Simon Starr

How To Organise Bath Ruby Conference

2015-10-11T00:00:00+01:00

Earlier this year I organised my first conference and it seemed to go pretty well. I’d never organised an event on this scale before and the aim of this post is to share the budget as well as some of the points which helped make things run smoothly. I hope you find it useful and I’d be happy to answer questions or expand on any points in the comments or on Twitter.

tl;dr If you’re only interested in the numbers, here’s a link to thethe budget spreadsheet.

The Idea

The idea of running a Ruby conference first struck me after attending Andy Croll’s brilliant inaugural Brighton Ruby Conference and thinking that the UK needed more of this kind of thing. As is the case with most big projects, the first step was to write some lists; lists of potential venues, brilliant speakers and possible sponsors. I also created a budget spreadsheet, filled it with guesstimates and started experimenting with different attendee numbers, ticket prices, etc. to make the figures balance.

I had to list the aims of the conference as part of a grant application to cover the venue hire and I think this sums it up pretty well:

To inform, educate and inspire attendees as well as those who later watch videos of the talks when they’re posted online for free
To promote diversity and inclusion in the technology community by actively engaging with user groups and doing our best to ensure that everyone feels welcome
To raise awareness of Bath’s thriving technology scene and promote it as a great city for tech companies to do business

My aim from the beginning was to make sure there was something for novices as well as experienced developers, and this was part of the reason why I chose the speakers myself rather than having a CFP. I started by writing a wish-list based on talks I’d seen at other conferences/online, people I’d heard good things about and people who were doing interesting things. Then I emailed each speaker with an introduction and offered them all the same deal.

Money

I’ve shared a simplified version of my budget spreadsheet with some rows merged together so as to obfuscate the rates of any freelancers I hired.

My first consideration was how much to pay the speakers and I was surprised to find that a lot of tech conferences don’t pay their speakers anything (apart from covering expenses). Much has been written about this, including a couple of great posts from Andy Budd and Remy Sharp, so I’m not going to bang on about it here. Suffice it to say that the speakers are the main attraction of any conference and I think they should be compensated appropriately. Compensating your speakers also changes the relationship from one where they’re doing you a favour to one where you’re paying them for a service.

In the end, after getting some great advice from Andy, Remy and Chris Murphy, I decided to offer speakers a fee/honorarium of £1,000 plus hotel and expenses. Settling this early on meant I had to be sure there would be enough income to cover everything and this influenced my decisions about ticket prices and sponsorship tiers.

Tickets

I wanted to keep ticket prices low and I released them in three batches at £59, £79 and £99, with student tickets always available for £39. This was made possible largely by the capacity of the venue – being able to sell up to 500 tickets means that everyone pays less. The £15,000 sponsorship income also helped to subsidise ticket prices.

General Advice

Plan the schedule around the speakers – rather than giving everyone a fixed slot, I asked them all how long they’d like to speak for and worked the timings around them. Then we went through a couple of drafts of the running order until everyone was happy.
Have a short break between each talk – people struggle to focus for too long, especially when watching a technical talk, so we had a 15-20 minute break between each talk (except lightning talks) to give people a chance to stretch their legs, grab a coffee and discuss what they’d just seen. (I actually borrowed this idea from another Ruby conference, the excellent ArrrrCamp.)
Look after your volunteers – Bath Ruby wouldn’t have happened without the volunteers who all kindly gave up their time in return for a free ticket and a t-shirt. Some were given roles or responsibilities in advance and I bought a load of cheap radios so we could keep in touch on the day. After the conference there was some money left in the budget so I gave all the volunteers an Amazon voucher to thank them for their help.
Have a Code of Conduct and take it seriously – Straight white men still make up the majority of the software industry and this can make it uncomfortable for anyone who doesn’t match that label to attend events full of people they don’t know. Having a code of conduct helps (and there are plenty of resources to help you write one) but making it clear that you take it seriously in emails to attendees and an announcement on the day helps even more.
Keep the sponsors happy – I invited people from our top tier sponsors to the speakers’ dinner and tried to ensure that all of them got what they wanted in return for their sponsorship. One exception to this is sponsored talks – a couple of potential sponsors asked if they could give a talk about their product or service but, in my experience, this never ends well; attendees can spot a sales pitch a mile off and it reflects badly on the conference as well as the sponsor.
Don’t bother with swag bags – most tech conferences will foist a bag full of fliers, stickers, pens, etc. on attendees at registration but these usually end up being dumped straight away. We had a couple of tables with piles of stickers and other swag that people could help themselves to instead.

Summary

The 2015 Bath Ruby Conference was the first large scale event I’ve organised and I think its success was down to equal parts luck, naive optimism and hard work (from the speakers, freelancers, suppliers and volunteers as well as me). Organising something on that scale can be pretty stressful at times but, with enough planning, I think it’s something that anyone could do and the satisfaction you get from pulling it off is incredibly rewarding :)

For more details about the 2015 conference, check out the following links:

The 2015 conference website built by Jack McConnell
A 5:47 summary video by Will Samson at Close Range Films
Videos of all the talks from Confreaks
The Spotify playlist

Bath Ruby Conference will be back on Friday 11th March, 2016. Visit the new site for more details.

Bristol Web Folk

2012-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Mark Wales recently started a Meetup group for web designers and developers in Bristol called Bristol Web Folk. The group has regular social gatherings and I recently helped Mark to organise its first talk night at The Elephant.

We had three talks; one on Unix and Node.js from Alex Young, one on ES5 from Jake Verbaten and one on responsive web design techniques from Mark. I made a last minute decision to record them on my Flip HD (and, when that ran out of battery, my iPhone) and I've uploaded the results here.

We had some great feedback from the night and we're currently planning the second one - this time I'll plan ahead and make more of an effort with sound and lighting for the videos.

Testing widescreen Vimeo embedding

2011-07-15T00:00:00+01:00

Khoi Vinh on iPad Magazines

2011-04-04T00:00:00+01:00

In my personal opinion, Adobe is doing a tremendous disservice to the publishing industry by encouraging these ineptly literal translations of print publications into iPad apps. They’ve fostered a preoccupation with the sort of monolithic, overbearing apps represented by The New Yorker, Wired and Popular Science. Meanwhile, what publishers should really be focusing on is clever, nimble, entertaining apps like EW’s Must List or Gourmet Live. Neither of those are perfect, but both actively understand that they must translate their print editions into a utilitarian complement to their users’ content consumption habits.

Khoi Vinh’s excellent article on iPad magazines is a few months old now but a great read nonetheless.

The majority of iPad magazines so far are just glorified PDFs with a few videos and slideshows thrown in for good measure. This reminds me of the early days of the web when a company’s website would be a series of pages with images scanned from their brochure.

Maybe the people responsible for these magazines are satisfied with cheap and cheerful solutions that get their content on the screen and are therefore “good enough”, or maybe not enough of them appreciate the opportunities presented by the iPad. Our aim with Coffee Press is to make original digital publications which aren’t restricted by their dead tree counterparts and that take advantage of this new media.

Who wants to buy my iMac?

2011-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

After we move house I’m going to be spending a lot more time travelling and working in random places. As a result, I’m selling my iMac and buying a laptop instead.

The iMac is honestly the best computer I’ve ever owned and I’ll be really sad to see it go. Getting a shiny new MacBook Pro should provide some consolation though.

Full details can be found on this page.

