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In Praise Of Dreamhost’s Backup System

I’ve been impressed, again, by Dreamhost, who provide hosting for this and many of my other websites. During a fit of stupidity, I accidentally rm -rf *‘d Abnib Gallery. For those of a less techy nature, I deleted it: pictures and site and all. Whoopsie.

So I thought: perhaps they have a tape backup or something. I filled in their support form, which asks lots of useful questions like “How much do you know about this?”, with options ranging from “I don’t know anything, hold me by the hand,” to “TBH, I probably know more about this than you do!” and a nice scale of rating the urgency, as well as indicating how many calls they’re dealing with right now and a link to an outstanding issues page.

Within half an hour I’d been e-mailed back by a tech support person, who explained in exactly the appropriate level of detail that hourly and daily backups (with grandfather-father-son fallbacks) of everybody’s home directory are made into their hidden .snapshot directory. I took a peep, and lo and behold there was my backup. Very impressed.

Now, if only they’d improve the reliability and speed of their Rails hosting, I’d offer them a round of oral sex.

Pissing In The Pool

Had a rather unusual dream last night: I found myself swimming at my dad’s local swimming baths, with him (as, in fact, I did the weekend before last for the first time in years – we used to do so weekly). The swimming was particularly easy going: I was going at a hell of a rate for very little effort. Later, I got out of the pool to go to the toilet, but was surprised to find that my urine was coming out in many very different directions and spraying all over the place. Eventually, I was able to deal with this by strategically standing in front of three urinals and having each stream caught by one. And that’s all I remember of it.

Really; kids – you don’t want to be in my head. I don’t get it, and you don’t too.

Dinosaur Adventure Land

ON DINOSAUR ADVENTURE LAND

This is the strangest thing I’ve seen so far this week, and I’m a diggdot reader. Dinosaur Adventure Land (site navigation requires JavaScript) is a dinosaur-themed education park with all the usual things – fossils, a “back in time” ride, huge plastic dinosaurs: you get the idea – that you’d expect a theme park with it’s name to have. But there’s a twist.

Dinosaur Adventure Land is run by Kent E. Hovind. Mr.Hovind (I shan’t call him “Dr.” until he gets a real doctorate) believes the world to be less than six thousand years old. He believes this because it’s what he interprets the bible as telling him.

At his theme park, having learned about how different dinosaurs lived and hunted, he reveals to his guests that dinosaurs and humans at one point lived alongside one another. The mass extinctions evidently didn’t affect humans too badly, in his mind, but he also claims that some dinosaurs continued to live amongst us well into the 20th century. This explains, he says, occurances like bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster.

You can read Mr. Hovind’s theories for yourself, if you can’t be bothered to get his DVD (although I might – it’s uncopyrighted so perhaps I can download a copy). Here are some of my favourite crackpot theories from his mind:

