Geography

This is going to be a shameless plug, really. My sister's boyfriend has just put a new album out, I've heard it, and it's brilliant! It's a kind of Jack Johnson/Bob Dylan/Paul Simon/Barenaked Ladies kinda thang, though it's hard to label. The best thing to do is to go to his myspace profile: www.myspace.com/loganwilson and have a listen there. He's also got a website up and running at www.loganwilson.com which is worth having a look at. The album will soon be available from iTunes and other music stores, but in the mean time you can email him on info@loganwilson.com for any further info... Happy listening!

MySpace stole my life

A place for friends, alright. Or for having no friends (unless you're this guy called Tom, in which case you have 78,165,521 friends - and counting), as, this week, MySpace has stolen my life. I'm not the only one, either. In the last couple of days another of my friends has fallen victim to the myspace curse. One of her friends contacted her on MySpace to tell her that she had a funny email about being addicted to MySpace - I told her to message me on MySpace so I could put this funny text up on my MySpace profile (www.myspace.com/gontofe, since you ask). This thing is taking over my life - I'm logged in all day long, fixing my profile rather than actually getting on with my uni work! It's the kind of obsession that has to stop, but it's truly addictive.
For the non-initiated, MySpace allows you to put up details of your interests (music, films etc), photos, movies, links to other sites, blogs etc, and share them with your friends (who have done the same on MySpace). You can also set up groups, forums and send each other messages. The problem is, it becomes very quickly addictive, and it becomes hard to find time to get on with work/studying/fulfilling bodily functions, such as drinking water/etc. In fact, some of you may have come here from seeing my post on MySpace. It really is hard to break the chain.
At any rate, it's time to go and cook some dinner. In the mean time, take care, and I'll see y'all on MySpace!

Tattoo

Now that it's settled down a little bit, here is a picture of my new tattoo. Granted, it's not actually finished yet, it needs filling in with all the little stars and a little tidying up. I've already booked the appointment for the 30th of the month at Physical Poetry just up the road with Dave, who did the original centre bit. The last bit (just the five stars) took around 3 hours, I can probably expect the same again for the filling in. Luckily, it wasn't too painful, just felt a little bruised afterwards. Even the bit on the shoulder wasn't too bad!

In the meanwhile, John's waiting to be told when he can start getting his back tattoo started, not sure as yet how long it's gonna be, how much it'll cost, or how big it will be!

I'll post photos on here when it's done.

Buy my T-shirts!

Hello all,

Having seen an endless stream of lame-ass T-shirts on the internet, I've decided to make my own lame-ass T-shirts.

Please buy them from http://www.spreadshirt.net/shop.php?sid=143241. There are a varying array of men's and women's t-shirts, some more offensive and funny than others, all extremely stylish.

Go on, buy one! You know you want to!

Douce France - ou comment se faire envoyer chier

Just got back from a week in France, visiting friends, eating so much food, walking and getting sunburnt.

There's no doubt that spring has sprung down there, although given that I spent the week in the south, I'm not surprised. One of my friends didn't seem to think that it would be that hot, although it was regularly over 20 degrees with blazing sunshine.

And France's wonderful administrative processes reared their ugly head, too. People don't seem to hesistate in telling you where to go over there, which can prove amusing sometimes, depending on whether you are on the receiving end or not. Two examples from my bank:

1) I went to pay money into a branch in Paris and query a charge. The lady at the counter seemed happy to give me information about the charge, but when I tried to pay money into my account without proof of ID, I was shocked to hear her tell me, "in that case, we don't want your money". I was tempted to suggest that with an attitude like that maybe they didn't want my business at all!

2) Slightly more amusing (not on the receiving end): In another branch there was an old hag at the front of the queue who had a long query. Just before she left, the charming young lady behind the counter told her that she "didn't want to get annoyed with her any more", which raised a few smiles.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the end of it all, seems there was something in the air. Earlier that day, I unfortunately had to go back to Paul Valéry University to collect my degree certificate. I had taken care to bring the papers I needed, and we set off. Upon arriving at the university, I was shocked to see security guards grouped around the entrances with dogs. Seems that they were expecting trouble after the demonstrations against the CPE that had been taking place in the last few weeks. We managed to get in (using my friend Marion's teacher card, my student card long having been lost), and eventually found our way to the office we needed, only to see that it was closed. Considering that it's only open three days a week anyway and even then only for three hours in the morning, this was a little rich. We eventually managed to find someone who was willing to ask the people inside (yes, this is Paul Valéry, they make no attempt to hide the fact that they are there) to help us, considering I had come from England to collect the document. In short, we were told that they could not help us, they were closed, and I would have to pay to send them the documents I was holding in my hand and for them to issue the document that was sitting in a drawer behind the door. I had to resist the temptation to throw a chair through the window of the office, as I didn't fancy seeing those dogs any more close up.

