recepticle=Wednesday, July 31, 2002
i couldn't resist...
especially since jon got such a kick out of mycathatesyou.com, i present, for your amusement, cat boxing.
- posted by lawrie at 1:14 PM ~ comments
it's poetry in toasty
what do you get when you take an ancient and beautiful japanese poetry form and apply it to toast? why, you get toast haiku, of course.
- posted by lawrie at 1:07 PM ~ comments
fucking CLIENTS!
i have three clients at the moment that are great. for those of you new to this blog; i am not a whore - i am a 'new media developer'. that's the new title i'm giving myself. that, or 'mojo daddy web boss'. so anyway; the first client seemed like a bit of a pain, but is tolerable, and a nice enough guy. the second client is a college run by a principal who knows absolutely fuck all about technology, but is a really nice guy and knows what he wants. the third client is the hong kong government and, fingers crossed, we get £125k up front for that one, so - 'nuff said.
the fourth client is a guy i used to know... you notice above how i said 'i've got three clients that are great'? well, this guy's a wombat-sized fucking n00b. look up slimy fuckface in 'collin's dictionary of colloquial abuse' and you'll see this guy's picture next to it. from the first time i met him, i always thought he was a cockweasel. he also changed his name last year for *ahem* legal reasons. so why the fuck did i end up doing work for this guy? well, he'd been trying to get me to work for him for about 8 months, i was flat broke, and had fuck all in the way of work coming in. after agreeing to do just a holding page for a very small fee, he then twisted the details of this agreement so that it covered a full flash site intro. i was bored, and obviously stupid, so i went ahead and started that; then i remembered why i had refused to work with this man for 8 months. because he's a TWAT. after almost 8 hours worth of design, revamps and revisions, with him going 'it's not what i want, but i don't know what i want' and 'i've already paid for this work - i expect something by the end of today', i felt like screaming "you paid fifty fucking quid! you'd be lucky to get a page with a jpeg and your fucking name with a little dancing 'click here to send me mail' cat! you got a logo, n flash, in 3d, an automated form with perl script and a fucking tracker installed! now fuck off and leave me alone!".
of course, my email went something along the lines of "apologies that my work is not meeting your expectations, but... you paid fifty fucking quid. what did you expect? a blowjob and a coffee to go with your corporate flash intro?" ok, again, that became what i wanted to say. but i did tell him that i was running out of time, and he really didn't pay for this level of work. i'm considering just cutting him a cheque for £50 so he'll just fuck off forever. i wish.
- posted by lawrie at 1:01 AM ~ comments
Monday, July 29, 2002
i don't drink to escape thought & rationality
here's one for ya:
from:phireborne@icqmail.com
Straightedge is an umbrella term that too many people are
using to escape thought and rationality. Why do they not indulge? Why not
even use moderate weed-smoking, sex or cocaine use? None of them are
addictive per se and properly used they rarely cause injury. Straightedge
is being used as a substitute for careful thought and weighing of the
facts. From another perspective, sXe could be robbing a person from
psychedelic experiences that could expose the other levels of life and
human existance. Rationalize abstinence- don't adopt straightedge(tm) the
image.
just another message from just another n00b who obviously hasn't read my straightedge page. he's had his reply. i have to say that for every message i get that's like this i receive twenty emails telling me that people respect my choices. i love that 'proper use of cocaine' line myself. what a cock.
- posted by lawrie at 1:09 PM ~ comments
Sunday, July 28, 2002
i am death
on aol: how does emphysima end up killing an individual?
:: update ::
also on aol: mini twats - third and fourth results. wtf?
- posted by lawrie at 4:56 PM ~ comments
fux0r to blogger
bastard bitchface blogger. apparently 503'ing on a blogger template is the most common error at the moment for non-pro blogs. it only affects non-pro ones because the pro blogs are stored on pro1.blogger.com and pro2.blogger.com, whereas the free blog data is stored on shit.blogger.com and deadserver.blogger.com.
me and mumfy went to a friend's 21st birthday barbeque yesterday, and it was fucking brilliant. joel made some badass kebabs and, because he runs a catering firm, he ordered some desserts from one of his suppliers, and they were absolutely amazing. then we played pass-the-parcel, and under each layer of paper there was one or two vodka shots. i was in charge of the music, because... well, sXe. obviously. and then it was time for the moment i'd been looking forward to; bash the pinata.
