Queen and Country
I'm off to start a bit of jury service today, so keep an eye on the site for me. The key's under the mat. Remember to flush, and keep the plants watered.
I'll write about the new NUS registration system soon if I don't manage to land myself in contempt of court first.
C ya! /al
Posted by Alex on Tue 29th August 2006
7 hours of house demos for your aural consideration
(Sorry about the gash title! ;o) )
I made it onto the decks for a couple of days last week and recorded some of my latest and favourite tunes on my favourite (and totally underused) toy - Final Scratch.
There's about 7 hours of music to wade through, and it's split up into a chilled mix of laid back house, three commercial/chunkier mixes, and a threesome of dirty house to finish off with. There are some random suprises in there, and I'll sort out a track listing shortly, but for now you're more than welcome to download the demos (but remember there's a bit of small print below about copyright and usage, etc - please read it before you download).
Oh, and I'm ashamed to admit my DJ name at the moment is “Chopper Harries”. Honestly, it's the best I could think up…
Download…
- 1: chillification (159Mb)
- 2: semichunkification 1 of 3 (159Mb)
- 3: semichunkification 2 of 3 (137Mb)
- 4: semichunkification 3 of 3 (80Mb)
- 5: chunkification 1 of 3 (159Mb)
- 6: chunkification 2 of 3 (159Mb)
- 7: chunkification 3 of 3 (133Mb)
(Everything's recorded at 320Kbit/s).
Small print…
Downloads are offered as-is and are provided solely for the attemped whoring of my DJing abilities (or lack of). Copyright remains with the owners of the tracks where appropriate. Files are not endorsed or hosted by UPSU - for comments, complaints, enquiries, etc, please see www.DJstalker.com.
Oh, and I didn't go swimming today - Fraggy dragged me down to Route last night and I am still, as I type, working from home thanks to having spent most of the night trying not to drive the big white porcelain bus. While Fraggy reckons it's down to my impending old age, my inability to handle my drink is entirely down to genetics. And being a wuss… ;o)
Posted by Alex on Fri 18th August 2006
Canine blogging
Max, the Andrex puppy doppelganger, is writing a blog. All say “aww”…
Posted by Alex on Thu 17th August 2006
Floundering
(Swimmingly off-topic… Sorry…)
I've decided to start swimming again.
I can hear the shouts of “big deal” from the back of the class, but I care not. This is my blog (technically it's a work blog, but I don't do much work, and certainly nothing a real person would consider interesting), so I may as well relate some of my boring non-work experiences too. That's my justification, and I'm sticking by it ;o).
I haven't swum in probably about 8 years. I used to swim regularly and at one point, some misguided soul in the ATC thought I should represent my wing at swimming. That, thankfully, only lasted a night - I much prefer messing about underwater to the science of thrashing up and down a pool.
As with any reasonably new experience, it's always good to start out with a recce, so I dropped into the baths yesterday morning to check on the prices and times. Truth be told, I'd taken my swimming kit in case I decided to take the plunge - pun intended - but chickened out at the prospect of scaring any small children (”Look mummy, it's Big Foot!”) and in any case, I'll deny I was ever there for anything other than a recce. So there…
This morning I dragged myself down to the pool and, armed with baggy shorts, a towel barely larger than a flannel, and more than a little apprehension, I turned up and paid my
Posted by Alex on Thu 17th August 2006
Bored? Try something blog-shaped today
(More non-news) In a random few moments of boredom yesterday, I've been trawling through a few blogs looking for more reading material. While the majority were dismissed without having to scroll down the page, a few stood out and I hacked through their archives yesterday evening…
- littleredboat.co.uk is a blog I've probably mentioned previously. It's written by occasional Grauniad contributor Anna Pickering, and is a brilliantly funny, off-beat look at … Well, anything and everything. Check it out - go on, you know you want to…
- girlonatrain.blogspot.com is one I admit I haven't really read a lot of yet, but it looks like it might just be a worthwhile browse (just maybe).
