Luke Sheldrick's Blog » Personal

A walk down memory lane

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:49:45 +0000

I’ve been at Mum’s over Christmas, and is always a bit weird coming back to the area.
I moved away to Southend-on-Sea (Essex) when I was 14, and lived in Essex until very recently.

I was meeting Mum from work today, to go on to visit my Brother for the afternoon. As I’m one of those people who are usually early, and I had a few hours to kill so thought I’d go for a wander.

There was always an area near to where I used to live, that was totally different to the surrounding area, and always somewhere I’d love to escape to. I always dreamt of living in one of the houses, and today was a bit of a shock, to realise, well actually I could if wanted to. At that point, I realised, I’m getting old. It’s like I always wished I’d work in IT, with a nice car…blah blah when I was older, and now I actually do it’s a bit like, well what do I do now? Well I know next time I have to move, which I hope isn’t anytime soon, that I’ll be looking in SE16.

Anyways back to the houses, they’re all in a small bit of Bermandsey, by the Thames, and Greenland Docks, but they have the most picturesque surroundings. Most overlook their own water features or ponds (like the above), and I just find them amazing.

Throughout my visit, I was followed by the Cygnet above… maybe he was trying to butter me up, so if I moved into the area, I’d keep him in stock of moulding Hovis.

Amazingly, the car above, I’m sure has been in that same parking space, since I left, when I was 13 (so a few years). Still has up to date TAX, but never looks as though it’s moved. Amazing.

A new view

Luke Sheldrick — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:29:34 +0000

So I’ve been really quite lax on updating here, for a number of reasons really or more excuses if I am honest.

There has been a lot of change since I last wrote an entry. I finally bit the bullet and moved back to Central London. I’d been living in Southend-on-Sea since I was 14, but for a number of years worked back in the city, and the commute was just too much in the end.

So I am now living in E1, with my new flatmate Andrew, just up the road from where the above was taken. The best thing is, it’s only about a mile walk into the office, so I don’t have to depend on public transport or worry about traffic anymore, which is great. I was cycling for the first month or so, but it seems I had forgotten about crime in London, and someone kindly pinched my bike whilst it was chained up outside the flat, so won’t be cycling for a while.

Living in the city has been great so far, lots of places to go, people to see, and am quite enjoying it so far. Still feel like the new guy in town, as don’t hardly know anyone locally, but that’s just a time thing, so I’m not overly worried. However if you do read this, and are in the area, am free for coffee, beers and bar mitzvahs.

I foresee lots more changes over the next few months, especially at work, however can’t really go into much as there haven’t been many announcements as yet.

Have a heap of stuff I could rabble on about, but I’ll save it for another time. I do hope to keep the blog more regularly updated however I don’t seem to get the same urges anymore since twitter has kicked off. If you wanted a more frequent update, check out www.twitter.com/an0key

Happy New Year

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:55:36 +0000

Wishing you a very Happy New year, hopefully you’ll have a great 2009

I was actually planning to do nothing this NYE, as every other had just been an expensive, messy night, that everyone regrets the next day. However my plans were changed at the last minutes, when I was invited to a gig in London. My arm was twisted when I found out Micachu were on the line up, a very small band*. Below the boys; Sandy, Steve (Birthday Boy too), Tom, Soo.

Was a great night had by all. Except Steve who had a bit of a nasty taxi bill, as he and Sandy missed their last train. The venue was called the Macbeth, in Hoxton near Shorditch, London. Was quite funny when they blew an Amp, and the band on at the time, went instrumental. I don’t think many people even noticed to be honest. I am a bit bumbed though, as I have just tried to upload my photos to flickr, and only a couple survived… looks like the memory card has corrupted, which blows as I had taken about 200 photos, mostly of the bands and scenery… GRRR!!! So I’ve got a load of photos, all of 2 or 3 lines

I’ve been trying to work out why my new years resolutions should be. A few things have been on my mind recently so what better time to implement them, huh;

Get back into the gym. Now this must be one of the most over used resolution, but needs to be mine.
Get back on track with my studying, I’ve slowed down a bit over the last couple of months.
Sort my spending out. Years are ticking by and I need to get on the property ladder myself, so no more spending £££ on gadgets, IT equipment, and many nights out. All in moderation still, but these can’t be the priority for 2009.

