Right, should now work in everything, to a greater or lesser degree.
I, for one, am really looking forward to the smoking ban that’s coming
in at the start of July. While I don’t hold anything against smokers
personally, I am fed up of getting home with hair and clothes that stink of
smoke. Actually, the main
reason
for this
post is that I’ve just discovered how to do these
funky curves in CSS, and wanted to show this off! 🙂
Friends on Facebook will already know my broadband suffered an outage on Saturday. Well, actually it’s still out. The set-top box stopped responding at 06.50 on Saturday morning, and the usual prodding didn’t bring it back to life, so I did what any computing professional would do in this scenario – unplugged it from the mains, and plugged it back in.
Unfortunately, it didn’t actually work – instead of springing back into life, it sat there looking at me with all it’s LEDs and bar segments on. 88:88 is not what you really want to be seeing on your STB.
At that point I had a nasty feeling that it might have been in the middle of flashing it’s firmware or something (I didn’t actually bother to turn on the TV to see if there were any messages to this effect.. rebooting the STB is a fairly regular occurrence), but it was well and truly door-stopped.
Nice man from Virgin media is coming tomorrow to give us a new one (hooray), but in the meantime I’m rediscovering the ‘joys’ of dial-up Internet. I’d forgotten how painful and frustrating it is to have stuff trickling down at 56k. I’d never really minded about the spam coming in (my spam filter eats it before I see it), but when you see 60 messages coming down … oh…. so …. slowly … and none of them are for real. Arrggg.
Then there’s trying to just pop onto Google maps while you’re on the phone to someone – but no, doesn’t work. Grrrr.
I did manage to get a whole bluetooth GPRS thing going with my Samsung on Orange (a whole 115 Kbps too), but my contract doesn’t include any data, so that would work out even more expensive then the dial-up.
For what it’s worth, the magic was actually straightforward:
at+cgdcont=1,"IP","orangeinternet"
*99#I found this info on various sites, such as this one.
Still, a useful reminded of the importance of anti-bloat on websites. MySpace is a particularly bad offender over dial-up, incidentally. It’s slow over broadband, let alone over a piece of wet string.
It’s coming back.
I never used to be able to see a guitar anywhere without starting to get itchy fingers – wanna play it, wanna play it!! I don’t know at what point it went away, but some point over the last 5 years my desire to play the guitar has waned.
To be sure when someone like KT Tunstall came along I had a minor relapse, but not the same craving I used to have. I think it was probably to do with having a baby, because (a) that left me too tired to do anything sensible, and (b) playing it would only wake him up, and the absolute cardinal number one rule of parenthood (early parenthood at least) is
One of the few times a blink is justified, I think. Actually maybe not, but I’ll leave it in for now*.
Anyway, we were away with out church last weekend, at Sneaton Castle, and the guy playing in our sessions had a gorgeous Taylor… and my fingers started itching!
He let me play it, so I had a luscious half an hour session of pure indulgence, just me and the Taylor. It was fab. And just this evening, it’s been another half an hour – maybe more – of hammering out power chords and worship songs and some of my own songs (had to blow the dust off those, must were written last millennium). Really really enjoyed.
Guitar playing James just might be back. 🙂
*Turns out <blink> isn’t standards compliant, so it’s come out. Probably for the best.
I’ve just discovered Facebook. I’d heard about it quite a lot – conversations on the train, articles in the press, stuff on various websites – but couldn’t really be bothered with Yet Another Social Network Website. I’d given MySpace a good stab, but after 6 months or so I still only had one friend, and that was only because I organised the friend invite thing via e-mail. I also don’t really like the feel of MySpace – probably a sign of my age, but I find it really hard to (a) find anyone, and (b) read anything about anyone once I’d found them.
Cue facebook.
I’ve been on for exactly one week, and I have 29 friends already – 12 or so are old contacts from London, mainly ex workmates or friends from church, some of which I’ve kept in touch with… others I hadn’t had any contact with for 5 years or more! The rest are all contacts from up here in Leeds; mainly my old job in Computing at the university, but some from Harrogate. Actually that’s not true – there are one or two fairly random contacts!
