Halloween today. Didn't go out trick-or-treating, again. Pretty sure it'd be a bit icky having me doing that anyhow . I had only 2 groups of kids coming around for trick-or-treating tonight, which surprised me.

I went to get some milk from Tesco's late this afternoon, but they had none left. Which will teach me to go late on a Sunday afternoon, really. Hey-ho.

The clocks changed today, too, so it's still a little skewed with time today. Feel very tired, but that's probably because it's 'really' after midnight now. I came to bed a little while back, but I'm still not asleep, so I'm writing this. Uh, obviously.

Been meaning to mention the quite cute back lot video for some of the blue-screen work in TV shows. It's amusing to see how much is faked up without being at all obvious - some things you'd really not expect.

And I probably mentioned the old Questionable Content comic that made me laugh with both fun dialogue and dune reference first time around, but I've been re-reading them as they've just brought out a new book of the strips. It's interesting how the drawing style of the comic has progressed.

It's embarassing when companies can't spell. Today, I came across this gem whilst reading some documentation on how to read eon smart meters (not that I have one, I was just curious as to what they do):

If you are not sure don't worry, simply right down everything that is displayed and we will do the rest [ Which is the right write ?; e.on ]

Pretty urgh today. I didn't sleep well, but don't remember any dreams. I woke up late, and wasn't really thinking so well most of the day. Felt I've got somewhere useful with work, but it was a very hard day. And this evening my hands haven't stopped shaking, which is probably from carrying the heater home as much as being tired and feeling sucky. I'm just about to go to bed, and they're nearly settled now - which, given that I went home at 6:20, is quite a while. It was a whole load of fun eating tea and trying to carry a glass.

Many small dreams last night; I really didn't sleep at all well. The earliest one I remember involved looking through lots of unmarked boxes for things that weren't meant to be in the boxes, and there being nobody else around. Eventually they all collapsed over me.

There was a dream following that where there was a blue crab-lobster-thing who was my friend and he died, because the sun made his shell get thicker and thicker and eventually it killed him in the bright sunshine.

Then there was one about trying to get away from some people that we'd (a group of four of us) had conned out of something or other, and we split up and raced through the underground in different directions (same underground that keeps coming back in the other recent dreams where I'm visiting town) before meeting up in a car to move on to another town.

I think following on from that, a couple of us went for food (in the Glasgow-like setting that seems to crop up now and then) and I couldn't eat my lobster 'cos it reminded me of my friend the blue-crab-lopster-thing.

And there was something about Caroline, continuing yesterday's theme but it's gone now. I remember she made some remark about my singing.

I think it's safe to say that I'm scared of going to sleep tonight because of the blue-lobster-crab-thing. That and the fact that I don't want to dream.

Re-reading a few Questionable Contents showed up a strip that I laughed a lot at.

I did a bit more on my random server code. It's code a few callbacks now. Golly.

My eyes have been itchy and tired for a few days. I was surprised when the little tiny Tesco express actually has eye drops in, though. So, I've got some sitting at work now. And I'm at home. Damn.

Last night's exciting dream involved trying to find somewhere to stay for the night for Caroline. She wasn't happy sleeping at any of the hotels - the bed wasn't comfortable, or the pool was wrong, or the sheets were the wrong colour. Eventually we found somewhere - the 8th floor of a B&B, and there was no bannister on the top floor at all. By the time we'd found somewhere I left, I didn't have time to go home to bed, so I went straight to work, stopping in the square (for some reason) to get changed into some smarter clothes.

Feeling icky and generally unhappy, and yet again had a "it's not the weekend tomorrow and I've got to go to work" thought this evening. I'm going to bed early to see if this improves my mood.

Casey: I dragged my former team half way across the desert, thus saving their mutinous lives. Chuck: Ok, then what happened ? Casey: I had them courts martialed. Of course they promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade... Chuck: ... to the Los Angeles underground, where they survived as soldiers of fortune. [ The A-Team; Chuck and Casey; Chuck ]

I choked on my tea whilst laughing.

I had another fun dream last night about not knowing where I was going when I started at school again. I couldn't find my bag on the second day because we'd changed registration rooms.

I thought today had gone really quite well until this evening when I began to feel it was pretty awful. I didn't get half the things done that I meant to. And it's just lonely tonight. And I've bitten my nails a whole lot. Which means I'm probably pretty worried about stuff.

