Date: 2009-11-16 03:47 Subject: Slightly further updating Security: Public

Okay. So, yesterday, I landed at Perth after a long journey that was tedious but made less than horrible by:

1) decent luck with my seat assignments/row-mates

2) a new and very entertaining audiobook on my iPod

3) my DSi

Seriously, Scribblenauts took up about three hours of flight time and Final Fantasy III took up at least four.

DSi lasted about six hours before the battery warning light came on, at which point I booted up my EEE PC and plugged my DSi into it to charge. Took a while and most of Zecter's own battery power, but my DSi was fully charged again and I was set for entertainment.

Was met at the airport by Chas and Oliver, both of whom are wonderful, and we came home.

I'd only got about 45 minutes sleep on the journey, so it was a little bothersome to manage only two or three hours overnight, but finally this morning I actually got to sleep and slept pretty much all day.

Now I just need to switch my body clock back from GMT to Perth time. It'll happen.

My head is gradually recovering from the long-term exposure to aeroplane and airport air. As before, it ripped hell out of my sinuses and I've also had a stuffed throat today, but that's improving.

While I slept today my parents dropped off their car and keys - my mother's away for a week on a business trip, and it seems my father's taking some time off his own work and going with her. I am tasked to keep Dad's tomatoes and Mum's mint plants alive. (The cat is being boarded. I only hope that our somewhat neurotic, reasonably elderly cat can handle this without having another nervous breakdown.)

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Date: 2009-11-14 08:23 Subject: home! Security: Public

further information later, have travelled very far on very little sleep

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Date: 2009-11-12 22:37 Subject: Idly Security: Public

Standing in a carpark at a pay-and-display ticket machine today, I heard a man behind me talking on his mobile phone. I thought he was speaking in a broad Northern accent; I've occasionally encountered people in England I struggle to understand.

As I finished getting my ticket and my attention was less engaged, I realised that he wasn't speaking English at all. My linguist's ear kicked in, and I identified the language as Cantonese.

Clearly, this is evidence of some kind of hideous, previously-unseen prejudice on my part.

I just can't work out who I'm prejudiced against.

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-11-09 23:37 Subject: A discovery Security: Public Mood: tired Tags: games

So, in Scribblenauts?

If you write "teleporter", you get one.

But if you step on it, you go to a strange holding chamber. With a bunch of other little mans.

I think you need to make two, but I haven't tried that yet.

I find it completely awesome that there is a setup for what happens if you only have one teleporter and step on that.

ETA: No, two doesn't work - that time I ended up on a mysterious alien world.

Concepts I am impressed Scribblenauts can handle:

"depth charge"
"cthulhu"
"coracle"

Also, it has fan (tool) AND fan (human). I haven't found a useful purpose for the human fan, but hey, it's there.

I have yet to use a "bomb" without blowing up my little man, though.

ETA2: You know what other term I recommend in Scribblenauts? "time machine"

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-11-08 16:38 Subject: Stickers! Security: Public Location: Leeds Tags: retail therapy

Easily Amused Sami is Easily Amused.

Today, I bought a Nintendo DSi and several games. I haven't even turned it on yet - it's charging - but it has still been awesome fun.

One of those games was Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades.

What I didn't realise about this game is that it contains two sheets of decals. Cool ones!

I decorated my DSi's carry case, the DSi itself, and put some on Zecter, my EEE PC, as well.

This was, seriously, the second-most awesome thing that has happened to me my entire time in Britain.

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-11-07 21:11 Subject: Wow. Security: Public

You know, you really don't expect Top Gear to be both heartbreaking and heartwarming. (As well as a little terrifying.)

Their challenge was this: going to America, buying cars in Miami for under $1,000, driving them across four states to New Orleans, and then selling them.

A couple of highlights:

- In Alabama, they nearly got killed by rednecks after a challenge to decorate each other's cars entertainingly.

- Arriving in New Orleans a year after Katrina, they found it was still utterly devastated, and were shocked. When the person saying, "How can the rest of America sleep at night, knowing this is here?" is Jeremy "Compassion Is For Other People" Clarkson, your country is messed up.

They decided that the original competitive terms, of seeing who could sell their car for the most money, would be Wrong. So they contacted a local mission and gave the cars to families who'd lost theirs in Katrina.

