Bye bye foursquare?

Looks like Facebook has decided to squash Foursquare. This article in wired touts the new Facebook check in service which lets Facebook users check into places, not unlike foursquare. The fact that it will be available to facebooks 500 million users will I expect mean an end in growth for Foursquare unless it can quickly respond with some new features not available with Connect.

First State

The Register has an article stating that Virgin Media are touting the idea of writing to customers found to be part of botnets. I think this is an excellent idea. One of my servers was attacked by a botnet and I reported it to 6 networks, all but one never even replied to my abuse reports. No wonder bot nets can get so huge if administrators do not do anything to halt the spread.

Local Foreigner

As George Lucas announces Star War will be re-released on Blue Ray I ask myself do I need another copy? As a child the star wars films were my favourite. I nearly wore out the original VHS copies, and when the special editions were released I bought the box set. Then when the DVD editions were released I bought them too. Since then the new films came out and have somewhat damaged my enthusiasm for the entire project. Given I hope to soon upgrade my home entertainment somewhat from the old Sony CRT TV of my parents to something a bit more modern getting a blue ray player is certainly on the agenda. I guess I will end up buying them in the end just to enjoy watching the X-wings fly around in High Definition.

I spoke to Martin in the week, Marks stag do clashes with Paul's party so unfortunately I wont be able to go. Its a real pig to miss it would have really enjoyed it. Especially as the wedding has moved meaning Kath and I wont be attending. I mentioned to Martin that we missed the Slayradio gathering, we went to the first one (that listeners attended)  in 2005, would like to go back there one day.

On a related retro note I saw this floppy disk holder on deviant art It is jus tthe job for holding all those retro games, I think its really nicely done

Man Research

Ever wonder why we have strict gun laws? Look no further than this idiot to see why

The Captain

Today marked 2 years to the day since I completed on my house purchase. I lot has changed in that time, the biggest thing for me was meeting my girlfriend Kath. Though she lives in Poland and I am in the UK somehow we have managed to see enough of each other to have a meaningful relationship.
We have just spend the last two weeks together, during which time we have managed to visit Sheffield, Liverpool, and Wales.

Sheffield
I picked Kath up from Doncaster airport on Saturday 24th July. From Doncaster we headed for Sheffield, walking round enjoying the Winter Gardens. We arrived in Sheffield at about 8.30 to find a line of teenagers (mostly girls) queuing up for some concert going on in the city. First stop was breakfast at Cafe Nero where we enjoyed a nice coffee and a Panini. Fulling full we had a wonder thought the Winter Gardens, then wondered around the city to the Cathedral.

We drove back taking the scenic route via snake pass.

Liverpool
Liverpool  has a special place for Kath and I. It was the first place we went together after I picked Kath up from the airport. We had a really good time there looking around, was just as Liverpool one opened.

There was a Picasso exhibition at Tate Liverpool we wanted to see so we headed to Liverpool. We arrived around lunch time so started with a  meal at Haha bar and grill in the Albert Docks.
Then a short stroll around the Dock before heading into the Tate for the exhibition. The Gallery was really good mainly focussing on the influences of the war and cold war. I never realised that Picasso was a committed communist and peace activist. When visiting the Picasso museum in Barcelona these items were oddly omitted. Its really worth the entry price if you are in Liverpool.

After the gallery we took a walk to see the three graces, took some nice photos. I managed to get a couple of Kath sunning herself, it made her laugh then we took a few silly pictures. We then strolled to Liverpool one. Its a really nice shopping centre I like the blend of open and green space, much preferable to the Trafford Centre.

Having browsed some shops we took a walk to the Cathedral via China Town. We were having trouble finding the Cathedral which is a bit crazy given its absolutely enormous. They were closing up as we walked in but we managed to have a quick look by heading in the exit ;) Its certainly a very impressive structure. Walking back via St James Gardens we stopped for a coffee where we were treated to a cheeky pigeon trying to steal food!

Beginning Polish

Kath (and her Polish friends) have been trying to teach me some Polish phrases.

Yes
Tak

No
Nie

GOOD DAY
dzień dobry

GOOD NIGHT
dobranoc

BEAUTIFUL KATH
piękna Kasia

HUG ME
przytul mnie

PLEASE
proszę

THANK YOU
dziękuję

WOMAN! beer!
kobieto piwo!

woman blowjob
KOBIETO LODA!

Skeletons

I inherited my home phone number from someone else and despite going onto telephone preference (and having the number for 8 months I regularly get calls for the previous owner. Today I got home to find not a message but a text message waiting, it read "Just to tell you Pat has died"! I would hate to think what sort of person decides text messages are the best way to break such bad news. I felt like calling back, but perhaps they are grieving so maybe best not.

