Car for sale

..or, why not to leave your wife:


_{Click to enlarge}

A Geeky Halloween

A few little pictures for halloween. I do love the amount of effort some folks put in to things for no renumeration...just for the fun of it.


<sub>Portal Pumpkins


The standard TF2 logo


The geeky halloween version


This one's just superb...</sub>

Happy Halloween kids.

So, so annoyed

So, remember that joyous post I made about my wonderful experiences with the University placements office? Well they've been annoying me even further recently and I'm trying my very best not to rip into them - I deleted six emails today before sending one back that tried to be nice.


_{[tutor's name edited out as requested]}

The tutor has, under the rules of my placement, to come and pay me a visit before the end of November. Therefore, he thoughtfully planned ahead and emailed me on the 10th of October to let me know what timeslots were good for him. I suggested a date a couple of weeks away, and he said he'd get back to me, after he'd contacted some other guys nearby, who he wanted to visit on the same day. Now, how he does his personal timetabling is none of my regard, and so I simply waited for him to get back to me.

He did indeed get back to me, at 12pm on the day I'd been expecting him, to tell me that as the other two people hadn't bothered to reply to him (or even give a real email address in one case), he wouldn't be coming. Oh, and would I therefore co-ordinate with these two guys who can go 15 days without checking email, because he couldn't be bothered doing his own timetabling.


_{Aston Placements Office}

At this point, I was clearly in a good mood, as instead of ranting at him for his unprofessionalism in both not replying to me, and expecting me to do his work for him, I simply listed the dates that I definitely couldn't make (those I wasn't in the office or was doing all day events), and asked for two weeks notice for any other dates so that I could re-arrange my meetings. Seemed reasonable enough to me.

Instead, the two clever folks over at Oracle sent me a lovely email a few days later. They didn't say they were suggesting a time two weeks away, and asking if that was ok for me, but that they'd booked some time 72 hours away.

Now, once I'd finished with their grammar, I let them know that I'd be in London that day, so...no. The tutor then proceeded to send me a very bitchy email, in which he suggested:

"Perhaps, smooth organization and "prioritization" are part of the skills that you should also consider for your future career."

He also claimed:

"I have almost given you three-days slots for every week for both Oct and Nov to choose from. I need your further coopertaion in this regard."

And then, even more cheekily, he went on to imply that I was some kind of code-monkey whose hand was held daily and had every minute timetabled by his manager:

"I am sure that your supervisors [...] are prepared to free you for an hour or even less during any of the my 2 months slots!"

Now, I'd hardly say that emailing me on the 10th of October, and then not getting back to me about my suggestion of the 23rd until midday on...the 23rd was giving me two months of dates with ample notice. Also, I doubt my manager could even tell you where I am or what I'm doing on an average day - I'm not saying he's not doing a good job or anything, just that I work very independently.


_{Oracle's training department}

I relatively politely replied, letting him know my displeasure, without ranting, saying:

"Dear [name edited out],

It is your responsibility to organise your visits (plural), and my responsibility to organise my visit (singular).

I don't feel it's acceptable to ask us to co-ordinate your time.

In future, I ask that you, and you alone contact me to suggest dates (I have provided you with my free times) and I will do my utmost to ensure they work.

Yours,
Ian."

Right, enough ranting here for now, I think this has done enough to ensure I don't ring him up and scream obscenities down the phone at him for a while. I don't even see why the guy needs to visit me, except for a free lunch. Couldn't we just do all this via a webcam link? I could even give him a full tour of the campus by carrying the cam around, he could talk to the folks in my office...

--------------------------------
Update (11/11/2007): Meant to pop this in here earlier but never got around to it. As the post's recently come to light though, I was going to give you the University's response to my above paragraph (phrased more thoroughly in my email to them):

"I see the logic of video conferencing, but we are always concerned that while some people are quite happy in the video environment, many are uncomfortable and restricted in that environment, and hesitate to talk freely. We (the University) feel that in many cases we gather fuller information with a physical visit - for example the atmosphere of a workplace is only evident on a physical visit.

The visit is also a chance for an academic to see briefly a little of the world of industry, to keep a little more up-to-date by talking to people in industry, so in that sense benefits the University and its students."

Very, very nicely put. He should be a politician :)
--------------------------------

What a pointless waste of resources. I'll let you decide if I mean the tutor, the placements office or the fact that I 'need' a physical visit by that.

--

w00t :) Just learned the tutor's leaving the University soon enough. Let's hope we can get someone a bit more professional in to replace him...

I'm wearing a suit :(

Aah, since when does this happen? I'm meant to be the student/developer, which means that it's practically illegal for me to turn up to work in anything smarter than a pair of ripped jeans, some flip-flops and a geeky t-shirt.

Not only this, but I'm now going to go and talk to 10 guys from a very important partner, with only one other Microsoft guy to back me up, and he started work...yesterday.

