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*poof* So many things happened since last update. Life is busy. Dan is busy. Overbusy, in fact: I'm really looking forward to September, when most of this nonsense will be behind me and all I have to worry about is writing up. And funding, but ... well, we'll deal with that when we have a minute.
This weekend, I went to London for Aquarion and fyrheafoc's housewarming in Hackney, north London. They live on the 17th floor of a rather nice building that can see most of London from the balcony, nice airy flat with slightly scary lifts. There were a few people there I know, and a Good Time Was Had By All. There was much frothing, and drinking, and we played "Eat Poop You Cats" (apologies for the style of the linked site, blue is not a good background colour...). I believe my phrase was the only one to make it around the entire group without being radically chinese-whispersed, which is kinda puzzling, but then it was a geek phrase and a geek group... *shrugs*
On Sunday, we went to Camden Market. Well, we meant to go to Camden Market. Instead, we went to an awesome art shop (Cass Art, in Islington) and Forbidden Planet, then went to Waxy O'Connor's for lunch. Waxy's is an irish pub in Camden, with a tree inside. It's on four levels, goes down forever, and serves great food. Well worth the visit, if you have the time and are in the area.
Then came the time to go home. This was trickier than it should be, because I was trying to get from Piccadilly Circus to Victoria, to catch a train back to Brighton. This is normally fairly simple, but complicated by the fact that of the three underground lines serving Victoria, two of them were closed for heavy maintenance and there was a football match on. In London. Involving Manchester United.
Man. U's fanclub is not small. I had to let three trains pass the hugely overcrowded platform before one arrived that I could get on to. When we reached Victoria, the contents of the previous trains was still on the platform, and we had to step out on to a packed platform. It took us about five minutes to shuffle the length of the platform, packed across the entire width and narrowly avoiding falling on to the track. I have to admit, my opinion of football fans went up a fair way there - no shoving, no shouting, just quiet, orderly, considerate shuffle-walking along the platform and up the escalators.
Still, good weekend. I've realised lately that I seem to treat weekends as days filled with NULL, and get all resentful if people try to make me do things on them, as it takes away my doing-nothing time. Since this is plainly ridiculous, I decided to treat this weekend as filled with a housewarming and good people, and it seems to have worked. The loss of my precious doing-nothing time doesn't seem to be a problem. Cool.
Well, it was a busy few weeks. I'm writing this entry in retrospect from November 2009, two months afer the events described, so this won't be terribly detailed. Still, a peculiarity of my blogging software means I can't delete this entry (placeholder though it was for something I never got around to writing), so I may as well make use of it.
In this entry, I helped someone to move house. A couple of weeks ago there was a housewarming, to which I was invited. It was a good evening, at which there was a good mix of people I had and hadn't met before, and at which we decided it was just as appropriate for men to sew as it was for women to work wood, and the apparent views of the general populace be damned.
One particularly interesting conversation amidst the tangle of chat was related to Laban notation. It is one of my core beliefs that everything in the world can be encoded, represented, written down if you can just find the right language to describe it. Music, obviously, is one of them. Dance is much less obvious, but that's essentially what Laban Notation is all about. It's a domain-specific restricted vocabulary that allows the user to describe not just the position of limbs and the shape of the body, but the strength, control and timing of each intervening movement. There are associated symbols and suchlike. Unfortunately, there also seem to be several factions, each practicing a variation on the base notation, which complicates matters somewhat, but I suppose no-one and nothing is perfect.
In other news, I tried to teach one of my other friends to ride a bicycle. This... well, it didn't work out quite as planned. Between my teaching, my jalopy of a bicycle and her inexperience, we successfully failed to learn anything. So it goes - maybe we'll try again some day.
Finally, a little game of RISK. Not so remarkable in and of itself, but it was played against three people I haven't seen in years: friends from high school. One's my mother's neighbour, and one adminsters the DNS for this site. I have to admit, given how we started from more or less the same place, seeing how their lives have developed along different paths from mine is ... interesting. Two of us are married, we all work in tech fields, but there's no way you could mistake one's life for another.