joel and rosie got this pinata from a local joke store and filled it full of sweets. because there were no overhanging trees or anything, they just hung it from one of those brackets that you hang hanging baskets from. with it being her birthday, marianne went first. she was completely off her face, and we were all absolutely dying on the floor with laughter. the rules were that you had to be blindfolded and put on a pair of giant inflatable feet. she managed to take of the donkey pinata's ear, but that was about it. so me and pete got out the gaffer tape and fixed the donkey back up; this donkey was going to be kept alive for as long as possible - it was going to become
MECHA-DONKEY
so a couple of people went for it, and then it was my turn. after fumbling about, completely unable to even locate the wall, i finally got my bearings, and once i found that donkey, it got the beating of it's short life. in fact i once missed and hit the wall so hard i broke the wooden stick in half. oops. anyway, i successfully busted that donkey wide open, but that wasn't enough for us. out came the gaffer tape, we put all the sweets back in, and fixed it up real good, and just kept going for it... the only problem being that gaffer tape tends to make anything indestructible, and so the game then became 'see how much damage you can do to the donkey with one strike'. god, i wish we had film left to take photos of that. it was brilliant.
i've spoken to a couple of people about mecha-breakout, and i want to add the following new features: five new levels, high scores table, timer on each level (so you get a time bonus), couple of new powerups, and maybe a new type of brick. one that moves.
- posted by lawrie at 1:24 PM ~ comments
Saturday, July 27, 2002
legotastic
make yourself out of lego. although it doesn't have my hair, or any of the clothes i wear. courtesy of clare, who stole my cat.
- posted by lawrie at 12:00 PM ~ comments
Friday, July 26, 2002
the inheritance, the family
i kinda of peaked a little too early in my telling of simon's lies, throwing out the classic "i'm-a-international-spy" yesterday. this is not to say that there aren't other lies, but that one was possibly his greatest. nevertheless, i shall continue with simon says: lies, chapter #4, and the tale of his family.
simon has a mother, a father and a sister. his dad, terry, i have mentioned before; his cool. his sister, stacey, is pretty cool as well, and she knows all about simon's lies. according to simon, however, terry is not his real dad. his real dad was called antonio benedici (or something like that), head of the benedici family. the family has been listed in the rich list 500, and this is the guy that simon 'punched out' in order to get insured on the bmw 3 series. if this is making no sense to you, you need to scroll back and read the start of the simon says series.
so the story about simon's 'real' dad goes thus: simon's mom was married to this guy, but about 18 months after simon's younger sister stacey was born, they divorced. being the only son, simon is the automatic heir to the benedici estate's fortune; about £180million. stacey, being a girl, and not having any contact, was to inherit only £40million. and we were told never to mention any of this to stacey; she hated her 'real' dad, and if you mentioned it to her, she would blank you, and pretend to not know what you were talking about. *cough*ohwhatafuckingsurprise*cough*.
simon's mom still part-owned the company her and her former husband set up, and was worth a fair few million herself, but to keep herself and her kids grounded, they live in a small semi in loughborough.
to be honest, my brain's gone a little blank on the simon stories at this moment in time; i may have to consult other sources (such as my mate pete) to jog those memories again. fear not; simon's lies will return.
- posted by lawrie at 5:13 PM ~ comments
Thursday, July 25, 2002
my friend, the singing squirrel
wheeeeeeeeeee!
- posted by lawrie at 4:38 PM ~ comments
a million jobs worth a million pounds
the chronicles of simon the liar are back, and as promised, today we will examine his glittering career; he's worked in showbiz, as a top level executive, a professional footballer, a student at cambridge, and an international spy. it's true. well, actually, it's not, and that's the point. so on with simon says: lies, chapter #3.
simon finished his a-levels with two a's and two b's - we don't know if this is true or not - and he claims he got these grades on purpose, so he could spell out 'abba' on his cv. whatever. anyway, he then applied to cambridge university, where he was accepted and begain studying physics (this is a guess ath the name of his degree course; he was never very specific about it - but then, it never existed). he left after his first year because he hated it. in this same sort of time frame, he played football for england schoolboys, on the team with the likes of ryan giggs. the time frames certainly fit, however the frontman of the band i was in had videos of loads of england schoolboy matches with ryan giggs in them. simon is not on the pitch. during his stint with england schoolboys, simon was looking at a potential offer to move to tottenham hotspur football club, a transfer worth £4million. bear in mind that at this time (about 1992) the most expensive football transfer made had been about £3.75million. anyway, simon damaged his knee, and his football career was over. damn.
