6 years to read a book

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Today is the day I finally finished reading Ulysses by James Joyce. I started reading this detestable book back in 2006. I’ve obviously not been reading this continuously for that entire time, but the thought of reading it has been in the back of my mind for much of this time.

Well, today is the day I finally reached the end. I am so pleased not to have to read this book any more. It is the least enjoyable book I have read in my entire life.

Now I’m going to start reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. The few things I’ve read about it seem interesting, and I am looking forward to reading it. :)

The Morning From Heck

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This morning was quite annoying. It wasn’t the worst morning ever, but it was quite bad so I am calling it The Morning From Heck!

It started when I got to Canada Water station and saw that the Jubilee Line had severe delays. I figured I’d check it out because it’s not always as bad as they say. Well, I’ve never seen so many people in that station. The trains were about 10 minutes apart and their arrival estimates kept getting further and further into the future. One train arrived while I waited there and it was so jammed full of people that I immediately turned around and went up the escalators and headed to the Overground.

The Gherkin from Whitechapel Station

The Gherkin from Whitechapel Station

When I got to Whitechapel I had to wait for 3 westbound District Line trains to go through before the Hammersmith & City line train I needed pulled up just past me on the platform. I walked along to the end of the train and got on. When the doors opened at Liverpool Street I was greeted by about 6 million people all wanting to get on the train. I pushed through and made it to the stairs. I crossed the busy crossing area where people are heading in 4 separate directions and trying not to bump into each other. It reminded me of watching traffic in India.

I got to the Central Line and the train that was there was too full to let me on, so I walked down to the other end of the platform. The arrivals board said that the next 3 trains were arriving in 1 minute, 1 minute, and 2 minutes. 5 minutes later the train (that I could see in the tunnel the entire time) crawled into the station, stopped short of the end, waited for a minute, then pulled the rest of the way in. I squeezed on and got shoved further in the guy in front of me by the retard behind me.

As we went through central London the train gradually emptied. I managed to get a seat by the time we reached Bond Street where I would normally have boarded the train, only 20 minutes later than usual.

The journey went well for several minutes and I was glad. Then the driver started speaking. He informed us that this westbound train would be pulling into the eastbound platform at Queensway. We all had to get off the train, get by the perplexed people on the platform, and get to the westbound platform to continue our journeys.

The rest of the journey was uneventful and I was very pleased about that when I got to North Acton.

I called into Tesco Express to pick up 5 porridge cups for £4 only to find that they had run out. Instead I bought some nice porridge sachets with apple and blueberry in them. I got to work, settled down, and then went downstairs to sort out my breakfast. I followed the instructions on the sachet and then put the sachet inside a cup to prevent it from falling over in the microwave. I set the timer and then went about making myself some coffee.

Less than 2 minutes later I looked into the microwave and found a delightful sight awaiting me.

Quaker Oats explosion

Quaker Oats explosion

 

That was The Morning From Heck!

:-(

Edit

Just noticed it’s Friday the 13th. Hmmph.

Waterloo station announcer

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Whoever the guy who sometimes makes announcements at Waterloo station is he’s brilliant. He announces everything in the style of a wrestling or boxing announcer and it never fails to make a whole bunch of people smile on the tube.

A very rare thing!

Mission Impossible 4

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I went to Stratford with Cheryl, JonP, Mikey, and Irina last night. We got some food at TGI Friday and then went to the cinema to watch Mission Impossible 4. Now, I don’t want to ruin any of the film or anything but my favourite bit is right at the beginning.

Simon Pegg is sitting at a laptop and then he decided to let out a prisoner at a Russian prison. A guard comes in while working his rounds, potentially a few hours from going home to his wife and kids. Then he opens up a couple more cells and more prisoners come out and commence beating the shit out of the guard. Pegg lets more prisoners out and the guard continues getting the shit kicked out of him on the floor while we watch.

I’m not really sure of the exact reason for this whole scene because it’s not really a requirement for any of the stuff that happens during the next 5 minutes of the film. Seems like they just wanted to show a Russian prison guard being savagely beaten by hardened criminals.

Tube time

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Today is my first day back on the tube doing my proper commute. It’s managed to remind me of most of the bad parts of itself in the first 20 minutes.

The first part is partially my own fault. I should have bought my season ticket online. Instead I stood in a queue for one of the machines which then claimed it couldn’t read my Oyster card.

I queued in the other queue for the other machines, considering using some PAYG credit instead.

When I got to the platform it was filled with the usual door-blocking morons. The train arrival times were 2, 3, and 4 minutes for about 5 minutes without any trains.

When the first one arrived everyone held it up by trying to cram onto it. I waited for the second one and it was almost empty. People never learn.

Anyway, I’m almost at Bond Street which is always filled with its own special breed of morons. Le sigh.

