I wasn't going to blog today. It's getting late, and I have limited online time before I must sleep. But somehow I felt like rambling aimlessly about stuff. Because I don't have anything to say, as such..!

Oh, but I just read this article, and it made me laugh. Because of the They Might Be Giants reference. Are all geeks fans? Or do all geeks have the potential to be fans? Do they just need to be exposed to the Giants music? Because when TMBG were on Top of the Pops, they were geeks. For sure. :-D

I'll leave it here. I typed more, but it was hopelessly rambly, pointless, and even more boring than usual.

Seeya later.

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:57 PM 2 comments

You know, I think I've figured out the Karaoke video thing. They go to a stock footage place and buy whatever's cheap, then weld it together! It makes perfect sense! Hmm.

Still hot. My Galileo thermometer (is that spelt right?) hasn't been able to tell me an exact temperature. It just says, "Over 26 degrees". I hate hot weather. I had today off work (I have to work Saturday), so I was sitting around trying to keep cool. (And, strangely, writing lots of that fic that I've been sort of writing for ages!) So that's one good thing about work - air conditioning! :-)

I could talk about the German Grand Prix, but... nah. It happened. And there are no more friendly rides back to the main part of the circuit because someone's broken down in the woods. But the new track was probably more exciting. What with tyre explosions and whatnot as well. I still haven't found out why they were fiddling with Ralf Schumacher's onboard car computer. (Am I making any sense tonight???!)

Oh, I know something exciting that's happened to me...! (Woo!) I was reading Darwin's Radio, right? Really good book, intriguing view of how humankind could evolve. You should all go and borrow it from the library, or buy it, whatever. :-D

Anyway, I went to Greg Bear's website, and it had a thing where you can e-mail comments. Oops, my right Windows key has just fallen off. Um, anyway, so I sent a comment. And a couple of days later, I got a reply! Woo-hoo!

Dear Helen--

Thanks for the very kind words! I've just finished DARWIN'S CHILDREN and am
doing revisions now. Lots of material about viruses--and some real
surprises, as well. Guaranteed to get me in hot water with many folks.

Best wishes!

Greg Bear

Maybe he sends the same thing out to everyone, but it's made me strangely happy. I like it when "famous" people take a moment to think about us plebs.

That's all for now.

Goodnight.

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:13 PM 0 comments

I would have blogged earlier, but there were problems. I had this amazingly long blog in my head on Thursday, but I couldn't get online. And last night, I just couldn't be bothered. And tonight, well, I can't remember all the things I wanted to say.

I remember one of them, though. You see, Wednesday I went to an "all you can eat" Chinese evening with Karaoke. I really wasn't in the mood. Work's been really busy all week, because it's the first week of the holidays, and we were a man down (or woman, even), which made things worse. But you don't want to hear about that.

The food was pretty good, although not as good as the place in Leicester that I've been to a couple of times. But the Karaoke, it was odd. I suppose by its very nature it's odd, but hey. The sound system seemed like it was going to break down at any moment. Perhaps it'd been subjected to too many dodgy versions of Carpenters songs. It meant that even people who usually sound great sounded a bit rough. Sad, really.

But one person, who I know from church, was fantastic! I'd never really heard him sing before, but wow, he can sing. He plays lead guitar, which he's amazingly good at (it's his job), but I never knew he could sing like that. Better than a lot of "pop stars" when you hear them live, that's for sure.

Hmm, I'm digressing again. The thing I really wanted to say about the Karaoke was this. What's up with those videos? A lot of them seemed to be vaguely pornographic videos featuring lithe young Asian women in bikinis. They ran along beaches! They posed in the surf! But those videos weren't the weirdest ones. There was one (it was a Queen song) that had a man abseiling down a building. But the best one had a really peculiar mixture of stuff in it. It consisted of people having facials, massages, and a bloke making jewellery. And a sort of 80's looking model posing in stupidly extensive jewellery, possibly things that the bloke had made earlier. I don't know. And it wasn't even like the people having massages were beautiful young models. It was a lot weirder than I can make it sound, however long I ramble on about it. Veerrrrry strange.

