Thinking in Circles

In 3 phases

2006-01-29T14:07:00.000Z

Phase 1: A few quiet drinks with my brother

Phase 2: The mother of all drinking sessions

Both of my brothers, my cousin and I went drinking. My brother went to a shop while the rest of us were in the pub and bought us each a bottle of Buckfast—horrible, horrible tonic wine—and made me drink mine. My cousin wouldn’t drink his, and I was so drunk that when my brother handed it to me, saying there was only a drop left, I believed him (the bottle was full!)

So, then my other brother and I went to a club, where the drinks cost £1 each, and he was served doubles because he knew the bartender… Tequila all round!

I was so drunk that I had to crawl along holding the railings outside the place where I live just to move forward… and slept on the ground when they ran out.

The next day, I had the mother of all hangovers.

Phase 3: Party in Limerick

My cousin drove my brothers and my friend’s girlfriend down. My friend and I were going to take the train, because I had tickets, but we missed the first train because we were too busy drinking.

When we eventually got a train, we ended up stranded in Limerick Junction because there was a train strike. Eventually, they got us a taxi.

I don’t remember much of the night. I do remember downing a bottle of creme de menthes the next morning as mouthwash though :)

See more progress on: Have a 21st Birthday to remember

Idę!

2006-01-23T03:17:00.000Z

I just got my ticket. I’m going over from the 30th to the 3rd of February. My friend Leszek has gone home (he got a grant to start his own business), and invited me to stay.

I think, though, that I’ve been cursed by one of the girls I know :)

At Leszek’s going away party, he was telling me that his town is boring, and that I’ll have to find something else to do (while Beata was trying to talk me out of going in February), and suggested I visit Kraków. Beata piped up immediately “Yes! It’s the most beautiful city in the world! My city!”, so I said “Well, I was going to go, but now…” (she hit me).

Leszek: “No, you have to go!”
Me, in an overloud “I know she can hear me” whisper: “I know. Just don’t tell her that”.

So… after an initial look showed lots of flights to Wrocław (Leo lives near there), the only flights I could find with a credit card in hand (for less than 700 Euros) were to… Kraków.

See more progress on: Poland

Dilbert Blog: My Irrational Beliefs

2006-01-12T10:22:00.000Z

[I]t makes me wonder if creationist geologists are worse at finding oil than atheists. Somewhere in Calgary I imagine a conversation between a creationist geologist and his boss:

Boss: “Matthew, why haven’t you found any oil? All the other guys have.”

Matthew: “Well, I’ve been drilling everywhere looking for carved stone tablets from God but all I find are these stupid fossils.”

I’m told that evolution is useful for a whole range of scientific things that I don’t know about or don’t understand. For example, I’m told that if you don’t believe that mammals evolved from lower life forms you’d be a crappy microbiologists. Every time you observed some viruses acquiring immunity you would stop working on a vaccine and sacrifice your first born son.

The Dilbert Blog

I.T. Agony Bingo

2006-01-08T22:01:00.000Z

From Userfriendly

Online grammar book

2006-01-06T01:14:00.000Z

I really like this book—I have a Russian grammar book, but it doesn’t have anything about particables in it. I’m not anywhere near the stage¹ where I’d feel comfortable trying to use them, but having come across their use in Polish, I thought I’d have a look.

I also found this book but the fonts are completely screwed up, so it’s basically useless to me.

¹ I’m still learning to read Cyrillic. I’ve gone slightly past the 4-year-old reading level, but still occassionally mix ц and ч.

See more progress on: learn Russian

Dilbert Blog: Ideals

2006-01-02T13:12:00.000Z

As you know, the Founding Fathers had a lot of time to write things down because they didn’t have television, and there are only so many hours that you can spend whittling new teeth. But I don’t believe they ever got together and created a document called the Bill of Ideals. To understand their ideals we must look to their actions. Here are a few of the ideals they apparently shared:

1. Slavery – excellent source of poontang
2. Women voting? That’s crazy talk!
3. People who don’t own land suck
4. A good way to change tax policy is through violence
5. It’s not really crossdressing if you also wear manly boots.
6. Treason is okay if you have a good reason.
7. No one wants to sit next to Ben Franklin

The Dilbert Blog: Ideals

Classic Linus

2006-01-01T16:33:00.000Z

Pretty much the ONLY people who ever complain about those internal kernel interfaces changing are the free-loaders. It's hard for them, because theydon't want to play according to the rules. Tough. Watch me not care:

[ Linus sits in his chair, patently not caring ]

See?

Linux-Kernel Archive: Re: userspace breakage

No, I don't want to "quit smoking"

2005-12-30T19:28:00.000Z

Quite apart from the fact that that goal is mired in the language of defeat, this is a different goal, though it is basically all in how you look at it, but hopefully the use of a different term will be enough to shut up the whiny kind of non-smoker who would make me want to light up just to blow smoke in their faces.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to avoid most of the patronising crap about health (listen to Bill Hicks—non-smokers die every day!), money (I can afford to smoke, thanks), and will power (I’ve managed to avoid punching every non-smoker who has ever tried to lecture me—I’ve got lots of will power).

