Friday 13th

Today I have realised that you don't have to believe in something for it to affect you. Just as nutjobs who don't believe in evolution did, nontheless, evolve from primates, whether they like it or not; Likewise, I have been smited by the wrath of Friday 13th today, regardless of not beliving in superstitions.

I shall, however, be looking to improve the day's events from here on in, starting with high levels of productivity at work, leading to a clear run on the drive home, culminating happily in a Crown Street bash.

So wish me luck, my friends, as I head into the unknown void that is the remainder of Friday the 13th. I take with me a sword of silver and a vial of the holiest water available (Volvic), with my valiant steed I ride (my Ford Escort Estate) to fight the dark paths that lay ahead.

You know you're tired when...

You know you're tired when you see the headline A Billionaire Clowns Around In Space and you get excited because you think it says "Billionaire Clowns In Space".

You know you're even more tired when you start to think to yourself "but, how would they juggle..." before you realise you've misread it, and the whole mental adventure was one big anticlimax.

Speaking of anti-climaxes, the Forza 3 demo that I've been awaiting for months, was decidedly pants. The graphics and gameplay were great, but come on, 5 cars and 1 track? LAME!

Why is it that when somebody offers the whole office a drink, and they take your mug away to make you one (alone with others), they always seem to bring you a drink back in an entirely different mug?

--

.... Well, at least they could never fall off the tightrope...

Of new beginnings and time between

My life has taken a move rather toward the better recently. I now no longer work at a major Anti-Virus company and as of Monday I start my new job as Operations Manager for a high-growth online retailer. My excitement dwindled, however, when I learnt that "Operations Manager" does not mean "surgeon". Rats!

Meanwhile I have no work to go to tomorrow and will enjoy a day off. Unfortunately, due to me not being a homeless bum all my friends will be at work so I'll have nobody to play with. If you have no plans tomorrow and would like to offer to be my play friend, please apply within!

To celebrate not having to be up early tomorrow Stuart and I and myself and Stuart have been out for a random drive. From the Wuthering Heights of Newark to the Sunny Side of Ripley, on to the Delightful Dales of Derbyshire, we've had adventures including, but of course not limited to, visiting the home of Amber FM, running over rabbits, racing Clios past fatal RTAs, getting pulled over by the pigs, and driving up the biggest and longest hill in the UNIVERSE.

Now I'm signing off, as downstairs I have pumpkin bread (courtesy of Stuart), chocolate cake (courtesy of Rhiannon), and mince pies (courtesy of Tesco), all waiting to be munched upon.

Right, where was I?

January. It was January 2nd when I got my driving licence back, after 9 long, hard months spent on foot or behind the handlebars of a GT Aggressor, while serving a driving ban.

That's right kids, I fought the law and the law won.

So I learnt my lesson. Or did I?

June. It was June 13th that I lost my temper for the first time in a few years and ended up committing the assault that, inevitably, led to a 100-hour community service order.

So come see me, Sunday morning at a public park near you. I'll be the guy wearing a yellow carnation, a top hat, and a "community payback" hi-viz. Be there or be square!

Anyway, aside from my underground criminal activities by night, as you all know I'm a mild mannered office worker by day. Inbetween the two I come home to Hayley and Dogbot, usually to find one of them making a mess in the kitchen and the other one licking their own body parts, and, to be honest, which one is which varies every day.

I should probably be upstairs in bed, to be honest I only came downstairs to check out a noise in my pajamas. What a stray noise was doing in my pajamas, I'll never know!

In a few weeks when I've got through this month of mega bills, I am going to begin living the dream. My life will never be quite the same again, after it undergoes the transformation. That's right, no longer will I be David Swinstead, Loser.... from then onwards I will become, David swinstead... Guy With A Bar In His Cellar!

That's a really bad name for a superhero.

Moi!

Of lazy weekends, only part through necessity

While my first half of 2009 was distinctly sub par, it has definitely started picking up in time for the mid point.

Things that have changed since the beginning of the year: I can drive again. I have a job. I am no longer in huge amounts of debt (barely any at all in fact, as of today). I have a great girlfriend.

Swinstead is dead. Long live Swinstead.

Of all things

A week ago I started my new job. It's in Newark which means a bit of a trek every day but at least I get to spend 45 minutes in a morning going over my top 25 favourite x-men. In the evenings as I drive home I like to ponder how I would escape from the jaws of a blood-crazed shark... Which is really a waste of time because OBVIOUSLY I would just use my ninja karate judo madskills.

