Day 751

Got a good book from Oxfam about Patience, including a triffic poker version which would make a good prog. Added date and time display to my DOS shell.

Started putting nutrition data onto an Excel spreadsheet.

Answered a library leaflet about the 'unitary authorities' (Tory vote concentration plan). Hopefully the scum'll take a pasting in the local elections on Thursday. I've been thinking a lot about politics recently, wish I'd never got interested in the first place. 15 years of actively malicious scum governments can get you a bit depressed. But will enough people hate them by the next election?

Day 750

Round to my parents' to sort out a computer problem for dad. Very hot today, hazy though with a SW breeze. Came back and carried on with the DOS shell program

Saw a great job in the local paper, pity I haven't got network experience. Ah well.

Day 749

Did a pretty good DOS shell prog capable of reading COMSPEC, noticing internal commands etc. Adding PATH next.

Day 748

Copied loads of data out of the DOS book. Saw Mandela casting his vote on the news. He's waited a while for that.

Quite a good Star Trek TNG, a bit clichéd of course.

Day 747

Same time, same weather, same place. Lovely. Copied vast amounts of interrupt data from the DOS book I got yesterday to disc.

Decided my precise and exact replies to the Restart form would provoke trouble, so rang up for a new form. I'll just put 'Mainly'.

The election started in South Africa today. Who'd've thought it, eh? Everyone seemed pleased enough. Unlike the sell-outs and capitalist invasions of 1989, this is something you can feel proud of. All those years not buying Cape apples paid off. A while back Mandela met a white kid who wanted to be an engineer. N.M. said, 'Don't go leaving the country now, will you? We'll need people like you.' What a bloke.

At uni in the second year 'Free Nelson Mandela' was on the wall in the bogs in Feb. 1990. A week later, when he was released, someone had added 'Ooh! It worked!'

Day 746

Beautiful weather. Smoked first fag of the day in the garden in glorious sunshine. Felt very well and optimistic. Did a flash new CV.

About two D rang up, interrupting my post-dinner coffee. The weather reports were fast approaching so I lied that I had to go to a Restart interview in 3 minutes.

Sorted out stuff I'm keeping as souvenirs in the afternoon, found a lot of stuff I'd forgotten.

Day 745

Quite a lot of computing today. Cleared about 2 M of dead wood off the hard disc all together, leaves me with about 5½ M free, which is close to minimum what with all the temporary files Windows generates (1.9 M to print a not-too-ambitious 20-page document).

Day 744

Into town in the morning. A Games Workshop shop has opened in the Commerce Hole, must visit it some time.

Day 743

More Greek, some cautious scanning. Reconfigured QEdit to run A86 on files.

Watched the 1988 Rock'n'Roll Years which I taped on Wednesday. Made me feel very old.

Day 742

Didn't wake up till 10 am. More Greek.

Day 741

Back a bit better. More Greek. Found out how to use clip art in Microsoft Word. Cashed my giro (new, dynamic colours). Felt rather paranoid.

Watched Star Trek tNG - quite good, certainly a lot better than last week. I still much prefer the old ones though.

Scanned the photo of myself P took in 1989.

Day 740

Backache still really bad. More Greek, doing quite well. More weather maps. No Quantum Leap due to snooker.

Reb is back on Pris, as hinted last week. At first I feared her bonkers, then, after being threatened by Lou and Alice, Lou spots her tugging her collar in that characteristic gesture. Then she tentatively picks up the comb...

Day 739

Had an incredibly stiff back for some reason (probably using the computer in bed last night). Walked glumly into town to sign on. Rather more jobs on the boards these days, mostly part-time of course.

Looked up where the Channel Light Vessel was in the library [parse!]. More Greek. Quite interesting really; because everything has to be deciphered you have to concentrate harder.

Listened to the cricket in the afternoon: Lara made 375, 10 over the record. Quite impressive listening.

Hope my back gets better quickly.

Day 738

Managed to print addresses on envelopes in the afternoon, had previously never been able to.

Copied down the weather reports from coastal stations at 1.55 and 5.50, drew up isobar charts with fair accuracy.

Day 737

Got evening primrose oil and the new Dragon, plus library books including an Ancient Greek primer. Tough stuff but satisfying.

Went round to my parents'. Dad was in a state over his CV, I remained calm and typed it in the afternoon.

Day 736

Restart letter in the morning, with the usual threatening form to fill in. As usual it depressed me for the rest of the day.

Still, wrote the width-distance-angle prog in Pascal. Listened to The Mayor of Casterbridge on R4. In the evening watched Red Dwarf - quite philosophical this week..

So now I have the Restart scum to cope with again. Ah well. I'll get over it.

Day 735

Here we are. 1012 days at uni, 1012 days after uni up to yesterday. This is the first of another 1012 days. Let's hope my luck changes for the better now.

