the sanctuary:

I guess the weather is just teasing us with suggestions of one type... then another. All I ask is continuity!

So, yeah, I watched Anaconda. Big snake, huh? I want to know if Ice Cube has a "Mr Cube will not die in this movie" clause written into his contracts. Seems plausible to me. More plausible than that snake, or the stuffed panther. Oh, the stuffed panther.

Poor Owen, I have to say. He drifts off to stardom, that's what I say. Starrrrrrdom!
posted at 3:47 PM

Anaconda is just starting on Channel 4, and I thought.. "Meh, might watch it.." then I remembered it was Jennifer "J-Lo" Lopez, Eric "E-Sto" Stoltz and, crikey, Owen Wilson versus a big-assed snake! Hot diggety! So I'm off to watch that now, pizza slowly cooling nearby..
posted at 8:39 PM

I'm on my way home... I guess it's been a long day, with a net result of not much. My feet hurt. However, the last oranges of today's sun are attempting to cheer me by making Tower 42 and the Swiss Re building glow. Thanks, sun! You rock.
posted at 8:06 PM

So I went into Game yesterday (after about 4 miles of back-and-forth to fetch my cashcard), armed with the knowledge that I'd got enough trade-in goodness and actual money to buy Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time. And, since it's now at 29.99, even on Gamecube, I was surprised by how much cash I'd got to buy it.

What also surprised me was that I ended up buying Hitman:Contracts for Xbox, price 19.99. I don't even own an Xbox. Why, then, did I buy the sequel to a game I had no interest in playing in the first place on a system I don't have access to? Why, for 200 loyalty points, that's why! So I got them both home and...

Wait.

[activates dagger]

[rewinds to shop]

Then I traded Hitman:Contracts back in. For 20 quid. Net profit - 1p. And the 200 loyalty card points. I don't know. I guess the guys in the shop worked out a neat little scam which got them some kind of commission bonus for flogging their latest offer. They're welcome.

PoP is, naturally, the bomb. But it's tough. At points. Argh.
posted at 12:07 PM

Yes, two pictures in a row. Sue me. This is the bruise coming along nicely. You can't see the actual cut very well - there's a darkish blob at the far end of my eyebrow. That's it. I doubt I'll even get a scar out of this whole stupid business.
posted at 7:18 PM

I never want to see this ever again. GOOGLE WAS BROKEN!
posted at 7:09 PM

Spent a good while reunited with the GameCube. Sure, it was nice to see Metroid Prime and Mario Party 5 is fun but a bit empty with only one person galumphing around the board, but the star of the weekend was undoubtedly Soul Calibur II.

Now, I've got Soul Blade on the PS, and it's good as it goes. It's no Tekken 3, I can tell you that, but it's an entertaining way to spend a few minutes. Soul Calibur II is a cut - pardon pun - above. Intuition doesn't come into it (Tekken's one-button-per-limb is intuitive as hell), but instinct does. Quarter-circles on the analogue stick, A A B button pushes, grabs, charges, it feels like home. And I may get teased for my tendency to play as a tiny girl on these sorts of games, but that's just me. It's the style I'm most comfortable with, nimble, darting, leaping. I can't handle bruisers, I feel clumsy and vulnerable. I need to know that I can dash away, dart in, float like a moth, sting like a bee. You know?

Of course, Weapon Master mode is a pain in the arse. So many tight challenges to unlock stuff. Whatever happened to just playing through on Arcade mode and hoping for the best? Added value, pah. I want to play as everyone now!
posted at 12:40 PM

So the boxes were moved across from flppy's parents' house today, by a removals firm. Meant I spent my FIRST NIGHT ALONE in the house. Oh, yeah. I slept on the wrong side of the bed, and everything. I just didn't care. Felt a bit empty in the morning, the house (and me, I mean, without breakfast and with only that disgusting chicken thing from last night), but that's how it goes, I guess.

Aaaanyway. The boxes were loaded up by the nice removal men at one end (overseen by the oaten one) and then she came over here while they did a drop-off and eventually turned up in Walthamstow. While we were just, you know, making the place ready for the boxes, I was dashing about the house and, in a fit of I don't know what, joie de vivre, I guess, I leapt from the third step to land on the living room floor.

Well, not quite. You see, I forgot (somehow) that there's a door in the way. So the top of my skull went CLONK against the doorframe with a sound not unlike a coconut being dropped onto a polished wooden floor. I dropped and sprawled on the bottom step, feeling a bit foolish and a lot in pain. The pain went pretty rapidly and I don't even have a lump on the top of my head, let alone blood.

However. When the boxes were in place and I was taking the vacuum cleaner down to clear out the cupboard-under-the-stairs, I turned sideways at the bottom of the steps, then, hastily, turned back. I guess I grew a few feet in the night, Ent Draught I don't doubt, because without lifting off the ground, my brow connected - again with the CLONK - with the exact same door jamb. Muuuch more pain. I did have the presence of mind to yell "Oh, shit, not again!" as a I staggered about clutching my forehead. When my hand came away - uh-oh, blood.

So, that's two head injuries in a day, and a nice dark patch on my left eyebrow. Oh, and a swelling I can actually see, peeking out into my vision. Clearly, I am klutz central today. You may leave your sympathies in the space provided below.
posted at 9:30 PM

I'm so sleepy and exhausted! A combination of too many late nights, too many stuttering mornings and TOO MUCH POLLEN! I want to lie very still for a very long time. Preferably with a troupe of servants bringing me drinks in tall glasses dripping with condensation.

