Mon, 22 Aug 2005

[01:20] Zooming 'round the streets of London
Date: 8/22/05 at 9:20AM

Well, I made it. London very nicely turned on the rain for my first ride in - a fact I didn't notice until AFTER I'd gotten dressed so I had to go and get changed into my boardies and a t-shirt and waterproof my bag. Luckily my bag always has it's little waterproof jacket inside it or it would probably be back at home (Australia) where my waterproof pants are.

I managed to get as far as the bottom of the lift before I nearly stacked :) Luckily I recovered and from then I kept a sharp eye out for the many little slippery pitfalls that pepper the roads of London:

• Steel Manhole Covers
  
• Rows of VERY well polished bricks randomly embedded across roads
  
• The stuff they use to write on the road with. Back home it's paint - over here it's a plasticy substance that is significantly raised from the surrounding road surface (a good 5-10mm) and is slick as hell
  
• Motorcycles - one of 'em nearly got me this morning
  
• My Bike! Yes, that's right. I broke the bastard on my first real ride in. Somehow the (plastic) chainguard managed to break off and, in a desperate bid for freedom, it attempted to leave the bicycle and take it's close friend the chain with it. This sucked for a number of reasons. Chief among them the fact that I was in the middle of an intersection with no method for providing forward propulsion and a large garbage truck bearing down upon me. I did the first thing that came to mind which was the "Secret Signal" I learned whilst watching Team America: World Police. Surprisingly this didn't work. I rapidly shifted to Plan B and shuffled the hell off the road. I shall be talking to my fine friends at Decathlon later today about that. I don't THINK it's actually a functional piece of the bike. I think it's just meant to keep trousers from being eaten by the chain but it was displaying a remarkable penchant for flinging the chain off whilst in 1st gear - I stuck to second for the rest of the ride in.
  

Sun, 21 Aug 2005

[02:14] What, and it's going downess
Date: 8/21/05 at 10:14AM

OK, it's been one of those exciting weekends, and there's still more to come. But first, a rant:

In a display of personal munificence I bought some speaks last weekend. To be precise a Logitech X-230. This was cool because now we have sound coming out of our (borrowed) computer. Unfortunately, said computer is running Windows 2something and as I didn't build it it has the default sounds turned on (which I turn off in my winnt.sif and never have to worry about normally). So anyway, there I was this morning eating my breakfast and checking out what music I wanted to put on my MP3 player, I open up explorer and click on C: ... *click* ... OtherDirectory ... *click* .... *MP3* ... click, at which point I started screaming at it, then I turned the default (aka crap) sound scheme off. Now my question is - who is so stupid that they would click on a directory and, in the time it takes to render the contents, completely forget what they were doing and require an audible prompt???? Let me present the scenario:

Characters:
- elBoxen: A default install W2x machine
- The Androgynous One : A Human Bean

Scene: A computer on a desk (elBoxen). A person (The Androgynous One) sits in front of the computer, mouse in hand...

Act 1: It Begins
The Androgynous One: I think I'll see what is in the "My Documents" folder, first I shall click on the folder
*clicks on folder*
The Androgynous One: Now we wait
nanoseconds later
The Androgynous Ones Brain: Oh SHIT, what were we doing....are we skydiving?!? SHIT!
elBoxen:CLICK
The Androgynous Ones Brain: Oh YEAH - waiting for a folder to load...let's click on another one...
nanoseconds later
The Androgynous Ones Brain: Oh SHIT....
*fade out*

Not likely really is it? Now I know I'm being a little melodramatic here (yes, just a little thank you). I know that the stupid clicky sound is actually the "Complete Navigation" event firing off. I can see there is possibly some leeway here in that a webpage might take longer to load than your directory full of files but it still pisses me off!


Right, onto more exciting news. I bought a bicycle yesterday. It was THE cheapest one I could find in the city that was still a legal purchase. I didn't want to get something bright and shiny because bicycle theft in this city is abundant. I also bought the plethora of locking devices on requires to cycle in modern-day London. A D-lock for securing the bike to something, a cable lock for securing the wheels/seat to the D-lock, another D-Lock to secure the first D-lock to something else in case the first thing gets cut/bent/removed and a small trailer to carry it all in.

I bought the thing because my Oyster card runs out on Monday and I'm not particularly keen on shelling out another 80 quid for the questionable privilege of ramming myself into a stinking, sweaty, overpopulated tube for "high-speed" transportation to somewhere close to where I want to be! I cycled in this morning in 14 minutes and 09 seconds - the Tube journey from Waterloo to Bank takes that long alone (including walking time form my house to Waterloo), it's another 5-7 minute walk from Bank up to where I'm working so so far most of me is happy - my tender buttocks are not so happy but they'll toughen up :)

Tonight we're off to see She Talks In Maths, a show by a lass named Eliza Lumley. She's a broadway singer and the show is launching her new album (of the same name). The album is "a re-working of songs by Radiohead". It sounds interesting and that's all we know about it. I'll let y'all know if she's any good!

One last thing, for those of you on the edge of your seats wondering where I left Bodies (the book, not the objects) - I haven't yet. It was pissing down on Friday and yesterday wasn't much better - not good weather for abandoning books to their fate in (even if they do have rain jackets - water resistant is NOT waterproof). Maybe when we go out tonight....

Sat, 20 Aug 2005

[06:10] bash.org
Date: 8/20/05 at 2:10PM

More than likely everyone knows about bash but I haven't looked at it for months. While waiting for some installs to finish at work today I dropped by to have a look - now everyone thinks I'm (more) mental 'cause I've been cackling at my monitor:

#5775 +(8910)- [X]
* ab is away - gone, if anyone talks in the next 25 minutes as me it's bm
being an asshole -
HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS

#368808 +(4766)- [X]
<@David> Yay I get laid today! Been a month.... needing it by now
<@Sony> ...........
<@Sony> TMI TMI TMI
<@David> Only a few hundred pounds but its better than nothing
Thanks for the info
<@David> eh?
<@David> damn i meant PAID
<@David> I get PAID today
<@David> dammit

#329292 +(4645)- [X]
Euch, rap is just missing one letter. c.
rapc?
...
Crap you idiot. you put the c on the other end
oic
Though you could also say it's missing an e
wtf is erap?
* Batty bangs his head repeatedly against a wall

#240849 +(4539)- [X]
what does your robot do, sam
it collects data about the surrounding environment, then discards it and drives into walls

UPDATE: Sorry, I couldn't resist one more (I read the Top 200 last night as well :)

#168859 +(2896)- [X]
The most secure computer in the world is one not connected to the internet.
Thats why I recommend Telstra ADSL.

PS: Sorry about the tragic use of cite/pre - I've fixed that up now with <'s

Fri, 19 Aug 2005

[06:13] The Cleverst Little Printer In The World
Date: 8/19/05 at 2:13PM

I've just moved offices (wheee) and I am now situated directly opposite the printer. The printer in question is a venerable HP Laserjet 5 (OK, I just checked and they were only manufactured in 2003). Anyway, The printer has a little problem, every now and then the little grippy wheels that help suck the printed paper out seem to lose their grip and the paper doesn't fully exit the machine. The next piece of paper to be printed then pushes it out.

Whoop-de-doo I hear you say, care factor nil. Haha - think again! There is a slight point of interest or element of cool, as I like to call it, here:

When the first piece of paper is pushed out by the second piece it tumbles off the printer and drops to it's doom....NOT! The printer has been carefully aligned (by the great printer gods I can only assume) so that as the paper falls and flips (due to the curvature imposed upon it on its trip around the drum) the top edge of the paper slips in between the bottom of the printer and the desk upon which it resides and hangs there, as does the next, and the next! It is SO cool!!!! I've been watching it for ages.

Possibly I need to get out more.

I'm going to hunt down a device capable of capturing video so that I can share the full excitement of the moment with you all. Stay tuned....

Thu, 18 Aug 2005

[12:24] Bodies by Jed Mercurio - *** (3/5)
Date: 8/18/05 at 8:24PM

Bodies is a book with the medical profession at its core. It follows the life of a young and naive freshly graduated doctor, from his first experiences as a casualty doctor onwards. It's brutally open in its coverage of his everyday life (if you're one of the whining killjoys who pipes up "Howcome they never go to the toilet in the movies" then you'll enjoy this book). Every nuance of his life from pimple popping to murderous thoughts and actions are illustrated which makes the book startlingly candid and immersive. You live vicariously through the main character and it really is most difficult to put down - on the other hand I found the sordid and grimy details of his life oft bordering on revulsion. There are some things I just don't want to know. I'm a nice clean neat kinda guy and there's a reason I'm not a doctor.

One of the reasons I was interested in this book is that my sister recently became a paramedic (no way I could do that) and this alternate window into her world was interesting, but horribly worrying, to peer through.

You grow up as a child assuming the adults know what to do. As I get older and wiser (for want of a better word) I see that no-one really knows what to do. We're all just muddling through life doing the best we can - it's just a worrying when you think that the guy up to his elbow in your guts with a very sharp knife is just doing his best...

I'm going off on a tangent here so go read the book if you want.....it is a good book. It would have had another half a star if I had a half-asterisk key on my keyboard, instead I knocked a star off because it was too horribly real for me, bring back the rose-tinted glasses!

Tue, 16 Aug 2005

[16:13] WoW Comedy
Date: 8/17/05 at 12:13PM

I'm sure this has been linked to hell and gone by now but I have to post it....WoW Forum pwnage

The posts in question are 3 and 5, I've excerpted them below but head over to the forums for the ribbing:

3. Re: Alterac Valley for Tuesday 08-16-05 | 8/16/2005 3:29:01 AM PDT
Quote this post Reply to this post
ok i have a proposition for the horde, let us kill Korrak while you sit and watch. and well let you get all the honor youll ever want=}. no? ok well it shall be a great battle then, hope to see everyone there!

4...

5. Re: Alterac Valley for Tuesday 08-16-05 | 8/16/2005 8:44:27 AM PDT
Quote this post Reply to this post

Q u o t e:
ok i have a proposition for the horde, let us kill Korrak while you sit and watch. and well let you get all the honor youll ever want=}. no? ok well it shall be a great battle then, hope to see everyone there!

((OOC))

Pardon me for hijacking the thread, here..

But, Brion - if you don't want your mother to know you were up and on the computer at 3:29 in the morning - DON'T post on a forum that she reads.

Busted.
Grounded.


Ahahahahahaha :D

I've been thinking about (and I've even semi-written) an essay/article (for want of a better word) on the interaction of technology, specifically virtual communities, and the real world - this just fits in perfectly! Anyways, you don't need to know that - go forth and do whatever it is that you do!

Sun, 14 Aug 2005

[06:22] Data taste good, Windows EAT DATA
Date: 8/14/05 at 2:22PM

OK, so that's not strictly true - but I thought it sounded funny. Here's the lowdown.

Shona bought a BlueEye portable HDD enclosure before she left Oz so that she could easily transport all her Mail/Recipes/Patters/personal data/etc. She then stuck an 80Gb drive in it and - for maximum portability - formatted it with FAT32. Now, as everyone knows, Microsoft have been making it harder and harder to format things as FAT32 in recent years, especially things bigger than 32Gb. To be fair to Microsoft, they do it because it is insanely wasteful to try and use FAT32 on such a large partition but this is the beauty of choice. If I WANT to stick the loaded gun in my crotch and pull the trigger, I can! But I digress, where was I, blah blah BlueEye blah, ah yes.

So with the aid of Linux and the mkdosfs utility the disk was formatted (NOTE: It has come to my attention that someone has ported mkdosfs to Windows - I haven't tried it yet but I've downloaded it for later) and the world was a beautiful place...she took it home, plugged it in moved all her data onto it and took it out.

A week later, it was plugged back in and Windows asked, most politely, "The disk in drive F is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?". Obviously this is not the kind of question you'd like to be asked about the disk on which you have the only copy of your mail and other personal data (no, really). She moved it to another XP machine and it worked, back on her machine, "How bout I format your disk? Lemme format it, go on!", weird. There was no time for diagnosis so it just came over here and I had a look at it this morning.