So all rather boring on that front, but at least that’s out the way. Just gotta’ stick to them now… hmm

Below a few pics from last night, or click here for the few surviving photos. There was a professional photographer there, his pics can be seen here

*not sure if you’d call it a Band. Micachu is the singer / writer, and she has a backup ‘The Shapes’

Christmas 2008

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:45:15 +0000

Christmas 2008, is all but over now, just NYE to go, which reminds me I still haven’t planned anything. This year I joined the extended family in Norfolk. My brother (Paul), Sister-in-law (to be / Sally) and Sally’s folks (Carole and Roy) stayed in a wood lodge in the woods, which was pretty nice. Well once we’d worked out the heating. The rest all stayed else where, but usually visited in the evenings. The lodge below reminded me of something from a horror film.

The view however was pretty nice to wake up to;

The drive up there and back wasn’t too bad, I did have my iPhone tracking it, just for the hell of it, but haven’t found a way to show the route on here yet. This was where we were staying however;

Interestingly the tracker had a spazm when I first set it up, but still registers I go everywhere at 14658 mph… if only.

Christmas day we had lunch at the local restaurant, which was nice… still can’t ever beat a home cooked roast though, and I really missed the Turkey sandwiches for days after
The place was near to Cromer, where a lot of the extended family live. Didn’t actually get to see much of the scenery, but am sure will go back soon enough.

Had to come home on Saturday, as first day back in the office on Sunday, which was rather difficult. Having almost 6 weeks off, then coming back to work…ekk! The worst was yesterday, having to get up at 5am again… yuck. Still only one more day shift in the week (Friday) then back on night shifts… which are usually quiet.

Finally got my flickr account slightly more up to date. I was trying to do it whilst I was away, but my 3G card had no signal, along with my iPhone (actually nobody had any signal), there was no wifi around. With the exception of the local pub where it was £6 an hour, and ran at silly speeds, still didn’t stop my brother and I paying for our occasional fix.

The eee 701 being my laptop I take everywhere, the HP my brothers. Essential Diet Cokes

Also found a cool plugin from tantannoodles which integrates my flickr account with my blog. Had to hack most of the css, so it sort of looks like the rest of the blog.

Some of the Christmas photo’s can be seen below, or the album here.

Remembrance Sunday

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:40:58 +0000

Today is Remembrance Sunday, where we remember our fallen Soldiers. Those served and sacrificed in their roles protecting the Country, and our way of life.

Both my Granddad and Nan (on my Fathers side) served in the Second World war. My Nan, was an Engineer on the fighter planes, and my Granddad on the frontline. Ted, was captured and was a Japanese prisoner of war. I never met him, he passed away before I was born, as were my Grandparents on my Mothers side. Some of the stories my Nan told me about what he went through made my stomach churn. They were were served a small bowl of plain rice a day, and the conditions they were subjected to, well you can probably imagine, weren’t very pleasant.

Today are thoughts are with them all. My thought’s are also with the men and women serving today. I went to school with a few guys who are actively serving in Iraq, hopefully they’ll come home safely.

Gigs

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:17:43 +0000

So, it would seem like I haven’t had 5 minutes to update my blog in what seems like ages… what with being busy with work, visiting friends & family, geeking, and generally being out, my time seems a bit sparse.

I went to a gig Friday with a couple of friends, to see Metronomy. I’d heard about them a a few weeks before, and fallen in love with their album… I must admit, the gigs I’ve been going to, before I went to them, I wouldn’t have said I would like, but how wrong I was.

When we arrived on Friday, it was a treat to find out that Micachu and The Cock’n'Bull Kid were supporting. I’d seen both of them previously. Both of them I really enjoyed, both previously and Friday. Micachu is a really cool act to watch, their ‘Electonics’ band member is amazing to watch, making sounds out of loads of geekery toys.

Then came Metronomy, the crowd went wild… it was such a good amosphere. For a quiet small venue, the crowd certainly made up for it, there was even crowd surfing. They came on, to a dark stage, and when each member did their part of the intro, they switched on a light on their t-shirt. All a bit tacky maybe, but still very cool. Their act was flawless.

Can’t really put into words how good it all was. I’d totally recommend all 3, even if it’s not the genre you’d normally listen to.

If you were interested in any of them, find the links below:
The Cock’n'Bull Kid
Micachu
Metronomy

I also had to sign up to myspace again, as they wouldn’t let me reopen my account from a few years back. I only plan to use it for tracking bands, but if you’re on there, feel free to add me [link]

Fell of the waggen

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:59:03 +0000

Well not really, but the whole giving up drinking and shaving until November fell through. Nevermind, the hangover’s were worth it.. not

You know, I always have a load of shit, I think I should blog about, but when I get 5 to actually sit down and type something up, I’ve either forgot about it, or well think it does indeed sound shit so forget about it.

