Haikublock

I can't write...

It's only three lines, 5-7-5, can't be that hard.

I haven't been able to write anything since start of Nov, not even a short story... I have some ideas but I can't manage to sit down and write... I only sit in front of the laptop and browse, browse browse...
That just sucks... I really feel like Matt (see John Kovalic's cartoon below).

The Mighty Boosh

I've almost finished the first season.

I'm not sure if this is a product of a genius duo or just a bunch of weird story lines and bad acting.

The stories are quite surreal, enjoyable and the guys really break the fourth wall and they're aware of the fact that they are a part of TV show.

Hmmm.. There are two more seasons, I should get them and give them a go.

Also I like the idea of a Writer's caddie idea, maybe it will get me into writing more often.

OK... Get on with it...

I never thought I'd have so much trouble concentrating...
PL/SQL is such a boring language...

Cheap food

Good for 6:

-1 cup of flour
-1 cup of milk
-2 eggs

Mix.

Heat the oven.

Pour the mixture into the oiled thingie (kitchen stuff).

Cook until it's brown, puffed and smells nice, or until it starts burning.

Total cost: penauts.
Total fat content: Very low
Total taste: It's OK, would be nice with strawberry jam.

Shipping Forecast

I need to be able to go to bed and sleep before the Shipping Forecast starts...
This is too depressing... Why can't I regulate my sleep hours better?
Tomorrow, wake up at 7 and be ready to get some work done by 9!
That's tne new orders, Mr. Brain! Now get on with it!

Argh!

How do I stop this stupid Thunderbird from formatting my mails in HTML!
Grrrrr...

Eastercon 2008

Planning and calculating the costs vs. balances...
I think it will be two days there, one night hotel.
Otherwise I can do four days there, three nights in the hotel.

The first one has the advantage of having some extra time in London and Oxford. We can go around, goof and have fun. We can do the other one from the hotel but paying for the hotel would be a bit daft, OTOH then we can spend some time in the evening on the hotel with the programme.

Unfortunately the Eastercon programme is not definite, there isn't even a list of things that will be happening so I think it's better two days...

Well, it's not upto me, it needs to be a joint decision. I'll wait until tomorrow and then order the tickets.

Will be posting more often...

I finally sorted the email publishing which means I can start a rant wherever I am and whenever it is! Heheh... More rants to follow soon... Repeating once more: Robotech Shadow Chronicles sucks!

Macross Frontiers

It's coming soon...
I think I've seen it somewhere already.
I hope it's better than Macross 7 and at least as good as Macross Zero.

20071223 11:22 (messages from the past)

Sitting in the Starbucks at Borders in Cambridge.
Had a muffin and a cappucino.
Nice.
Listening to George Hrab ranting about religion - much fun.
Need to do a bit of a shopping and a walk, then back to home and get started on something.
I will be doing a bit of a Java today, I think, unless I derail my plans in some weird way.

Watched a bit of Andromeda yesterday, it's not as bad as I remembered it to be. There was one funny scene where the captain breaks into a weapons cabined and there is a long wig and a huge sword - heheh, great reference to Hercules.

I'm quite bad with names, I can't remember the actor's name or the captains - I watched five eps and can't remember, I think the name is called "Dan Something". Oh well...

Robotech Shadow Chronicles

Yuck...
I'm about 5 min into it and it already sucks.
The animation is sub-par, especially compared with the rich and beautiful Macross Zero.
Where Macross Zero animation was done very nicely with a good story in the background, this is done very cheaply, with very very cheap 3D animation - especially with the advances in the 3D animation, this 2006 movie is just rubbish.
The character designs are really crappy and don't get me started with the voice actors, utterly terrible and done w/o any feeling. It's very obvious that they're just reading lines from their scripts without much practice - I never liked anime in English in any case - they simply don't have much of a talent generally. It's a sad thing because I know from Japanese originals in general (and from my childhood, Turkish anime dubs) how well it can be done.

The last thing is, how did they design the bodies? Even for an animation, they look so unreal, it's unbelievable. The mens are all triangle shaped and don't get me started on the boobs, come on, even on worse deformed-characters in Japanese anime, boobs look real!

11 minutes into the thing... My feelings are the same: Utter rubbiiiiishhh!

Last day at work

... was yesterday...
I'm still recovering. I feel excited but also I'm really sad to leave those nice people and move on.
I hope I will be able to keep in touch with them.

Last night I sat down and watched 10 episodes of Journeyman. It was good. It's annoying that they cancelled the show. Well.. Not suprising, really. They cancel anything that's any good.

New work, new house, new town

I'm moving.
I quit my job. Last day is next Friday.
I am moving to a new town. Because of bad planning, I will have to pay for an extra months rent down here. I have started going through my stuff, deciding on what to get rid of.

I hope the crowd in Freecycle will take the stuff of my hands, otherwise they are ending in the landfill. I don't want to do that.

I am quite excited about the new job and the move. It will cost me. I will miss St. Ives but I quite liked the West Wycombe and High Wycombe looks alright. I hope the work will be interesting. I need to get my ass off the chair and start working on JBoss, EJBss and Oracle in depth. I will start tomorrow. I promise.

NaNoWriMo was an utter failure, I didn't even manage to write a scifaiku a day, leave alone a story every couple of days as I wanted to.

I need to organize myself, spend some time writing and working every day w/o failure + walks and exercise.

I need some stuff done!

