If it seems like I haven’t posted anything here in a very long time, then that’d be a fair assessment.  There’s no real excuse, just a bunch of little things have gotten in the way.  So, instead of a single theme for this post, there’s going to be a bunch of them.  The biggest news at the moment, apart from the financial crisis in the US is of course the death of Rick Wright.  If you don’t know who that is, then shame on you.  Rick Wright was the keyboardist for Pink Floyd, and responsible in a very large part for their unique sound.  He died on Tuesday after a brief fight with cancer.  There have been many things said about his untimely death around the world and the web, and I don’t feel eloquent enough to add anything new.  Suffice to say that his musical brilliance will be missed dearly.

I had to re-install Windows on my laptop last week.  Vista was getting a little slow as a result of all the crap I had installed on it. So I backed up the last of the bits and formatted it a couple of days ago.  Everything is all back up now, though I still need to install some minor apps.  I posted a few weeks ago about my search for a new password(s) and I think I have a viable solution.  There’s an open source app called KeyPass Password Safe that manages passwords, and also has a fairly comprehensive password generator built into it.  It allows me to generate very random passwords with as many characters as I like, in addition to specifying the characters that can be used.  So, I could generate one with upper and lower case letters, and then another which is the same but with added symbols or extended ANSI characters. They’d look like dkBaQ3iDwAlAKnmqV5Df, or 0h-y_PiWVaeKn3H3LTkO or even 5^Zl-uexa*\]YaD:jKFJ)"U%F.Y(7+bE$nxs<zN".  This makes it very useful for web stuff, as there are so many different combinations of what can and can’t be used on different sites.  Portability is something I’m still working though.  For now, I have the app installed on two PCs and simply synchronise the databases if I make a change.  However, there’s an option to synchronise over the web which might be a good idea.  The program will also run from a USB key, so it is portable.  Nicely enough, there source is completely open, so the trust issues inherent to software like this don’t exist should you decide to crack open the code.   Although it is a Windows program, there’s a Mac port, and if you have Mono installed it seems to mostly work on Linux.

There are a bunch of new builds of the Windows Live apps were released today into open beta testing.  I haven’t done much with them so far, but it should be noted that the latest build of Windows Live Writer doesn’t work with BlogEngine.Net.  I’ve mailed someone about it and been told that there’s a hot fix in the pipeline for BL.E users.  Very unfortunately the crash occurs when trying to detect the style of the blog, so you never actually get a chance to get in and create a post with it.  I’ll update more when my contact in Microsoft gets back to me. I had some nice screenshots to go along with this post, but of course I can’t actually use Windows Live Writer to compose in so they had to be removed.  The alternative would be to hand-resize the images and then manually upload them.  Damn this program makes blogging too damn easy.

My sister arrives here in a couple of days.  We had a friend from London over to stay last weekend too, so everything is a little chaotic at the moment.   Emma is going to be here for the beginning of the Oktoberfest, though I'm still not sure if we can get in anywhere.  We may have to take her there during the day and sit outside the tents if things keep on going as they are right now.  It seems that you have to book tickets for Oktoberfest well over a year in advence. To add a whole bunch of interestingness to the mix I have an interview tomorrow (now today) for a job that appears to be perfect.  Its a combination of web development, product management and internal marketing all rolled into one package called “Senior Web Architect”, and the more I think about it, the more I want it.  It has all of the functions I’m looking for in an “ideal” job – though of course I have no idea how the paper description would actually relate to the real job.  I guess I’ll find out tomorrow eh?

We’re back, and I should have updated here earlier, but everything has been a little chaotic over the last week.  Ireland was brilliant, of course.  Although we spent most of the long weekend in Trim, we got out to Dublin on the second day.  There we had lunch with Trev in a nice organic restaurant, before heading south to Rathfarnham to meet up with Max and Kate.  We discussed the possibility of all of them coming to stay (separately), and once again discussed Trev getting a blog established.  Trev, if you’re reading this, set the damn thing up.  Once that is done I can start working on John (unless he has a blog I don’t know about?)  We had missed Max coming to Bochum earlier in the week, but in fairness it is a fairly long distance from here.

Anyway, there was a big party for my Dad’s birthday on Saturday night.  It was much better than I had expected.  All of my parent’s siblings were there for the first time in many years.  I have some photos of my Dad and all his brothers and sister together which is pretty wonderful as one of them lives in the UK and doesn’t get over to Ireland that much.  I don’t think they’ve all been in the same room in many years, possibly going back to when my grandmother died which would have been around 1995. So we had them all line up together and got some decent photographs, from a bunch of different cameras.  I’m going to sift through them (I took a lot!) and see if there’s one that needs to be printed and framed… they’re that kind of special. Most of my cousins weren’t there, so it was a bit quieter than the usual family parties we have in Trim.  However, one of them was, and all I can say is “holy shit!” – when did he go from being the small child I used to know to being a teenager who was still a bit hungover from the night before?!!!  Anyway, it was a great party, and a great weekend.  We were shagged after it – maybe even a little jet-lagged!  That’s what you get when you go to bed repeatedly at 4am.

