Room 6 [2006]

What an excellent title. You can automatically tell that it fits into that "Horror, Thriller" category. However, that is where the greateness ends. There are a few good scary moments, and the ending is satisfactory but it does go an awefully long way round getting there.

So I'm afraid its a thumbs down from me :(

End over end

The waves we saw last night looked like the best I had seen, so I thought I'd better call Dad, and give him the chance to have a go. He had been delayed, and was not home from work, but eventually he arrived at my house just before 10pm.

So, back we went to the beach, I wasn't sure how wise the whole escapade was, as the Sun was about to set. When we approached the waves looked even bigger than earlier, even a bit scary!

Out we went, and we had a fantastic time. However the waves were so big that on three occasions I managed to get the boat to go end-over-end. When the wave was breaking and I was paddling in with it, because of the height of the waves the boat had a tendancy to sink the nose. Apparently this can be compensated by leaning backwards, but these waves were just too big, and the nose went down, the back came up, and over we went. This is a thouroughly disorientating affair, as you are catapulted into the water on your front, below the boat, just before a breaking wave hits you. You just have to wait for the lifejacket to float you round, so you know which way is up, and then try to breath again.

After that it is a matter of removing water from your eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Then begins the fun of trying to get back in the boat with subsequent similar waves.

All-in-all a great evening, but it beat me in the end, and I just let the waves bring me in, and I think Dad was ready for out about the same time. He fell out for the first time just at that time, which left him really dissappointed. I told him the sea was just reminding him who was boss.

Raise your glasses

Yesterday was another glorious day, with temperatures in the low twenties, and so we decided that a trip to the beach was in order. SWMBO had been joking about how all the boating had been centered around me, so I decided she would get a chance last night.

We hitched up the trailer and headed over to Dads for the kayak. We arrived at the beach around 7pm got all suited and lifejacked up, got the kids into the water on their new bodyboards, and I pulled SWMBO around in the kayak to get her familiar with the waves. Like a duck to water she was quicky going on her own, paddling out through the waves, and surfing them in. She was very fortunate because it was another of those "perfect" wave night, where the waves bring you in nicely, but don't throw you out of the boat.

It was all I could do to persuade her to let me have a turn, so I had a short stint, and afterwards we let the kids have a short, and controlled go.

After that SWMBO headed out again, and I stayed, and played with the kids. Every once in a while I would turn to see SWMBO successfully surfing another wave, bot this time I turned to see her out of the boat and shouting. I began to run towards her (running in the water is never very successful, and I'm sure it doesn't look too graceful to the onlooker either) thinking she was in trouble, but as I approached I discovered the trouble was less serious. She had lost her glasses. We spent about 10 minutes in the waves looking for them, the waves were so big that visibility into the water was impaired by sand, and froth (and for SWMBO by eyesight ;). I managed to spot them once on the seabed, but that was just before a huge wave came. So unfortunately the glasses sunk, never to be raised again.

Thankfully this incident hasn't put SWMBO off kayaking, and she still had a fantastic time, and now she has an excuse to go shopping for a new pair of specs!

Another pleasant evening

The weather was super last night again, which prompted another boating outing. The waves were fairly small, similar to the previous night, so we decided to go out round the cost a little.

We started out at the West side of the castlerock beach (furthest from the barmouth, nearest the cliffs) and headed out around the coast. It was pretty tough going, which was a bit of a worry because the breeze (you couldnt really call it a wind) was in our back.

When we got halfway to Downhill, right inbeween the two railway tunnels, a train went through! It was a pretty unique perspective!

We persevered on around the coast, landing at Downhill for a break. It was a bit worrying, because the waves at Downhill seemed huge, but we managed to land without incident.

After a short pause, we set sail again back towards Castlerock, and to our great relief it was a lot easier, the tide must have been with us. About 20 minutes later we were back in Castlerock, and the going was so good we decided to keep going. We got about half way along the beach, and decided it was time to turn, knowing that the tide was against us. So back we went to our starting position, and landed again, emerging from the water almost completely dry. (this is the first time I didn't get my hair wet!)

I did a quick plot of our journey on Google Earth, and it seems we rowed just over 3 miles! So pretty good going... and great fun!

Let the mid life crisis begin

I figure why wait. Why put off the mid life crisis until mid-life. In fact, why even have your own when you can piggyback someone elses?

My Dad has been in "mid life crisis" mode for as long as I can remember, but recently he has taken up canoeing, or more accurately kayaking. He bought a kayak a few months ago, and has been relentlessly visiting the beaches / rivers to play.

He has been saying that I should go with him, and when he bought a second kayak my excuse list diminished drastically. In the end I gave in. I went for the third time last night, and it was great!

First time was about 10 days ago, and it was fun. Dad said the waves were the biggest he had ever been on, which I have to say was fairly intimidating, but it turned out to be great. Then we went again on Friday night past. It was freezing and windy, and really not an aweful lot of fun.

Last night was fantastic, we were out for about 90 minutes - the waves were a goldilocks size, not too big or too small, just right. We canoed out beyond the waves and went out around the cliffs a bit - the tide was perfect, and the wind was only a gentle breeze.

No photos unfortunately, I havent dared take the camera yet...

Mum, SWMBO and kiddies went for a walk along the beach while we were out, when they got back we got the kids into the boats and pulled them over the waves. They had a fantastic time. We'll definitely be doing that again... (hopefully tonight ;)

Growing up

Just a wee garden update - all coming up nicely, loads of lovely rain and heat over the weekend. It also got a spread of fertiliser tonight :)

Tourist Destination : North Korea

A very interesting photo diary of a visit to North Korea, the best place in the world to live according to the local government, according to everyone else in the world, it is the worst :

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=82755

Edit: Related news article : North Korea has a missile that can hit the USA & they can't wait to try it!

Rolling onwards

After last nights 1/2 completed rolling I got a more robust hitch mechanism made up and put the roller on behind the mower again.

It may have been easier and less effort to roll manually, but where would the fun be in that...?

The roller worked much better in the light, I could see where I was going - definitely a big advantage!

Got the remainder rolled, and its looking great - all we have to do now is wait for the grass to spring up....

Gardening

Our expanse of field has now been sown out in grass seed for a lawn.

It was ploughed a few weeks ago, and didnt look all that beautiful with a lot of matted field grass showing even with the ploughing.

Last Saturday morning I hired a garden rotavator and set to work - a tough job with a ploughed field on a hill. Anyhow, I toiled for about 2 hours pulling up I would estimate around a googol of stones. At 10:30 it was time to do a 2-hour shift at the flower festival at church, so I went there.

On the way back I called with Mr Farmer who I had asked to come and help with his proper tools, so he told me he would be there later in the afternoon. It was a fantastic day, sunny all day, and roasting. I did a bit more with the rotavator, and then waited on the tractor arriving.

