radiac.net

Right, so, what has happened since I last posted?

Well, heh, no shot girls tonight. Awww. I peeled off all of the labels from my smirnoff ice bottle, and didnt tear any of them. Claire stole my phone all evening, but that didn't really matter though, nobody ever texts me.

Chris has a hands free kit in his nice new shiny volvo. It is very neat, although a bit of overkill. Or at least it would be for me, since nobody ever rings me.

I must remember that drinking lots and then doing lots of push ups and sit ups aren't a good idea. I am currently drinking several bottles of water in a vain attempt to appease the Vomit God.

While on the subject of gods, I just recieved some spam trying to sell me holy water. Fantastic.

And while on the subject of spam, since July 1999, I have recieived approximately 2945 legitimate emails, and since the start of the year (ie since 01/01/03 00:00:00), I have recieved 9517 spams. That makes me feel a little sad. My most frequent e-mailer at the moment is Emily from HC who has emailed me 3 times in the past 3 months. Makes me feel a little sad. Nobody loves me :(

And while on the subject, why the hell haven't you made comments on my diary entries? Yeah, you. And if you have, make some more.

I am still in the alcohol-based "dodgy" zone, where I am perfectly concious of what is happening and what I am doing, but aware of exactly how much alcohol I have consumed, exactly what my stomach thinks of it, and exactly where it wants to put it all. Well, we'll see what happens, then I'll go to bed, wake up at 1pm tomorrow (yeah, screw you Peter, today), wake up, have a shower and let it all start again. Chris says he'll be drinking tomorrow. First time since new year 2001/2002, when he drank 2 pints of cider and then projectile vomited all the way from the pub to the car park. It was damned impressive. But I digress. Tomorrow, Chris will not be drinking.

Last weeks courses were actually quite a lot of fun. Two groups of 8, just lively enough to make it interesting, not so lively I was tearing my hair out. Only have afternoons next week, so I get a lie-in - yay!

Hope everyone who's on placement is having a good time :)

Oooooh! Ooooooooooh! Nearly forgot! Jared fixed mir yesterday, the case fits :) And he gave me a can of compressed air! He is a god.

Compressed air is so cool. My life is now complete.

I shall leave you with a link from Tristan: click here. Point 11 is the best - you can just imagine a lawyer standing up in court and saying that :)

Perhaps it's the alcohol talking, but I have decided that Benny Benassi - Satisfaction is the best music video of all time. These girls should set up a construction company. Hell, I know i'd pull down my house to get them to rebuild it...

I mean...

Uh..

So, anyway, tonight I got drunk, and I believe I made a fool of myself. Although I'm too drunk to clearly assess the damage I caused. Tonight, I drank JD and coke. I have wanted to try JD for a while. And I was wrong, Chris did drink. First time in two years. Wahaaay :) Happy 21st :) (it's only taken a month to get you in the pub :))

So, night y'all :)

I've been working for two weeks now, and I have less money than I did when I started.

Apart from £20 that I took from a cashpoint to spend in the pub, everything else has gone on uni costs.

But I'm in the middle of my holiday.

*sigh*

I just watched Jeremy Clarkson Meets The Neighbours, where he went through Belgium and Holland. Absolutely fantastic.

Visited the guy who runs this site, which is also absolutely fantastic. The two of them drove along a motorway until they found a mobile speed trap, then they put a sign up and started taking photos of the police...

Just been to a barbeque. Dunno if I'm going to the pub tonight, people seem to be talking about Tunbridge Wells, and I dont know my way around there, so rather than just drive round all evening, I'll wait and see if Chris'll drive me in. TBH I'm not too worried, it's a bit too hot. True, there's nothing good on telly, but it would give me a chance to watch a couple of dvds.

I'm afraid that's about as interesting as it's going to get. All I'm doing these days is teaching (there's only so many stories you can tell about that), going to the pub (there's only so many stories you can tell about that), and watching the video for satisfaction over and over and over again. I like it for the music and the informative text.

I am drunk. Make comments that are entertaining.

The phrase 'touch wood' has many possible origins. One possiblity is that, as Tomris believes, it refers to the Christian ritual of touching a wooden crucifix. However, another possiblity is that it is derivced from an ancient pagan belief that knocking on a tree was a way to ward off evil spirits, or to call upon protective spirits who supposedly lived in certain trees.

So there you go.