I will say, their experience of trying to buy a car for less than the cost of hiring one has not really soured me on my decision to hire a car for my trip, for all that plans have gone awry somewhat.

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-11-07 19:57 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

Seriously, this is the sort of thing that is why I watch Top Gear:

1) The concluding sentiment: "We are numpties, aren't we?"

2) A competition between the three hosts which involves a lap race... in small, cheap cars, in which the time starts as the driver has to try and load a very large dog into the car he's chosen. At the end of the lap, if the dog "looks sad", the driver is disqualified. James May: "But St Bernards always look sad..." He has a point, of course, but the obvious meaning of the restriction was that they must drive with due care and attention to avoiding any distress to the canine passenger.

Currently: There's nothing else I want to watch on, so I'm watching a few minutes of England vs Australia rugby union. Later, two things I want to watch are on simultaneously... but one of them is on Dave, so I can just watch the other one, then watch the one from Dave on Dave ja vu.

English television is spectacularly repetitive. Never mind channels repeating other channels - you'll have the same show more than once ON THE SAME DAY, and then repeated again the NEXT day. It's bizarre. It's not like the BBC hasn't produced a vast stockpile of extremely good television over the last few decades, after all - or even the last few months. But no, repeats are frequent and recent.

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-11-06 13:37 Subject: Watching Top Gear Security: Public

James May is complimenting this Cadillac on getting 20mpg.

My rented Audi A4 (diesel) gets about 28 in stop-start city traffic. On the motorway it averages around 47mpg.

Tonight I shall be dressing very, very warmly and going out to the woods near this farmhouse where I saw a badger tunnel and going to see if I can see some badgers.

BADGER BADGER BADGER BADGER

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-11-05 22:36 Subject: Photo of the Day: Leithen Water, Coldstream Security: Public Tags: images

Realistically, I have material to do Photo of the Day for a good couple of years now, so I will continue, I think, to put up more photos than I get around to posting on journals, and highlighting, and I also have a massive backlog of photos to annotate and put keywords etc on on my gallery. (I have finally enabled ratings for photos, though, so my gallery can get ever more interactive for the zero people who go to look at it...)

Anyway, because I'm tired, though I'm uploading more than this to my gallery, I'm posting one picture here.



This is a small bridge over the Leithen Water, in the town of Coldstream.

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-11-05 09:52 Subject: Sami's UK Travel Tips Security: Public Location: North Yorkshire Tags: advice for mothers, travel plans

1) If driving, get a GPS.

Unless you're going for a very short stay, buy it; hiring them appears to cost ten pounds a day, and if you buy it, you can get used to it and put in principal destinations in advance.

Some Brits will make snarky comments about how they just use maps, but they're used to this country and its sodding awful road design. The reasons you want a GPS if you're not from here are as follows:

i) The road signs here are bloody awful. With a GPS you will STILL sometimes go astray, because you'll find that you have five metres warning that the lane you're in approaching a roundabout is right-turn-only, or left-turn-only, or go-straight-only - and there are an absolutely stupid number of roundabouts, and their design has zero consistency. The Magic Roundabout in Swindon is no longer even in my top ten Most Horrible British Roundabouts.

i,a) Don't even try to work out what they were thinking. Only a sadist or someone who had never, in fact, driven a car would think that combining a roundabout with traffic lights, or having two roundabouts in immediate succession, with traffic lights between them, could possibly be anything other than a terrible idea. Welcome to Britain.

2) You don't know what time it is. Wear a watch.

When I arrived at the farmhouse in which I'm staying for the next several nights, it was dusk. Naturally, this makes it late evening... except it was a quarter to five. That's late afternoon. Your subconscious calculations of light levels and ambient conditions to tell you what time it is are wrong.

3) The papers are as bad as their stereotypes say they are.

An example is clear in today's headlines.

The Times: "A bloody betrayal"
The Daily Star: "FIND THE BASTARD AND KILL HIM"

I only wish I were kidding.

The Daily Mail's entire front page is dedicated to two headlines. A smaller panel: "Why yesterday was a sorry day for Britain, democracy and the Tories". The bigger panel has a photo and: "THis is the bloodied flak jacket of one of the five British soldiers murdered in Helmand. Their killer? An Afghan policeman they trained and trusted. What kind of war IS this?"

