Cricalix.Net

Well, I went to collect my camera today, having received a letter from the retailer that the camera was back in the store.

Handed over my ticket, salesman vanishes into the back and brings out the camera. Pull out one of my lenses, attach it, slot in a CF card and power it up. Everything looks good. With the salesman watching, hit the trigger.

*crash*

Salesman fetches manager. Show manager that despite being ‘on’, the camera is defunct. He nods, and says he’ll call the service manager at the place that repaired it (‘electronic adjustments’) and deliver it himself. So now I wait even more for my camera to come back to me in working form.

Craig linked to a YouTube video the other day – subtly entitled ‘Barbados Rocks’. I finally got around to watching it today, and I’ve started giving the link to several friends, because the video does, indeed, rock!

Now, all I need is a phone that uses MP3 ringtones…

I’ve been looking around recently for places I can get music that won’t line the pockets of the RIAA with more cash. I disagree with the strong-arm tactics of the RIAA, its stance that all music sharing is illegal, and I really dislike DRM. So, that promptly rules out the Apple iTunes store, and any of the major record-label stores. I’d also like to find more music than the crap that mainstream radio stations and labels push. Enter two stores so far, Zunior.com and eMusic.com. eMusic have recently opened a virtual storefront in the UK, and I’ve heard that they carry independent labels and artists, and a bit of older mainstream music.

I signed up for the eMusic trial – 25 downloads, gratis, no DRM, no restrictions of any type. A bit of browsing, and I found some music I liked. *click*. A bit more browsing and I converted my trial subscription to a paid one (£9 for 40 tracks), and started a small downloading spree which included some absolutely classic Bob Marley live tracks.

On with the subject of this post. I’ve been listening to the 30 second samples of a Megan Palmer album, Forget Me Not, and thoroughly enjoying it.So far, my favourite tracks are Portland, Tomorrow’s, Lemonade, and Angelo. In fact, I’ve enjoyed the samples enough that I’ve clicked the download all button and grabbed the entire album. Oh yes, this album isn’t even out yet.To give Zunior a bit more love – they’re a Canadian store, with pure independent releases, and given the exchange rate of $1 CAD being 47p GBP, there’s a good chance I’ll be downloading some music from there as well. Both Zunior and eMusic carry the Nettwerk Records label, and I’m finding some really nice music on that label.

Five years ago, on this day, I happened to be online from work.  Someone mentioned that the news was saying a bad plane crash had just happened in New York – we had a cable feed in the office, so I turned the projector on.  I didn’t move away from the projector for several hours, stunned by what was unfolding.  I had been to New York just a few months before, and stood at the base of the towers – the same towers that would crash to the ground from the actions of a few men.

Five years later, we’re not much further along the road to solving the problems brought to the surface on this day five years ago.  I don’t agree with how the governments of the USA and UK have handled the ‘war on terrorism’.  A ‘war’ on an abstract concept.  What a fiasco.  Unfortunately, there’s no way to rewind time and sort this all out, so we can only try to make the best of things as time marches forwards.

To those who lost someone in the tragedy of 2001/09/11, and to those who have lost someone in all of the tradgedy since then, I offer my thoughts – words are not sufficient.

In Dapper Drake, radrails 0.7.1 will fall over horribly when it tries to use /usr/bin/rails to create a new rails project.  This comes from the fact that /usr/bin/rails is actually a shell script, and RadRails is expecting a Ruby script.  The clue in the error is that the shell test fails with:

-e:3:in `load’: /usr/bin/rails:4: parse error, unexpected ‘=’, expecting ‘]’
(SyntaxError)
if [ "x$1" = "x" ]; then
^
/usr/bin/rails:4: parse error, unexpected ‘]’, expecting $
if [ "x$1" = "x" ]; then
^     from -e:3

Point radrails at /usr/share/rails/railties/bin/rails and life is good.

Last Saturday, I went to my friendly bank – a bank I’ve banked with for more years than I know, due to an account being set up when I was quite young. We discussed how they might help my finances, and there was a decent up-sell technique to convince me that I wanted a Platinum bank account (£15 per month to get ‘free’ AA coverage, travel insurance etc), but made with the honest remark of ‘Don’t upgrade if the “free” perks aren’t worth it.’ Nice honest bank manager :) We also scheduled an appointment to review my mortgage for the Saturday coming.

I realised this morning that I had agreed to be at the bank at 9 A.M., and agreed with the plasterer that I’d be at home at 8:30 A.M. so he could get to work. I’m not of the inclination to leave a total stranger in my house while I go spend an hour at the bank, so I rang the bank at lunch to cancel the appointment. The gent at the other end of the phone seemed positively shocked that someone would actually call in a day or so before an appointment to say ‘Sorry, something has come up, I’ll have to reschedule.’ Not shocked in a bad way mind you, shocked that I had bothered to be courteous enough to tell them that I couldn’t make it.

Has society really become so rude that being polite is that much of a shock?

I blame my broughtupsy.

I am now without a camera, having sent my Dynax 5D in for repair.  I’m looking at 30ish days without it, as apparently it has to go to Germany to be checked out.

Perhaps I’ll get a new mobile phone with a camera to make up for it!