Friday saw a few drinks after work, which led to 2 bars, 2 clubs and ending up losing a wad in the casino…. this is when you realise that first shot was a bad, very bad idea. Nevermind, had a good night [what I can remember of it anyways].

Spent the weekend working, and starting to play with Gentoo. I’m sure I’ll rant more about that all later. Today found an absolutely brilliant tool, that I had kinda been looking for a while. I run a couple of servers, that run Windows 2003, and VMWare Server 1.0.7, mostly just as R&D machines. I could look into setting up a nice ESX cluster, but I just haven’t got around to it. Also on the list to look play with is Xen and KVM. KVM especially looks quite interesting, just been bought out by RedHat, and boasts that it can run more on your hardware than VMWare can.

Anyways I digress, what I currently do is pretty bad in way of backing up my VM Guests, in that I will every now and again, turn one off, copy it’s directory on the host, switch it back on, and move that copy offsite. Whilst it works, and is better than nothing, it’s not really ideal as it causes an outage when I do it. I know with Windows Shadow Copy it can copy/mirror drives [including any locked files] but what I wanted to be able to do was the odd locked file, i.e. the vmdk that’s locked. Bring in hobocopy. Does exactly what I was looking for, you can tell it a source and destination file or directory, and it will use the Microsoft Shadow service, and mirror it for you, complete, and intact. Perfect! it even has the functionality to do incrimental backups using a state file. Wouldn’t work for VMWare files, as it would just see the file as being changed, even though only 1meg of the 100GB file has changed, it would still copy the whole flat file. Baring that, an excellent tool. Now just to setup a schdule to make a mirror, and rsync it offsite, and a nice enterprise offsite backup, for nothing

Tonight I went out with a few friends, to The Royal Albert Hall, to see cocknbullkid when my friend told me about it, I kinda didn’t believe it, but yes it was true. Very good artist, even if the sound levels were a bit off, and the set seemed a bit short, really enjoyed it. Then off to soho for a coffee. Was a bit weird walking around soho sober, looks totally different to when you’ve had 10 double black russians Just for proof, picture below of the comp’ed ticket I / we managed to blag at the door

No more

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:13:15 +0000

Today see’s many o things, not that I am going to discuss on the open t’internets…. but on a more non/public way, I have just closed my facebook profile…. a number of reasons they include:

Am getting too much info following stories, it’s like real life soap drama’s. I don’t have time to follow them.
Too contactable, I am feeling like every inch of my life, is contactable via facebook.
Too tempted to right shitty statue, which no-one really cares about, and doesn’t really help anything.
Don’t fancy the upcoming unheartfelt, happy birthday messages, so I’ll save you the trouble.

This will be a temporary feature, I expect, but at least 7 calender days…. I wonder if I’ll break. For all of those that I have replied to messages with, sorry you’ll just have to email me.

Many a thing I would like to blog about, but not that stupid, not even after a few beers…. going to bed I think, looking forward to a hangover… thanks Stella

Four Figures, and a lot of drink

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 23:16:12 +0000

This week saw the demise, of my not-drinking-until-november mission. I stayed at my brother Paul’s house, and we went to play poker at The Loose Cannon poker club. Was quite a cool game, and didn’t do too bad, but as usual came I lost when I got on to higher tables, as the tournament went on.

Paul and I decided the night was young, and after a few drinks decided to have a few drinks at The Empire casino. This is where the night went bad / good. I always take a set amount with me when I go to a casino, say £100. An amount, that I can have a good evening, a few drinks, and not too bothered about if I don’t have it when I leave. It’s still cheaper than going clubbing.

Well this night, I was on a winning streak, and it seemed the more I drank, the more I won. The logic doesn’t work, but the sums did. I must have had a few too many double Black Russians, as I don’t really remember much of the night / morning.

Getting back to my brothers at 6am, having to leave at 6.30am, was not cool. A taxi across London, 12 hours of shaking and mumbling later, I managed to get through the day. I stayed at my brothers again, and happily he filled in the missing gaps of my memory from the night before. ops.

I was going to be really good, and put the money to good use…. meh eBay got me, and have bought a few 22′ Samsung LCD’s, which match my TV. Then decided I needed a refresh on my home dev machines, so bought some Dual Xeon servers, as my current dev setup could do with beefing up.