I couldn't bring myself to buy the Daily Star or the Sun, and I can't remember the Sun's headline, but it was pretty histrionic. The Afghanistan deaths were the front page of all but one paper - that one was about MPs.

4) Irn Bru tastes better in Scotland.

I don't know why. It just does.

5) Some of the best places you will see are the ones no-one told you about.

Today, on my way south from Edinburgh, I stopped in Coldstream. The museum was closed, but I needed to pee so I stopped by the Town Hall/Library, then, on the purest of whims, I wandered down to Walk the Walk, a government/military surplus and memorabilia shop.

Which, it turns out, is also the building where some of the Coldstream Guards officers were billeted during World War 2, and down a narrow flight of stairs, there's a miniature WW2 museum that surprises you as you come around the corner. At which point the sound system starts rotating through WW2-era songs and radio broadcasts, like Churchill's speeches.

I bought three things there. One of them was not, originally, for sale, but he invited me to make an offer on it, and accepted my offer. The reason? We'd been chatting about my grandmother, and it turns out he had a framed set of maps and army print releases from the time and place where she was stationed.

Had. Now I have them.

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-11-04 18:35 Subject: Still no updates happening Security: Public

So, I'm still really, really tired, and don't really want to drive on yet, tomorrow. Alas, if I stay another night where I am, I have to move rooms, anyway, and I wanted to get back to England by the 5th, so I'll be heading off to the south tomorrow.

I visited my cousin Mary this morning, and spent this afternoon with her friend K and K's baby son. (Ten weeks old. He is tiny and adorable.) K is going to help Mary re-dress a nasty cut she has on her wrist - this morning I handled it. (Which included making a run to the chemist to get appropriate supplies - she didn't have quite the right things on hand.)

This evening I've been trying to rest and relax. I'm a zillion photos and videos behind, but I'm really, really tired.

ETA: On the bright side, through the Magic Of The Internet (tm), I've booked a place to stay near York tomorrow night. Huzzah.

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-11-03 11:54 Subject: Dear Britain, Security: Public Tags: britain, rants

A couple of notes about driving, travel, and road design.

1) When it's raining, turn on your lights.

I know this doesn't actually illuminate the road at all in daytime. The point here is not to help you see - it's to help you be seen. In heavy spray, in heavy rain, your car is pretty much invisible. This is not good.

2) When designing traffic control for a road, use EITHER a roundabout OR traffic lights. NOT BOTH. The combination of the two is INSTANT GUARANTEED TRAFFIC SNARLS ALL THE TIME.

3) You know what's useful? Road signs. Including signs indicating the speed limit. Expecting that people will "just know" is really, really annoying to tourists. And we're supposed to be something you want, for the sake of your economy, which is still ailing rather badly.

I am sufficiently sick of driving in Britain that I am quite looking forward to going over to Europe.

No love,
Sami

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-11-01 17:38 Subject: In Perth! Security: Public

... Scotland.

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Date: 2009-11-01 08:39 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

On some level, when men drag up for comedic purposes - like, say, Sean Lock dressing up as June Whitfield's character in Terry and June for David Mitchell to be Terry on a re-enactment of the title sequence of that show for TV Heaven, Telly Hell - I find myself, invariably, noticing one thing which to me speaks somehow of their professionalism:

Do they sit without showing their undies in a skirt?

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-10-31 19:42 Subject: evening Security: Public Mood: depressed

This message comes to you from a four-star hotel in Aberdeen. Which turned out to be sliiightly more expensive than I thought it would be, as the internet access costs 15 pounds for 24 hours, but given I am, for reasons I shan't at this time go into, feeling really quite down, in discussion with Chas I concluded it was probably worth going with.

As it is, I'm getting some use out of it, as it occurred to me that with my expensive but unrestricted broadband I could re-install my Half-Life 2 series in the hopes that they'll actually work again. (Steam does have some advantages.)

When I entered my room the TV was showing a splash screen that welcomed me by name. That was a little freaky.

Still, given the forecast for tomorrow's weather is still "heavy rain", though the gales forecast seems to have passed, I think I can do worse than here. I have munchies, there's a restaurant, a gym, a pool, I have internet.

Biggest problem may be that putting my stuff *back* in my car may be annoying, as I ended up taking the approach of just dumping everything I thought I might want with me in my suitcase, but now the place where my suitcase goes in my boot has a bunch of stuff in it.

