Muddyfunkster: A Word to the Unwise

Techie Update

2005-01-12T14:50:00.000Z

In computer news, I’ve converted to using Firefox – I tried to resist but to be honest it was inevitable, IE has slowly chipped away at me until I have no confidence in it whatsoever. I’m loving the tabbing in Firefox, as well as the extensions (a gadget geeks dream, plugin-toys to satisfy your gadget fix). I've already abandoned WMP 10 for Winamp 5 for the same general reason.

I’ve also bolstered my music collection thanks to a friend with a portable hard drive full of choons and videos (you didn’t see me, right). I now have around 60gig of music, so I have to get an IRiver H340 to listen to them on. After much deliberation I settled on that model - I'd get an Ipod but I'm not converting my entire collection to AAC, plus it has a built in FM radio which is very important for me.

Normal Service Has Resumed

2005-01-12T14:47:00.000Z

Ok, I haven’t posted in over a month – mainly because I couldn’t be bothered writing about what I did over Xmas. So, I’ve decided to skip that and probably drip feed you tit-bits over the next few days. Needless to say I had a great time in Belfast catching up with old friends and the family.

Don't call us, we'll call you. NEXT!

2004-12-09T13:36:00.000Z

Well, that was my first proper interview of the current spell of joblessness and I sucked. I was presented with a series of coding questions, most of which weren’t hard but all were designed to catch people out – and I stood in every man trap and steaming pile of poo laid in front of me. Of course, they were all C based questions, a language I haven’t done in earnest since Uni, and therefore there was the ubiquitous pointers/memory allocation question. I really should read up on pointers before going into these things, it’s a favorite question of anyone wishing to cause great stress and anxiety.

Anyway, I could see the results he was giving me and overall it wasn’t pretty. Ah well, I don’t think I would have enjoyed working there anyway. I think they were looking for a deep down dirty thick client coder and that’s just not me. In a Groucho Marx fashion, I wouldn’t want to work for a company who would employ me as a dirty coder!

I can’t tell you anymore, they made me sign a piece of paper………

Psychometric Hell on Earth

2004-12-07T14:25:00.000Z

In the latest stage of my job hunting hell I sat a psychometric test yesterday and it was bloody difficult. 3 separate multiple choice tests: verbal reasoning, diagrammatical reasoning and syntax reasoning. The verbal reasoning was pretty standard stuff, random passages and ambiguous questions – I might as well just pick all A’s. The diagrammatical reasoning was slightly more difficult. In fact it was the most difficult exam I've done since 3rd year Electromagnetics (where even the professor teaching the course didn't understand the answers).

Basically, it was transformations. A flow chart of symbols affected a stream of letters, so say ABCD goes through 2 symbols on the way down – each symbol transforms the letters in it’s own way – and DCB comes out at the end. So obviously one of the transformations swaps the letters around and another either removes the first or last letter (depending on the order). Now imagine that where there are 6 symbols, 4 input strings and 8 different paths through the flow. It then becomes a nightmare equation of letters. I had to answer 40 questions in 35 minutes and it was grim.

The last one, syntax reasoning, was more straight forward – making sure that lines of code in an imaginary language followed the correct rules given. Not hard, just tricky and I only got half way through.

Altogether not what I needed either on my birthday or after the weekend I’d had. The experience made me really quite down so I had a quiet birthday night with a Pizza Hut Meat Feast and an episode of Spooks. I've now got to go and finish the Screening Document for a different job application, 50 questions on why I’m the man for the job/company. Joy.

Hey Hey, It’s my Birthday!

2004-12-06T10:59:00.000Z

An action packed weekend all round! Friday night I stayed in, practiced for my test this afternoon. Saturday morning was the same, along with some work for my old job. Saturday night we went out for dinner to celebrate my birthday. I wasn’t really keen on celebrating it, I’m not big on celebrating my own birthday, but the girl organised it all and got the crowd round the table. My twin sister was there so we doubled it up and had twice the fun. We started with 3 bottles of champagne in the flat, kindly provided by the girlfriend, and then onto the Villager for a few cocktails before dinner. The restaurant of choice was the Point Hotel – I have to say the food was very nice indeed, as was the Viejo that went with it. Sadly, the service was atrocious – they were pleasant enough but totally incompetent and seriously under staffed (which finally climaxed in my sister tearing a few strips off the manager). Then we stumbled into the Hogshead for more shots and fun – I distinctly remember playing Mallet’s Mallet at one point. I don’t remember leaving, or going to the 24 hr shop on the way home, or making cheese and ham toasties in the flat but I’m sure I enjoyed that too.

Sunday brought much lethargy and a healthy hangover – but we dragged ourselves out of bed and went shooting at Cluny Claysover in Fife. It was my first time, and I only hit 1 in 3, but it was great fun and intensely satisfying. Look out for me on a rampage near you!

My birthday is actually today, so I’ve spent the morning opening presents. The highlights so far being a load of clothes (from the fashion expert girlfriend), some DVD’s and an amazing wireless mouse that controls your media centre! So now I can control the lappy when it’s playing tunes through my surround sound system. Happy days!

I’m not looking forward to my test this avo, it’s like being at Uni again and I'm heading to an exam that I've not prepared for and not even been the classes!

Psychometric Testing

2004-12-06T10:58:00.000Z

As part of my career development (ie not wanting to be unemployed) I’ve got several bites on the line – both contract and permanent. One of the permy jobs requires me to pass some Psychometric tests; verbal, diagrammatic and syntax reasoning. I’ve been practicing them, as much as it is possible to practice them, and they are bloody hard! I got 92% in the numerical tests, but that skill won’t be tested. I’m only average at the verbal and diagrammatic tests which are on the menu, so all in all I’m bricking it!

If you fancy giving them a go I recommend this one http://www.derby.ac.uk/careers/onlinepsychotesting.htm

The Recruitment Consultants Smell Blood

2004-12-02T15:07:00.000Z

Recruitment Consultancy is a cut throat business, one which I’ve never been overly impressed with. They make money being the middle men, you do the work, you have experience yet they get a little chunk of your earnings (or a lump sum) just for taking a handle full of people from a list and matching them to a job. Some would say parasite, other would say necessary evil.

Either way, I submitted my CV to a couple of websites yesterday and was immediately inundated with calls. Altogether 7 agencies called (many of them calling repeatedly throughout the day for more details). This was great, the market is more than alive in Edinburgh. However, this all turned sour today when I learned that I’d been put in for the same job by 2 agencies. This may have been my fault, so many jobs and agencies were being banded about and they rarely told me what company the job was in so how was I to know? So I told one of them thank, but no thanks. At this point it all turned ugly, the consultant could see his commission slipping away and used every tactic and coercion he could think of – but when I stood firm he turned ugly. I doubt I’ll be getting a job from them in the future.

All of this frantic behavior is well and good, but there is one role I specifically want. It’s in a large company who don’t move quickly, so what happens if I’m offered a contracting role before they have decided I should join their band of merry coders? What if I turn down £200 a day contracts and the large company in question turn me down? Suddenly redundancy isn’t the problem, it’s choice that’s keeping me awake at night now. That said, I've seen this before - it's all go for about 2 weeks and then, suddenly, noone calls with any jobs. I hate making decisions.

And I'm unemployed.....................now!

2004-11-30T17:30:00.000Z

As of now I am officially redundant. But don’t panic, I have a few interesting options on the boil. I’ll keep you posted.

Spare some change mate?

A great weekend of Beer, Rugby, Football and Parties

2004-11-30T16:43:00.000Z

Another top weekend under my belt. Friday night brought birthday celebrations at Berlin Bierhaus, the hardcore set did some serious drinking but I bailed early as I knew it’d be a long weekend.

Saturday was spent in Murrayfield watching squad Scotland’s Rugby Union squad get destroyed by South Africa. I was an honorary Scotland supporter for the event, but we had SA supporters in our party and they milked the win for all it was worth. Thankfully Ireland beat SA so I could still hold my head high. Once the sweet relief of the final whistle came we wandered back to the Walkabout to watch my native Ireland sneak a win from the Argentineans. Since when were they good at rugby? I always thought they were mince but their defence was first class and Ireland had few good ideas on how to break through. Thankfully the points came from O’Gara’s boots (he was able to find the gap between the posts ok, sadly he couldn’t find touch with both hands and a flashlight). Post rugby beers were in Pivo and then food in the Gourmet Burger Company on the Royal Mile. Great fun!

Sunday I met up with an Everton supporter to catch Newcastle v Everton live at the Walkabout again (they have good screens, shame about it being full of Aussies). Newcastle were the better side and deserved to win, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! They hit the bar twice and had the better ball possession. So there.

Last night was the xmas dinner event, although I don’t strictly work for anyone really. We went to The Villager (which is a Category B listed building) for cocktails to kick off the event, then to The Grain Store where I wasn’t overly impressed. I had the Cured Foie Gras to start, which was very nice but possibly a bit overpoweringly strong. For main the Halibut was incredibly dry, with next to nothing in the way of sauce to go with it. I had to drown it in wine (a great Rioja) just to get it down. The staff were nice though!

I Have the Polall Virus!

2004-11-26T11:11:00.000Z

Apparently I have a virus - which running AVG repeatedly won’t get rid of. The Polall virus appears to be spyware and contains the signature of the worm Worm/Rbot.I.Q.03 – whatever that is.

NB. Install Ad-Aware SE now if you are reading this and haven't installed it already. It's free and it might just save your ass.

So it’s delete the contents of these folders:
C:\Windows\TempC:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temp
C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temp
Empty the "Recycle Bin".
Then it’s shutdown the PC, restart in 'safe mode', launch AdAware SE and run a full scan. I’ve no idea how these things get onto my pootah, I’ve got firewalls, anti virus software, adware protection and all are kept bang up to date. I’ve a feeling this one sneaked in through email, but that should still be protected and I don’t open attachments unless I’m sure of their origin.

