A nice comment today from Julia about the diary, although being told that I'm 'sweet and bumbling' is not exactly something I'd like to repeat.

A little bit of madness on Egham from Andrew Hodgkinson today; giving a fake set of TV listings related to those around at the time. Anyone would think he'd not got work to do (for those that care, I was waiting for my perl to complete it's processing - it takes too long to process large number of files!) :

Hotpot      :gerph> 20:00, "Businesses From Hell". One-off docurama focusing
             on the dashed hopes of would-be business tycoons. Featuring the 
             late 90's start-up ping-pong ball manufacturer that 
             overestimated demand for Bingo halls at the turn of the new 
             century, and the ridicule suffered from a minor software 
             company as its four employees use public newsgroups in an 
             attempt to discover how to contact each other.
gerph giggles
Hotpot      :"Next week: Justin Fletcher escapes, but is recaptured when an 
             alert member of staff at the Milton Keynes Happy Eater 
             recognises him from the picture on a nearby carton of milk."

And a minor quote from earlier today :

Matthew: Hungry... didn't have breakfast this morning Justin: I know. I've no nails left :-( Matthew: We could go to lunch now Justin: We could, but Dave'll be down in a minute Matthew: Hmm... Eat Dave That is what you meant isn't it ? [ Hungry; Matthew and myself ]

And that, it seems, was January. Well, it's been and gone and nothing interesting has happened. Oh well. Well, there's been lots that has happened. But nothing of note. I've restructured the diary lots of times. Wow. Released DynDNS, mumbled a lot about Helen, and started using the diary 'vote' system a little.

Drew a couple of pictures for Amanda and Mum. We've got a Sweep and Sooty. Sort of. Sorry, no pictures. They're awful. Oh yes, they are. We went out to Pizza Express too, which was rather nice.

Ok. Nobody has ever reported this. I've never seen it. But it's there. Since someone reported the latent bug in HeapLib a few days ago (trying to extend a block on garbage collection and failing to mark the SWI as non-error generating), I've just had another report. Originally the bug was in MathsKeys. Basically it inserts a 'special character' into Impression Style documents. But doesn't work with Publisher or Publisher Plus. So I fixed that (it's a horrid way to do it, but works). But whilst doing that I noticed that the icon on the iconbar appeared wrongly. On further investigation the bounding box is too small. On further investigation still, I find that the routine to find the size of the sprite uses the sprite height as the source mode for the sprite. Sound weird ? Yes. It is. It shouldn't work. It does though. I assume that the sprite heights have just never caused problems before. So, that's two bugs in JFShared this year. Given that I've got no bug fixes listed for 1999, I guess that's just like buses - none for ages and then two come along. Actually it was December 1998 that I actually played with CreateIconBarIcon last (according to the history). Oh, CreateIconBarIcon also corrupted h%; which is nice. Looks like 2.57 is going to have to be released at some point.

Ohhhh - I want my mummy back... [ Life is a Lemon and I want my mummy back, by not Meatloaf ]

The original track is great, but it's somewhat destroyed by being upset a little when I hear it. A long time ago (well when it came out) I was watching some weekend morning show (I forget what - The O-Zone ?) and there was a phone in interview with Meatloaf, and one little girl said that her favourite track was "I want my mummy back". I forget what Meatloaf replied to it - probably something like "I don't remember writing that" or something - but I seem to remember that I thought it a little callous as the girl obviously thought that's what it was and probably with good reason. So, whenever I hear that, I tend to think of her. A little girl I don't know who I heard once on the TV.

I've tried submitting a move to the nomic game that David Chess has set up. I'm not entirely sure I understand the game, but I've followed the rules, so I guess it must be ok.

I probably mentioned that Amanda and Mum are here tomorrow. Anyhow, they are.

Watched a film tonight; 'Restoration'. It was quite good. Well, I enjoyed it. It's odd. I wanted children. Well, want children, really. But I guess it's another reality that I'll not have them. You need someone to have children with - as far as I can tell - and that's something of a problem. Ok, that sounds like I would just want someone to have children with. That's not quite right. But I do feel like I'm getting older and I'm going to miss out on a lot of things. I've already missed out on a lot by being me. I probably sound like I'm very depressed again, but I'm not really. I'm just... erm... writing what I think. I feel sad to think that, but I'm not... erm... frantic, or overly concerned about it. I guess I can say that I accept (hmm... I have a problem with getting accept and except around the right way) myself for who I am. I'm not the great programmer I once thought I was. I'm good, but I'm not in the same league as many. I'm not going to do many of the things I want to do. Partly because I'm lazy. Partly because I've not taken opportunities open to me. I'm not going to go out of my way to change I don't think though. I'm me. I've always said that.

I've always had this romantic idea that if there's someone you want, it should be someone you're willing to wait for. That's kinda what I've been saying for the past few months. I'm disappointed that things haven't turned out that way, and I'm disappointed that people have basically disagreed with that philosophy through their votes. But, that's life, I guess. I say that too much. It's a general catch-all for things that are out of your control, or you at least feel are out of your control. Then there's the argument that you should make your own way in life if there wasn't one before. It seems, if I've understood things correctly, that people who are complete shits float to the top. Generally. Very generally. Hmm.

That's enough of tonights little rant. Music today includes Meatloaf (well, you could have guessed that), Jim Steinman, Grey Lady Down and the Pet Shop Boys.

I've reorganised bits of the diary again today. I don't really intend to make a habit of it, but there's been no 'index' page for /diary since I moved things there, and it's useful to have as people can now go to http://www.thevillage.ision.co.uk/justin/diary/ and get to the diary, rather than having to add diary.html to the end.

Anyone know of a good ISP I should check out ? As you may remember, I'm unhappy with NDirect changing their name because I want to keep the same email address and homepage because they're now quite known. Anyhow; any suggestions ? It looks like I'll be going for another freenetname account, because it's more likely to do the things I want (ie I don't usually need support, so I can cope without), plus I get a domain of my choosing which is nice.

Well, it seems that Keith wins the award for best beta tester for Doom+, as he keeps repeatedly finding things that are silly in it. In the same vein, Dave Upstairs wins the award for best OS beta tester. It's generally quite frightening when emails come from him about things, or he wanders in with his little post-it notes full of minor niggles. Oh, and the great whopping "... and if you use the CDROM to play audio tracks whilst coping a 150Mb file from the network and idley click mouse buttons the machine always crashes - that's repeatable". Ok, so he's never said that, but there's usually something bizarre that crops up. Generally it's an application or patch that is incompatible, but sometimes they're very cool.

A few comments on the diary recently. One saying that the recent stories are a little 'depressing'. There's a kinda good reason for this - they're generally written with a little better view on the world. I don't really think of it as a nice place most of the time. So this tends to sort of come across in the stories. Some sympathy for having problems about replying to emails , and a query about why the HD is called Lucy. Let's just say I was stuck for a name for it.

I'd forgotten how much I enjoy Pop Up Video. It's suitably silly for this time of night, I think.

