The broadband at Yateley Baptist hasn't been working very well for the last couple of months. It broke down, stayed down for a fortnight or so, got fixed, stayed working for two or three weeks, and then broke down again - and it's been down for about three weeks now. An engineer's coming on Tuesday.
Not very helpful when you've got sermon recordings to upload, or if you'd been planning to screen World Cup matches with free food as a getting-to-know-people-in-the-community exercise, and the screening was going to be done via the web.
However, I had an email last night which offers a timely dose of perspective:
I've recently been helping to prepare some booklets for printing, on behalf of YBC's missionary Ian, who makes radio programmes in French (mainly for broadcast into Francophone Africa) and writes up summaries of the teaching in booklet form. It's an interesting exercise when I barely speak a word of French, although I can sometimes trace a few words back through their Greek or Latin roots and get some idea of what a sentence might be saying. But the latest instalment gets even more interesting - it's not the French version (already published), but a translation into Lobiri. I think I might have heard the name once or twice before the book turned up, but I've got to admit I haven't even got round to Googling it to find out what part of Africa it comes from! The script uses some Latin characters, but also several others that don't appear in English and don't look much like Greek or Cyrillic, so I can't even guess at what's being said - I have to take it on trust that it's a straight translation of Ian's writing and doesn't contain any raving heresies.
I've been sent the translation in PDF format and it's proving difficult to transfer back into Word for processing, so I've asked if I could have a .doc version. Then the reply came back, and this is where I return to my original point: apparently my request should be possible - except it might take a while, because the guy who translated the book into Lobiri doesn't have electricity. The nearest town with electricity - never mind the Internet, just basic electricity - is at the other end of 25km's (or 15 miles') worth of dirt tracks.
Which makes my little gripe with BT Broadband seem a bit puny, doesn't it?
- The Colclough
Showing posts with label Computer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Computer. Show all posts
Friday, 13 June 2014
Saturday, 3 August 2013
Ways to Pickle Your Brain
What the title says... here's a few thoughts on the subject, based on stuff that's been going on recently:
Have a heatwave. I can usually keep functioning until 11pm quite happily, but I've struggled lately. It's been particularly awkward at work - I seem to have spent several hours feeling like I'm wilting all over the till.
Play Antichamber. Acquired recently when it came up on a Steam sale, taken more than 5 hours so far... and I don't even know how much of it I've solved. It's unspeakably confusing. Non-euclidean geometry, things changing behind your back (which often happens in my dreams, but now it's happening on my PC monitor too!), and sundry other very odd game mechanics. Makes you miss the comparative linearity of Portal.
Change all the windows in your house and get paranoid that something's missing. It's especially confusing in the porch, because the new front door has a lot more glazing than the old one, and lets in a lot more light, generating the subconscious assumption that it must have been left open by mistake. Which is confusing when the door's actually shut. Still, the new windows are, in themselves, very nice, and the new front door key has the added bonus of looking not so much like a key as we know it, Jim, but more like some fragment of the Enterprise which has gotten lost in time.
Get your new hamster to eat something which you don't know isn't poisonous. After a longish period without any hamsters, we've had two new ones in the last week: Smokey (Ben's fourth), and Muffy (Sophie's fifth). I went to clean my teeth last night, and found Muffy's cage temporarily sited on the kitchen table, and the rodent busy munching on a bit of christmas cactus which was accidentally poking through the bars. I had no idea whether or not christmas cacti are toxic, so I pulled the plant out of reach (which left the hamster looking a bit confused!), and scuttled off to google the thing. The internet seemed to concur that christmas cacti aren't poisonous - the worst that might happen is a bit of gastric upset and vomiting, but nothing life-threatening - so I could sleep easy. But still, while it lasted, one more thing to help fry my brain cells...
Any other suggestions?
- The Colclough
Have a heatwave. I can usually keep functioning until 11pm quite happily, but I've struggled lately. It's been particularly awkward at work - I seem to have spent several hours feeling like I'm wilting all over the till.
Play Antichamber. Acquired recently when it came up on a Steam sale, taken more than 5 hours so far... and I don't even know how much of it I've solved. It's unspeakably confusing. Non-euclidean geometry, things changing behind your back (which often happens in my dreams, but now it's happening on my PC monitor too!), and sundry other very odd game mechanics. Makes you miss the comparative linearity of Portal.
Change all the windows in your house and get paranoid that something's missing. It's especially confusing in the porch, because the new front door has a lot more glazing than the old one, and lets in a lot more light, generating the subconscious assumption that it must have been left open by mistake. Which is confusing when the door's actually shut. Still, the new windows are, in themselves, very nice, and the new front door key has the added bonus of looking not so much like a key as we know it, Jim, but more like some fragment of the Enterprise which has gotten lost in time.
Get your new hamster to eat something which you don't know isn't poisonous. After a longish period without any hamsters, we've had two new ones in the last week: Smokey (Ben's fourth), and Muffy (Sophie's fifth). I went to clean my teeth last night, and found Muffy's cage temporarily sited on the kitchen table, and the rodent busy munching on a bit of christmas cactus which was accidentally poking through the bars. I had no idea whether or not christmas cacti are toxic, so I pulled the plant out of reach (which left the hamster looking a bit confused!), and scuttled off to google the thing. The internet seemed to concur that christmas cacti aren't poisonous - the worst that might happen is a bit of gastric upset and vomiting, but nothing life-threatening - so I could sleep easy. But still, while it lasted, one more thing to help fry my brain cells...
Any other suggestions?
- The Colclough
Thursday, 24 January 2013
What the Wacom Can Do
After a minor case of unsubtle hinting, I was given a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch graphics tablet for Christmas. I hadn't really used graphics tablets much before, and my last attempt (borrowing Tim's tablet, which is also a Wacom) produced this rather unimpressive bit of scribble:
However, I was pretty sure that my initial failures were just teething trouble. After all, I spent my first two or three weeks in The GIMP being hopelessly confused and (whisper it!) almost missing Photoshop, of all things - before it suddenly clicked one day, and I've been using the program for all sorts of things ever since. I expected a similar thing would happen with the tablet, if I had one of my own and was able to get some practice.
It looks like I expected right. This morning, I finished this (a rather better piece of scribble, if I say so myself):
I almost crashed GIMP during the production process, as the image had so many layers; in the end I fixed the problem by separating the thing out into three different files - one with the initial compositional layers, a second to tidy up the line art, and a third to add the colour. You can see a higher-resolution version of the finished picture on my DeviantArt page, and you might notice it cropping up as my new avatar on DeviantArt and on Steam.
