Experiments In Reality

Rio Bravo

2009-11-18T20:50:00.001Z

Listening to: the sound of my skin wrinkling with all of these lovely hot baths - you haven't lived until you convert from coal-fire water heating to a combi boiler. Seriously.

Watching: the busy traffic rush, rush, rush outside my - brand new double-glazed - window.

...so I've moved out - I am now officially on the road to skintsville by way of a beautiful, 2 bedroomed flat in a studenty suburb of a generic northern city.

So, strangely, I have nothing in particular to blog about, despite being knee-deep in popular satirical-commentary style topics; council taxes, television licenses, snooping landlords, tescos... In fact, life is so strange and even and mellow that I've found little to seriously complain about. Which is what a blog is all about, right? Well, ok, not necessarily. But often.

While I drum up some blogspiration (ho, ho), amuse yourself by leaving me a witty comment. Go on, don't be shy.

Gender: queer.

2009-10-07T15:05:00.009+01:00

Damn, damn, damn.

I've squandered my way through £30 this weekend buying and re-exchanging games.

The first game in this saga was Prototype, for the Xbox 360. The purchase was a bit of a blow-out as I'd wanted it since it came out, but after I'd spent a few unsatisfying hours running up buildings, and jumping really really high, I realised I just wanted someone to tell me how the game ended instead of finding out for myself. [Wait a moment, did i just subconsciously review a game? No. No, I couldn't have. Hm.]

Normally, I'd just sit it somewhere out of sight where it could wait for my fickle game-moods to swing back to a state of being interested, but I know money will be tight real soon (thanks, moving out!), so I thought I'd like to spend the money on something I know I'd enjoy. So I hovered around for 30 minutes in GameStation, drifting listlessly between Ghostbusters, Fuel, Blue Dragon (I came to xb360 gaming late, and have the privilege of thinking older games are still fun and fresh), The Darkness, Fuel again, Saints Row, Saints Row 2, the one with the cowboys, Fuel for the third time, and back to the bargain wall once more.

I plumped, in the end, for Fable II and a collection of umd videos for mam, who by the way is really loving her beautiful, slimline psp.

But here's the crux, the basic, central, or critical point or feature, of this blogpost (and mighty blogworthy I thought it, too - full of pseudo-angst stemming from the pseudo-world of my budding digital-media neuroses):

Do i make my Fable II character a girl or a boy?

Most games default to a boy character (aha! the notable exceptions: tomb raider, fighting games involving jiggly boobs, urban chaos, resident evil), so I reckon I'm not alone in the Girl Gamer World by being entirely, 100% comfortable playing as a laddo in a platforming, running-jumping-climbing-Eddie-Izzard-quotes sort of environment. But as far as rpgs go, I feel I need to look to my inner self to balance out the issue of "with which gender do i identify strongestly?":

- I'm not a boy

- but if there's a heterosexual love interest in the game, I will be moderately more involved if it's a girlfriend

- I'm more used to identifying as a more masculine presence in The Real World

- I can't shake that weird feeling that stems from playing Streets Of Rage as a child, where playing as the woman was faster

- boy characters are often cooler, and make me less intimidated physically in The Real World

- it would be awesome if I could be a girl character who is some sort of Matrix version of me (because all lesbians secretly long to look like Trinity, or that blonde girl who died, in the Matrix, apologies for the spoilers to all people reading this from 1998)

- but then, I would be more vulnerable to people seeing my Self as i wished to see me - thus, a boy character is a better disguise for my real Self (as People are not to be Trusted and should be Shunned and sometimes Beaten when appropriate)

of course, i think we all know what the real issue is here.

I have too much time on my hands to think about stuff like this.

The Strange World Of Beth Monday

2009-09-14T11:07:00.004+01:00

more iPod calamities for the anguaji household - my chunky monkey white 20GB iPod started emoting at me again the other week, this time it was the "Sad iPod" face - my mother thinks it's hilarious that an iPod can be sad - so i've sprung for the largest capacity flash-based-memory iPod i can afford, which is to say - a 32gb iPod touch off've (yes, again) eBay. some day, i'll have enough money to buy something decent first hand. until then, there's always eBay.

so i ran once again into the problem of trying to work out how much space there'd be on on a 32gb iPod. doing some quick maths in my head, i estimated that there would be a 6gb drop-off in the actual available space.

this calculation was unequivocally WRONG and it should be iterated over and over that i shouldn't be allowed to Do Maths by myself as it is DANGEROUS and MISLEADING and will probably result in WORLDFAIL. personally, i don't trust the art of numbers - everything in the world has a feeling to me, or a colour, or an abstraction. although working out 20% of 32gb felt right to me, it proved mightily, heart-achingly, wrong.

maybe i could usher in a new era of abstract mathematical expressionism. (myheart * 2 = ?/ life)

but i digress. here's the formula to work out the difference between theoretical hard drive space and actual hard drive space:

capacity * 0.93

dead easy. for drives over 1tb, it's * 0.91 which to me feels like there should be more available space, but i refuse to trust my almost non-existant maths instincts.

...you know, i had to study differential equations at Geek College. i remember the equation fine:

dy/dx = nax^(x-1)

it has a lovely rythym to it when you say it out loud. regardless, i got a different answer every time i did it, and actually can't remember what it was even calculating. but i do like to drop it into conversations that i studied Differential Equations.

i studied them in the same way that the ancients studied the stars, the gods or the birds in the sky, ie - from a great distance and mostly with a bemused expression - that is the knowledge that i keep to myself.

incidentally, i'm thinking of switching to serif fonts for blog posts now that browsers treat curls with a hint of anti-aliased glee. thoughts and comments welcome.

decided to revert to Trebuchet as Georgia is just too grown-up for my witterings.

Poetry In BASIC

2009-08-21T08:41:00.004+01:00

10 my heart is an infinite loop
20 I hate you
30 goto 10
END

# inspired by friend's boyfriend
# looking for IT section in
# poetry bookshop

Readybrek

2009-08-06T13:23:00.003+01:00

had a gig in a bra shop yesterday. nothing else this week will seem interesting.

on the subject of performance and lingerie, i need to sort out which laundries to do before the next mini-gig on Saturday. it will, of course, be a black t-shirt and baggy jeans affair, but which colour underwear to sport? i'd hate to be creatively stifled by my smalls.

2009-07-21T15:46:00.003+01:00

can anybody tell me why men think following a woman's recipe is beneath them? what years of fabulous meals have they got under their belt to fuel this arrogance? i'm looking at you, dad.

Have Emulator, Will Travel.

2009-07-06T00:12:00.003+01:00

got project64 again - playing zelda properly for the first time in years. it's wonderful. i forgot how much i hated the gorons though - yes, i'm only *that* far into it. i'm a very slow gamer. like a slow reader. only with problem-solving skills and spatial awareness. as with my misgivings about the lad-robot in innocent life, i can't help but feel the whole world is placing too much emphasis on a fairy boy. but that's just one girls opinion.

i just wish i could play all this on my aspire one. but my netbook won't look at my gamepad, which is in fact only a psp running fusa gamepad. it's a shame, as mupen (stupid name for emulator, or am i missing something?) runs fine an mostly non-glitchy as far as i can tell. ah well. i might shell out a fiver for a cheap gamepad and see what happens.

me - part with cash? for gaming? no, thank you. i like to wait until things go entirely out of fashion and then buy them up for pennies, just before they turn "retro".

in other news i have taken to anthropomorphising* that my dog wears pince-nez and has a gay crush on my friend nick. it's not so far from the truth. considering this sort of alternative life story that i could be telling, aren't you glad i only seem to talk about games now?

anyway. i'm off to blow shit up with bomb flower thingies.

* i only got one letter of this word wrong before the spell checker. ossum.

In Silico

2009-06-18T18:26:00.007+01:00

thank god for twitter: without whom, my meaningless drivel-thoughts might clutter up the rest of my intellect.

actually, the more i use twitter, the more i find that twitter-worthy 140-character-or-less thoughts seem to occur to me - like a great mundane void that needs filling up with instant, uninspired observations. maybe my brain was always so banal and uninteresting - just like the rest of the world's brain.

well, i'm jacked into the matrix and i'm having a sandwich right now.

