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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Contention's LiveJournal:

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    Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
    8:23 pm
    Mass Effect, lunar VI assignment:

    So you're on a mission to shut down a rogue computer before it kills more people. You finally zap it, and you receive the following message...

    A burst of white noise over all frequencies nearly deafens you. Your hardsuit's heads-up display interprets it as a series of 0s and 1s:

    01001000
    01000101
    01001100
    01010000

    They repeat again and again, blanketing all frequencies, until the lights on the final VI cluster flicker and die.

    Of course, if you're an utter geek, you go off and do the following:

    128 64 32 16  8  4  2  1                ASCII code
--- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
0   1  0  0   1  0  0  0  = 64 + 8      = 72           = H
0   1  0  0   0  1  0  1  = 64 + 4 + 1  = 69           = E
0   1  0  0   1  1  0  0  = 64 + 8 + 4  = 76           = L
0   1  0  1   0  0  0  0  = 64 + 16     = 80           = P


    So yes, I am a sad, sad man. :)
    Monday, June 22nd, 2009
    8:15 am
    Saturday, May 30th, 2009
    6:06 pm
    Monday, May 18th, 2009
    9:25 pm
    Friday, May 8th, 2009
    10:55 pm

    Alcoholic Friday Notes:

    Cocktail Friday (only new cocktails noted) -

    Iguana-wana - alcoholic orange juice? nice. £5!

    Ipanema Breeze - ugly! Enema Breeze! £5.30 (tastes like melon) Gemma says nice.

    Sangria - £4.90 genuinely weird. You can taste the red wine.

    ...

    May edit to add ingredients, may not.

    Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
    12:56 am
    Saturday, April 4th, 2009
    9:41 am
    Fiiiiinally:

    For The Expert Computer Users Out There:
    The Xandros OS that comes with the Eee 701 can also be made to connect to 3 Mobile Huawei E160G. The steps are:
    1.Power up the Eee 701 without the E160G
    2.Once bootup finishes, plug in the E160G into an unused port
    3.Type CTRL-ALT-T
    4.In the terminal type: sudo /sbin/huaweiAktBbo
    5.In the terminal type: sudo rmmod option
    6.In the terminal type: sudo modprobe option
    7.Now click the tab named "Internet" and click the icon named "Network". Proceed to add a new GSM/UMTS connection. Xandros now should find the Huawei E160G.
    Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
    12:23 pm
    Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
    10:25 am
    Hmm, haven't been here in a while. Again!

    A couple of things that have happened that I probably haven't bothered to write down:

    I got a permanent post working as an assistant to the deputy chief executive. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

    Gemma has turned this month into birthday month for me, so much so that between that and work I haven't had time to think about presents for my family. Slovakia has been great, though, even with having to stay another day because Sky Europe are cunts. Nice surprise birthday present. :)
    Thursday, January 8th, 2009
    1:08 am
    Today, I was told that Ewan had died.

    What do you say to that? I could take my pick of the things you're supposed to say; things you're supposed to feel. But what do I really feel? I've never been that well connected to my emotional side – topic for another day there, perhaps – so I have to stop and try to work it out: how am I really reacting?

    I feel saddened. Brutally aware of my own mortality, and all the things that I have never done and probably never will. Deep down, angry at the world (no change there, then). And beyond that... numb. Guilty that I don't feel more? I suppose it's a bit much, when I'm quite willing to be called a cold bastard, to expect to be sobbing into my Lucozade! Yet for some reason, I do. I guess I still need time to make myself believe it.

    This can't be a proper eulogy for Ewan. God knows he deserves one, but I never took the time to get to know him outside of conventions, and anime fandom. “Warm”, though, is a word that springs to mind. He worked harder to make things happen than almost anyone else I know, and to greater effect. “Meticulous” is another word that might fit. Some might say “fussy”, but I think that would be an injustice. Ewan generally knew which things to get worked up over and which things you can let slide – unlike most people, who just think they do.

    As Treasurer of Aya and Minami Ewan was directly responsible for holding together the foundations on which everything and everyone else came to depend. Financial Director would be a much better title, to be honest. He controlled the budgets; held the purse strings; made sure the things that needed paying, got paid. More than that, he lent a steadying hand of reason to proceedings on more than one occasion: Ewan's very presence and unspoken competence were immensely calming. Not that he never got rattled himself – far from it. But caught between screaming idiots (anime fandom has always had enough rejects to stock a seconds shop), and young enthusiasts on the committee trying to take things in new directions, you would have been hard pressed to find even one more person with the personal dignity, authority and implicit trustworthiness needed to safeguard other people's money. I don't know who first said it, but on more than one occasion committee members have been moved to say: “If Ewan dies on us, we're screwed.” Oh yes.

