Tigers and Cats

Tigers first:

[Bangladesh's] lack of form was enough for one gambler to stake ?7,500 on Australia duly consigning Bangladesh to yet another loss on Saturday.

The victory for Bangladesh was well deserved. The played well and it wasn't a fluke. Australia will be back though. Although Ponting just got out lbw first ball by Harmison. Corking.

I have been visited by a young tortoiseshell kitten. I have seen he/she along the road a couple of days but it has decided to jump in through my window and say hello. That was quite a while ago. Maybe it likes the cricket.

There was supposed to be a Ben Lairig trip to the North York Moors and the beach today but someone has broken the minibus we were going to take. It is a shame really, it is an absolutely gorgeous day. We are having the barbecue anyway.

Three wickets in four balls for Harmy.

Oh, I have forgotten to mention, I am the new Ben Lairig Safety and Training Officer. Sometimes I wonder about myself.

Twenty20

I am listening to the England-Australia Twenty20 match at the Rose
Bowl. It is so much fun. Tense, exciting and energetic. It is such
a long way from traditional four and five day matches but who cares?
Funfunfunfunfun. England have posted a corking total, unfortunately
I won't be able to listen to the Australian reply, I have to go
trampolining and sort out the knackered trampoline.

Hilda appears to have died and the 'dolphs still aren't poking their
heads out. I appear not to have green fingers.

I haven't updated on the Debian install recently, all is going well,
printing seems to installed, I am finding fun things, I have KMyMoney
set up.

For fans of Descent running Linux, check out D2x
(http://www.icculus.org/d2x/), a Linux conversion based on the
released source. It works wonderfully. I have no joystick and
really cannot believe that I used to play key board only. I was
probably better with a normal keyboard that this laptop one, but it
still very hard. Maybe my fingers are just getting old.

Boxes

An addendum to the previous post. I just opened a box which I
thought was empty and discovered that it is already mostly full of
books. Drat.

Packing

My packing is progressing well. I am currently in the state of flux
where one moment it looks as though everything should fit and then
there seems to be hideous piles of things everywhere. I have thrown
plenty out, which I am impressed with. I must press on with that, my
bed is covered in detritus at the moment.

I have been lent With Teeth, the new Nine Inch Nails album (a
temporary exchange for Mezmerize). I like it. The album is rockier
than previous NIN work, more song like, but still with the great
atmosphere. Definitely an album with a place, for those times when
you want the dark rhythms and feel but don't want to concentrate
quite so hard.

I have been playing a lot of patience recently. I had forgotten how
relaxing it can be. Stimulating as well. It is also great for
listening to new music as I can sit in the middle of my floor, in the
stereo centre, and do something at the same time as listening but be
so absorbed as I can get in a book and forget the music.

Old Friends

An old friend got in touch by the wonders of the internet. He used
to run the kids trampolining club attached to the University Club and
now is over in Japan teaching and enjoying life in a band. Have a
look at the Fish Tank TV website.

I saw Star Wars Episode Three last night. As a film, it was rather
poor, but I enjoyed it as the final piece in the story. Things could
have been handled better but some bits were superb and very
emotional. Yoda is my hero. If you are a science fiction fan with
no particular interest in Star Wars, don't bother. If you can
immerse yourself in the universe, it is worth it and worth seeing in
the cinema. That was the one thing that struck me afterwards, only
once or twice during the entire film did it strike me that most of it
was computer generated. I was so completely absorbed by the story
and the setting that I just never noticed.

I am loving Mezmerize (the new System of a Down album) more and more.

Rocks Rock

I was very impressed with Amazon. I ordered three CDs on Saturday,
one of which was released on Monday, using the three to five day free
delivery option. The Post Office attempted to deliver at 12:15 on
Tuesday and Amazon sent me the 'your order has been dispatched'
e-mail Tuesday evening.

The CDs then, The new Dream Theater album, Octavarium, the new System
of the Down album, Mezmerize and the remastered edition of The
Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails.

I don't have the original version of The Downward Spiral so I can
make no comments as to how the remastered tracks sound. Also, as I
am not really familiar with the album itself, I have yet to listen to
the remixes and alternative versions on the second CD. On first
listen, I like the album a lot. The mood is superb and the tracks
very well written. I suspect in the long run I may grow to like it
more than The Fragile.

