It’s a phrase often bandied about, generally in the context of poor route finding. It’s the lack of signposts that does it.
So, I lead my first trad climb on Sunday. Behold, ‘The Sugarloaf’, a 12m diff, ideal to cut my teeth on. No worries about the climbing, just concentrating on getting my head straight with protection and the fact that death is stood next to me, humming tunelessly.
I suppose my first indication that something was up is the fact that it’s probably nearer 20 meters rather than 12.
So, up I go. “mmm” I thinks to myself. “I’m really climbing badly today”. I hit the crux move, and start to have a ‘toys out of the pram’ moment.
It’s just a little bit of a reach, something I’d not think twice about when top roped, but not having the comfort of a rope above me, knowing that if I fall, it’s going to hurt. Especially seeing as I’m relying on being caught by some bits of metal and wire that I’ve been banging into cracks one handed!
Anyway, I shouldn’t have struggled half as badly I did, not on a diff…
Fortunately, Ian legged it up behind me and, as experienced as he is, commented that it was a ‘bit tricky’, so I knew all was not lost.
And there it is, all roped up and led like a mo’fo.
Also, after a good nose at the topo, it isn’t sugarloaf. It’s Pyramus Arête. A 25 meter VS.
The world came to an end the other day. It happened very quietly. Not like the cliches you read about in most doomy, gloomy apocalyptical texts.
No, the world just faded, like an old poster that has been in the sun for too long. The colours started going, reds turned to greens turned to blues. The contrast of the world started to turn itself down, objects started to blend, to meld together. People became indistinguishable. I forgot names and places and I forgot who I was. Everything just seemed to go quiet and nothing seemed to matter any more. There was no television, there was no noise, there were no children in the street, there were no arguments and no noisy discussions.
It was all rather pleasant, actually
Yup. I’ve made a plan. It’s not much of one, but dagnabbit, this is my website so you’ll just have to put up with it….
Before my thirtieth birthday I will climb a big wall.
Which is a bit less than 3 years…
Bugger.
Best I get my arse in gear, then.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields
By John McCrae, 1915
(the idea for this post shamelessly stolen from another board. Perhaps something for every year)
n/t
No, it’s a horde of bloody students.
Welcome & welcome back, you bunch of sods. I hope you get something out of this university lark. If nothing else, you’ll learn that asking a red-headed technican ‘what does that do’ whilst hovering a finger over a button on a piece of equipment worth more than a graduate’s starting salary will almost certainly get the answer “A poke in the eye, now gerroutofit you little bastard.”
Now, I’m not one to spill my guts on this here intraweb, but the freshers’ have brought their very own brand of a stupendous badass of a bug with ‘em, and I’m starting to come down with it. Going by previous years, it’s going to be a killer. Bird flu? Ha, s’nothing on this one.
But anyway, I digress.
I spoke with a friend today, and the conversation made me realise something. I bitch and moan about work, about money, about anything I can think of. But, at the end of the day, I have my health, a steady job (which although I’m often blasé about it, appears to be many people’s dream job) and a family who may not be the closest of families, but at least we get along. I may not be surrounded by friends, but I’m almost certain nobody wishes me ill and, if they do, at least they’re civil about it. On the whole, I’m doing pretty well and have a lot to be thankful for.
So, next time I start ranting about how miserable my life is, you have my express permission to come around and give me a proper shoeing.
However, I do exempt myself from the above when discussing Freshers’ Flu. Union rules, you see.
Whut? Whassat? Speak up, man!
Published September 25th, 2006 in Work- My favourite part is when they give me the money. 0 CommentsBecause I under that the minutae of my life is exactly what you live for, gentle reader, that is exactly what you’re going to get. That’ll learn you, you scamp you.
First up, I’d like to mention that my ears are proper shot. Unfortunately, it’s due to a nasty build up of something. Apparently it’s cattarh, but I prefer to think of it as generic yuck. Something I thought I’d got out of as a young ‘un, but it’s back with another one of those block rockin’ beats. Which I can’t hear properly. If you’ve paid any attention at all (Ha! Fat chance…) you’ll understand that this is a bit of a bugger, considering my job. I shall have a 7 minute consultation with my GP and see what he can come up with. I’m a little wary about the possibility of yet another operation, as I don’t think my ears will bounce back as well as they used to.
