Blog

  • It’s not working…

    I’m fed up. Fed up and tired and… yeah.

    This unhelpful woman (Caia Frances) who’s failed to e-mail me, she’s sucking the life out of me. I just want to know whether I’m doing the right thing, have I understood it? Is the plan appropriate?

    But no. No. She can’t give me that information because apparently she cares that little about her students. *sigh*.

    I just feel like curling up in the corner and waiting for sleep to wash over me.

  • Something’s rotten in the state of Fridgeland

    Well, not actually in the fridge. But something smells *really* unpleasant in our kitchen. And I mean unpleasant. Really gnarly. But my hayfever combined with it’s fleeting nature mean I can’t find it. I’ve checked the bin, my cupboard, under the sink, the fridges, the dishwasher, the sink…. I can’t work out where it’s coming from. I’ve emptied the cardboard box bin (in use due to my purchase of very small bin bags while I was living semi-alone); I’ve checked the other bin (empty, smells of detergent).

    I can’t work it out… I think I need someone with a better nose.

  • Being in a group alone.

    It’s funny isn’t it – I’ve spent three years on my course and never connected with the people on it. It’s not that they’re not nice, nor that we have nothing in common (hell, we’re all student nurses). The major reason for that lack of connection has been me. When I’m thrown into a group of people – a new group – outside of work this is – I become ultra shy. It’s taken me nearly 2 years of being with these people to become comfortable enough to start to speak out significantly in the group. When I do, it’s fine. I’ve really enjoyed it – but it didn’t exactly meet my intentions to be way more proactive about being friendly and meeting people that I had when I started.

    I guess a lot of that can be put down to my social and personal life during my course, it’s not been condusive to meeting new people; but I really regretted it today. We had to do a ‘share what you think of everyone else’ type thing – where we all wrote our name on a piece of paper, passed it round the group, and everyone wrote what they thought of that person on that piece of paper. Or some memory. Or whatever. And y’know what it’s interchangable with the one from school – except for two things, two comments, from the two people I always regretted not getting to know better.

    They both said stuff about being sorry they’d not got to know me. And that sucks, because I should have. I should have taken that step. I still don’t quite know what causes the shyness in groups that I don’t have in work. I think it’s some fear of opening up to people. Perhaps it’s my history. I don’t know. I need to change it though. Or I’d *like* to change it.

    Anyway, before I read the comments – we left them to read after the session – I dashed off. And I regret that now, in fact I regretted it pretty much as soon as I read them. Before, and most of the time I’ve been there, I’ve kind of felt like I was skirting the edges of the group – but the comments actually made me feel much more included than I did. Still, I promised to go to David’s party, so I shall. I’ll even stay over at Maria’s. Ironic, I’m leaving so I’m gonna get to know people.

    Hrm.

    It’s really time for me to start working. I’m writing this on the laptop – which has just thrown up a blue-screen, not of death (though I’m awaiting that); which might be related to my playing with Firefox 2 Beta 1. It’s nice and quick though.

    Anyway, in other news my copy of Firefly’s arrived – it’s different to Lauren’s (I wasn’t expecting that) – no booklet in mine and a different case. Mine appears to be the Australian edition. Heh. It’s not actually quite as nice as Lauren’s, but then it was free (well, ‘loyalty’).

    In other news, my friend Nikki’s asked me to do some music videos for a few of her songs. This is weird. And possibly hard. I’m not used to directing other people; which makes it hard. They’re her songs, which also makes it hard, she knows what she had in mind making them, so my suggestions my go down like a ton of lead, but then she may love them. It’s weird though. Whatever happens I’ll be ceding some of the control to her, and I’m not used to letting other people have much involvement in ‘my’ videos. It should be fun though, and interesting. Especially because I have some quite strong imagery in my head for some of it.

    Incidentally, we’re now wireless for sound and vision, except that being my ‘music server’ the loss of my main PC (although I still turn it on to check mail, I know I shouldn’t) is quite a spectacular pain in the arse. Although at the moment I’m listening to Ladytron. I’m not that impressed, ironically, with the quality of this record. I’m not *sure* but it sounds noisy, it had finger prints on it when I got it out of the sleeve. I’m going to see what the second disk sounds like, but I’m pretty convinced it’s got damaged, either that or it’s not very well mastered :(

    The DVD with the ‘Extended Play’ EP is fantastic though.

    Anyway, I should work. Not, you understand, that the lecturer Caia Frances has bothered to get back to me. A week and she can’t even be bothered to say “that’s not enough for me to comment on”; “that’s appropriate” or “that’s useless”. No. Nothing. Sod all. Fucking UWE. This is the level of support you get? I don’t understand an assignment, I’ve gone from 70% to 30% and there’s *nothing* there to help. Nothing a-fucking-tall.

    Yeah, see, there’s noticable regular crackles on this disk. Bollocks. Anyone with the CD of Witching Hour – are there deliberate crackles on it?

  • Kate hits google video

    Here…

    In other news, I’m very tired. Brazil has arrived on DVD and looks lush, as has Saving Grace. As has my Ladytron Album (Witching Hour, on 180gm vinyl with a remix disk. Can you say ‘happy bunny’?).

