Tuesday, January 31, 2006

My mate Mark had a job interview this morning in Nottingham. Being a fairly high-level post he was going for he was required to do a presentation as part of the whole process; one of those presentations when you have no advance warning about the subject.

He's shown to a small room and left there alone to put together his presentation. The only trouble is that the presentation was about some newly created government initiative he'd never heard of. He was about think 'f*ck it', get up and walk right of the interview when he suddenly realised he had his mobile in his pocket - his WAP-enabled mobile.

Seconds later he'd Googled the name of the government initiative and had everything he needed to know about it at his fingertips. Well, the job ad said they were looking for someone with initiative. He'll find out how he got on within the next few days.

Posted by Antz at 8:42 PM | Permalink | | |

So I've made it to four weeks without cigarettes and haven't lapsed once. I'm not going to pretend that it has been easy in the slightest because it hasn't been. Several times each day my brain has screamed at me to give in and have a fag and each time i've resisted the temptation. I'm not sure if it's getting easier now or not but I know it will in the end and then I'll be properly free from fags forever. Incidentially according to my little Firefox widget I've now not smoked 567 fags and saved myself the princely sum of £139.00.

Posted by Antz at 8:48 AM | Permalink | | |

Monday, January 30, 2006

There's no denying that everyone has at least one feature they'd like to deal with. I have a small red blemish on my face I will one day pay to have have zapped with high-powered lasers; my brother has a little less hair on the top of his head then he'd like; and then there's my mate Stu.

Stu has slightly bushy eyebrows that, unless carefully tended, drift inwards until he has a Noel Gallagher monobrow. Like all of our minor imperfections his eyebrows aren't a life-threatening complaint.

Every month or so Stu goes to have his brows sculpted so there's no monobrow action going on. Normally it's not that obvious that he's been waxed. The stylist just waxes away the worst of the unwanted hair and he's left with a pair of natural-looking brows. Well, that's the idea anyway.

It would seem that his 'stylist' has spent a lot of time recently working on some of Leicester's more flambouyent men; possibly some of whom enjoy the occasional evening in an outfit covered from head to toe in sparkles. Yes, our normally mildly bushy-eyebrowed friend has, over the weekend, magically been transformed into some kind of off-duty drag queen due to the stylist's over-zealous efforts.

Posted by Antz at 1:33 PM | Permalink | | |

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Over the years I've bought and downloaded hundreds of typefaces ranging from classics like Garamond through to a pile of terrible fonts knocked out by people in their bedrooms and stuck on the net for all to try. I'm not sure which is worse though, the fact that in a mad moment I (rashly) decided to download these font-ensteins in the first place or that 5-10 years later I'm still moving them from Mac to Mac to Mac like some kind of pixelated security blanket.

The arrival of the new iMac has once again seen me installing all my typefaces, running them through FontDoctor to weed out all the damaged ones and then putting the whole lot into Suitcase so I can easily manage them. Of course I could manage them much more easily if I just binned the 80% of them I've never used.

Of course one day I might find a need to use a typeface made out of cannibals or one where the type looks like it was designed on an Etch-a-sketch.

Posted by Antz at 6:23 PM | Permalink | | |

I came across the work of Olivo Barbieri while wandering round the net today. He has been working on a series of arial photos that look much more like models than the real world because of the way they are shot; everything looks strangely fake. You can see more of his work in this article in Metropolis Magazine.

Posted by Antz at 9:01 AM | Permalink | | |

Thursday, January 26, 2006

My parents appeared on a BBC TV programme called Flog It today. The show was pre-recorded some four months ago so it was hardly a shock but none-the-less it's very odd to see your folks on TV when you're more used to them watching it!

Dad's a bit of an antique collector and so I've always wondered how long it would take him to get onto an antiques and collectibles TV show; I always expect to see him wandering around in the background on BBC's Bargain Hunt while the contestants try to find bargains at some damp antique fayre.

