Livin' the life...

lol, cat not too impressed with baby it seems (source)! Have a great week! :-)

Recently on a visit to another city, I witnessed number of persons scattered about the main streets begging for money. At one point I passed by this gentleman, and noting his apparent ill-fortune, I decided that I simply must 'give'. As I headed back his way a few minutes later therefore, I fished in my pocket for a pound or two to make ready to deposit into his hat. As I got closer to where he was, surprisingly, up popped the guy, he put a beer can to his head, and then quickly walked away, leaving the few pence in his hat on the pavement. I really wasn't sure what to make of this i.e. whether the significance for me was in the consuming of beer, or in the small donations and hat left behind.

The point of me recapping this little story however is in neither of those two final observations. My reason for this story stems from us as Christians giving to others, freely and openly of whatever we have, even though, persons out there will be very willing to prey on the kindness of our hearts. I'm sure we all have read 1 John 3:16-20 at some stage but just to recap it states:

By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.

Now, please don't take this (i.e. giving) to the other extreme, but instead let's remember those out there in need, and how much brighter we could make someone's life by giving to them - of whatever we have, e.g. clothes, food, help, advice, or money - today.

Have a great week. :-)

Vint Cerf, the man who helped invent the system and one of the world's leading computer scientists, said that the web does not have enough unique codes that allow computers to communicate with each other.

He said that when the internet protocol (IP) addresses do run out, the connectivity of the internet will be damaged and some computers will not be able to go online. "This is like the internet running out of telephone numbers and with no new numbers, you can't have more subscribers," he said. Preparations had to be made now, he said, to switch addresses to a new system. 

When the internet was founded in 1977 there were 4.2 billion addresses available under the internet protocol version four (IPv4) system.

Each of the IPv4 addresses has a series of 32 binary numbers, but with the rapid expansion of broadband across the world, it is estimated that these addresses will run out by 2010.

A new system called IPv6 has been ready for a decade and is already used in Japan to connect thousands of earthquake sensors through a computer system that sends automatic alerts to television programmes and turns traffic lights red.

IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long and so provide a possible 340 trillion, trillion, trillion address space.  (Source)

I reiterate, the Internet is a monster.

In Britain, tea's definitely the way to go. Whether this is linked to the average temperature/weather, or the British natural taste for tea, I'm not quite sure. One of my mates even referred to it as "the answer to all your problems"!

Well in addition to drinking it purely for pleasure, I've found an article online from Reader's Digest that claims tea has many (23 to be exact) more uses! Of course, I'm not sure if all of these uses are true however, if they are, "wow"! These uses range from shining your mirrors and relieving tired eyes, to conditioning your hair and tenderizing tough meat! Read the full story - 23 Ways to Use Tea - I'm sure you'll be shocked at some of the uses!

If you're using Google Chrome, Lifehacker's Power User's Guide to Google Chrome should prove somewhat interesting. Enjoy!

Whilst taking the bus last week I overheard a rather thought-provoking conversation between a teenage girl and a bloke, likely in his twenties. At the point I got on the bus, they were discussing smoking, and the guy was commenting that he's fasting so he doesn't smoke before 7:30pm. The girl, being a smoker herself, was shocked at how harsh this was and inquired more about the guy's reason i.e. religion. When it was his turn to ask questions, he asked the girl, what religion she belonged to, and without much hesitation she replied, "Me? I don't have any. I'm just, .. normal".

For the remainder of the bus ride, her comments had me thinking about religion in general, and how un-normal and eccentric religious people really must be. After all, some of us believe that thousands of years ago God sent his only begotten son to earth to die for our sins. And that through that sacrificial death of one so perfect, we all would be forgiven (provided we repent and ask for that forgiveness of course!). Some of us even take it another step further and believe that things like adultery, fornication, idolatry, revelries, drunkenness, smoking and the like are sins, and can actually cause someone from inheriting the kingdom of God. "How crazy is that!" I thought to myself.

Well, I don't know about you, but I must confess, I'm one of those crazy ones, and to be frank, I love being un-normal. What about you? What side of the fence are you on?

Have a great week all. Love you!

As I suspected, photos from Women In Games (WIG) 2008 have been posted online at Flickr.. and as you can see from the photo below taken at the dinner at Warwick Castle, I was caught red.. or well.. blue handed, as an audience volunteer playing a tambourine along with industry icon Paulina Bozek (in the white) in the in-house  in-castle band.

Of course it was all in good fun, even though I must admit that sometimes I hadn't a clue what tune to play on the tambourine! Yes.. playing music was never one of my strong points.

Anyway, it was a great night out! (8)For Warwick and for glory!!(8)

Do you text whilst driving? This is especially for you to read...

Texting behind the wheel is more dangerous than driving while under the influence of alcohol or cannabis, researchers said Thursday.

Research carried out on young drivers (aged 17-24) using a simulator found that reaction time slowed by 35% when they were writing or reading text messages while driving. In comparison, reaction time deteriorated by 21% for those under the influence of cannabis, and by 12% at the legal alcohol limit.

Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) -- which carried out the study for the RAC Foundation -- also found that steering control worsened by 91% for those who were distracted by texts, compared to 35% when cannabis was involved. ...

Nearly half of all drivers aged 18 to 24 in Britain admit to texting while driving, according to an earlier RAC poll of 3000 young drivers. (Full story)

Intriguing, and worrying findings..