this was all before me and my friends knew him; in the time that simon was in the band and hanging out with us, he managed to land himself a job at a logistics company. within 3 weeks he was promoted to senior executive, along with a company car (remember now; he can't drive) and about £50k a year. he was responsible for shutting down companies that were going into receivership, or something. he even held a 10 minute conversation on my telephone with someone in his office. i picked up one of the other phones while he was talking; it was going beep-beep, beep-beep; the sound it makes when you have the phone off the hook but haven't dialled a number.
for simon, this was quite an easy lie to keep up; he said he worked flexi-hours, and while it was an incredible amount of bullshit, it wasn't pushing the boat out so far as to claim he was the king of brazil or anything. he left that company, and joined another, doing much the same. at one point, he even got an actual real job and didn't lie about it. but then, we kicked him out of the band, and his brain went into free-fall.
around the same time he lost his actual real job, and ended up working for a factory where his dad (the real one, terry, the good guy) was foreman. it was a plantpot factory in loughborough and simon immediately started lieing to everyone on the factory floor. this did not win him any favours, and after only a few weeks, his own dad had to fire him, because everyone on the shop floor was talking about giving him a royal fucking kicking. the day after he was fired, simon turned up at the factory in a suit, and pulled aside one guy who he had gotten on fairly well with. he told this guy that he was about to disappear, but didn't want his friend to think that he'd just up and left; the truth of it was, simon was an international spy working undercover. in a band, and then in a plantpot factory. right. later that afternoon, simon was spotted sitting on a bench in the middle of loughborough eating a burger, still in that same suit. sometimes, the word 'pitious' just isn't enough.
- posted by lawrie at 12:50 PM ~ comments
Wednesday, July 24, 2002
fear the kittens
my cat hates you.
- posted by lawrie at 9:53 AM ~ comments
Tuesday, July 23, 2002
the women, the cars...
for those of you who missed my last post... well, it's right down there. yesterday, i began the online chronicles of simon the liar. i must stress, this is not a fictional character; he lives among us. in loughborough, in fact. every day this week, i shall be blogging a selection of simon's lies, and today we move onto the cars and women selection of his fantastic make-believe land. please remember; simon told us, his friends, these untruths, honestly thinking we believed him.
simon says: lies, chapter #2
simon has driven a great many cars in his lifetime, and slept with a great many women - some of whom didn't even know it had happened. now, you may think that the reason any person would tell porkies such as these would do so to support and boost their own fragile ego, but simon was an arrogant motherfucker if ever there was one. i rmember coming back from an audition at sony in the taxi with him, and after a few minutes reflective silence, simon suddenly comes out with "i could have absolutely any woman in the world i wanted". to which i could only look absolutely flabbergasted, and reply "oh". he's actualy quite a good-looking bloke, but almost every girl i know that has met him says thesame thing; "yeah, he's good-looking, but fifteen seconds after he's opened his mouth and started talking, you just think 'what a twat'."
now, simon's dad, a great guy called terry, isn't his *real* dad. according to simon, at least. i will get into that more later, but let's just say for now that simon claimed his *real* dad was a very wealthy man that his mother divorced when he was younger. simon says that on his 18th birthday, after his 'real' dad failed to even call him and say happy birthday, simon got wasted, went round to his dad's house, and punched him out. the following week, his dad insured him on his bmw 3 series. i would like to point out before we go any further - simon can't drive. a year later, his 'dad' got rid of the bmw and bought a jaguar xjs, which simon was also insured for. simon even showed up to a few band rehearsals in it, but he always parked it a couple of miles away so we never saw it.
about 3 years ago me and pete went to a gig at loughborough university, and simon was there. he told us that, with his fantastic new job, he'd just bought a brand new £22,000 bmw. "brilliant!" i cried "let's see it then." "oh, er, i left it at home because i was going to be drinking tonight. i walked here." "but simon, your house is about 4 miles away." "um... yeah."
simon had a great girlfriend, a girl called laura. she was one of the nicest people you'd ever hope to meet, and none of us could ever figure out wehy she stayed with him. she must have known that he not only lied constantly but also cheated on her. recently, simon told me about a party that i had at my house, and he had sex with a friend of mine, a girl callecd karen. well, as soon as he told me this, what did i do? i rang karen. bearing in mind she hated him as soon as she met him, she was torn between laughing her ass off and being absolutely horrified that he had the audacity to spread bullshit about her like that.
coming tomorrow: simon's incredible career - including his £4million transfer to tottenham hotspur, and his double life as an international spy. and i'm not kidding.
