Quote of the day

Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight. - Phyllis Diller

Littlest Update

We had quite an adventure on Friday, with our littlest going into hospital for a wee operation. I think it was more traumatic for mum, but we all survived, and it all passed off peacefully.

Anyway, she was supposed to rest for 24 hours, she probably managed 2.4 hours, so I suppose that's something. Her hearing seems to be a lot better, although she has some habits that will take some time to shake, like watching lips, and I also think she has a habit of not listening (you know, what your teachers always told you - there was nothing wrong with the hearing, its the listening that's at fault).

We are able to see an improvement, and that's good. She is also completely unscathed by the whole ordeal - she seems to think of it more as an adventure. The nurses thought the anesthetic had had a funny affect on her, they said she was very talkative; we managed to reassure them this was perfectly normal.

Thanks to all for all the concern and your support.

Thank You

So, to the producers of Lost I say "Thank You."

At last we get a few answers. More questions are opened up, enough for an intriguing Season 3.

Caution: Look away now..

Finally, we get to see Desmond, how he got to the island, to the hatch and how he began to push the button. We got to see Kelvin, his predecessor, and hear his story.

Finally we see the countdown go to zero, and see the real consequences.

Finally Michael has to own up to what he did.

Finally we discover that there is a way off the island, bearing 325 degrees.

We get to see that Henry is an important person. We see that the camp is fake, and it seems the others live elsewhere

We have the promise that Jack, Kate and Sawyer will be taken to wherever the others actually live. We find out that Mr Friendly's name is Tom, and that the survivors shouldn't really be told that.

We already suspected that the island was somehow invisible to the rest of the world, more confirmation this episode. Except for the EMP.

What of Mr Eko, Locke and Desmond? Where do the others live? What do they want with the 3 hostages? What was the light/sound? The one footed, four toed statue? Where did Sayid end up? What was with that bird?

In Season 3 I think we will find out more about "the others." Maybe there will be a search for the island resulting from the EMP detection. I loved that scene switch to polar conditions, that was fantastic, and a nice ending to the episode too. After the poor ending in season 1, I think I may actually be tuning in on October 4th, when 3x01 airs...

Little ears

It's (apparently) a traumatic time for our household, as our littlest goes into hospital for an operation tomorrow. I say apparently because it hasn't really worried me much, I've never been all that convinced that worrying has much influence over these situations.

Hopefully all will go well, and we'll have a fixed little one soon.

If any of you happen to know the Creator, and are on personal terms, we would appreciate if you could have a word....

24 Season 5

I have to say I was really enjoying and badly addicted to 24, season 5 until 3 episodes before the end.

At the end of 5x21 there was another one of those "it nearly finished, but not quite," and to be honest I had just about had enough twists. I just wanted it to be over.

SWMBO however thought it was fantastic right to the very end, which was incidently a departure from the normal 24 ending....

Anyhoo I'm just about to watch the last 2 episodes of Lost season 2 - all we can do is hope that its a departure from the Season 1 "worst season ending ever."

New TV

So we finally got our new TV, which I had ordered as a result of birthdays passing, and its great.

The problem with it is that its too good. TiVo with composite out is no good, and my amp doesn't do RGB, or composite to component conversion.

I had already ordered a component lead for the XBOX, and it works great. I had read on the TiVo community forum that it was possible to modify settings in one of the output FPGAs to change the output from RGB + composite to component. It requires a setting to be applied on startup, and more interestingly a lead to be created.

I found a good article on it, got the iron out and managed to make up the lead as described. I plugged it in, and voila - it worked first time.

I did however spend an evening trying to get the colours correct, but thats another story.

My amp does switch component, 2x component in to 1 output, so I set about changing the settings to make it work like before. I have to say, that amp is the most difficult thing I have ever had to set up, input -> output mapping is really annoying. The thing that gets me most is the lack of buttons - they use the same buttons for a variety of things, meaning you have to be careful with the order you press the buttons. Why don't they just put ethernet, and a simple web server? Even a serial connection.....

Anyway, got it all sorted in the end, and its a great job - both sources are set up audio and video through the amp. I am content.

Getting elder

The past week or two has been an odd time for me. At least two of those "once in a lifetime" events have occurred.

