Planet Nonado

radagast: Is PHP vulnerable software?

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:47:18 +0000

Thanks to Ivo Jansch, I spotted Matt Assay mentioning in his article on cnet that PHP headlines in IBM’s list of most vulnerable software and I have to say this is complete balderdash on the part of IBM.

He quotes from the report:

Another commonality between these three vendors is that they are all written in PHP. If we look back over last year’s disclosures and apply the new CPE methodology to them, we would uncover another newcomer to the top five list, PHP itself, which would rank number four in the 2007 top five vendor list.

What are featuring in IBM’s top ten of vulnerable that makes the report insinuate that the PHP language is a security risk are Jooma, Wordpress and Drupal. How PHP would feature in a list of “vendors” is beside the point - if a construction company were to build a house where the windows don’t close fully, the security alarm doesn’t work and where bare wires are exposed you don’t “blame” the windows, alarm system and cabling. The responsibility rests with the construction company and/or the individual contractors hired by that company. Similarly, we can’t “blame” PHP for bad software architecture and security risks present in Joomla, Wordpress or Drupal - the onus is on the software developers and architects to design secure [web] applications.

They should, at the least, ensure input data is of the expected type, of certain values; handle uploaded files in a secure and cautious manner that they don’t overwrite files crucial to the health/security of the system running the application or the application itself; use an audit trail for checking against attacks, ensure security in depth against SQL injections, Cross Site Vulnerabilities, Command Injection and … I could go on but won’t - search for php security best practices, get the Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide, check out the library resource at the PHP Security Consortium.

Now where’s ruby, cobol, C, and z80A assembly language on that list? And why is Linux mentioned there as a vendor?

radagast: Irish PHP User Group: Committee Forming

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:21:43 +0000

Yesterday. a few weeks after much discussion and evolution of the constitution of the Irish PHP Users’ Group I suggested that we should get our skates on and get to forming a committee.
Nominations were made today for all of the posts but there’s a week left before the results are ‘official’ - the cut off is to have a committee voted in by next wednesday so there is still plenty of time left if you think you are better suited for the tasks at hand.

bigbro: Dear Linux Kernel,

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:25:00 +0000

my laptop compressing 14GB of data into an archive is not a great definition of being idle, and is probably not a great time to go into standby state. While I was impressed at the ability to resume and continue the compression, I'd rather hoped the job would be done by the time I returned from lunch.

*sigh*

bigbro: I've just been Rickrolled...

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:46:00 +0000

...in the pub! I think it's time to have a serious word with the staff of The Hamlet about their choice of music. I just came in for a quiet pint ;-)

bigbro: OpenStreetmap Mapping Party in Drogheda

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

OpenStreetMap is a worldwide community project to provide free maps; these maps (at www.openstreetmap.org) are free for anyone to use, modify, copy, redistribute and republish in whole or in part.

Building on the success of last month's State of the Map conference in Limerick, some of OpenStreetMap's nearly 50,000 members will be coming from as far away as London, Cork and Belfast to a mapping party in Drogheda this coming weekend, Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th of August, 10am-6pm both days.

Mapping parties are great for putting places on the map that aren't there already, breaking new ground. They're also great for getting new people involved in OpenStreetMap, and they're a fun way to contribute something real to a community project.

Thanks to the Rev. Michael Graham, we have secured an excellent venue to operate out of: St Peter's Parish Hall on Peter St - look out for the OpenStreetMap banner!

All are welcome to drop by at any time during the weekend and stay as long as they want, to make maps or just chat with the mappers. Laptop advised but not essential if you want to get involved. We will have plenty of spare GPS units available, on loan from OpenStreetMap UK.

Please visit wiki.openstreetmap.org for further information on OpenStreetMap, or e-mail Christian or Gareth via the usual blog comments address, blog@signal2noise.co.uk if you have any questions about the event in Drogheda.

froodie: Don't trust strangers to make you happy.

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 11:44:58 +0000

Strangers are funny old things.
Last night I was flitting merrily between two groups of people in Angel Lane as I prefer to do (it stops people getting tired of me), when I was suddenly transfixed mid-flit by an amazingly awesome Tshirt. The shirt in question bore the legend "Bouli Bouli. Fear sneachta bán" and a picture of said loveable snowman.
I let out a shout of joy and began to regale the wearer of said tshirt with my story about how Bouli used to sleep on my couch sometimes. And do you know what the fucker did? He looked confused and a little disgusted and wandered off. What a prick!

(Bouli DID used to sleep on my couch sometimes. I worked in the subtitling bit of a production company in An Spidéal, along with Inspector Gadget and Bouli Sneachta and yer woman from Ros na Rún who was only in it for a bit and went a bit mental.)

diamond: diamond@zrh:/tmp/accom$ cd ~

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:27:37 +0000

Today we had the handover of our new apartment from the estate agency. Despite all our worries that they might be mean, things went smoothly, and we’re now the proud possessors of a shiny set of keys for said apt. As we saw in the newspaper yesterday, out of the 206000 apartments in zurich, only 57 were vacant at one point in June. So, not only were we lucky to get an apartment at all, we were also extremely lucky to get our first choice, and after only one day of looking at that. Our (wonderful wonderful wonderful) relocation agent, Aline, has never had clients get a place so quickly. I think she was in even more shock than we were.

This marks a major milestone in our whole relocation saga. Tomorrow we are due to receive our airfreight shipment (which took a week longer than expected) which was meant to contain essentials to tide us over until we found a place and our main (surface) shipment arrived. Now, of course, we’re suddenly in need of things like crockery and towels and bed linen etc, and it could well be weeks before that stuff arrives. I guess that’s our fault for getting accommodation sorted so quickly ,-) We’re off to ikea afterwards to try and buy the bare essentials in furniture to start with. Coming from a country where all rental accommodation is furnished, it’s quite a shock when you have to buy things like light fittings and curtains as everyone is expected to supply their own.

Anyway, we have an early start as the shipment is being delivered at 07:30 tomorrow morning (it was a choice between that and wait another 10 days), so i’d better head off to bed.

artemis: Apparently soy makes you impotent. So if we wait long enough the hippy population will eliminate itself…

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:59:49 +0000

I’m not a vegetarian. I do not, nor have I ever had, the slightest qualm about eating meat. The idea that I am consuming a dead animal does not bother me. If I was hungry and there was a very cute baby lamb in front of me I would happily bash its head in with a rock so that I could eat its delicious innards, hampered only by the fact that my knowledge of sheep anatomy is too sketchy to guarantee I wouldn’t end up eating its small intestine or something equally distasteful.

I tend to treat moral vegetarians with suspicion. Essentially, I don’t care if you choose not to eat meat. Thats fine, it just means there are more delicious animals for me. However, if you are the squeamish type of vegetarian, please do not have dinner with me. I have no intention of ordering steak well done because you don’t like the sight of blood, well done steak is a flavourless travesty which should only be fed to children with weak immune sytems, and dogs. I happen to like my steak to taste like something that was recently alive, not something that was recently part of an old leather shoe.

Which brings me to my current problem, namely that this has resulted in years of being repeatedly served overcooked meat. Granted, my definition of overcooked is most people’s definition of dangerously raw. To be entirely honest its not limited to beef, I find it hard to eat chicken that has been in the frying pan long enough to be brown on the outside, and I like to make toast that can only be identified as different from untoasted bread by the slight crunchiness and not the colour. But hey, its a matter of personal taste, I don’t criticize all the crazy fuckers who eat butter made of peanuts (wtf? who even came up with that? “Oh look, small, slightly hard but chewable nuts of a mildly disgusting taste, I know! Lets grind them into paste so we can put them on more stuff! Yeah!” And they call the english weird for Marmite).

