I’m in the middle of watching Star Wars again with my wife. What a wonderful family ritual, one I’ll never get tired of!
I’m terribly looking forward to seeing the new Episode I and it’s especially annoying knowing that the movie will soon open in the civilized world and that I’ll have to wait until next October to set my eyes on it. I really hate this feeling of living in some sort of outer rim system, some sort of off-world colony, or perhaps the Kessel mines…
Anyway, it’s to damn late again and tomorrow I really have to be up early for a meeting or two. Gladly, one of the meeting involves our accountant which, by a happy turn of fate, happens to be my grandfather whom I haven’t seen in over a month.
Well, not many entries scheduled for today, then, since I’ll be away from HellMachine most of the day.
If I’m terribly lucky, then I might bring home a new SoundBlaster Live! and I can feed this crappy SoundBlaster PCI64 I now own to the pigs.
Gone to bed.
9:38 a.m. GMT
A successful breakfast for me consists of a simple, yet carefully engineered, cup of milk. It took me years to reach the perfected state of this breakfast and now I cannot live without it. It’s one teaspoon full of coffee (I use Nescafe classic), 4 teaspoons of white sugar, a cup of non-fat milk, stir. Heat up in the microwave, on maximum heat, 1,5 minutes. Immediately remove from oven and stir again. Stirring again is important because the microwave separates the ingredients.
The intense microwave heat melts the sugar into a soft caramel flavor, which mixed with the coffee is a real treat. Vary the amount of coffee according to your amount of sleepiness.
After drinking this sugary treat, your lips are likely to shut together, try keeping your mouth slightly open.
Now, feeling like I’ve just shared important and life-changing information with the world, I can get ready to get on the bus down to the river, cross it by boat and meet my partners for a nice cup of coffee and then proceed on to my meetings.
Later!
20:11 GMT
Everything went pretty well, except I didn’t get any SoundBlaster Live. Bummer.
Off to have my tuna fish with chick peas and hardboiled eggs.
22:30 GMT – now playing: Philip Glass – Island
I’m supposed to check out how to use CGI in HTML. I mean, in the middle of HMTL… can’t really figure it out… The main problem is, I don’t really know exactly what is the problem I’m supposed to solve… CGI in HTML? shouldn’t that just be a normal URL call?
Yes, as it seems it’s the , nothing much. With that cleared up it’s time to order the “Learning Perl” book.
Dilemma!
Where do I order it from? Bookpool.com or amazon.co.uk?
I think there’s actually a problem before that dreaded dilemma: I’m broke. Darn! I need that damned book!! I just hate not having money…
23:36 GMT – now playing: Guano Apes – Tribute
I think I’ll sink in the couch drinking heavily and watching Star Wars… I’m tired.
0:08 a.m. GMT – now playing: The Fun Lovin’ Criminals – All my Time is Gone
Funny how a new day starts… just now I was typing away about heat on April fifth, and suddnely I look at the clock and realise it’s the sixth already… ten points on observation here…
10:44 a.m. GMT – not playing anything, cause my wife’s asleep.
The cartoon just got edited a bit, minor changes, nothing much. Done it. Uploaded it. No history.
11:55 a.m. GMT
Working on a new site, the ideas don’t seem to be flowing all that well, which is a real bummer. It’s another thing that pisses my off: trying for hours to do something great and coming out empty or with a load of crap. Right now I have nothing and it starts to itch… little by little I start to get more and more anxious and soon enough I’ll be going berzerk, totally pissed off and unable to do anything at all. That’s me.
And that’s why there so much broken or patched up stuff around my working area, that’s why my keyboard is missing the F9 key and my drawing board chair is disfigured beyond recognition.
What do I do now?
12:02 p.m. GMT
Man! I just uploaded some files and noticed that FortuneCity has slapped some sort of banner on my index page… it’s all fine by me, of course; they do provide the 20 megs of free space, but… Can’t anyone design decent graphics in this bloody world? Have you seen the damned thing? I mean: the site looks awful, yes, but I have some plans for it to look better… now, with that horrendous thing hanging on the main page it’s always gonna look awful no matter what I do!
Cripes! *shudder*
21:52 GMT – now playing: Garbage – Hammering in my Head
The new entertainment site is starting to take shape as I draw schemes and write down its structure and functionalities. I’m aiming it for next June, will it be ready?
I just defined all of the sections and their contents, it’s time to e-mail the structure to my partners and have them comment on it. I’m quite happier with version 2.0 than I was with version 1.0, to be honest.
