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Travel Advice Needed
Jun. 13th, 2007 12:26 amCan anyone suggest the best (i.e. cheapest) way to book a trip from Dublin to Johannesburg (and back) next year?
I thought this was another very fine episode. Very scary monsters.
Just a quick comment, so I'll try not to say anything that needs a cut tag. I like the idea of episodes where the Doctor only makes brief appearances, and I though this one worked a lot better than last year's. The last one was sort of a joke episode, but this one was quite serious, and I thought it worked really well.
Oh and the ending... quite profound.
Just a quick comment, so I'll try not to say anything that needs a cut tag. I like the idea of episodes where the Doctor only makes brief appearances, and I though this one worked a lot better than last year's. The last one was sort of a joke episode, but this one was quite serious, and I thought it worked really well.
Oh and the ending... quite profound.
Family Guy meets Star Wars
Jun. 7th, 2007 09:11 pmApologies if everyone's seen this before, but this is rather good: clicky
Can't wait for the full episode.
Can't wait for the full episode.
Paul Cornell is my hero
Jun. 4th, 2007 07:00 pmWhat an amazing episode of Doctor Who. I might post something longer later, but for now I'd rather not include anything that requires a cut tag, so I'll write in code...
Martha... wow... run! wow... Soldiers! wow... Headmaster... wow... smart kid... wow... scary girl... wow... ba-da-da-da-da-da-da! wow! run... wow... hide... wow... boom! boom! boom! wow... John Smith... wow... a minute past the hour... go right! wow... ahhh.
Hope that doesn't give too much away. Everything nicely tied up in the end. Brilliant episode.
In other news, I couldn't seem to get into LJ over the weekend. I gather there was some malarky with accounts being suspended, but I couldn't even load the front page. Odd.
Martha... wow... run! wow... Soldiers! wow... Headmaster... wow... smart kid... wow... scary girl... wow... ba-da-da-da-da-da-da! wow! run... wow... hide... wow... boom! boom! boom! wow... John Smith... wow... a minute past the hour... go right! wow... ahhh.
Hope that doesn't give too much away. Everything nicely tied up in the end. Brilliant episode.
In other news, I couldn't seem to get into LJ over the weekend. I gather there was some malarky with accounts being suspended, but I couldn't even load the front page. Odd.
AlienLanding.jpg
May. 28th, 2007 09:39 am
AlienLanding.jpg
Originally uploaded by LostCarPark.
The aliens have landed in dublin's docklands. Well, maybe not.
Human Nature
May. 28th, 2007 12:27 amIn my humble opinion, that was the best episode so far this year. I can't wait for part 2. If the second part lives up to the first, it could very well be the best episode of the new series. I anticipate Hugo nominations.
I must get hold of the Paul Cornell novel of the same name!
I must get hold of the Paul Cornell novel of the same name!
Advice for programmers...
May. 16th, 2007 10:09 pmWhen you have a loop in your code, make sure it has an exit condition that will always occur.
I though I was the victim of a DoS attack on one of my websites, but it turned out to be entirely self inflicted.
I though I was the victim of a DoS attack on one of my websites, but it turned out to be entirely self inflicted.
Airplanes.jpg
May. 11th, 2007 06:08 pm
Airplanes.jpg
Originally uploaded by LostCarPark.
There is nothing particularly interesting about this photo, but i was experimenting with phone settings and i found a well hidden setting that would appear to let me send photos without shrinking them to the point where they're unrecognisaale. If it works i might find myself phone bloging a bit more. Let's see!
Visa have announced a new contactless payment system called payWave (I bet whoever though of the lower case 'P' thinks they're really trendy). The basic idea is that rather than having to go to all the trouble of swiping your card, or inserting into a reader, you can just hold it in close proximity to the reading device. This is to make paying for things easier and quicker, and one of the features I note is "No signature [and presumably no PIN] is required for most purchases under $25".
