5 Apr 2001 (Thursday) 

I discovered something kinda neat today. Well, I think it's kinda neat anyhow. My 'Ghost In The Machine' CD from MP3.com uses the RockRidge naming convention. Why's this useful ? Well, it means that if mounted with a suitable filing system, all the filenames come out correctly. Like under Linux .

The CDs burnt with Nero don't though. Grr.

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6 Apr 2001 (Friday) 

Article on The Register. About the Hotmail terms of use agreements. If you want to read the article and its related pages then feel free. Don't be offended by the fact that communication through their sites grants MS rights to basically do what they like with that communication (send it on to others, capitalise on business ideas, publicly display its content, etc, etc). Don't be shocked by the fact that you're granting them rights to steal any proprietary rights contained within the mail. Oh no. Because MicroSoft are these good people. You can trust them.

Scared ?

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7 Apr 2001 (Saturday) 

Some more tracks that go together...

• Love Is A Battlefield - Pat Benatar
• Where Have All The Cowboys Gone - Paula Cole
• Kiss The Rain - Billie Myers
• Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper
• If You Were A Woman - Bonnie Tyler
• Head Over Feet - Alanis Morrisette
• Long Way To Go - Stevie Nicks
• As I Lay Me Down - Sophie B Hawkins

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8 Apr 2001 (Sunday) 

A very good day today, I feel. So, what was today good for, then ? Well. I finally checked in the last batch of things that Robin sent me. That was useful because it means that I'm 'nearly' up to date with the 1.33 version which hopefully means a release soon. That was actually in the early hours of the morning, but it's still today.

Once I finally got up, I thought I'd make sure I could write a CD from unix. I'm very impressed with Nero under Windows. I like it. It's pretty, it builds the CDs you want, in the right order (pretty much), and it seems to be very capable. But what it won't do is write RockRidge format CDs. Without RockRidge format, or at least the filenaming portion of that, it's a pain to read them. So I thought I'd try it under unix. I've been creating images under unix for a little while, but never tried to write a CD.

Thus started the interesting story. I did a quick search on Google for writing CDs under linux. Lots of 'How-to's. Most of them referring to SCSI drives. After a couple of minutes I discover that you make IDE drives look like SCSI drives with the ide-scsi driver. Sounds reasonable to me. So, I follow the little instructions for installing it, modifying them as I go for Debian, rather than Redhat (which they were written for). Reboot. And wouldn't you know it, I've got a SCSI CD writer. And cdrecord blanks the re-writable and then... tada... writes data to it. Astounding. All in the course of about half an hour in the end. Happy ? Yup, I am.

So, I'm on a roll now. Grab the printer from downstairs that we've been given. It's an old Canon BJ-10sx. It emulates about ten different printers according to the manual, but I don't have a driver for that one exactly. Whilst I could stick the details in for the driver, I can't be bothered, so I select a likely candidate, flip the DIP switches, and... a printer that prints. Golly.

Talking to Dad, he wants to know how to get around having to modify formulas after copying them so that they don't change certain static references (well, he didn't phrase it like that, but that's the crux of it). So, we have a quick play and sticking $'s before the references fixes it. I'm surprised I remember that, as it's years since I did any spreadsheet work. Neat.

Whilst chatting, I remembered that the family RPC has a backplane in it that isn't being used. And it just so happens that I need one for my second machine's network card. Tada. A networked second machine. Coo. It could do with a larger HD, but it'll be just fine at the moment.

I'm getting annoyed at taking my HD in to work and having to modify the configuration every blumin' time. It's only a case of swapping two Internet directories, but... well... it's frustrating. So, let's install dhcp on the local server and use BootP to set the machine up. How easy should that be ? Pretty complicated ? Nah. 'apt-get install dhcp' as per normal, and it says 'look at this file, you'll need to change some bits'. So, you comment out a few little bits, add in the relevant sections for this network and... a working DHCP/BootP server. Stick in my host as a static IP from the server and it'll be even happier. And the machine boots. Astounding, huh ?

So, all in all, a good day, I feel.

Oh, and I've gone through 'most' of the SVG test suite, noting what fails on each test. So far I've had a single completely successful test.

Updated SVG to handle text much better today, and upgraded Newsbase to version 0.66a which is a development version. It's all been quite neat today, I think.

The Test Suite now passes on 6 cases now. Wow. Out of 127.