    I slept like a log yesterday, but today. Today was less good. Woken by noisy people outside, the postman and a phonecall, I gave up at 1400. Which is bad, that’s 5 hours sleep after a 11 hour shift. And the drive home was a killer this morning, traffic was frequently stationary for long periods – and it took over an hour and a half to get home.

    *sigh*

    And I can’t use my Wireless card yet due to a fuckup with disk selection (Lauren’s accidentally left the key on a linux floppy disk which neither of my PCs will look at).

    I think I may go lay on my bed s’more.

  • Ack. Windows dying.

    My machine is now spontaneously BSODing with a frequency somewhat higher than I’d like. In fact, it’s safe to say that I’m rather nervous about leaving it on, or indeed starting it up. I thought earlier today I might get away with the whole ‘leave it until after my essays are submitted’ but it’s becoming rather rapidly apparent that that isn’t going to do. At all.

    I will probably attempt to leave it, but by a process of using my laptop for work. Or something. I dunno. It’s three weeks. I can survive with reduced internet usage for three weeks can’t I?

    It’d help if there was some actual obvious reason for the failures; I’ve just reverted to the ‘last known good configuration’ (whatever that was), but the reasons for the BSOD’s I’ve seen have been fairly varied – and then there’s the non BSOD-just stopped’s which are also pretty alarming. The whole thing just says ‘not good’ to me in big Pink Neon letters, flashing on and of with a disturbing frequency that makes me want to reinstall *now*.

    If I didn’t have quite so much work on I would.

  • Okay, what’s wrong now?

    So, I came out this morning and plonked down at the PC to check my mail (yes, I am that sad, okay?); and it was sat at the log in prompt. Not unusual in itself, since this machine has multiple logins then it quite often sits at the log in prompt; but what was unusal was that when I logged in it was clear it’d rebooted.

    There having been a huge storm last night I vaguely assumed that the machine had rebooted after a brief poweroutage. But I just came up now and it locked up instead of logging in.

    I guess the reinstall is approaching quicker’n I might like.

    In other news, I think I’ve hosed the battery Lauren put in my Laptop – I’d forgotten that she put it in there, and didn’t bother to charge the damn thing. It looks like it might give – at best, an hour, of battery life. I’m guessing that the 3800mAh battery should last longer than that. Fiddlesticks. That’s what I say. I dunno. Anyone know what expected battery life on a Dell CPi laptop is?

  • I have been very bad.

    Very bad.

    No, badder.

    I have only done a minimal amount of work today. I’ve watched my video through a few times though. I’ve booked tickets to Canada I can’t afford, or justify, but worse. So much worse. Before that, feeling mizog as I was, I bought 15 quids worth of DVDs. Why? Just because I fancied them. So now I must stop spending money that I don’t have. Because:

    In early September, Lauren will be moving out (assuming we hand in notice nowish) and I will have to move. I will have to move to… where? Where I don’t know, because at this point I have no job. Apart from the HCA work I’ve got here…

    … of course, as Rochelle reminded me, there’s lots of other jobs I can do and which will help keep me solvent. So. Yes. It’ll be fine. If somewhat tight. And I *know* I shouldn’t have booked it, but I *need* a holiday, and this is something to look forward to. And believe me I’m looking forward to it.

    Of course, having spent real cash money on flights (it being cheaper than using Nectar points to get discounts, the tax and left-over-to-pay being substantially more than my tickets were flat out); well; I was left with 12,000 nectar points. And, y’know what I’d discovered when I was looking at Nectar points? The Brazil – Criterion collection 3 disk version that I’ve wanted for years… well, it was there. And so was the Firefly complete box set. And so… they’re mine. Mwuhahaha.

    I have been a good little consumer today. Oh, and I printed this because I want to frame it. Because at the end of the day, I’m still a little geek girl.

  • In other news…

    The A Pride of Minors 2006 EuroPride video is now available for download at the video page. In two flavours, Huge and Quite Small But Not Very Good Quality. It’s also in the process of being added to Google Video, so for those without enormous bandwidth availability it should be on there soon. Just getting verified at the moment.

  • ohmygod

    Oh my god

    Oh my god

    Oh my god

    Oh my god
    Oh my god

    I’m going to Canada. I. That is me. I, myself, am going to Canada. Thanks to Rochelle who’s offered to let me stay and the discovery of much cheaper flights, I can go.

    So I’ve decided to take 2 weeks out of being completely broke to go and be broke in Canada.
    RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

    *bounce*

  • V is for virtuous

    Which is how I’m being with not swearing at Premier. I don’t know quite what it is about Premier which winds me up so much – but it does just annoy me.

    The editing functions are nice, but why does exporting video have to be a trial by experiment affair – especially when rendering each time takes ages. I’ve no idea why it won’t export video that anything else can actually view, or why everything leaps up and says “this video has not been rendered for sequential viewing. You should reinterleave the video before exporting it to a slow medium” and then plays something of such staggeringly poor quality that it’s unwatchable.

    I don’t know what settings it *should* have, but none of the ‘default’ options work. I just end up fiddling with it until it works, which is tedious and because I’m normally tired and “just want the fucking thing to save the fucking movie” by the time I get to exporting, well, my patience tends to be a bit thin.

    This is my last attempt of the night though. And I need to work more tomorrow, so, well, we’ll see what happens. I’ll probably play a bit but I can’t afford to spend my whole day trying to coax it into rendering video.