Archive for April, 2006

I just tried to register with Live Journal. It sucks for two reasons…

• There verification image is worse than vBulletin’s. I realise that the bots reading them are getting better but guess what – nobody can read them! I don’t have any visual impairment and it took me three attempts to get it right. It’s bad technology, if you are going to use images like that you should add audio or use a system such as ASCII. How many users are you loosing because of that? How much of people’s time are you wasting just because you’re too lazy to impliment a better system?
• Their password filter blocked one of my passwords so I had to use a less secure one.

Furthermore their page is just BS, they don’t seem to provide a link to anything, are they trying to hide their own content or what? No wonder nobody uses Live Journal anymore.

I’ve been feeling really down at the xmeltrut.com network recently. I’m worried that I might reach the stage (in the foreseeable future) where I just say “right I can’t be bothered doing this anymore.”

I blame M World for my fear. That used to be updated every day without fail until about 18 months after I started doing it and once a few days slipped, it just collapsed and I stopped updating it altogether. I don’t want the same thing to happen to xmeltrut.com.

You would think that once you’ve been doing something for 18 months you’re not going to suddenly get sick of it. But it seems to happen. I’m past the 18 months stage now though, it will be 2 years on August 1st. That is still like 4 months away but that puts me a good two months past the 18 month mark.

Still I’ve missed odd days on xmeltrut.com and still kept focused and it’s not like this is the first time I’ve felt depressed about it. It’s been an on and off thing for more time than it hasn’t really and I’ve always got through those periods without it falling apart before. But can it go on indefinitely. The history of M World suggests it won’t although the history of xmeltrut.com suggests it will.

Whatever does happen, the amount of posts being made has declined so the chances of hitting the 10,000 post mark by the end of the year are slowly becoming slimmer each day. I thought now that I’m on holiday I would feel better about doing it as I have more time, but I don’t, if anything I feel worse. Maybe it’s because I have no real structure to my day though and I have time to think about it.

It finally happened :(. After 10 days solid of running I finally had to restart my desktop as it had grinded to an almost complete halt. It was a good run, I turned it on the Saturday when I got back from Bod and it’s just been running solidly since then.

Finally up. I’ve been awake for a few hours managing to get through Frasier, Miss Match and Without A Trace as I couldn’t be bothered to go all the way to my bookcase to get a DVD.

I was more hung over than I was expecting in that, I was hung over. I actually saw it coming a bit as I did get 8 drinks in, in total last night. I might as well cut down though as whereas most people need to be drunk to make an idiot out of themselves dancing I’m quite willing to do it sober ;).

Still it’s not like I drink that much normally as I have to pay normally :p. The whole idea of it being free drinks all night isn’t quite true though as you have to pay after 2. But then they used to just shut the bars at 2 so at least they are still available if you’re willing to shell out for drinks. Well, that’s what the guys in the toilets told me but then they said they were open till 3:30 when they actually closed at 3:00 like normal so maybe all the bars were closed.

I think Bondi during the holidays is the way to go. Well, Bondi on the whole is, it has a great ratio, at least when we first went in (it wasn’t that good by the time we left). Sitting around waiting for the free bar to start was a bit of a drag but then I underestimated how reduced the queues would be tonight. In that, there was no queue lol. But then it was only 10:45. Still, we normally get there at 11 and there is a massive queue backlogged past the Queens Hotel so it must have been building for a while then.

George eventually joined us (us being myself, Fonze and John) at about 12:30 (well, that’s a vague time, maybe later) although I don’t know if there was a queue then. I would suprise me as it never filled up, the bottle baths were dead all night and the upstairs bit was never opened up again. Although I guess the ease of getting drinks just encourages over-drinking even further. But then that’s what it’s about :p.

It was cool hanging out with all guys, no cross trains of thought as we all only had one thing on our mind – that of course being, what was going on with the music ;). Ok, it wasn’t that but I did put some thought into that. I request Offspring – The Kids Aren’t Alright which the DJ nodded to and then just never played it. John requested The Prodigy which he also said yes to and then just never played despite making an anouncement about it.

My Easter seems to be socialising up now. While it still can’t compete with uni I have Star on Friday, Friday after is Friday Flock and the final weekend is Wendy House, plus if Fonze suggests going back to Bondi I am completely up for that and I may be doing some kind of meet-up with people online. What can I say, everyone wants to hang out with me :D.

Oh, I should also add, I got recognised again last night. When we first got in some girls came over and got a photo with me, quoting my internet videos. Being a celebrity rocks! :p.

I’m a bit apprehiensive when discussing issues that concern others as I’m aware that other people actually read my blog. However I’d rather be honest on my blog even with them reading so in the spirit of such honesty I’m going to talk about tonights events.

