Pyoor's excuse for not working

Kathryn can stay! We finally got the Visas back yesterday; well, visa. Kathryn's now allowed to stay here until we leave, unless that takes more than 2 years. I was incredibly relieved, since we're going on holiday in the not too distant future and need passports for that.

So that's good.

Also good, I had my eyetest today; in 5 years my eyes have hardly changed. In fact, one eye is exactly the same and one is so very slightly different they recommended no change in prescription. I also have no signs of macular degeneration - which is good - my mum's got very serious degeneration and I'm slightly worried about my eyesight (long term) but they checked it today my field of vision is hunky dory.

I will just have to take care of my eyes.

I was sat reading the contact lens sign and really want to go back to wearing lenses; but can't at the mo. If this allergy clinic does the Sublingual allergy treatment, that might mean I could, which would be awesome beans.

I was also good today for numerous reasons:
- I actually walked to town and back, rather than driving, despite it being cold.
- I sorted out my debts a bit. A very nice woman at the bank explained that there is a way to avoid early repayment charges on a loan, so my debt is now a loan. I must not take the credit cards with me anywhere.
- I didn't buy the Nikon D70s I saw. I'm even not buying it now, despite knowing it's quite a good price.
- On a smaller scale, I didn't buy lunch. I bought a drink ('cos I was thirsty after leaving uh...an hour earlier than I needed to (yes, I'm stupid sometimes)).
- I went and dropped off my prescription at the doctor's - so I should be able to get my new nose-spray on Monday.

I've also been good:
- Yesterday I fixed the car's exhaust. Well. Improved. Fixed might be an overstatement. It's now only fouling the suspension at extremes of travel. Having beaten crap out of the bit that you can't replace for about an hour I managed to move the 45 degree joint by about an inch and a half - a good chunk of the two inches I needed. I think it's leaking less now. Not quite sure how to get it that last half inch tho'.
- I got the iPaq working on the Mac. Well, technically it's working through Windows 2000 on VMWare on the MacBook. The GPS bit should work, and so before we go to Ireland I need to fork out for a new CF card for it - a much bigger one - then I can have Europe maps...and an MP3 player in the car again. That would rock my little world.

Also good:
Royksopp's new video. Many people seem to have missed this, and it's excellent.

Said my body at 4:45am. I'm not quite sure why, I think I was woken by my throat, and then my brain started listing all the things I need to do today. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) Kathryn said I wasn't to do anything that might upset my throat further - so my cunning plan to strip the paint on the door frames, and uh, paint them is off*.

I've still got a fair bit to get on with. When the frost's melted a bit I need to take jejy round to the tyre place, having found that the 'slow' puncture's got quicker, and that it's leaking from the valve. Now I can point and go "look, it's leaking from the valve; that's definately your fault, please fix it". I also am debating getting an external enclosure for my now spare SATA hard drive (what? why?!)...

Let me explain. I want to sell the G5 Mac. The G5 Mac currently sports 2 largish harddrives, a lot of memory, a 20" monitor, a 14" LCD monitor and so on. To sell it, I have two options:

1) Dump all my data onto and remove the second HDD.
2) Copy all my data onto the 500Gb ex-entertainment-Hackintosh drive in an external drive case and then nuke the two drives.

I think the latter is probably the better solution. Whilst it will cost 20 quid, it will probably add more than 20 quid to the value of the Mac, selling it with two big hard drives in. Mind you, if one of them is bigger than 500Gig it'll be being swapped around.

At any rate, I've been travelling in the DAF a lot recently, and it's come to my attention that the Radiomobile radio doesn't work...



It did work when we got the car, it stopped working a while ago, and has not spontaneously reanimated itself. But I rather like the look of it. Ratty and tatty though it is, it's part of the car's 1970s charm. The plasti-chrome is peeling and the volume knob turns on it's spindle. But I have a solution. Rip out its guts and throw them away.

I've finally found a cheapie company making (almost certainly lousy quality) automotive amplifiers (but you're in a car with no soundproofing to speak of). In fact, the one I've bid 75p for (but £9.99 shipping) also sports 2 inputs (but no means of switching between them, switches, presumably, are extra). But since I intend to gut the poor wee beastie, that's fine. I'm also hopefully going to get my grubby little hands on one of the Matsui DAB tuners. Back before I planned to move to Canada I debated buying one of these for the Minor. But they were 30 quid at the time.

Now, at a few quid second hand, they're tempting to again be the subject of my soldering iron. The plan is simple; gut the DAB tuner, gut the amplifier, make Radiomobile into DAB tuner. Leave socket for MP3/CD player. And lo, we'll have the perfect modern stereo in a 70s box.

Mind you, that's how it is in my head. How it'll work in practice is another question. The other thing I quite fancy, having driven the car a while now, is a small amount of illumination around the air vent controls and the hot/cold air selector sliders.

