124.7cm / 155.0cm (80.5%)

Read more...

The details:
Read more...

I'll write up the con later in the week, when I'm more awake, but I had a good time.

Redemptions seem to be cursed, though, because at on Friday morning when I went out to my car to get my spare glasses, I discovered it had been broken into. I then spent the best part of three quarters of an hour on the phone to the garage, the insurance company, the police, the garage again and a different garage.

All that needs doing is the locks changed (as one is hanging off, but still working) and there are wires hanging out under the steering wheel. But the garage that are supposed to be sorting me out a new wing mirror so I can actually drive the car, told me they don't deal with that sort of thing. Which makes no sense. The break-in stuff is getting fixed tomorrow, then I'll sort out getting the rest fixed. So who knows, I might have a drivable car at some point in the future.

It was just as well I took some porridge with me because although I rang the hotel up in advance to make sure I could eat breakfast, they basically weren't interested and told me to talk to someone there. When I was there, they told me I should have told them in advance. Which is helpful. They managed dinner though, which is something at least.

It was good to catch up with people I haven't seen for a while, and meet new people. Lots of people I recognised from the last couple of Redemptions. Lots of other people I recognised their names from LJ or mailing lists etc.

I also established, from the backsword workshop, that before I go back to fencing, I really need to get some knee support, because oddly enough it didn't like being bent a lot.

I've finally got rid of my freeserve address, which I've been meaning to do for a while. And by a while I mean I was planning it a few years ago when I got my own domain name. If you have my email address ending with me.uk then that's the main one I've been using for a while. If you have an older address than that, with freeserve in it, then just change the 'freeserve.co' to 'me' and that's my new address.

This does all mean I now have three gmail accounts and two others I have access to. And Outlook Express apparently downloads accounts in alphabetical order. It does seem to have a bit of a strange dictionary if that really is the case.

The other day, as I was reading one of the Chalet School books (A New House at the Chalet School) right near the beginning Dr Jem met up with his sort of long-lost sister (since she married a man he didn't like and moved to Australia). The way it described them meeting described how I think of Sarah & Harry in my head so much I wanted to say something right then and there, but couldn't because I was at work and they'd have all thought I was strange(r).

The evidence: Read more...

I meant to post about this yesterday but I was busy getting annoyed at youtube instead. I went through finding good stuff I had bookmarked and added it to my favourites, but no-one else can see it. Which is a bit crap. I'll quickly mention College Sage though, which is a very funny game parody.

I got the stuff through yesterday morning confirming I am going to Romania in June with Habitat for Humanity to build a house. Which is exciting and scary. I keep thinking of silly things I need to do, like buy some cheap small t-shirts, as it'll be hot there and that way it doesn't matter if they end up horrid. They did make it look, in the stuff, like I'd need a visa, but fortunately Romania joined the EU last month, so as dad pointed out, I can also live and vote there if I wanted.

Only thing now is I have to find £700 of my own money to pay for flights and stuff. The first half of this year is going to be really expensive, I'm going to have to be frugal later in the year. But I also have to fundraise £350. I do have a few things I can do. I am planning to do a sort of sponsored drabble writing thing, but more on that after I get back from America. But if anyone has any ideas for anything sponsored I can do, specially if it's slightly unusual.

This morning I thought I'd quickly upgrade to WordPress 2.1. I forgot that anything you do with computers will take three times as long as you anticipate and go wrong. So I started by copying all the files I'd uploaded, just in case they were different from the ones on my computer. Then uploaded the relevant stuff and got confused with the deleting part. Then I upgraded. It made a mess of my links, then threw a wobbler when I re-activated the LJ Crossposter plugin. At which point I decided I didn't have the energy to deal with it and put everything back.

Except that the links now all had errors. Looking round the forum I found this was because they'd changed something that meant the tag I'd used to call them no longer worked. And also because I needed to upgrade back to 2.0. Once I'd done that it had just deleted all of my links categories. Or at least I thought it had. I've just discovered it decided they were post categories instead. But it's all fixed now, and I'm back to the old version that definitely works with the code I have in my theme.

