Monday, July 10, 2000
Woohoo. We got DBI working with MySQL, Perl and Apache in one big happy family...- posted at 18:31 :: feedback
Sunday, July 09, 2000
#now - film updated.- posted at 16:31 :: feedback
So: Mary and I went to see Mission: Impossible II last night at the local half-hour-drive-away multiplex thanks to the following train of thought:a) yes, we know all the reviews said it was crap
b) Mary wanted to see it because Tom Cruise was in it
c) I wanted to see it for the big explosions and loud music
d) I'd heard there was a funny Tom Cruise slo-mo hair scene
e) If you're going to watch big explosions, you might as well watch them on a big screen, as opposed to renting the DVD and watching them on a slightly smaller one...
Plot holes? Many. But then again, the first had a not-inconsiderable number of plot holes, and we'd pretty much expected to have to go with the flow somewhat.
I think the people sitting around us were probably sick and tired of our laughter and commentary all the way through the film. Predictable? Yes. The slo-mo hair scene was great. Stamp's bizarre accent provided a good forty five minutes of intellectual puzzling since we only managed to peg it down to South African halfway through the film, the character oscillating wildly between Irish, Geordie and Scottish accents throughout the film.
We ended up quite liking it. Granted, it wasn't any Gladiator, the plot wasn't in the slightest part original or believable (but hey, what's suspension of disbelief for anyway if it's not for a Tom Cruise film?), and the manner in which the plot contrived to get Tom Cruise out of black-special-ops combat gear into wavy leather trenchcoat a la Keanu Reeves's Matrix was nothing short of hilarious. The great part was that we didn't really go expecting much. I paid three pounds fifty, watched about two hours of stuff blowing up (always good) and laughed at plot holes. Mary paid thre pounds fifty, watched about two hours of Tom Cruise and laughed at plot holes... Can't say fairer than that, really.
Oh, and everyone laughed at the Dove scene, with the big explosion. You'll get it if you see it...
- posted at 12:45 :: feedback
The results of the Rainier Web-Index are somewhat shocking... check out the index highlights for companies that just don't get the web...- posted at 11:32 :: feedback
Saturday, July 08, 2000
Damn them. After being told for ages that exercise was addictive, I always thought it was propaganda. So I went out for a run today and the damn thing is after I got back I thought, hey, why not do it again... I hate it when they're right...On the plus side: wahey! exercise! endorphins!
- posted at 17:13 :: feedback
Surprise! The missile defence system that eveyone knew wouldn't work failed today. Yet Congress still wants one. Idiots. And George Bush Jr. wants an even more comprehensive system... [BBC News]- posted at 17:11 :: feedback
The Times lists letters to the editor about the Euan Blair affair: the last is by far the most amusing...- posted at 12:24 :: feedback
Lightning Field (The Times) is "a mathematically precise two-mile square of steel poles which glows gold in the sunset, but comes into its own in electric storms when it attracts forks of lightning which bounce off each shaft to create an astonishing spectacle".Go check out the official site and the google search.
- posted at 12:22 :: feedback
Angel Gabriel: "Oi, Mary, you are going to give birth to a currant bun and you are going to call him Jesus."Mary: "You what, I ain't been with no fella, you're telling me porkie pies."
- Cockney Bible teaches Jesus was currant bun [The Times]
- posted at 12:19 :: feedback
The Times: Showing remarkable foresight, two animal welfare compaigners paid £1,500 to rescue 10,000 battery hens from teh slaughter house. The only problem? They don't know what to do with them.- posted at 12:18 :: feedback
At last: genuinely useful information to the people most likely to own WAP phones: UCAS offers clearing information over the net and WAP. Of course, it'd help if WAP were usable... But it's a start. For those not in the know, UCAS is the Universities Clearing and Admissions Service that handles, well, university admissions in the UK.- posted at 12:17 :: feedback
Gotta catch 'em all: The Times reports that children are swapping prostitutes' calling cards "in a disturbing variation on the Pokemon craze". I really have nothing more to say to this... (muffled laughter)- posted at 12:15 :: feedback
The Times: After the comic relief that was Euan Blair getting drunk (and doing pretty much what every other sixteen year old does), Blair reckons he has about one "worst week" every three weeks. Not too far off the mark: The Times researchers reckon that Blair has a worst week every 4.56 weeks...- posted at 12:14 :: feedback
Excuses, excuses. Honestly, all you people with jobs, I don't know how you find the time to blog. Since I started work on Monday I've had no time, and any free time has been spent with a splitting headache (yeah, that's me complaining...)Big things I'm working on: Elias (secret thing), and another As Yet Unnamed Very Very Secret Thing that you're going to have to sign an NDA in order to have the slightest idea of what it's about...
- posted at 12:11 :: feedback
Wednesday, July 05, 2000
Today, I have mostly been learning how to use Samba -- sharing linux directories and accessing Windows NT shares...Tomorrow is a big mySQL day... joy.
