Toby's journal

Saw DJ Shadow live last night at the Brixton Academy. Excellent gig.. Shadow was on form, up on a raised stage with a massive desk of decks, knobs, samplers, and the ubiqitous Apple laptop.
Really nice, well thought-out visual show too. Three panels underneath the raised stage, and six above, forming a square, but with the bottom three usually different, but related, to the rest. (eg. View above ground in the top rectangle, and mechanical systems under the earth controlling it all, in the bottom rectangle.)

Work has been v.v.busy this last week, culminating in my company doing a demo to BBC News and BBC Sports, which went well. I'm really looking forward to the day when we can put this all live to the public, and I can point you to it and say "I made that."

PS. Can anyone identify the tracks used from around 90-100 minutes into this mix? (30th March 2003, DJ Shadow on Radio 1's Essential Mix) From the late 60s by the sound of them.

Girl at reception says to me as I walk in.. "Do you ever come in through that door *without* a coffee?"

Last night I went to see Bruce Sterling rant about RFID and other technology/futurism that came to mind. Met Reagan and Becky there. Sterling can sure rant with the best of them. I like him.

Last night a dozen ebay auctions of my old PC components finished, so I spent a good while just packaging them all up.. and then again today, posting them all. A lot went for 99 pence, which really makes me wonder if it is all worth my time.. but I'd feel guilty just binning all this stuff, and no-one ever showed interest when I've tried to give it away on LJ or London.pm.

I was exhausted, and crashed out several hours earlier than normal (ie. 12:30am) last night.
Work's SDSL line has been b0rked for days; the network techs have no idea what is causing the massive (> 60%) packet loss, except that
a) it comes and goes randomly, and is uneffected by equipment resets or reconnections
b) except it works fine from 11pm to 7am (approx)
WTF?

My guess is cross-talk from some other line; that would explain the semi-random interference (ie. when the other line is active), and why it works overnight (when whoever is on the end of that other line is asleep/out of the office).

I had a day off work today. Not entirely coincidentally, Oblivion was due to arrive today.

It's good. And I've lost a lot of today to it. It's going to be hard not to lose the rest of the weekend, too.

Last night I went to another leaving do for some people at work... and the company asked that someone secretly record who went along, because they were putting some money behind the bar, and needed to know who went, so they could tell the tax people. Lovely. Four more days until I've left too..

Full Mooners at the Comedy Store last night was great.. an absolutely hilarious end to this run of the night. I was feeling decidedly ill (as I have been all week), but was laughing my arse off anyway. (It was much funnier than last week's).

I've booked my motorbike in for a major service on Friday. (It's due for a 16k mile one; and hopefully it'll solve the starting in the freezing cold problems.) Over the phone, they said they required a deposit towards the parts they'd be ordering in. I turned up at the shop, and they said "Oh, we know you! You don't need to give us a deposit." Thanks guys.. I'm glad I didn't have to go to far to be told that.

I'm wondering what to do for my birthday. I don't have any major plans, but perhaps go out for dinner on Thursday around Angel somewhere, then head along to the pub meet after? (I don't want to step on anyone else's toes; I know I'm doing this too late)

I've ordered a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 AFD* and Nikon SB-600 wireless flashgun today in leiu of presents. Although the plush Master Shake was a big surprise! :D

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After discovering, debugging and then with some help solving the bug regarding Class::DBI::Loader running under mod_perl, I have realised that it was also causing the bugs with server-side query caching. I've re-enabled that on DieselCatalyst and Rate my sanity; If you see any errors on the latter, please email me ASAP? (Testing by LJ..)

I'm still surprised no-one else has ever, apparently, hit the DB problems with the aforementioned Perl modules. They only show up under load, so does that mean I'm the only one actually using these things in websites that receive Real Traffic and/or am I the only one *doing* load testing? *shrug*

Closed some bugs today, but also realised some conceptual problems in DC's email validation process and created some new tickets. Win some, lose some.


[*: I already have a manual focus version of this lens on my Nikon FE, but it doesn't meter so well on the D70. This AFD version is optically almost identical, and will accept my collection of 52mm filters that I've collected over time. It's also quite good for portraits once you factor in the DSLR's magnification factor to the focal length.]

Interesting.. my work just went around and dropped leaflets onto everyones' desks, saying that they realise they've been crapped and we're whinging about stuff, and this is a list of things they are definately doing to fix it!

* Microwaves and large fridges to be installed
* Vending machines in leiu of the former catering that left a while ago
* Staff discounts on nearby cafes (although probably less useful)
* Plus various internal changes re communication


Well, that's something. Whether they stick to it is something else entirely though!