When the tractor started with the power harrow (or par-harra as we say here ;) it was amazing. In went poor quality, aweful looking soil, and out came beautiful, well worked soil!

After another googol of stones were lifted, and a bit of harrowing the ground was looking great.

On Monday when I returned from work at 5pm I went straight to the garden. My Father-in-law had been there during the day with the tractor and land-leveller which had removed the humps and hollows. All that remained to be done was raking the small stones away.

Raking took a few hours, and about 9pm we were ready to sow the grass seed. After sowing it needed another rake to cover the seed in soil, and again this seemed to take ages.

About 10:30pm it was raked and ready to be rolled. I managed to hook the garden roller up behind the lawnmower, and got about 1/2 of it rolled before giving up due to darkness and mechanical failure (of the hitch for the roller, leaving the comical scenario of me running down the hill after the runaway roller 8- )

Just before midnight I stopped. Job *almost* well done.

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

ASP.Net Application Architecture

Maybe not really an "architecture" as such, perhaps more of a set of design goals, or statements. For a recent project I came up with the following:

1) Authentication is carried out in Global_AcquireRequestState. Only done once, then a session variable is set
2) All pages inherit from a BasePage class which provides:
- A "DataAccess" object through which all database activity is conducted (see later)
- A "UserSession" object which is used instead of the default "Session" (see later)
- Global catch all exception handling - for unrecoverable errors
3) All database interaction uses NHibernate
4) DataAccess is a class which collates all NHibernate functions, so the application simply calls dataAccess.GetUserList() to return a list of user objects etc...
5) UserSession is a small class which contains typesafe session variables, so rather than Session["someVar"] I can do UserSession.SomeVar - strongly typed, intellisense friendly and less error prone. I dislike HashTables keyed by text strings, I see this as a very unsafe practice.
6) No code or logic whatsoever in the aspx file - all in the code behind
7) HTTP GET on all page deliveries
- HTTP POST back form data, process it, and then Response.Redirect() to the viewing page - prevents “Warning: Page has Expired” messages
- Item Ids are passed in the URL, so bookmarking of pages is possible
8) Button clicks are all handled in event handlers
9) Consts all places in a globally accessible file, static classes used. E.g. Page names are declared in a static class called “Pages” allowing the developer to use the following syntax to redirect to a page: Response.Redirect(Pages.AccountDetails)

Any comments welcome.

Is it legal to copy DVDs and CDs to my PC?

I thought not. For a number of reasons. Firstly I thought it was illegal to copy something that is copyrighted. Then I hear I can backup for personal use. That sounds like a stretch to me too, because if you "backup"you don't typically exclusively use the "backup" - you use the source, and only resort to the backup if the primary fails.

However, I came across this today: From this google groups post I see that The Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 section 197 [click here] declares that a copy "for private purposes" is not an illicit recording, and thus any action under the CDPA against me for making a copy of a CD or DVD for my own private use would fail.

Turns out it's legal after all. I'll carry on as before then.

Popup windows in ASP.net

http://www.dotnetjohn.com/articles.aspx?articleid=88

close button for a popup window in ASP.Net (c#)

Found some nice code to create a close button for a popup window in ASP.Net (c#)

///

/// Create javascript to close the current window
///

/// Button to click to close the window
public static void CreateCloseButton(Button btn)
{
btn.Attributes.Add("onclick", "return window.close();");
}

NHibernate Nullables

This is a real annoyance. I thought the NHibernate stuff was going great, then I tried to save an empty string to our oracle database.... more mad errors

Still, the solution is not too tricky, just set the type arrribute in the mapping file:



and include the Nullables DLL in the project, and we're up and running again. A real annoyance.

see http://wiki.nhibernate.org/display/NHC/Nullables and http://nhibernate.sourceforge.net/nh-docs/html/Nullables.html

Family fun

We spent the day today doing fun stuff as a family.

First we went to the park at the Cresent in Portstewart, and the kids had a great time there. Then we had booked 10 pin bowling at waterworld in Portrush, so we had fun there, Dad won the first game and Matthew won the second.

It was a beautiful day, so we walked to the center of town, and had KFC for lunch. Then we walked to the park in Portrush, and spent a while there. After that we walked up around the cliffs, and stopped offf for an icecream on the way back to the car.

Back to Portstewart for another play in the favorite park, and then off to Castlerock for a walk along the beach to the pier.

A fantastic day was had by all, hope to do it all again soon :)

Sleeping with the enemy [1991]

A great film, fine idea and well played out. A clever woman escaping the clutches of her tyrant husband.

Well worth another watch if it appears on tv.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102945/

Vertical label component in c#

Some code for a vertical label in c#

Developed this for a project, but don't need it. Translated it from a Vb.net example on the web, and extended it a little

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Data;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace Whatever
{
///

/// VerticalLabel is a component that displays a label, but instead of the
/// text being horizontal it is displayed vertically.
///
/// This is achieved by drawing using the specified Font and overriding
/// the OnPaint method to draw with the font rotated.
///
/// Windows designer support is also included, the default text and alignment
/// can be set in the designer
///

///
public class VerticalLabel : System.Windows.Forms.Control
{

///

/// internal variable for the current label text
///

private string labelText;

///

/// internal variable for the alignment of the vertical text
///

private System.Drawing.ContentAlignment labelTextAlign;

#region default constructor, destructor and initialisation code
public VerticalLabel()
{
//base.New();
InitializeComponent();
}

protected override void Dispose(bool disposing)
{
if (disposing)
{
if (!((components == null)))
{
components.Dispose();
}
}
base.Dispose(disposing);
}



private System.ComponentModel.Container components;

[System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThrough()]
private void InitializeComponent()
{
this.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(24, 100);
}

#endregion

///

/// Override the onPaint method to draw a string vertically on the screen
///

/// default PaintEventArgs parameter
protected override void OnPaint(System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs e)
{
float sngControlWidth;
float sngControlHeight;
float sngTransformX;
float sngTransformY;
Color labelColor = this.BackColor;
Pen labelBorderPen = new Pen(labelColor, 0);
SolidBrush labelBackColorBrush = new SolidBrush(labelColor);
SolidBrush labelForeColorBrush = new SolidBrush(base.ForeColor);
base.OnPaint(e);
sngControlWidth = this.Size.Width;
sngControlHeight = this.Size.Height;
e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(labelBorderPen, 0, 0, sngControlWidth, sngControlHeight);
e.Graphics.FillRectangle(labelBackColorBrush, 0, 0, sngControlWidth, sngControlHeight);
sngTransformX = 0;
sngTransformY = sngControlHeight;
e.Graphics.TranslateTransform(sngTransformX, sngTransformY);
e.Graphics.RotateTransform(270);