Where next? Well - here's a bit of good news for the Root Hill attendees among you - I'm very nearly finished the Root Hill On Camera 2012 DVD: the video segments are rendered, the disc menus are authored, and the print components have been designed. All that remains is to produce the physical copies and get them in the post. And once that little project (little... haha, right) is off my slate, I'm planning to try and get back to animating something. So many ideas drifting around right now, including Papercuts episodes 5 onwards (waiting on script delivery from a guest writer or two), Arbitrary Stopframe Series 2 (waiting on... um... me getting round to it), The Murkum Show (working title, waiting on me figuring out what it's actually about apart from having lots of Doctor Murkum in it), and the long-planned Fishy Business remake Empire of the Pond (which has recently seen some movement on the test-illustrations front). But more recently, the idea occurred to me that I should try doing a quick-and-dirty (that fatal phrase...) graphics-tablet cel animation featuring my little-known character Elbows Dude in a variety of improbable scrapes, which he solves with his elbow powers. Right now, I honestly don't know which route I'll be going down next, but all five of them have some appeal, so I'll hopefully be picking one and getting down to business before too long. Watch this space!
- The Colclough
A concept sketch for Fort Paradox 115: my first graphics-tablet drawing. Srsly.
However, I was pretty sure that my initial failures were just teething trouble. After all, I spent my first two or three weeks in The GIMP being hopelessly confused and (whisper it!) almost missing Photoshop, of all things - before it suddenly clicked one day, and I've been using the program for all sorts of things ever since. I expected a similar thing would happen with the tablet, if I had one of my own and was able to get some practice.
It looks like I expected right. This morning, I finished this (a rather better piece of scribble, if I say so myself):
Blue in the Firelight, January 2013
I almost crashed GIMP during the production process, as the image had so many layers; in the end I fixed the problem by separating the thing out into three different files - one with the initial compositional layers, a second to tidy up the line art, and a third to add the colour. You can see a higher-resolution version of the finished picture on my DeviantArt page, and you might notice it cropping up as my new avatar on DeviantArt and on Steam.
Where next? Well - here's a bit of good news for the Root Hill attendees among you - I'm very nearly finished the Root Hill On Camera 2012 DVD: the video segments are rendered, the disc menus are authored, and the print components have been designed. All that remains is to produce the physical copies and get them in the post. And once that little project (little... haha, right) is off my slate, I'm planning to try and get back to animating something. So many ideas drifting around right now, including Papercuts episodes 5 onwards (waiting on script delivery from a guest writer or two), Arbitrary Stopframe Series 2 (waiting on... um... me getting round to it), The Murkum Show (working title, waiting on me figuring out what it's actually about apart from having lots of Doctor Murkum in it), and the long-planned Fishy Business remake Empire of the Pond (which has recently seen some movement on the test-illustrations front). But more recently, the idea occurred to me that I should try doing a quick-and-dirty (that fatal phrase...) graphics-tablet cel animation featuring my little-known character Elbows Dude in a variety of improbable scrapes, which he solves with his elbow powers. Right now, I honestly don't know which route I'll be going down next, but all five of them have some appeal, so I'll hopefully be picking one and getting down to business before too long. Watch this space!
- The Colclough
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
What's a Desktop?
I got one of those phone calls this afternoon, where they claim to be from Microsoft and want to talk to you about your computer problem (taking advantage of the fact that most people who have a computer have Windows and/or a problem, usually both), with a view to getting you to pay for some alleged 'repair service' which will actually do more damage to the machine than good, and let the perpetrators run off with your credit card details.
I spotted the guy immediately - the combination of a thick Indian accent and the (always dubious) opening line "Hello, I'm calling from Microsoft; am I right in thinking you are the primary user of your computer?" - and since I knew the Accented One was a miserable low-life trying to pull a fast one on me, I decided I could justify wasting a few minutes of his time by pretending to be a tech-illiterate moron. Five minutes spent trying to help me find my own mouse would be five minutes less for the cad to maraud around and prey on someone more vulnerable. That, and I thought it'd be fun.
Needless to say, I fully appreciate the irony inherent in the notion of me playing the tech-illiterate moron, seeing as the computer is by far my most frequently-used tool, and I basically got my current job (coming up to its one-year anniversary next month!) on the grounds that I can speak HTML and I showed promise at navigating the shop's database. But just for a few minutes, I carefully suppressed years of deeply-ingrained Windows-user know-how, and pretended I didn't have a clue.
"There's this thing out there that will infect your computer as soon as you go on the internet. It affects all versions of Windows," the Accent informed me in apparent earnest. "Oh dear," I muttered in fake worry, "that sounds pretty bad. I guess I'd better let you give me a hand..." And so we began. I don't claim that what follows is a verbatim transcript, but it does summarise the more interesting points.
"Can you be in front of your computer right now?" the Accent asked me. I was already there - having been using it when the phone rang - so I decided not to bother over-complicating that step. "Yes," I said, "I'm there". "Good," said the Accent.
"Right: is it a desktop or a laptop computer?" the Accent asked me. "What's the difference?" I replied. After making him explain two or three times, I finally 'deduced' what I'd known all along: it's all in separate bits spread all over the desk with cables between then, so it's a desktop. I then feigned surprise at the 'realisation' that a desktop computer is called that because it's non-portable and stays permanently on the top of the desk.
"Which version of Windows do you have?" the Accent asked me. "How do I find out?" I replied. And then I muddied the waters further by saying I'd heard that there was this thing called Linux which you could get instead of Windows, and how would I know if I had that? Mumble, mumble... we never did work out that I'm running Windows at all, never mind getting down to finnicky details like XP x64 Pro.
I pushed the OS question a bit further by asking "What happens if I've got Linux? Will it still get The Problem?" "Yes," the Accent said, "it'll be much worse." Oh, really - I thought - well, thank goodness I'm not running Linux in your imaginary scam-world then. I could have been in trouble.
"Could you go to the screen that comes up when you turn the computer on?" the Accent asked me. "Oh," said I, "but I always have the screen on when I turn the computer on. Otherwise I can't use the computer!" Apparently put off for a moment by this unfortunate spot of ambiguity in the English language, the Accent changed his tack a bit: "Can you go to your main screen?" "Um... I've only got one. Some of my friends have two, but I don't."
