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English for Aliens

Fri, 15 May 2009 16:15:08 Z

I've been looking for these for years, not remembering exactly what the aliens were called and always ending up with pages about Dan Akroyd rather than Harry Enfield.

Altogether now... TREE! ... SHOP! ... CAR! ... Baby Jeeesus ...

[English For Aliens Pt 1]

[English For Aliens Pt 2]

[English For Aliens Pt 3 - Dinner Party]

Do I Need Planning Permission?

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:03:09 Z

Good evening all! It seems I haven't written much of late so here's a little tidbit of the stuff that has been keeping me busy for the past few months.

First of all there was the quick revamp of Blackstar Search, but mainly I have been putting together a new planning website called simply Do I Need Planning Permission? for Orchard Planning Solutions.

Continue reading about Do I Need Planning Permission? over on theogray.com/blog.

Christmas Puzzle 2008 - Theirs not to reason why

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:25:09 Z

This year's annual Charity Christmas Puzzle has now been posted, and is available to download.

This, the 18th annual Puzzle that Gordon Gray has set, has a theme designed to help completion and will appeal to people who enjoy doing Crossword puzzles, such as in the Daily Telegraph (though it is not a Crossword puzzle). Puzzlers have plenty of time to find the answers and Puzzles should be returned, with donation, by 25 January.

Four winners will each receive a £25 prize.
Everyone who enters will qualify for a £25 prize draw.

So what are you waiting for, give it a go and download the Christmas Puzzle now.

Tired and rambling...

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 15:59:18 Z

It's Saturday, and supposedly the weekend... unfortunately I still have the FBYM newsletter to put together, then there's the many photos from the summer courses that need sorting and publishing on the site plus I really should get some up on the FBYM Facebook page to keep that alive... There's the fact that I really should be in work right now finishing the next release, rather than sat at home knackered and catching up on the miriad of other things that I've got on my list, but work is just going to have to wait until Monday now... And instead of doing stuff to get it out of the way I'm now sat here writing this...!

On a lighter note, Neverwhere is an excellent read and has allowed me to drop out of reality with Tanglefoot next to me for ½ hour in the sun before realising that I really have to get on with computer stuff inside again... I guess the point of this ramble is... RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! Oh, and I'm also very confused by the Japanese version of One Missed Call that I watched last night!

Microsoft Sphere

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:55:37 Z

This feels like it really should be a joke, but allegedly it's real.

Microsoft Sphere currently includes a "send to dark side" feature, and obligatory Pong game! Who comes up with this stuff, and how do I get to work there?! Sounds like a place where much jollity occurs coming up with ideas.

Full article: Microsoft's Sphere display in action

Big F1 news...

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:48:57 Z

Quite suprisingly Donington Park is to host the British GP from 2010 - more here. I never guessed the speculation would actually turn into a reality.

And on the same day, Bernie also announced he's gonna stop badgering Melbourne to host a night race for a few years which should be music to Pete's ears!

OCX wrappers for .Net - The joy of AxInterop

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:01:36 Z

Another strange one that we've just come across which seems to have no useful online help about is why certain Property definitions are marked as ReadOnly when you drop an OCX into .Net...

Read the full OCX wrappers for .Net - The joy of AxInterop entry on theogray.com/blog.

Max stays...

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:52:13 Z

Crap... Max Mosley wins FIA vote

Miss Bedfordshire

Wed, 07 May 2008 09:10:12 Z

For those that don't know, I recently had the honour/pleasure/daunting task of being a judge at the Miss Bedfordshire regional heat of this year's Miss England competition. It was great fun apart from the mad rush of trying to score the contestants in up to 5 different categories at a time during the 30-40 seconds that they walked up on stage, posed, and walked off again! For those eagle eyed readers, you may even spot this judge sporting a healthy pint of Guinness!

Congratulations to Hayley Sams who won the title of Miss Bedfordshire 2008. The photos are starting to come in now, with shoots by Chas Spradbery and Joshua Cornejo.

For all the follow up articles and pictures, keep an eye on the Miss Beds website!

Bruce Willis to play Murray Walker?!

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:54:43 Z

I had to check the date on this one, but apparently it's been confirmed and everything! If the Secret Diary of Michael Schumacher is anything to go by, we could be in for a very cringeworthy movie!

A movie about German racing legend Michael Schumacher is to be produced, with veteran commentator Murray Walker set to be played by none other than Hollywood hard man... Bruce Willis.

The film will be made by a Hollywood producer, and will chart Schumacher's rise all the way up to the pinnacle of the sport, a career that saw him amass no fewer than 91 grand prix victories, a staggering 154 rostrum finishes and a record seven world championship crowns.

The news – initially revealed in Bunte magazine – has been confirmed in Barcelona this weekend by the 39-year-old's long-time manager Willi Weber, who added that the man from Kerpen is to play himself in the flick.

