theboywonder.co.uk » Daily life

Alain de Botton on Pessimism (video)

Robin — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:51:25 +0000

Apparently we all need to be a little bit more pessimistic :) Just click the video to be redirected to vimeo in order to watch it.

Books for the Year

Robin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:59:54 +0000

When asked at work about my New Year’s resolutions I proudly exclaimed that it was my intention to read more books not related to computing. I had picked out twelve; one for every month of the year. A noble and virtuous aim, or so I thought. My colleague then mentioned that someone else within the department had completed “their 100 book challenge”. One hundred! Incredibly impressive. If I had to read that many I’d be reduced to reading Mr Men books in order to stay on target!

My twelve:

New Year’s Resolutions for 2010

Robin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:10:34 +0000

My New Year’s Resolutions are usually very similar each year – self improve with regard to fitness, both mental and physical, and work hard in my profession. This year I’m trying to set more explicit goals; rather than “read more”, I’ve set a target of reading a book a month. It may not sound like much, but when factoring in time spent on other things (not to mention reading technical literature) it’s a reasonable aim. Anyway, here they are:

Body:

After being ill, get cycling regularly again. Aiming for a consistant 100 miles/wk by May, then increase carefully.
Hit the cyclo-cross season in September feeling strong, not tired. Finish roughly 6-7 minutes down on the professionals.
Add running into the exercise routine.
Run my first 10K. Have a rough aim of beating 48 minutes.

Mind:

Listen to Radio 4 on the way to and from work (rather than music) – and hopefully absorb some of it.
Read a book a month.
Take the Microsoft 70-294 exam by the end of May.
Take the Microsoft 70-298 exam by the end of August, to get my MCSE.
Take the VMware VCP (Vsphere 4) exam by the end of October.
Learn to use my digital SLR properly in modes other than Automatic.

C-C-C-Combo:

Walk in the countryside more frequently.
Learn a new dish a month, and cook the well rated recipes more regularly!

Embikes.com – Scam site!

Robin — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:37:24 +0000

I came across Edward Murray bikes whilst searching for Kona Jake The Snake cross bikes. They were offering a seemingly impossible 30% off all orders placed before April 31st 2009 which seemed too good to be true so I decided to investigate.

Using DNStools.com it’s possible to see that the domain was registered on the 18th Feb 2009. Has the site only just appeared? If so, why? They have “blog/news” articles dating back to 2002.
For some reason, the robots.txt has been used to block a whole host of internet search engines. Why? A domain history in the “Way Back Machine” is blocked too.
The checkout process is insecure, carried out entirely over http:// rather than https://
Take a look at a few of the checkout options:

Enter your credit card details, over standard http! Haha, I think not.
They display a truste.org seal on their homepage. On a legitable website clicking this would redirect your browser to the truste.org website, which would subsequently display some kind of seal of approval. On this site however clicking it takes you to a copied version of the truste.org verification page, hosted on their own server. Here it is. Unsurprisingly when searching for seal holders on the truste website Embikes are not there, meaning they do not hold any seal of approval at current.
Almost every product has 1 review, and of course those reviews are always 5 stars.
They have all the bikes in the entire world in stock! Ok, not quite… but they have more than well known online retailers have. For instance, I could apparently choose any size Jake the Snake from the past 3 years (2007-2009 models). Unlikely.
I entered a brief email correspondance with the “owner” about purchasing a bike. As soon as I asked for some reassurance on the authenticitiy of their site (by providing some of the above concerns), all correspondance stopped.

Worryingly I found this site through Google Shopping. I haven’t yet found a way of reporting fraudulent shops but when I do I’ll be sure to send my “evidence” their way.

Update: Embikes.com no longer appears in Google Shopping results. I wonder how much money they made away with though :/

Ulia and Rai.

Robin — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:15:23 +0000

I stumbled across Rai about a year ago now whilst browsing flickr.com. Now there are many quality photographers on this site, and Rai is no exception… but the thing that really made him stand out from crowd was his photographic dedication to his partner Ulia… or who he lovingly refers to as his “Muse“… an almost obsession, but a healthy one – which from her photography seems to go both ways :)

And as if the photos of the dashingly handsome couple in love weren’t enough to make us all jealous, they have even made videos!

(from their youtube page)

I’ve felt love like this before… and have spent many in between years convincing myself that relationships are ok despite knowing something is missing, but in the past year I’ve really learnt something: don’t settle. Don’t settle for less than the best when it comes to something this important. Potentially, it’s for the rest of your life! Do you want to wake up at 40 next to someone who feels like a stranger? Or do you want it to be the person you trust the most, admire the most, and who helps you be a better person? If you can love as much as Rai and Ulia, save it for someone who’ll give back to you what you can give them :)

As Stellarjandri says:

“Rai and Ulia will make you believe in romance again…”

… that they do :)

On the Lash – Women drinking

Robin — Fri, 11 May 2007 21:22:05 +0000

Source article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6213686.stm

Ah. the battle for equality seems to have been won. Women are equally as stupid as men now.. We should all be so proud.

- Richard, Huddersfield

Top Web 2.0

Robin — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 10:32:41 +0000

Michael Arrington of techcrunch.com has written (updated) a very handy article listing some excellent Web 2.0 companies you should get to grips with. I can’t say I use all of them but I do use a fair few (Flickr, Gmail, Netvibes, Digg, WordPress, Skype, Youtube), and I love them. I dare say I’ll be signing up for a few more, and hopefully with the increased convergence of web services, 2007 will see people adopting and contributing to sites such as netvibes more frequently.

Goodbye Dec, but not forever!

Robin — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 14:51:49 +0000

A quick post to say, Dec left England yesterday. He’s meeting his girlfriend for 3 months in Thailand, before they both move on to Australia to lounge around, then find some work (they have work visas sorted out). Of course we’ll miss him loads, but we’re very jealous and taking our hats off to him for doing this :) With this virtual world though, no-one ever seems that far away… and fingers crossed as many of us as possible can meet up during summer 2007.

Good luck dude (and Mel)!

Haruki Murakami, Pinball 1973 (English).

Robin — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 04:11:26 +0000

Hahahahaha! I have a copy of Haruki Murakami’s Pinball 1973, in English!

Unfortunately though I won’t get to see it for about 2 months as I’m abroad right now (Thailand) and its only just arrived at my home. As soon as I get home I’ll photograph it and pop some photos on here. I won’t attempt to review the book because I suck at literary / artistic criticism.

I’m telling myself that I will resell it (after much admiration) because I can’t justify the amount of money I spent on it, on a mere book. At least I think I will. Hmm. I should work on trying to find a way to convince myself keeping it is morally acceptable =P

Please show your envy (or make your best offer) below :D

Matt Harding, dancing around the world

Robin — Sat, 06 May 2006 13:56:52 +0000

Seriously, how cool is this guy? He’s been to a lot of places, awesome! I could have done the same, had I not been to Thailand SIX times now. No regrets though, because I know I will see all the places I want to, it’s just a matter of time. Anyway back to the praise, how is he able to just not care, and dance like a crazy man infront of all those people?! Legend. I wish I could temporarily abandon my ego.

Check his site out here.