Continental drift is a myth. Despite heaps of evidence to the contrary, including modern-day observations of plate techtonics, Mr. Hovind attempts to refute the existence of continental drift. If you point out to him that the continents are an awfully convenient shape, then, he’ll point out that “what the geologists don’t tell you is that very similar fossils are found on opposite sides of the ocean, suggesting a world-wide flood.” He fails to spot that this could also be evidence that the continents were joined when the life forms died and fossils formed, and later seperated.
The Earth’s magnetic field is static. Magnetic anomolies among the continental ridges, while provide evidence for geomagnetic reversal (a theory almost universally-accepted by geologists), do not exist or are insignificant, he claims.
All of the mammoths were killed almost instantly. Hovind teaches us that we’ve found many deceased mammoths, all standing up and with evidence that they died very quickly, and claims that this is evidence for his “great flood” theory (which I’ll mention later). He’s wrong, by the way – we’ve not found many intact mammoths and I can’t find any evidence that any were found standing up (the one he usually mentions, the Berezovka Mammoth, may well have died from drowning, but certainly wasn’t standing up). He also carefully skirts around the fact that dinosaurs’ (which, according to his theories, would have lived at the same time as mammoths) bones are found buried in a way (different depths, carbon dating, etc.) that would suggest that they lived over a huge period of time and did not all die out in an instant.
So what killed all these extinct species? A great flood! And not just any great flood: a comet hit the Earth, we’re told. A huge comet entered the solar system and (for some reason he doesn’t really clarify) began to break apart. Lots of chunks of water ice (recent evidence from probes like Deep Impact suggest that comets contain far less water ice than was previously thought, containing far more dust and rock and ices of other gases, like methane). The craters on the moon, Mars and other planets were caused by this immense icy meteor, as were the rings around Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune (wow; this really is a huge comet). The comet seperated further in the Earth’s atmosphere, and fell as snow… curiously, the ice particles became statically charged in the Earth’s atmosphere which caused them to be attracted towards the Earth’s magnetic poles, which is why they are icier today than other parts of the Earth – which makes no sense whatsoever. The melting snow created filled in the huge valleys that are now the oceans (presumabley there wasn’t very much water on Earth before this happened).
More evidence for a great flood! Mr. Hovind takes pretty much every bit of evidence for an “old Earth” and twists it with a huge dose of imagination in order to attempt to turn it into evidence for his “young Earth.” Fossils of sea creatures found in the Himalayas have been accepted (through biological analysis, carbon dating, and the techtonic record) to have been pushed up there when the Indian techtonic plate crashed (very slowly, but it’s very heavy!) into South Asia. Mr. Hovind, however, explains that the only way you could possibly get seashells up Everest would be with a great flood “washing” them up there. He uses the bible to demonstrate the infallability of the bible a few times to help demonstrate the correctness of his theory.

He goes on to “disprove” coal formation, which is also amusing reading, but the whole thing remains kind-of alarming to me when I think about the fact that people genuinely believe this stuff.

ON MENTAL MODELS AND STAGNATION

When we are confronted by evidence that contradicts our model of the way things are, we are confused. We can amalgamate this new evidence and relieve the confusion in one of two ways. The first way, which is the most comfortable, is to assume that our existing model (what we already believe) is correct and take the extra evidence as an exception to the rule. The second way, which is harder, is to adapt the model to fit the new evidence. Which one is more correct depends upon the situation, but something that is certainly true is that it is far more difficult to retrospectively adapt a model (where your model has been hard-set by, for example, years of belief in it) than it is to adapt a model which is less-strongly held.

Let’s have a simple example: a woman has a son who, on a particular occassion, gets into trouble at school. Her mental model includes predicates like “My son is a good boy,” and so this new evidence challenges that belief. Odds are good that she will extend her model with an exception, such as “…except when he plays with [scapegoat],” or even “…except that one time.” This is probably correct, and her model is refined with this “bolt-on” extra clause. If she continues to be bombarded by evidence, she is likely to have to change her model to accomodate it, eventually changing her original ideas: “My son is not a good boy.”

Retrospectively changing ideas is very hard: the human brain doesn’t seem to feel as comfortable with it. Suppose you had firmly believed that there was a deity who cared about you and would grant you a place in it’s heaven if you lived your life in accordance with a certain set of rules and traditions. Then suppose something somehow managed to persuade you that this deity probably didn’t exist at all. Changing your mental model to something new, contradicting yourself, and saying “I have been wrong for the last 20 years,” or whatever, isn’t an easy thing to do, so people don’t like to do it.

What people will sometimes do is to maintain their model with an ever-growing string of complicated and intertwined exceptions, making themselves into an apologetic for their cause. “God doesn’t condone homosexuality, because Leviticus 18:22 and Deuteronomy 23:17-18 forbid it! Oh; but don’t mind Leviticus 11:12 and Deuteronomy 14:10 – of course God doesn’t mind us eating shellfish in this day and age.”

