Day 843

Got to sign on tomorrow. Luckily another 2 months till they start hassling me, according to my calculations. It would be far more productive if they informed me of suitable vacancies. Frankly at the moment I can't see myself working. The ABC caper has given my confidence such a knock that recovery time's hard to estimate. OK, so I've got over the immediate impact by selective amnesia but the overall impression is harder to remove.

Is there some way round it all (apart from winning the Premium Bonds, which could well happen). You won't catch me on the National Lottery nonsense. I reckon I know where the money'll really go.

Started reading Coming Up For Air again.

Day 842

Latin, computing etc. Quite hot: a thundery shower about 7.15pm with very strong downdraughts. Not much else happened today.

Day 841

Went into town to the library in the morning; got the new Viz, rather too much writing and not enough strips, but very funny in parts.

My catalogue order arrived but they'd sent black instead of white, so I returned it via the post office and ordered white by phone. Too easy to order: you could end up paying hundreds a month if you let things get away with you.

Did more Latin; doing quite well this time. What annoys me is silly word order like quo in loco when in quo loco makes far more sense.

In the evening watched Red Dwarf IV and Men Behaving Badly.

On the second bottle of home-brewed wine: very acceptable and quite strong, about 11% I reckon (attempts to work it out by weighing a known volume failed due to lack of accuracy).

Time going very fast at the moment, rather worrying. Noticed this when doing a diary summary last night. Without social interaction the summary is a dead thing. Who'd've thought it would turn out like this?

Day 840

Had a 14-page letter from T this morning recounting her recent doings in minute detail.

Watched Punt & Dennis in the evening. They're improving as the series goes on.

Day 839

Enjoyed Down & Out In Paris & London again.

Pris last night was quite good, with Daphne getting released and a bizarre suicide in the interview room.

Day 838

Did a lot of calculations about sound attenuation without much success. I love that applied maths stuff, I wonder if there're any jobs in it?

Started converting PSAE to QBasic, the fourth translation of the ephemeris prog. Difficulties more from QBasic idiosyncracies than any big probs. Psion batteries getting low after 3½ weeks' fairly intensive use.

Day 837

Extremely hot weather. Experimenting with my screen dump found that if you switch away from it, it runs in the background and copies whatever's on the screen for the foreground task. So I added a delay option and produced some triffic screenshots of some of the Psion applications.

Day 836

Wrote a screen dump prog for the Psion, got it worked out by 9pm. Did a bit of Latin, played gin rummy vs. the computer.

Day 835

Had another look through the Maplin catalogue, saw some nice multimeters. Did a bit more Latin.

Noisy party going on in the neighbourhood this evening: it's over 17 months since I last went to one.

Day 834

Into town in the morning to look round the library. Going to town Mon/Wed/Fri, a resolve I made after the ABC disaster, seems to be working.

Made a coffee cake in the microwave using an old ice-cream tub for a cake tin. Only took 5 minutes to cook, and quite a success.

Started a chart display module for PSAE (the Psion ephemeris). Somewhat hampered by the 'letterbox' display, but never mind.

Day 833

Found that the rechargeable batteries inexplicably did not work to power the Amstrad NVR. Studied more Latin. Making good progress this time: the new Teach Yourself book I got for my birthday is very good.

Watched the result of the Labour leadership election: Tony Blair of course, with John Prescott as deputy. Good luck lads.

In the evening watched Punt & Dennis; much better this week, less dead wood. A month since the end of the ABC caper. Fucking Tory scum bastards.

Day 832

Cashed my Giro, went into town. Kays offered me a free tool kit so I ordered some special walking trainers, which'll extend the life of my brown boots, monstrously hard-wearing as the latter are. I've had them since 1990.

Remembered that the shareware Gin Rummy should work on an XT, successfully transferred it to my own computer.

Day 831

Finally managed to sleep in till 9.20 am, catching up on about a week's lost sleep.

Watched a very good prog about sporting cheats presented by Derek Hatton (!) which I taped yesterday.

Day 830

Went into town to sign on, had to wait a long time again for some reason. Came back, computed, did some Latin.

Day 829

In the evening watched the World Cup final, Brazil beat Italy on penalties, they were the better team I suppose. Al Gore presented the trophy; good lad. And now another four years till another chance to relive the golden salvaged days of the second year at uni.

Got to sign on tomorrow. Ah well. 'It goes on..'

Day 828

Taped the last Masterson Inheritance. Rearranged my room in the afternoon. In the evening watched a prog about the Jupiter collision.

Day 827

Did some successful scanning of logos and the like. In the evening Jupiter, the Moon and Venus all in a line in the western sky together, showing the line of the Ecliptic.

