So this is an update I've been meaning to make for a while; just haven't found the time. Mainly it's about roleplaying stuff which all goes neatly behind ( a cut. )

Now for some more fun stuff, and not just vaguely geeky links that I'm sick of having open in Firefox. First up, I got a new and shiny phone -- the Sony Ericsson W302 -- and I've been playing with that a bit, although in a rather limited way as I lost the memory card that came with it (due to a rather forceful eject mechanism -- it went flying and the thing's the size of a fingernail) and my 4gb one hasn't arrived yet. I also had recommended to me ITC, which if I hadn't already bought a new computer, I would certainly take a look at. That being said, the NatAmi Project looks ambitious and interesting, if largely conjecture at this point.

Finally some geeky music stuff. First off, torque_tiger recommended the oddly-named Mungyodance to me, some kind of DDR/StepMania/arrowsmashing type thing, which looks quite fun. Apparently it has several hundred tracks, and so it should at over 3gb in size. I'd still like to give it a try, so hopefully I can arrange for someone to burn me a copy -- it'd likely take forever and a day for me to download it.

Also, on IRC the other day there was some discussion of videogame music, and naturally the conversation eventually turned to OCRemix. After much discussion we came up with a very eclectic kind of top 9 -- it was a top 10 or 12 but some were a bit awful -- though these are in no particular order and should not be thought of as in any way authorative, being after all the choices of an arbitrary group of people on an IRC channel one afternoon. If anyone has any other recommendations, I'd genuinely like to hear them. There's some great talent out there. But without further preamble:

1. Harmony - Dragon Song (Secret of Mana)
   This is such an amazing track. Some beautiful guitar and synth work as well as original vocals. I never really played any of the Seiken Densetsu series, but I can totally agree with the feeling in the track -- even when games were pretty primitive in both audiovisual and technical terms, they could really get the imagination working and make you feel invested in them.


2. The Wingless - Godspeed (Star Fox)
   This is another good one, though it's different in tone -- completely electronica, far as I can tell, but it's got a great ambience. It's long but the two parts come together really well. Again I never really played the game, but it manages to have that feeling of flight which is appropriate for, well, almost any space-combat game, but particularly made me think of the Wing Commander series.


3. Star Salzman - Pillar of Salt (Xenogears)
   I really loved Xenogears; in all its overblown pretentiousness, it was one of the first really good post-Evangelion stories out there. Sadly I never managed to finish it (though I still own a copy) due to my memory card crapping out. Anyway, this track is all kinds of pretty. It manages to maintain the distinct style of the original and have a unique identity at the same time. The middle-eastern feel combined with the sci-fi ambience reminds me of the best aspects of Assassin's Creed, too, which is no bad thing.


4. Scott Peeples - Another Inspiration (Chrono Cross)
   Now, Chrono Cross I actually finished, despite it being (like Xenogears) only ever available on import here. It quickly became a favourite, although in my life when I was playing it, it wasn't a great time for me. Without wanting to sound over the top, this track reminds me of that time; it's got that little melancholy edge while at the same time being really pretty. And man, getting the end boss with the colours in the proper order was hard.


5. Arkimedes - Dreaming While I Wake (Shenmue)
   Shenmue was one of the reasons I bought a Dreamcast. I loved that game, even with all the flaws. It's a shame that the story was never really continued beyond Shenmue II, though obviously some of us still hold out hope that Sega will stop making awful Sonic sequels and go back to a franchise that has plenty of life left in it. Anyway. THis is kind of... not quite synth-pop, but it's got that 80's feel certainly. I love the original vocals on this. It reminds me a little of lo-fi stuff like Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, and that can only be a good thing.


6. ceili, Sephire - Snowfall on Forbidden Lands (Shadow of the Colossus)
   I do not have words for how unbelievably pretty this is. If you only download one from this entirely arbitrary top 9, make it this one. SotC was a good candidate for the whole games-as-art thing, and this remix is the poster child for how awesome remixes of game music can be.
   
