Outrageous First Lines and the quotes were good fun I thought. Lots of comments including lots about the 1984 first line: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." And the first four comments about this line were fairly good, I felt, asking why it was outrageous as technically you could have 1300 hours and someone replied well yes but clocks don't "strike thirteen" etc. etc. But after that the people talking about the line got more and more rude, insulting and ignorant. It seems to me that if someone has either a) already resolved the issue or b) already laid into someone about it (I don't condone this) then there is absolutely no need to continue shouting at them. Another thing, I don't know about you guys but I always make sure I read other people's comments before adding my own, just in case I repeat something someone else has said. So the amount of people who commented with the opening line from "The Stranger" got to me because, you know, it's already been quoted and if it is absolutely your favourite line then say so rather than just repeat.

Still no writing has been done, I'm very glad now that I'm not doing NaNo, I'd already be trailing miserably behind! I think I may have a last minute cram before I go to bed. My mother came to visit and I had asked my stepmother to give her some of my books - I have about 12 with me, most of which I've read twice already *sigh* And OK my bookshelf is just shy of two metres wide and OK it's three books deep, but she's read the books so she knows what they look like and I told her exactly where they are. Oh well, now I'm *completely* out of books, trip to the bookstore methinks, so I should do some writing instead perhaps. That would be a good use of my time!

So it's the sixth day

2008-11-01T22:58:00.004+01:00

I hope you all had very happy hallowe'ens! I've had a nice day today - hung out with my mum and her partner, went into the fabric shop that has always tempted me in town and rightly so. It was amazing! I didn't even get to explore like half of it - I'm going back next weekend no doubt about it. I also went to a department store (a nice one) and pondered the idea of satisfying my craving for cushions, I need some on my couch as it's not the most comfortable thing in the world and it would be nice to be more snuggly you know? But maybe I'll get some plain ones and make covers with fabric from the fabric shop who knows!? Fun fun fun.

Anyways, I just want to give a shout to all those doing the NaNoWriMo this month. It sounds like a fab idea, I'd really consider it but I'm a few thousand words into my first book *ever* so I wanted to see how I go with that rather than cheat or start another one *at the same time* Maybe next year, when I know how I write books and whether I would ever do it ever again. Oh, only I'll be writing a dissertation this time next year *doh* Isn't uni fun? :)

Um, um, um, not much else to say, some friends on a forum know that I'm writing a book so they keep asking questions and giving me outlandish things to put in it - ok so it's a fantasy adventure story but some things just aren't, you know, required. Anyways one person asked me if the dragons had enemies and I was like "No... but they did fight amongst themselves before" which I hadn't known before, it's nice when your story tells you things about itself. Makes life that little bit easier. Anyways, night night.

And on the fifth day

2008-11-01T00:26:00.003+01:00

Ok ok so it's just gone midnight and it's technically the sixth day but I haven't been to sleep yet (except at work perhaps!) so it doesn't count ;) The reason this is so late is because I was posting on my respectable blog. I wrote an article on how baking is like programming then found an article about how magic (the wizarding kind not the pagan kind) is also like programming so I thought I'd extend my article to include comparisons between cookery and magic. Let me know what you think:

http://computersciencemusings.blogspot.com/

Anyway because I'm sleepy it took longer than expected and so I'm now technically on the sixth day but shwsh :P My mum and her partner came today and they're here till Sunday - yay! I miss my family so much. Though I'm only six hours away (only!) that's the same amount of time it takes to get from uni to home but the difference is that I have to plan in advance to go home from here, I can't just jump on a train partly 'cos they only accept credit cards on the trains - gits. So it feels even more isolated here than it did in Aber, plus the fact I had more friends there! Anyways no more whining.

Again no work has been done on the book but I've been working and then went straight to the hotel to meet my mum hopefully I will have done some more by the seventh day even though, were I God, I'd be a'resting up. Sadly that is not the case, if I can't think up some proper narrative I think I'm going to try out some world building type tutorials, I have countries and seas and planets and moons to name yet, and gods! Well gods first because I'm unimaginative and I'm going to name the other planets after the gods like we have. But it still means I have to make up god names and think about religiong and all that jazz, it's not really slacking off at all to be fair.

