Older blog entries for Iain (starting at number 284)

I went to see Low tonight.

I'd like to say they rocked, but they didn't so much rock as pleased. They were really good, if minimal. They had one guitar, one effects pedal, one bass guitar, one cymbal, one snare drum, and one of the big round ones that sits beside the bass drum if there was a bass drum (which there wasn't). They played for about 70minutes, apologised for the cost of the ticket (8pounds: Very cheap), and played lovely songs

Glad I went

Other News:

Went looking for EFM. Apparently it never existed, and it was all a figment of people's imagination. Lesson of the day: People in #E are not very nice. I vaguely remembered this lesson from when I used to hang out there, but I had forgotten it, or hoped that maybe they had changed. Naivity rules.

W.A.S.T.E.

DIGITAL HARDCORE

Okay, somewhere along the lines the blue turned into purple. Apparently I am now a Master. Why? It's puzzling me.

Started to rewrite that "lovely" interface cos Mr Meeks told me it sucked and was too complicated (internally). Basically, I think it's problem was it was trying to rewrite a whole load of stuff that Bonobo already has, and it was doing it poorly. Michael also showed me what it should be done like, and he's right. It is a lot simpler to use the pre-written stuff Bonobo has. Although I think some of the simplicity has been removed from writing a summary module (I hate calling them services, cos thats so generic).

Tuned my guitar to GABDEG to learn to play some Sonic Youth stuff. Started with Teen Age Riot. Pretty easy, and a nice song.

Inspired by Teen Age Riot, I decided to download some Atari Teenage Riot. :) Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rawk! Pretty good. Have to buy a CD sometime.

The music companies have heard of my "No CDs till Christmas/December" plan, so they're releasing a whole load of good stuff: Lo Fidelity Allstars, . . .Trail of Dead, and other stuff that I've forgotten. Bastards.

And still I can't find John Kettley is a Weatherman on Napster. *sigh*

Should probably go to bed now. . . Can't think of anything else.

W . A . S . T . E .

I wanted to know the exact dimensions of Hell

Libwvdial is coming along nicely. I've got most of the wvdialer class wrapped, execpt for the parts that need other classes wrapped, and wvdial-c.c now does the same stuff as wvdial.cc, execpt it crashes on auto-reconnect (for some unknown reason. . . must investigate), and it doesn't do the logging nicely or handle options. Hey, it's pretty good for the amount of time I've spent on it.

Found libmpeg3. Which looks much better than smpeg, partly because it's in C :) and partly because it doesn't have the SDL limitation. It doesn't have any output renderer, but I might use it in my Nautilus MPEG player. It also handles mpg files, so maybe it could be used in the MPG player nautilus has as well. . . *shrug*

Learned an important lesson today: Commit big changes before Michael Meeks changes all IDL method names. :)

Even though I made it months ago, I've finally updated and uploaded my CD list. Look at it if you're bored and laugh at all the really bad CDs I bought before I got musical taste.

Oh, it doesn't have Kid A on it yet. Oppps.

My panel has decided to stick itself in the middle of my screen, and I've got too many things happening to try to fix it. and I have a scary feeling that Sawmill is going to remember the position it was at and put it there everytime. ARGH!

W . A . S . T . E .

9 Nov 2000 (updated 11 Nov 2000 at 03:58 UTC) »

Life is in the mix; cut it up

For some strange reason I learned to play "Time of Your Life" by Greenday. I don't even like Greenday, although Time of Your Life is alright.

The Godspeed You Black Emporer! list isn't as bad as the RHML, but it's still quite bad. They keep meantioning an FTP site that you can download loads of bootlegs but I can't find it. ARGH! I can't ask as I'll look like a clueless newbie (which I am. . . but hey).

Got Xen Cuts back. Still pretty cool.

Slept till 1:30pm today. Really really shouldn't have. But it was the fact that I was up for about 21hours yesterday and got up at 7am again today. So hopefully I'm all slept out and can get up at a reasonable time tomorrow.

Room is still tidy. I need to find some Christmas lights to hang around the place. Just for ambiance and stuff.

Now for bed.

W . A . S . T . E .

WHER I END ND YU BEGIN

In a strange mood I signed up for a GBYE! mailing list. Maybe, just maybe it won't end up like the Radiohead one with me screaming at stupid Americans who just refused to even go anywhere near the point of what anyone else said. And maybe there won't be 100teenyboppers who decided to be "different" and support an "indie" band, and then proceeded to claim they wanted Thom's babies.

Libwvdial.so works! I am currently connected using my amazing 4 line C program.

int main (int argc, char **argv) {
WVDial *dial = wv_dial_new ("/etc/wvdial.conf", 0600, FALSE);
wv_dial_dial (dial);
while (1){ wv_dial_select (dial, 100, -1, -1, -1);
wv_dial_execute (dial);	}
}

Kick ass! Maybe I'll get round to wrapping other things, so that it can do the proper logging and stuff. (But I'll do that when I come up against things that need it. Muhahahaha global takeover here I come!)

Tomorrow is Monday, means everything starts all over again.

I've got a free house Wednesday (I had to correct how I spelled that. . .), Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoon, so if anyone wants to come round, you're welcome. Although I'll be out Wednesday (Got it first time this time. . .) night, and Thursday night.