E3 Fever (the geekiest i have ever shown myself to be)

2009-06-04T19:55:00.029+01:00

Swept Up By: tech-festival mood of the ultramodern age
Sweeping Up: ultramodern gadget packaging. it's everywhere.

woo boy, i have really enjoyed soaking up the feeling of carnival this week from the E3 buzz. my sense gamery-ness has been really inflated over the last few months (thanks to trusty old PSP) and i've been a lot more interested in the games press, the industry and the hype surrounding some of the franchises featured at E3. so i've been well-primed for it all.

for those not in the know, E3 is a veritable adult playground of a games press-convention-event-thingy. but then, if you don't know what E3 is, this whole post will probably be pretty boring and you can skim the metaphorical bullet-points safe in the knowledge that you haven't missed much, really.

earlier in the week, i scoured the net for some podcasts to grab on my PSP (trusty, old) and came up with surprisingly little (lifeinsidethebox.com aside, thanks twitter!) - i'm a bit hitty-missy with games sites. see, i hit escapistmagazine.com for zero punctuation and often stick around to read their editorials¹, but i don't check any of the major sites (ign, gamespot) regularly enough to know about their podcasts. so i was pretty disappointed really, as i wanted a plethora and i barely got a pleth. but the lifeinsidethebox.com folks seem cool - they snabbled me on twitter when i appealed to the higher collective for podcast leads and they seem to be sort of... internet-based gonzo game journalists. which is a phrase that i think i'll hide away and cherish.

the microsoft conference hit GMT at 5.25pm although i can't say for sure if it did, as the technical difficulties at xbox.com prevented me from seeing it until 5:45pm. durr, microsoft seems to say. what dis? thank god i missed paul mccartney though. ugh.

i'm not going to great-detail it about the conferences, as it's old hat, yesterdays news, and better writers than me are detailing it; i just want to sketch out my impressions of My Very First E3... for, you know, posterity.

Microsoft Conference
technical difficulties snickersomely aside, i must admit even my general british hostility at showy american enthusiasm wore off with some of the titles mentioned and also that nice girl who was in buffy really helped with this too. and remember, sony hadn't shown us their magic dildo at this point, so i must admit i goggled - positively goggled - at project natal and the level of depth with which it seems to implement nintendo's undignified stumblings in motion control. note also the touch of pride at peter molyneux in this mix, too, folks. i can't help it, he's a bit of a hero of mine.

Nintendo Conference
multiplayer mario and a heartbeat sensor thingy. no. no, no, no.
i did, however, like the forced chumminess on-stage of the really big guy who looks like he sells things for a living with the really skinny guy that looked like he codes in a darkened room for a living. and i enjoyed seeing the real-life incarnation of the simpsons' Lindsay Naegle being all feisty businesswoman. moderately interested in golden sun DS. as a previous owner of a GBA, 2xDS, a gamecube and an N64, i feel i have the right to say "nintendo should branch out a little, game-wise". i used to love nintendo's imagination, but now they seem to just add numbers to old games².

Sony Conference
that jack tretton lad. he's a card, eh? self-referential shtick. much chortling. much waggling of eyebrows. good stuff. good stuff. tech-wise, i was mightily excited for a umd-less psp. until i considered the logistics. the taking-away of my buying games in-store. the being forced to use my own bandwidth to download content. keeping my droves of data on an increasingly-filled wodge of memory³. but then he said they weren't replacing the proper psp, so i didn't feel pressured any more, and could just revel in a new gizmo. i still don't like the slidey top overbalance, but i think it would be perfect from someone such as my mother, who really should stop stealing my psp and get her own. so in four years time, when it's affordable, that's what she's getting for christmas. either that or a ps2, which i felt vaguely compelled to buy after all that spiel. by this point, i was gimmicked off and yet another motion control wasn't going to find it easy to grab my attention, especially as i was devoting a lot of my energy to eating a sausage roll at the time, but the PS3 hardware looks fucking awesome. if a little baby-steps, baby-steps.

those were my vague impressions of all these streaming webcasts that occupied my teatimes all this week.

INTERESTED IN:

free racing games on the xbox. i'm impressed microsoft could wrestle with the notion of free
twitter on xblive - sad but true
project natal & the ps3's magic dildo - not for me personally(!), but for such a seamless implementation of console hardware/software engineering.
alan wake - looks a bit like "John Carpenter's The Fog - The Game!" and i'll probably be too scared to play it.
splinter cell - the new demo made me interested in the franchise. i'm pretty gullible
metal gear solid rising puns. not the game, just the puns.
hideo kojima - who looks like a nice young man in need of a square meal
milo demo - yes, interesting, but with a multitude of ethical considerations (see the film AI)
uncharted female sidekick - a goldeneye natalya for this new generation. i hope you can shoot her in the bum.
little big planet on the psp - squee!
mass effect 2 - thank god i'm not dead. i had seriously invested in this character
assassin's creed 2. i hope i bond with this new chappie as much as i did with Altair. i know they're the same person, but i'm fickle.
assassin's creed on the PSP woooooooooo - i know, i know. old news. but still
soul calibur psp
tekken on the xbox. ouch, sony. ouch.
the thing with the dragon
star wars mmorpg - i'm even considering getting a gold xblive account. yes, i'm going to part with my freaking cash. again. for more games stuff

NOT INTERESTED IN:

halo
the beatles (i'm a musician, i can say this, and no, no i won't back down, no.)
forza. bleh. such hype, for this?
more mario sequels.
lilac
hannah montana
no price cuts for wii. bastards.

WORRIED ABOUT:

games industry secretly conspiring against gamers with motion control to make us all look like twats.

so that's it. my first E3 practically over, although i can't wait to dig into all the post-e3 reports and important bits that i've missed while work got in the way - podcasts in the mornings, webcasts in the evenings.

boy this took a lot of writing-up. i didn't realise i'd paid so much attention. well, i'm off to bugger my firmware on my psp. games sure are hard work. (note to self - too trite? this is extremely important i feel)

---

¹ _{actually, i find the escapist articles often hook me in with their titles but let me down when it comes to their content - i've been reading games journalism since the c64 age and we're still using cliches like "a [blank] all it's own" and "it's own particular brand of [blank]" - see harold bloom's comments on cliches of the "stretched his legs" variety if you want to pinpoint what i'm trying to say, but haven't the language to express it.}

² _{i'm still going to buy a wii though. and eventually sell it, like alllll the rest of my nintendo consoles. but i'll probably just end up playing gamecube games on it.}

³ _{i love the solid feel of umds, i just can't help it - having a bunch of them clatter around my desk, i feel so - so - dystopian futurey, so kathryn bigelow. (or i just relive the glory days of minidiscs. i miss minidiscs. sigh.)}

2009-05-26T09:48:00.002+01:00

yesterday i noticed a fluffy dandelion seed on my jeans.

i felt used.

The Scratch (or "Humans Optional")

2009-05-05T20:29:00.002+01:00

Listening To: the loudest laptop fan in the world.

the killer of all working fortnights has been stopping me from blogging recently. i've found the time to tweet of course, but had i let myself get involved in a more lengthy creative-writing exercise, i may have wandered into extreme anti-humanist areas, tangent-wise.

the cause: my beloved BigPoot* has been virused and malwared and everything-elsewared. so i've fallen into this strange cycle of mistrust with it. i won't let it online. i won't even let it on the network. which has of course led to quite hard working conditions for this net developer... in the first week of this hellish crisis, what time wasn't idled away in front of Malware Bytes running in safe mode was spent feverishly trying to keep my non-nicotined cool and refraining from ramming the spare usb wireless dongle up my Compaq laptop's arse. yes, in a house full of theoretical computers, the actual tally ran as follows, midweek:

1 x BigPoot - wheezing, looking peaky and moaning softly to itself whilst mumbling under its breath/rocking side to side

1 x HP/Compaq Presario F500 with a tendency to giggle at nothing and no working internal wireless card thanks to a hardware failure outside of warranty. this could be fixed if only the bloody thing had a PCI express card slot, but Compaq didn't think this would be needed in a laptop. and the touchpad gives me RSI, too. who knew?

1 x nifty netbook, plucky in attitude with a fine and dandy wireless connection and super-duper battery life, but running linux-linpus lite on a tiny screen and keyboard, so not very pleasing development environment

1 x usb dongle (more of a tease than an actual working peripheral)

so last week i kinda snapped a little and splurged (awful word) on a newold Sony Vaio. it's a cutie S5M/S from a few years ago, and although it has a terrible habit of running exquisitely hot, it's welcomed into the fold like a stray bantam under a broody hen's - er - well, whatever it is that bantams nestle under for warmth, i guess.

in other news... there's been no other news. i've been hiding in my Hobbit Hole for a good few weeks and i must say, i'm starting to enjoy my own company a lot more than seeing people who aren't in my head at the moment. yes, i think i can finally chalk myself up as an official recluse. give me my wireless network, my guitar, my dog and (preferably flat) ground to walk him on, and i am a happy woman.

Trying To Concentrate On: technology trends, learning the bamboo flute, exercise and my new moleskine
Trying To Ignore: the socialite screaming to be let out in my psyche
Baffling: Google's Chrome shipping without spelling-dictionary knowledge of the word "blogging".

Twitter Poems

2009-04-15T11:43:00.005+01:00

to celebrate my 1,000th tweet just now, why not feast on some lovely twitter magnet poems what i wrote:

Open Eye
after life & desire /
who are we most spun for? /
i, she - wear, devour. /
spat out like our home.

Gleam
slow down, boy. /
we satisfied all their bestial dances /
we - naked, /
as if from a ferocious, quiet blaze.

Marble
the ocean will say /
the godflower is most like you. /
i do gaze, but soft breeze-clouds /
are blind from above.

please excuse the whole "spat out like our home" debacle, as twittermagnet really wasn't giving me anything more fruity. i've been musing on these as i'm a little bit proud of them, and thinking to myself, how much of these words are my own? but the poetry of it sounds like me, so clearly i'm irrepressible. or maybe i just happen to think like twittermagnets.

in further celebration of mentioned twitter landmark, i shall now drink this mug of tea, which i feel i have been tweeting about often and consistently for many months now. omnom.

