I had a dream about working in an office last night. My boss had found me a desk that I could use in an office that was being used by other people, and I was settling in. There was a nice girl, who I'll call Kate although I don't know her name but that feels right, who spoke to me, and who was on the same train as me as well. It was nice having someone to talk to. The next day I was doing some things and Kate came to help me do something, and her boss told her she not to and that she was fired. So I told my boss that I quit, packed up my things and rushed out after her. I caught her at the reception desk downstairs, just as there was a call telling her that everything had been sorted out and she could come back. My thought is that my boss told them that they weren't going to need the space, so they wouldn't get paid, and that made them back down. But I didn't want to go back if that was the kind of place, so I left Kate to decide what she was doing and walked to the train with my small bag of things. I never found out what she would do because I woke up. I hope she was happy whichever way she decided to go.

I had someone ring up from a foreign place to tell me my computer had viruses and they were getting errors from it. Unfortunately they were really hard to hear so I could barely make out what they were saying. After 6 minutes I gave up and just left the phone off the hook, and they hung up after 8 1/2 minutes. A few minutes later they rang back. Again I could barely hear them, so that only lasted for 3 minutes. But, they were persistent and they tried again. This time they got a good line and so we managed to talk a bit - they wanted me to download some software from a website, which would have let them take control of my machine. So I didn't do that. I'd already told them that I don't have Internet Explorer, so when they asked me to run the application I'd downloaded I claimed it said "No run type specified for this filetype". They tried a few things and I kept telling them that the same error happened, in an error box from 'Oregano'. Then the guy told me to wait and passed me on to someone else.

This guy had a little more clue. I told him the same thing and he asked me what browser I was running - Oregano, and I didn't have IE, Safari, Opera or Chrome. So he tried to get me to install Firefox. A few minutes there and then I said that running what I'd downloaded had given me the "No run type specified for this filetype" error. He was confused and asked me what OS I was running, and listed them before finally asking what I was using - RISC OS. He asked me to go to 'My computer' which I didn't have, and then to the 'Start' button, which I also didn't have. Next he asked me how I shut down the computer - I click on the 4 and select Shutdown. So next he asked me to describe the menu that appears when I click on there, which I did as best I could remember. He wasn't too impressed with that and asked me to describe the icons I could see, so I described the iconbar, from HardDisc4, :0, CD :0, Apps, Display Manager and Switcher. Completely confused he hung up. 11 minutes 40 seconds.

It's not great, but that's at least 20 minutes of their time wasted which isn't too bad. My time... well, I don't care, I was quite enjoying myself.

I had a problem with my Perl at work today that left me questioning my understanding of tha language, but it was really down to how I was using it. Sadly it's the same problem I was having on Sunday with my weather CGI code.

I've got a function that I'm calling with parameters but the parameters aren't coming out they're things I'm passing from a CGI what I should have is a function call print_diff(0, undef, 1, undef), but in the function it's as if I called print_diff(0,1);

If I do print join(":", @_), "\n" inside the function call (print the args with : between them) I get 0:1, not 0::1: which I would expect. This made no sense to me and had me questioning myself.

The actual code was (equivalent to):
print_diff(CGI::param('diff'), CGI::param('weight'), CGI::param('page'), CGI::param('perpage'));

This might give a clue to anyone that knows Perl and the CGI module but, the reason is simple and stupid and completely non-obvious. CGI::param() returns different results depending on the context it's called in.

If it's called in a scalar context (eg $a = CGI::param(...)) it returns the value of the first parameter with that name or undef.

If it's called in a list context (eg @a = CGI::param(...)) it returns a list of all the values with that name (eg if you had '?key=value&key=another' it would return ('value', 'another') ) and in the list context when the parameter was never specified to the CGI, that's an empty list.

A function call parameter is a list context, so it was actually: print_diff( (0), (), (1), () ); which would be flattened to a single list: print_diff( 0, 1 );.

So... the solution is to assign to a scalar first (or put scalar(CGI::param(...))). It's a gotcha I've seen before but it's still not fun.

I got another mail today for Justin. It's nice to know how much he's touched people, but really sad that people confuse us - and I can only pass the messages on to CBeebies.