- posted by lawrie at 2:33 PM ~ comments
the launch... the lies
MECHA-BREAKOUT IS HERE
within 5 minutes of uploading it, i spotted two bugs *sigh*. one of them has been dealt with, the other... meh, i've no idea why it's doing it, but sometimes, when you start level 4, it sounds like the ball is trapped on an indestructible block, even though it's not. as soon as you launch the ball, the sound disappears. no idea what's going on there. also, when you start level 3, the ball doesn't immediately reset beck to it's proper start position, and so will destroy a block or two before you've even lanched the ball. this doesn't always happen though.
i was in the pub with pete this evening, and the conversation turned to someone we both used to know. his name is simon. he is a liar. however, saying he is just a liar is to slightly understate the facts; simon didn't just tell lies, like "i caught a fish this big" or "i got an 'a' at english gcse" or some other lame crap like that. oh no. simon tells lies so massive that you could fill up the atmosphere of jupiter with them. starting today, i will begin to chronicle simon's lies; lies that he has told us, his friends, and honestly expected us to believe him.
simon says: lies, chapter #1
a couple of years back, after we hadn't seen each other for ages, simon rings pete up and suggests that we all get together and go for a drink. so, we gather up kav and mikey, and go off to the pub. during the course of the evening (and completely sober; all of simon's lies are told stone cold sober) simon informs us that he has just been signed to telford united football club, earning £350 a week, and that telford are about to be promoted to league division 4, thereby making him a professional football player. pete, however, knows his football. telford are, in fact, at the very bottom of the league they are in, and are about to be relegated. they have no player named simon. we checked.
in the four months or so that we had not seen simon, he had also managed to not only write, but also have a book published. his book is a star wars novel, about the trials of a young jedi in training and the journey one has to make to become truly jedi. the book is called "i, jedi". "has it been published?" i ask, just to make sure (sometimes if you ask a question you know the answer to, simon will have lost track of his momentous lie, and contradict himself). "yeah, yeah, got published last month." replies simon. "so... you wrote a book in like two months, and had it publish almost immediately?" i ask, a quite honest look of perplexion on my face. "yeah." says simon, grinning. "so, i can just go into wh smiths and buy it? today? now?" "yep."
and i did indeed go into wh smiths, and lo, there was no such book on their records. just to make sure, i checked with waterstones. nope.
and that's just one night out with simon. imagine seeing this guy and listening to this level of bollocks almost daily for three and a half years. because i did. more tomorrow.
- posted by lawrie at 12:31 AM ~ comments
Sunday, July 21, 2002
mecha-breakdown
every day, i swear to myself that i will get mecha-breakout finished and uploaded. but it just never turns out like that.
yesterday, i was extremely close to having completed the entire game, but this thing is a beta-test nightmare. at the moment i'm just trying to cut down a lot of the code, because one of the main problems with flash (and you won't here me start a sentence like that very often) is that it renders all of the code at runtime, rather than as compiled code. this means that, for the many, many objects & instances i have that are checking their position and other objects relative to themselves 30 times a second, as well as calculating the ball's physics and making pretting exploding noises, things can get a little bit slow. not so slow as to ruin the gameplay, but slow enough to move sound rendering to the very back of the queue, which means you hit a block, and a second or so later, you hear it explode. just as if you were watching the game from 100 feet away. but you're not. so bollocks.
anyway, i have band rehearsal in about an hour (for the first time in about a month) but after that, i will endeavour my very hardest to get mecha-breakout online.
and once again, apologies to jez and rich for the total fuckerance of my template; you were both linked, and then my template went back in time, and you weren't. i try to update it every time before i publish, but then publishing isn't exactly blogger's strong point at the moment.
