webvictim.net

The musings of a programmer

Archive for category musings

#95: Hiatus

Nov 3

Posted by gus in musings, procrastination, short ones | No Comments

Back when I was a teenager on the internet, I hung around with a community of people and who all had websites. I had one too, hosted by someone else as a favour, complete with a blog (powered by the awesome Greymatter). Nobody really read it except for a choice few, but I thought I was cool.

Back then, “hiatus” was an often-used noun. It was a simple, one-word description that could be used to explain away a bout of inactivity when it came to site updates or blogging – “oh, I was on hiatus”. Actually, it was seen as a fairly cool thing to go on hiatus for a while and then come back with a new Photoshop-styled layout and colour scheme.

Anyway, I guess what I’m leading up to is that I can still use that phrase to explain where I’ve been. I’ve been on, um… hiatus. I’ve not just been really lazy. Honest. :)

#94: Sunshine

Mar 19

Posted by gus in geekery, musings, procrastination | 1 Comment

Quite frankly, I’m an awful blogger. I’d love to be able to say that my life was interesting enough to be able to go weeks without having the time to write about things, but the reality is that there isn’t actually a lot to say and I just have a truly awful memory.

I do like the sun, though. My part of the UK has been relatively sunny since the beginning of the week, and it’s lovely to look out of the window and see sunshine. I think I suffer a little more from SAD than I actually realise, because my mood has been much better ever since the sun started shining a little. Of course, the true English pessismist in me wants to say that I’m sure it’s not actually going to last that long, but it *is* nice while it does last.

I also have a bit of a confession to make. I gave in and signed up to Twitter – you can now view various exciting (!) little updates about my life at http://twitter.com/webvictim if you so desire. I’d appreciate the followers, actually – it might well inspire me to write a little more.

I have another tip for people as well – play urladex as well. It’s a trading game based around the traffic rankings of URLs on alexa.com and it’s really awesome fun to play. I’m not doing fantastically well – in fact, my two colleagues who play with me are trouncing me, but I have faith that a few of my investments are going to come good soon and then I’ll be rolling in the cash. Also, they can’t say a lot against me as I’m owning them both by a clear margin in the Fantasy Football league…

Apparently I don’t just have an awful memory, I am also shockingly lazy. I’m starting to wonder where the positive sides of me actually are…

#93: Dib dib dib

Feb 24

Posted by gus in geekery, musings, short ones | No Comments

The Team Fortress 2 Scout update is coming soon, and this makes me excited. New weapons, new maps, new ways to play… I’ve been slacking at TF2 lately, but hopefully this will regenerate some of my motivation to play.

If only I could do the same with Left 4 Dead as well… such a good game but so many other drains on my time…

#92: MGMT

Feb 2

Posted by gus in music, musings, short ones | No Comments

Just a short one to say that I can’t stop listening to “Oracular Spectacular” by MGMT, it’s a fantastic album. Particular tracks you should listen out for are “Time to Pretend” and “Kids” – they’re really, really good :-)

#87: Work and play

Sep 10

Posted by gus in humour, musings, work | No Comments

It was my work Christmas party last weekend. “Christmas party, Gus?! But it’s September!” I hear you say – well, yes. It was officially known as a “summer barbecue”, but considering that it was the major social function of the nationwide office calendar for the year, and also that it was mostly pissing with rain and not barbecue weather at all, it was essentially the Christmas party.

During the day, we did laser clay pigeon shooting, a treasure hunt and my personal favourite activity, duck and goose herding with a sheepdog. Fantastically amusing to watch and more fun to do, I felt just like I was in a farm story or something. Shouting “away to me!” and watching a dog make an anti-clockwise circle around a flock of running geese while you usher them through some gateposts is definitely an amusing way to spend some time. Nobody knew that was coming and it was a great surprise.