I think it's fair to say that my bullish attitude to BB has paid off already. Three weeks in and we've ticked most of the boxes for "things you want to see in reality telly". This week's rucking has been spectacularly entertaining - as much for the "WTF??" reactions of my fellow viewers as for the actual on-screen shenanimaganians. The one downside is their apparent reluctance to remove people from the house. Come on, Big Brother! Let's start picking these suckers off!
posted at 12:06 PM

Well, I think it's done now. This marks the Sanctuary's upgrade to php. I don't exactly know what that means, and I think I'm just repeating the same mistakes I made in html but with .php as a file extension. However, it all seems to work okay and if that means I did it right, well, go me.

Many thanks, once again to Mike for the help. If you haven't visited his site, do. It's very good, and he's my host. He's an excellent host, one of the best. He serves drinks in the ftp lounge, it's great. I had a vol-au-vent in there once. Didn't like it much, but that wasn't his fault. Once again. Mike.
posted at 11:49 PM

There is some maintenance going on. Please bear with me while I sort out the links and stuff.
posted at 8:45 PM

You don't believe me about the insects? Try this!



posted at 8:32 PM

We've been covered in flies lately. Little itty bitty tiny flies, the type one might find in an ironic chardonnay (today it's actually chenin blanc, which is a less ironic drink to find a black fly in, but still somewhat wry). Hundreds of them, perhaps even squillions. I think it's to do with the hot weather, or maybe it's because we've got a reservoir, like, there. Probably a combination of both. Anyway, whatever, we're constantly having to vacuum up the corpses of a thousand dead. Or however many. I can't guess. A lot. Jesus. They were on our bed the other day. That was so gross. It makes the spider infestation seem positively mundane.

Come to think of it, there are so many damn spiders about, can you imagine how many flies there'd be without them? Ewww!

And I may have overestimated with 90 minutes for The Colour of Magic (TCoM, sorry for the abbreviation, just so used it) - my quick first draft of a 15-minute estimate came in at 6 pages. Heh. It'll be more like 10 properly formatted, but still. And, Miss Corinne, if you remember Maskerade, I managed that in 60 minutes. Okay, I cut the witches out, but still.. Eat it, Steve Kloves!
posted at 10:50 PM

I think the drought may be coming to an end. Last night I worked out with not a great deal of effort a structure for TCoM which would a)make sense and b)come in at roughly 90mins. Go me!

Okay, I wasn't actually supposed to be working on it, but what the hell? The heart wants what it wants..
posted at 11:57 AM

Dagnammit, the guy on the platform is reading MY copy of TIUIOAMF Edge! No wonder I couldn't find the one copy the newsie near the station always has, what with greedy sneak-thiefs snaffling it like that!
posted at 7:24 AM

Great, I'm going to be hot, sticky and uncomfortable before I even get to work. And I'll be standing on the bus. And some morons have joined the wrong end o the queue. Now they're on ahead of me. I hate people sometimes.
posted at 8:03 AM

You know the feeling.
posted at 9:07 PM

Sometimes I wonder if I'm wasting my time on ideas and plots and characters and schemes that are doomed. Then I rationalise that I'm not one for creative waste, that I'll recylcle, reuse, reincorporate...

Of course, I've got stuff I never reuse. I just kick it around, trying to form it into some kind of sensible shape. What I'd like to do, mainly, is to pitch it as a concept, then hope someone tells me to write it. Then I might snap out of the aimless doodling and get on with it.

Or, you know, I might not. But I'd like to think I would.
posted at 7:49 PM

Ronald Reagan - dead at 93. I thought I'd whoop a bit more.. I guess any death is a bit sad for someone. Mind you, 93. You outstayed your welcome in the White House, too...
Now, on to our leader at the time..

edit: stupid phone..user

posted at 4:32 PM

Again. Sorry. Anyway, I was thinking about starting a team blog, because I've always wanted to but never seen a reason before.

So I was at work, thinking about how I wanted to rant about how much I hate my job - or at least... bits of it. That made me think about my weblog, which could easily accommodate such ranting. However, I also thought "yeah, but what if you had a separate blog, called something like 'I hate my job' or 'It sucks being a temp' or 'Hey, you! What's the limit on this thing?'..? Actually maybe not that last one".

Then, furthermore I thought, what about if that were a team blog? If anyone I know who hates their job (or aspects of it) could just come along and rant, and so we'd have a little shouty space in the middle of the inter-web? Because sometimes you don't want to have a goddamn dialogue about your stupid shitty workplace/workmates/workwork, you just want to yell.

So, uh, is it worth it? Since most of the people I know who are online people read this (all four of ya), who'd be in? Seriously.
posted at 4:16 PM

E4 rocks.. the whole.. Sorry, this leads on from the last post.. The red button is great. It's not that you're even watching all the time, but they're there. Like a fishtank, a little peoplearium. I shall name them all and keep them warm.
posted at 9:33 PM

I've been watching Big Brother. I watch it every year, and I'll not stop this year, dammit. In fact, it's already getting fun, what with random evictions and the housemates rumbling BB's secret rooms and suchlike. I enjoy it every year - though last year was a teeth-gritted test for even me and my undemanding scheduling needs - and I can probably even defend my liking of it. But, generally, I don't feel the need.
posted at 10:27 PM

There was, in the end, precisely no mystery to the faulty modem. All it required was a firm push in the right direction (down) to make it go. So, while I'm happy that it now works, I also feel like something of a doofus. I love that my phone has now been taught the word doofus.
I used to enjoy looking at the user dictionary in any word processor I'd been using for a while - I revelled in the swears and the made-up words.
posted at 4:32 PM