Merry New Year

I spent most of the time sleeping @ Abe's anyway but in the end she managed to drag me out to town. We decided we'd just have a meal and then "walk around town", which was way better than paying £30 each to go clubbing @ the Dome.

So after a meal at Pizza Express we came together to Central London to see Big Ben strie for 01.01.2003, 00.00. The place way packed... I dunno what was drawing people towards that clock but if a politician had stood on that tower and shouted "vote for me" they probably wuda won the next election.

I've got some pictures coming, for the new year that is, but in the meantime you can see the newly added X'mas 2002 pictures.

Gallery Update

Below though are some pictures not fit to be in the "new year" pictures that i thought u should see anyway; That's Abe in my GoateeStyle T-shirt. I thought i'd trest myself to one of Ryan's goodies over Xmas... but you've gotta admit she looks better in it... maybe u should give it up?

Late Resolutions

• Get to know my GP.
  I've been registered with Dr. Popat for over 2 years but I'm yet to find out what he looks like. Last time I had to be at the clinic, which is during my bout with chicken pox, I was seen to by this lady-doctor.
• Donate blood.
• Find out my blood group. (See, this I think is the easiest way to achieve the above)
• Get my heart checked out.
  For that pain  I sometimes feel in and around that organ.
• See if the bone in the middle finger of my right hand is alright. It's been acting funny for the past 6 years if my memory serves me right.
• Do something about my gum. See a dentist or something and stop it from sometimes bleeding when I brush my teeth.
• Change my sleeping habits. Or rather, my not-sleeping habits.
• Not make my life revolve around sex.
  I remember thinking sometime back about what I'd do if I was castrated. (Yeah, you read right... castrated... it's a long story) But then I remember thinking that suicide will be my only option out.... surely, I couldn't live without sex could I? Good thing I still have my cojones.

It's kindda worrying, most of the above involve hospitals and my health in general. Thing is, I'm the type that worried if I don't fall ill for a very long time. 'Cos that's the only time my body gets a check up. Being seemingly healthy for so long scares me into worrying about falling down suddenly one day and dying. That's how much I enjoy life.

Anyway, below are a few other things I cant exactly call "resolutions" but here they are anyway:

• Go to Ghana for a holiday, preferably before September this year. This has been a while in the planning though.
• Find time for my friends as well as my girlfriend. Toughest!
• Get an Xbox... but not spend any "new" money on it. i.e.. Sell some other possessions and/or collect donations.
• Make it to that job interview I have at 12noon today, even if it involves popping 2 more Pro-Plus

Oh that's it... I'ma try sleeping now.

(5 mins later...)
Ok... I still cant sleep, so I'm gonna try to write something... a poem maybe... or even one of my shitty short stories.

(15 mins later...)
Ok I give up. I wrote some lines for two different poems, but they turned out to be about farting. How pathetic... I'm keeping the day job. If I can find one, that is.

Just so you know though... here's one of them

Help Faf Get an Xbox

I dunno how long this is gonna take, but I hope not long.

Help Faf Get an Xbox

Go see what you can do to help me. If you see a 50p coin on the ground. Pick it up and send it this ways...

In Plain English

Late Resolutions & My Thoughts

Faf, your resolutions read like a blend of resolutions, a worry list and a wish list. I'm just in a writing mood and you gave me a way of expressing myself to the world...so to speak. A secret desire to be an advice columnist will be manifested in this writing I'm afraid...please bear with me.

Getting to know your male GP? Why???

Donate blood -- hmmm, very community minded. Best way to learn your blood type -- true, and good to know.

Remedy for your chest pain -- lay off caffeine, nada, zilch, zero, including those pills that are full of it...trust me and try it.

Middle finger on your right hand -- could guess if it was your left hand, did I say that! Lol. Stop abusing it, too much typing or too much something... Get an xray.

Bleeding gums, now that can be a problem starting... get to know your dentist, male or female.

Not-sleeping habits...regular hours, sleeping and waking, as much as possible and LAY OFF THE CAFFEINE.

