Day 409, Eye in the sky

Eye in the sky dark.

It's time to assemble the eye.

What goes on in the dark will be discovered.

Foxes.

Rats.

Badgers.

Flashers - perhaps these are best undiscovered.

That would be the writing on the wall.

The pieces are mostly in place, all that's needed is motivation.

And some instructions for how the eye works.

Pah.  Instructions are for wimps, it should be easy enough to guess how this works.

So here are some almost completely unrelated words.

Tangentially related.

If as well as an eye there was a pyramid.

Apologies for the prog-rock flashback.


I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules

What goes up, must come down
What must rise, must fall
What goes on in your life
Is writing on the wall


Apropos of nothing really at all.


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Day 408, Post-mainframe, pre-organised, pre-virtualised

A time-slice from April 2001.

This was between the 'mainframe period' and the 'actually properly organised in racks' period.

The image below shows barely a quarter of the room.

And most of the rest was as haphazard.

Now the server estate has grown by a factor of around 20 and occupies about an eighth of the space.

Due to improvements in hardware, implementation of virtualisation, and buying proper servers and putting them in racks.

It's even slightly tidier.




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Day 407, Cutting edge

This is quite sharp.

Savour it.*

Soon enough it will be dull.

If only it was Sheffield steel it would last forever.  Obviously.



*The savouring should be metaphorical, for goodness sake don't put it in your mouth to taste it.



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Day 406, Coach bolts, the fastener of choice for the discerning constructor

If wood is your material of choice, and you are dealing with substantial building then these are your fasteners.

Fasteners are great.

Aren't they.

Aren't they?

Well I think they are.

Harrumph.

Choose the size of fastener to fit the application, the data sheets will help.

The larger bolts here are bog standard, mild steel, coarse threaded M8 sized bolts.

Coarse here means they have a thread pitch of 1.25mm and 20 threads per inch.

Mixing units is common when referring to bolt dimensions.  All metric would be simpler.

The smaller bolts are M6, although they appear much smaller and the threads per inch doesn't look right at all for that.

Perhaps they are rogues placed there to disrupt the fastener zen.

I have nothing against the 'M6' bolts, I welcome them to my fastener menagerie.

Even though the 'M6' bolts aren't as shiny.





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Day 405, Random artefacts

Tidying up random artefacts, putting them in a supermarket carrier bag, from Sainsbury possibly.

Then toting them off to some antiques based low cost daytime television filler programme.

A programme that has 'educational' interludes to count toward the annual hourly requirement of the broadcaster.

Random artefacts like this object, an actual artefact.

I have no idea what it is, I wasn't listening.

My consciousness was still considering the 'messy beast' problem.  A problem where metadata associated with file objects are slow to process during the tidying of data areas when they are re-mounted.

These messy beasts aren't strictly speaking 'artefacts' in the same sense.

The answer to this messy beast problem, or rather the work around, is to set a switch - 

/FastWriteOfMessyBeasts

Which would then accelerate the process of dealing with the metadata on restart.

I didn't set the switch as the problem state has now gone and isn't likely to occur again until next year.

And the random not-quite-artefacts aren't likely to be a problem for us again.  Hopefully.



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Day 404, Chipolata not found error

Lost a greasy Chipolata?

Getting a 404 not found error?

Well let me assist you.  It's here on the stairs in our office.

And very tasty it was too, having picked up some extra granular flavouring from the floor.

No wait, I didn't eat it.

Not because it had been on the floor, I've eaten loads of stuff off the floor.  Although that isn't a habit.

It's meat, so not for me.

So I left it where it was.*



*I didn't, I picked it up with a paper towel and put it in the bin.

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Day 403, Shrewsbury, Shrowsbury, Shroosbury, Vic & Bob

Honestly, Bob Mortimer mate.

If only you'd not done whatever it was that you did for all those years that may or may not have contributed to you having to have a triple heart bypass and cancelling the tour then I wouldn't have to go and watch some bloody rubbish league one football tonight.

Me, me, me, it's all about me.

But no it isn't, all of the above was a joke.

Hopefully Bob is on the road to recovery.

Let's hope that my football team can manage some sort of recovery against the undecided-how-to-pronounceables tonight and get more than half way toward five points*.

Bottoms up.

* it's 3 points for a win you see, yes, weak I know, unlike the beer.


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Day 402, I did it Otway

This t-shirt has seen better days.  Purchased from John Otway at the Steel City beer and cider festival 1998.

Otway wandered off half way through the transaction leaving a carrier bag full of ten pound notes on the stage.

