Lugh sent this to the LIST today, I just spent 5 hours swearing very loudly His message read as follows:

I Bet I Can Make You All Swear Loudly Several Times Today :-P ...

Don't believe me huh?

Ok then.  I can live with that but, you will swear, and swear loudly.
So loud in fact, that your neighbours may complain.
They might even call the cops.
Your cat or dog (if you have one) may meaow or yelp and bolt under the sofa.
Your budgie (if you have one) will run to the other end of its' perch and tremble with fear.
Hampsters and mice will definitely hide deep in their straw.  Terrified at the racket you're making.
The local preacher, priest or vicar may refuse to call by *ever again* when he hears you.

Still don't believe huh?
Right ya feckers!You've asked for it :-P ...
HA..!
http://www.freewebarcade.com/game/bloxorz/

 *(Runs) ...*
Lugh ;-) ...

Jon Stewart introduces a nice exposition of the blatant lies of the neo-cons.

Mark Reed popped this up on this blog so I thought I'd copy him and do it too

Iris - Lands of Fire (from the album Wrath)

Probably the nicest and that's not a bad thing, band i've ever met. Really cool guys writing great goth/emo. Hailing from Austin Texas they remind me of a lost weekend in Gothenburg at Sama. Prictures on link. Regan Jones and Andrew Sega and of course Brian

 
Apoptygma Berzerk - Kathy Song (c64 mix ) Single

Apop was my first look into future pop/darkwave as it is now. I was lent a cd by an ex girlfriend and it all went from there. Contrary to popular opinion "i'm not a goth" and was always indie dance boy.

 
Patrick Jones - There Life in Their Hands  (from album  Commemoration and Ammesia)

Six form poets of the world unite. Particks work resinate in the soul speaking from a perspective of honesty. Seeing Patrick at Water Rats Theatre in Kings Cross when the album came out was a great experience.  The music on this album is  great from Super Furries to the Manics and Julian Cope.

 
Body Count - D Roc (RIP) (from the album Murder 4Hire)

Ah my rock roots comes out, BC, BC, BC...what does this say well...Graham, Riverside Studios club, Friday night. A pillar, My nose work the rest out for yourself. Great. Oh to be young and stupid. When you look back and see that  a lot of the  orgianl  memebers of  Body Count are now dead.

 
The Derek Trucks Band - Sahib Teri Bandi - Maki Madni (from the album Songlines)

I got introduced to this by my boss. This track completely rocks all 9.53 amazing guitar. Done by the same guy who played on the track used on the top gear theme tune. The break at about 2mins40 is sublime.  Put it on turn it up and  space out.

 
Nine Inch Nails - Wish (live) (from the album  And All That Could Have Been)

Trying not to be a teenager to this song is impossible. Everything comes flooding back, the copperidge on the quayside, riverside, bulletpoof dodgy old goths. hairspray  and thursday nights of  fun at 70p a pint.

365main one the San Fransisco's biggest facilities, had their PR monkeys issued a press release celebrating the site's "two years of 100-percent uptime at 365 Main's San Francisco facility." Oops.

Not wanting to tempt fate this morning/last night their facility shut down due to a power outage losing Craglist, and Livejournal as well as other big names. The area has been seeing power problems all day but it seems the backup supply didn't kick in.

Reminds me of a story about a nameless facility that had generators on the roof to run the technical mains in case of power loss then on winters night when the snow was heavy on the ground. The facility lost power and the generators kicked in, after about 15 minutes the generator started to set off the alarms for low fuel. Its seemed that whoever wired the generator into the building wired the fuel pump into the house mains rather than the technical so the pump was not working. So some poor engineer had to spend all night hand filling the generators till the morning came and the power came back on.

Storage vendor Isilon Systems has hopped aboard the thin-provisioning express that's chugging through the industry, adding the sought-after technology to its clustered storage products as a part of today's hardware and software revamp.

The new software, called SmartQuotas, combines quota management and thin provisioning into one software application. Isilon reckons its the first in the industry to combine the two for clustered storage. SmartQuotas allows users to partition a single, scalable, shared pool of storage (up to 1.6 petabytes) and assign limits on how much storage a particular user or group can access.