Sex...umm...the nature of the beast, and sooo...exciting...what would life be without it, stop worrying...it's a natural in all species, lol. Castration, would like to hear that "long story"..if you were being thankful for what you have (which you're not likely to lose to castration), trying to politely refer to your set of male assets in Italian...it's COGLIONI... enough about this subject, lol.

Worried about dropping over dead....save it for a few years...only the good die young, just teasing you :).

Going to Ghana...great idea....make it happen! Yes, time for EVERYONE is important...very.

Openly soliciting for an X-box...have you no shame? Better define it to the technically challenged.

Job interview...good luck...Lay off the caffeine!

Poetry? Was that supposed to be poetry? Sorry Faf, better get some sleep...and stick to writing blogs if that's your version of poetry.

Well Faf, this might not be my best blog...but I wrote it anyway...I'll call it an experiment in journalism, lol. Happy New Year :).

Poetic Juice

dotFAF.com Version 2.3

The difference it's going to make is so much obvious that I'm calling it a version change, albeit a small one.

The Problem:
I was using tables earlier. Here's a general idea of how tables are created in html:

<table>
<tr>[row starts]
<td>column 1</td> <td>column 2</td> <td>column 3</td>
</tr> [row ends]
</table>

As if that wasnt a problem, Column 3 contained images, buttons and worse of all scripts from other sites. Now imagine having one script for blogsnob and another for wander-lust. What happens if one of those sites is down? Well internet explorer tries to load the scripts for a few seconds before giving up. That's 10 seconds added to the loading of the page!!

The Solution:
Abe's current layout has the same problem. Difference between hers and mine though is that ther section of the page containing the blog entries loads first, but then the sidebar takes ages to load.

I had a look at her source and realised she uses CSS layer positioning for the quick-loading section. Well I've gone a step further and used CSS for all my layout. Now if somehoe a bit of script is slowing the page down, all that happens is that the site is displayed up to that point and as the script loads it's displayed.

The result is that, as soon as you're on the site, you see most of the page loaded. You wont realise there's some bit at the bottom loading, not unless you scroll down real fast. And even with that, you might not see anything if the script loads quick.

Now I'm at peace. And i'll also look forward to not receiving mail from people telling me "Your site takes too long to load. Do something about it!!"

All Your Kofis Are Belong To Faf

Granted I'm not at the top yet... but 45 is good enough considering I wasnt in the first 1000 before I started. I'm still working on it tho. Anyone who helped before can do the same thing the did again... it'll move me up.

___
UPDATE: (27.01.2003) -- I've moved two steps up since this post.
UPDATE: (20.02.2003) -- I've moved another step up.

The Week In Pictures

So much in fact that i think i may be starting work again by Wednesday at least. Anyway, here are some of the pictures from my cam. They full size images can be found in the general gallery section.

Call him Cuppie the snowman. Sadly i found him smashed to bits half an hour later.

Nathan and I. I was in Monoux with him. He's currently in Univ. of Hertsforshire

Thought I should mention that, when Nathan was @ mines on Thursday ... i happened to mention Christina Millian. Anyway... turns out he's got the hots for her. He dreams of charming her and making "her ask [him] to marry her".

Right. Cant wait for the wedding.

The Life Of The Employed

I woke up reluctantly this morning since I only had ANOTHER interview planned for the day.

Then i get this call that someone actually wants me. None other than the Carphone Warehouse or CPW as i'm already beginnig to affectionately call it. I just cancelled all other engagements for the day and in another hour or so i was in North Acton.

I've been here since 1pm and i'm working till 8pm. From tomorrow though... i'm working 9am till 6pm. This should be fun.... as well as pocket lining. I'm really glad to be earning some moeny for a change and i'm glad i got a job before being compelled to raid my savings.

Wish me luck youse all.

Yoghurt Recipe Anyone?

Anyway, i realised i didnt have anything to put the food it. I needed one of those plastic containers.. Just like the one they serve Chinese takeway in. Turns out my mum had used them all up so i had to go out to get one.