It’s really nice having a connection with those guys again. Just finding out where they are, what they’re up to; that kind of thing.
Whoops – up to 30 in the time it’s taken to write this! I love it! 🙂
Just got a curious e-mail:
have you read the book on casino royal you silly little man, you have no idea what you are talking about.
I can only assume this is a reference to this blog entry from Nov 2006, which was all about how much I disliked Casino Royale the film.
This is curious in lots of ways – as far as I can tell I don’t know the sender, yet he or she waded through (at least) 3 or 4 screenfuls of my drivel before picking up on this single entry. I can’t really believe they went straight there from Google.
It’s also the first time I’ve had a response to something I’ve written that’s not from someone I know. I don’t flatter myself that there’s anything of interest here beyond to me, and perhaps one or two friends – although I do try and put up interesting snippets of code or other information I come across, especially if it took me a long time to find it.
It’s also curious because the person accusing me of having no idea what I’m talking about (an entirely fair accusation, incidentally!) cannot themselves get the name of the book/film right.
At one level I entirely agree with the sender – I have never read a Bond novel, and from what I’ve heard Casino Royale is the most faithful interpretation yet. In fact, I believe I pointed this out in my original post. My point is that I didn’t like it, and it wasn’t the interpretation of James Bond that I’ve come to know and love over the last 30 years (or whatever).
That said, reading my post again I perhaps overstated my case, but I stand by the thrust of it!
I’ve been having a go at my bicycle, which has been merrily rusting away in the garage for the last 3 years. The chain had about seized up, and both tyres were flat – and both brake cables had a lovely orange tint.
So several days of soaking in oil and working it in didn’t help – time for a new chain, I think. But rather than do this straight away, I decided to have a good go at the seized links with a pair of pliers.. lo and behold they soon free up. A bit more oil and a bit more working and the chain is functioning perfectly. All the gears and the brakes are fine too.
Back tyre had just suffered through general seepage I think – topped it up and it’s holding the pressure nicely.
Front tyre was as flat as a pancake… Can’t remember the last time I fixed a puncture, so it felt like having to work it all about again from scratch. Somehow satisfying though. Oh, except for the fact I didn’t manage to repair it, and the tyre went flat again within a few days. Ho Hum.
One fairly major discovery was that while I was re-fitting the outer tube, I noticed it had writing on the side. “What’s this?” I think. “Inflate to 35 – 55 PSI”. 35 to 55 PSI?!?!?! That’s an enormous pressure – more than the pressure in our car tyres!! I happened to have a pressure gauge with me, so I tested the back tyre (which I’d inflated to about what I’ve always inflated tyres to).
15 PSI
So I hammered away at the pump for 5 minutes.
25 PSI
Another 5 minutes, and I’m starting to get worried the tyre will explode.
35 PSI
I’m a “middle of the range” kinda guy, so I’m aiming for 45. The tyre is already like a band of steel – I could hit it with a hammer and I think the hammer would come off worse. Another 5 minutes hard labour and it’s finally at 45.
I haven’t had the chance to test the ride, because of the front-wheel puncture, but it will be very interesting to see!
Interesting, on the way to work the next day I sauntered past a police van (one of the big riot ones), and noticed that the tyres on then should be inflated to 35 PSI!! On the other hand, an F1 car is a mere 16 PSI.
For the metric monkeys, my bicycle tyres have a pressure of just over 310 KPa.
Might have peaked too soon – just finished Half Blood Prince, which means I read all 2757 pages in 23 days, or over 120 pages a day. Guess I didn’t leave it too late! I did nearly miss my stop once or twice though, so absorbed was I.
Will have to read HBP again at the start of July, I think.
I’ve been struck by a few quotes over the last few weeks, for different reasons – here are some.
How the other half live:
It’s hard to believe that goat’s cheese salad used to be considered an exotic dish […] better than those old winter standbys Gruyere and Fontaine.
Waitrose Magazine
On vocation:
Do not try to find what the world needs.
Find what makes you feel alive.
What the world needs is people who feel alive.
Wild at Heart by John Eldredge.
So many people tip-toe through life in order to arrive safely at their death.
