:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Saturday, September 13, 2003 ::

It's finaly happend.

This week I came home from work and couldn't face turning on my PC. I'd had enough of computers and if one more thing went wrong with one more machine that day no matter how small a problem, I would never be able turn one on again in my life (which would kinda fuck up my career).

The past few weeks I've been doing what is known in sysadmin circles as "a domain migration", basicaly changing the operating system on _every_ machine in the organisation (7 servers, 200+ desktops and 70+ laptops in my case).

This is not the first time I've done this, and this is not the first time things have gone pear shaped.

To cut a long, boring and very very geeky conversation short, Micro$oft still suck.

But virii writers suck more.

I'd worked very hard getting XP on to all those boxes (well me and a monkey) but I didn't get a chance to do two very important things: patch and install AntiVirus.

I was just setting up an AV server when I noticed the network slowing down. I feared the worst.

I suppose I deserved all I got.


But I think I've beaten it now, and am looking forward to work once more.*




* Though this could be attributed to discovering a new workplace activity: stealth disco

:: popcorn 13.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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Warp Records are giving away a Yoseph era Like Vibert track. Why they bothered to zip the MP3 I don’t know. 3.9MB.

Alan Tit-mash track available here. 6.3MB. Hell's Gardeners is available now from Norman Records.

:: Dan 13.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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Is this the best music video ever?

:: Dan 12.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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I’ve reformatted the archive page, so you can now peruse mouldy old gusset postings more easily, and search them too. Please let me know if it looks wak on your obscure browser, I might do something about it.

:: Dan 12.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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F.A.O. Popcorn: I know you’re a fan of contortionists (not for any deviant sexual reasons of course, it’s an ancient art form of great beauty and elegance I believe) so you might want to know that "The Twisted Lives of Contortionists" is on tonight on Channel 4, 1:20 – 2:20. Enjoy.

Oh yeah, and I ought to wish the wife a HAPPY BIRTHDAY as well.

:: Dan 11.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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Interactivity comes to Radio 4 this month in the shape of The Dark House, a dramatic mystery where the listeners decide whose thoughts to hear.
"I did the maths," says Izzy Mant, the director and co-producer, "and there are over half a million possible journeys through the story."

The ageing residents of Japan are turning to cutting-edge technology in their twilight years.

Everything you always wanted to know (or maybe didn’t even give any though) about Don McLean’s American Pie

Free BBC training courses, including shooting with DV cam and four part Cool Edit Pro course. Might not include anything of use to the hardened user but a nice introduction. Personal tip: I always leave the Cool Edit Pro ‘Show Hint on Start-up’ switched on and have found many little gems of information I probably wouldn’t have come across by accident or thought to look for. Although why there was one in their about Monty Pythons Meaning of Life I don’t know.

Linux is a blond nine-year-old boy, according to IBM. Er?

:: Dan 11.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the shortlist for this year's Sterling Prize for architecture, photos here.

Experimental tourism: includes ideas like 'countertourism', which requires you to take snapshots with your back turned to landmarks like the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben, and 'erotourism', where a couple heads to the same town but travels there separately, the challenge is to find one another abroad.

:: Dan 11.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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Tag-team Christening

I had to attend the Christening of one of my nephews on Sunday. As a concept, Christening isn’t something I really agree with, but for sake of reducing family tension it’s the sort of thing you go along with and keep quite about. Religion is something that I don’t think you are really capable of making a sensible decision about early in life, and something I think you should discover (or disregard) on your own, rather than have the views of you parents/guardians/school etc. forced on you.

That aside, the ceremony itself was unintentionally hilarious. The vicar had been away for the last two weeks and so played only a minor roll in the service, sitting back and letting a bunch of around a dozen helpers in matching jumpers with pictures of the church on perform some sort of bizarre tag-team service. A different person would jump up from the benches and scurry to the front for each reading, hymn, handling of ceremonial object etc. Presenting a seven month old with “my first bible” already seemed like a bad idea before they attempted to present a burning candle! Fortunately this attempt was aborted and someone else had to except the candle on his behalf.

It was amusing how three of the five hymns sung seemed unknown to at least 90% of the attendees. The start of every verse an awkward slur of voices attempting to synchronise, usually finding full voice for only the last few words of the line. The mysterious new and unknown hymns were all written in the 80’s (according to the copyright notices on the back) and all had cumbersome names like “I am a new creation no more in condemnation” (bit of a heavy, Catholic sounding one that), “As the deer pants for water so my soul longs after you” and “From heaven you came, helpless babe, entered our world, your glory veiled” (which featured such beautifully matched rhyming couplets in the verses as babe/veiled/serve/live, tears/bear/torn/said, feet/sacrifice/space/surrendered, in stark contrast to the inspired combination used in the chorus of king/him/offering/king)

All of this with a girl sat behind me eating crisps as loud and as slowly as it is imaginably possible to do so. Surely if your children who obviously don’t want to be there can’t make it through an hour without eating you should at least humour them with something that can be eaten less noisily? Chewy sweets perhaps? Gob-stoppers? Tranquilisers?

