TV and swag

Today has been amazingly unproductive. A day of relative inactivity interspaced with guilt over my inactivity. As a diversion I flicked through the channels which, until I found Ross Noble on E4 +, was just another day in the 80 channels of utter shash world that TV has become. I can remember there being only 3 channels and there being stuff on most of the time. You had trivial shit on BBC 1, serious stuff and intellectual quiz shows on BBC 2 (call my bluff and university challenge) and on ITV you had a mixture of both extremes separated skilfully with soap powder adverts. In those days, they would let the poor sod who was spouting forth his heart finish his monologue before cutting it off to force feed you Daz or whatever. These days, there are whole channels dedicated to phone in quiz crap with the simple purpose of generating revenue. The thick as a plank man in the street type just has to narrow down London, Hamburg, Lisbon or Paris as the capital of France and he can win some crap amount of money being peddled by some over made up past her sell by date jumped up check out girl. These only annoy me as I know it’s Hamburg and I can never get through! TCM are showing the dirty dozen… Even better, UK Gold are showing Con Air. Neither anything to do with the UK, save the historic divergence of the English language, nor gold.

Adverts, text and flirt with the scariest hardest looking technically “attractive” women in your area. Footage of various scantily clad bunny boilers…
I think I'll save on my phone bill.

Now, swag!
I got a GPS. It is sooo cool. Using this at home is just pure childish gadget love. From a practical point of view this equates with a 40 year old man using a map as he walks to get to the shops and back, in the neighbourhood he has lived for 20 years. However, finally I have something in the car that tells me the correct velocity of my biscuit tin. Not as fast as it feels I have to report.

Torino - molto belle (I think)

Pretty picture of Torino from the air (a plane you duffus!)

Beer and electronica

It's two days till christmas. Hmmm. I spent a bit of time on the tree this year, as opposed to the last few years where it looked like it had been vomited into existence. Not sure why previous years got so little attention, I've always loved Christmas although something happened tonight that reminded me somewhat of the darkside of the childish Christmas experience. Danielle had found some ancient (ok ok 1980) Space Invaders game. Now, I remember the kid next door getting one of these, and I was deeply annoyed about it. It was, back then, a cool game. actually, it is still fairly cool. After I managed to cram the AA batteries into position, were even batteries smaller in olden times grandad? So I spent some time blasting the 2 x 4 grid of low res. aliens. this reminded me of all the toys which seem to have disappeared. Did they really exist at all? I mean, don't you think that you see a lot of the same people? I'm fairly attentive and I wonder if maybe the levels of repetition are just too weird. So, Beer. Having a nice cold Peroni, which I could NOT find whilst in Torino. As rare as wholemeal bread it seemed. Music. I should say MUSIC!! I have a somewhat melancholic preference in music and have been listening to "Ladytron", "Project Pitchfork" and "I love you but I've chosen Darkness". All three deserve to be listed to without any predudice. Ladytron are amazing! I have to admit that I have only listened to their last CD "Witching hour". But I don't know what I would have done without them. Some music opens you up to yourself. You listen to it and things clear and you see truthes and paths that perhaps you might have cloaked from your everyday view. Just a month ago the Ladytron tracks "Beauty Number 2" and Destroy Everything you Touch" had me in tears, as did ILYBICD "Lights" and "we chose faces", who were amazing live. I guess they grab you and make you think, what about this (insert aspect of life under extreme scrutiny). I can't claim to be terribly sciential about such things, but experience seems to point correctly. My biggest regret right now is that timing of career and love are in anti-phase. I am looking forward to going to Portugal, but i know I will miss my GF incredibly. This post is rather long and dull. Sorry about that. Check out the bands.

The sky is falling!!!!

I’ve been looking at the “Travel Chaos” headlines regarding flights to, from and via the UK. We were flying back from Turin using a very interesting route which was more of a leap-frogging action as we hopped from Turin to Rome to London to Glasgow. Our one hour in Rome dragged out to six as the flight was delayed, rescheduled, then finally cancelled. All the problems were due to the fog in the UK which of course no one in Rome bothered to mention. On the bright side we got a nice trip around the terminal in a bus and when we finally got on a plane, it took off, landed and the bmi staff were helpful and we made our flight back to Glasgow. Which is a lot more than most people seem to have managed.

Turin was gorgeous. City architecture was fantastic and the museums and galleries visited were superb. I have some really cool photos which, when I resize them I’ll put online. I have some other news, but that’ll wait for now.

Still going to Portugal to work for a bit, the project details look really interesting with a high level of relevance to the research work I have recently finished. Can’t find any viable flights before the 10th and managed to bugger up flights by having a five minute overlap of landing / take off times. I’m blaming the lack of coffee.

Last thing, windows is acting up again! Apparently the WMI module has been corrupted. Tried rolling the set up back but this had no effect other than stripping out the programs I had installed to do other stuff. Oh joy…

When am I changing my operating system?

Torino!

I know no one actually reads this, but it's nice for me to just rant and rave. also, when I wake up and can't remember what I did the day before, I can check back, presuming I haven't forgotten my password. So, in internet NOT cafe. ie, internet but no coffee which is odd. there is a mad, and large italian girl to teh right who seems to be very vocal and amused by almost everything. It's like being on a bus sitting next to a crazy person without the motion sickness or the smell of wee. Which I guess is a good thing. Torino is cold, the room is noisy and the plumbing has an air lock in it some where in the building which means anytime a tap is turned on in teh building it sounds like an elephant trumpeting the great strengths of living somewhere else. But that sounds ungrateful. My wireless network also doesn't work and my italian is solely dependant on their english skills. Last night buying a bottle of wine was fun, as the the elderly woman was quite obviously unimpressed with those bloody foreigners who turn up, want to buy wine and can't speak a word of teh language. Got a bottle, spilled it on the duvet.... arf arf
I liked the way it pooled on the floor and looked like something had been slautered in a wet room. Any way, dull dull dull. food then beer. no wonder no one reads this guff.
ciao!

december 10th last day?

it's Sunday, I'm in the library and I have to admit, a bit late. Looked out the window this morning, tried to think of a viable excuse to not go in, made some sandwiches, still couldn't think of any believable reason and in the end it dawned on me that I would have to show face. I also announced my resignation during the week and fear that I did so without specifying the actual day. Which means they might try to screw me for the statutory days off...
Damn it, Another perfect day.