I usually end up waving my arms around under the dashboard to find them (when driving in the dark) so a little glowy white LED illuminating the up/down arrows seems quite tempting to me. And a little red/blue illumination on the hot air and cold air sliders also seems like quite a nice idea (potentially mounting them in a small piece of sanded perspex to diffuse the light). I'm slightly concerned she might look a little boy-racer though with the blue/red glow eminating from the dash, but at least I'd be able to control the temperature while driving without too much concentration. I'm also slightly concerned that I might get overly attached to Jejy. But hey.

This all comes about because I need to prepare Jejy to be Rebecca's temporary replacement while I fit the diff (when it arrives), the gearbox (when it's ready), the new swivel pins (when they're manufactured; if ever), trunions, poly-bush the front suspension, and repaint the damaged paint areas of the engine bay. Oh, and strip out the dash, find all the things that are rattling, stop them from doing so, clean out the heater, fit a new inline heater control valve (from a golf, apparently), and potentially convert her to Left Hand Drive (which involves moving the brake master cylinder and associated plumbing, remanufacturing the dash I made (otherwise the worry gauges will all be in front of the passenger), fitting the other gearbox front plate and somehow working out how to lock and unlock the passenger door from the outside), oh and ideally fitting a heated rear window that works, and in a perfect world sending off the speedo to be recalibrated, the revcounter to be reinternalised and the clock to be made to work (a car with a working clock! that'd be a novelty).

Just a short list of jobs...

So Jejy may have to do service for the minor for a while. Which is why I fancy a radio and a CD input.

Anyway, today I need to get my act together and sell the Mac, and possibly the Dell (although I doubt the dell is going to sell). And in aid of getting started, I shall now have my breakfast.

* Yes, yes, I know she's right, but it seemed like a good idea in my head :)

So, it's that time again (already?!) when I stay up most of the night to try and swing my body around to nights. This is, of course, tedious. I actually have something I want to be doing; I want to be capturing my mum and Paramito's wedding - I plugged in the Miglia box, went to load FCP and realised that FCP isn't installed anymore. Then I looked around the chaos that is the desk, and considered weeping openly. I checked the OS X box in the hope that, like Photoshop I'd've stuck the disks somewhere 'sensible'. But of course, I haven't. I've no idea where FCP is.

This is 'upsetting', to coin a phrase. It's what I'd planned for the entire evening. Capture and then FCP my evening away editing first M+P's, then Kathryn and my ceremonies.

I may have a solution though, so we'll see if it works out.

Anyhow, since I've got some time to kill, here's a little early on review of the Vibram Five Finger KSOs.

I'd been intrigued by these since howlsthunder  mentioned them, the concept of bare-footing without bare-footing, and the positive statements she'd made about stress on joints and comfort made me think, hrm, worth a shot. I'm used to paying around 15 quid for my runners, the most expensive shoes I've got are my £55 Doc Martens that I bought for work, and which, are now 5 years old and still in service. My *best* pair of shoes, which I wore to destruction were a pair of £6 boots from Bacons, or PriceLess or Shite-CheapoShoe in Birmingham (not even a particularly salubrious bit of Birmingham) - they were in a sale, and I loved and loved them.

So forking out around 60 quid for a pair of runners, not least runners which actually consist of, frankly, very little, was a bit difficult for me. That and the buggers wouldn't ship to the UK...

But having bitten the bullet, so to speak, I ordered them and they were delivered to Kathryn's Mom's house while we were in the States (just). We'd already left, but we were meeting up to say bye, and they kindly brought the runners with them. After a bit of wiggling I managed to get my toes in the right holes. It wasn't difficult per-se, but I have quite long and dexterous toes (monkey like ;) ). I proceeded to wander around the hotel lobby in a very odd way.

My first thought was that it was freeing, and also that the world seemed a more tactile place.

I've not managed to get much wear time in; my job means I can't wear them at work, but I've worn them to the shops, and just around about. And I think my first opinion was right. The world is just a more interesting, tactile place. I've always liked my experiences on the visceral side; mountains, sea, forests, fresh air, dirt. I drive a car with the minimum between me and the road because I want to *feel* the road. I ride a bike so I can feel the world going by. I take joy in the world. These shoes enhance that joy.

Going outside barefoot tends to hurt my puny feet. Pointy rocks and bits of jagged stuff dig in and make it an uncomfortable experience. The Fivefingers, well, it's like going barefoot. The difference between KSO's and a pair of ordinary runners is like the difference between, say, a Ford Mondeo and an Ariel Atom. I was concerned that the KSO's, like my ancient Lonsdale (OneStar clone) runners, would suffer from the thin sole making walking on Concrete or Tarmac (or any hard surface) uncomfortable. But the majority of my walking has been on such surfaces and it's not been a problem so far....although the sight of grass or earth or pebbles leads me to disregard any pretence of decorum and stalk over to whichever surface it is, then walk about on it like a cat, while saying "OOoooh, textured!" (or possibly "Pebbles!").

