Radiac's Diary

The cake is not a lie!

2010-03-04T18:30:57-00:00

I had an excellent birthday, thank you to everyone who has sent me birthday wishes! Leela and I went around exploring a bit more of the Cotswolds on Sunday, and on my actual birthday on Monday we went to the ever-awesome Cotswold Wildlife Park. When we got back, Leela had made me a birthday cake:

It was good:

We finished the days off with a trip to the cinema on Tuesday to see The Lovely Bones - which wasn't nearly as bad as the reviews made out, and I thought it turned out to be quite a good film. In addition to all of the trips and cake, we had an excessive number of meals and assorted edibles over the course of several days around my birthday - thai, mexican, cooked breakfast, fish and chips, picnic, ribs, Nando's and pizza, and of course, plenty of chocolate. It was awesome.

Unfortunately I haven't been to the gym since this gluttony because I was feeling too full and/or lazy, and now Leela can't go either because she has fallen over flat on her face on a wet floor on the ward in front of a bay full of patients, and has seriously damaged her shoulder.

Still, as my grandfather apparently always used to say, there's always another day tomorrow not touched. Although I do have an appointment for a session with Chris at the gym, where I will no doubt pay for my transgressions. But no matter the pain tomorrow, it has been worth it for a very enjoyable 3+ days of birthday fun.

Tomorrow I Will Be Older

2010-02-28T18:43:40-00:00

No entries this month because I've been working very hard on lots of exciting things, and haven't had anything interesting to say on account of not doing anything interesting, other than writing lots of exciting things in various programming languages. My attempts to bring my diary back to the glory days are not going so well, are they? Must try harder.

But it will not start for a few more days, because I'm taking tomorrow off - it is my annual day of becoming a year older. Leela has planned a birthday extravaganza for me, which started on Thursday and (given that she has taken 2 days off work) will no doubt continue through to Tuesday. Speaking of which, it is now time for food.

As GLaDOS once said

2010-01-31T22:10:10-00:00

I'm still here, just very busy - as ever. The good news is that it looks like I'll have a clear inbox and all of my client projects will be either completed or on hold by the end of next week, barring some urgent disaster. This is quite notable, as it'll be the first time in about 5 years - hopefully this means I'll be able to finish off the CMS soon, and make a real start on my new sites. And I'll be able to post something on here that is interesting for once. Good times.

Anyway, must get back to the tax return...

It's that time of year, again

2009-12-01T00:00:00-00:00

It's the first of December, so that can mean only one thing; radiac.net is thrilled and excited to be putting on its Christmas decorations for the 11th year in a row.

As Christmas is all about traditions and memories, I've decided to go with the old classic advent calendar from last year - re-live the good times!

Hello, new server

2009-11-30T00:31:09-00:00

Everything seems to be running just fine on the new server, and even all of my personal sites are back up. Well, almost all; some of the old ones I haven't touched for years and I don't want to keep going, so I took the opportunity to spring clean my domains and drop them.

They were mostly insignificant so I doubt anyone will miss them, but at this time of year at least one person always asks me for the TCMI, which was until this weekend over at perl.uzeweb.com. Most of those scripts were about 10 years old, so I didn't hesitate to drop the domain, but I couldn't bring myself to kill off my single greatest achievement to date, at least based on popularity. In fact, unless I pull my finger out and start releasing some stuff I've written, I daresay my epitaph will read "Author of the TCMI".

Still, it's better than "Liked chocolate", so I've moved it onto this site; you will now find the TCMI next to some of my other aging perl projects.

Bye bye, old server

2009-11-28T03:59:33-00:00

I have just executed my main web server - I watched it destroy itself on my command, before shutting down for good. Faithful to the end.

This means that I have now finished the move from the old web server to the new one, and I'm pleased to report that I seem to have completed the transition with minimal disruption for client sites.

I used nginx on the new server as a remote proxy, pointing at the old server. I then changed the DNS and waited for the caches to update, before locking the user-changeable areas for a few minutes while I copied the databases over. I then switched the nginx config to point at the local site, and switched servers almost seamlessly - most sites were only locked for a minute or two. Sufficient.

I was more lazy with my personal sites, hence some downtime on here earlier, and there are still a couple left to configure; I'll leave them showing the holding page until tomorrow, as I'm off to bed. Night!

Situation Report

2009-11-25T19:39:01-00:00

Today I'm in the middle of moving my sites and services to new machines, finishing my new monitoring/alert system because last week monit failed to tell me a server had disappeared, I'm finishing the new CMS, upgrading bits of an old CMS, fixing problems appearing on the new servers, creating 3 new client mini-sites, and still trying to clear the 60+ e-mails that arrived while I was away on holiday. I've also written an excellent nginx control script, which I'll release on richardterry.co.uk next year.

