Welcome to Limbo

February already??

2012-02-02T00:12:48Z

Can't believe it's already February. January just flew by. Not much to say, except that I bought a friend's computer after he upgraded. I'm quietly excited. It's been about 4 years since I had a computer that had the following attribute:

a) a working disc drive,
b) the ability to connect to the internet, and
c) admin permissions so that I can actually install things, like games, or flash player upgrades.

Yes, although my work laptop has served me in very good stead as a runabout at home, I'd really like to complete Starcraft 1 at some point before I die!

In other news, I started a new challenge over at the blog: 29 flowers in 29 days.

In short, make a flower every day for the month of February from Lesley Stanfield's book, 100 flowers to knit and crochet. See the blog post for flower no. 1 (and keep reading to see some photos of the spring bulbs coming up in my garden! SO EXCITING!!!).

Please join in with my challenge if you fancy, or start your own! I got the idea from my friend who's doing 29 games in 29 days. As you may also have done, he's bought a lot of games in various Steam sales and never played them, so he's going to go through one each day and review it on there.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-10T20:45:59Z

Two new posts up at the blog, one about a small lavender sachet kit I knitted up over the weekend, and the other being the obligatory new year's resolutions.

This evening so far I have put on laundry, failed to start cooking tea, and taken photos of the more interesting parts of my stash, where stash is a thing that is mountainous and entirely made up of yarn that admonishes you for not using it yet.

I said I'd post about Oli & Tish's tree planting, but again I don't have time to say much except the following: It was a lot of fun and easier to plant trees than expected. We were provided with beautiful mince pies and stew and lovely things to do in the evening merriment, and a grand time was had. If you ever see a future plea for tree planting help up at their farmhouse, you should definitely answer it.

Gigs since last posting:

Drum Eyes (DJ Scotch Egg project) in a pub in Islington somewhere, 27/12/11
VNV Nation at the HMV Institute, 07/01/12

Mug Cosy Complete

2011-12-18T00:32:27Z

One completed mug cosy!

It was made for my work's secret santa. I maybe put more effort into it than the £1 budget implied I should, but I did only spend 5p on a button and that was it...

Also, see the mug cosy link for my FIRST CROCHET PATTERN! It's to make a crochet leaf, and is (obviously) incredibly simple.

Next update to include Oli&Tish's tree planting, but it's very late now so I must sleep. Good night!

Knitting

2011-12-15T23:28:35Z

I finally finished my first knitting project! Photos and more details over here!

In other news, one of the more unexpectedly pleasing side effects of mansunite moving into my little bungalow is the starting of a new tradition - Takeaway Thursday. OM NOM NOM PRAWN TOAST NOM NOM NOM.

No gardening last weekend, it absolutely tipped it down and my lawn is compressed enough as it is. :(

Veg patch part 2

2011-12-09T00:03:39Z

Part 2 is now up. :)

In other news, going to sleep in fresh bed clothes is amazing. Getting out of a bed that has fresh bedclothes on it the following morning is much harder than usual though.

Veg patch part 1

2011-12-08T01:05:04Z

I've dug out a veg patch! It's very exciting (for me that is, and probably no-one else). However, I have gone into more detail about it here in my new shiny blog. I'm going to try posting to LJ more regularly again, even if it's only to link to the other blog, in a (probably doomed) attempt to rejoin the internet that exists outside facebook (I'm rubbish enough at keeping up with that as it is). My complete abandonement of LJ for so long is probably down to being so busy during the evenings and not having the time it takes to read through my friends page, and then feeling that I'm so far behind with reading it that I might as well not bother, and then not bothering. On that note, I'm ever so sorry if I've missed anything important and not passed on congratulations/commiserations/incisive comment/dry wit (ok, probably not the last two, but you get the idea). Over the past year I've been a rubbish friend to anyone I don't see on a day to day basis and I must apologise to you all.

sleeperwaking @ 2011-05-07T01:27:00

2011-05-07T00:28:09Z

Today my hands were stained with the blood of a hundred aphids. Then I had a shower and went to the pub (Ye Olde Dolphin) for tea and beer. I will have to relent before going on placement and spray my fruit trees with insecticide - I reckon that to avoid using pesticides I need to look them over about once or twice a week to catch the aphids before they become an infestation, which will definitely happen if I'm away for 8 weeks. DO NOT want a repeat of last year. The complication is that, obviously, the fruit will then be covered in pesticide. Arghs.

Also, the emerging fruit does not seem to like hot weather and some has shrivelled and fallen off. So I guess I need to water my trees atm as well, until it finally rains properly.

