First, let me preface this by stating that I'm just a layperson who is quite interested in this sort of thing. I'm just putting some of my thoughts down as they occur to me without any scientific theory behind it.

Having just watched the first two of four episodes of "The Fabric of the Cosmos", they theorise that the the only reason time has a direction is due to the big bang. They also point out that the universe (i.e. space) appears to be accelerating its expansion, and that this is attributable to a majority of dark energy that is unseen (and unknown and not regularly detectable) throughout the universe.

From the first episode (and stuff I remember from A Brief History of Time and other articles) it would seem to me that if the direction of time ("the arrow of time") was caused by the Big Bang, then much like the fact that space is expanding as a result of the Big Bang, perhaps time is continuing to move forward as a result of the Big Bang? Perhaps the perception of the universe continuing to expand is simply a result of the energy from the big bang spreading out and dissipating, and time itself is slowing down making it appear that the universe is speeding its expansion when in reality it could be receding or even slowing down? This could even be enough to account for the dark matter/energy that scientists feel necessary to invent to account for their observations.

I haven't got to the bottom of the nature of time, space and spacetime so this is probably clearly ridiculous for obvious reasons, but I wanted to note it down as an interesting thought, perhaps one I can later come back to refute when I understand more.

Current Mood: curious

My ISP are upgrading my broadband speed to 120Mbit. I just realised in order to take full advantage of this I'm going to need to replace the 100Mbit network card that currently services the cable modem.. to 1Gbit!

This.. strikes me as somewhat insane.

Current Mood: amused

I've finally got my silent Windows 7 HTPC behaving. It had sat idle for a good while after I thought it couldn't both play 1080p video (stuttering indicating insufficient CPU horsepower) or multi-channel audio (crappy onboard ATI 4250 HDMI). As this took me the best part of 4 hours to research, fix and tune I thought I'd ( document this to save others the hassle )

Current Mood: accomplished

I don't suppose anyone wants to buy my LPG-converted 4.0L V8 Lexus LS400 do they? Cosmetically not great, but it has 9 months tax and MOT, is very reliable.. the front tyres currently deflate a bit but I'm hoping I'll be able to fix that shortly.

I'm selling it because I currently commute 100 miles per day and it's costing me ~£400 per month. If it weren't for that I'd be keeping it...

Make me an offer?

Current Mood: hopeful

Does anyone want any of the following? It all works to a degree.

• 2x small computer desks with keyboard shelves - one good one poor condition
  
• Shallow chest of drawers
  
• 2'4" square white Melamine coffee table
  
• 2 1x 14" analog CRT TVs
  
• 4 slice toaster
  
• Microwave (interior light needs replacing, possibly on the way out; had to reset power to get it working but seems fine a month later)
  
• George Foreman electric contact grill
  
• Under counter 1/2 height 50cm wide white fridge with ice compartment (ideally collect on 2nd June)
  
• 4x kitchen chairs, all matching
  
• Assorted kitchen crockery, cutlery, pans, utensils etc - although this relies on us sorting through stuff (garlic press)
  
• A box of mugs
  
• A half-box of wine glasses
  
• A Sony 29" (I think) CRT TV with 3 Dolby Pro-Logic surround sound speakers and remote

If not it's all going to the tip. 'Buyer' collects. It may even be clean, if you're lucky (I'm serious). I will strike stuff off here as it's claimed.

Do check back every while as I'm adding more stuff as we discover more we need to get rid of.

Current Mood: hopeful

..mostly from LifeHacker:

• Firefox 4 is out folks. It's noticably faster, but if installing over the top of FF3, my recommendation is either don't upgrade or if you do upgrade, consider resetting the preferences as the UI is quite different and really requires setting up from scratch to allow you to make the best use of the new features.
• Ninite - a simple app to automate the installation and keeping up to date of a set of core applications for Windows or Linux machines. I've tried it to update my current apps and it works exactly as advertised. Brilliant! Great if one reformats and needs to reinstall. The apps available are sane and the core of what most people use, and it doesn't install any toolbars or crapware along with it.
• CrashPlan - Where Dropbox (my referral link; gets us both extra free space) is like a (free,) secure, online, omnipresent USB key, CrashPlan is the (free,) secure, mutual automated resumable delta-backup solution you've always wanted. Back up stuff between your own computers. Make arrangements with your friends to back up your compressed, de-duplicated and encrypted stuff to each other's computers for free, and never worry about losing stuff to human error, burglary, fire, flood or failure again! (BTW, yes, I am looking for people to set up mutual backups with - please feel free to ask me)
• I'm also looking at SugarSync which is like Dropbox but apparently natively supports transferring other folders and gives you 5GB space for free, but I haven't decided if I like it yet.
• UPDATE: Prey - FREE & open-source theft-tracking software for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android. Go get it!