Never mind, all good. This coming week, I will not be turning another year older. I think I am going to hide away and ignore the fact, there are no birthdays to look forward to now, so it’s all just pointless.

A bit of cloud, and a bit of DNS…

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:04:48 +0000

Yesterday, when I was playing with Starbucks, and enjoying the sun whilst walking around St Katherine’s dock, I remembered I hadn’t actually taken my new camera out of the box (other than to switch it on, go ‘ooh’).

So today I decided to take it along to work, and spend an hour or so, in the afternoon testing it out. Well that plan was out of the window it seemed this morning. Super fog for most of the day. Hmm so much for summer, aye?

: Tower Bridge (Hiding)

Above is a picture from just outside my office, of Tower Bridge, hmm nice sunny day

Also been playing with DNS today. Just one of the things, on my huge list of todo’s, learn BIND. Not the most interesting things to know, but still, quite useful. Also annoyed by the fact that my registra for my personal domain (this one) gives you a maximum of 5 entries, per account. So if you had 5 domains, you can only have 5 A/MX/CNAME/NS/TXT…etc records between them. 1and1 Suck! Avoid at all costs. Also they refuse to change their TTL’s to anything but 1 day. Also not too useful, especially if you’re like me, and like to play quite a bit.

Anyways, so the idea was to have 3 name servers, one in London, one in Essex, and one in Paris. All authoritive, one being the master, with two automatically updating slaves. Getting the servers and zone files over to it was pretty straight forward, there were a few things, I clearly hadn’t read the RFC’s in clear enough detail about. I knew a root record had to be an A record. However I didn’t know that if you have a sub-domain, i.e. luke.sheldrick.co.uk and you have anything else, i.e. MX’s on that sub-domain, that too had to be an A record, rather than a CNAME.

Once I’d patched the slaves, allowing axfr’s (Didn’t realise for slaves, I had to stipulate allow-tranfer to be none, as BIND’s default is allow-transfer to any, it was time to migrate.

The only thing I was slightly worried about was an0key.net is this zone, would be hosting it’s own NS’s. So normally when you do a DNS lookup, you DNS client will ask one of the root servers, where to go, it will then (depending on you domain, i.e. .com will go to the gtld’s. .co.uk will go to nominet), and then they will hand you off to your registra’s name servers, who will give you the records.

As the name servers, of an0key.net will be ns0/1/2.an0key.net, when the gtlds, hand over, your client will ask say ns0.an0key.net what address www.an0key.net has, but to get to ns0.an0key.net it has to know it’s ip, so you end up in a loop.

This is where you setup what is know as a “Glue” record, whereby the gtlds, will kindly hold the A records of my ns0/1/2.an0key.net. There is a pretty good write up on wikipedia on how it all works.

If you’re reading this, then it’s safe to say that, my DNS servers haven’t packed up yet, or haven’t been poisened. If however this site, is now paypal, and you’ve got to give me your credit card, pin number, D.O.B, bra size…etc then pitty you!

Well somethings don’t change

Luke Sheldrick — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 02:28:49 +0000

Still can never get to sleep, which really sucks, as am knackered right now, but minute I get into bed, bang! fully awake again…. so giving up, and stuck the TV and Laptop on again….

Also, let down once again today… saying no more, but once again feel let down… nevermind, one must look on the bright side of things..

Been a while

Luke Sheldrick — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:41:43 +0000

As the title says, been a while, since I’ve posted on here.

Down to a number of factors I guess, been really quite busy with the new job, and learning bucket loads of stuff… don’t have the time in teh day to learn all that I want to. Also largely that I just lost interest in the whole blog thing.

Had my 6 month review the other day at work, it’s shocking how quick time seems to fly. Very happy with how I am progressing there and all. But I do wonder where I will I be this time in 6 months I wonder?

One thing recently that has really started to cheese me off, is how certain peeps, can’t be trusted anymore. I don’t mean that quite as bad as it sounds, but seems people just respect keeping to plans, and just fucks me off, especially when I have made arrangements around a certain event or day, and they don’t even give you the respect of telling you in advanced they can’t make it…etc in my opinion, it’s just rude, I never do it, and if I do it’s certainly not on purpose… Sometimes feel like saying to peeps, that I can’t be assed with them anymore, but a lot of the time, they’re great friends, but just fucking useless at keeping plans. Anyways enough of that, I am just a bit sour about it…

As I said above, I’ve been learning a load of stuff recently, and a bit of a shame I haven’t kept my posts up to date, not really for any public audience, but I find it quite useful to keep a log of what I have been playing with… nevermind, I’ll try going forward, but meh!

