Carrots handbags cheese toilets Russians planets hamsters weddings poets Stalin

Baaaaa! Here follows a year-by-year rundown of this decade.
( 2000 )

( 2001 )

( 2002 )

( 2003 )

( 2004 )

( 2005 )

( 2006 )

( 2007 )

( 2009 )

( 2009 )

I've probably left out loads of events. This is more meant as a selection rather than a complete history.

Friday was the work Christmas party. People were getting very drunk; I left the time that people started doing lapdances for each other! I didn't take any photos, but I know there are some somewhere. (None of me, I'm glad to say). I went to Aldgate to go bellringing to hide from the debauchery.

Saturday:
Afternoon I went ringing at Westminster. I don't often get nervous when ringing, but the prestige of them is enough to unsettle me a little.
Last in the evening I went round to see snork_maiden who I'd not seen for far too long and we headed out to spiral scratch. A great little place, in a pub just off Charing Cross road. I keep forgetting when it's on, but have enjoyed it each time I've gone.

Sunday:
A day I'll not forget for a long time. It was the first Sunday service ringing at Edgware since I started training the band. Such a proud moment, and it went really well.

In the afternoon there was more bellringing at Hackney and Islington, and then I went back to Hackney for drinks in the Pembury Tavern. A fantastic evening, and was great to catch up with people (especially those like missyk8 who I'd not seen for ages). Got the bus to KX with S. and even arrived in time for the last tube home \o/

Ugh. So this going-to-bed-earlier lark didn't work out well. Not that I haven't enjoyed myself - far from it - just that I'm struggling with the lack of sleep. It doesn't seem all that long ago when I use to regularly get by on 4-5 hours a night with the occasional 6-7 catchup. Now it seems to be a 7-8 with a slightly less common 9-10 catchup.
Anyway, so what've I been up to this week? (I've been asked about my mini hiatus from writing in my journal by more than one person. It's hugely flattering to know you're that interested in my blatherings. I've made notes of what i've been up to but am waiting for when I have time compose a worthwhile entry.)

Tuesday night I went to
Marine Ices
And then to a bar with
Bluehelen.
Was great to catch up without having to fight the bustle that is typical of our usual mutual haunts such as
Bmovie.

Wednesday wasn't awful, it just didn't turn out the way I had intended. By way of preamble, a friend has done a load of resoration work on a church in the city of london. It's not as well known as one might thought, considering how well-known is a song in which it appears. These bells haven't been in a functional condititon for over 100 years. They now are, and I've rung at a couple of services there during the week when I worked next to
The gherkin
This friday is a fundraising launch party and publicity event, and I was going to help set up equipment there. The spanner in the works (pun not intended, but left in for good measure) was that the trailer which was going to be used to transport things over was blocked in by an unknown vehicle. I had reached the church and was waiting for a while so again it was very late when I got home.

Last night I went out with colleagues from work. There were 2 departments (loosely speakingcustomer servies and tech), and it was good to finally meet some of the people I'd seen on the internal ticketing system. (the two depts are at different offices)
Ended up staying out very late, but still managed to get the last tube home. Once again it was a noisy bar and I was struggling to hear at times, particularly toward the end of the night when I was tiring so coping even less well.

Given loud enough background noise am sure even fully hearing people would struggle to hear, but though my hearing (as far as I know) is normal, based upon the facility with which most of my peers conduct conversation in noisy atmospheres I seem to struggle more than most. Having spoken to deaf people about it, I've heard occasional mention of cognitive deafness.

I don't know if any such tests exist, but that's pretty much what it feels like. I find it so tiring as I concentrate so hard and people sometimes mistake the resulting facial expression for aggression.

Towards the end of the night I spent it talking to one person who pointed out that I was "on edge". His english was easily converasational, but I think I would have struggled to explain the above. There's a story i've started using because it's easier to explain in noisy circumstances, that I fell asleep next to a bass canon in a club a few years ago. After that he took much more care to speak clearly. I know it's perhaps missing the hugedifferences between the two types (well, ok there are many more) of deafness, but in loud situations I rarely have the ability to explain.

I was intending this post to be a short one. Oops.

Back to the grindstone for today, carter usm gig this evening (and having heard through the grapevine, I know loads of the people going), then to katie and Zeke's housewarming.

The fact I couldn't go to the science festival in York actually worked in my favour. On a mailing list of which I'm a member, one of the other subscribers wrote about a Python conference in Birmingham. It took place over the weekend when the science festival started, so I was able to go to that instead. I go the train up on Friday and stayed with bethanthepurple - t'was fab to see you and catch up.

Organisation-wise, having been to other cons in the past, two things of note stand out, and they may be of interest to other con-goers/organisers. 1) double sided name badges. (when on a string they tend to flap about and sometimes turn over) 2) lightning talks. These take the form of a long slot in the timetable for several speakers to have a 5 minute slot in which to make a short presentation, have a rant, whatever.

Reading over this post I realised that when I say going to this event instead worked in my favour, I missed out why. I ran a lightning talk of my own, on the subject of genetic algorithms. I ran out of time, annoying so was cut short at the 5 minute point. That said, I quite enjoyed doing it, and aroused some interest because a number of people spoke to me about it afterwards.

