Wed, 12 Jul 2006

[16:11] I'm hired!
Earlier this week I heard back from the UK guys who offered me a job a couple of weeks back advising me that they would have to formally rescind their offer. I agreed and thanked them profusely for keeping it open for such a long time and kept my fingers crossed that I would get offered the other position I've been chasing...

Well, it's mostly official, although I've only got the electronic paperwork at this stage but it looks like I could have a good reason to be wearing this here shirt in the very near future (like I'd need a reason anyway):

Mon, 03 Jul 2006

[12:03] To brake or not to brake
I've been meaning to check/replace the brake pads on my bike for, well, quite some time now. My stopping distance has been getting gradually longer and longer and nearly ramming a taxi on the way home tonight reminded me that I needed to obtain some new ones. I stopped at Evans on the way home tonight and purchased two sets (front and back) of these. I'm not really a bike person ("knows enough to be dangerous" is the term I believe) so I dragged the bike into the shop to make sure I got the right ones and the look on the guys face when he saw my old pads said "I'm upset at the injustice being done to your rims and ex-brake pads" his vocal chords echoed the sentiment and chastised me as apparently I was long overdue for this.

I took them home and swapped them all over and once again I can stop almost instantly. I think the guy at the shop was right though, I don't think that brake pads are meant to be concave:

[09:32] Fearless - Rating 7/10
We went to see Fearless (aka Huo Yuan Jia) on the weekend for two reasons:
a) because it's a Jet Li movie
b) because I've been intrigued by the advertising on the buses recently stating that this was "Jet Li's last Martial Arts Movie"
I was wondering if somehow Jet Li had died and I'd managed to miss that, it seems not.

Fearless was an excellent movie on several levels:

• If you're a martial arts junkie then there are fight scenes aplenty. It had a fair chunk of wire-work, or what I assumed to be wirework, but it was pretty unobtrusive (I really hate the whole pseudo-flying/jumping that goes on in a lot of martial arts style movies these days) and there's a good mix of hand-to-hand as well as armed combat!
• If you like your movies to have a plot then, once again, you're in luck! The plot is easy enough to follow (although there are a couple of rather odd leaps through time right at the beginning) and doesn't seem to suffer from "translating the untranslatable" that impacts a lot of films with asiatic origins. The subtitles are easy to read except for a quick two-liner in the first five minutes. As an additional bonus the fight scenes are actually a an integral part of the plot rather than the plot being built as a vehicle for the fight scenes.
• It's real purty-like! The cinematography is excellent and both the action sequences and other scenes are beautifully shot and a pleasure to watch, with only one slightly cringe-worthy CGI moment, again right at the beginning.
• There's a moral to the story that you can take away at the end (although the movie doesn't end with a panning shot of everyone laughing at an inane joke).

Action and martial arts stories only use the form of martial arts. Kungfu represents a concept of time. You spend time practicing it, and you learn new skills. Martial arts are an overall concept, which also includes nurturing the soul.

Sun, 02 Jul 2006

[10:57] Transformers: The Movie
Hahahahaah! Get your drool ducts primed folks because a Transformers movie is coming!! OK, so it's coming next YEAR but it's still coming and the teaser is now out. You can check it out at www.transformersmovie.com.

I've done a little research and it seems that there're already a lot of annoyed fanboys out there so bear in mind that:
a) the footage from the teaser is NOT intended to be in the movie, nor is it meant to convey the plot of the movie.
b) this is a cinematic ADAPTION, not a remake of the cartoon.
I like the style and mood of the teaser and I'm hoping for the reasonably dark movie that this hints at....

[Posted at: 02/07/2006 18:57]

Sat, 01 Jul 2006

[13:58] A visit to the zoo Hamleys
We popped out to do a bit of shopping today. I purchased a beautiful "How to play Chess" book for Shona at the Embankment second-hand book market last week and I've been hanging out to get a chess set to start learning on and I've also been trying to locate a set of Ye Olde Styleie Jacks and Hamleys seemed to be the most likely place to locate such things so we boarded the number 3 and headed into London town!

The first hurdle of the day came when we found that our bus was not going to take us all the way in (as it normally does) because the EuroPride march had blockaded most of the city off and we were rather uncerimonisouly dumped by a somewhat shirty bus driver about 5 klicks down the road from our house and ended up walking over to the Westminster tube (which was a filthy skank-hole since the temperature was around 30 celcius). Anyway, we got into the city and managed to get a look at the parade which happened to be running down the road directly out the front of Hamleys anyway. As usual, Aussies had crashed the party (if you can find a good time going on in London guaranteed there'll be a bloke somewhere nearby with an Aussie flag and a beer) and in amongst the lady-boys and be-leathered gentlemen there was the rather incongruous flag:

Thu, 29 Jun 2006

[09:41] Death Cab For Cutie
Another concert! We popped out to see Death Cab For Cutie put on a show last night, supported by Viva Voce, this time back in the big auditorium at the Brixton Academy. Viva Voce showed promise but the speakers were up thumpingly high (yeah, I had the trusty Laser Lites) and it was difficult to make out the lyrical content of the songs over the rather energetic drumming - I suspect that they're worth a second look though...

Death Cab For Cutie are another pick from Shonas grab-bag of Things To See And Do. She was introduced to them by her brother who also played a CD for me but I must admit to not really having been taken by them (although the CD he played for me - possibly Transatlanticism - was interesting in that it had a twig wrapped in red thread encased in the spine of the jewel case). They're an American band from Bellingham, Washington and the odd name is taken from a song (obviously of the same name) by a band called "Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band", there's a bit more info on this over at Wikipedia.

Anyway, the concert was pretty good with a lot of happy, poppie tunes and a few more moody pieces to broaden the experience. I enjoyed it even though I'm not a big fan (apart from when they pulled the damn "ooh we're finished....unless you clap and cheer lots in which case we'll come back and do an encore" trick) and Shona got to see one of her favourite bands live and reasonably up-close. The audience was pretty interesting, spread across the age spectrum and including a family with one quite small, shoulder-mounted child right down the front. Apart from one dick (there's always one) who briefly attempted to start his own mosh in the midst of all of us simple, stationary folks it was all nice and easy. The nice 'n easyness carried on all the way home since the 159 bus route runs almost directly past both our front door and that of the Academey - hoorah!

[Posted at: 29/06/2006 17:41]

Tue, 27 Jun 2006

[13:13] Job Huntin...
It seems that I'm still in the race for the job that I'm chasing. I heard back from the recruiter today that I made it through the technical hiring phase and now it's time for educational history to be verified and references/referees to be consulted, just to make sure that I really WAS telling the truth back in the interviews...

Ultra-big thank-yous go out to the folks who have agreed to provide me with good references (well, I ASSUME that's what you're doing). I understand the time that these things take to complete properly (I've done a couple myself in the past) and I really appreciate that you're willing to do this! The party is on me when I finally repatriate.

[Posted at: 27/06/2006 21:13

Mon, 26 Jun 2006

[15:53] Lior
We went out to see Lior play at The Spitz tonight. This was a Shona-organised event, I'm not really familiar with Lior, but she figured that for £8 it's got to be worth it dragging me along! You might know him as the talent behind This Old Love, a track that JJJ had on pretty high rotation last year (and which I "broke" my knee whilst listening to, riding home in the storm water drains...but that's another story) or perhaps Autumn Flow which made it into the Hottest 100 at position 43. I certainly had no real association of the name to the music before I went.

I'm certainly glad that I DID go. The Spitz is a nice, small venue - somewhat reminiscent of The Gypsy Bar or Tilleys back in Canberra - I doubt that you'd get more than 200 rammed into the wee attic that is the concert area (downstairs being a restaurant). The cosy venue provided a perfect match for the relaxed and personable gig that Lior played. I don't know if he's normally so interactive but he really had the crowd (me too) under his spell. Possibly this is because said crowd was something like 90% slightly inebriated Australians (he checked), and possibly he played to this by giving Albury a bit of a ribbing and generally slipping in little Australiana tidbits, but overall he just put on a great show that would have been appreciated by anyone who saw it!

Liors music is a blend of Mark Cohn-style lyrics with a Jeff Buckley-esque delivery, he's certainly got a good set of lungs on him. He has an Israeli background and he uses the musical heritage from that part of the world in a couple of his songs, specifically Bedouin Song and the closing "song" of the night, a Hebrew prayer. I'd highly recommend that you check him out if you get a chance.


[Posted at: 26/06/2006 23:53]

Mon, 19 Jun 2006

[15:34] PasswordSafe 3.01 is out
My favourite password storage facility, PasswordSafe, has just had a major version release. It's had both UI and behind the scenes updates including the ability to collect URL and general notes as well as normal username/password pairs, a brand new DB format and a switch from Blowfish to Twofish. If pwsafe would keep up then everything would be perfect!