"What can you see on your screen right now?" I happened to be staring at Windows Media Player 11, so I said in dim-but-happy mode "I can see my music!" and merrily launched into a string of pointless questions as to whether the quantity or even the selection of music could affect the computer's vulnerability to The Problem. I even started reading out the contents of my library, but only got as far as "some Adiemus albums, and the soundtrack from that Portal 2 game, and" before being interrupted by the next question.
"How old are you?" asked the Accent. I feigned worry again and asked if I was going to be in trouble because of a legal minimum age for using a computer, to which the Accent said "No, no, I'm not talking about anything illegal." This remark provided me the opportunity to slip in the knowing question (albeit still disguised under the vapid manner I'd been keeping up for the previous few minutes) "Are you sure?" I don't know whether or not he picked up on the subtle aspertion being cast against his alleged Microsoft credentials, but if he did, he didn't let on.
"So," I blustered on, "does the computer know how old I am and behave differently based on my age?" I was somewhat taken aback by his answer - in retrospect, I think the Accent must have decided I was really stupid and thought it would be easier to just play along: "Yes, it does." "Oh," I mumbled.
Anyway, I honestly don't know why he felt he needed to know my age, and I didn't much fancy telling him. So I decided to bend the truth. Well, alright, I guess misquoting your age by seven years goes beyond 'bending the truth' and counts as outright fibbing, doesn't it. I claimed I was 17, and I think that was the point where the pudding got over-egged. His Accentedness didn't buy it for one moment. "No, you don't sound 17," he said. In retrospect, I should have asked how old he thought I sounded - was he going by the timbre of my voice and cottoning on that I'm actually in my mid-20s, or was he going by the implausible stupidity of my responses to his questions and thinking I was more like 7? I guess I'll never know.
I claimed I was really 17, but I have a throat condition that makes my voice sound unusual. And at this point, the Accent had obviously had enough, because he muttered something which I couldn't quite make out for certain, but which sounded a lot like "I think you've got a few other conditions as well," before telling me to "Have a nice day, sir," and hanging up.
One can only speculate as to how much longer I might have been able to keep it going if I'd come clean and said I'm 24...
Looking back on the conversation, the best bit was probably one of the earliest ones, but I thought I'd save it for last in the writeup: when he asked if I was the primary user of my computer, I said I was, but I said I sometimes let the hamster have a go too. Needless to say, the Accent seemed to have trouble knowing what to make of this. But while it may sound like the least realistic thing I said in the whole phone call, the beauty of it is that it's arguably true, at least in a manner of speaking. Okay, so Dusty doesn't exactly 'have a go on the computer' as such, but he does sometimes walk across my keyboard and accidentally press the odd key with his feet. So you could say he's 'on the computer', even if only in the crudely physical sense of standing on the controls.
As a coda to the story: once I hung up, I found myself shaking. I suspect it was a physical reaction to the strain of suppressing my usually-dominant honest streak and telling barefaced lies for a solid eight-and-a-half minutes. Strange and fascinating.
Anyway, shakes aside, I very much suspect (and certainly hope) that my Accented friend had the worst of the conversation!
- The Colclough
I spotted the guy immediately - the combination of a thick Indian accent and the (always dubious) opening line "Hello, I'm calling from Microsoft; am I right in thinking you are the primary user of your computer?" - and since I knew the Accented One was a miserable low-life trying to pull a fast one on me, I decided I could justify wasting a few minutes of his time by pretending to be a tech-illiterate moron. Five minutes spent trying to help me find my own mouse would be five minutes less for the cad to maraud around and prey on someone more vulnerable. That, and I thought it'd be fun.
Needless to say, I fully appreciate the irony inherent in the notion of me playing the tech-illiterate moron, seeing as the computer is by far my most frequently-used tool, and I basically got my current job (coming up to its one-year anniversary next month!) on the grounds that I can speak HTML and I showed promise at navigating the shop's database. But just for a few minutes, I carefully suppressed years of deeply-ingrained Windows-user know-how, and pretended I didn't have a clue.
"There's this thing out there that will infect your computer as soon as you go on the internet. It affects all versions of Windows," the Accent informed me in apparent earnest. "Oh dear," I muttered in fake worry, "that sounds pretty bad. I guess I'd better let you give me a hand..." And so we began. I don't claim that what follows is a verbatim transcript, but it does summarise the more interesting points.
"Can you be in front of your computer right now?" the Accent asked me. I was already there - having been using it when the phone rang - so I decided not to bother over-complicating that step. "Yes," I said, "I'm there". "Good," said the Accent.
"Right: is it a desktop or a laptop computer?" the Accent asked me. "What's the difference?" I replied. After making him explain two or three times, I finally 'deduced' what I'd known all along: it's all in separate bits spread all over the desk with cables between then, so it's a desktop. I then feigned surprise at the 'realisation' that a desktop computer is called that because it's non-portable and stays permanently on the top of the desk.
"Which version of Windows do you have?" the Accent asked me. "How do I find out?" I replied. And then I muddied the waters further by saying I'd heard that there was this thing called Linux which you could get instead of Windows, and how would I know if I had that? Mumble, mumble... we never did work out that I'm running Windows at all, never mind getting down to finnicky details like XP x64 Pro.
I pushed the OS question a bit further by asking "What happens if I've got Linux? Will it still get The Problem?" "Yes," the Accent said, "it'll be much worse." Oh, really - I thought - well, thank goodness I'm not running Linux in your imaginary scam-world then. I could have been in trouble.
"Could you go to the screen that comes up when you turn the computer on?" the Accent asked me. "Oh," said I, "but I always have the screen on when I turn the computer on. Otherwise I can't use the computer!" Apparently put off for a moment by this unfortunate spot of ambiguity in the English language, the Accent changed his tack a bit: "Can you go to your main screen?" "Um... I've only got one. Some of my friends have two, but I don't."
"What can you see on your screen right now?" I happened to be staring at Windows Media Player 11, so I said in dim-but-happy mode "I can see my music!" and merrily launched into a string of pointless questions as to whether the quantity or even the selection of music could affect the computer's vulnerability to The Problem. I even started reading out the contents of my library, but only got as far as "some Adiemus albums, and the soundtrack from that Portal 2 game, and" before being interrupted by the next question.