The shops werent quite open at 7am so i had to make do with the 24hour shops. I didnt find one of those containers so i bought a tub of yoghurt. 1000 grams. I wasnt about to stuff 1000grams of turkish yogurt down my throat at 7am in the morning or any time of the day for that matter, so i transferred it into a bowl.

Now... what to do. I cost £2.79 and i sure as hell aint gon' chuck it in the bin either. Thing is, it's tasteless and i cant eat it raw either so i'm looking for a yoghurt recipe. Anyone got something simple i can make? Just mail it to me or put it in the comments and i'll see what i can whip up.

Mind you, it says on the tin that it should be consumed within two days of opening the tub. So hurry!

On another seemingly unrelated topic... i had two really wierd dreams lastnite. Both job related.

One saw me "messing with" my pregnant female boss, who somehow had a "chair" with a phallic object protruding from it. The other was about this woman who'd got a new job managind some web hosting company of some sort. Tunrs out the employees dont like her alot, and try to make her leave.

They use her login details to delete and mess up clients' files and stuff. She keeps on changing her password but they're always one step ahead of her. It started frustrating me and i wanted to help her... then before i knew, i was he... or she was me... and i was the boss... and i was fighting workers that wanted me out....

The whole wierdness of this might be in the fact that my new boss is female. Laila. And no... she aint pregant. Well not that i can see anyway...

Thru Other People's Windows..

Last year I lived opposite Jubilee Campus, which was a good 200 metres away, therefore I had the view of the campus, without people being able to see me from that distance. .. well.. between myself and the campus, were some unsightly Gas Towers, a train line, and industrial works, however we'll discount that.

I was used to getting changed freely with my bedroom curtains drawn..except for that one unfortunate time when I was woken up at about 2am by some people who had the audacity to be working very noisly on the trainlines. I walked to the window to observe the situation, and they noticed me in the window.

Turns out that I happened to be naked at the time (I sleep naked). They saw.. what I can guess.. as everything. I was hoping that the mirror on the window ledge would conceal my breasts, but it just didn't turn out that way.

Anyway, now I live opposite another block of students, and its intruguing to see what they're doing etc etc, but I continue to forget that they can easily see into my room, especially at night when I'm getting changed and have the lights on. Sometimes it looks like people are staring for ages at you, but if you look closer, it turns out that its someone's back that you're looking at.. or possibly even some misshapen curtains.

Well, at least I'm living on the top floor. A friend (who shall remain nameless) had a boyfriend last year who lived on the bottom floor. Sometime during the evening, they decided to get down to it, forgetting that the curtains were open. Her boyfriend's flatmates took this opportunity to invite a select crowd of people to view the 'spectacle'.

Thank god that wasn't me!

Being Anti-Social

Apparently i'm allowed to check mail, browse outside the intranet and have earphones on so i'm listening to Capital 98.5 FM. Being out of everybody's business.

I know it's only been two days, but i feel so anti-social. Maybe i am.

Also being Anti-Social

Purely to compete, I thought I'd add another entry.

You may realise I have exams and such, and this immediately qualifies me to be an anti-socialite. Very little or no contact with anyone or anything, except for maybe your flat mates if you run into them in the kitchen, your textbooks and notes of course, and.. my dear laptop! However I spent a large portion of the day in the Dissection Room at the hospital, cramming in as much knowledge of the prosections that I could.

Part of our General Anatomy exam requires us to point out nerves, blood vessels, muscles etc of the body, from (manky) prosections. Not as easy as it sounds. I also watched a 65 minute video on the oral cavity and the larynx. Do you know how riveting that can be? (NOT!)

I've also noticed how I just don't go out anymore, plus I've lost a good friend that I had this time last year. He still lives in my hall, however I just think he's an absolute wanker. I keep on telling myself how I don't think about him anymore, and how I don't miss him, but the fact that I keep telling myself this is indicative of how I miss it? I don't. Its just one big finger up in his direction.

