Talking The Talk

Met my good friend Emily in the city centre. We were fortunate enough to bump into leet haxor Henry while trying to exit from the Castle Mall shopping centre.(which, btw is celebrating 10 years of utter crapness at the moment.) "The time has come", Henry said, "to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings." For reasons better left unwritten, none of the aforementioned subjects were discussed. We discussed stegangography, WLan, fibre-optics, university life, robots and fraud.

Decided to start Java and Eiffel month early. Am now plodding through "The Java Tutorial" written by a couple of lusers from Sun Microsystems. Over the past few days I have been trying to read "The little book of OOP". I've pretty much given up now on the grounds that it's crap. I can't understand why people write books on programming that involve many small fictitious languages instead of just basing their book around a real programming language. Lots of the blame must lie with universities and the way in which they teach computer science. As with most problems in the world of computing, trace it back far enough and IBM or Microsoft will be the cause.

The Rain In Spain

Shitloads of rain. Got an email from Amazon, the fuckers failed to send me a book that I had ordered several weeks ago. They had said it would take two months longer that the listed time(6-8 days). I sent them a rather a stern email, and as a result they're sending me the book this week at their expense. I have finally got a digital camera so there's now nothing to stop me putting lots of cool photos on Tokyo Robotnik, apart from the fact that I can't be bothered.(yet)

Do You Wanna Cyber?

Went to Blickling Hall. Got very lost while driving. Watched "Sonatine"(Takeshi Kitano). Watched a video of "Dr Who" on my own, late at night. For those unfamiliar with Dr Who, it was a BBC TV series that ran for about 25 years. As most of it was filmed in BBC TV studios episodes were far more like plays than TV programmes. Dr Who was always very low budget which resulted in rather odd costumes, the most famous being those of the various monsters that Dr Who and his female sidekick would have to deal with. The coolest robots were the Darleks and the Cyber Men. The Darleks main weapon was a hairbrush that had been spray painted silver and the cyber men sported big handles on the side of their heads.

ARPA

Went to Cambridge. Ate bad, expensive, Chinese food. Read Tintin. Watched "Boiling Point"(Takeshi Kitano) Finally got ARPA membership for The Super Dimension Fortress. ARPA includes 100mb of webspace, which is more than enough for Tokyo Robotnik and the soon-to-be-built "BBC Bullshit" so expect cool things soon!

Tax Return?

Had to go to the library to stock up on Tintin books. Found out that Inland Revenue have failed to pay me the tax they owe me. Met my good friend Thomas in the library. He was pretending to study some crap about water(in preparation for a Master's degree), but was clearly hunting for itty-bitty-titty, fishing for saplings as it were. Watched "Hanabi"(Takeshi Kitano).

There's Nothing Great About Great Yarmouth

Went to Great Yarmouth. Great Yarmouth is very grim indeed. It has a fantastic beach and loads of lovely architecture but sadly this is all eclipsed by the general air of decay and death that surrounds every part of the town. Most people go to Great Yarmouth to holiday or to die. It's totally unsuited to either activity. The only thin Great Yarmouth is suitable for is the testing of military ordinance. Watched Daria.

Code-A-Thon

I have decided that October will be Java and Eiffel month. All my waking hours will be spent coding. Assuming, of course, that I can be bothered... As you will all be aware, 3rd October is my birthday. My parents have very kindly said they will buy me "Object Oriented Software Construction, Second Edition" by Bertrand Meyer. Meyer was the dude who created Eiffel, said by many to be the greatest object oriented language ever conceived. His book will be my bible, and Delia Smith my sacrificial lamb.
Watched "Bugsy Malone". Watched "Jump London", again.

Faulty Ferris And Beauler Towers

Watched "Ferris Beauler's Day Off" this morning. It keeps getting better with each viewing, a bit like 9/11. The issue of whether Sloan is falling for Cameran while Ferris is in the parade is still unresolved in my mind. I could dig up something on it from the Net but can't quite find the energy.

Watched Fawlty Towers. I find John Clease less and less funny each time I see him. Fawlty Towers is still funny but I can foresee a time in the near future when the mere sight of Clease makes me so sick that I have to stop watching.(and start vomiting?) He wasn't very funny in Monty Python but at least he made some effort.

