Kirrus' Blog » General

The wind is not your friend

Kirrus — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:56:31 +0000

Cycling home tonight, I had just left work’s place, onto a stretch of road with no streetlights. Picture the scene, it’s just stopped bucketing it down with rain, now spitting. I’m in wet-weather gear, and it’s dark. Quite dark. My backpack has a reflective cover, and I’ve a reflectctive jacket, with a particually annoying LED flashing backlight. (I’m paranoid – shortly will have red LED flashing in my helmet.)

Got out safely, clipped my feet in fine (I now have special shoes that clip onto my pedals), accelerating towards my average 15-17mph on that particular bit of road, the wind decided to push me, hard, towards the edge of the road. A very small shallow there, with a grassy bank. Wheels in the culvert, uncontrollable de-acceleration, equals me flat across the A road, with one car passing me and another just behind it.

Promtly to the sound of car-horns telling me just how close I’d come to getting run over, I dragged myself off the road *sharpish*, and dragged my bike off as quick as I could after I was off. I’ve a couple of very minor abrasions on my ankles. Lucky. Very lucky.

Note to self. When it’s wet and windy, piss drivers off by sticking a meter off from the side. It’s far better than getting run over.

Goodbye

Kirrus — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:08:41 +0000

Grandpa passed today, after loosing his fight with pancreatic cancer.

See you when I’m dead. Till then, miss you Grandpa.

Quick, Easy, Nice way to eat a spare chicken breast

Kirrus — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:44:23 +0000

A forum-friend provided this recipe, when I asked for suggestions for a spare chicken breast (other one went into curry.) Very yummy indeed, thanks!

Season chicken breast with salt, pepper and your favourite spice blend.

Bake or grill it. (About 30-45 minutes at 175-200 degrees C)

Once cooked let it rest and start to cool, whilst you prepare the bits to go with it.

Smear mayonnaise and mustard on two slices of bread. Slice the chicken thinly into strips. Then add lettuce leaves to the bread, the sliced up warm chicken, and top with tomato slices.

I mixed the order, adding the chicken and then the lettuce, but it still tasted nice:

Sorry about the rubbish photo. Taken on my phone.

Charity shop thievery

Kirrus — Sat, 15 May 2010 16:25:25 +0000

I know that someone stole from the charity shop today. Found the remnants of a plastic tag broken by teeth on the floor in the changing room. Thought there was someone doing something suspicious in there earlier, but got distracted by people paying.

Not the first time either, we had a set of known thieves three weeks ago, think they probably suceeded, someone found a destroyed tag outside the shop.

I wonder, do they steal from need, from dependence on stealing, or for the excitement, the thrill of the crime?
Having never stolen anything physical, to knowledge, I don’t know.

Guess this will be one area of curiosity never sated. I just have to keep an eye out for them.

Photo below, Gerald the Giraffe enjoying a glass of coke, having just been rescued from the kidnapping admin team at one of our offices

Receipts

Kirrus — Sat, 15 May 2010 14:39:25 +0000

Working at a charity shop, I’ve been on the till of late. It still surprises me how many people don’t want their receipts. You know, of course, that they can’t get a refund without one.

I get not taking one for plain bric a brac, not much to go wrong, but shoes? CDs? I keep thinking, people, almost everything in here is second hand. Mad world.

I hate book study.

Kirrus — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:00:12 +0000

I really hate studying from a book. My learning style is much more practial hands on. My mind just does not want to read and make notes on this boring technical book, and I can’t keep myself from getting side tracked.

Case in point, Page 235 of my LPCI 1 text book (awful by the way, don’t get LPIC-1 in depth by Michael Jang, its useless, honestly), I decide to browse through my photo archive after I pulled that shot out yesterday. And this is what I came up with:

Click to see full size image

Right, mind. Back to shell scripting. (While loops.)

Why I hate colds

Kirrus — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:00:32 +0000

I use an iPhone app called ‘Sleep Cycle’ to monitor my sleep patterns, and wake me whilst I’m naturally most awake, within a half hour window at the end of the night. It is really useful, and works really well, when I have a good night.

Having a cold robs me of a good night:

I really hate colds
Sleep Cycle iTunes page

To the Oxfordshire Police Force

Kirrus — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:51:49 +0000

I was impressed by the tobogganing policemen, for having a sense of humour, and getting involved with the local community. As a UK tax payer I whole heartedly endorse this use of my money.

I as not impressed by them being told off.

Have fun (or not, as the case is much more likely to be).

Ref: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/14/sledging_coppers/

Christmas shopping

Kirrus — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:24:59 +0000

Christmas shopping today, in between watching episodes of the season 2 of Bones

If you want to get interesting fair-trade presents in London, check out “fair share”, at the end of bewick street, next to the red light district of picadilly circus (hope I’ve got the spelling right). Very cool little things, made in interesting and deprived places. Worth giving it a look, if you’re looking for something a little quirky as a gift

Quick interesting stuff for today

Kirrus — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:04:07 +0000

Addictive flash/iPhone game: canabalt
Elwoodicious just wrote an interesting price on elastic load balancing with amazon’s virtual servers: http://elwoodicious.com
RPS a uk pc gaming site/blog got mentioned on a BBC news article about the laws of war, and how they’re broken in computer games

That’s all for today!