Apparently my blog was stolen for a short time by some Monkey type creature, while this is not immediately an issue, it did make me realise I haven’t been doing my blogging duty of late and I plan to change this.
This time I’m changing my approach, I’m going to keep a diary of events rather than the more random links to cool shit I had previously.
Today’s blog may prove of interest to the rugby fans out there, I was minding my own business in work, writing up Java Documentation for a project i was previously working on, when Simon (My boss) comes in say “C’mon, we’re off to get some tickets”. I was a little aprehensive of this, tickets to what? why was i needed? What was going on? and would i be able to have any lunch. I decided to go along with it all, he pays my bills after all, so we all bundled into Barneys rather small fiesta and off we trundled.

It transpired that we were on our way to the Millenium Stadium box office to buy a few pairs of tickets for the Wales Vs New Zealand game on Saturday, and i was needed because they were limiting people to only 2 tickets each. I wholeheartedly despise the idea of ticket touting, mostly because its illegal but its also a totally underhand way of making money, but I didnt voice my opinions of the scum who partake in this particular trade. It did however make me wonder about wether these pair of “buisness men” have access to a certain Wales Vs Ireland 6 nations game which is coming up.

Me and linz have decided that our anniversary should coincide with that particular game each year as it was that game where we really became close and realised we should probably think about going out hehehe.
So yea, bit strange but nevermind, the rest of the day was fairly mundane, just writing more documentation, and if anyone has a pair of tickets for the Wales/Ireland game in the stadium 4th February please let me know

Hi everybody, it seems like Toby has decided to give up with bloging so I’ve decided to take it over. My name is Bob and I’m a monkey. Its a simple life I lead, I mostly hang around the seedier corners of Lindsays however, occasionally Im allowed out for a day trip. I have decided to steal this blog and chronicle one of these day trips.

It all began last June when my lovely owner Linzi moved house.. I was wrapped up nice and warm in a pile of scarves and suddenly it went dark, I was a little bit scared but I knew my owner wouldn’t let anything happen to me. I sat in the darkness for a while and fell asleep, it was really comfy in all these scarves. I was rudely awoken by what appeared to be an Earth quake, it transpired to only be someone moving the box i was currently living in. I was now quite excited, I didn’t know where I was going, but I could hear linzi’s voice so it was all ok by me. I unwrapped myself from the scarves and peeped out of my box to look around at what was going on… linzis room was bare! Everything was in boxes and piled up, we were moving… Yay!

I hid in my box again when Linzi came back into the room and decided to sleep again while everyone was busy moving everything. It seemed like days before anyone looked for me, but I waited patiently, knowing I wouldn’t be forgotten. Eventually, almost 4 whole MONTHS since i was first put into my box a strange figure opened the box and saved me from my cocoon of scarves. He shook the dust from me and sat me down on a shelf while he gathered a few other things from the box. “You’re going on a journey bob” he said to me in a kind voice, “Linzi’s been very busy and hasn’t been able to take care of you, so she left you with me for a bit”. I didn’t mind too much, this new person seemed nice enough and if linzi trusted me with him then he must be nice. I sat on his bed for a few days, occasionally sneaking around the new house I was in. I found a big box of videos which I’m fairly sure are my owners. It looks like he’s taking care of quite a few things as well as me, here’s a friend i made while staying with Toby, she’s a little protective of that L but I suppose it could be useful if you needed to spell “Louisiana”.

Anyway, one day, he starts packing a bag for me and says “You’ve got to wake up early tomorrow bob, you’re going on a long journey”. I didnt’ know where i was going but i was excited, he told me i was going home to see my owner!! I tried to sleep that night but it was hard, I kept waking up and hoping it was time to leave, Toby, my new foster owner, eventually woke up, but he seems quite lazy and he took *ages* to get out of bed and dressed. Once he’d managed to pull himself upright and dressed he took me to town.

Toby was really nice and sent me on my way, i needed to stop at work first, a few things needed sorting out. Toby let me borrow his camera for the trip, I’ve always wanted to try my paw at photography.

Here i am on my way to work, its a nice view but I cant really concentrate, I’m seeing Linzi tonight, yay. It was really early, for me at least, but the train was quite friendly, some smiles from passers by as I boarded, you’d think they’ve never seen a monkey on a train before.

While I was on my way to work I did notice something rather impressive though, the Millennium Stadium in the distance, I tried to take a good picture but I was too far away to get a good shot.

I eventually got into work and got on with doing some Programming, they pay peanuts so they get monkeys, its a good deal from my point of view. Encountered a few problems, and the day went past really really slowly, I kept checking the time to see how long it was till I was catching my train. Finally 5 o’clock arrived and I left work and practically ran to the station, only to realise I was half hour early as it was delayed.

So while I waited for the train I decided to check my tickets and realised Toby had treated me and bought me a First Class seat. I settled myself into the First Class lounge, their seats are massive and I could barely reach to get onto it, but the nice lady helped me up. I had myself a nice cup of coffee and watched for my train to arrive.

I sat myself down in the rather springing first class seat, did i mention it was first class? and prepared myself for the 2 1/2 hour journey.

I admitedly got a bit bored of the view, it was getting dark and nothing much to see as you go through Swindon so i had a quick read of the complimentary times. Its almost as boring, but i did enjoy the cartoons and the tricky Sudoku.