I've found that zipping up and down stairs and perching, my balance is better. My toes are able to do their job and curl around things or adjust my posture to make me more stable (and lord knows, I need stability ;) ).

The only bad things I've found are that there's no ability to try them on before you buy; mine are very marginally smaller than I'd like, I think, but Howlsthunder suggested that the next size up is actually 'huge', since they don't do half-sizes. I think the next size up would be too big, but I'd like to check. I'm sure that with wearing the KSO's and me'll get used to each other. It's really a couple of millimeters I want, and just on one toe (the big / great toe).

The other thing is people's reactions to them; most people don't look that closely at your shoes, but Paramito's comment I suspect sums their opinion up when they do: "Grotesquely ugly". I actually don't think they're ugly at all; interesting is the word I'd've applied. It perhaps doesn't help that mine are the black/black KSOs, which essentially swarth your feet in a layer of black material and plastic. But quite honestly, these aren't shoes for people who care about what people think. If you spend your life wondering whether you're looking suitably fashionable and cool, these aren't the shoes for you.

But they are the shoes for me, 'cos while I don't want people to go 'ugh' when they see me, I'd rather be reasonably comfortable than knacker my knees any day :)

And there endeth today's review.

Quick pop quiz, is Katy Perry's song 'I Kissed A Girl' derogatory or not? I quite enjoy it, in that way that I do, but then I have my concerns about an artist who's toured US churches and makes comments on her Christianity. Previous knowledge suggests that US Churches, as a rule, do not look on being gay favourably.... and that makes me 'suspicious'. Unfortunately it's a boppy bouncy song, and I'm known for liking boppy bouncy songs.

You can probably expect more updates as Kathryn's gone back to the states for Xmas; more on that in a bit. I thought I'd give you all a quick update on our early Solstice. So, Kathryn and I have already had our Solstice/Xmas celebration; we had a very chilled morning (and not just because the house was cold), slept in really late and when we finally got up we had a relaxed day mostly chilling. I had an argument with Windows on the lounge PC - having set up a temporary wired network I set it copying files. It did what appears to be a random selection of them, didn't report any errors though, and foolishly I didn't check that they'd all come across. I then deleted a bunch of stuff off the laptop and have spent several days finding all the things which went missing during the copy.

Anyhow, we opened prezzies, Kathryn got me a gorgoeous Retro Computing book; arty geekery! She's also got me something unknown, which is still floating in the aether of the Post Office. As, apparently (and frustratingly) is our VOIP adaptor. Anyhow, we then cooked a very nice (and veggie) Christmas Dinner - complete with Yorkshire pud, brussel sprouts, parsnips (although these were way underdone; in future I know to cook them for much longer), and a not very Christmassy Thanksgiving Sweet Potato Casserole (what can I say, it's gorgeous!). ( Read more... )

Anyhow, back to work tomorrow, so Merry Xmas everyone, have a great day :)

Okay, so shoot me. I'm taking my morning more or less, no actually I'm taking a chunk of my morning off. I may go and prod at the paint in the bathroom, I may not, I may turn on the water to the cistern, I may not. We shall see.

I actually got up hugely early, but the thing is - the thing is I've got to drive to my mum's to collect the wings for my mog, and the drive to the midlands to drop off Rebecca before waiting until 1800 for my train back. I'm hoping to have a big wait between heading up there and the train on the way back, but I can't promise that'll be the case. I was hoping she'd run better once she'd got some fresh petrol in her, but actually despite starting and running, she's still rough as sin.

So, anyhow, I've spent my morning doing stuff all. I've downloaded some nipod management tools, I've downloaded something which claims it can remove all my dupilicate mp3 files (ha, I've tried this before... but hey, it's worth a shot). I'm still converting several gigs of Kathryn's AAC (into mp3) files for placement on the nipod, although the application I've got in my sweaty little paws says it can do that on the fly while copying and integrating sorta with iTunes. Which is cool beans.

've spent some time trying to find a prezzie for one of my friends; frustratingly I dreamt the perfect present for this friend last night; sadly however it doesn't *actually* exist. I had my doubts, and searching the net has confirmed them, distressingly.

But you have to look, don't you?

Yesterday I stripped an awful lot of paint from the radiator. It's about 2/3rds done. I'm thinking I might mark out the channels to cut in the kitchen and then tomorrow I could do that, to give me a break from paint stripping. Ha, we could knock up a faux kitchen in a day, don't'cha think? Maybe? Heh. Anyhow, I should go shower, really.