Little hand says it’s time to rock and roll
May0
How awesome is Point Break? I mean seriously?
(Please note that although the head, shoulders and torso of this post are dancing around in whimsical stupidity, the feet are firmly planted in the cold, barren soil of Irony)
With the 80’s barely over and little to live for in the 90’s, along came a hairy-legged spider-like monstrosity of a film to really put meaning back into our barely sentient existence. I mean, if surf-boarding, thrill-seeking, mask-wearing, bank-robbing, Californian free spirits aren’t a reason to get up in the morning then colour me comatose.
This masterpiece centres around the interactions of John “Johnny” Utah and the mythical Bohdi, respectively (and respectfully) played by Keanu “Stiff as a board, light as a feather” Reeves and Paddy “Massive Hands” Swayze. Two larger-than-life characters, cut from the same cloth, a shame that society rolled different dice for each of them.
Utah is a young whipper-snapper of an FBI agent, out to make name for himself, he hooks up with the older, yet suitably unaccomplished, Pappas (Gary Busey at his pudgey finest), who has his crackpot theories about the identity of the ever-elusive bank-robbers, “The Ex-Presidents”.
They’re SURFERS! Following the waves! Living an endless summer….! Whoop whoop!
Cue a torrent of cliches, a stick-thin non-conformist love interest, soon-to-be-rockstar cameo’s and the inevitable battle for Johnny boys soul. Will he get lost in his voyage of self-discovery or slap the Fisher-Price cuffs on that scruffy haired lovable rogue, Bodhi?
Who cares? Indulge yourself! Fire off a few rounds into the sky, and scream your torment. Your best-friend and spiritual guide is really an adrenaline-junkie super-thief.
Oh and he used to dang your girlfriend.
Advanced Search/Replace in Vi
May0
For as much my sake as anyone else’s here are a few tips for searching and replacing with vi. Note this is especially useful when working with XML.
—
Take for example this brief piece of XML…..
<Parameter>
<Name>ConfigParam1</Name>
<Value>ConfigValue1</Value>
</Parameter>
<Parameter>
<Name>ConfigParam2</Name>
<Value>ConfigValue2</Value>
</Parameter>
…and you are looking to match only one complete stanza. Try this as your search pattern :-
/<Parameter>\_p\{-}</Parameter>
To those of you who aren’t that well versed in vi there may be two new character representation in there… they are as follows :-
\_p - This will match any printable character, including tabs and newlines.
\{-} - This is non-greedy matching
Together these basically mean as few printable characters as possible. Its also worth noting you can use non-greedy matching like this…
\{-X}
…to find as few as possible but at least X.
—
Now, say you had a huge XML file similar to the example above and you wanted to use search and replace to put it in the following format :-
Name = Value
Then we could use this Vi command :-
:s/
Sure there are quicker, easier and presumably better ways to do this but where’s the fun in that…. I mean…. we’ve already got Vi open… 
Arthas and The Blinking Blue Light
Dec0
After only 8 weeks of being a resident of Azeroth, I hang up the reigns to my mighty Acherus Deathcharger, and barely even 2 steps into Northrend. Yeah, I got into the game, quite a bit actually. Picked up both Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King for cheap and enjoyed the majority of the leveling process… and now to be honest, I’m bored of it.
Kill 10 of these, go talk to him, pick up that, run over there. B-Average student of the RPG school. Then again, the instances and whatnot are more fun, and I can see the strategy elements that seem to eek their way into the higher level ones, but…. I can’t be arsed. Anyways, I got a new pet.
After a couple of weeks of absolutely hellish work hours and unnecessary stress. I decided to buy myself a Christmas present. Playstation 3 80GB with a boatload of games.
I have to say, I hate Sony, always held a sort of personal resentment towards them since the original Playstation. God knows why, probably a hang-on from being a ‘tendo fanboy. Regardless, I hate Microsoft more, plus with the PS3 being the resounding underdog of the 7th Gen consoles…. Its where I belong.
So the minutes of my life that work doesn’t magic away and those that individuals, held dear and anonymous, don’t distract and devour, are now spent yelling at poor unsuspecting Americans as I blow the heads off the silent majority.
GET A HEADSET A**HOLES! TYPING WITH A MINIGUN IS SUICIDE!
Noveau November
Nov1
So once again I have let my blog lapse into the murky pools of inactivity, and lo’ we have the obligatory update!
No longer a student, I have been forced out into the cruel world to fend for myself. Which (rather oddly) treated me quite kindly, two job applications, two job interviews, two job offers. I stared down one to where it bent in the undergrowth and took the other just the same, perhaps having the better claim.
So now I work developing and debugging financial software.
My EvE habit as taken a bit of a knock with mine, and several others, departure from Core Technologies. We all leave the corp in the very capable of hands of Tupacobra and wish him the best. I had the intention of hitting some Factional Warfare hard, but just never got around to it. In its place I’ve decided to swallow my pride and try…..World of Warcraft.
Ok, so one 4GB download later I have the client, and 20 minutes of slow progress bars I have it installed, and then….. 7 (count ‘em) patches….
Sorry if I’m used to the polished, significantly more impressive delivery system of CCP’s Eve, but why not just offer the UPDATED INSTALL BINARY for download. Eve, download one file, install, play. WoW, download one files, which downloads another file, which installs, and downloads 7 other files, and then play!
C’mon Blizzard.
This will be continued…..
Bloggin’ at 50mph
May0
So i’m on a reasonably long bus journey and I’m bored so I decided to hook my shiny new Nokia N95 8GB as a bluetooth modem on Ubuntu Hardy.
For all of you who may be interested it was reasonably simple. Pretty much used the exact same setup I had before for my k800i.
Step 1.
Bind your mobular telephone to an rfcomm port via bluetooth. I used rfcomm0, but you’re free to use any number which takes your fancy.
sudo nano /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf
replacing nano with you editor of choice.
Here’s what mines looks like.
rfcomm0 {
bind yes;
device 00:1F:00:BB:97:7D;
channel 2;
comment "Dial-up networking";
}
Of course YMMV, especially on the channel.
sdptool browse AA:BB:CC:DD:EE
(replace with your devices bluetooth address)
This will list a load of useful crap, under which you may find a section about “dialup networking” and a channel number.
Who Am I?
Ryan Grieve
23yo Ironic Insomniac
Eventually reached the final year of his relatively protracted degree in Computer Science at Queen's University, Belfast
With ambitions high and moral fibre lacking, he sets forth.