So, its been a fair while, I’ve been getting jip off of people about not writing, but to be honest, there’s not exactly been a lot happening in my neck of the woods which is all that exciting. I’ve pooled everything I can remember from the last two weeks and bunged them into one post…

Sat 14th – Featured a grandma squashing her child by clipping her foot on a paving slab on albany junction and falling straight onto him whilst carrying. It might sound fairly amusing, everyone I tell laughs – but she was really upset and probably the most shocking thing I’ve seen in a while. She needed a lot of consolation before she was ok to carry on and stopped crying. The kid was fine, and in fact the only reason he was bawling was because his granny was. Fortunately she was with family so there was shedloads of people on the scene to help fairly sharpish.

Also featured in the day was my first coffee in ages, which I was tricked into thinking was a hot chocolate by the staff at Starbucks and couldn’t be arsed to faff about and change. It wasn’t as bad as I remember, but I don’t think I’ll be becoming a convert any time soon.

Sun 15th – Was the night of the gig of the mighty De La Soul, who were every bit as fantastic as everyone makes out. Prior to this was a bit of fun round the park with people throwing (well, almost everyone throwing) frisbee and galanvanting about. It was kinda hindered somewhat by the destruction of said frisbee by Jon underfoot. I took that as a sign that I should maybe be getting off to Bristol. There’s some (really lame) pictures of the gig in my gallery.

Tue 17th – Our department held a ‘research retreat’ which really wasn’t anything of the sort because of being held at uni due to cuts in the departmental budget…I was fairly scared of this due to putting myself up for prime time firing and all, but it actually went alright when I got into the swing of things. The evening was Em’s surprise birthday party which was great, meeting lots of her random friends and discovering exciting new stuff about the old ones.

Sometime this week also featured my second sighting ever in my life of a mouse, running along Inverness Place. The first was a tad more scary as it jumped out of our dog food store at home and darted up my arm…I would’ve thought that I’d have seen far more by now with the amount of student accomodation I’d been living in.

Fri 20th – Went off to Sumo at Clwb Ifor, which was fab as it featured hardly any drunken fools at all (as in those who spoilt it), and everyone was just having a good time. The dj (D Ramirez) was pretty damn good, even if he did look like a bit of a tidy boy.

Sat 21st – After having a late one yesterday, I bummed about the house before going off to tesco to do a weekly shop. I think this might of been a bit of a mistake as in my sleepiness, I forgot to buy the main thing I went for and bought bedding which clashed horribly with my room colour. Burgundy + Dark Blue = Mess. Anyway, I spent far more than I should of done and then spent the week trying to recoup my losses by surviving on what I’ve bought without making another trip in a while.

Tue 22nd – Went off to see Star Wars 3, which I really hated due to the excruciatingly drawn out pants script. I think I would of enjoyed it more if I hadn’t heard all the guys talking about in the labs before I went. I’ve also been accused of not being a true computer science geek (even by one of Em’s mates) becuase I didn’t go to see the 12:30am showing on its opening day 5 days prior – I’m not that crazy.

Sat 28th – Finally went to see the amazing Mr Scruff, who was performing an absolutely mental 6 hour set. He played everything from funk, soul, reggae, breaks, drum n bass and back again whilst being bombarded with various tea-related imagery (my kind of man). The only downside was the fact we had to leave an hour early because my mate Dan was feeling a tad sleepy after his previous night too. I also think that while it was fab that we got put up in Bristol by Jon C that I would’ve been better off travelling home the same night – I was extremely tired due to sleeping on lounge floor and getting woken at 9:40am after going to bed at 3:30am….these devoted Christians and their early morning Church ways!

This night also featured my third ever sighting of a mouse – a doormouse this time..

Sun 29th – After Mr Scruff and driving back to Cardiff, I was feeling the burn a bit and tried to sleep it off, which didn’t happen as the shower and drive I’d already taken had woken me up too much. In the end I just vegged out listening to music (a new Scruff LP) and browsing the web.

In the evening I went over to Jon Matthias’, had stir fry and watched random comedy dvd’s. The best of which was ‘this is Spinal Tap’, which in my opinion is fantastic, featuring lots of laugh-out-loud moments.

Anyways, I’ve actually spent an eternity writing this so I’m off to enjoy my Bank Hol…

I’ve been feeling a bit off today – maybe its the fact I had to cook dinner amidst housemates washing up at like 8:30pm yesterday, I had my wall banged on by neighbours last night due to noisy Tim (he has a gig soon so can be forgiven), or couldn’t get to sleep last night again for the same reason, radiators blaring and a noisy neighbour party or maybe its because I had to wait around forever at home today to collect a parcel from the Royal Snail.