Flash Fiction

Wrote a flash fiction, it was pretty bad but still... Finally I wrote something longer than a scifaiku. I might end up writing some more today, I'm in the mood of being creative. Heheh.
The FF is on the haiku blog. Go there if you want...

NaNoWriMo

OK... This is exactly what I feel right now.
I hope Mr. Kovalic won't get angry with me. :)
I suck. I suck. I really really suck.

More Comet Holmes

img_2302
Originally uploaded by m1fcj

I think this one slightly sharper.

Comet Holmes!

img_2305
Originally uploaded by m1fcj

There you go. After observing it yesterday, today it's here, with all of its glory, the Comet HOlmes!

I uploaded a couple of more shots to Flickr, with various different settings, they all look more or less the same: A fuzzy grey blob.

With the 30x60, I can just see a greenish tint but it might be my eyes fooling me.

Olympus OM2

I got a nice Olympus OM2 from a gentleman in Freecycle.
It's a nice piece of equipment, I'm in love with it. I'm in love with all full manual cameras in any case but this one is a very nicely engineered device.
I'm going to clean it up, put a roll of film in it and see if everything works fine. If it does, I'll find someone who will use it and give it to them.

IMHO, they don't build cameras like this anymore...

Exercise required...

Damn... I need to plan some exercise plan and stick to it. This is not good.
Grrr...

Painkiller...

Best album by Judas Priest... Ever....

I am sick

arrghhh... I feel yucky...

Promises

I am going to

• write at least one SF haiku a day,


• blog once about what I am doing a day,


• walk for at least an hour every evening,


• almost forgot - at least record 15 minutes of podcast episodes, for practice and for real,


• write an SF short story per week.

I need to keep my spirits high and my mind busy.
Promise.

blogging is hard

It is incredibly hard to blog regularly. At least for me. When I was on holiday, I tried to make notes of what I've been upto and what I've been doing. Since I wasn't online, I couldn't post them immediately. I am back, I've been online for the last two weeks but I haven't written anything down.

I am gearing to get ready to write stuff. I wrote a couple of scifaikus last week, if I can find the notebook I scribbled them on, I shall post them. I was checking the haiku blog and the last time I blogged one was in May. I was planning to write at least one a day.

And there's the NaNoWriMo. This time I want to get active. I might even make podcasts out of it.

I managed to order two microphones (an AT-2020 and an Shure SM58 with a mic stand) finally. I hope they arrive quickly. I am also setting a PC with the Studio64 amd64 version. I've already plugged the PCI M-Audio interface to it. I am going to plug a couple of the channels from the desk to that machine and make that one the recording machine. It will be easy. I might have to get a couple of more (and longer) balanced jack cables since that machine is on an other desk, I don't want to use the other mixer for now - that has a separate owner. I still have to think about the routings but it will be OK, there's four buses on thix mixer and I haven't burned any new channels recently. :( My Behringer mixer sucks.

Anyway... I need to keep my spirits high, I am planning for a lot of changes in my life in the next couple of months.

Coheed and Cambria - The Second Stage Turbine Blade

Finally I have it! Found it in Fopp today (strange, didn't they go bust a couple of weeks ago?).
Ripping it now to listen it with the mp3 players while travelling. I listened the first couple of songs and it's good. Wonderful cover art, all in green and grey tones, an insect and a couple at the back of the dust cover. When you take it out, there is no writing at all. When you open it, there's a good illustration of a girl and a young man, are these Coheed and Cambria? Maybe.

I thought I had the Coheed and Cambria comic somewhere, I hope I can find it.

These guys are great - they should be known more, be famous and produce more albums but since they're falling apart, that's not really possible.

This is supposed to be older than "In Keeping the Secrets Of Earth" but the audio quality, especially drums and the guitar sound seems to be worse, somewhat expected. I thought this version might have been re-engineered but it appears not to be, at least to my ears - I'd do something about the drum's sound, the snare is very very thin, I'd prefer a much fuller snare drum voice. On the other hand, the guitar work is really good and so far I've listened to the CD (track 5), it's been extremely good!

Google FlightSim

WTF!.
It's just awesome. Unbeliveable!
Arrgh!

WMAP - the Google Sky Edition!

Just wooowwwww.

Google Sky is getting better every day. Just brilliant.

Podcast work

Finally... The first (long) episode is out and the second (longish) episode is in the can.
For a total of 45 minutes of podcasts, I spent (apart from recording) more than 6 hours. I need to get more efficient in editing and altering audio files. This time mixing didn't take long, on the other hand, it wasn't particularly good either - there are level and automation problems.
Still... It's out. Yay!

I can't get no... Satisfaction!

Woke up an hour ago. Ate a chocolate chip muffin. Drank a mug of tea. Had a shower. Now drinking a cup of coffee. It's still only 09:30 on a Saturday morning - there's plenty of time but...

I am not satisfied.
I'm not getting any satisfaction from my day so far. It feels... Empty... Pointless...
As if I woke up just for the sake of it, there is no aim, nothing to achieve or aim for.

Oh well, I can spend the rest of the day reading my stack of Amazons and Asimovs...

Google Sky!

Completely out of the blue, Google releases the Sky. I downloaded it immediately, it's available on the Linux version of Google Earth and it's really good. Some pictures are not stitched up that nicely - you can see the background brightness difference where stitched but when you zoom in, you don't realise it. I was looking at Double Cluster, it was just sooo good.. Wow... Good work Google!

Arctic

First the Russians, now the Canadians.

Stay away from tne North Pole you bastards! It's mine! MINE! MIIIIIINEEEEE!!!!

