Oh, I forgot. Here is a list of the impressive films and albums that I have come across recently:

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(Yes, it is empty. This is not for lack of watching or listening.)

We were going to see Bat For Lashes this week but thought £17 plus booking fee was a little steep - so we are, regrettably, giving it a miss.
So we decided to book some tickets for the Horrors in December early. I dutifully searched online and found a range of prices (up to €99 [£89!]) and thought that the linked-from-the-website TicketWeb turned out to be the cheapest at £10 + a bit. After ploughing through the booking forms I was faced with the exceptional offer of getting the tickets emailed at £2.25, sent by UK post at £2.25 or sent Internationally at £2.25. Hmmm, ok. Next get to the 'confirm' form! Excellent a total of £24.75... erm, maths is not my strong point but... the breakdown of charges had no indication of where the 'extra' bit came from. There was, naturally, no option to review the order. So I went to another browser and carefully went through the process again. I read the small print and lo there was an entry about a service charge. I missed it more easily than the hidden items in Wolfenstein.

Ok, this is not really about Oxford, it is not even particularly interesting but it is important to me. We have a calamitous outcrying for transparency, honesty and general openness and even the simply things like buying a sodding gig ticket are awash with smoke and mirrors.

_{tbh if I hadn't spent the last week towing the party line and pulling a few blankets over things at work I wouldn't care; but I have and I do and I can see it in others...}

I feel a bit Bunny Munro.

I got back to my desk to find a large box had been delivered by DHL.
I dived in to find it contained numerous screwed up Xerox A4 ream covers.
At the very bottom was a jiffy envelope.
Inside was my SUN Java Certified DVD.

Why put it in a big box?

I should be excited but the order was placed months ago and if I had received it yesterday I would have been eligible for a free PSP.
Today... eligible for nothing :'(

Since upgrading to Snow Leopard a couple of things have been reset (nothing important: Fn key toggle, desktop background etc) but I did notice that one of my favourite shared drives was no longer shown by default in Finder.
I thought I would just drag it from Volumes but running my show/hide hidden files script resulted in a prompt indicating that I must install Rosetta.
Hmmm, well, it turns out you can temporarily toggle hidden/system file visibility in any Open or Save dialog: just hit SHIFT+CMD+.

Not quite as user friendly as Fedora but it'll do.

:)

Zippy. I think though they just made the mouse more sensitive.
Java. Apps now show in Activity Monitor with their real name, not (null), and the virtual memory size is reported correctly. Spaces works for Java apps consistently.
Dock. I quite like the new context menu structure/l&f.

It all just seems to work, without needing prodding. Unlike me...

...it came to pass that productivity declined.

I don't normally post links to silly sites but this one has amused me and stopped me doing anything constructive for a while. Its Japanese but I am sure you can work it out.

F*ck Buttons were excellent last night and it was nice to have a catch up, beers, conversation and generally good time with good company. Now I am hungover and confused.

No New Student Centre Building for us then.