OK, so Adaware has done it’s thing and found 195 dodgy Registry keys, 17 dodgy Registry values and 44 suspect files. This isn’t looking good, quarantined the nasty ones and I’ve kept the items where Adaware has over-reacted so, fingers crossed, I should be clean now!

Newcastle vs Sochaux (and Some Ant 'n' Dec jungeleness)

2004-11-26T09:28:00.000Z

Thankfully my team (Newcastle United) ended their run of bad form last night with a 4-0 win against Sochaux, a team I’d never heard of but one which seems to be doing very well in France – an unbeaten in European competition since 1976! Apparently the town is practically owned by Peugeot, they have a plant there and actually own 99% of the football team. They beat Monaco at the weekend and going into the match Graeme Souness (our manager) admitted he’d have been happy with a draw. But fate dealt us a different hand, Given made 3 spectacular saves in the first 30 minutes and then Bowyer netted against the run of play – knocking the stuffing out of the French side and setting up a huge win, largely against the initial run of play. After the first goal Sochaux battled hard but created little and after the second goal went in (40 secs into the second half) they sadly lost faith. However, all was not lost. The referee had an abysmal night, his judgment of free kicks was a testimony to video referees, and so a penalty was eventually awarded to Sochaux. The French side sold their regular penalty taker to Leon and have struggled to find a replacement, Mathieu showed himself not to be the heir as he scuffed his shot wide. A fantastic pass from Dyer split the defense for Hughes to pass to Bellamy to make it 3-0, and an awe inspiring free kick from substitute and fellow Frenchman Robert moments from time sealed the victory. The win equals the European record the team set the year we won the European Fairs Cup in 1968-69, although I doubt we’ll go on to win this competition.

Incidentally, for those more interested in what’s happening in that there jungle, Ant and Dec bought the rights to show the match in Australia just so that they could catch their team in such a crucial game. No one was showing it live over there, so they had to buy the entire commercial rights themselves, it cost them altogether £420 – so that’s £210 each! Not bad if they’d been able to sell it to the local pubs.....

Spanish Racism and Zimbabwean Cricket

2004-11-25T13:30:00.000Z

I hate when sport infringes on politics or (more likely) politics infringes on sport. There’s been a lot of it recently, with the racism in Spain and now the cricket tour to Zimbabwe. Oddly, both are connected – Spain being white’s taunting blacks, Zimbabwe being blacks persecuting whites. Both should be boycotted. England should have walked off the pitch, any team should walk off the pitch when rivalry turns to racism. Otherwise the perpetrators have no reason to stop. England should not go to Zimbabwe when ex-pats are being killed and maimed over land rights in an undemocratic society.

However, my original point was that governments shouldn’t get involved. Politicians in the UK were fighting over each other to take the moral high ground over the Spain incident – it’s a matter or the sport’s governing body, not the politicians who want to score points off it. That said, cricket’s governing bodies (the ICC and ECB) have shown themselves to be both spineless and toothless over the Zimbabwe tour – despite all of the journalists being allowed access to the country.

Street Art - Vandalism or Van Gogh?

2004-11-25T13:16:00.000Z

Some people love it, some people loathe it. No, I’m not talking about whatever reality pop-idol remake is out at the minute – I’m talking about street art / graffiti / vandalism*. Personally, if it’s done well then I think it’s amazing, you have to admire someone who can great such colourful and imaginative works of art with just a few cans and not much time. I’ve found two sites that track street art in and around Edinburgh (and Glasgow), they are great for taking a second look at the ones you pass in the street and finding out more about what’s behind them – how they were done and what the mean.

In and around Edinburgh / Glasgow
existencil
Duncan Cumming in Edinburgh
Elph

Further afield
banksy - very funny, often offensive but still makes you think
Duncan Cumming's full set - same as before, but he goes all over
Wooster Collective

Oh, and just in case you don’t like that sort of street art, here’s some Street Photography instead (from Edinburgh and elsewhere).
Street Photography

*delete where applicable

The Ultimate Film chart

2004-11-25T05:59:00.000Z

Channel 4, the home of inane and often invalid best of lists, is trollying out another top 100 – this time it’s “The UK’s 100 Most Popular Movies Ever” (Sat 27th/Sun 28th), compiled from films over the last 100 years. So, what’s the definition of Popular? Is it voted for by a significant proportion of the UK? Is it based on the thoughts of industry pundits? Nope, it’s based on viewing figures. Personally, I don’t see how this is going to work. Surely there have been times when, due to external circumstances, a greater of fewer number of people went to the cinema – therefore films released at these times aren’t going to do as well as those released when attendance was high. All sorts of factors hit the “bums on seats” figures, and if you consider what’s happened in the UK over the past 100 years, 2 World Wars and countless other events it seems an odd way of assembling a best of list. Plus, according to the BFI who compiled the list, “Documentaries, short films, and silent films are excluded”. Since the first film with sound was released in September, 1925, then surely it’s only the last 80 years of movies?

That said, is there a better way to compile the list? We couldn’t vote, as there are probably more people alive who watched Spiderman 2 than the overall number of cinema attendees in the 1930’s, and the UK’s Favourite 100 as selected by industry officials, not the UK, was released (here) and shot to pieces almost immediately (in a scene Rambo would have been proud of).

So, in conclusion, there is no way to compile a best of anything. Best of is purely subjective and opinion based. You can no more select the best of ice creams than the best of the 80’s or the Best Garage Beats Ever (volume 3). Channel 4, please stop making these shows (more of shich are here) and go back to more cultured and informative program making – such as Big Brother, or EuroTrash!

Whiskey for nothing

2004-11-23T15:14:00.000Z

My girlfriend went to get her hair cut the other day, an event which usually involves parting with a lot of money. This time, however, in addition to an expensive chat, she got a free gift as well as! She wasn’t overly enamoured by the contents of her goody bag, but I certainly was – a miniature bottle of Isle of Jura single malt (10 y/o). Sadly it wasn’t a big bottle, just enough for a large one, but you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth – so I cracked it open last night during Spooks (once the wine had run dry) and enjoyed the peaty, chocolaty taste of a fine whiskey. Already one of my favourites, it was made all the better by being free!

New Words to Describe a Slow Weekend

2004-11-22T17:46:00.000Z

Not the most earth shattering weekend ever, in fact besides being out at a party on Friday night it was a complete non-event. This was perfect after the week I’d had – what with the redundancy, meetings to plan my future, 2 games of football and going to see the Thrills. I still wrecked though, it’s been tough. I polished up my CV and applied for a job today, although I’m still not sure I won’t just go back to consulting. The job was doing ecommerce for a large bank so it might be worth a go.

To indulge my love of words and their origins, I stumbled upon this – "A study of when new words became common during the past century". Did you know that “pissed off” first entered our vocabulary in 1943 – you’d have been really cool to be saying “That Hitler has me really pissed off” that summer, especially seeing as the term “cool” didn’t actually mean that until 1948 (after “mobile-phone” and just before “Fast Food”).

Bad news to end with, I'm out of Curly Fries - dark days people, dark days.

Music to Thrill Your Soul

2004-11-19T20:22:00.000Z

Went to see The Thrills last night at the Glasgow Carling Academy and they were great! Although their music can be a bit bland at times, they really put on a fantastic floor show. Plus the crowd were potentially more mad than than The Zutons - they screamed and shouted so much after each song that the band members just stood about stunned, waiting for it to stop so that they could continue, but the crowd just kept going. Glaswegians eh, strange bunch. I have a feeling that the band have been watching Franz Ferdinand live as their performance and stage movement was very similar. Of course the usual problems were there, the support were soul destroyingly bad, the Thrills didn't appear for about an hour after the support left the stage, the tallest man in the entire place stood beside me and kept trying to block my view and I couldn't drink because I drove. But, all in, it was a top night!

If the iPod can handle pictures, then so can I!

2004-11-18T15:24:00.000Z

In a bid to avoid rewriting my code so that it can output XML, I’ve been playing around with Flickr as an alternative to Hello (Picassa) for storing online pictures. Hello is great for one or two pictures going to the blog, but if you want to stick a larger selection up then Flickr seems the ticket. That said, it’s not the easiest to use. The most sensible thing is to group the pictures together, i.e. all your holiday snaps from the Algarve in one group. But getting them into that group is painstaking, and it’s hard to keep an order. They have a thick client for uploading the pictures, why not for managing them too?

You can see some of my pics from My Fife Roadtrip plus some pics taken from my mobile Here. As a taster here is a pictures taken lieing on the Meadows during the summer, taken through my T610.

Suddenly redundancy isn’t just a spare PC

2004-11-16T15:54:00.000Z

We all knew it was coming, the writing has been on the wall (some would say it’s been there for a year now), I’ve been made redundant. Despite being amazing, after another round of layoffs were fired out I couldn’t avoid taking the bullet. It's not too bad, I've been expecting it and all good things must come to an end (plus I'm the last true developer to go so I win!). So I’m going to have to go out and get a proper job, no more lounging in the house, steaming through the work without a distraction. I’ll probably have to go back to being an office worker – the thought fills me with pain.

Anyone want a .NET man in Edinburgh? I can do other things as well, including making the coffee! Don’t make me beg now…….

Weekend Roundup

2004-11-16T15:43:00.000Z

It’s been a few days since I last posted, apologies if you came here with high expectations and left disappointed. Not that it would have been any different if you’d had some of my spurious offerings to read!