We're also trying to buy a house at the moment - we've had an offer accepted, and it's very exciting, but it has involved far too much time on the phone and writing e-mails to the estate agent, our solicitor and mortgage advisor, getting quotes for surveys and insurance to cover the house, life, the universe and everything, searching for places to source kittens etc. Still, we now seem to have reached the point where all we can do is wait for our people to talk to their people and decide when we can give them money and move in.

Consequently I haven't had time to work on my own sites, and although I do have half of my holiday written up, I still need to finish it off and go through the photos before I can post it on here.

Things are so busy that I've only played the first level of Super Mario Brothers Wii, and haven't even unwrapped Modern Warfare 2, Assassins Creed 2, or *gasp* the GTA DLC, which all arrived last week. Feels like I need someone to come along and stop time for about 6 months, to give me a chance to catch up with everything. That, or recruit a fleet of mind-reading interns.

I'm Back!

2009-11-02T13:56:05-00:00

You may have noticed that, for the first time in 9 years, this diary had fallen silent for not one but two entire months. You would be forgiven for assuming that this meant that I had died; however, you would be incorrect. I am very much alive. Bigger and better than ever.

Well, bigger at least - I've been on holiday in America for a month, eating bad meals three times a day every day. It was brilliant. Everything we did when we weren't eating was also brilliant - so much so that I feel the need to upload all 1500 photos and videos we took. But fear not; I'm in the process of going through the photos, sifting them down to a more browse-able number, then I'll stick them up here with a brief but brilliant write-up. It will be as if you'd been there yourself, only without the need to spend so much time in the gym afterwards.

For those who can't wait, here's the executive summary: we flew to San Francisco and drove to Yosemite, went back to the coast at Monterey and drove down to Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, then across to Las Vegas before breaking our flight home with a short stop in New York.

But that misses out all the interesting bits, like my gambling victories in Vegas, or that time I got swine flu on the bus back from our trip to Arizona. Well, according to the NHS website, but that thing would prescribe tamiflu to someone with an ingrown toenail. But I digress - point is, check back later.

Needless to say, I haven't been idle on the work front; I've been working on the CMS before, during and after the holiday, and it's pretty much done now - just a couple of months of finishing touches to go, then I can see about releasing a beta. Still needs a name though.

Since my last entry I've also started work on the new radiac.net and richardterry.co.uk; don't expect anything for a couple of months, but I'll be splitting my diaryblogthing in two: radiac.net will become my purely personal site for friends and stalkers, in an attempt to recreate the low-pressure glory days of yore when I'd rack up 30+ posts a month; and richardterry.co.uk will be a tech blog, full of things that friends and stalkers find boring, but which I feel would appeal to the wider audience of strangers with an insatiable appetite for links that appear halfway down page 73 of obscure google searches.

I've also started working on a couple of secret projects I'm pretty excited about - but you'll have to wait until next year find out about those.

I will leave you with a link for my more tech-minded readers; the ISC have written about one of my pet hates, agreeing with what I've been saying for years; that regularly changing your password is a generally bad idea, especially when you're forced to.

Eye Watch 2009

2009-08-31T09:23:26-00:00

It appears I'm getting worse at remembering to write diary entries. Over the past 9 years I have written 1287 entries, which averages about 12 a month, but due to work and procrastination that has dropped way off over the past year, and I'm barely managing 1 a month now. I have several draft posts half-written, just need to finish them, and get back into the flow of delivering you the minutia of my everyday life. Anyway, I expect you are all desperate for news of my eyes, so I will get on with it.

A month on from my previous post and my eyes are essentially healed. I can see one line better than 20:20 in both eyes, individually and together; although there is still a little dryness from time to time, it's a lot less frequent, and even then there is no pain, just a little discomfort, quickly fixed with a drop of fake tears.

It's great being able to just grab my sunglasses and walk outside without needing to put my contact lenses in, and being able to go out in the morning and come back in the evening without my contact lenses getting uncomfortable is brilliant.

The only downside is that I keep going to remove my glasses when I get in the shower or go to bed - I guess the years of training will take a while to overcome. And I'm still a bit disappointed my new laser eyes can't scan barcodes or etch bacon, but guess I should have read the literature a bit more carefully.

The optician says it will still be another couple of months before they will be fully healed, so until then I'll still need to use my drops from time to time, and I shouldn't really rub my eyes hard otherwise I'll risk damaging the newly-grown epithelial cells, but other than that, my eyes are now perfect.