[Posted at: 19/06/2006 23:34]

[15:14] Stinking SPAMwhores
Seems that some bastard has started spamming me via the pollxn comment engine. The IP's from the logs aren't really very helpful and my random sampling has ranged through Russia, Japan, Malaysia, Barbados and even the United States! I suspect that they're using a spider but perhaps it's just a search engine looking for common comment engines.
Step 1 in the anti-SPAM offensive has been renaming the pollxn.cgi script. If it's a spider and is even vaguely intelligent then this will do absolutely nothing to stop it so I'm hoping it's not!
I was thinking of implementing a gruesomely simple CAPTCHA for pollxn but I'll wait and see what happens next. I suppose this is a good time to think about whether it might be time to move back to a proper CMS. Blosxom is nice and simple and very easy to use but there's a lot more that I want to be able to do and I don't know if I really want to write my own CMS (which is essentialy what I'm now doing). It has been fun and interesting but I'm not really game to allow my non-web-savy developments out to play on the internet and with so many good packages out there written by people who actually know what they're doing maybe I should spend my time doing something more useful...

[Posted at: 19/06/2006 23:14]

Updated 20/06/2006 23:17: Day One - no sign of intruders so far...
Updated 21/06/2006 18:17: Day Two - BAH! Foiled. Picked up another six advertisements today. Going to have to do something about this. For now comments are suspended.

Sun, 18 Jun 2006

[12:02] Conquering "The Monument"
Shona came in to meet me for lunch on Saturday after she finished at the Gym. We had Vietnamese and, because I'd nearly finished at the office she came back and waited for me to finish. It was a REALLY nice day so we stopped for a juice and a laze in the sun in the garden of St. Boltophs, which is just outside where I used to work. London is surprisingly full of little grassy hideaways like this! Anyway, since Shona was so completely knackered (from the gym), we both had huge backpacks and it was such a hot day I thought that it would be a great time to cross another item off our "Things To Do In London" list and tackle the 311 steps that take you to the top of The Monument!

The Monument, or more correctly The Monument to the Great Fire of London, is a sodding great pillar that was built to commemorate the 1666 fire that consumed the considerable majority of the city (more details here). The pillar itself is 61 metres high and contains 311 steps that lead to the (extremely cramped) viewing platform at the top. It is topped by a golden urn that symbolises the fire and, were it to fall over (I think in an Easterly direction) without snapping into little pieces, the urn would land on the spot where the Great Fire was kindled!
There's actually a lot of interesting info on the Wikipedia site that they DON'T state either inside the column (granted there's not a lot of room) or on the fancy pants certificate that they give you if you make it back out the bottom. Apparently the architect, Sir Christopher "cop a load of my hair ya bastards" Wren wasn't just going for looks but designed it as some kind of swiss-army knife of scientific laboratories - it's worth the very short Wikipedia read and a bit more study!

Here now are some photographic proofs of the journey: Shona on the staricase, me at the top with one of the ubiqitous security cameras and a gherkin coming out of my head and finally, to give you some scale, me with the certificate underneath the plaque that's in the tiny little picture of The Monument at the top of this entry.

[Posted at: 18/06/2006 20:02]

Wed, 14 Jun 2006

[16:34] Tool and the art of mosh infiltration
Due to my friends crazy penchant for oversupplying themselves with concert tickets I was offered the chance to go and see Tool play at the Hammersmith Apollo tonight. I didn't really enjoy the last Tool concert I attended (back in Canberra at the National Convention Center) because it was really, really, REALLY loud. It was so loud that when the guitar started up and synched in with the drums the air was forced from my lungs - seriously. However, since I've really been enjoying their latest album, 10,000 Days, I accepted and I'm rather glad I did!
For starters, these English folks really know how to build a music venue. In a similar fashion to the Brixton Academy (where I saw NIN about the same time last year) the floor is nicely sloped so that those at the back can still see over the squalor bunched up against the barriers at the front and the mid-floor barriers were also present to prevent too much crushage.
The speaker stacks were of a decent size - not the towering monsters that I saw last time and the music was great (I used my last pack of Laser Lites though)! They played a lot of my favourites including Sober, 46 and 2 and a pretty credible version of Ions(!) before finishing up with one of my all time favourites, Aenima. Off the new album they cranked out Vicarious, The Pot and an impressive rendition of Rosetta Stoned, complete with the burbling "stream of conciousness" lyrics - I was well impressed. When the time came for the end of the concert the band stopped playing, threw various accoutrements into the crowd, said goodnight and left. I can't say how refreshing it was to not have to go through the wankery of the whole "encore" performance thing.

It's been a while since I attended a "rock concert" and I realised tonight that it's not so much the live music that I enjoy as the opportunity to get to the front of the mosh (although the music does give you something to concentrate on once you reach the front)! I made it down to the barrier tonight as I usually do, and I really enjoyed getting there. The crowd was quite mellow (no elbows, knees or finger prying near me anyway) so I could pay more antention to what I was doing than normal. Mosh infiltration is an art that requires the application of psychology (to pick your "targets") and body mechanics (to get past them) that you can't really practice in any other environment and I recommend it to those who like to study human psychology, social interaction and get soaked in other peoples sweat!

I would also like to say a big thank-you to the mob doing security at the gig (ICMB I think). I've never come across a nicer bunch of security guards. They were kind, courteous and friendly (are you paying attention you bastards at the ANU bar). Judging by the accents I suspect they are travelling with the band.

I managed to top the night off with the best chips in the universe (with mayo and chilli) from the Waterloo Kebab and Burger house to provide sustenance for the walk home. Life is good!

[Posetd at: 15/06/2006 00:34]

Mon, 12 Jun 2006

[09:20] Hello from Dublin
I'm sitting in Dublin airport on an eircom internet kiosk (with a browser agent of "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; SiteKiosk 6.2 Build 51)" and an IP of 83.71.63.166 in case you're interested). I'm sitting here because I came over for a job interview yesterday and I'm heading home now, post-interview.

The trip over was a bit of a disaster, I left London Heathrow at 1530 and got into Dublin airport 15 minutes early which was nice but unfortunately my bag didn't. It rocked up at 2249 after a getting drunk at the bar back in London and losing its passport, or that's what it told me anyway. I suspect the more likely explanation is that it's free-flowing straps got caught in the baggage transporting mechanisms and they had to send a trained ferret in to free it or something. Take note! Stick straps down with tape or chuck the whole damn bag in a pillowcase or something.
So anyway, I got my bag and got the bus into town and had Burger King for dinner because it was the only thing still open at 2350. I then walked up to my hotel. It was a very nice and quiet and not at all prepossessing. In fact it was so un-prepossesing that I walked twice around St Stephens Green before I finally found it - yay. So I got checked in at about 0008 and went to bed so I could be "fresh" in the morning.

I did get up on time and do all the morning things although I elected not to have breakfast, mostly because the hotel was of the opinion that breakfast was worth 14 Euros and I was not. Your probably better off on an empty stomach anyway - at least that's what New Scientist told me anyway.
The interviews (four of them) seemed to go well but I've given up trying to gauge such things. No-one spat on me or tried to bang my head against the table for speaking heresy so I'm chalking it up as a positive experience! At very least I met some really cool people, got some new books/authors to check out (Vernor Vinge/Rainbows End) and learned a few things about non-stateful firewalls and STP!

Fingers crossed....

[Posted at: 12/06/2006 17:20

Fri, 09 Jun 2006

[04:45] Ethereal is now WireShark
It seems that everyones favourite network protocol analyser Ethereal is now known as WireShark. It's allegedly not a fork because the entire dev team is following the project lead and creator (Gerald Combs) to his new job. It's all explained in the WireShark FAQ, in this Ethereal mailing list post and on the WinPcap news page.
I'm finding it a little odd that this is addressed as "...almost (but not quite) a fork..." on the FAQ and nowhere is there any mention of Ethereal ceasing development!? I wonder if it will actually fork and what that will mean. Hopefully it means that we get two really free open-source good programs instead of one!

[Posted at: 09/06/2006 12:45]

Thu, 08 Jun 2006

[15:04] That's no ORDINARY bus!
There was a bus parked out front this afternoon with a most impressive display of icons on the back window which, I assume, were advertising it's amazing attributes and abilities. Here's what the back window display looked like:

• Our driver has a spiky beard and wears a cycling helmet - beware!
• I assume this pertains to passenger refreshment - All Beers and Spirits. It could be the drivers refreshments of course, which would explain the helmet.
• Licensed to seat 66, with an Enhanced Concubine Enclosure that seats 66. Concubines for all!
• When you're all beer and spirited out and you've finished your concubine - have some freshly brewed coffee...
• and relax with your own personal entertainment system!
• I'm not sure if these means "We have Super levitating seats!" or "Caution: Inhaling the Stench of stockinged feet could cauterise your nose!".
• Should our be-helmeted driver be overcome by the sock stench and drive off a cliff, this bus is equipped with parachutes! Tell Ma that you're going to be OK!
• You're going to have A Super Ride

[14:15] More Unicylcing
I've been out nearly every night this week getting in a bit of practice and I'm reasonably comfortable with general pavement riding now. I can cruise without fear of decapitating a small child if I suddenly lose balance and I've barely lost a pint of blood from gouges this week so I decided to step up the difficulty and tackle my first wall today.
Obviously my jumping skills aren't that great yet so I have to start by stepping up onto the wall (it's only about half a metre high) but I CAN ride off and land without causing too much damage! It's amazing how much harder riding in a straigt line is when all of a sudden you HAVE to ride in a straight line or plummet to ashphalty death!
All-in-all I'm really loving this whole unicycling thing; I'm not moving at light speed or anything but I can approach a mild jog as opposed to walking-speed and it's got the added bonus of turning almost any surface into a magical bouncing playground. It's a very similar feeling to the one I used to get when I was a wee nipper and I used to take my bike out for a cruise. I look forward to when I can get down an entire flight of stairs, and back up, without dismounting.

