teh bigbro blog(tm)
Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
05 2005

Sun, 29 May 2005

And after all my efforts to finally make a Southpark-a-like figure, this is the response I get from Niall:

Yeah it was good. And by good I mean it was crap so myself and Maeve came up with a better one.

The weather still being good and it being the bank holiday weekend - we decided to take in the Fun Fair down the road. Róisín was quite keen to experience candyfloss (she's had some before and knows she likes it) and we were thankfully clever enough to dissuade her from having any until after she had tried (most) of the rides.

After an extended period of being prodded to produce a Southpark-a-like figure for myself, I have finally produced this thing:

Yet another highly useful (and no doubt entirely accurate) test from BBSpot. Surprisingly, I appear to be OS X... Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing - and it declined to tell me whether it referred to Panther or Tiger ;-)

Which OS are You?
posted at: 10:28 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 28 May 2005

Apart from the winds, the weather was beautiful, so we tok the opportunity to have a wander around the pituresque canal in Bingley. Even better, we actually got to watch two barges being brought through the locks.

Fri, 27 May 2005

Ah... the internet... bless its little nylon polymer SYN/ACKs...

http://gradha.sdf-eu.org/textos/klingon_programmer.en.html

Top 20 things likely to be overheard if you had a Klingon Programmer.

http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/~helwig/smileys.html

Erm... how useful...

http://www.sjbaker.org/humor/cardboard_dog.html

The origins and explanations of the Cardboard Cutout Dog for peer reviewing of software systems.

Tue, 24 May 2005

...may now have been indicated to help you lose body-fat and not just water - according to the ad I've just seen on TV. Do you reckon there's a department in the Advertising Standards agency the deals with advertisers just talking complette arse? Preferably by going out to the advertising company responsible for the ad and beating the entire staff with sticks? It would be a small victtory for common sense, I think.
posted at: 23:43 | path: /rants | permanent link to this entry

Another 12 hour day making computers work. I'm remembering why I stopped dealing with Windows on a professional level. *cry*
posted at: 20:41 | path: /rants | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 17 May 2005

Ah... the internet... bless its little plastic TCP/IP wrappers...

http://cheston.com/pbf/archive.html

I'd forgotten how funny (sometimes haha, sometimes just bizarre) this cartoon strip is.

Mon, 16 May 2005

Today's specials from those bizarre people who put stuff on the internet... oh... wait...

http://www.zdnet.com.au/jobs/resources/0,2000056675,39191112,00.htm

Clearly there are people out there who have more time than I have on their hands - and can devote time to contemplating things such as 'The worst foods to eat over a keyboard.' ...which leads me neatly onto...

http://www.rabidhardware.net/index.php?id=9

The 'Keyboard Dishwasher Howto.' Yes - it's the detailed instructions (with illustrative photographs) on how to get the grime off your keyboard by using a dishwasher.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/12/google_brothel/

From a few days ago... oh, the comedy ;-)

Fri, 13 May 2005

Down to 3 teabags remaining. I'll have to bring some of my work stock home tomorrow. I need to leave at least one bag for a cuppa in the morning...
posted at: 01:59 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Thu, 12 May 2005

I made a lovely, warm, nourishing, flavoursome, nutricious, delicious, comforting, caffeinating cup of tea here at home. I now have 4! ... FOUR!!! teabags left. This is not good. Not good at all...
Someone did find me someone else's poem(?) regarding Punjana teabags though... which was nice...
posted at: 23:38 | path: | permanent link to this entry

...aren't!
posted at: 23:32 | path: /observations | permanent link to this entry

While waiting for a compile to finish (Yes - I use gentoo - but it had nothing to do with that... Wasn't even on a gentoo system, honest) I got a chance to do the Luser Test that Sinéad's been muttering about. I got 37% - which means something... I'm quite convinced it means something, in fact.

posted at: 15:03 | path: | permanent link to this entry

I am running out of teabags! This is NOT good - I cannot emphasise this enough... it is a BAD BAD thing. Usually, I get a reasonably steady stream of visitors from from Erin's Isle, who are instructed to bring me a box or two of Punjana Tea, which I've managed to find only once for sale here in the UK. (It was short dated and someone else actually found it and bought it for me - you know who you are - thanks :-)) It seems that lately all my visitors have been from the UK - I think my friends in Ireland are busy with work - or having a life - or something; so the upshot of it all is that my stocks of tea have dwindled to critically low proportions.
I'm down to my last few teabags at home and have somewhere just over 80 (at a rough guess) here at work. This will not last very long - possibly a week or two at the very most. Help!
Time to sort out a trip to Ireland again I reckon. :-)
posted at: 11:23 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Mon, 09 May 2005

Somewhat akin to living in the jungle, having a small child about the place very quickly teaches you to check your shoes thoroughly before putting them on. I think this one might be art...

Apparently plugging a USB device into a Windows box requires you to reboot the machine. In fact, my machine was so adamant that I needed a reboot that it displayed it's trademark Blue Screen of Death, daring me to try and continue my computing tasks without rebooting after plugging a USB device in.
Thanks Microsoft.

Fri, 06 May 2005

It's tomorrow... Sinéad will be officially old. She's still not quite as bitter and cynical as I am... Yet...
Suggestions for what I might purchase her as a present gratefully accepted. Yes! Being! Organised! ;-)
posted at: 21:04 | path: | permanent link to this entry

I have been testing Ubuntu and have noticed that it is mostly brown.
posted at: 16:41 | path: /observations | permanent link to this entry

Thu, 05 May 2005

Thar be links of de starboard bow cap'n...

http://opensourceversus.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=155&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

A graphical comparison of various tasks and interfaces across Windows XP, Ubuntu 5.04 (Linux, Gnome) and SuSE 9.3 (Linux, KDE) Live CD's. Quite apart from it being an interesting look at how common many of the tasks between all three systems are, there is some clear evidence that certain HCI 'looks and feels' are well established - and should be maintained so that users can easily and intuitively switch between platforms. I'll leave the chaps on #linux to discuss the software patenting implications of this - and the risk of common look and feel being killed in the face by ill conceived software patents.

http://magno.hi.mce.uec.ac.jp/~inamilab/en/projects/SUI/index.html

Virtual Reality drinking... how interesting. I've been trying to think of useful real-world applications for this one... the mind boggles ;-)

We had a plethora of visitors over the weekend and got a load of Sinéad's furniture and boxes and boxes of her stuff from her old house. Some of it has been unboxed and put away...
Aaaaanyway, I took some random pictures because we went out walking and the day was nice and sunny. We had torrential rain the next day, so it's all evened out again now.

copyright © 2005-2011, Gareth Eason