To conclude, last time I asked "would I recommend it", and my answer was to ask me again in another few weeks. Well, now I can say that yes, I would recommend it. LASEK may have a slower recovery time than LASIK, but there's less risk rubbing your eyes, and the end results are evidently just as good. I can now see.

Laser Eyes

2009-07-31T21:37:57-00:00

I haven't posted for a while. You may have been wondering what has happened to me; well, for the end of June it was 24/7 work, and after that I couldn't see.

Around the end of June I wandered past Optical Express and saw the signs about laser eye surgery. I thought "Hmm, I wonder if I am suitable", so I wandered in to ask for some more information. They sat me down, ran all sorts of tests, and surprise, I was suitable! And I found myself booked in for the operation the next week.

I was booked in to have LASIK, with the 24-48 hour recovery, but when the day arrived, they told me that actually I wasn't suitable for that after all. Something about symmetrical eyes? Anyway, I wasn't suitable for it, and that was that.

However, the surgeon said I could still have LASEK - which is just like LASIK, only that involves cutting a flap in your eye and lifting it up to laser underneath, and LASEK involves them pouring acid on your eyeball to dissolve the front layer, which they then scrape off with a scraper before burning your eyes with the laser, and then they put a plastic contact lense "bandage" over the top for half a week for it to heal. Oh yes, recovery is 5-7 days, and it might be a "little more uncomfortable".

So I laid down under the machine and let them get on with it. Overall the surgery was quick and painless - thankfully they got the anaesthetic dose right, unlike many scare stories on the internet. I did get a bit freaked out by the sound of the laser and the smell of burning eye, and it didn't help that halfway through I realised I'd accidentally been looking around instead of keeping my eyes "steady and aimed at the light". Heh.

When I stood up, things were a bit bright, a bit blurry, but I could see. It was miraculous. They gave me some drops, some instructions and I wandered off home.

Oh yes, and did I mention? LASEK might be a "little more uncomfortable". Cue three days of agony. I don't say that lightly - it was as if someone had melted the front of my eyeballs with acid, scraped off the dead cells, burnt my corneas with lasers, and then stuck great big plastic things on top.

Add to that the blurriness and sensitivity to light, getting anything done on the computer was impossible. I had no choice but to take extra time off, sitting in a darkened room.

Things started to get a bit more comfortable once the lenses came out, but things still aren't back to normal yet; my eyes are still healing, so things can still be a bit blurry or uncomfortable depending on when I last put my drops in. But I can drive again, and at its best I can see better than 20:20, so things are promising.

Would I recommend it? Well, everyone recommends LASIK - you can see perfectly as soon as you stand up from the operating table, and apart from feeling like you've got some grit in your eye, it's generally pain-free. This has not been my experience with LASEK, so although I think I'd recommend it, I don't know what the end result will be, so... ask me again in another few weeks!

Royal Mail training isn't what it used to be

2009-06-11T18:35:46-00:00

It seems that postmen are no longer being trained in the ancient and mystical art of matching up the number at the top of the letter with the number on the door; for the third day this week we received post for our neighbour, and they have received ours.

I should probably also comment on the amusing election results, but I think they speak for themselves. Suffice it to say that I am disappointed all around. Just 14,922 of us had our finger on the pulse and voted for the only party who had policies where it mattered - but now, without an MEP for Mebyon Kernow, how will Cornwall ever get a devolved government?

Before I go, let me give a shout out to my regular readers from the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft - I really hate you, even more than I ever have before. You have cost me 3 days of going round in circles on what should have been an extremely simple 2-4 hour project, which has meant I've missed an important deadline, and the delay has also held me up from migrating services to two new servers which are sitting idle in their respective datacentres at the moment. Frustrating.

In more positive news, only 196 days, 6 hours and 24 minutes until Christmas!

European Elections (or who I will not be voting for)

2009-06-04T14:12:59-00:00

Over the past few days I've had some pamphlets through the door from various parties who want my vote in the European Elections today. Here are the parties whose leaflets disappointed and/or disgusted me to the point that I will definitely not be voting for them, and made me feel the need to make this post in the first place.

UKIP

Now, I am not a fan of the EU for many reasons, so I should be right in the target audience for UKIP, who "Say No to European Union" (presumably as well as to grammar, but let's not split hairs). However, ignoring the never-ending stream of deliciously stupid mistakes of the past few years, their flyer would not persuade me to vote for them.

