Ladybird, ladybird fly away home

What do you call a cluster of ladybugs?

This little group of 8 (two of them are rather dark) were found above the front door, where it's pretty cold. I don't know what they are surviving on, or are they simply resting here for a few days out of the way? The question about the 2 darker ones is probably the most interresting, any clues? They are alive, I gently dislodged one and it waddled off begrudgingly.

This is my test-victim, as you can see he is not dead at all, and giving me the 1000-yard stare after being rudely woken up. I feel bad about shifting these diligent predators outdoors, but it's probably better that way.

Update:
- A Ladybird fact sheet .
- Ladybirds do hibernate .
- How to make a bug motel - this is something I think we have seen again and again to death, but this time it's a tiny hotel that the kids can help make at home.

Sanity for sale

Maclaren are recalling childrens strollers in the US after more than a dozen children had their findertips removed. A mum over here in the UK is rightly angry, and I sympathize fully. But then again I can only wonder how many children have had function loss after getting a whole knuckle trapped in a door jamb - child-friendly and many public places now have hinge covers fitted for this reason.

The world is a dangerous place, but right now the greatest risk to my mental health stems from being jobless because of some ass-covering bankers and accountants.

Redundancy/Jobseeker SPAM

We do have a job offer available for you in response to your initial inquiry in reference 
to the job search directory in USA, CANADA and AUSTRALIA, which we have not been 
able to process completely since we do not have a Book Keeper/Payment personnel in these region. 
 
We have decided to recruit payment employee online, hence we will be needing a representative 
to process our payments in your region. if interested please do supply the following order of requirement 
as it appear below:
 
FULL NAME 
CONTACT ADDRESS (not p.o box)
STATE
CITY
ZIP CODE
PHONE NUMBER
COUNTRY.
 
ALLEN GIOVANNI
 
ALL CORRESPONDENCE SHOULD BE KINDLY DIRECTED TO lg-uk@i12.com

Whatever will they think of next? I see people slipping into believing tricksters harvesting info all of the time. Businesses need to cough up on data protection all around the globe or else this kind of crap is going to get lots of people hurt.

... Conrad thinks Blair needs to learn how to use a 32-bit computer.

Job Wanted

Posted my VC online Web 2.0 style this evening.

It's amazing what you can do when you suddenly have time on your hands.

Website update due

This is a test, if you can click on the image to the left, then you are in the right place.

Resistance is really futile

That is if you name is David Nutt .
But, if you are made of ABS plastic, then it looks like it could be hours and hours of fun, 'you shall be assimilated'.

So long and thanks for all the fish

Today was my last day gainfully employed... for an unknown interval it would appear. I thought this subject-line would be an friendly goodbye, but it appears it was a bit too accurate. I've gone from Angry to disappointed, and just grumpy and nervous. Don't ask how to get grumpy and nervous all at once, I just am. Now I'm disappointed all over again.


Synopsis : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Long,_and_Thanks_for_All_the_Fish
Buy the book : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thanks-Hitch-Hikers-Guide-Galaxy/dp/0330287001

It's gonna be a chilly weekend in the UK, so we are going to huddle together and watch more telly.

Cycle ride update

Pics here

First Donation

I have recieved my first donation (hence the picture in the post before this one) from Melvin Philips on an Open-Source project I published ages ago.
So it's not that I'm turning to drink, I am just celebrating 3 years of open-source contribs.

Programming STDERR

It's frustrating when you want to get something to work, and nobody's solution fits. I had already gotten quite far on a problem and had it almost done when I found this neat solution to the problem of piping error messages sent to STDERR to a file on MSDN.

I needed to either write a huge perl-script(and without a debugger that's a cramp) or reidirect the stderr and stdout from a static code analysis tool called splint so that I can gather statistics on any dodgy lines of 'C' code.
Why a beer? Well that's a celebration of a slight change in the wind. Where it will go is probably nowhere, but it's a change nonetheless.

/edit
Returning to the redirecting of standard error and pipes, the downside it the default pipe-buffer size, in fact although you can easily increase the pipe buffer size, we all know a huge buffer is in-efficient. You see, unlesss you can empty a smaller buffer in the background while the child-process is filling it, the child will get blocked if it tries to overflow the buffer. A very bad thing, normally solved by spawning a thread to process and empty things while you wait for the child to terminate. I hate and love threads, so forgoing a complex solution, I solved this by simply waiting 100ms for the child to terminate, and then emptying the stream buffer in between by polling using WaitForProcess(). It appears to solve the problem, but exactly how?.... because someone has to close the stream in order to detect the end and not get blocked yourself in the parent waiting for a read on a dead stream?
As it so happens, the parent can happily close it's copy of the redirected stream handle and then keep reading from the duplicate knowing all will unblock when the child terminates (because the handle closes in the child when it does so). Problem solved.