Why are there so many words for 'purple' ?!

I had some fun dreams last night. For varying degrees of fun. The first, rather short one was about being tied up on a bad and Caroline giving me electric shocks with a mains lead. I remember it hurting and maybe I want to be hurt. I remember lots of blue sparks and that she seemed to be enjoying it. Aside from it being a diversion from the usual spells of dreams, I'm going to try not to read too much in to it. The second, longer one, was slightly less 'interesting' but involved working in a small village shop or post-office with a couple of people, and having to also look after a cousin for one of my brothers. There was a lot of trying to keep them happy and stuff. It was a little odd, but nothing really new there.

Today I've been playing with weather observations and maps. I now have pretty maps of the country with symbols on and stuff. Not hugely exciting, but it's kept me mildly amused today.

I've had an argument with mum this evening over stuff I really don't care all that much about and am ill-informed about. I should learn to just keep my opinions to myself when I intentionally try to keep myself ignorant.

Still not sleeping well, and it'll probably be worse this evening as it's so very hot.

It'll pass, but I really wonder what the point is... it's not like I've got any better. In the past few weeks I've realised that I'm feeling pretty much like I did 4 years ago, although for slightly different reasons. It's just me and my attitude that's clearly wrong if I can't get away from that. It'd be nice to not feel upset and worthless most of the time.

Fortunately I have bananas. They cheer me up.

I lie in a field, In the trailer-park of my dreams Saving up for someday, But what does someday mean? [ Avalanche, from Siren, by Heather Nova ]

I was dreaming last night about starting a new job. Not knowing almost anybody or what I was doing, and trying to talk to people and (oddly) having problems getting lunch. I knew one person but they were busy elsewhere most of the time so I never saw them and they weren't around when I went home. There was a problem with trying to get home on the train, which was very busy and I had to go all the way to the end of the line and managed to leave my coat and bag behind on the train. When I went back for them the train station had closed forever and been changed into the guard's house.

My eyes hurt.

Seven little cygnets swimming in a row, Mummy swan and Daddy swan show them where to go. Swimming up and swimming down, fighting over bread, "Play nicely now, you'll all get some", that's what Daddy said. [ Cygnets; Me ]

I saw the cygnets on the canal today. All fluffy and cute.

Very tired. Don't really know what I'm doing but... trying to be optimistic that things will look up soon.

I was going to watch House (2004, FOX)DramaGo deeper into the medical mysteries of House, TV's most compelling drama. Hugh Laurie stars as the brilliant but sarcastic Dr. Gregory House, a maverick physician who is devoid of bedside manner. While his behavior can border on antisocial, Dr. House thrives on the challenge of solving the medical puzzles that other doctors give up on. Together with his hand-picked team of young medical experts, he'll do whatever it takes in the race against the clock to solve the case.House tonight, but it looks like it's going to be a bit much for me while I'm feeling icky.

Lines came to my mind earlier, but they don't really make up anything coherent, sadly...

Fairy tales of forgotten lands, Of broken promises and unmade plans. Lazy days with the fair princess, and no fabled questions and no distress. A sadness blooms throughout the day, and never withers no matter what you say. [ Not quite right; Me ]

Didn't quite work out, really.

Looks like the Fuse module author's accepted my changes for the module, at least to their development tree - which is kinda cute. Some of the stuff you can see on github, like the timeline graphs are quite cute.

Eyes have been very sore today so I've had lots of drops. I'd have hoped they'd feel a bit better by now but... hey ho.

I had fun learning some bits about Perl XS today and how to interwork with Fuse some more, and (ultimately) have now managed to get file handles implemented so that Fuse in perl can distinguish between open files. Bug submitted to RT.cpan so hopefully the author will accept that. It's possible I've made some bit boo-boos in there because it's the first time I've written any code like that. But, it was at least fun!

Not much else today really. Eyes are very sore despite putting many drops in today. Oh well. Sleepy time now, and the fun that is waking up on the wee hours.

Very tired today still. Slept a little more last night but still not doing too great. Feeling very warm this evening.