This is madness. The only reason they can actualy bother to claim it is the ice sheet in the polar region melting rapidly. The main reason they want that piece of sea is because there's OIL and GAS in there and every one wants a share of it. And the only reason they can get to those green-house-generating stuff is because the green-house-generating stuff is melting the ice. It's a vicious circle. They should be staying away from those and spend the money on R&D.

Why are politicians so narrow minded and shallow?

Observation Notes 20070811

Good clear night with ocassional wispy cloud. No moon.
Perseids in action. Only saw a couple.

Observation between 11pm-1am BST

Equipment: EOS350D + 300mm + 55mm, 10x50 binoculars

Observation Companion: Very Thick "These are all like earth burning away, right" Brit

In no particular order....
Cassiopea: NGC 654, NGC663, M103, Stock 23, Stock 2

Perseids:
Double cluster (NGC884+NGC869), Mel 20, M44, Algol
Tried NGC1528 and NGC1545 but failed.

Andromeda: M31 (obviously). M31 is not a good binocular target, all you can see is the center (at least all -I- can see) and you never realise it's actually larger than the bloody moon! Damnit - that thing is a monster. I always do the wrong thing and crank up the magnification whereas it requires a low mag thing.

Hercules: M13 (also photographed this), M92

Lyra, Vega, Epsilon, M57, M56.

Cygnus: Albireo, M29, deneb, gamma, Tried M1-92 very hard but failed.

Sagitta: M71, H20. Also photographed this.

Vulpecula: Generic browsing and awesome Coat Hanger cluster (Collinder 399)

Corona Borealis: nothing in particular, beautiful thing.
Bootes: Again, lovely thing, was lost in the glare of the lamp posts.
Delphinus: cute little thing.
Ursa Majoris: Alcor-Mizar

Resolutions: I need to buy a 10" Dobsonian damn it, it's really worth it.
Useful document: Astronomy Atlas of the Stars (I need a better one but this is really worth it's money!)

Closepened

That's what it says on Black Book's door... I want one...

Walk plan?

Saw this on Mur's blog.

Walk and Run Plan
If you are a true beginner, and cannot run for 10 minutes, you should start out with a walk/run plan. Here’s a good one to start with (do each one three times a week):

1. Week 1: Walk for 10 minutes. Jog slowly for 1 minute, and then walk for 1 minute. Repeat these 1/1 intervals for 10 minutes, or until you become uncomfortable. Walk for 5 minutes to cool down.
2. Week 2: Walk for 10 minutes. Jog slowly for 2 minutes, and then walk for 2 minutes. Repeat these 2/2 intervals for 10 minutes, or until you become uncomfortable. Walk for 5 minutes to cool down.
3. Week 3: Walk for 10 minutes. Jog slowly for 3 minutes, and then walk for 2 minutes. Repeat these 3/2 intervals for 15 minutes, or until you become uncomfortable. Walk for 5 minutes to cool down.
4. Week 4: Walk for 10 minutes. Jog slowly for 5 minutes, and then walk for 2 minutes. Repeat these 5/2 intervals for 20 minutes, or until you become uncomfortable. Walk for 5 minutes to cool down.



I want to try this but historically I've never been a runner. Even when I was at high school, I could never run far. I can walk a long time, I tend to have the stamina but not the power....
I am going to give this a go, also waking up early will help my general status.

Steampunk goodie

Hmm... they deleted the video. OK. that's how web 2.0 gets broken. Who cares.

Hooting Yard

I don't get him.

According to Langford, he is/was used to be relatively known to the surrealist SF readers. He also does a show on the London radio Resonance FM 104.4, unfortunately I've never listened to this radio since it's radiowaves do not extend all the way up here. They have a stream as well which I shall give a go - this wasn't there last time (months ago) I visited their web page.

There you go...

Review: The Making of Battlespace:

Watch it here...

Wow... I should take back some of the stuff I've said abotu this movie.
It appears that it was done on a shoestring budget, shot by a crew of 4(!), paid penauts, the producers got most of the budget for themselves and else...

The director/writer/producer guy sold his house and everything to finish it up.

I don't believe he will make any money out of this - although it was interesting, it was a failed experiment.

movie review: battlespace

Battlespace is a movie done in 2006.
It is a relatively low cost science-fiction movie.
It's about a marine colonel whose battleship gets destroyed. She gets stranded on a inhospitable planet with the enemy hunting her.

The movie is not -that- bad although it has a very low rating in IMDB.

There are several problems with the movie.
Let's start with the first and the most annoying one: Voiceover.
The movie is clearly based on a much larger universe design - there are a number of things which are not extremely clear as you watch it. The voiceover is presented as the daughter of the heroine, explaining things as happen, which is quite annoying... Instead of showing, they are trying to tell. It doesn't work.

The second problem is the editing. There are great scenes and quite a decent CGI (especially when you think about the low-cost feeling of the movie). On the other hand the direction and editing is quite atrocious. It is disjointed and really distracts you from what's going on.

The universe is quite self-contained and works without invoking a deus ex-machina.

Some of the CGI are quite funny like V2 rockets and spaceships designed like WWII submarines or simply like spanners.

There are hallucinations of the "Earth" which s supposed to be destroyed - which is not explained thorogly.

The worst scene is where the heroine straps herself to a V2 rocket. That is just senseless and stupid and without any point!

