There are no pictures today.

Evening.

I feel a rant coming on; brace yourselves for typos, probable swearing, and generally....well ranting and punctuation in inappropriate places.

So, the other night I decided I would have a preview of the next release of Ubuntu (Dapper Drake Flight 6 to be precise). Now, I know I have been a bit of an advocate of Linux in general recently and Ubuntu (and, sort of by default, Debian), but there were two completely unexpected outcomes of trying this...one of which was probably down to me (OK, was down to me) and the other definitely down to knowing more than just the basics when "f*cking with the system".

A favourite hobby of mine.

PRECONDITIONS:
i - I use an external USB 250Gb Drive for storing 90% of my media, personal and work files.
ii - I backed up /home (that's like "My Documents" and more for you Windows only people)
ii - I downloaded the LiveCD (that means it all runs from the CD)
iv - I am scared of messing with Boot Loaders (see GRUB)

METHOD & RESULTS:
1 - LiveCD Torrent downloaded very quickly and burnt [45 mins total]
[Take that Mico$oft!....did I mention that cost me nothing]
2 - Dapper is fast! Even with the LiveCD it's a little faster for many things than than my Breezy install.
[Breezy runs faster than XP on my machine!....Take that Bill!]
3 - So I ran the "This is GREAT! Install it" application linked on the Desktop. No problem....took about 30 mins [*bof*], looked good....restarted.

Everything was broken! Not even an Operating System.

Stuck the Breezy CD in, rebooted, waited an hour, ran Automatix, waited an hour.

[ *quak*]

Edit a file. Bobs your uncle all back!

CONCLUSION:
A - Learn a little more than the basics about your computer or find someone who does and that you trust.

B - F|_|cK Microsoft! Not literally....but why use them? Human usable Linux distributions do exist and they are not difficult to setup alongside or in place of Windoze! But make sure you get a Linux distro you can use as you want!

C - None of this cost me anything except a bit of time and a desire to go to the pub! If I'd been using Windows and it all borked I'd probably have had to pay (or steal) some of the software along the way! And it would have taken longer!!!

Some other fantastic news. Bristol Wireless have moved to the St Werb's Community Centre so I am hoping to get my CANtenna built at last....then I can connect for free at about the same speed as I have now....however I personally have some qualms about using a free access point, regardless of the professionality of the installation. I'm still going to do it though, if not at least so I can connect R (who has been thinking BBand)....wow, how about a repeater station on R's roof to a secure access point at mine, that connects back to the StWCC?!?

My brain hurts.

In other news, I removed the pink sofa from my lounge to the bin area for it to be collected tomorrow morning (for 15 notes to the council) on my own, but then collected loads of old boxes and big crap from neighbours and added it to the pile. A clean yard is a happy yard! Now I need to buy a dining table that can double as another work area (or vice versa)...

Tomorrow is the official day of conception of GuriNet...fully-fledged GuriMedia will be here with the arrival of EyeTV ;) and getting a decent WLAN bridge together...explanation and pics to come.

Scheduled a massive p!ss-up in Bruxelles for early May to celebrate the launch of a platform I had nothing to do with at the time....way to go I say!

Lil has more teeth coming so is red-cheeked and grumpy, but we had an OK time today....Sunday might be harder.

That is all.

Un Post pour Yasmina

This post is for Yasmina from Paris, who was intrigued by mention of The City Farm here in St Werburghs...the nearest translation I can come up with is "Ferme Citoyenne"....Citizens' Farm.

Anyway the pictures pretty much speak for themselves. But I just want to say that I love the fact that this resource is available pretty much in the middle of the city.



The farm sits in the hollow between lots of hills...a pearl at the bottom of the teacup.

There is a wonderful cafe with a small adventure playground.

Little Pigs....the massive pig was not there today.

There a couple of sheep, ducks, turkeys, chickens....

My personal favourite...Goat!

Lots of useful shops near my house!

This is the park that I can see from my window...Lil's favourite is the swings!


And here's a bad shot of Lil in the harness :)




In other news: The desk is finally built and installed with all the gadgetron required....except I went a bit mad this week and bought a Mac Mini....I know, I know...but it's sooo small and I can use BootCamp to run Windows XP on it too if I should be so mad.....Miniscule (16.5 x 16.5 x 5 cm) Home Theatre PC here I come!



Here's Lil before we set off.

Filles est Mignon!

Not Steak!

That's a French joke that.

Anyway, work....continues. It's still interesting, and I do enjoy the technical/managerial split, but what's with the politics? Crumbs. I mean, I'm not the most socially adept person in the world by any means; there appears to be no cut-off between my thoughts and my mouth most of the time. I'm trying really hard to be all diplomatic-yet-firm, but I still can't resist slipping in lines like "and if the integrator says that 'all functionality will be preserved' in one document and then says 'oh. that is not in scope', then I will personally fight them...with my fists."

