Category: Uncategorized

Well, after posting up about Alternate Reality Games recently, here’s a link about a more conventional but highly addictive game: Civilisation.

I first played this years ago, when I bought the original version of ‘Sid Meiers Civilisation’… I played it quite a bit, but I never really got particularly good at it. Anyway, you can download a really cool free (open source) version of it called Freeciv.

Download it, play it, read the strategy guides… you’ll be hooked! (Well, probably frustrated at first, but you do start to get better when you’ve played it a bit).

Have fun!

Thought I’d just let you know how the weekend went! It didn’t get off to a particularly good start. I got a call on Friday morning saying that unfortunately I hadn’t got the job I went to an interview for. So that was quite disappointing! Still. I went to Colchester in the afternoon, and met up with Philippa. It was Paul’s birthday, so we went round to Gemma’s house and then on to Cheesy Tunes — a group of us even managed to get a picture of ourselves on the Essex Ents website!

On Saturday, in the morning I didn’t do much… in the afternoon, Philippa did some work on campus and I went into Wivenhoe to meet up with Alex et al from Claremont Road. For dinner Philippa, Liz and Phil P joined us and we had fish and chips. Then we went back and watched ‘Anchorman’.

Sunday, I went to Fordham in the morning, then round to Wivenhoe again and played a game of Risk with Ash, Matt and Alex, and then in the evening Paul and Ian cooked us a gourmet meal which was very nice 🙂

So now you know! Back to the job hunt…

Do you want to be hooked? Check out Perplexcity…

[ it really annoys me when people post up links to cryptic pages like that without giving any form of explanation, so I thought I’d better just tell you what it is: it’s to do with “Alternate Reality Gaming” (ARG). You can find out more about ARG and its history on unfiction. It is very compelling… ]

Well I do apologise, it’s been ages since I last updated! That’s mainly because there isn’t much interesting to say. I’m still waiting to hear back from the job interview that I had last Thursday. Apparently they were making the decision today, I rang up the agency and they said they were expecting to hear something back late afternoon but I didn’t get any calls… hopefully I’ll hear something tomorrow!

Um, I don’t think there’s really a whole lot else to say. I spend last night in Colchester, I went to the CU meeting and then spent the night at Philippa’s. Then I came back today! So, yes, very exciting (hmmm).

It seems like my original blog entry about William Pince has attracted a fair few visitors! At the time of writing there are 42 comments about it… that’s quite a scam they’re running there! Still, I guess if it saves people some money, that’s a good thing.

I might consider making a permanent page about it at some point… but I can’t be bothered!

That’s all for now.

Tonight, Philippa and I are heading into London for Lost City Nights — it’s a night put on by one of the people I know from the DJ Source Forums.

Which means that I probably won’t be updating for a day or two! … no change there though 😉

The job interview yesterday went well though, so hopefully I’ll have some news to update you with there next week. Have a good weekend, all!

Well, apparently George W Bush was wearing a prompter earpiece / device in the presidential debates… suffice it to say that I’ve been reading the blogs and the evidence looks quite convincing.

I just can’t believe this guy is president of the US!

Anyway, here’s the info:

• The Register – this is the original article I read on El Reg
• Cryptome – examining the video evidence etc

• Is Bush Wired – a blog devoted to the evidence.

If what the prompters were saying to Bush could be recorded at the next debate, that’d be great… unfortunately, I think the blogosphere has had an unfortunate side-effect: now people know that GWB is possibly wired, the GWB officials will encrypt the data or something — basically, make it difficult or even impossible to record! Hmmm… we shall see.

N.B. — if you see any typos or words that shouldn’t be there in this blog — ignore them. I’m not having a good day with language, could be something to do with being a bit tired…

A few people have commented on the blog entry I posted about William Pince (publishers). It seems like they are a total scam!

I’m just glad that it helped a few people (or at least, confirmed suspicions… or whatever).

Just to make it absolutely clear, I repeat one more time, in bold: William Pince Publishers are a scam! Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT send money to them under any circumstances!

Well, I have a job interview in Colchester for a programming job… I won’t say too much about it (as always), but still… hopefully something will come of it!

The past couple of days, I’ve been doing temp work. It was an industrial place, I had to do various things which would probably take too long to explain here (for the benefit it would bring at least). Anyway, suffice it to say they asked me to use a tool which I wasn’t too happy using (people told me how awful it was to use, and how several people had become injured using it), so I rang up the agency and I’m not working there anymore!

It’s a shame in a way because I could have used the money, but still… I’d rather have less money than go back there and have cuts all over me!

… absolutely knackered would probably express it better. I’ll explain about my weekend. On Friday morning, I got up relatively early to get the train to Colchester. I wanted to be at the CU Prayer & Praise Fresher’s event which was happening on campus at 11:00. Anyway. After that, I had lunch on campus (another one of the CU’s free food events!), and then went round to Claremont Road with Alex. That evening, Philippa came round for dinner (although it’s not actually my house, Alex kindly said it would be OK and we had some fajitas)… then we watched the ‘Beastmaster’. It’s a really, really cheesy old 80s fantasy film, it’s terrible… it was great fun! Readers with exceptional memories and a keen eye for detail will probably find that I mentioned this once before on my blog. But I can’t be bothered to do a search and find the link, so I won’t.

Anyway. I stayed the night at Claremont Road, and then in the morning went onto campus for Fresher’s fair. It was good, I saw quite a lot of people to catch up with! At about 3:30, my parents arrived to take Philippa and I to Kent, where we had a family party to go to. My cousin Mel was holding a party for the Sacre family. It was good fun! They had a lovely dinner, followed by some karaoke… me and Philippa sang a couple of songs — ‘Any Dream Will Do’ and then a bit later ‘Roll With It’ by Oasis! Note to self: Oasis went down pretty well at karaoke — must remember that for next time…

So we didn’t get back home to Ipswich until about 12:30 this morning! It was a good time though, well worth it. This morning we went to Church, and this afternoon I took Philippa back to Colchester. We didn’t do much in the afternoon (I set up Philippa’s computer for MSN, so if anyone wants her MSN address then let me know and I’ll get it for you). In the evening we went round to see Alex et al again, and we watched ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’. It was actually a very good film, I highly recommend it if you like action-y sci-fi kind of films! Beautifully shot as well.

Ok then, I think that’s just about it for now. Goodnight!

I’m currently updating this blog from Philippa’s laptop! She has got the internet now (she didn’t last year), so I thought I’d make a post from it!

Is there anything you’d like to say to the readers of my blog, Phil?

She says, “Hello, Phill’s blog readers! (Um.) I hope knowing that this blog was typed from my laptop, (um, no, don’t write another um) greatly increases your reading pleasure. Greetings one and all.”

So there you go. Over and out.