domdavis.com

Right. My friends are bloody useless so were going back to how we used to operate at university. I shall be at Sedition on the second Friday of every month (assuming the regular night remains as good and it wasn’t just a one off good night with the Full Tilt reunion). You lot are welcome to join me but I shall notbe organising anything formal beyond ‘are we going to the pub first or shall I meet you in the club.’

As part of the “Let’s go find lots of clubs that play the music we like and maybe even find other halves for ourselves” Bathgirl and I are also heading to Leeds where we’ll be meeting up with my brother, possibly some of his mates and some of my old school friends before going down to Rios in Leeds for Darkside which, last time I went, was huge fun and no goth Not sure my brother knows what he’s letting himself in for (I’ve sent him a CD with some of the stuff he can expect and he’s still game, so you never know, he might even enjoy it ) but no doubt it’ll be a fun night.

I was also talking to my mother tonight who mentioned that she works with someone who was asking what her sons were like (in a ‘are they single and nice’ type way) so I’ve told mum to point her here [hello ] and if that doesn’t scare her off give her my email address and invite her out to Darkside too Hell, if you can’t do random then what can you do?

If people wish to post glowing reviews about me in the comments that would be good If you feel uncomfortable lying then just pretend you’re writing about someone else

So on to this Friday. Bathgirl and I got handed a flyer for Sedition at Mass in Brixton on our way out from the Electric Ballroom which we decided we’d try in the hope that it had less goth than Inferno. There was a third person coming but they had to drop out so I have a [single] bed in a hotel room spare (got a tripple room as it was cheap, it’s just somewhere to crash although we do have a private bathroom… Woo! I think ). It’s Darwave, Industrial, EBM, Cyber and Goth in one room, Metal and Rock in another so if you’re into that kind of thing or just fancy a laugh let me know. It’s £8 in, £25 for the bed and whatever your drinks cost. I’ll bring the glowsticks Drop me a line (phone, email, or comment if you don’t have either of those) and I can sort out where to meet up if you’re interested in coming.

On the morning of Friday the 22nd of February at 0930 zulu a specialist crack shopping unit was dispatched to Colchester Town center. Primary targets were Marks and Spencer, Next and Gap. Free Spirit, BHS and Debenhams were also identified as secondary targets.

These strikes were precision guided using the latest in handheld shopping technology allowing for specific, surgical strikes and minimising collateral overspend.

At 1230 zulu, coupled with elements purchased during the morning raids Operation Sock was officially launched. Initial reports showed that all members of the previous Underwear Regime, from both the Sock and Boxers faction were captured or eliminated. Undesirable elements from other radical clothing factions were also targeted.

By 1300 zulu new, friendly elements had been installed in the Underwear Drawer. A blue on blue incident Marks and Spencer meant Operation Sock had to be hastely aborted due to the incorrect size being aquired. Less militant members of the old Sock Regime were reinstated temporarily under heavy sanctions including an imbargo on entry to the Laundry Basket or Washing Machine.

Hostilites had ceased by 1330 zulu. No coalition casualties were reported, however in some areas it was impossible to completely overthrow the old regimes so peace keeping forces were installed. This was most prevalent in the areas of Short Sleeved Work Tops.

On Sunday the 24th of Febuary at 1400 zulu the crack shopping unit struck at the heart of London reporting sucess in Marks and Spencer and John Lewis. Results from Gap were dissapointing, however no casualties were sustained and the operation was declared a sucess. An investigation is currently underway regarding gap as it appears initial reports on the prevalence of Mens Work Trousers (WMT’s) was over exagerated.

The Interim Sock Government was officially retired at 1600 zulu and Operation Sock was declared a success.

The new socks purchased feature coloured toes and heels. This allows for fair and easy rotation of socks, minimising excessive washing of any one pair and aids in pairing of correct partners should they be separated. The gains for the Dom Empire cannot be overstated.