Today was the first time i saw him since last year. I doubt he saw me.. it was only when I walked past his flat was when I saw him sitting in the living room watching TV. I'm amazed how we used to be such good friends, but look at it now..

Yahoo! Launch

Frankly, i can barely stay awake. It's so tedious. But i got Yahoo! Launch to keep me company. I'm listening to the hiphop channel and it's got some nice tracks. Right now it's Get Up by Nate Dogg.

The Bitter Water Matter

The thing is, maybe it's just my tongue, but carbonated water tastes like it's designed to make u puke.

I'm going to be stubborn though and finish what's left of it in the bottle now. Ok gotta go, lunch's over now.

League of Gentle-Bloggers

Besides the point though, that is. I've never seen myself in that league of bloggers. People dont normally put me on thier favorites list and even when they do, not in the same list as Koti... [ahem] Kottke. Well that's all changed due to Dawn. Next i'll be getting a link from BWG... oh he already does [looks smug and grins]

3, Three, Troix, Miensa.

I remember the afternoon of 21.01.2000, I was playing football in the park with ma friends. Not all of them knew i was leaving that evening. How much surprised they were when i came out of the bag wielding my small green travelling bag. There almost was nothing in there. I even gave all my Dean Konontz books away. Close to a hndred books in all.

Anyway... that's not important now, cos these past three years have been a roller coaster. Take a look in the archives if you dare.

Another good thing about having spent three years in London is that i can now get Gov't financial help to get into Uni in September. That was the reason why i had to take a year out in the first place.

And if you didnt come here thru the main page.... take a look at the new splash.

Invoke Lazyweb: Cheapest Xbox Prices UK/EU

Can anyone find any package that has at least one game... preferably Halo or Splinter Cell that is in/around that same price? I dont mind paying EU delivery charges.

Hip-hop vs. Hip-Pop

The difference?

Hip-hop artists dont get THAT big and get dropped from their records labels for one. They die. More likely shop shot when they're getting into a limousine or close.

Hip-hop artistes THAT big dont get dropped from thier record labels. They probably own a big chunk of it.

Hip-hop artistes arent silent when dropped by their record labels. They have a big party, get drunk and tell record execs to come "suck [they] mutha*bleep* *bleep*, you *bleep*ing *bleep*-gots" on the 10 o'clock news.

Hip-hop artistes normally have a feud going w/ another hip-hop artiste or a whole bunch of them, and their enemies will call radio shows to laugh at them.

I'm hearing no such thing regarding Willie plus his music is too Pop oriented. "Jiggy with it"?! C'mon! More like, "Put your hands where ma eyes couls see".

That's just my 2 cents.

Sharing the "Dream"

Hi Faf and everyone. As you may already know, today is a holiday in the U.S. We celebrate the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the greatest civil rights leaders in the U.S. He was a peaceful man with a powerful message.

I write this today as a reminder of and my personal tribute to this special man who spoke of "making justice a reality to all God's children", in the name of racial equality. He rose above the riots and violence. He had the courage to speak out when others were perhaps afraid during a very turbulant period in American history. Even if you are not American, all fair minded people can relate to the value of freedom in any form.

He died for his beliefs, through the very violence he opposed so strongly. His death only reinforced his message to his people to press on with endurance and persistence, to make his dream a reality for all, for the rights and good of not only African Americans, but for all humanity to live in harmony.

I quote from the conclusion of his "I have a dream" speech given in the shadow of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Washinton D.C. on August 28, 1963 before many thousands of people who shared his dream.

"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God's children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

His dream continues in the hearts and minds of many. Not to be forgotten, but to be actively pursued by all who suffer injustice or observe injustice anytime, anywhere, in any way.

Time-Distance Senseless People!

I've had 3 new purchases on amazon and ebay - the revo and two books - and i need to send these before the week's out so I thought i'd use my lunchtime to find a post office and buy some stamps at least so that tomorrow when i go to mail the packages i wont have to stand in any long queues.

I checked for the nearest postoffice to the office of the Royal Mail website and was told there was one within a minute's walk. Good!! Very good, i thought.

