domdavis.com

One of the many good things about my new flat is that it’s a flat; I don’t have to worry about kids coming to the front door to Trick-Or-Treat (or, more correctly, extort sweets with menaces - gotta love the ASBO generation) as they can’t get to my front door, they can only get to the front door of the block. The flats are also new and still on what looks like a building site. This greatly reduces the chances of little (and not so little) oiks coming to the door and desecrating it with eggs if their demands for treats are not met. Should, for whatever reason, these defences be breached I will further hamper efforts by not being in for most of the evening since it beats the hell out of sitting in the house with the lights off hoping that nothing gets damaged (I used to seriously worry about the girlfriends car at my old house). There is a certain irony that I still have quite a few sweets from my rather large purchase a while ago. These are mine. I do not share with yoofs.

After I don’t know how long (well over a year elapsed) I’ve finally managed to beat the final level in the Lumines vs CPU mode. Woo, go me I’ve also managed to get a new high score on challenge mode of in excess of 600,000 points. A quick perusal of the t’internetweb shows that most people get in the 100,000 to 200,000 range (with 200,000 being considered quite good). The highest score I’ve found thus far is 400,000 odd, of course I might not be looking hard enough . I did find out that there is a new skin unlocked when you score 999,999 in challenge mode which just sounds insane. If everything went my way and I didn’t loose concentration I could probably get 700,000 (but I think a million is a little too far, but then I used to think that getting 200,000 would be hard and I regularly get that without trying). Won’t stop me from trying though Out of interest I have people who know people in the games industry doing a bit of research as to what kind of high scores are being achieved by uber players and where 600,000 odd falls in the grand scheme of things. I’d like to think I was quite good but there may well be much sadder people out there who spend way more time than I do playing it.

It’s getting to that time of year again. People are beginning to wonder what this years bonus situation is going to be like and are starting to make plans how to spend it. Of course this year is a little different. This year, like quite a few financial institutions, the place I work at has lost a fair amount of money (actually, that’s not fair. The place I work for has, on the whole, had an outstanding year, it’s just my area went and misplaced something like two billion pounds Sterling. Yeah, d’oh. Gotta love the US sub prime mortgage crap that’s going on.). Heads have rolled, the axe is still swinging and bonus pools may well be slashed. We could, for the first time in my career, be talking about bofnuses [there’s no f in bonus - think about it ] This would be a Bad Thing™. For starters I usually go one further than working out what I’ll spend it on and just go ahead and spend it anyway, hoping that whatever I get in February will cover the credit card bill. This year I’m having to be much more cautious. Instead I’m hoping to win £10,000,000 on the lotto draw tonight which would go a long way to solving my ‘how do I buy all these shiny things without having the money to afford them‘ problem and my ‘do I really have to haul my sorry arse out of bed each morning for the next 30 odd years?‘ dilemma. In the mean time I’m perusing the websites of purveyors of shiny things and torturing myself.

Woo - I have a day off Not actually doing anything fun though. For one reason or another I’ve not been sleeping well for the past few weeks. Now I’m needing sleep again and needing to catch up on my missed sleep so I’ve been coming home from work, going pretty much straight to bed, going to sleep and waking up late for work. Spot the problem . Tonight I shall go to bed a little late (10ish as I’m off to go see Stardust tonight), sleep for as long as I can thanks to some nice pills from my doctor, wake up whenever, spend as much time as I possibly can refusing to acknowledge the day and only getting up and out of bed with I am too bored to stay in it any longer. Further more I’ll be going to bed ultra early tomorrow night (7 or courtesy of some more nice pills and I wont be setting an alarm. If I sleep through to 7 then I sleep through until 7. If that doesn’t sort me out then nothing will and if I’m lucky it’ll get rid of the big black bags under my eyes.

Perhaps given this story on El Reg I should refrain from putting pictures of John and his actions

on the internetweb. That said, all his friends told me to put them up on facebook

Interesting weekend. If you’d told me on last week that on Saturday I’d be stood in a group of people hearing the phrase ‘John, get you dick out of the pumpkin!‘ I would have thought you were a bit strange; but no, I have photographic and video evidence of John performing a lewd act on a pumpkin. Apparently this is not uncommon where John is concerned and him getting his todger out when drunk is a completely unremarkable event to those who know him well. The mind boggles.

On the plus side I have discovered a new pub populated by my kind of people (long hair, wear black, listen to loud guitar based music) with a semi reasonable jukebox and, most importantly, a sign on the door saying ‘no chavs‘. I think I will be upgrading this to my local I also made a few more friends (I already knew John, although was unaware of his… habits) which is nice, most of which don’t seem to wish to perform carnal acts on members of the gourd family which is always a good thing.

This weekend I capitulated and turned the heating on. Not that my flat is particularly cold yet, personally I don’t mind if I have to put on a jumper and socks rather than walking around bare foot and wearing a t-shirt all day, but more because my washing and my towels are failing to dry in a timely fashion. I’ve also closed the spare bathroom window which means I’m down to airing the house through the small vents above the windows. Shame, as I’ve got used to having fresh air in the place.

