Bruce's journal (original) (raw)

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Bruce's journal \| most recent entries

Thu 21 Oct 10 \| 22:48
Mostly so that I can show it to people, here is what I find to be the funniest thing I've ever read. I can't read it aloud without breaking into fits of giggles. Here is a single entry from Stephen Pile's The Return of Heroic Failures (ISBN: 0140121722). I can highly recommend tracking down a copy of this and The Book of Heroic Failures if you like your schadenfreude funny.THE WORST SUBMARINEThe conventional submarine, rising and descending at will, is of only limited interest to our sort of student. It does not compare with the more versatile K-boats which the British developed in 1917.K-1 sank after colliding with K-4 off the Danish coast. K-2 caught fire on its first test dive. K-3 plunged inexplicably to the sea bed with the Prince of Wales on board, eventually re-surfacing only to sink after being rammed by K-6. K-4 ran aground, K-5 foundered in the Bay of Biscay.K-14 sprang a leak before its first trial and during one celebrated manoeuvre in the North Sea it collided with K-22, which used to be K-13 but was renamed after it keeled over at Loch Gare in Scotland while on seaworthiness trials. K-14 sank, while K-22 was damaged beyond repair after getting in the way of HMS Inflexible, a cruiser which happened to be passing.In the same manoeuvre K-17 was struck by HMS Fearless, having already been hit by K-7, thereby incapacitating itself. On observing this mayhem, K-4 stopped engines, altered course and was rammed by K-6 which later got stuck on the ocean bed. Better still, K-15 sank in Portsmouth Harbour before going anywhere or doing anything.Ks 18, 19, 20 and 21 were never completed, but their keels were modified for use in the new M range. M-1 was rammed by a merchant vessel while on diving patrol in the channel and M-2 sunk after springing a leak.Addendum: ...and, for any chemists out there, this comes a close second.
mood \| giggly
[ 4 comments \| add comment ]

Sat 03 Apr 10 \| 17:06
I've often wondered why buying Gaviscon Liquid (an antacid) from my local supermarket causes the Self-Checkout to whoop and whine until some assistant verifies I'm over 18. I've tried to think of mischief kids could get up to with liquid antacid but have never come up with anything particularly frightful. I've always assumed that it was inadvertently flagged as dangerous to children because it's a medicine.Today, however, I bought a quarter-litre of acetone. No alarm, no summoning of a responsible adult, just a regular beep. Now, I can think of quite a few Bad Things that you can do with acetone. Hell, I've accidentally done some of them myself. So why no checkout interrogation? Easy: nail varnish remover (aka acetone) isn't a medicine.Yet more proof that the goals behind rules can be eminently good-meaning but their implementations entirely inconsistent and deranged.
mood \| thoughtful
[ 4 comments \| add comment ]

Wed 03 Mar 10 \| 18:41
Here's a link to the lovely Lee Bay in North Devon.If you click this and end up looking at eBay instead, you'll probably want to add http://l-stat.livejournal.com/js/pagestats/dRev.js to your ad-blocking software.Thanks to shatterstripes for doing the sleuthing on this.Addendum: Longer version: LJ have added a script to add their affiliate IDs into links to shopping sites. Unfortunately, they forgot to put a leading period in front of each domain suffix in their list of sites meaning that they're redirecting ebay.co.uk rather than .ebay.co.uk. £10 says that it's because .ebay.co.uk doesn't match http://ebay.co.uk/...Addendum: Easier fix not requiring ad-blocking software: Open the Admin Console at http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/ and execute the following command: set opt_exclude_stats 1
mood \| irritated
[ add comment ]

Thu 25 Feb 10 \| 18:40
At work we have a simple little litmus test for candidates interviewing to be graduate developers - the children's game Fizz-Buzz.The test is very simple:Write a program that will output each of the numbers from 1 to 100 on a separate line except:when the number is a multiple of 3, output Fizz,when the number is a multiple of 5, output Buzz, andwhen the number is a multiple of both 3 and 5, output FizzBuzz.A correct answer would therefore output:12Fizz4BuzzFizz78FizzBuzz11Fizz1314FizzBuzz16...and so on.The disturbing aspect is just how effectively this thins the field. We end up failing as many as a quarter of the university degree holding hopefuls1! This is why I can't do interviews - I find it hard to imagine that someone would apply for a programming job without the necessary skills to conquer something so small.Mind you, that hasn't stopped me writing a solution using a finite state machine (FSM) and then spending most of the day taking that to the next level by writing a program to generate its own FSM using an evolutionary algorithm.Tomorrow I get to find out if my little evolutionary algorithm is smarter than 25% of our candidates. 1 We don't demand that the degree be anything to do with computers per se. Our lead support programmer, for example, has a classics degree and one of our chief systems architects is a biochemist.
mood \| amused
[ 19 comments \| add comment ]