22:55 GMT – now playing: Genesis – The Last Domino
Victory! Tritão just made the first fully functional Perl CGI script. I mean, he just made it work, he didn’t exactly write it, but it’s a very good first step. Soon enough we’ll be making custom CGI for websites.
23:20 GMT – now playing: Philip Glass – Floe
Time to hit the kitchen and cook myself some steak!!
16:40 GMT – now playing: Fat Boy Slim – Rockafellar Skank
Boy is it hot! It’s boiling hot here! I think I’m going to die before even getting to Summer, this year.
I’ve been working on tomorrow’s comic strip, but it hasn’t been easy, I’m not sure it’s very funny at all… I’ve also been considering the language barrier problems. I did start this log in English, but that’s not my main tongue (yes, I have a double tongue…). Changing to my national language could be appropriate, but I wouldn’t reach as many people as I want.
I’ll leave it at English for now, I think…
Too much time is going by without me taking care of this site… it’s a mess, hard to navigate and all, I hope I can get some free time for it pretty soon, or else…
18:15 GMT – now playing: Brad Fiedel – Cameron’s Inferno
It’s done! The bloody thing!
Of course, it’s only just inked, it must dry and be scanned and painted, and so on and so forth; but, anyway, it’s done and I can send it in in a couple of hours.
Meanwhile, I’m sweating my ass off in the 400 degrees in this room, I think I’ll be dehydrated pretty soon, and they’ll have to identify my body by adding a little water and stirring.
23:38 GMT – now playing: The Fun Lovin’ Criminals – The View Belongs to Everyone
I stink. I mean it literally: I smell bad. I just got an e-mail from a friend at it reads: “It’s too Darn Hot”, just like in the Cole Porter song. It couldn’t be more appropriate as it *is* too bloody darn hot and I’m sweating my ass off again, although the Sun is long set.
The problem is: it’s almost impossible to do anything sensible in its heat. I mean, you’re either a psychotic manic homicidal loon and you’re out there chopping people up and that sort of stuff, or you’re screwed, cause there’s virtually no other job you can actually perform at under extreme heat.
My limbs start to drop alongside the chair, my feet turn to liquid and most of my body feels like gelatin. The worst part is that my brain turns itself upside down in the attempt that it might refrigerate its various lobes, and makes it very hard for me to concentrate or think straight.
There’s a first thing for my new section… I mean, a new section I’m thinking about adding to this blog: “things that make me pissed out of my mind”. Heat, would probably be number one. Have you noticed that, no matter how much naked you get… there’s actually a point after which there’s nothing else to take off? What then?
In high summer I find myself in the tub filled with cold water, and that feels good, but… there’s not much you can actually do when immersed in cold water (or any other liquid at any given temperature, although I do agree you can probably get more done inside a tub of cold water than inside a vat of boiling mercury…). That’s why heat pisses me off. It seriously reduces my ability to drive or operate heavy machinery.
The really nasty part is that I live on a top floor, which means the Sun heats up the place during the whole day, and it stays hellishly hot during the night.
Been back a while from my couple ‘o’ days in the country. It was nice, but by the second day I could kill for a computer. There weren’t any, nor were there videogames, a VCR or gigantic music systems. There was, however, sun, trees and flowers, some gardening and that sort of thing. I got a bit of a sun burn on my face, from mowing weeds out of their misery.
Lucky enough my football team just won a five-nil game which I watched in my extra large wega telly. I checked my e-mail and downloaded a “Sin” patch. Feel much better now, yes, thank you.
2:29 a.m. GMT
I’ve just added this site to the OpenPages webring. It’s a ring dedicated to online diaries, and after having read some pretty neat stuff I decided to join.
My own online diary project has barely just begun, but as soon as I can dedicate a little time to it it’ll be a little more functional as well as interesting, I’m sure.
2:43 a.m. GMT
I’m wasted, the short vacation killed me and I’m ready to go back to work and be rested and relaxed. Oddly enough it always seems to be like this… Every time I go away on vacation I comeback needing some rest.
A couple of weeks in Algarve: Spent them swimming, running around, jumping or otherwise cavorting in some tiring sort of way in the swimming pool.
A week in London: walk, walk, walk. The very first day there we went from Picadilly to the Houses of Parliament on foot, not more than an hour after having left the plane and then some more.
I think my problem is I spent five years in college doing absolutely nothing. Boy, is that annoying! After a while things stop making sense… my life was divided between not doing anything and doing nothing at all. Now I panic at thought of having nothing to do. Gratefully my small design company is heating up and there’s always stuff to do, there are meetings to go to and, of course, there are already two comic strips we’re putting out weekly. There’s also the teaching job once a week, which I’m getting used to (now that I have only 10 classes to go…) and I still try to go to the gym three times a week.
I’m really looking forward to developing this site further. I’ve been writing diaries and journals for years now. Some are terribly juvenile (as expected of young people), but I tend to keep them as some passages are now true gems. I did toss away my puberty years diaries, as they were no more than hard-core as written by a 13 year old.
Putting it online opens a new level of challenge. One that I am eager to take.
2:55 a.m. GMT
Gone to rest my few remaining neurons.
14:37 GMT
I am now downloading the playable demo of “X-Wing: Alliance”. These guys at LucasArts are just amazing… They’ve put out “The Grim Fandango”, which I recommend, followed by “X-Wing: Rogue Squadron” and now “Alliance”, there was also “Rebellion” recently and there are two games based on the new “Episode I” of Star Wars to come out on the next few months. And the games are always great.
I have only a crappy 28.8 connection, so the download should take me about 5 hours (I wish I knew what kind of 28.8 modem do the guys at download.com have, because they estimate the download time in 2.5 hours.). The full download is a mere 28 megs.
19:55 GMT – now playing: Coolio – Gangsta Paradise (dub)
The game kicks ass! You get to pilot an YT-1300 Corellian transport (i.e. Millenium Falcon model). At the end Lucas says, you actually get to pilot the Falcon inside the Death Star, simulating the battle of Endor. Major disappointment: although you can jump into the gun turret of the ship, it’s not terribly exciting… the fighters don’t actually come in range of the cannon all that much as they prefer to waste you directly from behind. Also… when you’re wasting away at the gun turret… THERE’S NO ONE FLYING THE SHIP! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGH!
Found that the hard way… There is a silly droid sitting in the copilot seat… I wonder how you get it to fly while you shoot… A cool feature would be to, through a network, have a pilot and a gunner (or two, since the Millenium Falcon will have two gun turrets if correctly rendered). This would kick major ass, as, for the first time, you could have a co-op net game in which everyone’s aboard the same ship!
I managed to play the demo on my Matrox Millenium G200 at 1024X768 fairly well. The sound, however sucked bad, once again, on my SoundBlaster PCI64. People! Stay away from this soundboard!! I can’t believe how much it sucks! I bought it, I don’t know why, but I bought it and I regret buying it more than I ever regreted buying any computer part at all!
I have now ordered a SoundBlaster Live, which is what I should have done in the first bloody place. I repeat: stay away from the SoundBlaster PCI64 card.
20:21 GMT – now playing: Sheryl Crow – Solidify
My JavaScript is getting checked by Tritão. If it works, I may still make a popup menu for the diary site today.
I keep getting this error:
JavaScript Error: log.html, line 21: self.frames.mlog.document.choose has no properties.
Whatever the hell that means…
Well, apparentely it means that it won’t be done just about now, maybe later…
20:57 GMT – now playing: Sheryl Crow – Cold Turkey
Finally I’m downloading some Perl stuff, namedely the sutff that makes it possible to program Perl under Windoze. I just can’t begin to understand how I can install Linux without wiping my disks, so I’m starting like this and maybe one day, who knows, I’ll be rid of Windoze forever.
BTW: this Cold Turkey version by Sheryl Crow is pretty neat. Always did like the post-Beatles Lennon songs…
Well, got the Perl thingies, now I wonder if I’ve ever learn this?
21:25 GMT – now playing: Sheryl Crow – All I Want to do (live)
I’ve just decided that the look of this diary site will not have backward compatibility. This means that these pages will look like they do now forever and, whenever I change the look of the site it will only apply to future pages. In that way it’s easy to browse, no only the days and events, but the way the site looked when they happenend.
I also just dicovered I didn’t quite read the OpenPages rules throughly enough (son’t you all think we spend way too much time reading internet service rules?). Anyway, my journal has to have at least seven entries before it is accepted into the webring, so it’ll take me a few more days, I suppose, since I don’t intend on making up stuff.
21:59 GMT – now playing: Sheryl Crow – Father, Son
Aren’t black backgorounds terribly exhausting?
I’ve been online for two hours now, checking out other online diaries, weblogs, whatever. I found some pretty interesting things. I’ll combine my own ideias, with something my wife told me about pillow books and ideas I’ve collected around the OpenPages webring… I’m startig to have a few ideas on how this place can look like and be organized.
22:26 GMT – now playing: Miles Davis – Freddie Freeloader
Yea! the Javascript popup menu is now working and ready to be adapted to my needs. A special thanks to Tritão, of course, master of JavaScript.
Tritão is giving me a little intro to Perl, which he’s starting to learn himself. It’s a mess! What the hell is @_ and $ ? It’s not easy! The last programming language I used was Spectrum BASIC, for Odin’s sake! ok, so, $ stands for scalar, a type of string in perl which accepts any type on information, while @ stands for array. Worse thing is, neither of us knows much about Perl, since we’re only starting. I’m inclined to ordering a few books.
23:07 GMT – now playing: Deep Purple – Strange Kind of Woman
I think I’ll disconnect now and go have dinner instead of just packing in these spicy Ruffles chips. Or I’ll probably just go play “Alliance”.
I’m cooking lasagna with my wife, the real stuff, not frozen this time. We’re cutting a bit off the 2 and a half hour cooking of the Ragú, though.
My computer, or should I say windoze, is acting weird, the five disks/partitions in HellMachine: 666, Death, War, Famine and Pestilence are all mixed up, links are missing, programs can’t be found… how I love windoze…
Good news is, I might be installing Linux soon (at last!), I have it since christmas (s.u.s.e.), but can’t install it (lamer alert!), will get help soon.
1:08 a.m. GMT
Lasagna is in the oven, E.T.T.D. (expected time till dinner): 45 minutes.
I’m thinking about this site, it shall have perhaps a frame with a popup menu to easily access any given day, it’ll probablly include some pictures and, for sure, some sort of e-mail contact so that people can easily reach me for a good insult or two (or, in the case of more civilized people, exchange lasagna recipes).
I’m now going over Fortune City trying to get my free e-mail to work.
It works. I can’t seem, however, to retrieve my mail any other way except by logging into a web based e-mail client, which is something I loathe. I’ll check their chat and see if anyone can help.
Ok, fine webmail is all I can get, then it’s all I’ll need, e-mail me if you want, click here (not available anymore: may 5th, 99).
Bloody hell!: 1:49 a.m. GMT, the oven went off, it’s been off all this time and it’s bloody cold! The lasagna now resembles a piece of old plaster. Still, nothing will stop me now, the oven is back on (no, no explosions) and the E.T.T.D. is now… well, 45 minutes… I might take this time to begin reading Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchickers Guide to the Galaxy” which I finally borrowed from a friend.
2:41 a.m. GMT
The lasagna was great! A bit light on the salt and a bit heavy on the tomato, but still… pretty good! This was actually, I must confess, my first lasagna.
And now off to bed!
19:30 GMT
I’m outta here! Going south for the weekend, will be back Saturday night.
1:18 a.m. GMT I’m in the middle of watching Star Wars again with my wife. What a wonderful family ritual, one I’ll never get tired of! I’m terribly looking forward to seeing the new Episode I and it’s especially annoying knowing that the movie will soon open in the civilized world and that I’ll have […]
0:08 a.m. GMT – now playing: The Fun Lovin’ Criminals – All my Time is Gone Funny how a new day starts… just now I was typing away about heat on April fifth, and suddnely I look at the clock and realise it’s the sixth already… ten points on observation here… 10:44 a.m. GMT – […]
16:40 GMT – now playing: Fat Boy Slim – Rockafellar Skank Boy is it hot! It’s boiling hot here! I think I’m going to die before even getting to Summer, this year. I’ve been working on tomorrow’s comic strip, but it hasn’t been easy, I’m not sure it’s very funny at all… I’ve also been […]
1:31 a.m. GMT Been back a while from my couple ‘o’ days in the country. It was nice, but by the second day I could kill for a computer. There weren’t any, nor were there videogames, a VCR or gigantic music systems. There was, however, sun, trees and flowers, some gardening and that sort of […]
0:28 a.m. GMT I’m cooking lasagna with my wife, the real stuff, not frozen this time. We’re cutting a bit off the 2 and a half hour cooking of the Ragú, though. My computer, or should I say windoze, is acting weird, the five disks/partitions in HellMachine: 666, Death, War, Famine and Pestilence are all […]