On my way back to Paris at the end of the week, I found myself on a new concept TGV, the IDTGV. The idea is that the train has two mood zones, one called Zen and the other Zap. In IDZap, it would appear the idea is that you turn your walkman up as loud as you can to drown out the music blaring out from the bar, or the screaming kids around you. In Zen, I believe, you have to stay silent, trying to slow your heart rate so as to not irritate your neighbour. The ironic thing is that I'm sure that posh people book into Zen on the bottom deck, so as not to be irritated by the other passengers, yet it turns out that the Zap bit is in first class on the upper deck, and has larger seats, and a trolley service etc. All quite amusing really.

One final thought - we had a few discussions about young people, jobs, immigration and integration with various people while in France. Just as I was on the RER (another different kind of train, not to be confused with the Métro, the TGV, the TER etc) going back to the airport, a young second generation north african man came walking down the train, and started playing playing old French songs on an accordeon as we reached Le Blanc Mesnil station. He was busking (and being thoroughly ignored by most people, especially the Italian family who where filming him, except when he turned 'round, when the father pretended to film his children and out of the window). I think this says more about integration than most of the other conversations that we had.

The Projects

This is my friend Jen being a rock chick. She's in a band called The Projects. This band is the reason she's been travelling to York several times per week and working bloody hard. Forget the fact she's doing research for her MA at Leeds Uni in something phonetic, the music is where it's at.

The band have been refining their sound over the past year, and have created some good soulful, funky, trip-hop wonderment. You can listen to their stuff on their isound page. They will be even more happy if you listen to their stuff on isound between April 17th to May 15th, as they have entered a battle of the bands competition, and you can help them win by listening to their songs (no need to vote). They'll love you, as they'll get a whole host of wonderful things (and you'll get a warm fuzzy glow inside for knowing that you've helped them.

Faulty train isn't making journey (2,7)

Just a little snapshot of my journey on Monday - what must be the steepest escalator in London at least, heading down to the Northern Line at London Bridge station.

I was making my way back up the country after a weekend (well, just Sunday, really) spent at home. This was pretty much the mid-way point of a horrible journey - we had crawled into London Bridge after being forced to change trains (actual announcement, "Ladies and gentlemen, we would like to apologise for the delay to this service due to the adverse weather conditions, unfortunately there will be a further delay due to the train in front hitting another tree...") at Sevenoaks. I managed to arrive in King's Cross less than 10 minutes late, which was surprising given the delays incurred, though missed my train to Leeds. GNER replaced my ticket, but some jobsworth inspector made me pay a supplement to my fare, as I'd forgotten to bring my railcard. All in all, very frustrating, but worth it for the lovely day we had on Sunday for mother's day (roast dinner - the full works - at my sister's house).

Can't really complain though, seems mum, Paul and Lucy had a near-death experience as a tree came crashing down in front of them on the way into Hastings - they managed to stop in time. Not so lucky was the man from the Highways Agency coming the other way in his truck, though I'm sure it helped in getting the road clear as quickly as possible!

(Un)Fortunately I am now on holiday, and (but) am struggling to motivate myself to get some work done - the Independent crosswords and Sudoku are much more interesting.

Spring is springing

Well, seems the snow has left us alone for a while, I noticed yesterday the crocuses had started to open on my way across the park, and today I saw the first open daffodil outside the university. Also (something worth catching the bus for, you can only really see from the top deck), the leaves on the trees are just budding. Funny, last year I sent a photo to my mum of a huge patch of daffodils - I've just checked and this was on the 1st of March! Seems spring is running late this year, something that is perhaps confirmed on the Springwatch site. You can see, for example, that the spread of frog spawn is slower this year than last - some scientific data to back up my somewhat unscientific impression of a long winter!

The presence of dead leaves on the ground (just discernible on the above photo) confirms that this winter has been quite dry - they haven't yet rotted away from Autumn... Get ready for the hosepipe ban.

Translators fear not!

Looking at the above text, seems us translators don't have to worry too much about there not being any work for us, or that computers are going to replace us just yet (although I'm told in my machine translation classes that that's not what the goal is!) if this is the quality of texts that commercial software produces.

Just for the sake of it, I've put the above text back into babelfish for this translation:

Software English writing

Advanced Tool for drafting To write text easily -
To obtain!

Interestingly, their program (according to their website) allows you to "Fix all Grammar Errors Immediately" - maybe only in English!