Anyhow, I've managed to get my MythTV code working today. Part of the problem I was having with it was that there was a read call that was blocking when there was no data. That solved and I've got a working MythTV client that can request LiveTV, which is nice. The FUSE FS side of things was equally fun - preventing me from accessing the FS from other users, until I found the option that lets that work. Other fun things were that you have to remember to set S_IFREG on files when reading attributes and S_IFDIR on directories - and include a value return value for '.'.

The Perl FUSE FS API doesn't appear to allow for private handles for open files, which as a frustrating oversight really. It makes it a little harder to handle different open files. Other fun things are that returning 2G as a file size makes it return nonsense for the file length - probably a sign extension from 32bit to 64bit, represented as an unsigned number, at a guess. The APIs are inherently 32bit, so a little restrictive for returning large files.

The actual problems come with using it. It works reasonably well as a filesystem for streaming stuff, but actually using that with a media player is a problem. If you give it too large a file size then 'something' about Windows Media Player (accessing the file over SMB share) causes it to seek a long way into the file - might be VobSub that's doing that but I'm not sure. Also on occassion I got it searching for .dll files alongside the .mpg video - which seems like a silly security hole to me. Anyhow, WMP will play the .mpg, effectively playing LiveTV, but only up to the length of the file that was given in the getattr call - and appears to try to buffer a large chunk of the file before playing. Certainly 10MB was being read when I returned that size, taking about 30 seconds (which was the amount of time that it played for, obviously) before it started playing. VLC was no better at this, either - it didn't read ahead beyond the 'current' position, but it did stop when it reached the declared 'end' of the file.

The Sumvision Cyclone MKV, however, was more interesting. I'm accessing files over the network with it, using SMB, to view the FUSE FS - same as I was with WMP and VLC. The effect was different though. Whilst I know the the Cyclone can play MPEG Transport Streams it had a bad time. It seemed to repeatedly open, read and close the file about 15 times before... rebooting itself. Which I thought was quite neat. Additionally the Cyclone will try to display the video for the things that your cursor is over. That's pretty bad over the network so I turned the feature off, but that only appears to turn off the display of whatever it's streamed. It still accesses it, so as you cursor over things it's repeatedly opening files, which (because of what my FS is) means starting fetching LiveTV for each channel, as you're moving the cursor over things. Not a good design.

So, whilst I've got it working, and whilst it does actually do what I planned it to do... it's not actually as useful as it might be. Which is a pity. I'm a bit disappointed, but there's not a lot I can do really at the moment. I have some ideas about how I might make it better handle the cases that we've got so far, but it's going to take a little bit of thinking about to try to get something useful that works and doesn't break things. I'm not sure it's that worthwhile - cute though it might be.

On the plus side, I now know how to a) talk to Myth using its LiveTV protocols - which are just a nightmare really - and b) write a simple Fuse Filesystem.

I had my appointment for my eyes this morning - 1 month checkup. Mostly fine, but I should be using my drops more if they're feeling tired. That should help them feel better anyhow.

I woke up about 4 this morning, although I did manage to doze off in little spurts until I got up at 8. I'm now quite cumulatively tired, but I've had quite a good day for actually doing stuff. Except for cursing about MythTV just being a pig to use. It's really clever and when it works it's great, but... really it's the kind of thing that gives open source a bad name.

Every day there's a little voice giving me a message and chipping away at my soul. Telling me that there's just really no point. How's that helping ? Where's the benefit to me ? Clearly it's not working, but... oh well.

I woke up at about 3:30 this morning - well that's what the clock said when I finally looked at it, so I've no idea what time it was when I woke up - and finally got to sleep at about 7:30, in time for my alarm to wake me again at 8. I managed to doze for a bit but didn't really sleep that much. So, at 10pm, I'm quite tired. And I've got an appointment for my eyes at 10am. That isn't too early, but it does mean that I can't just get up and move to the computer for work. I miss that about working from home - become far more lazy about such things when there's nothing to make you get up. I did try to be up and dressed just like normal for the first few months, but ... really it wasn't really that worthwhile. I don't have to and nobody cares so why bother ? That holds true in general really.