I've just remembered (watching the video for 'The Riddle') Jamie and The Magic Torch. It was a kiddies' program from when I was very little. It was very cool. Unfortunately, apart from remembering that I liked them music, that it had a little torch that Jamie would shine at the floor and slide down to his little imaginary world, and that it was very silly, I don't remember much. It sits alongside Bagpuss, and Mr Benn as childhood memories I guess...

NDirect are now Ision, it seems. They're "Rebranding the UK division". Hmm. Basically, it means that email addresses and homepages become .ision.co.uk instead of .ndirect.co.uk. The thing is that NDirect costs me money. When I got it initially, there weren't any free providers, so I thought it a good idea. And when I renewed last year it was purely because I wanted to keep the same domain name and email addresses.

Consequently, I'm reasonably positive I don't want to stick with NDirect any more - if I am going to have to change my homepage and email addresses with people I may as well do it so that I don't pay for the service. It's argued that the support you get with the 'pay for' ISPs is better, but... well, you can read my experiences here. Partly they're down to my not reading the emails they send out irregularly - but you would think they could reply to me...

Anyhow, we're late in to work this morning because we both slept in - so I'm writing this whilst waiting for Matthew to get showered and dressed and stuff. I haven't been sleeping well recently; or rather I've slept, but I tend to wake up have the duvet all over the place and aching all over. I think I'm just turning over lots in the night, but it doesn't half make me feel bad.

Seems we don't have Baker Street in the MP3 collection. I'm sure I've a copy at home somewhere. Tracks this morning - "Beyond The Dark", Celtus; "Believe", Celtus; "Inside", Stiltskin; "Living Years", Mike And The Mechanics. I must get the first Mike And The Mechanics album on CD at some point; it's annoying that it's only on vinyl at home.

It seems that W3C are going for XHTML as their new standard (if I've understood correctly). I'm not sure I'm keen on this change because it means that the way in which HTML is written is no longer completely valid - the idea was that you could keep the same pages for a long time and even the latest browsers would still read the pages. I'm not sure that's going to be the case. Which is unfortunate .

Oooh! Four tracks for a 'classic love album' - "Beyond the Dark", "Believe", "Stay" (Lisa Loeb), "Jessie" (Joshua Kaddison). Must do that at some point.

Angela rang tonight; she thinks I'm doing the right thing by not talking to Helen. So why is it that I think that I'd still like to be friends ? . I guess that's the whole point, and I have to keep up my will power. Doesn't mean it's easy though. She was concerned that I was all right, as I'd not put up a diary for a few days.

I had actually meant to ring Helen tonight, but hadn't because... well, it was getting later and I didn't want to ring her too late. Ok, so that's a bad excuse, and I'd like to be able to say that it was because I had more willpower. But in reality it was just that I don't know how she'll feel about my changing my mind. Even a little bit.

You know why I'm feeling like this though, don't you ? I'm tired because I've not been sleeping well. Or is it that I'm not sleeping well because I don't know what I want to do ? Pah. Who cares. Bed sounds appealing right now.

Remember, Mum and Amanda are here on Monday; consequently it's unlikely there'll be a diary for a few days. Unless, of course, I get an opportunity to write things when they're not there. I dunno. Anyhow. Night.

Dave raised an interesting point today. Whatever happened to Chesney Hawkes ? If you don't remember him, he was the one hit wonder that sang "The One And Only". That may be unfair; but I don't remember anything other than that, and he vanished into a blaze of obscurity (to steal a phrase)...

Well, today started well. Ice everywhere, fog restricting visibility to just past the gate, and the heating had died. Oh yes, fun. We survived, though.

Watched X-Files today too; rather bizarre one about Mulder and another guy switching places in Area-51. Rather neat, if a little hard to follow sometimes .

Came across Kevin Bracey's site today. I'd seen this before (and it's probably going to vanish reasonably soon because of the fact that the domain it's in isn't maintained by Acorn anymore), but I'd not looked at the 'chars' PNG. It's a 256x256 grid of 1bpp characters, at 16x16 per character, which must represent - I guess - the unicode character set. Certainly it seems that way. I can't place a lot of the characters, so I'm not really sure what they might be - apart from being foreign.

Because Lucy is now an internal drive, I've moved over to using my generic filer only now. The main reason is that lucy can have a little 'note' symbol on it to show that it's the music disc.

I've bitten my nails a lot today; so they're really sore. It's hard to type at times . I must stop.

Anyhow; bed time. Too many games of patience are tiring - 124 games to 52, I'm on now.

No interesting email today. How dull. I'm really cold at the moment though - I think it's just feeling cold generally though, rather than being cold. If you see what I mean.

Curiously, it seems that NDirect is also Ision; try http://www.thevillage.ision.co.uk and you'll see what I mean.

Tim Wilde has been incredibly helpful when it comes to sorting out problems with my DynDNS client. Certainly he's been a lot more helpful than most network service providers I've spoken to.

Another lovely email from Stefan today (well a couple of days ago, but I've been a little busy). I really enjoy his emails, because... well, they're a different viewpoint.

Went to bed early-ish last night; about 9:30pm. I was knackered after the conference. And I don't seem to have slept very well, either, 'cos I ache all over now. On the plus side, I've got a very cool badge from the conference. Paul's little folders were a litle cooler than our notes (ok, much cooler), but we did have a rather nice CD.

I've registered DynDNS with the service maintainer. Because of the RISC OS application ! at the front, it comes at the top of the list . I also thought it might be a good idea to upload !DynDNS to the freenet site too. I don't know how many people will use it, but at least it's there.

A couple of emails from people today about the diary and about their lives. Thank you; you know who you are .

She's off men so she should like you. [ Comment about Amanda, read into that what you will; Simon ]

I've had a little email from Amanda today too, telling me a little about herself so that I know a little more of what she's like.

Also, I've had the first 'you are doing the wrong thing' comment. Which is interesting. Obviously one person thinks that it's not right. Hmm...

Drew some new graphics for Messenger. Nothing overly special.

Developer day today. Lots of talking to developers. Standing up. Talking. Very embarrassing. However, it was quite fun. Doesn't mean that I was any good. Just that I didn't die like I thought I would.

Not a fun day today. Finishing writing up the docs for the developer day. I'm tired now. I'll go to bed soon.

8 people already have agreed that I'm doing the right thing. So, basically, I'm right. Of the people that voted. And yet... Why do I feel so shite ? Because I feel it's wrong. However right it may be logically.

And, I got an email from Keith today being cryptic, forwarding someone elses email and just being bizarre.

I'm also sad because I believed (well, still do) that what you feel is what you should act on. And yet, everyone seems to disagree with that. I'm confused. And I won't talk to anyone to sort it out, because I'm too proud to do that. Infuriating ? Moi ?

Helen was on IRC tonight. Then she left. Even she agrees that I'm doing the right thing. Which just goes to show how right it must be.

Today. Spoke to Helen today. Finally, I've decided what to do. Given the situation I'm in, I think it's the right thing to do. I might be wrong, but it's a decision I've taken and I'm going to try very hard to stick to. I spent about an hour talking to her about things, and I don't know whether she thinks I've done the right thing or not but in any case I know that I am still keeping to my resolutions. Ok, so resolutions are not set it stone and change with the circumstances, but they are decisions that I made which are right for me.

