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. :)

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…

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…

I’ve been alive, I just haven’t written a lot. I’ve been stuck into World of Warcraft again, thanks to the awesome Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and also playing a bit of the awesomely good Left 4 Dead.

I went to Multiplay’s Xmas StratLAN with some of the CantFitMyN crew over my birthday weekend in December – it was awesome fun. We nearly got flooded out thanks to an amount of rain and the River Avon being very close to the racecourse, but it didn’t come up any further than about an inch from the bottom of the front door. It was still a close call though, and people had to move cars to avoid them being flooded, put their PCs on their desks and stop using the showers and toilets. I feel bad for the people who packed up and left when it happened, though, as it was fine by the morning and everyone was gaming again without any problems at all. Who doesn’t mind a bit of excitement, eh?!

I’ve also bought Rock Band 2 and spent a lot of Christmas playing it… such an awesome game. I really must do some more drum practice…

Where be me eyepatch?! Raise yer grog, an’ sing a shanty with yer old boy Mad Dog Gus…

The problem with ncmpc is that it’s rather a pain to use. It’s not very intuitive, and I often end up inadvertently stopping my tunes halfway through. This annoyed me, so I searched for an alternative.

I found Pitchfork a while back, which is a great Ajax-powered web frontend for mpd. It seems, unfortunately, that their website has fallen into disrepair – if you click the link above then you’ll find a SquirrelMail login. This means that it’s pretty hard to find somewhere to download it.

Fear not, however! I delved into my old ext3 partition backups and found a tarball of version 0.5.4 of Pitchfork. It’s not the most recent one that they managed before the server went bust, but only one beforehand from what I can tell, and it works perfectly. I’m linking it here for download so that anyone who might find this via Google is able to enjoy its power.

http://www.webvictim.net/random/pitchfork-0.5.4.tar.bz2

I’d appreciate a comment if you find this post useful.

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!