Been a while since I last wrote.. for two reasons. Firstly I've been at home for xmas, and secondly there hasn't been much to write. And I know that if I'd Blog'ed from home, I would've said something rude about my parents. But now I've overcome the need to vent a little.

So what have I got to talk about now? Well, I got some cool pressies for xmas, despite buying none for anyone. I got the Harry Potter books, and read the fourth one whilst at home. It is utterly fantastic! I also got a keyboard from my brother.. which was funny cause I was with him when he bought it.. and it was so huge he had trouble hiding it from me ;) But manage he did. It's cool.. it has auto-tunes you can play along with.. which although not necessary for me, is a nice feature if I'm lazy and want to prat around. The parents bought me clothes (plus the inevitable goodies from Avon - which were very nice). We managed to get flares to fit me.. which is a first. Plus two nice tops/jumpers. I don't think my parents could really afford to buy all that.. but I really needed the clothes so I'm not complaining. I also got the LOTR desk calendar, with pictures, quotes and trivia.. one page per day.. I'm gonna enjoy that this year. No real calendar yet.. and I don't wanna remove the old one cause of the mould on the wall.. oh well.

Haven't been to the cinema for a while, cause it's horrid there when kids are about. But there are the odd films we want to see. But we did watch a few films that have been on TV. Finally saw To Die For staring Nicole Kidman, which was weird but cool. And then Shallow Grave (Ewan McGregor.. yum), which was also weird, but cooler. Neither are on my list of top ten films or anything.. but both are worth a watch. Shallow Grave reminded me of The Last Supper (Cameron Diaz?) for some reason.. I have to watch that again soon.

Enough waffling. Will write again when I have something interesting.. or uninteresting.. to say.

LOTR IS SO COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry for the shouting, but I'm still bouncy, having seen the film about 5 hours ago. And it was cool. Ok, so there were inaccuracies, and lotsa stuff left out.. but what do you expect in a 3 and a half hour movie. It flowed smoothly, captivated me, and I rarely really thought.. "well, that was wrong".. and when I did.. it didn't spoil it for me. It was miles better than Harry Potter, which although truer to the plot, was much less flowing. But did we really have any doubt about that?

I think I can pretty much say that all the actors were great (although Rat has a few gripes about Gimli's accent). Viggo Mortensen proved himself perfectly capable as Aragorn, something that, frankly, had me very worried. And Sam.. another worry for me.. was perfect. And Pippin provided great comic relief :) My only possible problem was Agent Smith from The Matrix being Elrond. But that's probly cause I couldn't stop thinking of him as a bad guy.

The scenary and such was awesome. The elves actually spoke elven with subtitles.. and the characters were gorgeously perfect. And wow, I want to be able to fire a bow like Legolas can. What else is there to say. Well, if you haven't seen it.. go see it.. whether you like the books or not. I promise you won't regret it.. and if you do.. well, I can't give you my money back, but I can apologise profusely.

Ronnie won.. 10 frames to 1!!!!!

I'm sure I have lotsa interesting things to say.. NOT.

I actually looked at sport stuff today. Spurs won a match!! Ok, so I guess that's not *so* unusual.. but they one 4-0.. so I'm happy. And in the snooker world, Ronnie and Doherty started they're match in the finals of the UK championships. I only saw a tiny bit of it.. but Go Ronnie Go!

Saw this thing on TV.. Showtime at the stadium.. which was a concert (of show tunes) at the Millenium Stadium. And I must say, that most of it was crap. Being rather a fan of show tunes, I was horrified at Blue's rendition of "Something's Coming", and of Charlotte Church's two songs - she really isn't designed for show tunes. Two of the people from S Club 7 did a duet of "Bring Him Home" (from Les Miserables), and the guy of the pair was great.. if only he'd have done it as a solo as it should be. Most of the acts were bad, except for those such as Miss Saigon (since that was from the actual touring show.. I wanna see it). One woman sang a song from Annie.. and when she sang the line "when you stick out your chin.." I swear her tits were sticking out a million more times than her chin. A woman with breasts that big shouldn't be singing Annie!!! But I must admit that the most pleasing bit of the show was Atomic Kitten's rendition of Mr Mistophelles (or however you spell it).. they were surprisingly fantastic at it.

Also saw on TV today (yes, I've seen a bit of TV for a change.. I know.. it's pretty damn unusual), was this Walking With Beasts program that the BBC did after the success of Walking With Dinosaurs. I never saw the dinosaurs series.. and I'm a little disappointed that I didn't. The animation wasn't fantastic, but it was pretty good for non-film animation. But the thing that was great about it was the style they did it. It was just like watching a documentary on real animals. They followed a group of animals in the style of Bellamy and the like. At one point a "stone" even broke the lens of one of the cameras. It was a really clever, and interesting way to put across facts and ideas about creatures that we have never, and will never, see on the planet.

End of Lecture.

Thought I should post, since I haven't in a while.. hopefully, the new template should be up and working.. there's also a link to my e-mail address added to the site.. so if this looks crap on your browser, of if you have any other comment, let me know.

Nothing particularly interesting has happened in the past few days. Saw an advert for the ipod today, which had the amusing tagline of "don't steal music". Rat found an American "quarter" in the street the other day. Uhm, we went to the cinema and saw "The Deep End", and interesting film, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it unless you have a free cinema pass like myself.

