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!

biphoria last night, or rather - the pub afterwards, as I got delayed slightly by looking after the kittens and missed the time for the train. One train an hour is a bit annoying.

It's all a process of fine tuning our lifestyles around each other. I obviously need to get home slightly earlier, so that I can have time for food, to get changed and a bit of kitten play. If they're not too twitchy about me arriving then disappearing again quickly, I can go back to yoga which normally entails me getting home rather late..

Weakened to cheap crap on ebay and obtained two SGI O2 boxes. They're old, but quite cute and only cost me twenty quid all together. The hardware was supposed to be two 180Mhz R5000 systems with 256MB memory and 9 and 18GB SCA disks respectively.

What I actually had after swapping components around is one 200MHz 1MB R5000 system with 448MB, an 18GB 10K and 9GB 7K2 drives and even an intact PSU cover! The other is left as an 180MHz R500 with 64MB a 9GB drive and a somewhat knackered CDROM (good job I kept my old Toshiba CDROM, eh? :)).

edit : whoop! I'm also going to grab a load of 9GB SCA drives from work, as we'll never use them again. 18/36/72s are still useful though (indeed the production mail server uses both 18s and 15K 36s..)

Had a brief conversation with softfruit about the use of cheapo 486s/low power boxes as 24/7 bittorrent boxes for downloading those big 'Linux distributions' everyone needs to keep grabbing. I sense an LJ post on syllopsium's Guide To Buying Old Crap (and when New Shiny is more appropriate). This will illustrate why despite the ebay crap surfing, I've turned down far faster boxes at the same price (a tenner) including multiple Octanes, Powermacs and Sun Ultra 5/10/20s.

In other news, L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET 's IP address has changed to 199.7.83.42. If you're running a DNS server you'll want to update the config files..

Woke up this morning feeling cold. Briefly considered if this was because I was perhaps still ill, before deciding that, no, it's actually because autumn has arrived with a vengeance. Dark mornings and nights loom soon, and I suppose I should hack away at my DVD backlog seeing as there's no suitable person to snuggle with. Time to put the central heating on.

biphoria was good last night. 19 people! Good chat about Bifest and relationships. Discussed different organisation of Bifest, timings, seperate events and so on.. haggis made the good suggestion that my Coming Out workshop needed a bit more interactivity, and if I run it again I was planning on perhaps running a quiz/board game 'Risk Factor X-treme!'

'It's late at night. You haven't come out to anyone else. Someone you vaguely know and like is online, and you could reveal your bisexuality:

What's the risk factor? Piddly/Small/Moderate/Huge/X-Treme!
Change factor to your life :
What are the plus points?
What could go wrong?'

Silly, but perhaps worth it?

ION we're looking at repairing some US Courier modems at work (some models have unreliable power supplies), and were pleased to note they have a lifetime warranty. I suppose there /is/ an advantage of buying £200+ modems..

Yet another enjoyable biphoria social. Met up with S, V arrived, then P and S. Drinks were had, then dancing, more drinkies, poptastic, then home. Took the bus to Bolton, then weakened due to a 35 minute wait and took a taxi from Bolton to home.

Ok, so it's a tenner more than taking the bus, but

( can you blame me? )

So, a pretty enjoyable night, other than a degree of Bisexual Angst (bah)

biphoria was jolly good last night. 18 people present, I think! Unfortunately the LGF was closed so we had to convene in Taurus, but lots of good chat was still enjoyed.

Various things whirling around my head at the moment, but need to think them through a little more before I LJ/discuss them. Work carrying on ok. Still having issues with code, but there's a number of areas I can investigate, so I'm hopeful. Head down for the rest of the day : hope to have a new cut of code for tomorrow.

Have a meme, from essbee80 :

Ask me 1 question for each of the following:

1. Friends
2. Sex
3. Music
4. Drugs (you might have to use a fairly liberal interpretation of 'drugs' here, if you know my general stance on them..)
5. Love
6. Livejournal

No matter how rude, sexual, or confidential (although I of course reserve the right not to answer)
Then post this in your journal and see what questions you get asked!

Oh, and comments are screened, but anon commenting turned on and logging off on this one.