As You Like It

Thence to a good and contemporary production at the Lyceum . . .



Act IV, Scene 1



"I fear you have sold your own lands to see

other men's; then, to have seen much and to have

nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands."

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an idiot a day helps you ...

I've spent one of those difficult weeks in which nothing goes according to plan and you also choose (big mistake) to attempt a rational dialogue with an idiot. So I always look forward to some cleansing invective from Charlie on a Saturday morning and this week it's been delivered in tons. Go read!

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i've got a PSP and I'm so happeeeeeee :-)

Just do it OK and revel in this masterpiece of early 21st century technology! BTW when in the WWW browser holding down the [] button allows you to scroll around the web page with the analogue joy stick so you don't have to use the 'fit' feature to resize pages.

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a very quiet commons

Well done the BBC for finally making approx. 100 video clips from its archive available via the Creative Commons License. The only downside is that it is just that - video but with no audio. My guess is that they have had to take this approach because they cannot resolve the rights issues for music and voice overs used in the programme material that the clips are derived from?

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some you lose ....

East Coast Chicken Supper at the Traverse - oo'er typical Fiday evening from 30 or so years ago; amusing but pointless. Sorry. And as for all those *!&%$*@# prats in the bar . . .

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Jump baby!

By way of total contrast, Jump is an envigorating, non-verbal, acrobatic, martial arts based performance that takes your breath away. See this and then visit Korea!

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on the brink of extinction

Sunday early pm was spent seeing a perfomance of Switch Triptych. Maybe I'm getting a liitle old but the first 15 minutes were hard work, you really had to want this performance to work for you; there were a few walkers. The fact that the main character'e lines were hardly discernable was really the problem.

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It does exactly what it says on the tin

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De Battre Mon Coeur S'est Arrete) A superb French remake of James Toback's classic Fingers (also screening at this year's EIFF). C'est bon

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I take my hat off ...

It's festival time here in Edinburgh and this evening we went to see a performance of All Wear Bowlers;an enjoyable, clever and funny update on vaudeville and music hall acts from 80 or more years ago. God damn, these East Coast theatrical types are sharp for mark.

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OGG the way up

An interesting snippet. According to a new study of peer-to-peer networking by Cachelogic, 12.3% of audio files swapped over the network are in OGG format. MP3 still accounts for 68.9% though. The BBC has a commentary on the report.

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Alouette par radio est actuellement mon favori

Alouette par radio est actuellement mon favori écoutent sur la liste de l'aacPlus d'Orban. Appréciez !

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SQL Server 2000 backuphistory quirk

We came across this recently when we tried to delete a database and found that the server was churning away for hours at > 50% on each CPU. As Andrew's article explains this is because the backuphistory table in msdb is never cleared out - ours had > 250K rows and hence the load when sp_delete_backuphistory is called when a database is deleted!

If you have lots of databases that are backed up and hence a large table - like ours - you really want to step through a month at a time.

declare @xtime datetime
set @xtime = cast('04/01/2003' as datetime)
use msdb
exec sp_delete_backuphistory @xtime;

Once you have it cleared out then you probably want to add a nightly job to clean it up. Add something like the following procedure to to msdb:

create procedure TidyBackupHistoryTo60Days
as
-- delete backup entries older than 60 days
-- run as nightly job to keep msdb tidy
-- procedure must be stored in msdb as it uses
-- sp_delete_backuphistory which is defined there
begin
declare @xtime as datetime
set @xtime = dateadd(d,-60,getdate())
exec sp_delete_backuphistory @xtime
end

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screenonline anyone?

Whilst googling on some problems we've been having with the BFI Screenonline service I came across the Film Archive Action web site; evidently the work of the disgruntled staff who now find themselves the target of "modernisation". The Amicus Statement of Protest therein contains an absolute corker of a paragraph which resonates with those of us who also have the misfortune to be subject to the managerialist drivel that is now washing over large parts of the UK Higher Education "market". Here it is in full. Enjoy!





"We are gravely alarmed by the burgeoning tier of managerial staff whose only qualifying experience seems to be in the area of ‘organisational change’ (as if this were a virtuous end in itself). We have been brought near to despair to hear the language of education, cultural evaluation and public service drowned out by unintelligible managerialist platitudes whose purpose seems to be to marginalise knowledge and expertise in favour of an abstract and self-perpetuating rhetoric of ‘change’. We deplore the adoption of a management style which encourages a disregard of agreed policies, lack of transparency and communication, and tacitly encourages harassment."

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it's all too much

Here's one. Just back from several days walking the St Cuthbert's Way in the borders. The trip back today involved taking the 10.00 AM 267 Border Villager bus from Wooller to Berwick-upon-Tweed on which every passenger apart form ourselves and the driver were ladies > 70 wearing headscarves.



So anyway back home and listening to DAB Radio 6 play "It's all too much" from Yellow Submarine got me rushing to the iPod and whoa! it occured to me to wonder how when grooving along in our little iWorlds these days folk exchange their musical experience? In my youth and young manhood with nothing more than LPs - great for skinning up on - this generally involved going round to someone's place to have a blather and get stoned; social activity basically. So I say bring back 12" vinyl and the "Heavy". Oh and I listened to Nick Drake first time around. Good walk y'all.

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more getting the SMS message

Following my recent "getting the message - too late" post about my employer's evident inability to "get" SMS as a business tool, a colleague has kindly drawn my attention to an article on the BBC web state entitled "Texting keeps students in touch".

The applications of SMS described in the article are very similar to those I proposed over two years ago. I think I'll dust down that paper and have another bash at pitching it to our "senior management".

