| Sky at the aquarium |
[Apr. 8th, 2008|02:45 pm] |
Just added some new pictures to flickr of Sky's first birthday - here's one my dad took of me and sky looking at the brightly coloured fish.
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| BMW rear obstacle detection |
[Mar. 20th, 2008|09:11 am] |
It seems to have two modes.. "there is something behind you" and "stop! f*cking stop! jesus christ that was close!"
Sometimes it just skips the former, presumably it's looking at something else more interesting and then realises that it's up close and personal with a bollard...
"that's a nice azalea..... oh f*ck - a bollard.. stop! stop! stop!" |
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| Found photos on the mobile |
[Mar. 5th, 2008|02:11 pm] |
Wow! I really like this picture, it's pretty accidental - I took it with my mobile phone at the Merce festival in 2006 and cropped/despeckled it in gimp.
Anyway I think it's quite a neat juxtaposition of what it feels like when I was there - the huge stages with bands playing all over the city, often right on the doorstep of the Catalan government buildings (one of which is the backdrop here) and the traditional elements of the festival like giants, fire-running, human castles, pistolero's, processions of choirs, etc.
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| $Deity bless BT and PlusNet/Metronet engineers |
[Feb. 24th, 2008|10:58 am] |
This morning, after 2 months without it, I finally have full speed (or at least recognisable) ADSL : 1Mbs connection / 512Kbs actual download speed (according to various speed test sites).
Once I managed to get a BT Engineer out to have a look at the problem, it went relatively smoothly - 1 engineer the day after I requested one turned up first thing in the morning, identified the problem as the copper outside of the house and requested another engineer to look at the copper fault, the next engineer turned up in the afternoon (unfortunately he didn't receive any info from the other engineer, and didn't even know there had been another engineer, so I had to explain what the previous chap said) confirmed the copper problem somewhere between the house and the nearest cabinet - discovered there was no access to the access point he needed and requested a hole in the road, next day fujitsu contractors make hole, on the monday, BT engineer turns up, recables line, next day I get a call from Metronet asking me to restart my connection a couple of times so that the upstream equipment can adjust whatever they use for multiplexing, then yesterday called to say that sorry that didn't seem to work, and to try again - finally this morning I have decent ADSL.
Metronet previously diagnosed copper faults, sent me an alternative wireless router/modem, and called me to follow up the problem.
Nice work chaps - of course, if the ISP, BT Wholesale and BT Retail were allowed to communicate directly, they could have resolved this in about 5 working days. Gah! |
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| OFCOM and BT |
[Feb. 11th, 2008|02:20 pm] |
christ, I hate BT and OFTEL
.. to resolve a problem with my line breaking broadband, etc I have to test everything again through the test socket (after testing with the master socket), then speak to them again, then get a PSTN engineer to look for a PSTN problem, then get the ISP to get BT Wholesale to send different ADSL engineer to look at the ADSL problem, and none of them are allowed to communicate directly, and I'm not allowed to communicate directly or even share test/diagnostic information to engineers or technical people, or even a comments field in their support system.
thanks a bunch OFTEL, that's a whole lot better than before...
you've sure broken up that monopoly! I have the choice between BT PSTN and er.. nothing, and BT Wholesale ADSL whitelabelled, or er.. BT Retail ADSL , and if I had BT for both products somehow they can talk to each other, but that's not uncompetitive or a monopoly at all
c*nts |
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| new car |
[Feb. 11th, 2008|02:13 pm] |
So much for Audi, unfortunately despite a good effort the Ford cars let down the local dealership and we've ended up buying a BMW 318 Tourer from the local BMW dealership.
So far the BMW dealership have been pretty good, probably as helpful as Ford, but with decent cars. Of course the cars (and accessories, services) are more expensive, but the running costs and depreciation are actually low enough to cost about the same over 4 years for total cost of ownership.
Best of all, Sam is really comfortable driving the BMW, after finding the Fords either uncomfortable and noisy or just too big (the mondeo is huge, only a grand or two cheaper than a 3 series and deprecates as quickly as it drinks fuel).