"How old are you?" asked the Accent. I feigned worry again and asked if I was going to be in trouble because of a legal minimum age for using a computer, to which the Accent said "No, no, I'm not talking about anything illegal." This remark provided me the opportunity to slip in the knowing question (albeit still disguised under the vapid manner I'd been keeping up for the previous few minutes) "Are you sure?" I don't know whether or not he picked up on the subtle aspertion being cast against his alleged Microsoft credentials, but if he did, he didn't let on.
"So," I blustered on, "does the computer know how old I am and behave differently based on my age?" I was somewhat taken aback by his answer - in retrospect, I think the Accent must have decided I was really stupid and thought it would be easier to just play along: "Yes, it does." "Oh," I mumbled.
Anyway, I honestly don't know why he felt he needed to know my age, and I didn't much fancy telling him. So I decided to bend the truth. Well, alright, I guess misquoting your age by seven years goes beyond 'bending the truth' and counts as outright fibbing, doesn't it. I claimed I was 17, and I think that was the point where the pudding got over-egged. His Accentedness didn't buy it for one moment. "No, you don't sound 17," he said. In retrospect, I should have asked how old he thought I sounded - was he going by the timbre of my voice and cottoning on that I'm actually in my mid-20s, or was he going by the implausible stupidity of my responses to his questions and thinking I was more like 7? I guess I'll never know.
I claimed I was really 17, but I have a throat condition that makes my voice sound unusual. And at this point, the Accent had obviously had enough, because he muttered something which I couldn't quite make out for certain, but which sounded a lot like "I think you've got a few other conditions as well," before telling me to "Have a nice day, sir," and hanging up.
One can only speculate as to how much longer I might have been able to keep it going if I'd come clean and said I'm 24...
Looking back on the conversation, the best bit was probably one of the earliest ones, but I thought I'd save it for last in the writeup: when he asked if I was the primary user of my computer, I said I was, but I said I sometimes let the hamster have a go too. Needless to say, the Accent seemed to have trouble knowing what to make of this. But while it may sound like the least realistic thing I said in the whole phone call, the beauty of it is that it's arguably true, at least in a manner of speaking. Okay, so Dusty doesn't exactly 'have a go on the computer' as such, but he does sometimes walk across my keyboard and accidentally press the odd key with his feet. So you could say he's 'on the computer', even if only in the crudely physical sense of standing on the controls.
As a coda to the story: once I hung up, I found myself shaking. I suspect it was a physical reaction to the strain of suppressing my usually-dominant honest streak and telling barefaced lies for a solid eight-and-a-half minutes. Strange and fascinating.
Anyway, shakes aside, I very much suspect (and certainly hope) that my Accented friend had the worst of the conversation!
- The Colclough
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Still Alive
Time since last post: about five weeks.
Stuff achieved in that time: job worked, money earned (such a beautiful sheaf of purple banknotes...), Arc Phase Variations no. V partially inked, more Cylinder and Miserable written (just five days to go until Series 3 begins publication, in case you missed the announcement on the comic's homepage), Papercuts elements drawn... and computer reformatted.
I spent today wiping the C drive of my just-over-four-year-old PC, affectionately known as 'Beastie', and reinstalling my software, all in a bid to eradicate a nasty virus called Zeus which infected the machine last Wednesday and proved near-impossible to kill. Fortunately, it only infected software files (not images, music or other media files) and only infected things on the C drive (not my other two hard disks), so I was able to back up my documents and stuff to the external drive, format C, and reinstate most of the stuff I want to keep. Haven't got round to reinstalling my video editors or games yet, but I've got everything I need for my planned C&M writing binge tomorrow - picking up in the middle of the conversation I was writing last week when Zeus forced me to stop.
The first 24 hours when AVG first started telling me my files were getting infected, and before I'd managed to analyse the damage and work out a plan of attack, were somewhat traumatic. I occasionally have dreams where I switch on my computer and instead of starting Windows like it should, it goes off and does loads of really weird stuff that doesn't make any sense at all, and what with me being the creature of habit and logic that I am, I tend to find those dreams quite upsetting. So to actually have a program running around with a mind of its own and breaking things was pretty much a nightmare come true. However, the nightmare is over, and although I might have lost the odd file here and there, I've been able to preserve all the files that I felt any attachment to, and the reformatting has had the beneficial side effect of clearing up quite a bit of software rot. As I sit writing this, Beastie feels much like its old self... just a bit less cluttered. And I've got Dusty the Hamster scuttling round my room, as he often does of an evening. So things seem back to normal, or as close as makes no difference, and I can now look back at the whole escapade a bit more philosophically.
The week without a functional computer did have its downsides, but it actually had several upsides as well. Among other things, it prompted me to spend more time working on the analogue stuff, and I've been very happy with some of the drawings I've got done - especially the exterior of the Papercuts house, which I'm quite looking forward to showing off once the rest of the drawing is done. I also began reading Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones' book on "True Happiness", from Psalm 1, just hours after getting the first infection alert, which I have to say made a very interesting contrast.
All in all, I couldn't help thinking that quote from Portal seemed quite appropriate as today's headline.
Hopefully, normal levels of Colclough-ness will be resumed soon - I mentioned earlier that C&M will restart on Monday, and despite the fact that Papercuts seems to be creeping along very very slowly, the project is actually more alive than the casual viewer might be led to believe.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and evict Dusty from on top of my pillow. Again.
- The Colclough
Stuff achieved in that time: job worked, money earned (such a beautiful sheaf of purple banknotes...), Arc Phase Variations no. V partially inked, more Cylinder and Miserable written (just five days to go until Series 3 begins publication, in case you missed the announcement on the comic's homepage), Papercuts elements drawn... and computer reformatted.
I spent today wiping the C drive of my just-over-four-year-old PC, affectionately known as 'Beastie', and reinstalling my software, all in a bid to eradicate a nasty virus called Zeus which infected the machine last Wednesday and proved near-impossible to kill. Fortunately, it only infected software files (not images, music or other media files) and only infected things on the C drive (not my other two hard disks), so I was able to back up my documents and stuff to the external drive, format C, and reinstate most of the stuff I want to keep. Haven't got round to reinstalling my video editors or games yet, but I've got everything I need for my planned C&M writing binge tomorrow - picking up in the middle of the conversation I was writing last week when Zeus forced me to stop.
