Not Dead Yet

Just a mini update – I’ve been neglecting this blog again (I have a tendency to end up doing stuff then forgetting to write about it.) So here is a little glimpse into my life this weekend. There is a lot of geekage, with some glamour :)

Saturday was a rather mixed day with lots of fail tempered with one bit of quite epic win.

The first of the fails was with the PC, it has recently taken to crashing when the system is under load. I suspect it is the power supply as it seemed to improve when I disconnected some of the drives. So a new power supply is on order. However while testing I noticed things were running a little hot. So I looked up on the PissyWerld site, fans were £3.50 so I tried to order for store collection but the site wouldn't let me, giving a cryptic "Max Order 2" message. Those with experience of PissyWerld will know how much fail that place is, so read on for more fail.

So I got in the car and set off for Digby. On the way over I noticed a clanking noise, whenever the road was bumpy then something fell off the car. So I pull over and walk back up the road to retrieve a large chunk of my car’s suspension. So I had to call out the RAC man for a tow to what turned out to be the Isuzu truck workshop on Sowton, luckily they managed to get a new spring and fit it within a couple of hours and it wasn't too expensive overall.

So with newly fixed car I set off once again for Pissy World, and quickly located two 80mm case fans and took them to the till, where they wanted £4.99! I pointed out that they were £3.50 on the website and that I'd tried to order online but the site had errored. The cashier then told me that I wasn't allowed to reserve items if the store was low on stock. WTF! It could have explained that in English rather then "Max Order 2". Still I kicked off until they sold me the fans for £3.50!

So after all that fail I did at least have something to look forward too. Dru and I were hitting Exeter's sole Gay Bar so I got semi dressed up* and spent most of the night dancing to Lady GaGa (for some reason the DJ was playing two or three songs then another GaGa, or that Bad Boys song). I was getting so much attention too, though most of it unwanted (some old guy's chat up line was "I want to be in a relationship with you" - Darling I want someone much more fabulous!), so I slept alone but that wasn't a problem as I was happy enough with the confidence boost the evening had given me. Also one girl I met tried to introduce me to someone without asking my name, so she said I was a stripper called Tallulah! While that might be better then my current job I don't have the figure (or the confidence) for it. Would need some boobs, and prefer Burlesque! And I quite like the name Tallulah…

After all that, naturally I was rather akin to a Zombie on Sunday.

PS: I’ve just had the email to say that the fabulous Novatech have dispatched the new Power Supply!

*as in dressed up, but not overly so. I wore my Brian Molko angel top (evilbay), black skinny jeans (primani) and pixie boots (Priceless) with a short sleeved jacket (Primani).

Post Cosplay

This probably belongs more on the Geeklog then here but it is glamourous. As you know last night I celebrated the New Year with a group of gaming friends that I have known for years and with everyone dressed as a video game character.  My Costume was Jessie from Pokémon and I think I pulled it off quite well (certainly compared to some of the horrors you see when typing “Bad Cosplay” into Google). Geek Chic FTW (ahem!)

I’ve put a couple more pictures up on my Flickr, if you want to see the full awesomeness that resulted!

A new blog

I've decided not to flood The Glamlog with my geeking, so I've set up The Geeklog to contain my geekery.

Child of the 80s

Well I must say that the Alternative 80s night was fabulous. Although I did get some hassle from a weirdo in a wheelchair. Some people seem to want me to justify myself, yes I am technically a guy, no I don’t want a full sex change, yes I am bisexual. Does any of this matter?! Still it was great to catch up with a few people I’d not seen for a while and to hear some good tunes!

Anyway there is going to be a distinct lack of glamour and indeed cleanliness (though I will be flannelling)  as I can’t use the shower for a day or so. I’m going to repaint the ceiling and need to let it dry out lest the paint starts peeling again!

I also need to sort out the PC, its been playing up of late. Two years does seem a long time for Vista to start developing problems. So I guess I’ll be using the Macs and Ubuntu for a bit.

This Week I have been mostly.

Well they say bad things come in threes and Monday was just one of those days. After a manic (snow issues) day at work I decided to unwind with a bit of geeking. So I take the big HDD out of the pc and put in the old Duron I acquired from the parents with the aim of using it as a Server. Start working out if I can install from a USB stick and find that my Apple Keyboard doesn't work with it. It appears that you have to use an old keyboard to enable USB keyboards. I don't have one of those :( But then I had to abandon the project when I realised Windows Home Server needs a 1GHz chip, my Duron is only 800MHz.

