And so, I forget to do this again.

I was going so well too. But then nothing started happening, so there wasn't anything to write.

All I've been doing this week is watching TV, mostly downloaded because I don't want to wait until someone decides to show things here. Shouldn't have bothered watching Dr Who (because it was crap), but 24 is still being excellent and South Park was silly. Bring back stupid non-human characters after a few years. I thought there'd been a towlie-ban anyway.

And organising the camping, with only 2 weeks to go. Sending out a big message to everyone who might be coming. And finding a pub that can cope with probably 15-20 people for Sunday lunch. Luckily, there's a nice little pub we can get to after a 10 minute walk down the Thames. (Well, next to the Thames. Walking on the Thames would be scary). And the nice woman I spoke to (presumably the landlady) was very helpful. No problem, just have to remember to tell her exact numbers the day before so they can set the table. And she did want to join us camping. Must have been having a bad day and wanted to get away from it all.

Easter and stuff

A completely pointless holiday, really. A time for not very good chocolate. Oh well. And the shops all open at weird times.

I did, however, destroy a tree. Well, the remains of a tree. A tree in Phil's garden fell over. Not sure how, really. It's a very sheltered garden, not usually subject to strong winds. Plus there haven't been any strong winds anyway. I suspect a freak tornado. Or possibly the tree died of old age and suddenly just gave up and fell over. We discovered that a tree takes up a lot less space when it's standing upright than it does when it's fallen over and been cut up into lots of bits. One tree can cover most of the garden that way. And it's a bugger to try and cut them up with just a rusty saw to work with. Didn't lose any limbs, so that's a good thing. And avoided the common mistake of standing in the tree and cutting bits off below foot height. That tends to be either fatal or seriously embarassing.

And then we went for a little wander in some more trees yesterday, mainly to try and take some interesting pictures. Phil feels the need to experiment with his fancy new expensive camera. Took about 50 pictures and got half a dozen really good ones. Of course, the ones that should have turned out good didn't, and the good ones were actually surprising. I took about 5 and got 1 good one. So this means I'm better at taking pictures. Possibly.

The less said about the picture of me where I appear to be passing through a spooky portal into another dimension, the better.

Google must be running out of things to do

They now have a rather nice calendar thing. To go with the recent Google Pages thing (nice, if you can't build your own website), the maps (incredibly useful), Google Earth (good way to spend a long time looking for odd things), and all the other bits they do.

I'm fairly sure it could be useful. If you want to keep track of lots of things you need to do and when, and get at them from anywhere else. But it's almost too clever, and I don't like that. So I'm trying to break it. Which isn't really that hard, what with it being a beta and everyone trying it all at once today. Quite neat the way I could type "dinner with Phil next thursday at 8pm" and it would add "dinner with Phil" at 8pm the next Thursday. But that's easy. I could work out when the next Thursday is myself. It gets confused if I wanted "Dinner with Phil on the second Friday in June". That sets up dinner for me and Phil, with someone called June. Last Friday. Who's June? Will she get annoyed if I don't turn up for dinner last Friday?

But then again, that would be very clever, and it's only a beta, so I might forgive them. And at least I've broken something. It didn't even fall over when slashdot got hold of it.

Old houses are fun. Long waits for food aren't.

Saturday night with Phil. Go out for dinner we think. And wait an hour for the food. Very nice food eventually, but a long wait. Table next to us with a young child couldn't wait for there's and walked out. 30 seconds before it turned up. Which probably serves them right after being told there'd be a long wait for the food, and being offered free drinks when the wait turned out to be longer than expected.

Old houses don't involve a long wait. They don't usually involve hail either, which put paid to a look around the gardens. Dyrham Park. Nice house, with some unusual things. Like leather wallpaper. And the usual friendly National Trust Ladies. It's certainly given me one potential place to take people in May when we want to do something for the day away from the campsite.

And a man with a shiny new camera and a large memory card is never a good thing. But at least there's a decent picture of me. In a tree. Not up a tree, but inside a tree. Or it would be a decent picture if it didn't look like it was just a head in a tree. Which is sort of creepy.

Stupid Google Maps!!

Well, it's more like "Stupid me!!" really.

Things not to do when cleaning up files on your harddrive...

