Matts Meanderings

You win some, you lose some...

-or-

When you're feeling down, the world comes along and kicks you...

...

And yes, this is deliberately enigmatic.

Error message: Terse, baffling remark used by programmers to place blame on users for the program's shortcomings.

Lots more 'explanations' to be found at http://www.effect.net.au/lukastan/humour/Jargon/PC-Jargon.htm.

Stolen blatently from http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/2005/03/30#a1183

Listed below are the 10 winners of this year's Bulwer-Lytton Contest, aka the "Dark and Stormy Night Contest" run by the English Department of San Jose State University,wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel:

10. "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."

9. "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."

8. "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description."

7. "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.'"

6. "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved."

5. "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store."

4. "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do."

3. "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."

2. "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."

AND THE WINNER IS.....

1. "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!"

Okay, its been a while since I've just done a bit of a general update, and a few things have happened lately, so I feel I ought to share them...

• Carolyn and Andrew have moved in, taking over the 4th bedroom in the house. They're both American, Carolyn working for the labour party here in the lead up to the election, and Andrew is a freelance writer. They're here for 3 months or so, while Debs (the New Zealander) is off traveling.
• Margo and Mara came over last weekend, and we spent all weekend partying. Was lots of fun! (Margo and Mara are 2 dutch girls - we met Margo in Inverness in Scotland, and have kept in contact since)
• Andrew (Biscuit) has just finished his contract at his current workplace, and is starting at mergermarket on Monday, with nary a day off in between. He somehow managed to convince them that he was worth hiring^[1]... Now he just has to live up to it...
• Paul & Lyds have just finished their jobs, and are heading off on the road for four or so months of travel, then off home to settle down and be domesticated... Sad, cos I lose a good mate here.
• Andrew and I are joining Paul & Lyds, and hopefully Bec in Turkey for a bit of a wander and the Anzac day service in Gallipolli on the 25th. Andrew and I head over on the 21st, and head back on the 27th.

I think thats about all thats happened lately, and is looking to happen in the next little while. If I think of anything else, I'll try and remember to post it...

^[1] Yes, boss, that was sarcasm...

Woke up from a dream the other morning, and I caught the last thought of the dream:

"must remember to cut the parachute down to size..."

Now, I dont know about you, but I'm worried...

(This is a geek post - if you're not a geek [ie, most of you], skip it)

For the maybe 3 or 4 people who read this that are developers, they most likely use Visual Studio.NET.

In VB6, you used to be able to go Ctrl+R to show the project explorer. Now, even with the VB6 keyboard layout in VS.NET, you cant use Ctrl+R to show the solution explorer. It just sits there and helpfully says “(Ctrl+R) was pressed. Waiting for second key of chord.", and then doesn't do anything.

From this post in the microsoft.public.dotnet.general newsgroup, I've finally figured out that you can fix it properly:

Go to Tools/Options/
Select Environment folder and then Keyboard

Remove or change the commands for the following shortcuts:
* Edit.SwapAnchor
* Edit.ToggleWordWrap
* Edit.ViewWhiteSpace

And it all magically works again! Yay!

Going through my old email, I ran across this one from the end of last year:

With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person which

almost went unnoticed last week. Larry La Prise, the man who wrote the song "The Hokey Pokey", died peacefully at age 93.

The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin.

They put his left leg in. And then the trouble started.

<rant>

Okay, I'm about 5 years too late to really get in on the complaints about DVD region encoding, but, hey, i thought I'd put my 2 cents (pence?) in anyway.

DVD region encoding, for those that don't know, is where a DVD and a DVD player have a region setting in them. They have 'Region 1' for North America, Region 2 for Europe, Region 4 for Australia and South American, etc...

So, *most* DVD players will only play DVDs purchased in the same region (yes, there are multi-region players, but they are less common).

