What Comes To Pass

Hiya Well I'm here in

Hiya Well I'm here in Hong Kong.. The whole ticket fiasco was bizarre to say the least.. The Fedex dude never arrived ("everything we can" my arse!) and we had to make 50 phone calls to various persons involved in the booking, astoundingly the guy from our Hong Kong booker actually had the office calls diverted to his mobile and he went down to the office at 11pm to sort out the tickets! Now quite apart from the fact that according to the tracker fedex UK did sweet FA for 2 days this says a lot about the nature of Hong Kong folk.. They get things done with extraordinary devotion to duty, completely flying in the face of this modern british mentality of "ooh err.. ooh gonna cost ya.. not in my job description that!" I mean English folk never used to be like that!!! You look at folks like David Attenborough and see people who still keep that sense of true British pride alive, they work no matter what the job and they won't complain about it once - its the reason Hong Kong is the way it is today! It was built on the foundations of an English Colony, in fact it pretty much is and English colony still in all but name. Anyhow the plane was fantastic.. We got one of the new Virgin planes. I've done the HK to UK flight about 50+ times in my life (we've moved lots and enjoy holidays from one to the other =] ) and that was by far the most enjoyable flight I have ever experienced. The interior has *gasp* style and a very tangible cool factor.. The screens in the seats in front are now much larger than before and it had tv on demand (you chose the show/film out of the massive database) with full Pause/Rewind/Fast Forward options - with all the big films from this year. Then there was the Music library of about 60 great albums from today - all free play on demand. They also had groovy networked games to sadistically abuse other passengers on (If you were on that flight, I was John.S in seat 54F handing all your asses to you on trivia - and they said my accumulation of trivial knowledge was useless! Hah! Who's laughing now? Certainly not you mr ABBA of Seat 14A.. So, sitting in first class and feeling all superior were we? Yeah I opened a can of whoop ass all the way back in Economy and had one of the stewardesses deliver it to you along with your complimentary free martini and massage.. Vivre la resistance de l'economy!!) The big one was of course on flight email and instant messaging between seats and the ground =] Of course its bloody impossible to type with a puny remote control so the SMS'ing was kind of impractical but cool nonetheless.. Plus the whole doodah ran on Linux (hey, anything but Windoze) as you occasionally saw 'Tux' the penguin on some terminal loading windows =] So anyhow today I went out into central to get myself a haircut (Hey gotta look good for the photo shoot on thursday haha!) and Mac Addict - man I've missed that king of macintosh magazines... Took Denning my MP2100 along with me and realized my copy of Dashboard had expired - doh! so now I'm back to the original button-bar =] Kind of odd not having all that cool stuff but I figure I ought to actually use the Button-Bar for once as it is the true Newton configuration, at least thats how I'm planning on presenting it to myself to mask the fact that I really can't be bothered to pay the $25 registration fee at the moment - is it worth it? Hell yes! Can I afford it? Heck no! =] Mac Addict has a cool article on the Newt on its 1st news page! woo! In fact "Woo" is mentioned - Woo from the Newtontalk Mailinglist that is =] Not bad for a "dead" platform! =] Well tonight I have a party to attend for New Years Eve, sadly I'm also kind of shattered but I'll be damned if I'm missing out on a chance to meet up with folk from Shatin College.. Which reminds me to call Sean as it'd be really stupid of me to fly to Hong Kong and miss talking to a best mate of mine =] Cya Later! John

Ack.. "Set em up joe...

Ack..
"Set em up joe... I got troubles"

Couldn't resist but I kind of have... First is quite trivial...'

