The Church

Sorry for the extended quiet weekend, but I haven't been computer competent for a few days. Saturday saw the leaving do for my good friends Andy and Daniella who are leaving English shores to travel the world for the next year. They'll be missed enormously, but the leaving drinks did them proud with a tour of Camden on Saturday, and a Sunday afternoon jaunt to The Church for the more dedicated. I don't know quite how to describe The Church, but if you imagine the exact opposite of what you normally think of as church on a Sunday you won't be far wrong. Highly recommended (if you like very bizarre and debauched Sundays).

Entry 1172, Wednesday, April 27th 2005, Filed In Diary
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Wiped Out

Apologies for the extended weekend break in posting and the "I'm a bit busy at the moment" responses to all your submitted links (you're all superstars), but I've been a bit busy at work, I had to celebrate my birthday, and well, to be completely 100% honest, Wipeout Pure is just ridiculously addictive. You can complete a single race during an ad-break while watching television, almost miss your stop on the train while attempting a tournament, and win a few gold medals while in bed on a Sunday. My name is Graeme and I am a PSP addict. Anyway you probably want some links....

Entry 1162, Monday, April 18th 2005, Filed In Diary
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New Arrival

Fresh off a plane from Hong Kong there's a new arrival in the Lazylaces' household today - just in time for my *ahem*th birthday tomorrow. More on this, at what I'm sure will be excruciating length, when I have more time.

Entry 1157, Wednesday, April 13th 2005, Filed In Diary
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PSP Birthday

I actually had a PSP in my hands today (thank you Imran and your Japanese import). A rare thing in the UK (thanks to all my American friends whos' PSP demand has pushed back the UK release to June or something else ridiculous now). I've now moved from really wanting one to having to have one. Sheer awsomeness in a neat little package. I'd just like to note at this point that it's my birthday in 2 weeks time. I don't know why I felt the need to mention that. It's not related to how much I want a PSP at all. It's a completely seperate thing that just popped into my head. Really. Anyway the PSP...fantastic graphics, fantastic sound, great gameplay, and just a stunning design - I might be a little biased but this thing is the business. My order at Amazon still stands, but I could cancel that if say, someone randomly bought me one. *crosses fingers*

Entry 1121, Tuesday, March 29th 2005, Filed In Diary
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Nordinho

If you're an avid point'n'clicker and you haven't found nordinho yet use a couple of those precious clicks and get your browser over there now. An astonishing collection of games with walkthru's for most of the games for those of us that are a bit limited in our ability. Especially worth a visit since they wrote to me today suggesting a link exchange and it's only my own laziness which meant I hadn't gotten round to linking to them permenantly already.

Also while I'm shouting out to other sites a load of respect to milinkito who linked me recently and despite the fact I have no idea what they're saying half the time (no hablo español) a few quick clicks around reveal them to also be the home to some finely linked content.

Both sites are now linked permenantly in the right hand column of this site if you need to find them again and have an aversion to doing your own bookmarking.

Finally while I'm doing a catch up on linky and site stuff. A big thanks to all my visitors. I'm not totally sure what I was doing when I started this site - it really was intended as just some practise for my asp coding and somewhere to keep my own 'stuff' where it was easy to find. Anyways, a couple of years down the line and more and more of you are visiting all the time. Thank you! I've now just started to exceed my 30Gb a month bandwidth limit on my current package with my webhosts, Brinkster, so I've just upgraded to the top package which gives me unlimited bandwidth. So keep on visiting and bring your friends too! We may as well make use of the facilities.

So what does this mean to you the visitor? Well not too much hopefully. I'm opposed to advertising or membership on the site so I'll be covering the extra cost myself (it's not too much), but what it does mean is that I have access to some extra facilities. For a start I get a SQL Server database as part of the package so I'm looking to move the clunky Access database the site is currently based over to SQL Server. Hopefully this will mean I can keep things better maintained, but it will mean the site is down for a while, while I switch over. I'll keep the down time to a minimum though. I also hope to update the site to asp.net which won't effect usability at all (well maybe it'll be a bit quicker), but this is mainly for the challenge of reskilling myself. I hope to be doing a lot of stuff in my work life with C# and asp.net next year so starting here is a good practise experiment for me.

Right that's enough site stuff for now, back to the games and puerile nonsense...

