July 2007 in the Life of Ben (Blog)
Housesitting for Fliss and Sue (29th July 2007)
Fliss and her mum (Sue) were going to Craig’s wedding this weekend. Craig is a son of Sue and is about 34 years old.
It was very quiet in the house while they were away. Reminded me of when I housesit for mum and dad.
Friday
- Was ready 2 hours early.
- Arrived about 19:30 as Fliss was coming back from course.
- Played fetch with Scrappy.
- Fliss set up her laptop downstairs so I could play games over the weekend.
Saturday
- Woke up 10:00.
- Had breakfast.
- Met Liam, a friend of the family since 1998 or 1999.
- Sue’s first time out of the house probably since last year.
- Lovely sunny day.
- Waved them off about 11:00.
- Played with Scrappy and his new rubber tyre.
- Washed up some crockery and started cooking lunch.
- Played Worms Armageddon. (The organisation of their website was simplified after my feedback. They went with a more radical and effective change to what I suggested, which is cool.)
- Ate lunch.
- Played fetch with Scrappy and a rubber bee-hive chew toy thing.
- Played some more Worms Armageddon.
- Started cooking dinner at 17:30.
- Lonliness started getting to me, compounded by there being nobody around to express this to. (A vicious circle.)
- Sent Fliss a text asking how the event was.
- Watched some FIA WTCC.
- Washed up at 19:00.
- Watched some more TV.
- Went to bed at 21:45.
Sunday
- Woke up at 8:30.
- Snoozed through to 10:30.
- Had breakfast.
- Watched more FIA WTCC.
- Played fetch for over 1 hour with Scrappy.
- Fliss and Sue arrived back about 16:00 with: Kirsty (met briefly a couple of years ago).Dave (her boyfriend) and Liam.
- Sue was very appreciative of me housesitting. It had meant a great deal to Craig for Sue to be there and many other guests were very pleased to see she’d made it there.
- Fliss had gotten ill on the way back but still thanked me several times.
- Got a lift back with Liam after he dropped off Kirsty and Dave.
- Successfully made small-talk with him for the whole journey back. I gained this skill at college but thought I might have lost it. So this was cool.
Unpacked my stuff when I got back, then pumped up my bicycle’s tyres and went for a 30 minute cycle ride. Then I ate dinner and blogged this.
Haircut 3.0 (27th July 2007)
Went to a place in Church Crookham for my haircut this time. You can actually make appointments so there was no waiting around.
It was a big room with lot of space in the middle. The one in Aldershot was pretty cluttered.
Had it cut back to earlobe level, about the same length as the last time. But this time I let them put “layers” in it, which basically means the top gets cut back further to give it a roughly even depth of hair all over.
I almost look trendy now!
TextStudio 0.0.591 (23rd July 2007)
After nearly two months of development, today I release a new revision to my MDI text editor, TextStudio.
It has never reached a 0.1 release because as soon as it becomes stable I add a neat new feature. I test and bugfix it whilst using it for my everday tinkering with websites and whatnot. But once it gets stable, guess what? Yep, I start add something else!
Indeed, this release has truckloads of changes from the previous version. But once this Find/Replace panel is stable and I put together a rock-solid keyboard handler, a 0.1 release is on the cards.
Lower Left Wisdom Tooth Removed (19th July 2007)
Between 09:00 and 10:00 today I was having my lower left wisdom tooth removed. It was coming through crooked and food was getting lodged between it and the molar.
The 4 jabs of local anesthetic took quite a while to fully numb my jaw. But it’s still numb now, at 11:05, much like when I last had a filling done by my dentist. I felt no pain during the procedure but it needing a lot of heavy drilling and grappling with metal implements.
All the staff for this procedure were female; 4 of them in total. They were quite chatty and we shared a few jokes. But when it came to the crunch they were all business. And I mean “crunch” literally: the roots were very curved so it had to be split apart.
The news and whatnot can say the NHS is going to hell till the cows come home. My experience of hospitals and dentists has always been friendly staff with good equipment in clean rooms.
PHP ErrorDocument (19th July 2007)
At some unknown point, the new error handling for this website will be made available and written about. You can test it by choosing bogus URIs like these:
/blog/2007/404.404/404.404/4040440/tutorials/404/404/404/404.404.404/404/
The breadcrumb displays all the levels just in case the directories are correct. I could adjust this so it only displays the directories which are known to be correct but that requires more maintenance.
