David Morris – brassedoff.net

WoolforBrains and I had a vote as to who would get the photograph of the Hallowe’en pumpkins for their blog. As I did the carving and took the picture, I won!

As I was typing it this morning before I left for work, it set me in mind of a reworking of an Abba song done by the Not The Nine O’Clock News team some years ago. Let me know if you know which one I mean!

One of us is real, one of us is not;

One of us is made of pot, the other one is not!

You can see from the left-hand pumpkin that I slipped a couple of times with the knife and some running repairs had to be performed with a cocktail stick. This particular pumpkin is significant in that it came from our allotment, grown from seed, which makes it a bit special for us. The right-hand one is actually a ceramic one we bought a few years ago from one of the local stores.

On the travel front, I’ve managed to get away quite sucessfully for the last four or five years without doing any business travel. By Christmas, I’ll have been away four times since September. I’ve had a week in the USA, a combined two days in Paris and Dusseldorf, I’m now off to Dusseldorf again next week for a day and a half, and three days before Christmas, I’m off to Dusseldorf again. For the Christmas trip, WoolForBrains and Daniel are also going with me although I’ve got to work.

Final rant for today…

I’ve been supporting and contributing to the Killamarsh Forum over the past few weeks. I went to check it out this morning and it appears that the forum owner hasn’t paid the hosting fee and the account is suspended.

Last week, he / she decided to update the forum software and suceeded in losing several months of posts and membership records. We were told after the event that the forum had been updated.

Honestly, if that had been me in a working environment, I would have fully expected to have been shot. There’s no excuse for it.

The forum is PHP based with a mySQL backend. Why couldn’t the new software be tested first? It would have run on a WIndows or Linux box and any migration of data could have been tested before the system was made live. The fact that this person decided to set up a forum off their own bat is to be commended. Aso to be commended is the fact that they’ve managed to get an established community participating and have been trying to get some local publicity for the forum. To then destroy the community with what can only be described as a botched upgrade, then for whatever reason having the account suspended, doesn’t reflect very well. On this last matter, I dare say there are perfectly valid reasons for the account appearing to be suspended. I’m not party to them. I’m only looking at it from the point of view of an outsider and forum user. Heck, for what the hosting costs are, I’d be prepared to pay the damned costs myself. (If you’re reading this, Mr Forum Administrator, leave me a comment or email me – I’m sure we can come to some arrangement).

Some people want to get into IT but honestly have a lot to learn.

Two entries in one day I know is a bit excessive, but in my defence the one I filed this morning was about last night.

I joined the rest of the Killamarsh community in helping to clear up the canal as it passes through the village… and boy did we get some rubbish. We unearthed a lager can mine under the railway bridge between Station Road and Walford Road.

In fact, not only was it a lager can mine, it was full of wire fencing – we pulled out about four metres of it, platic bags, crisp packets, drinks cans, drinks bottles… you name it.

I suppose the only saving grace is there were no “contaminated sharps” if you get my drift. three of us pulled out around eight bin bags of rubbish plus the wire fencing.

Does anyone want to own up to the unleaded petrol can? Or the 5 litre emulsion paint can (and brush)? Empty ice cream tub?

Hopefully none of this belongs to anyone reading this, but if it does, I hope you’re disgusted with yourselves.

…along with all those who walk their dogs on this route and can’t be bothered to clear up the c**p left behind by your pooch.

Why were we tidying up this route? It’s all part of the development of a green access route through the village, to encourage poeple to leave their cars at home and enjoy a scenic walk through the centre of the village along a clean, litter-free route.

I wonder how long it will stay this way.

During a quick coffee break, on an unseasonally warm later October morning, I did get chance to have a go at a more ‘artsy’ shot, of the sun coming down through the girders of the old railway bridge.

Not much of one I know, but it’s the thought that counts!

One final word.

Did anyone sense any irony in my voice when I said up at the top that I’d joined members of teh local community in helping to clear up this route?

Well, as at 1pm when I signed out, the only people that had shown up and signed in at the appointed location to contribute any effort were three members of the Chesterfield Canal Trust (not including me who is a member, but not in the serious sense) and Angela Greenwood from the Regeneration Partnership office.