The next interesting point was someone forgetting to introduce the next hymn. You could tell she had forgotten because after performing her menial moving an object type job she went and sat back down again with all of the other jumpers eyeballed her all the way back to her seat with a look of horror on their faces. One of the more competent jumpers (the one with the walking stick with a plaster stuck on it) then stood up in her seat, tuned around to address the congregation from there, and introduced “One more step along the world I go.” But this did not save the situation, as another jumper wearing church monkey couldn’t operate the remote control for the CD player. Thrust me, I know this isn’t complex, I had to operate the same CD player at the wedding of the parents around 18 months ago. Yes, that’s right, she was up the duff within months of the wedding. What is it with these religious types who have to get married then immediately produce offspring, or get married in order to produce offspring? (I think I just answered my own question.) Indecently, this was the only hymn accompanied by CD, all of the others were accompanied by presets on a Casio keyboard and thus sounded like John Shuttleworth compositions.

So, back to the story, the CD monkey was searching through the CD for the appropriate track, not skipping through the tracks, searching. So the church is treated to the sound of a track winding through at two or three times normal speed. Everyone looks around confused, fairly sure it isn’t supposed to sound like that. The walking stick carrying jumper helpfully shouts out to the CD monkey that it should be track 10 on disk 2. He continues to fast forward but is obviously not getting anywhere, were probably only on track two or three. The walking stick carrying jumper attempts a joke in an attempt to prevent the congregation falling into coma. I think I was the only one that found the observation “is it playing in the right direction?” funny. Not because it was a good joke of course, or because it sounded anything like it was playing in the wrong direction, but because it conjured an image of death-metal backwards records and voices whispering “join us, join us...” repeatedly. Walking stick jumper woman eventually decided we all new it well enough to sing it without music. Just as well this didn’t happen with one of the other hymns.

:: Dan 10.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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Tired of lugging that harmonica around with you all day?
Need a saxophone sound but it's too dam bulky to take on the train?
You'll find what you need here.

:: Dash 10.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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More Duck Acoustics. And some sensible acoustics.

:: Dan 10.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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Listen to Daisy, the Duck with the Echo, here.
I couldn't resist posting this as Trevor Cox was one of my Uni lecturers. Go Trev!

Lowest note ever recorded - Perseus cluster's emission: 1 vibration per 10 million years

Controversial film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, who made the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, has died aged 101.

Japan Soon to Have 20,000 People Over Age 100. Japan is also home to the world's oldest woman and man. A woman from Japan's southern island of Kyushu is the world's oldest person, and she turns 116 next Tuesday. (Next Tuesday is also my birthday by the way, although I'm not that old!)

:: Dan 10.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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Another link courtesy of g3rm, John “Deliverance” Boorman on the cost of making movies, and why the studios are facing meltdown.

:: Dan 9.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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'Search my gusset' function added. See bottom of right hand column --->

:: Dan 9.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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Another piece on Infrasound (thanks to G3RM). This inspired a quick search, which revealed:
A paper on infrasound by John D. Cody.
The Sonic Weapon of Vladimir Gavreau
NOAA Environmental Technology Laboratory Infrasonics Program
Intro to Infrasound Java demo
Calculation of Infrasound frequency weighting (apparently called the G-weighting, what happened to E and F?)
And interesting uses for infrasound include monitoring for banned nuclear tests and forecasting surf.
British government acknowledge that not all 'hummers' are suffering from low frequency tinnitus.
Defra report

I’m always wary of people who claim to suffer from low frequency noise, as I know of cases where people have insisted it is coming from one particular source (even though they have no way of knowing where its coming from) just because they want to see that particular company moved further from their home for other unrelated reasons. However, it is very difficult to prove either way, as there may not be any measurable sound causing it. One case I know of the sound the person was hearing turned out to be sound of their own cochlea expending and contracting as a nearby radar station warmed it up when switched on and then allowed it to cool when switched off. Obviously that cannot be measured with traditional acoustic equipment.

Should anyone stumble across this looking for help with low frequency noise, the Low Frequency Noise Sufferers Helpline is contactable here.

:: Dan 9.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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Are the film-premiers of the future going to be held online? (Or only the shit films that no one wants to watch?)

Living in cyber-space; seven days without contact with the outside world. "I no longer dress, I no longer shave, I know every stain on my study wall and have named some of the larger ones."

:: Dan 8.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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Well I know what my next purchase is gonna be... Now where did I put that £700...

:: Dash 8.9.03 [Arc]    ::
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