Geekery

A few years back (probably 5 or so) I built up most of my current main AV setup[1]. It's an all Yamaha rig, with JBL Control 1AT speakers (main and centre) and a Celestion sub. At present, it's:

CD player: Yamaha CDC-685 multichanger. This has now been discontinued, but I'm not going to be changing this because they're not making any new multichangers at the moment. It's a fantastic unit, and has optical out. I also like the PlayXChange function which means you can change discs whilst one of them is playing. MiniDisc - Yamaha MDX-793. Again, this is discontinued. Not many people use MiniDisc now, but I've still got a whole pile of them with concerts on and such. I could transfer them, but well, I'm happy with it for now. Why bother? Cassette - Yamaha KX-580SE. Discontinued again. Brilliant bit of kit. What it does with noise reduction is amazing. Again, we've got loads of tapes. Can't fault it, and I'm happy not to transfer stuff whilst I've got this.

So, that's the stuff that I'm keeping. What am I upgrading?

The tuner deck is currently a TX-492RDS. This is going to be replaced by a TX-761 DAB tuner deck. The DVD player is currently a DVD-S796. There's nothing wrong with this - optical out for the audio, but it's being replaced with a DVD-S1700 which has HDMI (and optical) as well as upscaling to 1080p. Yes, Yamaha have just announced their Blu Ray player, but the specs on it look a bit pants for the £600 or so they're asking, and there's no point buying the S2700 when I'll be upgrading to Blu Ray shortly (when they've got a better offering). So why bother? The amp - I'm not sure on that one. I can't justify a Z11, but the RX-V2800 is apparently just around the corner. But that' been on the cards for months now. I'll probably hold off on making that decision for a while yet.

There's also a new panel on the way. I've been putting off getting a new telly until: A) 1080p panels drop to a sensible price B) The contrast ratios get to a decent level.

Since it's now possible to get a Samsung 1080p with 15000:1 contrast ratio that does pretty good blacks, I'll be getting one of these at some point soon, hence the major updates to the AV setup.

I've been doing a lot of work over the last few weeks to get my domain portfolio (both my personal one and that used by my employers) all into one place, as they were spread across a mish mash of registrars and pointing at various different name servers and whatnot.

One thing that struck me whilst I was doing this is the scarcity now of three letter domains (and, indeed, "good" domains) under the most well known TLDs (.com, .net and .org) as well as, to some extent, .co.uk. Whilst a quick Google revealed no hard numbers, I'd suspect that the last of the three letter domains under .com were hoovered up some years ago by Domainers (those who purposefully register domains purely to resell them at a profit). Of those remaining, there's obviously a split between business, and personal users.

The only ways in which these domains might come back into circulation are someone forgetting to renew; a business going under; in the case of a domain registered by a person, that person dying.

This is what I'd been thinking about. In the case of the last two, we've been aware for a while now of the value of three letter domains, so, in the future are we likely to see these domains valued by administrators when a company goes under? What about the Government (in the UK) for inheritance tax reasons? Who would decide these values? With a house, it's relatively easy to do. But with a domain, surely the value is much more difficult to calculate.

I found out yesterday that the exam board used in a project I'm involved with will accept the audio recording from an oral test (ie the speaking part of a test) as an mp3 file. This seems somewhat interesting as it's extremely easy to manipulate the files after they've been generated using freeware audio editing tools, such as Audacity. Obviously, though, this problem isn't a new one - certainly, it's possible to manipulate audio on tape or CD with as much ease.

The easiest way to prove that a file has been edited is to generate a hash of the original. If the hash doesn't match this file, then there's obviously been a change to the file. But how does one know that the has generated is that of the original file, and not one of the edited file? What's to stop someone just generating a hash based on the edited file?

Thinking about this a bit further, I hit on an idea. There's open source mp3 players/recorders out there such as the iRiver. This device runs an operating system which can be developed for applications such as this. It would be possible to create a custom operating system for devices such as this which could generate a hash based on the file that's just been recorded, along with the time, date, and a secret cipher. This hash could then be saved to an associated file.

From here, both the audio file and the file containing the hash would need to be sent to the exam board. As usual, if the hash matches the contents, all is good. It wouldn't be easy to create a new hash based on the edited file unless one knew the secret cipher and the other bits associated with the hash (ie method, and the date and time element). There's got to be something I've not considered here, though. What am I missing?

My Macbook Pro has been having some odd problems with the DVD writer for a few weeks now. I use Toast primarily for recording DVD-R and CD-R. Although the machine would read any media quite happily, I was having increasing problems with writing to CD-R and DVD-R. Out of a cake of 100 CD-R, I'd perhaps get a successful write with about 60, gradually decreasing over time to 20 or so. Not good. Googling suggested a dead drive.

Toast would give an error of "Sense Key=Medium Error 0x73, 0x03". Trying to record the disc from Finder would give me an error of "The device failed to calibrate the laser power for this media".

For reference, this is the device information:

MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-857E:

Firmware Revision: ZA0E
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -R DL, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO
Media: Insert media and refresh to show available burn speeds

What concerned me was after the drive failed to write to a disc, the cache line would change to:

Cache: 0kb

After trying the various fixes listed on forums (including Apple's support site) I only had one solution left - a lens cleaner. I've always been somewhat dubious about these things as they seem a little bit snake oil to me. Colour me surprised that it seems to have fixed it.

When I got into the office this morning I found a Dell D630 waiting for me that'd only taken two weeks to arrive due, I'm told, to waiting for a battery. Anyway. The machine had turned up with Vista installed on it. The University is rolling out Vista slowly, but it's by no means well supported yet, and there's still a lot of unknowns with it.

Popping in the XPSP2 CD I'd got ready resulted in the laptop giving me a BSOD, with the helpful error message of STOP: 0x00000007b. I've got an XPSP3 CD which resulted in the installation finding no drives to install to - this was a little more helpful.

To resolve this, pop into the BIOS (hit F2 during startup) and change the SATA operation mode from AHCI to ATA, and also disable the Flash Cache.

Once done, you should be able to install XPSP2 or SP3 as you would normally.

My installation of Office 2008 under OS X automatically updated earlier today and seemed to break itself quite spectacularly. After the update had installed, any of the applications on the suite refused to start, instead automatically starting the installer for the update again, and then trying to check for updates.

The way around this is to make sure you've got your serial number, then delete the following files:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office\ 2008/Microsoft\ Office\ 2008\ Settings.plist rm /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2008/Office/OfficePID.plist

After this, click on one of the applications that are part of the Office suite, it'll take you through the registration (asking for your serial) and then that's it - sorted.

I've been using Parallels on my Macbook Pro since I purchased it, because I still need to do a fair bit of stuff in a Windows environment. I occasionally do some work in Visual Basic, as well as Access - both of which aren't available under OS X. I'd been running the 3170 build for some time, and whilst it was totally stable, there was an irritating bug in it which would cause the fans to run at full whack (around 6kRPM according to iStat Pro) after a few minutes use. The processor and memory usage would rise significantly. Until now, I'd just put up with it.

Obviously, this was an older version. Today I upgraded to Build 5592, available here which certainly seems to have fixed the problem. The look and feel of the container has changed as well, and it just feels, well, nicer. Well worth the upgrade.

I've got a Cisco router here in front of me, the router is "reconditioned", but was received with a console password on it. Now, this is interesting for two reasons. As it's reconditioned (apparently) it shouldn't have a config on it anyway, and even so, whoever had it beforehand should really have cleared the config off.

More interestingly, the router is identifying itself with the name of a medical company. Interesting. So, rommon the box, get into it and do a sh start and see what we've got.

Username and password for the VPN service that said company uses, further identifying information for the company, firewall rules, SNMP server information, and, of course, the console password (in type 7, so easily breakable) for the router. What says that the same password is used on a number of bits of their kit?

It's not difficult - really. This is basic network security stuff. Just clear any configs off before the router gets taken away.

I've used Google webmaster tools for quite a while now, primarily for work stuff. That said, I've also got my personal site and this blog submitted to it.

I've been perusing the top search queries that bring people in to the sites - some of the search terms are rather interesting, leading me to wonder how the site had become so high on the list. Others terms are related vaguely to what I post, but then I know that there's nothing closely related to that subject matter. Some examples:

"how to access ip address for cisco aironet 1130 through hyperterminal" "cisco 1231 won't boot" "Nikon D3 resetting" "Possible spyware infection detected"

Maybe I need to post some more tech foo on here.

One of the issues I'm slightly concerned about with regards to Gruffydd growing up is that my parents - indeed, most of my family aren't going to see vast sections of this, as they live in Leicester, over 150 miles away. We're doing a lot of stuff with photos, and some stuff with video as well, but the video stuff is merely snapshots.

I've spent today playing around with: o QTSS (Quicktime Streaming Server) o Quicktime Broadcast

Quicktime Broadcast is a funky little bit of software available from Apple for OSX that takes a feed either from an iSight camera, or from a Firewire input. I've rigged up a Canon XM2 to the Firewire port (the same camera that's used for the snapshot videos). Broadcast then has various options for encoding the video and audio - as well as framerate and so on. There's various network options - if your network supports multicast, then there's an option for that. You can also do manual (single) unicast, and automatic unicast. I'm using automatic unicast via the server in London.