Last year dad heard that 'the TV' was coming to town and so he grabbed my mum and a couple of choice collectibles and went to see how they'd get on. It turned out they had just what the film crew was looking for.

In case you haven't seen Flog It before the idea is that members of the public bring some object or other to one of their valuation days and a select few are chosen to be on TV and have their item sold at auction - basically it's half way between Antiques Roadshow and Bargain Hunt in the evolutionary scale of antique shows.

The whole point of the show is to see how each person's item is going to do at auction. Will Aunt Jane's old teapot turn out to be some rare 17th Century Dutch piece or a 1985 copy from Woolworths? Will Derek and Claire from Bromley discover that their grandmother got shot of her diamond ring back in the 30s and replaced it with a glass copy to fund her gin habit? You know the kind of thing.

Unlike most people on the show Dad's 'treasure' wasn't an heirloom; unless by heirloom you mean 'bought at an antiques fayre about a year ago'. It was one of the reasons the producers wanted to include it. I think they hoped he'd lose some money at auction.

I won't go into all the gory details but despite a lot of smiling from my parents on TV you could see the disappointment on their faces after the item sold for 'slightly' less than dad had bought it for in the first place; but I'm sure the fact that they'll be local celebrities for weeks to come will more than make up for it.

I've got to come to terms with the fact that every few months my dad and mum will appear on my TV unannounced in re-run after re-run after re-run.

Posted by Antz at 7:48 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

According to the counter on my homepage it's been 21 days since I stopped smoking, which means I've now saved over £106 by not smoking some 431 cigarettes. It's proving to be tough at times and easy at others and I'm sureI'vee been a bit snappy at times.

The annoying thing is how smoking seems to worm its way into your head and tries to trick you into giving in. The patches seem to be helping (though whether the effect is psychosomatic remains to be seen) and I really do feel that I've smoked my last fag for ever.

Posted by Antz at 2:31 PM | Permalink | | |

"Designed by Apple in California" is the first thing you see when you open the iMac's pristine white box. You can't help but wonder how long the Apple design team spent creating such minimalist packaging.

Once you've admired the packaging it's time to take everything out of the box and get it set up; pausing briefly to admire the brilliant design of the iMac itself. Of course setting up the hardware itself takes seconds as everything is pretty much all-in-one. Connecting a keyboard and the (oh so lovely) mighty mouse is hardly rocket science.

The excitement of getting a new mac is always tinged with the feeling of dread that comes with having to reinstall everything from your old machine. Extracting your life and then rebuilding it again takes a lot longer than plugging in a couple of USBs; especially as the Migration Assistant can't cope with my old G4's post-fitted Firewire ports.

At least by manually moving everything I can do a bit of spring cleaning and ditch some of the programs that never really caught on in my world; goodbye NeoOffice, so long Pheeder, you'll be missed... not.

A few hours later and it looks like my (i)Life is back to normal. The programs I need are all there, my tunes are back inside iTunes, my photos are back inside iPhoto and eight years worth of emails are safely installed into their new home, Thunderbird.

I still wonder if i'll ever get to know anyone with an iChat account so that I can use my built-it iSight to chat to.

Posted by Antz at 8:58 AM | Permalink | | |

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Like most of the online world I have an eBay account and it always amazes me that no matter what I need I can find it up for sale; kitchen cabinet doors that match my current ones (took a few weeks to find), scalpel blades (for artwork not surgery I should add), replacement Sky+ remote controls... I've found them all on eBay.

The one thing I rarely do is put my unwanted stuff up for sale. It always seems like too much effort and anyway who'd want my unloved junk anyway?

Last week I broke with tradition and decided to try sticking my pre-upgrade mobile on eBay to see if anyone wanted it? There's nothing wrong with it except it's a Sanyo s750 which generally seems to be regarded as one of the worst phones ever invented. It's too big, too slow, too buggy and too ugly.