It's suprising that I managed to watch all of the 1h25 minutes of this movie. I should have stopped watching but by a decent editing, it could have been a way better movie. Even with the reasonably-poor actng, it could have worked.

What is really funny is the amount of (or the lack of) information about this movie on the net.

About an hour into the movie, it just loses the track completely, switches to the end of time, more and more explaining what is going on and a somewhat senseless ending.

There are a couple of very funny moments, one being the muzak playing in the elevator - in a spaceship.... Just shows you that some things never change.

It is fun to see classic Doctor Who-like scenes.
Shots from quarries, mines, factories, all used as a SF-technology background - which is very funny since these places tend to be pretyty much old-tech.

OK... The last thing: This movie is intelligent. It's not really an action-SF movie. It actually tries to make a point,... And fails. Regardless, it's a good attempt.

Anyway... There appears to be a new fad.
Way back the cheap SF movies were shot by a red filter, giving everything the "Mars" feeling.
Most of this movie is shot by a blue filter.
This is not the first time I've seen this. This effect was used in Charlie Jade with a very very good effect. Not here.

Mixers galore

First, Serkan and his mixer:



Then, this is my new desk layout:



Finally we managed to do a Skype-in call with the mob. Hopefully a new podcast will come out of this, even though Ardour crashed 4 times!

Trilogies: Just say No!

I wish I had the drive to start a new campaign: STOP THE TRILOGIES!

I know that trilogies, or simply put, multi-book deals are good for the writers financially, readers tend to buy all of the series usually since they don't like to stop at the middle of a book and printers just love it for the same reason.

On the other hand, I've had enough! I can't go to Borders and pick a random SF/F book anymore. Almost any other book is a part of a series and it only is the fourth book of an eight book series! Heellooo? Why should I pick this book and walk away with it?


Unless it is a manga - then it's the opposite. I buy my mangas from Amazon. Why? Because the bookshops in my City have a stupid rule, they only have the first couple of volumes of any manga so I always get my first hit from them and then get the rest of the volumes supplied by Amazon. Surely the bookshop is losing money here, a typical Manga series is usually 13 to 20 volumes. Selling only a small fraction is useless.

Back to the books again.

Obviously emotional attachment to the characters is a strong reason for buying serial books. Writers can flesh out the characters significantly compared to the shorter books. On the other hand, are we readers getting our money's worth? In my experience a story that should have been finished in a medium-thickness volume usually gets expanded into a trilogy. The events get sparser, with lots of "character development" in between. On the other hand these character developments don't give us any more insight to the story itself - we tend to fed up all sorts of stupid stories about the character's life. For example a character might be a cynical person. In a shorter book, this can be described as such and be done with. In a trilogy, we would learn about his failed marriage, his cheating wife, sweet but now dead kids and his folding business, not because of his fault either but his partner, who also was fucking our character's sister AND wife, make our character cynical. And this takes an additional 100 pages to go through... Thinking that most of 50s and 60s novels were about 120-180 pages long...

Let's all say NO to the trilogies.
Let's get the writers concentrate on the story again.
Let's be able to finish a book in a peaceful evening and then contemplate over it for a couple of hours.

This will mean that we will have to buy more books. We will be reading more of them and we will be introduced to more interesting ideas for the same page count.
I can't see any problem there!

Inspiron 9400 and WiFi

Thanks to this fellow, I'm all ready for Dublin!

in need of sleep...?

There is something wrong with me.
I spent almost all of yesterday sleeping, if not sleeping, lying down and reading/watching something.
I have absolutely no energy or stamina right now.
On the way to the office, I almost had an accident and then banged my head when I was getting out. I am usually not this much disoriented.
I had a couple of biscuits and a strong cup of coffee but they only made me crash more.
I'm really wasted.
I almost drifted to sleep listening to "Rainy Taxi" song - just after that cup of coffee.
This is not good. I need to get in shape and get my life in order ASAP.

This story must win the Hugo award!

I just listened to Impossible Dreams by Tim Pratt.
Now, I have this story sitting in my bookcase. I haven't read the Asimov's it got published in (July 2006). This is a shame. I should have read it before. It rocks!

You can read it here or listen it to here, on the brilliant Escape Pod.

Go and donate some money to Escape Pod, I always do. Steve does a brilliant job. I've been listenin gto Escape Pod since single-digit episode numbers. It is really really good. Go get it! Right now.

This story is the best story in this year's Hugo nominee short stories. The rest are all fall flat compared to this brilliant story.

I love well written alt-timeline stories.

Kudos to Steve Eley for bringing the Hugo nominees to audio for free.

Nokia 445M configuration

Here you go.
There are various pages reporting different syncs. The sync rates I found to be working are:
Horizontal: 30-79
Vertical: 50-114

Although allegedly it's supposed to as high as 90Hz horizontal but it ain't on this graphics card.

