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Fri, 25 Jul 2008
If you wonder why I'm wearing very dark sunglasses next time you see me: now you know.
Posted @ 16:12 | Category: /music | Permalink
Sun, 29 Jun 2008
Bloo at his best.
Posted @ 20:06 | Category: /misc | Permalink
Thu, 19 Jun 2008
Excellent gig last Friday. The band was tight and Michael Stipe was in great form with some amusing rambles between songs. Cuyahoga (possibly my all time favorite R.E.M track) was truly magnificent, but the surprise standout for me was Ignoreland with the powerful "defense, defense, defense, defense" refrain hitting home far harder live than it ever did on the studio recording.
Modest Mouse, the second support act requires some further investigation. I hadn't heard any of their music before but I was quite impressed with their set.
Posted @ 20:21 | Category: /music | Permalink
Took a ride up to Laconia today to check out motorcycle week. It was a beautiful day for a ride, sunny but not too hot, and traffic wasn't an issue until I arrived on Lakeside Avenue which was, as might be expected, chock full of bikes.
I'd heard that parking can be a problem but luckily I happened upon someone who was about to leave and I snagged their spot about half way along the avenue, roughly opposite the pier. After a couple of hours wandering around and something to eat I headed back to my bike and set off home. On the way there I'd taken I93 most of the way, quick but boring, so on the way back I headed west and wound my way back home down some less-travelled roads that I usually take on the way to local ski mountains in the winter. A fine day out !
Posted @ 19:53 | Category: /outdoors | Permalink
Wed, 09 Jan 2008
As of today my monster truck, once amusingly referred to by Tim as my "paramilitary vehicle", has been returned to the dealer and I shall henceforth be piloting a rather more modest Subaru Impreza. I really enjoyed the Durango but it was overkill for my needs and rather too thirsty for my pocket so when the lease came to its end I turned it in rather than keeping it. The new scooby has much to recommend it particularly when the road is less than straight but there's one feature I'm really going to miss: heated seats. Granted I now have cloth rather than leather seats so theres less of a need but its hard to beat a heated seat for fast warmth on a cold day.
Posted @ 14:38 | Category: /misc | Permalink
Tue, 02 Oct 2007
After a break of of nearly six years since I sold my Suzuki Bandit I'm back on two wheels. To the left is a picture of my new ride, a 2001 Triumph Sprint ST in British Racing Green. I very nearly bought one of these or a Daytona back in the UK before we moved but once I learned how difficult it would be to transfer to the USA I gave up on that idea and its taken till now to get back round to it.
I picked it up just over a week ago from National Powersports and have now put a few hundred miles on it. Its got a lot more oomph than my old Bandit but not so much that its scary, it doesn't really start to fly until the revs get past 5k so its easy to pootle along if you want. The riding position is more racey than the Bandit but not so much that there's too much weight on your wrists - its more of a sports-tourer than a track bike which suits me fine right now.
A few weeks ago I took a NH sponsored refresher course both to polish up my riding before I jumped on a new bike and to get the motorcycle endorsement on my driving license. The course was very useful and I'd recommend it to anyone considering taking the plunge, it provides lots of time on a rental bike to practice the basics and get your confidence level back up to the point where you feel able to head back out on the road.
Altogether now: brmmm, brmmmm.
Posted @ 15:21 | Category: | Permalink
ZZ Top at the B of A Pavilion, Boston, MA
I wasn't really sure what to expect, the band looked grizzled when I was but a slip of a lad so I figured they must all be well into pipe-and-slippers territory by now and I sort of expected a bit of a lame cash-in type thing. Instead we were treated to a couple of hours of excellent blues-rock, tight musicianship and some amusing, if rambling, asides. They played stuff of all vintages including my all time favorite Blue Jean Blues and a great cover of Foxy Lady. If you get the chance, go see them - they've still got it.
The venue was good too, its basically a big tent along the same lines as the millennium dome located on the south side of Boston harbour. The sides are open and there's a bar overlooking the harbour and the Boston skyline. Easy to get to off the Massachusetts Turnpike and plenty of parking in the vicinity. I wouldn't attend anything there between late October and April though - I reckon it would be too cold.
Posted @ 13:41 | Category: /music | Permalink
Fri, 03 Aug 2007
Further to Tim's recent post, Avoid Heathrow At All Costs, I have to concur. I flew out of Heathrow last Sunday after this years XML Summer School (excellent event BTW) and I have to say the experience was miserable. In all I had to queue 6 times before I finally got on the plane:
- Check in, not too bad thanks to having premier status on United.
- Documentation check, again not too bad.
- Security screening, awful, long snaking line with less than half the possible lanes being manned, took about 45min to get through, lots of folks getting concerned about missing their flights due to the excessive delay.
- Documentation check, they already checked my documentation, what's the point of doing it again ?
