Smokin' Malibu

We took a walk on Santa Monica beach with the Shahs and gazed across
to the smokey residue of multi-million dollar homes in Malibu.

Graduation

We've gotten thru our first day without mishap. If you don't count the
asthmatic boy in our charge who had to go to hospital. The weather
held out and I actully learnt the names of some of the kids and even
managed to put names to faces. Today while on trash duty during dinner
I had to say "rubbish" to someone. I like to keep the troops
entertained while clearing tables. Some video camera duty was thrown
into the mix while the kids voted which probably means a Youth & Gov.
Music vid is coming.

Poop deck

What better place to blog this photo of our barracks bathroom than
from the luxury restroom of the army-base cafe.
I'm just glad that so far the sar'nt major hasn't appeared an made us
scrub the floor with our toothbrush.

Candidates

At the California Youth & Government we hear from the candidates.
"Vote Spence 'cos Spence makes sense!"

Field Trip!

This is the bus I'm currently on. The thirty or so teenage school kids
are surprisingly quiet and the bench seats are surprisingly comfy.
Brekkie and dunny stop in fifteen mins. In n out burger for me.

Back to my roots

It's been a fun day of dentistry. This morning I visited my new
dentist for some short notice tooth filling. One jab of the needle,
two hours and three 'digital' x-rays later and I was away. Well not
quite. Had to return later for a full-on root canal treatment. That
meant another four x-rays and another mouthful of anasthetic and
dental hardware. All good fun though and very nice folks. Plus they
had a flat-screen tv in the ceiling :)

Hurrah! It's Guy Fawkes Night.

You can take the boy out of Blighty but you can't take thoughts of pyrotechnics out of the boy.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

See Wikipedia for the full uncensored traditional rhyme in all its politically/religiously incorrect glory.

Way back when again

I haven't blogged in a while so I thought I'd drop back in with an easy one - some more 'back-in-the-day' photos from my archive:

1 Year ago - 3rd & 4rd October 2006

I started my beginners' fencing course at the university sports-hall which became my Tuesday evening thing, often culminating in beers and movies at Guy's. Back home we took delivery of the new HD projector which was duly tested out in a makeshift manner on the wall with 'Rambo'. Next day holes were beingn cut for a proper installation. Most exciting of all though, my new old mobile phone arrived thanks to the wonders of ebay. A tasty-looking Nokia-Mobira Cityman brick.





2 Years ago - 4th October 2005

We walked the steep telegraph hill to the Coit tower and took the easier elevator to the top. Fine views of San Francisco were to be had and a lot of deco eye-candy. Afterwards we relaxed in a bijou Italian eatery.




3 Years ago - 4th October 2004

My trusty old truck needed moving from the farmers barn and in September we hauled it over to Tom's dad's yard ready for prospective buyers to take away. On the evening of October 3rd we set about removing the engine. A sad day indeed but onto bigger and better things.




10 years ago - October 1997

Mr John was leaving Global! A coincidence in light of his recent job change. He opened his gifts and prepared himself for worldly travels, bequeathing his deskly possessions to his colleagues. (NB: Bushy with long hair).

1...2...3...5...10 years ago today

With such a growing archive of photos I thought it would be interesting to see what I was doing on this day, back in the day. Give or take a day (depending on availability of pics) this is what I found:

1 Year ago - 3rd July 2006

Kipped over at Jamie & Amanda's gaff. They were in the middle of doing-up the lounge which was stripped to its bare floor-boards. Next day I drove through London, a journey of eight miles that took over two hours, to see the immigration lawyer.




2 Years ago - 4th July 2005

My first actual American 4th July bash. Following a fun-filled tour of Nor-Cal with Dunce, we headed into Sacto to experience pure Uncle Sam-age. Parades, s'mores, red,white & blue M&Ms and a barbie next day.




3 Years ago - 2nd July 2004

Max Power Live! With Guy unable to attend, Bushy and I took charge of his Nissan 350Z. We were part of the 'Live Arena' show which saw us drag-racing Starsky & Hutch, being a passenger in a drift show and eyeing-up a plethora of dolly-birds ;)




5 Years ago - 6th July 2002

Cat-sitting Billy-Bob for Jamie & his missus. A delightful moggy with a sharp mind. His favourite trick being to jump up and swing on door-handles until the door swung open.





