It's rather interesting...

This will definitely be the last post of the year of the "It's".

Well... A week at my parents went pretty much exactly as I'd expected. Other that to discover that my parents are scared of me... Very odd... My father took it upon himself to tell my better half that he though she was drinking too much, which ended in her in tears in the bathroom. When asked what he had said to her, my mother jumped in to say that it had been her... A blatant lie, but I guess she jumped in thinking I was going to lose my rag and hit him or something. Instead, I calmly asked what his side of the story was, and pointed out that the reason she was drinking was that she was being flat-out ignored by him at every turn. To which he went into a huff for the remainder of the week. My mother and I talked to my wife and managed to smooth things out so that a very strained cease-fire prevailed for the rest of the week.

It was a particularly cathartic trip for me as I went for a walkabout around my old neighborhood and took a lot of photos. This was me saying goodbye to the place, as I had gone to my parents fully intending never to return. My decision was wholly validated by my parents' abysmal behaviour. My wife, who for the last 6 years has tried to bridge the gap between my family and I, has now come to see that it's actually better to leave them to it and get on with our own lives.

Due to all of this, my computing activities have not been particularly exciting over the festive season. The only thing of note was borrowing a Linux book from about 15 year's ago from my wife's dad. It's wonderful to read on account of it saying things like: 'Ensure you have at least 20 meg of RAM before installing.....'

So... With some personal demons laid to rest... The future looks bright.

Looking forward to the year of the "So..."

It's CHRISTMAAAAAASSSSS!!!!!!!

Well.... Almost....

So... It's been a bit of a hectic time of late. After the disappointment of not being able to go back to Uni, I've now been made a full time employee in the job I've been doing as a temp since May. So life is now hopefully going to be a lot less stressful knowing that I actually have a salary coming in, and I'm not in a situation where they could just say 'Oh... Don't bother coming in tomorrow... We don't need you any more...' That possibility has been giving me nightmares for months.

Over the last week I've resurrected an old laptop, bunged a few different distros of linux on it before settling on PCLinuxOS (the list was: Ubuntu 8.10, DSL 4.4.1 and Puppy 4.1.2) for no other reason than I couldn't be bothered trying out a new one. The main purpose of this was to use the laptop as a kind of thin client to play videos on the living room TV over a wireless network; play mp3's through the stereo; and allow people to show YouTube videos at parties without having to go into my bedroom! :)

It all seems to be up and working okay. For a tutorial on streaming media over a wireless network using vlc have a look over on my wiki.

It's going to be somewhat of a strange Christmas this year as I'm going home to Cumbria to spend Christmas with family. Something I've not done for thirteen years. It'll likely be the last time I visit Cumbria so I plan to have a wander around my old neighborhood and say goodbye.

So, if I don't post again before then... Hope you all have a good Christmas and New Year.... And remember... A turkey is for life.... Not just for Christmas....

It's all over for another year.

Halloween is once again done and gone. It was, as always, immense fun. We had a big party round at ours with loads of people getting dressed up (the prevailing theme of the year appears to be Zombie Pirates) and having a laugh. There was much bobbing for apples and eating of treacle tart, along with the customary imbibing of alchohol.

I actually had a whole week off from work too, which was definitely needed. I took my daughter to both the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum in London and I have to say that I enjoyed the Science museum a lot more. Aside from the myriad old computery gadgets lying around there seemed to be a lot more to actually get your hands on and do. The Listening Post is a particularly good exhibit and well worth a look if you're in the museum.

Back at work as of today and I've applied for my job on a permanent basis now, so fingers crosssed!

It's very shiny.

After about six weeks off the road due to an unfortunate incident with a patch of oil on the road I am on to my second motorbike.

It's a very nice 2001 Sym Husky. Still a 125cc but a whole lot faster and heavier and, hell, nicer than my old SR. As of yesterday it's all taxed and MOT's and insured. And away I go! :D

Been a bit ill this week. Got another bloody ear infection. I guess I only have myself to blame for not finishing the course of antibiotics last time. At least I had several days in bed to catch up on lost sleep over the last few weeks.

