’sup! 29 July, 2009
Posted by fraggle in Travelogue.2 comments
Just thought I’d poke my head in and do…something….can’t remember what.
I’ve had a thread running in my head for a while about economics. Hopefully I’ll get that down soon. Otherwise, in the meantime I think I’ll take questions from the floor. Anything in particular you guys wanna know?
The trouble with growing up 16 February, 2009
Posted by fraggle in Psychosomatic, Travelogue.4 comments
Seems everytime I go to post here, the layout of the text editor has changed. I never know from one post to the next how to do anything. I must be getting old…
So – to those people who check this blog once a quarter or more – Hi! How’s things?
The big scoop of the century is that I have made it to 30. I say made it, like it’s the pinnacle of my existence, but to be honest I was kind of hoping to never be here. Not that I was hoping to die or anything psycho-depresso like that, but I’m officially old, and… well… I still live with my parents with pretty much no hope of escape. I’m also now pretty much whoever it is I’m going to be for the rest of my life (’cause lets face it – old folks don’t get reputations for being stuck in their ways for nothin’!), and I have to say I’m not particularly impressed.
I’m also discovering extreme grumpiness, especially when exposed to politicans and the utter nonsense they spout on an hourly basis. I will forbear from ripping them to shreds for now, but I make no promises…
So yeah – I’m not overly thrilled or excited; just gettings to grips with the mundane.
Greed is good? 6 October, 2008
Posted by fraggle in Travelogue.1 comment so far
Shock horror…..never saw it coming….etc…etc….
At some point, Mr. Fuld and people like him are going to realise that it’s not everyone else’s fault that there are people who think Communism is a fundamentally good idea…
Copyright stifles creativity by making it blinkin’ impossible to know when you’re infringing 20 September, 2008
Posted by fraggle in Jukebox Jury, The Age of Spin, Travelogue.2 comments
Last night (well, tonight – I haven’t got to bed yet!) was the first rehearsal for this year’s Christmas Concert for our Stake Choir. While there I heard about an extremely bizarre anecdote. Last year, we performed ‘O Holy Night’. The version we have music for only as the first 2 verses for some reason. During rehearsals the director decided that after the second chorus, we’d repeat the first to finish. So that’s what we did in the concerts. After one of them, a former director of the choir (incidentally the previous Stake President) was approached by a gentleman who asked who had given us permission to change the song. The man (who is supposedly in the music business) then claimed that by repeating the chorus we had rearranged the piece and thus infringed copyright. The sum result of this conversation is that the choir director now refuses to do the same this year in order to not cause trouble.
All of which I find quite incredible. My question is: whose copyright is being infringed and how? (more…)
Must….control….urge……to destroy!! 8 February, 2008
Posted by fraggle in Jukebox Jury, Travelogue.3 comments
One of my dad’s childhood friends, along with her husband, has come to visit from Dubai and is staying at my house for the next few days. They’ve been here a total of 3 hours, and I already want to kill the husband.
Dad’s been rabbitting on about how he plays guitar so we’ll enjoy playing together. I knew full well that’ll never happen. We’d play very different styles and not really appreciate each other’s (it turns out he’s into country/rockabilly – no surprises, but that’s fine, it’s his life). But then he started lecturing me on note theory and double-stopping (this is after being told that I learned classical instruments as a child and therefore actually know something about music). I put up with that though, for the sake of international relations. The icing on the cake though was the following exchange:
Him: So play me a full song.
My dad: <Chuckles> He doesn’t know any! [I'm not entirely sure what that was for, but anyway]
Me: <frantically thinking of something to play> erm…erm…okay
The first thing that popped into my head was Stone by Unbelievable Truth, cause it’s nice and simple, but I realise it’s not the most attention-grabbing song ever. That does not excuse what happens next however. I’ve barely started (about 10-15 seconds in), when all of a sudden he asks my dad about the how the heating is controlled, and then they both get up and examine the thermostat!
THE THERMOSTAT!!!
They don’t even want to alter it or anything. Just to explain how it works….
I knew there was a reason I didn’t like performing….
Conference Report, continued 3 September, 2007
Posted by fraggle in Hopeless Romanticism, Mormonism so-called, Travelogue.add a comment
Continued from here.
After lunch was Ultimate Frisbee, which was great, even if we were a rubbish team! Only other downside was one save which resulted in my glasses giving me a graze on my forehead. It looked worse than it was, but that was the problem, I definitely don’t look good in a scar! :-s (more…)
Conference Report (no, not *that* kind) 28 August, 2007
Posted by fraggle in Mormonism so-called, Travelogue.3 comments
A new vista, part 2 20 August, 2007
Posted by fraggle in Geekish Tendencies, Travelogue.1 comment so far
So after the joys of setting up the network card, the next problem was (and for all I know still is) random crashes. All I know about them so far is that it’s related to the graphics card an ATI Radeon 2600XT. Every now and then, usually while playing certain games (STALKER and X3 being the worst culprits) but sometimes while web browsing, the mouse will lock up and shortly thereafter the dreaded BSoD will inform me that Microsoft’s much vaunted separation of the display driver from the kernel hasn’t changed much really.
For some reason though one time that wasn’t enough. It needed to teach me a lesson for my impertinence. (more…)
A new vista, part 1 22 July, 2007
Posted by fraggle in Geekish Tendencies, Travelogue.3 comments
Howdy folks. What calamitous event provokes me to blog, I hear you cry? Why it’s my new computer and the epic story of setting up Windows Vista!
As this the second time I’ve assembled a computer from scratch, putting the hardware together didn’t take too long to do (about 7 hours which included being distracted by an ordered Chinese takeaway and the film Deja Vu which was quite good as time-travel thrillers go. Didn’t avoid a temporal paradox at the end though.)
Even the basic install of Vista was painless, after I realised that I’d installed to the wrong partition! Nope, up to then everything was peachy. (more…)
Stuff, March 2007 Edition 25 March, 2007
Posted by fraggle in Travelogue.add a comment
Moving on.
I am currently utterly shattered from the Northampton Convention. Here’s a tip for you, if it’s bitterly cold outside and someone offers to take you on a banana boat: Just Say No!
Incidentally I fulfilled one of my wishes that morning. The film was called Grounded, and was actually quite good, if downright bizarre and silly in several places.
In other happenings, the government survived a backbench rebellion on Trident, which to me is a good thing. Now I don’t know what form our nuclear deterrent should take, but we should definitely have one. There is this idea that we must be weak in order to have influence, but the weak cannot stop the bully, and after all it is the bully that Trident is the contingency for. North Korea knows this perfectly well.