Still up

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:56:00 +0000

Still up, and it’s got light too, woops, although not unusual for me to stay up all night. I wonder what catastrophic side effects this will have in later life? maybe I’ll just become a bum.

I just did a quick look on google, to see what “Luke Sheldrick” actually brings up, and it is scary. I never realised how much of a web presence I actually have. Looking through a lot of it is actually me as well. Very scary. A lot of stuff is from old forums, and to read back on it, is making me cringe. Good job some sites aren’t searchable by the google bot

Also sitting here, in two minds. I stayed at mum’s last week, and went for a walk around the lock.

I grew up around the SE8/SE13 area of London, and some parts of it I still really adore. I always wanted to live over looking this paticular lock, and the Thames. I could move back there, and afford it too now, but it’s just such an outlay for a view, and to be closer to work.

I also really hate being in London these days, living out of London is so different… what to do aye? maybe I’ll just get a poster of my view.

DIY Gimp Mask

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 25 May 2008 10:58:09 +0000

Here we have a friend of mine, trying out a DIY Gimp Mask / Chicken Mask

hahaha made me laugh, especially when it snapped

Did I really make the right decision?

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:22:30 +0000

I previously posted about going back to o2, as my personal mobile provider, having second thoughts about it now.

First off, EDGE wouldn’t work at all. Emailed ‘Tech Support’ and they come back with the usual speal. 4 email later they blame it on my post code (Southend – SS1) as service there is ‘Variable’. Excellent I thought, I had spent the day in Central London. Only after about 5 or 6 emails did it actually get tranfered to ‘Tech Support’ and sorted.

Today I thought I would have a browse of ‘My O2′, and to my shock, apparently I have already used 5 sms’s, well I never, I haven’t even used it yet! Waiting until my number is ported over.

Hmm did I really make the right decision here?

We shall see what excuse they can come up with for my mystery sms’s, maybe it’s the post code again.

A night of gamblings

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:16:51 +0000

Last night I spent the night out with my brother Paul. We try to catch up as much as our busy lives allow, which is usually on a Tuesday to go to an amateur poker night, held by Bubble Poker. Last night I was on my usual top form, and got taken out pretty early on in the night. My brother got taken out, pretty early by a Royal Flush, he had a straight, and someone else had four Jacks… a hand you wouldn’t see again. Totally recommend the night though, I always have a good time.

Then it was off to the Empire casino, to loose some more money. I have never lost before, as I usually only play red or black on the roulette. However last night, Mrs Luck had gone on holiday. It’s cool though, as I only take out what I’ll happily lose. So it was back home on the train, with a burger king, what more could a guy ask for.

Voyeur

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:03:10 +0000

It’s amazing how many people you can actually get in contact with on social networking sites, such as facebook. Years ago I was pretty impressed by the likes of friends reunited. That particular site seems to have died off now. This was again proven to me yesterday, when I managed to get in contact with another person, Laura, who I went to primary school with. Someone who I thought I would never talk to again, after I moved away from London about 10 years ago.

As per any site, you get people who just add you to bump up their numbers, but I have always been a bit of a prood, and will only add someone if I actually know them. So was a bit amazed when I checked this morning, and it says I know 397 people. If I had to guess, I wouldn’t have said I knew that many people.

An interesting application on there is the ‘Friend Wheel’ which shows you who you know, and then if the people you know, who knows each other. It is actually quite scary, how people from totally different parts of my life know each other. Below is my wheel (click to get in a new window)

If you do actually know me, and I have missed you, feel free to get in contact my facebook profile.

A new face

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 19:28:31 +0000

My personal site, and my blog were the last couple of things I needed to shift off my servers I run at home. I’ve since bought some colo space for a load of my stuff, but had neglected to actually sort my own stuff off.

This weekend I actually got around to doing it. First was to move the MySQL from a 2003 Windows server, to a Linux server (Fedora). That was pretty straight forward, but some how managed to corrupt my wordpress blog. Not a huge problem as had exported it using it’s own migration function.

The next was to get IIS to play with PHP. I remember the original setup was a nightmare, it just never seems to work… tried the installation package, what a fool. That managed to kill of IIS. So then un-installed that, and went for the manual approach. A few registry entries, and a few ini files later, and we were rocking. Well after convincing it, that it did have the MySQL dlls.