10 years ago - July 1997

Couldn't find any pictures from our Bude trip (I guess they're all shot on film) so I picked the only photo from the May Newquay trip that could pass as a Bude cliff-shot.

High Theory Technology, Low Implmentation Technology.

In the past I've pondered as to just how easy or difficult different technological ideas might actually be make happen. I remember reading about the early computers in the 1950s and how it was generally assumed at the time that within a few decades the ultimate 'Universal Problem Solver' would be constructed. This computing device would just need to be given a problem, such as "find a cure for cancer" and would go off and solve it. Obviously everyone involved had underestimated the technology required by quite a margin.

It occurred to me what if our assumptions were way off in other area too and that some inventions may be easier to solve than we think and others much more difficult.

For example we all assume that a practical realisation of time-travel is a long way off. On the other hand we generally assume that a floating three-dimensional 'holographic' display is going to be available in the very near future.

But what if we're vastly wrong in these assumptions and holographic diplays are fundamentally tricky and won't be made for another 200 years, whereas time-travel devices turn out to be a rather simple take on an established field of research or existing technology and as such are up and running by next year?

Today I was thinking along similar lines but with a twist...

What if the discovery and understanding of the principals that govern an invention are hugely complex and require centuries or even millenia to grasp, and yet the practical application is really very simple and could feasibly be implemented today using nothing more than readily available household items or natural materials.

Say it took 500 years of research and understanding together with a plethora of smaller discoveries built up upon each other to yield a working teleportation device. Having gained the knowledge of how to construct it, it could well be that a working teleporter was simply a case of arranging half a dozen teak coffee tables in a precise manner coated in Reggae-Reggae sauce?

Perhaps only then will we realise why the urban legends of time-slips and teleportations occurred simply because the subjects were driving at 88mph whilst listening to a particular country & western song.

Perhaps the Victorians could have made an anti-gravity machine or the Elizabethans a radio but not understood how or why it worked.

Who knows and who cares. Food for thought that's all. Discuss.

Curse of the Delayed Write Error

With the new Seagate "160GB" drive installed into the TC1100 and formatted to the full binary-adjusted 149GB I once again set about rebuilding the PC. So I had spent the entire day loading the operating system, installing all the updates, installing all the drivers, loading in the applications, entering the registration keys, tweaking up the interfaces, copying across all my pictures, music, documents and files, importing all the archived data and generally dotting all the i's and crossing the t's.

That's when things starting throwing up error messages and apps starting shutting down in the blinking of an eye. The real tell-tale was the ominous "Delayed Write" error message. I had seen these a couple of times before with 3.5" drives and both times they spelled doom.

I rebooted and was imformed "error with operating system". This seemed to be a permanent fatal error and when I tried plugging the drive into the Pavilion laptop, it was seen as an unformatted disc.

To cut the rest of the story short, I repeated the process once again (this time spreading the effort over two days) only to get the same outcome. Not wanting to give up on the benefits of 149GB I organised sending back the Seagate and replaced it with a Hitachi version. This drive claimed a lower operating power requirement and things went splendidly with all those i's dotted and t's crossed once again, right up to the point of failing to boot up.

With four full installations now under my belt, I reverted to the tried and tested 100GB NON-PERPENDICULAR drive on which I am successfully writing this blog.

Engineers' GigaBytes vs Mathematicians' Gigabytes vs Formatting limitations

I'm going though the usual rigmarole of installing a tasty newer and bigger hard drive into my Tablo (HP TC1100 tablet).

The setup on my current 100GB drive had started playing up and my preference is to go with a fresh installation from scratch - none of this ghost image malarky for me.

I'd had my eye on the newish perpendicular recording technology and saw that it was now available in 160GB form at a reasonable cost. Of the two models available from Seagate and Hitachi, the Seagate was in stock and I put in my order.

On fitting the drive into the PC and formatting I was surprised to see only 137GB registering. This seemed decidedly low even taking into account the 'binary calculation adjustment' which should have yielded 149GB (or 152,590MB or 156,250,000KB).

