31 Jul 2000 (Monday) 

Golly, all my little libraries work together nicely now. I'm missing macros still. And any form of actual processor. But they are now quite nicely integrated together so I should be able to hang macros off it reasonably easily. I hope.

Peter was down today to sort out his NTL account. His CD has finally arrived but he couldn't sign up on his machine. I think that's down to it just not being up to the job (down and up in the same sentence ? Curious). It was very slow once we finally got it connected, too. Not too impressed, although that was a rather quick test of it anyhow.

Tried out Video CD creation today. Apparently I don't have any MPEGs that are suitable for burning straight away as VCD 2.0 format. But I'm reliably informed that I can make some. I'll just have to work it out, won't I ? .

Also today, ordered some stuff from Scan. Hopefully it'll be there tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm hoping tomorrow as that gives Simon and Julian a quick chance to play with the DVD player. Albeit without any DVDs. But they would get a chance nonetheless.

Andrew appears to be selling his RISCOS Ltd RPCs that he's got back now. Basically he put these on loan to the company and now has them back. He obviously feels that he has no further use for them. And given the current - somewhat laughable - state of the market, it's probably wise. Pack up and go home. Go on. It's not worth the hassle.

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30 Jul 2000 (Sunday) 

Back from visiting Parents for the weekend, now. Grandma was at home for a few days, so it was nice to go home and see her. Dad and Simon are tiling the Kitchen floor, which is fun when you get to the edges. Apparently. Brought back loads of CDs to listen to. A box of them. Quite a few, anyhow.

One of the things about Steak and Kidney pies from the Chippy down the road is that they can be quite dry; they need to have Vinegar on them, otherwise they're just too dry to eat. I think that's Chippy pies in general (which seem to universally be Pukka Pies - a curious thing, but they seem to have cornered the market there - like, forever; I can't remember a time without them).

Another thing is... What do you call Chippy chips ? 'cos that sounds odd... Anyhow, Chips from a Fish And Chip shop don't appear to go well with Brown Sauce. I think it's just the way that I am, actually. I'm so used to them with salt and vinegar that I can't have them any other way. The thing about chips is that there are really two ways you can have them. One is that they can be seasoned - they have spices and stuff on them - that works well with chunky, but not long chips. Or you can have them with salt and vinegar so that your eyes water. Ok, maybe that's a little stronger than I like them, but it does work. You can have them with Brown Sauce, but those aren't Real Chips. They're just french fries that are something to have the Brown Sauce with. But anyhow, Salt And Vinegar'd chips are gorgeous.

I think it comes from doing car washing with the scouts. We used to wash cars at the Inn, every so often, and when we were done we used to get chips with salt and vinegar. I dunno, I enjoyed doing it quite a bit. Some of the scouts - no names mentioned - were really quite nasty to me at the time, but to be fair, I wasn't a very good patrol leader or scout in general. It was fun, but it was just something to do rather than something I worked at. I know that some people took it much more seriously, and some just didn't like me. But anyhow, I thought it was fun, and by-and-large liked everyone there.

Further integration of the parser tonight. Unfortunately, although it now understands about conditional nesting, it doesn't understand macros. Macros mean that aligned data is impossible in the way I want it to be controlled. And the structure of the code doesn't allow for arbitrary macros really. Well, not yet, anyhow. Part of the problem is a lack of forethought. Not strictly true, though. I did think about it, but I didn't think it would be an issue. I thought I'd be able to work around it. I think I can, even still, but it will mean that this parser will probably only work on a single source. Which isn't all that important, really, as that's all I'd really intended for it.

Caught up with email today; A couple from Jennifer and one from Mark Scholes.

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28 Jul 2000 (Friday) 

First update of the diary in ages last night. It's quite strange to not have network access from home, but it's not actually as bad as I thought it would be. I can cope quite well, although the "Not having a telly" thing is quite a bit stranger.