Sat 12 Sep 09 \| 16:29
Achievement Unlocked: Driving a car with manual transmission.I still say people should drive automatics. Stop-starting around London in 1st & 2nd gear is such a pain (figuratively and literally). However, this does mean that I can use Streetcar now whenever I need to carry stuff/people about London. All I need to do now is learn how to parallel park and I'll be a barely competent driver.
mood \| accomplished
[ 8 comments \| add comment ]

Thu 13 Aug 09 \| 19:23
Oh dear. I appear to have accidentally come off my anti-depression medication.I'm supposed to take 40mg of citalopram a day but it occurred to me, during my walk home this evening, that I couldn't remember when I last took it. It turns out the last time was Sunday. Now this is surprising to me - not that I'd be so forgetful but that I simply haven't noticed. I would have expected something to malfunction - I have friends who've come off citalopram and it was anything but uneventful.However there is a slight worry. I was supposed to be spending this weekend in Dorset camping by the sea. The plan had been to take a handful of folks down there to potter around, relax, make bonfires on the beach and generally not be at a music festival - which seems to be the only other time we get together. As the trip became more popular that began to change - the last time I checked in on the thread there was talk of Burning Man-esque burns and fancy dress. Having done several festivals already this year, and not really wanting another manic weekend, I decided on Tuesday to give it a miss.The thing is: was that the depression sneaking back? I don't know. It's certainly similar to my problematic behaviour of avoiding social occasions but that might just be coincidence. It's frustrating to not know my own motives. Should I be hurrying back to the meds to fix it - or was it unrelated? Should I even go back to the meds at all?
mood \| confused
[ 5 comments \| add comment ]

Wed 17 Jun 09 \| 10:37
Three weeks ago, I flew over to the US for the first time in a couple of years. I'd been holding off on travelling to the States after some particularly unpleasant encounters with the TSA but I could hardly say no when Ben asked me to be his groomsman. In the end the TSA at San Francisco were nothing but polite - so it just goes to show what a lottery it is. Still never flying through Dallas Fort Worth again.Ben's wedding went off without any hitches that anyone will remember (a family member's forgotten husband and the minister nipping off without signing the paperwork). Considering that Ben now has two mothers-in-law that's quite a feat. I think I looked okay in my tux and I mostly got away without offending anyone...My driving stateside was adequate; my parallel parking less so. The twisty mountain roads in Yosemite were quite a lot of fun when I wasn't being tailgated at 15mph above the speed limit by an idiot. Yosemite itself is simply gorgeous. I took something like 250 photographs from which I plucked my favourites and finally got through processing them and putting them online. Oh, and I totally saw a wild bear. That rocked.Now it's off to Barcelona (tomorrow) for Sónar. Good times, good times.
mood \| accomplished
[ 4 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 11 May 09 \| 20:32
I spent yesterday stood in a field somewhere in Cambridge watching things go whoosh (and occasionally bang) at EARS 2009. I took along my new point-and-click camera (a Panasonic Lumix TZ7) to see how it fared - so here're ( some pictures of rockets Collapse )
mood \| cheerful
[ 4 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 13 Apr 09 \| 19:23
Today was a good day.Half a lifetime ago, I passed my driving test at the second attempt. This I considered the high point of my driving career and, so as not to spoil it, I never drove again. Well, that, and I hated every minute of being behind the wheel. I am one of Life's natural passengers. I genuinely enjoy riding shotgun whatever the distance. Driving, on the other hand, was a constant panic tinged with the ever-present fear that I could cause someone else to crash1. Next month, I'm flying to California to be a groomsman2 at a wedding of a dear friend. Normally, I'd rely on him to drive me around but, on the week of his wedding, I think that's asking a bit much. So, rather than arrive in the US and attempt to renew my driving career over there, I nipped down to Heathrow today and rented a compact automatic3 to play with.Why on Earth don't more people drive automatics? I get that it's a bit dull and anathema to serious gearheads but why don't normal, just-getting-around drivers have them? They're so easy! They don't stall! I've piloted trickier shopping carts. I took the M4 out to Oxfordshire to look at the Uffington White Horse and, more importantly, Dragon Hill4 - and then told the sat-nav to avoid the motorway on the way back just to have something more to do5.This is quite a Big Deal for me. Driving has been one of those stomach-churning fears tucked away in my subconscious that's been an inconvenient impediment for years. Suddenly, I'm looking forward to Ben's wedding all that much more - and a trip to Yosemite afterwards is now a definite plan.1 Crashing my own vehicle didn't worry me nearly as much.2 (Ushers + Best Man) ÷ several people = Groomsman. I have to wear a tux. Should look...interesting.3 A Nissan Note. Ugly as sin, steers a bit like a boat and the sat-nav woman is a proper harridan.4 Where George allegedly slew the dragon. Nothing grows where the dragon's blood pooled - so now you know.5 Dammit. I meant to turn that option off when I got back. I hope the next driver notices...or likes B-roads.
mood \| chipper
[ 14 comments \| add comment ]