So at work I had a code review today and it was grueling. Partly because though I understood it all at the time when I came to actually coding it red lines appeared everywhere - just like misspellings in word and I couldn't for the life of me work out why. That stressed me out not a little and I got all down again which wasn't helpful. Still my mummy is here now and I intend to have a happy weekend at least :)

I really can't think of much else to say so I hope you all had a happy hallowe'en and I'll check in tomorrow :)

Four

2008-10-30T20:00:00.004+01:00

I know I said I'd stop numbering them but I really don't have a title today so meh. I haven't really done any proper writing in the last couple of days I've been putting off tidying my room by watching movies which also excludes the possibility of writing and laundry - doh! I do need to tidy my room though, my mother is coming to visit tomorrow and I need to look vaguely respectable it's one thing to have a messy room in the house you live in at home it's quite another for them to spend eight hours or so coming to see you and you *still* have a messy room although it's looking like a possibility.

So I set up another blog today - my respectable blog as it were. Where I don't talk about my writing and stuff because people I know might actually read it and then ask me questions about it. For some reason I have issues with people I know knowing stuff. My book is a project that my best friend and my boyfriend know about, and a few people I know on a forum but seeing as they want to fill it with were-llamas - a favourite topic of ours, their input doesn't really count. So other people that I know knowing about the book would lead to them having expectations of me and asking questions that I'm not ready for and it'd be all ugh and stuff. As such this is my technically secret from people I know blog and that is the blog where I can talk about the good things about work and general reviews of stuff and bitching about Open Office as I have already done today :D Anything interesting will come here too :)

So where is my issue with random people knowing about my book? I don't know, I'm a generally paranoid person, I feel like people judge me and it does matter to me and yet the expectations that anyone reading this might put on me are somehow less binding - maybe 'cos no-one is reading this as yet ;) As I read through this I notice a fair few spelling mistakes - it's atrocious, I used to be excellent at spelling maybe typing has sucked it out of me - spell check is a godsend and a... hellsend? I don't know but it's a pain especially if you don't know how to turn it off, like me, in Open Office or it's in American or it doesn't recognise the word "learnt" um excuse me Linux, "learnt" is a word you stupid opensource piece of... Lol but I've already bitched once. That'll do.

So at work today I actually ran out of things to do, it's unprecedented, normally I run out of things I want to do but today I'd done practically everything. At five minutes to the end of the day I realised I could better a presentation that I was working on but that took ten minutes and then I was done too! *sigh* tomorrow is going to be worse though - I have a grilling code review which means lots of people telling me I suck - not fun and then I have to make a cake and I have no idea what I'm going to make just yet. Which reminds me - I did say I'd write up some recipes. Instead of writing them up maybe I'll post all the links to them, that sounds much more fun - I'll write recommendations under them to show I'm not completely slacking off, honest. I've made a couple of excellent cheesecakes recently but they're definitely better made the day before. I've also noticed that I start too many sentences with "so" this is worrying. Luckily I'm the kind of person who is totally difficult about those kinds of things when reading and hopefully such issues won't turn up in my book. I've even highlighted words in my my chapters that have been used in another chapter recently in a different colour so I know to change them. Yes, I *am* that anal. So (see???) on the subject of the book I've got a few chapters done and a couple typed up - yay for me! I was just reading this blog: http://skimdecafmochawithwhip.blogspot.com/ And she really doesn't give anything away about her book: "there's a guy and a girl and um... no that's all I'm telling you." She's very good at it, as for me I'll probably talk more about it just because I can't help it and seeing as I don't talk to anyone else about it - because of the aforementioned reasons - I have to spill it out here, so uh, no pilfering mmkay? Not that you would but I thought if I sounded mean you might believe me, but I didn't sound mean so whatever. In fact I think I overuse the word "so" generally. This is something that needs to be worked on... Maybe it's only a thing I do when I'm talking and when I'm writing writing (as opposed to talking writing) it won't occur so often *fingers crossed* I've blabbered on about nothing in particularly so before you decide to scratch off your own face because it's more interesting (I actually knew someone who made me want to do that) I'll shut up. Tata!