Fliss and Baldur’s Gate 2 (16th July 2007)
Fliss had hurt her ankle earlier in the week and it had visibly swollen up. So we stayed in for the weekend and had a laugh playing computer games.
Friday
- Arrived about 20:00.
- Watched the first night of the Proms.
- Played fetch with Scrappy.
- Went upstairs and started playing Baldur’s Gate 2.
- I cooked us some fish with baked beans which we ate at about midnight.
- Resumed play after that.
- Went to sleep about 05:00.
Saturday
- Woke up a 1:30.
- Got dressed and went to town, eating an apple on the way.
- Bank was closed.
- Got a KFC which we ate in the railway carpark. The graveyard was closed but the railway has a narrow strip of woodland, so it was kind of nice seeing them rustle around in the breeze.
- Played more Baldur’s Gate 2.
- Found an old blue rattle toy Scrappy had lost.
- Cooked dinner (chicken pie with vegatables) at about 23:00.
- Fliss nagged me into playing even more Baldur’s Gate 2 until 07:00.
Sunday
- Slept in until 15:00.
- Chased a wasp out of Fliss’s bedroom.
- Made breakfast for us both.
- Played even more Baldur’s Gate 2.
- Got stuff ready to go.
- Waited outside at 18:55 to make up for all the time’s I’ve gotten out late.
- Walked to end of road to make manoevering easier.
Updated CFG Studio 2 (12th July 2007)
Many bug fixes and robustness improvements plus an improved Edit > Find window:
There were some bugs in my redirection code so that all requests for old versions get sent to the newest version. Those are squashed now. I also simplified that section so the download links are on the main page rather than a separate page.
Running with Fliss (9th July 2007)
Fliss has applied to join the Army as a medic! She’ll have to run a mile and a half in 11 minutes or under to be accepted, so we did a bit of informal training together.
Friday
- Phoned ahead.
- Fliss announced joining Army.
- Arrived at 19:00.
- Went to park.
- Jogged back and forth along one edge.
- I sprinted it in 44 seconds. Was knackered after that!
- Fliss drew a labelled diagram with instructions for using their microwave oven. Why are these things never usable?
- I cooked dinner which was chicken pie and vegetables.
- Watched TV for a while.
- Went to sleep about 03:00.
Saturday
- Slept in until 2pm.
- Worms Armageddon patch (v3.6.28.0 Beta Update) worked on the Sold Out Software version I bought for her Birthday.
- Went jogging and came home.
- Didn’t have any meals left so we walked to McDonald’s. We each had a quarter pounder with cheese and large fries, with strawberry milkshakes. Ate them on the bench by the railway. Actually tasted nice (worrying) and wasn’t greasy (comforting).
- Got back and Live Earth was on BBC1. Watched Foo Figters, Metallica, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Keane and various other acts.
- Went to bed at 02:30.
Sunday
- Woke up at 12:30.
- Made my breakfast and gently woke Fliss up, who was sound asleep.
- Played Worms Armageddon some more. Fliss won by 2 rounds to 1. Lots of giggling!
- Played Buldur’s Gate 2. It’s like a slicker and larger interpretation of the old one in a bigger and more detailed environment. A bit like GTA 2 compared with GTA 1.
- Scrappy got told off by me for the first time. He was making a load of racket by clawing at a cardboard box and pushing newspapers onto the floor.
- Asked Fliss to go out with me. She said no but kissed me on the cheek.
Busy, Busy, Busy (2nd July 2007)
When did my life get so full of responsibilities and obligations? My fingers only leave the keyboard to answer the phone or use a mouse these days!
Sore Throat (1st July 2007)
A couple of days ago I noticed the inside of my throat was starting to gain yellow polkadots. Since then it’s gotten quite sore and goey, slightly making me want to throw up at times.
Blackcurrent throat sweets are helping a lot. Not by any medical means, afaict: their lovely taste distracts me from the symptoms.
Birthday Bash (1st July 2007)
The family and I went to the Hatchgate for a meal. I had the sirloin steak which was gorgeous last time I had it and was just as good this time.