Everybody does this: not just the theists. But it scares me that we seem to be seeing an increase in this kind of thinking from theists worldwide, and while it’s probably better than them taking their thousands-of-years-old holy books as literal and following them to the letter, it sets a bad precedent. If they can justify making exceptions to the rules they don’t like, it follows that they will eventually adapt their models, internally, to say “It is okay to change our models to fit our needs and still believe that we aren’t hypocrites.” It’s happening now to many people all over the world, and it disappoints me.

Car Gliding?

Was just looking at Gareth’s blog to read about his recent car trouble and noticed an interesting quirk in the way his blog is showing “tags”:

It would appear that the thing Gareth writes about the most is “car gliding”. Cool. I want a go. I’m kind-of reminded of the Russian WWII Antonov A-40 experiment, where a light tank was fitted with wings to allow it to be “dropped” safely into battlefields after being dragged up into the air by an aeroplane.

Sadly, of course, this is just a quirk to do with the way his blog is interpreting “hang” and “gliding” as separate concepts. Interesting, though, that the things that appear to occupy his time the most relate to how much fun he has hang gliding or how shit each and every one of his cars is. Life in a nutshell.

The Edinburgh Fringe And Related Stories

Wow. That was a fantastic week. If you can’t read all of this on Abnib or on LiveJournal or wherever you read my blog, try the original post:

The Engagement Party
The Quirky Little Village In County Durham
The Fringe At Edinburgh
The Most Embarrassing Thing In The World
The Train Ticket Nightmare

Let’s get started.

1. The Engagement Party

We kicked off last week when we left town to go to Preston for my mum’s engagement party. The party was a fancy-dress themed one, so Claire and I went as Fry and Leela from Futurama.

The party itself was fabulously good fun. Many drinks and a little dancing later and a great time was had by all. Of course, I’m now beardless (as shown in the photos) – Fry is clean shaven and my costume really wouldn’t work with my former goatee – which is an unusual experience: I keep on reaching to stoke my beard and being momentarily surprised and alarmed to find a cold clammy chin where I expect to touch reassuring hairiness.

I’ll get another grown.

2. The Quirky Little Village In County Durham

Next up, we drove on to a strange village on the other side of the Pennines called Maulds Meaburn, where Ruth and JTA were staying with Ruth’s dad in his house there.

Maulds Meaburn is a tiny village which feels amazingly rural despite it’s surprising proximity to the M6 – a perfect distance away of being completely cut off from most pass-through traffic and almost all motorway sounds and still being close enough to get to any meaningful place in the country at a moment’s notice.

Oh; and it’s full of sheep. Everywhere. In the gardens. In the play area. Just running wild. And a herd of cattle marches through the entire settlement twice a day, much to my joy and Claire’s horror. Fabulous.

Anyway: eventually we all moved on to just-outside-Durham, where we stayed overnight before abandoning the car and taking the train up to Edinburgh.
3. The Fringe At Edinburgh

The flat Ruth had picked out in Edinburgh was absolutely fantastic. Spacious and clean and fabulously well-placed (right on the Royal Mile!) and with cool facilities like a dishwasher… luxury!

Claire snapped some unusually-framed pictures of the place.

As we flicked through the hundreds of flyers we’d had thrust upon us as we walked the Royal Mile, spread out across our living room floor, we first discovered the Free Fringe. Amongst all of the money of the Edinburgh Fringe there’s a handful of venues and comedians working their arses off to produce a shedload of great comedy for no cost at all to the consumer. The venues take the money from the bar. The comedians take donations only (after the flyers have been paid for). It’s a fantastic concept in an otherwise over-expensive city, and, better yet, it’s a chance for new comedians to make a stand without getting themselves into heaps of debt, and for old comedians to publicise their “main” shows with a little bit of good old-fashioned entertainment.

Reading some of the Free Fringe publicity one venue’s name came up time and time again – the Canon’s Gait on Canongate. “Looks like there’s some great shows at this place,” I said, “Where is it.” JTA slowly stood up, walked to the window, and pointed across the street. “There,” he responded.

