John's Wittering

Apparently Microsoft has turned off an old version of their MSN protocol that a lot of Adium and Pidgin users were using (they both use libpurple, I believe).

Adium: http://adiumx.com/blog/2009/01/msn-rejecting-adium-132-connections/

http://code.google.com/p/msn-pecan/

If you're using Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, you can just sudo apt-get install msn-pecan, then add your MSN account(s) again via the WLM protocol.

This so sounds like my experiences, I wonder if anyone else finds it very familiar: http://brahms.phy.vanderbilt.edu/~rknop/blog/?p=35

Well, after a long time without having Internet outside of work, I have it again. Blame BT for most of the delay and confusion. Ordered phone line towards the end of last month, and they delivered (as promised) on 11th November. Eclipse delivered Internet ADSL on the evening on 21st.

Sorry for not being around for ages. I feel pretty out-of-touch (although I know some of you would say that I am out-of-touch even when I do have Internet).

Also, I hate having a cold.

Much as I've failed to remember and post many impressions I've had on the USA, I've been struck wondering what it must be like for an American to visit the UK and to wonder what their first impressions would be. I've just come back from (sunny) California to (not so sunny) Autumnal Brighton. I'm struck by the quite tortuous and confusing one-way systems and twisty streets, and the, for the most part skyline-dominating, grimly coloured buildings, grubby pavements and rather ad-hoc traffic and pedestrian arrangements.

Hm. I wonder how that seems to a San Franciscan.

Yesterday I was mugged by two seagulls.

That is all.

(P.S - I'm back in Brighton now, and seem to have slept off the jetlag - huzzah!)

I can't help but think that most of the blame of the stock market issues (which don't seem that bad at the moment) should be placed at the feet of media. They seem to be using words like "panic" and "crash" - whilst at the same time the markets (at this moment) actually look to be coping.

I could be wrong, as I don't understand economics - but I feel like the media are one of the worst causes of the problem - causing the very problem they are speculating on.

Grr.

Had a bit of a walk around SF today to get a look around some of the parts of the city that I'd not seen yet. Decided to head vaguely North-West towards the Golden Gate Bridge. So, headed up Columbus Avenue. It turns out that that's where all the eating places are. In any case, made it up to the North side of the city, where you can see both the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as Alcatraz (didn't realise that it would be that visible, but there you go).

Stuck around looking at the Golden Gate for a bit from a hill, as there was an interesting looking tall-ship with square rigging coming into the bay. Was a bit disappointing when it got closer as it turned out not to be old at all, but was a rather sleak looking ship.

Carried on walking past a blues concert, and down into a towny/urban area. There were some rather good kite-fliers there. One chap had maybe 12 kites wired together with long streamers behind them. It was quite a display, he'd buzz some people on the grass, but always manage to avoid hitting them - he also dropped the kites to the ground, soft as butter, then lifted straight back off the ground again before the chap next to it could touch it :)

Wandered around a domed building with columns and statue-like embellishments on it, which turned out to be attached to a place called the Exploratorium - which was something like the Science Museum. Went in there and wandered for a couple of hours or so. Turned out that it closes at 5, so didn't get to stay as long as I'd like. Anyway, wandered out, and back along Divisadero Street, ate at a diner on the intersection of that and Lombard Street - nice cheap food, and tasted good (nommy cheesecake).

Carried on along Divisadero Street, and it just keeps going uphill. You reach the end of one stretch of the hill, getting to a flat intersection, and then you realise that there's another stretch after that (possibly steeper). There was a little bit of wheezing going up there. Finally got to the top and over the other side, finding Clay Street at about 2900. My hotel is near 0 Clay Street, so I turned down this. I think I ended up climbing two more hills before the nice gentle downhill stretch to the hotel. Got asked for directions to Powell Street on the way back by a couple of New-Yorkers, who chuckled, I think, at being given directions by a Brit. Anyway, was able to give them directions easily enough as my previous hotel was on Powell Street.