Koyal (Songbird)

2009-04-02T21:32:00.008+01:00

Listening To: the muggy night setting in behind me, instead of in front of me.

it's funny how, when things change, it always seems to happen so suddenly. technically, everything is changing all the time but i guess you have to really sit still to notice it.

but when you strive for change against the grain, don't you notice every single step? for me recently it's been changing the bedroom (let's be honest, it's more of a nest, really) layout around. but the hassle of changing this most supreme space has been mirrored in the equally tasking changing-the-rest-of-my-life. i told myself i wouldn't be ruled by the seasons this year, but it's hard not to feel motivated by spring...

the main bedroomchangeexperience motivation was reducing the #anguaji_mouse terror threat. it's strange, for all the noise he made, i only found a couple of signs of habitation. a chewed shoe here, a filled-out crossword puzzle there, the butt of a tiny mouse-sized cigarette stubbed out under the wardrobe... the natural world is a truly amazing place.

so no more #anguaji_mouse saga. truly, i think i should Saga it. in runes, and throat-chanting.

thanks to new layout, my exercise bike gets a good look-in once again. i think possibly i may be the only person in the world to exercise to The Lord Of The Rings audio book. very theraputic, it's the only thing that can replace Radio 4's the News Quiz (with the fantastico Sandi Toksvig) to cycle to. even when i work out, i Geek. it's in the blood.

actually, this audio book has been floating around my life for months and months now, mostly because i either work-out to it in short bursts, or listen to it in bed (i.e. while falling asleep). lately, i've been worrying about it finishing and what would i replace it with, in a macrocosm of human fear-of-death psychology, but a more pressing problem has manifested itself. we're up to the Two Towers and the narrator's Gollum sounds a lot like Zippy from Rainbow. frankly, i've had to skip the entire 4th book so the whole affair can wrap up with some dignity, but i'm dreading the final scenes in mount doom.

the rest of my time has been spent significantly avoiding my one-photo-a-day project, venn diagrams shaped like willies (and later - much, much worse), PSPs and the custom firmwares thereof, Cosina AF35s, retro gaming on the go, getting fux0red on eBay (twice) and drawing on whiteboards, blackboards and various other boards.

i currently have no plans to end this blog entry with a trite conclusion.

Watching: i'll tell you what i'm not watching. The Watchmen. i just finished the comic, and their custodes can custodiet themselves, thank you so very much.
Playing: at being the UberGeek, and winning.
Excited About: "hacker spaces". killer concept.
Worried About: personal ratio of musician-to-geek falling, entering into uncool territory. should gig soon and bring everything back to normal again.

[edit: friendNick just pointed out that George could be Legolas*, and we could spin an entire Rainbow-meets-? series out of this genre-melding. nice work, friendNick!]

* George would obviously be Frodo, though, Bungle would be Boromoir and Fred would have to be Aragorn. Rod and Jane? Faramir and Eowyn. obviously.

Blog As You Go

2009-03-19T17:13:00.005Z

Listening To: the TV in Coco V's, Newcastle.

you know, if you were in Coco V's, Newcastle, UK right now, you could watch me blog this. luckily, my readership is probably still on its way home from work, so i'm immune to blog-stalkers. although it does raise one of the many concerns about the rise of GPS-related information services.

anyway. nouveau geek-culture thought for today: can everything be expressed in terms of Version Control Numbering? like, this sentence brings this blog entry to v0.65b - Beta, because i may change this entry in the future, but intend to make it live to the public whilst acknowledging that it may contain flaws.

my hair: bethHair v3.0(b?).

hm. i think possibly working out what constitutes a full version change would take too much time and effort to implement such a grand philosophy, though technically it is possible.

did sartre feel this way when he was defining the theory of archetypes?

Abusing: the HSPDA network to look at lolCats on the go. how times have changed.

Cycling Trivialities

2009-03-10T23:18:00.006Z

Listening To: #anguaji_mouse rustle his newspaper at me irritably whilst waiting for me to finish on the computer.

i haven't updated for a while. this is due to many factors, the least of which was losing faith in a previously unheard-of quantity of humanity. but that's not important. the greatest things keeping me from detailing the minutae of my monochrome postmodern life were:

1) Sky+ installation
2) #anguaji_mouse fixation

re: bullet point 1 - this is the best thing to happen to the household since... well, since ever. unfortunately, we've never had sky tv at all while the rest of the world has long-since grown weary of its repetitive programming. this has meant i've had to catch up on 20 years of missed broadcasting. it's led to rediscovering M*A*S*H. bliss.

re: bullet point 2 - it all started out with a random nibbling sound. it escalated to paper rustling. i have a mouse somewhere in my teeny (but immensely cluttered) bedroom. i sleep on the floor. this is an awful situation, especially when you consider that i'm the biggest animal softie in the world, and can't bear to catch a mouse in a snap-trap, but the little bugger keeps avoiding the live trap, and persists in taking part in all-night rustling sessions with #landing_mouse.

it's gone beyond fixation, though. i'm trying to plug #anguaji_mouse as the next chuck norris. it could happen. and it could happen to #anguaji_mouse.

#anguaji_mouse doesn't read books. he just stares them down until they give him the information he needs.

Bed Time Audio Book

2009-02-18T21:48:00.003Z

Listening To: the sound of money gurgling its way down the drain as the pipes heat up this late at night.

i just had to interrupt my sleep cycle to tell the world about my new discovery: the post-modern lightbulb joke.

HOW MANY Wii OWNERS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?

i haven't thought of any good answers yet, or rather, none that i'd risk my blogging reputation for, but i invite you to submit some suggestions.

The Inspiration: i stumbled on a forum post entitled "why do wii owners never get arrested" and it showed links to news stories on a halo gamer that allegedly killed someone, a 13-yr-old that graffitied loads of xbox games n a store, etc. while most thread replies agreed that it was because you can't arrest 6 year olds (ba-zing?), it ended up going down the "lightbulb" route, and i heartily approve (i myself put forward the theory that wii owners were too easily distracted by shiny, colourful objects to have the focus needed to commit crimes).

so i conclude: ~~arpanet~~ internet does indeed contribute to culture, but we need a new word for it to sit snugly next to pop culture.

ooooh! post-pop culture?

Sigh Of Contentment: well-earned, for services to comedy kind. you can thank me later.
Good Night: john boy/mr chips/sweetheart

Sushi Remix / Synoiz Remix / X-over!

2009-02-15T23:20:00.002Z

Having finished the remix of Synoiz's Andromeda, what better way could i celebrate than sticking it on a random bit of youtube and reuploading it? needless to say, i haven't got any work done tonight, unless this counts as work. and i think it does.

2009-02-15T17:44:00.003Z

pleas to send moar hotdogs kthxbai

How To Save A Life Buggered iPod

2009-02-12T12:09:00.020Z

The Prologue
i'm a gadget-hungry girl. i always have been. once upon a time, when a beloved walkman died, it was with mixed emotion that i hauled out its sad carcass, as i knew that buying a new one was just around the corner. omnomnom gadgetsssss. in fact, the last walkman i ever bought was a panasonic (i was always a panasonic girl) silver slim thing and it was gorgeous and i loved it, even though it cost £70.

but i'm 27 now, and have literally put thousands of pounds into the great gadget economy since i was a frivolous teen. purchase choice now is now made with a priority of:

function

PRICE

style

trend

curiosity

this is why, although i love music and have a wonderful mp3 collection that stretches back years, i only use for my portable music, a 2nd Generation iPod Nano 4GB (which as we know, translates into 3.67GB usable space). i love it dearly, but recently felt the need for greater capacity. so i turned to eBay.

i bought myself a 20GB 4th Gen iPod for just under £40. cosmetically very good condition, apparently new battery fitted recently and everything was hunky/dory.

so, beloved newOld iPod worked for about half a day and then screwed up in the middle of a sync: click click whirrrrr. argh. click click clunk. arrrrgh. much trying to format bad sectors later, i got the awful "folder/support" icon. frantically opened it up once or twice to try the *slap* trick and it eventually spat out a "sad ipod" icon. cause of all this: Hard Drive Fail. after fighting down the gollum-like urge to buy a brand new iPod touch, i ordered a new HDD, flexed my geekgirl tech muscles and jumped right into to replacing the hard drive myself.

>> Not bored yet? Read the bit where i fixed it, got the girl and saved the day...

The Fixing Bit
okok, i tired you enough already. don't worry, though - it's real easy to run through the actual steps. lucky for me, i stumbled on this great guide by Josh Highland, without this i would've had to piece the steps together myself - many thanks!