Strangely, no French language version of their site is available.

Google Mars

Something someone might be interested in - Google have started a service similar to that used for their mapping service, called Google Mars. It seems that only a small section is available to view, but I assume they're going to expand this and integrate it into Google Earth, where the lovely picture of my house at the top of this page comes from (note to self: copyright the term Google Solar System immediately!). There are links to features on the planet's surface, and links to cool stuff like flythrough videos of parts of Mars.
----------------------------------
added 17/03/06
You can also view the moon on the imaginatively-titled Google Moon. For fun, zoom all the way in to see what the moon is made of!

An alternative to XP!

At last! I've been using this for a few months now, and am pleased to report it's all going quite well.

Ubuntu is a serious alternative operating system to Windows. It's a distribution of Linux designed to work on your Windows or Mac machine in place of (or in my case alongside) your usual operating system. Best of all, it's free (and means that you can gain back all those karma points lost by using evil Microsoft products) and easy to download, or you can even order copies on cd or dvd. It includes as standard loads of useful programs (Firefox, Open Office - a worthy replacement for and fully compatible with MS Office, Gimp - like Adobe Photoshop, but free, games, multimedia players), and anything you don't have (like Skype and Realplayer) you can easily download and install. It does involve a little getting used to, and you may have to look up how to do things you take for granted under Windows or MacOS on th'interweb, but at least the answers are there, as there is a large (and still growing) community online.

If things carry on the way they are, I'll be switching to Ubuntu full time very soon (although I need someone to convert the WordFast macros to OpenOffice format to allow me to work on translations in Linux)...

Seems winter is the new spring!

I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but Anne-Charlotte was just saying yesterday how it never snows here in Leeds. When I pointed out that it does happen (once even in June), she said, "well, I'm sure it never lays." So the weather set out to prove her wrong today. We were sitting in Opposite, being blasted by the freezing cold air from the door (were all these students born in barns?!) when we looked out to see a veritable blizzard. Well, for March...

Disable Orange Home Screen (finally!)

Images courtesy of http://uk.geocities.com/ras1968uk/orange.htm

This probably won't mean a lot to most of you, but for anyone who's got a Nokia 6680 on Orange:

It is possible to get rid of the hideous Orange Home Screen by downloading a little application called HSkiller. You can download this from http://gegelambert.free.fr/ (it's in French, but just click on the link at the top and install the .sis file on your phone). This changes your

Orange have confirmed that they are going to put an option on new phones to allow you to disable the home screen (thank god), thus returning the Symbian phones to their initial glory (and hopefully a) getting rid of the Orange screen and b) reenabling active standby!).

Christmas and New Year

Hello again!

Made it back from the south after a crazy tequila-filled Christmas!

Found out on the Monday before Christmas that the bank can no longer keep me on as a temp, so they've had to let me go. They packed me off with 3 bottles of wine, 4 bottles of beer and a box of choccies, which is quite nice considering I was only a temp!

So it's back to uni, and we're in the exams period which runs until the 20th. I've already had the only exam I've got, but I still have two projects to finish before then.

Apart from that, I am looking forward to the arrival of Claire in Leeds on the 3rd of February (which is really not all that long away), and then I've already booked tickets to go back to Montpellier in April (dis-moi si vous pensez être là, Karine, Dimitri, Yves, Mohammed, Fantine etc, ça va être vers le weekend du 15 avril).

But until then it's on with the work, and after next week more lectures at uni (it's about time really, haven't had any for well over a month now!).

Hope to hear from you soon!

First one for a while

Hello all,

Just preparing for Christmas, will be finished at uni at the end of the week, looking forward to getting Christmas shopping over and done with and then back down south for Christmas!

In the mean time, we've all got essays to be getting on with for this week (boo!)

Fresh Air (or a fight for ethical translation)

Climbing Ingleborough

Went for a little walk today with people from the Centre for Translation Studies, ended up walking up Ingleborough, the 10th highest mountain (at 724m or 2375ft) in England. It is one of the Yorkshire Dales' Three Peaks along with Pen-y-ghent and Whernside.

After a shaky start (heading in completely the wrong direction), we managed to get to the top, and decided to descend the opposite side before changing our minds again! We climbed back up to the top for soup, Wensleydale sandwiches, apples and shortbread (amongst other things) before heading off to Gaping Gill (110m deep, large enough to house York Minster) to look at what is essentially a giant hole in the ground (I realise I'm not selling this very well, although it really was very interesting!) before heading back to Horton in Ribblesdale to The Crown Hotel over six hours after setting out for Mars Bars, hot chocolate, coffee, Bailey's and Guinness (though not all at once!). A good day out for all!















