Homo-ner
I'm growing up... I exchanged contracts on a flat yesterday. That means that mid-July, I'll be a home owner (just around the corner from where I am now). The quantities of money that are involved are scary, but I'm really rather looking forward to it (not least because I'm moving in with the Mrs.).
Right now though, I'm trying to find an electrician. A friend suggested mybuilder.com, which so far has proved to be really rather good. Of course, I suppose it depends what the work is like when it gets done, but it does look like a good site and hopefully a good way to find a tradesman.
After that's done, I'm going to have to worry about the Cat5, 12 volt, wallpaper and paint and then getting my stuff shifted. It's gonna be a busy few weeks when we get there!
More Tube Strikes - A Solution?
Following on from this news about yet more tedious, forthcoming tube strikes I decided to Contact the Mayor (I have contacted TFL about this, but I'm not sure they really understood what I was going on about!).
Here's what I wrote:
I see, with some regret, that yet again, the Tube unions feel the need to strike. It remains to be seen if this next strike goes ahead, but if it does, it will doubtless cause the usual levels of inconvenience to Londoners across the Captial. The cynic in me wonders if we have generally more Tube strikes as the ambient temperature goes up...?
That aside, I am writing to you with a more pragmatic intent. I have approached TFL about this, but suspect my request was not properly understood by whomever dealt with it. I would like you to arrange that I am fully trained as a Tube train driver (or other critical role that would be impacted by strike action). In return for this, I will volunteer my time to work that job function on strike days. It is my hope that I can do my part in keeping London working, even if there are those who would try to disrupt us.
I will also make this pledge to you: I make all reasonable efforts to resist joining any union, I will not require payment for my volunteered time on strike days, and, even though I am employed full-time, I will make all reasonable efforts to be available to you on strike days, such that you can gain maximum advantage from me for the expense you will make in training me.
I offer this as a single individual. However, I strongly suspect other Londoners may be willing to do the same thing. I would even go as far as to suggest some employers would prefer to see their staff arrive late, having helped their colleagues get to work, than not at all. It would take some 'selling', but it's possible employers may even help sponsor such an effort.
I will leave this matter in your hands. However, I would urge that you give it some serious thought. I generally deplore strikes such as these, and I'm sure other Londoners feel the same way. If I can help a few of them avoid the disruptions strikes cause, I'm sure that would be of surprising benefit to London as a whole.
Yours Sincerely,
(etc)
I'll let you know what happens...!
Update June 21st: I've had a few utterly useless replies from the Mayor's office. The first was a long diatribe about how the Mayor doesn't like the strikes and how he's put on lots of buses and the like for the strike days. Since this didn't actually answer any of my questions, I asked again. Next reply said that I could apply to TFL to be a train driver (and gave me a link), so I tried again. Finally, I received a proper response saying that the Mayor doesn't deal with TFL operational matters directly, so I'd have to take it up with TFL. I'll give that another try...
The Cognitive Surplus
Looking for the Mouse (via Rivets) is an interesting thought.
Essentially, it suggests that our increased spare time has previously been used up passively by television. Since we now have computers, interactivity and the Internet, we're no longer satisfied by just watching - we want to take part in some way. The interesting statistic is that it would take as much 'brain time' to produce 100 Wikipedias from scratch as is used in 1% of all the television we watch.
It remains to be seen how we'll all use this spare time, our desire to participate, and to think. Once it's all happened, come and get me, as I'll be watching endless re-runs of Friends ;-)
Breaking Drupal Comments into Multiple Pages
I've taken the 'bold' step of breaking pages with dozens of comments into multiple pages. With Drupal, this is easy because it's just a setting in the admin screens. However, there's a problem because the 'Recent Comments' block (down on the left hand side) doesn't link to the right page.
A look at drupal.org reveals a number of patches, but none of them particularly good, and none actually making it into Drupal development. I've just created a 'patch', in the form of a theme template. It uses the Drupal cache system to save a bit of database work, which coupled with the Drupal Block Cache should see pretty decent performance. The theme template is attached to this page. Download it, and stick it in your theme's directory (rename the file to comment-block.tpl.php).
