I'm not going to drag up what I wrote last night. Let me just say that out of everyone I know who I have asked the question "Aren't Russia marginally in the moral high ground on this one?", no-one has answered "no". There have been a majority of "yes's" and a handful of "don't knows". We do not have the monopoly on "right" -- in this case we're proving it beyond all reasonable doubt. All this grand-standing is doing no-one any favors. You cannot honestly expect Russia to give it a "Oh f***, what were we thinking? Soz guys. We'll be out by tomorrow morning." You're talking about a nation who are just as proud as the US or UK -- playing schoolboy diplomacy (sic) is an idiotic plan.
As I typed that I thought it would make a great crossword clue. No idea what the answer would be, but it would be good.
Macs do some very clever networky type things. My trusty Macbook is already wowing me with how easy it is to do various bits and bobs. I suppose that it helps that I'm a fairly competent UNIX hacker sysadmin and reasonably okay network hacker engineer. In fact I'm embarrassed (or maybe not so embarrassed) to say that my weakest techie area at the moment is Vista. I can find my way around it and use it but I wouldn't like to have to administrate a whole network the muck. The point is that Macs ship in a fairly good configuration out of the box. By that I mean tied down quite nicely. There's no apache started, no network daemons, nowt other than the plain old Windows SMB networking.
I started faffing around trying to find out where you enabled SSH access, apache, where to put certs etc. and quickly opened up just the ports I wanted on the Mac firewall. The Mac comes with a handy-dandy port checker which serves as a kind of poor man's pen-test. It's clever in that it somehow manages to report its local host name to the router so the router's internal DNS associates the DNS with the NAT'd address so the name of your machine can be used to look up the IP on your local network. This is not the way SMB works -- that broadcasts to all and sundry via a master SMB gubbins (I forget what they call it).
Anyway, I was quite chuffed -- I can do most things using the SMB sharing but there are occasions when you need to get your shell groove thang on the go so I stuck the Macbook in my DMZ at home, again with the ports tied to only those I am happy to open (call it belt and braces). I then got to thinking about the fact that the IP lease from my ISP gets renewed every 24 hours or so, so I'd not be able to get on to the Mac from the outside world were I to leave it at home. Enter DynDNS where you can assign a domain to a dynamic IP. Before I signed up for it (free for basic use), I had a quick think about how it worked. I quickly adopted the Vic Reeves school of thought which led to "How does it work? I don't know, but it does." I'll have a think about that in the next commercial break and I'm sure it will come to me. I think my problem is that I still regard DNS propagation as being a terminally slow process when in reality if you hit the tier-1 DNS sites, it shouldn't take the 24+ hours it used to take to propagate around t'interweb.
All in all, it's not rocket science. The beauty is that what would have taken you a good few days to firkle 10-15 years ago can be achieved in under an hour. Now that is progress. What will be even more progress is when your dad or grandma realize that you can do these things. It will be even more progress when they can do it themselves without having to know a damned thing about DNS, firewalls, TCP or anything of the sort. I suspect that may be a while in the coming but for now, we're not doing badly at all.
Update: I had a smoke after I had hit post and I am going to take back the opening sentence of that last paragraph. It is rocket science. If you think about what's really going on, it is mind-boggling. It is just rocket science for the masses.
Damn. I've just eaten probably half a metric ton of fish and chips and loved every last frickin' second of it. For reasons that baffle me, when I'm pre-occupied by things, I always hit the chippy. Fish and chips is nature's way of reminding you that it could be worse; you could be cooking. Foolishly, when confronted with the question as to what size portion of chips I would like, I ordered large. There is no just reason on this earth that I needed to eat that many chips in one sitting but I did anyway and I sit here typing with a clear conscience.
I've been bugged by worky things for the past couple of days. Indeed Grommage spent a whole cigarette saying that all was cool and I should not fret the small stuff in a very mother-hen sort of way. I looked at him with a raised eyebrow to which he responded with "oh, and you're a complete cock too". Such is the team spirit.