Last Friday night I started drinking early, it had been a hard week and I needed to seek solace in alcoholic. So we went to the Park Hotel for a few pints then pub dinner (mine was rubbish, I should have gone for something with chips) then down to the Cowgate for a few more before watching a friend’s band (Bee Thousand) play in Bannermans. Altogether an enjoyable night, the rest of the weekend involved shopping, lounging, Indian meal with friends, more relaxing, rugby and finally Bridget Jones.

I have to mention Ireland’s historic victory over the South African Springboks in the rugby. To all you ‘boks fans: the better team won, we deserved the victory, the try was fair and accept defeat. The win was so much more enjoyable as the SA coach described Ireland as a “3rd rate team”. Well, I hope you’re eating your words mate.

Bridget Jones: The Sequel is worth watching, there are some genuinely funny moments that make it altogether bearable. Better than the first one, but still a chick flick.

Smokeless Scotland Fuels Debate

2004-11-11T14:22:00.000Z

Everyone is talking about it, Scotland’s (enclosed) public places are going to be a smoke free zone. So, no more smoke filled pubs, no more clothes stinking the next day, no more choking as a puff of smoke is inconsiderately blown in your direction. It’s also probably the last time my brother will come over here to visit me as he and his cigs are inseparable. Personally, I’m not in favor of the ban. I don’t smoke, never have, but I’m not bothered if people smoke around me. They may be harming my health but everything is bad for your health – including beer, with or without the smoke. Now I agree with Martin that smoking in restaurants should be banned, it really impairs your taste, but pubs and clubs is taking a bit far. The moves may back fire though, the Scots are heavily into their beer and smokes and they may not roll over as quietly as the Irish did. Plus they have plenty of time to revolt as the plans are a good 18 months off being implemented.

Richard asks a very interesting question on the subject (and gets an equally interesting answer).

Mid week beers

2004-11-11T13:50:00.000Z

Football was cancelled last night, which was a good thing as my body was still recuperating from the previous night’s game (which we won rather convincingly). So I used the time wisely and went to Angles Club to play pool (instead of going to the supermarket as was the planned alternative to footy). I’ve never been to that snooker hall before, usually I go to Marcos, but it’s quite nice in there - although, due to the area it’s in, it was full of polite middle aged men, not the usual interesting rabble you’d expect. Afterwards it was off to the Cloisters for one then home. All in all, a rather successful evening.

Feed-back

2004-11-10T13:31:00.000Z

A while back Martin asked for an extended output from my Atom XML feed. I was aware that I had a feed, and I was aware that people kept up with blogs / news through these feeds but I had no idea how they did it. So I set about looking into RSS and building my own reader. This is still ongoing, due to lack of free time I’ve not progressed as far as I would have liked, so to get a feel for the sort of thing I was wanting to do I signed up for Newsgator as an example. I’ve been using it for a couple of days now, and to be honest it’s rubbish – as a free user I’m glad I’m not paying for it! The layout is awful, deleting entries is a chore and the whole thing is just not intuitive. Not that mine’s going to be any better, but I was hoping for more from a commercial product.

Technology is not my friend just now

2004-11-09T13:24:00.000Z

Disaster has struck again, only this time it’s hit me where it hurts, my stomach! Last night our oven started making sizzling noises, great if you’ve got some bacon in there but it was only heating up. So I tentatively opened the door to see flashes and sparks coming from the back, attempting to remain calm but failing I frantically turn the whole thing off (all in a manner Frank Spencer would have been proud of) and head out to our local chippy for a fantastic Smoked Sausage Supper – they do great chips. Tests this morning have revealed complete oven failure, with no heating action what so ever. The letting agency are going to send a man round – until then it’s either the chip shop or ‘proper meals’ cooked on the gas hob. Chips I think.

As a result of recent technological dissapointments I'm considering converting to The Good Life - now where did I put Felicity Kendal's phone number?

Dundee

2004-11-07T13:48:00.000Z

Yesterday the girlfriend and I trundled up to Dundee to visit some friends who have just moved up there; so we left the bright lights behind and went North. It's been about a year since I was last in Dundee, then it was for a completely different reason but oddly enough we went to exactly the same places as this time around - maybe there aren't that many places to go in Dundee. I don't remember what the places were called, I can't chart our journey through the city - but we did get some shopping in The Overgate centre and once again I wasn't strong enough to resist the lure of Fopp. The journey across the Tay Bridge always throws up sepctacular views, though not as impressive as those from the Forth Road Bridge.

Coding is the new Rock'n'Roll

2004-11-07T11:45:00.000Z

It’s been a tough week with my computer. Often I find that my computer can be (without wanting to offend anyone) female in it's actions. It throws the odd wobbler, going nuts for no apparent reason and throwing everything out the window. Now don’t get me wrong, if I admit it there is often a reason – I’ve done something really stupid to create the situation but being male I either haven’t realised or thought it was a good idea at the time. Actually, safe in the knowledge I’m going to offend someone, my computer behaves better than some girls I’ve known (despite my rubbish code and hair-brained ideas).

Anyway, that wasn’t the point of this post – I’ve no idea where that came from, possibly something latent. I was going to comment on something I heard on the Oasis DVD I’ve been watching. Noel waxes about making music while drunk / high and at the time you think it’s the best shit ever – ground breaking stuff. However, when you put two feet on the ground and your head in a bucket of ice, you realise it’s just shit – no best in sight, and the ground might as well open up and swallow it whole. I find the same can be said about coding. I’ve been pulling some (alcohol aided) late nights to get myself back on track after my catastrophe, and at the time I’ve thought “Yeah, I’m steaming through this work, best shit ever” but when I wake the next morning the ‘best’ seems to have evaporated and all that is left is shit. Remember kids, don’t drink and work – just stay in the pub when lunchtime is over.

Forth Rail Bridge (in poor weather)

2004-11-04T11:35:00.000Z

Forth Rail Bridge - taken from South Queensferry when my Dad was over. I thought I'd trolley out the picture since I was talking about going over it last Saturday. I'll have to get a good picture when it's sunny. And for good measure, here is the Forth Road Bridge as well! For those who are unfamiliar with the Edinburgh / Fife connection these two structures sit side by side and overlook some fantastic scenery.

Weekend Round Up

2004-11-03T15:38:00.001Z

What an extended weekend it’s been! Sorry to post it all in one go, but that’s what happens when life travels at pace so scroll down to catch up! If you want to skip back to Friday Night go Here, Saturday Here, Sunday Here and Monday / Tuesday are right beneath you!

Do not panic, flight mechanic

2004-11-03T15:38:00.000Z

As you can imagine, as a day off Monday was a bit of a write off – I wasn’t in much of a state to do anything, so we went shopping with the mnusic vouchers attained through the birthday! HMV on Prince’s Street was a candy jar, but since I didn’t have any vouchers of my own I restricted my self to one CD – well, a double CD. Turned out Wet Wet Wet were doing a gig in the basement to celebrate the release of their new single, we didn’t see it as a reason to celebrate so we got out of there sharpish.

That night my taxi services were called upon, so thankfully the alcohol had worn off by then. My flatmate is a rally driver through hobby, and their car required bringing back to Edinburgh for it’s MOT. So I drove him out to Greenlaw so that he could drive it back, the hour journey down revealed the car still in bits – and at 10pm after the weekend I’d had this wasn’t good news. Eventually the car was ready and we went in convoy back to Edinburgh, arriving at 1am. You can imagine my joy when I returned to the flat to discover my PC had lost the plot while I was away and now was trying to tell me the primary partition was corrupt. The irony was not lost on me as only that afternoon I’d started backing up onto DVD but had only done one test of inconsequential data. I’m really not sure how it all happened, but random files were corrupt and so I had to painstakingly attempt to save what I could from my work and personal files onto a secondary drive (I didn’t trust the secondary partition), giving up around 3am as I could barely see. Yesterday, when the OS completely gave up, I decided to install XP onto the secondary drive, what a good idea! Sadly, probably due to tiredness, in doing so I managed to format the drive - deleting all the files I had rescued as well as all my Apps which I store on that drive so if I did need to format the primary partition I’d have no way of reinstalling my software. Disaster, unmitigated disaster. Cue the lifeline, in my day of randomly trying everything, I noticed a lot of memory errors. So I tried pulling out the memory in the second bay – as if by magic, everything worked including the primary installation of the OS! Putting that chip in on it’s own the boot didn’t get past POST (Power On Self Test) so it looks like the whole thing was caused by a dead DIMM. Removing this allowed CHKDSK to work it’s magic and all is tentatively back to normal, but at 256 meg and having lost all my apps. Drop what you are doing and backup now!

Sunday is a day of rest, usually

2004-11-03T15:18:00.000Z

Sunday morning was the present frenzy, I’d bought a raft of presents for her and so had everyone else so happiness all round! After a huge fryed breakfast we turned our backs on the country life and headed back across the water to civilisation. Thankfully we only lost about 40 mins in the roadworks on the way back – plenty of time to listen to the CD’s I’d got her (one of which was The Detroit Cobra’s album Love and Leaving , great stuff!).

Once back we snatched some downtime before my sister came round with more presents and we opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Much chat and laughter gave way when they had to leave, so we seized the initiative and stumbled to TGI Friday’s for cocktails – I had a Martini and then something red. Suitably juiced we made a quick pit stop in Bar Khol for a Honey Monster (Absynth, Honey Vodka and something else) before hitting The Outsider for dinner. Great food as always, although the service was rubbish – the girl threw down our champagne (just to continue the theme) and didn’t pour it, and then gave us the wrong bill - I was in no state to realize so paid anyway, only for the manager to slip me £20 on the way out to cover the over-spend. Once again, a top night!

