Sunday, October 25, 2009

White Wedding

Yesterday was Martin and Charlotte's wedding. The Church service was held at Church of St Thomas Becket Church in Chapel-en-le-Frith

Kath and I got a lift down with Bruce and Nina. It was raining when we arrived and we were prepared for 60 mph winds as threatened on the Weather report. Fortunately somehow it was fine for the service. It was Kaths' first outing in public with me, and I was proud to be with her.

The reception was at the local hall, they had a black and white theme.We spent a lot of the evening chatting to Holly. Joe was providing the music. I drank a lot of Guinness, and generally enjoyed myself. Kind of missed out on the buffet, Charlotte brother cleared out the cakes before I got a look in.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Metropolis

"There can be no understanding between the hands and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator"

I just watched Metropolis for the first time. I must say I found it awesome, released in 1927 as a silent film it is a product of a different era. However the effect have a certain charm, and the cinematography and use of the art deco is really wonderful.

The film concentrates on a deeply divided society living in the fictional Metrolpolis. While the workers toiling in 10 hour shirt, in the depths of the city, labouring to control the machines, above ground the thinkers / planners enjoy the lap of luxury. Until the intervention of Maria brings some of the children from down below to the paradise gardens at the top. The son of the leader Freder of the city is disturbed and ventures to see the heart of the city. Thus begins a chain of events where he ends up seeing Maria deliver a revolutionary speech about the tower of babel and how a Mediator will come to bring the 'head' and the 'hands', "THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN THE HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!"

I couldn't help but think of the modern day parallels, I was thinking of 1984, Blade Runner, and the Radiohead song Palo Alto, only more dystopian.

I sat watching the film with some honey toast and a hot tody in an attempt to try and drive away my cough before Martin and Charollottes wedding on Saturday.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Windows 7

My copy of Windows 7 arrived this morning, I managed to get an advances copy for £40 which I think is pretty good value for a full Licence.

Friday, October 09, 2009

At The Zoo

Kath arrived yesterday [Thursday]. We were pretty tired so we just rented a film (Red Cliff) and relaxed.
Friday we wanted to do something we ended up going to go to Chester Zoo. I haven't been since I was a really young kid so it was a bit of an adventure. I somehow got collared into paying an extra "donation" on the way in. Once inside we saw the elephant pen, then toured round the whole Zoo. Favorites included the Bat house, a dark dank place full of bats. I also loved the bears, especially the firefox and the Aquarium were all great.

There are some photos on my flikr feed here

Elephant

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Gomorrah

I had a really trying day today, one that I cant really talk about to the internet. By the time I got home this evening I was really tried and stressed I went for a walk with storm and got extremely wet. I decided the best way to relax was with a film and a few beers. Ironically the cheapest was Becks the people who annoyed me by getting spotify to push a playlist on me. However it was the cheapest premium lager in Tesco Cheadle so hey ho.
I rented a film called Gomorrah about the Italian mob. Its a bit a of a strange film following several disconnected stories, its well acted and scary portrayal of the mob linking into every aspect of society. Its quiet a shocking film in a documentary style, some stunning backdrops and clever cinematography, but from the opening you certainly get the feeling life is cheap.

Monday, October 05, 2009

Spotify Pushes Ad Sponsored Playlist

I opened spotify this morning to find I had a new playlist,  to Ladyhawke - music inspired art. Now I understand spotify is ad supported but and while I have nothign against the ads between the songs I do find this rather annoying. I do create my own playlists, I don't really appriciate having some ad sponsored list forced upon me.

Adaptive Predictive Dialler

For anyone who has spent time trying to get their stored procedure working with an Adaptive Predictive dialler and seen the error "IDispatch error #3105 80040e21 ODBC driver does not support the requested protocol", check the execute permissions on the stored procedure. By default database users on SQL 2005 do not have execute permissions.


Execute permissions are added either using GRANT or via the management console, drill into the database, expand programability, then expand stored procedures, right click your procedure select properties. Choose permissions, add type the name of hte database user then check the grant column for permission execute.