Maybe everyone knew that Karaoke videos were weird. But it was my first time.

And no, I didn't sing. :-)

posted by Fiery Fred @ 9:15 PM 0 comments

I feel very not with it. If that makes sense. So hot. Hot hot hot.

For ages and ages I'd been thinking how fun it'd be to start a website that had loads of pics of people from Stargate. But not pics from Stargate, rather other things they've been in. But I know that I'd never have the time (or indeed the web space anywhere) to do it. I have enough ideas already! But it dawned on me that I could use my (well, it's Ali's too) mailing list, 6DStargate. Yahoo Groups have this photo album thing where you can upload pics, so I'm sticking them in there. Hooray! Not that I have many. I grabbed Carmen Argenziano from Gone in 60 Seconds and The A-Team, and I have the episode of Angel that starred Tony Amendola. It's fun. I like these sorts of pointless exercises!

I know Ali has quite a few screen grabs from really awful things. We've watched some terrible Stargate related films in our time. Richard Dean Anderson's been in some abominable things! Heh.

Anyway, I was going to talk about the other stuff I've done, what with my appalling lack of Blogging, but I can't really think of much. The French Grand Prix was pretty exciting. But Mark's beaten me by Blogging about it first.

Should Blogging have a capital letter or not? Hmm.

Poor Arrows. They had to go so slowly in qualifying that they'd be too slow to race. So as to avoid paying fines (which they would have had to if they'd just said they couldn't race!). Somehow it seems mean to take more money off of a team when the reason they can't race is that they don't have any money. Or am I missing something?

And Jenson Button is off to BAR. It's official! Good luck to him. Maybe he can pick up some hairdressing tips from Jacques Villeneuve.

So hot. Head fuzzy.

Oh well. :-p

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:06 PM 0 comments

So, I've recovered from my ER weepiness..! But I have had a while. :-)

What have I done since I last blogged? Quite a bit, actually. Though it has been, erm, 5 days. So...

On Thursday I went to see Minority Report. I wasn't totally amazed by it, though it had some great touches. I'd been expecting it to be the next Blade Runner, but it was no-where near that.

Actually, I had a few problems with it because of the time travelly aspects. (Let's face it, the entire plot depended on that working, so...) I know my friend Ali feels kind of the same, so here goes. (Maybe I'm just being stupid, I don't know...!)

Highlight the following if you don't mind plot related detail! Why, if the three are seeing the future, can the future be changed? I mean, when he went to see the guy he was supposed to kill, he still ended up killing the person. Because that was what had been seen. Although not quite in that way. If you know what I mean. But the whole point of the system was that the future could be changed. So they were seeing things that were never going to happen. Trying to get my head around that is proving to be difficult! And don't get me started on gripping onto cars with sticky palms or something. And that eye guy. His revenge was making everyone think Anderton bought tank tops?

That said, a lot of the futuristic touches were great. Although the product placement made me laugh. Oh look, a Nokia laptop! Oh look, a Bulgari watch! Oh look, a Lexus car! And so on.

So many Sci-Fi "epics" these days are glossy but have no real depth. No real plot. Not when you analyse them. Unless I've changed and am no longer capable of liking a certain type of film.

I was a bit scared that that might be the case, actually. I thought I'd rewatch something I hold in high regard, just to make sure I still think it's great. So I rewatched Twelve Monkeys. Which is one of my favourite films. There's so much detail, it's so complicated, that every time you watch it you get a layer deeper. And I've watched it a lot of times...! This time round I went through another barrier. It went a bit like this. Bam! Wow! Why didn't I see that before? Am I stupid?