Third

2008-10-29T22:41:00.003+01:00

Don't worry, I will stop numbering them soon it's just that Third has another meaning for me right now - I am reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card and though I don't relate to it as much as many people seem to have done it is nevertheless a brilliant book. I'm not normally a "hard-core" sci-fi fan, that is, the one with more futuristic technology than fantasy but this book is quite beautiful it must be said. It's definitely going up on the favourites list. I don't really want to give much away but I'll tell you something about it and why "Third" is important. In this world, which is our future (sort of) there are population limits in a way, families are limited to two children and every child soon after they're born has a "monitor" in the back of their head which allows the people from the "Space Army" (It's not actually called that) to monitor their thoughts and feelings and how other people relate to them. Through this means they can work out who is suitable to become a soldier and perhaps who is suitable to become a commander. The story follows the journey of Ender Wiggin through Battle School and, presumably, beyond; but I haven't gotten that far yet. Anyways it's excellent.

Other things of note: today I saw a seventy year old man walking down the street and he appeared to be attempting to dress similar to the "cool" kids of today. This included the baggy trousers belted around the bottom, unfortunately for this gentlemen he did not belt them tight enough and as such had to walk along pulling his trousers up to stop from exposing copious amounts of thigh! Very funny stuff.

I had planned not to bitch about work on here lest someone track me down and fire me or whatnot for what I write but honestly I'm a bit miffed. I work for a software company and I'm doing some coding on a project, self-written in fact and I had a meeting today with my two supervisors - just a check in really. But they manage to make me feel guilty and nervous when I haven't done anything wrong. Yes ok I don't have a to-do list and no I don't have a time plan and my thought-he-was-a-friend-but-seems-to-be-a-traitorous-spy of a colleague has been been dobbing me in for slacking off. Ok so maybe that's all true but I finished my project: today. About an hour after this meeting. I've been working on it for three and a half weeks and have had four days off. I am an intern this is my first real solo project, it's a rewrite and redesign of a project I wrote in august through september but even then I had help. This I did by myself and despite slacking off it's taken me half the time. They didn't even believe me today when I said that I might soon be done, I knew I'd be done by the end of the day (to hedge my bets) and then, I was. And it just bugs me you know? Not to mention feeling completely f***ing betrayed by my colleague, this isn't the first time, he obviously just slags me off to my supervisor, wanker. So yet again I'm loathing Holland and my job and the majority of my life - yes I'm being melodramatic, no I don't care.

The story is having some downtime because I'm feeling sleepy and lazy and despondent to extremes but even so I'm planning little bits about it, thinking about secondary characters, fleshing out my knowledge as it were. I've realised that you can do a whole bunch of research but next to nothing shows in the book. I just live in "fear" of something Galaxy Quest-esque happening... Well not really but the idea of people quizzing me on background details if I ever did get published has me researching now so I will be able to answer their questions - laughable really but never mind.

I think that's the end of my ramble. Conclusion: yay for almost finishing projects, yay for Orson Scott Card, yay for old men reconnecting with their youth and boo for betrayal, work and Holland.

The second day

2008-10-28T21:24:00.005+01:00

So hurrah, I remembered - often the key problem with me - to write my blog post. Nada mucho happened today, I got nagged by my boss, did some good work, registered with a doctor - nothing interesting really. So I shall talk about other things. I am a big reader, I may not be a diverse reader but I do love reading and recently (five months ago) I joined the legion of people obsessed with the Twilight Saga which I thought was awesome. There are bits that could have been done better but hey she's a first time writer, plot lines that I didn't like but that's just my preference but anyway I thoroughly enjoyed them. I read the first three books over two weekends and then had to spend an agonising month waiting for the fourth and final installment. In order to prevent the onset of craziness I somehow or other stumbled across some fanfiction, it's the only fanfiction I've ever read so I don't really know how good it is by comparison, all I know is it kept me sane. She has done the first three books through the eyes of Alice, one "what if?" an alternate final book. All of these are fab, she also did a journal style 1st chapter by the main character but by comparison to the others it wasn't great. I'm posting a link to this in case anyone else is interested, I thought they were fab: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1544699/Nostalgicmiss The alternate final book is still being written so every morning I desperately check if the new chapter has been uploaded and every morning I remember that I'm nine hours ahead so she probably won't have posted at one am *sigh* anyway she said only a couple of chapters to go - yay!