- posted by lawrie at 10:47 AM ~ comments
Saturday, July 20, 2002
fucking BLOGGER
it's taken me a day and a half to publish that last post.
"error 503: template not found"
despite that fact that it's blatantly there, and re-inputting the whole thing and saving it doesn't make any difference. so tell me; what's greymatter like, and how does it work? or, with phpcore jon back, will he at last finish his custom blogging script for kate and i?
mild update: the ace new flash game i started building on monday, mecha-breakout: ultimate brick destruction (as it is now known) was supposed to be published here today, but i decided (as always) to a bit ambitious with it, and i'm usually reluctant to put anything online unless it's utterly complete. i wanted to offer at least 5 levels of gameplay for the initial version of mecha-breakout, but after some severe beta-testing tonight, i have discovered after building level 3 that part of one 'for' loop appears to be fucked. and i have no idea why.
so anyway, welcome home jon. welcome back, my template. hello, bed.
- posted by lawrie at 1:28 AM ~ comments
Thursday, July 18, 2002
fucking clients: part mcmxcii
so i worked my ass off over saturday and sunday creating a very basic but nice looking example-thing-blob for a potential client. i did this because i promised them i'd having something for them to look at and a quote by monday (as in, this monday just gone). and so, at 5.30am i uploaded everything i'd done (which included a demo for a 3d virtual tour in flash - i fucking rock) after spending about 15 hours on it on sunday, and sent them an email explaining everything we could do, how we'd do it, and the price. tuesday comes, no reply from them, so i ring them up. no answer, despite the fact that i'd been told someone would be in during the holidays (it's a college). but, there was an answering machine. so i leave my message, with both numbers for contact. wednesday comes and goes; nothing. so this morning, i vowed to ring their two numbers alternately every half hour until i got someone and i could know what was going on. i did this because being in limbo is very fucking annoying, and if i'm annoyed, i'm goddamn well going to annoy the shit out of someone else. this is known as transference. it got to about 1pm, and finally someone picked up the phone. i asked to be transferred to the guy i emailed, and after a short pause, i was.
now, before i carry on, you need to know a couple of things about the conditions of this job; this college need a website in a hurry. and that means before the start of next term which, after this week, leaves about five weeks. the guy i've been dealing with in the college goes on holiday next week, and only him and the principal are going to have any dealings with the website. so you can see why i wanted to know this week what was going on; if my contact person had gone on holiday and hadn't replied, i wouldn't have had a clue as to the situation.
right, so, back to the story; i get transferred through to my contact bloke. he got my email, thanks, and he loved the 3d virtual tour demo. he's just waiting for another guy to submit a quote, and then he and the principal will decide. the guy he's waiting for a quote from is going on holiday next week. so, you want a website in a hurry, but you're quite prepared to waste a week waiting for a quote from a guy who's so bothered about getting the work that he can't even be arsed to make a figure up in his head and email it to you, and is then going to go on holiday for a third of the deadline time? my advice to you would be tell this guy to go take a jingle-jangle bunny-on-heat fuck at jesus christ on a banana.
and give. the. work. to. me.
- posted by lawrie at 4:17 PM ~ comments
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
the crapness of having aol
most sincere apologies to anyone who is a regular visitor; due to circumstances way beyond my control, my ability to blog has been severely cut down. blogger fucks up when attempting to publish nine times out of ten, and aol, in it's all-seeing wiseness (is that a word?) decides to throw me off/crash/stop connecting to sites but insist that it's still online/time out due to inactivity halfway through loading a site/crash again/disconnect whenever i stream any kind of media etc. whenever i'm doing anything. it took me 45 minutes to connect today; aol crashed three times after connecting, and each time the entire machine froze. you know what i'm going to do? i'm going to write to aol customer services, and i'm going to whine like a little bitch about how fucking terrible their service is. then i'll post my email here, and see what they say.
also, coming soon: MECHA-BREAKOUT. remember that lil old classic paddle 'n ball game? well i took that, added a shitload of powerups, explosions, wierd bits, and i'm presently making it in flash. as soon as it's done, i'm gonna post it here.
