Month: November 2009

The Internet is a bit like an elephant..

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 29, 2009

.. in that it never forgets.

All this talk about Twibbles has brought home a good point about search engines and Internet archiving.  For those of us in our thirties, our parents used to embarrass us in numerous harmless ways – like your mum waving to you when you came out of school, or your dad dancing at the school disco.  Or your parents enthusiastically showing your girlfriend a video of your own birth, followed by all the baby and toddler pictures – usually the ones in which you’re nappy is being changed.

The Internet now amplifies this embarrassment by a factor of a thousand.

Young people (namely students and twentysomethings) who regularly blog, tweet or video themselves vomiting at parties will find that all of their activities are likely to be archived away by the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft so that if these same people eventually reproduce or adopt, their children can then be embarrassed by their parents in a whole new way when they do a Google search on them fifteen years later.

It’s not just blog or Tweets that can come back to haunt your children and grandchildren (and many more generations to come), but as video is now being archived on the Internet at a phenomenal rate, your children can groan at watching their parents do all manner of embarrassing things as they did as youngsters.  The difference between home videos of the past is that the rest of the world has probably already seen your parents embarrass themselves hundreds of times before you have.

I think some of the children of more infamous celebrities are going to have to go into therapy for decades as a consequence of this..

(Yes, I do realise the irony of this blog post)

The Trouble with Twibbles

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 27, 2009

Twibbles can be defined as an online Twitter quibble.

I’ve started following on Twitter movie director extraordinaire, Kevin Smith.  Recently he re-tweeted a post he received from somebody who told him that he was being unfollowed.  Kevin then posted in big unfriendly letters BLOCKED!  Fair enough, although why everybody has to know this I just don’t know.  If you’re going to unfollow somebody – JUST DO IT.  Don’t explain to them or to anybody else.  Just do it and walk away.

Twitter is an extraordinary social media system that allows plebs like us to see what the more famous/important folk are up to.  But bloody hell, can it get catty.  I recall following Dragons’ Den entrepreneur Duncan Bannaytyne, whom I’ve always thought of as a honest and fair man.  I was a bit shocked when he started to talk about one of his followers without mentioning much of the context as to why this particular person was being mentioned.  Looking through both sets of tweets, I was astonished to see that Duncan Bannatyne had, rather than blocked and ignore the user in question, started a pissing contest as to who donated the most amount of money to charity.  It was at this point I unfollowed Bannatyne (and no, I didn’t tell him!) as I completely disagree with that sort of thing.  He is in a fortunate position to donate as much as he does.  The person he was referring to may well do a lot of work for charity too – but clearly does not have the same kind of funds that Bannatyne has at his disposal.  It was if he was saying that he was a better human being than the other person because he could donate all this money.  And that should never be the case.  And besides which, charity can extend to offering one’s services and not just financial assistance.

I note that “celebrities” get rather riled when people tell them that they’re being unfollowed.  That, or if somebody really gets up a celebs nose, they use their legions of fans to fight their battles.  Maybe they deserve it, maybe not.  But it’s almost akin to the old pitchfork and torches brigade that was all the fashion back in darker times.

I myself managed to do something utterly stupid on Twitter in that I was following Noel Clarke, actor, writer and director.  And a talented one at that.  He posted a series of jokes involving his kids which I thought a little harsh as he came across as being a little unappreciative as to having kids.  So I unwittingly performed the first rule of Twitter faux pas – I told him that I was unfollowing him for this reason.  He went ballistic and tried to direct message me (althoughly clearly thought the better of it and posted publicly) before announcing to his followers that “this idiot” didn’t understand the joke and went on to belittle me in a few more tweets than than I did with my single post criticising him.  His followers dug into me as well.  And he never gave me a chance to explain or apologise (as I would have done).  As such I haven’t apologised to him as he  subsequently acted in a similarly unprofessional manner – he chose to pounce on me  in public rather than simply ignore and block me.

