Category: Uncategorized

Microsoft has released a preview of Internet Explorer 7. I don’t know about anyone else, but the functionality that it has seems to “borrow” rather a lot from the excellent Mozilla Firefox.

I haven’t downloaded the beta version because I don’t want to install a beta version on my work PC, and I don’t have the option of installing it at home because I don’t use Windows!

One thing which I think makes Firefox the best browser around is the extensions – they definitely improve the browsing experience a lot! I think if IE isn’t going to support extensions (I don’t think it will but don’t quote me on that) then I think I already know which one will win out, for me at least…

Kind of a random combination, but still. First Apache: some good news: version 2.2 has been released! You can read the Article on The Register and the Official What’s New List. One thing that looks really cool is the DBD Framework – it maintains connection pooling for a number of database servers, and seems to be an abstraction of the database layer. I haven’t read up on it in great detail, but it looks good from what I have read!

Anyway. Recently, both Joe and Simon have got into “X & Y” by Coldplay. I have to say, you’re a bit late off the mark guys, I was going on about it back in June 😉

Firstly, I’d just like to follow-up my last post with one more random thing about emoticons (otherwise known as smileys): Dave Barry’s Emoticons. It’s an extract from one of his books. Some of them are incredibly random, and very funny. I quite like this one: :-D* Which apparently means, “Person laughing so hard that he or she does not notice that a 5-legged spider is hanging from his or her lip”.

In other news, I have a couple of reviews for you! Firstly, ‘Company’ by Max Barry. I don’t believe I mentioned this before, so I’ll mention it now. I’ve been reading Max Barry’s Blog for a couple of years (I started in my third year at university, when I was introduced to NationStates (I believe I mentioned it here the first time). I’ve long since stopped playing the game, but I’ve kept reading the blog… I really like Max’s style. It’s a bit like Scott Adams in that he’s humorous and quite random at times, but the difference is he seems to be a genuinely nice guy (Scott Adams’ blog recently hasn’t exactly enamoured him to me. But that’s another story).

The book is currently not in a UK edition, but you can buy the US edition which has been imported (mine arrived pretty quickly). Anyway. I finished reading it on Friday night… I actually stayed up late just to read it to the end. It’s a very good read, it kept me engrossed for a few hours, and it’s definitely entertaining! It’s basically a corporate satire, but goes into some interesting ethical questions. You can find more information on Max Barry’s website.

The other review I have is, I went to see the University of Essex choir sing Mozart’s Requiem at Charter Hall in Colchester (handily, about ten minutes walk away from where I live). It was really good! The Requiem is a beautiful piece of music, and the choir sang really well. The soloists all sang well, and the London Handel Orchestra played well. So all in all a good performance! I enjoyed it immensely, as I do whenever I go and see the UoE choir – they come highly recommended by me!

One thing I noticed at the end was – the female soloists were both given flowers. The male soloists weren’t given anything. I contend this is inherently sexist and unfair, and I propose that the male soloists get given a token gift upon the completion of a performance. Maybe flowers, maybe something else… let’s throw it open! What should male soloists be given at the end of a performance? Answers on a postcard (or you could e-mail me or leave a comment…)

This is a link that I’ve found before, and I think I e-mailed off to a couple of people, but haven’t got around to posting up here. Until today. So, here you go: “A Wink is as Good as a Nod“. It’s a short piece about smileys, and about how some earlier writers might have used the smiley, had they had it at their disposal. My favourite section is towards the end, the response to Jane Austen. But I’ll let you read it…

Anyway. Yes. I haven’t done much the past couple of days. On Wednesday evening, I went to a Fordham home group social with Philippa. That was good fun! And very nice food… we played “pass the pig” afterwards which has left me convinced that some people have a better “pig-throwing” technique than others. And, as that’s the only thing I’ve really done this week, as well as not wanting to make myself sound more insane than I am already, I’ll stop there…

Ok, firstly, I want you to imagine (if you will) Darth Vader saying the title of this blog post: “The Power of the Command-Line”. Good, good (– The Emperor).

I suppose I’d better go and explain that now… the title, that is, not Darth Vader. I just thought it would be cool if Darth Vader said it. Anyway. I was thinking the other night how cool Linux was. I was downloading a relatively large file, and I wanted to go to bed. Some download managers interface with the Operating System which gives you the option of turning the computer off once you’ve finished downloading, but I was using Firefox which doesn’t have that option. If I’d been using Windows, my options would have been (1) staying up until the file had downloaded, (2) leaving the computer on all night. Neither of which were particularly desirable.

Thanks to Linux, I had a third option: use the ‘at’ command to turn the computer off at a specified time. I just dropped to a terminal window (basically a command line interface) and typed in:

[phill@dibber ~]$ su
Password:
[root@dibber phill]# at midnight
at> shutdown -h now

I could then walk away from the computer, in the knowledge that my computer would shut itself down at midnight, after the file had finished downloading! Ok, so, there was a small chance the file wouldn’t have finished downloading (if it suddenly went really, really slow) — but still. That’s the kind of power which you have from the command-line in Linux 🙂 There probably is a way of getting it to shutdown once the file has completed downloading, I just haven’t figured it out yet.

