Category: Rant

Their clothes are truly shit. Do not under any circumstances buy their T-Shirts, after a few washes you’ll be lucky if they fit the gnomes in the garden.

What is it with Course work. They tell you that if you don’t hand in tidy work then you’re screwed. I only wish this worked both ways.
So far I have had dealings with a lot of coursework in my time and trying to read the notes left by the tutors is like trying to decipher a doctors prescription. I know they may have a lot to mark but if they want us to hand in tidy work they could at least have the courtesy to do the same.

This would be funny if it wans’t so bloody common. For those of you not using the latest and greatest IE browser point yourself at the following link,
http://www.odeon.co.uk/
I refuse to provide a clickable link to this site on grounds of gross incompetence on their part. This has got to be one of the worst large commercial sites I have seen.
Someone took so much offence to the site they have taken the time to provide their own version and it is very good. Alternative Odeon Website
I have absolutely no doubt that the techs that built the Odeon site are more than capable and could build a browsable website.
This then begs the questions:
Who! made the decision to prevent non IE browsers access to it?
and
Are they still working there and if so why?

Take all this with a pinch of salt!
No one likes Spam, or should I say I have never met anyone who likes spam. I for one am not to fond of it in any of its forms. Whether it in bark or in binary I really don’t care, spam is spam is spam. Sometimes it makes me mad and sometimes, like today I get a bit philosophical.
I am sure that most of you agree, the people who are to blame are the ones who send it out in droves, I cannot really debate that. However, it does cause me some distress to know that the main reason we have spam is because there is a market for it. If there was no market then we would still get some but not in the proportions we are getting it today.
To have a market that pays for the equipment and bandwidth that is required to run operations like these then the market must be of a substantial size. This leads me to several conclusions about the state of our society and what could be done to reduce the problem. We need to remove the market!
I have come to the following conclusions on what could be done to reduce Spam.
Penis Enlargements and Vagina Reductions (PE and VR):
Since we live in a politically correct society I think it only fair that if men get PE’s for free women should be allowed VR’s for free as well, therefore.
Everyone qualifies for a PE/VR on their 18th birthday which can be deferred. When I mean everyone I really mean that. If a man has his penis enlarged and gets married his wife can then use her PE to increase her husbands to the required size. This works both ways, the man can also transfer his VR to his wife. For those men blessed with HUGE appendages then they can swap their enlargement option for an ensmallment one, this option is also open to their wives. So an exceptionally tight lady can have hers enlarged.
A Viagra a day helps you stand tall and play:
We should all receive one Viagra a day as well as receiving it in tap water the same way we get flouride. The tablet can be sold if you are single or have a broken arm or hand otherwise it must be taken.
Taking these two measures together we would effectively combat a lot of the spam in circulation today. Think about it!
Viagra is free — No more market
We all have huge cocks and tight fannies —- No more market
These two simple changes would have the following knock on affect.
If everyone was always at it then the last thing we would be wanting to do is go browse porn —- No more market.
Now all I need to do is to figure out how to stop the rest of the spam.

I was just browsing around today and I noticed the following link.
If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers..
There is a lot of truth in this article, although I would extend it to developers in general. How many times have you heard “Blame IT”.
When someone asks a developer to create something or comes up with a design spec invariably it is wishy washy crap. When the developer complains that there is not enough information they will get looked at funny and told that it is there job to do this sort of thing.
Another favourite is being told to use your common sense. “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”, using common sense to decide how something should operate or look when it is not really the developers decision how something should operate or look is a path fraught with danger.
You can’t take shit and make roses but we are always expected to. Next time you decide to point the finger at the developers ask yourself “Did you give them what they needed?”.

I just noticed a link in my weblog that goes something like this.
206.65.72.35 – – [21/Feb/2004:04:20:47 +0000] “HEAD /blog/ HTTP/1.0” 200 0 “http://www.blog.johnkerry.com” “StarProse Referrer Advertising System 2004” 0 www.thingthong.co.uk
What is this. A quick search on google led me to an explanation, Basically this guy John Kerry (Running for President) has either employed an advertising agency which are using unscrupulous means to get his named mentioned in every Web server log in the planet OR one of his unscrupulous rivals is doing it to upset every web administrator and searh engine tech on the planet OR some deranged individual has done it, god knows why.
I am not too sure which of the three I would believe out of the above since I imagine they are all as likely as each other.
What I will say is this. If John Kerry has stooped low enough to employ these tactics for self promotion then don’t vote for John Kerry. If it was one of his rivals that stooped this low to sully his name in connection with these tactics then don’t vote for John Kerry’s rivals.

I have just found out that to travel from Luton to London Kings Cross yearly will cost me about £3000. Is it just me or is this an obscene amount of money to travel 45 miles in a crowded train. I know that the UK train service is in a state but wern’t we meant to be trying to encourage the use of public transport. I doubt very much if these prices are going to have people flocking to cram themselves like sardines into a train.
We really need to sort our raliways out. They’re part of the backbone of a good economy and with the state ours is in I am suprised we haven’t got a trapped disc.

I had another bad day today. I need to return all the hardware to www.scan.co.uk, which means moving various bits and bobs around and restructuring my file system to make as much space as possible. The following was my file system before I started playing with it.
harry]#df -m
Filesystem 1M-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc2 3938 961 2777 26% /
/dev/hdc1 30 9 20 30% /boot
/dev/sda1 3937 3006 731 81% /home
none 505 0 504 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hdc7 1969 33 1836 2% /tmp
/dev/hdc3 3938 2177 1561 59% /usr
/dev/hdc5 3938 3108 630 84% /opt/links/hdc5
/dev/hdb1 9628 6955 2184 77% /opt/oracle
/dev/hdb2 9605 4884 4233 54% /opt/oracle/oradata/ide12
/dev/sda2 3937 1019 2719 28% /opt/oracle/oradata/scsi02
/dev/sda5 9365 8625 272 97% /opt/oracle/oradata/scsi03
/dev/hde1 156319 33 148470 1% /opt/oracle/oradata/hde1
After a bit of moving around and shifting of file systems I managed to get it into the following order. It is not ideal yet, but it gets the robots started again.
[root@cpc3-lutn1-6-0-cust26 root]# df -m
Filesystem 1M-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc2 3938 2567 1170 69% /
/dev/hdc1 30 9 20 30% /boot
none 505 0 504 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hdc3 3938 2177 1561 59% /usr
/dev/hdc5 8439 33 7985 1% /links/pg_xlog
/dev/hdb1 9628 4222 4917 47% /links/tables
/dev/hdb2 9605 752 8365 9% /links/temp
/dev/sda5 17364 10500 5996 64% /links/database
I now have a few extra Gb for the database that I did not have before. Something that was causing me some concern was what to do if I ever had to restore a backup. I had to make sure that I had a single contiguous file system that would contain the whole database. This is the reason I made the SCSI disk into a single file system.
35.876 Million links found
5.476 Million unique links found

I have a few rules about politics:
Rule 1. Do not talk about Politics.
1. You do not talk about Politics.
2. You do not talk about Politics.
3. When someone wants to talk or tries to talk about politics, the talk is over.
4. No two guys to a talk.
5. Zero talks at a time.
6. No left, no right.
7. Talks do not go on for any period of time.
8. If this is your first talk about politics, you have to shut the hell up!
I have many reasons for this none of which I will go into because of rule 1. Unfortunately I am sorely tempted to speak out about current events going on around the world and invariably topics close to my heart get close to politics but if I keep rule 1 in mind I will be much happier and release more good karma into the world 😉