Tue 03 Mar 09 \| 10:52
Umm. I've run out of work. No documents to review, no code to pore over.I should go looking for trouble. Right after this next coffee...
mood \| bored
[ 4 comments \| add comment ]

Sun 15 Feb 09 \| 22:58
I've just, with an array of specialised tools, dismembered four hard drives, wiped down the platters with magnets and sandpaper and then, quietly in the night, disposed of their component parts in various rubbish bins around Chiswick.I think I've been watching too much Dexter.
mood \| amused
[ 6 comments \| add comment ]

Thu 12 Feb 09 \| 13:13
Day five of catharsis. Last night's bin bag o' junk was mostly old computer cables. Not quite sure why I was hanging onto a 5-pin DIN to PS2 keyboard adapter or a 9-pin VGA to RGBHV BNC monitor cable or any of the other random bits and pieces. All I know is that last night's bag was the heaviest so far.This morning I finally saw my doctor about antidepressants. She prescribed Citalopram, initially at 20mg a day, and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy - although the NHS being was it is, that's unlikely to happen for several months.Still, I wasn't after therapy (though I will go along if/when it's arranged) so I'm happy with the result. I'll be even happier if it works1.1 Well, duh. Addendum: I've just noticed which post is currently sat at the bottom of my LiveJournal view. It's from March last year and ends:_I'm still considering seeing my doctor whilst I'm in a mood where things might actually get done._Well done, Bruce. Better late than never.
mood \| happy
[ 9 comments \| add comment ]

Tue 10 Feb 09 \| 20:32
Day three of catharsis and progress is...sobering. I just found a stack of unopened letters, postmarked December 2007.Yeah, you guessed it - my Christmas cards. If I needed an indicator that things haven't been right for some time, that would be it. You've got to be somewhere pretty crap to shy away from something so innocuous.Still, no such reminder is necessary. I already made an appointment this morning to see my doctor about antidepressants. Come Thursday maybe I can start to straighten this thing out.
mood \| thoughtful
[ 7 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 09 Feb 09 \| 19:33
My hibernation is almost over. This week I've got myself a project - jettisoning one black bin bag of junk a day for a week, starting yesterday.Some of the junk that'll be going isn't per se junk. There're a lot of functionally sound bits and pieces that are merely surplus to requirements - but I can't be arsed with eBay and I'm loathed to delay this purge now that I've got momentum. My old PC and monitor will probably go onto the pavement in plain sight rather than in a bin bag in the hope someone can make use of them - though the hard drives will not be going with them for obvious reasons.As a side-effect lots of small, meaningless tasks that have been lying around for months are done. Bits of carpet are emerging from underneath packaging and unwashed clothes. Of course, the flat's been going to seed for long enough that the first few days will be easy. I'm looking forward to the tougher decisions to come.
mood \| productive
[ 1 comment \| add comment ]

Sun 01 Feb 09 \| 23:40
I went out and played in the snow earlier - possibly the first spontaneous thing I've done this year - but, fair play, the lass who's currently making snow-angels on the pavement outside has more style about it.
mood \| cheerful
[ 2 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 29 Dec 08 \| 22:42
Life is weird.I've been bimbling around the edge of depression since the start of Winter - but through careful management of my time away from home, it's been okay. The Sigur Ròs concert was a particular highlight - their glitter and confetti guns made me grin from ear to ear.Snowboarding was...okay. I was never quite brave enough to push it beyond where I'd got to in my practice sessions and it was only near the end of the first week when my feet finally stopped hurting all the goddamned time.( And then Matt broke his arm.Collapse )Now we're back in London - Matt's off to A&E to get his arm set and cast and I'm at home. Once I know Matt's on the wards I'll drop by and keep him company. We can only hope he's at home for New Year.
mood \| thoughtful
[ 10 comments \| add comment ]

