Courtesy of google, I hope they don't remove this like they did my tandem dive, SOB's.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Name change and AFF
I say goodbye to "Me, My Pipes and I" and 'ello to "ScratchyBadgers Itching Post". The pipes and been on hold for a while whilst I cop out and get quick nicotine fixes from Swedish Snus. Now summer has past, autumn is here and winter is approaching the pipes should come back into rotation but I've found a new drug to feed the cravings, C9H13NO3 or adrenaline. I come by copious amounts this wonderful adrenal excretion by way of skydiving.
Ever since the tandem jump I did last year for Breast Cancer Care I said I would start going for my BPA 'A' license. The tandem was so much fun I just had to do it again, but this time I didn't want to be intimately strapped to another guys torso.
October 11th was my ground training, it took most of the day and the light was leaving so I was scheduled for my AFF level 1 the next day. Typical British weather and my luck conspired against me so jumping was rescheduled for the next Saturday.
Saturday's weather held out and I was a go for my first jump. After a check of my arch position, reserve drill practice and AFF 1 drills I was climbing into a jumpsuit and gear then squeezed like a sardine into the plane with some sport jumpers, my two instructors and camera man. Apprehension sets in after 10,000 ft and before I know it I'm making my way to the door, get into position, do my HOTEL check and am out the door. Everything I learnt on the ground and was ready to do was left at an altitude of 13,000 ft.
I completely forgot to do my H.A.S.P. check and had to be reminded to do my three practice rip cord touches. The main canopy opened fine and I was talked down to a safe landing in the field. Jump 1 over and I was completely pissed off with myself. Oh well, put mistakes behind me because I moved on to AFF level 2.
Food, water and a quick chat to the wife, bro and kid and in for a debrief of my jump and briefing on the next jump.
The AFF level 2 jump went great, HOTEL, H.A.S.P, two PRCT's, a turn to the right, a turn to the left, lock on and wave off at 6000ft and throw main pilot chute. The main canopy was big, square and there, no problems with the canopy or lines, no twists and slider was where it should have been. Two flares, left and right turn all OK so it was off to the holding area. The wind was getting up I was again talked down to a landing. This time I was in a field way out in the drop zone. I'm not sure why I was brought down so far away, I think I could have made it much closer. Sweating like a pig I made it back to the packing shed and was pleased to hear this jump was one of the best AFF 2 jumps my primary instructor had seen. I was far happier with myself. I only hope I can keep my wits about me like that again next time. Don't concentrate on the fact you're in apparent nothingness plummeting towards the ground, concentrate on arching and doing the drills as soon as you're out and forget about everything else.
The winds were too high for student jumpers after this so it was in the car and back home. I was glad about the weather this time and not getting to jump again, I was fucked. I wish my DVD was taken on my second jump and not the first, I'd rather not see how I screwed up level 1.
Ever since the tandem jump I did last year for Breast Cancer Care I said I would start going for my BPA 'A' license. The tandem was so much fun I just had to do it again, but this time I didn't want to be intimately strapped to another guys torso.
October 11
Saturday's weather held out and I was a go for my first jump. After a check of my arch position, reserve drill practice and AFF 1 drills I was climbing into a jumpsuit and gear then squeezed like a sardine into the plane with some sport jumpers, my two instructors and camera man. Apprehension sets in after 10,000 ft and before I know it I'm making my way to the door, get into position, do my HOTEL check and am out the door. Everything I learnt on the ground and was ready to do was left at an altitude of 13,000 ft.
I completely forgot to do my H.A.S.P. check and had to be reminded to do my three practice rip cord touches. The main canopy opened fine and I was talked down to a safe landing in the field. Jump 1 over and I was completely pissed off with myself. Oh well, put mistakes behind me because I moved on to AFF level 2.
Food, water and a quick chat to the wife, bro and kid and in for a debrief of my jump and briefing on the next jump.
