Category: General

Nearly-Halfway Check-up

Well, I think it’s about time I brought an update on the resolutions. The last time I checked on those, things were progressing slowly, or not at all. And in the usual order:

  1. Filing.
    I got ahead last week so I could spend a bit of time off this week – I’ll be about ten pages behind for next weekend, but I plan to make it up then. I’ve almost reached the end of the top drawer, and the bottom drawer is almost empty. Then there’s just the backlog of stuff that hasn’t been filed since I started doing this in January! All in all, I think this one will be finished in a couple of months!
  2. Dark Elves.
    I went to stay with my parents over the Easter weekend and while they fawned all over Freddy, I got a good chunk of work done on the Corsairs. I believe I may be able to free up a bit of time in the evenings to work on them now, so for about 15 minutes a night I can chip a little closer to my goal. Still looking like I won’t finish the whole army this year, but I will see what I can get done and plan accordingly for next year.
    The other problem is that knowing I won’t get them all done, I’ve lost momentum on getting the remainder of the models ready to paint. I know there are more undercoated than I can paint this year, so I’m just not motivated to get the rest undercoated. The weather has been a bit off for the last few weeks too, maybe I’ll catch the bug when the clouds disappear again.
  3. Driving Licence.
    Lessons have been going well, I had a double lesson today and booked a double lesson for next weekend (knowing that the one after it I will be unavailable). The instructor is really good, and I’m recommending that the wife take a couple of refresher lessons before I take the test again. Speaking of which, I was told to book the test today – “For the second half of June.” So that’s good news!
  4. German.
    Looking at my schedule, I believe that when the filing is out of the way I would do better to try and concentrate my time on painting for now. There’s also the driving lessons (1-2 hours a week) that I may have free, but I think I should focus those too on painting. Maybe when I’ve made more progress on that one, I’ll reconsider this.
  5. Star Trek cards.
    The bulk of my collection has sold on eBay! The remainder has now been listed, and there are a few parcels still to send out. I’ve even received feedback on a couple of items, so I know that they got there OK. I got more money for them than I was expecting, so that’s a nice bonus too. I just need to get it out of my PayPal account and into my real world.
  6. Family Tree.
    As I mentioned before, we’ve had our first bash at that and added a whole bunch of new names to the list. We’ve got a lot planned for the next few weekends (weddings, fairs, guests, etc) so I think when it’s all over (middle of June?) we’ll be planning our next one. My original plan to have the main bulk of this finished by July was a bit optimistic, on reflection. We have at least two more meetings to go to get the basics down, and possibly a third, given the complexity of my wife’s ancestry. I’ll also have to practice my German spelling for that one.
  7. Wargame Tools.
    I came to a bit of an irk-point a while ago – none of my friends have been able to test the program so far, they are all too busy. My own tests turned up that I need to alter the data structure, and since it was a learning project it’s not quite consistent in the way things are performed… it was looking to be complex and time-consuming. I am rewriting it to teach myself MVC, and so far progress has been quick. This also has the advantage that I can shove it on a website and point people to it to test much easier – I’ll probably go straight to some war-gaming forums and ask for volunteers. I still think I can have it in test by September.

All in all, good progress! A driving test being taken by July, which was my original aim, and hopefully I’ll pass! Star Trek cards almost all gone, and with more money than I expected to boot! Family tree and Wargame Tools both moving along as expected, and the filing hopefully coming to a close soon! I’ll probably have very little to do for the winter months this year…

A Dialect Meme

Stolen from the guy who writes For I Have Tasted The Fruit…

  1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks:
    Stream, maybe brook (but only if it is babbling).
  2. What the thing you push around the grocery store is called:
    Trolley, or shopping trolley.
  3. A metal container to carry a meal in:
    I don’t know of metal containers to carry meals in – plastic ones are lunch boxes (if they have a hinged lid and Action Man on it), tub or tupperware.
  4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in:
    Frying pan – although we grill our bacon and I am incapable of frying eggs.
  5. The piece of furniture that seats three people:
    Sofa.
  6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof:
    Gutter.
  7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening:
    Sit outside? Usually patio if it’s a concrete thing in the back garden (but I’ve never seen one covered), porch in the front of the house (though I can’t imagine many people sitting at the front of the house of an evening!)
  8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages:
    Fizzy drink.
  9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup:
    Probably pancakes, but they are not really a breakfast food.
  10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself:
    Baguette.
  11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach:
    Shorts or (swimming) trunks. I always preferred shorts, the longer the better. And a t-shirt. My theory was that if that was all I wore anyway, that’s all I needed to tan. Why risk cancer?
  12. Shoes worn for sports:
    Trainers.
  13. Putting a room in order:
    Tidying, cleaning if you dust as well.
  14. A flying insect that glows in the dark:
    Probably firefly. That’s the only one I can think of, I don’t think there’s a local word for it.
  15. The little insect that curls up into a ball:
    I’d call it a woodlouse, but apparently a Bristolian term is ‘grampfer grey’.
  16. The children’s playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down:
    Seesaw.
  17. How do you eat your pizza:
    Fingers. Pizza is a meal of last recourse, when no-one can be bothered to do something more difficult. No need to try and save dignity there. I will use a knife and fork in a restaurant, depending on both the quality of the restaurant, the company I am with, or (ultimately) the thickness of the base. Some of them are almost transparent at Pizza Express!
  18. What’s it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff:
    A crime? I’ve never seen people just set up at the front of their house and sell things. Most people would take it to a boot sale or church fair or something.
  19. What’s the evening meal?:
    Dinner. My wife would call it tea (but to me, that’s a drink).
  20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are:
    HELL. People don’t have furnaces in this country, and it’s very rare to have a basement either. I think of them as basements or cellars, depending on how pleasant they are to be in. Having not seen more than one ever, I couldn’t tell you which is worse.
  21. What do you call the thing from which you can drink water in public places:
    Fountain or drinking fountain. And the general rule is that you don’t drink from them.