Now, while that should make payments easier and quicker, I can't help wondering will it also make getting ripped off easier and quicker? You bump into someone in the street, and suddenly fund your card has been charged $25 - or worse, someone has managed to clone your card and make hundreds of small payments against it.
Another possible exploits I can think of is leaving portable readers hidden in places where unwitting suspects are likely have their wallets in close proximity - wedged in the seat lining of a pub is one possibility. It would then collect card details of anyone who came close enough and either transmit them or store them for later collection. If they could be made small and cheap enough, criminals could distribute thousands of them at almost no risk to themselves.
Of course, Visa assure us the technology is secure, presumably with multiple layers of encryption, but how many security technologies based on encryption have been compromised in the past? Pretty much every one of them. Once they send readers out to retail outlets, you can be pretty sure some will "disappear", and it won't be long before the criminals know exactly how it works. And while it often takes far too much computing power to be practical to try breaking the encryption when these technologies first appear, in a few years advances in computing are likely to render this practical before too long - just look at the "unbreakable" 128-bit encryption in widespread use on secure websites.
Visa also assure us that we will not be charged for fraudulent transactions, but one of the aims of the card is to get us using it for smaller payments. Will you remember every individual corner store transaction? More importantly, will you notice if your small transactions increase by 10%? Someone could keep a stack of cloned cards going for quite some time by rotating them and only charging small amounts to each one. A lot of people will check their major payments, but will skip past a lot of the smaller ones if they "look okay".
It's also worth noting that with chip-and-PIN, they have been trying to move the onus on proving a transaction is fraudulent back to the cardholder. If someone gets hold of your PIN it must be your fault. I haven't heard any stories of the keypads used to enter PINs being compromised yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.
Usually I'm all for new technologies, but in this case I think the Luddites might be on to something.
Now, while that should make payments easier and quicker, I can't help wondering will it also make getting ripped off easier and quicker? You bump into someone in the street, and suddenly fund your card has been charged $25 - or worse, someone has managed to clone your card and make hundreds of small payments against it.
Another possible exploits I can think of is leaving portable readers hidden in places where unwitting suspects are likely have their wallets in close proximity - wedged in the seat lining of a pub is one possibility. It would then collect card details of anyone who came close enough and either transmit them or store them for later collection. If they could be made small and cheap enough, criminals could distribute thousands of them at almost no risk to themselves.
Of course, Visa assure us the technology is secure, presumably with multiple layers of encryption, but how many security technologies based on encryption have been compromised in the past? Pretty much every one of them. Once they send readers out to retail outlets, you can be pretty sure some will "disappear", and it won't be long before the criminals know exactly how it works. And while it often takes far too much computing power to be practical to try breaking the encryption when these technologies first appear, in a few years advances in computing are likely to render this practical before too long - just look at the "unbreakable" 128-bit encryption in widespread use on secure websites.
Visa also assure us that we will not be charged for fraudulent transactions, but one of the aims of the card is to get us using it for smaller payments. Will you remember every individual corner store transaction? More importantly, will you notice if your small transactions increase by 10%? Someone could keep a stack of cloned cards going for quite some time by rotating them and only charging small amounts to each one. A lot of people will check their major payments, but will skip past a lot of the smaller ones if they "look okay".
It's also worth noting that with chip-and-PIN, they have been trying to move the onus on proving a transaction is fraudulent back to the cardholder. If someone gets hold of your PIN it must be your fault. I haven't heard any stories of the keypads used to enter PINs being compromised yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.
Usually I'm all for new technologies, but in this case I think the Luddites might be on to something.
Reunited at last!
Mar. 28th, 2007 02:31 am![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jamesb's Mum was in London for the weekend, and she kindly brought back my Psion. It's good to have it back again. I started writing something on the train. I'm not sure if it's going anywhere, but I got over 500 words written, so at least I can be doing something more productive than watching Lost on my train journeys.Have also located leather case, which will hopefully protect it from befalling any nasty accidents.
In other news, I have my final Junior Achievement class tomorrow. Ispent this evening writing out certificates to give them at the end of tomorrow's class. I don't have to do very much for this class, as it's the teams presenting their work to the class. For some reason that makes me more nervous than the classes where I had a lot to do.