And so began our schedule. We’d get up at a time appropriate to the time we’d gotten to bed the previous night and have breakfast. At about 11am, we’d open our first bottle of wine (Ruth had ordered 15 bottles of wine to be delivered before we arrived, and there was no other way to ensure we got through it all). By midday we were at the Cannon’s Gait for their first free show of the day, and – with breaks for lunch, dinner, more wine at the flat, and (occasionally) other venues – we stayed there pretty much for the rest of the week, on the front row in the cellar of the pub across the road.

JTA’s already written quite a bit about some of the acts we saw. Go read that.

By the end of the week, we were well-known amongst some of the comedians who also frequented the venues. The fantastic Peter Buckley Hill, mentioned in my previous post, autographed JTA’s flyer made out to “the front row”. Other comics joked that we should be paying rent to the venue, or passed on comments about us and tipped one another off. By late in the week we were casually chatting with most of the bar staff and entertainers, and even got sufficiently cheeky to insist that one comedian took a photograph of us standing with another: the picture shown in the aforementioned previous post.

We only ever paid to see one show (although we went to two “paid” shows: as for the other, we acquired free tickets for an undersubscribed show as we walked past the performers while taking Kit and Fiona to see Jekyll & Hyde, a fantastic pub we’d discovered) – the show was the final one we’d see, and it ran over it’s schedule by an hour and a half before we got too tired and departed at a time approaching 3am, leaving only comedians watching other comedians. Exhausted, that was our last event.

Oh: if you’re ever in Edinburgh, do check out the Jekyll & Hyde on Hanover Street, off Princes Street. It’s an amazingly well-themed pub, with potions and chemical works and electric chairs and twisted architecture and secret fucking doors, I kid you not. Below is a picture of the entrance to the toilets in the pub, in the “library” corner. Can’t see them? That’s because they’re hidden behind secret doors: you have to be told where to push (or see somebody else go!) before you can find them. Better yet – in the gents at least – a speaker makes eerie noises and announcements on a motion sensor/timer system. You’ve typically got just enough time to get to a urinal before a booming voice calls “I’m coming to get you!” or something similar. Well worth a visit. Nice cocktails (named after the seven deadly sins) too.

4. The Most Embarrassing Thing In The World

Well; it wasn’t the most embarrassing thing in the world for Ruth, JTA or I, but I’m pretty sure – based on her reaction – that what follows was probably the most embarrassing thing ever to happen to Claire. I’d promised I’d share it here with the world, and so I shall.

On our first night in Edinburgh we found ourselves at the “Laughing Horse Late Show”, which started at midnight at a bar about 15-20 minutes walk from our flat and went on until 3am. We were all already quite tipsy, having been drinking since we’d gotten off the train that afternoon, but nobody more so than Claire, who was particularly enjoying the comedy and participating quite actively. The day had been long, though, and by about a quarter to two Ruth, JTA and I were completely knackered and wanted to go to bed. Claire insisted that she should stay and see more comedy and was confident that she could find her way back to the flat by herself, so I left her with a map (just in case) and a set of keys and we left.

At a little later than half past three our doorbell rang. I got up and, realising that it was probably Claire unable to get the key to work or, worse, having lost the key, pulled on my trousers and went to the doorphone to let her in. The doorphone was either broken or there wasn’t anybody down there, though, because I couldn’t hear anything, so I took a chance on it and just pressed the “door unlock” button. The phone buzzed, and within a few seconds Claire was up the flight of stairs and on the doorstep of our flat. She seemed upset: I hugged her and discovered that she was freezing cold. How long had she been outside, I asked. She’d gotten lost, she replied, and eventually gotten a taxi. Ah well, at least she was home and safe. And so, we went to bed.