Today hasn't been the best day for me, I am in the process of re-mortgaging and I got a call to inform me that my house was not valued high enough to make the 75% loan to value (which gets the best rate). So now I need to either find another £2850 (£2000 to make up the difference and £850 fee) or take a hit on the interest rate. On a positive moment it still means my house is worth a lot more than I paid for it, just not enough more.

FUTURE SOUL SONG

I have seen two films recently. First one was up in the air a film about corporate downsizer Ryan Bingham [George Clooney], a man who spends his entire life commuting between companies where his only job is to tell people they are no longer required. Enjoying the Freedom of his job Ryan has no ties to the real world, spending as little time as possible in his tiny lonely apartment. A new employee at the company, and his sisters weeding threatens to change him forever.

Kath and I watched the film simultaneously so we could talk about it later.  I really enjoyed the journey of Ryan allowing some people into his single serving life.

Last night I went to the Cinema with Martina to watch Inception. Harking back to the the age old idea idea that watching a film is like a shared dream Nolan attempts to pull the viewer deeper into a dream state. A slick film, delving deep into our ideas of reality. At the end of the 90s there were a number of films along these lines including the Matrix, Existenz Dark City and the 13th Floor. Inception adds a new twist in that Dom Cobb [Leonardo DiCaprio] is a memory thief, creating dream spaces in order to enter targets minds and steal they memories. Sort of like Johnny Mnemonic who actually joins into the memory stream.

Martina made an excellent point that Nolan is a very literal director. A lot of the dialogue exists seemingly to explain to the viewer exactly what is happening. I felt that Ariadne character seems to exist as a foil to allow Cobb to explain himself. The use of the elevator where Cobb's secrets were stored in the basement was also a bit predictable. Actually I found it very hard to hear the dialogue because the pounding oppressive music. I found that the visuals were stunning, the action sequences impeccably complex and I walked out of the cinema with a head full of questions about the film.

Post 1000

I have been slightly intimidated by this post, one thousand times I have sat tapping away on my computer thinking about life, love, the future and the past. I dont think I have ever put so much effort over such a long period into anything else. Starting with my journal on Slashdot in 2002 then moving to blogger it marks 9 years of writing.

This blog charts some biggest highs, crashing back to earth, late night drunken rants. At times I have written things that have literally caused relationships to break down, and strained friendships to breaking point. You might ask why carry on with something that can cause so much pain. I suppose the answer is somewhere in between the catharsis I get from the release of putting my thoughts on paper and the ego trip of publishing something, even if it is only a blog.

Next week Kath is arriving for two weeks. I cannot wait to see her again, we are going to Wales for a few days to get away from it all. I will be amazing to spend time together, its a very difficult time we spend apart. Using phone calls and skype to bridge the gap is good, but nothing like the real thing.

Spotify lands on Linux | News | PC Pro

Spotify lands on Linux | News | PC Pro

C.R.E.A.M

I needed to get a webpage to focus on the first field, without knowing what the first field would be, I found this website. It neatly shows how to focus on the first field in a form using a simple piece of JQuery, awesome!

Crimewave

Talking of Fightclub there was an interesting article in the Independent. Starting out as a rebuttal that men are a dying species Christina Patterson goes on to describe a "whole sub-species of men that nobody wants". I wonder if they would make good space monkeys?

France 24 Mistake

France 24 Breaking news, actually Netherlands secured a spot in the 2010 World Cup final with a 3-2 victory over Uruguay not Spain, wonder what match the reporter was watching?

Flashback

Yesterday morning when I arrived at work there were some guys putting up new sign-age on the an empty unit in the paddock. When I left the office to go home there was a film crew outside filming the unit. I assumed that it was for some sort of advertising. This morning however the unit is once again empty, the only signs of its use were part of a logo sill taped over one of the signs. I wonder what it was filmed for?

I have been reading the novel Fight Club Having loved the film I finally thought I would get around to reading the book, only 11 years on :D In many ways I am disappointed by the book. The film basically distilled the ideas presented by the book, taking some of the best lines of dialogue and the main scenes. However the two play out in very different ways, in the book the narrator is far more involved in the various acts of Project Mayhem which I think lessen the eventual realisation the he is in fact the same person as Tyler Durden.


Also of note, check out the different packaging for the versions of the film. the original DVD features both Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, though Nortan is very much in the background. Whereas the updated Blue Ray release features only Edward Norton.

Breeze

Last week was unusually hectic work wise so I had a little bit of a chill out over the weekend. Starting Friday night Phil came round, and we played some Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2. I was actually hopeless but we managed to get a few promotions.

