Comfort Food

I have had a huge amount to do over the past couple of days, and, as ever, I haven't quite managed to do all of it.

I journeyed to Oxford this Tuesday, to hand in an application form for a job at the University, and also to sign up with an agency. The agency didn't fill me with a whole look of confidence, given that they seem to deal exclusively with the badly-paid sectors of the employment market, but we'll see if anything comes of it. In terms of Winchester, there doesn't appear to be loads of work there either, but I'll keep checking Guardian Jobs and so on.

Then, this evening, just when I was all ready to make the tube journey to Paddington, it occurred to me that I'd better check the location of my passport. I opened the top left draw of my dresser, where I was fairly certain it would be, and fished around a bit. I generally keep my passport and cheque book (i.e. the important official things) in this draw. My old passport, with the corner cut off, is there. My new one is not. Now, the last time I used it was to go to Rome, so it can't be all that far away, but after consulting my folks, they think I should find it before I come home to Cardiff. Arse.

Oh well, at least it means I can get my washing done in good time of leaving for Florida. And I might even get time to tidy my room a bit!

Right, one final things before I end this post. The first is to alert people to the truly wonderful www.uknova.com. This website lists 'torrent' files (a torrent file is a tiny file you download, then open to download parts the file from many different locations at once, thus spreading the bandwidth load) for UK television. Put simply, you find the tv show you want, then download the torrent file for it. Set the torrent file running (usually overnight, because the files tend to be quite big) and then you eventually get various British TV shows you can watch at your leisure. Apart from people uploading things like yesterday's Eastenders, there are all sorts of great shows available that people have recorded on VHS years ago, and now transferred to a computer file format (usually divx).

This might seem like a lot of trouble for anyone who's used to Sky+ and similar services. Well, it ain't for me. The primary reason why I don't just switch on the box and watch TV in a conventional sense is that the roof aerial of our house is pointing straight at the TV mast of Alexandra Palace, which has apparently been switched off for some years now. I can't really afford to pay someone to get up on the roof and reorient it so we can watch TV, and I'm sure as hell not going to do a Rod Hull myself. As a result, I'm not paying for a TV license, as I don't receive TV broadcasts into my TV (used exclusively for the Gamecube), but it doesn't stop the TV licensing people from sending me numerous, increasingly threatening letters. I'd be really interested to know the legal situation ias regards buying equipment that includes a TV tuner if you have no intention of watching TV with it.

[edit] I found my passport in the end, in the jacket pocket of my suit. Thank goodness.

Merry Christmas to one and all. Expect frequent blog service to resume in Florida, in a few days' time.