Since I got back yesterday, I tried logging in to MSN messenger but unfortunately I was getting the error below..

We were unable to sign you in to the Messenger at this time. Please try again later. To let us try and troubleshoot the problem, click the Troubleshoot button.
Error code: 80048820
Extended error code: 80048416

I tried troubleshooting, and one or two other things but nothing seemed to work! Anyway, this morning, with my strength and patience renewed, I searched the official messenger site and found a fix that seemed to work rather perfectly.. hence the need for this post!

The fix can be found in this article: Error 80048820: You can't sign in to Windows Live Messenger, and the step that worked for me was Check your Windows Internet Explorer proxy settings (i.e. Start IE -> Tools menu -> Internet Options -> Connections tab -> LAN Settings -> Clear the Automatically detect settings check box -> Click OK, and then click OK again).

Hi folks!

I apologise for not posting lately but I took a trip to Scotland with some friends, and only returned today. I hope to have pictures for you sometime in the near future including a full post on what touring we managed to get done.

Until then!

The Women In Games 2008 conference held at the University of Warwick (10-12 Sept) came to a close today, and all-in-all, it was a grand time. As I was a helper, I only attended a few of the talks, but based on the comments from the delegates, everyone enjoyed themselves and found it a useful experience.

Of particular enjoyment was the conference dinner held at Warwick Castle. We got a chance to do a bit of touring (and wine, and ale sampling) before we had our four course, themed meal of bread and broth, appetizer - a salmon quiche with salad, main - chicken and potatoes, and lastly pudding - custard and apple.. something. While this was served we were entertained by a lord, a jester, wenches, and a laundry lady - all in with the 15th century theme of course!

Anyway, it was a grand time, and I'm sure photos from it will appear online (maybe on Flickr, Facebook) in the next few days.

"Virgin Atlantic has called for a review into restrictions on what passengers can take on planes.

The company said it was time to reassess hand luggage regulations.

British Airways (BA) mirrored Virgin's call and said it was "sensible" that the rules governing the restrictions were kept under review.

Rules about what could be taken on to planes were changed in August last year following the arrest of a number of men accused of plotting mass murder on transatlantic aircraft.

Eight men were tried over an alleged plot to blow up planes. None was found guilty of the aircraft plot but three were convicted of conspiracy to murder, following a trial at Woolwich Crown Court, in south east London.

The Government has ruled that restrictions on carrying liquids and gels in hand luggage on flights must continue despite the inconclusive verdicts.

But Virgin Atlantic director of communication Paul Charles said: "Maybe now is the time for a review to be held on whether the restrictions in place on hand luggage and liquids should still take place. Passengers are still confused, there are different rules all over the world." (Source)

It's about time! Suitcases and briefcases should not be considered a piece!

Ahahahahh. Croiky! Image from here.

This week's TFTW is taken from Friday's Our Daily Bread devotion. As I read it I thought on it for a while and all-in-all, was inspired by its message. I'm sure you will be as well. Here's the article..

Roots or Shoots - Julie Ackerman.

Have a blessed week!

20 Useful Tools to Make Web Development More Efficient - I'm sure this article will come in useful for us developers. :-)

Yes that's right.. Google now has a browser, and of course it's freely available. Below I've included an excerpt of a very interesting article discussing Chrome..

As of this morning, Google still had not launched Chrome Beta, but it promises to be an innovative piece of software. (We’ll turn around a review soon after it’s posted.) On the surface, Chrome will act like a tabbed browsing architecture similar to pretty much every other browser. But it will treat each tab as a separate process, meaning that if one tab hangs or crashes out, it can be terminated without closing the entire Chrome application. Likewise, each tab will be “sandboxed” to prevent it from accessing files on the user’s computer. In essence, Chrome functions much like an operating system, managing resources and each Web page’s access to the computer’s vital functions dynamically. (Source)

Under duress (*eh hem*), I downloaded Chrome a lot sooner than I would have liked, and my review thus far is that it's an ok lightweight browser. I especially like the ability to see tabs hogging memory and to end them as necessary and, the search function in the address bar (albeit not that extensive).

All-in-all, I'll stick to FF, and probably use this as a secondary browser (IE just always seems so heavyweight!).

PS. I recommend this article - How Google's Simple Chrome Could Steer Web's Complex Future: Analysis - it was well written and very informative.

We all know that different people get different amounts of email “spam“. Some of these differences result from how careful people have been in hiding their address from the spammers — putting it en claire on a webpage will definitely improve your chances of receiving unsolicited email.

However, it turns out there’s other effects as well. In a paper I presented last week to the Fifth Conference on Email and Anti-Spam (CEAS 2008), I showed that the first letter of the local part of the email address also plays a part. (Source)

Interesting piece of research.

A few days ago, I had this overwhelming urge to document all the movies I've ever watched (I think I was trying to remember one and was totally lost :$). As a result, over the last couple days, I've been busy scouting sites and picking my brain to remember all the movies that have graced my eyes, and compile them into a nice little list.

If you're interested, you can check out that list here. Remember, it's a work-in-progress.

You would notice that it's on The Internet Movie Database (IMDB). I chose this as opposed to sites like Flixster mainly because IMDB just seems like IT when it comes to movies online. Also, they have an extensive, almost never-ending movie collection. I am yet to search and not find a title! What amazed me the most is that I found a title from 1938! Then again, that was staring Sir Robin of Locksley!