At the moment I'm stuck at Rowhedge whilst everyone else parties at the Farm - fecking FedEx were supposed to arrive at 12 noon and now its 8 and the dude at Customer Services said it would be here before 8pm.. Grrr.. All this for my flipping plane tickets.. If those bitches don't get their asses in gear and do "Whatever it takes" To get me my ticket I won't be able to fly to HK! =/ Man I hate FedEx.. Even ordering stuff online I choose USPS if its in America.. Their Priority mail actually makes a difference and unlike FedEx they care about every package.. What's worse is that it was flipping PRIORITY FedEx.. Thats like the 2nd most expensive.. Designed to be close to 2 days deliver!! I mean what the hell am I going to do with "my money back"
for the flipping postage when the tickets in there are worth 10 times as much and only valid for tomorrow.. Argh!

The other problem is rather more troubling and requires a lot of prerequisite knowledge of my past to really get to grips with.. I'll try and abridge it..
Dude called Jim, lived with us for no very good reason whilst we were in Hong Kong for a year because my father wanted to give him a second chance at life and more importantly because Jim is a syccophantic git and my Father likes suck-ups.. For someone with such immense clarity of thought he's pretty selective in what he wants to see in people.. Anyhow this dude's true motives are spotted by everyone else who grow to detest him (entire family + office etc) I mean we actually have concrete proof that he's trying to sponge off us as much as possible from conversations and what not. He actually dined at the table with us every F***** night. Point is he made my life miserable.. And I don't mean that in a melodramatic way.. I was actually depressed.. My Grades fell, I had no drive and I simply couldn't discuss it with my father because he's only capable of seeing one side of things. Then September 11th shook the family economic conditions so we simply couldn't afford to keep Jim in Hong Kong.. Instant recovery for me, I was happy I felt more alive in some way.
Well Jim went back to the UK to stew in his own juices for a while and bad mouth my father as much as is humanly possible.. Where is he now? at this very moment? He's at the farm ass-licking whilst everyone else - disgusted both with him and my father have left the room.
Something has to be done before he gets back into Hong Kong...

Hey folks.. boxing day was

Hey folks..

boxing day was largely spent playing with my sibling's Christmas presents *ahem* what can I say, Nerf guns are fun, but Artillery/rocket launcher sized Nerf guns were just too cool to ignore.. That's got to be fun with a group of mates =P I'm just a big kid really!

At the moment I'm at home in Rowhedge waiting for Mr. Fedex to arrive with my airline tickets from Hong Kong so I can ironically fly to Hong Kong.

Denning is filling up with stuff to do in Hong Kong, number one on the list is get a freakin' hair cut! few people can really cut my hair because its so odd (what with being red and thick) but there are a few people out there who sort of "get" hair and know how its going to fall.. One of those people is Giancarlo this guy in Jesi in Italy - nice bloke and he always does a superb job. The other is miraculously my mother's best friend Lorraine who has just returned to the hairdressing profession, its so odd that she left given that she was so talented. But anyhow she cut my hair last and to her absolute credit it came out beautifully and sat well for the next 3 weeks of growth! My hair grows at an astounding rate. However no hairdresser could cut with 5 weeks of growth in mind.. Therefore I have a haystack on my head.. Fantastic =] So its off the same salon I've gone to in Hong Kong since I was a kid haha! La Coupe in princes building, excellently placed next to the bookazine so I can buy myself something to read... Nostalgia value at maximum =]

The next thing is to meet up with Sean a great friend of mine from Sixth form at Shatin College. He's been doing the whole theoretical physics thing at University of Chicago - he's scarily talented at the whole thing.. Human calculator =]

Then I must meet Helen, whose company like Sean's I have missed greatly despite the fact that we are both in the same country for University (haha, man I'm lazy!). We're going to pick up a Gingerbread Latté and catch up..

Finally there's a New Years Eve party which another Shatin Colelge'r, Kate Townsend has organized which Helen is dragging me to =] I'd go wilfully anyway (infact I'm really lookng forward to it) but she's dragging me just the same hehe =]

Well take care folks..

I'm going to go offline so the house line is open to calls haha

John

Merry Christmas all!! I just

Merry Christmas all!!

