The Gallery

When checking on my bandwidth usage, I noticed my webhosts have upgraded their control panel with a huge number of free scripts and other nifty features. So here is the first I've bothered to set up.

TheGallery@TheBlack.Org

I'm not 100% sure its working right... works fine for me, but then I'm both domain and gallery administrator, and if it wasn't working for me I'd have to have done something seriously wrong. So take a look, browse around, press the buttons, and report any faults. Thanks. You can look at the pictures too if you like, I’ve mostly got little descriptions on them.

No, I'm not dead, I've just got very little to say for myself. Or too much to say for myself to put it down here. Kinda both in reality.

But to make up for the lack of posting, here's a picture! Of me (guy in black mask, who else?) and some other people (also in masks). Enjoy

Re: Your Email Advertising Campaign Re f#89167

Subject: ..look what i found

hey.. how are you doing?
this organization will help you advertise to millions of people
for free if you are a non-profit organization that benefits homeless
youth gain access to computers and technology.

at their web site, simply mail them, and they will tell you
how you can advertise your organization to 28 million people
for free if you fit their criteria.
this is a non-commercial email offer, and they make no money on
this at all.. it's great if you are trying to help out your organization.


No, I'm not a non-profit organisation (despite having a .org domain).
No, I do not help homeless people steal computers.
No, I do not wish to email 28 million people with anything

And why, if I'm a non-profit organisation giving homeless kids use computers, would I need to advertise to 28 million people via email anyway? "Do you need access to a pc kid?.. uh, sorry, looks like you already have it. Sorry to have bothered you."

I get 2 or 3 of these a day. GO AWAY. At least with Moz junk filter I don't have to read them, despite the fact they seem to use some huge dictionary of random names as their "from" to try evade spam filters. Got one from Quincy the other day... wasn't he a TV pathologist or something back when TV pictures looked a little washed out?

Late Arrivals

Theme for the day: Time.

Not time itself, but the general inability of humans to keep to it. Or trains for that matter. I was late to work yesterday due to being approximately 35 seconds too late to the station. I did, of course, run down the ramp to the train when I saw it was already there and not late as it usually is, damn inconsiderate of the train companies to be on time without giving due warning of this sudden change in behaviour! But I didn't quite make it. Roughly 35 seconds earlier, and I would have. Just.

Today, a vital piece of data I need for the project I'm working on didn't arrive. Apparently, the people producing it "didn't know which program to run". A feeble excuse if you ask me. It would seem they agreed with that sentiment, and later changed the story to "we did run it but it crashed before it finished". So I'm officially very behind schedule, despite the fact the work that was planned to take 10 days, actually only took me 3. I've just spent 2 weeks fighting with people who don't seem to understand the concept of a project plan and keeping to agreed timescales. We’re “expecting” the file tomorrow. I’m not holding my breath.

The Sound of Silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
’neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

Quiet day at the office today.
Empty day at the office today.

Mostly because the majority of the department way away having a party I wasn't invited to, being just a lowly code monkey as I am. Managed to get a bit done anyhow... redefined age, blamed more of the 'issues' assigned to me to fix on other people, and pass them on to someone else to fix, and upgraded from "incredibly bad BASIC-styled language" to "moderately better BASIC-styled language". And instantly wished I could go the whole way up to C++ "a pretty reasonable language", since despite the fact "moderately better BASIC-styled language" is much more powerful than "incredibly bad BASIC-styled language", it doesn't support everything I'd appreciate being able to do (like overwrite random bits of memory with random noise, something that's much easier to do than it should be in C).

Ah well, the grass is always greener they say. Though personally, I think a pastel blue colour would look great.

Ugh...

Eventually got around to re-adding my sidebar changes. So the links to other people's Blogs makes a return, as do the links to crazy stuff I read on the web. MegaTokyo and PvPOnline are both story-centred comics, MegaTokyo being a more Japanese manga-styled one, and PvP being more western. Unreal Estate is a SciFi story written by Stefan Gagne with a thousand IT and SciFi jokes in there. It's kinda The Matrix meets a parody of the Microsoft/Linux war, with some computer gaming culture in there too, and a bunch of other crazy stuff. He's since set up a writing community for other people to write stories in the same universe (or multiverse as it is). Worth a read if you like easy-going SciFi.

More stuff coming later.

And too little sleep last night. While I doubt I have the hangover some poeple there now have, I didn't get to bed until about 2:30 due to playing taxi before driving home, and for some crazy reason woke up again at 6:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Ah well, I guess I'll just catch up in the office tomorrow...

Today is brought to you by the letter F

F is for Friday
Friday is for Fun
sing along together
but don't expect the sun

Ok, so that was poor. But I couldn't think of a good 3rd line.

The week that was.
...Largely uneventful.

Monday, the team apparently won the quiz. Probably due to the fact I wasn't there... and hampered by the fact Chip wasn't (however, it must have been amusing to see Ian's world turned upside down when they won)

Tuesday’s session of throwing low numbers on many-sided dice (the 20 sided one especially seems very reluctant to land on the top 5 values), was as ever, lots of fun (even if, in the end, the group achieved very little - except perhaps consuming large amounts of alcohol). A special guest this week in the form of a short ginger Welshman, who managed to make even
Britney's traditionally poor dice rolling skills look good.