[Posted at: 08/06/2006 22:15]

Wed, 07 Jun 2006

[14:01] Presents!!!
I've been studying for my CCNA for a while now and I'm pretty happy with my theoretical knowledge but I'm not so sure about router/switch configuration and I am very unimpressed with the way the router simulatior that came with a book I bought works (or doesn't work as the case may be). With that in mind I hit the eBay and got myself a Catalyst 1900 switch and a couple of 1601 Series Routers plus all the cables to practice on. They turned up this morning and I'm looking forward to having a play.

Tue, 06 Jun 2006

[11:59] Avenue Q
I completely forgot to mention that we went to see Avenue Q last Friday at the Noel Coward Theatre. The theatre was nice and cosy, it was all red velvet and brocade with all sorts of little nooks and crannies that ended up being box seats, not to mention three seperate bars!

The production Avenue Q is a musical told via puppets of the Sesame Street ilk. It tells the story of a university graduate (Princeton) and follows him on his first day out in the real world (kicking off with the song "What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?") touring through the various problems that befall one on the way to ultimate wisdom (housing, money, girls, lucky pennies) before finishing up with....well I don't want to spoil it, suffice to say that it IS a moral tale but manages not to be preachy. Or maybe I'm getting too old and I just THINK it wasn't preachy...uh, hang on...

*time passes*

...sorry about that, I'm back. There were some damn kids out the front playing with a ball and making far to much noise. I went and yelled at them, and then I forgot what I was doing and trimmed my nosehairs on the way back. That's why I took so long.

Anyway, I did really enjoy the show and I thought it was pretty cool the way they made no pretence of hiding the pupeteers. It was interesting watching them and their facial expressions/body language and comparing that to what they were manipulating the puppets into doing. A good time had by all!

[Posted at: 06/06/2006 19:59]

Sun, 04 Jun 2006

[23:47] Unicycle bites man - pictures at 11!
Well, I won't make you wait. You can have the pictures now:
Not content with merely lacerating my shins, my unicycle has moved on to chewing on my socks as well!
Apart from the obvious cuts 'n scratches the weekend went pretty well. I managed to ride from my house, across the road, around the Imperial War Museum and partially down a flight of reasonably gentle stairs without too much death and destruction. I think I can safely say I've acheived UIF Level 1 and can move on with Level 2.

[Posted at: 05/06/2006 07:47]

Fri, 02 Jun 2006

[09:45] Unlocker is the shiznit!
I've been playing with a piece of software called Unlocker recently and I've decided that not only is it the bee's knees but I'm prepared to swear that it's also the bee's thighs, hips and abdomen (or thorax possibly, whatever bees have)!
Unlocker basically locates whatever processes are locking a file (thus preventing you from deleting it/moving it/etc) and, if possible, removes the lock. This is GREAT for getting Windows to release a USB thumbdrive for instance and much nicer than the old way I've been using of looking for processes using ProcessExplorer and then manually removing the lock.
If for some reason it can't remove the lock then it gives you the option of marking the file for deletion on the next reboot (before anything can get it's grubby hooks into it)

The only way this program could be better would be if it was free. Oh wait, it is! What are you waiting for? Go get it NOW! Huzzah for Cedrick Collomb!

Sun, 28 May 2006

[07:16] X-Men: The Last Stand - Rating: 6/10
X-Men: The Last Stand is pretty much your standard blockbuster fare, very much a sit back, tune-in, turn-off kinda deal. Which is not to say it's a bad movie! The majority of the X-Men morality tale was taken as being dealt with in the previous two films and the stage was left clear for the special effects.
The special effects were well-implemented, the acting was mostly good, the plot was not mind-snappingly contradictory and I didn't have to sit there constantly thinking "must willingly suspend disbelief" so all in all - a successful movie! My only gripe was the glaringly obvious continuity errors (the daytime/night-time switch was the "best" of these).

Two things more to mention:
1) Don't forget the post-credits snippet; and
2) If this is the last X-Men movie then I'll consume some form of inedible headgear.

[Posted at: 28/05/2006 15:16]

[06:12] The culture, the culture!
Another rockin' week of excitement and culture in London! Let's break it down:

Tuesday - Musical Culture Another classical concert, this time it was the Philharmonia Orchestra (again) at the Royal Festival Hall (again) playing a selection of Mozart. The selection included:

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Symphony No.36 (Linz)
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Sinfonia concertante in E flat for violin & viola, K364
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Symphony No.41 (Jupiter)

Sun, 21 May 2006

[10:43] How about some classical music then...
Since we're on a bit of a classical binge at the moment we went to see the Lambeth Orchestra play last night. They're a community-based orchestra that "...pursue a policy of performing minor works of major composers and major works of minor composers...". The main reason that I wanted to go and see them is because they played one of my favourite pieces, Rachmaninovs Isle of the Dead. The complete playlist was:

• Bruch: Scottish Fantasy
• Liszt: Mazeppa
• Rachmaninov: The Isle of the Dead
• Elgar: Crown of India

Thu, 18 May 2006

[15:23] An Eventful Day
I got a call today from the folks in London who I've been interviewing for, offering me a position. This puts me in a bit of a quandry because it's the second of two jobs that I applied for, the former of which (I'm pretty sure) I'd prefer to work for but that I've not finished interviewing for yet (a process whos outcome is by no means a foregone conclusion). If I decide to wait for the interview process to run its course then I lose the option of this job and possible end up destitute. Some heavy thinking for the weekend.

Luckily I was able to cast my cares aside as we had tickets to see the Philharmonia Orchestra play at the Royal Festival Hall so we rode the bikes up and went out to dinner at Wagamamas on the South Bank before the concert.

I think this is the first time that I've gone to see classical music played, certainly as an adult anyway and I really enjoyed it. The menu consisted of:

• Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Prelude to Act 1
• Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Liebestod
• Benjamin Britten: Serenade for tenor, horn and strings
• INTERVAL
• Sergey Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet, Op.64 - excerpts

Wed, 17 May 2006

[09:46] What do you call a man with no legs who climbs mount Everest?
Mark Inglis!
It's not funny because it's not a joke. I read today that Mr Inglis (who lost his legs to frostbite whilst stuck on top of Mt Cook in what he described as "a very public hiccup to my climbing profession") reached the summit of Mt Everest on Monday (15 May, 2006) under his own steam.

I think this is particularly interesting, nay amazing, for two reasons:

1. A guy with prosthetic limbs climbed the highest mountain in the world!
   I've not got a massive interest in prosthetic limbs because, so far, I've still got all of mine but I am interested in the concept because it's people who need the crappy prosthetics that we have today who are going to be among the first "proper" augmented humans. Look at the Rheo-Knee or listen to the interview with Jesse Sullivan who has prosthetic arms and is currently actively working with his doctor (Todd Kuiken)to make them a lot better. All of this is REALLY cool technology.
   
   There's a guy who I sometimes ride past on London Bridge on the way to work in the morning who has a leg that looks very similar to those that Mr Inglis is sporting in a couple of pictures on his site. How long before he's powering past me with some kind of exo-skeleton?
   
   
2. He was in near-constant telephone and e-mail contact with his wife and able to update his blog whilst up the mountain!
   I'll admit that I've not been actively on top of how satellite technology has been progressing (I assume that's what they're using because the websites are unfortunately skimpy on technical details) but I still think that's pretty cool that in some of the most extreme environments on Earth you can hang out in your tent and surf the 'net!

Sun, 14 May 2006

[11:03] Unicycle Update
It's been a bit tough to fit some practice in but I think I've racked up about three or four hours this week and, if I do say so myself, I'm getting a lot better. I can now free-mount and even "ride" for several meters. Ride is in quotes because I'm not at liberty to choose which direction to go in just yet, still some work to be done! I have ventured forth from my rubber coated play-pen and have been riding on the road and pavement around my house. I also put in a good hour and a half yesterday and I can now ride down stairs, up is still a considerable challenge.

Unfortunately this means that I've not yet achieved Level One of the Unicycling Society of America Skill Levels but I'm oh so close...

The weeks damage roster stands at:

• Reopened wounds on both shins,
• Scratches to left calf (that's right, I managed to hit myself in the back of the leg!),
• Ashphalt punctures to right palm,
• Considerably less steel on both pedals,
• Smashed reflector on right pedal.

