I went to the edinburgh festival last weekend and saw (amongst other things) Richard Herring (who comes highly recommended - if you can't see him in Edinburgh then at least read his `Warming Up' weblog) and the Durham Revue, one of which is from my ex-college so it was nice to see him. I had a great time - Kate and I went up on a Sunday so everything was cheap (richard herring and the hotel were half-price, and we got two-for-one tickets to the durham revue). The weather was amazingly hot on sunday and incredibly wet on monday. At least that experience was authentic! There are a large variety of lovely and interesting shops and places to go in Edinburgh. I particularly like late-night coffee shops. I wish there was something like that in Newcastle.

Whenever I go to Scotland I like to read a book by a scottish author. This is a result of sitting in Edinburgh train station some time last year reading the Bridge by Iain Banks, a book revolving around the Forth bridge (in Edinburgh, for the benefit of the large number of polish visitors this site attracts, possibly due to them mis-spelling whatever is the polish equivalent for `download' as `dowland' on google. Quite a few turkish people seem to do the same.)

Well this time I read Iain M Banks' Excession. I recommend this to any hard-sf fans (e.g. Egan, KSR). It's not particularly hard SF but it is fairly complex so it will probably appeal.

One of the post-university tasks I have set myself is to finally get my aiptek-clone tablet working in linux - a task that shouldn't be too hard as some (fairly mature now) drivers exist already. I stumbled across this Kuro5hin post in the process which explains quite well the ludicrous steps you have to go to in order to setup a non-standard device in X. I've got the patch and the X sources have just finished downloading (Fetched 62.3MB in 13m4s (79.4kB/s)). I have a feeling compiling won't be as quick...

update:

Applying patch debian/patches/999_xinput_add_aiptek_drv.diff ...
failed! (check stampdir/log/patches/999_xinput_add_aiptek_drv.diff for
reason)

AAARGH!

Another task is to stick as much of the cruft I've collected over the last three years into scrap books so I can file it away and have a nice clear desk by my window. My computer used to occupy that space but I moved it away from the window as it was impossible to play doom3 with the glare. I plan to stick an eazel up there and do some airbrushing. There's a few free courses about airbrushing on at Gateshead College although there's no mention of them on their website (typical).

Finally last night I went to a Cure Tribute event organised by some local music-promoter in a pub called the Archer, in Jesmond. This is a strange venue which I have been to once before. They cordon-off most of the bar for the gig and you have to pay to get into that part of the bar (in this case it was 3 quid). However, the remaining section of bar is perfectly accessible without paying, and there's a pool-hall next door with a line-of-sight view straight to the stage. I feel a bit guilty when I dodge paying for things like this, as I remember being involved with the bands back in high school and how expensive booking out venues can be, etc. However I've just graduated, I'm sans-job and mega-poor so I make exceptions.

The event was a bit of a wash-out: 90% of the time was filled by a DJ playing cure records (great: pay three quid to listen to someones CDs in an otherwise empty bar). Between three of us we spent considerably less than 3 quid each and played a fair few rounds of pool, enjoying the entertainment no less for being 10 metres away from the stage. A few performers appeared and played the odd Cure cover which was entertaining, but over all I'd be very dissapointed if I'd actually paid. Perhaps as penance I was made to wait 25 minutes for a metro afterwards.

Coming soon: my 21st birthday (probably postponed until I can afford to put on an entertaining night); my ex-housemate's wedding; my brother's A-level results (and subsequent acceptance or rejection from university); Kate's 22nd birthday.

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