Entry 1118, Sunday, March 27th 2005, Filed In Diary
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Micro$oft Leetspeek

Oh Micro$oft! I wasn't going to mention your laughable guide to l33t (aka A parent's primer to computer slang), but you leave me no choice. After 2 days configuring 6 applications on IIS6 spread over 4 Windows 2003 servers I'm at the end of my tether and I have no more patience with you. I've been chasing missing session variables (the application recycling tip on this link seems to work btw) and your complete inability to hang on to the auth_type server variable which has trashed every site I've been working on. How much time have I wasted due to things you allege are only fixed in SP1, which isn't even released yet? Too bloody much - that's how much. The fact that the servers have been located in Beijing, Houston, The City and my own office but remote desktop has allowed me to do all the work from my own desk hasn't calmed me down any either. I like air travel. The flights would have been nice. Arrrrrrgggggh!!!!

*deep breath*

Work related rant </ends>

Entry 1093, Tuesday, March 1st 2005, Filed In Diary
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GT4

Don't think I've been posting enough recently? Well I've got some bad news for you. In a double espresso induced buying frenzy I pre-ordered a new slim-line PS2 and a copy of GT4 (actual screenshot above - *drool*) this morning. Predicted delivery date is at the end of Feb so I suggest you catch me before then as I'll have entered 'career mode' shortly afterwards and be unavailable until May at the earliest. It's been nice knowing you all :o)

Entry 1070, Monday, January 17th 2005, Filed In Diary
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December 2004

Ok - I'm doing a little bit of end of year house-keeping to try and tidy up all the links and photos I've gathered over December and done nothing with. The idea is that come the new year when you guys are kind enough to mail stuff in I'll actually get round to posting it straight away. Well that's the idea anyway.

First up are a group of photos gathered over the course of my company's events during December which I only remembered I had lurking on my USB drive when Jules came round the other night.

They're from our quarterly monthly meeting (in which we discuss the progress of the various different parts of the company and then retire to a bar - this time we went to Mar I Terra a great Tapas bar around the corner from the office), from the IM Awards ceremony, which I've already posted about, and our office party at Jongleurs (comedy club and home of the worst food in London).

Right, enjoy the pics, and I'll move on to the links - apologies if I post something you sent in without a credit, but quite predictably I've lost pretty much all of the original e-mails.

Entry 1037, Tuesday, December 28th 2004, Filed In Diary
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Information Management Awards

I mentioned a while back that one of the projects I worked on was up for an award - well we were actually up for two awards. The project actually came second in one, but in the Information Management Awards which we attended en-masse we didn't get anywhere beyond being nominated. Still a good time was had by all as you can see from the pictures. Being a black-tie event we were, of course, all on our best behaviour.

Entry 1027, Monday, December 20th 2004, Filed In Diary
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O' Christmas Tree

Some people say to me "why haven't you posted any links for so long", and I reply "because I'm sooo lazy - the clue is there in the domain name". Anyway despite a week off work I haven't caught up with any of the linking, photo processing or coding I was meant to, but have spent it all chilling out. I'd say sorry but I'm not. I feel much better for it, thank you.

One thing I did manage to do in my week off was erect the lazylaces Christmas Tree, which for the more observant of you may look familiar. Yes - it's exactly the same tree as last year - I spurn real trees for plastic tree goodness. The really observant among you may notice that this year it is situated on the otherside of my living room - it's this kind of detail that really spices up my life.

Meanwhile the photos of me in black tie at my awards ceremony lurk on my hard drive waiting to be commented upon. When I buck up a bit they'll be on-line too. I know some of you (well one of you anyway) waits with baited breath.

Entry 1018, Monday, December 13th 2004, Filed In Diary
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Getting To Know Your Friends

Okay this is one of those circular e-mail things that I'm sure you've all got by now, but because I can't be bothered to forward my replies onto a gazillion firends I'm going to write all my answers here and I'll let you do yours in the comments or e-mail them to me if you're all prissy and private. The idea is you take the questions and post your personal responses to a bunch of people (you can know your friends too). Anyway here they are with my replies:

What time did you get up this morning?
Alarm got me up at 04.55, a couple of snoozes later I got up at 5.30.

Diamonds or pearls?
Diamonds (bit of a girly one this I thought, my jewellery actually consists of a steel watch and that's it).