1: Find A Buggered iPod

well, i was lucky enough to have my iPod brick on me without (much) provocation, but if you want to play along at home, you might have to hunt around for your own cream-crackered iPod. this should be easy enough, as apple's build quality and internal design is a bit sketchy at best (ouch, steve jobs. ouch.), specifically in the older models. (1st-4th gen iPods)

1a: How Do I Know My iPod Is iBuggered?

oh, well, the buggeration of an old iPod can manifest itself in seemingly infinite symptoms. firstly, and i didn't realise it when i used mine on monday, a hard drive that's on the way out can make some pretty loud noises as it seeks the data. other signs that your iPod may not be long for this mortal coil: wigging out in the middle of songs, skipping randomly, not syncing properly (although this may be a bad mp3 file, you know) all of these culminating in the classic "folder" icon on your lcd display, and eventually the dreaded "sad iPod icon". in my case, i first had misgivings when it wouldn't sync past about 10GB of music. ¬_¬

2: Get a New HDD

this is easy peasy. find a good retailer on eBay and get yourself the appropriate model. my 4th generation takes the MK2004GAL model, but i could also use the 2006 HDD that was used in the 4th gen iPod Photos. it cost £25 with p&p included, and was shipped via special delivery. a good retailer will send it out through a good postal service as it's important to know it'll be well looked after en route - HDDs are finicky little things.

3: Get Your Tools Together

for this experiment, you will need, to whit:

1 x pen knife or other thin implement (fnar, fnar)
1 x iPod
1 x firewire cable/wall charger (v. necessary)
1 x usb cable if you haven't got a firewire port to sync through with your pc/mac/etc (optional)
1 x guitar plectrum
1 x spanky new HDD
1 x courage (abundance of)

set everything out nice and neat so you feel like you're special. oh, here's a tip: chances are when your hdd was dying, your battery was running out like a mo' fo' too, as the bloody thing keeps trying to restart and restart, so you'll need some means of charging your iPod. if you don't have a wall charger (or firewire cable/port), get one. you'll need it for when your iPod restores. i have no idea why usb won't work - something to do with the older models, i presume.

4: Open Up Your iPod
- this is the very unorthodox bit -

this is by far the trickiest bit, i found. i looked a bit online, and found that this guy's method is a better description of events than i could give, so pop off and read it and come back. anyway - the case was so tight i did have to make a wee dent in my metal backing with a pen knife to make room for my Ani DiFranco plectrum to squeeze between the metal back and front cover. you should also remember to put your iPod on hold, because you'll end up switching the damn' thing on later if you're not careful.

5: Have A Rummage

time to be careful careful now, lay everything out - and take great pains not to disconnect anything by accident! i'm talking battery wires (botom right of the main case), headphone jack/hold connectors (glued to the rear backing) and hdd cables (at the top of your hdd).

6: Take Out Your Old HDD

look at the top of the hdd. you can see the black bit that's connecting the hdd to the ipod logic board. if you lift up your cowardly old hdd using the top connector as a hinge (CAREFULLY), you'll see that it's attached via a ribbon (which appears to be randomly taped to the logic board, i mean wtf?), just like a teeny tiny fairy-like IDE cable. aww. so, carefully remove this cable from the top of the hdd - it'll just come loose using a bit of pressure. you now have the very essence - essence, i say - of iPoddery in your hands. oooooOOOOooh.

O HAI: if your hard drive is not completely fux0red, removing and reattaching the ide cable may help to restore your iPod back to full health, so you may be able to avoid replacing the costly hdd altogether by reassembling the iPod after doing this and trying it - you never know, it just might work.

7: Rubber Up

now that your old hdd is safely out of the way, you can take the funky blue padding off it by gently coaxing it off, and gently uncoaxing it onto the new drive. it should fit nice and snug - and do try to remember which way round it all goes.

next, use your guitar pick (or the lovely josh suggested one of those razor thingies you use to get the paint off've shiny surfaces) and patiently sort of scrape the last bit of foam off the body of the hard drive.

josh also suggests sticking this lot back onto the new hdd with a spot of glue, but there was enough adhesive still on the foam for me to keep it in place - not to mention my concerns at melting glue with the hella heat that comes off these old iPods!

8: Whack It In, I Say!

ooooh so close! right, so re-attach the hdd cable to the new hdd. they belong together, they're soulmates, they are. so... yeah. press it gently into position.

9: Close It Up

now, carefully close your iPod case again, and try to think positive thoughts as you attach it to your pc.

10: Restore (or "Hold Your Breath And Cross Your Fingers")
so... iTunes will have a look at your iPod, and hopefully it'll be obsessing about restoring it. that's fine, it's a natural urge. let it restore it. now, if you've got firewire (and all goes to plan) it should finish the restore and be telling you the iPod will be restarting (and that the dialog will close in 10 seconds) or something like that. if you don't, it'll want connecting into a wall charger to complete the restore. once you've done all this, you should see a wee status bar on the screen of your (now-happy) iPod. everything good. if you kept it connected to the firewire all this time, as i did, once you've selected your language on the iPod and checked your "about" bit in the settings to make sure all is well, you'll need to disconnect the iPod from the poot and reconnect it before iTunes will look at it properly and give it a name.

i named mine "iPob". and i love it.

Definition: a lunchbreak study on form and netculture.

2009-02-11T15:30:00.009Z

Watching: the clock

i have a very heavy net-life. being a web developer, this is right, proper, and it's how i keep my eye on the web-trends. i have a twitter account, quite a few blogs, check my personal list of favourite sites often. i also have a myspazz account for various musics (as well as better outlets for such creations) and lastly (but not leastly, it's just narrative convenience) - a flickr account for my photos.

thanks to flickr, i'm doing a "one photo a day" project this year. it's a pretty tall order when you're not a professional photographer, or travelling, or doing something exciting. mostly it tends to be stuff that happens to be near me when i remember i should take a photo. but in participating in this, i've noticed there's a few flickr-based terminology trends cropping up: bokeh wednesday, self-portrait tuesday, zen friday.

ah, but not just flickr. i got excited about today being zero punctuation wednesday. and of course, there was always caturday. someone mentioned sandwich thursday, too? what a concept.

well, it got me to thinking, and if i had the time, i'd muse here in my blog on the following points for a lot longer, instead of leaving them as an unordered list:

a) humans still love to apply structure to whichever culture they create - twitter is so amazingly open-ended, and there's so many people using it, that new rules and clubs and styles are created all the time
b) funny how quickly the net became part of boring life, instead of being the new novelty

and

3) netculture replacing the TV as a medium for week-shaping? (think x-factor saturday, corination street mondaywednesdayfridayandsometimessundaysomnibusatweekends)

It's So Cold: so terribly, terribly cold.
iPod: is a profanity in the anguaji household right now. more on this in a future post.

iRant: look, but don't touch. v1.7

2009-02-04T16:13:00.011Z

i can't believe that there's people out there who're still not clued up about usable space on ipods/hdds/etc. "my ipod only holds 18GB - it says 20GB durr what dis?" i don't mind techno-ignorance as i'm pretty used to being immersed in it, thanks to my mega-techoid-brain, but this particular branch of the infidel seem to think that they're being ripped off by some... some bizarre inner circle conspiricy, when they should just clue themselves up on technology.

for reference: hard drives have less usable capacity than advertised because, like the universe (we Pratchettians suspect), quite a large portion of the actual, physical, object is taken up with the knowledge of where the rest of the stuff in the object, is. er.

that is to say, 1.5GB out of 20GB is keeping a record of where the actual files can be located in the rest of the 18.5GB.

see? hmph. maybe that's not the best explanation, after all. anyway, it's listed as 20GB because it is 20GB, it's just the file system (FAT32, NTFS, etc) is unwieldly and in need of it's core updating, i suspect.

i've often thought privately that computers should be treat like cars - pass a test and then be allowed to buy one. and drive it. er. and crash it. oh! that works. at least after crashing cars, the drivers don't ring the carmaker and whine and complain that the car crashed on them. well, you get the idea. it was a weak meatphor (i think that was meant to be "metaphor" but lack of red meat is starting to affect my subconcious).

at the very least, we should implement some system... something along the lines of restricting learner computer users from interacting with the internet. look, but don't touch people. look, but don't touch.

X-over

2009-02-04T15:03:00.004Z

Another: crossover with the _music_ blog
Sorry, but: nothing else has been happening.

here's an interesting pondering: i don't know how long it normally takes to finish a remix of a track. isn't that strange?

i'm remixing a track at the moment for Synoiz, called Andromeda. i've loved the track for a long time - well, since it was made last year anyway - and i'm pleased with where my first try at remixing is going.

but as i made a cup of tea this morning, i thought: "if i got me skates on, i could have the structure finished by tonight" ...and this from someone who's unaccustomed to finishing anything musical? (which is the by-product of having the shortest creative attention span in the music world) so... i'm just wondering how long it normally takes to remix a track. strange, isn't it? i have no frame of reference, so i don't feel hindered by either not spending enough time on it, or by being too needlessly in-depth. i'm going to keep myself ignorant until it's done, so that i can look it up later and see how i compare.