I just thought I'd leave you with an anecdote from yesterday:

On Christmas eve I spent 2 hours Wrestling with a Christmas tree. We got it from a nursery close to here. There was Only one tree sitting in the normal section which looked pretty drab, no chance. However there were about 4 in the "Hotels and football pitches" size area. We chose a 12 footer as the ceiling in tbe farm is massive, unfortunately it wasnt massive enough and we had to cut off the top. Nonetheless despite this we had a tree which still refused to stand the solution? Cut off Some more tree. With what you might ask, well with the puniest little baby hacksaw you ever did see. Now how the fuck do we decorate a 12 foot tall Christmas tree. No matter because it want Stand up at this height either. Enter muggins (mois) to hack at it for 40 minutes for about half an inch of progress.
Finally my father returned with a mean looking pruning knife which slices through the trunk in seconds. after about an hour we how have a nice tree, which leans to the right...... Doh!
A great christmas was had regardless...

I got me some Red Dwarf DVD to watch haha!

Take care and happy holidays!

John

Oh my go I'm Back

Oh my go I'm Back again- no... wait... must fight.... the Back street boy within... Don't you hate it when you're possessed by the spirit of boyband members? No? just me then.. hmmm

I think I was a bit superfluous to the whole picture-putting up affair. I figure my mother wanted to exploit my height when she was putting up the pictures but forgot the fact that my father is 6'3" which makes me the proverbial "Spare prick" at the nuptual proceedings.

Right I now need to send a fax to the office in Hong Kong to stop my grandmother from moving me onto her flight 14 hours of pessimistic drivel would probably finish me.. Plus I'd have like 5 days in Hong Kong which NEGATES the very principle of my going over there but she doesn't worry about little stuff like that.. Money + slight onset of Senility is a dangerous equation. I can't wait till I'm practicing as a barrister and am actually deemed capable of performing certain tasks by her *ack* I'm just dreading having to go through passport control with her *shudders*

Later folks!

John Swaine

Hello Sorry for the relatively

Hello

Sorry for the relatively long absence, primarily caused by obscured sleep patterns...

Decided to round up the lads for a night of sitting in front of the TV watching films and playing Xbox.. Sadly Richard forgot to buy beer still with the possible exception of Richard himself we're not big drinkers - only on social occaisions... The more beer we drink the more social we become hehe.
Ended up watching the Back to the Future trilogy which was great. You kind of forget how much fun some films are after a few years =] I'm still singing "The power of love" even now =]

ack.. Just had to pick up my sister's phone again. She doens't hear it because its playing "we wish you a merry christmas" as its ringtone so it doesn't contact that hidden "mobile sense" we all have.. You know the one. Somone will stop in the middle of a chat and say "My mobile sense is tingling" or something to that extent (Normally "I think My mobile is ringing") and dash off despite the fact that noone else can hear it. Thats why its the people who change their ringtone the most who hear it least, wise words of wisdom.. I know mine instantly because I programmed in the Red Dwarf Theme Tune whilst on holiday so it plays "Mango Juice" when I get a call =] Quality =]

Denning is online and I've been happily sneding/recieveing emails and surfing the web on him for the past 3 days =] joyous be the one who hath mobile internet.. Sadly having the modem eats his batteries and actually have a modem or ethernet card in the slot in a dormant state Still eats batteries which is why Denning has been getting such crappy battery life (I've had my ethernet card in the port since I got it and now the Modem in its place).. Well not crappy because he still stomps all over my mate matt's Sony Clié

Hang on I have to go bang stuff into walls for my dad.. Brb

Later
John

hiya Today my 56k modem

hiya

Today my 56k modem arrived for Denning but its being nasty and refusing to finish connecting with my ISP because of DNS addresses.. Don't as me why but no UK isp gives you a DNS, I assume its all configured server side after you connect so its annoying that the newton should be so steadfast in its refusal to work otherwise.. It recognizes the modem though - which is good, clearly shown by the "You have inserted a communications card" Dialogue box one receives when inserting it. Not long before I have net access if I can just figure out WTF to do =] I'm kinda hoping for the Newtonlist to answer this one =]

Met up with my mate Matt again today, we went out to watch the new Bond film, other mates didn't attend owing to working obligations, Richard works in Argos part time and Ben works full time as a printer apprentice. We decided to go to this great coffee shop in Colchester called "puchino's" afterwards, it must be good because a) they use actual Seggafredo coffee and b) my mother thinks its good and you don't argue with born and bred Italians =] I'm only half Italian hence less of an authority on coffee haha! It was great because when we arrived apart from both having to remove your glasses when we entered (they just fogged up immediately) we were met by my family who had decided to have a coffee break there too. Aww..

