On relationships and the like

Things between Sarah and I got a bit complicated the other day, and I nearly ended things as a result. In the end it was a misunderstanding (I hope) and eveything seems to be sorted again.

She went out on a drinking binge with her brother (which I don't have a problem with), after which she went home and got stoned (which I don't really have a problem with). She them proceeded to send me a txt message telling me that she'd 'fallen for me'. *Oh shit*

So after a day of mulling over this I decided that breaking up with her was the best option. Mainly because I don't feel the same and I'm not in a place in life where I can be serious with anyone (well anyone besides one person who isn't at hand right now). Anyways. We had a chat, she told me that she was drunk and stoned at the time and that it came out the wrong way. I told her that I was in no way up for anything even remotely serious and we settled at that. In some ways I feel better because I've now told her, blatantly, what's going on and there is no way that she could misunderstand me. In other ways I feel like I should have taken the 'out' that I was offered. It would have made other aspects of my life far easier. Still... life goes on and I make my decisions to the best of my ability (generally fucking up everything along the way).

However it is good to see that some things are looking up in my life at the moment.

I'm still working on the visual layout of the site (as is obvious) as well as the theoretical/mental approach I'll take with it. It's a work in progress. Be patient.

The only other news I can offer at the moment is that I have finally decided to brush the cobwebs out of my cranial cavity and get involved in something slighly less mentally menial than my current work. I'm going to offer my help at the local counselling centre a couple of hours a week, where hopefully my knowledge and eperience can do a bit of good. Hopefully.

Laters.

You wanna know what gets my goat?

What the hell is it with this trend in blogging to copy/paste newpaper articles into posts and then comment on them? Sure, I'm reasonable, and if some articles strike you as needing to be commented on, then fine, but I've seen numerous blogs over the past few weeks that seem to be mainly comprised of mainstream news articles followed by personal comments on them. Maybe it's just me, but if I want to read a news article I'll go to a newpaper site. And while the occasional comment on the war in Iraq (possibly the drive behind this new trend) is intresting, repeating it over and over again in a different form is just tedious. But enough about that...

I just placed my order for a WEGA with Unbeatable.co.uk so I'm in a pretty satisfied mood. I'm not the type of person who falls in to a post-spending depression. Getting things makes me happy. I wouldn't recommend it as a path to happiness in life, but it definitely a short term remedy. There's that age old cliche everyone's heard about money not being able to buy you happiness. I usually reply with, 'if you can't buy it, rent it' or 'maybe you're just not spending it correctly'. Whatever. Money may not be able to buy happiness, but as Adrian noted, pauperdom isn't a ticket to earthly bliss either.

Friday is WEGA day

I've looked, pondered, researched, calculated, and finally decided that on Friday I'm going to place an order for my Sony WEGA. The WEGA tube is rated as being one of the best (comparitively speaking) so I'm quite happy that I've settled on it. Unfortunately I've had to scale down the screen size from 32" to 28" due to lack of space, but I'm sure that it will be more than sufficient for me. Ooooh... I feel all tingly inside. I love getting new electronic toys!

Comments

I'm not taking any for a while. Not until I can get the damn things working.

What the hell is it with everything I do on the net, no matter how meticulously I follow the instructions, not working?

Why men don't listen...

Ok. I'm a man. I am rational, even if it's sometimes to the point of disbelief. But I know all these things.

However, on the advice of a friend I ordered 'Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps' by Allan and Barbara Pease in the vain, clutching at straws, hope that it may help me to understand the current relationship/future/life crisis that I'm going through.

And then it dawned on me... 4 years ant university, 2 degrees, honours and distinction in Psychology. And what the hell do I do? I order a pop-psychology book. Hell, next I'll be buying Dr Phil's guide to life!

Having said all that, after taking a brief look through it, it does make alot of blatantly obvious things more apparent. Kind of like shining a million-candle-power spot light at the naked bulb in your prison cell.

