This weekend just gone I was at FlexiWallop2 with my brother and the other Lickey Hill Flyers. It was a good laugh and the photos ought to be up on t’internet tomorrow along with a nice report. Well, a reasonable report. Maybe it could just be an average report. Regardless, it’ll be a report. It might be amusing, it might be sad, it will most probably be boring but hey, I really enjoyed myself.

Today has been a terrible poker day. I have played about five 10 person sit n’ go tournaments at $5+$0.50 buy in and done badly. It is a shame, on reflection I did well yesterday coming second and first in a few tournaments. All in all, I think I am slightly down this week, but I have learnt a valuable lesson: stay tight, stay aggressive. Well, most of the time.

Jaron, Paul, where were you when I needed you most? *cry*.

The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen: “Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer.”

One student replied: “You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building.”

This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer, which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.

For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought.

The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn’t make up his mind which to use.

On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:

“First, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H=0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer.”

“Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper’s shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper.”

“But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi square root (l/g).”

“Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up.”

“If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building.”

“But, since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor’s door and say to him ‘If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper’.”

The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel Prize for Physics.

This post is brought to you by the phrases “English Porn”, “We could have sex… but lets not”, “Poker”, “Family Guy”, and a new official word for a sexual act I am not at liberty to mention yet on such a public forum.

This will be a good post about how a really excellent friend of mine and all round procrastinator got married. And how me and paulc2_ went to go watch. It was a really good laugh and much fun was had by all. But I am so bloody busy with work at the moment that I am just going to put another picture here and will expand this later. I think the next few words are very appropriate. Almost there. Almost there. Almost there. Well done.

You can see the rest of my photos here and Danielle’s photos here.

Information Release.

Due to the nature of the quality of driving in England the Department of Transport has now devised a new scheme in order to identify poor drivers and give good drivers the opportunity to recognise them whilst driving.

For this reason as from the middle of May 2006 those drivers who are found to be driving badly which includes:

– overtaking in dangerous places;
– hovering within one inch of the car in front;
– stopping sharply;
– speeding in residential areas;
– pulling out without indication;
– performing U turns inappropriately in busy high streets;
– under taking on motorways and
– taking up more than one lane in multi lane roads,

These drivers will be issued with flags, white with a red cross, signifying their inability to drive properly. These flags must be clipped to a door of the car and be visible to all other drivers and pedestrians. Those drivers who have shown particularly poor driving skills will have to display a flag on each side of the car to indicate their greater lack of skill and general lower intelligence mindset to the general public. Please circulate this to as many other motorists as you can so that drivers and pedestrians will be aware of the meaning of these flags Department of Transport.

That is all. Move along

Yesterday I was hungry and jumped in my car, I drove to the garage, got some petrol and some money. I then went to a different shop to pick one or two things up and drove home. I used my car to expedite my journey so as to try and maximise the amount of time I had for lunch. Straight forward right?

No.

My personal pet hate on the roads isn’t other drivers, or cyclists or even the bus drivers in the Birmingham area. I can even cope with one of the oldest hates of the male race when it comes to drivers, the female race. I don’t even mind when someone has a problem on the road and can’t move their car, they could be a new driver, there car could suck, they could just be stupid. But that is life.

However, there is one thing that gets my blood boiling. Lollypop ladies.

Now, you are either thinking what is a lollypop lady or wondering why they anger me. Well, for those who don’t know, they look like this and their job is to provide a luminous beacon for kids to recognise so they can be aided in crossing the road, and for drivers to be made aware of the fact that kids swarm these parts and could potentially be found underneath your wheel if you are not careful. This is a good thing. I like this. I, as a driver, do not want to have kids stuck to my tires, not only are they tricky to clean off, but the parents don’t like it either. *cough*. So why do these luminous beacons anger me? Well, there are only a few that anger me and that is because of the way in which they do their job.

Let me give you an example. In this country we have something called traffic lights. To cross the road you press the button, you wait, and the lights change, the cars stop, you cross, lights change, cars start moving. You are still alive, no one is stuck to car wheels and the world continues to rotate. Now, I can understand in this scenario where a lollypop lady would enter into the sequence of events: stop children from running straight across the road, making sure they only cross when it is safe and generally acting as an experience administrator for the whole traffic light shebang. What pisses me off is when they wait for the lights to change, cars to stop and then MARCH INTO THE ROAD FACING THE DRIVERS with their lollypop up as if to say I am here to remind you evil driver type people that there are people crossing! You must stay still till the road is clear!. Well, gee whizz, thanks for the heads up, I had forgotten without your standing in front of me what the red lights meant. Or that running people over was a bad idea. Oh how ye have saved me from my cursed life. Maybe I should pack one of you guys up in the boot of my car so that every time I get to a crossing I can stop, get you out and have you remind me not to hit people. The way they act and look at you, the driver, is as if you are some crazed psycho intent on running people over but somehow quelled at the site of something of the luminous yellow variety and a circle on a stick that says “Stop”. It is as if they feel they are higher and mightier than you, the scum of the driving world. Now the important thing to note is this, I honestly doubt that anyone intent on running someone over actually cares very much who is stood in front of them, regardless of how big their stick is.

