Nexenta

Notwithstanding some (fairly pointless, IMHO) debate about the open-ness or otherwise of having to register for its pilot programme, Nexenta looks like being one of the most exciting projects to spring from OpenSolaris so far.

You want it *what* way?

First day working in my new home office since we moved house and BT got around to switching on our broadband connection again. Still a lot of unpacking and cable untangling to do, but everything worked pretty smoothly otherwise. (Wasn’t brave enough to try getting dual-head working on Ubuntu on my Powerbook, though– don’t know if it’s even possible.)

A couple of nights out last weekend… Harry Hill at Vicar Street on Saturday (my choice), and the Backstreet Boys at The Point on Sunday (Julie’s choice). Harry had his amusing moments, but I’ve seen him do better work, and Julie was seriously unimpressed. BSB were, well, five blokes looking younger than they ought to, singing close harmony 90’s pop songs amidst dry ice, lasers and indoor fireworks. More memorable for the spectacle than the music from my point of view, but Julie went to bed dreaming about Kevin so I guess she enjoyed herself 🙂

Testing, 1,2,3…

It’s kind of ironic, not to mention ever-so-slightly depressing, that both the ‘rival’ UI testing suites du jour only mention Linux in their acronyms and descriptions, when a key part of the underlying technology on which they depend (the accessibility framework) was largely developed on Solaris boxes in the first place 🙂 Presumably the suites themselves should also run equally happily on said ancestral platform, so it would be nice to see a bit of a mention at least…

Who are these… yoomans?

Got hold of Carl Sagan‘s Cosmos DVD boxed set today, which I managed to find on eBay a couple of weeks back for rather less than the $100+ that Amazon want for it.

When it was first aired in the 80s– and it’s never been repeated since in the UK, AFAIK, at least not on a terrestrial channel– I remember being blown away by the visual effects, the music (mostly from Vangelis’ Heaven & Hell album), and the suitably epic feel of the whole thing. I also remember missing the very last episode, about which I was rather upset at the time, so I’m looking forward to seeing it all again. (It should certainly help fill the pre-bedtime TV hole in our new house that’s still waiting for NTL to get off their cretinous arses and join two wires together in our living room.)

Calling Cantabrigian Logibods

The first place I ever worked (if you don’t count a crappy summer job typing in the size of graveyard plots), the Logica office in Cambridge, is closing at the end of this month. They’re planning a reunion dinner there on Friday October 21st (not sure if I’ll be going over for it myself yet), but so far they’ve only tracked down about half the people who’ve worked there… so if you know anyone who did and would like to be involved, please ask them to contact Clifton Hughes at logicacmg.com.

Moving House Wrecks Your Head

Packing and unpacking mountains of boxes is bad enough, but it’s not helped by the muppets who staff the utility companies.

BT Ireland need the Eircom account number at our new address before they can transfer our broadband connection, which will then take 14 working days (so, at least it’s not quite three weeks then). Eircom, though, despite having to log into their phone system with my existing account details, won’t tell me my new account number over the phone for “security reasons” (despite having done so every other time I’ve moved house), but offered to email it to any address I chose instead… which didn’t strike me as outstandingly secure either, until now, several hours later, when I’ve realise that they haven’t actually bothered sending it at all. Fair play to them, you can’t get much more secure than that, really.

Then there’s Bord Gais, whose skills clearly don’t quite extend to copying and pasting my name correctly from an email to wherever they have to type it in to open an account, and NTL who seem to be unable to make the cable TV point in our new house live without me taking a morning off work for an “appointment”, when they’ve managed to quite happily just flick a switch somewhere every other time I’ve moved.

Hopes of a full house are thus pinned squarely on ESB , who I have to phone at the end of this week with a closing meter reading for my old address. One can only imagine what inventive ways they’ll find to make that a miserable experience too.