And that’s when the alcohol kicked in. I was sobering up quite nicely, but Claire was still quite unwell, and took several trips to the bathroom to throw up. So frequent and sudden were these bathroom trips that eventually she stopped putting clothes on to go (we typically sleep nude) and just streaked down the hallway – “There’s only Ruth and JTA here,” I explained, “And I’m sure they’d rather you streaked past them – if they even get up – than that you vomited in the hallway.”

Therein lies my mistake. Claire was confused and drunk at best, and we suspect that on her 5am trip to the toilet she’d quite possibly fallen asleep in there awhile and dreamt that she was still trying to find her way home. At just past five I was awoken by a knocking sound and Claire’s voice shouting “Let me in!”

I pulled on my trousers and went to the front door of the flat: presumably, I thought, Claire had gone out for a breath of fresh air or something and forgotten to take a key. But the door of the flat was open. I heard her call again. She must be outside, I thought, going down the stairs to the front door and opening it. Still nothing. “Why won’t you let me in?” she cried, and it sounded like it came from upstairs. I ran back upstairs and to the floor above, and that’s where I found her…

…stark naked and banging on the door of the flat above us. When I arrived a very confused-looking elderly lady had just answered the door and seemed completely baffled by the sudden appearance of this nude young lady banging on her door and asking why she wouldn’t let her in. In the morning, Claire barely remembered her night’s escapades, but did report remembering – almost as if it were a dream – being naked and locked out. Once I’d explained to her my side of the story and she started to recall what had happened she attempted to drown herself in a cup of tea, but, thankfully, couldn’t fit her head into it.

The punchline: when Claire went up to the lady’s door the following day to deliver her some flowers and apologise for waking her in the middle of the night (and inadvertently flashing her), the lady’s friendly response was “it could have happened to anyone.” Not quite anyone, I think.5. The Train Ticket Nightmare

The plan for the return journey couldn’t have been simpler. Well; actually it could, but thanks to Ruth’s great planning it couldn’t have been better organised. Almost.

The plan was that we all left Edinburgh by train: JTA to Birmingham down the West Coast, and the rest of us to Durham down the East. Having gotten so far, JTA would meet with his family and they would drive onwards to Ruth’s home, near Oxford. Meanwhile, Claire and I would get a lift from Durham back to Maulds Meaburn to pick up Claire’s car and drive on to Preston to spend the night with my family before returning to Aberystwyth in the morning. Having seen us off, Ruth would get a train from Durham to Oxford to finally be reunited with JTA.
On the train to Durham Ruth discovered that her train ticket for the remainder of the journey had the wrong date on it. The person who’d sold it to her had made other mistakes in the order that had been corrected, since, and this was just one that managed to slip through. Worse, it was one of those cheapy super mega advance-buy tickets, so there was likely no chance of a straight swap for an alternative.

It got worse: when we showed the ticket to staff at Durham station it became apparent that the ticket wasn’t even a ticket for the wrong day – it was a “first class upgrade” to be applied to ticket she didn’t own, still for the wrong day. Durham station refused to do anything to help, insisting that Ruth took her complaint up with Oxford station where the ticket had been purchased.
After trying and failing to find any other suitable means of using public transport to get Ruth down to Oxford (or, failing that, to somewhere near enough to Birmingham that it would be feasible for JTA and his folks to pick her up en route), Claire volunteered to drive her to Oxford, in exchange for which they’d give us a bed for the night there, and we’d make it our “stop over” on our way back to Aberysywth, rather than Preston, as was the original plan. A 200-mile dog-leg later and we were there, somehow even managing to beat JTA who’d set off along a shorter journey some hours earlier: probably thanks to the speed Claire was able to maintain on our carefully picked combination of A1(M) and M1 motorway junctions.

