Feckoff.net

With today’s news that the government are finally going to crack down on the 400,000 provisional driving licence holders in Ireland there has been some hilarious angry ranting from those who believe it is their right to drive on public roads without sitting any test. Apparently over 300,000 of our provisional licence holders have not applied for a test. Check it out:

• One of those utterly worthless online petitions (with some rather humorous comments left)
• A call-to-arms on boards.ie to get people to sign the aforementioned petition
• A lengthy thread about the situation on boards.ie (152 posts and counting)
• Another lengthy thread about it on politics.ie (149 posts and counting)

(continue reading…)

I upgraded my laptop from Ubuntu 7.04 to 7.10 yesterday. I’m pretty impressed with it – particularly with the compiz eye candy. This is the first time I’ve ever had compiz working without it crashing after I reboot

I do have a couple of issues though – The Azureus BitTorrent client worked flawlessly with Ubuntu 7.04. It immediately crashes upon startup now in 7.10. I have read that manually downloading it and installing it from the Azureus website will remedy the problem – I had installed it from the Ubuntu repositories. In the mean time I have been using Deluge instead, which does the job but is not as feature-rich as Azureus.

My only other big issue with Ubuntu 7.10 is that suspend still does not work for me, just as in 7.04. The laptop will suspend just fine but it is impossible to get it to resume without forcing a hard power off.
Another minor issue is that the built in VNC server STILL does not support clipboard sharing. It is possible to replace this with an alternate version but its a proper pain in the arse.

Nice things:

• WiFi support is really slick now, with painless GUI configuration of WPA2 networks. It also seems to automatically connect to my wireless LAN before I log in, which is nice.
• It now has a fast indexed search engine (Tracker)
• Adding package repositories is now really, really easy and does not require editing of config files
• It detected my laptop’s screen resolution (1280×800) correctly, unlike 7.04.

(continue reading…)

Here are some photos I took in Shanghai on Friday, over on my flickr

A sample:

(continue reading…)

Anywhere that gives you free wifi that will happily download stuff at over 500KB/sec is worth a positive mention! This airport is a very slick operation – I got straight off my flight from Shanghai to walk pretty much directly from the jetway to a flight connections desk that got me checked in for my onward flight to Heathrow within 5 minutes. Security check was quick and painless. Heathrow, please learn from Hong Kong’s example.

The duty free’s pretty cheap too!

(continue reading…)

Here are some photos I took as I strolled around Suzhou last night. All at ISO1600 (it was pretty dark) with my trusty cheap nifty fifty Nikkor lens.

Here’s a sample:

(continue reading…)

I’ve been here in Suzhou since Sunday now, and I must say I’m pleasantly surprised by the whole experience. Suzhou is a city of some 6 million people, and while its been around for thousands of years, most of it was constructed in the last 12 years or so. Its about a 2 hour drive from the airport in Shanghai.

The city looks absolutely amazing at night, as most of the buildings are very well lit with bright neon. Its full of high-rise towers and great architecture. I haven’t gotten any photos yet – my camera stuff got locked in an office at work yesterday!

The hotel I’m staying in is fabulous and would be utterly unaffordable if it was in Europe. It is situated beside a beautiful park that is very well lit at night and contains a massive amphitheatre in its centre.

The roads are absolutely fantastic, and the drivers absolutely terrifyingly awful! 6 lane highways all over the place, wide cycle/pedestrian lanes separated from traffic by grass verges, etc. I’ve seen so many newly manufactured cars here that have been long ago discontinued in the west, many of them based on an old Seat Toledo design. Lots of Volkswagens and Buicks around here. the Buicks here are mostly rebadged Korean models like the Chevrolet/Daewoo Lacetti, known here as the “Buick Excelle”. I haven’t seen many of the Chinese marques with their poor reputations around, besides a single Landwind which looks suspiciously like the ancient Opel Frontera.

I haven’t had any free time from work to do any real sightseeing yet – we’ve had a lot of setbacks and time wasting caused by cock ups on the part of the Chinese builders.

I’ll be back with more later!
(continue reading…)

Tomorrow I get up at 4 in the morning for the drive to Shannon Airport. From there I get the its-days-are-numbered Aer Lingus service to Heathrow. Then I will spend a few hours hanging around Heathrow (in queues at security I reckon…) before getting a Virgin Atlantic flight to Shanghai Pudong Airport, which will take approximately 12 hours. Its my first time flying with Virgin. I hear they’re very good, even for economy class peons like me.

Once I get there its sleepytime, then I spend the next five days working. After that its back home, but because of the Special Olympics its impossible to get a flight from Shanghai to Heathrow so I’m going via Hong Kong. I get the impression that I might well crash my car on the drive home from Shannon when I eventually get there!

I’m told I will have internet access in my hotel room, so hopefully I might be able to stick up some photos here and on flickr during the week. If Aer Lingus shuts down for my flight home I think I’m going to have to visit Dermot Mannion’s house and take a dump on his doorstep. They’ve already screwed me once this year with their industrial relations bullshit.

(continue reading…)

teeheehee

http://www.lolcatbible.com – a wiki project to translate the entire bible into highly articulate lolcat speak

Ceiling cat is god too.

Here’s an excerpt from genesis:

1. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat was invisible, and he maded the skiez and da earths, but he did not eated it.

2. The earths wus witout shapez & wus dark & scary & stuffs, & he rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3. & Ceiling Cat sayz, i can has light? and & light wuz.

Also a bit from the gospel of Matthew:

18. Now, teh burth of teh Christ was liek dis: After Marry and Joseph were all “We’s gonna get marrieded, kthnx”, but before dey could had PENIS GOES WHERE?, Mary was all preggy from the Holey Ghosty.

19. Joseph was all liek “Oh snap, dis embarrassin. I’s gonna hide mah wife”.

LOL

(continue reading…)