Thinking a little more about it, I suspect it is all down to their own insecurity, they do it to validate their existence at the traffic lights but I musn’t expand on this thought process as it might move this post into being something coherent and well argued. Anyway, this post is dedicated to Alex, who said I needed more rants and opinion on this site.

I suck. It must be me. Or something to do with the way I develop software. Or maybe the way bugs present themselves to me. But at the moment I am resisting the temptation to go absolutely ape shit at the next thing to piss me off. Think of straws, camels backs and various bits of broken things. I would guess bones, but it has been a long time since I have investigated what exactly is in the back of a camel. And when I say a long time, I mean never.

I use the sourceforge.net cvs service, and it is great, I can’t complain because it is for free, but I am rapidly thinking of moving the whole of ferite and the services it uses somewhere else. Every time I have something insignificant to commit, for the most part the service is there and working. Hurrah. The point in time I have a critical software fix that I wish to deploy to other people (because they are suffering the issue) I can’t! Because it down for maintenance! Again! This isn’t the first time and puts my in a tricky situation.

It is about this sort of time I consider moving to a subversion based repository as that seems to be the hip thing to do. I don’t know why, but people tell me that it is better. When I ask why, they look at me quizzically as if I have just asked what colour robe their God wears. So far, it is all the same to me. svn commit vs cvs commit, and svn update vs cvs update. The main difference I have seen is with using TextMate as an editor, when editing the commit message I get some nice pretty colours. Yay for being 25 and colour motivated. So, if you happen to grok both cvs and svn, can I have some advice? And if you know of a good hosting platform for an opensource project, can you also help me there?

A motorist, on his way home from work in Westminster came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself, “Wow, this traffic seems worse than usual.”

After a short while, he noticed a police officer coming towards him between the lines of stopped cars. He rolled down his window and asked, “Officer, what’s the hold up?”

The constable replied, “Tony Blair is depressed, so he has stopped his motorcar and is threatening to douse himself with petrol and set himself on fire.

“He is upset that no one believes his stories; about why we went to war In Iraq, or that there is no pension crisis, and no worsening economy, or That there is no constant adding of stealth taxes, or that the health service is safe in his hands, or that his education reforms are doing any good, or that immigration is under control, or that he is not George Bush’s lapdog, or that his Party’s proposed tax cuts won’t help anyone except his wealthy friends, or that his chairmanship of the European Community hasn’t just led to more power being surrendered to the French, or that the sacked NHS boss deserves his multi-million payoff and peerage, or that his Cartier Adorned Wicked Witch never breaks the ministerial code over her blind passion for freebies, or that none of his cabinet ministers have ever had dodgy spouses and/or secret offshore bank accounts and/or questionable shareholdings, or that he will never be caught up in Silvio’s dirty laundry spin, or that following the ’sham’ Hutton report he is increasingly using the BBC for his own political ends….

…..So we’re taking up a collection for him….”

Thoughtfully, the man asked, “How much have you got so far?”

The officer replied, “About forty gallons, but a lot of people are still siphoning ………”

Friday was gorgeous. I spent it on the top of a hill socialising, flying my kite, having a go on other kites and doing my first bit of land boarding. It was great. What a way to spend a sunny evening. Afterwards we went to the pub and had a beer. It was all good.

Saturday morning was spent sorting out bits and pieces and then Rob and I ambled down to Worcester to go flying at Hydro. It was a good afternoon, although not too much wind. I picked up a helmet and knee/arm pads to further make my ventures onto my land board safer. I did a little boarding although the wind was a little gusty. I am getting more confident which is always a good thing. I also had a go on my first de-powerable kite: a 15m Phantom. It was cool, the kite I have got is a ‘ram-air’ which means that it pulls and pulls hard, any lift it gives will bring you up in the sky but will dump you which can potentially end in injury. A de-powerable kite, and this assumes I have understood correctly, gives a lot of lift and pull but it can be controlled which means that even if it pulls up 20ft in the air, it is possible to control descent. This in turn results, if done correctly is less broken bones, less blood and more complicated board tricks. In the evening I went with Maz and met some friends to watch Magnetic Four play at the Flapper and Firkin. Once again it was a good gig even if there was a fair amount of feedback off Dave’s guitar.

Today was a slow start with Ro coming round for some computer antics, followed by lunch at the plough with Dr Gurnell, then off to Lickey Hills for some more flying (it is rather addictive especially as you get better). Then Ro came round again to finish off her computer stuff, I made a roast and got some other stuff done. All in all, a great weekend