The new System album is very good. It seems to have found a little
of the energy and humour of their first album that I think was lost a
little in Toxicity. There are also a lot of new sounds for System in
the album and plenty of new ideas. I don't think any of the tracks
are as individually outstanding as some on System or Toxicity but the
album as a whole is great fun to listen to. It won't replace my love
for the first album but sits very nicely alongside Toxicity. (I do
have Steal This Album, but for some reason have only listened to it a
couple of times and so won't compare it).

Octavarium seems very solid Dream Theater. It doesn't push too many
boundaries for them, the sound is very familiar, particularly Rudess
and LaBrie. Petrucci seems to have gone for a slightly more classic
heavy rock solo style at times, which works quite nicely. All of the
instrumental virtuosity that you would expect is there and the song
writing is in a similar vein to the first CD of Six Degrees Of Inner
Turbulence, although no tracks are quite as good as Glass Prison for
me. The one downer is track two. Horrifically cheesy string
arrangements that make you want to laugh and cry in equal measure and
more proof that LaBrie, while an excellent vocalist, isn't really cut
out for ballads.

Lucky

I had a very lucky day yesterday. I thought that I had lost my USB
Key but on a completely random hunch decided to look in the rubbish
bin in my room and there it was. Not only that, I also got two
Double Deckers from a chocolate machine. Even better I was lucky
enough to be able to sit outside on a gloriously sunny day, read a
good book and enjoy God's creation to the full. And I saw some tiny
little cute fluffy bunnies.

Hilda has been dead headed but seems a little droopy. Maybe she
doesn't like Laurence? The 'dolphs are still fast asleep, even with
the duck to try and tempt them out.

Another lovely day to look forward to.

Very Cool Half Life 2 Pictures

I have never even seen the game running and have little desire to,
but Bobbajob pointed me in the direction of these HL2 pictures
(warning, web page with several large images). They are all very
good, although some are almost completely convincing. Other
participants in the thread don't seem to get the point. I suspect
that they have been either playing too many games, are very silly or
have no appreciation of any of life's wonders.

The new Linux installation is going well. Fluxbox is configured
properly, now that I have remembered to point it at the correct
config files. Imwheel and my mouse wheel are going. One worry I had
was that the personal finance applications wouldn't be able to import
downloaded statements from Nationwide. Now, despite the fact that
Nationwide only does csv and the applications only import qif, I have
found plenty of Python resources for outputting as qif so I should be
able to bodge something together easily enough.

Redeem has joined the Rock 'N' Roll Suicides, yay! We are looking
good to have a full line-up for Division One next season. Go us.

Hampshire had a stunning come back against Notts to win their County Championship game. We are back at the top of the table. Go Warney. He is such a great captain.

England finished off Bangladesh as well. Confidence is high for the Ashes.

New Installation

I have finally installed my new hard drive and put an operating
system on it. I decided to take the plunge and completely do away
with Windows. So there is nothing but Debian testing (soon to be
stable) installed. I have decided to go through the assorted
problems and issues that I am dealing with as I get the new system up
and running.

Selecting the correct hard drive setting: cable select didn't work.
I got to the partitioning stage of the installation procedure and it
tells me there are no partionable devices. Grr.

X: I decided not to use the Debian desktop system task, but to do it
bit by bit. I also managed to incorrectly set up my mouse port
during the X server configuration. Lessons learned: dpkg-reconfigure
is very useful, but you need to know which packages you are
configuring (I systmatically went through the X packages that I had
installed to find the correct on). It is easier to use Debian tasks
(which I had to resort to in the end), although they take a long time
to download and use a lot of space.

Restarting: whatever is claimed, lots of things only work in Linux
after a system reboot.

CDs

Asa thank you for helping him at the weekend, my Father bought me a
new CD, The Sky Moves Sideways by Porcupine Tree. It is very good,
being quite experimental, ambient rock. There are all sorts of
sounds going on but the two that struck me most of all were the
occasional resemblance to Boards of Canada and the very Dave Gilmour
sound of the lead guitarist, neither of which are bad things in my
opinion. While I don't think the gift was necessary, I shan't be
complaining giving the quality of it.