While getting up early in the mornings is going to take some getting used to, it is certainly a refreshing change to once again have a reason to wear trousers at some point during each day. I will, however, miss the ability to put in some hardcore xbox hours with no more pressing obligations.

In other news, Dogbot and I had fun at the park today.

The most fun you can eat for 45p

Most recently I have spent my days:

• Being mauled in my sleep by an over-friendly labrador and a hyper staffy.
• Putting in some hours in the vain hope of finally seeing an Xbox game through to completion.
• Avoiding college work, in an attempt to continue my life long habit as a filthy dropout.
  
• Hunting around ASDA for cheap bread produce, failing, and instead attempting to get the best possible use out of 45p.

For the record, the best use of 45p in ASDA is two tins of 17p soup and a 10p bag of Haribo Fangtastics, and you get 1p change!

Trebuchet

We finished it! It fires well over ten times it's own length which is pretty cool. Next project is to make one WAY bigger, like 5 or 6 feet tall :D

Dammit

Why is nobody ever around to see it when the really cool stuff happens to me? I have to tell people and it's just not the same!

Get sweded

Ida Maria, it turns out, is really pretty strange looking. But it's ok, we'll her off, because she has 2 first names.

Today I am currently sheeping my way down the motorway, being unique, same as everybody else.

Why is rising damp treatment made to look like a remarkably futuristic phallus? In 30 years girls will be buying this stuff from Anne Summers and trying to figure out where to put the batteries.

Green Fingers

I bought some seeds for cabbage, broccoli, carrots, lettuce and tomatoes. Then I raked and sieved soil into seed trays. Then I added miracle gro and water.

Fast-forward 3 months and I will have stacks of free food. Awesomes.

In other news, I went into college today and spoke with my course co-ordinator V. That's not me using a codeword to hide her identity or anything, she really goes by the name V. So anyway it turns out I can still be at college despite not having turned up since before Christmas and having missed a few deadlines, which is great so now I have to get my arse into gear and catch up with some work.

In other other news, tonight I shall be spending some time in the company of Jack Bauer. I missed you Jack, sorry I've been away from you for so long.

Kit Kats rock.

Somtimes you have to make it happen yourself

A man is at home one day when he hears on the radio a warning of torrential rain, which will cause horrendous floods like never seen before. The town is evacuated but when they come to escort him away the man says "I am a religious man and my God loves me, he will save me from the floods".

The next day the water is 3 feet deep all across town and a neighbour comes to the man's house in a boat and says "Hey Buddy, come with me in my boat and be safe."

The man says "I am a religious man and my God loves me, he will save me from the floods", so the neighbour shrugs and sails on by.

The next day the flood water is 5 feet deep and the man is almost drowning, when a rescue helicopter flies overhead and a voice shouts down to him "Sir, let us throw down a ladder for you, come with us and be safe"

The man says "I am a religious man and my God loves me, he will save me from the floods", so the helicopter pilot shrugs and they fly away.

The next day when the man has drowned and is in heaven he says to God "Lord, did I not love you enough? Did I not lead my life well enough for you? Why didn't you save me?"

The Lord shakes his head at the man and says "I sent you a warning message, a boat and a helicopter, what exactly were you waiting for my child?"

--

Sometimes you have to make it happen yourself.

Think you'll find it's spelled 'Zarah'

My dad, doing a crossword: what's a name for a Tsar's wife?
Me: Tsarah?

Ok, even smart people say stupid things sometimes...

Watching BBC3...

A program called "Vodka, Homework and Me" (sic). Thinking that somebody, somewhere, sits in a dark room actually being paid to think up this shit.

So much for getting some sleep tonight.

How Dickens got me more than I'd bargained for.

I haven't been sleeping at all recently - I'm currently operating on about 7 hours sleeping over the past 4 nights put together. That isn't really part of the story but it explains how it started, with me being on Facebook at 7:00am for no good reason.

I was reading this note (which you may not be able to see depending on your network, I think) about the BBC's list of the nation's favourite 100 books. They predict that most people will only have read 6 of them. Well of course, I'm not most people; nay, I'm a superintellectual who does nothing but read posh leather-bound books all day, so of course I'd read more than 6 of them. I'd read 7 of them :)

I decided that this simply would not do, which explains how I found myself sat at the back of Mansfield Public Library at 8:00am getting stuck into a copy of David Copperfield, just quietly minding my own business as you do, when a woman approached me declaring herself to be a local councillor who was there to talk with people about the plans for the Library.

