Boring is the new Bland

Boring is the new Bland
Katie Boring had to put up with alot of joke about her name all her life but that will change now she has marrired in Independence Denver - to Nathan Bland

Thanks to Forbesie for that one

Strictly non-PC

Strictly non-PC
Quote from New Scientist (28/8/04) from a news story of the above headline;

`Speaking at the International Geograpical Union congress in Glasgow on 18th August, Edwards (Head of MS's Geopolitical Product Strategy team) also admitted to a blunder that offended women. A Spanish version of its XP operating system destined for Latin-American markets gave users the options of selecting their gender from the options, "not specified","male" or "bitch". The error was blamed on a mistranslation.`

Modern art is rubbish

Modern art is rubbish
Modern art continues in its quest to become ever more pretentious and pointless. Now there is definite rpoof that is a load of rubbish

[Listening to: DJ Dean - Trance Parade 2002 CD2 ]

Blowing my own trumpet

Blowing my own trumpet
No, not a euphemism for auto-erotica. I just found a reference to myself online, in relation to some software, and felt all warm and glwing about solving someone's problem

Don't F**k with my food

Don't F**k with my food
What is it with food these days? I just bought a simple-sounding item for lunch, a Chicken and Bacon Pasta Salad. So why does the chicken have "added milk proteins"? Why do so-called "food scientists" have to mess with food? All they need for this item is chicken, bacon, pasta, mayo and a few veggies (this one has tomato, corn and herbs). Its nigh on impossible to get real unadulterated food these days. Even the "Organic" items in supermarkets aren't quite as organic as they would have you believe, and you generally pay extra for them too....

Zonk!

Zonk! For those Atari fans out there that remember the Ooh Crikey What A Scorcher demo, here's the Zonk! music

Triplets win place at Cambridge

Triplets win place at Cambridge
A set of triplets from Cornwall have become the first triplets to be accepted at Cambridge University. Great publicity for the University.

[Listening to: MFG - Shape The Future ]

Computing hits the big screen

Computing hits the big screen
Screens get bigger (and cooler!) with the arrival of a 40-inch multi-panel display at 3600x1600 resoultion. I want one!

[Listening to: Awesome - Deliverance / Stormlord 2 (Mystic Memories rmx) ]

Say that again

Say that again
Quite a cool text-to-speech engine online with almost realistic voices. Good fun, but remember to spell things phonetically to help it along....

Its not me!

Its not me
I'd just like to make it perfectly clear, that despite having the same name (originally at least), this is not me!

[Listening to: Jay - Z + DJ Danger Mouse - 99 Problems ]

More domain name fun

More domain name fun
While we're on the subject of .nu domains....

[Listening to: Cybernetica (May 2004) - mixed by Morlack ]

Unique domain name for sale

Unique domain name for sale
Some guy is selling the domain name g.nu - wish I could afford it....

[Listening to: Audialize - Perfect Cell ]

Feeding the Linux addiction

Feeding the Linux addiction
Given the recent demise of my Linux laptop, I've had to find new ways to satisfy my open-source cravings. So I've hooked up the Yopy with an ssh server, a C compiler and an editor, and now have the tools to start compiling some more useful GNU utilities

More computer woes

More computer woes
Oh, and continuing todays theme of computers now working, I installed Windows XP SP2 on my Mini ITX last night and now it won't boot - not even to safe mode. Bloody Microsoft

[Listening to: Underfoot - Up Res]

Death of a laptop

Death of a laptop
My laptop is slowly dying. The intermittent fault that causes random lines to appear on the screen, and the machine to lock up is becoming more and more frequent, and this morning I've hard rest the machine about 8 times in an attempt to get in there. The trouble is, its a minimum £75 charge and a minimum 3 week turnaround time. Also means I need to set them up a "repair" login under Linux, so they have a way of checking it when its done.

Bluetooth and Linux

Bluetooth and Linux
Getting Bluetooth to work under Linux is more complicated than it should be. Kernel patches exists, but you later discover that these are for older kernels, and that Bluetooth support is supposed to be in the kernel now, but there are two incompatible Bluetooth options in the kernel config, and neither of them seem to get my Bluetooth working. Bah!

Kernel Hacking

Kernel Hacking
Gonna have a go at hacking some code on a kernel module on my Gentoo laptop tonight. I've got some additions to the toshiba_acpi.c code, but they're based on version 0.13 of the code, and I've got 0.18, so I want to try and retrofit them.

[Listening to: Sensorica - First Start ]

Gnome tips

Gnome Tips
List of handy GNOME tips you might find useful

Handy geek reference

Handy geek reference
A few handy little guides (mainly web stuff, but some Unix/Linux and Mac stuff too) from mkaz.com

Laptop bugs

Laptop Bugs
A colleague at work has an interesting bug on his laptop. A tiny little insect about the side of this dash - has managed to get into the screen, between the LCD panel and the plastic cover. So now as he works, he can see the little critter running across his desktop....

Work goes Mono

Work Goes Mono
The project I am working on at work is huge. It is developed using Microsoft .Net. Then the following happened :-

Project Manager: "We need to get this project working on the Mac too. Can we use Mono?"

Me: "Not without huge amounts of rewriting, cos there's no stable Windows Forms support yet"

PM: "What are the alternatives?"

Me: "Well you could use GTK+ which is cross platform so it would work under Windows, Mac and Linux"

PM: "How easy would that be?"

Me: "Think along the lines of rewiting 95% of the entire application"

Doncha just love management?

My CUPS overfloweth
Finally managed to successfully configure CUPS so I can print from my laptop to the printer at work. What a pain in the butt that was!