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2008 Eng V SA DDMC Competition

Paul — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 08:45:48 +0000

The first DDMC to be competed over on Betfair was settled on Tuesday night with the winner’s curry at the Rajmoni. Morris’s commanding victory, including a 46% return on investment for the third test saw him win with an overall return of 19.92% against Clark’s -9.80%. Clark was always going to be playing catchup after a -91% loss in the first test but did well to claw back so much later on. Congratulations to the victor and we look forward to the day when the DDMC Winner’s Dinner can be funded entirely from the loser’s winnings.

Panasonic TX-32LXD85

Paul — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:10:26 +0000

We have a new digital flat panel at home hooked up to an Ubuntu box running MythTV. I can get the box to drive the display at 1280×720 (720p) but the manual says it can be driven at higher resolutions. I suspect I’ll be tinkering with modelines over the coming days.

When it’s sunny

Paul — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:24:12 +0000

After this year’s festival wash outs at Beautiful Days (not so beautiful in all that mud) and Bestival (certainly some of the best mud I have ever personally witnessed) I have had a think, and it is with much sadness that I’m announcing my retirement from camping at music festivals. I’ve been doing this quite a while now, about 15 years in all and I’ve been to some fantastic festivals and had some brilliant times, mostly however when it was sunny. These days my tolerance to muddy tents has declined so much that I can finally stand it no longer. This is probably a good thing for the people I go to the festivals with, as when it’s chucking it down with rain I’m not the most inspiring of company. Well goodbye tented festivals, it’s been fun. Now to find a decent RV!

2Wire 2701HG gateway

Paul — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:56:55 +0000

Vic’s company supply her with a broadband connection and a 2Wire 2701HG gateway. The router is an ugly, chunky piece of kit, but it does most things more or less. It doesn’t have any support for DynDNS, I’ve had to install ddclient on Ubuntu to manage that for me. The manual for the router is here.

Betfair trade tracker

Paul — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:20:00 +0000

I made this handy spreadsheet so I can keep track of my trades on Betfair. Not only does it track the trades it also shows me what my second trade needs to be to green up at the given odds. The auto filter allows me to show trades that are in play only, hiding the closed ones. If you want to change the team names update them in the Lookup worksheet. The worksheet is protected, so before making changes unprotect it.

Pavement marking

Paul — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:27:00 +0000

I spotted a couple of guys marking up the pavements around our office today. Presumably the road and pavements are going to be dug up and these guys mark all the subsurface cables and drains. The whole thing looked very cool. As though the pavement had been attacked by mathematically inclined graffiti artists. Apparently the colours represent the type and location of subsurface structures: blue for water, yellow for gas, red for electric. I have no idea what the orange or green are used for.

Invisio G5

Paul — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:56:00 +0000

I have a new bluetooth headset, kindly donated by Vic who doesn’t really like it that much. The manual is here, it’s a complicated little beast.

Being a statue is not a real job

Paul — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:29:00 +0000

I run past the London Eye a few times a week. In the summer there’s an avenue of people being statues between the Eye and Waterloo Bridge. Fair enough, some are quite believable and the kids seem to enjoy the surprise. The other day though I spotted a new one. A chap, oldish, badly spray painted silver with a baseball cap on and sat down on a black plastic chair, one of those cheap chairs you see stacked at the back of a village hall with buckled legs. Is being a statue just too demanding for him? How many real statues on plastic chairs are there in the world? Perhaps he should consider a less active job, like being a cadaver perhaps? I have taken to shouting ‘get a real job’ as I run past.

Za’s first show

Paul — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:32:00 +0000

Zara took part in her first show this weekend when she took part in the Stevenage Showing Show. It poured with rain but that didn’t stop her grinning from ear to ear for the whole time in the ring.

Etymotic 6i Isolator Earphones

Paul — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:03:00 +0000

I took possession of a set of these headphones this week. Once you work out how to fit them into your ear - tip, wet them and slide them in until they feel a little uncomfortable, then tug your earlobe, seems to do the trick for me - the sound is amazing. And best of all they’re isolating, so on the tube in the morning I can’t hear anything other than the music and the people I am standing next to can’t hear a thing either. If there’s one down side it’s that they fit too snugly. I keep missing phone calls when I have them in, but it’s worth it for the quality of the sound.