Firstly, let me say HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAHHHAAAAAHAHAHA!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAHAA!

HAHAHAAAA!

Ahem, done now.  Be sure to check out the link to the Power Balance website, where if you click on “How It Works”, you get a page that says “Coming Soon”.  (ie, once we figure out a semi-valid pseudo-scientific-sounding explaination that won’t have people laughing so much they wee a little bit).

I’ve always wondered how they got away with saying that they don’t handle warranties, and sending you to the manufacturer.  Maybe the ACCC isn’t a completely toothless tiger.

I’m not sure if this replacement electrical system smoke is compatible with old British bikes too….

“Here is presented for your perusal one Lucas Replacement Wiring Harness Smoke kit, P/N 530433, along with the very rare Churchill Tool 18G548BS adapter tube and metering valve. These kits were supplied surreptitiously to Lucas factory technicians as a trouble-shooting and repair aid for the rectification of chronic electrical problems on a plethora of British cars. The smoke is metered, through the fuse box, into the circuit which has released it’s original smoke until the leak is located and repaired. The affected circuit is then rectified and the replacement smoke re-introduced. An advantage over the cheap repro smoke kits currently available is the exceptionally rare Churchill metering valve and fuse box adapter. It enables the intrepid and highly skilled British Car Technician to meter the precise amount of genuine Lucas smoke required by the circuit.”

As part of a growing list as I make my way towards being a fully-fledged Grumpy Old Man, I’m going to share with you some things that annoy me.

- People who don’t wait for you to get out of a lift before they start piling in.

- Apparently able-bodied persons who catch a lift up one floor, or down any less than two.

- People who sit in the right-hand lane on multi-lane roads, when they’re not overtaking, just pacing the person next to them.

- The police who don’t book these people (yes, it is illegal folks, on roads 80kmh and over), and instead are hiding up the road with a radar.

- People who can barely drive forwards, and insist on reverse-parking in busy carparks while apparently oblivious to the queue of cars reaching critical mass behind them.

- People who give one flash of the indicator as they settle into their new lane

- People who “taste-test” neighbouring lanes by dipping their wheels in to check them.

- Little yappy fluffy white dogs.  Extra points for pink collars or bows.

- Incompetent overseas call centres.  I don’t have so much of an issue that you’re saving costs by offshoring your call centre.   It’s commercial reality; really, I get it.  The language issues aren’t a problem for me in customer service centres; it’s when you’re dealing with glass-licking morons who have crap systems and are not empowered to, you know, give Customer Service, that I have a problem.

- Apple.

- Microsoft updates.  How is it that I can often upgrade core parts of an operating system in Ubuntu (or Mint) without a restart and in 2 clicks and about 5 minutes, when with Windows it involves agreeing to a new 73-page EULA, 20 minutes and two restarts to update a media player?

- SMS spelling.  It’s bad enough that an entire generation won’t be able to spell, but when I see communications from people who should know better that can’t find their way to typing all of the letters in “Thanks” (thx) in an email (no length restrictions there), that annoys me.

- Their, There, and They’re.  Or more specifically, the fact that apparently 75% of the population now don’t know the difference.  “Their” indicates possession (“Their house is in Melbourne”), “There” is a place (“I’m going over there”), and “They’re” is an abbreviation of “They are”.  Not that hard folks.

- Brakes and Breaks.  This one REALLY grates on me.  It’s probably a little unhealthy actually.  I’m involved in a couple of forums where motorbikes and cars are discussed, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen Brakes (the things that stop your car/bike) referred to as “Breaks”.  Every time I see it, I get a little twitch.

- Baby-, Child-On-Board signs/stickers.  I really don’t give a shit who or what you have “on board.”  And I don’t know why you feel the need to inform me that you sometimes carry a mini-human in there (although more often than not, they merely contain a vacant baby seat.  Are they just using these signs to park in the “parents with prams” spots I wonder?).  Although annoying, these signs also perform a useful service for other road users in warning of the aptitude of the driver, because invariably cars with these displayed are driven by people with truly appalling driving and observation skills.