Reading an amazing book at the moment: The Book Of Lost Things by John Connolly it's really, really, really good. I'd describe it as a cross between Neil Gaiman's Wolves in the Walls and Pan's Labyrinth. Very weird and very fantastical.

It's about time!

I've been busily learning all manner of new exciting and geeky things of late.

What with all the stuff I've been learning I though it would be a good idea to start a wiki to document each of the problems I've been running into and allow easy, searchable access to them for when I inevitably run into the same problem again. The wiki can be found here.

I've finally got myself a UNIX shell account from the lovely people over at the SDF and I've managed to get access to it using my Blackberry. Hehe.... Fun.

Real life has gotten slightly better. My better half has got a new job which is great news, even though it is in London. This means that she's got a very long day indeed and I'm on school run every day! Not that I'm complaining, I actually really enjoy it.

Looking forward to the weekend!

Current Projects:
The Wonky Spanner - 3d Facebook App
MagentaBot - My own C++ IRC Bot
NeSS Data Exchange - C# Web Service Client App

It's okay... I am still alive... Just...

It's all been a bit hairy in real life of late. What with redundancies and financial woes I'm no longer starting Uni this year and have deferred my entry until next year. *sigh*

At least my facebook app is coming along nicely. I've got the full application framework up and running with full directx support. Just starting to put together the meshes and then we'll get this thing rolling.

Also, my ONS application is nearing completion too.

Hopefully I'll have some more positive news soon.

It's time for a change.

Okay, so I've been trying all sorts of different bits of software to get a working development environment using open-source tools.

I've finally settled on a mix of a few tools. If you're going to do this, then I suggest you install them in this order:

• MinGW(Debugger download is seperate)
  
• wxWidgets
• Code::Blocks

This results in a nice stable C++ development environment which is extensible with other plugins. Code::Blocks does require a little bit of tinkering with to get all the include libraries to link in, but once it's done you can develop cross platform applications.

It's all a bit of a hassle...

My continuing struggle to get as close to the pro version of Visual Studio.net using only the Express Editions and legitimate downloads... Well... It continues....

I've just managed to get SQL Server Express working pretty well with support for SQL Server Compact and Reporting Services.

You need to get hold of SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with advanced services from here. Install that with all options selected to be installed. Once you've got that in, then you can download and install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Toolkit. Again just install the whole thing. Once that's done you can download Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express Service Pack 2. Get that one installed and then fire up the Management Studio and you'll be able to connect to the local SQL Server instance and also any SQL Server Compact Database! You can also fire up the Reporting Services Configuration Tool and get those working. To create reports you need to click on the Business Intelligence Development Studio. If you get an error saying that it can't find devenv.exe then you need to extract all files from SQLEXPR_TOOLKIT.EXE using something like WinZip, find the file called vs_setup.msi and run it. This will install the necessary Visual Studio 2005 files needed for this to run. And Hey Presto... It Works!

The question is... Why... Well basically to see if I could do it. Also as nice as SQL Server Express is, I would have to pay for it on my hosting package at an exorbitant price. So I want to use multiple SQLCE databases for free.

My quest continues...

It's finally working

After a week or so of shouting, screaming and hair pulling I've finally managed to get my prototype app to connect to the new NeSS Data Exchange beta program using C# 2008 Express Edition.

It's been a huge pain in the arse because it uses SOAP and security token extensions that aren't supported natively in the Express editions. To make it work properly I had to download and install Microsoft's Web Services Enhancements 3.0. Once installed I had to use the configuration tool to create a wse3policyCache.config file to use a Username token with my application.

Once configured the following code worked a treat:

//Set up Credentials
const String UserName = "username";
const String PassWord = "password";

//Create new token
UsernameToken tkn = new UsernameToken(UserName, PassWord, PasswordOption.SendPlainText);

//Set up containers and service
NeSSDiscoveryService service = new NeSSDiscoveryService();
SubjectTreeRequest theRequest = new SubjectTreeRequest();

//Add token to service
service.RequestSoapContext.Security.Tokens.Add(tkn);

//Perform the query
SubjectTreeResponse theResponse = service.GetSubjectTree(theRequest);

//Get Array length
int responseLength = theResponse.SubjectTree.Length;

//Create Subject Branch Array
SubjectBranch[] theBranches = theResponse.SubjectTree;

//Introduce program
Console.WriteLine("This Program Will test the NeSS Web Services");

//Iterate through results
for (int i = 0; i < responseLength; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine(theBranches[i].Subject.Name);
}

Console.WriteLine();
Console.WriteLine("===========================================");
Console.WriteLine("End of output. You can close this window");
Console.WriteLine("===========================================");

System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(50000);

And hey presto the Subject List is outputted. Now to put that in to practice with a proper app. :)

It's unimaginable.

