24.05.09
Posted in House
at 14:13
by Simon
Some garden (yard) progress this weekend - despite a week of sun, and then an entire weekend of rain and thunderstorms. We were almost thwarted by the landscaping company delivering 7 tonnes of the wrong kind of rock (4-8″ river cobble as opposed to 2″ decorative rock). They scooped it all away and delivered the right stuff in less than 24 hours, which was good. Here’s the wrong rock - click any of the pictures for larger versions:
Here is the right rock in place:
And here’s the border between the rock and rubber mulch:
This area currently only has a weeping crabapple - people have said “oh my god, what’s wrong with that tree?” many times! We’re going to cover it with rubber mulch for now to stop the weeds growing, but eventually this area will have a pool.
Finally, here’s the deck so far with Amber pulling weeds around it. I need to put the stairs on before I can finish the trim, which is a darker shade of composite wood (Trex).
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14.05.09
Posted in Music, Travel, Uncategorized
at 18:49
by Simon
Usually when we go away on holiday, something happens with either the server (power supply fails, Comcast decides to knock it off the Internet) or the security cameras (transmissions mysteriously stop, etc). This holiday was no exception. I noticed after we landed that there appeared to be a large piece of tumbleweed completely blocking the lens. I thought it might have been put there deliberately - and I was right.
I give you exhibit A:
It built a pretty good nest, but the camera mount couldn’t hold it up and eventually tilted downwards, at which point the bird gave up. There was a single blue egg inside, but sadly it never had a chance because there was a snow storm a couple of days after the bird finished the nest.
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05.03.09
Posted in Computer
at 16:29
by Simon
Is anyone else seeing a 5 second delay when they visit simonrules.com? I am, and indeed any site on my server. I don’t think it’s the DNS because one of my sites is using a different DNS provider. That leaves either my ISP (comcast) doing something weird with incoming requests, my router (which hasn’t changed) or my server (which hasn’t changed in a while either). Anyway, let me know…
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17.02.09
Posted in Computer
at 14:57
by Simon
We’ve finally been given permission at work to reformat our computers to use as Ubuntu workstations - yay! This is my final stage in my abandonment of Windows. Three years ago, I realised I was spending a good portion of my weekends and evenings fixing Windows because of stupid problems. I’d install something and I’d get an error every time I booted Windows (if it booted at all), or it would get horribly slow, or I had a USB device that would work on one port but not the others. The usual solution was to reformat if it would take less time than to fix the problem. My solution three years ago was to go to apple.com.
I still have an Acorn RiscPC 600 on my desk at work, and it still works. It was manufactured in 1994, which makes it 15 years old. At home I still have an Iyonix (same type of computer), which is now 6 years old and still working well. Neither machine has ever been wiped. My MacBook Pro has not had a software problem in 3 years.
Windows XP was almost good. Almost good in that it almost didn’t suck completely, but it still managed to do things magnificently wrong, such as regularly lose all its icons, open tooltips below windows and change the height of the locked taskbar.
I won’t miss Word 2003 and its hundreds of autocorrect options that are impossible to turn off completely. I won’t miss having to install a USB driver once for every USB port on the machine. I won’t miss critical security updates. I won’t miss Windows Search that can’t find files that are in the first directory it looks at. I won’t miss playing games - that’s what I got the PSTriple for.
Windows, you won’t be missed. As Lily Allen would say, “fuck you, fuck you very very much!”
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11.01.09
Posted in Science
at 16:53
by Simon
Slogans saying “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” have started appearing on London buses in response to a particular religious message that pointed readers to a website telling them they were going to have to endure torment in hell for all eternity.
As expected, the campaign has already drawn complaint from a religious group.
Now, a few things piss me off about the complaint. If it’s fair to have religious slogans on buses, then it’s also fair to have these atheist/agnostic ones. You could even argue that it’s fairer to have the atheist messages, since they are based in science. Put simply, if I told you that there was an invisible flying spaghetti monster that created the earth, you would have absolutely no way to disprove it. After all, non-believers cannot even see him. The lack of a way to disprove him simply means he has been designed to be impossible to disprove, not that he exists.
I hope when the complaint is brought to the Advertising Standards Agency, it is laughed at.
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11.12.08
Posted in Family, Fun, House
at 23:10
by Simon
Hooray for 8ft trees and LED lights! Happy Christmas!