It should be noted that the existing arsenal of Work Trousers has been retained, with the exception of one damaged pair that has been retired. These have been augmented with three more ‘Combat‘ class trousers bringing the total Casual fleet to six. The Dom Empire still has plans to further incease the Work Trousers fleet by two, or to invest in two Smart Combat or Smart Cargo class trousers which can be used in a multi-role capabilty. This is required to defend ourselves from the WMT threat from rogue states.

The following intelligence photograph has been declassified. Note the incorrect size of the socks. Due to the sensitive nature of the items and their classification as ‘combatants‘ they are being held in a secure detention facility rather than being passed to a charitable group.

Finally, there have been rumours of a covert black op being operated by the Dom Empire in the past 24 hours. Details are classified but I can confirm that Operation Wind Up You Lot has been a massive success. Sorry Bathgirl

Well, 7 and a bit hours to go until the end of the Gregorian calender year of 2007. Let’s have a brief review (as seems to be the rage at this time of the year on blogs):

2007 sucked.

Brutally.

And not just for me either. It’s been a year of death, divorce, dumpings, and a whole host of other things beginning with D. (For those of you looking through the archives I didn’t blog about most of the really crap stuff as, contrary to the evidence presented, I don’t blog about everything )

Still, on the bright side I have a nice new house, shiny new toys to put in said house, a whole host of new friends and, for the first time since the dawn of the internet, a website that I’ve actually kept maintained for longer than about a month which is always good. I’ve also managed to live within my income this year (well, OK, an income that’s been heavily supplemented from external sources, but hopefully I wont have to buy and furnish a new house in 2008) and I’m actually in a much better state financially that I was last year (no girlies going to be getting their hands on this house, I can tell you ).

I don’t do new years resolutions (the only one I ever kept was the one to not make any more which has been going strong for 12 years now ) but I do have some goals for next year:

• I’d like to give this company something like £4,000 to custom build me a proper left handed, folded blade katana. This is very dependent on if I get a bonus or not this year (unlikely) or me being able to not spend enough during the year to save the money (even less likely) but it’s good to have goals.
• I’d like to not end up in the back of an ambulance or in A&E this year. This one should be easier since I now keep a stock of the drugs that A&E give me on my person at all times so I can just bypass the NHS bit and go straight to the private health care bit. Would be nice not to need that either.
• I’d like to start doing photography again. I’ve not really done any in the past 6 months. Hopefully in the spring I should have a bike so I can take my camera out into the countryside round here and take some spring time shots.
• I’d like to finish my house (OK, OK, flat - you guys are so picky ) off. Not much left to do, just need to get a new desk for the spare room, custom made thing for the en-suit (which really requires me to get the designs to bathgirl since she knows people who can make it for me), new lights (which knowing me are going to be expensive), new hob (my one sucks almost as much as this year has - I’ll get that and the lights fitted at the same time by an electrician), kitchen tiled (friend has said he’ll help out there) and the flat could do with a proper coat of paint.

Nothing overly ambitious, I know, but I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I do fairly regular exercise, I eat pretty well and any other ‘big’ changes are just not going to happen at this stage in my life. Besides, setting lofty goals that I can’t hit is just a bit pointless

One of the advantages I have with my job is that I am a natural geek. A lot of the time I just see the answers to programming problems without having to go through the arduous task of working each part out bit by bit. If you were to ask me how I arrived at an answer I couldn’t tell you. The downside of this is that my hit rate is not 100%, sometimes I see an answer, run off and code it up only to find I’ve forgotten to take some small, but important fact into account. Net-net I’m no faster than your average programmer who diligently works through a problem and finally arrives at a working solution. Yes, I’ve seen to solution and coded it up twice as fast as them, but hell, if this is solution #3 I’m behind.

The upside is my brain never really stops working on a problem and I can literally dream about solutions. Take yesterday. I had to run a test which, while I managed to hack it about to work, wasn’t working the way I intended. Given the state I was in there was no way I was going to be able to work the problem through logically and no solution sprang to mind. Rather than bang my head against a brick wall I gave up and decided to wait for today (when my collegue would be in to offer possible insights) or tomorrow (when there would be people who know far more about this stuff that I do in the office). No need. Had myself a nerdy dream last night, woke up knowing the answer. It’s actually quite simple, but given the amount of tramadol I’d taken yesterday I could just about tie my shoes (and they fasten with velcro) and, given a run up, basic tasks, like eating, were manageable. there was no way I was going to do anything as complex as ’simple’ though.