TextMate Snippet to Strip Table Tags

2011-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

Select Bundle Editor \ Edit Snippets from the Bundles menu in TextMate
Click the + button in the bottom left corner and select New Snippet, give it a name
Paste this: ${TM_SELECTED_TEXT/<\/?(table|tr|td|th)(\s?[^>]*)>//ig}

Select the table code in your document and run the snippet – all table tags will be removed and the world will be a better place.

The Mad Men theme tune with lyrics from Nat King Cole. Via Devour.

2010-10-18T00:00:00+01:00

Thinking Sphinx + Passenger on OS X

2010-10-01T00:00:00+01:00

I just looked at Apache’s error log on my Mac and noticed a lot of errors like this:

Sphinx cannot be found on your system. You may need to configure the following
settings in your config/sphinx.yml file:
  * bin_path
  * searchd_binary_name
  * indexer_binary_name
  
  For more information, read the documentation:
  http://freelancing-god.github.com/ts/en/advanced_config.html`

After scratching my head for a while I discovered that the problem was down to Passenger needing to be told where to look for things. One way around this is to add 'bin_path' to sphinx.yml but, since I work with other developers, this wasn’t really an option. Instead I added SetEnv /usr/local/bin to my httpd.conf and now TS knows where to look for the Sphinx binaries.

Civilization 5

2010-09-23T00:00:00+01:00

And then it’s 7pm and you’re eating fistfuls of dry cereal straight out of the box because the prospect of leaving the game to cook something as complicated as cheese on toast is an impossible idea. Mouth full of bran flakes, you order Beijing to begin the 40-year construction of the Notre Dame.

Dear Internet, please don’t let me buy Civilization 5.

The return of Looney Tunes

2010-08-05T00:00:00+01:00

I like big videos and I cannot lie.

2010-08-03T00:00:00+01:00

Breaking Out of Tumblr's 500px Maximum Video Width

2010-08-03T00:00:00+01:00

If you’ve ever tried using/making a Tumblr theme with content wider than 500 pixels, you’ve probably run into the problem with the Video-500 tag ignoring your embed code and stubbornly resizing embedded videos.

There are a couple of obvious options for getting around this, including pasting the code into a text post or giving up and using a more flexible blogging tool. Neither of these appealed to me so I decided to see what could be done with a bit of JavaScript.

All the hard work here was done by Matthew Buchanan & Hayden Hunter. This code was included in the theme I’m using and it was designed to get rid of the letterbox around widescreen videos. Since it replaces the height of the embed code to do this, I simply added a few lines to replace the width as well.

Simply paste it somewhere in your Tumblr theme and change contentWidth to whatever you like.

All Change

2010-08-03T00:00:00+01:00

I’m experimenting with a new theme – Catching Elephant by Andy Taylor. I’m not a fan of Tumblr’s default narrowness so I’ve made the main column wider and changed a few other bits but overall I’m happy with how it’s turning out. Now I just need to find an image or photo to replace the title on the left and add some links to Twitter etc..

I’ve also moved blog.simonstarr.com to www.simonstarr.com and setup a 301 redirect so old links still work. More changes (and hopefully more posts) still to come.

Dustin Curtis on Taste

2009-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

There's a common attribute that makes for good designers, good engineers, good employees, and good companies. For a long time, I couldn't figure out what it was. Was it practice? Was it skill? Was it innate ability? Turns out, it's none of those. It's taste.

When I first started designing as a hobby, I hated everything I made. I knew it was terrible, and no matter how hard I tried, I could never make it good enough for myself. But I didn't give up, and after a while something clicked. I started to sort of like my work. But I am still not satisfied; every day I reach higher, trying to grasp the level of awesomeness that I can feel but can't recreate.

Dustin Curtis

Text the Nation Ringtone

2009-09-24T00:00:00+01:00

80s Dance Bass Synth 06 from the default GarageBand loops, a.k.a. the theme music for Text the Nation, in ringtone form.

iTunes Ringtone version for iPhones.
MP3 version for not iPhones.

Right click, download, have a nice day.

Network Solutions on Rails

2009-08-03T00:00:00+01:00

If you’re trying to get your Rails app working on a site hosted by Network Solutions, remember to put the hostname rather than the IP address of the database server in database.yml

My Experience of Buying Adobe CS4 from UKtechstore.com

2009-07-01T00:00:00+01:00

This post is for the benefit of anyone else who can't believe how much cheaper it is to buy Adobe CS4 from UKTechStore.com and is Googling for reassurance.

Last week I set out to buy a copy of CS4 Web Premium and decided that £1512.25 (the price on Adobe's website) was a bit steep. Google lead me to UKTechStore.com, who were selling it for £799. This seemed suspiciously cheap so I decided to do some research which lead me to these two threads on different forums. Satisfied that it probably wasn't a con, I went ahead and ordered last Thursday 25th June and was relieved when UPS delivered it on Monday.

The software arrived in a legitimate looking cellophane wrapped DVD case with a serial number sticker on the back and I've since installed and registered it without any problems.

Here's a photo of the package:

Here's a screenshot of the order tracking from UPS.com:

Disclaimer: I have no involvement with or connection to UKTechStore.com beyond placing an order with them and being a satisfied customer. I spent 5 minutes writing this post to help reassure anyone else who was thinking of ordering from them by sharing my experience. If they suddenly turn evil and decide to start ripping people off it's not my fault. IANAL. YMMV. HTH. HAND.

Using Ruby and LibXml to Parse XML From FriendFeed

2009-06-29T00:00:00+01:00

LibXml is hard to beat if you want to parse some XML but there aren't many samples of code about. I find I learn best from looking at practical examples so here's a heavily commented snippet from a rails project I'm working on at the moment...

This example is taken from the code behind http://simonstarr.com/.

Stalking Adam & Joe

2009-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

Adam & Joe have various creative outputs on the internets but there's never been any way to combine them into one pure stream of concentrated greatness...until now. The Adam & Joe Stalker uses Yahoo! Pipes and twitterfeed to tweet everything they do in one place.

At the moment it grabs the RSS feeds from Adam's blog, Joe's MySpace page, Adam's YouTube channel and the BBC 6 Music podcast. If you have any other ideas for sources, please post a comment and I'll have a look.

The text of each tweet is prefixed with one or two letters to indicate where it came from:

AB: Adam's Blog
JB: Joe's Blog
AY: Adam's YouTube
P: Podcast

If you have a Twitter account you can follow the stalker here and be notified of their every move.

n.b. For legal reasons I must point out that no actual stalking takes place and your statutory rights are not affected.

P.S. You can see the source of the pipe here.

Essential iPhone Apps

2009-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

Today I decided that having over 60 apps installed on my iPhone was a bit much, so I did some pruning. This made me think about which ones I couldn’t live without and there now follows a list of the top 5…

Things

I’ve been using the desktop version of Things for ages now and have come to rely on it for keeping my life organised. The iPhone version complements it perfectly and allows me to keep track of tasks and add new ones when I’m away from the computer.

Download Things at the iTunes store

Fieldrunners

Ever since Kev introduced me to PixelJunk Monsters on his PS3, I’ve had a serious weakness for tower defence games. I’ve tried a few on the iPhone, including Mote Massacre and The Creeps, but Fieldrunners is the one I keep going back to. It saves your progress automatically after each wave so it’s perfect for a quick game on the bus (or while waiting for your wife to come out of a changing room when clothes shopping).

