Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Geo tagging goodness

Geo tagging goodness

Flickr introduced Geotagging today.

Awesome.

Although I have some fairly definite ideas on releasing too much information as to my whereabouts and movements (no, not those ones), I do like the fact that I can share the locations of my silly perambulations with you.

There is one flaw, however, you need to copy and paste the geolocation into Google Earth (the flickr one runs of Yahoo maps) to see much detail. I'm sure it will come, though.

To celebrate, I put the details from this set onto the map, which can be seen here

Friday, August 11, 2006

You may have to rub your eyes - this is real...


100_0048
Originally uploaded by cojchurch.

Yes, folks. I can't believe it is actually true, but someone has made a kids inflatable slide out of the Titanic sinking.

Allow me to remind you all that the sinking took the lives of 1490 people. Yet someone decided that it would be fun to slide down it. Do they, I wonder, hold the kids heads under some water for 20 minutes for added realism? Perhaps throw them in a refrigerated pool?

Who the hell decided that would be a good idea? That is one of the sickest things I have seen...



[edit: Ooooh, you can buy one for yourself At 'Fun-makers.com'... Nice.

Travel

Marvellous. As soon as I plan to travel back to England, there is a security alert.

Fuckflaps.

I have decided to fly back next Thursday (arriving Friday morning) for a week and this has created some turmoil in my decision process. With all this talk of having to put everything electronic in the hold, do I take my MacBook? I have seen the gorillas that load and unload the planes, and the best packing in the world can't help a laptop that falls off the side of a conveyor belt, can it? Even if it doesn't actually dent it or anything, the shock can't be good for it.

I am thinking I won't bother, as it goes. After all, both places I am staying for any period have internet access (admittedly both are dial-up - yuck) and I do only really need it for social emails. It's not like I am dependent on it for business or anything. But there is something fundamentally galling about having something that I have become so dependent on placed in the 'risk it or not have it' category. But regardless, not having it for a week is better than not having it because it is smashed, or worse, having it develop a loose connection that cannot be reliably proven to be due to the air travel... That'd suck arse.

I suppose that without the laptop, I could travel considerably lighter - one week of clothing + ipod + camera and spare card. It would preclude my need to carry a backpack if there is no way that I can take it on the plane with me on the way back, I guess. It would be very inefficient to carry a case big enough to take the backpack just for the way back, after all.

What I don't understand is the x-ray checking process of such things as these. Surely if a laptop is x-rayed, you have the potential to tell if it is genuine? Also, why is this done manually? Why not have a data file of an x-ray image of the machine (manufacturer provided perhaps?) which could allow the comparison of the image by computer for anomalies? I never understood how an operator could look at an X-ray of a laptop and have any possibility of assessing its correct function. Surely computer analysis and matching, with further investigations of (a much smaller percentage) anomalies (turning on the laptop and the like) would be more efficient? And doubtless more accurate in terms of assessing the equipment.

The x-ray data set could be added to by any manufacturer, or from a manufacturer supplied control sample, for any electronic device common in air travel - ipods, personal CD players, radios, organisers etc. It is in the interests of the manufacturer ("approved for air travel"?) and in the interests of the airlines - better security checking from a more detailed knowledge base.

In addition, if laptops and electronics are potentially dangerous, then surely the extra investigation and ability to individually examine the contents of hand luggage is better than just throwing it in the hold? You could slap a machine with a timer or a pressure sensor to initiate a device, and it is much less likely to be discovered than one in the hand luggage.

It all seems like knee jerk "be seen to be doing something" to me. If laptops, phones and ipods are really that dangerous, why would they be allowed on the plane at all. It's not like timers and remote triggering is completely unheard of, is it?

I think I will be sending my Macbook for its repair and battery replacement when I am in England. Much safer there than in Ug the Plane Packer's hands, I suspect.

Can I see your licence please, sir?

Oooops. At 0130 this morning on the way back from a night out in Atlanta, I pass a Police car sat on the hard shoulder of the Interstate. All it's lights were off and he was just sat there.

Well. Until I went honking past him at warp factor 5 he was, anyway. As I was standing the van on its nose, his headlights came on, and about 30 seconds later everything turns all red and blue. Damn, but his car had some poke to catch up with me so fast.

I pulled over and sat there for what seemed like ages watching for him to get out in the rear view mirror. He took so long to get out that I nearly got out myself to go to him, until I remembered that you don't do that here. I didn't really fancy getting shot. Terribly inconvenient, that would be. Then there was a knock at the passenger window that made me jump out of my skin, being as I was didn't see him get out of his car.


(adopting extra English accent and 'affable idiot' demeanour) Ah. Good evening, Officer.

"Hello, sir. Do you know the speed limit on this road?"

Um, yes, I think it's 55mph, is it not?

"Yes, sir. And we just clocked you at 79..."

Ah. Yes. Sorry about that.

"Can I see your licence please?"

(hand over UK license, and watch the copper's eyebrow twitch just a little, and his demenour change slightly)

"Hmmmm, ok. Well.... just be a little more careful and try and drive a bit slower, would you?"

Certainly. Thank you very much.


