i am sparticus: Words

Those Things Where You Observe Stuff About Movies And Everyone Nods Knowingly

You'd think that once in a while directors and script writers would stop and say 'you know, maybe in real life guards don't leave their posts on the hour every hour. Maybe instead they wait for someone to come and take over their position and then they leave. Maybe in real life someone who rotated the guards like that would be fired. And while I'm engaging my brain with the whole guard procedure in movies, maybe in real life one guard isn't left to patrol who areas of the perimeter. Maybe in real life they wouldn't only walk past a vulnerable area every fifteen minutes, maybe they might actually consider stationing a permanent guard there'

On Gambling

So here's the question. If you are playing games that cost you money and stand you the chance of winning money, but you aren't playing them to win money, is that still gambling? If you decide that you want to go out and play craps with your friends and decide that the enjoyment and fun you will have from playing craps with your friends is worth £20 then is there anything wrong with that? I'm happy to go with standard evangelical Christian belief that gambling to try to obtain money is wrong, that seems biblical. But yeah, playing games involving losing and winning money for fun?
I suppose you may ask that if the fun is the important part why do you need to do the whole money part of it? Why not play craps with chocolate money? Aside from it being a waste of chocolate money, I find it doubtful that you could get hold of a craps table for personal use.

On Losing Things

I had this whole entry lined up and ready to go, all about being noble and side stepping certain situations that would lead to embarrassment and frustration even if it made me look rude and uncouth. I'd written most of it out on my palm and was going to copy it over and do the whole "I'm a real writer" thing of spending time labouring over it and crafting the initial ideas into something beautiful. I was going to spend whole extended periods of time searching for the perfect adjectives and pondering which tenses I would use. I think I was even going to work really hard to make sure there was a punchline.
However, my Palm's batteries have died and I foolishly forgot to bring my charger or my hotsync cradle with me, so this is what is going to be written. Which is nice because it's not nearly as pretentious, I don't feel guilty about not reading it back over and instead just clicking publish. I'm also not too bothered about lacking some sort of punchline that leaves you smiling as your eyes leave the screen.

In His Hands

Back once again with the... uhh... however that song lyric goes. Comments are still broken, but we're not sleeping until we determine the source of the problem and put it to rest. Actually that's a lie, I don't know about you but I'm sleeping a lot, problems be damned.

update

Problems fixed. W00T.

I'm a muppet

Sorry, comments were broken and I was at Soul Survivor so I couldn't fix it. Still am come to speak of it. But I have a meeting. So I must go.

Later

Scratch that, need to actually update movabletype (the program that runs the comments). Therefore it'll have to wait till I get home. Sorry everyone.

The Yellow Rubber Duck Mystery

Below, is a yellow rubber duck.

If you are a Windows XP user then you probably recognise this yellow rubber duck as one of the images you can use for an account name. If you've used Mac OS 9 then you might recognise the duck from there. Or if you ever done any Adobe Photoshop tutorials then you might have seem the same duck there as well. Sometimes the duck faces left, sometimes the duck faces right. He's always smiling though, always looking like he's happy with his face splattered over thousands of monitors across the world.

And there-in lies the issue. Who is this duck? Does he (or even she) have a name? Isn't the duck slightly annoyed that every day people stare at him and click on him and don't even know his name? Who created this duck? Isn't the guy who created this duck going to be slightly annoyed that he gets no recognition whatsoever for the fact that his duck is now on tens of millions of computers world wide? Can't he claim copyright and sue Apple, Microsoft and Adobe?

We need more information on this duck. Google reveals nothing, and neither does Wikipedia. Someone somewhere must know. If nothing else we need to know the duck's name, so at least we can restore some respect to him.

Photo Albums

When trying to make a photo album for your website ignore all the tutorials that promise that they can convert movabletype into a photo album in five easy steps. Ignore Imagemagick and anything else that automatically makes thumbnails for you. Instead make sure you're outputting php pages and just use the PHP functions to sort out thumbnails. It's a lot easier.
Then when you've done all that coding, accidently delete the css file and give up.

Apple Apple Apple Appleman!

So I'm debating getting an Mac. Or rather, I'm debating getting a 14" 1.2ghz ibook with extra ram. Or rather I've stopped debating and am now actively searching for the best deal. I'm currently loving the student discount though.
Anyway, the request is this. People who have macs, what exactly do you use for FTP, Code/Text editing and general web browsing? Is the DVD player region free (forever, not just temporarily like Windows)? Can you setup apache / php to run as a localhost server for beta testing stuff? Is there an equivalent to Spider Solitaire? Does it really impress the ladies as much as it is supposed to? Anything I need to know?

Update

On a related note, if I buy a 206b ipod with my ibook, I can get one for £135. I don't really need an ipod, so if anyone wants one on the cheap...

Undskyld

Undskyld (pronounced un skool) is the Danish word for 'sorry'. You may wonder why I feel this word deserves such prominence when the English language already has a perfectly good word for sorry. Well the answer lies in the pronunciation of the words. You see, when you say sorry, it all to easily comes across all sarcastic sounding, all sorreee. However, you can't actually say undskyld correctly without sounding like a five year old. It's impossible to disbelieve that someone is genuinely sorry when they use the word undskyld.

Top Five Surreal Things That Happened To Me In Slovakia

• Seeing someone play volleyball in Estonian national dress.
• Danish Humour. Two lemons in a bathtub, one says to the other 'get me a drink', the other replies 'what am I? a computer?'. I'm hoping I've lost something in the translation.
• Telling someone about how great the Manic Street Preachers version of 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' is, then hearing it being played out of a tinny radio in a Slovakian tourist resort.
• Accidentally saying the one word I knew of Estonian at exactly the right time for it to make perfect sense and me to really offend someone.
• Trying to example to the pesky Danish why apple sauce makes sense with pork.

