Fun and games with YouTube

Take a YouTube URL like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 and replace "watch" with "warp.swf" like so http://www.youtube.com/warp.swf?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

I wonder what else they have hidden away...

Delicious LiveJournal Links for 10-30-2009

• Blog sparks mass council walkout
  Councillors unable to deal with people having *gasp* opinions.
  (tags: blog technology speech politics uk)
• Drivers with gene variant fared 20% worse than those without.
  (tags: genetics driving memory)
• Samsung shows off color e-paper prototype
  Want! Well, want it's successor, I suspect.
  (tags: e-ink electronics samsung technology)

My week

Well, after the insurers told me I was covered and that they'd talk to the builders (last Friday) I heard nothing until Tuesday, at which point I phoned then to ask what was going on.  "Oh," they said, "we told the builders.  Did they not contact you?  Here's their phone number."

So I spoke to the builders direct who said "We sent you an invoice for the £100 excess.  Have you not got it yet?" so I waited until I got home to check.  Which was stupid, as I should have just paid it on the phone right there.  Instead I ended up paying it the next day, at which point I got an appointment for work to start.  On the 12th.  In two weeks time.

Cue one quick phone call to the loss adjusters.  "You are aware that there is a leak in my ceiling, right?  And that with every day the damage spreads?  And that you will have to pay for said damage?"

So I got a phone call back today from the builders, offering to be round on Monday afternoon instead.  Much better.

There's also debate as to whether the damage to the outside wall is covered, but the loss adjuster's going to pop round and take a look, and didn't seem averse to the idea.

In other news, the people who handle ducker.org.uk (the domain name, not the hosting company themselves) managed to not send me an invoice for the renewal.  Which meant I got cut off at some point this morning.  I phoned them, was as polite as I could be, and got it paid, but goodness knows if any email has been lost in the last couple of hours.  Let's hope not (although it may take a while to arrive).

All of this has also added up to a fair chunk of stress, which meant that I finally passed out at 1am and then woke up at 7am, to sneak into the living room and leave Julie snoring.  Today is thus full of tiredness.  We did get a bunch of tidying doen last night though, which was good.  Although we also failed to find any of the stuff necessary for Dreams of Steam, so we'll be skipping this one (Sorry Roy!) and going to the next one instead.  Frankly, my stress levels are putting me off going to new events right now anyway. 

Apologies to people that haven't seen me for a bit, I've mostly been feeling like hiding under the duvet and pretending the world doesn't exist...  This should life over the next couple of weeks as we get the various problems around the flat sorted, and I eventually hope to be back to my normal self.  Julie has, thankfully, been terribly supportive of my stress (while I've also been supportive of her PhD stress), and we've been emotionally equivalent to a pair of tired drunkards, propped up against each other in a rather unlikely structure that fails to collapse through sheer comedy value.  God I hope this is over soon...

It's amazing the difference that a bit of dialogue can make

I wasn't very impressed when I first saw the trailer for Avatar (the new James Cameron movie).  It looked too much like a computer game, and I came away without any real feel for it.

Then I saw the trailer at the cinema, and that was better, because it just looked _better_ in 3D on the big screen.  Still not amazing though.

This trailer has a lot more dialogue, and is finally starting to click with me.  It now looks like a movie I'd like to see.  Full of cliches, and pretty simple by the looks of things, but like it might at least be a lot of fun.

I would go see this

but probably not this:

More halloween photoshops here.