No techie blag on this one despite the amount of web service blah I've been doing recently.

I've just had one of the scariest moments of my life. My daughter was up stairs watching High School Musical 2 and all of a sudden I heard a huge crash and then she screamed. I've heard her cry before, but this was real screaming. I bolted upstairs and found her hanging upside down by her leg on the ladders at the end of her cabin bed. There really is no way to describe the feeling that hit me in the stomach. I ran over and picked her up and carried her downstairs really not knowing what to do despite all my training in first aid and dealing with injuries. I immediately began checking her legs for signs of breaks and was on the brink of calling for an ambulance. It seemed like there was no way she couldn't have broken her leg given the weird angle her leg was in when I found her and the fact she was hanging upside down by it.

After much frantic checking I'm pretty convinced that it is whole. She managed to stand on it fine and ran back up the stairs after a little while. She's going to have one hell of a bruise though.

It really badly shook me up though, based on when I broke my leg and had to spend three months not being able to put weight on it and then another three months of physio. That really got me down and I was 23. I really couldn't imagine what an impact that would have had on the life of a five year old.

Anyways, thankfully she's okay. I now need to drink a lot of wine and smoke many cigarettes to try and calm down.

It's a new month so here's a new post.

I have been over-indulging a lot of late. Not only did Firefox 3 come out, but also OpenSuSE 11! In general it's very cool, although I did have a couple of problems with the compiz-fusion desktop, so I just got rid of it for now. I'll give it a try again later when it's had a bit more time. Likewise KDE 4.

I've been spending a lot of time with .NET recently too. I'm developing a prototype application to store an evidence base for the whole county. It's pretty cool so far, although I did run in to some weird problems with maintaining the state of checkboxes within a gridview control. No matter what I tried, it just wouldn't remember the states. After much investigation I discovered that it was maintaining the state, but something else was unchecking the boxes in a later event. So instead of setting the value of the checkboxes in the onpageindexchanging event I put it in the ondatabound event and hey presto! it worked fine.

It's looking increasingly more likely that I'm going to be staying in the job over the course of my degree too. That would be absolutely awesome and beats the hell out of a part time job in a pub! :)

It's here!

I've done my bit. Have you?

Download Now!

It's oh so quiet....

I'm pretending to be a single parent. My better half has gone off on a work assignment to Germany so I'm home alone. Well... As alone as one can be with a small child who won't go to bed until its rabid urge to watch Thundercats has been sated.

So I've made the best use of my time so far by finally getting the right drivers for my wireless card working on OpenSuse 10.3. The problem with my shiny, black HP Pavilion DV6000 is that the Atheros AR5006EG reported using lspci is, in fact, an AR5007EG. So, for those of you with the same problem, I would direct you here, then unpack, make, make install and, once you've done that, then modprobe ath_pci and it works. I've tested it fully and it works with Kismet and aircrack-ng, effortlessly putting the card into monitor mode. A much more elegant solution than using ndiswrapper.

More chatting to people I haven't seen in ages today. Thank you Facebook! And hello if you're reading this! :)

My bike broke down on me yesterday morning. I made the stupid mistake of leaving the lights on overnight which killed the battery and almost running out of petrol. Both of which culminated in a dead stop at a busy junction during rush hour. Thankfully a friend came and saved me by jump-starting the bike to get me home. Mental note: don't leave the lights on and fill regularly with petrol.

So.... For the rest of the evening I shall mostly be drinking wine and reading blogs.

It's all change on the West Oxfordshire front...

So... Out with the old and in with the new.

I'm thouroughly enjoying my new job. I actually get to use my brain for a change. You've no idea how liberating it is after four years of mind-numbing task.

