5:28 AM
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.

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9:06 AM
I found this little chap in the bathroom last night - at least, I'm fairly sure its the same guy. He was resigned to his fate inside a bowl, unable to clamber up the sides. I left him overnight so I could show Lola this morning. Then together we turned him out into the garden. An hour later, after dropping Lola at the childminder's, I decide to do some work in the garden (running memory tests on my PC inside, which meant I had to work on the laptop anyway). On getting out there, I noticed how the plants looked like they needed a drink, so I squirted the hose all around to quench their thirst and also to make a bit of a nice humid atmosphere (switched the fountain on too which makes things very pleasant). As I was squirting the geraniums hung from the wall, I noticed this chap scrambling out of the waterfall - looked like the same guy I just rescued once already. He looked so cute, glistening there, that I had to grab my camera. Sadly, in the glare of the sunlight tiptoed over the cellar steps at a wierd angle and 10cm from my macro-prey, the Sony's LCD was, erm, rather hard to read. I couldn't see whether I was in focus, so this was the best I managed.

And now... I've found a shady spot where I can actually see the laptop's screen and listen to the tinkle of the fountain, and for the first time ever, thanks to the wonders of Wi-Fi, I'm comfortably working in the garden. Except I'm not working, I'm procrastinating. I really ought to do this more often. Work in the garden, that is, not procrastinate.

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6:44 AM
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

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7:18 AM
Hmmm.... I don't think this is quite right:



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5:31 PM


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6:01 AM
Been a busy week for photos - here's some I took yesterday at Heeley Farm Festival.

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10:52 PM


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4:50 PM
And another load of Life... miscellaneous stuff at home from the last couple of months.

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1:05 PM
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.

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12:20 PM

Rowan's friend Ruby came over last week after school. Apparently they'd written a song together, and Rowan told Ruby that they could make a CD of it (I made a CD of Rowan singing about a year back, so I guess she remembered this and thought she'd make another). They came to me with all of the ideas for the CD already in their heads, down to their pose on the cover (they were going to fire party poppers over one anothers' heads. For some reason, this didn't happen). So I stood them near the computer, taped a tiny crappy voice mike (stolen from a PowerMac many years before) onto a cardboard box at head height and tried to get Rowan to stand far enough away from the Mic so that it wouldn't distort every two seconds and Ruby close enough to the Mic that it would actually pick up her voice. And they sang. I recorded it all in Cool Edit, played with it a little (boosted Ruby's very quiet voice... and also any background sounds that were going on as she was singing, and added a bit of reverb) and stuck it onto two audio CDs, one for each of the, (seemed like a bit of a waste using a whole CD for less than two minutes audio, but what the hell). Then the girls went off and found some clothes to dress up in (at least Rowan did, I think Ruby just borrowed a pair of shoes) and we went in the garden to take the cover photo. A couple of minutes in Photoshop and we had something to be proud of. And the girls certainly were, they were overjoyed with their new CDs. The next day Ruby brought her CD in to school, and was apparently mobbed by people trying to get a look. Rowan refused to let her have it played in class (Rowan hates the way her voice sounds in recordings - "that sounds nothing like me"), but she did consent to give a live performance in front of the entire infants school. Now apparently the two are superstars at their school, everyone there knows about The Bananas and their CD, and no doubt a string of copycat acts will soon be appearing. Simon Fuller, eat your heart out. Here it is then, Telephone by The Bananas

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9:53 AM
I'm going to court in the morning, ding dong the bells are going to chime

For somebody who doesn't like confrontation, I get a hell of a kick out of confrontations where I know I have the upper hand. I just got a telephone call from Leigh of the Yorkshire Mortgage Company, in response to my recent letter to him. He wasn't a happy bunny, and unless we can come to some arrangement he is going to take me to court, where he has "always won in the past". I have to say there is little I would relish more - it's a long time since I've been to county court, and although I never thought I'd hear myself say this, I do miss it somewhat.

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12:05 AM
Added two new sets of pictures to Life, FAD Party and Five Weirs Walk

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2:53 AM
Just watched some program on Channel 4 about models. They used that Mark Ribot y Los Cubos Postizos album for background music - the same one that was playing in some bar in Antwerp where I drank tequilas with Guy and Lucas. Anyway, it reminded me of something... but I forget what now. And I keep getting flashes of things that really should be written down, but aren't. Seeing people in the street and putting the most striking aspect of their appearance into words. But then I forget the words. There was that girl with her crazy mascara sucking everything into her eyes, or the bloke with the shaved zigs in his eyebrow that you couldn't see until you were up close, but you were aware of from hundreds of metres away. Or some other people. But I'm not going to write all that now. Because my hand really hurts, from where I smashed up my keyboard with it earlier. And after a week of rebuilding my computer four times, it still keeps fucking up and now I can't type the letters 'n' or 'h' on it because I've smashed the keyboard (although 'n' is also ALT+0110 and 'h' is ALT+0104). So I'm gonna reformat the hard disk and install all 50-odd pieces of software for the fifth time, in the vain hope that my hard disk doesn't get trashed again. And once I've done that, I might get a plaster for the toe that I nearly broke kicking the filing cabinet.

On the plus side, this house has never been tidier. Incredible what you can achieve in terms of tidying and cleaning in the brief time it takes to install Windows 2000 Advanced Server and reboot a computer a few times.

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9:20 PM
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE is corrupt!

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