Family Tree Update

On Saturday, we visited my father-in-law’s family to make a start on my wife’s family tree. We managed to add just over sixty names to the list, bringing to total to over two hundred! As usual, a lot of the details are concentrated near the bottom of the tree – people who are still alive – but some of the older details were backed up with birth, marriage or death certificates. These are fantastic, it helped to fill some gaps in the knowledge that people either don’t know off the top of their head or never knew. I am indebted to the in-laws for keeping a hold of that sort of thing. I’ll definitely try and keep what I can for the future, and pass it on with the tree itself. We’ve gone back six generations from my son on almost every path now, and just think how amazing that will be to his children and grandchildren!

There are still some gaps, but with luck we should be able to get in touch with some of the more extended family and see what they can fill in (even if it is only their own details!)

Also, my parents are at home Easter weekend so we’re travelling down to see them – hopefully, I can meet up with my granddad and get some more information from him. I’ve been warned that he probably won’t have any documentation to help piece things together, but that’s not a major problem. We’re also going to start planning to meet with my wife’s other grandparents, to find out what we can there. It will challenge my family tree program and it’s text support, as most of the names on that side are German…

One thing my dad hasn’t tried when researching his tree is getting in contact with living relatives he doesn’t know or have a lot of contact with, to try and get more details that his main sources (close relatives, of which there are few) might not know. Although, I don’t know that there’s much more that they can tell him – he is from a small family, and his mother knows enough to place the top of the tree near the beginning of the 19th century. It’s at least two or three generations further than I’ve managed yet.

In other news, I have a small disaster to report. I was, over this year, going to try and re-post all the content I produced for pagan-gerbil.net way-back-when I was a student, and had the time, and some really weird ideas. Like eating noodles for 23 days, or flying to Glasgow on a whim.

This idea might have to take a backseat for a little while, as in the recent reformats of my drive… I’ve lost them. Now, I’m sure there’s a spare hard-drive knocking around somewhere that it should be saved on (some of the older stuff may even be on a CD backup I made many many years ago). I think that I have a bunch of IDE drives in a box, and eventually replaced the ones being actively used with SATA drives. So given the age of the content, I just need to find out any old IDE drives and see what’s on them! That’s almost easy! As long as the files still exist somewhere!

I’m not filled with a huge amount of hope. I have a few too many things to get sorted before I can search the drives out anyway.

First Steps

So, it’s February and I think I can say I’ve made an acceptable start to my New Year’s resolutions. In order, then!

  1. Filing.
    My aim is to scan and shred fifty documents each week. I have done 392 so far, compared to an expected 250. This is pretty impressive, though it helps that the first week (my calibration week) I spent a lot of time shredding, and got over 100 documents sorted. And each week, I’ve been over my target by a little bit ‘while I’m in the groove’, as it were. So that one’s going well.
  2. Dark Elves.
    I’ve prepared a rough plan of what lays ahead with this task, and even wrote up a nice long blog post for sometime later to put up. But as far as actual work towards it goes, none yet.
  3. Driving Licence.
    I’ve been a bit preoccupied looking for a job to organise driving lessons. I believe that when I have changed job, I might be able to have a lesson straight from work to home again – this will make a big difference to the range of instructors I can pick, since many do not work weekends.
  4. German.
    Still not in a position to fit this one into the schedule, at present.
  5. Star Trek cards.
    All the cards are alphabetised, and I’m nearly halfway through cataloguing them. From there, it’s only a short evening on eBay, and then it’s all over!
  6. Family Tree.
    The weekends have been a bit hectic for the past few weeks, but luckily this is one where a small investment of time, even over 12 months, can provide a wealth of knowledge. I’m planning to arrange at least one fact-finding mission by the end of February, which should take the majority of a day. One day every eight weeks would have the bulk of this work finished by July, so that seems like a good target.
  7. Wargame Tools.
    This is another project that has suffered with the employment search. Still, have been able to spend some time reviewing it recently, and am a short length of time away from making the first half of the program available for testing. This is probably useless without the second part, of course, but that shouldn’t take nearly as long as the first part!