It often looks too far away to even work

It was said Goliath could throw his spear half the length of a football field, so that's probably how far David was from him. Furthermore, Goliath had body armour protecting him from head to toe, except for a small opening between his eyes and his forehead. That's what David aimed for.

black thief in my yard

Black squirrel entering the back-yard over the fence....


Yep, he's carrying something there.
They are easy to photograph up close (contrary to some reports) and I soon got within 3 meters of this one because black squirrels are more aggressive than their gray cousins. The black colour is actually caused by melanin, coming from a dominant gene.

Zoom in and you can see, it's a nut!

It is possible to fall off

Solid proof that it is possible to fall off. To be sure that's not all I have fallen off recently.

In other unrelated news, I have fallen off the social ladder by staring at unemployment. This is the first time ever for me that things are not my own choice; so how do we take it? I suppose we could talk about hope, we could talk about prayer, we could talk about humility.
Maybe all it means is time to clear out the closets, air the loft and start anew. Bad thing happen to bad people, bad thing happen to good people, even to great people. God lets sh%t happen all the time, I mean He let stuff like life and intelligence and self-awareness happen. He let random subatomic particles happen too, I don't do that stuff at all tho.
Time to get the shovel out and find work because I expect I have only got a few more weeks of real motivating work still to do. I hope it's not so, but due to the lack of respect held by some people in suits, I now shall have a chance to get to the loft.

Hey if that was glum!
My mum is coming to stay with me next month. maybe I will let her hold the camera, which I so closely guard every time we go out so as not to monopolize every photographic composition. (grin)

999 and Facebook Apps

The sticker that means my house could blow up due to a gas leak on 10/10/10 and it would be my fault.

FaceBook Flood
Do you have millions of friends on facebook? I find I am staying in contact with a lot of people I would never have, and in so far it creates a way of publicly meeting with folk I know - but Facebook Apps (the advertising/Commercial side of FB) are invading my time, every day I have to brown-down at least one person by ignoring a request to install a virtual vaccum-cleaner or aquarium. Every home needs a vacuum cleaner, but it's like ice cream, fun - but not achieving anything more than a environment to chat a little longer.
So if I dont' respond to your Pokes, Bloody Marys or Bacarat, it's because I'm busy cleaning up a desert island oil-slick, not offense meant nor taken.

Just wondering

Hey, I was just wondering about what happened to all the kids who are turning 40 around now who came from a small southern african coastal town, and how many have been blown to the four winds of adventure or circumstance.
I mean, how many have stayed behind. Those who have not, why have we moved, and is our generation especially mobile today or not really.

Fuji Finepix F60

DSCF1083
Originally uploaded by zaphodikus

This video is pretty much the old one, but with my new tiny camera (like this one: http://bit.ly/ckbhn)

Holiday Banana

tgimboej Cambridge update

Links to follow, but John got and has forwarded "the box" to another (evil mad scientist), proving we can take over the world one box of junk at a time.

Netizenry notes

Getting a bit swamped by the net?
Some of the networking tools you may or may not have a use for...
www.bit.ly/ is an unusual tool used to shorten URLs and most useful for mobile applications and tweeter integrated. So here's mine , and although clicking on your own link generates a hit I have 10 clicks (2 of them mine) in just 5 minutes, go ahead click this one too, it should bring you back here or at least closeby.

Mailing List, Electronics Junk, Holiday Reading

North Cumbria - Wow, that was a beeeuutifulll bit of England. If this pic of the back yard is interresting, visit Dickinson Cottages site.

I read another book from my fave Clive Cussler -'Plague Ship', and am still drudging my way through David Gibbins' 'the Last Covenant'.
But now we are back, with a vengeance.

TGIMBOEJ
I have picked out some basic character-LCD units off E-Bay and should drop one spare into the 'box'. I am slowly adding bits because it looks to me as if it is no simple matter finding someone who wants more curiosities clogging up the workbench.
So far I've crossed off the royal-mail list:

• Scott (busy moving)
• Tristan (no response)
• Trying - John Lindley (found, and arranging)
• double-booked : Martin (sorry) I'll start a second box.

After getting a few non-responses and a non use-able email address or two, I started to double-up my attempts to move my box of junk, and got 2 responses almost at once. I'll be sending it off to John in Bristol - and starting a second box to send to Martin.

• Update: box sent to John in Bristol - 11 August.

Updates to this TGIMBOEJ post to come once the first box moves.