Transpocalypse (written with the benefit of a good night’s sleep)

What a strange 48 hours it has been.

Friday was spent rushing around, packing everything I thought I might need and making a HUGE packed lunch (good call as its turns out – I had enough for the journey home). A friend helpfully points out that a local garage rents out Tom-Tom sat -navs. Sadly I will be 50 miles away before they even open. One for next time maybe. Eventually I manage to get to sleep.

Saturday morning I awake at 6.30am and have a decent breakfast and check my turnips (Animal Crossing: Wild World). Then I washed, dressed and loaded the car, with more luggage than I normally take on a long weekend. A quick text to Richard Eichmann to wake him up, and I’m off.

The drive to Norwich is clear and stress free, but I forget that getting to Richard’s involves a 15 trek through the city.

And he’s been awake for 10 minutes when I arrive.

After a panicked search for his passport (he looks younger than he is, and worries about over-zealous bouncers) we give up and set off.

The bulk of the journey is pretty smooth sailing, if tiring, and we also discover than when you get further west than Newark on Trent, all the services dry up. The Derbyshire Dales are spectacular although the route is very twisty and on the edge of huge drops, and I have flashbacks to Sega Rally (“Easy right baby!”).

We got to Liverpool in an amazing 6 1/2 hours.

It’s when we exit the M62 and enter the greater Liverpool area that it gets a bit tricky. AA directions are woefully inadequate and ignore useful things like landmarks:

Richard: “We’re looking for a turn off for the Royal Liverpool Hospital.”

Me: “Errr. We have two exits labelled for the hospital.”

Richard: “B5340?”

Me: “Neither of then. Oh bugger, let’s stay on this road. What are we looking for next?”

We get directions from a local who was very helpful but seemed incredibly puzzled that we were asking, and eventually find the hotel. And the full car-park.

Minutes away is a bit of waste ground marked as a car park. Except it closes at five. And doesn’t open on Sunday, so I can’t leave it locked in overnight. The owner suggests we leave it in his car park and keep an eye on the long stay by the hotel.

It works out OK in the end, and I get a space.

We spend the next couple of hours chilling, watching some film with Judi Dench and Stephen Fry in, and speculating why the lobby of a Liverpool hotel is full of local girls checking in.

We get tarted up and head for the proposed meeting in the Lisbon. The receptionist has never heard of the Lisbon, but confirms the road we’re heading for is correct. And then we discover why all the girls earlier – the front steps are covered in a fluffy pink hen party. And they are overjoyed to see a tranny! Smiles and cheers all round – its great to be a tranny!

We get to the Lisbon with no problems, and have a drinkie. The regulars barely raise an eyelid, and the lace seems nice. We’re soon joined by Joanna and Valerie who look amazing (and make me feel a little like a backwater novice, but it soon passes). And within minutes we are joined by a whole gaggle of trannies and partners. Many I didn’t know, but I recognised Becky , Jane , Chrissy , Beth, and Clarissa . Apologies to (among others) Sophie, Isobel and Penny who I know I met, but can’t connect the names to the faces in my camera.

We head off to the Mandarin, and get there as planned for 8. This is probably the most sociable part of the evening and much chat ensues. Although Bex does the rounds the seating plan sort of splits us into two camps, but it’s all good. We are joined soon after by four locals and another Norfolk trannie with her partner (making 30% of the group from East Anglia). Unfortunately we don’t get the main course till 10! The food was pretty good (stingy rice portions though) but I’ll draw a veil over the bill. Maybe paying separately might be a good idea next time though as down on the low table we were pretty thrifty with food and drink.

Clubbing is where is sort of goes a bit Pete Tong. Liverpool is freezing, and we all suffer for our miniskirts! Navy Bar is our first stop, and I’ve got to admit that even by comparison to Great Yarmouth clubs, it’s a bit of a dive. Big room with a bar and a DJ. And a ratty sofa. The music is way too loud for me and there is nowhere to escape the din.

We huddle in the corner and finish our drinks before moving on again.

