XSet is the personal website of Rob Dudley, a 29 year old software and web developer who lives in the Channel Islands...
// November 21st, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal
A story on the local news aperture for our local paper caught my eye this morning. Leanne Le Feuvre has, in the past 3 weeks, been involved in two serious car accidents and has walked away from both… I’m pretty sure she’s not going to be very popular in the car pool 
// November 20th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal
Red Light Day = hitting all the Red lights on the way into work = bad day
Red Skittle Combo = 2 Red One Yellow Out of packet = good day
Network Cables = Orange and Yellow for computers, Blue for comms / patching
Ciggy Papers = Green or Red only
// November 18th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal, Tech
There was an interesting post on Lifehacker yesterday outlining the steps that can be taken to migrate away from an old email address. It was recommended that you use your own hosted domain to ensure that future mail can be managed in a single place.
Well I’m in the process of doing something similar with my IM accounts. In all honesty, I only really have a single account that’s active but it is attached to an email address I simply don’t use for anything any more.
As such, if you have me on MSN then please remove the existing account and replace it with robert@xset.co.uk which is a perfectly valid and working Passport account in its own right.
For those of you not big on the MSN route you can also add robert@xset.co.uk to your GoogleTalk lists and Jabber will be coming along shortly.
// November 4th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal
I don’t often post about my Honorary Police work, partially because data protection is a scary mama and she’ll kick my ass and partially because very little of it is of interest to those who are not involved in the Parish and policing.
That said, my duty this Halloween was a definite reminder of why I volunteer my time to this worthwhile endeavour. Whilst other parishes were gearing up for mass egg confiscation and strapping on the riot gear to deal with drunken youths and fireworks (I exaggerate … but only slightly) my duty team and I went out on one of our rare patrols to ensure peace in the Parish. We weren’t carrying CS spray, cuffs or batons. The only additional equipment we had with us was a decidedly non standard issue family size tin of Roses.
For every group of trick or treaters we saw, we’d stop and give them some of the sweeties with a pleasant piece of cautionary advice and go on our way.
This is what community policing is all about and, whilst it may not work in all areas, it ensured we had a quiet Halloween that was fun for all involved whilst building trust in the local police with the youngsters concerned that, hopefully, will stay with them as they go through life.
It’s amazing what a tin of chocolates can do when properly applied.
// November 4th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal
And for those with Flickr Privileges* the photos can be found on my photo stream.
Thanks to Dan, Beav, Ani and Derek for a cracking evening!
*If you don’t then get a Flickr account and I’ll add you if you ask nicely.
// October 31st, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal
It’s been an age since I did a meme thingy but I stole this from the Facebook profile of Matt
“SUPPOSEDLY if you’ve seen over 85 films, you have no life. Mark the ones you’ve seen. There are 239 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own facebook account, paste this as a note. Then, put x’s next to the films you’ve seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun.”
// October 30th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal
Finally.
We’ve been given use of a shared, ADSL connection here at the flat – no great shakes but at least good enough for email and web browsing. Of course they couldn’t remember the WEP key but thankfully … it was a WEP key, took approx 10 minutes to break – which is scary when you come to think of it.
Now to setup one of the routers to bridge the connection so we can use it in more places than the corner of the bed room by the window
// October 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal
An interesting point raised by Robert Llewellyn in one of his recent Llewtube vids what should we brits refer to ourselves as?
This already difficult question is complicated even further by geographical sub divisions. For example, most Jersey Beans would deny (correctly) being even remotely English and would have a problem being classed as British. Even those for whom the country of origin is in little doubt will often self classify based on their region – Scousers, Geordies etc.
In answer to the question (posed most frequently by Americans oddly enough) “so you’re British” I will almost always reply in the negative. I, for one, am English in the same way that the Scots are Scottish, the Welsh are … well Welsh and the Cornish are … complicated.
So how about you? Are you British, English, A Bean, Geordy, Texan, American, or none of the above … ?
// October 28th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal
or rather hearing The Llight which doesn’t have quite the same ring as a headline.
And what is The Llight? They’re a band, specifically a band in which my cousin Paddy plays bass, sings a bit and no doubt handles all the creative input stuff to boot.
These guys aren’t your run of the mill, back of the pub crooners either. Their sound is modern, upbeat and filled with hypnotic rhythms and classic harmonies. The lyrics are intelligent (a bit rough round the edges in places but give them time) and come straight from the heart without a hint of the self indulgent bollocks that makes up so much of the shite in the charts these days.
Don’t belive me? Check out The Llight’s live session on Radio Stoke’s Subclulture, and then head over to their online store where you can grab a copy of their debut EP Dont’ Let the Bastards Grind You Down for nothing more than 3 quid (which buys you 4 DRM free MP3s of Llightness … Enllightment??? Whatever).
For those of you reading this and thinking – what does Rob know about music I’d remind you that the last band I gave props to before they broke big time were the Arctic Monkeys, with a limited release EP, bought online for a few quid… so get ahead of the curve, jump on the bandwagon and grab that EP … NOW!!!
// October 28th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech
Seam Carving is an image resizing technique that Jeremy originally pointed out to me … whilst on the phone … walking … through the rain … to the pub … funny what you remember eh?
When J and I discussed it, Seam Carving was available as a GIMP plugin which meant installing GIMP.
Well now there’s a whole Seam Carving GUI available to make the job that much easier (not that it was that hard in GIMP) so get it out there and carve baby CARVE!