The server is running QTSS which compiles quickly and easily on Debian Etch (make sure you've got a qtss user added before you run ./Install otherwise it won't work properly - this doesn't seem to be mentioned in the documentation, but you do get an error whilst it's running saying that the script can't chown some files because the user doesn't exist...)

From here, it's simply a matter of tuning the setup against what you're wanting to do. My parents have been happily watching the stream using Quicktime Player from Leicester, which is what I'd intended. I've tuned our setup to 2fps - the reason for this is it gives the overall best frame quality and audio quality at 320x240. This takes around 28kB/s which is pretty much the size of the upload path over our DSL.

The reason I chose to use the server in London is there's a chance my Grandparents (and obviously, anyone else) will want to watch at the same time as say my parents. The London server obviously has the bandwidth to cope with this. In essence, the London server offers the ability to have more than one client viewing the stream at any one time.

Photos of the setup are here.

There's a saying amongst techies that gaffer tape can fix pretty much anything. That, and that it holds the world together. We've been having some difficulties getting the baby to sleep recently as he doesn't seem to like lying flat. We'd also noticed that he's taken to sitting in his activity chair really well. He'll happily spend all day in it, and, importantly, likes to sleep in it.

The difficulty we've got is that we have a sleep apnea monitor. Each sensor for this is rigid, and roughly the side of an A4 piece of paper. The activity chair is soft on all sides. Trying to put the two together was clearly going to be difficult.

I ended up gaffer taping the sensor across the back of the chair, so his back is on it. The top is gaffer taped in place, and the bottom held in place using cable ties (so that his weight doesn't cause the tape to stretch and thus lose contact with the sensor). The top is gaffered because the top of the chair is circular and cable ties won't hold on it without slipping.

It looks rough and ready, but it works. All those years of working in theatre have taught me something...

I mentioned previously that my trusty Leatherman Wave has been away for repair. Just to close this off, after getting back this morning, I found a package from Kendal containing a brand new Leatherman. Turns out they'd discontinued the model I had, and instead of repairing it have given me a new one. Yay!

So - where did I get back from? We've been out this morning to register Gruffydd's birth. Lucky him, he now gets to pay taxes when he starts earning. :)

During the week I usually get up around 0720 and head in to the office, so attempting to keep with the routine, I got up with Sioned & Gruffydd at around 0700ish, did the usual stuff (feed, change), had some breakfast and whatnot before the midwife arrived. Straight after that, we headed over to Bangor and dropped in on a few people, including the offices I work for, all in all taking around two hours. This afternoon, we had the audiologist from the hospital over to check Gruffydd's hearing, which was all fine. Immediately after that, we had the Doctor over (he's sort of a family friend) to do more tests. Straight after that, Sioned's parents came over - I'd asked her Dad for a hand with a wardrobe we'd bought from Ikea which is, frankly, crap. I was having problems hanging the doors on it - they wouldn't hang straight. He pointed out this is because one bit of wood is warped, one bowed, and the whole thing seems to have twisted. Top marks to Ikea on that one, then. We made the best of a bad job before they headed off and we had some tea. Gruffydd elected to have his tea just as Sioned was serving up. Whilst this was happening, I was wondering why my laptop had lost the DHCP lease from the server, but thought I was doing something a little odd.

No. Wrong. Way more than a little odd. The UPS in the rack had switched off. I suspect we'd had low incoming power most of the day due to the storms, and the batteries eventually ran out. On powering everything back up, I seem to be one disk short of the quota - fortunately it's a backup drive, so it's not all bad. The issue being it's the one with the bootloader on it. Arse.

I'll have a quiet day tomorrow, please.

I'd quite like this if it was possible to get the control software onto something smaller than a laptop... http://revver.com/video/719432/etch-a-sketch-clock/

Reports have been circulating for the last few days now about one of the security mainstays of many of the larger web services such as Google, Microsoft Live and Yahoo being broken. CAPTCHAs are those little boxes of text which are obscured in some way - you usually have to enter your interpretation of them to prove that you're a human. The Wikipedia article for CAPTCHAs is quite good at the moment and also has examples of CAPTCHAs. The reason for this is primarily to stop software from signing up to these services and then using them to send out spam. For instance, having software sign up to the Google services means that GMail accounts can be created, then from here, spam can be sent.

You'll appreciate, if you look at some of the examples shown in the Wikipedia article that, in some cases, it can be difficult even for a human to decode what's being displayed. Indeed, there's numerous times that I've got the test wrong. With this in mind, it's somewhat surprising to find that software developers are now at the stage - if reports are to be believed - that software is able to get the CAPTCHA test correct in as many as 20% of cases.

This presents us with the question of where to go next. Spammers, and the software developers that work with them are always playing a game of catchup - the good guys build em up, and the spammers will knock em down again. So whatever the next phase is, they'll find a way around it - or solve it. It'll just take some time.

As it stands, they're currently able to solve - at best - 20% of the CAPTCHAs presented to them. This will only get better, but I think it's going to be a long time before they're even at 50%. I think that one of the better ways forward at the moment is CAPTCHA + something else, so you essentially have to pass two tests to validate. There's numerous ideas which would possibly work. Some ideas off the top of my head include matching cards together. The method would be something along the lines of you being shown five cards. Two of which are half of a face, with the third being half a cat, the fourth half of a dog, and the fifth half of a car. Clearly, the two halves of the face match. Another would be an array of ten cards, 8 with pictures of animals (for instance) and two with humans. Pick the humans.

The issue you've got to get around with anything like the above is that at the moment it's totally non-standard. People the world over generally recognise CAPTCHA and know what to do with it. With any new test, you've got to get around the language barrier, and possibly any cultural barrier. Those in the UK at least will know the HSBC adverts - what if people in some part of the world get given a new test involving a black cat? Is this unlucky for them? Different things have different meanings, so anything like this would possibly need checking to make sure it has no negative connotations.

Plenty to think about, though.

For a long time now, I've been heavily reliant on the charity of other people to provide me with DNS (primary & secondary), e-mail (secondary MX and also IMAP service) and web service. I know a lot of people who've got their own machines hosted in various datacenters around London. Whilst, hopefully, the load that my sites and e-mail exert on these machines shouldn't be too high, I've always felt a little cheeky as I didn't feel able to contribute anything back to them - obviously, hosting many of these machines is a cost to these people. There's also the requirement for them to invest significant amounts of their own personal time on the upkeep of the machines in terms of security, and also the occasional "Can you do " e-mails from me. Not regular e-mails, just zonefile updates, stuff like that.

After a recent discussion on one of the tech lists I'm on, I decided to take out a VPS (Virtual Private Server) with a company called Bitfolk. The company came well recommended, with one of the guys behind it (at least) being on said tech list. Since most of my personal (development) machines already run Debian Etch, I elected to have this as the base for the VPS. Putting everything on to the new VPS means that I've got everything in one place - this means that I'm not having to rack my brains (or run queries) to work out where a website is, where the DNS is run from, etc. I've decided to farm the actual management of the DNS out to Portfast, which is run by a friend of mine. You can't argue with the prices, and DNS isn't something I'm particularly good at.

I've spent the weekend installing software on the machine, testing out configurations and so on, and then pointing the DNS for websites at it. Obviously, leaving the website on the old host running in parallel with the new one on the VPS whilst the changes propagated. I'll leave the old sites running for a few weeks, monitoring the log files before taking stuff out. After that, I then did Exim, Dovecot and Squirrelmail installations, before starting to move over MX services to the new VPS. One of the tricks of spammers is to hit the lowest priority MX as an attempt to inject spam - their theory being that this part of the chain will have the least protection. I'll admit to being surprised at the amount of attempts that the new VPS was getting within half an hour of the MX changes starting to propogate. When I installed Exim, I also installed SpamAssassin, but in its vanilla state, this was doing pretty much nothing to stop the increasing deluge. I elected to use the zen.spamhaus.org DNSBL. It was stopping probably 25% of the hits I was seeing. As I say, it was in a vanilla state, so undoubtedly, with tuning and addition of extra rulesets, this would've been fine. The addition of the zen.spamhaus.org DNSBL, though, is far simpler.

Exim4 under Debian makes this relatively easy to do. I'm running a split configuration, so it's simply a matter of inserting this into /etc/exim4/conf.d/acl/30_exim4-config_check_rcpt just after the accept hosts = : line

# RBL List Begin
# Always accept mail to postmaster & abuse
accept domains = +local_domains
local_parts = postmaster:abuse
#
# Check sending hosts against DNS black lists.
# Reject message if address listed in blacklist.
deny message = ${sender_host_address} is listed at ${dnslist_domain}; See ${dnslist_text}
dnslists = zen.spamhaus.org
# RBL List End

Once you've done this, you'll need to update the config by running update-exim4.conf and ensuring the service has restarted.

This bit of code sees mail being referred to zen.spamhaus.org. If it's listed there, then a message is returned (as detailed above) in response. This sees us rejecting the e-mail at SMTP time, so it exerts far less load on the machine overall, and gives the sender an immediate response.

Having left the machine overnight, I'm pleasantly surprised at the amount of spam that didn't get through - just a small number, which will need some more fiddling to get right.

So, as well as having the screen replaced on the Macbook Pro a couple of weeks back, I've also had to return my in ear monitors to Shure. I tend to listen to a lot of music whilst I'm working in the office. Because it's open plan (and nobody else there shares my somewhat unique tastes) I use a pair of in ear monitors. Unfortunately, after 15 months of use they developed a fault. Sent them off Tuesday of this week and had a brand new pair turn up Thursday morning. Impressive service.

