Recursive

Author: jezmck

  • Bounce Spam?

    I, like a lot of people, get a lot of [tag]spam[/tag] [tag]email[/tag]s.
    I get a lot of these via a catch-all, but I’m now turning that off. Should I bounce or just ignore those messages?

    I’d like to think that the spammers would be put off by emails bounced back to them, but think I have to accept that they probably won’t even get the bounces, so I’d just be creating a little more pointless internet traffic.

    Perhaps the ‘[tag]email tax[/tag]’ suggestions should be adapted to only make people pay for bounced emails?

  • Working Nights

    My girlfriend is starting her first week (7 days) of night shifts, and I’m going to try to do the same hours.
    I work from home, on t’intraweb, so why not? I’m going to see how well it can work, if there’s anything which makes it difficult.
    (For example, we’ve already been woken up twice by the doorbell.)

    Obviously I shouldn’t be awake right now, but I am – we’re in the transition phase.

    UPDATE: (17 hours later)
    I’ve actually had a reasonably productive, er, shift. I don’t really know why, but I had longer periods of concentration than usual.
    I did sleep (or at least doze) in the afternoon, and so I’m not even feeling that tired right now. I’ll probably sleep well today though as I will be needing it.

  • Baby!

    Congratulations to my brother and his wife!

    She is 12 weeks pregnant and doing well. (Due date: 23rd February 2007)
    I’m going to be an uncle, which now I think about it, and as suggested by the gf, makes me feel quite old.

    I’ll see them both at my sister’s wedding which is in a few weeks.
    For now, it’s still a little surreal.

  • Puros Panas


    Puros Panas by Ram!.

    Nicely done, and something I’ve been wanting to try myself.

  • Antec Fantastic

    I recently got myself a secondhand Aria SFF case from Antec.

    Unfortunately I found that the card-reader which is built into the front was missing, and the eject button on the optical drive fascia plate had been broken and was MIA.
    I contacted Antec to see if it would be possible to get a replacement drive cover, expecting to have to buy it and other bits and pieces in a bundle.

    Amazingly, I got a short, but very sweet, email back saying that they would send me replacements free of charge!
    They even apologetically mentioned that it would be shipped from the States, so may take a while.

    Just a couple of days later they arrived in perfect condition.

    UPDATE: I’ve realised that I don’t have the cables to attach the front audio and card-reader to the mobo, so am going to see if they can help again.
    UPDATE 2: (Aug 18) I’ve finally got round to asking, let’s see how it goes…

  • Cars Review

    Cars was a real visual treat.

    If you can look past the cartoony style of the characters in the film (all vehicles of some kind, even the wildlife) you’ll see that an enormous amount of effort has been put into the look of the film.
    Genuinely photo-realistic, make that ‘actually-in-front-of-you-realistic’, backdrops and scenery, complemented by great little visual details make this real eye candy.
    There are many who, I’m sure, won’t fully appreciate the graphics – not because they’re not impressive, but because there’s much more to the film.

    Yes, the jokes are mostly for the younger ones, with occasional slap-stick, but there are a couple of great lines for the adults which I won’t spoil here.

    Great casting too: Owen Wilson as the lead, ‘guest’ spots from Michael Keaton, Jeremy Clarkson, Michael Schumacher, and a Pixar perennial John Ratzenberger supply very fitting voices.

    My criticisms lie mostly with the script – at 2 hours and 1 minute (5 more minutes than in the US), it’s a long film – especially given that it’s a PG rated film. There were a couple of flat spots, too deep for a ‘cartoon’ and boring for the youngsters.

    I was happily surprised and I’ll definitely recommend this film to those who aren’t sure.
    [tags]Cars,Film,Movie,Review,Opinion[/tags]

  • Kenya: Safari: Elephants at Dawn

    This is the first in a drip feed of photos from my Kenyan holiday.

    Elephants at DawnElephants at Dawn Hosted on Zooomr

  • SUWiki

    Regulars to the SCC will probably be interested to learn of a new wiki for SketchUp.

    It already has a fair bit of content, including a little from me, so if you need to know anything about SketchUp have a look at SUWiki.

  • Cars Behaving Badly (Site Proposal)

    I have been bouncing an idea around my head (and off a couple of other people’s) and would like to open it up to your thoughts, reactions and suggestions.

    Although I drive very little (I work at home), I see a lot of bad driving. A lot of the time it’s simply inconsiderate, sometimes it’s downright rude, other times it’s downright dangerous.
    I have also seen many vehicles in dangerous physical conditions, and sometimes with illegal modifications.

    Instead of whinging to the gf, I figured it would be much more useful to make a note of these things.
    Making these notes could be useful in discovering who is to blame, and what could be done to prevent the problems in the future.

    Some of you may be thinking ‘Goody Two-Shoes‘ etc, but there are too many people who complain about something and then do nothing to make it better. (Think Honda advert – Hate Something, Change Something, Make Something Betterrrr!)

    The features I’ve considered for the site include:

    • Note of the:
      • Crime / Misdeed / etc
      • Vehicle Make & Model
      • Vehicle Registration
      • Driver description
        • Age / Sex
      • Location
        • Using Google Maps API
      • Rating of the ‘crime’
        • which would also show which crimes annoy us the most

    All Web2.0’ified. All written in swanky OO PHP etc etc.
    It would be anonymous, but limited to one report per Reg per IP per day. (Or something)

    So, what are your reactions? Would you be concerned (for me) about litigation over slander etc? Would you submit reports? Would the police (or other authorities) be interested?

  • Paper Cut Pre-launch

    I have pre-launched my first proper theme, Paper Cut.

    Why ‘pre-launch’? Because it’s not quite finished and I wanted some comments from you all to help improve it.
    I really would like to hear any thoughts you have, so don’t be shy!