I shall be ordering two new CDs myself, to use up the Amazon voucher
that I received for being on the University Web Focus Group. I have
pretty much settled on the new Dream Theater album and the remastered
edition of The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails. How very rocky I
must sound.

My weight has increased by about half a stone since my last monthly
weigh in. I am less than happy, although I can see no visible signs
of weight gain in bad places. Maybe it is my sudden gym attendance
but I doubt it would have that much of an effect in such a short
time. Ho hum, I shall just have to carry on paying attention to my
food intake. Moving out and feeling able to cook properly and not
having to live off of convenience food will help.

Edinburgh Overrun

Edinburgh officials are slightly concerned about Bob Geldof's plans
to have one million people march through the city to support the Make
Poverty History campaign during the G8 conference.

Quite apart from the fact that, as Midge Ure suggested, the one
million figure is pretty much just a rallying cry from Geldof and
unlikely to be achieved, you do have to question the reasoning of the
authorities.

After all, just how many people congregate on Edinburgh for the
Festival? The situations are clearly different, the Festival being
considerably more spread out both geographically and over time, but
the other main difference? Festival goers stay in expensive hotels
spending lots of money in restaurants and arts venues. They aren't
whingeing lefty drop out student types.

Beyond that, central government I am sure don't want a popular
protest from the people embarrassing both them as hosts and making
their guests, especially the nice Mr Bush feel in any way guilty or
responsible.

I was all excited about going myself, my first popular protest and
all, but it is the last day of my NASMA conference. I suppose this
may lead to a slight questioning of my commitment to the cause. Ho
hum.

While I do throw as much support behind the cause as possible, I do
disagree completely with Bob Geldof attempting to persuade children
to skip school to go. Naughty Bob.

I do think that he may get a few more people to go if he promised
that he would come in a new suit.

Names

I have noticed that one of my rulers at work is called Emma.

It is raining. It is a nice steady rain, good for the ground and
lovely to be out in.

Three plums are not as filling as two bananas. I shall take more
plums to work tomorrow.

A small meme courtesy of Nikkiana.
Not my usual cup of tea, although I feel that changing, but it is
about music and I just can't resist that.

Total volume of music files on my computer:
None at all. I don't download illegal music, have no need of
electronic copies of my CDs and consider electronic format music to
be of too poor a quality to be worth buying compared to CD.

The last CD I bought was:
One Live Badger by Badger.

Song playing right now:
The Good Don't Last from The Kindness of Strangers by Spock's Beard.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
I am very much an album person rather than just songs, which probably
also has an effect on my lack of computerised music. So, five
albums:

1. Led Zeppelin IV (Runes)
2. Graceland by Paul Simon
3. Close To The Edge by Yes
4. Snow by Spock's Beard
5. Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence by Dream Theater

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:
I don't really pass such things on by e-mail, so I shall have to
trust my readers here. However, the chances that there are five
people who read my blog are slim, so I suspect that this will be a
dead end for this little meme.

What to wear?

Ezboard have been having some very nasty problems with their service,
posts going missing, pages crashing, data loss and so on. They claim
they have suffered a major attack. That implies someone cares enough
to attack them. Ah, possibly a disgruntled customer.

Anyway, it will soon be the Athletics Union Dinner and I need to
decide what to wear. I cannot of course wear the same as I have in
previous years, which rules out black shirt with gold tie or black
tie. I can't remember what I wore two years ago and can't find any
photos, but I suspect that it may have been black on black (two years
in a row, I needed shooting).

Shoe choice is fairly easy, I should really wear lace shoes and not
slip on and I can't afford a new pair for the Dinner.

So, shirt, tie and cuff links. White shirt? Black shirt? If I wear
black shirt, my tie choice is limited. I could wear the bow tie that
I wore at my Father's wedding. I could buy a new tie or bow tie. I
may try and find some duck cuff links. Everything is open to me with
a white shirt. Do have the figure for a cummerbund though?
Waistcoat?

Decisions, decisions.