Welcome to GlassHalfEmpty, my own little corner of the Wired. My name is Dan, otherwise known as Pewterfish in some circles, and I have collected a miscellany of occasionally interesting material in the following pages.
Go ahead, browse. You might find something worth your time.
For the last couple of weeks, my bicycle has been out of action, waiting for me to rebuild its rear axle (it's been picking up a nasty crunch of late, probably related to either the little accident I had at Coldean Lane last year or to the lack of maintenance over the winter). Today, I actually got around to taking it apart, cleaning up the parts and inspecting the damage.
...well, shit. When I finally got the thing apart (one of the cone nuts is well and truly seized to the axle), one of the bearing races I replaced in April has come entirely to pieces. This is probably related to the chips and scratches in the seized cone nut. Much more worryingly (bearing races are cheap), it looks like one of the cups in which the races sit has gotten scratched. If I can repair or recondition the cups, I can put the wheel back together with a new axle and a set of cone nuts and bearings. If the cups are non-replaceable and I can't repair them, that's a new hub, which could be veeeeeeeeeeery expensive.
It's annoying, not having independent transport. Public transport is all well and good, but it's expensive, inconveniently timed and it doesn't go where I need it to. This is, of course, the standard argument against public transport, which is slightly irritating. I've come to rely on my bicycle to get about to some extent, so when it's up on blocks in the mech lab downstairs, one wheel in pieces on the bench, it's ... inconvenient, to say the least.
Oh well. I'll get it repaired eventually, one way or another. It's more a question of price than anything else.
On a totally unrelated note, I'm going to OpenTech this weekend in London, an "informal one day conference on technology, society and low-carbon living, featuring open-source ways of working and technologies that anyone can have a go at" (from the site). Looks like an interesting day, as well as an excuse for a little jaunt up to London. Anyone else coming?
Don S. Davis, who is probably best known for playing Major General George Hammond of Stargate SG-1, has died at the age of 65 from a massive heart attack. This makes me sad.
Consensus among the fandom is that he was "a southern gentleman with a big heart, a no-nonsense attitude and all the love and respect one could imagine". That certainly came out in the character of George Hammond. The character has been in my awareness for a very long time (after all, I grew up with SG-1, really), and I think there's a little of him in me, as there is of so many role models down the years. That character, the little spark of life that made it more than a name on a page, could never have existed without Don to give it life, and the benefit of his experience.
M-day: -11 (slight mishap regarding people moving out on time)
Well, that was a pretty good weekend. Sessifet's birthday party was good: once I managed to wake up the following morning, we got a few essentials in and waited for people to turn up. There was lego star wars, there was food and all manner of things, in the way of afpmeets since forever - we're a strange lot, and when you get us together, the conversation tends to precess in a worrying manner. Good fun, though.
Next day, there was an excellent brunch, then more puzzling conversations and general hijinks. Or something. Anyway, Pol gave me a lift to Manchester airport in the evening, where I managed to get on the flight eventually (despite my gate being hidden all on its own behind the information desk, and the gate number not appearing on the monitors until the gate had nearly closed). The rail ticket machines at Gatwick were kinda overloaded, and some of them were getting badly misregistered, their touch-screens sensitive zones sliding slowly away from the graphics until you had to press next to the button you wanted in order to press it...
Still, I got home tired, but no worse than that. Today (Monday) I had an unproductive day at work, hunting segmentation faults in my code. Oh well. Back to the old grind, eh?
On the subject of friends, old, odd and otherwise, I seem to have found a few old schoolmates on Facebook. Nice to hear from them again. It's interesting to see the alternate paths we've taken through life, starting from much the same foundation.
Wow. Really tired. Suppose I should maybe go to bed.
M-day: -6
Well, the flight didn't quite go to plan, but when do they? I got to the gate on time like a good little traveler, only to sit there for three quarters of an hour while the crew tried to get someone off the plane (no idea what was going on there, I assume someone needed a wheelchair or something, but it took way longer than it should). Then, our loading crew was missing, so once we were on the plane, we just sat there for another forty-five minutes while the airport tried to find us a group of people to toss our bags haphazardly into the hold as our original crew had apparently wandered off. Once the luggage was loaded, we had to find a tug (as using the jet engines to push back from the terminal is generally frowned upon, as it is Expensive)...
Once we were in the air, everything went swimmingly, but given that we didn't take off till after we were supposed to have landed, we were a touch late into Manchester. Ladylark found me at the terminal without any trouble, though, and we got takeaway curry and then (eventually) slept.
Points of note:
M-day -8
Alright, at the moment, I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Gatwick airport, having checked in and gone through security. Gonna be a while yet since I can do more than that: my gate won't open for another half-hour or so, and there's not a lot I want to do here. Still, I guess it's marginally better than sitting vacantly on a bench in the departure lounge, waiting for my flight to be called. Which is, doubtless, what I'll be doing in 30-odd minutes...
At least the process so far has been reasonably painless - although I got stuck on the slow train from Brighton to Gatwick, we still made it in plenty of time. So far, three things annoy me, though.
First, the checkin desks aren't zoned by building, so expecting to check in at Zone D for a British Airways flight and finding the zone to be full of Aer Lingus and Easyjet desks is a bit disconcerting (the train arrives at the South Terminal, and BA flies from the North).
Second, the security system is as forced and daft as ever. Stand here, look at this camera, now take off all your metalwork, boots included, and try to hold your trousers up as you pass through the scanner, then put your clothes back together on the far side while trying not to hold up the queue (including keychains on carabiners, pocketwatch, phone holster and so on). The domestic side of the system is marginally less obnoxious than the international side, which is its one saving grace: at least here I don't have to flash my passport every minute. Well, that and the fact that the baggage allowance has been expanded so I don't have to check anything: a hand-luggage-only experience is very liberating so far.
Third, there's no free WiFi in the airport. This is something the Americans do so much better than us. There are seven APs in range, offering five distinct services, but they all want a credit-card and your firstborn to connect. In Charlotte, NC: free WiFi offered by the airport. In Dallas, TX, free WiFi, by a subsidised third-party. In Denver, CO... yup, them too, IIRC. Both Gatwick and Heathrow have no free hotspots, which in this day and age is inconvenient and annoying. It probably wouldn't cost me that much to get online, assuming they accept my debit card and don't take Visa or Mastercard only, I suppose. The inability to check my itinerary online, to check the news, to IM my hosts and tell them about any delays we're expecting, and so on, is limiting after years of it being effortless.
I'll freely admit that I live a sizeable part of my life online; I have friends I've never met in the flesh, and possibly never will, I have friends I see once a year in the States, but I talk to them regularly. This global network is a part of me now, and to be involuntarily disconnected from it while unable to do anything about it is ... irritating.
Reading back over that, I note that I seem to want something for nothing, and I suppose that's true. It's a common criticism levelled against people like me: geeks, open-source fans and so on. I think it's because that connection, that extension of our minds onto a limitless, timeless plain that has no borders or hierarchies, and which can be crossed in less time than it takes to blink your eyes, is as much a part of me as my sense of humour, my way of dressing, my fear of heights. Without it I feel ... disconnected. Incomplete.
Oh well. I can't be digital, even if I want to. Someone has ring-fenced the way out of here, and I'm forced to remain wholly corporeal, whether I want to or not. Time to get analog for a bit. I'm off to read a book.
M-day: -8
