Musings of a geek

_imran_ @ 2005-09-13T19:47:00

2005-09-13T18:52:38Z

Happy birthday dementias

:-)

I wouldn't bother to update my journal for just anyone, but I think you deserve it for bugging me about it all year ;-)

busy saturday lazy sunday

2005-01-23T20:15:22Z

First time I've managed to have a productive saturday for weeks, I managed to wake up at a reasonable time and tidied up my room so it no longer looks like a complete tip.

This was then followed by going down to south kensington to have lunch and show a friend (Kat) around the natural history museum/science museum which was rather enjoyablle but had to be cut short, as I had to meet my brother at 6 to go and see House of Flying Daggers at the UGC haymarket which was followed by dinner at Mr. Jerk (the original plan was Busabi but the queue was massssssive).

House of the Flying Daggers turned out to be an ok movie with some nice choreography but in my opinion it wasn't as good as some of the reviews had made out. It was the first time I've been to a cinema which has screen underground, which seemed rather unusual especially as the staircase made it look like we were entering into the bowels of the earth. I suppose it has the advantage that no-one can get a mobile signal, and thus no mobile related annoyances during the movie.

Mr Jerk was a reasonably good resturaunt although the staff seemed slightly incompetent, in that they bought us extra food we didn't order, but on the other hand they didn't charge us for it either, so I'm not going to complain :P

And at least unlike lunch (which was had at the Blue Reef @ Science museum) we didn't find ourselves suddenly surrounded by a horde of children that appeared from seemingly nowhere :-)

On the way back from Mr Jerk we got kinda lost in soho and ended up in one of the many indy coffee shops in the area and spent some time people-watching which was surprisingly entertaining. While trying to find our way back to a tube station we somewhow found ourselves in Borders on Charing Cross road, which turned out to have suprisingly good collection of current affair magazines, and also had a signed copy of Simon Singh's Big Bang on sale which I purchased. We did eventually find ourselves a tube station (TCR) even though it wasn't the one we were aiming for.

And that about sums up Saturday. Sunday was a do very little day, but I did go and find the local library , signup and borrow a load of pratchett books I haven't read, so at least I've got some reading material to keep me busy over the next few weeks.

Back to work tommorow though, the weekend just seems too short these days :P

long time no update

2005-01-16T23:31:45Z

urggh just noticed it's been over two weeks since last update, too quickly sum up the last two week memeland kind-of broke the server it was on and I was ill with food poisoning. Luckily memeland is now back up having moved to a host with load-balancing capabilities and I'm fully recovered :-)

Now back to current affair (nothing exciting having happened recently...) today was obviously a good day for meeting interesting people I met a scifi geek called kat, who wants to be the next pratchett, for lunch and this evening I went out for drinks with genie22 and mcskwared who proved to be enjoyable company (wooo - two more people on my friends list are now in the "met" columm even if it did take three months to get around to it).

Now back at the flat watching Amelie on DVD and writing this lj entry.

heh just found an amusing but embarrasing conversation I had with mcskwared on another website, glad neither of us remembered it :P

happy birthday to....

2004-12-31T01:26:11Z

Happy birthday to mcskwared today and an advanced happy birthday to omylouse for the third january.

And Happy New Year to everyone else :-)

memeland

2004-12-28T01:39:30Z

Hope everyone had a good xmas and will have a good new year, I won't be online much this week so if you want me just phone me.

Some of you may have noticed that memeland has temporarily disappeared after making the server it was on fall over - I'm now in the process of moving it to a server farm with load-balancing so it shouldn't happen the next time I release a meme.

My sympathy to pinky_thebrain and others who lost friends in the asian earthquake. I've decided to donate all the income from memeland this year (comes to a few hundred total) to the UNICEF's Asian Earthquake appeal, I can more than afford to cover the costs of hosting myself and this seems a more appropriate use of the money.

An Xmas Meme !

2004-12-21T21:15:59Z

Currently broken, alternative version available at http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran/lj/new/xmas.php

enjoy....

What Will _imran_ Get ?