- Ricers.  Especially the shopping lists on the doors/front guard.  And the park-bench spoilers on the back.  Although that said, they’re usually more funny than annoying, especially the ones that have competing brands of the same product listed on their doors (ie. two brands of tyre), none of which are actually fitted to the car.  Ricers can still be annoying too though, as well as funny.

- Poorly programmed ATMs.  Which seems to be most of them.  I’m talking about the ones that ask you if you want a receipt, you say “yes”, and then it tells you that it’s out of paper and you can’t have one.  Or it asks you to enter an amount in multiples of $20 or $50 bills, then it scolds you because it’s out of 50’s and you need to enter an amount it can make up in 20s.

- Timewasters when you’re selling something. Ebay is the modern incarnation of this (non-payers), but there are still the tyre-kicking, joy-riding dickheads you have to deal with whenever you’re selling a motor vehicle.

- Real Estate agent open for inspection signs.  Don’t businesses generally have to pay for the privilege of sticking advertising in public areas?  Saturday mornings around here have the streets awash with signs on every corner nature strip, anywhere up to 6 or 7 of them fighting for space.

- Credit card thieves.  My card’s been cancelled because I used an EFT machine that had been compromised, and I have to wait another week for my new card.  Bastards.

That was therapeutic.  If you made it this far, you’re doing well (feel free to put this on your list!).

Part one in a series length yet to be determined.  And like a true Grumpy Old Man, I’ll probably keep repeating myself too.

Having a recent addition to the family, I find this interesting.  This kid is bigger at birth than our new model, who is 3 months old!

Have the masses reached and surpassed the pinnacle of photographic fidelity?  Now that P&S cameras and DSLRs are cheaper than ever, it seems that most photography now occurs through pinhole lenses attached to crappy sensors on phones.  

Will the photo album of the future be a series of tiny, out of focus digital shots which are obscured by pocket lint?  (Those photos that weren’t lost when the computer “crashed” and there weren’t any backups).

Install Eclipse from the repos.  I’m just using Synaptic (installing on Mint), search for Eclipse and tick it (and agree to install the bunch of dependencies)

Once installed, open Eclipse.  Following the instructions here,

Click Help > Install New Software

Click Add

In the name field, enter Pydev and Pydev Extensions. 
In location, enter http://pydev.org/updates 

It should locate the software - Install Pydev for Eclipse (Pydev Django Templates Editor wouldn’t install because of a dependency - I’ve forgotten about it and moved on)

A restart, and you’re done.

I’m going to have a bash at building me a webpage using Django.  

On the tin it says it’s a “high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.”

Rapid = good.  And although my experience is limited (close to nil really), Python = good in my books too.  Plenty of folks will argue otherwise, but for a beginner apparently Python is The Business, and I like the way it rolls.  And I like Monty Python, after which the language is named.

This is a bit of a build log for getting a Django server up and running.  I’ve picked my usual poison, which is Ubuntu Server (10.04) running on a VMWare 2 VM.

I’ve left my Ubuntu install clean, with the exception of OpenSSH Server in the setup part (so I can connect and do stuff).

I’ve got some instructions from a couple of sources, but a good one is this: http://jeffbaier.com/articles/installing-django-on-an-ubuntu-linux-server/

Python should be installed by default, to check, open a terminal and type

python

You should be rewarded with the prompt

»>

If not, figure out how to install it.

Now install the web frameworks:

sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-python

sudo apt-get install mysql-server python-mysqldb

Now to install the Django framework.  I’m downloading the latest Official version from here (1.2.1).  Download the file, extract, and I’ve popped it into my home folder.

Open the new folder, and run

python setup.py install

It should install the files into /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django

Check that you can run django-admin.py from any path, if not you’ll probably need to add a symbolic link to it (it lives in /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/bin)