- Shoe screening, they have a separate queue just to scan your shoes so just when you think you're done you have to get in line again. Why can't they scan your shoes the same time they scan you carry on ?
- Gate entrance documentation check, fair enough they need to make sure my boarding pass matches the flight I'm about to get on.
I got to the airport about three hours before my flight was scheduled to depart. Even with that kind of time margin I barely had any time to do much beyond walk from the departure area to my gate before it was time to board. That's probably just as well since the departure area was completely packed and I'd have been lucky to find a seat anyway.
Another thing I don't understand is the limit of one carry-on item when leaving from the UK. Only the UK imposes this and I've yet to hear any explanation of how this improves security ? Given the recent baggage fiasco you'd think more carry-on would be first thing they'd try. Anyway, it seems the heat is building on this issue so perhaps the government and BAA will see some sense eventually. For now, just say no to Heathrow.
Posted @ 15:34 | Category: /misc | Permalink
Thu, 28 Jun 2007
Rush at the Tweeter Centre, Mansfield, MA
Excellent concert last night, a good mix of old favorites and material from their new album Snakes and Arrows. We were in the open-air part of the venue, aka the cheap seats, and were glad the rain held off although the heat and humidity conspired to make you feel like you'd been out in a light shower anyway. The highlight of the evening for me was a storming rendition of Subdivisions which, despite being something like 25 years old, still sounded fresh and vital. Low point has to be m'chum Mark (age 40) being refused alcohol since he didn't have a US drivers license or his passport with him - absurd.
Posted @ 10:04 | Category: /music | Permalink
Mon, 05 Feb 2007
Even with all the layers of spam filter on my work email address, a fair bit still gets through, here's the body of one message from today:
kind customer we inform it that for emergency issues it must renter its personal data and change password. It can make it at this address http://www.brooksattorney.com/paypal sincerely yours the direction paypal
Somebody has been watching Silence of the Lambs a few too many times.
Posted @ 14:31 | Category: | Permalink
Wed, 20 Dec 2006
Atom Feed
Due to some funkiness with the RSS feed generated by Blosxom (at least in my news reader) I've installed an Atom feed plug-in which seems to work much better: subscribe here.
Posted @ 11:05 | Category: /tech/xml | Permalink
AT DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That's why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators® designs, so you can skip the delusions.
There are so many good ones its hard to pick a favorite but effort, individuality and humiliation are all up there.
(Via Kontrawize.)
Posted @ 09:48 | Category: /misc | Permalink
Tue, 20 Jun 2006
I'm attending the Identity Mashup Conference in Cambridge, MA this week. Its a different kind of conference for me, for one thing I'm not speaking which oftentimes is the price of attendance, for another its not a solely technology-oriented conference. Many of the sessions focus on the social aspects of network identity, things like reputation, trust, privacy, civil liberties and community building. Its quite an eye-opener to look up from the bits and bytes for a while and learn something about the human aspects of network technologies.
Interestingly there are lots of Mac laptops in evidence here: in the session I'm sitting in now, about 30% of folks are sitting in front of Apple kit.
Posted @ 10:24 | Category: /misc | Permalink
Wed, 07 Jun 2006
Somewhat shockingly I won in kata at today's Shidokan International karate tournament. Granted, my division wasn't as full as some others (beginner, age 35-44) but I still felt a sense of accomplishment at the end. Here's a pic of me getting the medal.
Posted @ 13:46 | Category: | Permalink
Fri, 28 Apr 2006
The title says it all, a decent selection of Half Man Half Biscuit albums are available on iTMS.
Back in the DHSS is a work of genius, who else could come up with couplets the likes of:
Dracula comes from Transylvania
Stevie Nicks talks about kleptomania
or
Time flies by when you're the driver of a train
Speeding out of Trumpton with a cargo of cocaine
or even
James Dean was just a careless driver
and Marilyn Monroe was just a slag
Marvelous stuff.
Posted @ 08:44 | Category: /music | Permalink
Wed, 12 Apr 2006
This blog cracks me up: Chad’s Reviews.
Posted @ 22:28 | Category: /misc | Permalink
We're clearing out some trees from the front of the house in an attempt to open things up a little. Before we started we only had about 15 ft of lawn before the trees started and there were a large number of smallish pine trees that made quite a dense wall of foliage.
On previous weekends we've concentrated on the smaller saplings, digging out the roots to remove as much as possible. Last weekend we decided to tackle a few of the larger oaks and maples that were now accessible. I've been getting quite handy with a chain-saw and have cut down some fairly big dead trees elsewhere on our property so I wasn't too worried about tackling trees closer to the house. The first few felled quite cleanly and then one got jammed on another tree at about forty five degrees. Much rope pulling and cursing ensued until we finally wrestled the thing down to ground level.