Perhaps everyone else got confused with the clocks changing today.

We went to Sheffield Arena last night to see the 10th Annual Supercross event. There are two motorbike-type events at the Arena. One where the riders race like fury around a dirt track and one where they perform balancing acts on improbable obstacles. The supercross is the former.

Think ice hockey at the arena. Then, rethink…

The arena is filled with tonnes of dirt, packed and formed into shape. Men and boys on motorbikes throw themselves around the track at high speeds, flying through the air as they hit the jump on the finish line (left of shot).

It’s an amazing sight. Even better in my opinion than the pros are the amateurs and even better than that, the youngsters, as young as six, on 65cc automatic machines. They don’t have the power and speed to do some of the bigger jumps, but the races are just as exciting.

This is an international event with pro riders from all over the world, and young riders from all over the UK and Europe. In the 85cc big wheel (?) category, we even had some local sucess with a lad from Eckington (just down the road for non-local readers) getting second place.

I must remember, next time I’m moaning about mini-moto riders around Rother Valley and the local bridle paths that these youngsters could be the internationla supercross stars of the future.

On the other hand, they could be little thugs on motorbikes making a nuisance of themselves. I hope the ones we saw fall into the former category.

I shoudl also apologise for the less than good photography. I was using the Olympus and because the lighting wasn’t great, I’d pushed the ISO setting on the camera as far as I could – up to 400. It wasn’t really enough though, and the photos were taken at around F2.8 and 1/20s. Not ideal for action shots really!

Last night at The Arena: Steelers vs Belfast Giants. The cornet made another appearance, plus something that I suspect hasn’t been witnessed at the House of Steel for many years – two brass instruments, ‘cos t’other trumpter was there. He even sought me out during the break whilst I was talking to a friend. “No, I wasn’t really bothered about standing on top of the Whitehouse, thankyou. I’ve never found a need to in nearly 15 years of playing at games, and I’m not about to start now”.

Giants took an early lead and went in after the first 0-1 up. We came out a little more fired up and got the score to 4-1. Belfast had other ideas, and helped by some interesting calls from Moray Hanson, it was soon 4-4 then 4-5 as Belfast took the lead with minutes to go. Netminder Jody Lehman was pulled for the extra skater and a tactic that doesn’t seem to pay off that often got Sheffield the equaliser with 30 seconds to go.

In the overtime four on four that ensued, there were good attempts from both sides, but it was Belfast that eventually managed the break for the overtime sudden death win.

Sheffield got one point out of it. It should have been more.

One final thought… today would have been my Dad’s birthday.

Now, I’ll freely admit, as an IT professional, PC World isn’t my favourite shop. Generally overpriced with staff that they brag aren’t PC experts, just ordinary people, is there any wonder why? Sometimes though, you don’t have much choice… and that’s how I came to be inthere today to buy some up-to-date protection for my PC.

I’d decided on McAfee Internet Suite priced at £50 having first checked the retail prices on McAfee’s web site. WHen I got to the store, the price was the same (good news there), but the higher spec package, Total Protection, was strangely priced up at only £41.99. I range and checked with woolforbrains and the listed retail price was £60.

No contest really then, and I advised the couple looking for a similar package to do the same and take the cheaper better package.

When I arrived at the checkout, the till said £60 for the software, but correctly, they sold it to me at the tagged price, PFY on the till saying that he’d get the prices changed.

As an aside, why do PC World plug Norton / Symantec so? It’s probably OK to put on and run with, but it’s such a bitch if you ever need to install it IMO.

Update (22-Oct)…

It would be fine if I could get the whole thing installed and working properly. As it stands at the moment, I can’t get virus scan to fully install. The suggested fix is to reinstall, but despite repeated reinstalls, it won’t. Anyone got any ideas?

Update (23-Oct)…

The McAfee “completely uninstall every McAfee product in the whole wide world ever, reset all the registry keys and reset any security” program cured the problem. It took a couple of goes. The first time, it fired up a command window, some stuff scrolled past then it cleared. I assumed it had finished so shot down the box, about which time a further window popped up and did more “stuff”. The subsequent reinstall failed, so I repeated the process and left it this time. 30 seconds or so after the first command window closed, the second opened and ran for another couple of minutes. At the end of this process, it prompted for a reboot. The install after this reboot worked fine.

