Friday, 29 August 2008
At last I finally did it
Only a short one this, but I finally bought myself a larger capacity bike which I can pick up in a weeks time. One more week left of gunning the engine to get to 65mph :)
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
Quick update
Again I seem to have left this for a while, although a few times I've started typing posts only to leave them part way through.
So what's been happening lately, well I'm an uncle again after my Sister-in-law gave birth to little Alfie who is as with all new born's just adorable. I've had a bat in the kitchen which I think one of the cats must have bought in, it was alive and I managed to catch it and release it. And I went to LugRadio Live which was incredible, went down with a guy I work with called James whose just a great bloke.
Other than that I've been busy around the house and doing odd jobs for people. Hopefully I'll have something a bit more interesting to write about soon.
Oh yeah, and if you haven't already get yourselves signed up on Identi.ca
So what's been happening lately, well I'm an uncle again after my Sister-in-law gave birth to little Alfie who is as with all new born's just adorable. I've had a bat in the kitchen which I think one of the cats must have bought in, it was alive and I managed to catch it and release it. And I went to LugRadio Live which was incredible, went down with a guy I work with called James whose just a great bloke.
Other than that I've been busy around the house and doing odd jobs for people. Hopefully I'll have something a bit more interesting to write about soon.
Oh yeah, and if you haven't already get yourselves signed up on Identi.ca
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Phorm and OpenDNS
I know I've been kind of quiet lately but I thought I'd quickly post something up about Phorm, a service which I'm sure you've all heard of by now. So instead of ranting about it or any of the three major ISP's here in the UK currently involved with Phorm I thought you might like to know about one way around it. Enter OpenDNS.
I've been using their free service for about a year now and all though I can't say that it's been any quicker like they claim it certainly has made browsing easier and safer. As part of the basic setup which is available to anyone you get URL typo correction, so if you type in www.google.om it will figure out that your really meant .com and you get adware protection which is where it helps out with Phorm. Today I went to add the domain they use for their cookies to my list of blocked domains (another great feature) and it informed me that there was no real need to as they already considered it adware and it would be blocked anyway. I already have my router set up to use the OpenDNS servers for DHCP setup so any machines connecting on my local network will be free from Phorm.
I would recommend looking at OpenDNS even if your not to bothered about Phorm anyway as they provide a fantastic service with lots of great features and it's all for free.
I've been using their free service for about a year now and all though I can't say that it's been any quicker like they claim it certainly has made browsing easier and safer. As part of the basic setup which is available to anyone you get URL typo correction, so if you type in www.google.om it will figure out that your really meant .com and you get adware protection which is where it helps out with Phorm. Today I went to add the domain they use for their cookies to my list of blocked domains (another great feature) and it informed me that there was no real need to as they already considered it adware and it would be blocked anyway. I already have my router set up to use the OpenDNS servers for DHCP setup so any machines connecting on my local network will be free from Phorm.
I would recommend looking at OpenDNS even if your not to bothered about Phorm anyway as they provide a fantastic service with lots of great features and it's all for free.
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Stitched up!
Whilst I was in Whitby I decided to play around a little with my new digital camera (a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX50) which I got after getting some money back from the insurers. So one of the things I thought I'd do was attempt to create a panorama looking out over the harbour and the abbey. The camera itself has a nice feature which displays a grid on the LCD display to help you line up your next shot when taking multiple images.
I got the photos home and then started thinking about how to stitch them together, that's where I came across a program called Hugin, now this is by no means a tutorial just my initial impressions of the software. The basic idea behind Hugin is to allow you to take a series of images and stitch them together. What I wasn't expecting was how good it would be for a complete novice like myself.
What I did was to take a copy of the photos I wanted to create the panorama of (to make sure I didn't overwrite the originals), open Hugin and then tell it to open the 4 photos. It quickly popped open a dialog telling me what it was doing and to be honest I ignored most of it, until I saw a line telling me it was lining up the photos based on points it had determined? Eventually it finished processing the photos and I was expecting to get 4 photos to line up, instead I was presented with a panorama which I could tweak. I left the settings as they were and saved the finished product.
