Defenestrated

GV: Ohh Erica I shall be too late!

2009-07-17T16:34:01-04:00

Seems like Maureen's on a roll! This time, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...

And GV said...

"hi david it's maureen again i thought i'd try one more time this is alice's adventures in wonderland andy's is the first 3 paragraphs alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by your sister on the bank and having nothing else to do once or twice she'd pete into the booker sister was reading but they had no pictures our conversations in it and what is the usable books thought house without pictures of conversations so she was considering in around lines as well as she could for the day in major very sweet being stupid whether the pleasure of making it daisy chain looking forward to travel to getting up and taking it easy when separately a white rabbit with paid on his rent close by her it was nothing still very remarkable about that nor did alice think it's still very much of the wait to hear the rabbit's a to itself all we are ohh erica i shall be too late the when the rev it actually took a watch out of the waste code pockets and look at it and then i read on alice starting to recede forward slash to cross your mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either but we still talk or watch to take out of it and burning with curiosity she want across the field after it i was just in time to see it popped on the larger rabbit hole 100 H in another moment alice went down after it the and"

Nest it with the AFLAC I believe

2009-07-17T16:28:43-04:00

Maureen tried to read The Tale of Two Cities...

And GV said...

"hi dave this is maureen and i'm going to read the first paragraph of charles dickens' a tale of 2 cities it was the best time is it was the worst of times it was the age of wisdom it was the age of fullest nest it with the aflac i believe it was the at book of in could you already it was the season of like it was the season the darkness it was this bring up the whole it was the winter of despair we had everything before us we had nothing before us we're all going direct haven't we were all going direct to the other way in short the period with so far like depressant period that some of the noisiest the store eddie's insisted on it's being received for go to for evil in this approaches degrees of comparison only then that was the first paragraph of charles dickens' tale of 2 cities"

Stupid Google Voice transcriptions

2009-07-17T15:33:35-04:00

I just tried Google Voice for the first time today, and it's a really interesting service, including the ability to automatically transcribe voicemails so you can pick them up in e-mail or on the web. I have a heavy English accent (nothing bizarre, like Brummies, but definitely not American, either) so I did a little experiment by leaving a voicemail for myself. Here's what I said:

"I'm just trying this out. Google Voice seems pretty cool but, you know, I'm not so sure if it can try andhandle the really complicated things that one wants to do with voicemail. So I thought I would say things like efficacious, and stupendous, and deliberative, just to see how the transcription might work. On the other hand, it could be really good, and I'll be amazed, and astounded, and flabbergasted by just how good the transcription could be. I'll also look forward to receiving the message in e-mail, and if the e-mail is good then maybe I'll transition all of my phone calls to Google Voice. It's difficult to say. But, one way or another, Google is going to take over the world, and I intend to be there when they do."

And this is what Google Voice thought I said...

"i'm just trying this out to avoid seems pretty cool but you know i'm not so sure if you can try and handled it really complicated things that one wants to do with voicemail so i thought i'd say things like applications and stupendous and did with crickets just to see how the transcription might work on the other hand it could be really good and i'll be in the east of this down did flabbergasted i just have a good the transcription today i'm also i look forward to receiving the message in email and if you email is good then maybe i'll try and get all of my phone calls to google voice the fact the war in iraq google is going to take care of the will i'm going to be there when they did"

If you'd like to try making Google Voice sound silly, call 202-525-6817 and leave a message! I'll post the interesting ones here.

UK government advocates open source

2009-03-03T10:01:56-05:00

This is truly fantastic. The UK government has decided that, where there is little price difference between open source and commercial products, open source should be selected due to its inherent flexibility. The initiative is also promoting re-use of product evaluations, and has created an open forum where the public can view and contribute to the action plan. Great stuff!

Watch "The Damned United"

2009-01-27T11:05:38-05:00

Even if you've never heard of Brian Clough or Leeds United, The Damned United promises to be as good as Frost/Nixon. Clough remains one of the most divisive figures in English football, even though he's been dead for years. This tells the story of his 44 days in charge of Leeds United and, written by Peter Morgan (who wrote The Queen and Frost/Nixon) and starring Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, and Jim Broadbent, it's got the story and cast to be truly special. Just like Cloughie.

2008-11-10T13:32:51-05:00

Get this widget!

Medals medals medals

2008-09-17T16:58:27-04:00

Team Great Britain did fantastically well at this year's Summer Olympics, beating all expectations and winning an unprecedented number of medals....even if many were in "The sitting down sports," as our Australian cousins noted.

However, Team GB has also done extraordinarily well in the Paralympics, as this table shows, coming second only to China in the medal count.

I'm not sure what Brits are putting in their tea these days, but it's working.

Can We Have A Referee?