#region figure out offset to achieve the desired alignment
//default to left alignment
float leftOffset = 0;


//handle center alignment
if(this.labelTextAlign == System.Drawing.ContentAlignment.BottomCenter
this.labelTextAlign == System.Drawing.ContentAlignment.MiddleCenter
this.labelTextAlign == System.Drawing.ContentAlignment.TopCenter )
{
System.Drawing.SizeF sf = e.Graphics.MeasureString(this.labelText, Font);
leftOffset = (this.Size.Height - sf.Width) / 2;
}
//handle right alignment
if(this.labelTextAlign == System.Drawing.ContentAlignment.BottomRight
this.labelTextAlign == System.Drawing.ContentAlignment.MiddleRight
this.labelTextAlign == System.Drawing.ContentAlignment.TopRight )
{
System.Drawing.SizeF sf = e.Graphics.MeasureString(this.labelText, Font);
leftOffset = this.Size.Height - sf.Width;
}
#endregion

e.Graphics.DrawString(labelText, Font, labelForeColorBrush, leftOffset, 0);
}


///

/// Invalidate on resize event
///

///
protected override void OnResize(EventArgs e)
{
Invalidate();
base.OnResize (e);
}



#region windows form designer support
///

/// Windows designer Text setting
///

[Category("Verticallabel"), Description("Text is displayed vertiaclly in container")]
public override string Text
{
get
{
return labelText;
}
set
{
labelText = value;
Invalidate();
}
}
[Category("Verticallabel"), Description("Text Alignment")]
public System.Drawing.ContentAlignment TextAlign
{
get
{
return labelTextAlign;
}
set
{
labelTextAlign = value;
Invalidate();
}
}



#endregion



}
}

Variance calculation in c#

I found this algorithm a little tricky to get right, so I thought I should post it.

It calculates the variance for a set of input data using the formula Excel uses

private double CalculateVariance(double[] input)
{
double sumOfSquares = 0.0;
double total = 0.0;
foreach(double d in input)
{
total+=d;
sumOfSquares += Math.Pow(d, 2);
}
int n = input.Length;
return ((n * sumOfSquares) - Math.Pow(total, 2)) / (n * (n - 1));
}

New receiver ordered

Just ordered a Yamaha RX-V450, looks like a good entry level amp. Hopefully it will do my job very nicely.

One of the fellows from work is graciously lending me a set of speakers so I can get off the ground quickly. They are a set of Bush speakers, which will do nicely until I'm motivated to snik more money....

Bigger pics available at : http://www.mccaughey.co.uk/gallery/Yamaha_RX-V450

Excellent comment

I don't normally quote collegues, but this is just gold:

"You cannot possibly anticipate how stupid a user can be. Don't encourage them."

kellycycles.com Cycle sales

Really just a shameless plug for the website I have been developing - go and buy at least 2 things from it now, and tomorrow!!!

http://www.kellycycles.com/index/welcome

Donnie Darko [2001]

This is one weird film, which on first take I didn't get at all. I hate films like that. I need spoon fed. If I wanted to think, I would go to work. I want mindless entertainment.

Anyhow, now that I read a little about it I think I would like to see it again, or see the directors cut. It looks a lot more informative, and I don't care what anyone says, there is no way you could get all this information from the theater cut.

I have included some information below as to what is in the book [The Philosophy Of Time Travel], it really explains a lot :)

Simon





from : http://www.cinemablend.com/forum/archive/topic/20205-1.html

"The Philosophy Of Time Travel" contents

Foreword



I would like to thank the sisters of the Saint John Chapter in Alexandria, Virginia for their support in my decision.



By the grace of God, they are:



Sister Eleanor Lewis

Sister Francesca Godard

Sister Helen Davis

Sister Catherine Arnold

Sister Mary Lee Pond

Sister Virginia Wessex



The intent of this book is for it to be used as a simple and direct guide in a time of great danger.



I pray that this is merely a work of fiction.



If it is not, then I pray for you, the reader of this book.



If I am still alive when the events foretold in these pages occur, then I hope that you will find me before it is too late.



Roberta Ann Sparrow

October, 1944



Chapter One: The Tangent Universe



The primary universe is fraught with great peril. War, plague, famine and natural disaster are common. Death comes to us all.



The Fourth Dimension of Time is a stable construct, though it is not impenetrable.



Incidents when the fabric of the fourth dimension becomes corrupted are incredibly rare.



If a Tangent Universe occurs, it will be highly unstable, sustaining itself for no longer than several weeks.



Eventually it will collapse upon itself, forming a black hole within the Primary Universe capable of destroying all existence.



Chapter Two: Water and Metal



Water and Metal are the key elements of Time Travel.



Water is the barrier element for the construction of Time Portals used as gateways between Universes at the Tangent Vortex.



Metal is the transitional element for the construction of Artifact Vessels.



Chapter Four: The Artifact And The Living



When a Tangent Universe occurs, those living nearest to the Vortex will find themselves at the epicenter of a dangerous new world.



Artifacts provide first sign that a Tangent Universe has occured.



If an Artifact occurs, the Living will retrieve it with great interest and curiosity. Artifacts are formed from metal, such as an Arrowhead from an ancient Mayan civilisation, or a Metal Sword from Medieval Europe.



Artifacts returned to the Primary Universe are often linked to religious Iconography, as their appearance on Earth seems to defy logical explanation.



Divine intervention is deemed the only logical conclusion for the appearance for the Artifact.



Chapter Six: The Living Receiver



The Living Receiver is chosen to guide the Artifact into position for its journey back to the Primary Universe.



No one knows how or why a Receiver will be chosen.



The Living Receiver is often blessed with a Fourth Dimensional Powers. These include increased strength, telekinesis, mind control, and the ability to conjure fire and water.



The Living Receiver is often tormented by terrifying dreams, visions and auditory hallucinations during his time within the Tangent Universe.



Those surrounding the Living Receiver, known as the Manipulated, will fear him and try to destroy him.



Chapter Seven: The Manipulated Living



The Manipulated Living are often the close friends and neighbours of the Living Receiver.



They are prone to irrational, bizarre, and often violent behaviour. This is the unfortunate result of their task, which is to assist the Living Receiver in returning the Artifact to the Primary Universe.



The Manipulated Living will do anything to save themselves from Oblivion.



The Manipulated Dead



The Manipulated Dead are more powerful than the Living Receiver. If a person dies within the Tangent Dimension, they are able to contact the Living Receiver through the Fourth Dimensional Construct.



The Fourth Dimensional Construct is made of Water.



The Manipulated Dead will manipulate the Living Receiver using the Fourth Dimensional Construct



The Manipulated Dead will often set an Ensurance Trap for the Living Receiver to ensure that the Artifact is returned safely to the Primary Universe.