This works with openSUSE 10.0 and a crappy on-board Intel card:

Section "Monitor"
DisplaySize 370 270
HorizSync 30-79
Identifier "Monitor[0]"
ModelName "445PRO"
VendorName "NOKIA"
VertRefresh 50-114
UseModes "Modes[0]"
EndSection

Section "Modes"
Identifier "Modes[0]"
Modeline "1280x1024" 132.75 1280 1368 1504 1728 1024 1025 1028 1067
Modeline "1280x960" 124.54 1280 1368 1504 1728 960 961 964 1001
Modeline "1280x960" 105.61 1280 1360 1496 1712 960 961 964 995
Modeline "1280x800" 134.18 1280 1368 1504 1728 800 801 804 844
Modeline "1280x800" 118.88 1280 1368 1504 1728 800 801 804 839
Modeline "1280x800" 102.80 1280 1360 1496 1712 800 801 804 834
Modeline "1280x800" 86.35 1280 1344 1480 1680 800 801 804 829
Modeline "1152x864" 115.30 1152 1224 1352 1552 864 865 868 906
Modeline "1152x864" 99.64 1152 1224 1344 1536 864 865 868 901
Modeline "1152x864" 84.44 1152 1216 1336 1520 864 865 868 896
Modeline "1280x768" 128.77 1280 1368 1504 1728 768 769 772 810
Modeline "1280x768" 113.01 1280 1360 1496 1712 768 769 772 805
Modeline "1280x768" 97.81 1280 1352 1488 1696 768 769 772 801
Modeline "1280x768" 82.91 1280 1344 1480 1680 768 769 772 796
Modeline "1024x768" 102.54 1024 1088 1200 1376 768 769 772 810
Modeline "1024x768" 90.83 1024 1088 1200 1376 768 769 772 805
Modeline "1024x768" 78.43 1024 1080 1192 1360 768 769 772 801
Modeline "1024x768" 66.33 1024 1080 1184 1344 768 769 772 796
Modeline "800x600" 76.84 800 848 936 1072 600 601 604 640
Modeline "800x600" 69.65 800 848 936 1072 600 601 604 637
Modeline "800x600" 62.43 800 848 936 1072 600 601 604 633
Modeline "800x600" 54.47 800 840 928 1056 600 601 604 629
Modeline "800x600" 46.87 800 840 920 1040 600 601 604 626
Modeline "800x600" 39.49 800 832 912 1024 600 601 604 622
Modeline "768x576" 71.64 768 824 904 1040 576 577 580 615
Modeline "768x576" 63.82 768 816 896 1024 576 577 580 611
Modeline "768x576" 57.28 768 816 896 1024 576 577 580 608
Modeline "768x576" 49.92 768 808 888 1008 576 577 580 604
Modeline "768x576" 42.93 768 800 880 992 576 577 580 601
Modeline "768x576" 36.13 768 792 872 976 576 577 580 597
Modeline "640x480" 48.72 640 680 744 848 480 481 484 513
Modeline "640x480" 44.11 640 680 744 848 480 481 484 510
Modeline "640x480" 38.81 640 672 736 832 480 481 484 507
Modeline "640x480" 34.38 640 672 736 832 480 481 484 504
Modeline "640x480" 29.43 640 664 728 816 480 481 484 501
Modeline "640x480" 24.70 640 656 720 800 480 481 484 498
EndSection

Section "Screen"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 32
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
EndSubSection
Device "Device[0]"
Identifier "Screen[0]"
Monitor "Monitor[0]"
EndSection

Section "Device"
BoardName "865 G"
BusID "0:2:0"
Driver "i810"
Identifier "Device[0]"
Screen 0
VendorName "Intel"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout[all]"
InputDevice "Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
Option "Clone" "off"
Option "Xinerama" "off"
Screen "Screen[0]"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Group "video"
Mode 0660
EndSection

Evo's leaving FMP!

Well, out of horse's mouth.

On the other hand, it appears that Evo's been unhappy with what he's doing lately: His words: "But I’m becoming less and less of a scifi podcaster… heck, less and less of a podcaster at all, come to think of it."

I have an other idea.

Google's cache of Farpoint's About page has the following:

Email us:
Michael R. Mennenga, Director: mike @ farpointmedia.net
Summer Brooks, Producer: summer @ farpointmedia.net
Jeffrey Willerth, Producer, West Coast Office: jeffrey @ farpointmedia.net

This is from 31st of May.

Today this link has:

Michael R. Mennenga, Michael R. Mennenga: CEO, Director
Summer Brooks, Supervising Producer, Co-Host
Jeffrey Willerth, Managing Director (West Coast office), Production Coordinator for Video and Visual Media Projects
Draco Vista Studio

Now.. There's Mike, the CEO. Where is Evo? He is not there. My totally unfounded and completely circumstantial made up theory is Evo didn't get the title he wanted, he and Mike or Summer had an argument and Evo walked out.

Well, Brian appears to know something but he's not telling us.

As they decide to put more info out, it's all speculation.

London Book Project

How cool is this!??

Sometimes I wish I lived in London - that is when I am 75 miles away from it and I'm not stuck in its traffic or when I'm not being crushed to death in its underground.

Mr Wolf, meet Miss Sheep...

Come on! How can this happen? The parents of the missing child meet the head of the biggest organisation who has protected sex abusers for so long, namely the Catholic Church and this religious bigot is supposed to be good just because he claims he is The Man of the God and he is completely infallible. I suppose he and his organisation use this infallibility when they ignore the pains of the abused.

I really wonder how the family roped into this publicity stand for the Catholic Church. As if this old goat is going to be any use, or maybe, it might, if the culprit is a Catholic priest he might listen to his Vicar of Christ. Sheeesh...

Observation log

Yesterday, by the time I came back home, the weather was clear which is quite incredible itself, since it's been raining for the last week. Suddenly the clouds went away and a perfectly clear sky appeared, with an almost-full moon. We watched some stuff, then I saw Venus from the window (this is about 11pm). I set up the scope in the middle of the room but both Venus and Saturn didn't look that good. Having two people in the house is quite useful, we just took the kit outside and set it up very quickly.

