eggfriedrice.com

Ahh, blogging. I never really got the hang of it. Anyway, here’s my chuckle of the day taken from the Freecycle Edinburgh mailing list, here’s an excerpt from an offer advert for a Samsung CRT monitor:

I have a really good quality Samsung 19″ CRT monitor going spare – I just don’t have room for it in my new flat.

The monitor works perfectly and has excellent colour reproduction, so really good for anyone that does digital photghraphy or design work etc.

The only problem with it is that a couple of years ago, during a fit of angst when installing Windows on a new PC, I wrote ‘F### Bill Gates in the ass” on the front of the monitor. In permanent marker. Oops. I’ve tried to get it off, but it won’t budge (it’s faded a bit, but still clearly visible).

Snigger.

According to Sarah this is what happens when you leave the iron switched on. She’s right, and it points out a common failing with many appliances: they stay on when you don’t need them to be on.

In the case of an iron there’s a very simple fix for this, insert a little widget that detects movement (you picking up the iron) and if there isn’t any movement for five minutes switch the iron off. It would be simple to implement, an accelerometer, a microcontroller and a relay. Couldn’t really be simpler, could it? So why don’t irons have a “not in use” timeout? Probably because it makes the device slightly more complicated (not by much though), it adds another point of failure (though modern irons last about six months anyway) and, most importantly, it would add about 25 pence to the retail price.

I guess the only way to get this sort of iron safety device built into new irons would be for the Government to mandate it. Maybe I should start an e-petition for this… I might get three signees, that’s sure to get an act through Parliament!

Today we went to see the Edinburgh Cavalcade which pretty much is the start of the festival(s). It’s not every day you see the Lady Boys of Bangkok rubbing shoulders with the Scouts, and the Tay Valley Twirlers following Dr Who (and the Tardis, a Dalek and K9)! We also collected a metric butt load of leaflets and whistles and crap which I think will get a photo for prosperity.

The fine Scottish drizzle was out in force, as you’d expect, so much of the fun was spotting the split in the paraders between those feeling the groove and the ones that were just wet and pissed off. I particularly liked the guy holding the sign for The Edinburgh Samba School and friends who clearly was an ex-raver and was just itching for a glow stick.

In other news I’m still faffing about with emulated Linux. I’m getting somewhere with Puppy Linux now but I ran out of (virtual) disk space because I made the disk image too small. So I’m now growing that with Gparted. In case you hadn’t figured, I’m still not taking the easy way out!

OK, so I’m not doing very well at the blogging challenge. I’ve missed two days now and I’m pretty sure someone’s keeping note…

I need to blog earlier in the day when I’m still awake. Mind you, last night was EdLUG and I never really woke up today.

I’ve done a bit more work on the big giant database and it’s starting to come together a bit. It’s funny how even though the todo list keeps growing I feel like it might actually get there soonish. In related news, HSBC are being tossers over getting an internet merchant account for the online booking side of this site, even though the organisation has had a MOTO merchant account with HSBC for >15 years (pretty much the feeling I get as a long term personal HSBC customer where it seems like they’d be quite happy if I died as then they wouldn’t have the chore of posting my bank statements).

Also, my probable choice of payment processor for the new site, Protx, made a spectacular cock up of an upgrade to their system a couple of days ago. I might be looking around for alternatives…

I’ve finally got an excuse to use a couple of icons from FAMFAMFAM’s Silk icon set. Nice little icons and under a Creative Commons licence.

And that’s today’s exciting news, the time now is a bit past 11 and it’s time for news where you are.

I’m currently listening to Tenacious D’s eponymous first album and I had a revelation. The D and Tre from the Apprentice both share the same “We’re/I’m brilliant and you’re going to believe it” attitude. Tre was particularly excellent at it, “it’s another thing I’m great at”.

Lewis Hamilton has it too and people just believe it (well, up until the European GP anyway but we’ll gloss over that). I think there’s something to be said for this, so, just in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m awesome I am. Not to mention good looking and intelligent. With some minor assistance from Amoy I make a mean stir fry. And I’m modest too. I’ll let you know how this goes, but I think I’m on to a winner.

Awesomeness aside, there’s something to be said for being more confident in small ways. I made the decision a while back to avoid moving out of the way of other people when walking along streets and crossing roads. I got fed up of being polite and taking really long paths to get to where I want to go because of all the people in the way. This is working out really well, especially with all the tourists around at the moment.