Youthwork Magazine
On temptation and bad behaviour:
“It’s like I have two dogs inside me – a good dog and and an evil dog. They are always fighting each other.”
“Which one wins?”
[pause]. “The one I feed the most”
Interview with a monk as relayed in a Sunday sermon a couple of weeks ago.
About to start my Harry Potter re-read, in preparation for book 7. There’s 122 days until it lands on my doorstep, and I have 2757 pages to read before then. That’s between 22 and 23 pages a day.
Actually I’m wondering if I might have left it a bit late!
All the “10 ways to write a blog” articles tell you that if you want your blog to be read, you have to update it regularly, ideally everyday. I’ve never been that fussed about whether or not anyone reads this – it started off as an online notepad of stuff I wanted to record, and has sort of turned into a public diary. My plan is to be able to look back at this in 20 years time and go “I can’t believe I fancied Sophia Myles” or whatever it happens to be. Not that I do fancy Sophia Myles particularly (but she is quite pleasing on the eye). Probably my only major regret in life is I don’t have a diary for between the ages of about 10 and 21. I’ve got a pretty good record of important events and people from around 18 onwards, and a spiritual journal that I started when I was 23 – but I’d love to know what I felt and thought about stuff as a teenager. I really wish I’d kept copies of the letters I wrote when I was at school.. While I know I’d die of embarrassment now (for instance, my nickname at school was “Fat Horse”, and I was known to sign letters with this moniker!!!), that was who I was then.
Anyway, my original point was that I’d never particularly held with the “10 ways to have a award-winning blog” nonsense – but I have noticed that my readership, as far as I’m aware of it, has increased infinitely since I started doing my Boston blog everyday. Actually that infinite statistic hinges on whether or not you count me as a reader – if you do then my known readership only doubled. Possibly tripled, depending on whether or not a “Happy Birthday” e-mail was in response to Friday’s efforts. It is, however, slightly disconcerting thinking someone might be reading this. I used to do radio shows when I was an undergraduate in London, and it was always highly off-putting when someone phoned it. It’s a bit like discovering a student is actually listening in a lecture: goes against the natural order, somehow. In a way I’m glad it’s a non-anonymous blog, as that’s an extra safe-guard to me writing things that I wouldn’t want to come back and bite me. I have to confess my whole approach to this blog changed when I thought I was about to become a vicar – but in retrospect I think that’s possibly one of things I was getting wrong about becoming a vicar. Trying to live by other people’s expectations, and – if I’m honest – taking myself far too seriously.
It was, of course, very easy to do an entry everyday when I actually had something to talk about (i.e. going to America, especially in such an eventful fashion). My life isn’t normally interesting enough to generate material, and because this site is non-anonymous I can’t say the usual anecdotes about friends, family, and co-workers.
Actually I did have some shocking revelation yesterday that I’m still reeling from. You ready?
Postman Pat’s black and white cat, Jess, is a bloke. Jess, a male?!?! JESS – it’s a girls name, not a boy’s name. I really can’t think of any contraction of a boy’s name that ends up as Jess. I suppose if it’s a cat, it called be called Jessop (which might be quite an amusing nod at photography, with the whole black and white thing, I suppose), but I always thought he was a she. We were harmlessly watching an episode when Julian (Pat’s son) says “Oh Jess! Mum, look what he’s done!”. I was sure I’d misheard, but no, several other people said “he” or “him” when talking about Jess.
The other thing that wound me up this week? Tony Blair’s comments as reported in the Metro on Friday:
“I don’t think anybody foresaw a situation [in Iraq] where there was this degree of violence”
I’m not a political animal, but this comment made (and still makes) my blood boil. Of course we !%%$^^% foresaw that the war on Iraq would to nothing but bloodshed and a protracted period of violence exactly like what we’re seeing. Where Bush and Blair really naive enough to believe they could waltz in with all their superior firepower and technology, and be in and out in a few months? Well apparently so. I’m not at all sad Tony Blair is going. I think a lot of good things have happened in this country under the present government, but I think our Tony has lost sight of what’s actually important, and the mandate under which he was elected.