Oh my. That was an hour of my life I particularly don’t want to get back. Firstly, my past call at work was a shite one from some idiot who didn’t really have an issue. THEN I return to Mercuryvapour Towers to find that I’m sharing my room with someone. Or something.

I enter my room and look at my blinds. I notice there’s a shadow on them, as if some type of insect had landed on them. Presumably it was simply a huge moth, resting on the blinds, getting charged up from the amount of daylight shining through the window on this “fine” spring morning.

I check the blind to make sure it was a moth. “Wouldn’t it be awful if it was a wasp that size”, I chuckle to myself. I take a look at the creature….

Yellow. Black. Yellow Bl..oody hell.

I carefully move the blind back, and get my shitty little legs out of there as quickly as possible. My call for some fly spray was answered when I burst into Daddykin’s room (who was asleep, by the way), gibbering like an idiot, He let me know there was some downstairs in the kitchen cupboard.

I run downstairs, grab the can, only to find there was only a little bit left. Would there be enough? Luckily, I remembered there was some in the bathroom too. Not much again, but two sprays are better than one. Back into the room I go, relieved that Mr. W Asp was still firmly attached to the blind. I spray like I’ve never sprayed before. The window showing between the gaps in the blind turns a milky white as the insecticide spurts out of the can at a rate of knots.

The little bastard falls of its perch, lands on the windowsill with a sickening thud, and begins writhing in agony. I could hear it coughing. The spurt of milky white liquid doesn’t stop (oo-er!) and I’m determined to not leave go of the spray until this fucker stops moving, or my fly spray runs out. Eventually, it stops moving, or at least its actions make it look like it’s not going to jump off the windowsill and sting me in the ear canal.

I was finally confident enough to move towards it with the camera…

The bottle lid is there to try and give you a sense of scale..

I took a couple of photos a few minutes after I started typing this blog. I was a bit shocked to see that it had actually moved from the position I had left it in. Presumably this was rigor mortis setting in, or something. It was definitely dead by this point.

Here’s another photo of it, taken on a yellow and black floppy disk. I didn’t spot the concidence until I took the photo.

As much as I hate them, they’re really quite beautiful, and I’m sure it’d look a lot better if it wasn’t dripping with oily, smelly goo.

I have a feeling I’m going to have trouble sleeping today. After all, how did it get in here? My door will have been closed for most of the time (Senta is in heat, and, as long-term readers of the blog know, Sam likes to “practise watersports” on my bed during this period (DYSWIDT?)) and my window hasn’t been opened, meaning that this beast would have been in my room for a considerable period of time. What if there’s another one in here, watching me type? What if that one was the little one? What if “Daddy” wants revenge? Apparently, according to Wikipedia, only male wasps can sting. I think I’ve mentioned that before.

Something that ISN’T mentioned on Wikipedia, is that dead wasps make a truly sickening sound when you try to cut them in half with a 10p piece. I tried this before taking the little bastard into the bathroom and dropping it into the toilet.

It sank, by the way.

Whilst typing this post, I found this list of the Schmidt sting index. Sounds… er, intere-sting. Hohoho.

Well, OK, it was several days ago since I made that posting from a free wi-fi hotspot. It’s the first one I’d ever made. Of course, you’re wondering why I happened to be in such a small place? Settle down, for there is a tale to tell.

For the past several years, Daddykins has been going on holiday to Scotland. You know. That place, north of the border, where men are men and banknotes are ridiculous.

Each time, on the way back, there has been a little break in the coach trip, stopping off at Jedburgh, especially the coach stops at the Woolen Mills. Technically, it’s your very last stop in Scotland to pick up souvenirs, haggis and 500ml bottles of coke at £1.60 a pop (!!!!).

Now, some of you can’t have failed to notice that I’m off work this week, and I mentioned to my dad that I’d like to dust off the camera. He had a think, and decided that Jedburgh would be a good place to visit. Not only did it have some stuff worth photographing, he could fill up on his haggis supplies.

He’d planned for this to go ahead on Thursday, but I’d already made plans. These plans involved going with Andy The iridium Fan to photograph the soon-to-be-demolished college in the town, which he is currently attending. Unfortunately, due to some odd piece of health and safety regulation and/or insurance clause, which I still can’t get my head around, ATIF was able to go around, but I wasn’t. Hmmmm. Apparently, it was OK for him as he is a student there, but seeing as I’m a “member of the public”, I’m cast off as some type of leper who’s going to throw himself down the stairs, break every bone in his body, and sue them for every shiny penny they have.

Needless to say, because these two appointments clashed, the trip out was postponed to Friday.

