Random Quote:
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
—
The lesser spotted fantastic bank holiday weekend
Today was a good day. In fact the whole weekend’s been pretty darn good. Saturday I spent the day with my son at my parents house, copied some of my dad’s old cine film to dvd, copied it from there onto my PC, and started playing around with tidying it up. More on this in another post I think.
Yesterday I got out on the bike and rode 60 miles, up onto the hills, took some photos and rode all the way back again! Have a look here and here for a couple of pics. I also took a car for a test drive, as my car has now done 107,000 miles and I think it’s time I changed it before it fall apart. Again, more about this in a future post.
And then today my ex and I took our son for a day trip to Morecambe, where we played on the beach, soaked up the sun, and ate far too much junk food. Take a look ay my favourite pic of the day.
And to cap it all, the sun shone. Sheer perfection, couldn’t have wished for anything better.
Test of embedded video on youtube
Ok, so it may not be so impressive to some, but this is the first time I’ve done this!
This is a short clip from a Super 8 cine film my dad shot on my first birthday, back in December 1967. I had hair on my head back then!
Oh, and don’t be thinking your speakers have broken… dad’s cine camera didn’t record sound 
If you don’t ask…
Posted by dan in Things that happened today on May 22nd, 2009
A friend of mine works in a petrol station, and at this station they also do maintenance and repair work on cars. Today, two of the mechanics took a car back to a client, who was out of the house when they arrived. They left the car where they’d picked it up that morning, which was on the neighbour’s driveway. One of the mechanics (we’ll call him “Bill”) knew it was the neighbour’s house, the other one (we’ll call him “John” for the sake of it) didn’t. So Bill lets John post the keys through the neighbour’s letterbox before piping up “Hey, this isn’t the guy’s house, he lives next door.” Bill’s good like that, he likes to see other people cock things up.
Let’s skip forward a couple of hours. The client calls in to the garage (I’m not sure how he got there, maybe a friend gave him a lift). “Is my car ready?” he asked. “Sure is,” said “George”, the boss, “and it’s back at home waiting for you.” So off the guy goes and half an hour later there’s a phone call to the garage.
“Where are the keys?”
“Through the letterbox.”
“Which letterbox? Mine or the house you left it outside?”
“The one we left it at.”
“That’s my neighbour’s house, she’s away in China for three weeks. I need my car keys.”
Bill and George then go off to the neighbour’s house, where George makes Bill dangle a magnet through the letterbox on a piece of string to try and get the keys back. The more they try, the more they don’t get the keys. The client is going mad, he’s off on holiday himself in a few days and needs to pack his family and luggage in the car to drive to the airport 250 miles away.
After an hour, the neighbour’s neighbour, a little old lady, comes out. “I’ve been watching you for a while, trying to work out if you’re up to no good or not. You don’t look like burglars, what’s going on?” she asks.
“We posted this guy’s car keys through the wrong letterbox by mistake.”
“Oh,” she says. She pauses, and then remembers something. “She left me with a spare key to the house. Shall I go and get it for you?”
Well, duh!
You couldn’t make it up
Posted by dan in found while surfing, just me wittering on May 20th, 2009
I saw a blog entry this morning listing “50 free social media icon sets for your blog” – yep, another list site. However, I’m not going to go on about that again. One of the comments tickled my funny bone though, it said:
“Way too many choices! I love it! No, I hate it! No, I am in a state of rupture and do not know where to start…”
Ok, so I know this guy’s first language may not be English, but the idea of something putting you in “a state of rupture” is an intriguing one! Hope there was someone else around to clear up the mess afterwards.
P.S. I also like the way he said there were way too many choices What’s wrong with making a top 10 list and then just putting text links to the other sites?
Motorbikin’ (part 2)
Posted by dan in just me wittering on May 19th, 2009
Following up from an earlier post, I actually did something about this last year. My flatmate wanted to learn how to ride a bike, and she rekindled my interest in the subject. Fuel prices were astronomical back then, and the thought of getting 100mpg out of my chosen mode of transport was very appealing indeed!
To cut a long story short, she passed her CBT last September and bought a Honda CG125. She went out on it a few times, but unfortunately she felt very exposed on the bike and not at all safe. I tried to reassure her, telling her that she just needed more practice, more experience on being out on the road. She hadn’t passed her driving test at this point, so she wasn’t all that used to being out in traffic.
After she passed her CBT I booked myself in for one. A couple of attempts later, and I managed to get my certificate in October. Just a case of saving up for a bike now!