I've also managed to break the knife blade on my Leatherman Wave. This isn't the first time I've done this. Leatherman have a 25 year warranty on their stuff which is about as basic as "you break it, we repair it". Leatherman are an American based company, with another company called Whitby & Co handling their work in the UK. After sending the Wave off on Friday last week, I had a letter from them on Thursday saying that I'd managed to break it so spectacularly it had to be sent off to America for repair back at Leatherman. Oopsy.

I've decided that it's worth buying stuff that's well made - even if it does break, the company behind it gives a damn good amount of support.

I'd been holding off on upgrading to OSX 10.5 for a while now - firstly because I don't, as a rule, upgrade stuff until it's been out for a good while (giving chance for any bugs to come out and get blatted) and also because I didn't feel the need to. Since 10.5 has been out for a good few months now, I decided to get hold of a copy and pop it on to my MBP. For something that weighs in at 7 odd gig, it installed surprisingly quickly - admittedly coming off a Firewire hard disk, I was back at a login prompt in 24 minutes, which is pretty impressive. That said, there's now around 550mb of updates coming down which I don't expect to complete as quickly, being as the machine is behind my 2mb ADSL - if I'd done it at work so that I can use the gigE JANET link, I'm sure it would've been much quicker.

I picked the machine up this morning - absolutely spot on the money. Brand new glossy screen, all tip top. I had a quick browse through /var/log/secure.log to see when the machine had been used, and it looks like twice - once the day after (I assume to diagnose the fault), once on Thursday where it was on for a fair while (I assume after they'd installed the screen) and again yesterday just before they called me.

All in, rather impressed - Applecare seems well worth the money. Well, if you paid as little for it as I did - 30 quid for the extra 2 years.

I had a call from Digital Store Manchester at half four today to say that the Macbook Pro had been fixed and is ready for collection. As the store closes at six, it'd be hit and miss as to if I'd get there in time - so I've elected to go and collect it tomorrow instead.

That's not too bad, though - a touch over 4 days to get it all done.

Hopefully trying to catch Google with the title - I called Digital Store in Manchester earlier on today and they said that they'd not had the screen delivered yet, that it usually took a few days longer for the glossy screens (apparently matte screens are more readily available), but they hope to have the screen either tomorrow or Monday. Here's hoping...

For longer than I can remember (at least six years now) I've been using a laptop as my main production/development/blah machine. Taking the decision to put the machine in for a repair isn't one that I've taken lightly, trying to schedule in my head when it's going to be best to be without it.

I ended up calling a few places that aren't too far away to try and gauge how long I'll be without the machine to have the repair done. There's a bit of dust seemingly inside the screen (other people report it as being "dust behind the screen" - it's certainly visible, and definitely not dead pixels and so on). Whilst this isn't that common, it's not entirely unheard of, with reports coming up through Google of people saying much the same thing. (Here, here, here... and numerous mentions on the official Apple forums.

The Apple store in Manchester's Trafford Centre said they'd got no idea how long it'd be. Another independent Apple Authorised Service Provider (AASP) suggested a wait of 2-3 weeks (which is pretty unacceptable for me), whilst the outfit I plumped with - Digital Store reckoned on less than a week. The guy I spoke to on the phone was really helpful giving me all the information I needed.

I arrived in Manchester and dropped the machine off with them at lunchtime, having spoken to the same guy that I'd earlier spoken with on the phone - seemed to be a pretty top bloke who seemed to live and breathe Apple gear.

So, we'll see how this pans out - hopefully the extended Applecare I've taken out will be worth the money. I'm not into the extended period yet, my first year (which is given anyway) runs out in June.

Hopefully, anyway, I should be back with it later this week. We'll see what happens.

Whilst I do some pretty big file transfers around my home network (mainly photos and video) from the laptop to the file servers, I've always left these going in the background whilst I'm doing other stuff, so never paid too much attention to how fast or slow these are. In recent times, I've changed the setup of the network here, such that the network is now split into two. The servers are split away, and the only way of connecting them now is powerline ethernet converters. I'd purchased a pair of these from Solwise, the pair costing about 50 quid. Put them in, and forgot about them.

I was transferring some photos today and noted that they're only giving me about 250KB/s. My first port of call was the consideration that the access point (Cisco Aironet 1231 with a G card) or the laptop were being a bit odd. The access point is on the other side of the powerline segment, so it was a possibility. Taking it right down to the point of the laptop being directly connected to the powerline converter still giving roughly the same speeds.

I then took the laptop and connected it directly to the switch (a Cisco 2950) which has the servers hanging off it and saw speeds around the 5MB/s mark, more towards what I was expecting.

I'm now running a test of 700mb, rsyncing from the laptop. In both instances, the same fileset will be used. In the first instance, I'll do it using the powerline segment, in the second instance, I'll do it without the powerline segment and report the results back here.

...and the first set of results, with the laptop connected to the powerline segment are: sent 709976661 bytes received 3320 bytes 271554.78 bytes/sec

...and the second set of results, without the powerline segment: sent 709976661 bytes received 3320 bytes 4264144.03 bytes/sec

So, what, nearly 16 times slower with the powerline in. I think it's safe to say that if you're doing large file transfers, you don't want to be using powerline. I know there's issues of how long the link is/how new the cabling is/blah so you may get better results if you're not having to go as far.

I've been utterly crap at keeping the blog up to date recently, so what better time to look back on the year, and also conveniently put everything that I've not put on here already, er, on here.

December is, as is now standard for me, panto season. It's been a little bit more busy this year as December also saw the first data return to the Welsh Assembly Government for the University. This was a little bit stressful as most of the providers had either forgotten, sent in incorrect data, or submitted their data late. Lots of late nights and whatnot, and it was in on time, and I'm pretty happy with what we've sent. I'm also working on some new stuff for the website which includes media management and a Health & Safety system. All of this will only be visible to the providers, so not something for the general public. This is all tying in to a presentation I'm going to be doing to the other University techies on what I've been doing for the past year, how it's all come together, how it works and whatnot. I've got a few ideas for the presentation, but not started writing it yet. Panto - I said I wouldn't take that many shows this year as I'm fairly tired, and also it's not really financially viable at the moment for me (I get paid less at the theatre than I can justify). So I only ended up taking 20 shows this year (I think I did about 40 last year). Sioned still thinks that this is far too much. Ho hum. Only a few more left to go, then that's it for another year. Christmas was spent at my Mum & Dad's, and was rather enjoyable this year. Sioned & myself received some very nice gifts, there was excellent food, and the company was good.

October and November saw me working on an interesting project for another department in the University which caused a hefty political argument, eventually seeing the whole project canceled. Fortunately, I think I've come out on the other side without too many battle scars.

The department within the University that I was seconded away from (Work based learning within the School of Lifelong Learning) has slowly been making more and more people redundant. The have a contract with the Welsh Assembly Government which is typically renewed each August. This year (August 2007) the renewal was, financially, much lower than in previous years. This put a large amount of pressure on to the department. As a result, in March, the department will begin the final wind down. Students currently on program will be moved to other providers, and remaining staff will either be made redundant, or, where possible, be re-housed elsewhere within the institution. What does this mean for me? The department I'm now working for (Canolfan Cymraeg i Oedolion) has funding for a further three years. After this time, we either get more funding or I'm looking at redundancy. We're in a pretty good position within the institution, and within the country as a whole. Hopefully it should be ok.

The summer saw Sioned finding out that she's pregnant. We're going to be having a baby in late February/early March. Sioned is feeling poorly pretty much constantly, and seems to have a pretty much endless set of appointments with various people within the medical profession.

Also over the summer, we got rid of the Saab and now have a BMW 3 series diesel. In some ways, I still prefer the Saab, in others (especially the economy), the BMW is a nicer car. Ok, it hasn't got the pickup that the Saab had, nor the top speed, but it's still just as nice.

March this year saw us getting married, and then heading around Western Europe in the car. Absolutely brilliant time, really enjoyed it. Germany is a brilliant place, especially the Nurburgring.

I've also started playing in the Bangor pool league - I've got a win rate of 50% which is pretty decent, I think, for someone who's only just started playing. We're a new team to the league, so to also not be rooted to the bottom of the table is pretty decent, too.

As posted on the blog, I changed from my slightly-long-in-the-tooth Nikon D100 to a D2X. I've used the new body in anger a few times now, and it's a joy to use. Over the last week, I did just over 1000 exposures in a few hours and the battery is still over half full. The images it produced, in quite a few cases, required very little processing/colour correction. It's a brilliant piece of kit, although as you'd expect, the noise at anything above ISO500 is noticeable. I gather this is well corrected in the Nikon D3. Hmm... ;-)

This year also saw the purchase of my Macbook Pro. I'm really getting on well with it now - there's quite a few shortcuts and the like which, once you get to know them really do increase productivity. The machine was, within a few days, my main development/production machine, and has since stayed there. It's a brilliant bit of kit. It's been dropped once and - as you'd expect, hasn't suffered any illness as a result of it.

I think next year is going to be a whole lot different.

