Warning: These are old.
Other than that, not a diary-worthy day. Dunno what Alan's doing, did nothing of note except some very stupid things (cringe, including leaning on ^D and deleting the window I was editing this in) and I hope the rest of the month improves.
I think it may be the computer room tomorrow.
As threatened, went book-hunting in town. Alas, bookshop has gone sorely downhill. Had none of the books I wanted in. (I began to have qualms a while ago: despite this being a Welsh university town, tourist hotspot, and home of Dylan Thomas, it had no copies of Under Milk Wood, much to the consternation of the staff.)
Brycecan now focused on a Scooby-Doo cut-out with a monkey clinging to it. Grr. Persuaded RH people to fix.
Bright sunny day. If it's like this tomorrow, it may be time to walk round town buying all the things I never get around to buying whilst Alan isn't here.
Some nice people came and installed blinds today. I am having lots of fun adjusting them to be just right with regard to the light. Now it's just a pity the sun will insist on moving.
War of the webcam in RH. Bryce put the camera back where I could watch Alan. Alan moved it away. Bryce put it back. Alan moved it away.
Went out with some of the usual crowd for food. We had no Alan, but we had a Kira instead. Went for standard menu "but can we change this, and can we change that, and by the way, some more duck please". Discussed April Fools jokes. Shame none of us will get organised to do any of them.
Appalled to discover Bryce's account of massive hardware buying on the part of certain people. Can guess who was involved. Somewhat cheered when I realised that Alan can't bring much back because he only took hand luggage. Ha.
Finished Iceland write-up. I have a few photos I wanted to put into one version of the page. I wanted little thumbnails in the right places, so scripts which automatically generate thumbnails into a gallery won't do. I also need the exact size to put in the attributes of the <img> tag, apparently, if I want it to load in less than a year (yes, yes, I know about alt, and there will be two versions anyway). Failed to understand ImageMagick docs. 68 formats, maybe. Where is the "turn into thumbnail and give me the dimensions?" Failed to understand multiple perl scripts which all invoke ImageMagick anyway. Eventually had recourse to the GIMP.
Understand that my first experiences with this program were on a 32 meg machine and a monitor with what Alan calls "a dodgy gamma" and so I got used to not using graphics programs. Do not mock my lack of GIMP knowledge. GIMP-using friend on IRC told me I could just select all files in the directory, and I tried. Apparently my "a few" photos meant "twenty" and up they all started to come, one after the other...
I'm impressed. GIMP survived, the window manager survived, the pictures came up (continually, for about five minutes), and X survived. Okay, so it wasn't the best way to discover this program, but it worked. I have now created a whole two thumbnails, and the wretched things have stupid dimensions which are all one or two pixels different from each other even though the originals are the same size.
Alan has now reached Red Hat. Someone there put a webcam up and I was able to watch him and wonder "now who's he talking to?" and so on until I got bored. I am happy now.
Pondering tidying the machine room as a surprise for when Alan gets back. I fear it's the sort of thing that could cause complications. We'll see.
Was going to the rugby but got delayed and missed it. Pooh.
I am going to become an avid reader of his diary now, I can tell. "Where is he again? And, um, why?" Until I tidy the machine room up and manage to unplug the modem by accident, of course.
Got someone else's cancellation and ate out at favourite restaurant. Returned and caught up with sister-gossip. <rant>Apparently some garage tried to charge her over a grand for "stripping the engine" on her car after it broke down and she told them not to do any work without informing her and giving her an estimate first. So she wrote some impressive legal letters, got the car back, found someone else who remarked that "if that engine's been touched, it's been put together very neatly afterwards", and now she has her car running with some slightly more plausible bills and a working engine. I can't believe people try this on. It's so... blatent. It's only because she knows a little about cars and has friends who know a lot more that she had the confidence to say no and not get stung. Grr.</rant>.
Alan off at late hours (early hours). Wail.
