teh bigbro blog(tm)
Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
10 2005

Sun, 30 Oct 2005

Sinéad did some halloween shopping today, bringing home a veritable treasure-trove of confectionary. I'm not sure how much of it will be left for the little children on Monday. Mmmmm... sugar!
posted at: 01:10 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Fri, 28 Oct 2005

I have rediscovered my MiniDisc player - along with the copy of "Stunt" by the inimitable Barenaked Ladies sitting in it. The rechargable batteries are shot and the non-standard shaped rectangular replacements cost £40 (thanks Sony - really helping out the consumer there!) and are out of stock anyway - but the additional battery holder takes one of the rechargable AA's I got (4 x 2000mAh AA's + charger for £12 from Maplins.) So I'm able to listen to MDs on the way to work again, I've rediscovered an excellent album and I don't have to take it out on the environment by having to dispose of an unwarranted number of alkaline batteries.
Of course, this does mean I need to copy some of my more recent music purchases on to MD - which is a modicum more involved than simply MP3'ing it and ObEx'ing it to my phone. Perhaps this Christmas shall be the Christmas of purchasing a portable player that can handle Ogg Vorbis.
posted at: 08:54 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 26 Oct 2005

I think it's probably the Avian flu H51N ... or possibly H61N (one more than Avian Flu) or maybe Ebola?
Nah, I'm not quite that ill - I'm just rarely sick and an extremely bad patient. I keep myself pretty busy and it frustrates me greatly when I don't have the energy to do all the stuff that I can see needs doing.
Hopefully I'll be all better and back at work tomorrow.
posted at: 13:24 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Thu, 20 Oct 2005

7:05pm and I'm stuck in a bus, stuck in traffic, in Rodley. At this hour of the evening I should be just about getting off the bus, not still waiting for it to get places. It didn't help that it arrived 15 minutes late. I'm contemplating purchasing a car for the Winter months, when the public transport gets noticeably worse. wah!
posted at: 19:10 | path: /rants | permanent link to this entry

Mon, 17 Oct 2005

<elrond> But in general, yes, there is a decided lack of soft fluffy white bread in Germany.
<elrond> They tend more towards the gravel+yeast varieties.
<elrond> And there can be a lack of yeast.

Wed, 12 Oct 2005

... Róisín is having some mash, some spaghetti shapes in sauce and some sausage which she is covering with Dairylea(tm) - which just goes to prove that kids will, in fact, do anything for Dairylea (or something... possibly this may not constitute statistically significant evidence...)
posted at: 21:36 | path: /observations | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 11 Oct 2005

Ye olde internette today expelled:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4327258.stm

Internet addiction? Is this the first sign that the subculture of virtual reality is becoming a 'real' reality?

http://www.businessballs.com/teambuildinggames.htm

Some interesting ice-breaker type games. Some really appallingly bad ones too, but there are a few worth considering... possibly... maybe...

http://www.businessballs.com/stories.htm

Some useful analogies that can be applied to various situations. Sometimes it's useful to be able to use someone else's analogy when illustrating a point :-)

Mon, 10 Oct 2005

So there's three of us sqeezed into our tiny kitchen with the radio tuned to Pulse and the Bradford Vs Huddersfield darby commentry providing the soundtrack to my tasty and nutricious veggie shepherd's pie.
Sinéad has proclaimed that she will wear her Bradford City shirt to work tomorrow if they win.
0 - 0 at the moment but both teams making some good plays, according to the radio pundits. See how I struggle to contain my excitement...
...meanwhile, Sinéad is wondering if she can help her team to score by going to the bathroom. Something about her always missing them scoring due to being distracted by the tiny size of her bladder... or something. It's all comedy :-)
posted at: 19:58 | path: | permanent link to this entry

...because Sinéad and I decided to do some tidying. I suggested tidying the computer room, since I had one server down for repair anyway. This was enough for Sinéad to decided that the living room needed to be completely rearranged. So now I have one half of the computer room that's very clean indeed; the landing upstairs is full of boxes of stuff; there are PCs in the bedroom and some more boxes of stuff there too; until 2am this morning the bathroom door could not be closed due to yet more boxes of stuff; the first thing that greets people when they walk in our front door is a huge filing cabinet (that's preventing the front door from opening fully); 2 badminton rackets and a mandolin were last seen in the laundry basket (Sinéad claimed that she thought it would be a safe place for them because the clothes would cushion them from being damaged...); the living room is full of Róisín's toys and the contents of the aforementioned filing cabinet; and I can't find anything.
Sinéad did take the time to rearrange the videos and DVDs in some sort of category order that I can't quite understand though... as soon as I figure it out I'm looking forward to being able to find my DVDs more quickly and more easily than ever before, or something :-)
Tonight, I shall be mostly trying to remove musical instruments from the laundry basket and clean the second half of the computer room.
posted at: 11:54 | path: | permanent link to this entry

I've finally made the time to install and test CrossOver Office. Install (atop Ubuntu) went smoothly and Office 2000 and Project 2000 were installed with only one minor hitch, a missing RICHED20.DLL. Copying a RICHED20.DLL from somewhere else solved that.
The biggest issue I'm having so far is that the menus and toolbars in Word appear to completely break if any mouse input other than movement and left-click is used while the window has focus. This is not good. I shall continue to poke and see if I can find some solution for this.
Also, note to self: I need to test under Xinerama to see if I can run Project, etc. across my dual-head system's monitors.
posted at: 00:20 | path: /technical | permanent link to this entry

Thu, 06 Oct 2005

Political Correctness and other observations in life...

http://killer-fact.com/polite_society.htm

To Simon Poole, chairman of the Campaign for Courtesy:
Dear Mr Poole,
Fuck off.
Yours sincerely,
Harry Hutton.

http://chasemeladies.blogspot.com/2004/06/my-sniping-requirements.html

Pure, unadulterated comedy... Can you guess which website Sinéad decided to wander aroudn today? ;-)

Tue, 04 Oct 2005

lollersk8s... *cry*...

http://members.cox.net/pimpbot9000/roflcopter.htm

omgwtfbbq!!!!!!!!!1!!111111111oneoneoneoneoneeleveneleven</aol>

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