Perhaps even more surprising still, however, is the revelation that Weber has lined up Die Hard star Willis to play the role of Walker, who commentated on every one of Schumacher's successes.

“A Hollywood producer is interested,” the Daily Star quotes Weber as having said, “and the film would be called The Michael Schumacher Story, with him as the main actor. Bruce Willis would certainly do Murray justice.”

Walker was warmly referred to as ‘The Voice of Formula 1' during the half century he commentated on the sport for both the BBC and ITV, and his character is expected to narrate the film, in addition to appearing in a number of scenes with Schumacher.

“If you pop a pair of glasses on Bruce, the similarity to a younger Murray Walker is amazing,” an insider said, adding that the 53-year-old action hero would make ‘a very convincing' Walker. “Bruce is a huge F1 fan and insists the sport hasn't been the same since Murray retired in 2001.”

BBC Owl

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:35:53 Z

My Friday afternoon has just been made great - just spotted the BBC's Internet Blog using the Owl logo that took minutes to load from tape before making comedy beeping noises in the good ol' BBC Model B days.

MySong

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:57:47 Z

Just spotted MySong (includes video and demonstration results). Looks like a fun app to have a play with if it gets released.

Pretty good results with the basic piano backing track as long as the artist sings in time with the click track!

ISPs responsible for copyright

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:09:49 Z

What is actually going on behind all the smoke and mirrors of these "new" things the government is trying to force on the country?

One minute they're "consulting" on the idea, the next we're told that ISPs must do something to snoop on their customers, or have legislation forced on them, and that this is coming regardless of what anyone says during the consultation.

ID cards suddenly spring back to life with a new spin put on them, but with no change to the idea of storing people's personal data and biometric information in a system that "only the privileged will be able to access", and we're told that they are now definately happening regardless of what anyone thinks; last thing I heard nothing concrete had been decided about all of the additional data. A couple of days before, articles about NPfIT data being purposefully made available to trained receptionists just because no one else could be bothered to do an admin job, even tho the government promised that this would not happen, don't seem to even make it to BBC news.

And then there's all the other mini stories of the past few months along similar lines, but seemingly unconnected at the time.

What is the government really aiming for with all this?

A Musical Fable

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:43:50 Z

I don't very often bother to read the comments on Techdirt, but was interested in what the sensible folk might have to say about Another Look At The 'Does File Sharing Equal Stealing?' Question. With most of the commentors missing the point of the article about as badly as those of The Dilbert Blog, I soon got bored, but luckily this little fable cheered me up:

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a very rich man who liked to whistle. He was actually very good at it, and would make up elaborate tunes that he would whistle as he strolled through town with his bodyguards. One day, he heard a shopkeeper whistling, and realized the song was one of his, the rich man's, tunes.

This outraged the rich man. His creations belonged to him and only him, he decided. If someone else wanted to whistle them, they would have to pay him a fee. When confronted with this demand, the shopkeeper merely laughed and kept on whistling. And so the rich man ordered his bodyguards to beat the shopkeeper, smashing his face until his lips were so bruised and torn that whistling was impossible.

As it turned out, this shopkeeper was not the only person in town who liked whistling tunes that the rich man had composed. Whenever the rich man heard other people engaging in such unauthorized whistling, he would send his bodyguards after them. But of course there were too many people in this town for such a strategy to be widely effective. The offensive whistling continued more or less unabated.

But being a clever fellow, the rich man realized there were better ways to go about enforcing his will. He went to the town council and suggested that tunes created by any individual should be legally protected. If someone was caught whistling someone else's tune, the town constable and his deputies should force that person to pay the tune's originator a fee.

When the town council wondered, quite reasonably, why they should spend public time, money, and manpower on such a trivial matter, the rich man had a very reasonable answer. He invited the entire town council to a lavish banquet at his mansion, plied them with fine foods and rare wines, and then explained his thoughts:

Didn't they like listening to whistled tunes? Didn't they want to encourage the creation of as many tunes as possible? Further, didn't they want town trade to prosper from the legal sales of a new items, such as whistled tunes?

Well, of course the town council wanted all of these things. And the rich man's arguments seemed all the more reasonable for having been presented after a splendid meal and excellent drink. The council members immediately held an impromptu meeting and voted in a new law exactly as the rich man had proposed.

And while the rich man would've preferred that everyone lived happily ever after at this point (and always told the story that way), this was not the case. Every time someone was beaten and fined by the constable's deputies for whistling an unauthorized tune, town citizens began to dislike both whistling and the rich man just a bit more. Everyone became very aware of what they were whistling and who was listening to them, and so whistling -- all whistling, authorized and unauthorized -- occurred more rarely, only quietly, and usually in private.

When the rich man noticed the relative lack of whistling in the town's streets, he began to suspect something dishonest. He sent his bodyguards out in disguise to spy on citizens, and discovered the covert unauthorized whistling, both of his tunes and possibly other people's tunes. Clearly this was a serious problem, and so he persuaded the town council to work even harder to enforce the laws that they had created. New deputies were hired and sent out in disguise to punish unauthorized whistling.