If you've watched it, maybe you understand what I mean. If you haven't, you probably won't get it. It's probably not to everyone's tastes. Some people probably don't like being make to think (and it will make you think!). But it's worth persevering with. Oh yes. :-)

Anyway, the point I was making was that it's insanely complicated, but when you get down to it it makes perfect sense. How many time travel stories make perfect sense? Michael Crichton's novel Timeline was a complete mess from a logical time travel standpoint. And I normally enjoy his books loads. He took two "ideas" of time travel - the type where you go to a different timeline, and the type where everything happens on the one timeline (and so it's already happened and so the future can't be changed) - and mashed them all together. Eep.

Even Bill and Ted dealt with time travel in a more believable way, for crying out loud!

I know Minority Report wasn't time travel as such, but surely it should have had rules to it. Or maybe that's just me.

Maybe people who make films these days are afraid to take risks. Blade Runner was never a huge box office hit, though it has a huge cult following these days. It's too dark, too grim, too... inaccessible. The same with Twelve Monkeys. Too many people start watching it and think, "What on Earth is this horrible film about? I don't get it!". It's the same disease that's hit books - chick lit, the Bridget Jones effect.

Is this the end for intelligent, gritty, cinema?

I hope not.

Wow, and that was just Thursday! Heh.

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:23 PM 0 comments

I haven't cried so much in ages.

I feel kind of daft.

But ER was soooooo sad.....

My head hurts and I'm all sniffly.

:-(

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:07 PM 0 comments

I'll have to go to sleep soon. I don't want to. It's too early. But I am tired. And I have to get up at 6.30am or something tomorrow - I said I'd go into work for 7.30am. Aaargh! I start at 10am usually, and that's early enough! I'm not a morning person. Although the longer day means I get loads more breaks. Wow, a whole hour for lunch! Not 20 minutes! (If I worked 9-5.30 instead of 10-5.30 I'd still have the same amount of paid hours, even though I'm there for an hour longer. Interesting, eh? *grin*)

I've spent hours, yesterday and today, working out a Star Wars chronology for all the books. It wasn't as hard as it could have been, because the nice people at theforce.net had already worked out the dates! But their chronology included all the childrens books and graphic novels etc. as well, and I just wanted the adult novels. I've been spending a lot of money on eBay lately. I can't resist the call of the Star Wars novel. Aaargh!!!! I haven't even read them all and I want more!

So check out my chronology. Since it was mainly for my own benefit, I starred all the books I've got. (Although I haven't paid for two yet, and they're not actually here, 'cos I only won them the other day.) *sigh*

I can take it into work, that'd justify the hours it took slightly.

The worrying thing is, the New Jedi Order books look more and more tempting, and there are loads of them..! Oh dear...

And so many of the things are by decent sci-fi authors.

*sigh*

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:20 PM 0 comments

Wow, if Mark's spider had been in my room, I would definitely have been elsewhere!

And Stephanie, that site is sooooo cool! Timothy Dalton, hooray!

That said, what have I done recently that's interesting? Nothing. That's what. Like always. *grin*

Last week, the only thing I watched on TV was The Lone Gunmen. I look forward to it, I'm sad like that. It's good. And my brother seems to really like it, too. He has this weird thing about spinoffs - he refused to watch Buffy but he loves Angel. I don't think he's ever watched an episode of The X-Files, yet he can't miss The Lone Gunmen. Weird, huh?

Anyway, tonight my grandparents came round. I probably ought to go and see them, then they wouldn't come round when good telly's on. (That sounds really mean, even in my own head!)

You understand, don't you?

It's the one thing I watch all week?

But you do know what I mean, right?

Right...?

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:27 PM 0 comments

I'm tired. And replete.

Last night I ended up reading until 1am, and then I noticed an evil spider making a house right above my head. I have a fairly high cabin bed, so the ceiling's quite close. And the spider was doing that, "Oh, look, I nearly fell off. But I'm still here. Spin, spin, spin, wooo, nearly fell off again," thing that spiders do. I thought about trying to catch it, but it was taking me so long to psych myself up that I thought it'd be easier to sleep on the settee downstairs.

This makes me a complete wimp, probably. I let the spider have my room all to itself. Hmmm.