Still, onto better things. Speaking of better, my macbook washed up on the shores of Chéz rich. And rather splendid it is too. Nice to be able to run windows in a window, and it means I’ve been able to resurrect my rather meagre collection of windows games. It also I meant I could justify ordering this. Ding dong! Introversion do make some rather splendid games, and I urge all and sundry to go and purchase all their stuff. Now.
Oooh, computing gaming. That segues (Almost as if I planned it!) nicely onto the subject of a gig I did recently. i28, run by those nice fellas wot give me my internet fix. I’d never seen gaming as a spectator sport. I still don’t, come to think of it, but apparently I’m wrong. Still, it was a fun gig, and I’m glad they told me I was submixing the internet stream for 60,000 odd viewers after the show. I would have paid more attention. Still, nobody clipped me around the ear for it so I think I got away with it. Of course, if we could avoid mentioning this to HM Revenue & Customs, I’d be most grateful. Oh, and there was the beer. Oh. My. God. I don’t usually drink for a gig, but I’m pretty certain that I’d have been unable to cope if I hadn’t. Especially seeing as every single time I turned around there was another pint of that amazingly uninspired ‘Traditional English Ale’. Also called tea, which caused no end of confusion on the first day. Fortunately, at 3 and a bit %, you could drink it by the gallon and stay reasonably sober, but the quality of the mixing may have deterioated slightly, come 7 or 8pm.
And finally, Freshers’ Week looms. Again. If past years have been anything to go by, Freshers’ Flu is going to be a at-death’s-door version this time round.
From http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com
If you are driving along while using your mobile phone, and if a policeman (who is passing by in his car) calls to you to stop using the phone, do not, repeat not, shout back to the officer telling him to fuck off. When he advises you to moderate your language, avoid repeating the original response, and telling him that he is a useless wanker.
The above advice becomes even more important when you consider that there is a stash of cannabis in your pocket.
Ignore the above, and you may expect a fine for the phone, a fine for the bad language, and a fine for the cannabis.
That is the problem with this intraweb lark. You never know if anyone actually reads something like this, so you end up ranting into the dark. I assume, obviously, that the inside of an apache install is dark. It could well be a light grey.
Anyway, gentle reader, I do believe I owe you some sort of apology for being ineffably dull. Once upon a time, multijoy.co.uk promised a madcap cavalcade of fun and excitement. This proved to be a lie. In order to perhaps go a little way towards making up for the grinding disappointment, I’ve finally put the pictures that I deleted during the rm -rf fiasco back up, and added a couple of links for you. Hurrah! Granted, the pictures have all headed down into ‘previous post’ territory, but they are there. I promise!
So, have this one of a member of staff wot I dug out of iPhoto. This, ladies and gentleman, is what a graduate looks like. He calls it hard work, I call it a fluke…
Speaking of iPhoto, I did actually manage to order a macbook. I went for the 1.8ghz model, on account of it being cheaper. Very much like this iBook I’m currently tapping away on. Not much in it, according to the benchmarks. I can live without the ability to write DVD’s, having only ever burnt 2 in my life, and the lower cost meant I could dump in a gig of ram and an extra 20gb of hdd space. However.
I’m mildly obsessive, so imagine the joy I’ve had in watching my package make it’s way across the globe thanks to the hand dandy tracking page provided by Apple. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be. Having stared at the same page with 3 (count ‘em!) different ETAs, I bit the bullet and phoned apple. Imagine my surprise…
me: “Hi, I’m just calling to see why I can’t track my package”
[clickety click]
Apple: “OK sir, let me have a look at that. mmm. That’s odd. Let me go into the tracking system”
[clickety click][clickety click]
Apple: “Can you confirm your address for me?”
[clickety click]
Apple: “So not Cork then”
me: “Nooo…”
Apple: “Let me escalate this. It seems to have gone from Devon, to Cork and is heading for Amsterdam. I don’t think this is right.”
me: “You’re not kidding!”
Obviously slightly paraphrased, but I’ve a feeling that it may turn up with dreadlocks and possibly a rastafarian type hat. Still, I await the email with interest. I certainly don’t expect it to pass a drugs test, but at least it will have got in touch with it’s inner feelings.
When it comes to the whole updating thing, you might be right.
First up, a big wave to anyone at Apple who might read this. The domain name, whilst rather good, doesn’t lend itself to be read out over the phone. On the other hand, to have a customer service rep tell you that it’s a cool email address is quite the compliment, I think.
