Articles
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Walibi's back!
Rollercoaster Season has once again rolled around as marked by the opening of the Walibi season for 2008 this weekend. As with last year, an early glimpse into what's changed within the park — or what's not working yet — is somewhat necessary.
This season opener didn't highlight anything spectacular to report, except that the Vertigo was once again being tested and wasn't taking passengers. There was once unique aspect of this visit though: It was snowing!
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The cost of mobile data
I've found myself needing access to the Internet from some remote areas, so it made sense to finally “bite the bullet” and give up; After many years of deliberation and procrastination, I recently bought myself a GPRS/EDGE data plan for my mobile phone.
So why would someone like myself — who carries around a Nokia E70 — not have bought into this earlier? Well, it's very simple: The cost of data through a mobile phone is ridiculously high compared with other more conventional broadband Internet connections.
It's not just Internet connectivity that's expensive, but SMS text-messages also seem disproportionately expensive compared with e-mail. A while ago, someone with too much time on their hands went a bit overboard detailing the cost of an SMS but neglected to understand the big picture.
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DVD Overload
I like movies.
I hate cinemas.
I'm a home theatre kind of guy.
While I may not actually have the fantastic home theatre setup now, my DVD collection has grown significantly over the last two years. People around me have taken notice, and it's become a common gift for me, especially since I'm a difficult person to buy presents for.
This collection has grown to the point where it's become somewhat of an addiction: I'm now faced with a queue of DVDs I've bought or been given as gifts that I still haven't watched!
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14 Deadly Sins
Today the Vatican announced the first update to the list of deadly sins since the 6th-century, expanding the list from seven sins to fourteen sins.
Each sin on the list is guaranteed to give you a nice warm spot writhing in agony amongst fire and brimstone and all that good stuff, so I thought I'd have a look at the list from my agnostic perspective.
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World: Hold on
I am, at heart, a bit of a greenie, although not the kind that would rush off to chain myself to trees or destructively paint slogans on the side of Japanese “fishing” vessels. I am however strongly opposed to so many things that are permanently scaring the natural world, such as the aforementioned logging and whaling, and my opinion on climate change is that while it's a natural process, we have done so much to speed up the process.
Recently, to my absolute revulsion, a disgusting court case that epitomises the insalubrious legal system of the USA has once again highlighted the human obsession with sweeping major problems under the proverbial rug in order to convince ourselves that someone else will deal with the problem.
The problem is — as I realise every time I need to vacuum my apartment — that this mysterious “someone else” won't deal with the problem.
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Recovering from a lost MDF file in SQL Server
For all but the extremely lucky in the IT world, there comes a point when you realise that your backup procedures are somewhat inadequate. Backups are often not taken into serious consideration by management, and with the modern more-with-less attitude to IT departments, nobody really has the time to maintain backup procedures.
I had my wake-up call yesterday, mid-afternoon, when we suffered a series of unexpected and unlikely failures that ultimately combined to cause serious file-system corruption on the disk that houses an important database's master database file (
.MDF). With the database gone, but the previous night's backup and the transaction logs (.LDF) intact, recovering the database to the point of the incident wasn't particularly easy for someone who's not a DBA.Continue reading "Recovering from a lost MDF file in SQL Server"...
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Flying home
I'm flying home today, surrendering the fantastically warm and sunny weather here in Melbourne and returning to the gloomy, miserable, cold weather in Brussels.
This also means psyching myself up to return to the office: Urgh.
Sadly I missed out on seeing a few of my friends, but maybe you lot can come over to Brussels at some stage!
So long Melbourne; I'll be back!
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The Edge of Eureka Tower
Continuing the theme of tourism in my home town, my father and I visited Eureka Tower, tallest building in Melbourne, Australia, and the world's tallest residential building (if you disregard spires). This building is 91-stories high, at 297.3 metres, and officially opened on October 11, 2006.
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Luna Park
Whilst in Melbourne, a trip to Luna Park[RCDB] was inevitable for me. This is the park that introduced me to the buzz of amusement rides in 1986, by way of the Gravitron (which was unfortunately removed from the park in 2004). Naturally I was horrendously ill after the ride, and vowed (rather unconvincingly) never to do that ever again!
Four Gs is a bit much for a five year old, but never-the-less it was not long until I took up the challenge on all Wittingslow (now Amusements Australia) rides at Moomba, the Melbourne Show, Hobart Regatta, and the Hobart Show. Needless to say, both the Gravitron and Luna Park have significant sentimental value to me.
Today I took my nieces, Neve and Millie, to visit this tiny but amazingly historic little park.
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Melbourne revisted
Being back in Melbourne feels weird. It's been two years since I was last here, but this time around I feel like a tourist in my own home town. Melbourne is a city that has always grown fairly rapidly, and much has changed — new structures and the conversion of many shops into yuppie fruit-shake bars being the most prevalent.
At the end of the day though, is it the city that's changed, or have I changed?
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Christmas in Melbourne
For me, a real Christmas is one spent in nice warm weather in a relaxed atmosphere. The word cold should be applied only to the food and drink, and not the weather; Snow should never enter the equation, unless it's fake.
