Ians Ramblings

Had a brilliant Christmas ! Got a load of nice presents including; a spud trooper! how cool is that. Got a whole bunch of DVDs including the Band of Brothers box set, all the spooks episodes released so far, Batman returns. Also more boys toys such as quazar gun (if thats the right spelling!) and a rugby ball.

I have also simplified this site a bit, I am updating it more though template wise, but the other template has a few issues on some rarer browsers so re-used a standard one.

In the process of adding some new Xmas pics in the “Ians Pictures” section of the site so by the time you read this, should be ready for you to look at

Although the company cancelled Christmas, we all decided to have our own party anyway, which was great. Went around the bars near work, then headed over to the quilted llama for a fishbowl of cocktail

Lots of good people out from work, had a great time. So just spending today chilling out and recovering. Also going to be heading off to the family tomorrow for Christmas yay!!!

Yay, its 5:31 on my last day at work before the holidays, just awaiting last little bits of work to check out and I am off. Had a rather nice Laguna curry at lunch, so been feeling tired out all afternoon, but was good stuff. My company also gave me a bottle of wine which was nice

Been quite surprised at the number of exploit attempts / hacking that goes on with this site, even though it is only a little personal site, I really feel sorry for the guys running the big corporate ones. It seems every time a new exploit is out for any web server it is tried many times on everyones site by script kiddies.

Ah well, I am thinking about putting any information about the exploits I see and how to protect against them on here, and possible any institutions I have found that are particularly troublesome so others can block them like I have.

Yay, just one day left at work after today before the Christmas holidays, can hardly wait! For once I have all my presents bought and quite a few cards sent.

Still hoping to be going over to Paris in the new year, hopefully when the snow is there. See all the sites, the usual tourist places, and see if I can have a wander around the lesser known parts like I did in Rome. I found some interesting pictures of just that at Snowy Paris.

Had a good weekend, chilling on the Saturday having a good gaming session for once, with Jon and Gregg, seems like forever since I last did that!

Just to let anyone who knows me from abroad that I wasn’t effected by the explosions down in Hemel Hempstead. Though I do have quite a few family members living in the area, they are all ok too, just need hearing aids hehe. Apparently the blast was even heard in Holland, pretty noisy huh?

Decided to bring my old Nintendo 64 back up from home, unfortunately the three games I managed to find are already wearing thin, , not quite an xbox 360!

Unfortunately this year no Christmas party at my company boo, ah well I am sure our department will organise their own one.

Horrible freezing fog today in England, couldn’t even see to the end of my road this morning!

Hoping to put some tracking on this site soon, see how many people are visiting and where they’re from, seem to be getting quite a few hits in the ians pictures section but I am not sure from where the visitors are from as of yet.

Just added a couple of web cams on the right, showing Nottingham from a couple of angles, thanks to the BBC.

Another day at work, working on some cool things at the moment, to do with sports images again, and the organisation thereof. Went over to huge out of town warehouse bargainy place this afternoon, snapping up Christmas presents for the remaining family members, not a bad haul.

Isnt Christmas shopping weird, takes ages to get going, but once you start you start seeing appropriate presents all over the place.

If Julia is reading, hope your kids start to feel better soon, wish them all the best for getting better.

My server is now running the best it has ever been, after some tinkering from Phil, apparently my router wasn’t giving it a valid response to DNS requests which is a bit more than cheeky I thought. So it can now lynx with the best of them.

Thinking of making some kind of semi-intellectual side blog or totally separate blog, something like the Samual Pepys one that was about not so long ago. Thinking…. Though I am still supposed to be using that Cray….. hmm I am a lazy git sometimes hehe

Back in Shropshire this weekend for my Mum and Sister’s birthday. So that was great, got nearly all my Christmas shopping done now, though I did have to brave visiting Telford in order to do so.

Nice being back in the countryside, though it does make you realise that out here you can’t really get by if you dont have a car, unlike Nottingham.

Looking forward to Christmas holidays now ..

Such along time that I havent posted anything. Been super busy rushing around Christmas wise and my mum and sister both have the cheek to have birthdays in December. Work is going cool, loads more nice pythony things going on.

Finally got my login to the Cray super computers over at Cray-Cyber, great stuff for getting the chance to play with one of those massive beasts. Unfortunately Unix isn’t quite as friendly as Linux,,,
Better not geek everyone out though by nattering about it

Got Serious Sam 2 today, good old fashioned kill everything that moves game. Getting a bit sick of the sneaking around sillyness from alot of the new games.