[	feel	|	tired	]
[	music	|	Wumpscut	]

That will do.

That one was a right bastard.

[	feel	|	pleased	]
[	music	|	Stranglers - The Raven	]

Sorry about the vertical dark bands. That's strobing of the fluorescent tubes disagreeing with my cameraphone.

Right, on with the next project...

[	feel	|	okay	]
[	music	|	Infected Mushroom	]

Pinched Kol's idea of skull combined with a biohazard symbol, but I needed it to be cut-out-able, so made something which works OK in monochrome.

The question is, which is best? Black on yellow or yellow on black?

[	feel	|	productive	]
[	music	|	Bill Bailey's Belgian Jazz Dr Who theme	]

OK. Last weekend went camping with gothstew, mmmarcus, aradia_uk + Damien, and Rose. It was brilliant as usual and as usual we caught excellent weather. And as usual we drank beer, talked nonsense, had a fire and stopped off at the carvery at Mottram on the Sunday. All pretty normal. And on the 24th I'm doing it all over again with a different bunch of people because it's oo_cymoril_oo's birthday on the 25th and she's coming over from Ireland.

I've started an IT course. It's dead boring, not much to say on that front.

I've pretty much finished my single-handed pet project of voluntary community work: Project Clearing-up-all-the-fly-tipped-rubbish-from-Drinkwater-park-and-the-bottom-of-Prestwich-Clough. It doesn't have a catchier title. Anyway, most of the crap has gone that was small enough to move. Plus some stuff I probably shouldn't have moved as it was far too much work (cutting up a waterlogged sofa and armchair and dragging them up a steep bank out of the stream). The guys at the tip lend me a wheeliebin so I can haul stuff back and forth more easily. You wouldn't believe how many bicycles people dump.

Today I also pleased myself by fixing an ATX PC power supply which someone gave me with the usual "you can keep it if you can make it work". Usually I can't fix things that explode when I plug them in to test them, but this time I did. Frankly I'm amazed it works. It blew a 5 amp fuse and covered the inside of its casing with black soot. I replaced a handful of components and it worked first time! Freaky.

Can't think of anything else right now.

Free Piston Power Pack - linear electrical generator

The FairDiesel Opposed Piston Barrel Engine

Starrotor - A rotary internal combustion engine using the Brayton cycle

[Broken Link] Trochilic rotary Stirling and combustion engines

Revetec - Reciprocating engine utilising counter-rotating cams

Bruce Crower's 6-stroke engine

Interesting reciprocating engine in a rotating housing

Radmax rotary engine with vanes - not even sure how to describe this one

isovolumetric engine with revolving con-rod and half-floating piston

Pivoted piston engine

[	feel	|	geeky	]
[	music	|	Theme from Pirates of the Carribean	]

I skipped Ara as I hadn't regained my energy after not being able to eat all week. I almost did go, but after a shower and shave it was quite late already. Plus I looked at the temperature outside I and that clinched it. I expect I would have sat in the corner being boring anyway and my digestive system is probably not fit for alcohol at the moment either.

Feeling a little less hermit-like now though. I spent this afternoon sweeping up leaves and the fresh air seems to have done me good.

Yesterday I was fiddling with junk from the loft and managed to make a working PC out of it. Eventually. The only spare ATX power supply I have is on its last legs though. It's rated at 350 watts, but has trouble delivering 120 without cutting out. I cleaned all the dust out of it and replaced the fan, and two caps that looked like they were leaking. The problem remains. For the moment I seem to have bypassed the problem by putting the hard drive and DVD writer on seperate IDE channels. Somehow this seems to put less load on the 3.3V line during boot up for some reason. I also downclocked the CPU, but it's running at full speed now, so that's not a problem.

Also the -5V and -12V lines seem to be too low by more than an acceptable 10% tolerance, but I can't understand what would cause that and still let the other voltages be correct. I don't have the circuit diagram for this particular PSU, but it seems to be pretty bog standard. No components look like they've got hot. In fact the whole thing runs cool. My brain hurts.