Played Homeworld quite a bit tonight with the settings reduced so that it doesn't crash, but the unit capping turned off. It makes for a more interesting game, although I would like to see unit capping on some ships. It's not really fair to go in with a 6x6 wall of heavy cruisers, as nothing tends to survive that. A problem with so many ships around is that it is very difficult to tell what ship is what, and you may have one ship you want to control in the middle of a load of others. In reality I'd like to place a couple of missile destroyers outside the grids, and get them to pick off the strike craft, but it's too hard to ensure that they don't get selected with the rest of the fleet and that they only attack strike craft .

I'm writing a parser at the moment. I'm doing it in BASIC because I want to be different (well, because it just happened to start out that way. Foolish, I know, but it's fun anyhow. It's only for home anyhow, and it's not intended that anyone other than me play with it anyhow. Up till today it didn't understand much. Today I've linked the Variables, Structures and Options modules together so that things defined in one can be used in the others. Unfortunately Options is now top of the hierarchy (well, partly, and partly Structures is, depending on what facet of the parser you're interested in) and Structures needs to understand that it can be influenced by Options. I would imagine that that will be quite easy to add, but it's going to be another days work, as I'm far too tired now.

I think I may watch an episode of Angel for the amusement value.

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27 Jul 2000 (Thursday) 

Coo... Spanners pointed out a webpage to look at today. The reason is that it's got credits for him, myself, and David Chess which is really quite impressive. He's also got his own little diary section that he seems to update daily. Quite fun, huh ?

Yay. Finally I have RSS summaries of my pages. It's quite strange, but I've finally got around to doing it. All I have to do now is stick <summary> </summary> tags in my document and it will generate me a nice RSS summary file that people can check more easily than the full page. Neat, huh ? Oh, the URL for the RSS file is http://www.movspclr.co.uk/diary/diary.rss.

Still without a network connection, but I've fetched news and mail today, by popping upstairs and asking Peter if I could use his phone. Since it's the first time I've seen them in four days, it's quite strange. Anyhow, lots of email arrived, so I've got to read and reply to some of it.

Whilst I was passing through some internationalisation stuff I came across the following translations :

Schlagerforderung : claim, demanded in a pop song Schlagerförderung : promotion of pop music Schlägerforderung : demand of a hooligan Schlägerförderung : promotion of hooliganism [ Found in some translations ]

Quite curious, don't you think ?

Added support to JFTerm for the x-talker protocol that I've just invented. The main reason is so that I can stick a URIDispatch in my boot sequence to load JFTerm and connect to Egham without any hassle.

I was thinking - on the way to work today - how sad it was that I'd lost touch with the Rayners. When, strangely, when I got to work I found Angela on Egham. Ok, so I didn't actually talk to her. Well, no, come to think of it I did - I bought her a pack of crisps, but she didn't want them, so I had to eat them. Oh well.

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26 Jul 2000 (Wednesday) 

"You could live off trifle. Well, you could if you had Bacon trifle - that'd be really nice." [ There aren't any Trifles in the States; William Turner ]

I don't generally like Walkers Crisps. I find them to be quite greasy, but also, they have no understanding of what colour Salt And Vinegar crisps are. I like S & V crisps. I like to go into a shop, pick up the blue packet, buy them and eat them. It's not hard. This colour coding thing does work. Or would if it wasn't for Walkers. If I try that and accidentally get Walkers, I end up feeling ill because I've got Cheese And Onion instead. Cheese And Onion, as we all know, is in a green packet. Walkers seem to have misunderstood this concept. Boycott them.

Except...

I tried their Paprika Max crisps. They're nice. Really nice. Try them. Really, do, they're good. So, for a while Walkers are forgiven. At least until I do the accidental thing with the colours again.

Speaking of crisps, Branigans do about three varieties. Two of them are quite the most vile crisps you'll ever eat. The Ham and Pickle ones though, are quite amazingly tasty though. Try them too, but don't even go near the Mustard and whatever it is crisps. For some reason shops seem to believe that the Mustard ones sell better than the pickle ones. It is our duty to remind them that the Ham and Pickle ones are better. Go to it.