In quite an atmospheric contrast to last year's Christmas in Bristol with friends, my Christmas this year has been spent baking in the Australian sun. Oddly, this year could have possibly been the most relaxing family Christmas on record, being a simple barbecue over at my sister's house.
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⊥ɥǝ Ιɐup poʍu-nupǝɹ
˙ʇsǝɹ ǝɯos ʎΙΙnɟǝdoɥ puɐ uns ǝɯos qɐɹɓ oʇ ǝɔuɐɥɔ ɐ
— sɹɐǝʎ-ʍǝu puɐ sɐɯʇsᴉɹɥƆ ɹoɟ suoᴉʇdɐɹʇuoɔ ǝqnʇ ɓuᴉʎΙɟ
Ιɐʇǝɯ snoᴉɹnxnΙΙᴉ puɐ ǝΙqɐɹǝsᴉɯ ǝsoɥʇ ɟo ǝuo uᴉ ʞɔnʇs
„‘pΙɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ɟo puǝ-ǝsɹɐ„ ǝɥʇ oʇ ʞɔɐq ʎɐʍ ʎɯ uo ɯ,I ‘ʎɐʍʎu∀
˙sɹǝuǝɥʇɹoN ʎpooΙq noʎ ‘ʇᴉ ɹǝʌo ʇǝ⅁
¡pɐoɹ ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝpᴉs „ɓuoɹʍ„ ǝɥʇ uo ǝʌᴉɹp
ǝʍ ʍoɥ ʇnoqɐ ɓuᴉuɐoɯ ɟo ʇuᴉod ǝɥʇ oʇ uǝʌǝ
‘ʎΙsnoᴉɹǝS ˙spɹɐʍʞɔɐq ʇsɐǝΙ ʇɐ ɹo ‘uʍop-ǝpᴉsdn
ɓuᴉɥʇʎɹǝʌǝ op suɐᴉΙɐɹʇsn∀ sn ‘ǝɹǝɥsᴉɯǝH
-uɹǝɥʇɹoN ǝɥʇ uᴉ ǝΙdoǝd ʇsoɯ oʇ ɓuᴉpɹoɔɔ∀Posted
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A brief escape to The Hague
A friend of mine has recently started working for Thalys, and therefore she's gained access to some free tickets for the Thalys network as an employee perquisite. We decided to exploit this for some time away from the Christmas-shoppers in Brussels by going to The Hague for a weekend of tourism.
Well, at least the original idea was to go for a bit of tourism…
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A day in the life…
At the risk of seeming a bit like Seven Up!, I thought I'd have another crack at this day in the life stuff. After last year's effort, I was curious to see what had changed.
Apparently, not much!
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Christmas lights in Brussels
I couldn't possibly have a Christmas without my Mother asking for pictures of Christmas lights in Brussels. Not much has changed since last year, although this year's lights on the Grand Place are even more tacky…
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Sun Fire X4600
Every Christmas, a whole bunch of presents arrive from our various vendors at the office, quite often chocolates, or some chocolate related theme.
I seem to wind up receiving a new toy to play with at the office around this time of the year too: Last year it was the Google Mini 2.0, and this year it's a pair of Sun Fire X4600 servers.
I've always had a penchant for Sun hardware, and while we're normally an HP shop at work, I was able to convince the powers-that-be that these two servers would be ideal to replace our horrible ML350 G4 based SQL server, which was chosen before my time.
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So long, Little Johnny
After eleven years and four terms in office, Australians finally decided today to say goodbye to Mr. Sheen, and replace him with the hopefully more sensible Milky Bar Kid. In fact, it was such a resounding victory for Rudd that Howard may even become the second P.M. in Australian history to completely lose his seat.
Once again this proves that democracy can bring down the destructive “axis of evil” between George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard — Two down, one more to go!
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The great alarm experiment
I'm having a hell of a time trying to wake up on weekday mornings these days. Oversleeping has become so regular that my boss has even given up on joking about arriving an hour late in the morning.
I rely heavily on my E70 to drag me out of bed in the morning because I have some particular requirements for my alarms. To this end, I decided to revive one of my old distractions and create some new alarms.
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So, I gave in.
It was one year ago today since I started a little experiment, and that little experiment has since grown into somewhat of an outlet for my thoughts and frustrations. In fact, through the hundred-odd articles of the past year there's been a fair bit of relentless bitterness unleashed upon the masses.
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Quietude
I’ve been trying to avoid using my holiday time from work so that I can use most of them for my eventual trip to the arse-end of the world at the end of this year, thus keeping as many holiday days for next year as possible. To this effect, I haven’t taken much in the way of time off this year at all.
So hectic was last month, I didn’t really get much time for myself to decompress, and the national holiday of November 1st gave me the perfect excuse to was time to relinquish some holiday time to finally unwind a little.
Fortunately Aline was kind enough to offer an escape by way of her family’s chalet in Chiny, so on Thursday morning we trundled down towards the French border with John for some well-earned time away from everything and anything for four days.
…Or so we thought.
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