The first day of the rest of my life

2008-10-27T21:21:00.003+01:00

Or a year in posts. I have decided in order to bring some form of fun self-discipline into my life that I will write one blog post every day that I can in the next year. I'm not sure why but it seemed like a good idea when I thought of it last week and seeing as I've only just started self-discipline certainly seems necessary.

I'm not going to back out of the first post by it being solely about the next 365 days. I'm going to say lots of things, hooray for me. So, in my somewhat garbled post last week I mentioned that I'm writing a book and, discipline notwithstanding, it's still true, I'm still writing a book or a three-parter. I'm going for a different angle than many people go for (not 'cos I'm special, 'cos I'm weird) in that I want to have three protagonists. I don't know if it's going to work, it has so far but it might drive me crazy. What?! I hear you cry. How would you do this!? Well I'll tell you, it's going to be in third person perspective, in a way, but instead of following around one character it will follow three. I've only seen this done in literature in Robin Hobb's The Liveship Traders, which was phenomenal. But it's going to be marginally different from that too, she had four maybe even five threads in her expertly woven tapestry but each was a different story. In my book I want to have three view points on the same scenery, I'm not going to go over every scene many times but I plan to swap perspective at different points to give a better idea of what's going on. As I said it's working so far but if this ends up being three stories - as it's telling me it will be - I may implode, who knows? This is my first book so I'm kinda working blind here!

I had a loathesome weekend which finished off a pretty crap end of (working)week. The people below me decided to take advantage of the extra hour at two o'clock by having a party. I don't object to parties, I object to music that rattles my windows till five in the morning but I don't think I'm the only one. But now I'm feeling marginally more human and that's always a good thing. I've been given, by two separate people, for unremembered reasons, the hugest pile of DVDs. If I could get my butt in gear and watch one every day for the rest of the time I'm here (not a bad idea if I want to fill blog posts) I still would have some left over, even after the 250 odd days *sigh* luckily there are a few that I've seen but even then! Eek!

So I went to Paris last weekend (I'm making good on the 'lots of things to say' promise) and it was tremendous fun. I went with my boyfriend for our anniversary, awww. I say went, we met there seeing as I am in the Netherlands and he is in London. I left my love on Ealing Broadway... But yes it was good fun, we did adult tourist things like went to the Moulin Rouge - I've never seen so many breasts in my life! On the non-breast side of things there was a guy who did the most amazing shadow puppets and a pair not-quite-gymnasts where the man balanced the woman on his head... with no hands! I was rather impressed I must say. We went to my aunt and uncle's the next day and I ate the best tiramisu in the world - it actually is and it's the one recipe I will not post! But I had also eaten slightly too rare steak with disagreed with me not a little so I had to make close personal friends with a bin on a metro station platform unfortunately. But again I'm better now so all is well. Hooray!

Story Time

2008-10-21T17:47:00.004+02:00

So it would appear that I've started writing a story... it wasn't intentional I promise but it happened and now I'm on the second chapter and it's good fun. It's about dragons which is always good but other than that I'm keeping schtum. I think it could be good but then I'm sure all writers think that of their novels. I already know that it has to be a trilogy or at least in three parts which is a tad scary if only because it means I have to write three books! I'm pretty new at this so I'm going to start spending time trawling the internet to find out how other people do the whole writing malarkey and when's a good time to start looking for publishing, not that it'll be published I'm sure but it'd be nice to try :) I'm going to get a lot of people to read it first if only to set up a fan base!