Thursday night saw me check out Jedburgh on Google Streetview. It’s not a big place. One thing that caught my eye as being particularly interesting was a signpost saying “Free Wi-Fi”. Admittedly, I was a bit drunk at the time, so I registered it, but didn’t think any more of it.

Friday came, and after a totally unnecessary tweeting session about my struggle to get out of bed, I eventually surfaced. The tweeting session ended with my announcement that I’d just hung 28 pairs of socks out. You suddenly realise that your life needs a new direction when you tweet about your fucking washing.

During this moment of dullness, I suddenly remember about the free Wi-fi, and as an experiment, I would take the lappy along for the journey. After all, I’d never actually used a public wi-fi point. Would it be successful? Well, OK, I’ve taken all suspense out of that question by the post before this one, but I’ll continue on with this. I’ve not had a rambling post about nothing for a while.

Ahem. We get our stuff together… and by that, I mean, Daddykins throws his coat on the back seat, and I stagger down the Mercuryvapour Towers driveway with enough electronic equipment to set up a small country. It gets loaded into the back of the car, and we set off.

The car gets filled up with fuel, and I head off to Lidl, in order to fill up with some supplies for the journey. 18 bags of crisps, uncountable bags of Haribos, and a 99p bottle of Irn Bru. I suddenly felt like a six-year-old as I carried the bag of ket to the car. By the time we’d made our way to the King Oswy roundabout, I was halfway through my first bag of onion rings. I do like Lidl’s cheap crisps.

Now, the journey up to the Borders went pretty much without a hitch, except for being stuck behind an Asda lorry for half the journey, and a sheep jumping out into the road which almost hit the car in front. Nopw, just because it took me ages to find these photos, I’ll show you a photo of the afore-mentioned lorry.

Naturally, as we approached Scotland, I had to stop for some pictures.

The weather was overcast, as can be seen in those two pictures, and I’d inadvertantly set the camera to ISO 1600, meaning that the majority of them came out badly. I’d managed to set the camera correctly before we arrived at Jedburgh, however. The first stop, and potentially the only stop was the afore-mentioned Woolen Mills. They sold haggis, and had a toilet. Therefore, daddykins was in his element.

Unfortunately, they had a toilet, but no longer sold haggis. This was a disaster, and it was the first time I’ve seen my dad gutted for a while. 90 miles, and not a shred of animal stomach to be seen. Obviously, the natural thing to do would be to travel into the town itself, and see if a local butchers stocked such delight. This dropped us off into a car park which seemed familiar. Yes, it was the one I’d seen on Google Earth, with wifi! We left the car, and passed a butcher we’d seen on the way. Everything in this shop looked delicious. Especially the display of stiry-fry mix in the window. If we’d have had some fresh meat at home, several large spoonfuls of this, along with some chicken would have made an awesome dinner. Just like homer Simpson once said… “Ahh, dinner.. the time of the day between work and drunk”.

Mary Queen of Scots’ house was literally behind the shops where we bought the haggis from. Seriously, I must have looked like the ultimate English tourist, as we entered the house museum. Haggis in one hand, camera in the other. After a look around the exhibits, I headed off into the grounds to take some photos.

All in all, a very nice place. We returned to the car, and after spotting the “free wi-fi” sign which I’d spied on Google mere hours earlier, I grabeed the laptop from the back of the car, and switched it on.

Now, the lappy doesn’t go many places, mainly due to its size, and its dwindling battery life, so this would be the first time it would have connected to a public wi-fi spot. I’d never actually done it personally, so I didn’t know what to expect. I “ooh”ed with excitement, as it found a wi-fi signal, and began to connect me. Obviously, there were a few disclaimer screens, accompanied by the biggest lie of them all… “I have read and agree to the terms and conditions”. Before I knew it, I was staring at my homepage (which, at the moment, is AOL. Don’t ask.). On goes mercuryvapour, and I make that posting. Cor! It only bloody worked. With the interwebs at my fingertips, I wondered what else I would do. On went the webcam. I was able to watch the grounds of Mercuryvapour Towers. I had a brief blonde moment, as I stared at the gravel driveway, wondering why the car wasn’t sat on it. Answer: I was in the car. In Scotland.

I uploaded a few pictures to flickr to verify it actually worked. Indeed it did, meaning that the following photo…

… albeit of a pretty normal Thorn Beta 5, became the first time I’d uploaded a flickr photo outside of England, only 11 minutes after I’d originally taken it!

Well, I last left you, teetering over the ege of June, and falling into July, which just so happened to be the worst month of my life, on record, ever. Ever. It started as bad as it was going to get.