- posted at 23:37 :: feedback
Giles Turnbull spotting! (Sorry, Giles!) BBC Online - WebWise - Can't stop Clicking?- posted at 23:22 :: feedback
Oooh, spiffy. BBC Online - What's On BBC TV and Radio - Don't Miss Today- posted at 23:21 :: feedback
Tuesday, July 04, 2000
Yay. Apache server up and restricted directories ahoy. I'd point you to the server, but it's not listening to anyone outside of this office at the moment...- posted at 13:41 :: feedback
Gah. Started work. Booted up my first Red Hat installation (painfull, you try getting an ISA network card working...)- posted at 08:03 :: feedback
Sunday, July 02, 2000
Cheers to Matt at interconnected for pointing me to the Atomz.com Search Engine that you can now see proudly displayed to your left. Go ahead. Search away, to your heart's content...- posted at 23:41 :: feedback
Saturday, July 01, 2000
Okay, I know I've done this before, but I'm doing it again (just in a little more detail).Applications for summer vacation placements with the civil service have gone away via email, and I should be hearing about my status in about a week or so. I've applied to the CITU - Central Information Technology Unit and the Lord Chancellor's Department, hopefully I'll be able to spend some time at each placement if I'm lucky. Technically, as a lawyer, I should be going for the LCD job...
CITU do some seriously cool stuff. What seems to be really cool is their portal demonstration area, which is all to do with modernising government and the goal of providing access to a substantial proportion of government facilities by 2008. BT have just won the bid to produce "me.gov", which would be quite cool and groovy were it not for the fact that whilst being called "me.gov", the address would in reality have to be something like "me.gov.uk" which doesn't trip off the tongue as easily. Unless, of course, we're actually developing an American Government-Citizen portal instead...
Anyway...
Portal demonstrators: check out the change of address demonstrator (pdf or word, I'm afraid). It's a startling heavy document, detailing their XML schemas and even what webserver platform they intend using (Compaq put the document in, and the damn thing's going to be running on IIS with Microsoft's implementation of DES--maybe they'll change their minds...). Tonnes of interesting stuff in the document. They even tell you that the trial ISP was Demon, for crying out loud...
So, all interested parties: have a look. Check it out. Email them if there's any startling security flaws in their model (I bet there are...)
That said, these CITU people really do seem to know what they want...
- posted at 23:30 :: feedback
They started this last year, but it's still good fun: Wimbledon SMS squirts the scores of your five selected players straight into your mobile phone. Excellent.- posted at 20:21 :: feedback
Effort-free content: Web Server Statistics for [DailyDoozer].- posted at 17:16 :: feedback
Friday 21st July: if your're in Britain then you'll want to be at a cinema, because that's the day High Fidelity opens. If you haven't read the book already--what the hell have you been doing with your life?- posted at 12:48 :: feedback
Now that we can implant silicon microchips beneath human retinas, will someone please lock up Kevin Warwick? The media-cyborg is going to be all over the place with this news...[Damn. Can't hack the URL. Go to NTK and stick kevin warwick watch in the search box].- posted at 12:36 :: feedback
Going to sleep at half three and then getting up six and a half hours later to go to the supermarket is not a good idea... My head hurts...- posted at 12:30 :: feedback
Huh. Unknown News seems to like me...- posted at 02:22 :: feedback
To suggest to colleges and universities that banning ftp and telnet access is a good idea is a bloody stupid idea. The great thing about Cambridge's mail servers are that all the students can telnet in from damn near anywhere and pick up their mail. It's impressive that fifteen thousand people have a working knowledge of Pine when it would've been the easy way out to offer a web gateway. And ftp! For crying out loud, I just helped a friend get a copy of her CV (resume) that she left on the university managed network (she was pretty impressed that we had remote access)... Come on, we need this stuff...[via Slashdot]- posted at 02:14 :: feedback
Crap. It's two in the morning. And I'm still awake, thanks to the miracle that is coffee. Just finished watching Mercury Rising which, despite what the imdb may say about it, was a thoroughly enjoyable film. I'm a sucker for Bruce Willis films--I loved Armageddon, and feel free to hound me forever on that one, thought Sixth Sense was great, yadda yadda ya. Mercury Rising? Hell, I would've paid to see it at the cinema. No problem. Course, it helped that Kim Dickens was in it. She's nice.- posted at 02:11 :: feedback
Oy... I really need to sort my personal life out (again). I promised that I'd send Mary a package containing, amongst other things, the lipstick that she left behind in Cambridge last week for the ball, photos of said ball, and a nice card (though she doesn't know about the card)...I just haven't had time to do it yet. Technically, instead of writing about how crap I am at not writing to her, I really should be writing to her. Bizarre that. I think one of the main reasons why I've managed not to do it is that I'm still confused as to what's going on between us. It follows on quite easily from that that I'm a little unsure as to what to write, otherwise the entire exercise just degenerates into chirpy "hello! how are you? I'm fine. Miss you", which isn't really something that I want to do.
Sheesh. I wish people would just make up their minds about stuff. Myself included.
