Caboose

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).

Went to see Morvern Callar last night, it was fairly good but somehow disappointing. It missed out a lot of the humour surrounding the town where she lives but does well in not trying to explain why Morvern does things.

One of the strengths of the book was that although it was written in the first person there’s never any explanation of Morvern’s motivations, she just does things. Samantha Morton is very good as Morvern, looking vulnerable and out of place.

Maybe I was just grumpy due to sitting in the cinema in very wet trousers. I got caught in a sudden downpour crossing the railway bridge on Mill Road.

Just found Matthew Pariss’ articles from his time on Kerguelen.

I knew he had been there and read a couple of cuttings from the Times they kept in the bar. In fact his mind-blowingly arrogant comments in the visitor’s book at Port Jeanne d’Arc wound me up no end.

The articles are well written though and he does seem to have fallen for the place, I can understand why and I was only there for a month.

I’m off to see Morvern Callar later, I liked the book so I’m curious to see how the film has turned out.

Which Donnie Darko character are you? by Shay

Quite worrying, does this mean I’ll start getting visits from the scary rabbit guy? I do live pretty much right under the approach to Cambridge airport…

Went out to the pub this evening. Walking back I felt really opressed by the hideous orange sky over Cambridge. Admittedly this place isn’t too bad, it’s just an overcast night, you can often actually see the stars.

It’s weird, I’m basically an urban person, I’ve never lived in the countryside. I still feel the need to look up and see the stars though…

Just saw Donnie Darko, another not-very-cheerful film.

I’m not entirely sure what happened in the film, which I suppose is how you’re supposed to feel at the end. It mixes up so many different types of film: 80’s high school, dark teen angst, X-Files weirdness…

Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie is convincingly confused and angry. It’s not all dark though, the occasional outbursts of humour brighten up the film when it’s in danger of becoming too miserable.

(don’t read the rest of this post unless you’ve seen the film)
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