Anyway, I'm replete because I went to Pizza Hut tonight with three people from church. And my brother John.

I have bad memories of the two previous time I've been to Pizza Hut. The first time, I went to one in Southend. We were kept waiting ages. I was prepared to give them another chance, so I went to the branch in Leicester. And I was kept waiting there even longer! Some people know this story already. You see, I was annoyed because the staff seemed to be congregating and chatting rather than serve us. I can appreciate that if they were busy service might be slow, but... When the bill came round I noticed that it said, "Service not included". Presumably that's to remind us to tip. The service had been so appalling that I wrote "I noticed" on it, before we paid and legged it...

Tonight was pretty slow, too. I'm beginning to think it's me who causes the problem. Maybe they see me coming. I don't know. It was fine to start with, but when it got to dessert time the waitress disappeared. One of our party enquired as to her whereabouts, and the other waitress said she probably had a problem with her terminal, or some other vague excuse. Eventually a very nice lady came out, who I presumed to be a manager of some sort. She was very apologetic. I think she was having problems with several staff members. But she said we could have as much ice cream as we wanted. She was so nice that I'll forgive them. Besides, we were there to talk more than eat. And the music was decent, even if the air conditioning made the atmosphere like that of a fridge. :-)

Oh, and I feel extra sympathetic towards the nice manager lady because the two blokes at the table next to us apparently left without paying.

Tut!

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:54 PM 0 comments

Okay, so I'm not feeling much like blogging at the moment. There are two things I keep thinking I could be doing instead of being online. (This is unusual: there's not a lot that I consider interesting enough to get in the way of my nightly "online time"!)

First of all, the Stephen King book I'm reading is really scarily compelling. It's the first Stephen King book I've ever read - I never really tried the library's horror section when I was younger. Mark the work experience person recommended it, and it's grim but somewhat addictive...! It's Desperation, just in case you were wondering.

The second thing that's calling me away is Caesar III. It's all James's fault! He said he'd been playing it a lot, so I dug it out and installed it on my laptop, and... Aaargh.

I'd forgotten how annoying it is when those women clad in green dresses wander around completely failing to find the granaries stuffed full of things they can sell at their market. Oooooh.... Happily, Brian the laptop can run Winamp in the background quite merrily, thus enabling me to make use of my extensive MP3ed CD collection at the same time! Woo-hoo!

In other news, Bernardine Kennedy came into work today to sign some copies of her latest book, My Sister's Keeper. The synopsis sounds quite interesting. The picture put me off. Typical women's type cover - grinning young woman photo. If you know what I mean..! I'm more of a sci-fi/crime/thriller/adventure person usually. :-)

Anyway, Mrs Kennedy seemed like a lovely person.

And that's all I have to say about that. :-p

posted by Fiery Fred @ 9:53 PM 0 comments

My eyes feel blurry.

I'm fed up of making MP3's for my laptop, Brian. Is it really worth it? *sigh*

I just finished reading K-PAX II: On a Beam of Light. It seemed better than K-PAX, but then that might just be because I'd seen the film and Kevin Spacey was so good in it. I don't know.

There was less Prot in this one, see. Hence there wasn't so much of the "that Prot's not as likeable as Kevin Spacey's Prot" problem. It was more about Robert Porter. Which was good, in a way. And you still don't know for sure whether Prot is real or not. He added a few bits in just in case you were beginning to think, "Obviously Prot doesn't exist, what sort of a fool does he take me for?". Hmm.

I looked up K-PAX III: The Worlds of Prot whilst at work. It's only just come out. A nice surprise, seeing as all I knew was that it was due out this year. (It said as much in the back of the book I just read.) I wonder whether it'll clear up the truth about Prot. Or whether we'll never know.

I suppose it all depends whether Gene Brewer wants to write another million books about it.

Especially now he has a following because of the film.