I find it amusing that I've gone from doing ARM and C on RISC OS, which I care about, through C-based mobile development to Perl based tools development and API review, and finally on to Python tools, network diagnosing and policies. ... and by 'amusing', I obviously mean 'soul-crushingly depressing' [ Moving on; Me ]

And my fingers really are sore now.

Today I've been plagued - if you can say that about a thought that sits there like an unpaid bill on the side at home whilst you're trying to enjoy the beach on your holiday - by the question of where I am and where I'm going. It amuses me, in a sad way, that a few years ago I was working on an operating system, doing ARM and C code, managing the builds and releases and other bits, then I moved to doing development tools, API reviews and stuff in Perl, and now I'm trying to sort out odd network problems and writing perl and python, with a side order of procedures and evaluation.

Is that really what I want to do? And what sort of future will it lead to? I dunno the answer to either, and I guess you'd say apathy leaves me thinking that I'll just keep going until something changes. Which, we know it probably won't.

Then there's my personal life of which... well there's not a whole lot. I'm not sociable, really, and I'm still not so good at coming out of my shell. I realise I'm not going to have children, and there's not going to be anyone in my life to share things with. I'm not really ok with that, but there's not a lot I can do to change it. At least I can say I'm not ok with it.

And then one day you find Ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run You missed the starting gun [ Time, from Dark Side Of The Moon, by Pink Floyd ]

I would think that a single woman's biggest worry would be choking to death alone in her apartment. [ Choking to death ?; Jack; 30 Rock ]

Hmm. Does that mean I relate to it 'cos I'm closer to associating myself as a single woman, or that it's a non-gender speficic comment that Jack just turns on Liz ? And do I even care for the answer ?

I think it's also fair to point out that I'm watching Reggie Perrin (2009, BBC One)ComedyRevival of the 1970s sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Creator David Nobbs has co-written six new 30-minute episodes for this series, with the help of Men Behaving Badly writer Simon Nye. Reggie Perrin retells the story of a sales executive on the edge. An average man finding it increasingly difficult to put up with the monotony of life, the disappointing marriage, the office grind and the daily commute. Rebellion begins to build in his mind, in the form of increasingly surreal flights of fancy. And, slowly, Reggie begins to say what he really thinks, to his wife, to his boss, to his fellow commuters... and, most dangerously of all, to his new colleague, the beautiful Jasmine Strauss. Executive producer Phil Clarke told Broadcast magazine that this project (Objective's first studio sitcom and its first comedy commission for BBC1) is aiming to deliver an accessible family show for a pre-watershed slot. Martin Clunes plays the lead character, and an impressive cast list including Wendy Craig and Geoffrey Whitehead back him up. Clarke continues: "Reggie's still a man in crisis with the modern world, but what's interesting is to look at where the world has changed since the 1970s and where it hasn't. He won't, for example, dictate memos to his secretary and he'll be using email. It's an opportunity to comment on the modern world without being heavy-handed."Reggie Perrin because it's likely to be bad (and therefore good for putting me to sleep) and matches my mood, and not that my mood has been reduced by watching it. Although, it has because somehow it goes get across the sheer futility and frustration of Reggie in the original. Which is a bit sad.

There's also the repeated frustration that I've got lots of telly that I've recorded for people who aren't here - for Dad, or Simon, or Caroline, or just because someone might want it. Is that really sensible? I keep asking myself but keep doing it anyhow.

My right eye's been feeling very tired these last couple of days. Not the eye that something flew into on Friday, either, so it's not 'cos of that.

With that, I return to Reggie and the hope that I can sleep uninterrupted tonight.

Really, really sucky dream last night where I was (for some reason) hiding from my parents because they weren't very nice (not sure where that came from), with Caroline. But somehow I managed to get her annoyed, and she packed her things and left. And then a little while later she came back and I managed somehow to annoy her again, and I knew she'd never want to come back.

I've just spent a few hours trying to determine the network structure using information gleaned from SNMP, nmap and a bit of brute force. I've got something that's 'kinda' right being generated automatically. It's all a bit unfun. Although it's kept me amused for about 4 hours. It being now 3am, though, it might have been better to use that time for sleeping. What with feeling icky all day because of dream, and worrying about travelling next month, and other minor things, I've not felt like sleeping.

