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Thursday 1st July 2004
. . . just trying to put in the pictures for Cologne (end of June).
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Saturday 3rd July 2004
All pictures of recent holiday in Cologne now added at the tail end of June. Right. Maths assignment to complete. Due in on Wednesday. Ooops. Oooo, almost forgot to mention - Billy Ruffian is now an offical limited company:
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Monday 5th July 2004
Nothing much to report . . . still finishing off the university assignment. Blah, blah, blah.
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Thursday 8th July 2004
So . . . what's been happening then? Well, it seems to have been a week of deadlines for me, and it's still not over. The university assignment was due in on Wednesday (posted on Tuesday), it's my niece's birthday today and the closing date for this job I'm applying for (Grid support computer officer at the University of Leeds) is tomorrow, hence that was posted today. I was up until quarter past midnight this morning completing the application form, and then I couldn't sleep . . . not for about an hour and a half. And, erm . . . I keep getting all this potential junk mail from companies wanted to sell we domain names and web-hosting services for my new limited company. I don't know how these people got my details, but I have a pretty good idea. Hmmmm. So . . . they keep sending me all this rubbish, but amongst it all is something from S J D Accountancy which, on the face of it, seems a bit more useful, but is gibberish nonetheless. They've sent me a pack containing an 'original certificate of incorporation' (which I've already got), two share certificates, a certificate of non-trading, the first minutes (?! from what?!) and two 'transfer of shares or stock' forms. Crazy stuff. All I did was register Billy Ruffian as a limited company. I wasn't expecting all this. I think the reason is that . . . no, that can't be it. Well, you see, part of it is that I did all this through a company that, er, looks after contractors . . . maybe they think I am one. Hmmmmm. It's a bit like the cut-throat razor I bought - I've just wanted one for many years. And the junk mail? Well, that's usually along the lines of, "Wow! Congratulations! You've got your own limited company! Cool! I bet you want a domain name now, yeah? Good, good. The following domains are actually still available and are yours for just 39 pounds 95 for the first name and 23 pounds 50 for subsequent names. But hurry, before someone else claims them!" What, someone's about to claim billyruffian.co.uk? Hmmmm. Okey-dokey. Of course, they didn't mention BillyRuffian.com, 'cos that's gone to a very worthy cause already. Anyway, the price they've quoted covers registration of the domain name, 30MB of 'Commercial Web Space', a company web-page published on my behalf (presumably just a title page), one mail box (with 20 aliases), 'email virus protection' and technical support. Crazy, innit? I could have billyruffian.co.uk for five pounds a year (through Easily), and that price would allow limitless e-mail aliases all automatically forwarded on to one of the twelve mailboxex that I already have through my ISP. 30MB of commercial web space? My web-server currently has 14GB of space free. And, er . . . I could go on, but the point is . . . well, why? Why do people pay this money? Maybe they know no better, but maybe the technical support is so good that it's worth 39 pounds 95 a year for that alone. And that's what the junk mail's about. Great stuff. The company in question here is switchmedia.
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Friday 9th July 2004
 Hello. Me again. Well, I've re-done the Bellerophon symbol thingy up there, and it seems to be okay now. The whole thing is based loosely around the Golden Ratio, but I don't really have the time to explain how or why right now . . . but it is. I did this last night, perhaps when I should have been completing my next university maths assignment . . . but still, I managed to get over half of that done anyway . . . so it's all okay. The picture was taken at 09:02 this morning. I was just about to leave the house when I saw this intact web. Perhaps the spider had just finished it. I was initially tempted to move the spider along ("Sure, build your webs, but not here, okay? That's my loudspeaker (out of frame) you've attached yourself to there") but then I remembered that it would only be there for a day anyway. Webs don't last long. Spiders like that probably have to rebuild it every day. So . . . take a picture, and off to work.
