ssta

I've started a new project in reaction to the fact that all commercial Hospital record systems appear to be shite.

It's called "HSys", which is probably a bit generic.

Consciously, I'm trying to design and develop it the Right Way[tm]

I've created a Wordpress blog site to muse, explore the design and generally provide somewhere to braindump and document the design so far.

If anyone is interested in having a look, the site is http://minirolls.clothcat.com

Be gentle!

As a test http://minirolls.clothcat.com/wp-trackback.php?p=14 is the trackback entry. I'm not sure if I've correctly worked out how trackback works...

Bought a moped.

Nice enough little thing, should get me to and from work quite well. Saves having to pay Lord Ken's congestion tax. Saves 50 quid a month on the tube. Most importantly, hopefully will save between 60 and 90 minutes a day travel time, this is significant indeed.

Just be careful if you're on the roads of London and you see a madman riding a moped, it's probably me. Please don't kill me.

Current Mood: satisfied

Being bored (meeting got cancelled and not enoigh time left before the next thing on the calendar to start something actually useful), I thought I'd have a go at RSA704: http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2093#RSA704

I have a little processing power spare, so why the hell not I thought...

Wound up coming up with the following (really quite inefficient) Java: http://pastebin.com/514578

So okay, it's crap and as a method of trying to find the two primes, it's significantly less likely to succeed than a lottery ticket is to win the jackpot. But you never know...it COULD be you!

Yes, there are better ways to do it, but *shrug*, even if I were to spend a year refining it, I *still* couldn't do better than the experts on this stuff, so I'm hoping for blind luck.

If you feel like taking the chance, feel free to use it. If you're even sadder than me, feel free to modify/improve the way it works. Let me know if you do anything exciting.

Current Mood: chipper

Well, okay...I'm not quite managing every day, but I'm still doing okay

Even if I am posting utter drivel!

The screwup from two weeks ago is still making its effects felt at work.

There are LOTS more messages in the error queue than there should be (still)!

In other news, I have friday off so I can go to Durham, which is nice.

All in all, not a bad day.

Current Mood: cheerful

busy stressful week all around...

my co-worker is on holiday, so add that workload to my own, which I don't mind, but there've been a fair number of fires to fight as well...

anyway, the beer festival yesterday was fun. Good people, good conversation, good beer. What more can be asked for?

Current Mood: awake

I was going to go to Lugradio Live in Wolverhampton this weekend...but work being what it is at the moment, I wouldn't be able to go until Saturday.

Martin (he doesn't have an LJ, so I can't link :) has suggested a trip to the Kingsrton Beer festival on Saturday instead
so I think I'll do that :)

Decisions are fun :)

Current Mood: determined

Today spent much of my time writing up an incident report for the recent debacle at work. I've not posted to here about that (being cautious as I don't want to be sacked for blogging :)

In lighter news, got to spend an enlightening hour finding my way around some of the lastword DDLs. I don't know why that's lighter except that enscribe seems less mystical the more I learn about it (although still truly horrible).

Current Mood: busy

Today two new servers came online for clothcat.com (which will exist as soon as DNS propogates).

Nice control panel type access
now all Ineed to do is dream up some pricing schemes...

Current Mood: cheerful

Okay, I've now decided that come what may, I will post *something* every day.

This isn't because I lead a dreadfully interedting life though. It's because I intend to spend at least 10 minutes every day venting. Hopefully this will allow me to stay saner than I have been.

If that makes no sense to you, don't worry about it. It makes sense to me (and that's what matters).

Rules: There are none really. I'll post what I want using any colourful language I happen to feel like using that day.

So, today what do I have to say?

Well, my desktop died last night. No power. I suspect the overpriced (but quite nice) PSU I got last week has given up. This is irritating.
I get paid on Friday, it's massively tempting to just go and blow 400 quid on one of the cheapo shite Dells (the Dell Dimension 5000 at £429 is tempting).
Of course, Dell build cheap shite, but it's just a home desktop, and I don't really have the time or evergy to go source the parts to build better shite.
Work are a Dell shop and get Dell kit for silly cheap prices below what I'd be paying. I think I'll ask and see if I can order through them.

Current Mood: exhausted

Via senji and itagne

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Enter username:

InterestRank was bought to you by _imran_ and MemeLand.org

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There's a post-a-poem vibe going around at the moment it seems. This is one of my favourite poems:

An Irish Airman Forsees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

William Butler Yeats - 1919

Came across this fun logic puzzle.

Took me about five minutes to work out. See how well you do (probably lots better than me).

Current Mood: cold

Via senji

Name a CD you own that no-one else on your friends list does.

Hmm, not convinced there is one. I don't own very many CDs, and what I do own is fairly standard. Let's go for "Let It Be Naked" by the Beatles.

Name a book you own that no-one else on your friends list does.

Wise Children, by Angela Carter.

Name a movie you own on DVD/VHS/whatever that no-one else on your friends list does.

The Last Waltz, Collectors Edition

Name a place that you have visited that no-one else on your friends list has.

The power station control room, Guinness brewery, Dublin.


That final one was SO nearly obscene.

Current Mood: naughty
Current Music: Just a Spoonful of Sugar

Sometimes the internet manages (for the umpteenth time) to surprise and faintly apall me.

Someone on IRC jokingly asked about the unladen airspeed of a swallow. According to google some 5,490 websites refer to it. If there's anything surprising about this, it's that the number is so low...Monty Python is, after all, hugely popular.[1].

What surprises me - although on reflection it shouldn't - is that so many of the sites have actually made some - often quite vigorous - efforts to provide a sane answer. Two sane answers since they look at both African and European swallows.

If we could harness the amazing efforts people online are willing to expend on taking a joke well past any reasonable point and use it to produce useful work, I am sure we would have a cure for cancer in about a year.


[1] For the culturally impoverished and other Americans, the scene in question is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the script for it is found here.

Current Mood: thoughtful

First senji did a image meme. Then itagne followed suit.

Looking at these it made me sorry I only had one userpic. So I uploaded a couple more.

The Debian swirl for the obvious reasons. The cock because I like it :)

Anyone who knows me well won't be hugely surprised that I made the cock the default :)

I don't think anyone likely to be reading my journal would be offended by it. Far more likely to be offended by the picture of my ugly mug.

IFF I get complaints I might take it down.

Current Mood: content

sexy

I especially like the cloth simulation. I can't imagine that's an easy problem.

Current Mood: enthralled

Well, senji has a caption type thingy. So I thought to myself, there's a bandwagon, let's jump on it!

Shamelessly stolen from cjwatson's website.

Who says I've got no balls then?</h1>

Current Mood: nostalgic

Supposedly a great American poet, AlanAllen Ginsberg produced Howl, presumably as a reaction to that appalling beard.

I fail to perceive the greatness. Maybe I'm a cynical bastard, but I translate this to "Hey everyone! Look at how clever I am!". It reminds me of Bob Dylan in his more egotistic moments.

google have a puzzle

This is all very well. I wasted the best part of an hour of my life solving this. Would have been less, but I didn't stop to think about just how MANY 10 digit primes there were before I wrote something to generate them. I stopped it somewhere in the 4,000,000,000 area with the file at something on the orger of 1.5GiB.

Yes, rather interesting puzzle (the second half is MUCH harder than the first IMO)...

After an interesting puzzle like that, I was expecting something a little more than a page asking me to send a CV though. I wanted a payoff for that work and ingenuity!