Then we had a good look at Venus, unfortunately it appears to be in its gibbous phase so it wasn't much fun to look at. We peered at Saturn, which was nice but the conditions were not great. We could not see any of the gaps in the rings.

We looked at the Ring Nebula, which was great! I could not believe how easily I found it, considering that in the past many times I failed to locate it. It's just unbeliveable. Then we looked at Epsilon Lyrae and Deneb. I could not split the double-double, which really pissed me off. Wee peered at Castor and Pollux for fun.

What next, we looked at Mira in Ursa Major, which is not that spectacular on the scope.

Then we looked at the moon for a while using the moon filter, which really helps. Unfortunately there weren't a lot of craters to look at, since it was almost full moon.

Still, it was fun. By the time we packed up and went back upstairs, it was about 1am.
Missed opportunities: Andromeda Galaxy (I couldn't see it at all, I couldn't see Andromeda full stop, the light conditions were not great), double cluster (too low), all sorts of Messiers including Prasepae (which I completely forgot about). We could have done better but anyway, at least we used a very rare opportunity.

Todo list: maintenance on the EQ Mount, it's unbeliveably wobbly, you can't use the focus because it's so rigid and the telescope moves too easily, if not wobbles so bad, you can't even focus. Anyway, that can be done during any rainy evening... Heh, I'm not short of those lately.

Snow in May:: Anti-global warming pundits: STFU!

Rain mixing with snow, 0 degrees Celcius... 27 of May... Global warming denial crowd: just shut the fuck up, this is not supposed to happen!

Trains

I want to see some railtrack and some trains... Shiny railtracks and heavy, dark, sleepers... That would be fun fun fun. And photographing them.

Nodame Cantable

Kawaiii!!!!
And the music is gorgeous!

200705242030_slightly_more_relaxed_now

I love the channel tunnel. OTOH, I have serious issues with the train operators. They treat it like an airplane, whereas it isn't. It isn't that fully booked either, about half of the seats are empty right now. OK, it is middle-of-the-week late evening run but still you would have expected more people on it. I bet more people are flying between Brussels, London and Paris I write this thing. Also there aren't a lot of trains - I mean why would they, this carriage is half empty. On the other hand, they could have reduced the ticket prices and increase the frequency of the trains, more people would use it. It would really make a difference and it is much more civilised.

On the other hand... It's quite hard to get to. I mean, it starts at Waterloo, which is a pain in the ass to get to, or you can (maybe) get a train from Ashford but then you have to drive to Ashford, which is a significant distance for me (round trip around 200 miles) which sucks.

Technomaniac note: There's a problem with the focus on the laptop, quite a lot of times clicking doesn't actually grab the focus - it really pisses me off but I'm too tired to get angry about.

We're about to enter the tunnel, we've slowed down considerably now. The sun is setting and it's crystal clear. I should have been at home, observing.

Wohoo, the sun is beautiful, straight at the horizon... Or was.. Now we're going into the tunnel, I won't be able to see it again I think.

Now we're under the sea. I love this thing. Such an engineering feat, it should be used by more people, more often and the prices should be cheaper (so that even more people will be using it). They can make money by selling fuel and snacks, it'd be quite lucrative.

200705242018 on the eurostar

Location: Eurostar speeding towards England
Mood: Depressive and extremely tired


This has been a distastrous week.

First... I had a very poorly tested software.
Second... I forgot my passport at home and found about it when I was just about to check into Eurostar.
Third... After postponing the trip to Tuesday morning, I forgot to phone the hotel to talk about the reservation.
Fourth... I had a lot of problems with WebSphere shite.
Fifth... I found about the cancelled reservation, it took a while to find an other hotel room since it looked like all of Lille was fully booked.
Sixth... The second day wasn't that good either (but I did have some progress and finally ended up with one serious problem.
Seventh... I was asked to stay an other day, which I was completely cool about but the only hotel that had a room was a single star and it was VERY basic. Unbeliveable BASIC. (At least that night I had a good dinner with my colleauges and had some fun).
Eighth... WebSphere is still a pile of shite.
Ninth... Finally, after managing to escape, I find out that the return ticket for Eurostar WOULD NOT STOP AT ASHFORD. FUCK FUCK FUCK! I had to beg and beg, finally they gave me a seat on the next train, A FULL TWO HOURS LATER! Well, the Eurostar staff were brilliant, polite and helpful, I am really grateful.
Tenth... I dunno.. Something's bound to go wrong.

Update: Tenth... Fuck it! You can't make this up. After I got out of Darmouth tunnel, a huge HGV tried to run over my Volvo! He pushed me into the next lane, I hardly controlled the car. If there were any traffic on the lane I was pushed into, it would be a very serious accident. It's so fucking unbelievable. Also roadworks on M11 and M25 made the journey far too long with heavy delays. This sucks.

Importance of checklists

Fuck... Left the passport at home. Rescheduled the train journey to tomorrow morning. Wasted money. Wasted time. Pissed off. Angry. Ass, meet kick.

patrickMoore := arse

It's a sad thing. A person who has done so much for the popular science can act like an arsehole bigot. It's a well known fact that Sir Patrick is a Tory but behaving in such an immoral way? Argh, an other hero bites the dust. I'm really really sorry for him.. No, that's a lie. I'm not. How can a clever man like him utter such stupid words, it's just unbelievable. It appears that finally senility hits him, or maybe not, maybe we can't blame his gray matter aging, maybe he really meant it - which is worst, a hero like him getting completely nutty or his hidden feelings about women finally coming out and shaming him?

