Wavy’s World

Stunning

David Harris — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:07:01 +0800

I stumbled across this today. Every time I see footage of Mr Peart he just blows me away completely

FCO in common sense shock

David Harris — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:04:45 +0800

I rarely delve into politics here on WavysWorld, but I must commend Mark Malloch brown on his statement today: "Our objectives are to get in every forum possible a recognition that today President Mugabe no longer remains the proper rightful leader of the country," Malloch-Brown told reporters.

"He has no claim under his own constitution for the presidency ... we do not accept the status quo, we do not expect the international community to accept the status quo," he added. (Source, The Guardian)

Mugabe has turned his country from the bread basket of Africa into a basket case, That his election opponent has to seek refuge in a foreign country's embassy speaks volumes about Mugabe's intentions of holding free and fair elections.

Stunned

David Harris — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:38:23 +0100

On how many levels is this wrong?

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/lostinshowbiz/2008/06/rodney_king_from_civil_rights.html

Craig Bellamy - hero AND Villain

David Harris — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:57:07 +0800

Craig Bellamy really does seem to be a Jekyll and Hyde character. Violent nutcase on the one hand, viz numerous reports of bar-room and night club brawls on the one hand.

Humanitarian and philanthropist on the other. The Craig Bellamy Foundation was launched in Sierra Leone last weekend:

"The aims of the Foundation are:

• To educate the youth of today and tomorrow
• To establish a multi-league youth football system in Sierra Leone
• To support employment, foster community spirit and develop community impact projects
• To develop football talent."

Most of this is funded by the guy himself, although I'm sure that he'll try to attract some corporate sponsors as well. What's interesting is that he seems to be going about it in all the right ways: this is not a scouting exercise, with the sole purpose of producing new talent to be devoured by the European football monster. The Foundation is also setting up, or aims to set up, a complete footballing structure at youth level, including the raising, or rather establishing, the standards of coaching necessary, and ensuring that a full secondary education including personal welfare, HIV/AIDS prevention, etc, is part of the package.

But it wouldn't be Craig Bellamy unless he also did something mind-numblingly stupid while he was there.

Like getting rat-arsed, going to a casino, and picking a fight with an English aid-worker, at least, according to those bastions of truth, The Sun and the Daily Mail.

All said, I really applaud the guy for what he's trying to do, but I wish he could get rid of that self-destruct button that he just can't help pushing.

Sockpuppets

David Harris — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:36:16 +0800

Two very strange (and temporary, I hasten to add) visitors came to see the children last night:

Tantrums

David Harris — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:12:59 +0800

This song came on the jukebox in my local internet bar last night:

It did make me smile a little wistfully. Aysha's almost three now, and she sometimes gets so upset when I leave for work that I feel like a heartless monster for walking out of sight. And her mum tells me it can be even worse if she wakes up and I've left already.

Shoot! shot down

David Harris — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:19:32 +0800

A great shame today: Shoot! magazine is to be closed.

As a kid, Shoot! was a fantastic read, containing actual interviews and articles, rather then simply the photos of comics such as Roy of the Rovers.

It was also the magazine that gave you League Ladders, a piece of card into which you could slot smaller pieces of card representing each team according to the team's place in the League. Many an argument was had, I'm sure not not just in our house, over who got hold of the results page in the Sunday newspaper.

More than the League Ladders, Shoot! also had the most looked-forward to giveaway I can remember as a child: the Figure Panini sticker album, which was a must have item at school. Americans can have their baseball bubblegum cards, the football stickers were much better. There were shiny ones for club badges one year, or cloth ones the next, and the badges, team photos and, strangely, managers I recall as being the most prized.

The point being, if youo got Shoot!, you got the album a few days earlier than your friends (or at least, you did if you had a decent newsagent).

The was a feature every issue on the laws of the game, called You Are the Ref!. An established referee (and this was long before the days of professional referees) would outline a situation regarding offside, or an indirect free kick, and then ask which was the correct action given a certain action or sequence of actions.

I understand why IPC, the publisher, have taken the decision, but it's still very sad.

Another part of footballing history lost.

Maintenance

David Harris — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:07:00 +0100

I'm doing some maintenance on WavysWorld this afternoon.

When I started the site, it was based on Steve Castledine's excellent Project DX blog engine for Domino, which he made open for personal use. While they were going through a period of astonishing good sense, IBM snapped up Steve's services, as well as the rights to future versions of the website design (I don't mean the colour scheme and layout, since that's all controlled by CSS and stuff, but the underlying content management engine, comments engine, etc).

They also brought it under full IBM support.

This was in 2006.