Xmas pressie predictor
Big wooly jumper knitted by	genie22
Pair of Socks from	pyxiwulf
Bottle of Whiskey from	_imran_
Cd from	angharad
Something Cuddly from	davidkevin
Something Intoxicating from	darrkespur
Something Silly from	darrkespur
Something Funny from	rattieally
Lump of coal from	gemma_louise
Something Pretty from	emo_angst
Something Shiny from	rattieally
Something Naughty from	darrkespur
Something Smelly from	alexanderwait
Something Breakable from	fennecfoxen
Something Useful from	kumidian
Something not useful from	chibikawaii
The Black and Decker Tool Kit from	_dementias_
Livejournal account from	fennecfoxen
The Make-up Bag from	baljemmett
Stack of DVDs from	shibbysheep
Something Geeky from	nemecic

The initial idea was beyond_bananas who poked me until I made it. The background image is a derivative of one produced by Nathan Eady. Have fun !

you're cool because

2004-12-12T20:09:23Z

Not much done this weekend, I wanted to go watch a movie but couldn't find anyone who wanted to see any of the movies I wanted to see, hence just went shopping instead. Which is always a bad idea in london this close to christmas, but still got a lovely warm fleece.

Also went down to camden market which is very cool, lots of alternative type stuff there, well worth going to if you have been before.

And now for some of the "you're coool because..."

ilyanep - you're cool because your as smart as hell, when I was thirteen I was probably the smartest guy in my year at school. And I know you're a lot smarter than I was.

ladyortyger - hmm given that you've just cut me should I answer....yeah you're still cool, not least because you're geeky, cute and funny.

chibikawaii - you're cool simply because you are, you're journal is always worth reading (well at least in english - I assume the Norwegian entries are worth reading too ;-) even when things are going badly for you, you still come across as a lovely person.

squiggydaspcdog - you're a liberal in texas and that alon makes you cool. It's always enjoyable to chat to you on aim ;). There are lots other reasons you're cool too, which I'll no doubt remember

becuase I'm feelinf nice....

2004-11-29T21:38:42Z

1. Reply to this post if you want/need me to tell you how cool you are!

2. Watch my journal over the next few days for a post just about you and why I think you rock my socks.

3. Post these instructions in your journal and give your friends a much needed dose of love and adoration!

Mobile phone question

2004-11-22T19:38:20Z

I'm thinking about getting the Nokia 7600,

Does anyone have any opinions ?

_imran_ @ 2004-11-18T00:09:00

2004-11-18T00:12:37Z

Woohooo,

My Birthday

.............22 today.............

That is all :-)

ohio result

2004-11-03T22:06:21Z

Some of Ohio used Diebold machines.
Diebold machines don't produce a paper audit trail.
Ohio electoral law requires a paper audit trail for electronic voting systems.

Yet Kerry still chose to concede although a legal challenge on this basis would almost certainly have been valid. Would Bush have done the same in his position ?

Age meme

2004-11-02T22:35:26Z

This meme which I was planing to post a bit earlier but I unexpectedly ended up going out for dinner at Busaba Eathai (on Wardour Street off Oxford Street) with friends from work (where I managed to eat a whole meal using only chopsticks woohoo!), so only just got around to making the final touches to the meme:

So here it is, the LJ Age meme made especially for baby_sugar:

My age

21
How old are other lj users are compared to me:

Younger	My age	Older
67%	7%	27%

There are 141607 lj users the same age as me.

As always comments welcome.

Regarding the age-range limitation - it's not my decision, LJ only provide stats for people between the ages of 13 and 55.

texas ???

2004-11-01T22:55:29Z

One of the memes I'm currently working on breaks down your friends by which country/state/county/city they have listed as their location on their lj.

While testing it out I noticed something surprising about my results which meant that I had to check it by hand. The people on my friends list fall into three clusters, unsurprisingly two are Bristol and London. The third surprisingly is Texas.

I mean Texas ????

Why ????

Oh well, I know most of you aren't rednecks *wink* *hug*.