Firstly there was my Birthday, I'm getting older. I know they come every year, but it was a biggie, you know, an age that ends in a '0' - the reader may speculate as to the preceding digit(s). I don't really get that bothered about these things, but everyone seems to think that birthdays are exciting, especially ones that are multiples of 10, the arbitrary base of our numbering system. I'll only be this age once.

Secondly, and perhaps most peculiarly, I'm getting elder, or more accurately I'm in the process of becoming an elder. The fellowship to which I belong has recently decided that three new elders should be appointed, and so the process began. I was notified last week that I had been selected along with another person to be one of two new elders. This did not come as a complete shock as I had been pre-warned of the likelihood of this happening, but it was still a surprise, and a concern.

Many people seem to think that eldership is something that you earn, but that is just a dangerous misconception. Others recognise that it isn't earned, but still see it as a "promotion" in the church. Most people I talked to after the meeting of our Church on Sunday congratulated me, which I was a little troubled by, because I didn't do anything worthy of congratulations, although I suspect their motivation was innocent, and they were just trying to communicate their support as I take on this role.

I see the position as elder not as a promotion, or elevated status, but as a responsibility. A huge
responsibility. I feel truly unworthy of this responsibility. It is also a great opportunity, or probably will present me with many opportunities to influence the direction of the church, and also individuals, and I think that is one of the biggest responsibilities.

I have thought extensively, prayed and talked to friends about this and I believe this is where the Lord wants me to be, although it is well outside my comfort zone, so I have offered my acceptance. This is what faith is for.

There are a few formalities to get through yet, so it is possible that this rollercoaster ride will
crash, but that is in the hands of God.

A busy evening

Today I had arranged to meet a guy at lunchtime to pick up a cachecard for my TiVo. So part of the afternoon was spent reading about the steps to install that, in preparation for a busy evening.

Arrived home, and wolfed tea down, and then off to pick up SWMBO's new car. Over to Richard Patterson Motors again, where it was parked, waiting, ready to make its first trip to a new home.

When we arrived home it was time to get the kids to bed, and then start pulling apart the TiVo. Thankfully I'm not exactly what you'd call an "early adoptor," so hardware and software tends to be out years before I get round to trying it (the TiVo I bought was in the last available commercial sale of TiVos in the UK (cost £99)). Turbonet, Airnet and now cachecard have all been out for a long time, which means there are some great tutorials out there on how to install them. I used one from Steve Conrad http://www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo/index.html

I had to unlock my TiVo drive again, and about 20 minutes installed the drivers. Simple. Then the playing began. The tut I followed enabled FTP and Telnet access, so I could immediately transfer files etc, and log in. A few settings to make the environment a little friendlier (like the installation of the 'ls' command), and then the real fun could begin.

Once I got the TiVo operational again, and was happy that it didn't need any more surgery, I replaced the cover and let SWMBO fix on eastenders, while I worked away at it remotely.

Being Tuesday it meant a fresh ep of 24 was available, so obviously I had to take a break to see that (5x20)

After that I continued to play with TiVoWeb and some of the great modules available for that. I finished up at 2am having played around with endpad for a while.....

What a bargain [or so I'm reliably informed ;) ]

For my weekly half day Friday we decided to pop over to Richard Patterson Motors in Kilrea for a browse. We had been planning to change our 2000 Passat sometime this year, and I had called with Richard about a month ago to investigate.

I had really intended to come up 2 years to a 2002 Passat but today we decided on a 2003 Estate, which was a little over our budget, but brought us up a year beyond where we had been aiming.

It seems nice to drive, as usual from RPM it was perfectly presented, and seems very clean inside and out. Hopefully it'll do us for some time, without too many headaches!

If you're looking for a car check out the website for details of the current stock.

28 Days Later

After my success with film last week I thought I was on a roll. I thought finally I can discern good films. But I was wrong. Boy was I wrong.

28 Days Later has a couple of great aspects, I love the post-apocoliptic thing - a fantastic premise for a film - man wakes up in an empty city. It also interestingly raises a question about whether we have a responsibility to carry on the human race, and at what cost.

However, thats where the film stopped being good. They should have died. Many times throughout the film something that should have been inescapable happened. I know this is Hollywood, but it needent happen so many times.