Still, I got what I deserved.  And was a great lesson to think about what you type (just as you wouldn’t say to somebody’s face – God, I HATE that hat you’re wearing – without at least knowing them well enough that you could get away with saying something like that).   I still like Noel Clarke’s work, but I’m not so sure I would like him as a fellow human being if I were to ever meet him.  I just don’t know.   Humour is very subjective and personal, and what one person finds funny another may find offense (which what happened in this case).  After all, these were merely words typed away on a computer.   A souless machine without a face.  As it is most Twitters don’t know each other from Adam.

And this proves that if you’re not careful, the consequences can turn around and bite you on the bum.  And Twitter is one of those social networks which rely on spontaneity.  The war on twibbles will always continue, as much as trying to converse with 140 characters and complete strangers will allow.

Forget SkyNet, the future of humanity’s sanity will be destroyed by Self-Service Checkouts

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 26, 2009

They’ve now opened the self-service checkouts at Sainsburys in Brookwood (Knaphill).  I decided to brave it and try one.  I walked away after 2 minutes having had my sanity tested to the extreme.

The first test of my patience was trying to persuade the machine I was using my own bag (my backpack).  You have two options – press START or USE YOUR OWN BAGS.  I had to keep tapping the screen a dozen times before the thing recognised my choice.  I wouldn’t mind, but these were big big buttons in the middle of the screen.

The second test was getting the machine to recognise my bag.  You’re prompted to put your bags in the bagging area and then you can begin scanning.  But no!  That would be too EASY.  No, after I had put my bag in the bagging area, the machine told me that I needed an assistant to verify the bag.  Verify the bag?  After lifting and putting down the backpack a few times I gave up and flagged down one of the three assistances hovering by.  Once he scanned his ID badge, the machine allowed me to scan.  Hallelujah!

Alas!  Things went down hill after scanning the third item.  Having scanned it and put it into my backpack, the machine decided to accuse me of having an additional item it didn’t recognise.  How?  It was at this point I gave up in fear of steam blowing out my ears and fire snorting from my nose.  I put everything back in the basket and went around to the nearest manned checkout and completed the entire transaction in far less time than it would have if I had persevered with the machine.

The self-service checkout machines appear to use the same operating system as that of the machines at Tescos (but obviously branded and customised to the store they’re sitting in).  Until some other manufacturer steps up to bat and devises a machine that actually bloody works, there is no chance in hell I will ever consider using one of these things again.

iPhone, Blackberry Bold 9700 or Sony Ericsson Satio?

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 26, 2009

My T-Mobile contract is up for renewal (we still cannot exactly agree as to WHEN – all I know it’s somewhere between December and February) and as such, I want a new phone.

I MAY still stick with T-Mobile providing they promise to brush up their act (the most recent frustration was that their web site wouldn’t allow me to disable the Flex-T alerts, the last one was sent out around 4am and when you’re on-call, being woken up at 4am to be told I have X number of minutes left in my allowance does not strike me as being terribly competent!).  But I may go with O2 (despite the iPhone being offered by multiple vendors now – with O2 I’d have the confidence that they’ve had the phone on their network for some time and therefore now what they’re doing).

Depending on how O2’s contract and the iPhone selection pans out, I may just stick with T-Mobile and go with either a Blackberry Bold 9700 or a Sony Ericsson touch-screen Satio.  The Blackberry would be good as Jennifer already has one, and MDaemon will (when it comes out of beta) support BIS and thus I can directly push my mail to the phone.  On the other hand, my last few phones have all come from Sony Ericsson and SE have proven themselves to be an excellent phone manufacturer.  The Satio is a touchscreen model and boasts a 12.1 megapixel camera.  The downside is that I hear quite a few reports about the responsiveness of the touchscreen – and my experiences with LG’s Viewty makes me somewhat nervous.

So I’m in a conundrum.  Let’s see what O2 say to me having a contract phone with them and take it from there.  I will say that I will NOT be buying a pay-as-you-go iPhone.  In fact, pay-as-you-go is right out the window regardless.

I’m a celebrity.. let’s eat Ants (& Dec)

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 26, 2009

Us Brits are apparently a nation of animal lovers.

Yeah, right.

