Carrots handbags cheese toilets Russians planets hamsters weddings poets Stalin

This time, not the documentary from 2004. On Wednesday I went to a social group called Hackspace. I'd been to a couple of them before but heard through the grapevine that the BBC were going to be in attendance so made special effort to go to this one.

I'm about 80 seconds in from the start of the vid at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8108151.stm making somewhat a tit of myself rooting through a box of miscellanous parts donated to us. Full article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_8107000/8107803.stm

The event itself is just a social space for people to work on hardware ideas, software ideas or just to chat about technology in general. Like a social club for geeks, but with a (mild) emphasis on getting stuff done.

Awesome fun, if a bit hot due to the number of people. Rumour has it that the London group will be purchasing a fixed place soon, rather than just using a spare room in a pub. Yet another time sink for me!

of two kinds: Knitting and Programming.
The past couple of days have been spent with hughe and pinkoi - knitting and general geeking and playing with cats. A fabulous couple of days.

A few weeks back I finally found the yarn I was after for a sweater that I'm planning to make and then made a couple of test swatches. It comes out really well but with pinkoi's guidance wetted one to see how it responded, but it opened up a lot and ended up being far too loose. Perhaps I need to felt it, but that would shrink it a lot. I've not done much blocking for felting so need to defer to the judgement of a more reasoned knitter before trying it with such a large project. It can wait a while ayway, since a two part sweater course that I found (as a result of this post doesn't start for several weeks yet.

The other project I've been working on is a web dev project. Until I started this project earlier this week, I've not really done any web dev since I worked for Angels back when I lived in Gothic ValleyHolloway. It pains me how quickly skills fade through disuse. Anyway, the idea is a rendition of TreeHouse from looney labs. It's a basic skeleton at the moment so nothing worth showing but there's something like 10-20 hours of dev time left. depending on how much time I invest I should have something ready in a month or so. The challenging issue is that I'm trying to make it firewall-friendly by doing it all with HTTP and AJAX.

ETA:
Since this post is about geek projects, here's one I've been meaning to post for a while. It's not one of my own, but definitely one for the geek cat owners. hughe comes to mind but there are possibly other close electronic-geeks too.
A web cam attached to a catflap to deny access when the cat is carrying dead animals.

Using bash to generate DOS shell commands.

New icon

Things you don't want to see:
Message from syslogd@mattp-laptop at Thu Jun 28 00:12:40 2007 ...
mattp-laptop kernel: Uhhuh. NMI received. Dazed and confused, but trying to continue
Message from syslogd@mattp-laptop at Thu Jun 28 00:12:40 2007 ...
mattp-laptop kernel: You probably have a hardware problem with your RAM chips

Today I set up a Compaq ProLiant DL320 to run Windows 2000. The installation CD wasn't able to access the SCSI disks, so I downloaded a driver CD and used that, only to find out that you can use the CD directly - instead you have to boot from it and create floppy drivers. I did that, only to find that the BIOS can't be flashed until you flick a jumper on the motherboard. Power down, flick switch, flash the BIOS, power down, flick switch, insert windows CD, add driver, reboot. (Pray)

When was the last time you used a floppy disk?

ETA:
Heh. The OS installed was so old that Windows Update wouldn't run. We fixed it manually though.

Friday:
Went out drinking in Printworks with some non-LJers Russ and Matt (who stayed in the same halls as me at uni) and other fellow Linux geeks. It started off quiet, but by 8 or 9 it was actually had music bleating out at a stupid volume. Depsite this place being chosen because it was a Wetherspoons, we since discovered that it is part of the Lloyd's chain. I'm wondering how long after the smoking ban comes into effect that bar workers will start asking for music to be lowered, lest their hearing be damaged. It's not the fact that it was music I didn't like (I'd object if it was music that I did at such a volume, because it makes group conversation impossible, and one-on-one conversation almost impossible), but also that it was needlessly loud, and too loud for the equipment - I could hear the sound distorting.

We sought refuge down the road to the nearby Sir John Oldcastle and had a fab night. I might even have found a place to live as one of the people present is selling their place in Burnt Oak in order to move to Japan. It's a little further out than I'd like, but not a complete deal breaker.