Decided to give it a bit of a face lift, but as I am totally shite at any graphical stuff, I have got hold of a free template, took out a load of the woffle in it, i.e. the users ability to change the background image. Will migrate the rest of the site over soon enough, but have convert a few scripts from ASP to PHP, and oh I hate php

At least the site should be a bit more stable..

Floppys trains and burgers

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:37:58 +0000

Today I ventured on the C2C train line, well being bussled, in a tight seat, having someone fall asleep on my shoulder, and being bored shitless, all for a value £13.80 a day, bargain! Just confirms how much I hate public transport. Really makes me think that if we are to ever reduce our ‘carbon footprint’ they really need to make public transport a decent alternative, to my nice warm, clean, quick car.

I mentioned earlier about m0n0wall, and how impressed I was with it. Had the first problem with it the other day. Well m0n0wall runs of a CD (a linux live-cd) and keeps it’s xml config on a floopy. The problem is, (as I remember from yonder years) floopys tend to corrupt. Wasn’t a huge problem, a quick reconfigure with another floopy from under my bed, and away we go

Burgers: I have eaten too much junk, and neglected the gym for over 6 months, and oh it hit me today how much it’s caught up. Looked at the belly today, which was ab flat and getting a pack before, now well, it’s not. Back to the gym tomorrow. Gonna try and go as often as I can, as there is one on my route to/from work, so no excuse really. Am dredding it though.

Sinking boats

Luke Sheldrick — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:42:36 +0000

This week have been staying at Mother’s house this week as thought it would be a good base for starting my new job at ntt.

Well a bit of a mistake. My logic was, am in London, the Thames clipper takes about 20 minutes, sorted.

Everyday there has been some sort of cock up with tit, so not too impressed there. First couple of days, too foggy.

Then last night really took the piss. Coming home, waiting at Tower Pier, the clipper goes straight passed. The guy working there was clueless as to why. Then the next one comes along, and apparently there was only space for one more, great, I was first in the queue. However some cheeky bint was allowed to push in, because she had a season ticket. Grr. Now I’m sure if I had a season ticket, I’d want the ability to push in. A bit cheeky on public transport I thought.

Next week I get to test the C2C line to Fenchurch Street, I hope it’s slightly more reliable.

Also told by a few pals over at Kingston Communications, that my previous blog was mentioned in a management meeting, as it had flagged up an alert, that the company name was mentioned on the web. HA. As will this one no doubt this will too. (Hi to you all if you’re reading) I guess there wasn’t much on the agenda of the meeting. Also later on this afternoon, someone viewed my CV on the site, also from KCOM, or at least a customer, as the person’s IP resolved to Karoo (KCOM’s adsl division) ADSL. They were too wimpish to put their correct email address however, sad!

Am trying to post this via, email > wordpress. Wonder if it will actually play nice. [UPDATE: it didn't. No text came through]

End of an Era and a bit of Chinese

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:31:44 +0000

My final day at Mistral Internet (now known as Kingston Communications). Wasn’t there long, but didn’t really need to be, to know I wasn’t going anywhere fast.

So start a new role as a CSE tomorrow at NTT. Future entries will reveal how it all goes

Just got back home (well, Mothers house as am here for the week) after going to the Chinese NY celebrations in China Town. Was awsome. Went a few years ago with my girlfriend of the time Emma, and her family, and was invited to go again this year. Had a really good meal, watched a few of the firework shows (which are mad!), the pottered about. Was a really good day though, if anyone hasn’t been I totally recommend it.

Photos will be up shortly

Hours of fun

Luke Sheldrick — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:50:33 +0000

Linky

A fun week

Luke Sheldrick — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:25:49 +0000

Well what a week, glad it’s over

Has been quite eventful, but over all quite boring.

I broke my Dell Laptop screen a couple of weeks ago, and hadn’t got around to fixing it as yet. In a meeting earlier in the week, a project that had been put on hold came up, which i had been working on, but had been put on hold. As I am leacing the company pretty soonish, they wanted it completed. Hmm. The source code is on the laptop, the laptop screen is broken. Tried plugging in a VGA monitor, but seems as default is not enabled in the BIOS. No amount of screen pressing got it to work either. The HD is encrypted, using details from the mobo, so wont boot in another machine. Excellent the only thing really is to either pull two laptops apart and bodge it (which none of us wanted to do) or get it fixed.