Maps showing route (more than 12 miles)

Profile of the walk

Back to the grind...

New term at uni, start of my MA course in Applied Translation Studies (MAATS). Nothing much to report here for the moment, really, as lectures only started today. First lecture was corpus linguistics, which I was pleased to note covered some of the stuff I did in France. Just goes to show that despite appearances, Paul Valéry University in Montpellier is useful for something, even if it is only assuring that I understand some of the content in this lecture!

Too soon to really judge the content of the rest of the course, it seems that they vaguely have their heads screwed on here, so I don't expect too much confusion. If nothing else, it seems that the facilities they have here are quite good (computers/software etc), even if they don't quite stretch to air conditioning (apparently it's not so bad in mid-winter). I'm glad to have got the hard bit out of the way (registration), thanks to Kim who stood with me in the 25 minute queue (which is really really short compared to the usual 2.5 hours!).

Apart from that I will be at work one day a week from now on (Tuesdays), which means that I still have most of the time free to learn how to use the millions of pieces of software we have to get t0 grips with! Other piece of good news is that I have booked flights to Paris for the 9th - 12th, so if anyone's gonna be there let me know and we'll meet up :)

77 Advertising truths

1. Men are obsessed with sex but will forego sex in order to watch football or drink beer.

2. Women are locked in a constant battle with their weight/body shape/hairstyle.

3. Career success is entirely based on your ability to impress your boss.

4. Mums are often harassed but NEVER depressed/unable to cope.

5. Any act of male stupidity (e.g. walking across a clean floor in muddy boots, putting the dog in the dishwasher, etc.) will be met with a wry smile, not genuine annoyance/anger.

6. Married men will flirt with other, younger women but NEVER act upon it.

7. Anyone with a scientific career will have a bad haircut and dreadful clothes.

8. If you work for the emergency services, you are a better person than the general population.

9. Elderly relatives NEVER suffer from senile dementia.

10. Scandinavians are, without exception, blonde and beautiful.

11. Women have jobs they never do in real life, e.g. dockworker (who looks like a model).

12. Children will not eat fruit or vegetables. Ever.

13. Both men and women find driving deeply pleasurable, never boring or stressful.

14. Men are inherently lazy/slobbish; women are the reverse.

15. Chocolate, however, will cause women to immediately fall into the languor of the opium eater.

16. High Street bank staff are (A) friends of the customers, and (B) of slightly above-average attractiveness (only if female).

17. Modern men own a cat.

18. Hot beverages have miraculous rejuvenating effects.

19. Professional people have strangely trivial preoccupations, e.g. a female barrister who is morbidly obsessed with finding a healthy snack bar.

20. All women (except stay-at-home housewives) have interesting and enjoyable careers.

21. Any over-the-counter medical product will work instantly and 100% effectively.

22. Children know more than adults.

23. Women never merely hop in and out of the shower, instead preferring to act out some sort of soapy Dance of the Seven Veils.

24. School is a happy experience for all children.

25. Tortilla chips are the most exciting experience any group of young people can experience.

26. Playing bingo is THE number one pastime among 18-25 year old British women.

27. Science's most important applications are smoothing out wrinkles and making hair shiny.

28. Yoghurt-based products can change your life. Want to be a brilliant dancer? Have a yoghurt! Want to do away with your natural preference for *attractive* members of the opposite sex? Have a yoghurt! Want to avoid heart disease? Don't bother with all that boring giving-up of stuff, have a yoghurt!

29. Cleaning products will remove any stain in one sweep of a cloth.
Razors glide across male faces and leave baby-smooth non-irritated skin underneath.

30. Babies have conversations with each other about the relative merits of their nappies.

31. Women only wear spectacles in adverts for opticians.

32. It's OK to racially stereotype eskimos

33. Everyone is either in debt and wanting to take out a loan, or seeking compensation from someone.

34. Clothes come out of washing machines.

35. Anyone who is at home in the afternoon is in desperate need of a secured loan, a pension plan or no-win, no-fee solicitor.

36. Lipstick will never come off.

37. Driving in a brand new car leads immediately to all other traffic being kept off the road.

38. The last thing to emerge from an upended box of breakfast cereal is one perfect flake. The most important property of a tampon is its resemblance to a sweet.

39. Duvets are miraculously L-Shaped, reaching to the underarms of the woman in the bed but only to the midriff of the man.

40. Public transport is a beautifully clean and relaxing way to travel and you'll always be able to flirt with an attractive member of the opposite sex.

