Chris’ Blog

This title caught my eye the other day.

Taleban fighters using giant Afghan marijuana forests for cover are proving a tough foe to smoke out, the head of Canada’s armed forces has revealed.

Read on BBC News

(20:49:35) Dave: currently trying to fix an opera bug
(20:50:39) Me: fun
(20:50:57) Dave: as much fun as getting stabed in the face
(20:51:13) Me: Sorry forgot the sarcasm tag
(20:51:25) Dave: no, its fine
(20:51:33) Dave: i like getting stabbed in the face
(20:51:39) Dave: gives me something to clean up
(20:51:41) Me: sql_db::sql_multi_insert() <-- good idea
(20:51:49) Dave: my idea
(20:52:05) Me: Must be something to do with being stabbed
(20:52:10) Dave: i proposed it, all Meik did was write the code and make the changes

/me says yeah in an uneasy ready to turnaround and run sorta way.

Smile you are on camera, this thief obviously didn’t think that CCTV cameras would record him stealing them.

I see all the fuss regarding the name of the (E)CU has got into the news too.

Madness …

Got egged walking home from the Imperial, a local pub, wasn’t just me a few in our group did but not nice all the same; bastards…

… I have got to wash my coat now its covered in egg. *grumble*

Well I was trying to play around with some groovy new features in OpenSSH, namely its ability to create a secure VPN connection between two points. Its a fairly new feature so howto’s are thin on the ground, anyway I was persisting to make it work. I had multiple remote sessions open up on my server and a few to my PC here at uni, and anyway. I wrote out a command to alter the routing tables to hopefully allow me to connect, it was totally wrong, but I sent it to the wrong machine, the remote one.

Pop …

… my server disappeared off the internet, I had told it to route all traffic bound for external addresses down the SSH tunnel which had also died. I managed to solve the problem by divulging my password and SSH keys to my brother at home who ran the appropriate command to fix the routing table.

I think I am just gonna stick with local port forwarding over SSH, I could really do with another host running at home. You learn the hard way I guess.

I woke up this morning to find this sitting in a gaim tab:

(04:11:49) Peter: send her victorious
(04:11:55) Peter: happy and glorious
(04:11:58) Peter: long to reign over us
(04:12:04) Peter: GOD SAVE OUR QUEEN
(04:17:02) Peter: look, turn your PC off for once in your life
(04:17:13) Peter has signed off.

Odd…

Ahh the wonders of British weather, lovely morning very mild nice refreshing breeze (woke me up,) became very overcast around lunchtime and from about 2200 it has been pouring it down with rain with the odd flash and rumble mixed in for added excitement. Walked back from the Ram bar in the torrents of rain in only a t-shirt and trousers, I was totally drenched by the time I got back to the block (still wet now!)

Found a letter poked under my door today, it appears we didn’t follow the emergency instructions when the fire alarm went off last week, whoops. It also informed us that we would be having a drill sometime, but when? Best not be tonight in the rain.

Spent the watched Cinderella for the first time in donkey years tonight, most amusing. We have a whole collection of Disney films in the flat, how sad.

So I discover that the clock on my box has drifted really badly so I synced it with the Exeter time server, next thing I know is this wailing noise is filling the room. I am thinking wow, thats not supposed to happen. I realised that it was the fire alarm and this was not a drill, grabbed my coat, and keys and left.

Stood outside guy from the universities hospitality services turns up going rather quickly along the one way road, okay, no visible signs of fire, no smoke nothing really. Not long after I notice blue lights flashing against a window of a car, next thing I know is two fire engines had pulled up outside and guys were getting out and getting ready to go in. We saw them go in, looking through the windows, they concentrated on the bottom floor flat which has 4 mature post graduates living in it, I can only deduce they set it off as their stove looked rather full plus stuff grilling. Bastards. I come back to find my hot chocolate cold.

Whats more is I feel ill.