[	feel	|	accomplished	]
[	music	|	UK Decay - Sexual	]

Anyway, on the DIY front I have tried my hand at plastering. Yay! Mess and dust and more mess. Lots of fun. And before that wallpaper stripping and ripping off picture rail.

And unrelated DIY activity involves painting some wrought iron gates for my driveway. I am sick of picking dog poo out of the lawn all the time. It was bad enough when it was just cats, but now some local chavs have decided they can't be bothered to walk their dog so just let it wander around randomly. It likes to poo in my lawn. Great big enormous ones. I am hoping gates would stop this. And chavscum stone-throwing offspring too.

Last weekend Zsuzsanna came over to visit as she had a bank holiday. We went camping and apart from my atrocious driving and our campsite being half flooded it was pretty good. We took aradia_uk with us. And there already were John and Lee and Ricky and people I don't know. Much revelry and stuff happened and it DID NOT RAIN! Amazing! We even managed to squeeze in a meal at my favourite carvery with the half-price meal for veggies.

What else... I have joined the suburban set and washed my car! Yes, after 18 months of ownership I decided that the algae was in danger of completely covering the outside of the car, so I washed it.

gothstew

Last Friday I went to Ara and drank too much again. Oh well.

There's not much else to tell. I have been doing useful things like tree surgery and moving all the furniture out of my bedroom in order to decorate it. And I may finally get around to putting up my driveway gates, after extracting them from beneath loads of junk in the garage. I bought them at least 5 years ago, but have never put them up. I've brushed the cobwebs off them, filed off all the crappy bits and primed them. I forgot how much of a pain in the arse it is painting gates with lots of scrollwork. It takes ages and then when it's dry you turn the damn thing around and see lots of missed bits. Then when that's dry you turn it upside down and see lots more missed bits... Argh!

My financial situation isn't as bad as I thought. That always happens: I panic and then take stock and find I was Ok. Well at least until I go away. Not sure about what happens when I come back. ( boring stuff probably best left out about bills, but hey I've typed it now... )

[	feel	|	Worn out	]
[	music	|	REM - Orange Crush	]

I've just been on a 5 day visit to Dublin with gothstew and Shabs, hooking up with oo_cymoril_oo when there. Spent basically all my money on Guinness and coffee and trams. We tried the local Dublin goth night to try and get oo_cymoril_oo out of her shell. It was good actually, despite the sound system sounding like a bee in a tin can. In fact Dublin in general was good. The rain held off for all the important parts of my visit. Ate nice Korean and Italian meals. Also visited Howth on the coast, but that was a bit of an anticlimax to be honest.

Spent the last couple of days with an old friend of oo_cymoril_oo's called Silvia who crashed at mine to attend her graduation ceremony at Salford. Just like oo_cymoril_oo's it was very dull and pointless, but I went along anyway to lend her some support. And the rain held off again! Amazing. Went out for drinks with her in the evening. Then yesterday I patiently followed her around very boring clothes shops. God I hate doing that. Then she was stood up by a date yesterday evening (well actually I think it was a breakdown in communication followed by lots of neurotic second-guessing on her part). Anyway, quite relieved to see the back of her today to be honest. Her issues with men in general were starting to grate (I tried to insert the odd hint of reason where I could, but it didn't stop the ranting).

Now I must sell everything of value in the house on Ebay to replace all the money I no longer have. Don't think I'll be going out much for a while. I've got 4 weeks and then I have to have spending money for Munich and Hungary. Definitely time to find a job after that.

Bah and the car needs a new windscreen too... Ach! Crackedness!

[	feel	|	Sick of PCs	]
[	music	|	Serafin - Day by Day	]

I offered to sort out gothstew's PC, but it turned out to be a lot more time consuming that I thought. ( boring computer stuff )

If that wasn't bad enough, my own PC then caught a serious bout of Sod's Law and died( . )

Saturday saw me very drunk in Ashton for Big Marcus' surprise 40th birthday bash. It was good. Dunno if he had any idea why I was there as he doubtless doesn't know me from Adam, but John had pursuaded me to go, so I did. I had a great time, I hope Marcus did.