Simply, the resolution was either to make Helen see me differently, or to stop fantasising about her. The former was very appealing for a little while, but I came to the conclusion that the latter was the only way to go. It's been about a week since I finally decided that I was going to have to stop talking to Helen.

It's a matter of acceptance, and rationalisation. And maybe I'm rationalising this to myself, but still... The rationale I have isn't actually that hard to follow and makes sense.

• I love Helen very much.
• She doesn't love me, and won't see me like that.
• There are six years difference between us, she is better off with someone her own age.
• I'm obsessive, and I will continue to be obsessive, even if she's seeing someone else.
• Therefore, it has to be a conscious decision to not speak to her; to not associate with her or anything.

So. There you go. I hope she understands. This is, ultimately, the reason I hate "can't we be friends". It's not about them. It's about me - I can't do it.

Maybe I'm being selfish, thinking of me. But the point is that I've been selfish in what I've been doing before. It's not done her any good. So it is better to stop. Just stop.

She put it very clearly. It's an all or nothing situation. It's one that I put myself in. I hope that it's right. I think it's right. I don't feel it's right, but feeling is the problem.

I wish that things were different. I can easily change my mind, but I'm trying to keep to my 'assertiveness' thing and apply what little will-power I have. You will remember that I removed the gallery a little while back. That took a lot of will-power, but it was just one step of many.

Part of me - the part that wishes for a happy ending - wishes that she'd just ring and say something. But there are things I'd want to hear that she can't say.

It was hard talking to her. I think I just babbled a lot. And I know I came across as confusing her. I probably misspoke. But. I've explained. I've said things I wanted to say. It's not easy, but then the things you have to do never are. It was made harder by someone privately trying to talk to me and telling me that there was a rumour that Keith had been dumped. I hate rumours. The only thing they serve to do is provide disinformation. If it's wrong then you can't act on it, and if it's right then it's wrong to act on it. So I just have to ignore it. In any case, it makes no difference; what she does in her private life is none of my business and I can't change it. Keith said that, although a little less eloquently (only a little though!).

Am I doing the right thing ?
Yes    No    I'm a bot

I'm not looking for confirmation; I'm not changing my opinions easily (this time), but it would be nice to know what people think.

On a brighter note, I've got to talk to a large number of people at the developer conference and be scared out of my skin. Huh.

Quote of the day: "The AudioDynamics card. It's got loads of components on it. It's like a little city. Look you can even see the little people."

It's strange. Of the replies to the question on 13th January (one diary update per day), there are 3 No's and 2 Yes's (at the moment). And I've decided to ensure there is only one diary today. I'm going against popular opinion. Coo. There's a first.

A nice little email from Sue today about things down her way. And an email from Adam Scott about !Printers; I'll try to answer that tomorrow, but it's just too difficult for me to think about at the moment.

All of my life - you lie silently there; All my life - in a world so unfair; All my life - and only I know why; And it will live inside of me; I will never be free; All my life - trapped in her memory; All my life - till the day that you open your eyes [ Dreaming while you sleep, from We Can't Dance, by Genesis ]

I just wanted to listen to that. For some reason, it's the track that sticks in my mind most of all from that album. 'No son of mine' is very memorable, and tells its story in a similar way, but it's still not quite as... I don't know... sad ? thought provoking ? Yes, I think that's it. 'Driving The Last Spike' would be the track that I would have liked, but it just doesn't really cut it for some reason. The sort of long track that it could be just hasn't worked there. I don't know why.

I rang Angela tonight to see how she got on with her boyfriend. She's sorted things out with him now! I'm really glad, because she sounded so fed up on the phone. I hope things go a little easier on her now, although with the amount of work she's doing for uni it's quite surprising that she has time for a social life.

Listened to a few chunks of music that I've not listened to for ages; notable out of them was 'Mar, the bringer of war' and 'Dance of the Swans' which are both great.

Lots of comment submissions today. It's interesting how they sort of come in waves. I'm feeling lonely tonight for some reason. I think I'm just tired, but that doesn't help. I think I'll go and play patience and hope that relieves the pain.

I've swapped Lucy (temporary name for the new HD) from the IDE interface, so it's lost its little 'music' icon. Which means it's not so easy to see that's the MP3 drive. And in any case, it's full - I've had to place the 'tertiary' stuff on the main harddrive, which is quite disconcerting. I really need something like LayerFS that overlays one on the other.

I'm quite nervous about the developer conference. I don't like speaking to groups of people. It's just one of those things I am scared of. Hopefully it'll go off ok. I know what I want to say. And if they ask any questions that I don't know I can always ask them to email me and I'll refer to the relevant documentation so it shouldn't be too bad.

I have a 'blind spot' for green and orange. It's something in my head, and it doesn't tend to be a problem most of the time, but it's difficult sometimes. It's not a visual thing. I see exactly what I expect, it's just that the words 'green' and 'orange' become temporarily detached and swap with one another, if you can understand that. I end up saying "Those things in the orange packet" and in my head I mean green, but I've said orange. And if someone says "what orange packet" I'll say "that one there". I'll know it's green. But the word orange just means green for a moment or two. I don't know why. I've had this problem since I was at primary school, so it's obviously something that's quite strongly ingrained.

Consider the mind as a black box device. For any black box device, given sufficient inputs and outputs, you should be able to determine the function. This interesting 'problem' must highlight some degree of the processing involved in the mind, even if it's just to say that there is more happening than we thought. I think of memory and experience as associative actions. Because of that, I have to believe that there is a loose tie between the concepts 'green' and 'orange' that can make them temporarily crossed.

Consider this as a neural system (as you can) and you might imagine that the nuerons on output from these concepts have outputs that are finely balanced between green and orange. On occasion they flip because their output weightings trigger in the opposite manner (green suddenly becomes a greater weight than orange). Thus the concepts flip. At least for the naming, anyhow.

This might cause you to ask what might cause this change in weightings, and what might cause the change back. I think the answer lies in the way that learning and experience is overlaid on the network. As the entire network must change (or at least affected parts will) to take account of a new event (where 'new event' can be defined to be anything, even the reinforcement of a previous event), it is highly likely that other dissimilar concepts are affected detrimentally.

The other other question is answered in a similar way. Since the confusion caused by the mistaken concepts is relatively quick (green and orange being common colours), it doesn't have much of a chance to be reinforced. The same learning process that caused the flip will again be applied to reduce the weightings back so that the concepts are the right way around. But, and this is quite an important 'but', the act of righting this mistake will affect the rest of the network. Including the event that was imprinted initially to cause the flip. In an ideal system, the imprint will be left in only the 'correct' areas of the network by this righting, such that the event is only associated with one set of concepts. However, it's highly likely that it will cause other cascading changes.

