UnorthodoxY Archive It's wasn't what you thought

May 15, 2008

Closure

Filed under: General — SpaceDog @ 11:28 am

Time taken to refit my bathroom: 6 months with around 2 weeks actual work.

Time taken to refit my kitchen: 3 weeks with around 2 weeks actual work.

Admitedly it cost three times as much to do the kitchen but I doubt that altered the timescales, it’s probably more that Fraser Joinery don’t suck. Although their website could do with some work.

I’d have liked the kitchen to be finished before the weekend, but in the end it didn’t matter since I spent the weekend in Cardiff baking in the sunshine and occasionally making a fool of myself (by barking like a dog on stage in front of a bunch of tourists for example).

All of this means my life returns to a vague sort of normal for the next few weeks and I can hopefully catch up with the pictures and posts I’m missing from my recent trips.

The normality only lasts until the end of the month, at which point I head off on another long tourкомпютри втора употреба around Europe.

May 1, 2008

Hacked !

Filed under: General — cosmichound @ 6:04 am

Eeek, I’ve been hacked. This morning I received a helpful e-mail from Google, an extract:

We recently discovered that some of your pages can cause users to be
infected with malicious software. We have begun showing a warning page
to users who visit these pages by clicking a search result on Google.com.
Below are some example URLs on your site which can cause users to be
infected (space inserted to prevent accidental clicking in case your
mail client auto-links URLs):

Eeek!

A quick look through the source reveals some dubious looking iframes (so that’s what NoScript has been bitching about, I thought it was just the new 2.5 wordpress code.)

I’ve cleaned up the code, deleted the bogus user, and changed some settings to help prevent this in the future. I’m running the latest WordPress code so I imagine this happened after I updated to 2.5 and before I applied the 2.5.1 security fix. I doubt it’s been around longer as I would have seen the warnings from noscript.

Anyroads, if you browse the site without virus protection from Internet Explorer then you’re an idiot — but you might want to consider getting your computer checked out anyway.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Damn hackers.

March 20, 2008

Boat to Belgium

Filed under: General,Life,Travel — Tags: , , , , — SpaceDog @ 1:15 pm

The next stop in my Eurotour was Belgium, and I opted to mix it up a bit and get the SuperFast ferry across. It’s cheap, £31 for the overnight crossing in an airline style seat, and it means I can visit Bruges which is supposed to be a highlight of the country. Full posts and pictures coming up but here’s some advice and reflections on the crossing.

First up, sleeping, the seats are much bigger and more comfortable than those on a plane. The downside is that the seats are right beside a corridor and the kids play area is just round the corner, worse is that the lighting is left on full power all night. If noise and light are going to keep you up then take earplugs and a eye-mask, I just bundled my jacket over my head and got a fair bit of sleep but the noise was too much by around 9am and I was forced to decamp to the bar with a book.

The buffet on the ship was good, but pricey at just a shade under twenty quid. It looks like it would have been as cheap to eat in the à la carte restaurant, although I’ve no idea about the quality. You’re on the boat for almost 18 hours so you can’t really avoid the food, maybe you could get by with snacks and stuff out the shop but I think you’ll just got to accept that that’s were they make some of their money.

Last piece of advice, be aware there’s no ATM or money exchange in Zeebrugges port. There’s not much to buy but you’ll need money for the bus into Bruges, so have some Euros or buy the ticket on the boat.

So what was the trip like? Well, it was … interesting. As the boat filled up and the night wore on I realised that it was an interesting mix of people. It’s like an alien was charged with assembling a representative group of humanity and he dutifully picked up the business traveller, the young family, the sole blogger, and then got bored and just emptied the worst dancing-round-a-handbag nightclub he could find and mopped up an old folks home to make up the numbers. Perhaps a (blurry) picture will help.

Pink Hat

Those hats were on the tables in the main bar when I first arrived, people supplied their own pink wigs, silly sunglasses and general fancy dress.

There were three bars on the ship, the main bar had the bulk of the clubbers while the others were much quieter, mostly with families or groups of older folk. There was a dubious lounge singer of exactly the sort you’d expect to find on a boat in the more sophisticated bar, but apart from that they were fairly dull and they shut early. There’s also a dubious looking cinema, and what’s laughingly called a casino — in reality a blackjack table and a stack of fruit machines.

Seeking distraction I sat down at the sole gaming table, turns out it wasn’t blackjack but was pontoon which has different rules (notably, the house wins on a draw, giving them an advantage and throwing my strategy into disarray). As always I lost, but I did manage to waste a couple of hours playing and drinking for not much money. Chatting to the other players I discovered that the cruise isn’t always this odd, apparently I’d got caught up in an eighties theme cruise — hence the mad costumes and 80s disco.

The real shock was the number of people that were doing the crossing to spend four hours in Belgium and then just head back that night. It’s really just a big floating nightclub with a few hours to buy duty free thrown in. Each to their own I guess, it just seems a bit strange.

Everything on the boat costs money so it’s always going to be somewhere between boring and expensive. Again I wondered if I should have taken my laptop, but there is nowhere secure to leave it so I’d have to carry it everywhere or chain it to my seat. Overall I enjoyed the crossing, everything is well run and the surreal atmosphere helped. Plus you get some excellent views of Edinburgh as you’re heading out to sea, I’ll try and put some examples on Flickr once I’ve had a chance to sort through my pictures.

There are more ferries in my future so I look forward to comparing the experiences.

February 22, 2008

Still Alive

Filed under: General — SpaceDog @ 5:45 pm

Well, I’m still alive, in case anyone was wondering.

