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Monday, April 25th, 2005
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11:51 pm
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Well, I thought Constantine was a LOT better than everyone said, though there is a horrible bit in the middle where they clearly cut a love scene and several impotant plot points.
And Gabriel absolutely rocked.
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(13 comments | comment on this)
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12:09 pm - HOuse visiting
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2) snotnose's new house is rather fab - four bedrooms, light coming in everywhere, all newly decorated, gardens to front and rear, carport. You can move round the house sitting in the sun as the sun moves. Great party house, big open plan kitchen, and all for less than the current value of my gardenless flat. Maybe I should move to Motherwell.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, April 20th, 2005
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10:42 pm - Ah, home
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Ate toast. And Tea.
Spammed LJ.
Walked in Sun.
Had 30 length swim.
Had Massage.
Ate Veggies (amazing how you miss veggies when eating out for days on end).
Made Stew (actually carbonnade with guiness, nyeh.) Is fab and am barely resisting urge to eat it now insetad of saving it for me and Andy for tomorrow.
Played with Kitties.
UnPacked.
And am now marking a dissertation .. ah well you can't win em all!
current mood:  content
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(comment on this)
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1:08 pm - Nova awards - a modest proposal
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12:28 pm - Dating & problems
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I did this test and the results were, well, not unpredictable (I'd paste em in but my browser fucked up and I can't face doing it all again.) However this question intrigued me:
What is society's biggest problem?
Lazy people who leech off the rest of us.
Not enough love, kindness, and understanding.
All levels of government and even individual citizens not spending within their means.
Too much conformity, not enough individuality.
Too many people turning away from moral values
Well I didn't think it was any of them, natch. (THough I was tempted by, Too much individuality, not enough conformity :-) But I realised, I didn't know what society's biggest problem IS? Xenophobia? Sexism? General intolerance? The way that washing machines leave lint all over your black clothes?
So what IS society's biggest problem, huh?
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(26 comments | comment on this)
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11:45 am - Jet old lag
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| Sunday, April 17th, 2005
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4:23 pm
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3:43 pm - If it's Sunday..
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It must be Geneva. Unfortunately.
Not because thereàs anything intrinsically wrong with that (arg, Francophone keyboards! No apostrophes, all Zs and accents!) but because Geneva is extravagantly closed on a Sunday - not just the shops but almost all the cafes and bars and restaurants and CINEMAS even!! (what DOES everyone do - go to church I suppose) and it's PISSING down and has been since I arrived yesterday...
Never mind. After about an hour's wandering through old and new towns I eventually did find one respectable open cafe (Movenpick, naturellement, with a very nice apfelstrdel)and one open and affordable Internet cafe (the hotel was charging c 2.50 UKP for 10 mins!!!), even if it is in its other life apparently a smokey gambling den..
I hope it's nicer Tuesday. Monday I suspect I ll be at WIPO pretty much all day giving Terribly Important Paper. So Tues would be my last chance to see the lake, the boats, the bridges, the mountains etc NOT in rain, j'èspere.. (I also hope the shops ll be open as they look pretty good!!) Then home to Andy and kitties - which will be rather nice :-)
Seattle was fab in all kinds of ways - the city, people, conference, networking, fans, dim sum, fruit pie, Pike Place market, awards in the sf museum, Eileen and John, Randy, Jerry and Suzle, Ulrika & Hal, Cory, Andrea, Marcy, shopping, you name it. Even the peripatetic daveon who came all the way to Seattle to meet me and nonethless failed to hand over Desperate Housewives pt 2 on DVD,. How dare he!! More when I get back maybe. It's oh just so liveable. I almost talked Steve into getting me a job at M$ and only thought better of it at the last moment..
Belfast was also suprisingly good - I was there for the UK national IT law conference (BILETA) I hadn't been to for three years and people kept greeting me and hugging me! it was more like Eastercon than Eastercon really!! My denial of service paper went down really well and I am slightly gratified that it was our crime panel which was chosen to turn into a special edition of the journal associated with the conference (yes, Andy, another deadline! But a good one really.)
