This is one End User License Agreement (EULA) I can agree with

Introduction to Data Communications since Revision 2.0 has the following licensing agreement. You are allowed to use it, view it, modify it without permission of the author Eugene Blanchard, provided that you agree to the following:

* That you will try to be a better person today than yesterday.
* That you will exercise your body as well as your mind.
* That you will tell the persons dear to you that you love them.
* That you will defend the rights of those who are unable to defend themselves.
* That you will not hurt your family members emotionally or physically.
* That you will respect your elders and care for them in time of need.
* That you will respect the rights of others in their religious beliefs.
* That you will respect the rights of others in their sexual orientation.
* That every man, woman and child has the right to be here and is equal regardless of race, creed or color.
* That you will act honorably in all aspects of your personal and business life.
* That your family is first and foremost the most important thing in your life.
* That when you make a mistake, that you admit it and make amends.

This book is available online in the hope it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

From BoingBoing

The cat tower I built last weekend

…and before I go on, the kitten LOVES it:

and Yogi at the top of the tower, enjoying the view

and doing her squirrel impression

lazing about in the box (which is big for a kitten, but I was thinking of possibly 2 adult cats)

Another cool thing is, this counts as one of my Day Zero Project goals 🙂 #39: make something out of wood

New Kitten!!

I posted on my Facebook thingy (no, I’m not really that old) about ‘applying’ to re-home a kitten, well we got approved after a visit to the neighborhood by the charity, visited the foster home and the next day this week formerly feral kitten was delivered to us:

Her name is Yogi (the daughter of the foster home lady named her)

and she’s a lovely little energetic ball of fuzz

I could only get pictures of when she was sleeping (mostly because I was too busy playing with her)

She’s integrated with people really well, the foster/charity lady did a really good job, and she loves to lie between us as we watch TV or read or whatever.

I want to train her to be more of a lap cat, but right now she’ll lay in my lap for a while, then wake up and move back to her pillow

We might think about taking in one of her sisters (might be half-sisters) but they have a little way to go yet, they are still very shy and wary around people. But so cute!

She seems to be adapting really well, although after 4 days she still hasn’t been in the kitchen She can play football (with ping pong balls) really well, though! They definitely tire her out, plus anything on a bungee string with feathers.

(trying out the artsy option on my phone camera)

Yogi was re-homed through Leeds Cat Rescue, they were on a nationwide directory of cats that need homes, then we clicked through and there were pictures of the available cats and kittens. The shots are paid for, she’s been ‘chipped and the spaying is already arranged. The feral mother was trapped (along with all the kittens), spayed, then released – she’ll never be anyone’s cat but the kittens are making their way to new homes, instead of under the corner shop where they lived.

Getting all the ‘cat tat’ was half the fun (and I forgot to include the carrier and some toys in this pic!)

Happy New Year

Hi!…random blog-reader or person I know!

I’m a bit lax about posting stuff on my blog, since I’ll usually share stuff on Twitter and let those updates feed over to my Facebook status updates. I usually save the bigger topics and things for the blog, but because it takes more time to update I’m usually pretty lazy about it.

Anyway, I’m going to try to update at least once a week this year and see how that goes. Short or long updates, whatever, but I just want to put something here, so whether it’s links to some of my photos or other projects, or just commenting about stupid shit I’ve been noticing lately, it’ll go here at some point.

So. What’s been happening with me.

I suppose the main thing I’ve been wanting to tout on here is the podcast I do with a friend at work. It’s called Digital Porridge and we’ve just done our 11th episode and it’s gone up today.

If you’re not familiar with podcasts, basically they’re like radio shows that you can download and listen to on your phone, MP3 player, computer, etc. Our is just over half an hour long and we try to do one each week. Mostly it’s myself and my friend Mat telling stories, comparing cultures (he’s British) and goofing off, and hopefully entertaining whoever listens.

The link to the main web page/blog is here, and we’re even officially on iTunes, and if you have an RSS reader like Google Reader you can use this RSS link to subscribe.

We’ve been getting some nice feedback, even from people who I don’t know personally – I think the next step is to really push our listeners to get their friends to subscribe. We have nearly 30 subscribers via Feedburner RSS links, and who knows how many on iTunes because they don’t provide any info at all, but I’d say it’s less than 15-20. Because we’re pretty small fry in the podcast universe I’ve been trying to get all of the people I know with iTunes to subscribe, even if they don’t listen, and give us a rating (maybe listen to a show or two if you feel weird about rating us without giving us a try). This requires almost no effort on anyone’s part to subscribe, and a good rating gives us a nice bump and with enough good ratings we might get featured on a blog or even on iTunes. So please subscribe to us in iTunes!

Day Zero Project

So here is something I thought would be cool to take part in: the Day Zero Project.

The idea is to skip short-term, easily done things or New Year’s resolutions and complete 101 goals in 1001 days. That’s roughly 10 days to complete every task, whether it’s climbing a mountain or sharpening all the knives in your kitchen.

So here’s the gist

The Challenge: Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria: Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on your part).

Why 1001 Days? Many people have created lists in the past – frequently simple challenges such as New Year’s resolutions or a ‘Bucket List’. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 Days (about 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organising and timing some tasks such as overseas trips, study semesters, or outdoor activities.

The official web site for the Day Zero Project isn’t working as I type this, but their Tumbler blog is working OK and has a lot of great ideas to start with.