Download Fieldrunners at the iTunes store

Helipad

Helipad is an online notebook which is ideal for scribbling down lists and making quick notes. The iPhone app allows you to keep all your notes synchronised and accessible from anywhere - ideal for shopping lists, train spotting (probably) and keeping handy reference notes.

Download Helipad at the iTunes store

iSSH

iSSH is a near perfect SSH client for the iPhone. It even supports the use of an RSA or DSA key for passwordless logins and you can have it run a command after it connects as well. I mostly use it with screen and Irssi for chatting on IRC while I’m out and about or too lazy to get off the sofa but it’s also come in handy a few times when I’ve had to connect to a server and restart something in a hurry.

Download iSSH at the iTunes store

TwitterFon

This is my current favourite iPhone Twitter client. Not much else to say apart from it handles links nicely, has a search interface and doesn’t cost a penny.

Download TwitterFon at the iTunes store

Deadline The Simplest Calendar Ever Made

2008-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

Alex recently launched a new project called Deadline and it's been attracting a lot of interest across the internets.

Deadline is a calendar that understands sentences like "Phone Bob tonight" or "Go Christmas shopping on Saturday", turns them into appointments, then emails you reminders. In fact, you can even email appointments back to it and they'll be added to your calendar.
It works over Google Talk/Jabber as well so you can add Deadline to your buddy list and add reminders by chatting with it.

The API is now available too so it'll be interesting to see what people do with it.

It's free to create a Deadline account and, if you're already using Helipad (another great app from Alex's company!) then you can login with your existing details.

Keep an eye on the Helicoid website for more interesting projects :)

Greenwich Park Equestrian Consultations

2008-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

LOCOG have announce some more consultations on their website and I've published the dates in a public Google Calendar.

This link will take you straight to the calendar, or you can copy this iCal link to subscribe in your desktop calendar app (To do this in iCal on the Mac, copy the link, run iCal, click on the Calendar menu at the top, then Subscribe, paste the link and click the Subscribe button).

For more help with accessing the calendar, have a look at the Google help page.

I'll be checking the LOCOG site regularly and adding any new consultations to the calendar.

QuickBooks Confusion

2008-10-21T00:00:00+01:00

The form to register Intuit QuickBooks has this strange opt in/out bit at the end. Which checkboxes should I not be unchecking if I do want to opt out of not having them remove my details from their marketing database?

More importantly, why doesn't someone release some decent business accounts software for the Mac?

Cutty Sark Cam

2008-09-09T00:00:00+01:00

Since we're lucky enough to live next door to the Cutty Sark, I decided to install this webcam so that anyone who's interested can keep an eye on how the restoration is going.

Picture quality isn't great but the camera was cheap and it copes fairly well in low light.

The camera is a Linksys WVC54GCA wireless webcam and there's a cron job running every minute on my file server which grabs the image and uploads it to the webserver with SCP.

Still to do:

Write a script that tells me if the image stops getting updated
Make the webserver grab the image remotely rather than relying on the local file server
Archive one out of every few images for future conversion into a time lapse film
Clean the window

Olympic 'protest pens' empty | The Australian

2008-08-12T00:00:00+01:00

Olympic 'protest pens' empty | The Australian

Rollerblading in Greenwich Park

2008-07-31T00:00:00+01:00

Amy recently took up rollerblading (or inline skating) after having a go on her friend's skates and the other week we went to Greenwich Park so she could get some practice in.

Barely 5 minutes had passed before a Police Community Support Officer turned up and told her that skating was banned in the park. I told him I'd checked the park regulations and they say it's fine to do it on roads within the park and he replied that there was "some confusion about the rules". I said it looked pretty clear to me and he said they'd been told it wasn't allowed and that was that.

Not wanting to cause a fuss or any kind of brouhaha, Amy took her skates off and we left quietly.

The following day, I wrote a Victor Meldrew style letter to the Royal Parks head office and this morning I received a reply from a nice lady in the Policy Section stating that "In Greenwich Park – because of the lie of the land, the width of the cycle tracks and the Park's pattern of use – we allow [rollerblading] on the roads, but not on the cycle tracks."

Click here to see the full letter.

Now we just have to stop the Olympics Committee from ruining the park and everyone will be happy. Click here to read and sign the petition to move the cross country events somewhere more suitable.

Decluttering

2008-06-25T00:00:00+01:00

Inspired by a post on Lifehacker, the other day I decided to move my desk out of it's dingy corner in the spare bedroom and into the living room. This coincided with a general clear out and de-clutter which started at the weekend and has so far resulted in a lot of stuff going to the charity shop/recycling centre/bin.

Not content with merely moving the desk, I also rearranged most of the furniture in the lounge and enforced a strict GTD style filing policy to keep surfaces clear and things organised.

Anyway, here's the result:

More photos and details can be found on Flickr.

individuality.com is for sale

2008-06-21T00:00:00+01:00

The first domain name I ever registered (over 11 years ago!), individuality.com, is for sale.

Proceeds from the sale will go towards buying me a tropical island/house/car/LCD television/cup of coffee, depending on how much I get for it.

David Bailey Eat Your Heart Out

2007-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

Only three and a half months after we got home, the last of the photos from our holiday are now on Flickr.

There are about 4000 more sitting in iPhoto but I don't think I'll bother to upload them.

In other news, I finally caved in and signed up for Facebook. Still, at least it's not as crap as Orkut.

Like Buses

2007-10-17T00:00:00+01:00

Nothing for months and then two updates in as many weeks!

I've just stuck some more photos on my Flickr page. There are only ten more left from the trip now and I should get around to putting them up soon.

Bad Blogger

2007-10-10T00:00:00+01:00

Nothing to report apart from some more photos on my Flickr page, this time from Canada. I've uploaded a few more too but haven't got around to labelling and tagging them yet so they're still hidden.

Currently grappling with Ruby on Rails and getting it to play nicely with Apache. Ignoring the outdated version of Rails that Debian Etch wants to use and installing the latest one with RubyGems seems to have done the trick.

I'm also trying out RoundCube, a great new webmail package which is a few dozen times nicer than the painfully ugly (but very stable) SquirrelMail

Adelaide

2007-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

Apologies in advance if this entry is a bit vague but I'm writing it in Osaka as I try to catch up with the blog and my memory isn't that great!

The journey from Alice Springs to Adelaide on The Ghan wasn't as great as the first leg thanks to the grumpy night manager who kicked me out of the lounge car at 4am when I was trying to find somewhere comfortable to sleep. Anyway, we got there eventually and found our way to a hostel before exploring the city.

We soon discovered that the Adelaide Film Festival was due to start in a couple of days so we booked tickets to see the Australian premiere of a great anime film called The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
We also managed to get in the queue early enough for a free talk by Mike Reiss, one of the writers and producers of The Simpsons.

Aside from the film festival, we were also lucky enough to be in town for the Australian National Treasures exhibition where we saw Ned Kelly's helmet, Captain Cook's journal and the original architect's sketches of the Sydney Opera House among other things.

On top of all that, we took a day trip on the tram down to Glenelg, a fantastic beach side suburb where I drank the second worst pint of Guinness I've ever had and decided that if I ever have to move to Australia, that's where I'd want to go.

Our week in Adelaide was over all too quickly and then we were off to Melbourne!

