MaW’s Blog

Well, the last entry I made was the one about the results of my LASIK consultation. One of the reasons I haven’t blogged since then is that I’m trying to avoid descending into pointless self-pity and ‘why oh why’ kind of writing, which obviously doesn’t do anybody any good — especially when it’s me posting it on the Internet for all to see. I’ve been trying to avoid that kind of thinking entirely actually, especially since it doesn’t look like the DDA is going to be useful (although I could join the Army… odd, isn’t it?)

So I’m thinking about doing a PhD again. People will tell me that I’m mad, but I wish they’d tell me something I don’t already know and might actually get some use from. I’m going to wait for a definitive answer on the DDA, and if that’s not positive I’ll seriously investigate doing a PhD, which will give me three years of something else to do before I have to start worrying about what to do with my life again, at which point hopefully some better opportunities will have arisen.

So in the mean time what have I been doing? Well, there’s work of course. I’ve booked two weeks off at the start of November, so if people want to get together to do something around then that’d be great (Matt I’m talking to you in particular), although I’m away in Germany for the middle weekend. I’ve also been playing The Sims 2 quite a lot. I never had the original game, but I’m finding the sequel quite addictive, although it would be nice if the Sims were clever enough not to leave the baby on the kitchen floor when they go to work… also, it’s apparently impossible for them to take out the rubbish and then do something else. If you try and queue up an action for them to do later, they drop the rubbish on the garden path and go and do the new thing, and then have to be told to go and clear it up.

Still, my current family have a daughter who appears to be quite intelligent, and is rapidly acquiring skill points in both creativity and logic. Unfortunately she comes home from school with such a low fun meter that I can’t make her do her homework without letting her spend at least an hour watching TV, playing darts or stargazing. Thankfully the latter provides logic points.

One thing that concerns me is their general lack of money, because the parents seem incapable of getting promoted. Once I figured out that they need to make friends in order to get promoted (as well as having skill points), things got a little clearer, but they’re also apparently inept at making friends. The husband seems to want to spend most of his time cooking, while the wife just wants to have sex with everyone.

Have purchased a fair bit of new music recently. Well, three CDs, but they’re all good so I shall mention each of them.

The first is ‘The Big Session Volume 1′ which is a live session by Oysterband and numerous special guests including June Tabor, Jim Moray and Show of Hands. Very good stuff — lots of variety, a chance to hear artists I don’t usually listen to, and a fantastic sense of immediacy about the whole thing. I just wish I’d been at one of the performances where they did the recording!

One thing worth noting is that Jim Moray’s rendition of ‘The Cuckoo’s Nest’ is quite the rudest variant on that song I’ve ever heard, but it’s also very good. Makes Steeleye Span’s ‘Drink Down The Moon’ seem mild…

The second CD is The Kathryn Tickell Band with ‘Air Dancing’. Kathryn Tickell plays the Northumbrian pipes and the fiddle, and she’s very, very good at both. Her band are similarly talented and the result is a fantastic instrumental CD which is great for writing, and also for playing in the background of City of Heroes, which I’ve also been playing a lot this week (when I’ve not been playing The Sims 2, working or watching Star Wars DVDs).

The third CD is Show of Hands with ‘Country Life’. That’s just good, no more needs to be said. Very good.

Writing… writing’s not gone so well since Friday. I don’t seem to be able to concentrate on it like I need to to write these very difficult bits of the story. Bad timing there I guess… I’ve missed a week of Unfinished History in the Post, I hope I won’t have to miss another one. I want to get it done before November so I can concentrate on NaNoWriMo.

And that, my friends, is more or less the update. Except to mention that I’m now a developer on Growl, which is a Mac OS X notification server, for popping up little windows when people come online and the iTunes song changes. Very clever, very nice to learn Objective-C and Cocoa and how to develop for a really very nice platform. They even gave me Subversion commit access. Make of that what you will.