I agreed to talk to them but then she said what she really wanted was for a library user (that being me) to take part in a photoshoot with a photographer from the Chad (and also another photographer who I assume was from the council). Next thing I know I'm shaking hands and fake-smiling my way through what seemed like an endless stream of photos with various local councillors, library staff members, and an arbitrarily placed small child.

After signing away all rights to my image being used, along with a million-pound picture deal, I do believe I just became the face of promotional material for the new library.

My life is weird!

Micro-Gallery v0.1

A couple of days ago I got asked by an employment agency about whether I had any online portfolio work they could see. Well, there are a couple of sites I've been working on recently, but everything decent I've made in the past is now offline for one reason or another: So I decided I need to knock up something new to show off what I can do.

The result: Micro Gallery v0.1! A PHP dynamic picture gallery script.

The idea was that I wanted to create a gallery script that, unlike the much more mature applications available online, was entirely self-contained within one PHP file. The result is a gallery.php that can be dropped into any images folder and will do everything itself with no need for installation or configuration whatsoever - and importantly, no need for any database! Even the background image is generated on-the-fly by a little GD script!

Aesthetically it's not much to look at, but this was more of an exercise in PHP and AJAX than in design work.

Most folks reading this will be entirely unimpressed by that, but perhaps a few of the geeks among you will think it's pretty cool.

25 things about me

Do you want to know 25 facts about me?

No, didn't think so.

I don't want to know them about you either, what makes you think I do? Shoo!

Facebook is NOT real life.

At the weekend I was out and about. As usual many people had cameras and one nameless person in particular was taking picture of people in the usual state of inebriated disarray, when I said "let me take a picture of you, you're not in any!".

"No I've just taken my 60th," they said, "can't put any more on facebook, no point taking more."

Is this just one freak weirdo or is this a new idea that's going around, that taking more than 60 photos on a night out is pointless because only 60 can go per album? If this is a trend then I may kill myself.

Shoe money tonight!

At poker last night I was promised a small buy-in fee but in the end everybody decided not to play for real money - BOO!

I'm training to run the Mansfield Half Marathon this year. I must be a sucker for punishment.

One eyed Scottish idiot...

Guess who's in the news today for causing controversy, by referring to Gordon Brown (texture like sun) as a "one-eyed Scottish idiot who lied about the economy".

Yep, you've guessed it. I love you Jeremy Clarkson, you are a legend.

Awesome snow

I've never in England seen as much snow as we have at the moment. I've been out playing in it all day and I'm going out again later :)

Good call, girl

I went downstairs to let Bonnie and Jimbo out before bed. I opened the door and they both ran up, as usual, and Jimbo ran out.

Meanwhile Bonnie sat down inside the doorway and just looked up at me as if to say "What? Have you SEEN it out there?? Fuck that!"

Can't fault it. Ain't no way I'm doing my business out there either, girl.

Nails

Whenever you do anything in life, you have to consider how well you did it. Well, I do anyway, because I think too much, particularly about how I'm nicely turning into something that closely resembles normal.

Actually, thinking that probably means I'm not at all.

Whatever.

Well that conversation I just had with the texts and the messages and the BEEP BEEP and the buzzing every 20 seconds... well that thing... I nailed it :)

Well, up to the point about being blunt I did anyway, but up to then, with the not being snappy and with the reading the script, that was good I think :)

I really fucking hate The Cure

That will be all.

Driving in winter is awesome

Ok so it's snowing at the moment, same as it is more or less throughout the country, so driving at the moment is pretty hazardous but still, overall, driving in winter is awesome.

Y'see, when I got my license back a month ago somebody said to me "It's a bad time to be driving, in winter". Is it? Clearly this person has not for years had the experience of WALKING 10 miles to work in winter. If you think you're cold while you de-ice your windscreen in the morning, how do you think you'd feel if you were that cold for the whole journey, and it took 5 times longer? Driving in winter is the best thing ever. I particularly like it when I drive past a pedestrian I know and don't particularly like, then I turn up the heater and go into smug mode.

Funny thing is when I lost my license somebody also said to be "Shame you won't be driving through summer." Conversely - I can think of no better time to be outdoors and not stuck in a car than in summer.