Her bike sat in the shed all winter. She took it out once every few weeks to turn the engine over, but never rode it. When I got round to sorting out my finances she offered to sell me the bike, saying that she was gutted about how she felt when out on the road, and that she’d been looking forward to it so much, but she was just terrified of having an accident while out and about.
I bought the bike off her in February, and absolutely love it. I never thought I’d enjoy it as much as I do, and I go out on it as much as I can. Which, given the weather we have, isn’t very often really… once or twice a week if I’m lucky!
My flatmate still hasn’t passed her driving test, so I’m stuck giving her a lift to and from work each day, which means I can’t use the bike for commuting just yet. I do, however, ride it for fun, and take my camera with me whereever I go. Getting out onto the hills and taking photographs of the landscapes is now my reason for getting out of bed at the weekends!
List sites
Posted by dan in ranting and raving on May 18th, 2009
Blogging is the new breathing. Everyone’s doing it. Unless that’s tweeting, or tumblring, or flickring, or facebooking, or whatever the fad is this week. But let’s concentrate on blogging for a moment. Blogging has made it so easy for anyone to set up a site, install a template, and post a few articles, that there’s now so much information out there you can’t see the wood for the trees. The diamonds are getting lost in a sea of average (and often below-average) crap.
And so, the “list” site was born. The “we filter the rubbish so you don’t have to” site. The site that seems to do nothing other than collate other people’s posts and then try to claim they’re doing us a favour by doing so. For example, if you see a headline like 100 Amazing How-To Sites to Teach Yourself Anything, you might think that could be a really useful list. Hey, I could learn anything I want, and I don’t have to search the web to find out how to do it. These people have done it for me. Ok, so now take a look at the site itself.
There. Learned anything? If you’re like me, the only thing you’ll have learned is that you don’t have time to look at each and every one of the sites listed to find out if they’ve got anything there that you might want to learn. The point is, google is so much better at pointing us in the right direction than “list” sites like this. If I want to learn how to tie a windsor knot, or how to get red wine stains off the pet dog, I ask google, and sooner or later I’ll find a tutorial or video showing me what I want to know. Ok, maybe not so much in the second example, but you know what I mean.
Let’s look at another “list” entry – this time it’s 100 Tips to Be a Smarter, Better Twitterer. I’m going to rant and rave about twitter in another post, but for now I’ll just say that this is another list that’s way too long and gives you far too much information all in one go. On top of that, nothing mentioned in the list is unique content, it’s all links to tips written by other people. So, what’s the point?
Then we get to 9 tips for Brand Building With Web Design. Why only nine? Can’t he find another one and make it a top ten?
Web Design Ideas Huge List Of 395+ Web Design Resources goes completely the other way. Far too many resources, even the number 365 in the heading is enough to keep me from clicking on it. And when we do click, what do we find? Links to 10 other “list” sites, with no mention of whether they are any good or not, or whether they offer anything useful to the dear reader. This strikes me as being an entry “just for the sake of posting something”.
Where did I find these links? I looked at the rss feed for http://doggdot.us, and they were all there this morning. This is just what’s come up today, folks. I spent all of 30 seconds gathering these links, so don’t be thinking that list sites are a niche thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more list sites out there than content sites.
And why are there so many list sites out there? Because you can make money from blogging, that’s why. Doesn’t matter if you have original content or not, you can still make money out of it. These sites are the second hand car dealers of the net. Actually, that’s a bit unfair. With a second-hand car dealer at least you know what you’re going to get. When you first come across one of these sites you might be forgiven for thinking you’re getting some useful information.
Caveat Emptor
Posted by dan in found while surfing, just me wittering on February 22nd, 2008
I’ve just come across a site called exelib, and on the surface it appears to be quite useful. It tells you what some of the programs Windows runs behind the scenes on your computer actually do. However, there is a page there which mentions a program called isass.exe. It says this is a keylogger program installed by a virus/trojan, and that may well be the case. It then says “hey look, we have a program that will get rid of this program for you – click here to find out more.”
What’s dangerous about this is that there’s actually a perfectly harmless program that’s part of the Windows installation, called lsass.exe (that’s an L at the beginning there). A lot of people would open up task manager, see lsass running, and think it’s Isass (with a capital i). They think they’re infected, and then go and download a “protection tool” that could well cause more harm than it claims to fix.
As ever, keep your wits about you, and research a problem before downloading anything that claims to fix problems on your PC.
For more accurate information about lsass, look at the Wikipedia Entry
Knowing
Posted by dan in State of Mind on October 29th, 2007
Some people spend their whole lives not knowing what they want. Some people know exactly what they want and can’t find it.
I don’t know which is worse….
-
Photo Gallery
