Friday, October 27, 2006

LinuxWorld Expo

Debian stand. "Best linux distro ever."

New tshirt. Won a goat at hoopla.
Took a video of 4 NZ'ers and a giraffe doing a Linux chaka.

Found a surprising number of 'doze users on the other stands, and attempted to convert them (though I shall never know if successful). Chatted with the Oracle guys about the good old days of command-line installation.

Pub quiz. "My" team the Cute Gnomes (er, I don't remember actually answering any questions) were joint winners and received a goat, which was given to me. The other winning team also got a goat.
Subsequent Goat sex.

Another bus, another pub. Some drunken DD kept appearing next to me and insisting that I should become a Debian Developer, in spite of all protest. He introduced me to Sledge to further this plan. Sledge said I can attend the Cambridge bug-squashing this weekend, and I am permitted to squash bugs. "Ants, beetles, mosquitos - as many as you like."

I gave a goat to Noodles. Photo of Noodles the Evil Mastermind, with his goat.

Short video of Noodles the EM. Warning: turn down the sound!

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Oh wot a luvverly weekend

We have internet! But my laptop is broken :(

Lovely weekend. Three friends from York arrived, with guitar and leccy fiddle. On Saturday the boyz went to conquer Norwich while W and I drove to my cottage to meet Mark for the purpose of digging a French Drain (along the back wall of the old part of the cottage). When we got there Mark had already dug it! He's such an energetically competent bloke :)

Sunday was warm and sunny and perfect for a late bbq, with visitors and 3/4 of the Mayes crew. First I took W and her trusty camera round some of the interesting parts of the city, and then out to Colney Church (flint, with round tower); we dashed back when Mark arrived. Later L came over, and thus met another group of friends. And Richard III.

Joeboy turned up in the evening after the northern contingent had left, and we watched a very interesting set of films: Richard III followed by Syriana - sandwiched around the BBC Jane Eyre. Curious mix.

Excellent acting in Syriana, though the camerawork was rather uneven. And the actor who played Nasir was the doctor in Deep Space Nine. The Arabic sounded so good because he was born in Sudan!

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Semi-alug bbq

A bbq was announced at short notice in #alug on Saturday morning.

daven came over and checked phone cables. Then he looked at our bbq. Yes there was a full canister of gas, but no it isn't a gas bbq. Last week had turned up no coals in all the supermarkets (Christmas now, innit), so we went to see if we could get the end-of-season-sale gas bbq noticed in the Range. It was still there, and not surprising: it had no innards. What's the use of that? We bought an ordinary bbq for about £7 so we could try burning wood in it.

It started to rain. Thunderstorm, lightning, car alarms going off, and hail that gave concern for the windscreen, so I pulled off the road. The rain was so heavy we couldn't see the lightning.
The sky cleared and the indomitable bbqers went searching for filling stations that might have some coals left. Just as daven located a hoard, quinophex phoned to say he and wildduck and toddler Bea were waiting outside number 5 and had instant bbqs with them. We headed back, having told him that it's 7 not 5.

The Ruin'd Folly makes a good outdoor kitchen, especially soaked from the rainstorm and thus unlikely to burn down.
Noodles arrived, with bbq coals. He too thought it was #5. Weirdness.

Full of food, housemates vegged in front of the tv with Jane Eyre, while geeks tested cables and phone sockets and the router and took phonethings apart, and wildduck sat in between ;) Noodles noticed my laptop and took that apart as well.

We talked about qualifications and jobs and corporate preferences for m$oft, and the way "doing things in Windows" is taught instead of theory and algorithms, and came up with a new word - "microsoftened" for what happens to people brought up on Word, Excel, and Windows.

quinophex: Bea, pass me the IDC punchdown tool
and later...
Noodles: is the burny thing still on?
daven: oh shit!
[both run]

There were very few photos (4 on Fotopic), and daven banned the one of him and the purple snake :(