I plugged it in and it appeared as a non-formatted "Healthy" device. I checked it out with Disk Investigator and it looked like there was data there. I pondered for a minute. Because it's a USB drive most of the traditional MS tools aren't going to work because you can't get access to the USB device from a DOS botodisk. I had a look on the ole internet and came across a delighful little utility called TestDisk. With the aid of the online documentation I had the problem sorted in five minutes. Hoorah for Open Source! Basically it took a backup copy of the FAT32 boot sector and overwrote a corrupted one however it's abilities seem to stretch a lot further than that - hopefully I'll never need them but I now have a copy of that snuggled into my USB toolkit (which is getting obscenely large now, weighing in at 281Mb). For more information on how you could fix the problem if you actually UNDERSTOOD the 1s and 0s on the platter, read here: How a Corrupted USB Drive Was Saved by GNU/Linux

Thu, 11 Aug 2005

[00:31] A chance encounter with a book
Date: 8/11/05 at 8:31AM

On the way in to work yesterday morning I met a book. This book to be exact. It was sitting on a ledge outside of Bank and as the area is usually littered with free magazines, papers, flyers and pamphlets I nearly ignored it - but I like books and the fact that a book was sitting there, with a curious little sticker in the corner piqued my curiosity - I turned back and rescued it...the sticker read:

Mon, 08 Aug 2005

[09:21] VB6 IDE and the Mousewheel
Date: 8/8/05 at 5:21PM

A long time ago I used to work with the VB6 Integrated Development Environment a lot. My biggest irk with the environmetn was that, for some reason it did not support the mousewheel events. You can't scroll the page up or down. This was back in the days when mouse wheels were still new fandagldness and in the end I ended up using a cool little application called FlyWheel by a mob named Plannet Crafters. They've disappeared now but FlyWheel is still out there.

I came back to the VB6 IDE recently as it is packaged with Microsoft Office (up until Office XP anyway) and it is what you get to write your fancy macros in Excel and Word in. I was violently surprised to find that the mouswheel STILL doesn't work. "Surely this cannot be" I thunk. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen to fix the problem but not to include what I would have thought would be a required usability fix. Anyway, you can download the required executable, vb6mousewheel.exe or go and check out the page from the Knowledgebase, Article 837910 - Mouse wheel events do not work in the Visual Basic 6.0 IDE. It's a pretty easy install and is described on the page but basically all you need to do is:

1. Download the file (it's a self-extracting archive) and run it. Say Yes to the "Can Microsoft own all your propertity in perpituity" box and extract it somewhere easy. I chucked it in c:\wutemp\c.
   
2. Go to c:\wutemp\c and copy the file VB6IDEMouseWheelAddin.dll to C:\Windows\System32 or C:\WINNT\System32 or whatever magical DLL directory you've got in your %PATH% that you care to use. I will call this directory Magical_Directory from now on to avoid confusion.
   
3. Close the IDE and anything that runs it (ie Word or Excel, not sure if Access has its own IDE these days)
   
4. Pop open a cmd window (Start > Run > cmd)
   
5. Type regsvr32 Magical_Directory\VB6IDEMouseWheelAddin.dll. You should get a little window pop up saying "DLLRegisterServer in Magical_Directory\VB6IDEMouseWheelAddin.dll succeeded.". Hit the OK button.
   
6. Start Excel or Word or whatever and open the IDE (in Excel it's Tools > Macros > Visual Basic Editor).
   
7. Click on Add-Ins in the menubar and then click Add-in Manager.
   
8. You'll be given a little list of possible add-ins. Click on MouseWheel Fix so it's selected.
   
9. Click to select the Loaded/Unloaded check box, and then click to select the Load on Startup check box.
   
10. Click OK and you're done. Woohoo - welcome to the late ninties!!!
    

Fri, 05 Aug 2005

[05:10] Bugg....ooorah!
Date: 8/5/05 at 1:10PM

Attention Denizens London: If you see a lost looking SonyEricsson T610 could you kindly return it to me. Thanks so much.

Hehe, that's unlikely to work really isn't it. The bugger part of the post is that I've lost the mobile. I've canned the SIM via the network but I don't know my IMEI number (aka International Mobile Equipment Identity) so I can't disable the handset unfortunately. I've reported it lost on the tube but my provider tells me that someone made a call that used up all the pre-pay so I think it's unlikely that it's going to get handed in really, oh well.

Do yourselves a favour people - find the IMEI on your phone and stick it somewhere handy (I have mine at home...in Australia). Luckily I've been offered another handset by a friend and my provider is sending me a new SIM (that stands for Subscriber Identity Module - I never knew that :) with the old number so all is well. All the data is backed up so I haven't lost anything really.

On to the Hooorah part of the post. When we got home last night the connection light on the router wasn't blinking......the Internet is connected to my house!!!

Wed, 03 Aug 2005

[16:18] Damn Hickorydacks
Date: 8/4/05 at 12:18PM

Well, maybe it isn't my wooden underwear so much as my inability to read - the installaton is this FRIDAY....here is an interim post:

• My Make magazine rocked up today - YAY! This quarters issue includes such scintilating topics as : VCR Cat Feeder, Stunning Spud Gun and Mr Jaloppy Teaches Welding. I look forward to getting into this tonight!
  
• My National Insurance card turned up today! I can now officially be taxed (rather than unofficially on the "Emergency Tax Rate" of 50%).
  
• I bring up the next topic as it appeared in the Metro this morning:
  The Space Elevator! The idea is simple, string a cable between the moon (or some other orbiting object) and tie it to the Earth. All travel problems solved as all you need to do is climb up the "rope". Now, I don't intend to take credit for this idea but I did think of it all by myself some years ago. I then discussed the idea with a reasonably knowledgable friend who pointed out to me that if, for some reason, the cable were to become dissacociated with the base station then you would have a cable dangling over the earth attached to an object moving at a relative speed of 1 kilometer per second (0.6 miles per scond). Since we're talking about a "cable" that would be some considerable diameter you're talking about a VERY destructive object (watch the start of Ghost Ship for a brief introduction to the destructive magic of high speed cables). He also pointed out a phenomenon I like to call the "wacky smacky string effect". I'm sure you're all passingly familliar with the Tennis ball on a string on a stick game (I forget the trade name) whereby you hit the tennis ball and it goes up the spiral piece of metal whilst your partner attempts to push it to the bottom by hitting in the opposite direction. Once someone wins and the string reaches either the top or bottom of the coil it can no longer rotate around the stick, at this point the cable begins to wrap around the stick until it runs out at which point the ball thumps into the pole. With the whole MoonEarth setup I see a possibility (I'm not sure how exactly you'd kick of such an event) of a similar but intensely more catastrophic outcome.
  I'm assuming these guys have thought of all of this but I wll do some reading and make sure :)
  
• My efforts to bring Bug 252 to the attention of someone at ModBlog are not faring well :(
  
  
  OK, I've used up all my free time this morning.....time to get to work.
  

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  Tue, 02 Aug 2005

  [06:15] The Updates Of Meaninglessnessness
  Date: 8/2/05 at 2:15PM
  
  Hello folks! Happy days are here - I should have ADSL at HOME tomorrow if all goes well. As I type my spanky new modemy/routery toy is en-route and the ADSL connection is scheduled for tomorrow - my fingers are crossed and I've crafted a cunning set of underwear from hickory so as to be always touching wood.
  
  This is good news for YOU (see the pointy fingers up the top, this means YOU - or YOUS in the vernacular for those back home) as I will now be able to post on some kind of regular schedule (instead of sneaking in posts in my lunch minute) and I have SOOOO much stuff stored up that I want to post that you could find useful, informative, helpful or, alternatively, blithering crap.
  
  I want to tell you what I found out about the mysterious bumpy black paint, I want to wax lyrical on my last two weekend outings, I quiver in anticipation of inviting you into realm of the CyberDog, I have many and varied exciting Windowsy tips I've picked up and, of course, there's all the naked photos.
  
  Muhahahah, bring on the interjobie!
  

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  Sun, 31 Jul 2005

  [16:59] Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ***** (5/5)
  Date: 8/1/05 at 12:59PM
  
  My first experience of English cinema going was great! The whole allocated seating thing is interesting - there's no point stripping down for less wind resistance on the run down to the cinema because you have a seat allocated, however, there is simply NO room in these cinemas (Odeon - fanatical about film, not so fanatical about seating space). I like to sit there and drain every last drop of goodliness out of a movie - I'm the guy sitting there at the end reading the license number from the Humane Society license as it wanders past at the very end of the credits - this proved a little difficult and I was nearly trampled by an angry mob who wanted to leave the SECOND the movie proper fnished while I sat there reading the credits. Anyway, on to the movie:
  
  I am yet to see Johnny Depp do anything bad (no, I've never seen 21 Jump St) so I always look forward to his movies and this one was great. I have never seen the "original" Charlie and the Chocolate factory movie although I've read the book and, like all Roald Dahl books, enjoyed it immensley. Roald mostly wrote for children but his writing style (for those who don't know) is really quite dark. The beautiful thing about his writing is that he never coddled children - he wrote for them but never spoke down to them or hid the facts. If someone died, they died, if something bad happened - it happened. Sort of like what the Lemony Snicket books are like these days.
  
  Am I rambling, well a little bit but I think it's important to to point out because this movie brought a similar level of disquiet in the screenplay - it did get a smidgey bit saccharine here and there but to be honest, so did the book.
  
  To sum it up - this movie was brilliant. The screenplay was perfect, the sets (digital and otherwise, perfectly brought to life the quirky and slightly impossible world that Roald created and the acting was superb from everyone. The music for the Oompa Loompa songs was very nicely done and if you can catch all the lyrics, quite cleverly put together. I literally had an ear-to-ear grin when those songs were playing but the Verucca Salt one was my favourite.
  
  I have never before had the urge to clap for a movie but as the credits rolled on this one I finally understood why people might feel the need to do so (although I will never understand why ANYONE clapped The Phantom Menace - they did, I was there).
  

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  Thu, 28 Jul 2005

  [16:49] Stopping USB Devices in Windows
  Date: 7/29/05 at 12:49PM
  
  I store my To Do list and various other sundries on my USB key and invariably when I try to remove it in the evenings I get the annoying "The device 'Generic Volume' cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later." message. Why they don't include a list of PIDs or process names or SOMETHING in that message to indicate what you could do to expedite the arrival of 'later' is beyond me.
  
  The best way to find the locking processes that I've worked out so far is to grab Process Explorer from the Sysinternals Freeware site and, using the Find Handle (Ctrl+F) functionality search for Harddisk. Windows mounts USB drives as \Device\Harddiskx where x is a number between 0 and however many drives you've got in your machine (minus 1 if you want to be pedantic :). I currently have two drives in my machine, \Disk\Hardisk0 which is the internal drive and \Device\Hardisk1 which is the USB drive. You can determine your drive numbers by opening the Computer Management management console - located under Control Panel > Administrative tools - and clicking on the Storage\Disk Management option.
  
  After doing the search you will be given a table of process names, pids and handles that should lead you to the locking process pretty quickly. The one I just did returned this:
  
  
  As you can see explorer.exe and pdksh.exe are using Hardisk1 at the moment.
  

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  Mon, 25 Jul 2005

  [09:43] The Water Method Man - Rating *** (3/5)
  Date: 7/25/05 at 5:43PM
  
  This one was sitting on the shelf of my flat when I moved in and that was all the motivation I had to pick it up. I actually started reading it last weekend but then I got Harry Potter and read that instead so this weekend I finished it off (it's great not having TV or internet access :)
  
  A bloke by the name of John Irving wrote this, he is also the man behind the book The World According to Garp which I have not read but I've seen the cover for a movie based on it - that is possibly useless information.
  
  Anyway, I really enjoyed The Water Method Man - it could be the whole vouyeristc nature of the book or it could be that I really wanted to know what happened to the Fred "Bogus" Trumper, the poor bastard who is the stories anti-hero. The boko traipses gaily through his life for a few years from the start of his thesis to "now", revolving around urinary tract problems, his relationship problems with family and his eclectic collection of friends, the pitfalls or Old Low Norse and manages to hide some rather insightful little gems in amongst the humour and pathos.
  
  There was nothing ground-breaking here, no epic stories set against dramatic backdrops - just the story of a man whose faults many will find familiar I suspect. I'll be keeping an eye out for more books by Mr Irving.
  
  

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  Wikipedias take on The Water Method Man
  

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  Wed, 20 Jul 2005

  [16:46] Bombings MkII
  Date: 7/21/05 at 12:46PM
  
  We've all just been told that there have been another three incidents - I can't find anything online yet....
  
  UPDATES:
  

  
  
  • 1346GMT - Dummy explosions using detonators only have sparked the evacuation of three Tube stations and the closure of three lines, a BBC correspondent has said.
    