On the up side, we got the change to play the Buffy The Vampire Slayer Board Game, which has potential, given a few rules tweaks. This guy sums up what I’m thinking quite well: it’s got rules which are complex (because they’re badly-written) rather than complex situations (which require deep thinking), so it’s a bit of a shallow game. Plus, another post brings up a valid point that I suspect the designers didn’t think through as fully as they’d like to think they did. And I’m not sure it’d ever be much fun playing as Cordelia. It’s got some great ideas (variable-power players, hidden identities, asymmetric sides, etc.) but it lacks the “umph” that I think would keep it enjoyable after a few times playing it. We shall have to see… if, perhaps, we can get a cheap copy of it. But if I were given the choice between getting it and, say, Fury Of Dracula, Puerto Rico or Candamir – three games I’d like to get copies of – I’m afraid Buffy would lose hands-down.

Not that I’ve got any spare money for board games at the moment anyway. Ah well.

And yes, this is the end of the post.

We’re Back In Town

After a week of nudity, drunkeness, comedy, diversions, and unexpected board games, we’re back from Preston/Durham/Edinburgh/Oxford/everywhere else we’ve been. Buffy Night is on, tonight, if you want to come join us. Stories will be posted here soon (there’s some good ones you have to hear).

Here’s a picture in the meantime of us all with Peter Buckley Hill, one of the most spectacular comedians I’ve ever seen. The photo was taken by Yianni of “Yianni’s Head”, another show we saw.

It’s True: I’ve Got Baldness-Of-The-Chin

Dan, beardless – click for a biggy

It’s true what’s been implied on Dan & Alex: I am without beard. It’s funny, ‘cos I keep stroking my chin whenever I’m thinking about anything sufficiently hard.

For the benefit of Jon, mostly, there’s a piccy to the left.

Other folks are making a bigger thing of this than I am, in my experience.

In any case – the other piece of news is that Claire and I will be leaving town this evening (probably!) to go up to Preston for my mum’s engagement party. It’s fancy-dress: I can’t say here what we’re going as (we’re not telling the folks up there until they see us), but we’ll say this much: we’re going as a “couple”, and my sudden shaving and Claire’s recent hairstyle change are both related to our costumes. I’ll try to get some pictures and more info on here as soon as I can.

So; you lot can sort out Troma Night between yourselves, if you’re having one.

After Preston, we’re catching up with JTA and Ruth in Durham and going up to Edinburgh with them. Did I not mention that? Whoops. Well; if I’d made plans with you this week, my apologies – I’ve been at least a little absent-minded of late, which I’d also be telling you about right now but I’ve got packing and shit to do before we can hit the road… so I’d better sign off.

Curious Paul

As promised to him some time ago, here’s the picture of Paul dressed up as a “The Man in the Yellow Hat” from Curious George while ushering at the Arts Centre cinema:

Coding, Drinking, And Burying: Hilarity Ensues

This weekend Gareth and Bryn came over and we set up a computer lab in Claire and I’s living room and spent most of the weekend hacking Ruby and Perl code (in between segments of munching coder snacks, drinking beer, watching films at Troma Night, and, last night, barbequing food on Ynyslas beach). We made some great progress on a project that we’ve all been working on that was otherwise at risk of stalling: not only progress in coding, but also in setting goals and deadlines and in discussing implementation strategies that I’m sure have made the next stage of the project a lot clearer for all of us.

Claire, Binky and I got to Ynyslas first last night and ate some fantastic lamb burgers. Later, as Gareth drove up and came to join us (I was stood atop a dune to get advance warning of his approach), Claire and I buried Binky against the side of a dune, covering his face with an overturned disposable barbeque box and stacking other provisions around him. Gareth didn’t have a clue that he was there: “Where’re Bryn and Jimmy?” he asked when he arrived. “They didn’t come,” I replied. We sat around and got chatting and drinking and, after a while, I asked Gareth if he could pass me my mobile phone. “Where is it?” he asked. “Under that box,” I said, gesturing towards where Binky was so-well buried.

The look on Gareth’s face was priceless when he lifted the box. Mucho respect to Binks for managing to stay undetected underground for so long (despite having eyes full of sand and other irratating side-effects of being buried alive).

This blog post was later featured in the On This Day series, in an article I wrote in 2010.