I've been using a Nikon D100 for a few years now, and it's given me some absolutely amazing results, and I'm really pleased with it. That said, it does have limitations. When I bought it, it was an old(er) bit of kit, already being in some respects superseded by the D70. The D100 had been given a hammering and has done sterling service, having done a good few gigs, the honeymoon, had a pint of beer chucked over it - and that's just off the top of my head. Recently it's been giving some banding, a sign of a possible shutter failure. These things happen. It's regarded as a consumable part. I'd been starting to feel like I'd outgrown the D100 for a while now, specifically being bound by some of the limitations on it (ie the way it talks to the SB800 flash I've got, the number of FPS it can do, the AF areas, etc). I'd been lusting after a D2x for some time, but not been able to justify the outlay. So - when a chap I know mentioned that he was looking to sell his, and the result of lots of overtime sitting in the bank, it seemed like a good opportunity. I'm *really* pleased with it. The amount of fine tuning one can do is breath taking. I took some sample images outside the office at lunchtime, which are up at my photo site. Some of the detail being brought out in the shots is spectacular - the beads of water, as well as what's shown in the background in some of the other photos is - well, as I say. I'm impressed.

If you sign up to Tesco DVD Rental before 10am tomorrow morning, for at least three months (cheapest option is £4.47), they're offering up an iPod Shuffle. An iPod Shuffle for £13.41 can't be sniffed at, with a load of free DVDs thrown in too!

Winner.

I find that someone under iraq.centcom.mil is looking for a Welsh course. Unfortunately the coverage area for the North Wales Welsh for Adults Centre doesn't quite stretch that far. Nice to have the enquiry anyway...

I've been a customer of Orange for my mobile phone for, apparently, 7 years now. This is quite a feat judging by some people's experience. Their data service is crap at best (Vodafone is *far* better), but I generally get on well with them, and haven't had that many problems. Sioned joined me on my contract this time last year, and we both took out Nokia N80s. We were rather pleased with them, and elected to upgrade this year to a Nokia N95 each.

First thing you have to realise when upgrading phones is that you don't pay what you're offered first. Initially, they wanted £90 from me (since I use my phone quite a bit and thus spend quite a bit with them), and wanted £199.99 from Sioned for her upgrade.

I'd already done my research and found that we could move to T-Mobile and pay £60 per handset and pay roughly the same as we do per month now (give or take), so asked for my PAC - the code which lets you keep your mobile number and move to another mobile provider. Upon asking for this, I was transferred to Customer Relations, who told me that I could, in fact, have both handsets free of charge. Shock, awe. We spend roughly 80 quid a month between the two of us, so it was with further delight that the lass on the end of the phone said that she could get this down to around £45-£50. Then, she said "Um, hold on, let me just put you on hold".

A couple of minutes later, she confessed "Er, those prices I've just quoted you are all for an 18 month contract. Is that ok?"

Back to the drawing board. I certainly use my phone in anger - whilst it doesn't get chucked at walls, it's certainly showing signs of wear after 12 months, and my N80 is certainly having problems now (rebooting, falling off the network regularly, etc) - so I declined their kind offer and asked what my options would be for staying on a 12 month contract.

Long story short, after 53 minutes on the phone with them, I got to stay on the existing price plan (ie we pay £80 a month and use most of our quota) and pay £100 for both phones. Seems pretty reasonable all in.

It shouldn't take that long, though. Really.

No updates for a while, so it's time for one of those mega updates that come along every now and then. Working from today backwards...

Today has seen me moving the rack from its previous home upstairs in the office to somewhere else. This involved de-racking everything, taking the rack apart, huffing it all down two flights of stairs and then putting it back together in its new location. The UPS (3u APC 2.2kVA) weighs far too much. Managed to do it all in about 5 hours, which wasn't too bad. The reward, after sweating buckets was a nice bath, a glass of coke and a pack of marshmallows.

Yesterday we headed over to see Joel, Nicky and their kids for their summer barbecue. We needed to give the new car (see below) a run out - we'd also not seen them since the wedding, so it was good to catch up with them.

Last week, we took delivery of a new car. We'd sold the Saab due to it starting to become a bit impractical before the Eisteddfod, and since then I'd been borrowing a jeep from Sioned's Dad. Due to the miles I'm doing now, a diesel was required - so we're now the proud owners of a BMW 3 series diesel - photos here. This also involved seeing a couple of cars which... weren't quite up to scratch. I'd originally been looking at Mercedes C220 CDIs. Myself and Sioned's Dad went to see one in Bradford which was - for want of a better word - a bit of a shed. For the money, it had surface rust, knackered wheels and stained seats. Nice. We then went to see a BMW 3 series diesel in Nottingham. You'd kind of hope that a diesel engine (well, any engine really) would have oil in it. Not this one. Plus (bearing in mind it's a diesel) hadn't been serviced for around 30000 miles. Ouch. We walked away in both cases. I'm rather pleased with the one we finally bought.

I've been working from home a bit during the two weeks since the Eisteddfod, mainly due to being horribly knackered after it, and mainly because it had given me some good ideas about where I wanted to go with the website that I've been working on. Most of this has come through to fruition now, with a nice enquiries management/CRM bolted on which does some bespoke functions, as well as building in some other things which we needed. Pretty productive all in.

Over all, the Eisteddfod was pretty successful - and I rather enjoyed it, much more than I did the one in Swansea last year. I also did some followspotting work there, which involved actually sitting on the rig. I love doing work like that :-) The Internet connectivity didn't get much better during the week after my previous post - we were lucky to see more than half of the day with any connectivity, much less anything capable of uploading photos/videos. Whilst traffic shaping there was obviously a taken (since it was being run with ADSL as the backhaul), you'd still hope for some form of upstream bandwidth.

During the Eisteddfod (well, before actually - but I'd not been able to put my finger on what it was) the D100 suffered a shutter failure. It's not a total failure (yet?) - exposures faster than 1/320th see a black banding appear over the image. Fixation want £180 to replace this. In other news - Nikon have announced the D3. 9fps! 9! My god.

In other news, Mum & Dad are up this weekend - it'll be good to see them again. They're staying overnight as well, which means we'll be able to do a few more bits with them than usual.

This week I'm working at The Eisteddfod in Mold, for the North Wales Welsh for Adults Centre. We're relying heavily on an internet connection as we're uploading photos, video and webcam output live to the website. It's kind of important to us.

The company providing the connection (I'll not mention names, but they're quite big in North Wales) are charging a fairly high fee for what's essentially just ADSL (think over £100 for a week). We've had in the region of 4 hours service during the 9 hours I was on site. When it was working, it was shaped to hell - mainly, I suspect, because it was ADSL. I'd be interested to know just how many customers are being shoved down a single DSL because the latency was shocking (131ms to a machine that usually returns about 5ms from my home ADSL, and <1ms from the University).

Hopefully the rest of the week will bring a better service, but I'm not holding out much hope.

In other news, apparently I walked through a shot which was subsequently broadcast on national (Wales) telly earlier this evening.

I like to think that I can live a pretty simple existance (for a geek) - give me a laptop, an Internet connection and the occasional bit of food and drink and I'm happy to go on for as long as I need to.

I've been down in Swansea in South Wales for the past week - it's not often that work send me away for stuff. Perhaps the last time was when I was at the Eisteddfod, strangely enough in Swansea, this time last year. That was only for a couple of days, so the effects weren't quite as pronounced as they are now, and things were slightly different then anyway.

When you're away with work - whatever the reason, if it's being away on training courses, or conferences, or just working away - that's why you're there. To work. That's true to a point, the point being that I'm only paid to work for a set amount of time each day. If they want to buy more time off me - fine, go for it. As it stands, I feel slightly taken advantage of. The rest of my day isn't even my own when I'm away, because I'm in an area I don't know, with nobody around me that I know, fitting in to someone elses version of the world. It's just gone 2300, and I'm bloody starving. I phone for room service, because I fancy an ice cream. Can't be done - last food is served at 2200, it's a choice of sandwiches or wraps (isn't that essentially the same thing?). Apparently people don't want food after 2200. But wait, isn't this just an all expenses paid holiday in a fancy posh hotel? On the one hand, you're having your food and drink paid for, but on the other, you've got nobody to enjoy the going out bit with. Sitting alone in restaurants, eating alone. Going to the pub in the hotel with nobody else to enjoy it with. All of the empty business suits are sat there doing the same thing - apparently relaxing after a hard day doing pointless but oh-so-important business deals that'll change the world. Does the sneer give away that I'm totally fed up?

I think this reinforces the point that every single person is unique, and taking the person out of their own environment and putting them into the one-size-fits-all world of being on the road doesn't work for me. I've got an Internet connection that feels like wading through treacle, a telly that shows Sky News (no BBC News 24), the single music channel available is TMF (how many times can they rebroadcast the same show in 24 hours?) and the only kids channel is CBBC, which finishes broadcasting at 1900 each day. Great. The menu in the hotel bar hasn't changed once, and eating out in town ensures you end up feeling like a social lepper because you're eating alone. One of my friends suggested I take something to read (note: Make sure you get the free newspaper from the hotel each morning) just so that you don't end up studying the wallpaper in the restaurant too heavily.

There's only so many things you can do before you just end up being bored with trying to stop yourself from being bored. Last night I found myself organising the Documents folder and doing the things I'd been procrastinating over for far too long. Things that had long ago been put in the "far too pointless to even consider doing" pile are now finding the light of day.

To the people that like being on the road - good luck to you, and long may you enjoy it. It's not for me though, and I'm going to pay far more consideration to the length of the stay whenever something like this comes up again. There's far more to working away than first meets the eye.