-----

Oh so I can have workspaces in my Isilon oh it starting to sound like could be used to editing storage tool rather than your big SAN solution.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/23/isilon_smartquotas_iq_9000/

 never touch your eyes after you've been cutting chillis

Stanley living it up at Blanch House on Brighton www.blanchhouse.co.uk/

Saw this one Simon's blog and thought I better post a link to it

Stag night pranks:

One of the guys here at work just came back from a 4 day stag do.....

The rest can be read at http://blogger.gtvone.com/2007/07/smurf.html

Oh does the url give it away?

What happens if you have your ear to the ground and have your finger on the pulse at the same time?

I've recently updated my Linked In profile if anyone of you want to link up then add my profile on the link below

i've mentioned on my blog about beta drivers for netgear W111T drivers for microsoft vista well there are some release drivers out and you can download them from the link below

http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101649.asp#vista_wirelessadapter

well if you can see this it means my blog is back up again...it's been off since Mon 02/07/07 it seems that somewhere between the company that supplies my blog and interweb is going wrong at a very regular interval. Its been dropping off line since March when i first reported the problem. Well lets see how long its up for?

Stockholm at night

View from the sky bar at the radison royal viking

Today was a day for a bit of culture, Gaudi supplied it in droves. What an amazing building I'm never seen a church on this scale being built you normally see them 100 of years after they were finished. Lovely building.

photos are on flickr click on the picture and you can access the set.

Stanley makes himself at home in Barcelona

Currently in Madrid, Spain for a few days...turned on the television last night to see can you guess? Yes, Bull fighting and there was me thinking animal cruelty as entertainment was a thing of the past ho hum....

There is nothing like a photograph and nothing brings back memories than standing there seeing the place again,  While I was in Central Park, New York I popped down to the lake and tried to recreate one of my favorite photos. It was taken in 2002 when I was in New York with friends
.

Its now 2007 and I've gone digital, over film and colour over black and white...i made it a mission to take the shot again.

Yesterday my blog was flodded by a bot called ID-Search bot with the useragent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; IDBot/1.0; +http:// www.id-search.org/bot.html). Within a few minutes it requested around 1,386 pages and came from the IP 66.90.101.75 raping about 50MB of band width in the process...you've got to love those Russian spy bots

Is this a spam-bot or a serious project? Three things which make we wonder

1.) The bot does not (yet) support robots.txt. A quote from their FAQ

Does IDBot accept the directives from robots.txt file?
IDBot can recognize the directives from robots.txt files only partially, which is the result of the scantiness of our resources. Full support of robots.txt will be launched soon.

2.) They are not willing to release their IP addresses. Quote:

Can I learn the IP addresses, which IDBot comes from?
Unfortunately, You can’t since it is against the rules of our company.

3.) They flood servers. According to their FAQ you can write an email to tech support if the bot is causing problems. IMHO this is not a workable solution.

A New Yorker in Battery Park

It feels like I haven't been away, its been nearly a year since I was back in Manhattan, how much fun and a boy have in the City?

While distracting Rupert from asking more embarrassing questions about MPEG muxing and I showed him Microsoft Surface. While we were on the site he asked me to see if it was built in Silverlight,  so I right click and look what I saw...Oh so even Microsoft aren't using Silverlight for their main production websites yet. (click on image for large)

This an existential psychological play was named "The Man in the Cube" and was written and produced by Jim Hensen (prior to his Muppets productions). It was broadcast on NBC's "Experiments in Television" series in 1969. It stars actor Richard Schaal, father of actress Wendy Schaal and one-time husband of Valerie Harper.This kind of explains why Sesame Street is so dark in places.



It very much like the Twilight Zone epsiode were the people are in the create and trying to get out, only to find they are toys in a toy box. Also like the film The Cube

In my time in tech support land and being a bit of a techie bloke you get some some of the strangest requests and some of the funniest from around the office because you know about technology they think you can fix anything, as I'm not there so often these days I do miss them. Today for instance someone in the office asked me if I could get their ActivSync working as their mobile phone would not sync with their email. Ok I'll have a look, I walked over to the mobile picked it up and noticed the black screen. I didn't want to say "Have you turned it on?" but it just slipped out.I pressed the power button and as if by magic it all started syncing! If only they were all that simple.

