So we're running a residential for these young people, and it's all looking good. People are going to enjoy it. We've got glo-sticks to use in some night time outdoor activities. Of course, it's now snowing. Snow means slippery wet surfaces, frost and closed roads. The residential centre is in the middle of no-where. Curse you snow!
Hey kids! I'm not sure I agree with the methodology, but I sure agree with the sentiment.
Today it's Grey Tuesday! Go have a look.
I've never been particularly sold on idea of lent. The whole "well I'll give something up for forty days and I'll be a better person for it" idea doesn't appeal. However the whole "do something that focuses your mind on God for forty days" idea does make sense. Therefore I shall do something for lent. I don't know what, but it will be good. Watch this space (intermittently though, watching it continuously would just be silly, and you'd get really bored).
Right, so two weeks ago I got a letter off some debt collection people on behalf of O2 saying that O2 intend to sue me. I was obviously rather peaved at this on a whole bunch of levels. Firstly for never informing me that I owed them money, secondly for never giving me a reason for my owing them money, thirdly that the money they were sueing me for was five times larger that the figure I owed and fourthly for sullying the good name of Mark Nathan Walley. So I wrote some letters, as did my parents, I also e-mailed them repeatedly (I would have rung them, but as previously noted, nobody (not any of the 118's, nor O2 regular, nor the debt collection people) had their number). No reply for two weeks. Then today, a letter arrives in the post, a personalised letter! With a non-0900 phone number! And a name to speak to! So I ring them up, speak to some guy, who apologies for not contacting me about the debt, for sueing me for so much and for not replying to my e-mails for two months. I explain to him that I'll pay the nineteen quid as it turns out I genuinely owe them, but no more as it's not my fault that I didn't pay it. He agrees, I pay them ninteen pounds and he agrees to make sure my credit rating stays at the lofty heights (or lowly depths, whichever one of those is good for a credit rating) it's already at. Hooray!
So that's it for O2 now. Barring them billing me huge amounts of money, or forgetting to tell the debt collection people to stop hounding me, or firing rockets at my house. Huzzah!
So for a few years now, I've been thinking I've got Seasonal Affective Disorder or at least Sub-Syndromal SAD. I've had the symptoms since I was eighteen so there was always the chance it was just a late spurt of teenage angst or something. However, the other day I was coming home from Cambridge and I started listening to "Read Music/Speak Spanish" by the Desaparecidos which I got last year at Christmas. You know how sounds and smells will sometimes bring back really vivid memories. Well while listening to the the Desaparecidos I got the really strong feeling of having that "just woken up" breath in my mouth. Now the Desaparecidos album isn't boring or sleep making, but train journies are, and I listened to that album mostly on the train.
Now this may seem slightly irrelevant but I got the Hell Is For Heroes album May-ish time, and I listened to that mostly on the train. I rate the albums about the same (HIFH's album though has got "I Can Climb Mountains" on though which is the best song ever about mountains) but the HIFH album doesn't remind me even slightly of that groggy foul mouth taste. So I'm thinking that this means I sleep more in winter, and that would agree with me having Seasonal Affective Disorder. Okay so while it doesn't prove it scientifically, it does prove that buying cds is a good thing. Possibly.
Every morning I travel to work through an underpass that allows safe passage (Safe between the hours of 8am and 10pm anyway) between one side of the busy main road and the other. Every morning there is a busker at the bottom of the steps leading down to my corner of the underpass. There are two buskers who busk there (I'm not sure how they arrange it, they must have a rota or something) one busker (and we'll call him Mr. Entrepreneurial busker) makes a lot of effort; he has a special pot to throw money in, he's got a nicely written sign, he's even got CDs he can for sale (£3 quid). He always asks people politely when they come past for some money and always says thank you and nods his head at people, even if they don't give him anything. The other busker (and we'll call him Mr. Slacker busker) just has a coat that he puts on the floor. He ignores everyone and most of the time faces the wall, if you throw money on his coat he'll ignore you and carry on playing.
Mr. Entrepreneurial busker is also the worst guitar player I have ever heard. The entire time I was in hearing of him this morning he only played two notes, one after the other. Okay so he did incorporate other sounds into it, like the sounds of strings twanging badly, and him hitting the guitar neck with his hand, but that doesn't really count. I'm tempted to buy one of his CDs just to hear how truely awful it is.
Slacker busker on the other hand, is amazing. I've never heard him attempt a cover version (at least of anything I know) but everything he plays is catchy and sounds awesome. If he had a CD I'd buy it in a second.
The moral of this story? Rubbish buskers can make money too. The British public as a whole has no decent music taste.
I'd just like to make the point that cambridge internet cafe's are a lot worse than oxford ones, however they are a lot cheaper in Cambridge 1. I'd also like to point out that right now I'm breaking from my decision of only writing when I have something vaguely entertaining to write about. I don't. If you're only reading this to procrastinate you can go back to work now, nothing I say in this entry is of any value what so ever!
This really is the shoddiest internet cafe I've ever used. I just installed MSN Messenger and it didn't stop me. Surely that's not good. Oh! I also have control panel access. The havoc I could cause! Shoddy indeed.
1) This is based on having used one internet cafe in Oxford and one in Cambridge. So a good objective study here.
