i seem to have a few unread messages after being away fo a few days...lets hope its just the iphone messing me about and not really that many otherwise I'm going to have to get through a lot of Viagra emails.

Seems my blog got rapped by another bot yesterday, it ignored the robots.txt file much like ID-search.org so it looks like it was id harvesting.

The offending network was giganet from the 216.40.222.50 looks like another one for the htaccess file
seems like others are having the same problem http://www.a-daily-rant.com/2007/12/17/gigamega-gona/

"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make this planet great and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher."

This was sent to me by a friend Geoff

Intel has released Linux source code, and set up a community site, to allow Fibre Channel frames to be embedded in Ethernet packets. This means companies using Fibre Channel can make more use of the protocol while maintaining their existing kit. Open-fcoe will provide a home for developments, as well as the various tools and guides that will be needed by anyone trying the technology.

From The Register
Ethernet dances the light fantastic
I seem to have lambasted the rest of the article when i made my comments on the The Register

Part of me thinks, where were the Assistants who do the crowd control and did the director even tell the authorities that they were filming in the area??...Of course not, probably another production on the cheap thinking they can get away with it,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7149216.stm
----- The director of an Angolan crime film says police have shot dead two of his actors after mistaking them for real armed robbers.

The duo were carrying unloaded firearms as they filmed a scene in a rough suburb of the capital Luanda, director Radical Ribeiro told AFP news agency.

He said police roared up to the set and began shooting at close range.

Angolan officials have not commented on the incident. Mr Ribeiro says he had permission to film in the area.

Mr Ribeiro told AFP that police arrived at the scene in a pick-up truck and "started shooting at everybody at close range".

He was "stunned" when he saw the two actors fall down, he added.

"They went on shooting until I shouted out: 'Please don't shoot, this is a movie.'"

The officers then stopped firing and left without attending to the wounded, who were taken to hospital, Mr Ribeiro said.

Well as its the season to be jolly I thought I'd share this lovely tit bit I found the The Register. Remember what ever you do at the office party you have to see that person the next day. The guys and girls in the building with RED Consulting seem to be having a bit of fun.


We're absolutely delighted to announce this morning that the traditional drunken spirit of Xmas is most certainly not dead down at 41-44 Great Windmill Street, London W1, as the following email proves:

From: Mark XXXX
Sent: 14 December 2007 11:43
To: . All RED All Users
Subject: Extra Curricular Activities

Good Morning Everyone,

This morning the Office Manager from Sthree (company that occupies the 2nd floor) informed me that last night two people were caught enjoying 'relations' on one of their desks. The member of staff from Sthree was working late and heard something going on around the corner, after deciding to investigate he discovered the couple having sex and to his astonishment they noticed that he had noticed, but decided to continue anyway. Once 'finished' the lady in high boots asked the member of staff if there was a toilet she could borrow. Classy!

Ok, this does raise a few questions. If a horny couple decided to enter the office from the street they would have had to get past the main street doors without a fob and into Sthree's offices without a fob, which is a bit tricky. Sthree's main reception door in situated in the main atrium and is always open. Therefore, there is a good chance that they were already in the building. The member of staff describes them as dressed casually, pretty much like we are dressed most days. Also they appeared to be under the influence of alcohol…oh, that's right we have a free bar on the 5th floor.

So, the message here is quite clear, please make sure you know who is coming in the door behind you, make sure you can trust your friends when they visit the bar and make sure all office staff have gone home!

Thanks

Mark

P.S. If anyone does know who the copulating couple were, you can drop me a little email to save me the task of trailing through a whole evenings worth of CCTV! Thanks

Google Maps with My Location (beta)

Their website says See your location on the map, with or without GPS. Save time and tedious keystrokes finding where you are, what's around you, and how to get there. Why the uncertainty? The My Location feature takes information broadcast from mobile towers near you to approximate your current location on the map - it's not GPS, but it comes pretty close (approximately 1000m close, on average). We're still in beta, but we're excited to launch this feature and are constantly working to improve our coverage and accuracy."

So as you can see from the picture the dot is not showing me where I am, (the dot is around St James somewhere when I'm currently located in Soho, London and the accuracy of the location data can be up to 5km off. So rather than telling me i'm in Soho it could be telling me I'm in Islington lets hope they improve the accuracy soon.

After yesterdays little delay http://blog.kking.co.uk/blog/_archives/2007/12/9/3399945.html.

Well it seems that the new London Overground management have got the same refund process as the other Transport for London services.

you can find the refund page here http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/refunds/1092.aspx

The rules are for Tube refunds Tube journey has been delayed for more than 15 minutes by circumstances within TFL control, use the Tube refund link to claim your refund.