Why, then, do we enjoy watching “celebrities” eating kangaroo bottoms and various other disgusting parts of animals that, let’s face it, are NOT necessary to eat?  How many animals died in making I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here over the numerous series that it’s been on air?  Don’t get me wrong – I’m not an animal liberation person, a vegetarian, a vegan or anything that would imply that I don’t eat meat.  Far from it, I love my pork, bacon, chicken, fish, etc.  But what I don’t understand is how animal parts from creatures we would not normally find on a typical menu at a Harvester pub restaurant chain are on the menu for a TV show.  There’s no point in it.  If you really wanted to gross people out, you might as well make the celebrities eat raw cabbage and drink sewage water.  Or alternatively they let the celebrities eat human flesh.

Then there are the games in which insects, arachnids, snakes, furry animals of all descriptions are groped, prodded and disturbed for the sake of entertainment.  Do spiders really like being subjected to some of those “celebrities”?  I think they’re rather eat their young.  Oh, some of them do.

And of course, if that weren’t enough, there is the carbon footprint of flying everybody over to Australia, building and maintaining the sets, cameras and other equipment.  All of it not cheap in terms of cost, and certainly not cheap in terms of the environment.

Then again, it wouldn’t be the show it is today if it were shot in Croydon on a backstage, using glove puppets as replacements for the animals, or marzipan kangaroos doodahs for the bushtucker trial.

Are you being served? Sainsburys in Brookwood (Knaphill) to get self-service machines..

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 25, 2009

.. and as such, you’ll probably hear me mutter under my breath how much I hate the blasted things when they go wrong, as experience has shown whenever I’ve used them at Tescos in Guildford.

Sainsburys in Brookwood is undergoing a major refit, much to my annoyance.   The fact everything has moved around is taking ages having to remember where things are and even when things have stopped moving around, other areas are out of bound or being re-jigged which inconveniences shoppers even more – and most of these moves are done during opening hours and results in Sainsburys staff and packing containers getting under the feet of  shoppers.  As part of that refit, Sainsburys are installed self-service checkouts.

These new machines take up two regular staffed check-outs and they’re currently training up staff on how to use them.  They look identical to the machines used by Tesco (hence I’m reluctant to give them a go) in that one scans their items and has to stick them in a special bagging area (which, to me, is pointless as I usually have my backpack and would prefer to stick the goods directly into that than have to stick them in the bagging area first.  Do these machines really need to check that you’ve scanned and put the items away properly?

If the touchscreens on these new machines are anything like Tescos, you’d have hard time getting the machine to recognise any touch input without mashing the screen with your fist (I exaggerate, of course, but a fair amount of pressure IS required).  And payment takes forever and a day.  Whether card or cash is used, the machine has to think about things before printing a reciept.

Then there are the issues of the machine not recognising items that have been scanned, or if you miss a cue, or any billion things in-between that can go wrong.  Countless times I’ve had to wait for an operator to come over, tap in their security details into the machine, just so that I can continue scanning items, or continue to pay.

In theory these self-service machines should be quick and easy, but experience has told me that they’re too much hassle and take up more time than simply waiting in a queue and having everything being processed by a member of staff.  That said, I’ve never seen all the checkouts used at Sainsburys in Brookwood – even in the busy periods.  Lack of staff, perhaps?

And shoppers who come to Sainsburys in cars are still taking far too many plastic bags for their shopping.  This is very naughty!  Why not buy a few hardy cloth bags and keep them in the car.  When you go shopping (planned or otherwise), you’ll have the bags at hand to use.

Why are MY taxes wasted on bigoted & selfish Daily Mail/Mail Online readers?

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 23, 2009

I’ve just been reading this article from the Mail Online about a boy who is seeking medical assistance from the NHS to help with gender dysphoria.  Some of the remarks in the comments section are so far bordering on pure bigotry, that I half expect Adolf Hitler and his Nazi chums to come back from the dead and to pop out the Mail’s web site and shout, “Surprise!”

People don’t seem to realise that the NHS is there to treat everybody regardless of condition.  Gender dysphoria IS a recognised condition and such requires treatment.  Why should this child not receive the necessary treatment?  To the people that seem to think this is a waste of money, why is MY tax money being wasted on treating you and your bigoted views?

