Everyone in web development knows that the absolute worst time to go live with a new site is on a Friday or before you go on holiday.
So let me slice and dice with fate and announce my latest project, the Gameware Development website.
There is, quel surprise a bit of a problem in one version of Opera, but it just wouldn't be right if it was perfect first time out. Bah. :-/
We're all a bit sad here today. Our poor little Rhianna Rabbit died this morning. Hard to say what it was - possibly a tumour or an abscess behind her eye. It came on quite suddenly but she's always had an odd-shaped head, so maybe it only became fatal recently. She was only 2 and we'll miss her terribly.
Sarah has decided not to get the Jamie Oliver calendar for her mum. Quite right, too. It hurts just thinking about it...
[update: they cropped the calendar and there doesn't seem to be another image online. I may just have to make my way to Boots in the very near future...]
[update2: Mr. Mojojojo is a star indeed. He's managed to snag the image for me and now I don't have to go out in the rain! Ha!. See "more" for Jamie in all his glory.]
Funny. After all this time online, I've only once met an online friend in-person. At that time, I'd seen a photo, so I pretty much knew what to expect, but yesterday was a whirl of meeting online folks in London with no idea of what they would look like. Preconceptions are funny things, but I half expected everyone to be sort of quintessential nerdy types. I'm not sure why - I guess it's because I'm stuck in some timewarp where only geeky people spend their time online. I'm clearly wrong.
First stop was a meeting with the very lovely Joe Bloggs at the Tate Modern. We sat in the cafe and chatted about this and that - mostly the difference between Japan and the UK and bringing up kids in the two countries. It was a real shame we didn't have more time, but I was off to Highbury for the Arsenal/Rotherham match and had to run off. Nevertheless, we did see the giant sun hanging in the Turbine hall. I had, incredibly, not heard about it, but it was hugely impressive and quite awe-inspiring and I'm planning on going back to spend some more time there soon.
The Arsenal match was courtesy of a group of very nice and often terribly silly Arseblog folk and a good 15 or so turned up. It was a huge laugh and a nicer group of people you'll never meet. I didn't have any picture in my mind about people's appearance perse, but everyone seemed strangely familiar on the one hand and not like I expected on the other. Like I said, I expected geekier but was happily proven wrong. Quite wrong.
It was, by the way, my first match at "The Home of Football" and whilst warned that it was bound to be dishwater dull, it turned out quite exciting and was somewhat of a record with nearly 14,056 penalty kicks at the end. OK, maybe it was only 17. Still.
I was, however, threatened with dismemberment if I brought my camera, so there are no photos of the events. Soz!
Science-fictiony, but quite believeable, the Guardian takes a look at Life in 2020.
And on a similar vein, Martin at the SunPig sent along this link to an "Earth-sheltered" house in Cumbria that was featured in Channel 4's Grand Designs. I think underground housing is quite a nice idea. It reminds me of stories about how gardens planted on the roofs of city buildings could provide useful habitats. I've also admired their reed bed sewage treatment ponds.
It all sounds slightly promising. We live in hope.
A few more photos from our London Jaunt - these specifically from the Tower of London.
I also noticed that my entry got into Photo Friday's Noteworthy list which is a nice surprise.
So Bill Thompson terms comment spam. Hmm, I don't think so.
I was in London over the last couple of days and managed to squeeze in a trip to the Tower of London - someplace I've not managed to see before. I've got a few photos to post, but thought I'd pull these out first.
I had no idea that there was any significance to the ravens at the Tower of London when I took these, but it appears that the entire monarchy relies on their continued presence at the Tower. I did think they looked exceptionally well-fed.
I've got a functioning mobile and I've got a mostly functional moblog.
I had hoped to include the RSS feed from the moblog in this layout, but am having trouble getting this caching RSS Parser to work.
Nevermind. I'm off to London for a couple of days. I may very well post to the moblog and then again, I may not. Suppose it depends on whether or not I have anything to say!
(Sounds a familiar title - have I used it before, I wonder?)
A couple of my current and upcoming projects appear to have some mobile functionality to them, but flipping heck, is it a nightmare sorting out how and what stuff can be done.