I've been slack in my updating of the blog again of late, it seems, so an update on everything interesting (not that much then...).

Firstly, work - as usual, this is pretty high up on my agenda. In the past week I've been put on notice that I'm going to be losing a pretty big ongoing contract that I've enjoyed for nearly a year. In one way it was a bit of a shock, but in others there'd been signs that it was on its way out. This isn't something that's down to me, but the department that pays me has lost a significant amount of funding - there's going to be significant job losses across the board, and it looks very much like I'm going to be out. That said, the fact that the contract has lasted this long is frankly quite shocking. It's good that it's lasted this long. On relaying this information to Sioned, she said that I shouldn't worry too much as I'll no doubt manage to fill the gap quite easily. Still, I didn't think that it'd be as quick as having an e-mail some 7 hours after hearing the above news asking if I'd like to consider working on another contract with another public sector organisation around here. A further phone call today sees me scheduling the meeting for the middle of next week. Monday I've got another meeting to finally hand over a working version of a piece of software I've been developing for the last few weeks to a local SMC. It's been an interesting project as - whilst it's just-another-piece-of-software, it's been developed for use in a sector I've got absolutely no experience of. This is one of the nice things about working in the way that I do - I get to experience a lot of new things and constantly add to my knowledge. Next Wednesday sees me heading down to Swansea for a few days for a training course. The University are sending me down there, and I'm staying in the new SA1 development. I gather there's a lot of nice places to go out and intend to have a good mooch around the area whilst I'm there. If anyone can recommend good eateries that cater for vegetarians and any other places I should look at whilst I'm there, then let me know! I'm there for 5 days all in, so I've got a bit of time.

In geekery news, I've been giving the new Macbook Pro a hell of a hammering. It's been used to edit about 60 hours of video so far, done some audio recording (doing editing on the fly) under Logic, as well as doing a fair bit of work under Parallels. Frankly, it's been utterly flawless. I'm really rather pleased with it, although as expected, the video editing eats disk like it's going out of fashion.

Our car is up for sale. The Saab is going to be gone soon, and we're replacing it with a Mercedes C220 or C270. The Saab - whilst bags of fun to drive, is costing me an absolute fortune to run being as I'm doing so many miles at the moment. It returns a not-unreasonable 30mpg from a 2.0 litre petrol with a turbo behind it. That said, it's still a bit too low so we're opting for a boring-but-more-economic diesel next.

House stuff. We've pretty much decided we're going to stay where we are for now. Whilst our house is still worth a pretty respectable amount, we're now at the stage where we're close to being pretty happy with it. During the last week we've managed to finish off the new kitchen which has been a project going on for about 6 weeks. We've now got some rather nice new worksurfaces (black, of course) with funky new cupboards everywhere. We've also changed the format of the kitchen ever so slightly (moving the cooker a bit). Today has seen us taking the back garden apart - ripping the whole lot up in preparation for another change there. We've now got a skip full of crap just outside.

I somehow managed to end up being one of the few that were chosen to be offered tickets for Live Earth at Wembley this weekend, although we didn't really much fancy the line up, nor the trip down to London and ending up back here at some stupid hour, and besides - it wasn't exactly a cheap gig either (£125 for a pair of tickets?! Screw that) so didn't bother going. It's been a pretty reasonable decision, I think, as I've had far too much stuff to do this weekend (finishing touches to the software et al).

I think that's about it for now.

I've used a laptop as my main machine for some years now - probably around 7. As such, the machine gets a lot of abuse, and needs a fair bit of grunt behind it to cover everything that I'll possibly throw at it. This ranges from: o Database development (MySQL, MS SQL and Access) o Web development (primarily in PHP, but written by hand in a text editor) o Application development (usually in VB) o Graphics editing (Photoshop usually) o Recently, video editing (Premiere) o Massive amounts of e-mail (Thunderbird, which usually takes about 600mb of RAM)

My previous laptop - a Toshiba 1130 had been bought 4 years ago. It's done an *amazing* job and I'd have no problems recommending a Toshiba to anyone who needed a laptop. So why have I changed to a Mac now?

Toshiba weren't able to offer me a machine which fitted my needs exactly. The previous laptop was pretty basic in what peripherals it had. The physical an technical needs of the machine are: o It's got to be small(ish) and light. o Needs to have onboard wireless networking. This is a *must*. o Ideally have onboard Bluetooth. o Decent amount of RAM. My previous machine had a gig. Anything less than this isn't any good to me. o Firewire. I'm going to be doing a considerable amount of stuff over the next year with video editing. o With the above, it's going to need a big-ish hard disk on it and a DVD burner. o It needs to look relatively pretty. This doesn't bother me personally, but being married to (and living with) a non-geek, it needs to be relatively unobtrusive.

Toshiba (and some other contenders) were able to offer something which ticked some of the boxes, but not all of them.

It was an odd choice that I started investigating the Mac. I know Joel relatively well and have a deep respect for his technical ability and consider myself to work in a similar way. He's recently converted to a Macbook Pro (from here known as an MBP) and is working extremely well in it. One of the things that I need to be able to do is take to a new machine easily and not have to go through a significant learning curve. This was one of the things that's always steered me away from OSX (Mac's own operating system). With the recent developments within the Apple field of things like Bootcamp and Parallels, which allow you to run Windows (and other operating systems) natively on the newer Intel based Mac hardware, this was becoming a non-issue rapidly.

Sioned and myself headed over to Manchester a couple of weeks ago to the Apple store there to compare the different models. Did I want a Macbook or an MBP? Glossy screen or matte? After making the choice, I put a call in to the Apple sales people and ordered a 15" MBP with glossy screen. It arrived yesterday, taking a total of 11 days from ordering to delivery. Why didn't I order over the counter in the shop? Because I work for a University I get a significant discount which isn't available over the counter.

I was concerned that the screen would have problems with glare, which was one of the reasons for checking it out in the shop. This isn't a concern for me, although if you have any possibility at all of using the screen in direct sunlight, go with the matte screen.

Out of the box, OSX is rather intuitive. It sets itself up quickly and easily. I'm rather impressed. Some of the foibles of it are taking some getting used to, but I suspect that's partly coming from a ridiculous number of years using nothing but Windows. I remember changing from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 and wondering where Program Manager had gone. This feels pretty similar.

I downloaded the Boot Camp Beta and set about installing that, but found that A) You can't install from a USB memory key B) If you burn a CD, it needs to be bootable. This caused a few coasters, but I was well on my way after a bit of googling.

From here, I set Parallels up so that it would use the existing bootcamp setup, so essentially I can run XP natively and also within OSX. This seems a pretty decent setup. Whilst Parallels is absolutely fantastic, it's still suffering some issues in that giving it a really intensive workout can cause it to slow down. Because resources are shared between OSX and XP in this way, the whole machine isn't available to either OS. As such, when I'm running resource hungry applications, this does become apparent.

Safari seems a bit unstable, having crashed on me four times so far - quite often whilst looking at results on Google, which is a little disturbing. I've given up on that for now since I prefer the UI of Firefox anyway.

Overall, I'm rather pleased. There's lots of nice little things that've been well thought out, ranging from the charger having the inability to tear itself, instead being held in place by a magnet. The keyboard which lights up and the screen which dims when in a dark room... you can tell it's a good amount of design time has gone into it.

I'm looking forward to using this machine for the next few years.

Me: "So basically, you make your pricing up as you go along, but want the system to account for that?" Them: "Um, sort of..."

Pfft.

Last week (a week ago today) I ordered a Macbook Pro via the Apple UK Store. The "priority" shipping still seems to take a while. Saturday, they e-mailed me to say it'd been dispatched. It seems they dispatch from Shanghai, so it's going to take a couple of days yet before I get my hands on it.

Anyway.

The tracker that Apple user is a bit pants, but once it's actually shipped out, they'll send you a number starting 80. Pop that into this website: http://www.apecode.com/appletrack/ and you'll get some far more verbose information. Apparently mine landed in the Netherlands earlier today, and has subsequently left again.

Yesterday Sioned & me headed over to the Trafford Centre in Manchester for me to coo over the new Macbook Pro lineup. I was undecided between the glossy and matte screen of the 15" versions (anything bigger would be too much for me - I like to be able to travel light when I need to and sling everything into a single bag). It came down to how much glare the glossy screen would give. I'll be going with the glossy screen and putting an order in through Procureweb, which gives an impressive discount for University people. The reason for the new purchase? My four year old Toshiba Satellite is now showing its age - depending on where pressure is laid on the keyboard, it'll simply switch itself off. This isn't a battery or power supply issue - the same thing will happen on either. I've taken the laptop apart to a reasonable level, but I suspect that it's a cracked mainboard.

The weather was also with us for the journey there (and back), with us having the top down the whole way.

Today I watched an the Canadian Grand Prix which, to be honest, was utterly storming. The first race win for Lewis Hamilton was well deserved, but it's very rare that we see such attrition in a race now. The fact that Robert Kubica survived such a large crash, as well as the others who piled it into the final corner shows how far F1 has come now. Interesting also that two were black flagged. When did that last happen?

As some of you will know, a fair portion of the work I do is in the Higher Education sector. I recently needed to buy a small amount of kit (just over a hundred quid). A quick search on the interweb showed that Expansys was going to be the cheapest supplier of said kit.