On Sunday, just as I thought I had everything computery sorted and could avoid PCs forever afterwards, my Mum brought around her evil Windows ME machine for me to resolve problems on and I nearly lost the will to live. But there were no dramas with that one thank god!

Monday I spent on domestic stuff and tidying up the garden for when Zsuzsanna (oo_cymoril_oo) visits for her birthday on Friday (it was like a jungle out there). gothstew had tried to encourage me to organize a barbecue for this coming Saturday, but I get stressed running about organizing such things and I just want to chill really. Anyone's welcome to turn up and celebrate Zsuzsanna's birthday, but I'm feeling too skint and sleep-deprived to want to faff about with charcoal and meat products and stuff.

Yesterday until this morning I spent over at my sister's house sorting out her broadband setup which hasn't worked for months as her boyfriend couldn't figure it out (I should do this for a living). I would have got it all done yesterday except I wasted an hour and a half lost, driving to her house in Sheffield. I'm getting very good at getting lost. I think I need sat nav. I could have been lost for a lot longer if I hadn't recognised a familiar landmark near her house and kind of stumbled upon her street that way. Afterwards we did her local pub quiz and were totally thrashed.

On Friday I'll be at Ara celebrating Zsuzsanna's birthday. She's coming to visit so I hope most of the usual suspects are able to attend? Well I will be anyway.

Don't feel so lonely now. I've gone back into hermit mode. Plus Zsuzsanna has MSN messenger access at work, so can contact me that way during the day if I leave my PC on.

Last weekend I drank too much at Sin. I don't care. I enjoyed myself. Probably pissed off everyone in the world by being excessively drunk though.

Sunday was a bit of a write-off as a result.

Since then I've been clearing out junk from the loft. There really isn't much of any value left as I sold it all last year on Ebay. I now need to go to the tip. I've got lots of old circuit boards out of things for mis_tique though.

I also repaired a few things. Eg: The torch I dropped in the massive campfire when we were camping (to everyone's amazement it still winds up and charges mobile phones). I also changed the blades on the lawnmower and had a go at McGyvering a new lock for my garage.

And I fixed a long-standing bug in Some software I wrote, but don't bother downloading it as it's no practical use to anyone.

Still haven't got as far as carpetting the spare room, but the woodwork is undercoated now.

Oh yeah, I was supposed to mention Gothwalk. Bit late now as gothstew updated anyway, but we're going for a walk on Sunday. And I forgot the details.

Oh and I applied for a job. But only one. I didn't like the rest.

[	feel	|	Upset	]
[	music	|	Tanzwut - Lügner	]

Anyway we had a great barbecue on Saturday. gothstew, mmmarcus, and a couple of friends we go to the Crescent with were there and Giles came later on after his parents had gone home. Burnt loads of wood, and some food and melted beer bottles in the flames.

Next day I went to mmmarcus' BBQ too, but I think I was a bit useless really as I was knackered. Alcohol plus late night plus early morning, driving to the airport and back and then clearing up after the barbecue all left me very sleepy.

Anyway, I have to keep busy now or I get lonely. Spent today cleaning and gardening and rubbing down paintwork in the spare room - maybe I'll actually get it decorated now.

I should socialise a lot too, but I fear the hayfever season is almost upon me....

Just spent 9 quid phoning Zsuzsanna in Dublin. It wasn't a long call, but she has no landline over there. Or internet access. Or phone credit. And there's only one TV channel she can get. And the bathroom is mouldy. And the shower gives a lukewarm trickle. And the washing machine flooded the kitchen. Sounds like going back in a timewarp to me. I feel guilty now. I should never have let her go. :-(

[	feel	|	Laughing	]
[	music	|	Ignorant Cunt screaming	]

Especially the track entitled "Ere mate can i lend". LINK