I've spent a lot of today reading policy documents, which may have had something to do with having more inclination to write code.

I wonder if I might be ill or something. The last couple of weeks I've woken up feeling tired and with a headache, and I've been hungry all the time despite eating more than usual, and I've been finding it hard to concentrate. Maybe it's just generally being tired.

Tired today. Possibly due to playing a lot of 'Bookworm Adventures'. I mentioned it to Chris and he said it sounded like a kids game - well it is a game where you spell words from a random rack of them and do better for longer words. But it's good fun - I've been enjoying it, 'cos I can at least try to pick out some clever words.

Tonight I'm writing a very basic message encoder for passing around data reasonably efficiently. Similarity to ATS is entirely intententional - I know the way it worked, but I have some ideas on how to do things a little differently and in any case I'm doing it all from scratch. I don't actually expect to do much like ATS; it's just the message protocol which is the same really, which is mainly because it's pretty obvious and simple. I thought about using one of the other, 'standard' encoding formats, but from experience with ATS I know that unconstrained formats tend to not scale so well. I did quite a good job on making the server run efficiently, even on 32bit environments it ran in. And my server's even more constrained.

Anyhow, it's taken me a bit to write a simple lump of code to do the basic bits of encode and decode and about 3 times as long to get even rudimentary tests written - and I'm going to need a few more 'cos there's lots of odd ways the code might fail which I should test.

I've also updated the local fetcher so that it fetches the fanart from TVDB. Not too complicated, but it may as well be downloaded. It's not complicated to fetch, but it'll test the new videocollection code as well.

I've finished off some of my video collection filename processing regression tests. They're a bit tedious but they're probably good enough to ensure I don't break things if I change things. I've also started replacing the old code with some calls to the new code. Hopefully it'll all work in tonight's processing.

My head is feeling a bit funny. The top right of my head keeps feeling like there's something there itching. I've washed my hair lots so I'm pretty certain it's not anything outside my head. But it's annoyng me.

"You might want to put a muzzle on him" "Don't mind him, he just longs for the old days when us police had more power than you tabloids" "Really ? Wow, you must be very old..." [ Very old?; New Tricks ]

I've been watching New Tricks (2004, BBC One)DramaNew Tricks is a BBC television drama series which follows the work of the Metropolitan Police Service's Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad (UCOS). Led by Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman, it is made up of retired police officers who have been recruited to reinvestigate unsolved crimes.New Tricks this afternoon, and finishing off some of the regression tests for my video-filename processor. Of all the problems I found whilst writing the tests, the most fun one was "Series 7- The Contenders (2001)Comedy, ThrillerEver seen the show "Survivor" and wished they would just start killing each other?? Series 7 literally gives its contestants the guns. The film is not merely a satire on reality TV. It is an example of just how far people will shamelessly go for fame. 6 contenders are pitted against each other in a no holds barred, kill or be killed contest. The reigning champ is Dawn, a hard-nosed, mother-to-be. We go back and forth between Dawn and the other 5 contenders to see if someone can dethrone Dawn and become the new Champion. What is the prize? How are the contestants picked? These questions are not as important as asking yourself how shameless has our society become?Series 7- The Contenders" , which it seemed to mangle because of the 'Series 7' in it. Anyhow, the regression tests are now written, the problems fixed, and a comparison with the old function shows that the only differences are in ways that are better.

So... I'll have to actually use the new routine instead of the old soon. Converting stuff to use the new funtion shouldn't be that hard, but there's a likelihood that a few files will actually have to move - the rules have changed on where certain files live, mostly on extras and ISOs, so I'll probably have to faff around a little to get them to the new locations.

Someone found a funky Optical illusion which made my eyes go funny - it's not one that I've seen before.

I've had a very confused day. I managed to keep myself on track mostly until I got home, but then got worse. I came upstairs 3 times for paracetemol but forgot until I was back downstairs again. And now I'm sitting here writing this I'm certain there was something else I forgot, but... I can't remember it.

I made the perl IMDB module work with my patches, too. So hopefully mythweb will show the right colours now.

