Owner: rashbre central URL:http://rashbre2.blogspot.com Join Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:11:54 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: there is some fun going forward Site statistics:Click here
obsession 2007-11-17 13:17:35 In between working and sleeping this week, (oops, and yesterday's imbibing) I've been trying to keep a few minutes for the NaNoWriMo novelling. I'm at the stage now where the story is beginning to converge, although I'm not sure whether I've been adding too many pieces into the mix. As a way to blend in some content, I've been noting little items in my notebook and snapping interesting pictures which could somehow add into a scene. Hence this car. I sometime park in a swish London car park where there's always a selection of exotica which usually manages to make me smile. And so earlier in the week when I parked next to this Lambo I thought it should make an appearance in the story. And then a few days later, I was parked again and returned to find it next to me. Its obviously the latest model and costs 'do not touch' amounts of money. I need to work out whether it becomes involved in a car chase ready for the film rights from the novel....hmmm, black or orange?
vmware running vista in OS/X 2007-11-17 11:36:16 Windows ON OS/XI mainly use Mac at home and nowadays run the super slick Leopard. For my old-school moments, I've used Parallels for Windows in Mac and recently (pre Leopard) tried VMware, which is fairly similar to Parallels, although in my case it was rather slow. Windows IN OS/XIn the last few days I updated VMware to the new version adn now everything seems to run quite well, with a reasonably nippy Windows Vista running
inside OS/X. No boot camp shut-downs, just click a Windows ap and a new Vista-enabled Window opens (much like a browser) with the Mac application inside. Its probably not fast enough for games, but certainly good enough for office style applications.Though the weirdest of all is when the Mac starts to bling up Windows hassle boxes in the bottom right corner asking for updates, reboots and so forth. Its like a little separate eco-system. There... it wants to re-boot again right now whilst I'm typing this. You go ahead little vista. I'll keep working on OS/X whils
Repair a Thinkpad's missing key 2007-11-16 05:55:08 Yesterday evening, the letter 'D' just flew off of my Thinkpad
keyboard. "Oh, bother!" I thought, "What an inconvenience!" (or words to that effect).It was actually rather late and I thought for a few minutes if it were possible to finish what I was typing without using that letter any more in any sentences. It seems to go quite a long way through a paragraph without using that letter very much. Almost unnecessary especially if one uses 'autocorrect' if it is missing (=see - whole paragraph without a single use).So I then initially set about fixing it. Quite difficult. Other people had spent two hours and then ordered replacement keyboards. Including the key, there's four tiny pieces of fiddly plastic that need to fit together in sort of trapezoid / pantograph shape. I tried for about ten minutes and then rummaged around to find a spare keyboard to plug into the side of the laptop until the next day.And so today: How to replace a key on a Thinkpad1) Don't panic2) Have plenty of Read more:Repair
minor character about to get a speaking part 2007-11-14 19:20:00 Most people who saw Gerald for the first time looked away. He normally lived in a squat around the Balls Pond Road. He called the area Hoxton - which is an up-and-coming area - but the reality was that he lived close to some deserted warehouses and by a Saturday ad hoc marketplace where mainly Polish and other middle europeans would sell minor goods directly from cardboard cartons. Gerald lived by his wits and scrounged a living from small errands and some petty crime. He usually walked around in a grey raincoat, with a knotted scarf and a baseball cap. In a clean and well fitted version this could have made Gerald look quite respectable, but with the uncared for versions, the overall impession was desolation.There was rain this evening, a grey, drizzling rain that had persisted all day. It had the effect of flattening the landscape, and blurring detail. Car lights were smeared and there was a deadening of sound. This was not a good rain, just a persistent one. Gerald was shuf
the buzz of the city 2007-11-14 19:09:32 Another logistically challenged day today. I have meetings dotted around and need to do some train travel. I also have some phone conferences where ideally I have my PC switched on, but it could all get quite difficult to fit together. The theory of sitting in cafes in London on "the Cloud" WiFi and plugged into phone conferences sounds okay, but there is usually so much noise from expresso machines, ambient music and coffee drinkers that conference calls don't really work unless its a listen only kind of deal. So I shall have to find somewhere quiet for the calls and be offline.
little noise 2007-11-24 16:14:33 To set the scene for this one, I'd said I was very busy at work (true) and couldn't go to this. I was quite happy for someone else deserving to have the extra ticket that Julie has somehow obtained for the 600 person gig with her favourite Mr Young, supported by Newton Faulkner, Adele and another act.Come the time, though, and I find myself heading in a taxi to the small church venue in Highbury. We'd not eaten and managed to grab a quick snack from one of the thousands of places along the buzzy road leading to the Little Noise venue. Arrival 7:30pm and the place was already full. It was advanced tickets only and then 'find a pew' so to speak. No problemo, we sneaked through a curtain and up some stairs to the gallery and bagged some prime seats looking down on the stage.So with at least two of the acts normally playing in theatres and arenas, it was primed to be a strong evening. It did mean though, that once in place, it was a question of someone always staying at the seats to Read more:little
night moves 2007-11-24 11:53:13 Some kind of time warp this afternoon as I headed to the supermarket. Broad daylight when I parked and yet, some 30 minutes later I emerged into what looked like proper night-time darkness. Somehow the shorter days are sneaking up on us and the flip from day to night is quite sudden. And right now its still only 6pm.
