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March 31, 2004
Just when I thought
my stupid computer course couldn't get any worse... I came in today after having two days off sick, (I just couldn't face it) to find I'm the only one here! Not even a tutor. I'm sat in an empty room. Oh well I get to do a bit of sneaky surfing -but Jeez Lousie.
by groc at 03:03 PM | Comments (1)
Quatermass
The Hammer Horror Magazine comic book adaptation of the Quatermass Xperiment film here.
by groc at 04:16 AM | Comments (0)
Bowie
Um. I've just been watching that 2002 concert by Mr David Bowie on ITV 1 tonight and throughout it found myself thinking more than once: 'oh hang on a minute, this doesn‘t feel right‘. For example 'Sound and Vision' is a song that concerns loneliness and isolation, it’s about holing yourself up and shutting out the world. It’s actually quite a bleak little number -so why is it now being played out as a jolly little knees-up? Likewise where was all the distance and irony that made 'Heroes' such a classic? - here it was played out on all the one level. Where was the drama of it? It merely trudged along. The edge that has long made Bowie one of my all time favourite artists simply wasn’t there in this performance. But then at last it did make it’s overdue return (and thus restored a little of my faith that David hadn‘t completely lost it) in the final number ’I’m afraid of Americans’ which was played as an unrelenting wall-of-sound, thankfully free from silly little piano doodles or twiddly guitar solos*. Phew.
(*Which is precisely the sort of thing that makes watching Jools Holland‘s ‘Later’ on BBC 2 such torture for me. Musos jamming away -ugh. Shudder. No.)
by groc at 02:57 AM | Comments (5)
free culture
A free book about free culture by Lawrence Lessig.
by groc at 01:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2004
trading cards
by groc at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)
whooops
guess who forgot to renew their domain name then? Still -it can happen to the best of us...
by groc at 10:21 AM | Comments (5)
March 26, 2004
banner ads
by groc at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)
grrrr argh
by groc at 03:47 PM | Comments (0)
Fabrica
by groc at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2004
spamarama
Oh at last - I think I've had my very first instance of comments spam.
This despite the fact it's a totally futile gesture for any spammer (hello to jmathis555@aol.com) when it comes to my blog - simply because I don't ever let Google search and index the place. D'oh. Stoney ground here guys -please move on...
I bet spammers are exactly the sort of people who have an unhealthy obsession* with Access and Excel.
*I nearly wrote 'passion' there but I don't think such creatures have souls so they couldn't ever really 'love' or be 'passionate' about anything. Can you imagine such a person trying to be in love? [to be spoken in a flat atonal monotone -similar to a Darlek] "Hello Darling, today at work I made you a pie chart to show you just how much I love you. The area in red co-relates to the feelings of satisfaction I experience when I think of your face... the area in blue is how much I consider you visually attractive -expressed to ten decimal points. I then did a database listing all the things I like most about you, all cross-linked and co-related certain fields to compare how much I enjoy inputting data into spreadsheets and concocting elaborate formulas for the manipulation of that same data."
by groc at 08:13 AM | Comments (2)
BT Ya-Hell
Bloody hell. I've just had a game to wrest control of my computer back from -of all people -'BT Yahoo'. Just had to undergo a tedious rigmarole to their 'upgraded service' during which process BT-yahoo without telling you what's really happening, download an 'improved' Yahoo browser. Full of extra tool bars (top and side) packed full of extra nonsense buttons. (Yahoo personals? Give me a break! Stocks and shares? No. Ain't got none. So I why do I need a button for that?) Er.... and at any rate I've already got a yahoo e-mail account thingy and so I'm already very wary of the whole Yahoo thing. Especially since they've been doing too many things that have really annoyed me over the past couple of years or so. But now BT hand in hand with Yahoo are trying to outdo AOL in sheer awfulness in foisting their own particular version of the web browsing experience onto the hapless end user, and in doing so used settings and shitty programs which managed to trash my computer. Uninstalling everything didn't help either - only by going back to an earlier system restore point eventually got things back to normal for me. That's how badly it messed things up.
