Scents of Direction

	Scents of Direction


	This is what I think...


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	Monday, October 31, 2005 Well, we've made it through to dawn and we still have two kittens. She's much more lively now (unlike me) so that's a bit of a relief. I'm a little worried that she has some nasty disease, she is much smaller than her sister and has always been the sickly one. They have just had vaccinations, I hope she didn't catch something before them. Staying up all night was easier when I was 10 years younger and doing it for fun, only 10 hours left and I'll have finished work for the day... - Steve, 6:50 AM, I wouldn't normally still be up and about at 3.30am on a work night, but tonight we've got a poorly kitten who needs some nursing. She's been to the vets this evening and although we don't know what the problem is yet, they said it "wasn't looking good". They gave her some antibiotics because her symptoms (not eating, not sleeping, dribbling and a slight nosebleed) might indicate an infection, they would have kept her in tonight to look after her but we decided she would probably be better off being looked after at home as there was nothing more they could offer medically. I'm staying up tonight to keep an eye on her and to try and get some water and food inside her if at all possible, I've finally had some success and have managed to get her to have a syringe of water and some energy-dense food the vet gave us. She hasn't been interested in eating at all but I used a bit of a dirty trick by filling the syringe with the food and squirting it on the top of her paws, she cleaned herself and seemed to get a taste for it, eventually eating some from a bowl. I'm hoping she'll rest now before a 9am appointment back at the vets. - Steve, 3:33 AM, Sunday, October 30, 2005 This morning, for the first time ever, I didn't realise the clocks were going back. It was a bit confusing because the time on Sky was different to every other clock in the house, took me ages to figure out what was going on - Steve, 10:01 AM, Saturday, October 22, 2005 The mp3 player I mentioned has arrived and I'm really impressed with it, perfect for what I want it for. It's great to make a (small) portion of my music collection portable, it's great to do the normal chores around the house to a custom soundtrack. It's all about setting the mood; I needed to cut the grass because it's been left a while, so what better then to get in a Jungle Warfare mood with some Vietnam era Lynyrd Skynyrd? If I could have called in an air-strike of Agent Orange then I would have... damn Nanny State. - Steve, 10:09 AM, Wednesday, October 19, 2005 Here's a thing: An exact anagram of Georgia's full name is 'Argue an interrogation' which is fitting really because she probably would. - Steve, 4:20 PM, I'm still feeling a bit rough at the moment, the biggest problem is my mouth... it hurts. In lieu of actually going to a real live doctor I decided to do a bit of self-diagnosis using only the internet, some household goods and a willing assistant. According to Google I most likely have a case of Herpetic Stomatitis, the symtoms are: Fever, may precede appearance of blisters and ulcers by 1 or 2 days Irritability Blisters in the mouth, often on the tongue or cheeks Ulcers in the mouth, often on the tongue or cheeks -- these form after the blister pops Swollen gums Pain in mouth Drooling Difficulty swallowing (dysphagia) I have all of those. So, using an Ikea uplighter and a Bic Biro, my assistant had a good poke about in my gob and confirmed that the roof, sides and back of my mouth are covered in small blisters. This is something that normally only young children get, it should all clear up in 10 days of it's own accord. Isn't the internet a useful thing? Of course I could have it all wrong, it might be something like Ebola and I might cough my insides all over a Victoria Line tube train tomorrow... but at the moment I'm feeling good about not having to take time off to visit the GP. - Steve, 2:12 PM, Monday, October 17, 2005 You'll probably have noticed that I'm not shy when it comes to linking to BBC News stories on this here Weblog. I think the reason I do this so often is that I'm a bit of a news junkie and generally read stacks of stories each day, the BBC is my favourite source but not my only source by any means. I normally link to the stories that produce some sort of verbal response in me when I'm sat alone in the kitchen (like now). I've got a few months left of my twenties and there comes a time where a man likes to shout at the television, well it's 2005 and this is what we do now. So then, a couple of things that have made me go hmmm tonight: A violent prisoner escapes from a prison up the road from here. - Wait, I missed a bit out there, it should be "A violent prisoner escapes from an open* prison up the road from here". Can you see the bit that caught my attention? It's that whole "violent prisoner"-"open prison" thing, stands out like a pink tie with a green shirt doesn't it? Look at it this way: A retired Vicar is jailed for not paying all his council tax out of protest at scandalous rises, he gets locked up in HMP Woodhill which is a category A prison and home to what our American friends would call "some serious bad arses" (probably something to do with the shower block). The low-life thug gets a stay at HMP Springhill which is a category D prison and is home to a Buddha Grove. Seriously, given the choice of an extended stay at Springhill or Butlins I'd have to give it some thought. The other thing was that whole Army Captain leaves gun in Sainsbury's story. Now I know she's getting flack for leaving the gun in the toilet but isn't anyone asking what she was doing in a Supermarket in the first place? I've always hated shopping in Supermarkets, it's going to be so much worse now that I know that bint blocking the aisle with her trolley while she studies every brand of cottonbud on the shelf might be packing a piece! Yeah, ok, I do that too.