dave's barely awake :: it's a way of life

Happy 2008, and only slightly late

Dave — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:11:03 -0500

Oh. Hello. Still here? Poor you. Hope you haven't been waiting too long. I'd love to say I've been too busy to blog, but the truth is I just forgot for a while. Sorry 'bout that.

Incidentally, the fact that I am blogging again has nothing to do with the fact that I have an Italian assessment to do and am desperately trying to put it off. OK? Just so we're clear on that.

Cool. So now we've cleared that up, and got the Happy 2008 formalities out of the way, a quick update on what's going on...

1/ My flat still isn't finished. This is a combination of my fault for not chasing people, and the fault of non-showing-up-for-weeks-on-end tradesmen. Mostly their fault, in fairness, but still. It's very close to being done, and more than live-able in, so I'll settle for that for a few weeks more.

2/ I am working dayshifts this week! I am learning about a wonderfully exciting (!) new system that's meant to be coming in at work, so I can then impart this knowledge to my colleagues. This means 10am starts, and more excitingly, such things as lunchbreaks at lunchtime and finishes in the early evening, allowing me time to go out! I am, in fact, writing this paragraph in Beanscene... I'm just that excited about the whole thing.

3/ I want to go back to Australia. That's not really going on, I just thought I should mention it.

4/ I am learning Italian. I may have mentioned this, I probably haven't mentioned the difficulty I am having finding any time to study it outside classes. The only thing I can currently remember from the past few weeks is "how is the watermelon?" - which, just for reference in case you need it, is "com'e l'anguria?". That e should have an accent above it, but I can't figure out how to do that on my laptop. Hey-ho.

5/ I went to a party dressed as "the sheriff of stationery village" from the Mighty Boosh. This mainly consisted of my sticking post-its, paperclips and Pritt Stick to a shirt in the most hastily conceived party costume ever. Looked good though, until I lost my sheriff's post-it note badge, complete with star, and wrote myself a new one (I had pens stuck to my person too, you see) which said simply "I am a sheriff :)". Yes, complete with web-style smiley. Had a two-day hangover after those exploits.

6/ I have web work to do. As in, stuff that will make me money. I am also putting this off, for no apparent reason. I did spend 12 hours on it on Saturday night/Sunday very early morning, in fairness, so I reckon I'm due a couple of days' break.

7/ I got woken up this morning by the power box across from my flat catching fire...

8/ The island on the Great Barrier Reef which I visited was featured on the telly last night, in the very good series "Tropic of Capricorn". I mean, they were being all serious and examining the threat to the ecosystem from global warming or climate change or something, but I simply watched and shouted: "I've stood there! My room was just round that corner!" and so on.

9/ Erm, to be honest I can't think of anything else. I'm sure there is more but I've procrastinated long enough and it's time to start writing some Italian. It may be difficult to crowbar any mention of watermelons into 100 words of describing someone, but I'll give it my best shot...

Bumper everything (inc Oz and flat and indeed pics)

Dave — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 07:42:52 -0500

It has been pointed out to me - apparently by my blog itself, which has gained the ability to write and form sentences as well as having a personality - that I haven't written anything for a while, despite the fact that I've actually got some stuff going on which is worth writing about. I can't remember the last time either of those things happened, so let's get remedying them so I can at least have posted something else before 2007 ends.

Right. First things first, Australia. It was utterly amazing. There aren't enough superlatives in the world to describe the place and the stuff I did. It was a struggle to drag myself away from one incredible experience to go and take part in another. In fairness, this is probably partly because it was a very expensive trip - it was worked out that everything I did would have cost about £8000 for 10 days. That includes business-class flights, ridiculously nice meals and a host of crazy things which I never thought I'd get a chance to do. Luckily, I wasn't paying, hence my being able to do all these things.