Before i knew it i had arrived at Paddington station, I had a look around for my cousin, but i think he was off on another adventure. Nevermind thou, I’m sure i’ll catch up with him in the future now i live so close, will be good to catch up.

Ive got to catch a connection to get to Dartford which is my final destination, so I wander down to the Underground and wait about for a tube. I keep looking but I never seem them coming… no idea why.

I enjoy the Tube ride, but its a bit stuffy, lots of people around on the Bakerloo line, I would have taken another picture but they’re all a bit scary around here and I didn’t want to show off my camera, once I’d caught my final train from Charing cross we went across the Jubilee Bridge and I quickly took a snapshot of the London Eye. Not quite as impressive as the Millennium Stadium, but its very pretty at night. It doesn’t take long for me to get to Dartford, which is a relief cos I feel a bit nervous on this train, its full of riff raff… I think the first class has gone to my head. Finally the train pulls into Dartford station, I hop off and walk to entrance to be met by my lovely owner, and the end of my little journey. I hope you enjoyed my rather expansive diary, I hope to catalogue my future adventures, but we’ll have to wait and see where I go

A poor woman from Newcastle had a stroke last year, when she awoke first she had a few problems with her voice but when she returned home the real extent of the problem became aparent.
She is suffering from Foreign Accent syndrome, first encountered in World War 2, which changes her accent from a Geordie twang into a fairly strong Jamacian/French Canadian. Its an extrodinary condition and while its humorous to begin with, after a while im sure it’ll be a nightmare.

[ BBC News | Video Interview ]

A council has apologised to a woman who was fined £60 after workmen painted a disabled bay around her car. After parking legally, the woman then went to the hairdressers for a cut and blow, only to return to her car with a fine and freshly painted lines around her car.
The fine has been revoked
[ BBC News ]

Now, this is a funky application of a desktop environment. It only focuses its interface on the icons on the main desktop window, and doesnt indicate how real operations of the icons is implemented, i assume its a simple “double click” type thing thou.
The basic premise is of a desktop which is full 3D, with each icon behaving as a physics prop. Using the mouse u are able to drag icons around, select groups and pile them, view in grids, stacks etc. It has a very intuitive look, the demonstrator often performing a number of quick tasks with simple gestures.
The demostration video is avaliable here : BumpTop 3D Desktop Prototype, and while it may not be the most user friendly interface, it holds alot of promise, i find myself “pileing” icons into groups regularly, games in one corner, dev tools in another etc. This looks like a beautiful solution, and if it was avaliable for other folders rather than just a desktop it happily use it as an explorer replacement.
More information can be found at the homepage: honeybrown.ca

And yes before anyone complains at me, I found it on Digg, but thats life.

I’m sure many of the geeks out here know about this Net Neutrality thing thats going on right now, but for those who dont, heres the beef.
Some time last year the CEO of AT&T asked the world why the internet should be allowed to use their pipes ( Cables transmitting the data) for free, this sent shockwaves through the internet. Internet service providers would like to be able to charge Web sites for access to their customers, while web sites that could not pay the new fees would be accessible at a slower speed, or perhaps not be accessible at all.

This tiered system provides a number of threats as service providers could, for example, shut out Web sites whose politics they dislike, and while even if they did not discriminate on the basis of content, access fees would automatically marginalise smaller, poorer Web sites.

[ NY Times ]

Heres an Ask A Ninja Special all about it:

Just a short one today (ben)

A clever combination of the Google Maps interface with a Wiki backend, ive added some cardiff spots including some of our department. Looks like a neat idea, hope they fix the functionality so u can rotate the blocks around areas and suchlike.

wikimapia.org

I dont know how many geeks around will have seen this, and ignoring bens continual rants about my posting lots of mini blogs about different things, heres a neat clip from a Windows 98 Conference, the guys talking about the wonderful new feature of Plug and Play avaliable to all the users of Windoze 98… Brilliant Simple, Opulent Beauty (or BSOD).

In other news, heres a funny clip set of G Bush bloopers

A fabulously sarcastic calculation on the losses the RIAA acheive after a single month of torrent users downloading music. The figures are taken from the $150,000 per infringment maximum allowed by the Copyright laws in the US, which incidentally are the same numbers the RIAA are using to sue XM Satellite Radio for each song their subscribers have recoreded to their Inno Player

Such sillyness always amuses, especially as this guy wrote a Java app to trawl Pirate Bay for the torrents of music in the month of Jan

“We have all heard how the RIAA is suing people over piracy, giving figures such as “300 million dollars a year” in lost revenues due to piracy. However, what you might not have heard is that this figure is actually lowballed - they are actually losing significantly more!”

Enjoy: One Month of Torrents is Worth More Than The GDP of France

Google Labs have created what appears to be a clever little set o’ widgets.
Its now possible to write an AJAX enabled website using Java as its base language, which then gets translated into HTML, and Javascript. Creating a neat way of developing ajax sites without the headaches of browser quirks and odd effects.
The Kitchen Sink demonstrates all the widgets avaliable to the user, and its darn impressive, the source code is avaliable here.
I cant play with this at the moment due to exams, but its compatabilty with Eclipse is handy for me personally, but its not IDE focused. While it may not provide all the functionality you want from an AJAX site its a bleeding handy start, especially as it allows a more object oriented approach to your websites.
[ Google Web Toolkit ]