18:20 GMT

I decided to change the interface on the main page a bit, you may have noticed. The popup menu was getting way to big and annoying so I decided to start building a calendar with the previous months for quick access to any day. The days are still navigable between one another and the popup now contains only the current month with the “latest entry” feature to facilitate access to the most recent text in this diary.

That’s it. Yep. I lead a pretty normal life, no big conflicts, no terrible diseases… Innit great?

21:25 GMT – np: Mike Oldfield: “Four Winds”

Went and bought Mike Oldfield’s new album with the promising title: “Guitars”. I’m only now listening to it… it’s generally very uninspired although I wouldn’t label it as crap, like I did his more recent albums (“Voyager”, for example, what a load of crap!). Still… sometimes I wonder why I still, after all these years, buy Mike Oldfield records even though he hasn’t put out anything mildly exciting since 1990…

Oh well…

Anyway, I had a cool day at school today since I managed to catch my student’s attention by teaching them how to create Escher-like animal patterns (you know, like the blue swans that if you look carefully are intertwined with white swans. Incredible what you can do when you know something that nobody else seems to know.

23:57 GMT – np: music from the Settlers II game my wife’s playing…

My parents returned from New York today and so I went to pay them a visit. They were exhausted from having no sleep at all and jet lag.

They did bring us some very cool stuff, especially Star Wars Episode I stuff, including a poster and the novel based on the screenplay. I’ll have time to read the novel, since it’ll be another 5 months before the movie opens here. They also got me a Swiss Army watch and a couple of pairs of shades including some Oakleys, all fakes between 5 and 10 dollars, obviously.

Apart from that it was a hot lazy sunday, culminating in some football while ironing clothes routine with a favorable three – nil for my team. (My team?… anyway, the team I usually appear to have some affinity with).

Of course there was still time for some work, as I chipped in on some animation work one of my partners was doing.

And on comes Monday… oh hell…

23:39 GMT

Today was the day I first played Quake III Arena online.

Actually this was the first time I successfully played Quake online, any version.

This game is absolutely superb and after a few tries I was king of the frag, always classifying in the top 3 spots and even winning a 30-frag round. It kicks so much ass I don’t think I can compare it with anything. The game is so sweet and the action is so vicious! I especially love it when the server has only a few players running around… makes it even sweeter to catch a bad fucker from behind and make him eat a rocket (… pardon my language…) :)

Anyway, this is a must for everyone and you can hardly complain… although you must have some pretty handsome hardware, especially including a 3D accelerator, you can play this game if you have a Mac, Windows or Linux. As for connection speed… well, let me tell you, this is quite a luxury programming work of art… I can play the game with my lousy 28.8 connection with a 500+ ping and beat the crap out of people playing on a T1 with a less than 50 ping. There is some lagging, that’s understood and it does depend a bit on the server… but if you can find a space in one of id software’s servers you’ll know what perfect Internet playing is.

I am completely hooked, my phone bill is gonna go sky high and my wife’s probably gonna kill me… but I’m enjoying every second of it.

23:11 GMT

Well, I spent the whole day in pain. My hands, particularly my right hand, can’t take the mouse and keyboard anymore. It hurts just to be still.

My biggest concern is that drawing is becoming hard (I have to hold one of my fingers with another finger… what a mess), and playing the guitar is also becoming quite painful. I’m starting to learn some Kung-fu exercises, which are great for stretching and recently I heard about Tensegrity, which, aside from its philosophy, consists of a large number of physical exercises which also promote stretching, particularly of the tendons. If you’re curious go here. I’ve only recently learnt about Tensegrity, so don’t hold me responsible if you find it offensive in some way.

So maybe by practicing these stretching exercises I can overcome some of my tendon problems… my hand mobility is becoming seriously limited and I don’t like that one bit.