Chick Pea Tagine rules courtesy of The Vegan Society

Also, Taxi is a rather fun film. (edit : oops. Wrong taxi. The original French film, not the horrid American remake)

Modding games can produce some remarkable new results. In some ways it's a shame older 3D isometric games have fallen from favour, as drawn/painted art can achieve some effects that are rather difficult in 3D. On the other hand, a proper 3D environment really is quite remarkably flexible as the unorthodox clip above shows.

On a related note I really do need to start playing Oblivion again. I've even bought the Shivering Isles expansion cheaply, recently, but haven't had the opportunity/priority to play it.

A fairly chilled weekend.

Friday

sorting and pubbage

Saturday

Some tidying of my study

Nipped to scan and spent £2.17 very wisely on some flat cat 5 LAN cable (Scan's website says Cat-5e, but I'm pretty certain the cable itself only supports cat 5). Anyway, a couple of slits in the carpet and some fiddling around lifting it up and my home theatre computer is now properly connected. Fantastic! Have updated techiesnippets with this info, and will do further tests there.

Armenian and drinkies with T and S

Sunday

More study tidying - going very well. Next steps are to completely clear the floor, see how an inflatable mattress fits in and look at installing some shelves and re-instating the whiteboard

Late night bike ride. It rained just as I was thinking of a ride (5pm). Eventually shifted myself at half 8 and went for it (there was an awful lot of heavy breathing and swearing pushing myself throughout various portions of the ride). Despite really trying, for the first portion of the ride I was, in fact, no faster than the prior Thursday when I wasn't trying as hard but felt rather good. Decided to push on regardless, got absolutely soaked and covered in mud, but smashed my 01:45 target where I would allow myself to buy a pair of clip in pedals, completing the ride in 01:36:30. I rule!

Therefore, quite happy with the weekend.

My main PC has resurrected itself. Cause unknown.. May have to consider a motherboard swap anyway at some point. Might be due to the big heatsink. I used to have unexplained hangs but it hasn't reoccured for months at an end.

Also did a reasonable time on the bike, and wasn't trying as hard as I could have done. Might try a serious go at my 01:45 17 mile target at the weekend.

Plus, made progress on an extremely geeky old computing stuff that diverted me. Was only going to spend half an hour on it, but as ever, things turned out to Not Be That Simple.

I've resurrected a quite old lj : techiesnippets. This is an out and out geekfest with highly technical material of a fairly diverse nature. Currently up is a post about a permanently online IM presence courtesy of NetBSD and a neostation 3000. Next up will probably be something about old computers, once I've finished investigating various things.

It's going to be a technical blog *only*, though : no discussion of day to day life.

I'm looking for a larder cupboard - 58-60cm wide, preferably 60cm deep, quite tall (up to about 2 metres, ish) and not vastly expensive (few hundred quid).

It becomes rapidly apparent that the particularly nice cupboards are four figures (too much), and that larder cupboards aren't particularly common.

I'm pondering a few options. My existing cupboards are nothing special - standard 'shaker' kitchen units shipped with the house with sculpted beech effect doors. I'm considering a cupboard from Wickes for a couple of hundred quid (looks ok, but slightly too tall), one from Argos for about a hundred quid or searching around for a pine shop online or nearby (if I'm lucky I reckon I can find a cupboard for about 300 quid *if* I'm lucky) - that's pine rather than beech, though.

Have browsed Ikea and not been particularly impressed. Ikea, Wickes, B&Q, Homebase, Argos. I've been browsing a whole host of other sites would any way to shortcut the process would be welcomed.

Fed up of not having enough space in the kitchen and want it to be tidy.

Not entirely certain which way to go. The kitchen does not have to be the most stylish part of the house. Something cheap from Argos, or slightly better furniture from elsewhere. hmm..

As an example of things I'm looking at, there's this cheapo cabinet from Argos, this larder unit from Wickes (add another hundred quid for doors) and there another nice pine larder cupboard I liked the look of at 250 quid or so, but it's a bit smaller than I would have liked and won't match any of the beech in the room.. What to do.

