Journal: April 2007

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Goose invasion
Fri 27/04/07 (Link to this entry)

The geese are trying new tactics in their neverending quest to gain access to SPARC House, where I work. Their latest attempt was foiled by a revolving door...

It was tempting to go and open the door for the poor fellow, but we thought it might end badly (they can be vicious, can geese). That, and he'd pooed all over the shop so turning the door would have resulted in goose poo being liberally distributed around the revolving door...

PHP is the woot
Mon 23/04/07 (Link to this entry)

Over the past couple of weekends I've been working on implementing a members-only section for my archery club's website using PHP and a simple MySQL database. I've been really impressed at how easy it is to work with - maybe it's just because I already know how to program in general, but I've found it very simple to do quite complex things without too much trawling through manpages. I can see why it's so popular these days.

The MySQL stuff is also a cinch thanks to the databases course I did at university last year, which has to go down as one of the few truly useful classes I've done at uni in both a theoretical and practical sense. Just as well, really, given that one of my current projects at work involves coming up with a proposal for redesigning part of our booking tool's database structure... Moral of the story: pay attention in your databases courses!

Acer: Vista is poo
Fri 20/04/07 (Link to this entry)

I've finally recieved the free upgrade copy of Windows Vista that came with my laptop. I might have to play with it over the weekend, although I'll probably not start using it until the driver and application support improves. I'm also somewhat concerned by the fact that Acer themselves don't seem to think much of the product...

A little perspective
Thurs 19/04/07 (Link to this entry)

I've always sworn that I won't turn this journal into a b**g by peppering it with political opinion or getting up on my soapbox about stuff. Consider this a one-off, then.

I've been noticing for a long time that the daily massacre of human lives in Iraq is no longer news. Fifty people can die in an attack and nobody really bats an eyelid when they see it on TV because they're numbed to it. I'd like you to look at two stories from the past week. This first one is here and the second one is here. How many people died in each incident? How many families have been affected by each? And how much media attention has each generated?

Admittedly, one of them is a bit more newsworthy than another because it's less likely to happen there. However, take a look at the reactions from world leaders. Now, where is the corresponding expression of regret for the other story? Where's the bit where they come out and say "we're really sorry, we fucked up and hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by it"? Incidentally, that figure's not actually hyperbole.

Of course, an admission of error or culpability is about as likely as "No, of course we knew there weren't any weapons of mass destruction. Even an idiot could see that. 45 minutes? You're having a laugh!". In other words, it's not going to happen because our Great Leaders are a bunch of hypocritical fuckwits.

Rant over. Your usual programming will continue after the break.

Big weans
Wed 18/04/07 (Link to this entry)

Craig's girlfriend has gone and bought a big trampoline which is now sitting in our back garden. It seems I'm the only one in the house who doesn't think it's the best thing since sliced bread.

I would say that I must just be getting old, but I'm the youngest person in the house so that theory is out of the window. I suppose I must just be boring. I'm not totally unimpressed, though - I can see the trampoline becoming very useful next time Susie has one of her regular yapping frenzies at one o'clock in the morning. If I get the right angle and force I reckon I could bounce her clean over the house.

Note for non-Scots: wean is a Scots word for a child. The term big wean almost always refers to someone who should be old enough to know better ;-)

Crazy geese
Tues 17/04/07 (Link to this entry)

I've commented before on the crazy geese who live in one of the ponds on Sun's campus and their tendency to come and peck on the windows of SPARC house (where the lab team is based). Well, it looks like they're schooling their offspring to continue in this fine tradition...

It has to be said that the goslings are the epitome of fluffy cuteness. They only seem to be able to manage about a dozen paces or so without falling over. Their parents are a bit more mental though, particularly the male who has a habit of flying at his reflection wherever he sees it. Given the amount of highly-reflective glass in the Sun campus, that's quite a lot...

Poor little buggers
Sat 14/04/07 (Link to this entry)

Some of our new housemates didn't make it through the first week. It turns out Craig didn't properly clean their cage out after its previous occupant died, so the current theory is that they caught something which their young immune systems couldn't handle. Either that or the smell of Jay's socks was too much for them.

Jay and I gave the tank a good hard cleaning today and put in some woodshavings instead of the soil that was in it before. We also went and got three new friends to keep the sole survivor company. The plucky little fellow seems to be doing all right now; we were a bit worried that he might still be carrying some dreaded lurgies but all seems well (fingers crossed!).

"Quick, look away, he's got a camera!"

