Martyn Drake

The stylesheet hasn't been working properly for the domain mapping for quite some time, so I'm giving up and heading back to TypePad instead.

After a three year absence I'm back. I've decided to ditch Movable Type and TypePad and just stick to what I know best - LiveJournal. In addition, we've now using Gmail for your domain for our email needs. Therefore, for $3 a month I've a blog and full email facilities. Not bad going.

This will be the last posting to Livejournal. I've now switched to Blogger Pro, and the results are infinitely more rewarding. My blogger journal is now operating directly from http://www.drake.org.uk.

If Destiny's Child were kittens from Northern England, this is what they would sound like

.. one of the best things I've ever seen in such a long time. Couldn't stop laughing for ten minutes. Oh dear, I'm waaay too easily impressed these days :)

Mmmm...

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22martyn+drake%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=ar383b%24acf%241%40web1.cup.hp.com&rnum=4

Oh, and in case if anybody is wondering why I've not replied to anything in the past few days is that ADSL is on the blink again and it's been referred to BT for investigation. It's been up and down like a blooming yo-yo for the past couple of weeks.

Managed to almost collide with Jonathan Ross and his missus on Thursday on the way back from WH Smith's in Oxford Circus during my lunch break. Considering the number of celebrities that come through the offices (or the screening room), or trundle down Wardour Street, I've never seen anybody that I've recognised until now.

I've been mainly messing with SGI Octanes for the past couple of days. For such small machines they weigh an absolute ton. While I was lifting one out of the racks to move it to another location, my mobile phone rings and it's Lee from The Link offering me a free upgrade for my mobile phone. I explained to him that I was lifting an absolute pig of a machine and it wasn't a convienient time at all to call (although I almost told him where to stick his mobile, but I like to think that I'm too much of a polite person to say such things). So I managed to get rid of them for a while..

Not long now until Singapore.. ;)

1) Roots Manuva - Dreamy Days
2) Royksopp - So Easy
3) Bomb the Bass - Bug Powder Dust (K&D Session)

and there's a lot more, but the above are getting a fair old play with WinAmp at the moment :)

This is a long entry as (a) the Missus is watching Coronation Street which I've already seen and (b) our ADSL connection is currently dead.

We've had ADSL problems all weekend. Short periods of connectivity then none for long periods. I wouldn't mind so much, but the support line for One.Tel is 50p per minute and I don't have their phone number. Attempting to call the main One.Tel line simply gets you a "The office is now closed." and the line disconnects. Fat lot of good that is! The router just sits there attempting to connect, but to no avail. I'm composing this entry off-line until things start working again!

I attempted to contact One.Tel last week to get a new direct debit mandate and to check to see if I am all up to date with payments since I've not received an invoice for August. The operator said that I would need to be connected to the billing department and tried to connect me but as it was busy took my details and said they would pass it along to them so that they could call me back. Not a dicky bird from One.Tel all week.

I did manage to get to watch a couple of my very favourite movies. I'm a sucker for foreign films as they generally have more clue about making films then the British and Amercian film industries. Therefore, it comes no surprise that Cinema Paradiso is one of my all time favourite films. It is just classic. Having only watched the edited 155 minute version before, I managed to get hold of the director's cut that weighs in around 170 minutes. The additional footage really makes a difference and it becomes an even better film for it. The other film was Heavenly Creatures by Peter Jackson. This is a biopic of the two Christchurch, NZ girls that committed murder. It is a seriously beautiful and yet disturbing film that both delights and shocks in equal measures. The visual effects are superbly done, and you just can't stop thinking that some scenes just seem to remind you of Lord of the Rings. A foreshadow of things to come from PJ, eh? Oh, and he makes an hilarious cameo as a tramp outside a Christchurch cinema.

Two films I want to see on DVD are the French titles, My Father's Glory and My Mother's Castle. These, I think, are my number one films (yes, I can have two films in my number one slot - ooer missus). I seem to remember watching these films on Channel 4 one night as part of a French film season and was absolutely fascinated by them both. Their stories are simple, but compelling.

Other films I really love include: Zardoz (very weird, but bloody wonderful), Brazil, Time Bandits (classic Terry Gilliam!), Amelie, Chaplin (2nd favourite film of all time), Cinema Paradiso (third favourite film of all time), Delicatessen, Life is Beautiful, The Hairdressers Husband, and some of Jacques Tatti's films (not all of them are great, but there are some gems in his collection).

Over and out.

Note the domain, martyn-drake.com, will expire in several days and I don't intend to renew it. Please access this site through http://martyn.drake.org.uk instead.

I now have the Vigor 2600 router up and running at home and I can safely say that it is an excellent bit of kit. VPNing and firewalling a home connection has never been easier.

I also have a replacement DVD/CD-RW combo drive from Dell and it's a much better model than what I had before - 32x CD-R and 12x CD-RW writing as opposed to 8x CD-R and 4x CD-RW writing on my old model.

If you're looking for a good film, then look no further than Amélie. It is a brilliant French film from the director that brought us Alien IV and Delicetessen. It is a wonderfully crafted story, often very funny, and at the same time very touching. It's good to know that there are people out there still making decent films instead of the some of the absolute tripe that Hollywood produces. The French are well known for their film industry and I suppose that's why I like French films much more than any other country, including the UK (the UK has a film industry?!).

