Category Archives: Links

If your desk isn't cluttered enough already…

(and we all know mine is)

If you like polyhedra, if you like calendars, then here’s the perfect website for you! Print a dodecahedron with a year of your choice and fold it up as needed.

Definitely something to file under ‘look at this when it isn’t 3am’.

What I’m not posting yet: how good Serenity[1] is. And how good the new series of West Wing is.

[1] Google have special movie pages now? Holy crap, that’s brilliant. Google a film title. It organises a whole bunch of reviews on one page. Tell it you live in Nottingham and it instantly gives you all the times you can see it at all the local cinemas. Never again will I google cinema names! Wow, wow.

If your desk isn’t cluttered enough already…

(and we all know mine is)

If you like polyhedra, if you like calendars, then here’s the perfect website for you! Print a dodecahedron with a year of your choice and fold it up as needed.

Definitely something to file under ‘look at this when it isn’t 3am’.

What I’m not posting yet: how good Serenity[1] is. And how good the new series of West Wing is.

[1] Google have special movie pages now? Holy crap, that’s brilliant. Google a film title. It organises a whole bunch of reviews on one page. Tell it you live in Nottingham and it instantly gives you all the times you can see it at all the local cinemas. Never again will I google cinema names! Wow, wow.

Audioscrobbler

So, this is clever.

A little program sits in your MP3 player and reports what you listen to a website, where it puts up charts and info about what you listen to.

Then it creates a personalised radio station playing the sort of music you listen to.

And then it tells you what people who listen to music like you listen to are listening to — Amazon-style recommendations based on usage.

I’m going to cheat a little and leave iTunes telling it about my favourite music whilst I sleep.

http://www.last.fm/user/nilexuk/ is my personal page. You can sign up from there if you’ve a mind to.

Busy day

Today in Nottingham, there’s been a

  • peace rally in Market Square
  • Gay Pride festival in the Arboretum
  • and a Mela on the Forest Field

All connected by the tram, so a peacenik gay Asian with a bus pass can hop between all three.

Unfortch, I didn’t go to any of them. We had a delivery day in the diary from months back so I went leafletting with a bunch of Lib Dems.

I’m starting to work on the fantasies about the new house and garden. If we’re moving in at the end of the summer what can we plant? Help is at hand on the HDRA website that gives a month-by-month account of what needs doing in the garden — and what you could be enjoying if you’d followed their instructions earlier in the year. The Organic Catalogue has been constant bathroom reading for the last six months.

Will we keep chickens? There’s plenty of room. But to be honest, we don’t actually eat all that many eggs. I’m sure we can always eat more omelette, cake, quiche, egg sandwiches… We can Go To Work on an Egg, provide Oeufs Durs a la Mayonnaise to every bring’n’share… (Blimey, the Eglu has changed so that now it can hold rabbits. Are the rabbits for food or looking at? I don’t think that we’d need an Eglu when a couple of feet of chicken wire and some wood will do…)

There’s a quite a bit of garden out of sight of the house, so we could have a polytunnel and grow chillis and melons. And have a full sized compost heap instead of a garden compost dalek. But with all that garden, we’ll need a way of disposing of dead leaves and grass cuttings.

Maybe I’m jumping ahead of myself. First we’ll need to rewire, redecorate and furnish the place. That’s assuming we can sort mortgage, surveys and the conveyancing. Dammit! I want to move now!

But of course the main reason for moving? Away from restrictive leases and evil, inspection-mad letting agents? KITTENS!

Wow, what a day.

First, can I just say I finally made it back to the gym yesterday evening. I’m so proud. I even managed my full 20 minutes CV stuff without completely collapsing.

However, am now at a new gym nearer my new home (I moved house in May) and all the equipment is different. I don’t recognise half the weight machines and the emphasis is much more on macho things like free weights. There isn’t even an exercise bike! So I’ll have to do another induction. And there’s a bit of lack of decent showers. Whilst the last place was filled with homely-looking men and women with grey hair, the city-centre one is filled with intimidating muscled hunks (one guy managed 30 minutes solid on the rower!). On the plus side, the same centre has a pool and a sauna, which the old one didn’t. I have now found my swimming trunks again, never lost my prescription goggles, so as soon as they fill the pool I’m back in the drink. The, er, good, healthy drink.

Spent much of today properly clearing my in-tray at the council for the first time in quite a while, then came home.

Things have been ending today. The beer has finished its initial fermentation so I decanted it into a pressure barrel for two more days of fermenting, and then it should be ready to drink. Wow. 40 pints. Like that’s not undermining the gym…

And we watched the last two episodes of 24-II. Wow. We’ve promised ourselves III for Xmas.

The last few days I’ve been having aches and pains in my back, possibly linked to the fact that I spent this week working from home, with my laptop, either on the sofa or at the dining room table, neither of which is any good ergonomically. And all this when I have a really good desk and chair in the attic room, that I just can’t drag my sorry butt up to. Paul says it’s important, and he’s right.

So after the cataclysmic events unfolding in LA (can’t help but feel that it would have been a whole lot better with Bartlett…) I came up here, and googled for port replicators for the laptop. And top of the list was something a mate recommended in his blog a day or two ago. www.laptopsuperstore.co.uk can do me the specific docking station to match my laptop for only 7 quid. Unbelievable. www.ebuyer.co.uk can sell me a KVM switch for 15 quid, so tonight, (coincidentally payday) I’m in techie heaven.

Talking of Bartlett, I have a new naff polyphonic ringtone to replace the Rasmus which has been driving people nuts. Thanks to www.free-ringtones-free-logos.com it’s now the West Wing theme. Bartlett IS President!

And here’s a cracking gay website about what to do apart from bars and clubs in London: www.gawhydontyou.com

After a councillor’s surgery in Aspley Library tomorrow, we’re off to see the Rumble Band in Cleethorpes. Yay.