radiac.net

Hello and welcome to Radiac's Christmas Wonderland, Volume 8!

As is now customary, I type this while listening to the only true Christmas track (Slade), bathed in the soft glow of Christmas lights. But I haven't forgotten about you - I know what you like, and what with it being the season of giving and all, I give you lights, santa, and of course the TCMI. As usual, I'll be running a TCMI watch, so if you're running the TCMI, let me know!

Merry Christmas everyone!

So far I have only spotted two TCMIs in the wild - Shewolf and Benc. Come on everybody, get into the Christmas spirit! Patricia is...

In other news, I woke up late today but since then have mostly been working, although disturbingly have not been very productive, mostly just sending e-mails and making phone calls.

I've just stayed up all night working on a flash demo of a program Tristan is writing for someone (having spent most of the past 3 days on it too). They said they wanted the demo done by this morning, well, I just e-mailed it, so that's that. Hopefully. Unless he rings me when I'm asleep. Anyway, may put it on here sometime, or may not because I'm lazy and it's boring.

Good luck to people with mock exams today!

I am very tired. Time for bed I think. Then up and get on with the other flash demo I'm doing...

I've had a busy few days, lots of weird bed times and lots of work, and had a meeting yesterday morning somewhere up the M5 and now have a contract to do lots of flash, so yay. More work! :)

Anyway, the true reason for my post today is that I have found the true location of Ballamory - it is actually called Tobermory:

Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull was selected for the Children's T.V programme Balamory, because of its beautiful location, and, more importantly, its multi-coloured houses. The theme of the programme is based around what happens in and around each coloured house.

So there you go.

Me: Mmmm, that's like beri beri.
Leela: Isn't that a type of ice cream?
Me: No, it's a disease...

• Phone call to letting agency: £0.05
• Phone call to british gas: £0.05
• Working till 3.30 am, getting up at 7.30, having a shower in arctic conditions because the central heating has failed, probably waiting until the end of the 8-1 time slot for the engineer to get here: Priceless

Doesn't get any better than this.

Although it probably does. I placed an order with Dabs (yeah yeah) for a GPS thing for my ppc on monday, thinking that it would be perfectly timed to arrive at home on Tuesday or Wednesday when I was there. However, between me placing the order and them looking at it, they ran out of stock but didn't tell me until the end of the day. Keen to get the 1gb compact flash card I ordered with it, I cancelled the GPS thing, and changed the postal address to Bath - but because it's a new address, I get another days delay while they verify with my credit card company that it's OK, although they don't care. But we should still be OK, it's Wednesday, I leave Bath on Monday, it should be next day delivery, there's time.

Then yesterday I looked at dabs again, and see that they have 210 GPS things in stock now, so I order one of those. Keen to play with it, I stick it on next day delivery. Both parcels were then posted yesterday (Wednesday) - the gps on next day delivery, but the flash card on letterpost! LETTERPOST?! AT CHRISTMAS?! Gah. So that'll probably arrive sometime next week when I'm at home again, if not the new year, and I won't have enough space anywhere to install my GPS software for months.

Incidentally they also posted me my totally free order from my spent dabspoints yesterday too (two mousemats and a mug), but they posted that next day delivery for free, having made me wait 2 months for it. Dabs, you are stupid.

Doesn't get any better than this.

Perhaps I was a bit quick to condemn dabs - everything has now arrived. Excellent! My camera can now fit 1044 photos on a single card, which is nice, and my gps thingy works very well - I used it on a short journey yesterday and it told me to turn left and right very nicely, and when I decided to turn right early to avoid traffic, it figured out where I was and changed the route accordingly. Bless!

In other news I had a mini crisis last night concerning my personal projects; why am I bothering to do them when there are things out there that basically do what I want. But after I had stopped talking to Tristan, I realised that there wasn't actually anything written that did what I need, so it's back to the list.

The list which is now one item shorter, because I have finished another website - well, finished a CSS redesign to tidy up my portfolio a bit - for Hilary Davan Wetton. Let me know what you think...

I'm packing getting ready to head back to Sevenoaks for Christmas. I'm taking Tom because he's on the way, and am planning on using my GPS thingy to get me home from there! So if I don't post for a while, it may be because I've ended up in Scotland.