And to all my american readers who are registered to vote, I sincerly hope I don't need to tell you this but: go and vote. Yes even those of you that are Texan and support Bush :-)

photos

2004-11-01T00:22:56Z

Didn't do much today but I did manage to take some photo's in Regent's Park so you can see why I liked it.

not posting much

2004-10-30T20:54:33Z

I've not being posting much recently, but I haven't been doing much either :(

Today I was mostly doing random shopping followed by spending the afternoon reading a book in Regent's Park. Most of london may be a hideous urban sprawl, but it does have some truly beautiful parks. Admitedlly Regent's Park looked pretty average at first, but the inner circle is a work of art. If it wasn't for Telecom Tower shooting up in the skyline you could barely tell you were in a city at all. I might go back to take some photos tommorow so you can all see.

In the evening I went down to trafalgar square and spent about an hour admiring the pretty fountain (it's got a neat lighting effect so the water going up has a nice gradient effect) and making notes about developing memes until it became to dark to write at which time I went home, and here I am now.

I actually had a really neat idea for an lj tool which reads a users meme and works out where they live even if they don't fill out their location in their userinfo. But then I realied that people chose not to place their location in their userinfo for a reason and making such a tool may make these people freak out and flame me to hell. Oh well that's one idea off my list.

_imran_ @ 2004-10-24T00:14:00

2004-10-23T23:18:20Z

Probably about time for another one of these posts,

My contact details for various IM things:

MSN: tickletux@hotmail.com
AIM: tickletux1
Skype: tickletux

If you're on my friends list then you're more then welcome to add or contact me using any of the above.

If you're not on my friends list and want to be then just ask :-)

My second meme

2004-10-17T09:36:54Z

How common are _imran_'s interests

Universal

books (186866)
chocolate (102422)
computers (265117)
drawing (168573)
friends (336539)
harry potter (126522)
movies (538818)
photography (230452)
rain (112920)
reading (351744)

Popular

family guy (60095)
fantasy (63566)
history (62661)
ice cream (60114)
internet (73597)
pizza (54151)
politics (54441)
the simpsons (59970)

Common

bad religion (23335)
caffeine (13949)
comedy (39865)
creativity (27010)
dragons (38807)
fight club (49225)
films (23776)
fun (37610)
futurama (24265)
geeks (16310)
ghosts (17995)
intelligence (21552)
libraries (10448)
linux (13523)
literature (44230)
livejournal (23313)
london (23306)
math (13960)
monty python (40846)
mythology (42841)
pasta (14953)
photoshop (26675)
programming (17681)
queen (31175)
sci-fi (24995)
science (26165)
science fiction (32066)
shiny things (10070)
south park (34520)
star trek (19969)
tea (37061)
technology (13974)
terry pratchett (10173)
they might be giants (10783)
thunderstorms (30487)
vegetarianism (19380)

Specialist

artificial intelligence (2537)
blackadder (3231)
c (2618)
card games (4668)
castles (6589)
coding (2698)
computer science (3004)
crosswords (1337)
cryptography (1476)
dilbert (3092)
discworld (4655)
etymology (2282)
father ted (1819)
females (4009)
go (2761)
good omens (2051)
irc (6280)
isaac asimov (1918)
linguistics (8411)
logic (5614)
mathematics (4993)
mind games (1463)
open source (1991)
paranormal (8437)
quizzes (6809)
red dwarf (8050)
scifi (4391)
sf (1580)
slashdot (1251)
stargate (4602)
stargate sg-1 (3884)
tamora pierce (2590)
unix (5434)
west wing (2926)
world domination (5814)
x-files (8542)

Unusual

algorithms (546)
alt.fan.pratchett (53)
asterix (387)
bristol university (21)
british asians (3)
civ2 (28)
civilization (694)
codes (689)
computer art (920)
constructed languages (161)
cryptic crosswords (143)
current affairs (557)
diana wynne jones (840)
free software (707)
general knowledge (76)
interactive fiction (414)
l-space (34)
lojban (61)
maths (997)
memes (866)
ntk (31)
photo editing (549)
science fiction and fantasy (173)
second hand bookshops (44)
sid meier (78)
simcity (396)
space travel (844)
st:tng (247)
star trek tng (452)
startrek (377)
text adventures (137)
usenet (514)
user friendly (401)
what if's (31)
wiki (102)
wikipedia (318)

Rare

memeland.org (1)

Enjoy :-)

Comments, suggestions and bug reports are welcome as always.