If the Ensurance Trap is succesful, the Living Receiver is left with no choice but to use his Fourth Dimensional Power to send the Artifact back in time into the Primary Universe before the Black Hole collapses upon itself.



Chapter Twelve: Dreams



When the Manipulated awaken from their Journey into the Tangent Universe, they are often haunted by the experience in their dreams.



Many of them will not remember.



Those who do remember the Journey are often overcome with profound remorse for the regretful actions buried within their Dreams, the only physical evidence buried within the Artifact itself; all that remains from the lost world.



Ancient myth tells us of the Mayan Warrior killed by an Arrowhead that had fallen from a cliff, where there was no Army, no enemy to be found.



We are told of the Medievel Knight mysteriously impaled by the sword he had not yet built.



We are told that these things occur for a reason.





OK, now how does that fit in to the plot of Donnie Darko?



A wormhole is formed over a suburban town in October 1988. This forms a tangent universe, or an alternate universe that touches the primary (main) universe at exactly one place in time (midnight, Oct. 2, 1988). A jet engine in the primary universe falls off its plane during the flight on Oct. 30, and falls into the wormhole. It exits the wormhole in the tangent universe. There are now two of the exact same engines (or artifacts) in one universe, creating an imbalance. This imbalance corrupts the time-space continuum, and as a result, the tangent universe becomes unstable. It will remain stable for the time Frank tells Donnie (28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds). It will then collapse, forming a black hole, which will then destroy the primary universe.



To prevent this, a Higher Power (God, Allah, Buddha, etc.) chooses Donnie, a teenage chronic sleepwalker, and who fears being alone in the afterlife, to become the Living Receiver. His job is to take the artifact (the jet engine) from the tangent universe, and send it into the primary universe, thus restoring the balance, and closing the wormhole, saving all existence in the process. He is given "superpowers" to aid him in his task. The book lists these as increased strength, telekinesis, mind control, and the ability to conjure fire and water. Another one the book doesn't mention is the ability to see other's immediate futures (via their life paths a.k.a. their liquid spears). These powers, at first, appear to only work when Donnie is half-asleep or sleepwalking, but by the end, he has apparently learned to master them while he is fully conscious.



The Living Receiver will often have dreams and hallucinations while in the tangent universe (These do not explain Frank; they explain Donnie's dreams about the "city on water").



Everybody in the tangent universe is subconsciously aware of Donnie's task, and give him clues needed to complete his task. An example of these is "cellar door". The people are known as Manipulated Living.



If anyone dies in the tangent universe, they become Manipulated Dead. They can use the 4th Dimension Construct to help the Living Receiver. Frank is Donnie's older sister's boyfriend. He is killed early on Oct. 30 by Donnie, by a gunshot to the eye after accidently running over Gretchen, Donnie's girlfriend, while wearing the rabbit suit. He becomes a Manipulated Dead, and is assigned by the Higher Power to go back in time and guide Donnie to where he needs to be to complete his task. He sets up an "ensurance trap" (him running over Gretchen, leaving Donnie no choice but to go through with his task), and has Donnie complete certain tasks (flooding the school, setting Jim Cunningham's house on fire) to make sure the ensurance trap happens.



Once Donnie uses his telekinesis (one of his powers) to knock the jet engine off the plane (which his mother and sister happen to be on) into the wormhole and back to the primary universe, everybody is sent back to the primary universe along with it. Because the two universes touch at the exact same spot, everybody returns to the primary universe at the exact same point in time: Oct. 2, 1988. Anyone who is asleep (almost everybody) or half-asleep (Elizabeth) will think it was just a dream. They all will remember a specific part of their "dream". Cherita Chen being told that everything will be OK, Kitty Farmer learning about Jim Cunningham's secret, Jim knowing he will sooner or later get caught, and although we don't see it, Grandma Death getting Donnie's letter. Those who are awake at the time will remember. The example the film shows is Frank. He is honking his car horn when Elizabeth is walking into the house. He is aware that the jet engine will be landing on Donnie's bedroom, and is trying to wake up Donnie to save him.



One thing that isn't explained is whether Donnie remembers. There are two possibilities:



1) He also thinks it was just a crazy dream.

2) He is no longer afraid of death, because he knows he will not die alone (remember, that was one of his fears), and he accepts his fate.



Even though he does physically die by himself (he's all alone in his room), in the afterlife, he is not alone. He's convinced that God (or another Higher Power) does exist, and that his fear is unfounded.



And a few more notes that I didn't mention...



Cherita Chen represents both Donnie himself (by the fact that they are both loners, his name is on her book, and later, he wears her earmuffs), and all the good people he will be saving, should he complete his task.



Roberta Sparrow a.k.a. Grandma Death is the author of The Philosophy of Time Travel. In the Foreword of the book, she says that she hopes that the events in the book are fiction, but if they aren't, to contact her. This is why she's always going to her mailbox. She's starting to lose her faith (as a result of nobody writing her), and her telling Donnie that everyone dies alone shows this. She supposedly regains her faith after getting Donnie's letter, and we're led to assume that she remembers the letter when everybody returns to the primary universe.



The man in the red jogging suit is one of the FAA guys keeping an eye on Donnie.



The bathroom scenes with Frank and Donnie show the relevance of water and metal in the tangent universe. They are the two main "elements" used for time travel, according to the book.

---

Posted by: Phantasm

I highly prefer the theatrical release.

---

Films I need to see...

On recommendation I need to see these:

1) the descent
2) dark water
3) war of the worlds
4) skeleton key

Don't Say a Word (2001)

Don't Say a Word (2001) - a distinctly average film, unemotional, and certainly uninspiring. Having said that, it was the best thing on TV for a couple of days........

"When the daughter of a psychiatrist is kidnapped, he's horrified to discover that the abductors' demand is that he break through to a post traumatic stress disorder suffering young woman who knows a secret... "

The Skulls

Just got almost through watching The Skulls, then ITV2 decided to run behind schedule, and TiVo missed the end 8-

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192614/

Great film, so far, can't wait to see the outcome of the duel......

Joshua Jackson plays a college student who joins an elite secret organisation only to find out that all is not as he expected. He should really have figured that out beforehand, if he really was as smart as he is supposed to be, but that wouldn't have been much of a film :)

BiblePod - Interesting project :)

BiblePod Thats all folks :)

The Thirteenth Floor

Saw this again tonight, another great idea, I love these kinds of films :)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/

I do have a couple of problems with it though, all around the simulation which they invented. If it had already been running for some time, how could one of the chief developers not know what it looks like inside it. Surely if developing a project like this they would think to integrate the capability to perhaps grab a screenshot or two, perhaps even part of the testing would involve looking through virtual "cameras" into the system. That doesn't sit well with me at all. Not bulletproof (like the matrix ;)

Podcast Playlist Generator

I've just been introduced to the world of podcasting, where anyone can make audio files available periodically, and these can be downloaded to my PC, and then to a portable device, so you can have customised listening material available at any time

I've been using iPodder, a simple aggregator which takes care of checking for new podcasts, and downloads them for me. It also allows the option of running a custom command after each download.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a possibility to create a playlist for each podcast, or an option to create a playlist containing a list of all current podcasts.

