peteashtondotcom

Quite a busy week which I want to record in brief:

Monday: Went for a drink with Kate-the-ex. Really good night and we get on very well now. So that’s all sorted then.

Tuesday: Tried to see James Bond with Rob but it was sold out.

Wednesday: Had George Best in for a signing at work which was horrible as loads of obsessive collectors came and we had to control them. Really bad vibes in the shop all day. Manager turned down the offer of having David Beckham for a signing next year because of this. Decided we only want B-list celebrities from now on.

Thursday: Jez was down in London for a meeting so we met up for a few drinks before his train left at 8.00pm. Had a top chat about stuff.

Friday: Slept in a bit and had a panic attack BUT managed to phone into work. Assistant Manager said “So you’re phoning in sick then”. I paused, and said yes. Then I felt much better. But still not great. Read a book written from the POV of a 15 year old boy with Asperger’s Syndrome in one sitting and get quite worried about how it mirrored my mind. Want to write about this at some point.

Today: Mooched around all morning. Am off out for a Friends Reunited drink with Craig, Dan and Phil. Phil, I haven’t seen since about 1995. Craig and Dan I saw in the Spring. Should be fun.

I may write about some of these things in depth later but I have to be off now.

Photoblogs.org is an index of, well, photoblogs, being weblogs made up of photographs. With ratings. Looks interesting.

There’s this guy, and he send out spam to 250,000,000 email adresses. And someone’s managed to interview him.

Ever since I started getting spam in large quantities I’ve wondered who the people are who are sending it, especially as no-one ever seems to meet them or interview them. So this is fascinating, as is the statement “There are probably about 150 major spammers who are responsible for 90 percent of all the spam everyone gets”. (via bOING bOING)

Well, I have to say that get your war on - page seventeen made me laugh out loud.

A complete scan of a 160 page catalogue of “Burlesque and Side Degree Specialties, Paraphernalia and Costumes.” for use in Freemason Lodges in the 1930s, specifically for initiations. Some parts read like a fettish catalogue.

Matt Blackcustard has a photo-montage blog where he posts a strip of images every day. Very nice as they tend to stick to a theme so they’re a bit like my grids but more controlled. Found via Lightingfield another photblog I posted about months ago.

We Didn’t Start The Fire in Flash! MUCH better than it sounds! (via LMG)

At my Mum’s I smoke in the garden. It was dark and very wet and I took a few photos. The flash reflecting off the wet plants made for some interesting effects….
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This weekend was spent at Mum’s for a Thanksgiving party. These photos aren’t really of note unless you were there!
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Well, it looks like everything’s going to be okay. The investigative meeting with the Assistant Manager went well.
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As those on the mailing list will know the BugPowder site has been down. It’s just a payment processing thing and, all things being equal, it’ll be back up Monday night. Sorry about that!

Six photos that I think are interesting…
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Kate phoned this morning - the estate agent who let us a flat in East Finchley which we left 18 months ago without getting our deposit back have suddenly decided to give us £500. Which should shave the overdraft somewhat.

Also, my mum is retiring from teaching to do Yoga full time and my dad is moving to the UK for the immediate future. Both seem fine.

Went out last night to a couple of ligs. Wasn’t planning to but work was really boring, I was feeling antsy and I felt like seeing some people, so went. Got drunk (in front of my workmates and boss). Got home at about 2.00 after dealing with a domestic dispute with a couple of mates. Got up late for work.

Tomorrow I have an investigative interview with the assistant manager for persistent lateness, accompanied by a colleague (I asked Mo and he said he’d be there). This is to get the facts straight before seeing if a disciplinary is necessary.

I’ve got an appointment at the hospital for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy on December 4th - not the actual therapy but to talk about problems and what’s the best way to solve them.

BookCrossing is an intriguing project. The basic premis seems to be, you write a code and the URL in the front cover of a book and leave it somewhere for someone to pick up. They then read the book and, in theory, log onto the site and write about it. You then, in theory, have contact with the random person who picked up your book.

It’s also a fascinating exercise in fate, karma, or whatever you want to call the chain of events that can occur between two or more lives and one piece of literature. Oh, and we should mention, it’s absolutely free and absolutely private, too.

So go grab a book or two from your shelves now (they’re not doing anyone any good there, are they?), register them here, jot down our URL and the BCID we’ll give you inside the covers, and then give them away or leave them where someone will find them.

Hmmm….

Thanks for all the feedback and advice - all very useful. I think this could be the answer. It’s an Ethernet router than allows the USB ADSL modem I’ve already got to be used.

Once we have this, all we’d need would be an Ethernet cable for rob and we’d be sorted - total cost: about £170.

The alternative would be buying a normal Ethernet hub (£50), an Airport (£250) and a new ADSL modem (£100) connected to the Airport via Ethernet. £400 total, which I don’t have.