On checking our finance database, it turns out that the University has an account with Expansys. Yay! I call them up and say "Hi, here's our account number - I'd like to make an order please!". But what's this? Because I didn't open the original account - and I have no idea who did (let's see... 3500 employees. It could be someone from Finance itself, or someone from an individual department...) I can't place an order. Hum. Ok. Apparently we can't open a credit account with them because we've not got an order history (WTF? The University already has an account - you've just said that - but we can't open another because the University hasn't ordered from you before?). This strikes me as a bit chicken and egg, but anyway. Most suppliers fall over themselves to open an account for a University. My options, apparently, are pay for it myself and then claim it back (The University frowns on this as, I understand, the Tax man really doesn't like it), or get a pro-forma from them. Once this is paid, they'll ship the goods. I opt for the latter, since this is the only option open to me.

The pro-forma is paid on 15 May 2007 by BACS from our end. Now, I know BACS is slow, but it's absolutely 100% in their account on Monday. This we know. I ring them on Monday. "We've not received the payment". Fine - maybe it's taking a day to show on their end for some reason. I ring back Tuesday. "We've not received the payment". By this time, I'm starting to do my nut. It should not take 10 days to order a hundred quids worth of stuff. I give them all of the references from the BACS transfer - the bank for the University has spoken to the receiving bank and they've confirmed the money is there - but Expansys are saying it's not. They agree to get their finance department to look into it and contact me.

This morning - finally - an e-mail. They've received the money. Yay! But wait - there's more: "We expect the stock to arrive on an internal transfer in the next 3-5 days".

Expansys. Bunch of utter muppets. Keep well away from them if you want any chance of seeing your stuff within a reasonable time frame.

http://myfriendlyfox.com/extensions/ebay-toolbar/

Adds lots of nice eBay functionality to Firefox for those who (like me) seem to spend far more time on eBay than they should.

I've neglected the blog a bit of late. I usually try to write the interesting (well, to me, anyway) stuff I've been doing. I've been feeling a bit "Meh" of late, and not really been up to much, and what I have done hasn't been that interesting anyway. Or, at least, it didn't/doesn't feel like it.

On the work front, I've toned down on what I'm doing with the theatre as I'm absolutely knackered. Having said that, a desperate (ish) phone call over the weekend is seeing me working there tonight. That, and I've got a few bits on the go at the moment (designing and implementing a client management/stock management system for a small trader near where I am, which should also entail some ongoing support for them), as well as some ongoing projects in the University. I was on an interview panel last week which recruited a new System Information Officer for my old post within the University. This doesn't mean an immediate end to the contract I'm doing there - if anything, it's going to ramp up for a few weeks whilst the new chap gets bedded in, and then will start to drop off in mid-August to September time. My other main contract with the University is term-time only, so will be coming up for a rest in a few weeks time when the term finishes.

I took a brand spanking new Mercedes C200 CDI out last weekend (ie not the bank holiday weekend) for a test drive as we've pretty much decided that's what we're going for (well, it'll be a C200 or C220 - there's not much in it. Same engine, just the C200 is chipped down). The toss up was between the BMW 320d and the Mercedes C200/C220 CDI. The Mercedes won it for us as they just feel that bit nicer. It seems to pull sluggishly compared to the Saab, but then the Mercedes is a diesel, and also doesn't have a turbo on it. On the subject of cars, the front left tyre on the Saab had a valve failure last week. Trying to park the car with half the pressure it should have (usually has 33PSi, but had 14 in it) was an odd experience. Turn the wheel and nothing happens.

We've bought a new kitchen! Delivery is next week (Tuesday). Sioned has been muttering for aeons that she's not happy with it. The arrival last week of a new Smeg FAB32NE4 pretty much cemented that we needed a new kitchen to go round it (how does that one work then...?) We managed to get the price down from a mere £1037 to £410. Again - how does that one work then?

This weekend (bank holiday - yay!) saw us have some friends over on Friday evening for the first barbecue of the season. The evening went on for a good while, before people left at around 2330. Ace. Sunday saw Mum & Dad up for the day and the traditional visit to the Llandudno Victorian Extravaganza. Unfortunately the weather had turned on the Sunday - up until then it was top notch, with Friday and Saturday (as well as the days before) nice and warm. Sunday was overcast, damp and drizzly. The original plan had been for another barbecue, but this wasn't to be, even after we'd spent 30 quid on food for said grilling.

Yesterday saw us shopping for a new telly. Not that we need one, but we thought it'd be rather nice. We're a bit restricted on how big we can go at the moment - the largest that'll fit in the gap being 32". Could we find something with a decent colour reproduction in that size? Hell no. Well, not at a sensible (ie <£900) price. We're not too fussed about 1080p at the moment, but even so - a contrast ratio greater than 1200:1 would be nice. Apparently achieving real black in anything 32" or lower is unheard of. Ho hum.

That is all.

Fotopic moved house yesterday. I drove over to Wakefield and met up with Joel, Nicky and Keiron. After a couple of hours rest there before the driving and the work started, we left Wakefield at 1700 with Nicky driving down to London. Arriving at Docklands at around 2000, we headed for food at Pizza Express. Whilst here, Joel received a call from Clara.net, the current hosts of Fotopic asking what was happening about routing. Nice and on the ball. We left Pizza Express and went straight to GS1 and started de-racking the gear, getting it loaded on to trolleys and taken down to the cars. Small problems with paperwork not having been passed between people slowed us down, but no major problems. We left GS1 at 0030 and hit the road. Minor GPS problems involving tinted windscreens later, we picked up the A12 heading north at 0100, arriving at Fotopic's new home in Leeds at 0345 (a good run, those of you that know UK geography will agree *cough*)

Re-racking there, we didn't come across any major issues. I put in all of the network cabling and tried to keep things relatively sane, even though in an environment like that it won't last for long. Everything was back just before 9, and we left the building at around 10.

I decided that rather than getting some sleep at Joel & Nicky's that it'd be better to drive straight back and go straight to bed there, but only do a couple of hours sleep, instead catching up tonight. We'll see how well that one works out.

But still rather relaxed. I finished work at lunch yesterday and headed over to the suit hire place to pick up suits for myself, Steve, Kevin, Joel and Neal. Arrived, parked and was handed four suits. You may notice, as I did, that there was a problem. Joel's suit was missing. After bringing this point to their attention, it transpired that Leeds, where Joel had been measured, hadn't sent the details through to the branch I was stood in.

This is fine - they've got plenty of stock. They promise a call shortly once they'd got the details from the Leeds branch. About an hour later, I receive the call. Problem. Because of Joel's shape (same as me - tall and thin) they've not got anything in. Solution? They'll courier something over from Leeds, don't worry, it'll be with us tomorrow (Friday). Fine.

I then headed over to the theatre and collected various bits of PA equipment for the jukebox at the wedding reception venue. Nice and easy, except I didn't get as many speaker stands as I wanted. No major problem there.

Got home and spent the night putting the final touches to the jukebox - adding a few more albums, getting the database built, then making sure it worked properly. This caused some issues - the software - Nordbeat Jukebox is good, but has a lot of options. I ended up getting to bed at about 2330 after getting it all right.

During the evening, the harpist called and said he'd only that day received a piece of music I'd sent him which we wanted played as Sioned and myself walked back down the aisle after we'd been married. We were already aware of the fact he'd not received it, but it was only that evening that we realised that there was no way he'd be able to learn it in time, nor play anything in its place. A plan was hatched that I'd source another small PA which we'd use for the wedding ceremony itself.

Anyway, to bed.

Friday rolled around bright and early and saw me collecting a PA at 0845 in Bangor. Headed straight back home where I managed to get some breakfast before loading the car up with 2x PA, enough mains cable to sink a ship, a computer, touchscreen and two bags of clothes, two cd players, my laptop... basically, it was crammed full. I arrived at the ceremony venue at 2 and started setting up the PA there. Another small problem presented itself in that I'd opted for Kevin or Joel to operate the PA. Due to the layout of the room, this wasn't going to happen. Chances are, it would need to be Laura - my sister and also a bridesmaid - doing the operating. I called them, and they were still pretty far away. Estimated ETA before they left was 2. They were in Chester, and it was 1445 now. I decided to head off to the reception venue to start setting up there. I said to call me when they arrived at the ceremony venue.

I arrived at the reception venue to find a room set out with tables and so on. Great, except I could've done with checking I'd got everything to make the jukebox work. No matter, I've hopefully got everything - if not, Maplin is open till 8 tomorrow.

Sometime around then, I get a call saying that Mum, Dad, Laura, Grandma and Grandad have arrived at the ceremony venue and where-the-hell-am-I. I hot foot it over there, check Laura is happy with operating the gear then give a quick crash course in what pre fade listen is, how to cue a CD and operate a mixing desk. Happy with that, I then shoot back over to the reception venue and finish sorting stuff out there, including the worst hack I've ever done - bridging a GPRS connection over wavelan. Ick.

About then, Steve, Marie and Kev turned up. I took them over to the ceremony venue so that everyone was clear on where it was. On the way back, I had a call from the suit hire company. Remember that bit? It's now 1650 and the suit has *just* turned up. Instead of going back to the reception venue, we shoot straight over to Conwy to pick said suit up. From here, back to the reception venue for me to pick up my laptop and camera, before home for five minutes (literally). It was then over to the pub for a meal.