Leave me comments, subject may be random. Just make it interesting and me feel loved :)

Thank god for informed news bulletins. Channel 4 just had a metrological expert saying it's just trapped high pressure, not global warming. He said that, historically, this is nothing special; the medieval period had a hot spell, Greenland was so called because it was green and fertile, and the Romans grew grapes at Hadrian's Wall. At last, someone not spouting hippy propaganda.

And today Arnie registered for California governer. But screw that, they should change the law and let him be president. He would rock.

"So, Mr President, what is best in life?"

YAAaaaay!

Went for another barbeque today, over at Jamie's. Very tasty. And the second day of 24 ends tonight... looking forward to that :)

Thanks to Rachel (even more of an html/css nazi than Simon and Nat put together - she was the first person I knew to swap to using CSS for all layout, and she's even written books on stuff) for linking to these postcards. Nothing particularly ground-breaking, but nice to read and know that other people think the same as me, I must be on the right track. And they link to this colour thingy, which is very cool.

I'm teaching this weeks kids how to make websites. It's fantastic. We're learning in Frontpage. Some are doing quite well; they're using font tags and brs, and they all seem to have got the WYSIWYG 'Normal' view down to a fine art. Tomorrow I'll teach them nested tables and marquees!

Had a meeting with someone today about the tonbschl site. They want it redesigned and restructured again. Fair enough, it's nearly a year since I finished the last one... I'm thinking of hiring a graphic designer to help me out on this one, I want to start making nice sites.

I am sure that you will all remember this photo of Mr Bush... well, they made a toy. I've ordered 4.

Very handy...

It looks like I've finally decided to use firebird over IE. Quite why it's taken me so long, I'm not sure. I've had it (and/or pheonix) on my machine for at least half a year if not longer, and I've tested my sites in it...

So why now? Probably because I'm still feeling the effects of a friday in the pub. That, and probably the tabbed browsing. Of course, this isn't the first time I've changed to phoenix/firebird, so I might go back again... only been using it for browsing for about half an hour and have already hit some pretty crippling bugs/nastiness in the bookmark code (can't create a folder from the move dialog, bookmark submenus keep getting left open even after I've closed its parent, and adding bookmarks when you have a lot of directories is a bitch), and several other small things... still doesn't feel as polished and complete as IE... Still, I'll give it a go.

In one day's browsing using firebird, I've found more bugs/bad things than I have in, what, 4 or 5 years of using IE...

Tabbed browsing is nice, some of the plugins are nice, especially mouse gestures, but other bits of the browser is still pissing me off.

For example, three times today I have had to quit it and start it again after the bookmarks menu stopped me opening submenus after i clicked on a folder and upset it, the add a bookmark function in the bookmarks menu is disgusting - a drop down menu of an expanded hierarchy is great if you have 10 folders, but when you have more like 60 or 70, it seems pretty retarded. And the 'manage folder' function could be a lot better too (an 'up a level' function, anyone?). And just now, it died when I quit it, so when I next tried to load it, it told me that my profile was in use.

I guess the bookmarks sidebar makes the shortcomings of the bookmarks bearable, and I'll probably end up sticking with it now because I've changed my 'Web/Home' key on my keyboard to load up firebird rather than IE. That, and tabs and gestures. But IE's still on my quicklaunch bar... for now, at least.

So anyway, I'm off to the pub to spend the rest of the money I earnt this week.

Today, I wiped out a band of international terrorists, using only a flick knife, a rubber band and a tube of toothpaste.

So, I woke to the sound of gunfire. I pulled back my curtains and saw 7 or 8 men in balaclavas firing automatic weapons at a lorry carrying a large nuclear warhead.

Well, no, but that sounds more interesting than me telling you I woke to the sound of the doorbell, and pulled back my curtains to see a car. A car belonging to the person who rang the doorbell, no less. So I threw on clothes, went and said hi, and then felt pretty rough for the next few hours. See, this is what happens when I get up too early after a night of drinking. Or rather, that is what happens when I get up too early after a night of drinking, and this is what happens when I get bored and decide to write a diary entry.

Firebird still sucks it.

Shaun came over today, and just before we started playing computer games, my PSU blew. Yay. Then when I got it working, it wasn't fast enough, so I swapped in my laptop. But then it wasn't pretty enough, so we watched films.

That was my day. It was very exciting.

I do believe I haven't told you about my flatmate who hasn't paid his rent. I told him before I went home at the end of last term that he needed to write four cheques to cover the holiday. I told him 4 times. He went home without writing the cheques... even better, he went home without his cheque book. So Jason had to post him some cheques, which he then filled out.

Two or three days ago, about 3 months after I first asked, he emails me and tells me that he has now sent the cheques, and they should be there in 2 or 3 days. Could I ring the landlady and ask her not to move his stuff out...

