Monday, September 29, 2003
Compulsive and probably unhealthy video gaming aside, there's not much going on here right now.I did however read this very interesting article that tells the story of a NASA engineer who had grave concerns about the safety of the Columbia shuttle in the days before it broke up on re-rentry, and how his persistant requests for satelite photos of the wing, or even for one of the crew to simply look out of the window, were cast aside by mission management.
Steve 11:47 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, September 26, 2003
Woohoo! I've got a free shell account.Ummm....
What does that mean? I'm not entirely sure.
Actually, I do know what it means, but I'm damned if I know how to use it yet.
Free server space and processor time on some elusive linux box out in the middle of god knows where. I'll finally be able to run an eggdrop bot, either in my usual chatroom or maybe set up a new place on undernet. Now if only I knew how to set up eggdrops... or even how to log into my shell account.
Much research coming up, I think.
Steve 10:01 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Bogus Gran Turismo 3 Rocket Car Shock Horror!The stories on the various Gran Turismo 3 tips and cheats sites, stating that if you win gold in every race in the beginner, amateur and pro levels, you are given a rocket car are entirely bogus.
I guess some bright spark made the story up, not believing anyone could actually achieve gold in all of the races, and I have to admit, it's bloody difficult, but I did it, and hey presto... no rocket car.
Assholes.
On the upside, the formula one grand prix cars are absolutely mental, and to be honest, anything even slightly faster would be entirely undrivable.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 2:14 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
I've been playing Gran Turismo 3 again.I've known for ages that there are Formula One Grand Prix cars and Indy cars in the later stages of the game, but getting to the actual point there you can even see them, let alone drive them has been a very long process.
Up till yesterday, I'd completed every race in the Beginner, Amateur and Pro levels, except for the very last race series... which was Indy and F1 cars. The trouble was, I didn't have a car to compete in that series, and you have to win one... you can't buy them.
So anyway, being bored, I took my newest and fastest car... a Toyota GT1 car and went for a romp around the Endurance races. Several hours and 3 races later, I now have a funky white and purple Indy car... Woohoo!
Now... if what I've been reading is correct... and it may not be, if you win every single race in every series in simulation mode, there's a very special prize car. So, I'm now in the process of going back through all the individual races I didn't win, and wiping the floor with them in my Indy car, before embarking on the process of entering the F1 and Indy races. What's this special prize car? If my information is correct... it's a rocket car. We'll see.
If it's true, and I manage to win one... I'll take pics and post them here. It's all new ground to me, 'cause though I know several people who play this game, I don't know anyone who's as good at it as me , and thus... don't know anyone who's gotten this far into the game.
(Not saying there isn't anyone as good as me... I just don't know them)
If truth be told, I'm rather eager to finish this game for a couple of reasons. One being that I consider it something of a waste of money to buy a game and never complete it, and I've had this one for a couple of years, already having completed Medal Of Honour and Spyro. The other reason being that Gran Turismo 4 will be out soon, and I wanna finish this before starting that. GT 4 should be rather a special thing, as it features Internet Play and I have a point to prove to a particular person. You know who you are, and I'm gonna kick your butt ;-)
Okay... sad video game rant over... for now.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 6:17 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Ahhh.... you just can't beat a good vindaloo at 3:30 in the morning.There's something totally satisfying about eating something so hot it nearly blows your head off, and at the most stupidly late hour possible... especially when you know it's probably gonna blow your arse off next day.
Yum yum.
Pity I can't taste this coffee now though.
Steve 3:58 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, September 21, 2003
Not much going on here at the moment, but I have noticed a couple of interetsing little snippets in online news recently.Typically, I didn't bookmark the news pages, but the basics of one of the stories goes like this...
An internet marketing company has recognised the value of weblogs as a source of realtime market evaluation. What they're doing is setting up a search/database facility that searches through hundreds of thousands of weblogs, looking for attitudes and market trends in what people write... the relevance of a particular blogger's views being ranked by how many links they have. This information is then sold on to marketing and advertising companies.