The fact that I got this using only about a dozen mouse clicks is impressive, as is the fact that this same piece of free software is available for Linux, Mac and Windows.
I'm certainly inspired to get creative.
I got the photos home and then started thinking about how to stitch them together, that's where I came across a program called Hugin, now this is by no means a tutorial just my initial impressions of the software. The basic idea behind Hugin is to allow you to take a series of images and stitch them together. What I wasn't expecting was how good it would be for a complete novice like myself.
What I did was to take a copy of the photos I wanted to create the panorama of (to make sure I didn't overwrite the originals), open Hugin and then tell it to open the 4 photos. It quickly popped open a dialog telling me what it was doing and to be honest I ignored most of it, until I saw a line telling me it was lining up the photos based on points it had determined? Eventually it finished processing the photos and I was expecting to get 4 photos to line up, instead I was presented with a panorama which I could tweak. I left the settings as they were and saved the finished product.
The fact that I got this using only about a dozen mouse clicks is impressive, as is the fact that this same piece of free software is available for Linux, Mac and Windows.
I'm certainly inspired to get creative.
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Thinking Without Machines
Both my wife and myself are on holiday this week and yesterday we decided to travel up to Whitby for the day. Without really thinking about it I grabbed my Eee PC and booted it up to check Google Maps and see how long it was going to take to get there. That looked fine so we threw the camera in the bag, grabbed the GPS and off we went, a few hours later we'd arrived and we spent a merry day there.
So we had a really nice day, I dragged her up to the Abbey which is always fun as you can watch other people gasping for breath after the first twenty or thirty steps, but I digress. On the way back we decided that as we were not in any kind of rush that we'd a more scenic route home, so again I fired up the GPS, told it to navigate home and then picked a random place off the beaten track to travel via and off we went. It was during the journey home that a few things happened which moved me to post this entry.
The first was me thinking back to when I was a kid and traveling about with my parents, my mum would be in the front with a map navigating towards the points on the map which my dad had marked out as places we needed to travel to or via, he'd have spent a while that morning marking them out and checking them. Then there would be the inevitable arguments because we'd taken a wrong turn or had ended up somewhere we shouldn't have because of roadworks or traffic jams.
Flash forward a few years (I'm not saying how many) and here I am having spent about a minute telling my sat-nav where I want to go, never worrying about getting lost because I've got about 7 satellites currently telling me exactly where I am and a small device more powerful than the on-board computers of the Apollo 11 telling me which turn to take next. My greatest concern being "I hope the suction pad holding the sat-nav to the window doesn't come unstuck again".
The next thing which happened was with the sat-nav again. I was a couple of hours into my journey home and suddenly a message flashes up on it's little screen informing me that I'd been driving for almost 2 hours and that I needed a break soon. About 5 minutes later and a few miles away from a rest stop it flashed up again, this time with a timer to let me know that I was now 5 minutes away from needing a rest; this time though it didn't go away, instead it stayed on screen informing me that I was overdue a break and wouldn't go until I told it that I was now well rested (which I was when I told it having finally found somewhere to take a break).
About an hour down the road and it's the cars turn to start telling me off with the petrol warning light, I still had probably 50 miles worth of fuel left but it was advising me to re-fuel as soon as possible. A few miles later I'd passified the cars sensors and I carried on home, disturbed now only by road signs informing me of traffic information for roads I didn't need to take.
This got me thinking, today we hand over a large number of decisions to computers to make for us and as we progress the number of these decisions is going to increase. In reality we're not really that far away from cars which can drive themselves, where we tell it the destination, jump in and get out at our jouneys end. I use my phone and Google Calendar to remind of important dates and events and have it text/email me reminders.
I'm not going to say for a second that this is all terrible and we should live sheltered, disconnected lives. But I do sometimes worry that instead of using the time freed up by these advances to think about the next big thing, to focus more time on learning a new skill, that we instead just become mindless drones relying on machines to tell us what to do.
So we had a really nice day, I dragged her up to the Abbey which is always fun as you can watch other people gasping for breath after the first twenty or thirty steps, but I digress. On the way back we decided that as we were not in any kind of rush that we'd a more scenic route home, so again I fired up the GPS, told it to navigate home and then picked a random place off the beaten track to travel via and off we went. It was during the journey home that a few things happened which moved me to post this entry.