Wed 22 Oct 08 \| 10:42
( 2009 Schedule Collapse )
mood \| organised
[ 13 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 13 Oct 08 \| 21:05
I've now been alive for a third of a century. That suddenly seems like a long time.
mood \| accomplished
[ 5 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 29 Sep 08 \| 00:46
I have next week off work because I've not really taken any holidays this year beyond long weekends. Figured I might go to Milton Keynes' indoor snow slope to get some more snowboarding practice in.So why on Earth did I decide yesterday evening to take a four hour, thirteen mile walk along the south bank of the Thames and end up with a hole the size of a twenty pence piece in the bottom of my right heel? It'll be a few days before I can walk again let alone snowboard.
mood \| recumbent
[ 3 comments \| add comment ]

Tue 26 Aug 08 \| 20:28
Pointless mass update!Glade was good, music was heard but basically the point was to amble around with friends and do nothing of any great consequence. Shambala was good for much the same reasons. I think, on the whole, I preferred Shambala just for being even less about what time you needed to be where and for having a different group of really quite entertaining and talented people to hang out with to normal.Shambala encourages fancy dress and Matt and I went as Mardi Gras showgirls with fistfuls of throw beads and made lots of friends with them. However, our campmates stole the show (in my humble opinion) with their Boris Dancers - morris dancers in Boris Johnson wigs - and may even have secured an unexpected booking for the Lord Mayor's Parade in London next month... I'm slightly disappointed that a chance to do some übercoding at work fell flat because I coded beyond my ability to keep track of what I was doing. Due to the complexity of the problem revealing itself late in the exercise, I ended up with a central data structure containing lists of trees of trees - and then my head came off.My mobile phone just ran out of storage so here are ( some choice snippets from its camera.Collapse )
mood \| lazy
[ 1 comment \| add comment ]

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Bruce's journal \| most recent entries

Thu 21 Oct 10 \| 22:48
Mostly so that I can show it to people, here is what I find to be the funniest thing I've ever read. I can't read it aloud without breaking into fits of giggles. Here is a single entry from Stephen Pile's The Return of Heroic Failures (ISBN: 0140121722). I can highly recommend tracking down a copy of this and The Book of Heroic Failures if you like your schadenfreude funny.THE WORST SUBMARINEThe conventional submarine, rising and descending at will, is of only limited interest to our sort of student. It does not compare with the more versatile K-boats which the British developed in 1917.K-1 sank after colliding with K-4 off the Danish coast. K-2 caught fire on its first test dive. K-3 plunged inexplicably to the sea bed with the Prince of Wales on board, eventually re-surfacing only to sink after being rammed by K-6. K-4 ran aground, K-5 foundered in the Bay of Biscay.K-14 sprang a leak before its first trial and during one celebrated manoeuvre in the North Sea it collided with K-22, which used to be K-13 but was renamed after it keeled over at Loch Gare in Scotland while on seaworthiness trials. K-14 sank, while K-22 was damaged beyond repair after getting in the way of HMS Inflexible, a cruiser which happened to be passing.In the same manoeuvre K-17 was struck by HMS Fearless, having already been hit by K-7, thereby incapacitating itself. On observing this mayhem, K-4 stopped engines, altered course and was rammed by K-6 which later got stuck on the ocean bed. Better still, K-15 sank in Portsmouth Harbour before going anywhere or doing anything.Ks 18, 19, 20 and 21 were never completed, but their keels were modified for use in the new M range. M-1 was rammed by a merchant vessel while on diving patrol in the channel and M-2 sunk after springing a leak.Addendum: ...and, for any chemists out there, this comes a close second.
mood \| giggly
[ 4 comments \| add comment ]