I tried taking a few pictures of them for my photos section but it's incredibly difficult to snap the little buggers - as soon as they sit still for a second, they're off again before you can focus the camera. The only time you can actually get a half-decent photo is when they're eating...

300
Thurs 12/04/07 (Link to this entry)

I went to see 300 with Kim and Pete tonight. I hadn't heard a bad word about it so I was quite keen to see it, but I have to admit to being a bit disappointed. It certainly had its moments (some nice one-liners in particular) but I wouldn't bother watching it again. There wasn't much depth to any of the characters and I wasn't very keen on the director's style - it was clear that they were trying to play on the 'graphic novel' theme but I didn't think it worked all that well.

There was a fair amount of gratuitousness with the gore and sex as well; that sort of thing might appeal to other blokes but it isn't my idea of what makes a good movie. I guess it's a good movie to watch if you want to turn your brain off for a while, but it's not an epic must-see. Not all was disappointing, though - I found out the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie is being released next month, so that's something to look forward to :-)

New housemates
Tue 10/04/07 (Link to this entry)

Welcome to lamsey.co.uk
Sun 08/04/07 (Link to this entry)

Phew. I've just spent the best part of two days redesigning my website. Similarly to what I've done over the past month with the two archery sites I run, I felt it was time to get rid of the frames and other such nastinesses once and for all. I'm quite pleased with the results, I've managed to achieve everything I used to with frames but without any of the weaknesses. The only problem is that I now never want to look at an HTML tag again...

I'm open to comments on the new design; most things should look the same but hopefully the text should be a bit clearer now and URL navigation should be a lot easier. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, though, so drop me a line if the new look is burning your eyeballs out and I'll see what I can do. There's also a shedload of new hacks in place to get around browser strangenesses, so if something looks broken please let me know.

The other bit of interesting news is that I've now registered myself a proper domain so from now on you'll always be able to access my site at www.lamsey.co.uk, even if I move webhosts. The existing addresses will work for now though, so no great rush to update your links and bookmarks.

Lamsey, waffler extraordinaire
Thu 05/04/07 (Link to this entry)

Today was rather scary for me. I've been working on moving the source code control for our in-house machine booking system to Subversion, which is a fairly big project in itself. That's not the problem, though, the problem is educating the rest of the development team on why we're doing so and how to use the new system.

So, to educate the masses, today I ran what we call a 'TOI' or 'Transfer Of Information', which is a fancy marketspeak term for a lecture or tutorial. It was originally supposed to last about an hour but I booked in an extra half-hour or so in case I ran over or if there were loads of questions. As it happened this was a bit of an underestimation as it was closer to two hours before we were done. I am the king of waffling.

This entry won't go online until the weekend (since I'm in the middle of redesigning my website and my local copies of the journal pages are in the new format), so if you're confused about why you're only seeing this now, that's why.

Busy weekend
Sun 01/04/07 (Link to this entry)

I've had an uncharacteristically productive weekend. I've done two taxi runs for Charlotte and I've also completed my latest round of improvements to the two archery websites I maintain. All this and I've read a book I've been meaning to for a couple of weeks now - I think I've done more this weekend than I have in the last half-a-dozen!

With one of Charlotte's friends from home being up for the weekend, she decided she fancied a night out on the town so we arranged to get me put onto her insurance again for the weekend. This way, I could drive them to Guildford on Saturday night and they wouldn't have to worry about someone having to stay sober (I have no qualms about doing so). In the end I ended up driving them to Fleet on the Friday night as well (although we had to wait until midnight because I wasn't insured for the Friday...).

There was only one problem with this arrangement. Well, only one apart from the ridiculously tight car parks in Guildford - I thought I'd crashed at one point but it turned out just to be a violent stall. The main problem, though, was that I don't do clubbing - in fact I'm positively phobic about the places. This left me with a bit of a dilemma until I remembered that Paul had loaned me a book which I hadn't gotten around to reading yet, so I sat in the car and ploughed through it when the others departed for a club. Win-win situation, although it did make me feel like a bit of a social leper :-/

Speaking of social leprosy, my geek-fu has been strong with me this weekend. I've finished tweaking two websites to get rid of some nasty old design choices, foremost among them being the use of frames. It's needed a lot of hacks (thanks to MS) and compromises, but they're finally in a state where I'm pretty much happy with them. I'm particularly happy with the image popup effect on the gallery pages - much nicer than opening separate windows. Now I just need to overhaul my own site... <shudder>

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