chullymonster

Sat, 30 Oct 2004 22:42:44 GMT

Funny how life works. This evening I went to a dinner for old King's guys who are at Oxbridge; it was at Balliol, and they'd bussed the Cambridge guys up for the evening. I didn't know who was going to be there from my year as most of us have moved on from uni, but a good friend of mine from school turned up who I haven't seen for years (guys are useless like that). It turns out he's planning to go into Christian ministry when he finishes (yay!), which is quite fantastic. It was completely out of the blue because he wasn't a christian at school and I didn't ever think he was the "type" for it, whatever that means. So I'm a happy chappy :)

Edit - as I've got room, it's SUPER HAPPY FUNTIME!!!! (ridiculously happy song):

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~exet0970/MrBlueSky.mp3

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 23:51:07 GMT

I figured it was time for an update.

RIP Charlie's Three-Speed of Ultimate Justice :(. The consensus is that it'll take about £70 to repair it fully, which is far too much, so I went and bought a brand spanking new hybrid for rather too much money (that's me eating pasta till my next grant cheque comes in then). I don't want to take it out until I've crapped it up - I'm going to cover it in gaffer tape and paint the frame some awful colour, so that it's less likely to get nicked. Cunning plan :). It already has a frame over the back wheel to hold panniers, which is good because it drops the street-cred right down.

Today I went up to the Department's Science Park at Begbroke, which is between Oxford and Woodstock, to have a look around the clean room. I'm gonna have to do an experiment on one of the machines in there so we thought we should go on a scouting mission to check it out. The clean room is an interesting novelty, you have to get all suited up in over-suits and facemasks and stuff before you can go in, because it has to be kept completely free of dirt and particles of stuff. I wouldn't want to work like that for long though, there aren't any windows or anything so it's a bit claustrophobia-inducing.

I got my ninja suit the other day. Wha...?, you ask. Well I thought I'd finally take up some sort of martial art, because I always said I should but never did, which is lame. There were about 8 different ones at the freshers' fair and I joined "Sulkido", which has been fantastic fun so far. In fact I said sometihng about it in an earlier update I think. Anyway, one of the sweet things about it is that you don't wear pajamas like in most martial arts, you get a proper black ninja suit... here's me modelling it (the head cover is complimentary):

Ok, don't all laugh at once, haha! Obviously the newbie white belt isn't covert enough, so I'll have to get a nice black one :)

I cleared out my webspace a couple of days ago so now I have lots of room, and seeing as everyone's so miserable the whole time, I thought I'd put up a tune. It's a cover of "Fade to Black" by Metallica, done in a different style... if you know the original you'll find it hard not to laugh :)

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~exet0970/fadetoblack.mp3

Sat, 16 Oct 2004 16:57:17 GMT

My bike has a broken crankshaft. NOOOOOOOO!!! :( :( :( The poor thing. There's only one more place in Oxford that might be able to get me a new one and I'm going there on Monday, but if they can't fix it I'll have to retire the bike, sob :(.

We had our matriculation photo today, which was fun because it decided to rain so everyone was soaked. Then all the kiddies went off to matriculate, I didn't though because I already have :) so I went to the pub with some other people who'd been at Oxford previously. I must say I was enjoying wearing my rather superior BA gown which is great for swishing around the place.

Tue, 12 Oct 2004 22:05:58 GMT

I made some stuff in the workshop today, sample holders to hold my silicon bits. Ah, it's like heaven down there, all these massive machines that I get to use! I did stuff on a big metal saw and a lathe, and tomorrow I get to use a mill. The best part is that we're allowed to use the workshop to do stuff completely unrelated to work... can anyone say uber steel spudgun? ahahahahhaaaaaa!!!

I went to a "sul-ki-do" class this evening which was good fun. I got literature from all the martial arts people at fresher's fair and I'm slowly trying them out. This one was good because they don't seem to take themselves too seriously and it was very enjoyable. Just you wait, in a couple of weeks I'll look like this:

Also, here's a shocker - the cafe in the engineering building closes at 2pm. Where are we supposed to get our afternoon tea??? I'm gonna have to infiltrate nuclear phyiscs again because their place stays open until a reasonable hour. Stupid foolish engineers, not appreciating their tea.