Now while I'm no great fan of advertising, and hate spam and popups as much as the next guy, I do find it interesting to know that blogging is being taken seriously in such fields. Who knows, one day maybe they'll try to sell us something we actually want, instead of something they want us to want.
The other news article that caught my eye was about my favourite peer to peer file sharing system.
Everyone's heard of kazaa (or kazaa lite if you know what you're doing), winmx and suchlike... and god knows, the RIAA and MPAA sure know about them... but there's another system that's hitting the headlines again, namely bittorrent in conjunction with the top torrent site suprnova.org. It would seem that this is now one of the most popular methods of getting video files of tv shows, especially in europe and the uk, where many shows are either broadcast several months later than in the usa, or aren't broadcast at all.
I have to admit to being a bit worried whenever suprnova and bittorrent get into the news, 'cause being somewhat centralised, based around a specific website, extra publicity usually heralds a mass of ddos attacks that knock the site offline for days on end. On the other hand, unlike other file sharing systems, the more people downloading a file, the faster it goes. Clever stuff indeed.
Steve 2:18 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, September 19, 2003
Y'know, Johny Depp's really cool when you can't actually recognise him.I've long been impressed by the part he played in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas... and now in Pirates of the Caribbean... yup, quite excellent.
It's not a high brow movie by any stretch of the imagination... more like The Mummy movies, and highly entertaining for it too.
Labels: movies
Steve 9:36 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Do I ever get some weird emails.Last night I got one written in a foreign language that looked like spanish, from someone who'd been watching my webcam. So, I pasted it into google's translate feature, and what came out was rather bizarre. Mostly it was jibberish, but several references to prunes had me thinking it couldn't be spanish. I mean... prunes?
Next I tried stanslating from portuguese, and guess what? Yup... some sad git wanting me to take my clothes off. What puzzles me is, seeing as how there's LOTS of text on my cam page, and it's ALL in english, isn't it a bit dumb to be emailing me in portuguese?
Still, even though the final translation was your typical perv-mail, I'm rather relieved it didn't involve prunes. *Shudders*
Steve 9:35 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, September 15, 2003
What to write, what to write?Not a lot going on at the moment. I updated the Octopus Files for the first time in ages, and now feel the need to blog.
Creativity coupled with a lack of inspiration is a pain in the arse, and seems to be quite an issue with me at the moment. All this (alleged) 'talent' and nothing to do with it.
Steve 12:03 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, September 14, 2003
How curious.Someone's been watching my cam and listening to my audio stream for hours... like, all night. I don't recognise the hostname, so no idea who it is.
It doesn't bother me.... if people wanna watch and listen, that's what the cam and audio are there for. I just wonder how bored this poor soul must be to watch and listen for so long.
I'm piping Radio Benway through my audio link at the mo, since I'm not gonna sit here and talk to myself for the sake of being entertaining.
Anyways, if that person reads this blog, why not drop into the chatroom or something?
Labels: webcams
Steve 1:47 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, September 12, 2003
Ah... that's better.It's amazing what a spot of mayhem, and behind the scenes politics in a chatroom can do for my mood.
Without going into details, someone who thought they were untouchable has, or will, discover they were mistaken. It could get interesting.
My long term plan for world domination continues... Muahahahahaha!!!
Steve 9:35 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, September 11, 2003
I'm feeling a little agitated today.I've never much liked shrinks, mostly because I think they rarely get to the root of a problem, but also largely because I find them very often to be smug self richeous assholes.
I also don't like talking about my family here, mostly because my relationship with my family is no-one's business, and also if I were to say something bad or inaccurate about them, they're not in a position to correct what I've said or defend themselves.
However, today I'm going to make an exception, as both a shrink, and a member of my family are the major cause of my being agitated right now.
So here's the story.