I had a brief look this evening at how I can create a live TV player for Myth using perl. As before I discovered that a) there's no decent libraries for this, b) the documentation is bloody awful, and c) what documentation there is is usually wrong. I'm hopeful that I will be able to get something useful out of it tomorrow. I think I might have caused it to fail to record something this evening, by my tinkering.

I was really aching this morning. My legs been very sore today. My eyes have been itchy and tired the last couple of days and I've been headachey. I think it's probably related, but I've also not been sleeping too well.

Automated voice: You have been randomly selected to receive a Florida holiday. To find out more details press 9 Me: press 9 Real person: Hello, my name is Camilla, thank you for responding to our promotion, who am I speaking with ? Me: Don't you know ? Phone: hang up [ Don't you know ?; Some random promotion company ]

Dominos have a new look website. It's not wonderful, so I left them some comments...

The new look site is ok, but it no longer seems to be possible to view what your order is once it's in the basket - so if you say 'add last week's order' and it tells you it's a 2-for-tuesday you have no idea what it actually contains. The customise pizza page is particularly poor, I feel. The option/radio icons for the toppings are non-obvious that they're radio icons. The size isn't obvious that it's highlighted - I didn't even notice the side selection at all at first. When you go to the payment screen (I think it was) it offered lots of things with 'ticks' beside 3 fields that the site had clearly deemed correct. Beside my postcode it said, in red '(not my address)' or similar wording. The placement was similar to that of the ticks and the fact that it is a link to say that it's not your address, and the fact that it was in red lead me to think that this was a fault that it had recognised, not that it was a link allowing you to change things. It's a simple rule - links have underlines. Also... blue ticks ? Surely a green tick would be far more recognisable - that it doesn't fit with the red-blue colour scheme is pretty much irrelevant to user recognition of states. green = good, red = bad. Putting blue things beside fields to mean that all's well, and red things beside things that don't mean something's wrong is just a bad interface design. [ Comments on Dominos; Me ]

Oh gosh. Not only did I make a comment that someone was wearing an ugly tie today, I've just noticed that a woman is wearing her hair differently.

I was amused recently by 4 Chord Song video by Axis Of Awesome. Also today, I discovered that Eraser mode on Audiosurf has a 'paste' option on the second function key (or right click) which I'm sure wasn't there before. It's a little different to how I remember anyhow.

I was planning on doing something useful today, but don't seem to have got there. Oh well.

My eyes are tired tonight. I've had a few drops this evening, but they've not helped that much.

Looking back, I found a self-assessment statement that says that I've overpaid last year, and I've got no recollection of dealing with it. Then again, last year was pretty awful and I'd like to forget a lot of what I do remember.

Attempting to find my old address book today has been a complete failure - at least so far. On the other hand I've found all sorts of things. I keep stuff I want to hold on to because it's got a lot of value for me, and there's some odd stuff here. Letters from people and christmas and birthday cards from friends - many of whom I've lost touch with over the years. Although following up from that, I'm amused to see that Ross's still around the region, and has been playing in Brandon in his band . But the other things - there's all sorts of things. Old radios, a set of speakers, pencils, and rulers, and posters and cartoons from school and after. My old railcard - together with all the tickets I bought with it, still in its holder. Exhibitor badges from shows and stuff like that. Stuff from first communion and rosary beads and cards from graduation and my 18th birthday.

The box is a bit thinner now as I've thrown some things away that I don't thing I need to keep - although it makes me quite sad. There will be things that remain in there, things that came from certain people or certain times. However, really wanted to find my address book.

On the other hand, I found my pay-as-you-go manual. So now I've set up the voicemail on my phone. Only had it 6 years, and finally set that up. Sorry to anyone who has ever phoned me and not been able to leave a message.