I've now got two working speakers in the bedroom. Previously I was using the old stereo I'd had when I was at university - and it should still be working, damn it! - and which no longer seemed to put anything out of the left speaker. So I've dug out the spare amp I've got lying around and stuck that on the system. Together with a bit of extended speaker wire it now drives both speakers and the amp's hidden under one of the units. Plus I've wired up the media box to it as well, so instead of having the icky tinny TV speakers playing, I now have the much better stereo speakers. It's not perfect but it's a world better.

Someone pointed to a rather fun video showing examples of blue/green screen filmed scenes and how they're composited. It's really quite neat to see some - particularly good are the constructed Russian town scene (I think it is), and the burning boat.

I came up with an excellent idea for a product yesterday, but I'm not sure it'd ever sell - it'd be quite cool though. I also came up with an idea for something neat for keeping your laptop cool, but that too, probably wouldn't be worthwhile.

I would scale the mountains on high I would walk through the wind and rain For your love I would remain Forever more locked in chains [ Beyond The Dark, from Moonchild, by Celtus ]

It's been ages since I've listened to Moonchild, and it made a nice break this evening - whilst testing out the speakers .

And it's just been followed in the random playback by Second Love, from Remedy Lane, by Pain Of Salvation, which amused me 'cos I was listening to The Perfect Element (Part I) this afternoon until I got distracted by needing more concentration. Sometimes music helps, and sometimes it hinders. Ashes and a few others hinder if you're not able to write stuff on auto-pilot.

All the things we took for granted The words still live on in my head All the times I took for granted All the words I never said. [ Stars All Seem To Weep, from Central Reservation, by Beth Orton ]

I like my evening selection of music. I'd change it but it's friendly and very 'me'. And hard to turn off because I wonder what comes next and I'm sure I'll like it.

I've still not fixed the IMDB module, so don't have nice info out of MythTV at the moment, which is a little naff. Maybe another evening this week.

I'm trying not to think about the fact that I'm on my own in the evenings now. It bothered me a bit yesterday as I wouldn't get to go back home with Caroline. I know Simon wasn't around much before, but just knowing that he would be was nice. "It's lonely out here, too"

I decided to install Master Levels For DOOM II to see how well it works, because I'd forgotten how bad it was. For some reason, for the Steam release they essentially just run DOSBox. The Mater Levels is actually a harness around Doom II which runs in a DOS text mode (with those fun text 'window' interfaces that they had back them) to select all the options you might want - the Wad file, the parameters to launch with, what level, what sort of death match, how to use the modem to dial the remote machine...

It's all rather embarrassing. Really you expect to have things like resolution selection, key bindings, and improved bitdepth. The working MIDI was nice but... the lack of high resolution, the lack of overlay map, and overlaid health, and the keybindings themselves being awkward just mean that it's really quite icky.

I realise that I'd already tried this before and came to the same conclusion, but... I dunno... I thought maybe I missed something.

I've moved the server today, because I was fed up with it sitting in the living room. It's just annoying having it humming away in there, and taking up room. And it was humming quite a bit - one of the boxes has a PSU that's quite loud. So I've moved it under the stairs, which means it's got less ventilation, but it's out of the way. I may need to leave the door open to keep it cool. The living room's much quieter now which makes me feel less bad about it - and there aren't a bunch of boxes in there, looking messy.

I took the opportunity to stick the power meter on the main socket as well. It looks like...

• 218W for all the media drives spun up (9 drives).
• 166W for all the media drives slept.
• 150W for just the server (2 external drive boxes of media discs turned off).

Which means that the 9 discs+slept drives takes 16W. The drives themselves take 0.7W each for the Western Digitals (8 drives) and 1W each for the single Samsung, in slept mode. So that's 6.6W for the drives and therefore the 2 drive boxes take about 9.4W, or about 4.7W each.

It's interesting what the drive specifications are really. I usually go for the WD Caviar Green's because the discs will sit idle or sleeping most of the day and fast access speed isn't usually a priority.

Data taken from WD and Samsung's specifications of the drives. WDC Blue included for comparison - I don't use them in the drive bays generally, as they're not so appropriate for what I use them for. I realise the drive sizes differ, and that they don't cover all the drives I have in the bays anyhow - I have different sizes in there because the drives were bought at different times.

