Personal, Travel

One take, unedited – episode 1: the park

2 Comments

Inspired by my friend Russell Oatlicker, I too have started filming random moments of coolness. But because I lack the patience to edit things together, all my video blogs shall be produced in one take. I’m in Malaysia, so the first few eps will be produced at random, in Malaysian settings, for the hell of it. Episodes will thereafter follow at random intervals. If you’d like to offer me a job as a talk show host, stop taking drugs and watch the video again.

Update: now with added Revver goodness! Please watch it again and see if I can earn some money ;-)

Internet

Trivia – *updated*

2 Comments

I’ve just discovered Twitter, thanks to Timbee, amongst others. Hopefully this means I’ll be less inane over here; if you’re looking for the trivial minutiae that characterises my every day existence, look over here. The Google Talk plugin is addictive, but does actually make blogging less timewasting. Or does it just mean I share things that even fewer people have any interest in? The everlasting question.

Is there an IM plugin for WordPress? Of course, I’d then have to go through and tag everything manually afterwards… (ongoing thought process that’s not worth sharing with the world…).

I’m starting to lose track of all these web2.0 registrations… argh!

Update: Fully addicted. I have started to narrate my life. I guess this lets me be a bit more like one of my heroes, Dr John Dorian. There’s even a badge in the sidebar, now, so you can see what I’m doing at any moment.

Miscellany, Personal, Work

Ethnic Santa and Citizen journalism *updated*

Leave a comment

They call me ethnic Santa...Had a great time at my office Christmas party last night; our bosses do really know how to throw a good party. Am glad I’ve taken today off to recover; more from need of additional sleep than any particular excesses. That said, someone did seem to have slicked the floor in Strawberry Moons and, as a result, I slipped and injured my ankle. A day of RICE for me, methinks.

But to the point of the post: I was asked this year to be Santa for our office Secret Santa gift exchange. Very honoured, I think I rose to the challenge and donned the (rather slimming) Santa outfit. Of course, it was all rather hilarious. After the gifts had been delivered and my task fulfilled, I headed back to my desk to shut down before we went out for the evening and found an instant message from a client waiting: one of my ‘citizen journalist’ colleagues had, within a minute or so of the pack splitting up, emailed a picture of me in my Santa garb to my client, who was duly amused.

The curse of camera phones ;)

The really annoying thing, of course, is that I forgot my own camera and have no photographic evidence of the evening myself. Hopefully people will email some things across to me in the fullness of time…

Internet, Technology

DSL down: week 2

1 Comment

The escalation of the fault is absurd. As far as I can tell, it’s gone:

Stage 1 technical support
Stage 2 technical support
BT Exchange technical support
Ericcson technical support

And now the fault is being managed by some kind of crack ninja network technical support team. If anyone knows of a simpler way to resolve this, please let me know: what’s happened is that, despite the DSL being in sync at 17 meg / 1 meg, the ATM/PPPoA connection won’t resolve, so I gots me no t’internet.

I may write a song about this.

Update

The flood subsides, and I’m happy

Leave a comment

Now that the crushing flood of discount seekers has subsided, and my traffic levels have gone down to their previous levels, I’m a little less self-conscious than I have been about writing. Ok, so I was never really that self-conscious, but my internet’s still down (it wasn’t the modem), and I’m busy with Christmas things. But, now whilst I wait for my broadband provider to ring and talk me through some diagnostic tests (that I’ll inevitably have done and which won’t make any difference to the broken-ness of my internet connection) I find I have a brief interval in which to blog.

Ah, crap, nothing to say.

Well, that’s not true. I have a few things to say. And because it’s a happy season, I’ll bore you with all the happy stuff. It’s not smug, I promise. It’s about a shift in perspective: try it, if you like: struggling with blog posts? Write some things that are making you happy…

I’m pleased with Spurs recent performance in the premiership. We seem to have finally remembered how to score goals. Now if we can just win an away match…

I’m happy the Christmas season is here. I love buying gifts. I love receiving them too. Hint hint.

I’m happy my brother has posted my membership application for Soho House. That’ll be a thing of awesome beauty and power if it comes through.

I’m happy following a great Christmas party last weekend.

I’m happy planning a Thames-side Christmas lights walk this weekend.

I’m happy to be receiving review copies of games from Electronic Arts, which I’ll be writing up on this blog. Expect the first one, a review of the PS2 format Superman Returns videogame, this weekend.

I’m happy from all the Orange Wednesday films I’ve been watching, especially the Tenacious D movie, and, oddly enough, Stranger than Fiction. The power of the narration device is strong in this one.

I’m happy with gig tickets to see the Killers and the Fratellis early next year.

I’m happy having a skiing holiday booked.

I’m happy, listening to the Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny album for the 45th time in a month.

I’m excited, about Christmas parties and the trip to Malaysia this year (even if I have contempt for this. Sorry, had to get that out of my system).

That’s it, for now. At some stage I’ll see how this perspective on life fits into my overall philosophy on crap in general and write one of Hugh’s manifestos. For now, stay happy, people.

Armand David's personal weblog: dadhood, technology, running, media, food, stuff and nonsense.