Irish and english waiting staff in particular have an odd deficiency. When you ask them for rare steak they assume you are just doing so because you heard it on tv, and that you don’t really mean it. So they give you something slightly pink in the middle, and expect this to be sufficient. American waiting staff assume you do want what you ask for, unfortunately, they don’t actually understand what it is if they haven’t already been asked for it several thousand times by people without a funny accent. So after years of having to send back overcooked meat due presumably to misinterpretation rather than actual incompetence, I have become rather explicit about what it is that I want them to do.

This in turn has led to an intriguing discovery, namely the fact that it is universally weird to be a certain degree of specific about food. So when they ask how I would like my steak and I respond with “well, how rare can you do it? Ok, then very rare. Blue. As rare as you can cook it in fact. Just kind of warm it” people look at me as if an extra arm has sprouted from my forehead and is waving a small knife menacingly. This may be partly to do with the fact that I like to eat raw cow flesh, but I think its mostly because they don’t expect me to give a damn.

So restaurant employees, please rest assured. I won’t scream at the sight of blood on my plate, I don’t care about freaking out the other diners, and I really do want what I just asked for. If you are not sure about it, ask me what I mean. If you are too nervous about serving raw food, tell me I can’t have it like that and I will order the fucking pasta instead. Because if I have to send back one more fucking meal because no-one bothers checking that “blue” actually means “almost entirely red”, I will…. make like an american and passive-aggressively tip only 12.5 percent, thats what I’ll do. Fear my wrath.

radagast: PHP 4 - this parrot is deceased!

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:37:33 +0000

I woke this morning with a grin. Nope, nothing to with the Olympics; PHP 4 is dead and by that I mean it is no longer supported - no more official security updates for PHP 4 - or backports from PHP 5 or PHP 6.
The last release of PHP 4.4 occurred yesterday.
Why is this important - and why am I grinning?

PHP 5 has improved support for Object Oriented Programming, PDO, numerous performance and security enhancements that make continuing to maintain or develop PHP4 specific code a mugs game.
The enhancements in PHP 5.3, which is scheduled to be released in October, and those in PHP6 make it all the more compelling to move from PHP4.
If you are a developer and are unaware of this or are clinging on to PHP4 for dear life, you’d do yourself a favour by evaluating all options open to you - including a change of career.

The hosting market may be slow to catch up but remember this: there will be no more security updates for PHP4 and there are security enhancements in PHP5. Compelling reasons to ask your hosting provider if they do PHP5 hosting. Web hosts who are dedicated to supporting PHP 5.2 or later are listed on the gophp5 website.
Blacknight are the only Irish hosting company listed there.

Ivo Jansch, CTO of iBuildings painted a fairly bleak picture a month ago regarding continued PHP4 usage; poising the question “what if there’s an exploit for PHP4 and the bad guys are waiting until after 8/8/8 to make malicious use of it”. This is just scare-mongering but he does make a valid point, after today it will take longer than usual, if at all, for a fix against such expoints to be made available. So if you’re in business it would be wise to consult with your hosting company ASAP.

bigbro: eeePC Thunderbird fail

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:41:00 +0000

I'm making an effort to use my eeePC with a 3G modem as my work platform between home and the office. It's form factor is excellent, though I would prefer the 3G modem built in rather than dangling out a USB port. Oh well...

More seriously, Thunderbird (Work tab | e-mail) was completely failing to run after I updated the software. Running it from the command line yielded a segfault:

	/opt/thunderbird> ./thunderbird
	./run-mozilla.sh: line 131:  4440 Segmentation fault      "$prog" ${1+"$@"}

Apparently, this is a known issue that can be fixed one of two ways. Either remove the SCIM support (probably not an issue if you're only using Western character sets: sudo aptitude remove scim) or install the little known update pack eeepc-updatepack-20071126 using aptitude install eeepc-updatepack-20071126.

I chose the latter option and Thunderbird immediately sprang into life. For my next trick, I'd quite like to get Firefox 3 running.

noirin: Goodness Gracious!

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:13:43 +0000

The instructions for the pizza said to put it on a baking tray in the oven for ten minutes, at 180°C. Hoping to avoid dirtying the scarily-clean Swiss baking tray I had bought earlier today (because there was no way I was going to dirty the terrifyingly clean tray provided), I put some baking parchment on the baking tray, and put the pizza on the baking parchment, before putting the whole lot into the preheated oven.

There was a funny smell of burning, but I presumed it would pass. As I turned to go back to the sitting room for a few minutes, the smell continued, and intensified. I looked back at the oven, wondering what could be causing the smell… Could there possibly be some (shock, horror!) crumbs, hidden somewhere behind the dazzling clean oven fittings? Orange, I thought. Yellow, I thought. Those don’t belong there… Flames! What on earth?! The oven’s on fire!

Actually, not quite. Just the baking parchment, burnt in a nice pizza-sized circle in the bottom of the baking tray. Stephen put out the flames without destroying my pizza, and we cleaned up the ash. And so we come to “Weird things about Switzerland #203: Baking parchment that goes on fire when you put it in the oven”.

braz: Politics, fund-raising, and XKCD - who'd have believed it

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:44:36 +0000

Well the story of the US campaign season, how a cartoon managed to raise $95,000 in days for a new aspiring politician in Kansas.

It's not often I see a really smart link to popular culture but I've got to tip my hat to Sean Tevis, who's taken a nice leaf from one of the Internet's leading web comics, xkcd. Sean's idea started after two weeks of canvassing and twenty five dollars to show (its the US money talks...). He figured that as an IA (Information Architect) with web programming skills he could find some other way to fund his political campaign rather than continuing the door to door which wasn't working. 40 or 50 hours later he had the campaign poster below done in xkcd style.

More details on the actual funding appeal/poster and a WSJ article with some more details and an interview of Mr Tevis.

radagast: pear tab completion

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:12:37 +0000

Last Friday, Amir mentioned that he wrote a bash completion script for the pear cli. I’ve used it a bit since then and the tab completions that it provides makes using pear at the command line much easier. Thanks Amir!
Now - is there any chance to get it installed with pear by default? That would be good!

noirin: A Swiss Welcome

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:09:04 +0000

Once I got my start date from Google, it took us a little while to figure out when we should do the actual move. Obviously, we needed to have enough time to pack up on the Irish side, but we also wanted some time to settle in on the Swiss side, before I started in to my new job. Adding to that, 1. August is a public holiday here - the Swiss National Day. So rather than fly in on Monday, essentially losing both Monday and Friday, we decided to fly in on Sunday (it’s 7am on Monday as I write, and we’ve got ten minutes to get downstairs and meet our estate agent!)

I was a little bit nervous about landing in Switzerland on a Sunday - getting keys to a new place on a Sunday can be tricky sometimes, and my experience of Munich was that you could really write off Sunday altogether when it came to any kind of administrivia. I didn’t expect Zurich to be a whole lot different, really. But I checked with the relocation co-ordinator, who assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem. When she gave me step-by-step instructions on where to go and how to get the keys, I stopped worrying. I looked up the street addresses on Google Maps, and all seemed to be dandy.