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Then, after work, once again . . . a trip to Bar Home . . . there were four of us initially: me, Rav, Lisa and the new guy, Paul. We sat upstairs, next to two teenage girls who had a very young (less than two months old) child with them. They kindly moved along the C-shaped sofa when they realised the three of us (someone was still at the bar) had no where, as yet, to sit. Then, about half an hour later, just before we left, they asked us to take a photograph of the three of them. I was given this task. I took the camera by the strap (attached at one of the bottom corners) . . . it was a point-and-click. You know the kind . . . a button for the flash (on/off), a button to take the picture . . . maybe zoom in and out . . . black plastic.  "Everyone ready then?" I called out. The two girls were smiling at the camera, the child - completely oblivious to it all in this strange, plastic 'child carrier' - between them, so I shouted out, "Okay then," and took the picture, but the girl who had handed me the camera was making out that it had caught her by surprise. "What, you blinked? Do you want me to take it again?" but, no, it was fine. I think I tried asking again, because I couldn't really work out what she was saying, but I think the moment had gone . . . so we left, on to the Angel, then the Mixing Tin and, following a phone call at about 20:15 I dashed back to my house, a couple of strange beers from Safeway in my ruck-sack . . . just two bottles this time, and no Dead Man's Ale . . . lovely stuff. Did I ever mention Dead Man's Ale? A gorgeous, wheat beer from Oregon. The ingredients label reads, "Water, Wheat, Hops, Yeast," I think in that order . . . surely? But they didn't have any. So I got a different wheat beer, I think this one being from Belgium, and some French beer that I couldn't really make much sense of . . . it had a cork, I remember that. So, I cycle back to my house, perhaps got changed, and then went to M****'s, and then onto Anna's . . . and I have pictures somewhere . . . this one (above) from 21:51.
|  Then it gets a bit complex . . . this picture (to the left), taken at 22:02, shows Kim and Eve - Simon's cigarettes. These were bought in Cologne that weekend at the end of June, and somehow ended up in Anna's possession. This should do as proof to Simon - Kim and Eve are okay. Simon, you know what to do.
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You see, it was to be Anna's birthday on Sunday, so she had wisely set aside most of the weekend for celebrating. The celebrations began on Friday night, see. At some point Rich and Liz disappeared to do a bit of hunting and gathering. M**** insisted that I needed some food. I ended up with some 'chips' and this 7" battered sausage (I think made of pig) . . . I managed about half of it all.
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Saturday 10th July 2004
. . . this at 01:27 in the morning. I'm always doing this . . . see, erm, it is still Friday night, in a way, but it's gone midnight now, so we're in Saturday, yeah? That's fair enough, isn't it? I like this pictures - there's vertical lines and horizontal ones too. What more could you need? I have a few other pictures some the early hours of Saturday morning . . . but none of them that good.
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Sunday 11th July 2004
 Thirty seven minutes past midnight. This is the spider mentioned on Friday. Tania was attempting to move it, but I said it's probably fine where it is. As expected, the spider had moved further around the corner, and wasn't so much in the way now. Not much more happened that night . . . the ones who had gone to the Wardrobe got back to mine at about 02:30 and we went down to the kitchen, conscious that Tania had recently gone to bed (she was working later that day).
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Today involved quite a lot of sleeping, it seemed. Later on in the evening, like at about 8pm, five of us went to Dynasty's for dinner (Anna, Rich, M****, Liz and myself). Rich was freaked out by the carrots shaped as animals. I think there was rabbits and chickens. I can understand the chicken shapes, but rabbit?! What was rabbit doing there? Or maybe it was a dinosaur . . .
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Wednesday 14th July 2004
Hello. Me here again. Well, what's going on, then? It's all a bit dull, really . . . recompiling kernels. My keyboard and mouse were being weird . . . well, I think this was because I kind of semi-disabled USB support from my default kernel. The keyboard gave up completely (fortunately I have a PS/2 back-up) and the mouse was fine except for the middle scroll wheel thing (not responding). Also, the computer kept pausing for a fraction of a second every five seconds or so. Perhaps as if it was trying to handle all these signals from the USB mouse whilst not having a full grasp of how to handle USB appliances, and it couldn't keep up with it all. Not good. Perhaps a silly idea in the first place. It started when I thought, "Hmmmm. This printing service Boots and the like offer digital camera users . . . whereby you can take in your memory card and get the images printed for, erm, about 50p a copy (this varies depending on how many images you get printed at one time), for a single 6" by 4" image . . . well, surely these are just jpegs we're talking about here, so can't I put any images I choose onto this memory card and get those printed? So, erm . . . not necessarily pictures taken by my digital camera, but in terms of image size and resolution, they're the same thing. That's okay, isn't?" And assuming it is . . . I can up/down load images onto my camera's memory card and take those to Boots/Jessops/whatever for printing? Yep, all sounds fair enough. But what's this? The application I'm using to get the images from my camera does not support the uploading of images (from computer to memory card), even though the computer itself recognises that the camera does support this. So what's going on then? What's all that about? So, knowing that the memory card should just be another of these so-called 'mass storage devices', why can't we just access it from the computer as just another file system? But it seems you need SCSI support to do this . . . just generic SCSI support should do . . . and maybe enable support for DOS-like filesystems (FAT) whilst you're there . . . oh, and in the USB sub-section, tick all the boxes for 'mass storage support' . . . and it goes on and on . . . nothing's ever that simple. I should have got bored of all this a long, long time ago, but, the thing is, I really could do with some interesting colour images to cover wall space with . . . that's the problem, and is that so wrong?
