Inchoate

Hotline to Hell?

Seen yesterday in LSE:

Moral turpitude

From the I-94W US Visa Waiver that some non-US citizens can fill in upon entry to the country to skip applying for a visa. But first, you have to jump through a couple of hoops...

(dictionary: turpitude)

Lost headset

If your Bluetooth phone headset went missing in a pub, what could you do to get it back?

Natural History Museum Hair!

Spent a very enjoyable Tuesday afternoon with Mo checking out the Fabulous Beasts and Hair exhibitions at the Natural History Museum.

Turning off PHP in a hurry

Hanging out at the Morpeth Mansions on Sat night, enjoying a gin & tonics session, descending deliciously into a quinine-flavored giggly haze, ... whereupon with little warning Rob & DC, a couple of playful computer security experts, instigated a "capture the flag" session with my production server. This involved attempting to get root on my box (i.e. total control) before I patched any holes they might've found...

BMX Flatland Finals at Urban Games

Back at the end of July, I took a last minute decision to blow off Festival of Peace and meet up with Eva & Emily at the UK Urban Games (it was Emily's idea; I'd totally forgotten about it). The galling £15 entry for the last few hours turned out to be worth it for the excellent company, BMX flatland, FMX, and B-Boy (breakdance) finals, not to mention slamming hard on my ass trying out an Indoboard (like a physio's balance board but wildly overpriced, sketchier, and intended for skate/snowboarders: of which I'm neither :-).

I've now finally got around to mixing the video of the flatland finals, and putting it online!

It's getting late. Grab yourself a cold one.

...dedicated to the Legg, and a new friend I met on the Tube tonight ;-)

Technological surprises

Been playing with my new Orange M1000 Pocket PC phone. Found some secret audio recordings; realized my phone's a higher spec machine than my laptop; and discovered the coolest portable tunes player...

Circle Line Party 3 - aftermath

It happened, it was the best ever. Reports arriving here.

Suits you, Sir!

Needed a suit at short notice for an interview with some posh Asset Management Fund. Fine, except I don't have a suit. Well, not in this country anyway (long story). Nik kindly offered but first I wanted to feed that little cheeky personality trait that says "beat the system!".

Can I get hold of a tight suit for less than fifty quid with only hours left?

Circle Line Party 3

The third ever, and possibly last, Circle Line Party is happening this Friday.

Mobile phone maths

After over two years operating a pay-as-you-go phone I finally got fed up of paying rather a lot for rather a little and set about looking for a new phone.

Having had access to a P800 during the Urban Tapestries project I had become pretty excited about the possibility of applications running on phones. I intellectually knew it was a cool idea but until I actually directly experienced it and set my mind in motion as to what was possibility I hadn't really got it. Now, I'm hooked on software running on phones and I definitely want to have an up-to-date runtime to play with.

So how the hell does one choose a phone, carrier, tariff, ....??

My first car on book cover

From: Jez Weston <jezweston@y...>
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 23:19:52 +0100 (BST)
To: Paul Makepeace <Paul.Makepeace@r...>
Subject: Re: historical question

--- Paul Makepeace wrote:
> Were we at the Backyard Jam in 97?

Yup.

> It's on the cover of Mat Hoffman's autobiog "Ride of my life".
> The back jacket has the ramp and a pile of cars in the background, one of
> which next to the white Sierra looks remarkably like my Citroen GSA...

That's your car*. I remember it being parked at that angle to the ramp.
Woo! We are famous!

* For strange and complex values of 'your'.

Movable Type URL tweaks

I've been having "URL envy" for some blogs where the title of the entry appears in some form in the URL. So instead of /archives/002996.html it's /archives/that_blog_about_foo.html. Not only is that form of URL more descriptive, it's easier for me to remember, and even assists search engines in indexing the site (in other words, for search terms including the words in the URL these pages will appear higher up the results). After poking around the ever-useful Elise MT site I found how to do it.

London Night-bus-mare

Have you ever waited for an every-fifteen-minutes London night bus for nearly an hour, to have one roll right past you without even stopping because it was rammed to capacity? Had to watch four passengers leave the bus and the driver still not allow more passengers on? Had that happen three times in a row? Ever wished you could do something about it?

Tonight, after waiting over two hours to get an N77 home, when that third bus threatened to pass us by I didn't let it go by. Here's an account of what turned into a rather nerve-wracking but somewhat effective showdown with a bus driver at 4am.