Yesterday afternoon, we landed in Zurich. Hailing a cab was no problem - and the driver was lovely. He gave us a guide to Zurich, and wished us luck in our househunting. He even turned off the meter when we arrived at the right street, and then spent ten minutes helping us locate #71. All in all, a great experience. Until we got to the door of #71, only to find it locked, with no indication of where or how one might procure keys. The apartment number that we’d been given confused the very helpful local who we flagged down - there are no three-digit apartment numbers here, he assured us. Without a name, we could have tried every buzzer in the building, but there was no guarantee that was going to get us anywhere, so we decided to leave the residents in peace. All of the names looked like personal names anyway - they all had initials, and no AGs or GmbHs to be seen.

We headed over to #69a, where my apartment was supposed to be - and yes, my name was on the buzzer of what we decided might be Apt 15. Definitely not the other three-digit number we’d been given then. There was nothing useful to be found in my mailbox - newspapers dating back to March, and a pile of junk mail that would constitute a reasonable start to the Second Tower of Babel.

After talking to a couple of answering machines, and hanging up on a few more, we decided to give up on trying to talk to the relocation people, and phoned a lovely Lady Google. She sounded suitably shocked, didn’t at all seem to mind us phoning such a rather bizarre issue on a Sunday evening, and promptly booked us in to a hotel near Google - even sending a taxi to pick us up. Thank you Lady Google!

And now, we head out to start the hunt for our very own apartment. Things can only get better, right?!

froodie: Hiding out

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:55:01 +0000

I'm back home, hiding out for a bit. But there are definitely upsides.

Me: Dad, I need an onion.

Dad: There are loads.

Me: Where? I can't see them.

Dad: Up in the garden, go pull one.

:D

diamond: Attachment

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:40:00 +0000

Last night, Noirin decided that my attachment to this planet (and life thereon) could be adequately summarised by the utterance “Yaaay planet!”. I can kinda see her point.

tyrion: Week 5 & 6: “Manhattan is a narrow island off the coast of New Jersey devoted to the pursuit of lunch.”

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:43:15 +0000

My update frequency has gone down in the last few weeks, mostly because I’ve been busy working and doing real life stuff.

I travelled to Washington, DC on the weekend of the 11^th. I discovered the hard way that if you show up 20 minutes before a train is about to leave in the US, you’ll pay $400 for a return ticket.

Washington is a nice city to see. It some great free museums, a clean Subway and a few nifty landmarks. Despite this it’s still hotter than NYC and will cause dehydration if you stay outside for any length of time.

I visited The White House, The Lincon Memorial, The Smithsonian Institute (which contained a Jim Henson exhibit) and the National Air and Space Museum. Fun was had in all places and I’d like to spend more time in the Air&Space Museum.

On Saturday evening I witnessed my first baseball game. I wasn’t particularly impressed. The Astros (2nd worst team) played the Nationals (the worst team) in the poorer of the two leagues. It seemed that the crowd had to be engaged at every possible moment, if things dulled down on the pitch the crowd were instructed to clap, cheer, “root“, stand, sing, dance or make general fools of themselves. Hannah explained that the US has ADD, and with such entertainment being a constant climax of stimulation it’s not hard to see why or how.

On Monday I visited a nice French restaurant for Agnès’ birthday & a Bastille Day celebration. After I left I went back to the office for a few more beers with my bosses. Around 2am we left and went to find food/beer. We wound up in an Irish Pub called Muldoons. It turned out that I knew the barman, he was the guy who invited us back to the recording studio/loft a few weeks back. We stayed until we got kicked out.

Nothing interesting happened on Tuesday or Wednesday, that I can remember.

On Thursday night, at Midnight, I went to see the new Batman Movie, along with the two Chris’, Edgar and Sven. It was pretty damn good.

Friday Morning I wandered off to the H.O.P.E. conference (Hackers on Planet Earth) run by the 2600 people. I’ve read the 2600 magazine as often as I can for over 5 years now and I’ve been listening to Off the Hook and Off the Wall weekly for over a year. Out of all the tech based media outlets available 2600 provides (in my opinion) the greatest mixes of tech, political and privacy issues; blended with a great sense of humour. It may not be as technically in-depth as others, but it more than makes up for it, due to the fun attitude that goes along with the articles/discussions/talks.

I met a bunch of cool people at the confrence, everyone from speakers to vendors, organisers to security guards, press people to attendees; and everyone inbetween. I learnt some useful skills, got some free stuff, discovered some things I never knew existed and had alot of fun.

Despite the conference, Friday night consisted of another trip to the Mars Bar, and on Saturday Night we celebrated Agnès’ birthday again, in a nice trendy bar called Tribe. The music was OK (a bit loud) and the place was small, but there was nothing obnoxious about it that would turn me away. A fun night was had by all.

I saw one cockroach this last 12 days on Wall St (outside the Exhange).

noirin: Cruise Review

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:38:34 +0000

This is a massively monolithic review of the cruise Stephen and I recently returned from. It’s completely incomplete, and it’s so long simply because I don’t have time to make it shorter. Also because so very much happened. I’m posting it here mostly for my own reference - once I’ve gotten photos online, I’ll hopefully post some of the more interesting snippets.

Background:
I’m a bit of an uptown/city girl, while DH is more of a country boy. We’re recently married, and had a wonderful, but very city-oriented honeymoon last year. We were looking for a holiday that would let me have my bit of luxury, without all the madness of a big city break. A few of our friends had cruised recently, and universally recommended it - so that bit was easy. But where to go? Being a redheaded Irish lass, I don’t do too well in the heat - but I do love the long evenings we get up here. So the Arctic Circle/North Cape route was just perfect for us.

Now, this was our first cruise. And although I found some really great tips on these boards, there were still a lot of things I wish I’d known before - so you oldies just bear with me if some of this seems really basic!

Getting there:
I’ve navigated the Dutch public transport system a few times, and scouted out the Passenger Terminal (ok, it was right next door to the hotel I was staying in) on a trip to Amsterdam in the spring time. The flight times worked out well enough for us that we were comfortable flying in same-day (in the end, we were delayed a bit, but that worked out well too), but if you were flying in the day before, and wanted to be sure you were near the Passenger Terminal (PT) in the morning, I’d highly recommend the Moevenpick Hotel. It’s literally next door, it’s walking distance to Dam Square and the city centre, but it’s nice and quiet if you don’t want to be in the middle of all that. Trams 25 and 26 from Centraal Station stop just across the road from the PT - and if you ask the conductor when you get your ticket, he’ll tell you when you’re at the right stop (it’s about the second stop from Centraal, I think).

Our flight was late, so by the time we arrived at the PT, it was around 15:00 (for a 18:00 sailaway). Someone from the PT checked our tags, and took our luggage, then sent us upstairs. The check-in area was pretty well empty, so we filled out a few forms to say that we hadn’t had gastro flu in the last three days, and got straight into the queue. There was a security check, but I still don’t really know what they were looking for - hubby’s Leatherman went through the x-ray machine without a mention, as did the bottle of champagne Another queue to set up our onboard account and get our SeaPasses, and we were headed onboard.

Getting started:
We embarked into the “Grand Foyer”, which was an amazing, bustling introduction. The 360-views on Celebrity’s website don’t even give you an idea of what it’s like when it’s full of passengers, and waiters in formalwear handing out glasses of champagne!