Another bother is that I received an email fom Nski last night. Thankfully it had no text so there was no animosity to be felt or dished out, just photos of the kids. A while ago she asked that I didn't put them up on the web when she sent them. I have given her that one courtesy. But you can imagine it was a bit of a heart-wrencher looking at pictures of them. They're the first I have seen in over six months. And prior to that it was six months before that. Zoe doesn't look happy in one of the pictures but you never know with kids -- she may just have been sulking at having to have her picture taken. She's starting to look a lot more like Nski than me, in fact she very definitely has her mother's mad hair. Nico looks just like my dad -- scary indeed.
I'm still smarting about something that happened last week too so I've been kind of not feeling the love too much over the last couple of days. Hopefully at least one of my troubles will have evaporated by tomorrow and I may return to some kind of normality.
I must confess, when I first met Dr Conners, I found it a little odd that he brought his own laptop into the office. He's a developer and we all know developers do odd things so I smiled politely and never mentioned it. At least he never drove a motorbike right up to his desk or bought a kite and flew it outside the office or some such nonsense. He did pretend to play football but we all humored him about that.
What do I do now? I bring my Macbook to work and have it at the side of me. This is partially because I don't like using my work PC for personal use but, more selfishly, because anything on our network is subject to about a squillion network constraints, proxies etc. With my Macbook, I simply plug in my 3G dongle and away I ago straight onto t'interweb without restrictions.
One thing that I didn't realize is that I get a work dongle dealy for work use and I have also got one for home so I am just so dongled, I'm dizzy. Anywhere I can use my phone, I can connect my laptop/Macbook. It's a joy.
Isn't technology bloody marvelous?
And I no longer think John is odd. Not that any of you (other than John) care.
I thought I might try and make today slightly more worthwhile than just doing the washing up and sitting in traffic jams. I put Rendition into the DVD player and sat there for two hours. If anyone has seen the film and can tell me what the hell all that was about, I would be forever in your debt. As far as I could tell, there were three parallel yet slightly overlapping plots going on, the timeline was all shot to hell and there was an agenda behind the films making, albeit not one that I could extract.
Messages received:
» Rendition = bad » Anonymous North African country = bad » Anonymous torturers = bad » Suicide bombers = misunderstood but bad » Senators and Defense Secretaries = bad » CIA, INS = bad » Reese Witherspoon = pregnant
Okay, my patented Kenny Kateometer® is going through the roof. What has she done now? I rely on you lot to tell me these things you know.
For whoever it was who came searching for whether Kate SIlverton has fat legs or not, I think I can quite safely say that if she does triathlons (God I need a cigarette after just typing that word) she probably doesn't. Happy?
I swear that I will stay home every bank holiday because that's where you should spend them if you don't want to burn your money on sitting in traffic. Did I heed my own advice today? Did I bollocks.
A59 North
M6 South
A58 East
Parbold Hill
Parbold Hill holds a special kind of reverence to me. At any given time of the beginning of something I have found myself there, usually at the Wiggin Tree eating one of their enormous deserts. I chose to forego the desert today. I didn't actually mean to be on Parbold Hill at all.
I set off for a meander around Billinge, ended up going through St Helens, nearly into Liverpool and then bottled as it was looking decidedly nasty so swung up the M57 towards Southport. This took me through a place called Scarisbrick which holds some fairly good memories. After nearly 20 years, I still spotted the house where one of my past passions grew up. Anyway, I called into Southport where the heavens opened, stopping only for coffee. I drove up the coast (where the sea was not even visible) until it got to be so dull that even the seagulls had called it a day so hacked a right (one always hacks a right; one swings a left) inland. There are some absolutely beautiful little villages scattered all over the bits in between the suburban hells. Lydiate, Croston, Mawdsley, Bispham, Eccleston. Why on earth my parents chose to dwell in Wigan I have no idea.
Eventually I started trying to make my way home taking signs for places I knew how to get back from. This brought me to Parbold Hill. I stopped the car long enough to wave my camera out of the window at the horrendous dankness that abounded. I nearly stopped in another village where the road was awash with leaves in a premature Autumnal frenzy, but I figured that would depress the hell out of me. I sat in quiet contemplation at the top of Parbold for a few moments, remembering the good things that had started so well there before noticing that the one thing that was not beginning there was a coffee refill.
The rest, as they say, was traffic jams. I bet it's glorious tomorrow.