God knows how we're going to tell these 10 guys how their mad new project is going to even work, let alone benefit from Microsoft technology over competitor technology (Java/Oracle/LAMP), or Microsoft new technology over old technology.

Wish me luck kids...
Xx

Also, it's 8.10am and I'm about to leave for work :( This sucks.

Weekend in Bath

So, sorry I haven't posted anything for a couple of days (like any of you care), but I decided another weekend on my own in Reading, with a broken boiler and 12 Krispy Kreme doughnuts for company would probably kill me, so I popped over to Bath to distract Lucie from her Uni work.

The weekend was fun, though I sorely missed the doughnuts, and the boiler problem hasn't yet gone away. I nearly killed myself with something a bit too spicy from Wagamama's (Two for one vouchers available from Studentbeans) and we saw Run Fatboy Run which was brilliant, if you're into Simon Pegg's style of humour.

Under the guise of selfless generosity I gave the guys Lu lives with my PS2 copy of Guitar Hero II, as I only play that on the 360 nowadays. I therefore spent most of the weekend ignoring her allowing her to get on with her work, whilst I played that with them. Impressively, between a few of us we managed to complete the entire game on Saturday in one sitting, which I've never seen done before. And we still had time for Top Gear afterwards.

Less fun was the hour I spent with Lucie shopping for makeup. I tried to be helpful and suggest products she could buy, but unfortunately not having any clue what all of the different little bottles actually did, I'm not sure I succeeded. I was pretty impressed by the sheer range of things you can do to your lips though; gloss, stick, pencil...I forget the rest, but there were at least ten things. I was also really amused by a shelf holding:

1. Eye-makeup
   To make your eyes look better...somehow (there was 'science' on the back of the bottle, but it made no sense to me)


2. Eye-makeup remover
   For when you realise the science was actually all lies, and your body doesn't need 76% of its daily 'beauterizers'


3. Eye-care cream
   Because you've just put a bunch of crap on your eyes and damaged them beyond repair

Right, back to work...

I want a new computer...

My desktop died a few weeks back now (just a dead hard drive I believe, the rest of it should be working fine) and given that I mostly just use my work laptop when I'm at home for browsing the web etc (no time for real gaming in general, and when there is I generally spend it on Guitar Hero anyway) I decided to see if I'd mind leaving it dead.

Well, I've been coping well so far, with no real need for it, but recently I've seen a bunch of my friends start to build themselves new PCs, and quite frankly I'm getting a bit jealous. I want new shiny stuff so I can play all the latest games. Even more tempting is the fact that I get discounted stuff from Scan.co.uk thanks to Microsoft :)

I haven't ordered it yet, but here's what I'm sorely tempted to get, any comments/suggestions would be appreciated:

• Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 G0 SLACR, 95W, S775, 2.40 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 8MB Cache, Retail


• Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI NF650i SLi, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX


• 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-18


• 480W XClio-SCF aPFC Super Silent SLi (21Db) 12cm Fan 8/20/24 ATX2/2.01 12vEPS + SATA+PCI-E Hi-End


• Antec 900 - Nine Hundred Ultimate Gamer Case with 200m Top Fan w/o PSU


• 2x: 80 Gb Seagate ST380815AS Barracuda 7200.10, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 8.9 ms


• 500 Gb Seagate ST3500630AS Barracuda 7200.10, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ

And I'll throw in my 512MB 6600GS card from my old computer too.

Now, I'm not too familiar with RAIDing, which is obviously what I want to do with the two smaller hard drives. I presumed I wanted RAID 0 (striping) for increased performance, but I recently came across this in Wikipedia about RAID 1:

Mirrored set (minimum 2 disks) without parity. Provides fault tolerance from disk errors and single disk failure. Increased read performance occurs when using a multi-threaded operating system that supports split seeks, very small performance reduction when writing.

Will RAID1 (mirroring) really give me a performance increase? Will it be comparible to RAID0?

Let me know folks.

Xx

True Dedication

This guy is my new hero:


_{Click to enlarge}

Edit: Hosting the image myself as the imageshack one got pulled - after being Digged 3000 times amongst other things. Ouch.

Karaoke

Right folks, I'll be at Karaoke Thursday of next week in Aston Students' Guild - it's been too long since such drunken fun and Love Shack were the plat du jour. If you're coming, bring girly drinks and manly hookers, and I'll see you there.

Solder lives after being knifed in head

From ArmyTimes:

Troops unite to save soldier knifed in head

In brief, some American guy who was busy oppressing something, ended up looking like this:


_{Knife + brain...ouch}

Upon being stabbed, Sgt. Dan Powers was heard to remark that he was "pretty pissed off" (legend), before an insanely good stream of medical folks put him back together again. I'll admit I skipped somewhat near the end, but I'm sure that if I read the context, this line will cease to be quite as amusing:

'Trudy Powers, standing with her husband in their home, was tearful, trembling and mortified by the contents she expected to find inside.

