Blog Posts:
Latest News and Blog Posts from Wayne “Pendragon” Owens.
New Welsh Flag
In an attempt to persuade more tourists to Wales, The AIJMU think tank team came up with a new flag design, after deciding the old flag’s dragon was a bit to scary looking.
The new flag they feel is more user friendly, implies a happier, kinder country to encourage tourists.
The Pasta Dilemma
I thought I would share this incident that happened yesterday, since it has a happy ending, and I think on a Wednesday we need happy endings.
Yesterday morning before I left to head to the Insane Asylum I popped over to my Parents house to feed their dog since they were away. I open up the house, feed the dog, and get set to let him out for the day when I spotted a note on their whiteboard.
“I made pasta and there’s some in the fridge if you want it for dinner.”
Seems my Nephew had made a load of tuna-pasta-mayonnaise to take to work with him, and had a load leftover so put it in the fridge for me to have if I wanted. So I figured “why not!” it would make a change, so I grabbed it and left.
Unfortunately when I came to eat it during my Lunch break I found it very dry, lacking flavour, and not that good at all. But it was still a very nice thing my Nephew did for me.
Now as I went back to Parents after work to feed the Dog again (they were not due back till late that night) I was hoping I could get In&Out without meeting the Nephew so I would not have to say what I thought of the food.
NO SUCH LUCK!
He was standing outside the door to their place as I arrived. *arse.. feck.. drink!* I thought as I approached “here boy.. lets get you fed” I called to the dog and tried to speed walk past the Nephew as if I was busy with dog.
Nephew: “HI.. Did you find that pasta I left for you?”
WO: “err Yes, thanks!” *don’t ask, don’t ask don’t ask*
Nephew: “what did you think of it?…….”
WO: *ARSE ARSE ARSE ARSE*
Nephew: “because I thought it was very dry and not very nice, I’m not sure what went wrong”
WO: *Thank you Gods* “Yes, it was a bit dry”
So luckily he also thought there was something not right about it, so I did not hurt his feelings by agreeing with him.
Security Madness from Buzby
The guys over at Buzby have been busy again. This time they have been considering “SECURITY” which I think is a very Important & Valid thing to be considering (Especially these days) Only I think they need to do some more work on it.
For example, they are concerned about sending customer data back and too to their CP’s. Now this I can understand, you would not like the idea of your personal details being handed about freely over the net. So this is how the details are now securely transferred.
I as a CP upload some data over SFTP to their sever, their systems runs on the data and does what I request (All nice and secure so far). I then have access (again by SFTP) to an output file telling me which records worked, if there was any errors, etc.
Only now I get an email to tell me if there is any problem with any records. But what if my email is compromised? its not very secure so they put the text they are sending me in a file, ZIP it up with a password protection and email me the password protected file. And then at the same time send me another email with the password to the file in it. So if my email had been compromised they person would be unable to access the file since the password was in a separate email.
In theory sending the data in locked files is good, but it should be with an agreed on password so the password does not get emailed. Or maybe a PGP encrypted email? Or I could just collect the file over SFTP which was set up wit certificates, encryption, blah, blah, blah.
I’m sorry, I’m all for trying to improve security (I need to hurt one of the drones at the Insane Asylum and point out his passwords are retarded) But emailing the password to a secure zip file to the same email address, at the same time? Madness.
Also, they are not very long passwords, I’m sure a zip password recovery program would access it in no time at all. (I may test that and tell them how easy it was to access the file without the password)
I do give them ★★ (2 Stars) for at least considering security!
Review – Green Lantern
Before I review the Green Lantern film, I should point out my history with the Character. I personally think this is an important fact that should be supplied before people review comic inspired movies. Since Your prior experience will affect your personal views on the film. So for fairness, I shall start off with the following statement:
I never read any of the comic’s, Graphic Novels, or anything like that. My whole understanding of the character is from the two animated films “Green Lantern: First Flight” and “Green Lantern: Emerald Knights“. So I started the film with just the basic understanding of the origin of the Green Lantern.
The film starts with an ancient evil escaping from his prison, and heading out for revenge (As ancient evil’s tend to do). Which invariably leads to the death of some Green Lanterns, the destruction of several planets, and a short fight with the “Apparently” Greatest living Lantern, injuring him beyond repair and forcing him to crash on earth to find a successor to the ring. Enter “Hal Jordan” a cocky, young, risk taking, unreliable test pilot. As you can guess, the ring picks Hal since it can sense something in him that he doesn not realise is there.
I shall stop here and say that Ryan Reynolds plays the part well, But then does he ever fail at a role?