---

ooooh i got a nanoPAD last week - i'm sick of programming beats one click at a time, and having no decent midi interface, that's the only option. the thing is, money's a bit tight at the moment, so i was complaining to a friend on monday (during the great snow-in of 09) that i should probably sell it, as all i keep doing with it is picking it up, waving it around making "ooh shiny" noises, bashing out the same crappy beat and putting it away again - and though it was a bargain, it was still £50 - which is a weeks shopping as we young professionals know.

that was monday night, and i now have three more beginninngingingings of newer tracks, and the start of the remix, all contributed to greatly by the nanoPAD.

my guilty, guilty thoughts betray an unease with all this materialism though and want me to sell it anyway.

stupid thoughts.

---

Royalties Overdue

2009-01-30T11:42:00.007Z

Listening To: beats pound the rhythm of the rain?
Watching: My Name Is Earl on c4 catchup. but - and this is important - not on my netbook. bbc iplayer is the only available catchup service that works in linux, as it's purely flash video: nice one, beeb, but a big Boo Hiss to c4 and itv (i'd love to be able to watch Cadfael on my laptop, but it's just not meant to be, Little Derek Jacobi)

i came on here to moan at the internet, in that wit-treading post-humorous, find-the-punchline-if-you-can way that i have, but between starting the aforewritten, intricately-constructed, hyphen-filled sentence and winding my merry way to the conclusion thereof, i forgot what it was that was vexing me.

so, then, to a list:

1) i'm happy about being able to watch AVP2 tonight. yes. yes, i am.
2) i'm thinking of bringing in the phrase post-saying-the-word-post, but i can't decide if the whole thing is one long hyphenated word or an actual phrase. also i believe it's use could be very limited.
3) i used to love twitter, but now the world know about it and jonathon ross is using it, i'm not so sure.
4) i have a 50mm, 1.7 lens and i'm exquisitely happy about it
5) i'm sick of the cold
6) but i like the slightly lighter nights.
7) i got a drum pad midi-interface, but now i have rhythm-block, which i think mighty unfair
8) i've given up red meat, and hope to fade out white meat at some point.

Wondering About: what stephen fry's french accent sounds like to the french
I Wish I Could: be bothered to change the strings on the guitars that i still haven't changed the strings. of. on. er.

i don't know what that last bit of grammar was doing, but it ground itself to a halt, so i think i'll leave it be for a while to catch its breath.

Take 9

2009-01-27T01:56:00.003Z

life feels very iPod at the moment - by which i mean, shiny, new, interesting, colourful, fun and a little bit hopeful. it's probably the spring under the winter, seeping through.

call me Synesthasia Girl, but it feels iPod to me.

Dairy Products And The Art Of Zen

2009-01-22T12:33:00.004Z

Living On: busy-ness. no time to talk, got Stuff To Do! oh, but i can blog. that's a given. that's part of the Stuff To Do!
Thinking Of: the days getting lighter and not tripping over the dog whilst walking so much.

i had two major boiled-egg-related enlightenments today.

Boiled Egg Thought 1: how can the universe not have an underlying purpose when soft boiled eggs taste so good? the complexities behind this seemingly simple statement are pretty immense.

Boiled Egg Thought 2: why has nobody developed a perfectly-proportioned boiled egg plate complete with two egg cups and just enough room for three slices of toast (and possibly somewhere to put the tops of the eggs)? if i could make this, i think i'd be rich.

to couple BET1, is atheism nihilism?

Pleased: for America for finally getting something right in the eyes of the rest of the world.
But I Wish: he looked less menacing in certain poses. have you noticed? oh, i can't help it, i'm essentially an Aesthetic sort of girl.

Quiet Afternoon

2009-01-19T12:08:00.006Z

Listening To: my heartbeat in my ear. what's my heart doing in my ear, anyway?
Watching: the dog looking out of the window, which means it's officially afternoon.

i thought linux was meant to be the tech-porn virtual girlfriend of geeks the world over, but apparently what it lacks utterly is a decent, quick and reliable PHP editor. on Windoze i use max's html beauty (don't laugh, it used to have pictures of pretty girls on it, and it has the best syntax highlighting in the world. nuff said.) but on my netbook, all i can seem to find is bluefish, which i can't seem to customise very well - which is to say, i've made the document list appear at the top of the page, and that's about it.

someone needs to write a webcode editor specifically for the small screen needs of netbook users, they'd make a virtual killing (they wouldn't of course, linuxware tends to be free) - and i fear i'm just not enough of a geek to even try.

no, really.

no, really.

in other non-geeky news, oh no, wait - it's all pretty geeky. first, there's my on-going 365 Photos project, which is going quite well, but i have started to get sick of photographing my own house/bedroom/dog - although not so much that i'll actually brave the hideous elements on my own and take more interesting photos. secondly, i made a site for my own music (myspace doesn't count) which is here and i'm really, really proud of it. it also iterates that if my clients would only trust my artistic design sensibilities and uncanny spidey-esque sense of what's fashionable on the internet, i could put them in the right direction. for example, i made that site in about 8 hours, and i think it's standards-compliant, though i could be b@rking up the wrong foldertree there.

anyway, it's blue monday, today. or something. i think it's like Picasso's blue period, but it lasts just one day, so it's probably not like it at all, really. i think it's something to do with no-one having any money (you mean some people sometimes have money?) and it being cold and miserable (you mean there's other weather systems?) etc, but frankly it's toasty in my workspace thanks to my wonderful firemaking skills and i've become used to a world without a concept of currency. by firemaking skills, i mean i've put the fire on, not "i've set fire to the floor" - although it's always an option if i run out of firewood.

i should probably wrap this one up.

in conclusion - +++ geektech paradox encountered in linux +++ out of cheese error +++ redo from start +++ blue monday not inserted, abort/retry/fail? [a] +++

tomorrow, a treatise on why being a nerd is different from being a geek.

I Heart: being able to watch and listen to stuff online for free - it feels so... clean. and... neat. and... free.
Shadow Weighs A Ton(ne): driving down the 101, California here we come...
Spellchecker Says: capitalize your Internet. how odd.

Concept Post

2009-01-13T21:27:00.004Z

Listening: to my energy return, droplet by droplet - just like the T1000, you know.
Watching: the internet zeitgeist, although it's mostly too fast to see. it'll have changed by the end of this entry.
Suspiciously Straight Face: because i just said "entry". snf, snf, snf.

some killer new original concepts that i should patent soon before someone else steals them:

Courses For Horses - human handling, speed-neighing 101 and postgrad braying for donkeys only.
Twitter My Buns - a separate twitter account for the status of my curiously independant bum, including temperature, position, location and temperament.
Light Emitting Cake - cakes that glow in the dark. this really is a fantastic idea (possibly transmitted into my brain by the Creator on a slow Heaven-ing day) and is backed up with synchronicity - a few days after i'd toyed with the abstract, i saw this on flickr: Light Emitting Donut?

in other news, i'm in the huff with CSS, web standards in general and my own system in particular. argh argh argh.

To Do Blackboard: being proudly carried from room to room and surprisingly (despite blog post distrait) being worked through
Best Bookmark Ever: found last night. it's an ace of spades playing card with an Andrews Liver Salts advertisement on the back: Your Daily "help" -- 50's quotation marks not added for effect.

The Engine, She Runs

2009-01-07T13:05:00.008Z

Listening To: my own laboured breathing. laboured, i tell you.
Watching: the landing light flicker. or, possibly flickr. but i doubt it, as i've never seen it with a camera.

i think i will have the flu forever. i think i've become Flu-girl. i've had this strange sub-power (like a super-power but less fun) of flueyness for a month on and off, and i'm well fed up. it's sapping my funniness. also my general sense of self. i mean, who was i before this virus? was i ever not thus? am i just a collection of memories? in that case, i definitely paid too much for my broadband this month.*

anyhoo, this entry could very well have been titled "notes from a small island... of germs!!! mwahahahaha!!!!!" - but we have Xine for that.

ba-ziing.

*ah, plagarism - the last refuge of a flu-ridden comedien(ne). thank you mr. konigsberg. thank you.

Best Advertisment Of The Hour: "wil je een magneet zijn voor sexy vrouwen?" i was tempted to google translate, but i'd rather let the mystery be.
Interesting Phobia Uncovered: dendraphobia. the fear of trees, or the forest. thanks, wikipedia!

2008: retrospective

2008-12-31T22:41:00.005Z

Rapidly: making lists before 2009 - there's not a reason for it, it just keeps the list-making ability sharp during the merriment. gotta keep the skillz.
Planning: to see the new year in with a cup of tea. if only it was twinings, that's some good first-footing tea.

