Neil Hopcroft

A first step toward the edible mobile phone…just needs a little miniturisation.

Is anyone out there running awstats.pl?

What output does it give? I keep getting a bunch of requests searching for it, all of which are 404ing. I suspect its searching for a vulnerability of some kind – anyone know what uses this as a vector? What output should I feed it that would break the payload? I’m loath to install the awstats package, just to see what happens, but I suppose I could set up a honeypot to analyse it.

Oh, and alt-tab has started working again, I thought I needed to reboot my computer. What kind of programming makes a key combination like that stop working? I could still switch by pointing the mouse at the taskbar so it wasn’t having really serious process switch issues, just the key combo stopped functioning.

“We gettin the bus to Arbury innit?”
The March Massif are in town for Strawberry Fair, with their talk of ‘shrooms and stealing money from their mom. I’m so proud to be human some days.

Maybe listening to Radioheads Creep just before leaving didn’t help, though. Funny song, always puts me in an odd mood, I blame it on Low Morale. Only song of theirs I can stand, after being swamped by a hundred thousand shoegazers when I was looking for a house in Oxford, but Robins enthusiasm for it in Northampton made that one survive….I wonder what became of everyone I knew in Northampton…? I’m still a bit in touch with digitaljunky, mostly via LJ and random streetmeetings in London.

After a quick jaunt around town I headed down to midsummer common for the fair. I must’ve arrived early since it was fairly quiet when I got there, a good time to fulfil the traditional fair induced hot-dog craving before the queues arrive. Just as I’d gotten an icecream to follow the ‘dog Gizelle came bounding over to take me to join nevla and co – his friend Derek seemed oddly familiar somehow, and also seemed to recognise me, but we couldn’t place how that could’ve come about.

“But I’m a creep”

We wandered around for a bit and met up wtih Nevs kid sister and daevid & Jackie and their little one. There were a number of sights to be seen, we visited the circle Nev had helped open in the morning, and wondered how the wishing tree worked, and watched as the fairies wondered how their bubble makers worked. Bubbles were quite a theme this year it seems, even to the extent of the opportunity to purchase a 6000 bubbles per minute industrial strength bubble making machine – for an unknown price, I know that if I’d found it was less than I had on me I’d be a bubble machine up by now. One of many reasons not to take too much cash to these things.

Nev kept being amazed how relaxed I was looking, which seemed a little unlikely considering the sheer numbers of people who were collecting in the area by then, maybe the relaxed had gone to the outside, letting panic fill the inside….and I suspect that my suggestion of going to Edinburgh for a decent riot when the G8 turn up shocked him a little too, poor lad, shortly after that they made their excuses and left…

“I’m a weirdo”

Then I did another circuit and was aiming for donuts when I was saved by jhaelan and a bunch of other people I didn’t know…and royan & redshira who left as soon as I arrived, I presume it wasn’t something I said, since I only got as far as waving hello…was hoping you guys would come back…

Shortly after the lovely ladycat arrived along with more assorted ex-Cam people I didn’t recognise, and we all sat around conveniently close to the beer tent watching the crowds run from the occasional and short rain showers – its like everyone is allergic to a little water falling from the sky. Though, that said, the heaviest of those showers was lit by brilliant sunlight casting a double rainbow perfectly centred above the stage and there wasn’t any cloud cover above our heads, the heavy looking clouds had passed already by the time the rain arrived.

“What the hell am I doing here?”

People came and went, finally there was a small contingent of us heading down to watch a band that someone had seen a couple of years ago. They were quite good, though the sound system needed a little more work, perhaps their amplifier had been appropriated by the dumb and base tent over in the hippy corner, which was pushing out some quite literally earth moving techno. Thats a lot of bass for a little tent.

I couldn’t get into the band since their music seemed to be blowing away, they probably sounded better downwind, but you couldn’t see them from there. Another quick circuit before heading home, with heavy legs and tired head.

“I don’t belong here”

And I noticed that one of the magazine CDs I got today contains a copy of “A forest”. I think I’m going to need some inspiration on non-depressing music to listen to…ideas?

I found a great place for watching sunsets out just beyond Baits Bite Lock. Sadly tonights sunset, for all its potential, turned out not to be too spectacular. One day I’ll find somewhere outside the acoustic footprint of A14, which’ll add to the peaceful feelings somewhat.

“…you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind.”

Back to work this week. Its really tiring to go back after taking a break. And its only been a four day week. Gonna have to see how things go…though if everything is like this its not going to be a fun place to stay. Still, it would probably be fair to say that I’ve learned something this week – I started on Tuesday knowing nothing about Linux loadable kernel modules…

“0-60 of 6.5 seconds and fuel economy around 42 mpg“, though presumably not at the same time … thats the kind of car I’ll be after… doubt its in my price range for the next upgrade, though.

So, whats the score with Strawberry Fair? Anyone going? Is there any kind of organised meet up? Or is it just a case of wandering around in the hope of finding people I know?

“Shagster.net is a site to keep track of your sexual conquests, and give them a rating out of 10 for their troubles.” …personally I’m not sure I need a website to keep track of such things…

“From that point forward I always thought that a stack of CDs with a tubular light inside would make a very cool lamp” …looks like I have a use for my extensive collection of AOL CDs.

Sharing my doom with Grandi – it is considerably more fractal and isotropic than I had ever expected, to the extent that he spent a full minute laughing at my predicament. Still, at least he’s helping me out.

Burwell Castle is not the manicured historic monument we’re used to, its a bunch of bumps in the ground covered in nettles and grass. The only indication of its importance is a few tattered information boards overlooking the ditches around the perimeter.

There are few better ways to tell the world what kind of character you are than losing the back end of your beamer in an ill-considered drift on the way in to the Tesco car park.

“Limor Fried developed the Media-Sensitive Glasses that automatically darken whenever a television is in view, so as to protect the wearer from television’s “hypnotic” effect.”

“I’ve got an ongoing project, reprogramming the firmware in these 1985 Epson LQ-500 printers to turn them into musical instruments“