And so not funny

[IMPORTED from Livemeta Blogs // Next gen blogging]
#1 I am glad I have this space to talk to because I know pretty much no one (or at least no one I know) will read it :).
This is the problem: I am me.....

It's not a huge problem IMO.. I usually (no I ALWAYS) love it. But it has massive disadvantages. The first is that I am sensible to the level of craziness even when wasted (this is what allows me to write coherently even atm). As a result it is assumed I am "the one in charge"...

Well first off - fuck that any more.
The second annoying thing is that I care too much. Take a very personal example...
Everyone (and YES bar one person I mean everyone) I have ever cared for or been attracted too either never feels the same way or we just never get together. Yes this is silly, yes it is shit.. but I dont understand why...
Yeh that's the main reason im going to rant tonight (and not hit the new publish to facebook/myspace/bloggit - hopes u like it took me ages to get them to all to agree on it!! :D - button).
I just dont get it ... where do I go wrong. OK I get the whole not being able to tell people I know how I feel (who doesnt have that as some point) but I dont get how people I dont know still cause problems :(

Jesus seriously what do I do.... Im thinking it's one of 3 things:
1) Im just not attractive to people
2) They just "like me" as a mate
3) Someone else is in the picture
4) Im just crap at this

#4 is just a given, I am really shit at emotions. Those of you who actually read this crap already know that... but it is part of me.. and one thing I personally think I hide really well. Fact is tonight was just not one of "those" moments..
I totally dont understand it.. w/o a certain guy around tonight one moment I am the best person there.... the next minute he is there and I am just blown off completely.

Yes I know this makes me sound naive ("OMG HAX SHE IS USING YOU").. but it really didnt feel like that (I love how so many of my friends just lap up the uber naive image I built as a defence. If they only understood lol..). And then the next second when "he" appeared it STILL didnt feel like it....

So this is the question: when you meet someone you like, chat to them a lot. Flirt a bit. Hold hands (yay wonderfully 1990's..) and then the SECOND you get onto the dance floor she wont dance with you.. no matter how much you try. Maybe it is me.. but I refuse to accept that. Something is screwed somewhere. It just makes me really angry that I am apparently some easy target.

At the end of the day I know the truth which is this: I am just "that nice guy". And who ever wants him, really.
Fact is I just wish someone could look at me, just once, and think "hell yes"....

And now for cynical conclusion. The guy I lost out to tonight: I know I am way better than him (jesus he is a thick as 2 short planks stuck up his own arse womeniser.. and that is NOT just cos I am bitter. that's just him :)) but yet I still lost. And a nice girl that I like, and want to be nice too, almost (but maybe not totally) loses my interest and gets a dick who will abuse her and use her till HE loses interest.

The point is this: do women (sic: people!) just like idiots who lead them up the garden path.. because if that is the case i really am going to lose all faith in humanity and fuck off to some 3rd world country where people are sane. I just dont understand people, thank god.

Crux is.. tonight I lose my final "innocence". No more will I "care" or give a shit. People can make their own graves and lie in them. And hell that is their problem. I have far more important shit to worry about than the crazy pandering of a humanity that has lost it's humanism. Fuck you lot who want a naive mate to stack them up when all else fails. Go look for some 18yr old fresher no brain prick to do that for you.

/ rant over :) I feel much better now.

Slitting your wrists is the easy way out

God Im so bored!
The boredom comes in 2 parts. The first is short and new, the second is old and annoying!
1) I am at home at the moment which is always annoying (I love my family but they are soooooo boring)
2) Nothing interesting is happening in my life AT ALL.

Usually this isn't a problem, usually I can have a good long natter with Ellen (a v old friend) and get all cheered up. But no one has seen her for 6 months - she's off somewhere out of contact - so I'm stuck with no one to talk to properly grrrrrrr

It's also my fault because I pissed off most of the interesting people in my life. Now they wont talk to me (or are ignoring me - not sure which).

SO I need something interesting, dangerous and fun to do. I do have something but I swore a long time ago I wouldn't do it again - it's just too risky.