You can search the ESV bible online, and cleverly the geeks who run the service have compiled a list of abbreviations people use for bible books aimed at web programmers who have bible search software things going on. So they know they have to include mark, mk and mr, but not mrk. Okay so this isn't revolutionary, or particularly interesting, but what does fascinate me is the fact that Genesis is the most queried book, beating Matthew (the second most queried book) by approximately 3000 queries. Not that I'm dissing Genesis, and not that I wanted Matthew to win (I didn't... Go Team Romans! Woo Yeah!) but I find it very odd that it scored so high. Poor Obadiah though. That's gotta hurt.
Today, I shall be mostly testing my strength by working next to these pringles for as long as possible. I shall not be partaking of any pringle related eating untill my will power gives in. I can do it, I will prevail!
This is very temporary, expect a proper page to come soon, however it does work.
Black and White
Laser Guided Bombs
Icy Pixels
Red White And Blue
Orangy Pixel
Back To Randomness
Okay, so I can't work out a way to get it back to being random after you set the skin. Don't worry, I'll work on it and figure out a way.
This is what is wrong with the internet. I here by propose that for every one geek who is on the internet, three regular non geek people shall be added.
A long short time ago I learnt that it's not a good idea to blog purely for the sake of blogging. There is no point, it just winds people up. However, I appreciate that the people (whoever they are) want stuff (whatever that is). So with that in mind, I'd like to thank the following people.
Thank you all. Good Night
So it's all changed. Version 12 is here, hooray! You may think, well this is rather dull, I'm not sure I like this. In that case close your browser down, step away from the computer and count to ten with your fingers in your ears. Then, return to your computer, open up your browser1 and reload this site. Magic huh?
I wouldn't be a real geek if I didn't mention the release of Firefox here.
Sorry. It was ten minutes late. More coming online as you read this.
Comments working, search working, contact form working, about page working...
Everything now except the archive pages.
O2 are now intending to sue me. I haven't been told what the money they want to reclaim is for yet, or told anything by them at all in fact, but still that doesn't stop them. Once the new design is up (and I'm still aiming for ten o'clock) I'll have a seperate O2 part of the site setup, with all my posts that I have ever written complaining about O2 on. It turns out I have quite a decent number of them. Along with that will be more details of O2's intended litigation (or technically details of the people O2 employ to do all their work's litigation against me). Wonderful.
22:00! 10pm! 10 O'clock! 17:00 hours EST!
I have no idea whether or not I'll get everything done by then, but at least I have something to aim for.
Hullo!
Sparticus here, currently I'm away from this internet malarky, so I won't be properly writing again till Tuesday. Rotten luck eh? But before I retire I'd just like to say how beastly people can be on trains sometime. I was aghast by some of these young (and old!) rapscallions! Still, one must'nt tarnish all of them with the same brush! Why only the other day Mr. Smithe-Wearslot was saying how he got stuck on a train and they all had rather a good sing-song.
Still, that's enough about trains one thinks. Must Dash.
I'm still looking for resturants in Swansea (see below), but I had just had to post this. You know when you see a really romantic gesture and you think "the whole world should be told of this feat"? Well here is something that'll warm your heart. I saw this in a shop window and thought, if only someone loved me enough so that they'd be willing to splash out this sort of money on me.
Seeing as I've been so helpful as of lately (and I like to think I have), could somebody please recommend a decent (non-Indian 1) restaurant in Swansea. Apart from it not being an Indian restaurant it has to be within walking distance of the train station and not stupidly expensive.
Also it is probably worth noting that it'll be on Wednesday night, so Wind/e Street will probably be alright. Probably.
In preparation for the "why are you going to a restaurant?", "who with?", "is it a girl?", "is it a date?", "you hate Indian food don't you?", "are you home then?", "how long for?", "how about we go out and get drunk?" questions. Restaurants are cool, my friend, yes, no, no (see the footnote), soon, a few days, Yes Tuesday night as long as it's drink not drunk. In that order.
1: It's not that I don't like Indian food, on the contrary, I love it. However, the person who I am taking out for dinner doesn't really like Indian food (the poor person) so alternatives need to be found.
We need to use the word "shoddy" more. No-one uses the word shoddy nearly enough these days and it's a tragedy. It's such a handy word to use, and has so many uses in this day of inept workmanship and poorly trained staff. Shoddy!
Shotgunning is the practice of orally staking a claim on something. In this case the passenger seat in a car. Unfortunately over the years this practice has been abused and significantly devalued. If the abuse continues at this rate soon it will become a relic of a past society. To stem the tide of abuse here, in full, are the complete rules of shotgunning the passenger seat in a car.
These are currently the authorative rules of shotgunning. They are not open to discussion, although amendmants will be made if clarification is needed.
Amendment 1: Clarification, suggested by Ben
Amendment 2: Addition to cover owners of cars, suggested by Seb
Amendment 3: Addition suggested to cover simultaneous shotgunning cases, suggested by Ben
This is a website by Mark Walley. If you want to find out more or get in touch, that'd be nice.
Getting around this website can be a tad confusing. If you're looking to explore the better stuff of what I've written then this navigation should help you. If you're after a specific post then searching or looking through the archives chronologically may help.
This site tries its best to be accessible for everyone. Atom, and RSS feeds are available. All content licensed through a creative commons licence. I may have stolen ideas off you when you weren't looking, but it was almost certainly an accident. As with all claims of originality and ownership Psalm 24 v1 applies.
