Craig K

A time for change (US style) Aug 29, 2008 No Comments

I've just been watching the speech by Barack Obama as he officially accepted the candidacy for the democratic party in the US.

The American presidential election is something that is very important for not just America, but the world as a whole. Based simply on the fact that Barack Obama wasn't George Bush I would have been more than happy to see him go into power. Having seen that speech and combined that with everything else I have seen him say, I want him to be president for his policies, his attitude and his down to earth commitment for change.

America, please don't screw up this time, this is the chance the rest of the world wants you to take.

Speed distractions Aug 25, 2008 No Comments

I really don't understand the point behind speed cameras. You see, they put them at junctions and accident blackspots etc. So these are places where they had lots of accidents in the past before they put a camera up. Then, in their infinite wisdom they put up a speed camera. Now most people don't really want to get caught for speeding (or anything for that mater) and as we all tend to let our speed creep as we have other things to worry about we all almost always focus intently on our speed as we come up to cameras. So now we have a dangerous place with everyone focusing on their speed and specifically their speedometers. Now burying your head in the dash strikes me as a very good way to well, err, bury your head in the dash. Now the most odd part is the government admit, it really doesn't make much money from the things. It's like those thing that tell you your speed. As soon as they flash up "SLOW DOWN" people do... BY JABBING THE BREAKS!

Now I will admit, I have been caught speeding in the past by a camera. I can't complain I was caught, I was going over the limit and I cant make too much excuses for it, however I can say one thing. I was caught because I was too busy focusing on traffic. Had I noticed the camera then that concentration would have no doubt shifted to the camera.

Death of CD's Aug 23, 2008 No Comments

Got to love this comic:

How can this be true? Aug 22, 2008 No Comments

I have just realised I have waaaaaay too many clothes. How can this be even remotely possible? For starters, I'm male so clearly I don't need many, secondly, it's not like I have some form of exciting dress sense or any grasp of style. I have a wardrobe in my parents house and my room in Brighton. The one in Horsham contains 38 hanging items, plus another 30ish T-shirts, 5 pairs of shorts, 7 or 8 trousers. The one in Brighton to be fair is pretty empty, but still, how has this all crept up on me?

I guess this is what happens when you have a work wardrobe and a non-work/uni wardrobe. They have very clear distinction and yet both have and will continue to take up vast amounts of my time. I will always change after work into anything else and I will never start wearing a shirt at the weekend (if I start wearing shirts to church on a Sunday morning you have my permission to shoot me).

Hardware oddity No.1 Aug 21, 2008 No Comments

So, the family file storage server died a month ago or so.

This is a machine that I built for my family which lives in the loft as an always on file server and backup device. It's main purpose is to provide spill off room for the media centre (as that chews through scary disk space). It's a simple old machine with a CD drive, a small disk for the OS plus two large drives for the data in a RAID 1 setup. It runs FreeNAS as it's OS.

So about a month ago my dad told me the machine wasn't appearing on the network anymore, so I just told him to turn it off. Today I finally got round to working out what was up. At first I thought the primary disk had failed given the BIOS said that. Who would have though, an error message that made sense and was right... nah, don't be silly. So I tried to put a Knoppix CD to check the data was still there. CD tray would not open. I then check the BIOS again, the CD drive wasn't there. So, unplug the CD drive and the machine boots as per normal.

So, the lesson for today, a CD/DVD drive can actually break in such a way that even while being marked at the slave device on the channel and with other set as master, can still knock out the whole channel so the BIOS things primary disk fail.

Annoying but solved.

Facebook changes Aug 19, 2008 No Comments

Well that was a lot of work!

OK, so they have changed the Facebook interface. I for one welcome it, its very nice and removes a lot of the clutter for me. However, one of the changes I don't like is the removal of the friends statuses on the right. I used this as a quick way to see what my friends are upto and how their feeling etc.

So, Vista sidebar for the win. I downloaded an RSS feed reader sidebar gadget (this one in fact) and had a look. It is a nice gadget, lots of features. One thing that did bug me was it wanted to scroll all the time. This is a bit annoying, so, coding skills for the win, I took that feature out and while I was there added a pretty Facebook logo to each status to replace the RSS one that was there.

I love it when you can just change the applications to suit your own needs!

Yey internets Jul 24, 2008 No Comments

You have to love the Internet when it gives you such joys as ZombieHarmony. This is a dating site for the poor left out zombies of this world. The tag line of "Because the apocalypse doesn't have to be lonely" is just inspired.

Japan - The trip that wasn't Jul 6, 2008 1 Comment

OK, so this whole going to Japan thing failed badly. Basically, our flights went via Rome. My Brother came off the (late) first flight and decided he really really didn't want to go on a flight to Japan. To be fair the flight over wasn't great, one of my worst. So after a few panic calls home etc he made the final call he wasn't going. So clearly I wasn't either. So I had the bag pulled from the flight and we had to work out how to get home. I got the return tickets converted into return on the next flight home we could ones. Unfortunately it was 10pm at this point and the next flight was at 8pm the next day.

Observations from 24hours in an Italian airport:

• People have enough bags with them to move house. I don't understand how almost everyone has 3 HUGE bags... They must all be really really well connected drug smugglers.


• They make you go through security to go airside when you change flights. Last I looked you were airside when you get off the plane. I think it's all part of a cunning plan to steal yet more of your drinks based on the fact that I didn't care enough to put up a fight for then.