It amazes me that this hasn't changed significantly since Creature Labs first proposed a game concept to a big American mobile operator a couple of years ago. Back then, they were bafflingly unable to provide technical specifications for any of the systems they were attempting to implement (3G, not surprisingly). I'm still having trouble figuring it out. I'm not sure I understand why all the operators don't have SMS to email gateways, why it isn't really easy to send images from phone to computer and back (mine seem to change size in transit even when MMSing to myself).
The poor bloke from Carphone Warehouse "head office" called just now and got an earful. I've had so much trouble with my phone - GPRS, WAP, and SMS have all given me gyp and it all stems from the fact that you never actually speak to anyone other than a motley collection of call centres - all of whom serve all the networks. It's no wonder you get three different answers to any one question. In the end he admitted that their "head office" was, itself, a call centre.
With any luck, I pick up a replacement handset today and with even more luck it will work. In the meantime, I found this free, no sign-up SMS To eMail Gateway. Very nice site - well organised and potentially quite useful. Anyone know of any others?
Except, bollocks. I can't actually test it out because I can't send SMS messages at the moment.
My clever girl has won the runner-up prize in the City Council's "Wildlife in the Garden" art competition. It was also the Environment Council's 3rd birthday and so there was a little ceremony to go along with the birthday cake.
Did you know that over 1/4 of Cambridge is private gardens? That's quite a lot of potential living space for wildlife if people garden for it and encouraging this is a big part of the Environment Council's remit. The top prizes were digital cameras, and as I think I've mentioned before, digital photography is a great way of encouraging people to look around them a little more (and a little closer).
Either the internet is shite today or I am. It is my considered opinion that it is, indeed, the latter. Thanks to the silly arses at Arseblog, I bring you two totally unrelated, yet somehow strangely related links.
Mysteries Incorporated is a big ol' jar of Scooby listiness: Scooby Snaqs, Scooby FAQs, Scooby lyrics and Scooby scripts. Zionks.
The Gematriculator (on the other hand) is a "service that uses the infallible methods of Gematria developed by Mr. Ivan Panin to determine how good or evil a web site or a text passage is."
Just so you know.
Nothing happens on the DIYHomeFront and then three come along at once. Maybe I've confused metaphors here, but whatever.
Popped into Habitat to order some shelving for the dining room which was good timing since it was a 10% off day for some reason. It was also 10% off lighting so I picked up some little lights for the fireplace as well.
The Christmas display was up, not suprisingly and I couldn't resist these little unidentifiable critters. Actually, I did resist them in the end and took a photo instead...
Believe it or not, a little DIYing got done yesterday. I've gone with white paint and trim because, well, because I have a lot of white paint. You can spend a lot of money on paint, you know, especially the posh ones. Haven't done the ceiling yet because it's a miserable, horrible job. I suppose I really do need to before the new floorboards go down.
Either that or just not look up...
By the way... malaria tablets are really expensive. £40 for fifteen plus £8 to the surgery for prescribing them to me. And they'll probably make me sick, I'm told.
How nice.
Anyone else watch Michael Portillo as a single mum and felt hugely disappointed that he's a Tory? I've always liked him (probably because I discovered the UK political scene only recently), but I think the programme made a lot of people warm to him as well.
Portillo Switch Campaign anyone?
Well, almost all. Very small insects fly in air that's like swimming through treacle to them, but for most everything else, from bees to baracuda, one number describes the beating of wings and tails.
A quantity called the Strouhal number measures how efficiently an animal cruises. The number describes how much up-and-down movement a wing or tail makes relative to a creature's forward speed. It is calculated as stroke speed multiplied by size, divided by forward speed.
Flying and swimming is most efficient at Strouhal numbers of 0.2-0.4. The cruising speeds of everything from bumble-bees to blue whales, via mackerel, locusts, pigeons and bats, fall in this range, Taylor's team finds. Bumble-bees go faster than whales, at about 30 kilometres per hour to whales' 20.
