Jim's Journal

If you think that you can start child threads and then "grab data from the main thread before it changes" then DON'T TRY TO WRITE MULTI-THREADED CODE.

Saw Iron Man with kittensofdoom yesterday. It would be fair to say that I LOVED IT. I thought Robert Downey Jnr was excellent, I loved the costume, I loved how they'd taken good source material from the original comics and some of the Ultimates line and blended it to form a great superhero origin tale.

I think the orginal Superman film is still my favourite but I'm now struggling to decide whether Iron Man or Batman Begins is second.

We also saw some good trailers for the new Indy movie, Hancock - which opens with a drunk Superhero crashing through a sign into the back of a bad guys car - and Wanted. Wanted is based upon a short Mark Millar comic run from a couple of years back. It centres around a man who finds out he's the son of a top supervillain in a world where the villains won and changed things so we think that heroes are only in comics ;-) I loved it when it came out and it's pretty adult material - I hope the film is pretty good.

Tomorrow, for those that need reminding, is ENTROPY. Dave the flier guy did us another flier you might have seen at the last Entropy or in a few places around town...

( May 2008 Flier )

I like it because the first time I saw it I didn't get it. Then it dawned on me as I saw what was being shot down ;-)

Anyway, enough gibbering. Hope to see some of you tomorrow night.

Oh yeah, there's a little teaser at the end of Iron Man after the credits. Just FYI if you like that kind of thing.

The tide turns, time flies and the moon chases the sun around the sky. How did it get to be April SO SOON? It is the first Saturday of the month and (hopefully) you know what that means.



Another flier by our resident artist, Dave.

Tonight I will be DJing witrh Paul Roper and Andy - who's not DJed at Entropy before, so be nice.

Hope to see some of you there ;-P

On the way out this morning we noticed a sign in the flat below us (that's been redecorated and has been empty for months). It is for sale for "offers in excess of £175k".

This is a lot more than I paid for my flat but less than people tell me it's worth. Until I sell the flat I guess I don't really care as long as it goes up along with the other properties in Bath and lets me and kittensofdoom find a bigger, quieter place one day.

This evening kittensofdoom and I are going up to Brum to see the Editors, thankfully the NIA had no reservations about swapping out standing tickets for seated ones given that I don't think standing up for two hours is a good idea right now.

Tomorrow is Entropy, which we won't make it to as some of our parents are meeting and having a meal with us - we figured they should meet before the day of the wedding.

( March Entropy flier )

icklemichael and Ian (Beanz) are DJing at Entropy, and there are a couple of birthday parties that might stop by. This means Entropy will probably be awesome, as it is most times I'm not there... Huge thanks to minus10 for taking over the organising duties for the night.

Sunday is Mother's day and then we're off to Sheffield so that we can go to a funeral on Monday. Monday night we will be in Wigan and hopefully we will be back in Bath Tuesday lunchtime so I can get to a project meeting.

Marathon family weekend thing!

Anyway, hope everyone has a good weekend. Catch up with you next week!

I haven't posted here for a while now. I do read every day but I guess I either feel I don't have anything to say OR I don't actually have anything to say. Given that I've changed jobs and am now working back up at the University the latter probably isn't true...

Anyway, tomorrow the Entropy bandwagon gets rolling once more. icklemichael, Lucky 13 and myself will dust off the CDs and kick things off at the Porter Butt at 8pm as usual.



I haven't been as on the ball this month, what with a month off and changing jobs, but I hope people know it's on and come along. Tell everyone!!

At around 5pm today the Queen will become the longest-living British monarch.

This has, once again, raised the republican vs monarchist debate. I am firmly in the monarchist camp. Here are my reasons:

1) The monarchy is part of what makes Britain what it is - whether you like it or not (and I do) - and I want to keep it the way it is because I am a bit of a traditionalist.

2) If we got rid of the monarchy what would happen to all of the royal residences owned by the state? Sold off to Americans? Moved brick by brick to texas? I dunno. I don't mind paying my little bit to look after them all each year.

3) Having a president instead - no matter the model used (Irish vs American) - sounds a bad idea. Instead of someone who is basically a figure head, you'd end up with an appointed crony or a power-craving polition who'd claim an elected mandate to do things "his/her way". Imagine President Blair/Brown/Cameron/etc...

I know people go on about "look at all the money she has that could be ours", but when you divide it up it isn't much each, and it wouldn't really go to the people anyway: the state would use it to pay of PFI deals or something.

26

Saturday is the last Entropy of 2007. As he has ALL year, Dave has produced a cracking poster behind the cut below.

( December 2007 flier - Corset Santa )

juamei, Dav0 and myself will be playing some tunes for your listening pleasure. All the usual details can be found on the Entropy Web Site.