That was this morning. This afternoon proved that one or both of my parents is reading my blog as my dad suggested a CD writer alternative that is free, and I had on my computer at work for a bit. It doesn't copy CDs - or at least the current version doesn't, but it will. It took forever to take Pinnacle off, but then I put this one on. And then panicked a bit because it tried to tell me every blank CD I put in had no space on it, even though I knew it did. So I tried writing to one to see what happened and it was quite happy.

It was a bit strange with some of the audio CDs too, because it decided the tracks came to more than 700mb, yet was still ok in terms of the number of minutes. And it was quite happy writing those too. Except when I came to do the last one and it crashed when finalising (it plays in my stereo fine, so that's good enough for me). I could only get the CD out with a paper clip in the hole and then once it was open it just started spinning again. I ended up restarting and hopefully it's ok now.

I also discovered I love my hard disk recorder. I started watching The Trial of Tony Blair (for I am that far behind) at lunchtime. When I was done I just pressed a button. So when I came back to it later I started again from there. I only have Midsomer Murders left on there now. Well, except for Top Gear and Lewis. I was close to catching up, perhaps later in the week.

I also not only have a clean house (although I've lost my duster, which is very strange) but I have put posters up as well. Which is a big improvement, especially in the lounge where the walls are a dark yellow and it's all a bit colourless.

And I sent the first chapter of the Doctor Who soap sequel to beta. And after flailing about the number of stories the person I am remixing has written (like choice is a bad thing!) I have decided which to remix and what I'd like to do. Which is good.

Dinner at buffet night at the Chinese restaurant tomorrow. Mmm, duck.

I can't breathe for laughing so hard. I've just seen last weeks Top Gear, where they drove $1000 cars across America. Very funny. And interesting (in a scary sort of way) to see the locals reactions to them in Alabama (after they had decorated each others cars with slogans likely to get them shot or arrested). And also, because they ended up in New Orleans, to see what a mess it is still in.

Today I discovered that making bread just before lunch is great, because then the bread tastes nice. And the nearest bus stop is only actually 30 seconds walk away. Only one of the buses stops at it, though, all the useful ones are still 10 minutes walk away.

I've also copied CDs, made CDs, crashed CD writing programs a lot, restarted a lot, bought some new CDs-R when I ran out, and thrown a whole load in the bin because either my computer or my CD writing program is not happy. Although I wasn't entirely happy with my CD writing program to start with, but I've managed to work out how to get it to work. It just turns out it doesn't like writing CDs. DVDs it seems to be fine with though. So I might have to try uninstalling and reinstalling it. I do so love computers.

I see LJ has gone back to the boring blue *sigh*. The pink was far better. And didn't clash with the pink dalek. Although, I can now read the link to get to the message centre! It's not hidden behind the menu links any more.

I've been good with on the writing front today. I wrote something for AU Harry for RS prompts for Alcohol if by write you mean torture, and I do.

Then I finally finished off the first draft of the first chapter of Doctor Who: The Soap Opera: The Sequel (aka a title with lots of colons). I kept worrying that I didn't have enough plot and I wasn't sure where to end it. Then I realised that the only reason I couldn't see the ending was because I'd accidentally gone past it. Then I worked through my notes and fitted it into chapters and it came to 15. The Soap Opera was only 11, before SJA. So I think it's fairly safe to say I have enough plot.

I actually have a weekend free for once! So I'm going to watch Lewis nearly-live (so I can skip the adverts), clean the house properly and not just the bits I can see, go shopping (on the bus), sort out my doorbell (upstairs' wireless network (unsecured, incidentally but with too low a signal for me to use it much) is interfering with it), put up some posters maybe given that I've been here two months now, make some CDs, do my backing up, and copy some CDs. My computer has thrown a wobbler over the latter for no discernable reason, so I've brought my work laptop home to use instead. It's a lot lighter than mine too.

Somewhere in there the remix assignments will come out, so I'll be busy reading those, and catching up with my other reading. And I'm trying to see if I can have the first chapter of the soap sequel for hhertzof when she gets back on Sunday.