1. Delete important files
2. Not notice and spend an hour trying to work out why your website is now broken
   
3. Forget the format for the important deleted file
4. Remember the file format, and then forget to put all the bits in while recreating the file
5. Forget to take out all the debugging bits you put in while trying to work out what you'd done

It was all going so well up to that point. I'd got a nice easy way to add points to a Google Map, with the little pop up windows linking to a page about that particular place and a linking to pictures, if there are any. All the points nicely defined in a separate XML file. Which I then deleted because I'd forgotten to change the name after my initial experiments with Google Maps. Calling a file test.xml might be sensible while experimenting, but it's not a good name to use permanently. Idiot.

More free stuff?

I like getting free stuff from the internets. It would appear that many people value my opinion on a wide range of things. This is obviously stupid, but I'm not going to tell them that.

And in this case, they were paying quite well for it. Just 5 minutes a day for a week telling them what I'd been drinking. And as the week in question was one where I didn't drink anything but coffee, and some water, this was a particularly easy task. And they awarded me with 2000 of their points. Which then turn into Nectar points. Which, when added to some others I'd collected, easily took care of buying a DVD. So the final series of Red Dwarf should be on it's way soon. (Ok, it's not the best one, but it's still good and it'd be silly to not have all 8 series).

Half a dozen DVDs, a couple of CDs, and a pair of PS2 games in the past year, all for doing very little. And people think the internet is just full of porn and friendly men from Africa needing your assistance in large financial matters.

No more Tonberries! Yay!

Still trying to finish off FF12-x2 tonight. And I got past all those bloody Tonberries. Reached level 100 of the evil secret dungeon. And then died, obviously.

Several hours later, after lots of fiddling about to find the best strategy, the evil Paragon was no match for my tactic of repeatedly shooting it until it's dead. Ok, so as strategies go, it's not the most complex one. But it worked. After a few attempts and some luck.

And then, with no chance to recover, a mad old bloke pops up. Same strategy, and Trema (for it is he) kills me. Arse. Back to Paragon again, the shoot him lots and hope for the best strategy is working well now. Mr Trema again. Ok, that didn't work. Repeat several times, adapting the strategy to include desperately trying to keep everyone alive while 1 of the ladies keeps shooting like mad. And it worked. Not too difficult, really. It was getting there that caused trouble.

So now I think I've done everything. Except about 21% of the game, apparently. Hmm. I might finish it in time for FF12. So another year probably. At least.

But isn't it the middle of the night over there?

So, the little treasures that are my niece and nephews are in need of new toys. To match the existing ones that came from New Zealand. And the nice woman next door is down there now. And would possibly be able to find some and bring them home with her, saving on the slightly excessive postage.

After finally finding the correct name for the company that makes them (after many Google results that are totally inappropriate for small children), mum asks me to send an email and ask if the neighbour could find them and bring some back with her. And then asks "But isn't it the middle of the night over there?".

Emails are not telephones!!!

Tonberries! Grrr!

So, a nice quiet Sunday afternoon playing old games. Final Fantasy X-2. The really gay one. Thought I'd do a couple of the bits I never got around to doing before. Did a whole extra dungeon in record time (it's not the hardest game ever).

Then I tried to do the last 20 levels of the really annoying secret dungeon. Via Infinito. Or whatever it's called. 80 levels of it fairly easy, then it starts getting harder. And I died at the hands of a bloody Tonberry!!!

These things are evil. They might look all cute and cuddly, pottering about with their little lantern. Sometimes falling over. But they are always evil. Always! It's the way the innocently stroll up to you and then stab you viciously. If FF12 (whenever it's released) doesn't feature Tonberries, I'll be happy.

Now, back to those last 20 levels.

Never organise a camping trip

Just realised it's only 5 weeks to go before my big camping experience. Not good.

Way back in September, I had the strange idea to organise things so a bunch of people can come here and we'll freeze to death in a field. Or not. Depends on the weather, really. Actually, I had the idea earlier, but officially started sorting it out in September. It was only fair that I organised one, after having been to other people's events in Cornwall, Norfolk, the New Forest and having some others on my list of things to do this year.

So I picked May 5th as a good date. It's a Friday, which is a good day to start a weekend of camping. Much better than starting on, say, a Sunday. That would be stupid. And it was also 9 months away. Sounds like a long time.

Ask some people if they want to go, officially set it up so people can put themselves on the list. (This is on OUT, a website I spend too much time on!). And then check with the campsite owner. Or was it the other way around? Anyway, he says "no problem". (Might change his mind in 5 weeks ;). Doesn't matter about the numbers, should have most of the field available that weekend. Talk to him again in January. Still no problem.