I keep getting told I'm too cynical. I wonder why? :-)

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:22 PM 0 comments

Well, Mark's already talked about the Grand Prix on his blog, and I don't feel much like blogging. But here I am.

Imagine you're a highly paid, respected Grand Prix driver. From Scotland. Imagine you're not having a great season, even though you were expected to be up there when it all began. Imagine you're at your home Grand Prix, the one with even more pressure than usual. Imagine your car has Michelin tyres. And imagine it starts to rain...

McLaren guy: "We'll put you on slicks. It's not raining at the moment. You'll be fine."
DC: "Okay, whatever."

The race starts. The rain starts.

DC: "It's getting pretty slippery out here..!"
McLaren guy: "Come in, come in. Wet tyres are ready."

He pits.

DC: "These tyres aren't working."
McLaren guy: "It's not wet enough."
DC: "Can I go back to slicks?"
McLaren guy: "Okay, pit, pit."

He pits.

DC: "Whoa, this is way too slippery."
McLaren guy: "Careful!"
DC: "I can't help it! I'll be in the barriers soon at this rate!"
McLaren guy: "Well, we have one option remaining."
DC: "Anything!"
McLaren guy: "Intermediates."
DC: "Have those been tested properly?"
McLaren guy: "Erm, no."
DC: "But you want me to try them?"
McLaren guy: "Erm, yes."
DC: "Okay. Coming in."

He pits.

DC: "Well, I'm not falling off so much."
McLaren guy: "You're not going very fast, either."
DC: "You want me to push?"
McLaren guy: "Negative. Stay on the track!"
DC: "I think it's dry enough. Can I have slicks?"
McLaren guy: "You want slicks?"
DC: "I can hardly be any lower down the field, can I?!"
McLaren guy: "Okay, pit."

He pits.

DC: "Is this race over yet?"
McLaren guy: "Not yet. Oh, now it is. Michael Schumacher's crossed the line. You've been lapped. The race is over."
DC: "You have no idea..."

Or something like that. :-)

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:46 PM 0 comments

You're Captain Archer! You're always in control of situations and are very adventurous. You're a leader, but you're also laid back and willing to listen to what others have to say. You look a great deal like a scientist from 1999 named Dr. Sam Beckett. Take the Enterprise Quiz! Brought to you by redanubis.

posted by Fiery Fred @ 9:44 PM 0 comments

I've left it a few days and I have a huge list of uninteresting things to talk about. Drat.

I tried to blog, but yesterday you couldn't publish, so... It's not entirely my fault that I left it so long!

As I type I'm using two computers at once. To my left, on top of the scanner, is Brian the laptop. I downloaded an MP3 encoder, so I'm putting lots of CD's onto his hard drive. I've always wanted to do that, but this desktop (Paul Colin, if you wondered what he was called) only has an 8Gb hard drive, so... If I have any disposable income in the near future I'd love to get an MP3 player. Those Discmans are so 1990's. *grin*

The other day the papers were saying that Tony Head (Giles in Buffy) was going to be the next Doctor Who. Unfortunately, this seems to be completely made up. I suspected as much. He would make a good Doctor Who, though, wouldn't he? But then I'd like to see the Ripper spin-off from Buffy, and you can't have everything. If you know what I mean..! Hmm.

My brother John bought a new computer Thursday, and it's made me very annoyed. The purchase of a new computer should be a cause for celebration, but alas, PC World have made it something rather different.

Perhaps you've heard the stories of people being pressurised into buying service warranties on toasters. Well, it looks like I escaped fairly lightly when I bought my digital camera. John spent £999 in their shop, but we nearly walked out before it got to paying. I was soooo annoyed. And I still am. Just thinking about it again makes angry buzzing things start moving around inside me. It's a strange feeling, but that's what it feels like. It's probably just me who gets that. :-)

Anyway, we got there at about, oh, 6pm. We browsed a bit, and John chose which PC he wanted. An AMD Athlon 1.1Ghz Advent PC. Very nice. But that's where the horror began. First of all he spent ages finding a boxed computer we could have. This was fair enough, an understandable delay. Then he took a while to find the paperwork he needed. He needed a £20 off barcode or something, which was also fairly understandable. Although such a delay would indicate he hadn't sold many PC's. Which is weird.