The AFF level 2 jump went great, HOTEL, H.A.S.P, two PRCT's, a turn to the right, a turn to the left, lock on and wave off at 6000ft and throw main pilot chute. The main canopy was big, square and there, no problems with the canopy or lines, no twists and slider was where it should have been. Two flares, left and right turn all OK so it was off to the holding area. The wind was getting up I was again talked down to a landing. This time I was in a field way out in the drop zone. I'm not sure why I was brought down so far away, I think I could have made it much closer. Sweating like a pig I made it back to the packing shed and was pleased to hear this jump was one of the best AFF 2 jumps my primary instructor had seen. I was far happier with myself. I only hope I can keep my wits about me like that again next time. Don't concentrate on the fact you're in apparent nothingness plummeting towards the ground, concentrate on arching and doing the drills as soon as you're out and forget about everything else.
The winds were too high for student jumpers after this so it was in the car and back home. I was glad about the weather this time and not getting to jump again, I was fucked. I wish my DVD was taken on my second jump and not the first, I'd rather not see how I screwed up level 1.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Tobacco Cellar
There's this great place called The Online Pipe Tobacco Cellar. I use it to keep trac of what is stashed in my office cupboard.I was finding adding tins to be a pain. You see, I'm very impatient and searching through the large list of blends (even though it's ordered alphabetically) was annoying when adding new tins to my cellar. I saved the HTML of the page and spent an hour hacking together some javascript (instead of working >:) ) to make searching for blends far easier. I contacted the maintainers to see if they're interested in my changes. I'd like it if they wanted to use them. I'd find them useful and I'm quite sure others would as well.
It's only simple, it's just a text box to type your search text in, as you type it iterates over the blend list and jumps to the matching entry, it even allows for searching of next and previous matches. It would mean I didn't waste my time ;) If they don't use it I suppose I could always turn it into greasemonkey script so I at least get to use it ;)
It's only simple, it's just a text box to type your search text in, as you type it iterates over the blend list and jumps to the matching entry, it even allows for searching of next and previous matches. It would mean I didn't waste my time ;) If they don't use it I suppose I could always turn it into greasemonkey script so I at least get to use it ;)
Friday, March 02, 2007
Retail Therapy to cure Stir Crazy?
With the crappy weather and crappy work keeping stuck in this crappy house for far too long I went a little stir crazy.
I got bored and I went spending in an attempt to get rid of the crazies. I bought a nice new Wild Olive pipe from Jobert Pipes in South Africa. It's very nice, superb grain, a larger bowl than I'd expected even though the dimensions were given on the website. I prefer smaller bowled pipes as I don't waste so much baccy but this is going to be great on a little camping trip I'm thinking of. Since I'll have all the time I want, I'll be able to smoke a full bowl without any rush and might actually smoke to the bottom of the bowl.
In addition to the pipe for the trip I bought a hammock. Not a regular lounge in the garden type hammock, an expedition hammock from Hennessy Hammock. It's small, it's light, it's quick to set up (apparently). I spent a little time practising tieing the figure-8 knot before taking it out to experiment setting it up. I was at it for quite some time. I cose tree's that were too fat for a first try, then too close. I eventually had it assembled and then ran out of time and packed it away using it's neat little snakeskins and stuffed it in the stuff sack. It has to be the first tent like piece of equipment I've managed to get back into the original bag with no trouble. I realized when I got home that I'd tied it to the tree wrongly, and didn;t attach the rainfly correctly, so better luck next time.
It's going to be great camping in the hammock and smoking my new pipe, I'm really looking forward to it. I just received a small box of Cornell and Diehl baccy blends as well but I'm gonna have to keep this one hidden from SWMBO ;)
I don't know if it really worked as therapy, since I am still stuck at home, only now I want to get out of the place even more so I can try the hammock. I think I only made things worse!
