Finally picked it up, and once I get over the worst of this cold nothing will get in my way! Except bad weather, London traffic, and the lunatics who drive buses and old mini coopers (the two categories of people I had near-misses with on the ride home). I’m particularly pleased with my snazzy cycle helmet. Thank you parents!!
Going to have to find some guides on not getting killed in London…
I can’t believe Chris didn’t appreciate the full greatness of this sun-tan shop in St. Andrews.
Ok, I miscounted. Really there were three phases to the first round of celebration, and third was a great dinner on Monday that my brother cooked for me.
He made roast chicken in a bag which was great, and a rather marvellous salad, and we had some great wine and champagne – although I managed, to Arvind’s chagrin, to maintain my mid-week habit of not imbibing too much…
I also got AMAZING gifts. Gem got me an iPod Nano!!! I thought it was a double-CD when I saw the wrapped present! I still don’t quite believe it! They are every bit as beautiful and a little smaller than you’d imagine. I am going to have to plot something fiendishly good for her birthday to make up for it.
Siblings done really good. Some music and reading, a subscription to Private Eye and the box set of Jeeves and Wooster! And parents are buying me a bike, which my brother represented symbolically by laying his outer tyres around his living room with a bike helmet and a catalogue… hoping to shop for it today! So exciting!
It has been an awesome birthday – and the biggest party is yet to come! But I do already feel I have celebrated well, which is very satisfying, to say the least, and am massively greatful to friends and family for making it special in a dozen little ways.
Scary being closer to 40 than, erm, being born, though.
Been reading a lot lately; most recently finished Terry Pratchett’s “Thud” and the accompanying “Where’s my Cow?” (another gift from siblings), and this morning polished off the sequel to “Eragon”, which I blogged about a while ago, which is called “Eldest”.
I was jealous that the 15 year-old Chris Paolini had managed to get published when I was failing to even maintain my blog as adequately as I’d like — but that’s completely given way to simply being impressed. “Eldest” suffers from many of the things contemporary fantasy does – slightly derivative, pseudo-literary writing style that comes across as needlessly complex at times, and a moderately predictable plot.
That said, Paolini exceeds far more experienced writers with a maturity of style that really doesn’t give away the fact that he’s only just 21, with more believable dialogue and characters, with interesting relationship development and plot twists (even if they aren’t completely surprising) – and is, in short, inspiring. Its difficult not to judge a book by what you know of the author – indeed, what I know of Zadie Smith led me to have nothing but contempt for her Booker nominated “On Beauty” – so I don’t know to what extent my judgment is coloured here, but its probably enough to say that I enjoyed it.
Bring on book three!
Gemma made me a cake!! She’s a legend; that’s dedication for you…
Phase II of celebs were great, fortunately not being up too late last night meant not too knackered today for dim sum at Phoenix, followed by a rousing round of the hat game and some random Monkey Ball.
Had a great time. Fantastic to have siblings and good friends around. Shame few people couldn’t make it for various reasons, but I guess that’s what phase III of the celebrations are for!!
Anyway, will try to be less egocentric for a few weeks. But hey, at least the blog’s getting updated!
Have just gone “PRO” on Flickr. Good business model; create a great product that doesn’t seem limited… and then have people discover the limitations just after it becomes valuable to them as a service.
Fortunately the US$ is still rubbish so it didn’t cost too much… a small birthday present to myself.
So, first stab at birthday celebrations and we went out to “Onanon,” a cheesey LNL venue in Piccadilly, which proved very entertaining.
Particularly pleased of this photo with Katie and Lisa which makes me look like much more of a player than I really am ;).
Although I was middle aged and “called” the evening at about 11.30 so we could all get last tubes home, we got a good bit of dancing in and I had a great night on the whole…
Phase 2 of celebs comes today with dim sum lunch… Yum! Majority of my celebrations, though, postponed till November for reasons too complicated to go into… People are being very charitable and celebrating with me multiple times!
More photos at my photostream, as ever. I really need to stick a static link to that in on the main navigation…
Went to “Lucky Voice” with work last night, a flash new Karaoke joint in Soho. Whilst the beer was probably not the best of ideas on a weeknight, the singing was incredibly fun and uplifting, and I went with a great bunch of people from the office – all of whom were (a) moderately talented and (b) utterly shameless, so we all got into it properly.
Particular favourite moments were us singing “Combine Harvester” by The Wurzels and “Without Me” by Eminem, although the more tuneful numbers demonstrated more skill… I did, of course, sing my signature “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by the Crash Test Dummies in a tuneful baritone.
I always plug too many things into my computer. Something in the last batch of things I’ve added to the USB daisy chain, or possibly my flash new Freecom NAS, has caused my computer to crash to the new, improved, WindowsXP “blue screen of death”.
Google has failed me. Can a visiting Geek to my blog tell me what I can do about the mysterious “lpx.sys” that keeps causing my computer to crash catastrophically?
I lost my Windows profile at work yesterday. Net result: new password, new settings, needing to set up everything from scratch and re-import all favourites and bookmarks. Augh!
Sometimes Bill Gates just gets me so mad!!