Category: Angst

June 18, 2007 /

My interaction with the world has always been, and remains, mostly text-based; maybe this is why not being able to read holds a particular terror for me. Seeing the shapes of a familiar alphabet in configurations I can’t parse is a constant reinforcement. That would explain why I’ve handled London better than I did Rio, and why (cognitocultural dissonance ahead) I am now, in Innsbruck, missing London.

I like Battersea, man! I like the little library and the big park and fresh bread every day for lunch. I like living too far away from the bookstore or the electronics shop to spend money easily. I like my housemates most of all, and I’ve only got forty days left there, and it will be very hard to leave.

April 27, 2007 /

All the old blogs have been moved over to WordPress. People who blog or used to blog here: I’ll email you later with instructions and logins and stuff. When I find the strength. The Dispatch is a work in progress, as WP has no provision for importing comments except from other WP blogs, so I’m doing it manually. I didn’t realize it had this much content.

I’ve also uploaded the Idiotcams, all 278 of them, to Flickr. Now I just get to go through and retitle and retag every… one… of them.

I really miss NewsBruiser.

Hbleagh.

April 25, 2007 /

Okay, the highest-volume blogs are up, all content and categories and whatnot included. They also, regrettably, all look like WordPress blogs. I’ll fix that after I spend tomorrow importing the lower-volume ones.

With the exception of the calendar, category and random-entry pages, all the old links to everything SHOULD be working, so please let me know if you find stuff that isn’t. I’m tired. It’s almost 5 am here.

But there will be an Anacrusis later today.

April 25, 2007 /

I’ve fallen prey to the great Dreamhost CPU disaster and what that basically means is I have to change my weblog software. I’m very unhappy about this, but I can’t afford to move to a dedicated server and I don’t believe the situation would improve at another host. At least I won’t have to bug Leonard for help anymore (this is a lie, I’m writing him an email right now).

NewsBruiser did exactly what I needed it to do for almost four years and I’ll miss using it. Those of you whose blogs I host, I’m sorry; I’ll be sending out a guided tour email once I’ve got (sigh) WordPress or whatever up and running. The front page of NFD is static, so it will remain up for the duration, but everything else will go down later today.

April 24, 2007 /

THINGS NEVER TO DO.

  1. Store images in a database without a really good reason.
  2. Store them in BLOB fields, rather than MEDIUMBLOBs or even LONGBLOBs.
  3. Preconvert them to ASCII, rather than native binary, and ignore that your database is Unicode, and will inflate the images to eight times their size.
    • (Consequence, just so we’re clear: those images you’re storing now get cut off after 1.5 kilobytes, for no readily apparent reason. For comparison, your typical Flickr photo preview is over 50k.)

  4. Fail to document any of this.
  5. QUIT AND LEAVE ME TO FIX YOUR HORRIBLE HACKWORK.

Blaaah. I’m tired of computers. My hair is 10% whiter after today.

March 20, 2007 /

When Leigh sent me my copies of The Little Book [etc], she addressed me as “Catfish,” with reason, and which I liked. That probably contributed to my writing Kentucky over a year ago. I was looking for a penny to pick up today, and read that again, and was glad that it had come true after all.

March 11, 2007 /

I’ve been here for a week! This morning Holly made baby pancakes (which she called something much nicer that I can’t remember) and we ate them on the back porch, and the rest of the house failed to vote me out. I’m glad. This is a pretty great house!

I’ve been to Battersea Park repeatedly, and to the Science and Natural History Museums, and on a Tube Walk (pictures), and today I tried to go to a scheduled pickup Frisbee game at Hyde Park but it turned out not to exist. But still! I navigated to Hyde Park and back all by myself! I also managed to get to Victoria Station and back, twice, to pick up and drop off Caitlan when she visited.

Keen-eyed readers of this blog will note that normally I don’t go outside that much in a month, and will probably guess further that I am deliberately overcompensating to fight culture shock / homesickness / loneliness et cetera. Good guess, keen readers. But it’s working! And given my only other experience outside the country, I think overcompensation is entirely in order.

London is awfully big, but awfully neat too.

Update 03.07.2007 1243 hrs: Pikelets! They were called pikelets.

March 7, 2007 /

American Airlines has thoughtfully applied so much pressure to my suitcase that not only did the Listerine, face wash, et cetera stored in the outer pocket burst from their bottles, they also burst the sealed plastic bag in which all said bottles were stowed. Thankfully, the third level of containment (the plastic pocket lining) held, and my clothing and board games did not get a thorough shampooing.

The reason I found this out today is because I have only just received the bag, which was lost when I arrived at the airport two and a half days ago. I put this down to good plane karma. I will elaborate.

Before I left, I spent hours researching the layout of my plane online, finding which seats had an extra inch of leg room, which had DC power outlets under the seats, etc. For the seven-hour flight over the pond, I selected 26B, an aisle seat with only one person who would have to crawl out past me and an Empower outlet right underneath.

Five minutes after settling into this seat and ramming my carry-on into the overhead compartment that was supposed to carry the lifejackets, the nice old lady next to me asked if I could do her a favor. Her friend had been supposed to sit next to her, you see, and they somehow got moved, and would I possibly consider switching with her?

Was her friend’s seat on an aisle? Oh yes, the lady assured me. Oh well, I thought.

It wasn’t. But it was only one seat in and there was an outlet under it. The gentleman next to me quirked an eyebrow. Had they asked me to switch seats, he inquired? Why yes, sir, they had. Would I believe that he, too, had a friend who was supposed to sit next to him? (Said friend, overjoyed, gave me a high five.)

This is how I ended up in the most central seat of the plane, sans outlet, unable to find anywhere to put my knees. Good thing I don’t have mild claustrophobia when I can’t move my legs! Oh wait!

I lived, anyway, and staggered off the plane with numb legs after only taking twenty minutes to find the carry-on the flight crew had spirited away to first class. My luggage had a better seat than me.

And yes, I consider my losing the small checked bag a mild repayment for the ordeal, because the large and much more important bag made it through just fine. I doubt I will care so much about my luggage on the way home, though. I have reserved a seat with one extra inch of leg room, and any nice ladies next to me can just fuck off and die.