Have decided that I'm not going to buy anymore CDs till at least December.

Eep. Typing in mozilla makes the scrolling title on my xmms all jerky. Something wrong with that surely.

Leg thing is still driving me crazy.

W . A . S . T . E .

Tju Tju!

I got a spinny chair. Wheeeee. No more garden furniture for me to work on and get bad back ache. No! I have a comfy chair :D

Went to Belfast again to get a guitar peg. 49p it cost. So to make the trip worth while, I got CDs. (Bet you knew that was coming . . .)I was going to get a Hole album but they were 16quid, and I don't spend 16quid on an album, unless it's special. So instead I bought Sigur Ros (Agaetis Byrjum) and Low (One More Reason To Forget).

Sigur Ros is very pretty, but there's not one English word on the inlay, or any of the songs, so I have no idea what they're singing about. Sounds nice all the same, and the guitar with violin bow works really well.

Had a huge game of hunts in the church after yoof club. Kicked ass, about 30 of us running around. For the final game, because I'd helped so many people into their hiding places, I had no time to hide, so I stood on a chair in a dark corner. It still took them about 10minutes to find me, even with the number of people who walked right past me.

Working on fun Bonobo stuff, and I think I've managed to wrap the wvdial.a into a shared library in C, so the wvdial program can be a 4 line C program. Not tested it yet, because I can't be bothered to play with autoconf and automake.

There's a thing on my leg, it's been there for about 11months now. And I'm trying so hard not to scratch it so it will go away. But it's itching SOOOOOO much. I will falter and scratch it before tomorrow morning. And it will have won. Bollocks.

W . A . S . T . E .

We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl

At Genesis tonight, I managed to watch MTV2. And they played a song I kinda liked, but didn't know who it was by. Turns out it was Celebrity Skin by Hole. So I'm going to have to buy a Hole album sometime soon.

Started to wrap the WVDial static library into a C shared library. I think I've wrapped enough of it to rewrite the wvdial program in C. I shall test this theory out when I am not so tired.

Dunno why I'm tired.

Snow Patrol are playing on Sunday, but I dunno if I'll go. Don't like going out on Sunday: Day of rest and all that. And plus my parents have to go to bed early, cos of work. So if I come in late, my floor will squeak and they'll be woken up, and I'll feel bad. So I'll have to think about it.

Mistletoe and Wine

Then Low are here on 15th, JJ72 on 2nd December, and At The Drive-In on 9th December. Lots of fun bands coming. Woohoo.

Also should get a Low album if I'm going to see them. And some Sigur Ros. And loads of other stuff is coming out too.

W . A . S . T . E .

Dear sir, I have a complaint

eliot: Ah, mystery solved. It shouldn't be "The Pixies", it should be "The Posies". The other two people named in the radio announcer thing are the guitarist and drummer from the Posies, so it's a sort of semi cover by them I guess. Although you missed the best bit. . . Thom Yorke singing Wonderwall by Oasis really badly :).

Yeah, just call me Radiohead geekboy. But not in public.

W . A . S . T . E .

I accidently touched my head, and noticed that I had been bleeding

eliot: I'm fairly certain that Blowout is Radiohead's own song. Seeing as the inlay for Pablo Honey says "All songs written by Radiohead (Words by Thom)", and no site I have ever seen has meantioned it to be a cover. The Pixies may have covered it, but I dunno (although that might be what you meant)

Today's thought: When playing pool, it is much more gratifying to hit the balls all over the table (in the vague direction of the holes), and see if any go into the pockets, than to line up shots, work out the angles and put them neatly into the pockets with one shot.
It is even more gratifying to win a game using the former method.

Got my sucky UI ideas commited into the Exec Summary. Now moving ESummary's around is easy :)

I spoke up and I said "YEAH!"

I really have to tidy my room one of these days. And spray paint a picture onto my wall.

I think, that for the past 15years I've been spelling "Wednesday" as "Wedensday". Although I'm not sure, but "Wednesday" doesn't look right, and "Wedensday" is the one that comes out naturally. Although looking at them now, I have no idea. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I did. Am I going insane? Yes. ARGH.

Maybe everything will look brighter in the morning.

W . A . S . T . E .

However, for a beginner, the easiest way is to kill everyone as quickly as you can with the handgun

Halfterm. Parents were off yesterday and today. Wheee. They kept trying to wake me up early, but I resisted. Muhahaha. I then woke up really hungry and wondered where they were. After 20minutes wondering why they weren't home to make me lunch (yes, I'm lazy), I vaguely remembered my mum saying "There's some pizzas in the freezer. Cook them." Drat, had to cook myself. Bad things. . . I can't cook. Not even pizza. I still managed to burn it.
I think the executive summary is turning out quite swimmingly.
Whoever decided that fireworks should be legal again needs to be shot.
I think I have to tidy this place up tomorrow.
Jelly rings are the greatest sweet ever.
Love Hearts come a close second. Unless they're sucky ones that say really romantic things like "Fax me!" or "Email me".
Broke one of the pegs that holds strings in place on an acoustic guitar. Looks like another trip into town to get more guitar stuff. I know that one of these days I'm going to buy a long strap. I just know it.

W. A. S. T. E.

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