Heheh he sucks so much

In other news, I just had lunch. It was a cheese and tomato sandwich, and I ate it on the grass by the cricket nets. Now I want a sprite, but the orchard centre is full of screaming children and I want to get away from that...

Hangman!

Zozo has spawned a child process. Awww, isn't she cute?

Today (ok peter, yesterday) I accidentally bought another computer.

Went to dabs looking for a monitor, and found a nice 17" Iiyama one with dual input - handy, because it's going to be the monitor for two computers. And then, for some reason, I thought I'd check out motherboards. After I had added a couple more things, I'd ended up with a computer for £87 (needing a couple of spare bits I have lying around) - how could I say no? So then I chucked in some spares (PSU, 120gb hard drive and a DVD drive), and placed the order.

I really need to stop doing this.

So then I spent the rest of the day looking for cool shit to buy on the internet. I didn't want anything, and I only found one thing to get. Hell, I couldn't even find anything on play. Nearly got some text books from amazon, but that's not cool. Nearly bought another 'will work for bandwidth' shirt from thinkgeek, my old one's getting worn out, but I decided against it for now. Firebox had nothing, but trusty iwoot found me some weird metal thing that looked kinda cool, so I bought it. Also noticed that the overclocking store has ceased trading - that's a real shame, they were a fab company to deal with, free postage too.

I have issues.

Wow. Labour rock more than I thought...

I'm just working afternoons this week, and I've got 6 kids. 3 of which are known well by all the adults and most of the children for four reasons:

1. They are always on a course (morning and afternoon for 6 weeks)
2. They have therefore done all the courses before
3. They need to be better than the others
4. AAARGH I'M GOING TO GO MAD

In my second year, there were these four kids, we'll call them A, B, C and D - all nice children on their own, but put them with another child and they need to show off. If the other child is not one of them, they are OK; they can assert their social dominance and you only get the occasional shout demanding attention. But, put two from the group together, and it spirals; you have a week of the two kids trying to outdo each other. It gets insane. Put three kids together, and you can only imagine. In one of the afternoons in the second year I taught, I had all four.

This week, I have children A and B, and, according to the other tutors, a new addition to the group (lets call him E - although today he was fine). The best bit is that B has already been on the exact same course once this holiday. Exactly the same course. Which he had been on the past two years running. And he was down to do it in week 4 too. He got in there and said "I've done this before! I know what you're going to do!". It gets very annoying when you're trying to introduce things to kids at a level which will keep them entertained and yet not swamped in new information, and then you get this smartass kid in the front, pre-empting everything you do by about 20 minutes and asking how to get on the scooby doo website he went on last year, because he wants to beat his score on the scooby snacks game.

But then again, what do I really expect. This poor kid must be bored senseless by now. I'd love to show him how to use some other programs, but I can't do that without ignoring the rest of the class. You honestly have to wonder about some of these parents... "Oh yes, you can do the holiday courses this summer, that'll get you out of the house and give me some more free time... Hmm, you enjoyed computing last year, you can do it again this year. What do you mean he only does the same stuff? It'll be great, you'll know whats going on and you'll be able to follow it better.. Lets put you down for weeks 2, 4 and 6, that'll be fun for you". Poor kids. You see the same faces there in break, week after week, year after year, and you just know why they're there.

Anyway.

Today, child B was away, and I had A and E at opposite ends of the room. Tomorrow I will put B on the other side, but I don't think even that would stop the chaos; putting A and B in a room together with some other kids is a bit like setting two world powers against each other in some kind of a cold war, and then watching each side pump troops and equipment into opposite halves of a civil war in some crazy asian country.

In other words, it's going to be mayhem, and will very probably end up on the news.

But then again, I don't really care. I'm going to teach them the stuff, and I've only got 6 hours of holiday courses left.

I have a feeling that this week is going to be fun.

I'm singing a happy happy song:

(To the tune of '100 bottles of beer')

781 broken links on the site!
781 broken links!
Fix one now, upload the file,
780 broken links on the site!

YAAAAY!

Heh well at least ernie doesn't quite work properly, so it only tells me some of the broken links :)

New version imminent ;)

This is cool.

And I've finished the holiday courses! Woo yay for me!

Oh, and I've been looking at this picture for 10 minutes, but can't see any damned dolphins.

Been digging back through the archives tonight, and I thought I'd remind you all about a track from back in 92, 'Super Mario Land', by MC Mario. It is absolutely fantastic.