I added a new page to my website that will compile all the goals I have added, so they’re easier to find than spread out on a bunch of blog posts.

Follow-up to the McLaren visit!

Well here’s the video!

Watch closely at the 1-minute mark… and at 1:38…

More crap on eBay = more crap out of the house

Alright alright alright!

Achievement unlocked: 37 items listed on eBay

How about that? I spent AGES editing all these listings on eBay Turbo Lister as I watching Castle (good show, nice way to pass the time by the way). It’s nice having a widescreen monitor 🙂

Most of these would have been listed on Sunday, but somehow the hours I spent making listings on Friday were wasted when my listings weren’t saved for some reason. So I just lost all motivation  and read comics on my new phone instead (more on that soon).

Numerically, 37 listings is about 75% of the items I have ready to sell right now, but volume-wise it’s only about 25% of the space of the stuff!

BBQ time!

With summer quickly departing Great Britain, it’s time to organize a good BBQ while there’s still time.

I’m thinking the last Sunday of August, which is a bank holiday weekend – that means most people in the UK have the following Monday off, so it’s usually a late night for anyone who wants to go out for a drink or two.

It’s usually about this time of the year that I realize I haven’t BBQ’d much during the year so far, and there’s lots of ‘summer dishes’ I didn’t get to experiment with, so hopefully there’ll be plenty of Pimm’s & lemonade and cider to go around.

Achievement Unlocked: Obtain Android Phone

Got the Samsung Galaxy S (aka the Captivate) this weekend 🙂

Carphone Warehouse at the White Rose mall in Leeds had them (and the Desire) in stock and I couldn’t resist. Apparently they’re one of the biggest CPW locations in the area so they get priority on limited stock items like the Desire at the moment.

I got a pretty good monthly rate, too. Basically I’m going to be paying a few quid extra per month than I was before, for the privilege of one of the hottest devices available, and after a year I can drop my contract down to a cheaper rate, and in 23 months I can upgrade again. No money up front, £30 a month, 500 minutes (which I won’t hit), unlimited texts (actually limited to 500) and 500mb data transfer/internet (the Orange version of ‘unlimited’).

Right now I have the Geek Squad insurance cover, which is quick and pretty comprehensive, but because of the cost of the phone that’s £12 a month rather than the £5 or so I was paying for my older phone. I have a couple of weeks to cancel that, so I have to decide what I’m going to do with it. I found a website that will cover me for £5.99 per month, and 12 months of cover for the price of 9, and it looks very comparable to the Geek Squad  but I need to compare them side-by-side. I think the cheaper insurance wins out though.

I’ve started playing around with the various apps already but will wait a while before rooting it, mainly I want to be sure I can restore it to its default setting if it all goes wrong.

So far I’m running a bunch of free apps and have tried a few free games.

Right now I’m running the stock music player app and it seems pretty good so far. I’ll have to see how it handles album art. For podcasts I’m using Google Listen, but I need to be on a wifi connection to get downloads or my data limit will quickly be demolished. I’ve been using Gmail and Calendar for years, so I love how the system just integrates all that into the various Google apps.

I think the first  paid app I’ll try is Tasker, which is £4 and can do things like automatically send a text to someone when I get home, change the volume settings when I get to a certain location, change the GPS/locator functions of different apps, etc.

As for the phone itself, this particular one does look a lot like the iPhone, with a single ‘hard’ button and the volume switch where they’re at, but beyond that and the Apps screens the difference grows. Multiple configurable home screens can hold constant mail, weather, traffic or Twitter updates, Google search (by voice!) is right on the main screen, it’s very configurable and I haven’t even thought about rooting it yet.

There are some good things that it borrows from the iPhone, like the way it does speech bubbles with text messages, etc., but that’s not a bad thing at all.

So, moving up from my Nokia 5800 I’m looking forward to tightly integrated things like email, calendar, Twitpic and other services, all without paying much more than I was before.

And…no more iTunes 🙂

Goal: fillet steak and lobster

Woohoo! This morning I was under 91kg for the first time in AGES.  90.9 to be exact, but who’s counting, right?

All this is thanks mostly to the low-carb diet I’ve been following since the end of May, but I do have to give a bit of credit to the ‘crazy’ Xtreme Fat Loss Diet I did throughout most of May – that got me on the start to dieting right and working out.

So anyway, what’s with the steak and lobster?

Well at the suggestion of one of the users on a low-carb forum thread I participate in, I’m going to have a congratulatory dinner once I hit my goal weight. When I first heard this a couple of weeks ago I was thinking Oh yeah I’ll have a nice fat steak when I hit 200 pounds (about 90kg). But I was pretty close to hitting 200 back then, and at this rate I’ll be under 200 this time next week (awesome).

So when I do hit 200, I’ll celebrate somehow (but not with a whole cheesecake or buying a TV) – then I’ll save the BIG celebration for when I hit my goal weight, which is 185 pounds (84kg). It seems like a long way away, but as long as I keep doing what I’m doing I’ll be alright.

I think celebrating with a super-tasty, home-cooked meal of a big 21-day aged ribeye steak covered with Montreal steak seasoning and a couple of butter-drenched Maine lobster tails is pretty close to the best thing ever. It’s healthy, I won’t be wolfing down pies and sweets, and I won’t be spending a ton of money on a new video game or TV or something like that.

So, yay me and let’s keep it up 😀