12 Days of Christmas

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Really like this song... and the beard is quit impressive too ;)

Shall I get one for the scooter...?

The outrageously politically incorrect adverts from the time equality forgot

Nice collection :)

Remember, remember, the month of MOvember

If you walked around our department these days, you will have noticed the increasing amount of facial hair, moustaches, to be more precise. No, you're not back in the 70's. We're all participating in MOvember. Movember is an organisation devoted to raising money for men's health charities.

How does it work? On day 1 (Oct, 31st), everybody clean shaves and then grows a moustache during MOvember (the month formerly known as November). This is the fun part, as you will see in the pictures. However, the whole idea is to raise funds for The Prostate Cancer Charity.

So, I would be really happy if you sponsor my moustache by donating a small amount to fight prostate cancer. To sponsor my Mo (moustache) and fight against prostate cancer please go to http://www.movember.com/uk/donate and enter my registration number which is 120299.

Thanks for your help!

Randomness

When I do coding work and need to figure out something, I usually stare into space for a moment instead of looking at the screen. When I just did that a second ago, I found myself glancing at the flyer on my desk advertising the "Bloomsbury Blues Brothers Show" on November, 8th. I was still thinking about whether or not it's worth going, when my music player started to play "She caught the Katy", the intro song of the original Blues Brothers Movie... weird. Maybe I should go...

Guess the country...

Many sandwich shops around here import Coke from countries all around Europe, Asia or Africa. Usually, you can't read what's written on the can unless you chose Turkish or Albanian as a second language. Today, we had a little discussion about where a particular can came form. Since no one had the answer, each of us put 50p and had a guess: Portuguese, Albanian, Macedonian, Croatian, Afrikaans or Romanian. We googled for the text on the can to find out the language. Thanks to globalisation, Andy won his lunch money back with Albania ;)

Yet another social networking site

Ok, maybe a bit different from the rest. Link

Gold Ol' Mario Bros. Times

If you ever played Super Mario Bros. you know the feeling... :D

Modern Technology

It's unbelievable what's possible with modern technology...

It's the Latency, Stupid

is the name of an article by Stuart Cheshire that I found quite interesting.

Two Rooms, Glass and Twins

Take two identical bathrooms separated by a glass window plus two twins. What a cool idea! Thanks for the link, Andy.

Clean up your code before you leave for the weekend

Yes, very important. Otherwise, you return to work and find your program behaving in a really weird way, requiring you to spend some time to figure out why. Especially, when you just wanted to try something quickly on Friday and then on Monday forgot why and more important that you put

for (int i = 0; i < 1250; i++){
...
}

somewhere in your code. Took me about 20 minutes to find that loop and another 10 to remember why I put 1250... damn it ;)

Kubuntu Problem

I had a problem with Kubuntu Linux earlier this week and just wanted to share my experience, because it took me a couple of hours to figure it out.

Kubuntu was starting normally and showed me the login screen. When I typed in username and password, the check went well, the login screen disappeared and then for 1-2 seconds nothing happened. Then, suddenly, the login screen came back. Didn't matter how often I tried, even rebooting didn't help.

First, I thought I screwed up the settings when I logged out last time or that the update did something bad, but after reading lots of forum posts I found out that my disk might simply be full.

I stopped kdm with: /etc/init.d/kdm stop
and started KDE again: startkde

The messages appearing on the screen said that several files couldn't be generated. So I checked how much disk space was available: df
and found out that 0% free space was available. Great.

After removing some stuff, I finally could login to KDE again. Too bad, there's no warning message at the beginning, when you try to login.

If you think, your lunch was big today...

... you should check out this and this! I wonder, who has to do the dishes? ;)

The Hives - New Album

In case you like rock from Sweden, you might find it interesting that "The Hives" will release their new album The Black and White Album in a weeks time. Here's my favourite song (from an older album):



and here's the new single:

Fancy your own X-Wing Fighter?