JULY 2009

I’ll try to keep this short, and I’ll probably fail miserably. Following on from my earlier sunburn issues, I thought I’d make the situaltion worse by going back out in the sun and attending the Hartlepool dockfest, in order to get some photos. The photos were successfully obtained, but after waiting in a queue for at least an hour for what I thought was goingto be an action packed opening ceremony, it turned out to be the worst thing I’ve waited for in the whole history of anything ever. Infortunately, the damage was done, and I spent the rest of the two days walking around like an embarrased lobster. the fact I was wearing a bright white t-shirt never really helped matters.

Mid July was next, and I happened to be pointing the camera out of the window, to record the black clouds on the horizon, as shown in this photo, the first time it’s been shown.

OK, technically, those clouds aren’t on the horizon, neither were the clouds directly above my head. I was personally depressed about the fact that I hadn’t gone abroad this year. There were a few reasons behind this that couldn’t be changed, but I still felt that it was something to do with me, and spent a good few days moping about it. Obviously this was infinitely insignificant compred to what was about to happen.

Maybe there is such a thing such as fate? The day that we were “due” to go away (as in, the day that we’d gone away on the previous two years, and originally planned to this year), my dad suffered a heart attack. At this point, I went into “offline mode”, meaning that the rest of July was totally written off.

The Google car did visit Hartlepool too.

AUGUST 2009

Computer problems dominated August, with Beastbits constantly switching off. I thought I’d found the cause of the problem after inspecting the video card in Beastbits, and its broken fan. In this never-before-seen photo, you can see that the lead on the graphics card had became disconnected.

Actually, you can’t. That’s a really shit photo.

I didn’t do much in August. I was still off work for the first few weeks. I had only been back at work a few days, when we all learned about the sudden death of Stu, the security guard, of a heart attack. After what had happened in the weeks previous to that, it hit home. Hard.

On a lighter note, I met up with Chad the prolific troller who haunts this site with witty anecdotes (sarcasm), and long forgotten, often embarrasing memories of our childhood. Saying that, it was nice to see him after all of these years.

SEPTEMBER 2009

Quite literally, nothing happened in September. There were a few site issues, and a day trip to York. That really is it. There’s nothing in either the blog archive or my flickr account to show that anything happened at all.

OCTOBER

The occasional site problems continued into October, though the whole month appeared to be dominated by a hunk of metal and magnets. Yes, that was the month where that bloody Samsung hard drive arrived, and spent a good few days trying to get it working.

Photograph-wise, it was even more barren than September, with a mere 91 photos being uploaded to flickr, though one of these was part of my “bargain of the century”…

I went to a radio rally with Daddykins, and met one of my Flickr contacts, which was nice. I also got “knocked back” at Asda, and no matter how cheap their buns were, the humiliation meant I never returned there for over two months.

NOVEMBER

The flickr meet I attended at the Historic Quay was the highlight of the month, even though there were only a few photos that were actually any good. It was good to get the camera out for the first time since September and actually get some shots took. My computer problems officially ended when I gave Beastbits the right royal kicking it deserved, and it is now an ex-machine – its parts used to update and repair the scribcam.co.uk server.

The old video card from the server was a bit broken…

… well, it was after I’d finished with it. The new machine gave me my first glimpses of Windows 7, and… well, it’s not Vista, so that’s a plus point, I suppose.

DECEMBER

December has seen something we don’t usually se a lot of this time of year – snow. It also became the month where it occured to me, that I am officially old.

You are officially old, the second you look out of the window, see snow, and instead of jumping up and down like a kid, you slowly turn away from the window and think “If I go out in that, I’m going to break something”. Instead, I stayed in the confines of Mercuryvapour Towers, and took plenty of photos of it.

It takes a lot to get something hanging from a wheely bin to look insanely festive, but I think this manages it quite nicely…

Although at the time of typing, it’s actually Xmas Eve (thanks to the wonderment of scheduled posts, you’ll be seeing this a couple of days later), I doubt anything else is going to happen within that time, so this leaves me to wish both of my readers a very happy 2010, and I hope that it’s a much better year than what 2009 was.

Well, I have been summonsed by Glen Adrian of Obscureinternet (change your avatar, ffs!) to write a detailed review of my 30th birthday. I’ll start from the day, because it was a much better and more exciting day, for you see, I went bowling!

The first part of the day was spent watching stuff that had been collected on the Sky+. this involved several episodes of Countdown. Unfortunately, there wasn’t going to be a lot happening in the early part of this particular day, as the car was in the garage after it snapped a spring or something, thanks to the state of one of the local roads.

Onto the night, then. Plans had been made with most of the people from work to attend the bowling alley on Brenda Road. It was the first time I’d been bowling since November 2005

I arrived at approximately 7:30, to find that the place was absolutely packed, but I was the only one there out of the proposed group. Oh, great. Things start going through my mind, like “Am I on my own? Is anyone else turning up?” I decided to wait outside, just in case anyone was going to ring my mobile. It was noisy inside.