I've had a hell of a day today, dealing with a wide range of technical problems from internet connections and LANs to mobile phone services. I've spent absolute hours on the phone and even managed to lock myself out of my house. Modern life, hey? Promises you the world and then pulls it all out from under you without so much as a by-your-leave.
I'm only temporarily back, but before everything went Pete Tong this morning, I ran across a story linked from Riverbend's Baghdad Burning: US soldiers bulldoze farmers' crops.
It was bound to happen. I've run out of internet. Or maybe it was just a slow news day.
But just because I've not been anywhere interesting today, doesn't mean I didn't find anything useful. We did, for example, make Caramel, which has turned out quite fudgie. It has an unintentional, ever-so-slightly burnt tang to it. Which is nice. Really.
And when looking for the derivation of a bit of rhyming slang (as you do), I ran across "The Fabulous Harry Monk and his Fizbin Drop".
Chris Eubank has staged a one man protest against the war in Iraq.
For my American friends, he's a flamboyant former boxer who was (is?) the star of his own Ozzy-style reality TV series. He wears jodphurs whilst driving a giant semi trailer-truck. Mad as a hatter, he is.
Again. Not surprisingly, trips to foreign locales gets one thinking about cameras and the fact that you can buy tax-free at the Dixons at Heathrow. The 3.1 million pixel Fuji S5000 is only £300 and has a really rather lovely 10x Optical zoom and wide angle lens. The S602 (also 3.1 million pixels) has slightly better everything else for £82 more but only a 6x Zoom.
The S5000 uses weird xD-Picture card that I've never heard of while the S602 uses both Smart Media and CF, of which I currently have a total of about 240Mb.
They make it difficult on purpose, you know.
I still quite like Fat Face, but I've got a new favourite clothes shop that's just moved into town. Not quite so "patterny" as FatFace has become although I did buy a little shirt with a connect the dots rabbit on the front. Really, how could I not?
Watching (but certainly not enjoying) Pop Idol, we started talking about the different nose shapes of the contestants and analysing our own noses. Who knows why we do these things, but anyway, I wanted to have a look at what some of these facial features mean. I did a bit of a google and found this Introduction to Physiognomy - Face Reading the Facial Features.
Want to find more, though.
Have something to confess? Go on - tell the world. Anonymously, of course (or so you hope)! Some of them are deathly serious, some very sad, but loads are absolutely hilarious. I'm pretty sure that men make up the vast percentage of confessors and am positive theirs are the most disgusting. 971558845 is my favourite so far.
Thanks a bunch, Ash. I was just on my way to bed as well. I may be up all night at this rate...
As I said - I'm having a little trouble with comment spam-bots, so I've now taken the comments form off the individual pages and replaced them with a pop-up comments form. I think that could work mainly because I'm assuming that bots won't be able to access a javascript controlled window.
This is, however, just a guess on my part, so if I'm wrong, please do let me know...
Getting tons of comments spam at the mo. Rogi clued me into this solution and I'm in the process of coming up with some variations on the theme.
Please excuse any building dust.
(Update: because I can't deal with going through every entry and marking the comments as closed, I've taken the comment form off the individual archives. This means that the only place people can comment is in the pop-up comments boxes. At least for now. I'm going to have to have a think...)
Ow, me arm hurts.
Update: really, really OW.
Updated Update: I don't normally talk about my personal internal state on here (at least I hope I don't), however since this is supposed to be a sort of a travelogue, I should point out that I had the Hep A/Typhoid jab and I'm now feeling hot, headachy, a little nauseous and my arm is killing me. Apparently these are known side effects.
Did I mention ow?
Far from infinite, the universe may actually be quite small and 'shaped like a football' says some folks at NASA.
So, perhaps all those people who think football is the be-all and end-all may actually be right. Go figure.
A several thousand year-old limb is causing a stir in Siberia as scientists speculate that it may support the existence of the Yeti in that region.
Frankly, if the photo on the article is anything to go by, I'd be pretty certain it's a bear.