  • 1348GMT - Mobile phones seem to have stopped working completely, I wonder if that's caused by people going mental and calling everyone they know or if it was done to stop "terrorists" from talking to each other...
    
  • 1534GMT - I was just downstairs and one of the security gurads was on the phone to a mate - apparently the cops (or bobbies if you will) have a van full of people surrounded in Vauxhall.
    
  • 1538GMT - Police are asking the media to turn their cameras off! That seems, odd?
    
  • 1617GMT - Police are saying the situation is under control but the Bakerloo, Piccadilly, Hammersmith & City, Victoria and Northern lines are all suspended.
    
    

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    [09:18] Shona
    Date: 7/20/05 at 5:18PM
    
    Shona arrived at Heathrow today (along with 14 boxes of random stuff). Heathrow is a looooooong way out on the Tube, I'm a cheapskate and not willing to pay the £20 for the express train so I just whiled away the one hour and 30 minute (3 Tube changes - normally only one but the bombings have messed with the Picadilly line) listening to techy podcasts.
    
    I'm glad she's here- it's nice to have someone to go home to :)
    

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    Tue, 19 Jul 2005

    [03:02] Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
    Date: 7/19/05 at 11:02AM
    
    If there was ever a book that needs "To Be Continued" written in big letters on the back, this would be it. I'm not complaining, I enjoyed the book, but there wasn't a lot of substance to the 600-odd pages. I wouldn't go so far as to call it filler but not a lot really happened. I liked the way the characters evolved and for the most part that is what this book concentrates on, setting everyone up to play their parts in book seven. The book is moving out of the young childrens genre and into early teen territory with some of the concepts being dealt with but I don't think anyone'll miss out on anything - the non-applicable parts will be ignored by those who don't care about kissing! I'd like to know what happens next but I guess I'm going to have to wait - apparently the next one is out in 2007, let's see how long I can hold my breath for...
    

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    [02:15] Bourbon
    Date: 7/19/05 at 10:15AM
    
    I've been meaning to post this for weeks now but I keep forgetting and while I'm waiting for a maxed out CPU machine to try and reboot I thought I'd post it:
    
    I've discovered the BEST bourbon in the world. It's called Bulleit Bourbon "Fronteir Whiskey". It comes in a pretty distinctive bottle that is mostly shaped glass with the name in raised letters (like the Carlton Cold beer bottle I think) but it has a bright orange crinkle cut label pasted around the bottom fifth. It is the smoothest bourbon I've ever tasted; you could drink it straight from the bottle (were you so inclined). It is apparently available in the UK and Australia as well as its homeland (the US). The website is mostly a useless bunch of flash crap but you can at least see what the bottle looks like.
    

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    Mon, 18 Jul 2005

    [07:29] The Fragility Of Objects
    Date: 7/18/05 at 3:29PM
    
    I've always had a bit of a reputation for things "just breaking off in my hands" and this skill ,or whatever you want to call it, is still alive and well. In my time here so far I have managed to:
    

    
    
    1. Break the middle of an Argus flatpack hutch assembly
       
    2. Put my foot through my friends bed
       
    3. Snap the leg off a desk
       
    4. Rip the valve out of my friends bicycle tyre
       
    
    None of this was intentional but the shoddy construction of English goods is costing me a lot of money.
    
    I had a pretty good weekend. We finished GTA:San Andreas late on Friday night (and I am now addicted to Plush by the Stone Temple Pilots because I listened to Radio X too much in the cars). I finished listening to Steve Wozniaks speech at Gnomedex 4.0 on the way home on the bus. I highly recommend this if you haven't already heard it. It is quite old now (October 2004) but the way he describes building the first computers is amazingly approachable, I want to build one like that too now!
    
    I got my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I didn't go and queue up, I bought it for £7.99 on Saturday afternoon from the supermarket. I don't know how they can sell it for that price as that is less than 50% of the RRP! Unfortunately I'm a voracious reader and I've only 100 pages to go. I've enjoyed it and I don't know what the critics are all whining about.
    
    I also tried to get a phone (you don't get a dodgy free one over here) and my neighbours sugested Argus. As mentioned above I've already had a run-in with Argus but I thought I'd give it a shot so I navigated my way to Victoria and checked it out. Argus is a most bizarre place. They have a catalouge the size of a phone book (they sell EVERYTHING) and you peruse this, noting down the catalog numbers of the objects you require. You then hand your slip of paper over the counter and someone wanders off into the warehouse to find your goods. I'm not really keen on this as I prefer to see the quality (or lack thereof) of the goods I'm forking out cash for so I am still phoneless.
    
    For a bit of physical activity I went to Battersea Park on Sunday afternoon and tried to get the hang of Devilsticks. They are deceptively hard and I nearly took out several passers-by with my flailings.
    

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    Fri, 15 Jul 2005

    [05:11] Just Stuff
    Date: 7/15/05 at 1:11PM
    
    My week isn't getting any better, I swear if I have to mess with just one more Excel spreadsheet I am going to write a Macro that runs every five minutes and secretly adds 1 to random numerical fields, maybe change the odd text value to #REF or something too.
    
    I'm just writing this because I've had enough Excel and I've got a couple of things I've been meaning to post but been too busy:
    
    Item 1 - The Two Minutes Silence
    Yesterdays thinking time was quite eerie. I filed out with everyone else and stood around the still cordoned off Liverpool Street entrance. The silence was amazing. Standing next to one of the bigger Tube/Train stations in the city on the intersection of 5 roads and NOTHING was moving. It was like in the movies when aliens come and kidnap everyone, you could hear crows cawing and sod all else.
    
    Item 2 - Conspiracy Theories
    I'm partial to the odd conspiracy theory, they seem to come true a lot of the time (see Operation Northwoods). I haven't commented on the political side of the whole London Bombing thing because I don't think I've anything authorative to say. I will however bring one thing to your attention. On the day the bombs went off there was an exercise underway by a non-government company in association with the London Underground (?) and others that tested the capabilites of those involved to respond to an emergency situation. The simulated situation was....wait for it.....three bombs going off in the EXACT same stations that the bombs did go off in. I've heard this reported ONCE on the day of the bombings and it disappeared after that so I hereby point you here and here. I would like to point out that I don't condone the bombings but I am rather confused as to why they happened and find the scale of the exercise somewhat odd. The official explanation doesn't really make sense to me. I don't suggest that you put any more faith in the alternate (aka conspiracy theory) news sources than you would in government produced news. I suggest that you apply the same source checking and cross-verification for both; just 'cause you saw it on TV doesn't mean it actually happened that way. For more news you never saw check out rense.com.
    
    Item 3 - Reunification
    Shona is winging her way to merry England as I type. She's visiting her bro in Thailand first and gets here on Wednesday. Yay!
    
    Item 4 - Bathing
    I don't like it.
    
    No, but seriously, it appears that bathing (as opposed to showering) is the norm over here. I find it a little odd as bathing uses a LOT more water than a shower (well, obviously not if you spend all day in the shower) and are generally more of a pain in the heinie 'cause you have to run them and then sit in a pool of your own stinking filth and sweat for a while, nice! I rather foolishly rented a flat with a hand-held shower thingy because I was already familiar with that being the done thing - I neglected to take note of the fact that there was no shower curtain present. I'm currently in negotiations with the landlord about this.
    

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    Wed, 13 Jul 2005

    [06:51] Aaaaaarrrrrrgggghh
    Date: 7/13/05 at 2:51PM
    
    I stayed up to late last night (watching The Scene) and now I'm tired and grumpy and not dealing with work very well at all. My girlfriend sent me a picture that accurately represents exactly how I feel today.
    
    
    
    

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    Tue, 12 Jul 2005

    [05:05] Die Mouse Button Die!
    Date: 7/12/05 at 1:05PM
    
    I've been very interested in UI design since I first started building software and I've always been interested in ways to make things more intuituve and easier to use - designing the technology around the human rather than twisting humans around knobbly UIs. I stumbled across the dontclick.it site today which looks really really interesting - basically it's a site navigable without pressing the mouse button at all. I don't know about the RSI implications of this, I use a trackball (Logitechs Trackman) and consequently don't have to wave my arms around like a windmill, maybe my thumb will drop off instead.
    

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    [01:34] Online News and Information Sites
    Date: 7/12/05 at 9:34AM
    
    I've been trying to stay on top of breaking news for the past few days (why are those helicopters hovering over my house) and I've found a few new sites to add to my old list:
    

    
    
    • The Strange World Of Tapu - This site grew out of the original Strange World Of Tapu, I think. It was one of my favourites for a long, long time and it remains a very useful source of information on news and other things - explore the tabs! The site moves around a LOT so just remember the title and search for it.
      
    • ABYZ News Portal - Normal old news portal but links to a lot of traditional newspapers.
      
    • Rense.com - The real news. This site is updated quite often during the day and contains a lot of information that doesn't make it into the mainstream news. It could quite possibly be classsed as a conspiracy theory site but I happen to believe that a lot of the theorists are right - a lot of the predictions and observations made in stories written and linked to from here come true all too often. A lot of interesting info on the recent London Bombings in here too....
      
    • Wikinews - A new discovery for me and an interesting idea - worth keeping an eye on, sort of like a moderated meta-blog :)
      
    • Technorati - News from the blog world, a lot of "now" news is out there and you can find it here
      
    • IceRocket has a Blog Search and a News Search
      
    • Google - Allegedly an unbiased news search and works for major topics, remember you have to watch google
      
    • BBC News 24 Streaming Video - if anything big happens in London (which I'm a little biased towards at the moment) it'll be here.
      
    
    
    If anyone has any interesting or useful links I'd be interested in them.
    

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    Sun, 10 Jul 2005

    [16:26] House Of The Dead - Rating (0/5)
    Date: 7/11/05 at 12:26PM
    
    House Of The Dead is (theoretically) based on the game of the same name - I've played it, I enjoyed it and when we saw it on the shelves we thought, why not. Now I have a list of very good reasons why not:
    

    
    
    • The only connection to the game are the screengrabs from it that are flashed up randomly every now and then and a very tenuous link at the end.
      
    • The "horror" element is really, really pathetic. The zombies are energetic ex-ravers and behave in very un-stereotypical fashion
      
    • The incessant use of the "Matirx Effect". This started out funny but THEY KEPT ON DOING IT! It made no sense, it was almost like this was a practice film that was somehow released accidentally.
      
    • The, for want of a better word, acting, was atrocious. When the Customs lady first rocks up on the island we all wet ourselves the first time she opened her mouth, if doors could talk they would talk like her - you could almost see the Teleprompter refleted in her eyes.
      
    • The checklist. I haven't watched a lot of shlock horror but I've seen enough parodies to know the list, it's like these guys did too, and followed it religiously.
      
      
      
      1. Gather good looking teens: Check
         
      2. Transport to spooky location: Check
         
      3. Establish "Good Time" scenario: Check
         
      4. Segue to random teen nudity: Check
         
      5. Introduce scary thing: Check
         
      6. Kill everyone: Check
         
      
      
      
      I have watched a lot of movies that other people won't tolerate, even I found this one hard going. In summary, don't bother - go play the game instead.
      

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      [16:26]
      House Of The Dead - Rating (0/5) Date: 7/11/05 at 12:26PM House Of The Dead is (theoretically) based on the game of the same name - I've played it, I enjoyed it and when we saw it on the shelves we thought, why not. Now I have a list of very good reasons why not:

      • The only connection to the game are the screengrabs from it that are flashed up randomly every now and then and a very tenuous link at the end.
      • The "horror" element is really, really pathetic. The zombies are energetic ex-ravers and behave in very un-stereotypical fashion
      • The incessant use of the "Matirx Effect". This started out funny but THEY KEPT ON DOING IT! It made no sense, it was almost like this was a practice film that was somehow released accidentally.
      • The, for want of a better word, acting, was atrocious. When the Customs lady first rocks up on the island we all wet ourselves the first time she opened her mouth, if doors could talk they would talk like her - you could almost see the Teleprompter refleted in her eyes.
      • The checklist. I haven't watched a lot of shlock horror but I've seen enough parodies to know the list, it's like these guys did too, and followed it religiously.
        1. Gather good looking teens: Check
        2. Transport to spooky location: Check
        3. Establish "Good Time" scenario: Check
        4. Segue to random teen nudity: Check
        5. Introduce scary thing: Check
        6. Kill everyone: Check
        I have watched a lot of movies that other people won't tolerate, even I found this one hard going. In summary, don't bother - go play the game instead.