Wednesday came and went without very much happening at all. I spent the day waiting for people to send me information they didn't send, then went home and did very little.

Thursday I was late home... not because (as is traditional) a heap of work landed on my desk 5 minutes before I wanted to leave. Not because I stopped at a couple of people's desks on the way out (even though I did). But because my hero-complex kicked in when I got outside and encountered a very lost looking Londoner. My attempts to give her directions to the station appeared to only confuse her more (perhaps a slight language barrier – a combination of my usually bizarrely re-arranged sentences, and my Yorkshire accent I think) so I said that since I was going there myself, I'd walk her there. Of course, being in girly shoes with heels and straps and whatever meant she wasn't about to jog there like I was planning to in order to catch the train. So instead we walked, and discussed if York and whether or not I was at school, and I tried to remember when the next train was (I found out when I got to the station - it was 20 minutes after when it should have been). Not only do nice guys finish last - they also get home late.

And that brings us to Friday. For Fun. The weekend beckons, and I'm getting all dressed up in Tux and waistcoat (which cost a minor fortune) and silly mask and going to a big party. And probably also cutting the lawn and doing some DIY (although not while dressed in my Tux).

Have a nice weekend y'all.

Trying to Reach You

I was reading about the uproar over the proposed ID cards earlier this week.

ID cards will remove my anonymity?

I have two phone numbers, 4 email addresses, a postal address, two bank cards, a driving licence, a company ID card, a travel ID card, a website, a national insurance number, an NHS number, an employee number, an electoral roll number, several store loyalty cards, and my computer is host to any number of tracking cookies and spy-ware registry settings at any one time (despite the fact I regularly get rid of them). None of these are very private, most appearing on semi-public domain places, or are available by sticking your head in my dustbin. Or just by pretending to be official, and asking me. Any and all of these can be, and are used, to track my location, actions, shopping habits, browsing habits and political leanings.

What anonymity?

Your only anonymity these days is a safety in numbers approach. Information on you exists in more places than you could possibly imagine. Your only hope for not being relatively anonymous is the fact that there are so many other people with information in those places too.

Technological Breakdown

With a small 'Buuzzzzmm" noise the TV died, the various clocks blinked out, and the hum of the fridge fell away. The sudden silence meant we could hear the half dozen house alarms going off outside. Upstairs, the ever-present whine of the fans in my PC would have shut down too, as would the almost inaudible high-pitched scream of the ADSL router (you can only hear it when the much louder PC is off).

A power cut leaves our technological society very cut off. The 4 of us stood around and looked at each other, somewhat at a loss for something to do without TVs, computers, the kettle or the phone (we've got one of those fancy cordless ones, but the transmitter doesn't work without mains power, and we threw away the old one). Minutes ticked by slowly without the blinking digits of the oven, microwave, hi-fi, TV, Video and DVD player to remind us of their passing. We drifted around the strangely silent house, looking for...something. Some of the alarms outside stopped, but most carried on (ours, it seems, doesn't assume power is ever-present, and therefore if it's suddenly without any, someone must have sabotaged it).

It reminded me just how completely reliant on the invisible electron we are. Everything from the humble clock to my state-of-the-art (well, it was 6 months ago, I guess that makes it practically a museum piece now) PC needs a constant but very carefully regulated supply of them. Could our society function, if by some unfortunate turn of events, the national grid broke down to the extent that the vast majority of the county was without power for a couple of weeks? I'm not sure it could.

With a click and whirr, the TV came back on, the clocks blinked 00:00 at us, and the fridge resumed it's quiet humming, and we returned to normality. The 30 minutes starved of electrons a curious vacuum in our otherwise crowded day.

Old and New, and my friends too!

Just a couple of page layout changes. Eyes right for some handy links to the Blogs of a couple of my friends. And one to a guy who doesn't even know I exist, just because ... Well, it looked rather empty with just two links. He's a crazy American with a taste for games and a strong dislike of Bush - that makes him a alright sorta guy in my books.

Links to other stuff when I actually think of something worth linking to. Other cool site features coming soon!

Aha

For no logical reason, moving the blog to a subdirectory seems to have made it work (even though the mysterious atom.xml is still in the inaccessible directory that www.theblack.org is contained within. Ah well, as long as it works.... Oh, new idea.. I could make the blog a subdomain of my site... No doubt that'll take ages to get working too. Well, what's life without a challenge?

I wrote a bunch of crazy stuff at work, but since I forgot to mail it home, you're all saved from having to actually read it (although, you probably wouldn't anyway)

TFI Friday! Not that I've got any special plans for the weekend, but it's been another crazy week at work, and I'll appreciate the break.

Where it all began

The universe has a wonderful sense of irony, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. My playlist just ticked over onto the Bee Gees little known "I started a Joke" which is perhaps appropiate.

I started a joke, which started the whole world crying
but I didn't see, that the joke was on me

Welcome to TheBlog, a no doubt totally uninteresting addition to my fairly empty website.

TheBlog - Take a look Inside Insanity (tm)