Lets ignore the picture of Churchill, which is a pathetic attempt to elicit war-time spirit and patriotism, by cynical politicians who think nothing of cheapening the iconic war-time image. Although his views in the late 1940s were similar to UKIPs now, if my knowledge of history serves correctly he actually proposed a union between Britain and France in 1940, and was the first person to speak publicly about a United States of Europe. Besides, a lot has changed in 60 years; who's to say he'd say the same thing now?

No, it's the actual content of the flyer. Pretty much every sentence starts "Say No" - as far as I can gather, their policy is just to be entirely negative about the EU. I couldn't see a single thing that they will actually do as MEPs - as the few MEPs that were elected last time have demonstrated, they are entirely incapable of achieving their aim of taking the country out of the EU. They simply don't have the power. Even their own pamphlet implies they're only good as a protest vote, to "send out-of-touch politicians a message they cannot ignore". Yes, because that proved so effective at the last european elections.

They're a joke. No clue, no actionable policies, no vote.

Labour

Regular readers will know that I hold Labour in contempt, and revel in any opportunity to point out their shortcomings. Most of you will already be aware that I disagree with our new and improved surveillance society, the piss-poor management of the economy by our Glorious Leader for 10 years and his subsequent piss-poor management of the country as a whole, and of course the pointless wars, bloating of civil service, constant spin, and headline-grabbing empty policies. However, those are things that we should be holding against them at a local or general election; we elect our Euro MPs based on what they will be able to do for us in Europe.

Sadly this distinction has been lost on Glyn Ford, who seems to be an MEP for my area. His head floats above scenic fields on the front page of his pamphlet, accompanied by a quote about how terrible the Tories are, and how Labour is just like President Barack Obama - although of course Labour isn't mentioned until the tiny white un-bold logo buried at the bottom of the page. At least it's good to see someone in the party isn't completely deluded about how popular and successful they are. But it's symbolic of what Labour have become - they know the only way they can get you to vote for them is to deceive you.

The inside of their pamphlet goes on about how wonderful Labour have been to Gloucestershire, and makes tentative links between what parliament does and what the European parliament does. But the best bit is that their pamphlet was glued shut, and surprisingly difficult to open - presumably so you wouldn't see the tiny picture of Gordon Brown on the inside, and instead would just read the back, about how terrible it is that the Tories want to cut spending, and that the Lib Dems want to legalise drug use - the scum.

No credibility, no policies, no vote.

As an aside, I will risk my future political career by coming out and saying that I support legalising drugs, at least in a controlled way. There are plenty of things in this country which are just as addictive, dangerous and destructive as illegal drugs but which are perfectly legal, such as alcohol, smoking, or Jeremy Kyle. If you legalise drugs you will start to lift the stigma and make it easier for people to come forward for help; you can control the supply of drugs at sale, ensuring people are educated on the risks and that they know how to take it safely; you can control the supply of drugs at source, protecting against the harmful effects of production on the country of origin; and you can tax it to the hilt, helping to clean up Brown's economic mess.

I feel the same way about prostitution; legalise it, license it, tax it, protect everybody involved. These things have been going on since time began, and the only thing you succeed in doing by making it illegal is to push it underground where people can be exploited without any protection or representation. Unlike certain (soon-to-be-former) members of our Glorious Leadership, I realise that we shouldn't ban something just because it doesn't fit into my limited view of how the world works.

With one exception:

BNP

There. I've done it. I've mentioned the BNP. I feel dirty doing so, just as I felt dirty holding their propaganda. But it's worth a mention because evidently many people around the country felt equally dirty about being approached to appear on their leaflets; I recognised the Elderly White Loving Couple and the Tanned-But-Still-White American Doctor from spending far too much time on iStockPhoto, and after a quick bit of digging, it turns out I'm right. Reason #374 not to let a photo of you go into a stock photography site.

I won't discuss their "policies" which ignore basic economic truths, or how, similar to UKIP, they're using a spitfire to call upon war-time spirit and patriotism, ignoring the irony that the fight was against a political system who discriminated against people based on race, and despite the fact that 1/5th of the pilots in the Battle of Britain were filthy stinking foreigners - particularly those damned Polish migrant workers, a squadron of whom racked up the highest number of kills in the war. See, they were coming over here and stealing jobs from good hard-working British People even then.

Wait, would these be the same hard-working British People who create the opening for foreign workers in the first place by realising they can make enough money to pay for Sky+ by working the benefits system, instead of getting a menial job that would involve having to wait a few hours before watching Jeremy Kyle?

That's enough of that - Charlie Brooker said it better anyway.

Fail.

