Let it be

Sunday night was the Liverpool Sound concert. Once Phil finally made an appearance we set off to Liverpool. I was feeling incredibly hungover but Paul McCartney was playing so I had a soak in the bath and some tea and pulled myself together.
Paul had this notion that there would be some sort of early birds area so wanted to arrive well ahead of time. It struck me a decent idea get there early, get a nice parking space, have something to eat together and queue up. Unfortunately I hit a problem. I bought Phil a ticket to the concert for his birthday present only he wasn't at home and his phone was switched off. I got stressed, but finally I booted my computer up to find that at 3.26 am he made friends with Andrea, I assumed this meant he was at her place. At about 12.30 he came online on messenger to tell me he would meet me at his house at 2. I arrived and waited getting more and more stressed chatting to several people on the phone. Finally at 3 Phil arrived and we left for Liverpool, as it turned out our timing was great. I managed to park right next to the stadium and get near the front of the queue. We even somehow beat Paul in though he had been in the queue an hour longer.
Our early arrival gifted us a forward position to watch the bands. The Zutons started around 6.30 they were really good. The sound was great. Kaiser Chiefs were next, I am not really a fan but they put on a really good performance, Ruby and I predict a riot were stand out. Unfortunately by this point I needed to visit the bathroom and Phil having been up all night needed to grab some caffeine.
Thanks to the toilet being right at the back we were unable to get back to Paul and Pippa, we found a place that had a reasonable view, which was good as Paul was superb, well not just superb, superlative.
He put on a great show mixing in his own, the Beatles and Wings numbers. I couldn't remember the full list but fortunately another blogger has it.

Hippy Hippy Shake
Jet
Drive My Car
Flaming Pie
Got to Get You Into My Life
Let Me Roll It with the Foxy Lady
My Love “This one’s for Linda”
C Moon
The Long and Winding Road
Dance Tonight
Blackbird
Calico Skies
In Liverpool
I'll Follow the Sun (with 4 endings)
Eleanor Rigby
Something (tribute to george) played first on ukelelee and electric for other half
Penny Lane (forgot the words off the bat and had a false start)
Band on the Run with David Grohl on guitar
Back in the U.S.S.R. with David Grohl joining Abe on drums
Live and Let Die with stage pyros and fireworks
Let It Be
Hey Jude

ENCORE
Yesterday
A Day In The Life then Give Peace A Chance ending
Lady Madonna
I Saw Her Standing There (with David Grohl joined Abe on the 2nd drum kit)
Dave Grohl came out and joined Paul to play Band on the Run, Back in the U.S.S.R. and I Saw Her Standing There. Then moved to the drums to a couple of songs, he also joined in the encore on Day in the life. I cant really adequately describe in words how good the atmosphere and the music was, hearing an entire stadium singing along to Hey Jude or being overwhelmed by the pyrotechnics on Live and Let die was all just awesome.
We caught up with Paul and Pippa as the crowd dispersed at the end, to the bangs of the fireworks over our heads. We were all buzzing, I boughta program and we said our goodbyes as Paul and Pippa headed for London and Phil and I to Manchester. We were both really awake so as to extend the evening I took a detour into Rusholme for a curry and a chat about the gig.