He appeared absent minded and slightly detached, exactly as expected.

On a previous visit to the city Otway had stayed at the house of an acquaintance.

I'm surprised he ever managed to leave given the nature of the parties that happened there.

The t-shirt is now in the wash, maybe it can party on for a while longer.  Like Otway.





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Day 401, The smell of Christmas past

Lingers.

Years later.

WTF.


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Day 400, Dusty alien

With only one antenna this alien is unable to contact friends.

As home for the individual has probably been destroyed there is no option but to take the alien in.

This should be done no matter how much dust your alien may exude.

It's the only human thing to do.


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Day 399, Tubular crisp autumn leaves?

Well you can't have that, but, If you're an American citizen you are entitled to ...

These delightful rehydrated autumn leaves

an over-ripe pear - don't squash it in your bag

a lampshade, I'll personally illuminate it in the privacy of your own lounge

a king size fully adjustable waterproof hat, with removable brim

a Scottish clan, and some airtight Tupperware

real simulated flat-white coffee

a Mouseman mug tree

a year's subscription to The Times online

a personally defaced picture of Winston Churchill

and Justin Bieber's new unlisted cell number

a beautifully restored authentic Tory back bench

Tony Blair's vasectomy

a speed date on ice with Bruce Willis

a new Marathon, a new Snickers

a mast, a mogul, a monster

a monkey wrench, a minster spire, a meteorite

a marble, an MX, or a malibou

a millipede, some malachite, a Mac Book

a mailman, a new mumbler, or a mambo

a fitness tracker - hell an armful of fitness trackers we're givin' 'em away

or how about a McDonalds breakfast

a Las Vegas snow storm

a Mexican drought

a solid gold jewel encrusted butt plug

or high wind that might take away your roof






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Day 398, Arbitrary phone picture

Small chickens launched into the air via the means of a spring.

That's the problem when creatures have limited ability to fly, they may need a little persuasion.

Chickens will generally only fly short distances, such as over walls or fences, or onto tree branches.

Their aerobatic skills are primarily focussed on briefly getting out of the way of predators.

Sometimes they will take to the air momentarily to have a look around and survey the area.

That's the limit of my chicken knowledge.

Although it is worth mentioning that they do apparently lay eggs.

I have never owned a chicken.

And I have never been in a pub called the hen and chickens.

Hens are also chickens.

Not all chickens are hens.

That's like cognac and brandy.

Which I would choose to be the names of my hen and chicken.




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Day 397, Bang, flash, trip, beer

So I went to plug a cable into a power bar in a rack.

There was a bang.

There was a flash.

There was a puff of smoke and the power to the rack went off.

The power to the rack had been tripped.

It's the most exciting thing that has happened in weeks.

I was only fiddling to determine what had twice previously tripped the power.

It turned out to be the top-of-rack fans - they are now completely unplugged as they're not needed.

Now let's have a beer.

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Day 396, Leaf chasing

Here we can observe the lesser variegated leaf chaser in their natural habitat.

Rounding up the disparate branch droppings, herding them, and then measuring their mound against their competitors.

Naturalists have spent many hours in vain pursuit to determine the reasons for this behaviour.

Now we can reveal the truth.

It is part of a symbiotic relationship with similar bipedal creatures.

These other bipedal creatures use the chased leaves by letting them render in to mulch.

The 'bipedal mulchers' favour the larger mounds.

The mulchers then mix the product with sharp sand and use it to plug gaps in tree branches to prevent future leaf droppage.

A reduction in leaf-fall subsequently gives favoured leaf chasers more time to chase grass, a predator of the bipedal mulcher.

Isn't evolution marvellous.

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Day 395, Open road

A clear way
With back to the flow of traffic
Only cyclists pass
As they slip through the road block
A better mix
Pedestrian and bicycle
Than anything and car

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Day 394, Hammered, protection against blow-backs and blow-out

Being tee-total* and having an awareness that all manner of hazardous conditions may arise means extra caution is employed.

Under what circumstances?

On this occasion it is for protection against the loss of perspex shed windows due to weather events.

Yes I know, that's nowhere near as interesting as the title suggested.

The perspex windows have been fixed to the shed using the panel pins supplied.

Only panel pins?

No, this is Sheffield, on a hill, and it is windy here even during calm weather, it must be due to thermals.

Thermals?

Yes, up-draughts from the city centre, not the type used during cold weather when attending the footy.

The panel pins *might* be good enough, but that seems unlikely.