Perl to the rescue. A nice simple script, which can be run from iPodder after each download, and will generate m3u playlists which EphPod can then convert for my iPod.

Fun.

use warnings;
use strict;

my @casts = list_dir(".");
foreach my $dir (@casts)
{
        next if (! -d $dir); ##check its a directory
        my @files = list_dir($dir); ##list all the files

        #create the playlist file
        open(OUT, ">$dir.m3u")  die "cant write playlist for $dir : $!";
        foreach my $file(@files)
        {
                print OUT "$dir/$file\n";
        }
        close OUT;
}


#list the contents of a directory - exclude . and ..
sub list_dir
{
        my ($dir) = @_;
        opendir(DIR, $dir)  die "cant read dir $dir:$!";
        my @results;
        while(my $file = readdir(DIR))
        {
                next if ($file =~ /^\.$/);
                next if ($file =~ /^\.\.$/);
                push(@results, $file);
        }
        close DIR;
        return @results;
}

Cygwin / vim / rxvt arrow key problems

On my new machine I installed cygwin, the great set of unix tools for win32, (BTW this is what makes using a win32 machine acceptable IMHO, it just works like a unix box...) and as usual in vi (or vim) my arrow keys pop me out of insert mode and then insert a newline and 'A' 'B' 'C' or 'D' - very annoying.

So the search started.... and I remembered the simple solution from the last time. People say in this situation that it is your terminal, and not vim that is misconfigured. I'm not sure I believe that, because the fix includes vim.

All you need to do is modify your .vimrc file. Copy the example .vimrc file from /usr/share/vim/vim62/vimrc_example.vim to ~/.vimrc then open vi and its fixed :)

Great, thats what we like - annoying problems, simple solutions

iPod

WOW. I got my iPod this morning, and have spent most of the day / night listening, and configuring, and I like it.

I configured it first on a windows 2000 machine at work, installed drivers and stuff (probably didn't need to) and all was great.

Back at home it appears as a drive under windows XP, I downloaded the iPod updater and iTunes, but haven't installed either. Instead I'm relying on the default windows drivers, and Ephpod software to synchronise it. At first I thought I'd use Windows Media Player (my fav player) to synch it, and indeed, it looked like it was going to work. But I should have known better, it transferred the files to a folder called "Music" on the iPod. Fat lot of use that was.

Anyhow, Ephpod solved all the problems. All now up to date, and looking great.

Now, where are all the hacks......?

Automatic MP3 Tag Generator

Could be useful : Welcome to MusicBrainz!

cygwin networking commands

Just found out some nice stuff about cygwin and network shares. I like to have SSH access to my home network, and under MacOS I had no problem with this - I just log in and a couple of commands mounts any share.

Now that the Mac is to go however, this presents a different problem. I have always been a big fan of cygwin, but I have never actually set up an SSH server. This document suggests that SSH server setup should be fairly trivial, so I'll give that a try. That should give me full access to a cygwin shell remotely. From there it should be a couple of simple commands to map a network drive

net view \\\\computername

Need to do the escaped backslashes to make windows understand it. This gives a nice list of the shares available on the machine such as :

Share name Type Used as Comment
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DBTestProject Disk
downloads Disk
quake2 Disk
VBCode Disk

The command completed successfully.

From there we can either do :

cd //computername/VBCode

which will allow use of that directory like a normal directory, or ifwe want it mounted :

net use i: \\\\computername\\VBCode

will mount the share to the I: drive on the local machine. Great.

Visiting Perth

Flying out tonight to visit Susan's sister and family in Perth, Scotland. Easyjet at 6pm, then hiring a car

Hope all goes well ;)

Interview (shhhh!!!)

Don't tell anyone, but I've just had an interview to work for a software company in 'derry.

It was about an hour long, and the folks seemed very friendly, and down to earth. I don't know how it went, it felt like it went well, but then so did my second year latin exam, and I got 16% in it....

Mac Mini - Problems

Ok, so I've had the thing for a while now, by this stage I had hoped to have my PC switched off, and out of daily usage. I've even upgraded to "Tiger" to see the latest features.

Its a great little unit, and a fine operating system, but I still find that I am much more productive on an XP machine running cygwin. All the Unix command line stuff is available, plus all the great features of XP.

Anyway - for me the biggest problems (in no real order):

Remote Desktop

M$ has the market cornered on this one, their Remote Desktop is head and shoulders above any other product on the market. My PC in the Kitchen can behave exactly as if it is my office PC, with the windows button and all its shortcuts working perfectly. The sound transfer is the piece de resistance for me , all my MSN / Yahoo alerts are transferred to the client PC, even whatever music is playing, its great. The only downside is video playback doesn't really work, but we'll excuse that ;)

The Mac version of remote desktop hasn't a hope, I don't think it does sound, and there is certainly no windows client.

Geovision

I have a Geovision hard disk based CCTV system in the house, and it works brilliantly. I have looked at a lot of systems, and I think the Geovision is very feature rich, and very usable. The problem - the client is ActiveX, and wont run, even on internet explorer under the Mac. There is a mjpeg client available, but you really wouldn't bother if you saw the quality.

Keyboard

I thought for maximum Mac acceptance I would need an apple keyboard. I have to say it is a nice keyboard, but they've forgotten some keys, and got some of the most useful ones in the wrong places. The # key is non existent, although you can access it via Alt-3 - but I am primarily a Perl programmer, and I sometimes like to insert comments in the code. Also # is a necessity in "vi". Then run up windows remote desktop client for Mac (another point for M$) and everything looks great. Try to type a \. Go on, just one \. I'm waiting....

And another thing. Page up / page down / home /end. Enough said.

Windows Media Player

I know this is somewhat controversial, but I really like Media player. I have about 12Gb of music on a centralized server (2500 songs), which I then index on the two main computers in the house. I can share playlists, and update tag information from either PC. I know iTunes is supposed to be all-singing-all-dancing but again WMP does my job very effectively. Plus it works nicely with the little remotec remote control I bought from eBay.

