Author: Tris

Is The Storm Coming? Plug

Post author By Tris
Post date March 15, 2011
No Comments on Is The Storm Coming? Plug

Because I have little other content to put up, I’m just leaving a note about another website I run with Jason, Is The Storm Coming?.

The whole idea of this website, came from a saying at work. So we bought the domain, and wondered what to do with it. Eventually we came up with the idea of scraping a weather website, and searching for key words.
Firstly, I hacked something together in PHP. It took all of about 20 minutes, and the website was live.

Obviously the information provided is only for Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, but it provides a simple yes or no answer on weather to stay indoors.

In January, Jason recoded it all in Ruby on Rails. We also tarted the thing up with a nice graph showing storm frequency. This uses the google API, and although Jason needs to get on it and fix the labels on the axis, the scales are good, and now there is nearly 3 months worth of data in the graph, its actually interesting what shape it takes.

The future plans I think are to use an algorithm similar to the one used by the Rock, Paper, Scissors Bot to predict the weather.
Accurate, No
A bit of Fun, Yes

Reviews Tech

Rock, Paper, BSOD

Well interestingly the NYTimes have released a bot that plays Rock, Paper, Scissors. As the website states:

A truly random game of rock-paper-scissors would result in a statistical tie with each player winning, tying and losing one-third of the time. However, people are not truly random and thus can be studied and analyzed

But the way the bot works, means the bot can also be studied and analysed…

Tech

Windows 8, This Soon?

I was reading a blog by Sam Bellis, here, asking if we could see Windows 8 materials by June this year, and a post about a Windows 8 2012 release, here.

My personal opinion is that it’s possible we will see materials, but no way will we see a release of an OS until 2013, maybe even later.

And here my logical (to me) reasoning

Rants

Speaking to Nobody

It is wonderful to have the right to speak out, but it is a shame people then have the right not to reply.

I was outraged after not being able to by a pint at a meal, and this prompted me to right an open letter to our local newspaper.

It was published, and I promptly recieved no response. It has now been over two months (nearly 3) since the letters publication, so I presume I will be getting none.

Below is a copy of the letter for my archive purposes, and for anybody that cares to read my rants, and some links for references. And if anybody who has any say in this stumbles acrross this, I would be thrilled to hear your response.

Tech

Windows 1 Upgraded To 7

Well you know how you always get told, don’t do a Windows upgrade installation, and always to install from fresh.

This guy took that advice, and then threw it out the window.
As a proof of concept, he has taken Windows 1.0, and done Windows upgrade installations all the way to Windows 7.

It’s interesting that it appeared to hold some of his preferences,all the way from Windows 3.1, including ‘Hot Pink’ backgrounds. He also installs Doom II, and Monkey Island, and they continue to work throughout the upgrades.
Although, id be very interested to see the size of his C: drive and how much crap he has carried over.

Rants Reviews

Focus CC Review

My parents are looking at getting a new car. They have always liked Fords. The other day I was writing to a friend and decided to update him on my thought on their current thoughts. A Ford Focus CC. I made a small PDF review to send to him, which can be found below.

Rants

Road Rage Redefined

I know I get very upset when people dont use the cycle lane, but this is something else.

In Brazil there was a pro-cycling demonstration, and the man in the car felt ‘threatened’ so drove at the cyclists.
He could now be facing charges of attempted murder.

Anyway, here is the video. This is real!

More information on BBC news here

Rants

Technical Writing Fail – Guernsey Press

Post author By Tris
Post date February 28, 2011
1 Comment on Technical Writing Fail – Guernsey Press

I know Jason was going to cover this at his blog over at deedoubleyou.net, but he hasn’t. And this was posted on the 4th of Febuary, back when the IPV4 exhaustion thing was current. So I thought I would write a little something about this before its entirely outdated.

Everybody knows we are running out of IPV4 address, and has read about it on about a million technical sites. Well our local paper decided do a small section about it in its ‘world news’ section.

As an IT Professional/Technical person, reading this explanation was painful to say the least. Now, I know they are writing for a non-technical audience, but a small attempt for some sort of accuracy would have been nice.

So without further ado, look after the break for a copy of the article, and my points after reading it.

Oh, and Guernsey Press, keep away from technical writing for a bit please

Tech

iPhone 3GS Rebooting During Call

Post author By Tris
Post date February 24, 2011
No Comments on iPhone 3GS Rebooting During Call

Today, one of the most senior people at work came to me with their iPhone 3gs which they claimed would reboot approximately 5-10 minutes into a call.

He said that he had tried rebooting the phone, had tried restoring the firmware, and contacted the iStore who said it would have to be sent away to be fixed.
I decided I would have a look first.

Rants

Distance != Quality

After noticing some of the traffic to my previous post came from some google searches, I decided to search for these terms which brought me to the I Like Fast Internet blog at https://www.fastinternetblog.uk, specifically this post on “Investigating Internet speeds in Guernsey“

So it appears im not the only one having woes. But the engineer at C&W blaming the quality of my line, then this blogs mention of distances from the exchange made me wonder. So did some investigation of my own….