I'll report on how it goes tomorrow!
My Psion is Back!
Mar. 20th, 2007 01:23 amWell, actually it never left, it just hasn't been working for the last while.
It started to go horribly wrong in the middle of NaNoWriMo, last November. I was on the train typing, and I suddenly noticed the Z key wasn't working. That's not so big a problem, as quite a lot of English can be typed without using Z, and when I closed the case and opened it very carefully it seemed to be okay.
However, over the next few days this spread to neighbouring keys, and it took a number attempts of opening the case very gingerly to get it to behave. By the end of that week, the whole bottom row had stopped working, and no amount of fiddling would get it to work. I did toy with the idea of trying to compose the remainder of my novel to only use the remaining letters, but realistically my novel attempt was over. The hour each way on the train was a fairly critical part of my writing time, and with that gone, it was going to be a real struggle to find time to get much further with it.
With no working Psion, I have done very little creative writing in the last few months. That's a bit of a pain, but I have read several quite interesting books (both factual and fictional), made quite a lot of paper notes on a web project I'm working on, and watched quite a few TV programs on the small screen of my MP3 player that I'd been meaning to get around to. But I do rather miss the time I used to spend writing.
So, being in London this week, I askedlproven to show me a place he knows that specialises in Psion repairs. We arrived there early this afternoon, and were greeted by a friendly member of staff, and I explained what was wrong. In theory all that should have been required was a replacement cable to connect the keyboard to the processor and screen, but he said they'd replace the cable, put in a new keyboard, and replace the top part of the case as there were a couple of broken bits around the hinges. This would be covered by their standard service charge, which while a little expensive, was a fair bit cheaper than a new machine (or even a working second-hand one).
I thought I'd have to come back later today or even tommorrow to pick it up, but he took it away to work on it, and within about half an hour or so, it was back and good-as-new. I scrounged together the money to pay for it and headed off to the tram, a happy camper.
I have a couple of other broken Psions that I'm now thinking it would be well worth my while bringing over next time I'm in London (although they'll require a slightly more expensive job as they have cracked screens).
From now on, though I'll be taking better care of my Psion, as I'd like to keep it working as long as possible. I've had a tendency to throw it in a pocket in the past, which possibly subjects it to more knocks than is wise. From now on it will be stored in a proper case (I have a leather one at home) and carried in my bag rather.
Now I'm looking forward to getting some real writing done on it.
It started to go horribly wrong in the middle of NaNoWriMo, last November. I was on the train typing, and I suddenly noticed the Z key wasn't working. That's not so big a problem, as quite a lot of English can be typed without using Z, and when I closed the case and opened it very carefully it seemed to be okay.
However, over the next few days this spread to neighbouring keys, and it took a number attempts of opening the case very gingerly to get it to behave. By the end of that week, the whole bottom row had stopped working, and no amount of fiddling would get it to work. I did toy with the idea of trying to compose the remainder of my novel to only use the remaining letters, but realistically my novel attempt was over. The hour each way on the train was a fairly critical part of my writing time, and with that gone, it was going to be a real struggle to find time to get much further with it.
With no working Psion, I have done very little creative writing in the last few months. That's a bit of a pain, but I have read several quite interesting books (both factual and fictional), made quite a lot of paper notes on a web project I'm working on, and watched quite a few TV programs on the small screen of my MP3 player that I'd been meaning to get around to. But I do rather miss the time I used to spend writing.
So, being in London this week, I asked
lproven to show me a place he knows that specialises in Psion repairs. We arrived there early this afternoon, and were greeted by a friendly member of staff, and I explained what was wrong. In theory all that should have been required was a replacement cable to connect the keyboard to the processor and screen, but he said they'd replace the cable, put in a new keyboard, and replace the top part of the case as there were a couple of broken bits around the hinges. This would be covered by their standard service charge, which while a little expensive, was a fair bit cheaper than a new machine (or even a working second-hand one).I thought I'd have to come back later today or even tommorrow to pick it up, but he took it away to work on it, and within about half an hour or so, it was back and good-as-new. I scrounged together the money to pay for it and headed off to the tram, a happy camper.