Muster drill was fine, although it seemed to go on forever. Some people got a bit hot under the collar about how long it was lasting, but in reality, I don’t think it even lasted the half hour that we’d been told to expect. The crew did a full drill later in the cruise, including lowering the lifeboats etc, and that took a couple of hours from start to finish - so really, it wasn’t that bad!

Finding our CruiseCritic meet’n'greet was a little tricky - I couldn’t find any signs for where the “Sunset Bar” was, and was lucky that Polydonald (I think!) overheard me asking the bar staff about it and told me I was in the right place.

Also, the deck numbers that I’d looked up on the Celebrity website were all off-by-one, leading to much confusion and lost-ness in the first few hours. None of it bad - we had a great time exploring the ship! - just something that took getting used to.

DH rented a tuxedo from Cruiseline Formalwear, which we had expected would arrive on the first night. Turns out, it wasn’t meant to (and didn’t) arrive until the second day – but regardless, he had it in time for the formal night, so we were fine.

Stateroom:
We were staying in 1088, a Cat 10 inside on the Panorama deck. This cabin was recommended by the Celebrity agent when we booked, as a very quiet location. Bzzt, totally wrong. Next door seemed to be where all the food prep for the Concierge Class rooms was done, and there was significant noise practically the whole night through (loud enough to keep us awake until 2-3am if we didn’t use earplugs, and loud enough to wake us up again at around 6am). The stateroom was plenty big enough for us, with loads of storage space which really helped make it feel that bit roomier. Other than sleeping, we didn’t spend a lot of time in our room, so having an inside was just fine by us. Our stateroom attendant was lovely, and although we didn’t see much of him, he quickly learnt our ways, and had things just the way we liked them. Although, he never stopped bringing the chocolates at turndown time, and they just weren’t to our taste – so we ended up with rather a collection of them!

Food and drink:
I had planned beforehand that I was going to buy the soda card - but ended up skipping it. The drinks included in the soda card don’t include any kind of lemonade (Sprite/7Up), and I fell in love with the free American-style lemonade (lemons, sugar, water) available in the Islands Cafe (Deck 11). DH went crazy for the tropical fruit cocktail, and so we were set.

We had table 505 for our second-seating dinner. Second seating suited us great - 6pm is just a little early for dinner, for us. Our tablemates included an English couple, a Dutch family (mum, two daughters and DH of one of the daughters), and a Dutch guide/travel-agency liaison. This has got to be one of the best tables in the house - right by the window, with an amazing view straight out the back of the ship. Dinner was quite an affair - starter, soup, salad, main & dessert all as seperate courses. There was no problem with skipping one (or many) courses, but if only one person was having a salad, you still had to wait for that course to be over. The food was lovely, and there was a fairly simple “always-on” menu to order from if none of the daily choices suited your palate.

The room service was a novelty, but I didn’t find the food as good as what we got by just wandering upstairs and grabbing from the various buffet options. We tried it once, and just didn’t bother after that.

We ate in the Islands Bistro (casual dining) one evening - well, I’ve never had a three-course casual dining experience with linen tablecloths & napkins before! Similar enough food and service to the main restaurant, but when I ordered a soup, no salad and DH ordered a salad, no soup, they were able to bring my soup & his salad out at the same time, which was nice. We regularly ate from the pizza/pasta buffet - the pasta was a bit uninspiring, but the ravioli (only found them there once) were absolutely fab. The pizza was also really tasty - obviously nothing beats a real pizza oven, but the stuff onboard was definitely more-ish.

The Murano - all I can say is make a date. This is food as a performance, and the Steak Diane is not to be missed. The zabaglione is also prepared tableside, but it’s not quite as spectacular (although the result is quite lovely!). Try the selection of pastries, definitely. DH fell in love with the foie gras, and my tomato & red pepper soup was so good I had it twice. It’s not quite Michelin-star levels of service/performance, but it’s a lot of fun - and they only take one booking at a time, so when we arrived, they knew straight away who we were, and the maitre’d was able to take the time to introduce himself, settle us in etc, before he had to deal with anyone else.

The cocktails deserve a whole section to themselves - the martini sampler was a lot of fun and beautifully presented. DH had a chocolate chip cookie blast on the first night and is now entering rehab The “drink of the day” isn’t a one-day-only deal (so if you really like Tuesday’s drink, you can have it Wednesday, Thursday and Friday too), although I think it costs a dollar or so more when it’s not “on the day”. Custom cocktails were no problem - anything you could give a recipe for, they’d make. The only thing that was a little frustrating was that the “main” cocktail menu didn’t include recipes for most of the cocktails - although the bar staff were happy to answer any questions. (An “Ole Margarita” is the same as a regular Margarita, for anyone who’s wondering.)

Do try out the different bars - the ambience is very different in each of them - and don’t be afraid to order something that’s not on the menu. The martini bar will do daquiris, and Michael’s Club will serve you a kir if you ask.

Cocktail moment of the cruise: sitting in the theatre, waiting for $next-event to start (I can’t even remember what!), couldn’t decide what I wanted. A waiter came over to ask if we wanted drinks, so I told him I wasn’t sure what I wanted. He informed me that I wanted a Kir Royale - and he was right on the nose It was the perfect choice - and tasty too!

Activities & Spa:
We didn’t join in a whole lot of these – watched a movie I’d been wanting to see (since it came out two years ago), played a few games of trivia (and ended up not even bringing the prizes home), and several games of bingo (never won anything). The Activities staff mentioned a couple of times that it was a particularly quiet cruise, which they explained as being related to the demographic (apparently, we had an unusually high proportion of Europeans and older cruisers, neither of which are particularly activities-inclined groups).
Probably the most fun was the “Polar Bear Dip”, where some of us had a (quick!) swim as we crossed the Arctic Circle. Lots of camaraderie abound as we waited out on the Pool Deck for the countdown!

We paid for a couple’s pass to the Persian Garden – make sure to get the “couple’s” price if you’re getting two! When we asked about prices we were told about it, but when we went to buy, the girl we were talking to had to go check, and was going to charge us for two single passes. Personally, I didn’t really feel it was “worth it” – the sauna was off the first time we went in, and even when it was on, it was pretty cold. Several passengers complained about that, but the spa staff simply said that it was at the temperature they had been told to use, and they weren’t meant to turn it up. There were only six heated beds, hugely oversubscribed, and the same three or four people nearly always “reserved” a bed – often coming in first thing in the morning, putting their towels out, and then disappearing for a few hours. When someone who had been waiting about 15 minutes took the towels off a bed, and used it himself, he got seriously told off by the person who had reserved it – when they came back 45 minutes later. Not a nice experience, even just as an onlooker. There were also two guys who would go in and ignore the “Cover-up is required” signs and strip down. Not the end of the world, but not exactly charming either, especially when there are (free, hot) saunas in the changing rooms that are single-sex (and I didn’t notice any mention of cover-up).

I enjoyed my massage & facial in the Spa – the therapist was excellent, friendly, and not too chatty (which is just how I like it). Although it was an Elemis spa, it seemed quite different to what I’m used to at home – but none the less enjoyable for that. Although the therapist tried to sell me various “products” after the facial, I didn’t find it intrusive or pushy, and she was quite happy to take a simple “no thanks”.

Entertainment & Casino:
The casino was good fun, although a bit intimidating. Apart from the roulette lesson we attended one day, the staff really didn’t seem interested in helping out/explaining anything to anyone who didn’t already know how things worked etc. Great if you know what you’re at, not so great for newbies!