Squally weather, a bit cold, wind N.E. still. Got the size-of-distant-object equations properly worked out, to 99.8% accuracy with the Sun and tolerable accuracy at shorter distances (like 5 yds!)

Day 734

Sweated all morning cutting a slot in the computer chassis so the scanner card'd fit all right. Then a dodgy moment: an over-ambitious scan crashed the system and trashed IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS. I spent an anxious half-hour restoring them from drive A. Without a bootable floppy I'd've beeen in trouble.

Watched Star Trek: the Next Generation but it was crap. I'll try again next week, hopefully there might be another Mintaka. Recent heavy drinking has not done me good.

Day 733

Spent the day using Page Plus. Next: cutting a bit of the metal sheet out of my computer so the scanner card fits properly.

Read Albert Schweitzer's book in the afternoon. Pity the natives couldn't've had the medicine without the cheap rum. Still, be fair, A.S. was against the latter.

Day 732

Rather more paranoid. Composed a new CV, was hampered by being unable to remember what all my O-levels were. Managed to unjam the drawer under my bed by knocking the front off with a lump hammer.

Day 731

Woke up to a thin covering of snow on the ground in the morning! Can't remember snow in April (after Easter too) before.

More scanning. I can now scan with confidence. (!)

Is it just me or does my leg hair grow slower when I drink more?

Day 730

Two years ago, a dreadful day. This year, a good one. These green jeans are great! Got more vodka too.

in the afternoon scanning with still steadily increasing success - even the OCR working in the evening.

Day 729

More scanning. With confidence now. Crashes seem to be related to changing the DPI setting. Moving SCAN to a floppy seems to have worked, but there's no knowing whether it would've worked anyway.

About five M rang up and we went to PC World. They had the scanner for £5 cheaper. But it wasn't there when I looked last Monday, so I'd still've had to wait. M regaled me with tales of her and J's exploits last night at the Triangle.

In the evening watched Red Dwarf - now on III, racing ahead rather with the story.

Day 728

Went into town with M. Went to the library, borrowed the elusive Microsoft Mouse reference manual for her. Came back here, she bringing the Police Stop video I'd oddly heard about on Today in the morning. Watched it, was amazed. Talked till 5.45; she's got access to shareware download in Newcastle, offered to get anything I wanted. Nice of her.

I've had a thought. DMA 1 or 3 is the hard disc: the scanner crashes the system when on the same channel but only when a disc write is attempted. I'll try from a floppy tomorrow.

Day 727

Went into town but had forgotten to cash my Giro, went back, etc. Went to the building society, and the out-of-town Sainsbury's for a 1.5 litre tank of vodka. When I got back M came round, and we fiddled with expansion slots etc till we got the scanner working, producing big 100K images without crashing the computer. I thanked her and she went at three.

At tea-time caught the last in the series of Star Trek, the one (at last) where Kirk is forced to swap bodies with that woman. Very interesting. I must admit Kirk is not wholly likeable, not least because of his confrontational approach to semi-villains which causes so much trouble ('We come in peace - Shoot to kill'). Mind you, it's miles better than the Next Generation which is on next week - despite good eps like the Mintaka one, it's too clean and clear-cut.

Scanned image of Rodice from Halo Jones - when printed out of Paintbrush at 'printer resolution', very clear.

Day 726

Went down to the computer shop, the scanner had arrived. Paid £104 in cash - OCR included. Came back pleased, having saved £15 on what I expected to pay - the balance pays off my shareware debt to mum, and £10 can go into the building society tomorrow.

Messed about in the afternoon with IRQs, DMA channels and the like, with steadily improving results. Scanned a bit of Viz for a test, successfully loaded a .PCX into Windows Paintbrush.

Watched Quantum Leap in the evening.

Day 725

Assailed by scanner doubts.

Day 724

Lovely weather for Easter Sunday but cold. Did various 486 experiments, went round to M's and talked for an hour and a half, about courses, jobs etc. She was impressed by C's front page article in the free paper.
Watched _The Great Escape_ in the afternoon, some scenes cut unfortunately. It's the 50th anniversary of the real one this week.

Did an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the Grand National winner (Southern Minstrel).

Day 723

Got the new Viz from the shop, rather too much Virgin propaganda.

Day 722

Having had rather a lot of leisure time recently, went round to my parents' and made myself useful so mum could enjoy the bank holiday.

Apparently tomorrow is not a holiday, even though the library will be shut, so, my scanner might arrive. Worked on programming projects, including a program to return useful values to batch files via ERRORLEVEL. Also converted my calendar program to QBASIC.

Re-did that list of recommended jobs, found Computer Programmer right at the top. Wonder how you get into it.

Watched Red Dwarf, the one I'd heard about where they go into a parallel universe and meet Ms Rimmer and Ms Lister. Very good.