Managed to drop my powerbook (and bag) today and although the padding in the bag prevented any major damage, there’s now a bit of a dent in one corner where the bag landed upside-down on the one part that had virtually no padding. 🙁
I really must invest in some kind of protective case that has padding all round instead of just on the front and back and a little at the sides.
Category: Personal
Oven clock
Just happened to walk past our oven at midnight and it said “24:00”. A minute later it was back to “0:01”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a digital clock say 24:00 before, usually they run from 00:00 to 23:59.
Gateshead Trip and Angel of the North
We went for a daytrip to Gateshead yesterday with the main purpose of visiting an art gallery. On the way there, we passed the “Angel of the North” sculpture and stopped to take some pictures. There was also plenty to take pictures of down by the river near the art gallery.
Amusing driving directions
Just been planning a day trip and using Multimap to give me driving directions, it came up with the following step that just made me laugh. 100 miles into the journey it reckons I should (driving not walking):
18 Turn right onto PAVEMENT and proceed for 0 miles
If the whole journey wasn’t 100+ miles long, I’d have assumed that was actually walking directions instead of driving.
Build your own…
…computer case! Lori found a system called Lubic yesterday. It’s a cross between Lego and Mecanno and lets you build either computer cases or just general models.
For those in the UK, Maplin Electronics stock the kits at between 30-50 pounds. Since the sides of the standard shaped cases that you can build are transparent, there’s the chance to add neon lights to make it look really strange.
Harry’s Challenge
Went to Harry Ramsden’s, the fish and chip restaurant, yesterday evening since we’d never been there before and didn’t feel like cooking. It’s quite expensive, on a par with Little Chef, around 8 or 9 quid per adult but the food is really good.
Harry’s Challenge is a 12oz piece of cod or haddock, a huge pile of chips and 2 portions of either garden peas, mushy peas or baked beans.
If you can eat it all, you get a free dessert and a certificate to say that you managed it. Never one to pass up a challenge, I’m sure you can guess what I had.
The lost art of MU*
These days when someone says they enjoy “online gaming” you probably think of 3d games engines with lots of monsters and vast quantities of bullets being fired by players all using the internet to connect to each other and play against each other. Either that or one of the many online casinos where you can’t tell if you lost because the computer at the other end was programmed to make you lose or if it was simply bad luck.
When I was first introduced to the internet back in the early 90s, there wasn’t much to do except download demos from a few large ftp sites, browse some fairly primitive webpages and telnet to various text based services. Online gaming took the form of MU* – MUD, MUCK, MUSE and MUSH.
Recently read
Just finished reading Persuader by Lee Child. It’s a story about an ex-MP (Military Policeman, not Member of Parliament) who goes around getting involved in all kinds of violent stuff, usually involving at least one government organisation such as ATF,CIA,FBI,DEA,etc. There’s often a fair amount of “whodunit” involved as well.
Jokes
Time for a couple of dreadful jokes.
Q. What do you call a man with a spade in his head?
Artemis Fowl & other books
Artemis Fowl, Artemis Fowl : The Arctic Incident and Artemis Fowl : The Eternity Code – a trilogy worth reading. These stories are full of fairies, goblins, and other races, together with a “Mud Boy” named Artemis Fowl.