Category: Real life updates

Flaming Lungs and Flaming Lips

At various points in the last few days I’ve been fairly convinced that I’m ill. I’ve had a sore throat, various wheezing fits, and a general sense of tiredness that sleep does not fix.  The annoying thing is that each “episode” only lasts a few hours and then I feel fine again. Maybe it’s my super-immune system kicking in, or maybe I just need a holiday and I’m not ill at all.

In other (more relevant) news, I’ve been losing myself in the new Flaming Lips album for days. It’s epic (over an hour and a half if you download the iTunes version), and a very challenging listen, but if you like music that makes you think and that is a little (lot) to the left of the mainstream then I’d very much recommend it. I’m also liking the new Califone album (for those times when I need to be soothed rather than challenged), but have otherwise not bought a great deal of new music recently.

Of course, by “recently” I mean this month.

Holidays and other things

As of 4pm tomorrow I’m on holiday for 10 days. It’s the first break of any length I’ve had for a few weeks, and I am very much looking forward to it. Last time I was off I ended up spending most of the week working on various projects, but I do intend to make at least a half hearted effort to step away from my laptop for a few hours each day and actually enjoy the sunshine.

I will also review some music, seeing as I’ve actually been asked to by some of the people who make it (which still scares me).

Of course, it would be a good time to upgrade all the computers to Ubuntu 9.04, but I think I may wait a couple of weeks for that.

Renovations

So far this weekend I have:

  • Built a webserver out of the useable parts from my dead PC (and the case of another less powerful machine).
  • Set up webmin on all my Linux machines and built a webmin cluster.
  • Copied 10gb of music (the stuff I actually listen to) onto my new laptop.
  • Rebuilt my old PC (OS and config files) as a VM on my laptop.

So all in all a busy weekend.

Why I hate this time of year

This is not a post about any of the things I usually blog about, but I thought it was worth making a note of.

October and November are fast becoming my least favourite months of the year. It’s too cold, everyone is miserable, and our household is in a state of siege mentality due to the constant sonic bombardment that comes from the endless firework displays that our neighbours seem to love.

I actually like fireworks. I think they are pretty and that they cheer people up at a time when shorter days and less sunshine can drag us all down a bit. However this view is not shared by our cats, and most especially by our dog who has now been prescribed a herbal remedy for his firework phobia (valium didn’t work and we’ve run out of other viable alternatives). He’s currently sat on the floor underneath my desk and he’s visibly shaking. He’ll probably be like this for a few hours during which time he’ll not eat, not sleep, and be very fractious and downright unpleasant.

So yes, that why I’m not too keen on this time of year and also why we’re unlikely to be out and about after dark for the next couple of weeks at least.

A Million Ways to Spend Free Time

Free time, it’s like free money really. Free money is things like lottery wins, tax rebates, and one-off performance related bonuses. The kind of money you can spend without guilt because it doesn’t feature whatsoever in your budget. Free time covers things like bank holidays, getting up an hour early by mistake, and finding yourself sent home early due to a bomb scare. I find free time quite productive, because somehow it doesn’t even occur to me to do things I need to do, meaning I can instead concentrate on fun things that might contribute to my general well being in a more abstract fashion.

And so, today I have trawled the internet for useful things that might make my life easier, but are more likely to keep me amused for a short period of time and then fade into insignificance.

And then in a moment I’ll get a pop-up window and an email telling me to get downstairs, open a bottle of wine, and watch Doctor Who. Technology is great sometimes.