When The Wind Blows

This morning I bought:
(1) Designing with JavaScript
by Nick Heinle
(2) Java Server Pages and Servlets
by Mark Wutka
(3) Constructing Intelligent Agents with Java
by Joseph P. Bigus
(4) Java Examples in a Nutshell
by David Flanagan
(5) The Little book of OOP
by Henry F. Ledgard
(6) Learning UNIX OS
by Jerry Peek
Total cost was 20 quid, about 4000 Yen or 14 US$.

This afternoon I watched the Raymond Briggs animation "When The Wind Blows". It was very fucking harsh. Most of you will know of Raymond Briggs' animation "The Snowman" which was a bit dull. "When the Wind Blows" tells the touching story of two stupid old people surviving a nuclear strike on the UK and then dying of radiation sickness over the following couple of days. Although it's not very well made, it does remind you just how harsh and stupid war is and how appalling nuclear weapons are. It's enough to make you do something about it, or at least eat something.

Harsh Enough For You?

It has recently occurred to me that I have stopped reading novels. It's very likely that I'll never read another novel in my life. Many of you will find this very difficult to understand as I have been an avid reader all my life. I just can't seem to find any books that are harsh enough to be relevant to the life I lead and the world in which I live. Suggestions by email please.

The First Cut Is The Deepest

Spent the morning doing manual garden work for my father. There are few pleasures in life greater than that of cutting things. Whether one is cutting thick paper with a pair of Chinese scissors, chopping wood with a large axe, or as I was, hacking down ivy with a machete, cutting never fails to satisfy. "Rad" just keeps getting better. This week it showed, among other things, a 13 foot jump and a skatepark in an old church. The programme has managed to completely change my opinion of Channel Five. I hope to put together a programme proposal for Channel Five by the end of this year, so you may see me on TV sometime in the near future. If anyone has a digital video camera that they can lend me to make a demo, please email me.

Death Of A Good Man

Last day at work. Handshakes all round. Many shouts of "Best of luck mate". There is death in everything we do.

Remembering The Heroes Of 9/11

A suggestion was made that we should have one minute's laughter at work in remembrance of September, 11th 2001. Most people thought the suggestion was in rather poor taste, however, as it was my suggestion, I thought it was fucking hilarious...

Corrupting The Intended Use Of Public Space

This morning I watched a documentary called "Jump London", about a new street sport called "free running". Free running is a bit little skateboarding but without a skateboard. The documentary was a typical Channel Four job, complete with toffs talking about how free running is rather nice because "it corrupts the intended use of the space". The programme contained more footage of people eating expensive sandwiches than people actually running.

Mega Banzai Genki Go Go!

I ripped an amazingly cool CD today. It's called "Di(vi)nity" or "Feersum Enjin", I'm not sure which. I'm very much hoping that I can get permission to stream it on my site so you can all enjoy it. 12 tracks of pure techno bliss. Also ripped the Banzai soundtrack. May stick some of the stranger tracks on my site, such as "Holiday Rap" by MC Miker & DJ Sven.

Red Kross

I woke at the crack of dawn and headed to the "British Red Cross Charity Shop" in search of books to help me along the path of hacker-mind. I bought the following:
(1)Unix in Plain English
by Kevin Reichard
(2)The SuSE Linux Server
by Paul G. Sery
(3)Java in a Nutshell
by David Flanagan
(4)The Java Tutorial
by Mary Campione
(5)Java in Plain English
by Brian Overland
(6)Java Servelet Programming
by Jason Hunter
(7)Java Servelets by Example
by Alan R. Williamson
(8)Developing Java Beans
by Robert Englander
(9)C++ How to Program
by Harvey M. Deitel
(10)C++ for Programmers
by Leen Ammeraal
The total cost came to 36 quid, about $50 or 8000 Yen. The picture of a dog on the front cover of "Java in a Nutshell" turned out to be a picture of a Javan tiger. Still sucks, though. All good computer books have a large photo of the author on the front cover. This allows the potential purchaser to judge the quality of the books content by how bushy the author's beard is.

Terrorism In A Nutshell

I went to my aunt's office this morning to get her new CD burner working. It didn't take long, so there was plenty of time for daydreaming about setting up a huge software, music and film piracy empire and having a tatoo that said "RIAA RIP".