Out plopped a hunk of stainless steel resembling a flea market dagger.'

..he posted the knife back to his wife? Legend. I bet she's not going to think about cheating on him anytime soon...

Placements...grr

Given that this year's working for Microsoft isn't just about drinking and getting paid, and actually counts towards my degree course, there are a couple of extra bits I have to do for the University on top of my normal job.

Firstly, I have to fill out my Personal Development Plan. PDPs are ‘means by which students can monitor, build and reflect upon their personal development. I'm told, which is a bit confusing, given that this isn't actually a planning exercise, but more of a recording one.

A PDP is made up of:

• A Key Skills Audit Form four times this year


• A Personal Development Strategy


• A Reflective Log once a week


• A Key Incident Log after every Key Incident (no I have no idea either)


• A Quarterly Review every...you guessed it


• An End Review

As you can see, my PDP is split into far too many parts, each of which takes far too long to fill out. On the plus side, no-one's ever going to read all of this, so I take delight in spicing it up with odd sentences every now and then. So, for example, I'll type

'this was my first presentation to a non-technical audience, which help I'm trapped in the internet provided some new challenges'

Pity no-one will ever read it :(


_{I Googled 'PDP' and this came up, and seems oddly appropriate}

On top of this PDP, I also get one (maybe two!) visits from my Placement Tutor. This key service is to ensure that (four months after starting and having heard nothing from the University) everything is going well, that I'm settling in OK and that I'm happy with the work I'm doing.

In order to provide this caring and supporting service, the University in its wisdom has decided to get someone I've never met before to visit me for an hour. Now, not only do I have to find an hour free in my schedule, but I have to also find an hour free in my manager's schedule when he'll be in the Reading office (he normally works from home in Manchester) that coincides with some free time I have, so we can talk crap for an hour, so it can get noted down on some paper by this Placements Tutor and then ignored for eternity, because so long as I don't get fired/arrested, I pass the placements year by default.

To make things even more fun, my Placements Tutor wants to time the visit to me so that he can visit some other students working at Oracle on the same day. These guys don't actually check their email (indeed, one didn't actually know his email address) and I really wonder how they actually got placements, so instead of doing his job properly, the Tutor has now asked me to find some time when all three of us, and our respective managers, are free.

I'm playing along for now, but if the other two don't get back with some pretty good responses within a week, I may feel the need for another rant, aimed at this Tutor's inbox coming on.

Not amused.

Beware: Monkeys

From BBC news:

Monkeys kill Delhi deputy mayor

Absolutely hilarious, I love news reports like this. I'll probably burn in hell, but it's totally worth it. I was particularly amused by this bit of short term thinking:

One approach has been to train bands of larger, more ferocious langur monkeys to go after the smaller groups of Rhesus macaques.

Planet of the Apes anyone?

Twitter

So I've recently decided to take up Twittering again, since people decided to start replying to my Facebook status updates. For those of you who haven't yet encountered the joys of Twitter, it's a little site where one can post short little messages about what one's up to, and have them read by a group of people with nothing better to do.

If, like me, you're feeling pretty hardcore, then it doesn't just have to be web-based, and it can get sent as a text message (free) to your phone every time someone you're 'following' (read; stalking) posts up something new - and you can text in your updates (normal mobile rates) too.

It's strangely fun and addictive - but like most of these things, the more the merrier. So, come stalk me over at http://www.twitter.com/tiedyeina, and create your own accounts so that others can watch your every move.

:)

Dumbledore was gay

From The Observer:

Dumbledore was gay

Now, I've not actually read all of the books, and I've only seen a couple of the films, but I think that this story, combined with the disgusting innuendo in the first Harry Potter book, proves once and for all that J.K. Rowling's books shouldn't be sold to children.

Note that I'm not saying there's anything wrong with one of the characters being gay on its own, but, did it really have to be Harry's elderly mentor? What's next - Harry Potter and the Repressed Memories?

I can't wait to see how the American Christian Fundamentalist audience react to this...book burnings anyone?

Eye Test

This gave me a little giggle...

I love Gib

Two people today have mentioned the lovely picture below, taken on a rather drunken night out to me, in two completely unrelated conversations. I say completely unrelated, but I should point out that they were both half-hearted attempts at blackmail - as if anyone could really win an argument with me...


_{Doesn't my hair look lovely?}

Homo-eroticism aside, I do quite like the picture - I'm not just posting it up here to ensure that no-one can try to use it against me. Most people assume it's a guy and a girl kissing (in either permutation), although I have heard one person react with 'cool, lesbians', which was quite amusing. I particularly like the over-exposure on the lips :)

As I reach the end of this rambling post I should point out that the person in the picture who's not me, for those of you who don't know him, is Kieran 'Gib' Hawkes, one of my lovely artists on Tie-Dye Heart. He's the one with the completely illegible signature.