Where would you find the miracle of programming? Here

This one’s a bit of a monster post, catching up with European travels.

On Tuesday, I set off on a trip to take in our Paris and Dusseldorf offices with a colleague, sorting out configuration issues on the PCs and, I suppose, doing a bit of flag waving.

It started badly. The weather on the trip over to Manchester was rough – foggy over the top although it brightened up as we dropped down into Manchester. At the airport, using the new e-checkin terminals for BA, I managed to get my colleague checked in but not me, despite having bought both tickets on my card, and despite the BA woman saying that the system would know that my ticket was on my colleague’s card even though it would know nothing about his card. Like duh, missis. It transpired that I’d got a duplicate booking, and instead of cancelling one, BA cancelled both then never reinstated one. The company travel agents seemed to know about this but thought that BA had reinstated the booking. Confused? Eventually, after not quite swearing at various people, the ticket got reinstated and I managed to get checked in.

The flight to Paris CDG was fairly uneventful. It was a BA Connect service which basically meant cut price “if you want refreshments, get your cash out”. Not a problem – we’d grabbed sandwiches at the airport anyway.

The booked taxi was waiting for us when we got out of the airport and we joined the Paris peripherique and made like the rest of the traffic and stopped…. then moved a bit… and stopped some more… for ninety minutes until we got to the hotel. Not bad after a fifty minute flight. This ninety minutes included spending some 15 minutes staring at the back of a French police car whilst the taxi driver got a ticket for not being a taxi and driving in a bus lane.

Hitel. Adequate. Not earth shattering, but it had a bar, restaurant and bedroom. The evening meal was washed down with wine and / or beer… we didn’t feel up to exploring the local area to find elsewhere to eat.

The day in the office was exhausting – joining reticent machines into the corporate domain, copying profiles on machines that didn’t want to have their profiles copied, installing software… forgetting lunch, then waiting for the (same) taxi driver to find the offices, twenty minutes late.

These twenty minutes meant getting stuck behind an accident on the peripherique and watching the seconds tick ever closer to the time the plane was due to leave.

We made it with no more than twenty mintes to spare, and to our surprise, ended up in Business class on the flight between Paris and Dusseldorf. “Champagne, orange juice or water sir?” Let me think… not a difficult decision.

A short taxi ride from Dusseldorf put us at the swanky Steigenburger Park Hotel - only the top hotel in Dusseldorf. Apparently, all the other hotels were booked up for an exhibition. What a bugger. I had to disappoint the bellboy – I daren’t let him carry the luggage because I’d only got 20EURO notes and I thought that was a bit excessive for a tip!

That evening, we had a couple of beers and sandwiches from the bar menu.

The rooms were beautifully appointed, nice beds, lovely bathrooms, cable TV… all mod cons – no free WiFi though.

Breakfast was also very nice – a buffet with plenty of choice.

The day’s work was easy – most of the machines cooperated and the pizzas provided by our German colleagues for lunch went down a treat.

One of the staff dropped us off at the airport five minutes drive away. We had enough time to master the e-checkin system (no problems this time) and had time to pick up a few gifts at the duty-free.

An uneventful flight home, 90 minutes drive back from Manchester (longer than the flight – perhaps all transfers tend to being 90 minutes – maybe there’s a theory of airport taxi journeys waiting to be developed somewhere).

It looks like someone will have to be back in Germany around 21st December for a couple of days as well. My hand’s up!

Paris? Hmmm. I might just get someone else to volunteer for that one!

I’ve just tried twice to book some cinema tickets so we could go to see Open Season this afternoon with Woolforbrains and Daniel. I don’t normally mis-type my card details, so I was surprised when I got a denied card error on the UGC web site. Ah well, back around and try again… denied again. Funny. I rang the bank up and eventually got through – a big queue on the phones which is unusual for First Direct. When I did get through, the slightly harrassed-sounding lady asked if I’d been declined.

“Yes, twice” I replied.