Grrrrrrrrr - I need help :P

A Team who break the rules

del.icio.us Tags: rugby , world cup , england

For 4 years the England rugby union team has not played up to the standard they set themselves in the 2003 world cup - even at the start of this years tournament they looked like a shadow of their former selves. But yet somehow, someway they have made it to the final - almost in secret.

People keep blathering on about how they've achieved nothing yet and are only here by grace and favor - but how many sports teams could come back from a 36-0 thrashing .to beat some of the best teams in the world in less than 3 weeks. Very few I would hazard!

England faced a very dark time, especially on the knockout stages. They didn't sh9ow any instant improvement or tournament winning style. What they did show was a refusal to be beaten by default and a massive desire to prove critics wrong. Most of all they finally seemed to want to win the damn thing.

With our usual humility even us Brits are still writing England off. Even the sports writers are predicting narrow Springbok wins. But tellingly no one is predicting a run away South African win, such as the teams' previous meeting would suggest. As David Hands writes in the times today, England are a team that "don't seem to know when they are beaten".

Against Australia we should have been thrashed, but we came out much stronger (if still struggling), the magic wasn't quite there and the Aussie's were formidable opposition but it was a start. In the end it came down to luck and a bit of a coup.

The France game seemed a bit more hopeful in the light of such improvement. Indeed they were nowhere and would have had a thrashing but for 3 terrible English mistakes gifting them their 9. After the astoundingly good first minute try it promised a magical match that never materialized. In the end it was a brilliant tense game but still not perfection.

So we have the skill and the gritty determination, today we need that magic and sparkle that makes a cup winning team. It would be like a fairytale for a team that was written off as outsiders after 4 years of hopelessness stepped up to the plate and said "yes, we are the best and can prove it".

Today England face a fitting finale, the team that handed them their drubbing just a few weeks ago now are all that stands between them and immortality.

Win or lose, this is going to be a fantastic game.

Valve kill 32 man TF2 servers.. but what is next...

This was posted on the HLDS mailing lists (list.valvesoftware.com) a little while ago today. It made me laugh for a bit but it also made me think a bit too.

Read it and see...

Hello, Let's run a book on which servers Valve will randomly filter out next, without even so much as the decency to tell us.

1) Australian servers. Let's face it, it's those pesky Australians who are so far up Valves sweet asses it must be embarrassing for Valve. Those Australians need to be taught a lesson to counter balance all of that Pacific rimming that's going on.
2) Servers that have an unusually high number of players with 8 digits. Come on let's face it. The 8 digit crew are all noobs, snotty nosed teenagers and haxors.
3) Servers outside the Western United States that have an unusually high number of players with 6 digits. If a server attracts the old and wise, they're community is going to be too smug.
4) Servers running FF.
5) Servers that sends the player into a different world where there is 1000's of custom skins and the admins have been sad enough to invest 500 odd man hours into creating a work of art, not to mention the modding communities whose total output dwarfs anything that has come out of Valve.
6) Servers that attract the top players. C'mon something has to be wrong, they're all hacking.
7) Servers that attract too many noobs. No scrub that, they're all in Washington State.
8) Servers that are running that new plugin, which lies about the total number of available slots.there's 32 slots but 24 are advertised!!!
9) Servers with unsuitable chat language for minors. 10) Servers with 2 slots, passworded, that say "Valve doesn't listen to server admins" as their server name.

Right. That's my list. Odds anyone?

Fact is Valve killed off 32 player servers by filtering them out of the master server list (as far as I follow it). IMO that's fine - it is hardly a killer blow to any servers and it's their choice after all! But the amount of craziness this move invoked has been staggering. I mean are Valve REALLY likely to start picking and choosing which mods (or types of mods) are allowed to run and filtering out servers running "unauthorized" ones?

Dammit they provide and API and SDK to allow people to make mods -they are not going to kill any off (unless of course they do serious damage - in which case such a move is understandable).