Thu, 11 May 2006

[03:37] Final Interview?
I had my final interview for the UK job last night. It consisted of two parts. The first was about an hour with the CIO and the second was a social event, drinks with the team whom I'd become a part of.
I think both parts went well and I'd be surprised if I didn't at least get a offer (considering the amount of time these guys have put into interviewing me now). The interview was pretty good, the guy obviously knows what he's talking about which is nice - management with a clue! - and I'm told that the only guy who failed the social test did something unmentionable on top of the bar with his underwear in entirely the wrong location.
Although this started off as being my second choice job, after meeting the team (through the interview process) and seeing the work that's to be done I'm actually quite keen on working with them! The management structure is really quite flat (about four hops to the top I think) and they're really open to new ideas - especially from us techies! After yet another year in the EDS bureaucracy jungle (about 400 hops to the top I think) I'd really like to work for a smaller company and actually achieve something. Working for larger companies, especially doing outsourced administrivia, means that although the work is essential it's basically a thankless task - somewhat akin to painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge; By the time you've finished it's time to start over on the other side again.
I should hear back from them late this week or early next week and I guess I'll also be hearing from the other mob again soon (my recruiter is on a weeks holiday). Hopefully there'll be some decisions to make soon...

[Posted at 11/05/2006 11:37]

Tue, 09 May 2006

[10:01] The Shredder
EVERYTHING that comes through the post box in this country seems to be personally addressed to me, even the junk mail! Bills turn up consisting of four pages, one with the bill and three with advertisements, each with a full name and address emblazoned across the top. Identity theft has become such a problem here in the UK that there's an entire website devoted to it (although it's run by a mob calling themselves the "Home Office Identity Fraud Steering Committee" which makes it sound like they're the ones behind the whole caper) and there are little stickers and posters all over the place exhorting constant vigliance.
With this in mind I've finally procured a shredder, this one to be exact. It's a cross-cut shredder that spits out confetti in the shape of 4x36mm rectangles. Cross-cut shredders are basically strip shredders (your standard "cut paper into ribbons" style shredder) but with an extra cutting edge that cuts each strip into about 7 pieces (assuming you fed it an A4 sheet). The cross-cut seemed like a better idea because it's pretty easy to put the ribbons back together if there's not too many of them. I actually had a go at piecing some of the stuff I shredded back together and I've dicovered that you should definitely shred from top to bottom rather than edge to edge. Edge to edge means that you end up with strips of sentence and I managed to put my name and address back together easily! I also heard a tip on the In The Trenches padcast that suggested sealing half a cup of milk in a bag with your shreddings and leaving them in the sun for a day before disposing of them but I'm not so sure if I need to go to such extremes just yet...

[Posted at: 09/05/2006 18:01]

Mon, 08 May 2006

[00:34] Stolen Bodies?
Whilst reading my New Scientist in bed last night I came across the article Putting bodies on display regarding the "Bodies...The Exhibition" exhibition that we went to see last week.
According to the article, and contrary to what the staff told me when I asked, the people (or bodies I guess would be more correct) on display did NOT give their consent to be stripped of their skin, eaten away by acid or otherwise folded, spindled and/or mutilated. The article states that: ...all the specimens used in Bodies were obtained legally from the Dalian Medical University and they are the bodies of unknown people, or people whose families never claimed them for burial. There's more in an article entitled Who is running man? from the St Petersburg Times when the exhibition visited Tampa.

[Posted at 08/05/2006 08:54]

Mon, 01 May 2006

[12:08] The Whirlwind Weekend Of Fun
Yet another weekend off! This weekend is Microsoft patch weekend so I've been kicked outta the building for the duration (don't want too many changes occuring at once). So, it's been another weekend of crossing off things on the "Things to do in London" list. First up, on Friday night, we went to the Blue Man Group production (for want of a better word) at the New London Theatre in Drury Lane. The walk there was an entertaining experience as we negotiated the hordes of brawling pre-teens screaming obscenities and traffic cones at each other, interesting neighbourhood. The outside of the theater was pretty un-preposessing but the inside was nice enough and the seats were pretty comfy. Our seats were in the fourth row but, since we booked so late, were on the far right-hand side of the stage. In the end we were actually able to see nearly everything. Because of the nature of the show and our proximity to the stage our seats had disposable ponchos waiting for us - they came in handy!
I don't know how to describe the show really. I guess in the simplest terms it's a (semi-?)scripted combination of comedy and percussion. They describe themselves as:
"...a creative organization dedicated to creating excitement-generating experiences for our audience and ourselves."
which pretty much sums it up. I highly recommend that you go and see this show if you get a chance.

On Saturday we headed off to the London Butterfly House which, as the name suggests, is the premier spot for butterfly watching in London. It wasn't as spectacular as the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary in Kuranda but, given the location and complete lack of funding they're doing pretty well. There was no shortage of butterflies and there was also a really cool leaf-cutting-ant house. I also saw the biggest bodied butterfly I've ever seen anywhere, being ported around by a 6 year old touting for pictures. I was greatly amused when the butterfly voided itself down his leg (it was a seriously large butterfly). We lay outside in the sun for a while because it was a GREAT weekend (sunny and clear) before adjourning to the attached nursery refectory for lunch. The lady we were with ordered a coffee with her lunch and received a rahter odd setup: a ceramic cup with a second, plastic cup perched on top. This turned out to be a coffee filtration system - the boiled water percolates through a wad of coffee in the bottom of the plastic cup providing freshly filtered coffee. Upon closed inspection this filter turned out to be disposable! I've included some pictures so you can see just how large this thing is, I was (and still am) incredulous that someone's made this thing to be thrown away:

• Probably the freakiest bit was the cabinet containg a "skin suit" basically one of the bodies skins had been removed in one piece and put in a case - very odd to look at
• The nervous system exhibit was quite bizzare looking as well - it consisted of the brain, eyes and the major nerves all in one unit - as Shona pointed out, somewhat reminiscent of the aliens from "Mars Attacks"!
• There was a skeleton leaning back, arms outstretched supported by a muscle-suit in a similar pose leaning the other way. The skeleton was actually removed from inside of the muscles before they were put into position!
• The variety of circulatory system exhibits was probably the most technically challenging and beautiful to look at. They basically pumped blue liquid into the veinous system and red into the arteries, let the liquid cool into a solid and then ate away the body with acid. They did this to various things ranging from kidneys, hearts and lungs all the way up to an entire body. This leaves you with a thing shaped structure made up of the blood vessels - the whole body display was simply berath-taking.

Wed, 26 Apr 2006

[11:03] Unicycling...not as easy as it looks
Here's me and my beautiful unicycle, post-practice:

Tue, 25 Apr 2006

[13:27] Interview II, part two
I just had my second phone interview for the original job I applied for. My first interview went pretty damn well but this one was definitely not as impressive. I was pretty tired due to getting up for ANZAC day this morning (I'd been up for about fourteen hours when the interview started) and I think I was a litte fuzzy and not as articulate or energetic as I'd like to have been.
I think the fact that I'm applying for jobs with companies that are good, and know it, mean that they can be a bit more meticulous about the whole hiring procedure and actually do all they can to verify that what they get matches what was written on the packet. If nothing else, I've certainly enjoyed the whoel interview process - I've picked up a couple of cool ideas and reading suggestions from all of my interviewers so far and it's been good talking to people who obviously enjoy what they get to do every day!
I'm going to keep my fingers crossed because this is really my dream job but I'll begin to prepare myself for a "No thanks" I think....

[Posted at 25/04/2006 21:27]

Mon, 24 Apr 2006

[22:52] Lest We Forget
We just got back from the London ANZAC Day ceremony. There was a pretty good turnout and it was interesting to see a truly ANZAC ceremony (as opposed the Australian ceremony that I'm more used to) - I've never actually heard the New Zealand national anthem before today! It wasn't the quiet ceremony that I'm used to, with all the traffic blocked off around the Australian War Memorial service; this one was at the major intersection that is Hyde Park Corner with buses and taxis and the occasional wailing siren throughout that make a quite a difference to the magpies and cockatoos that accompany the service back home.
The ceremony was considerably more religious than the ones we've had over the last few years in Australia and the "standards" like In Flanders Field and Lest We Forget were, for me, noticeably absent. Also, it seems that candles are not de rigueur over here, so we were the only two that had them.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

[Posted at: 25/04/2006 06:50]

Sun, 23 Apr 2006

[12:46] The Return Of Jason
Jason is back in the country and to celebrate his return he came down to London for an evening of fun and frivolity. I had to work during the day so he went out to Ikea with Shona ('cause he's got a car) and they went shopping. I also snuck out at lunchtime and bought my unicycle (yay!). I got pulled over by the cops when I left, about a kilometer from work, asking for proof that I'd bought my unicycle and, once I produced the receipt, querying why I was carrying it like a dickhead (I had the wheel balanced on my handlebars and the seat resting on my shoulder). I assured it that in future I would be riding the thing rather than transporting it and he was happy enough to let me go.