The whole film was too implausable. If others had survived in different countries, surely the army would have been able to communicate.

On channel 4 they showed both endings, the alternative available on the DVD, and both were equally as bad! Quite an achievement to write two equally poor endings to a poor film. Don't watch this film.

I watched it on my PVR last night, and after it had finished I turned over and caught the end of "The Hole." Now there is a good film. Should have been called the perfect crime...... although I think the making of "28 Days Later" was criminal.

Saw [2004]

What a fantastic film week! Yesterday it was Memento, today "Saw."

On recommendation from a night out with some film buffs about 2 weeks ago I got a copy of this film, and sat down to watch last night. Wasn't expecting much, especially after just having watched Memento (you can't have 2 good films in a row...) , and to be honest I was a little scared it would be a blood-fest, which is not what I wanted.

But it wasn't. If you can watch past the first scene, the gore doesn't get a lot worse than that - it's not a very graphic film.

[Spoiler]

Another fantastic story, a serial killer who doesn't actually kill anyone. Well worth a watch, another fantastic ending - about 5 minutes from the end I thought we were going to have a Hollywood hero ending, but it all turned out well ;)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387564/

Memento

[Spoilers]

A friend from my previous work recommended this film, and I'd been meaning to see it for quite some time. So I finally got round to it - and it's fantastic.

On many levels an excellent film, from the storyline it's something unusual and the storytelling system tops it off nicely. I was worried for the first few minutes that I wouldn't get it, but what a fantastic film it turned out to be. And the ending, the icing on the cake, a fantastic way to finish a confused story.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/

XBMC puzzle solved

So, I (partly) figured out the problem, with the help of the good folks at ukha_d. It is *something* to do with the PC I was using for a media server. It doesnt appear to play nice with the XBMC software - I still haven't figured out why.

But swapping the drive into my desktop and sharing from there worked 100%. Even using a usb-ide adaptor and USB 1.1 from the kitchen pc with a network share worked 100%.

So the problem lies squarely with the fileserver machine. Investigation required ;)

New toy: XBOX

The lack of responsiveness from my Showcenter remote control, and the general '80s look of the GUI, together with the constant "XMBC does this" "XMBC does that" chat on ukha_d have prompted me to take the plunge and buy an XBOX. £65 delivered from amazon marketplace, with a controller, and a DVD Remote kit - not bad.

Anyhoo, it arrived today, so I spent the evening (or part of it) setting it up. For no good reason, other than 'just because' I decided to softmod it, rather than bothering with a chip. Now, I have never done anything like this before, and I have to say the documentation is the poorest and most disparate I have ever seen.

I followed the manual at : http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=443489 which sets it all out in a fairly sensible way. Except it didn't work. The bit where you have to hot swap the drive didnt work, it stayed locked for me. But a quick google showed an alternative - rip a track from a CD to the Hard Drive, and begin playing it. Pause playback, and then swap the drive. Apparently works 100% of the time.

With that completed I now had EvoX dashboard installed on my XBOX. Installing XBMC was simply a matter of copying (FTP) across the files from the distro - I followed the second part of the instructions from here to do that part.

Pictures and music 100%. Video not working. Very disappointing. Posting to ukha_d for advice....

13 things that do not make sense

An interesting article at new scientist : http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=mg18524911.600

Busy weekend ;)

Amongst the million other things that take up a weekend, I managed to fit in 3 films.

The Constant Gardener [2005]
I really enjoyed this film - a "political thriller" which I'm led to believe is purely fictional, but based somewhat on factual unethical behavior by the big drug companies [Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Discovery Labs placebo trial : Read more].
This film was fantastically filmed showing great pictures of life in the African villages - it was a great insight into that impoverished lifestyle. A really great story, well worth catching, and for once in a modern film, a satisfactory ending. A disturbing film. [imdb]

Dark City [1998]
A Matrix-esque film, recommended by one of the simulation argument websites, I think I was expecting too much. It's similar in makeup to "The Thirteenth Floor" but without the depth, I didn't think it was the same calibre of film at all. Well produced and thought provoking. [imdb]


The Island [2005]
Started to watch this on Saturday night after I finished Dark City, intending to just catch a flavour of the film, and ended up hooked, and watching the whole thing. Another good cloning film, hopefully it provokes thoughts in those who think human cloning is a good idea. Of course it had the big companies are inherently evil element to it, which of course makes it an instant winner with me. The Island awaits you. [imdb]

2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

Watched 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) last night too, a nonsensical film about fast cars and mad driving. These films annoy me with the detail of the cars, a bit like a 292 ip address, but putting those things aside its a fun film.

