Nearly back online properly. Just a quick post with miscellaneous tidbits of
news.
<a href="http://www.scotsys.co.uk/">Scotsys</a> tell me that my PowerBook's repair has been marked as complete by
Apple today, so now I need only wait for Apple to ship it back to Scotsys,
then for Scotsys to check it once again, and then finally I'll be able to
drive over and pick it up. It's been away since March 1st, due to a screw-up
on Apple's part. Thinking of writing a letter to complain, actually.
So, not long until I'm back online properly. Other news in brief: I received
my 1932 hardback edition of Sir James George Frazer's <em>The Golden Bough</em> today, and it's in
remarkable condition for its age. Only paid about £8 for it, from a dealer
in England.
I must also do my meme-propagating duty by mentioning the launch of the new
collaborative blog, <a href="http://www.thefourcorners.net/">Four Corners</a>,
founded by Tom Bridge and my good friend Robert Daeley (he of the <a href="http://celsius1414.com/">melting point of silicon</a>).
Here's the <a href="http://www.thefourcorners.net/four/2004/04/welcome_to_four.html">welcome post</a> (posted, you'll notice, at 04:04 am GMT on 4/4/04),
and here's some info <a href="http://www.thefourcorners.net/four/2004/03/about_the_autho.html">about the various authors</a> (including your friendly neighbourhood Irate Scotsman, though I've not actually posted anything just yet).
Um... what else? The car had its first MOT, which it passed. Also had the brake clevis pins
replaced by the Shields Peugeot garage out in Hamilton (not the easiest place to find,
I might add). Ah yes, obligatory mention of the completion of our Comp Sci 3rd year
team project, which in our case (the team being <a href="http://mrry.co.uk/">Derek</a>, <a href="http://solitude.vkps.co.uk/">Gary</a>, Neil, Mark and myself) was a distributed topic-driven web crawler written in Java. Here's <a href="http://mrry.co.uk/articles/1760">Derek's post</a> about it, and <a href="http://solitude.vkps.co.uk/Archives/2004/03/21/TwentyFour24">Gary's</a>.
Cat remains obsessed with the cartoons on <a href="http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/">Weebls Stuff</a>, frequently serenading me and anyone else who'll listen with <a href="http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/21/">The Badger Song</a> (requires Flash, and is work safe; I bought her a plush badger in tribute to the unquestionable genius of that song, incidentally). <a href="http://bugsblog.com/">Fiona</a> is doing fine, working away as usual and stitching like it's going out of fashion. I've come to the conclusion that webmail systems are perhaps one of the greatest technological evils currently being visited upon mankind. And I'm hungry right now.
Since anyone of taste stopped reading several paragraphs ago, I'll stop there. Normal
service will be resumed within a few days, hopefully. I'll also let you know if I do
send that complaint letter to Apple, and if (as hoped) they send me anything cool by
way of apology. I dearly love you all.