Category Archives: General

Trains

2 Replies

I’ve been running around on the Train & Underground system recently for my daily commute into work. (Currently 2 1/2 hours each way… I need to move closer ;))

Firstly, I much prefer Welsh trains. They have a conductor, who’s nice. The best experience I’ve had of a train in Wales, was of the conductor holding the train a couple of seconds to allow the ticket machine to finish processing my debit card and spit out my tickets. The best experience I’ve had in England, was a train that was on time.

I’ve not had a bad experience in Wales, but in England, I was once accosted by 5 toughs, whilst on the train and told to hand them my ticket. At this point I was travelling on a “Permit to Travel”, as there’s no ticket machine or office at my starting station. From the outset, they made me feel like I was a criminal. They phased me enough that I managed to miss my stop. I was late to work that day. Thanks, Southern Trains.

Last week, I had the lovely experience on the Tube, of having a guy sitting next to me lean across/against the seat divider enough that I couldn’t avoid him touching me. I find human contact uncomfortable in the extreeme unless I’m expecting it and I know whom its from well.

The photo is one I dug out of my archive. I will upload the full-size version to my flikr account if requested.

Another Meme

Leave a reply

Stolen from http://dannimatzk.co.uk/?p=245

1. What time did you get up this morning?
7:20 am

2. Diamonds or pearls?
Diamonds

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
Iron Man.

4. Favourite TV show?
Firefly, Startrek, Doctor Who.

5. What do you usually have for breakfast?
Cereal

6. What is your middle name?
Paul

7. What food do you dislike?
Raw tomatoes.

8. What is your favourite CD at the moment?
ZOEgirl – room to breathe.

9. Favourite sandwich?
Chicken, sweetcorn and mayonnaise.

10. What characteristic do you despise?
Selfishness

11. Favourite item of clothing?
Jumpers.

12. If you could go anywhere in the world on holiday, where would it be?
Germany

13. What colour is your bathroom?
White

14. Do you make friends easily?
No

15. Where would you retire to?
Somewhere warm.

16. What was your most recent memorable birthday?
21st

17. Favourite sport to watch?
Snooker.

18. How many towns have you lived in?
Three

19. How many do you think will send this back?
0

20. What’s on your bedroom floor right now?
Books. Wires. Multigangs. Some clothes. Bag of Books. Some computer parts.

21. Favourite saying?
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time. Terry Pratchet – The Hogfather

22. When is your birthday?
1987

23. Are you a morning person or a night person?
Night.

24. What is your shoe size?
Size seven and a half

25. Pets?
none

26. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share with us?
I’ve managed to process one photo out of the nine I wanted to.

27. What did you want to be when you were little?
A firefighter.

28. Which talent would you most like to have?
To be able to pick up different languages quickly.

29. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Aye.

30. What is your favourite flower?
Bluebells.

31. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to?
Monday 19th. End of Phase 3 of a project we’re working on at work.

32. What colour are your eyes?
Brown.

33. What was your favourite toy as a child?
Woofy. A teddy. Quite small and fragile. Still got it, somewhere, although its falling apart.

34. Summer or winter?
Summer. I hate the cold.

35. Hugs or kisses?
Hugs.

36. Chocolate or Vanilla?
Chocolate.

37. Do you want your friends to send this back to you?
It would be nice.

38. When was the last time you cried?
A month and a bit ago. Old memories.

39. What is under your bed?
No idea.

40. Who is the friend you have had the longest in SL?
Not played in SL.

41. What did you do last night?
Ate. Read my email. Slept.

42. Favourite smell?
Lavender.

43. What are you afraid of?
Needles. Strangers. Lots of people in a room. Not knowing where I’ll be tomorrow.

44. Plain, sweet, or salted Popcorn?
Salted.

45. How many keys on your key ring?
9.

46. How many years at your current job?
0.1 ish.

47. Do you have any scars?
One on my cheek, and one on my tummy.

48. Favourite day of the week?
Sunday.

You are quite welcome to do this, and please trackback so I can see :)

Move Complete :)

Leave a reply

My blog’s move is finally complete 🙂

As I said, my new RSS feed is available from https://kirrus.co.uk/feed/

With the move, my commenting system is now open, and does not require registration. Be patient for comments to be posted – the first time you post, your comment will be moderated. Also, I have a set of spam filters that may be a little too exacting; if a comment hasn’t gone up after a while feel free to contact me.

As well as the blog move to WordPress, had all three interviews. On the final interview I was offered the job and I accepted it. I started two days after the interview (thursday). Yay! Currently, my commuting time is a total of 5 hours a day, so I’m already thinking about moving closer to the office.

