Caboose

I’ve been fiddling around with some of the template for this site, to try split things up a bit more. It’s now easier for me to add links (have a look in the column to the right).

The next thing will be some serious thinking about how to integrate the Journeys section of the site with this part. A good start would be including it in search results… tricky…

As I was driving through Cambridge this morning it seemed that an unusually high number of people were carrying buckets. Must just be one of those things, once I noticed the first one I was more likely to notice others.

Or maybe it’s some kind of weird conspiracy?

OK, I’m a bit late with this one. I went to see Bowling for Columbine yesterday and was impressed. I had expected an anti-gun humorous tirade but instead it was an often funny exploration of why it is that Americans shoot each other so often.

Bits of it were also intensely sad, whoever is shot and whoever is shooting it’s always a waste of life.

The slight conspiracy theory bit surrounding Lockheed Martin seemed a bit out of place but I felt this was more than made up for by the interviews and the South Park style brief history of the USA.

Worth watching but of course the people who need to watch it won’t.

Dancer in the Dark was on on Monday night, unfortunately way past my bedtime so I videoed it and watched it last night.

It’s very odd.

Björk’s accent is especially weird, she sounded more English than Czech to me. It’s also very emotional, I really felt for her character by the end. I was almost screaming at the TV every time Selma kept digging herself into deeper trouble.

So, not as bad as I had been led to believe. Could have been a bit shorter but I couldn’t stop watching because I had to see what happened to Selma.

Went to see Evil Dead at the Picturehouse last night, it’s another film I had never seen in full before. The acting’s terrible, the dialogue is laughable but it’s still very scary.

Wandered into town this morning, it’s fairly busy as people get into total over-the-top Christmas shopping mood. By the time I started heading back to the house fog had descended on the city.

Walking across Parker’s Piece I could only just make out Parkside Pool from the Reality Checkpoint (photo). A few people were taking photos, I wished I had my camera with me.

Started using the beta of Opera 7 at work yesterday, it looks good. Seems to work much better with over-Javascripted sites. Even my online banking works in Opera now.

Now I just need to wait for the Linux version to appear.

Got my copy of the latest Orange magazine yesterday. As usual it’s a fairly content-free advert for their services and the latest phones.

One article had a picture of one of the buildings from Halley, with an aurora behind it. The article had a bit of information about Halley then went on to talk about Orange’s wonderful international rates.

Two things were wrong with the article. In the first place they quoted 00 672 as the international code for Antarctica, it’s only the code for the Australian Antarctic Division. Secondly, you can’t phone Halley from an Orange phone. The phone link is by Inmarsat satellite phone (00 870), which is barred, probably because Inmarsat calls are too expensive even for Orange’s ‘rest of world’ band.

Update 10/1/03: apparently you can call Inmarsat numbers from Orange but you have to get the facility turned on specially.

I’m 27 today, seems very old. Went out to the pub last night and was at the Junction on Tueday night to see Ezio so I’ll probably just have a quiet night in.

I just had a fantastically idle weekend. I was so lazy I didn’t even leave the house on Saturday, my plans for washing my motorbike have now been delayed until next weekend.

There’s something really nice about lounging around, reading in bed until 1pm and then spending the rest of the day doing much the same. I’m currently rereading my collection of Terry Pratchett books, I’d forgotten how funny they are.

Also watched a couple of films on TV, Saturday night’s was The Game, Sunday night I watched Sleepy Hollow. They were both pretty good, I liked the twistiness of The Game and the atmosphere of Sleepy Hollow (even if the characters did seem to spend most of their time fainting).