Peace, love and harmony?  Not while these idiots are about.

Is James Cameron’s AVATAR environmentally friendly?

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 22, 2009

The art of ethical energy efficient digital visual effects?

I’ve just been reading up on a few articles regarding the forthcoming James Cameron 3D spectacular, Avatar.  What I’m trying to get my head around is just how environmentally friendly this film is given that one of the messages that it preaches is protecting the natural environment.  One thing is for sure, there will have been a hell of a lot of CPU cores thrown at this project – split across a variety of different post-houses and as such, different rendering architectures.

One must consider how many servers (particularly physical dedicated servers) were used to render the film, which primarily features a 3D CG environment.  Modern CPUs such as Intel’s Xeon and AMD’s Opterons now have considerable power saving features built-in to them to ensure that power consumption is kept to a minimum.  A few years ago, this would have been fairly simplistic.  CPU architectures  from a few years ago would have limited control over power consumption in comparison to modern CPUs (for example, Intel’s Nehalem/Core i5/i7 architecture).  And have any of the studios started to virtualise their rendering architecture?

Bigger VFX companies (who regularly buy workstations and rendering systems in bulk) would, I’d imagine,  have arrangements to install early development processors which  include better power saving technology than their previous offerings  (for example, switching off unused cores/CPUs and ramping up as needed or reducing each core’s frequency and ramping up – all of which is now standard features of modern CPU architectures).   My former employers eventually went down the Intel architecture route for the majority of it’s rendering due to power/wattage ratio of the new Xeons that were being introduced just after AMD had launched it’s newest Opteron system.  AMD actually seem to perform less efficiently back then!  Since leaving the world of HPC and VFX, I’ve not used AMD systems at all and as such, not quite sure how they now stack up against Intel’s newest Xeon architecture, based on Nehalem.

In terms of workstations, a lot of companies are buying dual CPU, multi-core workstations and using virtualisation to run Linux on one CPU and virtualised Windows on the other – in effect giving the artist two workstations but only using the power output of one.   In some cases, companies such as Disney have been using the Wine project to allow Photoshop to run under Linux without the need for virtualisation (or buy expensive Microsoft licenses!)

Finally, monitor display technology has improved greatly over the past few years.  Previous to 2005, artists had to rely on big, heavy CRT displays to ensure accurate colour reproduction.  Calibrating them took time – especially if you had hundreds of workstations to calibrate.  Therefore turning them off was not an option, nor allowing them to go into power saving mode.  Thankfully LCD technology has improved to the extent that modern (albeit specialist) LCDs can come close to or match the colour reproduction of the older CRTs and take less time to calibrate.

So I look forward to reading or watching how the FX companies have built up their workstation and rendering architectures required to support such a massive film project, and hope that they’ve done their bit to keep power consumption down as much as possible to back up a film that’s about saving natural resources.

When a shortcut becomes a longcut..

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 21, 2009

Friday didn’t go too well for me.

I decided to leave the electric pushbike at home and embark by bus to Guildford (and consequently to the Surrey Research Park).  Sadly, after two buses failed to turn up and an ever increasing queue of old people and student-types, I decided to go by train.  This particularly journey didn’t go too bad.  Coming back: not so good.

By the time I got to Guildford train station, it had been announced that a car had hit a railway bridge which would affect trains heading into London Waterloo.  The announcement boards for incoming trains kept repeating this fact over and over again.  By the time a train did come in, all of us bundled into the nearest carriage and set off, thinking we were heading to Woking first.

Oh dear, no we weren’t.

We travelled all the way into London Waterloo where it turned out that the train was going back to Basingstoke via Woking.   Had to explain to the ticket inspector that there were no announcements or indications that the train wasn’t a stopping service.  The inspector was quite understanding and told me that she had spoken to quite a few people in a similar situation.  Got back to Woking close to 8pm and home about 8:30pm.  Two and half hours after I left work.

Back on the bike Monday..

