Gareth

The Falls at Morgan Steep.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:28:18 GMT

The Falls at Morgan Steep., originally uploaded by BamaWester.

Was browsing flickr and came across this picture. It has made me realise how much i've missed a proper autumn this year. If you remember last year, i was in Italy for a week where i was really impressed by what autumn can be like. Some photos from that trip are on my Picasa (from before i switched fully to flickr) here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/Garethness/Italy08Autumn?authkey=Gv1sRgCJGGyK-j84OfPg&feat=directlink

...

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:03:57 GMT

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

/post

Trick or treat (early but still wtf guys!)

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:29:54 GMT

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
garethness goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as a robot.
assisted tricks you! You get a wet rag.
auroraldreams tricks you! You get a dead frog.
feelingsuperior tricks you! You get a rock.
isaviel tricks you! You get a rotten egg.
katsuninken tricks you! You get a clothespin.
milusia gives you 1 mauve passionfruit-flavoured pieces of bubblegum.
phaedie tricks you! You get a piece of paper.
pixiepanic gives you 3 white coconut-flavoured gummy bats.
porkface gives you 1 purple banana-flavoured jawbreakers.
sugar_shrapnel gives you 6 blue spearmint-flavoured gumdrops.
garethness ends up with 11 pieces of candy, a wet rag, a dead frog, a rock, a rotten egg, a clothespin, and a piece of paper.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:46:53 GMT

Lol

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:53:21 GMT

Paddy has to go to the vet today. Paddy hates the vets. To keep him in the house we kept him in the utility room. My mum came down with the cat carrier and opened the door. Paddy bolted out the door outside.

My mum effing and blinding at her bad luck is overshadowed by Betty strolling inside, seeing the cat carrier and casually crawling into it and falling asleep.

Why cant all kitties be like that?

Stuff

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:16:13 GMT

As i mentioned on my previous post, i move out tomorrow. I've started packing already. I have some stuff from when i moved out a few years ago, but surprisingly not as much as i had thought i did. This confuses me as i cant quite figure out what was so big in storage (other than my bed) which stopped me from just keeping it in the shed and saving me £120-£80 a month.

So yeah, i move out on Sunday. I'm staying in university managed accommodation. I will be just off campus, unfortunately the far side of campus, but there's an upside to this. University park is one of the prettiest university campuses in the UK, I will get lots of exercise, I walk past the building in which my Dad works/teaches in, so when i'm poor i can (maybe) invite him out for dinner, and then have him pay? Or more likely, it's good having family well within reach.

I am in self catered accommodation, so i have to get back into the swing of making myself food. I have an en suite bathroom though, which is good. I am going to be a boring university student, one of those ones who stays home and works and does assignments on time (that's the aim anyway).

Stuff i've bought:

I bought a lovely new bag. This bag fits my laptop nicely! My current bags arent that well suited. I have a laptop backpack, which is designed for 17" laptops. My laptop is 11.1" and somewhat drowns in it, plus i dont really need that much space. My other bag is a camera bag. It's great being able to have my SLR and my laptop together, but not so good for university where i wont be needing a camera, but will be needing paper and pens.

Lots of kitchen stuff. Well, my Mum actually did. She gave me a lot of the old stuff in the kitchen. Partly because it's old, partly because it matches nothing, partly to make space. She topped up what i didnt have on a trip to Tesco. The result though is i have the strangest set of kitchen utensils of all time. I have mugs which are black and white lines/bubbles, pale green plates, vivid orange vegetable peelers, white bowls, black dinner trays for example. It's free so i dont care, and half of it will get broken/stolen/knackered so it's a moot point.

A printer! This is actually part of my 101 list! I bought a laser printer. I made the best of the last of my staff discount and got a £75 laser printer for £49. Lovely job. Although the equipment on campus is good, around essay time, the print queue is around 6 hours long. I could send stuff to my Dad to get printed off in his office, but it's far from ideal if i'm working late.

A fridge. I got a smallish fridge as it was cheap and i would like somewhere which i can store my luxaries in without worrying about it vanishing if i'm away for 24hours. It may sound petty, but it's a sad case of life for many university flats. I just hope it's the size i think it is (it arrives tomorrow). I would hate to find it's too large to fit in my room.