Update: As a number of people have mentioned it the rare category has changed slighltly so it now covers interests which have less than 10 people (before it used to only list unique interests).

Note: If you're having problems posting this meme to your lj using a tool like semagic try posting via the lj website instead, some clients appear to be having trouble posting this meme without breaking it.

Note 2: Some people are getting "none" listed when they actually have interests, this is due to a bug in the caching system. If you wait 7 hours and try again it should work, alternativly as a quick fix you could just capitalize your username differently (i.e. capitalize the first letter, or use all caps) and the meme will think you're a different user and will hence bypass the cache.

Update 2 (21/Oct): Sometime in the next 48 hours I'm going to chage webhost so memeland might disappear for a short while, hopefully not to long though. Sorry if this effects you :(.

Which adverts do you hate the least ?

2004-10-12T21:46:21Z

I've thought about it and I've decided I should put some adverts on my meme site (please don't hate me:( ) - I can afford the cost of hosting but I'd rather the site was self-funding. But I want you to help me decide which type of adverts are most preferable to you and hence this poll...

Which type of adverts do you hate the most ?, 1 means "not at all" and 10 means "you despise them".

View Poll: #365446

MemeLand.org !

2004-10-10T20:52:35Z

Ladies and Gentleman......

I give you MemeLand (thanks to ladyortyger for the name). There's not much on it yet, just my old meme and a lj tool I find useful occasionally. But it does mean I can get on with the actual task of working on memes, expect my next meme to appear sometime in the next month once I work out a good colour scheme :-)

If anyone wants to know what the tool does - it basically produces a version of your friends list which is easy to copy/paste into a lj entry. So for instance I can get a list of everyone I've friended who hasn't friended me back: kissycat1000, timwi, ladyortyger, greengolux, ev1ldonut, amicu, spot_and_chilly, aerion7, the_smut_fairy, debaday, rob_is_raze
This list was generated using LJFriends.

If you're on that list and are reading this I would appreciate getting friended back, but having had a quick glance through that list there's no-one I would defriend for not friending me back.

_imran_ @ 2004-10-10T18:16:00

2004-10-10T17:34:16Z

my weekend...

Saturday: spent most of the day in the National Gallery which has an impressive collection of artwork including some of Rembrandt's better works including Belshazzar's Feast (for the geekier of my readers - this painting is the Rembrandt featured in David Kahn's The Codebreakers), afterwards I spent about an hour just hanging around Trafalgar Square, which has now become my favourite place in London. I don't really know why but it is pretty pleasant even though it is full of tourists. I haven't properly been to Trafalgar Square since I was a kid and being their reminded me of the time when I was a kid when I climbed on-top of one of the lions there, I guess pretty much every kid whose been to Trafalgar Square has done the same :-)

Afterwards I decided to walk down towards parliment/buckingham palace and saw all of the major political buildings in the area, I was pretty tired by this stage so I spent the rest of the afternoon reading K&R in St James' Park - which I have to say is a pretty nice park with some good wildlife. The wildlife seemed to be quite willing to get close to humans so I might go back there sometime with my camera and try taking some photos.

Sunday: Visited Tate Britain, which I much prefered over the Tate Modern, although I think the Tate Modern ha s a more impressive building. The Tate Britain is currently running an exhbition of the works of (JMW) Turner, which is ok but nothing impressive. I don't really get why everyones so impressed by Turner's works, I can appreciate his technical skills in achieve a good sense of perspective but his works just don't do anything for me. They also had a number of Tracey Emin works, some of her non-sensationalist work is actually quite good.

On the way out I realized that I had lost my AtoZ somewhere so then spent the next hour wondering around Pimlico to find my way back to the tube station, but I wasn't in any rush and it was a nice day, so I ddidn't really mind exploring another part of london (btw does anyone know what that wierd buidling near the end of vauxhall bridge is ?). Did some other stuff today to but nothign blogworthy. I was quite amused on the tube to see a busker playing a harp, quite an unusual busking insturment, but it was in South Kensington station so perhaps that's what buskers normally play in that area :-)

Also spent some of weekend working on my website - but see my next post for info on that.

