Friday 31 July 2009

Dark Side of the Moon

Today a song I listen to a song on the tube that i hadn't listen too for over 4 year probably for no other reason that it was missing from my Zune. After buying Gatecrashers Trance Anthems 1993-2009 I started smiling as this is one of those song you remember from a dark time around the time i left my old company and started my present job. Funny how I now come to being sat yards away for a framed signed copy of the Dark Side of the Moon Album cover as a print so it had seridipidy when I have a friend being made redundant today the step i took to be where I am today scary but worth every minute. Step to the dark side Emma.



"Ernesto Vs. Bastian The Dark Side Of The Moon lyrics"

Try a run, try a hide
Escape your only truth, for a while
Live the past, create a picture, it won't last
A million colours to a lie, it won't last


When the sun is cold and black
When you wanna scream and shout
And the record plays the dark side of the moon

Brighter days, on a distant shore
You realized it's steep, to the top
Never fight, a never win reality
A million colours to a lie, that will fade

Monday 27 July 2009

Geo-Defense


While on a plugging session I thought I'd better just mention Geo-Defense on the Iphone from http://www.criticalthoughtgames.com This game is from the classic tower defense genre but I've got to say it has me hooked, the level progression isn't so mad and each level you build on your skills to get the levels down. The game is very strategic it has opening moves which are very precise but then as it speeds up no amount of towers and firepower will save you if you haven't got the pieces in the correct place. Currently I'm on medium and level 7 Bad Plumbing.

Download Lite free version
Full Version

Tip: remember to join your towers to the vortex to increase the vortex power and sap the strength of the creeps.

Autoclav1.1: Where Once Were Exit Wounds

You may know that I've played with Autoclav1.1 in the past so I thought I'd take a minute to plug the new album "Where Once Were Exit Wounds" available on possible one of the best labels in the world Tympanik Audio. The

In the press blurb it says "AUTOCLAV1.1 fearlessly interjects a powerful concoction of love, loss, and despair fueled by lathering electronic rhythms, akin to a thoughtful drive accelerating almost uncontrollably along a distant country road on a warm summer night."

Personally I think it was just too much tequila rose drunk at the Parish



also avalable in the UK and Europe via MusicNonStop

http://autoclav.sentrymusic.com
http://www.myspace.com/autoclav

Thursday 23 July 2009

Malware redirecting Google searches

Yesterday I had on my machine a PDF which had a MALware payload inside it and my machine got infected. So a quick clean with Panda Security got rid of the nasties. But I had an unfortunate problem in that everytime I used a search engine like google, bing or yahoo something on my machine was redirecting the searches to other websites, so I downloaded Malwarebytes and Ad-ware both found thing and cleaned but on reboot the problem persisted. It wasn't until I looked on th web via another machine I found COMBOFIX. This low level program really seems to do the trick rebooting you machine into the recovery consol and automatically scanning and removing any malware on your machine, I'd recommend it to anyone with a malware problem.

Wednesday 15 July 2009

The IRack lives - Iphone Server

Last year when I was in Texas with a few collegues we were drunk in a bar. The County Line thanks for asking. We joked that someone would come up with a product to use Iphones in a docking station and use then as storage. Just like drives in a SAN Server. We applied this to the TV and Film industry and came up with a few products the IScan the 4k Film Scanner.....One of the product we mentioned during the evening was a docking station were you can plug and un plug iphones a bit like Panasonic P2 Card we gave it a name the IRAID, We thought the IRACK was a bit close to IRAQI and won't sell. We were that drunk we even considered the marketing too.

Well like everything said in a pub someone had to do it, after a tip off from @mmartoccia: I saw this the iPhone Server Farm http://bit.ly/mombN



The prototype pictured here is intended to promote the ServersMan app, which gives iPhone users the ability to use their phone as network storage, file viewer or a mini web server.

Domestic Window Turbines

Scientists outline UK's best locations for domestic wind turbines

http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generate-your-own-energy/Can-I-generate-electricity-from-the-wind-at-my-home


Scientists have produced the mostcomprehensive report of its kind to identify the UK’s best locations for households to install micro-wind turbines.