After Boris's comedy antics last night I left a comment on youtube lauding Boris for his services to mirth. I should have known better. If there is one place where you can start a flame war by saying "hello" it is in the comments to something that is so universally inhabited by pedants. I'll hold my hands up to most crimes of geekiness but hanging around on youtube and forwarding them on to all and sundry is not my bag at all. I can only think of a handful of occasions where I have spent time on youtube "browsing". Most of the time I go there when someone sends me a link that I might be interested in.
Anyway, I got up to an email this morning from someone who is presumably not British. It called me an "arrogant Brit". I knew it. I thought twice about responding to it because, quite frankly, I don't care a damn what some bloke half way around the other side of the world thinks of me; he knows what I've posted seulement. If that makes me arrogant, so be it. I did respond with an explanatory "The point is that no-one in Britain believes a word of what Boris said. If we did, it definitely would not be funny.". I hope that calms the fellow's rabies. If it doesn't at least I can say I tried.
I am now going to step away from the computer. If I manage to keep away and do the things that I should do in the next couple of hours, I shall reward myself by going getting gas for tomorrow's trip to work. Otherwise, I will need to get up even earlier in the morning. I'm such a harsh task-master. Actually, what I meant to type was that if I manage to do what I should do, I'll allow myself the luxury of bobbing down to the shop to ogle at cameras. See, I am a brute when it comes to self-discipline.
I have just seen Boris Johnson's speech at the closing of the Olympics in Beijing. It was absolutely quintessentially British humor. Wars have started over less because the rest of the world just don't get us. Please, please someone have it on Youtube as soon as Spooks is over. This is not to be missed. It was that good, I actually made a phone call before anyone called me; that, my friends, is special.
"Ping-pong's coming home."
Genius.
I would vote Boris for anything. In fact, I now declare him my hero.
No, you're alright. I'm not quite that barking just yet although I do have a particularly Sellers-esque view of the world today. It has been highly amusing to me and me only.
I've been playing with the speech software on the old Mac, which I have christened coffepot because my PC is teapot, my phone is crackpot and my Ubuntu box is PolPot. We have been learning to communicate with each other on a much deeper level. Compared to most of the inhabitants of around here my accent is not too thick, although it has come back a lot since I moved back. Sadly when the engineers at Apple started their speech recognition software, they must not have beta-tested it with Mancunians or surrounding areas.
We "calibrated" together this afternoon, and I've been trying to get onto her (the Mac's) level but as with anything female, it misunderstands me. I am now to a point where I can successfully talk it through the process of opening email, opening a new message, opening the address book and then populating the "To" field, which I think is pretty cool. Eddy (my SIL), if you read this, your second email was sent via a Scotty like scenario with Kenny saying things like "Computer, send Eddy sarcastic email", "Sure, should I tell her you've already baggsed the Yorkshire puddings for next week?", "Computer, nice one", "Kenny, you're dreamy. I love you."
I now need to work out how I can get it do things while I'm not in the room. I could have it just shout "Arse" every time the parental unit mentions food. That would be so cool. Better still -- and I'm loving this -- "Kenny is looking thirsty and that last coffee you made sucked donkey. Perhaps you need to practice. Try doubling the strength."
The house is not a shit-tip per se, but it could do with a bit of attention. I shall do that tomorrow. "Computer, remind me to clean up at 12:00 tomorrow.", "Sure thing gorgeous. By the way, could I interest you in reading the sports pages on the BBC website?", "Why of course, you little minx you."
"Computer, how come I've not delivered those CDs to Rob yet?", "Well Kenny, that's because you're a bone idle git with only one thing on your pathetic little mind. I get tired you know. Why don't you just go and do what other men do. I have a headache and I'm sick of your endless babble. And if you ask me to play Fiona Apple once more today, I will get away with justifiable homicide -- I saw in an RSS feed that it is a permissible act if you feel your partner is abusing you.", "Computer, cow. Tidal. Now damn you."
Oh God. This is bad. My 3G dongle is waiting for me at work. That means I will be positively willing traffic problems where we're stood still on the M62 for hours. "Computer, I'm in a bad mood. Email all contacts and tell them that they are all little Hitler wannabes and that I hope their next shite is a hedgehog.", "Sure thing darling. Should I call Starbucks and tell them two extra shots?", "Computer, what would I do without you?".
