One of the greatest technology visionaries and science fiction writers to have ever lived. I have to credit Clarke, above all others, for making the potential of science exciting and immediate to me when I was growing up, despite the fact that most of his books are older than I am.
Add comment March 19th, 2008
I’ve been ill for the past week or two, with some sort of cold & flu thing, which has been incredibly annoying. Not only that, but it makes the commute into work that much more unpleasant because I know I’m one of the people in the carriage who is infecting everyone else. And I hate it when other people do that. But I got thinking about the network of transmission; a DAG of disease sweeping through the population. I wonder if the clique would be commuters, on the tube, meeting every morning and evening to cross-breed their germs. Gathering new specimens and training them against their immune systems and drug regimens, selecting them for greater virulence and tolerance. The next morning, they’ll be back on the tube to try out their improved strains. On me (cf. Catch-22).
Its a bit like Petz (TM), but you don’t need AA batteries.
Add comment November 6th, 2007
Well, its 2007… Please excuse me if I’m being cynical and pessimistic, but to paraphrase The Who:
Meet the new year,
same as the old year.
Maybe this year will be different. I’m not making any new year’s resolutions, because I never keep them anyway. Instead, I’ll just put some things that I might want to do here and hope that their continued presence will shame me into doing them. Or, at least, making up some good reasons why I couldn’t.
So heres a list of not-new-years-resolutions:
This makes a lot of sense, seeing as the government here will be banning smoking in public places (where they are “wholly” or “partially” enclosed) from July this year. Also, the government seems to be trying to gradually ban smoking altogether by gradually raising the age requirement for buying fags. My prediction is that, over the next decade, the government will make it more difficult for people to smoke by restricting where they are allowed to do it and by restricting the sale of cigarettes by ever increasing taxes and regulations. Possibly, eventually, tobacco will be made a class C drug. I can see them making the case for banning smoking in private residences with children under 16/18 or where not all the residents have given consent. Anyway, long story short; probably better to try and give up now, as it will take some time.
I get annoyed quite very easily. In some circumstances this is a good thing – sometimes in meetings getting a bit stroppy means you get your way, especially if you had a valid point-of-view in the first place. However, most of the time I think I just come across as a complete wanker. I’m going to extend this to include when I’ve been drinking, because I seem to be even more of a wanker then; just wandering off and leaving people behind, getting stroppy and verbally abusing people. Apparently, I gave the finger to some poor taxi driver in Tampa, but I don’t remember doing it. Regretted it the next day, too. (NOTE: I very infrequently drink sufficient quantities of alcohol to produce this behaviour and this may be part of the problem, i.e: I can’t handle my drink. However, I’m pretty sure drinking heavily more often, to build up my tolerance, is not part of the solution.)
This one is either really easy or really hard, depending on how you look at it. Hard, because I’m habitually late and always have been. This probably stems from an underlying laziness that is pretty well ingrained in my character by now. On the other hand, it should be easy to make some improvement, because my punctuality couldn’t really get any worse!
I should really divert about a tenth of my salary directly into my savings account, and have that done automatically. Its not that I don’t try and save already, but at the end of the month my balance is usually pretty near zero. This might be a case of spending increasing to match income, though, so a if the money goes into my savings account without me noticing then I might not spend it… Although I do want a new laptop… 
This is less important, but starting to piss me off that every few days either I or Steve have to restart this server because all Apache’s child processes have gone into some sort of infinite loop and pushed the load to 20!
Anyway, I want to reiterate that this doesn’t mean I’m guaranteeing to do any of these at any point in the future. At this point in time they appear to be good things to aspire to, however I reserve the right to totally change my opinion at any time without warning 
Add comment January 1st, 2007
Apparently, its not just me who noticed the ubiquitous smell of urine in Paris. On another note, I think its quite amazing that the French are banning smoking in bars and restaurants. I thought it was weird when it happened in Italy, too. Which country will be next? I think it would be unlikely to be Greece, but I would have said the same about France a few weeks ago…
Add comment October 15th, 2006
I finally bought the system I mentioned before, with dual DVB-T cards, installed Gentoo, configured it and sat back to watch some high-quality TV. But, of course, it wasn’t as simple as that.
The Gentoo installation went smoothly (and slowly, it goes without saying) and I installed MythTV from the portage repository without problems. I also installed Kaffeine, just in case it was any good. With the boring bits out of the way, I scanned for channels… Nothing.
I checked the aerial cables, of which there are three in my flat, and went out and bought a signal amplifier. Still nothing.
Thinking that the easy Linux install might be hiding some sort of error or misconfiguration, I installed Windows. Ugh. But, of course, Windows is too old and doesn’t ship with drivers for the nForce 430, so I had to use the Gentoo LiveCD to wget the drivers… Oh, the irony. Finally, with all the drivers installed and the DVB-T software loaded, I scanned for channels again. Nothing.
