#Hot Iron
Used a soldering iron for the first time in about ten years today.

It was the first leg of the new fireplaces today, during which the existing fireplaces get pulled out and opened, generating lots of noise and brick dust in the process. While moving the living room furniture to make space for the blokes to work, I knocked the cable telly box onto the floor. All its little lights went off. Things looked bad. I jiggled the mains cable a bit and could hear it sparking inside. Long dormant bits of brain started working - I'd obviously bashed the connector and fractured one of the connections.

Telewest will have kittens if they find out, but I opened the box up (using my super Aicom-provided Cybertool). Sure enough, one leg of the mains connector had broken, but by a massive stroke of good fortune it was a nice clean break, the circuit board was undamaged, and everything came to bits easily so I could take it out and have a look at it. Often, consumer electronics are put together in such a way as to actively discourage this kind of field repair. Nat and the Bean went out in the rain to Walid's hardware shop and bought me a soldering iron, and I had it all sorted out under ten minutes. As I finished up the joint, I reached out to put the iron into its stand. Except I don't have a stand and I haven't had one since I left the Open University in 1994, I just have the muscle memory of one.
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Movable Type User Manual: TEMPLATE TAGS
[Add a comment]

#Inappropriate advertising

blah [e] said what [added 11th May 2005]

[Add a comment]

# There are 55 cards in the US Military's most wanted Iraqis playing cards. So that's the four suits, making up 52 of them, two jokers and then what? Iraq's most wanted set of Bridge scores?

Perhaps they should have used a Tarot deck. That way, they could have list 78 Iraqi leaders. Although they'd no doubt want to go for that extra one and have to invent a new card. Sir, if the Oil Well comes up in my spread, is that good or bad?

In Hitler, My Part in his Downfall, Spike Milligan describes being given a picture of Adolf Hitler emblazoned This is your enemy. He was about to board the train to Bexhill for basic training. "I searched the train", wrote Spike, "but he wasn't on it".
[Add a comment]

# We took the Bean on his first trip to the cinema today, to see The Little Polar Bear. It was declared all round to be a success.
[Add a comment]

#Smell The Coffee

This little piece is one of my earliest "proper" comics. Before this, I'd drawn a few strips taking the piss out of one of my college lecturers, and long, strange, stupid jokey-adventure strip called Herbert the Hippo. That probably tells you all you need to know, but I've come to see highly-derivative genre-hopping anthropomorphic stories as a necessary step in any cartoonists development. That and knob jokes. (Not everyone moves past this step of course and occasionally someone manages to make a career out of it).

I drew this in October 1992, shortly after starting my first job in the Planetary Science Unit (now the Planetary and Space Science Research Institute) of The Open University in Milton Keynes. Until then The Open University was, as it was to many people, that thing on telly very early or very late, featuring people sporting wide ties and bad haircuts. In fact, the OU campus is much like any other university campus, except it doesn't have any students. There are bars, sports facilities, covered walkways between buildings, all that kind of thing, along with a general air of unhurried quiet braininess.

And there I was. I had a job that paid as much money in a month as I used to have to live on for three, a newly built workshop all of my own, and my own responsibilities under a sometimes alarmingly hands-off style of man-management. I'd instituted afternoon coffee in the workshop - at first by physically rounding up the students and the other research assistants - but it was starting to bed in properly. I'd bought a coffee machine especially, and put up a row of cup hooks populated with assorted mugs so there would always be enough to go round even if someone forgot to bring their own. There was an honesty box to fund the coffee and biscuits, and Morsey brought the milk.

By one of those strange engulfing cosmic coincidences, Judy (wife of my new boss Colin) was a friend of someone who was a friend of Richard, my next door neighbour in Hull. When I was offered the job, the PSU had some trouble getting hold of me, and Richard came round with a message to phone them. Richard, while maintaining a house in Hull, actually worked in Northampton where he rented another house. For the first few weeks, I travelled back and forth with him on Mondays and Fridays, staying in the house midweek. It was good fun - we cooked curries a couple of times a week, drank a reasonable amount of beer, and watched The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin together. Richard was an insatiable record collector and I'm indebted to him for playing me albums by Screaming Trees, Smashing Pumpkins, Richard Thompson, The Hindu Love Gods, Warren Zevon and more.

One evening, not even half a mile from the home of Comics Beardy-Weirdy Godking Alan Moore, I sat on my bed and drew Smell The Coffee.

