Invent your own amusing "Wii" pun-based headline

Well, I like it a hell of a lot more than the rest of the internet do. The 'they've called it wee, hur hur' feeling took about 3 minutes to wear off. Now I am just enjoying the harbingers of Nintendoom crowing about how stupid Nintendo are. That's the same Nintendo that is the only games hardware manufacturer in existance to boast over a decade's business making consoles, half the top 20 games ever made in most of these polls you get and are the only current manufacturer ever to have turned a profit, let alone be making one these days. Not to mention the fact that their last 'stupid idea' is now outstripping PSP sales worldwide and bringing new faces to the gaming table for the fist time since ever. When will my felow 'internet types' realise that they are not a microcosm of the world, and that the internet doesn't carry the same power over people that TV does? The signal to noise ratio over this console will drift comfortably in Nintendo's favour as time goes by. In a couple of weeks video of the tjhing being used to play games will be rife. I also think it won't be very long at all before the consle is released, with a games catalogue as slim as the DS had for the first six months. So we have a couple of weeks for the name related hysteria to permeate all strata of the media, then the E3 performance everyone will be straining to see for comedy reasons will ensure a maximum audience for whatever other Wii related secrets the company has, then shortly thereafter it hits the shops. Plenty of time for people to get to know how good the machine is (if it is) before Xmas, by which time production shuld be such that they can meet demand, quite unlike Playstation 3.

And with that discussed, wii are off to Wales to get married again. It has been a heck of a couple of weeks, but a good one if I'm honest. Life is not boring, but wii aren't being complacent about things either. What was that Chinese curse about living in interesting times?

I shall see many of those reading this at the weekend. Remember to bring food and drink.

St. George's Day

So I mowed the lawn and had a cup of tea. Very nice.

Preparations for Wales continue apace.

Take my shoes off and throw them in the lake...

...and I'll be two steps on the water.

Getting a new job, however temporary and poking one's nose into the sale rack in HMV has it's benefits. For the same price as a modern chart CD single I can get one of the best albums ever made. I might have to do it again next week. We've got a lot of driving on in the next fortnight. It deserves a good soundtrack.

It's coming for me through the trees...

Get a job, hippie!

How's about solid work until the end of May then? I am 3 days in, including a day's training in Newcastle. That was a decent journey... really nice spring weather and a good ariel view of Durham, which I really ought to explore one day. The Cathedral is nothing on Lincoln though. Also, the Angel of the North is a wonderful tribute to photography and all it can do. On paper or screen, the Angel looks enormous and appears to be standing guard over Northumberland in vast acres of verdant, untouched wholesome boundaried British countryside.

In reality it is a bit smaller than it looks, is not even visible from a train for long (car passengers are the intended recipients of whatever aesthetic bounties the Angel offers the weary traveller) and from certain angles is dwarfed by nearby tower blocks. All in all, it seems a little more honest to see it in that context. These modern day Stonehenges have no right to succeed in inspiring the same wonder, products as they are of an age which long ago forfieted its right to leave an indelible legacy on the surface of our beautiful island. Despite being betrayed by its neighbouring proletarian sprawl and stripped of all idyllic 'Local News Into Sequence' glamour it still cuts a refreshingly pagan figure, resembling nothing more than a wing'ed tin wicker man. I defy you to state how that could possibly ever be a bad thing.

I'll spare us both the gruesome details of my job, suffice to say it is far from being carbon neutral, ivolves Grimsby of all godforsaken bloody places and is nevertheless not bad at all so far, in a fleeting kind of a way. I work all day with one colleague who is thoroughly nice and tolerates my choice in CDs. She is also substantially more female, youthful and South African than my last bunch of colleagues and will therefore have to try awfully hard to make me dislike her. Grimsby need not go to such lengths. I am appalled by it.

In other news, we have almost successfully organised our third wedding in 366 days. Now all I need to do is figure out whose bloody stupid idea it all was in the first place and take my revenge.