As its my own kit (used as I have licensed versions of the dev tools) they wont repair it… great. Anyways come to some compromise, and they said I could go and get it fixed Thursday. The place is near Heathrow, and for times sake, I drove it there.

Thats where the fun starts, Thursday is really pants weather, so much so that visibility is really crap on the M25. Anyways doing about 50ish in the outside lane, then without knowing about it, I am spinning over ever carriage. I had hit the brakes, as there were three cars pilled up in the outside lane, but as its so wet, my car span. I ended up stopping a cm away from the crash and the central reservation. Then I see a TT doing the same, stopping a CM from me.

I looked at the chap, and laughed. Then thought shit better get out of here before someone crashes into me. with that went to Heathrow, got my lappy repaired, and back home (well the office anyways). Thought as it was mid-day I’d pay the CC charge and go through central London. Seems the CC change hasn’t actually cut traffic, but you just have to pay for the privilage.

Later on in the week, I was getting a server ready for sticking in a colo, as when I leave my current job, I loose the nice perk of having a server in the DC. I had some LP2000r’s lying around that I use for testing and running a couple of VM’s. One had a few warnings, i.e. the fan had died…etc, so thought I would strip that one down, and make 2 more powerful beasts, with some spares for the future.

In doing so managed to reset the raid on one of them. Needed to rebuild the OS anyways. My primary exim box, which is a virtual died a couple of weeks, ago, so was running off a backed up version, which also has now died. So had to rebuild that, and made a couple of spares too.

Friday saw KCOM being particularly up to spec (that’s sarcasm there, if you didn’t guess), so this is definitely coming up to my last week.

T’internets

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:36:51 +0000

A quickie for all you internet folk who may read.

Day, well having actually got a whole nights sleep (22:00 to 05:00), weirdly enough, I felt even worse than if I don’t sleep, can’t work that one out.

Work was quite busy, was only 2 of us in, when we should have had 4. No lunch, 50 million fixes later, I get to come home, and sit in two and a half hours of traffic. Joyous!

This evening, I thought I’d take a look at a blogging manager, that Nige’ recommended. Why, does nothing ever work straight away.

Ecto, says it cannot connect to my server, which I know it’s lying, as it’s 2 foot away . Turns out the php page it was trying to contact (http://luke.sheldrick.co.uk/blog/xmlrpc.php) was giving a delightful out of memory error.

‘Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted’

A little edit to the php.ini on my webserver soon solved that. So now can use ecto. So far quite impressed.

Erm think that’s it. Probably loads of stuff, but brain has gone to sleep.

EDIT: solving the PHP error, has also restored the problem with wordpress loosing it’s advanced RTF formatting toolbar too

No one is ever awake

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:40:11 +0000

I need to find like minded people to share the early hours with, as insomnia (well I just think I don’t need much sleep) gets boring.

No to have another vodka, or not, considering I have to leave for work at 5ish… me thinks just a Dr Pepper and no point sleeping now is there.

Need to find the source code to connect vb & sql express, but do you think I can anywhere. Grrrr. It was a paticular type so you didn’t need to use odbc. Dammit! any hints welcome.

A day of erm pain

Luke Sheldrick — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:58:55 +0000

A fun one today, woke up this morning, fell over, and emptied my stomach… oh yes, another migrane. Not sure why I keep getting them, but their frequency is getting more and more common.

As you may have previously read, I am currently not having much caffein, mainly due to the fact I am brassic, so the diet coke budget has been slashed. I had put it down to that, but looks like I’ll be seeking a new theory. So called in sick this morning, which is fun due to work having a new process where you have to call a call centre of nurses, who I guess are there to see if you are faking it, which already makes you more nervous than you need to be. Anyways spoke to the nice chap, who was like oh sounds like you have a migrane, I was like well yes, the first thing I said is that I have a migrane… blah blah blah.

So have tried to sleep it off all day, which seems to have pretty much done the trick, still got a killer head ache, but can cope with those, as get them most days anyways.

On a lighter note, got paid today, so caffein can once again run through my veins woop, and may treat myself to a curry too.

Why can’t I sleep

Luke Sheldrick — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:14:08 +0000

Sometimes I wonder, what is it that makes me stay awake, until the sunrise? I’ve been like it for years, but just assumed it was caffeine, as am a coffee and diet coke junkie. It would appear my theory has been foiled, becuase I am still wide awake, and haven’t had any caffeine for 48 hours. It just sucks.