P.S. More photos on here

The Top End, the Red Centre and the Ghan

2007-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

After flying from Cairns to Darwin, we hired a car and spent a week exploring Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks. Unfortunately Amy managed to strain a tendon in her foot and spent most of the week on crutches!
Still, we had a good look around, went for a scenic flight over Kakadu in a plane the size of a shoebox and experienced a tropical cyclone on our last night. On the way back to Darwin we stopped off for a Jumping Croc cruise and met Hannibal, undisputed king of the Adelaide River.

After seeing all that Darwin had to offer (which, apart from the 2 local national parks, isn't much), we boarded the Ghan on my 30th birthday for the journey to Alice Springs.
Alice is a great town with a real frontier feel to it and made an ideal stopover before we embarked on a 3 day tour of Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon.
On the tour we hiked into Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) in 50 degree heat, slept under (shooting) stars, saw sunset and sunrise at Uluru and walked into Kings Canyon – definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

We had a couple more days in Alice Springs which were spent visiting the telegraph station, the School of the Air and the Royal Flying Doctor Base before getting back on the Ghan and heading south to Adelaide.

Don't forget to look at Flickr for loads of photos!

The Great Barrier Reef

2007-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

Those red suits are very much de rigueur here in Australia and, as you can see, they make us look pretty good.

Today we went on a cruise to the Great Barrier Reef and had our first scuba dive (closely followed by our second!). It took about an hour and a half to get there and when we arrived, the boat moored alongside a massive pontoon at Moore Reef which is about 70km from shore.

After some tea and biscuits, we climbed into those ridiculous outfits (to protect us from the jellyfish), donned our scuba gear and walked down to a submerged platform under the pontoon. The instructor went through some basics – how to pop your ears as you go down, how to breathe underwater etc. – and then we lowered ourselves down a rope into the water.
As this was our first dive, the four of us linked arms with the instructor in the middle and he guided us around the reef. It wasn't long before local celebrity Wally the Maori Wrasse swam up to us and introduced himself which is when this photo was taken of us giving him a stroke. Next we swam down to the bottom (about 6 metres) and passed around a sea cucumber which was similar to a land cucumber apart from being fatter and darker and breathing through it's bottom.
The 20 minutes seemed over very quickly so, as we climbed back out of the water and admired the marks left on each other's faces by our masks, we both started thinking about doing another dive.

After a great lunch and a stroll through the underwater observation thing to see the fish being fed, we signed up for our second dive.
This time we were allowed more freedom because after the 20 minute session in the morning we were seasoned professionals. The instructor swam ahead and we followed him along the reef wall, met Wally again and eventually found Nemo and his family swimming around an anemone.

Soon our time was up again and we waddled back on to the pontoon in our flippers.

At the end of the day we came back to Cairns and headed straight for this internet cafe so that we could show off our red suits (or at least the photo; despite Amy's protestations we weren't allowed to keep them).

That's all for now because we need to go and get some dinner!

Cheerio
Simon and Amy

Photos!

2007-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

I've just uploaded a few photos in lieu of a proper update because being on holiday is very hard work and we're too tired to think up much to write ;)

We're in Cairns at the moment having made our way up the east coast by train from Sydney, stopping at Bondi, the Blue Mountains, Hunter Valley, Newcastle, Coffs Harbour (where we sadly didn't have time to see the Big Banana), Brisbane, Hervey Bay/Fraser Island and Airlie Beach/The Whitsundays. On Sunday we fly to Darwin and from there we plan to spend a couple of days in Kakadu National Park before catching the Ghan down to Adelaide with a week in Alice Springs/Uluru.

We also now have tickets to the Grand Prix in Melbourne so we'll definitely be there in mid-March!

Anyway, the photos are on my Flickr page so go and have a look!

Cheers, Simon and Amy

Week One

2007-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

Hello!

Our first week Down Under was spent wandering around Sydney like a proper pair of tourists, seeing the sites and trying to avoid buying Didgeridoos, cork hats and kangaroos.

We spent a few hazy hours in Singapore before getting here and found out that it's basically just a big shopping mall with an airport attached to it. Their automatic toilets are quite an experience and the buses run on time but otherwise it doesn't have much going fot it.

When we did finally land in Sydney on New Year's Eve, it was a good three hours before we could check into the much needed five star luxury of our hotel thanks to a rush of fellow pommies coming over for the cricket (the less said about that the better). Once we'd found our room and unpacked our bags, we settled down for a "quick nap" and by the time we woke up it had been dark outside for quite some time.
A brisk walk to the harbour followed where we found masses of people staggering around with their stubbies and trying to find a good spot for the midnight fireworks. As we sat on the pavement with our own stubbies, a generous local asked if we had any tickets and, when we told her that unfortunately we had arrived too late, gave us a pair of tickets to watch the fireworks from the Cahil Expressway which turned out to be an excellent spot (see photo in our previous post!)

After the NYE celebrations, we headed back to the hotel and ate noodles and crisps in our room along with bottles of champagne (thanks Steph & Terry!) before calling it a night (or early afternoon, depending on the jet-lag).

The following day, we took full advantage of the buffet breakfast in the hotel and headed out to see Sydney. After wandering around Darling Harbour, seeing a free didgeridoo show, visiting Hyde Park, the ANZAC Memorial and the Australian Museum, we started preparing ourselves for the reality of having to leave our luxury room and check into the Dulwich Hill YHA the next day.

After another hearty breakfast and a cruise around the harbour, we packed our bags and headed out into the suburbs. The hostel was pretty basic but comfortable and, once we'd visited the local supermarket (with a quick visit to the pub on the way home), we read our books, had some beans on toast and went to bed early!

The rest of the week was spent trying to get the most out of our See Sydney Cards by visiting as many attractions as humanly possible inside seven days. These included Taronga Zoo (the "Zoo With a View"!), the Aquarium (Meh), the Sydney Tower (Great views!), the Opera House tour (Amazing architecture!), the Australian Museum (Great skeletons), Manly Beach and Oceanworld (Better that Sydney Aquarium - they had the top 5 most venomous snakes and bigger sharks!), Bridgeclimb (Definitely worth paying extra for the sunset climb) and Sydney Olympic Park (We even had a swim in the Olympic pool).

I'll get around to uploading some photos soon but now we've got to go and catch a bus to Newcastle.

Cheers, Amy and Simon

Penny Arcade Greatest Hits

2006-07-20T00:00:00+01:00

November 2008 Update: This post gets a ridiculous number of hits so I might get around to going through the rest of the PA archives and updating it one day. Don't hold your breath though.

Digitally restored from my post on the infamous Long-Wang Gaming Forum in December 2004. Soon to be updated with the best of 2005 & 2006.
Conversion from the original phpBB post to Textile was done with a couple of Regular Expressions and a large amount of patience (especially since PA have recently changed the paths on their site).

A list of the best (IMHO) PA strips for easy reference...

Christmas is coming and it was a pretty slow day at work today. FYI it takes approximately 6 hours to read every single PA strip properly.

Stupid DIV

2006-06-16T00:00:00+01:00

I found the rogue </div> which was screwing up the layout on some pages :)

Hello

2006-06-14T00:00:00+01:00

It still needs some work but the site is now looking in a reasonable enough state to be ‘launched’. Since I don’t want to smash a bottle of champagne over my computer I’ll just publish it and move on with my life.

Expect irregular random updates.

Are We There Yet

2005-10-24T00:00:00+01:00

Blah blah blah, still too busy to finish fixing the layout, blah blah blah.