Linen, blankets, Stationery. Quite limited buy on this. It's not really something i like buying too much of in advance before i figure out what i'll need. I have folders, paper trays, blankets, sheets, pillows, trays for bathroom etc. I'll buy whatever else in due course.

I get internet access as part of my room. I essentially connect to the university network. This is good. It means i'll get 30-500mbps internet. Unfortunately, it will be locked down to hell. It already says no torrents, which i can deal with as i dont download stuff anymore, but other ports are blocked as well. I just hope they dont block gaming ports etc. Another pain is, you get 1 data port in a room. You can only have 1 thing plugged in at once, you cannot bring your own networking equipment (router, bridge, wap), so wtf am i going to do with my laptop? I figured i'll bridge my ethernet ports on my pc and just tether my laptop. Far from ideal, but if i get bothered, i still have WWAN (cellular) internet. and

I'm about 15 minutes walk from Beeston train station, where there's hourly trains direct to Birmingham. I can also change in Leicester to get to brum, making it a train every 30 minutes. This will mean i can see pixiepanic simply and easily.

I should get some sleep now, as i have an epic day of tying up loose ends, packing (including my computer?!?!?!?!) and laundry. wish me luck

YIKES

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:33:13 GMT

I move out on Sunday. I start university on Monday. I have so much to do!

That said, i'm going to start posting more now, just not this second because my printer is here!

HOLA

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:04:54 GMT

My laptop got delivered the other day, well, in fact almost a week ago! The past week has flown by. In fact, the past 2 weeks have flown by, in a sort. Last week Maz was in Spain which sucked, so i worked some night shifts at work to try and ensure i no longer bounce in and out of my overdraft before i start university which, by the way, is getting scarily close. She arrived back on Saturday night, i drove up after work on Sunday, and we drove back here on Tuesday. We're both full of cold right now. Well, i dont think i have a cold, but i have this weird sickness feeling which sucks.

Back to the laptop, I got my laptop last week. It arrived, no problems with it. Battery life is as expected, very very very good. I've been trying to set it up to how i had my previous laptop, but still needs a bit more work. I should really consider sending it off to Sony as well so it can be tinkered with for that product recall thingymabob a few months ago, (a few months? wasn't that like last year?). Anyway, yes. I have my schedule for my first week of university which starts on the 21st. I'm moving in before that because there's little to be sat around here for. I finish work on the 13th. I would like to make brownies for my co-workers for my last day. It would be nice. Most people when they leave just slack and whatever, or get to give people a piece of their mind that they never had the guts to do before hand. I'm in a strange situation that i quite enjoyed my job on the whole, didn't have any feuds with colleagues, and will probably miss working there (but not my much really).

My accommodation provider is already being a fucktard by saying OHSHIT ARE YOU STILL COMING? COS LIKE, WE HAVENT HAD YOU SAY YES YOU ARE, SO ARE YOU? yes, yes. i am coming, hence why i've got a few thousand pounds of my money in your bank account ffs.

Gotta sort out insurance too. I hate having to put a value on my belongings. It's like, well i bought you 3 years ago, so do i put your current value or the value it would cost to replace you?

Anyway, sleep time for me, so i guess i'll have to continue this post another time. Enjoy reading until then :) x

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:42:58 GMT

11

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:05:44 GMT

11, originally uploaded by garethness.

Fluffy.

Hola

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:38:51 GMT

Hola.

Updating from my phone as i'm uberpro etc.

Last week i got a present from Maz of lots of Lush goodies. I've never used stuff from there so it was kinda interesting to see how they work. I got 2 shampoo bars, some shaving cream, bar of soap and shower gel. Shaving with the cream got some getting used to as i usually use foam. Still did a good job.

You know my laptop was borked? Well it was claimable on home contents insurance so it got sent off to be repaired by the insurance company's laptop repair 'specialist'. It seems they cant source a panel for a sony vaio TZ anywhere. Well, i could. They're about 450 quid which is why i'm doing it on insurance anyway. So due to them being unable to find what a replacement screen panel, they're offering to replace the laptop. Said laptop cost about £1700 and i dont think is in production anymore as it has been replaced by the sony vaio TT this year.