I'm not the most diligent of blog owners, as my reader may have realised, but I've decided it's time to move WWDC (WavysWorldDotCom) to the "new" .

In essence, the upgrade is a case of uploading the conversion agent, running it, then applying the new design template. The only thing thing that might affect responsiveness is network latency, but it should only take ten minutes (fingers crossed - surely something has to go right after this morning).

Appearances should be unchanged.. Otherwise, I'll work out how to get back to normal non-service within a couple of days.

See you soon.

Wavy

Sidenote: Steve Castledine is two years younger than me to the day - why could I have built DX? Answer: Talent.

Update: Things didn't really go too well. If you can read this, then everything's back to normal now, but trust me, it wasn't for a long while.

Update 2: Well. that really didn't work. Not helped by the server being incommunicado for 36 hours either. Thank the stars for remembering to take a backup before I started. Time to fire up the test server and play around a bit, I think.

Friday 13th, or a flying visit from the TCFs

David Harris — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:34:04 +0800

Ever had one of those mornings?

I was supposed to be on a training course this morning, for a companion product for Lotus Notes.

I didn't make it. I got hit by the Travel Curse Fairies plying their brand of fun on Friday 13th. I should have just stayed in bed.

First thing to go wrong: I went to print the map to ECS (the IBM distribution partner giving the course). Printer not working. "Never mind" I thought, "I'll just get in the taxi, and open the gif on the way". Very early on the way, in fact. About 25 yards from my block. Still and all, once my machine had come to its duty, about five minutes later, we were off.

And eventually off course. The taxi driver, with the aid of the map, got lost. For fifteen minutes. Still we, did a u-turn and headed to Wisma Glomac, which I sort of remember from the address on the map, and which we could see not too far ahead, and after much to-ing and fro-ing, pulled up outside, where I and Mr Taxi parted company. That may have been an error.

Wrong building.

By now it's already 9:45 as well. Training started at 9:30.

I walked inside, enquire as to where ECS are, and the security guys just stare blankly. So I open the machine and show the map, and they call in the guy from outside. "Ah" he says, "wrong place, lah. That building, white one" pointing out a big white building about 400 yards away.

So off I trot, only to find out there's no way between the two, despite having walked round the whole of the (large) office complex (and down to the car park and back), only to end up back where I started. I escape its clutches, however, and back it back out to the road. Now it's 10;00 already, and I'm hoping that at least I won't have missed the lab part of the day.

Ten minutes later and I'm at last the big white building (via a blazing hot patch of waste ground - KL sun at that time of morning? no thanks - and two very large, hot and angry looking turkeys and their concubine) and sweat y way round to the first entrance that looks like it might have some offices behind it.

I still can't see ECS on the tenant companies' name board though, so I speak to the security guy. Out comes the map again and the predictable response "Block C, Affin Bank" which means I'll have to go further back on myself, only this time the safe side of the barbed wire (did I mention the barbed wire? Silly me).

By now, I'm really beginning to regret not listening to that little little voice that had been saying "it's Friday 13th, don't plan anything that isn't absolutely routine".

So I reach block C, Affin Bank, and again, nothing on the name board. Panic's rising (it's now gone 10:15) and I ask, knowing somehow what the answer's going to be. "Eh? ACS?". "No, EeeCS". He shouts something to his female colleague who comes over, and out comes the map again.

Yep, here it comes: "Ahh, wrong place lah, luar Kastam Haus" or something like it. From the inbound trip, I know that that's at least a mile away, with a route that's about as friendly to pedestrians as a mongoose is to a cobra.

"Ah" I say. "Where teksi?" "Teksi Maybank. No car?" "No car" I reply, and she walks me back to where I'd come into this little outpost of hell, ten minutes ago.

So at 10:30, eventually an empty taxi pulls up, and I make my mind up.

"LRT, boss".

Had enough. I want to get out. I want to get back to KL. To make sure my kids don't grow up thinking Daddy went to work one day and didn't come back, while I'm stuck in the Kelana Jaya Triangle, or, like Odysseus, forever wandering, trying to get home.

You can keep Friday 13th.

I'm going home where the Travel Curse Fairies can't find me.

Quote of the week

David Harris — Tue, 3 Jun 2008 01:08:00 +0100

I'm reliably informed that the following assertion was made a couple of days ago, and it brought a smile.

Picture two australians sitting in a bar in a KL suburb, one of whom delightfully refers to Asians as "rice-eating c**ts" and football, ie, the round ball game, as "wogball", the other of whom has a somewhat contrary disposition to people of a Levantine heritage...

"Better a rice-eating c**t than a redneck cowboy with no feckin' horse!"

[Note: may not have actually said "feckin'"]