Weekend was quiet-ish. Off to see Terminator Salvation on Friday - a decent film, provided you ignore some huge plot holes and believe that everyone is quite stupid. Pub after that, the following day some tidying, a reasonable bike ride and cooking lots of pineapple and lentil curry before Saturday Pub.

Sunday was visiting parents, sorting out the garden (this took a few hours), sleeping and doing very geeky things with a soldering iron (more later, once it's all working).

Kayaking performance wasn't fantastic on Monday, but slowly improving I think. May have to consider my own kayak and practising at other times, although when I can fit this in is a good question.

Goth book group Tuesday was quite fun, decent discussion and nice beer. Last night K was round to cook me green risotto and watch Godzilla : Giant Monsters All Out Attack - quite good although not the best monster fights so far. Skillful use of editing made best use of the budget, and most of the effects were quite well integrated into live action and were mostly on the same level rather than jittering between excellent and crap as Godzilla : Final War did.

The cats aren't always enjoying the sunshine, but cry to go out late at night. My sleep patterns have been all over the place, sadly. Going to bed at a reasonable time to ('lie down just for a moment'), waking up at 5-6am, making sure the cats are inside and going back to bed. My plan of getting up at 7am and exercising for a while is taking some time to achieve.

Computers are being Fucking Annoying. It started off with the SGI O2's composite video input which doesn't like all composite input (such as that from old home computers), moved onto the fact the TV card doesn't work well in the neostation (too many interrupts for the Geode chipset) and the huge ISA WinTV celebrity I whacked into my legacy/DOS/OS/2 box was being an arse too.

Then the home cinema PC refused to load powerstrip properly - easy to fix if you can see the screen, but annoying if you need powerstrip to load so it'll program the projector to synchronise the display.

Finally, my main system appears to have died, and it looks like the motherboard unless the power supply has failed. It's not too hot, the memory checks out, the processor is working and three different hard drives refuse to boot. I was hoping to avoid too much computer fettling, but will now have to try swapping out the power supply, processor, and running it outside the chassis. Fucking joy.. It's under a three year warranty and hopefully won't be a hassle to replace.

Health-Club Employee Stops Going To Work After Two Weeks (from the onion).

I have also posted a comment to the Have Your Say for that weirdo celeb death. Do you think "'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PIERROT!! " will get in? ;)

I don't think these are actually in short supply now, but it seems a reasonable time to offer them as a free for all.

Four Three available. Post friends locked for now, thrown open to the wide world tomorrow morning.

It definitely has improvements over LJ. Enough though? Not sure. Under rapid development - worth watching. I'm impressed by the contributions from the community.

I joined the online Dreamwidth darkroom orgy a while back, not expecting any response (not that many people on Dreamwidth yet, not decided what I'm going to do with it myself, really - need to consolidate journals really.).

I appear to be being filthed by persons unknown[1]. I thought I had a suspicion to who they are, but apparently I am wrong or they are being naughty and lying (on the Internet? who knew? ;)).

Still, you can go there and post your own entry or comment as appropriate if you wish. It's definitely Not Safe For Work, unsurprisingly.

It's also been a welcome diversion from work today; I'm on my own in the office this week and support is going a bit mental.

Comment here if you wish. Everything screened, this time..

[1] yay

Nicely chilled weekend. Went to Calderdale and Sheffield Pride with H on Saturday, chilled out, listened to the music and chatted.

Calderdale Pride is what many prides should be; it was held in the gorgeous Piece Hall - a square, with surrounding shops and grassy areas. All of the entertainment was local, and there was decent input from the council, community groups and suchlike. The sound system was amateurish to say the least, and the quality of the acts was variable, but this was genuinely a decent local pride aimed at the local community, rather than the commercially oriented enterprise Manchester has generally turned into. They also had the wisdom to have a real ale tent, which I unusually didn't take advantage of.

Sheffield was quite similar - a lovely big field with friendly people in it and a variety of community stalls. The sound system was properly set up this time, and had both local acts and the Eurovision song contest entry from a year ago which H most enjoyed. Sadly I missed yoyoangel by five minutes, but I'm sure there'll be other times.

Went home via a Wagamamas in Manchester, then onto the pub for a few drinks.

Sunday was a bit of a sorting day. Fixed a few things at home, went for a short bike ride and finished reading Starman - what a fantastic comic that is.