Anyway, that was the day. :)

Adjusting to SF has been rather many-pronged. I've had to adjust to an 8-hour time-zone shift, coming from London. I think that's generally been okay, although I'm still waking up at stupid AM (4-6am) so far. Although this has seemed to be getting better as the week has gone on, I still tend to wake a little early and flake out at the end of the day after work.

Otherwise, I think I've got used to the mundane activity of crossing roads - and you have to do that a lot in a city, of course. The pedestrian crossing lights are handily white "walk" and red "don't walk" symbols - and when the walk time is running out you get a countdown of how long you've got to reach the safety of the pavement (sidewalk *cough*). A lot of the roads in the city seem to be one-way, which makes road crossing somewhat easier. The lights allow for pedestrian crossing on a pretty regular cycle, so you don't generally have to hang around for too long. One thing that can be a little unnerving is that the car drivers tend to come to an abrupt halt right next to the pedestrian crossing zone, sometimes a foot over it.

The hotel I started out in is called "The Westin", It's one of those hotels that's really, really posh in the lobby, and throughout. It even has posh looking shops on the ground floor. It also has a rather nice HD TV in the room. So that's rather nice. Not all programs are in HD, but the news is - which is kinda odd - seeing news presenters in HD. I have to wonder if HD TV has put somewhat more pressure on the presenters to wear makeup.

After a few days in the Westin, I've moved out to Club Quarters, which is somewhat cheaper, and more conveniently placed for walking to work. It also seems to offer free Wifi, whereas the Westin was charging $15 or so per day - which seemed a bit much, really - ADSL lines cost about twice that for a *month*.

The city has some rather interesting views. I haven't caught sight of the Golden Gate Bridge, yet, but I think I've seen the Bay Bridge (or something) between buildings, from around the Battery Street area. I think I shall do some walking this weekend to have a look around - for now I've pretty much only covered streets between Powell St. and Battery St. - often involving those steep hills that San Francisco is so well known for *wheeze* *wheeze*.

One thing that has struck me about American car adverts is how proud they are about their fuel economy. The current high water mark seems to be 30mpg. Oh dear. Having said that, they are rather fond of their large cars, so that might explain things a bit.

Fire Engines are a fairly common background noise in the city. The first thing I thought when I heard them is that they sound like lost souls, wailing up and down the city streets. It can often be quite difficult to place what direction the sound is coming from, as often the sound is bleeding around buildings, and up more than one gridlock street to your ears.

I've ordered a camera, so that I can take pictures while I'm out here, but unfortunately I left it until Thursday (yesterday) to do so, so it's not likely to arrive until next week - so no photos from my free time this weekend. Darn :(

Still, I'll have a little look around the city to get an idea of what the place is like, and what might be worth going to see properly. Until now my evenings after work have been busy trying to find food, and subsequently getting back to my hotel and just wanting to sleep.

It's been quite a while since I last updated, Just been rather out of the habit of blogging in general.

Anyway, a quick recap on the past few months. In February I got a job with a small energy consultancy company as a web developer for a few web applications that they were making for some of their customers. That was in the rather nice little town of Amersham in Buckinghamshire. In mid April I was made redundant when the company went into voluntary liquidation. Bit of a pain that. Not sure exactly what caused the company to go under, but sounded like a debt was called in, when a major customer hadn't paid up. Possibly a repercussion of the larger economic problems that were starting out just around then.

I was unemployed for about 4 months after that. I turned down two jobs that I felt would not fit with me too well. I was turned down for one or two others. Eventually moved back to my parents' house for a bit when my 6-month flat contract ran out.

BT were a bit of a pain when I disconnected from them. I knew when I signed up with them in March that it was a 12-month contract, so I wasn't surprised to be paying for months after disconnection. However, the £10.50 monthly rate "increased" by a little for the remaining time, as apparently while I had the contract I had the benefit of a discounted rate. It seems that it would (if it was possible) be cheaper to keep the contract for 12 months rather than to disconnect. I wasn't best pleased with that, and will probably be avoiding BT for some time after this (which is a pain, as I rather like the ADSL provider I was with - and I doubt I can get them on a non-BT line).