The vaio TZ and the TT are both ultraportable laptops. They're 11.1" in screen size, come with low voltage components and a smegload of tech crammed into a tiny chassis. They're not netbooks as they are more powerful.

A few of the things i loved about my TZ were:
battery life (i can forget to charge the thing for a few days as it has a good 7 hours of battery life)
screen quality
keyboard design and feel
weight (1.2kg)
still has an optical drive.
Very well designed, looks lovely.

The TT has most of the above except that Sony decided to put 2 horrific faux chrome strips down the chassis and on the mouse buttons. Also, the battery life has been reduced meaning that the TZ can beat it by an hour or more in some cases.

I've seen that where i bought the laptop from originally has still got some of the TZ's in clearance. They're reduced as they're 'aged stock. I am going to see if i can get the insurance co to get one of these and a new battery for it as i expect leaving a laptop battery for 2 years in a warehouse would degrade it a little.

Ok enough tech babble.

I've been up in Leeds a lot in the past month seeing Maz. I have to come back home at weekends to go to work though which sucks a lot. Luckily i leave my job mid September so i only have like 6 shifts left :D !

I need to go to my bank and ask if they're going to be pissy that i wont have a regular income into my account. I think it says i gotta have at least 250 a month going in there. I will actually be 'earning' more now than i have been working, just in lump sums instead of monthly income.

Because of this, i'm not sure if i need a student bank account. I am not intending on touching my overdraft, certainly not in the first year. My bank doesnt do student accounts, so i'd have to change banks too. It's all a bit silly. God damn i hate banks, and insurers, and mobile phone companies. Did i bitch about vodafone and their unwillingness to take my money for using my phone as a modem? I'm unsure. I'll check next time im at a computer.

Apologies if this is a wall of text and hard to read. I'll reformat it later if it's a problem.

Ciao for nao.

Hai

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:01:50 GMT

I'm alive and well (ish, i've felt a bit bleh tbh). I'm in Leeds with pixiepanic who gave me a present today :D

Anyway, i shall endeavour to do a nice proper post some time in the next week with all the details.

take care.

Gareth

After the haircut

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:38:34 GMT

After

Before the cut

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:09:24 GMT

Before

1wordmeme

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:20:00 GMT

1. Where is your cell phone?
desk.

2. Your significant other?
Madelaine

3. Your hair?
scruffy

4. Your mother?
holidaying

5. Your father?
holidaying

6. Your favorite thing?
achievement

7. Your dream last night?
Jigsaws

8. Your favorite drink?
Peach

9. Your dream/goal?
Engineering

10. What room you are in?
Bedroom.

11. Your hobby?
Photography.

12. Your fear?
Obliviousity

13. Where do you want to be in 6 years?
Happy

14. Where were you last night?
Home

15. Something that you aren't?
Great

16. Muffins?
pls

17. Wish list item?
Minifridge

18. Where you grew up?
Countryside.

19. Last thing you did?
Fan

20. What are you wearing?
Enough

21. Your TV?
Where?

22. Your pets?
Demanding

23. Friends?
Away

24. Your life?
Going

25. Your mood?
Achey.

26. Missing someone?
No

27. Car?
There.

28. Something you're not wearing?
Coat

29. Your favorite store?
Dabs

30. Your favorite color?
Unsure

33. When is the last time you laughed?
Today.

34. Last time you cried?
Sunday.

35. Who will resend this?
Unsure

36. One place that I go to over and over?
Car.

37. One person who texts me regularly?
Madelaine

38. My favorite place to eat?
Newmans

Lul

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:44:54 GMT

I just finished an EPIC shift at work. Well, not so epic as it was only 11 and a half hours. Anyway, the funny part.

My Mum was just telling me about what Oscar has been doing today. For those who are unsure, this is Oscar:

He's an old cat. He has an arthritic hip and is fed steroids to combat a snotty nose that gets inflamed. Because of his hip, he cant jump very high at all, but has incredibly strong front paws/arms.

This morning he was seen in the garden eating a bird. It is unlikely that he killed it. It was most probably this beast, Ziggy:

Anyway, he ate it. It was apparently revolting. I didn't see the deed as i was at work, but i was told it was gross.

He then went on to eat his cat food for the morning.