I acompanied my mother to see her psychiatrist today. She's a very nervous person at best after having had a nervous breakdown several years ago. I was with her partly because she doesn't like travelling alone, and partly because the psychiatrist wanted to see a member of her family.
No biggie, it was just a routine review to see that her medication was doing the job and to get an outside perspective. It did mean I had to entirely turn my sleep pattern upside down in order to be awake in the morning, but for her own peace of mind, it's worth doing that every once in a while.
"Every once in a while".... there's the thing.
It would seem that daily routine, while being good for my mum's state of mind, isn't entirely good for her short term memory. When every day's the same as the last, it's.... well, I guess a simple way to put it would be to say it's turning her brain to mush. She's aware of it, and I can see it myself when I visit her.
Me: "What did you do today then?"
Mum: "Nothing really."
Me: "Watch any good tv shows? Listen to any good music?"
Mum: "I can't remember. I don't think so."
See what I mean? There's just very little.... there.
Getting back to the point, the shrink considered this and said I should go and see her more often, give her things to do, take her places... whatever. Something to occupy her mind.
I can see his logic. He's entirely right, she does need something to actually keep her brain ticking over.
However.... and this is what's really got me wound up... I'm 35, have a girlfriend who lives with me, and a life of my own. It upsets me greatly, makes me feel like a bad son, that I resent so much being expected to hold my mum's hand, to be a crutch to support her through life.
I sit here looking at what I've already written, and it's like "You asshole? You don't want to help your own mother?"
Yes I do, but I also want to be able to live my own life as I see fit, without having to keep turning it upside down to accomodate her needs. Parents are supposed to bring their kids up and then let them go, not abandon them in their early teens and then cling onto them later in life.
Obviously I have more issues going on here than just the present situation, the history of my family is a difficult one at best. I've cast off a lot of the shit that happened, and a number of family members with it. I can't and won't shut out my mum... she's my mum and I love her, but that's starting to feel like... being chained to her. I feel trapped.
Does that make sense?
I feel angry at her for being fragile and struggling in life, for needing my help... and I feel angry at myself for being angry with her, as none of it's her fault. I should be happy to be able to help, when really I just want to shake her, shout at her to get a grip.
Needless to say, she's completely unaware that I feel this way. I always put on a happy face when I see her, and will always do so. I'm a selfish and often cold hearted person in many ways, but even though it aggravates me to feel so obligated, I don't want to upset or hurt her.
Okay... that's probably the most open and frank view you will ever see of how I think... a glimps inside the not altogether nice mind/life of Benway.
I probably shouldn't even post it here, but fuck it, I needed to get it off my chest, regardless of how ugly it sounds.
Labels: annoyed
Steve 4:05 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Aha!!!Comments are finally back.
Doh! I don't have anything worth saying now.
Oh well.
Steve 3:43 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, September 08, 2003
I never cease to be impressed with the people who leak and distribute unreleased movies and music.I dunno how they do it, but I'm rather glad they do.
So today I had the pleasure of hearing the new David Bowie album, Reality. It's been described as the best of the trilogy Hours/Heathen/Reality, though personally, I think whoever decided that is an idiot.
It's not bad, but nowhere near the awesome creation that is Heathen, and to be honest, probably isn't even as good as hours. Still, I'll buy it when it's released, some time around the 15th, 17th or something, if only because I buy all of his stuff.
Labels: music
Steve 6:50 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, September 05, 2003
Nostalgia's a curious thing.I was just listening to Radio Benway (linked over on the left) and the title track of Disintegration by The Cure came on. I dunno... there's a lot of retro stuff on my station, but any tune from that album takes me back to what was a very special time for me.
It was around July 1989, maybe August, I don't remember... hot weather. A sunday afternoon, myself and a small group of friends were down by the river in Stony Stratford recovering from what had been a very drunken party. We had my portable stereo with us, drinking coke, cherry 7up, or anything else we could find that didn't contain alcohol, listening to Disintegration.
