June 27, 2008
Cathy's procedure went with no complications and she is enjoying some pampering. The procedure was described as a
punch biopsy, which is a tad puzzling as this is usually diagnostic and done in preparation for surgury. However,
Wikipaedia indicates that this is sometimes used to remove small tumors like this one.
They also say that a large melanoma is treatet with a multidisciplinary approach
. This means they hit it with everything they can think of and hope for the best.
Meantime: We have chicken croissants, and loads of videos. Cathy has declaired that she has hat too much chocolate - which is a good place to be.
June 25, 2008
Cathy's suspicious mole from the last entry turns out to be a melanoma - a
basal cell carcenoma which will be removed tomorrow. Early indications are that it has been found early enough. We'll see. The kicker is that it is on her face!
So, my darling will be wearing a bandage on her face for a bit - and then there's the scarring. With any luck, ACC will pay for reconstruction and not that much will need to be removed. We'll see.
Treats tonight then - we went to Silvia Park to see Prince Caspian on the big screen. Tried te sneak a la-premier seat but got caught. The movie is better than the book!
No housework for Cathy - and a special "whatever she wants" weekend.
This is helped in that I got payed for that Heinecken Commercial - about four times what I expected. Which means there is quite a bit left over after paying my agent. I gotta tell you - show business is definately worth it.
Timely too - just had a crash. Backed into the lawnmower guy coming out of the drive. He was fine: I hit the back of his flatbed and his trailor. No sign of any damage to his stuff at all. However: my wee sportscar has a huge ugly dent right in the middle of the trickiest panel, and a crumpled bumper. I'll get a quote soon as I can. I've been lucky with this car so far so - fingers crossed.
And I have a new install - there are people out there claiming linux knowledge who are just so full of it. The previous attempt apparently took eight hours to get nowhere putting Hardy on a packard-bell easynote f5. I can see how someone may get stumped - but the solutions were all standard. "If at first you don't succeed, read the instructions." In this case - hit F6 and read that.
So - to the mysterious stranger who told these good people that linux will not run their machine: enroll in my next class dude. See you there.
June 23, 2008
Cathy's moontime is upon us - so there is definately no new family member on the way. This is the good news. However - a funny growth on Cathy's face turns out suspicious - it's being biopsied. We'll have to see what happens. I don't think I can take much more suspense!
What with other family members similarly under the gun, I'm starting to feel a bit left out. Best I can manage is a funny rash - dosn't really count. Though: all the people getting sick are all the ones who would insist on a "healthy diet" and badger me over my second coffee and croissant in the morning while they choke down their musely.
Managed a day at the Uni yesturday - five hours with stage 1 Physics students. They were a decent bunch this year - it was mostly a matter of pointing them to what they already know.
Spare time is spent happily re-imagining the core starships from Oolite. Havn't been testing the models out in the game yet - but here's a sample.
Cobra mk4 "Supercobra" with the "Bride" livery. Have managed to re-model the Cobras I and III, the Moray Star Boat, Python, Anaconda, Boa & Boa II, and the Fer de Lance. Each has multiple skins.
June 18, 2008
Intrepid Ibex has passed it's alpha-1 benchmark. HBCLUG has four Intrepid wallpapers - go get 'em before the official artwork comes out.
For those who don't know - firefox 3 is out of beta. GNU/Linux users have been enjoying this version for some time now. If you are still on v2, go upgrade. Mozilla has put it on some decent servers so they can handle the bandwidth.
Last couple of days have been spent doing some website maintenance. I've been fixing links and updating information. Enjoy.
A quick look at the statistics shows that the site is still growing. Almost at the total for the last month already.
June 16, 2008
Been wasting same timo on the
fermilab code. Almost all has been
cracked, they must have asked
Woodstock!
The middle bit still presents a puzzle. My only contribution is that each line in the middle has ten unique characters - decimal digits? But I cannot seem to make anything of this. Except, maybe, that I am way too easily distracted...
Fiddling with Oolite ships has lead to an odd observation - these ships are much bigger than their skins would seem to indicate. The cobra mk III for eg, is 30 meters thick - which makes it 10-15 stories tall. That makes the bridge about the size of my house!
Since staterooms are additional, I shudder to think what size they are. But the Cobra can only handle 20T cargo - which, at the default water density, is a tiny portion of the overall volume. Much of the volume could be feul, except that we see 3ly worth of witchdrive fuel in a pod-mounted disposable tank. Perhaps the witchdrive is huge?!
This does intreguing things to my ship designs... I may need to go get the latest version to make sense of this. (I'me tempted to re-imagine the entire set.)
Cathy's moontime remains in the future, despite negative pregnancy tests. We'll know for sure in nine months I guess. Could be menopause... which would be early. It's a worry...
There has been some updated info on the Aspire 4315 - it seems that the ACPI functions work properly in the latest kernel. This is great news - and leaves only the modem non-functional.
June 13, 2008
Releif! Cathy did a pregnancy test yesterday - and she's
not pregnant. I repeat:
not pregnant. Prospective grandparents can relax.
Today was utterly wasted making starships for Oolite. Models and pics later.
Yesterday was supposed to be the first lesson in the Open-Office Sikills course. Nothing happened! Nobody called to say if there were enough bookings or anything, so I went along on the offchance. Nobody was there. I'll have to find out what happened.
Apart from all that it's been bills (I keep getting his mail) and shopping. Bacon croissants for breakfast - yum.
