Lloydie’s Blog

I was telling my friend Alun about something that happened to me last weekend and I realised I might as well share it with you people too.

So, I go into this department store and they were playing Christmas songs. Just to put this into some sort of perspective, it’s last Sunday – October 28th – and they’re playing bloody Christmas music.

It took every ounce of my strength not to grab the nearest salesperson and shake them vigorously by the shoulders, shouting “Is it Christmas? Is it? IS IT!? NO! No it bloody isn’t! It isn’t even bloody Halloween yet, you bastards!”.

In retrospect that may have been a little harsh, so I’m glad I kept my usual cool exterior.

My experience in the department store, like a visit from the Ghost of Christmas past, left me with somewhat of a crisis, questioning my harsh attitude and what might lie ahead in the Christmases to come. By morning I had renewed vigor and was alive with the Christmas spirit. I flung open to window of my apartment and shouted down to a small street urchin, “You boy! What day is this?”. He replied, in an appropriately jolly manner, “Today sir? Why it’s the 29th of October!”, before adding a heart felt “Merry Christmas sir!”.

ok, so that didn’t actually happen. My windows are locked and I lost the key about 3 months ago. Still, if I was able to open them, that’s how I imagine the whole scene would play out.

Anyhow, as Halloween has now safely passed us by, I’ve decided it’s time to fully embrace the (now even longer) “Christmas season”. I’m embracing it so much so that, from today onwards, I shall start saying “Merry Christmas” to every salesperson I see in town. And then, when they look back at me in utter bemusement, I’ll shout at them “See! SEE!”.

Or maybe I’ll just walk off and remain smugly quiet, I haven’t quiet decided yet.

In a shameless attempt to win an iPod, I here-by announce my belief in the truth.

Thing is, even if there wasn’t a free iPod involved (and, let’s face it, who doesn’t like free iPods), I’d still be telling you to believe in the truth too. You see, that’s the funny thing about it. It is actually true (the clue was in the name there).

To be fair, I am inclined to believe pretty much anything from The Science Creative Quarterly, being genius science types and all.

They’re also backed by the Order Of The Science Scouts Of Exemplary Repute And Above Average Physique, of which I am longing to be a member. I think it has something to do with my unfulfilled ambition to be a scientist.

No. Wait. I have a BSc. That makes me a scientist! Excellent.

If you’re like me, you’ve uploaded pretty much all your digital photos to that wonderful photo sharing website that is flickr. In fact, you probably use it to archive your photos too. Kind of like a backup service – just in case you wake up hung over and, in the shock of the phone ringing at some ungodly hour, accidentally knock a glass of water all over your laptop, which subsequently emits some scary blue smoke when you turn it on. Or, you know, something like that.

So what happens when you want a copy of your photos on a different laptop? You download them from flickr, right? If only there was an easy way to download all of them, rather than having to grab each one individually. Well guess what, now there is (although you already knew that, because “you’re like me” apparently).

Introducing flickr downloadr!

ok, so it needs a new name, but it works (mostly).

Please feel free to visit the flickr downloadr page and try it out.

Oh, and it’s at version 0.1 right now, which is a beta. That means if it breaks I’ll apologise and try to fix it as soon as I can. Also, don’t rely on it in any life-or-death situations, as it’ll probably bail on you.

Anyway, watch the flickr downloadr page for updates. I’ll also post on here when new versions come out.

Brian reappeared at the weekend. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Brian is the mouse I occasionally share my apartment with. I say “occasionally” because he hasn’t been around for a while. He tends to come and go as he pleases, which kind of baffles me somewhat as he doesn’t have a key.

Anyway, I shouted at him last time and he just took off. That was over a month ago.

Now Brian was back I decided I was going to treat him differently this time. I felt really guilty after shouting at him and realised that it was my own fault that he abandoned me. Now he’s returned, I thought, I’m going to treat him with a lot more respect and patience.