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Thursday 15th July 2004
Hello, Jonath here again. I've been at work again today. After work, I went with Rav and Lisa to Bar Home yet again. We met Walter there. I hadn't brought my camera, so I cannot provide photographic evidence thereof, but hey . . . Now I am home, and I'm thinking I need to cut my hair. Hmmmm, hair, cut, cut, hair. Yes. I have clippers for such things. I also need a shower, but I figure hair first, shower second. BYE!
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Friday 16th July 2004
20:39 . . . so here we are at, erm . . . Dimitri's? Was it? Somewhere like that. It's Walter's birthday. Walter's second from the left here. The guy on the left of the picture is Nick, I believe. Sorry if you're reading this thinking, "That's not his name, damnit," or maybe even, "Nick? NICK?! I'm not Nick, damnit," although that's less likely. But, erm . . . the other guy, holding the menu, that's Steve.
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a couple of minutes later . . . I read in The Guardian recently of how the building supporting Big Ben is slightly tilted (one in 250), on account of the foundations, a 15m squared lump of concrete, resting on 'soft estuarine sediments and riverine gravels'. This means the tower is leaning slightly to the north-west. I had no idea. From left to right here, we have Andy, Rav and Jasmine (Rav's sister).
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and, er . . . far more scary, if it's possible, is the apparent intervention of the United States government in the, er, world of science. This is from the same newspaper, the same source, it's even on the same page, damnit. But, hey, it's interesting. Pay attention. The Bush administration has now decreed that prior to any of the WHO's (World Health Organisation) US government funded researchers speaking at conferences, they must first be 'cleared' with the health and human sciences department. Apparently, this has meant that authors of papers on AIDS are no longer permitted in a conference environment. How crazy is that? The guy who decides who can and who cannot speak is someone called William Steiger. George Bush Snr is his godfather. The girl in the picture, she's Catherine. Catherine is going out with Nick.
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I couldn't decide which picture I preferred here, so here's all three. The girl there is someone called Catherine (yes, two Catherine's), one of Walter's many friends. We met her here at Dimitri's.
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22:04, 22:07, 22:08. So, erm . . . yeah. The middle picture might look familiar here.
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and that's about it . . . there were more pictures, but they were awful. You know - too dark, too blurry, too dull, or a combination thereof. After the meal, Walter and his friends went to a nightclub, I believe . . . I know not which. Rav, Jasmine and I went to meet M**** and a couple of her workfriends 
(Sarah and Jenny?!) at the Packhorse. I didn't like it there too much - largely because they wouldn't sell me a drink a couple of minutes after eleven o'clock and when they wanted to get rid of us all, they turned most of the lights off, making it very difficult to ensure that we had all of our belongings with us when we left. It was like the bar staff didn't really want to be working there . . . they weren't enjoying the experience. Sarah and Jenny went home after the Packhorse, and the four remaining went to, erm, well, it used to be called Tequila Tequila, but it's name has changed to something like 'Santiago' or something to that effect. I had a gorgeous whisky at this place, but I've no idea what it was . . .
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Saturday 17th July 2004
All of your loopback devices are in use. . . . kind of reminds me of that 'all your bases are belong to us' thing that was going on a couple of years (?!) ago. I never really got that either. Still, at least I managed to stop the, er, 'loopback devices' from being in use. Lord only knows what they were doing. I think the gist of what my computer was trying to say was, "If you do that, it will break me. Reboot with a different kernel then try again." Ah well, it's all fixed now. La di da. So, erm . . . let's see if we can break it again . . . So, yes . . . Simon (M****'s brother) and his girlfriend, Beccy, came over today. I think their train got in at 14:10. I was still drudging around town at that time. Simon and Beccy were off to some Lesley Garrett ('and friends') concert at Temple Newsam park. M**** and I just stayed in that night, drinking wine, watching films (?! I dunno . . . were we?). Anna popped around. Blah, blah, blah. I have databases to administer (sp?!).
