The Grax Domain

25 Apr 2005 Grax's Detox journey: Preparation

I've decided to attempt something quite spectacular, unlike me and possibly dangerous. Unlike Mia's run, which actually means something; I am doing to attempt the following: I am going on a detox for 30 day. My first day will be the 2nd May 2005That's right, my body will become purified of all the toxins that I have forced-fed it for all these years. But why bother? Well I thought that it's something I've never done before and everywhere I look people rave on about how great it is. So I thought I'd see what all the fuss is all about. Who knows, it might actually make me a lot healthier and have better skin. Personal reasons, don't ask. But before I run in headlong into this mammoth task I will do some background research. I found a list in the Daily Mail which has a list of food that you can and cannot have, as shown in the link below: The Detox Do's and Don'ts The first thing that crossed my mind was "Fuck, I'm going to starve!" Regardless I will attempt it. Nay, I will complete it! I will triumph, and I will record my process to warn other people if they want to attempt anything stupid like this themselves. I'm doing a public service here people. You owe me! Next thing I ought to figure is what meals I could make with my limited palette of food. ... Why do I get the feeling I don't know what I've gotten myself into?

23 Apr 2005 Links and Tweaks

I sometimes worry about how bad my memory is and my ability to procrastinate, so I'm taking action.

Firstly I've added some new links so that I can remember them when I'm away from my computer. I have also added a tick box for when you add a comment, which sends out an email to you whenever a new comment is added. It may or may not prove popular. Only time will tell....

I'll probably put the SimpleImg feature on hold, or at least add them infrequently. This is because I have a few art pet projects that I want to complete and I want to dedicate as much of my free time, or what's left of it, as I can.

Strike off three things off the To Do list. That's right, it has gotten so bad I've written out a To Do list. On Paper. And stuck it on my wall. I'm fed up of putting off things that need to be done because I get distracted. Hey, maybe I should create a page for the Grax Domain called "The To Do List". Yeah, it'll have a huge list of things to do (hence the title) and I'll cross them off as they get done. Yeah, what a great idea!

... Man I'm so bored....

18 Apr 2005 SimpleImg to reflect my mood.

This week's SimpleImg word is Worried, and that's kinda how I'm feeling right about now. The main cause for my worries is work. I don't really feel very secure in my job now. Sales have been bad over the winter period, which means things have been a bit tight money wise. This has partly left me thinking that my time at my workplace may be shorter than I'd like it to be. This wouldn't be so bad if I had a "Just in case" stash of money just in case. Trouble is I've spent it all on maintaining my car for a year and I haven't been putting aside a little of my pay... Oh well, the taxman owes me some money and he better pay if he knows what's good for him.

The other thing about my job is I'm starting to get bored with it. I've completed the big project web site for the company I work with. It's live. I want to move onto another big web project that's unrelated to the last one. But now I'm pretty much stuck maintaining the thing. And maintenance is boring. That's partly why I'm so late updating all my websites. I want something new, challenging, and exciting. I need to be thrown in the deep end again with something and be forced to learn something new or die otherwise (or something like that). Dammit, that's how I became the competent web programmer you see before you.

Still all these things are not a major worry. I still sleep quite comfortably at night. I just wanted to share and show how I feel that's all.

10 Apr 2005 Stag Weekend (or how to make the most of the freedom you have before being attached to the old ball 'n' chain)

My old school mate, Kiz, is getting married soon to a lovely Norwegian woman. Getting to the wedding ceremony it gonna be a bitch seeing as it's being held in Norway but that's a different Story. And the missus wanted to the traditional Hens night thing with all her girlfriends and basically wanted Kiz out of the picture so that the girls can play with dildos and stuff. The natural thing for him to do is for him to have a traditional Stag night, or in this case a whole weekend.

And the only way to celebrate his last few moments of freedom? Me and five other good friends of his took him to Blackpool.

This is a long entry so to save screen space I stuck the rest of the entry in the comments bit of the entry.

10 Apr 2005 The Syndicate Supernightclub, Blackpool Review

For Stag weekend in Blackpool we spent every night in The Syndicate superclub. I've gotten a pretty good idea of what it's like so here's a review.

The whole venue is seperate into three rooms, one large and two huge. Each room has a particuar genre of music being played, e.g. mainstream music in one room, R&B/hip-hop in another, dance anthem music, etc. This allows a person to choose the room that matches his musical taste.