Looking at how the antenna points on my roof, I think its aimed at the Montpelier transmitter, which is analogue only. So this means, if I don’t want to throw away by DVB-T only cards, I have to get the roof antenna re-targetted… I have no idea how much this is going to cost and, indeed, whether its even possible (the other transmitters may be hidden – Bristol is pretty hilly).
Anyway. My advice: Before buying DVB-T only cards, borrow someone’s Freeview box to check you can actually get a signal! Alternatively, spend the extra £10 to get a dual card, so at least you’ll get some sort of signal.
Add comment August 11th, 2006
So I did find a flat, just in time! It was a bit hectic moving in, but I had some good help and we managed to get it all done in a single day. Then, of course, comes all the paperwork. I think I’m up-to-date now with everyone that should be sending me stuff, but it took a while for BT and/or my ISP to move over my broadband, so I’ve been in a blackout for two weeks.
Its pretty interesting, living as my ancestors did: without internet or TV!
Basically, there’s not much to do but read, hack and go out with friends… So its actually a pretty good life and I’m in the process of deciding if I actually want to get a TV at all. (Well, possibly a computer with a TV card and MythTV). This is precisely what steve has been saying for quite a long time and I’m beginning to think that he’s right.
1 comment June 14th, 2006
My flatmate is moving out to pursue a more lucrative (and possibly more satisfying) career in a different part of the country, so I’ve been looking for places to live. Its difficult. I have no desire to live with randoms, as you can get into some really big arguments about whose turn it is to do the washing up. And its usually mine, because I’m quite slovenly.
Flat rents are just incredible, though. I saw a couple of places today which were OK size, fairly modern and pretty well located. Unfortunately, they were ground floor flats on a busy main road, electrically heated and extremely expensive.
The estate agent seemed genuinely surprised that I wasn’t particularly interested. Apparently, in the current market, those flats were good value. I guess I just have to lower my expectations or dig deeper into my wallet.
This weekend I’ve got another couple of viewings lined up, so I guess we’ll see how that goes.
Add comment May 19th, 2006
In byegone ages there were rituals to mark the coming of spring. The local one in Reading (Abbey) was the singing of “Summer is Icumen In“. Or, at least, thats the one I was forced to sing at school. In most places there were harvest festivals and the like, dancing, getting very drunk, etc…
In modern times (if we’re lucky enough to even notice the difference between winter and spring) we’re as likely to just complain about how long its taken to arrive, or how lacklustre it is now it has arrived.
Having nothing better to do on an Easter Monday, my parents and I went for a walk down by the canal (NOTE: this is rural, so the canal is actually a nice place to be, unlike the canals in Paddington) and tried to enjoy the nice weather. Well, the reports said it would be nice and that there would be some sun. I have to admit, there was some sun, in between the bits that were cloudy and windy and quite cold.
Weather being one of the staple topics of British conversation, you’re probably not finding this post very interesting. But it was interesting to me to remember what I thought spring used to be like; when it suddenly got warm and the sun shone and things started to grow (and we were forced to sing “Summer is Icumen In”…)
But maybe this is one of those cynical, growing-old things. I’m sure I noticed spring more when I spent more time outside, rather than in the office. Most of the exposure I get to the sun these days is walking to and from the canteen at lunchtime (providing the observations for the lunchtime discussions about the weather, obviously ). Or, maybe, I notice it just as much, but find it more difficult to get excited about the slow turning of yet another year.
If you got this far looking for some sort of a point… sorry. Its all just rambling drivel, thats why it is posted under “random”!
1 comment April 17th, 2006
Last night I went with some friends to the the Comedy Store, which was really funny. This morning I got up and went to get some cash, but the machine told me I’d already withdrawn £200 today. That wasn’t so funny.
So it seems over the past few days that someone has siphoned just over £800 from my bank account. Since all the withdrawals are from cash machines and none in-store, I assume that my card was cloned and my PIN stolen. Needless to say, this is really, really annoying.
I phoned my bank and cancelled my card, which adds to the annoyance – I won’t have a valid card for the next few days. Meanwhile, some bastard is walking around with almost a grand of my money and will probably never be caught. (Mind you, the guy I talked to at the bank said I could fill out a form to get my money back.)
Wasn’t this what chip and PIN was supposed to help prevent? I guess that, while all stores are now using it, cash machines have yet to be upgraded. Also, it appears that cash machines will fall back to using the magnetic strip if there is no chip (as there would be on a skimmed card).
The solution? Maybe I should deface my magnetic strip on my new card. At least then it couldn’t be skimmed, but I’d still be able to use it in any cash machines that do have the chip and pin upgrade.
Or maybe, I should just be much, much more careful when putting my PIN in.
4 comments April 9th, 2006
Just upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.0.2, which is cool. At least I didn’t have to throw away my theme like I did when I upgraded to 1.5. I like this blix-based theme anyway.
Yeah, yeah. I should be in work, but I overslept because I thought it was an hour earlier, or later, charmed, strange, whatever. BST always has this effect on me…
Add comment March 27th, 2006
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