I love Krispy Kreme

Everyone in Reading has ditched me this weekend, so I've decided to replace them all with doughnuts. As a result, I've got a new found empathy with fat people - it really is a good swap. You don't have to listen to stupid opinions and no-one argues with you, plus there's a lot more sugar glaze and creme filling involved. Well, most of the time.


_{mmmm, comfort eating}

SpaceTime

Wow.

SpaceTime

3D web browsing and searching, with lots of really cool little features. It can be a little awkward to navigate around at times but I highly recommend you download it and have a play. :)

Microsoft on drugs in the 80's

Ever wondered what would happen if a large company gave a bunch of advertising executives drugs and told them to go wild?


_{Wah-Wah-Wah-Windows, Three Eighty Six}

Note that the original video was 12 minutes long, this one's still got a bit of a painful introduction, and some supremely 80's acting in there, but everything is worth it for the two bits of rapping.

Also, I don't have a reliable source for the whole drugs thing, it's just a very strong suspicion. Don't fire me or anything...

Drawings on Tie-Dye Heart

Today's update on Tie-Dye Heart is a little different to what we've done so far, but if it proves popular I'll be putting up a few similar things from time to time - so let me know what you think about the whole idea of having some drawings up there alongside the cheap jokes and comics.

Chased/chaste is just a little drawing Lucie gave me one day, but for some reason I find it oddly compelling. There's something about her hidden face that really makes me wonder about what's going to happen next. Lu says it's a girl behind chased, who's just fallen/stopped to rest, but I tend to imagine otherwise...

It's been up on my living room wall for awhile now, just thought I'd share it with you. Even better - as this is just a pilot to find out if you like/don't like this sort of thing, the post's out of sync with the Sunday/Thursday updates, so you're getting a freebie this week. Enjoy :)

Xx

Offsite

I've just returned home from my first departmental 'offsite' event, which was certainly an interesting experience, if not a thrilling one throughout. The idea is that everyone stops doing their work, travels to a sub-par hotel in the middle of the country and watches some Powerpoints, then goes drinking.

Oddly enough, it worked quite well, with the 'teambuilding' exercise of making a one minute video on what the department actually does (no-one knows) proving great fun - as did the evening/night of drinks, of course. The 'forced fun' of a Murder Mystery night fell mostly on its face unfortunately, as did most of the presentations - but this just led to more fun making/hearing amusing little comments about them all. I was also involved in a coding 'competition' to show off the powers of some fun new technology, but the less said about that, the better.

Fun though it was to have yet more drinks out of BillG's pocket, the most useful thing I took away from these two days was a presentation from 'eclectic guru' Eddie Obeng who gave a great talk on the art, and science, of telling a story. I won't steal all his IP by telling you about it all here - but if you're interested, let me know and we'll chat, I was really, really impressed.

--

Various tidbits that amused me on the way there/back:

Ibstock - Innovators in Clay
I'm fairly sure that making bricks out of clay isn't exactly a recent innovation..

Interbrew - Making Beer Great
Such a hard job.

Steve Lamb - "Why isn't monosyllabic?"

And also from Steve's blog (wot I just found):



A car outside a showroom with the number plate:
HI IAN M

--

I'm sure there were more, but I'm tired and forgetful :)

Bloody Students

It's not just Grads that have it nice and easy - I forgot how lazy and wild one could be as a student too. Seems it's just us placement folks that have hard work and no spare time...you bastards.

After getting back from London on Friday I dashed over to Reading for Julie-oh's birthday celebrations. I won't go into too much detail, party because bits of it are sketchy (thanks again, alcohol) in my memory, but mostly because I didn't actually get drunk enough to engage in any wonderous adventures this time.

Despite this, I still managed to get to bed (I say bed, I mean a sleeping bag on a sofa) at 4am and 4.30am on Friday and Saturday nights respective, which probably wasn't the best of ideas given that I'm off to Northamptonshire (I think, is that even a place?) at 8am tomorrow morning for, amongst other things, a live coding challenge in front of a hundred people or so, involving Beta technology. Nice.

Great fun though, and thoroughly enjoyed the whole time - except the France vs England match - possibly the worst 80 minutes of rugby (followed by a minute and a half of tense play in over-time) I've ever seen, made even worse by the fact I was actually supporting the French (or rather, hoping the English would lose) and they were playing like absolute cowards the entire time. Yet another reason to hate the surrender monkeys.

Go South Africa.

Scrabulous

So I've recently been drawn into the seedy world of Facebook Applications for the second time, thanks to the folks in Birmingham. The first time, by the way, was to add the ironic, tongue-in-cheek 'No Applications On Facebook' Application.

