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Thursday 3rd July 2003 Do robots exist to move little magnetic chess pieces? Happy Birthday, Jon So, Jonathan, why is it you decided to make a, erm . . . 'blog', precisely? I think I was just wondering how difficult it would be. But you have nothing to say . . . Yeah, weird isn't it?
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Friday 4th July 2003 Well, so maybe it was today that I created this development of the Spiderllerophon . . . thing . . . 
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Saturday 5th July 2003 17:30 - Long conversation with Tom . . . basically, it seems that the likelihood of viewing favicon.ico (or whatever it is the current web-page refers to it as) depends not just on what browser you're using, but also on what platform the browser is running on. (earlier . . .) Oooo, freaky - I've worked out how to do those weird little icons you get to the left of the URL in some browsers. But what icon? Some trees, perhaps.Hmmmm . . . and random images . . . yeah . . . that must be a good thing.
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Sunday 6th July 2003 These icons I speak of . . . I think they will only appear if you use Opera or Konqueror. Could someone please tell me - why would a computer crash following (or during?!) a change to the video mode? You see,
I would like to say Linux is great, and that my computer never crashes, but occasionally it does . . . but I've no idea
whether this is a hardware fault (and would happen regardless of operating system) or a software one. But it always
happens the same way . . . I'll be changing video mode just a bit too often, my monitor will be clicking and twitching
and trying to keep up with all this, and then . . . blackness . . . an all-pervasive darkness . . . and that's it . . . it's power
cycle time . . . The motherboard's an Asus A7A266 and the video card is some kind of Voodoo 2000 (16MB, I think). The video
card may be old, but the motherboard certainly isn't.
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Monday 7th July 2003 Oh dear, I feel like I should write something . . . anything . . . My sofa arrived today. Hurray! But even more exciting is that Tania picked up this weird Christian newspaper thingy (the Jesus Army?!) in town today. It's downstairs right now, so I can't quote from it just yet, but maybe tomorrow. Full of fascinating facts and figures, like the following: 80% of us, yes, EIGHTY PERCENT, would like to see the custom of saying 'Good Morning!' to strangers reinstated. I like that, but there are a lot of strangers in Leeds, where I live. That's a lot of 'Good Morning!'s. Plus, I cycle to work, so some of these strangers might not get the full 'Good Morning!' effect. But, yes, otherwise a brilliant idea. I saw another idea somewhere on the 'net of, erm . . . you know . . . making Friday a day where you just do someone a good deed, just for the hell of it, with no thought of reward. sh*t, I gotta go buy some milk.
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Tuesday 8th July 2003 Currently listening to Kronos Quartet - Early Music . . . . hmmmmm, gorgeous. Hmmmm . . . it's called Streetpaper, and even has a web-site, but I don't have time to look at this right now. Yesterday, I neglected to source that statistic - it was from Facts from Future Foundation, so it must be true. Of course, when you read something like '80% of us . . .', what this actually means is '80% of those polled in our survey . . . '. This should be obvious. But here's another one, from the same foundation: 80 per cent expect to hear bad language in public places but only 2 per cent are happy about it. So next time you're sat in a public park, minding your own business, there's a strong probability that you will hear 'bad language'. You have been warned.
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Wednesday 9th July 2003 How odd . . . I found this on Tom's web-site and was left thinking . . . "What the hell?!" I've never heard of this Domo-kun thing before, but after a bit of searching around on the internet . . .
If you haven't seen Donnie Darko and can't be bothered to do all that typing stuff to find out more, then don't bother with imdb, but rather read the reviews at Amazon. All this linking to web-logs from other web-logs is getting a bit incestuous, don't you think?
