Gents Toilets Mystery

The gents toilets on the first floor of the building where I work is a complete mystery to me.

That’s not strictly true. I know where the stalls and the urinals are. I know how to make the taps – little push-button ones – work. I know that the hand dryer to the right typically warms up a lot faster than the one on the left. I know to check that there’s toilet paper first (because there frequently isn’t) and that I can liberate some from the overstocked disabled toilet down the corridor if I need them. I know all this.

What’s got me confused is the automatic lighting. Whenever I enter the room, the lights come on.

There are no sensors on the door, so far as I can see, and there is no optic sensor that could have spotted me (the only optic sensor I can see sits above the urinals and regulates the flush, so it doesn’t waste water when nobody’s in there – but the lights always seem to come on before I’m far enough into the room to be within the line of sight of this sensor). There is an optic sensor inset into the ceiling of the antechamber between the corridor and the toilets, but it can’t be this that’s responsible for the lights because I’ve tried to trigger that one (without entering the toilets themselves) and it doesn’t seem to do anything. There doesn’t seem to be a pressure sensor or anything. And the most mysterious bit of all: if you hide in the stall where a sensor might not be able to see you… or if you stand very still… the lights still stay on until you leave. I’m pretty sure it’s not activated by sound, as the car park can be pretty noisy sometimes and I’ve never gone to the toilet, that I can remember, and found the lights already on when I got there: I always see them flicker on.

Yes, it’s true: I’ve spent the afternoon so far playing hide and seek and musical statues with myself in the gents toilets. But I’m of an inquisitive mind and this is a mystery that needs solving. Perhaps there’s some kind of concealed optic sensor, or infrared tripwire grid across the entire floor (I’ll try standing on the seat of the toilet for awhile, later). Maybe there’s a body heat sensor of some variety. Maybe there’s a little imp hiding in the wall cavity with a remote control. Maybe it’s entirely random. Maybe I’ll never know.

I’m going to go to the toilet again…

All Ready For NaNoWriMo

Well, here goes nothing.

Words written: 0 / target: 50000

As many of you already know, I’m participating this November in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month contest. The aim is to write, from a standing start, 50,000 words in 30 days. So… about 1,700 words a day. There were days that my dissertation got a lot more than that out of me, but then: I wasn’t working full time as well as helping with a million and one other projects when I wrote-up my dissertation. And in the end, that came to under 30,000 words.

In answer to the inevitable questions from those folks who can’t understand why I’m engaging in this ludicrous idea: no, I don’t expect to write something publishable; no, I don’t expect even to reach 50,000 words; yes, I’m going to give it a bloody good shot. I’m being joined in this challenge by several folks in Aber, including, I’m lead to believe (although some of these seem a little uncertain), by Sian, Paul, JTA, and Jimmy. A little bit of healthy competition as we try to keep our WordBars filling up will probably do me the world of good. Let’s see how far we can get.

When I say “All ready for NaNoWriMo,” of course, I am lying at least a little. I have only the vaugest idea of a story and no idea where it’s going, two characters: both underdeveloped, and no way of tying together all the ideas in my head. And I’ve written nothing down. This could turn out to be an inspirational benefit, or a self-destructive nightmare. But we’ll see, either way.

Anyway; better get ready to get to it. Damnit; why does Civilization IV have to be released in November, too…

Soup On Your Head

There are some very strange tags on Flickr, the photo sharing service, such as this one which was revealed to me today: Soup On Your Head. It’s pictures of people… with soup on their heads. And that’s it. Damn weird.

Baba Yetu

Go on, JTA, tease yourself a little longer with a copy of the menu theme from Civilization IV.

Paul’s 100th Duty

Another Stunning Error Message

This time from Corel:

Dan and Alex

Dan and Alex now has it’s own subdomain, so you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. Yeah, right. There’s a new episode up, and you can even subscribe to the new RSS feed (or just pick it up on Abnib).

Expect to see more of Dan and Alex in the near future.

Edit: A minor bug in the RSS script resulted in some folks being able to read Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday’s comics before they were released. This has now been fixed. My apologies to those of you who’ll now have to do without any new episodes until Sunday.

Genius Filmmaking

This is just a piece of genius filmmaking. 5 friends in Machynlleth made huge chipboard letters akin to the ones famously on the hills above Hollywood did so secretly, deploying the letters the night before Mach’s weekend-long film festival started.

Big chipboard letters on a hill near Mach

But better than that, they filmed themselves doing it and entered their short movie into the film festival they did it for. That’s just brilliant. A well-deserved award was given.

For more, see the original article from the BBC.

Who’s My Daddy?

I’ve seen some pretty stupid test memes. So I’ve made one of my own:

Who’s My Daddy?

Peter Huntley is my daddy.

Generated by the “Who’s Your Daddy?” Test Meme

In other news, “Hook” by Blues Traveler (lyrics) is a spectacular song.