So Hal gets given a ring and the instructions that he should hold it to the lantern and say the oath. You know the oath “In brightest day, in blackest night,: No evil shall escape my sight: Let those who worship evil’s might,: Beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!” Only the alien dies before he can tell Hal the actual oath, which leads to several attempts like the “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America“, “To infinity and beyond?“, “By the power of Grayskull!” Eventually I think the ring gets bored and plants the correct oath into his mind.
So our Hero ends up being transported through space to the home of the Lanterns, where he finds out what’s going on, starts his training which he fails miserably, is told he is a waste, and an insult to the memory of his rings previous owner. Disheartened but believing he is not worthy, Hal returns to earth. Unfortunately a scientist who examined the body of the x-lantern has become infected with the ancient evil, and things start to go wrong on earth. “how wrong?” oh, the ancient evil decided he would eat earth to gain more power before going to get his revenge.
“Don’t worry right? The Green Lantern Core, the Universes defenders will help us?” No. sorry, they are gathering their forces to defend their base and have one last fight, it’s not all bad they said they would be upset at the loss of earth, but its not like its a decent planet or anything. If only earth had a defender!
Yes, you guessed it, Hal man’s up. He finally realises that even hero’s know fear and its OK. so he single-handedly takes on the ancient evil. WOO HOO.
So all in all this is your typical movie, Guy is a unreliable person whose going nowhere in his life, something happens, he learns an important life lesson and saves the day. Only all that with super powers, aliens, and space 🙂
There is a nice setup to a second film in the series, with a end clip of a lantern switching from Green to Yellow. Yes I know if you are a comic book fan you spotted a lot of “other” possibilities like the Sapphire core logo, sapphire herself, and other things, I did not since I have never read the series, although in looking things up after watching this movie, I am tempted.
So I enjoyed this film, it had action, excitement, good effects, and an actual plot. The acting was good, it had Ryan Reynolds, just the right underline of comedy and slight throwaway geeky references. I know you can enjoy this film if you are not already a fan of the franchise, and I would think if you were a fan it sticks close enough to the cannon that you will not be disappointed. Hey you can also go see it with a newbie (Such as myself) and help point out the Easter eggs.
Let me end by saying this movie has inspired me to consider reading a few of the graphic novels.
Subscribe to Blogs/News Sites on the Kindle for FREE
I love nothing more than finding new ways to use Technology, Or Ways to use it in a different manner to that which it was intended. I also like finding legal ways of doing things for free, that would normally cost money.
So what was the first thing I did when I got our hands on one of Amazons Kindles? I decided it would be nice if we could read my favorite Blogs & News sites directly off the Kindle in weekly digests. Unfortunately Amazon charges for this service, Which is OK I guess since some of the money can go to the Bloggers who write the sites.
No I do not want to cost fellow Bloggers Money, BUT if you think about it, you can use the Kindle’s web browser to read free Blogs for Free, so If you could get it sent directly to your device for free, its only really saving you time.
So heres the procedure I followed to get Weekly Digests of my Favorite blogs sent directly to the Kindle. (NOTE: If you really enjoy someone’s Blog consider supporting it with some comments, or some other way to show your thanks)
1: Download & Install Calibre – EBook Manager (Free Software)
2: Click on “Fetch News” -> “Add Custom news source”
3: Give your list a title “Recipe Title“, Set “Oldest Article” to be “7 Days”. Then using the “Feed Title” “Feed URL” box’s at the bottom keep “Add Feed” until you have all your Blogs added.
4: Hit “Add/Update Recipe” to save your list.
Your custom feed list is now saved, You just need to assign a time to auto download it to Calibre (You need to leave the software running on your Computer for the auto download to work)
5: Hit “Fetch News” and look in the “Custom” header in the list.
6: Pick “Days of Week” and a Day to suit yourself, then pick a Download Time, Make sure “Schedule for Download” is checked, and hist Save.
Thats all you need to do to get Calibre to download a “book” made up of your favorite blogs/news feeds. You may want to have a look at the other newsfeeds Calibre has listed as standard.
Now there is just one small thing left to do to get your downloads sent directly to your Kindle (Providing you have WiFi or 3g Turned on)
7: “Preferences” -> “Sharing Books by Email” Make sure you add your free kindle email address there *****@free.kindle.com. and Make sure “Auto Send” is checked.
8: “Preferences” -> “Behavior” Make sure “Automatically send Downloaded news to ebook reader” is checked.
Now when Calibre downloads your custom newsfeed, it will auto convert them into an epub format and email them directly to your Kindle. So they popup ready for you to read.