What a bunch of losers. OK, if you're a practising Catholic, I'm very sorry, but I'm also very sorry for you because the Catholic church is obviously completely off their heads when they insist that "condoms don't stop Aids" because they "have little holes in them that the virus passes through". Some are also telling people that condoms are laced with the Aids virus.
One could almost sense some sort of conspiracy to kill off whole swathes of poor people, but maybe I'm going too far and they're simply very, very stupid indeed.
Quite simple, but interesting Personality Test from the BBC's Science programme, The Human Mind.
Extraversion
Some people like lots of stimulation; they want people around them, activity and excitement, whilst others prefer to be able to focus on things in a calm and quiet environment. Most people prefer a blend of the two extremes although your answers suggest you have a preference for the livelier situations. This may help you if you work in busy, hectic and very sociable settings but you may get bored and even frustrated when things are too quiet.
Confidence
Some people make decisions very easily and tend not to worry about them before or afterwards while, at the other extreme, some people are so careful and cautious that the decisions never get made! Taking a cautious approach can be a good thing (do you want to fly with a pilot that is so free from worry and concern that she never checks her controls and instruments and doesn't bother to communicate with air-traffic control?) and you seem to have described yourself as someone who does tend to be quite cautious and careful. This can be very important in detailed work or areas were mistakes can have a major cost although you may find yourself avoiding risks and many cautious people wish they were bolder.
Openness
While some people like experimenting with new things and ideas, others prefer traditional methods and taking a very practical approach to problems.
Your answers suggest that you may more interested in the creative, new and experimental aspects of situations than dealing with the routine practicalities. While your dreams and plans may not always be achievable, you are likely to be very open to new ideas and ways of doing things.
Agreeableness
Most people want to be able to get on with others but to some it is the most important thing in the world, whilst others are quite happy to upset someone else if it means that things get done.
Your answers suggest that you can be firm with people when you need to be but that getting on with others is still important to you. Like most people you would rather avoid conflict but are not prepared to put up with being treated badly by others.
Conscientiousness
Some people like everything to be well planned, tidy and organised, whilst others prefer to deal with things as they come up and appear to work in absolute chaos.
Your answers suggest that you don't like having things too structured or being tied down and you can cope quite well without having to have everything organised. This may make it hard to find things at times or for colleagues to know where you are or what you are doing, but you probably find coping with the unexpected (the things your colleagues didn't plan for!) easier than many.
You know I've said Time of Defiance is a great game and you should play it (plug, plug). The game is so good, in fact, that it's a fabulous 27% better than as-good-as-it-gets. Good or what?
Oh looky, a glossary of football terms, because some people only laugh and point when I ask questions...
Interestingly, we were just discussing the fact that children seem to be genetically programmed to dislike certain foods and speculated it was a survival mechanism to protect against dangerous toxins and food poisoning.
We also wondered if getting kids to eat their greens wasn't a bit of a waste of time, therefore, and not worth losing too much sleep over. There's a good chance that their little bodies aren't as desperately in need of the vitamins that leafy green veg provides as older folk. Getting them to eat fruit sounds far less stressful for the parents.
My daughter's school is just about to change their status from a "Leading Edge" college to a "Foundation" college. Does anyone have any idea what this means? The letter from the school is a masterpiece of marketing gobbeldygook typical of the Labour government. Things like, " increased flexibility to promote innovation", "continued raising of standards" and "excellent schools should be a force for levering up standards across the system".
Please tell me this isn't code for, "we'd like to start charging tuition"?
I just dialed my home phone number and was rather surprised to hear a local health authority's answerphone. I dialed twice to make sure and then called NTL to see what could be wrong. Apparently a whole block of Cambridge numbers are doing this. Poor NTL - they're so messed up at the moment.
I also called my local surgery this morning to reschedule my travel check. Again they suggested I call on Thursday as they only do same day appointments now. I double-checked with the nurse to find out if this was actually a government ruling or some local thing and she assured me that the government requires this. Apparently it's a part of the GP contract that was just agreed.
Any wagers as to how long this will carry on?