Hello

2005-09-18T00:00:00+01:00

I wanted something to make this site easier to manage/update so I decided to give Textpattern a try.

Seems fairly good so far.

The only downside is that, technically, it makes this a blog.

The Ruffest Hobo

2005-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

We've moved again and, hopefully, for the last time (at least for now). Ruffest is now hosted on a VM supplied by Bytemark Hosting.

Thanks very much to Ikkebra for providing a temporary home for the last couple of months :]

Takk Skal Du Ha

2004-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

After an unfortunate incident involving zoidberg's disks and a dodgy RAID controller, Ruffest has been on holiday for a couple of months.

Now, thanks to the legend that is Ikkebra, everything is back to normal :]

Apple Crack

2004-07-21T00:00:00+01:00

I finally upgraded the forums to phpBB 2.0.10 and got rid of the annoying error message at the top of the front page :]

Kevin Ford and Simon Starr are trying to boost their Google rankings with some precision blog comment bombing ;]

Since buying an iBook a couple of months ago I have fallen deeply in love with Mac OS X because it is obviously the best consumer operating system ever to have existed. Soon I should get a reasonably sized redundancy cheque which will allow me to further indulge my new obsession :D

Long Wang

2004-05-07T00:00:00+01:00

Go and visit long wang to see all the games news in the world in one place :]

I've been busy with training courses, holidays and Tony Hawk recently.

By the way, have you met Kevin Ford?

Auf Wiedersehen

2004-03-30T00:00:00+01:00

ruffest.org has now moved from One & One to Black Cat :]

I'll leave it a few hours for DNS to sort itself out then everything should be back to normal.

If you ever need to register/move a domain then you should speak to Black Cat - they have a team of highly trained ninja sysadmins on hand 25 hours a day and will sort everything out for you in no time at all ;]

Moving

2004-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

If you're reading this then the forum/site move from One & One to zoidberg has been a success ;D

Dirrrty

2004-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Oh yeah, ruffest. Been busy buying/moving house over the last few weeks and haven't found the time to update.

Looking at the logs it seems that the last 10 referrers box is just an invitation for filthy spammers to fill it with crap in order to improve their search engine rankings. I shall remove it forthwith.

After hearing about this game and finding out that it's going to be a PS2 exclusive I accidentally agreed to buy Kev's PS2 so he can get a shiny new silver one.

Now I must say 10 Hail Miyamotos and make the sign of the Shine. Forgive me Mario for I have sinned.

Complete Bastard

2004-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

I just finished working on a new site for West Of Bastard :]

Speaking of which, it's WOB 668: The Neighbour of the Beast tonight. If you leave now you might just get there in time ;]

Java IRC RIP

2004-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

16:13 -!- strenx [~[baddest]@ANantes-106-1-3-7.w217-128.abo.wanadoo.fr] has joined #hangover
16:14 -!- strenx [~[baddest]@ANantes-106-1-3-7.w217-128.abo.wanadoo.fr] has quit [Read error: EOF from client]
16:14 -!- strenx [~[baddest]@ANantes-106-1-3-7.w217-128.abo.wanadoo.fr] has joined #hangover
16:14 -!- strenx [~[baddest]@ANantes-106-1-3-7.w217-128.abo.wanadoo.fr] has left #hangover []
16:15 -!- strenx [~[baddest]@ANantes-106-1-3-7.w217-128.abo.wanadoo.fr] has joined #hangover
16:15 -!- strenx [~[baddest]@ANantes-106-1-3-7.w217-128.abo.wanadoo.fr] has left #hangover []
16:26 -!- strenx [~[baddest]@ANantes-106-1-3-7.w217-128.abo.wanadoo.fr] has joined #hangover
16:26 -!- strenx [~[baddest]@ANantes-106-1-3-7.w217-128.abo.wanadoo.fr] has left #hangover []

That was starting to get REALLY annoying :/

Besides, it was a crappy irc applet anyway. I'll be installing a better one after the move and this time I'll disable joining channels other than #hangover

Megaton

2004-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

Nintendo have announce a new handheld console. It has 2 LCD screens, an extra processor and will be on show at E3 in "fully playable form".

I really hope it doesn't suck.

What?! My mother was a saint

2004-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

Mad leet props to Andy for setting up the new server :]
All domains etc. will be moving there in the next few days so there may be some disruption. Moving the forums is going to be a huge pain in the arse because I have no shell access with my One & One account and phpMyAdmin just spazzes out after dumping about 100K from the forum database. Looks like I'll have to download each table manually :/

How Who?

2004-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

A couple of people have emailed me recently to ask how the "who's on irc" box works so I thought I'd just write a brief summary here...

First you'll need an Eggdrop bot running in your channel. Then you need to make it run the the HTML2 TCL script. The original version can be found by searching for html2 here but I've taken out all the stuff I didn't need and put a modified copy for you to download here. When configured and run, the HTML2 script will dump a page somewhere with statistics from your channel but I only wanted a list of who was in the channel, hence my modified version which creates output like this.
Once you've got that page listing who's online, simply use PHP include to embed it in your homepage or wherever you like.

I think that's about it but if anyone has any questions just post them as replies to this topic and I'll do my best to help. There's probably an easier way to do it but, given my complete lack of TCL knowledge, this is the best way I know :]

Hah Bumhug

2003-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

Nothing much going on at work this close to christmas so I've been busy making new things for the site. Now there's a last 10 referrers box and a google box on the left hand side. The google box has actually been there for months but I forgot to uncomment it :/

I also made a gallery thing which I can send pictures to directly from my phone :]

In about 50 minutes time I'm a free man for 2 weeks so I'm going to spend a few days back at home getting drunk.

Merry whatever and happy new thing.

Is Christmas Over Yet?

2003-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

In case anyone was wondering what Saddam's been doing for the last 7 months.

New Haquery

2003-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

If you look to your left (under the menu, buttons etc.) you'll see a new box on the homepage called Who's on irc.

This is updated every minute and tell's you who's in #hangover.

I've also been working on a PHP script called php!seen which can be found here. This is a PHP interface for Bass's Seen Script; an eggdrop script which tells you when someone was last on a channel. It's still fairly primitive but writing it has taught me a lot more about PHP than I knew before :]

WOB4 and the Temple of Meads

2003-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

West of B*st*rd 4 next Monday and it has the best flyer I've ever seen :]

If you live anywhere near Bristol you should definitely make the effort to attend.

Call the Police

2003-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

Weird Google referral of the week (another AOL user):

how+to+make+poison+darts+that+kill+people

Weird oversized pet of the week:

http://www.britishgiantrabbits.com/

Excellent condensed movie site of the week:

http://rinkworks.com/movieaminute/

Interesting mis-typed domain of the week:

http://www.roange.co.uk

And why doesn't DJ Yoda have a website?

Need Speed

2003-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

F-Zero has given me tourettes and robbed me of the ability to blink

Coup

2003-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

I suppose that's what happens when you get image coaching from the presenter of Perfect Parenting.

This is Hattori Hanzo Steel

2003-10-23T00:00:00+01:00

Saw Kill Bill last night after reading the script last week. It was interesting to see how well Tarantino's written ideas worked on screen, especially the scene in the House of Blue Leaves.