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        [07:47] The Jacket - Rating **** (4/5)
        Date: 7/10/05 at 3:47PM
        
        A title bereft of big names - I think. I don't usually remember actors and as far as I'm concerned, if you recognise them, they aren't doing their job :)
        
        Based on an idea from a book published in 1915 by Jack London called The Jacket/The Star Rover comes a rather interesting movie. A little bit thriller, a little bit sci-fi, a litte bit drama, a little bit like Memento. The film opens in Iraq, 1991, and follows an American soldier by the name of Jack. That's all I'm going to say (expect that this is NOT a war film). I hate knowing what movies/books are about and just try to watch everything that comes along.
        
        What I will say is that I really enjoyed this movie and highly recommend it to one and all. If you do watch it, sit back and have a think afterwards. What REALLY happened at the end.....talk about it to whomever you watch it with, you might be surprised at what other people think. I was.
        

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        Fri, 08 Jul 2005

        [03:56] Without Tea
        Date: 7/8/05 at 11:56AM
        
        I usually have two or three cups of tea a day in my VI Mug. So far over here I am missing a) my mug (I left it at home goddamit and b) a decent cup of tea. You'd think that you'd be able to get one in England wouldn't you.
        
        I usually drink Twinings - the Yunnan, Earl Grey, Afternoon and English Breakfast varieties. So far the only one of these I've been able to track down is English Breakfast. I've looked in Saisburys, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, CostCutter and any number of local corner shops. They just aren't to be found.
        
        I did the trendite thing and went to Starbucks this afternoon because I'm trying to code and I REALLY need a cup of tea. They gave me a filthy cup of muck made by a company called Tazo. I'm not going to link to their site because it's covered in flash bollocks and I have no desire to help propogate their disgustingly vile teas any further - granted they seem to be corporate buddies with Starbucks but every litle bit :)
        
        Anyhoo - I just found out that Twinings do mail order over here! I'm so into that! There is a catalouge and when you're ready, an Order Form. You don't really need the catalogue as everything is listed on the order form anyway.
        

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        [00:18] Here We Go Again
        Date: 7/8/05 at 8:18AM
        
        We've just been notified that we're going to be evacuated due to a "suspect package" outside a restaurant next to the station.
        
        I think it's going to be a rather jumpy few days around here.
        
        UPDATE: Police have all gone away again and we're allowed to stay. False alarm. Some bloke walked in downstairs about 10 minutes ago and said "Shit, I think I left my bag in Benjys". I think the police blew it up.
        

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        [00:00] NIN - Tales From The Mosh
        Date: 7/8/05 at 8:00AM
        
        Due to the munificence of a friend of a friend I got free tickets to the Nine Inch Nails gig on Tuesday night. I nearly didn't make it due to some work malarkey but in the end I did! It was in the Brixton Academy and the design of that place is very well thought out. It has a gently sloping floor, sloping down to the stage, so that you can ALWAYS see the stage no matter what your location.
        
        I promptly lost everyone I was there with in the crowd and proceeded to have a good time anyway. I was somewhat foolishly atttired in a shirt as well as a t-shirt and this led to some trouble in the mosh.
        
        It was a good gig and NIN didn't do the thing I REALLY hate that every band seems to do these days - an encore. If you want to play, play, if you want to stop, stop. Quit it with the ego pumping you bastards. There was a good mix of new and old stuff and the crowd was quite genteel for a rock gig.
        
        Moshing is an interesting sport. It only occured to me on Tuesday night that it is a game combining elements of billiards/pool/snook er and breakout. You have to judge precise impact points and pressure required to break through to the next line. I got through to the second row but the front row were clinging to the barrier like limpets so I had to be content with getting an arm to the barrier (to anchor myself) and bouncing around there. At this point tradgedy struck. My sweat-soaked shirt started to creep down my non-fence holding arm and, as anyone who's been in a moshy situation before will know, you can't really move in an individual fashion. I was slowly being handcuffed and there was nothing I cuold do about it. Then, one of my earplugs started to depart and obviously I couldn't do anything about it being handcuffed and all. It left about an hour and a bit in I finally decided enough was enough and followed it. I couldn't really protect my head anymore and I was suffering the usual oxygen starvation coupled with a lack of anything substantial to eat since breakfast and my not so energy enhancing dinner of bourbon and ice. For the first time ever I bailed on the mosh and went out over the barrier!
        
        This was interesting for me, another sign of the inevitable ageing process? Depressnig thoughts to think but I went and hung out with some other evacuees and had a good chat with them until one of my favourite songs came on and, and this is the surprising bit for me, managed to get back to the EXACT same spot I'd been in before the song even finished. I stayed there until the end of the concert.
        

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        Thu, 07 Jul 2005

        [23:30] Back To Work
        Date: 7/8/05 at 7:30AM
        
        I got to work today in record time - I have to say that I'm well impressed with the Transport For London efforts to get everything working again.
        
        I have a registered Oyster so I received an e-mail about 1630 yesterday saying "Sorry the Tubes are out but we expect to resume a slightly limited service tomorrow morning. Please check the Journey Planner tomorrow to find the best route to get to your destination.". So, I did that this morning and my normal route popped up, Northern Line to Bank, change to Central for Liverpool St! I went down and there are definitely less people on the Tube this morning, I got a seat all the way in :) I would conjecture that there was about 25-30% of normal traffic out this morning.
        
        Well done everyone involved!
        

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        [00:46] The Tube - Liverpool St Explosion(?) And More!!!
        Date: 7/7/05 at 8:46AM
        
        Well, had my first Tube related problem this morning. The Northern Line was closed from my station so I detoured via the Victoria Line and onto the Central Line from there...unfortunatel y Liverpool Street Station was closed (bomb scare), as was the prior stop, Bank (Power Failure) so I had to get off and walk from St Pauls. This was interesting as you don't get ANY idea of what shape London is whilst wizzing around underground. Turns out that where I got off (two stops from where I was going remember) is only an 8 minute walk away. This is interesting as the rule of thumb here is each stop is approximately 3 minutes from the next. This doesn't include maneuvering time getting out of the rabbit warren that is the Tube.
        
        I think I could probably walk to work and not use the bastard Tube at all!
        
        UPDATE: It seems that Liverpool Street wasn't so much of a scare as an actual explosion. I don't know if it's malicious or not - I suspect not as the Tube announcement when I was down there was initially "closed because of Power Failure". When I wandered in this morning both ends of my street were blockaded by Police but they weren't evacuating buildings (I am in the building next-door to Liverpool St). Someone just in said they are now evacuating the street and the sirens have now been added to by a helicopter! More news as it comes to hand.
        
        UPDATE II: Well, we've just been told to evacuate the building so...I'm out of here! As one of my colleagues has just mentioned - what's the point of evacuating us onto the street where we can be blown up more easily :)
        
        UPDATE III: I'm home - not sure how comforting that is due to my proximity to Stockwell Station - I had to talk my way through some police tape to get home! Looks like living in London is going to be a bit of a bugger for a while. There's no way the Tube is going to be going tomorrow and unlikely to be moving within a month I'd say, depending on the damage from the explosions. Looks like my earlier comments about walking may be put to the test :)
        
        UPDATE IV: Wikipedia is being put to use to cover this in what I think is an excellent way, check it out here. I had never heard of Wikinews up to now.
        

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        Sat, 02 Jul 2005

        [10:02] Musings
        Date: 7/2/05 at 6:02PM
        
        I'm getting REALLY sick of not having my webserver at home. Back in the good old days I used to drop "stuff" onto my site so that I could access it from work or wherever else, now I'm working out of a 10Mb restricted account that does HTTP only. I've lost my reference library (although most of it fits onto a CD I carry anyway) and my SSH tunnels. I also no longer have the ability to host whatever odd applications I wanted to run (ie the whole Sunbird remote calendar thing).
        
        I hope to resolve this shortly as I am days away from signing a rental agreement (yay). Once I've got that sorted I can get a phone line, then an ADSL account and then a computer. THEN I can get a computer and get things happening again. I''m actually wondering if I should just bite the bullet and pay for hosting somewhere. There was an interesting looking company called Bytemark who had a table at LUGRadio Live. They host you on a VM and give you pretty much free reign over your machine. You get a choice of Debian, Gentoo (sweet!) and RedHat. The base package (£15 a month) gives you a static IP, 64Mb of RAM, 15GB of disk and 1Gb of backup space. They also offer time on a compile farm (handy for Gentoo) for getting through nasty compiles on the little machines.
        
        On a non-tech note, whilst living on my friends lounge room floor I have become decidedly non-physical, I guess the proximity of a GTA-enabled XBox and the lack of any real space to swing arms and legs has led to me vegifying. So, I've decided to go and check out Krav Maga. It looks interesting and should keep me pretty fit. I've wanted to try this for a long time. I read about it in a book whilst browsing in Berkelouws about 8 years ago (Aussies are highly commended to make the trip and check it out - if you love second hand bookshops you'll go crazy for this place).
        

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        [09:28] A Joke
        Date: 7/2/05 at 5:28PM
        
        I'm in at work waiting for a script to run and I've been flipping through a calendar I found with daily jokes, I couldn't let this one go:
        
        Two parrots are sitting on a perch, one turns to the the other and says "Can you smell fish?"
        
        HAHAHAHAHA
        
        OK, sorry.
        

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        Wed, 29 Jun 2005

        [12:24] I Got A Headset!
        Date: 6/29/05 at 8:24PM
        
        Not excitingly groundbreaking news for some but as I spend four to five hours on the phone every day I get REALLY sick of trying to type with one hand. The headset was ceremoniously awarded to me after the following e-mail went out (I'm the 'chap'):
        
        
        From : [Name removed to protect the guilty]
        To : [A broad selection of people on the floor I'm working on]
        Subject: Mental Status of your PB02 man
        
        [My bosses name removed], I am a little concerned about the mental status of your PB02 chap who has been working on a desk in the server team.
        
        On Monday afternoon he stuck a plastic bag on his head and then proceeded
        to use parcel tape to create a DIY hands free kit by sticking the phone to
        his ear.
        
        Is this normal behaviour amongst PB02??? Do you want me to call security?
        
        I have pictures on my phone if you don't believe me.
        
        Regards
        
        [Judgemental man not appreciative of ingenuity]
        
        NT Server Team
        
        
        UPDATE: Someone just forwarded me the phone picture which I present for your viewing pleasure:
        

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        Mon, 27 Jun 2005

        [06:32] TCPDump on Windows
        Date: 6/27/05 at 2:32PM
        
        I had a situation today where I needed the functionality of TCPDump but I couldn't install ANYTHING on the server I wanted to dump on. This ruled out WinDump as you need to install WinPcap to get that, and most other similar utilities, working. I then stumbled across MicroOLAP TCPDump. This is a windows port of the original tcpdump program using their own Packet Sniffer SDK. From what I've read on the site, the SDK is actually a rebadged (and reworked?) Network Investigation Suite - a Delphi based fully self-contained, dynamically-loaded packet capture technology.
        
        It is free for personal use and attracts a $US40 license fee for commercial use.
        
        It has exactly the same command line switches as the *nix version (yay!) but the interface selection is a little difficult. I couldn't find any doco on it so here's what I worked out/guessed:
        
        How To Find Your Network Interface ServiceName
        

        
        
        1. Start RegEdit.exe
           
        2. Navigate to the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkCards key
           
        3. Assuming you have a NIC in the machine there will be one or more keys listed here, one for each NIC. Each key is an integer but I don't know what this integer is, it is NOT the number of cards you have. There are two string (REG_SZ) values in each of these keys. Description and ServiceName. The Description field should provide you with enough information to identify the card you're after, the ServiceName is the string you are going to need.
           As you can see in the image below, my ServiceName data value is "{5A484F38-DF22-483C-A4B8-69570E3C7DE2}".
           
           
        4. That's all you need - to use it with tcpdump:
           tcpdump -i \Device\{5A484F38-DF22-483C-A4B8-69570E3C7DE2}
           
        
        
        If you don't want to expend all that effort I've written a script that will enumerate all the NICs in your registry and put the ServiceName value in an InputBox so you can copy it out. Copy everything between the lines below into a file with a vbs extension and double-click it (NOTE: you'll need WMI on the box for this to work):
        

        ---

        
        

        
        
        Set oReg=GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\.\root\default:StdRegProv")
        
        sKey = "Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkCards"
        
        lRet = oReg.EnumKey(&H80000002, sKey, arSubKeys)
        
        If (lRet = 0) Then
        
        For Each oKey In arSubKeys
        
        sSubPath = sKey & "\" & oKey
        
        oReg.GetExpandedStringValue &H80000002, sSubPath, "Description", sDesc
        
        oReg.GetExpandedStringValue &H80000002, sSubPath, "ServiceName", sValue
        
        InputBox sDesc, "Network Card ServiceName", sValue
        
        Next
        
        Else
        
        WScript.Echo "Couldn't get registry array (" & lRet & ")!"
        