Put a bit of effort in on the description and did my best to make sure that if people were looking for a mobile like mine they would find it. I put it on for the princely sum of a fiver. Someone could end up with a seriously cheap (although ugly) mobile.

The bidding came to an end last night and it looks like there was some serious bidding going on in the final hours. The 'lucky' bidder ended up forking out £66 plus shipping for it.

Time to go up in the attic and see whatever 'treasures' I can get rid of. Pair of questionable armchairs anyone?

Posted by Antz at 8:32 AM | Permalink | | |

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Ever since I was a kid I've had problems with my eyes. While I was an infant I had a squint which meant having to wear an eye-patch on and off for a couple of years as well as surgery to straighten my eyes up. Despite all of this the quality of vision I have in my right eye is still pretty bad and because it's down to my optical nerve not having developed property my vision can't be fixed with glasses.

This morning I find myself at the opticians having my bi-yearly checkup to see if the condition of my eyes has changed since the last visit. The reason I'm making the effort is because it seems that my vision is getting worse, David has complained about how I squint when I'm watching the TV plus I've been getting headaches at work over the last couple of weeks.

I run through my history with the optician and then she and I go through the whole 'Is it better in 1 or 2' process that is having your vision tested. No matter what she tries with my right eye the result is always the same... fuzzy vision with blind spots.

The outcome is (as ever) that medical science can't do a great deal to help me out. The optician recommends making sure I take plenty of breaks at work which should deal with the headaches and to have a re-test if I'm still having problems. At least I've avoided glasses for the moment.

Posted by Antz at 10:30 AM | Permalink | | |

Friday, January 20, 2006

We had to head out tonight in pursuit of a new fridge as for no apparent reason ours suddenly decided to stop making anything cold last night. The interior light was working but no matter how you adjusted the dial inside the fridge it simply wouldn't leap into action.

We'd debated getting 'a man' out to look at it but decided it would cost nearly as much to get someone out to fix the fridge as to replace it with a new Category A Efficient model. So it was off after work to the local shopping park to look at replacements with the hope of picking one up and (with a bit of luck) getting it back home in the back of the car.

Luckily we knew pretty much what we were looking for and had even done a quick check online to see how competitive the local electrial superstores were going to be. We ended coming away with a double bargain as we were offered the display unit of the fridge we wanted at 10% off the already reduced sale price.

We nearly succumed to buying a US-Style fridge freezer made by LG instead of our 'budget' choice. It was fantastic - but only £500 over budget. Today was about getting an affordable fridge not making some life-statement by buying a cooler the size of a small family hatchback.

Surprisingly the MINI managed to get the fridge in the back with the tailgate up so I showly headed back home with David following in his car; just in case the fridge should suddenly decide to make a leap for it onto the road. We did, I should point out, tie the thing down before driving off.

Posted by Antz at 12:10 AM | Permalink | | |

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Sometimes things don't go the way you expect them to; well that seems to be the case with with snake and hamster at Tokyo Zoo. Originally the hampster was put into Aochan the Snake's cage as his lunch but the two have become friends and now live together. The full story is on BBC Online

Posted by Antz at 5:22 PM | Permalink | | |

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

I realise I've posted a couple of times about my progress and you'll probably be bored of me going on about it but today is the fifteenth day since I stopped smoking.

This isn't the first time I've managed to stop smoking for a period of time but I'm sure (this time) this is it forever. I feel a lot stronger about having stopped this time round than I ever have before and truly think I'm starting to get over the worst of the pangs. I am using patches to get me through the worst of them anyway but even so there's a lot of willpower involved in not sparking up.

According to some website I saw today I've already saved over £75, although I have to say I'm not feeling the health benefits that my no-smoking plan goes on about just quite yet; but still, there's plenty of time for that.

Posted by Antz at 9:03 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

For the last few years David and I have moved away from celebrating the arrival of the New Year in a club or a bar to bringing the whole celebration to us; in the form of a big dinner party where in exchange for one bottle of good champagne per head we'll give our 10-12 guests a great evening of celebration and a three course meal. The guest-list is fairly fluid each year. Some people are lucky enough to be invited every year while others come and go. It's always a blast.