In case anyone is interested in reading the script but doesn't want to find out what happens in the second film, I've chopped it in half and put part 1 up here :]

Boring

2003-09-29T00:00:00+01:00

A couple of months ago ikkebra posted a review of Boring3D and it promptly stopped being updated :/

Looks like it's back again now tho :)

Spam Free

2003-09-20T00:00:00+01:00

I just found this handy guide to getting Spamassassin working with Kmail :]

Stupidest Thing EVAR

2003-09-16T00:00:00+01:00

How the hell have Verisign got away with this?

As of a little while ago (it is around 7:45 PM US Eastern on Mon 15 Sep 2003 as I write this), VeriSign added a wildcard A record to the .COM and .NET TLD DNS zones. The IP address returned is 64.94.110.11, which reverses to sitefinder.verisign.com. What that means in plain English is that most mis-typed domain names that would formerly have resulted in a helpful error message now results in a VeriSign advertising opportunity. For example, if my domain name was 'somecompany.com,' and somebody typed 'soemcompany.com' by mistake, they would get VeriSign's advertising.

Email ICANN right now to complain...

comments@icann.org

Nokia N-Gage Released to Critical Acclaim

2003-09-12T00:00:00+01:00

What didn't impress the image conscious pub crowd, however, was how the device looks when you make a phone call on it. "It looks like you've got a taco held to your ear," laughed one woman, while another man likened it to a croissant. Others were more blunt - "it makes you look like a twat"

Nice work Nokia!

Friday Matinee

2003-09-12T00:00:00+01:00

Thanks to alex for finding the best site i've seen in ages :)

Video Games Don't Kill People - Guns Kill People

2003-09-11T00:00:00+01:00

"Grand Theft Auto in the dock over US highway killings"

Pardon my French but that's a fucking disgrace. If the victim's family want to sue anyone it should be the parents of the children for letting them play adult rated games and get hold of loaded guns.

</rant>

There Be No Law 'pon the Seas

2003-09-11T00:00:00+01:00

On a lighter note, we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean last night and it was bloody good :)

Although I kept expecting Ragetti to say something like...

I could catch a monkey. If I was starving I could. I'd make poison darts out of the poison of the deadly frogs. One milligram of that poison can kill a monkey. Or a man. Prick yourself and you'd be dead within a day. Or longer. Different frogs, different times.

Pointless Waste of Time

2003-08-07T00:00:00+01:00

Last night I downloaded the free demo of World War 2 Online.

After being forced to use IE to make the site work and then having to install a pointless ‘Delivery System’ to download it, it installed the Playnet game launcher to launch itself. I launched the launcher which launched my browser which took me to the website where I had to create an account and click a link to launch the launcher again. When the launcher launched it downloaded a 13mb patch and took ages to install it. Then I had to launch the launcher again which, in turn, launched my browser so I could login and launch the launcher to launch the game. This time it download a slightly smaller patch and I had to go through the rigmarole again. Then it downloaded another patch. Then it started to load the game really slowly.

After all this effort I was hopeful that the game might be really good.

Sadly it’s the mostly ugly, badly designed, counter-intuitive excuse for a game I’ve ever had the misfortune to play. The graphics would look poor next to Quake 2 and it would have been easier to control if I’d eaten my mouse and rolled a turd around the mousemat. I might copy it to a CD just so I can slice it up into tiny pieces and jump up and down on them. Anyone insane enough to actually pay a subscription for it should probably seek professional help.

Nintendo Power

2003-08-07T00:00:00+01:00

Metroid Prime 2 next year :D
With a bit of luck I should have completed the first one by then.

Nintendo recently announced that they'll be announcing an announcement regarding a 'new game product' next spring. Thanks Nintendo. Thanks a lot.
Theories currently range from a DVD playing GameCube to an online service but it'll probably just be a new Pokemon game :/

Weird Referral of the Week

2003-07-24T00:00:00+01:00

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22dolphin+porn%22&hl=en

It comes as no surprise that this filthy deviant was a Mac user. The relevant authorities (and the RSPCA) have been notified.

On Error GoTo ruffest.org

2003-07-23T00:00:00+01:00

I've been meaning to update the site for ages but various things have prevented me from doing so. That and I've decided that I have a bad case of N.A.D.D.

Looking for something to do? Why not go and report a filetrader.

After the staggering success of my shoe fund appeal a couple of weeks ago, I think it's time to start asking for money again. This time I'll be needing slightly more cash. $4,500,000 to be precise. It's for a very good cause though.

Henshin a go go Baby

2003-07-08T00:00:00+01:00

Viewtiful Joe is loads of fun. I've played through the demo a dozen times already and I can't wait to get hold of the full game :D~

The Billy Hatcher's Giant Egg demo that was also on the sample disk seemed to suck rather a lot tho :/
Not to mention the ultimate sucktitude of Sonic Adventure DX. That game sucked on the Dreamcast 4 years ago and still sucks now. Shame on you Sega.

Dead Beatle

2003-07-08T00:00:00+01:00

George Harrison recently said that Nintendo has no immediate plans to move into the world of online gaming. A lot of people are saying this is a mistake and that nINtenDo ARe TeH sUx0r. These people are morons.

If Microsoft and Sony are happy to invest loads of money in online gaming then good for them! Meanwhile Nintendo are saving themselves a load of cash and preparing to join in when and if it turns out there's actually a market for it. My experience of online console gaming (various games on the Dreamcast) is that after the initial novelty wears off it's a load of crap.

Fair play to Nintendo for not bowing to peer pressure and instead waiting to see if something worthwhile can be done - history shows that being first to market with a hot new concept/product is not a guarantee for success.

Angry and Boring

2003-07-08T00:00:00+01:00

Moopy has been busy writing another website review, this time for his all time favourite Bob the Angry Flower. (and yes, I did get your subtle birthday present hint. If Stephen Notley happens to read this maybe he could get in touch to arrange autographing it ;] )

Ikkebra has also been busy with his first review of the awesome Boring3D.

Land of the Free

2003-06-18T00:00:00+01:00

What kind of crack is Senator Orrin Hatch smoking?

During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading....."If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize the seriousness of their actions"

Another Astounding Website

2003-06-18T00:00:00+01:00

moopy has just posted his latest webcomic review. It's another excellent site and much healthier than the dolphin porn for which he's so famous. Go and read it now.

linkdeleted.com

2003-06-17T00:00:00+01:00

I registered linkdeleted.com a couple of years ago and I can't remember why. The other day I decided to try doing something useful with it so I hacked together a script similar to that of Make a Shorter Link. If you have a really awkwardly long URL that you want to email to someone, simply paste it into the box and away you go. I've also added a form on the left hand side of this page which does the same thing.

I've got a couple of ideas for more useful things to do with linkdeleted and, who knows, maybe i'll actually get around to doing them one day.

Friday Rant

2003-06-13T00:00:00+01:00

I just wrote a really long post about how Domino's Pizza is staffed by useless retards who couldn't find their respective arses with both hands. Then I decided that no one would be interested so I deleted it. Still, it made me feel better so that's nice.

Over the last week I've been getting gradually addicted to Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. When I first downloaded it I played it for 5 minutes before dismissing it as being a dull RTCW mod. I've since decided that it's one of the most entertaining online games I've ever played (next to BF1942).
To quote someone on a public server the other night - "fuck counterstrike, this is the shit now!

CATPRIN, a Tailor For Cats

2003-06-09T00:00:00+01:00

I have never seen so many cats look so pissed off all at once.