Finally in August I went through a spree of phone screenings and finally a set of face-to-face interviews with a company, and was finally offered the job and accepted in late August.

So, I've moved to Brighton to a new flat, to work for the company. It's been good fun - the people there are really nice to work with and obviously quite bright. So, after a long period of unemployment - I'm feeling a lot happier and less anxious about things in general.

After a couple of weeks' employment in Brighton I've been packed off to San Francisco to spend 3 weeks working in the company's head office. This is the first time I've been to the USA, and things are that strange mix of familiar and subtly different all over the place. I'll have to write up my early impressions of the USA and San Francisco pretty soon - which is why I'm doing this update now, to provide some context.

Currently sipping from a can of Mountain Dew - and trying to take it slowly so that I don't bounce off the walls.

I'm back. Internet in my flat etc. etc.

Not sure what to say now :)

Packed up a load of stuff now - desktop computer now in bits and I'm using the laptop for the moment. Should be quick to load my stuff onto a van when I move. Looks like the move isn't going to happen tomorrow, but early next week. Apparently one the organisation giving a reference for my guarantor for my flat is taking it's sweet time about replying.

Looks like I'm going to have little time to settle in to the town and flat before I start the job. Oh well. On the plus side I'm really looking forward to spending the weekend with a friend.

So I should be moved to Amersham either this coming Saturday, or the Monday/Tuesday afterwards. I'm looking forward to being able to settle in my own space, it's been quite a while since I had a flat to myself. Hopefully I will manage to find some friends in Amersham, a nearby archery club, church etc. Looks like we'll be using a Transit to get there. We couldn't fit the mattress in Dad's car, so that kinda decided it. We should also be able to move everything I have easily in one move.

Slightly odd dream last night. Was commuting to London, and somehow the driver (or signalman) managed to get lost driving the train to London and we ended up ploughing down a dead end siding in the middle of a field and derailing. I seem to remember knowing that this was the third day in a row that this had happened on my way to work, and feeling a bit grumpy about British Rail. Well, I don't know what to make of that dream, I have one or two theories, but nothing convincing. Dream interpretations often seem pretty non-obvious anyway.

Not good enough, BA. I was a customer.

The court ruled that the airline can prohibit Eweida from visibly wearing the cross. It held that other types of religious symbols, such as turbans, bangles, and other religious markings, are acceptable because they cannot be concealed.

Original story

I've been talking to people on IRC about freedoms and such forth, and it occurs to me that I'm probably one of the few people in my circle of friends who doesn't own an iPod, an iPhone or something akin to those devices. This seemed like a good time to justify it. It comes down to a few reasons.

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Just letting you all know that I'm moving down to Bristol tomorrow, so I won't be reachable easily for a while, except by email (I'll attempt to read that every day, albeit briefly.

Take care, y'all!

I'm back from PyConUK. It was a really good conference, and when one considers that it's the first PyConUK so far, that shows even more credit to the organisers! The talks were great, the atmosphere was really good, and there were some really interesting people there to talk to.

I'm currently busy typing up my notes that I took during the conference, while it's still fresh in my mind so that I can elaborate on the points and keep them in mind more clearly for when I present things at work. So, I'm not going to write up too much right now, but hopefully this entry will remind me to write more in the next few days. If I don't, then poke me repeatedly until I do!

Incidentally, it turns out that wearing an XKCD t-shirt (“Regular Expressions”) is a really good idea for geek conferences. I was initiated into so many conversations purely by virtue of someone commenting “Hey - good t-shirt!”. I think that happened at least 5 times, and it's helped me get into some interesting geeky conversations.

Warning, random thoughts ahead - nothing of great interest!