Saturday I got out in the garden, cut down a couple of trees and removed some of the vegetation at the back of the garden. I filled my green bin and had a boot load for the tip. Still load to do though. In the evening I headed round to Bruce's for a BBQ. After which we watched a couple of films, an older one rise of the footsoldier. It is a kind of strange film which follows the life of East end football hooligan type Carlton Leech, then becomes a who dunnit of the gangland execution of Pat Tate, Tony Tucker. After that we watched Harry Brown, another British film about crime. Michael Caine plays a retired marine who goes on a train of retribution following the death of his wife and violent murder of his only remaining friend. I found it very similar to Clint Eastwood's Grand Torino, only in the Eastwood film the conclusion is more satisfying, and I would almost say less Hollywood than Harry Brown.

Sunday I went to help Jo and Holly on the allotment. A couple of hours of weeding left me feeling tired and covered in cuts from brambles. It was quite good fun though, and by the time I left you could really appreciate the difference in the vegetation. Lots less weeds around the trees. Holly suggested going for aday out while Kath is over, which hopefully we can arrange, maybe a day out in Castleton if the weather holds.

I went for a swim then chatted to Kath for a for hours before bed. We are both excited that she will soon be here again.

10 Years of .Net

Sometimes news announcements make me feel old, I still think of .net as shiny and new, but its now been around for 10 years!

Rest my chemistry

I have worked on and looked after systems for over a decade, in that time I have seen many security breaches. They have ranged from serious taking out an entire school network for a couple of days, to defacement on a webpage. Each time different factors took their toll.

The most recent attack was against the lan party website. A vulnerability in the content management system E107 allowed an attacker to upload a script file to my site. A file "fwriteq.php" a modified version of a php example file. When a remote attack to request the page using a specific URL the page outputted a huge amount of junk traffic towards an IP address given in the request string.

The weird thing about it was that it created UDP datagrams. In response I cleaned up the site and altered the firewall to block outgoing traffic of type UDP on port 80 as this is invariably junk.

I went through the logs and found the command and control IP which were sending in the requests for traffic and then emailed the abuse contact. BT owned 2 of them and I received no response (another reason not to recommend them). One of them was a linode box, they replied and asked for more details which I sent on to them.

One Day

It has been a very tiring weekend. The weather was phenomenal, warm sunny and dry. Saturday I had a job to do, the partition fence is mostly rotten. Speaking to my neighbours they offered to split the cost if I would go and get the panels. 6'x5' Fence panels wont fit into a Ford Focus, fortunately I know a man with a van, Nick. He took me in the week to Stax where the cheapest panels cost £15 + Vat. There were pre treated but in a very light stain, so I decided to coat them in Cuprinol Shed & Fence Preserver in Acorn Brown. I spent the morning painting the panels the plan being for my dad to help me slot them into place. This should have been easy at the [concrete] fence posts were a standard width. Unfortunately one of the posts has moved a little so the first panel I tried to place didn't fit and I ended up scratching my leg on a rose while trying to position it. We slotted in the other panels and tried in vane to move the concrete post, I tried pushing, hitting it the a hammer but it was solid.

In the end after many hours I called Nick and once again he came and helped me out. He sawed 15mm off the edge, no mean feet given the amount of wood at the edge. It was a bit tight but we manhandled it into place, hurrah!
As it was getting late I invited Nick to share a dinner of stir fry. We sat in the garden enjoying the evening air chatting about life, enjoying a beer.

Sunday I invited my parents and Grandma around for a barbecue. Before they arrived I had to do some work though releasing some new software for the website. It took the majority of the morning, I had just enough time to quickly hoover and start preparing for my parents. I prepared a salad with rocket, pepper and tomato. Then grilled some burgers, chicken and sausage on the barbecue. It was all very tasty, after the food my gran did he usual trick of taking over the TV. So songs of praise won out against the England match. Probably best given the drubbing they received.

Mum and I played with Cocoa, brushing out her knots. I don't think she knew what to do with herself in the heat.

In the evening I went for a swim to cool down, then watched the first episode of the new Top Gear. Then I finished off the go live following the results of testing.

I went to bed feeling tired, but took the receiver and talked to Kath. Not quite the same as falling asleep together, but lovely to hear her voice before falling asleep.

Problem with Cisco Connect

I had difficult connecting to a site using Windows VPN on a machine which also had  the Cisco VPN Client. They wouldn't play ball together at all. I had been connecting by going into Windows Service manager and stopping the "Cisco Systems, Inc. VPN Service" this enabled me to connect to my Windows site. I finally stumbled upon the answer! Right click on the Cisco client in the windows task bar and disable the option "Stateful Firewall Always on". After doing so I can be connected to both either VPN (or even both at the same time).

X-rayted pin-up calendar

Saw this on The Register quite amazing lengths to go for advertising I hope it wasn't all one model getting zapped.