READERS MEETING SATURDAY 02 SEPTEMBER (like NOW!)

I know its short notice but why not get yourselves along, drink some coffee, take in some art, meet fellow readers and have a fag, oops, go for a wander and so forth.

The schedule is:

3pm The Caffe Nero The Cut Waterloo

Meet up and have a coffee - where I first came to on Day One.

4pm Guided tour/walk to my workplace - see the steps I no longer walk up and down. See My K's The Chemists where I used to get my patches. Visit the "Valley of No Customer Service".

Continue on to The Founders Arms for some more coffee or maybe a beer.

5.15 Breathe coffee fumes on the punters at Tate Modern for half an hour or so before heading off to the Charles Dickens pub in Union Street arriving about

6.15pm Charles Dickens Pub - for another, ahem, coffee and maybe some food.

If food is not on we'll head to the Capital Kebab or Maries cafe subject to a popular vote of the masses.

7-9 Eating things drinking coffee smoking some more with a Final Wind down awith some karaoke down the Sussex Arms.

PS The proximity to my birthday is a pure coincidence and is neither here nor there.
PSS This is the first day coincidentally close to my birthday that has occurred since giving up smoking.


Now all I have to do is make sure R is coming.

See you soon! Everyone Welcome!

Oh dear...I've got compettion

Windows XP Activation...Must Activate Within 90473437 Days. WTF?
Originally uploaded by dan-lemm2001.

...but having had a quick look at it I don't think I need worry too much about my google-rankings just yet.

Messing around with the wonderful Puppy today and decided to check out my bloglines page . This is an online version of an RSS reader and is an option for all those who want to keeep their eyes on a lot of blogs at once. The most linked to when I looked was a website called the EH List that allows you to check the stats on any blog by adding the address. This is quite a brilliant idea for a webpage what with 50 million anxious bloggers hanging around. I decided to check out the stats on a particular blog (no points for guessing which one).

Read about and try it here.

AT the LBs barbecue last month someone Mr H.O. brought up the subject of my blogs unfindability using google. I countered that I was number two hit using '"erik fuller" blog' as the search term in Yahoo. Then I disappeared from yahoo and mysteriously appeared in google. Trying it just now
I turn up as Hit 3 with google.com, don't show at all with google.co.uk (guess because the site is US) and show as Hit 7 for yahoo.com.

Two things. First my friend's assumption that if you can't find something with google then it can't be found. I was put right on this by a colleague whose job it was to use search engines. I was bitten by the desire to check out some friend's name on the web and was getting a few vague references to some work she had done switching out of google and using some of the other search tools out there I got a perfect hit with her tel number and her email address. I think it might have been dogpile but that's not the point. For the cost of a few clicks you can go from meagre rations to the full monty in search terms. Try it out. There's plenty of tools at this site.

Second thing. Can I expect old friends to start getting in touch using the web as the way of finding me? Well they would either have to be imaginitative enough to stick the word blog by my name or persistent enough to dig theirway through the first 14 pages or so to find a link to me (not necessarilty a very useful one)just using Erik Fuller. So I won't expect a surfeit of Christmas this year but slowly and surely we're moving towards the biggest telephone book in the world.

Technorati Tags Search Engines Eh List Bloglines Famous

R's friend C from years back popped up from Hastings today and we headed off to the Miniature Worlds show at the Jerwood Gallery. We then went to the the Tate Modern. C took us
into the bookshop behind Starbucks (my whole worldview is determined by
coffee outlets nowadays) and I saw a programme there from a Roualt
exhibition that I went to. I was shocked to see it was in
1993. Who did I go with? Did I go alone?

Having spent too much time staring at this computer screen it was a
lovely refreshing thing to focus on on lines that have been impressed
upon paper by the human hand and to revel in the extreme delicacy
of the "evil fairies" in a corner exhibit that we all liked at the
Jerwood.

The Tate's showing Domestic Incidents in the turbine space which was quite pertinent. R's been heavily involved in household goods and they were well represented here. Amusing but not as good as the evil fairies in my opinion.

For some reason I kept thinking I should be lighting up when leaving
both galleries. Guess it's my first art-fest since giving up.

(Geek-point: I did this post from beginning to end just using the tiny Puppy Linux Live CD and the software that gets squeezed into its 70Mb.)

Technorati Tags Puppy Linux Tate Modern Jerwood Gallery

More fun with LiveCDs.

Unlike my initial look at the Ubuntu one when I tried Mandriva

and Knoppix (both magazine coverdiscs) last night the internet

connection worked a treat.

So I could write a letter saved as a Word Document (to my tiny

little SD card attached to the usb socket), whizz through a

calculation on a spreadsheet programme, browse the internet, do

some internet banking, download a podcast (to my SD card) then

switch off, remove the DVD and unplug my SD card and walk away

without leaving a trace. No change will have happened to the

hard drive of the computer I had used - no cookies, no net

history, no recent document entries, no registry changes, no

spyware and no virus and no nothing.

So if I'm holidaying at a friend's house I could view all my

email attachments safe in the knowledge I'm not going to damage

their machine. I guess could also carry around my own preferred

settings and bookmarks etc around in my SD card).

There's one Live Distro (Puppy Linux?) that is so compact that

you can actually write data to its own disk. Or Geexbox that you

can remove after it has booted so that you can use the ROM-drive

to play a DVD or review other data.

The main use of them I think is for emergency recovery and to check out particular Linux flavours (Mac and Windows-type are also available- see this article) with your current hardware set-up.

But it's not just that: Knoppix is stuffed with 1000+ applications or something ridiculous like that.

Geek heaven.

Technorati Tags Knoppix LiveCD Ubuntu Mandriva

Well I must say...this weather....hmmm....er...I know what...er...We must really get together sometime...get a bite to eat...get a few bites to eat...like big bites....yes I am tentatively thinking about having a readers meeting...a chance to meet the Great Author...look at where Dr SH works....visit Mr K's...

Now on a more important note - Verbal Diary Best Coffee Supplied by a Chain Award.

The candidates are Starbucks (Waterloo Kiosk)
Pret (Stamford Street)
Cafe Nero (The Cut)

And the winner is Cafe Nero. Because its a good cup of coffee at a good price and they have the best range of syrups of all the chains. Having said that they ran out of caramel today because I had used it all. I was confused by the choice. I saw cannelle and that looked tempting but I didn't have a clue what it was. In fact they were all pretty weird looking so I went for plain old vanilla.

I also like their silly little loyalty cards - an added bonus if anyone nicks my wallet.

My readers meeting could start there...it is where I went on my first day of not smoking and composed my first blog. I thought I'd go there on that day because I thought it was non-smoking inside and continued to think it was for some time until I noticed someone lighting up in there when I went in for my morning special the other week. It's amazing how you can fool your senses simply because you want something or don't want something to be the case.

Technorati Tags delusion weather coffee

I know how he feels.

Self Portrait Study- Disappointed
Originally uploaded by JJZ.

I was feeling a bit peckish at lunchtime and headed off to Frank's the second -best cafe in SE1. I had some kind of light snack in mind no doubt and was greatly cheered to see the usual mad scrum at the door wasn't there. I put this down to it being Monday today. No - it was closed and will remain closed for at least a week as the bods who run it get a break.

I headed back towards the office disappointed and had to make do with a meagre salt beef sarnie from the local "have-a-good-day" Pret.

No fun at all though I felt a bit better in the afternoon without a great lump of meat cheese and pasta in my stomach.

R went over to Surrey Quays and did the grocery shopping - a careful examination of the bags has revealed a distinct lack of spaghetti. I wouldn't mind these hunger pangs if I was smoking.

I'm in ubuntu as I write and can't tell you what the Quit-o-meter says because it's a Windows programme. I guess it's something like Fags Not Smoked = Loads.... Life Saved = Years....Cash Saved = Buy Yourself a Yacht.

I want spag. I want spag. I want spag

Although I use digital photos a lot to illustrate things on this blog I don't actually own a camera apart from the one on my trusty Motorola phone. It is a bit rubbish to say the least though possibly a bit better than the other phone one I used for the official blog photo.

A reader of this blog "C5" has asked if I would update that official photo to reflect my present physical condition. Well I won't do that just yet but if any one is at all interested...(warning-not a pretty sight)...here you are and here and here and here

Apparently the stop smoking guru Allen Carr has been diagnosed with lung cancer. Its a useful reminder that giving up is no guarantee of boundless health and should be attempted for a range of reasons and just out of fear of illness.

I wasn't at all successful with his method but lots of people have been and I hope this new development isn't too serious for him.

Meanwhile it has been decided by my dearest R that the "hilliness" of my stomach demands abstinence from spaghetti for the foreseeable future. I was even banned from looking at the pasta shelves in Tesco's yesterday. I think this is a bit off - surely chocolate is much worse tummy-wise?

I met another recent ex-smoker whilst basking in the radiance of the Redsticks hospitality on Sunday. H had been going six months but had had a solitary relapse. She says the urge to smoke has grown since that relapse. As they say on the WhyQuit site I link to "Not a single puff more".

Today has been almost perfect so far. Work was of the brain dead variety that I prefer and I was able to check out the excellent Frank's cafe . I have good reason to believe their spaghetti bolognaise and chips is first class. I have very good reason. I took a lot of care today at lunchtime especially wearing a white t-shirt. When I got home I don't think R noticed anything suspicious.

Technorati Tags: spaghetti dictatorship belly SE1