Dear ISP people -please note that when I go onto to the internet it's to get my mail and look at web pages. Sites to which I choose to visit. I certainly don't want a portal page chockfull of totally useless information being pushed at me every time I launch a browser. Also I only very occasionally want to chat to anyone or be interrupted by other people wanting to chat to me*. Not unless I’ve specifically go online to do just that, in which case I'll load up whatever chat program I need for myself. So surprisingly I don't need Yahoo messenger loading up at boot up -even before I've even decided I'm going to go on the internet on that particular computing session. It's for this reason I long ago disabled MSN messenger from ever running at start up -so why should I now want Yahoo messenger to do so?
Oh, and when I click on a hyperlink in a e-mail I certainly do NOT want to have to type in yet another bloody password before the browser will let me look at the page!!! Christ on a bike. I want to go straight to the page - dammit. I don't need a 'personalised' web experience as coyingly they call it - I certainly don't need parental controls. I live alone. So I already have a personalised web experience, one I‘ve come to all by myself, developed over the years. One I'm already happy with -thank you very much. So keep your bloody mitts off my settings. Oh and do stop flooding everything up with so many bloody adverts.
BT Yahoo.
Avoid.
*I used to be on AOL a long time ago and AIM used to drive me insane. It’s frightening how many people are out there in AOL cyber-space-land who just want to ‘cyber’ with any and everyone who puts the 'gay' word in their profile.
by groc at 12:47 AM | Comments (4)
March 24, 2004
statement 2
Access is if anything even more soul-crushingly tedious than Excel and I am convinced lies behind much of the evils of the modern world (although not quite so much as spreadsheets are).
I suspect the people who invented it and who designed the wretchedly clumsy and aggressively anti-intuitive interface for it, are soulless soul-eating alien creatures from another planet whose only goal is to subjugate the human race. They must be resisted, and all hunted down and killed before their wicked plans come to fruition.
by groc at 03:42 PM | Comments (2)
March 22, 2004
Whoops
What did I tell you?
by groc at 10:51 PM | Comments (3)
sigh moan moan moan sigh
Well, I'm not particularly enjoying life at the moment. I've been put on a wretched super basic course learning how to do those Microsoft business packages - you know: Word, Excel, Access, power point. Blah. I thought it might be a doddle to do - which it certainly is, but I'm also finding it cripplingly tedious and an insult to my intelligence. The only thing I've really learnt on this course is that these things are utterly foul, disgusting and soul destroying and as a direct consequence I now know I certainly never want any kind of job where I'll have to use those things on a regular basis.
But if I'm not careful it looks like I might be wrong-footed into doing exactly that.
Feh.
My whole computer situation remains problematic too, but I'll spare you the tedious details of that.
As it is I am pretty much sick of nearly everything at the moment.
It's something that only lots of chocolate and a huge win on the lottery could cure...
by groc at 02:05 AM | Comments (6)
March 16, 2004
Statement
Spreadsheets are mind-numbingly soul-crushingly boring and I'm firmly convinced lie behind much evil in today's world.
by groc at 01:34 PM | Comments (7)
March 15, 2004
I'll be back....
After finally getting up enough bravery to fit the DVD writer I'd been bought as a Xmas pressie but only to find the shock of it killed off my already-ailing motherboard completely. Grrrrrr and argggh and grrrr and argh again. But not to worry, after much begging and pleading a nice shiny new computer is on it's way - I hope. Complete with a 17 inch monitor (although I really need something like a 21 inch one). Yay. I've also now got enough bits and from old computers to reconstruct a new old one Frankenstein-style to act as a back up should this ever happen to me again. I've never had much luck with that old Tiny computer have I? Good riddance.
Life sure isn't the same without a 'puter and internet access that's for sure...
by groc at 10:41 AM | Comments (9)