MatStace

There are some Olympics over there #blog

December 22 2011 by autopost in Phone Photos |No Comments

via Instagram http://instagr.am/p/arKH5/

Selling the XBox 360

December 10 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

As twitter is somewhat limited in characters for explaining things, I thought it worth typing this up in a slightly longer form, so interested people can see what’s what.
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OK, I take it back. Maybe the future actually is here.

December 3 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

Yup, I said it. Let’s ignore the fact that when you go the toilet on a train, it still flushes onto the tracks (wait, are there still any trains which flush onto the tracks?), and welcome the future.

There’s a saying, that goes something like “whatever is invented before you’re 18 has alway been there, if it’s invented when you’re between the ages of 18 and mid-thirties, it’s amazing technology, and anything invented after your mid-thirties is witchcraft and should be banned”.

I’m not sure I’d agree with those age ranges, but I definitely feel like I’m now moving into the middle age band, where new bits of tech are making me think “Ooh, wow”, rather than just “well, yes, of course someone sells a box to do that”.
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Let’s get ready to grumble…

November 22 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

…or “why I sometimes get to close a ticket with the minimum of work.”

At work, we have a ticket system. This is a good thing. It allows different people to pick up a task, and (in theory), there doesn’t have to be a lengthy handover. All relevant information is in the ticket. It also means that people are more likely to get their task done. OK, maybe it might not happen today, or this week, but it’s logged, it will happen. If you tell me in passing, or come to my desk while I’m in the middle of something (pro-tip, I’m always in the middle of something ;-p ), then there’s a high chance that it may just slip my mind. The same if you email it to me. I get lots of emails, and occasionally, despite my best efforts, I can miss things (or Google can think it knows best, and mark it as spam).

When submitting a ticket though, apart from trying to send it to the right people, it’s usually good to have some substance to the ticket. For example, a ticket with the subject “check config on www.example.com” and a body of “has something changed?” is likely to get a response in the style of those (possibly not entirely true) airport mechanic repair log sheets, for example

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

Or in the case of this ticket “yes, something changed”.

Please, when you raise a ticket for a problem, try to describe the problem, and if you don’t know exactly what the problem is (hey, I’ve taken a car to garage and said “Broken, please fix it”), then please try and describe what is currently happening, and what you are expecting to happen, and if that used to happen, when did it last happen, or rather, when did you first notice it not happening. Actually, when I took the car into the garage I didn’t just pull in, say “Is something wrong with this” and walk out, I explained that it used to do X, now it’s doing Y, can it be made to do X again. It turned out that no, not without spending three times what the car was worth, but that’s what happens when you’re a student driving an old knacker of a car

Anyway, please remember that your sys admin loves you (sometimes), and isn’t there to make your life hell (occasionally), and anything you can do to make their life more easy is definitely appreciated.

And if you can’t make their life easy, make it better by buying them a beer

London, E1, Rural Backwater

November 17 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

A comment on a mailing list I’m on about a measure of non-ruralness being that Dominos delivers there got me thinking.

I live in E1, which is pretty damn central in London, and yet I can’t get a delivery from Dominos. I’m stuck in ADSL land (ADSL2+ is available, but it’s not worth having as I get no speed gains), and although there are cable TV cabinets around, they are just lumps on the pavement, as the digital cable TV (and therefore Virgin’s high-speed cable internet) was never available here. Continue reading »

Just about a bargain

November 16 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

Last week a colleague spotted that Amazon is selling a TP-Link 150Mbps wireless-n access point for a penny shy of £15. A quick look at the description, and I saw that they can be used as a client, which made it worth a shot to replace my homeplug, which works, but is pegged down at around eleven megabits per second. It took a whole load of faffing around, and generally clicking on things randomly, but I managed to get it hooked up to my wireless LAN, and passing the packets through nicely. I haven’t bothered to do a speed test yet, but it’s certainly speedier than the homeplugs were. Even if there was no speed increase, it is probably worth it just so I can stop using the homeplug which I snapped the earth pin off, and can finally retrieve the earth pin from the socket. Mmmmm, electric safety, I can haz it.

Well played to the people selling them on ebay for £35 though.

Oh, and here’s a link. moustair.tumblr.com – don’t have nightmares

Uh-oh, I’m becoming a hipster…

November 15 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

Of course, some people who already know me seem to think I already am one, but I reckon I have never really changed. I was hipster before it was cool. Wait, what?
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There has to be a name for it

November 14 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

Using up some annual leave from work today, before the year ended and I lost it, I decided to clean out “The Box Cupboard”. You know, that one cupboard you have, where the boxes go when you buy things, because it might come in handy/the thing might break/some other reason.

Apart from realising that I have more USB HDDs that is probably sensible, through looking at the invoices neatly folded and kept in side the boxes, I’ve also discovered that not only am I probably more than a little OCD (or CDO, to arrange the letters in the correct order ;-p ), but when buying USB HDDs, I appear to have something of a mental block on the price of them.

Over time, when buying the external HDDs, I’ve accumulated various capacities, and also form factors, between 3.5 inch desktop USB HDDs which require a power supply, and 2.5 inch portable USB HDDs, which are powered over USB. Looking at the invoices, I’ve realised that despite varying disposable incomes, through various jobs, and with varying requirements (not including the obvious ‘get the biggest capacity available’ angle), it seems that I have something of a sweet spot, where I’ll spend a certain amount of money, and get the biggest drive available at that cost.

Maybe it’s just me avoiding the “latest and greatest” largest size, knowing very well that there will be a decent premium for picking up the only recently released X TB drive, but thinking about the various USB keys I’ve purchased over the years, I also have a (different) cost limit that I’ll spend on these, which seems completely disconnected from my actual need, and any sort of budgeting in a “you only need a USB key half that size, so save a tenner and buy the smaller one”.

There must be a name for this this sort of “buying based on perceived [cost|value], not related to actual need or budget” behaviour. And if not, there should be.

Told you I was tidying…

November 13 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

Not only have I now moved my List O’Crap tumblr from tumblr.matstace.me.uk to listocrap.matstace.me.uk (whilst also making sure that any old permalinks to individual posts still work, thank you nginx for making that easy), but I also got bored with having a plain old list of links for my homepage, and did some amazing artworks [aside, they're crap. Complete and utter crap] and now have a slightly more shiny homepage/landing page too.

It can’t be long until I’m head hunted for a flashy design job now…

Tidying Up and Sorting Out

November 12 2011 by Mat in Daily Wibbles |No Comments

Unfortunately not my living room, although $deity only knows I need to.

Nope, over the last few days I’ve been having a bit of a tweak around and tidy up of my online presence, and have actually started using one of my accounts somewhere again. I’ve started on a re-do of my homepage, basing it on bootstrap from twitter, which makes it nice and easy to sort a layout. I just need some decent design skills and content for it now

I’ve also started using my tumblr account again, since google reader removed the sharing function, I’ve decided that since my tumblr was basically a shiny way of viewing my google reader shared items, I’ll keep sharing things that way, although it does mean a couple of extra steps now (I have to open up the article in a new tab, then use a share via tumblr bookmarklet). I am thinking of changing the URL though, from the really rather generic tumblr.matstace.me.uk to the more accurate and descriptive listocrap.matstace.me.uk, so do beware if you bookmark it. I’ve got other things to do at the moment, like go and get some sleep, so I won’t be doing that just yet