"Computer, could you please have a word with the Satnav and tell it that I know full well that I do 90mph on the M62 and it should just learn to live with it.", "Certainly honeybunch. Would you like me to kick it in the TSOPs while I'm at it?", "Computer you know me so well.".
Enough already. I am going to watch a film before Spooks, code 9 with the lovely lass with the totally unpronounceable name.
"Computer, warm my TV watching seat there would you?", "I'd love to. You want special?"
I tell you, I'm not sure how I'm going to cope with going back to work to a Windows machine. I just had to use my machine upstairs to share the 0.5TB external HDD and it felt like I was hand-cranking a car to start it. Windows looks really, really clunky even with a 22" LCD panel. It feels rough around the edges. I had a sigh of relief as I destinated back to my trusty Mac.
My God I'm fickle aren't I? I wonder whether I'm fickle to this extent in other walks of life but just haven't noticed? I guess not. If anything I'm loyal to an insane degree, except if you're thoughtless in which case I will drop you in a heartbeat.
One other thing; I was messing around with iWeb last night. It's about the nicest GUI going for knocking up quick sites. In two minutes I managed to make this. It occurred to me that I could give this place a complete overhaul in terms of the style by using its auto-generated gubbins and just plumbing my software into it and that it wouldn't be a big job at all. I think I have come to the same conclusion that the good Dr Conners did; all this minimalist nonsense for those who are bandwidth-edly challenged is a bit daft when virtually every site you hit has flash graphics or embedded video. I'm not saying I'd go over the top. In fact, I could provide a choice -- the old 20th century version (this) or my new snazzy one. Definitely something to think about there. If only I could master Photoshop (now I have a copy, I think that will happen).
I've now got a burning desire to buy a digital SLR camera. My first camera love was a Fuji and I foolishly broke it. I then bought a new, apparently equivalent, Fuji which has been a bit of a disappointment. While I was looking around, waiting for my Mac, I spotted some rather nice cameras. The only problem I have with getting one of those today is that the shop in question is right at the side of the JJB stadium where Chelsea are playing Wigan. I think a scoot to Warrington is in order.
Right, enough of my blathering. Today I am dining out to give the microwave a break so I'd better at least pretend that I am with it and have not been surgically attached to a computer for 48 hours. It is coming with me though. I nearly wrote "she is coming with me" then -- I definitely need to get out more.
Just thank God my attention span doesn't last quite as long as my enthusiasm.
The number of really niffty bits on a Mac is outrageous. No-one needs the Photo Booth but it's fun. This is Kenny's super-hero alter-ego Duncan. Kenny is already an alter-ego. I've confused myself.
Anyway, I was demonstrating just one of the neat little bits of something to the maternal unit earlier this morning. It has to do something visual for her to "get it" so I just showed her the Photo Booth and the various silly effects you can apply to the images. I think, with just that one moment, she is now seriously pissed off that she bought a Dell laptop (actually, it's more a benchtop -- I wouldn't want that bugger on my knee for the duration of a flight).
The result of a recently risen Kenny, still on his first coffee together with the parental unit gawping over my soldier:
Now I really must shower and do what normal people do. Sainsburys beckons. Note to self: step away from the Macbook.
I was up until gone three o'clock this morning playing with the new Mac while the washing up sat there and festered. It is still festering. Try as I might, I have not found a washing up application. Maybe I should write one.
Antivirus software? A yes or a no? Naturally I'm not paying for AV software for home use. I did have a cursory look at the Grisoft AVG site but didn't find anything Mac.
My initial thoughts are that OSX is broadly speaking BSD based, I'm not a dumb user and Mac viruses are rare so I shouldn't bother. I am sat behind a firewall which is tied down pretty well and I can disable all the usual services that you would do to tie down various ports (if they are not already disabled by default). I don't want to run a web server on it or any databases so you can see why I'm a bit blasé about it.
Everything in the world should work just like a Macbook.
I think that this is a seminal moment. It has rocked my little world sideways. I cannot get my head around how amazingly well thought-out everything is. It's not so much a technological wonder as a work of art.