Having done these parties for a few years we're pretty wise about the multitude of setbacks that can befall us. We've enjoyed fire and flood in the past and are still waiting for pestilence to make its entrance (probably in the form of some hard to lose STD). This year the champagne obviously got to people far too quickly as by midnight we'd already had at least 6 champagne glasses smashed and enough bubbly was spilt onto the living room carpet to fill a whole bottle.

Once of the guests (who will remain nameless) felt the desire to hold Court on the stairs wearing nothing except a pair of white briefs and a very big smile. For a good hour he was the star of the show with other gayers circling round him like sharks waiting to attack. Luckily before they could get their teeth into him he was dragged off to a side-room to be sobered up just enough so that he could toast the New Year in.

At about half one someone got a bit heavy-handed with the volume knob on the stereo when their favourite tune came on... pop went the bass speakers and all we were left with was the fizzing and popping of the tweeters. Tunes were only restored once we'd gone up into the loft and rummaged around for a spare pair of JBL Creature speakers.

One of our guests drank so much that she had to lie down for an hour and then woke up believing aliens had abducted her. She was clearly shaken by the experience; so much so that she proceeded to fall off of the sofa, hitting her head on a large candelabra on the way down. For a few seconds (as, one by one, the candles fell from the candelabra hitting her as she lay on the floor) you couldn't do anything other than laugh. The next 30 minutes spent dealing with NHS Direct wasn't so fun.

The last guest got off to bed at 9am and David (always the last man standing) managed to stay awake until 11am when finally everything caught up with him. That afternoon he was found fast asleep in the living room with the last of the champagne in one hand and TV remote in the other.

Must have been a great party then.

Posted by Antz at 11:57 PM | Permalink | | |

Monday, January 16, 2006

An overheard conversation between a mother and son in the queue at SportsWorld:

Mum: "Are you gonna pay for these or do you want me to?"

Son: "Mmmmm, can you sort it out for me? I can't deal with it right now."

Mum: "What do you mean?"

Son: "I can't be doing with all that speaking to the checkout girl and then they want your money. Then they count it and everything. I just can't be dealing with that kinda stuff. It's too much like hard work."

Posted by Antz at 7:52 PM | Permalink | | |

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Trying to keep myself busy at the moment so that I don't think about my cigarette-free life too much; so this afternoon I've been swapping a couple of kitchen cabinets around. All in a day's work for a DIY-superhero!

My kitchen is pretty big but the last owners decided to save a bit of cash by fitting as few cupboards as they could get away with, but then blew the budget by adding loads of pricy wine racks and open-corner cabinets. Great if you've loads of wine and niknaks to display but shit if you want somewhere to put your groceries.

The obvious solution was to add some extra units to give us more storage space and worktop; trouble is that the manufacturer stopped making my kitchen a couple of years back. Bastards.

Before Christmas I found someone selling matching kitchen cabinets on da 'Bay. I'd been keeping an eye out for a couple of months in the hope that someone would dispose of identical kitchen units as mine and, luckily, someone did. A hundred quid and a journey to Leeds later I have a garage half full with oak cabinetry. A lot of good it'll do in there!

So this afternoon I made tentative steps towards adding in the extra cupboards by ripping out one of the open corner units and replacing it with a proper cabinet. Not a big job it has to be said, but it kept me occupied for an hour or so and has tided up the paperwork blackspot just inside the kitchen door.

Posted by Antz at 9:00 PM | Permalink | | |

While David and I were shopping at our local out-of-town shopping centre, Fosse Park, today we decided to grab something to eat from their cavernous food court. It's one of those massive enclosed courtyards with ten or so food vendors around the outside (as well as two mobile phone shops and a perfume store too for some reason). You'll find the finest gastronomic delights (!) here from the likes of Mickey D, Pizza Hut and KFC.