Sat 03 Apr 10 \| 17:06
I've often wondered why buying Gaviscon Liquid (an antacid) from my local supermarket causes the Self-Checkout to whoop and whine until some assistant verifies I'm over 18. I've tried to think of mischief kids could get up to with liquid antacid but have never come up with anything particularly frightful. I've always assumed that it was inadvertently flagged as dangerous to children because it's a medicine.Today, however, I bought a quarter-litre of acetone. No alarm, no summoning of a responsible adult, just a regular beep. Now, I can think of quite a few Bad Things that you can do with acetone. Hell, I've accidentally done some of them myself. So why no checkout interrogation? Easy: nail varnish remover (aka acetone) isn't a medicine.Yet more proof that the goals behind rules can be eminently good-meaning but their implementations entirely inconsistent and deranged.
mood \| thoughtful
[ 4 comments \| add comment ]

Wed 03 Mar 10 \| 18:41
Here's a link to the lovely Lee Bay in North Devon.If you click this and end up looking at eBay instead, you'll probably want to add http://l-stat.livejournal.com/js/pagestats/dRev.js to your ad-blocking software.Thanks to shatterstripes for doing the sleuthing on this.Addendum: Longer version: LJ have added a script to add their affiliate IDs into links to shopping sites. Unfortunately, they forgot to put a leading period in front of each domain suffix in their list of sites meaning that they're redirecting ebay.co.uk rather than .ebay.co.uk. £10 says that it's because .ebay.co.uk doesn't match http://ebay.co.uk/...Addendum: Easier fix not requiring ad-blocking software: Open the Admin Console at http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/ and execute the following command: set opt_exclude_stats 1
mood \| irritated
[ add comment ]

Thu 25 Feb 10 \| 18:40
At work we have a simple little litmus test for candidates interviewing to be graduate developers - the children's game Fizz-Buzz.The test is very simple:Write a program that will output each of the numbers from 1 to 100 on a separate line except:when the number is a multiple of 3, output Fizz,when the number is a multiple of 5, output Buzz, andwhen the number is a multiple of both 3 and 5, output FizzBuzz.A correct answer would therefore output:12Fizz4BuzzFizz78FizzBuzz11Fizz1314FizzBuzz16...and so on.The disturbing aspect is just how effectively this thins the field. We end up failing as many as a quarter of the university degree holding hopefuls1! This is why I can't do interviews - I find it hard to imagine that someone would apply for a programming job without the necessary skills to conquer something so small.Mind you, that hasn't stopped me writing a solution using a finite state machine (FSM) and then spending most of the day taking that to the next level by writing a program to generate its own FSM using an evolutionary algorithm.Tomorrow I get to find out if my little evolutionary algorithm is smarter than 25% of our candidates. 1 We don't demand that the degree be anything to do with computers per se. Our lead support programmer, for example, has a classics degree and one of our chief systems architects is a biochemist.
mood \| amused
[ 19 comments \| add comment ]

Sat 12 Sep 09 \| 16:29
Achievement Unlocked: Driving a car with manual transmission.I still say people should drive automatics. Stop-starting around London in 1st & 2nd gear is such a pain (figuratively and literally). However, this does mean that I can use Streetcar now whenever I need to carry stuff/people about London. All I need to do now is learn how to parallel park and I'll be a barely competent driver.
mood \| accomplished
[ 8 comments \| add comment ]

Thu 13 Aug 09 \| 19:23
Oh dear. I appear to have accidentally come off my anti-depression medication.I'm supposed to take 40mg of citalopram a day but it occurred to me, during my walk home this evening, that I couldn't remember when I last took it. It turns out the last time was Sunday. Now this is surprising to me - not that I'd be so forgetful but that I simply haven't noticed. I would have expected something to malfunction - I have friends who've come off citalopram and it was anything but uneventful.However there is a slight worry. I was supposed to be spending this weekend in Dorset camping by the sea. The plan had been to take a handful of folks down there to potter around, relax, make bonfires on the beach and generally not be at a music festival - which seems to be the only other time we get together. As the trip became more popular that began to change - the last time I checked in on the thread there was talk of Burning Man-esque burns and fancy dress. Having done several festivals already this year, and not really wanting another manic weekend, I decided on Tuesday to give it a miss.The thing is: was that the depression sneaking back? I don't know. It's certainly similar to my problematic behaviour of avoiding social occasions but that might just be coincidence. It's frustrating to not know my own motives. Should I be hurrying back to the meds to fix it - or was it unrelated? Should I even go back to the meds at all?
mood \| confused
[ 5 comments \| add comment ]

