Archive for category Life

The Onion: Star Trek Report

Personally, I thought the film was frakking awesome :)

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Milo and Mimi photos

So I’ve just ordered some poster photo prints from photobox.com from my gallery…

poster_mimiimg_6063-intense

… can’t wait to see the results :)

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Exchange Square

Last weekend I was on-call and was working late on Friday so I deceided to take my camera into town to take some photos of Exchange Square which I walk through every day to get to work from the station. These are the results (click the photo to go to the gallery) and some are my first foray into HDR imaging too…

Exchange Square

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Why I stopped using Facebook…

Some time ago (approx three months), I decided to go ahead and delete my facebook profile fora number of reasons, none of which are personal.

I was using Facebook before most people in the UK, while everyone was still relying on MSN Messenger / MySpace – so in a way I helped contribute (in a miniscule way) towards Facebook’s success. Unfortunately it entered pop-culture and went down rapidly, most notably in the form of the Facebook Apps Platform.

I knew Facebook had now turned into something that I knew I would regret staying a part of. Judging by this article it turns out I was right…

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/how-your-facebook-is-their-fortune/2009/02/01/1233423045622.html

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Canal boating

I’ve been meaning to get ’round to sequencing this time-lapse, I’m quite happy with it, although I wish the battery on the camera had held-out until we’d passed all the way through the tunnel :/

canal-boat.jpg

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Achievements and stuff…

So, since I last wrote we’ve got a new greyhound bitch called Mimi. I caught and rescued an emaciated stray German Shepherd (Alsatian) who was scavenging for food  around the Waterloo marina. Here are the photos in my gallery. She was a little apprehensive about being on a lead to start and we had a few growls and snarls to start with but once she knew I was not in the mood for any messing about she soon became quite submissive and was happy to follow me. The poor thing was absolutely famished and we’d noticed a rabbit carcass on the field where we take the hounds for walks – with hindsight it was obvious that it must’ve been her who caught the wee bunny for dinner.

We phoned seven different agencies to get advice on what we had to do to get her picked up / out in a kennel for strays. On the way home I flagged a passing police van and asked them if they knew of a number to call etc. They told me it was the dog warden who was legally responsible for collecting and kennelling stray dogs.  The dog warden didn’t answer and apparently, from speaking to all the various charities (who couldn’t take the dog due to the legal requirement of going through the “dog warden”) the said dog warden service is a pile of shite. They see it as just a 9-5, Mon-Fri job, with no interest about dog welfare, there’s no out-of-hours contact, even though there’s supposed to be. Out of the seven agencies we contacted it was only the RSPCA who were interested in taking this dog in, because she was so mal-nourished.

She had quite a good demeanour about her once she knew she was in a safe environment and  she knew certain commands like “sit” etc, so it was obvious that she’d been domesticated so she should be easily re-homed. In fact, looking back, this reminds me of a post I wrote a while ago about a dog database. When the RSPCA guy turned up he scanned her for a microchip and she didn’t have one. It’s cases like this, which I’ve now experienced first-hand, when a database / compulsory chipping would be great. To either re-unite with a loving family, or prosecute an abandoner.

At work I’ve been really busy working on a few RHEL (Linux) and AIX (IBM UNIX – read ‘mainframe’) projects for a few of our clients. I actually really enjoyed most of the project work – it’s all really fascinating stuff, for me at least and very good for my career as a whole. All good stuff for the CV! I really feel that I’ve learnt and refined my linux skills quite a lot recently. I’ve got a Google notebook that is stuffed full of really useful tidbits of bash scripting and commands – I keep meaning to write a decent “crib-sheet” post on here for some of the most useful stuff.

Oh! I nearly forgot!! Mimi (our new greyhound) is the one on the right…

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Dog database…

Today El Reg covered this story about the The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals pushing for a national database of all dogs and for dogs to be chipped with the owner information. For the most part I’m not exactly for any kind of Big Brother national database, but this I think is a part of a really good initiative.

After taking in a rescue greyhound which has obviously had a terrible ordeal at the hands of some very cruel owners I’m all for this scheme and would gladly participate. It’s exactly because of the way that ex-racer greyhounds are treated in this country that I would be a strong supporter of this database, once racing greyhounds have lived out their racing career for the most part they’re just seen as an unwanted, disposable commodity which has no further value or monetary worth and are quickly abandoned. The fewer others are lucky enough to be used to stud or breed – but even after they’ve lost this value they’re seen as being useless and disposable.