Networking - Network Shares And Printers

I have three XP machines in the house. The CCTV server also acts as a print server, 'cause its always on. On my other two XP machines, I didn't even have to install the printer, it was already there. To this day I have not managed to get the printer working remotely with the Mac. It works locally - i.e. plugged into the USB port, but I can't get the Mac to connect to the XP shared printer. And yes, I read all the FAQs about printers, and I think I've just got a bad one (ML1210)

The Mac also doesn't let me view all the files on a windows box at file:////windows_machine/share/folder instead you have to mount "share" as a drive. This is limiting

Thumbnails / Explorer slideshow

This bothers me. In XP I can quickly select a folder thumbnail view from any explorer window, no matter what the view, or even in a file dialog. On the Mac, this is not so simple. There are various hacks you can turn on to see thumbnailing, but its not trivial, and as far as I'm concerned not very useful.

Hold on - is it all bad?

NO! not at all. There are lots of nice things. Drag and drop is great, I love the fact that you can drag urls, or folders into the terminal etc, etc... other things:

SSH Access

I love how easy this was to set up, a checkbox, and a setting on my router, and it worked first time. Very useful too.

Expose

This is the best thing. I really make a mess with zillions of windows, and expose sorts this out for me.

Conclusion

The jury is still out. I haven't made up my mind, but I have to say I'm leaning back towards windows at the minute.

My first intention was to basically retire my PC, but using the Mac is like starting al over, I have to learn how to customize everything, its like learning to walk again, that may be useful, but I can already do it.

I am currently a lot more efficient on my PC than on the Mac.

Tiger Arrived

Tiger arrived, and installed, have to say anticlimax, but there you go. It works, everything as before, some new options, lots of playing to do...

OS X Tiger

I think I must have been among the first to stumble on this, the apple.com website is all changed with big splash advertisements for the new release 10.4 OS X Tiger

None of the rumour / news sites are listing it yet, and the UK pricing doesn't seem to be there yet.

Mac Arrived!!

Well, when I say it arrived....

I called the TNT Depot at 9am *just to check* and they said they had no record of a delivery for me pre midday today!!!

So I asked the guy what happens next, and he said Monday delivery..... I thought this was all sounding a little familiar, so I asked where they werre located.

So we all set off in the car for the 100 mile round trip to the TNT depot near Nutts Corner.

My 1pm I was at home working on my nice new Mac.

Very impressed so far, it will take a bit of getting used to, but it is slick and fast so far.....

time will tell...

Mac Coming today!!! .... :(

So I've been following the excellent online tracking as my mini has slowly made its way from the Czech Republic, thruogh Luxemberg etc the whole way here. Phoning TNT tracking, they told me it would arrive today. So I waited in (well worked from home today) and about 3pm I called them.

They told me that it was in a "check address" status, which means there was a problem with the delivery address. So I got put through to the depot, and the fellow said that it was probably a problem with the address details. So he took my details and said it would arrive pre midday on Saturday (tomorrow)

:(

Ah well, another night of waiting won't kill me.... or will it....

Mac Mini Ordered.....

Well, I've finally taken the plunge, a friend offered me a £35 discount voucher that expires today, and I'm a sucker for a bargain.

Went for the standard 1.42 mini upgraded to 512Mb RAM, and bought the apple keyboard too. I've ordered a MS wireless mousse off eBay too, so fulll nice new kit is on its way.....

What is Mac OS X?

What is Mac OS X?

This is a very interesting article about OS X, lots of juicy information. Well worth a read.

Picked up new car!

We went last night to pick up our new Passat from Richard Patterson Motors, just outside Kilrea. Just MOT'd and just valeted, it looks like a new car, and it drives well too.

One problem though - about half way home, I decided I was getting too warm, and turned down the heat, and .... nothing!

The hot / cold control didn't seem to be working, so out came the tools, but found I didn't need tools as the problem was with the lever which operates the flap, the lever had come out. So I got it pushed back in, and now its all working. I enjoyed the drive to work today for the first time in 6 weeks.

Its definitely not as fast as the Rover, but it still goes nicely.

Another new car!!!

After almost a month of torturous driving in an aweful Rover 45 I have to change.

Its a bit daft changing so soon, but I really can't stand driving that car. It is as if whoever designed it has never driven a car. Even the electric window switches are placed in an unintuitive position.

But its more than that. Heavy steering, pedals that all have different travel length, and aren't in a row, funny wiper controls.... I could go on...

So, after the success of Susan's Passat, we're going for another, a 1998 TDi 110 SE

Pick it up today, so we'll see how that goes ;)

Sendo X

I received the new phone today, liking it so far. The folks over at Sendo X Forum seem to have a very mixed opinion on this phone.

We'll try it out, and hopefully all will be ok.

All I need now is a nice big SD card for it :)

I shot her

Definitely the most I've laughed at a film for a long time "I shot her"

From
Jackie Brown, Tarantinos 1997 film

Quite a good film, I don't think its all that great, but worth a watch. A good origonal story.

Funniest Dialog from movie:
ORDELL : Melanie must be dyin' to see it . (pause) Louis .
LOUIS : That's what I got to talk to you about . You see, Melanie was giving me a
hard time -
ORDELL : Not now, pick me up . [Louis hears the phone
disconnect] .
[The Toyota pulls up to the back of the bar . Ordell hops in, the car takes off]
ORDELL : ....(pause) Hey, where's Melanie?
LOUIS : That's what I gotta tell you . She bugged me the whole time . Got pissy with me 'cause I wouldn't let her carry the bag . Started running her fuckin' mouth ... I couldn't remember right away when we came out where the car was parked, so she got on me about that . "Is it this aisle Lou - is, is it that one?" She was totally fuckin' with my nerves .
ORDELL : So what, you left her there .
LOUIS : I shot her .
LOUIS : I expect she's dead .
ORDELL : You shot Melanie?
LOUIS : Twice . In the parking lot .
ORDELL : Couldn't talk to her?
LOUIS : You know how she is .
ORDELL : You couldn't just hit her?
LOUIS : Maybe ... but at that moment ... I dunno ...
ORDELL : You shot her twice?
LOUIS : Uh - huh .
ORDELL : So you're sure she's dead .
LOUIS : Pretty sure
ORDELL : Where did you shoot her?
LOUIS : In the chest and stomach .
ORDELL : Well, if you had to do it, you had to do it . What we don't
want is that bitch surviving on us . Anybody but that woman .

full script here

Car Sold!!!

After my car died, I was advsed to try to sell it through Autotrader. I hadn't thought anyone would be interested in a car without an engine, but I can honestly say that of all the cars I ever sold, I have had the most interest in this one. Over 10 calls on Thursday, about 6 on Friday, none Sat/Sun (Christmas/Boxing Day) and a few more Monday.

A man came from Newry to pick it up today, and thats it gone ;)

New Car

I had a friend go out and buy me a car. Its a Rover 45, and I'm not really sure about it. But anyhow its cheap, and according to the specs, pretty fast.