And on the subject of food - I'm cooking tea tonight, so food is on my mind (notice I'm cooking; first time since I've been on my own, mostly I'm tired so I go to the chippy, ) - I noticed some Cadbury Fudge cakes at the shop, and I like fudge so I thought I'd try them. No. They're not good. This should teach me to read the print before trying things. They're not that bad, in reality, but there's one thing that lets them down. They have chocolate sponge in them. Make it plain sponge and you've got me. Otherwise I'm not going to have anything to do with them again... Sorry Cadbury's.

I've probably mentioned Coke flavour Smarties, so except for that passing comment I'll mention them no more.

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25 Jul 2000 (Tuesday) 

Set up my phone and TV with NTL today. Nice woman... strangely called Helen... took all my details and talked me through what needs to be done... see, it's not scarey to sort these things out

Had a play with RCI secure sockets. I can 'almost' get a server working. A lack of understanding is preventing me getting any further. Or possibly a lack of documentation. I think the latter is a big factor. Particularly as there was meant to be some. I spent a long time chatting to David about it and I'm not much the wiser...

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24 Jul 2000 (Monday) 

Got home really knackered tonight and just lay down and dozed for about an hour. I'm just really tired at the moment. That, of course, is because I'm not going to bed early enough.

Now I'm going to sit on the bed, eat my tea and watch Buffy. Can you think of a better way to spend an evening ? I can, but since it's all that I've got I'll cope . Watched the Pilot episode; well most of it... it sort of missed a small section in the middle . Maybe it's 'cos I'm so used to the 'real' Willow that I don't like the one from the Pilot. Or maybe it's something else, but I think they made the right choice in going with Alyson.

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23 Jul 2000 (Sunday) 

Dad brought down a load of stuff for me so that I've got some things to wear and a bed and stuff. Quite handy really. Still don't have a kettle, though. Went to Center Parcs with the family, Julia and Peter. Reasonably fun, although I'm really tired now.

Playing with my new CD I made last night today. I've got a 110 track CD with Marillion albums 1-10 (that's up to Radiation, if you care but don't know which is which), B'sides Themselves and disc one of La Gazza Ladra on it. Unfortunately, I don't own any albums after Radiation, so I had to stop there. It's also unfortunate that I can't fit on any of the demos. It'd be nice to have a demos and rarities CD, actually. What with going out today and other things, I'm up to track 43 now. It's a lot of music.

Yesterday, and today, I've been working on the MP3 ID3 tag editor, so that I can modify tags wholesale, rather than having to fiddle around with each one individually. The theory is that I no longer have to enter the details of each track, when it's already in the filename - I can just get the editor to 'guess' the ID3 tag data from the filename. And I've made it do it on a recursive directory basis, too, so if your whole collection is organised in the same manner you can ensure that the tags match the filenames. I'm really very pleased with it, because it actually does what I set out to make it do, and it does it in a nice generic way, so that I shouldn't have to re-write code to make it handle particular forms of naming styles.

I'm still without a phone at the moment, so no email incoming or outgoing, and no external diary updates, either. Hopefully I'll get phone sorted soon, but I can't be sure when that will be.

Watched 'The Sixth Sense' on DVD last night whilst waiting for the MP3s to finish encoding (I'd done some as MP2s so I had to re-encode them). It's quite a scarey film .

I tried the pepper coated salmon at Center Parcs today and found that it was incredibly nice. That's at Huckleberry's. I've not seen CP for ages, and things have changed quite a bit. Well, it's been about four years, I think.

Dave made a lovely comment about the diary (and the use of the word lovely, too, but that's only because he loves my misspelling of it ) - "I'll go to a search engine if I want to read lyrics". Well, it's true, I do go in for sticking lyrics and interesting quotes in the diary quite often. I do tend to hold off doing that sort of thing as much as some diaries do. Although, to be fair, if you're a weblog, or other commentary 'diary' then you're going to end up doing something like that and you're not really in the same category as my diary. At least, that's my thought.

I'm trying to catch up on email at the moment. It's going to take a while to trawl through the piled up messages. That's one from Alistair from the beginning of July replied to... I'm getting quite a bad record for replying to email . I'm moving slowly through the email, though.