   The last few are a bit more light-hearted, but no less good for it:
   
   
7. The Megas - The Annihilation of Monsteropolis (Mega Man 2)
   This is basically rivalled only by The Protomen, who made a Megaman Rock Opera, and really it's pretty difficult to beat that.


8. Arkimedes - Fall From Above (You Can't Stop) (Halo)
   If I did not include a Halo mix at some point, nidonocu would kill me. This one I was a bit shaky about at first (the robot voice and the other vocals really shouldn't work), but somehow this manages to be pretty great.


9. Game Over - Little Mac's Confession (Punch-Out!!)
   Don't let the pretty arpeggios in the intro fool you. This is from a Swedish band that does metal covers of Nintendo game music. If you think that sounds awesome then you are right.

I've been thinking of giving this kind of music a try, myself, though I'm not sure where to start -- I've only done a handful of remixes at all, and never really attempted anything with game music. One final related link, though I forget who I got it off: DA CHIP! is a series of chiptune reworkings of Daft Punk songs, and if that sounds like your kind of thing, then you should download it because it is free and made of all kinds of awesome.

Also? This video (SFW) shows a truly awesome Super Mario World ROMhack - no controller input at all after selecting the level. That is all.

[edit: oh yeah I forgot to add, Watchmen came out on DVD here yesterday so after some consideration I decided to order it, along with the Complete Motion Comic and the Tales of the Black Freighter animation; there's going to be a 5-disc edition in the US, but that seems to comprise basically a slightly extended director's cut of the film and the stuff I ordered, so not much point, even if it does get released here...]

Despite a messed-up sleep pattern, things have been going pretty well for me recently. There's quite a lot to talk about, certainly beyond the scope of a single post; but here, I mainly want to talk about one particular day, and one particular person, which made me really happy.

( Friday )

There's two things I've noticed with torque_tiger that I've not really felt in a while. First, he's given me some gentle encouragement at things, and given me more confidence in myself. So far, it's not been in anything of great significance; he convinced me to play Rock Band on Expert -- and I did pretty well -- and persuaded me to give DDR a try again after a really long break. Secondly, there's a thing in Buddhism called mudita, usually translated as 'sympathetic joy', and I think I've felt that here; I feel proud of Torque, rather than envious of him, when I watch him play games very skilfully, and (more importantly) I admire him as a person, particularly that he aspires to become a doctor.

I've got another person to thank, too; Toroka (confusingly, he was also/previously known as Torque) for introducing us to each other, and for having been a good friend for more years than I care to count. With torque_tiger, I've found, at the very least, a good friend who lives locally and shares a lot of my interests; yet, although it may be a little premature, I really hope that something more comes of it. He's a really sweet guy, and I could see things working out for us.

Around this time last year, I'd just bought my Asus Eee PC 701 4G, and replaced my broken Nintendo DS with a brand new DS Lite. Of late, I've got hold of various add-ons and equipment to add to the functionality of those, along with rekindling some of my other 'geeky' interests: comics, anime, and roleplaying.

( First, the tech... )

That ties in nicely with the roleplaying, as both series are often touted as inspiration for and/or examples of Exalted-level combat. While I'm still very interested in that game, and continue to acquire books for it, I've recently got (back?) into the new World of Darkness. I had the core rules, and (naturally) Werewolf: The Forsaken since the release of the latter, but until recently I had not really looked at the line at all. A few weeks ago I picked up another of the main 3 games, Mage: The Awakening; and on Wednesday, I was able to get hold of Vampire: The Requiem -- completing my collection of the core three games -- and Changeling: The Lost.

As of last week, we'd begun to play a Vampire game run by Miquel; it is thanks to his efforts and those of kolat_ray that I've got back into roleplaying, and I can't thank them enough. The game we're playing is set in ancient Rome, and so far has proved to be quite interesting; it's really held my attention despite me not being familiar with new Vampire, or overly fond of vampires or Roman settings in general. (I also got interested in Orpheus, as Miquel owns the main book; although that and at least one of the supplements is fairly readily available, all six books may prove difficult to find.)