Oh, to make matters worse – had to re-install OS X Snow Leopard on the Macbook as it’s been playing silly buggers over the past few weeks.  Lots of rainbow beach balls and no activity at all.  So had to spent an hour and half wiping and reinstalling everything again.  Thankfully our own SquirrelSave service saved me embarrassment when I realised that my SSH keys were wiped.  Thank goodness for Cedric the Squirrel!

Office 2010 now in public beta, but some things never change..

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 19, 2009

Microsoft have now released Office 2010 as a public beta.  So I decided to download it and give it a go.  The user interface has generally improved in Word, but Outlook 2010 is the one application I had great hopes for and, to be quite frank, am the most disapointed in.

The major issue I have had with Outlook since the last millennium has been that it always top posts.  That is to say, it produces an effect similar to this:

Dear Mr. Drake,

You are quite right, we will give you £25,000,000 to fund the Top Quoting Is Brilliant! Institute.

Yours lovingly,

Microsoft

– Original Message –

From: Mr. Top Posting Genius <topposting@microsoft.com>
To: Outlook Team at Microsoft <flurglemumblings@microsoft.com>
Subject: We’ve got to give this guy money!

See below!

– Forwarded Message –

From: Martyn Drake <contactme@drake.org.uk>
To: Microsoft <welovetoppostingandwillnotchangeitwhateveryousay@microsoft.com>
Subject: Money needed for important project!
Date: 19th November, 2009

Dear Microsoft,

Please can I have some money to fund an institute dedicated to annoying people by only ever allowing top posting in emails.  Bottom posting/trimming replies is a complete waste of time.  I mean, everybody has oodles of bandwidth and nobody has any time to sit and trim their email replies.  So it’s top posting all the way!

Kind regards,

Martyn Drake

Almost every other email client, including the more popular web mail systems (ESPECIALLY Gmail), allows for free choice.  Some even allow you to rewrap the quoted text so that it doesn’t turn out like a bunch of horrible mess when you come to reply to the reply.  The best you can do with Microsoft Outlook, even in 2010, is this:

From: Martyn Drake <contactme@drake.org.uk>
Date: 19th November, 2009

> Dear Microsoft,
> Wibble Wibble Wibble

Message body goes here.

Whereas what I WANT is this:

On 19th November, 2009,  Martyn Drake wrote:

> Wibble Wibble Wibble

Message body goes here.

Without using third party macros for Outlook 2007, and without disabling a whole bunch of stuff, and using signatures to hold templates for certain variables, can you do the type of quoting above.  It’s a hack job.

Microsoft could fix this, but despite feedback, they STILL choose not to do so.  WHEN, Microsoft, will Outlook get proper quality quoting?  I’ll bet we’ll never see it implemented.

If you go down to the spam trap today, you’re in for a big surprise..

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 19, 2009

You will note that on the sidebar there is a new option called Send me your UCE.  This email address is actually a spam honeytrap.  Anything sent to it will be processed by MDaemon and be immediately sent to SpamAssassin’s Bayesian filters as well as having the IP address of the sending mail server tagged as being suspicious.  Therefore, if you’re a spammer then please DO send me your UCE.

This should hopefully stop companies like vacmedia.com who sent me spam to all email addresses listed on this site.   I’ve changed my own email address to that of the honeytrap, although left the Googlewave address alone as I don’t particularly care about that too much.  I’ve sent abuse reports to Google (who host vacmedia.com’s email) and Rackspace who are responsible for allocating the IP address space for VAC Media’s clients.

Here’s an email from “Martha Martha” at VAC Media, who wants to praise me for something I haven’t done!  Joy!

Note: I have absolutely no qualms about publishing unsolicited commercial nonsense here on my blog from any company or individual as well as reporting said company or individual to their web hosting provider or ISP.