As with any neural system, the balance is reasonably constant, but for the time that the confusion arises there are two (or more) things competing for importance weighting in the system. One will lose, or be reduced greatly in effect. Since the 'important' one is the green/orange clash, the other event will be forced to lower priority (possibly, or reinforced; it depends on how propagation is applied, obviously).

The upshot of this is that 'something' caused me to be confused about green and orange. To right that, the 'something' has been reduced in value 'somehow', possibly to the point of being destroyed as a useful event; ie forgotten.

That's not very scientific, and is only based on the AI courses I did at university, my experiences with networks and general experience with my mind. Association is not the only force in a mind, but it does relate to most things that I understand, so it makes a good way of thinking about that. Nor is purely treating the mind as a simple experience modification system a totally correct thing to do. But the models work, and that counts.

Does that sound like a reasonable summary ?
Yes    No    I'm a bot

Obviously if you don't have a clue what I'm on about you shouldn't answer .

I really like the idea of one diary entry update per day, so I'm going to try to do just that. Once I work out how to do it. The scripts are fine, but it's likely that you'd get Monday's entry at about 8pm on Tuesday. Which doesn't quite feel right to me. Although it would be a better thing to do, really - it means that if I declare that I'll connect at around that time then the diary will only be one day out of step. That's not a real problem I don't think.

I've spell checked this month and December too. Hopefully that fixes all the mistakes. Oh, and the diary should only be updated once a day now. That makes more sense in general, because then you don't have to come back to it every so often to see if it's changed, or check the previous entry to see if it grew after you read it.

How to pack a hippo. Gratuitously pilfered from David Chess' log. And quite bizarre. The rest of the page is actually quite useful too.

Added DecodeErrors to InetServices. It's not exactly brilliant in the way that it stores the tokens in its workspace. I'm not sure exactly how to do it for the best.

Ctrl-Alt-Iconise = iconise all windows. Remember that. It's useful.

Dave offered an interesting thought at work on Friday; You can't answer "Will you answer no to this question ?". It's another of those paradoxes that you can't resolve. I suppose that 'maybe' is a valid answer though. Basically any self-referential question runs the risk of being paradoxical. And any question that refers to impossible situations (eg "Are you dead ?" - you can't be dead and answer it... well not yet).

It seems that Helen hadn't received the emails I sent her. Well, she says that she's received nothing from me since New Year, and I've sent an email and a chaser since then (not including the second chaser). However, I really don't care too much any more about her reply. I had set myself a limit of next Friday, but... well, what the hell.

I'm going to go and have bath for a change now. Usually I have a shower, but I felt like a change.

Did a little work on Addr today; nothing much really - added the module chain and incarnation lists.

I've decided to add 'The Last Days' and 'Edward' to the Stories page. I'm relatively happy with them, so they might as well go on there.

Odd. The last three stories there all end with things dying. Admittedly Chloe was written back in November '97, but still... And in any case there are other things written in the meantime which aren't like that. But they've not been released yet.

There's a 'day' bug in our cookers clock. It displays 23:59, then 24:00, and then 0:01. Impressed, I think I am. The sad thing is that it just highlights that the problem of cackness doesn't just extend to the computer industry, but out into other areas where programmed hardware exists too. Maybe I just get too wound up by these things but...

Should people stick to standards where they exist ?
Yes    No    I'm a bot

You know my feelings on this by now, but it would be useful to have other peoples opinions. At least then I'll know whether the world agrees or disagrees with me. My view is that if there is a standard you should use it (if it does what you want, if it doesn't then you should look for something else that does). You might wish to extend the standard to do things that weren't intended initially, but at least discuss this with the initial standard authors and try to extend in the same, documented, way. Standards are there for a reason. They increase interworkability. That may not make sense to some people, but the basic thing is that if you use a standard then anything that also uses that standard can work with you. At the point at which you deviate, things go wrong. Email doesn't arrive, or is mangled. People can't contact you. Files that were once completely readable become unintelligible. More than anything else, you should attempt to stick to standard forms, rather than doing things differently. Some might argue that this reduces innovation, but my opinion is that if you are doing something innovating then you aren't going to have a standard to work to so there is no problem. And development can continue in a standardised system because the development is not just of one product, but of the standard.

So, next time you complain "I can't read x in y", or "Why doesn't this do that ?" Just think whether it's an application incompatibility, or whether the authors have avoided the standards issue.

I'm skirting the issue of proprietary standards, because that's a whole problem in itself.

And whilst I remember...

Do you talk to yourself ?
Yes    No    I'm a bot

Well, it seems that Robin has started learning Perl now to make some webpages. Perl is strange; it's this bigs collection of symbols, bodges and nastiness that turns out to be easy to program and very powerful. Odd really, but there you go. If there's one thing I would say, it would be that people should learn BASIC in preference to Perl early on... because although it's hacky and nasty, at least BASIC is followable .

Thought for the day from Chris "College girls are legal, that's the difference". So there you go. Possibly that needs an explanation. It's just that we were discussing a girl that he knows from IRC who is at school, and comparing to those that are at college. See, it's blatantly obvious.

The Judge: "You're a fool. No weapon forged can stop me." Buffy: "That was then, this is now." [ The Judge; Buffy, The Vampire Slayer ]

You have to have seen Buffy, I suppose, to get that one.

Added the 'Answers' section to the diary. Most of the day has been spent writing the program to parse the information in the newsbase database for this. Hopefully, you'll like this. The page will probably update on a daily basis, although I may change that if I think that it's a little too much for it.

Tea was far too late tonight - I'm still eating it, and it's 2:20 in the morning. Basically, Chris rang at about 9ish and we chatted until about 11pm about various things. Then I rang home to say Hi and tell them to watch Buffy tonight as it's a cool episode - they weren't in, but there you go. Then Angela rang and I chatted to her until 0:35 when I watched Buffy, then rang her back and spoke to her until a few minutes ago. So, I am kinda keeping up with friends.

Angela seems to be having a hard time at the moment. I have this suspicion that people feeling bad at the moment (and a lot of the people that I speak to are feeling bad, it seems) is related to the time of the year. And of the century. I think that because of all the hype up to the new millennium, people have been these balls of wound up excitement that has now spent itself and left... well... just a sense of not being excited. Which is depressing and therefore causes people to feel worse. Probably I'm way off base here, but that does seem to be the way. Could be that I'm just thinking that because it's the first year I've had a chance to actually think about things over New Year.

I've left Angela with an open invite to come down if she feels she needs to get away. I doubt she'll take me up on it, as she has lots of work to do, but still, she can stop here as long as she likes, no problem. Alternatively, I'll pop up and see here; I can take some time off next month if she's still feeling fed up, although there's not a lot I can do that her friends in York can't.

Looks like I'd forgotten to update the main diary icon from my homepage. Done now. Look, it's got a 2000 on it, instead of a 1999.

I tried to imagine what it would have been like living up there; Isolated from the world; Every night watching the fires crawl slowly down the valley. And knowing that one night it was going to be your turn for the visit; I tried to imagine what it would have been like hiding in a cellar, With your family and the fear. Hoping that when they do come, when the dogs don't bark, and the silence is around you, you hope that they burn the whole house around your ears, and they don't discover you hiding in the cellar, because you've got nowhere to go. [ The Perception of Johnny Punter, from Sunsets On Empire, by Fish ]

I'll say no more than to say that when I saw the news today of the war crimes trials, this is all I thought of. Think about it. Please.

