another hangover!

just got back from london after a rather successful cards evening. it was just
one of those lucky evenings. good to see all the guys again, drink a lot and
generally arse about for a night.

i’ve just spent an hour trying to sort out an internet banking problem which
meant my credit card bill didn’t get paid last month. i have recently moved
banks and this was the first problem so i suppose if that is all that goes
wrong then i have got off quite lightly. what it did show, however, was that
although the banks try and project this image of being hugely advanced, the
majority of the work behind the scenes is still far too manual.

it means that there is still plenty of work for people like me out there
though!

back on the footy, it’s ipswich v man utd this evening, as it stands we
have to win otherwise there is no chance of catching sunderland and
staying up.

poker night

we are having a poker night in wimbledon tonight. we all used to work together
(everyone has since left that company for one reason or another) but now live
all round the south of england so these nights are a challenge to organise but
always cracking fun.

it’s got to the point now where the “special” rules and games we have devised
take more time than the actual cards but this is half the fun.

£2.50 on a four, 2s are wild and random luck based games. expensive but great
fun.

ibm? international b*****d machines more like

i spend a large portion of my life using ibm products (namely lotus notes &
domino), i am going to an conference in 10 days in san francisco, so if anyone
should be pro ibm it’s me.

however, having tried to use the ibm website recently i do despair. they produce some
really powerful software, domino is great and websphere is almost
totally flexible, and yet they seem incapable of designing a website which
works!

i was trying to download a bit of software which we need to use for a project i
am working on, until recently it was simple as lotus ran their own site but now
it’s been swallowed up by ibm and is seemingly impossible.

in contrast you see articles like this where ibm are developing the next generation of
storage devices which are just mindblowing.

if me, or any of the people i work with put out a shoddy site like ibm’s we
would, quite rightly, get fired very quickly.

moan over!

smile… you’re on crimbo camera

the independent had an article today about a camera system which is in
development which can be used to predict if people are going to commit a
crime.

apparently it has been tested in liverpool st. station (in london) where i
commute to and from pretty much every day. i wonder if i got flagged as being a
potential criminal?

as discussed on slashdot
this is pretty difficult to implement but being cynical conspiracy theorists
they all immediately started comparing it to george orwell’s thought police!

sunday hangovers

we had a few bottles of wine and a chinese last night. a good night talking
rubbish for hours but there is always the downside.

the hangover which followed this morning was no fun but it has persuaded me to
continue the weekend of lounging around doing nothing, even though there are
about 50 things on my to-do list. i’ll just have to work harder during the week.

garden

well it’s finished. i am really happy with what the gardeners have done with
it, what you can’t see is the patio areanear the house which will be well used
during the summer for barbeques and general lazing around in the sun.

i can’t recommend the gardener highly enough – vinyard
landscapes
, tell jason where you saw the link!

the future of hard disks

american scientist has this article about the past, present and future of hard disks
and what will happen when we have 100+ terrabyte disks.

i know it’s a stupid thing to say but, i don’t currently use all of my 100+ gb
of disk space, so what will we be storing. the concensus at work is that file
compression will become a thing of the past as we go for quality over file
size, but i am not convinced.

when i look back on this in 10 years time i’m sure i’ll feel rather silly for
ever questioning the need for so much space.

entirely proportoinate

a guy at work sent me this:
zdNet reports a new bill being passed in the uk this week which just
about sums this government up.

it will allow for people caught breaking copyrights (i.e. downloading mp3s,
movies etc) to go to prison for 10 years. seems entirely reasonable compared to
some rapists getting 3 years! i despair for this country sometimes.

progress

we have gone from a green square to a brown one in half a day. some progress i
think you’ll agree?

one of my neighbours cars got broken into last night so there were police cars
round this morning, along with a lorry delivering the skip for my garden, all
of the other builders on site and various other hangers on. i am rarely round
during the day and having seen it this morning i am fairly glad as it was
mayhem when i left at 9:30.

garden

i am having some landscape gardeners in over the next few days to convert the
green square which i have now (see right) to something a little more friendly
and welcoming.

not being green fingered in any way (i tend to kill things within days) this is
a bit of a departure for me but i find myself getting quite excited about
it.

i suppose you will see for yourself whether or not i kill everything they plant
within days!