X-MDAV-Processed: mail.drake.org.uk, Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:33:36 +0000
Return-path: <martha@vacmedia.com>
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by mail.drake.org.uk (mail.drake.org.uk)
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for <contactme@drake.org.uk>; Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:33:35 +0000
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spf=neutral smtp.mail=martha@vacmedia.com;
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x-ip-mail=hardfail smtp.mail=martha@vacmedia.com (does not match 209.85.223.172)
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Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:03:39 +0530
Message-ID: <d3f1deb00911182133o5bcbeed3n8b096602cee7f8b6@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Kudos for your great site “drake.org.uk”
From: Martha Martha <martha@vacmedia.com>
To: “contactme@drake.org.uk” <contactme@drake.org.uk>
Cc: “mbdrake1976@googlewave.com” <mbdrake1976@googlewave.com>
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–0016364d309b99baa40478b2b32b
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hi

Martha here from VAC Media and I wanted to drop you a line and just
compliment your site “http://www.drake.org.uk/”. I was looking around at a
few different latest reviews on internet support service related sites and I
definitely thought yours was one of the best.

I currently work for a company that maintains a website that offers best
broadband deals in UK market http://www.aloadofoldballs.com. We are a
nationally recognized, reliable source for broadband in UK and I was
wondering if you’d be interested in giving us a link on your site.

Could you please send your proposal for guest post/sponsored post or other
advertising options available with you for further correspondence.

Looking forward to hear from you.

Regards

Martha

–0016364d309b99baa40478b2b32b
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

<meta http-equiv=”CONTENT-TYPE” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″><title></title><meta name=”GENERATOR” content=”OpenOffice.org 3.1  (Win32)”><style type=”text/css”>
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@page { margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
A:link { so-language: zxx }
–>
</style>
<p style=”margin-bottom: 0in;”>Hi
</p>
<p style=”margin-bottom: 0in;” align=”JUSTIFY”>Martha here from VAC
Media and I wanted to drop you a line and just compliment your site
&quot;<a href=”http://www.drake.org.uk/”>http://www.drake.org.uk/</a>&quot;. I was looking around at a few different  latest reviews on internet support service related sites
and I definitely thought yours was one of the best.</p>
<p style=”background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;” align=”JUSTIFY”>I currently work for
a company that maintains a website that offers best broadband deals
in UK market <a href=”http://www.aloadofoldballs.com/” target=”_blank”>http://www.aloadofoldballs.com/</a>.
<span style=”font-weight: normal;”>We are a nationally recognized,
reliable source for broadband in UK and I was wondering if you&#39;d be
interested in giving us a link on your site. </span>
</p>
<p style=”background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;” align=”JUSTIFY”>Could you please
send your proposal for guest post/sponsored post or other advertising
options available with you for further correspondence.</p>
<p style=”background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;” align=”JUSTIFY”>Looking forward to
hear from you.</p>
<p style=”background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;” align=”JUSTIFY”>Regards</p>
<p style=”background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; margin-bottom: 0in; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;” align=”JUSTIFY”>Martha</p>

–0016364d309b99baa40478b2b32b–

Commuting grump post of the week..

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 18, 2009

This week I’d like to have a go at both car drivers and my fellow cyclists. Pedestrians get an honourable mention.

I’m encountering too many cyclists, both adult and children, who are out and about after dark without any lights or reflective clothing.  Or helmets.  There are also a good number of cyclists who like cutting up both pedestrians and other cyclists without paying attention as to who else may be using the road or pavement.  I was coming down the road that leads out of the Vyne and suddenly a cyclist (who DID have lights) cut across my path rather than turning properly into the road.

To the car drivers of Woking and Guildford who have graduated from the School of Psychic Motoring, you will already know what I’m about to say.  SIGNAL.  And especially: SIGNAL AT TURNINGS AND ROUNDABOUTS.  But in particular: KEEP TO THE CORRECT LANE.  I cannot describe how frustrated I am at trying to outguess the increasing number of car drivers who fail to correctly signal at junctions and at roundabouts.

I’m also fed up with cars and vans overspilling into the cycle lane around Sainsburys in Brookwood/Knaphill as well as the cycle lane further up Aldershot Road.  Or cars PARKED in the cycle lane.  And the cars that park right by the roundabout between Southway Road and Aldershot Road in Guildford: why?  You’re effectively blocking off an entire lane by your selfishness.   It is very difficult to turn left.

