Via Nik & Ash:
The value of Jim’s van has just doubled. Check the dice and steering wheel cover 
I promised myself I’d blog a little more now I don’t have to watch every word I say in case I squeak CD2, or something. I’m failing miserably, so just to buck the trend…
Life Update: Spent the day with Connor today, which was a nice change. Although he’s clearly getting to the teenage point as he didn’t get out of bed until 11, so by the time he’d showered and we’d nipped to town to get bits and bobs, it didn’t leave much of the day left. Just about long enough for him to make it very clear that he wanted COD4 for his birthday, before he bundled upstairs to play COD5. Will check with Mum and consider it, I guess…
Stella seemed pleased to see me. Or she was hungry. Probably the latter.
Cat Update: Tubs had a scrap about 3am Thursday morning, resulting in him getting bit on the arse as he tried to squeeze through my teenie catflap. This is the second time he’s been bitten running away, but fortunately this time it doesn’t seem to be infected and his tail seems ok bar a little lump. Scared the life out of me at the time, cos I was fast asleep and thought the house was falling down. Anyway, upshot is he seems a little more worried about going outside, so I’m back to wandering out with him now and then. This has also resulted in a new game for him, where he tries to hunt me. He’s won a few times, completely scaring the shit out of me late on Saturday night, as he flew out of a bush and jumped on my foot. Bastard.
House Update: Still slowly getting bits and bobs for the house. Latest arrival was a marvel of MDF, that now houses all my vinyl and Technics. It’s quite nice, but the picture on the website definitely oversold it. By about 60 quid. I feel a bit of a mug having paid for it, cos it’s not even fucking painted and for the life of me I swear it’s knocked out by someone at the back of Wickes with a Black and Decker jigsaw. But, the plus side is it’s sturdy as hell and my vinyl just about fit into it. I’m hoping this’ll last a few years, cos then I can at least pretend it was value for money.
I’ve found a little bracket that’ll screw on the top and lift my DNS5000 above the technics, so the current plan is to get one for that and another for the VCM600. I’m hoping it’ll turn into my little ergonomic mix station over the course of the next few months. And yes, I have semi organised the vinyl by label. And no, I’m definitely not as tight on the decks as I used to be.
Fig. 1. A Marvel of MDF
More House Update: So, smoke alarms. Saviours of the free world. But annoying plastic bastards by the same token. Despite the fact that none of my windows open (all painted closed) it turns out that I have 3 smoke alarms. In the event of a fire I’ll reassuringly be woken up to fully experience being scared shitless, running around in my grundies screaming like a girl, before being toasted alive. Which I guess gives me at least a fighting chance…
Funnily enough I tested the one in the kitchen the other day, to discover it has no battery, fortunately for my cooking. The one on the stairs seems ok and the third I didn’t know I had until about 4am this morning, when it started beeping to tell me it had no battery. Once. Every. Fucking. Five. Cunting. Minutes.
Usefully, No.3 lives 8 foot up, on the ceiling above my bedroom door. Less usefully, I don’t own a ladder or spiderman grundies.
I tried a careful balancing act of chair and speakers - arranged in a sorta step fashion - in order to get up there, but failed. I tried jumping, but failed. So obviously, the only course of action was to beat it to fucking death with the brush I found in the kitchen. (If I hadn’t found that I was contemplating throwing shoes.) Satisfyingly it started beeping after the first hit, which slowly morphed into that slow, agonising death curdle as it beeped out the rest of it’s life. For making me laugh, I’m leaving it as a reminder to landlords the world over about the fucking stupidity of dodgy placement.
Fig. 2. Die, you bastard.
Fig. 3. Innards and the murder weapon
Tuneage Update: Have started getting up to speed with Logic Pro. Had a good crack at making something over the weekend. Although it’s missing a few key elements, it is starting to shape up. Have done lots of reading and learnt lots of stuff about production the last few days which is all interesting and new.
I’m not expecting anything amazing to fall out, but it’s fun to play again.
Mix-wise, I’ve got DJMix.net Presents for Proton, the Progressivehouse.com Progcast and FEEL on Frisky Radio lined up for the end of the month, so I’m going to have to get busy…
Anyway, back to work tomorrow. Can’t wait
Nice find from Martin, of the crowd reaction to the CD2 trailer at E3.
And a couple of photos of us down the pub
I let Jack out on Friday. T’was a nice night and he’s been going bloody mental trying to breakout, so it seemed like a sensible time to do it. Anyway, was all good, but life suddenly has a strange pattern to it, entirely dictated by his lordship.