OK, it’s nearly the end of this day of awesomeness (well, this last however long a Tenacious D album is), tomorrow another full day of excellence!

Wikipedia is a dangerous game. I think it’s actual proof of six degrees of separation, it’s possible to get from anything to any other thing in less than six steps. Without resorting to All articles with unsourced statements. And lo, someone has created a tool to do just that.

This all started by looking up Office Space which I just watched. Before you know it you’ve read articles on staplers and somehow ended up Star Trek TNG. Funny how it works.

Most importantly, I’ve discovered the importance of (Stephen Root’s) makeup…

How is it that in a city of culture and attractions and stuff I am completely unable to think of something to do in the rain that is near a bus route? There must be something, suggestions in comments please!

I picked up Mum from the airport today, which, in a feat of accidental perfect timing, meant me getting off one airport bus, finding Mum in baggage reclaim then the pair of us getting on the bus in front of the one I just got off. Getting on the bus in front of the one I just alighted from felt a bit like travelling forward in time and gaining an extra few minutes. Probably a bit like crossing the date line and getting a free day. I’m using those free minutes to write this very entry.

We went to visit the Napier campus I’ll hopefully end up at in September. I was quite impressed with my navigational skills as I managed to find it first time having only been there once before. Without a Google Map!

Tomorrow we’re going to attempt a tour bus, assuming it’s not pissing down. Google Calendar claims it will be raining tomorrow, but it also claimed that it wouldn’t rain today. I remain unconvinced…

Well, she can if she can remember the lyrics to the song on TMF she’s singing over. Apparently Madonna sang about level crossings.

The big giant tidy up is complete! Just in time really as my Mum’s coming to stay for a couple of nights. If we don’t pass inspection after five days of solid cleaning I’m going to quite miffed. Now we’re just hoping it doesn’t piss down quite so much as it did last time she was here, we nearly drowned.

I don’t really have much to say but the threat of a fine is looming large so here’s a couple of things from the internet that amused me recently:

(You might need to be a bit geeky to get it but trust me, it’s hilarious)

YouTube comment of the day (Mika – you’re on a winner with comments like this):
“i think this video is good becoz i jst went to devon wid skool and we woz all singin it on da minibus”

Righto, that’s it. See you tomorrow, assuming I can get past security at the airport and get in and out…

There’s something I do that really bugs me: not doing. I’m really excellent at coming up with cunning plans and genius schemes (not as genius as Sarah’s Cheese Sander though) and then completely failing to actually do it. I’m quite good at doing what I say I’ll do with work, stuff tends to get done (although I have six days to complete the big giant database…) but with projects and things I’m pretty crap.

Here’s an immediate list of things I haven’t done that I said I would (in a hope that writing them down will make me do them):

• Buy bits for and finish the MythTV box
• Blog about the Arduino that I said I’d do some days ago
• Figure out how to make the 8×8 LED bricks work and design a PCB for them
• Retrofit a Luxeon LED into an old lamp to make it cool (and to make it work…)

So here’s the plan: Manage my time a bit better so I have a bit of spare time to actually do this stuff. I tend put all my time into one thing and then fry myself working on it. I need to spread my time around a bit over the different things I need to do and I’d like to do. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m not looking at an old processor heatsink sitting on my (unnaturally tidy) desk and thinking that it would look pretty cool with a Luxeon stuck on it too. Luxeon LEDs look totally cool to start with. Another one for the list…

It has been a truly thrilling weekend of mostly vacuum cleaning and tidying. It turns out that 1.4 metric tons of dust can accumulate under a bed in less than a year. A chat with Sarah’s Dad went a bit like this (I’ve skipped to the bit where he was told about the dust):

Sarah’s Dad: You know what that means?
Sarah: What?
Sarah’s Dad: You should be ashamed of yourselves!

I think he has a point. It’s amazing how much crap I’ve accumulated in a year and crammed into a fairly small flat. It’s not a good habit and I’m going to try and sort out what I have. It was actually quite a nice feeling to offload some of my Sussex junk on the Sussex Linux geeks.

In my defence the furniture I have here to store and use my junk is, well, suboptimal. With a lot of sub and not much optimal. So tomorrow I’m going to try and modify an old desk in an Ikea Hacker style. Only with an old desk, a jigsaw, copious bodging and probably a substantial amount of swearing.

If it works we’ll have a server desk that’ll fit in better. If it doesn’t we’ll have a pile of broken chipboard (or “firewood” to the people at the back who tried to barbecue with an old bed frame…). We’ll see!