Snow is Cold

Last weekend on my way to and from Leeds I attempted to take a few point and click shots out the window as I was driving along (and not crash into anyone/thing). On the way home there was an eerie freezing fog hanging over the M5 which made it seem as if I were driving through a post apocalyptic world of mist and haze, where no sunlight could penetrate through. It was a beautiful drive home actually even though I felt like death for the first part, and the shot here is probably the best of all, but if you’re interested the rest are in the photos section here.

So why am I bothering? Well just to make it look like stuff is happening I suppose :) today I’ve been reflecting on how my mental capacity in the week is diminished to that of a near lifeless empty husk which exists solely to transport itself to the office and back whereupon it stares blankly into a 19″ window and attempts to decipher the logic behind EJBs, which I must say, are a damn sight more confusing than PHP ever has been. Also the clarity of tutorials is far less than their pre hypertext processor equivalents.

Ok enough of that talk. Weekends are still burning me out, and the weeks are spent struggling by, trying to recover in time for the twice-weekly festivities. The past 2 weekends have been no exception - the killer Cheltenham + Gods Kitchen combo was pretty intense and involved a lot of Saturday lying around, and this last weekend I was up in Leeds on a bit of a Whistler reunion. At Gods’ Deep Dish were pretty good but didn’t blow me away like last time unfortunately :( think it was mainly to do with the fact we were all expecting them to play ’til at least 4, but the money grabbing bastards had double booked for the close at Ministry’s 14th birthday. Bah. Also there were suggestions of a few too many commercial leanings for our taste. Instead, we spent the majority of the evening grooving away to Babooshka’s Lee Pearson (at least I think that was his name), who was rocking it hard. Props.

In the week I was vetted for the health of my eyes and teeth. Almost received a completely clean bill of health but have been advised to get some specs for my persistent PC usage and should probably get a couple fillings done sooner rather than later (boohoo). Interesting stuff huh? Actually my dentist had just recently come to the country from Toronto so we spent a few minutes discussing Canada & England. Basically I was wondering why the hell she wanted to move from there to here :) especially to live in Gloucester of all places…

Leeds weekend was very messy. Took 4 and a quarter bastard hours to get to Leeds on Friday as silly me left it too late to leave and crawled along the M42 at snails’ pace. On arrival we immediately set off again to Castleford snowdome - no rest for the wicked but managed to squeeze in a cheese sarnie courtesy of Timmy before we left! Boarding again was cool and I can’t wait to go away in a couple weeks (wow is that all it is? Excellent). Didn’t quite make it out into Headingly in time for drinks but polished off all the beers at home and indulged in some monster pizza action. Saturday was spent drinking all day, starting off whilst watching the rugby and progressing via a curry house and lots of bars to a place called “Bourbon” I think. Got to bed at 5am for about 5 hours before being rudely awoken by the residents as they had to move out of the place that day! lol.

Anyway was awesome to see ya guys (if you read this). Dunc you bastard flying off to Mexico, and Tim potentially bigger bastard for going away for another season this Sunday! Outrageous behaviour. Well I wish you a great time mate, honest… Also respect is due to Ms Game for locking himself out of the house on Friday wearing only a swimming costume and with a ready meal (resplendent with plastic container) in the oven to take a dip in the hot tub!! 3 hours, a kicked in door, garage, and a broken window later he was back inside, but had sadly missed both of the two buses that leave his village daily and therefore couldn’t make it up for the boarding session :) good skills! Where the fuck do you live tho that only 2 buses leave a day?! Hehe.

Speaking to Pete and reading Daz’ emails also made me rather green, seeing as they are both still ritzing it up in North America. Keep the stories coming though as I’m sure it provides welcome entertainment for us poor buggers stuck in blighty :) apparently snow is coming this Friday, although I doubt it’ll warrant scratching hell out of my board on one of the molehills over yonder. Expect the country will be grinding to a halt too at the mere mention of adverse weather and/or driving conditions. Gotta love England.

Excellent (and amusing) piece on wikipedia here about Slashdot subculture, just RTFA already ;)

Actually while you’re at it, check out this video of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, pitching Windows 1.0 to the public. Lol.

And, Why $5 gas is good for America - courtesy of wired.

Time marches on never ending,
time keeps its own time.
Here we stand at beginning,
and then goes passing us by
And I, I, I can dream for us all.
I hope I’m in a better state,
When here and now crumbles and falls and you, you,
you who make worlds collide,
I knew you’d come knocking one day,
unannounced like a thief in the night.

