25April2007
Posted by Christopher under: House.
Foam polarises people. I only found this out when I finished making my own bed a few weeks back. Its big. Really big. In fact, beds don’t get any bigger than this. There is no standard size up from mine, a Super King. I’m not sure why I made it that big except to do star shapes in.
Anyway, the foam. I needed a mattress so to the internets and ebay. I put some cash down on a memory foam mattress which is when all the trouble started. People either swear by them or spend ten minutes explaining why theirs fell apart in two weeks flat. I just like it because it was invented by NASA, Q.E.D. very cool.
19April2007
Posted by Christopher under: Travel & Leisure.
Unbelievable.
I draw your attention to paragraph 5, line 2. “The group provided the candles, their wicks shielded in donated Coke and Pepsi logo paper cups, for the vigil.”
Nice to see the two major cola producers getting the most out of a violent massacre. I’d love to meet the person whose thought process went:
1. OMG, Killing spree, 30-odd dead
2. Hey, candlelight vigil
3. Hey, televised candlelight vigil!
4. Lets brand those candles to the hilt, literally
5. Profit!!!
19April2007
Posted by Christopher under: Travel & Leisure.
So I’m off to Vienna in exactly one weeks time. Opodo emailed yesterday to say my schedule had changed. Except they don’t run the before and after schedules through diff :/ You just get the update and after ten minutes I discovered the update. My plane lands one minute later in Mozartville at 23:11.
They’ve just e-mailed me again. Its back to 23:10.
15April2007
Posted by Christopher under: Travel & Leisure.
So I went to Liverpool. On the day of the Grand National (Didn’t win, what happened Dun Doire?). And on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Well the anniversary of her hitting the iceberg. It took a while for the old girl to go down.
I’ve never liked scousers. So I paid the extortionate train fare to change that. I invested GBP £22 sterling to see what the place had to offer.
To start with its a building site. You also get a vague smell of sewerage every now and then. Next year Liverpool is the European City of Culture. Which must be something big as the place has plenty of work being done on it. Here’s a photo of the famous Liver building. To the very left of the picture is where they are connecting the Leeds-Liverpool canal with the Albert docks. To the right is a couple heavy petting on a bench.
You can go on one of these duck boat things from WWII around the docks. So I did. The docks are surprisingly clean as under the Customs and Excise building is a huge mussel farm. Which has put me off mussels.
I then went to the Cavern Club. Which is where The Beatles started playing and not a gay strip bar as my mate Rob thought. Anyway, the actual Cavern club is now the fire exit for this one and not really where this one is. Basically a bodge job.
Then I went to church. Twice. They have some pretty spectacular spots to sleep off your Sunday morning hangover in Liverpool - good job as it has the highest intake of alcohol per person in England. You can see why. Slowly the Aintree crowd started to return and the journey back was eventful. If you like singing.
13April2007
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
So I _tried_ to do the right thing. Getting dvd playback working on a colleague’s Windows XP laptop. The Cyberlink online store takes me through eight pages to register (because I have to have an account to buy a decoder, right?) and then informs me that I’ll get the activation code emailed to me in anywhere between 4 and 24 hours time. At which point said colleague will be able to watch DVDs. That’s the Windows way.
CentOS 5 came out yesterday so installed today on the works computer. Added the necessary repository, typed “yum install libdvdcss” and was watching the company DVD in about two minutes flat. Add an extra minute or two if you want to install with pretty graphical interface instead. For disclosure purposes I should mention that the HP printer we use in the office wont work. Still swings and roundabouts. Or maybe Fedora 7 is the answer. :)
8April2007
Posted by Christopher under: Family & Friends; House; Linux & Open Source.
The wisps of steam rise gently from my cup of Earl Grey whilst down the road by local curry shop is preparing my lamb balti just the way I like it. Hopefully.
A few months back I found a necklace from Tiffany & Co under the carpet. So spent a few minutes researching the origins. Turns out its an Elsa Peretti teardrop heart necklace and what those in the retail trade would call “A Regular Runner”. The Tiffany’s website quotes cost at USD $135. An ebay auction from google of an identical piece finished at 25 quid. Ah well.
Lastly, as there hasn’t been a picture up on my blog in a while, here is where I do my RHCE course at Leeds Met. The one disadvantage of the course is that you cant take it outside on the good days. Which this Bank Holiday has been.
5April2007
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
An old friend from way back added me to her Facebook profile. Did I want to create an account? Not really. For no specific reason, Facebook want the password for my email account!? I find it disturbing the number of people who sign up for this and blithely give away security details without much of a second thought. This from a site where the founder was disciplined at Harvard for privacy breaches. Congratulations Mr Mark Zuckerberg, you clearly missed the Ethical Computing module on whichever course you took and with a few broad strokes tar the computing fraternity with the same brush in the eyes of the general public. This kind of site makes me _really_ angry.