IMDB's changed recently - the pages have all been restyled. It's generally harder to find stuff now 'cos where I knew where I was looking, I now no longer know. More importantly the CPAN IMDB module's no longer finding anything either. Or rather, it finds some bits but others it struggles with - in particular the ratings are causing me headaches at the moment because I'd usually use that information to populate my MythTV listings for films. The information from Radio Times doesn't give genres usefully, so mostly I populate the info in the schedules from IMDB using the Radio Times scheduling title and year as a reference for the IMDB lookup.

I may look at fixing that tomorrow or something, depending on how tired I am when I get home.

Spoke to Caroline this evening, too. She's had a quite tiring weekend, probably not helped by staying up with me last week. But hopefully she'll get some rest tonight. It's been nice to chat to her, despite it being only a day since I'd seen her. The house is a little lonely without her, but then I'd feel that way anyhow - it's lonely without Simon, too.

Too tired to write much more tonight.

Caroline's gone home today, and I've slept from about 12 until 5pm, and then again from 5:30 till 7pm. Too many late nights watching telly and chatting. It's been nice, apart from being ill this week. Got to see a few things, including the first two "Omen (1976)Horror, MysteryRobert and Katherine Thorn seem to have it all. He is the US Ambassador to Italy and they want for nothing in their lives, except one thing: they do not have children. When Katharine has a stillborn child, Robert is approached by a priest at the hospital who suggest that he take a healthy newborn whose mother has just died in childbirth. Without telling his wife he agrees to to so but after relocating to London, strange events - and the ominous warnings of a priest - lead him to believe that the child he took from that Italian hospital is evil incarnate.Omen" films, which I'd not seen before, and Fairy Tales (2008, BBC One)Drama/Mini-SeriesFour contemporary adaptations of classic fairy tales, Rapunzel, Cinderella, The Emperor's New Clothes and Billy Goats Gruff.Fairy Tales, which I'd borrowed from LoveFilm and was quite fun - well the Rapunzel and Cinderella stories were, and the other two weren't quite so good.

She's not back here for another month, so it's back to having the empty house. That's nice too, but in a lesser way - it's nice to have the place to myself but then there's nobody to come home to which is still a little sad. Oh well.

I've caught up, this evening, with a few things on TV - as I've not seen anything for about 2 weeks.

We use Perforce at work - it's not something that I've used much before but I'm getting the hang of it. Jarrod's just shown me a very neat monitoring application for Android that'll tell you lots of stuff about the server and monitor the changes and stuff. I could do - at some point - with getting a new phone anyhow, and it's stuff like that that's more useful in general.

Ian passed some very cute hologram videos to us this afternoon - rather neat panels for viewing 3D plans. And a multi-level view.

Oh, and exciting thing today... Caroline pointed out that my laptop has multi-touch scratch pad on it which works for zooming in Opera.

I wonder how I wonder why Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon-tree I'm turning my head up and down I'm turning turning, turning, turning, turning around And all that I can see is just another lemon-tree [ Lemon Tree, from Dish Of The Day, by Fool's Garden ]

I had a couple of songs in my head this morning, and didn't really want to go around humming them, so I decided to find something that I didn't understand. So I chose Baladas En Espanol, by Roxette which was quite fun, albeith 'Crash! Boom! Bang!' sounds the same .

It's after midnight, I'm tired an I've had a pretty good day all around. Taking a branch at work was both less and more painful than I'd expected. Minor wrinkles which have now been sorted except one that I'll deal with tomorrow. Caroline seemed happier this evening, although tired, so she's asleep now - and I probably should be, too.

I didn't sleep well at all last night, and kept ending up switching from one side of the bed to the other, and didn't sleep until about 3am. I did watch a House (2004, FOX)DramaGo deeper into the medical mysteries of House, TV's most compelling drama. Hugh Laurie stars as the brilliant but sarcastic Dr. Gregory House, a maverick physician who is devoid of bedside manner. While his behavior can border on antisocial, Dr. House thrives on the challenge of solving the medical puzzles that other doctors give up on. Together with his hand-picked team of young medical experts, he'll do whatever it takes in the race against the clock to solve the case.House yesterday and it was really quite sucky. The thing that got cured was... food poisoning. Hardly a stretch, and the story to there wasn't that interesting.