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22 Jul 2000 (Saturday) 

One of my friends told me that such people - like you - should be given hundred years long - at least hundred year long life - with a good health, to enjoy their own lives, and to bring such sunshine to other people's lives and I hope that God sees it. [ Spoken Section, The Gap Is Too Wide, from The Spirit Of Autumn Past, by Mostly Autumn ]

Spent ages on the phone to Chris tonight; a bad thing, given that it's the mobile. Oh well. The rest of the day, though, I've been moving things upstairs with Peter and Julia (and yesterday, actually). The house is slightly bare now. Like very bare. But I'm not worried. I don't have a kettle or any cooking utensils, though, which is a little awkward.

I've updated MP3ID3 today. I know I said I wasn't going to, but I thought it would be cool to have the ability to take the filename and convert it into an ID3 tag. So I've added the facility. That's quite fun, isn't it ?

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20 Jul 2000 (Thursday) 

No diary much recently; mostly because it's a little hectic around here, as Peter and Julia are starting their move upstairs. That and the fact that I'm not really in the mood for doing much at the moment. It's hot, too.

Couple of people commented on the fact that the alt tags for the smileys are obscured by the browser sizing to the image size even if images are off. I can understand the reasons why it does that, but it does make life hard (and alt tags near useless .

Oh, I've got a few new toys, too... Antony Sidwell has sent some 'replacement' emoticons. They're quite nice. And white. I think I've seen them before, but they're pretty much what I was thinking of when I did mine. I'll replace mine with them at some point. Or maybe I should stick a few examples up first. Dunno. I might just put them on the page and see whether they have a better response...

He's also sent a new set of sprites for ControlAMPlayer which is kind cool. Particularly as they're based on Thomas Olssons original graphics - much nicer I think. I /think/ I like my progress bar better, but Antony's is a little less 'wobbly'.

Music of the night "Mars, The Bringer Of War", Gustav Holst.

Coo... more smileys from someone else. They're... um... interesting. Yellow, mostly.

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15 Jul 2000 (Saturday) 

It works! What works ? I am the proud owner of a Central Nervous System ! [ Bicentennial Man ]

Yeah; I watched Bicentennial Man tonight with Peter. Really fun film . I really enjoyed it.

There were loads of comments on the Diary, mostly about the use of the emoticons, rather than words. A couple of these I feel I should comment on, as they are interesting.

"Text smileys are visible instantly"
"You have to switch images on to understand them"

I have included 'alt' tags with every one of the images, as well as a link to the definition. If your browser does not display the alternate text when you have images turned off, then maybe that's a browser fault ? Certainly, the information has been provided in the form that can be made available should the browser wish, and therefore if it doesn't display it then it is lacking. This is a HTML 1 feature, and therefore it ought to not be a problem.

The issue of them not being visible 'instantly' shouldn't worry people too much as the alt tag should be displayed in the meantime.

"They look too big and take the focus away from... the text... Why don't you tell us why you like them ?"

Fair comment. It's always annoyed me that there are graphics that won't appear the right size when embedded inside text. That's a fact of life, I think. There just isn't a way to do it, unfortunately. So on those grounds it's always going to lose. Out of interest, I use 14.5pt text. I don't believe in straining my eyes any more than I have to, so I have my text a reasonable size. At that size, the graphics are 'right'. Even still, they are unclear (a point the same poster wrote, actually). I'm not an artist. I don't do graphics much, and there's a good reason why not . Particularly, the sigh doesn't look very good, I think.

As for why I like them... There are lots of reasons. I don't like the idea of having this wonderfully rich medium for getting across what I want to say that allows for text and graphics and yet only using the text. I might as well stick with using text format if I wanted to just put things across plainly. I don't. I write my diary in a macro language above HTML anyhow, so it's a matter of very little to change the representation of certain things. It's almost XML-like in structure representation (although that's hard to get away from). I don't like wasting the opportunities available. In theory I can produce two versions of the pages, one which uses emoticons, and one which doesn't, but I'd prefer not to go down that route, because the idea of double file maintenance is just quite scarey really.

There's also the fact that the graphics break the text up. And they make it a little more human.