I tried to find some places to get cheap roleplaying books from, and I was surprised to find Amazon had some good deals. I've ordered Promethean: The Created and Hunter: The Vigil to complete the set of new World of Darkness main books, along with 3 supplements for Werewolf and two for general World of Darkness use.

I'm vaguely considering going to the comic/gaming shops in the near future, possibly today, as I've not been in a very long time; it'll be interesting to see what they have.

(How am I affording this? Well, it was my birthday last week, and I am eternally grateful for generous relatives. Also? They let me have a credit card.)

So, I've been following up with some of the tech things I've mentioned in past entries.

( Yes, this is a little geeky. )

Thanks to salith, I should be getting a pretty decently-specced PC custom-built and ready within the next two or three weeks; we decided on the parts a few days ago, and I gave him a cheque yesterday. It cost substantially less than I was expecting it to, having looked at prebuilt machines of comparable specification, and it should be pretty expandable as time goes on. The only thing we were unable to find on the site used was the live bay thing for the Audigy, but I could feasibly take it out of this machine. I'm planning to keep this one around as a spare, as it still works OK and everything; it's just not very powerful. Alternatively, I may get a KVM switch so I can run both machines as necessary, but I'll work this all out when I actually have the new PC.

Talking of PC stuff, I found a couple of useful sites for desktop backgrounds/wallpapers. I've had the most use from DesktopNexus, though 4scrape has some pretty neat stuff too.

As there's been some malware going around on Twitter lately, LongURL Mobile Expander is a pretty handy add-on that lets you see the full address for shortened URLs, in case of any doubt. I recall reading somewhere that people are substantially more likely to click links in a Twitter feed than in an email, despite such things not necessarily being any safer.

So, I've been playing with a few new toys recently, both software and hardware.

( First up, and my favourite thing in ages... )

Finally, it's worth mentioning that I'm looking into expressing creativity in writing; two books I got recently, Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down The Bones (which treats writing as Zen practice), and The Ode Less Travelled, a book on writing poetry by the ever-lovely Stephen Fry, have made me think about giving it a try.

Well, I haven't written here in a while. First thing to note is that I'm going away to my mum's for Xmas/New Year tomorrow, and so for that period I'll be online substantially less often; on the other hand, I'll be spending time with my family (including Neil's mum and my grandparents), and I should hopefully also get to see massivesustain and shirosirius.

( With that out of the way... )

Finally, I'd been considering getting a new music game after Xmas, but with GH: World Tour, Rock Band and RB2 all having different instruments with them, I wasn't sure whether I'd end up having to buy several peripherals if I wanted to play more than one game. Fortunately, someone (can't remember who, sorry!) linked me to Joystiq's Instrument Compatibility Matrix. Having tried at least 3 different guitar controllers on the 360, I think the best choice would be to get GH: World Tour with the guitar, and pick up both Rock Band titles on their own. [edit: I think I'll just get RB2, as apparently -- thanks Toroka -- if you want the songs from the original Rock Band, it costs 400 XBL points and 1.7gb of space to copy them for use in RB2. Any downloaded songs for either game work with RB2, though, so it's not like I'd be losing out on very much -- plus RB2 has more songs on the disc and better options anyway.]

That's about all the news I have, really. Though a lot of my focus lately has been on games, I've still been keeping up with reading Buddhist books (I got some last week, and I'm still trying to sort everything out with Wisdom so I can get the lost shipment replaced and delivered to my mum's) and various other interests. The only other thing I need to do today is pick up a repeat prescription from the doc's, to ensure I have enough meds to cover me for however long I'm away.

So, I was browsing GameSpot looking for something completely different, and I came across the review for Legendary on the 360. By all accounts it's a pretty terrible game, but in the section on the good and bad points, there was something ( I'd been telling people for years. )

I feel oddly validated. Also, I will make a real post with actual content soon.