After a short break we moved onto the last tree which was pretty much upright but with a slight lean to the right looking from the house. Letting it drop that way would have risked it hitting a small ornamental tree so we decided to try to send it to the left instead - big mistake. The wedge cut went fine but nearing the end of the felling cut the tree started to lean to the right jamming the saw blade. I managed to pull the saw out of the cut and then tried to drive in a wedge to try to persuade the tree to fall the right way but even with me pushing from one side and Ali pulling from the other there was nothing we could do to shift the balance, the tree was just too big and heavy. At this point we were getting quite stressed, we had a large tree precariously balanced with only an inch strip of trunk holding it up and if it fell towards the house it would do some serious damage. The only thing to do was to finish the cut from the left hand side while pulling on the tree to make sure it didn't fall directly onto the house. We attempted to do exactly that but the tree had other ideas, after a small amount of additional sawing the remaining trunk gave up and the tree started to fall towards the garage. It was one of those moments where the world seems to go into slow motion, even in recall it happens slowly. The upper branches of the tree hit the corner of the house and the side of the garage but amazingly the only damage was a 12in rip in a small section of vinyl siding which looks pretty straightforward to repair. Phew !
Posted @ 11:55 | Category: /family | Permalink
Wed, 08 Mar 2006
British Airways - Not Too Shabby
Flying back from the W3C Technical Plenary in France last Sunday I ran into some weather related problems (Munich was basically snowed in) and got transferred onto BA flights to Boston via Heathrow. The flight out of Nice was delayed due to baggage counting difficulties (one too many bags on board, they're very strict on that kind of thing these days) and it was looking like I'd miss my connection to Boston as I had to switch from terminal 1 to terminal 4 at Heathrow. Now in my experience in these kinds of circumstances, most airlines just dump you at the gate and wish you good luck but in this instance we were met by a BA rep who ushered us through security and then drove us to the gate for the Boston flight which I still only made with minutes to spare. Thanks BA !
Posted @ 16:19 | Category: /misc | Permalink
According to the Great Circle Mapper, that's how many miles I flew last year. Here's a map showing the routes I flew.
No wonder I was little tired over Christmas. Unfortunately that still left me 10,000 miles short of full "tinsel of the ionosphere" airline status but as things are looking quieter travel-wise this year that's not such a bad thing.
Posted @ 16:06 | Category: /misc | Permalink
Sat, 04 Mar 2006
I've had to disable comments due to the amount of spam that was accumulating. I'll turn them back on once I find a suitable Blosxom plug-in to stem the tide of crud.
Posted @ 11:34 | Category: /misc | Permalink
Hacking Apple iSync to Work with a Motorola V557
I recently got a new Motorola V557 to replace my ageing Nokia 3650 which had developed an intermittant fault that would cause it to crash. The 557 is a pretty good phone: small, light, good battery life, bluetooth etc with a nifty news ticker thing from Cingular. The only problem is that its not one of the phones supported by Apple's iSync software. I'd gotten used to having all the contacts and calendar items on my laptop synced with my phone and to suddenly lose this capability was a pain. I did a bit of googling and managed to synthesise the following solution from a couple of forum posts.
Make a copy of the iSync application just in case and then edit the following file:
/Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/ \ PlugIns/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources/MetaClasses.plist
That's one long path broken over two lines. The easiest way to do this is from the command line but you can also burrow into the iSync application contents by ctrl-clicking it and selecting "show package contents" from the menu. Search for the existing entry for the Motorola V551 and copy the <key>..</key> line and following <dict>..</dict> lines. Move the editor insertion point below the </dict> line and paste a copy. Now edit the new lines so they look as follows (the changes from the copied V551 entry are shown in bold).
<key>com.motorola.V557</key>
<dict>
<key>Identification</key>
<dict>
<key>com.apple.cgmi+cgmm</key>
<string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2000"+V557</string>
<key>com.apple.gmi+gmm</key>
<string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2000"+V557</string>
</dict>
<key>InheritsFrom</key>
<array>
<string>com.motorola.usb-bt.0x22B8/0x4902</string>
</array>
<key>Services</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.model</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>ModelName</key>
<string>V557</string>
<key>PhoneIcon</key>
<string>MOTV551.tiff</string>
</dict>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.synchro</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>stringEncoding</key>
<string>UCS2</string>
</dict>
</dict>
</array>
</dict>
Save the edited file, close it and then fire up iSync. Add the phone as a new device and run a synchronisation. Voila !
Posted @ 10:40 | Category: /tech/gadgets | Permalink
Sun, 18 Sep 2005
We are pleased to announce a new addition to the family: Polly Jane Hadley, age 8 weeks, not too heavy yet. At the moment she's 'very tired' after her first night's disturbed sleep - she'll fit right in.