A long time ago, in a garage in Santee, California, a group of slightly insane rocketeers decided to make a flying scale model of the X-Wing fighter from what is arguably the best movie ever made, Star Wars.

Read the story here.

What a punch...

Mike Tyson would have been proud...

This happened after Celtic Glasgow scored the winning goal against AC Milan (2:1):

I already hate this day...

Tried to login to my machine this morning and it wouldn't let me to. After installing some updates yesterday, I can't login to KDE anymore great! The cycle: "reboot - start windows - read tips in Kubuntu forums - reboot - start Kubuntu - try them out - reboot" is really annoying!

On my way to uni with the scooter, I suddenly heard a noise that sounded like a little machine gun. I looked around for the next 30 seconds in order to identify the source of the noise until I realised it's me. First, I thought it's something to do with the engine, but when the driveability changed as well, I stopped and found a big metal spike in my (flat) back tire. Fantastic! Should I mention that I replaced the back tire a couple of weeks ago?

So, what's gonna happen next?

Death Star Canteen

I don't understand...

... why healthy, young people take the lift for one floor? Even worse are the people that go from the 1st floor to the ground floor! Why?!?

The Ballmer Peak

What's the correlation between alcohol and programming skills? Check out the Ballmer Peak.

Trade Malware Protection for Privacy?

Slashdot reports that the new Firefox 3 includes an interesting malware protection feature.

"As we were discussing, Gran Paradiso — the latest version of Firefox — is nearing release. Gran Paradiso includes a form of malware protection that checks every URL against a known list of sites. It does so by sending each URL to Google. In other words, if people enable this feature, they get some malware protection, and Google gets a wealth of information about which sites are popular (or, for that matter, which sites should be checked for malware). Fair deal? Not to worry — the feature is disabled by default."

Handy C++ Compiler Errors

I love 'em!

This handy error:

node.cc: In member function ‘virtual void Node::initialize()’:
node.cc:14: error: no match for ‘operator=’ in ‘((Node*)this)->Node::neighbours = (((const std::allocator&)((const std::allocator*)(& std::allocator()))), (((std::list >*)operator new(8u)), (->std::list<_tp,>::list [with _Tp = Node*, _Alloc = std::allocator](), )))’
/usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.1.2/../../../../include/c++/4.1.2/bits/list.tcc:120: note: candidates are: std::list<_tp,>& std::list<_tp,>::operator=(const std::list<_tp,>&) [with _Tp = Node*, _Alloc = std::allocator]

... simply means: You forget a "*", idiot!

I didn't know the Wii was so much fun...

The Dark Tower Movie

Every now and then, I do some research on a potential Dark Tower Movie. In case you don't know, The Dark Tower is a 7-book novel by Stephen King written in almost 25 years. I really like the books and highly recommend you to read 'em. However, King himself doesn't like the idea of a movie.

I've always resisted that idea because movies have a way of freezing characters and places in the audience's mind whereas in books everybody has their own different idea of, for instance, how Roland or Susannah looks but if you do it as a movie, immediately that kind of gets frozen in place and you say 'Oh, Billy Bob Thornton is what Roland Deschain looks like.' Or you say 'Brad Pitt, that's what Eddie Dean looks like.' You know what I'm saying, or you can say 'Calla Bryn Sturgis from Wolves of the Calla looks like maybe the Universal back lot', and I've always resisted that. The issue with The Dark Tower books is there's so much story, so many incidents, that it couldn't be done in one movie alone. It would have to be done at least as a trilogy the way The Lord of the Rings movies were done or it would have to be done as a TV series, probably on HBO because of the violence, the way The Sopranos was done. I haven't entirely ruled that idea out but for the next two or three years while the books have their initial run, I think that if you want the story of Roland, you'll have to get it at your bookstore rather than the local movie theater.

Last February, King apparently changed his mind.

Remember last week when we told you that JJ Abrams might be directing an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series? Well it looks like this rumor is true...

