sjh - mountain biking running linux vegan geek spice - mtb / vegan / running / linux / canberra / cycling / etc

Steven Hanley hackergotchi picture Steven
Hanley
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email: sjh@svana.org

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Wed, 30 May 2007

Catholic Explosion - 16:45
So what would happen if you got a Pope and an Antipope together?

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Fri, 25 May 2007

Patrick the Pink Boat - 18:34
Last week I happened to drop a hint that I would be getting a new toy that our team would use at Geoquest this year. So here it is, a brand new Mirage 730 Double Sea Kayak. Yay.

Took it out paddling today and it was indeed good fun. I will have to wait until I can paddle with someone I am used to paddling with to gauge if there is much difference in speed compared to the Mirage's I am used to paddling. However I was happy Amanda was able to join in the paddle at lunch today as it meant I got to try out the brand new boat.

As I mentioned, I decided to name it Patrick, fun will be had.

[/mtb/gear] link

Tue, 22 May 2007

Almost the same to where this category came from - 15:28
I had not thought of this last time I read this xkcd strip, however the concept there is almost the same as the one I got the category name for silliness from ilmiwac (with update) though with Knuth rather than Frank the vet.

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Mon, 21 May 2007

Unix command scheduler graffiti - 11:52

Unix Command Scheduler Graffiti: CRON! (fullsize) 		I was interested to see this on the Braddon Telstra building yesterday. Graffiti artists are getting into unix in a big way when they feel the need to pledge their support for the unix command scheduler on the side of buildings.

Of course I guess, as it was on the side of the Telstra building, it may be some statement about how telstra is run, all from a series of cron jobs. That may actually explain a lot about the organisation if you give it some thought.

[/comp] link

Sun, 20 May 2007

New paddling PB at 10 KM - 13:26
Took a TK1 out for the 10 KM time trial today and got 57:19, 11 seconds faster than my previous PB. Rock on.

[/mtb] link

Wed, 16 May 2007

There is an obvious reason for the naming - 22:21
I got to wondering why the pope is always called something like Benedict, John Paul, Innocent, Clement, etc. It seems so obvious they should at least once choose a name that rhymes nicely with Rope, however I had a quick look for names that may infact rhyme and it does become more obvious, the majority of names are from some heathen (Greek mythology) source, those that are not (Lope for example) are too obvious a rhyme, you could not in all seriousness call him Pope Lope after all. It is a shame really this lack of appropriate names for the Papal person, I guess they may have to stick with established tradition after all, just for a change.

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Fri, 11 May 2007

Predictive text in hopeful mode? - 18:56
I was just typing something into an sms and had to hit the button for a W to appear on the screen at the start of a word, this key also has X, Y and Z on it. Of the four letters there I wonder which letter is the least often used to begin words with. I strongly suspect it is X. This is why I was mildly interested to see X appear as the first letter suggestion for this word. Is this some form of predictive text in hopeful mode, wanting to be able to use this little used letter only realising as the second letter of the word is requested that, no we are not speaking about Xylophones, at least not in this message.

[/various] link

Thu, 10 May 2007

Recovering data from a dbx file - 17:10
Maybe this should have a Dear Lazyweb heading?

So I have been trying to extract some email from a Microsoft Outlook Express 6.0 DBX file for a friend. She has deleted a lot of email in a mailbox by accident. However the email is all still in the file, however there is no way I can find to get it out cleanly.

Running strings over the dbx file it finds all the old email, though in a corrupted sort of output. There are some dbx libraries for linux and they have programs to readdbx or similar (perl libraries based on them). However running these it extracts the email that still shows up in the mailbox in outlook, but not all the deleted content. The DBX file is over 5 MB, however the available linux dbx libraries extract about 120 KB of data. Strings output is close to the 5 MB (the attachments, due to being base64 encoded of course are recognised as strings)

I wonder if anyone knows of linux software that can extract all the email from a dbx file even those with the leading few bytes or whatever outlook changes to indicated they do not exist any longer?

The best option I can find so far that may possibly work, though I have no idea what it can do is a utility called DBXtract that runs on windows for USD $7. It would be nice to extract this to mbox format on linux though.

[/comp/software] link

Wed, 09 May 2007

Silent G - 15:41
I commented to jdub and a few others it is sort of a shame Ubuntu releases are named with the same first letter of both words, with the next release named "Gusty Gibbon". As they are bringing in the Gibbon it would be so much better to call it Funky Gibbon in reference to The Goodies.

However when I mentioned this problem to Bob he had a rather brilliant suggestion, they should have used a silent G as is used in most open source recursive acronyms derived from the letters GNU. (GNU itself, Gnome, etc)

Just think Ubuntu GFunky Gibbon.

And for the bad pun lovers out there, I bet you can't wait until your UGG Boots.

[/comp/linux] link

Tue, 08 May 2007

A concert I have been waiting 12 years for - 12:19
On Saturday night my sister and I went and saw the Dave Matthews Band live at the Hordern pavilion in Sydney. I was hell keen as I have been an avid fan of them since I first heard Ants Marching way back in 1995. I guess you could say this is one gig I have been hanging out to go to ever since, strangely I did not hear that they were touring Australia in 2005, though they did. Thus my first chance was this year, I had not heard about this gig either until I was driving to a mountain bike race with a friend and she told me the gig was on and she was heading up to Sydney for it.

It was a fantastic performance, with classic DMB style, lots of solos from all the performers: Boyd Tinsley on Violin, reminiscent of a dreadlocked muppet in his on stage antics, look and style, but man can he jam on a violin, LeRoi, Stefan, Carter and the rest. (7 all up). The crowd was really enthusiastic and danced a lot which was fun. Interestingly the tour was not really very heavily promoted in Sydney and yet it still sold out, a lot of Americans were there to see the performance. This makes some fair amount of sense as DMB are huge in the US and have consistently been in the top 5 selling groups there for over 10 years now. It almost makes me wonder why they are not more popular here (the lack of Australian tours could have something to do with it).