Seven Spices

After a rather dull day I had a very interesting evening. Hooking up with Nick, Ian, Phil and Gilly we headed out to the new(ish) Indian seven spices in Cheadle Hulme. The place is attempting to be an upmarket Indian restaurant. They have excellent decor and the food was a cut above the normal.
Poppadoms were scarce they server a kind of salt and pepper Poppadoms, not just the usual deep fried affair. They tasted great but there wasn't really enough to go round for 7 hungry people.
I started with Sheek Kebabs, which were excellently prepared, just about the right level of flavor. I swapped half for Phil's Afghan Tikka, I wish I had ordered his dish. The chicken was succulent and tender the preparation superbly flavoured.
My main course was akin to a Jalfrezi, chicken tikka with a green chilli onion an pepper sauce.
The drink service was pretty good the Polish girl serving us regularly asked us how we were doing. The food service wasn't quiet so hot, we had to wait for some time for our order to be taken and as I guess everything was cooked to order the waiting time was fairly long. The portion sizes were good all the food arrived server in deceptively sized copper pots.
Overall the food and surrounding were top notch, in fact some of the best I have tasted. The service was good in places but it took a good while to actually eat anything. The bill came to about £27 a head pretty expensive for Indian, and pushed up by the high cost of the drinks which due to the wait we ended up drinking quite a few of. I would say for connoisseurs is an excellent choice for people wanting a traditional Indian its a bit overprices and definitely not fast food.
After the meal we headed to the John Millington for a drink, then wen on to Bramhall for a couple of drinks at Graze. I was so full I found drinking a chore and got a lift back with Nick at one.

3V

Here is an interesting idea. Bascially you buy vouchers at payments points which can then be used to buy goods and services online.

Each voucher you purchase has a visa number on the receipt the expiry data and cvt2 are sent to your email or mobile phone. These are the three details needed to make purchases online.

Unlike some other payment cards this can be used at any site that excepts Visa. While this does look like a coinvent solution for people whom don't have or cannot get a credit card there do seem to be a few little quirks. The actual physical card is only used to purchase vouchers each voucher has its own visa number and while you can move money from one to another there is a £1.75 charge. Some of the vouchers themselves have a charge to purchase and the maximum amount that can be used cannot exceed £200's

Further more like the pre pay mobile phone vouchers this scheme is clearly based around the vouchers have an expiration after which their value drops to zero.

You could use these for anonymous online payments couple with an unregistered pre pay mobile phone.

Over all I think this is an interesting but expensive and fiddly system which isn't worth it for the average person. Given one of the pay points local to me is a high school they are clearly targeting young people who are used to buying top up for they pre pay phones and cant yet get a real credit card. They might also be useful for people paranoid about fraud shopping online after all the maximum you can lose is the vouchers value.

One thing to note as these are not real credit cards you wont be protected by section 75 of the consumer credit card act so if you were buying items and they arrived damaged you would not have the credit card company to back you up.Here is an interesting idea. Basically you buy vouchers at payments points which can then be used to buy goods and services online.

An Ending

I got back from the Gym in time to catch the Japanese part of around the world in 80 Gardens. You can catch it on the bbc iplayer for the next 7 days. Kyoto looked so wonderful, I really cant wait to see it for myself. There is one scene where Monty Don is in a taxi driving past a bamboo patch and just has to stop and admire it, it looked like the scene in house of flying daggers!

Owners on the orange phone network get two tickets for the price of one at Cineworld cinemas every Wednesday night. As Martina is an Orange customer was indulged in an Orange Wednesday night.

We went to see Juno, a film about a teenage girl whose life is turned upside down after she becomes pregnant. Rather than aborting she decides to have the hild adopted, the film follows the emotional twists and turns. I found it a really touching and cute film. The dialogue and acting were excellent and the sound track is superb, well worth a watch.

Boxbackup

For a long while I have pondered and tried to find an elegant way to backup my co-located server. I tried and failed with Amanda and several home-brew scripts. I finally stumbled across boxbackup.
Boxbackup is a multi platform network backup device. One system acts a a server to which clients (windows mac linux bsd) can connect to and backup files.
Boxbackup uses libsync (think rsync) to only synchronise files that have changed. Also because there is both a server and client agent its should be more efficient than rsync alone.
Security is assured through the use of Tsig certificates. Certificates are used to encrypt the data transmission and secure files as they are transferred.