Even when I’m not ill I get flashes of inspiration from dreams, or just nowhere which is why it’s vital that us natural geeks be allowed to ’slack off’, as the rest of the world so cruelly puts it.  We’re on the job 24×7, jut sometimes we need to offload the problem to another part of the brain to mull it over (hell, even House does it, and he saves lives… in a ‘doesn’t really exist and would never be allowed to practice medicine in he did‘ type way).

So there you go, I’m convinced, I’m pretty sure I’ve got you lot convinced, now I just need to convince management. “I’m not asleep, I’m brainstorming with my subconscious”.

OK, so I totally stole this from an email from Bathgirl, but hey, that’s how memes are started. So, todays meme is to pick 5 songs that sum up your year.

I’m going for:

Fear Factory, Archetype (from the album Archetype)
Threat Signal, Counterbalance (from the album Under Reprisal) - especially the last bit
Killing Joke, You’ll Never Get To Me (from the album Killing Joke)
Blink 182, I Miss You (from the Greatest Hits album)
Fear Factory, Zero Signal (from the album Demanufacture)

Yeah, been a bit of a crap year really.

Whats on your list. Entries in the comments, or feel free to create your own blog post

Canary Wharf (that large development with an unknown number of light bulbs) has, in the shopping part, a number of small Christmas trees (4ft tall or so) nicely decorated with baubles, lights… and signs saying ‘CCTV in operation’. They obviously have problems with people stealing the decorations. How sad must you be to steal Christmas decorations? That said, I want to go steal the signs warning of CCTV watching!

Right - new meme for all you blogged up people who read this blog. Bluesoup is doing a 10Km run for cervical cancer in order to raise money and awareness of something that is, unfortunately, all to familiar to her. Thus far she’s done a sterling job of raising sponsorship money and is [at the time of writing] just off the £1500 mark which is absolutely incredible. By her own admission, however, she’s running out of people to hassle. Which is where we come in.

Firstly, regardless of your presence, or lack thereof, on the internetweb, if you haven’t sponsored her: do so. Since you don’t need to buy me gifts and cards for the midwinter solstice period you’ve got some spare cash lying about. Link is here, credit card is in your wallet [blokes] or hand bag [laydeez]. I’ll wait while you do…

…all done? Good. Now, if you own a blog slap up a post hassling your readers to sponsor her. I read your blogs so I’ll know if you’re cheating :P  Get your readers with blogs to carry the meme on.

If you don’t own a blog then get your friends to read blue’s blog and get them to sponsor. If you meet resistance then threats of extreme physical violence are always effective. If they don’t believe you then point them to my collection of incredibly sharp swords.

If you work with me and know what a rolo is (not the sweet) then a one time gift of 1 rolo per £1 from the bot if you sponsor her (chat me and I’ll sort it out).

Right - I’m tagging all of you. Let’s see if we can’t get Blue to £10,000

The Urban Geek Pack, as a concept, is years old. The Urban Warrior Coat came out of a conversation about superhero names. I came up with The Urban Warrior who is a cross between Blade (from the Blade movies) and Neo (from the Matrix movies). Costume consists of black combats, black paraboots, plain black t-shirt, full length black leather coat, black shad and, vicious, back mounted sword. A master in martial arts, stronger and faster than most humans and with the ability to heal rapidly the Urban Warrior strikes fear into those he hunts. Dedicated to protecting Middle England the Urban Warrior stalks the city streets hunting chavs, numpties and morons extracting swift and brutal payment for their crimes (existence being considered a crime, especially in the case of chavs). His word is law, his judgment final, his punishment disproportionately brutal as he executes those who offend him with extreme prejudice.

What’s your superhero name and what would you do with your powers?