I’ve also noticed that this junction:


View Larger Map

is seeing a good number of drivers who fail to get in the correct lane and consequently then pull off when it’s not their turn and nearly collide with cars turning from the opposite direction.  The traffic lights at that junction are quite obvious, and yet so many are getting it wrong.

Speaking of Sainsburys at Brookwood/Knaphill – why do Sainsburys security allow kids to ride their scooters/bikes/whatever around the car park? I’ve nearly collided with these kids who shout abuse (at both staff and customers) and generally get underneath the feet of shoppers. This suggests to me that we need more open space/parks in the area for kids to go. A Sainsburys car park is no place for kids to play.

Also to the college students who attend the Merrist Wood College and who walk down the cycle path that connects Holly Lane to Aldershot Road: it’s a cycle path – there is PLENTY of room to the either side (pavement or the road itself).  Don’t act surprised to see cycles coming down it.  Oh hang on, you don’t – you don’t look or pay attention where you’re going and need to be alerted that somebody is coming down the path.  Perhaps the college could offer courses on the Green Cross Code?

2012: Predictable overly PC[*] drama with pretty visuals..

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 14, 2009

Roland Emmerich’s latest opus is three hours too long and is so politically correct[*] that it makes New Labour look bad.  It features more cliches than a cliche pie.  The typical dysfunctional family is featured, and you just know that it’ll be okay in the end.  Which is the case.

Do not expect good storytelling or diagloue, because there are none whatsoever.   The visuals are perhaps the only good thing about this movie, and even then, the CG overload this film uses makes you wonder how much damage this film has done to our environment given the total amount of wattage and carbon produced by each post-production facilities’ renderfarms.    This is massive waste of electricity and hard work.

In short: It’s alright I suppose, but very silly and worth watching only once.

[*] Except if you’re not American.  If you’re British, French, Russian, Chinese, Arabian or Indian, then expect stereotyping to the hilt.

X-Factor, Simon Cowell, John & Edward & Lucie

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 10, 2009

It must be said that Simon Cowell is no fool.  He still has all three acts still in the game.   The rest of the judges are bleeding contestants.  John & Edward, the most unlikely stars of the show, are still in the competition, but have now become pawns in the ultimate game of showbiz chess.  We had initially speculated that J&E are only in to save the better acts during these live shows, but we did NOT expect that they were being used to eradicate the better singers so that when J&E eventually go, only the survival of the fittest (that being Cowell’s bunch) survive.  Jedward are NOT going to win this competition.

While J&E are still popular (or at least notoriously popular) with the public, they’re going to be bumping off people like Lucie, Lloyd, Joe, Stacey and co. until Simon Cowell’s three acts make it through to the finale.  Cowell is using the twins to his absolute advantage.  He must have known that the public would have preferred (for whatever crazy reason) John & Edward.  With Lucie now out, that brings down one of the better contestants quickly.  Don’t forget that the X-Factor is a competition between singers AND the judges.  And the judges want to win just as much as the contestants do.

I also wouldn’t weep for the losers.  They’re got enough exposure to make it on their own.  Once the contracts that bind them to the X-Factor run out, they’ll be snap up sure enough if showbiz still thinks they’re got what it takes.  There are no real losers here.

It’s a veritable Winter wonderland..

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 9, 2009

.. out there and I’d really appreciate it if car drivers would consider switching on their lights when driving in the dark as it’s a tad difficult to see a small box on wheels pulling out unexpectedly without them.  Which is precisely what happened to me today when I was cycling home from Sainsburys in Brookwood after work.  I wouldn’t have minded, but he (or she) could spot me a mile off what with my front lights, day-glo jacket, etc. coming up towards them.

While I’m on the subject of Sainsburys, why is it that when I queue up and watch people take tons and tons of plastic carrier bags that when I follow them out the store shortly afterwards that I see them load all those bags into their car?  What’s happened with the re-usable bags?  If you’re going to be doing that much shopping, surely you’d have planned on doing so and as such, would have made your life easier by re-using bags or boxes rather than waste plastic carrier bags?

Back to Wordpress..