The entertainment was varied, but we really enjoyed almost all of it. Big props to Celebrity for the quality (and number) of classical performances they put on – Brooks Aehron was fantastic, and Dominique Ava was very good, although not quite as much of a “performer”. There was a magician, a Broadway singer, and the various Celebrity groups (orchestra, stage-show singers/dancers, gymnastic duo, barbershop quartet, string quartet, guitarist). They were all both entertaining and well-polished.

Ports of call:
In almost every port we stopped at, there was a small amount of souvenir shopping available just outside the ship. This varied from “NORWAY” t-shirts and baseball caps, to genuine local handcrafts, and in one case, even included a local musician playing traditional Norwegian music. The shop attendants were just how I like them – unobtrusive, happy to let you browse and even leave without so much as a word, but willing to help you with endless rounds of “Will I, won’t I?” if you asked for some help.

Alesund: We got off the ship, and found a nearby, deserted taxi stand. We wandered the town a little bit, looking for another, but came up empty-handed. We returned to the original stand, where a family were waiting, and decided to phone for a taxi. There were two recorded messages in Norwegian, followed by a friendly voice saying “Taxi?”. We managed to book a taxi in English without any difficulty, and it turned up in a matter of minutes. When the other family jumped straight in to the taxi, the driver wouldn’t take them anywhere – he had my name and our destination on his screen, and he wasn’t going to take any fare other than the one that had phoned for him.

We went to the aquarium, which DH really enjoyed, although I was a bit underwhelmed. We were quite impressed at the practicality of the Norwegians – the aquarium was quite clear that fishing is a major industry in Norway, and that yes, many of the creatures found in the aquarium were really rather tasty! We even had a fisherman’s platter in the restaurant, which was pretty delicious. We stayed to watch the diver feeding the fish – a good show – before phoning another taxi back.

Entry to the aquarium cost 240NOK for the two of us, with taxi fares coming to 100NOK on the way out of town, and about 120NOK on the way back. The taxi driver said that it was more expensive because it was a Sunday, but I’m not sure how much more.

Alta: We didn’t get any further than the little shops just off the ship! People who went to see the rock carvings reported being variously underwhelmed and disappointed that the carvings had been painted over to make them more visible. Your mileage may vary.

Honningsvag: We took the North Cape transfer, and despite a high price and rather foggy day, thought it worth it. There was a fairly serious queue for buses back to the boat, but it was well managed by the Celebrity staff at North Cape. The North Cape Hall includes some really sweet models of various expeditions to the North Cape, the scenery on the way up is wild and beautiful (it reminded us of a much steeper version of the Burren, on the Irish west coast), and there are also some interesting sculptures at the North Cape, worth a wander around.

Tromso: The excursion we took here was probably DH’s cruise highlight – the Polar Museum and Wilderness Centre. The Polar Museum left me a little cold – it reminded me of several small, local museums I’d been to as a child, with content of local and some historic importance, but without a real sense of curatorship, or a story to tell. The Wilderness Centre however – well, what’s not to love about 300 sled-dogs and 50-ish puppies? I’m a bit afraid of dogs, but it was easy to admire them from beyond-arm’s-length (they’re all chained up, with plenty of space to play, but enough to let you admire them without getting licked to death either). They were also the most friendly dogs I’ve ever met, and after a little while of cuddling an absolutely adorable puppy, I was happy to play with the full-sized version for a bit before my (now proven to be completely irrational) fear sent me back for another go of the puppies! I’d recommend this excursion to anyone, and we’re already thinking of a return trip to Tromso in the winter, to spend some time at the Wilderness Centre (they do dog-sled tours, overnight trips, and Aurora-watching). The tour description mentioned that we would see the Arctic Cathedral, but it turned out that they meant “from across the bridge, if you look to the left as you drive past at reasonable speed”. Our very informative and helpful guide brought us over the bridge and even managed to squeeze in a ten minute stop at the Cathedral however. I’d highly recommend a visit if you can make it – the stained glass inside is exquisite.

Molde: We took the Atlantic Ocean Road & Fishing Village excursion in Molde, which involved a scenic drive only somewhat spoiled by the most monotonous tour guide I’ve ever come across. The main highlight of the fishing village was actually a WWII lookout post, and some coffee & cakes. I don’t think we saw anything fishy or village-like really, but if you’re into bunkers and lookout posts, it would definitely be your kind of tour! The Ocean Road was picturesque, and included a nice-enough photo stop – but it wasn’t the best thing we saw by any stretch of the imagination, and the photo stop seemed to be more of a pitstop for anyone who’d had too much coffee. So not an excursion I could recommend, on any front really.

Olden: We took a very scenic route past the glacial lakes of Stryn, to the Jostedal Glacier National Park. The excursion included a photo stop at one of the many incredibly beautiful places we saw on this trip. I know it must sound hyperbolic at this point, but the scenery really was out of this world. We took a “troll car” up the mountain for 180NOK per person, as I didn’t feel up to the two-mile hike. Note that while there’s no problem taking a car up and walking down, it’s more difficult to walk up and get a car down. The cars are described as electric in the brochure, but I’m pretty sure they’re not. They’re quite open, which is nice from a scenery point of view, and you’re given a blanket and tarp in case it’s cold/wet. The car left us about fifteen minutes walk from the glacier – or as near as we were meant to go – and came back for us 45 minutes after the drop-off (making the whole trip approx. 90 minutes). There were people who went past the “do not cross” chains, even onto the glacier itself, but we didn’t try it.

Bergen: The highlight of our Bergen Highlights tour was an interested & interesting guide – and the stave church, and the Bryggen… Perhaps I’m jaded, having seen the houses of many famous composers, but Grieg’s house left me a little cold. His mausoleum was in a very picturesque spot, as was the “composer’s hut”, where he supposedly wrote most of his work. The museum seemed to mainly look at his travels and death, while the house was full of portraits, and not much else. The stave church was nothing at all like I had expected – I don’t know where I saw a picture of one, but it was completely unlike the Fantoft example. That didn’t take away from it in any way though. The smell of fresh-cut pine was intense and wonderful, the carvings beautifully intricate, and the craftsmanship just amazing. The Bryggen, or wharf, was like a step back in time, and reminded me a little of childhood visits to the Viking Experience in Dublin – where a Viking village was lovingly recreated, complete with Vikings! I kept expecting a suitably costumed re-enactor to step out from one of the houses, or wave down from a balcony. The ship was docked within sight, and a ten minute walk, from Bryggen.