Whilst we're in the Far East, Nong Shim's website is quite interesting. I had a bowl of their Kimchi noodle soup at the weekend and, probably because I was hungover and bored, decided to look at the site advertised on the packet. Again it may have been the hungover boredom but the cyber tour kept me entertained for at least 10 minutes.

When snacks go bad

2003-06-06T00:00:00+01:00

Vanilla flavoured Monster Munch are just plain wrong. They should probably be illegal. Mad props for that l33t URL tho.

This looks interesting - exept nearly everyone I know has an Orange mobile phone so I can't try it out :/

Is your wireless network running slowly? You need this!

These screenshots of Unreal Tournament 2004 look suspiciously similar to UT2003.

Finally, there's a Metallica video game on the way. Presumably they expect all the people they tried to sue a few years ago to go out and buy it instead of just downloading pirate copies from Kazaa.

Incompetence

2003-06-06T00:00:00+01:00

Why is it that so many big companies have such shitty customer service?
In November of last year someone drove into the back of my car and did about £500 worth of damage. After I reported this to Direct Line it took them almost 2 months to contact the other driver, despite the fact that she was one of their customers. A few months later (after a lot of arguing) I finally got a letter to say that the other driver had admitted liability. 2 weeks after that they sent me a cheque for the wrong amount with a letter attached saying that they were sending it in settlement since "no one had accepted liability". Morons.

Endsleigh Insurance are just as clueless. We've been trying to sort out our house insurance policy with them ever since my girlfriend moved in 3 months ago. After going over the details with them 4 times and getting 4 different "policy amended" letters they're still wrong. Fools.

If anyone can recommend an insurance company that doesn't suck I'd love to hear from you.

Other companies that get honourable mentions for pissing me off this week include:

Singlepoint

Bristol City Council

NatWest

On the subject of NatWest, this site makes interesting reading and this site is really handy.

Rant over. Time for a cup of tea.

Pastebin

2003-05-06T13:51:00+01:00

The other day I ran across this really useful site called pastebin that lets you paste a load of text into a form and then gives you a unique URL which can be given to other people so they can look at it.
Then I lost the URL and just spent 15 minutes looking through my browser history to find it.
That's about it really.

Coming back to work after a three day bank holiday really saps your will to live.

Sexy Losers

2003-05-02T11:42:00+01:00

Today sees the first in a series of webcomic reviews from our resident Mac-loving deviant Moopy. Watch this space for more fascinating insights into the mind/bookmarks of this deranged individual...

First up, my second favorite site, Sexy Losers

You like hentai? You like to Laugh? You freak.

Site used to be called the Thin H line (H for hentai) but the author, 'Hard' had some kind of copyright thing, so it changed.

A really good blend of fine comedy, and tits. Updated weekly, this is a great site for fans of anime and hentai culture. Hard has several reccuring themes, and a host of characters which he lovingly maintains. Lots of wanking, lots of stupid gags about every sexual deviancy you can imagine. From Bukkake to necrophillia, compulsive masturbation to nepotism, Hard effortlessly delivers Belly laughs and comic smut.

did I mention that it's a bit rude?

Oh, and it doesn't have any nepotism, I just like the sound of it. And if you don't know what Bukkake is then cherish your innocence and stay away.

Deee-lite Singer Sues Sega

2003-04-30T12:24:00+01:00

Deee-lite singer sues Sega
...The lawsuit also states that audiences will most likely be confused, if they haven't been so already, as a result of the similarities between the two.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Kev introduced me to the Mozilla Firebird (nee Phoenix) Browser a while ago. The new nightly builds since 0.5 are looking particularly sweet and it appears to be faster and more stable than Internet Explorer. Why don't you go and take a look for yourself? :)

Poll

2003-04-28T15:35:00+01:00

Now ruffest.org has a poll. Making it work involved changing the index page from .html to .php so now anyone looking at www.ruffest.org/index.html is doomed :/

Still, it gave me an opportunity to play with php some more so one day I may turn the whole of ruffest.org into php and possibly even trade this Blogger template in for something new.

Equal Rights

2003-04-25T15:54:00+01:00

This made me laugh - look out for the bloke stood at the back...

All Seeing Eye

2003-04-23T16:14:00+01:00

I finally registered my copy of All Seeing Eye today. If you currently use GameSpy then you should uninstall it, exorcise your PC, say 10 Hail Mary's and download ASE instead. Then, when you're convinced that it's the best thing since sliced bread, go and register it :)

A Message From Our Sponsors

2003-04-22T16:09:00+01:00

Dear Amazon.co.uk Associate,
March 31, 2003 marked the end of the 1st calendar quarter of 2003, and it's time for payments to be calculated for that quarter's activity.
...
Your total this quarter was less than 10 pounds.

£5.56 to be precise. Who says the internet boom is over? I'm off to put down my deposit on a new Ferrari.

Dexbot is Not Funny

2003-04-22T13:55:00+01:00

dexbot has now learned some really bad jokes:

13:50 <+dext`r> !joke
13:50 <@[dexbot]> "Doc, I can't stop singing 'The green, green grass of home'." "That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome." "Is it common?" "It's not unusual."

Many thanks to Ikkebra for forcing me to buy Battlefield 1942. Next time just get me hooked on crack instead; at least then I might still have a social life :\

Zelda Secrets

2003-04-17T12:55:00+01:00

If you have Zelda and an Action Replay you'll probably be interested in this :)

Hangover Stats

2003-04-04T10:39:00+01:00

Just upgraded the stats to pisg 0.47.
I have a week off next week so in between playing Zelda, drinking beer, doing nothing and sleeping I may find some time to sort out the new site design. Don't hold your breath though ;)

Duck and Cover

2003-03-20T16:05:00+00:00

Duck and cover.

Blah blah blah still busy blah blah.

Clifton Suspension Bridge

2003-03-09T21:35:00+00:00

Been incredibly busy for the last week or two (thanks in part to this). I'll post some proper stuff soon (ha ha); in the meantime, take a look at these pictures of Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Multi Theft Auto Release

2003-02-27T00:09:00+00:00

We’ve just uploaded the new version of GTA3: Multi Theft Auto, v0.2a!. Currently available for download!

A list of included features:

bugs fixed (for example: xp ‘out of memory’ bug, etc.)

far more improved layout and GUI (quick hideout warps, connection details, etc.)

added serverbrowsing support thru IRC

ingame chat added

outgame chat added

most unused code is deleted

added port 2004 for ingame/outgame chat

some other small improvents not mentioned here

Multi Theft Auto

2003-02-25T23:03:00+00:00

"MTA v0.2A will be released within this week :p"

:)

F-Zero GX

2003-02-24T21:38:00+00:00

This is in danger of becoming my new favourite GameCube game :)

If you want that site to make even less sense, take a look at it with BabelFish.

Blogger Bought

2003-02-22T11:30:00+00:00

I just heard about Blogger being bought by Google. Congratulations and good luck to all those involved :)

The stats page is now working properly again and the sun's shining so I'm off to Devon for the rest of the weekend.

Emporium of Fruit

2003-02-19T22:58:00+00:00

I've spent days trying to remember this URL and it was only by switching on a laptop I haven't used for 3 years and looking in the IE history that I found it.
One of Charlie Brooker's earlier sites... The Emporium of Fruit (warning: some content may offend & confuse)

Betty Ford

2003-02-14T12:10:00+00:00

Phew. Birthday celebrations are now finally over and I think it's time I checked myself into the Betty Ford Clinic.