Saturday Round-Up

2004-11-03T15:00:00.000Z

Saturday I headed over to Fife to start the girlfriend’s birthday celebrations at her family home. Due to the crippling roadworks being carried out on the Forth Road Bridge every weekend I decided to avoid a 2 hour traffic jam and take the train. Fantastic journey as always, going across the old railway bridge. After my favourite dinner of steak, egg and chips (wasn’t even my birthday) we headed out to see Alfie at the local Odeon. It was an enjoyable film, which lost part of it’s origional greatness in bringing it up-to-date. Jude Law made a great Alfie, mainly because it was a copy of Caine’s original acting; can’t complain though as it was done well! Fog made the journey home interesting, 70 mph on the motorway when you can’t see the hand in front of your face (if you’d been out of the car of course).

Friday Night Fun

2004-11-03T14:48:00.000Z

Friday night I went out with Andy and a couple of guys he had up from London Town. Sadly, they had a bit of a head start on me and were already falling off their chairs / abusing waitresses when I arrived so I had to get a few pints and the odd shot down me so that I could at least understand them. We started in Native State (remember when that was the Woolpack? ) and then onto The Belfry, where Andy could be warned by the management for standing on the seats and swinging from the light fittings. So I left them there, anyone who doesn’t think I left them there was sorely mistaken, to join another crowd celebrating the immanent departure of our friend – who is off to join the geriatrics as an Engineer on a cruise ship. So that was The Standing Order and Nickel Edwards to close off the night. I don’t actually remember closing off the night, but I’m pretty sure it happened.

New Gadgets? Surely Not!

2004-10-29T14:13:00.000+01:00

Quiet night last night watching the Oasis Definitely Maybe DVD that Andy brought round (along with the Kasabian album which I'm loving). The DVD is very well made, with some great characters and interesting information on an album which is almost certainly in everyone’s collection. Maybe not worth buying if you’re not a hardcore Oasis fan, but definitely worth borrowing from a mate.

Coincidentally, I got a DVD Burner yesterday. It is Dual Layer and burns at 16 speed; apparently there is no media out that can be burnt at that speed, I can’t remember the last time I was ahead of the curve with a part in my PC! I was tempted by a new CPU but I’ll hold out for the 64 bit as I’ll need a new MB and memory.

Also, I’ve got a set of Cordless Headphones! Actually, I’ve got 2 pairs. Originally I had bought a pair as a present for the girlfriend (from Ebay), but they broke as I was testing them (I’m glad I did). I sent them back, the seller offered a refund but I wanted the headphones so I suggested a replacement set. After several emails from me I gave up, asked for the refund and said I’d get them elsewhere. A frantic email came back saying that he’d sent them already (that day, coincidence?). Unfortunately, I’d already bought another pair on Ebay – so now I have two pairs (his and hers). This isn’t a bad thing as they are ACE! You can wander around the place, unhindered – which I do a lot when I’m working, up and down from the PC. Some have said the sound quality isn't the best but it's crystal clear for me. I'll keep you posted on it.

Contradictanyms

2004-10-28T10:32:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Schott's Original Miscellany I have now discovered (amongst many other things) Contradictanyms - "words which have opposing meanings depending on the context in which they are used".

You must BOLT the door.......................or he will BOLT for the door.
FLOG a horse..........................................in order to FLOG the horse-meat.
GARNISH that dish................................or I will GARNISH your earnings.
Secure it with a BUCKLE..................or it will BUCKLE under the weight.
Please SCREEN us from....................the film they are about to SCREEN.
Though CRITICAL in his comments........he was CRITICAL to our success.
You can see the stars are OUT...................once the lights are OUT.
It is everyday CUSTOM.............................to have suits CUSTOM-made.
It was an OVERSIGHT..............to give him OVERSIGHT of the project.
I will FIX the gate.........................................in order to FIX the race.
Bind him FAST to prevent..........................a FAST getaway.
He was only a QUALIFIED success...........although he is fully QUALIFIED

Clever eh? More to add, please do! Get your thinking cap on.

Political Outburst

2004-10-27T18:54:00.000+01:00

Now I generally avoid politics as a rule, mainly due to my dislike of politicians borne out of growing up in Northern Ireland and watching them perpetuate the violence through their petty arguments and prejudice. But just now things are too interesting, with the constant shuffling and maneuvering both here and in the US over the US elections, British Troops and Domestic Policies here. One thing which has really riled me is this the axing of the term ‘Strangers’ to denote members of the public in the Houses of Parliament. Think of the time and effort politicians have spent deliberating, debating and voting on this (not to mention the mass of bureaucracy generated). Does it matter what they call non mp’s or peers? That time could have been used to change something important – or just not used at all and the money put to something important, instead of implementing a change to a name that MP’s fear makes them look bad. And what are they changing it to? Well, should you find yourself in the great halls of Westminster then you’ll be “A Member of the Public” – radical isn’t it? I wonder why you’re new name isn’t “A Taxpayer”, “The Boss” or “The Person Who Pays You To Swan About The Country”, but we can’t have the "Members of the Public" getting above their station can we!

Ok, staying on a theme we can all have a laugh at the rampant ego that is The Sunbed Kid (Kilroy-Silk) cutting off his nose to spite his face. It appears that his team won’t make him captain so he’s going home, and he’s taking his ball with him! And I wonder if I should go easy on politicians..........

Impromptu Jazz

2004-10-27T09:38:00.000+01:00

Lying in bed last night, listening to the radio to get to sleep, I started hearing some strange sounds. I thought the news I was listening to had some kind of backing track at first but when I turned off the radio I realised that it was coming from a different source. Cupping my ear to the wall ruled out the neighbours, so I went over to the window to discover that it was blasting out of the student halls across the round.

Now I require silence to sleep, as I don’t sleep well, so this would have normally infuriated me and awoken my inner pensioner, but this was actually some rather good jazz – and pumped out at such a high volume that I could clearly hear everything. What’s more, I realised it was live! One lead guitar and a drum kit, both played extremely well (obviously from the mature student block, not the freshers). I was already in bed or I would have gone down to check it out, so I just lay back and enjoyed the tunes!

John Peel - A Legend is Lost

2004-10-26T14:55:00.000+01:00

The incredibly sad news of John Peel's death has just broken, many people are shocked that such a well loved figure in British life has been pulled away.

To say that John Peel shaped the music habits of several generations is an understatement; his grasp of good music and his own impeccable taste were always on show throughout the relatively brief time I listened to his shows. As a massive fan of both his Radio 1 show and the Home Truths programme on Radio 4. I shall thoroughly miss this legend of music.

Listening to a random person's music collection!

2004-10-26T10:46:00.000+01:00

While looking at the songs I’ve listened to recently on Audioscrobbler I though I’d give the “Personal Radio” option a try, seeing as I have free access to it for a while (another 18 days). In their own words “plays you a random radio program of the music in someone's profile (if we have the songs in the Last.fm streaming archives, and there is a lot).” So the concept is, I look at your list of listened to tunes and think “You’ve got good taste – I’m going to listen to your tunes for a while”. It’s like hitting random on someone else’s collection – but you have to find a collection you like. So I hit Network on my profile page and went to the first user in Musical Neighbours (the kind people at Audioscrobbler look at what you listen too and compare that to everyone else to see who has the same taste as you). For me, it was Ning so I clicked on his Personal Radio button and now I’m listening to a random selection of his tunes.

There is a caveat though, since he is a 71.1% match to my musical taste there is a lot of duplication and I so far haven’t heard much that’s not already in my collection; but it’s all good so another option is listening to my own radio station. This is the same idea but only plays songs from my own collection. Think about it, you are away from home (and your music collection) and want to catch you own tunes, just log on and it'll blast your favourites back at you! Great.

RIP WMP

2004-10-25T15:52:00.000+01:00

In other music news, I’ve finally ditched Windows Media Player 10. I used to like the previous versions and my adulation peaked at WMP 9, I was used to the interface, I liked the layout and everything was clear and easy. Then they had to ruin it all with WMP 10 – now everything is an exercise in generating traffic to their pay-per download site. Just as they won the browser wars by forcing IE onto the masses, they are trying to force the non Mac public into MSN (thankfully the public are more savvy this time around). No-one likes to have things rammed down their throat, and naturally for Microsoft there was no way of turning this off, so as a disgruntled consumer I moved to WinAmp. Although I don’t find it as professional, it has more functionality and it does look cool. RIP WMP.

Another First, Downloading Music!

2004-10-25T15:48:00.000+01:00

This morning I bought my first music online, I like the real thing which is why I'm behind the curve on this one. It wasn’t from a big online store like iTunes etc. it was simply a one off purchase straight from the band’s website. I chose to pay through premium SMS instead of Credit Card; this raised the price 50% to £3, but I was interested to see how they did the pin code delivery (turns out it’s the same way as I do it for work so I didn’t learn anything for that extra £1). I’m very excited about the music though, as it is The Divine Comedy’s special EP (The Bavarian EP) to celebrate the release of their DVD. There’s nothing on the EP a hardened fan like myself hasn’t heard before, it’s just the having it that counts. Now to get the DVD….

The Weekend Round Up......

2004-10-25T15:38:00.000+01:00

A great weekend was had by all, if a slightly low key one. Friday night was a couple of drinks in The Belfry followed by a bottle of Budvar in the Illicit Still. We had thought about going to Lawries but it was boarded up, no idea why.

Saturday was spent relaxing, doing some computer stuff and generally chilling. Then that evening I went out to Pivo and onto The Egg. I’d never been to the Egg, despite having several friends who did Art at Uni, and I now know I wasn’t missing much. In fact I wasn’t missing anything (except cheap beer).

Yesterday was more of the same; I took some time out from relaxing to watch the GP, shame Barrichello didn’t win but it was a good race none the less (and Schumacher was nowhere).