As an aside, the person posting that reply was using - I believe - Opera. I've heard a lot of different opinions of Opera, but I'd not heard about its identity crisis before... The browser declares itself as Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 95) Opera 4.0 [en]. I can understand the reasons why this evolution takes place, but it's so patently stupid. When will webmasters learn that you can't start demanding a particular browser variant, because people will just code around it in the next browser release whether you like it or not. And then the whole thing about tracking what is being used to view the site and spotting problems is made so much more difficult.

"They are tacky, look crap and look odd in sentences"

Well, design some more . Honestly, feel free, and if I prefer them I'll replace the ones I use at the moment...

"Make them just plain white instead of yellow?"

I quite like that idea. The original reason for yellow was that that's just how I envisaged the site, and it sort of comes from the 'Friends' page icon. White might look better, but it may not stand out so much.

"They are too distracting, besides smilies give a more familiar feel"

That's a sad comment really. I so prefer graphical things to text, and it's quite sad that we've reached the stage where we recognise a piece of text over a face smiling. I do it myself, so I'm not exempt from this, but it's sad that things have grown like this . Product of the internet age, I think.

"They look like a horror from MS Word or AOL IM. And they bugger up the linespacing"

Same comment as before about the sizing of icons, I guess. The MS Word auto-replacement of :-) with is, I find, intensely irritating. Or would be if I wrote any documents in Word. Which I have done only on rare occasions. The reason it doesn't work in Word (or other DTP packages) is that :-) looks bad in a proportional font (which if you have, you'll see there. Plus the fact that "if that's what I've typed I don't want you to fuck with it, ok ?". That's a quite commonly heard comment about anything that doesn't do what I tell it and tries to be clever (and gets it wrong).

"I think graphical emoticons are a bad idea, cause you get an inconsistency across the Internet. You often have to look up what they mean, rather than having some standard ASCII-ones where everybody knows what they mean."

Fair comment, and referring back to the other replies.

I'd also like to add my own comment that dragging around the page has to be done more carefully now because you might accidentally start a drag by clicking on one of the smileys and end up at its definition. I could remove the link (a href) and put it in a long description (longdesc) instead. That would actually feel a lot better, to be honest.

Basically, if you can't tell that a smile is a smile or a sad is a sad, then there's something wrong with you. Or the graphics. I think the graphics are quite clear in their meaning. The sizing of things, well, you just have to take your chances there as there is no way to explicitly cope with such things. HTML isn't a DTP language and should never become one. However, the sigh () is wrong. It doesn't show what I want it to show. I don't know how to draw a sigh. Any ideas ?

Yesterday I got a nice email from a Nicola Brown, who was referred to the diary by someone I'd mentioned in it. Not sure who, or what they think of me, but Hello Nicola anyhow .

Nicola pointed out something very nice today that I'd not thought of. As well as a diary being read by yourself in years to come, others such as your grandchildren (or just children) may want to read it. I'd - now - be interested to see what my parents, or grandparents had written about their lives. I don't think I'd have been so interested a few years ago, but now I think it would be interesting. Maybe, at some point in the future people will look back at the diary and not only laugh at where I came from, but also at how things were, and at viewpoints that have long since vanished...

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14 Jul 2000 (Friday) 

Open day at Pace today; Dave Ward came down to see the place, which was quite nice; Paul was also about, too, and I had a meeting with ANT, so I got to meet Simon at the same time (I've met him before, but it's difficult to remember). And Simon and Paul invited me out for dinner tonight, which was rather fun.

Woo! A quote in the spodmag for the first time! Wahey!

gerph :ok... is there a good reason why The Conservative Party gets a top spot when you search for tits ? [ Egham Hills Spodmag ]

I'd like to point out that this was in reply to a .comment by someone suggesting that you search for tits on one of the search engines (I forget which one now, sorry!). It's not as funny when you know that. It's true, though, it did come at the top of the list at 56% relevant.

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13 Jul 2000 (Thursday) 

More RSS stuff tonight; I'm really not happy with my bubble library at the moment. It's just not doing what I want it to do. In fact it looks quite awful. However, it is displaying multiple fetches simultaneously and they are being fetched 'live' (well, they work for URLs that are on the internet as well as local ones). Window sizing is broken. Bubble sizing is broken. RSS parsing works well, though. As does URL fetching.

