Thursday, 1st January, 2004

chuckle

First of all .. Happy New Year

Secondly, you're probably wondering what on earth has been happening since it's been like about 2 months since I last did anything to the site:

Well takes long breath ...

...you see, I host my own site. The server is my lovely G4 which right at this moment is on the floor behind me playing lots of music and generally being happy. The thing is though, because I host my own site, it helps if I have an internet connection. And for the past God knows how long, I haven't...

I came home one Wednesday at the end of November to find all the lights off on my little DSL box and my Mac complaining that it couldn't find a PPPoE server. This happened every now and again, so I figured I'd just wait until the next morning. However, when I woke up, still no connection — and a phonecall to my ISP confirmed my worst fears...

I should throw this little story back a bit. 6 months previously I got a letter from my ISP saying there had been some problem with my billing, and they would be sending me a new bill and I should wait for that to come. So for those 6 months, considering no bill ever arrived, I was getting free internet yay

But as most things in life pan out, that Wednesday in November they had suddenly realised that a certain young girl in Lancaster was getting free Internet, and rather than ringing her up or sending her a bill, they just cut her off.

So anyway, there I was, four hours until Sarah West was due to arrive (another story which I will continue later) and no internet poo

And that is why, for the past two months, this site has done nothing. Sarah was kind enough to host an interim thing for me, and a local friend let me shift everything onto his server, but I never got round to sorting out the database so that I could post stuff.

Lots has been happening here though. I have a bucketload of new pictures, but I'll stick them up later. One thing to bear in mind though, it IS January the first today, but no-one is going to be able to read this until at least the 19th, which is when I'm due to be reconnected. It may seem pointless to be writing stuff now, but I've missed writing my diary. It helps me get my head round things

And why am I only writing now? Well, I only just got round to hacking httpd.conf so that at least I can work via 127.0.0.1 — my old IP address is obviously kaput

...

OK, let's start the "Big List Of Things That I Have Been Bursting To Talk About But Couldn't Because My Website Was Broken" with the joyousness of the new addition to the family...



tra la la Just another normal day at Siobhan's house. Tish is muching some food, George is prowling...

...the floor is all lovely, the lights are low and ambient, but wait. What's that on the floor over there? It looks like a box...

Better open the box and find out what it is I suppose Now, if we didn't know any better, we'd jump to the conclusion that Siobhan had gone out and bought herself a new Mac...

Ooooooh!

Ahhhhh!

A shrouded piece of loveliness, but what kind of machine is it? Could it be...?

It's a G5! yay! Dual 1.8GHz processor, aluminium housing, 1GB RAM, I think I'm going to melt with excitement

Let's wire it into the network and see what it can do...

Gorgeous isn't it? It's name is CuChulainn (I call all my Macs after Irish Kings and Queens — the iBook is Emer, the G4 is Erin) and it is the most fantastic thing ever. My video and Photoshop work now gets done about 100 times quicker than poor Erin could manage (seeing as how she was running as a server too). The whole network isn't exactly as I want it yet, there are still wires trailing and I've yet to instal MacOS X 10.3 Server on Erin, but I'm getting there beam

...

OK, next thing: You know I mentioned a minute ago that Sarah West came here, well I've been Little Miss Socialable recently

Over the summer, I discovered that Eddie Izzard was touring this year, and seeing as how I had a bit of money at the time, I splashed out on 15 tickets to his Manchester gig, and then spent the next 3 months trying to offload them on people As it turned out, there was quite a little gaggle of us went — quite a few friends from Lancaster, but from the chatroom there was me, Natalie, Sally and Sarah. It was really good meeting up with them — I know I've met Natalie and Sarah before, but those were kinda one-on-one situations and it's always nice to vary it every now and again by meeting up as a group. It was the first time I'd met Sally, and she was lovely

One thing I often get asked about that night was "did I go dressed?" No. Only Sarah went enfemme.

Sarah stayed with me for a few days after that night. We mainly talked and (I) drank, but we did venture out into the hinterland of Lancaster and have meals and stuff. It was really nice having her stay — and it was also nice to have the opportunity for people from different parts of my life to meet up. It's something I've been saying to myself in my head for ages — I want there to be more crossovers between al the different aspects of my life.

The only thing that bugged me was that since I didn't have a kitchen, I couldn't cook for her. THe closest I came was heating up some microwave Thai Curry. Next time I'll cook I promise

...

What else...

Um, went back to Ireland just before Christmas. DIdn't stay long — it's funny how a place can totally stay the same, but doesn't feel like home any more. I guess I've changed.

This year I flew over — which was very brave of me cos I did it without valium. Nasty bumpy flight and I thought I was going to die...

...

I've stuck a whole load of photographs that Pauline took of me in a gallery in the photographs bit. The one picture I have put in there is the one of just my eyes — she used some kind of magic pixie dust on my eyes which made them sparkle. Apparently it was very expensive



I hope this doesn't sound all vain and egotistical or anything, but I do get quite a few compliments about my eyes. I think that picture shows them at their most made-up ever, and I'm really chuffed with them. People tell me I have big eyes — which is just as well as it compensates for my enormous nose. Which I hate. pah