I spend much of my life attempting to avoid the unneeded extra pounds that devouring junk food provides but, every now and again, you just have to treat yourself to a bit of unhealthy take away. David always goes for a couple of Mickey D's 99p burgers as, in his opinion, they are the furthest thing from real food you can buy and I tend to indulge myself with some of The Colonel's finest.

As I kid it was a real treat to have a couple of bits of KFC chicken when my brother and I went out for the day with my parents. I grew up in a world where everything we ate was homemade and so occasional treats like delicious 'finger kicking good' Kentucky Fried Chicken were few and far between.

Sadly it seems that these days KFC's secret recipe chicken just doesn't have that magic 'finger kicking good' quality any more as all I wanted to do after eating mine was to go back in time a few minutes and go somewhere else instead. Instead of lovely pieces of chicken in a crisp coating of herbs and spices I ended up with soggy greasy lump of chickens with so little meat on that it wasn't really worth the effort. Truly disappointing.

Posted by Antz at 10:45 AM | Permalink | | |

Saturday, January 14, 2006

If you've been round these parts for some time you'll notice that today I've made a few changes to the blog and the site in general. On the blog you should find that the posts are now easier to read because i've made the type bigger with more space between the lines (or 'increased the leading' as us graphic designers would say).

Across the site I've tweaked the design at the top of the pages to add a little more colour to the design and use up the grey space between the menu and the browser window. It doesn't do anything other than look pretty.

Behind the scenes I've completely redesigned the page structure so that I could get rid of the frames that Antzonline has used since day one. Frames are, after all, so 20th century! IT does mean that people should find it easier to bookmark inside pages.

Posted by Antz at 8:49 PM | Permalink | | |

Friday, January 13, 2006

This isn't a movie review site and I've got no ambition to become the next Jonathan Ross or Barry Norman but I did want to say a couple of things about Brokeback Mountain (or, as I keep accidentially calling it, 'Bareback Mountain').

Firstly I wanted to say that it's quite possibly one of the best films either David or I have seen in ages and secondly I want you to put the idea that its gonna be full of man-on-man action out of your mind and just accept it for being a brilliant love story which just happens to be about a couple of poofs.

Posted by Antz at 11:00 PM | Permalink | | |

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Not going to drone on about the whole no smoking thing but do want to point out it's now been 10 days since I stopped smoking. It's still proving to be tricky and I'm noticibly more on-edge than normal (just ask David) but i'm getting there.

Posted by Antz at 1:38 PM | Permalink | | |

The mens toilets at Vue Cinema, Leicester

I head into the large toilets and walk right to the end of the room to use one of the twenty or so urinals which are arranged in a big arc. Following the unwritten rules about communal toilets I take up position at the central one and go about my business. Seconds later someone walks in and starts shouting. I do my best to ignore him despite wanting to turn round to see what's going on. He continues to shout in strange voices and I realise he's clearly having a shouting match with himself. Do you have any idea how hard it is to piss while someone is going mental behind your back?

I finally have a quick glance over my shoulder to see that while he's still having a one-man heated debate he's started to use one of the urinals; then, without stopping pissing moves to the next one, then the next, then the next, gradually gettting closer to the one I'm using.

Luckily I finish my business and button-up before he gets to me. I leave him to his own unique way of using the facilities, hoping he wasn't gonna see the same movie as me.

Posted by Antz at 10:09 AM | Permalink | | |

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Is it sad to get into work and sit down and watch the whole of Steve Jobs' Keynote webcast from Macworld in San Francisco? I'm not a sad computer geek but I do love to know what's going to happen in the world of the Mac.

Trouble is watching Steve go on about the lovely new range of Intel-powered imacs suddenly made me realise that i've gone about the whole 'new monitor' situation completely arse-about-face. Why am I spending over £300 on a new flat-screen monitor and video card when know that old G4 is getting very near to the end of its life and will soon need upgrading for something a little nippier?