When I got home there was some Ikea construction work in progress and I was rather impressed with one of the tools included in the chair kit. The tool was, of course, the ubiquitous allen key, but with a twist:

Fri, 21 Apr 2006

[11:06] Job Interview II, but no unicycle
I had my second interview for one of the two jobs that I'm applying for at the moment. I'd have to say that as far as interviews go, this has been the most thorough that I've ever had. It started at 1230 and I didn't get out until 1803; That's right, five and a half hours of interview! It was split up into four different groups who asked questions ranging from the technical through to general social/public knowledge and trivia. They covered everything I claimed I'd had anything to do with, basically my resume was ransacked! I guess they're trying to pick out the people who are inclined to a bit of BS to make themselves look more suitable. I'm glad that I don't subscribe to this sort of thing because if I did I think I'd be feeling quite foolish right now - as it is I'm thinking of making a few modifications.
I'm really keen to get away from where I'm working now and I'm fortunate enough to be being considered for, what I consider to be, two awesome jobs. The only problem is going to occur if I get cleared for both of them but, to tell the truth, I'm not sure if I'll get either. I'm feeling semi-confident about this one, several of the mini-interviews went quite well (I think) but at least one of them was quite unspectacular. We'll see what happens next.
One of the cool things was that the floor I was interviewed on was glass-walled and appeared to have a ring of binary "code" at the height normally reserved for those white "Warning there's a wall here" stickers. Whilst waiting between mini-interviews I decoded the binary down to text and it turned out that the last guy to interview me was the one who designed the floorplan and the stickercode. I got it all right except for one character (I blame it on the fact that I had to work it out on a piece of toilet paper) and I figure that's gotta be worth something right?

Unfortunately I didn't get out until post-closing time for the shop I intend to buy a unicycle from so I'm going to have to try and get over at lunchtime tomorrow.

[Posted at 21/04/2006 19:06]

Mon, 17 Apr 2006

[12:01] Happy Birthday Shona!
Today's a holiday in the UK, in honour of Shonas birthday (it's also been hijacked by religious zealots who are claiming it's some "Easter" holiday as well). We went book shopping at the local second hand book store, "My Back Pages". I love second hand bookshops and this was my favourite sort, the kind that looks like it organically grew and consumed the surrounding shops. It's got little hidden corners and enclaves and staircases, all full of the most esoteric collection of books. I managed to snarf Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection, A Brief History of Time : The Updated and Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition and, because it had related but different information, A Briefer History of Time. I've always wanted to read that book and, for £5, why wouldn't you! We also bought Shona a couple of books, one on squishing up plants to turn them fabric dyes and one on cooking fabulous meals with two pieces of off ham and a cabbage. We then retired home to do some hardcore reading!

[Posted at 17/04/2006 20:01]

Sat, 15 Apr 2006

[10:57] A shopping we will go
Work finished early today so we took the opportunity to go shopping in Camden to pick up a pressie that's "on the list". We met up at Bank and caught the Tube together up to Camden (how romantic!). It occured to me that the local comic shop (MegaCity Comics) might stock the Spider Jerusalem comics I was looking for mid last year. Turns out they did! I'm looking forward to reading Back on the Street this weekend. We also bought the present so that's another item off the list!

Whilst browsing the through the juggling shop (because I can't go to Camden and not go through this shop) looking for an extra juggling ball (working on four balls) I stumbled upon what I think is going to be my new obsession: Into The Thunder Dragon - Mountain Unicycle Odyssey) and I'm pretty keen to give it a shot. I used to be able to see a guy commuting to work on a unicycle from my window back in Canberra and that always appealed to me. I'll sleep on it for a week and see if I'm still keen.

[Posted at 15/04/2006 18:57]

Wed, 12 Apr 2006

[11:45] Padcast vs Podcast
I've developed quite a dislike to the word "podcast", mostly because of the Apple connotations that it invokes and thus the implicit advertising they receive everytime someone uses it. I HATE advertising for things and I always strip labels from bottles, pens, hats and other miscellany.

I don't object to Apple selling over-priced and unusable gizmos (what the hell was whoever came up with iTunes THINKING). Nor do I object to them, or anyone else, using the word 'podcast'. What I object to is every gimboid in the universe referring to any internet-sourced piece of media as a podcast. A podcast is a piece of media made specifically to be played on an iPod, OK?

I've been convolutedly referring to "internet-sourced media" as Mediacasts but, lets face it, that word sucks quite a lot. On the weekend the word 'padcast' occured to me whilst observing folks on the Tube and their Personal/Portable Audio Devices. As those words crossed my lips I wondered why I'd never thought of them before (yeah, I'm slow). I'm certainly not the first but when I remembered to look it up today there were only 422 hits from Google and even less from the IceRocket Blog Search. What's worse, the Wikipedia podcast entry is attempting to subsume the padcast entry!

Help prevent rampant commercialism and the evil trend of subliminal advertising. I urge you to join the incredibly catchily named 's/podcast/padcast/g' campaign today by adding this incredibly crappy button I just smushed together to your website immediately:

Sun, 09 Apr 2006

[13:42] Hittin' the Mueseums
Due to DR testing at work this weekend, I've had quite a holiday. We decided to try and work through some of the items on the "Things To Do In London Before We Go" list. Because we're currently based in the "Gateway to the South" it takes a little longer to get back into town, about 30 minutes on the Northern line (assuming that the bastards running).

Yesterday we went to the Science Museum which was both interesting and sadly neglected. I liked the idea behind the place - making science "hands on" and relevant with lots of new exhibits but sadly a lot of the exhibits suffered from pretty obvious neglect. I was pretty impressed with the Boeing 7x7 wheel assembly that's right inside the front door, I've always wanted to get close to one of those but there was a section inside on the second floor called "Communications". This would have been interesting if I hadn't had to break out my torch to read half of the information panels due to the lights (both overhead and inside the display cabinets) being out. One of the monitors mounted on the wall showing various little spiels was broken and had so much dust on its screen that someone had managed to write "clean me" in the dust.
There was also another exhibition being hosted by the Museum, Pixar: 20 Years of Animation. This cost an extra £10 to get in but I thought it was worth it. Amongst various working drafts and character references they had on display a collection of storyboards for all of the movies. The concept behind them being to describe the major emotions felt during each segment of the movie. Each movie was covered by two to three A3 sized canvases that were most spectacular, although stylised, you could follow the whole movie really obviously and easily! The other static highlight was some of the art that had been done to get familiar with the medium they were trying to portray, some of the light studies from Finding Nemo were fantastic. There was also a Rotoscope style exhibit, except in reverse. Instead of a whole lot of stuff inside a cylinder they put everything on a plate and strobed the lights instead. It consisted of a wheel (about 1 meter in diameter) that had a whole lot of Toy Story characters in various positions (bouncing on a ball, parachuting from a toy bin, lassoing themseleves, etc. Finally there was a short film that featured all of the static items from the exhibition and made an end to end animation of them all. If you're a Pixar fan then it's well worth the entry fee!

Sunday brought the Natural History Museum. Since all of the museums over here are (generally) free, I don't mind paying the extra entry fee to the value-adding exhibits, besides it was only £6! There were some pretty awesome photos involved (as you'd expect) and on the way out there was a "film" that displayed the previous years winners as well. Luckily I'm not a photographer or I might have been quite discouraged by the amount of winning and runner-up photos submitted by folks in the 10-14 year age bracket!
On the way out we checked out the lower floor of the museum, covering mammals. There are a lot of stuffed animals, circa 1960-something I suspect. Most of them are fading quite badly and there are notices all over the place noting that they are aware of the fact but that it's not considered polite to go around killing things so you can stuff them in a glass box to look at - very progressive!

[Posted at 09/04/2006 21:42]

Fri, 07 Apr 2006

[09:21] Pink Panther (2006) - Rating: Worse than Ticker
Well, I used to rate movies based on how much better they are than Ticker, the current version of The Pink Panther has reset the bar for awful movies and scores a sum total of absolutely zero stars!

Even taken as a stand-alone move and not comparing it to the originals it really is bad. Not "so bad it's funny" bad, just plain bad.

• The accents were grating - I've read various arguments saying that they were meant to be - I don't buy it.
• The slapstick was minimally amusing (the catapulting ID card and the bathroom disaster for instance were funny) but mostly it was checklist comedy, sung to the tune of "Hot Shots" but really, really badly and out-of-tune (to stretch the analogy). There was even one scene that seemed to be wire-assisted (the Globe vs the cyclist), which just took the humour out if it for me.
• Mostly it's the puerile Americanisation (for want of a better term) of British humour. What's up with that car parking scene at the start, maybe one bump would have been amusing but the back and forth for no reason was just, well, pointless. That, followed up by the "Haha, his face is in her groin" joke really put me off from the start.

Thu, 06 Apr 2006

[03:13] ...and the mortgage battle is OVAH!
Bask in the resplendent glory:

Wed, 05 Apr 2006

[10:13] Housesitting in Balham
A couple of friends are heading back to the homeland for two weeks so we're house-sitting and cat-minding, way down south in Balham. This'll be interesting because it means my ride to work goes from 15 minutes to 45 minutes. On the bright side I could probably do with a touch more exercise and it'll also give me a chance to listen to the grotesque number of padcasts that I try to mow through weekly!

[Posted at 05/04/2006 18:13]

Sun, 02 Apr 2006

[14:57] Site Redesign
I've been working on and off on a new site design for just over a month now but I didn't want to put it up until it was finished, not even with an "Under Construction" icon on it. I've realised however that it's a web site and the damn things are forever being worked on so I've updated the static site and the CSS with what I've got at the moment but this makes the blog look odd and the blog menu is plain ole wrong. Hopefully I'll fix that next week.