Still, nobody disagreed with me.

I just typed a massive rant about work politics here....but on retrospect it was a bit too harsh, so i removed it. ;)

So.....without any further ado:



And pretty much the same thing happens here... ;)



That is all.

!UPDATE!

Huntley sent this (pre-shave) photo from Sunday....thanks Huntley!

Buggy Woe

Got a flat tyre on the mega-buggy, so I stopped off at a bike shop and they lent me a bike pump...Lil and I went up to The Caff this morning, met up with Huntley, and Buck & Gazatron came down for a bit too. Lil seemed a bit subdued with all the new people; Louise and Nellie were there too, but there was no great trauma. Gave her some milk and she played around with some toys while I had a coffee.

Stopped off at Redland Park and played on the swings for a bit and then she lay back in the buggy, sang "mumumumum" for a minute or two and then dropped off until the exact instant I stopped outside Rose's.

Swing

Short post. Tired....going out later (see post below)

Babbling 'bout Babel

Going to see Babel on Friday night!

w00t!....you can check out their MySpack site too ;)

Plus I will be accompanying the wonderful female Ricola...

w00t w00t!

Brought Lil round for half an hour to play with some toys....played a bit of "boinky boinky boo" (might explain another time...or video).



Back to work today :(

154 Emails in 2 days, even with the "Out of Office" thingie on. Did, however, manage to get out of going to Lyon for 3 days during easter week.

Babies + Trains = OK!

As you can see my desk is a bit cluttered....still not got round to putting up the new uber-desk...



Anyway...those are bits scavenged together for Lil's Robot! The current plan involves a snazzy light up cyclops eye, record and playback 2-3 seconds of sound with big push buttons...i might even get round to installing a spinning thing somewhere...

There's also a PIR and a couple of camera lenses from the "Stealth Cam" project...which seems to have ZSL in something of a tizzy!

We took the train up to Clifton this morning for a quick coffee and to show Lil off to anyone that might be in Tapas...so today we met Meesh, Super Al, Wierd Old Man, and Barny...might do the same next Sunday. No train though, so super-buggy it will be!



...unfortunately neither Uncle BuK nor Teh Berber managed to get up in time. But Lil seemed to enjoy it all nonetheless. First time on a train (I think...must ask R), and certainly the first time playing in a highchair with daddy & the magic cube. I even managed to sneak out for a quick smoke without her getting upset. Not a worry the whole morning! :)

Off to Gazatron & Lovely Kerry's engagement thinguh tonight....meeting up with Teh Ricola (both female and male) for a pie and a pint at the P&S before we all go to the do at 130.

Here is the lucky Tronmeister!

Standard Procedure

Afternoon.

Another short post. Mainly due to a desperate need for kilos of food...and it aint gonna cook itself.

I came across someones list of "5 things" the other day (can't remember where), and I suddenly came up with 5 things that 5 years ago, I'd never thought I'd say:

1 - "Hang on honey, Daddy just needs to tie his hair back"
2 - "So now, I just use MAC Addressing and a limited DNS Pool"
3 - "If I buy these 2 dresses, can I get this pair of tights free?"
4 - "Who's got a prettly little smile? You do! You do! You doooo! *Raspberry Noise*"
5 - "Yeah, but the risk of using the same integrator on both project streams outweighs the cost of re-submitting an RFQ...wait, did I just say that?"

Here's the main attraction, with her new "Magic Box" (thanks Amazon)!



Then, just now, I thought of 5 "must see" websites I probably do not mention enough:

1 - Peachie Keen (not for me you understand!)
2 - Lifehacker (hax0r your life!)
3 - Treehugger (I got me some "new" shoes coming thanks to them...pics when they arrive!)
4 - MAKE Blog (so many hacks and toys...and so little time!)
5 - Stupid [and offensive] people on IRC (so unlike me!)

And finally, I'm offering to set your computer free! And yes, I am mad...If you're local enough, I'll come round assess what you have and basically give you back a system "as good as or better than" you're current system...with free software!!!...I'll even provide (very cheap) lessons after I've shown you the basics for free...!

Especially lovely if you have a broadband connection...

Ultimate Sweetness

OK, so today's "headline" is taken from another very fun 'blog' (I started visiting the site regularly before I ever heard the word 'blog'). You should check it out here.

Not much to say today other than my sleep patterns are all over the shop (like 2-3 hour naps all the time, very odd), and that no, I have not bought a new sofa. Merely a new throw, which is actually a thin double duvet (30 notes from a shop nearby).



Me and Lil had a nice morning playing around at mine, then after a bit of grumbling while I got her into the new cardigan we were off in the uber-high-tech-baby-harness-frontpack-backpack that I've never used but turned out to be as comfy as claimed, and nowhere near as painful as the sling which goes over only one shoulder. Only problem was getting her out....I needed R to help as it is so safe. Lil had a kip after a visit to the farm, so I nipped to Tesco & Mothercare (my god this is boring isn't it?) bought a few things for "us" (OK a paint roller and a hat for me, a couple of books for Lil...one about cats, one about dogs).