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Saturday 12th July 2003 I was trying to make some script to save the output of fortune (some kind of Unix program to output random quotes) to a file for use in my web-page, but then . . . oh look, my web-server doesn't have fortune installed, but my other PC does . . . okay, so I guess I can set up some kind of ftp thing . . . but then . . . permissions, permissions, permissions. And I realise . . . this is getting too complex, and I have too many other things to do right now. This seems apt (if a bit geeky): Eleanor Rigby Sits at the keyboard And waits for a line on the screen Lives in a dream Waits for a signal Finding some code That will make the machine do some more. What is it for? All the lonely users, where do they all come from? All the lonely users, why does it take so long? But anyway, for the time being . . . "In the world I see, you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You will wear leather clothes that last you the rest of your life. You will climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. You will see tiny figures pounding corn and laying-strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of the ruins of a superhighway." -- Tyler Durden, Fight Club
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Sunday 13th July 2003 I read about this in some newsgroup somewhere (perhaps it was alt.politics.british), and I think I alluded to this in a previous entry somewhere, but I wasn't aware it was a fully fledged Danny Wallace (who you may recall working with Dave Gorman to find more Dave Gorman's) project. I think in a nut-shell: You, the joinee, are encouraged to undertake Random Acts of Kindness on a day-to-day basis... maybe it's paying for the cup of tea that the person in the queue in front of you has just ordered... maybe it's offering to carry an old woman's shopping (and not legging it)... maybe it's as simple as holding a door open for someone. Odd how some things seem to come to you with little or no effort sometimes. Anyway, here's a random quote for the day (don't say I don't look after you): "I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Monday 14th July 2003 Oh no, my nemesis - http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ouscr/directory/ (a non-resident of the Oxford University Society of Change Ringers, naturally) . . . about two thirds of the way down the page. I've e-mailed them, and can't wait to find out what this one's about. Watch this space. Oooo, and something else - check me out, fifth in the list. You sad, sad, little man. Busy at work, busy at home. Oh well, at least my 'products' arrived from Tom's CafePress thingy. Confused? Try this. Live action shots to follow shortly . . . yeah, right. Like, when I buy a digital camera that also happens to be compatible with Linux. Random link time . . . www.faxyourmp.com Aaaaaaaahhhh, the sweet, sweet smell of liberation When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists. Next best is a leader who is loved. Next, one who is feared. The worst is one who is despised. If you don't trust the people, you make them untrustworthy. The Master doesn't talk, he acts. When his work is done, the people say, "Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!" -- Tao Te Ching, Lao Tse (translated by Stephen Mitchell)
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Tuesday 15th July 2003 I've just e-mailed someone from the Bellerophon Drum & Bugle Band . . . but I have
no idea why . . . and I just ended up telling the poor recipient all about Napolean and the steam train and the Chimaera and the
collective. But didn't quite have the heart to mention the music . . .Wow . . . I didn't realise there was so much stuff written about this so-called, imminent pole shift. I love this kind of stuff. My advice - get a magnetic compass (as oppose to . . . ?). Since 30th May, due north has budged no more than one degree (according to my compass anyway). Which is more of a twitch than a shift. But hey . . . As usual, incapable of original thought, I turn to another quotation, this time a Chinese proverb: Old Horse Knows the Way. sh*t, wrong one. I meant: If we don't change course, we may end up where we are heading. Where the frig do they all come from, and if we keep changing course, who the hell's driving? www.bilderberg.org - once again - "What the hell?!" www.mj12.com. This is interesting. To quote: ". . . we appreciate that recent events have made our existence and mission of increasing importance to the general public." If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: Belief and knowledge are not the same. Know but don't believe a word of it.
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Wednesday 16th July 2003 Is it Wednesday yet? Well, it's Wednesday enough now (23:54) I don't know how, I don't know why (or when or who), but jonath has recently moved up to . . . (drum roll) FOURTH PLACE!!!! Anyone out there know how Google search results are ranked? I can't be arsed with this right now.
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Thursday 17th July 2003 No reply yet . . .
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Friday 18th July 2003
No - I'm not getting into retrospective web-log writing (I'm in Saturday afternoon right now) . . . no, definitely
not. I was trying to watch a film called
Perfect Blue but keep getting distracted. 1 hour and 9 minutes watched so far.I think writing this now is somehow apt for this film. Don't be fooled by the 'blue' in the title - this is a very strange . . . well, thriller, I guess. Can I go now?
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Saturday 19th July 2003 POWER GENITALIA Is it Saturday? I think so, but I haven't been to sleep since Friday morning. That's just the sort of pedant I am! I have watched the Big Brother eviction with M**** this evening & Nush was evicted which I am quite sad about because I thought she was a lovely individual. I was going to try to go somewhere exciting tomorrow for lunch, you know, like Barcelona, courtesy of Jet2 but their last minute flights are priced at 112.00 which is truly crazy. Who at this hour of the day (Saturday 01:07hrs) would think paying that amount of money at such short notice is justified? Especially since they obviously have seats yet they're prepared to let them sit empty rather than encourage people to have a short break abroad by offering these seats at 5. & lets face it, even if it was advertised at 5 we'd still pay 40 when they add on the insurance & the taxes & the VAT etc. etc. Is this a bit of a rant? . . . maybe, but have I told you about the wheelie bins?! Now that's a proper rant. Catch ya later, Jonath xxxxx
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Sunday 20th July 2003 I need a link to this and this. Otherwise I'm sure to forget.
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Monday 21st July 2003 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MUM! So, still no reply . . . here's the original e-mail: Hi there, I friend of mine stumbled upon your web-site whilst doing a net-search (I'm guessing here) for all things 'Bellerophon'-related. You see, I formed a collection in 1995 simply called 'The Bellerophon', and my friend is a 'member' of said collective. Since The Bellerophon's inception, it's become a bit of running thing to find all things Bellerophon and, to the end, we've found a steam-train (built in 1874 and still running not far from my home, around the Worth Valley railway), a ship (the ship on which the defeated Napoleon Bonaparte was brought back to England by Captain Frederick Maitland) and, of course, the Greek legend (apparently slew the Chimaera). So, it's been quite a revelation finding out there is also a Drum & Bugle band with the same name. If you have a mailing list, it would be great to be added to this, so that I can keep track of your movements (although I doubt you have plans to tour the UK . . .?). Kind regards, Jonathan How can you NOT reply to that? I'm thinking they (tgraphic@cogeco.ca) need more polite e-mails like that and . . . well, I just want to know what a 'drum and bugle' band sounds like, really. You know, just for the hell of it. Oh, and regarding the stuff about steam trains and sh*t:
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Tuesday 22nd July 2003 Hey, check me out - I had a visitor. What does it all mean? Who are they? Might have to upgrade my web-server soon. Not sure if it can cope with this increased load. How pitiful is this . . . one visitor today, my log file stating they requested index2.cgi at/on Tue Jul 22 12:00:57 2003 I know their IP address (66.196.72.84) I have a contact e-mail address (slurp@inktomi.com) I know what pages they viewed . . . Previously today . . . Great show, Sam - www.sheffieldlive.org. We need track listings . . . track listings . . . mmmmmmm And previously . . . Was it 1995 or 1994? Maybe I should check the tape-reels. Yes, tape reels. Almost the TEAC 3340S. I was looking for tape reel . . . I'm not sure why . . . Can you still buy this stuff? As ever, there's always ebay.
