Hey, wait, I got a real complaint

My Macbook died last night.  It has been gradually slowing for the passed few weeks as in the hard drive for some reason wasn’t coping with life very well.  It then just completely froze and made a constant clicking noise as in it was trying to read from the disc but couldn’t.  I cut it’s power and when it rebooted there is just a pale grey screen with a picture of a file and a flashing quesiton mark.

It’s not the biggest deal in the world, it’s still under warrenty but as it’s a hard drive problem I’m sure they’ll find a way to wriggle out of it and make me pay.  But while it’s at apple they can fix the touch pad clicker which isn’t working properly and that is definatley to do with the warrenty.

All my photos are backed up but I doubt I’ll lose any data, I mean come on this is Apple not Microsoft.  I’m going home now for 10 days so it’ll just have to be in it’s coma on my shelf in London until then and I’ll download some free editing software to edit with for the time being.

The most annoying thing really is that I edited alot of really nice pictures last night to upload to day and I’m a little disappointed that now I can’t do that

It took me two hours to get from Hackney to Russel square this morning, hence why I’m here procrastinating now as there’s no point in going to a lesson when you’re already half an hour late. I had read the 150+ pages for it too and generally enjoy that class.  Just everything worked against me.  The bus that said it was going to Tottenham Court Road terminated at St. Pauls after being stuck in horrendous traffic.  I then had to wait 20 minutes for a bus that was remotely going in the Oxford Street direction.  This bus then stopped by another bus that had broken down, the driver got out and then just reappeared 5 minutes later….  I could go on.

Then in a completely empty computer room that is rather large and where I am sat in the most far corner, someone decides to sit next to me.  Great.  To add insult to injury when I arrived there was a hands free for my phone left on the desk that clearly I was/am going to rob, but I left it where it was for the time being incase the owner came back.  This ultra irritating person has now moved it and I had to confess it wasn’t mine.

My only options are to sit it out until they go, or to claim that I’m, “taking it to the bar to hand it in.”

I mean come on.. This thing has been there since yesterday and has sat there for two hours today.  My need is greater!

fone foto time

…but first a rant. Jacobs ‘photographic’. I had a film from the Lomo fish eye to be developed and had high hopes for the shots on it. So I take it in on Thursday morning pay £5.99 for 3 (I guess working day) processing to go and get it after 11am today (Tuesday). Ok fine, great. I turn up at 12 today only to be told they weren’t ready. Why. The machine is broken. So you develop for all of the stores in London and you have no provisions for when something like this happens. Apparently not. So what time do you think it will be ready. Err around another hour. So what time are you saying I should come back. Come back at one. Great.

So I spent an hour in Burger King reading Charles Tripp’s History or Iraq, which I might add is a fantastic read. (Or the new addition.)  Fantastic!

So I go back, different person and the developing still isn’t there. They go to the lab to get it. It’s so warm that it has literally only that second been finished. It had not been lined up at all and so what should be a almost circular in the middle of the 7×5 frame – this was only on one half and the other half was just dark negative. They said this was because it was under exposed. It was not under exposed at all. Ok yeah there were a few shit shots out of 36 but it was certainly not under exposed. So it turned out really sh.t and I will not be going back there and risking wasting my money. I would upload a few shots but the disk that came with them doesn’t work. So I will have to try and extract them on the computer at home and/or scan the shots. I think there are a few shots that can be fixed with some selective cropping and levels changes but the fish eye effect is all but lost. *sigh*

But on the plus side I got on two buses (non free as in not bendy buses) and the oyster card readers were broken! Magic. I forgot my ipod today too which also made me realized how little English is spoken on London buses… And how Dalston is like a third world country…

But it was a nice day at least. Hurrah!

With this quite blatantly being a UFO sighting.

This is not up for discussion.

It is a UFO.

I mean come on, you can even see the sonic boom and the red lights of the aliens trying to communicate with us!!

Had a loltastic evening in Giraffe with King Fan. We’re writing our dissertations on Giraffe, hence the constant research.