2008 was the year of:

zero punctuation
twitter
the acer aspire one
louis the dog
paris
broken windows
the lumix lx2 (it's got a leica lens, you know)
anguaji.net
this blog, and the many side-blogs (like standing stones, you can't count them all and get the same number twice)
prince caspian
thai-envy
the xbox
clumsy accidents
bittorrent
linux
old friends
new friends
in-the-middle friends
crazy ex-friends
the end of coco v
the birth of bewick house
the resurrection of tilleys
obama ambivalence
stephen fry
nation
the dalai lama 2008 desk calender
zen preparation
real christmas tree with twinkling lights
photographs of you - my favourite piece of handmade music thus far
reason 3.0.4
(only just) reason 4
cubase betrayal
the fujitsu monster of beth's room
10yrgay
mobil mania: sek660i lgkf600 sew200i sez760
flickr
comedy gold
the high road
dogwalking
the flu
collecting and storing for later use
giving up smoking
hypothetical teetotalism
losing weight
wifi/3g/HSPDA
list making

i hope 2009 is many things, but mostly i hope it'll be the year of:

staying smoke-free (mostly)
remaining relatively teetotal
saving up money
the sony psp
louis the dog v2.0
this blog (and all who sail in her)
more making music and getting out it out there
losing weight once and for all
zen discipline
365 photos - the one photo a day project
better health

here's to another year! good/bad/indifferent -- it's all the same, really.

happy new year all - all the best! and look up "first footing"

-- beth x

Midnight Feast

2008-12-29T19:18:00.002Z

Wishing, Hoping, Praying: New Year celebrations could take place in about a week's time, instead of tomorrow.
Singing: the festive grumpy song.
Listening To: the silence of a gas fire that's gone to the great hearth in the sky.

and a merry yulemas to you, gentle reader, wherever you may be located on the map. i, for one, had a very quiet christmas filled with maltesers, the latest terry pratchett hardback, old friends, and having to take tinsel off the dog every five minutes. all in all, quite exhausting, really. quiet christmasses are the hardest.

and now i'm trying to think of a way around new year. it's not easy, as almost everybody's heard of it...

Plotting: and scheming, too. oh, yes.
Wondering: about PSPs, and MIDI keyboards, and gerbils.

The Mirror Pool/Indus

2008-12-21T15:12:00.004Z

Listening To: this hideous year slowly grinding over into next year
Reading: Woody Allen. Again.

winter solstice, i always feel, could be summed up by the colours grey and white, and whatever colour that strange bleak feeling is that you get while looking at a leafless tree branch against a light sky (a sort of grey-ey brown, i think). i'm celebrating it while the folks are out of the house by listening to Dead Can Dance, looking at our spectacular christmas tree lights wink on and off, and occasionally playing Assassin's Creed on the Xbox. all this while the dog sleeps peacefully on the chair. i don't get many perfect moments nowadays, but this could be one.

in other news, i've been smokeless for nearly 14 days now (except for two half-tabs in the first 7 days, which do not count, as all fiendish nicotine addicts will agree with - it's really not the same. no, really. you can't reset your quitting date every time you have a small setback, otherwise you'd just start smoking 20 a day again out of sheer frustration) and (sorry for that really long bracket-based interlude) i sort of feel good for it. thank god for the flu - i was so sick i went through withdrawal without a moment's discomfort, although it was probably part of why i was so sick. but i do feel cleaner, and i feel psychologically healthier for it, and i'd rather not go back on myself if i can help it - this is something i've wanted to do for no little time. soon, i plan to cut back on drinking (which luckily won't be too much of an issue as i don't drink all that often, although when i do, i kinda make up for it) and naturally, i plan on some sort of more rigid fitness regime once i've stopped chewing at the wallpaper out of boredom.

during all this, i'm going to throw myself back into Zen practice... and come the new year i may dig out that Soto group in Heaton. or i may not. i'm more of a Steven Seagal-esque maverick, lone-wolf Buddhist, who doesn't play by anyone's rules. not even her own.

ah, and now my favourite track is on so i'm going to go listen to it and ignore that particular part of my head that wants me to light up a cigarette to it.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little: christmas tree.
Snuffling Up: the scent of christmas tree.
Wrenching: the dog away from the christmas tree.

QI

2008-12-11T09:15:00.002Z

Listening To: the voice in my head, it's singing christmas songs to me
Dosed Up On: nurofen, paracetemol, stephen fry, pineapple, anadin

consumption-like illness has struck the happy bloghome, just in time for christmas. feeling no better after four days (in fact, significantly worse as boredom has set in like something that sets in).

worryingly, i seem to have lost the dog under all the duvets.

pineapplepineapplepineapple. i have a wicked temperature, which is sort of fun if you watch the pretty lights for a while, but it hasn't helped my irritability at seemingly having given up smoking. actually, having such a bad chest has made me wonder how painful lung cancer could be, so i'm thinking of not resuming my nicotine habit once i'm fit and well - although i make no apologies for my mood in the coming weeks... i don't think i've got any friends who know me untainted by smoking, so it's going to be quite scary, really.

anyhoo. i'm off to find the dog, he's bound to be under these blankies somewhere....

Little Plastic Castle

2008-12-08T11:32:00.002Z

Listening For: the sounds of the gasfirerepairman a-knocking at the a-door.
Watching: Family Guy, mostly.
Also Watching: Absolute Power (season 1)

so very often, musicians practicing in a room turns into chinese food with a beer. it's a funny old world.

Wishing: that i had the energy to change my damn strings. and clean the guitar. and the switches on the guitar.

Pulse State

2008-12-03T14:57:00.003Z

Listening To: the happy fizz, crackle and rumble of a coal fire in its initial stages.

the buns of doom: episode 1. my buns are freezing. yesterday they were not quite so freezing. some day, they may be freezing in a recording studio while i cut a new album or in fact excercising in a new york gym. i wonder if it's the right time to twitter my buns? best lay claim to this whizz-bang idea before someone else does.

weekend staying in and making music was great, and went just as planned. as was expected, i'm sick of the track now of course, and wondering when i can slice and dice it into another track, but we'll have to wait and see. go have a little listen if you want to be so chilled your armchair (or computer chair, or coffee shop stool) engulfs you in a hemp-soaked ambience. i just can't seem to drum up more than chilled energy at the moment, but i'm drowning myself in Future Sound Of London, so everything's going to come out pretty spiky soon.

Ponderment: why do my fires always threaten to go out, so that i can't leave them for the first two hours of setting?
Wishing I Could: do this in the front room, but the gas fire has finally handed in the towel and you can see your breath in there.

Smash The Pinata

2008-12-01T21:07:00.002Z

Listening To: Winston Churchill chuckling in a self-satisfactory manner.
Gazing Fondly Upon: sleeping dog, lying.

In Ascending Order

2008-11-29T13:22:00.000Z

Listening To: the rustle of my inspirational magazine as i riffle to the inspirational page.

today i'm making music. tonight, i'm avoiding X Factor, lest it destroy my faith in a music business with integrity.

so far, so good.

Wondering: whether or not to take the dog out in this freeze.

3rd Rock From The Sun

2008-11-28T13:38:00.003Z

Listening To: the birds outside my house. it's very quiet. almost... too quiet.
Watching: the birds outside my house. in my defense, i'm helping the dog Look at them. it's what he likes to do of an afternoon.

i don't like to be topical, but what the fuck is up with the V.A.T. change?

that is all.

Pondering: whether The Universe cares about anything or if it's just content to keep on existing, or what
Bordering On: nihilism? no thanks, but i can see the appeal.

Meanwhile, On Experiments In Musicality...

2008-11-27T09:59:00.003Z

I Have: too many web-outlets (or should that be weblets?)
Miniplug For: anguaji-music.blogspot.com

.crossover-o-rama:

have compiled interesting ideas concerning:

ambient choons
xen cuts (my favourite album at the moment)
soft tone guitar jazz
hip hop and flamenco
flamenco finger rolls (sounds like a snack, but it's so much harder to do than it is to say)
the flamenco guitar sounding so lovely


...flamenco being a big part in the ideas thing.

so when i said in jest that i was in a collection phase, i was being more truthful than my roguish smile belied.

also - and this is a very late addition to this list - i think i need to put more energy into my music. i love my chilled-out a lot (i'm a great believer in the Archetype, and i'm always looking for the Archetype Chill Track) but i think i need to up my bpm for a month and see what happens.

guh - there's too much going on in my head. i denied myself a weekend of music on saturday last, in favour of socialising - i'm like a little sim character with levels that are all dropping constantly at the moment, i think i need a week to myself to replenish them all, also one of those big beds from the sims that are, like, +10 rest or whatever - so i think i'm going to end up in an unhealthy 72hoursolidmusicfest this coming friday.

so. i'll post the results, naturally.

Thought You'd Be Interested In: musical shenanighenz
Normal Service: will be resumed when something happens

Sane Men Surround

2008-11-25T11:41:00.002Z

Reading: about openID's - good concept, but in practice, does it compromise personal identity? ah, just like the internet communism.

i'm killing 18 minutes waiting for my Cadbury's brownies to cook. as we all know, waiting for cakes in the oven is a universal time-slowing convention that should be researched - the scientific possibilites are enormous.

world peace brought about by Cadbury's brownie mix? when we think of the Bush administration, it's not such a crazy idea.

Thinking About: leaving off the satire, it's not my forte.
Also Thinking About: building a forte out of pillows.

