Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!
A Merry Christmas to all my readers and visitors from NiceGuyUK

David Blunkett's Blind Panic

David Blunkett's Blind Panic
Best flash game I've come across in a while. Definitely needs sound, trust me!

It pays not to pay

Its pays not to pay
Just bought a USB 8-in-1 memory card reader from eBay. The item had a Buy-It-Now option for £1.95 but I'm glad I decided to bid cos I just won the item for 25p!

[Listening to: Nuke - Fatal Funkside ]

Weekend Choons

Weekend Choons
Picked up some new CDs this weekend (which I'm currently converting to MP3 and transferring to my iPod). Astral Projection - Ten, Astrix - Artcore and Skazi - Storm so plenty of material to listen to on my 4hrs a day commuting!

Out shopping

Out shopping
Got a ½ day off today to do some Christmas shopping with Alison. Not sure how I can pick up her present yet though, if she is gonna be with me.....

[Listening to: radix - extra bjelle2 ]

P2P miniaturised

P2P miniaturised
Legislators will probably find it hard to stop Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing applications, especially when you can write your own P2P software in 15 lines of Python code :-

# tinyp2p.py 1.0 (documentation at http://freedom-to-tinker.com/tinyp2p.html)
import sys, os, SimpleXMLRPCServer, xmlrpclib, re, hmac # (C) 2004, E.W. Felten
ar,pw,res = (sys.argv,lambda u:hmac.new(sys.argv[1],u).hexdigest(),re.search)
pxy,xs = (xmlrpclib.ServerProxy,SimpleXMLRPCServer.SimpleXMLRPCServer)
def ls(p=""):return filter(lambda n:(p=="")or res(p,n),os.listdir(os.getcwd()))
if ar[2]!="client": # license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0
myU,prs,srv = ("http://"+ar[3]+":"+ar[4], ar[5:],lambda x:x.serve_forever())
def pr(x=[]): return ([(y in prs) or prs.append(y) for y in x] or 1) and prs
def c(n): return ((lambda f: (f.read(), f.close()))(file(n)))[0]
f=lambda p,n,a:(p==pw(myU))and(((n==0)and pr(a))or((n==1)and [ls(a)])or c(a))
def aug(u): return ((u==myU) and pr()) or pr(pxy(u).f(pw(u),0,pr([myU])))
pr() and [aug(s) for s in aug(pr()[0])]
(lambda sv:sv.register_function(f,"f") or srv(sv))(xs((ar[3],int(ar[4]))))
for url in pxy(ar[3]).f(pw(ar[3]),0,[]):
for fn in filter(lambda n:not n in ls(), (pxy(url).f(pw(url),1,ar[4]))[0]):
(lambda fi:fi.write(pxy(url).f(pw(url),2,fn)) or fi.close())(file(fn,"wc"))

or 9 lines of Perl code (docs at http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/software/molester) :-

$p=shift;$a=shift;i(shift);socket S,2,1,6;bind S,&a($a);listen
S,5;$/=undef;while(@ARGV&&($_="$p $a f".shift)||accept(C,S)&&($_=)&&close
C){m!^(.*?) (.*?) ([e-i])([^/]*)/!s&&$1 eq$p&&&$3($2,$4,$');}sub e{open
F,'>',$_[1];print F $_[2];close F}sub f{&s($_,@_)for keys %k}sub
g{open(F,'<',$_[1])&&&s($_[0],$a,"e$_[1]",);close F}sub
h{&s($_[0],$_,'i')for keys %k}sub i{$k{$_[0]}=1}sub
a{$_[0]=~/:/;pack'CxnC4x8',2,$',split'\.',$`}sub
s{socket X,2,1,6;$w=shift;if(connect X,&a($w)){print X
"$p $_[0] $_[1]/$_[2]";close X}else{undef $k{$p}}}

The revolution is here, and its very very small....

Beer today, late tomorrow

Beer today, late tomorrow
Had a few beers after work with some of the guys in the office last night, before grabbing a chicken biryani to go and jumping on the train. Had a few more beers on the train and a "wobbly coffee" which was on a special deal (brandy and coffee). Needless to say I overslept this morning, missing my usual 06:36 train - that was the time I woke up!

Frustrated EA employees

Frustrated EA employees
Lot of discussion going around the net about the treatment of its staff by EA, who by now must me the largest computer games company out there, given all their acquisitions of the smaller games studios. Anyway, there's a t-shirt available to cheer them up a little.

[Listening to: big alec - tubular bells ]

Return of the DVD

Return of the DVD


Good news - its out in the UK today.
Bad news - I'm getting it for Christmas so I gotta wait another 2 weeks

Shut up about Ebay!

Shut up about Ebay!
If one more person in my office witters on about this eBay UK Treasure Hunt instead of doing some real work, I'm gonna slap them silly. Hard. With a fish.

Back in the land of the (online) living

Back in the land of the (online) living
Just on chance I tried my internet connection at home again last night (yup, the one thats been out the last few weeks), and it worked first time. Nice of BT to a) tell me there was a fault and b) tell me its fixed.

Charlotte Church

Charlotte Church
Its not just the voice of an Angel that Charlotte Church has, as evidenced here, here and here

[Listening to: Paul Van Dyk - Live at Casino Club Berlin Part2 10-02-2004 ]

Catch Up Time

Catch Up Time
A few people have been moaning that I haven't updated the blog for a while - nice to be missed! Anyway I thought I would post an entry catching up on recent things going on in my world (in no particular order).

Last night was a the team meal out for Christmas here at work. Not particularly festive since we went for an Indian meal at Chowki, where most of us were somewhat underwhelmed by the speed of service (1 hours to get the starters!) and the portions (three little bowls of generic brown stuff), but we didn't let it dampen our high spirits, and it wasn't too bad a night, although I had to dash early to catch a sensibly timed train home, only to miss it by 1 minute and have to wait at the station for a further 59. Bugger!

In other NiceGuyUK related news, I've been getting back into demo coding on my Atari ST (well, an emulator these days but I still have 4 Atari STs in the attic and an Atari Falcon in the wardrobe!), while the other half of my old Demografica demo crew, Darkcyde has been playing with some ideas and effects on the PC side of things. I'm sure we'll release something again soon.

Had another viewing booked for someone to look at my house, and we were hoping he might make an offer to buy it, but then the estate agent called to say he'd cancelled. Thats twice now and its getting very frustrating. I just hope we can get some better news in the New Year, possibly catching the "New Year, New House" mentality in people.

Ok, think thats it for now, but I'll post more entries later if I think of stuff....

[Listening to: big alec - prophecy ]

Rough Guide to a Better World

Rough Guide to a Better World

Pick up a free copy from a UK Post Office or order it online

[DISCLAIMER} Rough Guides is a Penguin Group Company, owned by Pearson. I work for Pearson.

Thanks to Starbuck for making me aware of that one. Thanks to Steve R for pointing out the typo in my link too - fixed now

Not dead yet

Not dead yet
I'm not dead (in a blog sense of things) - I've just been spending more time at my other two blogs.