Monthly Archives: April 2009

Gardening

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Grete removed all the dead / overgrown / weird / scary plants out of the little strip of soil in front of the window in the front garden last week.  It sort of looked a lot tidier and then it suddenly looked a lot like it was empty so we popped into B&Q today and got some plants (not many).  We got a few more bags of ground covering bark for the back garden borders as well to keep the weeds down.  We bought short plants which will hopefully spread and cover the soil surface and flower during spring and early summer, assuming they survive long enough.

Here’s how it looked after being emptied –

Emptied!

And here’s how it looks now with the few plants in it –

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Patch Messages

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Half the fun of playing online games, MMORPG’s specifically, are the patch messages, this is my favourite in a long time.

The broken pieces of the Bridge of Khazad-dûm were backwards, with the longer piece on the west side of the chasm and the shorter one on the east. They have now been reversed. This could cause people who logged out while standing on the broken bridge to log on in midair and plummet to their dooms. This should teach them not to log out on precarious bridges!

Itchy ears and 6-inch scratches

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Fizz, the younger of our two cats, gets itchy ears.  The vet gave us a bottle of gunk to squirt into them once a week which clears out any debris and alleviates the issue.  We tried last night to inject said gunk into her ears – as you can imagine she’s not really very appreciative at the time.  I don’t think it hurts and I’m pretty sure it’s not even that uncomfortable, but if you have to hold a cat down they just assume whatever you’re doing is bad for them.  Which I guess is a pretty good assumption.  We were on the sofa, fizz between us and Grete was holding her down.  I got some gunk in one ear but the little blighter is bloody strong and she squirmed out from Grete’s grip.

In order to get some purchase and get herself off the sofa she used her back feet, claws out, and my body as a launch pad.  So now I sport a pair of nice 6-inch scratches down my left side.

We managed to wrestle her back onto the sofa and do the other ear, and she then spent two hours sulking while we watched Quantum of Solace, before finally deciding we were done and allowing us to pet her again.  Of course, she shredded Grete’s arm after the second squirt of gunk, because she doesn’t like to show any favouritism.

It’s interesting to me how different cats deal with this stuff in different ways – I guess some people just see animals as animals and when you discuss personality they shake their heads and roll their eys.  But if you’ve owned pets or been in contact with animals for a while it’s completely obvious they have a personality of their own.  Bubbles puts up a fight, but once she’s grabbed she sort of just accepts whatever you’re doing in the hope it finishes as quickly as possible, however it takes her about a day to forgive you.  Fizz never gives up – she’s always fighting – and she’s built like a small dog, all muscle and anger, but she’s pretty much over the whole thing in an hour or so.

Oh and don’t tell Grete I’m blogging about the cats, I try and maintain and air of disinterest.  Thanks 😉

Twilight

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Twilight is targetted directly at a specific demographic, but even if you fall outside that it’s an inoffensive film with some better than expected acting and some shockingly bad ‘special effects’ delivering an unmemorable but peaceful viewing experience.

Wow that’s a long one

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Long day at work, made longer due to the nature of the meetings and the fact I had to get the bus home out of the city centre.  Not a bad bus journey when all said and done, and although it started too warm (due to a lovely spring day) they turned the air con on half way home so it wasn’t too bad in the end.  Yep, air con, on a bus.  Ages since I travelled that route – they’ve knocked down a whole swathe of buildings near Beeston bus station which I assume they’re going to turn into houses / flats they can’t sell during a recession.

I used to get three buses to work (when I was er, 22) and I survived that, but I’ve gotten lazy.

Finally moved

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So, I finally moved the site away from Gradwell (the last stage was the domain, registered with them, which moved today).  It’s been served by a different server for a little while but all the bits are moved now.

So that leaves me with two domains on Gradwell, one which I run for a bunch of EQ’ers which will take more planning to move and the original one I used to open the Gradwell account which has a few things hanging off it, which will take longer to move in stages.

Typically their service has improved now, but it’s too little too late, I was tired of the bad performance, bad communication, bad planning and bad technical implementation and just couldn’t justify giving them my money to provide that service, or lack of it.  I know no where is perfect, and I have no illusions that the current hosting platform isn’t ideal, but now I’ve taken the time to split the hosting and the DNS management, it’s a hell of a lot easier to move sites around in future.

Blogging from the car

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Thought I’d see if you can use the wordpress app to write posts off-line and what do you know, you can. We’re just on our way to weekly d&d (4th ed.) and the m1 north bound was slow bit it’s cleared up now. My fighter made it to level 5 last time we played but various events transpired against us and it’s been a few weeks since we got together.

Probably a lot of downtime things in this session, dead companion to replace, gear to restock etc.

Guests!

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Nice visit from a couple of friends on their way south from a few days on vacation.  Was really nice seeing them both even if I had to be rude and half-work while they were here.  They seem to have brought a change in weather with them – was overcast until they arrived and now it’s sunny and hot!

Can’t complain – fingers crossed it lasts the weekend we might get some more garden stuff done.

Movie Piracy

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With the escape of a pirate versoin of Origins:Wolverine, movie piracy is in the news again (is it ever not?).  As it happens I was chatting to Grete about this after a small piece on Film 2009 earlier today, and then I read this article on the Empire website which sums up my view completely, especially how the movie industry arrives at the numbers they use and the ads you can’t skip.

Check out the article here.