This was a classic blond moment if I've seen one.

looks like someone else is having one too http://www.gtvone.com/blogger/2007/06/is-it-turned-on.html

A coroner has recorded a verdict of death by misadventure on a reclusive Manchester man whose obsession with cleanliness led local children to dub him "Dettol Man".

Jacques Niemand, 42, of Didsbury, died of "an inadequate supply of oxygen to his vital organs" provoked by over-exposure to Dettol, the Telegraph reports. The inquest heard that he "habitually placed buckets of Dettol around his flat", while the rooms were "littered" with bottles of the liquid.

Niemand's sister Ruth Bain explained that her brother had suffered from an "obsessive cleaning disorder" for some years, but didn't seek medical help "because he feared the prospect of being detained under the Mental Health Act". Accordingly, he hadn't seen his GP since 1992. Bain said: "He didn't want any help and was scared of receiving it."

 A friend sent me a link to the The 22 Worst Place Names in the World

but I think they forgot a few of them.....

 
Pity Me, UK
http://streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=426500&y=545500&z=3&sv=pity+me&st=3&tl=Pity+Me,+Durham+[City/Town/Village]&searchp=newsearch.srf&mapp=newmap.srf

LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH, Anglesy, Wales
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A403642

 
Sockburn (Co. Durham)
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=434500&y=507500&z=3&sv=Sockburn&st=3&tl=Sockburn,+Darlington+[City/Town/Village]&searchp=newsearch.srf&mapp=newmap.srf

 
Nasty (Herts.)
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=535781&y=224354&z=3&sv=Nasty&st=3&tl=Nasty,+Hertfordshire+[Town]&searchp=newsearch.srf&mapp=newmap.srf

 
Monkey's Eyebrow, AZ
 

Paradox, CO
http://www.google.co.uk/maps?q=Paradox,+CO,+USA&sa=X&oi=map&ct=title

 
Spuds, FL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spuds,_Florida

 

Two Egg, FL

 
Normal, IL
http://www.google.co.uk/maps?q=Normal,+IL,+USA&sa=X&oi=map&ct=title

 
Truth Or Consequences, NM
http://www.google.co.uk/maps?q=Truth+Or+Consequences,+NM,+USA&sa=X&oi=map&ct=title

 
Gayville, SD
http://www.google.co.uk/maps?q=Gayville,+SD,+USA&sa=X&oi=map&ct=title

This was a shot i took over the weekend, i personally think its great

Sorry about the quality of the picture but i saw it and took it with my phone, I couldn't believe the price of the DVD's on the shelves at my local supermarket. How can they afford to have a DVD on the shelf for £1.97 and make a profit from it. Scary. Even if its a loss leader how much is the loss are they making 3 pounds???

WEP is dead - and here's the proof.

Phil Crawley made a post on his Tech Blog about Tech Support


To which I could only reply with that great Mark Parisi cartoon

as you may well know if you've been following my blog, that I upgrade the Miami Device to a Croquette and Tubbs phone that being the new Nokia N95.

Like I've said before I'd post a review of the phone up here when had a good look at it. Well before I starting writing my I say I've just phoned Orange to return the phone back to them. If that isn't a sign of how much we don't get on I don't know what is! Coming from a Window Mobile environment its was hard to use what seems like a backward OS in Symbian, I suspect if you've always used Nokia phones you find it a blast. I found that the phone took 3 clicks on the keypad to do any normal funcation. It seems Nokia have hidden away all the funations inside a lot of menus and you really have to dig down to get to some of the setting. Some of the feature of the phone I liked were the maps and gps navigation. I tried this out on Friday on a journey to meet a friend on the Southbank for drinks.