Otherwise I watched Inception with some friends tonight. I thought it was a good film, although the ending was of the sort that slightly annoys me (I know why it's done, I just like things... neater). :)

Off to Chippenham tomorrow for Sal's wedding send off thing. Hopefully everything will go well. :)

sleeperwaking @ 2011-05-04T05:37:00

2011-05-04T04:37:53Z

Still alive! Not much of note recently, I've been working on the garden a bit (as in buying plants and then later trying to work out where on earth to put them) and work is currently busy. My cousin got married last Saturday and next Saturday it's my friend Sal's wedding send off party (in lieu of a stag/hen type thing). Saw Hellbastard at the Old Bell in Derby who rocked lots more than I expected. mansunite is still all kinds of wonderful. :)

Future wise, if things go well I hope to do a 6 week placement in Hong Kong, starting end of May (and therefore will not be here for Sonisphere or Metalfest, which sucks ever so slightly on the one hand, and not at all on the other).

And that's all I've time for right now. Off to work to finish a drawing I should have finished yesterday.

Game of Thrones

2011-01-22T01:17:39Z

AAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

That is all.

sleeperwaking @ 2010-12-23T23:35:00

2010-12-23T23:35:04Z

I'm now obsessed with Yuki Kajiura's music. Thank you Tsubasa Chronicles and .hack//Sign.

Don't know why I like it so much, must be getting soft in my advancing years... ;)

In other news, LAST DAY OF WORK TOMORROW YEAH!!! FINALLY!!!

sleeperwaking @ 2010-10-29T01:13:00

2010-10-29T00:13:34Z

NaNoWriMo: Should I do it, yes or no?

I'm currently thinking no as I don't even seem to have time to LJ post, let alone write 50,000 words. Maybe next year.

I started writing an epic post about my holiday in Scotland with the lovely mansunite but I haven't had time to finish it. It may go up next week.

In short, we saw lots of beautiful mountains and tasted many different whiskies, along with visiting strigidae and hetfields_beard in Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively. All I know is that we really need to go back to revisit the AWESOME.

Also I saw Derby beat Doncaster 3-2 (that was a fun couple of days at work... not), but then they turned it around and beat Sheff U 2-0 (probably as I didn't go and watch it). :)

Anyway, work is sleep inducing atm. I have finally got round to watching the LoveFilm DVDs I've had sat here for nearly 3 weeks, which I will attempt to review without spoiling anything:

* There Will Be Blood: Brilliant film. The last scene (in the bowling alley) is hilarious and my favourite bit. Daniel Day Lewis' character was sometimes very hard for me to watch (for the same reason as I can't watch The Office) and the music really got on my nerves at times. It's very 20th century and thus can be very discordant; I know that's the effect that's wanted but it doesn't mean I have to like it.
* Mongol: Very good, a bit depressing in the first half as the young Genghis Khan has a massive mountain to climb just to survive, but that's Mongolia for you. I look forward to the sequel when it's out.
* Ice Age: Entertaining but I wouldn't say it lived up to all the hype I've heard about it. I found the scene with the dodos entirely unnecessary and very annoying, along with the character stereotyping. The best character is definitely the squirrel.

Still to watch:

* Bubblegum Crisis (disc 3)

Discs 1 & 2 were great, love the soundtrack and the style. I tend to be annoyed generally by series that are about a team but put the importance on one character way above the rest (of which this is one) but apart from that am loving it. I mean, if that character can defeat the bad guys by themselves, why on earth are they in a team? Also, I usually feel more affinity with one of the quieter team members that never gets as much glory/limelight, which is also annoying.

Previously of note on LoveFilm:

* Elfenlied: Really love this series, want them to make more NOOOOOWWWWW!!! Damn things that have a slightly open ending. This is well worth watching anyways, although not if you're squeamish.
* Red Cliff: One of the most epic films ever, and I didn't even watch the epic-est special edition too epic for Western cinema full out epic version. In China, this was actually released as two separate films, over 4 hours in total, whereas the Western version is a mere 2.5 hours long - to play.com!

I really am pleased with my decision to join lovefilm (speaking of, I can give free 30 day trials to people if they want one, just let me know). Even if I'm not getting the highest value per DVD from it as every so often I have a few weeks of not watching anything, it forces me to watch films that I've always wanted to but never got off my arse and done anything about. Also I can't get sucked in for hours on end like if I'd got a TV license, score! Now I just need to stop getting distracted by the net...

sleeperwaking @ 2010-09-21T00:16:00

2010-09-20T23:17:32Z

I've not been doing so well at reading and posting lately. So I decide to stay up and post when I really should be in bed - have a stupid o clock train to London to catch tomorrow morning.