Notting Hill (1999)

I was surprised by Notting Hill. I've seen this before, and remember it in the same category as 4 weddings... but it's really not there. There are several side splitting scenes, not to mention the SWMBO factor too.

"The life of a simple bookshop owner changes when the most famous star in the world walks in his shop and buys a book"

S.W.A.T. (2003)

S.W.A.T. (2003) a film about the Special Weapons and Tactics team in LA (everything exciting seems to be happening in LA)

An interesting watch, a few punches to pull, worth a watch, but really just a standard action film, with a better than average story.

The Pianist (2002)

I've just finished watching The Pianist (2002). Its about a Polish Jewish musician who struggles to survive the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto of World War II.

Very graphic in its portrayal of the German treatment of the Jews in the war. Not a brilliant film, a few extra points because it is true, but I would recommend a watch, just to see how good we've got it!

It makes me appreciate my freedom.

Car is dead :(

Coming home today I pulled out to overtake, and bang, I had to pull in again.

Upon inspection the bottom pulley which drives all the belts (inc timing) had come off - not good!

The AA towed me home, and it looks like I'm going to need a new car :(

Showcenter AC3 Downmix

Definitely the best £3.49 I ever spent :)

Downmix to sterio from AC3 means I can play a couple of DVD Rips I got from a friend, great!

Using Neuston software on Showcenter

From http://www.geocities.com/dasbacgl/: "

Using the Neuston Software with Pinnacle ShowCenter

Until version 1.82, the Neuston application was a worthy alternative to Pinnacle's ShowCenter application. Unfortunately, after 1.82, Neuston began including hardware checks in their application to make sure the Neuston application could not be used with hardware other than Neuston's.

Fortunately, the check is easy to bypass. I have only verified this fix on the Neuston Media Center version 2.5 for Windows. But this fix should work on Neuston Media Center 2.5 for any OS.

1. First, download the latest version of the Neuston Media Center, available here:
Windows version: http://www.neuston.com/en/mc500download_win.asp

2. Install the Neuston Media Center, and restart your computer.

3. After the restart, stop the Neuston Media Center (if it's running), and open the directory where the NMC is installed. Located in the 'Program Files/Neuston Media Centre' directory on Windows.

4. From the installation directory, open the 'webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/' directory.

5. Edit the web.xml file and remove the following lines (near the top of the file, the value of XXX is not important, just look for the fwname text)


fwname
XXX



6. Save the changes and start the Neuston Media Center. You should now be able to connect to the Neuston Media Center software from your Pinnacle ShowCenter hardware.

Happy Surfing!!

Starfire94"

My next Freeview Set Top Box.....

Found this thread on the forums entitled Freeview Set Top Box - No red dot ever. Interested? - TiVo Community Forum which lists a couple of good set top boxes


Quote:
"Also, the SetPal-based STBs (Labgear DTT-100, Daewoo-DS608P, Triax DVB2000T) have a very strong tuner, so are useful in weak/marginal signal areas where other STBs give picture break-up."

BIOS bug killed

I have sorted the power on "Fan Failure - press F1 to continue..." problem. A bit of a sledgehammer solution, not a *nice* solution.

I had a look in dells forums for information on the GX110, and came up with this post which gives a workaround for the BIOS warning problem.

It seems that the third wire just gives feedback about the state of the fan where 12v = fan turning, and 0v = fan stopped. The solution is just to connect the 12v red cable directly to the pin where the which cable was.


http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_bios&message.id=31560

New Kitchen PC arrives

The PIII 733 I ordered from eBay arrived today, and I got it up and running tonight. It is a lot faster than its predecessor, the K6-2 machine, although it is a lot noisier.

But, I got the screwdriver and snips out, and removed the fans from the PSU and the CPU, and replaced them with a couple of old fans, an old PSU fan for the CPU, and an old 486 fan for the PSU. I then wired these two fans in series, which slows them down considerably, and makes them an aweful lot quieter.

The heatsink on the PSU is a lot hotter now, but it has been running for some time, and it seems fine. By fine I mean no fire.

The only problem which remains is a BIOS warning. When I disconnected the origonal CPU fan it had 3 pins, black, red and white, but my new fan only has 2, black and red. The white is obviously some kind of monitor to allow the motherboard to panic if the fan stops. So now on startup it tells me there is a fan failure, and press F1 to continue. There is nowhere in the stone age BIOS to configure this alarm, so we may have to live with it.... bit annoying, no remote reboots.....

Bluetooth working

After fighting with my old bluetooth dongle for a whole night I bought a new one. It arrived today, and I got it all setup and working with my palm tonight.

Windows XP make it pretty simple to set up networking across a bluetooth serial link, just add a bluetooth com port, and set up an incoming connection from that com port.

I was hoping that it may work in the living room, which is adjacent to the kitchen, but it seems that it is the Palm that is the problem, not the dongle.

Well, at least I can read the tech news at brekkie time without having to synch my palm:)

New PC for kitchen ordered

The PC in the kitchen is a bigger hit than I could have hoped for, always on because of the low power consumption, online banking and weather just one click away, its a CD player and internet radio / mp3 player etc etc...

Anyhow, it is clear that it just isn't powerful enough, so I've ordered a PIII 733 to replace it. Hopefully it will be almost as quiet, but much more powerful - we'll wait and see....

Kitchen PC

I had intended to install a small PC in the kitchen as soon as my ADSL was installed. So I ordered a 12" TFT screen second hand from eBay, as soon as my ADSL was working [12-Sep]

I am using an old PC for proof of concept in this case, a AMD K6-2-500 CPU, etc, etc, and it is a big hit with SWMBO!!!

So much of a hit in fact that she considered authorising a £200 spend on an ITX based computer. Wow. But I didn't do it, I think I will try to stick with the machine I have, its a bit slow, but seems to be working well at the minute

ADSL Faceplate installed

My ADSL Faceplate arrived today, and I just finished getting it installed. Now ADSL and all extensions are working 100% :)

The router reports an impressive Signal to noise ratio of 8.5, and a Loop Attenuation of 69.5dB

But at least it works :)

I got the router re-routed into the attic, and made my old 10Mbit hub redundant, so now we have a proper network in the house

ADSL Router working

Well, that was more tricky than I had hoped...

I spent a long time working with different versions of firmware for the router, it wouldn't pick up the ADSL signal at all without *all* the phones unplugged. It came with version 2.5.3UK which didn't pick up the ADSL at all.

I had to fight for some time with the firmware upgrade process, before I eventually admitted defeat and read the manual.

I installed version 2.5.2 which came on the CD with an auto-installer, and this picked up the signal.

I noticed in the manual that it stated that you should plug the ADSL router directly into the main socket, without using the filter. So I filtered the phone, and plugged the router directly, and it all worked!

Just need to get the extensions working now.... the saga continues.