I have an unbelievable amount of work to do today, and I’ve used the morning just dealing with my e-mail and the things that I’ve been asked to do by that medium. Fuck a brick.

eBay Context Advertising

You’ve probably seen eBay‘s context-sensitive advertising on Google: you search for, say, “children’s toys”, and one of the Google ads on the right-hand side of the page tells you how you can buy and sell children’s toys on eBay. I’ve always thought that this system was probably just waiting to be abused, so I had a go at Googling for some animals (real and fictional), and picking up the eBay ads:

Buying animals on eBay

Yes, this is a collage of genuine advertisements. Didn’t know you could buy kittens on eBay, or “bargain monkeys”, let alone Griffons, which are mythological.

Let’s see what else I can get. What happens if you search for “eBay”:

eBay, now on Lycos

Interesting that one of the ads that comes up if you search for ‘eBay’ is one for Lycos… what?

I wonder what I can get hold of from eBay in order to commit fraud and cause destruction, in order to further my plans for world domination…

Fake ID, passports, and weapons on eBay

Wow! eBay’s a proper little terrorist toolkit, and I never knew it. I know where I’ll be getting my “new & used ID cards” from, not to mention taking advantage of “great deals on armaments!”

Perhaps eBay needs to make these ads a little smarter.

Balloon Fetish Porn

Perhaps the strangest site I’ve seen all day: Loonerz.com.

E-Mail Server Configuration For Dummies

Well; I feel like a wally.

SmartData‘s taking on a new client for a content-managed web site, web and e-mail hosting. In anticipation of the domain transfer going through without a hitch, I reconfigured our web and e-mail servers to already be ready to accept connections to their “new” web site and for e-mails to come through. This is a wise move, because not all of the computers on the internet appreciate moving domains at the same time, and so for a day or so, e-mails will be going to both the old e-mail server and the new one: the new one needs to be ready to catch these before the first computers start sending e-mail to it.

Unfortunatley, I underestimated the intelligence of the configuration tools and the anti-spam mechanisms of our e-mail server software.

So, I send an e-mail to our client, who we’ll call bob@our-new-client.com, from my @smartdata.co.uk address. It goes out through our mail server. This is where it all goes wrong. Normally what our mail server would do would be to look up where on the internet our-new-client.com’s e-mail is kept, connect to there, and deliver it, but our mail server is a little bit lazier than that. It thought to itself, “Hey, I am the e-mail server for our-new-client.com: I know this, because I’ve been configured to accept mail for them,” and so it happily filed all my mail to bob@our-new-client.com… on their new mail server.

And then the news came through that there were complications in the domain name transfer, and it would be a few more days before they could easily pick up said mail. So, I’ve happily e-mailed them a request for their deposit on their hosting package with us, and they’re wondering why we haven’t asked for it yet, so they e-mail us. Here’s what happens:

Their e-mail server contacts our e-mail server and says “I am our-new-client.com, and I have an e-mail for dans-real-address-goes-here@smartdata.co.uk.”
And our mail server thinks “Hang on, this server is pretending to be our-new-client.com, but I know that I am responsible for our-new-client.com’s e-mail. This must be a filthy spammer trick.”
But our mail server was configured by me, so it’s a little devious. It responds (to the real our-new-client.com mail server): “Okay, I believe you, give the the e-mail.” (so those filthy spammers have no idea whether their mail got through or not) Then it shreds the e-mail and buries it in virtual concrete.

And so, for the latter half of this week, neither our newest client or us have been able to e-mail one another, and it’s only today that I’ve noticed.

Bugger.

This Weekend’s Events

Just so those of you in Aber know, here’s some of this weekend’s highlights:

Geek Night tonight is cancelled, as JTA and I are building his new PC (possibly with the help of Paul and certainly while being hand-fed peeled grapes by Ruth).
A number of us are discussing seeing the 2:30pm matinee showing of Wallace & Gromit in The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit at the Commodore on Saturday, thereby still having time for our usual film programme in the evening. Want in?
Troma Night tomorrow is on as usual. Hopefully we’ll be finally having the long-promised “comic book night”. We shall see.
Claire is away for the weekend, helping out the Freshers at on the computer science activity weekends as they throw themselves off telegraph poles and otherwise get very muddy. This means you won’t be able to get in contact with her. This means you, Claire’s Dad.

Dan’s Dingbats Challenge III – Results

Thanks to everybody who played Dan’s Dingbats Challenge III; it was great to see some of your answers. Almost everybody did really well on points this time around, but many were let down by their times.