The heating, as it turned out, wasn’t too problematic to sort out, however, I suspect it’s one of those things that appeals to my mind and that others would find a serious problem. I know for a fact that 2 of my neighbours haven’t worked it out yet, although this is mainly due to the way the instructions are presented. We do not have the instruction manuals that came with the heaters and heating system. Instead the 3 A5 manuals were disassembled and photocopied which means that page 1 of our ‘manuals’ has page 1 and 8 of manual 1, page 2 has page 2 and 7 and so on. Since 3 manuals have been grouped in this fashion it’s near impossible to work out what order the pages go it. Lastly, just to make life impossible for us a page is missing on programming the heating system. Given these hurdles I can understand why the others haven’t worked it out.

Given the state of the manuals I set out to find copies on the internetweb and managed to find 2 of the 3. Given the 3rd is simply for installation this wasn’t a problem. I then printed them out and read them in order, figured out how to set the panels, worked out which ones were in Zone 1 and which ones were in Zone 2 and then programmed the times I wanted them to come on. It’s quite good as the panels in the bedroom are in Zone 2 and the rest of the flat is in Zone 1 so you can have a toasty warm bedroom to wake up in (but not bother about the rest of the house) and then have a nice warm house to come home to and finally heat the bedroom just before bed time. Still need to work out what settings each of the panels needs to be on (started low, will turn them up if it is too cold) and also need to find out how much the place costs to heat. This is the first time I’ve had electric central heating, I just hope it doesn’t cost too much more than gas.

It amuses me to see the number of ‘financial’ blogs that have linked to my Dom Economics post. Of course they’re just putting entries with to generate links to get google page rank scores but I must have hit a whole load of keywords to generate so many Of course all their comments have been deleted, but I’m not going to complain about the links from them to me

I have white, Egyptian cotton bed sheets from John Lewis. They’re quite a high thread count, very nice and fairly expensive. I’m fastidious about keeping them clean and paranoid about getting stains on them. I also (probably thanks to many years in sunny climes) have quite a few moles. When those buggers get caught on something they don’t half bleed so it was with a real sense of joy that I discovered one on my back had started bleeding and that my bed sheets were now covered in blood. There is nothing fun about standing in the bathroom, well past your bed time, bowl full of cold water (so as not to set the blood) scrubbing the sheets with a bar of plain soap in order to get the stain out. Thankfully I think I managed to get it all out. From now on I think I might start sleeping in a t-shirt.

Given all the fuss that’s been going on about sword bans and what have you I’ve been finding it incredibly hard to find out what the law is regarding them. It is perfectly legal to own them, it’s hideously illegal to carry them in a public place, beyond that: nada. Thankfully for me Bathgirl had some time to kill at Kings Cross yesterday and went to ask the British Transport Police what they thought (rolo for you there). The news is rather good

First off, there is bugger all information on the web about this so no doubt this entry is going to get people who are searching for the same information I was so lets bung in a disclaimer here. I make no claims about the legality or validity of this information. I am by no means a legal expert and this information is already second hand. The law may have changed or I may have misunderstood what I was told. Different police forces may have different views on things. You troll round with a live blade (or even an imitation weapon for that matter) and get stopped/arrested/shot repeatedly in the head at point blank range/whatever it’s your own damn fault. These things are dangerous and the police get understandably nervous about them. If in doubt go ask them. And for god’s sake don’t go running around with these things in the open. That will get them banned and ruin it for the rest of us.

So, with that in mind, apparently it is perfectly legal to carry swords if they are in an unobtrusive bag/case and you have legitimate cause to be carrying them. Legitimate cause pretty much starts and stops at: transporting them to be sold; transporting them to and from martial arts practice. Self defence is not a legitimate reason (The UK is pretty stringent of self defence laws and we’re not allowed to carry any kind of weapon for that purpose). I wouldn’t like to use ‘I wanted to show my mate‘ as a legitimate reason either, get your mate to come to yours. Provided the bag/case doesn’t look like it’s carrying swords all should be good and it does not count as a concealed weapon. Putting a lock on it wouldn’t go amiss either.

Should you get stopped and searched then apparently holding a licence from the Association of Martial Artists [or something like that, it’s all a bit hazy there] goes a long way to convincing the police that you have legitimate cause to be carrying swords. Similarly being a member of a martial arts club also helps stop any confusion (getting both is probably the best bet). That said, claiming you’re off to practice in London on a train heading to Leeds isn’t going to go down well, especially if your club does Karate rather than something where they actually use swords.

Key point here is you go directly from your house to your destination. You do not pop into the shops, you do not nip to the pub, you don’t do for a relaxing stroll in the woods. Doing so puts you on seriously dodgy legal ground.

Apparently, and this did make me chortle somewhat, simply bunging the sword in a box with ’sword’ slapped all over it and taping it up is a huge no no and is also seriously dodgy in legal terms. Whoops . Good thing I taped up the bits that said ’sword’, although it does make you wonder where the delivery guy stands from a legal point of view Just to be safe I think I’ll invest in some brown paper to wrap any other ones I get.

Like I say, if you are in doubt, go ask the police. When it comes to stuff like this it’s better to ask for permission than forgiveness.