The Zutons

2004-10-22T13:17:00.000+01:00

Last night the girlfriend, myself and a couple of friends went across to Glasgow's Barrowlands to see The Zutons. It was my second live encounter with the band and I wasn't disappointed. The gig was fantastic and I can heartily recommend seeing them live if you get the chance! My gig review can be found Here!

In other news, I set up my first secure server yesterday - we're all SSL/HTTPS'd up.

The weekend's going to be a slow one, hopefully.

Football, Cars and Drink - a great combination (in that order)

2004-10-20T22:50:00.000+01:00

5-a-side was a complete washout for the second week in a row. Strangely, tonight's rain wasn't nearly as heavy as last week's but I appear to be more wet. Answers on a postcard. I don't really think I enjoyed it, which is very strange because normally I can’t help but enjoy any sport, but tonight I didn't. One of the guys on my team was very negative, blaming others and not making an effort himself. Sadly, he was technically our best player so if he'd actually worked instead of moaning and blaming we might have won. It’s not the winning or loosing, it’s your attitude that counts.

I see Button's attempts to stab his team in the back have backfired - I wouldn't like to be him back at BAR HQ.

Lastly, I'm in mourning. One of my favourite brands of whisky has been sold to the highest bidder, the French. I'm very fond of their Madeira Wood Finish (and have yet to try their Burgundy Wood, never seen that one before) but I'm not sure I can stomach it now that they've sold out. I'm sure I'll manage though.......

Can you see what it is yet?

2004-10-20T10:51:00.000+01:00

Once I saw this article describing how to make your own mosaics I had to give it a go. So, here are the fruits of my labours - the mosaic was made from 1500 of the pictures in my collection. Click to see the bigger picture!

Origional

Mosaic

Catching up with the links

2004-10-19T14:06:00.000+01:00

There’s nothing much going on today, so I’ll see if I can offload some of the links I’ve got stored up.

Today I got possibly the most random email spam I’ve ever received – it’s for the “Best American Woodworking Machinery Since 1890”. Needless to say I don’t need woodworking machinery, but then I don’t need a pen1s enlargement either, or do I?

The Ministry of Defence has chosen the Windows operating system for the war-fighting computers of the Royal Navy's latest destroyers. “Windows has detected a Nuclear Weapon – do you want to run the WMD Installation Wizard?”

I have the real Schott's Original Miscellany – which probably why I find this site so funny.

Want to know what was in the top 40 when you were born, or how high Timmy Mallet got in the charts? >Then just go here!

Continuing on a theme, do you ever watch ads and like the backing tracks - or do you argue in the pub over what the song is? Well find out what that tune is here.

Have you been caught playing away and need an excuse? Well look no further, you were sleeping!

Bored of Kelkoo, and all the other price comparison sites that make searching for reviews on Google pointless? Google isn’t, and has >now (officially) launched Froogle in the UK!

Now I'm not up on polotics, but we are all watching the US Election with shock and awe. I doubt life will change much no matter who gets gold - but there has been some heated (and very much informed) debate over on Richard Bloomfield's site.

New Music

2004-10-18T14:31:00.000+01:00

Inbetween eating, drinking and driving round the country I also found time to buy some new albums over the weekend - so look out for them in my Audioscrobbler (on the left). They include:
The Thrills: Let's Bottle Bohemia
The Bees: Free the Bees
The BareNaked Ladies: Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits 1991-2001
I'm still letting them perculate through my subconscious before I make a decision on quality.

Gordon Ramsay Eat Your Heart Out

2004-10-18T14:29:00.000+01:00

Well, dinner was a complete success –
Starter: Scallops in a tomato and puy lentil sauce (grilled goats cheese for my sister as she doesn’t like fish)
Main: Roast joint, fantastic mash, roast potatoes, cabbage, peas & bacon, Yorkshire Puds and gravy
Desert: Home made individual chocolate puddings with chocolate sauce in the centre

It all worked, in the past we’ve had great trouble getting everything ready at the same time – so we took a tip from the experts and made as much as possible before hand and then polishing it off at the end. The parents were well impressed, I was at the time but now I just fell I’m getting old – cooking Sunday Roast for the parents. Next time I’m going to trash the place and order in from the Chinese.

All in, it was a fantastic weekend - I can't beleive I've done so much, especially after the weekend before! I love it when a plan comes together.

Late, late night shopping

2004-10-18T10:25:00.000+01:00

Today I’ll mostly be playing Delia as my girlfriend and I are cooking the full Sunday Roast for my family (well the 6 of us who are in town). So, to save having to get up too early this morning, after Iggs we raided the 24 hr Asda for the items we still needed. Shopping at midnight is an odd sensation, especially after the day I’d had (and the wine at dinner) so I stumbled about the frozen food aisles while the lady ran through the items we were missing. I was half expecting the place to be full of wierdos, reprobates and insomniacs but the place seemed pretty normal – maybe I wasn’t in the state to notice.

Unfortunately, our plan seemed like a good one but it was flawed. We weren’t able to get everything, since I forgot to get Scallops from Eddies, so my Sunday morning still involved shopping. We were camped out on the doorstep of M&S waiting for it to open at 11 so that we could complete the raid.

Iggs

2004-10-17T10:24:00.000+01:00

Sadly, Iggs didn’t live up to it’s reputation for me. Maybe it was the fantastic fish’n’chips I’d had earlier, but it just didn’t work. The service was excruciatingly slow, although friendly when they eventually arrived, and the food was imaginative but not great. Maybe they were over stretched, but I just wasn’t overly enamored. I'll give them a second chance some day and try their tapas bar (oddly called a Tapas Cafeteria, do they server jelly and custard?).

East Fife Road Trip

2004-10-17T10:13:00.000+01:00

What a day Saturday was, top drawer in every respect. I picked my Dad up from George Street at high noon and we set off on a Road Trip! Dad, being a seafaring fellow, wanted to see the Forth Road Bridge (again, he’d been over the Rail Bridge on Friday) and then head to Fife. So we went to South Queensferry, took some photos from under the bridges and then headed over the water into bandit country! So, 80p lighter, we headed through Inverkeithing, past Dalgety Bay and on to Burntisland. We stopped in Burntisland by the sea to get some fresh air and look about, it seemed like a nice town but we had no time to stop – the rest of the Fife Coastal Path was waiting for us! So it was on up the A921 to Kirkcaldy, then A955 through the Wemyss’s, Methly and Leven to Eelie. If we’d had time then the beach at Eelie would have definitely got it, along with the pub, but we had bigger fish to fry (so to speak). Eventually (due to a massive diversion along some hairy country roads, and some cows crossing) we arrive at our destination – Anstruther.

Actually, the real target was the famous Fish Bar & Restaurant in Anstruther (which reputedly changed hands for over £1 million). People come from far and wide to sample their fish'n'chips, so we were just expecting to get some take out – but as chance would have it there was one table free, the fabled Window Seat! So we sat down and enjoyed some freshly deep fried Pittenweem Haddock (2 per portion).

Afterwards we needed a walk so we wandered out and watched the goings on around the lifeboat house; the lifeboat was out on maneuvers so there was a general buzz about the place. They weren’t on a call-out, just laying the ashes of a local fisherman (a procession which involved all the boats from his fleet, a lovely gesture). It was a fairly rough day and the waves were crashing up and over the sea walls – great to watch. Sadly, it became time to head back to civilization so we took the quick route home to get ready for the restaurant that night...Iggs.

The Route - click the image to make it bigger!

The Patio

2004-10-16T10:33:00.000+01:00

Dinner at The Patio (87 Hanover Street) last night was very nice indeed, huge portions of great food (all from the massive Specials menu, I rarely even open the real menu these days) and fantastic service. Of course, that’s what the people head to The Patio for – the service. It’s not that they are the greatest waiters in the world, it’s that they all are friendly and fun; everyone has a laugh and there is always at least one available should you require anything. Then there’s The Boss – the matriarch of the family, a lovely (and incredibly scary) lady and very much the driving force behind the restaurant. She gave us all a free liquor after the meal - can't say fairer than that!

Last Night...

2004-10-15T10:20:00.000+01:00

My parents arrived yesterday, keen to see the children who had moved to Edinburgh. Well, keen to see my sister - I'm obviously just an expense. So I met them in the Guilford Arms on West Register Street, one of my Dad's favourite pubs in Edinburgh, and then went on to Bailie Bar for some top notch bar food - I can definately recommend it!

Tonight is The Patio - a family favourite.

In other news, I got a bus out to meet them. Now I'm not usually one for public transport but I had the time and I fancied taking it slowly - so I went to Eddie's Seafood Market and stood for the bus. There is always something happening in or outside Eddie's - it's theatre with fish! They sell the best fish in Edinburgh; I'll be going there for my Scallops tomorrow.

I rarely make the tea - or coffee

2004-10-14T10:20:00.000+01:00

I stumbled upon this site during my early morning wakeup surf: www.imadeitlast.com. Basicaly, you and the rest of your coworkers sign up to the service and tell it as and when you make the brew - it then tells you who isn't pulling their weight and who should make it next. It's an interesting concept which, properly marketed, could get a large number of short term users. They even have an SMS service (charged) for alerting the chosen brewer - I wonder who they use to deliver them.

Edinburgh Restaurants

2004-10-13T16:38:00.000+01:00

Edinburgh is awash with restaurants, some good - some not so good. I've been to more than my fair share of them and I'm still uncovering hidden gems (and conspicuous dives). With the parents coming up this weekend, one site I find useful is The Edinburgh Restaurateurs Association. It's a good list of restaurants that my parents would enjoy. It's also completely biased so dont look for reviews, although you don't get much more impartiality from the List. I have yet to see them right a bad review, probably because (Like the ERA site) people pay to be in it. It's good for ideas, but take the reviews with a pinch of salt.