I'd be interested to know if the new colour scheme makes your eyes bleed or if the menu is not functioning in your browser (I've only tested in Firefox 1.5.0.1 and Internet Explorer 6.0). Mostly I did this to understand how CSS works so, if it's all too horrible, then I'll just change it back to the old design or something. If you're interested, I got a lot of CSS info from CSS Basics, read the excellent tutorial on CSS Positioning from Brainjar and, of course, used the w3schools CSS site as an indispensible reference. Finally I borrowed and personalised (read mangled) the CSS menus from Stu Nicholls CSSPlay site . Check out the CSS Zen Garden if you want to see CSS in all its resplendant glory!

[Posted at: 02/04/2006 22:58]

Fri, 31 Mar 2006

[14:14] Greener Pastures?
Our mortgage is ticking down and D-Day is fast approaching - hopefully next month we're going to be mortgage free! This is good because it means I have the option of trying to find a job that doesn't suck in such a mammoth fashion. I've been pulling 6 or 7 day weeks pretty much since I got here (about 9 months now) and although that's a good way to gain money, the other side of the equation is that, for the most part, I've only seen the inside of my apartment and the inside of my office. We'd like to take some time to check out London properly, followed by the UK and, if possible some of Europe.

On the subject of new jobs, I finally had a phone interview for a job that I've been chasing for a few months now. It went a lot better than my last phone interview (where I found out that apparently it's possible to be "too technical"). Somewhat surprisingly I actually really enjoyed the whole interview process! The interviewer was really nice and obviously really enjoys his job - I'd like to rejoin that particular clique. Hopefully I'll make it to Interview II, I'm reasonably confident but I'm not great at gauging people over the phone (come to that, I kinda suck at it face-to-face). Fingers crossed.

[ Posted At: 31/03/2006 23:14 ]

Mon, 27 Mar 2006

[23:17] Idiot Pilot - Strange We Should Meet Here - Rating 4/5
"Strange We Should Meet Here" is the CD I bought myself for my birthday after Shona recommended it to me (because she liked the cover). I listened to it on the magical Virgin listening stick and the 30 second clips sounded good so I bought it.

The first listen at home made me think "Have I made a bit of a mistake here?" but the fact that I've had it on high rotation since then makes me think "No". It's a bloody great album! The songs are generally built on a background mix of ambient electronica, soft guitar and vocals with some Deftones/Filter/NIN style screaming singing smashing in for backing vocals and the chorus every now and then. It's proving to be really great coding music and is what I spent a goodly portion of Saturday and Sunday listening to.

Weighing in at 14 tracks and just under an hour (57 minutes and 37 seconds) its good value for money in both the quality and quantity department. Favourite tracks? Hmmmm. The title track "Strange We Should Meet Here" which meanders in just past the halfway point of the CD is excellent and "A Violent Tango" provides a good example of what the majority of the album is like. "Spark Plug" is a nice mash of guitar and electronic distortion and you can even pick out the vocals on this one. "Moerae" is somewhat reminiscent in style of the Bram Van 3000 track "Drinking in LA" (which I really love). Meh...they're all good - just go buy the damn CD folks.

For more information check out the website at www.idiotpilot.com or you can sneak-preview a couple of the tunes here (which is cool!).

Sun, 26 Mar 2006

[13:29] Yummy snacks,dismantling and CSS wrangling
Due to DR testing I got Saturday off which was well cool! We slept in (I got up around 0900 but that's sleeping in for me these days) and then scooted up to Borough Markets to do some produce shopping and have some fun. It was all pretty interesting and there was some really nice food around but the prices weren't really competitive with the chain supermarkets. With that in mind, the veges were definitely much nicer than what you'd find in Tescos so maybe it's worth it? We snacked on spicy sausage-inna-bun, toasted chorizo 'n rocket rolls (which we had to queue up for for about 15 minutes), cheeses, breads, brownies and cakes (award winning cakes no-less).

We rode home and I spent a happy hour dismantling a discarded stereo to get the magnetic tape reading head. I've been waiting for AGES to find one so that I can build a card reader, that's going to be my next project. My current project took up the rest of the afternoon, smashing together the new CSS layout for this site. It's taken me about a month of Sunday afternoons (and it's Sunday evening again as I type) but I've finally got the damn thing doing what I want in both Firefox and IE - what a pain in the keister! I'm no CSS guru (which is why I wanted to do this) but it's unbelievable how differently these two browsers will render the same HTML/CSS combo - god knows what Safari or Konqueror or some other browser I've not got access to at the moment will do.
Anyway, the static portion of the site is done (with a few data updates pending) and hopefully next weekend I'll be able to update the blog portion as well.

[Posted at 26/03/2006 22:28]

Tue, 21 Mar 2006

[04:06] MSN Messenger Is Fugly
I installed MSN Messenger yesterday and was so disgusted with everything flashing and all of the built-in advertisments that I uninstalled it straight away. I was going to switch over to Trillian and then I remembered that GAIM now has a Windows port.
I installed the new Beta2 of version 2.0.0, fired it up and was rewarded with GAIM crashing out the second I tried to start it. However, being an open source project coming from the linux world, the programmers understand the incredible handiness of debug output and by running "gaim -d" you get verbose output of exactly what's going on, and going wrong.
In my case GAIM appeared to be inheriting aspell from the UltraEdit directory. I nullified the GAIM_ASPELL_DIR environment variable (as suggested here) and it now works like a charm, with NO advertisments, no flashing things, no *nudge* "functionallity" and no crappy emoticons.

Mon, 20 Mar 2006

[15:53] Birthdays and Listening Posts
Yes, that's right, you forgot my birthday (I'm looking at you Don). I turned the big 2 9 on the 17th! For the most part t'was a day like any other - I got an exciting pressie when I got up, a nice black t-shirt with the words: One by one the penguins steal my sanity bannered across the front! I then went to work and did stuff and came home. It got more interesting from there:
We ventured out into Ye Olde London Towne, ostensibly to go and fetch the latest edition of 2600 which you can now only get from the Virgin store in Piccadilly Circus. We descended to the bowels of the store, where they keep the magazines and the DVDs (this is where it gets exciting folks), I went and fetched my mag whilst Shona did some browsing, she found......

I've been trying to find that for AGES! We spent then next half-hour or so marvelling at all the other cool stuff that was down there before heading upstairs to pay. This is when cool thing number two happened (I apologise if this is horrendously old and passe now but I don't get out much, and I spend money even less). Since we emerged into the CD section we had a bit of a browse around. As is always the way, you find something(s) that you think you might like but you want to listen to. I always hate asking because the staff wherever I happen to be generally are quite surly about having to dig up the CD just so I can listen to it and then you have to brave the "evil stare" when you say "Actually, I don't really like that". But I found something and I took it to the guys and he showed me how the listening posts work.
Basically you pick a post, scan your CD and it gets looked up in the database. They then play 30 second clips of each song. 30 seconds isn't the greatest but you can scan ANY CD IN THE SHOP and listen to it! I spent some considerable time hunting out "obscure" CDs just to verify this. The only things I couldn't get to play were my Trapdoor DVD and magazine. I don't know how long they've had this but I think it is very, very cool! We're heading back next weekend with a big ole list of things to listen too!
After escaping the consumer-paradise of Virgin we wandered the St Patricks day reveller-rammed streets looking for somewhere to eat. We eventually settled on a hole in the wall called Mr Wus because it was all-you-can-eat for £4.50, hoorah. The food was actually pretty good and we decided to walk home to walk off dinner (stopping only for a lemon sorbet from the gelato shop on the Strand). Good time had by all! A quick tangent on the subject of grub: I had to work Saturday (as with all Saturdays before it) but too make up for this injustice we've been working our way up Shoreditch Road (near where I work) every weekend for lunch. This weekend we found the BEST Vietnamese joint (we've tried one every weekend for the last month). It's called Song Que and they make the best Pho in this damn place, and they have those wacky Vietnamese desserts! More here.

Mon, 13 Mar 2006

[16:15] What a T.W.A.T.
If you haven't heard of it yet, Today With A Tech aka T.W.A.T. Radio is a community media-cast and is, to quote the website: ...a hardcore tech daily internet radio show that has multiple hosts, guests and topics. There are 1000’s of internet radio shows that talk about what the hosts had for breakfast. This one is going to be HARDCORE TECH... I really like it because of the sheer variety of topics being discussed. I've listened to some obvious audiophiles talking about setting up a recording studio, an interesting tour of the Boston Telephone System by a phreak (who better to run such a tour), how to design and build a softball launcher, cracking SAM files and more. The quality varies considerably (one guy actually recorded his by yelling into his headphones after plugging them into his MIC jack) but I've picked up a few interesting tidbits none-the-less.

The way it works is that people (I'm looking at you here) do up a show based on whatever they know something about. There's a lower limit of five minutes and an upper limit of "How long can you hold peoples attention for". A lot of people from the tech media-casting scene have pitched in, probably because they are already above the bar in terms of recording equipment and having what it takes to produce a listenable show.