Anyway, i've made a bit of a rash decision and splashed out on a nice and shiny Intel-powered iMac from the AppleStore. I've also arranged to send back my Formac monitor and cancelled my video card order as well. It's probably all a bit rash but sometimes you've just got to treat yourself.

Posted by Antz at 1:07 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Over the last few years I've had a love/hate relationship with the gym; sometimes only managing a workout every few months. When I moved jobs last summer I signed up for a new gym which is on my journey home from work so there's no excuse for me not to do an hour or so in the gym. Sadly after a month I found that I stopped going again. Always the same story... home beats gym.

Tonight (for the first time since August) I actually managed to force myself into the gym for an hour. The main reason was to see if spending a bit of time on the treadmill would help take my mind off of my smoke-free life. What did help me take my mind off of the lack of fags was the incredibly fit lad using the treadmill directly in front of me. I could have jogged for hours.

Really got to beat my gym-avoidance and get back into some kind of regiment. After all what's the point of paying for gym membership if I don't actually use the gym.

Posted by Antz at 11:01 PM | Permalink | | |

I'm obviously aware that stopping smoking isn't easy but I would have hoped that by the start of my second week without fags it would be getting easier rather than harder. The first few days proved to be pretty bearable but as the excitement about quitting has faded the feeling that I want a dose of nicotine is getting stronger. I'm sure it'll pass.

My resolve is very strong and I've got no intention of starting again. Compared to my failed attempts over the last few years am doing very well and really can see me making it this time. I just want these God-awful cravings to end. The first three weeks are meant to be the hardest and so I'm a third of the way through the toughest part of my challenge.

It would be very easy to comfort-eat my way through the worst cravings but having spent the last six months losing 35lbs in weight I don't want to start piling the lbs back on.

Posted by Antz at 10:34 AM | Permalink | | |

Friday, January 06, 2006

A couple of months back I out-grew my office at work and my team up-sized to a brand new office-space out of everyone's way; new furniture, new plants and in fact new staff. There's just one small downside to this; while I have all the space I now need I don't have any windows. The overhead lighting does its best to recreate natural daylight but you can't help notice from time to time that you have no idea what's going on outside.

Being in an totally artificially lit office didn't really bother me as a smoker as every couple of hours I could sneak down the fire escape for a quick fix nicotine and natural light. Now a small patch on my arm is dealing with my need for nicotine I don't get to see natural daylight at all, except while I head out to grab some lunch. Thank God I don't get my lunch brought in.

I didn't think that working in a daylight-free office would really bother me (I've worked in totally artificially-lit offices before; in fact when I used to spend most of my life doing digital retouching having a daylight-free office was a serious advantage.) however during this last week I've found that I've really missed seeing brief glimpses of the nondescript trading estate on which I work each day.

I'm going to look into whether we can do something with the office lighting to make it slightly more suitable; I've been told that in some countries offices in public buildings without natural light have to be fitted with tubes that emulate daylight. I imagine these are similar to the ones used to treat people with SAD.

Posted by Antz at 5:52 PM | Permalink | | |

Thursday, January 05, 2006

I've been having real Mac-related dilemmas recently as my seven year-old 21 inch monitor is on its way out. Month-by-month the right side of the display has been gradually turning redder which isn't a good sign.

I've been keeping my eye out for something flat to replace the beast and recently found a lovely Formac monitor on sale that would compliment my G4 perfectly. Goodbye ugly monitor, hello plenty thin monitor.

Except, now it's arrived, I suddenly have discovered that Formac use the (only found on the G5) DVI monitor connector on their range of monitors. My only solution is to buy and install a £100 DVI PCI card so I can get my new screen up and running.

The whole situation would have been better if anyone in the UK actually had a suitable DVI card I could buy. So far everyone I've tried has em on backorder. Bugger.

Posted by Antz at 2:22 PM | Permalink | | |

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