Brings back happy memories....

My Little Eye (2002)

Watched My Little Eye (2002) last night, a very interesting concept, another in the genre of The Truman Show, although an altogether darker angle.

Worth a watch, I have to say I was dissatisfied with the ending, but the concept makes it worthwhile. I'd think twice before signing up for a reality tv show....

Suns J2EE JMS Example in eclipse

I'm hastily trying to learn all things java. To add to the mix, its the enterprise stuff. Before this week I'd heard of "enterprise Java," but never really understood what it meant. It appears to mean "complicated, scalable Java."

I've been looking into all aspects of it, specifically Java Messaging Service (JMS) which is a scalable messaging system between java programs.

I ran through the tutorial from Sun [http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/docs/tutorial/doc/index.html] (be sure to get the tut specific to your SDK, it seems to change quite a bit), and had a bit of trouble with it, as I didn't understand the need to package the code into jars, and run it via the "appclient" batch file provided by Sun [http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/docs/relnotes/cliref/hman1m/appclient.1m.html].

This sets up the environment to allow the "application client" to run under the control of the application server, and have full access to its queues etc. This is necessary because of something called Environment Naming Context (ENC) which the application needs to have access to to connect to the application server.

C:\JMS_Test\bin>appclient -client SimpleProducer.jar jms/Queue 4

Works perfectly.

With that running the next step was to get it running from within Eclipse. After many dead ends, I found someone who had had this problem before [http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=484229&tstart=90]. I mostly followed his instructions, not quite - here's what worked for me:
I set up a project in eclipse, just an ordinary project, and added a source folder to it. I then copied in the simplified code supplied by Sun. Running this leads to a series of problems. The first thing that needs set is command line arguments. Right click the project and select debug as -> debug.... - from the dialog select the arguments tab, and insert "jms/Queue 3" (without the quotes) into the top box. This specifies the command line arguments expected in the program.

This gets through the first part of the code, but then throws an NoInitialContextException Exception:
JNDI API lookup failed: javax.naming.NoInitialContextException: Need to specify class name in environment or system property, or as an applet parameter, or in an application resource file: java.naming.factory.initial

This is because the environment is not set up properly. That's where This article comes in - I set up the project as suggested :
1) Set the VM Arguments (in the Arguments Tab [debug as -> debug...])
-Dcom.sun.aas.installRoot="%AS_INSTALL%" -Dcom.sun.aas.imqLib="%AS_IMQ_LIB%" -Djava.security.policy="%AS_INSTALL%\lib\appclient\client.policy" -Djava.security.auth.login.config="%AS_INSTALL%\lib\appclient\appclientlogin.conf" -Djava.endorsed.dirs="%AS_INSTALL%\lib\endorsed" -Djavax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory=org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserFactoryImpl -Djavax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory=org.apache.xerces.jaxp.DocumentBuilderFactoryImpl -Djavax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory=org.apache.xalan.xsltc.trax.TransformerFactoryImpl -Dorg.xml.sax.parser=org.xml.sax.helpers.XMLReaderAdapter -Dorg.xml.sax.driver=org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser
2) In the Classpath Tab, click on user entries and add the following External Jars:
From the directory C:\Sun\AppServer\libj2ee.jar
appserv-rt.jar
appserv-ext.jar
mail.jar
activation.jar
jaxrpc-impl.jar
saaj-impl.jar
jaxr-impl.jar
relaxngDatatype.jar
xsdlib.jar
install\applications\jmsra\imqjmsra.jar
appserv-cmp.jar
appserv-admin.jar
From the directory C:\Sun\AppServer\imq\lib\
fscontext.jar

Debugging this application now works. Phew.

Explorer crash when viewing thumbnail AVIs

This Google Groups article helped me fix a problem with explorer crashing when browsing folders of avi files. I reallly don't know what the problem was, but this solution worked, although it is a workaround rather than a fix.

regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll