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.
Just came back from the movies, went to see “Elizabeth”.
Again I cannot understand this Oscar® thingie. This movie “Elizabeth” was nominated for a bunch of them and so was “Shakespeare in Love” (yes… shudder… that title is really awful); anyway, I saw both and, although “Shakespeare in Love” was ok, “Elizabeth” is by far a much better movie in every sense: better actors (although Joseph Finnes is in both movies), a better story, better dialogue, better settings, clothes and yes, better direction… The same thing happens over and over!
I still can’t bring myself to believe they actually awarded that crap “Titanic” with so many bloody statues, and it still pains me to remember they named “The English Patient” best movie/director over “Fargo”… Oh well, that’s the kings of bullshit for ya…
1:25 a.m. GMT
Gone to bed, three meetings tomorrow.
21:51 GMT
Finally came back to HellMachine (my computer), to check my e-mail. The day was extremely tiring and at the end it rained on my vinyl copy of “Five Miles Out” and my “Boxed” box was drenched… that’ll teach me to leave stuff out by a leaky window.
Anyway… I’m beat and can’t really think of anything interesting to write, so I think I’ll leave it here for now.
It’s 1:27 a.m. and I’m still sitting in front of the computer, listening to The Beatles and exchanging ICQ messages with some guys. The fact that I’m actually maintaining two conversations at the same time can get confusing, especially when I should actually be sleeping… perhaps I should get off my butt and go make myself some coffee.
Or maybe not, I do need to sleep if I am to begin working on the new cartoon series early tomorrow.
I finally brought myself to using the “please mail my password back to me, I’m a dickhead and lost it” service at fortune city so I can actually upload these files and let my life float around on that magnificently ethereal thing they call the “net”.
I’m not in a bad mood today, which is a nice exception. Let’s see exactly how long I can stay like this.
The shitty frozen lasagna I had for dinner is kicking my stomach and my brain is begging for some coffee, or maybe sleep.
I think I’ll just throw my ass in bed, eat some ChocoCrispies and read Sandman comics, I’ll come back later.
These are the very first lines of this completely uninteresting diary website, weblog, as they call it; if all goes as nature intended this project will be forgotten within a week and a couple of html files will linger, lonely, here until Fortune City decides to put them out of their misery.
My special thanks to Kikoo for staying up late talking rubish with me and hitting reload on his tired browser to check out this page. Live long and prosper man.
It’s 2:38 a.m. GMT, logging out.
13:07 GMT.
Most of the morning was spent on the drawing board achieving nothing, this new comic series is more demandig than usual and I can’t get myself to produce the results I want and the client expects, it’s back to the drawing board…
In the meantime, there’s more website updating work to do… but that is easy… and… it’s… done! I’m glad this doesn’t take too much work, because the pay is really crappy.
Here I am again in the middle of two conversations through ICQ… Apparentely, one of my partners has advanced some more on the creation of that new comics series, he’s uploading some stuff for me no, let’s check it out… They’re great, of course, which just means I gotta go back to that drawing table and be inspired.
It’s now 13:43 GMT, logging out…
14:39 GMT
Victory! I have managed to draw a super-hero type, a mean judge, a nervous attorney, a cute woman lawyer and a wide eyed black secretary. Yes, the strip is about lawyers.
The super-hero, I’m figuring, will probably be based on a certain lawyer friend of mine… it’ll be a downtrodden lawyer with an oppressive boss. At night he becomes some sort of avenger and goes out to put criminals out of their misery.
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 […]
1:19 a.m. GMT Just came back from the movies, went to see “Elizabeth”. Again I cannot understand this Oscar® thingie. This movie “Elizabeth” was nominated for a bunch of them and so was “Shakespeare in Love” (yes… shudder… that title is really awful); anyway, I saw both and, although “Shakespeare in Love” was ok, “Elizabeth” […]
It’s 1:27 a.m. and I’m still sitting in front of the computer, listening to The Beatles and exchanging ICQ messages with some guys. The fact that I’m actually maintaining two conversations at the same time can get confusing, especially when I should actually be sleeping… perhaps I should get off my butt and go make […]