Reflections on the Rapture
So the weekends over, and we have all survived. Well I assume we have all survived, there has been no news articles on the Zombie Apocalypse, no reports of missing people in their masses. So I can only assume that the End of Days (2011) aka The Rapture (V2) was a no show.
Now I should quickly explain what I am on about for those of you who may have been living in a cave for the last month and be unaware of the Rapture. Although you do raise a new question of why do you have the internet in your cave? anyway The Rapture….
Rapture
Basically some bloke called “Harold Camping” said he had calculated the secret code hidden in the bible, and was 100% the world would end on September 6, 1994. Some point shortly after then, when the world was still going strong Harold admitted he made a slight mistake and had forgot to carry the one and the correct day of the rapture was May 21st 2011. On this day Jesus would return to earth, the chosen holy people who followed the laws of Christ would ascent to heaven, and the long forgotten dead would rise forth from their unhallowed graves and the end of days would be upon us.
My biggest problem with any of these beliefs is one of simple logistics. The holy get to go to heaven. Who is holy? If you follow the laws of Christ will you be allowed in? Which branch of Christianity do you need to follow since they are all different? What about the rules, once you could not eat fish on a Friday, but that rule was revoked, but did God approve the revoking? If you have to follow every rule there ever was to be 100% valid, then I do not see anyone being saved.
Anyway Rapture came and went without anyone noticing. So was it all a miscalculation again (Not everyone can do math) Or is it as some blogs are stating that the chosen were raptured, and the rest of us just have to wait the five months till the world ends? So all we can do is watch this space.
Bicycles should be Banned!
…..On roads during peak travel/commute hours.
Now I should point out that in principle I have no problem with people who want to enjoy the fresh air while getting or staying fit and healthy, or those who want to help the environment, or even those who have several mortgages and can no longer pay the exuberant petrol prices.
What I do have problems with are those people who ride push bikes, and tend to be in the middle of the lane making it harder to overtake them, especially if like me your morning commute is down country roads where its hard to overtake due to the number of blind bends. Now I would not mind if they would pull to the side to let you pass, or even stop and let the long tailback pass them. Instead they seem to delight in moving closer to the centre of the road making it even harder to pass, and laughing at all the cars such behind them, with their engines screaming at the indignity of travelling at 3 miles per hour.
I think like tractors, and industrial diggers there should be a core time when they are not allowed on public roads to prevent tailbacks, dangerous driving to try and makeup time, and road rage. I really believe they should be kept off the road during these hours for their own safety. You see, you may be smug sat slowly peddling your bike making me drive at a babies crawling speed, but I’m in a big car, and you know how much damage you and your bike will make to my car as I drive over you? NONE….
Now get off my road you bunch of weirdo hippies!!!!
I Voted on how to Vote
So I went to do my Civic Duty and voted (AGAIN) I swear I seem to be voting a LOT at the minute.
So I packed my pack with provisions, emergency supplies, spare ammunition. Grabbed the shotgun & Katana and set off on the trek up into the wilds of the mountains, braving the elements and inbred locals to reach the Hut where I have to vote.
WO: “What? You don’t believe me? let me recount my route from a previous post”
If I leave my house, and turn left, its a one minute drive through civilisation to the nearest polling station. Only I am not allowed to vote there, Oh no, I must use a different one. To get to the one I use you have to turn right out of my house and drive away from civilisation. after about ten minutes you turn onto a small back road and head towards the mountains. Fifteen minutes later you leave that road, for a smaller, less used track and head even deeper into the wilderness of the mountains. Eventually you will arrive at a small shack on the side of the track, and its there I have to go to vote.
Seriously, If I did not have a four wheel drive sturdy vehicle, and a house full of lethal weapons to choose from, I don’t think I would ever vote.
So I arrived at the Hut and went in to Vote on the YES/NO to AV vote that I knew about. I walked slowly up to the two very strange looking people sat behind an old rickety table, my right hand absently hovering mere inches away from the concealed blade I’d draw at the first sound of Banjo music. I handed over my Voting slip and one of the men started handing me several voting forms, while the other made a note in his book. Turns out they has sneaked a couple of election’s in with the AV referendum. And with some great choices for who to govern us, BNP, Christian Party? (I thought they were a religion, but Hey instead of having views on the economy, immigration, Health Care they do state they are for the Ten Commandments). So I voted and left.