Posted @ 10:13 | Category: /family | Permalink
Fri, 17 Jun 2005
Finestkind indeed.
Posted @ 14:21 | Category: /misc | Permalink
Fri, 27 May 2005
 I am a Defender-ship.I am fiercely protective of my friends and loved ones, and unforgiving of any who would hurt them. Speed and foresight are my strengths, at the cost of a little clumsiness. I'm most comfortable with a few friends, but sometimes particularly enjoy spending time in larger groups. What Video Game Character Are You? Interesting, Defender is my all time favorite 80s video game. Posted @ 08:46 | Category: /misc | Permalink Sun, 13 Feb 2005We've lived in the snow belt for a couple of years now with mountains on our doorstep and yet somehow we've never gotten round to any kind of winter sports unless you count a bit of sledging and making big log fires. This weekend we ran out of excuses so Caleb and I headed out to learn how to ski at Mount Sunapee which is about an hours drive north west of our house. Not being the fittest of men, I'm now 'very tired' (TM) but it was great fun and I plan to head back up there next weekend to take a couple more lessons. Here's a couple of pictures that Alison took in between trying to keep Alex warm and amused.
I realize the slopes we're on in the pictures look pretty flat but I can assure you that's just an optical illusion ;-). Posted @ 19:30 | Category: /outdoors | Permalink Sat, 12 Feb 2005Congratulate me, my permanent resident (aka green) card arrived today although, slightly disappointingly, its not at all green. Our application to adjust status was approved on Jan 13th while I was in Melbourne and we went to visit our local USCIS office on the 24th to hand over photos and get our index fingers printed for the cards. I was told it could take up to 6 months to get the physical card but in the end it was only 3 weeks - which was nice. Having a green card has the following advantages:
We still don't get to vote in presidential elections and could be deported for a misdemeanor but for all intents and purposes we are now free to stay here for as long as we like. It took a little over 2 years to get through the green card process. I was quite fortunate as I qualified for a 'manager or executive' visa in the first place and that allowed me to skip one of the longer steps in the process. If anyone reading this is in the queue for a green card, good luck and hang on in there. Posted @ 22:32 | Category: /misc | Permalink Mon, 07 Feb 2005I guess I'm pretty late to the game of geocaching judging by the number of caches round here but, just in case you haven't heard about it, the basic idea is that people hide stashes of nik-naks (called caches) around the place and then publish their location on the internet. You get yourself a GPS unit, grab the coordinates for some local caches and then set out to find them. I was introduced to this pastime during a recent W3C meeting and decided it would be a fun thing to try so I picked up a GPS from Amazon and today was our first attempt. Using the geocaching.com site we found the details of a couple of caches in the nearby Beaverbrook conservation area and set off to find them. We've had a fair bit of snow (a couple of feet in total) over the last couple of weeks so I was bit dubious about our chances of finding anything but it turned out that the trails were fairly well packed down and the caches we'd picked were not too far off the beaten track so we didn't have to wade through too much snow. We'd picked a couple of easy ones to start with and luck was with us so we found both without too much hunting around. Top fun, here are some pictures.
Posted @ 09:17 | Category: /family/pictures | Permalink Sat, 22 Jan 2005This has to be the best/worst case of jet lag I've ever had. I spent last week at a W3C WS-Addressing meeting in Melbourne, Australia (very nice btw) but have been home since Thursday evening. Its now just after 5am on Saturday morning but I've been awake since about 1.30am. This is pretty churtling because I'm 'very tired'(TM). Posted @ 04:09 | Category: /misc | Permalink Sun, 05 Dec 2004Got myself a new truck the other week. Rather unimaginatively its the same make and model as my old truck (a Dodge Durango) but, as they say over here, its an 'all new' model. The new truck has major benefits over the old one including brakes that work, headlights that light the way, heated seats, suspension that dulls road imperfections rather than amplifying them and, most importantly, a really good stereo. Oh and er, yeah, its got a Hemi :-D. Posted @ 16:12 | Category: /misc | Permalink Mon, 15 Nov 2004Scary new toy. This purchase has been brewing for a good while but what finally tipped the balance was checking out how much a load of logs would cost to have delivered and noting how many fallen trees we have in the woods at the back of our garden. A mornings work in the woods and now we're stocked up on logs for winter. All together now, 'I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK...'. Now, anyone with an axe who fancies a doing a bit of log splitting, just let me know. Posted @ 07:47 | Category: /misc | Permalink Mon, 27 Sep 2004NTL customers told to 'f**k off'. A Freudian slip if ever there was one. Posted @ 15:36 | Category: /misc | Permalink Sat, 25 Sep 2004
TCP/IP over Bluetooth
As an added bonus, now I'm not burning my data quota I can play with Mobile Opera and AgileMessenger to my hearts content. Posted @ 21:13 | Category: /tech | Permalink
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