Being as he passed me as I was coming off the interstate and went off in the direction of the Police Station, I suspect that the reason he suddenly lost all interest in booking me was the idea of all that paperwork right at the end of his shift. Bargain.

There's something to be said for being a foreigner, although I'm not sure I'd rely on that sort of luck too often.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Busted.

No, not a teen band post, this refers to getting caught doing things that are illegal.

Work is slow at present. The car that we are supposed to be getting ready to race is away getting a new body put on it, and the engine and gearbox are also away being done, so we have little to do. We have painted the workshop floor (twice), cleaned out and fixed up any of the pit trolleys that need attention and generally fucked about. While getting paid.

Boring, but it could be worse.

So our task the other day was to strip and rebuild the 125cc gearbox kart (like this one), as the team owner and now driver uses it to keep in shape. They are pretty physical to drive, and it is a pretty cheap way of keeping your reactions, eye coordination and neck muscles in shape. So Travis started cleaning it up, and I wandered over and helped every now and then. After dragging it out for two days, we decided that the time had come to start it up.

Now, I have seen these things started on the preparation stands by wrapping a rope around the rear tyre and pulling on it to bump start it. But being as the thing hadn't run in over a year, we suspected that may be unlikely to be successful. So we elected to bump start it. Travis got in (my fat arse didn't fit in the seat) and I pushed him around the workshop while it failed to start. Due to the temperature in the workshop being around 95 deg F (35 degC) once was enough, especially as we were making marks on the freshly painted floor every time he let the clutch out...

Hmmm, we mused, I think we need to be going faster, but also for longer to pull the fuel through. Let's go outside. And to help the 'faster and further' bit, I'll tow you with the Golf cart...

But the temptation of the open gate was too much, you see, so within 20 seconds of tying the kart to the, er, cart, we were zipping up and down the road outside the unit while Travis experimented with choke and carb settings to try and get it started. After a few minutes, we had it fired up and Travis went zooming off past me down the street to turn around at the end. Obviously, my golf cart was hopelessly slow by comparison, so I turned around early and headed back to the workshop. Travis (quite rightly, as it happens) took that to be a challenge, and came belting up the road after me, pulling gears and accelerating as fast as he could, to try and beat me back to the workshop. He came past me doing about 50 or 60mph, I guess, and was then hard on the brakes to stop by the junction at the end, with me puttering up behind him.

However, just as he managed to stop at the end of the street, a police cruiser came around the corner, right in front of him. Oops.

"You gotta be kidding me!" Says the cop, out of his window.

"Er. Pretty much, yeah." Says Travis- trying to stop the engine and pretend he hadn't been driving the race kart up the road at double the speed limit with no suit or helmet on...

Meanwhile, I nonchalantly buzz past the front of the cop car, on my golf cart, and park just inside the fence.

By the time I got to Travis and the copper, however, it was all smiles. Apparently the guy races a dirt track car (not sure what one of those is) and understood the need to 'run things in' once in a while.

"But y'all gotta get off the street, or y'all'll get me into trouble"

(Excuse the punctuation in that last bit, but that's what he said, and I have no idea how else to write it...)

So we got away with it, shockingly. Not too often that sort of thing happens. He missed us racing the team mopeds up the street for about an hour (speed limiters removed) the week before, trying to work out which one was faster and why - again with no helmets. So we neglected to mention that. The guy came around about an hour later and we showed him around the workshop, and he left his card with us in case we needed any help at race weekends. All a bit surreal.

It did prompt suggestions (after he had gone) from the boss that if we had a cop on the team, that John should dress as a builder, Travis as a cowboy, and me as a Red indian and we could have the village people themed pit crew. This suggestion was rejected.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Techno-disaster week.

It's all gone a bit wrong.

Macbook Pro:
1: Horrid whistling from front left - potentially diagnosed as needing a new logic board (5-7 days away for repair).

2: As I was, rather ironically, on the phone to the Apple repair centre to report this - I was waiting in the queue for them to answer - my battery shat it's pants. Total loss of 1/4 power in less than a second. After I plugged AC power in, it initially told me that it would take 55 hours to recharge it... I suspected a problem. They'll swap this over when it goes back.

3: Also, the default Mail application won't talk to my mail server to allow me to send mails. This is an arse. I want to use it (as opposed to Thunderbird still), as it talks to the address book which talks to everything else. Bah. I may change my email address drop box (no change to any of you lot, don't worry. Invisible and behind the scenes).

And even more annoyingly (nothing has actually terminally broken on the Macbook - the battery is behaving at present):

My camera is fucked. I am, unsurprisingly, monumentally pissed off about this. Especially as it happened when John the stupid cunt through a football (not even a proper one) at someone sat at my table, missed, and fired my camera straight off the table onto the concrete path. Fucking cunt-faced bastard. It has smashed the selector button for picture/film/playback off, so the camera is not much fucking use right now, being stuck on play and that. Also, the zoom sounds very noisy now, but that might be my paranoia. If he wasn't so fucking enormous, I'd have even considered smacking him in the mouth for being so bloody stupid around everyone's kit, but at the risk of being a coward, I shall claim 'sensible' and just be mighty fucked off about it.

So I am grumpy today. Pretty much lots.