Secondly the paint is coming down in my bathroom. I suspect that the builders did just the bear minimum when it came to decorating because I'd have longer, steamier showers at the parents without problems! So I'll be spending one of my days off next week doing that.

Thirdly the water tank decided to have cock of ball issues in the night and consequentially started to overflow. Thankfully I woke up early for some reason, heard it and so wrestled naked with the cock until it behaved itself. (I've had to do that once before as well so know how to sort it!) I then went back to bed!

Oh and did I mention that it snowed.

Yesterday I decided to go in search of more snow. And drove down the A38 to Haytor. I’d have strayed further from the car had it not picked that moment to start blizzarding!

I then drove down to Widecombe-in-the-Moor – famous for THAT folk song

Finding not much there (it wasn’t fair day) I then headed back home, taking a few more pictures on the way

 

And today I’ve had a very very busy day at work.

(Also I’m trying to write this is using Windows Live Writer – which allegedly supports LJ!)

Geek Stuff: Push Woes and Home Servers

This is the first of an occasional series of posts on the subject of “geek stuff”. As well as being a Goth and Glamour Fiend, I am also a bit of a geek (which in my experience seems to come with both the Goth and Girlyboi territories). So if geek stuff does not interest you then please disregard this entry – normal glamour stuff will resume shortly…

Firstly I have a small rant about “Email on 3” – a Java push email abomination provided by my mobile network for a Sony Ericsson K800. It doesn’t work! In theory the app launches when a new email is received for me to read it. Unfortunately it now declares “Device Identity cannot be confirmed.” and goes no further, so fine, I’ll delete it. Problem is that the network sends a text to the phone which it silently passes to the app so it can wake up. If there is no app, then I get a text full of gibberish. It is possible to turn these off. But only through the app itself, which won’t start because it can’t confirm my phone’s identity. Arrgh!

Something else I’ve been doing a bit on these long dark evenings after work is experimentation. I managed to get Windows Home Server installed on my Mac Mini from an illicit download (I’ve not used anything to crack it so it was running in 30 day trial mode) by using this guide, and was quite impressed, though the Mini’s small hard disk limited what I could do. Still I’ve restored OSX now (speaking of which Microsoft get abuse for Windows patches, Apple’s OSX required nearly 2GB of patch). I’ll probably set up a more permanent solution when I have more money (always the limiting factor). I’m torn between using old PC bits from the parents, or buying a Bare Bones ‘Shuttle PC’. The old bits is cheaper, but I’d be limited to IDE drives which are few and far between. The Shuttle would cost more, but would be more compact and quieter, and the Atom should mean it doesn’t eat much juice.

There goes the new email tone of ‘Email on 3’ still hopefully I’ll find some way to fix that. I’d rather not deal with the offshore muppets in ‘3’ support, they are the main reason I want my contract to be up soon!

New Buy: Tripod!

My new tripod has come, and I'm quite impressed for the £15 it cost. It should make the Vlogs look a lot more professional, and should mean less 'in mirror' footage. Only problem is that my camera looks so tiny on it!

The Geek vs The Glamour

For the past few days I've been considering whether to buy a new camera for the VLogs or a new pair of boots. I've been truly torn between my glamdiva self and my inner geek.

I'd been looking at a small camcorder for doing the VLogs, nothing too fancy but something with a rotatable screen (so I'm not tied to the mirror and can aim properly when outside) and had settled on a £120 Toshiba model.

The other option was boots, I'd seen a rather nice pair of over the knee boots in the Pleaser range for about £80, but then came emails like this.

Unless you have been living in the Amazon jungle for the last year you couldn't help but notice that the £ has been taking a severe battering by the $ and Euro. We have swallowed the losses for months hoping that the £ would go up (which it hasn't). We cannot afford take the 25% mark-down on the currency any longer so, from midnight Sunday (Monday morning) the prices will have to rise by 25% on, Demonia, Pleaser & Devious footwear and Laughing Vampire clothing.

So most of the bootsellers are raising their prices, oh well, boots will have to wait

So camcorder it is, only Amazon are out of stock and estimated delivery is somewhere between mid December and mid January - still Me in High Definition might be worth it ;)