Still, I leave you with this recent snapshot into my life:

Caterpillars. On the one hand, they can be incredibly cute and furry. On the other hand, they can strip an entire branch of my apple tree.

I'm pretty sure I can see buds of new growth waiting for next spring so I'm not terribly bothered. Also, they didn't eat my apples, yay. And moths and butterflies are having a hard time of it so I shouldn't crush the caterpillars (not that I want to as they're cute, and also it's a bit late now). After some investigation, the caterpillars may have been for a Grey Dagger Moth. I'm not sure, my mental picture of what they looked like isn't great. Will have to check properly on Weds to see if there's any left on the tree and decide whether to squish them or not. Still lots of leaves left on other branches at least, so not dead yet. I think mansunite took a photo of one so maybe he could post it up for better identification.

Looking a bit more into Grey Daggers, I'm pretty sure it was these as I've found they like apple trees, a snippet from a website says:

The damage caused to leaves is not very noticeable and on a deciduous tree they will shortly be falling off anyway, so there is no need to take any remedial action. Also the adult moths may be important pollinators as they feed.

Which was broadly my thoughts on it (no noticeable damage until I had a weekend away and found a branch completely stripped, but then the number of caterpillars spotted went up from 1 roughly a fortnught ago, to 5 or 6 a week or so ago).

sleeperwaking @ 2010-08-16T20:19:00

2010-08-16T19:19:56Z

Back from Bloodstock wooooooo! Also, CLEEEEEAAAAN!!! So. Damn. Tired. But so much to do. I put on laundry so I should at least wait for it to finish. And I said I'd look at some work stuff, but again, tired. Zzzzzzzz. Maybe if I wake up early tomorrow it'll all be ok.

Bands, have some:

Good: Ensiferum, Cathedral, Sonata Arctica, Enforcer, Flayed Disciple, Benediction, Evile, Onslaught, Edguy, Obituary, Suffocation, Holy Moses, Doro, Korpiklaani, GWAR, Bloodbath and TWISTED FUCKING SISTER!

Mediocre: Sylosis, Devin Townsend Project (snooooozerriffic), Amorphis, Gorgoroth, Rage, Gojira and Mordecai

Fucking awful: Chaos Asylum, Reisn, Witchsorrow

Twas excellent to see all my metal friends, especially sophia_fred.

Tomorrow I have a team brief and a team hillwalk (cheap team bonding ftw) and my leaving Edinburgh thing in the pub. I have no idea which pub as of yet.

sleeperwaking @ 2010-08-09T02:15:00

2010-08-09T01:15:30Z

I have a half price bloodstock ticket for sale (as I bought mine at 2-4-1 on a last minute Orange thing). Anyone want it?

The one problem is that I can only pick up the tickets next Friday morning (due to being in Edinburgh until Thursday evening and them being in Derby) so will have to hand them over that day. On the plus side though, it's somewhere between £55 and £60 (I'd check what the exact price is but my online banking is currently unavailable grrrr).

EDIT: It'll be £56

sleeperwaking @ 2010-08-08T21:44:00

2010-08-08T20:44:52Z

Made it up both Ben Vorlich and Stuc a Chroin yesterday! Spectacular views from the top, so many mountains in view. Will post up a picture later this week. Also, both are Munros so I'm up to 2 out of 283. Not many to go then...

Some things I've done in Edinburgh

2010-08-06T22:48:09Z

In short:

* Climbed the Cobbler (Ben Arthur) two weeks ago with Tom H (another grad who's in Glasgow on depot placement) and survived!

* Went to the Sunday at Sonisphere to see the MIGHTY MAIDEN! :D So good. nuchtos let me crash at his house, with Grover very kindly lending me his room as he was in Cardiff. :)

* Ran the whole length of a Mark 4 rake as I left my bag on the train during a change. Fortunately it all turned out ok, although I was rather out of breath.

* Went to Kilmarnock yesterday on a 12hr work day, catching the 0633 train. Nearly missed it as I woke up at 0608. Thank fuck for 118 numbers being advertised all over the place now - TAXI!

* Tomorrow I'm off to climb Ben Vorlich (mountain of the bay) and possibly Stuc a Chroin (peak of TERROR) with Iain from the Edi office.