SmartData Wasn’t At The Royal Welsh Show This Year

Pity. From a BBC report:

A young woman’s naked table-top dance in a cattle shed at the Royal Welsh Show has led to an official inquiry… One witness, who did not want to be named, said security guards rushed to the scene late on Tuesday, but had difficulty grabbing the woman because the water had made her skin slippery.

The Royal Welsh Show is certainly trying out some different entertainments these days. Last time I was there the highlight was the Dancing Diggers (which were great, it’s true, but they’re not strippers by any stretch of the imagination).

A Special Kind Of Conservative Stupidity

I really can’t stand Ann Coulter.

I mean, her book, “Godless: The Church Of Liberalism” (somebody sent me an e-copy, which saved me from the bad feeling I’d associate with helping shower her with royalties) was bad enough, but this…

She’s appeared on TV recently (video clip) to talk about the former US president, Clinton. Her claim? That the 42nd president’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky is evidence that Bill Clinton is homosexual.

Whoah, whoah… let’s roll that one back and hear it again, Ann.

Apparently his latent homosexuality is evidenced by his promiscuity. This is a fascinating turnaround of the old stereotype that “all homosexual people are promiscuous”: even it it were true, you can’t just invert causality to fit your arguments… unless you’re Ann Coulter. The argument works both ways for her – not only are all homosexual people promiscuous, but all promiscuous people are homsexual! One is left wondering, then, whether homosexuality is self-perpetuating – in her mind – as it’s promiscuity leads to greater homosexuality leads to further promiscuity. Oh wait: she only seems to see the world in black and white anyway.

If you watch the video right to the end, there’s another classic quote. Homosexuality isn’t actually a sexuality at all, claims Ann: it’s just narcissism to be attracted to somebody of the same gender: essentially masturbation. So, you homosexuals: be told – you’re not actually attracted to other men or other women – you’re merely attracted to yourself too much to appreciate people of the opposite sex.
[sighs]

Suppose I’d better stop ranting so much and get on with some work.

Things That Aren’t Good About Today

The power keeps going off. It’s awfully hard to build software in the dark.
I have a shedload of work to do and I’ve spent most of my day so far either cursing the aforementioned power cut or in meetings about how much more productive we could be (if, for example, we weren’t in meetings when I was busiest…).
Our customers can’t tell the different between our mail server going down (which it hasn’t) and a power spike bricking their router. “Can you get to any websites? No: then might the problem be at your end?”

On the other hand, a good moment was when our visiting sales consultant dude gave me a copy of Who Moved My Cheese? and I responded by summarising the story in about 60 words, then providing an analysis of the virtues and the faults of the book. In hindsight, it might have been cooler to flick through the pages of the book, pretending to read it stupidly fast (Johnny Five-style), and then summarised it for him.

Better save this before the power goes again. Grr.

Why I Shouldn’t Be Interested In Security

I love being me.

While paying for drinks at Thresher with a card I didn’t own, I persuaded the staff to talk me through the fundamentals of arming, disarming, and hypothetically evading their four alarm systems.

The Most Unusual Gift Idea Ever

Disappointed with the shape of your turds? Bored with “sausage-shaped” shit? Why not treat yourself to a pack of 10 Turd Twisters? Inserted carefully into the anus, they allow you to mould your faeces into amusing and interesting shapes. They’re “one-size-fits-all”, dishwasher safe, and come with their own special Safe-T-Floss Retraction Cord, just in case they get embedded too deeply into your rectal cavity.

Plus, when you order, you get a free book, “How To Twist Your Turds.”

Coolest Personality Test I’ve Ever Seen

As I’ve said before, I don’t just jump onto every memeing bandwagon that crosses my path, but now and then, one comes along that really impresses me. This one is a ‘smart’ personality test that attempts to define you by asking a series of questions… yadda yadda… but this one learns from it’s mistakes, and it’s getting pretty good.

take the ‘Smart’ Personality Test

Go on… give it a go.