Here’s the final scoreboard and answers:

Position	Player	Time Taken	Right Answers	Total Time
1	Faye (Aber) Very quick; every one right…	3mins, 44secs	14	3mins, 44secs
2	Count Gonzo van der Winklestein Jones	2mins, 45secs	12	4mins, 25secs
3	Binky The fastest time to answer all the questions, but lost marks for wrong answers.	2mins, 28secs	10.5	5mins, 23secs
4	Claire	4mins, 5secs	12	5mins, 45secs
5	A Bowl Of Candy	3mins, 23secs	11	5mins, 53secs
6	Mister JTA	4mins, 14secs	12	5mins, 54secs
7	RockMonkey	5mins, 13secs	13	6mins, 3secs
8	Statto	4mins, 10secs	11.5	6mins, 15secs
9	Ruth	4mins, 43secs	12	6mins, 23secs
10	Pacifist	4mins, 11secs	11	6mins, 41secs
11	Matt In The Hat	5mins, 19secs	10	8mins, 39secs
12	Leu	5mins, 58secs	10.5	8mins, 53secs
13	Raz	6mins, 15secs	10.5	9mins, 10secs
14	Itsme (Gaz @ SmartData)	8mins, 23secs	12	10mins, 3secs
15	Chloe	7mins, 31secs	9	11mins, 41 secs
16	Sarah Only answered one question; as a result, came last!	1mins, 18secs	1	12mins, 8secs

Apologies to “bleh” from 82.144.227.98; your answers arrived just too late to participate, but for your reference, you took 5mins, 14secs and got 13 right (give or take some interesting phrasing), for a total score of 6mins, 4secs.

Here are the answers. Click on a dingbat for a full-size version:

Charity begins at home
A nice simple one to begine with – the word “charity”, beginning inside a symbolic “home”. I also accepted “in the home”, “starts”, and any other derivitive of this basic phrase.

Fractional distillation
Yes, I know that this was ludicrously difficult, but a good number of people managed to get it. Incorrect answers included “distillation quarter”, “a quart of alcohol”, “Hooray! Distillation = Whisky!” (thanks, JTA), and “I have no idea”.

Back to basics
Another simple one: at least I thought so – the word “basic”, twice (“two basics”), written backwards (hence “back two/to basics”). Nonetheless, wrong answers included “basic backeards [sic] twice” and “two basic backwards”.

Actions speak louder than words
Several “actions” saying “blah” louder than their wordy friends. One wrong guess was “all talk and no action”: not sure where that one came from…

Every dog has it’s day
Several “dogs”, each with a “day”. What more do you want? I accepted “a dog will have it’s day” (basically the same thing), and gave half-marks for “give a dog it’s day” (there’s no “giving” involved, I’m afraid). I also accepted Paul’s “I was going to say “Dog Day Afternoon” but I don’t think so. Every Dog Has His Day?” because he concluded the right answer in the end and he was very sweet to lose several seconds of his time writing me an essay about how he reached that decision.

Definately wrong answers included “dog days”, “dog day afternoon” (what?), “until dog days end” (huh?), “ground-dog day” (umm?), and JTA’s deluded “Hm. Something about the ‘Dog days’ at the arse end of August, I suspect. Er. Which means Sirius, but I can’t get it…”

Like father, like son
The word “like” appears in the place of “father” and his son in this stylised family tree, and most players understood the connection. Wrong answers included the wonderful “your mum” and the great guess “I don’t like my mother (well? It’s true!)”

Look on the bright side
The word “look” appears on the bright (or light) side of this gradient. Most folks seemed to understand, but some guessed “look lighter on the other side” or even “the right look” (what???).

Love is blind
The word “love” is depicted here with a guide dog and cane. “Blind love” was also an acceptable answer. Half-marks were earned for “Love is like the blind leading the blind”, but I’m afraid I can’t give any points for “guide dog of love” (wasn’t that a song by Dire Straits)?

All that glitters is not gold
Decpicted are a bunch of metals, all of which are glittering, except for gold, which is not: hence, “all that glitters is not gold”. It’s not quite what I was looking for, but full marks go for “not everything that glitters is gold”, which still embodies the meaning of the phrase. However, no points for “black gold” or for “Something about gold being stronger or bolder or something than something. (thanks Chloe)”

Divide and rule
It’s a divide symbol, a plus (“and”) symbol, and a rule(r). “Rule and divide”, despite turing the phrase on it’s head, was also acceptable. “Divide and measure” got half a mark, because it was clear that the player who wrote it knew where they were coming from but just hadn’t heard of the phrase before. However, Paul’s “Divide Plus Ruler? What?” doesn’t score on this question.

A picture is worth a thousand words
Well, a lot of words, anyway. No prizes for “weight of words”, though.

(It) takes two to tango
Probably ought to explain this one: the word “take” is repeated multiple times (“takes”); followed by the number 2 (“two”), followed by the word “tango” twice (“two/to tango”). Anything close got the mark, but “three takes to tango” is wrong and “right to tango oh fuck it” is way out.

All is fair in love and war
Easy enough – the word “fair” is repeated throughout the words “love” and “war”. The only person to get this wrong wrote “nothing is fain in love and war”, which I don’t think is even close to accurate.