* - Steve, 11:20 PM, Early on Saturday evening I started to feel a little bit shaky and odd, my hands were shaking and I started to feel a bit sick. Looking back over my food and drink consumption for the day I realised that I'd had pretty much no food and lots and lots of coffee. Obviously I didn't have any more coffee, but we did have dinner and I thought that might fix things, it didn't. I progressively felt worse, in turns boiling hot and freezing cold, lots of shivering and a crushing headache. I went to bed for a couple of hours but that didn't really help much, I spent the rest of the evening on the sofa with a duvet and then went to bed and had a really bad nights sleep. Yesterday I felt even worse, all the same symptoms and a sore throat too. The worst thing is the hot and cold, peeling back the covers to reach for a drink resulted in about ten minutes of uncontrolled shivering followed by ten minutes of unattractive sweating. I slept as much as possible and ate a packet of Anadin. After another bad (and very damp) nights sleep I actually feel miles better, not quite right but getting there. The headache has gone, the shivering has gone but I still have the mother of all sore throats. It actually feels like the back of my mouth is covered in blisters and it even hurts to move my tongue. Considering the fact that I don't have any of the normal cold symptoms and that this all came on very quickly, I'm left wondering what I had. Could it have been the coffee? - Steve, 7:59 PM, Sunday, October 16, 2005 Mr Davis repeated that he had never taken drugs, adding: "The whole idea of drugs makes me nervous." Then you're obviously not the right man to lead the country. There is drug use in this country, even in safe Tory seats, you would do better by electing someone from the same world as the rest of us live in. - Steve, 1:11 AM, Friday, October 14, 2005 Sometimes I feel like the only person on the planet who doesn't have an ipod or equivalent type thingie, I've been tempted in the past but never enough to justify shelling out all that cash for one. I suppose it's because I spend my time at home, in the car or at work and in all of those places my entertainment needs are quite well looked after. On Thursday there was an ipod related announcement from Apple. On Thursday an order was placed from my first mp3 player... There is no link between these two things. No, I'm not going to get myself a video ipod, what would I do with that? I ordered one of these babies and they are cheap. You see, I have a modest collection of music in mp3 format and it all lives on my laptop, there are very few occasions when I ever want to listen to any of it when I'm not sat with the laptop in front of me. The only reason I want an mp3 player is for Podcasts, I listen to a couple regularly and I normally burn them to CD to listen to in the car, a cheap mp3 player will save me doing that. So, I'll be having 128mb of audio in a portable device all for £30, cheaper if you shop around. That'll do me nicely. - Steve, 4:18 PM, Tuesday, October 11, 2005 So, Google reader then. Well it's the first web based feed reader I've used and it pretty much does what you would expect, I find I'm using it more often than Feedreader due to location mainly. It's not all roses though... I'm pretty sure I could jump in the car and drive to the homes/offices of all the feeds in my list and read the content on their monitors before that "loading" icon disappears. It's s-l-o-w but it gets there eventually, it is free and it does do what it should so you won't hear me complaining. In other news: Well, there is very little at the moment, I'm a little bit pissed and I'm listening to Neil Diamond and Barbera Streisand. - Steve, 10:42 PM, Monday, October 10, 2005 I'll be watching the progress of the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill with interest, it's one of those debates that I think most people will have a position on. The Church have voiced their opposition to the bill, which isn't a surprise as anything else would probably be seen as a kind of support, I wonder how representative their views are of the public? Personally I feel lucky not to have witnessed the kind of suffering these articles describe, I can't imagine what it must be like to watch a loved one slowly come to the end of their life in pain. I am very much in favour of this option being available to those who choose it, I try to live my life with some dignity and I would like it to end in a similar manner if at all possible. Dr Williams wrote in the Mail on Sunday that life was "a gift from God that we cannot treat as a possession of our own to keep or throw away". The value of ones life is surely more than the manner in which it ends, isn't it? Normal service will now resume! - Steve, 11:47 PM, Go on, tell me you wouldn't want a kettle that you can switch on by sending it a text message. - Steve, 11:21 PM, Sunday, October 09, 2005 I've just exported my OPML list of RSS feeds from Feedreader to the new Google Reader. I