• VISA cards work sporadically at best. About 1 in 10.


• Everyone speaks about enough English that you can get by with no Italian.


• There are very few British.


• There is only one shop that sells sandwiches and alike. The Italians tried to apply their love of long meals and good food to the airport. As one might have expected, it was destined to fail. Give me a WHSmiths sandwich any day.


• People just don't queue! God damn you people, do not try to queue jump me when I have had 3 hours sleep.


• There is simply nothing to do. You can pace the shops, you can browse the shops, but you will be left with nothing but clock-watching in an hour tops.


• Finding somewhere to sleep is hard. Most of the seats have immovable armrests. I call this one of the most stupid ideas ever! Especially given the number of people staying overnight.


• When you ask the guy in the café how long he is open and he says all night, alarm bells should go off in your head when bedding down near it.


• It's amazingly hot and stuffy in here all the time. This certainly does get annoying. Also, the cooler air moves round. Following it is impossible.


• Drinks are scarily expensive


• No-one sells sweets


• Free WiFi is nonexistent here too (so not just Gatwick) But the pay option is very good value, ‚¬15 for 5hours no bandwidth limit. However, the sign-up page is broken.


• Italian fast food that isn't pizza is foul. Not just tasteless, bland and pointless, but actually foul. McDonalds puts it to shame. This is not a good thing.


• They seem to have a fascination with having their bags "security wrapped" which means covering it in slightly tinted cellophane. At ‚¬8 a pop this is very expensive for something no-one cares about. Hell, my bag isn't even locked.


• People seem to have this stupid way of fanning themselves with their hands. It just plane doesn't work. I don't get why they keep doing it.


• Airside becomes a distant memory after the first few hours.


• The only currency exchange is airside.


• Digital cameras here really are quite good prices.


• They actually have bins here. As in actually inside the airport itself! This is something that needs sorting out in Heathrow. I couldn't find a single one in Terminal 2. I ended up using the "you can't have this bottle over 100ml, it might blow up" one at security on the way through. Not helpful.

I think it would be safe to say I'm fed up of this place. Another 3 and a half hours until we can finally check-in and get the excitement of going through security and then a whole new place to explore, wander round, grow tiered of.

At T-minus 6hours till leaving I have come to realise some people here are very trusting. Some guy came over, plugged in his phone next to me and then asked me in Italian if I spoke Italian. Now to me that seems a little silly, but guess you have to start somewhere... And it's not like I didn't understand. He then said in his best English, he was going to the bar, could I watch his phone. Clearly I either had that kind, caring, compassionate, trusting look, or I looked like I wasn't going anywhere fast. Anyway, he is gone and doesn't look like he will be coming back anytime soon. Meh.

T-minus 4hours 30. This place is driving me insane. I can't stand being stuck here. I'm trying not to clock watch but I can't help it. I don't get how people can make it through things like prison and being a long term hostage. An airport has reduced me to lifeless, bored and desperate for something new. How on earth can people get through years being in a mud hut. Bear in mind I have a laptop, phone, mp3 player and enough money. Perhaps this is more me than anything else. I know I have a very short attention span. I get bored easily and move on in my interests and focus as often as some people think. Apparently I am destined to have large boring open spaces as my weakness.

T-minus 4hours or something. Why aren't their plug sockets everywhere? This strikes me as strange if I'm ignoring the more blunt "insane", "stupid", "idiotic" and "useless". As far as I can tell, there is 1 for all the passengers. Well, to be fair it's a bank of 3, but the point remains. Since I've been here I've used it for my phone and laptop, there have been 3 more laptops and 5 or 6 phones. Clearly in this modern day and age when people normally carry at least one battery hungry device on them the transport industry needs to catch up. Some planes and some classes have them, but paying first class for a plug is a bit OOT. Long distance trains have them, that's a start. Had I remembered this for my trip down to Cornwall I would have just bought my laptop and a couple of DVD's with me. It's in the same vein as free WiFi. It should be deemed a basic service in our ever more connected world. As a side note, I've taken to writing in here and walks round the terminal to keep me sane.

OK, I'm now back in the UK having had a slightly interesting end to that joke of a trip. Basically, when I realized we needed to come back I went to the desk and asked them to do what they could. They printed my return ticks for a week and a bits time and changed them to the Friday. Due to a miss-understanding, bad hand-writing and someone on the desk not having their head screwed on correctly, I realized that our flight was in fact 35mins from then. At this point I did a lot of running and frantically checking in. Going through security is always going to be a joke, especially when you have a laptop, and large digital camera. We then ran through yet more terminal, onto a mono-rail, then through yet more terminal only to find the flight was delayed by half an hour or so. To be fair, probably because they had to put my bag on, but their fault, the check-in was still open.

Anyway, now home I've been fixing my blog, catching up on sleep and generally trying to do things...

That was an experiment I have no wish to repeat again anytime soon.

Waiting Jun 25, 2008 No Comments

I've been waiting at Paddington's underground station for over 5mins for a train and I'm already very adgitated. Not sure if this says more about what being back in London does to you or more about the normal service here... If these people hurry it up I might make the last but one train home and not be pinning all my hopes on the last.

In other news, mobile internet is a good way to pass 5+ hours on trains.

I just had to Jun 11, 2008 No Comments

I feel like a dirty person, I just used a read receipt in an e-mail. Please world, forgive me!