Thursday, February 17, 2005

Adopt-a-Fetus

The internet really does have some strange stuff on it, take this for example. A place where you can adopt a fetus. Slightly beyond me what the thrill is exactly, but I thought I'd get myself one anyway. So here he is:



I adopted a cute lil' death fetus from Fetusmart! Hooray fetus!


Cute little bugger isn't he?

Edit: I also used by basic photoshop knowledge to make myself a weebl fetus. Wooyay.



Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Overheard on RuneScape...

Person: What does your robe do?
Monk Person: It says that I feel closer to God. Does that mean I'm going to die?
Made me laugh, so I thought I'd put it up here. I overheard it while I was doing a spot of mining.

If you don't know what RuneScape is, it's basically a Massivly Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), that is all browser based, so no downloads, and is free. Sure there are some idiots on there, but if you can work past that it's a half-decent game. Linky if you're interested. Look me up on there, character name is Ithilinen, I usually hang around on World 15.


Monday, February 14, 2005

Sneaky second post

Just thought I'd post this link right here. Have fun.

Valentines Day

So I look at the date today and I think, "Oh God, it's that time of year again". Valentines day, or as the businesses would probably like to call it, "all your money are belong to us" day. Exactly why this day exists has always intrigued me. Now, I can see the logic in wanting to do special things with that special person, but why reserve a particular day for it? There's 363(4) other days in the year, so why this one? So I thought I'd look into a bit more.

Typically, it's origins are rather boring. The name comes from a St. Valentines, who allegedly arranged illegal marriages, as some big and important person had declared marriage illegal because they found that single men made better fighters. There was also something about secret love letters and prisons, but that was about as interesting as it got. On February 15, there used to be some old Roman holiday, which was actually quite cool. It involved dipping torn up bits of wolf in their own blood, then running around and painting every women you could find with said blood-stained wolf bit. The funny thing is, the women enjoyed this. From this I conclude that ancient Roman women were actually all goths, and thus liked that sort of thing. However, the Christian church, always keen to ruin other peoples fun, decided that the painting of women with wolf blood wasn't really all that Christian, so they decided to replace the Roman tradition with what we now know as valentines day. Well, that's the general gist of it anyway, and I may have combined several theories together because I like the sound of them, so I wouldn't be too surprised if the above is a fabricated load of waffle.

Now that's all well and good, but I still don't really understand what the modern valentines day is all about. The purchasing of cards with really cheesy messages on, that have been produced by some bloke in a back room of some factory who gets paid to write cheesy messages to put on greetings cards. Just because you can buy a card with a message that was written by a complete strangers isn't really much of an indication of your own true feelings doesn't really prove a whole lot in my opinion. I guess what it all boils down to is my dislike of the way that nice holidays are becoming increasingly over commercialised, such as Christmas, Easter, and all the other ones that I can't think of right now. Valentines day is going down the same route, pretty soon it will be meaningless and filled to the brim with cheap plastic stuff. Which is rather quite sad, as the concept of valentines day itself is quite a nice one. I have nothing against the concept, just the way businesses try to sell it to us. And, of course, there's no resentment in the fact that I'm currently single :P

Well I apologise for the length of that; I do have a nasty habbit of going on and on (and on and on) sometimes. If anyone has subtracted a case of chronic boredom as a result of reading this, and needs someting to ease their pain, then might I suggest clicking here for some Team Laser Explosion action. Lastly, I hope everyone has had a good day. I know I have, I had pie and waffles for dinner, which rocked mightily. Until next time, drive safely and remember that if you should come face to face with a rabid emu, then the best advice I can give is to run as fast as you can in the opposite direction, screaming as loudly as possible. Goodnight folks.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Lent

It's that time of year again, where people intentionally sacrifice something that they enjoy in order to prove that they are somehow better then everyone else. Or at least that's the case with me. Now usually I don't go in for the whole lent thing, as I would much rather watch everyone else suffer and still be able to enjoy my luxuries. This year is different however, as I have been dragged kicking and screaming (only, minus the actual kicking and screaming) into the whole ordeal. Why? Because its worth it to watch other people suffer. ]:-)

So what small luxury am I to go without for the next month? Chocolate? Crisps? Cheese? No, it has been decided that for the next month my life must be entirely devoid of coffee. For me, this is the equivalent of being asked to give up oxygen for lent. Actually, no for my caffeine is important than oxygen. But for some unknown reason, possibly indicating an latent case of masochism, I have willingly decided to give up coffee. For a whole month. I had been doing fine for the past couple of days, but today it would seem that the last of the caffeine has finally worked its way out of my system, and blood has started flowing through my veins again for the first time in months. As a result, I can hardly keep awake anymore, I've got a headache almost constantly, and it's becoming increasingly more and more difficult to concentrate on anything. I keep wanting a coffee, but I know I can't, not for a long time. Already I can foresee that the next month is going to be not nice, and haven't even been coffee- free for a week yet.