The filling in of the paperwork was where things got nasty. He proposed that we pay £250 for a 3 year warranty of some kind. Annual PC Healthchecks were included in that price. And that covers any repairs that needed to be done, too. John said he wouldn't be interested. The man asked whether we'd be interested if it cost less, and John (being polite) said maybe. The man rushed off to see his manager (or hang around out of view, who knows?). He came back and said he could do it for £200.

He was rather confusing.

He said that the healthchecks alone made the deal worthwhile. Unless I'm missing something, the healthchecks cost £39.99 a time. Three of those doesn't add up to £200.

He said that we wouldn't be able to sort the computer out if there was a problem because there was no recovery disc with Windows XP. Well, there's a recovery disc. It sounds fairly easy to use. Let's see, can I put a CD-ROM into a CD-ROM drive? Hmm, I think so.

He said that any repairs would cost a lot because it was a proper Advent PC, not a "do it yourself" job. (He said this after I pointed out that getting stuff repaired would probably not come to £200). I can see that we might have a problem if the motherboard exploded, but really, how likely is that? I'm no expert on this stuff, I haven't exactly kept up with developments as much as I might have. Perhaps Mark knows, since he's such an avid reader of PC magazines..! As far as I can tell, the things that generally go wrong are floppy drives and CD-ROM drives. In ten years or so of home computing, that's all I've had break down. And they're not exactly expensive, are they...?

John still said no. The man said, "I hope you won't be offended, but I think you're being extremely foolish by not taking up this offer". Fair enough, we thought, the only reason we came here to spend £999 was to be offended. Does he think saying that won't offend people? I can run system maintenance on my PC, thanks! I don't want someone "health checking" my PC! I don't want "upgrades" recommended to me!

A three year service agreement? It'll be obselete in three years! This desktop's only three years old, and who'd want a 350Mhz processor these days?! *sigh*

Anyway, after making us squirm for a while, he deserted us again. I don't know where he went. I felt like walking out. I don't appreciate being kept waiting for no apparent reason, especially after being made feel like an insignificant person who knows nothing about computers. After a while he came back, and repeated the fact he thought we were being stupid not to take up his offer. By this time I felt like shouting "shut up!!!" really loudly.

He escorted us to the till, and we paid. The person on the till was much nicer than evil man. Or maybe he just seemed nicer after evil man's hard sell. I don't know. :-p

He didn't help us out to the car. I think he lost interest once he realised we weren't going to pay more for his "deal".

I was sooo annoyed. I'm never going to shop at stupid PC World again. I'm fed up with their stupid "customer service". I'm going to complain, before I explode with indignation.

Shouldn't you be nice to people who are spending that much money? At work I'm nice to people who're spending any amount of money. We have "mystery shoppers" who come around and make sure we're being lovely and polite and efficient.

Why was he so eager to get people to sign up? Was he on commission? Do they know that people won't need to spend that much on repairs, so the best way to make money is to sign them up to a service agreement?

Ooooh, I'm so angry...!!

Grrr....!

posted by Fiery Fred @ 8:59 PM 0 comments

Quite a few people have asked, so I'd like to state that there's no particular reason that my brother called my laptop Brian. I wonder if you can personalise the start-up sequence in XP? I haven't really had enough time to play with him yet. Because I have this crazy idea of using a snippet of the Monty Python #Brian, the man they call Brian# song...

I meant to talk about the wedding I went to on Saturday, but it wasn't all that interesting. Not for people to read about. It was my second cousin's wedding (I think that's how we're related!). I hadn't seen her since her sister's wedding, four years ago. I'm not sure why I was invited. I think it's because they basically invited the entire Berrington family. Which consists of me, my brother, Mum and Dad, Dad's two sisters, and my Nan and Grandad (who is my second cousin's Dad's brother). Heh.