OK, for those of you Readers who live in countries where you left the 18th century and are now living happily in the 21st I should explain how our voting works. You get given a piece of paper, you walk over to a table where a pencil is taped to a piece of string to prevent theft. You put an X in the appropriate box, then return your paper to where you received it, and basically drop it through a letterbox into a glorified bucket. Yes, in this age of computers, touch-screen terminals, and easy technology we in the UK use pencils, those tamper proof voting system that is super secure unless the person wanting to rig the ballot has the cutting edge tools of an eraser and another pencil. Am I the only one who thinks this is a slow, silly, insecure voting system? Also Humans counting thousands of votes? Its way to easy for mistakes to happen. We’re living in the future people, lets try and act like we are. Now where’s my flying car I was promised?
What I am curious about, is how many people actually believe the urban legend that our votes are anonymous, and that big brother does not know what or who we vote for? When I was too young to vote I’d often hear people talking about how voting is anonymous and all that stuff. I found this odd as the magazines and books I read had other facts in that were contra to popular belief. I remember when I was sixteen I read in a biker magazine how if you voted for one of the extreme parties that MI5 would start a file on you. I remember conversations with people when they assured me voting is private and confidential. OK, so if its confidential why when I’m given my voting paper the number written in the top corner of the sheet is marked in a book next to my voting number? So after counting the votes you could pick up the pile of votes for say “The Monster Raving Loony Party” or “The Green Party” or “The BNP” and look up the names of all the people who voted for them. In what way is this anonymous? or is this anonymous in the same way a pencil mark on a bit of paper is secure?
Anyway.
- Civic Duty – Done
- Trip into the Hills – Done & Survived
- Blog post – Done with extra Ranting
Now we wait for the results.
RTL – From the Bookshelf: Heat Wave
What a brilliant piece of MetaFiction this is:
For those of you who have been kept locked in a box for the last few years, or believe Television is the work of Satan’s minions and as such avoid the evil gogglebox for more spiritual activities, I guess I should start with a quick recap of what Castle is.
Castle is a TV show about Richard Castle, a best-selling author who decides to tag along with a NYPD team as they investigate cases, since he is using Detective Kate Beckett as his inspiration in a new series of books.
Since in the TV show Castle (Played by Nathan Fillion) is writing a book inspired by Beckett, the book gets mentioned a lot in the first season, even to the point of showing the proposed Cover, and its launch/release. You even see the characters reading the book in some episodes, as well as discussing a certain sex scene that’s a bit raunchy. There is nothing special in this, since a lot of TV shows make mention of Books, Films, Etc. that are apparently going on in the background. And there are a lot of shows that will do spin off books. What the producers of Castle have done, and done brilliantly is to release a bit of metafiction. They actually released the book that was supposedly written in the show. The covers the same, the plot,s the one mentioned in the show, the sex scene on page number 105 is there, and even better the Thanks page, bio, writers name, everything is written as if the character Richard Castle wrote the book. He thanks his daughter & mother, the guys from NYPD the works. All in all this is a brilliant bit of meta-fiction,
But what about the book itself?
It’s actually a good book, its very similar to an episode of castle, only its about a newspaper reporter who is travelling around with the NYPD gang solving a crime. The style is like the show, comedy mixed with action, mixed with chemistry. The only real difference is the book is darker, more violent, and more explicit (but not in a bad way) Hell there is no way you could get away with the female lead being totally naked and using an iron to melt half the face off an armed assailant intent on raping her, but in a book? alls fair.
This book is an enjoyable read even if you are one of the people who have never watched an episode of Castle. And I would recommend it as a read to anyone, you will enjoy it. In fact I will give it a 7/10 as a generic book.
But if you watch the TV show, and can appreciate the work gone into linking the book with the show, then I give it a 9/10.
This Article was 1st posted @ rocktheLAN.com
Time Travel & The Tardis
The overall theme of the weekend was “Time Travel“, And not just in the way Adults seem to travel back to their youth when presented with Chocolate Easter Eggs.
Neither was it purely because the new season of Doctor Who started back up on Saturday evening, with a bang and [REDACTED], Sorry I had to redact that last bit for in the words of River song “Spoilers!!!” So I shall say no more on that subject. (EDITOR: “Unless I write a review of the new series or episode“)
The main Time Travel I am referring to is the feeling of being back in the past I experienced on the Saturday evening. I had gone around to a friends house while his wife was away. The evening involved some Multiplayer Age of Empires 3, a game (well AoE1) we used to play back in the days when we were work colleagues. Then a call to Domino’s to bring us Pizza & Chicken strips STAT.. All while some Junk-TV played in the background. This used to be the useual way to end a nights training down the Dojo, Pizza & Junk.
In fact all we were missing for it to have been one of those nights from the distance past was a good conspiracy theory documentary playing on the TV.