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Month: June 2003

Personal: Sweeet

June 23, 2003
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Oompha LumpaI’ve just been speaking to my GESF (and will be again shortly) about various things and the conversation got onto personalities and she said that I had a nice, kind, considerate, lovely personality and if I was there now that she’d give me a cuddle!

Ahhh, I responded “Stop it – my face is turning the same colour as an Oomph Lumpas” (and, yep, I could feel the blood rising in my cheeks). In usual Richy/GESF manner, the conversation then went off on a tangent and she asked if I had spent so long on a sunbed that I looked like David Dickinson [Order from Amazon.co.uk] , I then (deliberately – honestly!) put my foot in it by saying that Dale Winton was more my sort of man sweetie! (yep, I did a camp voice and everything). We had a good laugh.

(David Dickinson and Dale Winton are both UK TV personalities that are known for being a bit “orange” looking, Dale Winton has also recently came out and announced he is a homosexual although he does have a number of camp mannerisms which made it quite easy to guess anyway).

Anyway – gotta go do stuff now. Need to call GESF back, get Linux running on Zaphod (my old PC), crack the latest Google algorithm (it’s a strange one and a large number of people are reporting problems with it already), finish off coding a site, have dinner, finish reading Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets (I finished the Order Of The Phoenix yesterday) and a whole host of other things: but not necessarily in that order!

Snippet: Too Hot

June 22, 2003
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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).

Books: Harry Potter etc etc

June 21, 2003
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I’m now in possession off an authentic, hard-cover copy of Harry Potter And The Order of The Phoenix – even though I had no intention of actually buying it. £16.99 for a book is a bit pricey for me (unless it’s a specialist book: I’ve paid nearly £100 for a copy of the “Programmers Reference Manuals for RISC OS” before), and even WH Smith’s reduced price of £12.99 didn’t get my fancy (my Mother brought my sister a copy for that price).

But when I calmly manoeuvred my extra big trolley into Macro (a “trade only, usually in bulk” style supermarket) to buy a dishwasher, I noticed they had Order Of The Phoenix available for just £8.99! Normally, Macro adds VAT (17.5% of the purchase price) onto goods as they are intended for business use (and businesses can then claim the VAT back afterwards), but books are VAT-free!

So, Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix cost me just £8.99 from Macro! Can any body get any cheaper, and if so, where did you get your copy from?

Fun: Cross Crossing=Happy People

June 19, 2003
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Pedestrian CrossingIt’s been ages since I’ve had a “funny picture” entry and since I’ve currently got my old hard drive in my main PC, I thought I’d raid the archives…

Here’s a picture of 4 people using a pedestrian crossing in an unusual way. It’s almost like the pedestrian crossing is made out of sugar and they are sucking the sugar up in big straws… (yeah, yeah, I know what they are really doing). It’s obviously been “Photo manipulated”, but still 😉

Click on the pic for a large image.

Movies: Quick Movie Reviews

June 18, 2003
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Quick reviews of films I’ve seen recently:

Matrix Reloaded
Same characters. Different Story. Good special effects. Scenes too long in place and mostly “throwaway” plot. Worthing paying to see twice (if only to catch the bits you blinked at: one of the most important bits is only on the screen for a few seconds in a dark room!). Number of times watched so far: 7
Dumb and Dumberer
Same characters (different actors though, but they look strikingly similar). Different Story. Bad Plot. Some poor acting. Good “doesn’t he look like Jim Carey” factor. Not worth paying to see. Number of times watched so far: 1 (and not again)
Italian Job
Same title. Some same characters. Same make of car. Different plot, different location (the “Italian Job” itself takes place for just 5/10 minutes at the start then it’s a case of re-creating the Italian Job in Philadelphia whilst borrowing bits from the original Italian Job movie). Doesn’t seem to have much of the “human factor” (the original one had a lot more “respect”, feeling etc for me). Lots of violence/guns/number of deaths. Worth catching on DVD/Video/TV, but not really worth paying to see. Number of times watched: 1 (but it’s “todays film” so I haven’t really had a chance to re-watch it anyway)
Bruce Almighty
Not a sequel, prequel or remake. Good plot. Good acting. Thought provocative in places. “Proper special effects” (i.e.: you hardly notice they are SFX until you think about them). Quite funny. Worth paying to see. Number of times watched: 2.5 – soon to be 3.5

In-depth movie reviews, this post wasn’t. But it’s 11.50pm at night, my hands are hurting a bit (I’m trying to reduce my time at a keyboard because I think I’m overdoing things a bit recently), the cat wants me in bed (don’t ask!) and I’m getting cramp in my legs…