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an english man's home is his insecure WiFi network

Apologies for the overly long and gender specific title. I was coming back to Edinburgh on the GNER Mallard from Kings Cross recently, only to discover that the WiFi availability advertised on the state-of-the-art departure board was not in fact available on the train. The on-board staff were very helpful though suggesting that I try plugging my laptop into another network port.

A handy hint from the GNER WiFi support desk, which I now pass on. Disbelieve any source other than the "Where are the Mallards/WiFi trains today?" link at the very bottom-right of the GNER home page. I can't help thinking that GNER ought to change that title though; they really ought to know where their trains are. But I digress.

Leaving my laptop free to discover available wireless networks I was pleasantly surprised at the almost continuous supply of unsecured WiFi networks along much of the route. Approaching any urban area you really are spoilt for choice. Added to that, most folk obligingly leave their networks with the default SSID of their wireless router model.

Now it seems to me that given a bit more time and imagination GNER's investment in WiFi enabling their trains and then charging "standard class" plebs - sorry passengers - a hefty premium for the privelege for using it will be entirely unecessary. C'mon Tony how about an initiative to suspend a WiFi cloud over the entire nation based on peer-to-peer integration of personal and small business WiFi networks? Now there's a vote winner. Feel free to give me a ring if you'd like to discuss it further. Premium rates may apply.

BTW travellers might like to know that the unsecured WiFi broadband access in the GNER Executive lounge at Kings Cross is exellent. So good in fact that it extends right across the passenger concourse and all platforms/trains. The SSID to look out for or is "train". Though again, you'll really be spoilt for choice. For your own protection practice safe computing and always use a VPN with networks you've never met before.

And as a parting shot. Observant readers of the GNER April-May edition of the on-train magazine "Livewire" will notice that the article on their York operations centre includes a full page of photographs one of which includes a whiteboard on which a number of usernames and passwords for various systems are clearly visible.

Happy trails.

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getting the message - too late

In the past three years I've written or co-authored three papers proposing the use of Short Messaging Serivces (SMS) to support our business goals, each of which has either been killed or met with indifference at executive level. So it was with mixed emotions that I read in this week's Guardian Online that text messages are being used increasingly to conduct business, to such an extent that 20% of all text messages are now directly related to busness processes. As you might guess, I happen to work for a wholly dysfuntional organisation wandering toward irrelevance. Which is a shame really, as it needn't be that way.

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Free Mojtaba and Arash

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we are sailing - on empty

Not wishing to be uncharitable but it would be encouraging to see Dame Ellen use her much sought after celebrity over the waves to draw attention to the paralous situation facing those species that live and have their being under the same waves. This is going to be a dark century my friends!

As Grace SLick sang in Eskimo Blue Day:

But the human crowd
Doesn't mean shit to a tree

As it turns out though whales are guided by their singing. Well would you B&Q it!

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been away a while

Work and my starting an Open University course (M358) have kept me away for a while. But I'm happy to report having stumbled across the very excellent open source VLC media client that - yes, you can probably see it coming - supports MPEG-4/aacPLus audio on Windows, Mac and Linux.



Now, should I get that new S700i mobile or not?

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eh by gum

My travel to work is now strictly by LRT bus and since the New year I've taken to riding upstairs as it provides a different outlook on the world. Some days even find me on the seats at the very front, though I refrain from "driving the bus". Small children and parents will understand that reference.



What I have noticed now our steets have been jet-washed by driving wind and rain is the level of chewing gum splatter on the pavements. There's hardly a square foot that is not covered in the stuff; which brought a couple of thoughts to mind. How does the damn stuff get there in the first place? The streets are not full of gum gobbing trolls so I reckon it's distribution must be more akin to the subtle but widely practised art of public nose picking. Keep an eye out for that one. And paving slab manufacturers are definitely missing the boat in not providing artificial gum enhanced products. Surely architects and urban planners would just love the chance to provide that authentiic city-scape feel to their new developments. But I wouldn't want it on my patio. Anyway, watch your step.

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double plus aacPlus

Last month I blogged about the fantastic audio quality now available from aacPlus at 48kbps. It just gets better. Check the 24kbps stereo - yes that's stereo - streams on the Orban listings. Thanks to the good folk at Preco for pointing me there.



What's going to really drive this of course is the incorporation of the aacPlus codec into the DSP chips in mobile phones. Betcha!

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79 Springs

A mood of light melancholy on another grey Scottish winter's day found me thinking on my long-gone young manhood and on films from it that have particularly stood in my mind for 35 years or so. One such is 79 Springs by the Cuban director Santiago Alvarez (1919-1998) to which I was introduced by an older woman who had loved me and taken me in at the time. I was 19 or so and she 10 years older. And to her I'd like now to say thanks for much of making the best parts of the person I am today. I've always been a lucky lad. And on that note a quote from Senor Alvarez:



"The advertisements of capitalism are, in fact, much better than the product. The Jesuits were their precursors. Remember that saying about giving them a child? Remember too the famous old-style Coca-Cola bottle? Why do you think it was designed like that? Feel it and you will find out. It is in the shape of a woman wearing the long dresses of teatime. When a woman has a good body, we say in Cuba that she is Coca-Cola."



Footnote: Whilst blogging on this came across news from ELF on the DVD of his work due for imminent realease.

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wot no wmd!

I see that the US has given up searching for WMD in Iraq stating that "Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons at the time of the US-led invasion nearly two years ago." thereby confirming Tony's status as the complete unprincipled lying scumbag we all know him to be. Oooh Yes Prime Minister! On the other hand, Hans Blix is a model world citizen of exemplary rectitude and principle. You might like to watch his public lecture last year at The University of Edinburgh. Teach your children well.

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dead dogs

Seen scrawled across the back of a lorry somewhere on the M6 over the festive period: "Ken Dodd's dad's dog's dead."

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