Read more:moves
camera state 2007-11-24 07:45:48 The Merc had an easy grace as it slid along the motorway. The entire drive from Germany had been uneventful until he reached the British roads again. Then, a mile or two from the rail terminus, he'd been stuck in erratically moving traffic all the way back to the slow M25 encircling London. Across France, he'd watched the mirror for the long term cars following him. It was the usual situation on this persistent drive. A small grouping of vehicles proceeding at roughly the same speed yet staying within the French law. He'd deliberately stopped at a couple of snack areas along the way, to randomise these cars that accompanied him and now back in the UK everything was suitably mixed up again. His German temporary plates with their bright orange square did stand out from the other traffic and he knew it would take a couple of days to get them converted to British number plates. But he was relaxed now, the paranoia from Jake and Clare was unjustified. No-one cared about him or the shiny
now be thankful 2007-11-23 09:54:11 The wires have been quiet today with our cousins in America celebrating Thanksgiving Day. Clearly an American celebration, formalised by Abe, although the roots in Harvest festival are worth noting. The Brits have been doing this since pagan times and the original haerfest is from Anglo-Saxon and means 'Autumn' (Fall). I gather the native America Indians had a similar way to celebrate the harvest. So not surprising when a boatload of British and European religious separatists turned up on the shores of what would become Plymouth 2, that they would invoke some of the traditional festivals as a way to encourage and celebrate the harvest. So, whatever interpretation you have for the celebration, "Happy Thanksgiving". now be thankful
a matter of public record 2007-11-21 15:05:47 I see 25 million individual UK citizen records have been mislaid when they were sent by HMRC through the internal post on a couple of CD/DVDs to the National Audit Office. Apparently the first set that were sent by TNT didn't get through but the second recorded delivery set did.It looks to me as if some of the records must already be out there, judging by the types of inexpensive private investigation site already available.
Read more:matter
Competition : Spot the missing CD 2007-11-21 15:03:23 OK, I know its supposed to be wordless wednesday, but today, "X" marks the spot. And tomorrow's competition will be "guess the password". (Not the most common ones like password, 123456, secret, qwerty, abc123, letmein, monkey, charlie, myspace1, password1, arsenal, (your first name))And clue : Its none of these either......or is it?
reading other peoples' papers on the tube 2007-11-19 16:41:37 The big headline tonight on the tube (ie what people were reading) was about the £23bn loan that the government has given to Northern Rock out of taxpayers' money. I can't remember how much it equates to per UK adult, but it must be around £1000 per "household".And at the moment, no-one seems to want to buy Northern Rock, presumably partly influenced by the thought that they would need to pay back the £23bn to the government (aka the taxpayers).But the UK numbers pale into insignificance compared with the USA, where even the BBC is reporting Wall Street banks could be hit with losses of half a trillion dollars. As a number that's $500,000,000,000, which is quite a lot of wonga.So with the recent actions by the US Treasury and to a degree by the Bank of England, there seems to have been some emphasis on deferring a crunch-point. But if all of those bundled together parcels of bad lending crash and there's a raft of foreclosures, then the US economy could be in for an amazingly ro Read more:papers
Das Blinkenlighten 2007-11-30 06:32:33 I finished last night very late again, probably still buzzing from the last cups of 'spresso lungo. So as I headed for bed I became aware of the various scattered piece of technology in the bedroom blinking little lights back at me. Normally, if I am away, I can have nearby parties, streetbrawls and in room full screensavers blattering away through the night whilst my poor little PC defragments itself and I don't notice a thing. But last night I was aware of the various tiny flashing lights from phones charging, the radio, the bluetooth headset and a stray Powerbook in snooze mode. So I slid into sleep thinking about the old, but still true Blinkenlights...
