Well we made it Snowdon. Up all of 1085 metres and back down again, in under five hours. The weather let us down majorly on Saturday meaning that we couldn’t see a thing when we got to the summit, but at least we still have the sense of acheivement from it.

We went out for dinner and drinks in Bangor afterwards (much to the confusion of the owner of the hostel in which we were staying). The food in the Fat Cat was as good as I ever remember it. We stood and watched (at least the last 20 minutes) of the football in the yellow pub with the others. Me and Stace stayed neutal while Paul and Bryan cheered at England’s and Austria’s goals, respectively. I hadn’t been out in Bangor for a while – it was good.

This morning we went to pick Paul’s car up from where we’d left it in Bangor, going via Swallow Falls and Llanfairpwll in perfect weather, before setting off back. It was far too short a weekend, but hopefully there’ll be another time (with better weather, perhaps).

Here’s a photo of us looking like catalogue models in front of Swallow Falls earlier today. The rest of the photos are here.

Been really busy the last couple of days so still not had time to go through the photos from the other night.

Went out to Brum with Dave last night. Carly’s birthday meal the other week made me realise that there’s more to the place than the Bullring and DV8, and last night just served to reinforce that. If I’m around here for another few months (as it looks like I will be) then I think more trips like that will be required.

I’m going up to Wales tonight for the long-awaited Hurst 12 Snowdon trip. The weather looks good. We have maps, boots and a hostel booked. There’ll be no more blogging until Sunday evening at the earliest, but I’m taking my camera.

Also, my legs feel funny.

I’ve just remembered what happened to the the Degree 15 off the table in those pictures. Erk.

The last time I was late for work due to having got very very drunk the night before was the night last summer when I fell asleep on the night bus and ended up at Buckingham Palace at 3am in the morning. Last night’s activities to celebrate James’s 23rd most certainly lived up to that, but I think we’re all paying for it today :-).

Currently sitting on my desk is an empty coffee mug (must make more) and a large bottle of water from the water cooler. I’m starting to feel better, slowly. To echo matt’s thoughts, I’ll blog more when I’m feeling up to it. For now, the photos are shared on the network, for those of you with access.

Continuing the frequent cinema-age that’s been going on recently, tonight we went to see The Village at the Skydome. The film seemed promising at first, with a few really good tension-filled scenes, but didn’t really seem to go anywhere after that. It may have been the irritation factor of the fifteen-year-old kid at the back of the cinema who wouldn’t shut up for more than ten minutes, but the film really just seemed to lose something after a while.

Although the cinematography was great, I thought they could have done a little more to make the ‘creatures’ appear slightly scarier and less reminscent of something out of Jeepers Creepers. It was also a shame that despite all the things going on throughout the film, it just didn’t really seem to go anywhere in the end.

It was worth seeing, if only to enlarge my list of scary-films-that-I’ve-seen, but didn’t quite live up to The Stepford Wives and 13 Going On 30 that we saw earlier this week. It also got me back out of bed again (having grabbed a couple of hours of sleep after getting home from work, in an attempt to make my acidic hangover go away. Note to self – bear in mind current lower-than-usual alcohol tolerance levels when drinking next time).

I spent the rest of tonight reading all the news sites and blogs I’ve been too busy to read recently. The Guardian have a Second Sight article looking at the disruptive effects of new media (i.e. blogs) on the mainstream media industry, which tied in nicely with some of the blog-related stuff I’ve been looking into recently. I also found a couple of articles on the continuing advance of open access publishing, which looks set to open up more and more research papers etc. to the masses. A good thing, I think.

In other news, Service Pack 2 has finally been realeased on the Windows Update site for XP, but sadly doesn’t fix all the security holes that are in XP. No surprises there, then.

Today’s been a real busy day. Was up at 7.45 (early for me) in time to make it into work for 9AM. It was hectic all day until five and I spent my lunch break trying to battle with a bunch of nasty virus infections on some guy’s PC. Straight after work I went down to play cricket with work people and was there until 8.30. I got back here, grabbed some food and went to see 13 Going On 3 with Matt, Cath and Sarah at the Skydome. I’ve been back in Cryfield for about an hour now, doing some analysis of the residential network performance (still not looking good) and sorting through the stupid number of photos I took on the walk I went on last night.

Here’s a field of sheep. I’m going to bed now.

Running is a lot like blogging. It’s really difficult to start up again once you begin to neglect it, but once you’re in the swing of doing it regularly it’s quite good. They’re also both good for thinking about stuff and generally clearing your mind. This means I should do more of both. Especially the running.

I did another 4-5 miles (I think) this evening on my new route out across the sports pitches and fields towards Kenilworth, up the old railway and then back past the Westwood church and Varsity. I need to measure it properly sometime, but I really can’t be bothered pissing about with my map and bits of cotton.

I managed it in 47 minutes, but I had to keep stopping to dodge huge big clumps of nettles and to give a woman directions to the Ramphal building. Which means I should be able to get it down to 45 minutes next time! I just have to try not to leave it 13 days before the next time…

Sorry, Stu, it had to be done…

Me and Dave went to see Thunderbirds tonight at the Skydome. It was pretty much as rubbish as I’d expected it to be, but for some reason I seem to find films like that funny. Sometimes after a long hot and sticky weekend you’re not really in the mood for watching a serious film, and Thunderbirds fitted the bill quite well there.

Lady Penelope was funny. The younger Tracy boys were quite nice indeed, and the desert island location for the first part of the movie seemed to provide the producers with ample opportunity to get the nearly-sixteen-year old Brady Corbet quite wet, on multiple occasions (slightly wrong, but still…).

The London scenes were a little strange. Seeing Thunderbird 2 land in Jubilee Gardens under the London Eye, where I’d been stood yesterday taking photos freaked me out a little. Seeing Mary’s old office in the background freaked me out even more.

The whole experience was a tad bizzare. There were only six of us in total in the film, not counting the ten year old kid who crept in behind our seats, made some funny noises and ran out again. No more bizzare than the film itself though, I guess (hacking into a communications system using someone’s braces being a prime example).

It was a good night, and a good end to a cool weekend. I missed going to Brighton and catching up with Stu, but I at least I made it to London. And unlike last week I also made it back on the Sunday, despite the best efforts of a hugely f**ked up public transport system.

Here’s an arty picture of the London Eye, sadly without Thunderbird 2. And here’s the rest of the photos from this weekend.

I moved Planet Afterlife over onto my project server, so I can now get it to rebuild every minute or so. I’d much rather have it on wabson.org, but as I can’t run cron jobs on the server to rebuild it, that’s pretty much a non-option at the moment. At least it works for now.

The new location is here.

Listening to: Roger Sanchez – Another Chance