Last night we went ice skating on the temporary outside ice rink in Bath (Queens Square I believe it was) and I only fell over once! I even left the side a couple of times! The time I did fall over though I grabbed the side and hurt my shoulder - it still hurts! Ow. I also forgot to write and hand out any cards this year, so instead I will send you e-cards! There's something to look forward to...

I have hiccups.

Late night shopping at Tescos is something to be experienced. Gone are the screaming children, the people pushing for parking spaces , beating you to the last trolley in the trolley stack or the last box of tasty chocolates. Yes, despite it being the day before Christmas Eve Eve, I have just returned from one of the most relaxing shopping experiences of my life, a far cry from the 45 minute nightmare earlier in the day of driving around the town looking for somewhere to park.

I spent over half an hour casually wandering from aisle to aisle, striking up conversations with the midnight shelf-stackers, picking up things that I wasn't interested in just because I could, and then mostly putting them into my basket because I wasn't paying. Still, at least Christmas dinner is covered - I got something turkey based, but more importantly 24 sausages-wrapped-in-bacon. Mmm, I love those things.

My GPS navigator also got me home perfectly on Monday - after turning out of the gate in the wrong direction (intentionally to test the device, you understand...), it told me to turn around at the next available opportunity. It then guided me back to where I recognised, but I left it on and it guided me straight to my door. Most nifty. I decided that I do need a car kit - it will be invaluable for glancing at the map when the voice directions aren't quite clear enough, such as when there are two roads right next to each other and it tells me to turn in 200 yards - I'm not that accurate at guessing distances. But to be honest, I'm a little disappointed with it - I was hoping it would have a bit more sass, more along the lines of "You're going the wrong way again; turn around, you retard.", that kind of thing. Ooh, perhaps they do a plugin...

So, on the subject of Christmas Cards, the likelihood is that you will not have got one from me this year. This is quite possibly because I hate you or that I don't know who the hell you are, although it's more likely that it's just because I didn't get round to even thinking about cards until yesterday. So, in attempt to make up for my festive shortcomings, I have made you one. Have a very Happy Christmas.

I have had my first christmas present - at 16.40, notnet was hacked. Some poorly written amateur php script (phpbb) let someone break in and replace every index file on the server with something else, so I now have the fun of going through all my (or more importantly, my clients) websites and fixing them. That'll only take a few hours... (Update: took a total of 3:30 to replace the files with my local copies, but have not started reconstruction)

Well anyway, Happy Christmas everyone! Oh, and you're all miserable for not commenting on my card - I spent hours slaving away at that for you!

This evening I went off to Tescos at 11pm. It really is the best time to go - nothing on the roads, you can park right outside the door, there are no screaming children or indecisive housewives, the night army have been on for long enough to restock all the shelves so everything you want is there, and no queues at the checkouts. It's great.

The rest of the day was spent setting up my new server (well, old hardware brought together in a second-hand case to replace an older server) and changing the naming scheme of my MP3s so they will work a bit better on my shiney new Rio Carbon which I bought myself for Christmas. It's a 5gb mp3/wma mini ipod beater with 20 hours battery life and none of that pussy DRM stuff, and it looks ridiculously cool. It goes very nicely with my other shiney silver toys (laptop, pda, gps thinger), so yay for that.

Speaking of my GPS thinger, I have bought it a car kit, although on the way home from PC World (they're not so bad, cheapest place I could find for a car kit and rio carbon, plus they're virtually on my doorstep so no waiting for il postino pat) I noticed that I didn't have a cigarette lighter socket in my car. Sucks. But my dad got me one installed for me for my Christmas present, so yay for that too!

And while on the subject of Christmas presents, I recieved lots of lovely things, including a coat and a jumper, a desk calendar, and chocolate. Ooh, and just before Christmas I bought lots of chocolate to give to people, but I only ever got round to giving out half of it, so we're left with several boxes, and since my gran's a diabetic I'll have to eat it all on my own before it goes off. Shame.

Christmas day lunch was spent down the road with some friends, which was very enjoyable, but on Boxing Day I cooked a christmas lunch with turkey and potatoes and green things and sausages in bacon and then christmas pudding and custard and it was actually the best meal I've ever eaten. I would go so far as to say it was perfect. I think I've missed my calling, am now seriously thinking about ditching my career in computing and becoming a chef. I owe it to the world.

Oh, nearly forgot to give you this link - Miniball - nearly as good as bubbles.