Thursday

Did some lab work that confirmed stuff. Nice. Read some target journals for a paper I need to write. Calculating.
Came home, made potato and leek soup which I had for dinner with some bread. Okish.
Watched season 20 of Never mind the Buzzcocks on you tube whilst eating tiramisu and drinking red wine. Decadent.

For breakfast I will be mainly flying a RC (no, not Roman Catholic you idiot) helicopter around my room, potentially to herd spiders. It should be noted it is to herd spiders, then I will be controlling said helicopter from the balcony with the door firmly closed.

Vodka.

Holiday and a bit of a gripe

Not a whole lot to report.

Got annoyed when a piece of equipment was taken apart and remade to the EXACT SAME THING as had been destroyed and which was still required. This was after weeks of giving advice about procedure and data processing and analysis only to hear time and time again, “Oh, this is what I’ve done..” with no mention of “…gave me a lot of help and pointed me in the right direction”. I’m only whining on here as I really don’t want to make a big thing of this, it’s just professional work ethic that if someone gives advice or help, It's acknowledged and, you don't just disassemble other people's stuff. The word of choice has to be "incredulous". No matter...

Monday I discovered a not huge, but formidable, spider hiding under my bag on the sofa. Number one rule, no animals on the sofa! Particularly if they have more than the acceptable number of limbs! On lifting the bag, the bugger made straight for the interior of a glove. Not sure if it was hoping to use this as some pneumatic exoskeleton and attempt strangulation, I picked up the glove and shook the fecker out, all the time paranoid about its whereabouts and where it would end up. Upon its landing I found a glass to cover it and I retreated back to the relative safety of bed.
A text message on my cell phone summoned me from bed later and I dozily knocked over the glass. Floor covered in shards, scary spider picking its way toward the chair, I knock it back a little and stuff the top of a CD cake over it. It is doing that rolled up “I’m dead don’t worry about me guv” trick. I position the centre spot over its lifeless form. I go back to bed. I get out of bed and put the base of the glass on the CD cake, just in case it’s been to weight lifting. I go out about 4 hours later (Holiday!!!) and the thing is still in the same position. I report it dead and feel guilty having taken a scary but innocent life. I come back hours later. The spider is defiantly dead, it hasn’t moved at all. I prepare for disposal and lift the plastic cover. Nada, not a peep out of it. I prod it with a wooden spoon, a very long wooden spoon. The bugger unravels and makes a break for the best seating arrangement in the flat! After it gets through the broken glass the cake is back on it and I am wondering if I have fire insurance and what things I need to save. I figure music CDs, credit cards, some notes and cards from SB and the computer and the rest can be abandoned.
Below is a link to the spider picture. I didn’t put it on here as people don’t like that sort of thing. Especially me.

Easter...

So, it's Easter and just me and Chris to look over the city and think "Hurrrrumph". After waaay too much to drink on Friday we had spent most of Saturday mooching around with a pain in the head that did indeed feel like I'd been kicked. I was meant to go out last night but, thankfully, plans feel apart without any attempt by me to molest them. This is probably just as well because according to my temperature sensor...

I did notice that it dropped to 3.5 degrees C but you can only watch these kind of things so long before you are indanger of being taken into residential care for your own, and others', protection. As you can see, it was a bit parky. Much of my time was spent gazing at a photo of new jumper made by SB which is a fantastic affair of knitwear and sci fi geekery. Previously, I got an excellent scarf with a DNA helix cabled on it (into it?) which is quite unbelievably cool in a geeky sort of way. I also got a rather cool celtic jumper with some knot work up each arm on the outer edge, possibly my favourite jumper of all time. So, SB has combined to make the DNA jumper, the photos of which I still gasp upon. I will probably be mocked, but the mocking will originate from deep seated envy at the unbelievable coolness of the creation. Will get photos up soon. :o)

Lazy bastard

Sometimes I read stuff and have to do a double take on what was just there. Today’s was the email sent to my old university staff account announcing that there would be “Pilates classes in ARC”. Now obviously I saw Pirates and was halfway through a very hearty “Ah harrr” when the error registered. Was a little disappointed I have to admit.
It’s been a little quiet here lately. Not because I don’t have stuff, good stuff too! But because I have been lazy. Sorry reader.
Was getting mad results in the lab, but double checked it all and they are real. Now I have to think why. Damn it!
Came home, removed MP3 player and plugged it into speakers. At the time, Oasis was blasting away advising me to pull myself together, it is now some hours later and we have gone through Pete Murphy, The Pixies, Placebo and Portishead. These have all been bands that I have wilfully neglected for a number of years. I’d forgotten how much I’d like Placebo.
Over dinner I had this weird sense of déjà vu realising it was mainly due to the fact I have been living off an obscenely unhealthy diet of hamburgers for I don’t know how long. They have salad!! But really, I think some variation is required.
I got to drive a car here in Portugal! I was all ready for it being a little bit weird, but I wasn’t ready for dropping my left hand into the door pocket looking for the gear change or the handbrake, or looking at the left A pillar (the one at the windscreen) in search of the rear view mirror. On the whole, it was ok and I think with a couple of years practice I could get the hang of it.
Bought flights to Scotland, which is both a happy and a sad thing. By a strange quirk of economics it was cheaper to buy return flight than a single way, which means I have to shoe horn a long weekend or a week in August. Which will be nice.
MP3 has graciously furnished us with Project Pitchfork.

