Well, for a while now, I’ve been meaning to purchase the classic book “Odyssey” by Homer but haven’t had the “umph” to really do anything about it. I know I could probably download it for free, but unless I’ve got a PDA (such as a Palm with a PDF reader) it just isn’t convenient to read.

However, I was in WH Smiths earlier today and just looking for a book – and I saw they had it available. Check the price on the back and it was £3.50 – quite pricey for an “out of copyright classic book” (I’ve picked up similar books for just £1). But I decided to buy it.

Got to the checkout, had the book scanned and the register said “Homer – Odyssey: £0.01″. Yep! ONE PENNY! The women on the register looked at the back of the book, looked at the cash register display, checked the front of the book and then said to me “Oh well, I just do what the machine says.”

What a massive saving – I’m planning on going in tomorrow and seeing if I can get Homer’s Illiad at the same price. I’m not sure if Odyssey was MEANT to be priced at 1p, but I’m not complaining If you’re after a copy yourself and fancy a “bit of a gamble” (as they may have corrected the price to £3.50 by the time you reach the store)…

Just a bit of advance warning for y’all: within the next 6 hours there will not only been another very long awaited “Guess That Movie” image BUT there will also be a movie review type thing AND a joke post AND (if I get time) a personal post!

Yep: I’m going to be blogging again

Yesss, it seems that Zaphod (my old PC: now equipped with a working fan and a 120Gb hard drive) is now running Debian Linux successfully (well, it’s just downloading the security updates as I type). Why the cheer? Well, yesterday’s installation didn’t quite work so I offer this advice: Despite what the Debian website suggests, ignore the net-install and jigdo installs and download a complete CD image from your local mirror. I just did and it was plain sailing!

Now I’ve just got to be sure I want to purchase a RedHat Linux webserver: the reason I’m installing Debian is so my server and a home/office machine is running the same OS, but there’s a chance I’m swapping the main Beebware webserver from Debian to RedHat (as I can get a cheaper hosting package if I go to another backbone provider). However, I’m happy with the level of service my current hosts have provided me with so it seems a bit “bad” for me just to be comparing prices and bandwidth allocations…

Add:
Seems I spoke too soon. The original 250Mb partition I made for Linux was too small, so I’ve had to start again from scratch (I’m giving it 750Mb to play with now). Fingers crossed. And I just hope it doesn’t, somehow, bring down my Windows XP box when it connects to the internet (for some reason, on occasions it has caused the network section of WinXP to go strange)

It’s too hot to go to sleep, I’m too tired to attempt a 6th install of Debian Linux on Zaphod (with its shiny new 120Gb HD, new processor fan and 15m network cable to Ford), I’ve got programming work to do for work, but I’m too tired to even start reading Book 1 of the Harry Potter series (I finished Order Of The Phoenix earlier today and it was a bit of a disappointment: it could be so much shorter without most of the blurb, and there were no real surprises in it).

Oh – along with it being 11.50pm and being quite hot, it’s also raining, but my throat feels parched. I can’t win Can somebody please sort the weather out for me please?

Change of subject: Does the word “Mardy” mean anything where you are? I’m asking as it means something here in Leicester (and, it appears, over most of the East Midlands), but my GESF had never heard of the word before (her flat mate, from London, knew what it meant though).

Wow! Nobody managed to guess the current Guess That Movie image so for the next 48 hours I’m going to be awarding a massive 200 points to the first person to correctly recognise the screenshot.

It is NOT from:

• Mad Max Beyond The Thunderdrome (or any of the Mad Max series)
• Poltergeist (or any of its sequels)
• Small Soldiers
• Osmosis Jones (I’ve never heard of this film anyway!)
• Spy Kids 2 (it’s not Spy Kids 1 either)

Ok: additional clues:

• It’s a spin off of a TV series
• There is some allegedly Latin spoken in this movie, but it isn’t real Latin
• Liza Minelli, Brooke Shields, Barbra Streisand and Winona Ryder were NOT in this movie
• The scene in the movie where this screen shot was taken from doesn’t really “look like” the rest of the movie

Have fun and have a guess!