BTW new bond film is fantastic.. of course my mates and I like all the bond films so it was sort of garunteed a successful rating but this one got extra marks for a Hong Kong Cameo which is always good. The man in the Golden Gun is all Hong Kong so it gets superb marks... I used to live where the industrial leader's mansion thing is and only realised what it was when I was about to leave haha!

Right I have some figuring out to do about denning's connection troubles but in the mean time look! I got Newton Web-Ring acceptance =] wooo! Ordinarily I think web-rings are lame and overused but the Newton one is well policed and administrated, plus the graphic is nice =]

Well take care all!

Later!

John

woooo! My father arrived today

woooo!

My father arrived today which completes the family for the moment =] Great to have him around once more, sadly he's just crashed out on the bed literally just flopped down to sleep without getting changed.. 14 hour flights will do that to you...

Today I spent most of the day watching and old musical... Have you ever realized that old musicals seem incapable of delving into any subject other that the making on musicals in real life?? "No business like show business" "Singing in the rain" "that one with Gene Kelly" "that other one with Gene kelly".. "Out on the town" and "Anchors away" don't count because they are just about incredibly gay navy seamen engaging in hetrosexual activities - an almost plausible plot for a broadway musical...

I saw the "star trek actors the weakest link", as an Englishman by partial nationality I feel its my solemn duty to appologize to the world for letting loose Anne Robinson.. I mean whilst she was hosting Watchdog checking the sell-by dates on yogurts and stuff she was just about containable but now she's world wide? ack! In the words of commedian Paul Merton "what's with her wink?? Its like she's having a stroke or something! Like someone below her desk is pulling down the eyelid with a string".

Still kudos to those who wrote the put-downs for the star trek addition.. They were superb
"Whose brain should report to sickbay"
"Who shouldn't have been transported back after the away mission?"
"Whose phaser was set to stupid?"

Haha!

Actually it rocked.. Apart from Roxxane somethingorother who plays Belana Tor'es in Voyager she failed totally to see through Wil Wheatons very good act - he was pretending to be a pretentious child-prodigy actor - and took it seriously! arrgh! Lame!! I mean this is a dude who decided to walk 8 marathons accross states for Cancer research .. Levar Burton and the doctor from Voyager duked it out in the end and set the new Weakest Link Prize record for cash winning but Levar was on FIRE =] Now we see why he was cast as Geordie.. Shame that the actor who played "Q" was knocked out so soon =P

Man I'm sad =] What can I say, apart from "Enterprise" and TOS Star Trek Rocks *prepares himself for flaming* what's more DS9 was the best Star Trek ever - although TNG has the best cast... hmmm.. I'm waaaaay to much of a trekkie... Especially since all the good series are over! =]

Well I'm going to do some more idle researching...

Ooh and I bought a 56k modem card on Ebay.co.uk for Denning =] This ought to be fun!!

Later!

John Swaine

Hiya... man my life is

Hiya...

man my life is interesting..

If you've read the left collum of this page you'll know that I have aspirations of becoming a Barrister and practicing in Hong Kong along with my father and Grandfather.. What you probably don't know is that my Grandfather and father are both called "John Swaine" too.
My grandfather goes by the official moniker of "The Right Honorable Sir John Swaine QC, MBE, OBE, CBE, PHD etc etc" and was at one time Chairman of the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club (the biggest force in Hong Kong) President of Legico (The Government) and Director of HSBC, Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, simultaniously no less. Consequently to say he holds a bit of a reputation in Hong Kong is putting it lightly.

