Can I just draw your sluggish porn-jaded attention to this doppelganger?

No, thought not.

Wednesday 31st march 2004 is now officially know as "busy wednesday" on the timeissinking critical mass pay as you go web blog. It will rank along such other days of note as: "greyfriars tuesday", "hasselbacken saturday" and "have your cake and eat it wednesday". Any further nominations for days of note should be submitted in the usual manner.

Holidays are funny, aren't they?
I go on holiday to Spain next week. I'm looking forward to it a lot since I haven't had much in the way of time off recently. On the other hand, all the things you need to do to get ready to go on holiday really annoys me. As is turns out, my corporation tax was overlooked by the director of my company (idiot!), so I'm having to chase round and essentially guess the number of 0's on the cheque. The next stage is to go to the Post Office to pay the cheque in. This actually works out okay since I also have to renew my road tax, which still seems to be the only thing on the planet that you still need to go to the Post Office for. They will also only accept cash for this. You will also get your baws booted with heavy shoes if you don't get it in time. (It's an automatic fine these days, generated by the DVLA database - none of this getting caught by an observant plod). So, and you'll excuse me if I ignore the slight inaccuracies about applying by post, using a debit card, etc, given the year, the technology and the fact that everything else can be done over the phone or Internet, why on earth is this still the case. Let me just point out again. The fine is generated by a computer database of people who haven't got their road tax in time. Ergo, the database exists. So, someone please explain to me the point of the piece of round paper which needs an expertise with a scalpel only the greatest brain surgeons posses to get out it's square container?
/rant
Oh, and to the initial point - gotta get clothes, haircut, currency, find passport, worry about weather, worry about terrorists and learn Spanish while covering the end of year company books, pay bills, and deal with general life.
Bollox

Day 23: sticky fingers

If you have been eating spare ribs at your desk (with your fingers) and then you go to the toilet to wash your hands and there are people in there and then after you've washed your hands you decide you need a pish you can't because it would look funny to the others to see that you had washed your hands first. So you have to go back to your desk and wait a bit before going again.

I got a new mobile phone a couple of years ago. It was a nice one, was used in the Matrix film. Nokia 9110 or something.
I've never quite worked out how I managed it, but I had it in my shirt pocket one day when I was in the bathroom. I was only doing a normal number one, nothing Greyfriers relates at all. Now, I can't remember exactly how it occured, but as I leant over to flush the toilet the phone dropped from my pocket, straight into the bowl. Quandry. The toilet had successfully flushed, so in theory this was clean water now, suitable for even the most discerning dog. On the other hand, I'd just pissed there and now had to delve in and recover my brand new phone. Of course, I did. Plucked the offending article from the offensive location and scrubbed my hands to a bone-showing level. The phone lay on the radiator for a couple of days before trying to switch it on, which didn't work. I had to phone O2 and declare it broken, said it had just stopped working. They sent me a new one and I returned the defective item.
Anyone get a refurbished 9110 a couple of months later?

I don't have a subject today. Not that I'd usually bother with such trivialities, but inspiration is light too. Let the rambling commence.
We have a teammate (Paolo), who is Italian. This will probably be no shock, especially based on his last post. He is teaching us many, many words from his home country, and we're lapping it up like the sick puppies we are.
I do need to use the word "Minchione" - Mink-ke-ownee, which is a particularly nasty scicilian word, and I want to get hits from the google when it's search for. I won't go through all the phrases, but I will have to be careful on my next trip to Italy, in case I end up with a severed horse head in my bed.

Message ends.