Our family is small. Inevitably, the conversation got onto whether John and I would be marrying any time soon. Perhaps I should have told them I can't get married because I'm already virtually married to an Australian called James. Virtually being the operative word. I'd hate to think what my scary Aunt would have said if I'd brought that up... John was sitting between the two aunts, poor boy. :-) Anyway, they were telling him how important it was for him to get married and have lots of children. Because he's the very last Berrington. Sad, isn't it?

There was less than thirty people there altogether, so it really was an honour to be there. Even if John and I were only invited to complete the Berrington set. One of my Aunts, the scary one, drank loads and complained about people like me who took alcoholic beverages and only had a sip. (My Great Aunt virtually insisted that we take champagne for the toast, but it's horrible stuff! She said I'd get used to it, but I don't really get the chance to drink champagne on a regular basis. Strange, that.) She also complained a lot about computers. I hate it when people do that. *sigh*

She's the reason Christmas dinners are so fun. *s/v* Inevitably we get onto the subject of the metric system. Which I like, just in case you were wondering. Family get togethers, eh?

Where was I? Ah yes, the wedding. It was the first one I've been to at a Registry Office. I've only been to about three weddings in my entire life, that I remember. And they were all in churches. But I think it's good, if you don't go to church regularly, to get married in a non-church environment. It was a really nice wedding, though. My Great Uncle sounded really happy to be getting rid of his daughter! Which was amusing. But she's such a happy person. It's fun to meet her every four years or so. :-)

If my scary Aunt ever read this she might not be pleased. But if someone hates computers, there must be some sense of irony in maligning them on the internet.

If I'm using the word "irony" correctly.

Because Alanis certainly isn't. :-p

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:24 PM 0 comments

Well, I really ought to talk about Brian. John called my new laptop Brian, you see. That was his big surprise, along with the fact it has the greatest hits of Steps on it. And worse than that, Shaggy's album. Eep.

Brian, then. Brian has a tiny pixel (I suppose by their very nature they're tiny, but hey) on his otherwise magnificent screen that never changes colour. This is a fault, I suppose. But somehow I'm beginning to think that it adds character. Now that Brian has a name, now he's been accepted into the family, I can't bring myself to complain about him. What if they took him away and destroyed him? I couldn't live with myself! ;-)

His specifications are as follows:
2GHz Pentium 4 processor
256MB DDR SDRAM
20Gb HD
DVD/CD-RW
32MB ATI mobility graphics card
Windows XP
etc.

He's a Medion. And he only cost £1199! Which I thought was good. Go ahead, shatter my illusions with cheaper laptops you've found online. See if I care. :-p

He came with some pretty good software, too. I particularly like PowerDVD. A strange thing to like, but you can see what I like doing in my spare time. Watching DVD's, obviously. I have that on this computer. (Yes, I'm not using Brian. John's playing with him.) But it has Works and Autoroute and Encarta. And other stuff.

And you know what else I've got to play with? A new digital camera. It doesn't have a name - let's face it, it'd be stupid to give a camera a name!

Its specs are as follows:
2.0 megapixels
6x optical zoom, 2.5x digital zoom
Internet conferencing
Movies (with sound)
Voice captioning
16MB Smartmedia card
1.8" LCD monitor

It's a Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom. It cost £299 from PC World. I went there after work this evening. I had researched it over the weekend. It wasn't some strange impulse buy. It'd be hard to impulse buy in there - it takes them a million years to notice you want help! Anyway...

So I've spent lots of money. You know how I'm justifying all this expense? This stuff will be invaluable whilst undertaking my Professional Archaeological Practice MA. *grin*

Perhaps later I'll kidnap Brian and write some more of that Stargate fic. You know, the one I've been writing for years? I can write in bed now. So much more relaxing..!

BTW, I took a pic of me with the camera. All done with mirrors. :-)

In the sidebar. :-D

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:45 PM 0 comments