Auctions:
The highlights of our cruise were provided by the Make-a-Wish foundation auctions. Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and Azamara (I think) support the Make-a-Wish foundation through fundraising and in-kind donations. Several “experiences” and prizes were auctioned off on the second and third sea days (I think! I lost track of time around day two…). I enjoyed a spa package (that I’d already planned on having) knowing that the money I’d paid for it was all going to charity – and that was only the first of many highlights. We had:
- A spa package, including massage and facial
- Dinner in the Murano Restaurant with the Hotel Director and Food & Beverage Manager. These were both very interesting and friendly men, and the Hotel Director even sent us a lovely (completely personalized!) note thanking us for our support and wishing us well for the future.
- Lunch with the Executive Chef. An opinionated but not inexperienced man, the Chef was great fun and gave us a fascinating tour of the galley.
- A night as Cruise Director. The woman who won this at auction didn’t seem to have realized that she was bidding, and seemed rather distraught at the idea of standing up on stage. At her request, I took this “prize”, and presented the evening’s show. I got a DVD of the show afterwards, although I haven’t been able to watch it yet!
- Bridge sailaway from Bergen. Obviously, the captain, pilot and officers were rather busy as we navigated the harbour & fjords – but the chance to see the captain’s office and the bridge was not to be missed, and the views were fantastic! It was also interesting to be able to see the “crew deck”, including pool, that we later discovered some of the crew didn’t even know about! The captain spent some time with us once we were in slightly clearer waters, and was wonderfully friendly and informative.
- The navigational chart from the Grand Foyer, depicting our journey, signed by the ship’s officers. Not really close enough to actually plot a journey on, but certainly a lovely souvenir!
- All our laundry, washed & ironed (and significantly cheaper than it would have been, even if we’d used the “fill a bag” special). Given that we’re emigrating in ten days, this was a biggie for me!
- Dinner with the Celebrity Singers & Dancers. Again, we didn’t actually win this one, but since the prize was a dinner for four, the gentleman who did invited us to join him & his wife. The singers & dancers were, like all the staff, fantastic fun – and it really did feel like dinner with friends. In fact, if anyone gets the brochure from Dance Around the World, can you tell me where Tiffany went to school, so I can look her up on Facebook (not entirely kidding!)
- A tour of the Engine Room with the Chief Engineer. Since visitors aren’t actually allowed into the Engine Room, and the Chief Engineer’s wife was onboard, this was actually a tour of the engine control room, with a cadet and a staff engineer. There was a tour group there when we arrived, and another arrived before we left – apparently, this was a tour that could be had simply by asking Guest Relations. But hey, it was for charity, so what can you do?

We also took part in the art auction – there was only one on this cruise, and it was pretty slow going. The auctioneer did everything he could to get things moving, but by and large, people just weren’t buying. It worked out well for us though, and the auctioneer went way above-and-beyond in trying to help us work out the right address for shipping (we needed an internet connection, and were out of satellite range). It was a fun experience – and I got a free bottle of “champagne” (Asti) when he auctioned it off as the first lot, I won it at $15, and then he told us that it was free!

Disembarkation:
Being the bad and horrible people that we are, we completely neglected to fill out the disembarkation questionnaire as requested, even by the third deadline. When I checked with Guest Relations, they told me that we were assigned a disembarkation time of 08:10, but we could debark any time up to 08:30 – eep! That was a lot earlier than we were expecting (yes, sure, we’re dumb).

We also forgot to give the gratuity envelopes to the right people, but Guest Relations assured us that those people would get their tips regardless.

Our stateroom attendant contacted us on the last day to ask for the return of DH’s tuxedo – we probably should have left it out when we left the room in the morning. There was no problem with it anyway, and he picked it up in the evening.

We had a lot going on throughout the last day, and so it was well after 23:00 when we realized that our luggage was supposed to be put outside our door by 22:00! Still, no-one had asked us for it, and it disappeared some time after midnight, so we went to bed.

When we got to the Celebrity Theatre on the last morning, on the dot of 08:10, there was no one announcing what to do – but we recognized one of the Activities Staff, and he asked us for our colour/number. Turned out, we were right on time, and he directed us straight down to the foyer. One last click of the SeaPass card, and we were off the ship. Our luggage was waiting for us in the Passenger Terminal, and we headed back to Centraal Station to drop it off. Lockers in Centraal were 7EUR/day (for a large one, big enough to hold our large suitcase, or our backpack plus two pieces of hand luggage).

We wandered as far as Dam Square before deciding that making a day of it in Amsterdam just wasn’t happening, so we headed back up Damrak to a place that advertised hotel reservations. They were fantastic to deal with, understood that we needed a room that was available immediately, and weren’t concerned that we didn’t want to stay the night. (I’d be happy to let you know who it was, if you ask, but I’m not sure whether naming-names is ok here.) They suggested that we go for something near the airport, not in the city centre, as there was a significant price difference – they really did seem to be interested in finding the best deal for us, and not just maximizing revenue. Since all we wanted to do was sleep, and being near the airport was an advantage to us, it all worked out brilliantly. They booked us a room in the NH Schiphol Airport Hotel. For 80EUR (plus 8EUR booking fee), we had a “double” (Dutch double = two singles pushed together) in one of the nicest 4* hotels I’ve been in, ten minutes shuttle ride from the airport. It was nice enough that I’d actually consider staying there if I wanted a “weekend away from it all” – including pool, sauna & Jacuzzi!
There was a small amount of confusion on checking in – we had booked so recently that they didn’t have our booking on the computer, but a phonecall to the office sorted it; and on checking out – they didn’t realize that we’d paid a deposit at the hotel reservations place, but were happy to go and look for the piece of paper once we mentioned it.

Summary
This review is long, because I didn’t have time to write a short one. The cruise was fantastic, amazing, beautiful, relaxing, everything we could want. I’m more than happy to answer questions – I just can’t stop talking about the whole thing!

noirin: A Great Irish Tradition

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:47:55 +0000

In ten days time, Stephen and I will be moving to Zurich, Switzerland. Don’t be too surprised if you never got the memo - life’s been rather busy, and I never really had time to send it

Some quick answers to the questions I keep getting asked:

I’ll be starting work as a Technical Writer in Google Zurich, and Stephen will be continuing the job he’s currently doing, from a new location. A technical writer is, according to Wikipedia, “a professional writer who designs, creates, maintains, and updates technical documentation”. I describe my line of work as translating between geek and English.
Yes, the photos you’ve seen of the office are real - it has a fireman’s pole, and a slide, and meeting rooms that look like anything but. No, neither of us speak French or Swiss, but I speak reasonable High German, and if my experience in Munich is anything to go by, we’ll survive just fine with English anyway.
We’re planning on being there for “a while”. We don’t really know how long just yet. It could be three years, or five, or fifty. Probably somewhere in the single digits, but we’ll see how it goes.
Google have provided us with a generous relocation package, and the nice men will be coming to take our stuff away this time next week. Accommodation will be provided initially, as well as assistance in finding our own place.

If you’re around, we’re having a barbeque at my parents’ house on Saturday, starting around 4pm-ish. If you need directions, please let me know. If you didn’t get told about the date previously, sorry for the short notice, and please don’t worry if you can’t make it. We’re leaving, but Zurich really isn’t that far. You can come and visit us if you like, and I’ve already got my tickets booked for my first trip back home.

braz: switchAbit glitch

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:06:49 +0000

Sorry for that last post but I didn't create it. I had signed up with switchAbit to try out their automatic cross-posting tool (e.g. Flickr to Blogger, Facebook, etc or Blogger to Flicker or any such 1 - 1 or 1 - M combination). However I've been a busy bee working on my thesis so haven't had anytime to post anything lately which means the robots are trying to take control of my blog! The joys of beta software, so things have been turned off and hopefully normal service should be restored.

braz: Telas y bordados - México 2008 5976

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:47:00 +0000

radagast: Andrii Nikitin’s son Needs Help - ASAP

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:02:39 +0000

(Reposted from Zack Urlocker’s blog, via Vidyut Luther and planet MySQL. I don’t usually repost such things but a 2.5 year old’s health is at stake so I’m making an exception. If you use mysql at all - and even if you don’t - please dig deep.)