The rules are for  journey on London Overground has been delayed for more than 30 minutes by circumstances within TFL control, use the Overground refund link to claim your refund.

You can read the Overground Passenger Charter one the link http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/Overground-Passenger-Charter.pdf

My claim was number on their site was #123

Typical British railways, London overground new management same problems. Trying to get anywhere is painful.

Update: How to claim for delays on the London Overground. http://blog.kking.co.uk/blog/_archives/2007/12/10/3401563.html

Well the academics at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis revealed their shock findings yesterday from their research "Beer makes people have sex with you!!!!"

Yes, they have already started on next years work Trying to find out if the Pope is Catholic and do Bears toilet in the woods.

Release http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0145-6008
Abstract http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2007.00537.x

No more listening to the guitarist tune up between songs, oh bliss! Guitar manufacturer Gibson has started to produce the self-tuning Robot Guitar.

The technical details of how the axe keeps the strings nicely in tune - via pitch-monitoring bridge, CPU, and servo-motored machine heads - is available here.

Also a great training vid HTTP://www.gibson.com/robotguitar/robotguitarvideovoting.aspx?playvideo=training

indexing is great and can allow people to find great stuff on the web but when someone comes along and programs their spiders to make 10000 request and indexes(rapes) the whole site, I think oh my god you've killed my bandwidth. Which has got me a bit pev'd. The last few times its be Id-search.org, you and read all about that on this link.
This time it looks like Identity sellers 192.com  .I don't mind them indexing but have some consideration of peoples bandwidth cost, 10000 pages in one go is just excessive. Here a example out of the log file.

212.227.102.48 "/blog/_archives/2007/9/5/3208735.html" "-" "192.comAgent" "GET /blog/_archives/2007/9/5/3208735.html HTTP/1.1 " - - "text/html"
[01/Dec/2007:14:26:14 -0500] 0 200 26523 GET blog.kking.co.uk

Whois for 212.227.102.48 from www.dnsstuff.com

inetnum:      212.227.68.0 - 212.227.108.255
netname:      SCHLUND-CUSTOMERS
descr:        Schlund + Partner AG
descr:        NCC#1999110113
country:      DE
admin-c:      UI-RIPE
tech-c:       UI-RIPE
rev-srv:      ns.schlund.de
rev-srv:      ns2.schlund.de
status:       ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:       SCHLUND-MNT
changed:      ***@schlund.net 20040611
source:       RIPE

role:           Schlund NCC
address:        1&1 Internet AG
address:        Brauerstrasse 48
address:        D-76135 Karlsruhe
address:        Germany
remarks:        For abuse issues, please use only *****@oneandone.net
phone:          +49 721 91374 50
fax-no:         +49 721 91374 20
e-mail:         ***@oneandone.net
admin-c:        SPNC-RIPE
tech-c:         SPNC-RIPE
nic-hdl:        UI-RIPE
notify:         *********@oneandone.net
abuse-mailbox:  *****@oneandone.net
mnt-by:         SCHLUND-MNT
changed:        *****@schlund.com 20040512
changed:        *********@oneandone.net 20071116
changed:        *********@oneandone.net 20071119
source:         RIPE

% Information related to '212.227.0.0/16AS8560'

route:          212.227.0.0/16
descr:          SCHLUND-PA-2
origin:         AS8560
notify:         *********@oneandone.net
mnt-by:         SCHLUND-MNT
changed:        ***@schlund.net 20040611
changed:        *********@oneandone.net 20071030
source:         RIPE

So this IP range is now going into the firewall of the blog.

Saw this on Mark's Blog and thought i'd share,

"What is Warner Brothers? Out with an eye patch and a tin cup on the street?"

Anyone who comes to London knows how expensive it is to get around, well if your a tourist. You pay alot less if you have a Oyster Card, but you used to have to pay a 3 pound deposit and pay in advance to get one so anyone coming to London  didn't used to have the time. Well Transport for London are running a promotion in line with the new London Overground network. You can get a Oyster Card for free and just top it up.

Oyster pay as you go is now valid across the new London Overground network. Click below to receive your free Oyster card.

Get my FREE Oyster card

Last night the New Frontier hotel and casino was demolished, another bit of Vegas history gone. Now with Westwood Ho and Stardust gone all that is left at the top of the strip is Circus Circus and the Riviera

Click for Demo Video

Stephen fry said exactly what i was going to say "The rest of the world can mock as much as it likes. If you’re going to have a phone/video player/slideshow/music centre/web browser/camera in your pocket, is it so wrong to want one that makes you grin from ear to ear? Not with smugness (though heaven knows the enemies of the device will read that into the smiles) but with delight."