Monday already., eh? Let's see if we can get a weekend summary going.
We had a leaving night on Friday. One of the Monkeys from our sister(?) team has given it all up to go to Malaysia. We do suspect he's off to become a ladyboy, but that may be conjecture. Anyway, we headed off to Centraal in Edinburgh where the boys, and girls, were busily eating away at the suspiciously pub grub looking fare. Glad I missed that then. They do have a nice little feature where all diners throw a die before eating, and if they get a six, their meal is free, and for a five, half price. By all accounts the boys done good. A number of 6's and 5's, resulting in a stewards enquiry from the foreign manager to ensure the dice weren't loaded and copious amounts of free food and extra beer money for the kids. Get in!
At this point though, I was at the bar with Air, who had arrived a bit behind me. I was busily supping away on my Budweiser as he chastised me for not getting into the spirit of the bar, which had an amazing collection of foreign amber nectar (altough not that many were amber, come to think of it). I, of course, took the critisism well and proceeded to order random things from the bar. I tried to stick to draft, given the nature of flavour being better from such. Oh, and I think there's a legal requirement that draft beer has to be less alcoholic than ethanol. Not so with the bottles, as Air found out. There's a beer called Forbidden Fruit, maybe, which is the strength of Atlas, of which he partook. I ordered the draft beer with the longest name, which looked a bit German, but was greeted with a glass of Cremola Foam, cherry flavour. We, of course, took the sensible option and ordered some vodka and lemonade chasers to cleanse the palate.
As the night proceeded, as apparently it did, we managed to have some chat with the crazy kids that had decided to make sure our exiting workmate actually left. Some good craic was had, for a bundle of techies the chat was devoid of dungeons and dragons references, which was nice.
We moved on to another bar, where I bumped into some old friends that I hadn't seen for a while. Cue surreal images and various time travelling through the unexpected rip in dimensions that this caused. We bounced around in here for a while, sporadically trying to crash land back to earth at the right orbit to hit the right city, and failing.
Next, night club where some of the guys had VIP tickets. Which they'd received from the pamphlet handing student at the door. Us normal people had to pay 2 quid for the priviledge of entering this dive.
So, wrapped up the night relatively early with a chicken and sweetcorn pizza, dropping Air off (without his keys) at home and forking out next months mortgage to a lovely, grinning, taxi driver to get back to the sticks.
Saturday was poor.

In terms of development I'm not sure if this is positive for Critical Mass or not. In case anyone has forgotten what that is I mean the "simple game" mentioned in the subtitle at top-right.
Last night I looked through my old javarchives (that's a clever madey-up word) for a giggle and what should emerge but the package air.game.atoms.

Alas emailing the JAR file to my work account has led to it being bounced as a terrorist threat or something. If the postmaster gets back to me today do we want the source to play with and be inspired by?

Day 11: sunburst and snowblind

I was awoken this morning by the good old Scottish rain hammering against my bedroom window. I got up went downstairs and looked out of the downstairs window and it was snowing. The biggest snowflakes I have yet seen. It was already settling on the wet ground and by the time I set off for work cars were slipping arounf all over the place. The next few hours were spent monitoring the edinburgh airport website to see if my flight this afternnon would be cancelled or not, but by lunchtime the snow had turned back to rain and flights seemed to be back to normal.

Vi ses måndagstrött!

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, it's a beautiful spring day. This is the time of year when it feels like a weight is being lifted from your shoulders as the remnants of winter are blown away by the gusty March winds. We do, of course, realise that this will soon be proven to be a false dawn as the next squall arrives from the Atlantic and pisses down ice cold shards of glass which can only loosely be described as rain. Still, that's Scotland for you, and if it wasn't for the depressing cycles of bad and atrocious weather, we wouldn't have the wonderful countryside we have. And, let's face it, it keeps the English out.

Day 9:

Of course I am never one to brag, but I got my certificate for my Swedish course with SNEL last night and my performance was rated as "Excellent (83%)", which is pretty good for a slacker like me.

So, Tuesday it is then.
My alarm went off at 8:15 this morning, and woke me up. This isn't unusual in theory, but I normally wake before then and am up and about before the thing starts it's incessant beep. So, on the odd occasion that this happens, I know that I'm pushed for time and need to get my arse moving so that I can be at work for 9am.
Now, I do have the alarm set five minutes fast, and normally am pleasantly surprised when I get myself ready and in the car only to discover it's only 8:30, which gives me enough time to get to work. This morning, however, something strange happened. I was in the car and on the road before I looked at the clock, only to discover is was only 8:15am! I must have changed the time on the alarm clock and don't remember.
Doesn't life throw the occasional curveball?