It's my first public post in a little over a week -- twitter nonwithstanding, and autoposting that still isn't working -- and I wanted to talk about the weekend just gone, which was particularly good, especially the Sunday.

( Saturday wasn't bad either, but not much happened. )

In the next few days, I need to work on the final project for my photography course; I've selected the 10 images I want to use, but I still have three questions to answer at ~200 words each, and it needs to be in before next Monday. I've also some work to do on my arts course before Monday evening, but that's less pressing. Ideally before I go out tomorrow, the books from Wisdom will be delivered, and I'll have time to burn a DVD for lord_kook, as he's going to do some mixing and possibly other work on my album CityZen when he has time.

So, it's been a while since I last wrote, and I've got a few things to put up here. Unfortunately I've been feeling pretty down for the most part, though things have been better the last couple of days. Anyway, the first thing to mention is some good news: I scored 80% on the test on my photography course, which was a higher mark than I expected. I'm also doing quite well on the arts course, and had a tutorial by phone on Wednesday of last week; this was very helpful, and although it may be tricky to find time to do the work I need to do before the next tutorial on Monday, I'm more confident about the course as a whole. We also discussed the possibility of aiming for a diploma or a degree, and I think the former is certainly attainable; I need to either look online for a qualification to aim for or call up to get the Arts and Humanities Prospectus.

( There's some more good things to say as well. )

Finally, there's still the idea of going to Manchester at the weekend with gothicwhitewolf; however, for various reasons I won't go into (though not least among them, being behind with uni work) I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to be able to go. The plan is for him to come here tomorrow evening and we'll stay in Sheffield overnight, and then go to Manchester earlyish on the Saturday, staying the night and returning on Sunday. I'm perfectly happy to spend time with him tomorrow, but it's the Saturday that I have some problems with. I'll talk it out and see if some solution can be reached, but I may end up just coming back home; he was going to go anyway, and stay the night, so it shouldn't be a great loss if I don't make it.

This evening the plan has suddenly transpired is to go see kitsunefury for a while. We're meeting in town and going back to his place -- I've not been before -- for however long. I really need to get back here tonight rather than staying over as I've quite a few things to do. For now I should get something to eat and take a shower, then maybe make a start on uni work.

So, this has been a pretty awesome weekend. I've got a lot done, and I'm feeling generally in a positive frame of mind. Hopefully things will continue in this vein; for now at least, I figured I'd make a record of what's been going on.

( I guess it starts with Friday night. )

Overall, it's been a very good weekend. Although at the moment I'm far from depressed, my stepdad sent me a link to a very good article by Clare Allan, on the Guardian site: One of the very worst features of depression is the impossibility of communicating the reality you are in to anyone outside it.

I've taken out a paid membership for 3 months for my DeviantArt account, as well as having put a couple more pictures up there. Hopefully it'll be worthwhile; it's good karma if nothing else. Along similar lines, I wanted to give a regular small donation to Soma FM as I listen so often, but there's a bit of trouble with PayPal at the moment (it's set up with my mum's card, and we can't remember the password) so I've not been able to do that as of yet. I did a little more work on the computer though -- freed up a load of space by deleting crap I never use, and installed all the old Fallout games to have another play through.

Also, I've been meaning to update my profile, since they changed the layout, but I haven't found time for that yet. I'll make a note when it's changed; for now I should get something to eat and go to sleep.

[continued from here]

The second theme of my time away (as well as the creativity mentioned in my last post) was the media I acquired while I was there. I explored two main interests of mine, which carried throughout the different things.

( Two main themes )

Finally, but by no means least, I managed to pick up Fallout 3 at a very reasonable price while I was away, and I've been playing it a fair bit. "Oblivion with guns" has been a comparison that's been made, as it's by the same developer and shares some superficial similarities, but if anything it's "Morrowind with guns" -- those who have played both extensively will know the difference.