Since it was only a minute, i didnt think there was any need to feed the post code to streetmap.co.uk, like i always do, before setting off.

Now the shock of going out and asking directions only to be told it was 10minutes away by this lady i met in a shop. I was kindda weary of her directions and asked a couple more people... they all kept saying there wasnt a post-office within a minutes walk from the office.

Baffled.. i set off on the directions the lady gave. I was still going after 15minutes. WTF?? So i stop and ask this old man at a bus-stop and he goes, "Turn right into that street there... it's 1minute down that road". OK... so my hopes are high again... I walk another 2minutes.. and i dont see any post office... so i ask another guy.... "10 minutes" he says. What the hell is going on? 1 minutes turns to 10minutes, turns to 16minutes, tunrs to 26minutes? At this rate i might as well walk home!

So i keep walking expecting to be told by another person anytime soon that it was an hour away... or worse. I'm expecting to walk 10minutes before having to ask anyone again so i just keep walking and munching on my Jaffa Cakes. Then only 5minutes after the 10-minute guy... Lo and behold! There's a post office. An actual one with doors and all and a red post box in front of it. Can you believe that?!

What is wrong with people and thier distance-time co-ordination? How difficult is it to tell the difference between 1minute's walk and a half hour journey? I'm dissapointed most in Royal Mail for discieving me in the first place with thier website. The faggots! The worst bit of it all is that they forced me to register to use THAT service! I think they need to pay me to use it.

Anyway.. did i mention that i've got diarrhoea and i was [almost] shitting my pants all this while walking up and down? I made it back just in time to go doo my booboo* in the kaka*. I couldnt believe my luck when i walked into the kaka and there was someone booboo-ing in there already and i had to wait.

*In case you didnt notice those arent actual words

Hooked On Smilez & Southstar

"Love, hate, mistakes...."

Lazy Person/Productive Worker

Primarily, i'm updating records to show that addresses customers provided are wrong. This enables the shop assistants to "confront" them next time they go to the shops for example to complain about some charges on thei phone or report an error.

Now this job is monotonous. I'm sitting there all day like blergh! It only took me a few hours to decide i wasnt gonna have a hardcopy of the list in front of me an keep typing all day. [apparently the girl before me did it that way].

So first i asked for it in Excel format. So i started copying, switching windows and pasting. By the end of the day i was sick of that too already. Especially the constant pressing of alt+tab. So i kept poking around further and found out that the was some built in scripting that could send keypresses. The problem with this is that it sends commands to the terminal, not windows. It doesnt say: "Hey Windows, pretend the user pressed a b c d". This meant i couldnt tell it to switch windows

The good news though was that, i was past pressing F1,F1,F4, blah blah blah continuously. But i wasnt happy enough. I wanted something to switch the windows to copy the text for me. Switch back to the VT wasnt a problem though cos i wrote a macro in Excel on the first day to delete the previous transaction ID, copy the new transaction ID, and switch windows.

I decided to find one of those programs that record keyboard presses and mouse movement and play them back. Trouble is most of them are too big and require registration. The computer isnt mine and i'd rather i got into no trouble even if it's at the cost of being lazy/productive.

I found one small enough. EZ Macros requires registration and expires after a few days, but what the makers overlooked is that because it a Winzip Executable file, you dont have to actually install it for it to work.

I just extracted into a folder. This means no registry changes are made. Every single time you run it, it shows up a "Hello thanks for trying out product. You have used this product for 0 days" .... or close. Dont bother telling me how wrong it is to use a program i'm supposed to pay for illegally. I dont need it anymore so it's chucked. Another thing is that, I couldnt have installed it anyway if i wanted cos i dont have administrative rights on the comp.

Anyway so i managed to record some macros that will switch windows for me. To call it, i tell Powerterm to run ezmacros and tell it which macro to run. Worked a treat. Except by this time i was tired of actually having to switch. I mean why cant Powerterm ACTUALLY read from a file? Oh! ma bad.. it seems it does. So i coughed up this script in about an hour:

You Think you'd Know a Wooden Spoon

My wooden spoon has been going AWOL as late.