41. All babies spend their time being either naked and perfectly happy or clothed and asleep.

42. Saving a few quid on a car insurance bill of several hundred pounds will make you ecstatic for the rest of the week.

43. Women are unable to remove their glasses without shaking their hair down in slow motion.

44. Shop staff always greet you with a smile and answers your questions in a professional manner.

45. All dogs are happy and stupid. All cats have impeccable taste.

46. Mothers never ever shout at their offspring, and have endless patience.

47. Chocolate bars come out of hand bags/top pockets facing forwards, pause for a moment on their journey upwards in the half in/half out state (of hand bag/top pocket) and finally they are opened, perfectly, by simply pulling at the top outermost corner of the wrapping.

48. People who talk to the viewer never seem to be noticed by the people around them (i.e. their family, friends, co-workers).

49. If you have dyed red hair you are glamorous and sexy. If you have natural red hair then by all accounts you have a problem.

50. Cat food smells delicious to humans.

51. Bars are not sweaty, smoky places with very drunk people in them

52. Shaving is always performed to music, semi-naked and accompanied by a blonde woman in a towel.

53. Young people always live in fantastic flats.

54. You only ever wash one item at a time in your washing machine.

55. It's possible to take great photos with a camera phone.

57. Pieces of chewing gum only ever fall from their packet in pairs into the hands of the gum eater.

58. It is totally acceptable and quite normal behaviour to go around kissing babies' bottoms.

59. Soldiering is portrayed as being on a challenging outward-bound course

60. Any advert so obscure that you have no idea what it is about will be revealed to be a car advert in the final half-second.

61. Black people don't exist - or at least they don't buy anything.

62. Women suffer from constipation, men suffer from piles.

63. People with regional accents are always friendly and helpful.

64. Buying a sofa will not only improve your life beyond measure, it'll also make you and your family beautiful.

65. Teenage "sufferers" of acne will only ever have one completely invisible spot, for which they will apply a product which will not only clear the spot, but also miraculously solve all other social issues they might be having.

66. Slim, young, sexy, beautiful women are invariably and inexplicably married to frumpy, dumpy, pudgy - and quite often balding - middle-aged men.

67. If senior women are smiling and dancing they must be wearing an adult diaper.

68. Cars never sound like cars revving and changing gear, but the gentle sound of a hollow breeze.

69. Cats are always fed by women.

70. All people are heterosexual.

71. All vicars look like twits.

72. Married women are *nearly* sexy. (I believe there is an ad industry formula for this.)

73. Dogs in adverts never sniff your crotch.

74. Andie McDowell never ages.

75. Carol Vordeman knows everything.

76. Everything is or will be great

77. Technology works.

From the Magazine at news.bbc.co.uk

¡Viva España!

Well, we've been back for a week from holidays in Spain (me, my sister and John), and boy is it depressing going back to an office Job!

The weather was really good - always very hot, although ranging from bright sunshine to thunderstorms and hailstones (that's the mountains for you!). We didn't arrive at my dad's house until very late on the Sunday night (i.e. sometime after 1 in the morning) after braving the drive down from Barcelona. The fiestas didn't start 'till Tuesday night, but when they did, we were treated to the correfoc (cue hundreds of bad puns about correfoccing, meeting the correfoccers etc) which was a parade through the streets of the village with lots of fireworks and small children dancing in the sparks. They also had a huge dragon with fireworks in its nose! Unfortunately we didn't take our cameras, but maybe next time!

Aside from the fireworks we managed to get around to see some of the surrounding area - like the roman ruins at Tarragona, Tortosa, the castle at Miravet, the beach at Hospitalet...

But now we're back. Today I got my tattoo done that I've been waiting for for a while now, which is very cool:
So I shall be looking after that very carefully for a while now! It didn't really hurt, I was expecting a lot more pain, but I suppose the arm isn't a very sensitive area...

Masters/Computer/Holidays

Computer finally fixed!

I had to buy an external hard drive casing so I could connect my hard drive to my neighbours' pc to save my documents...and reinstall windows again...but it's done. Now just struggling to get my programs installed again, I've lost all my emails...all fun and games.

But good news - I got my funding for the masters course! This means that I'm back at uni in 6 weeks' time, which is quite a scary thought. I'm hoping that I don't have to end up doing any weird elective modules, but I'm not gonna find out for a while. It seems that the bank have decided they might give me a part time contract, so I won't be with the agency any more (which is fantastic).

Apart from that, we're off to Spain tomorrow, we've got tonnes of stuff to do today, but haven't managed to get up off my arse yet and do any packing etc. We still have to go into town and do a million things! Sounds like the start of a busy week (I'll be glad to get back here for a rest!)...