Scrabulous is a wonderful game, which has been cunningly named to avoid any copyright infringement (I'm sure the entire board, rules and all the other stuff isn't IP guys, don't worry) - though I'd hope you can guess what it's a bit similar to.


_{Naturally, I always win}

It's turn based, allowing you to play at your leisure - or so the theory goes. In reality, this just means that if you're ever part-way through a game and you dare to leave the internet for a short while, then you return to a flood of offline messages prompting you to move:

Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:12:
...i don't wait until some cows meander towards the cowshed munching on a nice juicy verge along the way
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:12:
...slight misappropriation of that metaphor there..>!
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:12:
is misappropriation even a word?
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:12:
maybe you could use it
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:13:
malappropriation might be better
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:13:
Mmmm malapropism.....
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:14:
stilton with apricots
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:14:
its SO dirty
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:16:
ok i need to go shave now
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:16:
my beard is catching on the keyboard
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:17:
snagging on the mouse
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:17:
tick tock tick tock
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:17:
he waits....
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:17:
for a guiness
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:18:
...and the word IS ........
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:18:
"narcolepsy"
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:18:
are you still awake?
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:19:
oh....no..... my computer is ossifying.......
Tim sent 14/10/2007 20:20:
oh so its my go now is it??

Even more amusing when it's not your go, and the other person's just forgotten to refresh...

;)

National Fail

So with all this travelling I've spent a lot of time on various trains and the Tube, which has resulted in hearing quite a few interesting excuses for the various delays and cancellations that plague our wonderfully antiquated rail system.

When travelling up to Manchester, on part of the route towards Liverpool (where else?) our train was delayed near Crewe because there were leaves on the track. Tea-leaves in fact. Yes, our train was delayed because, and I quote, 'there are some thieves on the track'.

From Bath to Reading there was a slight delay because 'one of the carriages has come a bit loose'. Well, so long as it's just a bit loose then, not very loose or anything. Very reassuring.

On my way up to Birmingham (where I am now, by the by) my train was delayed on two separate occasions. Firstly, one of the windows (in coach B) broke, which sounds quite dramatic, but I wasn't present to see this, being in lowly coach D. They stopped at a later station to replace this (but only with single glazed glass!) but then we had to stop again because someone was 'a bit ill' in a train on the tracks ahead of us. Interesting.

Being forced to leave the house now, ciao.

Xx

--

Almost forgot another funny one, it wasn't a reason for a delay but was certainly a bit bizarre. At one point on some journey, the train manager said "..and welcome to all the paying customers, and the naughty girl, who joined us at <place>" - though we never got to find out what was meant by this...

Bloody Grads

So I've spent today talking about the Microsoft Graduate Scheme, and in case anyone was wondering, yes it really is as cushy as I made it out to be.

Just check what Will's been up to.

National Work Placement Exhibition

Today I decided that, instead of doing my normal job, I'd pay a visit to the National Work Placement Exhibition being held over in London. Microsoft had a stand there, with Guitar Hero and lots of fliers, which is where I spent 7 hours or so today, standing around and talking to prospective placement students and graduates.

Naturally, this was pretty tiring, and when I got home today I fell straight into bed. It was fun though, and I got to meet lots of cool people - although all the best folks I met were running the other stalls. All the students looked uncomfortable and out of place in their suits, and were more interested in trying to get a job than having a laugh.

I didn't let any of them get away with being shy though, which had mixed results. If someone just came up to me and didn't say anything, I wouldn't say anything to them. If they asked me to tell them about the schemes, I'd ask them what they wanted to know. I made them think up three questions to ask me once I'd told them stuff, which was quite amusing, but made life more fun for me and got rid of a bit of their nervousness.

Gave an impromptu presentation at one point too to a couple of hundred students, which was quite fun. I knew at 10am that I was going to be talking on the stage at 2pm, but time flew so quickly during the day (I even missed my precious free lunch) that I just assumed the events girl was wrong when she said I only had ten minutes left before I had to get up there. That turned out quite well again though, and folks kept stopping me afterwards to say they enjoyed it - though by now I honestly have no idea what I said.

So, enough tired ramblings for now - same again tomorrow and then I'm off to Birmingham.

Xx

Extroverts and Introverts

Miles linked me a week or so ago to this very interesting little article recently dug up from the grand old excavation site we refer to as the internet/web/bob

Top 5 Things Every Extrovert Should Know About Introverts

It’s a particularly interesting read alone, but it’s been very fun applying it to myself. I’ve asked a few folks here in Reading, where most of them only see me either when I’m presenting or out drinking, what category they think I fit into, and the unanimous verdict has been that I’m certainly an extrovert – for obvious reasons. However, having read through that article myself, their opinions couldn’t be farther from the truth. One to one I’ll happily chat away for hours, but when in a group of people, I’ll often simply (seemingly) ignore the conversation and just sit in silence.

