theboywonder.co.uk » Daily life

Capdase 180A MKeeper Camera Case

Robin — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:02:09 +0000

I’m not one to spend to excess. I may have many things but I always try to hit the sweet spot when it comes to quality and value for money and I nailed it on my latest purchase that’s for sure! A camera case for my Nikon D3100 that I bought in March called the “Capdase 180A MKeeper”. Goodness knows who came up with that name but that doesn’t matter! I got it from Love Cases where it’s currently £17.95. An absolute steal. Both my brother and dad are considering purchasing one for their new dSLR cameras after getting their hands on mine.

Note that the case is only big enough for 1 lens though. If you have two (which I can’t justify) then perhaps the larger model would suit: Capdase 270A.

From the front, minus the main strap (which attaches via study plastic clips to the side):

A close up showing the quality of the fabric/weave:

The front pocket. Large enough for a few batteries and other bits:

The inside. Additional pocket inside the top flap, and a removable velcro fitting in case you want to keep the lens separate from the body:

From a tiny zip pocket at the back, a pull out waterproof(?)/resistant cover!

Are we missing out on beauty?

Robin — Sat, 21 May 2011 19:03:01 +0000

via: http://www.jeffbridges.com/perception.html

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:

The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children.. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly..

45 minutes:

The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

The questions raised:

*In a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?

*Do we stop to appreciate it?

*Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.

How many other things are we missing?

SQL Query for WSUS 3 Needed Updates

Robin — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:02:46 +0000

I wanted an SQL query to retrieve the number of updates “required” by our clients / computers managed by WSUS. Most of the advice online seemed to be applicable only to WSUS 2. With a few tweaks to an existing script I managed to get a working SQL query (key: ComputerID now seems to be TargetID).

This is executed from within SQL Server Management Studio on the WSUS server itself (I migrated the database to the full version of SQL Server).
SQL version: 2008 R2
WSUS version: 3.2.7600.226
Windows version: Server 2008 x64 SP2

SELECT left(tbComputerTarget.FullDomainName,30) as [Machine Name] ,count(tbComputerTarget.FullDomainName) as [# of Missing patches] ,tbComputerTarget.LastSyncTime as [Last Sync Time] FROM tbUpdateStatusPerComputer INNER JOIN tbComputerTarget ON tbUpdateStatusPerComputer.TargetID = tbComputerTarget.TargetID WHERE (NOT (tbUpdateStatusPerComputer.SummarizationState IN ('1', '4'))) GROUP BY tbComputerTarget.FullDomainName, tbComputerTarget.LastSyncTime ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC

SummarizationState:
1 = Not Installed
2 = Needed
3 = Downloaded
4 = Installed
5 = Failed

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.