King Fan and the palm tree after a nuclear explosion. Luckily he survived relatively unscathed……

SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW

Pathetically I didn’t make it to Tesco before it closed so had to eat some life shortening shit from some dodgy chicken place.

To remember…. EYE-RAQ is God’s mission, as is an oil pipeline through Alaska and all kinds of other awful stuff…. BITCH PLEASE SHUT UP! Palin you thick sh.t just SHUT UP! Don’t make me argue about the hundred reasons why this is UTTER BULLSH.T.

STFU PLZ.

AND SO, today there are two thoughts for the day.

Thought 1:

Don’t be such arses then!

Thought 2:

Because at the end of the day everything is absurd. Our lives have no meaning and we are just adding structure to this pointless existence until we die. So what the f.ck. Let’s enjoy ourselves.

It is not death that we should fear but rather the missed opportunities that this brings.

(From a book on philosophy.)

Forgotten points from the week

Tesco discontinuing penguins I can just about tolerate because they’ve changed the recipe and I don’t like them anymore. BUT I do draw the line at them claiming to be discontinuing Milky Bar cookies. I cannot sit by and just let this happen. If this has anything to do with that Essex boy Jamie Oliver and his incessant diktats on what we should eat then….

This is the most wonderful idea, it took my breath away. It’s perfect.

I hate to use the word ‘captivated’ because I’m not a tragic 15 year old writing poetry alone in my bedroom instead of going out, but. I love the shots of double exposure. It brings an element of fantastic creativity into the photographic mix. I’m literally desperate to play around with it but I really don’t have the appropriate camera as the only film camera I have is totally automatic and moves to the next shot as soon as one is taken. Thus I have invested! If you can call a £10 purchase from ebay an investment….

I owe alot to Annabel for introducing me to fail blog and all of its various LOL subsiduaries… If you haven’t checked them out then you simply must. I rarely laugh out loud when I’m on my own but I couldn’t stop last night. Fantastic.

I think the answer is that we are no as free as we once were and that the various governments of the world have used the imaginary war on terror to pass hideous laws that they’ve been having wet dreams about for years and years. But I’m not going to get started on this, it makes Pandora’s box look like the perfect birthday gift.

I have a day of super fun Japanese homework and vocab memorizing ahead of me. I’m the luckiest girl in the world. I love it really. I can’t believe I did almost 300 pages of reading in to 2.5 days. I was actually quite proud of that one.

It’s pouring with rain, I love it being like this when I don’t have to go out and I can just sit and watch it. I love all the colours of outside.

And it’s really starting to irritate we how wordpress and firefox for that matter always underline colour as an incorrect spelling. I think you’ll find that COLOUR is the original and the correct spelling.

Finally, we come to our thought for the day…

*I WOULD*

Everyday is like Sunday

I was rudely awoken from slumber by the weekly meeting outside my door of the stupid bitch convention. Todays topic of discussion was the proximity of a wasp to the meeting. After intense negotiations the executive decision that resulted was one to run screaming around the hallway.

In one of our many intellectual conversations myself and King Fan made an executive decision of our own; to get fake Tamagotchis from Ebay. This was based upon the notion that back when these were all the rage we were in Primary School. Thus meaning that there wasn’t enough breaks in the day to clean up all of the digi-pets poo and so by the time it got to lunch the door little thing had died amongst piles of its own excrement.

However, now we’re at University we have simply unbelievable amounts of free time in which to look after this thing. So no more death by diarrhea for digi dino! What fantastic alliteration. Go me.

In other news I trapped my right index finger in a door and not to sound like a Diva, it’s really, really hurting. I thought when I woke up it would be fine. I do accept that if this were a real possibility then there wouldn’t be doctors and it would be a fantastic cure for a multitude of diseases. Anyway. I can’t write properly nor type properly. Though it is strange how my hand is very rapidly adapting to not using that particular finger. It’s really quite amazing.

The row of black emo washing is still outside. I may be speaking out of turn here, but I’m guessing after 24 hours of rain free and breezy weather it might be almost dry. But who am I to comment, I’m not a meteorologist.