So far I've updated a section of a website using Websphere Portal and Content Management System, which is clunky and buggy but generally works. There are a few odd quirks in it where it occasionally loses all the content that you've been working on and you have to quickly grab it from the live site and paste it back in before you lose the info. I've also written a batch file to convert a directory of jpegs into gifs using imagemagick. The way they were doing it in photoshop was taking hours. If you want to use it, you'll need imagemagick installed and then paste the following into notepad:

@ECHO OFF
ECHO.
ECHO This file converts all jpegs to gifs in the current directory
ECHO.
ECHO If this is your intention then hit any key, otherwise close this window.
PAUSE
ECHO Converting

mogrify -format gif *.jpg

ECHO Done.
ECHO Deleting original jpegs

del *.jpg

ECHO Done.
PAUSE
CLS
EXIT

Then save that as ConvertJPG2GIF.bat ; copy it into the desired folder and run it.

I've finally taken my CBT as well and got myself a little Yamaha SR125 for scooting through to uni on. It's a lovely maroon colour and, despite a few hitches including dog biscuits in the air filter and a flat battery, it runs like a dream. YAY!!!

It's the 'How to get the Ricoh webcam working in opensuse 10.3 on hp pavilion dv6000' post

After much faffing and hassle I finally managed to get this cam working.

Here is how I did it:

uninstall any previous versions of uvcvideo and/or r5u870 drivers open your favourite console and type:

kwrite /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

add 'blacklist r5u870' at the end of file (without quotations)

cd to any temp directory

svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk

cd trunk

make

make install

modprobe uvcvideo

Test if it works using gqcam or something similar

open YaST

open system

open /etc/sysconfig editor

expand system

expand kernel

select MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT

type uvcvideo

click finish

Reboot and enjoy.

Any questions, feel free to post.

It's all been a bit busy.

I've finally decided to to take the plunge.

After much trying to get jobs in software engineering based on my previous it work and failing miserably. I have finally decided to go back to university. My absence from blogging is explained by this fact as I have now secured my place for September entry on a BSc Software Engineering degree.

Also, my last laptop died. Just as I had VMWare set up and it all running like I wanted it too. Typical...

This does mean, however, that I have a swanky new laptop, which, after a week of tweaking and playing, is now set up properly with Vista Home Premium, OpenSuSE 10.3 as the main OS's and Windows XP pro running in VMWare.


It's all fun! :)

It's a brief addendum...

I believe I have found the best power combination in City Of Heroes.

Choose a Scrapper with Katana and Regeneration. By Crikey!!!!

I'm going up against Red and Purple opponents all over the place and winning!!! I went from lvl 16 to 20 in about 2 hours.... Give it a try.

It's really starting to get me down.

After months of work, the RPGManager is coming together ion both Linux and WinBlows.

This is, however, not getting me any closer to getting a new job.

It appears that the world requires a piece of paper that says you can make programs before anyone actually believes you. In respect of this I have just applied for a Software Engineering degree. That's right, at 31 years old I will once again become a beer (surely cider) swilling student.

Hopefully in 3 year's time when I've officially learned everything I know now then they'll be banging down my door instead of vice-versa. :D

It's all getting a bit too much...

I've applied for a load of new jobs, I've worked my arse off and so far to no avail.

Hopefully something will pan out soon.

I ran into some weird problems recently in Linux. My webcam works when I use luvcview but does not work using gqcam or skype for linux. I spent a long time trying to solve this, and haven't quite managed it yet. It appears to be some problem with v4l and v4l2 which I can't quite work out. There also seems to be some problem getting the cam to work using mplayer. I've tried a few workarounds, but no results yet.

Admittedly, having only used linux for a few months, I may not see the problem straight away, but my computer sense is tingling and tells me I should be able to solve it.

I've also had to make a tough decision of late as to whether I'll keep playing city of heroes or keep roleplaying. A tough choice, but COH eventually won. It's not good being in a situation where you actually have to make that coice as I enjoy both equally.

Beowulf is out on Monday. Been looking forward to that for ages now. Mr Gaiman, I doff my cap to you sir.

It's not the best of ideas...

... to let me drink a lot of alcohol and then post a blog. Or indeed let me anywhere near a computer.

