Morning, it’s far too early to do much else and I’m waiting for a Dreamcast game to burn so I can see if my new DC will play burned discs. It’s taking ages though, so here I am updating my blog. Today’s beginning was rather too abrupt for me. I had a dream this morning that I was at work (which I was last night) but it was slightly different. And we were trying to close up the shop but people kept coming in because we hadn’t had chance to lock the door or something, then we finally got everyone out and I left. It was light outside, even though I’m sure it was night, and the roads were quiet. I decided to try cycling a different way home, so I set off up the road rather than down it. I went up this road that I thought would lead to my house, but it was a dead end, I think it just led to some locked-up garages, so I turned around and tried the next turn-off. This was like a lumber-yard, and another dead end, but further away. What was strange about this place was that it had flickering flourescent lights on metal posts, about head-height. As I passed them on my bike I noticed that in my hands, resting on the handlebars, I was holding several sheets of paper with dark grey squares on them. Every time the lights flickered, it lit up the squares somehow and they were printouts of CCTV footage from the shop, just of me and the guy I worked with standing around.

(more…)

Every now and then I get an impulse to create something or do something new with computers/technology/the internet, usually in the summer when I don’t have any uni work to keep me occupied. I always think this creative urge could be put towards writing, but it always seems to manifest itself as a desire to learn how to write computer code. I always think it would be really cool if I could write games or applications or other things, but I have no idea where to start, or what I definitely want to do, so  I usually spend a couple of days reading about programming languages then give up, since I don’t have the resources or inclination to follow through.

My general philosophy is that life’s too short to learn how to program, because even learning how to do fairly simple things with code takes ages. Two summers ago I did start this site though, and during short bursts over the next several months I taught myself enough HTML and CSS to make it look and work like it does now. I doubt you have any idea how long it took me to work out how to do a front page that displayed the latest post and a random post in a nice rounded border, but was separate to a page containing my last ten blog posts. It took a long time. Sure, I probably could have done it much more quickly with Dreamweaver or some equivalent, but I did it the old-fashioned step-by-step way so I could learn how it worked. I still know next-to-nothing about web-programming though.

(more…)

You know how sometimes you get lines from songs stuck in your head? Not necessarily the music, but the lines themselves. Well I do anyway. Lines like “And still we will be here, standing like statues” or “do you believe in magic?”, though they’re much better with the music to go with them, and when they’re sung in a certain way. Lately I’ve had a few literary lines stuck in my head, two of them from James Joyce, one from Simon Armitage. Sometimes the best sentiments come from the fewest words, and some quotes are brilliant not because of what they say, whether they’re a pithy little aphorism or a well-put piece of rhetoric, but by what they suggest, and how they seem to carry a whole weight of ideas that is much greater than the sum of their parts.

Without further ado in this short, sharp little post, the three lines I have stuck in my head, that I thought I would share are:

i. Yes I said yes I will yes.

This, as everyone really ought to know, is the final, triumphant line of Joyce’s Ulysses. I love the emphatic expression of affirmation it embodies. It’s only seven words, and yet it is so enthusiastic in conveying its message. It’s so well-balanced as well, the way two words separate each of the three yeses. It’s probably even my favourite line in the whole novel.

(more…)

Look at that picture, why is this the official press shot for the final leaders’ debate instead of a picture of the three of them looking stern and debatey? Perhaps it’s just because of the irreverence with which British people treat their politicians. I don’t think they release press shots like this in China. Brown and Clegg look like they’re doing a little dance, or perhaps the floor is really hot, while Cameron is staring into space, perhaps day-dreaming about his Eton days, or how many butlers he’s going to have when (if) he moves into 10 Downing Street.

I never thought I’d really care about politics, being quite generally apathetic about a lot of things, and until recently, I never really knew anything about the different parties or what they stood for. I’ll tell you what made me start caring about politics though: Nick Griffin. When he was on Question Time, I watched the programme for the first time, and it inspired me. I sat there, and I watched his fat, lop-sided toad face articulate his racist ideologies, his holocaust denial, I listened to the audience booing him, and I realised at that moment that, as a person eligible to vote, I had to do everything in my power to make sure somone like that never got into any position of power.

(more…)