The first was me thinking back to when I was a kid and traveling about with my parents, my mum would be in the front with a map navigating towards the points on the map which my dad had marked out as places we needed to travel to or via, he'd have spent a while that morning marking them out and checking them. Then there would be the inevitable arguments because we'd taken a wrong turn or had ended up somewhere we shouldn't have because of roadworks or traffic jams.
Flash forward a few years (I'm not saying how many) and here I am having spent about a minute telling my sat-nav where I want to go, never worrying about getting lost because I've got about 7 satellites currently telling me exactly where I am and a small device more powerful than the on-board computers of the Apollo 11 telling me which turn to take next. My greatest concern being "I hope the suction pad holding the sat-nav to the window doesn't come unstuck again".
The next thing which happened was with the sat-nav again. I was a couple of hours into my journey home and suddenly a message flashes up on it's little screen informing me that I'd been driving for almost 2 hours and that I needed a break soon. About 5 minutes later and a few miles away from a rest stop it flashed up again, this time with a timer to let me know that I was now 5 minutes away from needing a rest; this time though it didn't go away, instead it stayed on screen informing me that I was overdue a break and wouldn't go until I told it that I was now well rested (which I was when I told it having finally found somewhere to take a break).
About an hour down the road and it's the cars turn to start telling me off with the petrol warning light, I still had probably 50 miles worth of fuel left but it was advising me to re-fuel as soon as possible. A few miles later I'd passified the cars sensors and I carried on home, disturbed now only by road signs informing me of traffic information for roads I didn't need to take.
This got me thinking, today we hand over a large number of decisions to computers to make for us and as we progress the number of these decisions is going to increase. In reality we're not really that far away from cars which can drive themselves, where we tell it the destination, jump in and get out at our jouneys end. I use my phone and Google Calendar to remind of important dates and events and have it text/email me reminders.
I'm not going to say for a second that this is all terrible and we should live sheltered, disconnected lives. But I do sometimes worry that instead of using the time freed up by these advances to think about the next big thing, to focus more time on learning a new skill, that we instead just become mindless drones relying on machines to tell us what to do.
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
Who needs motivation!
It's amazing really, the bedroom needs some decorating finishing and I struggle to find the time, I lock out my Eee PC (note to all, if you type in a password try and remember what it was) and I can't sleep until I've got it fixed!
I suppose it's down to what we find challenging in life, with computers I'm fascinated by problems and wont stop tinkering until I know what the answer is. Home decoration on the other hand I find tedious and see problems as obstacles to me settling down with a beer. If I could apply myself to more obstacles in the same way as I do with computer related then I'm sure my backlog of odd-jobs would soon disappear instead of growing at an exponential rate like it currently is.
I suppose it's down to what we find challenging in life, with computers I'm fascinated by problems and wont stop tinkering until I know what the answer is. Home decoration on the other hand I find tedious and see problems as obstacles to me settling down with a beer. If I could apply myself to more obstacles in the same way as I do with computer related then I'm sure my backlog of odd-jobs would soon disappear instead of growing at an exponential rate like it currently is.
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
What lies ahead
You know, lately I've been thinking about what I'd do if I didn't code for a living any more. Not because I want to quit my job or because there's a reason why I think I couldn't but still it has been playing on my mind.
I've relatively little else I can fall back onto in terms of skill-set but I don't think I'd want to leave IT, so what else is there? Well for one thing there's trying to find something to do which is rewarding, not financially necessarily but that feeling you get by knowing that you've helped and made an impression either in the world at large or with a single person.
This isn't really a post as such so I'll leave it there but sometimes it's nice just to get write stuff down and get it out of your system.
I've relatively little else I can fall back onto in terms of skill-set but I don't think I'd want to leave IT, so what else is there? Well for one thing there's trying to find something to do which is rewarding, not financially necessarily but that feeling you get by knowing that you've helped and made an impression either in the world at large or with a single person.
This isn't really a post as such so I'll leave it there but sometimes it's nice just to get write stuff down and get it out of your system.
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