30 Sep 2006 (Saturday) 

Why on Earth is Epsilon Eridne (or some spelling that sounds similar) floating around my head ? I'm thinking it's a star. I don't think it's an important thing. It just is there. And in the absence of anything that is important that I can deal with, that one might find an answer I hope.

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29 Sep 2006 (Friday) 

Defcon released today. And, aside from their servers having real problems with the number of people playing, authenticating and such like, it's really cool .

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28 Sep 2006 (Thursday) 

Mobuzz did a show about frying stuff yesterday. And there was no episode today. Think Karina's poisoned everyone ? I do hope not.

Defcon's released tomorrow, at about 6pm GMT. I'm quite looking forward to that.

I had a dream this evening that someone was getting divorced and they got received something about it in the post and they weren't happy. I don't exactly know why, but they were talking about it not being right and stuff. I don't remember much more. But there was also something about a little girl as well. I don't know what that was. Just that she was in the background and... something. I blame Eureka. And IBM. Just because, Ok ?

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27 Sep 2006 (Wednesday) 

Do I know someone at IBM UK ? I don't think I do.

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22 Sep 2006 (Friday) 

Jogu's been doing some neat little boxes so that he can control his Sky box from the computer. He's been doing them for quite a while, but he's recently been getting a lot more orders and things have been going pretty well. They're pretty neat, particularly as they can be controlled from both Windows and Linux. It's all pretty neat. I played with the much earlier version that he did with the browser - oh, last year some time. It's not quite as interactive when you're accessing it over the Internet, but it's still quite cute. Anyhow, I promised him a plug for his SkyControl, so if you're into home automation, or you just want to play with it, you can control Sky box using serial or USB.

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21 Sep 2006 (Thursday) 

This is the story of every programmer. Probably. I saw Wargames when I was younger - much younger. From that, I wrote myself a little game I named 'GTNW' for the BBC. It was a mode 7 affair, 10 cities per player, 2 player, simple turn based, with 2 missiles per city (IIRC), using a simple calculation to base launch-to-impact times. Very simple - this was all BBC BASIC and I wasn't that hot. But it was fun. UK-v-Australia games were common ('cos those were the first two countries I stuck values in for - later there were others but they were never played that often). Eventually I wanted to move up to using a graphical map and having some decent timings for missiles, etc. But that was beyond me, because MODE 1 (which was 320x256 in all of 4 colours) was 20K and I couldn't write the rest of the program in what remained - I wasn't able to write assembler at that time.

It might have been simple but it was fun. It wasn't as pretty as Wargames though, even though in my head I knew that I wanted it to be. However, the day has come when there is a game that will match where I wanted it to be. Or rather, I hope there will be - 'cos it's not out yet. Defcon - Everybody-dies.

I've had a copy on pre-order since is popped up on Steam. Given that it's a cool idea, and obviously had a lot of history it was appealing, so adding that it was from the makers of Darwinia just tipped the balance.

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16 Sep 2006 (Saturday) 

I've finally finished Cholo, with the 33rd best time (so far - no doubt I'll drop as others complete the game). Yay me. [Edit 14th December 2006: I'm now 29th. Not entirely sure how I can go up the best times list, but I'm not going to complain!]

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13 Sep 2006 (Wednesday) 

Jim: I have a cunning plan, fuzz-buddy. I am going to... let them win! Peter: Ah-ha. Not quite as cunning as one might hope, is it ? [ A cunning plan!; Jim and Peter; Earthworm Jim ]

Lots of rain early this morning, waking me up. This evening it came back, and it's quite nasty.

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11 Sep 2006 (Monday) 

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10 Sep 2006 (Sunday) 

It'd be nice if I could remember how to talk on the telephone without seeming like I'm retarded. Managing to string together sentences would be good.

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9 Sep 2006 (Saturday) 

Two very good Stargate's today. Vala loses her memory, which was done very well, and - far more fun - McKay's sister comes along to Atlantis. And she's played by his sister, too which just makes it more fun .

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8 Sep 2006 (Friday) 

I was slightly freaked this morning by a very strange coincidence between the fun dream world I awoke from and reality. It was a little scary.

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7 Sep 2006 (Thursday) 

Dad wanted to find the track with the longest intro section before any singing begins. I suggest that Archive's 'Lights' at 8:36 before the first line is sung is a contender (the total track is 18:29).

I've submitted my (tiny) diffs for qemu for ARM. Nothing special, just a few niggly things that make life difficult...

