Driving to work watching two people walking down the road.

On the left - a woman wearing a robe
On the right - a man in a hoodie

The similarity is rather amusing.

Things were going well last week until a few unexpected expenses materialised.

First, there was deliberate shiny buying in the shape of a cheap Sound Canvas 55 off ebay. It's somewhat more modern than the MT-32 I got a while back - the piano actually sounds like a proper piano and it can be mapped for proper General MIDI compatibility (even if it's capable of a superset of that) although my modern standards the note polyphony is a bit low..

Then the UPS died at home (it was cheap, and has lasted a couple of years) encouraging the purchase of a second hand with new batteries one (this also showed that the old one was never doing a fan test, which may be why it failed). The new one carries on the tradition of the old one in continually trimming the input voltage - it appears the household voltage is a bit high.

Eye and dentist appointments hit simultaneously, and I think it's likely I'll need a new prescription - probably the same frame though.

Thus, despite the fact there are lovely people I wanted to see in London, I stayed around Manchester - particularly as it was therainbowqueen's 30th birthday, and that only comes around once!

Due to the rainbow theme, there was a last minute dash on Thursday to grab some orange machine dye. An old pair of white jeans magically became burnt orange, coupled with my Stuff Is Awesome orange t shirt with a rainbow on it :).

Saturday consisted of going to Futuresonic with T. I was confused here, and actually thought it was Eurocultured - which is on the coming bank holiday weekend. Anyway, it was a decent diversion and some drinks and chat were also had. Then, onwards to see the RQ in all her splendid rainbowy glory together with various colours in the rainbow friends (S in green and C in an orange jumpsuit were particularly good).

Sunday was spent vegging on games (it rained) and Monday a bit of snoozing and a quick 17 mile bike ride - jolly good.

Last night was Biphoria.. I'm pondering looking at running Manchester Bifest in November.. Any suggestions or offers of help (workshops, cake, crafts, decorations, entertainment) welcome!

On Thursday I finally took the cats to be chipped and to purchase some spot on to prevent fleas/ticks/worms (another £70 on top of everything else, but chipping only needs to be done once and it works out at £5.50 per cat, per month to keep them flea free..).

This of course meant I could then take them out into the garden! :). They generally enjoyed this, although I have taken some measures to stop them exploring the building site beyond the rear fence. Maisie loves running madly after me with a bootlace, but Cairo is still more lazy - I need to do something about his podge. I'm trying to encourage them not to go into the front so much, but they do like to explore. I suppose everyone needs to let their babies do their own thing sooner or later though.

At the moment I'm only letting them out when I can supervise them, and opening the patio door. A cat flap will require reglazing/a new patio door and will not be cheap.

Sunday was computer game day as it was miserable. There was a bit of Freedom Force vs Third Reich. There was some Discworld (1) to test out the Sound Canvas, a run of Ultima 7 to confirm that even if a sound module is a league ahead of an older one the sound can be poor if it has not been remapped to suit the instruments of the new one..

I got Cyro Interactive's Ring working (for varied values of working) to which I can only say : don't bother, as the game is irritating, obscure and dull even if it contains Solti conducting Wagner. Finally, there was a little Rise of the Triad, which remains an extremely fun game even if technically dated - is there a modern alternative to it?

Finally, at some point last week I had a go of Beyond Divinity and am finding it a little uninspiring to get into. May require a little effort to make the most of that.

Progress on hacking exult has been slow; I need a half decent memory profiler - any suggestions? (I'm sure I have some links somewhere).