In fairness, both comparisons do a disservice to a game that stands up to its heritage but also has its own identity and style. It's a lot more of an intense experience than many other role-playing games, and I've not been able to play it for very long in one sitting because of that. And, with the 50's-meets-scifi stylings, it knocks BioShock into a cocked hat, which I thought was overhyped and overrated in the first place.

At the risk of sounding a touch schizophrenic, the situation since my last post has vastly improved. On Thursday, I was still feeling bad and decided to have an early night; for whatever reason I decided I'd select another book to read, and picked out volume four of Thomas Cleary's Classics of Buddhism and Zen, a series of compiled translations. I started reading the first text in the book, Transmission of Light (Denkoroku) and I was somehow able to focus on it with great clarity, and it seemed quite profound. After having read several chapters, I went to sleep peacefully.

( The next day went well. )

There's a couple of minor downsides though. I had a couple of great photo opportunities while I was out, but unfortunately the only camera I had with me was out of juice, and I didn't have enough batteries on me to replace them. I'm also a bit annoyed at myself for not getting DS puzzle game Professor Layton and the Curious Village (or at least asking them to hold onto it for me) when I saw a cheap preowned copy of it; by the time I phoned this morning, it'd already been sold. I also seem to have totally mislaid the rest of the huge pack of AAA batteries I bought, so there's no more power for my small camera or mp3 player until I have opportunity to get some more next week, or they turn up somehow.

I also managed to sleep forever today (well, was up earlyish, then somehow managed to nap from about 2:30 to 7:30) and my back's rather sore -- possibly as I've not gotten around to doing any yoga in a while, due to not feeling good. Hopefully I'll continue to feel better and get more done over the next few days; I'm really looking forward to the end of next week and visiting my folks again, as I could do with a bit of a break. For now though, sleep.

Two new pictures and two new tracks:

	Schrödinger's Dog - Night Drive (Extended Mix) Some rather funky tech house to begin with. For once I wrote a short-ish track, as I often do, and then realised a way I could go back to it and make it longer. Hopefully it's not too obvious where it originally ended, though maybe now it's a bit too long. Can't win 'em all I guess, but I'm reasonably happy with how it's turned out.
	Schrödinger's Dog - Shine and Emptiness I largely blame miyabisan and last week's Hard Drive for this. I have a hard time classifying stuff lately, but I figure this is minimal techno; I'm pretty pleased with it overall, though I wish I'd been able to make it longer as I did with Night Drive. It's just a little bit Trentemøller.

( Plus a few little things about how my life's going. )

Things haven't been terrible or anything lately, it's just that I've either not had the inclination to write (Twitter nonwithstanding) or something like a lack of time has got in the way. It's been about 2 weeks since my last 'life' post, so I'll write again in the reasonably near future, I suppose. In the meantime, as ever, I hope people like the music and pictures.

I need to kill some time before I go out, so I figured making a post here wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm feeling better, too, so today should be pretty positive.

Anyway, via something completely unrelated I found out that someone stole Ian Curtis' memorial stone. It's a pretty bastardly thing to do to any grave, but as a pretty big Joy Division fan, that got me somewhat aggravated.

On a brighter note, Matter will send you "a box full of interesting stuff" periodically, for free, if you sign up. The only catch is that the boxes are produced in limited quantities, and there's a high demand, so it's possible that it'll be some time before one shows up.

Also if you would like to translate stuff into lolcat, that service is available. God bless the interweb.

More importantly, there's a project for Firefly Season 2. Now, the original series, and the movie, were great, so I'm really hoping this works out. They're looking at various options, such as monthly DVD delivery, streaming download, and TV on demand via cable/satellite, and hopefully there'll be a box set of DVD's once the run has finished. It's as-yet unofficial, but fans of Firefly/Serenity have already done the impossible, so I wish them the best of luck.

( A little bit about games, and some memes. )

Finally, I've heard something back about one of my courses -- the digital photography one, specifically. I got an introductory letter, some software (including a version of Photoshop Elements that won't run on my system -- hopefully Photoshop CS2 will do the job) and a tutorial DVD. It looks promising, and I've been out and about taking some photos already. I'll post stuff on deviantART as and when it's ready; I've been occupied with other stuff so I've not really processed much of what I took yet.