Frustratingly, it takes 10 days for my T-mobile phone number to transfer to O2. I was really very anxious to try the MMS stuff, since I'd managed to set up a quick Moblog using pMachine. Without the MMS service, I can't really incorporate images. I spent rather a lot of time on the phone with T-mobile trying to get the service activated. It only just works. I can send a photo to myself and sometimes it works, other times it sends me a text message saying I'd have to see it online. Quite bizarre.
WAP doesn't work either, which is also frustrating. I've always liked WAP, despite the tales of doom and gloom and "it's already dead". And apparently I'm right. So nyah.
I think we all know that the mobile industry is a bit of a dog's breakfast when it comes to standards and protocols. It's certainly getting better, what with J2ME, MMS and yes, WAP.
But damn, why do manufacturers make their accessories so specific? This Gamepad and little car are due for release from Sony-Ericsson, but only for their new, top of the line, Z600.
Bastards. I'd be in there like a shot if it would fit on my new T610.
And, after all that, today is World Animal Day. I'm off to hug a bunny (a happy healthy domestic bunny, I hasten to add).
It's really quite inevitable when wild animals are used for entertainment purposes.
Life animal exports really must be stopped. Fifty thousand sheep living aboard a disease-ridden transport ship with no sunlight for months on end is one of the most disgusting things I've ever heard. I read about this weeks ago, and am shocked to learn (from Joe) that they are still there.
How can the world allow this to happen? The amount of bad karma being wracked up is on all our heads.
Right, so after all that other nonsense, I got to pay £30 for the privilege of waiting a good half hour to fill in a form to send money to my hotel that doesn't take credit cards and I come home to this:
Oh happy day.
Another little task in town was to get my daughter a mobile phone and upgrade mine since my contract is now a year old. I wanted the Sony Ericsson T610 with the camera phone but I wasn't prepared to pay anything for it.
When I got to the shop, however, it appeared that, since I don't make many calls, T-mobile wanted to charge me £75 upgrade plus £100 for the phone. That's absurd and I told the guy so. He agreed but said I could switch providers, keep my own number and get the phone I wanted for free.
Fan-bloody-tastic. That'll show them. However, I needed to talk to them to confirm that I was me at which point the woman proceeded to negotiate. In the end I persuaded her to waive the upgrade. As the salesman started to sort it out, we found that the T-mobile woman hadn't waived the cost of the phone and it would still cost me another £100. I should coco!
So, we went throught the process again and now I had to choose between O2 and Vodafone. Vodafone was a little cheaper per month, but since Vodafone sponsor ManU and O2 sponsor Arsenal, I found myself unable to go for Vodafone. I felt a little silly revealing this to the salesman, but he admitted himself that he'd never go with Vodafone for the same reason.
I thought that was funny and indicative of the strength of feeling amongst football supporters in this country. It also made me think that in a lot of ways, team sponsorship may very well be counterproductive.
Happy ending though. The T610 is very groovy and although I'm unlikely to send MMS to anyone, I rather like the idea of carrying yet another little camera.
I've always been a huge fan of socialised medicine and very pleased with the NHS in general, however, something is certainly going wrong at present and I have a funny feeling it's the Labour government.
First the Foundation Hospital fiasco that Tony seems unwilling to back down on despite protests from his party and constituents (democracy? I hardly think so). Now, another barmy plan is in the works.
I made an appointment for my travel check which, just to waste time, is two appointments. One to tell you what shots you need, another for the actual shots. When I got to the surgery, there was no appointment for me. OK, so that's a human error and I can live with that, but the WHO says I need my shots 4-6 weeks in advance, so this seemed problematic. "Is there anywhere else I can go?" I asked.
The receptionist gave me the number of the BA Travel Centre, which is a private clinic and I gave them a call. They were very helpful and told me exactly what shots I needed over the phone, but the cost of the shots was more than I can afford - a couple of hundred pounds. Nevertheless, she told me that I only needed them 12 days in advance, so it seemed possible to get it done on the NHS.
I went back into the surgery to make an appointment only to find out that new government rules meant that appointmets can now only be made on the same day - no longer in advance! Not just for travel checks, but for everything! Of course, next week is new student registrations, so she suggested the only day I could call is next Thursday as Monday through Wednsday is completely booked up with registrations.