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 9, 2009

Have found the ideal theme, so here I am.  Drake.org.uk is now entirely self-hosted at Memset.

Pride and Prejudice and Operating Systems

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 5, 2009

This will sound hypocritical of me, but I really dislike OS snobbery.  I've unsubscribed from the Greater London Linux Group (GLLUG)  a number of times due to the general bitchiness of some subscribers over their hatred for all things Microsoft, OS X, or any number of other operating systems that are not Linux.

I also hate to say this, but much of this snobbery seems to stem from Linux zealots.  I continually hear how crap Windows is and that Linux is so much better than every other operating system.  Similar things from the FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD camps too – although they tend to put their OSes above Linux.  As for the hard core Windows user, they bitch about Linux being unfriendly and complicated.  OS X users come into the fray and say their computers/OS is better than Windows, Linux and all other *ixes put together.

I have news for you.  No one operating system is any better than the other.  And it also all boils down to personal choice.  I've seen Windows, Linux and OS X systems compromised[*] (and I should note: none were any of mine!).  I've not been around FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD to say the same.  But certainly one cannot be smug about any operating system when it comes to security. 

In terms of usability, I've always found Linux desktops to be terribly inconsistent and fiddly – and not a little ugly.  But that's just my personal preference.  Windows has generally been a bit more consistent (although I am still getting used to some of the changes in Windows 7 where Microsoft have moved some regular options I used to the Control Panel), but it provides the biggest choice in terms of software and compatibility.  OS X has been the most consistent interface of all, and provides a very friendly and wonderful approach to user friendly computing.  But I'm not liking much the software availability and quality of some of the software that's available for the Mac.  Apple's own software products are, for the most part, wonderful, but there are still some issues that prevent me from loving Apple completely.

The reason I'm now rooting for the Windows/PC camp is that it suits my needs now.  I may well head back to Macs later down the road, but for now, the PC and Windows does what I want it to do.  I could even go to Linux as a desktop if the interface was right (Ubuntu comes very close to my ideal, but it still needs work).  In terms of hardware support, Linux has never had it so good.  And the same can be said about Windows.

I certainly grumble about OSes and hardware myself, but I *do* try to bear in mind about having an objective outlook on things rather than simply dismissing something simply because it comes from Apple, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, or whoever.  Each and every operating system has advantages and disadvantages over each other and I believe it is quite wrong to start slanging matches for the sake of doing so. 

[*] I'm seeing more people running obsolete versions of Fedora Core and even Red Hat Linux operating systems.  A few years ago I noticed a film distribution company running Red Hat 9 with telnet (not SSH!) and all available default services running (and all versions of those services were available for all to see) – and this was a server running the web site for a Terry Gilliam film.  I had to write to the systems team and advise them that this was putting their site (and reputation) in jeopardy.  Thankfully they then firewalled off the machine and fixed the problems.  The stupid thing is, this is still a common problem!

Up, Up and Away!

Posted by Martyn Drake – November 2, 2009

Friday night turned into a bit of a fiasco, having volunteered to take over on-call while my colleagues went out for a free-for-all night out.  Sods law dictates that when this sort of thing happens, all hell breaks loose.  And that's what happened.  I even took a half day off that day and found myself working through that too.  By the time midnight came and went, I was still doing stuff for work.

Thankfully there was not emergencies throughout the night and we had a leisurely morning before heading off to Woking and Waitrose to pick up groceries.  Came back, dropped off the stuff, and headed out to Guildford to watch Disney/Pixar's UP in glorious 3D.

The only time 3D has ever really worked for me was Terminator 3D way back in 2000 at Universal Studios, California.  Since then, whenever I've seen 3D stuff, it's just not worked.  It's not helped that I have a slight squint and I have a lazy eye.  So watching UP in 3D was about as much good as watching the show in tap dancing clogs and lederhosen.

Lack of 3D action aside, Pixar have come up trumps again.  Absolutely loved this film.  Cried like a baby twice, much to Jennifer's amusement, but laughed uproariously at most of the gags.  This is a beautifully crafted film and has to rate as one of my favourite Pixar films of all time.