On the way, the company supplying the cars called us. Fantastic people - I've hardly had to do anything with them. It's all under control and they've upgraded Sioned's car to an S-Class. Ace.

Joel, Nicky, Ellie, Ben and Will arrived at the pub shortly after we did. It was quite nice to relax there, although receiving 12 voicemails from individual people once I arrived there was rather odd.

An interesting comment tonight was that this is, apparently, the most organised wedding and it's not even happened yet. We shall see. I'm happier now that Joel and Will are here - certainly, if any of the things that I was concerned (I won't say worried, as I wasn't) about are to go wrong, I know I can rely on them. Joel has a car full of stuff that will probably solve anything that might go wrong.

And now - sleep

As a geek, I use my laptop extensively. It's with a huge amount of forethought that I decided my laptop had really had a hell of a thrashing over the last three and a half years. In that time, I've not once reinstalled the operating system (Windows XP Pro), instead carefully considering what was going to be installed and how it'd affect other things running on there. In that time, it's had a lot of abuse, having things such as QuarkXpress, VB .Net, Photoshop and many other intensive applications and suites installed, all of which have left their mark. So I decided to start again. A week on and things are pretty much back to usual. I took the important things out of documents and settings - my offline e-mails and so on, and took the plunge. I've not installed any of the software I don't regularly use (which did find me installing Powerpoint about 2 minutes before a training session was due to begin...) Other than that, the laptop does seem a lot happier, and it's a lot nicer to work on at the moment. I've pretty much got all of my sessions put back onto SecureCRT as well.

Last week we met up with the photographer (after our original photographer dropped us due to there being a number of pro-am photographers also in attendance). Nice lass, who's got a lot of good ideas. Looking forward to working with her as she's open to suggestion on what we want to do.

I went to Leicester on Friday night, primarily to sort some bits out hanging over from the IP regrade but actually ended up in the pub with Steve which was incredibly useful in having a sound off about all of the wedding guff. The people sorting our suits out phoned me today so that's one other thing ticked off the list as well.

We've been looking around at new cars recently after the revelation that we're spending about £250 a month on petrol for the Saab. We're paying huge consideration to a BMW 320d compact, which seems to return about 50mpg compared to the 25-28ish on the Saab at the moment. With the mileage I'm covering at the moment, it's a bit of a no brainer.

In other news, Formula 1 season starts this weekend. Yay :)

The above allocation has been sitting happily on the end of one of my DSLs for over 4 years now. Today, however, the allocation was returned and a new (/28) allocation was given to replace it.

A moment's silence for the passing of 217.155.50.176/29.

As Sioned found out, steelies can be an absolute God send. I'd left a UPS in the kitchen (rackmount APC SUA1500RMI, which, apparently weighs 29kg, or 64lb in old money. Problem being that after struggling to get it from the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs (heading for the office), she gave up and went to put it down, but dropped one edge on her toe.

Ouch.

Unfortunately, I was out at the time - one of the University clubs I'm part of was having a social, so Sioned decided to have a tidy up.

Ho hum.

Played Snooker for the first time in weeks today and managed to win, which was nice.

Sioned & myself went off to see Hot Fuzz tonight at the cinema. It's been ages (well before Christmas) since we both we to see a fillum, so this was something vaguely different. Very good film, in a sit back and veg out way. Enjoyable, if only for the idea that they had to find a small quiet village somewhere that'd let them do handbrake turns in a Subaru. Got out to the car after the cinema and it wasn't happy. It started, but was doing odd things at idle. Gave it a thrash up the A55 for a couple of junctions (and subsequently found it can do 65 in second), but it seemed ok. Switched the engine off after pulling off said road, started it again, and it's still not happy. Hm. Got it home, did the same (engine off, back on again) and all is fine. There was a brief smell of petrol in the car, so it's possible that Shell sold me something sub-standard, or the car was just having a bit of a strop about something. Either way, I'll keep an eye. In other news, I decided yesterday to migrate one of my DSLs to one of Zen's DSLMax products. I'd previously been against this as I wasn't (and to some extent, still don't) like DSLMax for various reasons, but since the way the line is used probably lends itself well to it, I took a jump. I have to admit, it's good. Very good. Very fast at what it does. I'm not totally around to it yet - I'll be keeping an eye on how things pan out on the line for a while yet.

I'm back in the office - I was in yesterday morning, but by lunchtime was feeling totally monged out again, so headed home. I've been working on a small project over the last few days - nothing exciting - taking an existing form, prefilling it with information held in our database, so that the individuals who need to fill in the blanks have less possibility of cocking up. I'm now doing the run of all of these, and my new laser printer (new office - new furniture - new equipment) is getting its first thrashing. Oddly, it smells of McDonalds Chicken Nuggets.

I wonder what HP are using in their printers these days...

It's been just over a week now since I changed how comments are handled on my blog. Whilst I doubt that this blog is in any way regarded as high traffic or likely to get a high readership, I'm quite shocked at just how many attempted spams it's had in a week:

mysql> select count(id) from blog_comments where status='spam' and createtime>='2007-01-31 23:59:59' and createtime<='2007-02-07 23:59:59';

+-----------+
| count(id) |
+-----------+
| 509 |
+-----------+

Impressive.

What I was actually trying to do when I did the wrong thing with an rm command was implement some anti-blog-spam stuff. It'd been getting pretty dire, with 40 or 50 comments spams a day on here. Previously, there was nothing to stop this - I'd just wade through once a day or so and delete them all. The new version is much more svelte - it'll accept comments and then hold them for moderation. I'm not all that fond of captchas for some reason - they're a great idea, but with visually impaired users, they're not.

Anyhow. Comments are all working fine now - you can even view your own comments whilst they're in the moderation queue. I've also changed the format of my blog a bit - made it a bit less bland. Although the content is still as bland as ever.

One of the things we're doing for the wedding is having an mp3 jukebox, rather than the "traditional" DJ, because trying to tame a DJ into playing no pap for the night would be rather difficult. It means we get more control over the music generally.
A couple of months before Christmas, I managed to source a CRT Touchscreen Monitor. It's taken from a Kodak Picture Kiosk. 14", and has all of the touchscreen gubbins built into it, presented on a serial interface on the back of the monitor.
I finally got around to starting to sort things out tonight. Firstly, XP doesn't come with any drivers for touchscreens at all, although there's plenty available on manufacturer websites. However, there seems to be little or no relevant documentation on the Kodak PS4 Monitor, which is what I have. So I fired up hyperterminal and had a look at the output from the monitor when I moved my finger over it. A bit of googling later, and I found that Touchware (the software drivers from http://www.touchscreens.com would do the job. Indeed, it did. Downloaded, installed, job's a good'un.

Next came trying to get some mp3 jukebox software which lends itself well to being used in a touchscreen (or kiosk) environment. Again, there's not much in this field, suprisingly. I was getting to the point where I thought I'd have to write my own (I could probably knock something together in VB pretty quickly that answers all of my needs). My needs are:
o Can operate in "Kiosk" mode, whereby options such as being able to add albums, change options and so on aren't available when being used at the wedding
o Can crossfade between tracks
o Won't repeat tracks if they're already queued/have been played recently
o Is easy to use (ie not too fiddly, things are obvious, etc)

SK Jukebox was first on the list. It looks like a jukebox, but my word is it a pain to use. It doesn't really lend itself that well to being used with a touchscreen, even though it looks like it should.
Next up was Albumplayer - it looks the part, but doesn't really offer enough options to lock things out when being used in the wild.
We settled on NordBeat's Jukebox, produced by Nordbeat. It's paid for software, but since it does what it does so well, I'm happy to pay for it. All I can say is, it's bloody good software.
Next I've got to get a dedicated disk for the music that's going on the box, sort out a PA (no problems there), and also get some form of non-intrusive lighting sorted out.

My personal fileserver, sourcefour is starting to get a bit full again. Before Christmas, I ordered a 400gb disk which was to replace one of the older disks in the server. Unfortunately, it was DOA, but the warranty replacement turned up today.
I'm currently transferring across 190gb of data from one partition to the new disk, soon to be followed by 110gb from another.
The whole process of migrating from the older disks is likely to take in the region of 3 months (for a number of reasons, one of which being I don't want to get a batch of dodgy disks, and also because I want to take my time over it).
It's also allowing me to repartition some of my smaller mounts as well, such as the photos which is now vastly underspecified, and will benefit from being changed to just over 100gb.

IPSec. It looks like Microsoft released an update to IPSec which was installed (the machine pulls its updates via autoupdate). This then blocked all "dangerous" ports. Excellent. *sigh*

The panto has now been and gone. I am absolutely *knackered*. I can probably do all of my cues in my sleep. I'm looking forward to a good few weeks of recovering now, and spending a lot of time just doing nothing. Whilst time-wise it didn't seem to be that much work (probably 7 or 8 hours a day once we'd got well into the run), it seems so much more than that.

In other news, last week I took delivery of a Nikon VR 70-200 F2.8 AF-S lens. I mentioned a couple of entries ago about how nice the lens was when I trialled it at a camera shop. I used it in anger on Thursday night, and also Saturday night when I was taking photos of the show itself. My word, it's blown me away. Whilst the photos aren't available for public use, I'm hoping to be able to use it to its full potential sometime soon and put the results on the photo site. Some of the images it gave me from the shows are absolutely awesome.