Saturday:
Went ringing for a wedding at St. Bartholemew the Great in Smithfields. I since learned that this is the oldest Anglican church in the country not to have had strucural work done on it. The bells are also the oldest peal in the country, offically dating from 1510. On top of that, it is the fourth church to appear in the film Four Weddings and A Funeral :-)

Evening was a fabulous meal in Mildred's in Soho. FOr such an avid carnivore, I really enjoyed the meals put on by a vegetarian restaurant. We were in the function room upstairs as there were a large number of us. Best thing was the "interesting" artwork on the walls. I wonder if anyone got any photos. I forgot, annoyingly. Pondered going to a house party afterwards, but decided against it due to having a headache.

I got home and worked out the probable cause - I'd not had any caffeine that day. Oops. Maybe I should take this as a hint to cut down.

Sunday:
No morning ringing, so I had a well needed lie-in. Instead we rang a quarter peal for evensong, thus completing 79. Ring a quarter peal on my 101 in 1001 list. 3 parts of Parker's 12-part Grandsire Triples, for those who care, of which I suspect there'll be 3.

Today:
Stupidly busy at work - it's not suprising I feel I'm nearing burnout at times. This evening I'm viewing the house in Burnt Oak. *fingers crossed* Well, later, otherwise I won't be able to type very well:-)

The Crypto Song: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/anavabi/mp3/MC%20Plus+%20-%20Algorhythms%20-%20Alice%20and%20Bob.mp3

Before I forget I just wanted to documented my social movements last week. Saturday was a party chez saintmaryuk - I took an early train from London and arrived around 1330. Was excellent to catch up with people. Had lunch in the nearby pub and after still being a little bit hungry, pondered the ettiquette aspects of ordering a second meal for oneself in a pub/restaurant. Is it such a social faux pas, or would they just be happy for the additional business?

One thing I love about gathering such as these is the diversity of topics covered in conversation. More for myself than those reading this post, but I made a list of things to research when I've got some time:
Book reviews to read: Big lies to tell small children, Chambers dictionary of etymology, Heavy words lightly thrown
Leglistion to read: Regulation of investigatory powers act, mantrap law

Also met da_pol, another name I'd seen around on my flist quite a bit.


Got dropped home and spent Sunday packing and came back to London Monday with enough weight that I could still feel the effects on Wednesday. I had a rucksack on my front, one on my back, a shoulder bag and I was carrying a box. It took me about 30-40 mins to walk from Holloway Rd tube station to my place - I normally do it in about a third of that.
Just a few items of crap to bring back - maybe I can persuade an ex colleague to give me a lift next time he's got a job in London :-)

On Wednesday I went ringing again with mrk and helped out with some of the learning band. At some stage I'd like to run a theory course (or couple of sessions), because I think some of them are struggling because they don't really know what they're doing and have no "mental hooks" to place things on. He seemed to approve, but it'll wait until the new year. (After all, that's only 8 days away. Well, 11 as it was then)

How would you say "Source Code" in Latin?

Woo! Pub lunch with a few colleagues yesterday. Food was good, but service was a little slow. (Understandable, perhaps, as a huge number of us descended on a very quiet pub without prior warning, all wanting food.

Went out to fab cafe later in the evening and met up with msbhayvn, syllopsium, fruit_boy, tabath_yeddap, db85, _phuturatica_, megashrike, paul and a few others. After a bit of faffing around (surprise, surprise) we went for a meal at Mughli. I do so love a good curry.

Today I've done nothing of note. I've thought about website designs as it really is about time that I got around to publishing the various programs, documents, rants and recipes that I've been compiling over recent years.


megashrike: I found Page::visible_tag_list(): TagDetail[] (defined in the S2 core) so what we talked about is certainly feasible.

nmc, jdev and possibly others of a geek bent:
Q: Why is it that the more accuracy you demand from an interpolation function, the more expensive it becomes to compute?
A: That's the Law of Spline Demand.

Am working in London Mon-Wed, so pondering driving down on Sunday when it'll be quieter. Dinner for 7 tonight - I should get dressed and go shopping.