“Ah, the reason phones were going crazy and we have over 200 callers queuing is that the whole of the UK debit card processing system had gone belly up. I suggest you try again in thirty or forty minutes.”

By that time, I’d already booked the tickets on credit card, but image the chaos that could cause, especially if, as woolforbrains has just ponted out, it happened on a weekday or Saturday?

Know what this is?

It’s a scruffy cornet.

What’s special about it?

Well, at some time, this cornet has been to most of the ice hockey rinks in this country where professional ice hockey is played. It’s taunted officials and players and even the occasional opposing supporter. It’s also been in a cupboard for around six years.

After a straw poll on the Steelers mailing list over the last week, I decided to get it out and give it an airing again. It needed an hours-worth of Brasso to get it looking something like, not to mention a full internal inspection, flush out and valve clean.

(I do have another cornet – a medium-bore B&H Sovereign which doesn’t go to hockey games. the only concession is that I use the same gob-iron when I’m playing properly as when I blast at games. That way, I maintain some modicum of an embrouchure).

I think that’s the correct spelling – dictionary.com doesn’t have anything close that fits the bill, but whjat can you expect? It is American.
Anyway, back to the plot…

A bit of TLC and it was back in working order again.
It’s a pity the same couldn’t be said about the team. Two goes down at the end of the first, Phil Hill pulled one back and we conceded another to go down 1-3 to the Edinburgh Capitals.

One guy, seeing me carrying the cornet between periods asked if it had been me playing it (odd question really in the circumstances). “It was my brother”. Honestly!

I’ve had a problem with Wordpress image uploads not creating thumbnails as they should.

If you’ve had a similar problem and you’ve checked the various resources truned up through Google, just have a quick look at your apache log file. When I checked mine, it turns out that PHP was aborting with an “out of memory” error. The giveaway was that after an upload, the pane on the posting page that allows you to upload new images wasn’t refreshing after the upload.

I fixed the situation by editing my php.ini file and increasing the memory_limit value from 8M to 32M. this may be overkill (my server’s got 1 gig), but the image upload works properly now. If you do make this change, don’t forget to restart apache (if you’re using mod_php5).

Look at the website (thumbnail left)

It’s the official web site of Killamarsh.

It’s owned and operated by Killamarsh Parish Council.

It’s horrible, isn’t it?

I’ve complained about it twice now and am awaiting a response from the Parish Council.

This travesty of a web site ranks second if you search google for Killamarsh. What sort of an impression do you think it creates for prospective home buyers or investors planning on moving into the area? Not only that, but there are guidelines for accessibility for partially sighted people, and I’m sure some of the choice of colours are less than helpful.

On top of everything else, it’s got bad grammar. I’m sure whoever wrote it didn’t mean to say “Unsung Hero’s”… that really means something like “Unsung hero is…”. Perhaps they meant “Unsung Heroes”.

The Dracula Panto page dates back to 2004 and doesn’t have a page title. The “contact us” page is blank. Just have a look at those rollover effects on the sidebar as well. The links change to bold forcing the whole sidebar to re-render.

It’s all very amatuerish.

I’m no great shakes on the web design front, but I have emailed the Parish Council and offered to attend a meeting and discuss the website with them. I’ve even offered to put something together with their assistance that might do a marginally better job of selling the village.

Whilst driving somewhere around Bawtry today, we passed a quarry… a quarry where they supply sand and gravel.

Specifcally, it was the Rotherham Sand and Gravel Company.

If you try to say the abbreviated name of the company, it sounds like R-SAG, or specifically arse-sag.

Now, try explaining to six-year-old son in the back of the car why Mum and Dad are wetting themselves in fits of juvenile laughter at this nearly-rude sounding company name, which of course makes it all the funnier…

Whilst watching Mythbusters tonight, I’ve just seen an advert for First Plus loans – the one fronted by Carol Vorderman. In this advert, she suggests that you could consolidate your credit with a First Plus loan. All the other similar adverts seem to want you to consolidate your debt.

Now, in this context, what’s the difference? Sure, consolidation of credit sounds much less like “I’ve got financial problems” than consolidation of debt.

Discuss.