I turned the gps on and it started download the map via 3g. I typed the location of were I was trying to get to and the phone told me the location didn't exist, not a good start then i tried the postcode and it found the location and displayed with the address i typed in that it said didn't exist. Oh well not to worry lets check the route. The route seemed to be sending me down all the major roads and across all the main bridges. I check the settings and yes I'd set them to 'foot' rather than 'car'. The route that the phone would have sent me on was going around the houses down the main shopping streets when the quickest route was to use the back streets and across Hungerford bridge. Ok so the route planning looks off. Lets use the GPS to nativate there or find out were we are, I have a little Polstar GPS which I've used around the world to get about with Pocket Streets and it normally picks up the 3 satellites its needs to navigate in about a minute once your out of cover. The Nokia N95 didn't even connected once or give me any GPS data at any point during the whole journey to the Southbank. Yes the GPS was on as I could see 3 or 4 satellites on the information panel but it seems you need 5 for the phone to lock and start giving you data to navigate by. In London the chances of getting 5 satellites to lock if about 1 in 50 due to the height of the buildings and width of the streets which makes this possibly valuable feature useless. The feature set on the phone does seem to be tied together having two gps apps in different places on in applications and one in tools just seems daft. It looks like Nokia have just been trying to hard.

Also Orange have block access to Truphone the VOIP system that comes installed on all Nokia N95's from the factory, this feature has been disabled to Orange can protect their call revenue and not have you make cheap VOIP calls.

All in all if your not it a big city, not into VOIP and you like Nokia OS you might just think this phone is the bees knees but I'm sorry to say its not for me....looks like I'll be getting a SPV E650 after all.

but really couldn't be arsed... well Tracey Moberly, Tony Pletts and Mark Thomas have the solution for you.... McDemos


We provide bespoke or off the peg demonstrations against governments, corporations and occasionally neighbours at a price to suit all pockets. No job to small or too big, from a discrete "boo" to a literally renting a mob, we cater for all your protesting needs!

McDemos is a protest solutions company (06153817) registered at Companies House UK

Neil king knows that a man should be judged by the devices he owns, with this in mind the old Orange M5000 aka the brick as James Clarke called it. Has been upgraded and retired and I got a all singing and dancing Nokia N95 as a free replacement. Well see how it goes and i'll post a review in a few days. Love the intergrated GPS so far.

Sime doesn't like blackberries much, well i think he's made his point that he really wants it to work. But i don't think that the blackberry could stand the Extreme Tech Support that can be meated out by engineers these days. Other PDA's be warned.

Should this be classed as bullying in the office?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6633745.stm
A senior policeman in Los Angeles has been demoted and his deputy and about 60 other officers have been reassigned after an inquiry into May Day clashes. Last week protesters and journalists were injured when police fired some 140 rubber bullets to break up the crowd. The rally had been peaceful until the clashes, which the police department said were prompted by agitators throwing rocks and bottles at officers. But TV footage showed a police officer pushing people who were walking away.

Judge for yourself from the clips below from the major news networks
clip 1
cnn msnbcprivate journo

* Comcast issues apology for programming glitch
Disney Channel viewers in New Jersey were stunned to see the inadvertent display of pornographic programming in place of the children's show "Handy Manny" on Tuesday. The error was chalked up to a technical issue at a Comcast facility. New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities will reportedly take up the matter with the cable provider. 
----
i just wonder how many heads have rolled. I know many stories like this from my short time working in Soho. I especially like the one that had a company dubbing tapes and someone used some recycled vhs tapes instead of new when dubbing a supermarket training video. The training video was played at a conference they let in run on after the end of the video and the guy didn't stop the deck, so after the training video finished there was about 30 seconds black and then the hardcore porn that had been on the recycled tape. Sadly the guy who dubbed the tape carried the can for that one and lost his job. always remember use new stock....

I fancied a bit of nostalgia so i logged onto the WayBack Machine and pulled up Atomiclava.

Atomiclava was mobile blogging platform way a head of its time, from James Clarke its was a vision of how we are going to be going mobile technology to show the world whats going on when the blogsphere was a twinkle in a journalists eye. Well time has moved on and James is now at Microsoft developing cool technology around Microsoft Silverlight and Atomiclava has ceased to exist.

If only the picture below could be true, what do you say James.... Atomiclava + Sharpspace + Silverlight.

James Clarke: Creating Silverlight Media with Expression Media Encoder

move uncle joes car on:
http://englishrussia.com/?p=865