Carrot Cake and recipe books

2008-09-24T18:30:00.004+02:00

So last Friday, I made a Carrot Cake at work, this was the recipe I found:

http://www.joyofbaking.com/CarrotCake.html

It was rather delicious, at the request of my co-workers it wasn't iced which I previously would have been shocked at but it turned out lovely all the same. I didn't add nuts, feeding 10-12 people means the fussiness rating goes right up! I don't believe in pineapples, for eating anyways, but it turned out quite moist I felt. It could have had a little more spice to it though I did add a pinch of nutmeg as well, I searched some fifteen carrot cake recipes and took a little from here and a little from there, oh! I also used brown sugar with a little vanilla sugar - because I couldn't find vanilla extract, shopping in Holland is quite stressful! Anyways, all in all a very nice recipe, definitely one to add to the collection.

I have a student recipe book called Classic 1000 Student Recipes and it's absolutely fab and I looked it up the other day on amazon to tell my friend to get it and what do you know? It's part of a whole series, one of which is Classic 1000 Cakes, it's going to be my new friend! It has the most delicious looking black forest gateau on the front which is simply calling out to me...

Chocolate Cloud Cake

2008-08-15T11:32:00.007+02:00

Chocolate Cloud Cake:

This is the recipe for the Chocolate Cloud cake as made on 15/08/08.

Ingredients:

Cake
| 250g chocolate
| 125g unsalted butter
| 6 eggs, 2 whole, 4 separated
| 175g caster sugar

Topping
| 500ml double cream
| vanilla extract

Utensils
| 23cm springform tin
| 2 mixing bowls
| Electric hand whisk and regular whisk
| saucepan

# Preheat the over to 180 degrees C
# Line the bottom of the dish with baking paper
# Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water, when melted, melt the butter into it, never let the chocolate boil
# Beat the 2 whole eggs and 4 egg yolks with 75g of the sugar then gently add the chocolate, the best way to add it is with a wooden spoon or non-electric hand whisk
# In another bowl, whisk the 4 egg whites until foamy then gradually add the 100g of sugar until the whites hold their shape but are not too stiff.
# Lighten the chocolate mixture with a dollop of egg whites then fold in the rest
# Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 35 - 40 minutes or until the cake is risen, cracked and the centre is no longer wobbly
# Cool the cake in its tin on a wire rack, the middle will sink as it cools
# When you are ready to eat, place the still tin-bound cake on a cake stand or plate for serving and carefully remove it from the tin, don't worry about cracks or rough edges
# Whip the cream until it's soft then add the vanilla extract and continue whisking until the cream is firm but not stiff
# Fill the crater of the cake with the whipped cream and dust the top lightly with cocoa powder, push it through a small sieve to ensure there are no lumps

Tips and Tricks:

In Holland double cream doesn't exist so try to find a slagroom with 35% fat content.
It is important to use an electric whisk to beat the cream and egg whites because otherwise it takes a very long time and the cream may not even grow stiff.
Ensure that the cream _and the beaters_ are very cold before trying to whip the cream, this speeds up the process considerably. I would suggest placing the beaters in a glass of cold water in the fridge as soon as you are done making the cake.
It is a good idea to leave time between making the cake and putting the cream in because otherwise the cream will warm and soften, undoing all your good beating work.
If you like you can add Cointreau to both the cake and cream. Add two tablespoons to the cake mix after adding the chocolate and one tablespoon to the cream _after it's soft_ do *not* add it beforehand otherwise the cream will not whip.

So many shoes

2008-08-14T12:39:00.003+02:00

So, I've just moved to Rotterdam and it's a very cool city, ice cream capital of Holland doncha know. But it also seems to have a lot of shoe shops, and I mean a *lot* and I can't fathom why. It's not like Milan or anything, they're variations of regular high street stores but there's like a billion of them! As I said I haven't been here long so I don't know if this is a Dutch thing or just a Rotterdam thing, but it bemuses me to say the least.

The First Blog

2008-08-14T11:50:00.001+02:00

So this is my blog where I will post stuff... duh! Mostly I think I will post recipes so that I always have them available, provided there's also internet ;) But there may also be occurrences of wise thoughts, ponderings and the like. It will be interesting if you comment - on the more interesting posts anyway! Yay for blogging.