‘at’ sets up a ‘job’ to run once… ‘cron’ sets up jobs to run repeating. I’ve already mentioned this in a previous blog post, but you can use it to keep your machine up to date. Can you use Windows Update from the command-line? I’ve never seen it!

This is why Linux suits itself so perfectly to servers – you can set it up to basically maintain itself! Although Microsoft have done a great job in Windows of making it easy to use, I think it does require a lot of user input. Even with Windows Server 2003, I’ll login to a machine and see messages saying that Windows has downloaded updates for the computer which require a reboot… why should we have to reboot the machine? It’s just symptomatic of the cowboy attitude Microsoft have taken to security and patching in the past which… (Phill wanders off into the sunset, ranting under his breath)

Just thought I’d make a “The Weekend” post because I haven’t done in a while. So, what did I get up to? Not a whole lot is the answer to that! On Friday night, I went back home to Ipswich and stayed overnight with my parents. I watched an old episode of “Dad’s Army”, the one where they challenge Captain Square’s platoon to an assault course type thing. It was really funny, I’ve seen it before but not for a while!

On Saturday morning I went back home and had my hair cut (told you this was exciting, didn’t I? It gets better…). In the evening, I basically just stayed in and did nothing. I thought about adding a subscription to this blog (see my earlier post), but didn’t actually make it live in the end. I also did a new mix, the fruits of which you can see below if you so wish.

On Sunday morning, I went to Fordham as per usual. Then in the afternoon, Philippa and her parents came round for a cup of tea. It was good to see them again (Philippa had been home for the weekend, and her parents were dropping her back off in Colchester). After they’d gone, Philippa and I went round to Alex’s to meet up with Alex, Sarah and Chris J, and we all had pizza and watched “George of the Jungle”… possibly not the best film I’ve ever seen in my entire life, but quite light-hearted and fun! Very much a kids’ film, but quite enjoyable.

And that brings you up to date…

I’ve done a new mix! It’s breaks, as per usual.

DOWNLOAD (If you dare…)

MP3, ~48.5MB, 53 mins (right-click and select Save As…)

TRACKLIST

01. D-Ranged – A Love Song
02. Screwface – Phat Bass
03. Entity – G-Breaks
04. Jade – Made of Steel
05. Bill Vega & New Decade – Fear of Darkness (Control Z Remix)
06. Ed 209 vs DJ Rasco – The Calling of the Darkness (Backdraft Remix)
07. Eskmo – Only a Few
08. Phrenetic – Who’s Rockin’ Best
09. Cut & Run – Sound in Motion
10. Titchmarsh vs Dimmock – Quick Fix
11. Autobots vs Screwface – Flesh Eater

Would anyone find e-mail subscription to this blog a useful feature? The reason is, I found a subscription plugin the other day, and was toying with installing it. I would install it if I thought people would find it useful, but on reflection I think it’s perhaps a little unnecessary!

So, this is your chance: speak now or … email me at a later date if your circumstances change and you decide you do want subscription after all!

Anyway, if you do think you would find it useful, leave a comment on this post.

There’s been a bit of a craze sweeping the blogosphere (sic) lately. If you haven’t heard of it, you obviously are far less bored than I am and don’t bother browsing around the internet looking at forums where people with far more time on their hands than I have talk about absolutely meaningless junk whilst simultaneously like to think that what they’re talking about is deep and meaningful and gives their empty, hollow lives meaning somehow. *ahem* sorry – that’s a rant for another time!

Anyway. It’s called Sloganizer, and it gives you an image with a ‘slogan’ in it (if you type your name in) that you can use on internet forums, blogs etc.

Here’s mine:

It changes every 30 seconds. It currently says, “3… 2… 1… Phill” (I quite like that one). Before that, it said “Phill is better than chocolate” (in terms of health, that may well be true – just about). Just refreshed again, and now it says “Feel good with Phill” (alliterative… nice). Anyway. I just thought you should all know about it, because it’s my right to clog up the internet with useless junk as much as it is anyone else’s.

Thankyou, and goodnight.

(It’s actually made me feel like working on some random junk for my website. I’m not really sure yet, but we’ll see… muahahahahahaha! Or something.)

Can you handle it? It’s possibly the most extreme thing you will have come across. In fact, so extremely extreme that I’ve just got to say extreme again in this sentence. It’s mental, it’s dangerous, it’s life-threateningly thrilling.

It’s….

EXTREME IRONING

From the website:

The sport that is ‘extreme ironing’ is an outdoor activity that combines the danger and excitement of an ‘extreme’ sport with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt. It involves taking an iron and board (if possible) to remote locations and ironing a few items of laundry. This can involve ironing on a mountainside, preferably on a difficult climb, or taking an iron skiing, snowboarding or canoeing.

Here’s a sample pic:

BRING IT ON!!!!