While we were over, I tried Tayto crisps again.  I had gone off them over the duration of my time in London, and developed a taste for Walker’s Ready Salted.  However it all came back to me this weekend.  I think I munched a couple of packets of Tayto Cheese & Onion in a row, all wrapped in some Brennan’s Bread.  Fucking awesome!  Have to take a trip to the Irish shop here that supposedly sells them, and soon.

I had been looking for a nice pair of sun-glasses recently.  The lens needed to be decent enough to block the sun, but also not too dark that they hampered my vision as I would use them for driving.   That’s the easy part.  The frames were the difficult thing really.  The size of my head means I would need relatively small  frame, and they needed to be strong but light enough not to hurt my nose.  I had tried some Oakley Whiskers on in the airport on the way to Sweden and found them really comfortable as well as looking good on my face.  They were however about €250, which made them very expensive for a pair of sunglasses that Anna kept telling me I’d lose.  Imagine my surprise when I found them for less than half that price in Dublin airport of all places!  So I bought them on the spot.  Obligatory cool photo on the right…

This brings me nicely onto the new camera I picked up.  I had been thinking about getting a point & click digital for some time now, mainly because my SLR is just too bulky to carry around in my pocket all the time.  So we got a 7.1 megapixel Sony which is actually very convenient for us as we have Sony laptops.  The memory cards it uses are obviously Sony Memory Sticks, for which we have native support on our laptops.  That makes getting the images from the camera to the machine quick and easy for us.  For example, I took the photo of my in the new sunglasses about five minutes ago, which would have been possible but problematic with my Canon.  Oh and I can do things like this on the camera (which has a large touch screen on the back).

You might not be able to see it in these photos, but half my face is anaesthetised as I was at the dentist to have a filling in my rearmost right lower tooth.  I’m starting to get the feeling back now, but its a damn uncomfortable feeling, and I can’t eat or speak much because I don’t want to bite off a piece of my cheek.

So, what else?  Oh yes, we bought a bed settee for the office / spare room, so all are welcome to come and stay at any time (with forewarning of course).  Not that you weren’t welcome before, but as we only had an inflatable bed it might have been a little less comfortable than one might want.  Emma is coming to stay next month, and potentially the other Emma and Helgi later in the year.  The invitation is open to you too.

Oh, my laptop was overheating lately.  The USB port on the right also stopped working on me, so I opened a service ticket with Sony, figuring that I might have to send it back again.  The nice techs there recommended I blow it all out and check if the fan was running correctly which I did and I’m ashamed to say it worked.  If this were a desktop I wouldn’t have thought twice about taking it apart to look for overheating problems, but laptops are closed magic to me.  Typically they’re “warranty void if opened” closed magic too, so I don’t have too much experience working inside of them.  Overheating due to dust seems to be a perpetual problem for my equipment.  Though I have to say its a lot less dusty here than it was in Stockwell.  So, if that wasn’t bad enough, the main hard disk in my desktop died the day before yesterday too.  It is fully covered under warranty, and winging its merry way back to the factory as we speak, but a fucking annoying thing to happen with a very modern disk. This is the second “modern” Western Digital disk I have had die on my in recent years.  I have a 750GB Samsung unit that may work a little better so it has moved to being the primary drive in that machine.  If nothing else, I think its faster than the WD unit. 

The process of going through this blog and re-tagging / categorising every post is a long and relatively boring one.  However, some interesting posts have come back to me.  One of them refers to a post I made on May 21st 2002 about blogging at work. Another is about being demoted the same week, and a bunch of others all grouped in the same month.  That period in my professional life was a time of great change and stress.

My entire team had been transitioned into another department and we were very fucking annoyed about it for many reasons.  We felt that we were coming from a different culture into something more stifling than we had previously experienced, and we didn't like it.  I was ostensibly the team manager, although I think there wasn't much management needed with the guys I had working with me.  We were a very hard-working bunch of guys, and all seriously good at what we did.  Consequently we liked to play hard as well as working hard.  It was our way of letting off steam.  Our work culture was very stressful, and conducive to burning people out, and we really needed an outlet valve.

The department we moved into wasn't like that.  They weren't typically under the kind of pressure we experienced in our team.  Part of the reason for this is that we were working to schedules made by our parent company in the US, and they had the luxury(?) of making their own.  So, while there was a general bad feeling on our new floor, we felt particularly abused because of the change in circumstances forced upon us.  I know I thought some pretty awful things about my manager at that point.  With hindsight, I regret those and am glad I never actually said anything to him.  It would have spoiled what eventually became a pleasant relationship with a very interesting guy.  Anyway, at the time I got seriously disillusioned about my job, and the company I was working for. I stage-managed the creation of a new position for myself in May 2003 and deserted my team.