What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
I really can't remember, it's been far too long since I went to the cinema. The last film I watched was School Of Rock which I highly recommend.

What is your favourite TV show?
At the moment it would be Spooks or West Wing.

What did you have for breakfast?
Black coffee, no sugar. Multiplied by 3.

What is your middle name?
Fascinating fact #1 - I have no middle name.

What is your favourite cuisine?
Pizza. Domino's to be precise. You might not think they are cuisine. I know they deliver. I win.

What food do you dislike?
Brie. Don't ask. It sends shivers down my spine just looking at the stuff.

What is your favourite crisp flavour?
Golden Wonder sausage and tomato. They're damn hard to track down though.

What is your favourite CD?
Big Calm by Morcheeba is an all time favourite. I'm currently listening to Jamie Cullum, Snow Patrol and The White Stripes though.

What kind of car do you drive?
Mini Coop.

In men/women what characteristic do you look for?
Just that I like/get on with them. Most people would agree I don't have a 'type'. Especially at the moment when I'm a sad singleton.

Favourite sandwich?
On a friday/weekend/bad day it would have to be bacon (hot). Any other day of the week Pret chicken caesar.

Favourite item of clothing?
G Star jeans that are 5 years old if they're a day.

If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation where would you go?
Cape Town. When I was in South Africa everyone insisted I had to go there but I never did.

Where would you retire to?
The Somerset countryside just outside Bristol. Great memories.

Favourite time of the day?
Early summer morning in London by the Thames. Sometimes it can take a long time to walk to work.

What was your most memorable birthday?
21st - also the most unmemorable - you know what I'm saying.

Favourite sport to watch?
Sunday village green cricket. As long as there's a village pub.

Who do you least expect to send this back to you?
Any relation of mine.

Person you expect to send it back first?
Daisy - except I think she might have posted something similar a while back.

What fabric detergent do you use?
Tesco Colour.

If you could choose any animal as a pet what would it be?
I'm not to be trusted with pets.

Are you a morning person or a night owl?
A little bit of both, but I definately get more work done in the morning.

Favourite alcoholic beverage?
Laurent Perrier or a Mojito if I'm feeling flash, a London Pride otherwise.

Do you have any pets?
1 fake cat. It's quite realistic.

Any new and exciting news you would like to share with your friends?
A project I did most of the development work for has been nominated for an award.

What did you want to be when you were little?
A train driver if I remember rightly. You wouldn't believe how much I hate trains now I commute every day though.

What are you meant to be doing today?
Working about 11 hours on 3 different projects. I have a week off starting on Friday though.

Entry 1015, Wednesday, December 1st 2004, Filed In Diary
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#1000

Phew! Well here it is, after over 2 years of lazylaces postings we finally arrive at post 1000.

The mini hiatus over the last couple of weeks has been down to me using every inch of my free time to get the site redesign finished in time for this post. I felt the site deserved a new set of clothes to mark the event, but I've added a style switcher in the right hand column for those of you that prefer the old blue colours. I still love them myself, but I was getting tired of looking at the same old thing all the time and fancied a change. The code redesign behind it means it will be easier for me to add extra alternative styles in the future as well.

There are a few other tweaks and changes, although lots of these are still on a 'to do' list that just seems to get longer no matter how many items I cross off. The photologs are slowly being changed over to use my own code, meaning I can ditch the clunky frames they used before, and the 'popular' links on the right are now generated dynamically from the number of recent comments, rather than being generated by hand when I can be bothered to check my referrals.

Up-coming changes include a font-size selector, improved site navigation, a site-map, content warnings for things like games that need shockwave, and an overhaul of the 'about' and 'links' pages. As always my free time is minimal so I don't when I am going to do all these things but I do have a week off work at the being of December so maybe this will get cleared up then.

I was going to make this a cheesy retrospective post with all my 'best bits' from the last two years, but the site redesign has spared you that, I'm still pleased to note though that some of my favourite posts go all the way the begining of the site, and post #1 is still one of my favourite things I've found online.

That's all for now. Thanks for everyone's support over the last 1000 posts, all the friends I've made on-line, all the folks who have e-mailed ideas, contacted me on AIM, or made one of the 4000+ comments. Here's to the next 1000.

Graeme aka Lazylaces