30th April - OTT passwords

Oooh, ow! Sunburnt nose! Good weekend though.

I've been thinking about mobile phone technology a bit recently... you see, your mobile phone provider can tell where you are at any one time, by which cell you are patched into. In fact, by triangulation from base stations, they can probably tell down to a resolution of about ten metres or so. So... if you ever lose your mobile phone - say you think you may have left it on a train - they could tell you so long as the phone was switched on. Also, they could use it to work out how fast you were travelling along a road (speed traps obsoleted?) etc. Thing is... I don't think they are allowed to use tha information under British law. I mean... you might not have been in posession of the phone at the time; your basic invasion of privacy stuff. Still, its all worth thinking about.

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29th April - TOTKat (Vietnam)

Gosh! It appears that there is another thing on the planet named "TOTKat". OK, the etymology isn't the same, but... all the same, I'm surprised. (If you're interested in how the name came about, it is here in brevity. You really ought to look through Deja News to find the history in full.

I've spent the whole weekend on foot around San Fransisco. Yeah, I didn't take the cable car or tram once and those hills are a killer! I got suntroke a bit yesterday, which is impressive seeing as the locals don't seem to get it. Went to the cherry blossom festival in Japantown today (who needs maps when the sun is out and you know roughly where you're going?) and watched traditional Japanese dancing and a demonstration of Wu Shu. I then headed back to the Yerba Buena gardens to drink frappucino, read my book and watch the world go by. I could almost live in this town if it weren't for the lack of supermarkets (decent ones) and the fact that you can't get washing machines.

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27th April - Webmonkey - charts

San Jose was beautiful yesterday! Dave and I drove up I80 from San Mateo, out of the fog and into the sunshine *beam* Not a lot else happened apart from the site visit: I fell asleep on the CalTrain back to San Fransisco then did a bit of shopping in town - nearly bought a silk/cotton suit that was on sale, but I decided it would be difficult to take it back if anything went iffy with it. So, I crashed out early and didn't go out at all last night.

By the way... I was in San Jose on a site visit to a customer and the shops in San Fransisco are open until 9pm or so. So, those people who keep saying that I'm not getting any work done can bugger off! There's more to the day than the 9 to 5.

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26th April - Gates' U-Turn?

MmmmMMmmm... Mt. Tamalpais has a great view of the bay. We drove up there, across the Golden Gate bridge in the fog - it was so foggy we couldn't even see the top of the bridge! So, we drove on up the mountain (OK, it was a hill really) until we were almost at the top. The view over the bay was fabulous: it was like looking down onto a blanket of cotton-wool that had been thrown across the water so that only the tops of the towers on the bridge were poking through.

Onwards and upwards (in the words of Aslan), on the windiest of roads as it got dark and we could see San Fransisco twinkling across the water. We stopped off for a meal in a town in Marin county somewhere. By chance, we came across a good Italian restaurant where we got asked for ID to buy alcohol (the youngest in our group being 28!) and took the waiter's advice to go for a large pizza between the four of us and a dish of their special ravioli. Wow, it was delicious!

Driving down the mountain and back to San Fransisco, with the top down (yeah, we upgraded the hire car to a convertible *grin*) the evening was balmy and the air filled with the scent of the eucalyptus trees that grow all around here. A very nice day, all in all.

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25th April - Craig's Lists

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24th April - Hamburger Mary's RIP!

What a night! Having had a huge lunch yesterday, we didn't much feel like getting any food, so I looked through the Time Out San Fransisco guide for a bar not too far from the apartment. I found Twenty Tank Brewery near 11th and Folsom. We grabbed a cab down there only to find it had closed down. So, we wandered down Folsom a little and found Hamburger Mary's. Cool joint! The crowd was a mix of everything from 60 year old bikers, to hip-trendy scary lesbians, to ex-strippers, to web-designers and all sorts of others. We joined up with a few people who were there from an online news forum (well, we found out that's what they were eventually). Anyway, it turned out that Hamburger Mary's (which turns out to be just about a year older than me) was closing down that night and all the beer was free! So, we hung out for a while, drank beer and talked to almost everybody there. I got left there by myself with these guys at about 9pm, but that was fine.

Even cooler: I got a lift back to the apartment with this girl - who was part of that online forum - who was really nice and had a photo of her two pugs with her :O).

I love this city! Ohyes, I checked out that online forum, Craig's List... they think I'm not a real person *laugh* apparently I'm just some fictitous persona, dreamed up by a pair of girls I met last night at the bar. O... K...

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23rd April - Guestbook

"If you're going... to San... Fran...sisco..." - make sure you take some sun block! The skies are clear and blue. The sun is shining and it's been like this since I got here on Saturday. I've caught a little sun already.

The plane journey was fairly uneventful; I watched "Vertical Limit", which was complete crap; and "What Women Want" which was schmaltzy pap, but bloody funny. We hired a car at the airport and paid the extra to get a convertible (bloody good idea Joel!). So, when we hit SF itself we found out that it is a one-way system from hell! Still, we found the apartment without too much trouble and it is in one of the cooler parts of town - SoMa - South of Market.