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05.12.08
Posted in Science
at 13:17
by Simon
The BBC and other news sources are reporting on an initiative to start promoting atheism to counter similar public religious messages. They want to put signs on London buses telling people to enjoy their lives and stop worrying about nonsense questions. A fundraiser was started, and the aim was to collect £5500. As of the time of writing, £125,711.32 has been collected so I hope to see lots of these signs.
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Posted in Weird
at 13:15
by Simon
What was one of the biggest reasons I got rid of my Verizon phone? Aside from the sucky service and terrible battery life, it was because of poor customer service. Not only didn’t they care when I called customer service with my issues, but they were unwilling (or unable) to solve a basic problem for me: my phone couldn’t display dates in UK (dd-mm-yyyy) or ISO (yyyy-mm-dd) formats, and it couldn’t display times in 24 hour. I think it would take a programmer less than 15 minutes to add those as options for future phones. It still wouldn’t work outside the country, though.
I’ve noticed this kind of thing a few times. Today I had to enter some security answers for online credit card access, and a hell of a lot of the pre-defined questions that I have to pick from are solely geared around the USA.
“What high school did so-and-so attend?” - they don’t call it high school in England, but I’ll let it slide as it’s a translation issue.
“When is so-and-so’s birthday (MM/DD)?” - I am not sure why they even need to know the format, since it accepts any string input.
“What is the last name of your 1st grade teacher?” - I can’t remember that far back. Even so, they are not called grades in a lot of other countries, including the UK. Translation issue again, but who remembers that far back? For me, that was 1985!
“What was your favourite college year?” - Questions like these are really problematic to me. Not only are college and university two separate things in England (we have two years of college before we go to university), but asking me what my favourite year was may result in a different answer depending on my mood.
“What’s the name of your elementary school?” - I am still not certain what elementary school is.
“In which city did so-and-so get married?” - City? Many times I am asked what city I am from in England. Addresses don’t work that way in Europe; we don’t all live in or near a city.
“Who did you go to prom with?” - We don’t have prom in England. Oops.
“What state did you first visit (other than the one you were born in)?” - That’s a big assumption! I guess I can still answer this one…
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Posted in Weird
at 13:08
by Simon
I don’t have a photo of this to hand, but CU Boulder attach computer mice in some of their labs to the right side of each keyboard, leaving about 10 inches of cord free. Thanks, CU! You have access ramps for the disabled and want to increase the diversity of your students, but you don’t think about the 10% of your population that is left handed. I don’t know why I felt so mad at the time - I just went to a different lab to do my work. Perhaps it was because I really cannot use a computer as quickly with my right hand (almost, but not quite), and it doesn’t feel at all comfortable.
This brings me onto my next theory - the 50% skill theory. I believe that when we are all born, we each have 100% of skill to allocate between our hands for various sports (some athletes get more than 100%). Left handers get so confused with what to do - do I mirror what the instructor is doing or repeat exactly? As a result, our skill gets split more like 50/50 instead of, say, 80/20 in a regular person. We have equal skill in our hands but neither is particularly good. I have always found that I am terrible in any activity that involves throwing, catching or aiming, so maybe that’s why.
Another thing. When I was in school, we had left handed scissors. You know the type - the blades cross the opposite way. If they have moulded handles, they are moulded to fit the left hand rather than the right. I just cannot use left handed scissors. I hold right-handed scissors in my left hand, but my eye is trained to look at the “cutting” side of the scissors. If I pick up a left-handed pair, I look at the wrong side and my line goes wonky. The funny thing is that I remember when I was about 7, my school bought few left-handed scissors, and they would make me use them, since there were not enough right-handed ones to go around. As a result, my work turned out utterly crap.
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14.11.08
Posted in Photography, Weird
at 21:50
by Simon
Why is it necessary to bring down an entire site for hours every weekend to perform scheduled maintenance? I think all bank online account access sites do it, but I rarely ever see online shopping sites doing it. So, what’s the deal? I think it’s another case of unless you are parting with money, they don’t care. It’s pretty simple to switch over to a back-up server while you do an upgrade. Ever notice how you can get through to someone on a sales line quicker than you can get through to support?
Also: Circuit City officially suck. They are closing a local store and liquidating all merchandise. I went tonight and they have a sign saying “everything in store is on sale”. I asked a sales assistant, and they said it includes all display merchandise. I wanted to buy a Canon 40D, but they had none left, and wouldn’t sell me the display copy.
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