I scared myself earlier by the realisation that the weekend after this one is Redemption (I looked at the program earlier and I might need to clone myself, probably more than once, so I'm refusing to look at it too closely), then the weekend after that I've kept free for doing pre-America stuff because I'm going the Wednesday after that. How did that get so close so fast?

I don't know why but for some reason the bin men don't quite feel the need to actually empty my bin. There was some stuff left in there when I moved in two months ago. I dump my stuff on the top and they take that, but nothing else. And when I got home today I found the lid was off and I'm sure it's gained stuff. Next week I'll try not emptying my bins and just put it out as it is and see what happens.

On a good note, I've not had a single pill for my back since Saturday morning. It's not perfect but it hardly hurts at all. My legs ache, which is a bit weird but presumably just a symptom that will go away.

I'm starting to feel a bit more caught up now as well. My inbox is looking emptier and the number of unread RSS Feeds I have has gone down. Although most of them is stuff to read, and I have a folder of SOA alerts on stories/chapters to read. I could really do with people stopping writing and letting me catch up!

If you're reading this on LJ because you found out I added you, it's because I've been on a random friend-adding spree. So you're probably on sarahjane_fic, posted to the DW friending meme, on relativespace, or you know Ann.

So add me back, or don't add me back, I don't mind and you don't have to feel obligated.

(This is assuming LJ lets me post this since it's decided to ban me. *kicks LJ*)

I wrote a fic for the sarahjane_fic Valentine's Day drabbleathon (except for the part where I wrote 500 words, I don't know where my ability to write short has gone): Unromantic.

I seem to be dealing with stupid people at work. Someone in my department is leaving soon, so needs replacing. They interviewed someone the other week, thought she was good but had someone else who also looked good. Turns out he was crap and the others they've looked at since are also crap. So they were desperately flailing about looking for someone despite the fact they had someone. Who I think they might now be employing maybe, assuming she hasn't found something else in the time they've spent pissing about.

And then I've spent most of the week playing about with data we've had from an agency through another agency. We did a project with them a year ago that it took me a week to sort out, mostly because I had flu so was only doing half days and pretending I wasn't in. This time, despite the fact they've done it before, they've managed to cock it up even more. And we get to do this four more times over the next year. Am so looking forward to that.

I watched the first episode of series 5 of Press Gang tonight, and Natalie Roles has changed so much in such a short space of time! Her voice was the same, only not so nasty as Debbie MacAllister, of course, but she looked so much younger and had short hair. I didn't recognise her till she had a fair bit to say.

Dad's discovered RSS Bandit can do things with comment feeds, so I'm off to investigate that, and maybe get round to adding some people.

Just to make my day complete, I got in, thinking I could watch Life on Mars slightly time-delayed only to find my video hadn't recorded it. Despite me checking it's set up for it. And the BBC, in their infinite wisdom, don't repeat it. So my only option is to illegally download it. Thank goodness for illegal downloading, otherwise I'd never see it!

Just waiting now to see if it tapes the second episode on BBC4 - which I'll watch anyway.

I'm back to feeling behind on my life again today. Mostly because today was quite an easy day at work until 4.30pm.

At the moment I still have 20gb on my hard disk recorder, I still have emails both unread and in my inbox that need dealing with, I have unread RSS feeds. I need to add feeds and rearrange them because size 8 fits them all on a page in the Friends folder but is too small to read properly. I have piles of paper in my lounge. I have piles of boxes in my lounge. I still haven't fixed my doorbell so it's not set off by upstairs' wireless internet. I have a car that I need to hassle the garage about fixing. I have a whole load of Rotaract stuff to do. I have writing I want to do. The TV guide was full of Heroes starting on the sci-fi channel, so I'll be avoiding blog posts till the autumn when it gets to the BBC.

And then today something went strange with my email. We think things might have disappeared down the black hole but we'll see what happens. And whether my gmail account (now temporarily a black hole) fills up with spam.

On the plus side, Life on Mars starts tonight and Lewis starts on Sunday. My dad taped Coldplay (I swear I set it up, it just isn't on the list for some reason). Apparently the last episode of Top Gear was really funny, although I've got another episode to go before I get to that one. And Press Gang series 5 is in the post. The Bill series 1 is not, because Lovefilm is crap.