Later: Posting videos of tigers and photos of Scotland.

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-10-30 12:52 Subject: Finally Security: Public Tags: rants

You know, if I'd realised Bioshock had such unbelievably bad copy protection on it, I would have pirated it instead of buying it.

(And that, right there, is why copy protection on software is stupid.)

Not only did it require an internet connection to finish installing, so it could check for a patch, which: what the fuck, 2KGames, if your game needs to check for a patch to INSTALL, then it is clearly NOT READY TO SHIP - but it also required online activation AND THEN wanted the DISK TO BE IN THE DRIVE in order to run.

Naturally, I went to GameCopyWorld and got a fixed exe so it will run without the damn disk in the drive, because I HATE THAT LIKE POISON, but seriously, I wish I'd just pirated it and then I wouldn't have to deal with the copy protection. (GameCopyWorld is awesome, but a site that specialises in breaking copy protection for legal copies of games should not have to exist. The fix I got doesn't let you run it without activating it - you HAVE to have a legal copy. It just runs the game without the CD.)

Recently I heard a program start on the radio which involved speaking to reps from the music industry about music copyright and piracy and ooh, RAGE, I had to turn it off immediately.

Because the thing is this:

mp3 downloads are good for the music industry. It is thriving. And I am infuriated by their complaints.

Ultimately, the result of this will probably be that musicians will make more money from their talent and the companies that exploit them will make less. So I can see why they're screaming... it just annoys me anyway.

And anti-piracy measures only EVER cause problems for legitimate users - for pirating purposes, you just break the anti-piracy stuff, and you're fine.

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-10-30 12:14 Subject: Travel Video 1: Horse vs Car (Result: Draw) Security: Public Location: Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland Music: Radio 4 Tags: scotland, videos, when animals attack

So, yesterday I went to the Highland Wildlife Sanctuary near Aviemore. I saw Mercedes the Polar Bear, but as it turns out it wasn't the most interesting thing on the trip. I have some awesome video of Amur tigers (fka Siberian Tigers) I still need to edit and format to smaller size, but for now, have this video of a horse that decided to get grumpy with my car for no apparent reason. (I'm just pleased I had my video camera on it at the time.)



[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-10-28 13:49 Subject: Booyah! Security: Public Tags: scotland

I've found the nearest place where I can get USB broadband reception!

A mere fifteen miles from where I'm currently staying, in the town of Inverurie, I HAVE INTERNETS!!!

Today I walked around the gardens and loch of Fyvie Castle, because we actually had clear weather for a change. In a few days I shall be heading out of Scotland, going through England and crossing to France.

Some notes from yesterday:

Here in eastern Aberdeenshire, we're into the second straight week of rain.

Apparently, this is a thing unheard-of in this part of Scotland, and it's a terrible frustration for many, including many of my kinfolk; they can't lift the harvest in this weather. As well as frustrated, they're bored; they can't do their work, and they can't do other things that might feel productive, like fishing, because the river is running six feet higher than usual.

And there's been flooding, not too far away, which drowned a farmer. I'm rather thankful my kinfolk are up in the Grampians, where the hills keep them safe from floods.

Yesterday I went into Aberdeen, and had a rather startling moment on the road that approaches the city. I drove over a bridge and saw a sign for the River Ythan. Glancing to the side, I saw a river several metres wide that snaked off into the distance.

My great-aunt Hilda tells me that there's a lot of wildlife at the estuary at the mouth of the Ythan, too.

The thing is, near here there's a tiny sign that points up a track. The sign says: "Wells o' Ythan". The source of the Ythan is away up that track, and is an old little well, from which runs a tiny little stream.

It's amazing to think that this is the source of a real and mighty river.

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-10-27 12:25 Subject: Gah Security: Public Location: Brander Library, Huntly, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, United Kin

So, I'm discovering a new personal difficulty I wouldn't have expected:

I'm struggling to use a library catalogue system designed for The Public, because I'm too used to using one designed for academics.

It feels like such a wanky thing to say, but... I seriously don't know how to refine a search or anything like that with this system.

[Originally posted at Dreamwidth. comments. Reply there (with OpenID or otherwise) if you wish.]

Date: 2009-10-26 17:13 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public Tags: plans with no possible drawbacks

... I just bought fireworks.

>.>

<.<

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