The other day, I was googling again and found this trailer on youtube:


I was really excited until I found out it's a mock trailer... :)
Here's another one (that clearly says at the beginning that it's a fake trailer).

Google Video Top 100

I was checking the Google Video Top100 the other day. There used to be a lot of funny clips. Having a look at the Top20, I would say that has slightly changed... ;)

What's the worst location to sell your new lip-gloss line?

You're right, an office full of computer scientists. Nevertheless, it just happened that a beautician was around trying to sell a new make-up line. Do I have to mention, that she wasn't that successful?

Time to practice your guitar again...

My Journey with VirginTrains

I booked train tickets to Edinburgh online over one month ago and chose the "post it" option instead of picking them up from a FastTicket machine. When they hadn't arrived at the beginning of the week (departure was Friday @7am), I called up the VirginTrain call centre. They told me to call again the day before I travel.

Alright, I did that and of course this day they had technical problems and always asked me to call again two hours later (several times that day). Since I don't have a landline number I had to call from my mobile and spent almost 10 quid on that. Several times they suggested to buy a new ticket and then send it to the refund department. I checked the price and the ticket was up to 160£ already. And who would give me the guarantee that I really get the refund?

After calling them up another two times, explaining that I don't have the money to spend another 160 quid on new tickets, they finally managed to send a fax to the station in order for them to issue replacement tickets. I asked the guy if I should collect the tickets from Euston Station since VirginTrains is located in Euston, but he said: "You depart from King's Cross, so we'll send the fax to King's Cross. Please wait for at least two hours to set things up."

It was already 6pm and my journey was the next day at 7am. So I waited until 8pm and walked to King's Cross Station, where GNER is located. They had received the fax, but the lady told me that she can only issue the outbound tickets. For the return ticket I could either ask the ticket office in Edinburgh or go to Euston Station where VirginTrain is. Really!? -_-

So, back to Euston Station, where the surprised Virgin guy was complaining about the lazy GNER people at King's Cross. "That's typical for GNER. They could have easily done it.." At least I got the tickets.

It took only over one month, about 10£ quid worth of phone calls, several hours waiting, calling and walking between stations to get these tickets. Never, ever will I choose the "post it" option again. Why don't train companies issue e-tickets?

That felt good...

Seeing Germany win against England in a pub in London felt great.

After winning the last game in the old Wembley Stadium and the first in the new one, I hope, I don't have to read about the 1:5 defeat from 2001 for at least a couple of weeks :) Wow, I just found out, you can order the DVD online for just £16.98...

More exercises needed...

After four weeks of no sport at all, I played one hour indoor football today. This can be quite exhausting after one week in Crete, enjoying the Greek food policy: lots of meat and if it's not meat, deep-fry it, and then another couple of days at home. I really can't be blamed for my bad shape, can I?

Ok, and here's the best penalty ever...

Ribery vs Schulz

It's great to see him play for your team :D

Spider Pig Trailer

Wouldn't a spider pig movie be great?

Found this "Spider Pig" Trailer on youtube...

Skype's Timing

It usually takes a while until Skype changes the status of contacts from online to offline and vice versa. Today, Manish passed my desk saying: "I've to go, I see you guys later in the afternoon" and walked out the door. As soon as the office door closed, a Skype message popped up: "Manish has gone offline". I was impressed!

Spider Pig, Spider Pig...

does whatever a spider pig does,
can he swing from a web?
no he can't, he's a pig
look ouuuuuuut! he is a spider pig



Just went to the vue to see the movie. Ingenious!

Grow a Mo!

(source: www.spaced-out.org.uk)

Movember! What a genius idea!
So we can all look like Mike from Spaced... :D

http://www.movember.com.au/

Finished reading...

Finally, about 88 hours after the world speed reading champion Anne Jones turned over to the last page

Speed reader and Potter fan Anne Jones was one of the first to finish the book, reading more than 4,000 words a minute...

I finished reading the last Harry Potter book "... and the Deathly Hallows".