* I last saw mansunite a week ago, won't see him again for another 3 weeks at least. :'(

Garden thoughts

2010-07-22T20:50:41Z

I've been thinking about what to do with my garden, especially the front. What I'm moving towards is some sort of cross between a rockery and a cottage garden. Rockery mainly because there's not much good soil - get about a spade's depth of clay/weedy turf and then hit shale. Also wild flowers apparently prefer poor soil, so that might be an idea. Have to think of other things to put with them though as I think they look wonderful for a few months and then not so great the rest of the year. Be great for bugs and bees though! :)

In the meantime, I've joined a thing called "The Big Wildlife Garden", run by Natural England. It's a website that's trying to encourage people to have a more wildlife friendly garden, listing things to grow/make/do and giving each garden points for how many things they have.

Time to start a spreadsheet and do a comparison methinks - spreadsheets solve so many dilemmas!

sleeperwaking @ 2010-07-18T23:57:00

2010-07-18T22:57:46Z

PS: I've gone a fair way back in the friends list, but not caught up on everything. If there's something particularly cool or important you want to let me know about, or if you want to fabricate something really cool/important that I will probably believe completely (because I'm a naive trusting fool like that most of the time) then please leave a comment.

Update

2010-07-18T22:51:50Z

I'm in Edinburgh on my regional office placement, staying at strigidae and her bloke Martin's house for another 5 weeks.

Aiming to do some hillwalking, but with weekends taken up by festivals and my one visit home I'm not sure when I'll fit it in.

Speaking of, I'm planning to go to Sonisphere on the Sunday for some MAIDEN and then to Bloodstock. How do I have less money for gadding about now I have a job than when I was a poor, impecunious student?

I'm thinking about getting a cat, but it depends on a lot of things that I have little control over so I don't know if that'll happen any time in the next millenium or two.

I have 8 apples on my trees, 1 Bramley's Seedling and 7 Laxton's Superbs. The Laxton's tree is a little bit older I think, thus the larger crop. The lone Bramley's getting pretty big though!

A previous day, my Dad and my Uncle Stephen spent about 6hours cutting my back hedge as it had not been cut in at least 18months if not a lot more. The resulting mountain of debris was taller than my Dad! Yesterday, me, my Dad and mansunite spent a good 4-5hours shredding it all and carting the resulting mulch around the garden (to keep weeds down ostensibly, but mainly so we didn't have to take many trips to the tip). Yay wanton destruction! We didn't shred the frog that had moved into the pile though, he got rescued and released near the compost bins...

Nearly there!

2010-05-28T02:21:13Z

19 down, 1 job to go! Hot Axle Box Incident, start quaking in fear and paint discolouration...

Although once I've done this, I still need to redo them all to fit the London Midland and Chiltern setups. Damn you ATP, CSR, GSM-R and bloody split cabs!!! I think that can wait until next week.

In other news, Balrog backwards is Gorlab, which would be an awesome metal band name.

This post brought to you by Moonsorrow - Sankaritarina and last.fm.

Big money clubs always win.

2010-05-27T00:19:50Z

On the Doncaster Rovers' signing front, we're being priced out again:

Lost Gareth Roberts to Derby on a free (they offered more money, same way they poached Greeny two seasons back).
Lost out on Jason Shackell to Barnsley (again offered way more money).
Offer rejected for Billy Sharp as Sheff Utd want more since he's been scored 15 goals for us (but hardly any for them in as much time and more).
Lost out on Elliot Ward to Norwich City.

Not looking good so far! Season's only been over a few weeks and all. :( Three of the above players were on loan at Rovers last season for varying amounts of time and all improved due to the magic of Sean O'Driscoll. So once again we'll have to take in someone no-one else has ever heard of, or who has been written off as rubbish (Sharp) and turn them into awesome players only to lose them to clubs with more money. And again we didn't get anything for Roberts in transfer fees! DAMN YOU DERBY! NOT A-FUCKING-GAIN! *headdesk headdesk headdesk*

Props go to the chairman for at least trying to sign Sharp. Odds were we'd never have enough cash - our record transfer fee is £300k! The only other Championship clubs with similar records are Plymouth, Peterborough and Blackpool (although they've done alright for themselves...) at 500k, everyone else is £1 million or higher. *sulk* I guess it's probably a sideeffect of our meteoric rise from the Conference. Players almost always go for the money, not the club environment or quality of football.