On a more topical note, this made me laugh and this made me laugh even more :)
In other news, Shigeru Miyamoto will be in London next Friday saying konnichi wa and signing any copies of his games that people bring along.

"Proper" updates are still on the way; they must have got lost in the post or something :/

Whazzat

2003-02-07T19:41:00+00:00

This is the funniest site I've seen in a long time.

Still need to do loads of updates but I've been too busy getting addicted to 24 and installing Debian on my PC.
Whilst looking for something else today I found an eggdrop script that searches the IMDB so now dexbot responds to !imdb [film name]

More (proper) updates coming soon...

Dexbot Upgrade

2003-01-18T14:09:00+00:00

dexbot now auths himself with Q and is capable of opping himself and lifting bans placed on him thanks to this script and this post on the QuakeNet forum \o/

I had loads of trouble finding out how to do this so I plan to write a howto sometime in the near future in case anyone else wants to try it :)

/whois [dexbot]
  
12:52 [QuakeNet] -!- [dexbot] [~i.live@bin.bash.sh]
  
12:52 [QuakeNet] -!-  ircname  : Mumra the Everliving
  
12:52 [QuakeNet] -!-  channels : @#ick @#hangover
  
12:52 [QuakeNet] -!-  server   : *.quakenet.org [QuakeNet IRC server]
  
12:52 [QuakeNet] -!- [dexbot] is authed as [dexbot]

Dexbot

2003-01-17T19:49:00+00:00

dexbot has finally moved to his new home at bin.bash.sh :)

To celebrate, I've added some new commands:
!insult <nick> - hurls a randomly generated insult at someone
!uptime - reports the uptime of the bot
!topic - sets a topic for the channel, use ?topic for information on who set the topic

These are all currently working in the 2 channels that [dexbot] lives in; #hangover and #ick on QuakeNet.

Now I think it's time to go to the pub.

Soul Calibur 2

2003-01-15T08:38:00+00:00

IGN Cube have posted loads of screen shots of Soul Calibur 2, including several shots of Link who will be a playable character in the GameCube version.

In other news it's occurred to me that this seems to be turning into a Nintendo fan site so to redress the balance I'll post this random link to mnftiu :)

Zelda Bonus Disc

2003-01-10T12:27:00+00:00

Vive la revolucion! Nintendo have confirmed that Europe will be getting the Zelda bonus disc :)

Go and pre-order your copy right now.

Happy New Year

2003-01-07T16:58:00+00:00

Phew. That’s Christmas all finished then.

It’s lovely to be back at work and nice to know that the root cause of my tyre problem should hopefully be fixed when I take the car to the garage tomorrow.

Once I’ve recovered from the shock of getting up early and coming to work instead of sleeping a lot and getting pissed all day I’ll think about putting some new stuff on the site.

In the meantime, happy new year!

OoT Bonus Disk

2002-12-17T12:56:00+00:00

How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?

In other news, Nintendo of America have confirmed that they will be giving a limited edition Ocarina of Time bonus disk to people who pre-order Wind Waker :D

*** update ***

It seems that NoA only decided to do this after being petitioned by over 500 people as the bonus disc was originally only planned for the Japanese market. If you live in Europe and you've got nothing better to do, you can contact Nintendo and ask them to make sure they do the same over here.

Email: Customerservices@nintendo.co.uk

Phone UK Customer Services on this number: 02380 623200

Other contact details can be found on the Nintendo Europe website.

Zelda Wind Waker

2002-12-12T10:14:00+00:00

IGN have reported that the new Zelda game has been given a glowing review and a score of 40/40 in Japan's highly respected Famitsu magazine. If anyone is still complaining that cell shading has ruined it I'll personally come to your house and kick you in the nuts.

Meanwhile I'm going to put myself into suspended animation until I can get hold of a copy.

Wheel of Fortune

2002-12-11T23:50:00+00:00

If your tyre looks like this, it's probably time to change it o_O

Apple Switch

2002-12-09T15:27:00+00:00

These Apple Switch Parodies are frickin' excellent. Thanks G :)

Rabid Hamster

2002-12-07T13:23:00+00:00

If you appreciate decent Winamp visualisations then you owe it to yourself to download this plugin right now.

It might make your eyes hurt tho.

h4x0r5

2002-12-03T19:41:00+00:00

If h4x0r5 ruled teh world.

bash.org

2002-12-02T18:41:00+00:00

17:15 <@fr0d> I'm re-reading http://www.bash.org again
17:15 <@fr0d> it's the b0mb

He's not wrong.

Pornolizer

2002-12-01T00:40:00+00:00

The pornolizer. Wad-licking deep throat genius.

Welcome to ruffest.org

2002-11-28T00:28:00+00:00

Welcome to ruffest.org

Come to IRC - #hangover on irc.quakenet.org:6667

See Channel statistics on this page.

Try joining the channel with this thing if you have no IRC client.

Info about DexBot (commands etc.) will be here soon.

Some other stuff too probably.

Jobbed

2002-08-01T00:00:00+01:00

Hello, I now have a job as a “Development Analyst” here, here or here depending on how you look at it so, unless you want to pay me huge amounts of money to drink beer/play computer games/travel the world then there’s no need to offer. Thanks anyway though.

I suppose I’ll have to think of something else to do with this site until I’m next in need of a job.

One Day...

2002-05-08T00:00:00+01:00

One day I may even get around to putting something on this site.

Please Give Me a Job

2002-04-05T00:00:00+01:00

Thank you.

Simon Starr

How To Organise Bath Ruby Conference

The Idea

Money

Tickets

Sponsors

General Advice

Summary

Bristol Web Folk

Testing widescreen Vimeo embedding

Khoi Vinh on iPad Magazines

Who wants to buy my iMac?

TextMate Snippet to Strip Table Tags

The Mad Men theme tune with lyrics from Nat King Cole. Via Devour.

Thinking Sphinx + Passenger on OS X

Civilization 5

The return of Looney Tunes

I like big videos and I cannot lie.

Breaking Out of Tumblr's 500px Maximum Video Width

All Change

Dustin Curtis on Taste

Text the Nation Ringtone

Network Solutions on Rails

My Experience of Buying Adobe CS4 from UKtechstore.com

Using Ruby and LibXml to Parse XML From FriendFeed

Stalking Adam & Joe

Essential iPhone Apps

Things

Fieldrunners

Helipad

iSSH

TwitterFon

Deadline The Simplest Calendar Ever Made

Greenwich Park Equestrian Consultations

QuickBooks Confusion

Cutty Sark Cam

Olympic 'protest pens' empty | The Australian

Rollerblading in Greenwich Park

Decluttering

individuality.com is for sale

David Bailey Eat Your Heart Out

Like Buses

Bad Blogger

Adelaide

The Top End, the Red Centre and the Ghan

The Great Barrier Reef

Photos!

Week One

Penny Arcade Greatest Hits

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

Stupid DIV

Hello

Are We There Yet

Hello

The Ruffest Hobo

Takk Skal Du Ha

Apple Crack

Long Wang

Auf Wiedersehen

Moving

Dirrrty

Complete Bastard

Java IRC RIP

Megaton

What?! My mother was a saint

How Who?

Hah Bumhug

Is Christmas Over Yet?

New Haquery

WOB4 and the Temple of Meads

Call the Police

Need Speed

Coup

This is Hattori Hanzo Steel

Boring