I don’t often do small talk, I find it rather pointless and would much rather spend my time planning future projects, and analysing various arts (music, books, other) than commenting on the breasts of everyone vaguely female who appears on the TV, or participating in the increasingly lewd homoerotic innuendo that seems to develop whenever a group of lads get together for more than about 30 seconds or so. Or maybe that’s just my friends...

One thing to note though, if I don’t want to go out, it’s not because the social contact doesn’t stimulate me. I love going out, I probably just hate you.

Home...for now

I’ve just begun the 4 hour journey back to Reading from the wonderful city of Manchester. Not that I’ve actually seen any of Manchester, having spent the entire time either in my hotel, or presenting, but I’m sure it’s a very nice place...
I got back from Bath at about 10pm on Sunday (after missing the second half of the Scotland/Argentina game, grr) where I’d spent the weekend with Lu. As you may have guessed from my previous post, I took her to the Spa there for a treat – and given her illness (and, more importantly, given the amount of rugby on TV) we didn’t really get out much other than that. Got to meet/re-meet her housemates too, who seem quite an amiable bunch – they like Guitar Hero at least, which is always good. I’m almost certain that they like me much more since I declared (and proved) that anything they could do on Guitar Hero, I could do far better with the guitar behind my head, because awe of such skill always overcomes impressions of arrogance, or so I assume.

Left for Manchester at 6am the next morning, getting in as the day of presentations I’d organised was already partly underway – fortunately someone else had done the introduction for me, I probably should have planned for that in advance though. My talks went down well, though the day could have been a bit smoother – we’d (I’d) originally advertised it as being specifically for folks in the Public Sector, but then with low attendance figures, had to make it open to all. Unfortunately not everyone noticed this change so a few of them came along hoping for more specialised content than was actually provided. We were also unable to get our SQL guy to do the talk on SQL Server, so we had to have someone else do it, who really got grilled when it came to Q&A time.

After that was all over and I’d collected up the feedback sheets (mostly good, other than the two points above), I got back to my lovely hotel for the night, the Marriott. For some reason (I’m sure I didn’t book anything too mad) I ended up with a room the size of a small flat, with two double beds and three sofas. This all sounds very impressive, but my usual methodology for measuring the decadence of a hotel room is number of light switches, and last night’s was a bit of a disappointment in that area, only having 9. The best to date (with work at least) is 12, which was quite simply silly. I find number of light switches to be an extremely accurate measurement, as it not only accounts for the size of the room but also for the amount of money that went into wiring it up, and putting in extra lamps wherever possible to justify the room rates. I had my dinner in the Player’s Club restaurant, which has managed to combine gourmet cooking with home-style portions, and was absolutely superb. A bit pricy at £25 for a course and a drink, but worth every penny when the expenses account was paying. Half a roast duck, caramelized peaches, stir fried noodles with red peppers and various vegetables – perfect. A bit sad, admittedly, eating in the hotel restaurant on my own, but the traditional tactic of bringing a book along saved me from too many pity glances from the well-dressed couples about, and the waitress’ pity was probably what convinced her to let me play the sublime grand piano they had there for a short while.

Today was another early start, and a lot more intense, as there were only two of us presenting and we went into some real technical depth. The agenda went to pot in about 5 minutes, after I asked everyone attending what sorts of things they wanted out of the day, but I think between myself and Dave, we managed pretty well, with lots of laughs and joking in the middle to prevent the day from dragging on too much. The feedback sheets I got everyone to fill out for this one were extremely good, with nearly everyone commenting on how happy they were with our presentation skills and technical knowledge – the only complaints were about the coffee, which I naturally had nothing to do with (it’s great being constantly surrounded by servants, I might look at employing some at home...).

So, that’s that, sorry I haven’t been blogging too much recently. Remember, I’m in Birmingham over the weekend, and London on Thursday, if anyone fancies catching up for drinks or the like.

Xx

Thermae Bath Spa

Yesterday, as a treat (and more selfishly, as a way to counter her illness) I took Lucie to Thermae Bath Spa, which is far, far better than Bath Spa train station.

What it lacks in vending machines and late-running trains, it makes up for with a range of heated-water based treatments and really, really hot girls. The first 'bath' (think very fancy swimming pool where no-one swims), the Minerva Bath, was pretty sweet, being underwater and having various fun features, such as a circle where one can simply float around and around, being propelled by little jets of water. There was also a large jacuzzi-style bit and, again, lots of hot girls.

Upstairs there was the steam-rooms bit, which had four rooms in it, each 'flavoured' with a different plant. The smell of lavender/eucalyptus/something else/something else was really overpowering at first, but was a great touch. There was also a large 'waterfall' in the middle of all the steam rooms, which was again very well done. Did I mention the hot girls by the way? They were great.