Therefore when the press heard my Grandfather was removing himself from the bar list to set up a Law Firm of Solicitors there were a good few jouralists at the hearing. In his explanation my father spoke of the fact that I was soon to be joining the bar (in about 3 years of hard study haha!) and the folks from one major newspaper which shall remain nameless until the article is out, asked to publish a big old article on the 3 John Swaines so they need me in a photo. So I get to fly off to Hong Kong for the New Year! Wooo!

In the words of a very close friend when I tried to explain the family connections; "So John.. Are you actually Forest Gump?" =]

Fun fun fun!!!

Right, well my father arrives here tomorrow morning at some ridiculous hour so I really ought to sleep at some point but its only 8pm

Simplemail was giving me some crappy error on Denning today so I figured I'd reset and see if the problem ironed itself out.. It did, but not without killing off all my HWR data so I had to reset all the letter shapes and stuff *ack* still thats what happens when you get lazy and fall back on the old paperclip =]

Mmm.. Time to do some more idle surfing!

looks like I'll be able to see my mates in Hong Kong after all!!! Woohoo!

Later!

John

Hiya.. Well this morning I

Hiya..

Well this morning I was savouring that glorious feeling that only being home from University can bring, listening from beneath the warm duvet, to my siblings stumbling out of the door bound for school, and then falling back asleep. Sadistic? Maybe so =]

Still I am not alone in the house at the moment as my yougest sister, Francesca is sick with some cold or something anyhow whilst she gorges herself on a diet of Daytime TV and children's panadol I'm taking some time out of my ever busy schedule to surf the net =]

I just downloaded Chimera again, Chimera is an open source Mac OS X web-browser built on the Ghecko layout engine you find in Mozilla. Except its cute, fast and tiny.. Someone needs to be shot for designing the buttons and they have gotten worse since I last used it but on the whole the experience is far nicer. Its nowhere near OmniWeb in terms of that "Built for OSX feel" but it does the job with tabbed window broswing so it might be in a position to usurp the ol' OWB for my broswing needs... To tell the truth its probably just because it likes Java and my present Omniweb installation doesn't. It has some other nice nifty features but the fact that I don't have to change Browser to update this blog is also nice. I think a large part of me liking it is because I'm without "Genevieve" my G4 933 and currently using "Trevor" my 466mhz iBook DVSE, so speed really is of the essence and apart from the classic iCab, Chimera is the lightest browser around.

I used to be quite involved in the whole Chimera Dev thing, I was on the mailing list for a time but really it just didn't interest me that much as it was getting ponderous with some Key UI issues not addressed.. But now, apart from from the still obvious button "blobs" my only issue is that the cursor isn't keeping up with me as I type making it look as if its spasming in some very odd way as I'm typing all this into the Text Entry Field.. Nonetheless.. A good show from Chimera.... Lets hope the fabled Web.Mac comes out soon, Apple's own Ghecko Driven Browser for .mac, that would probably be the end of the Chimera project but it would satisfy all my browsing needs.

Now back to slobbing out around the house =]

Catch you later!

John Swaine (Man I could really use a Modem for my Newt about now =])

Just ate Lunch/Dinner in the

Just ate Lunch/Dinner in the form of Roast Chicken.... Stuffing levels are approaching saturation...

