Sunday 28 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 22:19 RT @crunchgear Bill in UK may disallow public wi-fi bit.ly/9m466C #
  • 12:33 Firefox why do you need 170MB of memory to show a blank page? #
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Friday 26 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 09:14 Good job I went for the cheaper dental option yesterday as the tumble dryer packed up this morning and frightened the Corgi !! #
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Thursday 25 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 08:59 Has the BBC downgraded the RBS loses? I am sure the headline was over £5bn an few hour ago? bit.ly/9Uq1hv #
  • 09:01 "many experts had been expecting losses of £5bn for 2009" Experts? Do they ever get any figures right? bit.ly/9Uq1hv #
  • 13:42 £450+ on root canal, temp filling and crown or £70 to have it pulled - guess which I chose? & can't have it done on NHS as list full - c**ts #
  • 20:00 RT @markhw42: Brilliant, brilliant Adam Buxton www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-q1MtKmMew /via @Glinner #
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Wednesday 24 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 14:24 I would expect the BBC to be able to produce podcasts with consistent volume levels, the last few I have downloaded have been dreadful #
  • 16:02 How to Take Better Low-Light Photos - nyti.ms/asMxBj #
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Tuesday 23 February 2010

Daily Tweats

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Monday 22 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 09:45 The world has gone mad, I just cannot be bothered anymore I think I will just sit here mumbling and rocking to and fro #
  • 11:40 I hate the telephone bit.ly/cXXJ9d #
  • 13:01 Enough is enough, the pain isn't going away so have put my phobia behind me and made appointment with dentist #
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Sunday 21 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 07:09 Been showing for the last couple of hours... ng24 6/10 #uksnow #
  • 11:07 Picasa is messing me about again, importing duplicates and hanging up #
  • 17:20 Perpetual motion? You won't be taken seriously using Microsoft Frontpage Express and Comic Sans font! bit.ly/4p5Sgf #
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Friday 19 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 14:37 In the midst of an intergalactic space rock listening session courtesy of Hawkwind #
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Thursday 18 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 07:15 I hate tossers who can't manoeuvre in car parks, damage your car and then sod off. Just noticed Xtrail got scratched at hospital yesterday #
  • 10:42 can't believe some of the crap I'm seeding to repair my torrent ratio :-) #
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Tuesday 16 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 09:46 Boris' video has had 60+ views since midnight! Was it because it was incorrectly tagged agilty corgi! bit.ly/clSgNP #
  • 11:53 Bunnie's 'counterfeit' microSD problems bit.ly/c2d0iR #
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Monday 15 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 10:43 knew I should have stayed at home, overdid it in the cold this weekend - feel shivery, tight-chest and now toothache #
  • 11:04 Wow, the economy is going to be safe with the Tories look at their skill with figures and decimal places #
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Friday 12 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 12:20 RT @TelegraphNews What has Gordon Brown done for Britain since his first Budget? - Telegraph ow.ly/1ou4lh #
  • 16:31 ubuntu system running perfectly now! slight drawback is it isn't running the cctv software anymore, hate it when a plan falls apart #
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Thursday 11 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 07:14 going to be listening to the Soam Fm mission control feed today somafm.com/ #
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Wednesday 10 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 22:06 can't help thinking all this fuss about Toyota in the US is a way to boost their domestic car industry #
  • 14:02 I don't f***ing believe it, ubuntu server has crashed yet again with a kernel panic, maximum uptime so far around 10 hours #
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Tuesday 9 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 11:35 RT @guardiantech: Facebook is the new threat to Google bit.ly/dghBBG (not if they keep changing the interface every few weeks!) #
  • 11:36 I just gave my heart to a lonely puppy. Help us raise awareness of homeless puppies: bit.ly/a5fxqB #DogsTrust #
  • 11:55 Would everybody please stop using science to prove things and get back to burning witches and turning lead into gold, please! #
  • 12:26 Apple gets set to shaft its initial Ipad customers bit.ly/aCzvKr #
  • 12:54 RT @Mpdreamz: An average car's codebase is 20 times a s much lines of code as the joint strike fighter bit.ly/9uNJQQ major wtf! #
  • 14:30 interesting to hear legal ramifications of driving a faulty Toyota, you can't claim mechanical fault if aware of recall #
  • 16:33 the great and all powerful ubuntu cctv server at home has crashed again, remind me why I migrated from the windows2000 system? #
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Monday 8 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 09:52 RT @AIannucci: Today's poll: Do you feel sorry for Alastair Campbell? A)No B) Not really or C) I don't think so. #
  • 10:18 RT @bowbrick: I'm announcing a safety recall. More or less everything I've done since I left school has been a bit dodgy. Mind how you go. #
  • 15:50 Man 'breached Asbo by dressing as a schoolgirl' bit.ly/bqYzkd (mind you he does sound like a perv) #
  • 16:54 Tweetdeck updated v0.33 #
  • 19:51 RT @boingboing Best Superbowl photo ever Boing Boing ow.ly/1ojmGp #
  • 19:58 www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/feb/04/challenger-space-shuttle-video-discovered #
  • 21:21 RT @robwinder: very disappointing start to BBC's 'generation jihad' doc, cliched music and shots and a couple of missing 'allegedly's #
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Weekend of unfocussed inaction

Was a quiet weekend, the weather was lousy not raining but very dull and cold. The wife is currently suffering a back problem and is a new prescription of painkillers. She has felt a little odd so decided she would rather rest and take it easy.