2008-08-05T13:51:22-04:00

The English Football Association has launched a campaign to improve how referees are treated in football. Part of that campaign is this fantastic video that features some very well-known ex-players and (some not so well-known) celebrities. Genius.

Mozy for Mac - backup does not start [updated]

2008-08-02T11:46:09-04:00

I've been a Mozy for Mac user for a couple of months now and my backup (which is admittedly very large) still hasn't completed for the first time, despite my machine being left on pretty much 24x7. I am backing up a LOT of data (over 85GB) so I knew it was going to take a while but one problem seems to have been recurring, preventing the backup even starting on many occasions. Here are two typical sections of the Mozy.log file.

2008-08-01 20:11:39.505 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Starting backup
2008-08-01 20:11:39.582 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Checking for update
2008-08-01 20:11:40.084 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Connecting to r4165.mozy.client.ut1.berkeleydata.com (66.133.112.24)
2008-08-01 20:11:40.552 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Version is up-to-date (1.0.1.0)
2008-08-01 20:12:52.035 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) User ID is [my user ID]
2008-08-01 20:12:52.036 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Cleaning up temporary files
2008-08-01 20:12:52.055 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Starting full scan
2008-08-01 20:13:09.846 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Starting filesystem churn
2008-08-01 20:13:09.904 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Waiting for filesystem churn to end
2008-08-01 20:22:50.694 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Starting backup set churn
2008-08-01 20:22:50.765 MozyBackup[41:601b] (backup) Waiting for backup set churn to end
2008-08-01 22:47:40.910 MozyBackup[41:4603] (updater) Error adding changes to scan cache: database is locked
2008-08-01 23:47:40.935 MozyBackup[41:4603] (updater) Error adding changes to scan cache: database is locked
2008-08-02 00:34:48.026 MozyBackup[41:4603] (updater) Error adding changes to scan cache: database is locked

Another typical behavior is shown here:

2008-08-02 09:49:35.127 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Starting backup
2008-08-02 09:49:35.129 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Checking for update
2008-08-02 09:49:35.526 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Connecting to r4165.mozy.client.ut1.berkeleydata.com (66.133.112.24)
2008-08-02 09:49:36.069 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Version is up-to-date (1.0.1.0)
2008-08-02 09:49:42.297 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) User ID is [my user ID]
2008-08-02 09:49:42.298 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Cleaning up temporary files
2008-08-02 09:49:42.300 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Starting full scan
2008-08-02 09:49:53.378 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Starting filesystem churn
2008-08-02 09:49:53.382 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Waiting for filesystem churn to end
2008-08-02 09:52:45.956 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Starting backup set churn
2008-08-02 09:52:45.957 MozyBackup[42:5b23] (backup) Waiting for backup set churn to end

It seems like either the backup set churn never ends, or the database is locked and the backup can't continue.

I've checked all permissions on my machine (using Disk Utility) and everything checks out. The Mozy support forums lean heavily toward Windows users, which is disappointing but somewhat typical. I can't see anything else that I should check to ensure the backup starts when I want. Has anyone else encountered this problem?

I've sent this report to Mozy support by e-mail, so I'll post their response here when I get it.

[Updated 8/4/08 20:45] I got an IM out of the blue today from Devin at Mozy, asking if I could work with him to diagnose the problem I'd written about here. Clearly someone at Mozy has some Google Alerts set up! Devin passed me on to Ben at Mozy (their resident Mac expert) and he and I have been exchanging information to try and diagnose the problem. Apparently this is a known but very rare issue that they haven't quite gotten to the bottom of yet. Hopefully this exercise will fix that. In the meantime, they've kindly extended my subscription by 3 months due to the inconvenience this problem has caused.

This is how customer service should be, people. Let's hope the product lives up to the (so far great) service...

[Updated 8/7/08 9:30] Over the past couple of days, Ben at Mozy has been working me with to try out various strategies to see how this problem can be eliminated. Uninstalling and re-installing the client doesn't seem to fix it, but we've found a couple of other oddnesses along the way, such as an incorrect number of MS Word files being detected by the Mozy backup client. The guys at Mozy are working to develop a new version of the client that aims to solve this issue. More as it happens...

[Updated 8/15/08 10:52] There's been no change in the status of this for a few days now, and I haven't seen a new version of the Mozy for Mac client yet. Some commenters on the blog note that attaching an external drive to the system seems to stymie Mozy completely, but that's not confirmed.

BBC's Olympics movie is fantastic

2008-07-24T10:54:46-04:00

The Beeb has collaborated with Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett (of Gorillaz fame) to produce this fantastic sequence to promote and introduce their Olympics coverage. Only the BBC could possibly have pulled this off with such aplomb. During my childhood, a dubbed-for-English broadcast Chinese series called "Monkey Magic!" was shown on BBC2 regularly. It's something of a cult hit. That show was inspired by the same story as this Olympics sequence, so it's doubly sweet for Brits like me.