So further nails have been hammered home, and some cross-members applied, to increase strength and resilience.

With luck, and a following wind (is that right?) this should do the trick.

And there we are, all ready to start potting up.

It's a potting shed.





*This is not true.



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Day 393, Gok Wan's psychical research institute

Here at the Gok Wan (no, not that one) Psychical Research Institute we aim to capture moments.

Moments that pass unnoticed, moments in those dim areas at the corner of your vision.

What was that?

I've no idea, I didn't see it.

I thought there was a white sheet of paper with a square drawn on it.

Are you sure?  It might have been a triangle?

No, it was almost certainly a square.  Probably.

Well be unsure no longer with the guidance of the Gok Wan (no, not that one) Psychical Research Institute.

We can provide you with the latest technology to capture events occurring just out of vision, or even behind your back.

Take this high speed camera for example.  This camera can be used to capture even the most fleeting of non-existent events.

Events that pass in the blink of a bat's eye.

Events can be captured even before they happen, the camera really is that fast.

You don't even need a PS3 to use it.

Trust us.  You'll thank us for the hours of fun to be had spooling through aeons of video with not a lot happening.

Best regards, the Gok Wan (no, not that one) Psychical Research Institute 

Make all cheques payable to Ernesto Bolivar, and send to 461 Boulevard Zapata, The Elms.




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Day 392, Clegg is alive

Booms Brian Blessed, standing on the other side of the M1 and audible above the traffic.

Here's Clegg and his 'free sheet' - telling us all about the mighty things he and his acolytes have been doing for the area?

Of course not, it's the usual -

it's all their fault, nyer, nyer, nyer.

So no change there then.

Apart from the bit where he defends his record in government with the Tories -

we moderated them, it could have been so much worse.

Until it is pointed out how often they voted with the Tories to enable much worse, then it's - 

bigger boys did it, we couldn't stop them.

Referring not only to how spineless he is but also to the male domination of his and the Tories cabinet.

What an irrelevance.

Actually, there is no evidence of Clegg anywhere in this waste of paper.

Maybe he isn't alive at all and he's part of the undead, along with the Tory cabinet.




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Day 391, Redacted

The information I am about to convey is of the highest level of secrecy.

Be sure not to divulge this information even while sleeping and talking to characters in a dream.

If this information becomes public knowledge there will be a forfeit to pay.

This will necessitate the removal of internal organs.

Organs for removal will be chosen randomly by a hamster on a roulette wheel.

Ok, this is the text.

................. .............. ................... .. ............................                                           

                                                                                                                                      

.............                                                                           

.. .. ............................                                                                                                       

Got that?

Good.

Now ffs don't say a word.





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Day 390, Ambience

More time spent in the laboratory is more time developing the new super thing.

Open the tool box.

Power up the soldering iron.

Start building the Plasmatron 3000.

Perform stereotactic surgery in your own home with your custom built kit.

All great fun.

Who needs highly trained health professionals when you can do it yourself.

Homeopathy, ginseng, shamanic fiddling, and dried tiger penis have all had their day.

Have your day too, get building.

I've lost track.

Who am I.

Where is this.

Help.

Who are you.

Perhaps I digested an overdose of slug slime, guaranteed to aid in the growth of bushy hair.

no, there's no fish, who said there would be fish, is that you harold

oh look, a potato, what's a potato doing in my ear

ahhhh, swimming, indoors, it's the only way to fly, tickets for the aisle seat please

Ooof, and back in the room.

Apologies, the Plasmatron 3000 can lead to a variety of side effects, be careful which settings you use.

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Day 389, Shed building, is it worth it

Is it worth it?

A new preserver coat and coach screws for the wood

And a bitumen layer for the roof to-day

It's just a huge kit that was spread on the drive

By the de-live-ry man

Soon we'll be shed building

It's all we're skilled in

We will be shed building

Slightly dissimilar to diving for pearls


Completely inappropriate to the meaning of the original - apologies to Elvis Costello,

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Day 388, All this watch strap goodness can be yours

NATO style watch straps, as worn by James Bond.

Apparently Bond is a fictional character who ends up in all sorts of dangerous and exciting situations.  Escaping by the skin of his teeth, beating the odds time and again, and dusting himself down when the events have concluded, all the while bearing a cheerful demeanour.

What's so fictional about that, that's my life to a T.

Or at least that's what it's been like since owning the NATO style watch straps.

So my question to you is, how would you like to lead an exciting, relatively action filled life?