This was all done supposedly to cut down on piracy. But, I'm going by the theory that it was done to increase profits, by preventing people buying DVDs from overseas, where they can be much cheaper. (I'm also a bit confused about how that works with the whole free trade thing, but thats another matter...)

But, the problem with this is, now that I'm in the UK, I'm in a different region to Australia. So, given that my home is in Australia, I want to be buying DVDs that I'll be able to play in Australia. But, you cant get them here.

So, rather than cutting down on piracy as the media moguls intended, it actually makes me look closer at obtaining movies the dodgy way. Its also cutting into their profits, as I'm just not buying DVDs now, which I probably would be if the region encoding didn't exist...

Good on ya, media dudes...

</rant>

The Credit Card Prank II is definitely worth a read...

Warning: Do not read while drinking coffee...

Went out to a team lunch the other day, to celebrate the fact that we released dealscope onto mergermarket, and apparently, everyone liked it lots and lots, both internally and externally. So, to thank us for this, the boss/company gave us each a 512MB iPod Shuffle. Bonus!

Warning. The next little bit is the techy part, so if you dont care about techy stuff, skip over it to the important bit (the bit near the bottom).

I was under the impression that these were pretty crappy devices, and installing the iTunes software really reinforced that idea:

• I had to put in the devices serial number
• I had to provide registration information
• I had to register the ipod with them
• It reinstalled quicktime, which was already on the computer
• It put icons for quick time and itunes in quicklaunch without asking
• It loaded quicktime in the tasktray, without asking
• It wanted to reboot after installing

And loading iTunes didn't help either:

• Its outright confusing to use.
• For ages, I couldn't figure out how to sync my ipod shuffle
• It asked if it should find files on my computer - I said yes, and it promptly did... nothing.
• Selecting is odd - hold down shift, use down arrow to select files, then hit up, cos you selected one too many - and it extends the selection from the top
• Click on a heading, and your selection disappears
• Random little arrow icons *everywhere* (3 times per song), that you have no idea what they do, until you click them, and suddenly find yourself on the apple website...
• Throws an icon in my task tray, without asking
• Registers to startup with the computer without asking

But, once I managed to figure out how to use it, I discovered that:

1. I didn't need to use iTunes with it (uninstall - check!)
2. I could might be able to use Windows Media Player (much more user friendly interface)
3. It works as a usb flash drive
4. Its rechargable via usb
5. It *doesn't* force you to put a random selection of music on the ipod (like i thought it did)
6. It *doesn't* force you to listen to the music in a random order (like i thought it did)

So, all in all, its waaay better than I expected it to be. But, then again, being given one as a gift is A Good Thing^TM .

Just spent Easter out on a tiny island off the west coast of Ireland, called Inishbofin. Its a tiny island, with 180 people. Its a pretty cool little place, but I don't think I could survive there for more than a week or so.

I went to visit Holly and her friend Tess, who're running a hostel there. Well, Tess is currently running the hostel, and Holly is looking for a job to last her a few months until the hostel gets busy enough to need 2 people to run it. Its a fun little hostel - looks like it'd have a good atmosphere. The owner (Kieran) is a cool guy too. Only wish that I could've understood him...

All in all, had a good weekend - even if the travel times were a little overboard. It took me 14 hours of travel to get back on Tuesday - a little longer than I'd planned. I think it was a 9 part journey home... A ferry, 4 buses, a plane, and 3 trains. Ouch.

Went for a few walks around the island - its only 2 mile by 5 mile, so its not that far to walk. There's some pretty cool places to go a-walking. Didn't see that many people - but definitely found them that night, in the pub - very crowded. There was a bit of the traditional Irish music going - I think at one point, they had 5 violins, 2 piano-accordion things, flutes, a banjo-y thing, and a few others. I'm not quite sure I like the music, but I love the concept, and the community that it creates.

I managed to take some photos - will try and upload them at some point soon.

Oh, and I really don't think the Irish are ever going to win any awards for architecture...