New Body Composition:
Water 20%
Tissue 5%
Stuffing 75%

I just spent the last 45 minutes cracking stuffing realated jokes with my family.. I'll probably share them with you later, unwilling as you all are =]

Later

John

By the way if you

By the way if you like the classic BBC Sci-Fi Commedy Red Dwarf (And lets face it who doesn't? =]) I've compiled all the episodes from all the series except for Series 6-7 which have odd formatting, into a Newton book with archived chapters for different episodes etc (Its all very well organized and a great laugh) then you can download my whole massive red dwarf NewtonBook package =]

Download it here

BTW Red Dwarf Series 1 is all out on one huge feature Packed DVD, buy it! You know you want to =]

Hi all =] Sorry I

Hi all =]

Sorry I didn't manage to post yesterday, I went to a christmas party/25th wedding aniversary of some old family friends and the 2 hour drive each way put pay to any time I might have had to post =] Denning did however have some use as my younger siblings and I realized how fantastic it was to have what was effectively a "glowing piece of paper" for in-car entertainment. Hangman ensued along with the ever pointless Tic-Tac-Toe or "Noughts and Crosses" and a brief round of pictionary, however after 20 minutes I decided not to ruin my nice backlight through extended use and prevent the onset of motion sickness.

The actual party thing was a great laugh, lots of people there who I hadn't met before and many I had, including the ever-animated Dan who is I think the richest 23 year old on the face of the planet aside from some Sheik's son. Whats more he got all the money by earning it, he's like some financial banking wizard or something, anyhow we agree on a lot of things, (eg; I don't intend to go through the effort learn to drive despite having been elligible for some years now <17 in the UK> because I like public transport and living in cities) and had a great laugh. Nice bloke.

Today I awoke comfortable in the warmth of being home from Uni for Christmas. My mother has just returned from an extended trip to Tescos to pick up vast quantities of ingredients for both Stuffing and Mince-Meat. We also found this little farm place which sells huge sacks of onions and potatoes and stuff for £1.99!!!! In case you're wondering why this is great its because that is like wholesale price and food in England costs a flipping bomb!! Anyhow I just fished out like 8 of those suckers so theres going to be a whooooole lot of stuffing come christmas!

We're behind schedule on the whole Mince-Meat thing as my Father isn't back from Hong Kong till the 17th so we've been slow to get into the Xmas Rhythm. Not anymore however as at the moment I'm blaring out loads of Christmas Hits on my iBook hooked through my Ghetto Blaster =] Elton John's - "Step into Christmas" just came on, another classic! Anyhow where was I? Oh yeah mince-meat.. I guess a lot of American's don't understand the whole Mince-meat Christmas thing.. Well chuck it ain't actually minced-meat its just what its called.. Its actually sweet, made with rasins and all sorts of stuff and it tastes divine.. To be honest I don't even know what its really made of apart from the fact that my Mother has her own recipe which is incredible.. We once had a great friend from Santa Monica over to stay (was actually the best Christmas in my living memory =]) and she didn't get the whole mince-meat thing either so it was kind of funny when she found out.. Anyhow then she got addicted to it and used to sneak downstairs at 2am to eat some haha! It is superb when made really well but short of sending you guys a jar full of the stuff to put in mini-pies as we do in the UK I can't describe it fully =] You'll just have to take my word on the whole "Divine Nectar" thing =]

Anyhow another tradition with mince-meat is that in the preparation the whole family each comes up to the bowl in turn and stirs it with a wooden spoon making a silent wish as they do so. As a kid your wishes are always without exception along the lines of "I hope I get that *insert toy here* for Christmas" haha! Anyhow its funny because you can track the growth of a person through that ritual. When you're small you can barely move the spoon through that stuff but now I reckon I could give that mince-meat a whupping =]

Anyhow I think I'll go and help out with the Stuffing and other things.. We're not decorating till my father arrives (which is cutting it a little fine =]) and we have no tree because he always picks it =] Can't wait for his arrival.. I mean when I was a kid he wasn't in the same country and we had to wait till he could visit, only when we lived in Hong Kong was the whole family together 24-7 as we were last year but I've never spent this long without seeing him (about 5-6 months) so we're all really desperate to greet him =]

Enjoy your day!!

Later

John

Well Denning arrived yesterday and

Well Denning arrived yesterday and started up flawlessly!