No hazards, just great fun, with the ability to tell the time thrown in.  And with the added bonus of instant attraction from whichever of the various sexes you wish to be found attractive by*.

For only £9.99 you can have anyone of the wide range of watch straps seen below, and all the above great things can be yours.

Just send cash in a plain brown wrapper to PO Box 007, The Circus, and within the time it takes for an evil genius, slightly warped criminal mastermind to be overthrown they will be winging their way to you via the Royal Mail postal service.

The Royal Mail postal service, just one of the many services you used to own, now in private hands.  Unlike the watch strap, which will be safely secured around your wrist, preventing removal even in the unlikely event of privatisation.

*Or gender sub-genre.

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Day 387, Suckers wild

Yes it's time for barrel scraping attempts at puns.  Puns that don't even make sense.

It's almost as if the author has turned into a front-page writer for one of the tabloids.

This is where the turnaround comes, a tenuous link leading to ...

The right-wing press and their support for all things Tory.  There's precious little in any of these tedious rags about any of the parlous and menacing things these dreadful clowns are up to, they are more concerned about the angle that Jeremy Corbyn bows at than any serious danger to society.

Let's look vaguely at one of the piss-poor things this Government are up to, by reading a not quite as right wing newspaper.  - yes, I know we shouldn't take any newspaper reporting at face value without understanding the political aims of the owners but in this case the owners are not a tiny group of immensely wealthy political donors to the Tory party, or any other party.

Our current government has decided that due to the enormous majority (it's tiny, tiny majority) that it can do whatever the fuck it likes.

Let's spy on everyone's emails.

Let's listen to everyone's phone calls.

And let's spy on all our internet activity.

That last point is the subject of this Guardian article, Theresa May's threat to the privacy of reading, which discusses the draft investigatory powers bill.

Being aware that we are being watched has the effect of causing us to moderate and change what we might read.  Where what would have been private reading online is now open to access by anyone with authority.  

The impact of this is described by the American Library Association thus - “The possibility of surveillance, whether direct or through access to records of speech, research and exploration, undermines a democratic society ...”

A sucker

Do we still have a democratic society, when we have a government elected by 37% of the votes cast, and able to wreak havoc using policy that wasn't even in their manifesto? 

Maybe we should just give up, what is the point in aiming for a fair society when so many can't see the benefit.

As someone in the comments section (never read the comments though, seriously) said with regard to attitudes:

I don't care about the right to privacy as I have nothing to hide.
I don't care about free speech as I have nothing to say.
I don't care about the right to education as I have nothing to learn.
I don't care about freedom of movement as I have nowhere to go.
I don't care about the right to protest as I have nothing to complain about.
I don't care about the right to a fair trial as I have committed no crimes.
I don't care about the right to assembly as I have no one to associate with.
I don't care about freedom of thought as I have nothing to think about.
I don't care about freedom from torture as I have no feelings of pain.
I don't care about freedom of conscientious beliefs as I have no conscience.
I don't care about human rights as I have no humanity left in me.


And as the article goes on to suggest, the great British public are notoriously naive and profligate when it comes to giving up hard won rights.

Suckers.




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Day 386. Conduit Road, gradient

Conduit Road is quite steep.

There are no handrails to prevent you sailing off into the former Unitarian Church on Crookesmoor Road and potentially damaging a listed building.

A listed building you say, that'll be prime land, perhaps we can build on it?  Too late, that's already happened.* 

Conduit Road is approximately 223 metres long and has a rise of 30 metres.

That's a gradient of 0.13, or more familiarly as a percentage that's 13%, or slightly steeper than 1 in 8 as it used to be shown on road signs.

Here is one sign at the top of the street.

On a modern mountain bike cycling up Conduit Road presents no problems and it can be done without breaking sweat, unlike the equivalent on Blake Street.

Conduit Road may be steep, but not as steep as the street with the Blake Hotel at the top.

The distance and height information were gathered using GPS devices.



*The building is still there, it now has additional elements added at the rear, perhaps not so bad.


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Day 385, Green roof

Amazing what you may find in the corner of secluded car parks.

Here's a vehicle growing from the undergrowth in what would have been the front prospect of Ebenezer Elliott's house.

Perhaps it is a sign of a nascent manufacturing industry.  An organic development of the motor world.

Or conversely maybe there has been a deal of recycling taking place.

Possibly the doors have been cleanly removed, the passenger seat, the seat belts, and other bits and pieces.

And to finish the environmental job off a green roof has been installed.

The curios debris of car parks.

Who knows what else takes place here under cover of darkness.


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