I'm glad, I managed to avoid reading about the ending beforehand. So many websites, news articles or radio shows out there that spoiled it for many people. I haven't visited any news sites apart from sport for the last three days. I would have been really pissed off, if I had read about it!

Of course, I won't spoil it for anybody. Read the book or, in case you haven't, start to read the series! It's worth it...

A beautiful morning needs...

... a car standing on your foot. Happened to me this morning while I was waiting in a car queue with the scooter. A woman rolled forwards and stopped the car on my foot. Although, it didn't hurt, because not the full weight was on my foot, it was enough weight to keep me from pulling away my foot. I was just afraid that she might roll forward again, so I tried to advise her of the fact that she was standing on my foot by knocking on her engine bonnet, but still it took some time until she noticed me and rolled back (before that she was just staring into space which was a bit scary...). Good thing, I wasn't wearing my white shoes... ;-)

I wanna go to the seaside

The video isn't very exciting, but the song is really nice...

Lost?

I'm used to people asking for directions like "Where's this pub", "Where's that club", etc...
The other day I was walking back from dinner when this guy approached me asking: "Dude, where's North?" Either he was completely lost or he just wanted to avoid asking for the real direction since guys don't ask for directions ;-)

Doing everything wrong

Unfortunately, the LondonSkate was canceled yesterday due to some rain. We went to Hyde Park anyway to practice the parallel slide which was really fun and it also went quite well.
After one hour of torturing our wheels we bought some pints from a local petrol station and found some benches to sit down in a quiet and peaceful garden, next to a church. Around 9.30 the park warden came along saying: First, you'll have to leave, the park is closing. Second, it's not allowed to drink alcohol in here and third, skates are not allowed either.
We have to remember to bring a dog next time ;) However, the warden was quite friendly and of course we apologised for doing so many things wrong at the same time. The way back was a bit tricky, cause it rained a lot and the pavement became very slippery.

Here's another video of the parallel slide, keep practicing!

Passwords

I already received a couple of mails from one of the email systems I'm using insisting on a password change, because they expire after x days. Fair enough, I agree that one should change passwords every once in a while. Considering the other 47 passwords I have to memorise, I tried to slightly change my old one...
-> Password's too similar to your old one, please try again

Fair enough, would have been too easy, change it a bit more...
-> Password's too similar to your old one, please try again

Damn it! Let's just keep the last 2 letters then...
-> Password's too similar to your old one, please try again

-_-, maybe I can use the one I had used before the current one?
-> Password has been in use already!

I give up, I have to come up with a new one. Let me try the UNIX pwgen tool for that. This program generates passwords using numbers and lower and upper case letters such as Eetaish8, eeF0chah, eiHaiL9t or gooThai6. You can't find them in a dictionary (-> no dictionary attack!) but they are still quite memorable.

Ok, let's try one of them...

-> Password does not have enough symbols / lower upper case / numbers

Gosh! What are we protecting here? It's still about email, right?

Sigh, I will include two symbols like !, % or $. Of course, there's no way I can memorise this, so I have to write it down and stick a post-it next to my keyboard! Ok, kidding, but I think annoying systems like these make many people do exactly this!

Time to improve your braking skills!?

Astronomy Picture of the Day

A friend of mine sent me this awesome picture which was published in the Astronomy Picture of the Day Series by the NASA. Check it out!

LondonSkate again

Due to the all the rain during the last weeks, lots of LondonSkates got canceled recently. Also today the weather was quite bad, but in the evening the sun came out, so Bruno and I went to Hyde Park to meet all the other skaters for the LondonSkate. Today's route was fantastic. It's called Shopper's Delight and goes along Oxford Street, Regents Street, Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square, Parliament Square up to Chelsea were we stopped for 15 minutes (to have a pint :)
The route is one of the fastest (I think), the road surface is mostly smooth and the music was great too. I really enjoyed skating today, it's my favourite route so far. Check it out: www.londonskate.com