My mother had advised me that a local charity shop(British Red Cross) was selling some secondhand computer books so I decided to walk past the shop in question to see if the said books were still there. Sure enough I was greeted by a window displaying several fine books included O'Reilly's "Java in a nutshell" and an admin guide to Suse. After I had wiped the vomit from my mouth(O'Reilly covers REALLY make me sick-"Java in a Nutshell" has a line-drawing of a dog on it) it was time to walk home and mentaly prepare for my martial arts lesson. I always take great pleasure in the 50 minute drive from sunny Norwich to equally sunny Lowestoft, but sadly I had forgotten to bring any tapes to listen to so I just had to listen to the music playing in my head. Today it was "The Teaches of Peaches", which is what I would have brought with me, had I not been busy mentaly preparing and eating a cinemon and raison bagel(Lightly toasted with sunflower margerine). On the subject of sunflowers, we have 3 in our front garden that are about 15 foot high(5 metres). Not interesting, but true.

The Bench Connection

Watched "Rad" again. It was even better than last weeks programme and made me want to take up skateboarding straight away. Sadly I don't have the figure for it, or a skateboard. That could all change soon though...

For lunch I had 99-pence pizza. It was quite good and was certainly better than anything I ate in Italy. Met up with some of Norfolk's most elite hackers and chilled in the city centre. While I'm writing this I'm trying to eat baked beans on toast with fishcakes and potato salad. I've added mozarella to the baked beans for a bit of class. Adding mayonaise proved to be a mistake.

Watched "The French Connection" on TV with my dad. A very good film although slightly spoilt by the fact that it has one of the stupid bits at the end that tells you what happened to the main character. "Detective Lakam was reassigned to traffic duty and later became a paedophile. Big Ted opened a bagel shop and died a few months later in an olive oil fire. Dr Edward Bearskin evaded capture and was last seen in a chip shop in Bolton". That kind of thing. They're usually used by directors to trick you into thinking the film was better than it was. The only film which uses such an ending really well is "Night of the Living Dead"(the original, not the crappy remake). It doesn't use text but instead shows you a series of still photos of cops pulling the dead bodies around with meat hooks. Rememeber "When Hell is full, the dead will walk the Earth":)

Chatted for a bit on the Super Dimentional Fortress. I haven't been using it much recently because I have slow dialup Net access but after last night's sucess I though I'd give it a try again. Megan was there, which was very cool as I hadn't talked to her for ages. SMJ, the guy who runs the Super Dimentional Fortress was also there. Next year we're all going to meet up in Las Vegas for SDF-Con which will be very, very weird. I'm still trying to work out what to give a speach on, and more importantly, what type of cape to wear.

Ken Hom, Ken Bomb

Finally quit my job. I will have to work all of next week because my contract states that I must give a week's notice. At work I saw a poster anouncing that TV cook Ken Hom will be coming on Tuesday to sign his new book. I have no intention of buying his new crappy book on cooking healthy food in a wok, but I do have a copy of "Ken Hom's Chinese Cookery" so I may get him to sign it. The only problem is that he's coming to work at 9:30 am and my shift doesn't start until 1 pm, so I'm not sure if I can be bothered... I got my payslip last week and discovered that I did in fact get paid for bank holiday Monday. I haven't felt happier since Diana died.

Watched "Pheonix Nights". Sadly it was the last in the series. I decided to put a health warning on my website, as some users have complained of side effects. While I was updating the page using on the Super Dimetional Fortress's server(which hosts my site for free, with no adverts) I suddenly got a message from Kitsune(now known as Cystitis or something), one of Norfolk's Elite Haxors. At first I didn't have a fucking clue as to what was going on, because the message was just pasted onto the page of text that I was editing with Pico.(a unix text editor, based on the "vi editor", I think). Anyway, Kitsune and I chatted for quite a while using "talk", a split-screen, real time Unix chat program. We finally gave in to exhaustion and I crawled to bed, where I dreamt of telephones, drain opener and fishing.

MarshMarlowe

I stayed up until midnight to watch "Red Dwarf". For some reason it was not on, and had been replaced by a documentary that Shakespeare hadn't written his plays, and that they had in fact been written by Christopher Marlowe. I was, as they say, gutted. The sooner I start my anti-BBC website, the better. I'm planning to call the site "BBC Bullshit" and use the url www.bbcbs.co.uk, although I haven't registered the name yet.

Booktastic

Bought "The Lonely Planet guide to the USA" and "The Lonely Planet guide to California" from the bookshop at work. I paid a quid each for them, so I'll have to go to the USA soon to justify the purchase.

Ah-Ha

Watched the fantastic "I'm Alan Partridge" which my mother kindly videoed for me. It rocks so much.

The Land Of The Internet

Greetings, children in Internet land. Decided it was time to update my blog, as people are now actually reading it! If you are reading this, PLEASE email me. Tell me what sort of things you want to know about my pathetic life.