LOL

LOL

LOL

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

So much work to do. So. Much. Work. Damn Israel and Palestine ‘disagreement’ being so damn wordy.

Business lunch…

The three stages of decomposition, awaiting the winter death ritual:

Bokeh

I’ve just spent the last 5 minutes starting and restarting my mac and fretting it may have to go to Apple because I can’t get the DVD out. I then found it in it’s box. Ooopsie. I then melted chocolate on dear macbook. sorry mac. I also got a book out of the library that I already have in my room. Many people wouldn’t believe my Alevels based on this abject stupidity.

BUT clearly by far the most interesting part of the day was the fact that the bus I was on crashed into a police car! Just was the driver went to pass it before the main bus stop in Islington….. CCCRRRRRUUUUUUNNNCCCCHHHHCHCHCHCCCCCCHHHHHHH. I really feel for the driver, not only did he crash at a busy 4pm in central London, he crashed into a police car. That is one horrendously bad day at the office. The police men (who were in the middle of persuading a tramp to move from a bench) just stood there with this total look of “ohmygodthatbusjustcrashedintoourcar, didthatreallyhappen!??!.”

It was almost impossible to get a decent picture as there were fake policeman everywhere at this point. Islington seems to be saturated with them. There must be a large do-gooder community. Anyway, as I was saying, most of the damage was at the back as the bus completely scratched up against it. Though this gauge in the door was pretty deep. The photo really doesn’t do it all justice.

But who would commit such a heinous crime against the protectors of our society. Well. I can reveal. That it was (the)…………

Though, I must say that credit where it’s due. I was sat right at the very back of the bus, the part that whacked into the car and I didn’t feel the slightest thing. I think the bendy buses get a bad rap for no reason. I like them alot. (Not just beacause they’re the ‘free’ buses.) I mean, it’s not the buses fault that someone was once stupid enough to get stuck under it.

I’ve been waiting (for one day) like a kid for christmas to get my film back from Jacobs and to be honest wasn’t disappointed there was a fair amount of good shots on it, so pretty happy. I have to confess that film photography in some ways isn’t my strong point. I’m from the digital generation. When I was younger I had a manual film camera but like all kids I was crap at everything so someone else put the film in. Then I graduated to one of the kodak advantix cameras were all you had to do was drop the film in and the camera did everything. Then I moved to digital. So basically what I’m saying here is that I’m a retard at putting films in cameras, taking the picture is the easy bit. I can (after getting to grips with the F65 SLR) manage that ok, but as for a wind it wind it off thing….. well there’s a whole other story.

So the highlights (and lowlights) of the second film through the SLR, which I am getting rather fond of.

Bokeh <3

Bokeh bokeh bokeh

Anger management.

Apparently this Dude gets angry. Very angry.

Woman troubles (no not that kind)

Finally someone has acknowledged this. I think this is McCain’s only hope of getting into the White House, though unfortunately I think it’s a very real possibility that this could happen. I just really hope not. America (read: the world) doesn’t need a geriatric at the helm. Foreign policy will be based upon the 1970s purely because his short term memory will be shot. Let’s just hope (or not) that the Oval Office is (not) old people friendly. I really hope Obama wins. I like people that don’t wave some irrelevant military record in everyones face. Obviously some people haven’t noticed that all over the Western world virtually NONE of the leaders have a military record be it heroic or dubious. Why? BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MATTER when it comes to being a prime minister/ president. Though I think it’s fair to say that being smart should be a prerequisite. *coffDUBYAcoff*

And people please don’t go here. It will not help anyone or make anything better! It is the fantasy writings of a hypocritical man who critiqued a society that didn’t exist in the first place. I repeat, please don’t go there!

There was a fantastic woman on the 38 bus this morning. She wanted off the bus at the end of New Oxford Street and she wanted it there and then.

“You can let me off here, it’s safe, it’s safe, really it is, let me off at the bus stop.”