Interestingly someone else had written a python suite for GA stuff, though his app was to solve the timetabling problem.

I might re-run that as a longer talk at the London Python group. Ideally I'd like to record it and put it online because it's qute an academic subject and I'd like to make it a bit more approachable. If not at London Python then I'll record it myself.

It's odd - having done training in previous jobs, and teaching the Edgware band to ring, i'm still very nervous when doing the standup and talk style of teaching. Ì might book myself on a course, because it will be useful even though I don't do a lot at the moment.

On Friday night I went to darkgoddesskim's birthday party. Such a fabulous place, dear, I hope you stay for a while. Was also good to catch up with ruth_sedina — thanks for the knitting pattern.

( knitting pattern for a hat beneath )

Saturday was the Pride march. Was good fun, but also very wet. Finished off with drinks in The Chandos.

I'm not talking about mouldy yoghurt.
On Sunday I went to the British Library to see the gallery on London maps. It was a huge queue - almost an hour of waiting. Sadly I was too tired to take much of it in, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Despite previous woes about getting tickets, I've managed to find a pair for Placebo tomorrow night. *fingers crossed* that they arrive in time. I'm so looking forward to that - it made my day yesterday evening when I won the ebay auction. I was so excited that I had to share it with the person to whom I was offering support on the phone :-)

Next Tuesday and Thursday, Ig Nobel are offering a couple of London lectures. I'm going with a colleague to the one on Tuesday. Anyone else fancy joining us? Tickets are free. For those not in London, there are a few other dates/places linked on that page.

Heute Abend geh' Ich bei Deutschclub.

Next saturday will bring a new experience. I shall probably document that after it happens.

I know it's a long way ahead, but I'm planning to host a new year party at the House in Burnt Oak, assuming it's all ready in time. Current indications are that there are no problems.

Crash space can be provided and I'm hoping to have about a dozen guests total, for which I'll most likely cook food. Assuming the plan comes together as we intend, it will be me, _lexx and cyberpunkgrrl as your hosts in residence. Who'd like to come? Who wants crash space? Post a link to your eating habits etc.

In order to complete another task on my 101 in 1001 list, I'd like to have it as a themed party. After brief conversations in the pub, the suggestions so far are: "Come as you aren't" (i.e. something that you would not normally wear) and "something beginning with the first letter of your name". Any better ideas?

_lexx and cyberpunkgrrl: feel free to repost this invite in your own journals if you wish

Busy at work, so I'll be brief. I saw the house yesterday and loved it. Loads of potential . I've put an offer in and am waiting to hear back from the agent. as I type this I get a text message from the vendor accepting the offer.

I'm moving to Burnt Oak.

*fingers crossed* for a pre-Christmas completion.

Going to the Tech Pub Crawl tonight.

_lexx: Shit, sorry, I left the phone at home so meeting up in town won't be an option. Catch up with you on IRC later this evening?

Friday morning, though I booked it off work, I got bored and installed Nagios on the work servers so that we can be alerted when stuff goes wrong.

Got a train up to Manchester and headed back to xugglybug's place where we got pizza and watched Phenomenan.

Saturday headed into town for BiFest, which was fab. Was great to meet up with people who I don't get to see very often. I miss Manchester loads, having spent almost a third of my life there, though I love London too. A weekend doesn't seem long enough - I may spend new year there if I don't move into another place here in London (if I do then I'll most likely host a party myself). Introduced a few people to the wonders of the game Set.

Sunday: went into town again and met up with phuturatica and was introduced to Suburb - lovely place, and cheap too. Randomly saw Chris. Stayed there much of the afternoon and headed to Moon Under Water for food, only to find out they'd sold out of most dishes. Still had a fab meal and left for the train shortly before 2000. It would've been a 2 hour journey, getting me home for 2230 ish, though my train was cancelled so I had to do it in two stages changing at Birmingham. I got home at 0130 ish, later by than the original journey would have taken.

Didn't have the energy to do anything other than sleep, so flopped into bed.

Thursday's pub meet was most entertaining. poggs and I (and possibly a third person) were coming up with amusing ways to annoy webdevelopers with data mangling. We came up with mod_mangle, an Apache module to close a few random tags when a page is served and also a firmware patch for routers to put in random semi-colons and braces in javascript. Geeks, eh? :-)

Clearing air over less-than-perfect past events is so liberating. (Thanks - you know who you are.)

Saturday: Afternoon was another picnic by the lock on the canal in Camden. nearly_everyone was there - too many to mention. I also got a haircut. Sorry, bluehelen and stephmog. Had a late meal in the Ice Wharf and then headed back to the Dev. There I learned to play Duell (wikipedia article that I wrote explaining it), a dice game which looks quite interesting, and I'd like to play a few more games. I'm getting a board made, so that'll be fun.

Didn't do much today apart from Laundry. Oh, whilst I think of it, the Sunday service bellringing was excellent. We had a few visitors from Cornwall so were able to do some advanced stuff and it went flawlessly. It's so rewarding when it goes well.