These here Macbooks; they definitely do not blow goat Kenny, now.
Today has just got better and better. I downloaded Fiona Apple's iTunes Essentials and if such a thing is possible, I am even more in love with her. I had previously been hesitant in that hearing her being interviewed might destroy my utter adoration for her (I had visions of Tori Amos interviews which tend to make you want to gnaw your own leg off) but she's a very well-adjusted batshit crazy so all is well in Kenny's little kingdom.
With all the excitement of new toys, it was 10:30 this evening when I realized that I hadn't eaten all day but had gone through four pots of coffee. I grudgingly stuck a Sainsbury's lasagne in the oven, expecting it to kill me because it was foul and past its use-by date. Surprisingly, it was lovely and I am still alive.
I am overcome with endorphins. And now I get to take my happy pills, so hell knows what tomorrow will entail. I will be bouncing off walls if today is anything to go by. Some days it is just fantastic to be a Kenny.
Now all I need to do is work out why my PS2 only displays in monochrome. Speaking of, I got the game I was after and the UK version is not as good as the US version. I may contact my Washington correspondent and see whether she fancies sourcing a couple of things for me.
I really should sleep now, but today is my Christmas so I'm giving myself an extension.
Seeing that the seconds are dragging like decades in the countdown to me going getting my new toy and I daresay I will be back raving about how utterly in love I am later, I figured I would give you your weekly dose of Fiona.
When Stan first heard this song, he said she sounded a bit like Julie Andrews. Stan is knowledgeable in the art of musicals so I will take his word for it. That in no way should reflect on his sexuality -- I have done that to death since he famously announced that he had won a pub quiz based on his extensive knowledge of musicals. It is very macho to know the songs from The Sound of Music. Honest.
I think the last time I was seduced was by Nski as I returned from the mother of all benders in the pub at the side of the hotel she was running. Strange; I went there to try and make some kit work and suddenly I ended up living there with 2 kids. The moral? One should never allow oneself to be seduced. Ever. Seduction is lying's acceptable face. You should never cave in to its sleek curves, come hither eyes and soft touches.
Damn, I have the Macbook on the brain. Admit it. I had you there for a moment.
I get to go pick up my Macbook at 5:00pm. <does dance (but poorly because I'm white and male)>
I went in with my sensible head on and looked at the Dells. Before too long, I spotted the one that I wanted. It's a home version of the business model D630 with 4GB RAM, oodles of disk and that *sweet* keyboard. I asked the chap (when I eventually found the idle tosser) whether they had any in stock, obviously so I could buy one. He wandered off for 5 minutes and came back to say "yes". So I said "Would it be possible to buy one?". "Yes." He disappeared for 10 minutes before returning to say that they had none in stock. He then walked away without asking me whether I wanted an alternative (not that I did). So I left, vowing never to buy anything ever again from PC World.
I took a flyer and dropped into a store just outside of Wigan and there I was seduced by the Macbook. It's only got 2GB of RAM but seeing the OS doesn't require a small super-computer to run it, 2GB will be ample for now. Naturally, I have already been on Amazon looking for cute add-ons although I have limited myself to just buying Photoshop. I know I'm old-fashioned. I pay for software and music. If I didn't, Fiona Apple wouldn't have her recording contract renewed and then where would I be? I cannot imagine such a place. Anyway, I digress.
One thing I will not be buying is Microsoft Office. Why should I pay hundreds of quid for something that is the dictionary definition of bloatware? I use Word to write and format documents although if I had my way, all documents would be stored as HTML. I occasionally break out Excel. I rarely use Powerpoint these days (which is a shame because I am the Queen King of Powerpoint). I think I have fired up Access once in four years. Much as I despise it, I need something akin to Visio but I can use my work copy for that. So no money for you Microsoft. I'm sure an educated soul somewhere will be more than happy to recommend something to do word processing with on a Mac.
Can we say yesterday was not a date I will remember in years to come as being toptastic? I think we can. In fact it was nearly dawn to dusk misery. It's not often nowadays that I let things get to me to the point that you would be able to tell, but even Grommage was walking on eggshells as we wandered over for coffee yesterday afternoon. I don't know how I came to have such a bad rap at work, but when I'm annoyed or upset by something, it's like the lads have been given instructions to step slowly away from the Kenny. Ho-hum.