Day 4: new house

Finally moved into the new house yesterday. Unlike the flat I was renting before, this didn't have any bedding so a trip to Ikea was in order. Rather than deciding what to get when I got to the store I thought I'd do my choosing on the internet and print out each item I wanted. Then when I got to the store, going in, getting the items and paying for them would have been a quick in and out operation.

So, first I went to the pillow section to make sure they had some good old Swedish square pillows. They had some pictures of pillows that looked square, but the dimensions of these were 80cm by 50cm - definitely not square. So I next had a look at the pillow cases, this was a bit more promising, not only did they have plenty of square pillow cases, but they also had some that I really liked. So I printed that off and went back to the pillow section. Surely if they sell square pillow cases they must sell square pillows to go inside them, but none of them were the requisite 65cm by 65cm, they were all 80 by 50. Looking back at the page with the pillowcases on I saw that it said they were specially made to go with a pillow called "GOSA VILA".

So that's ok then I'll Do a search for "GOSA VILA", they'll probably just be on another page or something, but no. There was no sign of any pillow going by that name anywhere on the UK site. So, never wanting to make do with rectangular pillows when square one could be had, I looked on the Swedish ikea site. I was going to have those square pillows even if I had to fly to Sweden (on a 53p Ryan air ticket from Prestwick airport) and get them from here. But it was exactly the same story there - no GOSA VILA pillows to be had for neither love nor money. Ok, I thought, we'll sort the square pillows out later, lets choose a duvet, duvet cover and fitted sheet. We'll get the fitted sheet out of the way first - this will be nice and simple, needs to be double, 100% cotton and white - sorted. The SOVA will do the job nicely. The only problem here is that I don't know the dimensions of my new bed and this comes in a variety of sizes - well, I can sort that out later. Right lets choose a duvet cover - don't need pillow cases as I've already picked those. Ok, so now I discover Ikea only sell duvet covers with pillow cases and 50 by 80 ones at that. Ok that's no bother I'll just not use the 2 pillows cases I get with the duvet. Did I say 2 pillow cases (cue the "waah waaaah" noise from family fortunes) nope the double duvets come with 4 pillow cases and every last one of them is 80 by 50. Well not to worry it just means I'll have 4 unused pillow cases, but it gets a bit better as because there is no duvet set that goes with the pillow cases I picked (that I still don't have pillows for) I will simply go for a white cotton set which means I'll have 4 white regular sized pillow cases spare that I can use back at my regular home - problem solved. So the ALVINE STRÅ it is then.

So that was me with all my bedding requirements printed out (apart from lack of square pillows) ready to go to Ikea and be in and out in 5 minutes flat.
So 20:30 that evening I arrive at Ikea. Its a bit cold and windy outside, but I'm all prepared and really looking forward to a text book bit of shopping.
In I go, straight to market square (or whatever its called) shopping trolley well oiled and ready to receive the goods. So I arrive in the bedding section and what am I confronted with? Shelf upon shelf fit to bursting with GOSA VILA pillows and every single one of them was the 65cm by 65cm variety - I was in square pillow heaven and you know, I no longer wanted this to be a quick in and out operation, I wanted to savour it.
Right so lets pick a couple of really nice looking GOSA VILAs and get stright on with the pillow cases. They were soon found and getting them in the basket was, with me, the work of a moment. Right next we'll pick off the fitted sheet. Well I don't know what size the bed is (as mentioned previously) but it seems that the standard double size is 140cm by 200cm so I'll get one of those -whoops, first disappointement of the evening. The SOVA shelves are overflowing with every size they do apart from 140 by 200 - and I just didn't want to have to go for a colour other than white. But Ikea wasn't about to let me down, I just had to turn around and there behind me was a big basket type affair and it was full of white 140 by 200 SOVAs. I was feeling good! Right lets get the duvet now, I had decided to go for the 200cm by 200cm MYSA MOLN because it had real feathers in it, it wasn't too high a tog and it wasn't too expensive, as I was shopping on a budget. Anyway this was soon found and bagged so all that remained was to get the duvet and extra pillow cases and I would be gone. So over to the ALVINE STRÅ section.