One site I can definitely recommend is The Oracle - it's not the easiest on the eye (or to navigate) but it really is the one stop shop for where to go in Edinburgh.

Update: I wanted Haldanes for Sat night but they have no space - so it's Iggs instead. One day I'll book early! The Patio on Fri night, it's tradition.

Audioscrobbler Profile

2004-10-13T16:01:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I signed up to Audioscobbler thanks to Aetheria. In their words "Audioscrobbler builds a profile of your musical taste using a plugin for your media player. Plugins send the name of every song you play to the Audioscrobbler server, which updates your musical profile with the new song." So, the music I play gets recorded and updated here for all to see. This may not be wise as I have a large collection which is 50% rubbish, ripped off other people's collections (you didn't hear that RIAA) including Kylie, Keating, Westlife and other atrocities - and I have a habit of sticking it on random so I hope I can flip to the next top choon before anything gets recorded!

UPDATE: I should have my fav artists / songs ranked on the page but they ain't - due to server issues and them not having beefy enough kit. But, as good techies, they have a page of graphs showing how over worked the server is!

Ebay Virginity Sold

2004-10-13T15:56:00.000+01:00

Ok, I'm not quite an Ebay virgin as I've bought many items there - from SD card to a widescreen TV. One thing I'd not done (until the other night) was sell an item. I can tell you, it's not an easy process but I did do it and the item sold in under 3 hours (Buy It Now).

The only problem is that PayPal is goosed at the minute so they can't pay me, since it's for tickets to a gig next week the situation had better be resolved sharpish.

Linkage Backlog!

2004-10-13T15:51:00.000+01:00

OK, I've got a raft of links backed up, so here's the lot
Interesting optical illusion - don't stare too hard or you'll go mad.
An infrared keyboard - I saw these a while back but I didn't realise they had made it into production.
Get your Bill Bailey tickets here.
And to finish off, here are 2 links to cheap computer parts (for me) 1 and 2

And the rest

2004-10-13T15:50:00.000+01:00

Monday was full of meetings. We had our weekly meeting at work, then I went to have lunch with an old ex-colleague.

Yesterday I went to try and remonstrate with the DVLA over my scrapped car. The played the Teflon card and said that they couldn’t do anything about it and that I’d have to write to the DVLA in Swansea and tell them. Played 5-a-side last night, great game although I didn’t play the best. I caught a bit of Bill Oddie tracing his roots, it started well but in the end he spent most of the time berating his Granny for driving his mother into a mental instituyion, heavy watching for a Tuesday night so I turned to BBC 3 for a repeat of 2 Pints of Lager. And I think we're caught up now.

The Saturday Finale

2004-10-13T15:45:00.001+01:00

Saturday night was the birthday extravaganza – my sister in law was over from Belfast to celebrate her 30th birthday with her close family and a few choice members from her husband’s siblings. We went to Bar Roma, I had veal and it was awful – I don’t say that often as I like my food but it was over cooked, dry and salty. Thankfully the others enjoyed theirs and I had a pint of Nasty to keep things ticking over. A family altercation (too sordid for disclosure here) drew the night to a premature end so we scattered. The taxi rank on a wet Autumn Saturday night is always a bit of an anti-climax.

The Aftermath

2004-10-13T15:45:00.000+01:00

Sunday was spent trying to relax and persuade my stomach to settle. My girlfriend and I went to a car auction in the bottom of a car park just off the Royal Mile (she wants a new ca). There weren’t many cars to choose from, and the pickings were slim so we weren’t tempted to put hands in pockets (except for a bottle of Sprite at the burger van). There was something sinister about wandering around the basement of a multi-storey car park in the dark, water dripping from the ceiling into large puddles. It was like something out of a bad gangster movie, and we were there to meet with a rival family (no connection to the previous post). We got home in time to see Schumacher win another GP – I may never like that man.

Saturday part 3 - this time there's beer

2004-10-13T15:43:00.000+01:00

Saturday lunch was spent wandering around trying to find somewhere that was showing the Eng v Wales match. This proved difficult as Scotland were playing Norway at the same time, and this being Scotland most people wanted to see that – being from NI and having no affiliations until a later game I felt the other game would be more interesting. We trawled the bars, eventually ending up at Scott’s on Rose Street. In all honesty it was a great place to watch it, totally unpretentious and full of hard core fans – plus it was showing both games so it was a good atmosphere. The game was a bit rubbish though, Wales seemed a bit intimidated.

Saturday part 2

2004-10-13T15:41:00.000+01:00

On Saturday morning I headed out to the Royal Mile to meet up with my brother who was doing the tourist thing – thankfully the Queen was in the Parliament by this point so the crowds had dissipated and only the road sweepers were left. Since the world’s media had descended and footage of the charade – I mean parade – was shown on 2 of the 5 terrestrial channels we have, obviously the Royal Mile had to be beautified so thousands of pounds must have been spent on the plants and trees brought in to make the place look it’s best. And, naturally, this kind of thing can’t be left behind for the locals to enjoy so as soon as Her Highness had trundled down the road in car the vans were round to take them all away. But it’s all worth it, we can’t have the Queen not surrounded by nice things.

We met in Robbie Burn’s Café – I’m sure that poor man is turning in his grave.

Brother in Town

2004-10-09T13:25:00.000+01:00

My brother is in Edinburgh this weekend with his wife (and her family) to celebrate her 30th birthday. I was supposed to meet up with them last night but plans changed (see previous post). We'll meet up today to catch the football and drink a few pints.

This plan, however, may be slightly hindered by the fact that most of the city is closed off as the Queen is in town to open the Scottish Parliament (let's not start on that one). I'm not going to get into a debate on wether the monarchy is a good or bad thing, but when it infringes on my God given right to drink beer and watch the football with my brother it becomes a different matter. I sent her a text to see if she fancies joining us for the Eng v Wales match but she hasn't got back to me yet - as lon as she doesn't bring along that husband of hers, he's got some mouth on him.

UPDATE: The whole event is live on BBC1 AND ITV, at the same time, using the same cameras and footage. What is the point in that?

The Free Bar Hangover....

2004-10-09T13:16:00.000+01:00

There was a party last night in The Jekyll & Hyde pub to celebrate the completion of a project in a well known internet bank. Now I was a consultant there for a brief period about 2 years ago, and my girlfriend currently works there - but neither of us actually worked anywhere near the project being celebrated. But we didn't let that get in the way of enjoying the free bar and food! I must have been drinking shooters of Jagermeister as I have 5 (empty) test tubes with the name and logo branded on their sides in my kitchen. By all accounts a top night, and I only spent £10!

Who reads the words? I just look at the pictures!

2004-10-07T13:22:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Dee over at Planet Edinburgh I have discovered Hello (what a great URL!) and will soon be adding pictures to my words. Don't expect anything to rival David Bailey, do expect random and strange images of things I find interesting.

And here is my first picture, it's my old car (and a tree) taken on Mull last year.

Crash, bang, wallop - what a wash out

2004-10-07T11:00:00.000+01:00

As they say it couldn't have been more of a wash out if it had rained. Last night, having been dropped from football due to excess numbers and being slow to reply to the email, myself and a few friends went for some Karting, up to 70 mph about 2 inches from the ground.

However, just as we were literaly getting into our karts all the floodlights failed - and after a little look around we realised that the whole area was dark, a power cut; which was odd as we could see a power station and it's light's were on. We were absolutely gutted, so we went to the pub (the Argyle, no links) to drown our sorrows.

UPDATE: Having looked to find a web presence for the Argyle I could only come up with this "Marchmont on the web". They have a good vehicle there for promoting Marchmont (and showing it's not just full of students), I hope they use it.

All this way, just to come back

2004-10-06T17:53:00.000+01:00

For all those fans of Manic Miner, here's another emulation you can play in your web browser.

Further retro talk, it appears those toys you (may have) played with in the 80's and 90's are making a comeback- including Cabbage Patch dolls and Tamagotchis. Save me from Tamagotchi's, they drove me insane.

WiFi with a difference

2004-10-06T17:10:00.000+01:00

OK, you’re going to have to stick with me on this one - as a former electronic engineer I find this interesting, you might too. Wifi is standard these days, the idea that we don’t need wires, we can transmit and receive a signal carrying our required data from anywhere in the house (within range) is common place.

OK, let’s take that a little further – WiFi get’s transmitted as radio waves, just like, er, your radio. Something else that gets delivered in waves is your electricity. So, therefore, it’s just as possible to transmit through your home electrical wiring as it is through the air. Using one of these you can hook your network into one plug socket and out another.

What’s that you say? Surely that’s just the same as using cables, and is just so 1990’s? Well, think about this – your WiFi has a range of maybe 100 meters (unlikely) and gets stroppy if you expect it to go round corners or through thick walls – creating huge pockets where there is little or no reception. On the other hand, every square foot of your house is within range of a plug socket.

It's driving me insane!

2004-10-06T16:21:00.000+01:00

Just over a year ago, my lovely little Volkswagen Polo Coupe GT was written off, these things happen - I accepted it and moved on. The DVLA, on the other hand, were obviously rather more attached to the silver bullet than I was (God rest it’s shiny alloys). I got a letter the other day asking me to tax it or declare it off road. I couldn’t find a box on the document to tick to tell them that the only way the car would be on the road again was if it was turned into hundreds of baked bean cans and driven to Sainsbury’s in the back of a van. And so started the online paper trail trying to find how to declare the car was scrapped (which I thought I had a year ago). Turns out I filled out a V11 when I should have filled out part of my V5, given the other part to the scrappy, filled out a V890, gone into the woods at midnight, buried all my tax and insurance documents and sacrifice a goat to the Gods of Vehicle Licensing and Registration. So I’m going to pop into my local friendly branch of the DVLA tomorrow to plead for an end to needless bureaucracy, or at least to try and stop them harassing me over a car that hasn’t got wheels let alone need taxed.