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 will hit Jupiter tomorrow although there won't be much to see from here. Think of it though - bits of ice and rock miles across going at 150,000 mph.

Day 826

Vivid dream last night that I was playing for Ireland in the World Cup (on the strength of my Irish great-grandmother). Jack Charlton substituted me after 75 minutes because I'd only had one touch of the ball. The other players were indignant. We lost 9-1 to Brazil.

Watched Punt & Dennis. Would be much funnier without the watered-down stand-up stuff.

Day 825

It had rained overnight and was overcast and very humid, with low visibility and poor air quality.

Round to my parents' to carry on sorting through the loft. Found my old school shoes, which I must've abandoned when I started wearing boots in 1987. Gave them a good clean, they might do for interviews. 'If you look the part, you'll get the job / In last year's trousers and your old school shoes'.

In the evening watched Bulgaria v. Italy in the semi-final.

Day 824

Beautiful weather and extremely hot. It was too hot even to wear clothes, I spent most of the day just wearing underwear.

Day 823

In the afternoon listened to excellent R4 play The Bonepit while washing my net curtains. In the evening another one, If It Wasn't For Graham Taylor which was very good. Watched Panorama.

Day 822

Sorted out the Jupiter problem. Then worked hard on the aspect module, getting it perfected.

Heard on the news itm that Craig Charles (Lister) had been charged with raping a woman - and worse, jointly charged with some company director, and even worse still, the police are looking for a third bloke. Very sad. Wonder what the rights and wrongs are?

Day 821

Went into town. Tocai was £8.95 so snapped up a £2 saving. Came back and watched Italy beat Spain by cheating, so there goes my 50p e/w. But when Spain scored it took me right back to 1990. Saw some of Brazil v. Holland later.

Day 820

Carried on transferring the ephemeris to the Psion - all planet stuff working except Jupiter, which is inexplicably 40' out. Can't work out where that's coming from. Carry on debugging it tomorrow. While the OPL source code is 24K, about the same as the Pascal, the object code is 10K against 57K, which is the advantage of interpretation and 1 MB ROM.

Watched Red Dwarf and Men Behaving Badly, the latter getting even better and displaying a lot of charm.

Day 819

If the post-uni era was the Real World, what's this? Grim Reality?

A letter from S. this morning, typed a long reply on my Psion.

In the afternoon read The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Day 818

The start of the fourth year since the end of uni. I have now completed a three-year course at the University of Life.
Successfully transferred the sun and moon routines to the Psion; cashed my Giro, went to Sainsburys. Charged up batteries for the bathroom radio. Very unsuccessful day's imaginary betting.

Day 817

Went to scout out battery chargers in the morning, returning in the afternoon to lay out cash. Each Psion battery replacement, est. every 10 days, costs £2 so I'll make the money back after five weeks, which isn't bad.

Started transferring the ephemeris prog to the Psion, getting the GST/Asc/MC parts worked out properly. OPL is quite economical with space because, as it's interpreted, all the run-time routines are in ROM. And 8-byte (~ 15-digit) accuracy too; but even with 107 floating-point variables in the planet routines, everything fits in the suspected 64K limit.

Watched some of Bulgaria v. Mexico. Italy v. Nigeria went to extra time so Pris may go down, though there's a 35-minute filler-type prog in the early hours that could go instead. I'll write and complain otherwise. Giro tomorrow, hopefully.

Day 816

Had to wait ages when I went to sign on.

Typed an invoice on the Psion, printed on my computer, done by using the link and printing to file REM:C:LPT1.WRD (extensions on device names are ignored). Worked perfectly.

Day 815

Very hot and still. More Psion experimentation, wrote a good hex dump program. Watched a prog in the afternoon about cults in Los Angeles.

Got to sign on tomorrow, unfortunately, but I should get some much-needed cash on Wednesday, luckily, because I've spent £400 of the £406 I got on Friday.

Day 814

Up early because I thought it was Monday and I had to sign on. Relieved to be wrong, taped The Masterson Inheritance after listening to Whatever Happened To... .

Continued to experiment with the Psion, putting my imaginary bets onto a spreadsheet with great success and making more experimental use of the serial link. Watched parts of Germany v. Belgium and Spain v. Switzerland. Weather very hot again.

Day 813

Drew the cash out of the bank and got the 3a from Argos and the serial link from Dixons: spent the rest of the day in happy experimentation. Got the link working after a few hiccups: it can go at 19,200 baud which is pretty nippy.

Scanned the local papers for jobs but had no success - my confidence applications-wise is shot to bits since the ABC caper and will take a while to recover.