Do I have data from Finland????

Obviously things are starting to slip by me now. The answer is yes. And it should be reasonably salient, for it was the first lot that I was actively involved with. D'oh. Although I guess it's rather a long time ago now. In fact, I'm trying to date the origin of the webpage. However, being so many directories deep of the domain, webarchives a bit thin on it. Grrrr. And damn frames don't archive well either. Mind you, they always were a tool of the devil.

Oh wait. It's like incoherent 2am ranting. Perhaps I should sleep now...

Deadlines

Oh how I've missed deadlines. Or not. I knew things were getting relatively dire when I elected to have a small scotch last night. All the silly little liquid and food superstitions I used for my thesis -- no doubt contributors to my thesis gut. Now that I have a mint blender and frozen berries at home, I don't need to midnight mission to countdown for my smoothie fix.
And as I suggested elsewhere recently, my thesis routine was something like this until the dying days:
9am-1pm: multiple plunger coffees at home
1pm-5pm: cheap arse instant at school
5pm-8pm: G&T, wine or beer with dinner
8pm-11pm: a pot or two of tea
11pm-midnight: scotch or port
midnight-2am: hot chocolate
2am-9am: sleep

So yes. Not good to be back in this game. The awful feeling of knowing that the end is not far away, and that there's not much left to do, but struggling with the will to do it.
I'm not planning to pull an all-nighter to night, but I'm not sleeping til I have a full draft...
And for one of my most long-distracting side-projects. Don't even mention how bad the website needs updating....

No Picnic

It might not be the most grusome surgery possible, but when I met with the oral surgeon the other day he had three things of interest to say. First, although I was only his second patient of the day, he awarded me the "teeth of the day" award (for which I'm quite chuffed). Secondly, he asked me to reproduce*. Thirdly, I was informed that the two wisdom teeth I have were "no picnic", and that general anaesthesia was really the only option. Apart from the inherent danger, I'm quite happy about this, being the wimp that I am. Not only are they in odd places, they are each snuggled up to two nerves, and have their roots growing out perpendicular in opposite sort of directions, making a(n) (in)convenient sort of T shape.

* My upper wisdom teeth are absent, so it's something he'd like to me to pass on. Incidentally, this led into one of a number of interesting discussions we had. This one was on whether selection processes are still operating in humans.

The Candyfloss Incident...

Not too riveting, but L* borrowed a digital camera over the weekend, so there'll be a few extra images in the next little while. So here is the product of my previous labours. It looks like somebody's gone a bit crazy with candyfloss in the ceiling. Unfortunately glass fibre more scratches than melts in your mouth.



However, when the hills are looking like this, glass fibre is not such a bad thing.



(although if it wasn't for the smudge of snow, using the barbecue doesn't seem like such a silly idea -- this next shot is about 2 hours later!)

Sold Out...

I've always been pretty down on laptops: expensive, non-upgradeable, and most of the time attached to so many wires and excessive crap as to make them about as portable as a desktop. Well, those of you who know me well, and my inimitable skills, may not be so surprised to hear that I "acquired" a laptop.

As an amusing aside, I acquired the laptop after it got damaged by lightening. I do have a surge protector, but I've never heard of anybody actually have trouble with power surges etc. Well, anyway, I acquired a laptop which had some lightening damage via the phone cable. Not surprisingly, the modem no longer works, and neither does the DVD/CR-RW drive...

It would never be my primary computer. I still find controlling it exceptionally annoying relative to my desktop. However, what I am finding great, is sitting here typing this in front of the fire, connected wirelessly to my desktop, and thence onto the information superhighway. There's probably also a good likelihood that I'll be posting from on the deck on sunny days in future.

If I only said I'd never buy a laptop, then I probably haven't sold out. However, if I claimed I'd never want a laptop, then I guess, er, maybe...

Journalistic Cliches

I suspect most of my readers are "progressive", and thus regulars at Hardnews, but I'm not sure how many of you read Island Life. David has a stunning link to "journalistic cliches" today...

Feisty: Short, old female
Never: Not in Google
War-torn: We can't find it on a map

Etc. Check them out for yourself...

More Computer Geekery

Following the popularity of the previous post, I thought I'd post a couple of the longer lists of this that I modified for mine. Some of them are not funny, but there are plenty more gems

• The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons and flashing lights it has. However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons and lights are not labeled. Note: The most advanced systems have multiple displays, some showing three-dimensional wire-frame graphics slowly turning in space.


• Computers sent into an endless loop, or otherwise confused by an operator, will eventually explode.


• Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash of light, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks and an explosion that causes you to jump backwards.

Those last couple may be truer than you'd expect. I believe at least one of my readers has witnessed smoke coming from an SGI.

http://www.iol.ie/~thedeans/cinmovie.html
http://www.esmerel.com/circle/movies.html