Cricalix.Net

Some days I despair at the code I write.  I’ve been doing it for enough years now that I should be avoiding the stupid bugs, like keying a hash on a non-unique value over the run of the program.  The brilliant part about that bug though, was that it looked distinctly like a random bit-flip.  A value from the database appeared to be getting modified, even though there was no code that actually modified the value at any point.

A quick change to the keying value to be a composite of two values that would ensure uniqueness, and life was groovy.

Today, I decided to make courgette soup. I’ll skip the whole step by step thing - 3 large courgettes, 1 litre of chicken & vegetable stock, several cloves of garlic, extra virgin olive oil, single cream, salt, pepper, frying pan, stock pot. Chop the courgettes, soften over low heat in an oiled pan with the garlic. Add to hot stock, blend with a stick mixer. Salt and pepper to taste, cream to thicken and add richness. Soup!

One of my favourite DOS games from years ago is Tyrian - I forget how I found it, but I remember having great fun playing it. It turns out that the author made an updated version called Tyrian 2000, and released it to the world for free. Two downloads later, one for Tyrian 2000 and the other for DosBox, and I was in business. I’d really forgotten how much fun this game is - it can be frustrating too, the author follows the old-school method of just throwing more and more stuff at you, faster and faster. Works for me though.

Some screenshots - I’ve run from episode 1 to 5, and looped back around, so I’m in a nice beefy ship with everything maxed out (except shields).\

Bonus part about Tyrian (and Tyrian 2000) was typing ‘destruct’ at the main menu and getting a Scorched Earth clone! :)

While chatting on EVE Online last night, I realised that I own 3 cellphones, and have 5 UK-based telephone numbers and 2 US-based telephone numbers.

Wasn’t someone muttering about ‘one number for life’ a few years ago? I could certainly use it!

Oh, and one of those cellphones actually plays music. I must be moving into the modern century.

.. the camera that is. It’s back in the shop for the third time, this time with explicitly precise instructions on how to replicate the issue. Apparently they were trying to replicate it by pressing the menu button, not the shutter release. The manager at Jessops (where I got the camera) said if they still can’t find the problem, they’d probably look at supplying a replacement camera. Wonder if I can do a replacement and upgrade for £50? :)

It’s interesting, to me, to look at the signal-to-noise ratio values that my current DSL router spits out regarding my ADSL connection. The previous router was unable to present this information to me, and I had no way to correlate the disconnections I was experiencing.

The numbers are a bit off, as I haven’t changed the mrtg configuration to divide by 10, or change bytes to dB. The majority to the right was a 8000/288 kbit connection. The little bump on Thursday was when the downstream rate dropped to about 7000 kbit, and the massive drop on Sunday is when my ISP returned my upstream to 448 kbit. What’s a bit more interesting the cyclic pattern that the downstream signal (green) shows when the line was functioning at 8000/288. The peak-to-trough drop is about 50%, and I think the ZyXEL just couldn’t handle the loss of signal. As the downstream rate dropped, the SnR dips become less pronounced as well.

I’ll see now if the upstream change gives the Billion any grief - I know the ZyXEL had lots of trouble with it.

I am a digital packrat. I have e-mail going back years (and I’ve managed to move it from server to server along the way). Over the past few days, I started sorting out my main inbox, as it had several thousand e-mails. Today, after much folder creation, mail moving and deleting, I’ve managed to get my inbox down to 25 mails. A few more bits of clever on the server side of things, and it should stay that way too.

Next stop, de-duping my 70 GB image directory. Hopefully I can free up a few gigabytes.