- universalsoldieruk.blogspot.com is another blog I've been drawn into. It's no secret I like Andy McNab's writing style, like Bravo Two Zero, if only for the grim - but very very good - Army humour he writes with. Universal Soldier is a blog written in a similar style - again, it's more about the comedy than any gore - but you might still want to use a spot of judgement before clicking around it, just in case…
p.s. a big “hooray” to Fraggy who has finally updated his blog after months of neglect. Fraggy mate, if you've ever considered buying plants or a pet, please don't - they'd be dead for weeks before you missed them ;o)
Posted by Alex on Thu 17th August 2006
PEBKAC is…
(Geeky moment) Comms manager Mike Cooter's shiny new 19″ widescreen monitor arrived yesterday. On enquiring whether it was any better than his old 17″, he darkly muttered something about “fuzzy pixels” and poor picture quality.
… Turns out he'd spent several hours thinking his new screen was fit only for the bin because he'd been running it at the wrong resolution.
(PEBKAC: “Problem exists between keyboard and chair” - Wikipedia)
Posted by Alex on Thu 17th August 2006
Firefox users: beware Alliance & Leicester online banking
(Kind-of off-topic in a pixel-orientated way, not to mention long-winded, rambling and - arguably - pointless ;o).
Checking my bank account today to see if a transfer I'd arranged between a couple of my A&L accounts had cleared, I was more than a little confused to spot no sign of the transfer, and a mysteriously overdrawn third account.
Looking further into this, it turned out that my transfer - which should have gone from account A to B, had in fact been set up to go from account C (which didn't have enough money in) to B. Naturally, the transfer failed and account C had a
Posted by Alex on Tue 15th August 2006
A bit of an Andrex moment…
Pete Hooley brought the latest addition to his household into work today. Not a new car, TV, computer game or barbecue, but his eight week-old Labrador puppy, “Max”, who Pete collected yesterday.
Pete thinks Max should become the Union's new mascot. I agree - he's much more cuddly than the Union bods (since they only exist on paper, which isn't particularly cuddly at all…).
Max is also a doppelganger of the Andrex puppy, which does him no harm when it comes to getting the ladies to go “aww” and “isn't he sweet/lovely/gorgeous/etc”.
So, as you do when there's a new face around, you grab the camera and try to get some pics. I say “try” since Max has developed, it seems, an innate ability - shared by many top models - to strike great photogenic poses for just long enough for the cameraman to set-up the shot and then, at the last minute - as you go to take the shot - he would move at the speed of fluffy lightning out of shot.
Hence this rather questionable collection of slightly-fuzzy pics.
Still, he is very cute…
Posted by Alex on Tue 15th August 2006
Essential pixel pushing and some Modern Toss
The last couple of days have seen me chopping up and adjusting the Union Essentials booklet-thingy being sent out to new students in the Freshers Packs.
The idea is that this 3-page pamphlet will encourage people to start getting to know the Union and everything that's on offer. Of course, we do a lot more than can reasonably be squeezed onto 3 easily-digested pages, so we are focusing on NUS/UPSU membership, Freshers' Fayre, and the Freshers' Fortnight Social:Life line-up (even though even us Ents crew don't exactly know what's happening yet…!).
You can take a look at it for yourself at upsu.net/essentials. You never know - you might spot something you didn't know the Union did, and hopefully it'll get you just a tiny bit excited about the new year coming, and all the new people coming and old faces returning to Portsmouth. At the very least, it'll break the boredom ;o).
And on a totally unrelated note, this week I have mainly been watching Modern Toss.
Billed as “the stink of excellence in a world gone
t*ts up”, it's random, repetitive, childish, pointless, doesn't say much at all about society or the way the world is suffering today.
And I love it.
Honestly, it's the best thing on telly since that damned kid off the Frosties advert got splattered… ;o) /al
Posted by Alex on Thu 10th August 2006