The evening was the usual sort of affair which started out civilised and degenerated into a massive piss-up, as any good office party should. I danced like a total loon, as I always do at Christmas parties, and drank a decent amount of wine. Myself and a couple of others managed to sneak off with a bucket of booze at the end too and carried the party on back in the hotel bar which was a great laugh. I did feel the consequences in the morning, but had an absolutely fantastic time and wouldn’t change it at all. Even the drive home was a brilliant laugh, discussing all the drunken quotations and dancefloor moments from the night before. You can always tell a party’s been great if you feel completely ruined the next day but don’t regret a moment of it.

I bought “Rock Band” for the 360 on a bit of a whim as a payday present at the end of last month, and it’s properly awesome. There’s something that’s just brilliant about singing and playing the guitar at the same time – makes you feel like a rockstar even if you’re useless at it. Brilliant stuff!

#85: Insanespot

Aug 18

Posted by gus in musings | No Comments

I’d like to extend an open invitation to all readers of this blog. If you’re an IRC user and you fancy talking to some really cool people, you should join #insanespot on irc.netgamers.org.

I recently became the owner of this channel as a result of the old owner being inactive, and so I think that gives me the right to start recruiting people to join!

I’m there pretty much all day every day, so stop by and check it out if you fancy it. They really are awesome people, and we promise to make your day more enjoyable :)

#82: Friday

Jul 25

Posted by gus in musings, short ones, work | 3 Comments

I really like sun. I really like Fridays. I really like drinking Diet Pepsi.

That is all for the moment. Today is a good day. :)

#81: Sun

Jun 30

Posted by gus in cars, computers, football, geekery, musings, rants, work | No Comments

It’s been a lovely weekend. My best friend Matt and I held a bit of a barbecue and gaming evening at his house on Saturday which was great fun – Sarah, Louise and Jo came round and we played Monopoly, baseball on the Wii and Guitar Hero. We also got rather drunk which was fun, until such time as I got a phone call from my brother saying that he’d had a car crash. It turned out that my parents couldn’t drive and neither could I, but I got a lift down to go and see him as he sounded a bit shaken up on the phone.

When I got there, it turned out that the car that hit him had driven off with a broken radiator – my brother’s car was in a pretty bad way, so they must have hit him pretty hard. I just let the police do their job and gave my brother a comforting arm round the shoulders – not a lot else I could do really. I’m unsure if they’ve caught the people who did it yet or whether that’s still in progress.

I watched the European Cup final last night, thought it was a brilliant game – Spain totally deserved to win as they were all over Germany from about 15 minutes in until right at the end of the game. Torres scored a lovely goal, and Spain were unlucky not to get two or three more.

It’s rather hot today. Work is going alright, but it’s a bit loud thanks to the 3 HP DL140s running by my feet. Configuring servers is a noisy process!

#79: “You’re fired”

Jun 3

Posted by gus in computers, geekery, musings, procrastination | No Comments

I’ve recently got quite into watching the previous series’ of “The Apprentice” – it’s really compulsive viewing. Once you start, you can’t stop watching… you just want to see more of what happens. I’m going to try and get myself up to date on all the old episodes (I’ve got ever episode to date ready to watch so far) and then get into the current series – see if I can manage to make it there before the current run finishes.

I’ve also been levelling my warrior up to 70 on the ever-addictive World of Warcraft. I’ve been doing this most evenings for the last week and a bit, and I still haven’t got bored with it. I think that WoW is one of those games that you just fall in and out of wanting to play – it never quite gets too old for you not to carry on, you just might not renew your subscription and forget about it for a couple of months. Then at some point in the future, you always come back…

My brother’s got himself “Age of Conan”, which looks rather cool. Don’t think I’ll be purchasing it myself just yet, but never say never!

#78: Win

May 20

Posted by gus in computers, geekery, musings, short ones | No Comments

I just bought myself a Saitek Eclipse II keyboard and Logitech G5 laser mouse as the latest equipment to add to my computer rig, and I have to say that they’re fantastic. The keyboard is smooth beyond belief and a complete pleasure to type on, and the mouse is one of the nicest peripherals I’ve ever held.

It’s amazing how a good keyboard and mouse can improve your computing experience :) Now I just need to convince work to buy them for my desk there as well…