I’ve also been looking at iMacs on eBay with the idea of buying a second hand one to have in another room, inspired by this story about the computer in the kitchen. You can pick up a decent iMac, better than the one I have now, for about £300. Something to look at in the new year. Plus there’s the storage idea - I can’t expand my hard drive on the Mac easily, but I could buy an external hard drive and slot it into the network. As for wifi, it can always be slotted in in the future. I guess. But that’s all for later.

Right now the Ethernet/USB router looks like the best bet. Anyone think different?

Okay, Mac people. I need some help here.

I have broadband ADSL. This comes into my computer via a modem which plugs into a USB socket. I connect to it via remote access in the same way I connect to the net via the internal modem.

I want to network my iMac to Rob’s iMac (both running OS 9.1) so that Rob can access Broadband via my computer. I also want BT not to know that we have two Macs connected to the same ADSL line because this is breaking the agreement I have with them.

I know this can be done. But I don’t know how. We’ve managed to get the two Macs talking to each other via an Ethernet cable but we can’t get Robs iMac to get online because the Ethernet connection is not a modem and he needs a modem. Currently he has access to my files and programs but not my modem.

How do we do this? Preferably without buying any more stuff.

So, I’m checking out Plasticbag, as I have done for the last couple of years and which is run by Tom who is a friend of my relatively new flatmates, and he’s writing about how he’s noticed in his referrals that someone has mirrored his site over on LiveJournal and he’s wondering who’s responsible. Of course, his post is mirrored on the LJ site and the person responsible gets in touch finds out that he’s onto him and gets in touch. Turns out there’s an LJ called Syndication Promotion about playing about with RSS feeds and they’d used his feed to make the mirror site, just as an experiment. With me so far? If you’re not, don’t worry.

The point is, the person who made the mirror site is Jo who is involved in running the Caption small press comics convention in Oxford which I’ve been going to for years. Normally when these circular things happen you can explain it through friendships, etc. This one is completely random.

Just reading through the ¡Journalista! weblog and I came across a word I’ve seen before in US-based publications / sites:

“This little exchange took place on the internet, so it should go without saying that the clusterfuck had yet to begin. Enter one Franklin Harris….”

What exactly does clusterfuck mean? The context implies a load of people rushing in to make a lot of noise and try and beat each other up, so perhaps it’s a combination of “cluster bomb” and “fuck someone up”. But what intrigues me is whether it actually has anything to do with real fucking? How does one clusterfuck? Is it an orgy?

Post-colonial cousins, please do inform…

After a mp3 gourge which has left my eyes red and my hed spinning 19 tracks later, it’s time for bed, but before I go, and because my brain is too fried for a Monday Question, here’s one for you lot. Yes, the 80s were shit on the whole, but this song is rather good.

Tonight, Broadband happened. I was expecting it to sometime this weekend after finally getting through to someone at BT who knew what they were talking about and who fixed my local exchange thingy, but it was still a pleasant surprise. And so, straight over to fp for a load of mp3s! Biggest pleasure so far - Lemon Jelly.

Twelve photos taken over the last week.
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Last night I went to a book launch, drank a lot of free wine, then went on to the pub to meet up with some people and stayed there until quarter past midnight. I then went home, went online for a bit and got to bed around 1.30am.

This morning I woke up before my alarm clock with a slight hangover but feeling fine. I’m posting this then I’m going to have some breakfast and go to work.

This might seem mundane but this is something of a breakthrough. Over the last week or so, other than some glitches over the weekend (I slept right through Saturday for example) I’ve been getting up early and feeling good. Today I did it after a boozy night out. As people who’ve been following this weblog will know, this is not normal. I appear, touch wood, to have settled into a normal pattern.

And it feels kinda nice!

…and if you can’t you’re not looking hard enough. Or so they saying goes.

Well, I looked on Sunday morning and I couldn’t find much on Bankside (apart from those drain-holes by the river - they were pretty keen). Thing is, inspiration often comes when you’re not expecting it, in a kind of Douglas Adams sort of way. I don’t think you can actually go looking for it - the best you can do is put yourself in a situation and frame of mind where it might come and find you.

So, today’s Monday question (I’m off to bed early tonight so I’m posting it on Sunday) is:

What unexpected thing inspired you recently? And to what end?

These photos were taken on a wet Sunday morning in November. Most of the graffiti is by Banksy.
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I went out looking for inspiration along the south bank of the Thames between Blackfriars Bridge and The Golden Hind. I didn’t find much. I wonder if I’m getting disillusioned with this patch of London or if it didn’t have much to offer to begin with other than a way to get from one part of London to another with no traffic. I thought that a rainy Sunday morning with nobody around would help it to reveal something interesting but it didn’t. At least not to me. I kept thinking that the side roads I walk down every day to work were more interesting.

Anway, here are thirteen of the photos I took.
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Some lovely manga-esque art here with a French twist. Quite sensuous in places but with a sense of humour, especially with the animations.

via Ben

Mark Emmerson mentioned in the comments to this post that he’d got some photos of the Thames at Lewisham, and here they are. Very nice indeed. Really brings out the expanse of water around that area.