Hopefully the reliability will match the reputation of the badge - the reviews in the motor rags seem to suggest this is the case. |
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| cars and dealerships |
[Jan. 21st, 2008|05:07 pm] |
so we've been having a bunch of problems with the C-MAX we bought from our (very) local Ford dealership :
* on paper it's perfect for us - reasonable price, reasonable miles-per-gallon, pretty good boot space, pretty good spec, 7 speed automatic, electric handbrake, automatic lights and wipers.
* in real life it's been a huge pain - in a couple of months it's devalued by several grand, the transmission has failed big time over a dozen times with at least 2 problems, the first of which wasn't even diagnosed and fixed until it had been into their service department twice already, the visibility is really poor for my wife.
Anyway - we've been trying to get a suitable replacement, which ammounts to the ordinary focus estate, except that it doesn't come with isofix, so we need to get the new post-market kit fitted at the dealership, and it's only available for focus - so if we wanted a mondeo estate instead because it has most of the c-max and is a nicer car than the focus we'd be out of luck regardless of how much money we'd be prepared to stump up. For added fun, Ford has been lowering the specification of it's newer focus, so while our 2 year old c-max is a Ghia with Air Conditioning, automatic lights and all the extras, all the nearly new focus have no aircon or extras on top of a distinctly basic and dated trim.
The guys at Vospers have made a stirling effort, but as far as I can tell have been stimmied or left in the dark by Ford at every turn. I mean we're happy to pay at least 12 grand for a used family car that my wife can drive with her health problems - that means a large-ish boot, automatic transmission, affordable on fuel for urban driving (which rules out subaru and many petrol engines), and a spec that's comfortable for journeys beyond the town centre.
Luckily for us, it looks like Audi will now be able to fix isofix aftermarket on most of their family-type cars, they have a higher safety rating, much better fuel consumption, decent diesel automatic engines, much nicer specifications and standard features and well, look less dull/fugly.
Unfortunately the Audi and BMW dealerships don't even come close to the Ford one at going out of their way to find out about stuff like the aftermarket kit so we could have bought the car we saw at the weekend and saved everybody time (me, the poor guys at vospers, my wife, our family who have been babysitting while we're out car hunting).
As for Mercedes, that dealership is a joke, trade-in prices are profiteeringly low, getting attention is slow, and I've seen one salesman ask a customer to wait and then finish playing windows minefield or solitaire. |
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| gah! more php hate! |
[Dec. 27th, 2007|02:23 pm] |
PHP 5 no longer includes useful mysql libraries.
More importantly though - PHP5 configure script assumes you have a source install of mysql with everything in /usr/mysql or /usr/local/mysql - anything else and it breaks completely - naturally it provides no way to specify where mysql.h or mysqlclient.so are except editing the configure file. joy.
On the plus side - my load balancing between master and slave databases for my client's (rather large and heavily used) website seems to be working nicely - the website feels almost snappy - shame that the main listing page doesn't get rendered until all the images are in place - it would look and feel much faster that way! |
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| php application installation instructions.. |
[Dec. 19th, 2007|11:44 am] |
From the readme.txt of both activecollab forks : "Unpack and upload the files to your web server."
That's it - thats your complete guide to installing and configuring - so what if there is a setup script - that's no good if I don't know where it is - how hard would a simple apache configuration example be to provide. *sigh*
Compared to Trac and SVN, which provide example config, wiki's etc that's not very helpful.
bah |
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| sky is a dj |
[Dec. 6th, 2007|02:36 pm] |
One of the best things we've bought Sky was this "DJ Booth" that Sam got from eBay.
It's got a little turntable that spins when you pull the "needle arm" and a clicky fader switch - it's also got lots of other fun bits including a disco ball and a "microphone" that makes noises when you move it.
Of course the best bit is that it encourages sky to stand up and move herself around in it - and you can leave her in it while doing housework around her.
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| mysql's first bite |
[Dec. 4th, 2007|11:15 am] |
I think this is the first time mysql has really bitten me.. unlike databases that have had transactions and stored procedures for donkeys years (yes I know that includes you, postgres you can STFU now) you can just type in :
Create function foobar
begin
declare whatever
...
no! that would be ker-azy!