The melancholy of the tunes seemed rather fitting. There we were, a group of young lads, 18, 19, 20 or whatever, getting our heads together after what had been a great party, lots of beer, lots of young women, much fun.... and there we all were next day... all very single and not too thrilled about it.
So why do I consider that to be a special time? Sounds like we were a bunch of losers.
Truth is, it's that very innosence that I enjoy remembering. I know now for a fact that several of those girls had fancied the pants off of several of us, but being innnocent, mostly quite inexperienced, and far too polite (or shy) none of us had made a move that certainly would have had a favourable result. The potential was there to not only have a lot of fun, but also to do a lot of damage... and even though more through ineptitude than design, we didn't do that damage.
I look back on it now as the time we really started becoming the people we are, laying the foundations, and though I'm a very different person now to who I was then, I still remember it like it was yesterday.... and can't help smiling.
So we were a group of freaks, losers, drop-outs, and complete basket cases, but what we never were, and still aren't, is assholes.
Funny what a song can remind you of.
Labels: music
Steve 11:01 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, September 04, 2003
I just finished reading Dead Air by Iain Banks. Brilliant book, though I'd expect no less form the best british writer out there at the mo. Two days to read a novel... that's something of a record for me, as I'm not a fast reader by any stretch of the imagination, I just couldn't put it down.Comments are still down, and likely to remain down untill the 8th at the very earliest. Oddly, I'm finding it rather liberating, blogging without comments. It's rather like going back to the very start, when I had no readers whatsoever, didn't care what anyone stumbling across my ramblings thought, and knowing that even if anyone did read it, they couldn't respond other than via email.
So, I won't be going in search of a new comments system. If yaccs gets it's act together and starts functioning again, all well and good, but if it doesn't, I don't care. I'll remain commentless and maybe get back to the purity of what blogging once was for me.
I think in truth I've become entirely jaded with blogging as a phenomenon.... the blogging scene. I used to read twenty or so blogs daily, even twice daily... clicking through them excpectantly to see what was going on in this odd little corner of unreality. I felt some kind of attachment to the people I read. These days... well, I still like these people, in as much as it's possible to know anyone from reading a few choice lines every day or so.... but for the most part, I just don't care that much any more.
Hmm... multiple deletes.... too much stuff that sounds negative, when really it's just a whole load of indifference. Time to sit back and take stock, decide what's important and what's not. This blog will continue, and perhaps be better for my not actually caring too much any more about how it's percieved. Self promotion after a time becomes just another chore. Lots of websites, high online profile... what a pain in the arse.
Steve 11:05 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
What a cool day.Oh yeah... it's my birthday. I'm 35.
How'd that happen?
Things started off as well as they were to continue, with some really cool pressies. Thanks Brigitte and Sis :-)
Next, the plan was to drive up the A5 to a military museum, but when we got there 75 miles later, we found the place was rather... well... crap, hehe.
Not a problem though, as on the way I'd spotted signs for Twycross Zoo, so we decided to pay the place a visit.
It's rather sad to see the levels of boredom some of the animals have to deal with, but still fascinating to see such creatures up close... and with a zoom lense, that can be REALLY close.
When we finally left to go home, I'd flattened the (new) batteries in my camera after taking 134 photos. As expected though, many pics didn't come out well, as not only having to contend with poor light, bars and glass, my camera doesn't handle moving objects too well, and do you think the animals would sit still for a photo?
Needless to say, there will be some very cool new photos in my online album very soon.
Just as a taster, here's one of my fave pics of the day.
Steve 11:04 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, September 01, 2003
**Grumble grumble** ... comments are still down.... **grumble**....How annoying. If they aren't up and running by the end of the week, I'll go find a new comments system that actually works for more than 5 minutes a month. I know they're free, but damnit! What's the point of having a free service if it never works?
Steve 5:50 PM [+] (0) comments
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