After all that…

Piggies are sick.  They’re lethargic and sneezing, sniffles we think. We’ve moved them inside so they can stay warm and we can watch them closely.

The poem was alright, I’m not very descriptive and the metre went out the window.  I’m not going to reproduce it here but it’s on cheesegreen, which is my plog.  A poetry log for those that don’t get the portmanteau.

I have to recommend Uplink, which is a strangely addictive game.  It’s based in a mythical future and is a kind of simu-RPG-thingy type game where you play the part of a hacker making a name for yourself in the hacking world of 2010.  It’s really a dramatised version of the real thing, hacking isn’t as fun or glamourous and normally involves sifting through vast lines of code or picking out weavils or something boring.

It does work quite well and I like it, although a tad limiting and slightly mundane, it’s simplicity is it’s attraction I think.  Starting to tire of Unreal Tournament a bit, I am still rubbish at it.

Poetry and the whole shee-bang

By the end of today, I am going to write a poem.  It is not going to be a shining example of technical expertise and fluid thought, neither is it going to be a cataclismically life changing prosody that will set the world to right.  It’s just a poem.

I have a lot of faith in my own ability to write, although it is still naive and childlike in many ways.  I feel confident writing a sentence, constructing it in such a way that it reads and scans, I feel more comfortable writing my thoughts or dealing with difficult situations.  It gives you time to deliberate and cogitate your meaning and your message.

But when it comes to poetry, I suffer ‘pen fright’.  Recently it’s been quite bad but after Thursday night I feel reinspired and reinvigorated to dive in to verse with a renewed outlook.  However, I am scared of heights and metaphorically I don’t like diving boards.  Actually come to think of it I don’t like diving boards whether in real life or in the metaphoric sense. (bad experience when I was younger, but that’s another blog post).

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Moving to my own server / Shameless

I am going to start this post off with a recommendation.  www.freehostia.com is a great little hosting service that lets you create your own website and has an easy-peesy php script installation tool for installing those much loved applications such as WordPress.  Even better, you can get it for free with a not too stingy level of bandwidth per month and a good level of support.

Recommendation over.  I have decided, wise or not I am not sure, to try and get this blog off the WordPress servers and on to my ‘own’ server.  It’d be even better if I had my own server hidden under the stairs or something but alas I am not that technically capable and Laura would have triplets if I started hoiking in bits of PC and server and started trying to attach it to the wall.

So far the experiment has gone OK, but after trying to export all of the posts, only half of them are actually appearing.  In fact only 2007 appears at the moment.  So, in between trying to play Uplink, writing poetry and doing domestic type things this evening, I might get around to continuing my forays in to this wild and uncharted territory.

My creative juices have dried up quite badly.  Everytime I try and sit down and write something poetic, I just clam up.  It’s almost a strange case of stage fright, I guess it’s ‘pen fright’ or ‘keyboard fright’.  Big happiness at seeing the new series of Shameless start yesterday.  E4 sneak peak showed the next one straight afterwards so I have seen next weeks too.  Weird how they do that, must improve ratings.  I know that Channel 4 has been losing money on E4 and More4 for quite some time now (source: Can’t remember) so I expect they’re trying to scrape back revenue.

David Threlfall was fantastic as Frank again, and it looks like he’s directing it too.  Big highlight was his monologue when Debbies jilted policeman husband was holding a gun to him.
I love the way the whole concept and programme has evolved from the first series, the character development is really good.  It is also impressive that they have managed to integrate two new families in to the plot seamlessly, which I guess reflects real life in a way.

As a reflection on real life, is Shameless true to the characters they are depicting?  Some reckon so, others not so. But as an entity in it’s own right it is a modern day classic.

Falling over on ice and Scan tomorrow…

Well what an eventful day I’ve had.  Not only did I bump in to Ian B in Orca, after going to down to bookcycle to donate more money to this fantastic charity, but I managed to fall flat on my face this morning on some ice.  Come lunch time I felt quite weird so Sally insisted on me going up to NHS direct to make sure I wasn’t on the verge of having some sort of nasty episode.

Thankfully I was told to just take painkillers and make sure I didn’t start becoming dizzy or sick or confused.  Haha, I joked, I am always confused.  Seriously, I find life and other people very confusing.

Tomorrow I zoom off to the great smog to have a scan.  Not sure how I’ll get across London in 25 minutes, but I am sure I will one way or another.

Further adventures with jLime

Well, I think my quest has come back to where I started with jLime winter.  After managing to lose my driver disc for my WL110 Wifi card, I can still use it through jLime.

I know I am getting a bit technical here, but it’s been bothering me for the last few days.  Sad as it is.

So anyway, I feel I can use it to write on so long as I can find a way of getting the email to work, and so long as I can remember what POP3 email address is, I’ll be fine.

A morning of watching Monty Python methinks? I have a todo list.  Plus I need to start doing something creative, or my creative gears will seize up.   I watched ‘A Beautiful Mind’ last night, utterly thrilling.  The controversy that it caused when it first was released aside (read the wikipedia entry on it for more, it has references so I recommend it), as a film written and shot, it was stunning.  Russell Crowe was middling, but Ed Harris was as usual, stunning.