Although there is much ranting to be done.

Not only have I been working my ass off for this interview on Friday by getting the database and GUI sorted for my RPGManager, but I've also has the most amazing idea for two screenplays. The first is a drama about a guy suffering from Depression, Sleep Deprivation and Multiple Personality Disorder and the second is a super-hero movie.

I won't go into details just yet, but when I've got something sorted I will post it.

I need a cigarette...

... That's better.

I turn thirty-one on Saturday and it is my ardent wish that I will actually get a job for which I am better suited than my current one. I am a geek, that is what I do best... For God's sake, I just bought a binary watch...

I'm actually going to see my parents on my birthday too, for the first time in 10 years. My mother and I share a birthday (probably the least welcome present she ever had... A nine and a half pound baby) and the last time we saw each other on our birthday was my twenty-first... There is a weird palindromic co-incidence there too, but I'll explain that at a later date.

Wish me luck with the interview...

It's a light.... There a the end of the tunnel.

That's right... Finally... A job interview. Next Thursday I'm off to try and convince someone that I'm worth employing as a software engineer and that the last 6 years were just a clerical error.

So I'm busily swotting up on my C++ and databases as that's what they're after.

Oddly, there was an earthquake last night. Weird because earthquakes in the UK are really rare, not being anywhere near a faultline or anything. I wonder how this is possible. It certainly merits further study.

It's time for a bit of a sit.

Well... Back from Paris and I'm absolutely exhausted.

Not only did we manage to do most of the tourist stuff: Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame, Pont Neuf etc; but we also managed to get around a few alternative bars as well. If you like rock, metal etc then I can highly recommend either the Katabar near the Moulin Rouge or Les Furieux near Bastillle.

Another cunning little trick I picked up is that if you want free internet access from a hotel then make sure your laptop is running Linux. It seems to bypass the credit card sign-up procedure.

Anways... time for a big cup of tea and a bit of a sit.

It's nearly time.

Well... This time tomorrow I'll be in Paris.

I'm really looking forward to, it's our five year anniversary and we've got the weekend away together without the sprog. :)

No really huge developments to report, I've started work on a code demo for applying for games programming jobs. My two options are either an R-Type clone or a 3-D environment walk-around. Still not quite sure which yet. It does get very frustrating when learning a new thing, you just want to be able to do it straight away instead of having to go through all the 'Hello Worlds' and other applications. Ah well...

Fun little site for you to check out if you like musical comedy:

RobP's Page

I can highly recommend the Pachelbel Rant.

Bon Soir!

It's starting to look up

Had a call from a recruiter yesterday, based on the updated cv I sent out on Saturday. Now all I need to do is convince them that I'm still good enough at development despite many years away from it professionally.

Successes over the last few days include: Re-Configuring Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition to use the Windows Platform SDK and DirectX; Finally getting 3d support working on my laptop (cursed savage s3 drivers).

So hopefully good news will follow in terms of jobs.

If anyone out there wants to know how any of these linux/windows workarounds have been achieved then by all means drop me a line.

It's simply marvellous

After several months of fighting with various installations of SuSe Linux Enterprise Desktop I finally made the switch to OpenSuSe 10.3. It is quite simply amazing. All the problems I've had trying to get WPA working in Linux were solved in one fell swoop. All I had to do was install the firmware for the bcm43xx chip and restart the interface and lo and behold it worked. No need for poxy ndiswrapper solutions any more, it works with KNetworkManager and the WPA encryption is on! :)


So if there is anyone out there having difficulties with wireless and Linux I would highly recommend that you switch to OpenSuSe immediately. Not only has it resolved my wireless issue, but the Build Service is amazing and contains all the packages I've been installing from source, so I can now install them using YaST.

*big grin*

It's getting to be an obsession.

Not only did I watch all six of Kevin Smith's Jersey movies in one night, but over the last couple of days I've also done both Evenings With Kevin Smith. I think I might be close to overdosing. You'll know it's happened if I get arrested for peddling weed outside a video store, or calling a small child a fucking cunt rag.

Still having problems with getting WPA working on my damn wireless card. There must be somebody, somewhere that's had the same problem so I can google it. Needless to say, my search continues.