The DC do downloads!

2004-10-06T13:17:00.000+01:00

As well as the divine comedy on dvd, from October 25th is a special downloadable live EP, available exclusively via the official Divine Comedy website. Tracks are: No One Knows (performed live at the Dublin Gaiety), Our Mutual Friend (live demo from 2003) and Three Sisters (performed live at the Dublin Gaiety). To get this unique limited release visit www.thedivinecomedy.com.

Ok, I lifted this from the email the sent me - I'm busy, but I thought you needed to know.

Blog Shares?

2004-10-06T09:52:00.000+01:00

I've been known to participate in a share trading game based on music in my time, so I wasn't overly surprised to hear that there was one for trading in blogs. I was surprised, however, to find that I'm on it! As is another Edinburgh blog I follow. I've no idea how share prices fluctuate (and no time to find out now) but it's an interesting concept. I think I'll just stick to the real markets!

Tuesday Catch Up!

2004-10-05T10:14:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy few days, and I've not really felt up to busy (see this to know why) so some things have suffered. Sunday was occupied by some early morning shopping (11am on a Sunday IS EARLY!) where I bought some 4-plugs, a smoke alarm and an S-Video cable. As a rule of thumb, the number of 4-plugs a man has is a good indication of how geeky/techy he is - and I have plenty! My TV system alone requires 8 plugs........and hence the smoke alarm! The s-video cable was to hook the laptop into the TV; the effect of which was somewhat lackluster as my TV could only cope with 800x600 for some reason; I think a tweak is required. The rest of Sunday was spent relaxing, and yesterday was a complete write off due to work.

I watched Bend it like Beckham over the weekend and it was rubbish, despite it starring Keira Knightley. I'm not adverse to girly films as long as they have something, this had nothing.

Also, it appears we aren't getting evicted! (See here for background) Our landlord has now realised that the market for over priced flats in nice areas has fallen through so he wants to tie us into another 6 month lease instead.

2004-10-05T09:17:00.000+01:00

An interesting archive of 404 pages (funny ones, not the standard ones you swear at every day)

The Best Laid Plans

2004-10-02T11:15:00.000+01:00

I was supposed to be heading up to Dundee tonight to stay at a friend's (i.e. drink), but for one reason or another that has fallen through (still waiting for the full story). Shame, I was going to get the mega bus! which is apparently the Easy Jet principle of buying online applied to public (bus) transport. I'd love to know how the bus drivers get the booking references - maybe they have 3G installed on the buses! Or maybe they swing past the depot on the way...

Today will be filled with relaxing, bit of .NET in the afternoon, followed by relaxing. I am tempted to even go so far as to lay off the sauce tonight, but we all know that's not going to happen.

T-Mobile, T-for terrible!

2004-10-01T19:05:00.000+01:00

It's going to be a long night. I'm still trying to link into 2ergo's SMS delivery system but it isn't going well. They have told me that I am currently using T-Mobile's pipe (because you can stimulate the sender number and appear to be whoever you like!) but apparently it's frubbish and they've just been binning messages. So, I'm trying to use their O2 pipe instead; however, they seem to argueing amongst themselves how their own system actually works. I was told to change the XML I was sending, it didn't work and so they said they'd got it wrong and to change it back to the origional XML, which I KNOW doesn't work! Of course they've all buggered off home for the weekend so I'm now just trying random changes in the desperate hope they might work.

And I've solved it! I was leaving in the tag and since only T-Mobile can handle people setting the originator it was forcing my messages onto their pipe. I was maybe a bit harsh on the 2ergo guys earlier. Let Friday night begin!

linkage

2004-10-01T15:40:00.000+01:00

Japan's young people's expectations about work are changing.

The Crusade Against Evolution

Shares and share alike

2004-10-01T13:22:00.000+01:00

I see the BBC has invented (along with those clever people at FTSE) a new indicater on economies. However, unlike the FTSE 100 or Dow Jones that show how a country's economy is going, the new indicator The BBC Global 30 is intended to show how the global economy is going - taking 30 of the best performers across 10 sectors to give an overall outlook. Just another stat or the stat to end all stats? Who knows.

What's that you say - you don't care about global economics because all you want to do is RAWK?? Well I have just the thing for you, The Kleptones invite you to... "A Night At The Hip-Hopera" - download it (filesharing like bit torrent or from the website) and enjoy vintage Queen mixed with some great Hip Hop tunes. It's much better than you'd expect and is blasting out of my speakers right now!

Just while we are talking about downloading music, I see that the evil empires are gearing up to take on the UK. I don't download music, possibly because I'm scared the Americans will sue me, but I know people who have. I wonder what their threshold is, gigs of music? hundreds of albums? One album? We'll have to wait and see.

Friday comes but once a week

2004-10-01T09:12:00.000+01:00

Great result for Newcastle last night, we won 5-1 taking us through to the next stage 7-2 on aggregate. The opposition weren't great to say the least, but they made up for it in passion. As Shearer said after the match, "They weren't afraid to put in a tackle". This roughly translates into "It was the most dangerous game I've played". The Bnei Sachnin players were amongst the dirtiest I've seen, even worse than Tottenham or Wimbledon (in their day). Two footed lunges, shoulder barges where the player wasn't even going for the ball and much, much more - all with no red cards! Thankfully there were no injuries, but I don't know what the ref was watching.

As it's Friday I'd like to laze, but I've got too much to do. I'm going to build a new interface to 2ergo - or maybe just augment the existing one.

An interesting article from Paully that I'll read when I get the chance.

The Divine Comedy on DVD!

2004-09-29T16:19:00.000+01:00

Nope, not Dante's one, it's the greatest band in the world! And now they've released a DVD of them live at the London Palladium! I'm rather excited about this and will be purchasing it as and when I can......

Extreme Cashless Shopping!

2004-09-29T13:00:00.000+01:00

In a Barcelona club you can now pay through RFID. No biggie I hear you say, the difference is how you keep the RFID emitter about your person. The chip, which emits the unique signal for your account, is injected into your arm! And I quote "The chip is made of glass and is inert so there is no risk of it reacting with my body" - but what happens if someone gives you a dead arm? Doesn't bare thinking about, and don't even start to think about removing it.

In other news, it appears that Former world rally champion Colin McRae will take on Michael Schumacher at December's Race of Champions. My money is on the Scum, despite me not especially liking the charm-less kraut, although my flatmate assures me it's more akin to rallying than F1 and has staked his pennies on the Scot.

It's a really slow news day!

Interesting Software

2004-09-29T09:48:00.000+01:00

http://www.xceedsoft.com/

Last Man Standing

2004-09-28T21:52:00.000+01:00

Having played an energetic (and lacklustre) game of footy I find myself once again at my desk working. I thought disaster had struck and the day been saved, only to start getting this error every time my service runs a thread.

SENDER: SendTopOutstandingMessageOpera() failed to get messages Index and length must refer to a location within the string.Parameter name: length
I've no idea as this object (charged messages) doesn't use the length method, although others do - including the free message sender. I'm just sending a batch of free SMS messages, I'll wait until this run their course to see if that stops.

A quick Google of the error throws up very few useful results, this one looks to be the best.

It must be time to call it a night. After a server reboot (I thought a thread might be caught in a loop and throwing the error) I scanned through the 1000 messages I'd just sent to see if I could spot anything ary. True enough, stamped with a big FAILED, there was an entry in the table with a CLI (phone number) with nothing in it. I'll have to see why the error reporting fingered the wrong man, but I'll leave that to the morning.

Enough work

2004-09-28T17:04:00.000+01:00

OK, that's enough of being serious - here's a link of interest! This vase changes colour with changes in room temp. For all those who had a Global Hypercolor t-shirt back in the 90's (although this won't show up your sweat patches).

Eat Like a Man, search like a robot...

2004-09-28T13:33:00.000+01:00

This book will have to be bought, it sums up my entire ethos around diet. I like food, why spoil it? Link courtesy of Pauly which is strange as he's a Vegan. Ah well, each to their own.

I'm going to spend some time today finding out about Search Engine Optimization, for my real work. It's something I've always been curious about. Some sites courtesy of Tim:

This is a must read http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

Also from the same site http://www.webworkshop.net/doorway-pages-and-links.html has a good explanation of doorway pages and suggests two strategies which they claim work. You can remote into www.citylets.co.uk (a friend's site) and take a look at how they did it.

It is widely accepted that page rank is a logarithm scale with an index of about 5 so to go from 6 to seven you need 5 times as much as you had before etc. etc. Page rank 7 will get us to the top of the tree with respect to parental controls.

Another handy tip it to go to google and type link:www.surfingshield.com and you can see who google thinks links to surfingshield. Using this technique you can find out how others did it and then email referring sites and ask for links.

One more: http://dmoz.org/add.html
OK, another: http://www.webworkshop.net/search_engine_optimization_basics.html
http://www.pagerank.net/link-popularity-checker/ http://www.instantposition.com/link_popularity_check.cfm
http://www.akamarketing.com/

Reminder

2004-09-27T16:48:00.000+01:00

When I can be bothered I'll tell you what's so great about flickr as shown by bizstone

Publicity Stunt!

2004-09-27T10:09:00.000+01:00

I see that everyone's favorite bearded, cardigan wearing entrepreneur (and I don't mean Noel Edmonds) has signed a £14 million deal to give Virgin exclusive rights on the first tourist trip into space. At an expected £115,000 a seat they'd better be serving a decent meal!

Just for added cheesey publicity they are going to name the first craft the VSS Enterprise. I just don't have the words.