I also had the standard thing through the post about the electoral roll, which you have to confirm or change as appropriate every year. This time I asked for a postal vote, as it's not often easy for me to get to the polling stations, so hopefully that'll mean I'll actually cast a vote for the first time in... quite possibly ever, actually. Never been big on politics, though I'm pretty left-liberal as these things go.

I got caught in sudden heavy rain yesterday after picking up my week's benefits, and I wasn't dressed for it at all, so I decided to catch a tram to go either back home, or to the mall. I decided on the latter.

( I tried to focus more on my health and spiritual side. )

I have some other things to write on the subject of spirituality, but that'll be a restricted post for another time. In the meantime, I've been occupying myself with (among other things) weird anime series Noein, two-player co-op on Too Human with Toroka, and writing music, which I'll post soon. I'm also planning to take more photos and do more artwork soon, and I'm looking for a service where I can post images from my phone straight to the web, like Twitter does for text.

Overall things are reasonably good; I just feel a bit like I'm waiting for something to happen, especially with regard to the courses starting in a few weeks.

It's looking like my stay with my mum and stepdad is finally drawing to a close, and at present, I'm planning to go home on Tuesday. Unfortunately, they're fighting at the moment (I won't go into details, but it's really Not Good) and so I've been hiding in my room pretty much all weekend. With luck, though, things will have got better before I leave for home.

That being said, I had a good time with my stepdad ( last Tuesday. )

There's a couple more things to add. Games-wise, and especially with the DS, I often play things for just a little while before deciding I want to keep or get rid of them, and with a lot of titles, especially RPG's, you can't make a judgement quickly. To this end, I've spent the last couple of days playing all the DS games I have here, and I'm pleased to find I've chosen well.

Next, although I've talked about books already, there's a couple more to mention. I decided to further my interest in wolves by getting a further two novels: Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver, the first in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series, and Promise of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst, first of the Wolf Chronicles trilogy. I can't find any info about her or the book on Wikipedia, so I'm guessing it's a first novel -- it did, however, lead me to find rather interesting articles -- I suspect footpad may well want to check them out -- about wolves in fiction and werewolf fiction.

Finally there are two technical issues. First, it seems that my phone is damaged or something, as in a few calls I've been unable to be heard. I haven't tested this extensively but it seems like I need a new one. Secondly, I see no point in renewing the domain name for my old site loopback:reconnect, having done nothing with it in about four years, so some really old links and images may be broken.

In a way, I'm looking forward to going back home. I want to escape the bad stuff that's happening right now -- though maybe that'll be gone tomorrow -- but I also have things waiting for me, and I can hopefully sort out something positive for my future.

So, things are looking up. For the past several days I've been trying to foster a more optimistic attitude than usual, and it seems to have paid off. I've been thinking a lot, and I've also ( done a few things too. )

At the recommendation of m'dear filterchild, I downloaded Renoise, a multi-platform piece of music software, and I'm considering buying it as it's only €50 and it seems really good. It runs reasonably well on the notebook, and the license lets you use as many different versions of it as you like, so I could install it on a Windows machine too, as long as I was the sole user. I got a pretty sweet pair of DJ/monitor headphones, too; I don't mind using the little earbud ones for my mp3 player or whatever, but the ones I had for serious use broke. (Also got some music by Super Furry Animals and The Stranglers, for a bit of variety.) On the level of appearance, I found the time to re-dye my hair, and it's a much better colour now, if somewhat darker than usual. My folks bought me a really awesome pair of durable sandals. And I still love my keffiyeh.

I've also been considering taking up a course again, and one thing I have in mind is to go down to Red Tape Studios back home and see if I can try again at the music training course I attempted (and failed) last year. It occured to me that if I went for the Thursday afternoon class (assuming they run it on the same days again), I could avoid the rush-hour trams and go down to Games Workshop after class and get some gaming in, then come back after that when the trams would be quieter.