[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Testing Microsoft and the DMCA
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] BKS Iyengar
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Masked Wrestler Wins Japan Assembly Seat
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Did CNN Turn Up The Boos During Michael Moore's Acceptance Speech?
[Add a comment]

# Huw Edwards, presenter of BBC News At Ten O'Clock, has tonight contracted Severe Acute Jon Snow Syndrome. Mr Edwards, 42, recently promoted to the BBC's flagship news broadcast, is now thought to be recovering in a London hotel. No pictures were available at press time, but we are able to provide this artist's impression.

Joseph said can you tell me what is in coffee please?

[added 23rd Apr 2003]

anonymous said HUW DO YOU CRY LIKE A BABY [added 22nd Jun 2005]

anonymous said Do you realize how handsome you really are ? [added 29th Jun 2008]

anonymous said I LOVE YOU HUW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????! [added 9th Jun 2009]

[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Are you a Kicking King?

   * anonymous said what the hell are you on about [added 18th Jun 2008]

[Add a comment]

# Tom Lehrer's The Elements, animated.
Much funnier that it should be, with a great little ending.
[Add a comment]

# The next mini-cab driver to beep his fucking horn is in great danger of a severe kicking. Just get out of the car and knock on the damn door you lazy bunch of fucks.

smellygit said Where I used to live someone regularly used to turn up at about 6am and beep their horn to give someone a lift....

Allmost as annoying as the person who parked their heap outside our house and had to rev the engine for 10 mins at 5:30 to get it going.

Grrr [added 11th Apr 2003]

ILLEGAL CABBIE said FUCK U ALL ,AND GET A LIFE AND IF U ARE SO FUCKING HARD THEN GET OUT OF YOUR CAR .AND JUST TRY TO RUN ME OVER U STUPID MOTHER FUCKER , [added 4th May 2005]

anonymous said knickers [added 19th Aug 2005]

[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Quickiwiki, Swiki, Twiki, Zwiki and the Plone Wars
[Add a comment]

#OpenOffice.org, I stand corrected.
OK, so *now* I'm hip with the kidz.
[Add a comment]

#Things falling apart
At Anton's place, Saturday, back from the pub, sat on the throne, discovered a varicose vein on my left calf.

From NHS Direct:

Varicose veins tend to run in families, and it is probable that there is a genetic tendency to leaky valves. Being overweight increases the risk of varicose veins, as does pregnancy, prolonged standing, and local constriction from tight clothing.

Not pregnant, spend all day sat on my arse, clothing only constricts at the waist. Must be time to lose some weight again.

planetcutie said Look on the bright side. There are worse places to discover varicose veins. Especially whilst on the toilet. [added 14th Apr 2003]

BuckeyeBoy [e] said Planetcutie is right. A few years back a specialist calmly told me that I had a varicose vein in my left nut. Something about a design fault from when we went to walking upright from running around on all fours. [added 28th Apr 2003]

falcon7 [e] said nj rocks!!! [added 16th Sep 2005]

[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Nullsoft (SuperPiMP|Scriptable) Install System
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] A wireless color-shifting abstract decoration
[Add a comment]

#PGP encrypted mail? Yea, I can handle it.
Finally spent 10 minutes hooking up GPG to Pegasus Mail using the goodness of QDGPG. My long slumbering key finally has a purpose.

Related:

• PGP means Pretty Good Privacy. That's a bad hacker joke, but would you trust a product called "Virtually unbreakable privacy". No, neither would I.
• Why and how to encrypt your email?
• 10 Reasons to Get Your Crypto Working Now
• Brief background on Phil Zimmerman and PGP

smellygit said Best start lining your hat with tin foil too. [added 9th Apr 2003]

But then how would my wifi work? [added 9th Apr 2003]

[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] ICU > Demo > Unicode Browser
[Add a comment]

#[Arabica] XML Benchmark 1.1 is a C/C++/Java toolset for benchmarking XML parsers including Expat with Arabica, libxml2, Xerces, Oracle XDK, RXP, QT, and Crimson. Benchmarks include parsing (native, SAX, DOM), DOM manipulation, schema validation, XSL transformation, and XML signature and encryption and whole pile of other stuff. It has a load of graphs for speed and memory use and things, but haven't really worked out what they all mean. Unfortunately there's not "easy-of-use" metric, because I'm pretty sure Arabica would win that :).