I can haz DVDs

Following "incident" I've been dosing myself with scary ibruprofeno (600 mg!!) and I feel a little more normal.
I got a parcel today which had obviously been hand delivered by Superman whilst on his hols in Portugal. Two days from Sunny Scotland to my doorstep here in slightly sunnier Portugal. Why Ambassador...
One retaining screw and out slide old drive, RIP DVD laser, and in slide new drive, The King is dead! Long live the King!! New King, new DVDs. I also has the bit to remove said screw, a block of Mature Canadian Chedder (MCC ;o), and a book (Cities in Flight, James Blish). Thanks to SB for stuff and a nice hand written note to make me happy. Now, bacon and cheese sandwich and some Battle Star Gallactica.

The Final Count Down

Been taking some time to reflect on the important things in life. In that I mean important to me ;o) So, as I sit here enjoying a rather large glass of Vinho Verde, the calming low octane variety, I am trying to draw on all my angels and demons to balance and offer input as to what direction I should be taking. Career needs to provide enough incentive to get out of bed in the morning and to actually open that file and edit it. Within the career envelope we need at least the minimum of functional support from which we can launch ourselves towards goal and fulfil objectives. Lately this has been lacking. Equipment not working is made much worse when it adds to already notable problems. So home and family. Need to go home. Don’t miss the weather at all, and there are things here in Portugal which will never be replaced in Scotland. Equally, there are things in Scotland that I simply can not live without any longer. Time to go home and try and find my place again. Will be like a new start again. I have loved my time here, and it was always something I have wanted to do after I’d finished university and thanks to the constant support of SB it has been a reality. But it’s time to wake up, get out of bed, shiver a bit and make SB some coffee and toast.

Tonight’s Play list:

The Arcade Fire – Wake up
Depeche Mode – I feel you
Sisters of Mercy – More
Neurotic Fish – Breaking the Cliché
Project Pitchfork – Requiem
Garbage – The Trick is to Keep Breathing
I Love you but I’ve Chosen Darkness – We Choose Faces
Ladytron – The Way That I Found You
Telephone – Ahead
Franz Ferdinand – Fade Together
Bent – Swollen
Kasabian – Ovary Stripe
Boards of Canada – The Colour of Fire

I haz curry kit!!!

I received this today.

Thank you you lovely SB.
Book, at last, something to read.
Crisps. The snack of quality from the old country.
And last, but not least, the component parts of my curry kit. These are the bits I need for a Korma and SB test drove the recipe and gave it the thumbs up.
TY TY TY

Trading from a portal to the distant past

I had a bit of an unfortunate incident last night which sadly lead to the death of my trusty Sony Ericsson S700i. The thing still works except the screen is cracked and renders no image except for a bright blob, see photo.

So, as I am only here for a couple more months, I decide to buy the cheapest phone I can find. This my friends is the rather unbelievably retro LG KG275.


Now, it’s not an ugly creature but it is fantastically basic. It's of horrible plastic construction and comes with a quality we can only describe as added "what could have been”.

Does it have:
Internet? Nope
Blue tooth? Nope
Good selection of ring tones? Nope
Camera? Nope.

The camera is where the “what could have been” is featured. Because on the back of the case, where the lens for a CCD camera would peer out into the world, there is a little square of rubber. Reminding you that what indeed you have bought is the least specified mobile phone produced in the 21st century. That said, it has T9 dictionary and comes with a choice of three languages, Portuguese, Spanish and English. It'll also send text messages of 160 characters which the S700i couldn't do, never did update the software, and I presume it'll have a bigger memory.
Starting up and installing my old SIM card is when I find all my numbers here were stored on the Ericsson’s phone memory. Instructions for transferring the numbers are very straight forward, if you can actually see the menus…
So all my numbers are in hiding. I did try to get the Bluetooth on the S700i operational with success, but then I couldn’t get it to synchronise with outlook on the laptop. I could use a cable to do this, but at €30 for the cable, I am rather inclined to go the route of if they like me, they’ll phone or text me.
Despite the fact the phone is really quite shit I'm growing quite affectionate to it.
Happy days.