Current Mood: pleased

http://www.grooveshark.com/

It's like spotify, but web/flash based. And end users can upload music (which means just about anything you want is there). And there's a client that works natively on my n900 (groove in test/dev repos). And it's free (unless you want advanced features).

I call this a win!

Current Mood: excited

I'm at sessifet25's now. Unfortunately I forgot the VGA to DVI converter to allow me to use my desktop machine with sessifet25's old monitor, and I wasn't paying the £21 for one from PC World for a few days, so I'm stuck using my little laptop. No shiny games for me.. bah.

Also, I appear to have a proper outbreak of coldsores on my top lip, which started the day after I got here, swelling to twice normal size and making me feel hideous. I've not had an outbreak like this before; last time was as a child and nothing like this and of course the timing is impeccable, so I've been feeling pretty sorry for myself. sessifet25 has been fantastic though :)

I was given a 10 cup teapot in red for Christmas, which is 3.2l capacity. I need a second kettle to fill it up! But this will make supplying tea for guests simpler :) I also got 6 posh new mugs to go with it :)

We're now in the lull for the job hunting situation (which I originally thought was going to start in the run up to Christmas, but I was called as I drove to my mum's on Christmas Eve by a recruiter wanting to put me forward for a job). I've got a telephone interview lined up, and some other reasonably promising things in the pipeline, so the outlook is reasonable at the moment :)

A facebook post by a friend reminded me about a 'sport' I used to watch as a kid. I think it's what got me into ridiculous engines and the like. I didn't know what it was called - but can you imagine as a young technically curious child looking at the boring morass of so called sports and regular stuff on television, then flicking over and finding this? (american one here, also see this 4 chinook turbine one here) Apparently it's called Tractor Pulling, and it comes from the time when farmers would compare the strength of their horses by getting them to pull a barn door along the ground and have people jump on as they went along until the horse could no longer pull them along...

Yesterday I went to the rather excellent Vale Inn in Bollington for a beer festival with smescrater, sessifet25, the_ladylark and Thermobaric Tom. One catchphrase rapidly came to the fore - "blame it on the mammon" - of which I'm tucking in to a half from my 4 pint jug (it's 7.0% and not a beer to be consumed lightly) now :)

Current Mood: okay

But facial recognition is coming to the mainstream (see my post of nearly 4 years ago). It's not quite 'searchable' yet (thankfully), because Facebook currently places restrictions on tagging photos. But then we all know how good Facebook's record on privacy controls is, and I suspect it wouldn't take much for someone to aggregate the data and provide an external face recognition search service. I don't doubt that law and government agencies already have ways of achieving this anyway - this is about it coming to the casual user.

This has come at an interesting time for me anyway for various reasons that I won't go in to. I doubt I'll bother changing my habits now. I guess I'm mainly concerned with the principle of being able to keep my private life private from potential employers' casual searching - not because I have anything to hide, but simply because it's my private life - only people I choose to tell about my private life have a right to know about it.

Current Mood: contemplative

My car's power steering broke recently. Took it to a garage who quoted 2 hours labour and 160 quid for the Lexus power steering cooling pipe, plus as the pump was most likely gone as well, 3 hours labour (no, they can't be combined as they're in different places) and 695 quid for a new pump. Pattern parts aren't available for those bits either.

So I was looking at the worst part of a grand to get my car back on the road.

Well, that was until today. I woke up thinking - if it's just a cooling pipe, why not see if it's possible to replace the pipe? I can refill the system and see if the pump's knackered at any rate, and eBay have pumps (in America unfortunately) for around £100.