I got bored and I went spending in an attempt to get rid of the crazies. I bought a nice new Wild Olive pipe from Jobert Pipes in South Africa. It's very nice, superb grain, a larger bowl than I'd expected even though the dimensions were given on the website. I prefer smaller bowled pipes as I don't waste so much baccy but this is going to be great on a little camping trip I'm thinking of. Since I'll have all the time I want, I'll be able to smoke a full bowl without any rush and might actually smoke to the bottom of the bowl.
In addition to the pipe for the trip I bought a hammock. Not a regular lounge in the garden type hammock, an expedition hammock from Hennessy Hammock. It's small, it's light, it's quick to set up (apparently). I spent a little time practising tieing the figure-8 knot before taking it out to experiment setting it up. I was at it for quite some time. I cose tree's that were too fat for a first try, then too close. I eventually had it assembled and then ran out of time and packed it away using it's neat little snakeskins and stuffed it in the stuff sack. It has to be the first tent like piece of equipment I've managed to get back into the original bag with no trouble. I realized when I got home that I'd tied it to the tree wrongly, and didn;t attach the rainfly correctly, so better luck next time.
It's going to be great camping in the hammock and smoking my new pipe, I'm really looking forward to it. I just received a small box of Cornell and Diehl baccy blends as well but I'm gonna have to keep this one hidden from SWMBO ;)
I don't know if it really worked as therapy, since I am still stuck at home, only now I want to get out of the place even more so I can try the hammock. I think I only made things worse!
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
HenPlus patch
Found a bug in HenPlus, the describe command doesn't show the decimal digits on numeric fields. This has bit me a couple of times when reverse engineering some tables from a customers DB. I did a little poking around and fixed the issue in version 0.9.7. It's not thoroughly tested but works fine for me so far. I contacted the coder and sent him the patch but havent heard back so I'm posting it here.
The patch:
The patch:
--- henplus-0.9.7-orig/src/henplus/commands/DescribeCommand.java 2006-03-19 23:11:26.000000000 +0000
+++ henplus-0.9.7/src/henplus/commands/DescribeCommand.java 2006-11-21 16:33:23.000000000 +0000
@@ -257,8 +257,14 @@ public class DescribeCommand extends Abs
row[2] = new Column(colname);
String type = rset.getString(6);
final int colSize = rset.getInt(7);
+ final int colDp = rset.getInt(9);
if (colSize > 0) {
- type = StringAppender.start(type).append("(").append(colSize).append(")").toString();
+ if(colDp == 0) {
+ type = StringAppender.start(type).append("(").append(colSize).append(")").toString();
+ }
+ else {
+ type = StringAppender.start(type).append("(").append(colSize).append(",").append(colDp).append(")").toString();
+ }
}
row[3] = new Column(type);
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
DomainBuster/Fast24
Well, if anyone is reading this who has been trying to contact me at kronos@fluxcode.net,.. forget it. Domainbuster, the cheapo domain hosting I was with have royal screwed me over. They handled my mail an web hosting.
They are owned by Fast24 Ltd. They used to be quite good a couple of years ago but things went sour. Their service was shit for the last couple of months. I was looking into moving my domains somwhere else when they fucked up. I can get no mail, the domain for a family members website was also handled by them and is screwed just the same.
What is worse is that I can no longer move the domain since I require them to update the TAG of one domain and give me an auth code for the moving of the other. I'm pretty well fucked. I've had my domain for over 4 years and I thought it would always be around no matter where I moved to without using some web based email. Fast24 screwed that up for me, wankers.
I don't know what, if anything I can do to get my domain back. Fast24 have done a runner, there are reports they are not even in the building they worked from anymore. The boss has fucked off and can't be found or contacted.
Domainbuster busted my domain. Fuckers. It should have been a warning really, but they used to be quite good. Now domainfuckers or fuck24 are more suitable names for them.
They are owned by Fast24 Ltd. They used to be quite good a couple of years ago but things went sour. Their service was shit for the last couple of months. I was looking into moving my domains somwhere else when they fucked up. I can get no mail, the domain for a family members website was also handled by them and is screwed just the same.
