Chris Worfolk's Blog

Christmas Day sucked. Having been up late and not getting to sleep until like 4ish because I had been at work the night before so didn’t have a 9-5 sleep pattern I got dragged out of bed at 9 and then proceeded to spend the day having my family attempt to engage me in mindless conversation. I really don’t care how many Christmas specials Strictly Come Dancing has – I have a life so no, I don’t watch it.

Today was a little better though. It got back to the true meaning of Chrismukkah – earning money. 13 hour shift at time and a half, that will do nicely.

Many people are probably in bed by now.

After all it’s 1am on Christmas Day morning.

Of course most people didn’t have to drag their ass out of their nice warm bedroom at 11pm Christmas Eve to go spend 2 hours trying to bring the internet back online so that they could get on with doing some of their final year project for their degree which requires remote access.

As it turns out, I’m not in this group of most people. Nor have I actually got anywhere with the time I’ve spent unless you class ensuring I don’t get enough sleep before getting up tomorrow as getting somewhere. Personally, I don’t. But maybe I should as it would ensure far more victories in life for me.

So there is some quality time down the drain now it’s just a case of waiting to see how much money goes down the drain as well. Of course that’s a joke – it’s going to cost far more of my valuable time to sort it out than has been taken up so far. Happy holidays everyone.

Ok, don’t get me wrong, I don’t support the introduction of ID cards. I know the reasons against ID cards, I agree with them and I don’t need you to list them for me. But all this overkill paranoia about them is forcing me to play devil’s advocate. Consider this…

• We already have an identity document system, it’s called a passport. Like an ID card it costs you to get one, like an ID card you need one to open a bank account and like an ID card you are in trouble if it falls into the hands of a criminal.
• ID cards aren’t some crazy system the government has dreamed up to invade our privacy, lots of countries including many European nations already have them – Spain, Belgium, France and Italy.
• It’s not even the first time they have been introduced in the UK, we have had them twice before.
• The act of parliament to introduce ID cards has already been passed so it’s too late to stop them there.
• Who cares if someone gets their hands on your personal details – they’ve already got them off that missing CD anyway 😛

Tonight is the longest night of the year. For the nothern hemisphere at least. Solstice occurs at 06:08 to be exact. It only gettings lighter from here people (although to be clear that’s not indefinite :p).

On a morning I wake up and flip open the laptop screen. I VNC into my desktop and turn off the movie I had playing last night. To take myself up I turn on some rock music at a decent volume. I then proceed to check my email, check Facebook and get a few other jobs done.

The problem is, where do I go from here. If I’m getting up at a decent time it’s still gloomy outside and I need to turn a light on. But this requires getting out of bed before I really want to. I then need to get dressed too.

With all our advanced wireless technology I feel these are problems I shouldn’t have to deal with. How can I further automate mornings so I don’t have to deal with them by getting out of bed? USB desk light perhaps? Do they make ones you can control from your desktop? That would solve step one. Now I just need some kind of robot…

My server has been suffering quite a lot of downtime recently which on top of the less of revenue and amount of hours I have had to spend fixing it rather than doing uni work has had a far more important consequence – I have been unable to rant on my blog!

In order to solve this sites are getting moved around to new servers including my personal site which is now located on Jennifer.

Having read Kieran’s post which in turn leads on to Dan Zambonini’s post about which programming language gets you most sex it got me thinking. While it does, as Dan correctly points out, vary from situation to situation, you really don’t seem to be able to go wrong with Dot Net.

Think about it. People like myself and George we’re Python FTW. I generally use Python for my “real” programming projects (generally I just script so something that runs on my desktop is rare :p) because it’s fast. Just like me in the bedroom. While I doubt the same is true for George we both share the commonality of singledom. Admittedly George fairs much better than my own barron wasteland of a romantic life but bare with me.

How about say Kieran and Raby? Well Mr. O’Shea sold his soul to X-Lab for the summer writing in Dot Net (because secretly he’s just a big Microsoft fan boy :D) and is currently in a long term relationship with Heather that has gone as far as mystery weekends away so you know it’s serious. Meanwhile Raby is currently working for a year at CSC who code a lot in Dot Net after doing a summer intership of C#. The result? No shortage of ladies. Let’s just say, the girl in his profile pic isn’t his girlfriend ;).

Lessons learned? Getting laid starts with the Dot Net framework ;).

• Ok, even I am willing to admit it’s getting fairly close to Chrismukkah now. We’re getting to the point where I actually might start shopping soon, that is how close it is! Not that I’m excited, I really don’t care. All the good stuff has already happened. Well for the most part. As a general rule from here on in it’s just having to spend time with the family, lots and lots of FYP and annoying song after annoying song.
• My sister is back from uni – and she is already stealing my car!
• Charlotte is back from uni. About time too! I can finally spend some time with my real friends as we would say Michelle would say :D.
• I’m back on the case this week. Last week was my slightly more relaxed lets take a week off. It ended up really busy and with me not getting as much sleep as I would have liked but it was fun anyway. Now it’s time to do some serious work though.
• Before I kick into revision mode next week I’m spending some time on my FYP and I’m pleased to say I think I’ve managed to make a decent indent into it. I’m glad to be doing so. The deadline will be on us before we know. I mean, we graduate in 6 months, how crazy is that!

Is holding “ladies’ nights” at nightclubs descrimation? Apparently so. There is a lawsuit going on in the United States (ha, like I even needed to specify that) where someone has suited several New York nightclubs because he feels descriminated against by the discount entry and drinks offered to women.

It’s an interesting situation as when you look at it, it is descrimination. It’s hard to defend against that. But are their practical real-world limits to removing descrimination?

I ended up on the Wikipedia page for Brass Eye which just presents a brilliant picture of what a show it was.

The Capital Radio DJ “Doctor” Neil Fox, for example, informed viewers that “paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you and me”, before qualifying his remarks with “Now that is scientific fact – there’s no real evidence for it – but it is scientific fact”. Viewers were also told by the then Labour MP Syd Rapson that paedophiles were using “an area of Internet the size of Ireland”, and by Richard Blackwood that internet paedophiles can make computer keyboards emit noxious fumes in order to subdue children (Blackwood even sniffed a keyboard and claimed to be able to smell the fumes, which he said made him feel “suggestible”); Blackwood also warned watching parents that exposure to the fumes would make their children “smell like hammers”.

You just couldn’t make it up :D. Have a read for yourself. Although if you really want to experience the brilliance of Brass Eye you need to watch it. And remember – cake is a made up drug ;).