Sponsored 10K Run
I'm doing a sponsored 10K run for ACT. I'd really appreciate some help with the sponsorship, as so far I'm pretty much blagging my place and probably costing the charity more money than I'll make for them.
I should also point out that I'm a bit over-weight, haven't done any exercise in ages and have obviously not done the pre-requisite training. In the past, I could have popped a 10K out without really thinking about it, but at the moment, this is gonna hurt.
Strictly ITM
I was lucky enough to go to the ITM's annual conference gala dinner last week. It was, as you'd expect of the ITM, a fantastically well arranged affair, and of course sported the much anticipated... Strictly ITM dance competition.
There's a bit of a pre-event video here and here, but the main stuff is here:
Caroline & Julian
Fay & Dan
Jason & Lena
Kerrie & Jonathon
Richard & Camille
Paul & Hannah
Well done to all of them... didn't they do well? ;-)
The Marvels of Virtualisation
I had a bit of a geeky afternoon at work yesterday - I got a load of stuff moved from one computer to another. For the first time (for me) though, I used a VMWare Virtual Machine to do all of the transferring.
I've been using VMs for a while now on a knock-about desktop machine I have at werk (running Linux). I use the VMs so that I can try stuff out on the different operating systems and versions we have at work. I also run a few 'proof of concept' web tools for people internally too.
Moving this stuff from one machine to the next was incredibly easy. All I did was to create an empty VM on the target machine (with the same name as the one I wanted to move), and then copied the VM data files over the top of it. Easy!
I know, I know... the promise of VMs taking over the world is because of exactly this. However, I never really knew how incredibly cool VMs can be. I'll have to try dynamic starting/stopping next, and see how that goes ;-)
Doing Good Feels Good
The other day I was sitting on the tube on my way to werk (as you do) when I noticed a mobile phone on the seat opposite me. I checked with a bloke nearby, but sure enough, it was just sat there, lost to it's owner. So I pocketed it.
On leaving the tube station at my destination, I started calling the 'last numbers dialled' to see if I could find someone who knew the owner. Sure enough, a very nice lady told me she'd contact him and call me back. She told me he'd call a bit later on.
Sure enough, a very relieved chap called me up, and we arranged for him to come to my work to pick up his phone. When he arrived, he was so incredibly grateful, I thought I might never get my hand back from him shaking it. Bless him, he also bought me a bottle of red wine.
I have to say, it took about 30 minutes of my time, earned me a bottle of wine, made some chap very happy and makes me feel really good. All this reminds me that a little bit of consideration for one's fellow man makes us all feel much better.
Hacking The ReadyNas Duo
I've been hacking about with my ReadyNas Duo. It's got a little Sparc based CPU (an Infrant Technologies neon), which for the most part sits pretty idle on my machine (despite some hefty NFS access from time to time).
In addition to this, I have an HP Compaq DC7100 desktop machine (which runs Coofer Cat). I do a bit of database work, and thought maybe I could stick MySQL onto the ReadyNas, and perhaps make things work a little quicker. There are a few details about getting MySQL to work on a ReadyNAS, although it's not all straight forward because the ReadyNas is such a cut-down system (so doesn't have some of the tools you might want).
Anyway, now I've tried it, I have to say it's been a bit of a failure. The CPU in the ReadyNas is very small (Linux reports 186.36 BogoMips, which isn't bad, but nothing compared to the 2x5590 in the DC7100). As a result, whilst the ReadyNas can be used for many things, it's not really much good for anything other than streaming data from disk to the network (which is, after all, what it's designed for). I was wondering if I could install some crypto tools and encrypt disk data, but I'm wondering if even that might be too much for the poor little CPU.
Despite all this, I still love my ReadyNas - I'd very much recommend one to anyone who needs a bit of disk storage for photos, music or whatever. If you're a bit more intrepid, like me, then it's still got plenty of scope for a bit of 'customisation'.
Tardis Wardrobe
I just bought a 'Tardis Zipperdrobe' to replace the 'floordrobe'. This thing is great, and surprisingly large inside - I've got oodles in there and there's room to spare. It's sturdy enough to travel far into the future unscathed too. (via Toyology)