Thankfully, the cars did indeed start pulling up, and before long, we had a group of about 16 of us. Unfortunately, Tuesday is apparently semi-pro night, so we had to wait until about 9 before we got a game. The price was £3 for the hour. It closed at 10, so we’d just got in. It was at this point, I began to fling my camera around in the hope to catch some epic shots. Unfortunately, this failed miserably, though I did think Matt got a good strike here:-

Unfortunately after I got home and checked the video, he hit the rail first. So technically, it didn’t count.

I finished last, as you can probably gather, though I did manage a strike. I might have to start going there, if I can find someone to go along with. there’s no point playing on your own.

After the bowling, we made our way to Lloyds, in Church Square. And yes, I really did wear this shirt…

Some random barfly stated that I looked like Timmy Mallet. Out of all the times I’ve worn that shirt, it’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to a compliment. Unfortunatelty, there’s a button fallen off it, so that’ll give me an excuse to never, ever wear it in public again. Awww.

After sharing a jug of some odd drink bought by Matt (possibly to celebrate his non-strike), it was time for everyone to begin departing. Some people had work in the morning, and some people wanted to attend the Indian. Guess which category I fell into.

So, the initial group of 16 had dwindled down to 4, and we headed off to the Dilshad for a load of grub.

As usual, the meal was delicious, and just as we were finishing, the clock struck midnight. Yup, I was now 30 years old. Daddykins sent me a text.

The second person to wish me happy birthday was Wayne, at an impressive 2 minutes past midnight, though obviously I didn’t get it until I got home. His email made me quickly realise how much of my life had disappeared…

“You are now twice as old as you were when we had our first talk on CB”.

He was right. The CB days were now half my life ago!

The 4 of us finished our meals, and headed off home in our respective taxis, and a good night was had by all. Well, certainly by me, at least, and I made my way up the long, winding gravel driveway of Mercuryvapour Towers at 1:13.

And now, onto the day itself. It started off early, around 5AM. This was mainly because I could feel the vindaloo on the move, and it was only a matter of time before it was indaloo (actually, alloverdaloo would be a better description). So, I was wide awake after only 4 hours sleep, and with an arse like the flag of Japan. I logged onto Facebook, and watched the happy birthday messages scroll past. Thanks to all of you who left a message, and for those who tried to talk to me, Facebook Chat is being a tart at the moment, and although I can see who sent me a message, I can’t actually see it. I’ve gone back to an earlier release of Firefox. That might help it.

Anyway, the morning consisted of my usual “Woo! I’m off work!” ritual – lie on the sofa and watch “Homes Under The Hammer”, followed by “to Buy or Not To Buy”, then “Cash In The Attic” (as long as Jenny Sodding Bond isn’t presenting it), followed by “Bargain Hunt”. Andy The Iridium Fan popped round during the preceedings, and dropped off my birthday card. He stayed for a few hours, and was amazed to find that he also liked amplifying the ends of songs just to get every last note out of them. An “interest” of mine which I thought nobody else shared. A bit like streetlights. He also helped me dispose of the large boxes that Beastbits2 had came in.

ATIF stayed for 3 hours, 22 minutes and 45 seconds, and after that I began watching some more stuff that had accumulated on the Sky+. I was absolutely knackered, as I’d only managed a couple of hours sleep, and decided to go to bed “for an hour”. This was at 4PM. Next thing I know, it’s 10PM. I must have been more knackered than I thought. The day was finished off with the obligatory “few cans”, and I headed off to bed some time around 4ish.

So, that was the story of my first full day of being into my 4th decade. Not bad going considering I wasn’t actually going to blog about it. And now, I’m off to take photos of a pothole, or I might wait until the chippy is open, and kill two birds with one stone. Pothole photography and chips. Being 30 is AWESOME.

I know it’s a while since I’ve posted about anything other than my ongoing computer problems, but today, Beastbits really did go the proverbial journey, due to a hardware failure in another machine.

The scribcam.co.uk server popped its video card earlier today, so the machine couldn’t boot without beeping a diagnostic code. (AMIBOIS, 1 long beep, 8 short beeps for the record).

I had an old Radeon 9200 which I’d been given at some point. I’d put that in, only to get the same series of beeps. Bugger.

It was then I remembered about Beastbits, and it’s Geforce FX5200. I knew that definitely worked, so in it went. Machine came right up. And, because Beastbits was definitely goosed without its video card, I also moved the RAM over, and the DVD writer.

In other news, I attended my second flickr meet on Sunday, at the historic Quay. I enjoyed it, as there were a couple of people there who I knew, and a couple of people I’ve been wanting to meet for a while. Unfortunately, out of 113 photos, there were only a couple that were any good…