- posted by lawrie at 11:15 AM ~ comments
Saturday, July 13, 2002
catholic-baiting - day one
damn it all. i had this great idea, but it all went to shit. i was ambling around the old-and-no-longer-updated death clock site, reading through the emails the webmaster has received, telling him what an evil demon he was for telling people when they were going to die. i wish i'd thought of that website first; just answering those emails publicly would be the most fun for me. unfortunately, the wit of deathclock's webmaster stretched to "no comment", or "absolutely no comment" or "you're an idiot", mostly.
so anyway, i found a coherently readable letter from some guy saying how he lived in the bible belt and was big in his local catholic community and how the deathclock webmaster was most assurely going to hell to burn in eternity for his diabolical sins. he even called him an 'insolent spoiled brat' and basically declared a personal war on this guy. my eyes lit up as a quart of adrenalin was dumped into my bloodstream and the little ideas light above my head exploded. i was going to email this bible-belt catholic dweller and ask him about harry potter. genius! so, i logged in, composed the email, hit 'send', then logged out again. the next day i logged into my mail account, eagerly awaiting the tirade of bible quotes and promises that he will pray for me and hope that god forgives my evil ass.
bugger. the email bounced.
utterly disheartened, i logged out and meandered about the house for a while. sitting back down, i started making some stupid google searches, see if this site came up when i typed in the name of my infamous and nefarious mafia live-in buddy, bob the cat. no results for me, but bob the builder came pretty high. so, seeing as educational online stuff is going to (hopefully) be a big thing with me for a while, i decided to take a look. and it's pretty fucking good.
however, the loading sequence seemed a little bit out of whack, so i decided to decompile the flash movie. i can do this, because i am a cheeky imp. lo and behold; the designers had fucked up the loading sequence. there was not one, not two, but three typos in the programming code that basically meant the movie would play through, loading as it went, rather than preloading and then playing smoothly (and yes, it was supposed to preload, but they fucked it). so what did i do? why, i emailed the people that built the site and told them what i had discovered. this is me impying two things;
a) i decompiled your flash stuff so successfully that i can read every line of code, and see how you did everything, and
a) not only that, i'm actually better at it than you because you fucked it and i told you how to mend it.
which is perhaps pushing the boat out a little too far over the 'i'm-a-cheeky-bitch' horizon. i did email them late on friday afternoon, so once again i am waiting with baited breath to receive some kind of email. can lawrie fix it? yes he can.
- posted by lawrie at 5:59 PM ~ comments
Thursday, July 11, 2002
there's one for you, nineteen for me
for the uninitiated, that's the second line to taxman by george harrison. if any of you know jack shit about accounting, or if you're a tax officer, then maybe you can give me a little advice.
i had a meeting with the big client today. or, should i say, the facilitator of the big deal, which doesn't have quite the same ring to it. we sat there discussing the project, and i agreed to drop my price from 144k to 125k, just to make it all nice and even. then i mentioned that i was bricking it about how i was going to pay myself, and deal with vat, and be thrown into a phenomenally high new tax bracket, and nic showered me withsome fucking great news. firstly, it's a grant, and therefore my company don't have to pay vat on it. w00t! secondly, because it's a grant, i can declare it as a company dividend, and as long as i set up gaijin design as a limited company and myself as a partner & shareholder, i can pay myself from this in dividend shares as opposed to profit shares, and therefore only pay 10% in tax. heh. even if that doesn't work out, then i just set mumfy up as a partner, and pay her 37.5k, which makes my income lower , and should (hopefully) knock me into a lower tax bracket. unfortunately, because i've never been in any kind of tax bracket that i was aware of (yes, i've really been making that much since i was 18), i have no idea what the brackets actually are. fuckit.
anyway, i'm fucking about with variables (for a change) and my head is going to explode from the amount of pain that's in it. mm hmm. that was a real good sentence.
- posted by lawrie at 2:14 PM ~ comments
Tuesday, July 09, 2002
templates shmemplates
must apologise to rich on two counts - firstly, i haven't spoken to him in fucking ages, and secondly (i've only just noticed) his link has disappeared. this is because blogger appears to be going back in time; previously it wasn't letting me update my template properly. now, it's reverting to a weeks old template. what a pile of poopants.
quiz update: to those who have queried about the quiz i said i was working on; i have the idea in my head, but i've got a trillion other things to work through as yet. fret not, it shall be done sooner than you think, but perhaps not as soon as you wish. *wisely* aaaahh.