I went to Bondi. I actually started out at Leodis and got a VKD and a coke in with John before we went down to call for Fonze and headed to Bondi. We got there at 10:45 and it was dead. Indeed it remained dead for the whole night, at least compared to normal. All the students have gone home so there was no cue when we got there (pretty early though as free drinks don’t start till 11).

They closed off the upstairs where we were sitting though because of how empty it was. Did they not see this coming? Perhaps not as Leeds Met only broke up this week so they will have been there last Monday but as Leeds Uni has already been off a week I would have thought last week would have been relatively dead too.

I did quite a bit of dancing when we were down though. Well, skanking, I can’t really be expected to do any more being a punk rock fan. Got my some serious time on the big screen though :D.

Of course the concept of dancing with a girl is rather mundane to most as by my age I should have got laid many times over but I would remind you that I am a computing undergraduate and so my natural environment is in a darkened room in front of a computer screen leading to massive social-underdevelopment. I stand by my choice and now it gives me the added bonus of being able to psycho analyse (spelling?) each new situation I end up in.

So yeah, overall a really good night. I doubt Star can top it on Friday but I’m eager to find out :D.

Last Monday I mentioned that a new episode of Nightmare 90210 was on it’s way. Well, it’s arrived.

Episode 4 has now been unleashed onto the internet via Blair Space’s indie movies channel. Entitled Evil Wind it takes a cold hard look about the evil that can dwell within mother nature.

I would make a comment about how bad I probably spelt that but as it’s not a real word I don’t think it matters.

David Smith: humm i dont remember installing this
David Smith: my webcam is up and running
Chris: lol
David Smith: aparently it cant save pics though
David Smith: humm cant find a wizerd for it
Chris: Check behind the fridge. When I loose stuff, it’s always behind the fridge.

Well, if nothing else, as this is going to sound like an attack on Amazon, I will say that they really put some time into finding my book. So it’s not really a negative post. But anyway…

I got an email this morning from Amazon informing me that they had cancelled an order I made because they were unable to source it. I placed the order, well, I don’t know because it’s disappeared from my account but it was somewhere around the end of November / beginning of December last year. 5 months ago.

I was annoyed by the “this may take us 4 weeks to ship it” thing on the page but I thought what the hell, I’ll order it and wait it out. Of course, now I know it would actually take a little longer than that. Indeed forever, as they can’t actually get hold of it.

I have actually forgotten about it most of the time, I only really remember it when the send me the occasional email saying “we’re still trying to source this for you but it’s going to take x amount more time to find it.” Still, now it’s cancelled I guess that’s a good thing considering the amount of debt I’m in.

Who says punk revival is dead? Well a lot of people given the massive rise in popularity in the 3rd generation of punk – emo punk. The hate of it must go ever on. But then punk revivial isn’t dead. Sure, we’re a long way from the hayday of the 90’s when Offspring and Green Day were at their peak but then both Offspring and Green Day are still producing albums. I wasn’t a massive fan of Splinter and American Idiot was wandering off punk but it was a fantastic album never the less.

Plus many bands only recently started – The Used, Billy Talent (ok, they are slightly emo but still more a punk revival band than an emo punk band) and many more examples that I am not sure of the date of but think they fall into the right category, only made it big this side of the millenium.

Then you get bands like Be Your Own Pet that only recently burst onto the scene but have none of this emo crap, they are punk all the way. They have a female vocalist too which makes them the decond non-gothic rock band to have a female vocalist ever I think :-p). They are even playing in Sheffield. On the same night as The Wendy House! That is just inconsiderate. I mean, what am I supposed to do there?

I could do both possibly. If I got a train back at 10 (the gig starts at 7:30, I presume it will be done by then, although I wouldn’t suprise me if it went on longer, who knows) but that would involve paying for my gig ticket, Wendy House ticket, bus ticket into town, train ticket there and back and taxi fare home. That’s a expensive night even for me. It sucks I can’t go back to Bod, maybe I should have applied to go back a day earlier then I could just crash back there. That said, I don’t know when the 95 starts running again and I wouldn’t have my bus pass anyway.

As some of you know, I’m quite a big fan of The Offspring because they are blatantly the greatest band ever. Recently their frontman, Dexter Holland ran the Los Angeles Marathon in aid of the charity, The Innocence Project.

It was quite inspiring. I mean, the guy is 40! I know I am normally against the whole charity thing because of my moral views (I think it conflicts with the interests of civil rights) but then an organisation such as The Innocence Project is fighting for civil rights as it’s about exonerating those wrongfully by using postconviction DNA testing.

So it got me thinking, maybe I should be doing my bit for charity. I lot of people who represent the man (parents, teachers, confirmists, etc) have suggested I shave my head for charity and normally I would just laugh at them but now I’m giving it some real thought.