Now I've just got to finish off organising it. Got a bit carried away to start with, huge 10 page PDF document with lots of useful information for anyone that wants to come. Got 11 people definitely coming (as of today), and 26 probables. And a couple of others not on the list. And I'm sure someone will just drag random people along. I'm guessing at 15-20 people in all will eventually turn up.

So it should be a good weekend. Just lots of things to still organise. A barbecue should be sorted now. A wide selection have been left behind at the campsite by previous visitors. This is good, because I'd wanted to borrow one from the local school. But it was destroyed in the Great Shed Fire of 2004.

And then there's the messaging people. I could send out a message to everyone all at once. And I have done. And I will do again in 2 or 3 weeks. But I like to do things differently, which is usually my fatal mistake. Takes a long time to send individual messages to 35+ people, each saying something different. Some people probably think I'm mad. Or will do when it gets to the stage where all I can manage is "Camping! Come! Or I'll tell the king of the potato people!". Which is probably around next Tuesday.

Then there's the "what might people like to do?" question. Ok, so that's mostly a case of making them a map showing the location of the shops and the nearest pub. Also thought it would be good if we could all drive off somewhere nearby. So we (or some of us at least) will head off to a nearby hill to realise the big white chalk horse we were looking for is where we're standing. Then to a pub for lunch. And then to some suitable interesting old house. But that's where I'm running into problems. Need to go and have a look at somewhere soon, make sure it's of a high enough quality. One for next weekend when Phil's here, I think.

Oh, and the mobile phone issue. It might be useful for me to have a phone at the campsite. So anyone that gets lost can phone me and get directions. This is a disastrous problem, because of the lack of phone, and the fact that my directions are apparently rubbish. (Though I still insist that's Phil's ability to follow my directions that's the problem). But I think mobile phones are evil. But give in and liberate one of Phil's old ones. It works. People can talk to me on it. What more do I want? A battery that doesn't die after 3 hours and then beep annoyingly loudly at 6am would be useful, possibly.

Not even started on what happens next. After all the messages. And getting a phone. And finding places to take people. And pestering people to try and decide if they're going to come or not. And then getting there and putting the tent up. And tying special orange balloons to something handy so people can see the entrance to the campsite which is on a main road but not entirely obvious. And then arranging for someone to go and pick people up from Swindon station because they don't drive and neither do I. And remembering to get something to burn, because a barbecue isn't much use otherwise. And greeting people as they turn up and trying to work out who they are, because they don't look like their picture online and I don't know what their real name is. And then finally hopefully sitting down and having a nice pleasant weekend.

It's all mad and a bit scary. But I'm sure it's going to be a fun weekend. Some of the people who are coming are really nice people to spend a weekend with. Many a night spent sat in a field trying to keep warm with them. And some people I've never met, but I'm sure they're just as much fun. I just hope nothing bad happens. The campsite is next to the Thames, so it'll probably flood or something.

And I really shouldn't drink so much coffee. It's taken me about 30 seconds to type all this. Well, 10 minutes. I'd have stopped after 3 words if I'd not been drinking coffee constantly all day. Oh well.

Amazon, DVDs and lies

Oh, I hate it when this happens. Ten quid Amazon voucher (if you can call a code sent by email a voucher) to spend. Check Amazon. Ah, a DVD I quite fancy. It's The Mission, providing hours of entertainment of a comedy G*** / quite good music variety. A pair of old videos re-released on shiny DVD format, with nice surround sound. DTS5.1, no less.

Order DVD on Thursday evening. Arrives this morning. That's good. Turn up all the speakers, put DVD in to play. Oh. It's the same problem I had with the Pixies live DVD. It's all coming out in black and white. Despite claiming to be PAL format on Amazon, it's quite obviously not. Hence the black and white thing. It does claim to be region 0, which probably should have made me suspicious. It will now. Just means that you can play it on any DVD player anywhere, and that includes NTSC regions. So it's obviously in that format.

I really need a new TV. One that can cope with it. Still, it'll play on the PC, I guess. In colour, but not with surround sound. Then again, is that really much of a problem? All those sounds surrounding you are good for films, but not really necessary for music. Don't need a guitar wandering off round the back scaring the cats.

Still, the DVD is good. If you like The Mission. Or other dodgy 80s G***s. A 60 minute "documentary" thing, and a nice 12 track live experience. And a special "jukebox" feature that lets you rearrange the order of the 12 live tracks. Or play the same song 12 times in a row. Useful, I'm sure.