Coffeehouse.co.nz

If you want an easy way to check if there is anything new on this site, and assuming you’re using Firefox or any other browser that has this feature (Internet Explorer doesn’t yet) then you can add a “live bookmark” to this site as easily as a normal bookmark that will show you if there are any new posts, and take you to them if you want to read that new post.

A good explaination of how to do this and what they are all about is here. Just note that if you have a different theme installed for Firefox, then the little orange icon may actually look like something else, but it will still be in the same place in the address bar.

This feature is really handy for all sorts of sites, especially news and blog type sites. The icon will appear for any site that lets the browser know that it has such a live bookmark feed.

Taking a break from the Neal Stephenson epic, last weekend was spent reading the one of the latest from Tom Holt. Earth, Air, Fire and Custard is the third in his series that started with The Portable Door set in what must be one of the weirdest places to work. Weirder even than a UK government department. I’ll let you read about it if you want, rather then trying to explain. I don’t think I could.

What’s so good about these books is the way Holt can get across the feeling that for his main characters this is just like the most mundane, boring job that I’ve ever done, despite all the chaos and mayhem that is going on around them. And there is certainly plenty of that! As well as the filing.

It’s good to try not to worry about working out just what the hell is going on for a while safe in the knowledge that it will all be explained sometime, somehow. Maybe.

I also really like a bit at the end where one of the characters is asked to explain New Zealand to another: “Well I don’t really know a lot. It’s sort of near Australia, and the people are sort of like Australians only not quite so bouncy, and they filmed the Lord of the Rings there, and I think that’s about it really.” Sums it up really!

Really good fun.

Here’s a story from the Sun site with his vital stats, and here is the BBC’s story, with details of his diet.

I guess it had to happen. When there are as many of the bloody rats with wings in this city as there are people I guess that paths must cross sometimes….

Yes, as you might guess, today was “let’s crap on that guy” day. And the little bastard had obviously been saving this up for a loooooong time, just wating for the right victim.

Fecker!

Really makes your day. I really hope that they do some good somehow like keep the rat population down, because otherwise they all deserve to be forcibly removed. Fast. Please?! Before this happens again!

Finally got around to finishing Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. What a fantastic book! Best part is that there is still 2 more to go in the series, and they’re just as long.

It’s been really interesting wandering around some bits of London and seeing some of the sites described in the book in a slightly different way. And learning a bit more history about the place too, in an interesting way.

And after reading his other book Cryptonomicon it’s been fun to see the ancestors of characters in that novel pop up in Quicksilver.

It’s been really surprising how long it’s taken me to get through though. Not beacause it’s so long, but becaue I’m not reading on the tube any more. The trip to and from work just isn’t long enough any more to bother taking a book . The free Metro each morning is just long enough to get me to and from work every day (as long as there are no delays) without lugging a book as well. Still, at the rate that I normally go through books, that’s not a bad thing. Leaves me something to do on holidays.

The superbox got an upgrade last week. A version bump up to .19.

The new mythweb is great, and jumping forward now seems a lot crisper.

I’m still not sure that I’m making the best use of the box by running it at 1280×768 when all the video is at 720×576, but I’m too lazy to change it to see what happens. It runs fine anyway though, so I guess I’m worrying over nothing….

Today is the day that the crocus flowers (just what is the plural of crocus?!) burst into flower outside the front door. Must be getting close to spring then, or they’ve just got a bit confused with the relativly warm weather lately.

They are amazing though. On Thursday last week they were just little spouts of green stuff, and now there are about 10 flowers out. I swear you can almost see them growing.

But it’s nice to have a pointer to the season to come.

Well, ok, it’s not a car, more’s the pity, it’s only an external USB hard drive that I can now use to transfer files between the superbox and the faster computer upstairs so I can edit the recordings and burn them to DVD there. But it apparently was designed by Porsche. Made by LaCie. I have to say I can’t quite see all the design work has come in. It’s pretty basic, and was cheap, but seems to do the job.

One small thing about it is that the drive activity LED is orange for idle, and, errrr, yet another orange for working. It would be a little more helpful if they were a little more different. Maybe that’s was the design feature.

Waiting for a 2 gig recording to come across a 14Mbs network was doing my head in. Let alone what it would be like to wait for 5 of them! Life’s too short. A 160 gig drive means I can fit all the recordings to transfer on if I want to. I can see that one day I’m going to have to upgrade the drive in the superbox too.

Setting it up on Linux was a doddle, with the help of several web pages. How did we ever do this stuff without the friendly web?!

Setting it up on the box upstairs was a pain in the butt though, as it just would not work. I tried (almost) everything, but it just would not connect properly. After about an hour I finally decided to try using the USB connections on the back of the box, rather than the front. And guess what? It worked first time. So now I know not to bother with the front ones… Hey ho. Who knows why.

That was almost as bad as trying to put printable DVDs through the printer. I was trying for about an hour, and nothing was working. Even reinstalled the printer driver and everything. No luck. The printer would error every time.

And then I worked it out. The printer was too close to the wall, and the DVD tray could not go back far enough for the printer to get to the front of the disk. Did I feel stupid?! Well yes. Quite. But now I know…

Finally got around to another little system admin job that I should have done ages ago. All the system clocks on the Linux boxes should now be all syncronised to the “real” time from an internet server.

They all connect to one box on the network that gets it’s time from central net servers. I thought that was a nicer way to do it than to keep bugging them for every box.

One box gave me a bit of giref though. For some reason it just wouldn’t sync right, and the time daemon would just disappear without a trace. Finally worked out that it was due to the system being an hour fast, and so it was too far out of sync to allow it to automatically fix itself. I don’t know how long I stared at the apparent time before I actaully saw what was right in front of me.

Probably a good job I got around to this if it was that far out!

And yet more interactivity between the boxes. Now I’ve set things up so that the programme schedule and control of recordings on the superbox shows up on the other web server. At least to anyone on the internal network currently with a bit of .htaccess goodness.

Seems to work pretty well, although I suspect there is still a bit of configuration missing on the web server for it to work perfectly.

But then I know that I can set it up to allow me to record shows from wherever I happen to be in the world if I’ve forgotten to programme it all before we go anywhere….