Last weekend, or thereabouts, I was letting the cat in to feed her (as usual). She's a bit nervous, so I open the back door, swing it wide open, and step back to let her come in. So she starts her cautious approach to the door, and slowly moves over the threshold and I notice that the wind has caught the door which is now swinging shut on the cat - who is clearly too preoccupied with being cautious to notice the door silently swinging shut behind her. So I do the obvious thing - I move quickly to the door and push it back open - thus avoiding decapitated cat.

Unfortunately the cat runs off and settles down outside, with a definite air of suspicion about her. So I push the door back open, and retreat a little from the door. The cat eventually makes up some courage again, and starts to come inside again. She's moving even slower this time, so the door which is now swinging shut in the breeze now has an even better window of opportunity to cut the cat in half. So again I move up and stop the door. Again, the cat scampers off.

By this stage the cat is clearly very nervous. But I don't think that once she's noticed the door closing on her, all she's seen is me rushing towards her unexpectedly as she comes in the door.

Just to make sure things go a bit better, I go outside and put a hook on the door to hold it open against the wind. I then go inside and start getting the cat's food ready.

No cat is forthcoming. So I peak outside, and the cat is sitting a little away in the dark looking at me. I try to coax her in, and put the food on the floor, inside by the door. I look back outside and the cat has vanished into the night.

I guess this is a bit typical of this cat, who is extremely nervous at the best of times. The worst part is that I was probably saving the cat from pain, injury or even from being killed (the door is quite heavy). The cat is actually not coming in at all when I open the door to her in the evenings now. I suppose this means that I'm in the bad books.

Anyway, it just puts me in mind of how this sort of thing doesn't just happen between people and animals, it also happens between people and people. Examples of this are pretty common - where someone has someone's best interests at heart, but all they get is a bloody nose, because of suspicion and a lack of understanding and trust.

No, there's nothing particularly deep in what I'm writing, it just makes me sad.

Not gonna write much as I'm tired etc. Been a bit of a long day, went out last night with my uncle and cousin, slept on my uncle's boat for the night, and got up early for a yacht race. Only the one boat to race against. We lost, but it was a nice fun day out. Nice fresh air away from London - which was ace. Got to stay on the helm quite a bit, and also got in some practice at taching. We got quite close up to the WW2 anti-air batteries in the mouth of the River Thames. I might have to pinch the pictures that were taken from my uncle and cousin, as we did get a really fairly spectacular view of them.

Anyway, glad that I brought my sun-block, there were plenty of rays out there today. I'm actually quite tanned. The reflections from the water add greatly to this, of course. Anyway... Bed soonish! I need it after a long day of sailing!

Lugradio Live 2007 has drawn to a close, and I'm now back home to Essex from Wolverhampton. In short: it rocked a bit. One annoyance is that there were so many good talks on it wasn't possible to see them all, but I did see and learn about several interesting things. This shouldn't be too bad, however, as I'm planning to catch up on the other talks on-line, as soon as the recordings are released.

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P.S Had a power-cut whilst I was writing this, but thanks to the fantasticalness of LiveJournal, it asked me if I wanted to restore from draft, and got back pretty much everything I'd written.

Of late I have been feeling increasingly iffy about the BBC. Whilst it's still the news source that I place the most trust in, I feel that its quality is shifting downhill. Specifically, things are stated as fact that cannot have been corroborated (such as the motivations of an angry mob). Whilst it's okay to speculate on such things, they cannot be stated as fact unless they have some mind-reading ability. Perhaps the articles to which I am particularly thinking were examples of particularly poor reporting, but it still seems like a worrying trait to see at all in a respected news source.

But then, I guess I've felt increasingly unsettled about the state of the BBC since that whole mess at the start of the Iraq war. That the UK government were able to take apart the BBC as much as they did for what increasingly seems like accurate (but inconvenient) reporting is not a good state of affairs.

I'm just worried that our traditionally accurate news source has become a puppet, and that the public's opinion is all too ready to be shaped by it, to more easily make the case for things that would otherwise seem unacceptable. So where do we get our trusted news from, now?