The largest of the rooms has huge speakers surrounding the place that are so loud and basey they make the very cells in your body vibrate, just the way I like it. And get this, in this room the dance floor rotates in a circle! This little extra touch only adds to the experience.

I also had the pleasure of seeing the BBC Radio 1 DJ Dave Pierce mixing away on one of the nights. Who is Dave Pierce? I dunno, just some nobody DJ that plays dance tracks.

One thing that ruined the night for me was the cloak room. There was this old fat woman who looks like someone's neglected grandmother working there. I handed over my ticket once the night was over and she gave me some random jacket rather than my suit jacket. After I had a go at her she said that I had to wait until she and another person dealt with everyone else. I had to wait half an hour, thusly creating congestion for everyone else waiting for their jackets, before she even considered looking for mine. Long story short, don't give in your garments to the cloakroom if it's being manned by an old lady, you'll get it lost.

Despite the shortcomings of the cloackroom, The Syndicate is a great place to go if you're ever in Blackpool. And at the door tell them that Grax send you. Then tell me what happens.

GRAX RATING: 4/5

10 Apr 2005 SimpleImg Time, Kinda.

Right I've put up last weeks SimpleImg picture, lazy, and this weeks SimpleImg picture, busy, but because I've been really busy with all sorts of stuff like work, going out, going to a Stag weekend (read more here), and foolishly adding some annoying spyware on my computer that I can't seem to get rid of, I'm only uploading the sketches of the images. I'll upload the coloured in versions as soon as I do them, as well as a new SimpleImg in time for next week.

Boy this new attempt at doing SimpleImg every week is not going terribly well, is it?

3 Apr 2005 Modems: The Bane of Modern Technology.

I never have any fun with modems. I can never get them to work first time when I plug them in and try to connect. I always have to work up a sweat before it works properly. It's like some sort of curse or a sick joke being played by some higher power. And what happened the other day is no exception.

On Saturday I went to my mums house to reformat her computer, so she can have a fresh computer and a clean start. Now bear in mind this an old computer with 700mhz process, 64mb RAM and a 3 gig harddrive, which means its a good 6 years old roughly. Regardless I backed up all the needed files, cleaned the hardrive, and installed Windows 2k with all the other bits and pieces. And for a time, it was good. Then it came to the modem.

Now my mum and her partner are not very IT literate and don't use their computers much, just to check emails and other simple things. So they didn't really need things like broadband, they used a dial-up modem. Fair enough their choice. But there was a problem...

For some bizzare reason Windows 2k didn't recognise the old modem, even though I installed drivers for it from the CD. It just said it was an unknown PCI card or something similar. And every time we tried to dial out there was no dial tone. Not even a beeping noise to dial the number. So after an hour of clicking on the 'Connect' button, uninstalling and reinstalling, and cursing I called my friend up and he happened to have a newer modem that we could use.

So after a 30min drive there and back to retrieve the worthless device I slapped it in the copmputer and it installs properly. I plug in the phone line into one of the free sockets and we got a dial tone. Huzzah! So we dialed the number that Microsoft uses to bring up the selection of available ISP providers. However after dialing the number it wasn't making the usual modem noises. It wouldn't connect. It was then I realised it was plugged into the wrong phone socket at the back of the modem. I'll hold my hands up and say that was my error.

Once that was sorted it was time to get the dial up settings set up. "Right then we've got username; check, password; check, dial-up phone number..." Once again hands are in the air. I should have known better than to not take notes of the phone number and assume that they would have the details noted down somewhere. So after calling u p my mum's Internet providers to get the number I finally managed to the modem working with the right details and everything was hunky-dory.

It wasn't suppose to take all bloody day to sort out. I'd figure that it would take a few hours max to sort out their computer, which would allow me time to catch up with my mates in the afternoon. I had to cancel on them after I'd spent the week bigging up meeting-up event all week (much apologising the next day). The whole thing nearly broke my spirit as a computing person, I was almost ready to renounce my faith in computers and isolate myself in a dark cave and become a hermit. Really.

Well there's one thing for sure; my mum won't ask me to fix her computer any time soon. :P

p.s. This weeks SimpleImg will be a few days late due to me being super busy, but it is on it's way. Here's a preview; this weeks word is lazy.