Monthly Archive for June, 2003

Great night last night – came down to London in the morning for a couple of meetings, first one got cancelled so I spent a few hours in Century with Mark (where we met Peter Walker) before heading to Pineal Eye to drop off some flyers then Magma to stock up on trendy mags. We met up at Jo’s for a mag talk, JC arrived with new haircut – not one to do things by halves, he’d bleached it almost white, with a touch of aquamarine on top, got a slightly-diagonal mullet-mohican, and Egyptian patterns carved into the short bits on the side. Awesome.

After the meeting, JC dragged us to a private view at amazing glasses shop Kirk Originals in Covent Garden – I wish I’d been to this place before I got my recent pair (which actually arrived the day before I came down to London). Well, I needed some sunglasses to go with my new contact lenses so… I’m afraid I splashed out a little (but at least I got them half price in the sale). Amazing specs, I’ll post a picture soon. The private view was for some comic-book pictures reproduced as 3D art, painted onto layers of plywood, rather good stuff. We hung around for far longer than I expected, partly I guess because the booze lasted for far longer than any other private view I’ve been to (or was it just that we got there earlier), met up with Marianne from Virgin Mobile, who we intended to go down to the Air Guitar Championships heat with (Marianne sponsored the event).

We were hungry so… decided to get some food first. Headed East and ended up in an amazing Vietnamese restaurant on Kingsland road. Awesome food, and once again sadly highlighted the discrepancy between London and Sheffield – there’s a noodle bar in Sheffield that everyone raves about, but when I ate there the food seemed uninspired greasy slop. Here in London I got delicious really fresh food – I had soft-shelled crabs to start with, two crab-shaped spice-encrusted deep-fried lumps, delicious but – wooo – some chilli there! My main course was lemongrass tofu with rice noodles – I couldn’t taste much lemongrass, but the thing was chocka with fresh mint, a really nice surprise (I’m on a fresh mint trip at the moment) and something I’ve never had in far-eastern food before.

By this time, after 4 or 5 bottles/cans of beer at the private view and a couple of glasses of red wine in the restaurant, I was getting a bit wobbly (though not as pissed as JC). I staggered back to JC & Tam’s flat, taking photos of everything on the way. Somehow (the booze talking) I let JC hanrangue me into buying a bottle of J&B whisky when all I really wanted was some more wine. We sat in the flat sipping whisky & cokes until we were zonked (not very long) and I crashed on the futon.

I just woke up with a very witty cism in my head, after thinking about whoever he was who got caught masturbating in the big brother house:

Wanking – the leisure activity that dare not speak its name

Ha ha – fruckin hilarious. I run a little piece of software on my PC called Workrave, which pops up reminders whenever I’m supposed to take a 30-second micro pause (every 10 minutes with my current settings), a five-minute rest break (once an hour), or stop working for the day (after seven hours). Today it seems to have been a lot more active than usual, prompting me to take rest breaks even when I thought I’d just had one etc. It’s really starting to annoy me… and then I realised what was up. I’ve been getting my computer “perfectly” (ha!) set up, with my new Soundblaster Extigy and other wotnots. My subwoofer is now underneath the desk (as opposed to on the floor behind the desk, where it’s been for months), and today I turned up the woof on it as I feel like being moved by music.

A moment ago, Workrave popped up its usual “its time for a break” reminder window, and I sat here watching the seconds ticking away and not registering the fact that I actually was having a break. Then I noticed… the mouse pointer was swaying gently from side-to-side. Appears it was being moved by the sub-bass, so that even though I wasn’t working, Workrave thought I was because my mouse was still active. Sheesh.