Picked up from Cafe con leche (useful and interesting site, but horrible way to drink coffee).
[Add a comment]

#Frazer and Jez discuss the the new BT logo
frazer : The rebranding costs will "less than £5m" over three years
jez : seems very cheap
frazer : plus whatever it originally cost to develop it for BTOpenWoe
jez : sounds like they're doing it in dribs and drabs then
jez : not a big-bang quick-lads-paint-all-the-vans way
frazer : yeah, that would cost a bazillion wuid
frazer : i'd like to see what the "in depth explanation and the psychological reasoning behind the change" was
jez : I think it's pretty retro
jez : it's like the twirly whirly psychedilic light effects in things like Silent Running and 2001
jez : but it's less silly than 3
frazer : it looks a bit like the world would look from a long way out in space if a few very very very large WMD's had gone off around the world
jez : that's a topical angle, certainly
frazer : I'm sure as a result their business will go from strength to strength
frazer : although just doing a decent job of providing services might just have more impact on their bottom line
jez : that's a very old fashioned approach to business Frazer
jez : get with the new millenium dood
jez : brand is everything
jez : that's why people change them so much
jez : I never used immac in my life, but Veet? There may be a place for that in my personal groomin repertoire
frazer : I'm still reeling from the Oil of Ulay change
jez : yea, I went right off it then
jez : Olay just sounds more oily than Ulay
jez : I want a bit of moisturing, but I don't want to be, you know, dripping
frazer : so that's two customers they've lost then

[Add a comment]

#[Arabica] Lots of interesting XML parsing discussion on the Spirit mailing list.
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Talk Like a Gamer
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Nuclear Winter - The Realistic After-the-Holocaust Game
[Add a comment]

#I'm going to my Granny's house. With sweets!
That's what the Bean and Nattle are doing this weekend. I'm off to Worksop for beer'n'curry shenanighans with Anton and JD (but not unfortunately AndyB this time) the Warps boys who played my TMNT game. Warps is a crappy acronym for Wargames and Role Playing Society, but it makes for a better name than Hull University Wargames Soc and it meant Ian could design a fantastic logo for the T shirts. If I could lay my hands on mine, I'd scan it. (I found it before we moved, but can I lay my hands on it now? No. I don't know where anything is. The floor in the newly-through lounge is all pulled up so the damp course guys can start on Monday. The floor in our bedroom has only just been relayed and varnished. Consequently everything that had been unpacked is crammed into the little bedroom, or is stacked up in the attic behind me. Everything that hadn't been unpacked is still, amazingly, packed and crammed into the attic spaces.) We all got back in touch last year and had a get together at the old place. Now we're doing it again at Anton's.

Ian Waugh, Jason Haggerty? Are you out there?

[Add a comment]

#[Arabica] Spent a couple of hours fiddling around with Garden, Arabica's nascent (and pretty dormant) "native" parser, to get it to build with the latest boost/spirit release (which I enthused about earlier). It's nowhere near anything like ready for production use, but it's a fun and interesting thing to work on.
[Add a comment]

#[Arabica] Feel so stupid - sax2dom_test was failing because I'd got object files compiled with an older gcc linking with files compiled with gcc 3.2.2. Once I'd fixed make clean so it really did clean, everything spung into life. It's all checked in, so the builds from CVS should build on gcc 3.2.2 with libstdc++. I built against expat, but I can't see why libxml or Xerces should be a problem.
[Add a comment]

#[Arabica] Back in windows, verifying that sax2dom_test works there. It does. Just realised I didn't check the Linux changes in. Doh.
[Add a comment]

#[Arabica] Working on getting everything to build with gcc 3.2.2. on Linux. Minor warnings about implicit typenames are the most frequent change, as it's much stricter about it the VC7.

Right now, everything builds ok using gcc 3.2.2 libstdc++ and expat. The SAX examples run ok, but sax2dom_test segfaults. No time to investigate at the moment though.
[Add a comment]

#[Arabica] Minor build notes doc fix today. In between times, I'm getting things building using gcc 3.2 under Cygwin.
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Link Sys Community Network
[Add a comment]

# Remember this? Well, I did.

angry_john said Blimey you bloggers must have king sperm. Congrats dewd. [added 1st Apr 2003]

marc said Cool, congrats. [added 2nd Apr 2003]

ajbattrick said Cool, congrats dewd. [added 2nd Apr 2003]

Stu said April fool [added 3rd Apr 2003]

No, it isn't. I do indeed have "king sperm". [added 3rd Apr 2003]

Pete [e] [w] said Whe-hey, and al that. Congrats all round. [added 3rd Apr 2003]

BuckeyeBoy [e] said Again! Do you guys not have a television to entertain yourselves with in the evenings? [added 5th Apr 2003]

Like I've said before - Enterprise and Alias on a Monday, Buffy and Angel of a Thursday, other nights we make our own entertainment. [added 6th Apr 2003]

[Add a comment]