First problem, in the picture it looked like a simple white duvet, but in reality if had some unexpected pleats in it. Well I suppose I could live with those, but next discovery; they don't have any left in 200 by 200 and there was no handy backup basket type affair behind me this time. So I had to find another plain white duvet, and all the available ones had frilly bits on that I just didn't think would go with my manly image. But deep down I know Ikea are never going to let me down and just around the corner I spot a duvet that goes axactly with my square pillows which wasn't on the Ikea website. Fantastisk - I grab one throw it in the trolley and realise this is the happiest day of my life. So off I head to the checkout and I casually look down to admire my new duvet cover and I see that it doesn't say 200 by 200 on the package. I had picked up the wrong size. Back I run to the duvet cover section and shock horror I find that there are 3 shelves marked out for this particular duvet cover design: top shelf for single (which was full and was what I had accidentaly put in my trolley), middle shelf for double (empty), botton shelf for king size (also full). So what do I do? I could swap my 200 by 200 duvet for a king size one, but that would add £10 to cost of the duvet and about £6 to the cost of the duvet cover and, remember, I am on a budget here. Well I need that double size duvet cover so much that I decide I am prepared to wait for it to come back into stock. I find a nice Ikea lady and ask when they'll have some more in. She tries looking it up on the computer, but it keeps saying "item not found".

My heart is beating but she keeps tapping away and eventually comes back with "Sorry it is now obsolete and there are none in stock anywhere else". So now I'm going to have to choose another duvet set - but I know it just won't be as good as the one I wanted. But never to give up on Ikea, I go back to the section it was in and look through all the single ones to see if there is a double hiden away in there. No joy. I look through the king size ones and there on its own at the very back is a 200 by 200 duvet set. Deep down I had always known that Ikea would not let me down. So my 5 minute in and out operation may have taken a full hour, but what and hour that was. Full of ups and downs, but climaxing on a high.

Busy morning so far; two arbor upgrades and having to sign the lease for my new house up here and also doing a bit more tidying in the old flat and various sorting out. But, I think it should be pointed out that just because I set this thing up doesn't mean that it is just me and Al that should be putting posts on it. You other guys (and you know who you are so its no good just trying to merge into the background) had users set up to enable you to post top level posts (not just comments). Some people would have used html style tags such as rant and /rant around this, but I don't do things like that. (Of course I can't put html like tags in anyway because it won't let you).

Welcome to Thursday, we've been expecting you.
I was watching some documentary on one of the bonus channels last night. I think it might have been BBC3 or something, but they all tend to merge into one after a while, don't they?
Come to think of it, the only reason I was watching it was because I was bored, and there was nothing worth watching on the rest of the channels until the cheap porn started on Living after 11. Last nights efforts included some sort of playing around naked in mud and some guy guessing the size of chicks breasts before getting a prostrate massage or something. I also started watching Looney Tunes - Back in Action and proceeded to giggle at the exploits of Daffy, Bugs and Elmer until it switched into a Roger Rabbit style live action deal, then I got bored and switched it off to get back to the dirty channels.
So, all in all, another few hours of my life wasted.
At my signal, unleash hell!

Day 3:

All is strangely quite.....

Every other person in our office seems to have decided they want one of those big round blow up balls to sit on instead of the traditional (and as Al previously mentioned, ergonomically designed) office chairs. I just spotted 2 of them, (one silver and one yellow) on a simple trip to the lavatory.

On the subject of critical mass, the current state of play is as follows:

| | | | | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | Segmentation Fault(coredump)
you have mail in /var/mail/root---|---|---|---|---|---|

# cal 09 1752
September 1752
S M Tu W Th F S
1 2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

...and of course everyone is now arguing about the 'ls' command!

And complaining that I've changed the dates to be in Swedish - haven't people got anything better to do?