I think I was a little abrupt with Crok on IRC today. But on the other hand, there's only so much you can do before you get fed up.

Hard drives arrived today. They work. So I've got a blank 20Gb drive now which needs filling.

Someone asked a little while back about the names - partly because I was talking about the drives Sabrina and Gerph... Ok, let's see if I can remember... Most things are named after who they are with, or someone I like.

So, we've got Helen as my main drive here, Justin as the temporary drive. The machine itself is called Helen. My machine at work is Justin and has Gerph as its main drive; Sabrina was a drive that I borrowed from work prior to its premature death. Matthew's PC is called Buffy; the server at work is Willow. The router is Alyson. Mum and Dad have Family as their main drive, and Greebo as the secondary drive. The SCSI drive that I don't have fitted at the moment is Grendel. There's a drive at work that was my parents main drive before 'something' killed it - that was Users (because it had all the users on it). There's a tiny drive sitting on the side and I've no idea what that's called.

I think that covers all of them. But now I've got a big drive to name. It's going to have to be something cunning, but I've yet to think of anything that is good for it. I had enough problems trying to name Sabrina! I really don't like the idea of calling it 'Music' or 'MP3s' because that's just a bit bland.

Ok. Good day today. Oh yes it was. Plumber arrived at 8:18. Far too early in the morning. So we've got heating. For now.

Harddrive arrived at work eventually. But, both mine and Matthew's didn't work. They sort of made this little sigh when you start the machine and refuse to spin up afterwards. Which is annoying. So Scan have been rung and they will (we hope) deliver tomorrow. Since they were ordered on last Wednesday and they usually deliver next day, it's a bit bad really.

So, still no toys. I'm getting desperate now. And I've not got a phone yet. Each time I go to lunch I think I'll remember to get a phone, but I usually just can't be bothered.

David Dade mentioned about DynDNS today. Basically this provides names for machines which are on the internet as dynamic hosts - dynamic DNS serving. I had written a program to register with the Monolith DynDNS service when that was running, so I've slightly modified that and it now does DynDNS.

Buffy was on today. With the Rocket Launcher. That was quite fun. And Willow was cute.

What else. Well, watched the end of Cold Feet tonight. As you'll know, I've been watching them over the last week or so at a rate of one per night, about. Today it was Episode 6 (the last) of the first series. Rachel's pregnant and Adam doesn't know which way to turn, because it might not be his.

And whilst he's out having a meal with her, and proposing, I'm just thinking about a small McDonalds (ok, ok, so I was brave once!) in Kings Lynn, and trying to be objective so that I don't have to think about how amazingly scared I am. In retrospect, I was a complete prat. More than that. Invent your own words. In a lot of ways. But that's just because I was still quite childish and selfish - I was really thinking of me. That only vaguely relates to the story, but still... I've sort of forgotten those sorts of things about that time. Sometimes I remember. It's then that I wonder exactly what I was doing and why it was impossible to do anything to change things. The answer to the latter is simple - I'm very selfish; thinking about me all the time, whatever I may have said. The former... well, I knew what I was doing, but why on earth I did when I knew that it was wrong is... well... Stupid.

In some ways I'd like to speak to Caroline again. As friends. Honest! No, I mean it. Maybe to talk about mistakes and say "Oh well" a few times, but it would be nice nonetheless. It seems a shame. No, I don't love her. Well, I do - I don't think you ever truly stop loving someone, even if you really hate them (ok, so I can see exceptions, but you know what I mean). I know that she broke my heart, but I did some of that too. That's my own stupid fault. And I probably hurt her. And I don't know it, because all I remember is the selfishness hurt that I was feeling myself. Life, it's a git isn't it ?

Anyhow, that's enough remembering about the long past. It's only six years ago. Sometimes I wonder - as I've probably said - what would have happened if I had a son or daughter, and I didn't know now. What sort of dad would that make me ? A poor one, obviously. Poor wouldn't come into it. Pathetic. Yes, that's better. But that's then and it's only thoughts...

I do wonder what I'd be like as a father. It's unlikely, I know. There's this thing about girls being involved, I think... but then I'm no good at that sort of thing. I'd like it. But I don't think I'd be very good. I think I said this to Dad when we were driving home from somewhere (I talk in the car; it kinda fills the gaps and I can get things off my chest. Dad doesn't tend to talk about himself though. Mum talks about work sometimes. Well, nightly when she gets in, actually. It's nice to hear about her work. The people she's with and her friends. It's a different world that you can pretend you're in... but back to what I was saying) about the fact that I don't think I'd make a good Dad. I'm too easily distracted. I'd be doing one thing then forget another. That's dangerous. I'm dangerous when I'm like that, but that's me. However, that aside, I would like to be a dad. Because... No, I don't know why. It's not a burning desire; just a dream. The way I think of it, I am thinking about it. It's not like I've not thought of it.

Anyhow, I think that's probably sounded as depressing as it should for now.

I've tried to update Imagen tonight so that it's got better pane support and 'works' where it didn't before. All being well I've achieved that.

Oh, and Bill Gates has taken a sideways step to run the internet side of Microsoft. A step which to me seems as if it's just expecting to be ruled against and for the company to be broken up. Placing all your pieces in the right position for the greatest advantage prior to a conflict ? That is, they set up a situation where, if - as many expect - they 'lose', they are still in as strong a position, but in smaller chunks. In this way they're not able to be called a monopoly. Cunning.

If I was a child, I would refuse to leave; I would sit down on the street, Kick my legs and scream. [ Beyond You, from Afraid Of Sunlight, by Marillion ]

(In work) Well, that drive is dead. Sabrina is pretty much no more now, too. Which means I'm going to have to put together a new working harddisc which is going to take ages to get right, because it always does. Hopefully, I should be able to get back up and running by Wednesday.

And so far (2pm) no HD yet. Which makes me a little annoyed. And no Psion either. So, basically, I'm not having a good week. I expect that the heating will probably be bust when we get home. All in all, I need about 5 months off just to cheer myself up, I think.

Well, I'm home now. Harddisc hasn't arrived. Fed up. I've spent the day reconstructing the drive, which is fun. And now the heating's off here. I'm going to go and play Patience...

Ok, I've just reached 100 games won, to 37 lost. I'm hoping for some interesting email...

We've got some electric fires for the house now. It's warm. Plumber should be coming tomorrow.

Purely out of interest, a RiscStation user replied to one of my questions (the one about quote tags). Hello, whoever you are !

Lots of answers to questions tonight. Totals for the recent 'graphical emotions' are 5 against them and 2 for them.

I had a very scarey dream last night. Not scarey as in frightening, but scarey as in "Oh my god, did I think that?".

Iain Truskett asks whether I did all those games tonight. No, that's 100 wins since I started, about mid-November. Now that I can, I like to keep track of how well I'm doing.