Mostly, I think I’ll just avoid thinking about it as a pleasure I’m denying myself, because that hasn’t been true for years. That’s why I’m doing it.

See more progress on: become a non-smoker

My Mother's blonde moments

2005-12-25T11:46:00.000Z

My Mother's been having a few of these recently.

Moment #1: My sister was talking about "buffalo wings"
"Do buffaloes have wings?"

Moment #2: I was showing her the Christmas present I had bought for my sister, who has recently gone into business as a masseuse -- a reproduction of the first edition of "Gray's Anatomy"
"Is that to tie in with the TV show?"

Dilbert blog: Winning by Knockout

2005-12-25T11:12:00.000Z

I always consider myself a winner by knockout whenever someone distorts my point to something ridiculous and then argues against the ridiculous thing. That seems like an acknowledgement that my real point is unassailable. Why else would someone need to invent a whole new point to argue against?

Knockout!

The Dilbert Blog: Winning by Knockout

Hmm...

2005-12-20T17:50:00.000Z

A friend of mine is a big (big!) Pink Floyd fan, and I know he hasn’t done this yet… maybe I should get him “The Wizard of Ozz” for Christmas :)

See more progress on: Watch "The Wizard of Oz" at the same time as listening to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon"

I love this comic

2005-12-20T13:46:00.000Z

Today's Pearls Before Swine

Marketing lesson from the Dilbert Blog.

2005-12-20T05:14:00.000Z

Several years ago I found myself nutsack deep in flaming e-mails for my prediction that illegal downloads of music would lead to lower sales of CDs. It seemed obvious to me, but scores of illegal music downloaders and self-proclaimed marketing geniuses argued vehemently that these “free samples” would lead to increased sales of CDs. That didn’t happen, of course, because it turns out that people prefer “free and instant” over “overpriced and later.” This experience reinforced my belief that my MBA gave me a better understanding of markets than my verbal sparring partners got from doing bongs and thinking as hard as they could.

...

I don’t regret making God’s Debris available for free. I had nothing to lose, since the hardcopy of God’s Debris was published in 2001 and had run its course. I was happy just to know that I had one of the most read books on earth for a month. It was worth a shot. But I think I demonstrated one marketing truth: When something is free, that’s what people expect to pay for the next one.

The Dilbert Blog

Interesting quote

2005-12-20T03:29:00.000Z

Most folk who are against the user-intuitive desktop lived through seeing Microsoft rise (and lately, fall). They also lived through a group of people known as AOLers destroying some other things they worked together to build, such as usenet, irc, most of the rest of the Internet… They’re afraid that if the common man decided Linux is the operating system of choice, Linux will be destroyed, too.

Tickled to Death » Blog Archive » Has everyone gone bloody mad?

Universal binaries

2005-11-21T18:49:00.000Z

Funny citation from Universal Binary Programming Guidelines, 2nd edition (taken out of context):

Here are the most typical behavior problems you'll observe when your application runs natively on an Intel-based Macintosh computer: 1. The application crashes.

Pavel's diary: Education day - universal binaries

Her name is Alexa

2005-11-21T18:30:00.000Z

Isn't she pretty?

Pixie

2005-11-21T18:22:00.000Z

She looks like you or I...but half the size. its wierd. And kind of erotic. She isn't a dwarf in the stubby arms and legs way, just a pretty little thing that happens to be tiny. She could sit on my lap quite easily too. Hmmmm....And I could cart her around on my shoulder like a giant...stomping my feet and singing sea shanties. Wearing a flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up, and a pair of britches and braces.

Oh you know, life, that sorta bull.

From my friend's blog. Potentially offensive, but funny.

I'm an uncle!

2005-11-21T17:13:00.000Z

No real details as yet (other than girl, 8lbs), but... what the title says.

Phone stuff

2004-11-02T22:20:00.000Z

Cellspotting: is a global location based service for mobile users Celltrack: is a program to collect some phone information about the cell you are connected to - like the net monitor. GNUbox: is a simple program for the Nokia 7650 which allows you to configure the smartphone to access the Internet through an Infrared or Bluetooth access point. Gnapplet: use with Gnokii to manage a phone. BT dongles supported by Linux. Bemused: control an MP3 player with Bluetooth. Series 60 & Linux Multisync: Has SyncML support. Sync4j OPL: Open source Basic-like language for Symbian. * Firewall tunnel

New phone

2004-11-02T07:42:00.000Z

I got a Blackberry phone friday and my mail settings came through today. It's pretty sweet but I have to figure out how to use attachments.

phto0027

2004-10-30T22:23:00.000+01:00

Mark: What are you, a whipping girl?
Angela: No, I'm a dominatrix
Mark: A domi-what-what?

phto0027
Originally uploaded by jimregan.