Harsh news about Heath Ledger. He was a damn good actor, and will be missed.

It's another thing crossed off my list.

My list of things I absolutely have to do has one less entry.

I sat down on Friday night with a few friends and watched the entire Jersey trilogy (I know there's 6 of them now so it's technically two trilogies). The last time I did it there was only Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy and we did the drinking game. We only managed to get to halfway through Mallrats before we pretty much passed out. It's vicious. Needless to say we did not even attempt a drinking game this time.

Out of probably 15 people who attended it came down to just me and Hannah who managed to stay up until Clerks 2, admittedly I passed out about half way into it, but as I've seen that many times recently I think it still counts as job done.

For extra geek-ness I made the Clerks: Lost Scene and Chasing Dogma comics available for the sake of completion. :)

At the end of it all I have to say is: Mr Smith - I salute you.

It's astounding

Dante said it best 'A bunch of savages in this town'.

What kind of world is it where a bunch of teenagers have nothing better to do than smash up a shop. I can't believe that scumbags like this are allowed to wander the streets. If left to their own devices they're going to grow up into the next generation of lager louts who beat the shit out of each other and anyone who gets in their way.

My solution:

Give a week's notice to anyone who doesn't want to get involved to leave town. At the end of the week, seal off the town and quarantine it. Air drop in some automatic weapons and leave them to it for a week. At the end of that week, send the army in to mop up the survivors. Problem solved.

It's not just grim up north

It has been absolutely awful the last couple of days. The river outside of our house nearly spilled over again. We came within a couple of inches of being flooded during the last lot of bad weather. This is what it looked like from just inside our front door:

Thankfully it wasn't quite as bad this time and the river didn't actually spill over onto the path.

I must say how much I love roleplaying. It's been a hobby of mine for over 20 years now, and it still hasn't lost it's appeal. Now I'm not talking about Dungeons and Dragons here where me and a bunch of my friends sit around battering orcs and collecting gold pieces and xp. At the moment we're playing a game set in the future but in a parallel universe. It's basically futuristic magical steampunk, which is awesome, lots of airships and the like. We've just discovered Atlantis and it turns out that it might be Hell.

I'm still having problems with my wireless network and Linux. I've managed to get it all set up and working, but when I try to use the WPA encryption my laptop won't connect. So I'm left using MAC address filtering which ain't very good if anyone nearby knows how to spoof a MAC address. Despite much googling I still can't seem to get it to work using iwconfig. Hmmm.... Ah well... I'm sure I'll crack it eventually.

I ran into another odd problem the other day while transferring old VHS tapes onto DVD. There appears to be some sort of archaic copy protection system that will not allow me to back up my videos onto dvd. As soon as I start the tape playing and record on the dvd it says 'Copy Protected' and stops the recording. I guess I've become so used to ripping cd's and dvd's that I'd completely forgotten that copy protection is such an issue.

Only for weeks now until we go to Paris or our 5th anniversary. Can't wait, I'm going to have to see how much it's going to cost to do the Eiffel Tower and the Louvres.

It's a start.

I suppose the first thing to get out of the way is the fact that I hate my job. I make this clear from the outset so that, from here on in, I don't have to mention it again and can concentrate on more important things. Suffice to say it is the one thing in my life I would change in a heartbeat. I know people will say that it's within my power to change my own position, and I am trying, but the world is not very forgiving of silly mistakes made in employment choices over the years.

That said I am looking forward, not due to any half-baked new year's resolution that I'll forget in a few weeks time, but as a result of my re-invigorated focus on things that really matter to me.

I've spent the last few months finally getting my head around Linux, something which I have been meaning to do for nearly 7 years now. Now I'm up to speed with it and plunging neck deep into C++ and KDevelop (another thing on my to do list for several year's now).

As well as geeking out, I'm currently working on several creative projects, including a tabletop RPG, a LARP and a couple of screenplays and short stories. As per usual I'm spreading myself a little thin and finding it a little difficult to concentrate on one thing at a time.

I'm hoping that actually sitting myself down to write this blog will focus me and give me a bit of direction on whichever task I'm currently working on.

Anyhoo... not getting too in-depth this evening, it's already ludicrously late and the chores commence anew in the morning.