There is only one word which I genuinely feel can sum this up, and that is "arses".

Ch-ch-Changes

Just gonna have to be a different man,
Time may change me,
But I can't trace time.

New template, as I got bored of the last one. And this one looks a lot more shiney. Don't start thinking that just because there's a new template that there's going to be anything worthwile reading here. ¬_¬

Edit: Changed the template again. Got fed up of the last one being too big for my resolution (I'm still running in 800x600). Also, this one is on the whole more blue, which can only be a good thing. Perhaps one day when I'm really bored I'll have a crack at making my own template.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

\o/

Today begins half-term, which means I have a week where I can do absoloutely bugger all. Although this is what I usually do, the difference is that now I can do it without any feelings of guilt.

Today I finished the last of the scholarship exams for Aberystwyth. If I'm really lucky then I'll get my course paid for me. Wooyay.

I have also (rather foolishly) decided to accept the challenge of giving up coffee for lent. This is not going to be good, but at least I haven't started hallucinating yet.

Monday, February 07, 2005

Caffiene Laced Beer \o/

Clicky.

I hate beer. Yet I feel that with the addition of caffeine it could be vastly improved. The again, with the addition of caffeine I feel that most things can be improved. Although there are some thigns that will never get better, no matter how much caffeine you pump into them; including such things as Michael Howard, Modern Music and magerine. (OMH they all start with "m", go me ^_^).

Friday, February 04, 2005

*Shudder*

Downloaded MSN Messenger 7 (beta) last night. And the only way to sum it up is: yurgh.

Firstly, they've tried to make it look nicer and more friendly. What has really happened is that they've added more crap to it. There are now even more of those "tabs" on the left hand side of the contact list, and although you can now change the order in which they appear, there is no longer an option to disable them. Who actually uses the tabs? They're annoying, pointless and just take up space. At the bottom of the contact list there is a search bar. Handy you may think, but it uses MSN search which couldn't find a needle in a haystack. I'd much rather stick with google. Again, this search bar cannot be removed, thus taking up more space.

The conversation windows are also different now. The text input box takes up half the window, which is just unnecesary imo, as I only ever need it to be 2-lines tall. Your display picture is now displayed at the same size as the person you're talking to, but it can be shrunk, or hidden like in previous versions. Next to the boxes for smilies and backgrounds you now get 3 others. 1 lets you send "winks", larger, flash-based emoticons that also have sound emebedded in them. Whilst these may look pretty, I certainly find them annoying. By default they play back automatically, something which I was quick to disable, mainly due to the fact that in previous BETA releases the "wink" code has been open to exploit. You can also send a "nudge", which plays a sound and shakes both the person your speaking to and you conversation window briefly. While this may have a practical use, say someone hasn't responded to you for a while, it can become quite annoying when it is used over and over. I'd go as far as to say this is the single most infuriating thing about this new version of messenger. Lastly, you are given an option to download "packs", which can contain things such as winks, emoticons or backgrounds. From what I gathered, they are not free. At the bottom of the window is a small line of text informing you that you can download these, essentially another advert in addition to the main one displayed at the bottom of the contact list.

There are some nice new features though. It certainly does look a lot prettier, and for newer users I guess it will be simpler to use. You can now choose to set your status before you login, for example you could set yourself so that you appear as offline everytime you log-on. Your current display picture is now shown at the top of the contact list, alongside your display name, and whenevver somone signs in it will show you theor display picture as well as their screen name. However, the good points are few and far between, and are vatsly outnumberd by the bad. Also, consider the fact that it currently consumes a whopping 30Mb of RAM; which just goes to show that the new features are just bloat-ware.

For my money, the best IM client is still Trillian 3.0. This does everything MSN 7 can do, except winks/nudges (which I had turned off anyway). Okay, it may not have the same smileys (it has better ones, and lots of them), and you can't have things such as backgrounds, but I hardly use them anyway. It also lets me connect to MSN/AIM/YIM/ICQ/JABBER/IRC all at once, which is incredibly useful.

And thus, this concludes exactly how bored I am right now.




Wednesday, February 02, 2005

...and if you look to your left you will see me

Decided to actually get the pictures of my camera and upload some, so I stuck one in my profile. Don't worry, you can always click the x in the corner of your screen to make the ugliness go away.

Today was mostly spent playing San Andreas for 6 hours solid, with a few breaks for eating. Yesterday was spent soing the same. I know that you really wanted to hear all about it.

I'm really bored so I'm going to go and stare at the wall for a bit, and then if I'm feeling really adventurous I might go spin around on my chair for a bit.

Something tells me I need to get out more.