What is worse is that I can no longer move the domain since I require them to update the TAG of one domain and give me an auth code for the moving of the other. I'm pretty well fucked. I've had my domain for over 4 years and I thought it would always be around no matter where I moved to without using some web based email. Fast24 screwed that up for me, wankers.
I don't know what, if anything I can do to get my domain back. Fast24 have done a runner, there are reports they are not even in the building they worked from anymore. The boss has fucked off and can't be found or contacted.
Domainbuster busted my domain. Fuckers. It should have been a warning really, but they used to be quite good. Now domainfuckers or fuck24 are more suitable names for them.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Happy Lappy Dance
Sorry, it's nothing to do with real lap dances so most of you will be performing an about turn right about...... now.
I dusted the cobwebs off my wallet and sprung 600 goodies on a laptop. It's a nice little (well, actually, rather large) Acer Aspire 5612. It's got a 15.4" screen, 100G HD, wireless and wired networking, 1G of RAM, Core Duo 2300E processor, built in webcam and other little bits 'n' bobs.
I had a little fun getting rid of the data partition and resizing the main partition put on by acer so I could stuff linux on the thing. The main issue was after partitioning Acers eRecovery software went nuts when it couldn't find the data partition and decided to max out the CPU.
To do the partitioning I used the gparted LiveCD which is without doubt f'ing awesome. Very straight forward, very reliable and it got the job done nicely.
I had linux on it within a couple of hours, Ubuntu to be specific, which is also f'ing awesome. I've been using linux for about 12 years now and know my way around but it's nice to not bother sometimes. My biggest pain was getting the wireless working with WPA using NetworkManager. NetworkManager just refused to allow me to use WPA so I dumped it and did it myself. Now, wireless works great with the ipw3945 driver and wpa_supplicant, I just wish my wireless access point was as reliable. Wireless sucks when the AP freezes and has to be power cycled.
The only thing I haven't got working under linux is the webcam which isn't that much of a loss, but it just looks like there isn't a driver for it yet so I'll just wait.
It's a nice machine, it's quite fast and very comfortable to use and certainly worth the money. The only things I have to do is get an extra cable for the power supply so I can plug it into US sockets and get a nice bag for it then I'll be all set to take it on my business trip. Oh, and I have to get apache2, tomcat and jboss going, but that's too much like work so I'll leave that along for a while ;)
I dusted the cobwebs off my wallet and sprung 600 goodies on a laptop. It's a nice little (well, actually, rather large) Acer Aspire 5612. It's got a 15.4" screen, 100G HD, wireless and wired networking, 1G of RAM, Core Duo 2300E processor, built in webcam and other little bits 'n' bobs.
I had a little fun getting rid of the data partition and resizing the main partition put on by acer so I could stuff linux on the thing. The main issue was after partitioning Acers eRecovery software went nuts when it couldn't find the data partition and decided to max out the CPU.
To do the partitioning I used the gparted LiveCD which is without doubt f'ing awesome. Very straight forward, very reliable and it got the job done nicely.
I had linux on it within a couple of hours, Ubuntu to be specific, which is also f'ing awesome. I've been using linux for about 12 years now and know my way around but it's nice to not bother sometimes. My biggest pain was getting the wireless working with WPA using NetworkManager. NetworkManager just refused to allow me to use WPA so I dumped it and did it myself. Now, wireless works great with the ipw3945 driver and wpa_supplicant, I just wish my wireless access point was as reliable. Wireless sucks when the AP freezes and has to be power cycled.
The only thing I haven't got working under linux is the webcam which isn't that much of a loss, but it just looks like there isn't a driver for it yet so I'll just wait.
It's a nice machine, it's quite fast and very comfortable to use and certainly worth the money. The only things I have to do is get an extra cable for the power supply so I can plug it into US sockets and get a nice bag for it then I'll be all set to take it on my business trip. Oh, and I have to get apache2, tomcat and jboss going, but that's too much like work so I'll leave that along for a while ;)
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