Un Boxing Day 2007-11-29 03:24:02 I thought I'd post a picture of the rashbre central Christmas Decorations. Er...Its still November though, so they are still in the box. Most of the area has been stealthily adding trees, lights and baubles to the public spaces since around mid October, and in some areas like Oxford Street the surreal purple trees were already on the buildings many weeks ago. Sloane Square is lit up and Peter Jones's store has had a positive cascade of lighting all down the front for weeks. Folk I know have already been to see the "Nightmare before Christmas in 3D", and others have even returned with bags laden with Christmas goodies. Hereabouts, I shall wait until we are into December to begin the countdown. No fancy blog based-advent calendars, but maybe a twinkling light or two, probably after I've been on a bulb-expedition.
messy? moi? 2007-11-29 03:00:48 Sometimes its good to look at an area with fresh eyes. Take rashbre central's holding bay for misplaced household items. Every so often I manage to reduce its contents to a level where I can see the floor, and then ever so slowly it somehow builds up again with new stuff that is either on its way out, or on its way in. And because it is already a bit messy, the area gets used by other friends as a temporary storage depot too. Some may recall the sizzling skip sagas of '6, when I managed to rationalize the whole area quite well. It's a little troublesome that some 15 or so months later it should already be back in a similar condition. No wonder I couldn't find a book I was looking for a few days ago.
i'm not bad, i'm just drawn that way 2007-11-27 12:24:20 I think Jessica Rabbit agrees with me that the internet is a mysterious system. Both in my flickr account and here in rashbre central I'm often mystified by the random 'popularity' of miscellaneous posts and pictures. Yesterday I noticed the counter had spun around somewhat on rashbre central and I thought "what wondrous, clever post did I write to cause such interest?" Of course, the reality was more sobering when I noticed that the hits were mainly on an ancient post called "pulp powertool fantasy bunnies" (yes that well known search term) and that there seemed to be particular interest in viewing the rather suspect video that accompanies it. Fantasy Bunnies? ... Never mind.
Read more:drawn
i need more ink 2007-11-27 12:24:00 Big project, NaNoWriMo and blogging are creating a backlog of words. I need more ink.
earth rush 2007-11-24 18:58:40 I've been putting in very long hours over the last few days, for a current work project and I'll be back on it Sunday too. The interesting thing is trying to keep the various other plates spinning at the same time, whilst the world whizzes along. Its kind of strange, but somehow having a lot happening seems to bend time, so that I'm still finding slots that wouldn't normally exist to do other things. In amongst shopping, laundry and even the few stolen hours to go to Thursday's gig, I seem to just be squeezing more out of the available hours. Against the total madness of it, I seem to be keeping the wordage count tracking for the nanothingy. I admit I'm grabbing minutes of train journey and other potentially dead time to do this scripting and have written some parts into my phone or email and then sent them back to my rashbre account so that I can pipe them back into Pages. There's less than 6 days to finish now, but as my word count is somewhere in the low 40s, I'm still hangi
britney & rashbre mix piece of me 2007-12-06 11:26:10 Yes, from the holodeck of JLP's Enterprise, Ensign Britney and I decided we'd better make a video as part of our collaboration before we both blasted back off into our own separate news stories. The video on here is suitably squished for web loading. A slightly better fidelity version is over on MTV here.Technorati Tags: rashbre, britney, britney+spears, piece
ofme, piece+of+me, mtv, remix, collaboration, latest
party time 2007-12-06 03:56:43 I've been pretty busy at work recently, but I did manage to get along to the Enterprise Christmas Party over at JLP's on Wednesday. My date was Ensign Britney and we decided even with the theme being Las Vegas, that it would be fun to go along dressed as Pirates. I managed to take one picture of Brit on the Holodeck, but I'm afraid it came out a bit blurry. The party was a blast and actually its still going on, but I have a couple more this week and need to save myself for Cuba on Friday and then the Masque of the Red Death Ball on Saturday (and probably Sunday as well).That will be four parties in a week, if I count the impromptu Birthday party for Britney,too.
space hopper 2007-12-06 03:56:19 A wordless wednesday to enjoy. Go on, click the pic!