Oh man. The hilarity of it all. Gotta share this story with the world, I nearly fell off my ergonomical chair.
It all started with Paolo exclaiming he had two files called the same thing in a directory. Cue the techie boys springing from their chairs to be the first to show off their prowess in fixing Unix 101 problems.
Dom leapt from his seat, tearing his shirt off as he flew over my desk, revealing the SA logo emblazoned across his tight-fitting vest and landed with his fingers already over the keyboard. "A-ha!" he exclaimed, "Let's get that ls command on the go, redirecting to a file using the greater than sign.". Paolo delayed, fearing the wrath of the geek gods if he were to accept help for this FAQ covered problem so easily. "ls -lf will show hidden characters" he said. The look of victory slipped from Dom's face as he felt confused about the success of such an obscure flag. He felt that he should have known about that one, but not convinced enough about it's potential for failure to dismiss it out of hand. Better to keep quite and wait for the results before continuing his "greater than" tirade.
The room froze as Paolo executed his command. As the results were displayed on the screen it was clear that he was wrong. No special characters had been revealed and he deflated and assumed the prone position, taking the subservant pose to Dom's obvious status in the pack. "ls greater than filename" repeated Dom, his place now assured due to the guaranteed success of this well-trodden route. Paolo complied, crestfallen, as Paul, who had crept slowly into the background to pick off the weak, looked on. But wait. the file showed none of the expected ^ led symbols, no ^H to satisfy the blood lust. Not even a trailing space, obvious to the trained eye. The difference, as it turns out, was a simple 1 vs l error, a schoolboy error, not even FAQ-worthy.
The group dispersed, giggling nervously, accepting the all-round loss of this engagement. After the wounds were dressed, the memories faded and the great god google browsed, they would return.

Of course the true origins of the days of the week is as follows:
Monday: Moaning day - cos its your first day of the week at work
Tuesday: Day 2 or twosday
Wednesday: Traditional day for getting married
Thursday: From the american word 'thru' - get thru this day and its nearly the weekend
Friday: Have a fried lunch
Saturday: Sat on your bum day
Sunday: Page 3 day

We've been discussing the origins of the names of the months and the days.


Some debate has occured, which I'm sure will be settled shortly. In the interests of never actually getting the point of a discussion, I instead decided to just write some crap poetry about it.

Monday's child is full of pish,
Tuesday's child smells of fish,
Wednesday's child is full of shit,
Thursday's child has a big fat clit,
Friday's child is really thick,
Saturday's child takes the dick,
But the child that works hard on the Sabbath Day,
is funny and thoughtful, yeah, they're gay.

Thank you, my paypal logo will be posted shortly to allow donations.

italian word not-ending-in-vowel: con, meaning with.
Might want to revise your rules.

Day 2: pizzas

The word 'pizzas' has been put forward in the "name an Italian word that doesn't end in a vowel and can't be of foreign origin, a name or Latin" competition. Paolo, in his role of senior adjudicator, will be explaining why this in not a winning entry when he can remember how to login.

The Story About Ping:
Have a read of the customer review of this book headed Ping! I love that duck! on amazon.

In order to help us keep up with the tough demands of our current project, our team occasional set ourselves tasks of a highly intellectual (and highly relevant to the job in hand) nature.
The latest is to find an Italian word that doesn't end in a vowel. Words of foreign origin, real names and Latin words are not allowed. This is being moderated by Paolo who is "The only Italian in the village" (said in a welsh accent - of course).

Now that I have been duped into creating a web blog by Al and Aaron I now have to start writing things in it.
The whole thing started because yesterday I thought I would write a C program to solve the 8 queens of death problem . After staring at a blank vi screen for 5 minutes I decided I'd write a game instead.
Many years ago I had a cool game on my amiga (that I can't remember the name of) and as a way of learning curses I wrote a unix version of it and called it "Critical Mass". The source of this has long since been lost so I thought it would be a good idea to write it again. The trouble is as soon as Aaron and Al spotted what I was doing they said I simply had to set up a web blog to chart my progress with the project, but now it means I am going to have to spend so much time updating this thing that the critical mass program is never going to get finished.