Neil Hopcroft

I woke up this morning to find a sticker saying “L4” on my chin, wondering if that was there while I was at the calling last night and everyone was too polite to say anything…?

Looks like this mornings soldering has paid off – I’ve now got what appears to be a functional PIC microprocessor programming board. Sure, this isn’t much of an acheivement for most people, but I haven’t soldered for ten years, I was surprised how easy it was….gotta install the software now and actually *do* some programming.

And confirmation today that after six months here I still don’t know how to use the green bin, its for ‘organic waste only’, so I’ve been especially digging out the biodegradable carrier bags (you’ll notice that not all carrier bags are these days, having made a big sales pitch about it a few years back) to bundle up the mouldy oranges and teabags, but they’re not taking those – I got a big nasty ‘contamination’ sticker. OK, well, if thats the way you want to play it everything goes in the black bin, its not like I actually produce that much in the way of organic waste anyway (three bagfuls over the last fortnight) and if you’re going to make it impossible to package then it’ll go with the rest of the landfill. I tried.

Today I was supposed to be staying in waiting for the plumber, then the courier taking away my broken graphics card. So I figured I’d catch up on some soldering I’d been meaning to do while they were wrenching apart my bathroom. Turns out the overflow isn’t a big deal, since its got an internal one now instead of an external one, but I’ve now got two shiny new taps and all four in the bathroom work – no more having to check them make sure they really are turned off.

Then just as they were leaving the courier turned up. And I’ve finished my soldering, well, apart from a slight blobbing on one of the IC holders, but I can’t do anything about that until I’ve got a solder sucker, and I need a power supply and some sensible wiresnips. But thats it, I’m now free to go out again, and I hadn’t expected to be able to have a plan this afternoon.

I just ordered a MiniMac…

Edit: and I got to be “Dear Not specified Neil Hopcroft,” …you’d’ve thought they’d’ve learned after the “Not specified Richard Kettlewell” experience….

Mmmmm Pi

“And yes, the trojan will most likely also work under Linux, but it won’t do really anything there as it tries to download and execute Win32 EXE trojan.”

Presumably it wouldn’t take much to run this under WINE, should the initial attempt to launch it failed. I wonder how much of a problem that could cause? …indeed, maybe it could obtain a different executable, which would presumably run within the security limitations of the user running the JVM.

“‘Tagging for terror’ under the new Prevention of Terrorism Act got off to an inauspicious start over the weekend, with one control order detainee left without money, food or phone for 17 hours, police being forced to break down the door of one flat, and detainees claiming to be baffled by what their control orders allowed them to do, and who they were allowed to see.”

“For some years now The Register has been of the opinion that Government incompetence was one of the UK’s most important safeguards against totalitarianism, and we are therefore more than a little comforted by unfolding events.”

Something I love about things like using jump leads – you get to experiment with some real inginuity, especially if the car you’re jumping is parked face first into a bush, there just isn’t enough engineering in this world, everything got too easy once it became software upgradable, we all got lazy.

Walking back across the Jane Coston Bridge (“A perfect location for protest banners”, but I didn’t tell you that) I caught sight of the vast expanse of roofs (rooves?) of my housing estate. Good god its ugly, a sea of red nothingness, just the same for what seems like miles. I feel ashamed to live in such a lifeless, historyless place.

The boot fair over in the Cowley Road park and ride car park could get quite addictive – todays finds were the pretentiously titled “Dr Who – battle for the universe”, a simple looking board game (3.50 complete), and “Speculate”, a share trading game (1, share price markers missing but otherwise complete). So, less than a fiver and I’ve got two more fully fledged games.

Indeed, Speculate looks like an interesting game for understanding some of the dynamics of the stock market, it was published in 1972 so it doesn’t cover modern markets, no derivatives or futures, and it deals rather heavy handedly in sectors rather than shares themselves, but its a reasonable trade-off given the level complexity that is possible with what is essentially a card game.

New year, new trouble

“BATMAN: NEW TIMES an all new pulse-pounding animated adventure created by students at the DAVE School”