A few comments about the diary tonight; but I'm a little too tired to comment on them right now.

Bit my finger this afternoon when I wasn't paying attention and it's hurting a lot now.

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12 Jul 2000 (Wednesday) 

Did some work with Draw module today; I can display draw paths now. Wow. Yes, this is the first time I've actually used the Draw module for anything more than simple paths. I usually use Drawfile, you see... Anyhow, I'll stick up pictures once I've something pretty...

So much for an early night.

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11 Jul 2000 (Tuesday) 

Is it getting better ? Or is it still the same ? Will it make it easier on you now, you've got someone to blame ? You say, 'One Love, One Life.' When it's one need, In the night. One Love, We get to share it. Leaves you baby, If you're not careful. [ One, from Achtung Baby, by U2 ]

Apparently Spanners has been asked by Loretta to remove his comments about her being a mad bitch from hell when she visited. So much so that he's removed his pages in their entirety. To be honest, she's way out of line. Particularly if the things that were said were actually true. There's no accounting for some people.

Wow. Such a response from the question about graphic emoticons. 9 dislikes and 3 likes. Oh well...

Tried using the Draw module today for the first time in ages. Can I get it to do anything useful ? Nope. I think I'm just tired

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10 Jul 2000 (Monday) 

Thought of the day: playing The Sims until 3am is a Bad Idea (tm). However, when I got back from work today I did manage to sort some parts of John and Jane's lifestyles out. Hopefully tomorrow they'll be able to start earning more money in the knowledge that their lives are going to get better.

Mum always says that I think about things too much. Julia says the same. Odd, init ?

Little work on TelnetD tonight, spurred by Theo Markettos. A few Diary emails replied to too, so I feel a lot better than I did .

My headphones work to nearly the other side of the building (at work), which is rather neat. They do have a restrictive response range at 28Hz-17kHz, but since my hearing is bad anyhow, that doesn't bother me. Parts of it can be supplemented by using the AMP32 equaliser to bump the lower and upper ranges. That doesn't help an amazing amount, but it is useful.

Oh, a few days ago a new SVG draft went out. It unifies Exchange and Styleable SVG, which is quite good for me !

I got a nice email back from the BBC about Buffy (being replaced by the Tennis) so I feel quite well disposed toward them. For now anyhow .

Ok, research tonight. An MP3 playing watch. And it's got 32Mb of memory. I'm in love.

Good things :

• It's a watch that plays MP3s and keeps the time
• It has 32Mb of memory in a watch
• You've got the standard features like equaliser, repeat, shuffle, loop, etc
• It understands and shows ID3 tags.
• It'll impress the hell out of some people.

Bad things :

• It only lasts for 4 hours of music and then has to be charged.
• It only lasts as a watch for about 4 days without recharging.
• If the battery goes dead you have to return it to Casio.
• You'd look really sad wearing it.
• It's $250.

Second prize for cool... ok, maybe third or fourth... goes to The Tape-like MP3 player. It's a Tape shape. It plays MP3s.

But the useful one is the Genica Portable MP3/Audio CD player. That's a more useful one to me...

However, I'm taken by Personal Jukebox PJB-100. It's just that. A jukebox. Ok, so its storage isn't quite up to my liking. I know I probably rant on about 32Mb being a tiny amount and hardly worth the effort (excepting the watch which is so cool), and that's why a CD MP3 walkman is so much better. BUT. At 4.8Gb, this thingy looks like it's nearly at the size I can cope with. At $799 it's slightly more than I want to pay, but... one day . However, one day it will be that we all have this sort of thing in watches .

Added some Emoticons to the diary tonight, because I was bored. There was a Poll back in January for which the vote at this present time sits at No 7, Yes 3. So, I've gone against that and added them anyhow. Sorry, but I just had to; they look nicer. I think anyhow.

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9 Jul 2000 (Sunday) 

Nothing special today. Played a little of The Sims; Peter and Julia played a lot of The Sims. Peter needs a PC .