Read more:hopper
the long and short of it 2007-12-04 15:30:46 The new London Overground which is like the Underground, but runs at ground level - (similar to railways) - has had a problem surface. Actually its quite a long flat problem surface. But not a very wide one. The new train service was due to start on 11th November, but has been having a bit of bother with Shepherd's Bush train station. Its the platforms. They've some how been made too narrow to stand upon to wait for the trains. Apparently measurements of ABCs (Average British Citizens) were taken when the line was first being designed back in the late 1990s. A combination of increases in shopping bag size and some side effects from genetically modified carrots mean that the widths of the platforms are now insufficient for modern commuters.The station cost around £65 million to create and now a fairly substantial retaining wall needs to be dismantled and moved back before it can be declared fit for purpose. This is not news to London Connections which alonng with Private Eye reported
iPhone Oyster hack for London 2007-12-03 08:46:51 Live in London? Use the tube and buses? Then you've got an Oyster card. There's an experiment at the moment to integrate them with phones and Nokia are trying it out with a pilot.Here's the rashbre central unofficial pilot for iPhone
users, but it works fine for other phone makes too. The iPhone is great. It looks fabulous but in regular use its a bit slippy. So I bought a 'tight fittlng rubberised case' from incase.. Oooh, I hear you cry. So as an experiment, I've added extra functionality to the phone by inserting my Oyster card into the case before putting it around the phone. Then simply wave the phone by the Oyster touch-points.Works brilliantly and makes me smile.rashbre iPhone oyster london londonist apple hack Tfl tube buses
rashbre radio 2 2007-12-03 04:30:18 I'm working again this morning, but hope to be 'let out' this afternoon to head over to Windsor for a while. My 'big project' continues and is still consuming nearly all available time. I seem to have adapted back to a no sleep/little sleep model again at the moment, but I also know when that stops working is when I start to get 'sense of humour' failures - although that has not quite occurred yet.In other news, 24 hour non-stop rashbre radio now has an overhaul to the new look. Never listened? Its always been there in the little tab at the top of the blog and it can be undocked to be a continuing companion on the desktop. And if you get fed up with my choices you can (a) skip forwardto the next track or (b) change channels!And now back to the project.rashbre radio last.fm lastfm rashbreradio widgets blog
(b) log 2007-12-03 04:29:05 I seem to have spent most the weekend working, apart from our little excursion to Windsor yesterday afternoon.Aside from the upward vertical rain and fighting through mad shoppers trying to buy scented candles and single pyramid shaped tea-bags for £2.50 each, the main reason was to visit the theatre. To be honest, it was disappointing. I've seen the same play with different direction and thought a lot of clever allusions in the previous version were not expressed in this equivalent. I suppose it was a late afternoon performance, so perhaps the cast were saving themselves for the evening, but I doubt they would be able to pull a lot more from the hat. Then time for an early evening bite to eat and we scrambled between various busy venues along by the Windsor Castle until we reached the brasserie by the oddly festooned Christmas tree outside the castle entrance. Here a pleasant supper with jazzy saxophone accompaniment before home to more work until about 23:30.And more work today,
tree time 2007-12-15 08:42:02 To my slight surprise, rashbre central is gradually becoming ready for the festive season. No great day of decorating, but rather more small movements which add together to create the effect. The little red christmas trees along the top of the fireplace (and in the blog header) started the process and a couple of nights ago I threw a bundle of lights across the outdoor foliage to start the illuminations. I did forget to check them before I threw them into position and had to retrieve one set which was somehow multi coloured and looked a little out of place with the rest.I've even managed to get the tree which is still wrapped in that netting at the moment (took me two attempts though because the normal place has somehow closed down without me noticing) and the boxes of decorations have been waiting to be opened for a couple of weeks. I have a feeling that the full effect will be in place by the end of the weekend after I've gathered together some presents and maybe wrapped the wine f
fun with Qlympic trademarks 2007-12-15 07:21:54 I noticed diamond geezer is trying to get some folk to help raise a bid about the upgrade of the area leading to the Olympic&trade site for 2012&trade. Unfortunately, the name for the road was to be Olympic&trade something but it can't be because the Olympic&trade Committee have Trademarked the word Olympic&trade and the use of London 2012&trade.I thought it would be fun to trademark the common mis-spellings so we now have a selection of rashbre central&trade reserved words too...Qlympic&trade Oljmpic&trade Olympjc&trade Qlympjc&trade Olympac&trade Olymp.c&trade Olimpic&trade Olimpjc&trade and a couple more which I'll keep secret until I see if anyone uses them.Some of this legal stuff is all greek to me.
truth beauty freedom love 2007-12-15 03:47:32 I borrowed the Baz Luhrman Moulin Rouge video a few days ago and decided I'd spend part of the evening to watch it again. Its quite evocative of the Masque of the Red Death party I attended last week, with red curtains, tragedy, drama and so forth along with that surprisingly good musical soundtrack. Still an entertaining one to watch, bursting with colour and 'hope' despite the sadness of the main storyline.
xmas tunes 2007-12-15 03:10:58 We're approaching the period when all of the XMAS singles get promoted into the pop charts (whats left of them). The X-Factor machine is doing its very best to get a number one for Christmas, having already seen the Spice Girls tune slip quietly into charity record oblivion. Keeping with yesterday's 'Waterloo' train station theme, I was musing on seasonal tunes
reflecting the late evening scenes around popular London train termini in the week leading to the start of the Christmas holidays. After the shoppers have left by around nine thirty pm, its best to stay away, unless you wish to become involved in the mini dramatic scenes that play out as a result of too much celebration in the earlier part of the evening. So as wel as the original well sung and well filmed 'Fairy Tale of New York', about Christmas in the drunk tank I've added the Eastenders' soap opera version set in a betting shop and then rounded off with the 2007 anti X factor Xmas song entry about a drunken Santa in
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