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Sunday 18th July 2004
Lord knows when Simon and Beccy got up, but me and M**** didn't surface until we had had at least eight hours of sleep - 11am. Beccy had to leave early, in order to catch some train . . . Later on, Simon, M**** and I got a bus to town, had lunch at the Courtyard and then wandered around a bit, showing Simon a few of the sites of Leeds. Then, after saying goodbye to Simon (his train was at, erm . . . 3pm, I think), M**** and I did a bit of shopping . . . books from Borders, largely . . . and then went back home. Nothing much else happened.
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Friday 23rd July 2004
When you laugh, the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone. 
Me again. Currently watching bits of 'Oldboy', whenever it is I get the chance. I'm now 27 minutes into it. I'm not sure where you would ordinarily obtain this film. I think it's Korean but hasn't yet been exported to the UK. I might be wrong. Anyway, M****'s brother Simon recommended something called Azureus as a means of trading data using this Bit Torrent thing that everyone seems to be going on about these days. The link given just then relates to the Linux installation of this software, but the application (client), being Java-based, should work on any platform with an up-to-date version of Java installed. There's links there on how to get the Windows version and the Mac OS X version installed. So that's what I did. I had to update Java but, hey . . . it's not difficult. Oh and, er . . . I had to poke a hole in my Firewall as port 6881 is the preferred route for this software but, erm . . . yeah, I can live with that. And, erm . . . using something like Suprnova, you do a search for whatever it is you're looking for, download this freaky .torrent file, open this in your recently installed Azureus thingy and then wait . . . few hours later, you've downloaded 700MB of data, and may have also uploaded something during that time. Crazy. So, Rav recommended Oldboy and, having watched 27 minutes, I think I'd like to see it properly now . . . like on a cinema or from a television . . . a DVD, you know? So, Amazon sell it, but it's 33.95 US dollars, which works out at almost 19 UK pounds, and that's not including deliver. Hmmmmmm. Oh, eBay . . . of course.
Oh, and other news . . . looks like you won't be able to buy this little trickster in your local market for much longer. Stock up while you can, or else wait until Autumn. Otherwise . . . well, I'm still trying to implement a database to keep a track of activity for this web-site. You know, hits per hour/day/month/year, most downloaded picture, all that kinda stuff. I've got the database working and everything, and have analysed several megabytes of log files, but I just need to now stuff the database with all this data and change index.php to update the database every time something happens. Then I guess I need some interface to query the database . . . blah, blah, blah. It's just a matter of having the time and inclination to do all this. Next university assignment due 4th August.
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Saturday 24th July 2004
 
I had a cat in my house last night. Downstairs in the kitchen, I went to draw the curtains, when I noticed this tiny, tortoise-shell coloured cat outside. I opened the kitchen window to try and let it in, but it couldn't work out how to get from where it was standing to where the open window was. So, erm . . . I went to the front door to let it in. The cat was just wandering around my living room, being curious. The picture with the flash was an accident, as I didn't want to startle the cat too much, but all the other pictures were just coming out blurred. So . . . yeah. But the cat was tiny . . . and skinny. But I wasn't giving it any food, as I know what cats are like. The owners will have spent a load of money on vaccinations, cat food and lord knows what else already . . . but as soon as someone else comes along, perhaps with more interesting food, the cat's out of there . . . couldn't care less about who its 'owner' is.
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. . . so it eventually tired of being curious and just sat next to Tania on the sofa for a while, purring away . . . Later on, the cat kind of freaked a bit, and was just staring at a point on the wall for ages. I thought maybe the cat was staring at Tania's shadow, but I don't know . . . the spot was close to where I once saw a flash of light, like a camera flash . . . but as that flash was in my peripheral vision, I assumed it to be some kind of retinal thing, you know? The flash occured on my retina, but not necessarily anywhere else. So . . . the cat was staring at this point on the wall, being weird. When I tried to move the cat along, it gave this strange miaow and striked my hand with it paw, although as an act of defence, it was pretty lame, unless it wasn't intending to harm me . . . there were no claws involved, you see. Anyway . . . the cat kind of wandered around a bit and then I led it outside. A few hours later, when I went over to M****'s house, the cat was outside again, and made a dash inside, but I grabbed it and put it back outside again. That's the thing, see? You let them in once, and they think they're now onto something.