• The N & Z flag being tied together hurts quite a bit at times, so I've made a minor modification for that which isn't too bad.
• The MMU implementation treats the special AP=%00 wrongly - it allows writes according to the S and R flags and disallows reads and prefetches. That's just a reversed conditional so it's a simple fix.
• The emulation did not support the instruction cache flush operation, so dynamic code did not function. This isn't all that hard, but just requires a few more co-pro operations to be supported.

Nothing really massive - the rest of the emulation is fine as far as I've used it. Certainly good enough for playing with.

In any case, it's now 00:40 so I must go sleepy-byes.

Oh, and I got a new CD player today as well, 'cos it was a freebie.

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6 Sep 2006 (Wednesday) 

Looking at the Google new archives, I see that in '97 my JenniPics archive was mentioned (and I was mentioned by name) in the Washington Post. Golly.

I mentioned to Chris that there was an encrypted message on the Bunny comic today, and that I hadn't managed to decrypt it myself. He managed though, so big congratulations to him. He's clever.

Why has the phrase "From the people that brought you 'goldfish in a can'..." just popped into my head ?

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5 Sep 2006 (Tuesday) 

Are you Damien ? Are you trying to contact me ? If so, I'm here. This is a random request for info, which I don't do all that often. Apparently someone of that name rang one of the old companies I worked for and asked for me or a couple of the people I worked with. Very odd.

It's quite warm tonight Or maybe that's just me.

I've got a new chair now. The old one has a slightly dodgy back on it. It's not too bad, but it has a tendency to lean backward if you do silly things like sitting with your legs on the desk - which I don't do that often but it's not good when I do, 'cos it takes another few minutes to get it to lock upright again.

One side effect of having been away is that the server is still set to go to sleep at 1am, regardless of what I'm doing. So, it's now 1:05 and I'm without the server. Mainly because I thought it wasn't worth disabling. Better to use that as a reason to go to bed, I think.

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4 Sep 2006 (Monday) 

I'm back home now and catching up on the few things that have happened that I missed over the last week. One of which is that Mobuzz is all broken right now so I can't catch up on that yet.

Another of which is that IE7 was updated. So I've tried installing it. It continues the generally poor decisions on user interaction in my opinion. In order to install IE7 you have to download a tool that generates a 7 character pass code after validating your Windows is 'genuine' that you copy into a web form. Then you can download the installer for IE7. Which, when you run it, checks that your Windows is genuine. You might say that MS were paranoid that everyone was pirating their OS.

Anyhow, we get passed there and it starts its uninstall of the previous beta. Finally up pops a dialogue box - "You must restart your computer to finish installing IE. Setup will continue after you restart. [Restart later] [Restart now (recommended)]" - I click 'Restart later', 'cos I'm still doing things. Up pops a second dialogue box - "It is strongly recommended that you choose "restart now" to allow setup to finish. Are you sure you want to restart later ? [Yes] [No]".

Now this is where I get annoyed. What is the point in asking me to confirm an action that I've already given explicitly ? It's like asking a question in the 'question-alternate' form and not understanding the answer when it's given. I was genuinely expecting that when I clicked 'Yes' I would get back a message saying "You're wrong. The system will restart now."

I know nothing stays the same But if you're willing to play the game It's coming around again [ Coming Around Again, from Coming Around Again, by Carly Simon ]

I think I can actually listen to that album again. It's taken a while.

Whilst at Claire and Justin's I was trying to remember songs to sing for Bethany - she stops crying if you sing. And I vaguely remembered two that Grandad sung. One was 'I will never let our Jane' which Google believes only exists on my diary. The other was the one that follows...

Oh, my father was a bricksetter's labourer, and he worked in a jeweller's shop One day whilst climbing up a ladder, he fell from the bottom to the top Now he was saved by a miracle and this is how it came to pass He'd been drinking ginger beer and it filled him up with gas Up he went in the elements just like a big balloon If it hadn't have been for his hob-nailed boots he'd have gone right to the Moon [ My father was a bricksetter's labourer ]

And this comes up with no hits at all. It would be a pity if they were 'lost', so it's included here. Am I odd to think it sad that such things might be lost just through not being recorded anywhere ?

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1 Sep 2006 (Friday) 

There were hours that just went on for days When alone at last, we'd count up all the chances That were lost to us Forever [ It's All Coming Back To Me Now, from Original Sin, by Pandora's Box ]

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