This morning I didn’t sleep enough, went to the airport earlier than I had to, bought an entirely forgettable cup of coffee and went on a plane. Or to put it another way…
I went to be last night happy in the knowledge that I had been tired all day, so was all set to get straight to sleep and be ready to start my time back home. Three hours later, I got to sleep. Two hours later I was woken by a strange keening sound.. I punched at it until it stopped, then realised that it was my mobile phone awakening me at the predetermined time I set it to in order to get me to the airport early enough to get through the no doubt wild and crazy crowds that would be there for a packed plane at this time of year. I got to the airport just before they started opening the check-in counters for the morning. I dropped my bag off and got to the security terminal just before they opened to let us through. I got to the gate about an hour before boarding. Turns out I could have slept another hour and evened out the trying to sleep/sleep disparity. Oh well..
Not too long after I got to the gate, I noticed the coffee place over there had their coffee machine warmed up and ready to go. Most of the lights were off, but they seemed operational so I headed over for a long black to start my long day. Turns out that the guy operating the machine gets in early for the early flights to supply us early morning passengers with an early cup of joe before embarking on our early morning trips purely because he can. He has no change in the register because they’re not officially opened yet so when I hand him some money he tells me what I owe him and gestures towards a bowl of change telling me to ‘go for it’. As I kick my brain into gear to calculate my change he prepares my morning repast (the coffee and a ham & cheese croissant) while completing the previous chap’s order and taking the next one. I sit and eat my croissant while listening to my ipod (same song you’re listening to) and waiting for my coffee to cool in a darkened corner of the cafe while watching the shuffling human morass start their day similarly to mine. We’re all up too early and trying to offset the sleepyness, seems some are more capable than others in making it happen.
I spend the next five hours in a wing’d beige tube of tedium listening to music and daring myself to get some sleep for the first time ever on a plane… I fail. Still, I’m back home.. ish.. for now. Hello family, hello friends, hello dogs. It’s/ll be good to see you again.
Lately Volkswagen have been running an ad campaign called Fun Theory. They’re not actually selling any specific cars in this campaign, in fact they’re not mentioning any at all. What they’ve decided is that the world needs more fun, so they have teams of people out there putting a little exuberance into things. Case in point, they rigged up a set of stairs that run next to an escalator with piano keys, so wandering up and down the stairs becauses something new and exciting. The point of the whole thing is that they can change peoples behaviour in simple ways simply by changing something mundane into something a whole lotta fun.
They reckon that 66% more people used the stairs because of the change. I think it’s a great idea, I love that something so simple might make an otherwise dreary morning into a bright start to the day. They have another two similar videos, one is a bin that’s ‘bottomless’ and the other is a bottle recycling bin that’s been rigged up to be a game. I want something like that in the park near where I live here, it might stop the shits leaving their beer bottles lying around not 4 metres from a bin. Or they’ll be brutally vandalised… but hey, maybe they can see how much fun being targetted by a vigilante gang can be.
Ooof.. got a little dark there. Anyway, take a look at the other two – they can be found at the website for the campaign. They even have an award for a similar great idea, so get those minds cranking and see what you come up with. I’m not sure my vigilante gang will get through the selection process, but maybe you can more successful!
There’s bodging to be done by the people who are still alive.
I made myself a new TV stand! Here is the old:
The keen-eyed amongst you may notice it’s the box that a toilet came in. A fresh, new, clean toilet, before you ask. A very sturdy box it is too I might add.. it assisted me well in the move to here. It’s still full of stuff that will now need rehoming, but that will happen shortly. This is indeed only the beginning! Bwahahaha!
Oh dear, I seem to have gone rather off topic. Anyway, my TV box has been bugging me for a while now so I ventured downstairs to see what was around that I might repurpose. Initially I was going to cut up the old table I had, but that would have required buying a saw.. normally I’d be well into buying new tools but I wanted to see how cheap I could do this. Turns out.. I did it for free! There was an old, slightly pinkish beige chest of drawers falling apart downstairs, so with a hammer and a couple of screwdrivers I assisted its breakdown, added a few other things I had lying around and came up with this:
Check it out! Admire the awesomeness of it all! Look slightly concerned about the fact that there’s no fastenings involved whatsoever! It’ll be fiiiine… probably. The two structual PC cases are empty, but the fancy looking one in the middle there is my TVPC. Basically it’s a DVD player.. unless I need an install of windows to break.