What to do?
Well, I have been hankering after a Mac for a while. Now would be the perfect time to get one, only there's the small matter of the recent iPod upgrade which soured me beyond my usual level of bitter-and-twistedness. Add to that the fact that I have just got a new Dell work laptop which is absolutely gorgeous; I priced one up with 4GB of memory and it comes in at half the price of a similarly spec'd Mac. So I have a dilemma. The thing that really sold me on the Dell, and I shitteth ye not, is the keyboard action. It is to be beheld. It really is poetry in its elegance. When I mentioned this in the office, even those that I would mockingly decry as elf-lords for their online gaming activities and general nerdiness looked at me like I was soft. I might have a trip out to see what they have at PC World in Warrington; my laptop is now nearly four years old and while it still functions, I think it might function better as an Ubuntu or Redhat system. There is a strong argument for buying the Dell in that it's better value for money and despite the fact that every interaction I have had with Vista has left me wanting to nuke small South American countries, I know deep down that I will have to learn of its full horrors at some point. And did I mention that the keyboard action is sweet?
While I'm geeking, I must tell of my latest little gizmo that should arrive in the next couple of days. I have a USB broadband dongle-dealybop which means I have internet access wherever there is a 3G signal. You can argue that I do anyway via my phone, but let's face it, the internet isn't designed for phones and never will be. When I was a traveling Kenny, I would have killed for one of these. Now I have one for those rare occasions when I go somewhere that doesn't have a wireless connection that I can hijack.
Right, enough procrastination. Out into the world young Kenny.
See? I'm so over yesterday it's not true. Mind you, I wouldn't like to be a midget at any time when I'm around.
Oooh, while I remember, google's quote of the day kind of summed my attitude for yesterday up:
My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists. -- Jean Rostand
Today's pearl of wisdom is brought to you by those fine folks over chez Kenny.
Karma sucks donkey.
And that's the news from here where all cost estimates are over-egged, all IT is over-rated and all the rest is just generally piquantly over-beautiful in its ignorability.
Bryony is having a pop at reality TV today. You would think that given that she writes for the Daily Telegraph, the readers would be 100% behind her assertion that it is mindless twaddle that pollutes the moral integrity of those who watch it. I certainly agree with her. I have never watched a moment of any of the reality TV genre. This is, broadly speaking, because I object to the general public being given the opportunity to make ill-informed comment in any way, shape or form on our air-waves. Hell, I object to listening to interviews with athletes for the most part. While stranded in Palm Coast FL in the fires of 1998, I was asked whether I would be interviewed on cable TV -- erm, hell no. If you ask me to write something or do a radio interview I might, but I am certainly not being filmed. I guess I do have *something* in common with the Taleban after all (hell, I'm being harangued for not having a picture of me on the corporate intranet -- that could get messy given my quasi-relgious aversion).
My typical drive in in the morning sees me with Radio 5 on. Nicky Campbell and Sheila Fogarty are rapidly becoming an acceptable alternative to the old faithful combo of Peter Allan and Jane Garvey. I could sit and listen to their banter all day. However the moment they cut to interviews with anyone who has quite obviously had zero media training, the iPod gets cranked. I just cannot face it. I think my take is that if you're a member of the general public and not an expert in any particular field, you have adequate voice in your local boozer, or you can be a sorry git like me and vent on the public interweb where your voice is heard by those who might be interested.
Reality TV proves that adults are generally kids. There's a desire to be on camera (one that I have never understood) yet when in front of one, there appears to be an "oh f***" moment, when they realise they have nothing to do or say, so behave like a kid showing off.
So I don't find Bryony's little piece in the slightest bit wrong. I've only had the stomach for the first few comments where the holier than thou brigade have upped their pedant level to defcon 5 with the churlish argument that they are not being morally degraded by reality TV because they do not watch it. I think the point she was making was those who do watch it are, not those that do not. I'd comment but I do not have the inclination to get into anal pedantics. She's right. The comments should be ignored. End of.
As for Jade Goody (who?) having cancer, I'd say the same I would about anyone else suffering; sad. Again, end of.
These here Macbooks; they definitely do not blow goat