My first destination was Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. It's a bit of a trek to get there - I reckon I spent 36 hours travelling from leaving my flat to arriving there - but it was well worth it, between the snorkelling on the reef (I saw a turtle), the huge, clean beaches which were practically deserted (apart from birds - there are 300 people on the island at a time, and 70,000 of our flying friends, all of them very noisy), the ability to just jump into the sea for a swim whenever I fancied - and in December, of course - and the sunset wine cruise on the reef, complete with the Glaswegian boat captain who tried to persuade me that a move to Australia was the best idea ever (and I'm now starting to agree with him, actually).

I got stranded on the island by a tropical storm the next morning. Nobody has any sympathy over this when I add that I was meant to be getting flown off by helicopter (that's how I got there). Strange, that. Anyway, eventually got taken off by boat over rather choppy seas, having run through the pouring rain to get there, about five hours late. That meant that I got basically no time to explore Brisbane, which was a shame. But I saw the main street, main square, a random anti-Aids concert outside the hotel and a very tasty Italian restaurant where I sat in the corner and wrote up the first half of my trip for the paper, accompanied by wine.

The other half was basically on Kangaroo Island, off Adelaide (south coast for those of you whose geography is worse than mine). It's a total wildlife haven, so we spotted koalas, rare birds, wallabies, scary snakes, loads of seals and of course, kangaroos (of which I had my picture taken with one, which was fab). I also got to go swimming with dolphins, which was the second-most incredible experience of my life - the most being the coral reef swim, I reckon. The trip back was quite impressive, too, as we were on a speedboat and belted across the waves. I very much wanted to do that again.

Our flight back to Adelaide was awesome, too. The island's airport has two gates - metal, they are, on to the runway itself. The check-in desk eschews all the usual security guff to say "hi, how are you, did you enjoy the island, oh don't worry about your bag being way over the weight limit". In fairness, they could afford to give me a few extra kilos, owing to there only being seven passengers on the plane. We were led out to it by the captain and the world's smiliest stewardess spent the entire flight (when she wasn't either doing the safety demonstration right in front of the group of us or serving the in-flight snack - a cup of water and a Mentos) chatting to us.

I liked Adelaide, too. Had a bit of time there, got to see the shops (didn't buy anything tho unfortunately), a couple of nice bars and an excellent restaurant which won a restaurant-creation reality TV show on one of the networks out there a couple of years ago and is just stupidly posh, to the extent that your entire dinner is explained to you when it's put down in front of you. I ate duck. Nice, too.

Return home was a bit of a nightmare. We were late leaving Melbourne (we had to fly back via there) and then we got held up in Singapore owing to some tube loading our plane with the wrong cargo, which was too heavy meaning we couldn't fly. We then missed our slot to fly over Afghanistan so we were 90mins late into London. That should still have given me time to make my Glasgow flight - got in at 7am, it wasn't until 8.40 - but then the marvellous Heathrow staff took 50 minutes to get my bag from the plane to the conveyor belt, and then the Heathrow Express proved much less than an express owing to a points failure. I got in at 8.15am. The gate was shut. Changing to the next flight would have been £195. I chose not to pay that and got the train the next day (for £38!) after a very enjoyable night with Iain and Suja bumming around Kensington and Earl's Court.

Right, so that's the very concise version - the full one should be in the paper and is about 3000 words, but doesn't include mentions of flights being missed and suchlike.

The pictures, for various reasons, aren't on this site. Instead, you can see them at www.bennettsweb.co.uk/oz/

Oh. And I only watched Neighbours twice while I was out there. Libby is back! Yay!

OK. Half-way done. The flat is tantalisingly close to being finished off. The decorators are now done (though they have to come back owing to one of my walls being rubbish and growing a crack every time I turn the fire on) and my last door is going in tomorrow. That just leaves a bit of finishing-off stuff in the kitchen and bathroom and getting new sockets put on and lights up, new curtains and so on. It's been a struggle to get here - especially in the week when the decorators were starting at 8am every day and I was at work until almost 1am - but I'm really pleased now it's so close to being finished off. I very much look forward to not taking advantage of it at all by getting up and then lying on the sofa watching telly all day.