So that’s where I stand now. On reflection, I’ve made little or no progress on five of these projects – the ones with the least definite plan of action! There’s a lesson in that, I’m sure. Still, two of the projects have a minimal time investment in total / remaining, and I’m firming up plans on the rest. So that’s definitely a good sign that I should be on top of everything soon!

Man of Resolve

I know these are probably supposed to be announced at the New Year, but I’ve been a busy bunny. I also couldn’t think of any good ones till after the deadline (when I realised that these goals I set myself were proper resolutions, with full action plan and everything!)

What I like about these resolutions is that most of them are ones that are totally finished – they can’t (easily) be undone, and have a definite, visible result. Plus, unlike the nebulous ‘lose weight’ or ‘get fit’ that are probably in the top 10 resolutions, the only way to fail at most of these is to not try. Much easier to motivate yourself when that’s your only barrier.

First of all, I plan to do something about my filing cabinet. It currently has every phone bill, bank statement, hospital letter, and so on and so forth that I’ve received over the years. I plan to scan all these into the computer (I’m a hoarder at heart) and then shred anything more than two years. That’ll clear a lot of space, and make the important bits (for example, recent stuff) easier to find. The plan for this one (after a feverish weekend of shredding) is to try and scan at least 50 documents a week. That ought to be something I can easily do on a weekend without cutting into other stuff too much.

I’m also going to paint all my Dark Elf models. Some of these are unpainted, some are unassembled, some even need some remodelling to make them usable! I don’t have a definite timeframe, but I plan to focus on assembling and getting models ready to paint first. This way, as soon as Spring comes around, I can spray the models and have them ready to paint at the earliest possible opportunity. Some of these models have been unpainted for 10 years! This might be one of the hardest to keep, because there are so many other things that are important to do when I’ve got a spare five minutes, it’ll keep getting pushed aside.

I don’t have a driving licence at the moment. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I’ve not had a lesson for over a month, and that was after a dry spell following my practical test and a house move. I’m going to try with a new instructor, although I am restricted (pretty much) to weekends or late evenings. I figure a lesson every two weeks to get me feeling happy about driving again, then a lesson every week between booking the test and taking it. I should be taking the test before June. And if I fail, to rebook immediately. I must be a driver by December. This one will be the hardest to keep, because I hate driving.

I want to learn a language, and I’ve picked German. My wife is half-German, which makes my son a quarter-German, and she doesn’t speak a word of it. Neither does Freddy, but he doesn’t speak a word at all at the moment. It would be nice to learn a language, and I have one of those CD course things to tap at when I get the time. Unfortunately, I feel this is something that needs a bit of regular time and dedication, so it will have to wait till at least one of the other resolutions is done and dusted before I can squeeze it in, or I’ll see how the time-management goes and whether there is a place for it. I will have to see how things transpire.

Sell all my Star Trek cards. This is a fairly simple one, don’t think it needs that much explaining.

My Dad and I have been working on a family tree for a few years now. My involvement has been… less than involved, to be honest. But I’ve always taken an interest. I decided just before Christmas that it’d be nice to get Dad’s information (which mostly covers my Grandmother’s family) and put it into a new family tree, for Freddy. It’ll be nice for him to have a lot of the hard work done if he, or his children, ever decide to do some research into it. And as amazing as our earliest date of 1812 is, think how incredible that would be in 30-50 years time! To that end, I’m arranging to meet up with my mother’s parents, and my in-law’s parents, and glean as much information as possible. This should be easily completed by June. Apparently, my wife’s aunt has already done some research into her family, so that might be the best place to start – to save duplicating effort.

Finally, I want to get the first version of my Wargame Tools on this website to test. Given the amount of progress I’ve made since September, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to believe that it could be being tested around places by this September. I’m only aiming at a rough, unpolished version, however. The final one, with lights, colours, bells, whistles and knobs on could take a while longer. But we’ll see how it goes. I already know there’s a couple of limitations with the data structure I’ve designed as it relates to a perfect representation of the Warhammer system, specifically the Bretonnian army, but I’d want to wait and see what changes come with the 7th edition version of that army book before I start making massive modifications.