Anyway it was one hell of a good performance and I would like to see them again sometime. It has also crossed one of my must see acts of the list of those I had not yet seen. I still really want to see the Counting Crows live one day though. I hope they can tour Australia sometime.

[/leisure/music] link

Thu, 03 May 2007

Careful how you bend me - 14:14
The battery on my bicycle is flat, the light will not work, oh no I may not be able to start the bike now. What will I do, maybe I had better ride it home an charge the battery. I guess this could have been viewed as a problem riding back from somewhere else (as opposed to riding in circles in the dark in one place) last night when I kept flashing people with what little power was left.

Heck that almost brings us into the realms of more silly super powers, what is your super power? Well see I can flash people. That is not a power, simply the behaviour of drunk uni students... or is it? Of course this may bring us to something along the lines of a recent post with the song quote "Funny girls on the T.V Shows, Close your eyes and they turn to snow." that I heard a few minutes ago. Oh my god, watching comedy on tv, if we close our eyes the funny women turn to flakes of frozen water. What ever will we do to avoid our "comediennes" coming over all frosty?

Of course if the funny girls happen to have the above mentioned super power and put it to use while making the males in the audience laugh there will be far less chance of them turning to snow, they always said sex sells but in this instance it may also ensure we are not lining the pockets of the snow making industry through the sacrifice of female comedians. Wondering as we were about not much power being left, or running out of power, what is it that you do to recharge this super power, this ability to flash people. Unlike the battery on which the green lantern recharges, there must be some other way in which to recharge this super power. My suspicion is it involves copious amounts of beer.

[/various/ilmiwac] link

Wed, 02 May 2007

Careful with your fact checking when tim tams are at stake - 15:34
For some reason I placed a bet about some capability of a new piece of hardware at work with a colleague. His terms were a packet of my preferred biscuits (dark chocolate tim tams) to the winner. So I sat own and tested the fact we were discussing in this hardware. At first look it appeared I had been wrong. So I told him and gave him a packet of tim tams from my office supply.

For some reason I still was surprised by this so I did some deeper checking and realised I had been correct all along, I simply had done my testing wrong and thus I had in actuality won the bet. Though this was about 15 minutes later the tim tams were almost entirely gone by then, wow, you really need to be careful with your fact checking when chocolate is on the line.

[/various] link

18 films in one sitting - 14:57
Last night I wandered into the new Dendy cinema (I think this was my first visit to the new centre) with some of my house mates to watch Paris, je t'aime (imdb) (or wikipedia).

On the whole I liked it a lot, some of the short films were a little bit off the mood of the whole, though they still were good. An example is the vampire film, a little quirky and dark compared to the rest, but still interesting. The humour in some was fantastic (such as the mime couple situated in the Eiffel Tower area by the creator of Les Triplettes de Belleville) or the incredibly strange but humorous hair salon film.

I really did not like a few of the short films (the first one with the woman pulled into the car and the later film with the couple starting out in the strip club), however one of the great advantages is any film you did not like was over soon and something new was coming along.

I think the concept worked remarkably well, a collection of short films telling a single theme/story by different people with different styles. Unlike most short film festivals, such as Tropfest, with different films (even though they include a common element) on different subjects. What came out was a good night out with some very interesting and quirky ideas and scenes from time to time. I recommend seeing it.

[/leisure/screen] link

Tue, 01 May 2007

ADE 2007, ride around Canberra seeing what tracks we can find - 15:58
It may seem not to be so epic, simply riding around the bush land between suburbs, however anyone who did the ride would disagree, even those doing less than half the ride found it a bit of an effort, anyone completing the entire 85 KM of riding last Wednesday said they had indeed been Epicced.

The Anzac Day Epic stayed in Canberra this year, and though I had to go to work that afternoon and thus miss out on finishing the ride I was there for the first half and had fun. Some photos from the 2007 Anzac Day Epic can be found in the normal sort of place.

[/mtb] link

Oh no the meme really is taking over my common sense - 14:00
Eric Bana (Hulk) has a Gamma
Eric Bana has a Gamma. 		Thinking some more about this silly meme (yes I am wasting thoughts on something like this, how did I get this low), it occurred to me that another amusing one was the image to the left here. An alternate (to bring in the rhyming more) is wording such as "I am a Bana" here.

I really need to go an do something productive I think, Argh.

[/amusing] link

Ride and Run around Mt Clear/Horse Gully hut loop - 13:07

Five of us about to head off for a run in the middle of the ride (fullsize) 		I should have put this up when I uploaded the photos, ahh well laziness is an artform. Saturday April 21st Celia, Chris (with Toby in tow), Libby, Kevin, Nathan, Bruce and I headed up to the Mt Clear area for a ride and a run. Fun was had, just as it has been on previous visits to the area.

Photos and a few words are online in the normal sort of place.

Mt Clear / Horse Gully Hut loop ride and run.

[/mtb] link

Caught by yet another meme, or lol cats applied to computing celebrities - 12:50
Donald Knuth has a grammar
Donald Knuth has a Grammar. 		I was trying to refrain from finding the lolcats thing amusing, heck I was not about to wreck my record, and in an attempt to get some Blogthenticity put a photo of a cat here. However when Jdub linked to the lolgeeks variation on the meme I felt the need to play along.

Of course this will be most amusing to computer science people (those who actually know who Knuth is and what he does).

[/amusing] link

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