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 10:54:32 GMT

I'm back in Oxford and very busy, and I haven't even started work yet :). There's so much sorting out of stuff to do. At least my connection is finally working, yay! In brief: Materials is very nice, Oriel is very nice and my accomodation is very nice, so I'm a happy bunny. I've been walking around everywhere though because my bike was up at 225, walking takes far too long. I went up to get it yesterday and it's currently in the bike shop being fixed so that's good. It needs new everything - front wheel, two tyres, new brake cables, new brake blocks, and new pedal retaining pins, but it still comes out at less than half the price of a new bike so I thought I'd get it repaired. Plus it's just too damn cool to get rid of. I'm gonna paint on some new racing stripes when I get it back if I can find the time :).

I'll put up some pictures of where I'm living when I can get round to it.

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 01:57:31 GMT

I haven't got anything worth updating really, so...

I downloaded Predator the other day. BEST MOVIE EVAR. When I get a DVD player it'll be the first thing I get, it's just that good. So, in my boredom, I took some screens of a few scenes. It might be a bit random I guess, and also the divx had subtitles, which actually makes the screens better surprisingly enough. Anyway,

here's Jesse in the chopper when they're going into the jungle, he's offering his chewing tobacco around but no-one wants any:

That kind of sets the tone for the movie. Then they go and attack some rebels, or guerillas or whatever they are. Who cares? Jesse rules with his minigun:

Arnie doesn't like being outdone, so he takes a break from shooting everything in sight and takes someone out with his ridiculously oversized machete:

Another classic from Jesse:

So that's that. Then they go out into the jungle and start getting hunted by the Predator. Jesse's unfortuntely the first one to buy it:

Nooooooooooo!!! Mac doesn't approve either. He runs forward and sees the predator:

Then he picks up Jesse's minigun and lets fly:

Then Arnie joins in:

Then one of the white guys turns up, no-one cares about them:

The indian tracker guy's there too now and they're blasting away. Arnie's expression is priceless:

Lando gets there, finally:

They mow down the jungle a bit more, then stop:

The film goes downhill a bit from there, well it would have to wouldn't it? That was the best scene in cinema history, after all. The last screens I took were of Arnie giving out a piece of advice that applies in nearly every situation:

ahhhhhhhhhhh, when films like this exist, you know life is good :)

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 19:05:05 GMT

So, the pond.

I dug most of it last year. The original intention was to have two ponds on two different levels, with a little waterfall between them, so I dug two holes:

That was as far as I got last year unfortunately. It's quite hard to see, but the whole side near the camera was built up from earth I'd dug out, because the thing's on a slope and needs a wall to keep the water in. Earlier this summer some foxes decided that the upper hole would be a great place for a new house, so they started digging into the sides furiously and filling it up. That, combined with a realistic idea of how much work is required for a two-tier pond, led us to abandon the waterfall idea for the moment and just do the lower pond. So I creosoted the new fox holes and filled them in, and got to work sorting out the big hole. I had to build up the wall even more and cut into the upper side so that there was a level shelf for the edge of the pond. Then the pond guy came with the liner and had a look at it all, he was a very nice chap. He said the built up wall would have to be reinforced because it might not be able to hold the water in (I was kind of sceptical, especially when he did a rough calculation of the weight of water in the pond and got it 20 times too big, oops... I didn't tell him though). Anyway he's the pond guy and he knows what he's talking about. So over the weekend I had to sink lots of concrete piles into the wall to make it stronger - this involves bashing a fencepost down about two and a half feet, pulling it out again, and filling the hole with concrete. The pulling it out is the hard bit, fenceposts don't like being pulled out when they're that deep, so after 25 of them I was a bit knackered, hehehe :)

On Sunday we decided to start filling it up, so we put the liner over, weighted the sides down with bricks, and got out the hose. We only did it halfway because the concrete hadn't set properly yet, so it's about a foot deep in the middle:

That's just over a tonne of water, 93 minutes at 10 litres every 55 seconds to be precise. I'm going to fill it up to the top tomorrow as the concrete will be sort-of-hard by then, then after that we'll trim off the excess liner and get some paving slabs to go round the edge, and that'll be that :)

It's pretty hard work, all of this. Quite apart from all of the digging, I've had to lug about half a tonne of sand, concrete and pond liner down there from the front of the house. Ponds have to be lined with sand before you put the liner in you see, and it took 325 kilos of the stuff to do it fully. Still it's all good exercise I suppose. My hands are toughening up nicely which is a blessing, no more blisters, yay!