For example: On Sunday night we were sat watching the TV at around, say, 10 o’clock in the evening. While sat there I decided that I needed the toilet. I move to get up and, seeing me starting to head to the bathroom, Brian rushes across the room and darts straight in there before I could. “Bastard”, I thought.

Then I remembered I was going to be more patient with him. No, I decided, I’m not going to bang on the door and swear at him until he comes out, even if he is in there for bloody ages again.

After about an hour I started to think that maybe he was just doing it to annoy me. After all, he KNEW I needed the loo. I gave it another ten minutes and, deciding that no-one should monopolise the bathroom for that amount of time, I let myself in.

Here’s the weird bit. He’d vanished. Now there’s no exit to the bathroom except the door I’d just barged through. There’s not even a window or skylight or one of those cartoon mouse holes in the skirting. There’s nothing. Short of donning some mouse-sized scuba equipment and riding down the brown-flume , I have no idea how he managed to get out.

I’m beginning to think Brian has some sort of escapology super power.

Twice this weekend I have been approached by little kids, around 5-7 years old, wearing cheap plastics masks and asking me for cash. I’m sorry, but since when did Halloween start 2 weeks early and involve down-right begging?

I may be a bit old for trick-or-treating now days, but I’m still pretty sure the rules of engagement haven’t changed. Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought it went like this:

a) get dressed up for Halloween

Wearing your normal clothes and a 99p mask from the joke shop does not constitute a costume. If you come up to me, like one girl did, failing to even wear a mask, expect a frosty response. We asked her where her costume was and, as if it was a perfectly acceptable trick-or-treat strategy, she replied “it’s in my bag”. Yeah? So is my money, now piss off.

b) go trick or treating for sweets

In a moment of undeserving charity, my sister gave one small girl a sweet from her handbag. The girl removed the sweet from her McHallowee n “collection cup” and looked at it as if we’d just wrapped up a turd and asked her to eat it.

Kids used to settle for sweets. Now it appears that they just want cold, hard cash. You have to wonder if there is some Dickensian mastermind behind all this, sending hordes of children out into the night to lighten the purses of the populace.

c) go from door to door, not pub to pub

What happened to the image of children walking from door to door, down pleasant tree-lined streets (or other such clich�d locations from the Americana of my youth)? Apparently it is gone, replaced by gangs of children roaming from pub to pub at 11 o’clock at night. Children all under the age of 10 by the way. Although I didn’t see their parents, I’m assuming they were stood outside the pub, smoking a fag and picking the next target for their Halloween begging squad.

d) do all of that actually on Halloween

Halloween is on October 31st. That’s at the end of the month, not now. Sadly it’s on a Wednesday this year, which I’m guessing will make trick-or-treating more difficult for the children of today, as most people will be tucked up at home and not down the pub with a pocket full of cash.

Tis work to be done, so I be brief, but say this I will. As it be Talk Like A Pirate Day t’day, I’ll be postin’ all pirate like.

Them seadogs at 1&1 never found me buried treasure in that ol’ server o’ theirs, so now me ol’ blog posts have gone the way o’ Davy Jones. Tis a sad day, to be true.

Still, dwell not says I. It be foolish a pirate who look back but not f’ward. Onward and upward says I. More posts for ye to read, as I been slack till now. Many tall tales to tell ‘ave I, least not from me voyages to the New World, them Americas.

While I be talkin all piratey, I shud point ye to flickr. Them mateys ‘av gone an added a pirate translation for yer enjoyments. Just seek out the “Arrrr!” link at bottom o’ the page. As I be workin’ with translation ev’ry day, I be findin’ this pretty funny me harties. I fears if yours truly did as such for his workplace he’d be walkin’ the plank.

You may have noticed (although probably not) that my site has been down for about a week. Thank you 1&1.

Apparently they moved my server or something, and now it’s borked. And this isn’t the only time I’ve experienced long outages from them either. So, I’m moving to a better, cheaper, more reliable host.

Anyway, what this means is that, until they bring my old server back online (and I can get access to all my old stuff), this site is going to be a little bare. Sorry about that.