David Carrington

• A 728-ton stabilising ball
• The Phoenix lander has “convinced” scientists of ice on Mars – still not actually confirmed.
• A film about a guy that always responds “yes”, with Jim Carrey: Yes Man
• Pityriasis rosea – an oval shaped rash
• 401? 301? 501? – HTTP status codes
• Real time shadows in Blender
• Site Identification Button in Firefox on various SSL sites
• Skype phones. Especially the dual mode Netgear one.
• HTML vs XHTML
• 9 day weeks

New SMS notification: “nicholasclarke: A crazy week of work coming up! Never a good thing.”

Combine that with ability to intercept text messages into my own application on my phone, this basically means I can write a Jaiku application which keeps track of everyone’s Jaikus but doesn’t interfere in my day by beeping and flashing at me 24/7.

In theory, this means I could write a Windows Mobile Jaiku client that stays off GPRS.

It’s about zero degrees outside, perfect to go on a night hike for 10 miles around Cookham with a load of Scouts I’d say! Here’s how I’m packed:

Bag main compartment:

• Waterproofs
• Headlamp
• Food
• Spare map

Front compartment:

• First aid kit
• Camera
• GPS (for plotting route on the computer later)
• Spare batteries
• Wallet
• Keys
• Space blanket

Fleece pockets:

• Woolly hat
• Gloves
• Compass
• Folded up map, printed from an OS map

In the rear of the bag is a big pocket for my water bladder, 2 litres so that I’ve got plenty spare. I just need to charge my phone now and that’s me pretty much ready.

On Tuesday night I was glancing at an OS map of Maidenhead to check out a route that the 19th Maidenhead Scouts would be navigating. 4km long, with about 14 stops, and 1.5 hours to do it – it was focusing heavily on precise navigation rather than walking speed. Just to “be prepared”, I loaded up the route into both GPS devices I own.

Up comes Wednesday evening. Parking a short distance from the start point, 14 of us gathered at the start point and began the crucial first step in our two groups: making sure everyone knows where they are on the map. MP3 players removed and torches switched on, we head off on our journey into the night.

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I quite like being able to use my own tools to edit my website database, MySQL Query Browser rather than phpMyAdmin (although both are powerful tools). I was concerned today when I logged in that I got not only my own list of MySQL databases, but also everyone else’s!

A quick chat with Web Hosting UK‘s support, notifying them of my security concerns led to it being quickly dealt with – although no information was given for the cause.

A couple of things stood out in the conversation:

1. Passwords
   After telling the first support person that I wasn’t comfortable giving out my account login details, I was instantly transferred to someone else who asked the same thing (twice). I can understand them wanting to test the problem out on their end, but I still don’t like the idea of tech support people asking for account usernames and passwords over unencrypted channels – I don’t even know who I’m talking to apart from a first name.
2. Names
   This was quite odd – the two “Technical Support” people I spoke to both used female first names (Karen and Nicole). Not to say that women can’t be technical, I just find it surprising to find two women in tech support. The other conclusion is that the names are chosen as a psychological factor with the clients.

The issue is fixed and I’ll check every now and again before my trial period is up to see if it resurfaces. If it does, I wonder if Emma, Lucy or Sharon will ask me for my password.