I ordered with him (it came in the package from J&K Sales inc) a nihm rechargeable battery and an AC adaptor but it was in a japanese plug configuration.. No sweat I said. I have an adaptor at home.. In Rowhedge doh! Then after playing around with the settings a bit I managed to get some packages installed using newten which is a superbly simple package installer for OSX.. Kudos to its creator Stephen Frank. The first I installed was Avi's Backdrop which works beautifully with my C&H backdrops! Woo! I was very happy with the results. Anyhow this let me see what kind of charge my battery was at I read off 28% and went "Doh!" then after about 3 hours of non stop use and a train journey only killing off about 10% I realized how fantasticly power-friendly "Denning" is!

Anyhow I'm an apple fanatic so I was determined to get the Newton to recognize my handwriting, I had to stop qriting cursively because my handwriting was so crap on paper so for the past 3-5 years now I've been writing in printed block capitals =] Since then noone has had a problem with my writing.. Except Denning, I screwed around with all the settings, letter shapes etc.. I consigned myself to a long battle when I decided to try something for a laugh - my old cursive script.. Anyhow I wrote a word.. Denning understood it.. I wrote a sentence, it understood it.. A whole paragraph went by without a problem!! Its fantastic!!! I can write normally in my old cursive script which noone could understand and yet Newton only understands that facet of my writing! I hadn't written cursive for something like 4 years!!

Anyhow EVERYTHING about the Newton Rocks.. I spend virtually the whole of yesterday fooling around with it =] and today my Ebay.co.uk ordered Ethernet card arrived! After screwing around some more with packages I managed to get the whole thing working! Ethernet on my newt.. yay! if only I had broadband to make it worth my while haha! At the moment all this means is that I have a Newt with ethernet capability =]

Right I have to go write stuff on my newt for no readily apparant reason =] It's never going to get old haha! =]

later folks!!

John

two words ... It came

two words ... It came :)

Urge to kill..... Rising .....

Urge to kill..... Rising ..... =]

Still no Newton as of 10:37am grrrrr... Still my amazon.co.uk package arrived at 11am a few days ago so you never know =] Might be alright after all =]

I have 64 Newtontalk Messages from the Mailing List to read now so I'm not going to be bored for a bit.. Ack!! I ought to go back to Rowhedge to my family but the allure of the Newt is strong =] Is sure hope it arrives in the next hour or I'll be reciting a bit from the simpsons in the infamous "Who shot Mr Burns episode".

Lisa: "But dad, your name isn't in this thankyou card"
Homer: "Kiiiids Daddy needs to be alone for a bit right now"
*Bart and Lisa run off at high velocity*
*Homer takes a deep breath*
Homer: "Fff-"
*churchbell clangs*
*Flock of doves fly out of tree*
*woman gasps in shock*
*Ned flanders leans out of his window
Ned: "By golly thats the loudest expletive I ever heard!"

I'm almost there right now hehehe! I mean if I don't get it soon I'm going to suck for Christmas - when the Newton does arrive I'll be spending at least a week just sitting there playing with the Handwriting Recognition.. In terms of Novelty value the MP2100 rocks =] And thats before I even use my snazzy new Ethernet card which should arrive in the post when I get back to Rowhedge =] Its going to be a long time before I get bored of writing imaginary conversations with myself:

"Hello newton"
"How are you?"
"I'm fine!"
"What did you have for Breakfast today?"
"Just some chips - hahaha!"

(I would like to appologize for that lame joke... Besides apart from my freind Richard who thinks that 4 square meals a day are so called because of the shape of his takeaway curry boxes, noone eats chips for breakfast... Or do they?? If it is done my money's on it being somewhere in America, can anyone help me out on this? I mean I would say Canadians (There is a stereotype held amongst brits that the reason tables are nailed to the floor in Canadian Diners is that the patrons would otherwise swallow them) but then you are the originators of the "Greatest Breakfast Known To Man™" - Large stacks of Buttermilk Pancakes drizzled in your own Maple Syrup and hence would have no need for crappy Potato based breakfasts.. Apart from Hash Browns and little potato cubes whose name I don't recall.. Mmmmm, entire paragraph on Breakfast =] )