Later on, he jumped into the chicken run with the chickens. Something he NEVER does. He then proceeded to barf quite violently. As he did this, all the chickens saw it and thought OOOH FOOOD!!! And ran towards him freaking him out making him barf more. My Mum had to run in, scoop up the sick and bin it before the chickens ate it, and rescue Oscar.

Weird eh?

Anyway. I get to see Madelaine tomorrow :D all i gotta do is ensure my thumb is extracted from my arse and i get some work done at college. THE PRESSURE IS ON. (i'm going to stop with the metaphors now)

Smoothie making

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:58:15 GMT

Apologies if you have to see this twice (if you're friending mazzlestar that is)

All photos courtesy of mazzlestar http://www.flickr.com/photos/mazzlestar/

Lol, so

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:00:09 GMT

I fell asleep last night at a really really early hour. I had too many days with too little sleep. I woke up finally this morning at 04:35 rather amazed at how blue the sky was. I quickly glanced at the news and read the bombshell that 8 out of the 10 current teams in Formula 1 have had enough of Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley and are intending to make their own championship.

There are enough websites which explain how this has come about. What interests me is: If there is a breakaway series, what circuits will be raced, what kind of rules will there be, what aid will there be for smaller teams wishing to compete.

A good way to save money is not change the rules so drastically each year. R&D costs are by nature very high and if the rules and regulations change yearly, you end up spending money but not reaping the benefits for more than 4-8 months before you have to start again.

The Silverstone circuit is likely to want to be part of any new series, as they have been told repeatedly that they aren't going to be back on the F1 calendar for at least 17 years. Bernie Ecclestone said if Donington park isnt ready for when it takes over the British GP in 2010, then there just wont be one.

The fans are in agreement over the circuits fiasco, with there no longer being any F1 activity in North America, both of which would usually fully sell out of tickets. France cancelled their GP after prohibitive costs also. At the same time, exotic locations such as Turkey and Bahrain remain on the Calendar, yet there aren't many fans that care for the sport there. (At Turkey there was 40,000 spectators out of a max capacity of 150k).

I know a lot of people find politics in sport tedious, but i find it rather absorbing and interesting. I will be watching carefully what happens. I will quite likely watch both series' if any breakaway happens. I'll be focussing on the breakaway, but i cant wait to see ForceIndia and Williams fighting it out for the constructors championship.

Enough F1Bawwwwww.

I walked up the stairs and Oscar was sat there looking pretty. I remarked at how clear his face was (he usually has major snot problems around his nose) and he looked at me and blew a bubble out of his nostril !

I have a presentation to make today. I'm jotting down notes. The powerpoint half of the presentation has to be e-mailed off today. I have an interview next Wednesday. I've been focussing really hard on getting my college work done, that i haven't really been giving this the attention it really needs. Regardless, i will give it my all, and hopefully receive the sponsorship/job in question.

Caprica

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:08:48 GMT

I just watched the pilot for the Battlestar Galactica prequel series named Caprica.

I wont say what happens in it for obvious reasons. It does have a fair few links to BSG, so if you were a fan of the contemporary series (ie the one made this side of the year 2000) you should enjoy this. To be honest, this pilot was a lot easier to watch than BSG's, which really does feel like it drags. That sounds a bit unfair to Battlestar, but the pilot does feel very long. That isnt to say it is no good however.

The futuristic city of Caprica, about 58 years before BSG is placed, is pretty cool. I noticed that they filmed a lot of it in Vancouver. They didn't hide this very well as they used the great big city library as a backdrop.

So yeah, i watched the pilot. It was pretty good. Now i've procrastinated enough, i will FINALLY finish my magnetism assignment, and i will do some partial fractions maybe.

Ciao

Discuss

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:36:19 GMT

New Kirsty Hawkshaw song

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:23:52 GMT

Face to face by Kirsty Hawkshaw

Heard it today and love it already, so thought I'd share.

Betty pouncing on Paddy

Mon, 25 May 2009 13:24:30 GMT

Betty pouncing on Paddy, originally uploaded by garethness.

Lookie! Paddy getting pwned.

It'll be summer soon, once it stops pissing down with rain.

Tue, 19 May 2009 18:42:18 GMT

Great feel good track :

They're predicting a heatwave summer. Let's hope.