Tam in the city

A good friend of mine has joined the crew and started up her own blog - taminthecity - and is publishing from Cape Town, South Africa. I set up her new virtual home (or at least the Blogger side of it) and so had a small bit to do with choosing her blog description.

Oh hell. Ok. I imposed it on her. She'll probably change it soon.

Banal

Seems that some people don't share my opinion of Rodriguez. I got this e-mail from Adrian this morning:

"Rodriguez is shite. You can have my copy for a pint."

F I G H T T H E U R G E ! ! !

Ok, having a half decent credit card (no, I'm not going to tell you what colour it is because then you could draw all sorts of conclusions about me) is a bad thing. Not only am I fighting the urge to buy every single compact disk that I've ever wanted to own, but I'm also fighting the urge to buy a new Sony Wega (pronounced 'vega' like as in Street Fighter 2) 28" flat and wide screen. Yes... I know it's small by widescreen standards, but hey, it has to fit in my room doesn't it?

M u s t w a i t a n o t h e r s e v e n d a y s . . .

M u s t . . .

I am weak, but will prevail for what I calculate to be 248 more hours than Adrian did.

Good music, good wine... no company

Tonight I'm sitting down with a bottle of organic Chardonnay and it's partner, a bottle of Red Rioja, to do some serious work on this redesign that I've been mulling over for so long. You may think that mixing red and white is a bit yobbish, but both bottles are open and as much as I may have access to a Vin de Verne I'd far prefer to just drink them both tonight.

My Tracy Chapman CD (Tracy Chapman) also arrived today after I ordered it from CD-WOW, so I have some mellow music to work to. I'm still waiting for Cold Fact by Rodriguez to arrive from South Africa (if you don't know Rodriguez go here and order it now, trust me), but that'll probably take another week or so.

In the mean time I must get down to my redesign.

Testing the archives

After months of hassle with my archives, both on my old blog and this one, I have conceded defeat. I have given up trying to find out what line of code to change so that the archive link stops looking for the archives in my root, and instead have just moved them there.

Blogger 1 :: 0 Ian

We're getting aggravated

Tonight I went to see the Matrix Reloaded at Cineworld in Yeovil. Without giving too much away, it has better fight scenes than the first episode (Neo wielding a street pole at a weapon against more than 50 Agent Smiths), better special effects than the first episode... and far more obvious product placement than the first episode (as much as I don't really mind it when it concerns Ducati... the only motorcycle to own as far as I'm concerned). Still, it has and ending which could rival that of a soap opera in the way that it leaves you hanging... the difference being that the next episode won't be on tomorrow afternoon. Sod! Bugger! FCUK!

While I was sitting in the cinema watching the trailers it struck me that we're going through an epic period in the history of film. Not only do we have the hyped up first three episodes of the Star Wars hexology (I just made that word up) to look forward to, we also have the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Matrix trilogy... and finally... T3: Rise of the Machines too! Having just seen the short for T3 I'm incredibly excited to see the final product. If anyone has an idea of it's release date could they let me know, I couldn't be bothered to look it up myself at the moment.

And now, while we're on the subject of film, here's a good question, and one that I'd stick on a poll, if I had one (anyone out there, feel free to run with it but give me a link so that I can see the results): Who do you rate better: Kubrick or Spielberg? Me, I tend to lean toward Spielberg, but no-one can argue that Ride of the Valkyries from Apocalypse Now isn't one of the most moving pieces of filmwork ever.

Sometimes the best laughs are at the expense of others... even me

A couple of weeks ago I bough a new car - a red 1997 (practically 1998 really) Renault Megane 1.6e RT. As far as I'm concerned it's a great car. Looks nice, goes well, is economical, cheap insurance, electric everything including sunroof. All in all it's definitely the best car I've ever owned, although not the best that I could have got. Sometimes though you just have to bite the bullet and realize where your real priorities lie. In my case I realized that the flat on the beach in Cape Town had to take preference and that I didn't want to be spending much more than 6 months paying off the car. So the next couple of months will be a little tighter than usual, but worth it I reckon. Anyway, I digress.