I'm sitting here in the boring room It's just another rainy Sunday afternoon I'm wasting my time I got nothing to do I'm hanging around I'm waiting for you But nothing ever happens and I wonder [ Lemon Tree, from Dish Of The Day, by Fool's Garden ]

Cause all I really want is to be with you Feeling like I matter too If I hadn't blown the whole thing years ago I might be here with you [ Hey Jealousy, from New Miserable Experience, by Gin Blossoms ]

The sacrifice is never knowing... Why I never walked away Why I played myself this way Now I see, you're testing me, pushes me away [ Pushing Me Away, from Hybrid Theory, by Linkin Park ]

Standing in the sun with a popsicle Everything is possible With a lot of luck and a pretty face And some time to waste [ Without A Trace, from Grave Dancers Union, by Soul Asylum ]

So stand on me, I'll catch you falling You can stand on me and I'll help you find a way Stand on me, I can see our ship turning Stand on me, we're sailing on the wind of better days [ Better Days, from Black Moon, by Emerson, Lake And Palmer ]

Stayed true to the things I knew when I was younger And food and love was all but left to hunger. 'Cause when I stray from my truth as I grow older Too much leaves an empty hollow hunger. [ Stars All Seem To Weep, from Central Reservation, by Beth Orton ]

Part of the problem with playing Audiosurf is not just finding tracks that are interesting (most are if they're musically interesting), but finding those that you want to listen to as well. And that's part of the fun, too. Ochentas, by Soraya Arneles is actually surprisingly good for Audiosurf, I found. And then there's things like Stars All Seem To Weep, by Beth Orton which you score so well on that you have to try again because just a smidge more will push you to the top position.

Funny how you can say something in your head and it sounds fine... [ Sounds fine...; The Doctor; Doctor Who ]

The new look Google is annoying me. It seems a lot less like Google and ... um... more crap than it used to. The sidebar that was - I'm sure - optional is now forcibly there. There's something wrong with having the site logo not at the top of the webpage. Having secondary links above the primary site link really isn't a good design in my opinion. The search bar looks ugly as anything now - what's wrong with using a standard submission button ? More importantly, links are no longer consistant at all. Some are underlined and blue. Others are a different shade of blue but only highlight as being underlined when you float over them. Essentially you're forced, yet again, to have to wave about in the darkness until you hit upon things that are active, rather than following the standards that have been used on the web for years. Worse still, this overrides the user's preference - if you've configured your links to be green, underlined... well, we're Google, to hell with what you think you like.

I'm also not sure what they've done to the homepage but 'View source' just brings up what appears to be noise - half of the content is JS or stylesheet - I'm certain that there's no need for any of that. Maybe I'm just out of touch but... Google's become more of a mess over the last year or so.

Today's Doctor Who (2005, BBC One)Action and Adventure/Science-FictionThe Doctor looks and seems human. He's handsome, witty, and could be mistaken for just another man in the street. But the Doctor is a Time Lord: a 900 year old alien with 2 hearts, part of a gifted civilization who mastered time travel. The Doctor saves planets for a living - more of a hobby actually, and he's very, very good at it. He's saved us from alien menaces and evil from before time began - but just who is he?Doctor Who episode "Doctor Who5x06
"Vampires of Venice"Location: Venice, Earth Date: 1580 Enemies: Saturnynians Dessicated corpses, terror in the canal and a visit to the sinister House of Calvierri – the Doctor takes Amy and Rory for a romantic mini-break, as the Tardis touches down once again. But 16th-century Venice is not as it should be. The city has been sealed to protect it from the Plague, although Rosanna Calvierri may have other plans...Vampires of Venice" wasn't all that great. Most of the episodes this series have been pretty average-to-poor, and this leant to the poor side. Fortunately, no Graham Norton, but yet are doing the 'next time' before the credits roll, still. Still quite annoying. More annoying than this, though is that it started earlier than I expected today. I'm certain they move it every week, 'cos I've never come in at the right time for it. Usually you'd say that moving a show is the network's way of killing it, rather than just being unable to get a schedule that is reasonably fixed. Maybe it's been like this for previous seasons and this is just the first season I've actually been watching live.

Whilst coming back from town today I had to run across the road because I misjudged the lights and it's really hurt my hip. I'd kinda hoped that it would have eased off by now, but maybe I've just not given it long enough.

Election over with; no majority... just wait and see now.

Eyes are still tired today and I've had a few drops today.

XKCD did a survey recently of the names that people call colours. The results are in and... they're quite interesting. Well I think so .

It's late tonight. I was doing a report for work when Caroline rang, and then Chris rang and after about 2 1/2 hours on the phone I finally got back to the report and was still doing it for another hour or so. And now it's somehow 12:20 and I'm finally in bed. I don't think I've been in bed this late in age, and my hip reminded me again that it's sore.

