by GothNinja | Jul 28, 2009 | Travel
Yesterday I made my way back to work after a weeks holiday (Why do you always need a holiday to recover from a holiday?) As i traveled along my normal commute, I was hit with a closed road & diversion. Now this is a bit of a tricky one as the closed road is a rather busy road that carries a vast amount of traffic up towards the north wales coast, and has trucks going back and too almost constantly. The diversion sent this heavy traffic through Bwlchgwyn (A place advertising itself as the highest village in Wales) For those of you who have never been there I should point out this is a small village situated on the top of a mountain, and has very small roads between its buildings. Roads that due to parked vehicles are just wide enough for a single car to drive along as long as there is no oncoming traffic. “Great!” says I, “This is going to annoy me for weeks!“.
That was yesterday.
Today the commute included a load of new road signs. in bright yellow, and placed every 50 yards for the length of the diversion. These signs said simply “DO NOT TRUST YOUR SATNAV”
Now, I agree this is a valid warning from the government, You cant have people going about listening to voices coming out of small box’s, how does the box know which way to go? it hasn’t even got any eyes? And what if the person in the box is rubbish at reading maps? you could end up anywhere, Or it could try and tell you to turn and drive off the end of a cliff. But I digress.
Now for the signs to have been placed, and the amount placed you know there had to be at least several incidents. All I can think off is several trucks (since cars are more maneuverable) must have been sent on the diversion, and their satnav’s must have realised they were on a different road, and tried to recalculate them back to the road they should be on. The only way to do this would be to direct them down streets not designed for traffic bigger than horses, or the small horse drawn cart. roads where you have no chance to turn around on. Now these roads will go to the road the trafic should be traveling along, but wait! that roads closed so can not be used.
So I figure there was a lot of trucks or larger vehicles trapped on small side roads yesterday, causing chaos, and possible emergency rescue. I would love to have watched it on my Spy Satellite, If only I had one.
by GothNinja | Jul 17, 2009 | Holiday
YES
Today is finally over.
I am now off for my weeks Holiday.
No Work. No Phones. Just Peace, Fun, & Beer!!
See you soon…
by CodeNinja | Jul 10, 2009 | Programing
I read a book many, many years ago. It was one of the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, Either second foundation, or foundation and earth, I forget which. (I did read them all in order straight after each other, so the actual books blurred into one story). Anyway, In this book the empire wants to find the second foundation people who they suspect of controlling everyone’s choices. So they send out one of their guys in a state of the art spaceship to go find them. The ship had a thinking brain as its computer, and what the pilot did not know was they suspected him of being one of the advanced second foundation people, and had given him a broken ship so if he was able to fly it, then it proved he was one of the people with advanced minds…
Some days I feel like that pilot. I swear they are testing me! Let me explain. I was given a new project, out the blue, with a deadline of a week. And I mean deadline since the Governor was setting it up at the customers site in exactly one week. (OK. that’s partial hindsight as I was only told the deadline at hometime the day before he was due to install the system!).
So, Whats the project?
Right, What is needed is to integrate the LDAP address book on grandstream phones with the LDAP address book on a kerio email server. Simple!
Do I have the necessary tools?
Like what?
Do I have a Grandstream phone with LDAP capability?
Err no, you don’t. There is a fellow inmate at the other side of the building who has one. You could do a bit of code work, walk over to his desk, test the phone, walk back to your room and check the code? Oh, I should mention He is one of the phone support guys, so he is on the phone all day long, so you may have to wait until he’s not using the phone before getting a quick test!
Right, Do I have an account on a kerio server so i have an address book i can use for testing?
Don’t be silly, Kerio accounts cost money, so no account to test with!
Do I at least have documention on the phones? details on how it talks to the LDAP server? format it needs responses in.
No documentation at all, No information, The only person with that knowledge is not working on this project so You’ll just have to find it all out yourself. Oh, you do have the web address of a script someone else has written. Did I mention that?