Server Setup

There are Debian packages available here Download
wget http://www.backports.org/debian/pool/main/b/boxbackup/boxbackup-server_0.10-1~bpo.1_i386.deb
then install
dpkg -i boxbackup-server_0.10-1~bpo.1_i386.deb
The debian installer didnt work out very well for me so I manually ran. Replace server1.example.tld with the name of your server.
bbstored-config /etc/boxbackup server1.example.tld bbstored
Change directory
cd /etc/boxbackup/bbstored
Create a certificate authority
bbstored-certs ca init
Sign the server key
bbstored-certs ca sign-server server1.example.tld-csr.pem
copy the certificates into the bbstored directory
cp ca/servers/server1.example.tld-cert.pem .
copy the server cert
ca/roots/clientCA.pem .
My server is behind a NAT firewall so I had to open port 2100 and edit /etc/boxbackup/bbstored.conf from
ListenAddresses = inet:server1.example.tld
to
ListenAddresses = inet:10.0.0.254
Create a client account, each client is identified with a unique hex code 75AB59D
bbstoreaccounts create 75AB59D 0 20480M 20480M
The numbers with M following are the soft and hard limits for the amount of space on the server to allow for backups.
Start the server
/etc/init.d/boxbackup-server start

Client Setup

Log into the client computer, download boxbackup-client
wget http://www.backports.org/debian/pool/main/b/boxbackup/boxbackup-client_0.10-1~bpo.1_i386.deb

and install
dpkg -i boxbackup-client_0.10-1~bpo.1_i386.deb
You will be prompted to let Debian guide you, it didn't work for me. Change to the boxconfig directory
cd /etc/boxbackup/bbackupd
and run the config generator
bbackupd-config /etc/boxbackup/ lazy 75AB59D server1.example.tld /var/bbackupd /home /var/www

The final entries are the directories to backup.
Copy 75AB59D-csr.pem to the main server /etc/boxbackup/bbstored/ and sign with your server certificate.
bbstored-certs ca sign 75AB59D-csr.pem
This will create 2 files ca/roots/serverCA.pem and ca/ clients/75AB59D-cert.pem. Copy these to the client in /etc/boxbackup/bbackupd/
Start the client
/etc/init.d/boxbackup-client start
Check its running
grep bb /var/log/syslog
You should see something like

Jan 14 22:53:54 client bbackupd[3540]: Starting daemon (config: /etc/boxbackup/bbackupd.conf) (version 0.10)
Jan 14 22:53:55 client bbackupd[3540]: Beginning scan of local files
Jan 14 22:53:55 beta bbackupd[3540]: Opening connection to server server1.example.tld...
Jan 14 22:53:56 beta bbackupd[3540]: Connection made, login successful

Good Luck!

Second life

I opened the Telegraph this morning and on the front of the property section had a most revealing article about the world of the second life. For those not in the know second life is a virtual world, not really a game more a in which you can live, own property. I always thought it was about sex people living out their lives vicariously or attacking journalist with flying penis.. However increasingly it seems that people are living out there lives even making a living from Second Life.

The article in the telegraph was talking about Prim Perfect a magazine showcasing some of the more imaginative the houses in Second Life. I knew Second Life was big when I started to read about companies and country opening up shop there. Such as Reuters opening a office in second life. Though part of what I found funny in that was the Reuters reporter imitating Jennifer Government and taking the name of his company in the virtual world.

I suppose virtual worlds give creative people a canvas to create, whether it be objects, or art and others who want to surround themselves with nice things. Perhaps things they can buy only in a virtual world. I think I might be somewhat behind the curb I was going to create a character for the screening of Four Eyed Monsters in Second Life, then for the technology expo. Maybe Ill open up a shop, I just need to think of an angle ;)

Aqueous Transmission

This evening Phil and I went to see Incubus at the MEN Arena. It was a really good gig they played a mixture of the old favorites, Drive, Mexico, and The Warmth. I enjoyed the old songs immensely.

They love to experiment many of the songs featured eclectic electronic openers and in the middle of the set they did a prog rock esq bit where all the band members played a solo section.