Other than that, I'll take a look at what the Open University are offering, as well as investigating Sheffield Hallam and Sheffield U; I've just now requested a prospectus from each.

[edit: Totally forgot to mention, we've been looking into the details of our planned holiday in Amsterdam at the start of September over the last few days. There's some really nice apartments and there's a lot we want to do, so hopefully it'll be a good trip -- I'm certainly looking forward to it.]
[edit2: I've done some photography while I've been here too, so if any of that turns out well, I'll post it here when I get back home -- I don't have the cable with me to connect the camera to a computer.]

Another week, another update, I guess. On the whole, things have been good since I last wrote; today's been a pretty lazy day, though I did just get out of the shower after dying my hair again -- a darker red this time, which I'm not sure I'm as keen on Scratch that, it's a reddish/purplish brown and I hate it, I'll have to buy better dye tomorrow -- and, of course, it's afforded me time to write here.

( My week, then. )

At home, I've been using my notebook to chat to a couple of friends with video and audio via Skype; I was surprised at how effortless it was to get it all working, and it feels like closer contact than talking over IM or whatever. It was good to hear Russ' voice again, and I spent a good while talking to huskion one night as well; among other things, we talked about NEET and Hachikō. Subsequently he linked me to some interesting things about where he lives: some myths about Poland and this picture of the British Embassy in Warsaw.

That's pretty much everything that's been happening, and I think we should be having dinner soon. There's not a lot planned for the weekend, though hopefully I'll be seeing actively_lazy for a bit tomorrow afternoon [edit: due to a mistake with the buses, he's not able to visit as it'd not be worth it for the little time he'd be able to spend here, so we'll have to make it another time] and with luck, I'll see shirosirius before I go back home some time next week. (I'm thinking luck maybe isn't on my side at the moment though.)

So, after a week or so at my mum's, I figured it was time to write. The journey here was easy, and I managed to pick up the latest issue of Wired en route; although I've been unable to subscribe (only one place near me ever seems to get it in, and it's inconvenient to go there; no website seemed to have it) I found that Wired UK will be relaunching next year, so that could well be interesting.

( While I've been here... )

Plans for the rest of my stay -- which is going to be at least another 10 days -- include going to the Royal Armouries to see an exhibition of movie arms and armour, and a bit of shopping to hopefully get a mod for my DS letting me play homebrew software and emulators etc. For the most part I'm planning just to take it easy, see friends if I can, and try and enjoy myself.

[edit: changed my journal style -- hit up electricdog.livejournal.com to see]

[edit2: I am troubled by this error message: (drivel:5139): Drivel-WARNING **: Throbber animation not found]

Today was markedly better than I was expecting it to be. My sleep is still troubled though, and I felt very tired despite not waking until about 1:30pm. After that I basically killed time online and started work on some completely new music; I doubt I'll finish it before I leave though. I worked on that until was time to go to the doc's, which was largely unremarkable, though I now have about 2 1/2 months' supply of meds, including some antihistamines to help with this constant coughing and sneezing from hayfever.

The evening, on the whole, ( was a lot more interesting )

I'm also pleased to say there's been some progress on the relationship front, specifically with laini. Although we've yet to meet in person, we've spoken extensively online (by text and voice) and known each other for a long time, and we've decided (at least provisionally) to get together. It feels a little fragile, as these things always do at the outset, but I'm sure it'll be better once we get to spend some time together IRL. I know he's having a bit of a hard time lately, and I hope we'll be able to support each other through times like that; if nothing else, it's nice to know there's someone who will always care.

I should sleep, soon. I need to pack tomorrow before I go away to my mum's; I'm really looking forward to spending some time there, and I'll probably write again while I'm visiting. I feel pretty calm, so I should rest well, and hopefully the journey won't be too bad, and I'll get to see some friends as well as my family.