On the way to G-Bar we are offered pills by some very friendly locals, right there on the street, but they seem OK with our refusals.

We stop for a cash machine, and I finally get to have a chat with Jane. Smart girl, and very nice.

We get to G-Bar and it’s a fiver to get in. We try Garlands, and that’s £10. We mill around a bit pondering in the freezing cold, and Becky announces that Jane is not feeling too good. She apologises and they go off home. We decide to give G-Bar a go. It’s packed. And I don’t mean “a bit full”. It’s completely wall-to-wall with bodies. It is impossible to dance, and drinking is difficult.

I try downstairs with Richard, Chrissy and Beth. There’s much more room, but the music is crap. I get chatted up by a couple of blokes, but I’m not interested. Well I say “chatted up” the second bloke had an impenetrable scouse accent, so he may have been offering me drugs or discussing Proust.

About 2 we find Joanna and Val going home, so walk back with them to the hotel. And meet the hen night also turning in! They’ve had a pretty good night at least.

Sleep is easy but I have to get up at 7.30 to feed the meter. I’m not alone! No idea why I can’t just buy a two day ticket, but there you go.

We get up around noon and head off. After a crappy Big Mac at Lymm, we hit the motorway. After turning off and heading for Knutsford we miss a turning and are only back on track and hour later. The Dales are trickier this time with fog and rain, and by the time night falls we are only as far as Lincolnshire. After a very tedious night drive, I drop Richard off and am looking forward to a short drive home and a cup of tea. Only some bugger has caused the Acle Straight to be closed off, and it’s a 40 minute slog through back roads and pissant villages before I can finally rest. (And discover my mum has left me new bathroom mats, the jobs page of the local paper, and some Malteasers – Thanks Mum!)

Overall it was great to see everyone; even if I didn’t get to speak to everybody I wanted too. Nice to put names (and voices) to faces. You’re a lot taller than I expected Bex – must be all those photos with Siobhan!

So in closing – congratulations to Becky on a tricky job (herding cats springs to mind). Next time though, a more anal-retentive approach to researching clubs might be a good idea.

I might be in touch with some of you later in the year if you want to meet up for drinkies in smaller groups.

Transpocalypse: Aftermath

Wow. What an experience

Full write up when I'm back to normal, but giant thankyous to Bex and Jane for organising, and everyone else for turning up and making the night.

And in acse I forget: The Derbyshire Dales - WOW! I've seen mountains in Wales and Canada, but for a poor Norfolk tranny, driving through the heights was a hell of an experience.

"Easy right. Hard left 100 yards. Right 200 yards. Etc." Heh.

Psycho-somatic

Don't you hate it when people put ideas into your head?

I went to the opticians yesterday. I've never feared the optician before. Dentist? Yeah. Doctor? Sometimes. But never the optician. What is the worst they could say? You need stronger glasses? Woo! Big deal.

So why was my gut churning yesterday? Astigmatism.

All it means is that one of my eyes is more lemon-shaped than spherical. But I'd never heard it before. It's the first time anyone had mentioned it to me.

And then she had to mention the slightly increased risk of detached retinas. Thank you. Now I'm seeing floaters and getting a twinge in that eye. Nothing has changed since yesterday, but now I'm sensitive to any little change and I'm getting heartburn and nauseous feelings fearing the worst.

Oh well, at least I've got Transpocalypse to look forward to. Road trip for me and Mr Eichmann. And the telly says the snow is pretty much gone too. Cool!

And I've now got a much better reason for turning down bungee jumps.

See you all Saturday.

The Death of Active Desktop

Active Desktop is one of those highly underutilized features in Windows that allows you, the user, to have web based content on your desktop. Starting around Win95 or 98, Microsoft put this feature into the operating system, but never fully made use of it.

This is some pretty powerful stuff we're talking about here... While in 1997, the Internet was just a minor thing and exploding onto the scene - it was nothing compared to the Internet of today. What we see today are Web 2.0 applications pouring out all over the net. Browser based services and applications, like Ajax13.com who have created a web based Word Processor, Database, Powerpoint (I think) and a few others... then there is one of my absolute favorites: YourMinis.com

When I first stumbled on this website my first thought was immediately - "This would be an awesome Active Desktop!".