May I present my Iphone, yes I have as my Gee at work put it. "Sucked on the Apple Crack Pipe." (C) 2007 www.podrush.net

I didn't have a good time with the Nokia N95 and found it to be a bit of a dog with a battery life of a dying bee. So lets hope the iphone is better.

Which way to the Kool-Aid.

http://www.icetruck.tv/index.php?id=2ab7d8448419967464f50fae62cda09f

The Cubika broke this morning and I wasn't happy. So ever the engineer I open her up and it turns out that limescale had created a air pocket in the pipe that was stopping the water pumping. A little tweal if the pipe to break the limescale and we are back in caffine heaven. Now time for a coffee

After yesterday post about the deaths of Rock stars I went back and listen to a few tracks and this morning I found this on youtube.
I've always loved the Manic Street Preachers and always will be a sad old Manics fan, its for performances like this. Manic Street Preachers - Sleepflower - Live Sapporo 21-10-1993. You can take the band but you'll never destroy the spirit!!!

You know your getting old when your heroes start dying, this week we've lost Paul Raven the bassist from Killing Joke he was found on Saturday in Geneva, where he was recording dead in a chair from a suspected heart attack. And today I find out Jacqueline Breyer (Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge), of Psychic TV Lady Jaye died suddenly on Tuesday 9th October 2007 at home in Brooklyn, New York from a previously undiagnosed heart condition which is thought to have been connected with her long-term battle with stomach cancer. Lady Jaye collapsed and died in the arms of her heartbroken "other half" Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article3087256.ece

Broadcast Engineering the local parish magazine in this neck of the woods printed a Phil Crawley esk article on running media over networks. One of the great statements it makes it that "the indeterminate nature of an IT network is fundamentally at odds with its use in media applications. It could be argued that Ethernet and IP are the worst possible network technologies for real-time media systems." and that "A modern broadcast technologist must think in terms of both the broadcast engineering and IT domains when designing a networked infrastructure that must support real-time transcoding." So the next time our designing a broadcast IT network, don't let the spotty Dilbert from IT that fixes the email server design it, call in a qualified broadcast engineer. The Article in question http://broadcastengineering.com/storage_networking/real-time-media-networks/index.html

Are you ready for the digital television switch over, well it starts tomorrow. In Whitehaven in Cumbria Whitehaven is the first place in the UK to have its old Analogue signals turned off, first they lose BBC2 and slowly by 2012 the rest of the UK will be switched to digital only and the frequencies used for other things like the advance in mobile communications.

Sex and violence may sell, but if you want better ratings you got to have some substance says a study, the boston globe covers it here "fuck you you fuckin fuck" Crudeness and the slipping standards of TV, despite big fines fruity language is up on TV, you can read the full article

This is so true it hurts.....

Did you get a chance to make a cup of tea, well put that cup down, its already booted. New Asus Mobo's will have Slashtop on them, The point of Splashtop is to get you surfing the web seconds after you press that power button. Virtualise the device and your up and running. check out the video below for more info or check out their website http://www.splashtop.com/index.php

Well it seem they decided to put up a poster of a scantily clad Billie Piper in one of the most conservative neighborhoods in London. Someone seems to have taken offense to the poster and covered it in White Gloss. Some one really doesn't like billie piper

The picture that they splattered is this one img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_04/BillieUndiesL_468x28...

The Grand Master Gee has been spending too much time getting the Silverlight love and has this on his blog, Xsan madness

My life is a very complicated drinking game

Ronnie Hazlehurst wrote some of the BBC's best-loved theme tunes Archive interview

Ronnie Hazlehurst, who wrote the theme tunes for television shows such as Blankety Blank and Last of the Summer Wine, has died aged 79.

-----

I still remeber the Mary Whitehouse experence sketch about him, where they taking about the track my friend billy has a ten foot willy and he's nailed to the girl next door.

He also did the theme to Yes Minister.

A Bomb in Wardour St,? Nt really a bit of fire/gas on Berwick Street.  I'm glad I left work early as Phil's picture shows everyone else left early too.

 From the List:

Hardcastle:  "For those of you familiar with Bill Hicks' stand up, I'm sure you'll rememeber his bit about the ultimate telivision commercial, where a girl is completely nude and touching herself. All it says is "Drink Coke". For those of you unfamiliar with this, here's the clip: http://youtube.com/watch?v=z2BTO91iotU

Well, it would seem that fashion designer Tom Ford has made it all reality.

http://www.tomford.com/en/

 Jessic: "The obvious conclusion to draw from this is that it smells like minge... Erm I mean shocking state of society exploitation etc."