I’ve been from Paris to Luxembourg (too small, and closed), then via brief changeovers in Cologne and Prague to spend the last two nights in Bratislava in Slovakia. I’ll post more details of each city when I get back (no, really I will!).

My feet are killing me from old boots and too many ‘walking cities’, my brain is fried from changing currencies and language every two days, the changing food has done nothing good for my body and the strong beer has done nothing good for my head.

I’ve done all I can think of in Bratislava, I’m out of season so things have been quiet everywhere I’ve been so far. I’ve got a few hours to kill before I take the overnight train to Krakow. My final train ride of the trip, the trains are very good, but my last overnight journey was a bit cramped until half-way through. This one is worse as it arrives at half six in the morning with lots of stops in between. At least Krakow is the last stop so I can ignore everything until we get there.

The next two days will be interesting, I had nothing planned for Bratislava before arriving and managed to find things. But for Krakow I have more than enough things I’d like to do to fill the time. Hopefully I can shoehorn it all in, otherwise we’ll just see how it goes. It’s easy enough to fly to anyway, so I can come back.

Off for a few drinks before the train, more when I get back to Edinburgh next week.

February 17, 2008

Reputation

Filed under: General — SpaceDog @ 3:45 am

What’s that you say?

Jagerbombs?

At ten to four in the afternoon?

With my reputation?

World of wrong!

Posted at quarter to five, from an apartment in the midst of Paris, after an excellent day — I just hope I remember tomorrow.

February 11, 2008

Gleaming

Filed under: General — SpaceDog @ 3:56 pm

A so another week begins, and I stagger my groggy, slightly hungover, self into work.

But what’s this? There’s something on everyone’s desk.

A present from the gods of corporate? What a fabulous way to start the week!

I contemplate the gift for a bit, what can it be? It’s a small grey package in some sort of plastic sleeve, about the size of a pack of cards but half the thickness. The company logo is prominently displayed across the front.

Maybe it’s set of business cards, a crisp twenty pound note, a name badge, a little metal ingot or a voucher for something-or-other.

Perhaps it’s just a little card from the high heid yins saying “thanks for the hard work.”

No, it’s none of the above.

It’s a lens cleaning cloth.

Woo-bloody-hoo!

Now we can all have our own personal cloth to polish our lens to our hearts content.

And it’s branded, just so we know who’s paid for that gleaming shine.

The little plastic sleeve it came in is arguably more useful than the cloth itself.

Fabulous use of the companies money there guys!

Corporate Wankers.

I’m tempted to blow my nose with it.

January 30, 2008

Time passes…

Filed under: General — SpaceDog @ 6:23 pm

Time passes…

It’s been a while since the last post, I guess I’ve been distracted by technology and infuriating web games.

The bathroom is finally finished, plumbed, tiled, painted, decorated, the works. I’ve even forked over the money for it.

So, eh, woo-hoo, it’s only a year since I first tried to get it done and seven and a half-months since the current gang took over. I’ll try and put some longer posts up with my thoughts on the companies involved and maybe some pictures when I have more time.

The wise choice would be to just quit there but the shiny (ish) new bathroom is making the rest of the flat look bad in comparison. Particularly the kitchen …

Maybe more posts next week, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Time passes…
Day dawns.

November 8, 2007

Further thoughts

Filed under: General — SpaceDog @ 12:52 am

Well, I´ve been at least partially proved wrong. We were out drinking until at least 12:30 last night — and that´s with a 8:30am start. I think I´ve about sussed the tour now, the early starts make a lot of sense (that way we beat the traffic and the other tourists) it just cramps the nightlife a bit. But I´ve never let an early start stop me before — I am on holiday after all.

Still I´ve seen some really stunning stuff during the days and there are certainly a few others who are up for a bit of a drink of an evening. For the moment it´s all good.

It´s the long drive into the start of the jungle areas tomorrow, this is the part I´ve been looking forward to. Enough of the sand, desert and cactus, I want plants, insects and stuff.

So, I was probably a bit hasty in my initial jumping to conclusions. I doubt I´ll get another post up for a while, probably not until next week when we hit Belize and half the tour group go a seperate way. Sadly that split will take a few of the more adventurous people away from the tour. But I think the rest of the group might have loosened up by then.

March 28, 2007

Twittervision

Filed under: General — SpaceDog @ 2:33 pm

Twitter meets Google Maps at Twittervision.

This shows comments posted on Twitter, with the location, as they happen. Very close to the sort of graphical global internet representation they try so often to do in films.

It’s fascinating and strangely distrubing at the same time.

February 14, 2007

Primeval

Filed under: General — SpaceDog @ 10:47 am

Due to some spectacular overindulgence on Saturday I was forced to spend Sunday on the couch moaning softly.

But every hangover has a silver lining, and yesterday I stumbled upon the repeat of ITVs new prime-time Saturday night Sci Fi drama Primeval (noisy and complex Flash site warning). Since I’d dimly heard of it and had meant to check it out, and because changing the channels was dangerously energetic for my fragile state, I watched it.

I’ve only seen one episode but it’s really rather good. The premise, random ‘rips’ in time open joining the modern day to ancient times (with assorted CGI dinosaurs and monsters), is simple but should allow them to do quite interesting things. Add to that the mystery of the disappearance of the lead characters wife and some heavy-handed government involvement and you’ve got a nice little Sci-Fi show.

It looks like everything that Torchwood (also a noisy flash site) should’ve been. Of course they’ll probably screw it up by episode three but at least they started out well.

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