I want to rewatch the Dead Poets Society again, tried last week but failed due to other things needing doing.

Jlime? Waste of time?

When I was given a trusty little HP Jornada 690, I jumped with joy.  Literally buzzing, I ran home to tell my mum.  Not really.

I quickly realised why this thing was surplus to requirement.

Although the packages installed, Pocket Word etc. were really useful little tools, and with a 75% keyboard, you could actually write on it.  However, it struggled to get on the internet as the browser was IE 3.3 or something archane and obsolete.  So started the long and fruitless hunt for a piece of software that would let me go on the internet as normal (displaying Java, SSL etc).

Months down the line and I still couldn’t find anything that wasn’t going to cost me the earth.  In the meantime, I received a phone with Opera loaded on, and Wifi too, so immediately this seemed to destine my poor Jornada for the bin.

However, thought me, I could install JLime onboard and see what happens.  JLime is basically a ported Unix operating system that is booted from the CF Card, it gives you some up to date applications and an updated browser too.  A week after hijacking my grandads laptop (running Xubuntu, however I used Puppy Linux) I am still no closer to being able to use this stupid thing.

I managed to load Jlime Winter userland (amazing Proof of Concept GUI) on fine, then I tried Donkey which didn’t work, then I tried ICEwm which loaded but didn’t let me use the stylus.  So in a minute, I am going to go and load Vargtass on and if that doesn’t work I will put it down to a lost cause and give my grandad his laptop back.

Or I could try NetBSD? hmmmmmm

I might woodstain the hutch as Laura hasn’t woken up yet.

Twitter and the tale of the broken CT scanner…

Today, I was meant to be scanned in London but I was rang up yesterday and told that the CT Scanner had broken.  I wonder if it went down with someone inside?  Try explaining that…

Machine: Deep breath in…and hold
Patient: *Breathes in*
Machine: Fuzzzzz sparkle crack
Patient: *Turns blue*
Nurse1: I think the machine has just died, oh shit.
Patient: *Turns purple*
Nurse1: (to other nurse) Shiela, what do we do?
Nurse2: Try rebooting it.  Has it frozen?
Nurse1: I think it’s burst in to flames
Patient: *Turns red*
Nurse2: No, that’s just the patient..oh shit

Ah well.  At least it didn’t break today, meaning I’d be the patient knowing my luck.

Work has been fun, screen casts are extra fun, even more fun when you don’t quite know what you’re doing but enjoying it all the same.  I went down to Bookcycle last night and bought a City Light published book of Kerouac poetry, plus DH Lawrence who I really feel I should know more about given the obvious interest in poetry and writing.

I now have a twitter account.  My username is ChrisAFGower.  I don’t quite understand the appeal of Twitter but I am starting to see its benefits.

10 Alternative Search Engines

So, with my geeky hat on, I have to tell you about this post.  Whilst hunting for Podcasts and Screencast examples I fell over this, in a metaphoric sense of the word.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_alternative_search_engi.php

The world thankfully does not revolve around www.google.co.uk , but there is a reason why Google is the top choice for everyone.  It’s synonymous with speed and efficient searching, but there is much rubbish that is displayed too.  Alternative search engines aim to improve the relevance and the quality of the information, imho.

I am finishing a long tiring day,  we have a big social gathering tomorrow so I expect there will be cleaning to be done tonight.  Martin let me borrow his copy of ‘Trout Fishing in America’ by Richard Brautigan, a lesser known Beat writer, but as influential and captivating as Ginsberg, Kerouac, Corso and Burroughs.  Shot himself in the eighties, but has remained a cult writer since he published Trout fishing.

New years resolutions and things that go along with this ridiculous time of year…

And so tomorrow I go back to work.  I am looking forward to life getting back to normal, getting my routine back again and being able relish what time I have off, rather then taking it all for granted like I have been doing.  Tonight I spent 4 hours titting about with Second Life, my skin colour on my avatar has gone wrong meaning that I am currently a bright blue, so I had to try and work out how to change it without cancelling my account.  I couldn’t, so I am still working on it, but I look back and wonder what else I could have done.

So I have made the usual disposable new years resolutions, I have to lose weight, I have to paint, I have to play my Ukulele more, moan less, love more, smile more, drink more tea, eat less apples…or is that the other way round? Anyhoo, this year is another year hopefully filled with good luck and more money and less cancer and condensation.  One of my new year resolutions is to write in this blog more, and generally write more and spend less time on whacky ideas.  This is one that I want to make stick as I frequently lose money and waste time on things that I don’t really understand or want to do, the smell of quick money is an intoxicating temptation for anyone scraping the barrel to live.
Although our lives are full of uncertainty, my cancer, our house and possibly other things we don’t even realise are uncertain, we still have love and each other.  It’s 12.30am so I am starting to ramble incoherently in my head so I will sign off.  Peace.