January 2006 - Neil Turner's Blog

Cleaning out my closet

September 26, 2026January 26, 2006 by Neil Turner

When I came home 3 weeks ago, it was the first time I’d brought most of my clothes back with me since Easter, during which time I’ve amassed additional garments. Trying to fit all of this in my drawers and wardrobe at home became somewhat of a challenge, so today I had a clear-out of clothes that I no longer wear or that don’t fit. This came to:

7 t-shirts
6 shirts
3 jumpers
5 pairs of trousers
1 coat

These will all be going to a local charity shop sometime soon. There was another pair of trousers that won’t, on the basis that it had that many holes in it that it wasn’t really fit for anyone. That’ll be going to a textile bank for recycling.

I also found some clothes that I hadn’t seen for years which still fitted, including a pair of jeans that are probably 4 or 5 years old that fit almost perfectly. I’m guessing they get relegated to the back of my wardrobe because they were too big for me at the time, or because I was starting to lose favour with jeans in favour of khaki trousers with big pockets.

I’m 30% Gay

September 26, 2026January 20, 2006 by Neil Turner

Channel 4’s Gay-O-Meter is something that I’m sure I’ve done before but have seemingly never blogged about, however Dave blogged it a couple of days ago and so I thought I’d do it again. Here’s my result:

Neil is 30% gay!
Loosen up my straight mate! These days women like a man with some softer edges to grab onto.

Which means I’m mostly straight, as I suspected. Still, it’s 10% more than Dave, and only 10% less than someone who was actually gay. I haven’t yet got Hari to take this as she’s sitting an exam at the moment.

Producing exams

September 26, 2026January 19, 2006 by Neil Turner

The poster for the musical version of The Producers film

Hari and I are going to see The Producers tonight. I saw it last month but Hari hasn’t yet, however I enjoyed it the first time so I don’t mind seeing it again. Ideally, we would have liked to go tomorrow night, but the last showing of it at our local cinema is tonight. So, we don’t have much option, short of waiting for the DVD.

This is a bit unfortunate because we both have exams tomorrow – mine is at 9:15am and hers in the afternoon. I’m reasonably confident about the exam, as it should be somewhat easier than the last one. It’s about networks and protocols, so I’ve been busy revising things like the TCP/IP reference model and ways of controlling congestion. Thankfully, I covered quite a lot of this stuff 2 years ago, so I knew a lot already.

4 years

January 5, 2025January 14, 2006 by Neil Turner

At about 6 minutes past 5pm on the 14th January 2002, I wrote this entry. 4 years, 4821 entries, 6689 comments, 757 trackback pings and a whole shedload of spam later and it’s my fourth blogiversary.

Four years is a, to put it bluntly, a bloody long time, and I’m really pleased that I’ve been able to keep it going this long. So many of my projects in the past have come and go – this is one that I’ve managed to stick with and it makes me proud to think it’s still going strong. I have no intentions of giving up now.

Most of all, I’d like to thank all of you who have commented and trackbacked over the years, especially people like Andy, Kim, Ben, Richy and Ciaran who have been commenting here almost from the beginning. It’s the feedback I get, more than anything, that keeps me going, so keep it up and I should still be here in another 4 years time 🙂 .

The blog has also been with me through some interesting times. Back in January 2002 I was a 17-year-old college student. Since then I’ve had my 18th and 21st birthdays, left home, been to university, got a degree and started another one, met Hari and visited lots of new places, met lots of new people and done many new things. I can’t guarantee that my life will stay interesting but at least if it doesn’t I have a good record of when it was.

And the blog itself has changed – back in 2002, there were no comments, trackbacks or RSS feeds, and I was posting using Blogger to some webspace that only had 100MB of monthly bandwidth. Now I use 100MB in about 6 hours, the site is powered by Movable Type, and I’ve graduated from RSS to Atom for all my feeds. I also started the sideblog in November 2003 which has been doing well too, despite a few quiet periods.
I don’t regret starting this blog one bit – through it, I’ve made many new friends and got a lot of enjoyment.

Here’s to another 4 years! 🙂

Previous anniversary posts: 2003, 2004 and 2005 (when I nearly forgot).