Eventually, townspeople stopped whistling altogether. Instead, they started to hum tunes. The rich man heard this newfangled music-making and was outraged.

And the whole story happened again, and again, and again.

Exchange 2007 OWA on Windows Server 2008

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:06:19 Z

How to spend a few hours fighting with a new server. Thought I'd post this to help out any other poor soul that's stuck with the same problem.

The Setup
Exchange Server 2007 SP1 running on Windows Server 2008, and having users trying to run Outlook Web Access (OWA).

The Problem
Only users that are members of the Administrators group can connect to OWA successfully.

The Resolution
Ensure that all users that need to use OWA are at least members of the Builtin\Users group.

Sounds simple right! Well for some reason, Microsoft have kindly changed the default permissions on the %windir% directory on Server 2008 so that "Authenticated Users" no longer have Read access as they used to on Server 2003. This means that anyone not in any of the other groups that has access by default can no longer read the ASP.Net ISAPI filters; so when the user logs in, IIS responds with a 401.3 to say Unauthorized: Access is denied due to an ACL. "Domain Users" do not have any permissions on the directory either, so newly created users in an AD domain will not have access by default (if OWA is running on a domain controller; hopefully they'll get this right when SBS 2008 finally comes out later in the year).

Straight No Chaser - 12 Days

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:34:42 Z

This is too good to hide away on the fun wall!

Sooo... enjoy Straight No Chaser - The original members of Straight No Chaser perform their comedic version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" at the Musical Arts Center, Bloomington, Indiana. December 7th, 1998.

More here:

Christmas Puzzle 2007 - The birds and the bees

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:52:26 Z

This year's annual Charity Christmas Puzzle has now been posted, and is available to download.

This, the 17th annual Puzzle that Gordon Gray has set, has a theme designed to help completion and will appeal to people who enjoy doing Crossword puzzles, such as in the Daily Telegraph (though it is not a Crossword puzzle). Puzzlers have plenty of time to find the answers and Puzzles should be returned, with donation, by 27 January.

Four winners will each receive a £25 prize.
Everyone who enters will qualify for a £25 prize draw.

So what are you waiting for, give it a go and download the Christmas Puzzle now.

Futurama's back baby!

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 15:24:04 Z

Just when you thought it was safe to watch something else!

Uncancel your plans for the future - Futurama is back! In this all-new feature-length epic, evil nudist aliens send Bender on a rampage through time, forcing him - slightly against his will - to steal all the Earth's priceless historic treasures. Will the heroic Planet Express crew save the planet? Will Leela find true love? Will the ancient and terrible secret of Fry's buttocks be revealed? Find out when you watch Bender's Big Score, the greatest adventure of our time, and also the greatest adventure of several other times! In the words of a certain beer-fueled robot... "We're back baby!"

Go buy it now! It even comes with a futuristic ('80s) 3D holographic cover!
Note: Currently available as a Region 1 DVD, but play.com says "coming soon" for Region 2.

If you've seen The Simpson's movie, don't worry, Futurama have managed to pack in enough jokes to fill the whole film, plus some extras, including a full-length episode of Hypnotoad - "The future's most popular TV program!" - and a great Futurama Maths lecture plus lots more!

And there's another three feature-length episodes on their way sometime soon...

Update: If you want a proper review rather than my "Go buy it now", look here.

Woo Ajax!

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:34:01 Z

Well I've had a fun few hours finally getting to grips with Ajax, and with the help of the zXml library and Professional Ajax from Wrox, it's turned out relatively easy to hook everything together . Admittedly I'm supposed to be on holiday, but with no car due to a completely dead battery which won't charge, and the only other choices being housework or walking in the rain, I thought it was about time I get on with a few things that have been hanging around in my head taking up space for so long.

So Eaton Bray now comes with ajax comments (oh, and a major overhaul of the design too!) Now to see how the spammers get on trying to get past the checks - fingers crossed I've done enough this time to make sure they don't get their grubby links through.

So, if you're bored, please go break Eaton Bray for me.

Right Brain v Left Brain

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:20:44 Z

The Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa. Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

via Pete; more info at Right Brain v Left Brain.

This is great, whenever I blink she changes direction; how does she know?!

Which way does she spin for you?

Showcase

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 20:29:32 Z

Articles

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 12:46:26 Z

Photo Albums

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 13:43:26 Z

Reading

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 19:36:49 Z

Dahab, May 2004

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 02:23:39 -0700

Sharm El Sheikh, June 2004

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 02:28:49 -0700

VW Action, September 2002

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 02:31:16 -0700

Bug Jam, Santa Pod, July 2005

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:33:21 -0800

Spitfire & Tanglefoot

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 23:48:03 -0800

Random Pics

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:44:13 -0700