It was a strange gig really Bandon Boyd hardly said a thing, they were late on went straight into it played until 10 had a break then a 20 minute encore. They finished the set by playing Aqueous Transmission, it sounded amazing but the insect sound they played and left playing soon chased everyone out of the venue. Overall not the best gig I have been to but enjoyable and different.

I have been finding it hard to write recently it used to be a release I enjoyed and there are a few things mulling around my mind. Somehow though I cant really find a way to get things down onto my blog. Hopefully my mind will open up and Ill be able to write again soon.

mmm Simpson's

Bruce and I headed to Parrs Wood last night to take in the new Simpsons movie. I love the Simpsons TV satirical full of in Jokes and references. The film continues this tradition, Lisa delivers an environmentalist lecture entitled "an irritating truth" and at one point Bart wears a black bra on his head and says in a rather mousey voice, "I am the mascot for an evil corporation".

The main plot centers around environmentalism and religion. After a dark warning from grandpa Simpson, Homer does everything wrong and inadvertently causes the doom of Springfield after polluting the lake. He goes on to nearly lose his family (Bart even starts to idolise Flanders!) after moving to Alaska Homer faces some stark choices, will he be able to save his family and Springfield?

The only real criticism was the underuse and sometimes irrelevant use of all the other Simpsons characters. Monty burns, and principle Skinner had rather unfunny parts almost just to get them in. I suppose with such a wealth of material they just wanted to put as much in as possible.

I really enjoyed the film, I think they did try and take on an awful lot transferring it to the big screen. Especially whilst still working on the tv series. Some if it worked the main, there were some hilarious moments, both visual gags and dialogue driven. I especially loved the pig parodies, Harry Plopper and Spider Pig. Overall it should make you chuckle and feel good well worth a watch.

Harry Potter vs Transformers

Saturday was consumed with PC building so I only managed to read about a third of the new Potter book. My mum got a copy from John Lewis for £5.

I made a proper start didn't get to start my copy of Potter properly until Sunday.
I read a good deal Sunday Morning, but I had to take a break in the afternoon to go visit the data centre, then help Bruce move some bits around his house. Its really coming along, the kitchens pretty much done the floors don't have holes in the floor anymore and the decorating is in progress.

In the evening we headed out to see the new Transformers film. I can still remember playing with them when I was a kid. Watching this film was an attempted at reliving childhood memories. The effects were spectacular, the transformers fought, lived with the actors. There were some annoyances, the plot was about as understandable as the Chinglish manual that came with my PC bits. I have no idea what the point of the security analyst / geek programmer were other than to have a beautiful girl ons creen. I would personally have confined it to the cutting room floor. Its worth a watch for the action, but its too long, too short on plot, and not really for kids there is a lot of adult humour and references.

I got home and hit potter hard, the story twisting and turning throwing the odd curveball. It starts out dark, and pretty much stays along at that level. Everything which Potter has endured thus far is firmly eclipsed (short of his parents untimely end) as the rise of the dark lord casts a dark shadow over the Potter universe. The usual trio, are nearly torn apart by the stresses and strains. A good section of the book read like something out of Lord of the Rings, they are cut off from the world facing incredible odd the situation worsening all the time.

Overall I enjoyed reading it though I do feel she hasn't quiet reached the levels of imagination she hit when writing Goblet of Fire. Too many loose ends were ticket off in a sort of screenplay fashion, I wonder it was aimed for the screen. A shame if so. I guess my biggest gripe with Deathly Hallows is how it ended. After everything Harry is forced to go through suddenly its over, very neat, there is even an epilogue. I am glad that its a series where Rowling has taken risks characters can and do die, the narrative can be gritty and real, examining issue like racism exclusion jealousy and love within stories about a teenage boy. Its certainly worth a read, especially considering how readable a writer she is. Somehow even complex narrative is always not just understandable but enjoyable. Would that I had even a modicumo fher talent I would be a happy man.