Wed 17 Jun 09 \| 10:37
Three weeks ago, I flew over to the US for the first time in a couple of years. I'd been holding off on travelling to the States after some particularly unpleasant encounters with the TSA but I could hardly say no when Ben asked me to be his groomsman. In the end the TSA at San Francisco were nothing but polite - so it just goes to show what a lottery it is. Still never flying through Dallas Fort Worth again.Ben's wedding went off without any hitches that anyone will remember (a family member's forgotten husband and the minister nipping off without signing the paperwork). Considering that Ben now has two mothers-in-law that's quite a feat. I think I looked okay in my tux and I mostly got away without offending anyone...My driving stateside was adequate; my parallel parking less so. The twisty mountain roads in Yosemite were quite a lot of fun when I wasn't being tailgated at 15mph above the speed limit by an idiot. Yosemite itself is simply gorgeous. I took something like 250 photographs from which I plucked my favourites and finally got through processing them and putting them online. Oh, and I totally saw a wild bear. That rocked.Now it's off to Barcelona (tomorrow) for Sónar. Good times, good times.
mood \| accomplished
[ 4 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 11 May 09 \| 20:32
I spent yesterday stood in a field somewhere in Cambridge watching things go whoosh (and occasionally bang) at EARS 2009. I took along my new point-and-click camera (a Panasonic Lumix TZ7) to see how it fared - so here're ( some pictures of rockets Collapse )
mood \| cheerful
[ 4 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 13 Apr 09 \| 19:23
Today was a good day.Half a lifetime ago, I passed my driving test at the second attempt. This I considered the high point of my driving career and, so as not to spoil it, I never drove again. Well, that, and I hated every minute of being behind the wheel. I am one of Life's natural passengers. I genuinely enjoy riding shotgun whatever the distance. Driving, on the other hand, was a constant panic tinged with the ever-present fear that I could cause someone else to crash1. Next month, I'm flying to California to be a groomsman2 at a wedding of a dear friend. Normally, I'd rely on him to drive me around but, on the week of his wedding, I think that's asking a bit much. So, rather than arrive in the US and attempt to renew my driving career over there, I nipped down to Heathrow today and rented a compact automatic3 to play with.Why on Earth don't more people drive automatics? I get that it's a bit dull and anathema to serious gearheads but why don't normal, just-getting-around drivers have them? They're so easy! They don't stall! I've piloted trickier shopping carts. I took the M4 out to Oxfordshire to look at the Uffington White Horse and, more importantly, Dragon Hill4 - and then told the sat-nav to avoid the motorway on the way back just to have something more to do5.This is quite a Big Deal for me. Driving has been one of those stomach-churning fears tucked away in my subconscious that's been an inconvenient impediment for years. Suddenly, I'm looking forward to Ben's wedding all that much more - and a trip to Yosemite afterwards is now a definite plan.1 Crashing my own vehicle didn't worry me nearly as much.2 (Ushers + Best Man) ÷ several people = Groomsman. I have to wear a tux. Should look...interesting.3 A Nissan Note. Ugly as sin, steers a bit like a boat and the sat-nav woman is a proper harridan.4 Where George allegedly slew the dragon. Nothing grows where the dragon's blood pooled - so now you know.5 Dammit. I meant to turn that option off when I got back. I hope the next driver notices...or likes B-roads.
mood \| chipper
[ 14 comments \| add comment ]

Tue 03 Mar 09 \| 10:52
Umm. I've run out of work. No documents to review, no code to pore over.I should go looking for trouble. Right after this next coffee...
mood \| bored
[ 4 comments \| add comment ]

Sun 15 Feb 09 \| 22:58
I've just, with an array of specialised tools, dismembered four hard drives, wiped down the platters with magnets and sandpaper and then, quietly in the night, disposed of their component parts in various rubbish bins around Chiswick.I think I've been watching too much Dexter.
mood \| amused
[ 6 comments \| add comment ]

Thu 12 Feb 09 \| 13:13
Day five of catharsis. Last night's bin bag o' junk was mostly old computer cables. Not quite sure why I was hanging onto a 5-pin DIN to PS2 keyboard adapter or a 9-pin VGA to RGBHV BNC monitor cable or any of the other random bits and pieces. All I know is that last night's bag was the heaviest so far.This morning I finally saw my doctor about antidepressants. She prescribed Citalopram, initially at 20mg a day, and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy - although the NHS being was it is, that's unlikely to happen for several months.Still, I wasn't after therapy (though I will go along if/when it's arranged) so I'm happy with the result. I'll be even happier if it works1.1 Well, duh. Addendum: I've just noticed which post is currently sat at the bottom of my LiveJournal view. It's from March last year and ends:_I'm still considering seeing my doctor whilst I'm in a mood where things might actually get done._Well done, Bruce. Better late than never.
mood \| happy
[ 9 comments \| add comment ]