So anyway, T.W.A.T. went dark in February after a successful two month run - ostensibly to produce some backup episodes and update the website. I freaked out a bit because I've seen three promising shows of a tech nature like this die because the guys making them didn't understand just how much work was behind doing a daily show. Droops and co have long history of this kind of thing but I freaked out anyway and as the last show to air was a request for content I offered to put a show together. What I wasn't expecting was the e-mail coming back saying "Cool, you're on in two weeks".

Well, I've been silent for the last couple of weeks because I've been pretty busy at work and in my spare time I've been busy researching for what I'd intended to do - basically a rundown of handy Windows command line tools to keep you safe from the nasty GUIs. This has been a reasonably successful endeavour and I've managed to write a 40 page discussion of tools and their usage with some sexy text-based screenshots.

I suspect the more astute amongst you have spotted the main flaw in my scheme, namely: CLI tools are REALLY hard to talk about with no visual references and I spent two weeks writing a huge article (yeah, with screenshots) that is going to be completely impossible to transform into audio.
I got down to trying to record this Sunday using Audacity and a free Skype microphone I collected from Liverpool Street station as a handout. Once I hit the hour mark at around page 4 I realised that I was in trouble. So, I sat down and re-wrote my treatise to try and mangle it into a 15 minute presentation, retaining all of the commands and just hinting at their functionality. Then I started recording again at about 2300. I was about three-quarters of the way through the content and about 38 minutes into the recording when my Beta version of Audacity politely informed me that some bastard had flogged it's memory. And then it blinked out of existence.

My first thought was "Well, that's Beta software for you", closely followed by "Gee, I really wish I'd saved that at some stage". Yes, that's right. I was on such a roll that I neglected to shut-up and save it at any stage. What a dick.

So, it's the day before I'm meant to hand this thing over and despite overwhelming ineptitude, I've managed to record it. My main problem now is that, compared to what I had intended to produce, I've got some smashed up and highly questionable material (vetted by a man half asleep you'll recall) recorded at high speed with no quality control. Yay. As I type it's busy MP3ifying itself back home and I WILL hand it over because I committed myself to a deadline and I'm going to meet the damn thing. I'll clean up the original article and add that as a link from the show so that if anyone actually listens to all 50 minutes of the audio and manages to pick up anything that I'm talking about they may be able to track it back to the article and find some understandable examples.

I guess that on the bright side, it's been an educational experience for me. My two day crash course on Audacity has been quite interesting (that's a real slick piece of software and I think it would run really well on a machine that had a little more than 300Mb of RAM). I've also learned that people who produce all the media that I glibly download and listen to put in a SHEDLOAD of work to produce interesting and listenable content. I will never hack on a "crappy" show again, I swear. Finally, I've picked up more than a few new tools and tips and found some really great websites whilst trying to provide a quality piece of information.

For better or worse, I'm a real T.W.A.T.
[Posted at 17:22 13-03-2006]
UPDATE: It occured to me on the way home that it might be a better idea to split my one mangled show into multiple short 'n sweet listenable shows. Hopefully this will also give me a break and let me get the quality back up to where I'd like it. I've pieced together a makeshift Episode 82 and if it's not too awful (volume seems to be really bad) then I'll see if I can make a go of it on the next one!
[Posted at 00:15 14-03-2006]

[10:13] I Want To Safely Remove My USB Device
If Windows Explorer happens to "abnormally exit" it generally takes all the other explorer processes with it, including the one controlling the desktop and taskbar. When this happens you lose a certain number of tray icons that hooked in when they started up, one of which is the little "Safely Remove Device" icon that you're meant to use to remove USB devices so that they can flush everything to disk properly and all that kind of jazz. If yours goes missing and you need to get it back, you can do like this:
%windir%\system32\RUNDLL32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

Sun, 05 Mar 2006

[14:07] Time Flies Like A Really Fast Thing
I was intending to catch up with a few posts this weekend (not to mention last weekend when I got caught up trying to work out how to redo my site using CSS instead of tables) but work and having a good time got in the way. I've been writing notes for myself over the last couple of weeks and I'm going to try and get it all up here over the coming week.
This weekend has been really good! I had to be at work early on Saturday morning for the change window and it was a bit of a shock as it was -1 when I rode in and, since they turn the air-con off on the weekends, 30 degrees inside! I finished around 13:00 so Shona rode in and we went for Pho at a restaurant in Hackney that Shona found on the interjobie, the Viet Hoa Cafe. The food was good and cheap and fuelled us on our cycling adventures!
We then went for a bit of an explore on the bikes and (after browsing through the local Yamaha dealership to check out the new XT660R) we stumbled upon the Geffrye Museum. It's a museum of English House Interiors from the 1600s through to now and it was actually pretty interesting. It was also somewhat disturbing to see the 1990-2000 interior which looked uncannily like a mix of a friends house and a our house back home. I found it really weird looking at "now" in a museum and the Fat Boy Slim playing the background really helped to make it completely freaky!
We cycled home via the Gerkhin and after that Shona noticed a building that looked a LOT like an oil refinery that I went to on a school excursion many years ago. It turned out to be the Lloyds building and it's really quite incongruous sitting in the midst of all the brick and stone buildings, not to mention all the glass of the Gerkhin. It looks a lot like Gigers work for the colony on LV-426 in Aliens. The most interesting part (for me anyway) was the fact that everything was inside out. The outside of the building is shrouded with plumbing and conduit, the staircases are all external to the building and all of the lifts are on the outside - big banks of doors running up the side (see here) look most bizzare.
Sunday I spent at work, working for the most part. I've signed myself up for a bit of extra-curricular information provision, so I spent four hours trying to finish that off as it's due on the 14th - more info on that soon.
Posted: 05/03/2006 19:58

Tue, 14 Feb 2006

[10:04] Happy Chip and PIN day!
Ahhh, technology. Only technology can bring us such marvelous slogans! And of course the logos (such as the one below) that go with them:

Chip and PIN is the new,
more secure way to pay
with credit or debit cards in
the UK.

Instead of using your
signature to verify
payments, you will be asked
to enter a four-digit
Personal Identification
Number (PIN) known only to
you.

Sun, 05 Feb 2006

[13:15] The Weekend Off
I started out my weekend off by heading to this months London 2600 Meeting with Shona. I have to say that The Freemasons Arms on a Friday evening is not the most conducive atmosphere for chatting about stuff, mostly you have to yell to be heard by anyone more than half a meter away! The turnout was roughly similar to last time with a couple of different people but with a very similar plan - head the the pub and hammer on the local WiFi....meh. We bailed and went to the bookshop instead. I was looking for Windows Internals, 4th Edition but I came out with Love and Other Near Death Experiences instead. They didn't have the book I wanted (well not by itself anyway, if I'd had a spare £220 then I could have bought the box set) but I'd read that LAONDE was coming out soon and £8 just seemed like too much of a bargain!

Flushed with post-consumer contentment, we headed back to the Tube and for home, pausing only to purchase an exquisite (no really) kebab from the Waterloo Kebab and Burger House. We watched some amusing television whilst eating, and retired. We then proceeded to sleep in until nearly 0730 on Saturday morning and which point we were roused by the postman delivering a package. There's something to be said for England's weekend mail service, and sometimes it has four letters.

I was intending to spend the majority of the weekend studying for my impending interview (3 days and counting) but I sabotaged myself with my fictional book purchases and spent 4 hours mirthfuly reading whilst Shona was out raiding the knitting shop. I did get to the study when she came home but it seems that mostly my body wanted to rest and I ended up sleeping from about 1600 to 2030 at which point I got up for dinner before collapsing back into bed.

Sunday brought more procrastination when we decided to visit the Imperial War Museum which we've been meaning to go and see since we moved into this place (the museum is less than 3 minutes walk away). We checked out the Great Escapes exhibition which was quite interesting - it covered POW WWII escapes from places like Colditz and Stalag Luft III and also included a small display of Chicken Run sets and characters, some of the few Aardman creations to escape the fire that destroyed most of the Aardman history. I was amazed to see that some enterprising bastards in Colditz actually built a glider out of matress covers and offcuts (not too mention the tools to make it) which reminded me of the one and only Macgyver episode I ever saw in which he does exactly that. It was pretty amazing to read and hear just how much of a sport the process of escaping was treated as for the majority of the war (provided you weren't in a Japanese POW camp that is). It all seemed to be very Hogans Heros.
We also wandered around the lower floor of the museum (there are four floors of death contraptions to view in total) but we'd inspected the wide variety of tanks, planes, submarines and bombs in the entrance hall and after spending a further few hours in the Great Escapes exhibition we weren't really up for any more ingenious ways of killing people - war museums have a real spirit sapping quality to them I find. We wandered into the Post '45 section and after I'd watched all of the Protect and Survive telvision advisories the government produced in the late 70's to help the populace survive a nuclear attack I reached my limit. We evacuated and went home and I finally got some study done. I should also mention that I ate my "All Day Breakfast In A Can" for linner. It tasted like baked beans.

