Category: Random

Check out this keyboard.

I don’t know what I would do with it, but I need it 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Finally, VMware Server, the free version of VMware, is out of beta testing and has been released as a full production version.

Cheers

Tim…

I took a bit of a beating at Karate last night, so I’m feeling a little fragile this morning.

Monday night was tough. One of the instructors took me aside and worked with me one-on-one for the whole lesson. I just went up an down the hall constantly doing combinations and the six katas I need for my next grading. I thought I was going to puke, but I survived. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger… Or so I thought.

Last night we did quite alot of partner work, then switched to lineups. For those who don’t know, a lineup is where you stand at the front of the class while a bunch of people take it in turns to attack you with a single technique, which you must block and counter attack. After a few rounds the speed gradually builds up to a point where it’s a little frenzied. Finally, when the class was finished I did some sparring with one of the instructors. Once again, this started quite light and ended up with the pair of us lying on the floor, still trying to punch and kick each other 🙂

When I got home I took stock of my injuries, which included:

• A sore right elbow, caused by one of my punches being blocked on the elbow joint. Ouch!
• A very painful right shoulder, caused by a stray punch that was meant to hit my head, but fortunately hit my shoulder instead. It hurts to raise my arm above shoulder height.
• Swollen right hand, where I managed to punch somebodies elbow. I best avoid punching with that hand for a coupe of weeks.
• A miriad of bruises on my forearms and shins from blocking punches and kicks.
• A big green bruise on my chest, presumably where I got hit, although I really can’t remember it…

For the rest of the night I lay on my bed moving an ice pack from one bit of my body to the next. The only real problem is the shoulder, which feels like it’s going to take a few days to fix. Unfortunately, I have to go swimming at lunchtime, teach Ashtanga Yoga tonight and of course, go to Karate tomorrow…

What’s more, one of my friends is going to India for a little over two weeks, so starting next week I’ve got to teach his Hatha and Astanga Yoga classes while he’s away. I can just see their faces now when I turn up all battered and bruised with the odd joint that won’t move. Not exactly what you expect a Yoga teacher to look like 🙂

It’s going to be a long couple of weeks… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

I stumbled across these neat images:

• Sunset
• Hurricane Ivan
• Earth at Night

Cheers

Tim…

It was my 37th birthday yesterday.

On the way to visit my family I hit a pigeon, which wasn’t very nice. There wasn’t anything I could do to avoid it, other than not drive that day… 🙁

My brother and his wife hired a bouncy castle to keep the kids occupied, which of course meant that all the adults went nuts on it for the whole day, including the grandparents whose ages varied from 65 up to 78. I hope I can still jump around on a bouncy castle when I’m 78 🙂 There were several tramplings, flying head-butts and body-slam incidents, but everyone survived with only mild bruising 🙂

Cool!

Cheers

Tim…

I went to the West Mid Show yesterday. It’s an agricultural show held every year, near the town where I grew up. Although we did look at most of the exhibits, the main reason for visiting was the impressive display of tractors, diggers, combine harvester, ploughs, bailers, mowers, quad bikes etc. Most of the day was spent watching my 4 year old nephew play on all this equipment, punctuated by me nervously saying phrases like, “Please don’t do that!”, and, “Don’t break it, I don’t have a spare £26,000 to buy a broken tractor”. It’s amazing how a four year old can find novel ways to break agricultural equipment. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

I’ve been getting loads of link spam recently. Unfortunately, I get it from many angles:

• Blog Comments – I installed the “WP-Hashcash” plugin and so far it has prevented all link spam, but I’m a bit fed up of deleting the moderated spam. It is a great plugin though!
• Article Comments – I don’t have any anti-spam protection on these, so I guess I need to do a bit of programming.
• Forum Posts – I use phpBB, so I guess I need to hunt for some plugins to help me out.
• Forum Users – I get loads of users signing up who don’t post, but have dodgy homepage URLs. I guess they are all trying to use my forum as a link farm. I have a visual confirmation check on signup, so either they are signing up manually, or they have a way round this security feature.

I usually get rid of these spam posts pretty quickly, but it does get a bit depressing having to clean up on a daily basis. Drastic measure may be taken soon 🙂

On a lighter note, I got kicked in the solar plexus last night at Karate. It was a perfectly timed heel bang on target and it doubled me over straight away. After a few seconds of not breathing I dropped to my hands and knees and waited for a few more seconds before my lungs started to work again. It was a rather odd because I remember feeling like I wanted to breath, puke and laugh all at the same time. Not the most normal combinaton. The funniest thing was, even though I couldn’t breath I managed to croak out the words, “That was a good kick!”. You gotta laugh 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update: I’ve used the “WP-Hashcash” plugin approach on my article comments, so now they must be posted from my page, and the comment must be posted within 15 minutes of the initial request for the page. Let’s see how that works 🙂

If you think your network is safe, take a look at this. It would have been fine if it wasn’t for those pesky users!

Cheers

Tim…

This is totally cool!

http://www.evanwashere.com/StolenSidekick/

Cheers

Tim…