        End If
        
        

        
        

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        Sun, 26 Jun 2005

        [15:47] LUGRadio LIVE - Report
        Date: 6/26/05 at 11:47PM
        
        LUGRadio Live 2005 happened this weekend (Saturday 25/06). My report on what was there and what I saw follows (yes, it's all me me me, it's a blog goddamit):
        
        I was all organised and had everything together and ready so all I had to do was get up at 0615 , shower and head for the Tube. I got there and made my connection at Euston station with no problems. 2 hours and 46 uncomfortable minutes later (you get what you pay for with the ole £18 return ticket) I alighted in Wolverhampton. I was just on the verge of congratulating myself for the eminient smoothness of the travel arrangements when I realised I had absolutely NO idea of where exactly I was going in Wolverhampton! I tried wandering around in the vague hope that I'd either bump into it or I'd come across an internet cafe. I didn't. Forty-five minutes later I realised that I had a couple of the podcasts on my MP3 player and I slowly FFWD through to the annoucement of the location. I got there only an hour late and got into some serious llistening. I managed to check out:
        

        
        
        1. Rufus Pollock - Digital rights and freedom campaigner
           
           Had some interesting things to say about the various open source licenses and their various interactions with each other. Also touched on the new OpenSolaris licensing and warned of possible linux "contamination" leading to potential SCO like legal action in the future. He also made some interesting points about free software and the government. He pointed out that schools are THE place to get Linux in because getting the mindshare of the children is going to be what gets Linux into the position of a contender rather than an annoyance to the major powers. He also pointed out that winning market share from those who CAN make a choice is not really helping. Those who can make choices about what they want to run are probably something like 5% of the overall OS market. Schools and government offices are what needs to be aimed at.
           
        
        
        2. Mark Shuttleworth - Founder of Canonical and the Ubuntu project and part time space-man.
           
           I found this to be one of the most interesting talks. He gave the talk whilst playing a slideshow of photos taken by and of him when he was training and IN space. The talk segued through space travel whenever a photo caught his eye and Ubuntu development and philosophy the rest of the time. I remember when Mark did the space thing back in 2002 and I didn't really pay attention at the time because a) I had no idea who he was and b) I was busy thinking unhelpful things like "Goddamn rich people" and being jealous. He seems to be a pretty philanthropic kind of guyand he further fired my ambitions to do something for the OS/FS/Linux community this year. He also followed on with the school theme and talked briefly about his SchoolTool project. Basically a project to develop a common global school administration infrastructure that is freely available under an Open Source licence.
           
        
        
        3. Bill Thompson - Tech commentator and BBC journalist
           
           This talk drew some interesting parallels between the Madrid bombings on the 11th of March 2004 and the Open Source community. He pointed out the difference between the American reaction to the 9th of September attacks ("Who did this and where are they so we can do it back") and the Spanish reaction ("Who did this and why did they do it? What can we do to stop them doing it again?"). He then moved on to how Open Source software was used to provide a website including registraion and pre-registration functionality, high turn-over forums in three languages and a certain degree of privacy - all in three days. Bill said the the slideshow was available on his website but damned if I could find it.
           
        
        
        4. Ian Bell - Co-creator of 80s classic game Elite
           
           This was an interesting talk in that the presenter seemed seemed very much drained by the subject he was talking about. There are documented troubles surrounding this attitude but I still felt really sorry for him. He was obviously very smart but just seemed to be over everything.
           
        
        
        5. Kevin Carmony - President and CEO of Linspire
           
           This guy is pure PR genius. I played with the first couple of versions of Lindows when they came out but I've done nothing more than read news stories ever since they became Linspire. I must say that purely going off what he said I'm definietly up for another look. Although his distro is probably not what I'm looking for it might be a very good stepping stone into the Linux world for Windows people I'd like to move over (people like my parents for instance). He pointed out that a lot of the work they are doing with Linspire is getting hardware drivers for Linux in general. They are big enough to be able to deal with companies like Via, Abit, Nvidia, Asus, AMD and get drivers out of them. He also explained that everythign that is developed at Linspire to make their desktop more useable is given back to the community that owns the original base product.
           
        
        
        6. and, of course, Jono Bacon, Ade Bradshaw, Stuart Langridge and Matthew Revell doing the live recording of LUGRadio late in the afternoon!
           
        
        
        Of course I also got some cool free stuff:
        
        
        
        • An O'Reilly pocket Etch-A-Sketch
          
        • An O'Reilly Developers Notebook (basically a little book full of grid paper)
          
        • A boxed copy of Linspire with a 12-Month Click-and-Run license
          
        • A RedHat Europe cap
          
        • A CD with all the LUGRadio episodes to date, signed by all the presenters of course (yup, I'm a sad fanboy)
          
        • A 12 month subscription to Make magazine (I scored that by travelling the furthest to get to the meet).
          
        • The latest Ubuntu and KUbuntu releases on CD
          
          
          I'd like to plug Make magazine just briefly. It's a new offering from the O'Reilly company and I really like it. I bought the two available copies before I got the subscription because I really enjoyed my brief skim through them. It could be that they just happen to be paralleling my current side project (building a magentic swipe card reader - Make's take on it here) but there seemed to be plenty of other stuff to interest the hardware hacker - sort of like 2600 but without the social commentary.
          
          I think the best thing I got took away from this event (apart from masses of swag) was the re-enforcement that Linux is more about community than anything else. All the really cool people who gave up their time to talk at this event which, lets face it, isn't exactly world-shaking, without being paid anything at all embody the spirit of what the Open Source community is all about. They came, they talked about what they give to the community and none of them put themselves up on a pedestal. If you wanted to approach them and have a chat, you could!
          
          Although on the face of it it might be nice for all of the talent available to work on one distro and perfect one desktop manager and one application suite the reality is that all of these projects inter-operate anyway. If someone comes up with a bright idea you'll see it spread around soon enough. Without the choice the community becomes no better an option than what is offered by the proprietry "Do It OUR Way" OSs.
          
          I get more dissilusioned with private enterprise everyday and I really hope that I can provide something useful to the world - no matter how fleetingly - rather than tapping my blood for some vampiric leach who cares not for the quality and elegance of the solution so long as they get paid.
          
          Vive la resistance!
          

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          Thu, 23 Jun 2005

          [07:20] MSTSC Three Finger Salute
          Date: 6/23/05 at 3:20PM
          
          I've been using the Microsoft Terminal Services Client (mstsc.exe) a lot recently and today the root explorer.exe hung on the server leaving me unable to do anything. I needed to press Control Alt Delete to get to the Task Manager but I couldn't because the local machine obviously gets precedence on that little combo. A little digging on the MS Support site revealed:
          
          To send Ctrl Alt Del via a Terminal Services connection you need to press Ctrl Alt End.
          
          The only other really interesting combo I found is Control Alt Break which toggles between Windowed and Full Screen modes.
          
          To get the word from the horses mouth or decide for yourself what is really interesting, check out the MS article How To Connect Clients to Terminal Services By Using a Terminal Services Client in Windows 2000 - in particlar the Shortcut Keys section.
          

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          Wed, 22 Jun 2005

          [03:48] Sunbird Calendar
          Date: 6/22/05 at 11:48AM
          
          I finally caved yesterday after all of my meetings moved about three times and my diary (written on paper) ended up looking like some kind of cryptic treasure map. I'm using paper because I don't have a tiny mobile computer yet (they're all too delicate and expensive) and I can't use the work calendering system (Lotus Notes) because I still don't have access due to some administrative bungles.
          
          So, I headed for Sunbird. I looked at Sunbird a while back and it seems to have moved on quite a bit since then. The 0.2 release was set free on Friday, February 4th 2005 and it's slowly developing into a useful app.
          
          The problem I have is that I want it accessible from multiple locations (hopefully I can get online from wherever I am) to deal with the lack of portable device to keep it on. Sunbird provides the ability to publish your calendar to a remote server via HTTP. It uses the iCal file format. Searching for iCal on google provides a link to iCal Exchange. This is a free service that will host your calendar, password protected if you wish. Obviously if you are going to be putting private/secret information (ie 1630 - Dominatrix Appt.) in your diary you don't want it out there on the internet so it's up to you to decide if you can utilise this service. If you have the luxury of a home server then you can host it yourself - there's an Apache module, mod_dav, that will do the job for you. From what I've seen the website that Carlos provides is pretty slick - the interface is simple and data transfer is quick!
          
          I had to get it to go through my work proxy and as the interface is still lacking polish there is no proxy option. To get it working I had to do the following:
          

          
          
          1. Download Sunbird 0.2. This is the ZIP package, just unpack it somewhere
             
          2. Run sunbird.exe from wherever you unpacked it.
             
          3. Shut it down again, now all of the initial preferences have been set.
             
          4. Locate your prefs.js file. It will be somewhere like: C:\Documents and Settings\
             YOUR_USER_NAME\Application Data\MozillaSunbird\Profiles\A_RANDOM_STRING\prefs.js and open it in Notepad
             
          5. Add the proxy settings:
             user_pref("network.proxy.autoconfig_url", "http://your.proxy.url/proxy.pac");
user_pref("network.proxy.type", 2);

             I stole these settings from Firefox, I use an automatic proxy so if you have a single proxy these settings might not be correct. I'll look up the other proxy settings and post them here later.
             
          6. Start up Sunbird again
             
          7. Go to the Tools menu and select Options
             
          8. Add your remote URL. If you're using iCal then it will be something like http://icalx.com/private/USER_NAME/CALENDAR_NAME.ICS
             
          9. Press OK
             
          10. Over on the left hand side there's a little tabbed menu. Click on the second tab, Calendars and right click on the calendar listed there. Select Edit Calendar from the menu.
              
          11. The Remote Calendar URL should be populated now but you should tick the Automatically publish your changes tick box down the bottom. Press OK
              
          12. Last step, right click on the calendar and this time select Publish Entire Calendar from the menu
              
          13. A window will pop up with the URL you entered before, press the Publish button. If you've selected a private calendar then you will be prompted for the username and password you entered on the website. Press the Close button.
              
          
          That's it!
          It works but it's a no-frills service so far. Obviously Sunbird has a long way to go, maybe it's time I finally pulled my finger out and did something useful for the Open Source community.....
          

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          [01:10] Painting London : Your Options are Bumpy or Sticky
          Date: 6/22/05 at 9:10AM
          
          I've been doing a LOT of walking in the past two weeks in the search for a place to live. Whilst on these adventures I've been observing London and the way it's different to home.
          
          I'm one of those annoying people who like to tap on fences/railings whilst walking past them. If one has a stick, all well and good; If not, hands will do. So anyway, I was walking along a road (after a failed attempt to get into BT Tower) and I turned onto Euston Road. This road is quite large so the powers that be have built a fence along the side to stop you wandering into the traffic. I automatically stuck my hand out to tap-tap-tap on the railings as I went by and - and this is the exciting bit - nearly stripped all the skin from my fingers. This was my first encounter with the Bumpy Paint.
          
          I stopped and investigated the railings. Although they were painted matt black the paint was impregnated with what can only be described as 'stuff'. Some of the stuff was quite large and protruded from the surface about 6-7mm, other pieces were smaller like sandpaper. Looking around I noticed that every other council owned object was painted with the same substance, lightpoles, traffic signal boxes, fences - anything that hadn't moved while the painting team went through I think. Since then (that was last weekend now) I have come across it in several places and I'm still not 100% sure what it is.
          
          My initial theory that they'd heard I was coming over and wanted to force me to sand my own arms off doesn't realy seem all that likely and the only other thing I can think of is that it's an anti-graffiti measure. It would probably stop Magic Marker activities but I doubt spray paint would have any problems, it's also possible that the nodules would prevent bill posters from sticking their wares as there wouldn't be enough points of contact for the glue to hold. I've search for anti-graffiti products and there are none that match what I'm seeing here. I decided to send an e-mail to the London Mayor (it was the only e-mail address I could find) and ask him. The mail was received and they replied:
          
          We will look into all of the points you have raised and get back to you as soon as possible.
          