Hitit Gunesi Podcast

Now we're on our way...

Dejavu all over again

Woah..De... Ja...Vu...
Here I was, listening to "Eye In The Sky" by Joe Frank and suddenly everything goes funny and I know exactly what's going to happen and just follow the precognitions and here I am.

By the way, Eye In The Sky was very good. Go and find it, listen to it.

first podcast out of the way!

Yay!

It needed to go out. I've been hanging to it for two months and I did almost no work on it.
Today, I cleaned it up - twice. Audacity crashed towards the end of the first attemt. I rushed the second edit but it's OK.

Then I cleared it up and mixed it with Ardour2 with gates, compressors and whatnots.

Then I exported it, clipped the end using Audacity again, converted it into mp3 with Lame and then I edited the mp3 tags using Amarok and....

I tried to reopen the project in Ardour2 and the damn thing dies on me. Arrrrgh!

Anyway, the first MiniMi episode is out, it's 2:15, with only 1 minute of Eralp talking. Now, that's not long - I am really scared of the long shows I'm planning and I really envy other podcasters, how do they go through all this, it's unbeliveable. Especially Mike of Farpoint Media is MetaGod!

Kurt Vonnegut(*) R.I.P.

He's gone... Oh well, so it goes...

Section 6!

Unbelievable! Google Mail locked me out with Section 6 - I can't see any of the HDRI pics Michele has been sending to me! And this happened just after I reported a problem with Thunderbird. Strange? Suspicious? OH HELL YES!

This is the first time I'm seriously pissed of with Google Mail - so far I've been a big advocate and this really sucks.

2007052010

Back in Starbucks... I love Borders in Cambridge. I browse, buy books and magazines and sit down and have a nice cup of extremely expensive coffee listening to some podcasts... Live the feeling. I need to do this more often but...

Food in Starbucks is evil and outrageously expensive so sneaked in a KitKat in. Hehe. They can try throwing me out. Good luck to them.

Just before the easter bank holiday, it's almost completely empty. Probably all of the studens have gone home or on holiday somwhere, same with the rest of the people. It's only me who gets stuck.

Spent an hour reading some documents and some PDFs I had with me - I better get going...

Twitter sucks?

I can see how Twitter can be used to harvest data about me - I am getting friended by bots lately and I can't find a way to block them. Damn damn damn!

Escape Pod hits 100!

Escape Pod rocks! I've been spending all my time since this morning listening to old (and new) Escape Pod episodes. Love this guy and the show!

Mason Rocket is dead

Joe Murphy is gone...
It's better this way, he was very heavily drugged and I'm glad he's no longer suffering.

HDRI and long walks

Went to Wimpole farm with Michele and Serkan. Walked slowly but a reasonable distance, shooting lots of pics. After that we went to Cambridge, had something to eat at Dojo (great place). And then my stomach got very upset. After walking a bit more, we headed back home (now it's 7 hours after we met first time today) and then looked at some of the pics. I'm dead tired and tomorrow will be long and stressful.

Spaceship

Time to get on board and fly to the stars, dreaming in the hibernation pod.

Snowblind!

Wow... An other storm and we couldn't see anything through the windows. Only half an hour ago it was cloudy but not bad. It's gone now, only lasted 5 minutes. It's snowing again but large, puffy crystals. It won't last long, there's a strong wind and it doesn't look like it's going to settle down to the ground. Shame, I'd love it.

It's snowing!

Wow! We have a storm right here! Wow! Only this morning the skies were crystal clear and blue!

incoming bad weather but great skies

Right now it's gorgeous outside. Blue skies and puffy clouds.
The weather this morning was clear sunshine and a very cold winter but right now the wind has picked up speed and the forecast is snow. Probably this is the front I'm watching out of my window. The wind is bitterly cold and I had to turn the heating on since it is loosing a lot of heat because of the cold wind.
I am having a slight cold, I have a bit of temperature and a gorgeous headache. Now I had had some painkillers and drank vast quantities of liquid, I feel better now. I am upgrading the BlackBird to FC6. Hope it goes well.

Dunkelbier and Charlie Jade

Dunkelbier was good...
We had a lot of fun at the hotel bar, drank lots of weissenbier and later, when we figured out that they had some, lots of dunkelbier. But I managed to put some weight on as a result of the hotel breakfasts and hotel dinners plus the beer. Now I have to exercise more than normal.

I am watching Charlie Jade - it is good. I'm quite intrigued by it and I want to know how it will develop. I'm not a great fan of its camera movements and editing but the story looks good so far. I've only managed to watch 4 episode so far so there's still a lot to see.

Frankfurt

Yay! Pilseners for a week!

Belgium was great. I spent two nights at Eralp and Deniz's place and loved it. They took me to the down where the beer Leffe is brewed (Dinant) and I had white beer soup and two pints of very good beer. Then we wandered around the Dinant castle and that was fun. They also let me play with their baby, Toprak, and he was so sweet.

I spent the last day in Antwerp, with Bahadir and Lizbeth, along with their kids, Alice and Beatrice and that was good.

Then two more days in Lille and a depressing three days at home. I arranged to be sent for training for four days next week so I'll be flying to Frankfurt early on Monday morning. Fun fun fun.

Okaaaay....

Disorder	Your Score
Major Depression:	Extremely High
Dysthymia:	Extremely High
Bipolar Disorder:	Very Slight
Cyclothymia:	Slight-Moderate
Seasonal Affective Disorder:	Extremely High
Postpartum Depression:	N/A
Take the Depression Test

Lille...