Snowboarding Roadtrip

2008-11-20T18:16:00.005Z

Listening To: my patience with the Now 71 advert dwindle into a small puff of air.
Watching: my laptop-xbox stack with a strange mixture of pride and OCD-inspired fretting about the wires sticking out the side.

many a wonderment to be had - so a structured, but not bulleted, list is called for:

point one: stephen fry is following me on twitter. and i'm following him, obviously. this is one of the most queer internet-based feelings i think i've ever had, as stephen fry is something of an intellectual pop-culture hero to me. to sum it up - it's like a certain star trek character phoning up my 14-year-old self and telling me how their day was. i won't reveal which character, though. i have to have some privacy after all.

point two: xbox 360 update-o-rama, much. neat new redesign of familar old interface to emulate the wii. this point is actually preceded by point two beta, which is me making my xbox 360 wireless without forking out pocketfuls of cash for the micro$oft wireless bridge. did you see that? i said micro$oft. with a $$$. what a subversive scamp i am. so now i present you with my first screenshots thereof fully hencewith:

^ hey, for once, it took no time to download - thanks m$! (titt3r)

^ the digitized look of smugness as a girl is allowed to update her xbox without having to bugger about with 100ft of cat5 cable can be a terrible sight to behold

point three: i made my fancy-schmancy website live. i won't go into detail how clever it is because i've managed to create a stylish, standards-based, developer-baffling microsite that fits on one, plush, page. or maybe i just did. but anyway, i'm quite proud of it - i managed to make myself a happy customer, so i'm going to recommend me to my friends and family.

point four: i'm sure there was a point four

point five: i'm in the middle of a few days off, so rest assured of more bloggy goodness to follow. possibly with more humour. less content, more comedy - have you noticed?

Oh God Moment: comic book guy in the simpsons just spouted some serious geekspiel and i understood every single hideous tech-infested word of it.
Now I Remember Point Four: but i'm not going to tell you.

American Dad

2008-11-18T23:39:00.003Z

Life Slowly Taken Over By: web standards.

can't talk. banter not standards compliant.

Humming Sound Probably Coming From: speakers left on all day, but who knows - maybe the dog has learnt to hum.
Worrying About: random thoughts that involve falling over in every situation.
Five Days Away From My Lovely Blog: and this is the best i can come up with?

Discotron

2008-11-13T13:05:00.001Z

Listening To: the gas fire put-put-put - quite an adrenaline ride, our gas fire. it manages to convey the impression that it could blow at any moment.

the dog is systematically destroying any remaining keepsakes from my childhood. so far, in his short 6-month stay with me, he's chewed the eyes off my beloved A.G. bear, the hair off my favourite wish troll (before they were wish trolls, you know), the beak off an owl statue, and Straggle's nose. Straggle is just about the cutest looking teddy critter in the world, and now he just sort of looks... eerie. anyway, if he doesn't have any nose, how does he sme-

Thank God For: the blog-discipline to not finish the great british nose joke.

Jungle Beats/Jungle Bass

2008-11-12T18:49:00.004Z

Listening To: Headz 2B - a Mowax compilation that sourced my trip-hop immersion. potentially, it could make my career, you know. don't worry, i'll write it all up in my autobigraphy.

well, it's heroes night. heroes for me is the only tv programme on terrestrial that kinda-nearly fills the windswept void left by buffy (no, i still haven't quite got over it). the happiness is muted somewhat thanks to the unbelievably derivative writing, which plays out more like a round of "spot the origin" every wednesday, but still - it's better than eastenders, or screaming at "dr ian" (what a twat) on the eggheads spinoff.

Completely Bemused By: eggheads spinoff
Innermost Circle Of Hell Reserved For: people who pointedly use their doctorate salutation in casual situations
Heroes-rip-spotting: Star Wars dark side allusions / long lost fathers; X Men 3

Just Shoot Me

2008-11-10T08:37:00.008Z

Listening To: a trailer for the new Indy film. i don't think i could make myself more uninterested if i... i... er... something... witty... sardonic... meltdown...
Watching: my empty plate with an expression of sadness and grief.

today, great things are abound. no, really - abound.

not only is this the week that projects are going to be cleared off the metaphorical board with the greatest of ease [never has a line inspired so much tempting of fate], but i see the way clear for areas of Personal Life [different from .blog_life only because it's less organised and updates more often] to be tidied and trimmed and generally topiary-ed.

instinctively, i felt that french toast must play a part in this New Order. and thus, french toast was made:

it played a particularly tasty part of the New Order, actually, and i might repeat this step another time. plus, you can't change your life on an empty stomach, hey?

Boxers Are Cool: for morning house-wanders, whilst pondering your gender identity.

Mad Blunted Jazz

2008-11-08T09:38:00.008Z

Listening To: the pipes that run through my bathroom.
Wondering About: how to swallow my britishness and talk myself up in my forthcoming site.

if i was a topical blogger, i could remark on any number of things that have occured recently. luckily, this is more of a space to let the head unwind, and very few global issues trouble me sorely before i go to sleep at night, whereas small, personal problems vex me hugely. like when i'm going to turn the mattress over to avoid the sticky-uppy spring. also the state of my bedroom wall troubles me. i'm a very immediate worrier; it would take me quite a run-up to worry about anything bigger than this house.

lucky for you, gentle reader, that i'm in a relaxed mood, hey?

i have noticed (she said, fussing irritably with her duvet) that "mobile technology" and "wireless" can so often be synonyms for "uncomfortable body" and "awkward hands in process of aquiring rsi". while there's something about this wireless concept that makes me go a little crazy, carrying my acer round the house from room to room tucked proudly under my arm, once i finally rest myself and prepare to browse/view/read/work, i find that conventional furniture is not built for such activities. my mother spent a good two hours of net-time on this acer a few nights ago (while i attempted to interest her in my new copy of police squad. it's hard being an only child) and she adopted several increasingly tortured positions whilst browsing. she enjoyed herself immensely though, so i don't know what that says, really.

i'm not going to speculate further, though, on how the body may change to suit technology rather than the other way around, because that lends itself to yet another distopian slant, and i think there's far too much of that going on these days.

Do Androids Dream Of: being mechanical sausage rolls
I, Wireless: my dog has just walked straight over the top of me. more fool me?
Yes, Of Course I'm Happy About: the black guy getting in. but i'm always looking for The Catch. i'm suspicious of anyone who seems too good to be true...
Horoscope Angst: "It takes a lot less energy to explore the unknown than you might think." - no it doesn't. change is tiring. and tedious. and unsettling. i wish everything could stay the same. forever. especially the internet.

Military To Battle Toads

2008-11-04T16:55:00.002Z

that is all.

Carpel Tunnel Syndrome

2008-11-02T08:00:00.004Z

Listening To: the dog, snoring.
Thinking About: what i'm going to watch as i work today - it's a choice between Animaniacs and Weeds. Oddly, i find Animaniacs too distracting to have on while i work.

blackboards are fun. everyone wanted to be the blackboard wiping-off type person, way back in The Learning Years. i've found that this tight little thrill of misplaced responsibilty can be yours again, by purchasing a cheap-as-chips child's blackboard and chalk set from your nearest seller of tat. ostensibly, the blackboard is an innovative way for me to design code without using up reams of the world's natural resources. it's true, i code faster than they can replace the rainforests, although i'm sure my clients would disagree with me there. so, answer to the problem: blackboard.

i'm thinking about getting a whiteboard so the ethnic balance is maintained. ha. ha.

but enough of this edgy post-ironic humour.

i've been out and about again (still no free wi-fi in my favourite bar yet though, boo hiss) just to prove to myself that there is an outside world, athough i'm still not convinced that it's any better than the world inside my head.

in this time of solid work, my brief excursions into the (alleged) Real World prove many interesting points:

1) girls are as silly when they grow up as they are when they're silly girl-children.
2) people consume way too much alcohol in this nation. a few nights ago, the Gang spent two hours observing a young lady repeatedly falling over and staggering gracelessly from one side of the pavement to the other. she was bouncing around like a humourous bouncing thing when some (presumably) kind gentleman ushered her into a taxi. go Team Alcohol UK.
3) Things are expensive, but i like to buy Things anyway.
4) a squishy mushroom keyring is a foolish thing to buy when one owns a dog that is only happy when it's chewing.
5) i hate paying taxes.

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing: that my router would stop playing silly buggers
Bathroom Author Of The Hour: Terry Pratchett.

Chocolate Box

2008-10-27T18:52:00.004Z

Pondering: the purposeless of headaches
Marvelling At: the unbelievably precise timing of said headaches

i took to the road at the weekend and high-tailed it into the nearest city with my Acer. the original mandate was to seek out the wi-fi spots in town and get drunk at the same time.

perhaps before i bundled up my beloved netbook into its car seat and put on spongebob squarepants to keep it quiet during the journey, i should have considered the following:

1) i have pretty bad luck with plans of the best-laid variety
2) i haven't had a drink for two weeks, so i got distracted from my task almost instantly
3) cate blanchett feels it in her water

when i awoke many hours later in a state of mild dehydration, i checked my bleary-eyed emails - clearly for sheer novelty factor as there were three other computers in the room with me - and it must have been at this point that i got distracted by colourful things and left the netbook on with no power-saver in place and eventually the battery went into a deep, peaceful sleep.

the rest of the day was plagued with bars offering free wi-fi. the bastards.