          So they obviously haven't read it :) If they ever do I shall pass on the information here: watch this space.
          
          The sticky paint is easier. I came across it about two days ago and I thought I'd actually found an answer to the bumpy paint. Whilst walking along Vauxhall Road I saw a big yellow sign (see a lovely selection here) saying Anti-Climb Paint. I rushed over thinking that it was going to be the bumpy paint and found that it was actually some black goop that they smear on stuff to stop vandals/burglars from climbing on or over them. Theoretically you can't climb downpipes because you'll slip off and you can't climb other things because you won't want to get dirty. I'm not sure just how effective this actually is. I think some gloves would make it quite easy....
          
          I like an industry that covers all angles. The paint industry brings us non-slip paint for pool surrounds and slip paint for everything else!
          

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          Sun, 19 Jun 2005

          [03:52] Hey! Where'd my life go?
          Date: 6/19/05 at 11:52AM
          
          Woah! I've had so many things I've wanted to post this week and a grand total of zero spare hours to do ANYTHING in.
          
          Work has been non-stop and frequently hasn't finished until nine (that would be PM) after starting at seven-thirty/eight which means I have to be well out of the house by about seven (I'm currently less than three minutes from a Tube station). The whole Work/Social Networking obligation this week (Bob, this is the new guy, don't hurt him...much) have precluded me actually getting home before midnight any night this week - not to metion the fact that Thursday night we were forced to go to a Karaoke bar...wheeee, now my only suit smells like I'm a hardcore chain smoker!
          
          In addition I'm trying to locate a place to live which means viewings. The agents over here (who appear to be exclusively Australian or South African) don't start work until nine so I can only view places at lunch time or in the afternoon if I can scab off earlyish.
          
          To cap it all off, I suspect that the lack of sleep, combined with exposure to less than clean environs has contributed to a lapse in the vigilance of my immune system and I seem to have a cold...
          
          My only hedonistic moment this week was when I spent eight hours plaing GTA:San Andreas (Yes, I have an XBox, not a PoopStation so it's new to ME OK) last night (I didn't start until after all the real estate agents were closed though, we played from five until one). Damn that's a cool game - more on that later!
          
          Anywho, I shall now attempt to post all the things I've been meaning to post this week so apologies in advance for hopelessley out-of-date information (for those of you avidly scheduling your lives based on my blog).
          

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          Mon, 13 Jun 2005

          [15:42] LUGRadio LIVE
          Date: 6/13/05 at 11:42PM
          
          Since I so cunningly managed to miss Linux Conf 2005 (no no, there are plenty of tickets left, I'll buy one later) in my own home town I'm NOT going to miss LUGRadio Live 2005, not when I'm so close!
          
          I've been considering it for the last couple of days and, in a serendipitous twist of fate, a mailing list that arrived today pointed out to me that a man whom I very much respect and admire is also going to be there. That man is Mil Millington! If you haven't heard of him I suggest you check out the link, he is a most hilarious author and has written several books now including Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About and A Certain Chemistry.
          
          See you at LUGRadio Live 2005.
          

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          Sun, 12 Jun 2005

          [09:32] This Blog Sucks
          Date: 6/12/05 at 5:32PM
          
          It has been pointed out to me that my blog sucks and that "The feeds are utter poo".
          
          Strong words but, sadly for me, true. The feeds are indeed "poo". I've been doing some digging and it seems that feeds out of modblog.com are generated by some magical php and that this php is not as magical as it should be. It strips all HTML from the blog entry! This leads to some interesting formatting issues wherever the feed is displayed.
          
          I have raised Bug 252 with the Modblog team and we shall see what happens.
          
          UPDATE: I was notified (somewhat bizarrely) by a comment on this blog that the nasty bug is under investigation, I await it's resolution with bated breath....
          

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          Fri, 10 Jun 2005

          [06:29] Vindication
          Date: 6/10/05 at 2:29PM
          
          I've been meaning to write a diatribe on telecommuting for the last week but I haven't had a chance. I mention this because I spent my second day physically at work today and, since my MP3 player ran out of batteries on the tube this morning I listened to my co-workers chatting today.
          
          I was both stunned and vindicated by what I heard. I've had problems with this company before and I spent more than a little time reviewing their behaviour and reputation in my city, country and eventually my geographic area. My conclusions then were that they were universally unloved by their employees for exactly the same reasons. This was based on internet research and a few internally aired isues - issues that were quickly removed from intranet sites and Inboxes upon their discovery.
          
          Today I heard comments indicating that team morale is rock-bottom due to problems with expense claims, constant unpaid overtime demands, no remuneration reviews and attempts to bribe the workers into ignoring the dismal working conditions with vouchers for goods and services.... I'm glad I'm contracting :)
          
          I honestly have no idea how this company continues to function. They chew up and spit out young, naive talent and spit out jaded IT contractor husks like me.
          

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          Thu, 09 Jun 2005

          [13:46] Podcasts, Crappy JVC MP3 Players & LUGRadio
          Date: 6/9/05 at 9:46PM
          
          Since I have become a commuter I've found that one requires Things To Do whilst on the Tube. Books are a nice idea but space is often at a premium and asking 4 people to move so you can turn the page is a little annoying - especially if you're a fast reader. Therefore I turned my attention to the auditory world. A brief tangential but highly relevant detour:
          

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          Before leaving the sunny shores of Australia I invested $A200 in a JNC SSF-5100 MP3 player. I selected this because it:
          
          
          
          1. is ultra-portable as it is tiny
             
          2. has 1Gb capacity
             
          3. has a built in radio
             
          4. doesn't run off some crazy proprietry battery
             
          5. is firmware upgradeable
             
          6. supports USB2
             
          
          
          Let me now provide you, dear reader, with another list or things I would never have found out about the SSF-5100 had I not been so rash as too buy it. I would have never known that:
          
          
          
          1. the "built-in radio" is actually one of those amazingly crap untunable magic-scanning dohickeys that was NOT built into the unit. It is external to the MP3 player itself, being lodged halfway up the headphone cord. Also it can't pick up ANYTHING. Not one station has it managed to focus it's teensy receptive powers on!
             
          2. the AMAZING battery life. I can run this thing continuously for anything up to 20 minutes before I have to change the batteries. I am stunned by how fast it eats them up. I though that maybe if I bought the Extra-Heavy-Mega-Super-Alkaline-MP3 Player Specific batteries from a certain vendor that I might do better. I was wrong. Although 20 minutes is an exaggeration, so is their claim of 9 hours. I went through 3 batteries on the plane trip over here (26 hours TOTAL travel time) and I've gone through another 2 this week alone. I think on average you get about 4-6 hours.
             
          3. the little joystick one uses to navigate the menu is COMPLETELY USELESS! It was difficult to drive when it was new and still reasonably firm but now that it's lost its spring/auto-center functionaliy it is a magical mystery tour of prodding and poking. It's a four-direction thingy with Left being previous track/rewind, Right being next track/ffwd and up/down is the volume control - no problems there. However, to mess around in the menu you have to push in (z-axis). This is IMPOSSIBLE. It's like trying to poke a rock at the bottom of a mud pool with a stick, complicated by the fact that you can't SEE the rock and the stick is considerably larger the the rock so you can't tell if you hit it anyway. It gets better! The menu has a timeout so while you're trying to push in and make contact with something it decides you've left and goes backk to what it was doing before you entered the menu - usually something like blowing raspberries at you or drawing lewd and uncomplimentary caricatures of your bad profile.
             
          4. playback controls are pathetic. The ffwd/rewind aren't adaptive. If you start to ffwd/rewind they speed through the track at about 10 seconds to the second. I would expect that if I were to continue to ffwd/rewind for more than, say, 10 seconds real-time then the rate would speed up. It doesn't. This makes zipping to the end of long tracks (I have many hour long or more MP3s) excrutiating - 30 minutes of MP3 takes about 5 minutes to get through. You can only ffwd through a track, you can't rewind past the start of the track you're on and into the previous track. Combine this with the thumb numbing ffwd process and you have an excellent recipe for 4 minutes and 30 seconds of ffwding, 2 seconds of pressure relaxation and an automatic reflex to put the pressure back on...bingo, you're on the next track and YOU CAN'T GO BACK. It's fiendish I tell you.
             
          
          In summary, don't buy one. It blows goats (Note to self, research where that term came from).
          

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          Anyway, the bastard makes sounds if you leave it the hell alone so I converted my oggs into mp3s and stuck them on there. I have an extensive CD collection that I oggified but I find that listening to the same things over and over isn't a great way to keep the mind ticking over so I started to look around for something else to occupy myself...and I discovered PODCASTING!!! OK, so I was aware of the term but as I was restricted to 3GB of download bandwidth per month back home I never really bothered with streaming anything and podcasting has passed me by along with Net Radio (with the notable exception of Egg Radio). So, for those of you who have also been living under a rock for the last couple of years a breif precis:
          Podcasting is basically someone recording their internet radio show and making it available to listen to on your magical portable audio device. I love it. I've been downloading all sorts of techy rubbish and listening on the Tube. My favourite at the moment is LUGRadio. Basically an hour of humorous banter about linux, open-source and "stuff". It's deadset hilarious and I commend it to one and all. For more exciting and interesting podcasting doolally go check out Idiot vox or PodCast Alley. Also, for the Aussie ex-pats, don't forget that JJJ also wrap up a lot of shows as PodCasts as well!
          

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          Wed, 08 Jun 2005

          [15:35] Blergh
          Date: 6/8/05 at 11:35PM
          
          It appears that if there's one thing I haven't learnt it's reading ALL of the documentation BEFORE you make a damn fool of yourself start working on something. Let me paint you the scene...swirly lines...swirly lines...swirly lines
          
          I finally got to go to work today after technically starting last Wednesday....that would be a full working week, a full working week which I spent reading doco. There is a trick that most people know (well, most people I know - this could be an IT phenomenon) of reading for "fact position retention" rather than comprehension. There is no way that I could have remembered everything that I read in the last 7 days but I do now have little signposts stuck in my brain of which documents to refer to when I need more info on a certain subject area.
          
          My jobs today were to:
          a) Get into the bloody building without assistance; and
          b) test the unattended installation processes of a monitoring server
          
          In that simple word lay the seeds of my undoing. For the most part the project on which I am working is installing agents on servers as opposed to installing the servers that the aforementioned agents talk to.
          
          So, I get two documents e-mailed to me. The first to arrive covers the Unattended Agent Install, the Unatteded Server Install arrived a while later. I grabbed the first one, obviously without engaging any kind of cognitive process, and as it fit with the theme of my previous reading so well my brain stayed in signpost-mode and I started blindly following the steps....luckily I couldn't get very far as I had to try and copy 7Gb of install data (sheesh!) over the network and I ended up talking to my boss whilst still in the data gathering stages of my first foray. Luckily I'm so anal about things that I don't actually DO things the first time through, I pretend to do them and see what data I need and what might go wrong. He pointed out that I was not doing what I was meant to be doing (yay me) and completely refrained from calling me a prat, which was nice. I then went on to read the right document and do the wrong thing out of that as well, because I DIDN'T READ IT ALL FIRST.
          
          I'm a little upset with myself for this, mostly because the most spectacular mistake of my career (well, thus far anyway - no point in putting limits on myself now, there's always room for escalation) came about from exactly the same thing. I read a document and started blindly following instructions without actually thinking about what I was doing....and destroyed a server that took a lot of people several months to build. That time I was lucky in that I had a whole weekend to reverse the damage and a few knowledgable friends to call on. It caused a managerial battle but no real technical damage was done - well, none that I didn't reverse and I learnt a lot that weekend :)
          
          I hope that by writing this and pointing out to all and sundry (Ha! I know no-one's actually reading this) that I'm a prat (someone had to say it) will prove to be a cathartic experience for me and that I can move on and not repeat my mistake again. We'll see I guess.
          

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          Tue, 07 Jun 2005

          [06:59] SCUBA is for losers
          Date: 6/7/05 at 2:59PM
          
          It seems that an Israeli inventor has come up with something akin to those little tubes the Jedi had in Star Wars I & III, a portable device to obtain breathable air from water! It works by spinning water in a centrifuge until the pressure is low enough to allow the gas to part ways with the liquid - as per Henrys Law (the mass of a gas that dissolves in a definite volume of liquid is directly proportional to the pressure of the gas). The original story is on Isracast but there is also some interesting information on www.technovelgy.com on this and other Sci-Fi inspired inventions.
          

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          [01:54] Toolset - the word that never was
          Date: 6/7/05 at 9:54AM
          
          I've been reading/proofing a lot of doco over the last couple of days and, amongst other bizzare things, I've come across the word "toolset" spelled tool-set. I was going to correct it and then I thought, "Hey, I don't know which is correct!" so I checked a dictionary search engine. I was a little suprised that there was no entry anywhere for toolset. I looked for tool-set instead...no entry!
          
          I'm sure that anyone in the IT industry will have run across this word many times as it is oft used to describe the functions provided by a particular program or subset thereof. A search of the web for toolset on any engine you care to name returns a large number of hits so the word is certainly in use, it just hasn't made it to the dictionaries yet. Now that I come to think about it, I don't know if it really should either. Writing "toolset" delivers no more to the reader than writing "tool set". However, as I read out on t'internet:
          In English, words, particularly adjectives and nouns, are combined into compound structures in a variety of ways. And once they are formed, they sometimes metamorphose over time. A common pattern is that two words — fire fly, say — will be joined by a hyphen for a time — fire-fly — and then be joined into one word — firefly. There is only one sure way to know how to spell compounds in English: use an authoritative dictionary.
          
          So, let us sit back and watch etymology in action!
          
          UPDATE: It seems that toolset IS known, to something called the Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.6). I haven't been able to track down any info on this publication so far but they define "toolset" as:
          
          Main Entry: toolkit
          Part of Speech: noun
          Definition: a set of software applications that aid a task; also written tool kit, also called toolset
          Usage: computing
          
          So there you go! The copyright date on the definition is 2003-2005.
          
          On a seperate note, did you know that the hyphen is actually only one of the horizontal line based punctuation symbols? There are actually three of them. The hyphen, the en dash and the em dash! Read more here.
          

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          Sat, 04 Jun 2005

          [17:07] Zombie vs Ninja - Rating *** (3/5)
          Date: 6/5/05 at 1:07AM
          
          I have long been a fan of old Hong Kong martial arts flicks and as soon as I saw the trailer for Zombie vs Ninja I knew I'd like it.
          
          It has everything you could ask for from a HK flick: the beautiful kung-fu choreography, the incomprehensible plot and of course the sublime dubbing. But this time there's more!
          
          The protagonist and his antithesis are both of European descent (and are both the same actor?) and the evil "Ninja" or "Nin # Ja" are also predominately caucasian. This makes for some really bizzare fight scenes and some crazily gratuitous swearing.
          
          A plot synopsis: All but impossible - even five minutes after "The End" I have not a clue what happened. Basically the hero (Ethan) sees his father killed and seeks training followed by revenge. The training comes from the secret zombie master aka the town undertaker. That was about ten minutes in at which point it lost me. Nonetheless (isn't that a strange word) I thoroughly enjoyed the ride!
          
          Highly recommended.
          

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          [03:54] C-To-English
          Date: 6/4/05 at 11:54AM
          
          After posting my software list yesterday I felt the need to justify my selection of PasswordSafe and the BlowFish algorithm - if only to myself. With that in mind I headed off to the authors site (Bruce Schneier). Whilst reading the details I came across a link to an English version of the C code for Blowfish as generated by the c program by Leevi Marttila - this is quite old (circa 2000 I think) but I hadn't heard of it. I read the translation and found that you can actually follow the program! Some snippets:
          
There is William code named "bf_N" who has 16 leafs.
There is Edward code named "noErr" who has 0 leafs.
..
This rugged Charles code named "subkeyfilename" says "Blowfish.dat"
any time he has chance.
From here I'm assuming that melons are about same size as coconuts.
From here I'm assuming that apples are about same size as oranges.
..
Comment by author: " ABCD - big endian - motorola ".
If "ORDER_ABCD" is mentioned, then read next lines.
These briefcases can hold next things:
Treat next things as a compound. There is David code named "word". He
likes melons. Move to next person.
There is Thomas code named "byte". Calculate next thing: 4 He likes to
carry that amount of bags of cherries. Move to next person.
..
Count the amount of things this thing really has: Get the amount of
tomatoes that Kenneth has. Take a box that corresponds to that number
from John. Then count the amount of things this has: Get the amount of
tomatoes that Raymond has. Add previous amount to this: 1 Take a bag
that corresponds to that number and count the number of melons. Take
away what he has. Give this guy these things: Get the amount of melons
that Walter has. Move to next calculation.
..
Beware of stoned humans! There is James code named "bf_P". Calculate next
thing: Get the amount of leafs that William has. Add previous amount to
this: 2 He likes to carry that amount of bags of melons. Initially that
persons has these things: sugar coated 608135816 and this sugar coated
2242054355 and this sugar coated 320440878 and this sugar coated 57701188
and this sugar coated 2752067618 and this sugar coated 698298832 and
this sugar coated 137296536 and this sugar coated 3964562569 and this
sugar coated 1160258022 and this sugar coated 953160567 and this sugar
coated 3193202383 and this sugar coated 887688300 and this sugar coated
3232508343 and this sugar coated 3380367581 and this sugar coated
1065670069 and this sugar coated 3041331479 and this sugar coated
2450970073 and this sugar coated 2306472731 Finally I have listed
all. That was all holdings.

          Whilst ostensibly this appears to contribute only humor value it was actually written to circumvent the ruling of Judge Gwin of the Federal District Court of the Northern District of Ohio who stated "...software is not protected by the First Amendment because it is a 'functional device' like a telephone circuit...". So, your code isn't protected unless you turn it into a "story"?
          

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          Fri, 03 Jun 2005

          [15:02] Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter - * (1/5)
          Date: 6/3/05 at 11:02PM
          
          I just watched Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. There's not really a lot to say but I do wonder how films like this would ever have "made it" without the power of the internet.
          
          It's a Canadian effort, released in 2001 after two years of weekend shooting - I'd like to say "impressive" but I'm not sure it is.
          
          See it for the kudos, I suspect not many people will be able to say they've endured it all.
          

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          [06:55] Bread in the UK
          Date: 6/3/05 at 2:55PM
          
          I haven't worked it out yet but bread in the UK, or here in London anyway, DOES NOT GO STALE!!!! I've had a loaf of bread I bought on Wednesday (three days ago now) sitting half-eaten under my bed (don't ask). I pulled it out for lunch today and it was fine. If I heated it up so it was warm and steaming you'd swear it was freshly baked.
          
          I've decided I'm not going to eat it anymore until I find out why. If only I had a mass spectrometer and any idea of how to use it.
          
          UPDATE: I've been thinking about this and I suspected that humidity may have something to do with it - more moisture in the air leads to the bread sucking it up and staying nice and squishy. Going off the BBC WeatherChannel site we have London and we have CanberraSydney.
          
          I'm going off the relative humidity figures (relative humidity being "...expressed in percent, of the amount of atmospheric moisture present relative to the amount that would be present if the air were saturated.") and, for those who couldn't be bothered clicking, the June figures for London are 70 during the day and 58 at night. The same for Sydney (can't get Canberra on there, why would you anyway, it's only the CAPITAL CITY) is 77 daytime and 62 at night. This does not support my theory, nor does it support the average conception of English weather. It's a lot more humid in Australia (Canberra/Sydney) than London and I am rather surprised!
          
          UPDATE II: I got figures for Canberra off BoM and they're even worse (for my theory) than the Sydney ones, daytime of 85 and evening 60!
          
          UPDATE III: I'm back on the ingredient theme again. The packaging for my piece of, for want of a better name, "bread" says Bake 'n Bite - a little bit of internet trawling reveals The Bake 'n Bite Website. These guys seem to be a brand name extension of Country Choice, a "specialist supplier of frozen bakery products and bake-off systems to the retail market" who in turn are owned by Brakes Food Service Solutions. Armed with this information and the fact that I'm entitled to get an ingredient list according to the Food Labelling Regulations 1996 (I think) I'm going to find out what is in this thing. First I'm going to pop back down to the outlet I got it from and see if the ingredients were cunningly hidden on the container somewhere. If not I now have a number (0800 521366) and an e-mail address (country.choice@brake.co.uk) to harangue!
          
          UPDATE IV: R.I.P. Bread. It seems I was little overzealous in my longevity predictions. My piece of bread is going hard. I went down and checked the stand (for those who are gripping their seats, knuckles white with anticipation) and the only ingredient listed is "Flour Treatment Agent". My research concluded that Flour Treatment Agent is usually Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C) or, in less regulated countries, Potassium Bromate.
          I checked it out on the off-chance that Potassium Bromate would do magical things and it turns out it is a carcinogen and not a magical bread freshness ingredient. Fat fingered research also showed that Potassium Bromide is an anti-convulsant for dogs. I wish I knew the difference between an -ate and an -ide ending.
          

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          [06:46] Business Bloodbath
          Date: 6/3/05 at 2:46PM
          
          I am now contracting to a company that I used to work for back in Australia. I spent a lot of time bad-mouthing the managerial structure and business nous of said company because of their frankly bizzare way of going about business (Hello Mr Customer! Can I....STAB YOU IN THE BACK? Muahahahahaha).
          
          Anyway, after people found out I was going back for a second tour they pointed out that I was a) a hypocrite and b) loco. I defend my actions by pointing out that pounds convert into $A most favourably.
          
          This is a "pay off the mortgage" move, not a grand career step.
          
          I just thought I'd mention that the company in question work in EXACTLY the same fashion over here!
          

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          [06:10] Welcome Back To Windows
          Date: 6/3/05 at 2:10PM
          
          Well, after primarily working on the Unix for the last 5 years (and running Gentoo on my personal machine) I'm heading back into the Windows badlands! I've setup my first Windows box since I left my last job a year and a half ago and it seems my habit of keeping my tool collection on my USB key up to date has paid off. I have everything set up as I like it with minimum of fuss.
          
          Here's what I've got (note, all but one of these programs are Free (not necessarily OpenSource though):
          

          
          
          • TweakUI : I really only use this for XMouse
            
          • Firefox and a few extensions, All-In-One Gestures, SessionSaver, AdBlock, Ook
            
          • Thunderbird and the WebMail extension. I love this! I've managed to move my mail from a linux box to a Windows box with 0% effort! All I did was tar up my mail directory and then point Thunderbird at the un-tarred directory on the Windows box. The Webmail extension is bliss! Once installed you can check multiple webmail accounts (I use it for hotmail) without resorting to other applications like MrPostman.
            
          • Foobar2000 : I use this instead of Winamp because I don't give a stuff about skinning and it knows MPEG, FLAC and OGG out of the box (amongst others).
            
          • Adobes Acrobat Reader : I love how it's 20Mb now (40 on linux), remember the good old days of version 4? It was only 8Mb. On a side note: If you're a Linux head looking for the Linux package is here, Adobe haven't stuck it on their download page yet.
            
          • ext2fsd : This rocks! I have all my oggs on a 80Gb USB2IDE removable HDD. It is formatted as an ext3 filesystem and Windows can't see that....it can with this!
            
          • IrfanView : a multimedia viewer (images and sounds).
            
          • IzArc : compression utility
            
          • PasswordSafe : A Blowfish encrypted password storage utility (Linux users, the format is compatible with MyPasswordSafe
            
          • puTTY : SSH client
            
          • Ultraedit : Hands down, the best editor out there. Don't get me wrong, I love vi but Ultraedit can do it with so much ease. One of the very few programs I have ever bought.
            
          • TClock2 : This is pure frosting, but I can't help it. I like to make my startbar look like the startbar image in the gallery.
            
          
          
          That's the majority, there are a few others that I've got on here that aren't on my USB key, things like Cygwin but that's about it. So far, I'm happy although I haven't started work yet.....
          

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          Wed, 01 Jun 2005

          [11:21] XBox Media Center
          Date: 6/1/05 at 7:21PM
          
          There's an XBox around that I'm going to update with the latest XBMC. If you don't have an IRC client and couldn't be bothered installing one there's a lovely Java based web client here: http://www.macsat.com/xbins/
          
          Once it connects just type in /msg xbins !list and go get your stuff.
          
          Very handy!
          

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          [11:12] Fruity London
          Date: 6/1/05 at 7:12PM
          
          I don't know where it all comes from but it's great. All of the train stations seem to have fruitiers out the front selling what seems to me to be bizzarely cheap fruit. I have just availed myself of £3 worth of fruit which included two punnets of strawberries (about 16 strawbs per punnet) and a huge bag of cherries. This little cornucopia would have set me back about $20 back home. According to xe.com I have spent about $A7.40.
          
          I've just check the Woolworths Homeshop website and Strawberries are $3.98 for 250g. I've just constructed some rudimentary scales using the chopping block and a wooden spoon and my strawberries seem to weigh in somewhere just over 500g (assuming that the container of salt I was using does actually weigh 500g like it says it does, I don't know it that includes packaging weight). That means my strawberries are worth about $A7.96. Unfortunately Woolies doesn't stock fresh cherries at the moment so I can't price check them but already going off the strawb prices I am getting the cherries for free!!! I wonder where they come from to be able to sell so cheaply. Maybe they're all GM and I'm going to mutate or something.
          

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          [10:44] Nothing Changes
          Date: 6/1/05 at 6:44PM
          
          First day of work today, I went in and it seems that company I'm working for here is the same all over the world (I've worked for them previously in Australia). Their customer does not particularly like them, they are running under the belief that more meetings will fix EVERYTHING and red-tape stops ANYTHING from happening (my login for the network should be ready in about six weeks).
          
          On the interesting side, everything is COE/SOE run and if you try to log in from a non-SOE build to the MS domain some magic happens to shutdown the port you are connected to on the Cisco switch. I think that's really cool and I shall be attempting to find out how that happens, SNMP is my guess for now.
          
          I've been given lots of doco to go and read in the meantime, for those interested I'm working with CA Unicenter and shall be trying to make it do things it was never intended to do (like work).
          

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          [10:37] London, The English, Customer Service & Technology
          Date: 6/1/05 at 6:37PM
          
          Wow, I've been a busy boy.
          
          After getting off the plane in London I made it through Customs without even being stopped. I got on the Heathrow Express (cost me £14 but I was over travelling by then and the quickest was the best). I then succesfully navigated the tube with nary a problem. The instructions my friend gave me were uncannily clear and I managed to arrive at her house about an hour ahead of schedule...or so I thought. Turns out I was about 4 hours ahead of schedule. I sat on her front doorstep and read the rest of my magazine and newspaper collection and then watched the police arrest some of my new neighbours (that's right, I'm living on an estate in Stockwell). Finally, I got bored and dragged my 24 kg suitcase around the corner to get some hot chips. Naturally, it was at this point that my friend came home - I was happy 'cause I had chips :)
          
          I was at this point quite knackered and went to bed - this was Monday in England and a Bank Holiday so everyone was out and about. Day Two of my London adventure was a "Real Day" but I'd scheduled work to start on the 1st of June ('cause it seemed nicer that way) so I had the day to sort out the notorious bugbears of antipodeans in London:
          * National Insurance Number
          * Bank Account
          
          I'd have to say that of all the subjects people have felt inclined to tell me before I came the "Obtaining a Bank Account is impossible" story was the second most prevalent (right behind "It's quite expensive over there you know"). Funnily enough, it also happens to be true! Obstinate fool that I am I thought I'd try and, with my new flatmates squeals of laughter still ringing in my ears I departed to do battle with the banks. Then I gave up. You really can't do it....unless you're prepared. So, take note those of you thinking of attempting this in the future. You will need:
          * Passport
          * Proof Of Employment (Proof of Income really)
          * A Bill with you CURRENT UK ADDRESS
          
          That's all!!! I obviously didn't have the second item having moved here mere hours ago but I found a loophole of sorts. If you can get your bank back home to send a statement to you at your new address they will accept that (well NatWest will anyway). Do this before you go and you can set up your account the second you arrive. I didn't know this and didn't manage to get it set up just then. The reason it is so difficult is because after the September 11 terrorist attacks the UK put in place a series of knee-jerk schemes to prevent money laundering. This is one of them - you can't launder money if you can't put it anywhere.
          
          I moved on to my second task, the NI number. I was also warned that this could be impossible. The story goes that the English hate foreigners and, in order to prevent them from invading they make it impossible to get an NI number so you can't work without being taxed out the wazoo. I thought, sounds like bollocks I'll give it a shot. Outside my second bank I got on the mobile and called the magic number. I talked to a lovely lady who said come on in and we'll sort you out, if you're one of the first 50 people in the door you're guaranteed to be served today. It was only 0930 so I wandered down the road thinking "That wasn't so hard" and being well impressed with my self. I arrived at JobCentrePlus and was greeted at the door by a burly security guard who asked me my business. I explained my phone call and he politely laughed until he cried. He then gave me a piece of paper with a phone number on it and informed me that an appointment must be made via the "Tooting HUB" (phone 020 8218 4417) and pointed me at the free phones. It was at this point that I ran into the British love of old technology. I called the number, it rang and was picked up by a robot. The robot said "Sorry, can't take your call right now, please ring back later". It then hung up on me. It wasn't a robot, it was an answering machine. "Odd" I thought, and rung back. This time I got an engaged signal. I tried again. This time it rung...and rung...and rung....and stopped. I was getting a little surprised now but, still undaunted, I tried again. I was hung up on again by the answering machine. In my mind I was contemplating the bizzare lack of a robotic answering service and queueing system. "Why would you not implement one" I thought as I mindlessly hit redial on the phone. I continued to ponder this for 20 minutes before I finally got someone to pick up the phone. She was very nice and made me a booking for next Saturday. I didn't yell at her about the phone system as a) it's probably not her fault and b) I'm sure a lot of people do and she books them appointments for Thursday coming, next year.
          
          I returned home semi-triumphant. No bank account but an NI appointment. I talked to my friend and she said I should go and see 1st Contact. They basically provide a service to itinerant Aussies, Kiwis and Saffas (which apparently is a nickname for South Africans!) to get a bank account for the sum of £35. They also give you a £9 phone card so it's not that bad I guess. I called them and manged to book in for the 1100 meeting. I whizzed in and sat through 3 hours of bollocks (1.5 by 1st Contact and 1 by the bank where they try to sell you their £10 a month magical bank account). I opted for the £0 non-magical account and that should be sorted by Monday! It is < a href="http://www.maestrocard.com/wheretouse/"Maestro/Cirrus so money can be slurped out back home to pay the mortgage without extra fees.
          
          I then went and visited my agency and signed my papers and I'm all sorted for the day!
          

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          Mon, 30 May 2005

          [01:16] Vienna IS sunny! Airplanes DO suck!
          Date: 5/30/05 at 9:16AM
          
          Nothing out of the ordinary hapend so far on my epic journey - that is to say that I am all in favour of someone working out matter transference so I NEVER have to go on a bloody plane again. It started out amusingly when I sat down and the little video monitor popped up a message: PAIN PROGRESS
          And I thought, "They can measure that somehow now?" and looked for neural probes in the headrest. Later I realised it said "PA IN PROGRESS". Other highlights of being rammed into tube with 300 other unfortunates for twenty one hours:
          * Being given a plastic fork that I SWEAR should be on some kind of restricted access hard-core weapons list. I was so impressed I kept it! Seriousy, it is THE sharpest thing I've wielded for some considerable time and as my Swiss Army knife is in my luggage I'm hanging onto it in case I need to cut/impale something/one. Security will probably remove it when I go back through again.
          * Stopping in Kuala Lumpur at 3am and getting booted off the plane....why??? Can't you refuel the bastard without it exploding or was it all just a cunning plan to get us to go through security again in case the terrorists amongst us had manufactured some sort of plane destroying wepon from the forks? Either way I left my juggling balls on the plane accidentally and, instead of being destroyed as was forewarned by the flight attendants they were decoratively placed around my seat - that was nice!
          
          Well, I've killed three of my six hours here in Vienna. I escaped the airport but, fearful of never escaping the angry Austrians, I didn't stray far from the airport. I wandered around until I found a sunny poppy field with some pine tree to lean on (no, really) just outside the airport and read a copy of 2600 that I found. Whilst sunning myself I contemplated the Austrians passing me by on the airport feeder. They were travelling quite slowly due to some rather bizarre and un-Austrian (in my opinion) intersection design. They were going so slowly that one bloke hopped out of his car and marked his territory on one of my pine trees. I was actively not thinking about where I was lying and thankful I was using my Drizabone as a ground cover.
          
          I've come back inside now and am getting ready for the last leg, soon it will all be over and I will have new and exiting English things to get upset about!
          

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          Sat, 28 May 2005

          [22:16] A man with no luggage must play on the Interweb
          Date: 5/29/05 at 6:16AM
          
          Goddamn bastard Austrians took what I thought was my handluggage :(
          
          On a seperate note. Samsung have littered the international terminal with free internet kiosks. The IP I'm coming from is 203.49.200.243, which I'll have a look at later. Theoretically I am paying for this by staring at the advertising plastered all over the stand (and off course by mentioning them in my high-profile, high traffic blog) but I suspect they're covertly monitoring keystrokes to grab passwords. It's running a nicely locked down 2K build by the looks of things. I hope I haven't caught anything nasty from this keyboard.
          
          OK, since they're not going to board us I'll play on the interweb....
          Apparently my IP resolves to visp.inabox.net. inabox.net resolves to 204.255.30.37. My IP seems to belong to Telstra.
          
          Boarding time...
          

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          [20:07] How to not get to the UK in one easy step
          Date: 5/29/05 at 4:07AM
          
          Easy! Go to the wrong security gate mere minutes before your flight leaves! I tried this exciting experiment this morning but due to the fact that I fly too much (once a year in my opinion) and now know that carrying Swiss Army Knives, Keys, Metal Buttons, Foil Wrapped tasty treats, wearing evil boots with Metal Eyelets Of Death and having too much iron in ones blood are all criminal offences whilst travelling via air in this day and age I went suitably enunencumbered to the airport. Seconds after my error was discovered I managed to flee to the other end of the terminal (bless the Canberra "International" Airports tiny little boots) AND get through security again before my plane got bored and left.
          
          So, I made it too Sydney and soon I will line up for the next plastic glove search to get into the International side of this airport before winging my way to sunny Vienna for a glorious 3 hours of relaxing airport perusal before the final leg of my journey to the UK.
          
          A quick note for bloggers: The Inquirer has an interesting article on the pointless of living out here in the blognoence.
          

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          [15:02] To infinity and beyond
          Date: 5/28/05 at 11:02PM
          
          Well, today is the day!
          
          In hindsight, chocking up yesterday with social obligations was not a great idea but at least I saw some folks! My bag is packed and whatever is left is....well, left I guess. Next stop London!
          

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          Thu, 26 May 2005

          [21:42] Why I Shouldn't Be In IT
          Date: 5/27/05 at 5:42AM
          
          The problem with me being in IT is that I love pretty much every thing about it so when someone says something like "Hey, I was getting rid of this " I invariably say "I'll take that" which is why I have just removed a 386 desktop and laptop, a 486, a Pentium 90, a Pentium II 266 a PIII, a dot matrix printer, a HP Laserjet IV, 2 canabilised cases, a 17",15"and 14" monitor and a grab bag of cables, drives and modems. Luckily the 486 was still working and had a copy of Police Quest I (why wouldn't it) installed so I spent a happy half hour playing that before trying to drive at Code-3 speeds and smacking into the house opposite the river.
          
          What to do with all of the "treasure" I removed from the garage? These days you can't really dump it at the tip, not now that we know what happens when you do (unless you have no morals anyway) so my options are either pay the $10 per computer and $15 per monitor at the Waste Management Center ("tip" is SO gauche darling) OR take them to these guys: Charity Computers. I was pretty stoked when I found out about these guys. I like the idea that someone who can't afford to buy a computer can make use of this stuff. Admittedly it's run by Christians but even they aren't all bad.
          
          So, most of the junk from the garage is gone (I couldn't bring myself to chuck the 386 or the 486, they're going to mind the house for me with my sister) and I've the rest of the day to pack...yay! I'm sort of over that too, I think I'll just give everything to Vinnies and buy new stuff when I get there.
          

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          [06:06] Quake
          Date: 5/26/05 at 2:06PM
          
          Good things for today: my signed contract turned up in the magical e-mail so I now have a definite reason to catch the plane on Sunday and I managed to get my room mostly cleaned up.
          
          Unfortunately I struck a hitch pretty late in the piece when I came across my old games archive. I've happily spent the last hour playing Quake 1 (by the virtue of WinQuake).
          
          So, I'm leaving on Sunday and I haven't started packing yet. Tomorrow for sure. Unless I get into Police Quest anyway. For now, to bed, before mt cat rips my face off.
          

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