Discussions at work today turned to having UPS, and surprise that I'd got one - Matthias has too, but then he's got a better setup than I. However Andy pointed out that there were some reasonable places that did off-site backups. Not sure how sane that is in general, but it might help make me feel a little more secure about things if stuff went wrong.

Music today has been Take My Head, by Archive and Lights, by Archive which has been an odd combination.

I've been walking through the park I've been walking in the dark I've been walking in the rain I've been walking with so much pain I've been walking in the sun And it's bought me so much fun Lyin' on a beach Darkness out of reach The world is not so cold But still it makes me fold [ Fold, from Lights, by Archive ]

The obvious end-word rhymes make it seem less sweet, but I rather like it. Makes a bit of a difference to You All Look The Same To Me.

I came up with something yesterday which I reckon is a pretty funky idea but I've now forgotten it. Caroline suggested I should write it down at the time, but I completely forgot.

Ooh, and I recognised Kyle Chandler in a clip from Grey's Anatomy in a 'TV blunders' type programme.

It's been quite a crappy weekend really. I've spent all of it trying to sort out some TV series into some sort of order, removing dupes and ensuring that they're all in the right place. I enjoy it, but it's fundamentally flawed in that I'm not really caring that much about the content. Like many things, I ask myself what's the point ? But then can't offer much of a good answer.

I did discover that Alyson Hannigan is in How I Met You Mother for the entire series, and Sarah Chalke's in a few episodes too. Only one of the films that I ended up sorting was actually disturbing, too. Although, saying that, there usually aren't that many films my collection in my collection that bother me. I do tend to avoid horror and a some of the other related genres though, so that's probably the reason.

I spoke to Dad earlier, and amongst various things I mentioned about coming over later in the year. Probably around November. Really need to work something out for that.

I've still not got around to watching some telly - I've not yet seen the last couple of episodes of Warehouse 13 (2009, Syfy)Action and Adventure/FantasyAfter saving the life of an international diplomat in Washington D.C., a pair of U.S. Secret Service agents are whisked away to a covert location in South Dakota that houses supernatural objects that the U.S. Government has collected over the centuries. Their new assignment: retrieve some of the missing objects and investigate reports of new ones.Warehouse 13, a Chuck (2007, NBC)Action and Adventure/Comedy/DramaChuck Bartowski, ace computer geek at Buy More, is not in his right mind. That's a good thing. Ever since he unwittingly downloaded stolen government secrets into his brain, action, excitement and a cool secret- agent girlfriend have entered his life. It's a bad thing, too. Because now Chuck is in danger 24/7.Chuck, a Castle (2009, ABC)DramaRick Castle is one of the world's most successful crime authors. But when his rock star lifestyle isn't enough, this bad boy goes looking for new trouble and finds it working with smart, beautiful Detective Kate Beckett. Inspired by her professional record and intrigued by her buttoned-up personality, Castle's found the model for his bold new character whether she likes it or not. Now with the mayor's permission, Castle is on her case and in her way. Kate's initial disdain for Castle turns to grudging respect as he quickly proves that a background in plotting murders can be a valuable asset in catching killers. As they solve a new crime together each week, their partnership grows as does their love-hate relationship. These two may not always see eye to eye, but together they might just write a whole new chapter in crime-solving.Castle, and a House (2004, FOX)DramaGo deeper into the medical mysteries of House, TV's most compelling drama. Hugh Laurie stars as the brilliant but sarcastic Dr. Gregory House, a maverick physician who is devoid of bedside manner. While his behavior can border on antisocial, Dr. House thrives on the challenge of solving the medical puzzles that other doctors give up on. Together with his hand-picked team of young medical experts, he'll do whatever it takes in the race against the clock to solve the case.House.

I want to tell, if I am or am not myself; It's hard to know, how far or if at all could go. Waiting far too long, for something I forgot was wrong. I don't know all the answers I think that I'll find Or have it within the time but it's all that I'll have in mind [ Until I Fall Away, from New Miserable Experience, by Gin Blossoms ]

I'm still not completely sure about the song, but despite the ambiguity, I think I can relate to it. I'm pretty certain that they're saying they can't work out where they are and whether they're doing the right thing (clearly), but there's also a general pessimism through the song that just says it's all going to fall apart.

