30 Apr 2005 (Saturday) 

Hannah's brother was having problems setting up broadband so I'm currently trying to sort that out which is amusing. Annoyingly, I got close to nowhere with it. Friggin' useless.

One slip, and down the hole we fall It seems to take no time at all A momentary lapse of reason That binds a life for life A small regret, you won't forget, There'll be no sleep in here tonight Was it love, or was it the idea of being in love? Or was it the hand of fate, that seemed to fit just like a glove? The moment slipped by and soon the seeds were sown The year grew late and neither one wanted to remain alone [ One Slip, from A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, by Pink Floyd ]

I moved around some bits and pieces on the site today. The recently private, and previously on NTL, webcam has now moved to a new place on the site. And we've also got the thrilling (yeah, sarcasm) 'currently playing' page around there too.

The highlight of the week was Doctor Who, again. It's about the only particularly good thing happening at the moment really. Dalek's are just scary. Much more of the backstory opened up this time; apparently the Dalek's are all dead, in the same war - why do I get the feeling that the 'ultimate solution' (my words) took care of both the Daleks and the Time Lords ? I felt sorry for the Dalek at the end. Which was the point I think, but still... there's also the question of the Doctor being so torn between his morals and his outright hatred of the Daleks. I'm not sure; this Doctor seems a little more judgemental than I remember the others being.

I was pondering the idea of making the songquote macro expand into a search for the full lyrics for the track. I'm not sure quite how successful that might be, though. The alternative is that I could export the lyrics myself from the collected database. It's pretty complete now, so it wouldn't be all that hard to integrate the two. Just pull the lyric from the database whenever the track was referenced. With a little thought the whole thing could be done through an SQL database with the lyrics in. Of course, ensuring that the lyrics were correct might be more of a problem. It's surprising that these lyric sites manage to make money out of just giving text pages. Or maybe it's not. I don't know really.

I've just been testing the new 'link things to a google search' thing for the 'Quotes' page. It's fine for many of the tracks. Archive's things don't work well, mainly because 'Archive' is a quite common word. Amusingly, Final Conflict's 'Last act' gets linked to my diary from Google. Sadly to the lyrics quiz, so it's not so useful. Some link to just pages about the artist which is less useful, but it's better than a kick in the teeth.

The most amusing one must be the search for "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood which ends up at a Google maps search for "2 Tribes Lyrics Frankie Goes To, Hollywood, FL". Not entirely useful.

I got very bothered earlier today. Not by the things that bother me usually, but by the little girl across the road. Not because she was a little girl, but because she's using some huge shears to cut the hedge and I'm just thinking "good god, please be careful... don't wave them around... oh, I can't watch". Maybe I'm just a little bit... something.

To be honest, I'm not all that impressed with the linking like that.

Spent a while chatting to Hannah today. I think I kinda rambled and ranted a little which might have been a little uncomfortable for her.

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29 Apr 2005 (Friday) 

A few days ago, whilst populating the MP3 player I noticed the Air Supply directory. I don't go in there. Like I don't listen to Forever Autumn, by Justin Hayward or the James Bond themes. Well, maybe not so like the James Bond themes, but they all have associations that I just don't try to pull out. The reason for Air Supply is that I remmber many days of going to Sixth Form with 'All Out Of Love' floating through my mind. I'd forgotten, but I remember that now. Frustrating.

I kept everything inside and even though I tried it all fell apart What it meant to me will eventually be a memory of a time when... I tried so hard And got so far But in the end It doesn't even matter [ In The End, from Hybrid Theory, by Linkin Park ]

It appears that Windows XP installer doesn't support USB mice - or possibly my mouse doesn't work. In any case, it doesn't support hot-plugging the PS/2 mouse. Ah; looks like it was just my USB mouse that was dead. Replacing the batteries helped.

I'm still very tempted to do the daily 'this is what's playing' update thing. It's not all that hard really; it just takes a little bit of work to get it to a sensible state because to make it 'like every other fool's blog' style it needs to be a little more... extensive.

Make the best of what's given you Everything will come in time Why deny yourself ? Don't just let life pass you by Like Winter in July [ Winter In July, by Bomb The Bass ]

And I wonder if you know How it really feels To be left outside alone When it's cold out here Well maybe you should know Just how it feels To be left outside alone [ Left Outside Alone, from Anastacia, by Anastacia ]

She can't remember a time When she felt needed If love was red then she was colour-blind All her friends they've been tried for treason And crimes that were never defined [ To The Moon And Back, from Savage Garden, by Savage Garden ]

I'm going crazy A little at a time And everything I wanted Is now driving me away I woke this morning To the sound of beating hearts Mine is full of questions And it's tearing yours apart... [ Home, from Sheryl Crow, by Sheryl Crow ]

Yeah, I'm just in a song-lyric-quoting place at the moment.