RIP Dio

2010-05-16T21:14:41Z

:'(

Productivity continues. :)

2010-05-13T23:06:58Z

So far I've continued to be productive in the evenings (although it looks like I'll miss my 10pm snooze target by quite a way tonight, oh dear). Yesterday after work I took a load of rubble and old tyres to the tip, raked up the remains of dead hedge (the pile responsible having gone to the tip in 5 separate trips, and I have a big car), then mowed the lawn, then raked up the clippings (real lawn mowers don't clean up after themselves!), then loosened the earth in readiness for my two shiny new compost bins, then filled them with said clippings, then continued to fill them with previous clipping piles and leaf mould and a few spades of soil and the contents of a watering can-turned-planter rescued from the tip on a previous visit. Amazingly, it still functions perfectly well as a watering can, no leaks or blockages. Brilliant!

My garden has a lot of hedge surrounding it (although a lot less since mansunite pulled out all the dead bits, cheers! :) ) and the previous owners obviously felt the place would sell a lot better if they cut it. Unfortunately, they then piled the clippings in a big heap at the back and left them there to rot for at least a year. But privet clippings don't rot very well - the leaves did, but the twiggy stems remain. In fact, some of them were sprouting new leaves! So instead of the easy "shovel everything into the compost bin" jobby, it was a case off separating out one damp pile of crap from the rest of the damp, rotting pile of crap, shoving it in the brown wheely bin and then battering it repeatedly with a large piece of timber until said bin could close. But now it is DONE! Woohoo! And the blackbirds have been pecking at the unearthed patch of soil very enthusiastically today. Also, whilst separating and shovelling, I saw two frogs! Awesome! And there's a robin that likes to perch on my newly planted trees, and the compost bins now too. He's probably claiming them all as his, like the Cat.

Today I met my parents at IKEA and they very kindly bought me some shelving units, a TV stand and a reduced shoe rack that was in the seconds area. Two of the exact shelving units we wanted were also in the bargain area so we saved £55! I'll have the fun of putting them up at some point - I love building flat pack furniture. It makes me feel competent at something. :)

Anyway, in short, I'm feeling accomplished and useful and seem to be making some headway into the house chores. Was getting me down a bit having piles of stuff to do and seemingly getting nowhere with them. So yay!

sleeperwaking @ 2010-05-12T00:31:00

2010-05-11T23:31:46Z

Yay Tory - LD coalition! Assuming all the relevant parties finally sodding agree to it. Hopefully all the extreme right/left/plain ridiculous policies will go out the window and we'll be left with something decent. And that they'll all learn to talk to each other rather than bellow across a room.

In other news, saw Gama Bomb on Sunday with mansunite. Unfortunately their lead guy had a sore throat so he was a bit hard to hear and wasn't quite with it, but well done to him for continuing and not cancelling! Overall it was loads of fun and there was lots of good stuff from the supports. We had an awesome cover of Judas Priest's "The Ripper" from a combination of Gama Bomb and Mutant. Mutant themselves were excellent, as were The Engines of Armageddon, with a stoner looking dude dictating everything from behind his drumkit centre stage. Death Valley Piledriver were ok, but too much in the vein of Job For A Cowboy for me, something evident from their name and logo (a bull's head in a flaming horseshoe). Some members of the crowd got very excited about jumping up on stage and headbanging before diving off, to the slight annoyance of Gama Bomb seeing how little room there was up there. Think that's about it, was a great gig, hopefully be going back to the Old Bell to see Criminal/Evil Scarecrow in a few weeks. :)

Other than that, hopefully today marks where I finally get my act together and stop being rubbish at work and at home. Had a productive day in the office and managed to get a lot of the chores out of the way this evening, although not the ironing as I'd hoped, but blame the BBC's live election coverage for that. Speaking of, it's because of them I'm late off to bed so I'd best be off to see if I can continue this progress tomorrow!

sleeperwaking @ 2010-05-08T00:45:00

2010-05-07T23:45:43Z

I'm quite excited by the thought of a Conservative - Lib Dem coalition, however short lived. Not that it'll probably work out, can't see the old sticks from both parties bending far enough however much the leadership tries to reconcile things.

Relatedly, Don Valley voted in (surprise surprise) the Labour candidate. A certain Caroline Flint, who has probably spent more of the tax payer's money on shoes in a year than your average person would in a lifetime (this could be a fabrication btw). Also, after the complete hash Labour made of the council (I think it's being babysat as the councillors can't be trusted to decide what sort of stationary to use, let alone try and run social services), I did wonder how'd they do in the local elections, but it seems to have been forgotten already as they've been voted back in there too.

Ok, I'm bitter, I'll admit it. :) There was a 10.6% swing away from Labour here after all.