June 10, 2008
Wow! Cathy reports that her "moontime" is late - none at all while in India (though I'm sure she did have one before she left...) We'll have to see what happens. There was a chance way back - and it is possible to have a light period and still conceive.
I'm not sure we're ready, but that's how life happens.
Meantime, I noticed that Big Media has been caught in false accusations. The methods they use to detect p2p and bittorrent piracy also can detect legitimate users and be used to frame innocents. It seems reasonable that real pirates will attempt to disguise their origins and identity anyway. The trouble is, it costs to defend the charge.
We should see if a similar issue exists with NZFACT. There is a disturbing lack of information about them. The latest in the press is this bit about troubles establishing legal downloading sites.
In the news today: inhuman police? Seems there is a security issue here: how can the Police, or anyone, tell when a gunman is "long gone" and it is safe to approach? The person waving and shouting for help could be mistaken - and they have strong motivation to underestimate the danger to others. "It's safe dude, come save me! Woops - my mistake..."
Still - there seems to have been quite a delay here (I make it 18 mins that the paramedics were held up - not the 26+ mins reported). Perhaps the Police need to take a more pro-active approach to verify reports of the scene's safety. Did they attempt to phone the store to see if the gunmen were still present?
The people there could have helped too. Why not demonstrate the safety by walking up to Police, show them? (They were calling from the carpark and could hear the sirens - there were a lot of people on the scene, why not go meet the Police? Did anyone even stand so as to be clearly visible?)
It would have been very confusing for everyone involved. The people on the scene kept being assured that help was moments away. Early reports were that the victim was able to go to the loo unassisted... though he was in pain and vomiting blood. A conflicting message there. It is very important to be clear in communicating the facts of the situation to emergency services so they can make the correct decisions. It is also important that the responce team (police and ambulance) establish direct contact quickly to be sure their information is current and accurate.
June 8, 2008
I've been under the weather this weekend - mostly allergies I guess. No flu excuses this year: I had the jab already.
Benn having a lazy time watching Gerry Anderson TZ shows - in this case: UFO. I remember liking it when it repeated in NZ ages ago. A 1970 SciFi set in the 80's - slow and naive by todays standards but worth it for the Moonbase babes.
Meantime, Cathy is settling back in to NZ life and catching up with everyone. And I have to pay my hosting bill to domains4less I thought I'd had an autopayment arrainged - better look into it.
June 4, 2008
Bruce Scheier
talks about the evils of Internet Explorer. This is IE6, MS promise to have fixed that now. Honest.
The meeting with Acer went down today.
That was different... the top-dogs were there and made some very positive noises. Some things I don't get to talk about but here's the gist:
Acer NZ are still testing the water re. linux but they are interested in having another go a bit later. They are after a closer relationship with the NZ LUGs are implimenting the solutions I have presented them. We'll have to see what happens.
On the MS OOXML front - more countries have joined the protest. That makes it South Africa, India, Brazil, Venezuela and, possibly, Denmark. MS seems to be back-pedalling on the standard:
The significance of OOXML as a standard is waning: Microsoft does not expect to make its current generation of office productivity software, Office 2007, compliant with the ISO/IEC version of OOXML. Microsoft plans instead to add compatibility with ISO/IEC 26300 OpenDocument Format standard used by OpenOffice.org, Sun Microsystems' StarOffice and IBM's Symphony software.
--- from PC World
More via GrokLaw.
June 2, 2008
Wifey is back - woot. All cuddles and snuggles. More later.
Also heard from Steve of Acer NZ - the meet is happening on Wednesday (4th). Hold tight.
Finally - more on SFD from Pia:
Hi everyone,
SFD2008 is around the corner - Saturday 20 September - and team
registrations are now open! The first 300 teams registered before the 15th
July will receive a SFD team pack including SFD 2008 tshirts, button pins,
stickers and balloons, as well some useful resource CDs including some
OpenEducation Discs (http://www.theopendisc.com/education/), a resource DVD
with artwork, documentation, presentation templates and video material, and
the option for some Ubuntu CDs.
Additional T-shirts will also be available to purchase via our online store,
which will be open soon.
You can register by visiting our registration page but don't forget that you
need to make your team page (or update your old page) *before* registering.
There is more information about how to form a team and how to register on
the teams page on our wiki:
http://cgi.softwarefreedomday.org/register.html
http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams
Check out who has already registered on our new interactive world map!
We wanted to change how people find teams so it was directly through the map
rather than by continent and then country due to your excellent feedback
last year, so teams can simply be softwarefreedomday.org/team rather than a
really long url. If you already have a team page you can create a new page
and shift all your data to the new page, or you can just link to your old
events from your new page. We will also be ensuring team packages are sent
much earlier this year so you get them on time. We had about 20 packages
returned to us last year from teams who put the incorrect address or didn't
pick up their packages so please ensure your address is 100% correct as we
can't check it! Also try to ensure your address on the map is the actual
address of your event so people can zoom in and go to it easily :)
Good luck with your SFD 2008 preparations, and don't forget to pass the
message around and get more teams involved! We had over 330 teams last year
and are anticipating over 500 this year!
Thank you all for helping take software freedom to the streets and make a
better world for everyone! After all, freedom isn't just for us geeks :)
Cheers and happy planning!
Pia and the SFI team
I'll have the HBCLUG team page updated soon - anyone who wants to help out, let me know.
