Heart Internet (again)

Well one of the performing monkeys tried to solve my problem by changing file permissions. The ones I had set myself correctly. These were changed without any indication of what files were changed, which makes checking them rather difficult.

How is this for an explanation? "Root permissions such as 777 would not be allowed as this is a root permission." Hmmm..... tautology?

Heart Internet

I used to quite like heartinternet as a hosting company, they give you a lot for what you pay for. Especially when compared to 1and1 who I used before. However recently some issues have been cropping up.

First of all the server fairly regularly has its slow moments - not ideal by any means. Today it started giving Forbidden messages without registering them in the logs. Imagine the confusion that caused the trained monkeys in customer service.

I did once try to change my payment method to a debit card, which somehow their system managed to screw up. When I contacted customer services to explain that my card didn't work, that my bank said there is no problem with it, that I can afford it and I have checked the details I entered the monkey asked me for all of the details on my card so that he could try and enter them. Slightly wrong?

NHM Terracotta 2

A fix?

I'm starting to think that the Grands Prix are a fix. Will a black man really become president of the United States of Apathy before one wins the F1 Championship

Museum Coden Search

Museum codens are great - if you know what coden relates to what museum. However they can be a bit frustrating if you have no idea! The days of the Natural History Museum, London being the British Museum (Natural History) are long gone. However the BMNH coden still remains.

A while ago I was searching through documents for codens. I needed a comprehensive list so I scraped the Bishop Museum's list into a MySQL database. Thankfully they have a logical HTML structure and besides one small error (corrected in a matter of hours) the list was easily parsed.

Creating a local copy saved having to repeatedly hit their site and eat their bandwidth.

I made a slightly improved search engine for the list that automatically searches for redirects (AHCC is apaprently a museum coden synonym of ARHC).

I have made this available here for anybody who is interested.

This will hopefully link in (at some point) with some phasmid related projects that I have tiime to work on occassionally.

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day

Arghhhh........



Perhaps the most holy of days for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

NHM Terracotta 1

Terracotta wall decoration at the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, London.

How to NOT use powerpoint

I came across this on GrrlScientist's blog.

Not sure whether it's meant to be a comedy but says very clearly and effectively what it took a lecturer the best part of 30 minutes to explain to me when I was at university.

Time Management

It's been months since I posted a comment here.

I've been recently re-examining my time management strategies, which despite creating an increased delivery in useful things, seems to have bypassed creating time to write here.

Incidentally I recently discovered that I seem to have rediscovered the vast majority of what Randy Pausch has already said.



I have a folder full of things to put here - so I will endeavour to work through the backlog and make this a little more interesting! Feel free to also check out my other blogs, In Defence of Reason and Invertebrate Diaries.