Another grad ball has been and gone. Goldie Lookin’ Chain (You knows it) vs the Scratch Perverts. Pretty good, I’m led to believe. BCS, GLS & Bigfoot did an awesome job, turning the white elephant we call a union into something rather spectacular.
On the tunage front- Kate Rusby (The only artist to ever thank me by name on stage) is well worth a listen. Plus you can’t complain about high bitrate, non-drmed downloads.
I’ve finally got around to getting a replacement trumpet. On the downside, I live in a terrace. I’ll update on my progress when I get a practice mute!
If you’ve been following the site with any interest (freak!), you’ll be pleased to hear that a regrade has been issued, along with some sweet, sweet backpay. An intel iBook will be ordered on monday. It’ll be great, I promise.
That is all. In deference to the time, I’ll post something coherent tomorrow.
Yes, I know. Frequent updates have been promised. I’ve also promised to never type ‘rm -rf’ without typing ‘pwd’ first!
In the meantime, get your listening gear around Acacia Sears. Buy her cd and help her move from myspace, won’t'cha?
When rm -rf’ing, make sure you pwd first. Deleting the wrong directory is always embarrasing.
No, it’s true. I’ve let it slip a little bit. Motivation, dontcha know.
The news, in brief…
New site layout
As you can probably see, on the assumption you’ve been here before. K2, if you wish to practice the sincerest form of flattery.
Xbox turned into a rather splendid media jukebox
Through careful application of a soldering iron, some little bits of wire and one of these. Works on the latest versions (mines a crystal xbox) and comes with a handy little pcb template to avoid a rats’ nest of cabling. Which didn’t work for me. Happily, I overcame this problem with little bits of cable which gives it a homebrew feel. *cough*. Tip for the top- Install the socket before you do anything else.
Once this had been done, all that remained was to flash the bios (you’ve got two banks of memory to play with, so you can fuck it up the first time round. Just make sure you flash to bank 2 first). With the handy, dandy web interface, you don’t even need to muck about with cd-rw’s and dummy files.
You do need to burn one, though, in order to get XBMC on. Once it’s there, everything else can be done via your favourite ftp client. With XBMC, you can:
Watch DVD’s region free.
Run pirat^H^H^H backed-up games, along with unsigned homebrew apps.
Play music from a network drive or shared iTunes library (very cool).
Watch videos from a network share. This is awesome. No longer do you have huddle in front of a computer to watch your downloaded TV shows. Seamless over a 100mbs connection, as is music on a wifi 54g (yet to test video). No stutter, no complications. This has to be seen to be believed and is, IMHO, the reason to fork out £20 for a modchip.
The interface also looks very cool. Looks like a professional product rather than something slapped together by a bunch of dirty hackers. It is a german product, mind, so this might be the teutonic equivalent of a product slapped together by a bunch of dirty hackers.
Iran. A shooting war in the offing?
Had some paperwork through the other day. Compulsory mobilisation is in the pipeline for some personnel for an existing operation.
This could mean one of two things:
A large movement of troops coming out of theatre.
Two large movements of troops, coming out of one theatre and into another.
A little while to go though, so perhaps all will become clear. (All of the above is wild speculation, and shouldn’t be considered as gospel. Or even vaguely accurate).
Reference book purchased
Picked up the fourth edition of ‘The Inform Designer’s Manual’. It is avaliable as a PDF, but it’s nice to be able to flick through it. ‘ave a look at the Interactive Fiction category on the side bar. Over there, on the right. When I finish my first game, I’ll be sure to link it.
murdochspace.com up and running
A homage to Rupert’s takeover of myspace, by mattR. NSFW!
New broadband provider
I’ve given pipex the heave-ho and gone with some upstarts- multiplay.co.uk, people who run big lan parties and lots and lots of game servers. It’s cheaper than pipex, has no limits or traffic shaping and I have the mobile number of the bloke wot runs the network. Allegedly a beta product at the moment, but seems pretty solid to me. My only concern is someone has ‘tail -f richspr0nactivity.log’ running in a console somewhere. Mainly because it’s the sort of thing that I’d do…
Regrade
Ongoing. Still…
iBook’s fixed
Finally. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but apple came through. Come the regrade, I’ll be having me an intel version.
And that’s your lot. For the meantime, anyway.
