Liadnan

Odd bit of spam today. Well, I thought it was spam and so did Gmail, but the curious thing was that it was well tailored: for a sort of Librarything/"books you might like" predictor coupled with amazon, sent to my livejournal email and not obfuscated in any way: the English was a little broken but not of the incoherent stream of drivel model. I dithered a bit before hitting delete (rather than unmarking as spam and then hitting delete - does that actually make a difference? I assume gmail's spamfilter learns, and if so that seemed almost... unfair. The really odd thing is that their "taster" book prediction was for something of which I actually am rather fond: Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. Outfit called nearsky.com, if anyone's interested, which whois tells me is, um, owned by an outfit which itself has an .ru domain. Hmm.

I have been arsing around with setting up a local mail server recently, for no particularly good reason other than that I was bored and felt I wanted to understand this stuff a bit more. (a Getmail/Dovecot IMAP /Postfix setup if anyone cares). In the course of doing that and also trying to set up a vpn client to log into work's machines I somehow managed to completely screw up everything that had anything to do with the internet at all: this came as no surprise as I have no real clue what I am doing (it doesn't really matter as I want to do a complete reinstall soon and everything is backed up to the nines). Rather more surprisingly I managed to figure out how I had managed to completely cock it all up and undo it fairly quickly. This pleases me.

In other news, or rather, other rhetorical questions, why does chaos break out in Lebanon every time I am on the brink of buying a flight there?

Not a poetic statement, or the title of a historical novel by Barbara Willard (actually, that's untrue of course, it is the title of an historical novel by Barbara Willard that I was reading only last week) but a simple statement of the thought that's dominated my mind much of the last few days. I don't deal with the cold very well you see.

I said I was going to write again, but haven't. There are several reasons for this. The first is that I'm still not really in the mood. The second is that writing "I am so cold" over and over again is hardly likely to thrill and engross you, unless you're very weird. I did find myself strangely drawn to Friday's Standard by the way. The headline on the boards, Friday Freeze: All the details was just so tempting. But it's better to imagine the story... It was very cold today in London. As a Standard reader you may have noticed this. Also, public transport was a bit screwed. As a Standard reader you may have noticed this. (Cont. p.94).

There are other reasons, too. They include "my arm still hurts really badly", "my USB mouse has stopped working for no apparent reason and the trackpad drives me up the wall with its flakiness", and the real killer "this week, I have mostly been getting drunk with friends". Apart from Wednesday, when instead I went to a lecture by Lord Bingham about the history of law reporting (edited to remove any chance of anyone assuming it was a lecture about Lord Bingham's law reports) and had my drinks courtesy of the Official Law Reports.

Normal service will be resumed as and when. In the meantime I'm going to Athens for a long weekend to see K on Friday. Hurrah. Bloody well better be warmer than here. I've also just this moment bought flights for two weeks in Greece in August, for yea and verily we (ie, Rob, Steph, Steph's sister and I) had booked the self-same villa we had two years ago for another week. Now we just have to find at least two more people to come with us. Oops. No, I have no idea what I shall be doing with the second week. I'm sure I'll think of something.

Look, it's my first post in what seems like ages. I'm out of practice.

With Christmas behind me and that nightmare date for those not on PAYE, 31st January, looming ahead, January really ought to be the cheapest month. Unfortunately, I seem unable to pass a bookshop or a cd shop at present without wandering in and finding something I really can't do without. (Incidentally, for those who follow such things, Joan Aiken's very last novel is now out as is the second of John Dickinson's incredibly dark children's fantasy series, The Widow and the King, as are a variety of other things.)

In the meantime, my desk has, by dint of me being the only junior tenant around this week, piled high with lots and lots of briefs and sets of instructions, all of them fast approaching Really Final Extended Deadlines, plus I really need to start making inroads on a major Thing I'm supposed to be doing involving A.N.Other jurisdiction. Plus I'm working on something non-professional and new, which may or may not come to anything.

I should be relatively cheerful, but I feel as though I'm waiting for something. I just don't know what yet. Either that or I'm just bored.

January in my 33rd year. Hmm. W.A.Mozart, Alexander of Macedon, F.Baggins, J.H, Christ. Oh buggerit.

Oh and my shoulder hurts like hell, as it has for weeks now.

This has been a post for the sake of it.

Ho hum.

Accomplished precisely two things this weekend: a hangover and a significant improvement in the cesspit into which my flat had been descending.

Had I been writing this on Sunday evening I would also be able to say I had accomplished the rebirth of my laptop. Unfortunately, shortly after doing so I did something so abysmally stupid that I shudder to think about it, and the end result is that the bastard machine has had to go in for repairs anyway. Significantly more cheaply than originally quoted though: thank something for small mercies. In the meantime I am reduced to borrowing one of the clerks' machines on which to work when there's one free, for the next couple of days. Bugger.

Had there been a Midsomer Murders on last night I wouldn't have been pissing about on the machine while logged in as root and my life would be improved beyond measure. Or possibly somewhat, anyway. So I blame the ITV schedulers. And Janet Jackson, obviously.

***

Last week's case did make it into The Times... I had rather hoped that when a case of mine appeared there it would be in the Law Reports, for arguing a novel and interesting point of law, not in the news section.

***

Still, there are good things in life. They include comp. tickets to the pre-Raphaelite landscapes exhibition for tonight, and a copy of Joan Aiken's penultimate novel. They don't seem to include free sex, free intoxication or free holidays somewhere hot, but I'm sure that's only a matter of time.

***

I just re-read Barry Unsworth's Songs of the Kings and Dan Simmons' Ilium in quick succession. Though both are very good books I don't advise it: I managed to rather confuse myself on which book was which. I'm quite keen to see the Troy film, though I'm not sure Brad Pitt is really going to cut it as Achilles and I forsee another dose of Clash of the Titans/Jason and the Argonauts style lunacy. (I'm pretty sure Simmons references those films in Ilium, by the way.)

Five on a Friday, no pressing work left hurrah.

I don't appear to have any plans for the weekend. Presumably something will emerge, it usually does. I think a fairly quiet weekend would be in order anyway.

I somehow seem to be on a Nancy Mitford binge at present. I honestly think she is seriously underrated, the Jane Austen of the early 20th century, only funnier. Somewhere in the middle of all that I'm also re-reading Tim Severin's Crusader, his account of riding the equivalent of a medieval warhorse all the way from Ireland to Jerusalem on the route of the First Crusade (actually, he stopped riding that horse, a carthorse, after a while when he realised that there was a very good reason those horses tended to be ridden only in battle, and used it for the baggage instead). And, due to my short attention span, there's an eclectic bunch of other stuff in the 'currently reading' pile as well. I really should make some effort to break myself of that habit.

Fans of childrens' books should give Sabriel by Garth Nix a go incidentally. Despite the author's silly name (pseud?) it's extremely good.

And there's Buffy tonight, which everyone says is a fab episode. Life is looking up. Ish.