It's rather interesting...

This will definitely be the last post of the year of the "It's".

Well... A week at my parents went pretty much exactly as I'd expected. Other that to discover that my parents are scared of me... Very odd... My father took it upon himself to tell my better half that he though she was drinking too much, which ended in her in tears in the bathroom. When asked what he had said to her, my mother jumped in to say that it had been her... A blatant lie, but I guess she jumped in thinking I was going to lose my rag and hit him or something. Instead, I calmly asked what his side of the story was, and pointed out that the reason she was drinking was that she was being flat-out ignored by him at every turn. To which he went into a huff for the remainder of the week. My mother and I talked to my wife and managed to smooth things out so that a very strained cease-fire prevailed for the rest of the week.

It was a particularly cathartic trip for me as I went for a walkabout around my old neighborhood and took a lot of photos. This was me saying goodbye to the place, as I had gone to my parents fully intending never to return. My decision was wholly validated by my parents' abysmal behaviour. My wife, who for the last 6 years has tried to bridge the gap between my family and I, has now come to see that it's actually better to leave them to it and get on with our own lives.

Due to all of this, my computing activities have not been particularly exciting over the festive season. The only thing of note was borrowing a Linux book from about 15 year's ago from my wife's dad. It's wonderful to read on account of it saying things like: 'Ensure you have at least 20 meg of RAM before installing.....'

So... With some personal demons laid to rest... The future looks bright.

Looking forward to the year of the "So..."

It's CHRISTMAAAAAASSSSS!!!!!!!

Well.... Almost....

So... It's been a bit of a hectic time of late. After the disappointment of not being able to go back to Uni, I've now been made a full time employee in the job I've been doing as a temp since May. So life is now hopefully going to be a lot less stressful knowing that I actually have a salary coming in, and I'm not in a situation where they could just say 'Oh... Don't bother coming in tomorrow... We don't need you any more...' That possibility has been giving me nightmares for months.

Over the last week I've resurrected an old laptop, bunged a few different distros of linux on it before settling on PCLinuxOS (the list was: Ubuntu 8.10, DSL 4.4.1 and Puppy 4.1.2) for no other reason than I couldn't be bothered trying out a new one. The main purpose of this was to use the laptop as a kind of thin client to play videos on the living room TV over a wireless network; play mp3's through the stereo; and allow people to show YouTube videos at parties without having to go into my bedroom! :)

It all seems to be up and working okay. For a tutorial on streaming media over a wireless network using vlc have a look over on my wiki.

It's going to be somewhat of a strange Christmas this year as I'm going home to Cumbria to spend Christmas with family. Something I've not done for thirteen years. It'll likely be the last time I visit Cumbria so I plan to have a wander around my old neighborhood and say goodbye.

So, if I don't post again before then... Hope you all have a good Christmas and New Year.... And remember... A turkey is for life.... Not just for Christmas....