I should get a job in interior design…
I went for a ride today.. even tucked away as it was my bike was covered in the red dust from yesterday morning’s dust storm. I should probably clean off the mirrors at least before I go for the license test in a couple of weeks. That and practise the sort of stuff that’s required of me in the test anyway.
If there was an ocean big enough to hold Saturn, it would float.
There’s not an ocean around that can hold me, coppers!
Greetings, salutations and furniture. Are you well? I am transposed. Barley!
I installed Windows 7 on my desktop a couple of weeks ago. It’s the full proper real technet version, so it’s not pirated and not going to expire and screw me up shortly. Which is nice. First impressions are pretty much positive.. it’s certainly a set up from Vista. Given I was one of the few geeks in the world to voluntarily use Vista over XP, (on both my laptop and desktop in fact!) I really appreciate the differences. The slightly revamped task bar is definately an improvement for one thing. I like being able to pin my constantly open apps to it for two reasons; it saves on quick launch bar space and they’re always in the same order. Being the pedantic fellow I am, it’s something I’ve been wanting for a while now. There’s a pile of little changes too that all add up to a big positive change in usability. If you’re dragging a window around and pull it to the edge of the screen it’ll automatically maximise. If you grab the task bar of a maximised window and pull it somewhere, it’ll restore (go to its smaller window size). There’s native support for shuffling the desktop background image. Admittedly these are somewhat minor given there’s been basically no changes to the core UI since Windows 95, but if we’re honest it’s always been a nicely functional design. The start menu is the same as it is in Vista and aesthetically there’s little difference. But again, that’s not really a bad thing – especially given all the customisation that’s possible for those who want it.
Under the shinyness the experience feels more smooth and solid. I’ve not done any comparative boot up timing or anything (I’m not that pedantic..) but it seems to be more efficient in what it’s doing. The UAC is far less invasive now, which is definately a welcome change. Pretty much all the screen darkening prompts that I come across are due to running software that was designed for XP or earlier – other items will have the shield on the button but pressing it won’t cause the disruptive UAC prompt we all know and revile. Most everything I’ve thrown at it will install and run however, though I was out and about getting the latest versions of things before I started. Drivers for pretty much everything were fine, except for my Logitech stuff – as of writing their drivers don’t recognise 7 as an operating system that they’ll run on. The keyboard one refuses to install and the mouse one offers to install anyway.. but I didn’t. Given the mouse stores the changes I made to the thumb buttons (who’da thunk it, the on board memory is useful!) it works better without the drivers anyway. I’d really like the media keys on my keyboard to be functional though..
The only other major quibble I have with 7 is that VLC doesn’t scale properly in it. Apparently this is due to the graphics card drivers not supporting under Win7 whatever scaling method that VLC uses.. so I just use WMP. There are other players out there that will work apparently, but WMP has been remarkably non-irritating so far. We’ll see how long that lasts.. but signs are promising. Certainly it’s less irritating than it was under Vista, and there’s now the option to completely remove it if you so desire. Things for MS to work on for the inevitable Win8 include seperate background controls for multiple monitors and not burying the keyboard controls so badly in the Control Panel. Also, for some reason the icons are wider spaced now.. both in the system tray and in Windows Explorer. Not sure why.. but it’s less good. Get on it, eh?
Sperm whales sleep vertically with their heads pointing towards the bottom of the ocean.
Hoi all.. I’n not neglecting you, ’sjust that nothing much is happening. Here’s a few words, anyway.
I read this and was reminded about why it is that I love that game so much. It’s a tiny masterpiece.. that’s not actually very tiny at all. They managed to distill The Legend of Zelda down to the Game Boy, yet give it its own unique character and whimsy that shines through wonderfully, even to this day. It’s regarded by some as the best Zelda game, and by many as at least the best 2D one. I reckon it’s the one that I look back at most fondly, and if I had the DX version here I’d probably play it again.. again. I have the original one, but I like the additions made in the colour one. Aye, I bought it twice.. and if Nintendo do what we all want and have a Virtual Console on the DSi for GB games.. I’ll buy it a third time. Read the article anyway.. it explains things far better than I could.
