Articles – Page 106

Beautiful Morning In The Valleys

Jen is, of course, correct. It is a beautiful morning. As I came over the brow of Penglais hill into the valley of Capel Dewi, the frosty fields were spread out before me like a big white blanket. If you happen to be up early this morning, go take a look… before it thaws.

It’s a pity I have so much work to do. I’d have enjoyed spending the day walking. Perhaps I’ll see if I can get everything I need to do, done, and bunk off early… try to find a way up the hill that overshadows the valley: the one I’ve always wanted to climb…

(all dependent on getting this work done, but hey…)

More, Abstract, On Faith In What You Love

Following my previous entry, here’s some recent feeling around the matter of “losing faith in what you love”.

Very recently, I’ve met a great many people who are just beginning to find interesting and rewarding a thing which I have taken for granted for so long. And I’ve been encouraging this, in my own way – helping them to understand what makes it so great. Would I be a hypocrite if I didn’t believe it myself? And to hide this, how well must I act?

Maybe I’ve written too much. And maybe I’ve written too little. I’m not looking for people’s sympathy any more than their concern. And I’m still me, still happy, and still doing the things I do with the people I love. I’m just a little confused.

But if anybody has the answers, don’t hesitate to tell me.

The Most Frustrating Things In The World… Ever… (2004)

The most annoying thing in the world? Witnessing an argument and knowing exactly what needs to be said, and what needs to be asked, to resolve it, but those involved being so engrossed in it that none of them will listen to hear what they need to hear.

No; that’s not right; the most annoying thing in the world: when one of the people involved in said argument is so self-righteous about what they’re trying to say that instead of listening to what the other people are actually asking, they keep re-iterating their point, which isn’t actually the answer to the question being asked.

I’m still not sure that’s quite it… perhaps this is it:

Losing faith in something you love.

Manos: The Hands Of Fate

This is the worst movie I have ever seen. It is far, far worse, even, than Barb Wire.

It is truly abysmal. Awful filming, meaningless plot, impossible-to-understand ending, crap acting, discontinuity, shitty clipping… apparently three members of the cast committed suicide shortly after filming was completed. Almost none of the rest worked in film again.

Never, ever watch this film. Really.

Update (20th March 2012) – crosslink:

Kit’s warning

Jam

I’ve just watched the DVD of the controversial Channel 4 TV Series, Jam. It’s… different. It’s perhaps a little too dark and bitter a sense of humour even for me, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I particularly enjoyed the “Symptomless Coma” sketch. All very, very sick-and-wrong, though. While I personally liked it, I can see why it got complaints.

That, and I’ve been doing my laundry and practising my juggling. My left arm still isn’t as strong nor as controlled as I’d like it to be; and I’ll need it to improve some more before I can really make any progress with four-ball juggling.

And I’ve been reading yet more of MMYRTL (A.K.A. Developing Your Own 32-Bit OS). It’s really quite scary. But great bedtime reading.

Oh; and you can rely on me not to go on about the WinNT/2K source code leak for ages in my blog. It’s being well enough covered, I feel, by… well; everybody. It’s safe to say that the Windows source code is spreading across the internet like a virus. I don’t think I ought to finish that analogy.

I need to get some sleep.

SiteFinder: Mark Two

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

[further fragments of this post were recovered on 12 October 2018]

If you’ve been reading this blog since September-ish, you’ll remember when I had about a week of ranting about the VeriSign/SiteFinder lark: this was where VeriSign, who (in layman’s terms) are responsible for linking all .com, .net, and .org addresses to their respective servers, in September last year put a ‘catch-all’ clause in. In other words, every possible combination of letters and numbers, followed by a .com, .net, or .org, ‘belonged’ to them. This was a complete abuse of their position of power, and caused a great deal of faults amongst systems throughout the internet. In addition, it could eventually have been used (and evidence suggests that the intention was there) to monopolise the internet’s search engine and advertising services.

Well; they’re at it again, as this article (“SiteFinder vs. Engineers: Our Mistake Is Ignorance”) discusses, so you’re likely to see me ranting at least a little more. If they do decide to do it again, they’ve stated that they will “provide 60 or 90 days warning, in order for the appropriate technological …

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…

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 …

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.

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 …

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…

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…

Busy Days

[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]

Yay! I won an eBay auction for a copy of Everyway. For £4! Yay! Winner! Now all I need are some friends, some paper, some pencils, and no dice.

In other good news, I solved a really nasty Project: Jukebox bug.

And finally: I’ve been spending way too long (when I should be revising) in Second Life. I’m currently working on trying to build the game world’s first Bluetooth-like short-range radio system, but while building prototypes I seem to have come up with a great espionage/surviellance device (i.e. a bug). It works really well. I’ve spent the afternoon listening in on people’s conversations. I intend to sell my bugging device for L$100 ($L = Linden Dollars, the currency of this virtual world), and then, when I’ve cornered the market, start selling a de-bugging device that can detect bug usage for L$500. I am one of those people, I have decided, whom; if I ran an anti-virus company, I would write viruses to ensure that people still needed my products.

I have one exam left. The …