Effin’ BT cancelled my ADSL connection last night at about 9:45pm.

Of course, Zen Internet only have support from 8am – 8pm.

This morning I got ping-ponged between Zen and BT.

The BT database shows that a BT worker cancelled my connection, yet until I forcefully made them aware of it they insisted that it must have been the ISP who requested it.

I’m not happy.

It looks like I’ll not get my ADSL back until 5 working days after this gets sorted by BT Wholesale.

Zen Internet are still awaiting a reply from BT Wholesale about the matter, it could be hours until they get a reply.

I’m not happy.

It looks like lingula.org.uk will be off the air for at least the next week.

I’m not happy.

What is your Alignment?
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Did you know that if you plot the population density of haystacks against that of brothels that you find that there’s an inverse relationship?

Indeed, from this you can prove that the two are mutually exclusive.

Hence, a new idea for New Labour to pick up:- Inoculate towns and cities against prostitution by installing haystacks. Of course, this would need a new QANGO (Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation) such as the Office for Haystacks with a Haystack Czar and the Haystack Direct hotline.

I’m sure this would be a populist winner in the fight against anti-social behaviour.

It’s been a pretty geeky weekend this weekend.

Having replaced the 80GB disk in my games machine last weekend with a faster 160GB one it gave me the opportunity to at last build a functional replacement from my old SPARCstation 4 as my main server. So, that’s what I’ve been doing this weekend. I had to do the OS install and then configure the web server, learn how to set up the postfix mail daemon so that it didn’t relay nasty e-mails and finally get Bullet to compile and run in a chroot(3)’ed environment.

Of all of the tasks, getting Bullet running was the hardest. Rob’s use oc C is starting to show its age and is causing problems. The assumptions he’s made are starting to break down with modern compilers which are more strict on enforcing ANSI C. Add to this I had to work out the minimum necessary to get a Linux chroot(3)’ed environment (and the discovery that if you link Linux executables staticly they still need the dynamic libraries!!!!)).

I’ve still a few things to do yet. I’ve got to find out how to persuade Apache 2 to allow user web sites (ie. http://…/~user/) which it’s not at the moment and I can’t see why not at the moment. Also, setting up samba for the local Windows file serving would be nice. That’s about that, really.

As for the other stuff I’ve done. Well, I didn’t do a lot on Saturday, mostly due to an animal rights protest happening around work so I couldn’t park and go into town. Today, other than the server hacking, I popped into Oxford City and did a little shopping. I got myself a new jumper for the Edinburgh Wool Shop ‘cos one or two of my older ones are starting to wear out. I also got myself a coffee from Starbucks. On the way back to te car I thought I’d have a look in the Oxford Museum of the History of Science as I was passing.

I was expecting something akin to the Science Museum in London but in a much smaller form. I was very disappointed. It should really be called the Museum of Early Astronomy, Navigation and Biology. If you need an astrolade they have huge numbers. If you want old telescopes they have some along with a similar number of microscopes. The trouble is that that’s about all there is and nothing later than about 1850.

And so, that’s about it, really.

Well, the skating trip on Tuesday evening went well. Though I did fall over once, quite spectacularly, apparently, backwards. This was the first time I’d fallen over in the three ice skating trips i’ve had, one in ’82, one in ’83 (both sixth form club events at school) and Tuesday. Oh well. At least most of the time I was going around the rink. I even managed about two full circuits without having to stablise myself using the wall.

After an idea in the pub after the skating, I’m now trying to organise an alternative Christmas do for department people. Ok, well, postgrads and postdocs. It’s hard going. No-one will have an opinion on anything so I’ve decided the date, next Wednesday, the time, around 7-ish and the place, Moonlight Tandori followed by The Zodiac for much merriment. No doubt someone will complain but tough, they should have raised their voice when they had the chance.

Well, the weekend before last I went down to Yately and visited Rachel, Graham and Christopher. On the Saturday we travelled through the falling snow to a rain forest.. OK, it was “The Living Rainforest” attraction just outside Newbury but still, it was strange going through the snow to get there. I’m sure I’ll post one or two pictures to show it off. It was a fun day taking photos, meeting local photographers and getting a lusting for a nice pistol-grip, omnidirectional head attachment for camera tripods. Rachel wants one too.