Up further there was a heated rooftop bath, again filled with natural spring water, which must have been shockingly inefficient to heat. If it was me, I've have put a roof on, some insulation around it...oh well. This was again, very cool though, although it was a bit bizarre to wander over to the edge and see people just walking through the streets. Must have looked even more odd to them to glance up and see someone on the roof of a normal-looking building mostly naked and very wet.

Highly enjoyable, and certainly recommended as a place to go if you want to relax, like heated water before it hits a teabag, or want to find girls. Lots of girls.

Xx

Around and Around

I've spent today fairly well relaxed, going over slide decks, giving presentations to an empty room, doing some development and (less interestingly) writing guidelines for an internal tool I'm putting together. I've been enjoying the time at home because I've a bit of a gauntlet coming up, and won't have much chance to sit still for a while.

Tomorrow's the first of the Business Value Discovery Days (why, why did I come up with that name?) I'm organising and presenting at, where I show off all the cool new technologies, but I do so by using lots of buzzwords and Powerpoint slides, instead of writing code and making geeky jokes.

Then once that's over I'm straight off to Bath to see Lucie (beginning to regret the word 'gauntlet' now) for the weekend, which should be ace because I haven't seen her for ages. I'm back in Reading at about 10pm Sunday night, so that I can get the 7am train off to Manchester on the Monday morning (my manager wants me on the 5am one, so I can give the introduction, but there's no way that's happening) for another of the Business events.

Tuesday's a day long technical event I'm organising/presenting at too (in Manchester again), where I get to talk to the real geeks, and show off lots of code - as well as quite a lot of slides and the like too.

Wednesday's some more presenting in Reading before I'm off to London for the National Work Placement Exhibition on Thursday. Friday I'm back in Reading for some presenting, and as soon as I'm done there I'm off up to Birmingham to see folks, celebrate a couple of birthdays and get up to some dancing at The Jam House.

I'll be back on the Sunday night before I'm off to Northampton on Monday for the departmental offsite. I thought offsites were meant to be social, but I've found myself presenting to, and running sessions for, my colleagues at this thing, to do with that new internal tool I'm creating that I mentioned.

Wednesday I'm back up in Birmingham, to visit the Aston Careers Fair and then I'm finally back in Reading for some rest. And, when I say rest, I mean catching up with the million things I'll have missed during all of the above.

So, coming on to one of the points of this post - if you're about in any of the cities I'm coming to visit, and you fancy meeting up for dinner, drinks, or anything else then let me know. Here's a recap:

Reading --> Bath --> Reading --> Manchester --> Reading --> Birmingham --> Reading --> Northampton --> Reading --> Birmingham --> Reading

Total Travel Distance: 1,167 miles

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Today's random link: A very overpriced XBox 360

Pepe Deluxé - Go For Blue

This is just...unbelievably awesome:



Lots of drugs anyone?

Free DVDs anyone?

So a new comic's just gone up over at Tie-Dye Heart, so those of who've been slacking off, remember to put http://www.tiedyeheart.com in your favourites, or as one of your RSS feeds. Hope you're still enjoying things :)

Anyhow, I've just come into possesion of a couple of free DVDs from Play.com (couple of restrictions on what you can get, but should be something for anyone), and instead of getting them myself, I'm going to give them away to the person who can get most new folks over the comic.

I'll be tracking where people click through to the website from over the next 10 days, and whoever does the best job can have the DVDs (if you're outside the UK, you'll have to pay the excess postage yourself, sorry!). It can be any page at all, so long as it was you that posted the link. If you're putting it on multiple pages, send me a message so I know to combine the numbers.

This blog contains some very simple instructions for how you can put a pretty banner/button on your websites for folks to click on and get through to the comic. You could also just put up a textual link or even a Facebook posted item, or blog about it....be creative.

So, 10 days left, best of luck!
Xx

Mapping the Internet

The Opte Project is (was?) an effort to produce a full, real map of the Internet, using graphing and some basic colours, and grabbing every IP registration out there, linking them up. It produces a pretty little visual, and if you go back up to the website, you can even find a nice viewer for zooming in and out of the map. Click to enlarge.



I love attempts like this to bring the internet truly onto the physical plane - because it really is like a limitless set of geography, with areas of great beauty, massive hubs of entertainment, run-down smutty alleyways and a massively mixed culture.

I've bought a couple of the XKCD comics to go on my walls that also map the internet, they're less pretty but still infinitely fascinating. The first is similar to the above, a mapping of the IP address space:


_{XKCD 195}

The second is a fictional map of all of the online communities. The store version has a bunch of fun stuff on it that's not in the picture below, but it's still great - although, with the ever changing nature of the internet, already dated, with the massive growth of Facebook.