Andrii and his son Ivan

Andrii Nikitin, one of the MySQL support engineers located in Ukraine, has asked for help from MySQLers and so I’m sharing this information to the community at large. Andrii’s son Ivan, who is 2 1/2, is in need of a bone marrow transplant operation. This will require going to a clinic in Europe that will not be covered by regular insurance. So Andrii has asked to see if we could help raise funds. The cost is expected to be €150,000 - €250,000. A huge amount for an engineer from Ukraine to cover. But a small amount by many people could make a big difference.

Many MySQLers have kicked in to help out, but more is needed. Ivan’s health has taken a turn for the worse recently and the issue is now quite pressing. Even a small donation could mean the difference between life and death for Ivan.

I hope some of you who use MySQL or have young kids will join me in making a donation today. You can do so by using Paypal, by sending a cheque to MySQL, or via wire transfer.

Paypal:
Paypal
Or
by check payable to:

MySQL, Inc.
Mail to: MySQL, Inc.
Attn: Linda Dong
20450 Stevens Creek Blvd #350
Cupertino, CA 95014

or
US wire transfer:

MySQL Inc: 7396643001
SWIFT: NDEAUS3N

or
International wire transfer in any currency:
Bank: Nordea Bank
Bank address: Stockholm, Sweden
Bank account: 3259 17 03868
IBAN: SE27 3000 0000 0325 9170 3868
SWIFT: NDEASESS

Thanks to those who have donated already. A child’s life is precious and I hope we can give Ivan a chance.

ducky: City living isn't for me...

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:50:03 +0000

I just saw a lady help her (roughly) 3 year old boy pee down the storm grating at the side of my street

bigbro: State of the Map, 2008

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:23:00 +0000

The Kilmurry Lodge Hotel in Limerick is playing host to well over 100 mapping enthusiasts this weekend, for an in depth view of the Open Streetmap project. Thanks to a persuasive Steve Coast, and trojan work by one Christian van den Bosch, the second international State of the Map conference was brought to Ireland; and thanks to the generous loan of equipment and expertise from HEAnet, the Irish NREN, we have the technology to make video recordings of the presentations.

It's been fantastically interesting thus far. I brought a car full (literally, including the entire back seat and some of the passenger seat) of cabling, adaptors, microphones and gaffer tape. I've used most of what I brought :)
We've been a victim of our own success, for the first time running out of IP space in the /16 allocated to wireless networking. I'm now regretting only bringing a single wireless access point, though dropping the lease time for the addresses appears to have helped. I was also marginally surprised at how many of the devices in the DHCP table were obviously iPod / iPhone type devices. It would appear that the average Open Streetmap contributor is slpa bang in the middle of the Apple target market :)

I'll post up links to the talks as soon as they're available.

Edit: Of course, I meant that a /24 was allocated to the wireless access point. I've never managed to make OpenWRT handle anything over a /24's worth of addresses. Apologies for implying that we had upwards of 64,000 devices on our conference network: my guess is it was more like ~300.

tyrion: Week 4 & 5: “A person who speaks good English in New York sounds like a foreigner.”

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:30:21 +0000

Work has been hectic the last two weeks, I’ve been working 12+ hour days to get a CMS finished for a client, but thankfully it’s all done and finished now (let’s just hope there are no fatal bugs, like uploading a GIF will DROP a table or something else weird).

Agnès arrived in NY on Tuesday. Herself and artemis dropped up to the office and we sat around chatting for a few hours. I also met up with Agnès on Saturday afternoon for Lunch.

I’ve noticed a bizzarity in social event attendance etiquette. I’m not sure if it’s a New York thing or an American thing (I’m told it’s a New York thing) but saying you’ll attend x social event and actually attending it mean two completely different things.

On each of social outings I’ve had with American folk only 0-25% of them have shown up. Even for a co-workers birthday (which was joined with a going away party, as we weren’t going to she her for a few months) only about a quarter of the people who said they’d show up actually came. I suppose it’s something I’m just not used to, if you say you’ll be somewhere, you’d better have a good reason for not showing. Sure, you may be late, that’s almost expected, but to not show up, with no excuse? To not even call or text to say that you cant make it after you’ve made a commitment seems very aloof.

Also, there is a certain amount of suspicion and second guessing of ones motives in social encounters. A lady in a Subway station a few weeks back asked if a certain line stopped at a particular station. I told her that I didn’t know. I then tried to make small talk by saying that I’d just arrived, that the city was new to me and the I had only really taken one of the lines. I was glared at, as it to say “I only asked you for directions, nothing more. How dare you try and talk to me”.

Anyway, I went to see Infected Mushroom on Saturday in Webster Hall. It’s a really cool venue. There was Rap/Hip-Hop playing in the basement, trance/house on the ground floor, the band were playing on the Ballroom (which has a balcony for VIPs) and there was some Minimal Techno in an Upstairs room. There was also an EBM DJ playing before and after Infected Mushroom in the Ballroom. Infected Mushroom are a band who I’ve been into for about a year and I’m quite glad I saw them, considering I missed a free Coldplay gig and a Freezepop concert. I hope to get a few more gig’s in before I head home; I have my eye on Regina Skeptor, Bloc Party and Foo Fighters.

On Monday I wandered over to artemis’ to watch Dexter. I’ve also been watch a bit of Curb your Enthusiasm with my flatmates, Greg and Nanda. Both shows are pretty good and this has been the first time I’ve seen either.

I got a new phone on Saturday, a Nokia N70 (Music Edition). It’s a small step up from the 6680, but it’s got a better camera, more RAM and an Active Standby screen (which Vodafone decided the 6680 didn’t need, so they stripped it out). All my apps from the 6680 also just worked straight away when I pop’d my old card into the new phone, which was really handy. I also picked up a BL-6C (at last) and a Bluetooth Keyboard. Here’s a great list of S60 handsets (maintained by Steve Litchfield) which I’ve used for reference since I’ve owned an N-Gage.

I went to my first Movie Premier/screener on Wednesday. Some of the nice people in Media at Large gave us tickets. It’s called The Rocker and is basically a story about Pete Best. In a hilarious coincidence it actually contains Pete Best, playing a cameo role. There was one line I found amusing where a bland hippstr type is referred to as “[...] like Abercrombie are making people”.

I’ve just watched Once twice, the second time with the commentary. It’s been the first time in years that I’ve liked a film enough to watch it a second time, with the commentary. It’s a film everyone should watch.

I saw one more cockroach in the basement. I don’t consider two in a month to be an infestation but apparently the germphobic upstairs thinks otherwise and has asked the landlord to get the building fumigated. Germphobia is another big thing I’ve noticed over here, but I’ll leave my comments on that till another day.

froodie: An update.... since then there's been steak and beer.

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:00:34 +0000

Once again, I'm typing on a train. I'm starting to think that the only way I will get my never-to-be-written novel so much as begun would be to take a trip across australia on a train. That's not to say that I do my best writing on a train, but definitely my only writing, these times.

It's hard to say what else I actually do, aside from the usual 'very little'. There are all these plans, not even at the embryonic stage... just the whisper of a promise of an idea, that never get anywhere. And I've got very little to show for the time I do spend doing whatever it is that I do.

