229 of 365 - Watch out! It's Lady No Pupil and she's come to eat you alive!

229 of 365 - Watch out! It's Lady No Pupil and she's come to eat you alive!, originally uploaded by elsvo.

Just found this images on the old flickr pages, like you do. What I like about this images is the eyes, I have been told that the eyes are a portal into the soul, if that's true then this is I think an images that tells that in spades.

Reading

I have just finished reading a book which when it was first out in hardback caused a bit of a storm, well for a few days back in 2009.

You will see what all the fuss is about as soon as you see the books name, but just to prolong things a bit longer, I begin to wonder what all the fuss was about as 90 percent of what the author says is well to be simple and straight forward.

I enjoyed the book and there where parts of it that where presented in a way that I had not seen before.

The book I think losses a bit in that not enough examples of the current state of things is given and then saying where he thinks they are going to go. Don't get me wrong the book is okay its just that I think you need to know where you are before you can say where you could or might go.

Anyway it did entertain me and at the of the day that's all that matters for me.

So after all that the name of the book is "Love & Sex with Robots" by David Levy

Updates

The Dirk Maggs website is a bit nearer to being completed as I want it.

I am now working on the odds section, and so far it has some 16 pages, which is a bit of a surprise, I hope to have it all done soon. One thing that I have done is drop pages that are no longer needed as this new website works in a very different way to the old, so much so that features that the old did not have and so had to have pages created by hand to give the feature are now created or done automatically by the new site software, neat!

I think that a another couple of weeks will do it.

The only thing that I will I suppose have to work out in the near future is how to update the software that runs the cms, and do it in such a way that it is safe.

The other thing that I will also have to do will be to delete all the old pages on the website so only the new Dirk Maggs site remains.

Headphones

Finally got my headphones that Donna brought for me as a Valentines present!

The finally bit is that even though the delivery was supposed to be 24 hours DHL decided that not delivering them on Friday was a good reason to delver them on Monday so they had them Friday am till Monday am, not happy about that rather poor service, I expected better, and there does not appear to be a way of telling them what I think about their service.

Anyway talking about the new headphones is what this blog is supposed to be all about, and they are made by Sennheiser they are an upgrade of my existing headphones, they are noise reducing and they are model PXC300.

I must say that for me they work very well, and do exactly what the manufacture said they would do which is good, even though we got them in a sale they still cost over hundred pounds, but so far I would say they are worth the money. The sound they produce for me is good and the sound reduction technology works very well.

My ipod touch seems to like them and that's all that really matters at the end of the day. I have read else where that they are't as good as expected and that they don't cut out all the external noise, but that's where I think people have misunderstood what a noise reduction headphone is designed to do.

But me I like them and they do what I expected them to do, if I want hifi sound then I would have gone for closed ear type of headphone, and these are not that, so by their very design they can never be better than a closed ear design, but you have to ask yourself do you want to go around the streets looking like Mickey Mouse with big ears?

Updates

I am hoping that to day I can finish the layout changes on the Dirk Maggs website, and that after that has been done the site can be called done as far as this round of changes and updates to it goes.

I suspect that the next changes will be if I get new pictures of any of the voice actors that I haven't already got or if Dirk ever does another new radio production or and yes there are lots of or's in this sentence I get new information on any of the radio productions already featured.

Updates

So I have I think got most of the images in on the major pages of the Dirk Maggs website, which is good, I have decided at this time that the interlinking of pages on the website is not needed as I give every user of the website the chance to search the entire website for whatever they are looking for.

Saying that the number of users for the new Dirk Maggs website never hit more than 75-100 people a day so I suppose I am not going to upset many people by removing the links, and any way its my site and I can do whatever I want with it, and if removing stuff like interlinks makes my job easier for no real loss of usability then its a step that I am going to take.

Reading

I have just finished reading the very latest book by Robert Harris called Lustrum which as you may or may not know is book 2 in the Roman trilogy that he is writing. A the books chart the life of the real life figure of Cicero.

So far both the 1st book and this book have both been a good read, and I must admit I don't know where real life stops and the fiction begins, but checking real life with what he has written he dos not go to far from what happened all that time ago.

Part 3 will be out next year if Robert keeps to his publishing time-scale, which is good because I would love to see how he will bring it all to great conclusion.

Updates

Just do a bit more updating of the Dirk Maggs website, and even if I have to say it myself it's going well.

I think that in the next day or so I should have all the pages in all the pictures in. The only thing that will be left to do will be the interlinks within the website, which will take some time.

I also have an idea for the odd extra page here and there after that the only changes will be if new material turns up or a new production by Dirk appears.

Updates

I have made some more progress on the Dirk Maggs website, in that I think I have worked out how to get some of the tables to center up. Its a bit of a cheat in that all I do is make the table width bigger, and some how or other it center itself when being displayed, no I don't understand how it does it, but it appears to work, this means I now have to go through all 200 odd pages, as I did't keep a record of what pages were broken, oh well

Updates

Have some how found just a bit of time to do some more update to the Dirk Maggs website, I have added a few more images and also added some changes to the layout of a couple of the pages, so hopefully making them easier to read.

I still have a layout issue on some pages where for some reason or other the pictures in a frame will not center up in the page, why I just don't know.

So those pages will remain broken until I find a way of correcting what ever the fault is that breaks them.

Cold

So mister BBC weather man has just said that temperatures this week will be 5 centigrade lower than they should be.


I want spring, when is spring going happen.