Having gone ahead with the full Windows installation and loaded in all the software, a bit of scouting around finally revealed the problem - most BIOSs will only partition a maximum 137GB. The only way to get around this is to format using either a special boot-disc or by using Windows XP itself to format. Since I had no special boot disc but did have a spare PC running XP, I was able to format the full quota of GB and thus free up another not unhealthy 20GB.

Vans Boa Snowboard Boot repairs : To whom it may concern

This is an overly long and boring post for most readers, and is intended merely as advice for users of Vans (or any other) Boa system boots.

I bought my Vans Boa Switch boots at Board-X in November 2003. They were the last pair on the shelf and were the 2002/2003 model. The word was that they were more comfy that the new version and since I was looking for a pair I snapped them up at their £100 price tag. I had also looked at the Salomon boots and a few others, but really liked the cable lacing idea. Only downer was that they were softback and required some highback Switch bindings making my Switch setup redundant. I bought a pair second hand for £20 and the job was a good-un.


So in Tahoe last year one of my cable laces snapped. Not surprising after about three months of hard use. I went to the nearest board/ski/hire and general snow-clobber shop and they fixed it for me on the spot for around ten dollars.

Now I already had a spare cable that came with the boots, and the Tahoe repair left me with another spare cable from the repair kit they used in the shop. However I still managed to not pack either of those items when I set off for two weeks in Whistler.

Halfway through the holiday as I hopped off a lift I noticed that my back boot was slack and proceeded to tighten the cable. Having twisted the winder a few times I realised that it was actually a broken cable and all I was doing was winding extra cable into the winder.


This, as it turns out was bad. The problem was that more cable had now been wound into the winder than was ever meant to. The whole thing was jammed up, and following the instructions to "pull the excess cable from the winder by hand" was impossible. Since we didn't have a clue as to the internal mechanism and the likelihood of the cable spilling over the spool and jamming around the axle, we didn't know if pulling the cable ends with pliers would help or just tighten the thing more. There was no way to dismantle the unit as it was stitched and sealed in place at the time of manufacture. We spent some time considering the options, and the final decision was that it would be ok to pull with pliers as hard as we could. It worked and it didn't take as much force as we had expected.

With the new lace in place I continued my boarding until the penultimate run of the holidays when the front boot went slack. By now I'd learned my lesson and checked the cable for a break rather than just tighten the thing. Typically I had emptied my pocket the previous night and not repacked my spares kit. With help I continued with a knotted lace and the distinct possibility of shredding the plastic guides in my boot like a cheese slicer. Well they survived the punishment and I went out and bought a few more spares so that the future of these boots is assured for a good while.

Bottom line: I love these boots - best I've ever used - and I love the Boa system. If it seems like a lot of lace snappage then consider that we are talking three laces in 135 days of riding. I've never found a problem with pressure points that some people have and even if I did I think the benefits from the system outweigh any shortcomings (for me). It seems that the winding mechanism is pretty tough and even if jammed, will shrug off a bit of brute-force required to free it. In future I will always make sure I have an emergency lace and associated hex-driver (included in spares packs) with me.

Whistler day 1 - Saturday 13th Jan 2007

Disturbed from my lie-in by a holloring Martin and his "get up!" catch phrase, I slurped some tea and we completed our last-minute chores in Bracknell town centre. Martin pointed out another fine concrete brutalist structure that has been earmarked for demolition which led to a discussion of conservation and how it should be applied to those buildings that lie in the 'wrong' period of architectural history.

S&J arrived at midday shortly followed by our taxi, and after the usual palaver of fitting our extended board and ski bags in, we were off on the back roads past Ascot and the fine follies of Windsor Great Park to Heathrow.

Despite arriving well early, we were informed that most (actually all) other passengers had checked in online which meant zero seating choice for us and we were split up across the plane.

Other than the usual personal space issues with our flight-neighbours the food was good as was the movie line up. John and I stayed awake to sit through three films - well more like 2.9 films since the final one was abruptly ended during the dénouement as we approached Vancouver.

Aboard the coach to Whistler Village we purchased our Fresh Tracks tickets and browsed the activity options. Midway through the journey and midway through watching "The State Within" on my Tablo, I succumbed to the sleep.

Once into our hotel and beyond its intricate lift system which was not particularly welcoming in our tired and befuddled state, Domino's came up trumps delivering a brace of pizzas at around 1am.