Shaftesbury, Dorset (where I live), is a market town. To those of you unfamiliar with the term, what it boils down to is that every Thursday the high street is filled with loads of stalls and traders, flogging everything from olives to oysters (and some books and other assorted fluff in between somewhere). So here's the catch: I live in the High Street. I park my car in the High Street. I didn't realize that I had to move it before 4am on a Thursday morning.

And thus I give you this montage of photo's, which greeted me at about 10am on Thursday when I finally dragged my lazy ass downstairs.



Don't feel bad, everyone whose seen them has laughed. Even I laughed at the time (although had the car been scratched there would have been murders!)

Test

Comments, where are you?

Sometimes blogging can be cathartic

Actually, having just written that title I've changed my mind. Blogging, by it's very nature, is cathartic. Maybe it's just me, but for the most part, saying something to an open audience - putting it out there, so to speak - has a rather purgative effect on my mind. Or soul. Or whatever it is that feels weighed down when things aren't going to well in life.

For the cathartic 'other side' to my previous post see Rockit. Two people whose lives are very much entwined, and whose relationship is more complex than most soap opera scripts, blogging their own take on the same occurence.

Besides that, by now infamous I'm sure, intercontinental argument, which has pretty much soured my entire week and very possibly more, things have been going alright. As always I've been working like a slave, dealing with some pretty heavy split-shifts (working till late at night and starting again early in the morning, with about 4 hours in the afternoon off). I have however managed to pre-book tickets to go watch the Matrix Reloaded on Thursday and that makes most things better. But only most.

On the tickets note, thanks to Adrian at Sevitzdotcom I also have a ticket to go watch the 4th day of the cricket test between South African and England at the Oval on the 7th of Spetember. Considering I'll be heading into London again I'll probably make that a good 3 days worth of hedonistic abandon. Or as close to as I can get.

The web site redesign is coming along slowly but my heart is heavy and somehow lying in bed reading the rest of Lord of the Rings feels more appealing right now.

Catch up with you all later

Communication in the 21st Century

Having been a communication major at university I'm a big fan of the web and what it allows me to do. I credit modern communication with facilitating pretty much every single major accomplishment humanity has achieved in the last six decades. The world is a smaller place for modern communication methods, and the better for it as far as I'm concerned. Having said all that...

You can also argue with your closest confidant, your best friend, and the person that means the most to you in this life over MSN while she's 13000kms away, and ruin your entire day. And hers probably too.

... but what you can do for the net

I was recently chatting to a mate of mine back home in Cape Town who I share a bit of a joint venture/hobby/collective set of ideas with, and through the course of our discussion we got around to talking about the web and what people do with it. In many respects the internet is an unlimited opportunity for innovative ideas to take shape and for people to push the limits of entrepreneurship.

So this is my challenge to you. With so much out there on the web already what do you think it could offer that it doesn't already? Technically this could be just about anything, and as zany as you like. Hit me with your best material, I'm interested to find out what a collective conscious can come up with*. Direct your thoughts to contact at foolstop dot zed aye dot net. Just like the domain name really. I'll post all the ideas that come in and you can let me know what you think of them.

* Disclaimer: Due to the nature of the internet, and the fact that this site is open to public perusal, your ideas will be 'out there' and may indeed be snapped up by some industrious individual who thinks they have merit. Don't come back in a few years, when he (or she) is a multimillionaire, and claim intellectual property. Only lazy gits do that kind of thing.

Test... again

Checking to see if changes have been made.

Trying to get back into the swing of things

Well after a brief (or not so) period of innactivity at Foolstop I'm happy to be back blogging again, and hopefully frequently too. Unfortunately the innactivity seems to have resulted in me losing my last blog page, so I've had to set up a new one again. I'm thinking about perhaps importing my old archives, but that will be in the future - maybe.

At the moment things are looking a bit simple, I know. But have no fear, there are exciting things planned for the future. If all goes according to plan this space will become more far more thought provoking and dynamic than it ever has before.

post post post

Testing testing testing...