Worse for Wear

2004-09-27T08:55:00.000+01:00

I'm not feeling the best this morning after a rather busy day yeserday (and a rather drunken night). All good fun, and I might expand on it later should I feel better. For now, a few links

Something interesting about Google Images

An interesting page for those with SP2 - some of the 'other' work I do is in the deployment of activeX.

Popmachine - a couple of guys I went to school make up this band (with another). Not my taste, but good on them none the less! Try out their music, see if it's your thing.

I'm sure everyone has seen this but it's new to me - Google Fighting!

On the topic of old school associates, I know of one who is apparently blogginf in Seoul - I couldn't find it on Google so if anyone knows the link then let me know.

Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts

2004-09-25T13:29:00.000+01:00

Those nice people at Vodafone called me this morning to tell me that my contract was up and to see if I fancied extending it. I've been with them for 6 or 7 years now and I'm perfectly happy with them as a providor. That said, they have been raising prices steeply in the past few years (my line rental has gone from £12 to £35 without any change in type of contract) and they always strike me as a company who kill you with hidden costs - the monetory equivalent of someone saying "look, over there" before grabbing your bag and running. So upon hearing that it would be an 18 month contract I said thanks, but no thanks. I usually go to the CarPhone Warehouse to get a new phone anyway.

I wonder what phone I'll get this time, I'll definately get a new one as my T610 is looking it's age (1 y/o). I'd like this one, the Sony Ericsson p910! If only I could afford it......

Chill Time

2004-09-25T10:16:00.000+01:00

Last night was a quiet night in, just me and a few glasses of nice whiskey. It's not as sad as it sounds, I could have gone out if I'd had the energy (my flatmate went to Doctors) but I wouldn't have enjoyed it as I was too tired. I'd have had to overdose on vodka and redbull, which is never pretty - especially the next day! So I dug into the sofa, watched some of the Paramount Comedy channel and topped it off with some rousing coverage of The Battle of Britain.

Which reminds me, I must read this when I get the chance, just to see how it all ended.

The F1 GP should be interesting this weekend as Schumacher starts at the back of the grid. He is by far the best driver and is in the best car so the only time the actual race gets interesting is if he has to fight through the traffic. He really should retire for the good of F1, if he'd been on pole position the race would have been pointless. It's on at 6am if anyone wants to catch it live!

Friday Fun? I wish....

2004-09-24T13:46:00.000+01:00

Things are a bit frantic here, lots on, so I won't get to go out and enjoy the sunshine today.

I have, however, signed up to play the National Lottery Online. I've always turned my nose up at the lottery, picturing people clutching their pieces of paper and shouting at the tv as the balls drop - that's not for me. I'm going to be a sideline enthusiast, I've set it on lucky dip* for 8 weeks just to see what happens. If I enjoy checking to see if I'm a winner then I'll keep it rolling, if not then I'll jack it in.

As it's Friday expect a raft of links to comedy sites and interesting articles....

Starting with me catching up on the activities of the BOFH from those nice people at The Register.

*so that, once the 8 weeks are up I can walk away without one week seeing my numbers appear!

Can't have fun, too much work!

2004-09-23T16:13:00.000+01:00

Nothing of note today as I've been working hard trying to get some web services working for people in the US. I've mostly had trouble with System.Security.SecurityException: Requested registry access is not allowed. - the solution to which was to change my machine.config file for .NET to use an account with better priviledges.

Fun shall commence again tomorrow.

Brain Dumping

2004-09-22T20:19:00.000+01:00

A few points to cover today, firstly it's football. I have a widescreen tv and therefore get those annoying black strips at either side when the BBC (or previously ITV) broadcast their coverage. I thought this was just a restriction in their sports technology, but last night BBC Sport Scotland managed to show the Aberdeen V Rangers match in widescreen with no problem. Is this new technology or are we just being robbed of the rest of the pitch by the national broadcasters?

Also, I stumbled upon the Maxis website this morning. In their 'About' they detail a raft of simulation games building up to The Sims 2 and Sim City 4. But there's no mention of A-Train, a game that took a large part of my childhood. Do they disown it?

I really should start using this site for the original concept, that is to remind me to do things. So

1. Get a water bottle for playing football
2. Link to Here as Jules talks about something which weighs on my mind all the time.
3. Fix my fantasy football team!

No Break Pads

2004-09-20T19:47:00.000+01:00

Got my car fixed, for those who have read my previous post on the subject. Apparently the rear left brakes fell off (as they weren't put on properly). I'm not sure if I have the confidence to drive it anymore. One thing I can say is that I'm never taking it back to my current garage again (Citroen (Edinburgh)). I've spent close to £1000 there in the last 4 months and how do they repay me? Do they do a sterling job on my car and maybe give it a good clean inside? Or do they fail to fit the brakes properly putting me in an incredibly dangerous situation on a major road? They came out and fixed the car where I'd had to abandon it as they couldn’t get a transporter there to take it away. I know I've said this before, but this time I mean it. Never again.

Shame though, they seemed like nice guys.

Break Time

2004-09-16T13:44:00.000+01:00

I had more car trouble last night - only this time my breaks failed completely. It was a comedy Hollywood moment where I pumped the breaks and the pedal just went to the floor. Thankfully I was only going slowly along Queensferry Road and the handbreak still worked. After stopping to get some composure they came back to life so I made it over the Forth bridge, but they were making a sound like a plane landing by the end of it - scraping and grinding when I break, like Edward Scissor Hands sliding off a tin roof.

I've no idea what the problem is this time, I had the rear breaks completely replaced in the past two months.

So much hassle, such little reward

2004-09-15T14:34:00.000+01:00

Nectar points are a big pile of rubbish. I've been collecting them since they started and I've only got 3500 points - which means I can have a big mac or a DVD or something. What ever happened to decent loyalty schemes? Although I never shop there and am not a part of their scheme, Somerfield's reward card gives you money off products there and then. Essential the idea is you can buy this 8 pack of beer for £10, or with a reward card for £8. No messing around, just money off. I'm incredibly impatient and so the instant gratification puts a smile on my face!

Further to this, Boots deserve some recognition for their Advantage Card. I used to buy my lunch in there as it was tastey and cheap, then I got an advantage card and started getting mega points for my already cheap lunch. Now the girly can go and spend them on eye cream and expensive makeup - earning me priceless browny points!

How does this Hoover work?

2004-09-14T10:01:00.000+01:00

We’re getting a flat inspection today. My flatmate and I are part of the growing band of would be first time buyers who are priced out of the market, so we have to rent off others to put a roof over our heads. I know the arguments – I’m just paying someone else’s mortgage – but it’s not that simple. Anyway, a representative from the letting agency is gracing us with his presence so that he can check we haven’t burnt down the kitchen / knocked through any walls / been sacrificing goats in the living room. To be honest, I dn’t think the letting agency could care less what we do with the flat as long as we don’t bother them, but the landlord wants to get the flat valued so it has to be in order. The very fact that some greasy estate agent (I don’t like estate agents, they are parasites close to the evils of job agencies) is coming round to put a figure on what is essentially my home means that the landlord is considering selling. A wise move in my opinion, he’ll get close to £250k for this flat (mostly due to the stupid Scottish system of selling) and unless house prices continue to skyrocket then, at our level of rent, he’s better off with the money in the building society (or whatever high yield portfolio he feels like stuffing it into). It’s a shame though, I really liked living here.

Ringing in my ears

2004-08-31T18:41:00.000+01:00

Ok, so that's me back from the Leeds Festival. It's quite a journey down from here to there, thankfully I wasn’t driving. The weekend capped off 2 weeks of gigs, including The Mull Historical Society, The Charlatons, The Zutons as single gigs and seeing (in alphamabetical order) Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines, Morrissey, Razorlight and The White Stripes at the Leeds Festival.

Out of that vast selection, The Zutons were far and away the best – their on stage energy and sheer talent won through for them. Hopefully they are headed for big things!

Where's Stelios When You Need Him?

2004-08-19T23:22:00.000+01:00

It's really hard to get a new idea out there on the internet. Build a better mouse trap and they will beat a path to your door - but how do you tell people you've built a better mouse trap? The internet was once heralded as the method for small time actors to play on the big stage. But how do you get the traffic when the big guys have it sewn up? What’s that you say? Spam? Let’s not go down that route, although it may come to that if a better solution doesn’t rear its ugly head.

There are banner exchanges, but that means hosting a banner on your website which looks unprofessional. I know you give a little to get a little and it’s better than nothing, but still not a great idea. It’s software based so spraying the free download sites such as download.com may suffice, but that’s just another string to the bow. We need a solution, and we need it fast.

Linkage

2004-08-14T18:15:00.000+01:00

You may notice the links down the left, they are mostly for my own benefit as they are all sites I regularly visit when I’m within reach of a computer. One which I’d like to take the time today to draw your attention to is Ten Years of my Life – don’t click it yet, let me tell you more. A man called Matthew Haughey has started a project where he takes a picture a day for 10 years. In his own words “Although it sounds like a lot of work, it's only about 3650 images” – hmm, only. But he seems keen, and he’s a great photographer so have a look – especially if you are like me and enjoy starting your day with a quick, inconsequential surf.

On Her Majesty's Service

2004-08-07T22:42:00.000+01:00

So many people work in computers these days as a service. I right code which helps others to work and live their lives – I provide a service. They say that the UK’s future is in its service industry, where did this service industry start and what would I be doing as a job 30 years ago; before the advent of computers and the rapid advancement of technology?

I’d like to say that I’d be something cool like an aircraft pilot or racing driver, but that’s just pining back to kid’s dreams. Sadly, I’d probably be an accountant or some other kind of paper pusher – thank God for computers! Sit back and have a think about what you’d be working as if computers never existed? Oh, wait, your not enough of a geek to be affected – ah well.