Tue 10 Feb 09 \| 20:32
Day three of catharsis and progress is...sobering. I just found a stack of unopened letters, postmarked December 2007.Yeah, you guessed it - my Christmas cards. If I needed an indicator that things haven't been right for some time, that would be it. You've got to be somewhere pretty crap to shy away from something so innocuous.Still, no such reminder is necessary. I already made an appointment this morning to see my doctor about antidepressants. Come Thursday maybe I can start to straighten this thing out.
mood \| thoughtful
[ 7 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 09 Feb 09 \| 19:33
My hibernation is almost over. This week I've got myself a project - jettisoning one black bin bag of junk a day for a week, starting yesterday.Some of the junk that'll be going isn't per se junk. There're a lot of functionally sound bits and pieces that are merely surplus to requirements - but I can't be arsed with eBay and I'm loathed to delay this purge now that I've got momentum. My old PC and monitor will probably go onto the pavement in plain sight rather than in a bin bag in the hope someone can make use of them - though the hard drives will not be going with them for obvious reasons.As a side-effect lots of small, meaningless tasks that have been lying around for months are done. Bits of carpet are emerging from underneath packaging and unwashed clothes. Of course, the flat's been going to seed for long enough that the first few days will be easy. I'm looking forward to the tougher decisions to come.
mood \| productive
[ 1 comment \| add comment ]

Sun 01 Feb 09 \| 23:40
I went out and played in the snow earlier - possibly the first spontaneous thing I've done this year - but, fair play, the lass who's currently making snow-angels on the pavement outside has more style about it.
mood \| cheerful
[ 2 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 29 Dec 08 \| 22:42
Life is weird.I've been bimbling around the edge of depression since the start of Winter - but through careful management of my time away from home, it's been okay. The Sigur Ròs concert was a particular highlight - their glitter and confetti guns made me grin from ear to ear.Snowboarding was...okay. I was never quite brave enough to push it beyond where I'd got to in my practice sessions and it was only near the end of the first week when my feet finally stopped hurting all the goddamned time.( And then Matt broke his arm.Collapse )Now we're back in London - Matt's off to A&E to get his arm set and cast and I'm at home. Once I know Matt's on the wards I'll drop by and keep him company. We can only hope he's at home for New Year.
mood \| thoughtful
[ 10 comments \| add comment ]

Wed 22 Oct 08 \| 10:42
( 2009 Schedule Collapse )
mood \| organised
[ 13 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 13 Oct 08 \| 21:05
I've now been alive for a third of a century. That suddenly seems like a long time.
mood \| accomplished
[ 5 comments \| add comment ]

Mon 29 Sep 08 \| 00:46
I have next week off work because I've not really taken any holidays this year beyond long weekends. Figured I might go to Milton Keynes' indoor snow slope to get some more snowboarding practice in.So why on Earth did I decide yesterday evening to take a four hour, thirteen mile walk along the south bank of the Thames and end up with a hole the size of a twenty pence piece in the bottom of my right heel? It'll be a few days before I can walk again let alone snowboard.
mood \| recumbent
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Tue 26 Aug 08 \| 20:28
Pointless mass update!Glade was good, music was heard but basically the point was to amble around with friends and do nothing of any great consequence. Shambala was good for much the same reasons. I think, on the whole, I preferred Shambala just for being even less about what time you needed to be where and for having a different group of really quite entertaining and talented people to hang out with to normal.Shambala encourages fancy dress and Matt and I went as Mardi Gras showgirls with fistfuls of throw beads and made lots of friends with them. However, our campmates stole the show (in my humble opinion) with their Boris Dancers - morris dancers in Boris Johnson wigs - and may even have secured an unexpected booking for the Lord Mayor's Parade in London next month... I'm slightly disappointed that a chance to do some übercoding at work fell flat because I coded beyond my ability to keep track of what I was doing. Due to the complexity of the problem revealing itself late in the exercise, I ended up with a central data structure containing lists of trees of trees - and then my head came off.My mobile phone just ran out of storage so here are ( some choice snippets from its camera.Collapse )
mood \| lazy
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