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[09:06] Human Area Networks
I didn't see the HAN mentioned in the CCNA study guide anywhere but they appear to be a burgeoning technology, well according to the folks over at RedTacton anyway.
According to them - they being the NTT - they've created a device that utilises the weak electric field that is generated by all living humans to faciliatate data transfer. The website alleges "duplex communication over the human body at a maximum speed of 10 Mbps" (about 1.25 Megabytes per second), they mention "duplex" as opposed to full duplex but this figure is reduced to half-duplex in the FAQ. The bulk of the pertinent information can be found on the:
[10:24] Get Some Culture Up Ya - or Kynan and Shona Go To The Ballet
This is a little bit old news but I'm whittling down my pile of "Thangs to be blogged" and this one has been sitting here for a couple of weeks now.
We went to the ballet because Shona won subsidised seats to the Royal Opera House - they cost us £10 each but if we'd been actually paying they'd have cost about £80!!! (Sorry I felt the multiple punctuation marks really were appropriate - that's about $A200)
The seats were actually pretty good, if you go to the ROH Seating Plan site you can see just how good they were (and I presume still are). The seats we occupied were "Orchestra Stalls", seats 18 and 19 - you can click on seat 21 and see our view of the stage - I think having this functionality is GREAT idea!
Anyways, we saw two ballets, in three parts - The Lesson and La Sylphide.
The first 30 minutes was devoted to The Lesson, a "modern" ballet. The Lesson was actually adapted for ballet in 1963 by Flemming Flindt from a play written by a bloke named Eugene Ionesco in 1951. I liked it the most of the evenings entertainment. In a nutshell, the story is about a teacher who becomes extremely disturbed by their pupils inability to understand what they are being taught, with some unfortunate consequences for the student. the actual play seems to fall into the Absurdist category, one with which I'm not familiar but I'll be doing a bit of reading around the subject as it looks quite interesting.
The Lesson was followed by a 30 minute break, the first half of "La Sylphide", another 30 minute break and the grand finale of "La Sylphide". La Sylphide was more of your traditional ballet and involved a damnsite more prancing. It was written way back in 1832 in France and is set in Scotland. The story is that some Scottish guy (James if you must know) is getting married and, the night before his marriage he spies a forest nymph and, completely besotted, screws up the big day by sodding off into the forest chasing the nymph. Blergh.
As I am an uncultured buffoon I was not particularly enamoured of the ballet. Although I can certainly appreciate the athletiscism involved in the activity, the substance does not particularly appeal. Although I went in with an open mind, I came out with the opinion that ballet dancers (is there a plural/group noun for them? Balletisists seems a trifle clumsy.) are for the most part egotistical prats. Watching ballet was like watching a cross between slowed down mime and synchronised swimming, but without the thrill that the performers could drown at any second (despite my fervent wish that they would, somehow). I was also deprived of the opportunity to watch the orchestra as they were hidden in a pit!
The bright side of the evening came when, after interval two, the curtains open the evil witch, Madge, cooking up a storm in a "steaming" cauldron. It seems the providers of said "steam" were a little to enthusiastic in their provision and when the scene change came from Madges cave to the forest, the entire stage was slicked with some kind of oily residue. This made it completely impossible to dance upon! The curtains dropped dramatically after one of the nymphs/sylphs nearly broke her ankle and someone frantically cleansed the stage somehow. Fifteen minutes later the curtain arose and the forest magically re-appeared.....I waited, secretly hoping for disaster. The last half of the show was immensley more enjoyable because whatever they'd used to clean the stage had REALLY cleaned it. Every step was accompanied with a tiny tearing sound, as if the entire stage had been covered with upside-down masking tape.
The straw that broke the camels back came when the person who dies (finally) finished cavorting around the stage and dropped dead. Down came the curtain, up came the curtain for crew bowing/curtseying and general audience appreciation. Now, I've been to the theatre before, I've been to a lot of live gigs, I'm familiar with the whole concept of showing ones appreciation by clapping. I've expressed my dislike of the whole "encore" trend that seems to be de rigueur these days; At least if a band makes you clap and carry on for five or ten minutes they come back and play you another song or two. These ballet prats sort of pulled an "encore" but instead of actually DOING anything they just stood there lapping up the adulation.
First we clapped for the whole cast, then each section (leading couple, principals, sylphs and Scotts) and the curtain came down. I was reasonably happy at this stage. Then, someone pulled up the corner of the curtain and the leading man pranced back out and we all clapped for him for a little while, he shoots back in and the leading lady came out and we repeated the whole clappy thing. She ducks back in and they spring back out together for a bit more clappy-clappy before the principal cast memberst came out for their shot and then everyone gets some flowers. They all disappeared again and then the whole sodding bunch of them pour out at which point certain crazed individuals in the crowd, unable to curb their enthusiasm, start up with the standing ovation. I was no longer clapping at this stage but muttering imprecations under my breath. The travesty continued although when the conductor came out next I clapped for him. He was yanked off stage so the leading couple could score another hit before the curtain finally closed for good.
