dtgreenwood.com

Tonight, Myself, Claire, Steve, Mum and Chris went to Perk Up in Ripon and had a fantastic meal. Everything was perfect, the food, the atmosphere, the service, everything.
The meal was for Steve’s birthday and he enjoyed it as well, which is always good.

To start off we had an amuse of mushroom and truffle oil vallute with bread and olive oil, Steve and Chris weren’t sure about this but Mum, Claire and I really liked it, it was so delicate and tasty. For starters Steve had mozzarella and roasted peppers, Mum had moules marianar and I had roast butternut squash and coriander soup which were all excellent, the soup was delicious.

For mains Myself, Chris, Mum and Steve had Rump of Beef with bernaise sauce, chips and salad and Claire was unusually adventurous and had the lemon sole which she really enjoyed. The beef that the rest of us ordered was absolutely amazing!! It was a nice piece of beef and was cooked so amazingly none of us needed steak knives.

For pudding, Claire, Chris and Steve had steamed chocolate sponge pudding and custard or cream and Mum had cherry and frangipan tart. All delicious.

Well, at the moment I’m filling up Chris’s MP3 player I’m going to borrow for our trip to Hungary tomorrow. Chris, Steve and Myself ae driving, well, Steve is doing the 19 hours of driving. So in the morning at 6something AM I’ll get up and we’ll hopefully be setting off at half 7 after we’ve packed the car with all the goodies we are taking for Kanaan House. So I’m going to pack some more cloths into my rucksack and go to bed, I’m pooped. See you all in ten days

This morning I had a lovely nice long lie in bed ’till 11am. Which considering my former student status and my terrible sleeping habits, is actually pretty good. I feel much better for it. I also made some amazing poached eggs, they were perfect and so, so tasty!

One more week ’till I go to Hungary again. For anyone who doesn’t know I’m involved with helping the renovation of Kanaan House as a womens refuge. I went out for nine days in August, myself, Steve and Chris are going over again next weekend and we’re trying to organise another trip next easter. Me and Chris also want to go and stay out there for a couple of months. I shall be asking for donations, sponserships and attendance at fund raising events in the future, so stay tuned, it’s for a very worthy cause.

To help fund this and have the opportunity to take enough time off to actually get over there, I’m going to be working with Steve for a year. After that year I will actively look for a job in an area more involved with computers. My only worry is, will a year away from university and not working in the I.T. industry make it harder to find a job? Or will dedicating a year to volunteer work, work in my favour?

Well, me and Claire are going to watch The Last Kiss starring Zach Braff(website) and Jacinda Barrett. I can’t wait, I’ve been a big fan of Zach Braff since Scrubs and that was only re-inforced by the movie Garden State which he wrote, directed and starred in. He also won an award for the compilation of the soundtrack for the film. A very talented guy if you ask me.

…been getting dirty!

I’ve been helping Steve doing a bit of demolition which has been great fun. I’ve destroyed stud walls and brick walls as well as giving the cellar a good beating with an Adz, which was fun. What wasn’t fun was bringing all the sand and bricks out of the cellar… far too much hard work!

On a much lighter note, I’ve just come across earFeeder which gives you custom music based RSS feeds based on your music library. Cool beans. Between earFeeder and Last.fm I should be finding some cool stuff. earFeeder is pretty slow to scan though

Speaking of music, I received Evanescence’s new album the open door, Outkast’s new album Idlewild and Papa Roach’s new album the paramour sessions. I’ve not listened to the Papa Roach album through yet but the Outkast album is great! I’m undecided as to whether I like the open door better than Fallen or even if I like it at all, Fallen is such a fantastic album and I’m not sure that the open door is anywhere near as good but I’ll give it a couple more chances.

I read an article today (Here), talking about Microsoft’s new licence agreement for Windows Vista that Microsoft has amended their licence agreement in my opinion for the worst.

Currently (with Windows XP) you can install you copy on any device you like as long as it is the only installed copy. This means that if you get a new PC and want to install your copy of XP on it you can provided you un-install it from the previous machine. All well and good, especially for people who upgrade or renew their hardware on a regular basis.

Windows Vista will let you do this but only once. Now I think that’s a bad thing. When you install your copy of Vista for the first time you assign it to a device (physical system) and that is then the licenced machine. You can then once and once only transfer it to a new machine or third party, if you sell the machine to your mate for example. Just what measures they are going to or a willing to take to enforce this I don’t know but I would imagine it would take a compulsory registration and some information about the machine to do it.

I wonder if you can install it multiple times on one machine. And if you can’t then I’m not even going to bother getting one copy, I think I’ll switch to Linux, that or a super sexy Macbook Pro. I’ve just started to download Vistas RC1 beta to istall on my second machine. I’ll let you all know how it goes.

Last night me, Claire and Alana went to Leeds University Refectory to watch Orson play after seeing them at Robbie Williams’ concert back in September.

We started off by taking a slight detour in that we were a bit lost. When we got there, with not much difficulty it turned out, we found where we were meant to be heading and off we went. Once in there we waited around for it all to start. First up were a Californian band called Gliss who were ok, had a couple of good tunes but to be honest I couldn’t hear the vocals very well. whether it was them or the sound system I don’t know. Anyway, I thought I’d give them a chance and at the end of the show I went and bought their album ‘Love The Virgins’ which is out on the 24th of October and is their debut. I’m not entirely sure if they will appeal to the UK but I’m listening to their album as I type and it’s pretty good. I’m not entirely sure what it is about the music I like, but I do like it.

Then Orson came on the place came alive, the techs brought out the big lighting system and things kicked off. Orson played a great set with all their well known tunes and were really good. Over all a really enjoyable night seeing as Orson aren’t my usual thing. However I have found that when you’re there live, the atmosphere and the live music make it much better.

So what have I learned from this? Buy the supporting bands cd, they may just be good and if they make it big, the cd might fetch a bit on eBay in a few years

On Sunday myself, Claire, Mum, Steve and Kara went to Dish’s as it’s our favorite place in Ripon to eat together. The food, the atmosphere and of course the staff are all excellent. Sometimes we are disappointed but only because we can’t get in due to lack of tables!

I had the most amazing grilled chicken Caesar salad, it was the best ever and I’ve had, and made a few. The chicken was so moist and well cooked, the lettuce was lovely and fresh, the Caesar dressing was mind blowing and the rest (croutons, anchovies etc) were just as good. I think I’ll go back and have the same again.

Claire had a sausage and bacon buttie as she wasn’t up for a full meal, Mum had Yorkshire puddings and savory mince, again that was wicked, we think there was some beer in there and it really gave it a rich flavour. Steve went for Dish’s half pound burger which is always tops and Kara had beans on toast. We also ordered mushrooms and garlic dip which were a meal in themselves and were delicious. If I haven’t said it before, which i have here and other places, get down there! It’s fantastic.

On Wednesday night I’m not going to be on the Ollie C show because Me, Claire and Alana are going to see Orson at Leeds university which should be a good laugh. They toured along side Basement Jaxx with Robbie Williams on his latest tour and whilst they’re not my usual cup of tea, they were pretty good.

Well, I’m off to get ready to watch Spooks in all it’s awesomeness!

Well, this week I’ve mostly been tired. I’ve been working with Steve and Chris and so far it’s been lots of fun. I’m very tired tonight so it might be an early one, but before I do go to bed I’m going to sort another playlist for the Ollie C Show on wednesday night as well as trying to think up a topic for the shows longest running feature, ‘The Metric Dozen’.

I thought that seeing as I haven’t updated in a week I should post something. So here are some articles of interest that I’ve come accross in the last few days.