The world turns beneath us, and we all of us change to keep up. 'tis the way of things.
At some point, I think, everyone wants to live in their own house. To own it, secure in the knowledge that unless they fall behind in the mortgage repayments, they can't be kicked out. They're safe: an Englishman's home is his castle, and all that.
A couple of friends of mine recently moved into a house in the north of England, along with their family. It was surveyed before purchase, and the survey report said it was alright: not great, it would need some work in the next few years, but it was quite safe and livable.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, cracks started to appear in the walls. Another survey was done, post-haste. The chimney is being held up by the efforts of a single valiant brick now, and almost every structural member in the roof-space has twisted or broken. The entire house is quite literally falling down around them - the surveyor immediately condemned the building as unsafe for habitation.
Adam and Livi and their daughters are now couch-surfing with friends, trying to get repairs made to their home before it gives up and falls down. The insurance company doesn't want to pay out, because the survey at time of purchase didn't find anything (which the second surveyor thinks is impossible: this much damage couldn't happen that quickly).
Local news and politicians are getting involved, and between that and some generous relatives, the funds for the initial work are more or less sorted. But the damage is pretty extensive: making it safe is a long way from making it habitable again. Here's where you come in. Adam happens to have written a book of stories and rhymes for children, called "Sir Parsley and the Dragon, and other stories". It's being sold on Amazon, and a few other places: it would really, really help them out if some of you could buy a copy for your children, or those you teach, or those of friends. Sales links, and more details, can be found at the following link.
Thanks in advance, anyone who feels able to help out. They're decent, lovely people, and they deserve better than this.
The week has been kinda uninteresting, hence the total lack of posting. One of our favourite receptionists at the Sports Centre busted her ankle in almost exactly the same way as I did last year, under almost exactly the same circumstances, and is now hobbling everywhere. My work is continuing: this week, I have been mostly implementing ring buffers in everything, as none of the fixed-length buffering code I hacked together some time ago actually works properly past the zeroth index. *sigh* I hate pointer arithmetic... So I'm not using it any more :)
Traditionally, I relax as far as possible on weekends. This means I tend not to get a lot done, but I'm unwound and ready to face the world again on Monday. Saturday this week may have been a record, even for me: I woke up past midday, and can't think of a single useful thing I did all day. Except maybe the washing. Hmm.
At least Justin was in town today. He, and I, and a few mutual friends had the chance to catch up, first over a pint in the Great Eastern, then later in Wagamama over tea. The food in Wagamama is pretty good (Japanese Cuisine, which ISN'T sushi, thank $foo), even if the wait staff are a bit dismissive. At least this time I didn't get stepped on, just nudged around a bit. And their chocolate fudge cake with vanilla ice-cream and wasabi sauce really shouldn't be that good.
...that was the old roleplay group, actually. Me and Justin, Al, Sam and Rhi: since Justin moved to Horsham, and one of us got involved with an SO, and the world got in the way... I'm not sure we're gonna meet too often now, and if so mostly as friends. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, I suppose, even if a small part of me pines for Alex's Magical Tortoise, the Sensible Stealth Trousers and the other puzzling things that happened to our poor characters on a near weekly basis. Things move on, and I'm now aware of another roleplay group (coincidentally involving nearly all the same people, plus more) in the area to which I might wander at some point.
Guess we'll see.
In other news, my PC has been whining intermittently for a couple of weeks. Craig dropped in this evening, sat on my bed and talked for a bit, then stood up, handed me a washing-up sponge, and told me to wedge it between the machine and the desk. I did so. End of whine: 'twas a rattling case panel, it seems. I hate it when other people are right :)
I went into town for a coffee with some friends earlier today (me, spook, and a guy from IT Services, for those playing along at home). When we were done with drinks, we figured we'd go and spend some Christmas money. I mean, we're in the middle of a nice big commercial shopping area: CDs, DVDs, games, books, no problem, right?
Instead, we ended up going to Screwfix and Maplin (and just those two). Spot the engineers...