To Slovakia

The best way of working this whole 'what I did last summer' update is for me to go through chronologically what has happened in the last twenty four days. However, I am lazy and you may not really care. Instead, I'm going to write something very short about each thing I did, add a top five about each thing (which'll be in it's own entry for the sake of display) and a new and exciting word I've started using (which again will be in it's own entry). Photos will follow (when they are developed) and they'll probably be far more entertaining.

Anyway, what you've heard about Slovakia in the news and in the papers is probably a fair representation of the country. I'm sure you're all aware of anything important that has happened in Slovakia and I don't think I could add anything. In case you are unsure why I went, it was because I was helping with an international Christian youth camp. I got to speak and lead seminars, and I got to talk to people and all in all it was excellent. I did get to meet a wide range of people from Europe and learnt lots of exciting foreign words. I learnt how to say 'hello' in Polish (though I've since forgotten it), 'hello' 'how are you?' 'good bye' 'thank you' 'please' 'you'll learn' and 'I'm a chicken/duck' in Danish and 'hello' 'good night' 'I completely disagree' 'shut up' 'whatever' 'go to hell' (literally, 'go to the forest') in Estonian. I also flicked through a book called 'Revival's Golden Key: Official Training Manual for End-time Believers' which title's alone makes me want the people who wrote it to be left behind and face all that crazy stuff. Oh, and we got to fly a prop plane for a short internal polish flight.

Home Sweet Home

This was going to be one of those typical, "I'm back, holidays were great, very tired, will blog more soon" posts. However, I'm tired, so make up something yourself.
Oh and so the record shows, the first website I visited after being away from the internet for twenty four days was my own. I'm that sort of a person.

I was Sparticus

Well I think Walley should be home anytime soon, so my blogging here has come to an end. Lets have a review of what we have learned so far :

1) We should all have flying cars
2) Marko loves the cock
3) Ntl are stupid
4) The Porsche liquidizer makes me orgasm

As im sure no one has noticed there is nobody visits the site anymore. I can only assume people just dont understand my fantastic comedy stylings and want more blogs on god or something. We shall just have to see how successful my spin off blog www.iwassparticus.co.uk does.

A review of Siemans MB91101 Porsche Liquidizer

I purchased the 'Siemens MB91101 Porsche Liquidizer' about 6 months ago after deciding that juice from the Tesco supermarket chain was not satisfactory enough. I had several juicers before this one, they were so bad that I dare not even THINK their name! Taking Siemens MB91101 Porsche Liquidizer home and juicing some fruit was a dream come true! It juices sooo well, I juice so many things, oranges, potatoes, carrots, even lettuce. I EVEN MANAGED TO JUICE A LOIN STEAK! SUPERB! Sometimes before juicing I chop my items for juicing on my 'Chasseur End Grain Hevea Chopping Block Round'. Juicing has never been so thrilling, while using this product I recommend listening to a spot of the Cheeky Girls, their colourful music makes juicing even more choice. The 'Siemens MB91101 Porsche Liquidizer' turns juicing into a memorable experience, not just for you but also for the whole family. Sometimes, on a Tuesday evening, I want to be left alone to do my juicing, just for a special juicing bonanza.
I even make juice for my neighbours every Sunday! That's 20 houses, A LOT OF JUICING, I CAN TELL YOU! Last Sunday I juiced 800 oranges and 300 Lemons to make a refreshing lemon and orange juice mix, I call it 'the Seb special' refreshing Sunday morning lemon and orange juice combination', I think I will also drink it on Fridays, I usually eat a sausage and a soft boiled egg with it.
it's slim line stature allows excellent portability, you can never tell when you will want some juice so I take it nearly everywhere, to work, on holiday, in my car, the swimming pool and sometimes even job interviews, nothing beats freshly squeezed juice to calm the nerves.

Blogging from Work

Yes thatís right a blog from work. Although it somehow dawns on me that no one was even reading these blogs anymore I somehow felt the urge the write how much I love cream soda. lately I have falling in love with Sweet Tatters. They are like sex in potato form. Its like eating a potato covered in sugar but is actually better for you than a regular potato. I would also like to announce my new job as sweet potato spokesman. You cant get better than a potato Thais sweet! 'Just eat it' (Warning : may cause loss of scalp and penis)
More importantly was the worrying feeling that the University of Glamorgan havenít received my UCAS letter telling them I accept the course and when I turn up in September they will be all 'Iím sorry sir feed the bum night is Wednesdays only'. Also the lack of commitment to my student loan forms was pretty poor. They took half a forest and used 90% of every ink cartridge in the machine just the print the thing and then I spell my name Sebostian. Good thing it wasnít my printer. On the plus side both parents I live with are now retired = mucho casho for me.
Now as Iím blogging for work I shall give everyone a little insight of the current situation. I call it an 'NTL Special'. They planned a huge 'harmony' upgrade over the next 4 days, which is where they merge some of the old systems together with what we use so eventually everyone in ntl uses the same program to log calls. During this time the call centre gets very few calls because we cant access any information or run any diagnostics. They planned it for the next 4 days, however 'Team Harmony' (the people who do the upgrade) have decided to make the upgrade go more smoothly they are best off leaving it until the end of August. Fair enough. Except they have already rota'd hundreds of agents off for the next 4 days, and were the only team working 4pm - 12am. There are currently : 100 calls waiting. The average wait time = 1270 seconds, which is roughly 20 minutes. On arriving at work, there were 181 calls waiting.
Im starting to think ntl are stupid....