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things with the University. My current task is beating a Win2k Adv Server into submission - If anyone has any suggestions as to why shared drives/directories wouldn't be visible to the rest of the network, please let me know :)

Back in Leicester again as it's my birthday today. Yay me. After having a brief lie in, I opened my presents, before heading out into town to sort out a few bits and have a look around the shops. I fancied having a look at Yamaha's new offering in the HD amp market (the Yamaha RX-V2700 as my current setup sees the amp controlling the entire room - when we upgrade the TV to a HD panel (1080i, natch) it'll cause some issues. This, coming in at 1300ukp, will be more than suitable. It sounds absolutely fantastic. I also bought myself a new pair of Alpinestar SMX 4 boots, since my old ones were a bit worn out. I'd received a 10% discount voucher from the local Hein Gericke, which saw them come down to a fairer price.
Kev and Steve then joined us for lunch at The Observatory, before we headed off back into town so that I could coo over some Nikon VR lenses, including the rather sexy Nikon VR 70-200 F2.8 AF-S lens. Fortunately the manager at the shop still remembers me from when I worked for le.ac.uk, so mentioned various discounts and the like from the advertised price. It's a gorgeous piece of kit - it focuses so quickly, and with the SWM it really is brilliantly quiet.

The rest of the day will see a visit by family shortly, before I head on out for a night in Leicester with friends.

A rather good day all in, thus far.

I consider myself cynical enough now to be able to, more often than not spot the real reasons behind those decisions which are made by outside consultants, and have people asking "Why?".
Problem is, I really can't fathom why a suggestion has been made for something.

An important document exists (we'll call it The Development Plan, or TDP - name changed slightly). Currently, the TDP is a 10 (or so) page Word document. The layout for the document is 5 columns wide, by say 40 odd rows.
An outside consultant who is tasked with trying to improve the overall work of the department in question has made various recommendations, one of which is that the TDP is stored in an Access database.

My first comment was "Why?" - I cannot come up with any logical reason to have a single document stored in an Access DB. It just... isn't right. It's like buying a filing cabinet to keep a single piece of paper in.
I consider myself pretty adept at explaining technical issues to non-techies. Problem being is that being as it's not wrong, nor is it right, I was struggling to explain why I thought it was such a bad idea.
My current thinking is that this could morph into a pretty poorly designed CMS/DMS. I've forewarned them of this and told them not to even consider doing anything like this, as it would put the whole setup on a very shaky base. Access just isn't meant for that type of thing.

Quite simply, I'm really not sure what he's trying to do, and it's got me scratching my head a bit.

Various blog entries have probably alluded to me not being quite right at the moment. I'm still not sure what's causing it, but today I had a whole raft of nice things happen which have cheered me up somewhat.

Firstly, I had an e-mail today about one of my contracts which is due to finish next Thursday asking if I'd be interested in continuing for another semester (about 3 more months), since they're impressed with the quality of the work I'm doing. This is rather nice, as I was preparing myself for the financial drop associated with this. I've asked for further details (as it would involve a slight change to times that I do stuff), but they've prepared to get a contract out immediately. Which is nice.

Secondly, I put an e-mail out yesterday asking for cashmoneyplease for work I did on another contract 6 weeks ago. Reply within a few hours saying something like "Oops, forgot! Want more work?" - obviously, I shall wait for payment from the first lot of work first, but it's good that I had an immediately (near enough) reply, and also that I'm being offered more work here.

Thirdly, I spoke to someone in another department at the University who is extremely interested in some of the work I'm doing within the University, and wants to use my work elsewhere. This gave me a good push to get my code tidied up so that it's ready to go live shortly. I've got to write in the error catching, but then I'm happy that it's good to go to bug testing/beta. I'm quite pleased and proud that someone is prepared to take my work on for pretty wide usage. Whilst it's not paid work (I've got enough of that at the moment, to be honest), I'll be getting my name spread around, which is perhaps more useful to me.

Fourthly, arriving home elicited a nice surprise in the shape of a cheque from my secret project, with an e-mail later on in the evening leading me to expect another one. It's all rather woo.

I was wanting to go in on the bike to the University tomorrow, but with the weather being like it is at the moment, I'm really not going to risk it. The car was getting blown around horifically on the way home tonight. This week is probably going to be one of the last chances before Christmas with the panto coming up.

In other news, probably one of the few times that I'll ever be picked first for a team (remember when you were at school all the sporty kids got picked first for football?) - I'll be representing the University Snooker & Pool Club at a match on Sunday night, which I'm rather looking forward to.

I also now have a standard answer to When did you last take a day off?"

Zen Internet (who supply DSL for my family) have just e-mailed me to say that they're implementing what's essentially capping on their older discontinued products. Earlier this year, they announced that they were going to withdraw their Home 1000 & Home 2000 (amongst others) products, replacing them with DSLMax products. The new DSLMax products would be capped at differing amounts, depending on how much you wanted to pay monthly. This had been on the cards for a while.
One thing they said at the time was that the customers on the products that were being withdrawn from sale for new customers is that the existing customers could stay using those products for however long they wanted to - lots of users migrated over to the new DSLMax product. I decided to stay on the existing Home products for all of my lines for the primary reason that it was uncapped. The fact that the highest available download speed on the Home when they closed the product was 2mbit, whereas on DSLMax was 8mbit (theoretical) was the trade off.

The e-mail saying that they're now capping the usage is a kick in the shins. I realise that Zen are a company and that they're obviously not able to sustain vast loses that certain users are causing them. Fortunately the cap is at such a level that it won't cause me any issues - it's more the principal, and the fact that this probably is the beginning of the end.

Original e-mail follows:
On 1st March 2007 we are going to introduce a monthly usage allowance on all Home 1000 and Home 2000 broadband services. The usage allowance will be 100 gigabytes (GB) per month.

WHY?
A small number of our Home 1000 and Home 2000 customers are extreme users of our service. They leave their computers downloading files 24 hours per day, day after day, week after week. This extreme usage costs Zen hundreds of pounds per month for each extreme user . many times our income from the monthly subscription fee. In the past we have subsidised this usage but we are no longer prepared to incur this loss.

By introducing a 100 GB monthly usage allowance we will limit the financial loss generated by the extreme users whilst leaving the vast majority of our customers completely unaffected.

HOW MUCH IS 100 GIGABYTES?
100 GB is a vast amount of usage, enough to download 40 feature length movies, thousands of songs, and to browse the Web for as long as you want. In other words, 100 GB is more than enough for anything other than the kind of extreme usage described above.

WHAT HAPPENS ON REACHING 100 GB?
The usage allowance for Home 1000 / 2000 will be handled in the same way as the usage allowances for Zen 8000 Lite / Active / Pro. If you reach 100 GB part way through a month your Internet access will be blocked and your web browser will display a page giving you the option to buy additional usage for £1.49 (inc. VAT) per GB. For full details, please see:

http://www.zenbroadband.com/athome.aspx?page=510

HOW WILL THIS CHANGE AFFECT ME?
Your peak usage over the last 3 months was only 6 GB so this change will not affect you unless you completely change the way you use the Internet and become an extreme downloader.

If you have any questions about this change please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best regards
Richard Tang
Managing Director

Dozing off in bed last night, I was rudely nudged and asked "What's that noise?" by Her. The UPS in the rack upstairs was having a fit because I'd not replaced the batteries and had set its alarm off. Great. Off I toddle to the office and get the batteries (which I'd bought, but not fitted) and set about installing them.
Would it be easy? Nope. The batteries that were in the unit weren't tied together, nor was there a draw string to get them out. My knuckles are rather sore today after gradually pulling the first of the pack of four out, so that I could get at the cable. I've left the new battery pack on the floor for now. Job for the weekend: Get the rest of the batteries out of the chassis, and properly install the new ones.

Got in to work this morning to find the Windows 2000 Server I babysit having crapped itself. Crux of it was that IIS (one of the primary reasons for the existance of the server) didn't exist any more. After about 30 minutes of trying to get to the bottom of the problem (thanks to the extremely verbose error messages that Windows can generate sometimes), I set about sorting the situation out. I got IIS reinstalled sometime around 1115. From then until 1415, the support guys from our bespoke software providers were fighting with the fresh install of IIS, ASP.NET and permissions trying to get the whole lot to talk to each other properly.

Nearly six hours of downtime.

I hate computers.

I hate doing updates from the CLI ona a database. They always make my heart go that bit faster. Especially those that seem to take far too long. Then you have the "Er, have I just overwritten the whole table?" moment.

Query OK, 15 rows affected (46.20 sec)

I've been given a laptop to tidy up today which has the usual symptoms of "Running slowly" and "It's got a virus". It seems to have a tendancy to:
A) Open IE at intervals, going to http://antispyweb.net/?aff=242
B) Producing popup bubbles in the system tray at intervals saying things like "Caution! Spyware attack detected... Security Protection Center indicates high possibility of spyware attack! Update Windows antispyware protection (sic)"
And
"Warning! Possible spyware infection detected... Your computer may be infected with dangerous spyware! Update your antispyware immediately"

Problem being is that, as any good techie will do in a possible virus/spyware situation, it wasn't connected to the network. Very good.

So, setting about removal. The exe that seems to produce all of the popup bubbles in the system tray is msmapi32.exe, which is located in windowssystem32 - removal of this file requires safe mode usage, or one of the tools which are freely available to do this for you. An access denied error will be presented if you try to remove