Another scraper

2004-10-24T17:41:00.000+01:00

I only read Telsa's diary occasionally; maybe having a feed in liferea would change that.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use XML::RSS;
use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::Entities;

my $rss = new XML::RSS (version => '1.0');
my $url = "http://www.linux.org.uk/~telsa/Diary/diary.html";
my $page = get($url);

$rss->channel(title       => "The more accurate diary. Really.",
              link        => $url,
              description => "Telsa's diary of life with a hacker:" 
	      		     . " the current ramblings");

foreach (split ('<dt>', $page))
{
	if (/<a\sname="([^"]*)">
		<strong>
		([^>]*)
		<\/strong><\/a><\/dt>\s*<dd>
		(.*)<\/dd>/six)
	{
		$rss->add_item(title       => $2,
			       link        => "$url#$1",
		       	       description => encode_entities($3));
	}
}

print $rss->as_string;

Michael Moore scraper improved

2004-10-24T15:53:00.000+01:00

Now with added /x-ness!

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use XML::RSS;
use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::Entities;

sub findurl ($$)
{
	my $title = shift;
	my $pagein = shift;
	if ($pagein =~ /<a href="(index.php\?id=[^"]*)">$title<\/a>/i)
	{
		return "http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/diary/$1";
	}
}
							

my $rss = new XML::RSS (version => '1.0');
my $url = "http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/diary/index.php";
my $page = get($url);

$rss->channel(title       => "Mike's Blog",
              link        => $url,
              description => "Michael Moore's blog");

foreach (split ('<table ', $page))
{
	if (/<p><span\sclass="smallText"><i>
		([^>]*)
		<\/i><\/span><br>[\r\n]*<span\sclass="titleText">
		([^>]*)
		<\/span><\/p>[\r\n]*<p>
		(<p>.*<\/p>)
		[\r\n]*<\/p>\n/six)
	{
		$rss->add_item(title       => $2,
			       link        => findurl($2, $page),
		       	       description => $1 . encode_entities($3));
	}
}

print $rss->as_string;

Michael Moore's blog

2004-10-24T15:38:00.000+01:00

Is here. Scraper, here:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use XML::RSS;
use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::Entities;

sub findurl ($$)
{
	my $title = shift;
	my $pagein = shift;
	if ($pagein =~ /<a href="(index.php\?id=[^"]*)">$title<\/a>/i)
	{
		return "http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/diary/$1";
	}
}
							

my $rss = new XML::RSS (version => '1.0');

my $page = get("http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/diary/index.php");

$rss->channel(title       => "Mike's Blog",
              link        => "http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/diary/index.php",
              description => "Michael Moore's blog");

foreach (split ('<table ', $page))
{
	if (/<p><span class="smallText"><i>([^>]*)<\/i><\/span><br>[\r\n]*<span class="titleText">([^>]*)<\/span><\/p>[\r\n]*<p>(<p>.*<\/p>)[\r\n]*<\/p>\n/si)
	{
		$rss->add_item(title       => $2,
			       link        => findurl($2, $page),
		       	       description => $1 . encode_entities($3));
	}
}

print $rss->as_string;

Bill Bailey's blog

2004-10-22T22:02:00.000+01:00

Bill Bailey has a blog! Bill Bailey's blog doesn't have a feed! Solution:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use XML::RSS;
use LWP::Simple;
use HTML::Entities;

my $page;
my $rss = new XML::RSS (version => '1.0');

$page = get("http://www.bill-bailey.co.uk/blog/index.php");
$rss->channel(title       => 'Bill Bailey',
              link        => 'http://www.bill-bailey.co.uk/blog/index.php',
              description => 'Bill Bailey\'s Blog');
      
my @chunks = split ('<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">', $page);

my ($date, $link, $content, $title);

foreach (@chunks)
{
	if (/<td class="BlogTitle">\s*([^\r\n]*)[\r\n\s]*<\/td>/is)
        {
		$date = $1;	
	}
	if (/<td class="BlogHeader">\s*([^\r\n]*)[\r\n\s]*<\/td>/is)
	{
		$title = $1;
	}
	if (/<td class="BlogText">(.*)<\/td>\s*<\/tr>\s*<tr>\s*<td>&nbsp;/is)
	{
		$content = encode_entities($1);
	}
	if (/<td class="BodyText">\s*<a href="([^"]*)">Read comments/is)
	{
		$link = "http://www.bill-bailey.co.uk$1";
	}
	if ($date && $title && $content && $link)
	{
		$rss->add_item(title       => $title,
			       link        => $link,
		       	       description => $content,
		       	       dc => {date => $date});

	}
}

print $rss->as_string;

More Bill Bailey here.