Marking makes the world go round

Or drags it to a screaming halt.

Um, nothing much to say. Actually, that's not really true, but it's almost midnight, and I've spent the last ten hours working, so I'm not entirely thinking straight at the moment. So maybe you'll get more tomorrow....

Miracles and Marvels

Looks like Todd McFarlane is going to be slightly poorer after all the details are hashed out. I wonder if we’ll be seeing that Spider-Man/Spawn series next year after all, depending on the amount of money Gaiman asks for tomorrow. One less obstacle to the reprinting of Marvelman, only 1,873 to go (we should start having bets as to whether Zenith or Marvelman will make it out of the gate first at this rate).

Tropical Storm Kyle. Heading this way. The temperatures are still crazy here - it was 32?C today. But this is most unusual for this time of year, so don't send death threats just yet....

Testing

Yay, I finally found the link to this place. Hopefully this should work. I’m going to try something else that probably won’t work but who cares?

lance

Deathwish

On Monday, I decided that I wasn’t going to install RedHat 8.0 until a few weeks after its release, having just attempted an unsuccessful CPU upgrade. So why am I sititng in front of my computer trying to regain control of my system after installing 8.0? I have just over an hour before The West Wing starts. I’ve only managed to do two hours of work today, not counting lectures. There are times where I’m simply stupid.

Now that's a nasty transition...

Having a summer break inbetween episode 1 and episode 2 of the second season? That’s classy.

Chuck Palahniuk doesn't look like the type of person who would write Fight Club. He's older than you think, as well. The Q&A session was quite enjoyable, with lots of useful information being given and funny stories being told. Of course, I managed to forget my camera, so I didn't get any pictures.

Something Big is happening in Buffy. I've get a few theories, but I'll stay quiet for the moment. Especially since most of you won't be able to see it until January...

Bonnie - you will cry when you see this Smallville episode. And there's still half of it left to go. I'm sensing that we might even get some kryptonite before the final credits roll. It's that good.

currently playing: Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Under Your Spell

The Arrival of the Shiny...

It’s probably a bit of a disappointment after buying the iBook on Thursday, but this what I ordered last weekend:

The Cybershot U10

It doesn't look like the Sipix Blink camera I got a few months ago will ever be supported under Linux. As it doesn't work with MacOS either, it's just a paperweight at the moment, and I want to be able to send everybody lots of amateurish pictures of Chapel Hill. The new camera works with both Linux and MacOS, so expect lots of pictures in the near future. I'll probably be putting them up on my Linux box; at the moment there's two test pictures for you to view (I'm still playing with all the features, so forgive me if they look less than wonderful). It's also 5cm x 2cm x 1cm, so it's not much bigger than the Blink, and it has a 1.3 Megapixel CCD, so the pictures should be quite reasonable.

I should have kept quiet yesterday; once again I have a huge workload, And the marking...the horror, the horror...

The fates twist again: one of my midterm exam dates is October 23rd. I'm going to the Sleater-Kinney concert the night before. Normally, this is where I would consider not attending the concert in order to revise. That Is Not Going To Happen. I've been looking forward to this for three years, and a poxy exam isn't enough to prevent me from being there. Incidentally, this may the greatest weblog post in history. Han and Charlie make a great stalker double act.

currently playing: Low - Point Of Disgust

Almost forgot!

The UPS website says that the shiny should be here tomorrow….

currently playing: The Strokes - Last Nite

Another day, another fire alarm.

Bonus points for setting the alarm off in daylight hours. However, actually causing a real fire is looked upon as cheating by the Gentlemen of the Fire Alarm Sport Commitee. The Committee also resents having to spend two hours wandering around Chapel Hill, not being able to do anything because their wallets are still in the building. Bad form.

This weekend hasn't been as hectic as most weeks, but I imagine that it's just an aberration. I have some more marking to do tomorrow, for a start. The mid-term exams are not far off as well, which is fairly scary.

Where am I at this moment? For a partial answer to this question, point a vCalendar-compatible application at my first iCal calendar, At the moment, it only shows when I have lectures or TA office hours, but it'll grow as I get busier.

Finally managed to catch up on some of the outstanding DVDs I have to watch last night. I started with Double Indemnity, which was a rather depressing affair, but a well-made film nonetheless. After that, I decided I wanted something a little more upbeat, so I unwrapped my just-arrived copy of Singin' In The Rain. They did a fantastic job on the restoration - it looks like it was made yesterday. Technicolor Goodness. I still have His Friday, The Apartment, and the new special edition of Pulp Fiction to watch, plus I will have two new Netflix films heading my way tomorrow - oh, and I taped Wait Until Dark during the Audrey Hepburn special on AMC last week, so there's that as well. It's a good thing that the current cinema releases are fairly uninspiring at the moment (The Truth About Charlie has been pushed back again, this time to October, so I can't even go and watch that for train wreck amusement), otherwise I'd be even further behind.

I can't believe that the bank charged me $2 for a statement. Am I supposed to just know the contents of my bank account? Okay, I should really sign up for the Internet banking system that they have, but I still don't have my Social Security Number, so I'm not allowed to yet. Strangely, I seem to have much more money in my account than I think is correct, so I might have been paid this month after all...

currently playing: Echobelly - The World Is Flat

"Superman!"

One of the many long-running jokes over at The V Forum is that Nick Locking, purveyor of fine robotics, gets teary-eyed when watching the final scenes of The Iron Giant. Having finally managed to sit down and watch it last night, I can see what he’s talking about. sniff

Apple released iSync today, so I've been playing about with that this evening, filling the address book with entries from my Visor. I'm still getting used to MacOS X, but it seems rather wonderful so far...

My Weakness

Thanks for the advice, everybody. It seems that the majority opinion is that my power supply is simply too feeble for the new chip. When Fall Break comes around, I’ll get a 400W power supply, and see whether that fixes things.

If nothing else, yesterday showed me the dangers on just relying on one computer. So I bought a new one today.

I have now reached the apogee of computer elitism; I now own an Apple Mac. A 700MHz iBook, to be precise. My sister refuses to talk to me. Especially after she found out that I had an AirPort card as well. First thoughts are very positive - iTunes is as easy to use as they say it is, and I have access to almost all of my Linux software through the Fink distribution. I haven't been able to connect to a wireless network yet, but I might be able to try and find one tomorrow...

This is blog entry 100. Which is fairly scary, but not as scary as the calendar, which shows I've made an entry every day so far this month. I've made a few changes to the site this morning, fixing a few links, and moving some old pages into the MovableType system. You shouldn't notice too many differences. I suppose I should get around to updating the Amazon entry, as I finished Newjack two weeks ago.

One thing I do miss about home is the music shops, specifically HMV. You can go inside any HMV in Britain, at any time of the year, and there'll be a huge sale on. They range from 'Two for one' deals on chart albums, to a general clearing of their stock. Obviously, there's a lot of rubbish, but you'll always find something worth buying. By contrast, the music shops over here don't seem to have anything on sale except for "Pan Pipes play Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music". Which is a shame, as it means that all my music purchases now happen on the Internet. Amazon tends to be cheaper than most of the shops around here, plus they have a bigger catalogue of titles available...