I found this extraordinary and asked how they possibly thought it could work. She said no one was happy about it and were convinced that it wouldn't work, but that there was nothing they could do about it.
Time for a new government, I think. Preferably one that lets the Health Service get on with providing health services rather than getting involved where they clearly haven't a clue!
Good old Bigfoot. First he does then he doesn't exist. I could have sworn that climber Reinhold Messner who first claimed to have come face to face with a Yeti went on to say it was a black bear, but I couldn't find the story. Now, however, a police expert claims he has 'proof' Bigfoot exists.
Of course, it was only a week ago when a row erupted between the Nepalese and a Japanese scientist who claimed that the yeti was nothing more than a case of linguistic mistaken identity
Ooh, remember that Japanese Earth Simulator announced back in April? The supercomputer that's 10 times more powerful than any other computer? Well, the results are in and are due to be presented at a 3 day conference here in Cambridge.
I'd love to go to that. I hope they can simulate the effects of Russia dropping out of Kyoto.
I got both my tickets and visa application in the post today. Still one or two things to do before I've finished preparatory bits and pieces, including vaccinations and actually applying for the Visa...
Because of the sanctions, credit cards aren't accepted in Myanmar, so hotel reservations for the nights I arrive and depart, while easy enough to make online are rather more difficult to actually confirm. I still need to get to the bank to transfer the funds directly to their account. Costs extra, of course.
It also means that I'll have to bring cash for any other purchases. Buying gifts and souveniers will also be interesting, and possibly not too easy or fulfilling since exports are severly restricted.
In precisely a month I'm off on a journey and although I'm incredibly excited about it, I've been putting off blogging it because my destination is a little controversial. It is, however, an important trip for me and I really want to record it, so I'm taking the plunge and announcing it now so I can mark the whole trip - from soup to nuts, as it were.
Now, the thing is, the tickets are confirmed and there's no turning back, so I'm respectfully requesting that people please don't chide me for this. I've thought long and hard and know the pros and cons. OK?
OK. Read on.
My beautiful, wonderful, and incredibly generous cousin has invited me to go with her on a trip to Myanmar (Burma) for a week and a bit. The only cost to me is the airfare - she and her husband are paying for everything else. Needless to say, it's a difficult offer to refuse and refuse it I most certainly am not.
It's controversial because, as you may know, Myanmar is governed by a military junta and is currently undergoing sanctions by the US government as a result of their suppression of democracy and various human rights violations. Obviously this makes things difficult and not a little scary. I also know that my friend Francis got a bit of stick from people who didn't approve of his trip to Myanmar at the beginning of the year and the Lonely Planet guides were chastised for even providing information to would-be travelers. Hence my trepidation in blogging the trip.
Lonely Planet is a good first stop in any event as they list the pros and cons of visiting the country:
Reasons Not to GoReasons to Go
- International tourism can be seen to give a stamp of approval to the SPDC
- Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD have called on the international community to boycott travel to Myanmar until the candidates elected in 1990 are allowed to form a government
- The government keeps travellers away from areas where forced labour or repression of minorities is occurring
- It is difficult to avoid some government-owned businesses, tourism sites and transport, and impossible to avoid the mandatory purchase of US$200 worth of FECs (Foreign Exchange Certificates)
- Forced labour has been used to construct some of the country's tourism infrastructure
- Tourism remains one of the few industries to which ordinary Burmese have access. Any reduction in tourism means a reduction in local income-earning opportunities
- It is becoming increasingly possible to travel in Myanmar without staying in government-owned hotels, using government-owned transport etc
- Many pro-democracy activists within Myanmar itself argue that sanctions are counter-productive, and that economic development can lead to political liberalisation
- Keeping the Burmese isolated from international witnesses to internal oppression may only cement the government's control
Add to this the fact that I am an enthusistic (although admitedly inconsistent) student of Buddhism and anthropology with a particular interest in Tibet, Southeast Asia and India and there was really no way I could not take up this opportunity.
Right. So that's that. I'm going. More anon. Ever so much more...