Communications

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Skeptical Pat

Just watched an episode of Postman Pat, or rather, just turned over and caught the last little bit. I was feeding son #2 rather than enjoying the stop-motion for myself. The episode was called Postman Pat and the Magic Lamp.
Now I’m going to have to guess what the story was about but I think the kids (all with ginger hair, Pat’s hair is ginger, you figure it out) found a lamp that they considered magic. I think they made wishes and then waited for them to come true. When Pat spoke to them he said:

Wishes only come true like that in books and stories. If you want something to come true then you have to work yourself to make it come true.

This is surely an excellent lesson, not only for children but also for every person on the planet. What a skeptical chap.

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What the son sees

This is what happens when you give a camera to a three year old. Eldest son took these while we were visiting family. I’m not going to give a commentary this is just what he finds interesting.

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Hawaii 5-O Part 2

I still really like watching Hawaii 5-O, see my previous post. The scenery is great, the colour filters used show Hawaii off to the best and the camaraderie between the characters is good. The tech is over the top, but I can actually live with that. There’s a problem now though.
I think they jumped the shark!
The latest episode that I watched had 5-O invade North Korea to rescue their leader. He’d been lured there by a double agent of Wo Fat who is the series’ lead baddy.
Seriously?
A group of rogue coppers and hang-ins fly a Huey (wrong war for that helo) into North Korea across the DMZ (the most heavily armed 100 miles in the world) and not only get there alive but successfully capture their top man and make it back!
For some reason I can cope with them hacking into any database or CCTV stream in the world but invading North Korea really launched them over the cartilaginous hunter with supreme success.
Going to keep watching for the next little while to see if they improve. If not then I have some episodes of Alcatraz recorded and ready to watch. Perhaps that will be better?

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Knowing your market

Getting together with companies who have the same customer base is a bonus for big business but needs careful arrangement. Never a clearer example:

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Possibly this photo also clearly shows an example of standard Scottish weather. Snow tonight!
I think this post clearly shows my growing snobbery towards certain things. Will have to reign that in, it doesn’t do good for a so called liberal to be a bit of a snob (except for universities).

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NAS Drive

For my birthday I bought a 2TB NAS unit. I spent ages looking at different types and was going to get a LG NAS until I saw an Iomega unit in PC World in BlueWater Shopping centre with quite a good price reduction. I did some internet searching that evening and went back the next day to buy the Iomega unit.

I got the Iomega StorCentre ix200 Cloud Edition there are some good things about it and some things that to be honest I don’t understand and can’t be bothered to invest the time to understand.

I use the NAS to store movies, iTunes libraries and eventually I will categorise all our photos on it. I can stream content to the PS3 and iPhones and laptop which is useful. I can also access it via the web should I feel like it! Here’s a list of functions I won’t be using:

  • Flickr upload folder – automatically uploads to Flickr
  • Bit Torrent download automatically
  • Time Machine
  • Print Server
  • Cloud backup
  • Facebook folder (see this about Facebook)
  • You Tube upload

I have the two 1TB drives configured as RAID0 at the moment which, as far as I understand it, means they copy each other for data redundancy. If I ever need the extra space I’ll turn that off as I also back up photos and video files to DVD. Can you have too much redundancy?

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48 Degrees

My newest favourite number is 48 or more accurately arccos (2/3). Other favourite numbers are 5,17, and 309. Although 48 is ten more that the Revolting Cocks song 38, the reason for 48 degrees is explained (mathematically) below, but essentially 48 degrees is the solution to the problem:

A smooth hemisphere with radius, r, is resting in a fixed position on a horizontal plane with its flat face in contact with the plane. A particle of mass, m, is slightly disturbed from rest at the highest point of the hemisphere. Find the angle to the vertical that the particle leaves the surface of the sphere.

Also  this is independent of radius, particle mass and local gravity! Nice.

 

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Talk Talk Part 4

My lovely router (a D-Link) started to drop connections and act a little bit funny. I put this down to overheating as I had lost the little rubber feet upon which it was meant to stand. This may or may not have been the cause for its miss-behaviour but that was my diagnosis. So I needed another router and reluctantly I went to the back cupboard and got the free router I received from Talk Talk when I signed up with them. It looks pretty grotty and has a huge Talk Talk logo on the front panel.
So I un-plugged the old lovely router and held my breath. Would the new one work? I plugged it in and turned it on, an on-switch is a luxury. Lights flashed and there wasn’t a whirring sound, the connection light blinked and flashed and went green.
I plugged in, logged in to the router and had a look at the settings. It didn’t look like I could change the SSID! Arrghhh. I don’t want my wireless network to be called Talk-Talk8654. I left it.
Later I loaded the router admin page on the iPhone and suddenly there was a settings page for me to play with. I think there was a refresh issue with the PC browser that meant the settings didn’t show. I have now changed the SSID and am a happy bunny.
I know Talk Talk are slammed in public relations but I have to say I have had an excellent service from them! Please remember that anecdote isn’t evidence!

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