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9 Apr 2001 (Monday) 

I get a summary of the searches performed on my site every so often. Someone seemed very interested in Helen and Angela on the 3rd. Hello, whoever you are. No, I've not said anything about her for ages. I don't think so anyhow. And I've not said anything about Angela for a while. Which reminds me. It's Angela (another one - Beardsmore)'s birthday tomorrow... well, strictly today as it's the early hours of the 10th.

On the 4th, someone searched for MPTrip. Interesting. I like my MPTrip walkman. It's cool. And on the 5th, someone was looking for 'Crystal Beach tx' whatever that is... Sorry, I can't help you there .

Coo... The FreeFind control panel has changed. They need to get the hang of anti-aliasing though. Between March 1st and today, the top query is 'modules', closely followed by 'helen', then 'map', 'cvs', 'amplayer', 'mp3' and 'angela' all tying for third place.

Brief note: Bother, SVG transformations which are joined into a single transform are applied backwards.

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11 Apr 2001 (Wednesday) 

This is a question that's been playing upon my mind. How does one apply for God status ? I mean, what's the way that these things work out. Surely you have to have worshipers to be a God, yes ? So, am I a God because my cats worship me ? Or is this just a dependency ?

A little lighthearted speculation never hurt anyone .

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17 Apr 2001 (Tuesday) 

Brief diary entry, because it's been a few days when I should have made an entry or two. Thursday was fun, because I had a nice chance to chat to Andrew and Stewart. And I found out that I broke some stuff before leaving. Bother. I really hate that .

Gary came back from holiday on Thursday, too, so he popped in to chat, which was quite strange and... well... strange. Lots of interesting things happening.

Over the weekend, Chris came over. I've not seen him in... oooh, God knows how long. So it was nice to see him again.

And as we were going to the station, this voice yelled out 'Chris' from down the road. Obviously nobody around here knows him, so I just ignored it. A moment later, up comes Jason... He'd been to see his brother who lives nearby and was just driving past with his parents. How strange is that ?

Simon went home today, too. Just as Chloë rang to see if he was around as she's now back at home for a couple of weeks. Typical. Oh well.

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21 Apr 2001 (Saturday) 

Finally decided to play with my digital camera. I've got a little collection of programs to talk to it now. I can read pictures off it and convert them to sprites. Not very well just yet, but well enough. I'm working on the C version, but as it's now 5:30am I think I ought to go to sleep.

Mum and Dad are on holiday now - they went this morning.

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23 Apr 2001 (Monday) 

There's a phrase that I look forward to hearing every Monday night. "Angel will be back at the later time of ..." Because, yes, yet again Channel 4 have put back the time of Angel. From about 11:15, Angel has moved progressively later each week. I don't remember all the times we've had, but I do remember that there was a 12:50, a 1:15, a 1:50, tonight a 2:05 and... next week 2:25 !

For crying out loud Channel 4, what's the deal ? Are you trying to move it to early morning TV or something ?

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24 Apr 2001 (Tuesday) 

Ok! Who's the sad git searching for 'justin naked' ? !

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25 Apr 2001 (Wednesday) 

Spent too long today watching telly. Managed to see the end of 'Star Trek - The Undiscovered Country'. That was about the best bit of it, if I remember rightly. 'The Iron Giant', which I've not seen before, and was really fun. And 'Star Wars V - The Empire Strikes Back'. Quite a fun night anyhow.

Even the voices in your head need friends. [ Voices; Me ]

I set up the telly in my room tonight. It's a bit of an overkill having a 21" telly in this room but hey, what the hell... So, I've got the DVD player on it and I've been looking at the docs about it. Although my firmware is so incredibly old it doesn't support half the things in the docs, there are a few neat things. The system status window appears to work and indicates that the firmwares is version 1.03. Since the current firmware is at 2.33, this is very slightly old. I'd like to upgrade, really. I thought I'd try out some of the hidden features. Most of them don't appear to work, but on the 'select RF mode' option I get instead the option to disable macrovision. Which is quite cool.

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26 Apr 2001 (Thursday) 

Whee! WebCam is up and running. Yes, I've grafted the STV680 code into the !WebCam application to produce a nasty, horrid and... well, somewhat dodgy WebCam application. You can go and look at the pictures if you like. Of cource, I have to have remembered to run the cam. And to be connected. But you can at least see what's there.

Watched The Return Of The Jedi tonight, too. Quite cool.

Well, Sir, the 'Meteor' seems to be hovering over a small town in Wiconsin. [ Fallen Angel; Comms operator; The X Files ]

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30 Apr 2001 (Monday) 

It's early. Angel. This week 2:25. Next week 3:05. Huh.

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