No you did not. So I have an example script that does what I need to do, so I can work from that? That’s not too bad!
Oh. You have a link to a script. I should say it does not work on any account based LDAP server so falls over if you try using it on a Keri server. And even if it did work, it does not do what you need it to do since its a script to make an xml address book to import into older phones, so a)does not work, b)Not what you want.
So. Just to summarise. I have been asked to develop a system where a phone talks directly to a kerio email server and auto populates the address book? and has the search functionability built in? I have no phone to test with or see how it works, No account with an address book, No documentation, And only a broken script that doesn’t even do what I need? Great!!!!
You forgot less than a week to finish it and get it tested!
I’ll just go out back and shoot myself now……………
CN
by GothNinja | Jul 2, 2009 | Travel, Weather
This post should be read to the theme tune of Road Rage by Catatonia. 
You could be taking it easy on yourself
You should be making it easy on yourself
Cause you and I know,
It’s all over the front page, you give me road rage
Road Rage by Catatonia
Some mornings I really wish they hurry up inventing the personal teleporter.
So once again the temperature is stupidly hot, with the possibility of outbreaks of “Dave Syndrome“, and its time for the long commute over the welsh mountains to work. Now having to drive a long distance in this heat is not a nice experience in a car where the only a/c is opening the windows. So I did not start off with high expectations, and what little I had did not last long.
Irritant 1) Animals
I do not know if its the heat affecting them, or if there’s some big conspiracy in the animal kingdom to get me for some past upset, whatever the reason they are not behaving as you would expect them to. I first noticed this “oddness” when leaving my drive and as I pulled onto the road there was a huge fat pigeon standing in the middle of the road blocking it. So being Nice, I slowly drove up to it so it would fly away. Nothing! It just stood there watching me, as I had to maneuver around it since I did not want my car splattered with dead animal (It took ages to clean off the badger entrails). After the pigeon there was a rabbit, followed a bit later by a squirrel, then a baby rabbit, another squirrel, and finally a cat.
Irritant 2) Cars
Whats going on? Today there are something like one billion extra cars on the road (Give or take a Car). They are everywhere, Why? If it was Friday I’d say there were all taking the day off work to go away for the weekend to enjoy the heat. Yet here they all are! Junctions I normally just slow down for and get to turn instantly, I’m now stuck parked at for several minutes waiting for a gap in the traffic so i can pull into, Roundabouts are a similar problem. There’s also the knock on affect of slowness, since the roads are so full.
Irritant 3) Diversions.. (AKA Pointless Diversions)
This is also an irritant over stupidness and pointless red tape. On my route to work there is a junction I have to take. Its a simple T-Junction with a small filer road to make it easier for traffic to flow onto the road speeding it all up. Now they are currently doing some road repairs on this filter road, leaving the main junction clear. Yet, and this really is a good example of red tape. The filter road is closed, With loads of “Road Closed” signs, and “Diversion” signs. Now the turning for the junction is about 10 yards from the turning onto the filter road. This means the sign saying there is a diversion is next to the sign saying “<=- Diversion“. Then when you turn you have another 10 yards before you hit the sign saying “Diversion Ends“. The three of them are so close together you can jump from one to the other to the first in a small triangle. WHY?
Irritant 4) Road Works
Why? For the love of the Gods, Why? as soon as we get hot weather does every builder on the planet start doing work on roads, or on building close to roads causing traffic lights, or the road to be restricted to one lane? Is there a Memo that goes out? are they in the pay of petrol stations to waste our petrol by making us constantly stuck waiting to pass?
Irritant 5) JCB Diggers
OK. I don’t really have to say anything about these, it says it all, They are Big Yellow travel at 5 miles an hour and make overtaking on country lanes impossible, and tend to only drive during rush hour commute times…
So on another day where they claim “Its the hottest recorded day!” (I’m sure they only have records going back one week), I’m stuck inside a metal box slowly cooking on my long commute to work, All I need is some idiot to cut me up, or start tailgateing me and we’re having a bit of road rage!!
