Deutschland
I’m going to Munich tomorrow because I’m in a show out there. The last time I was in Germany was when I was in Berlin a few years ago, which turned out to be full-tilt, drunken mayhem. So I’ve got high hopes.
Jun 23, 2005 at 23:50 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Meltdown
On Sunday night my computer went into meltdown. As is always the case with these things, it happened late at night when I was just about to go to bed. And it happened right before my very eyes…
It started to behave oddly and I thought it was going to crash. And although I’ve had a couple of hardware problems with this comp, excluding sleep and the battery dying it has only ever been switched off on a handful of occasions, and in that whole time, has never crashed once. (That’s because Mac OS X runs on a flavour of Unix these days. And Unix is to computing what a JCB is to digging holes).
Anyway, I though my trusty comp was in the process of crashing. Oh well, I thought, it had to happen some time. But no! It was far far worse than that. The details are slightly boring so I’ll skip them, but basically my comp had a total mindquake for no apparent reason. Complete meltdown. Needless to say I had a later night than I expected and I’ve spent a bit of time over the last few days sorting everything out.
I could have lost over a years worth of email, everything I’ve ever written that isn’t posted here, hundreds of images of my work, all of the software based stuff I’ve built, lots and lots and lots of good web bookmarks, a picture of a man with a tattoo of an office chair on his arm and my Icy Hot Stuntaz sampler.
Lucky for me I took a backup. I’ve got to be honest, it’s not something I do with great regularity but as fate would have it, I had backed a lot of stuff up last week. So I almost learned the golden rule of computing the hard way. Always back everything up. Always always always. Okay, I do now. Because that was a very close shave.
aaah… arm chair, I get it. Very clever.
In case you’re wondering (and if having a big tattoo of ‘a blue shape’ on your arm qualifies you to judge this sort of thing) I’m pretty certain that this is real. (?!)
Jun 22, 2005 at 19:41 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Blatant Drugs Reference
‘Captcha’ stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It sounds very fancy but in reality it’s just a small image of scrambled random letters that you have to type into web pages for security purposes.
You’ve probably seen loads of them before but I bet you’ve never seen one like this…
It’s totally far out man. Someone must have bugged my fillings and uploaded the beta waves from my brain. How else would the internet find out about all that acid I took?
Jun 16, 2005 at 2:00 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Very Large Cracker
I made a discovery in the back of the cupboard the other day. There was a big circular paper package tucked away at the back that looked like it contained something interesting.
At first I thought it was a packet of those electric sander disks that you get. Then I realised that what I had in fact stumbled upon was nothing other than the biggest cracker I’ve ever seen in my life. So I ate it.
Jun 14, 2005 at 21:02 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Shouting Fox
[I have edited this entry because I wrote it when I was drunk]
Basically what happened was that I was walking home in a drunken stupor when I thought I heard someone up ahead making an otherworldly barking/shouting sound. It turned out to be a fox that was stood in the middle of the road shouting/barking at a mangy looking labrador that was running away. Then it almost got squashed by a taxi and ran away when I walked past.
I got to only a few feet away because it was too busy going nuts to notice me. It’s definitely the closest I’ve ever been to an urban fox apart from the one that Edward Labesdski showed me on the way to school when I was a wee boy. But that one was dead and covered in flies.
Jun 11, 2005 at 2:35 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Pictures And Noise
Double hangover. I went to the Transmission members’ show opening last night then nipped round the corner to see one of my favourite bands, Macrocosmica. As usual, they rocked. I think they’re better than Dracula.
Jun 5, 2005 at 16:21 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Quest
I went to The Institute last night to see Rich Hughes’ show. As usual I was mostly within grabbing distance of the bath of beer. Afterwards, there was a party at the old buff club which is just a few doors down from my old flat, where I continued to drink Guinness and gin until I could drink no more.
And then I walked home. Which is at least three miles through the town. My biological compass is faulty at the best of times but when I’m drunk I might as well use the I-Ching to navigate. So the usual scenario unfolded… I tried to avoid both people and having to make any decisions regarding direction at all costs. Predictably this led to me more or less following a bus route home. A sort of half-imaginary bus route that goes via a wide variety of insignificant and slightly dangerous places before getting anywhere near where I stay.
Jun 4, 2005 at 16:52 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Nae Watter
I woke up this morning to find that the water had been turned off. It’s happened a few times before so I didn’t expect it to be for very long. Plus, I was okay for my morning coffee because the kettle was about half full.
But by by lunchtime the taps were still just making a funny noise when I turned them on and then I noticed the large hole in the street outside with machinery around it. So I went out to the shop to get a bottle of water and I noticed a note from the council stuck to the front door on the next close. And it said blah blah water is very important blah we are improving things by turning it off for 2 days.
So without even the slightest preparation, I’m without water until 8am on Saturday. At least I can use the goldfishes water for cups of tea.
Jun 2, 2005 at 23:52 Filed Under: Blog Comment
Crime Drama
Hmm… let’s see, there are a few things that never made it into the ‘Salad…
The main one that springs to mind is probably the triple murder that happened on my street a while back.
I was going to the post office one morning and I had to take a detour because half the street was fenced off and full of cops. And then I saw it on the news that night. Three old men were found dead in the same flat.
It was really strange seeing the other end of my street on a live news report when I could pretty much hang out of the window and see it for real. And it was even stranger listening to the reporter saying how it was a pretty brutal affair while standing outside the flat which I walk past every day.
I meant to mention it at the time but it slipped my mind. I wouldn’t have had much to say anyway, apart from: three old men were badly murdered at the end of my street- they were attacked with an axe, a baseball bat, golf clubs, a hammer, knives, metal files, a belt and pieces of wood.
Anyway, maybe I should stop there. There were other things but they were mostly just hangovers, cat shenanigans and the Ken Loach film Ae Fond Kiss getting filmed round the corner.