So I removed the old pipe (god that was fiddly), got some copper pipe of the same external diameter from B&Q, gently hand bent it and put it in place, got some more power steering fluid and started her up. A bit of a whine but the power steering works perfectly! The whine is only slightly noticable as you pull out of a junction, and is practically unnoticable when you're just driving around.

So, 3-4 hours of my time, and a bill of £40, plus a euphoric feeling of success (those who know me will know that I've not had the best of luck fixing vehicles before.. I've kind of been put off by past attempts). So this was a huge win for me :)

Current Mood: ecstatic

Like a good citizen I told my new car insurers about the incident I had relatively recently, despite not having heard anything from the 3rd party on the matter. The new insurers have to take this at worst case to protect themselves, meaning I've now got an 'at fault' claim against me and my premium has increased by half again. There doesn't appear to be any length of time that the 3rd party has to make a claim within, except that incidents are kept on the insurers shared database for 3 years. So I'm guilty until proven innocent, and may have 3 years with this 'at fault' claim on my record when in reality no one may even claim anything!

Oh, but luckily for me, they're not going to dock my 'no claims' by 2 years (which would actually be pretty bad for my premium).

I should have just kept my big mouth shut until (if) someone squealed about a claim.

Hats off to the New Sales Manager at Admiral though. He spent 30 minutes going through how it all works and made fleecing me an almost pleasant experience.

Current Mood: pissed off

Well, I'm at sessifet25's now, which always makes things seem better :)

Just an update on the previous post - the recruiter did respond to my request for feedback - on a Saturday no less. I must have tugged at her heart strings! She said she'd sent them rather a few CVs, but would be happy to speak to them if I wished. So I said yes please!, of course :)

Anyway, this goes some way to restoring my faith in humanity a bit.

Here are a couple of awesome videos to challenge your way of thinking: Changing Education Paradigms and The Secret Powers of Time.

Current Mood: good

An idea to enhance our understanding of what is real: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28idea_lab%29#Is_this_real.3F

What do you think?

Current Mood: curious

Agencies are starting to call me now with reasonable regularity, and there are roles that are pretty suited to me coming up in the local area more regularly now. Hopefully it won't be long before I'm able to join the ranks of the gainfully employed again :)

One not so good bit of news is that I discovered a lump on Jazz, our oldest cat (at 14 months he's hardly old, barely out of kittenhood). It will hopefully be nothing, but he's in for an X-Ray today to check it out. UPDATE, 12:37: Vets have just called, it's just a fatty deposit, nothing to worry about. Phew!

And despite all the doom and gloom in the news, there are exciting stories of progress: 100-year starship project feasbility study, for example.

Current Mood: hungry

Today (ok, technically yesterday) was a good day, especially in retrospect, sitting here watching videos helping me to visualise the fourth dimension and chatting with sessifet25 about this and other things.

In telling this story I should point out my state of mind; that my job hunting thus far has not secured me so much as a sniff from another company yet, although agencies are responding in a variety of ways (mostly OK) but not grinding me down too much just yet.

Earlier today I decided to pay a visit to the company just down the road from me, which is a factory producing steam boilers. I had identified them as the source of a low droning noise, which switches on and off regularly every few minutes, both day and night. Being a light sleeper, it was keeping me awake at night. When it first started, it wasn't too loud and was only a problem in the summer months when I wanted the window open, but now it's loud enough that it's quite bothersome even in the winter with the windows closed.

I was polite and friendly with the manager there, who was polite and friendly back. I explained why I was there, and mentioned that I'd come directly to them in the first instance. He showed me around the site, allowed me to identify the noise with him, and assured me that someone will be in touch, either a production manager or an environmental manager. In the mean time, there is a service due on the equipment this weekend when they will take a look at the issue and see if there's anything to be done about it, and also close the windows in the room with the boiler that is making the noise.

They are due to be out by Christmas this year anyway, which is fine. I was thrilled to have such a positive outcome with the company and mentioned in passing that I had recently been made redundant. The manager showing me around said that they were sometimes looking for mechanics and if I wanted I should apply through the agency they use.. not my line of work but I was grateful for the consideration.

So, really, just a reflection on the human touch being so important in how the outcomes of things go. Everyone knows this, but doesn't really have time or energy to put it into practise. Possibly I had today as I have more time/energy on my hands than I might otherwise do..

Current Mood: content