Lord knows what You Lot have been up to as I have been in a series of places where they assumed you could use wireless Internet but I had no laptop!! What kinda techie geek am i , huh. So it's been v expensive and occasional dial up on smartphone and hotel business centres - so tell me now if anything's happened I should know about in last week and a half;-)
Oh and finally! MANY MANY thanks to Flyingsauce (can't find angled brackets..) who did indeed get me an upgrade to World Traveller Plus on way back which made getting over the jetlag WAY easier (she says as head sways :) - I so owe you a drink!!
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, April 4th, 2005
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2:37 pm - Things Not To Do
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First of all, do not win major foreign competitions which give prizes in US dollar cheques.
Do not sit on cheque for several months expecting US $ rate to rise again not fall further.
Do not panic when you realise approx one third of value of prize has disappeared due to exchange rate collapse.
Do not believe helpful woman at local branch of Really Bloody Awful Bank of Scotland when she assures you cheque is still valid till end April, even though you have dim recollection cheques usually time out after 6 months. Maybe is different for dollar cheques? NOOOO.
Do not be suprised, when after several months of enquiring, clutching only copy in universe of terms and conditions of foreign currency accounts, that Bloody Awful bank admits it DOES now do US currency accounts, maybe, possibly, but no, you can't withdraw money from them by cashline or other sensible method. No that would be too sensible. Withdrawals have to be by CHEQUE at £4 per cheque.
Do not point out that US does not have clearing system, therefore cheques almost useless; none of them will have been to US or had any training in this.
Do not decide that as you CAN withdraw in travellers cheques and cash, is still worth pursuing.
Do not go to bank, having finally, finally, opened currency account, joyfully grasping now very old, dog-eared and chewing gum-encrusted cheque, in fond belief details will be on bank computer, therefore no need to take opened-account letter with you. No, that would be too simple.
Do not wait while trainee of four weeks, cute though he is, tries various permutations of your name hopefully for 40 minutes and occasionally makes up possible account numbers.
Do not be even remotely surprised when at end of hour in bank txting people about made up diseases, trainee announces, "oh actually this cheque was out of date in February".
Do not kill supervisor who when told of previous information that cheque was valid till April, announces "well, that would be a training issue"
Do not go postal and fire live ammo into grouchy pensioners and sullen single mums who have been waiting in queue during all this. No, don't , really. Why you don't even own a Marilyn Manson album.
Do not bank with the Royal Bank of Scotland. Ever.
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(24 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, April 3rd, 2005
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6:32 pm - Kings of fragiility
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While I'm spamming LJ, anyone heard of Kings of Convenience? I caught their new single Know How on Radio 2 in the car (yes radio 2, *shame*) and thought it so lovely I've now got the album on loop off Napater. They sound like this fabulously time displaced mixture of early 80s fragile-indy Prefab Sprout and Everything but the Girl, with a touch of Siman & Garfunkel and Cocteau Twins thrown in. I lurve it.:-> (Oh they're Norwegian BTW.)
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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6:18 pm - Election dysfunction..
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la_marquise_de_ reports that Our Tony is reportedly backing off from the much expected May 5th election date out of "respect" for the Pope's death. Ha! A few weeks back Andy and I were discussing why on earth Tony *would* want to call on May 5th just because everyone's been planning for it. He only has to gain by postponing, it seems to me - the public's memories are short and in a month or two people will have forgotten about Iraq, lies, ID cards, religious hatred bills et al, even Jamie's dinners. If Tone brings nothing controversial forward before the summer break, then everyone has a chance to go back to contented sleep.
It seems to me he's basically got to bet whether the house market will really go down the tubes in the SE or not and how many of his votes are there and not in the North, where a house market downturn is to some extent a good thing (chance to get on the ladder for new buyers, but no real negative equity fears for existing owners)
In the meantime, it looks like the Tories have spent a huge amount of their election ad budget already, on the guess he'd go for May. (remember spending is limited by law once we're into the actual electoral period so it's a good gamble for rich Tories to spend lots before the election is actually called.)
I'd hang on till Oct or Nov if I were him (probably Oct, actually, as winter is bad for Labour turn outs, isn't it, old and poor people being sick and lacking transport) and this is a great excuse. Imagine how sick Howard will be.
