Monthly Archives: December 2003

Can we play you every week?

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Barclaycard Premiership table - Mon Dec 22


Great day for The Saints yesterday: a comprehensive 3-0 win over local rivals Portsmouth, with a direct-from-a-corner goal by "The New David Beckham" (Jason Dodd), a superb individual effort by back-from-injury Marian Pahars and a diving header by James Beattie.


Saints are fourth in the league again. Unless we keep winning, though, we could just as easily be in the relegation zone, like The Skates. We’re closer in points to our old rivals, 12 14 places below us, than to Chelsea, one place above us. This season is freaky weird.

Praise Be!

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Thank goodness: this year’s Christmas Number One is a product neither of Pop Idol nor Fame Academy:

Little known US singer Gary Jules has clinched the Christmas number one with his cover version of Tears For Fears’ 1982 hit Mad World. — http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3302887.stm

What’s even more refreshing is that it’s a "real" song (albeit a cover), rather than a cheesy "comedy" outing (think Mr. Blobby or Kim Wilde with Smith & Jones).

Rumours of the death of real music have been wildly exaggerated, it seems. Things go in cycles: rock is now "in"; dance music is on the wane. It’ll be back, though. The only constant is change.

Mac OS X – Woo!

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I’m in the process of installing Panther (OS X 10.3) on the iMac DV+ sat next to my desk, which is used for cross-platform testing. It used to run OS 9.1, and wasn’t actually used that much. Due to its Unix underpinnings, OS X should make it a more useful machine, as my place of work is a pretty-much exclusively Linux shop. I have chosen to install X11, so I’ll be able to open gvim (my editor of choice) from a server, and have it display on the iMac.

All of which makes me even more keen to get hold of a Mac of my own. But, wait! Kathy’s uncle Robert (yeah – “Bob’s your uncle” – she knows) has offered us his iMac 350 MHz slot-loader when he gets his new Anglepoise iMac, the only proviso being that I help him set his new machine up. “Fair enough,” said I.

Back to the install. Note to self: read the frellin’ manual. Actually, read the whole frellin’ manual. I noted the piece about original iMacs (“boot partition must be no larger than 8GB”) but not the bit about running the firmware update before trashing OS 9.1. I had to reinstall OS 9, apply the updater, then install OS X. And it turns out that this iMac doesn’t even need to have its boot partition no larger than 8GB. Harrumph.

Still, the Aqua interface is gorgeously lickable…

Christmas Shopping

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1970s Glam Rock band "Slade"


So I’m ill. Well, I’m on the mend, anyway. The doctor has signed me off until Monday and I do actually feel better today, for the first time in a few days (I thought I was getting over it last Sunday, but then The Cough hit).


So, Kathy helpfully suggested things I might like to do this afternoon. They were (IIRC):

  • Wrap Christmas presents
  • Write Christmas cards
  • Buy Christmas presents for Kathy


The third option sounded like the most entertaining, so that’s what I did. I have the act of present-buying quite easy, really: Kathy buys for everyone else; I buy for Kathy. Bliss—except for the fact that I am the world’s worst (or should that be best?) procrastinator.


As such, I always like to buy my presents as close to Christmas as possible, mainly because I hate the way in which shops and malls have progressively dragged the start of the season further and further forward. But this leaves me in a quandary: I also hate hearing rubbish Christmas music like I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day (do you really? I don’t think so!) by Slade. So, like the cat with toast on its back, I am left hovering in indecision between the two forks of the dilemma. Or something.


Until now, of course. I have just bought most of Kathy’s presents online. There are a few more to get, but at least one of them (thankfully) is sold by a small independent shop in Bath, and as such will (hopefully) be free of Christmas Musical Tat, or CMT for short.


Which reminds me: I’d like to walk into one of the "Christmas Shops" (fly-by-night purveyors of Christmas-related tackiness) and say "Hi! I’d like to buy a Christmas, please!"

UPDATE


D’oh! Trust me to get my 70s Glam Rock bands confused. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day was by Wizzard. Slade did Merry Christmas Everybody. Sorry ;)

Radio Silence

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My apologies to the regular readers of this weblog: I have been ill for the past week with a viral infection, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Fujian-strain ‘Flu. I had a variety of symptoms of headache, sore throat, ears hurting when swallowing, until I settled on an annoying tickly cough, which I’ve had since Sunday. It, too, is now in decline, for which I am very grateful.


I’ve never known anything quite like this. I can’t remember being ill for even a week, let alone ten days, during my adult life. I shall quiz my parents to see if I was this ill when I was a kid.


It’s all a bit worrying, though. We don’t need extremists to spread bio-warfare. The superbugs are doing quite alright on their own, thank you very much.