I've become wary of making big changes at work, so everything I do tends to be piecemeal and documented - and easy to reverse (usually). But it doesn't half make things slower. On the plus side, I've doubled the speed of some stuff in the last couple of weeks and whilst it's been slow progress in doing that, because of the small changes, the overall result has been good. It feels a little odd that I could have made the same changes (and the ones that are to come) en masse and they'd have probably been just fine, but it's so much harder to review large scale changes and the likelihood of problems increases exponentially. I've also managed to sort out some of my SQL problems that were leading to very slow queries - not all that exciting but at least I'm making progress.

Someone's complained that the RSS feed doesn't work in Chrome. I don't know why that should be. Aside from a little bit of an oddity of the RSS handling about putting HTML in the comments, the feed is fine. And certainly it's valid which means that it should work, even if it doesn't display quite right. A little more research indicates that the reason that the RSS feed does not work in Chrome is that Chrome does not support RSS feeds. I like it when there's a simple explanation .

Tired again today; just not sleeping all that well. My eyes have been incredibly sore today too. Well, maybe not sore, but itchy and dry, and I don't want to have to keep using the drops all the time, but I've had to use quite a few today just to keep them from feeling icky.

Still very tired today and didn't sleep at all well last night, and I've got a headache tonight. I should have something more to say than that but there just isn't a whole lot I can get into words right now. Try not to be frustrated about things that are just... not right.

Very tired today. Slept a little better, as my hip's not quite as sore - it kept me up most of the previous night and I didn't sleep hardly at all. Finally gave up about 6:30 and rang simon to ask if he could get some things on the way home. And then we had no Internet from 9am through till 7pm, which was absolutely no fun.

Just been generally miserable today. Nothing really worth speaking of. And tonight, I can't sleep, despite being tired. I managed to doze from about 6 till 8, but now I'm just tired and can't sleep at all.

Well, I've had a fun day. I sat down oddly this evening and my left hip made a funny noise and is now quite sore. It's hard to bend over and put on pyjamas. Walking up and downstairs is fun, and getting into bed provoked a lot of laughs.

In other news, drinking tea through a straw is still a bad idea. Just wanted to see what it was like. Hey ho.

Joseph suggested today that I might have a little OCD. So I tried a test thingy from a search on the 'net... I scored 13, with 12+ being 'likely', which is mildly concerning, but on the plus side it doesn't affect me in any way that I can't handle. So there's little need to worry.

Of course, I say this afer having gone through the remaining DVDs that I haven't (for some reason) put into the collection (things like "Independence Day (1996)Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, ThrillerOn July 2nd, communications systems worldwide are sent into chaos by a strange atmospheric interference. It is soon learned by the military that a number of enormous objects are on a collision course with Earth. At first thought to be meteors, they are later revealed to be gigantic spacecraft, piloted by a mysterious alien species. After attempts to communicate with the aliens go nowhere, David Levinson, an ex-scientist turned cable technician, discovers that the aliens are going to attack major points around the globe in less than a day. On July 3rd, the aliens all but obliterate New York, Los Angeles, and Washington. The survivors set out in convoys towards Area 51, a strange government testing ground where it is rumored the military has a captured alien spacecraft of their own. The survivors devise a plan to fight back against the enslaving aliens, and July 4th becomes the day humanity will fight for its freedom. July 4th is their Independence Day...Independence Day" were never encoded... can't imagine why not), and which whilst doing that I wasn't getting dressed. So when we had the Lib Dem candidate come to the door I was still in my dressing gown. Quite a plus, though, that they came around - none of the other candidates have.

I didn't sleep all that well last night, so I've been pretty dopey all day anyhow, but I have had a chance to chat to Simon a bit, which makes something of a change.

Sharon: I'm trying to find a guy. Berg: Through the chance encounter ads ? Well that's so sad. Pete: Why don't you just go buy a cat ? [ Two Guys, a Girl and a Chance Encounter; Two Guys and a Girl ]

I miss my cat. Next door's cat was sitting on its windowsil mewing to come inside, yesterday. We said hellos and they went back to mewing at the window.