Sunday, I spent wandering around San Fran, doing some shopping and then up to the Golden Gate bridge to take some photos at sunset. It was beautiful and I ran off about 30 exposures of the bridge, the sunset and the sun reflecting off the buildings in San Fransisco just along the bay. Marvellous. We went into the Mission district for dinner and came across a fantastic place. It wa a kind of trendy bar/restaurant that did excellent food and a nice selection of Californian wines. I'll look up the name of the place later.. something Luna. Anyway, I have to work while I'm out here, so that's all for now.

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20th April - Smart paint

Ooo, look! A new section. I've finally set up a guest book. It is a bit slow at the moment, but it works. I'll fiddle with the perl to make it faster (hopefully) at some point. The big caveat is that you _must_ be using viewing this site from the totkat.org, totkat.com or totkat.co.uk otherwise it will _not_ work. So, please check your bookmark!

Bit of a cruddy start to the day... I thought I'd left the car unlocked and when I got to work I managed to tip a mug of hot water over myself and half the contents of a catering tin of coffee granules at the same time. I reek of coffee and I keep finding semi-hydrated coffee granules, glued to body parts and bits of clothing.

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19th April - What happens when we die?

I was down on Tottenham Court Road yesterday lunchtime, looking at toys, and I came across some fun. At R.I.A. Technologies there was a woman who had brought back a portable minidisc player/recorder because it was faulty. She was complaining that it would not play back a particular disc that had been recorded on it, but it would play others and other machines could play that disc. She launched into a diatribe about her consumer rights, having wound herself right up to critical mass.

She was demanding that her minidisc machine be replaced by him as she had bought it only seven weeks ago and it was obviously faulty. He kept telling her that he could not replace it as it was now scratched. She blew her head at this point, shouting that the scratch wasn't the issue here and she was well within her rights to demand a replacement. All credit is due to the sales guy, he deserves a medal. He wound her down from her ranting state, explained that there are such things as faulty discs, using examples of CDRs with CD burners, and finally got her into a calm state in about 15 minutes. As I was leaving, she had stopped demanding a replacement machine, was armed with the Sony technical services phone number and was even pleased with the service she had been given by the shop. A complete turnaround. I was thoroughly impressed with the guy's tactics and delivery. Shame I didn't get to tell him, as I had left the shop before Mrs. Twisty-Knickers did.

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18th April - Fast phones

What a beautiful day... hey, hey!

		Intel profits down... what about AMD? Until about 3 years ago, Intel have dominated the processor market for PCs. AMD and Cyrix were the poor cousins who appeared not to be competing in the same arena. Cyrix have almost faded into obscurity but AMD are forging ahead and Intel are scared. Quite rightly so.
AMD have been producing consistently better performing processors, for a cheaper price, than Intel and the gap is widening between them. Intel can't seem to keep up with AMD's next generation processor performance, since AMD Athlons came onto the scene. The big PC manufacturers have recognised this and so have the geek masses. The emperor is dying... long live the new emperor.

The joys of spring are in the air today... it's bright, crisp and clear and I feel fabulous. I even got a parking space at the station this morning - I had to drive to the main station because the stupid bloody construction workers outside my house delayed me so that I missed the local train. Even that hasn't dampened my spirits today. *bounce* And, it looks like I'll be taking up a martial art again after I get back from San Fransisco and will have a scuba buddy to do a refresher course in the late autumn. Fab!

This trip to San Fransisco does mean that I may not be updating the site much between 21st April and 5th May - it all depends upon the availability of decent internet access for me while I am out there. We'll see.

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17th April - Digital loveliness

So there I was, innocently thinking that there was not one gadget I could possibly want to buy for the foreseeable future and then my father hands me a leaflet for this! Bloody well not fair!

It's an interactive digital radio, which picks up wireless digital radio signals (both audio and visual), and sends them direct to your PC. (Yes, it is a PC peripheral, not a portable device.) It means you get: digital quality music; multimedia games and entertainment; one-click recording to MP3 and MP2. And because it uses wireless signals, you don't need an internet connection to use it. Thanks to Psion's great design team, it looks really ergonomic too. The huge drawback is the price. At a list price of £299, I'm not so sure I'll be getting one just yet.

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12th April - Sir Harry Secombe - RIP

Minor rant from this morning: what is the point of a car park, at a large and busy commuter railway station, that has only 39 spaces!?

Anyway, I went to see "Bridget Jones' Diary" last night and it was _hilarious_. If you've read the book; the film isn't precisely faithful, mostly in the fact that Bridget comes across more as a cute goofball than the weight-obsessed, 1471-neurotic, dipsomaniac in the book. I think it pretty much is a chick-flick, but men will get something out of it too because it is just bloody funny - and there's a big fight in it. It is a shame that it comes across as purely for the girls as it is mostly a representation of the lives of 30-somethings these days. Having said that, only one in twenty of the people I saw leaving the cinema from that film, was male. Hey ho. Ohyes... Hugh Grant is wonderful as a bastard for once but Colin Firth really steals the prize in the "yumminess stakes". (He possibly wins this for being frightningly like someone I've had a crush on for about ten years - and is unavailable, buggrit!)

