thelost

Time for a new entry into ye olde journal. So many exciting things have happened that I think I might need to capitalise Certain Words for no Particular purpose. Well perhaps that might be overstating the excitement that my life usually entertains but still I have had a fair old weekend filled with rain and even a little sun!

I got the chance to go home and see my family this weekend which was pretty cool. It's always nice going home, getting out of the city and away from the dirty air. It's also nice being terrorised by my small dog Freddy, an embodiment of evil in the form of a jack russell. He doesn't look evil in this picture but then again an evil genius is always very crafty. He actually has a little cupboard within which he keeps a black cape and a waxed moustache that he twizzles occasionally while cackling insanely.


of photographs...



If fear doth have a name it's name is perhaps Freddy. Known for his instability and profound attatchment to killing anything small and squishy this dog/monster has been seen all over west wales and even as far afield as croatia, plying his trade as an evil genius. Responsible for many of the ills of the world such as the beegees, herpies and stranded orca whales he is a well known figure that should be avoided at all costs. If it's ever a full moon and you look up to see a caped doglike figure silhouetted against the moon then run, run like your life depended on it.

Truly there is no justice in the world when monsters like Freddy 'the cut-throat' walk abroad.

In other news while I was home I took some photographs with a digital camera and a few came out half decent so I have added one to my photograph folder.



It shows a rather muddy millpond near where I live. It's so empty at the moment because it's near the beginning of a tidal estuary and so rises and lowers with the tide. I love the picture with it's three bold colours however I wish there wasn't a shadow at the bottom. There was little I could do about that as I was standing on a bridge at the time with the sun behind me.



The picture above is a castle near me which is apparently haunted by a ghost. My friends dog also hung itself by it's extending lead when it jumped out of one of the turret windows you can see in the picture. I kid thee not!


of fire flies and fire foxes...

Well I watched the whole season of Firefly for the first time today. While I enjoyed it and certainly would like to see a second season I'm not sure it deserves the manic support it garners among it's fans. The idea of melding the wild west and sci-fi is not a new one but is extremely well realised by Joss Whedon, its creator.
One of the things that struck me the most was its character development which really imbued the characters with life and depth. Unfortunately - and I don't particularly blame Firefly for this, it's a fault of all sci-fi - the characters did tend to fall into the usual categories that one comes to expect from modern sci-fi. You have the rough-diamond captain tortured by his past; Comrade at arms and resident hard women first officer; joker pilot; comedic and treacherous hired heavy; enigmatic priest; female engineer; emotional center and calm spot companion and young toff doctor learning about the world as he goes on the run to protect his sister.
Now this is hardly a fault that can be laid soley at the feet of Firefly, the characters are extremely good and interesting but it's just far too easy to find comparable characters in other shows that represent the same values and ideas as each character does in Firefly. In other words they arn't really saying anything new. I can think of a few genre defining series that created these archetypal characters which have popped up again and again in other shows since then and it would be nice to see characters that didn't fall into these stereotypes. Perhaps I'm just getting tired of sci-fi as a genre, however it seemed to me as I watched Firefly that it was a little kid living out his personal fantasies with the use of a camera and some special effects.

In other news I read a good thread on the board about possible ways of speeding up the navigation through them using Firefox. It was pointed out that you can use firefoxes "find as you type" function to navigate among threads without resorting to the mouse. This is a good thing if you are a keyboard addict like me.

If you havn't yet made the change from Internet Explorer to Firefox you might want to start thinking about it, simply because firefox is how the web was ment to be browsed. Firefox is simply the greatest browser out there and much more importantly is much more secure than Internet Explorer which is more vulnerable to viruses and abuse. To get Firefox or learn more about it click below.



One of the greatest innovations of firefox is its support for third-party extensions and themes that add enhancements to the browser such as added searching capabilities, download management and the ability to change it's visual appearance. One I've come across recently for Firefox is the Adblock extension. What particularly excites me about this extension is that it can block iframes and flash adverts as well as normal banner ads and pop-ups/under ads. Any time there is a a flash advert it will show a little adblock tab on the edge of the flash movie where you can block the address the movie came from. In a few days of use you can pretty much eliminate adverts from any site you visit on a regular basis. It also allows wildcards * so you can block based on a wide range of criteria. The possibilities are massive because of this, a lot of sites have their advertising on a sub-domain or in a certain folder so for instance I could block adverts.domain.ext/* or domain.ext/adverts/* and not have a single advert from that site any more. This was something in my wishlist for firefox and like manna from heaven... fantastique!


of running around screaming...

Just got a text asking me how my essay is going and I replied asking when it had to be in, to which the reply was a frightening 8th of december. I really should get a good kick up the ass. I hate how lazy I have been this semester. I have three essays to get done in the next two weeks and I've still not started. It would be wonderful to learn how to work properly rather than leaving everything till I am a gibbering wreak. I'm sure you're all familar with the final night push where you kill yourself with caffeine as you work into the early hours of the morn', eyes watering as you stare into the cold electric glare of your computers screen. Every feckin' time. grrrrrr.... Well not this time laddo.

In my frustration I just hit my housemate over the head with a chair. Very satisfying. It was also a hit of celebration as I have managed to purloin back my wacom that had made it's way into another housemates room. I thought I might celebrate with a 3 minute wacom wonder:



Feel the power of the wacom. A good investment all round.


of the joy of sounds...

Nothing brings me greater pleasure than music so if any of you who read this know of any esoteric or unusual music out there then leave a comment in my journal. I love to hear new and exciting music that stretches the imagination so lay it on people.
At the moment I'm listening to a little italian hardcore by a cool hardcore band called Arsenico. Well worth a look. Also doing the rounds is a calyx ep called Dark nights, Aerogramme and Akuma.

Akuma is worth a special mention as he is a member of a hip-hop collective known as The Shape Shifters. I've no idea how popular he/they are, everyone else might have heard of them already. However I have to say a few words about Akuma's album 'Eye in the sky'. A choice few words would be: simply fantastic! It reminds me strongly of Roots Manuva's work and has that same nostalgia for childhood that made Run come save me such a great piece of work.
Akuma's album is well worth getting if you like good hip-hop so check it out.




of the terror of seaweed...

It's quite scary.


all friends applications accepted unless you happen to be Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. just bugger off i don't like eon old betentacled things who come and go without a please and thank you. no-ones impressed and if they are it's probably because they are stygian or suchlike.

the dude abides

ps someone please help me I'm stuck in a hayloft after being chased by serbian badgers. I'm somewhere in Eastern europe, there's a tree outside.
A good sysadmin always carry a short length of fibre-optic cable. If you get lost, you can drop it on the ground, wait 10 minutes, and ask the backhoe operator how to get back to civilization.