I just wanted to say I'm sorry.  I suspect at the time you all thought I was maybe a bit fucking selfish to leave you all in the position you were, and I wholeheartedly apologise for that.  We have all moved on to better things (except you Sparky, get your arse in gear!) and have all kept in touch over the years, so I don't think any permanent damage was done. However I don't ever remember asking you all how my leaving affected you.  I hope that you don't think I wasn't thinking of you all, for it simply isn't true.  I hope you can understand why I had to leave.  I had to get out of Technology before I ended up coming in one day and going postal.  That wouldn't have done any of us any good.

One more thing... you absolutely should take the photos Dave.  The reason the Killing Fields are still around and have not been built on is that we need to remember just how fucked up mankind can get.  We need to remember so we won't allow it to ever happen again.  Take the photos, make them good ones, and never forget.

An old friend and colleague from the AOL days has started up a new blog. James is the guy who used to write those fantastic interactive CDs we did from time to time. He's started a blog in the last few days, and is going to place code snippets there from time to time.  The first post is up now...

How to use Ampersands in Actionscript loadVariables function...

Hey Dave, I have no idea if you've ever played it, but I want to share with you something that has kept me going through many many nights over the last... erm... twenty years.  Its a card game called Shithead (I've heard Ozzies call it President though I've just Googled and found something completely different.  Shithead Googles with the wrong rules too.*) and its one of the top three or four games I've ever played.  It goes like this.

Two to many players can play. You need two decks, from which jokers must be stripped. Shuffle the decks together.  Dealer deals clockwise : four cards face down which players cannot look at, then four cards face up for everyone, and then another four cards face down for all, and one card in the middle which stares the discard pile.  You are allowed to pick up and sort the eight cards you have access to.  You can sort the cards and place your top four cards face UP on the four cards you have face down.

The order of play is to lay a suitable card or cards to the discard pile and then pick up from the deck.  You must hold at least four cards in your hand where possible.  You must play higher or equal to the card last played except on a seven (you must play seven or lower on a seven).  Ace is the highest, two is a wildcard which can play on and be played on by anything, and ten reverses the order of play.  You can play multiples of cards up to a maximum of four on the discard pile.  When four of the same cards have been played, then they and the rest of the discard pile are put away for the duration of the game.  The person who puts away the discard pile with "four of those" gets to play again, after picking up if necessary. If you are unable to match or beat the last card played, then you have to pick up ALL the cards on the discard pile.

Once the last card is played from your hand, you can play your face up cards in any order you like.  Once they are gone, you are forced to play your cafe down cards blind. The one who is left with cards remaining is the Shithead, and can sometimes be required to forfeit something (go make the coffee etc).

* If you google Shithead there are a myriad of variations on the net.  There seems to be a very popular variation with three cards played at the start and requiring only one deck of cards.  It might be worthwhile looking into that too. Enjoy :-)

Today, Deutsche Bahn was on strike.  The trains were all delayed and running on alternate schedules.  They still ran very regularly though, and the schedules for each affected line were posted in an excel spreadsheet on their web site.  Awesome doesn't even begin to describe how cool it was to see it all in action.  Back in London, if there was a tube strike then we would have to use alternative methods to get somewhere because the trains would run irregularly and infrequently.  Today the service was depleted by 50%, but they still ran on schedule.  The schedules were posted to the minute, and the trains probably stuck to them too.  I didn't find out though, wasn't on the train today. 
We met Sylvia and Al on Wednesday - which was Re-Unification day in Germany.  Its the public holiday that celebrates the day that the wall came down and the East joined the West.  Actually, it may be more symbolic and not an arbitrary date at all, but I haven't done any research into it. Anyway, it was nice to see them after so long :-)

Last week was punctuated by two hangovers. Wednesday we went out to the Porterhouse for some leaving drinks, and for some reason I actually drank a lot of porter.  It was remarkably like real porter too; about halfway between Guinness and Murphys. It was very tasty, and of course very hangover inducing. If that wasn't enough, I seem to have been way more drunk than I expected or wanted to be on Friday night. Oh well. Then Saturday we were out for dinner with some friends, and there were coctails and beer. Luckily it wasn't enough to cause any harm so the night was nicely tame. Like I said though; a boozier week than usual, and hard on the body afterwards. Interestingly enough, I don't think I have ever had a hangover from German beer before, and I have several times been stewed on the stuff.

...so I read your blog.  If I didn't know better, I'd say you were having a mid life crisis.  But the subject is so limited in scope that I know that's not the case.  It seems like you're just fucked off with the culture you inhabit, and need a change.  I won't pretend to be able to offer you any advice, as the situation is completely specific to you, and your life / desires / beliefs etc.  Its an interesting situation to be in though, to go back and question the things you did when you were younger, and question the environment you inhabited.  Me, I'm not perceptive enough to be in a situation like that, I always take people at face value.  That has been my undoing in the past, and gotten me into more trouble than it was worth.  It took a bad split with an ex for me to get seriously introspective and start to question things.  That capability has gotten better, and worse over time, but I guess I'm just not the kind of guy to dwell on things.  That may be why I usually do so well in work, relationships and friendships - I don't question things that much.  Its not that I can't, just that I don't.
::sigh::  I hate Fridays, they drag on forever.