It seems late, but I was up at 05.40 ! I had to set up the upstairs PC to record the repeat of a radio programme that I missed yesterday. I also took the opportunity to feed Nelly and Schiba, and let Schiba out.

     Yesterday Jodie did come round with her photo CD's. I managed to get her to install Paint Shop Pro as practice for installing it on her own PC, but it was an uphill struggle. It was probably a wasted struggle as well. One of the first uses of Paint Shop Pro, that I thought would be very useful for her, was rotating a picture round through 90°. Some of her pictures were taken in portrait mode and needed rotating for correct display on a PC. It was apparently "too difficult" ! In the end I had to do most of the stuff myself. We burned a few disks of stuff that she wanted to send to friends and she seemed quite happy with it all.

     Tonight is another drinking night. This one is slightly different as it will be in Maidstone, or perhaps more correctly in Barming which is a "suburb" of Maidstone. It is also different in that it will be an early evening drink that will probably finish a little after the time I would normally start to drink. With Luck I should see Bob, Ivor, Howard, Patrick and Kevin. I understand that I may also see Peter and Horace, although as yet this has not been confirmed. It should be good fun !

     Considering all the dire warnings about terrible storms for this morning it seems remarkabley calm. It is very wet though.

      Wet monday mornings have never been a good idea as they tend to cast their shadow over the whole week. However today may not be too bad as I have plenty to do. I have to put the finishing touches to my VHS to DVD transfer of "Carry On Screaming". I did a test pressing last night and it revealed lots of faults. For a start the last video section cut off 5 minutes before the end, although the encoding programme never warmed me of such. Also the lip sync was badly out after any 15 minute segment. So much of it has to be done again.

     I felt quite eleated yesterday. I finally recorded part 20 of the 20 part serial "Journey Into Space - The Red Planet". I have been recording this science fiction radio play off of BBC 7 for the last 20 weeks and now have all 20 parts safely backed up on 2 identical CDR disks. One day I will listen to it all over again. It is really good classic scifi originaly broadcast in 1954. To make matters even better I have discovered whe whole of the preceeding series (Journey Into Space - Operation Luna) is downloadable fom the internet.  The quality is not quite as good as the BBC 7 broadcasts, and the entire series is some 150 MBytes of downloading (split into 14 episodes), but I cannot wait to finish downloading it and having a listen.

     I am surprised I am up so early - if you can call almost 9am early. I had a rough night last night. I went to bed just before midnight, but it was not until 3am that I was able to fall asleep properly. I should have had loads of exciting dreams, but I cannot recall a single one.

     All of yesterday was a bit weird. It was not just after going to bed. Somehow the day went past really quickly, and yet I did not seem to achieve anything in particular. It seems hard to recall just how I did spend my time yesterday. I listened to two half hour episodes of a radio dci-fi drama (Earthsearch II). I went out briefly to buy New Scientist, and then I read New Scientist. In the evening I watched 2 hours of TV. That was my entire day. It seems odd that just that filled the entire day.

      Today ought to be more interesting. In all probability I'll be going over to the border between Peckham and Forest Hill for a lunchtime drink with Ivor. One day I'll work out the best place to describe where the pub is. It seems to be in a sort of no mans land bordered by Forest Hill, North Dulwich, Nunhead and Peckham.I think that its postal area is probably Peckham, but to me Peckham conjures up a vision that does not match the area that the pub resides in. North, or North East, Dulwich has a better feel to it.

     I had a fine night at the pub last night. I think I had 4.5 pints of Winter Warmer. The night was only spoilt by finding icy cold rain to meet us outside the pub. It was dry when I went to the pub, but I did get a bit damp coming home.

     Most of my dreams I have forgotten, although one of the forgotten dreams did involve being in a pub I think. I do remember part of one dream though. I cannot recall the circumstances, but I was given a sort of pass to attend a university lecture. I went along because I thought it might be fun, but with no idea what the lecture was about. Actually I still don't know what it was about. The lecturer started spouting off about something or another, and then started asking questions that no one seemed to be able to answer. Except me, but I have to admit the answer was pure Bart Simpson. I said "dammned if I know" and apparently that was the answer the lecturer wanted !

     Yesterday I spent many hours burning CD's and DVD's, and printing cover inlays. These were for the Skyline Video. I now have sufficient stocks to distribute at a booze up next week. Today I ought to delete all the skyline stuff off my PC. It is taking up at least 20 Gigabytes of hard disk space. The full edited video in avi format clocks in at a single file size of 8 Gbytes and the unedited clips must add up to around double that. Once I have cleared all that out my next project is to transfer a VHS copy of "Carry On Screaming" to DVD. As I recall the tape came from a bargain bin somewhere. The cassette was still shrink wrapped, but there was no library case around it. Don't ask why I want to transfer it to DVD, because my only answer is, that I can !

     Once again, Schiba, who had been grumpy during the day, decided that he would come alive once I went to bed. He does it on purpose. I know this to be a fact now. Last night I went to bed a lot earlier than I have done lately. After half an hour he was up bothering me. At 4 am I was out of bed feeding him, or at least that was the general idea. He has been picky about his food and didn't eat that much. After that quick snack he went out again.

     Once again (again) I had a lot of strange dreams last night. In one dream someone had bought the old Post Office underground railway and was offering rides on it. I went through several tunnel sections before coming out in the basement of a building that had, allegedly, been built by Brunel. Within this basement was a large circular staircase that I went up all the way to the top floor of the building. There seemed to be a choice of two doors. The first one led into a very large room. I went into the room with someone who I think was the senior engineer of the place where I used to work. We found a party going on with plenty of food laid out on tables. Whenever we approached the food it was covered up and we were told it was not for us. In the far corner was a DJ who might have been one the girls from the office (again from where I used to work). She was playing some dreadful drum 'n bass music that we both hated. Also she had seemed to have painted her teeth with some fluorescent paint. As she smiled all we could see were these green glowing teeth. I decided to leave and came out back onto the landing where the huge spiral staircase emerged. I tried the other door and found myself in something like a large house. It had a butler who was the neandertal character from a Doctor Who story called Ghostlight (I think). I can't remember what happened in that room, but the butler would sometimes morth from neandertal to large gorilla and back again.All the time he would remain pleasant and intelligent, but quite what I may have talked about with him is now a mystery.

     Until the the time when I was interupted by a phone call while writing this, I was convinced today was a Saturday. I now realise that it is definitely Friday. In some way this is a shame. I was looking forward to my first Saturday of the month drink with my old workmates. This drink could be extra special as I am hoping I will be getting a couple of presents. Last month I was offered a seconhand flatbed scanner for nothing. Hopefully it will be supported by Linux. Even more hopefully the guy who offered it to me hasn't changed his mind and will actually be there, with it, tomorrow. The other present is slightly more tenuous. One of the "girls" has a laptop that has crashed and won't boot. Her husband should be capable of fixing it but had not bothered to do so. I offered to have a go but she said it may not be neccesary because she had a suspicion that she may be getting a brand new laptop for xmas. If that was the case I offered to buy the old one from her. I think, although I was drunk at the time, she said I could have the old one for nothing if she did get a new one. That would be a really useful windfall. It is not a great laptop. I don't know what speed or type the processor is, but it is probably something like a 166MHz Pentium 1. I do know that it has no CD drive, but does have a broken hinge. Also I suspect the battery is not in good shape. But it will do OK for me. I would like something I can show photographs on when out and about and, I hope, that would do just fine. So, roll on tomorrow and I hope that luck comes my way.