Oh, Parcel arrived for me today, too - my electric blanket from home. So, whilst we may have problems with getting Scan to deliver (well, it's actually City Link that are the problem), there is at least one group that deliver to order. Parents. They're too good to me. I can't thank them enough! Thanks!

I'm wondering about putting up a page of the statistics about questions answered, so that people can see what the current 'scoring' is. However, I'm dubious as to whether that's a good idea because people could try to artificially raise the scores and watch as they went up. I suppose they could do that now, but I tend to personally check them at the moment to see if they are dupes that people have accidentally clicked twice, or whatever.

I'm toying with the idea of not including the 'current' entry in the current diary until it is actually finished. This would mean that you would be able to read the entries in their entirety, rather than having the danger of them being updated after you've read them.

Would you prefer there to be one diary update per day ?
Yes    No    I'm a bot

One possibility is to have the 'main' diary.html page as the current entry as it is being built, and a page for the month that is the one that is updated each day. Most diaries list their entries as a week to a page, where as I use months. This is bad in general because the entries become quite large (December '99 is 100k) but on the other hand gives a nice set of break points that people (ie me!) understand. And it means I can use my nice calendar 'summarise' script too.

I'm still trying to work out how to do vector handling in CMunge. It's something of a pain because... well, the technicalities of how to do the underlying bit are second to making the C usable. Obviously the code underneath has to be reasonable too, but if the C isn't usable then it's not a lot of help.

One game of Patience before bed. I won. 101 games to 37.

I'm trying on my new shoes today. They feel a bit big and loose. But that always seems to happen. And then they rub for a while. And they they're fine. I hate new shoes.

Well, they seem ok. They're still a big odd, but they work and that's all that matters.

Sabrina really has died now. Taking the other drive that was on the IDE bus at the time with it, I think. I'll find out tomorrow when I can be bothered - I'm just too tired right now to think about that .

Quote about my stories, from Chris: Death is a good way to end; its a nice final point; like a full stop.

You know my harddrive ? The one that was meant to arrive on Friday ? The one they couldn't find the building we're in to deliver to ? Well, it should be here tomorrow. As an adjunct, the harddrive comes from Scan. I like Scan. They do some good offers, and the previous times we've used them we've never had any problems. Their site is interesting, it doesn't appear to have a clear idea of how to define its colour scheme. For some reason, many website maintainers fail to understand that if they don't give the browser the information it needs it won't do what they expect. I wonder sometimes if that's an inherent flaw in the development of the internet.

I've asked the webmaster if I can quote his reply to my complaint. I doubt that they'll say yes, but I have to ask.

Matthew's quote of day "Is the disc still shared if there are no machines on the network to see it ?".

From the few replies that I've had, I can see that Internet Explorer 5 doesn't support the quote (<q>) tag. Mozilla 4.61 does though. Interesting. Every time I think that IE outdoes Mozilla, I get proved wrong. Hmm. And we're half and half for the graphical emotions, too...

I was going to do some work on Imagen tonight, but I'm just too tired after watching Cold Feet. Sorry.

Oh, I've just remembered. H2G2 have fixed the minor problem that was preventing some browsers (well, Browse!) viewing it. Cool.

An icy dew lay all around; A light white blanket on the ground. A pretty morn for all to see; As a meteor put an end to me. [ This Morning, by Justin Fletcher ]

Dull day. Still no HD. Seems the courier can't find the building. Neat.

Interesting comment on the diary from another anonymous spectator today. Some particular bits which I'd like to reply to...

[The Shrine] are you going to replace it with a more ornate one?!

The answer there is a definite no. I've removed it because, well, I dunno... I wanted to. Read nothing into that; let's just say I don't feel it fits in with the site very well. Maybe I'll include a single photo at some point, but for now I'll leave it.

I think diaries are rather lifeless unless you write what you really think.

I think that's true too. I realise that what I write isn't very deep and meaningful, and there's very little here that you couldn't see elsewhere (I'm thinking of David's diary, because it generally gives me something to thing about), but life isn't always full of deep meaning. I'd like to say that we all have our problems and dreams and things would be a lot less fun if we didn't. But that sounds pompous. So I won't .

Hmm... I've been thinking about replacing the emotion labels (eg ) with some little graphics instead.

Would you prefer graphical emotion representations ?
Yes    No    I'm a bot

Keeping a diary on the internet is a very courageous idea.

I'm generally a very shy person. People that know me will know that I don't generally talk about how I feel. I talk like a computer person - you have to get something out of the conversation otherwise it's not worthwhile (I think I read that in a Dilbert book actually, but it's very true). But I really want people to know a little of how I feel, rather than just how I act. I know that I'm... erm... what's the word... moody, but that's just me.

I'm glad that this reader enjoys the diary. The diary is really good. In some ways it's helped more than I ever intended, and more than I have said. I find it a little easier to talk to my parents about how I feel because I can express things through the diary. That probably sounds odd. They know what I mean though.

Sabrina's died too. That's the harddisc I was transferring things to and from work on. It seems to have got a terminal case of deadness, and won't ever read the drive itself which is a little irritating. Especially as I had some new music I was bringing home from work on it.

Heating's playing silly buggers again today, unfortunately. I fully expect Matthew to come banging on the door tomorrow morning to give him a hand moving stuff when it dies.

I'm curious actually as to how many people see the quotes around the outside of the quoted sections (like this). If the word 'this' was highlighted, surrounded by quotes, or otherwise made to look different then your browser supports the 'quote' <q> tag.

Does your browser support the quote tag ?
Yes    No    I'm a bot

If I find that the majority of browsers don't, I'll change it and avoid its use in future. Which will actually mean changing the diary after it has been written. But since it will only be a syntactic change, I think that's quite reasonable.

ROMPatch fixes today too. Wonderful fun. Makes me wish I'd not bothered to do the fixes on Sunday even. I'm a little surprised (and not at all disappointed!) that the diary hasn't been mentioned in the newsgroups actually. I've often wondered what would happen if someone suddenly started discussing the content in the newsgroups. I can quite imagine it taking quite a long time to dissipate as people present their own views (as is their wont in the newsgroups) and counter views. It's always possible that this has already happened and I didn't notice. Of which I'm thankful.

I had a strange dream last night about Caroline's daughter looking for me. I know that she lied about few things, but that's still odd to think. My mind seems to run that way every so often for some reason. Trust. A lack of it.

Fixed more of CMunge, but I'm still not happy with the error identifiers code, nor any of the 'specials'. I need to start adding a flags word for identifying such things I think.

Julian's mail seems to be bouncing with a 'mailbox full' error. Bother. Had to go into work today, for various reasons. Cacky day.

I don't really like books written in the first person. I just find them hard to read and a little... erm... lazy, I think. I think it's because when you're at school you write stories in the first person and therefore I associate such things with being childish. I don't mean that nastily, because I've read some quite good first person books, but it's just... hard sometimes.

I wrote a couple of things today. Nothing long, but I just felt I wanted to write something. I'll include the shorter of the two here, because I like it. I'll warn you that when I write things like this, I just write. I don't tend to think too much about it, so it's not always very coherent. But generally they are... interesting...