A scheme such as this may help reduce the abandonment and mis-treatment of retired greyhounds as well as reducing overall mistreatment of the species.

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There must be some way out of here…

Something disturbing happened last night. I found myself kneeling half-way down the hall in the middle of the night coughing like I’ve never coughed before in my life. The kind that uses all the might of your diaphram muscles and scratches at your epiglottis while making a booming noise as your chest hollows. I can’t remember much about it now, but I remember for about five minutes I had a horrible feeling that I’d die if I stopped trying to expel something inside me. A bit dramatic sounding – I know. Eventually I started to grab a hold of ‘reality’ and tried to control the coughing and catch my breath back. I wasn’t fully awake though, which was wierd for me. Normally if something like that happened I’d become fully awake. Since I hadn’t awoken fully I went back to bed and fell back asleep.

I woke up this morning and had a really sore throat, then I remembered the episode in the night. Before I fell asleep again last night I remembered having a revelation about the philosophical cause for my coughing and saying it aloud to Klara. She told me when she came back from work this afternoon that what I said in the night was apparently something very philosophical and sounded familiar, I just wish I’d been awake enough to understand it myself or remember what it was that I said. I think something happens to me when I fall asleep, and I don’t mean the standard physical and neurological processes that occur during normal sleep. Something else happens and I don’t quite know what it is yet, but I’m getting closer to understanding it.

Ever since I can remember I’ve had a ‘different’ sleep habit than other people. I’ve always had problems integrating sleep into my daily cycle. I’m a ‘night owl’ sleeper, and then some! I underwent a sleep study for the Glasgow University psychology department while I was a student there and the results were surprising, even for the professor who was conducting the study. I was ultimately ‘diagnosed’ with a sleep condition called DSPS (Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome). After the study the professor pulled me aside just as I was about to leave after the ‘debrief’ of my results and asked me if I did anything to the electrodes on the EEG machine that I used during the study because he’d only seen such ‘deep’ electrical patterns in comatose patients or anesthetically influenced patients. In other words, it was like I went into a coma every night.

Pyramid of KulkulkanApparently recently I’ve sleep-walked on at least one occasion that Klara told me about the other day, I’ve been laughing in my sleep and having full blown conversations too.
Now, I’ve recently been researching the Maya civilization and their constant references to evolutionary consciousness, scales and cycles, of which humanity is in its ‘last’ phase, in the prelude to Dec 21st 2012. If you don’t know what I’m refering to then chances are you might like to find out about the Maya and their calendar.
I don’t know whether this research has triggered an evolution in my consciousness and my sleep is just a conduit of that manifestation or not, but I think the timing of the two is a little too close to be coincidence. I do have a feeling that I’m somehow moving forward at a rate that I can’t quite get a measure on yet.

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Red Hat Certification

Well, today (Monday) I embark on a new chapter in my life – Red Hat certification. I have never been on an I.T. course before in my life (apart from humanities computing at uni). So it’s kinda weird considering it’s my profession. So tomorrow at 10am I’ll be in a classroom in Manchester taking a crash-course in linux system administration. I’ve been booked on the course for a few weeks now, so I’ve been trying to prepare myself as best I can for it. In truth the past four years that I’ve been using Fedora Core and CentOS have carved out a sense of trouble-shooting in me which I’m very confident with.

I remember the first time I was confronted with being forced to use the command line to administer a remote server. I was shitting my pants. I’d heard all the horror stories of people doing an rm -rf * in the wrong directory and losing everything on the box. So, looking back at all that and I realise now how far I’ve come since that day. I can now quite happily setup and break a system (on purpose) and try to fix it confidently on a live system.

To tell the truth I’m nervous and excited at the same time about this course. I really have no idea what the exam on Friday will entail and probably won’t have a full appreciation of it until the day itself. Wish me luck (even though I don’t really need it! hehe)

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Desiderata

You are a child of the universe – no less than the trees and the stars and you have the right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God whatever you conceive him to be and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life – keep peace with your soul.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly. And listen to the dull and ignorant, they too will have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexacious to the spirit. If you compare yourselves with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your career, however humble – it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Be yourself, especially do not feign affection, neither be cynical about love. Take kindly the council of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune – but do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness, beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle to yourself. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams it is still a beautiful world.

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste – and remember what peace there may be in silence.

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