It’s extremely quiet at uni as well, due to students in exams (woohoo) – although this means far more time to my work, it invariably means more work as well and I have a whole host of things to do for it. Anyway, all of these things combined have made me quite depressed of late so I needed cheering up…

I almost found the answer, did a good boost anyways. A face transformer courtesy of St Andrews uni, which manipulates a head-shot to create a bunch of different takes on me….from artist impression to various continents and a particularly butch woman (I wouldn’t have it any other way).

I’m thinking I like the manga one best…

I’ve had the fairly bizarre experience this week of attending the CCGrid 05 conference at city hall. This is my first conference and by all means a first introduction to my peers outside of the group involved with the PASOA project I am working upon. I think the most interesting thing is how normal each of them actually are – I was expecting them all to have some sort of superiority complex for some reason. One thing I’ve learnt in academia thus far is that the further you move up the rungs of its ladder, the more respect you obtain and the more at ease I feel talking to people about, well, anything – most of the topics which come up are rarely to do with your work (or maybe I lead the conversation this way).

I always seem to get stressed about events like this in my academic calendar and the fact that I was busy Sunday with Church, lunch, afters, helping people move and then having to go into Uni late to collect stuff in prep for the 6:30 start on Monday means I must of got all of 4 hours sleep. I had so much stuff doing my head in it was stupid and had to resort to sleeping on my back (an extremely rare occurence, I usually wake in this state), which achieved nothing. This became a bit obvious on monday when asked the content of the 1 hour’s worth talks I’d just attended in the afternoon – for which I wasn’t able to give an answer.

In the evening, I had the exciting experience of attending my first fashion show (not actually mine, a fair trade one attended by me, organised by the Matthias’s) which for some reason made me think about hollyoaks and neighbours, who always used to be having them when I was back home. It was great, aside from the fact I was so tired by now I almost fell asleep in the dark and Rob and I looked like prats in front of an audience trying to find the edge of steps we needed to descend because we’d got there a little late. Housegroup this evening was on a similar tip, I struggled from falling over a couple of times whilst in ‘worship’. I’d best go to bed.

I’ve had a really great week this week, mainly due to spending a large majority of it with the wonderful Matthias’s and crew. I’m not sure if this was altogether intentional, but it was great however it happened. I enjoy the crazy banter, furious sarcasm and witty jokes which are often made at others expense….

Monday we spent the day at Jon and Cathy’s eating and playing board games due to the unfortunate weather that occurred outside. Later featured some full-on frisbee action from the lads (well me), and all the girls flailing about like wallys in the park, followed by everyone trying to break the childrens playground there. Wraps back at Katies was a great way to end a fab day.

Wednesday we went over the Matthias’s again to have fud and watch a film I’ve been quoting for ever, “Happy Gilmore”, which should be featured in any self respecting Adam Sandler fan’s collection. I think it may have been understood and amused all who attended, which is always good.

Thursday was a Matthias free night (I had to try to keep back the tears) to prepare for the Friday night shennanigans of board games and food once again. I think it might be a while before ‘Rat Race’ makes an appearance on my favourite games list and as I have been given numerous nicks for the impending doom I release with a dice roll on anyones behalf, I believe the same may be said by most others too. It brought back those competitive streaks in me once again and turned me into an apathetic evil grumpy guts, instead of my usual jolly self (?!). Also, its probably the last time we’ll dare a Morgan to eat something..

Today I spent the whole day farting about building a simple rss gathering script – basically compiling all the Cardiff Vineyard blogs into one page. I get fed up having to trawl all through the same websites everyday, so I’ve taken to use RSS/ATOM aggregators to do the job for me. Bit depressing that I chose this over sitting in the park in the sun though. Anyway, said script can be found here, beware its very slow (but fun), if I’ve missed someones blog, please let me know. I know about the various problems like:

• A) Viv’s feed is busted
• B) The same photo’s show every time
• C) It’s not true XHTML

but to that I say “Gimme a break, would ya? You do better!”.

My blog’s found its way onto a few new websites too, the process of domination is making some headway. Ooh, and I also now have the ability to comment on photo’s, if you should so wish. There’s some wonderful specimens in the gallery, prime for mocking, so please do.