Nothing is impossible for an engineer

01:19 pm - Rammstein vs Cookie Monster

For the non-Redditors:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZeciX-3wfs

10:05 am - Mission Control Soma

Do you like electronic ambient music? Do you like watching live space shuttle missions?

The ambient channels on soma.fm have been filling my ears with droning electronic music to blot out office noise for years. Recently I discovered that they have a channel which is only live during space shuttle missions, which mixes NASA Space Shuttle mission audio mixed with electronic ambient music: http://somafm.com/play/missioncontrol Awesome!

What I found works amazingly well is to have that channel providing the audio, then have visuals on a spare monitor showing NASA TV streamed from http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Wednesday's space station flyaround was amazing. Atlantis slowly moving around the station, with the Earth shining below, and gentle droning music mixed with Mission Control voices in the background.

The Shuttle is due for a de-orbit burn today at 13:37 UTC, landing at KSC around 14:41.

01:51 am

Mr and Mrs Devil, Vin Petrol and Trash Petrol

12:57 pm - Everything was expensive in the 70s

trash_petrol and I were discussing the fact that when we were children, in the 1970s, *everything* was expensive. Since then, clearly many items have plummeted in price (in real terms). Technology is laughably cheap compared to prices in the 70s. As far as we could work out, pretty much everything is cheaper now than it was then.

But can anyone think of anything that is not cheaper now? About the only thing I could think of was tobacco. I'm sure that duty on cigarettes now is higher than it was in the 70s. Alcohol duty may well be higher, but alcoholic drinks seem to be far cheaper (think deals at supermarkets) so that the price seems to me cheaper overall. Not that I was drinking much in the 70s :-)

I'm wondering if the wisdom of my friends list can thing of any other examples? Fuel costs have fluctuated wildly - petrol was stupidly expensive after the oil crisis in 1973, and has been again recently, so that kinda doesn't count in my head. (Ooh, nice graph on wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Oil_Prices_1861_2007.svg)

Tuna fish, possibly. That seems to cost more now than it did in the 1980s, as production methods have changed ("don't drown the dolphins") making it harder to produce. However, I was eating pilchards in the 70s so I don't know how much they cost then.

10:43 am - Eight legged monsters from outer space

Is it just me, or are there a lot more Category 2s seeking the warmth of our houses this autumn?
I found one this morning lurking under a small pile of my dirty washing, as I picked it up to put it in the washing basket. I'll never wear those underpants again...

12:29 pm - I helped build this

After years of working away on things only visible on WAP or via SMS, recently the new Orange News site has gone live:

http://www.orange.co.uk/news

With back end CMS loading services written by me! Loads of wobbly XML comes in, gets parsed, processed and placed in our CMS using the Atom Publishing Protocol. So now you can all vaguely see what I do for a living.

Although, for how much longer, given this rather interesting news story that appeared on the day we launched:

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/copycat_fears_after_23_staff_die_by_suicide

Eek!

[In case you don't know, France Telecom owns Orange. And yes, I am well aware this means I work for a French company. It has been pointed out to me before. Regular and often! :-)]

12:19 pm - Default school trip location

I suspect we all have one of these. When you were at school, the cheap, local, default location for school trips. You probably went there multiple times. Kinda like the box factory in The Simpsons.

Mine is the supposed location of the Battle of Bosworth Field (I went to school in Ashby de la Zouch). trash_petrol's is Ironbridge Gorge (she went to school in Sutton Coldfield). I seem to recall road_runner telling me of several visits to Hartlepool nuclear power station (he went to school in Chester-le-street).

So what's yours?

03:43 pm - Most tempting reason for owning an iPhone I've seen so far...

http://www.wooji-juice.com/products/soundroid/

Hurrah for giant stompy robots!

[Link originally from pensive_mary]

09:04 pm - Arrr it be Devon

I am in deepest darkest Devon, in East Budleigh (birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh). We drove down single track roads with grass growing in the middle of them to get here. I have no internet connection. I also have no mobi reception in the cottage we're staying in, something that's not really happened to me this century. To send out this message i have climbed a hill behind our cottage to get one bar of GPRS coverage. 3G doesnt happen round here.
Fortunately I got an HTC Touch Pro the other day so I once more have a phone with a 'real' keyboard.
Took sprogs to a donkey sanctuary this morning, which they enjoyed. Then we had a bracing walk on the stones of Budley Salterton beach in the wind and rain. Hurrah for England in the summertime.

11:43 am - This morning on the Sky music channels

*click*
Michael Jackson
*click*
Michael Jackson
*click*
Michael Jackson
*click*
Michael Jackson
*click*
Michael Jackson
*click*
Michael Jackson
*click*
Guns N' Roses! Hurrah for the Kerrang! channel :-)

12:38 pm - Watch thoughts

You know what I want from a watch? I would really like one that displays:
1) The current datetime for UTC in ISO 8601 format: 2009-04-01 11:33:06 as I type.
2) The current local datetime in ISO 8601 format: 2009-04-01 12:33:06.
3) The current Unix timet: 1 238 585 633 as I type.
Come on Casio, build it for me! There are watches for pilots and divers. I want one for a speccy nerd like me! Working with 24 hour rolling news and data services I have to think in terms of UTC, and lots of the code I work with uses the Unix epoch time. What clocks on the wall say is for 'locals'.

