Archive for August, 2009

Headed down to the Cuthbert Brodrick this afternoon for Sunday lunch. George, Norm and Lil also joined me in some kind of cartoon style intro (or perhaps the video to The Offspring’s “Why Don’t You Get a Job?”) in which I’m walking towards the pub and people peal in from the left and right to join the procession. Pure coincidence we all arrived at the same time or yet more evidence my life is a real life Truman Show?

In any case we arrived to find that steak was on offer, so that took care of that decision!

Got myself an iPhone this week as, as much as I love my Sony Ericsson k800i which has served my exceptionally well for these part three years (it is honestly a fantastic phone) it is started to look a bit dated and as what most people would consider to be a geek, I decided I needed to move with the times a bit more.

So far I have thought it a very nice device to use, it’s not the greatest invention to ever benefit man kind but as a smart phone it does what it needs to do exceptionally well. I don’t use a great deal of applications but I am loving having Tweetie and Facebook at my finger tips and easy access to Wikipedia and the web has proved very useful as well – not that these are something specific to the iPhone of course.

It really came into it’s own at the pub today though when Norm informed me that my podcast feed was down. This was a most amateur mistake on my part of having the permissions set wrong on the config file and so when I did an upload the local copy which specifies the full domain name as the database host overwrote the live permission and MySQL kicked the remote connection from my server’s ISP into touch.

I needed to fix this fast so I headed over to the Apps Store and found myself a (free) SSH client which installed in a few seconds and allowed my to connect in to my server via SSH from my iPhone, go into the file I needed to update using vim and edit to the host to the correct setting. Problem solved!

The real test of course is when my number ports over on Tuesday and I start actually using it as a phone.

I also have yet to work out how I am going to set everything up – at the moment I have it syncing with iTunes at work because I don’t want to spoil my home machines with such software. However I need to sync it with my music so I can make use of the music functionality. And work out if I can connect it to the hands free kit in my stereo – otherwise I may end up making in car calls on my k800i still!

I headed over to Si’s last night to have a bit of a catch up. I suggested we grab some takeaway but with Si having already eaten I dared to try the Tesco healthy eating paella which turned our to be rather nice even if Si’s cat Katie was on the prowl for leftovers.

Got home last night to my apartment, casually wandered into the kitchen and took a look outside the window – to find the street below absolutely swarming with police.

Not just a few but dozens of them, half of them carrying machine guns!

There was a line of police cars and vans and the whole top of the street was blocked off as officers moved round a suspicious looking black SUV. Eventually some guys were brought over and the police got them to slowly open up the boot of the vehicle before inspecting it and then escourting it away. Crazy times.

As Nicola finally finished her resits on Tuesday, Wednesday night was dedicated to a tea party at hers in celebration. The kind of tea party that involves lots of alcohol of course 😀 . Nicola and Kate had also been down to give blood that day so Nicola was wasted by the first drink!

We started off Tuesday with a committee meeting which didn’t go too tell as it was noiser than we had anticipiated in the pub. We also had far more to talk about than we could possibly fit into one meeting and we had several non-committee members in attendance who had shown up also so it didn’t make for the most productive meeting.

The rest of the night went well though with much eating of stake and drinking of alcohol as should be expected from our Tuesday nights these days.

Following on from our previous Sundays at Leeds Museum and the Royal Armouries we met up for our usual Sunday lunch today.

I saw we met up for it, I had Sunday lunch, Kate and George had drinks because they had no money and prioritised alcohol over food. Kate assures me this is the choice anyone would make if they had her job though 😀 . Though to be fair if you’re drinking Guinness (not that she was) you probably don’t need food after all.

Afterwards, we headed down to the Leeds City Art Museum and took a look round the first gallery which was reasonably interesting, if only from the perspective of the inequalities in the pricing of works of art. Rubbishly, they don’t allow photos in the galleries, however.

Given both myself and Norm had a rare Saturday off for various reasons, I headed over for a bit of food and a few beers on Saturday night.

It’s mental really, I moved to the city centre so I could walk home after drinking sessions and I end up having to go all the way out to Seacroft. Still nothing makes you feel better than getting on a bus and observing the type of people also using said service – it makes you feel so much better about your own life 😀 .

Unfortunately X-Factor has now started again but once we got that out of the way we had some really good discussions as we sat and drank long into the night. What a Saturday night should be really.

We headed over to Aagrah in the city centre on Thursday to celebrate Felix’s birthday. Overall I was quite impressed the service was fast though a little over zealous – three seperate people asked us if we wanted more drinks essentially in a line one after another but at least it meant we weren’t left thirsty. They did then take a while to get the drinks though.

The food was excellent and I somewhat regret filling up entirely on the starters and being unable to actually eat my main meal for the first 10 minutes after it arrived. Still I managed to get all the chicken so I got the important parts 😀 .

Headed down for the monthly meetup of the York Brights on Wednesday which saw a record turnout for the group! That said the pub wasn’t exactly up to scratch – they had run out of lemonade and pint glasses!

In any case the group provided it’s usual good conversation and entertainment as well as a chance to flash my new title and charity. Good times.