More or less it's a ton of Ajax and Flash put together to create a load of web based widgets on a flash desktop. It's tabbed and fully customizable, what more could you ask for?

Today I set out to make this site - YourMinis.com my active desktop and you know what? It's friggin beautiful. Some things on it do not seem to work properly (the mini browser) but I would say that about 90% of the functionality is easily there still. It's still more than worth it.

So, I'm hearing you say "Hey Darian, how do I use this active desktop stuff?"

Well, it's pretty simple actually... first go to this website: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/171437

Not that they were making it really easy to figure out or anything, but this will outline how to set a website as your active desktop. Following that page, I would experiment with it, but I am so far very pleased with having yourminis.com as my active desktop.

A lot of times once you set the web content, you will see it load in in the top right corner of the desktop as a small box. Don't panic! You can resize that little box to effectively cover your entire desktop by positioning the mouse cursor at the "edge" of the box and click-dragging it. At the "top" of the box if you position your mouse there, you will see the title bar show up and the "expand window" button in the top right.

The reason I thought I would write about this today is because apparently in the upcoming release for Windows Vista, Active Desktop has been discontinued. Leave it to Microsoft to kill something just when it starts to become useful. Active Desktop was created during a time when the Web itself wasn't very mature, and so a great concept went to waste while the Internet itself needed time to catch up.

Now that we are seeing Web 2.0 and all sorts of AJAX applications on the web, it would only figure that Microsoft would kill Active Desktop - and thus the ability to embed these wonderful things onto your desktop, (though I hear Active Desktop may in fact be called Motion Desktop in Vista, but that has yet to be seen).

Friggin morons... I swear...

Anyways, seeing as many people are still using Windows XP, you should have Active Desktop until you decide to upgrade (if ever) to Windows Vista. So why not make use of this awesome feature? Maybe make a visualization in Flash and set it as an Active Desktop? The ideas here are endless... though I believe setting yourminis.com as an active desktop absolutely takes the cake.

In Other News

I'm lazy, so sue me :P

Ok, I have been totally side tracked lately with other things (namely AWRPG). I did manage to get Cartoon Network to stream on my television in VR5 world, so .. w00t!

More or less, we're all on extended break for VR5 world. I mean, I believe we have probably done everything we can short of building the place up. Either that or we're all out of ideas... We have a working arcade (courtesy of vNES and Jamie Sanders) which are all Classic Nintendo Games, there is a Post Office, Skate Park (with hoverboards), Radio Station, Starbucks, Papa Johns, Some Houses (me, justin eyre, Brina, etc), ASCII Memorial Park, The Adam Model (which after reading the BS you have to go through to jury rig it for skeletal animation, we aren't exactly sure it's worth it)... and recently MPL Raven and I have built a cabin near the Arena...

Heck, there is even a Lensman Teleport Station in VR5 (near the Papa Johns)... so quite honestly I am out of ideas... GSK built the Tower of Terror ride, and continues to improve it... *shrugs*

We were thinking of another concert in world, but we no longer see the point...

What I am thinking of doing... is opening to building, but invitation only basis. There is well more than enough in VR5 world to teach people how to make a good build, so I believe we've done our job while exploring nearly every facet of AW technology and squeezing out all it has to offer.

So at this moment in time, I am seriously considering not renewing the world in June/July. Some will be deeply saddened by this, while others will break out the balloons and confetti ;) Either way, we'll have to wait and see... but as of right now, I have yet to justify paying for another year on this world and having nothing in return.

Maybe it's the winter blahs getting to me - who knows? Only time will tell...

Easily distracted by shiny things - Darian Knight

Same shit; different number

I don't do New Year's resolutions. But things I am going to try to do in 2007 are:

Be more assertive
Get more Pandora-time
Get a better job
See more of my friends (especially ex-workmates)
See more of a certain young lady :)

Good luck to all of you who have made some. That goes double for smokers quitting!