Lessons Learnt: netbook is light enough to fit in bag. users brain also light enough to fit in bag. attention span small enough to fit in wallet
Shiny Things Happened To Be: infuriatingly colourful anime of the baffling variety

The Fellowship Of The Ring(s)

2008-10-25T16:21:00.003+01:00

Watching: the world pass by as i Blog On The Move!

just a quick sign in. i'm now officially an on-the-move blogger.

...
..
.

this was going to be more exciting in my head.

Wondering If: that girl i like is really only a few hundred feet away from me right now - and here i am, sitting drunk watching a lord of the rings a thon
Wondering If: i'm too geeky to really care about the above

Flagstaff's Abstract

2008-10-21T10:40:00.011+01:00

Overtime: ridiculous amounts
Made Possible By: sacrificing what little is left of my social life

i'm awash with technology.

surrounded by my gizmos, i have so much gadgetry that my room/office/nest is starting to look like Joe Pantoliano's code haven in future-gone-wrong, google-has-taken-over-the-world distopian epic The Matrix. you may have heard of it.

in truth, it's more like Jamie Bell's desert cubby-den in Jumper (yes, i did like that movie, thank you, and i make no apologies), only there's no sand/london buses/Darth Vader The Early Years and i'm a girl, not a dancer. but i digress.

i'm beginning to feel akin to someone who was mildly starved in their childhood and is suddenly thrust into a world where all-you-can-eat chinese buffet is the norm. that is to say, everything on offer is such a novelty that i instinctively want it, but i can't work up the energy to care because i'm already stuffed. with chips. silicon chips. because of food being a metaphor for technology. remember?

so... following my own dogged, if haphazard, train of thought: the new fuji desktop in april was my main course, the lumix in the summer was a fondue pudding thing, and this netbook is like cheese and nuts. my pda was snacking between meals, and my iPod nano was a wartime banana.

i sometimes wonder if i lack structure.

Listening To: the trundle of a happy dishwasher (or maybe it's plotting my distopian demise, who knows?)
Resisting: M&S Sponge Cake

Easy Muffin

2008-10-18T08:29:00.012+01:00

Enjoying: the first cup of tea of the day. which is the best, as we all know
Listening To: my noisy fan kicking in at 70 degrees

i'm beginning to see the world from a linux point of view.

two weeks ago, i chose a linux-powered netbook because i thought to myself "beth, old girl", because i've been reading a lot of Wodehouse recently, "i think it's time we took the plunge and became the UberGeek."

first impressions were marred by the toybox linpus that acer have stuck on here for the doofuses of the world, but a quick tinker later and the thing was looking especially purdy and sleek. everything seems quicker in linux. the bootup is 30s. and there's something about all this free software that i love love love. there's other good points, but i'll save them for a rainy journal day as i'm in danger of losing my (potential, but not proven) audience.

in conclusion, i may be on the brink of letting slip the slang "windoze" into my day-to-day vocabulary; i'm positively bustling with indignation over which major developers do and do not support linux distros; i'm using linux words like "distros" without shame.

all of this does not equate to the fact that i feel any affection for that fat penguin thing linux uses as a subliminal underdog message. i'm not a "mascot" girl, i'm not a "hey kawaii bandwagon for meeee" geekgirl following her socially retarded boyfriend from comic shop to comic shop with a vacant smile, and i prefer helvetica to comic sans.

but if i was all of the above, it would take a lot more than a fat penguin representing an operating system to tickle these bios.

Loving: the pale glimmer of light through my dusty blinds
Hating: being too lazy to dust my blinds

Martian Economics

2008-10-17T14:12:00.004+01:00

Thinking About: Jeff Brown

That is all.

Ug.

2008-10-16T15:31:00.003+01:00

Listening To: the dog squeaking a bone, which sounds eerily like someone fingertipping a balloon

i wonder where the word for balloon came from. ball. oon. it's a floaty ball. therefore: oon.

mice are silly. they've apparently been eating their way into the dog's kibble. this is bizarre, and unecessary, as there's a gaping hole in the bag where i get into the dog's kibble. this to me suggests answers to the following:

1) why mice get caught in traps
2) why mice and humans (and dog humans) can't co-exist in the same household

Learning: new ways to expand my already wide train of thought
Not Learning: to take my plates downstairs when i've finished with them

Rumble Rumble Rumble

2008-10-15T17:38:00.008+01:00

Baited-Breathing-It: with the season 2 finale of Weeds
Listening To: strange, unidentifiable rumblings
I Could Be Listening To But I'm Saving It For Later: Aphex Twin's selected ambient works (vol II?)

i can go outside right now (should the perverse urge take me) and look at £45 worth of coal. as far as the fuel-damage of the planet goes versus the cost per load in these times of ~~constant regional economic depression, which the latest money crisis has little or no impact on~~ credit crunch, it doesn't look much.

carbon footprint? you can keep it.

speaking of ~~Dickensian landlords and estate agents finally getting their comeuppance after skimming the financial cream off've the top of relatively honest citizens not wishing to live 16 to a house~~ the housing market slump, i may finally be able to afford a nest of my own in the not-too-distant future. saying the not-too-distant-future sounds a little bit Phillip K. Dick-esque, but in the real world that means sometime in the new year. which is decidedly more Winterson than Bradbury.

Fretting About: where the internet is going, and how will it change in the future / too many literature references per pixel inch
Pretending Not To Fret About: autumn. bastard red leaves. they can bugger off.
Not Fretting About: who wins the ~~gimp parade~~ American election.

No iPod, No Music

2008-10-14T07:00:00.004+01:00

Listening To: the early bird catching the worm

mmm. bagelicious early start today - the dog does not seem too happy about it. he's undecided between Course Of Action A) sitting outside dad's door looking miserable and Course Of Action B) sitting between my legs looking at my bagel.

i set the live trap for the mice downstairs last night. we of this household are very pacifist when it comes to animals, but we can't have the kitchen offered up to the Rodentia. so we set normal traps. which the mice can't get enough of (after a few false starts, playing out like a poorly re-dubbed tom and jerry where the lady isn't quite so black anymore. don't think we didn't notice) and we have to haul their sad little carcasses out every morning. well, i'm making it seem like it's the Sommes of the mouse world, but there's only ever one at a time.

anyway. the point i'm making is that the mice never go in my (more expensive and re-usable) humane trap. which is laden with kitkats (they supposedly love chocolate) and raisins (i don't know who does the experiments to see which food mice like, but from my own lab-testing, i'd say they prefer any food where death may be an exciting option) - which, frankly, if i could fit into the trap, i'd be after those nommie treats like a humourously topical subject after a sardonic twist.

Pining After: my own bagels, which have grown cold in the dog seige

Wondering: about mice/work/bagels/egypt

Secret Societies [day one in retrospect]

2008-10-13T21:57:00.007+01:00

Listening To: noisy AA1 fan
Watching: dispiritedly as my dog begins a pre-emptive strike involving the duvet
Biggest Catastrophe Of The Day: 12 hour working day for not much ROI
New Sound Track Of The Day: Xen Cuts
Working Hard Made Bearable By: Xen Cuts

long day. long night ahead. all things in balance. cosmic harmony restored. garbled brain functions. night night.

$beth = sleep_mode(true);

Pasta N' Sauce

2008-10-13T13:05:00.007+01:00

Making: tea
Boiling: kettle / pasta goodness
Listening To: the kettle boil

i'm blogging while eating dinner. this, i feel, is important to the tone of the following posts. it reminds me, for example, that a lot of the time, my life is boring, ordinary, and is characteris(z)ed by an astonishing lack of events.

i wonder if i'll go to diet hell for adding more cheese to my pasta n' sauce. i wonder where my comma went when i typed it, just there... i wonder if there's such a thing as potential punctuation. what a fantastic concept! maybe we could do away with the need for actual punctuation in sentences, and bring in the power of virtual language instead.

my god this pasta is taking a long time for conveniance food.

idea for essay: the power of the innocent exclamation mark in contemporary fiction and its uses in defusing postmodern situations.

Ponderment of the dinner hour: would you know if a mouse crawled up your dishwasher hose until it was too late?

Diet Karma Resolved By: extra cheese proving too hot to eat and causing more calorie-crunching typing.

working (on a theory)

2008-10-13T10:40:00.005+01:00

.. this is hopefully the first and last time i'll mention this thinking, as i do believe a good blog should never be self-aware: i can't remember the purpose that i assigned to this space. it was very clear in my head when i chose "Create A Blog" on friday. and it had something to do with my netbook. but now i can't articulate it.

what a netculture faux-pas.

*taps chin with biro in thoughtful pose*

i think... something about... blogging (a lot more than i do usually), using my netbook or maybe any other mobile device? sort of at-the-scene impressions of this existence? it probably had existence in, i'm quite keen on that word.

i think it was maybe devised out of a crossover between The Diet Diaries and my hidden blog (which is an abstract mussy-fussy thing which i share rarely and even then, only when drunk).

...there may be a part two on this, before i give up and start flipping through a magazine.

All Things In Reality

2008-10-10T13:07:00.002+01:00

For those who have stumbled upon me:

Blog #id: 6270694576517551548