The chillis germinated on Friday 25th March 2005, when they got thrown out of a nightclub for “shooting” up in the corner.
Hey, we thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we peeled the labels off of the Boots Basics shampoo and conditioner and wrote “SHAMPOO” and “CONDITIONER” on them by hand? Then people wouldn’t know that we had bought really cheap shampoo and conditioner, and next time we are in the shop, and we come to our senses, and buy not-so-cheap products, we can refill these bottles, and they will look ace?
And then, I added, we should do the same to the spare bottles of shower gel, but to deter people from using them (because they are supposed to be the spares, you see) we could write “ACID” and “NAPALM” on them instead.
10.00 Ghz 2000MB Ram and 30000GB HD.
The comments are the funniest bit. Naturally.
(Warning: non-geeks may not find the advertised “funny comments” to be funny)
UPDATE: the page has been “mended”. Nothing to see here anymore.
Book #16 of 2005
The attentive among you will recall that red clay kindly sent me a parcel, containing amongst other things a copy of The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving.
It’s a book that lurches from death to death, trailing in its wake such various horrors as rape, incest and bear impersonators. Parts of it are beautiful, and other parts, such as the hostage scene, should not be interrupted by Pete even when he is at his most linux-talking fascinating.
I don’t feel that I’m all John Irvinged-out, yet, which is lucky because I also have The World According to Garp on my to-read pile; but I do recognise a couple of recurring themes, including the dressmaker’s dummy.
A good read, narrowly missing out on a five star rating by going on just a little bit too long after it should have ended.
4/5
Setting up Samba so that you can use your Linux-based machine as a fileserver for consumption by a Windows machine is not trivial.
Samba Setup Guide For Linux – this is probably the best page – a nice walkthrough, that worked pretty well for me, up until the last point (restarting samba was “/etc/init.d/samba restart” not “/etc/rc.d/init.d/smb restart”)
Ubuntu wikipage SettingUpSamba
I also think that this forum thread on MandrakeUsers and this one on Techspot have some useful notes.
The title is slightly misleading, but you will admit that it is highly attention-grabbing. With a bit of luck, by the end of this tale you will understand the relevance.
Before I commence my divulsion of this marvellous tale, one that will amaze you like none that you have read before it, it is necessary that I give you some background information, an insight into my daily life that will be central to our story, though in a quite small way.
Are internet cafes illegal in China?
If so, how shall I keep in touch with Pete when I’m over there for two weeks of training? And blog – how shall I blog? And share my photographs? Huh?
Last week my optician informed me confidently that there had been many advances in contact lens technology since my last traumatic experiment with taking my glasses off, about fifteen years ago.
Yesterday he stuck a plastic lens on each of my eyeballs and sent me out into the street to cling on to Pete’s arm and blink a lot. I spent a lot of time staring up at the security mirror in a hardware store, thinking, so that’s what I look like without my glasses.
Then I went back for my lesson in taking them out and putting them in again. The right lens came out at the second attempt.
My lesson was supervised, not by the dishy Irish optician, but by a lady in the scary-nurse style, who obviously knew I was going to give her trouble. After explaining the technique to me once, she spent most of the rest of the time sighing, while I struggled to put my fingers in my eye and remove a lens which remained mysteriously invisible, despite feeling like it was roughly the size of a dustbin lid.
Every so often, scary nurse pointed out that I wasn’t pulling my lower eyelid down far enough. I would fail to move the lens again. She would sigh again. She mentioned that we only had an hour, and that I needed to take them out and put them in again twice more before I would be allowed to take the trial pack of lenses home.
The left lens didn’t emerge until Pete was called upon to coach me. I managed to put them back in with no difficulty, but my eyes were so bloody sore, and my fingers so shaky, that dishy Irish optician took them out and sent me home, with another appointment to go through the fun and games again in three weeks’ time.
If I really want the lenses, apparently, I’ll find a way.