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11th April - Who are you?

Many thanks to the postie this morning, for waking me up in time to have a shower in the dark (the bathroom light needs fixing), have breakfast at home (for once) and get in to work at a reasonable hour.

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2779th September 1993 - Future Horizons

American Beauty - what a fabulous film. When I was on a course in New York for three weeks, I got pretty bored one evening and didn't fancy trekking out anywhere so I decided to get a movie in my hotel room. There was nothing that really took my fancy, so I picked American Beauty at random. It turned out to be a rather fine choice. Kevin Spacey shines, again, as a straight-laced guy who decides to opt out of the stressful life, get fit, flip burgers and smoke a lot of weed, which he buys from the neighbour's kid. The neighbour being a homophobic, military nut with a very strange kid who deals dope to make a lot of money. Of course, next door's kid gets involved with Spacey's daughter, while his attention-hungry wife goes off with a real estate king. There are twists, turns and surprises, along with incredible details which require a second and third viewing to catch.

Four day week, four day weekend then another four day week. I _like_ Easter. :o) Not that I feel the need for a break. I still feel much better than when I was at Nortel - energy and sleep-wise due to the travelling by train rather than car. Plus, I've not really had any work stress yet, so that isn't tiring me out either. I expect that I will start to feel different when I actually get stuck into the account management, but I don't think it will be very stressful.

I had "dimwit head" on this morning. There I was, looking at the clock, thinking that I had another 10 minutes in bed when in fact I should have been leaving the house by then. My brain was confusing the time I had to leave the house with the time I had to be at the station, and the fact that my alarm clock is set ten minutes fast just made things worse. Still, I got to the station in time, after a brisk trot and a mild panic at the ticket machine.

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9th April - Good B&W Resource

So... more Black and White stuff, you say? OK. I started off with the ape and got really pissed off because he learned really quickly then stopped learning as soon as I was in the second land. (I wasn't teaching him correctly). So, I restarted the game with a cow. Even worse! Not only was I teaching him badly, but he was as thick as two short planks; if he ate a villager and I beat him, he'd still keep doing it again and again after that. So, I went back to the ape. Then came the breakthrough - you have to use the leash of learning and leash the creature _to yourself_ while you cast miracles etc. for the creature to learn.

My ape and I are now in the third land and we've nearly finished that one. He doesn't really have any bad habits (though I have no idea where he's doing his poo - I've not seen him doing that in quite a while) and he loves dancing with the villagers.

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8th April

Mmm... Sundays. I made a roast chicken dinner and a huge vat of chicken soup with the leftovers. Best chicken soup I've made yet too!

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6th April

It's here! I'm pretty much tempted not to go to the dog racing tonight... we'll see. I tried to install it on my laptop, but it doesn't work [probably a good thing as I'm at work ;o)]

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5th April - Blasphemy! ;o)

The site is now searchable. Finally! It is a great relief for me as I often use the site as a repository for site links and information that I find useful or interesting. At least now I can find what I need without having to manually trawl through the pages.

The game we've all been waiting for... Black and White. You may, or may not, have heard of it - if you haven't you must have slept through at least the last few months - but it is going to be bigger than The Sims, bigger than Populous, bigger than... bigger than Jesus (to paraphrase a certain Beatle).The game is a god sim. You are the god and you get a titan/avatar/metatron type thing in the form of an animal.

You teach the animal to be whatever kind of god you want to be, by example and a system of rewards and punishments. The AI is incredible and, looking at the creature stories pubished so far, the possibilities are mind boggling.

So, unless you have no interest in games whatsoever; if ya ain't got B&W, you're nobody! [Buy it by clicking on the image above :o)]

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4th April - I Love Lunch

Bit of a tough day yesterday at work. There's an awful lot of aggressive people in this company. Most of the time it makes for productive, driven people, who perform rather well. Sometimes it ends up with nastiness and arguments. Tact and diplomacy can often be forgotten in these cases. Hey ho... I have a thick skin, so if any of it is directed at me, I'll be fine. The plus points about this is that, because it is so busy and the people here are pretty bright, I'll actually not get bored! :o)

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2nd April - Astronomy pictures

Now there's a sight that's just awe inspiring! I remember while I was in Iceland, being lucky enough to see the most amazing natural display I've ever seen in the Aurora Borealis. Thanks to the recent, huge solar flares, the aurora has been scaring American hicks who thought that the aliens were coming for them and delighting people all over the world where they were visible. Unfortunately, unless you live in Scotland you won't have seen anything fabulous in the UK.

I hope you like the new site look... there are going to be a few more changes soon. Basically, I'm aiming for some more actual content in the site, plus to make it searchable. I want to add information that will be useful to people, not just giving the world a bit of a laugh at a mad woman :o)

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