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Wednesday 23rd July 2003 Another flying dream last night (yeah, whatever), but this one wasn't so good - the people on the ground who were after me were able to almost keep up with me. And I had been given a gun (reminded me of an AK-47 or how I imagine an 'assault rifle' would look), but this was plastic and didn't actually do anything. I think eventually I took refuge in this warehouse where this girl had set up this enormous computer near the roof of the warehouse. It was all a bit suspicious though . . . she had body guards and claimed the computer was there so that she could 'listen to music'. Yeah, right. Then I woke up. I usually like flying dreams, but there was too much running away in this one, too many weapons. hmmmmmmm . . . thanks for that . . . Anyone recognise this one - 62.253.141.227? That was at 00:52:39 (GMT) this morning.or this - 68.77.144.72? That was at 06:09:44, 06:15:59 and again at 06:16:40 (all GMT) I really need to set up some kind of feedback, like a guestbook or comments for each post I make. Hmmmmmm.
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Thursday 24th July 2003 What the hell does all this mean: HTTP_ACCEPT = image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/msword, */* What is it with browsers, eh? Why do they wanna tell my web server all this stuff? I wonder how the conversation goes and what Apache says in return? Apache: So . . . erm . . . it says here that you accept gifs, jpegs, pjpegs, flash . . . wait a sec . . . what the hell is a pjpeg?Browser: You don't know? Apache: No, but it doesn't matter. I don't have any of those anyway. And . . . let's see now . . . msword, ms-excel . . . hmmmm Browser: You gonna run the script or what? Apache: Sorry? Browser: These are just environment variables. I'm asking you to run index2.cgi, remember? Apache: Yeah, sure . . . It's a crazy world, eh? Browser: What?! Apache: Dr. David Kelly . . . what's all that about? Browser: Just run the script please. Give me some HTML. Apache: Prescription pain-killers . . . Browser: I'm smelling 404 Apache: You want some HTML, do you? Browser: Oh yeah. Apache: That's all you care about? Browser: Pretty much. Apache: Ah well . . . here you go. That stretched out 1x1 gif might not come out properly though. Browser: Yeah, whatever.
I bought the Guardian today, full of interesting web-sites and computer/internet related stuff, and I go and leave it at M****'s. Typical. See, er, the Guardian had this article about work web-logs, so I thought I ought to offer something. I do remember the golden rule for web-logs though: Write nothing you would feel uncomfortable telling your grandmother. I like that. And look . . . [out-of-date link removed. Try this one instead.]
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Friday 25th July 2003 Once again, why say what has already been said . . . Countdown to Lift OffIn the tenth second of forever I thought of the sea and a white yacht drifting. In the ninth second of forever I remembered a warm room where voices played. In the eighth second of forever I thought of the life I would not lead. In the seventh second of forever I thought of a leaf a stone, a plastic fragment of a child's toy. In the sixth second of forever I saw your mouth whispering something I could not hear. In the fifth second of forever I thought of the vermillion deserts of Mars, the jewelled forests of Venus. In the fourth second of forever I could remember nothing that I did not love. In the third second of forever I thought of rain against a window, I thought of the wind. In the second second of forever I thought of a pair of broken shades lying on the tarmac. In the first and final second of forever I thought of the long past that led to now and never . . .never . . .
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Tuesday 29th July 2003 Internet connection restored . . . Downloading KDE and XFree86 . . .
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Wednesday 30th July 2003 The nightmare of installing (re-installing) KDE is finally over. Oh my god.
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Thursday 31st July 2003 No data. Still trying to get my XFX Geforce 4 MX440 AGP8X 64MB DDR TV-out VGA (to give it its full name) to work under Linux. Apparently, it can be done. There aren't many pages with the word Spiderllerophon in them.
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The graph to the left shows the kind of stuff I do at work. Well . . . yeah, in a
way. 
July 2003
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| 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | |
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
other months
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| May | Jun | Jul | Aug | |
| Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
other years
| 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | |
| 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | |
| 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | |
| 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | |
| 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | |
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | |
| 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | |
| 2024 |
navigation
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friends
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