Ying Tong Iddle I Po

Jennie is now almost certainly staying on to do a PhD in Cambridge. Congratulations to her. I’m so proud. She has worked really hard this year and it is pleasing to see it pay off.

I’ve recently regained access to my monster laptop and, now there aren’t any pressing demo deadlines, I would like to replace the Ubunutu install on it with something new. Currently all the Linux machines I use either run Ubuntu or Gentoo and I’d like to expand my experience of modern distros - or maybe even try one of the BSDs.

So my question to my tech f’list guys out there is what distros, aside from Ubuntu and Gentoo, do you run on your laptops and which is ‘best’? ‘Best’ in this case is defined as relatively low maintainance, different from Ubuntu[1] and Gentoo and fairly stable.

[1] So Debian is no-go being, resolved onto my axis of perception, equivalent for my purposes.

Yesterday my housemates got me The War of the Worlds as a gift. No, not the crappy new film or in fact the excellent book but the musical version by Jeff Wayne. Today I listened to the first CD on my way to work thanks to the magic of iPod and was reminded about how great it is. If you can get a copy I heartily recommend it. Whilst listening it ocurred to me how great it would be to have some video set to the music, possibly CGI to allow for martians etc. I started to day-dream about such things attempting to visualise CG versions of the cast and machines. When I got to work I find such a thing is in production. I am so excitied…

Well I am now a quarter of a century old :). This birthday has somewhat come upon me from behind as it were and I have realised I have absolutely nothing planned. Hence I’m moving 90% of the celebration to my ‘official birthday’ which will be some point in the future when houses, work, etc are all a little more settled :).

SpamAssassin.

Pledge to help set up an English EFF.

In other news I just tried some SigProc Lab tea (the coffee procurement politics have, for some time now, been such that this sad day would have to come) and found, horrors upon horrors, that it is worse than the free tea available downstairs. This is indeed a sad day for people looking for refreshment without descending a flight of stairs.

I also got up very quickly this morning which might explain the somewhat spaced-out attitude I have ATM :).

Update: From , modern day propaganda is far subtler.

Isn’t it funny how quickly one adapts to technology? I can’t imagine how I coped without Google Maps + Satellite when house-hunting last year :). Now I can find the house, scrub around to see how close it is to various things, find shops, etc nearby and look at a real picture to try and guage how big the house is and what the neighbourhood is like.

the Wit (60% dark, 17% spontaneous, 27% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you’re probably an intellectual, but don’t take that to mean you’re pretentious. You realize ‘dumb’ can be witty–after all isn’t that ‘the Simpsons’ philosophy?–but rudeness for its own sake, ‘gross-out’ humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most effort to appreciate, but it’s also the best, in my opinion. Also, you probably loved the Office. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

Perhaps that should be ‘Humor Meme’ as it was somewhat stupid^WAmerican-centric[1] :).

[1] Tongue definately in cheek.

Our stupid landlady has issued us with a Notice to Quit which states they want us out of the property by the end of August. Our Tenancy Agreement runs out at the end of September. Luckily the law of the land is with us (Housing Act 1988, Section 21(1)(b)) in stating that the Notice must be at least 2 months, even if that extends beyond the end of the agreement so I’ve emailed her to, very politely, tell her to get stuffed.

This would all have been avoided if she weren’t stupid in the first place and decided to advertise the property as being available now and further having a habit of arbitrarily deciding one group of tenants is the group and lying, twisting, ignoring and slipping her way to try and get them in despite them thinking they could move in tomorrow.

I’ll be glad to get away from her. Given previous tenant’s experiences I shall probably have to take her to the Small Claims Court to get most of our deposit back too.

Your IQ Is 140

Your Logical Intelligence is Genius Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Genius

Be careful with question 2 (nickels and dimes) - I almost went for the obvious answer before a bit of wikipedia-ing revealed something important about US coinage which is different from US notes. UK takers should not just replace it with ‘5p-s’ and ‘10p-s’.