Thursday, 24th November, 2005

Spring Cleaning

There's a certain air of melancholy about this morning. I think (before anyone jumps in with the obligatory "aha, you're hungover aren't you Siobhan?" assumption) that it's most likely something to do with the light.

See, a few minutes ago, despite my protestations, I was dragged kicking and screaming from the bosum of sleep by the frolicking annoyance more commonly known as "Hungry Tish".

Yeah, but he is adorably cute

So I go downstairs, feed the monsters, pour myself some coffee, and start my morning rituals off by checking RSS thingies. And it was whilst doing that, sat in my studio at 7am, noticing the complete darkness of the world outside, that I realised that everything was exactly how I'd left it last night.

Perhaps I could explain that better...

Nights (and more specifically, sleep), to me, is a way of marking a passage from one day to the next. You know, as you close your eyes and lay yourself down, it's almost as if you're marking some kind of border between the day just gone, and the one about to come. It's a pause, a breath, a way to package off anything that might of happened — and the new dawn is a fresh start, a clean slate, and other such clichés

But, it felt this morning, as if I might-as-well not have bothered going to sleep at all. The lack of daylight gave no clues whatsoever that a new day had started. It was as if the boundary between Wednesday and Thursday — if it existed at all — had been blurred.

A Gaussian Blur of about 50 pixels I think

I'm not a great believer in things like "Seasonal Affected Disorder", but I think it's fairly common sense to assume that we are not particularly suited to nocturnal behaviour as a species. Sure, we can do stuff in the dark (because we are ever-so-clever and have invented lightbulbs), but our heads need daylight to keep out sanity.

A friend of mine likes to refer to us as being still mediæval farmers — we base our lives around the sun, and it's jarring to try and force ourselves to go against it.

Of course, personally, I wish I was hibernating right now

...

But this is all beside the point. See, as I was going through my RSS feeds, I noticed a fair few hints on http://www.macosxhints.com (that wonderful repository of Mac-based-knowledge) that touched on the idea of keeping your Mac well-organised...

A simple but effective Mac speed-up tip
Here's a tip I was made aware of recently that I thought I'd share (though I'd like to take credit, I must give that to some Smart Friends of mine); it'll help speed up your Mac, and may reduce the appearance of the SPOD (the... [macosxhints]

10.4: Remove attachments in Mail to save disk space
I've been using the excellent utility WhatSize (a long-ago Pick of the Week here) to see where I've got file cruft that I can trim away to save space. Using it recently, I noticed that my mailboxes were larger than expected. ... [macosxhints]

(Yeah, OK, that would be "two" rather than "a fair few" )

...and, having peeked around my hard disks a bit, I realised that my entire system is a mess. I spend a lot of time, you see, pootling my way around the web, option-clicking on Things That Take My Fancy™. As a result, by the end of a day, my desktop is littered with pictures, texts, applications, disk images, and the like.

As the first hint clarifies, having your desktop full of things is not a good idea, as every icon seems to make the Finder open a seperate window:

Well, every icon on your Desktop is a little window, and as such, has a corresponding backing store allocation in the window server. Lots of these little windows apparently can put a strain on the window server, especially when you've got lots of other (normal) windows open as well.

In Days Gone By™ (ie. pre-Tiger) I yearned for some kind of script that would move things automagically from the desktop into special folders — for example, shoving all the screen-grabs into a "screen grab" folder, and all of the JPEGs into a "JPEG" folder (see the pattern?). But ever since the Macintosh Faithful™ (or as we're known in other circles, "rabid fangirls") were rewarded with the joy of Spotlight, I've been a lot less bothered about being organised.

What I do, at the end (or beginning, or middle, depending on how hungover/arsed I am) of a day is create a folder in my Documents folder with the day's date, and shove everything from the Desktop into it.

Like this...

...and then I let Spotlight take care of the sorting and cataloguing of the Stuff™

But I've noticed recently that I seem to be running out of space. My pristine three-hundred-and-twenty-gigabytes of room have shrunk to a measley fourteen-point-six

I was rather hoping that using WhatSize, I could discover some sort of treasure-trove of easily back-upable folders somewhere that I could shove onto DVDs, delete, and free up vast tracts of space.

But it turns out that the majority of my disks are full of rendered movie files — files that are still in progress. Files that I can't delete until I've finished a couple of films that I'm working on.

Arse.

Even so, there's probably about ten or twenty Gig that I can sort out if I set my mind to it. So I decided a little while ago that today is going to be a bit of a Sort My Life Out Day™

Not just digitally, but physically as well.