I was thinking about whether I want to stay here and the hassle of moving again and stuff, and - from what was being discussed last week with people - how I feel about my home and stuff. I don't really like the way things are at the moment. That's been the case for some time, and it's not really improved that much - I've been waiting and hoping that something would improve to change things, but nothing I've done, or that's happened has really improved. It's possible that I'm just tired again and shouldn't think about it so much - Chris Williams suggested as much earlier this evening.

I woke up this morning from a dream that our new VP of Engineering was giving everyone written and physical tests which lasted a couple of days and that I wasn't doing very well.

Over the last few days I've learnt a bunch of new stuff, of which I can't remember much , or I do remember but don't want to include here . I've also been very tired today and not done much other than trying to organise some stuff for Caroline and myself.

I spoke briefly to Claire last night, and she seems well - she's sent me some lovely pictures that I need to forward on to Dad soon. I keep meaning to reply to Sue but I've been too tired to catch up on her last mail - and I've not heard from Christina in ages and I've got myself a little worried about her. I'm sure she's fine but I still worry a little 'cos I'm me. It was nice to chat to Claire though and hear that things were all going quite amicably.

This last week it's been very obvious that I'm scared of things and don't always deal with them in a sensible way. Still, I've been working here for 2 months now, and living on my own (albeit seeing Caroline quite a bit, so not really on my own) and haven't quite gone mad. I was, however, very tired and pretty unhappy on Friday and was nearly in tears at one point. Went and sat in the toilets for a bit and that helped calm me down. The lesson to learn there (well, relearn, 'cos I know it quite well) is that a tired Justin is a irrational/emotional Justin.

Talking this evening to Alex about general stuff led on to talking about buying a house. I'm still renting and that's going to be the way for a bit, I think. I've been trying to think about it differently, but it's still in my head as something I'll do when I'm settled with someone and know where I want to be. I can't say that Cambridge is the place for me right now - maybe it will be in the future, but at the moment I'm not too bothered. I miss Reading - well, more specifically I miss being close to the town centre and the train station, and stuff like that.

Anyhow, it's late and I wanted to make sure I wasn't so tired when Caroline arrives tomorrow - because of the tiredness thing that I mentioned. So I might just watch 30 Rock (2006, NBC)ComedyEmmy Award Winner Tina Fey writes, executive produces and stars as Liz Lemon, the head writer of a live variety programme in New York City. Liz's life is turned upside down when brash new network executive Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin in his Golden Globe winning role) interferes with her show, bringing the wildly unpredictable Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) into the cast. Now its up to Liz to manage the mayhem and still try to have a life. 30 Rock and then try sleep.

Quite tired and achey this morning. Probably has something to do with going to sleep quite late and resting awkwardly on my arm and side. Shouldn't complain, but... ouch. It's been nice having Caroline here this week, but it's left me tireder than usual. We've been watching telly until a lot later than I would usually do so, this week. Which is nice - I get to spend time with her. We watched Sherlock (2010, BBC One)Action and Adventure/Drama/Mini-SeriesSherlock Holmes and Dr Watson's adventures in 21st Century London. A thrilling, funny, fast-paced contemporary remake of the Arthur Conan Doyle classic. The update maintains some traditional elements of the stories, such as the Baker Street address and the evil Moriarty. Although the events of the books are transferred to the present day, existing elements are incorporated into the new characters to "ground the forthcoming tales in reality, and appease ardent fans of the classic tales"; for example, Martin Freeman's Watson has returned from military service in Afghanistan. When speaking to The Sherlock Holmes Society of London and discussing the fact that the original Watson was invalided home after serving in the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), Gatiss realised that "It is the same war now, I thought. The same unwinnable war".Sherlock again - still really good to watch a second time around. She's gone home this evening, so I won't see her until Sunday.

Keep those clouds dispersing. Never leave my side. [ Fold, from Lights, by Archive ]

So, this weekend I've got a couple of plans - one is to sort out some more videos, another is to try to sort more of her videos . I think I've got some things I need to finish for work which I just couldn't get very far with today - although I was doing stuff, it all took a lot longer than I expected and I wanted to get stuff ready for Monday. I couldn't find much music to try to be sufficiently hard, to keep me awake and not too bouncey, so I settled on Lights, by Archive which has a sufficiently good ratio of heavier to melancholic for today. Not that it's that heavy, but it was a good level.