I have a couple of other broken Psions that I'm now thinking it would be well worth my while bringing over next time I'm in London (although they'll require a slightly more expensive job as they have cracked screens).
From now on, though I'll be taking better care of my Psion, as I'd like to keep it working as long as possible. I've had a tendency to throw it in a pocket in the past, which possibly subjects it to more knocks than is wise. From now on it will be stored in a proper case (I have a leather one at home) and carried in my bag rather.
Now I'm looking forward to getting some real writing done on it.
A Walk in the Park
Mar. 18th, 2007 04:26 pmIt happens that I'm in London for the weekend that the LegoLand theme park opens for the season. Officially it doesn't open until Saturday (well, that's today), but I learned from the grapevine that they were secretly opening a day early for annual pass holders. As it happens I had a free voucher for an annual pass because I bought a bunch of sets that I'd have bought anyway before Christmas.
After landing in Gatwick, I got the train up to Blackwater, where I met with David, Stuart and Naomi. From there it was about a half hour up to Windsor.
The others already had their annual passes, so I went to get mine sorted out. There was a little girl ahead of me in the queue, sitting on the counter, having her annual pass bought for her. The man behind the counter asked her "and do you know when your birthday is?" The poor child's face suddenly fell, and in a very sad voice she replied, "I've had my birthday." Realising his blunder the man quickly reassured her that it was okay, she could still have her pass and a parent provided the necessary details.
My pass sorted, I rejoined the others and after a browse around the shop, we headed down towards Miniland. We spent a good while browsing around the fantastic models, trying to spot what was new this year, and arguing over whether we'd seen a particular model before. It was a bit tricky, because while there weren't any major new sections, there were quite a few new models that had been slotted into existing displays. The last time I saw it was back in December, when we had a sneaky behind the scenes look while it was closed, so it was good to see it with the water features filled and cars, trucks, trains and boats scurrying about. We did notice a DLR train that had overshot its buffers.
After that we headed down to the Jungle Coaster, which is the best roller coaster in the park, because we thought we ought to get to it before there was a big crowd. We needn't have worried - there was no queue at all. We got straight on, and when we got to the end we had to wait until they got another couple of cars off before we could get off. We went around a second time, but even that was a matter of getting out of our car and into one a couple ahead of us. First time I've ever been on a roller coaster that had a longer queue to get off than to get on!
After wandering around and jumping on a couple of silly kiddy rides, we stopped for a bite to eat (fish and chips). We then found the Pick-a-Brick store, which has now moved from the area near the entrance and is slightly larger. There were some quite good parts available, and I bought a little bit more than I really should have, but you can never have too many Lego bricks, can you?
After a little more wandering, we found ourselves back at the Jungle Coaster, and there was still no queue. Well, why not? We then tried out some JCB diggers and took a train ride around the park before finding ourselves at the castle and popping on to the Dragon Coaster.
As it was getting cold, we started heading back to the entrance area, but we stopped to have a look at the works on the new Viking ride. This is going to be a huge water ride where you are guaranteed to get wet. It sounds a lot of fun, and it certainly looks like they are moving a lot of earth to build it. Apparently they expect to have it finished this summer, so I'll have to come back to see it in action.
It was a fun day out, and it's great to be in a place like that when there aren't too many others there and the queues aren't too long. I picked up a couple on nice things in the shop, most notably a Harry Potter set for less than half price. Special thanks must go to Phil, who we met at the end of the day and very kindly went out of his way to give me a lift over to Stef's.
More photos here.
After landing in Gatwick, I got the train up to Blackwater, where I met with David, Stuart and Naomi. From there it was about a half hour up to Windsor.