Having spent the past few weeks frantically popping backwards and forwards between Leeds and Lancaster (with the odd stop-over in London), things around the house are a bit of a mess. There are papers and work all over the place. There are also (no surprises here) bottles all over the place. And clothes too

...

A colleague and I were talking the other day about the day after we do a stint at work. Despite everyone thinking I've got an easy ride in my career, I do get to the end of each two-or-three-day session absolutely knackered. The day after, we both agreed, was needed just to recover from having giving consistently for two/three days.

Personally, I like to spent the day after in complete isolation — not answering my phone, dealing purely with the outside world via email, at my own pace. Just giving myself the chance to unwind and have a bit of time to myself.

And today, I think I'm going to spend that Me Time™ just sorting some stuff out.

And then perhaps, I can write something intelligent, rather than stuff like the piece of crap I've just written

does your router have the ability to be restarted from either a command line interface or a web interface

Hmm

In theory Sarah, yes, there must be a way (I'm Googling at the moment, already found this which might have some possibilities) of rebooting Tara (the wireless router). And that would have been really useful a while back when, becuase of a bit of borky mis-configuration on my part, Tara kept locking up and the only way to restore things was rebooting her.

But in this case, it was the modem that's connected to her that needed rebooting — which (and correct me if I'm wrong here) is basically a physical device with no IP or way of controlling. So yeah — that iBoot thing looks exceptionally promising (if expensive )

What I'd love to do though, is hack open a cheap Pay-as-you-go mobile phone and do something stunningly geeky to it like make it control a relay switch or two, so that if I sent a text-message to it saying "reboot -d [device]" it would restart things

Just as an aside, I have been having some connectivity issues with my ISP (who are, on the whole, bloody good, and who sent me — and I presume several thousand other people — a long email of apologies/ explanations of why we all lost connection) — nothing major, just an occasional connection drop.

And the way I've been getting round it, is to call my home phone FOr some reason, it seems that just by making the phone line do something, the modem reconnects.

Must be a better name for us than that

Dan, how about "people who have finally come to their senses"?

Grrrr

November

photo

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

(Damm, my phone is rather poo in low light)

A Cautionary Tale

Once upon a time, as all good tales begin, there was a princess called, um, Siobhan (yeah, that'll do).

In the kingdom that Siobhan lived in, there was going to be a huge ball — with cake and pie and booze and everything, and everyone in the land was going to go along.

Siobhan was excited by this prospect, and spent weeks and months trying to choose what she was going to wear. Two nights before the ball, however, she was still at a complete loss.

But this isn't a story about that. This is a story about something on one of Siobhan's cheeks.

You see, despite being a princess, Siobhan didn't have the most flawless skin in the land. And on one of her cheeks, was an annoying little white lump.

"Don't pick at it", warned her Fairy Godmother. "Or it'll turn into a pumpkin."

But Siobhan was foolhardy and a bit shit really. And picked it. For weeks she prodded it, squeezed it, poked it, all the time wondering what this little white lump could be.

Then, as predicted, two nights before the ball, the little white lump turned into the biggest, orangest reddest pumpkin you had ever seen.

And everyone laughed.

...

I knew I shouldn't have. But I did. And now I've got a massive zit on my face. Typical.

So shall I bring two paper bags instead of just the one then April?

A Cautionary Tale (2)

This afternoon, prompted by a bit of Mac-based spring cleaning, and, as promised to myself earlier in the day, I decided to spruce up downstairs a little.

You might remember (going back far enough), that I rather wonderfully got myself a solid oak floor a couple of years ago. And today, in a fit of brilliance, decided it would be a lovely thing to do if I polished the floor.

So, out with the Pledge, me on my hands and knees, going over the entire ground floor with a yellow duster and a bit of elbow grease.

Gorgeous it looks

Except, well, um, I'm a transvestite. And being a transvestite, it is required of me, by law, to ponce round the house at various times of the day in stockings and suspenders. Which don't really have much in the way of friction on their soles.

"Ooh! The kettle's boiled!" exclaims your hostess, as she pegs down the stairs to make herself a cup of coffee ... and finds herself on her arse on the other side of the kitchen.

Valentines

This story has the folowing elements: Passion, romance, flamboyant expressions of intent, and flagrant Class A drug-usage. And a less-than perfect outcome...

In 1998, I was rather obsessed by a particular girl. It wasn't a particularly healthy obsession (not like my current obsessions), and not one that, looking back, I'm particularly fond of remembering.