I've just tried checking through the email that's been piling up and came across one from a Vanessa (not the one in Warwick) saying how impressed she was at the diary. I'm quite flattered. She didn't give an email address, so I can't thank her for her kind words, so I shall thank her through the diary - thank you .

Now it's early in the morning and I've got too addicted to The Sims. Jane and John Doe seem to have a problem with their lifestyle. They never see one another because of the hours they work - one's in the medical profession and one in the army, and also they don't get an opportunity to socialise. It's not good. I think John's looking for a new job because the Army doesn't seem right for him. He's just not seeing any body and frequently has tantrums at his lack of socialising. Aww .

Someone commented on the lack of cutting and pasting in the Wimp. I'm not touching it.

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8 Jul 2000 (Saturday) 

Took back the headphones that didn't work today, and got some others. This time I've got some JVC headphones and I've got to say that I'm quite impressed. The family came over today for Simon's birthday (well, that was the idea) and we went to see Chicken Run. It's a pretty good film. Go see it. There are good bits and bad bits, but it's quite fun.

And today I bought 'The Sim's, a game for the PC. I don't own many, but wow, this is good. I'll admit to buying it partly on the comments by David Chess, but I'm really glad that I did. It's fun. Or I think it's fun. Certainly Julia and Peter and the family liked it. I've not really had a chance to look at it yet !

Matthew rang up specially to tell me to watch Channel 4 tonight which had a very strange film with a young Alyson Hannigan in it. Unfortunately I didn't get to see any of it, because everyone else was watching Peter play The Sims... Life's just too complicated, isn't it ?

Big feedback today on people associating music with places or times. So far a responding 100% vote.

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7 Jul 2000 (Friday) 

Today, I had a chance to listen to Black Widow a little. Now, I've heard a little of them in the background. They're one of the groups that Dad liked when he was... um... younger, and he bought the CD of Sacrifice about a year and a bit back. So... What do I think ? Well, interesting use of stereo in various places, and the synthesizer sound throughout it is quite interesting...

It's all based around a satanic ritual; a concept album which is really quite strange.

Help me in my search for knowledge; I must learn this secret art. Who dares to help me raise the one, Whose very name stills my heart ? Discard your clothes and come on foot, Through streams and fields and moonlit moors; Your body soaked in scared oils, Perfumes herbs will heal your sores; Join me in my search for power, Wives and husbands bring your kin. We'll be as one within the hour; Let the Sabbat now begin. Come, come, come to the Sabbat, Come to the Sabbat, Satan's there. [ Come To The Sabbat, from Sacrifice, by Black Widow ]

Not that I'm even vaguely moved to do anything in that direction, but it's so different and has a little of the strangeness that I remember from things when I was younger. It's not often that I hear pretty strings coupled with a pagan chant, and it makes it quite different. And people wonder why I don't like the 'pop' groups these days .

Now I think about it, the closest thing I have is Strangers On A Train 'The Key', which is vaguely similar. It's a concept album. So far as I can tell, it's someone who has been saved from being sacrificed to appease a god in land of magic. well, that's how it seems - at first I thought they had been kidnapped and taken to this land; I'm not so sure now. It's quite odd too. Actually, that's an album I'll always associate with Doom, as it was music I listened to whilst working on getting the TNT levels (and some of the later Doom I levels) to work correctly.

Offer a life, Offer a life, To an angry god. Blood on the rocks, to quench the thirst; Blood on the ground, to lift the curse; Blood on the face, to save the land; She has come down, She is the key, She is the prayer, The Prophecy; She will provide, She will protect, She is the answer to our sacrifice. [ Sacrifice, from The Key Part 1 - The Prophecy, by Strangers On A Train ]

Just like a little girl, All of those years ago; I have to find the way, Back to the world I know; What has become of the Life I'm accustomed to ? Who are the people here ? Who are you ? Who are you ? This new world, it's a dream; This new world, can't be real; This new world, Help me! [ New World, from The Key Part 1 - The Prophecy, by Strangers On A Train ]

Two quotes from an album in one entry ? I must be quite taken by it, mustn't I. It's got lots of keyboards in it. How can I fail to love it .

Tonight has been another Charmed night. Unsurprising really, as it's on Living every week day . It's so cool to have a show I can watch regularly. Ok, so it means I have no life, but that's something I've accepted. We're going out with the family tomorrow. Apparently they're arriving at about 1ish.

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6 Jul 2000 (Thursday) 

I've had a chance to listen to Mostly Autumn's first album 'For All We Shared'.

1. Nowhere To Hide (close my eyes)

Quite a bouncey track; it's got a quite singable chorus and a nice beat too, which is quite nice for an opening track. Has a similar feel to 'Please'. Comparing to the subsequent album is odd, but it having that album first forces that. Definitely a catchy track.

I don't want to close my eyes, I don't want them open, And there's nowhere, nowhere to hide, In my head. [ Nowhere To Hide, from For All We Shared, by Mostly Autumn ]

2. Porcupine Rain

Quite a long instrumental introduction, moving into a beat similar to that on Nowhere To Hide. Not a memorable track. At least not on first listen.

3. The Last Climb

Mostly instrumental track. I found it to be a little 'shrill' for my tastes.

4. Heroes Never Die

At this point I'm getting increasingly annoyed because my headphones keep cutting out. Pretty keyboard work on this track.

5. Folklore

Almost a bagpipes like intro, and then we have a little um... violin, drums and cymbals section - almost a hornpipe, I think it would be... and then a short drum solo and some guitars.

6. Boundless Ocean

Guitars and keyboards, and some wind instrument. Quite a pretty track.

7. Shenanigans

Another instrumental in the vein of Shindig, which is great. And a big clatter of thunder at the end, running into...

8. Steal Away

A sung track, by a female singer. Starting out quite slow. Quite pretty; not as memorable as Evergreen, but has a lot of the feeling of The Gap Is Too Wide about it, certainly the end section.

9. Out Of The Inn

Starts in a pub, singing a song. Very bizarre; I'm not sure it's something I like, but it's a very interesting intro. The rest of the track is instrumental; it's a guitars and drums affair.

10. The Night Sky

Starts out very windy, sort of like Tubular Bells III. Ooh, and a quite Celtusy feel to it in places too, with undertones of Floyd.

Peter got stuck at Stanstead tonight because he missed his first flight and the second was delayed so there were no trains. Fortunately Dad picked him up. Isn't he wonderful ?!

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5 Jul 2000 (Wednesday) 

Watched "The Thomas Crown Affair" tonight. Which was quite cool. Oh, by the way, Angela got a 2.1 - yay! she's outdone me again Oh well .

Oh, I got a really lovely email about the diary from someone called Vanessa today. Thank you Vanessa - not Vanessa Illingworth, the other one. It's strange how people stumble upon the diary. I've not said much of interest recently, I know. Partly it's because at the end of the day (that is, just before I go to bed) I'm usually thinking "I need some sleep", rather than being in the mood to write up the day. Peter's in Glasgow today, and so I'm here on my own with Julia .

I've finally got a copy of 'Mockingbird' as the last diary entry probably testifies to. Mockingbird is a track that I grew up with and just know in my heart rather than knowing in my head. It's a track that will forever be Leeming to me. That's where I associate it with, because that's where I was when it was played most, I guess. I assume that other people have the same associations with certain music...

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4 Jul 2000 (Tuesday) 

Didn't have a care in the world, With Mummy and Daddy standing by; But Happily Ever After fails, And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales; Laywers dwell on small details, Since Daddy had to fly; [ The End Of The Innocence, from The End Of The Innocence, by Don Henley ]

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3 Jul 2000 (Monday) 

Cool command of the day :

*modules { | cut -c 5- { | cut -f 2,5 -d " " } }

List the base addresses and names of all of the modules currently running.

Fixed polyline in the SVG converter today, and added polygon.

Rain, Sea, Surf, Sea, Clouds and Sky; Hush now baby, don't you cry; There's a mocking bird, Singing songs in the tree; There's a mocking bird, Singing songs, Just for you and me. [ Mockingbird, from Barclay James Harvest, by Barclay James Harvest ]

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