NeverAlways Be Lonely

Its been a bit of a mad weekend, for expected and unexpected reasons. Friday was a long day, I was meant to be catching Sandbox after work, but by the time I left work I wouldn't have had time to change, I felt tired and didn't want to turn up to a gig in my suit.
So my Friday night consisted of drinking a couple of beers and watching a dvd. It was a very very good dvd though, Pans Labyrinth. Its a film that crosses the dreams of a girls fertile imagination against a brutal backdrop of the end of the Spanish civil war. Well written well acted a good story this is the sort of film I really enjoy.
On Saturday my dads pc failed, this meant stress for me, as de facto pc guy I had to sort it out. I decided rather cunningly to give him my 18 month old old and to buy myself the bits to get a new one. I found aria were selling 4GB of ram for just over £ 100 and scan had a reasonable price on processors. I decided to go the whole hog and shelled out for Windows Vista just to give it a try. I would say Vista is a worthwhile upgrade if you have a powerful computer and like eye candy. Its got slightly less patronising pop ups then XP other than the box which pops up every time you want to install anything. I know its for security but does it really have to be that irritating. The graphics tweaks make Vista look good but switch between Windows has nothing on Apples expose. I was a bit worried when on installing Visual Studio it warned me about the incompatibility problems. I only had to download a 490mb patch to fix it.
I basically spent the rest of the day backing up, screwing together, installing and configuring this new machine, which was good really as I was feeling dreadful. Sometimes I find the loneliness consumes. I spend hours looking at photos of whats been happy times trying to cling to something good. I also find doing installs is a good way to avoid thinking about it, her.
To be honest I am angry with myself, my friend said it best. I make too deep connections too quickly so I end up hurt then shut myself away to avoid getting hurt again. Overcompensating in both directions like an emotional sea-saw. I supose things are not made easier by the fact the I received an sms telling my how much she was enjoying herself with her niece by the sea. Whereas I am sat alone, in the rain. I suppose it could be much worse I shouldn't complain my house isn't sat in the middle of a new lake right new. Bah the only problem is I feel guilty for feeling sorry for myself, but at the same time whilst other people have worse problems it dosnt actually change the way I feel, stupid emotions.

Magic mystery and junction boxes

My head hurt this morning, unfortunately thanks to my routine I find it virtually impossible to sleep in these days so I was awake before 9 feeling sorry for myself.

I spent most of the morning chatting to someone online, she told me I should have proposed to Olya. I was a little horrified at such an idea but she sees the whole a lot differently than me. We always have interesting conversations for it though.

I was also trying to use PHP to access the webservice I wrote for my dad. To be honest I understand why people pay for products that just work, I am using complex types for my webservice and php just can't seem to deal with them :( Failing with that I foolishly turned my hand to some diy.

The light on our landing for well over a year so I decided it was high time it was fixed. Hours later I was covered in crap from the loft and desperately searching for fuse wire after blowing the fuses. Basically its got two switches one downstairs and one up which can turn the light on and off. Unfortunately the electrician just used chocolate boxes and the light was removed months ago so it was trial and error wiring. It was also all in the loft which has no light and it very dirty. My dad and I both get pretty stressed out, it took hours and hours but eventually I succeeded in getting it all hooked up.

This evening we went to see the new Harry Potter (Order of the Phoenix). It is the longest and in my opinion one of the best of the books, a lot darker than the preceding stories. Obviously there was far too much in the book to squeeze into the film, indeed I think this one is the biggest departure from the book. It mostly got things right balancing between being faithful to the main story whilst cutting out some of the sub-plots. Some of the editing was a little clumsy, a few words glossing over some huge part of the book but overall it was an enjoyable film well worth a watch.

