Be Excellent To Each Other

I will wave as I pass the derby Train on the way to work

Cheeky monkey... That's where your plan falls down it's not my outfit that isn't here, it's Mr. flis' and his youngest boys'. So ner.

I have been wrapping presents tonight! I love giving presents. Mostly because I can now spend the next few months until my birthday reminding Mr. flis how awesome his presents were and how I definitely deserve super awesome ones in return. That's totally how it works, right?

I got him a Citizen Eco drive watch, thanks for the recommendation there guys; a pair of Oakley sunglasses; a TT 2014 to shirt - which is something of an in-joke; a chauffeurs cap - another in-joke; and a pair of walking boots. And a badge that says 'I can count to potato'.

As well as his birthday, I also have my eldest boy turning 15 on the same day; double present giving joy!! However, 15yo boys are rubbish for buying gifts for as he knows exactly what he wants, and if I deviate at all, he'll be like one of those kids who got an iPhone 5C at Christmas, instead of an iPhone 5S. *woe* He's asked for Wolfenstein and clothes. The clothes he has to choose himself when we go to Englandshire next month. Quite easily pleased but he has everything else a teenage boy could want, within reason. It'll be driving lessons next year, I think.

Note that I'm not in a strip club.

Craster.

https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

You can now register to vote online people
Next stop, voting online I hope!

Done, registered. Loved the ability to apply for postal vote. Survey also filled out.

No hang on, they've just logged that I'd like a postal vote, so I have to print out the form they've sent me in an email and then post it off.

Trooper your system is a joke.

Russell, you were already registered to vote. Hence you voted the other day.

Yeah, but I thought I was going to be able to auto sign up for postal voting before Trooper's stupid system RUINED EVERYTHING.

Seriously? Have you never used any 'online' government system before?

Gateway.

But Trooper promised me this system would be new and amazing, and I trust him not to let me down.

Seriously? Have you never met Trooper before?

baby steps Russ! Lots of things in government still need a wet signature and it takes a lot of legislative work to change that, it's being done but it isn't a fast process.

Fine, I'm not voting ever again.

Well, that's annoying. It seems that someone has sent out a spam message with one of my email addresses as the from address.
I have his real email address by virtue of the reply-to field, is there anything i can do with that to annoy him?

What? How has that happened?

It's pretty common, you can set the from address to be anything you like in an email, it just so happens that this spammer has chosen a from address at my domain.

It's called spoofing.

Aah, I see. Chances are the email address is worthless, and the domain in the email is the information he is trying to disseminate.

Unlikely, the spammer just wants to send out spam and using other people's email addresses is the safest way.

It's a "reply back for more info" scam, the actual email itself doesn't have any phishing links in it, and while the sending locations are different and forged in each email, the reply-to is always the same.

If you get to him, make sure you include retribution for 'reply back', as well as everything else.

Could always sign the address up with all the met office alerts. From experience they spam the utter shite out of you at times.

https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts ... criber/new

Going to see a financial adviser tomorrow... That should be good for a laugh, if nothing else.

We're going to discuss our options regarding mortgages. I'm approaching the whole thing with an open mind; I have no idea how it's going to go or what we could get but ideally we want to buy something at the end of the year. It'll be nice to be able look with realistic expectations as opposed to daydreaming over 5 bedroom, 6 bathroom detached houses I'd definitely need a cleaner...

I dumped it into mailbait and let that run for an hour or so while I watched a film. It'll do fuck all, but it made me feel a bit better

Question.

(a) When one has a facebook friend who pollute ones timeline constantly with a continual barrage of 'Mother Earth'...'we must limit our use of precious resources' stuff (not that you're necessarily inclined to disagree but a little break from 17 facebook posts a day would have been nice before the unsubscribe feature existed, and hey, I only came to facebook for the chicks in bikini pics anyway, dudette)...

(b)...and that facebook friend has just shat out a second progeny...

...when is the best time to point out that views (a) do not coincide with actions (b) for maximum destructive effect?

Heh.

I am annoyed at the moment. My 360 is now louder than my washing machine, so to play DVDs and files from USB sticks I bought a new Sony DVD player with a USB input.

Can I get it to play any files? Nope!

It says it plays a massive range of files, but nothing I try to use gets past it. Either 'unsupported format' or 'data error'. I've tried three different conversion tools, packaged it into about eight different formats, gone as basic and stripped down as I can, and still nothing.

Anyone struggled with this kind of thing before? I really want to watch the new episode of a popular television show I have obtained in a legal fashion.

Buy a PS3, best non-Windows media player ever.

Is there any such thing as an av amp that can mix two inputs? Sometimes I'd like to listen to music while playing a game.

Not that I've ever come across- It'd likely end up very muddy. Which is why I used a mixing desk when I wanted such a thing.

I played Outrun in a hydraulic car yesterday at The Trafford Centre before I went to the cinema.

It was fucking amazing. God I miss arcades.

Gotten as far as Birmingham New St. There was a stunning lass in a tartan dress walking through the concourse. Absolutely beautiful. Lots of people looking so she is probably famous. Now I am on the Walsall train Wotton bound. Had I stayed on the train I was on at half six I would be half an hour into breakfast in London now. Odd things, trains.

Holy shit, I'd love to play Outrun like that again. And Galaxy Force II.

It was recently mandated that all the corporate Macs here should have a company desktop wallpaper, but we're not setup to deploy such a thing as a group policy, even with Open Directory. So I've made a scheduled task for Apple Remote Desktop to send the wallpaper out a few times a week (provided it's not already present on the target Mac, of course), then deploy a tiny app, which launches as soon as the copy is complete, which forces the wallpaper to immediately change to the mandated one. Of course, people just change the wallpaper back to whatever they like, so I've also gone to the trouble of reading up how to add that app to everyone's Login Items, so it'll run at every login.

I haven't taken this final step though, because doing so would deprive me of my newfound pleasure of randomly VNC-ing into someone's Mac, seeing that they've changed their wallpaper, and then manually running that app myself, so it changes right back, right in front of my eyes.

I think something has gone terribly wrong that I'm finding this as fun as I am. Like going hunting, where my prey are hipster designer types.

And then play an MKV video. Oh, oops!

Something like this would do the job. You'd need some cables too.

http://www.soundlightuk.com/shop/products/Soundlab-4-Channel-Stereo-Microphone-Mixer.html

It would except that my PS3 and PS4 have HDMI cables that go straight into the av amp.

Most 360 games allow you to listen to your own music while you play - some PS3 games do to, according to the Internet.

Only stuff that's on the 360 itself isn't it? Not sure about the PS3, the PS4 you have to use some shitty Sony version of Spotify.

I just want to be able to plug in any device with an audio out and mix that.

None that I've ever tried it with, mind.

I use mine almost exclusively for playing downloaded MKVs. So nyer!

But remember if you're playing 'naughty' videos then your PS3 might discover this and block the sound*. You won't get that on your 360, mind.





*insert something about muting the sound when watching naughty video's anyway.

What are you talking about?

I Googled it and I presume you mean this Cinavia thing? Interesting; I only ever download TV in HD so had never come across this. Although I did watch a downloaded Bluray rip of a very recent film last week and it was fine so I assume they've found a way round it?

Pirated downloads, init.

Well I'm certainly glad you cleared that up.

My new office looks over Pride Park...

I don't know what's happening here.

I wasn't facepalming at you. More facepalming in sympathy.