Romantic Robot » Chatter

Not a good week

Mark — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:39:17 +0000

The neighbour’s “home improvement” has continued. Drilling, hammering, banging at random intervals throughout each day and starting before 8:30am too.

My Wacom pen broke so I had to use a mouse. Pain arrived within minutes. Couldn’t use the big trackball, using the mouse was doable for a couple of minutes at a time if I then did not use the mouse at all for many minutes after. Got a mouse trackball (a Logitech M570) which works and is improving but it’s whole new set of muscle control and that is infuriating at times.

Winston had an eye op so he has one eye stitched closed to allow a corneal ulcer to heal.

Something upset the graphics drivers on the Windows laptop so that had to be restored from a backup image. Nothing of value was lost, just annoying.

Bought Starcraft 2 and downloaded the game. The European download defaults to the cuddly “sorry didn’t meant to hurt you” love’n'stuff German version because of their pathetic video game laws so that 7.08gb has had to be re-downloaded. Bought the Company of Heroes games from Steam. If you are going to play RTS you might as well play the best ones. I have Dawn of War / Dawn of War 2 / Starcraft (was playing SC up until the pen broke). Can’t play either as much as I’d like until I get the pen – the replacement was posted from Germany this morning apparently – as the pen = work, trackball = play and that helps the hand somewhat. Not as much as ibuprofen + paracetamol though.

It’s my birthday next month and I need to make a list of things I want.
I don’t own a dremel.
Yet.

Candles

Mark — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:47:36 +0000

What is the point of a vigil? Lots of people gather, they light candles, leave toys (and in the case of Steve Jobs there was chewed fruit) and they all hang about. Why? It’s not respect because most won’t have known the person. I can see that many users of shiny gear will have wanted to pay their respects in some way but it does seem an odd thing – especially chewed fruit. It looked cool enough that day in the news reports but later? And the days after? Why this need to go out at night with others and just mooch around while wax melts? Candles wouldn’t work so well in the day, I’ll give you that but really, why do this? Maybe it’s just the “done thing”.

People hold a vigil outside a US prison where someone is about to be executed and is 100% absolutely no shadow of a doubt bet your own life on it guilty. What on earth is the point of a vigil?

Random person dies in random place and random people appear at dusk holding candles. Weird. Especially if they died in the daytime. Or do vigils not happen 9-5 due to the needs of the economy?

Maybe there is some deeper meaning that I just don’t get. Maybe it’s some sort of collective guilt being assuaged by collective candle melting. And doesn’t the first person there feel just a little odd?

Paying for bullshit

Mark — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:42:57 +0000

What does “lifestyle coach” actually do?

Here’s what I think it is”: Pretending that if you breathe certain scents deeply, put the right shoe on before the left, change your rooms so seats all face south, never wear black/purple/pink/red, eat masses of vitamin D but avoid calcium supplements, brush your hair 3 times a day and give them shitloads of money that you will get better at everything you do, be richer, get the girls/boys, create a massively successful business and lots of other total nonsense. In other words they talk bullshit and convince people to pay to listen to it.

Maybe it’s like the Emperor’s new clothes. Everyone else says they are great so they have to agree and get one to boost their lives too. But no-one really does.

Vacuous crap of the highest order.

People talk

Mark — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:36:13 +0000

J has discovered that there is an option in using BT’s amazing tree of “Press #1 to do this, #2 to do that” etc to get to speak to a real person. Choose the one that says the owner has died.

(My one concern when switching back to BT was their customer service. So far I have been proved right many times and we’ve only been dealing with them for 2 weeks. Why switch back? Infinity has arrived at the exchange so 6x speed increase)

I hate pixelmator

Mark — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:28:28 +0000

You’d think that people who claim they’ve made the best image application on the Mac would have a better website than grey text on a black background. Dear Pixelmator people, get a clue and change it.

Videoswiper. Spammers.

Mark — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:12:37 +0000

From an email:

> How would you like 1500 unique backlinks to your website
> for just 1 cent a bookmark ?
>
> That’s just $15 for 1500 social bookmarks creating 1500
> new, fresh oneway backlinks directly to your sites.

> *We create all the accounts
> *We click on all the activation emails
> *We do all the submissions
>
> All you have to do is give us your URL.
>
> Grab your $15 for 1500 links right now!

> Regards
>
> VideoSwiper Team
> http://www.videoswiper.com

So Videoswiper are spammers because if that isn’t spamming nothing is. Just my personal opinion of course.

Google ARE the problem

Mark — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:25:07 +0000

They make their product, stifle innovation by reducing the ability of others to create yet earn money from their own hard work and then they kill their product too.
Official Google Reader Blog: Upcoming changes to Reader: a new look, new Google+ features, and some clean-up.

Google are the problem. (and screw G+)

Mark — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:17:33 +0000

Love facebook? Take This Lollipop.

Mark — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 21:38:42 +0000

The Yanks have changed HP sauce!

Mark — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 16:32:49 +0000

Playing Civ5 while listening to Vanessa Mae. If the Red Bull was replaced by a nice cup of tea I’d consider myself even older.