XSet is the personal website of Rob Dudley, a 29 year old software and web developer who lives in the Channel Islands...
// December 29th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal, Tech
That was painless (as upgrades go) although that may have something to do with my having performed a full backup before I started!
Of course you won’t see any massive differences just yet but the new UI is pretty damn sweet and I’ve reactivated some of the older plugins in their updated form and they’re sweet two!
let me know if you find any gaping holes…
// December 29th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal, Tech
See you in about … 10 minutes!
// December 25th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal
Consider this my seasonal greeting of the season.
To all of you who I know and all of you who I don’t may you find peace, joy and pudding today.
Happy Christmas!!!
// December 23rd, 2005 // 6 Comments » // Personal
Anybody know what that means?
WITHOUT GOOGLING!!!
// December 23rd, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal
I fear I may have started something here!
After the previous piss poor efforts (sorry mate but the truth hurts) I’ve had two more sent in all the way from Exeter in the UK!!!
Actually they are really the same attempt but the creator of these wonderful attempts thought it would sound more convincing with a bit of cheap reverb … hmm …
Wookie from Devon – original (MP3 – 32KB)
Wookie from Devon – remastered (MP3 – 32KB)
Scores in the comments…
// December 22nd, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal
It’s been a while since I bother to post anything techy. The plan was to split all the techno babble onto XSet and leave this as a pure journal style space, but, in true rob form, I’ve yert to get round to doing anything with XSet and so feel that I must relapse and share some of the cool things I’ve discovered / heard about recently.
Performancing Firefox Blog Extension
This is a corker of an extension for Firefox 1.5 (if you haven’t downloaded it yet then go and grab a copy). Effectively it gives you a Blog posting application built in to your browser, no need to login, full WYSIWYG (with a couple of glitches but what the heck, it’s new right?), recent post history and almost everything else you’d expect from a full application. With support for all popular blog engines (wordpress, blogger, mt and anything else that uses their XML-RPC’s) it’s a fantastic addition to my blogging experiance. The only downside? Yet another reason to cuss and moan when I’m using a PC without Firefox installed!
You can download the Firefox Bloging extension from the Performancing website.
MSN 8 (aka MSN Live)
I’m not privalegde enough to be on the Microsoft Beta Tester list for their new products but I’ve been hearing a lot about the new Live services including the new version of Messenger. For more infor on some of the cool up and comings then go and see the Live Messenger blog at MSN spaces.
Joomla (ne Mambo) OS CMS
Looks like I’m a little bit closer to not having to write my own CMS system. Joomla is what Paymaster are using to run their support site and, whilst it has taken some getting round of my head, it’s pretty freakin cool. If you need a simple way to organise / maintain a big website and you have no budget for software then you could do worse than check it out.
Ok, that’s enough geekery for one day… now to see if Performancing actually saves the post!!!
// December 20th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal
Prompted by yesterday’s post, the blogger who was supposed to email me his wookie impression has finally done so…
Don’t know about you but I think this is actaully the worst of the bunch.
Wookie Redux (MP3 – 92KB)
Anybody else got a wookie noise they’d like to share?
// December 19th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal
Cast your mind back some months …
I challenged you, my dear readers, to provide your best attempts at a wookie impression – remember?
Well exactly 0 people bothered to take advantage of the oppourtunity to flash your crazy vocal skillz. Of course I’m not surpised, you’re all a bunch of bastards, but I was expecting at least one to be emailled to me at some point … … …
So in the absence of that “one” I have decided to assemble my own montage. You see I had my own microphone that fateful night in the pub when the competition was born and here, for your listening pleasure, is a compilation of the best efforts by a certain local blogger. I particularly like the bubbling sound of delight at the very end as the realisation dawns that all is being recorded:
Wookie Noises (MP3 – 152KB)
It’s worth bearing in miind that this is assembled from two nights worth of effort. Marks out of 10 in the comments please.
// December 19th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal
Saturday – The St Mary’s Country Inn Corner Crew Christmas Lunch
If there is one occasion in the year that is likely to end in a drunken mess then it really has to be the Christmas party organised by a bunch of people who tend to meet each other in the local pub … think Cheers on ice.
The restaurant that could consider itself honoured to play host to this monumental event was the Windmill in St. Peter. It used to be … well … a windmill before being converted into a jewellery workshop and a lovely bistro / bar kind of affair. I won’t go into to much detail but suffice to say the food was fantastic, the portions generous, the wine corking (which is almost totally the opposite of corked) and the company, mostly, buoyant and bubbly.
One thing that did occur to me though. This was the third party of the year and each one has provided the same make of Christmas crackers with the same crap toys. The highlight of these crackers are the measuring spoons that have no units and don’t seem to represent any known quantity or volume… they do however make wonderful catapults as the Windmill staff found out to their cost 
After lunch (a blinding 2 hours this time) we adjourned to the upstairs lounge which was round (it’s a windmill remember) and had very odd but rather cool lighting that phased between colours meaning the room would be green, red, blue or purple depending on the time you looked at it. There was dancing (don’t worry guys – no video just yet), drinking, singing and the slow descent into the drunken comfort zone.
Of course for some the comfort zone is just the precursor to a darker more maudlin place and that state was achieved by at least two of the assembled party over the course of the evening. This of course simply goes to show that alcohol is a great leveller … drink enough of it and you will end up sobbing into your best mate’s shoulder for no reason other than somebody stole the last party popper!
Sunday – No Christmas Party!!!
I did officially naff all Sunday. Quiet dinner with the folks and a swift bevy or two to swap stories (and assemble memories) with the corner crew and home, bed, sleep.
The next party is Tuesday with another one one Wednesday and the final one on Friday … then I get a whole weekend off although I have a nagging feeling there’s something happening on Sunday that I should be aware of … oh yeah … Christmas!
// December 19th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal
Just as Jersey’s Drug and Alcohol Advisory service issue a warning not to drink to excess over the festive period I was setting out on a weekend of … well … excessive excess!
Friday – Christmas lunch with mega-comp. Last year ended up with the diehards in a local bar drinking the entirety of their port stocks before realising that consuming an entire bottle of LBV does not sit well with sober and erudite communication… in fact it didn’t sit well with any communication 
This year was a little more subdued; possibly due to the absence of certain staff members from the line-up. The food was of the Thai variety (proper Thai as well, non of this Thainese rubbish) and the beer was imported. Lunch took a mere 3 hours to complete and then the hardcore crew headed for a pub whilst the rest went home to bed / children / x-factor.
I’m not going to run the risk of publicly humiliating anyone (well not from Friday’s antics) but suffice to say I discovered one of my ex-colleges has a real issue with scotch, and others can do interesting things with magnetised balls…
Oh and to my mind, highlight of Friday evening was the random meeting of a bunch of completely wasted firemen on their watch Christmas do who seemed to be missing on of their party and kept asking each other if anyone had his number at which point they would all chime in and cry 999 and then fall about as if this were the funniest thing they’d heard in minutes.
Percentage of the evening recalled by those around me > 50%
Percentage of the evening recalled by me < 90%