The first 24 hours when AVG first started telling me my files were getting infected, and before I'd managed to analyse the damage and work out a plan of attack, were somewhat traumatic. I occasionally have dreams where I switch on my computer and instead of starting Windows like it should, it goes off and does loads of really weird stuff that doesn't make any sense at all, and what with me being the creature of habit and logic that I am, I tend to find those dreams quite upsetting. So to actually have a program running around with a mind of its own and breaking things was pretty much a nightmare come true. However, the nightmare is over, and although I might have lost the odd file here and there, I've been able to preserve all the files that I felt any attachment to, and the reformatting has had the beneficial side effect of clearing up quite a bit of software rot. As I sit writing this, Beastie feels much like its old self... just a bit less cluttered. And I've got Dusty the Hamster scuttling round my room, as he often does of an evening. So things seem back to normal, or as close as makes no difference, and I can now look back at the whole escapade a bit more philosophically.
The week without a functional computer did have its downsides, but it actually had several upsides as well. Among other things, it prompted me to spend more time working on the analogue stuff, and I've been very happy with some of the drawings I've got done - especially the exterior of the Papercuts house, which I'm quite looking forward to showing off once the rest of the drawing is done. I also began reading Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones' book on "True Happiness", from Psalm 1, just hours after getting the first infection alert, which I have to say made a very interesting contrast.
All in all, I couldn't help thinking that quote from Portal seemed quite appropriate as today's headline.
Hopefully, normal levels of Colclough-ness will be resumed soon - I mentioned earlier that C&M will restart on Monday, and despite the fact that Papercuts seems to be creeping along very very slowly, the project is actually more alive than the casual viewer might be led to believe.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and evict Dusty from on top of my pillow. Again.
- The Colclough
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Two Bits of Wood
You may or may not be aware that I have, once again, left the old lair (maybe you noticed that Cylinder and Miserable has taken yet another one-and-a-half-week break from posting, or maybe you didn't). Well, this time I'm doing something a bit different for a few days, namely helping my Grandad fit a new kitchen.
A reductionist description of today's achievements: we've cut two bits of wood to size.
That's not exactly a fair summary though, as it fails to mention that the bits of wood in question are the main sections of worktop, and they've had to be fitted with millimetre precision into a room which doesn't even have properly square walls. And there's a nice complicated joint where the two bits fit together. And they weigh a ton or two each (figurative tons, admittedly). And there was a whole sink in the way, which needed to be removed before we could make any further progress, and which has now become a lawn decoration. And the router pretended to break down, which raised some doubts as to whether we'd be able to make that nice complicated joint at all.
I think every single measurement must have been double-checked, triple-checked, quadruple-checked, re-checked, cross-checked, counter-checked and generally checked-to-within-an-inch-of-its life. Or rather, to within half a millimetre of its life. But it all paid off, as the joint is about as tight as it could possibly have been without the use of computer-guided laser cutting tools.
No, I admit it, I didn't deploy a computer-guided laser cutting tool. In fact, as much as this fact may shock you all: I don't even own one. I should of course point out that this sad fact is a result of financial and logistical constraints, rather than choice on my part. I'd quite happily have a big shiny computer-controlled laser cutting tool if you wanted to give me one. Don't know what I'd cut with it now that the worktop has been chopped, but never mind that.
I digress.
You should have seen the amount of sawdust we generated (well, Grandad did the sawdust-generating, mostly, but I share the guilt by implication). I can now inform you, from experience, that making a 3655mm-long cut with a 12mm router bit is a bad idea, unless you've got a pre-planned use for an Atlantic-sized ocean of powdered chipboard.
I've also attempted, and largely failed, to fix Grandad's old PC. We formatted C and did a clean install of Windows ME (yes, yes, I know - that's just the installer disc we had available). It's now locked itself into 16-colour VGA mode, and I can't find anything that'll let me change it to a proper colour palette or a decent resolution. Very weird. Never seen a computer do that before. What's really odd is that I've tried a Ubuntu live CD on it, and that runs 24-bit colour depth perfectly well. It's just Windows ME being strange and difficult. Then again, maybe Open Source kicking Millennium Edition's sorry behind isn't really that odd after all...
In other news, I've finished the second draft of Megastropulodon Episode 6, and started the next phase: unsurprisingly, *drumroll* third drafts, beginning once again at the beginning with Episode 1. I've decided to try doing this round on paper rather than just being glued to the word processor all the time, and that's involved printing out the 29-page document. It feels much more of an achievement when you see it take the form of a huge wad of paper, compared to when it was just so many kilobytes of digital data. Now I need to convert it from a neatly-printed wad of paper to a profusely-scribbled-on wad of paper, and tighten up the narrative yet again. Oh joy.
I think that's all for now. I might blog again if the DIY gets too slow and boring.
- The Colclough
A reductionist description of today's achievements: we've cut two bits of wood to size.
That's not exactly a fair summary though, as it fails to mention that the bits of wood in question are the main sections of worktop, and they've had to be fitted with millimetre precision into a room which doesn't even have properly square walls. And there's a nice complicated joint where the two bits fit together. And they weigh a ton or two each (figurative tons, admittedly). And there was a whole sink in the way, which needed to be removed before we could make any further progress, and which has now become a lawn decoration. And the router pretended to break down, which raised some doubts as to whether we'd be able to make that nice complicated joint at all.
I think every single measurement must have been double-checked, triple-checked, quadruple-checked, re-checked, cross-checked, counter-checked and generally checked-to-within-an-inch-of-its life. Or rather, to within half a millimetre of its life. But it all paid off, as the joint is about as tight as it could possibly have been without the use of computer-guided laser cutting tools.
No, I admit it, I didn't deploy a computer-guided laser cutting tool. In fact, as much as this fact may shock you all: I don't even own one. I should of course point out that this sad fact is a result of financial and logistical constraints, rather than choice on my part. I'd quite happily have a big shiny computer-controlled laser cutting tool if you wanted to give me one. Don't know what I'd cut with it now that the worktop has been chopped, but never mind that.
I digress.
You should have seen the amount of sawdust we generated (well, Grandad did the sawdust-generating, mostly, but I share the guilt by implication). I can now inform you, from experience, that making a 3655mm-long cut with a 12mm router bit is a bad idea, unless you've got a pre-planned use for an Atlantic-sized ocean of powdered chipboard.
I've also attempted, and largely failed, to fix Grandad's old PC. We formatted C and did a clean install of Windows ME (yes, yes, I know - that's just the installer disc we had available). It's now locked itself into 16-colour VGA mode, and I can't find anything that'll let me change it to a proper colour palette or a decent resolution. Very weird. Never seen a computer do that before. What's really odd is that I've tried a Ubuntu live CD on it, and that runs 24-bit colour depth perfectly well. It's just Windows ME being strange and difficult. Then again, maybe Open Source kicking Millennium Edition's sorry behind isn't really that odd after all...
