by GothNinja | Jul 29, 2011 | Media, MEME
Sean Bonner Made a Thing “http://spockisnotimpressed.tumblr.com/” Wil Wheaton suggested it get made “A Thing”, The Internetz Agreed and “A Thing” has been born.
(This is a retouched copy of My contribution to The Thing. Original one was a quick five minute knock up while working, you can see it HERE. )
But Remember, Spock is not Impressed! Unless you grab a copy of the Spock template to use to add Spock to photos which can then be submitted to the blog.
Go Internetz. Go spread The Thing and make this MEME fly.
by GothNinja | Jul 25, 2011 | Vehicles
As I was on my commute home after work Friday I noticed my battery warning light was glowing. “By Jove, that’s a devilishly unfortunate occurrence” I exclaimed, (Well I think those may not have been the exact words used).
Now I have had problems in the past with my alternator, so I hoped it was either a dead battery, or just the alternator playing up. My commute is over the Welsh mountains, where there is no phone signal in the slightest, So I decided to drive on in the hope that :-
- If the battery was dead. I could keep driving fine off the alternator as long as I did not have to stop and restart the vehicle.
- If the Alternator was dead. I could get home as long as I did not over use the charge stored in the battery.
Option 2 was a bit tricky as it was pouring down with rain and dark, I should have had my lights & wipers on, but I am MAN. so I needed no lights, and minimum wipers. Unfortunately my plans were destroyed when I made a right turn at a junction. I had slowed down partially, and tried using the breaks as I turned only for it to feel weird. Confused by this event as I mounted the top of a hill and started to drive down a steep incline, I noticed as I adjusted speed to manage the twisting turns of the road that each time I used the brakes there was less and less there until the time I put my foot on the pedal and there was nothing there. *Don’t Panic!*
I came safely to a stop using the age old breaking technique of mounting the grassy bank at the side of the road for the grass/mud to slow the vehicle down, then finalising the stop with the handbrake. Upon checking the engine I discovered my “Alternator Belt” or “Fan Belt” (depending on your age) had come off.
So I found myself, standing over a internal combustion engine, big metal engineering tools held in my oil stained hands roaring up at the heavens as they poured rain down on me. “I AM MAN HEAR ME ROAR!!!!” You Know, working in an office based Job you sometimes forget the feeling of manly work. If there had been a woman in the area I would have asked for a stocking to really be manly in fixing the car.
I soon got bored of this activity and decided to sit inside the car while waiting for the engine to cool down enough to let me re-attach the belt. (Since the belt also controlled the oil pump & radiator fan the engine was a tad hot)
When I could safely work on the engine it was a five minute job to reattach the belt, which was a lot less time than spent looking manly and roaring earlier. And my trip home continued with me driving very calmly as the belt was frayed, twisted, and not the healthiest. I actually made it the last ten miles home with the belt, before some woman stepped out in front of me two hundred yards from my place and as I swerved around her I heard a SNAP, as the belt finally gave up the ghost. At least it had got me home.
I need to add one more section on this story before I bid you farewell dear constant reader. On the Saturday I popped into town to go to a Car Accessories and Parts place to get a replacement belt. Now I have used the same place for years, since its a lot cheaper than most because it sells to mechanics and car part shops. So I pull up outside the warehouse near the customer door, only to be confronted by a sign saying they now have a shiny new shop across the road, for customers to use. I manage to cross the four lanes of very busy traffic to enter the shop, which looks more like a normal car accessory shop than a parts place. I order my belt, the guy behind the counter checks the exact one I need, takes my money, then tells me I need to go to their main building across the road to collect my part. Yes. They send you across four busy lanes of traffic to order your part, then back across them to collect it. From now on I order over the phone.
by CodeNinja | Jul 21, 2011 | Technology
This post has been brought to you By Windows 7, And trying to set it up to work happily with a Gentoo Server & Linux NAS.
Well, Just trying to get it to work in a useful productive way really. Or put simply, in deference to Microsoft, to just not FAIL.
by GothNinja | Jul 18, 2011 | TV Shows
I have now finished watching “The Cape” and as such I need to revisit and update my review of the show. If you recall the original Review you will no doubt remember that I said “Anyone who likes action shows, or superhero shows will Like this show a lot. ” Well I need to update that view.
The show was originally designed to be a thirteen part season, unfortunately it was cancelled after just ten of the thirteen episodes were filmed. And as such they never made the extra three. And as such they never finish the story off, and leave many questions unanswered. You never see where they were taking different story lines, and it leaves you as the viewer unsatisfied at the end.
for example:-
They start a Orwell ark with her loosing it slightly, painting everything white, and loosing herself in her mind. They start this just as season ends so never goes anywhere.
The Carnival of Crime are apparently training the Cape so they can use him in some big, dangerous, mysterious way that they hint at but never tell you.
In fact the final episode feels more like a penultimate, episode, or at least a penultimate to a two part season ending.
All in all I feel let down by the show, and would advise people not to bother watching it.
by CodeNinja | Jul 14, 2011 | Media, Hacks
Unless you have been living in a small cave half way up an inhospitable mounting for the last month you would have heard of the News of the World (NotW) Phone Hacking Scandal. It’s especially bad if you live in the UK.
If you are that cave dwelling hermit let me say “How the frak are you reading this post? Did you follow the article on reading blogs on kindles? How have you got internet access? inquiring minds want to know!” *relax* I mean to say, that this scandal is about slime masquerading as reports who accessed a vast (possible 4,000) number of people’s (Celebrity’s, Sports Stars, Politicians, Victims of Crime) answer phone messages. Now there was such an amount of this going on that the paper has closed down after 168years in print.
I have no intention of writing about the incident itself, or any of the fallout, or anything directly in relation to this case. That has been covered in depth all over the Internet & Surviving media. What I would like to address is the term thrown about “Phone Hacking Scandal“. Why must everyone insist on calling it Hacking?
*NOTE: Phone Hacking is referred to as Phreaking
No where in any of the reports is any activity mentioned that even faintly falls into the category of “Hacking” under any definition. Even if you take the original definition of Hacking, as in using some piece of technology or item in a way that was different to the intended use. Or knowing or wanting to learn about the inner working of different things, you still can not fit the term “Hacker” or “Hacking” to what the NotW reporters actually did.
What they did was to access peoples voicemail’s. Yes this is wrong, its an intrusion of privacy, it’s probably illegal as “unauthorised to personal communication” but it is not Hacking. They phoned up the voicemail number, and using the Victims phone number, and the generic default pin number accessed they voice mail system in the way it was intended to, in the way we all access it, they just did it without the Victims permission.
Surely it should be called “illegal phone tapping” or “illegal access to mail” or by whatever legal term it is for the crime they committed. The media like using the term Hacker to scare the public about these faceless super-criminals with secret abilities that let them to do almost anything. I think its time to stop the mass-hysteria and excessive incorrect use of this term.
We do not call someone who sticks a plaster on a small graze a Doctor, We do not call the small child playing with a plastic gun in the street a terrorist, and we should not call someone who phones up a publicised phone number and follows the instructions the recorded message tells them a Hacker.
Come on Media People, Your reputation is tarnished over this NotW incident, don’t make it worse by not doing your homework, and just falling into your old scaremongering ways.
The Three Ninjas saying a few words about the misappropriation of the term “Hacker“. To quote Randal from Clerks II. “I’m taking it back”