As we have for the last few years, we won't be doing an Entropy in January. It gives me a chance for a month off making fliers, Dave has a month off designing fliers and we can all recover from whatever we all do on New Year's eve.

I hope to see some of you there.

Latest B3ta challenge is "What happened next for the characters of Kids TV?" Some very good entries.

kittensofdoom and I were hoping to get over to Vienna to catch up with Hagen in a couple of weekends time. Unfortunately we've only just heard back from him (family stuff) so I'm looking for flights at the last minute.

Ideally we'd like to catch a flight from Bristol, late in the day on Friday and come back sometime Sunday afternoon. Cheapest flights I can find at the moment are with KLM at awkward times for £180ish each.

I know that some of you fly around to places and are much more familiar with jetting around Europe. Can anyone point me at a cheap flights web site or tell me where I can get some? I'm going to have a better look around tonight but time is of the esscence here.

The first Saturday of the month does seem to roll around so quickly. Only yesterday we were celebrating Entropy's birthday and its Entropy AGAIN tomorrow. Anyway, a flier by Dave:



Myself, icklemichael and Lucky 13 (Seven, Discord, Ignition) will be DJing from 8pm as usual.

I've just emailed out this month's newsletter. Not much news but plenty of nights going on.

Hope to see some of you tomorrow ;-)

The "oh too short" weekend is over and it's back to work. kittensofdoom's parents came up on Friday and we went over to Marmaris for a sit down meal. Saturday we got some bits and bobs done (opened a joint current account so that we can open a good rate savings account) and took the parents over to (what now looks almost certain to be) our reception venue. They didn't have any real problems with it and we hope to have it booked fairly soon. We'll then have to book a ceremony venue and a registrar and I will stop stressing for a few months.

Saturday night Dave drove us over to Pandora's Box where we joined up with friends for dancing, drinking and coughing. I am going to the doctors later today to see if they will give me any drugs. Had a whale of a time but did notice that the place seemed quite empty all the time - probably due to Whitby and about 20-30 people standing smoking outside all the time. Whilst the smoking ban has lead to less smokey clothes and an easier time for my cough ravaged lungs, it does mean that my friends spend a third of their time outside in the cold all the time.

Sunday kittensofdoom and I got up very late and did nothing all day apart from slow cook some beef. It, and my sandwiches today, were lovelly. We will be doing it again.

I know some of you are fans and have seen them live a number of times.

BBC have the full story hidden away in the entertainment pages.

I am bored.

Thank goodness for Oompah.

Living on a Prayer is especially good...

I believe at least one person I know would like this...



..if they really wanted a gun.

kittensofdoom and I have not been well over that last couple of weeks. We've both been achey, fluey and generally run down. So much so I had Friday off work and poker was cancelled and Monday off work and I didn't make footie Monday night.

We did manage to get a few things done around the house, chief amongst which was taking EVERYTHING out of the bedroom, cleaning it and putting everything back IN A DIFFERENT PLACE. It now is less annoying for kittensofdoom and generally a better arranged room all around.

This week we have lots to do and father is showing up on Thursday night to help with decorating goodness. By the end of the weekend we hope to have our "master bedroom" papered and ready for new carpet - then we'll have to go and pick that out and get that done. Target is to wake up in there on Xmas morning. We will see...

Anyone want to come round Wednesday night and help strip wallpaper?

Anyway *cough*.

Entropy was awesome. The club was pretty close to capacity but with a host of people smoking outside it never seems as crowded as it used to. Lee and Nick played some excellent tracks and the "Michael and Jim DJing experiment" went down ok too.

I was really impressed with the sheer number and quality of costumes. I'd list them all but I'm sure I'd miss a few out and I don't want to offend anyone by seeming to forget ;-) Lets just say that it was the most difficult fancy dress competition to judge that we've had. Lee, Nick, Michael and I struggled to narrow down our short list of TEN people but eventually picked Elliot (she had a bike!), The Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles (not sure which two, they were very green) and Jimmy Saville. I felt bad that we couldn't give everyone some kind of prize for coming in fancy dress because some people had obviously done A LOT of work. Maybe next year we can find a way o reward everyone... we will see.

Anyway, thanks to all of those people who made it along. Thanks to everyone that DJed, made posters, sat on the door and helped us set up and carry things around. Thanks to everyone who made the effort to make a costume. Thanks to Andy and Helen at the porter Butt for continuing to let us run Entropy there. Thanks to Julian and Ian for the sound equipment.

Basically, thanks EVERYONE. We couldnt' do, and wouldn't want to do, Entropy without you all.

Now I must crash and slob around for a while to recover.

Not _exactly_ sure why I'm doing this - probably boredom. Anyway, list of books in the cut.

( book listing thing )

In common with previous entries I thought it worth pointing out that Mervyn Taylor is, once again, leading the pack when it comes to my Hattrick team.

He has become my first MAGNIFICENT level player.