Turned out that my flatmate, Anna, has been using it. When I confronted her about whether it was hers or not, she claimed she'd lost hers, and she just found it in the drying rack, so she used it thinking that it could have been hers.

Well, that was all sorted, but before I discovered why she was suddenly using it, I asked myself whether it was actually in fact mine. I mean, who studies wooden spoons to the point where you can recognise it, point blank, from a line up of them? Obviously there are different sizes and shapes, and colours, and types of wood, but do you notice the contours of the actual spoon bit. I realised that I never really noticed it before.

Plus my spoon is slightly charred at the tip. Aren't most wooden spoons? But I was thinking I'd remembered it charred even more and possibly had a crack in it, however I was thinking more of the spoon at home with the crack in it.

Talking about home. That's my destination after about 2:30pm today. I need a holiday. My Christmas holiday was practically robbed from me because of revision. I couldn't relax because I was too concerned about not doing any work.

But home is where the heart is. Truly.

Its my last exam(s) today. Possibly the hardest; General Anatomy. I'm not sure whether I'll be sleeping. I might snooze for a bit, then work, and take the rest of the sleep on the train home.

Perhaps I'll get a new wooden spoon when I get back..

More Than Productive

The good thing about the Powerterm scripting is that you can tell it to copy any text off the screen by telling it which co-ordinates (column by row) you want. Basically, on an error page, we'll have a different tite text for the terminal screen. I only wanted it to continue copying and pasting whiles it was on the right screen. ie. the job search screen (repair job).

You might also like to know that i'm not keeping it quiet and i'm the talk of the office now. Rightly so too. They were doing 300 a day and last time i checked, i was doing 2000+ a day and that was before i added this new script to do it all without my intervention.

Looks like getting a permanent job here is possible afterall. :)

You Know When To Get A Unix/Linux Box When...

But that's not important. This post is about why i think i should put together a box specifically so i can play around with Unix/Linux. I have 2 important reasons why... and some:

When you start issuing unix commands to a dos command promt and end up getting frustrated, cos you always realise too late but you'd already pressed enter When you fuck up a 20GB -- and almost lost a second 30GB -- harddrive trying to install FreeBSD alongside windows. When you have a spare case, a coupla 800MB harddrives, some graphics cards, some old motherboards, and some bits and pieces that are just rotting away. When you cant stand not having to open up a computer every now <$MTListItemIndex$>: <$MTListItem$>

So Fresh, So Clean

Then i spend the next three hours on public transport trying to work. There's been an accident on the Central Line and all trains on it have been called off for inspection for at least a week.

At one point in time, i was 5 minutes away from work. Then i managed to get on a bus going the other way. Silly ol' me eh? It's not going to be a problem getting back home though cos there is a shuttle for employees to the nearest Tube Station in service. Great. Now i'm off to lunch.

Oh... just to let you know. I think i'm gonna have to teach everyone in the office how to use my scripts. It's kindda silly me submitting 2000+ records a day and them submitting 400 at most. Ha!

Chips Assaisonnés Parpoulet avec Tampax

I dont know if you're reading this Mr. Patel, the propritor of that post office right by the Acton Main Line station. You know, that man with so much hair in his ears. I dunno for sure that you're called Patel, but chances are you are. Anyway.. i'm just telling you...

Dont put crisps near the Tampax boxes.

No wonder they've got so much dust on them. No one will buy them!!

Meanwhile.... what is wrong with this guy in my comments???

Too Much Energy

I tend to climb stair in bounds. Two at a time... all the time. I seem to prefer stairs to escalators on The Tube. Even when it's not so crowded. I did that on Saturday (or was it Friday?) when Abe came down to London.

I find myself standing more on buses and trains. Those times, especially when i've stood for half of a journey and a seat becomes available, i'm like,"Oh, fuck it... I might as well".

Too much energy.

Good End To A Bad Week?