The others already had their annual passes, so I went to get mine sorted out. There was a little girl ahead of me in the queue, sitting on the counter, having her annual pass bought for her. The man behind the counter asked her "and do you know when your birthday is?" The poor child's face suddenly fell, and in a very sad voice she replied, "I've had my birthday." Realising his blunder the man quickly reassured her that it was okay, she could still have her pass and a parent provided the necessary details.
My pass sorted, I rejoined the others and after a browse around the shop, we headed down towards Miniland. We spent a good while browsing around the fantastic models, trying to spot what was new this year, and arguing over whether we'd seen a particular model before. It was a bit tricky, because while there weren't any major new sections, there were quite a few new models that had been slotted into existing displays. The last time I saw it was back in December, when we had a sneaky behind the scenes look while it was closed, so it was good to see it with the water features filled and cars, trucks, trains and boats scurrying about. We did notice a DLR train that had overshot its buffers.
After that we headed down to the Jungle Coaster, which is the best roller coaster in the park, because we thought we ought to get to it before there was a big crowd. We needn't have worried - there was no queue at all. We got straight on, and when we got to the end we had to wait until they got another couple of cars off before we could get off. We went around a second time, but even that was a matter of getting out of our car and into one a couple ahead of us. First time I've ever been on a roller coaster that had a longer queue to get off than to get on!
After wandering around and jumping on a couple of silly kiddy rides, we stopped for a bite to eat (fish and chips). We then found the Pick-a-Brick store, which has now moved from the area near the entrance and is slightly larger. There were some quite good parts available, and I bought a little bit more than I really should have, but you can never have too many Lego bricks, can you?
After a little more wandering, we found ourselves back at the Jungle Coaster, and there was still no queue. Well, why not? We then tried out some JCB diggers and took a train ride around the park before finding ourselves at the castle and popping on to the Dragon Coaster.
As it was getting cold, we started heading back to the entrance area, but we stopped to have a look at the works on the new Viking ride. This is going to be a huge water ride where you are guaranteed to get wet. It sounds a lot of fun, and it certainly looks like they are moving a lot of earth to build it. Apparently they expect to have it finished this summer, so I'll have to come back to see it in action.
It was a fun day out, and it's great to be in a place like that when there aren't too many others there and the queues aren't too long. I picked up a couple on nice things in the shop, most notably a Harry Potter set for less than half price. Special thanks must go to Phil, who we met at the end of the day and very kindly went out of his way to give me a lift over to Stef's.
More photos here.
Lots of poeple look after different types of websites, whether it's a personal site hosted on something like MySpace, right up to a a corporate e-commerce site clustered across hundreds of servers.
If you find, or have ever found yourself in such a position, I'd like to know what's the one thing about the experience that ticks/ticked you off the most. Could you post a tiny bit about the site in question (no need to identify it unless you want to), your role, how the site is/was maintained, and either the thing that you found really annoying, or something you thought that would have made your life a lot easier.
This sort of ties into something I'm working on. I'm not promising I'll be able to make your life easier, but I'm not saying I won't...
If you find, or have ever found yourself in such a position, I'd like to know what's the one thing about the experience that ticks/ticked you off the most. Could you post a tiny bit about the site in question (no need to identify it unless you want to), your role, how the site is/was maintained, and either the thing that you found really annoying, or something you thought that would have made your life a lot easier.
This sort of ties into something I'm working on. I'm not promising I'll be able to make your life easier, but I'm not saying I won't...
This evening my Mum wanted me to come over to help her with her printer (ink cartridge needed a cleaning cycle). I took the advantage to download a few largish files that I haven't been able to get at home while I'm without broadband.
I've always used a simple text editor for PHP, but it's a bit limiting for the class library stuff I'm trying to work on now, as you keep having to look up the exact syntax of class members, which tend to be a bit more exacting than the simple function calls of old (and there's a lot more of them). So I've been trying out Eclipse, which has a PHP extension. So far I'm well impressed. Coming from a Visual Studio background, it seems to do everything I expect it to, though I've only been fiddling with it for an hour or so. I look forward to trying it out some more and getting into some real coding.