In other news, I've finished the second draft of Megastropulodon Episode 6, and started the next phase: unsurprisingly, *drumroll* third drafts, beginning once again at the beginning with Episode 1. I've decided to try doing this round on paper rather than just being glued to the word processor all the time, and that's involved printing out the 29-page document. It feels much more of an achievement when you see it take the form of a huge wad of paper, compared to when it was just so many kilobytes of digital data. Now I need to convert it from a neatly-printed wad of paper to a profusely-scribbled-on wad of paper, and tighten up the narrative yet again. Oh joy.
I think that's all for now. I might blog again if the DIY gets too slow and boring.
- The Colclough
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Part III and All About It
Here's the third instalment of Arbitrary Stopframe, followed by a lot of verbosity relating to the clip:
Sam asked last week whether the episodes are going to fit together to form a bigger story. The answer is: to be honest, I have no idea. As of now, I'm not planning a bigger story, but as I go along I might start spotting connections. Watch this space, basically!
I rambled on last week about the problem of YouTube series that start well but fall apart on or around their second episode, and listed Problem C as being when there are two instalments, and every indication that the series is set for a long and excellent run, but it somehow vanishes into thin air and Ep 3 never shows. I've managed to avoid that one, as you can see from the presence of Episode 3 above.
I might not do one next week, as I'll have a guest staying, and it'd be a bit antisocial to ignore them for a day just to get a bit of animation done. Normal service (i.e. Ep 4) will resume on the week commencing Monday 21st.
But having avoided Problem C, I've discovered something much more worrying:
On a brighter note, in case anyone's wondering what all that stuff says on the computer monitor in the clip, here's a transcript:
Contrary to popular belief, it is in fact possible to execute a stopmotion animation in a very small and hard-to-access location (such as the inside of an inkjet printer) without going stark staring bonkers in the process. There are three main ways of achieving this.
The first way to avoid going stark staring bonkers during your animation session is if you are already stark staring bonkers to begin with. Many of the best animators take this approach, and are always careful to remove any lingering traces of sanity and leave them at the studio door before commencing work. While there is no reliable scientific evidence, it is widely believed that this is the approach taken by Henry Selick, director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline.
The second approach is to channel in impending insanity through your characters instead of bottling it up in your own brain and allowing it to ferment there. This is particularly effective if you are animating a character who is already deranged (e.g. Ron Haggard), or at least moderately eccentric (e.g. Wallace). The results from this technique can sometimes be impressive – see for example the relative collectedness still exhibited by Nick Park after all these years – but they are not always reliable, particularly for method directors.
The third approach is not recommended, as its primary ingredient is paracetamol, in a dose which would be lethal to most known human-based life forms, even animators.
Mea culpa: there's a typo in the third paragraph. It was meant to say 'channel any impending insanity'.
And finally, on an unrelated topic, here's another painting I finished the other day:
No relation to Arbitrary Stopframe, despite the similar-sounding names. It began life as a random pattern of leftover watercolours dribbled onto the canvas, and then added to with acrylics.
- The Colclough
Sam asked last week whether the episodes are going to fit together to form a bigger story. The answer is: to be honest, I have no idea. As of now, I'm not planning a bigger story, but as I go along I might start spotting connections. Watch this space, basically!
I rambled on last week about the problem of YouTube series that start well but fall apart on or around their second episode, and listed Problem C as being when there are two instalments, and every indication that the series is set for a long and excellent run, but it somehow vanishes into thin air and Ep 3 never shows. I've managed to avoid that one, as you can see from the presence of Episode 3 above.
I might not do one next week, as I'll have a guest staying, and it'd be a bit antisocial to ignore them for a day just to get a bit of animation done. Normal service (i.e. Ep 4) will resume on the week commencing Monday 21st.
But having avoided Problem C, I've discovered something much more worrying:
- Problem D: you're busy animating, and after a few moments squinting into the viewfinder you suddenly find that you can't focus one of your eyes.
On a brighter note, in case anyone's wondering what all that stuff says on the computer monitor in the clip, here's a transcript:
*****
How to Animate in Confined Spaces
Without Going Totally Insane
Contrary to popular belief, it is in fact possible to execute a stopmotion animation in a very small and hard-to-access location (such as the inside of an inkjet printer) without going stark staring bonkers in the process. There are three main ways of achieving this.
The first way to avoid going stark staring bonkers during your animation session is if you are already stark staring bonkers to begin with. Many of the best animators take this approach, and are always careful to remove any lingering traces of sanity and leave them at the studio door before commencing work. While there is no reliable scientific evidence, it is widely believed that this is the approach taken by Henry Selick, director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline.
The second approach is to channel in impending insanity through your characters instead of bottling it up in your own brain and allowing it to ferment there. This is particularly effective if you are animating a character who is already deranged (e.g. Ron Haggard), or at least moderately eccentric (e.g. Wallace). The results from this technique can sometimes be impressive – see for example the relative collectedness still exhibited by Nick Park after all these years – but they are not always reliable, particularly for method directors.
The third approach is not recommended, as its primary ingredient is paracetamol, in a dose which would be lethal to most known human-based life forms, even animators.
*****
Mea culpa: there's a typo in the third paragraph. It was meant to say 'channel any impending insanity'.
And finally, on an unrelated topic, here's another painting I finished the other day:
#006: Arbitrary Strata
No relation to Arbitrary Stopframe, despite the similar-sounding names. It began life as a random pattern of leftover watercolours dribbled onto the canvas, and then added to with acrylics.
- The Colclough
Monday, 17 January 2011
The Better Side
No, nothing to do with ITV1's current tagline. That's "The Brigher Side", anyway, not "Better". And I'm more of a BBC watcher.
More to do with the fact that Saturday had some really bad bits, and some really good bits. (Hannah's blog post in the small hours of the morning about good and bad experiences was rather timely, as it turns out.) I won't depress you with the bad bits of my weekend - I'd prefer to ramble about the good bits instead.
The big news: I've finished making those blasted DVDs at last! After waging an epic war against my DVD burning software, ranging across three different computers, I finally nailed it down on a little old laptop and compelled it to do my will. So now I've got a nice neat row of finished RH DVDs sitting in a cardboard box by my desk and waiting to be put in the post.