So tell me how do you do,
Finally I meet you.
You don’t know what I’ve been through,
waiting and wondering about you.
I had a dream my trip would end up at you,
and now I know paradise.

Where do we go from here,
time ain’t nothing but time,
I now have no fear of my fears
And no more tears to cry, tomorrow, tomorrow,
tomorrow means nothing at all.
If we don’t hear the line, when today places its call,
and morning, morning,
Morning, won’t ever be the same,
now I won’t make the same mistakes,
Time and time again.
Time and time again.
Time and time again.
Time and time again.
Time and time again.
Time and time again.
Time and time again.
Time and time again.

[from Kings of Tomorrow ft. Julie McKnight - Finally]

Wow. It’ll take you a while to read, and a lot of it may be stuff that you’ve seen before, but… Disturbing.

http://www.drasticmedia.com/Scientology.html

Actually, more relevant, and probably more realistically worrying, is this info on George W’s senior advisor - Karl Rove. I was wondering why ‘Family Guy’ painted him as the devil :)

Thanks to Tiff, I just completed the superhero quiz, and I am… INDIANA JONES:

You scored as Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones is an archaeologist/adventurer with an unquenchable love for danger and excitement. He travels the globe in search of historical relics. He loves travel, excitement, and a good archaeological discovery. He hates Nazis and snakes, perhaps to the same degree. He always brings along his trusty whip and fedora. He’s tough, cool, and dedicated. He relies on both brains and brawn to get him out of trouble and into it.

I can live with that - esp. as James Bond was my nr2 ;)

Which Action Hero Would You Be?

I’m off to see Deep Dish tonight! They rock my world. In fact they’re one of my biggest influences from a DJing perspective. In order to prepare I’ve spent nearly the whole day lying down or in bed, in various combinations! I’ve been feeling absolutely exhausted today, and have an almost complete memory blackout from last night which is a bit worrying. The plan of “taking it easy” obviously didn’t work out too well - quelle surprise. I guess it was probably something to do with the fact that in the whole nightclub there were about 10 girls to every 90 blokes, heh. Not that I would probably touch any of them anyway..

It was lucky then that there was so much sport on TV today, and even better that we beat the Aussies at rugby and the Argentinians at football. A good day to be English indeed :)

Also in music: yesterday I got Steve Lawler’s new mix CD (Lights Out 3) through the post. Haven’t really listened to it yet but seems awesome, the guy continues to impress me.

I bought a learn Japanese book too, which came in the same delivery. Thought seeing as I was lucky enough to receive a fair amount of private tuition in Canada it would be a shame to let it drop! So, I expect to be getting stuck into that shortly.

More later…

Whilst searching on inclusion of AJAX in JSP pages today, I happened across a lovely script called Behaviour, which purpose is to remove excess javascript tags in HTML pages (don’t you just hate that? ;). As with a lot of web 2.0 stuff, it’s a pretty simple idea. Javascript code is housed in CSS selectors, which is located in the stylesheet then rather than the HTML. This way, you can use CSS ids to trigger javascripts, removing the need for example for “onClick” etc. events in hyperlinks. Lovely.

Actually I’m sure it’s better explained on the Behaviour page, so you’re probably better off checking there if you’re interested :)

Incidentally and interestingly, a couple more links from that page (via the Sam Stephenson link at the bottom of the page) lands you at projectionist (tumblelog) - which I was looking at just yesterday via here (and the subsequent link). Seems it’s not only a small world, but a small web too ;)

I received an email yesterday with a whole load of these in, but these ones are my faves:

Mary had a little skirt
with splits right up the sides,
and every time that Mary walked
the boys could see her Thighs.
Mary had another skirt
’twas split right up the front,
but she didn’t wear that one very often.

Simple Simon met a Pieman,
going to the fair.
Said Simple Simon to the Pieman,
What have you got there?
Said the Pieman unto Simon,
Pies, you dickhead.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the kings horses and all the kings men,
said “F*ck him, He’s only an egg.”

Picked this up off the OpenCms mailing list today. Oh dear.