Huge erection in the garden

Grandma got us a tent. Indirectly. We are using it at our own and other's handfastings and at Beautiful Days so we needed to take it down to Wales this weekend. Checking the instructions, they were found to say the following:


...so we did. Here's the garden, with suitably festivally lumpy turf. It's like a Division One pitch.


...and here's the tent packed...


...and going up...


...and up, it gives our kitchen and bathroom a run for their money size-wise!



To give you some idea of scale, this is a diagonal view of the interior half of the tent (up to the doors to Mars' right, with both our legs stretched out). There's space for a dead pig between our feet.


Here's the finished article, porch open, sans groundsheet in the outer half of the tent. It is bloody marvellous. Much more of a honeymoon suite than the leaky thing from last year.


...and that's the story of our tent. I'm off to listen to some REO Speedwagon before work.

My copy is late

Realistically speaking, my current deadline is today. I've got thousands of words to write. I'm off outside to pitch a tent in the garden in a minute. That someone could be born both a writer and a procrastinator and that it should happen so frequently is proof that if God should, by some strange quirk of fate, exist, he's one sick S.O.B.

Deadlines aside though I should fill ths space with other news. I could be all livejournal about it and philosophise over the small patch of eczema that has materialised on my chin, or tell you what music I am listening to, but I won't. No sir. I'm going to tell you about my new bit of work. Not because I'm chuffed to have it, or because it couldn't have come along at a better time, but because it has been such a daft couple of days getting it sorted out.

Got an email two days ago from an agency up in Newcastle. Bcause there isn't one in Hull. Hull's too good for that sort of thing, honest. They wanted some someones to audit and archive all the paper records at all the branches of somebankorother in Grimsby and Hull. So I phoned them up and said:

"well, it's a good job you had my CV and were able to see I've managed just such a project for the entire Greater Manchester area at one of the larger high street banks in the past and can lead a team on this with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my back. Drunk. In darkest Peru. Over a very bad line. With harpies swooping upon me, clawing at my very flesh. I shan't let you down. Thankyou for this opportunity."

and she said

"nooo, man, pet, we just had your email address on a big list, like. Howway."

so I said "well cheers anyway.When do I start"

and she said

"Tuesday. Day's training in Newcastle. Toon Army. Bottle o' Dog. Howway."

and I said alright then.

Problem time.

They want references.

Now, I've got references. I'm an honest and dilligent employee and I've only told a small percentage of my 'superiors' to piss off over the years. My current boss is happy to recommend me for anything that involves me not working for him and Ike from my club days of yore is both able and willing to give me a character reference. Even if that character is from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos and puts babies on spikes. So I despatch my CV and forward contact details for these two. But they know I worked for a bank and they want one from the bank. Which closed in September leaving me bereft of communication lines and somewhat adrift on the seas of economic misfortune.

Fate - ever the cocky one - did not count on my resolve. And my hunger for new games consoles which can only be sated by cold, hard cash. Undeterred I set about phoning those whose numbers I hadn't lost who might still be working there. They were... and as such weren't allowed to have their mobiles on when at work for this particularly autocratic company, who shall remain nameless, but whose name may or may not rhyme with 'Haemorrhoids BSE'. Then I tried calling the union for whom I was an office rep - my old boss has left, her colleague is now only dealing with branches in Cumbria and has been on maternity leave for a year. I call the old office. It has shut too. I call the national office, they advise me a new office exists in Prestwich. I call prestwich, getiing my old bosse's replacement's answerphone. I dial another number I was given for teh same address. I get a secretary that tells me to call London. I call London. They tell me call Prestwich. I call the bank. They won't tell me where the service centre I used to work at has gone, or Human Resource's number (which is really all I need). Eventually, I call one of the main bosses in the union, on a national level, who is on Holday in Crete. She then txts me back a phone number for teh caretaker of the old building. I give this to the agency for references. They seem satisfied.