Edward

Edward fell to the floor. He knew he was going to die when he saw the gun, but for some reason he hadn't been afraid. Maybe it was the thought that there was a heaven waiting for him, and there his Mary would welcome him with open arms, or maybe it was just terror. As he lay there, all he could think of was the fact that he was sorry for all he had done.

He had ended up here behind the warehouse after being moved on from the library doorway where he usually lived, a few hours ago. The warehouse was usually deserted, so the boxes outside were a dry place to stop the night. None of the other people he knew were here though, so he stuck to what he knew - the library, the grocery store, and the back of the supermarket.

He'd been living like this for a few months now. Ever since the house had been repossessed he'd sunk lower and lower into depression, but the real trigger had been Mary's death. She had died of Cancer eight months ago, and Edward hadn't even tried to get over it. Without her, he really didn't have much to live for.

And as he lay there on beside the police cars, he knew that there wasn't any thing he would ever be able to live for. As people were herded into the backs of cars and ambulance sirens screamed, his eyes clouded over and blurred into nothing. And there, in front of a raided warehouse, Edward Binns died.

That's all. I don't never think that things have to be long. They don't have to go anywhere. They can just be.

A couple of people have commented that the structure of questions for which they've been answering has been confusing - the "Do you think x, or y ?" type questions. I find them pretty easy to understand when I read them (but not when they are spoken, because that's different somehow) because the questions is about x and y is given as the converse case to identify what you are agreeing with if you disagree with x. However, I can see where the confusion arises, so I'll try to avoid using those sorts of questions in future.

I've added a 'common on the diary' link to the bottom of each entry now. I'm not sure if it's useful, but it's there.

Bizarre. I've just had a run of 7 on Patience. Which is rather good for me, as I didn't even slow throughout them.

A comment from Keith today on the last question. I'm politely ignoring it though for reasonably obvious reasons.

Hmm... I've been jukeboxing today (playing tracks from the collection as the mood takes me) and I've come to a conclusion. Whilst you can play some tracks one after another, some just don't go. The example I've just tried that shows that perfectly is 'Confrontation' from Les Miserable, and 'Tears Are Not Enough' from The Lexicon Of Love by ABC. It's just a little too jarring a change.

Ok, that's enough for tonight I think.

No interesting email today, alas. Actually that's not true, there's been a few over the last few days that have been interesting. I've had an email or two from Dave Chess, one from Matthew Godbolt, none of which I've had a chance to reply to yet. I've been playing Patience today (Julia didn't seem to know what that was, so I'll say quickly that Patience is any card game you play on your own - I think that's Solitaire to some people, but to me that's a game of bouncing balls that you play with yourself [erm, that doesn't sound right, but you probably know what I mean] or a single variant of Patience) so I've been too busy to do anything interesting. Sorry, but I need some time to just play a game. And Patience is good because it has no sound effects and therefore I can listen to music and play at the same time (AMPlayer oddity - you can't have the sound mixed... I've been meaning to make a mixing sound channel handler, but it's just too much effort for such a small thing).

Oh, I did something to CMunge today. Erm. I forget what. Oh yes. Error identifiers can now have numbers associated with them instead of using the explicit error numbers.

Cool website of the day (I don't do this often though) UK Television Adverts website has a list of adverts and their soundtracks. Which is very cool. The Frames seem a little broken, but there you go...

A second one is a few Fairy Tales with the Voyager crew which is quite bizarre...

Watched Sleepless in Seatle tonight. I think it's actually one of my favourite films; one I have to have a little tear at 'cos it's really sweet. Ah, well.

I got Sue's book of Poems yesterday, so I've been looking through them. They're really neat, but there's one that I apparently know but don't remember. You know I said that I don't remember much about Downham ? Well, it turns out that 'The Pit' is one that Sue wrote to me whilst I was there (under circumstances I'll leave you to guess). It's gorgeous. I've never had a poem written to me before (well, I have, but like I said, I don't remember it first time around). Which probably makes Sue think that I'm really awful . I rang her today anyhow, to say how surprised I was. She had a shelf fall on her head today. And she was made redundant today as well. Aww!

Anyhow, I've been given permission to cite it here, which I shall do. Because I think it's great.

The Pit (To Justin) There is a pit called 'Loneliness' Where many unfortunates dwell Their abode is sometimes Paradise More often it is Hell Only the strong can stand it They have the will to fight To trust in that which can never change To snatch a glimpse of light Some victims struggle out of it And reach up from the black But a monster there called 'Solitude' Will only pull them back He owns a brother whose name is 'Fear' Of 'Abandonment' and 'Hurt' And once you've lived in this domain Of these rulers be alert Some come to trust this 'Loneliness' Though the pain still in them burns -- For 'tis far worse to gain Then lose once more, then happiness one yearns [ The Pit; Sue Robinson ]

So there you go. I'm generally feeling a lot better than I was before Christmas. I would like to think that's because I've made some positive decisions in the form of my resolutions. I think I'm doing better. I don't feel great; but then again, who does ?

I think Sue understands me a lot better than I do. I know now and then are very similar really. Then, I had someone with whom I could talk. Now, I've been talking to myself so things have been worse. Except that when I spoke to people I blatantly ignored what they said, or listened to only what I wanted to hear. So. Decision ? I think it is. I'm doing well...

Do you think I'm really getting better, or is this just one of those false hopes ?
Yes    No    I'm a bot

No Psion today. No new harddisc today either. Not a day for presents, obviously. Oh well. Psion is currently out of stock, but I'm "at the top of the list" apparently, so soon. And the harddisc... Well, who knows... it was meant to be arriving today...

Heating's back working again now - someone came out to look at it today. And I had a couple of nice EMails from Julia today too. Looks like she's got a job and starts on Monday - Great ! I've got to work out some way of getting to see them again.

Music of the day (No, it's not 'This Desert Life' although that's great) is Greatest hits of Neil Diamond, which is quite strange... It's just something I like - I don't listen to it often, but sometimes it's nice for a change. The other one I've been listening to is Stiltskin 'Inside', but I've got nothing else by them. I think that's really good, so I'm going to have to go looking for the album.

Didn't remember phone today. However, I did remember toothpaste. And it's so cold here at the moment. The heating's having a bad time and it's not quite working. We hoped the landlord would get someone out to it today, but it seems not. I hope it'll be tomorrow, 'cos it's only 16° at the moment and that's too cold!

Tidied out some more things from the mailbox today. Down to 310 unread mails now. Which actually means 310 unfiled mails, but that's just being picky!

Updated the diary main page to include a link to the 'about' page. Sorry about that, but I forgot last night. Modifications in the 'friends' section.

Chatted to Chris on IRC tonight. Nothing special, but I think we both came to the same conclusion about that email to Helen last night.

Someone managed to remind me to get a phone. I forgot today, though. I'll try to remember tomorrow. Maybe they want to ring me. Good god, no! Would I put my number out for anyone to ring ? Well, actually it already is and nobody does, so I'm not worried.