I like the word meander

So it's been a while since my relatively regular writings on here became, suddenly, sporadic. I guess I should explain why but we all know i'm not going to because most of the 2 (if i'm lucky) people reading this will care even less than I do.

One thing I have learnt recently is that we live in a crazy world. In the last week, over 5000 people in the uk lost their jobs at various companies all on the same day, Man City were on the cusp of signing a player in excess of £100m, and a pilot had to land a passenger jet in the Hudson river.

What most people don't know is that the Hudson isn't actually a river. Well technically it is, but it isn't by the time it reaches Manhattan, it's a tributary estuary.

Here's another thing most people don't know; the weasel, while oft times represented in historical folklore as a sneaky and perhaps even devious pest, was more anciently revered as the only animal that could slay the mythical basilisk.

I'm not at my computer i'm writing this from my phone which, combined with the fact that I just prefaced two paragraphs by declaring them to be things most people don't know... Well it's probably a strong hint that I may have made both of them up.

I've been unable to sleep tonight which is not at all unusual for me - I don't often sleep much. So in a futile attempt to cure boredom, I've just spent an hour with my computer beating me at chess. But don't worry, the next round in our tete-a-tete is kickboxing and to be honest I fancy my chances.

I got new underwear today. Well, new to me. Getting yourself some new underwear is a rite of passage for a guy: the first time I ever got my own boxers I felt like a growed up.

Sometimes I still do. But not usually.

Expensive cameras are a waste of money

For Christmas I bought my nephew a digital camera. Well technically I didn't buy it I just chose it and paid for it, but that's a long story.

Well he's only 10 and never had a camera before so I bought him basically the cheapest that he could play around with and ultimately, in all likelihood, break.

When it arrived today I played with it so I know how to use it when he inevitably asks me to show it to him. Conclusion: I like it. I mean I really like it, it's a great camera!

It does everything most people want it to, as easily and simply as you would hope for, but also has a very good selection of advanced settings that are hidden away from usual view - but not too hidden away to find easily when you want them. It's looks good, it's small and compact, doesn't fanny around with proprietary memory cards or batteries (Sony, I hate you) and it's just generally really good. It's not a shitty unheard-of brand either by the way, it's from Kodak who I think have been in the camera business a little while now.

So if this is what you get for a camera that costs £45, what more could you really expect from the many, many, vastly more expensive cameras on the market?

So if you want consumer advice from a geek who dabbles in photography - cheaper cameras are no worse than considerably more expensive ones. If you want good pictures you have to find them and take them, you don't need an expensive camera and don't ever let any DSLR wielding slaphead tell you otherwise.

Listen up.

I am here to preach to you about my religion. But fear not brave readers, my preaching doesn't involve a religion that requires flying a plane into a skyscraper, avoiding eating pork, or even touching small boys (but it doesn't rule it out either, don't worry).

The basic premise of my preaching is to spread the holy word of the two best things ever created by our god John Logie Baird, The West Wing and How I Met Your Mother.

I have commandments too.

The first commandment is honour thy father. Thy father is Aaron Sorkin (thy mother is Neil Patrick Harris).

The second commandment is thus; all television other than that which is preached in our religion, is shite. Thou shalt not watch lesser television.

The grace of the lord Sorkin be with all. Amen.

Words cannot fully express the irony in this

I got my driving licence back at midnight tonight. I went out driving straight away. The roads were empty - and everything was going fine. That is, until a police car appeared and started driving behind me. Then on came the flashing blue lights and I got pulled over, and had to go and have a nice sit in the back of a police car.

They said it was because I have a light out.

They checked all my details and sure enough my licence is fine, but they have no record of my insurance. Most likely this is because it comes into force today and their systems haven’t registered it yet or something, I don’t know.

SO I have been given a producer which means I have 7 days to take my driving licence, insurance certificate and MOT pass certificate to the police station, or I’m in some very, very big trouble.

This was at 12:08.

I was less than a mile away from my house. I’d been driving for 2 minutes, if that.

This is unbelievable. I am so fucked off right now.

If it happened to someone else I'd see the funny side. But it didn't, and I don't. I'm sure everyone reading this will have a good laugh at my expense though.

Happy New Year everyone

"Start as you mean to go on" is a phrase my mother says a lot. So why, then, do we all start every year getting blind drunk?

I will not be continuing this year in the fashion I started it.