Then... they can't find me on the electoral register. Not my fault, the form went off ages ago. So I am asked for all my addresses from the last 6 yearws. That's a lot of addresses. Thankfully, my Mum never throws such data out. She's a one woman Equifax. She has a whole section of the Data Protection Act devoted to her. Thank god for parents. So I fire those off and it is a two day wait for a callback saying I've passed the test. Now I can book tickets and stuff to get to Newcastle for a day's training. This morning, I get the call confirming me in post. Only they want me to check with the electoral register and get on it, for their auditing purposes. Fair enough. Only twenty minutes later my bloody polling card drops onto the doormat. I'm taking it to Newcastle, and I'm going to have my photo done with the lass from the agency and I'm sending a copy to my solicitor. You can't be too careful these days.

The moral of the story being if you don't vote, you can't have a job. Funnily enough, I then found out that had I not received my polling card the new employer would not have been satisfied after all and would have required me to provide two proofs of address for every place I've lived in the last 6 years, at which point speculation would have begun regarding exactly how far up their arses they might have been able to stick their job.

Weddings then

So our weddings aren't posh affairs at all. It's a rather pagan occasion. Two brilliant local druids officiate. It all happens up an iron age fort. It's a beautiful day. We've already done it once. This year we go back a year after having tied the knot (literally) just to reiterate the whole being married thing. You know, for good measure. And for the mead. Always for the mead.

Now, the overwhelming majority of our guests (80-ish people all in all) came last year. They know the score and they know what they are doing. They all loved it last time. Mars and I did too. So this time round we wanted things to go a little more smoothly. Slightly fewer people are coming. They all know what they need to pay and why. We don'ty ask for presents and we pay for the minibuses that make having the wedding where we have it possible. We've secured the services of a field which, frankly, is worth far more than we are paying - the location is beyond perfect. The facilities aren't bad either and it is all ours. So the farmer wants a minimum of x and thus y amount of people are required to make it worth his while renting the field out, as he wants a fiver per head for each adult and each night they camp (2 nights usually). We guarantee him the x and send him a cheque up front, then give him a second payment that brings him up to what he's owed.

So the guests are paying the farmer for permission to sleep in his field (he can't graze sheeps on it for a month prior to our debauchery and needs to cover that time) and we do all the admin for that field tax - we just need cheques from each person to cover that - as between paying up front for the amount we've guaranteed the farmer and hiring four minibuses it is very bloody tight financially, especially as I am only working part time and will be missing shifts and therefore broke until mid July due to the knock-on effect of not being in work early May. But if everyone pays (and when we sent the lovingly handcrafted R.S.V.P. invites out a while back we set a time sufficiently far in the future for everyone to have had a payday) then things are fine. Of course, not everyone pays. I won't go inot some of the hopelessly poor excuses and reasons some people have given, suffice it to say that people have committed, then been a couple of weeks late with their money, then when chased have said "Oh, we can't come". Well, thanks a lot.

Is it just me and Mars, or is there anyone else out there who thinks that once you have made an arrangement with someone to have them pay for something on your behalf as a matter of convenience, your obligation is then to see them right for that money as soon as you possibly can?

Perhaps people these days are just more accustomed to owing, what with borrowing culture in full bloom and that. Whatever. They're all wankers and I'll be highly unlikely to do these mates any favours in the future. Grrr. Grrrrrrrr. Gr.

Updatus Gargantous

First of all then... let me fill you in on what is happening about my various websites and that. This is now my main blog - the having a seperate one for the laptop wasn't working out as I was only using that machine during moments of extreme tiredness. Secondly, the photoblog which used to be at this address is now at governmentyardphotos instead... and will no longer be updated. There are various reasons behind this, most noteably that it is impossible for the casual viewer to see all the photos from one event at once and everything is always in reverse order :(

I do like using Picasa to organise my photos - it's a damn sight better than iPhoto or anything else, but I get them from there to the intertron using another Google-pwned app called 'Hello!' which is (yet another bloody) instant messenger program, tweaked for sending photos with ease... and this one, whenever you send each photo to the blog, opens a new window in your browser. Naturally, as I tend to upload about 40 pictures at a time, this sucks. Never mind the fact that blogger only seems to accept half the pics you give it. So... from now on, no more photoblog, although the odd cameraphone pic will make its way onto this blog in future - the odd pic should break up the text here nicely.