In summary, then:

  • Organise the filing cabinet
  • Paint all my Dark Elves
  • Get a driving licence
  • Learn German
  • Sell all my Star Trek cards
  • Work on the family tree
  • Get Wargame Tools released as an alpha test

Windows 7 Cheats and GodModes

According to http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10426627-56.html, there are a whole range of special codes you can add to a folder name in Windows 7 to make a shortcut to a particular function. I’ve tried out the ones listed in the article, and here’s what they do:

{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33} – Set default location for devices such as GPS
{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428} – Goes to control panel page for biometric devices, such as fingerprint readers
{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D} – Goes to control panel for power plans (I do use this quite often, actually)
{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9} – Settings for notification icons/area on the taskbar
{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70} – Control panel page for Windows/Certificate/Generic credentials store
{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4} – Install a program from the network
{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966} – Change default programs
{1D2680C9-0E2A-469d-B787-065558BC7D43} – Opens what appears to be the GAC
{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87} – Manage wireless networks
{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D} – Opens network for your Domain (browse computers in your domain)
{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} – Opens My Computer
{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} – Opens faxes and printers
{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B} – Control Panel for ‘Connect to desktops and programs at your workplace’ – something for RDC and RemoteApp
{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423} – Windows Firewall settings
{62D8ED13-C9D0-4CE8-A914-47DD628FB1B0} – This is just an empty, normal folder on my PC (Win7 Ultimate, x64)
{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC} – Rate and improve your computer’s performance

I only wish that the undocumented bits of Windows 7 were documented somewhere!

Apple Bites

Just a quick update today: Apple has gone up one point in my mind. One of my big problems with them has always been that iTunes, the ambassador to the Windows world, has only offered English (United States) as a language. Not just ‘English’ with a silent ‘whoops we thought this was English’ but ‘English (United States)’ as in ‘this is a specific language, and yours ain’t supported’.

Today, I installed iTunes just to get my iPod recognised (it comes off straight after, no fear!) and I realised that they finally had English (United Kingdom) offered on the installation.

Well done Apple, better late than never.

On a side note, I still dare some company to put English (England) on their languages list.

EDIT: That didn’t work. Now I have to uninstall all the additional junk Apple fills a computer with just for an MP3 player and software. MediaMonkey doesn’t do this. Nor does WinAmp. Still no solution.

I never realised this would become a political blog…

So, the British Nationalist Party managed to get on Question Time and almost the entire audience was wanting to ask questions about Nick Griffin’s nasty policies.

I have to say that I think to anyone who sees the BNP as just another political party (whether or not they would actually vote for them), Griffin presented himself calmly (more so than the frustrated panellists disgusted at having to be near him) and said all the right things. Send back immigrants who commit crimes, etc etc. When the discussion moved onto someone else to talk about current immigration policy, they totally dropped the ball.

To people who shiver any time they hear about the BNP, they were exposed as frauds, liars and snakes who haven’t abandoned their wicked ways. But that requires that you already believe Griffin and the BNP to be inferior creatures – people who don’t are more likely to see them as an underdog after this, being almost the sole subject of scorn and derision.

My criticism of Question Time is that the show was not nearly long enough to really get to the bone of any of Griffin’s claims and lay them out in simple enough terms that he could not claim he was misquoted. Although that would have made it more of an inquisition, rather than a “meet the politicians” sort of thing. Since he managed to wriggle long enough on each specific accusation, they had to keep moving onto the next question and he wasn’t forced to actually say “Yes, when we talk about Ice Age Britons we know full well we’re ignoring the dozen different major cultural eras that took us from barely sentient cave-beings to the almost entirely sentient McDonald’s employee, we just use that as an excuse to hide our racist views.”

The thing I took away from the show about the BNP is that if they have changed (and I don’t believe that for an instant, just talking hypothetically) then they are still taking us as a culture backward. Ignoring the immigration issue, they want Christianity placed above other religions in this country. Although technically it is the state religion, we have moved far in that everyone gets a level ground, and everyone’s religion is equal. In the same vein, anyone not ‘obviously’ British would have to start proving it, even if their family has been here for more generations than most. And their view on homosexuality not being taught or talked about is just plain wrong. People are homosexual, bisexual, or whatever they are, and just because they’re not told about it when they’re young won’t change that fact. It’ll just cause more problems for them in their own personal life, and act as a stepping stone backwards to situations like Alan Turing, and the way he was treated by the government for being homosexual – despite inventing a code-breaking computer that contributed immensely to our efforts in the Second World War.

Basically, I think it shows that our culture has moved on to ignoring differences between people, and focussing on people themselves. The BNP would be taking us back to an “Us and Them” culture, where anyone like the party-in-power is Us and any minority is Them.

(disclaimer: this does not constitute my entire feeling on the BNP, which can easily be simulated yourself by ramming a fork into your eyes, but merely a few things I had to get off of my chest this week. Thank you.)