So now that it's finished, or nearly finished, I can get on with getting ready to go back to Oxford :)

Current mood: Weeeeeeee!!!

Current music: Mario World castle music

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 20:56:23 GMT

Haven't updated for a while. I was going to do a big post a couple of days after my last one, but the thought of all that html put me off so I didn't bother, and I haven't done anything since. Kinda going off livejournal a bit I guess. Anyway...

The bunker's properly finished apart from one very minor detail which I'll sort out when I remember to. I bought some plastic sheet and covered the thing in it:

I also put shutters in the windows which you can see in the bottom pic - I've got to put some latches in so I can keep them open, that's the minor detail. The reason for the sheet was for damp-proofing, because I was going to cover it all in earth, and wet soil would slowly rot the roofing felt. So, here it is covered in a few inches of soil:

The soil covering was far more work than it should have been because of the sodding clay. I wanted nice topsoil to go on top so that stuff could grow in it, but my big pile from the hole was all clay, so I ended up having to dig new trenches to get some topsoil. Ugh. Still, it's finished now. The next thing will be some fox or something deciding to dig it all up I bet, oh well...

Then someone on the wwiiol forums said I needed a grenade sump, which is a hole at the bottom of your bunker where you throw enemy grenades, to contain the blast.

So I dug one

Of course I had to test it, I haven't got any real grenades though so I used a firecracker:

Here's a vid of the test:

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~exet0970/grenade.wmv

Thankfully I survived, which meant the grenade sump worked, yay!

So that was the bunker. Since then I've been doing the pond, pictures of which will appear when I've had a chance to take some. Ponds are interesting. You have to dig a hole with a ledge around the edge, and shelves and stuff so that plants can grow. It all has to be level of course. Then you coat the thing with about an inch of sand, and put in your 1mm thick butyl rubber lining which costs £160 from Kingston Aquatics, who you've found are the cheapest after ringing everyone in the yellow pages. PVC liners are rubbish, you don't want them, go for the 1mm butyl every time. Then you slowly fill it up with water, and adjust the liner as the water presses it down into the shape of the pond. Then you bung loads of stones around the edge to hold it all in place, and you're done. Ah, the internet is amazing. You can find experts on every imaginable subject and ask them questions about stuff. Muxh better than any library for anything practical, if you ask me.

Our rubber liner is arriving tomorrow hopefully, all 323 square feet of it, so i'll be playing with that all day :)

Also, various sharpening paraphernalia which I ordered have arrived, from "Axminster Power Tool Centre". I got various grits of wet&dry paper and some stropping compound for my strop - an old £1 leather belt from the charity shop. I have been madly putting convex grinds on everything in sight (internet again), which is great fun. I have discovered that of my various knife steels, Spyderco's VG-10 holds the best edge (hair-popping sharp), next is the high carbon stuff on my opinel knife (almost hair-popping), then after that come the 19th century differentially tempered non-stainless stuff on the kukri and some sheffield steel on one of dad's carving knives (shaving sharp), and lastly, CRKT's AUS-6 and the bath steel on some 19th C carving knives (not quite shaving sharp). I know far too much about this as you can tell. That's what happens when I have nothing to do, I start reading about weapons and scary things :). Also that's a bit unfair on the kukri because I haven't done it properly, it takes too long because it's heavy and massive. I do rather like the kuk. I might have to get a nice shiny new one from www.toratoratora.co.uk or www.himalayanimports.com, which are the places of choice for kukri.

Also, I have decided that I'm going to join the Countryside Alliance and partake in some civil disobedience to protest against the fox-hunting bill. Jolly good show today in Westminster, haha!

Ah, the long ramblings of livejournal!

