Monthly Archives: October 2004

Congratulations

To Gary and Jill (Niven) who had their second baby boy last night at 2130 – 9lb 4oz – Gregor Andrew. Hopefully pics to follow.

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Blog Comment Spam

You probably haven’t noticed at all, but we have just recently began recieving blog comment spam – we’ll do our best to get it under control. I will be investigating WordPress plugins today, and we may have to change the … Continue reading

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Compulsory overtime?

This is going to sound like such a whinge… At work at the moment we’re expected to produce data 7 days a week for some companies. That means that, as there is no seperate weekend staff, we have to come … Continue reading

Posted in BigAl | 1 Comment

Tipping bad service

Last night Ruth and I went to Frankie and Bennys at the Quay in Glasgow with some of my friends to celebrate Edgy’s birthday. The guys and I have been there before, and the food and the service has always … Continue reading

Posted in BigAl | 2 Comments

Trick or Treat

It’s been interesting this year to watch the news in the run up to Halloween. 2 stories have particularly caught my eye – this morning in the Metro was the story of the Elim church, who are running a national … Continue reading

Posted in Faith, mrBen | 3 Comments

Firefox goes mental

In the beginning there was http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox. Then we got Switch2Firefox.com and BrowseHappy.com. Now, suddenly, we have SpreadFirefox.com, which is raising money to have a full-page ad in the New York Times on the release day of 1.0, and DefendingTheFox.com which … Continue reading

Posted in Computing, mrBen | 1 Comment

Back from Holidays

Well – I’m back. Had a reasonably relaxing time at home, which is good. The site appears to have been quite quiet while I was away BigAl busy at work…… The final uptime of my desktop ended at 16:55:30 up … Continue reading

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LUGRadio Returns

Yes, the LUGRadio team have finally finished their lengthy summer (!) break and released episode 1 of the new “season”. We’re now contributing a mirror to them, so you can get it at http://lugradio.jedimoose.org Warning – the shows do contain … Continue reading

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Revolution: Month 1

Revolution is part of the Chrysalis Project, the “childrens work” arm of Whiteinch CofS. But childrens work is really far too vague a term to explain what it’s all about. Chrysalis is about reaching the youth of Whiteinch and providing … Continue reading

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Of competitions and McDonalds

Call me old fashioned, but when a company wants to promote its product by running a competition/giveaway I don’t expect it to cost me money. Post and packing, ok I might stump up the cash for that. But what I … Continue reading

Posted in mrBen | 1 Comment

Book Review: The Bourne Legacy

Hold on a minute, I hear you cry, Robert Ludlum died 3 years ago, and the Bourne Trilogy is just that, a trilogy! (“Trilogy is three” to quote Sean Astin). The Bourne Legacy is not a Ludlum book; it is … Continue reading

Posted in Books & Comics, mrBen | 4 Comments

Movie Review: Adaptation

Starring: Nicolas Cage (Charlie Kaufman), Meryl Streep (Susan Orlean) & Chris Cooper (John Laroche) Director: Spike Jonze Adaptation is a brilliant, if weird, film about 3 people: John Laroche (an obsessive orchid hunter), Susan Orlean (journalist for the New Yorker) … Continue reading

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Pictures

A couple of weeks ago I put together a short video based on the lyrics of Jars of Clay‘s song “Worlds Apart”. One of the images shown was of a tear, and it was such a nice piece of work, … Continue reading

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The power of RSS

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is something that may have passed you by if you’re not a regular surfer. Simply put, RSS provides a simple, up-to-date list of the top posts on a webpage. This may sound pretty useless, but actually … Continue reading

Posted in Computing, mrBen | Leave a comment

So near, and yet so far

It’s nice to see that the current status of my desktop box is thus: mrben@hobbes:~$ uptime 12:55:48 up 80 days, 56 min, 24 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00 mrben@hobbes:~$ It’s basically been up since I last updated my kernel. … Continue reading

Posted in Computing, Linux, mrBen | 5 Comments

Book Review: The Prometheus Deception

I thought I would drop in a quick review of the book I am currently reading (for the umpteenth time) – The Prometheus Deception. Those of you who know me well will know that I am a dedicated Robert Ludlum … Continue reading

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Not quite the man I used to be…

I’m concerned about my health. I’m full of the flu, with the headaches, aching limbs, sore throat and the list goes on. But the flu isn’t my main concern just now. What is my main concern is that I’ve fallen … Continue reading

Posted in BigAl | 4 Comments

Doom3

Well, id Software finally released the Linux binaries for Doom3, along with a demo. Downloaded and installed last night for a bit of play. Only had 30 minutes, so didn’t get very far in, plus if I’m going to do … Continue reading

Posted in Computing, Games, mrBen | 3 Comments

On DRM, Trusted Computing and the like

It’s seems that Digital Rights Management (DRM) is becoming big news again. IBM is continuing to ship ‘Trusted Computing’ chips again, Steve Ballmer (CEO Microsoft) is chirping on about the DRM in Windows Media Player and how most music on … Continue reading

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