| I present to you: |
[Apr. 27th, 2008|08:38 am] |
An engineers' guide to cats. Genius!
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[Apr. 26th, 2008|03:05 pm] |
It's been a hell of a long time, but today we got Freeview again after I put a new TV aerial up :D Our old aerial was an ancient design based around a frequency range that didn't include the digital multiplexes, so swapping it for a swish new one made it all work. I even managed to reuse the old mountings!
*waves goodbye to life* |
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[Mar. 31st, 2008|09:09 pm] |
I just made our living room look a million times better with a new Ikea light fitting. It looks like it cost way more than £28!
[edit: one of these:
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*pride*
It's great cos you can point all the spots independently so all the lumps in the walls don't show :D |
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[Feb. 28th, 2008|07:16 am] |
Garfield minus Garfield is great - removing Garfield from Garfield comics is clearly the only way to make them funny. They gradually get more and more disturbing...
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[Feb. 23rd, 2008|11:25 am] |
So yeah, all is still well. House looks a lot better now; we're all double-glazed and the new heaters are nominal so at least we're not cold any more! Ikea made nice shelving happen, too, so we've somewhere to dump all the DVDs and generally keep stuff out of the way in the lounge now. Once we've some carpet and a new sofa it'll be pretty much done down there :-)
Holed up at Katie's dad's place at the mo, been fixing his (ex-work) lappy. Lost XP admin password? You could do a lot worse than this which makes you a bootable CD or floppy with enough of a Linux kernel in it to blank out passwords of any currently existing users, and escalate their privileges to admin :-D Took a few roundtrips of a DVD-RW (only media that was lying around...) to find a working copy so hopefully that'll save someone some time one day. Glad there's no need to reinstall everything, anyway! Previous owner filled it with a ton of AOL/Disney/McRubbish which couldn't be removed without admin rights, so it's a bit cleaner now. Fresh install of AVG's found a ton of spyware and trojans too, so getting shot of them will be a bonus.
Not bad for an evening's jiggerypokery :-) |
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| New telly! |
[Jan. 21st, 2008|08:46 pm] |
Old telly was taking up way too much room so we got a new one and stuck it on an arm on the wall. Shiny floating telly! :D
Off on holiday for a week tomorrow, will be nice to get away for a bit. I really enjoyed not having to get up early for work this morning so hopefully I'll have a chance to calm down a bit and get some downtime before I stick my nose to the grindstone again. Yay :-) |
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| Bollocks. |
[Nov. 27th, 2007|09:06 pm] |
Lesson of the day is, don't rewire your lighting circuit if you don't have any spare fuse wire *rolls eyes*
[redoing a ceiling rose; the crack-smoking cowboys who installed it didn't bother to label the cables so trial and error made our ancient rewireable fusebox go sparkypop]
And my multimeter is hiding at my parents' house, so I can't even identify the switch cable...Arse.
Oh well, learn something new every day and all that... |
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[Nov. 18th, 2007|10:07 am] |
Here's one for Mike:
(more rap in graphical form here)
Also, I'm about to get my own back in utterly hilarious stylee. More details in a couple of weeks. |
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[Nov. 17th, 2007|04:42 pm] |
Why is it that when strapped into the cavity of a multiTesla superconducting magnet having my nuclei precessed, all I can think to do is drift straight off to sleep? It seems highly inappropriate, somehow.
So yeah, work is good, arm is not quite so good but at least being looked at properly now. House looks much better due to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ktx's awesome paintwork, and we keep making really tasty dinners. Not so bad, this life :-) |
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| Code |
[Oct. 26th, 2007|06:51 am] |
GP.getAppointment($Wednesday, "hand");
Appointment.attend();
GP.getDiagnosis();
GP.makeShrug();
GP.obtainReferral(private, Consultant, orthopaedicSurgeon);
More later. |
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| Wales |
[Oct. 15th, 2007|08:27 pm] |
Wales is a lovely place.