But I doubt extremely he's actually affected by any "moral" reasons to avoid campaigning out of "respect!..:-)
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(11 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, March 30th, 2005
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6:47 pm - Bloody hell
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5:52 pm - 2004 FC 488
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4:52 pm - TAFF for Flick, age 13 3/4
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| Tuesday, March 29th, 2005
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10:26 am - Home after 4 days - kitty alert
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I have very purry kitten on my lap. And they cuddled up all last night. Aww.
Can't face work. Yawn. Can do WIPO edits at home though. Bad kitten :-)
Anyone got good advise on stable strategies for stopping litter getting stinky too fast?
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(10 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005
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5:22 pm - Larry Lessig in Edinburgh
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| Monday, March 21st, 2005
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2:48 pm - Enchanted fishtanks
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An amazing thing happened yesterday - good TV!!
Is anyone else watching Casanova on B3? I missed the first ep, saw most the second by accident and it's FAB - like a mix up of the better earlier irreverent sex-ridden historical Andrew Davies adaptations, mixed up with that curious techno-dance anachronistic quality Plunkett and Maclean had. And funny. When did you last laugh out loud at a period drama? I did a lot of it. Has this been on terrestrial TV already? why haven't I heard about it?? and why does the black sidekick look SOOOO familiar??
Then I went channel surfing and found myself halfway through the omnibus repeat of that self same Andrew Davies' Moll Flanders on BBC LJ Drama or suchlike. I *loved* this when it first came out and , it turns out, I still do. God, Alex Kingston was gorgeous before ER got hold of her. And what a piece of acting!! From pure bathos to sheer tragedy. That line when, widowed and bankrupt, she abandons her children and turns to the camera and says "Well , what would YOU do?" has haunted me for years.
Good TV is really good. It irritates the hell out of me that my screenwriting class tutor assumes everyone wants to write for Hollywood and TV is a poor relative where you might make a crumb while in waiting. I'll take Buffy, Desperate Housewives, This Life, 6 Feet Under, Coupling, Black Books, Moll, and Casanova over 99% of the (many) films I';ve seen in the last ten years.
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(11 comments | comment on this)
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2:45 pm - Experiment
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Fill in the blanks
I'm too sexy for my _______________
That's it, I'm giving up ________________
Great balls of ______________
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(30 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, March 18th, 2005
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12:22 am - saddo
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| Tuesday, March 15th, 2005
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12:06 am - Arg - not so much Wavering as Frowning
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Too busy lately to update. Did you notice? What has happened: hmm, Danish human rights pal Rikke came visiting to give a seminar on the World Information Society summit and I took her with various to Barioja for tapas, then to the Tower for lunch, which was fun, tho exiting via the Escher-esque new museum extension nearly lost both of us down a wormhole forever -- I riveted her with unlikely tales of "the chocolate fountain was here once, really" and "look! a giant Golden Orf!!". She talked me into going to Computers Freedom & Privacy in Seattle , sort of, and now I'm simultaneously really excited to get back to the States after a year and panicking at the 300 VIP things I have to do at work first. At moment it looks like the grand ensemble triple of Belfast, Seattle and Geneva is indeed GO, but we shall see...
Meanwhile meanwhile. Last week of teaching, thank christ. Last chapter of verdammt book really and truely came in yesterday. I went to the gym and did proper things on treadmills and exercise bikes for the first time since god knows when, and boy, do I still ache 2 days later. Decided the mini Pill was Not For Me. Conflicted on various things. Weekend spent mostly slobbing with some minor DIY (actually watching Andy perform same, let's admit it :-) , v nice, tho did also catch up with long lost gorgeous Halle Berry lookalike pal Steph - who naturellement had new man in tow since last I saw her. (I really have to get her and Naomi WINOLJ in the same room some time, they have so much in common ..!) Also struggling to engage with BitTorrent, legally speaking. Plans: another poker evening, another Buffy evening chez Keith WINOLJANWB, my film class half hour short film script(about what? help!), swim yoga gym losing weight, Eastercon, Seattle, WIPO in Geneva, marking, more marking, family law book, holiday somewhere Warm, Worldcon. Time in there somewhere for a good army burial too I think. help. Send chocolate (lo cal variety) and/or sanity.
OH and kittens - don't forget the kittens..
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