- posted by lawrie at 11:46 AM ~ comments
xml eye socket
does anyone know anything about flash and xml socket connectivity? particularly, some details about flash multiuser client-serve application development. no? thought not.
i went out for a drink with my da' today, and sat there talking about design, particularly 3d stuff (my dadoo is a draughtsman, and designs everything in autocad, so he knows about 3d) which i've just started with, and don't really know what i'm doing. i told him how i'm redesigning my work site, and i'm spending more time doing that, or just thinking about it, than anything else i've ever worked on. and that's a good thing. i'm trying to push my brains out through my fingers (um... i don't know what that means, but stay with me here - it's 3am); trying to think of stuff that i've never tried to do before, and really push myself. woo. go me. i'm ok, you're ok.
sorry, that was just really starting to sound like some supergay self-affirmation bullshit about how i was constantly improving. and how's about this for improvement? i've got another fucking eye infection. *sigh*. i actually had to leave mumfy's house after watching 'six feet under' because i could feel the bruising sensation that is characteristic with this kind of eye infection, and needed to put my ointment on it, which was in the drawer, by my computer, at my house. so here i am, at home, with oily gunk in my eye (insert sperm facial joke here), fretting about this because these things are so fucking painful that they make me want to rip my infected eyelids off with a pair of scissors. and apparently it's going to rain well into august. *sigh again*
- posted by lawrie at 1:47 AM ~ comments
Saturday, July 06, 2002
i'm number one! twice! yay!
not only am i the number one result for the word 'jedi' on google out of almost 2million results, but i am also the number one result for 'lawrie' as well; a place formerly occupied until very recently by some gay labour mp for fucking scarborough and whitby.
on my way out of town, walking back from mumfy's place to catch the bus, i got stopped by some research person. usually, i stop for no one, and that's because nine times out of ten they're trying to sell me a card that will give me 10% off all burgers or asking if i'd had an accident or fall in the last three years. after many, many years negating these people, i have developed a psychic ability that determines, before they even open their mouth, what they are selling, and how much of my time they're going to waste. in this case i knew immediately that i wasn't going to be sold anything - it was research proper , so i stopped, because i like questionairres. here's how it went:
market research person: hi, we're just doing some market research, measuring people's opinion on draught.
me: um... draft?
mrp: draught, you know...
me: draft?
mrp: (thinking i said 'draught') yes, draught. ok?
me: (thinking she said 'draft') draft, fine.
mrp: when was your birthday, and how old are you?
me: 23rd may, and i just turned 24.
mrp: right, you turned 24 last may.
me: no, i turned 24 this year - the may that has literally just passed.
mrp: right. how old are you now?
me: ...24.
mrp: do you, or anyone in your houshold, do any of the following? (shows me a list of jobs all based around advertising & marketing)
me: um... i design websites, and sometimes they... sell... stuff?
mrp: (gives me a look like i'm a fucking dummy) ...ok. (proceeds to show me a long list of alcoholic drinks) which ones of these do you drink, and how often?
me: (rolls eyes) um... i don't drink. at all. ever. i'm, er... (debates whether this will mean anything) straightedge.
mrp: what?
me: i don't drink.
mrp: none of these? at all?
me: no. i. don't. drink.
mrp: good for you. bye.
me: (awkwardly stumbling backwards in an attempt to turn around after being so immediately brushed off by some market research bitch) um... yeah.
- posted by lawrie at 11:11 AM ~ comments
Friday, July 05, 2002
wtf is ima?
i've been up since 7am, competely alert and totally awake. this is so unheard of for me, particularly since i wake up, on average, about 11am every morning. that's not to say i got out of bed at 7 - oh no, i stayed under the quilt reading for a little while, and turned on the television to see former big brother contestant and lesbian ex-nun anna performing a frankly poo-pants version of 'let it be' on craptastic new channel4 morning show ri:se.
this show got completely slated during it's initial run because it was rubbish, and the ratings were so very poor. now, channel4 are screaming back at their critics, jubilant grins on their faces and sticking out their tongues like playground children saying "ha! our ratings are higher now! we win and you lose, you losers! so nyah nyah!". the reason that ri:se's ratings have gone up is because it dedicates most of it's airtime to live clips from the big brother house normally only shown on e4, which people with terrestrial television can't see since it's only available on satellite and cable. this is actually a completely crap idea, since ri:se actually finishes at 9am, and no one in the big brother house actually gets out of bed till 1pm, and as soon as big brother finishes, ri:se's ratings will droop like the small, flacid penis of televisual entertainment it is.