Useful iPlayer addition

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I currently have 2 laptops, an iMac, a PS3, an Xbox 360, Cheryl’s laptop, and Cheryl’s PS3 all capable of playing content from BBC iPlayer. If I want to view HD content I have to download it using the desktop app. This is available on the computers and laptops regardless of the operating system, which is very nice as I have Linux, Mac, and Windows installations at the moment.

My improvement comes from a situation I have found myself in a couple of times since Cheryl and I got the iMac the other day. I can download HD content on here, but if I do then I have no way of playing it on my TVs. The iMac has a nice 27 inch screen, but the dining chairs aren’t anywhere near as comfortable as the sofa.

When I’ve downloaded the HD copy of some media it would be great if I could connect to my BBC iPlayer installation on any of my other devices and stream that content over my local network. The DRM can all be handled in the same way it is by the app on the PS3 or whatever. It’s just a locally-hosted copy of the exact same file. They could even make it so that you can only stream the content from within the iPlayer app if they wanted.

I don’t want to pirate anything, I just want to be able to play media I’ve downloaded on one device on another. This would be possible if I did illegally download a copy of the media, I shouldn’t be punished for being honest.

New Year’s Day

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Today belongs to the this new year. That is why there’s an apostrophe there. Same with new year’s eve. I’m not really sure why the case is different for Christmas eve though.

From what I have read it seems likely that NYE and NYD refer to the actual occurrence of that day, whereas Christmas eve refers to the generic day. That seems quite a lot like bullshit to me though.

Oh well, hope you’re all having a happy one. :)

Cutting my own hair, almost

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I decided that I should shave my hair off a little while ago. I went into the bathroom with my shaver and selected the longest setting. I looked at Cheryl, turned it on, looked at myself in the mirror and pushed it through my hair right in the middle like Marshall in How I Met Your Mother.

Nothing happened.

I was confused. I checked the trimmer and it was fine, so I tried again. Still nothing happened. It seems my trimmer only cuts shorter hair.

I came into the kitchen and picked up some scissors. I held my hair up ready to cut into it and then chickened out. I looked at Cheryl, but she wouldn’t tell me what to do. After a few minutes of indecision I collected my resolve and held a bunch of hair between my fingers and closed the scissors on it.

Nothing happened.

At this point I started to think of Samson, and how much he would have wished he was me if he had been real. The trimmers and the scissors both refused to cut my hair at all. I don’t really understand the complete lack of effect, but oh well. I took it as a sign that it would probably be more effort than it was worth, so I quit.

At some point I guess I’ll just go and buy some proper clippers or pay someone with the right tools to cut it.

2011 ✓

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It’s the end of another year and I find myself in yet another city this time. As it tends to from year to year everything has completely changed. It’s been pretty hectic at times, but I think things should really start to settle down this coming year.

I’ve got an awesome girlfriend, we live in an awesome apartment, I have an awesome job, and some awesome friends. :)

I don’t really have time to do a full retrospective of the last year because we’re going over to see our friends and have a bit of a party. It should finish with watching fireworks up on the roof terrace. I did not think I’d be typing that sentence this time last year! :D

First post from the iMac

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Cheryl and I went to Stratford this morning to go and buy an iMac. Cheryl has been saying she wants one for quite a while now, and I think that some sort of desktop computer would be preferable for writing code on because I need screen real estate.

We decided to go and buy the 27-inch one with 8GB of RAM, a 1TB SATAII hard drive, and a bunch of other cool bits. Luckily Cheryl’s student card still passed the inspection by the staff in the Apple store, so we got 12% off.

We did ask the guy to give us the keyboard with the numpad section, and he said yes, but when we got home we found he hadn’t swapped it at all. Oh well, not a huge problem.

Getting the thing home was a massive effort. I had to carry it through the Westfield shopping centre as it was getting busier and busier. Then I had to carry it down escalators and through the tube gates and then find a place to stand with it on the tube. It was quite awkward at times, but luckily the trains leaving Stratford were considerably less busy than the ones arriving there.

At the moment it’s been set up on the dining table. It’ll probably be here for a while because there’s nowhere else suitable for it. When we get rid of the Christmas tree we’ll hopefully put some sort of big desk thing in its place and the iMac can live there. Then I’ll get a nice computer chair and everything will be nice.

Since we got it back here I’ve been configuring it to work more like a Linux installation. I’ve got my terminal set up, installed git, ports, Chrome, Spotify, Xcode, and all the other crap you need to make a computer feel personalised. It’s starting to feel pretty nice. It’s basically the most well-designed Linux distribution out there.

So yeah, I now have Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX running at the same time, as well as an Xbox 360, a PS3, and a Wii. I guess I just don’t believe in brand loyalty.