Sun, 05 Sep 2004 20:19:02 GMT

bunker's done.

need some shooting practice, i should be better than that. i'm gonna go and hunker in the bunker for a bit to see what i can see :)

Fri, 03 Sep 2004 03:02:25 GMT

got myself a gamepad for my PC today, then went on a NES emulator rampage, aaaaaaaaaahahahhahahahahahahahhaahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahhhahahaahahahaahaaahahhahaaaaahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!

teh. i feel like writing a big ramble, enter at your own peril.

first i did some star wars and power-saved my way to about 50% complete. that's the thing about NES games, you couldn't save them, so using an emulator with quicksave can get you through quite quickly. YES IT'S CHEATING I DON'T CARE NA NA NA NAN AN NANA!!

then woy and i did some 2 player battletoads (which RULES).

then we did some two-player nintendo world cup - the only football game where you can kill the other team >:), we were pwning but then it was 2am so we stopped.

i want to try master blaster next. when we played it originally we came to the conclusion that it wasn't possible to complete it, i'll have another go with the powersaves :)

also i don't think my LJ is very good, they're supposed to be miserable and depressing and i'm far too unemotional for that. posting at 3.43am is a positive point though. here is my contribution anyway:

oh actually i have got something to whine about, i got sent an invoice from DHL today to pay VAT + BS customs duty and handling fees for my thinkgeek order which was like 6 weeks ago or something. oh the joy of stealth taxes! i wonder when they'll start putting fees on amazon.com packages? never mind that trade protectionism makes the economy less efficient, NOOOOOOO, we're going to screw you for all we can get dammit. hmph. ok, rant off.

got more coffee beans too, dominican republic ones this time. mmmmmmmmmmm they're nice :). at some point i'm going to order a nice big 2kg package (enough for about 6 months to a year probably at the slow rate i drink the stuff), then i'll have LOADS, mwahahaha!!!

nowhere sells squash balls. woy and i were searching for them in kingston and there weren't any :(. kingston's a bit crappy like that though, it's rather downmarket, the sports shops are all JD SPORTHHHS!!!!!!!!!! and stuff with their 200 varieties of tracksuit bottoms and nothing else, well maybe a football or two if you're lucky. but nowhere to buy a simple little squash ball! john lewis had some but they were the wrong ones - you could get red and blue dot ones which are for n00bs (they're bigger and they bounce higher), and yellow dots in boxes of 3, but no double yellow dots which is what we wanted. i'm gonna have to intarnet it i guess, which is annoying because the p&p will be about as much as the price of the ball :(. oh well such is life. gonna play squash tomorrow (today), maybe i'll beat woy this time, we'll see. i'd better go to bed actually otherwise i'll be all tired tomorrow. he's bound to want to play early, the rotter.

Thu, 02 Sep 2004 01:39:02 GMT

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1179768&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

I require pixelblocks

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 21:42:36 GMT

if you ever doubted that LJ is mostly composed of freaks, check out this link:

http://mirror.routed.net/SA/lj.php

it shows the latest 30 images posted on LJ, WARNING, definitely NWS, all sorts of crap comes up.

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 19:04:52 GMT

haha!

protest warrior cracks me up.

in other news, i started putting felt on the bunker today:

and why can't LJ use [img] tags? it's really gay having to type out all the html each time. no-one cares about the alt="".

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 20:58:07 GMT

sorted out the roof and sides of the bunker today:

gonna felt it tomorrow and do the trapdoor. wibble.

Sat, 28 Aug 2004 17:15:40 GMT

just had a go throwing the stock. oh my, how it pwns! wow.

We decided not to throw at the big tree in the end, so I set up an old piece of chipboard because it was the best thing i could find. I was thinking that the blade might not penetrate and it would just bounce off. So i was pleasantly surprised when this happened on my first go (note the nice pristine board):

here are some vids:

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~exet0970/stock2.AVI
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~exet0970/stock1.AVI

and it even goes through the wood when it hits at the end of the handle:

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~exet0970/stock3.AVI

so i'm rather pleased at the moment :). It's stood up to being thrown around rather well, the blade is still solid and there's just a bit of damage at the end of the handle, from going through the chipboard a few times.

Sat, 28 Aug 2004 00:43:41 GMT

hmmm. the stock is sticky :( or rather, tacky. i put too much oil on - hopefully it will dry more and it'll go away, otherwise i might have to start invoking beeswax or something similarly exotic.

just watched "kill bill" on one of lizzie's dodgy dvd's from china. i was trying to work out whether it was supposed to be half in japanese, or it was a copying screw-up. it's a strange film...