    Not only is there now a great, Treasurer-shaped hole in two convention committees. There is a massive empty space where once stood someone we could rely on completely. I wonder how many people will ever appreciate what a difference Ewan made? I doubt I understand the full extent myself, so what hope is there that the people who only knew him as that large, older bloke with the cash boxes will appreciate the contribution that his prudent financial management made to their fun? “Modest” is another word often applied in these situations, and yet in this case is nothing but the truth.

    I will miss Ewan. That's the simple truth. If I can't claim the honour of having been his close friend, he was never anything less than a good one.
    Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
    8:32 pm
    Sitting in bed in the flat with Gemma, after quite a hard day - not so much at work, as getting to work (1:40 min commute each way these days, including a freezing train journey in today, not to mention a few minutes walking around in the bitter cold that were genuinely quite painful).

    Just had a pollo pancetta pizza at Pizza Express, which could perhaps be more accurately described as a large moist nacho. Nice though. I have coke and chocolate now, which is also nice.

    Feeling a bit ill. I probably have something I should be doing, but god knows what.

    Sorry to anyone who noticed that I haven't been around online for the last six months or so. ;)
    Sunday, October 26th, 2008
    9:56 am
    Saturday, October 4th, 2008
    11:53 pm
    Goodbye, PlayOnline.

    We had some good times, and some frustrating ones. FFXI was truly a world of wonder, which makes it a shame that so much of my time there was spent repeating mindless tasks, dying due to lack of attention, and standing around waiting for something to happen. I met some cool people, about half of whom would have been really irritating if I'd had to put up with them in real life. I never got that far with the game... I wasn't willing to worship you with all of my life.

    Despite everything, I cancel the subscription - which I haven't used properly in perhaps a year, probably much longer - with a kind of regret.

    Joined: 11 December 2003
    Canceled: 5 October 2008 (Effective 31 October 2008)

    Estimated fees: £7 * 58 months = £406
    Total playtime: Not very much
    Cost per hour: Doesn't bear thinking about...
    7:17 pm
    The council have started our private Saturday-night fireworks shows again (that is, they let off fireworks on the seafront, directly in front of our window).

    Thinking of downgrading the PC to a C7 mini-ITX. It's not like this thing can play the latest games anymore... for about £200 I could have something: virtually silent; cheaper to run; and small - rather than the howling Alienware monstrosity that I've been using for the last four years.
    Sunday, September 14th, 2008
    7:39 pm
    Running times:

    Mile 1: 7:07.97
    Mile 2: 7:33.23 (14:41.20)
    Mile 3: 7:53.92 (22:35.12)
    Mile 4: 7:34.27 (30:09.39)

    Stitch on mile 3; I really need to drink more water.

    Woman walking along sea front: "Do you only run up and down this little stretch?"
    Me, startled: "Yes, pretty much."
    Me, thinking about that 'little' mile, to woman's rapidly retreating back: "YOU TRY IT!"
    Me, to fat woman now looking at me: *shakes head* "Stupid cunt."

    Gemma has commented on this before. There's something about a lone runner that invites people to have a go - perhaps that you're a single [weak] person doing something that they don't [outsider] but that they wish they did/know they should [making them feel uncomfortable about themselves].
    6:16 pm
    Running times from Saturday:

    Mile 1: 7:12.57 (but I missed my turn - I would guess this was about 7 minutes)
    19.26 (getting back to the mile marker)
    Mile 2: 8:02.59 (15:34.42)
    Mile 3: 8:21.09 (23:55.51)
    Mile 4: 8:05.35 (32:00.86)

    I wasn't trying to run particularly quickly, and was thinking of other things (that was probably obvious anyway, from the above). I was running in the middle of the day, and in the second half the sun came out, which did not please me at all...

    Off to do it again.
    5:19 pm
    Sunday, August 24th, 2008
    12:01 pm
    Running times:

    One mile: 5:51.52 (Last Friday, after breaking up with Gemma - not sure if that helped or not. Back together for eight days now, and counting...)

    Yesterday:

    Mile 1: 7:19.31
    Mile 2: 7:33.50 (14:52.81)
    Mile 3: 7:32.59 (22:25.40)
    Mile 4: 8:03.36 (30:28.76)

    The times make more sense if you consider that there was a decent wind behind me on the mile out, and in my face on the mile back...
    Sunday, August 10th, 2008
    4:06 pm
    Official splits:

    PosRaceNrWaveNameSwimT1BikeLap1BikeLap2BikeLap3 BikeLap4BikeT2RunLap1RunLap2RunLap3RunLap4RunTotal
    9110094SAT4A SHORE THING00:26:5600:03:0300:18:0000:17:3400:17:0100:18:26 01:11:0000:02:3700:13:1500:13:0200:13:1800:12:24 00:51:5702:35:30
    3:38 pm
    Further research reveals that according to the organisers, the bike was 42k and the run was 10.4k (making my average mile almost exactly 8 minutes, which I'm happy with). We came a respectable 91st out of 417 teams, although I was correct in my assumption that almost all of the runners were faster than me - you have to get down into the lower third of the teams before the run times are often slower than mine.
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