Lille... I'm here for three days, this is the end of the second day. I managed to get a WiFi connection from the hotel room but couldn't get it working on Linux so I switched the work laptop to Windows temporarily.

I got lost three times on the way. I mean, in England every road is marked with the road number (M25, A14, B1040) and where it is heading - this way you can easily follow a route without really knowing where you are. Here, the only thing you have is cities and places. After I got out of Eurotrain, I got lost and started heading south, almost immediately because the road sign was not clear. Then I realised my mistake (lost 40 minutes overall) and went back. Then at Dunkirk, I managed to miss A26 junction and lost an other 10 minutes. When I arrived at Lille, very quickly I got lost and had to ask for directions. Incredibly, the guy was working where I was heading to so we had an amicable agreement, he pointed the way, I gave him a lift.

Tomorrow - Belgium. 'ere I come!

Babylon 5

I got the seasons 1 and 5! Now I can actually listen to the Bab5 podcast!
I'm watching the first episode, it looks fun!

Down with the organised religion

Take that the Catholic Church!

Borders, Cambridge - 200701262040

Here I am again...
Somewhat bored.
Drank some coffee, ate a sandwich, played with Ardour, Jack Rack and Hydrogen. Somehow I've broken my amSynth - it no longer works with Jack - bummer. I have to check the version and where it came from and how on earth I can reset it. It complains about the jack libraries missing or something like that. I need to check it out.

I also have to put a decent media player on this thing, my last attempts to get Amarok work properly failed miserably - this truly sucks.

It's friday, everyone is out clubbing or getting drunk, not a lot of people are in Borders at this time of the day. A couple of University teachers and lots of young but single people - otherwise they wouldn't be here, would they?

Anyway... I have to get going, even with the coffee I'm falling asleep here - I still need to go home.

I have no plans for tomorrow, I suppose I can spare some time to do some Java work, I haven't touched the book since new year. My plans are not going very well. I;ll leave when the songs I have on this machine run out.

Time to go...

Truth

Truth is everywhere you look.

FT-101B

It no longer smokes... Either I was roasting a spider or whatever that was smoking two years ago, all of the magic smoke is out now. It booms at 14MHz using a piece of wire I hang around the flat.

Not suprisingly enough, this stupid wire outperforms ATAS-100 by a factor of 10dB! Pah!

State of the disharmony 20070117

Mood: Miserable

Listening to: Quirks and Quarks from Canada

Location: Starbucks at Borders, Cambridge

Real time: 19:45


The weather sucks. It was raining miserably, it might flood in St. Ives again.

It's a shame, during the break I was so depressed, I wouldn't be bothered even if the weather was nice. Last three weeks it usually rained but there were a couple of days when the weather was fine and clear but I was sort of depressed. It goes in opposites, if the weather sucks, I'm better, if the weather is nice... Well...

At least I have my nice laptop now but I'm really afraid to use it out in the open, what if it gets wet or I drop it - especially after MJ's laptop disaster today.

On the other hand, I love Stellarium, it is brilliant and it would really look nice if I use it, especially with a web cam or the camera connected to it directly.

I also had too much junk today, I should go out for a walk for an hour, well, what else do I have to do?

Hydrogen works fine now. The sound card is really crap and Jack won't work recording and playing at the same time - which is sort of nice, I'll be only mixing on this thing but this also means that I have to upgrade and maintain the desktop. Since I got this laptop mainly to get rid of two of the desktops, this really sucks.

I have to find a couple of Ardour tutorials, try out some of the other software and find out how this mixing stuff actually works.

Time to go, I'm running out of time. I had my coffee, I have to go back to the car and pick up the power supplies.

Comet McNaught

Apparently McNaught is visible to naked eye during daytime. No much luck yet. Today wasn't very clear in St. Ives. Now it is reasonably clear and sun is about to set but I can't see anything even though I looked everywhere. I shall try tomorrow again.

Comet McNaught!

I SAW IT!!! It's BRIGHT!
It was yesterday (20070110)
After days and days of rain and cloud cover, I left my camera, tripod and the good binoculars at home. Then the weather suddenly cleared up. I picked up the bino I have in the back of the car and got out of the office and walked to the edge of the fields.

I knew that it was supposed to be close to Venus. First I couldn't find Venus. After a couple of minutes suddenly it popped into field. It is quite interesting that how bright stars suddenly appear in the sky, one second you can't see it, and then suddenly, they appear and you wonder how on earth you missed it. Venus was bright. I had a quick look at the Venus and then scanned the horison to the north of the Venus...

AND I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT! It was so bright, it was a NAKED EYE comet, just after the sun went down and there it was, just brilliant and its tail clearly visible, at least a couple of degrees in length, in broad daylight! Unbelieveable!

If this comet was visible well after sunset, it'd be so bright, UFO nutters would go mad!

I went back to the office and collected John and Steve (his last day in the office). Steve was quite excited, John was his usual self and commented on the possibility of some nutters comitting suicide to jump to the Mother ship.

After a couple of minutes later, I was cold (the wind was quite powerful and the weather was cold). McNaught was only a couple of degrees above the horison and the amount of extra air made it dimmer, even if the sky was darkening.

I';m quite excited about it - hopefully the weather will get better and I'll start observing in earnest. This year, I promise, I shall observe the sky more often.

McNaught might be the brightest comet in 30 years. At least I managed to see it! I'm so happy!