[10:04] Modblog Transplant
OK, I finally moved all of the ModBlog articles over here. If anyone were to care, they could look here: blog.kynan.org/modblog. The code I used to turn the output from ModBlog into something that can be read by blosxom is a dodgy Korn shell script. I should have done it with something else but shell scripting, despite being ugly, is just too easy. I suspect this could have been done in a much nicer fashion using perl but what the hey - it worked.
#!/usr/bin/ksh
INFILE="kynan_modblog.txt"
cat $INFILE | while read -r aline
do
DATE=`echo $aline|cut -c1-4`
if [ "$DATE" == "Date" ];then
DATE=`echo $aline | awk '{print $2}'`
TIME=`echo $aline | awk '{print $4}'|sed 's/
//'`
AMPM=`echo $TIME | tr -d '[0-9:]'`
if [ $AMPM == "PM" ];then
HOUR=`echo $TIME | cut -f1 -d:`
HOUR=$(($HOUR + 12))
if [ $HOUR -eq 24 ];then
HOUR=00
fi
else
HOUR=`echo $TIME | cut -f1 -d:`
if [ ${#HOUR} -eq 1 ];then
HOUR=0$HOUR
fi
fi
TIME=$HOUR`echo $TIME|cut -f2 -d:|tr -d '[A-Z]'`
YEAR=`echo $DATE | cut -d/ -f3`
MONTH=`echo $DATE | cut -d/ -f1`
DAY=`echo $DATE | cut -d/ -f2`
if [ ${#MONTH} -eq 1 ];then
MONTH=0$MONTH
fi
if [ ${#DAY} -eq 1 ];then
DAY=0$DAY
fi
OUTFILE=$YEAR$MONTH$DAY-$TIME
fi
if [ "----------
" == "$aline" ];then
mv $$ ./done/${OUTFILE}.txt
echo touch -t $MONTH$DAY$TIME ./done/${OUTFILE}.txt
else
echo -E "$aline" >> $$
fi
done
[02:58] White Christmas...check!
It was a mite nippy when I stepped out to go to work this morning and by the time I hit London Bridge it was snowing, albeit in a somewhat off-handed and desultory manner. I called Shona when I got to work and she had apparently been trying to call me. IT all sort off packed up by 0930 but then, about 30 minutes later it put on a show of force and really dumped. I don't know what it's like at the moment as my office has no windows but Firefox (well ForecastFox actually) tells me that it is now up to 0 degrees from -2 and it's also "Partly Sunny" as opposed to "Snowing" so I guess the shows over. Now I just have a slushy ride home to look forward to!
[16:58] What I Did On My Christmas Holiday
Well it's been an interesting weekend. We went over to Decathlon on Saturday and bought Shona a bike. She got exactly the same cheapo bike as me but she splashed out and bought a gel seat cover for an extra six pounds. We then rode around the corner to do the shopping at a Christmas-ravaged Tescos and had lunch at an interesting fast food franchise called spudulike. We then did the 4 mile (about 6.5k) ride home for Shonas first "big ride"! She had a very sore ass by the time we got home.
I then spent the rest of the day reading Michael Crichtons State Of Fear. I finished it on Sunday morning and it was a pretty good read. I've not got a lot to say about it at the moment because I've got a lot of digesting and background reading to do. I'm somewhat surprised that that there wasn't a bit more of a controversy surrounding it - maybe there was when it was released, I don't keep up with the mainstream media much. If you like Crichtons books (hell, who doesn't) then I'd advise checking this one out. The only odd bit was the somewhat Flemming/Bond death-trap scene, apart from that it was up to the normal standards and the subject matter is certainly something I'm going to look into - more on that if it all turns out to be true!
Finally, Christmas. We rode over to Sam 'n Simmos place for lunch. There was some contention as to how to get there and, after 10 minutes, we checked map and compass and then rode in the right direction for another 10 :) There was a little bit of struggling to et the bikes into the lift but it all worked out in the end.
Sam is back home in Australia at the moment so 'twas us, Jason (Simonsen), Giorg, Simmo and Jess. We played XBox and chatted, ate Iceland Turkey-inna-box with roasted veggies (thanks Giorg) and watched Granny which I would heartily advise you not to. We then watched the death of the Dr Who franchise on the BBC (seriously, what the hell were they thinking when they wrote that trash). Basically, a good time was had by all (although as everyone but us was a smoker we came out smelling hella stinky). We rode home around 2330 and, after meeting a few odd people, made it home - huzzah!
[10:03] Damn you Borders!!!
I was SO close to making it through the "festive" season without encountering a single christmas carol when *BAM* I was mercilessley subjected to a barrage of "Jingle Bells" whilst on hold on the telephone.
Since I'm on the subject, according to multiple sources on the internet ('cause you know I'm just going to link to Wikipedia - I do look in other places but who's to say that THEY are definitive?) "Jingle Bells" is not actually a Christmas Song. 'twas written by one James Pierpont back in 1857 to be sung for the American Thanksgiving celebration (I'm not in the mood to go into it now, but it's interesting reading if you try to find out the origins of Thanskgiving, by the by).