The Sunday was quite quiet though an unexpected visit by Bob and Jos for tea was fun. Then I went home myself.

In the week I bought from Amazon Half-Life 2 and pre-ordered the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Extended Edition but then the evil one-click got me and I bought Shrek 2 as well. Oh well. 🙂

My new computer at work arrived and is nice and fast. 🙂

Friday evening was spent in the company of Grim, Holly and Matt as we met up to see The Incredibles. Here’s a quick review: Go see it! It’s brilliant. I hope there aren’t any spoilers there.

The weekend started out a bit expensively. I went to the local All Formats Computer Fair as I wanted to get a cheap webcam. Unfortunately, although my wallet was strong my will was weak and I came out with not only the cheap webcam (£12) but also a USB2 memory card reader (£19), 160GB hard disk and a graphic card (£149 for the two)!

The rest of the weekend was basically spent installing the goodies and playing Half-Life 2.

Nothing happened yesterday, really. However, tonight I’m off to the Oxford University Polar Society end of term skating and dinner (ok, pub + food). It should be fun.

Not a wholey eventful day.

Basically, I watched “I, Robot” before lunch. I was pleasantly surprised by it. Let’s say that the trailer didn’t do it justice. It was a lot more thought provoking that I thought it might be. However, anyone who didn’t get that it was Viki what dunn it by the middle of the film obviously hasn’t watched “Tron” and “2001” enough. There were definite shades of HAL in some of the robotic characters as well as some of the back plot from “Tron.” Overall, for a Hollywood film, not too bad.

The only other accomplishment today was finally finishing Unreal II. OK. So, it took me about 2 years in total, but that was mainly cos I’d give up for many months at a time when I got stuck. Still, the propensity of mega bosses at the end was rather a let-down, as was the revelation that the boss of the rangers was the bad guy AND then the character you’re playing shoots him in cold blood during a cut scene. Talk about linear play and not allowing the player to actually mold the story at all. They could at least have had multiple endings at that point and left it to the player to decide what was done.

The rest of the evening was a bit dull as there was nothing on telly, really.

OK, so i didn’t tap on his window, that was for comic effect. However, I was held up so inconveniently as Jaques Chirac rushed through in his black motorcade with Met diplomatic protection squad officers in tow.

What a pain.

I was held up on The Plain roundabout and yet again on Parks Road. I wish those world leaders would just keep out the way, along with the film crews. I’m not sure which is worse, Harry Potter or Bill Clinton.

I was cycling in this morning, as you do, when this big limosine turns up flanked by police motorcycles. They stopped right in front of me and made me stop as well. So, I knocked on the window to tell the person inside what I thought of this and he wound down the window.

And guess who it was.

It was bloody Jaques Chirac!

I thought I’d give him a piece of my mind so I said to him, “Jaques”, well we’re on first name terms you see, I said “Jaques, what do you think you’re doing holding me up in the morning? You world leaders are all the bloody same, going around causing traffic jams without a thought for anyone else.”

Well, he didn’t say very much of course, he was too embarassed. So he just drove off and caused traffic jams down the road.

Well, this weekend is not a busy weekend. Nothing special has been planned, which, I must say, is probably a good thing as I need to recharge my sleep batteries.

So, what HAVE I done today?

Well, for much of it I was in work doing something I could never do during the week, namely clearing up/out my office. I also re-arranged the office a little in preparation for the arrival of my new machine. Seeing as the monitor should arrive a lot sooner and it’s an LCD screen, this will allow a far different arrangement of things. However, this isn’t due until the beginning of next week, so for the next few days I’m going to be very cramped with the old large CRT monitor in the new arrangement. Anyway, it shouldn’t be a problem for long.

Once the new Sun W2100z arrives in the next few weeks I’ll ship out the old frankenstein Athlon box and have that as the main machine. I should be able to connect both the W2100z and the Ultra 10 to the new monitor’s two inputs so that should cut the monitor count by one as well.

So, after the 3 hour clear up it was off to Sainsbury’s and thence home. After lunch I’m not sure what I did as I was one minute sitting in my comfy chair and the next I knew it was an hour or so later. I told you I needed a sleep recharge.