“(Bus Driver) I’m sorry I can only open the doors at the appropriate stop for this bus, sorry.”

The mad woman then goes on to beast him for a further few minutes and THEN calls the transport for London advice line number form the sticker on the bus asking what their policy on the bus stopping is. To make this even more hilarious she got off a second later. It was so hard not to say something. Like, have you really not got a pet stick insect at home to talk to or anything at all?!

Crazy B..ch numero dos raised her head in my lecture. She’s a rude ‘mature’ student at the best of times but today she decided she was window monitor. Life depends on such things. She turned round to me “Close it” my grasp of English isn’t so hot when ‘please’ is missing so I confused close with… open. I’m bad. I could go on for hours about this woman, she’s so rude, I really dislike her. Petty… how low can you go? I can go so low I’ll come out in Australia.

Said lecture was also unbelievably dull that I had to resort to my old game of tattoo spotting/ mental critique of subject and quality of tattoo in question. I love this game. People probably do it to me too when I wear short sleeves.

Because I ripped my bag and had to take my things out in a plastic tesco bag today I had to prioritize camera wise. As I’m messing round with the Lomo fish eye and the Nikon film SLR (F65) I took those and left my digi-babies at home. Hopefully got some nice shots but it rained so hard that there were some awesome reflections in puddles and I was really pissed that I didn’t have even a point and shoot to capture it with. Just hoping the films develop well. I think I used the right settings blah blah blah…

I do have to thank King Fan alot for the Lomo Fish eye. It went something like this….

Me: “Do you ever use that, can I borrow it for a while to play.”

KF “I was thinking to give it to you, i never use it.”

Me: “Cool”

KF: “With terms like those of third world debt.”

Me: “What, I pretty much get to keep it forever and ever and ever and various charities will tell you that you should let me keep it?”

KF: “Yep”

Thanks King Fan!

Final thought for the day? Are you being affected by the credit crunch? Struggling to make ends meet? Kids going hungry? Having to sell the porsche and downgrade to a BMW? Lost your job in the City?

THEN TESCO ARE THINKING OF YOU! (Yes you.)

COME HERE AND… SAVE 6p

There’s a feast tonight kids!

Common sense prevails

I can’t convey how happy I am to see that Barack Obama has a substantial lead in every poll, pretty much 7% ahead. Fantastic. Colin Powel has also come out of the Republican closet to endorse him also. So let us all sit back and watch as yet again the Americans fall at the final hurdle.

I had a really nice afternoon with Jo yesterday. We went to the Breakfast Club in Islington and both had a massive breakfast when the woman remembered to take our order. I refuse to let black pudding anywhere near me though.

I was terribly disappointed by the DLR. I had expected so much more based upon what people had bigged it up to be. After I got over the novelty of it being like the monorail at Disney Land I found it quite Dull. We got some really quite nice photos wandering around Canary Wharf. I was tempted to cross off with marker pen all the banks that don’t exist anymore on the Canary Wharf map. Also, as if some strange yet powerful metaphor a boat was in the process of sinking right in the middle of all of this. LOL. You know when you’ve been credit crunched.

But what can I say, we really had the most beautiful sunset last night. I couldn’t have dreamed of more. Me and Jo walked all the way from Canary Wharf to (pretty much) Liverpool Street. I have no idea how long it took us because we were going at photographic dordle speed 99% of the time.

(there are many much better pictures on flickr)

We got the bus back to Old Street and parted ways but for reasons unknown I went straight back to Canary Wharf… I have no idea why I just felt like I wanted to go there at night. It was so quiet.

A further point:

The price of fireworks being what they are, the levels of unemployment being what it is, why do people let fireworks off in daylight?

There’s a chav outside hitting a ball with a stick at a blue bucket. I think it’s called golf, some should tell him that to. I don’t think he’s heard of it yet.

Also…. why do people preen themselves and stay at home.  I always see people outside who look ready for the catwalk or the local emo gig but they stay at home.  When I get home Thursday I stay in pyjamas until Monday unless I really have to go out.

Closing thought:  We rock.

FAIL