Ah. Nice email from NDirect saying...

We are pleased to announce that the move into the Year 2000 has been successful and NetDirect systems remain unaffected by the Millennium bug. [ EMail from NDirect ]

Whilst service was great, nothing fell apart and mail continued as normal, the statement that the systems were 'unaffected' is actually wrong. All form submissions came out with '1 Jan 19100' which is wrong.

Quote from the 'Government Millennium Centre' :

The millennium appears to have passed off peacefully both in the UK and throughout the world with no significant bug-related incidents being reported so far. [ Statement; Government Millenium Centre ]

Whilst I see the point that it was 'peaceful' for the computer community, I don't think that you can really say that... oh well, they did...

Matthew's sleeping at the moment. It makes a change for him to be sleeping and me to be awake, but I know damned well that if I sleep now I'll not sleep when I go to bed.

Had a vague chance to speak to Helen on IRC today. However, Keith was about, so it wasn't much of a chance...

One anonymous commentator asked what my new years resolution is. December 31st lists the things I wish for this year and the coming years. These equate directly to the resolutions I've made.

I was wondering if I should add a 'nickname' field to the y/n comment boxes I've been leaving. The idea is that people can sign a nick name (one I know, or something else so that their comments are merely identified as the same person), or they don't and therefore are anonymous as now. I'm not sure I like the idea, because it's really quite nice to not know who says what, but on the other hand it does mean that people can directly comment on the diary and have their submissions identified. No, I've decided I still dislike the idea enough to not use it.

"Saying what you mean is a good thing, isn't it ?" Yes: 11, No: 3.

Which basically means that I'm doing the right thing by being honest with people and saying what I mean rather than worrying what they think too much. That's good.

"Do you think this is a good idea ?" (re: including comment buttons in the diary) Yes: 6, No: 1 (but I think that the no was me testing things).

Which means that they stay. For now anyhow. I'll only include them sporadically because I don't really want to clutter it by asking the reader things - this is my diary after all.

Watched the first episode of the first series of Cold Feet tonight. I'm intending to watch one episode per night.

Hmm. I can't sleep. That's not good. For some reason, my mind is working overtime at the moment. Possibly because I'm not getting a 'normal' rhythm of sleeping. Most of the time I seem to be merely lying there thinking up scenarios and responses to them. Which is bad. Particularly in this new realm of decisiveness.

One nice one (well, ok, not nice, but strange and bizarre [ Oh, bother, I was going to bring my uni project write up back with me, but I forgot... sorry, just remembered ] that I should remember it now) I remembered was a picture of sitting in an Olde-style pub with Phillipa and Caroline, and with my Business Studies teacher sitting across the other side of the bar and smiling at me. Whilst that may not seem like an odd picture to have in your head, I was underage at the time, not meant to be in Downham at that hour, and he didn't let me forget it for the rest of that year. I'm generally amused as to how much of my time at Downham I've forgotten. Curious, that, isn't it ?

I need a phone for my room. Remind me to buy one, won't you ?

Updated a link to David Chess' site, now that he's archived the old pages. He's very helpfully provided a description of how to link to his diary which is rather neat. I've actually been meaning to do an 'about' page for the diary for a little while. Just to describe who people are and what they do, and generally provide meta information about the diary...

Peter and Julia (Chocky and Speckles) were here today, but I'm not going to write much, because I've got to get some sleep tonight - I'm going home tomorrow. Played Scrabble, Grandma and Simon won. Played Trivial Pursuit - Grandma and Simon won, again!.

Watched Jonathan Creek; a reasonably clever one. Watched Corrie; A Curly and Rachel special. Very strange. Curly is an amazingly nice bloke. I hope I'm like him, but I don't think I am. I know it's only a character, but still...

Apparently there were six calls for me through the day whilst I was with Peter and Julia and family, and an SMS from Chris saying my webpages 'have vanished'. I'm not quite sure what that means, but I'll see in a minute or two when I connect.

I had lots of things planned for when I go back to work last night, when I couldn't sleep, but I've forgotten all of them now. Isn't that just the way ?

It was rather amusing today to have unCiscy, Xyra and Chod all trying to make the point that ROL should basically fix all the bugs in RO4. It's laughable. See the diary entry for 3rd December 1999 for more details on why this is the case.

Hmm... Interesting discussion with Fnagaton tonight. Outcome of which, I shalln't talk about ROL anywhere. Which means that basically, I won't be stating anything much in this diary barring things outside work. Which won't be much, because I don't do much else.

One anonymous commentator suggested I lay off on the Helen thing a bit. They're right. But still...

Well, that's it. A new millennium. Wow. Ok, so some are going to say, "that's not till next year", but who cares, really... I mean this is the year that the numbers changed. Anyhow, I don't really, so there you go...

What have we been doing then ? Well, we watched telly, did a century quiz (answer questions on the century), watched the fireworks everyone had, and drank a little. Well, Simon and Grandma drank a lot, I drank a little...

I'm now sitting here, with a cat on my lap who is being so affectionate it's amazingly cute. Greebo can be at times. At the moment he won't let me use the mouse and paws at me to be stroked when I use it. He's gorgeous. Almost as gorgeous as someone else. But not quite.

Speaking of which, I had a thought. Not one I'm going to carry out, I want to say right now, but a thought nonetheless. Every year you do something dim and feel embarrassed and regret it. It always happens. For every year, there's something you look back on an cringe at.

Well, I reasoned that if you do something amazingly dim after new year, then from then on everything you do has to be a step up. With me ? I think it's quite a neat idea. But I didn't have the nerve to do it. I came up with a better one a little later which would have provoked more embarrassment, but I won't do that. Actually, I was offered ten quid to do the former. But no matter what the embarrassment to me would be, I'd still have wanted to do it, and it would have been the wrong thing to do.

Start the year as you mean to go on, I guess - with a weak excuse and not being as direct as you ought to be. Yes, Helen, you're right, I'm never direct. And the reason for that is that I'm scared of saying the wrong thing and cocking things up. If I said every time I had wanted to that I wanted to go out with you, to hold you, to kiss you, without wondering if it was the right thing to do, then I'd probably feel sillier than I do now. And if I had the nerve to just talk to you, rather than being concerned that you might not want to talk to me, might feel that I was pestering you or that I was wrong in what I believed, then I'd be in a different position than I am now.

Obviously I'd be in a different position, but no idea what it'd be.

I will try to say what I mean.

Saying what you mean is a good thing, isn't it ?
Yes    No    I'm a bot

Looks like my 'fixing' the diary last night didn't quite work. I ended up with this entry being listed as 31st December 1999, but that's only because of the lateness of the entry and the fact that I was entering it for the new day. Too much automation is bad... Already got two replies to the above question and it's only been there about 18 hours ! So far it's split between them - one yes, one no. I agree with both, but I think I should go for saying what I mean and to hell with the consequences. Because it's generally more direct that way.

It's sad to see that although there's all this talk of peace and such like and yet even as the millennium passes, the wars are still going on in the world. I mean, is that really what this new millennium is about ?