This was a big film release and so we didn't have to sit with the mob (and children) we splurged out on gallery seats. The gallery seats are on a raised area above the main seating. There are large plush leather seats, there is also a separate sound sound system and the best bit is free soft drinks, sweats and popcorn. Its a bit expensive at £16 a ticket its a bit pricey but if your the sort who goes to the cinema, and buys drinks and popcorn its probably not bad value.

Little Miss Sunshine

This film has got to take the cake for its portrayal of the most wildly dysfunctional family in America. The dinner table scene was surreal the whole family tucking into chicken on paper plates and talking about why Frank tried to commit suicide.

Olive the bespectacled little 7 year old, who's only dream is to take her crown in the little miss sunshine beauty pageant. Pity she has a brother who "hate everyone", a heroin addicted grandfather, failed motivational speaker of a father, and a suicidal gay uncle.

While the story is very dark it has some wonderful humour from the Acerbic grandfather.

Worth a watch if you like indie.

Word Up

Spent a hectic day of bug fixing, and proved once again that people just cannot be trusted to actually test anything properly. Nevermind got to do something fun this evening to make up for it. There was no Japanese class instead a few of us went to Umami . I even took the train into Manchester, it was a little strange reminding me of the day I used to commute to university. Its getting to b a long time since was there now.

The German girl Martine arranged it and 5 of us turned up. Thats 50% of the class so not a bad turnout really. I ate a rather wonderful Japanese meal, surprisingly good in fact. Starter were a kind of fried king prawn dumpling. My main course was a very tasty noodle and chicken concoction.

After the food we went for a couple of drinks in Kro 2. It was a little noisy but they had several Japanese drinks including Kirin lager on tap. I sat chatting to Martine for quiet a while, we got talking about the Dark Tower, she had quiet an interesting interpenetration on Roland, and the ending of the series. I found it somewhat and anticlimax, whereas she found it amusing that near the end his strong masculine character tempered with the imagery of the roses surrounding the tower, and she liked the circular nature of the story. It was an enjoyable and different evening food chatting and a couple of drinks a nice relaxing time after work if only I could do so more often.

Hot Fuzz

After spending a rather frustrating day trying adn failing to sort Ians website out, stupid html / css makes it very hard to place images dynamically despite its best intentions.

I went to see the new Simon Peg film Hot Fuzz. The film is about a top London officer Nick Angel (Pegg) who after showing all his colleagues up is "promoted" to the sleepy town of Sandford. Full of cultural references and clever humour coupled with some rather Tarentino esque ultra violence its a funny, light hearted take on the buddy cop film genre. My personal favourite laugh out loud moment was Pegg vaulting a fence to fly kick a shotgun wielding octogenarian.

Guillemots

Bruce and I went to the Academy in Manchester this evening to see the Guillemots. I bought the tickets ages ago basically on the back of hearing there most famous songs "Trains to Brazil", "Annie Lets not Wait" and "Made up Love Song". I thought they would be a pretty different band to see live.

They were certainly different, announcing they had food poisoning in the first five minutes they played a very experimental set. I got the feeling they love to play and experiment which is cool, though I much preferred the bouncy songs to the melancholic solo (Amusingly during the solo the sound of people were talking louder than he was playing!) or the orgy's of experimentation. I have to hand it to them, they put different slants on their songs so the live act is definitely a different experience to listening to the cd.

The people in front of us enjoyed themselves, a couple of girls were dancing like lunatics, though from the way they were speaking it was clear they had indulged in a few drinks, we probably more than a few.

I am not sure if Bruce like it or not, I hope so. He made a couple of jokes, one song a new one called Big Dog, he thought was big cock, and in fact his lyrics fitted nearly as well...

I wasn't the only one with reservations a heck of a lot of people left before the end (the band did not come out for an encore either. I guess they weren't joking about feeling ill). I think its the most people I have ever seen walk out of a pay for gig.

Overall I am glad I went it was a different experience, and variety is always fun, still think Trains to Brazil is amazing.