07-04-2005
– Still going

I have decided, for now, to run the blog and the ‘Holm concurrently. There are things around here that won’t work in blog format (the bookshelf for one), but I am preferring the blog for what was on this page. From now on, look to the blog for rants/updates on my life etc, whilst come here for other things. This page is going to become more what it was intended – a first place to look to see what is new around the ‘Holm.

And in that spirit, a new book review: Clive Cussler’s Sahara.

The relationship between the blog and the Holm is going to be awkward for a while till I get set up with my own hosting, when the blog will nest nicely inside the site. If you were are one of the (few) frequent visitors to the Holm, then I would recommend you look at the Blog first. I will notify you there of anything worth looking at around here.

05-04-2005
– Traitor

I feel all traitorous for even thinking of doing this, but ah well. Go, view my blog – Blog. A work in progress, as always. I am in the process of changing things around, so this won’t be the first bit of upheaval you’re going to be seeing. Also, I should be working on uni stuff, so it will look rough-and-ready for a while. Enjoy.

01-04-2005 (evening)
– The Oven Strikes Back

Well, the curse of the oven strikes again. I was trying to make some flapjacks and I put them in the oven at the requisite 180 degrees. According to the recipe, JannyFlaps take 20-25 minutes, but I always check things after 10 minutes because our oven is pants and can’t cook things evenly. This time, I go back into a kitchen filled with smoke: once more, the oven has cooked insanely above temperature and incinerated the poor tray of flapjacks. 🙁 Possibly more worrying is that the smoke alarm didn’t go off… Ah well, the birds are going to have something tasty to eat tomorrow. *sigh*

01-04-2005
– A fluffy blue unicorn called ‘Kitty’

The fair has come to Southampton so, what else can a girl and her flatmate do, but go to the fair? Jo and myself went on Thursday afternoon, managed to spend nearly twenty quid between us, and have nothing to show for it bar one fluffy top hat wearing snake tied in knots a-piece, a plastic bow and arrow set (Jo’s pride and joy), and a fluffy blue unicorn creature called Kitty.

An explanation of sorts for the name I feel is in order. A couple of nights ago I had a very odd dream, the presence in which of a three-foot long, Bagpuss-striped, fluffy worm calling itself Kitty was only just the oddest part. I don’t normally remember my dreams, though lately I have had some with a recurrent Millfield (people from) theme that have freaked the crap out of me, so waking up with the full plot of the Kitty dream fresh in my mind was odd in and off itself. An attempt to explain the dream to Jo only lead to her even firmer in her convictions of my insanity, and a fresh appreciation of how bizare a worm called Kitty was. And then I won the unicorn-creature. When you see it you might understand why it could only be called Kitty. It took me five minutes before I realised it even was a unicorn!

Sorry for the dodgy quality of the pic, but I only have my camera-phone at the moment. Ooh, and look at my shiny keyboard and dual-screen goodness! *gloat* (Ignore the OED being used as a stand. That will be remedied when father dear gets all creative with some wood and kitchen-cupboard legs…)

Non-sequiter of the week:

• “Pigeons were mating in the birch tree today” – Moose. The point with it being a non-sequiter is that it needs no context 15-03-2005

31-03-2005
– A fluffy worm called ‘Kitty’

I’m trying to write this news item whilst listening to Blackadder Goes Forth on tape, so if it is littered with references to cunning plans, speckled Jim’s, and random typo’s caused by bursts of hilarity, blame Rowan Atkinson and co. I got back from a highly enjoyable but exhasuting Easter weekend spent on the boat on Tuesday, and I am still recovering! 48 locks in two and a half days, plus the installation of a new kitchen, reattaching the prop-shaft, hypothermia, and assorted other trials and tribulations – a normal weekend on the boat really. Great fun was had (in between groans of agony), and now I am back refreshed and ready to get on with planning dissertations and major projects and the like… Gulp

Films watched in March:
Life Aquatic
Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Dodgeball
Hotel Rwanda
Man on Fire
Tomb Raider 2
Phantoms
Layer Cake
Napoleon Dynamite
Mystic River
Hitch
Clerks
Constantine
One Night at McCools
Miss Congeniality 2
Roman Holiday

18-03-2005
– Well I’m in a state of mild shock.

Possibly I am doing the right course after all. I just got one of my marks back (the multimedia, xml, quite fun in a twisted kind of way) and I did rather well!

…

I am still waiting to hear about my databases project, so that will bring me back down to earth with a bump, but for now I am basking in the looks on tutors faces that I wish I could have seen when they found out I wasn’t such a blonde girl after all… Ok, so perhaps they weren’t surprised, but the impression I got from them last semester was that they were surprised when I managed to find my way back to the class each week. Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to gloat some more to flatmates…

10-03-2005
– Some more book reviews to read: Pride and Prejudice, Cryptonomicon, Tender is the Night, Cold Comfort Farm, and Oryx and Crake. I’m not totally happy with how the review section is lain out, so if you have any ideas, please let me know.

And now for the embarrassing admission: I have no idea how to use ftp! I am getting sick to the back teeth with geocities, as well as a url that sounds like it should belong to an old peoples home, and have pretty much decided that I am going to fork out for my own domain name and webhosting. No more evil adds! This though leads to a problem, because geocities has the nice interface to edit/upload things through. The webhosting service doesn’t seem to. I am perfectly capable of creating webpages on my computer, but I am at a loss to know how to get them from my harddrive to the servers, and then how to edit them etc. From what I can gather from the hosting peoples help files, they give you ftp codes, and then it is up to you… Help?!