But it was an obsession, nonetheless.

At the time, I had jacked in my job and ventured back into the world of academia — a world in which I was, bizarrely, destine to remain for the foreseeable future.

...

Actually, just changing the subject for a second, what is it with badmouthing academics at the moment guys? Is it (as my egomaniac-head suspects) some kind of ruse to wind me up?

Sorry

...

1998, I'm back at university, studying hard (for a change) and living with a bunch of undergraduates about ten years younger than me.

But one of them, I kinda got a bit obsessed about.

She was gorgeous, she was interesting ... looking back, actually, she was as vacuous as Victoria Beckham's Dyson ... but still, maybe it was the unavailability that kept hitting me in the face like a wall, whatever. I fancied the arse off her.

You have to understand here, that this wasn't a very easy time for me. I'd gone from happily earning a packet (in my terms), to being totally skint. I'd left everything I'd worked for for the past five years behind and had ventured out into the unknown. I was on antidepressants as well, having just come to terms with the fact that my brain might not be as stable as I first thought.

I was also going through a period of excessive Speed usage.

Ah, Speed. Not something I'd really recommend

True, my first brushes with amphetamine had been giddy and exciting — memories of lying on a canal-barge giggling like a loon with various women rubbing their hands all over my face. But the continued use of it had left me in a bit of an odd state.

(No prizes, incidentally, for making the connection between prescribed drugs and voluntary prescriptions here. OK? I am fully aware)

But this story takes place (a) on Valentines Day 1998, and (b) at the tail end of a rather insane three-day Speed binge.

This obsession of mine, I'd been trying to cop of with her for ages. I'd copped off with all her mates — but for some reason that didn't seem to do the trick.

So I thought I'd try a more romantic approach.

Me and a friend (who had been hitting the nose-candy as much as I had) decided to go for a walk one night. We headed up through Meanwood (which was where we were living), out towards Leeds's ring road, to see what we could find.

And out on the perimetres of the city, we found a playing field.

Now, the reason this is currently in my head, is because I drive past this playing field every time I go over to Leeds to work. It's at the top end of Meanwood, just as you come down from the Harrogate roundabout on the ring road.

And each time I drive past it, it sends little sparks through my head. I kinda want to jump out of the car, run across the grass, travel six years back in time and grab the foolish, pathetic version of myself who's sat there and shake seven shade of shit out of her him.

But I digress.

It was coming up to Valentines Day, and I came to the conclusion that the way to *ahem*, "get my end away", (sorry) was to perform some sort of superhuman act of romanticism.

So, we hatched a plan.

Knowing full well that it would be impossible for me to book a restaurant for Valentine's Night with the object of my (pathetic) obsessions, I decided to home-brew an alternative.

I would cook a meal.

But I'd do it in a rather spectacular way.

My friend and I (bless him — I still probably owe him for what he did for me that night) went into the city centre and bought some provisions: some little shot-glasses; some food; a blanket; some candles; some more food; some booze.

And then we shoved more sherbet up our noses than either of us thought possible.

...

On the day itself, we walked up to the playing field, and started to lay things out. We spread the blanket out, arrange some crockery on it, followed by the shot-glasses with candles in them, and then I left him waiting while I headed back to where we lived.

See, the plan was this: I would go back to the flat, cook a meal, wrap the meal up in tinfoil and grab 'The Intended'. Then I would take her up in a taxi to the edge of the playing field, and — with her in complete bemusement — lead her across the grass, and when my friend heard us coming he'd light the candles and leg it.

Which is what happened.

I made one of my (infamous) lamb dishes, with a side-dish of steamed nettles (I was being experimental with food as well as hard drugs), wrapped it in tinfoil and shoved it in a bag.

I got her from her flat, bundled her in a taxi, and dragged her up the grass.

I can still remember, vividly, the noise of scurrying as my friend made his hasty retreat through the undergrowth, and the gasps of amazement that (oh, fuck it — she's never likely to read this...) came out of Josie's mouth.

As we neared the crest of the hill, there, in front of us was laid ut a candle-lit scene. A blanket laid across the ground. Various salads and nibbles on tap. And two bottles of wine.

...

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "OMG Siobhan, I bet she was impressed".

Truth is, we spent the whole time talking about how pissed off she was with her (sorta) ex-boyfriend.

And we never did get together.

But no matter. Actually, her mother was a lot more attractive.

But that's a completely different story.

"A couple of glasses of wine" is usually the reason I fall down the stairs to start with Sarah