So far you guys have downloaded a whole lot of C&H backdrops so I'd take it they're being appreciated =] I'll probably shove some permenant links in as soon as I've finished formatting this site =] It also means that I'll probably be churning out more Backdrops seeing as I've found an outlet for my 'aritistic spirit' *cough*, My only other claim to fame is the popular OSX bootpanel released shortly after OSX's introduction, entitled "Because Windows Sucks..." =]

Not to gripe or anything but I have this little post which says "Here are the backdrops" and then a broken link which I posted as a test.. Problem is that Blogger evidently hated my coding so much that it wouldn't let me touch the link again to delete the post so it has to sit there as an eyesore (no kidding, the picture thinks its part of the code for the "edit" button so it won't let me link!!! arrrrrgh! And I can't manual it because the next time I post a message Blogger will replace the *nice* page with one contaminated by the post's crappiness =] Joy of joys! =] 'Tis the Season to write Buggy Code =]

On the subject of buggy code (boy do I mean buggy) my forays into the world of programming have often been a source of great fun and great frustration alike. Ultimately I go through the same phases with each programming stint:

Day 1: Gee this is neat
Day 2: "Hello World"
Day 8: Wooo! Magic the Gathering Life Counter Compiled
Day 15: Wooo! Coding almost fininshed on Magic the Gathering Deck Builder
Day 16: @&*%^$%# Batteries!!!!!! AAAAAAUGH!!! 7 Days Coding deleted by an AAA!!! my Arch Nemesis!!! Dry Cell of doooooooooom!!

This happened on OPL (the Psion Language).. Err I can't even remember what I programmed with for my palm and OSX except there I found true love with Objective-C and simply gave up because I realised having an MTG life counter was pretty useless unless I was going to lug "Trevor" my iBook to all my friendly games;
"Joooooohn I can't see your creatures for that massive lump of (v-lickable) plastic!!"
"Must.... reach.... life...... counter......" etc

However the Newton is perfect for this role... As soon as I've finished with my aforementioned Imaginary 1 man conversations in HWR I'll start, perhaps looking at programming for it... You have been warned:

("Auuugh!!! John how can your 36k app kill my system!!?!?!?!?!" - "I'm Sorry it never did that before!! ouch! Where's that smoke coming from?)

Later Folks.. I have a Mailman to deal with
*chik-chik* Lock and Load =]

John

Welcome to Adobe GoLive

Ok folks!! They're here!! all you need is Avi's Backdrop and you have Calvin and Hobbes Christmas Backgrounds! Woo!

Calvin at his best, one of my favourite quotes of all Calvin and Hobbes Christmas strips. The greed_portrait.pkg file is made for - you guessed it portrait aspect use and only contains the last caption which still works well on its own both Horizontally and Vertically. The greed_full.pkg is however the full shebang and only works horizontally. Both fantastic backdrops.

Another Classic! I laughed myself silly over this when I read it as a kid. Its just Hobbes's spontainious reaction which cracks me up.. Since this strips very visual and precise in its timing it doesn't really convert well into portrait so it remains here in full size horizontal aspect. Enjoy!

list_full.pkg

Geeeeenious.. No other words for it.. Also a lot like my father hahah!

Again.. only the full monty here- Horizontal Format.

tree_full.pkg

I used Hobbes's taunt of Christmas barbecues on my siblings when I was younger, hehehe... Its all horizontal baby =]

coal_full.pkg

All the Calvin and Hobbes Christmas Mornings were fantastic - most characterised by a deep sentimentality juxtaposed with sleepless parents.. this one is no exception.. Calvin's choice of words is fantastic! Perfect for Xmas Day =] Only in Horizontal folks!

morn_full.pkg

Yep one for the portrait view only =] I love the panel, it so perfectly characterises Calvin's entreprenurial nature... Enjoy folks!!!

sign_portrait.pkg

Ok here are the backdrops!!

Ok here are the backdrops!!

Posted by John Swaine at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)