now, onto today's subject line; wtf is ima? i rarely receive email from site visitors anymore, and so when i opened my mailbox this morning to see a message waiting, i got all excited. the subject line was "stop using stoopid ima". the sender was sdf@sdf.com, which i'm thinking might be a fake email address. and the message body was simply 'gay tard', which is a very clever play on the words 'gay', meaning to be jolly, and 'tardy', which is to be messy. so i am obviously jolly messy.
anyway, the message body was an aside to the frankly confusing subject line. what is ima? was the subject line not long enough? did the sender mean "stop using stoopid images"? "stop using stoopid imacs" (which, coincidentally, i don't)? or was it a typo? "stop using stoopid aim" is possibly the most likely, but i rarely use aim at all, and haven't really been able to use it for the past week or so. however, aim is a fairly random target to hurl abuse at me for, and they may possibly have meant "stop using stoopid aol", which is a horrendous typo on their part. and purely out of interest, why would anyone bother to email someone they don't even know to advise them on their choice of chat client (or some other random bollocks) in an offensive manner? i could understand if he was a harry potter hater, or an evangelist, or really didn't like the colour blue.. some people have way too much time on their hands. like me.
oh, and if you are the message sender i have just blogged about, please feel free to go take a flying fuck at a christmas-coloured batmobile, you hippopotamus molester.
- posted by lawrie at 8:54 AM ~ comments
Wednesday, July 03, 2002
why yaccs and blogger and aol hate me, pt.1
i don't actually know why these services hate me, but they do. to me, they are a small collection of demi-gods that control my online life; blogger, my own online pensieve (note to non-harry potter readers: a pensieve is a bowl that holds your excess thoughts when they get too much for your brain. obviously i'm not suggesting that my brain is small, only that i am so ingeniously brilliant that i have about a trillion massive thoughts every day, and sometimes they get a bit much); yaccs, the commenting system that lets me know that people actually respond to my crap; and aol, without which i wouldn't even be able to get online in the first place.
aol is fucked. first there's the news reports that aol has not paid it's bill to the company that hosts and controls it's dial-up facilities. second, there's the fact that, no matter were i am, or who's machine i'm on (mine, emily's, emily's parents), aol always refuses the first attempt to log on, due to a 'refused tcp link'. doesn't matter what the number is, what the settings are, modem speed or username, they all fail on the first attempt 95% of the time. and their tech support should be called "talentless know-nothing retard muppets from the planet temp agency".
blogger won't let me change my template, and hasn't for about 2 weeks now. all i wanted to do was add one tiny little image, but it refuses to save my template. grah.
yaccs has been down at least twice in the past four days, with no apparent explanation; now you see it, now you don't. what are these bastards playing at? the internet is supposed to put me in control, so why am i the one who's being persecuted by the hypertext gods?
- posted by lawrie at 5:23 PM ~ comments
Monday, July 01, 2002
just a little aside
jay and silent bob tell spiderman how gay he is.
- posted by lawrie at 11:27 PM ~ comments
roll on summer
ohwhatafuckingsurprise. it's absolutely pissing it down outside, and i'm freezing. and it's july. mumfy's just gone up to essex to get the keys to her new house, which is apparently gorgeous. all woodpanel floors, brand new kitchen and bathroom, all furniture from ikea. sounds like my kind of joint. so she's driving for 3 hours, will be there for about an hour, and is then driving 3 hours back. and then tomorrow she's got to drive for an hour to get to calke abbey to voluntarily renovate a harvester. or something.
in other news, the flash-to-php experiment between me and jon has taken a couple of turns, mainly on my part, to turn it into a fully-fledged game. well, not quite fully-fledged - i want to add a dynamic highscores table to it, this also controlled by php.
there's not a whole lot of an interesting or opinionated note going on right now - nothing for me to get especially incensed by. i might have to go searching for things to rant on and on about. yes, yes i think tomorrow's topic may well be conspiracy theories regarding the pope. excellent.
- posted by lawrie at 2:18 PM ~ comments