Apologies

Sun, 03 May 2009 00:10:17 GMT

Sorry for not really having a proper blog post in over a month.

That said, this isnt going to be a 'proper' blog post either.

I got some things though :)

First off, is a Poster which i ordered back on the 21st. Impressively, it arrived here very promptly considering it was coming from California. Even more impressively is the poster itself, photographed below, complete with a thankyou card drawn by the artist herself. I rather like it! The added fact it's 2/50 makes it a little more special too.

Secondly, my Dad kindly bought me a couple books i felt i needed for my course. One out of two have arrived. The first, as you can see, is "Higher Engineering Mathematics". I'm waiting on "A guide to writing as an Engineer".

Books are expensive. This was £24, the other is nearly £40. I know i will be using these 2 books a lot though in the next 5-6 years though.

Anyway, i sleep now. ciao x

From Twitter 04-21-2009

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:01:06 GMT

00:07:48: @mazzlestar technically it's 116 by driving, but only 104 by walking. that said, HADES!
00:22:48: @Nelja it's about a 2 hour drive, but 5 hours using public transport. this is shorter if you get a lift from Leicester station home.
00:31:45: @Nelja night night
01:26:43: sleep time. Loads of work to do tomorrow.
09:29:05: http://twitpic.com/3pel8 - Ziggy and Paddy asleep on the bed. Do they not realise how sunny it is outside?
09:31:03: http://twitpic.com/3pemu - And now Betty joins in on the show.
10:01:11: so, crumpets for breakfast, coffee brewed (Folgers hazelnut coffee) and now i just gotta start working.
10:48:02: @spetznatz only ever does that with me if you play an incomplete file or a streamed file
11:31:38: work work work work work work boredom.
11:34:32: http://www.questionablecontent.net/random/1386alternate.png awesome.
11:44:03: Awesome-o. Procrastination has made me (It held a gun to my head) buy a Skadi poster. http://is.gd/tDCP check check check checkitout
12:13:34: I finally blogged. Really short post considering i tried starting to write it last night.
12:16:11: http://www.speedtest.net/result/456894630.png sigh sigh sigh. wtb a 6km length of fibre
12:54:00: WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY did my Mother find the need for 3 more chickens? 5 already. 5 eggs a day.
13:11:18: further information finds they are my mothers friend's chickens not hers. thank heavens.
14:05:02: back to the previous previous point, my mum DID get 3 chickens. her friend got 5 cockerels.
15:07:36: #lastfm #love Let It Take You by Goldfrapp http://bit.ly/KKqlx
16:34:05: http://twitpic.com/3ptgf - Gone for a walk
16:36:09: http://twitpic.com/3ptl0 - Sheep sheep everywhere @phaedie
17:01:23: http://twitpic.com/3pv2h - Walked pretty far so far.
17:02:46: @heenster you'll be fine i'm sure. just remember to turn your phone off during the ceremony unless you're going to tweet live updates!
18:02:59: @shanellelee holy cats! your cat is scarily alike one of mine
18:22:17: @shanellelee i'd say yes if it wasnt for the fact i'm drowning in 4 cats and 8 chickens
19:18:18: I can find 2 services to post my tweets to a blog. loudtwitter and twittinesis, but they all post daily. i want weekly posts to reduce spam!
19:24:08: to elaborate, loudtwitter and twittinesis post the previous 24 hrs tweets. i want a weekly post of the last 7 days.
19:27:44: @Nelja they must find you delicious
19:29:15: @justpetehere unfortunately not. i'm using LJ so that limits it to e-mail and ATOM posting.
20:38:00: @rstevens lets just hope it's electromagnetically shielded, and can withstand radiation from distant supernovae
21:56:31: *grumble*
22:15:37: @Nelja http://cursebird.com/Quelquefois_R wtf is this? and why is it a result when i google myself?
22:54:25: @Nelja sorry for being rude. I googled myself (or rather this username) after a friend did and said gosh, you're on a fair few sites.
23:06:38: @Nelja that isnt exactly unheard of, aye.
23:08:18: @Amathria wow that's ace! better than a chicken by a long way.
23:12:28: i require some graph paper, and i seem to be unable to locate some.

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com