Looks like I'm going to get one of these Vigor 2600 ADSL routers to play with at home :) It is a fully featured ADSL router with VPN capabilities and all for a very decent price. Of course, I will have to eventually hand it back, but I can certainly test the living daylights of it when I get it :)

In other computer-related news, Dell have not bothered to call me back RE: the CD-R/CD-RW drive on my home machine. I will have to give them a call tomorrow and start shouting at them now as it's been over a week since my original support call to them. I have paid good money for this three year on-site warranty and I'll be darned if I'm going to get fobbed off by Dell support who keep insisting it's a software problem (well, the last chap I spoke to seems to insist that it is, but another technician thought it was hardware and another thing - why the heck did they not keep notes on my calls as I have to keep repeating everything over and over again).

My Britannia Video Club DVDs STILL have not turned up yet. They're being delivered to work, but even so it's taken a long time.

I'm very grateful for extending the on-site warranty for my Dell workstation to 3 years since it looks like the combo DVD drive/CD-RW unit is buggered. Can record to any CD-R or CD-RW, but more often than not you can't read the discs that are created. Don't you just love computers when they go wrong?!

Current favourite tunes: So Easy by Royksopp (music from the T-Mobile advert with the baby face being plastered all over the place), King of Bongo Bong by Mana Chau (or Mana Negra - I can never remember which), Psyche Rock (the one from the most recent Coke Cola advert in which some chap rides about on a lawnmower), and Where's Your Head At by Basement Jaxx (the video's visual effects were created at The Moving Picture Company).

At home today. Jennifer is not feeling very well, and I've got to sort out what the heck went wrong with cheque and PO order to my Smile account. I'm also downloading RC1 of Windows .NET Server (legally, mind - Microsoft are making it available from their web site) which is the successor to Windows 2000 Server, etc. Should be interesting if nothing else.

Also now have a webcam of sorts running at http://www.drake.org.uk/webcam since it seems to be the trendy thing to do these days. Be warned for the site of severe ugliness of Martyn when he's at the computer since it's been known for grown men and women to run away screaming.

The ruddy local Post Office has eaten a cheque and postal order that was destined for my Smile account. It has taken WAAAAAAAAY too long to show up. Whoever processed the cheque and PO at the time seemed inexperienced and wonder if that had anything to do with it. The whole experience has completely left me pissed off with Internet banking - there is no substitute for a bank with branches. Had I paid that cheque and PO into a branch there would be no mess that exists now.

Postmen kicking and breaking cat flaps, and now the Post Office loses my money. What a marvellous service Royal Mail is. Absolutely spiffing. Aggggggggggggggggggggh!!!!

I'm really beginning to get sick of having to install Service Pack 3 for Windows 2000 Server for the fourth or five time today.

I hate Microsoft's implementation of L2TP over IPSec. Much more work is needed to make it more managable and easier to configure. Less registry hacking for a start.. In the mean time, take a look at http://www.ssh.com/products/sentinel/ instead...

Jennifer and I have have just returned from a brilliant weekend in Bournemouth. Before that, however, we have been celebrating two years of being together. For it was on August 1st, 2000 that we had our first date in Greenwich, London. We celebrated last year by taking a romantic dinner trip on a boat down the river Thames and staying at a Radisson hotel in central London. This year, we've spent the night at the Le Meridien Waldorf, just off the Strand in a beautiful suite.

While I'm not exactly a great fan of playing computer games these days, there are just three games that I think are just great. The first is Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. The second is Grand Theft Auto 3, and the third is Crazy Taxi.

Jedi Knight II is a brilliantly conceived and executed game. It's massive and has potential for a an absolutely huge amount of playtime. The fact that you can play with other people on-line just makes the game a worthwhile investment. The graphics, the storyline and the performance have just blown me away. I'm hooked :)

I was very unsure about getting Grand Theft Auto 3, but having read the reviews in magazines such as PC Format and Windows XP Magazine, I was convinced that it might be worth a go. I have to say that this is my all time favourite game. Wow - I've never played anything so damn good before. It caters for my ultra-violent criminal side quite nicely :) But seriously, it's a driving sim, a gangster sim, and just about anything else thrown in for good measure. It has tons of playability in it, and I'm sure that this game will still be played for many more months.

I've always loved Crazy Taxi when I first played it in the arcades of Bournemouth. When I read that it was being converted to the PC I was quite looking for to playing it at home, since it has already been converted and running on various game consoles for quite a while. It's a game that you can play quite happily in short bursts. A quick 20 minute game here leaves you feeling quite fulfilled in the knowledge that you don't have to keep spending 50p a shot at the arcade to play this game!

Am I becoming a gameaholic? I sincerely hope not .. but it's difficult when companies such as Rockstar Games/Take Two Interactive and LucasArts just keep releasing quality stuff :)

I just want to say how very much I hate those flipping hardware dongles that attach to the back of a PC to protect software from being copied/over-using licenses. If most companies can release a centralised license server that allows for easy management and floating licenses, then I can't see any reason at all for just one company to use dongles to protect their software other than to just piss off systems administrators.

One big disadvantage about dongles is that is quite possible for someone to steal the dongle (and accompanying software) rendering a large loss of money for the license. I just don't think hardware dongles are terribly secure as they claim to be. It's much more difficult to abuse software licenses with a central license server as the license manager generates a unique ID for the license server and all licenses are generated against that unique ID. When the software starts up, it just asks for a valid license from the server and hey presto everybody is happy (until more licenses are needed!). Most companies base their licensing scheme against FlexLM who are part of the Macrovision (the DVD/video copy protection folk). This is the closest you get to a license management standard.

Anyway, I feel much better for getting all of that off my chest, so I will now head off home..