Got an e-mail from one of the job agencies today. A possible week's work, earning £18/hour. Assuming it's within the local area. Could be good, although it'll mean rearranging christmas with the parents (they won't be please), and I hope to God it doesn't mean working next Wednesday. Plus it might mean a lot of hassle with the job centre. So we'll cross-fingers and wait and see.

I've been playing around with a script I downloaded for KVIrc. When I've worked it out fully, and altered it to suit myself, I might include it for d/l on this site.. who knows.

Just a quicky post. The Register have just announced that people on DALnet helped to track down the author of the Goner worm. Coolies.

I thought I'd make another random journal entry. I've been doing more to add to my website, but until I get hold of Rat's computer (which will be Wednesday), I can't really upload it. Damn proxy. I should also be able to then upload the new stylesheet, and alter the template for the journal, then everything should look so much happier.. although I do need a better charset so that it works nicely in netscape..

I've found (okay, someone else found) a cool link on linkfilter : Psuedo Dictionary. Another interesting link (while I'm on linking pages) is Disturbing Auctions - they have some weird shit on that site.

Now I think I'll go until I have something interesting to say.

Uhm, I'm sure I've lots to tell you about. But I'm sure I can't remember.

I was finally persuaded to buy lotr tickets, *just in case*.. but since we're going in the morning, we got "earlybird" prices: £2.95 each :) Not bad. Unfortunately we do need to get there for 10am.

Rat didn't get the job he went for, so we're both still unemployed. I really need to send more letters out. But I'm running out of places to send them to.

Finally got a 'draconid' e-mail address. Would you believe both draconid@yahoo.com and @yahoo.co.uk were taken. I mean, who on earth would come up with a nick like draconid!!! Okay, so probly and astronomer or something.. but still. Didn't wanna try hotmail, but managed to get a lycos address. So if you ever wanna contact me and you aren't on DALnet (why the hell not), then you can email me at draconid@lycos.co.uk. Ok, I know I've just invited a load of spam, but I'm not that bothered, it's just a throwaway address after all.. and it will give me something new to do, filtering through all the spam :)

Oh, Rat spoke to that guy from the company I applied for, and apparently, if it were March, they would've employed me.. for the linux/Java stuff.. that's why they really wanted me.. not for the current position.. so if I'm not employed by then.. although I'd better damn be (although, that's what I said about having a job by xmas).

Oh, saw The 51st State yesterday. It was pretty damn cool and funny, except for all the swearing which was unnecessary. Robert Carlyle was great as always tho. He makes a weird yob however.. I'm used to him in other roles.

It's been a little while since I've written. Haven't had much to say really. Yesterday had a useful day. Despite not getting up until about 4pm, we managed to rearrange all the furniture in the bedroom. It now looks pretty snazzy. The main reason was to move me (my computer that is) away from the window, so that I wouldn't be so cold during my late night IRCing. Not only has that been accomplished, but the bedroom now looks so much better. Although some tidying is still needed.

I also discovered yesterday a way to make my website much better.. I had previously discovered the 'frames' attrib of tables, but didn't think it would work on all browsers. However I have discovered that it actually does work, due to linkfilter using this idea. Thus with the help of the linkfilter html source code I have managed to improve this. But since I haven't yet uploaded the more recent stylesheet, then I haven't changed this just yet. Anyway, I hope it will be better.. and I am already using the code on my World of Books site. A warning tho.. if you are using an old version of netscape, as you can probably see.. fonts get rather large.. might be better if you turn off stylesheets.. but then you went get the intended affect. Damn netscape to hell :)

The Rat has recently discovered Opera 6. Looks good. I wait for it to come out on Linux with some excitement.

Currently, I am in the university computer room. Rat is at his Java course, and I am waiting for him to come out so we can go to the pub for the SWLUG meeting. I look forward to nice Wetherspoons pub food later. And in the meantime.. I should get back to looking at my site. I was gonna try IRCing, but I'm not on a windows machine, and the Sun's don't have an IRC client. I tried the dalnet java client, but it didn't seem to want to work. Bugger.

Just a quicky.. didn't get the job I was hoping for. Despite everything they said that made me think I was the only one in the running, someone else (with VB experience) got it.. and the boss didn't even let me know, it was the programmer who rang me. But the Rat did have an interview today, so cross-fingers.

Other than that.. well.. the world is going to pieces. Looks like Palestine and Israel might be going to war. Oh dear.

And that's all the interesting shit I have to say today.

Well, had a rather hectic day today.. had to sort out paying bills and shit like that. Had to sign on at the job centre. And was dragged off to not one, but TWO movies..

Firstly saw Zoolander.. a load of cool cameo appearances.. and one of those rare films that actually make me laugh out loud. And Ben Stiller is so cool.. enough said :)

Second was Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back.. long awaited by myself and my other half.. it was fun, incredibly silly, and exactly what you'd expect from a Kevin Smith film.. lotsa film references to both his other films, and films by other filmmakers. It was very, very good, and it was nice to have the chimpanzee from the end of Mallrats explained.. unfortunately though, I found some of the extra characters a little too unnecessary. Mark Hamil was cool tho :) But there was no obligatory Star Wars conversation :/