Again, backdated.

29/10/06
Clocks went forward today. No biggie, my alarm clock is self adjusting, but it means that time at work will be a bit tighter, we're now on GMT (or "Zulu") time. Makes things alot easier, you don't have to check which time people are on about, Zulu or local, but we loose an hour first thing. I do wish the government would stop using daylight savings time. I know most of the arguments, which mainly involve the increase in safety in the morning, when people are heading to work or school. To be honest, this will only work for a couple of weeks max, and people seem to be generally more awake in the morning than during the evening coming back from work or picking people up. Anyway, I digress.
Didn't have my alarm on this morning, I was planning on having a late morning and getting up around 11, having a late breakfast/early lunch and head out onto a hill before light levels dropped too far for comfort.
Unfortunately when I woke up the clock showed 12:40, which was too late for safety. Ahh well, there's always next week. Or this week on a night shift, although that would mean heading out about 10 in the morning. Hmm, might do that. Ahh, actually I've just remembered the charts for this week, Tuesday (I'm on a night then) is the only day I can do and the wind is looking a bit strong. Now, I've got the kit and the experience to walk in high winds alone, although I know it's more dangerous so would leave a route and timings with the mess reception, but it's looking like the winds will be into gale force and there's a good chance of snow. Again, not generally a problem, just need to carry the old axe and take more care, but I'd rather have a pair of crampons as well, and that's not possible until I get some debt cleared.
So I'll see how it turns out.

Aside from that, bought a printer from Tescos the other day (they stock everything except squash balls and chopsticks - aparently noone in Scotland uses chopsticks, I almost had to buy the silly costly collapsable titanium ones, but fortunately found a pack of 50 in Asda. Felt silly buying that many but at 50p it was okay, might even give some to Matt so he can snap them on his neck. Crazy Wing-Chun stuff.) mainly to run off some maps for the walk. It's not a brilliant printer but does everything I need and it costs less then Matt spent on print cartridges last time. Bloody silly economics that.

Adverts, some are good, some are terrible, a few are fantastic. My favourite one is "cog" the Honda one with all the bits of machinery. I also like the Honda "choir" and the one with the bloke going from his caravan on a variety of Honda things, culminating in going over a waterfall. Looks like fun. The Guiness ads are usually good, the horses was great (good use of Leftfield's Phat Planet as well as using quotes from Moby Dick) and the time running backwards was memorable. Sony are using a series of "Colours" ads, "Balls" was the one with loads of coloured balls falling in San Fransico and the new one has cannons and jets of coloured paints exploding all over a Glasgow council estate. The thing I like about Cog and the Sony ones is that they don't use computer graphics, they used real balls, real car parts (and about 617 takes) and real paint (and a two week clean up). Bonza.

Yes, I have been watching too much TV. Am now as it happens, it's episode 3 of Torchwood, a Doctor Who spin off. If you're interested Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who. It's not bad as such, just not as good as the build up and no way near as good as the Doctor Who series have been. But it's based in Cardiff and I know some of the parts of the city that they're using. If you know Cardiff, you'll know that the chase scene that they just had is physicall impossible, they just ran from the Castle to the train station (about 800 M) in under 3 seconds. Hah! I know the train station fairly well because I spent about 4 hours there one morning waiting for the 6:30 train home to Swansea. I'd been in Cardiff with seeing Tasha while she was at Uni. Phil had come down as well. This was in our fist year I think. After we'd finished at the club we'd gone back to Tasha's halls (girls only-very odd) and about half an hour later Tasha and Phil felt ill so were heading home. They dropped me at the station, but I'd missed the late night clubbers train back by about 40 minutes so had to wait for the next one. Tell you, you need to spend a morning in a train station, but if you can, make sure that the toilets aren't shut due to drug use, and the cafe and waiting rooms aren't closed for refurbishments. Waiting is much more fun with others, just down the road at Port Talbort (much worse station) was more fun. Mind you, Chris, Sally and Jo and myself had just been to a Levellers concert and we spent the three hours at the station running around like loons or sleeping against each other on the benchs.