[the guy in question is having a problem importing 1800 files at one time into the cms virtual file system]

>>Split the 1800 files to 10 imports.
>>Then import the files and, after that, publish your project.
>
>
> I’ve tried importing them in batches of 600 and publishing each batch
> on its own

Although this may sound pretty obvious, but 1800 / 10 != 600 :)

Should I be worried that I found this humourous?! It obviously doesn’t take much to bring on a snigger at work :) I do get some pretty funny looks from the girl on the other side of the office actually.

So the labour MPs rebel against Tony Blair and reject his proposal to increase the holding period for suspected terrorists from 14 days to 90 days, overturning it by a majority of 31 votes. Instead they agree on increasing it to 28 days - wow. Do they think that the police go around arresting people hither and thither without the notion of intelligence gathering? The BBC reported that the PM was left staring blankly at the members of his party who chose to vote against him and are now questioning whether he can run the party in light of the revelation that his MPs are no longer willing to follow him on his personal quests to reform. Seriously, considering these people are supposed to be in the upper strata of intelligence to even be in such positions of authority they create a remarkably poor impression. To me the politicians seem incredibly fickle, and whilst the labour MPs were genuinely have been against the proposal there’s little doubt that the conservative party’s motives were purely to undermine the PMs authority.

Did they somehow overlook the fact that the people, and especially the police, were campaigning for this move? Do they really think this is in the best interests of public security, and security of the nation? I’m bemused, for want of a stronger word, by the lack of insight shown by decision makers in this country. Not just in parliament, but extending throughout the entirety of the public sector.

At least the guy with funny glasses and a bald head who goes crazy about any political controversy is having a field day about how exciting the next few weeks are going to be, and no doubt we’ll be subject to his contrived theories about the implications of these events on the running of the country and the respect commanded by good old Tony. I was actually quite happy about the reforms he was trying to initiate, but I guess now we’ll be left to stagnate a while longer.

Not that I have much interest in politics… It might as well be a schoolyard squabble amongst local bullies, the way they carry on. Jesus.

BBC news article

Busy couple of days just gone by. This evening I was down in Bristol visiting at an accenture open evening - the first interest I’ve taken in a company further than browsing their website :) it was quite informative, though they didn’t really make me feel like I want to drop everything and buy into management consultancy just yet. In fact the question still remains over whether I want a career at all (lol). I did manage to find out though that the little arrow above their corporate logo has a symbolic meaning, which I’ve promptly forgotten. Doh.

The journey down was marred slightly by probably the worst driving conditions I’ve ever experienced. The rain was so heavy that the roads flooded and you could hardly see a thing. I thought I was probably best off just sticking my car in the outside lane and straightlining as much as possible - it was kinda scary though during the brief moments of aquaplaning. All the water made for some interesting backdrops and phenomena, for example as I reached the crest of a hill on the M32 there was a huge column of reflecting light where the cars were queued into the distance coming in the opposite direction, and on the way home the spray from the lorries on my side of the road was illuminated by the headlights from traffic on the other carriageway, creating a phosphorescent mist. All very artsy, and pleasing to the eye..

Sadly though my evening is but an hour long tonight, so I will have to call it a night. Feeling exhausted again :(

Too much to write. Too aching to move. Squash after a long layoff equals pain the next day - so there IS a point to warming down after all. Either that or I’m getting old. Leaving for a meeting in 10 hours. Hung over again. Nearly got obliterated by a lorry travelling at 70mph (I was doing around 5mph), wouldn’t have been fun. Fortunately the senses kicked in in time. Did here to York (195 miles) in 2hrs 40mins (twice). My bed is calling…

Ok I \*promise\* this isn’t developing into a theme of depressed-moanings-about-where-I-was-last-year, but today I was wondering if I had any photos of this day a year ago for comparison, and found this - the first day of snow in Whistler village. Ahh. Had a shocking afternoon at work today because I felt really dodgy, couldn’t concentrate at all, and then on the way home the rain was so heavy that you could hardly see anything except for the lashing torrents against the windscreen. Happy days.

It’s almost that time of year! Have to say that having stumbled upon this photo through the usual tangential series of links I was suddenly aware of the other great love of my life again. In my opinion there is only one thing in life that compares to the feeling you get when making a turn like this in fresh, deep, beautiful POW. And that’s not an individual activity.. ;)

All going well I shall be in the alps (on holiday, not long term, at least not yet, hehe) on the 10th December. A little later than last year, but not bad nonetheless. Bring it on.

Complaining about being ill on Saturday? Drinking lots anyway? Drinking again at lunch on Sunday? Shocking behaviour.