10:38 pm - I aint dead...

although things have been mildly grim. Two weekends ago we all went off to Centerparcs (Sherwood Forest) with custancia and family. This was lots of fun. evie_petrol has thoroughly got over her fear of water and was thrashing around with Ellie lots. Ellie is a much better swimmer, but if Evie wore a buoyancy aid she could keep up with Ellie and the two of them thrashed around together in the pool nicely. Daddy went on some water slides for the first time in, er, decades and all was good. On Saturday night trash_petrol and custancia went out for a drink and Paul [WINOLJ] and I played several games of Memoir '44. I got to say such things as "achtung panzer!", "eat lead, Fritz", "take that, Ivan", etc, and eat lots of nachos.

Unfortunately, I awoke on Sunday morning feeling very ill. I wondered if I had eaten too many nachos. We took the sprogs out to rampage on the adventure playground, but I eventually had to admit defeat and take to my bed. Shortly afterwards I was very sick. Now, historically, I've often been ill at Centerparcs or after I've been swimming. We wondered if I have some curious sensitivity to chlorine or something? So we kinda decided this was why I was ill and didn't think much more of it. I did the best I could for the next couple of days, but I was quite out of it.

Then on Monday night evie_petrol was sick too. When she returned to school we discovered there was a sickness bug doing the rounds and 10 children were off in one class at her school. All became clear...

amelia_petrol got it Wednesday night, and trash_petrol finally succumbed on Friday. Fortunately, by the time trash_petrol was laid out by it I had recovered, so there was always one responsible adult (stop sniggering) who could child-wrangle.

Finally, taking evie_petrol to ballet on Saturday morning custancia appeared without Paul and explained that he was at home being very sick. Oh dear.

We all seem to have recovered now, although the unexpected weight loss has been nice. I've had to tighten my belt a notch!

I've finished work today for a couple of weeks. I'm taking the Easter school holidays off then it's back to work fulltime. The next three days will be relaxing - just amelia_petrol at home. Next week Bonkers Girl will be at home and things will be, er, less peaceful...

04:02 pm - Watchmen

I went to see Watchmen last night [Hurrah for Orange Wednesdays]. I thought it was great, which was good, seeing as I've been waiting 20 years for that film! As Jonathan Ross noted in his review, it's not often you get to sit in a cinema and feel a warm fuzzy glow as you watch a film made just for you.

Y'see, I'm an old 80s comic fanboy. I dug out my copy of Watchmen for a re-read. Here's my copy:



A 12 issue limited series published 'monthly' by DC in 1986 to 1987. Although 'monthly' got rather stretched towards the end when the whole thing fell behind schedule.

Most were bought from the long defunct Zap Comics, somewhere in a grotty cellar behind the Silver Arcade in Leicester. It was "Non Distributed" in the UK, so all copies were air-freighted in, and you paid a premium price. I have a vague recollection that one issue's distribution was delayed, as the whole DC consignment for that month got stopped by Customs, due to some dodgy imagery in another comic possibly falling foul of UK obscenity laws at that time.

Obviously, I've got many of the other iconic DC comics of that era: Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Sandman, V for Vendetta, etc. The only gaping gap in my collection is that I failed to be on-the-case with The Dark Knight Returns, and I don't have that in its original four issue form. I've also got most of the run of The Question that started in 1987. This was the Charlton character that Alan Moore was originally going to use in Watchmen, who eventually mutated into Rorschach. In issue 17 of The Question the title character actually reads the graphic novel of Watchmen and notes the similarity between himself and Rorscharch.

I never bought Marvel, and to this day I have a curious anti-Marvel affectation. I've not seen the X-Men, Spiderman or Fantastic Four films, as they're from "the rival company".

12:55 pm - Vague Update

I'm back at work for a short three-day-week at the moment, so today is my virtual Friday! I'm looking forward to being back at home with Amelia. Looking after Evie was always pretty hard work, but Amelia ambles around and gurgles. As long as she has plenty of toys to play with and the odd chunk of bread to munch on she's happy. So tomorrow Trash and I can sneak out shopping for a bit with Amelia in tow.

Coming back to work has been something of a tiring shock. I went to bed around 20:00 last night. I also had to contend with 15,865 emails waiting for me when I got back. Fortunately, most were error emails, which had been sorted into relevant folders by Outlook rules. Generally, unless you're actually there when a process is spewing out error emails, they have little historical value. Sadly, there were still 656 'real' emails waiting in my Inbox to be sifted through though.

My motorbike is back alive as well. After a couple of months with the clever Stuart Rafferty she's all fixed up and back on the road. The weather is a bit nicer to, so I've been riding her to work and back this week. It'll soon be spring. It ended up costing me almost exactly the insurance settlement. They gave me £2000, I bought the 'wreck' for £700, and it cost £1300 to be repaired. I couldn't see this in purely monetary terms though. That VFR is a beautiful example of the final itteration of the VFR 750 design, before Honda made a hash of things with the distinctly inferior VFR 800. It is the closest thing to perfection on two wheels I'll ever ride. It would have been a crime against motorcycling to send that bike to the scrapyard.

03:30 pm - Watch geeking

( I have a new Casio! :-) )

12:01 pm - Update

( Child related stuff... )

02:10 pm - Google Latitude

Feel free to add me: vpetrol@gmail.com

09:17 pm - What on Earth is trash_petrol up to?

Cheerleading?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQWzd3Qb690

*cackle*

10:01 pm - Pictures of Amelia Petrol

From our first meeting:
http://vinpetrol.fotopic.net/c1655800.html

09:49 pm - Adopting second child

( child related stuff... )