think I've mentioned before that I only have feedreader on my machine at home, and not on the work laptop, this is the ideal solution, a web based feed reader. I'm sure there are plenty of other system out there, but this is the first one I've tried. - Steve, 12:48 PM, Saturday, October 08, 2005 IMG_0016 Originally uploaded by Saturner. Saturday is laundry day, FiFi isn't really helping much by looking cute in the washing basket... - Steve, 12:22 PM, Amphibious homes - I do like elegant solutions to problems. Via Plasticbag.org - Steve, 10:03 AM, I had it all planned, but I got distracted. The plan was to wait until everyone else in this house had gone to bed, and then spend a little quality time having a 1 to 1 with our SQL server in Crewe, it was going to be such a productive night. What I actually did was play Burnout Revenge on the PS2 and then watch QI followed by more QI and then Road Wars on Sky One. So, now it's gone midnight and I'm just about to start some serious number crunching. Should I go for the pot of coffee and make a night of it, or the hot chocolate and make a start? - Steve, 12:10 AM, Friday, October 07, 2005 "The optician told me it would take six months for my brain to settle down again." And just look at what it did to her face... - Steve, 7:47 PM, Jim's post a couple of days back about cookery shows (well, podchef anyway) got me thinking about Lapdancing. See, I've never been a big fan of cookery shows, audio or video based, it makes no difference . The problem is that I can appreciate the art and science that goes in to the cooking process, but the fact that someone else gets to eat the dinner at the end of it just doesn't sit right with me. This is where the Lapdancing comes in. Now, I've never been to a Lapdancing establishment, and I really have no desire to do so, the principals are the same. I might really enjoy the show but I'm not going to bed the dancer at the end of the evening, in the same way as I don't get to eat Jamie's souffle, and that spoils the whole thing for me. If I get the munchies late at night, I won't be satisfied by just sniffing someone else's kebab, I'm gonna need my own! I know there are other establishments that might be able to sort me out, but that's a whole different subject. - Steve, 4:59 PM, Thursday, October 06, 2005 I like dark chocolate, I also like chillis... so I wonder if I'd like this. - Steve, 9:39 AM, Tuesday, October 04, 2005 There has been plenty of talk on the Daily Source Code recently about Biodiesel, I was surprised to find that there is a supplier in Oxford. I'm thinking about giving it a try, it's not much cheaper than regular diesel but this is because of supply and demand; if you sell a lot of something it's cheaper, so I can do my bit for the cause by becoming a biodiesel user now. There is half the amount of tax on biodiesel than regular diesel, so if the production costs come down because of increased demand we'll have cheaper fuel that is better for the environment than the alternative. In a related note, funds are running low at the moment so I'm trying to save fuel by working from home more often and traveling to the NW once a week where possible (as compared to 3-4 times!). I also tried hard to drive economically on the way home tonight and I averaged 71.6mpg over 122 miles, not bad for a big-ish car is it? - Steve, 9:41 PM, Sunday, October 02, 2005 There aren't many places round here that you can get kitten food after 10pm of a Sunday night, cat food maybe, but not kitten food. It's not a disaster, I won't have to go out in the cold and forage for a fresh Cod or anything, but it's one more thing to add to my list of stuff to do before work tomorrow morning. So far: Iron a shirt, possibly two shirts depending on what's in the wardrobe. Make lunch to take to work. Pack bag with enough stuff for an overnight stay. Get my OU course materials together. Have breakfast Make coffee to drink on the commute Buy diesel Buy kitten food Drive 2hrs North Get to work before 9am. Of course I could do some of those things now, but you haven't seen my list of stuff to get done before I go to bed. I've said it before, if I could get away with no sleep things would be easier. - Steve, 10:14 PM, Big fat bold blokes shouldn't dance and I, for one, stick to that rule quite religiously, but even I could be tempted to throw a few shapes to that Pendulum remix of the Prodigy track Voodoo People. It's ace!* *I know nothing about this music genre, so it might actually be rubbish, but I like it. Lots. - Steve, 5:50 PM, My Open University course started yesterday and so far it looks like I'm going to really enjoy it. It's completely online, so that makes it very flexible in terms of when you study, they expect you to put in around 8hrs per week which doesn't seem too bad. In practice though finding 8 hrs of free time per week isn't a problem, but finding 8 hrs per week when it's quiet enough to study might be a bit more of a challenge. I suppose I'm quite lucky because I work away from home for a night or two per week, so I'll take all my materials with me and do some studying at the hotel. I really wish I had done a course like this for MS Access (yeah, I know!) but I learnt that myself, I can do some pretty complicated things with Access but I can't help thinking that I haven't quite got the basics right. - Steve, 11:06 AM, Saturday, October 01, 2005 On Cillit Bang and a new low for marketers... Go and have a read. - Steve, 11:36 AM,


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