A Bun In The Oven

I bought a crap lunch from "The Baker's Oven" and ate it on the noisy train back to sunny Norwich. It felt nice to be back in Norwich after the grimness of Birmingham. Norwich hadn't changed much during my two-day absence although it did seem to be slightly more expensive than it had been on Friday.

Lord Of The Blings

A relaxing day, spent watching The Lord of The Rings, both the crappy film and the not-so-crappy-but-still-crap 1970's Warner Brother's animation. As far as I know, there were never any other films of Lord of the Rings made. It's rather a shames that Jim Henson(the guy who did the Muppets) hasn't had a try because his film "The Dark Crystal" is exactly how Lord of The Rings should have been.

In the evening it was time to eat a Balti, Birmingham's only worthwhile contribution to humanity. I talked to a couple of friends about their research projects for their PhD's and thought about many wonderful things. Although I hadn't seen the friends for a year or two, I felt as if I hadn't been sepparated from them for more than a few days.

I Like It, I Like It!

I awoke at am to take the 5:40 train to Birmingham New Street Station. 7 hours later I was in the Britannia Hotel, about to attend "BrumCon 2004, The Return of the Fed Guy". BrumCon is a conference organised by Brum2600, one of the UK's leading computer security groups. I enjoyed BrumCon a lot. All the talks were interesting with the one exception of Dr Kaos's speech on the nature of hacking, which was so crap that it defies comment. About 30 people attended, most of them being typical geek types, both in good ways and bad. I learnt a lot, but failed to do any networking, which is what conferences like these are said to be all about. I'll definitely attend many more next year such as DNS, HOPE(if it goes ahead), SDFCon and one or two of the ones in Europe.

For the first time in history, I watched "Monkey", a cult Japanese/Chinese TV series from the 1970's. I'm hooked. It tells the story of a monk and his three followers, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy. They traveling to India in order to become Buddhists but each episode sees them coming into some kind of difficult that prevents them continuing their journey until they've had lots of big fights with people in dodgy looking wigs. Monkey is a god so he has magic and is able to fly on clouds. The prince never gets involved in fights but spends his time telling off the others. Pigsy and Sandy and very stupid and are usually the ones who cause trouble. Sandy is armed with a ornamental spear, Monkey has a staff and Pigsy has a rake...

Birthday Boy

I woke up, feeling 24. Birthdays are always a sad time for me. I'm forced to reflect on the darker aspects of the human condition, and every year I conclude the same thing: We're fucked and we all going to die, stupid and alone. I very much hope that this state of affairs will improve during my lifetime, but I doubt that it will. My birthday ended as it began, in silence.

Taking Five At Take Five

Ate lunch with a friend at "Take Five", a cafe run by Cinema City.(see 30/09/03) It's the kind of place that make me want to tear people's skin off. So pretentious with is organic sludge that passes for food. I had something that was described as "a freshly baked baguette with tuna-mayonnaise". It was like eating glue-covered sponge dusted with dishwasher salt. My friend had a jacket potato with blue cheese and mushroom topping that looked like it had been excavated from a site of national historic interest. It is trendy cafes such as "Take Five" that are destroying the few genuinely cool places that we have left.

I read "Private Eye" today for the first time in several years. It was really rather good. Not good enough for me to bother writing much about though.

Shock BrumCon Decision Reversal

In a exciting development, I decided to reverse yesterday's BrumCon decision, and go! This will involve taking a train at 5:40 am, a task which may be beyond me. If I come back on Saturday evening or Sunday, I'll have to change train 6 times and go via London which makes the ticket price higher. I will therefore stay with a friend until Monday, although this means I'll have to miss my martial arts lesson. The fact that I'll be spending my birthday(Friday, 3rd October) in a pub(I don't drink), with a bunch of technophiles, says a lot about my life. Please leave birthday messages in my guestbook if you have time.

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.