Plus how the hell will they pick out specific mods and kill them off? It would be a stupidly difficult task - and not one they are going to undertake (it's not as if they are Valve servers - you can do what you like with it!).

So yet again we get silly hype and scaremongering and Valve get a load of bad press in the server admin community. Sure they're not perfect and their updates do often break things or make silly changes. But give them a break - the service they provide is pretty damn fine considering they are still churning out game after game and, despite regular massive breakages, the engine is fairly stable and very powerful.

Why cant we all just enjoy the game for once???

(And I STILL haven't had time to buy and Orange box GRRRRRRR I'm running 7 TF2 servers and I'm not able to play any of them - THAT's a problem!)

A Law unto Himself (Murphy's law review)

del.icio.us Tags: TV , Drama , BBC

One of the problems with being a film buff is that TV drama is just so much less interesting nowadays - it has non of the gloss or realism a film has, nor the immersion you can get from it. Luckily those of us in this situation have the BBC to save us. Murphy's Law has from the start been gritty, gripping and engaging TV that rivals some of the best movies in it's genre.

For those who live under a stone the show follows Tom Murphy, an Irish undercover cop (in England) doing deep cover work in dangerous situations. In the latest series he is less of a field agent and more of a manager - at least he starts that way, things soon take a bad turn and he is back doing what he does best: kicking ass.

Of course the series is really made by James Nesbitt who is a fantastic actor. He brings realism to quite a hard role - he has to be hard, gritty AND show a soft side - all without it looking corny. And he pulls it off, just. It is wearing a bit thin by this series - they have been trying to build character depth since S2 but have done it in a very hazy and complicated way. In a way this enhances the mystery of Murphy but at the same time just confuses you. Many of the support characters and people in his life do not carry from series to series (and even episode to episode) and he seems to have so much 'history' he should be 400 years old.

Despite the shakiness Murphy's Law is still some of the best TV all year, we can forgive the mild plot holes and the occasional corny scene in light of the fact that it grips you from start to finish and leaves you wanting more. Thumbs up to the Beeb!

Lets go Live

Technorati Tags: Live Writer , Live Mail , Microsoft

I've been using Windows Live Messenger for a while now, along with Live OneCare as my security software. I have to say it is pretty good stuff, amazingly Microsoft have come up with good products! Today I tried 2 more offerings. Namely Live Mail and Live Writer.

Live Mail is simply an Outlook Express replacement. I say simply but it isn't wonderfully simple. It is not bad to set up but the interface is not wonderful.

That said it is quite clean, it does work and it is fast. My one major grouch is that message rules are complicated to setup. Well not complicated just a little long winded. Also there is no calendar included which is a big problem for me (as I use the one in Outlook quite a bit).

An 8/10 for the effort would be fair. At least it beats OE into the ground :)

Live Writer on the other hand is another matter. Quite simply a stunning piece of software. I'm using it to write this blog at the moment and it's working well. Writer is a blogger program that connects to just about any blog you can imagine and lets you post to them in a WYSIWYG way. sweet.

My only annoyance with it is that it keeps putting <p> tags in every time I hit enter and a few other html annoyances. Not a huge problem but it could be cleaner.

But it has a spell checker, it has the ability to insert media (although the attempt above inserting from Screencast didn't go so well) and it has lots of features. One useful one is the ability to live preview your post as if it were published. If nothing else it might make me make a few more posts :P

So 9 or even 10 out of 10 for writer.

So a couple of highly recommended programs there - give them a go. Microsoft's Live Network seems to be working out ok!!

Of Beowulf

We are just sorting out our 3rd year degree projects at the moment. Somehow I think I've managed to convince them to let me loose on the departments 80 CPU Beowulf cluster (basically a load of fast PC's networked together into a BEAST!! :P).

The main focus of the project will be to create a parallel calculations algorithm to convert some slow serial calculations into fast parallel ones (or something like that).,

I'm well excited, mostly because it means I get to play with a powerful cluster (under supervision sadly :P) as well as do some cool research into an area I'm enthusiastic about. I'm finally excited about the course again!

I'll keep posting updates with how it's going :)