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So, yeah . . . later on (22:11, 22:20, 22:20) and here we are at the Hogshead (around Call Lane). The taxis kind of messed things up a bit this night, so instead of sending a single 5-seater, City Cabs were gonna send a single 4-seater. So that's why we got there rather late. Left to right in the first picture we have Security Dave, Nicola, Penrith Dave and Tania. Then, in the middle picture, that's Rich with his birthday present from M**** - one of those bubble gun things. You know . . . slot the batteries in, attach the tube of bubble mixture, pull the trigger and you get bubbles. I think it's Rich's birthday on Monday, but this was the nearest weekend, see. In the other picture, that's Liz and Anthony.
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(23:50/23:52)This is the inside of Lux, another of those bars under some railway arches. The very same arches that support the same train track that goes over Bar Home (have I said this before? Am I like a stuck record?). It took me a while to get here, as I had to go find a cash machine. You're probably thinking, "What's with the black and white?" Well, the reason is . . . I felt my senses being bombarded a bit in here, what with the music (kind of at that volume where, unless you can do sign language, you have to shout at someone else's ear from about a foot away in order to be heard) and the garish lights and decor. So I thought I'd bring it down a peg or two. You see? Anyway, the first picture . . . that's M**** in motion. Middle picture . . . that's M**** and Simon. I'm not sure where everyone else had gone at this point. Nicola, Gemma and them lot had gone, erm . . . well, I don't know. Rich? Where did Rich and his friends go? Maybe they headed towards the Faversham . . . I just don't know. I just don't know.
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Sunday 25th July 2004
  
(00:02, 00:05, 00:29) . . . so then we have pictures of M****, Tania and Mouse in transit. That's Simon sticking his fingers up behind M****'s head. I think we were on the way to the Lounge at this point. Yes. The picture on the right must be when we had reached the, er, the Lounge.
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(00:47) . . . that's Dave again. Dave helpfully pointed out that I had spelt his name wrong on my web-site on a number of occasions. If you're reading this, Dave, it's all been corrected now. Well, come to think of it, whether Dave's reading this, or not, the mistake has still been corrected. Although, I suppose you could argue that as only Dave was aware of the mistake, then Dave is the only person for whom the mistake has been corrected. Sorry for the mistake. Oh look, it's Sunday now. Forgot about that. Dave also had a problem with my web-site . . . I think around the time of my birthday . . . but I wasn't sure what the problem was. He told a few people, so maybe someone else understands. Maybe I was just a bit drunk. I think he mentioned how the pictures got blurry when he arrived on the day of my birthday celebrations. Perhaps that was the problem. God knows. Better be more careful with that camera though next time. Don't want to upset anyone else.
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(01:56) . . . and maybe I took more pictures at Bourbon, but they've since been deleted. It was okay here. Well, if you excuse the ugly, fat guy trying to dance (?!) with M****. He was one of those guys who just kind of gradually moves up to a lady until their personal space is well and truly being invaded. I don't think words or subtlety are involved in this, er . . . technique. I rescued M**** and the man shuffled off to his next target . . . and on and on it goes. The futility of it all . . .
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From left to right, times are 02:42, 02:43 and 02:58. Yeah, so . . . nothing too exciting going on here. This was probably before the pizzas had been ordered. The picture on the right . . . that's Mouse. She doesn't like to be photographed. I seem to remember it was a bit of a strange journey back. I was in a taxi with M**** . . . maybe Tania as well. I'm not sure. We went via a garage. The taxi driver was a bit bemused (though smiling) when M**** presented him with a bag of Minstrels, 'for his troubles'. I'm sure I went back to this garage at some point . . . perhaps for a Pepperami. Erm . . .
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This is at 03:00 and 03:01.
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Tuesday 27th July 2004
There's a few pictures from Saturday night (the celebrations of several peoples' birthdays) and the early hours of Sunday morning, but I haven't yet had a chance to up/down load these to my web-server. See, I'm trying to get the next OU assignment done before the weekend (due 4th August). Correction - all pictures now uploaded . . . well, at least as many as I'm going to make available from that evening, of course.
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Thursday 29th July 2004
I've been playing quite a lot of this recently . . . chess. Love it. I think the pawn is my favourite piece; it's the only piece that cannot retreat.
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. . . this is later on (to the right there). I think M**** was trying to tickle my feet.
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