And although the book I'm currently reading is good, except that I've just discovered Ewan McGregor apparently played Qui-Gon Jinn. News to me.

I feel like I've actually got some things done tonight. I cleaned the house and did the washing while cooking dinner. Since it seems like most of the plotting for Relative Space goes on in chat while it's the middle of the night here, I discovered the power of email. I've cleared my inbox a bit and reduced the number of RSS feeds I have marked as unread.

And I watched the first episode of the new series of Top Gear (I'm a bit behind on my viewing). I did like them doing roadworks, that was funny. The film that Richard Hammond did when he had his crash was kind of heart wrenching. He is so lucky though to come out of it unharmed in the end.

I've still got loads of things to do, mostly Rotaract stuff, and trying to write some stuff for the RS prompts, and maybe even getting a first draft of the soap sequel chapter done. And some reading and sorting out of my bookmarks. And lots of viewing still, like the whole series of Midsomer Murders and most of Colin and Justin. But tomorrow is Rotaract and Life on Mars. After that I'm in a lot, so hopefully lots of catching up.

I need to watch series 5 of Press Gang, like, right now. Since Friday I've gone from being halfway through series 2 to the end of series 4. But I have found out why I didn't watch it when it was on originally - it was on ITV, and I didn't watch ITV because I didn't like having my viewing interrupted by adverts, I couldn't see the point. How times haven't changed.

But Chandler was in one episode, occasionally doing an accent of some description. It was so bad it only turned up twice and I couldn't work out what accent it was supposed to be. A quick look at IMDB tells me Natalie Roles is in the fifth series, so I think that makes five The Bill regulars in Press Gang altogether.

On Friday whenever I checked my email the freeserve page told me Anna Nicole Smith died. When I checked LJ I found Ian Richardson had died. Now, let me think which of those is more interesting, hmm...

I did get my UNIT ficathon story done and in on time and came up with My Waymostly featuring Harry in an adventure with the Doctor and a bit of Sarah torture in there for the B story. And the one written for me was When Harry Met Sarah which is a fantastic Sarah/Harry story.

Ugh, it snowed today. Well, overnight, although it was still snowing when I left for work this morning. So the office was empty because quite a few people decided to work from home anyway. I don't really like the snow, and what makes it worse was dad emailing me to tell me all they'd had was a bit of rain. I so much want to live back where the civilised weather is, except that it's so far from anywhere.

It's been bugging me for a bit that some of my RSS feeds don't seem to have updated, even though I can see that the feed has when I put the link to it in Firefox. I just realised that the link between them is that they're all Blogger. Apparently it's something that Blogger has changed and RSS Bandit can't cope with. I updated RSS Bandit and then found I needed to delete and re-add the feeds in question. Except I accidentally deleted a folder instead. And it refused to get it back from the OPML export I cunningly did before I started. *headdesk* Fortunately, I bookmark the site for every feed I have.

And some good, squeeing news that I've been putting off squeeing about. I'm going to America four weeks yesterday! I can't believe it's so soon. I have my flights and train booked and everything. All I need to do now is pack and get some more monopoly money (can't remember how much I have squirreled away from last time). I'm going to Washington DC to meet Melli, as she's a whole lot closer to me at the moment than on the other side of the world where she usually lives. Then I'm going to New York to see more of New York than I did in the previous five hours I spent there, and to see hhertzof and her bunny. No prizes for what bit I'm most excited about. Yep that would be the bunny.

Works this morning, so now there are photos from Peg2. And my neighbours waking me up at 6am again.

Had a good time at Pegasus 2 this weekend. I have even put my photos onto my computer and would have them uploaded, except flickr required me to merge my account with my Yahoo one. I thought this would be a bad idea but all their stuff assured me I wouldn't notice the difference. Except that it'll ask me for my password every five minutes because yahoo is shit. Oh, and just the slight little problem of it now not letting me into my flickr account.

So I'm going to bed instead.