That said, work seems to be going well at the moment. I could be wrong, but I'm feeling a lot more comfortable and confident in what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. I deserve my paycheques, dammit. And I'm going to use those paycheques to move somewhere nice for a while. Well, somewhere nice within the confines of Limerick city. The Castletroy game has been getting old all its life and it's time to be callous and kick the entire suburb to the kerb.

So, fingers crossed, in a couple of weeks I'll be living in high-rise luxury down the Dock Road. Believe it only when you see it.

Last time I was near this thing, plans were afoot. Well, those plans are now afinger - the long finger, this time... but we're still going to go, it's just that now the whole thing is over a year away so it doesn't feel real. Hopefully I'll get to continue doing what I'm doing for the moment, and gathering money for the great escape. Just between ourselves, I've been keeping an eye on the jobs page in Radio New Zealand... while it's probably a long-shot that something would come up, a few years back in the Land of the Long White Cloud would be a welcome break from the land of the unending lumpy grey pissing clouds that we seem to have gotten lumped with as a result of the ultimate misnomer (global warming).

And as I typed that, there appeared in the sky just enough blue to patch a Dutchman's trousers... a saying that I found in a story years ago, anyone else remember it, or is it just me? I'd fancy some nice weather for the weekend. I am working Friday, but would quite like to actually get up to something on Saturday, and whatever it may be, I'd quite like it to be one of those things that only happen with the permission of the glorious (and somewhat bitter and vindictive) weather god. So I won't propose picnics or parades, because sure as eggs are bird's periods, the weather god is reading over my shoulder and flexing his (her?) thwarting muscles, just for kicks. But, you know, if such things could chance to pass, would you be game?

Ah, yeah. You're probably at Oxegen getting pissed on and set on fire. Ah sure, what harm. You're only young once. And my advice is make it last as long as possible.

bigbro: Bind Vulnerability

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:16:00 +0000

After yesterday's worldwide BIND DNS update, I noticed that on Ubuntu systems, at least, the package maintainer provides a db.root with IPv4 addresses only, for the root zone DNS servers. If you want IPv6 connectivity to the root nameservers (or at least the ones that have IPv6 connectivity available) you can update your root zone to the latest definitive one available with the following command:

dig +bufsize=1200 +norec NS . @198.41.0.4 > /etc/bind/db.root

Note that your DNS root hints file, db.root, will now have AAAA records detailing the IPv6 addresses for those root servers that support them.

radagast: LinkedIn Usability Woes (or “How come there are two Irish Linux Users Groups?”)

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:49:55 +0000

One of my fellow members of the Irish Linux Users Group posted a link to a newly created LinkedIn Group so that members could connect to each other using the Group as a reference point.
It’s a shame that LinkedIn don’t [yet] provide a search facility for locating such groups as I had already created such a group for ILUG back in October last year - however it does prove a point that it hadn’t been getting much publicity for ILUG members to make use of it.
To prevent this from happening again I’ve placed prominent links for the linkedin and facebook groups on the linux.ie website.
Thankfully there were only a handful of people that joined the second group before we noticed this gaff but it does highlight yet another usability issue with linkedin, which is this:

Importing a CSV file requires you to have firstname, lastname and email address in the file. Why? The people you reference in the file must already be on linkedin so just providing their email address should suffice.
Manually entering this data on the linkedin website can only be done one record at a time; and again you must provide the persons firstname, surname and email address - heaven help you if you enter Thom E. Gemcitty rather than Thom E Gemcitty for example - round trips to the server for adding such data is so web 0.1; I would expect this data to be entered in a spreadsheet-like-grid that the user then verifies and saves.

radagast: Book Review: Learning jQuery

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:36:08 +0000

Packt sent me a copy of “Learning jQuery” by Jonathan Chaffer and Karl Swedberg. jQuery is a javascript library that I have been using on and off and was delighted to be given a chance to review this book and have a chance to read through and learn about jQuery in a less urgent manner than I had initially.

With a tag-line of “Better Interaction Design and Web Development with Simple JavaScript Techniques” and some 376 pages long (split into 10 chapters, along with three appendices) the book excels at fulfilling that promise.

From the chapter on Getting Started through selectors (css, dom, xpath), Chaffer and Swedberg examine and show how to use jQuery for animations, ajax and manipulating tables to the all important client-side form validation with disarmingly concise eloquence and skill. They also detail how to use and develop jQuery Plug-ins.

Any of the required server-side code examples, for the AJAX chapter, are in PHP but that doesn’t make the book any less relevant or more specialised towards PHP - it should be trivial to rework them for any language.

The authors use an example based approach and this works very well as they continue to progressively enhance each example with additional features and functionality - you can really see their shopping cart and image carousel examples really build up into very well formed examples of what can be done with jQuery.

If you haven’t already been turned on to jQuery by it’s excellent on-line documentation and fluent API (method chaining), this is the book that will do it.

There is one caveat though: “Learning jQuery” was written for jQuery v1.1 and published in June 2007; version 1.2 of jQuery was released four months later with some substantial changes to the API.
This doesn’t matter all that much to be honest; obviously this book doesn’t cover what’s available in v1.2 but until there’s a second edition of this book (and wouldn’t that be great?) you won’t find a better book on the subject.

braz: Two Places Hanging Gardens installation review in CIRCA Art Magazine

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:06:49 +0000

The installation, Hanging Gardens that Jurgen Simpson and I created for the Two Places exhibition have gotten some great reviews in CIRCA (Issue 124, Summer 2008). This exhibition ran concurrently in two locations, hence two places, in the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast and in the University of Limerick.

The Belfast aspect of the piece was reviewed by Niall de Buitlear who said

Jurgen Simpson and Eoin Brazil have collaboratively produced Hanging garden. The piece, more than any other in the show, creates an environment in which the audience is immersed; it is a simulation of garden in which sixteen speakers represent insects or other small animals which react to each other and to the movements of the audience. The piece responds directly to the architecture of the gallery, in this case the overhead metal grid which is the most distinctive feature of the mezzanine space at OBG.

Overall the exhibition is varied in terms of the quality of the works on show and their engagement with the context of the exhibition. It is at its most rewarding, as in SHRDLU/BELFAST and Hanging garden, when the work responds to the architectural space while engaging the viewer with a range of abstract, suggestive possibilities.

The Limerick aspect of the piece was reviewed by Karen Normoyle-Haugh who said

Perhaps the most successful work in this exhibition is Hanging Gardens by Jurgen Simpson and Eoin Brazil. Occupying the hallway upon entering a campus building, it provides ample space for the viewer to sit and listen to the sounds. Hanging gardens consists of sixteen speakers, each one generating its own sound in response to the sounds around it. Sensors pick up movement within the space and this affects the level and rate of the sound both in Limerick and Belfast through the use of an internet connection. The eerie tinkling and croaking sounds are interspersed with sounds reminiscent of chirping crickets.

Again the work had to compete with a noisy environment. Undoubtedly the idea behind using the campus was that students would, unawares, happily stumble upon the sound artworks. It would unsettle them, disturb them, give them an experience of sound art. However noble the idea, the reality was far from ideal.

I will have to admit to being over the moon at getting such great press and while there were a few wrinkles in the UL end, it was a great experience. Sonic art works well in gallery spaces but in busy campus environments it has got to be notched up but doing so in collaboration with the denizens of a space is not always as easy as it seems. I'm really glad to have had the opportunity to have worked with Jurgen and we're already thinking about a couple of other ideas for future work.

In case you missed it, here's a clip from Limerick of the piece.