Here be pics:

I can't do my zeitgeist this year because there's so much spam on the interwebs now that I can't distinguish what are proper links in the first place. D'oh. I'm still willing to bet that the phrase "curly dave's happy hour" would appear in it at least once, though.

Wow. 1200 words before I write this bit, that's impressive. Especially given that I'm writing this on my laptop in the coffee shop with a battery which has been threatening to die since I got there. I best not tempt fate any further, plus I have to buy dinner and do a few other things before I head into work (boo).

Plans for 2008:
- Move to Australia
- Move to Australia
- Erm, Move to Australia

We'll see.

Merry Christmas and to all a good night!

Yum coffee

Dave — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 04:40:11 -0400

I am delighted to say that yesterday I found there is another really rather good coffee shop just down the road from me, making it much handier than my regular haunts of Offshore or Beanscene.

Not that there's anything wrong with those places, right enough... in fact, I was in Offshore on Saturday night. The guy even looked up the name of an artist who had a show on there a few weeks ago which I liked, which was very good of him; and I finally picked up a loyalty card (it only seems fair).

In fact, this place is even closer than my favourite cafe/bar that is Jellyhill, which is all the way up in Hyndland and serves rather nice (if expensive) wine as well as rather nice (and less expensive) coffees.

No, this one is called Oscar & Holly's, and is skulking down in Broomhill, right on Crow Road. It has the disadvantage of closing really early (6pm weeknights, 8pm weekends) but on the plus side it is practically next door to me (5mins walk tops), as well as making nice drinks. They seemed to have exceedingly good cakes (albeit not from Mr Kipling) too, although I was trying to be healthy and not eat them. That, plus the fact I was still ploughing my way through my free Galaxy bars I picked up as part of some ludicrous promotion at Buchanan Galleries on Saturday.

So yes, if you happen to find yourself that bit further out of the city, pop in to Oscar & Holly's and admire the bright colour scheme while trying to decide whether the baby in one of the three pictures they have on the wall is, in fact, crying his eyes out.

Things are less broken

Dave — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 03:49:12 -0400

Thought I'd fixed everything yesterday. I was wrong. It's fixed now, though.

Hmm, apparently this thing leaves a huge gap whenever I only post a one-line entry. How odd.

Teh pix

Dave — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:40:16 -0400

I've been taking full advantage of my shiny new camera over the past week or so. So far, it's been around the west end, into work and up to Loch Lomond. Apart from changing lenses (which is something of a hassle when you're on the move), it's absolutely perfect. And in fairness, I could have got around the lens problem if I'd fancied spending £550 extra on an all-in-one lens, which I didn't, oddly.

Anyway, seeing as I'm stuck waiting for flooring to come (still), here is some of the photographic evidence that I haven't just been sitting in the house...

Pretty much the first proper image I managed to take this was basically an experiment in night-shooting without using the simple auto-mode (which, when shooting in the city, makes the sky orange. I mean, the sky is orange, but still). Stood up at Partickhill and aimed it at Glasgow Harbour. I took another one which was zoomed in - you could pretty much make out individual rooms, which was a tad scary given that I was at least a mile away.

A west end stalwart, Ashton Lane. We didn't actually end up in any of these pubs as they were either a/ mobbed or b/ rubbish, but it still looks nice in a picture. This one was just done on auto mode, as were most of the others as it made pretty much as good a job was possible.

Apologies to whoever owns the B&B at Balmaha and was confused by the randoms standing outside taking pictures of their windows, and windowboxes. Actually, when I write that, I'm impressed the police didn't turn up.

On the beach on the loch shore, there is this. It looks nice.

The sun finally came out as we were almost about to leave, so I got some reflection-type pics. They're not perfect, but they're pretty good, and better than the ones I took when the water was magically flowing uphill owing to my inability to hold the camera level.

I rather like this, actually, These were on a not insubstantial tree above the path. Thanks to the magic of zoom, they might as well have been on the ground...

...Much like this, erm, was actually. I want to figure out how to take a picture in the rain so you can see the individual drops; I haven't figured out how fast the shutter speed needs to be and how to make it work without the whole picture going black yet.