Alternative picture hosting sites are not quite where I need them to be (for free) just yet either. Flickr was going to see me make a new account for it, but it requires me to use a yahoo account. Try and keep up with this next bit. Right... first of all, I love Google messenger, the clean interface and gmail linkup is spot on for me, however no bugger uses it, they all use the system-hogs such as MSN, Yahoo or even, god help them, AOL and ICQ. Some use trillian, which is noble in intent, though of course the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And crappy user interfaces. So those who use yahoo will probably never leave it... as they are already quite comfortable with their webmail and their messenger which takes up half their ram. Whatever makes them happy, I suppose. And of course, there's skype too - though what that app is capable of excites me more every time I use it. When I was young I used to love the idea of these big videophones from the sci-fi movies and this is one of the few things (along with the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy) that has actually become true... the quality and performance aren't there yet but the technology is, I've used it. There's a company in Hull that can stream real time video live across the internet on anything greater than a 1Mbit connection, at a quality I would personally compare to middling quality digital TV - there are compression artefacts but the standard is still way beyond anything I've seen before. When that gets into the likes of Skype, communication is going to change. A lot.

But yes - the point is that Google's various servicse are fine for me - all I need. Even the nascent Google Pages service is shaping up to be what I am after - I have a page on that - but alas it is using my main email address in the URL and I need to move it to a secondary address. This is not currently possible so I can't take that site live, which is sad as it would eventually link to my blogs and suchlike. But I'm not joining flickr as it will involve me getting another Yahoo account. My current one has been around for years, though the password is long forgotten random letters and the secondary email address I used at the time is long gone too, so I can't use the current account I get my yahoo messenger access with for owt else!

Plus, I want my Google Pages, google messenger and google email to link up with my picture hosting site eventually - I am certain Google are going to come up with such a thing sooner or later. So I wait and see. In the meantime, read this blog.

Next - What I've been doing...

Being very sick. I had the 'vomiting flu bug' that' been going around. It struck as I settled down into a nightshift at the hostel and by the morning I had water free flowing from each end of my alimentary canal. Mars likened it to the 'Daily Mail Women' sketch from Little Britain (which I went to see in Manchester. Was very nice to go back... Impressive how they pulled it off. Less impressive how they've only got 6 jokes...) So that lasted for a few days, I missed work and lay there doped up on kaolin and morphine, feeling like the Singing Detective as voices from outside the house shoved my semi-conscious daydreams down strange tangents of mis-en-scene or plot development. I had some cracking adventues while I was sick. It wasn't worth the sore arse though.

Not getting a job. There's too many people after the jobs I can do and the jobs anyone can do are not going to make it worth my while cutting down on hostel shifts. I am still hopeful of getting something from the IT tech post at the college. I can dream. Nothing from the national title that wants me to review for them yet either, though I'm not pushing the bloke who has been kind enough to consider me in the first place. And plenty for Sandman, plus BSE has resurfaced and I've said I'll stick something on there.

Gaming. Animal Crossing: Wild World every bloody day. Mario & Luigi Partners in Time, lots of Beyond Good and Evil (nearly done) and plenty of Football Manager as Forest's reversal in fortunes since Meggo walked have rekindled my passion for single-player spreadsheets that play chanting noises at you every 25 minutes and make me punch the air like a sad bastard.

Working. My tenure at the hostel continues. 3 words. Oh my god.

Sleeping. But not at the tiemes I'd like.

Planning a wedding. More on this later, suffice it to say I am acquainted with a larger number of annoying people with slight sociopathic tendancies than I previously realised. All will be well. I can't wait to get back into the field. The weather so far this year has not been filling me with confidence however.

I shall be brave.