2004 Archives

I Love Orange; Orange Love Me; We’re Like A Happy Family

Orange phoned me up today and told me that they’d like to give me £4/month off my bill for the next 12 months. Nice.

The lovely lady on the other end of the phone then helped redefine my contract to something far better suited to my actual usage pattern, in a move that ought to save me up to another £12/month. Sweet.

Finally, they agreed to let me finish this month’s contract (a few days left) with all my existing free minutes and next month’s rollover minutes. Which gives me hundreds of free minutes I need to use. Time to start calling people!

Love and hugz from my favourite telecommunications company.

CV Of George Bush

[this post was damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has not been possible to recover it]

[it was partially recovered on 13 October 2018]

This one’s doing the rounds of the internet, but it made me smile so I’m posting it here…

RESUME – GEORGE W. BUSH
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

LAW ENFORCEMENT:

I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver’s license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been”lost” and is not available.

MILITARY:

I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.

COLLEGE:

I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.

PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:

I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil business in Midland, Texas, in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn’t find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock. I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took…

The Internet Is A World Of Ends

Got a spare quarter hour? I think you should go and read WorldOfEnds.com. It’s a fascinating and concise analysis of what is the nature of internet, and why why should stop making mistakes with it.

It’s not geeky – it’s philosophical.

Like A Sheep; Following My Friends

My friend Jen has done one of those god-awful survey thingies where you supposedly reveal yourself better to your friends, on her blog. Not one to miss out, I’m going to do it, too… I’ll be skipping a few of the more boring questions and adding a couple more…

1. BASICS:
FULL NAME: Daniel Huntley
SEX: Male
BIRTHDAY: 8th of January, 1981
HEIGHT: 178cm (about 5’10”)
WEIGHT: Not sure; probably about 80kg at the moment
HAIR COLOR: Light brown
EYE COLOR: Blue
PETS: Would love to have cats, but don’t really have space to keep any right now
SIBLINGS: Two younger sisters, Sarah (15) and Becky (14).
RELIGION PRACTICED: Devout atheist
RIGHT, LEFT, OR BOTH HANDED: Right
STRONGEST ATTRIBUTE: Stubbornness? Intelligence? Extrovertism?
WHAT YOU’RE KNOWN FOR: Being “the axe man” of Aberystwyth, Penbryn-Hall.co.uk, Scatman Dan, that thing with the goat, etc. etc. I’m a local …

Safer Internet Day

Today is European Safer Internet Day.

Does that mean that all those idiots who fell for the MyDoom virus (which, of course, required you to open a ZIP file inside the infected e-mail, the run the program inside it – yet still became the fastest-spreading e-mail virus to date) are going to actually plug their brains in for once.

If you got infected by MyDoom, shame on you for your stupidity.

Answer These With Song Titles…

Alec has a thing going on his blog where he’s challenging people to answer questions about themselves in terms of song titles. Go have a look, see my response, and have a go yourself, here.

Went to Booker Cash & Carry this afternoon, and bought just over 3kg of Sherbert Lemons and a little less of Dew Drops. Fun!

Amusing Line From The Python Manual

I just extracted the following line from the Python documentation (for those of you who don’t know, Python is a relatively-new and somewhat unusual programming language who’s name is derived not from the snake but from Monty Python):

Attempts to pickle unpicklable objects will raise the PicklingError exception; when this happens, an unspecified number of bytes may have already been written to the underlying file.

You have to love any manual with that line in it! It almost beats the famous Fortran line about defining pi as a constant in case it’s value changes.

Burger King Love Us

A new-looking manager (young, with a shiny badge) is making Changes at the Burger King around the corner from us. From Monday, the entire restaurant will become No Smoking (yay!), and the old upstairs toilets – once closed owing to vandalism – have been re-opened. Claire and I were in there this evening, discussing our comparative days (mine at work, hers learning Japanese), and met the new-looking manager, who gave us vouchers each, redeemable for free meals there in future. Nice.

Space Mutiny!

[this post was lost during a server failure on 11 July 2004; it was partially recovered on 13 October 2018]

Not the worst film I’ve ever seen (fourth worst film in the world, according to the IMDB), and seeing it as the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version only made it funnier in it’s stupidity!