Discovered that Wales finally (ahem) won a match in the Six Nations. Whilst we were away. Paah.
Apparently there is still a chance to be a sponsor of the penguin at the zoo if you're UK-based and tell Al quickly.
Wrote a lot of diary whilst in Iceland; link will appear when I have caught up with the rest.
Lots of catching up with post, ringing to get parcels re-delivered, playing of new CDs. Alan departs (waah!) in two days, so more washing, packing, and so on. Rampaged through a week of gnome email to the extent that someone wanted to know whether I had actually sent every single email in his latest digest issue of it. I, by contrast, do not want to know the answer to that.
Tidying up later, lay down for a quick rest on the futon, blearily heard "Rugby starting" from Alan, woke up two hours later, and discovered I'd missed it. Waah! I blame Gnome. It can't possibly the the effect of happy hippy trousers-buying.
Lots of gnome-testing and making lists of "things to do."
More "I, Claudius". More moans from Alan. Philistine.
Out with the Equiinet (or Cymrunet, or 3com, or whatever they are this month: the same group of people have gone through so many name changes) and associated crowd for a meal down beyond the Mumbles. German guest of one of them unable to appreciate the view because, well, it was dark. "Well, if it was day, you'd see all this cool stuff, but um...".
Found a flyer for something at the theatre tomorrow night. Alan is too busy to go. Grumble. Not good.
Best release announcement I've seen in a while has to be Qt 2.3's song. No idea what the software's like. I just like that song. Alas, my only copy of the real version of the words is on a vinyl record. Now I regret getting rid of my archaic record player. I have room for the thing now.
Discovered sister is not, as I presumed, still facing a wall of snow. She is now able to get through it to work and back. Lucky her.
Persuaded Alan to buy CDs I wanted. Some of them, anyway. Listened to the samples of Metallica-as-played-by-string-quartet and tried to persuade him that we really needed this, but to no avail.
Alan has discovered some website with midi files of dozens of folk tunes and jigs. Watching (and listening to) kernels compile and making the machine go "gronk, whirr, whirr, gronk" to the tune of electronic "bee-bibipi bibipi bibipi BEE!" from the speakers is an experience for which I cannot find the right word.
Went to investigate latest Indian restaurant to open, housed in an old church building. Unfortunately, so did the rest of Swansea. Decided to try again some other time and came back.
We shall not discuss the rugby. Ahem. (Oh, okay. Wales-Ireland off. England beat Scotland. And France beat Italy. This is all the wrong way round. Waah.)
Alas, he went back to sleep after that. Curses. My cunning plan foiled.
More cold weather. More foot and mouth. More things closed.
Grabbed sandwiches from the shop for lunch. I took the papers home and read all about the huge areas of Britain apparently begging people not to trample foot and mouth all over them whilst Alan and Andi took the long detour back. As the hours passed on, I began to wonder where they'd got to and whether some irate farmer or council official had hauled them off. They eventually returned, having walked from the town down past the Mumbles to Bracelet Bay. I gather they got the bus back. What a surprise. Alan described the stunning views and lack of people and then admitted sheepishly that he'd forgotten to take the camera. They'd also gone shopping and been greeted by a male voice choir performing in the supermarket. It is St David's Day, the national day of Wales, and events like this are not totally unexpected as a result.
Chilli tonight. Alan has become enamoured of adding chocolate into it. I am not convinced. Then "Time Team" (Andi: "You say this programme is popular here?") and "I, Claudius" (Alan: "Oh god").
I've been asked for a more obvious feedback route. So there you are! But please note: This should be clear from the above, but: I am not a kernel hacker. I am not an anything hacker. "Is this diary true?" will get answered. (It is.) "I have a problem compiling the brainsplat module under the pre-sliced option terminator; I am using the mutability framewedger on the standard infernalisation build" will not. (Well, it might be answered in a similar vein, but for a real answer, look elsewhere. It's much safer.)