Sun, 29 Jan 2006

[09:18] Windows network connections and "net use"
I had a problem a few months ago which I have finally managed to sort out. In the end it was mind numbingly obvious and simple to fix but it had myself, and several others, well confused for some considerable time so I figured I'd note it down as an aid to my memory and hopefully someone else will find it useful. I've stuck in a reasonable amount of detail thus this post is rather long and, I daresay, rather boring if you're not interested in such things. Sorry.

PS: IPs, username/passwords, directories, etc are sanitised throughout, otherwise all commands are displayed as they exist.

The Background
We are using a software delivery product from CA called Unicenter Software Delivery (USD). It works in a similar fashion to the software deployment functionality seen in Microsoft's Systems Management Server. USD can be remotely installed if you have admin rights on the box using a utility called sdsweep and this is how we deploy it. Software can then be deployed by wrapping each piece in scripts and adding a procedure to a package group. These proceures are then run locally on the box by the Software Delivery service and error levels are used to determine the success/failure of the installation.

The Problem
I'm working on a rollout project and the the installation of USD is a pre-requisite, providing a means of installing the software we actually want to install. The normal installation procedure is:

1. Install USD
2. Install other software

net use * \\x.x.x.100\BuildDir$ /user:x.x.x.100\RemoteUser RemoteUsersPassword

C:\>net use * \\x.x.x.100\BuildDir$ /user:x.x.x.100\RemoteUser RemoteUsersPassword
System error 1219 has occurred.

The credentials supplied conflict with an existing set of credentials.

C:>net use
New connections will be remembered.

There are no entries in the list.

C:\>netstat -an

Active Connections
  Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address        State
  TCP    x.x.x.50:2135          x.x.x.100:445          ESTABLISHED

1. Use the "Task Scheduler" service to kick off a cmd process for you.
2. Use psexec.

LOCAL C:\>time
The current time is: 14:12:17.00
Enter the new time:

LOCAL C:\>at 14:13 /interactive %COMSPEC%
Added a new job with job ID = 1

LOCAL C:\>at
Status ID   Day                     Time          Command Line
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        1   Today                   14:13 PM      C:\WINNT\system32\cmd.exe

C:>psexec \\x.x.x.50 -u DOMAIN\USERNAME -s %COMSPEC%

PsExec v1.70 - Execute processes remotely
Copyright (C) 2001-2006 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

Password:

Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.

C:\WINNT\system32>net use
New connections will be remembered.

Status       Local     Remote                    Network
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disconnected           \\x.x.x.100\BuildDir$     Microsoft Windows Network
The command completed successfully.

net use \\x.x.x.100\BuildDir$ /delete

Fri, 27 Jan 2006

[08:59] I Name You Shona Of The Gainfully Employed
Congratulations to Shona for her triumphant return to world of IT Support. After an interview earlier this week she was offered a position with Attenda as a *nix Level 2 Support technician! Goodbye call centers!

This was no small feat for a person with no higher education paperwork (no Uni degree) and no formal industry qualifications. Pieces of paper mean EVERYTHING in the UK job market, so to even get an interview without them is an uphill battle. To then get through the interview and technical test without having touched a computer for 7 months proves that (despite what she says) she really CAN do this stuff :)

Thu, 26 Jan 2006

[09:15] Happy Australia Day!
Well, no holiday for me this year - for some reason the English don't recognise Australia Day as a legitimate holiday. C'est la vie. I hope everyone back home had a great day!

In other exciting news: a) I'm a genius and b) I have a "new" phone.

1. According to this here Intelligence Test I am a certifiable genius. I'm not sure how reliable that actually is so I'm not going to add it to my resume just yet! For those of you who'd like to compare geniusnesness I've managed to nut out 21 of the 33 questions over a 24 hour period (that's 24 hours since discovery and posting that also included sleeping and working - I haven't dedicated my life to it or anything).
   
2. I've been given a new phone! Someone at work felt sorry for me (and got sick of the ear piercing ring tome) and donated it. He goes through at least 4 phones a year so he has plenty of spares!
   The details: it's acutally an old phone, a Sony T610. If you've been paying attention you'll know that this is the same model as the one I lost - my favourite phone ever! I am VERY happy to have put the detestable Samsung A300 to bed!
   The menu system has been mauled customised for the Orange phone network over here (in a similar fashion to the way Vodafone "value added" to my one back home) but now that I've got no money (or warranty) invested in the thing, I'm going to have a go at upgrading the firmware and see if I can get back to a vanilla install. I just have to work out how...

Tue, 24 Jan 2006

[08:14] Prepare for hardcore home-knit envy
As promised, here I am in my nice new jumper:

Sun, 22 Jan 2006

[10:21] We return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast
Well, I think (hope) that I've just had the most stressful two weeks of my life. I had some pretty long, hard days back on the ole CCF project but that was truly nothing compared to the mental and emotional wringer I've just been through.

Banking experience is highly prized in the job market over here, mostly, I think, because it proves that the person in question has worked in an environment where teensy little mistakes can cost thousands of pounds a minute and survived. Unfortunately, I can't comment on why I've had such a godawful time of it because it would involve providing details of my current job and environment that I'm not keen on providing in this day and age of vindictive sacking of blogging types.

So, it's going to have to suffice to say that I think I'm out the other side of "it", credibility intact and technologically victorious :)

There's not a lot of news because I've been pulling 10-12 hour days every single day of January since my last post with the exception of Sunday the 8th. The news in brief is:

• I got a cool jumper knitted for me by Shona. It's her first completed big project. She warmed up on a couple of baby jumpers that she gave to someone at work. I've got a picture that I'll upload shortly. It fits perfectly - there was a slight head/neckhole issue but that's been resovled peacfully.
• I went to a funeral. This was one of the more bizarre events of the month. My grand-uncle Felix died on Sunday the 8th and as he was Jewish, the funeral was mere days later.
  I'd never met, or even heard of Felix but as the sole living relation in the country, I went along.
  After a hectic morning I nearly missed the train but I managed to make my way out to a nice little place called Rainham in time. I learned a lot about jewish death rites that day too. I was the only relative but the Jewish Refugees Association had arranged to gather an minyan. There was a brief ceremony, we rolled the coffin out, lowered it into the hole and then filled the hole in before returning to the hall where I said the kaddish (with a LOT of assistance from one of Felixs friends).

Tue, 03 Jan 2006

[14:46] ...which is when my head exploded Officer
Man, what a day. I love the holiday season. Not because I go on holiday, but because everyone else does. Today was the first day that most everyone was back on board at work and the fragile peace of the last two weeks was brutally and incontrovertibly shattered. I also noticed that the cough that I'd been carrying and finally lost last week came back today, I don't know if that's something to do with the air-con or if I'm allergic to people or what.
Apart from getting all kinds of crazy e-mails and phone calls, today was also the day when a lot of the jobs that I wrapped up and distributed over the last several months (because they weren't "my" job, that's why) all came back and landed in my lap. No-one told me we were playing pass-the-damn-parcel and I think it's a little unfair that ALL of the packages came back with just one layer of paper left :)

On the bright side, I got bites on two lines, both baited with reasonably significant job possibilites, hmmm, with that analogy perhaps I should be biting on their line, or maybe I'm the bait and the jobs are the fish....OK so I got that a bit backwards and it didn't really work out - lets all smile and skim over that, move along, nothing to see here.
Anyway, both jobs are infinitely more funarific (I suspect) but are probably going to pay less because they're not contracting but there's only so much Excel one man can do in a day and I'm pretty sure I'm ODing right now. I'm freaking out now because I'm going to have to do interviews and neither of the jobs are in a field that I've worked in for at least the last six months. I'm hoping that I'm not going to be asked any mind-numbingly precise technical questions because the potential question field is, for all intents and purposes, infinite which means I need an infinte period of time to study, which I don't have.
Either way, the next few weeks are going to be an interesting and educational experience and I'll get to see if my year (well six months) in the wilderness has garnered any useful new skills!

Mon, 02 Jan 2006

[12:35] A Dancing Bear - Rating: 4/5
A Dancing Bear is the debut book of one Mark Osher. Sadly it seems that it could be his last as, due to repeated rejections from publishers, he has taken the somewhat drastic measure of disappearing!
I finished it this afternoon after spending about 15 hours over the last four days dedicated to devouring it - the only thing that stopped me reading it any faster is the fact that it is online and it's hard to curl up in bed with the internet.
The story is set in Australia and centers on a portion of the life and times of Fenton Brand, a university student whose life gets a little "complicated". Every theme you could ask for is contained within: unrequited love, revolution and radicalism, sex, political correctness, poetry, blundering ineptitude, serial-killers and terrorists and it is unrelentingly funny from Chapter 1.
If comparisions had to be made, the closest literary allusions I could make would be to Tom Sharpe. A Dancing Bear, like the work of Mr Sharpe, does come with a bit of a language warning but it's all part of the vernacular of the people at the core of the story.
The only reason I haven't given A Dancing Bear five out of five is because I'm hanging on to the slender hope that Mark shall re-appear and produce another, even better, book.

Sun, 01 Jan 2006

[14:09] Happy New Year!