Back to "Jingle Bells", and I must admit that I now find the song a smidge less offensive knowing that the original was written about attracting the eye of a comley lass with your souped-up sleigh and racing fast horses with an eye to making a killing betting high stakes, but there's still not a great deal of love in my heart for the poxy Commericalistmas version that we hear so often.
There's more info over yonder, including the missing lyrics, at (brace yourself, here it comes) Wikipedia.
[10:42] and now I'm a drug addict...
Well, that's what I think anyway. I normally drink about two or three litres of water a day. This has the obvious consequence that I go to the toilet a fair few times a day. There is an automatic "Air Purification System" in there and, over the last couple of weeks I've noticed that my "relief breaks" seem to coincide perfectly with the automatic *pssshht* of the little machine on the wall. Two options spring to mind:
[10:59] A New Phone - The Moral Dilemma
I've been eyeing off new phones because the dinky little Samsung I'm borrowing at the moment is REALLY annoying. I hate clamshell phones and this one is so old that the battery will only hold charge for 20 hours, once it gets low it starts complaining, LOUDLY, even in "silent" mode. While I'm at it (a small tangent I promise) WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH VIBRATE OR RING. WHY CAN'T IT DO BOTH??? It's not just me either, as this Google search shows.
Hence, I was looking at the new Sony Ericsson W800i. I really liked my old T610 and the form-factor is very similar. There are a few other reasons I was eyeballing the W800i:
[10:34] UK Oil Fire
As most of you are probably aware an oil storage terminal in Hertfordshire exploded on Sunday. Although it's a long way away from me it seems that London will be caked in non-toxic smoke sometime this evening. I'll try to stay low while I ride home tonight but I suspect it will have to fight pretty hard to make itself noticed above the normal particulate content of London "air".
Some interesting figures from the paper this afternoon:
"[The fire department] will attempt to create a "foam blanket" to put out the huge inferno using 250,000 litres of foam mixed with 25,000 litres of water per minute.The emphasis is mine. I don't know about you but that sounds like a LOT of watery foam to me. I checked it out and your average Olympic-standard swimming pool is 50 metres by 25 metres by 1.5 meters. Using the magic of mathematics I know that this equates to 1,875 cubic metres of water. I believe that 1 cubic metre is equal to 1,000 litres so an Olympic-standard pool contains 1,875,000 litres of water. So, somehow the fire brigade is going to pump out about 15% of a pool a MINUTE (that's a whole pool in about 7 minutes) to extinguish the eight burning tanks remaining (they've put out twelve of the twenty already).
[09:01] Sony...you've done it again
Dragged your name through the mud that is...
You'd have thought they'd have learned after the whole XCP debacle, but apparently not! They've attempted to clean up an earlier copy protection program (Suncomm Media Max) and repeated their earlier blunderings with the "cleanup" of the XCP. Check it out here on Arstechnica or the excellent FreedomToTinker article or here on CIO Central, for a humourous high level view with an interesting point about the new PS3 copy protection.
[01:24] The Fall and Fall of Journalistic Standards
There are a lot of people who detest blogs and curse them as the scourge of modern journalism. I don't intend to cover that argument right now. As a completely unbiased bystander I would just like to casually point in the direction of the "professional journalists" over at news.com.au. After the storms that caused significant damage back in my home town of Canberra last weekend, this is, or was at the time, the front page story on the aforementioned site. I present for your reading enjoyment: Storms leave three dead from the Daily Telegraph.
Please note, I don't intend to make light of the fact that people died during these storms. If I knew the people involved and they cared who I was then I would pass on my condolences to the families of the six three people who were killed.
[09:23] Kynan v. English Furniture...FIGHT!
Well, it was a forgone conclusion but - for the doubters - I won.
All the furniture in this country is made of MDF and, despite what its manufacturers and the media have to say about it, I'm not convinced that it's such a grand old thing to be constructing load bearing furniture out of.
During my brief stay over here I've so far managed to put my foot through a friends bed, broken the middle of an Argos hutch, snapped the leg off a desk and broken the head-end legs off my bed. To add to the list, this weekend I broke the foot-end legs off the bed as well!
Luckily I still had enough spare parts from the last repair to be able to put it back together (in a slightly more sturdy configuration I might add) and, after borrowing a drill from the next door neighbour and a saw from a friend, we got it back together within the same afternoon as it was broken.
That's all very well but I would expect furniture like a bed to be able to withstand any random amount of load from an averagely proportioned person; whether they choose to step daintily into bed or leap with gusto from the bathroom should not be a factor in deciding if the legs will part company with the body. Maybe they don't use thick enough boards? The board the legs were attached to, the one that gave way, was approximately 1.7cm thick. Or perhaps making furniture out of cardboard just isn't a good idea! On top of all its structural issues it seems that unprotected (painted/laquered/whatever) MDF releases formaldehyde gas from the urea formaldehyde used to hold the wood particles together!
[13:44] Faithless at Brixton
We went to see Faithless at the Brixton Academy last night and ther're three things I'd like to talk about: