Archive for November, 2008



Movember sir, it’s all about the good of the prostate!

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

I was surprised this year by the apparent surge in popularity of the charity-come-cool event that is Movember, a group month-long facial hair growth that raises money for Prostate Cancer awareness, and you guessed it lasts for the month of November.   It was a huge to-do in Australia with many people taking up the sport to see who could grow the biggest oral shrubbery, and often quite prominent in the media in the lead up and during the month.  But I don’t remember it being terribly big here in London last year, which seems to have changed a fair bit this year as it’s been in the papers a few times, and a few of the peeps at work seem to be taking part.

I myself didn’t shave for the first 16 days of the month, but caved in last week when the attempt to grow a full beard failed miserably with sporadic poor looking growth over most of my cheek area, so until I become more of a man, it’s back to the Craig David for the near future.  Not to say he’s not a man, just that strip lining the chin line I’ve taken to naming after him, as I’m sure others have before.  (What the hell happened to that guy)

I think Movember is a perfect example of a charity event where adding a bit of fun to it can get the masses involved (even if in this case, the masses are predominantly male), and a quick peruse of the Movember page backs this up.  In Australia alone over 120,000 people have entered and are collecting donations with over AUD$8million collected so far, with the rest of the world included (apporiximately 170,000 in total) that total is closer to $12million or over five million pounds.

So whether its the 70’s porno, the handlebars, the bikie goatie, the hitler/chaplin toothbrush or any other type of growth your into, those who didn’t participate in the charity event (me), get into it next year, I definitely will.  As an incredibly self centered reader posted in the paper (something to the effect of):

“Yea, I always laugh at this time of year, seeing wallies with uncouth facial hair on the streets, but I’ll give them a little donation anyway if anything, it’s such a real threat I’m practicly paying for support that will one day probably save my life”

I think a day by day time lapse photography style blog and photo stream would be an ace idea, especially if done with 10 guys at a company or something:

Day 1: Meet Dave, the head financier at Rankin Walter, for charity he’s planning for the Magnum P.I look

Day 8: Remember Dave?  The ambitious Tom Selleck wannabe?  The only girls he’ll be pulling his current Dirty Sanchez are ones who don’t mind the smell.

Day 14: Dave’s magnum has taken a turn for the worst, he’s now got a porno-style sslug that makes even the likes of Eric Edwards (II) shiver in his boots

** A big shout out to the H-Man, for his transition from baby face to goatie royal, and raising a big chunk of cash.

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Relearning lessons from old mistakes

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

I’ve wasted a ton of time recently being annoyed at my recurring absense of any kind of motivation, and concentration, though I find the two go nicely hand in hand.  I seem to have fallen into the same trap of late where I want to get a chunk of work done, the desire’s there, but when it comes to actually putting pen to paper (so to speak), I’m off with the faries thinking about whats for dinner, or the last time I had a Guiness, or perhaps how great I looked in my mankini last night.  You get the picture.

Wind back 6 months ago when I was noticed myself having the same problem (it’s definitely a common recurring theme for me, but its been especially bad over the last couple of weeks), and I was thinking about what I was doing back then to try and improve the situation.  I spent a few minutes trawling google earlier yesterday for some answers to curing motivation/concentration issues, and the common theme seemed to be depression and other mental health issues.  This is nonsense of course, I’m just as happy and laid back ask I’ve always been though I definitely feel the stress of money and financial situations a hell of a lot more than I used to.  If anything being motivationless is depressing, but not so much vice versa, I don’t think.

Money is definitely an ingredient of motivation though, I can usually push out required work with ease if theres an instant reward at the end, but this seems to fade when the money is not bankable within a month or so!

So, I’ve spent a few days just thinking about what I’m going to do about the situation, and i’m noticing (obviously) that some of the things I’m figuring out, I worked out last time I felt this way, so like a viscious cycle, I’m once again learning from past mistakes

I’ll attack it this way, and like a childish game give myself a score of 1 – 10 for my percieved moto-rating.

Thinking about:

  • Being positive at all times, despite what s*#t the day throws
  • Systematic approach to get a job done by cutting down everything into miniscule tasks
  • Attempt to fight laziness and apathy by not checking email/forums every two seconds, just because
  • At work, Insist (unless its important) that communication is carried out via email/IM, as being interrupted 30 times an hour is a recipe for mind blocks and mental muddle

Now the question one might pose to me, is why on Earth am I posting this?!? I answer in one way, if this I.T jig falls through but my self motivation is successful, coach the other 87.3% of corporate/business workers in my way of thinking.

I’m going to be the next Anthony Robbins… Bitch!

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QNAP TS-409 Pro

Monday, November 17th, 2008

Two months ago, I wrote about the Icybox NAS-4220B Network storage unit, my first choice in the search for a set it, and forget it storage and home server solution, and if anyone’s used an Icybox before I have no doubt they’d be at least as dissappointed as I was in my few months of battle with it.  I won’t get into it again, no one likes a whinger but it was so flawed but writing everything to 1,000,000 floppy disks would probably have been a quicker, easier and more reliable solution.

Recently an oppurtunity came up to buy another NAS unit, the QNAP TS-409 Pro, from a friend at work for a good price, so after quick thought and some research (more than I had done for the Icybox!), I snapped it up.  And after a month of use, I havent regretted it.  It’s a four drive SOHO (prosumer, maybe) backup solution which currently has 4x 500GB drives in a RAID5 configuration.

The best things:

  • Gigabit network connectivity (realworld gigabit, this time (20 – 40MB/s, much better than the 5 – 10MB/s from the Icybox)
  • 4x SATA Bays capable of RAID0, 1, 5, 6 and JBOD configs
  • Inbuilt media, iTunes, music streaming server
  • Torrent/HTTP queue downloader
  • NSLU2 support with iPKG management (basic linux OS with Debian like package installer).
  • FTP/Samba/NFS/HTTP file access
  • support for USB drives/keys and one touch/scheduled backup of core files, either from the unit itself or from locations around the local network.
  • and a whole bunch of other features like web server, database, time server etc etc.

I’m especially interested in the IPKG manager and NSLU2 based linux console as it really closes the gap between useless (or limited use) network device, and fully configurable server or computer, and I’ve got a bunch of scheduled tasks UnRAR’ing downloads, backing up photos and documents, rebuilding/exporting the music collection and downloading new album artwork and doing other system and network diagnostic tasks.  Infinitely useful!

Nothings perfect though, and it can’t all be good, in the case of the QNAP, its loud as hell and building the initial RAID array took a fair few hours but that’s to be expected, and under the circumstances, I think I can let it pass.

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The Longest Read

Monday, November 17th, 2008

I’m not sure what happened to me in the last six weeks, I got back from Greece and apart from a brief post a few weeks ago, I’d all but forgotten about HD911.  I seem to have been floating in some kind of bubble for the past 4-6 weeks and have forgotten all but a few responsibilities and I’m starting to go stir crazy in my own head at the boredom that i’ve created, in my head… Or something like that.

I figured I’d pick up where I left off, and give an after thought on the book I was about to read at the time called Playing for Pizza by John Grisham, and after reading the blurb on its cover, I sniggered and panned it like an arrogant film critic pans a Rob Schneider flick.  Well, shame on me for doing so, and I hate to be cliche’d, but there must be some truth in that saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover…”

Quite frankly if there’s one author who can turn a short story about a failed NFL footballer who gets shipped off to Italy to play in their (minor) league and gets friends, a girl, a love for pizza and a championship trophy into a good story, even in my short experience in reading, I’d have to say it’d be John Grisham.

I’d love to say it’s taken me all this time to read and was a really complex story, it wasn’t, but I was interested from start to finish, and I liked not having to thnk about what I was reading.  So kudos to you, and shame on me for my quick judgement and poor form.

I’m almost 800 pages into the 1,000 page mammoth that is Shantaram Gregory David Roberts, which has kept me right on the edge of my seat since I first picked it up, until last Thursday, when I left it at the pub, moments before stumbling on to the last train home, only to pass out and wake up one stop from Windsor (yes, the place with the castle) in the lovely town of Datchet, to finally get home an hour later cost of £50 as a result of a late night cab ride from the outskirts.  But that’s a story for another day.

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