I also decided that I was finished with my latest painting. It involved six different layers of colour (each allowed to dry before the next was applied), and although I actually put the last one down on Friday, I thought at the time there would be more to do. But on Saturday morning, I went back and looked at it again, and I said to myself "nope, that's enough. I'm going to call it a day." And then, for lack of a better title, that's exactly what I did.
Yes, I do realise that I have committed a truly atrocious pun right there. My sincerest apologies to those of you with delicate linguistic sensibilities.
I also made more use of my new webcam. It's rapidly turning out to be better value for money than anything else I've ever bought (not difficult, considering how little I had to pay for it). Skype is much fun.
And I've done the illustrations for Fort Paradox Episodes 33 and 34, which feature a new experimental art style which I've never used for any other cartoon before. It involves biros, I'm quite pleased with how it's come out.
And now for something completely different (and altogether nerdier): on Saturday, I used Linux for the first time. My Grandad was asking if there was a free operating system he could use to recondition an ancient PC of his, so I made him a Ubuntu installer disc. But before handing it over, I thought I'd try it out myself in demo mode on our family laptop. It more or less worked, except that the laptop's optical disc drive is basically shot so it took ages to read the disc and load the software. It took me all of two minutes to find my way around the OS though, and I already like it almost as much as Windows, and much better than Mac OSX.
Since I've already got a perfectly good Windows installation on each of the machines I use regularly at the moment, I'll probably stick with dear old Microsoft for the time being. But I got a very good first impression of Ubuntu, so you never know - I might end up going the whole open-source hog someday!
My stats, for the next-to-last post of the 11 For 11 race...
- The Colclough
More to do with the fact that Saturday had some really bad bits, and some really good bits. (Hannah's blog post in the small hours of the morning about good and bad experiences was rather timely, as it turns out.) I won't depress you with the bad bits of my weekend - I'd prefer to ramble about the good bits instead.
The big news: I've finished making those blasted DVDs at last! After waging an epic war against my DVD burning software, ranging across three different computers, I finally nailed it down on a little old laptop and compelled it to do my will. So now I've got a nice neat row of finished RH DVDs sitting in a cardboard box by my desk and waiting to be put in the post.
I also decided that I was finished with my latest painting. It involved six different layers of colour (each allowed to dry before the next was applied), and although I actually put the last one down on Friday, I thought at the time there would be more to do. But on Saturday morning, I went back and looked at it again, and I said to myself "nope, that's enough. I'm going to call it a day." And then, for lack of a better title, that's exactly what I did.
#004: A Day
Yes, I do realise that I have committed a truly atrocious pun right there. My sincerest apologies to those of you with delicate linguistic sensibilities.
I also made more use of my new webcam. It's rapidly turning out to be better value for money than anything else I've ever bought (not difficult, considering how little I had to pay for it). Skype is much fun.
And I've done the illustrations for Fort Paradox Episodes 33 and 34, which feature a new experimental art style which I've never used for any other cartoon before. It involves biros, I'm quite pleased with how it's come out.
And now for something completely different (and altogether nerdier): on Saturday, I used Linux for the first time. My Grandad was asking if there was a free operating system he could use to recondition an ancient PC of his, so I made him a Ubuntu installer disc. But before handing it over, I thought I'd try it out myself in demo mode on our family laptop. It more or less worked, except that the laptop's optical disc drive is basically shot so it took ages to read the disc and load the software. It took me all of two minutes to find my way around the OS though, and I already like it almost as much as Windows, and much better than Mac OSX.
Since I've already got a perfectly good Windows installation on each of the machines I use regularly at the moment, I'll probably stick with dear old Microsoft for the time being. But I got a very good first impression of Ubuntu, so you never know - I might end up going the whole open-source hog someday!
My stats, for the next-to-last post of the 11 For 11 race...
- 11 For 11 status: 10 down, only 1 more to go... who will be the winner?
- Latest book read: *still* that commentary on Ephesians...
- Latest film/TV watched: haven't seen anything in a few days, and I've actually forgotten what the last one was...
- Latest music listened to: How to Train Your Dragon OST by John Powell (2010) currently on speakers
- Latest food/sweets/whatever eaten: crossaint and cowjuice for breakfast, unless you count the bit of jelly sweet I'm currently chewing on
- Programs and web pages currently running: Outlook 2007, Word 2007, Windows Explorer, Skype, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Create Post; YouTube; Blogspot Dashboard)
- Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable #1130; Alien President #9
- The Colclough
Monday, 27 September 2010
You wait and wait and wait and then...
This one starts all computery, and then drifts into philosophy. You have been warned.
***
Today seems to have gone mainly on waiting for stuff.
Our new PC was supposed to arrive this morning, but it wasn't delivered until after 4. I think everyone got a bit tetchy waiting for the doorbell to go. But it did arrive in the end, and now it's all set up and ready to go.
It's got Windows 7, making it the first computer in the family to move beyond the Windows XP paradigm. Not that I have anything against XP - it still holds up remarkably well for a 9-year-old operating system. But there is something rather shiny about 7.
I've also been waiting for an email or two which really ought to have been here a long time ago, but neither of them has arrived yet.
*Gets distracted* I've just become aware that the several-decades-old clock in the lounge is bonging obsessively - nay, almost psychotically - I'm talking several dozen chimes in a row, which is (of course) far beyond the call of duty for any clock. *Investigates* Turns out someone wound up the chimes mechanism, and now Mum's winding the hands round and round in an effort to wind the chime spring down again. But if you didn't know that and you just heard the noise, you could be forgiven for thinking that the clock had gone mad. It's been known to happen, you know - we've got a cuckoo clock in the dining room that went mad, and once it starts cuckooing it won't stop. It's been counted doing well over fifty cuckoos in one go. It does stop eventually, but only when the weight on the cuckooing gizmo hits the floor, a good six feet down from the clock.
Anyway, back to the point. The new PC - dubbed 'Bolt' for its speed - isn't a new addition to the Colclough computer fleet, it's a replacement. Its arrival means the decommissioning of an older machine - one running Windows 98 SE - and now that the old thing is sitting on my floor with no controls or monitor attached, one side panel missing, and looking a bit sorry for itself, it's really feeling like the end of an era. We acquired the machine in question in 2001 or early 2002, and shortly afterwards upgraded it with a video card, which was in many ways responsible for the beginning of my career as a filmmaker and animator. Years' worth of my life history have passed through the processor of that PC, and it's put up with so much that I'm almost amazed it's still running at all. In its later years it's been affectionately nicknamed 'Crunchy', because of the horrible noises the fan motor and hard disk make whenever it's switched on. I've moved on - in addition to a 4-year-old laptop and my own 2-year-old 64-bit quad-core, 'Beastie', the new arrival makes three computers in the house which all easily outclass old Crunchy, and it really doesn't have any useful function any more.
