December 21, 2005
December 20, 2005
Winding down
Tomorrow afternoon I will start what will probably be about two weeks of offline life, as I spend Christmas with the family and then fly out to Latvia's capital, Riga, to spend New Year with friends (Nic, Paul, John, Nick, Martin). I'm closing comments on the blog (don't want to return to a spam-infested mess), updating spamassassin on the servers, and generally wondering how I'll cope without the internets for two whole weeks ... *gulp*
See y'all on the other side. Merry Christmas!
First Aid
Reading bsag on First Aid reminded me of a couple of things. Back in Easter 2002, I was on holiday with my sister and nephews at Butlins, bastion of the great British holiday experience (or something). During the few days we were there, the eldest nephew, Tom, took to climbing the tree opposite the chalet. Like all good kids, he ignored my warnings about dead trees and brittle branches, and was soon at the top of the tree saying "look at me, I'm the best tree climber in the world!"
Inevitably, a branch snapped and in just a few seconds he was relegated to the most unconscious tree climber in the world. Here's where I learnt a useful first aid lesson: don't try and lift up people that have taken a fall, wait for them to wake up first if possible, so you can make sure there's no broken neck etc. Seems obvious in hindsight, but I didn't know it at the time. Thankfully helpful bystanders did.
On Saturday night, I was making my way to a takeaway after having a few beers (and a few more beers, and a fair amount of wine too). Crossing over a notorious bridge in the middle of Norwich, I was unsurprised to see someone lying flat on their back on the other side, having slipped on the icy slope. Every winter this spot is icy and polished smooth by people crashing to the ground. The unconscious guy was being prodded and lifted by his mates, so Paul and I stepped in and advised them to leave him to regain consciousness first. Always tricky, when you're not sure if it's a concussion or excess drinking.
Anyway, the guy eventually came to, and no doubt had the worst hangover of his life the following day. But it seems to me there's a real need for a first aid website listing "things you really ought to know", or maybe something like a "tip of the day" mailing list. Just a thought.
December 19, 2005
It's a wonderful internet
For all those cursing Amazon for failing to deliver yet again: it's a wonderful internet.December 17, 2005
December 16, 2005
Dixons monkeys
"I'd like a 1GB ultra II compact flash card"
"We only have 512mb, but I can do you two of them for £X"
"Bargain. That'll do!"
Gets home ...
"Hmmm. Compact flash != SD cards. Gah!"
December 15, 2005
Variable Amazon pricing
I've been looking around for the best price on a Canon EOS 350D (for the history see Cameras and Cameras revisited), when I noticed that in the space of just a few hours, Amazon's price has changed.
Early this morning, the 350D was £522 (click pic for large version):
But after checking the page again a few minutes ago, I noticed the price has jumped to £555.58:
Look at the Amazon Sales Rank: between the two views, this camera has gone from 47 to 42. So as it gets more popular, Amazon puts the price up. Sneaky!
December 14, 2005
Cameras revisited
The insurance money is finally on the way for my lost Kyocera Finecam, so it's time to make a choice on the replacement.
Right now I'm torn between a pocket-friendly go-anywhere camera like the Canon PowerShot SD550 and a prosumer like the Canon EOS 350D ... my budget almost certainly won't stretch to anything more expensive.
Any recommendations or horror stories?
On being British
Via Ewan, Is He Cute or Is He British?:
Decades of BBC and English Lit classes have genetically programmed the American female to believe the British are culturally superior beings, skipping around Oxford making puns with their Byron under one arm and a pot of marmalade under the other.
Never Byron, never marmalade, and never Oxford (Keats and Cambridge thank you very much) - but yes, the rest of it is true ;-)
December 13, 2005
December 9, 2005
Who stole my voice?
Wow, this is strange. Our primary server has been down since mid-morning when the masterswitch blew up (I'm not sure it did anything quite as exciting as actually blowing up, but it sure stopped working in a hurry). After it was replaced, our server failed to come up cleanly, which meant one very hurried trip to London to give it some TLC. Once again, the evil that is LILO had managed to fry itself, which it does whenever anyone sneezes at it or looks at it funny.
So here's the strange bit. I think I'm more distressed at not being able to blog than I am at not being able to send or receive email. The idea of not being able to broadcast "I'm alright, we're having some minor technical difficulties is all, and by the way, LILO sucks!" is quite disturbing. Like someone stole my voice.
December 7, 2005
Who am I, revisited
Suprglu is an aggregator of personal content from the various social software sources, such as flickr, del.icio.us, etc. So now I can answer the question of who am I? by simply pointing to My Glu.December 6, 2005
December 3, 2005
December 2, 2005
Beyond Java
Tim Bray, talking about Bruce Tate's Beyond Java:
Bruce claims that the "continuation" facility, commonly found in dynamic languages, snaps neatly onto the problem of making the Web look like a linear dialogue.
He goes on to say that both Ruby on Rails and Seaside support continuations.
Tim, I have some good news for you. The Apache Cocoon framework also supports continuations in Javascript, and has done for some time now. It's a stable and mature implementation, and if you prefer to use Java, well, there's Java flow too.