Conservatives

Gosh. Really a no to them from me, a Tory born and bred? Well, their pamphlet was actually ok. They said it was a general election communication, and had stuff covering both the local council elections and the EU, with a bit of Gordon-bashing thrown in for good measure. What's not to like?

Well, I disagree with their MEP's policies. They think that copyright terms should be extended, that it's fine to store absurd amounts of data about internet use, and that the three strikes rule for cutting off internet access - based purely on an accusation from a biased commercial entity, without due process - is a fantastic plan.

Well, I make that three strikes - you're out.

So who will I vote for?

Good question. I'm still undecided:

Lib Dems seem to mostly agree with what I care about most, but I haven't had a flyer from them, their general policies on Europe seem confused, and their website is down so I can't find out more.
Libertas' policy for reforming the EU seems good, but can't find any actual policy details, let alone how they feel about internet rights. Have they published a manifesto? They certainly haven't posted me anything, which makes me feel left out. Perhaps they're just not running in my region?
The Greens seem to agree with the ORG, seem to agree with Libertas regarding reforming the EU, and I support environmental reform - but I'm not a hippy.
votematch.co.uk says I should vote UKIP *spit*

Decisions, decisions.

Progress!

2009-05-28T00:12:29-00:00

As you may have noticed, I've been remarkably silent here so far this year. This is due in part to moving random comments onto twitter rather than expanding them into longer diary posts as I did in the past - I've got a couple of posts to make about things I've twittered about recently, so hopefully this won't be the only post in May.

But mostly I've been quiet because I've been up to a lot. We're trying to buy a house; I've cooked a couple of excellent puddings (must update the recipes); and I've taken up archery, having lessons for an hour or so a week.

And of course, in between my hectic social life detailed above, I've tried to fit in a bit of work. 20-22 working hour days for 6-7 days a week have been common since Christmas. I misunderestimated my January and February projects and failed to take account of unpredictable day-to-day spikes, which has knocked me off track - even with the overtime, the project I'd pencilled in to complete at the end of March wasn't complete until mid-May. Not helped by deadline confusion with the client, who expected it in February. Always confirm things in writing...

However, I'm definitely getting on top of things now; my inbox is down to 12 outstanding tasks from the peak of 150+, I'm back to a ~24 hour turnaround on most tasks, and I've at last reached the first deliverable of my new Django-based CMS. Still a lot left to do, but I've started moving client sites to it, and after 10 years of on-off development, I'm finally getting somewhere. Two more deliverables and I should be ready for a beta release, so it actually looks like I might get it out before Duke Nuken Forever - bonus.

So, this year there has been progress, but there's a lot more to do. But that can wait for another entry.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-10T22:00:50-00:00

Modern life is a bit lame, really, when you think about it.

We're meant to roam the forests and fields, stabbing things and eating them; when we're not hunting or sleeping, nature intended for us to be punching each other for the right to mate with our womenfolk and propagate the most awesome DNA around.

Instead, the majority of the world now sits in chairs in large concrete boxes, pushing bits of paper around and tapping away on little bits of plastic, making silly lights dance around on a glass box. Hunting consists of staggering out of the nearest door into small metal boxes which take you to another concrete box, where you hand over a small piece of plastic to swap meaningless numbers for stale poor-quality mass-produced processed food, which we take back to our desks and stuff into our mouths.

The evolutionary battle for genetic superiority is reduced to online dating. Survival of the fittest no longer applies - these days anyone can find someone suitably inappropriate to procreate with. Regardless of the quality of our genes, we multiply unchecked; taming, consuming, or destroying everything in our path.

Instead of rising with the sun and retiring with the darkness, we come up with increasingly elaborate ways to extend our waking hours in an attempt to out-do each other in our futile efforts to collect longer numbers on bits of paper than the people around us, so that we can buy bigger concrete boxes and more plastic trinkets to show everyone how awesome we are.

We organise ourselves into groups who try to out-do each other by seeing who can come up with the most convoluted and absurd explanation for how we came to be and how we ended up in this state, and we then go around coming up with increasingly imaginative and disturbing ways to kill those who disagree with us.

And if we ever manage to collect enough numbers and bits of paper that we can at last take the time to look out of the window to enjoy our fleeting experience of conciousness, the miracle of modern medicine fails us, and we act all surprised when our weak corpulent bodies start to fail. And then we die, leaving nothing of worth.

All in all, I wish I'd been born a cat.

Awesome!

2009-03-15T13:47:53-00:00

Hey, someone at MIT has implemented my dissertation idea, and then taken it to awesomeville. Want.