Not when work sends you there on what is described to you as an 'outward-bound activity week'. Especially not when the centre thinks you've been sent on a management course and proceeds to spout bullshit management phrases at you for an entire week. Gnnnnnh.
In other news, with my declining RSI-bound wrists it looks like I'm in the market for an ergo keyboard to go with my VerticalMouse. Currently opinion is split three ways:
Maltron make a lovely fixed-split 'board.
Pros: Looks comfy, nice keyswitches. Normal (ish) key layout, so less learning curve. High top speed.
Cons: Not adjustable. At all. Hands must 'float' above keys while typing. (but you get somewhere to rest your wrists in between times)
Datahand make, well, the Datahand.
Pros: Looks freakin' weird. Adjustable in lots of dimensions. Low activation force. No hand movement while typing. Higher top speed than with a flat board.
Cons: Apparently pretty hard to learn. Massively expensive. (not such a problem, if work's buying...)
Keybowl make the OrbiTouch.
Pros: Looks more space-age than even the Datahand. Looks comfiest of the three.
Cons: Slow learning, but between Maltron and Datahand. Slow maximum speed (20-40WPM, vs my normal 90-odd at full tilt)
Looks like I'm leaning towards the Datahand at the moment. Any of you lot have any experience playing with freaky input devices? :-) |
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| What's the opposite of a to-do list? |
[Sep. 23rd, 2007|10:03 am] |
A list of things I've done, of course! [most of which I certainly didn't expect to...]
So in no particular order, in the last month I have:
- Finished my summer placement
- Won £1000 in prize money for having the best student project of the year at my summer placement
- Quit uni with my Bachelor's instead of carrying on to the Masters
- Got a job that wasn't advertised, in the same company/place as ktx
- Bought a house with ktx (!)
- Had a genuine argument with a surprisingly close-to-stereotype double-glazing salesman
- Rewired the house electrickery (new faceplate for a switched spur, compounded by the ratfuck who wired the house originally leaving only a half-inch slack on each wire, and using solid-core wire for no reason)
- Ripped out a fireplace
- Spent £250 in IKEA
Today we're rewiring phone sockets and TV aerial wallplates, and exploring the attic :-D |
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[Sep. 12th, 2007|07:13 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  SQUEEEEEEEEEEE | ] |
My project started working today.
I think I might actually become incandescent with joy. |
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| Neat stuff |
[Aug. 28th, 2007|09:21 pm] |
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This is pretty damn cool. Yay for SIGGRAPH :-) |
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[Aug. 27th, 2007|03:52 pm] |
OMG. Banks are such a pain in the arse.
Grrrrrrrr! |
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| When the cat's away... |
[Aug. 20th, 2007|06:23 am] |
When your housemate's out for the weekend, do not:
- randomly change the router SSID to something bizarre so you can't connect to it because you've forgotten the WPA key
-- (and don't do it 'because there's loads of other nets around with the same name': not only are there not but the config page where you set the name has the current name plastered all over it
- change the central heating timings so anyone who gets up earlier than you gets a cold shower
You risk making everyone angry. |
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[Jul. 24th, 2007|11:34 am] |
One for Mike:
Sorry! :-D |
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[Jul. 22nd, 2007|10:33 am] |
Work sent me home on Tuesday because I have RSI and they 'didn't want it to get worse'. Gah. I only wanted them to give me a squidgy mousemat!
On the bright side, two new home projects got spawned, since I've basically been forbidden from gaming or using PCs. (one of those tends to get ignored. Can you guess which?) More details when some of the components arrive. |
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[Jul. 14th, 2007|01:41 pm] |
OK, so out of the blue the head of department from my last job (gap year/2 summer placements) emailed and asked if I wanted to be sponsored through uni again.
Which would have been nice if I didn't already have 2 jobs and they'd actually bothered to sponsor me last year. Grrr!
On the bright side, yay for employers realising I was actually quite good at my job and they shouldn't have dicked me about until I left forever. Maybe they'll think harder in future. |
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