So yes, that's my adventures so far. I kinda hoped that in the time it took me to process the pics and type this, Mr B&Q would have turned up with my floor, but sadly no luck yet. Oh well.

Oh, I've yet to figure out how to colour-correct or anything in Photoshop (or indeed why I'd want or need to) so these are all exactly as they were taken, just resized and cropped a bit (especially in the case of the Ashton Lane one, as there were big ugly bins in the right of the frame which I failed to notice at the time).

Things are broken

Dave — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 06:19:24 -0400

Hello. You'll probably find that basically none of the links here work right now. You couldn't even see this front page until a minute ago, my server's gone nuts quite frankly. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon. Sorry.

Work continues on the flat - my joiner started yesterday. I now have windowsills made of wood, as opposed to minging PVC, and the cool old-style alcove which had been inexplicably half-filled in is now getting towards being restored to its former glory. Today he is building a cabinet; my tiler/electrician/plumber is getting bits of the bathroom plastered and finishing off tiling my kitchen (in theory, he's not here yet) and I'm waiting for 34 packs of hardwood flooring to arrive and probably fall through the floor.

Fun stuff.

This upset me

Dave — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:45:02 -0400

Spotted yesterday, in Sainsbury's...

It's September.

Work in progress...

Dave — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 17:19:13 -0400

So I felt that, what with Scotland having just recorded a historic victory in Paris, I should write about... how the work on my flat is going.

It's going not badly, actually. The rewiring is all but complete and my new kitchen hob is being fitted on Friday; the people who are fitting my new fire are coming to have a look tomorrow and will take the old one away in a fortnight; and I'm in touch with joiners and suchlike about getting various jobs done.

It also occured to me that I hadn't posted any pics of the new place yet, really. So, without further ado, here goes. I should really do this as a gallery, but I can't be bothered, so the scrollbar is your friend...

These are all pics of my new living room from various angles. The computer desk that you can just see in the third one is in a (not so) wee alcove, which is really handy and keeps it out of the way. Not much is changing in here, really. The sticker on the fireplace is condemning it so that's going; and I now have these in the inshot behind the TV:

They're LEDs and they change colour and do all sorts of cool things. Expensive but totally worth it. That is all going to be glass shelves so they reflect and refract and suchlike.

Next: the kitchen.

Not bad, as you'll see. A good size, loads of space at the far end, and only slightly let down by the fact that the floor currently looks like this:

There is a good reason, though; it means Mr Gas Fitter can come and easily lay a pipe on Friday. Then the thing will be put back together. Meantime, I'm forced to eat out again. It's a hard life.

Bathroom next. I should say it's getting replaced fairly soon. This is what it looks like...

Unfortunately, when the place was being rewired, it was discovered that the plaster on the ceiling wasn't the best. This is what happened, in fact, when the plaster - which wasn't actually attached to, well, anything - was touched:

Eek.

Finally, the bedroom. Not much getting changed in here; new doors on the walk-in wardrobe and some new decoration is all it needs:

So yo, that's my crib. Now get the **** off ma property.

Or something equally MTV.

Idiocy

Dave — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:03:47 -0400

So in my haste to clean up after my rewiring became 99% done (just a couple of gadget-type things to get fitted now), I was hoovering my flat. Unfortunately, I hoovered over my phone cable into my living room. A tiny little, almost invisble phone cable, which instantly snapped and wrapped itself around the innards of my hoover. Result: no ADSL. No phone either, for that matter.

Luckily I managed to get things working wirelessly with a bit of moving stuff around. Still, I feel like a bit of a complete moron, frankly. I do have a couple of handy phone adapters now, but the cable is completely destroyed as, strangely enough, the power of the hoover snapped it in two.

I am a moron.

That is all.

Open aspects to the east

Dave — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:52:23 -0400

As promised, a pic of the tenement collapse. You can probably make out the furniture still inside. Sorry for the fairly poorish quality; it's from my mobile.