Call to UKers and Americans

2004-10-08T22:35:58Z

On Thursday morning the FBI seized the hard drives and brought down the servers of the independent media organization Indymedia, moreover they seized the hard drives in the UK without explicit permission of the UK authorities, instead they did it by placing pressure on the US webhost Rackspace who owned the UK based hosting facility.

That the FBI should bring down and sieze the confidential information of an American media organization is shocking, that they did the same with a journalistic organization physically located in another country is simply unbelievable.

If you're located in the UK or US I ask you to consider writing to your local politicians and ask them to look into the situation and potential threat it places on journalistic freedoms.

Further details from: http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/111999.shtml

_imran_ @ 2004-10-02T22:27:00

2004-10-02T21:27:31Z

Something that was mentioned at the ljmeetup made me decide to make this poll, be warned that I will change my commenting/replying habit depending on what people say - so please do it.

View Poll: #360047

Saturday.......

2004-10-02T19:35:44Z

Didn't do much today, slept in most of the morning before deciding to go down to the Tate Modern fot a couple of hours, it was interesting but nothing spectacular (but then again I don't really like the kind of modern art Tate is famous for) but I did like some of the pieces like the giant spider and the optical illusions. As I was there anyway I also crossed the millenium bridge several times, I still think it would have been better if they hadn't fixed it I'd have quite liked to have crossed a wobbling bridge.

Spent the afternoon doing some more shopping and picked up a couple more dvds (Akira and Dune) both movies I've seen before but both are good movies. I've also only seen Akira once and that was about ten years ago (it was the first anime I saw) so I'm looking forward to watching it again. Must stop buying dvds though, especially as I still lack furniture in my bedroom (I'm building up piles of dvds and books on my floor).

Also had a look around covent gardens market today and they had lots of interesting stalls there, including one which sold plastic keyrings which had insects embedded in them. Lots of stalls also sold paintings, so I'm tempted to go back there tommorow and pick up stuff to brighten up my room. There's also going to be a punch & judy festival nearby (the area has a long history of punch & judy shows dating back to the mid-17th century) so I might go along to see that.

Incidently Happy birthday to ilyanep today, and to gemma_louise for tommorow.

touristy post

2004-09-26T19:57:54Z

In the mood of exploration and touristyness I've being going to various tourist spots this weekend:

On saturday evening I went down to hyde park and waled along the water feature they have in the middle - I don't know why but I really like walking alongside running water, it seems to have a calming effect on me. Sunday turned out to be mostly a touristy day which I started by going down to the Wallace Collection where I was suitably impressed by their excellent collections of european armory and seventeenth century paintings. Although some of the swords looked truly gruesome I guess some of them were designed to do more damage coming out then going in.

After that I went off to the British Museum and this time I did get to see the Lewis chessmen (woohoo) before heading down to oxford street for more shopping (still no furniture though) and then down to embankment where I saw Cleopatra's needle.

Standing at Cleopatra's needle really gives you a sense of perspective on history, the needle is probably the oldest monument in london. When the Roman Emperor Augustus saw the needle London didn't even exist and the needle was already over a 1000 years old. When you stand in front of it looking over the thames to the left you can see the Swiss Re Gherkin, in front of you is the big news ticker on the side of the IBM building and to the right is the London Eye. It really makes you think about how new much of London really is.

Back to work tommorow and I've just realized I'd forgotten to buy something else, but it makes more sense if I give you the backstory first: at work we have to wear id badges that we hang around our neck using a beadeed metal chain, however I find this chain a bit annoying as (1) I dislike the feeling of the metal beads on my neck and (2) when I'm bored I start playing with the chain and I really don't want to accidently throttle myself. But we're allowed to replace the chain as long as we hang our ids around our neck somehow. Hence I was planning to look for something to replace it with but completly forgot. Maybe I should try replacing it with some multicoloured ribbons and see if anyone comments :-)

_imran_ @ 2004-09-23T20:57:00

2004-09-23T20:00:42Z

just a quick update...last two days have been fairly dull having been mostly spent on a unix crash course. There have been interesting moments but nothing spectacular.

To the main reason for this post: does anyone have any recommendations for good (but not massively expensive) places to go on a friday night near the moorgate/liverpool st area ?