Naturally, such bizarre behaviour results in the ever so helpful :
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 3
This means, amongst other things, that you can't just copy and paste the output of SHOW CREATE FUNCTION functionname into a terminal, or even load it in an sql file.
instead you have to set the delimiter, i.e. "DELIMITER $$", and then remember to reset it back to ";" later. see http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?118,162347,162357#msg-162357
also functions/stored procedures aren't included in mysqldump output AFAICT, so you have to use the following query :
SELECT ROUTINE_TYPE, ROUTINE_NAME
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES
WHERE ROUTINE_SCHEMA='dbname';
where dbname is the name of your schema |
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| Solr/Lucene is a fragile and over-complex piece of software |
[Nov. 27th, 2007|03:26 pm] |
Lucene/Solr has been making my work much harder than necessary.
Currently I'm having two problems :
* The solr/admin url will randomly stop working without warning every few days requiring the jetty server to be restarted manually (no init.d scripts here, it's kill and nohup *sigh*)
* installing solr on a new server I keep on getting the same error about files not being found that solr is supposed to create for itself, there is nothing in the logs about failing to create the index files and nothing helpful associated with that error message in google.
Also - the configuration is a maze of huge XML files that expose the workings and innards of the system entirely un-necessarily - this is a common theme in Java projects I've used - they seem to put all the internal settings, etc in their (huge, verbose and needlessly complex) xml configuration files. |
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| sea kayaking, caves and reefs |
[Nov. 6th, 2007|03:09 pm] |
So, it was my 32nd birthday last week, and my other half bought me a 1/2 day one-to-one trip with the nice chap at waterborne in Porthleven, it was great fun.
I haven't kayaked properly since I was at school, when I was a member of the falmouth canoe club and managed to pass the BCU 1 star before I got fed up with washing kit, lugging a kayak around and getting mouthfuls of filthy water from the docks in falmouth harbour where we practiced our rolls and capsizes.
Fortunately most of what I learned came back to me - usually moments after I needed it, such as how to brace just after attempting to balance myself in the water with my hand and which direction to lean when doing a side stroke.
Anyway the trip started at praa sands, took in a few caves and getting up close and personal interesting bits of coast to the west of praa sands and on the way back to porthleven.
The sea was incredibly calm, even for summer, let alone early november, and the weather was very mild, even the water seemed quite nice (in small doses, wearing a wetsuit).
Highlights had to be going into some cool caves and gulleys, and some hairy action between rocks and on the reefs where suddenly you would find yourself pushed six feet up into the air in a second (especially fun in a cave), as well as propelled sideways into rocks and breaking or dumping waves. |
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| my politics blog |
[Sep. 27th, 2007|04:22 pm] |
I'm moving most of my political stuff to my political blog at http://liberalprovocateur.vox.com/, the rantier stuff will probably be found here too :) |
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| Sky's Christening |
[Aug. 18th, 2007|04:06 pm] |
This is a picture that Andy (aka Case) took at our (my wife and I, that is) baby's christening party - the lower layer has another teddy sitting with his legs bent over the side of the cake.
The service went really well, pretty quick, very relaxed and cheerful, in a nice local church in the small village (chacewater) next to ours (threemilestone, which feels more like an industrial estate with houses around it by the month).
The vicar was great, and sky behaved herself all day - she was a bundle of smiles and laughter from when she woke up until when we put her to bed - despite being passed around for hours at the reception and being too stimulated by all the people and activity to sleep very much.
We even got lucky with the weather, the forecast showers held off and it was bright and sunny for most of the day.
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| Great picture of baby Sky |
[Jul. 25th, 2007|02:25 pm] |
Sam took this picture of Sky the other day and I love it, definately captures her amazing interest in everything going on around her.
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| First fathers day (from a while back) |
[Jul. 24th, 2007|09:15 pm] |
It was my first fathers day last month, and I'm surprised how much it moved me to get the card and chocs, so I took a picture.
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hashbangperl's journal