I spent some of the weekend tweaking zoneminder and the ubuntu server installation for the cctv system.

I also went through my growing collection of unlabelled camcorder tapes indexing them. They are mostly videos of the dogs doing agility, but there were some other segments and they went back as far as 2007. It was a little emotional seeing Toby, Fred and Basil again, we lost all three during 2008.

My camcorder is a Sony Digital-8 which I purchased back in 2002, it struck me that I have an awful lot of tapes (some from my older Video-8 as well as some on VHS) stored in boxes which rely on an almost obsolescent technology. So I really must get around to archiving them onto DVD and must think about replacing the camcorder. There is nothing wrong with the camcorder but continued usage is likely to accelerate the wear and tear and I would hate to lose the ability to view the original tapes.

I currently have some old 8mm film stock taken by my father dating back to the 1960s which I had intended to transfer to a video form, (I also have the ancient Bell-Howell projector) I really haven't got enough hours in the day for all these projects!
 

Oh and I also went through my den's collection of boxes and draws sorting out the mass of cables and connectors. Now if I need a specific firewire, usb, audio, scart or power cable then I can at least find the box likely to contain it!

Sunday 7 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 21:35 RT @crunchgear Google Street View camera car tagged with GPS sensor, stalked around Berlin bit.ly/bwMRxz #
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Saturday 6 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 07:00 Is Jim Devine the stupidest MP alive? Admits fraud on live TV bit.ly/csIyDZ #
  • 07:28 Devine insisted this type of accounting was normal practice in the union movement! Surprise surprise! bit.ly/b75AuZ #
  • 10:16 Feeling a bit light headed... must be the visit to the barber! :-) yfrog.com/3g2dxaj #
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Friday 5 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 10:00 RT @boingboing South African budget airline's fantastic self-explanatory livery Boing Boing bit.ly/bsQMnJ #
  • 10:56 enrage the express "DIANA ADMIRERS' FURY AT SICK TWITTER PAGE" bit.ly/bNLzUY follow @dianainheaven #
  • 11:11 Latest Score Labour 3 Conservatives 1 #
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Thursday 4 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 13:10 linux cctv security system up and running... #
  • 15:23 Oh well so much for linux stability... rebooted server remotely and it appears to have died! #
  • 17:42 Just bought some Jamie Oliver sausages from Sainsburys. Says on packet "prick with fork". Can't argue with that. #
  • 20:40 #savedave bit.ly/9fEorL #
  • 20:44 RT @boingboing Campaign to "Save Dave," the poor banker caught looking at girlie pics on TV Boing Boing is.gd/7Hr7h #
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Fortress Nerdsville - Part 2

Well the next stage of the CCTV system was to install the Zoneminder and thankfully it was fairly straightforward, following the process on the link below

http://www.zoneminder.com/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu_9.10_Server_32-bit

The only tricky part was getting the video capture card to be recognised properly. I am able to monitor the camera pictures remotely via the web but at the moment something isn't right as I cannot get any 'events or alarms' to trigger.

And to add to the frustration a remote server reboot has failed to restart so will have to wait till I get home this evening.

Fortress Nerdsville - Part 1



Last year I purchased a couple of CCTV cameras to monitor around the exterior of my home (not that we live in a hot bed of crime, it is just I couldn't resist the technology) They were connected to a 4-input video card (from ebay) which came supplied with some pirated and bug-ridden cctv software which ran for a random number of hours on a Windows 2000 installation before crashing the PC!

I swore then that I would investigate the use of a linux solution to create a proper reliable solution that could be monitored remotely. Well this morning I finally got around to swapping the harddisk in my designated PC and have just installed Ubuntu Server

Next step is to install zoneminder

Wednesday 3 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 08:55 Blogger.com are pulling FTP support. Time to migrate my dormant blog to wordpress methinks bit.ly/8qrazw #
  • 08:57 RT @Nottingham_News: SNOW is forecast for Nottingham today. Met Office expect temps to plummet by late afternoon - Time to get the BBQ out! #
  • 08:59 RT @billt: Important letter in The Times today about orphan works and danger of #debill locking them up: bit.ly/9BtfTm #
  • 14:48 RT @guardiantech: Excessive internet use linked to depression, research shows bit.ly/bLiEKY (I can give it up anytime...) #
  • 15:20 RT @iamlittleboots: spent much of last night discussing if gaga is actually controlled by the illuminati bit.ly/5efSI #
  • 16:33 some just mentioned a name from the past, brought up not very nice memories #
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Tuesday 2 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 23:00 Ubuntu fail.. tried to resize the partition containing home and lost all data therein - oh well at least backed up :-) #
  • 15:35 iPad Keynote in less than 180 Seconds: Incredible, Beautiful, Amazing! bit.ly/9cjRFq #
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Monday 1 February 2010

Daily Tweats

  • 13:03 Somewhat relieved to have found my missing usb drives. They were hiding in the lining of my laptop bag! #
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No I'm not dead!

I might not be President Umaru Yar'Adua but like him I can claim to be very much alive, it may have been June 2009 when I last posted something other than my daily tweets (and twitter isn't proof you are still cognitive and breathing)

I've been in my current job for 18 months now and still very much enjoying it. The work is varied and demanding. I have been forced to break out of the depressing programming rut I had bounced along for too many years.

The upshot of my new found work ethic is I don't have much time in the day to sit writing blog entries, but after watching the first programme of the new BBC documentary series The Virtual Revolution I thought I really should make posts.. it won't last it never does