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 13:49:12 GMT

drew 3-3 with woy today in squash, yay! he was a bit miffed because he lost the last two games. haha!! pwnage isn't far away.

stock is *almost* done. it's had two coats of oil now, plus the dye. when this coat is completely dried i'll see if it needs another one, and if not, just a quick polish and it's finished. here's the latest pic:

i'm going to try throwing it later. if i'm successful a video clip will appear :)

tomorrow i'm going to the Beer Festival at the Swan, one of the pubs in claygate. they cart in all sorts of exotic beer from around the world and everyone goes down there and slowly gets pissed, it's great.

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:49:19 GMT

i've got a couple of gmail invites to give away - anyone want an account?

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:00:21 GMT

the epoxy has hardened, so i can attack stuff now:

also my green coffee beans arrived. i ordered them a couple of days ago because i wanted to have a go at home roasting. and it worked! i think i did them a bit too dark though because the coffee was slightly too bitter, but it might have been due to cheap beans.

note how the roasted ones are bigger - they grow in the process.

the reason for all this is that freshly roasted coffee tastes nicer, and green beans are cheaper. well, "cheaper", because i had to pay p&p which makes them about the same price as roasted beans from whittards. i'll have to try to find a shop in oxford which sells green beans. plus it's fun too :)

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:53:10 GMT

the blade is sorted out for the gunstock now, i've cut it to shape, put a notch in the stock for it to go in, and a hole for a pin to hold it. so now i've got to epoxy it all in :). it's looking pretty vicious, i must say. mum keeps looking all concerned and saying stuff like "ooh, DO be careful charlie!". and dad's obsessed with the possibility that a burglar will break in to the house, see the gunstock, and decide to attack us with it. not very likely if you ask me! besides, it's not much use indoors, no room to swing it properly.

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 13:25:17 GMT

athers is up in my window:

Sun, 22 Aug 2004 23:59:10 GMT

oh bugger. the rome: total war demo is out and it looks incredible. that'll be another month lost to the computer then...

Sun, 22 Aug 2004 23:20:15 GMT

another person on the list of cool ppl today - Sheriff John Bunnell, of "World's Wildest Police Videos!" fame. oh yeah!!

what an awesome program it is.

also i got bored this evening and decided to make a massive poster of athers:

it's probably quite hard to judge the size from the picture, but it's 21 A4 sheets stuck together (7 by 3). i think i'm going to stick it in my bedroom window (facing out) as there isn't a big enough bit of free wallspace.

been creosoting the bunker again, blah blah blah. gunstock - i'm working out what coatings to give it. got some linseed oil and i'm testing various combinations of things on off-cuts. might have to get something shinier, dunno. and the squash racket came. it's sweet, i played tom today and totally owned him, new racket helps immensely. i'm gonna beat woy tomorrow :)

Sun, 22 Aug 2004 00:10:02 GMT

best internet thing ever: http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/?flashupdate

here's a quick attempt, none other than newmie from baywatch:

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 22:22:31 GMT

have done very little today. the plyboard came which is good, i'll attack it tomorrow if it's dry outside. also i'm gonna make a trip around the hardware stores to get stuff for the gunstock - i need some woodstain to make it nice and dark, some oil to treat the surface, and some epoxy to hold the blade in. might be a bit expensive :(. i'll have a look around the garage to see if we've got anything that'll be ok to stain the wood. it's gotta be a nice dark brown really, it would look just funny if it were light like it is now. in fact i could even use creosote, except that it completely stinks, although putting oil on top might seal in the smell somewhat. hmmm.

epoxy is cool. you get these two little tubes that you have to mix up :). i've only ever used arctic silver thermal epoxy before, to glue a heatsink to my old laptop, but it should be ok as it's fairly easy.

i sanded the stock down to 600 as well, so it's nice and smooth now. if i can get the blade in properly it'll be a totally sweet weapon. i'm thinking about whether i want to sharpen the blade or not. probably not i think, i'd only cut myself by mistake and i have no intention of actually using the thing ever. the gunstock is just a weapon you see, whereas the kukri and other knives are tools as well, so they have to be sharp because they're supposed to cut stuff. the gunstock has no legitimate use :). i can always sharpen it once it's attached, it'll just be a bit awkward. not that the thing would hold a decent edge because the steel is crappy, and anyway, it doesn't really need a sharp edge at all because it's a stabbing weapon. well there you go :)