I've still got an original Windows 95 installer disc (which I suppose must have arrived with one of Crunchy's two predecessors), and I'm rather tempted to format Crunchy's C drive and install Win95 on it, just for the nostalgia trip of seeing the 15-year-old OS in action one last time. And when that's done, I'd also like to format the disk again and then see if the decrepit box will run Ubuntu.
And when I've finished playing with the corpse, there are two other things I'd like to do. One of them, in fulfillment of a long-standing ambition, would be to take the machine to the top of a tallish building and throw it off the roof, just to watch it smash at the bottom. I've been wanting to do that to a computer for a very long time.
But the other thing is very different: part of me wants to give it a hug before it finally meets its end. Yeah, it's weird. I know. But as one of those people whose IT skills far outstrip their people skills, I don't just look at a family computer as another piece of hardware, like a washing machine or something. It's a friend, of sorts - or at least it used to be, before it went senile and started arbitrarily destroying important files. That's what the hug is for: not because the metal and plastic is anything special in and of itself, or because the old box is still valuable (let's face it, it isn't), but for auld lang syne. For the dozens of films and videos which I edited there, for the hundreds of comic strips I wrote there, for all the emails written and received there - my best friends live 120 miles away, and a lot of our conversation is conducted via email - and for everything else that the machine and I did together over the last eight or nine years.
Having said what I said about people skills... I'd still hug a human friend goodbye too if I knew there was an ending in the offing. Unless they didn't want it, of course, in which case I wouldn't. But you don't go through the same process with humans, of deciding that their end has come, formatting C, saying a ceremonialised farewell and then throwing them off a rooftop. Well, I don't anyhow. I hope you don't either. (Do you?)
Still, the point remains: it'll be sad to see the last of Crunchy.
Now, if its successor matches its longevity record, then we won't be saying goodbye to Bolt until at least 2018...
***
See, I told you I could blog on other days of the week besides Thursdays!
- The Colclough
***
Today seems to have gone mainly on waiting for stuff.
Our new PC was supposed to arrive this morning, but it wasn't delivered until after 4. I think everyone got a bit tetchy waiting for the doorbell to go. But it did arrive in the end, and now it's all set up and ready to go.
It's got Windows 7, making it the first computer in the family to move beyond the Windows XP paradigm. Not that I have anything against XP - it still holds up remarkably well for a 9-year-old operating system. But there is something rather shiny about 7.
I've also been waiting for an email or two which really ought to have been here a long time ago, but neither of them has arrived yet.
*Gets distracted* I've just become aware that the several-decades-old clock in the lounge is bonging obsessively - nay, almost psychotically - I'm talking several dozen chimes in a row, which is (of course) far beyond the call of duty for any clock. *Investigates* Turns out someone wound up the chimes mechanism, and now Mum's winding the hands round and round in an effort to wind the chime spring down again. But if you didn't know that and you just heard the noise, you could be forgiven for thinking that the clock had gone mad. It's been known to happen, you know - we've got a cuckoo clock in the dining room that went mad, and once it starts cuckooing it won't stop. It's been counted doing well over fifty cuckoos in one go. It does stop eventually, but only when the weight on the cuckooing gizmo hits the floor, a good six feet down from the clock.
Anyway, back to the point. The new PC - dubbed 'Bolt' for its speed - isn't a new addition to the Colclough computer fleet, it's a replacement. Its arrival means the decommissioning of an older machine - one running Windows 98 SE - and now that the old thing is sitting on my floor with no controls or monitor attached, one side panel missing, and looking a bit sorry for itself, it's really feeling like the end of an era. We acquired the machine in question in 2001 or early 2002, and shortly afterwards upgraded it with a video card, which was in many ways responsible for the beginning of my career as a filmmaker and animator. Years' worth of my life history have passed through the processor of that PC, and it's put up with so much that I'm almost amazed it's still running at all. In its later years it's been affectionately nicknamed 'Crunchy', because of the horrible noises the fan motor and hard disk make whenever it's switched on. I've moved on - in addition to a 4-year-old laptop and my own 2-year-old 64-bit quad-core, 'Beastie', the new arrival makes three computers in the house which all easily outclass old Crunchy, and it really doesn't have any useful function any more.
I've still got an original Windows 95 installer disc (which I suppose must have arrived with one of Crunchy's two predecessors), and I'm rather tempted to format Crunchy's C drive and install Win95 on it, just for the nostalgia trip of seeing the 15-year-old OS in action one last time. And when that's done, I'd also like to format the disk again and then see if the decrepit box will run Ubuntu.
And when I've finished playing with the corpse, there are two other things I'd like to do. One of them, in fulfillment of a long-standing ambition, would be to take the machine to the top of a tallish building and throw it off the roof, just to watch it smash at the bottom. I've been wanting to do that to a computer for a very long time.
But the other thing is very different: part of me wants to give it a hug before it finally meets its end. Yeah, it's weird. I know. But as one of those people whose IT skills far outstrip their people skills, I don't just look at a family computer as another piece of hardware, like a washing machine or something. It's a friend, of sorts - or at least it used to be, before it went senile and started arbitrarily destroying important files. That's what the hug is for: not because the metal and plastic is anything special in and of itself, or because the old box is still valuable (let's face it, it isn't), but for auld lang syne. For the dozens of films and videos which I edited there, for the hundreds of comic strips I wrote there, for all the emails written and received there - my best friends live 120 miles away, and a lot of our conversation is conducted via email - and for everything else that the machine and I did together over the last eight or nine years.
Having said what I said about people skills... I'd still hug a human friend goodbye too if I knew there was an ending in the offing. Unless they didn't want it, of course, in which case I wouldn't. But you don't go through the same process with humans, of deciding that their end has come, formatting C, saying a ceremonialised farewell and then throwing them off a rooftop. Well, I don't anyhow. I hope you don't either. (Do you?)
Still, the point remains: it'll be sad to see the last of Crunchy.
Now, if its successor matches its longevity record, then we won't be saying goodbye to Bolt until at least 2018...
***
See, I told you I could blog on other days of the week besides Thursdays!
- The Colclough
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