Hmmm. Seems I had more to say than I thought. But not much.

Check out thys linke, this link and this link!

Holid Yay!

So. I finally got round to taking some of the days holiday I carried over from last year!

I have tomorrow off and quite frankly I am going to do big b*gger all! No work, no stealth cams, no computer (that's a lie). I am going to laze in bed for ages with my phone off I am going to eat nothing but take-away or restaurant food...and I am going to go buy the wonderful Indian-esque bedspread I saw last week but was too chicken to buy.

In the meantime....you can watch Lil :)

No Massive Rant Today

Instead....go read this:

"The human imagination is an amazing thing. As children, we spend much of our time in imaginary worlds, substituting toys and make-believe for the real surroundings that we are just beginning to explore and understand. As we play, we learn. And as we grow, our play gets more complicated. We add rules and goals. The result is something we call games."

Read on at Wired

And so...

...sorry about the poor quality of the videos below...that's because they're recorded off phonecams. Not such good quality with 3GP, but youTube lets them play on anything pretty much,so thumbs up from me. I might mess around with the size of the embeds, and post the link to another site that lets you download them into "normal" formats for free.

is it me, or is everything suddenly getting good on the net? Finally I'm seeing "secure", distributed, collaborative services (e.g. Digg, del.icio.us, the whole "social bookmarking" thing, plus RSS aggregators so you don't even need a browser as such, then VOIP, "swarming" (aka Torrents), AJAX & Ruby and that whole Web 2.0 thing!)...not to mention the fact that mobile access speeds are constantly creeping up (I have EDGE / UMTS / GPRS) off the laptop and the same off the phone. TheN Bluetooth for "personal area networking" (read: getting pix off my phone, sharing small video and music locally, as modem).

Oh. By the way, not only can you call/message me on Skype (ask me for contact details if you don't know them), you can also send me a "voicemail" from this site too! Just look for the "Send me an ODEO" (they had no nicer buttons) on the right hand side [down there somewhere]....then follow their instructions...it all comes straight to me "somewhere", "wherever" that may be, even if I am "anywhere" other than home...heh, who says I waste bandwidth?

O.O

Crikey. My phone can read my email to me...I can find anything I was ever interested in, even if I'm not sure how I categorised it at the time, I have new ways of visualising the content of the things I am interested in (using "Tag Clouding" for example)...using my current setup, I have paid a total of about £16. That was for the cable connection (12.95) and some blank CDs. Yet, with the "plugged-in"-ness of what I have created I truly have a universal tool in front of me...and thats on £12.95 per month from now on for the connection (2Mbps).

Not that you always need to be on the net...I'm also building a"KiddieBox" computer and one for a neighbour with MS, who basically just needs a really easy to control interface (BIG mouse and a clever desktop (plus various plugins)....it's a longshot).

Anyway, enough of the geek-love. I "punted" a railing with my finger today, which was already bad. Imagine stubbing your finger on a doorframe or something...ouch! To quote Rik from the Young Ones..."Eeeegh, it's gone all big!"....and kinda odd looking. Still it matches the "emo nail" I still have on the other hand (from the Xmas taxi door incident)...

Work still hardcore...trying to figure out what "eurovision" wants. As opposed to UK and France (it's somewhat like the EU I imagine....though I do not have translators...nor a big round room!).

Lil is apparently over the worst now, and R seems to be up and about, so I'll maybe post some pictures tomorrow night, though I have to do an early leave from work (for the doc) and then go see "teh byootifarl chile", then make sure my flat is respectable for the agency on Weds morning....they're going to sort my boiler and my fridge (yay!) but want to "look at the situation"....er? the fridge is sh!t?!?!?! and the boiler occasioally decides to not "go" when I press "go"!...but then it mostly does...anyway

...Good Shighne!

Vid Yo!

Just a brief one....I can now put video on the site.

Here's Tom!



Here's one of Lil (this time using the SE/// W810i)



Had a wonderful time with Lil today. Well, we only went to the market & Tesco (I bought her some cool jeans and a cardigan....and groceries for me) and then to the park, but she was happy enough all the time. Even though it was pretty cold in the wind, the sun was shining and she was well wrapped up and had the cosy toes on in the megabuggy (thanks Nicky).

Here's the older video of her "cycling" I promised...

Blech!

Ha. What was I worrying about Ubuntu supporting my "flash" cards...plugged it in and it just worked.

It just gets better!

So....that means you can have a few pictures..


Lil has discovered that my glasses come off!



Plus I got Skype working & mounted another 180 Gig disk (650 Gigs total!)...only MythTV remains :)