Interview – I had to take a brief test, which was interesting. The first section was grammar, one of which we had to find what was wrong with “LCD Display” and “PIN number”. Later, it turned out, that the website of the company which I’m now working at has a very similar error, with “ZDR reboot”. Fun fun.

I will be working on a theme for this blog shortly – this is a stock “K2” theme. I saw that elwoodicious is using K2, and it seems to be quite handy 🙂 (Look at the footer for a link to info about K2)

Photographs – My memory card reader is ready and waiting next to my laptop for me to download another batch of photos from my camera, so the next post will be the best out of that batch.

Computer – I’m back on my laptop, because my new hard-drive has failed in a very similar way to the old one. I’m guessing that theres’ a problem with the PSU or SATA PCI control card.

General Update Ramble

Leave a reply

The following is a random update, covering everything from my explorations of Linux to life stuff. Feel free to skip if you don’t care 🙂

Hardy Release Party

Was really nice, once I’d got past my initial reluctance to go and the butterflies in my stomach as I traveled to it. I said on IRC before I left, that the first person to recognise me, would get a drink on me. Daviey failed, he was outside having a cigarette when I finally arrived. To be fair, he wasn’t on the IRC channel when I said about the free drink… I managed to get lost, walking from the tube (Embankment) on the way to the pub – asked directions three times. Had the obligatory chat with Daviey about asterisk (I like asterisk!) and some of the pros and cons of the FreePBX interface add-on. (As suggested by Popey on the mailing list. Thanks!)

I went in with Daviey, and saw Alan Pope. He was in the middle of a conversation, but was about to say “hello Kirrus” to get his free drink, when Josh (Jerichokb) popped up, and nabbed it first :). Funnily enough, we had this conversation on IRC before I left:

<jerichokb>    Kirrus: thank you in advance for the beer :)
<Kirrus>       jerichokb, don't count your chickens...

Heh… I guess he can count them after all 🙂

I had a really nice time, which is *really* unusual for me in a room with that many people in it. (I don’t do lots of people… I normally can’t cope, and leave asap, or sit in a corner hiding…). Sad to leave at 9, but I got lost 4 times(!) on my way back to the tube station, (asking for directions each time… one guy gave me dogy ones…).  Next time I find a good map. Missed the train I was aiming for, and ended up taking the last train, got home midnight. (Yes, three hours travel. Missing the train will do that for you.)

Distro Experimentation / Hard Drive Failure

Well, my CentOS install died with my harddrive, about 2 days after my posting about it. CentOS is useable, and is quite nice, though I didn’t reinstall it when my new drive arrived. Unfortionatly, it turns out that my new drive has some bad blocks on it. Repaired the filesystem using “e2fsck -c” on the live cd, and reinstalled gutsy. Upgraded to Hardy RC. A lot of work. I’m going to have to boot back into the LiveCD sometime and check the filesystem again, to see if there’s any more corruption. If so, I’m going to have to get another Harddrive, and RMA this one. Just what I didn’t need with my dwindling savings and no job. Update:(Thanks, as always, to the Ubuntu-UK irc guys for the help and advise as I tried to repair my partitions)

Jobs

I’ve had 2 interviews so far, one at Codian, one at Canonical. I’d  really like to get the Canonical one (working in a datacentre, looking after servers), as it sounds like an enjoyable thing to do, that and giving me plenty to learn. But, I don’t think I will. (Heh – my natural state after any interview. Then getting the job is a pleasent surprise rather than a disappointment.) Millbank tower is NICE, and the commute into Vauxhall fairly simple.. I just take a slow train from a town about 3 and a half miles away… an hours walk, or 15/30 minutes cycle depending on the traffic, and which way you’re going. (To is easier. One big hill up, then mostly downhill to the station.) I’m still awaiting a reply from Canonical HR about blogging guidelines as applied to interviewees, so I won’t go into too much detail about that interview here. Suffice to say, it was interesting.
The Codian interview was by far the most difficult, I was asked a tonn of questions by three different people, over 2 hours. Decimal to binary (on a whiteboard).. I’m a bit rusty at, not having done it much before, but got there in the eventual end. Decimal to Hexadecimal, mathmatics is not my strong point, but again, got there in the end. (6E == 110).Very friendly receptionist 🙂

I’ve one interview/meeting left, at Positive Internet. Sounds interesting…

If you know of any Junior/Trainee Linux/Ubuntu-Based jobs in London going around, let me know.

To Do:

  • Process, upload and blog photos. Recharge camera’s battery (rarely need to do!)
  • Continue Job Hunting.
  • Look at the feasibility of moving onto a new blogging platform, but staying with my current email and domain host.
  • Hunt for jobs.
  • Bug Triage.
  • Think about applying for temp work to tide me over.