_{XKCD 256}

I want to die

Stumbling between my bed and a source of tea this morning, with a horrific hangover, I was heard to remark 'I hate everything' - which I'm sure anyone else who's been going out for Freshers' Week can sympathise with.

However, it became apparent to me that 'everything' was quite a lot of stuff to hate, which really reduced the impact of my emotion. Therefore, I've decided to try and rank all of this stuff I hate, in order of how truly awful it is.

1. France
Come on, no recent events are going to overcome innate, reason-less xenophobia.

2. Purple Spinners
A drink I probably shouldn't have invented last night. It's made up of equal parts of red vodka (why the hell was the vodka coloured?), blue vodka and Lilt. If it doesn't sound bad enough already, you then have to factor in that it can only be drunk whilst spinning around.

3. Freshers
My Freshers' Week was fine, I was a good Fresher. Sure I woke up in some interesting places and poses, and did a few strange things, but I never forced any of the older students to join in. Since then though, the quality's just been going downhill - last year's lot were spiking my beer with vodka on that infamous trip to Manchester, and this years lot...well I assume last night was their fault somehow too. Bastards. I recall they had some pretty hardcore drinking games, and it probably didn't help that I showed up drunk..

4. Weston's Cider
So, back-tracking here, it wasn't just the drinking games with Freshers that have left me in my current, very fragile state, I was actually drunk yesterday from about the hours of 1pm till whenever I got to sleep. My team meeting involved lunch, lunch involved drinks and drinks consisted of some cider which was far, far stronger than I originally realised. Also some girls upstairs in the restaurant gave me a drink of something green and strong (you'd think I'd learn about taking drinks from strange girls)

5. Internet Explorer
Now, the one advantage which IE has over Firefox, for me, is that it is incapable of remembering that I'm logged into my Google account, and forces me to log in every single time. This is (was) great, because it meant that in moments when I am possessed by inebriety, I can't get on here and post retarded stuff. Clearly that somehow failed yesterday, so apologies for whatever garbled nonsense I was trying to write (pulled now).

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There, bitching's made me feel a little better, and I think you've got a decent idea of my Monday's activities. I didn't get around the mentioning the bit where I was in a hot-desking area in the London offices trying to pretend I could read what was on my laptop screen, and hoping the various high-level managers who were around didn't notice I was drunk. Oh, also forgot to mention; if you're my manager, please don't read this post.

Virgin Teenager Lawsuit Shocker!

I recently found this article, during the course of my daily read of the Sydney Morning Herald:

Virgin sued for using teen's photo

Now, the story's fairly amusing on its own, but if you look a little closer, you can find some really funny stuff in there:

1. The SMH have reproduced the photo on their website, and presumably in their paper too. Massive media exposure there...and they managed to violate the CC license which the entire lawsuit revolves around by not stating where the photo was taken. If any lawyers are reading...quick! Go sue! If they actually do get sued for this, I'll laugh so hard I might cry...

2. Anyone else make the connection between:
“The experience damaged Alison's reputation and exposed her to ridicule from her peers...” and “‘A lot of her church friends saw it.’"?

Nice Church she goes to...

3. "The lawsuit, filed in Dallas late yesterday, names Virgin Mobile USA LLC, its Australian counterpart, and Creative Commons Corp, a Massachusetts nonprofit that licenses sharing of Flickr photos, as defendants."

Someone remind me why they're suing Creative Commons? A non-profit organisation that publishes some legalese on the web for others to use freely. Seriously, I'd love to know.

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So, there you have it folks. I know a lot of you whine and ignore me when I tell you off for using images you found on the web for whatever purpose you want, without checking the licensing - maybe this'll get you to think a bit harder. Or maybe not.

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By the way, I hope you like my new style of tit(i)l(at)ing my blog posts by the way - I'm trying to see whether the editors over at The Sun are really advertising geniuses, or just idiots with a poor grasp of grammar. I'll review what sort of traffic this gets and let you know...

OneNote Snipper Tool

Those of you who've bought, or obtained, a copy of Microsoft Office (now only £40 for Ultimate for students) have probably installed a little program by the name of OneNote along with it, and then never even opened it or used it.

It's a great little tool for note-taking/scrapbooking, with simply awesome OCR abilities (even on video), but I've just discovered a little feature it has that's made my day.

The feature's a simple drag and drop to screenshot just a part of your current screen - something I do daily, but previously I've been going down the long-winded route of Print Screen > Open Paint > Copy > Select Region > Cut.

Now I simply press Windows Key & S, and then drag and drop, to get the item on my Clipboard. It also opens up OneNote and dumps it in there by default too, but I don't really want OneNote open most of the time, so I choose to just copy my clipping to the clipboard. Here's how (to quote a message from my junk e-mail folder; 'click to enlarge'):


_{Guess what tool I used to get that screenshot? :)}