Router Ordered

So now that the ADSL is working its time to buy a router. After the usual in-depth research I managed to find out that the Draytek Vigor 2600Plus is the one most people seem to recommend for poor quality lines.

It has some firmware updates for people with poor quality lines.

YAPC::Europe - Day 3

The final day - and just when I was beginning to get used to it :(

Oh well - another day of good talks, and meeting interesting people. I had lunch with the two guys who headed up the development for The Register - that was interesting.

Throughout the conference I met lots of interesting people, guys from France, USA, Switzerland, England, and many others. I have to say that the people were overall friendly, although not one of the Belfast crowd spoke to me voulentarily :(

ADSL Working!!!

Unbelievably I came home this evening, and found that the ADSL LED was on constantly!!!

The service is working - web pages at a sensible speed. However, there is still a bit of a problem - I've had to disconnect all my extensions, or the ADSL doesnt work.

But at least that part time ADSL!!

YAPC::Europe - Day 2

Back for another days learning, some good talks today. I love the lightening talks - 10 5 minute talks in a row, some excellent information shared.

Lunch today was in Robinsons, and with noe American and a guy from Switzerland.

YAPC::Europe

Well it was the first day of YAPC::Europe today, and that was quite an experience .

I was supposed to go with a couple of others from work, but other commitments meant that they had to stay at work. There were a wide and diverse array of people there, all shapes and sizes :)

The day started a little slowly for my liking, but when we got into the talks I knew that my time would be well spent.

Today I had lunch with two Americans which was very interesting, one of the worked for a medical insurance company, and he explained the way the medical system works over there, and that amazed me.... $1000 for a trip to casualty

ADSL latest....

Called support today on my mobile on the way into work, but they aid they needed to run a "line check" and I would need to be at my computer for the test.

I called back when I got home, and told them the update - all hardware working on one line, and all hardware giving the same result on my line :(

The guy on the tech support said he couldnt esculate an error 619 to BT, but I wasnt going to let this guy off the phone without some progress. They suggested that I talk to Microsoft support about what the problem was with my PC(s)

I evenually mentioned that I had noticed the bytes tx counting up, and bytes rx remaining at zero, also loss of signal, loss of frame, and errored seconds on my line. The errored seconds seemed to illuminate something in his mind, and he spoke to a supervisor, and got it esculated to BT. We'll wait and see....

ADSL Today?

So its nice to get notification that your ADSL will work by 6:30, but the question is - will it?

The answer : NO. Hardly a surprise (although it would have been nice)

So on the phone to pipex support - half an hour waiting, talked to some guy who told me error 619 was a bit weird, but said it looked like my modem was broken. He suggested trying it at a friends house. So I did, and it worked, and so I called them back.

This time they told me it must be my computer. (what, both of them?) So, off to friends house, and borrowed his laptop. Surprise, surprise all the hardware works at his house, and produces the 619 error at my house. By this time it was too late to call the helpdesk, so I had to wait.

Mournes walking in the rain....

Well we went for another mountain walk today. A bad turnout, just the three of us. We went up the pot as usual, and followed the smugglers path, finishing with a nice walk through Tullymore Forest

It rained heavily almost the entire time we were up there. It was 11.9 miles, and I tell you, I was sore when I got home.

See some pics here

BT Gives us a chance!

From today BT will be accepting applications for ADSL from anyone in the UK, regardless of their line length. So at7.4 km I've waited for this day...pipex, here I come!!!

[more information]

Geovision card

Collected my Geovision CCTV card today, and got it installed in my PC - its a very impressive piece of software

Now all I need is a separate server to run it in, off to ebay....

Pulp Fiction - What?

Saturday night must have been the best TV night in years, The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction both on at the same time!!! So we watched The Shawshank Redemption, and TiVo'd Pulp Fiction. These must be two of my favorite films of all time.

Pulp Fiction also contains one of the funniest lines of all time, although there are many comedy moments, such as the Marvin "Woah, man, I shot marvin in the face," the best for me is the "'What' ain't no country I ever heard of,they speak English in 'What'?" [listen]

I fall off my seat laughing each time I hear this....excellent. Another contender for finest film moment is this section from Dogma, but that's another story :)

Caravan's Gone...

After almost 2 years, the caravan has gone. Some nice folks from Mosside came to see it about 2 months ago, and agreed to buy, but said it would be some time before they needed it.

So they came back today to get it. The caravan mover people came about 8am, and were away before 10. Susan and the kids were sad to see it go, I was glad to see the back of it!!!

See the pics at : http://www.ccso.co.uk/gallery/CaravanMove

New Car

We picked up Susan's new car today. Well, when I say new, its new to us. Its a 2000 VW Passat TDi, just the 90bhp model, but its surprisingly nice to drive.

Its only the 'S' model, but it has a lot of the 'SE' stuff, like climate control, and full electric pack. Hoprfully it will do us well, for a long time

The Hole(2001) [SPOILERS]

[SPOILERS] Last night I watched The Hole (2001) for the first time, and I really enjoyed it. I was captivated from start to finish, although about half way through I was a little concerned it was going to end up in some bizarre dream, or something else which I wouldn't understand. However, it didn't!

It started by portraying the lead character as an innocent victim, and set out a base storyline and background of how things should have been. Thora Birch plays Elizabeth Dunn, a seemingly innocent schoolgirl, caught in a trap by her long time friend As the film progresses we learn more of her true character as evil and manipulative.

It's usually nice to see the bad guy get away with it, but I didn't feel the usual sense of satisfaction with this film. Still well worth a watch!

24 - Season Three

Over the past few weeks I've been following 24's third season with interest, and I have to say that the action in the last few episodes has been great! I've watched up to episode 20, so only 4 more to go, and from what I've read it isn't going to be a disappointment! 24 delivers again!

Outbreak (1995)

Outbreak (1995) - another fine film, I'm quite sure it's factual basis around bio-chemistry is flawed, but nevertheless, a fine film. Good story, gripping and interesting to the end, the charactors are well developed, and it's interesting to see Morgan Freeman acting the bad guy.

Raises some interesting questions, for example, how would any country / government handle a virus outbreak of this severity (or even less serious)?

Good film, well worth a watch, as long as you can put your science head behind the sofa....

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Dead Poets Society (1989) - another TV rerun to take over my evenings viewing.

A strong film, about an influential English teacher, who encourages students to think and learn for themselves, rather than just fall into the mould society porovides for us.

Robin Williams is the teacher, Carpe Diem ("seize the day") a central part of the film, a fine storyline, as the charactors discover more depth to their lives.

Another interesting and thought provoking film.

Simon's Gallery :: Mussenden Walk

I've had the camera for about a week, and I'm still snapping everything I can see - Simon's Gallery :: Mussenden Walk

Great fun, just wish I was better at taking photos. :)