Apparently Helen's off to Poland next week, which is quite cool.

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28 Apr 2005 (Thursday) 

Stuff happened today; some of it was interesting. Oh, and Julian's present arrived.

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27 Apr 2005 (Wednesday) 

Looks like Sue's hurt her foot so we can't meet up tomorrow. Oh well.

Why do we crucify ourselves ? Every day I crucify myself ... Got enough guilt to start my own religion [ Crucify, from Little Earthquakes, by Tori Amos ]

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26 Apr 2005 (Tuesday) 

New MP3 player arrived today.

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25 Apr 2005 (Monday) 

Last night was not overly fun.

I would search this world for you Even though you can't imagine [ Dragging Me Down, by Inspiral Carpets ]

Only I didn't.

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24 Apr 2005 (Sunday) 

I'm not sure what I've achieved today. I plugged in a couple of leads that dad bought. Yes, I think that's the entire day's stuff.

Gathering comforting remains I was unprepared, running scared Faltering, and why do I hold on? It's gone, I know [ Fading Senses, from Ever, by IQ ]

Julian's quoting Thirteen Days, by John Wesley. I find 'Rome Is Burning' to be a track that I come back to more. Really the track says "this is your fault" which is not how I like to think about it. I tend to think about it from the other side; "what have I done?". The problem with 'Thirteen days' is that it's more angry than I am.

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23 Apr 2005 (Saturday) 

Yesterday was not so good. I just went back to bed.

Spent most of the evening chatting to Julian on the phone. He's a 'little down' at the moment for a very specific reason. He, too, mentioned about the 'private entry' thing in the diary was odd. And he mentioned some things that annoy him about me, which I'll try to sort. Maybe. I've seen part of his passworded diary though; I can see what he means about the private entries being a little bit odd if you've used something like what he's done. His diary is... well, it's a little bit cleverer than mine, although based on different principles.

Julian (obviously) likes his lyrics too. His are more ecclectic than mine, though, although the Counting Crows-specific ones are from later albums than the ones I cite.

I thought "I'll have a good day today. I'll do something useful". So I decided to transfer the CD player from upstairs which has the remote control on it. Which I did. Yay. Only the player isn't actually the one for which the remote works. So that was less than good. However, I reckon there's a very easy way to wire up the amp and speakers so that we can have a better 'home cinema' type thingy, and part of the advantage with that would be that we could lose the CD player because the DVD player would do a better job, really - plus it has a remote. Well, two if you count the multi-remote thing.

On the plus side, I did ring a couple of people that I said I would. And I did play a few hours of Civilisation which I said I wouldn't. Ah well.

Maybe I just think Caroline should be the person she was when I knew her, and I don't how, even through everything, she can have just accepted changing herself.

Years go by, will I still be waiting for somebody else to understand Years go by, if I'm stripped of my beauty, and the orange clouds raining in my head Years go by, will I choke on my tears till finally there is nothing left [ Silent All These Years, from Little Earthquakes, by Tori Amos ]

So it's better this way, I said Having seen this place before Where everything we said and did Hurts us all the more [ Full Of Grace, from Surfacing, by Sarah McLachlan ]

I think I may have Julian's birthday presents sorted. Miracles may happen. Maybe I should organise Simon's. Actually it's being hard to sort out.

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21 Apr 2005 (Thursday) 

I made a list of things to do yesterday. I managed to do none of them. However, I got them done today. So that at least makes me feel not-so-useless.

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19 Apr 2005 (Tuesday) 

Someone anonymously provided a comment on the diary :

Isn't the point of a web page that the stuff on there is public? What's the point in having private entries?

To quote from the diary 'about' page - "It's a diary for me that I make available to you.", "For reasons of contractual necessity, refraining from abusiveness, or general politeness there are sections which have been 'hidden' or have not been written about.".

I make the diary available to the public on my terms. If I want to say something, I will. If you don't like what I say, then fine. If you don't like that I don't say anything, then fine. I don't care whether you or anyone else reads the diary, and I am slave to nobody for the Diary. The reasons that the diary entry over the past few weeks remains private is very simple - they cover aspects of my life which are strongly related to people I know and whose lives are not public knowledge and I will not discuss in public. I'm happy to talk about my general life, my obsessiveness, my dreams, and my interactions with people. I'm not happy to reveal aspects of my life which are directly related to other people and which are nobody else's business but ours. The reasons and circumstances over the past week are my business. And so we have private entries. If you look back through the diary you will see many such private entries listed - usually in the form of comments.

Now we come to the reason that these entries are visible to the outside world - it's a technical reason. All text is wrapped up in a 'day' for the entry. Withing that entry there may be any number of visible regions and any number of 'private' regions. In the cases over the past month, there has been no content which I have wished to make public. But the entries still require a 'day' container, otherwise they won't be associated with the diary at all. As such, I chose to just make a small visible region that states that the entry is entirely private; then the entry doesn't just appear as a date with no text.

As for the specific comment about a 'web page being that the stuff is public', that doesn't follow in any case. Web pages can be public, private, or anywhere in between through a mixture of access attributes, permissions or other attributes, not to mention content negotiation.

If anyone who is directly involved with entries which have been listed as private wishes to see them then I might choose to disclose their content as I would prefer to be open about myself where appropriate, but if anonymous person, or Joe Bloggs from around the corner says "what's the private entry last week say" then I'm not disclosing things.

At the end of the day, if I say I don't want to talk about things in public, that's just the way it goes.

Anyhow, I don't need to justify myself to the outside world, only to provide explanation if I want.

I spoke to Phil this evening! Wow. He seems like he's mostly got himself together. He's working at ProZone now, apparently. It sounds like for the most part he's got a pretty cool life, although he's hurt himself running recently which I do hope doesn't turn out to be serious. He's invited me up there sometime, so I think I might take him up on the offer; it'd make a nice change of scene and give me an opportunity to see how Things Should Be Done . It's odd, I have this feeling that I let Phil do a lot of the talking about how he'd been. I don't really have that much to tell so I guess that's it. It's actually 2001 when I last spoke to Phil - that's a whole long time ago!

And I got an SMS saying that the mis-addressed diary email hadn't been read by the recipient, which is - I think - a good thing. I don't know. Maybe if they had read it and yelled at me it might be better. Helen once said to me that it would be a whole lot better if we said what we mean. Whilst that's a great maxim, opening your own private thoughts about someone to them - whether they're good or bad - may not necessarily be the best of things.

Had my hair cut today. It's shorter.

And the KiSS DP-1000 DVD player arrived today, too. Which means that playing a DVD isn't now a constant strain - the old player was having a very bad time - plus I can watch DivX films, and view the JPEG-CDs as well, which is rather nice.

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18 Apr 2005 (Monday) 

Little chat to Andrew today. Weird. And yesterday I accidentally transposed the email address and subject and sent someone a diary entry without realising. Fortunately I noticed after an hour or so that it had not arrived (I email entries to myself as reminders 'cos it's easier than having to be at the right computer) and sent them a big bold "Please don't read the other mail" email. If they read it then... well, there isn't much more I can do. At least I've not had an angry phone call with "Is that what you really think of me ?", so that's a good thing.

Don't do anything when tired. That's a good motto.

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17 Apr 2005 (Sunday) 

A bit of private stuff today, but... Phil and Katie got Married! I looked him up earlier today and found that he and Katie are married now. I haven't spoken to Phil in about 2 years - and still haven't. I did speak briefly to Katie and she was really nice. It's a long time ago and I don't really remember her so well, I'm afraid. I do remember a lot of Phil talking about her though .

Noted earlier:
Wow. Philip Tordoff and Katie got married a couple of years ago. That's... like, wow. Well, a big congratulations to them. They're still in Doncaster. I only spoke to Katie briefly today but it was nice to hear that they were both well and happy. Phil apparently wants to do the Marathon. Coo.

And there's a note here that I've screwed up the order of entries in the '93, '94 and '95 diary. I'm not sure that I can be bothered to sort them out now. Oh, it appears that I can be bothered. That was a little bit painful.

I think I got to sleep today from about 10am to 1pm. I should be tired, but I'm not now. I would prefer to be tired so that I'm not dreaming. And so that I'm not thinking too much .

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16 Apr 2005 (Saturday) 

I updated the diary to have a Summaries page today. Yes, all of an hour spent doing that. That's the most code I've written in two weeks, I think; all of 902 bytes. And most of that was copied from elsewhere.

And there's an obligitory private entry too.

Caroline hasn't replied to my last email, which given that I asked her not to talk to me is understandable. Still, I had kinda hoped she'd reply.

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15 Apr 2005 (Friday) 

All alone, staring on Watching her life go by When her days are grey And her nights are black Different shades of mundane And the one eyed furry toy That lies upon the bed Has often heard her cry And heard her whisper out a name Long forgiven, but not forgotten [ Forgiven Not Forgotten, from Forgiven not Forgotten, by The Corrs ]

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14 Apr 2005 (Thursday) 

Private entry, I'm afraid.

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13 Apr 2005 (Wednesday) 

Private entry, I'm afraid.

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10 Apr 2005 (Sunday) 

Private entry, I'm afraid.

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9 Apr 2005 (Saturday) 

Private entry, I'm afraid.

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8 Apr 2005 (Friday) 

Private entry, I'm afraid.

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7 Apr 2005 (Thursday) 

Private entry, I'm afraid.

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5 Apr 2005 (Tuesday) 

Private entry, I'm afraid.

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4 Apr 2005 (Monday) 

Private entry, I'm afraid.

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1 Apr 2005 (Friday) 

Private entry, I'm afraid.

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