The study, funded by the Energy Saving Trust (EST), said some households could generate in excess of £2,800 worth of electricity a year. However, it also concluded that other locations would actually lose money if a small-scale turbine was installed.

The year-long study, which was conducted by the Sustainable Energy Research Group in the Southamton University’s School of Civil Engineering and the Environment, involved 57 locations, ranging from south-west England to the Orkney Islands, and tested a range of turbines that fell within two categories: building-mounted (typically 1 kWp) and free standing pole-mounted (2.5-6 kWp). The results show that the performance of domestic wind small-scale turbines is highly dependent upon location and proper installation of the technology.

The problem of Traveling Salesman

New look at an age old problem....that of problem of Traveling Salesman.

No not airports, lost luggage and RyanAir but the mathematical problem. The basis of Traveling Salesman Problem(TSP) is, given a list of cities and their distances, the task is to find a shortest possible tour that visits each city exactly once. The problem was first formulated in 1930 and some work has been done since but never a new approach.

Andrej Kazakov has come up with a new algorithm to solve TSP, which according to him "looks very promising". Could that be an underestimate?

Andrej looked at existing solutions to TSP, the most popular approaches being local search and divide and conquer but a new approach was an algorithm called 'Building Block Hillclimber' and applied a combination of approaches so that he substantially improved its quality, performance and range of applications.

The algorithm is still incomplete, but its current shortcomings have been thoroughly analysed and it has been substantially improved.

you can see Andrej Kazakov paper on the link below
http://www.alphagalileo.org/AssetViewer.aspx?AssetId=11321

Friday 10 July 2009

Dean Street Fire 10/07/2009

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Dean Street Fire 10/07/2009, originally uploaded by akira_kev.

Click on the picture to link to my pictures of the fire at 76 Dean Street in Soho London


Below is a short video of the fire fighters in action

Monday 6 July 2009

They Work For You not to blame for Civil Servant Sacking

My Society service "They work For You" seem to have got some bad press today from not least the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail over a Civil servant sacked after criticising Blears for avoiding £13,000 tax in expenses scandal, Lisa Greenwood, an office administrator at the Department of Children, Schools and Families, posted an anonymous message on the internet at the height of the furore over abuse of the second home allowances.Read more on the link.

The articles say "The anonymous posting appeared on They Work For You, a political website, but was traced to Miss Greenwood's work email account.

The administrator, who had worked for the DCFS for seven months, was brought before a disciplinary panel and fired on May 22."

Well it seem "They Work For You" have nothing to do with it which is good as we know the privacy of anonymous posting will be respected.

http://www.mysociety.org/2009/07/06/theyworkforyou-nothing-to-do-with-this-sacked-civil-servant-story/

Note: Post likely to update as we get further information

You may have seen coverage on various websites saying that a civil servant was sacked after posting a comment on TheyWorkForYou.

We’ve no idea what this story is about, but we’re pretty certain it has nothing whatsoever to do with TheyWorkForYou.

* There is no comment on TheyWorkForYou containing the text quoted in that article, nor anything like it, nor has there ever been. Nor in fact (as we’ve checked), on HearFromYourMP, WriteToThem, or WhatDoTheyKnow.
* Only one comment has been left on any contribution by Hazel Blears in 2009, and it’s definitely not related to this.
* 27 comments were left on 13th May, the date the comment was apparently posted; we’ve read them all and they’re all nothing to do with this.

So frankly, we’ve no idea what’s going on.

No journalist bothered to contact us before running the story, and what we do know is that the implication that mySociety would merrily hand over sensitive personal data that ends up in getting someone sacked, without fighting tooth and nail for their privacy every inch of the way, is a complete misinterpretation of the way we work and the things we hold most dear.

We think what might have happened is a simple mis-remembering of the website that contained the problematic comment. We’re hoping to get in touch with Lisa Greenwood so we can get full details before asking the various media companies that have run with this for a correction.

Reg link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/06/mysociety_not_sacking_civil_servants/