Nothing

Funny how you can go from having lots to say to nothing, I suspect that I am in my nothing to say period!

Reading Now

I have just finished reading the latest Matthew Reilly book called "The Five Greatest Warriors" and I must admit that it was a great read and I felt that I had been entertained, which is what I want from most of the books that I read.

This book which I have to wait some 2 years for was worth the wait and completes the story which was started back in his earlier book called "The Six Sacred Stones" which I read back in 2006-7!, yes 2006-7 even I had to check the year that I read it.

Matthew writes books that are just all out thrillers with action and some very clever puzzles in them, they will never win awards for literature, but then I don't read that kind of book, I want to be entertained and to go with the help of the author into a movie that is better than Blue Ray and is more 3d than 3d and better sound than Dolby, and I think that Matthew is for me one of those authors who just does it for me, your mileage many vary.

So would I say to others read this book, yes if you like the kind of stories that Matthew writes.

Last Post

This is the last post for this month and all in all so of the projects that I wanted to work on have been worked on, which is good.

The websites that I have, so far only one of them which is the Dirk Maggs Productions website has been updated, work on it will take some months yet but I think there is light at the end of the tunnel as the saying goes.

Updates 7

Updates

I have managed to update the Dirk Maggs website for production year 2001 and 2003. For some reason that I have yet to work out the layout on pages that I am sure I had sorted out are now all wrong with all the headings all hard over to the left-hand side, why this is I just don't have a clue.

Any way these two years all the production pages where looking okay as of this post on my blog.

So that of course means that the next time that I go and have a look they will be broken again!

Moon

Just a note to me that the Moon looked real big on the horizon and the red "star" by it was Mars.

ipad

So the ipad is out, I don't know why but I wanted it to have more than they gave. By that I mean that as a version 1 device it has some failings that to me here in little old England are so obvious that you begin to wonder just what plant so of the folks in Apple are on.

I suppose will will never know what sort of discussions went to to decide what the machine should or should not have but the sad fact is that for what ever very good reasons, some of the stuff that they have left out are well to me just strange.

Take for instance multitasking, if I understand it right the new cpu that the ipad has, is more than capable of doing more than one task at the same time, the OS in the ipad can multi-task, in fact I think I have read somewhere that it does multi-task if you happen to be Apple and its your software running at the time.

So why does it not multi-task? there must be a reason, what it is I just don't have a clue.

The other thing that is not there is a forward facing camera, which would make the ipad just so much more usable, may be Apple don't want to sell too many devices or the cost of adding a camera broke the budget on the build cost.

Talking of build cost, I wonder just how much it does cost to make an ipad?

One thing that makes me really unhappy is that when I use my itouch ( which I do use very heavily, and have also run out of space on lots of times, its a 32G unit) is the number of website that don't work because I don't have flash on the itouch and I now see that for some reason Apple have still not got over there fears, worries about allowing it to work on the new ipad, why?

I am told by those in the know that the machine eg my touch is more than capable of running flash without any real problems.

So I have looked at other version 1 devices that Apple has done and have decided that a version 2 device is the better way to go.

So I have 12 more months to go before I will have to look at replacing my touch , I hope it lasts that long as the use it gets is stupid.

Reading

I have just finished reading the latest Peter James novel that has come out in paperback. Its called Dead Tomorrow and is the latest in the Roy Grace series, and I have to admit that it was a good read with lots going on, and I think this bit is important the characters in the novels do change and progress and the way they act to the world they are in also change.

I like the main character Roy Grace, not sure why? maybe because he is human he makes mistakes and is not flawed like so many police men in fiction you meet these days.

By that I mean you only have to look on telly what is coming out of the USA to see that all the policeman have something wrong with them, if its not that then they appear to have a budget so large that any new kit that that comes out that could be used to catch the bad guys is brought and suddenly every one knows how to use it perfectly.

What I like about Peter James is that in the story money or resources are tight and sometimes Roy Grace can't have the item or resource that he needs, but and this is a big but he finds another way to do what needs doing.

So this book is a good read, you do not need to have read the early books but you do get more from the book if you already know Roy Grace and his world.

I suppose that it will only be time that will tell when it gets to the small screen which I think would be a pity as this is a series that needs you the reader to get involved, a multicast radio series would I think be really good, but these days the money and the interest for such a thing just will not happen which is sad but that's how it is.

I suppose the only consolation to this is that Peter has written the new book in the series, I just wish he was just a bit like Terry Pratchett and published a book every 6 months, cause I need my Roy Grace fix, I want to know what is going to happen next.

Updates

The updates to the Dirk Maggs website are still going on, the only trouble is that for most users of the site you can't see any changes.

The other thing that I have also noticed is that the number of visits to the site has collapsed, where I used to have thousands I am now lucky if I have 20 or 30 a day. Which is a bit of a surprise as I am still very high up on Goggle when you do a search for Dirk Maggs.

I know that I still have the old Dirk Maggs site, but that is not getting any more hits than the new one, so I am not too sure just what is going on.

I also have the problem of working out just how to safely remove the old website without loosing the new one.

Blood

Today is the 1st time this year that I have given blood. Apart from the booking system not working how it should I have now given 114 units of blood.

To say I am proud of myself would be an understatement. As the worst thing to me about giving blood is when they pull the plasters off that hold the needle in your arm, it real really hurts and the number of hairs that get ripped out of my arm is well lots.

But its a small price to pay to help others.