6am, Jack decides he’s coming home, so jumps on the bed meowing.
6:05am, Jack gets bored of me sleepily waving a hand in his general direction and curls up for a nap.
8:45am, Jack gets fed. Stroked. Made a fuss of.
8:48am, Jack goes back upstairs and sleeps until 6pm
Whenever I get home, Jack gets fed, meows, has a fuss made of him, then buggers off out.
Rinse / repeat. You can set your clock by it atm
The only change to this is when Connor nips over to see him, in which case he’ll be out and about before I get home. Which is good as I’m glad Connor’s making the trips. I had the guilts when I saw him upset at Jack going, which tbh, I can totally understand. They’ve been a right chuckle the whole time we’ve had them, and he’s loved them to bits.
Anyway, it’s odd how much of a routine the furry fella has. And how easily he’s got me fitting in around him. Bastard
The last few days have been ok - had to take Monday off to catchup with chores as I still had a mountain of stuff to do with the change of address, my car needed tyres, I needed shoes, the cat needed flea stuff, I had red bills to sort. Yawn. Then there’s been all the positives about E3 as well, so it’s all been a bit busy.
Gorra beer up to look forward to on Friday, which will probably wipe me out over the weekend.
From: http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20061229
Gaz has stuck up some photos from our little beer, pizza and keynote session.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruffiangames/sets/72157619106852520/
Blimey, the internet is fast these days. Here you go:
Just typing the words in public, cos after months, I finally can
We watched the announce at the studio, while drinking bevvies (world famous Ruffian Fridge!) and having a good giggle. Feels great to finally be out of the shadows…
Will post the trailer up later…
Looks like Jack’s going to move back in with me and Stella will stay with K and Con. I doubt this has pleased Con at all, but at least Jack isn’t far away so he can see him whenever he wants. Not ideal, but better than Jack being booted off to cat jail forever…
I’ve just been down the pet shop and bought all the necessary bits and bobs for the furry fella and am now a bit worried that hairy houdini is going to make a bolt for it, especially if the landlady pops in unannounced to do the garden. I don’t think he’ll care too much about any stupid hours I do and Connor’s offered to pop in and feed him if I work late, so it could all work out ok.
It’ll be good to have Jack knocking about the house again. There’re cat flaps in the kitchen and back doors already, but we’re on a main(ish) road so I’m a bit torn about letting him out. I think he’ll be fine, but there’s always that risk and I keep thinking of Chiv. 
A bit worried that he’s going to miss Stella, Con and K and end up being a whingey cunt. Dunno. I know fuck all about cat psychology. Will have to get him some toys or something.
Anyway, I’m going to make the place cat friendly tonight and then plan when to get him. At the very least it’ll be some company in the house.
God fucking help us all…
Jesus christ. Even getting mine off eBay and paying for airmail cost less than this.
It’s a good stick though
I’m forever getting burnt by these fucking things. The pattern normally goes, I want something stupid like Ruby SDL, there’s a port version that’s supposed to work out of the box. So stuff gets installed, apt-get (or port, or whatever) does what ever the hell it does and I may or may not have what I want at the end of it all. Plus a different shell setup and a load of unix tools that I’ve already got from the base Darwin. Then I’ll forget about it for a while.
But then, a year later, when I’m doing something useful, like building Handbrake from source, I notice all sorts of oddities. ./configure will pick up something stupid, like an ancient version of gtar from Fink, that’s not actually capable or untarring a file, or the shell will prefer the port version of mkdir and all hell will break loose. Cue trawling through 5k lines of output to find that tiny little fail hidden in all the build output. Praise the lord for pipe and grep…
Anyway, after wondering why the hell I could untar ffmpeg on the cli, but my makefile couldn’t, (plus lots of weird errors from the cruftiest version of yasm the world has ever seen) I’ve finally deleted every scrap of Fink and Mac Ports - yet again - and cleaned myself up. More discipline required, me thinks. Make it for the Mac and don’t go down the dirty Fink path ever again…
On the plus side, all the crashes I’ve been experiencing with Handbrake seem to be resolved now I’ve built from head. To be fair, none of them seemed to be down to Handbrake itself - it’s something to do with the audio parsing from AC3 to AAC - but I’ve got a ton of files I wanna transcode for the AppleTV including a load of full HD stuff residing in dirty MKV files. Handbrake is by far the speediest way to convert, so the quest for stability is key…
Rant over
Too cool…