Halloween Party

Blair Witch Project
Originally uploaded by brixtonboy.

Some pictures I took at the Halloween party of a friend of mine. Quite a few people had made good efforts. The Blair Witch girl was probably the simplest but I recognised her outfit the quickest.

We left at 4am, well it was 3am timewise but the clocks had gone back! We didn't do much at all Sunday.

Big Brother is Watching

For the next few months, every trip Elahi took, he’d call his FBI agent and give the routing, so he didn’t get detained along the way. He realized, after a point - why just tell the FBI - why not tell everyone?So he hacked his cellphone into a tracking bracelet which he wears on his ankle, reporting his movements on a map - log onto his site and you can see that he’s in Camden. But he’s gone further, trying to document his life in a series of photos: the airports he passes through, the meals he eats, the bathrooms he uses. The result is a photographic record of his daily life which would be very hard to falsify. We all know photos can be digitally altered… but altering as many photos as Elahi puts online would require a whole team trying to build this alternative path through the world.

WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: Tracking Hasan Elahi

An interesting solution to having to tell people where you are.

Exchanged!!!!!

Kitchen
Originally uploaded by brixtonboy.

At last. We exchanged today. So hopefully from the 6th Nov the place to the right will be ours all ours. Mwah-ha-ha-hah.

House Hell Reloaded

Tower Bridge
Originally uploaded by brixtonboy.

It seems we "may" exchange on Thursday now as this is when our buyer will be ready with his cash. Even though he allegedly did a bank transfer last week. This is getting beyond the proverbial joke. If this does happen then we're looking to complete on Mon 6th November. Assuming the buyer goes with this as they've suggested Friday, the day after and no one else in the chain is ready fore that.

We've now sent an edict to our conveyancer basically saying if no exchange on thursday then it "Game over man. Game over". As this seems to be the only way to regain control or our lives. The picture is meant to be calming.

A little nachtshooting...

Pebble and Pictures
Originally uploaded by brixtonboy.

...took this last night whilst tkaing some shots near Tower Bridge.

Uh-oh!

The government, not the courts, will now be deciding what is cruel and inhumane treatment. Only monstrous abuse, reaching the level of a war crime, such as rape, mutilation, and the like, are expressly forbidden. And prisoners will not be granted legal counsel during interrogations.

Welcome to the Fourth Reich | The Register

When things like this happen it essentially means the terrorists are winning. They want us to to fear and to lose our freedoms.

Once there is a critical mass of legislation like this all it will take is a real dodgy leader to be elected. The state apparatus for oppresion will already be in place...

technorati tags:freedom, liberty, legislation

House Hell - Apparently, it turns out, the contracts sent out to our buyer by registered mail were both lost by the Royal Mail - I think the irish term is eejits. My term would involve a shed load of expletives.

Hopefully it'll all be over by Christmas ...

House

Still no exchange of the contracts. :-(

How dumb is this?

People will be told to wear radio tags round their necks when they get to the airport. The tag would notify a computer system of their identity and whereabouts. The system would then track their activities in the airport using a network of high definition cameras.

Airport to tag passengers | The Register

Yeah, because ne'er do wells will keep the tags round their necks won't they! Stupid stupid people. Theonly way they could be sure that the tag was going to stay with the person would be to inject it someway and like passengers will go for that one.

Why does everyone think technology is the answer to everything?

technorati tags:RFID

Small world..

Flickr: Photos from Robert Seber

Someone else I used to work with turns up on this interweb thingy.

technorati tags:flickr, netdecisions

House Buying sucks...

...oh yes.  The chain was complete (we had an offer and we had offered) back in June.  Now its October and still waiting for an exchange of contracts. The latest is our (well my g/f's) buyer is wanting a complete date around the week beginning 23rd as funds not ready. Arrrghh.  fingers crossed the exchange happens today/tommorrow and we all get locked in to a date sometime. Until then we have no comeback if someone pulls out. Lordy.

I reckon we'd have more rconsumer rights we Ibought a tomato from Sainsbury's than we do buying a house upwards of 200k.

This explains 75k + hits on photo

This explains 75k + hits on photo
Originally uploaded by brixtonboy.

Yesterday I was having a look at my popular photo's and found that this one had over 75000 hits and abvout 90 odd comments. Seeing as my previous top photo was at about 6000 odd hits this was a bit weird. Turns out someone wrote a blog on yahoo the other day and included my photo.

Nice one.

OH. MY. GOD!!

Engagement Manager

Profile: AD

Probably. The worst PM I ever had. Probably. Though there is some pretty inept management round these shores right now.

technorati tags:management

Does this make sense?

To the question - posed to a designer of a part of the system we are working on - "Has development for either of <design document references> started yet do you know?" I get the reply;

"I believe that the development has started for some components but I am not sure. Are the component teams required to check <requirements tool>and produce compliance documents?"

Also for a document that is still in DRAFT status but is (probably) in development;

Q - "Surely it only gets versioned at 1.0 when the approvals are in?"

A - "Ideally yes. But this basically signifies that the design has been reviewed. The people on the 'Approvers' list need to approve but they would take a long time as they are pretty busy, I guess."

I know this is all very waterfall. Did I mention we're supposed to be on an AGILE project...

technorati tags:software development, methodology, agile

More IBZ photo's

What had you two been doing?
Originally uploaded by Pitcocp.

This set is from the other Martin.

Passwords. You know when you have rules such as these;

• Passwords are not case specific
• Minimum Length = 8, Maximum Length = 20
• Minimum of 2 numeric characters
• No more than 3 of the same character
• Not the same as your Login Id or Name
• No obvious passwords
• Not the same as one you have used within the past 12 changes
• It shouldn't contain 3 concurrent keys on the keyboard
  e.g. "QWE", however there are exceptions e.g. "RTY"
• Passwords have a maximum validity of 90 days

It is just about impossible to create a password that is memorable - actually its' proving problematic just creating a password - this will merely result in it being written down somewhere. Which means almost the whole point of having a password is redundanct. Developers should really think about the human aspect of such things when they create such awkward rules.

Ibiza 2006

Sunglasese
Originally uploaded by brixtonboy.

Well another year has gone by and so has another trip to the White Isle otherwise known as Ibiza (Eivissa also works). This year we managed;

• Manumission@Privilege - ok but marred by rubbish bouncers (1hr wait in the gusetlist queue)
• Bora Bora - madness at the beach bar.
• We Love Sundays Closing Party @Space - 12hr clubbing marathon.
• Release Yourself@Pacha - rather good.

Plus the hotel (EsVive) was the best hotel I ever stayed at. The hotel bar was still kicking at 7:30am most mornings.

Update: Apparently Manumission is the act of freeing a slave, done at the will of the owner. According to wikipedia anyway.