The main reason for being caffeine free for 48 hours, is shire skintness! would appear that a number of factors have attributed to me being pot less until payday, including it being a 6 month (well financial month) and having a new engine put in my car, oh and it just being Christmas.

I thought I would embrace this however, a lot of my friends at uni manage with just a few pounds per week, so decided I would take up the challenge. The hardest thing was food, as didn’t have any in, so am on a super budget, although I did have a frozen pie in the freezer, that was todays food sorted

hmm what else to babble about.

oh yes, I was playing with my HTC TyTN earlier, as since I have changed to the HTC Touch, it’s been a bit neglected. As I have smashed the screen on my dell laptop, I was looking for a way I could use the TyTN as a modem for my MacBook, and reading on t’internet, all looked like a lot of bother.

Then I stumbled on something I did look at before. Using the TyTN as a Wireless AP / Router. Before you had to do about 3 regedits everytime you wanted it to work, but some clever folk have made a simple app to do all the work for you.

http://www.jongma.org/WMWifiRouter/

Simple app, does what it says on the tin, and works with no problems on my MacBook. Happy days

That is all.

Too much to write, too little time.

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:10:01 +0000

Where to start… hmm Well last week was on a Red Cross 4 day First aid @ work course. Was quite a laugh, but scary how things have changed in less than three years.

There was two guys on the course, that really didn’t get a grip on first aid, and on a number of practice sessions, would have either killed you, or you’d never have walked again. They had to do the exam/test THREE times, and then they were passed. It really makes me think how unsafe first aiders could actually be.

Whilst on the course, I got to work with one young lady, who was pretty cool. In the end we exchanged details, now usually people would exchange numbers or at least email addys. Now it seems perfectly acceptable to exchange nothing more than full names. Why you ask, to find each other on Facebook. It seems that social networking has overtaken phones. I’m just waiting for a time where we all have some sort of unified social networking / mobile / email / address / ip address / voip contraption, would make life so much easier.

Friday saw me attending an interview in St Katherines dock, for a similar, but more technical role than I am currently doing. The interview was a technical interview, which I passed. I was invited back for a second interview on Monday, which seemed quite positive. Monday evening the agency confirmed that the company was going to make me an offer on Tuesday, which they did. Just awaiting my contracts, and my start date is 11th Feb. So 2008 looks positive so far. The only draw back is, there is no parking, so will be utilising the train. Which I guess with a bag full of gadgets, wont be too painful. It’s not terrible as I only have to get the train, and don’t have to venture on the tubes.

Also went for leaving drinks on Friday for my good pal Yinka, who is leaving us to go work for Betfair, so the team will be two down, which kinda sucks I guess for the existing team.

This morning was awoke by my ever ringing mobile, today it was Barclays, calling about my executive complaint. Seems I was 1000% correct on my thoughts, and was their error, which they are correcting, refunding charges and correcting my credit history. I ask myself, why could they have not resolved it like that on my initial call, and force me to write a letter of complaint?

BarclayCard (aka the Scammers)

Luke Sheldrick — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:08:36 +0000

This evening returned home, and had an unusual letter, well different from the usual Bank statement types.

From BarclayCard, stating I have missed 3 payments. Well from my banking experience this is something I would NEVER do. Just to prevent this kind of thing, I always have a direct debit set up on any of my bills.

Well it seems they have not taken a direct debit since I lost my card in September. Weird I am thinking. Especially as they haven’t even told me any of this as yet, and are charging me for it too. Grrr

Phoned up the New Deli call centre, who were as much help as talking to a… well I don’t know. Very unhelpful. Apparently BarclayCard dont have any managers outside 9 to 5.

So I have faxed over a very snotty complaint to their cheif executive.

Grumble Grumble Grumble.

NYE

Luke Sheldrick — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:05:03 +0000

So, never drinking again. HA! How many times do I have to tell myself that.

Ah well.

Had a cool evening, went to Smiths2 in Chelmsford, with my good friend Drew, and his flatmate Steve. Long story short, they stopped serving me, as I managed to tip my freshly poured Double Vodka + Diet Coke over the barman, was accidental, but don’t think they saw the funny side, after I did it 3 times in a row. haha

Ended up asleep in Drews bathroom, and felt like total poo alday. Photographic proof naturally available on facebook, courtesy of Drew. Thank you

An afternoon of dominos and wii soon sorted that out am actually quite surprised how good the wii actually is, tis a very clever box of tricks.

Here’s to a good 2008 for ya’ll.

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