In other news, my keyboard's space bar seems to be dying, and I keep having to go back and insert missing spaces. I need to either get a new keyboard or get into the habit of pressing space with my left thumb (it seems to only be the right side that's going). The fact that the keyboard doesn't have a Euro symbol next to the dollar gives an indication of its age, so it might be time for a new keyboard.
I've always used a simple text editor for PHP, but it's a bit limiting for the class library stuff I'm trying to work on now, as you keep having to look up the exact syntax of class members, which tend to be a bit more exacting than the simple function calls of old (and there's a lot more of them). So I've been trying out Eclipse, which has a PHP extension. So far I'm well impressed. Coming from a Visual Studio background, it seems to do everything I expect it to, though I've only been fiddling with it for an hour or so. I look forward to trying it out some more and getting into some real coding.
In other news, my keyboard's space bar seems to be dying, and I keep having to go back and insert missing spaces. I need to either get a new keyboard or get into the habit of pressing space with my left thumb (it seems to only be the right side that's going). The fact that the keyboard doesn't have a Euro symbol next to the dollar gives an indication of its age, so it might be time for a new keyboard.
Perhaps I'm Foolish...
Feb. 5th, 2007 12:36 amStill have no Broadband, so this will be fairly brief as I can't be bothered going offline to type it and reconnecting to post it.
I've been doing quite a lot of web stuff lately. I'm working to update my websites, though there isn't really any visible change yet. One thing I'm trying to fix is the different versions of similar scripts that have propagated over various websites over the years. There have been small changes to provide a specific feature for a particular website, so that I have places where the same script might have five slightly altered versions on different websites. So I'm trying to pull them all together and produce one script that services all of the sites, correctly implementing the features each site needs. At the same time, I'm trying to tidy up some very old code, and take out old styles that are no longer considered good practice. This will allow me to turn on some security and performance settings on my new server, and ensure all the code is up to a good standard.
I've also been working on several bits web things different people have asked me to do, which are also proving good fun, but somewhat time consuming. Hopefully I can find enough time to keep them all happy while still having a bit to work on the stuff mentioned above. I'm working on a system that makes it fairly easy for the website owner to edit much of the content themselves, which should cut down considerably on the amount of time I have to spend doing it.
There's a lot on at work too. Mostly good stuff. The last while, I've been doing quite a bit of work on optimisation of some of our systems. It's fun taking a process that takes almost an hour to run and reworking it so that it completes in under a minute.
In other news, I took some time out today to go bowling with Angie and Jack and the two Austrian students who've been staying with us for the week. I'm not particularly good at bowling, though I did manage to get a strike (though this was more than offset by the balls that went in the gutter).
I've been doing quite a lot of web stuff lately. I'm working to update my websites, though there isn't really any visible change yet. One thing I'm trying to fix is the different versions of similar scripts that have propagated over various websites over the years. There have been small changes to provide a specific feature for a particular website, so that I have places where the same script might have five slightly altered versions on different websites. So I'm trying to pull them all together and produce one script that services all of the sites, correctly implementing the features each site needs. At the same time, I'm trying to tidy up some very old code, and take out old styles that are no longer considered good practice. This will allow me to turn on some security and performance settings on my new server, and ensure all the code is up to a good standard.
I've also been working on several bits web things different people have asked me to do, which are also proving good fun, but somewhat time consuming. Hopefully I can find enough time to keep them all happy while still having a bit to work on the stuff mentioned above. I'm working on a system that makes it fairly easy for the website owner to edit much of the content themselves, which should cut down considerably on the amount of time I have to spend doing it.
There's a lot on at work too. Mostly good stuff. The last while, I've been doing quite a bit of work on optimisation of some of our systems. It's fun taking a process that takes almost an hour to run and reworking it so that it completes in under a minute.
In other news, I took some time out today to go bowling with Angie and Jack and the two Austrian students who've been staying with us for the week. I'm not particularly good at bowling, though I did manage to get a strike (though this was more than offset by the balls that went in the gutter).