Here’s a brief synopsis of the plot (if it can so be called), as I understood it:

A retired Santa look-alike runs a spaceship called the Southern Star, which looks like Battlestar Galactica from the outside (stolen footage) and like the warehouse of a brewery on the inside. For some reason, sunlight streams in through the open windows, and the computers look like running Asteroids would be beyond them.
Unfortunately, the head of his security forces (who for some reason wear painball masks and balaclavas at all times), a man who laughs manically and frowns in such a way as to make you think his skull is trying to escape, is plotting a mutiny. He is killing or freezing members of the security team who do not comply with this plan. His motive isn’t terribly clear. He and the other mutineers are planting bombs made of soap around the brewery. His name is Calgon… yes, like the detergent.
…

Handles; Life; And Grabbing The Latter By The Former

[this post was damaged during a server failure on 11 July 2004; it was partially-recovered on 13 October 2018]

Oh yeh – we went to Brum on Saturday, but Bryn tells that story far better than I did, with all of it’s visiting Scottish girlfriends, fallen trees (and phone lines), visits to Newtown McDonalds, and enormous shopping centres, so I’ll not bother repeating anything to do with that. Troma Night, when we got back, was good, though.

What I did want to share with you was that there’s a lot of pleasure to be gained by ‘grabbing life by the handles’, hence the title of this merry little post. I’m sure Andy knows what I mean, and Kit, with his ongoing evacuation in the direction of Scotland, understands too.

What I’m talking about is leaping on opportunities; not being tied down by pessimism. And doing things just to remind yourself that you can, because you’re wonderful and you can take on the world if you’re that way inclined. It’s pushing yourself that little bit further for nothing more than the satisfaction of a sweat. It’s letting yourself show off how great you are …

Dodge!

Go play this little DHTML game. Can you beat my ‘survival time’ of 24.593 seconds?

How To Make Piracy Legal; Nobody Loses; Everybody Gains

The Register brings a report about Harvard University Professor Terry Fisher’s plan to make piracy pay for itself. Not by making it yet more illegal, but by stopping it from being immoral. Go read the article. It’s great.

Final Exam, And What I Will Be Answering

[this post was damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has not been possible to recover it]

[this post was partially recovered on 12 October 2018]

My final exam is in nine and a bit hours time. It’s on “Implementing The Information Society”, the ‘fluffiest’ module in the entire Computer Science department. It could almost, almost be an Arts module.

It’s title is a bit of a misnomer. There’s absolutely no ‘implementing’ involved, and it’s only got tenous links to the Information Society as a whole. But it is a very interesting module with funky ‘what-if’ seminars and discussions about everything from national identity card schemes to security on wireless broadband connections.

Which, as it happens, are the two topics of the two-of-three questions I’ll be answering tomorrow. Unusually, this module’s exam paper is available on the web three days prior to the exam. Which makes the whole experience slightly less stressful, particularly as it’s an ‘unusual’ paper for us CompSci’s in general: we are so used to being assessed on things which have only a moderate degree of flexibility in their answers – a true Science paper – that when we’re given this kind of essay-esque arty exam we panic. Well; actually that’s not true – U.W.A.’s CompSci department are very good at making sure that our geeks are…

Make It Snow!

It’s snowing!!!

How Would Sian Feel About This?

Here’s a conundrum. Based on prior conversations, I’ve concluded that Sian is against the idea of genetic modification of plants etc. I’ve never really agreed with her on this – although I can see her reasons.

As a member of Amnesty International, it’s safe to assume, then, that she’s also not in favour of landmines. I’d certainly agree with her here: landmines are particularly nasty devices, and as we all know, hang around to kill people for decades after wars are over.

So how would she feel about a genetically modified flower which changes colour if it’s roots come near landmines [Yahoo! News]? These things, which are sterile to prevent cross-contamination, could be planted using seed-sprays from the rear of low-flying planes over areas known to have minefields, and those near mines would be a different colour, warning locals and making diffusion easier for UN soldiers. Of course, they wouldn’t be foolproof – nothing is – but how many lives could this GM tool save?

So; Sian – place a comment if you like: where do you stand on these flowers? (other than ‘away from the red ones’) And of course, anybody else is also welcome to have a say…