Cheet’s Blog

Small but cozy and comfortable to dine in. The tiny toilet is outside the main building which can be cold during winter days.

Website is very well done (and done right!): http://casaroberta.co.uk/, certainly a pleasure to visit.

Tried “Bruschette Miste” (mixed bruschetta) as starter. Interesting choice as it contains strawberry Certainly not your usual bruschetta, tasty, especially the strawberry with soft cheese one - but, there was only one bruschetta for the strawberry cheese one… the other one was roast vegetable, good, and two tomato ones, not as good as average tomato bruschetta, I would like smaller chops and more juice….

“Brasato di Manzo” (braised beef) was my main course. It came with potato wedges! My favourite The beef is good but too salty.

“Pesce al cartoccio” (baked fish) was Mary’s main course. I tried it, the rather small sea bass was probably grilled first as the skin is slightly crispy, powdered with spices and chilli that gave you a spicy bite The mussels and prawns doesn’t look too fresh to me though. Came with salads and potato wedges too

Overall the dining experience was positive, we were the only people for the whole Tuesday night! Could be a quiet place to unwind and talk. Wine list is very limited though. Food portion is good for us, although many others will find the portion to be on the small side, maybe give it a 3-course We didn’t try any dessert though, as they looked normal to me.

50% off bills with the Tastecard.

Finally I figured out this workflow using free software on OS X, for my projects (they are produced into DVD but I need to take samples for Youtube). By doing this, I am leaving all the encoding work to Youtube, since it will re-encode your video anyway. Supplying the original file to Youtube directly will avoid any quality degradation from your local encoding works.

Here is how I do it:

1. Open your favourite video player that can playback the DVD or the VOB file (I use VLC Media Player), take a note of the start and end time of video you want to extract.
2. Use MPEG Streamclip to open the DVD or the VOB file), it will complain that it need Apple’s Quicktime MPEG-2 Playback codec ($20) to play the video. Ignore this, I am not going pay for that.
3. Press ⌘+G (jump to time), enter the start time you noted, press I (set In point). Press ⌘+G (jump to time), enter the end time you noted, press O (set Out point).
4. Press ⌘+T (trim), now you should have the section you wanted. Press ⌘+S (save) to save the extracted video clip. MPEG Streamclip will save it using original format (VOB) without conversion or re-encoding.
5. Verify your VOB clip by opening it with your favourite video player. Use the same procedure above to make adjustments.
6. Upload to Youtube*, even though Youtube said it doesn’t support VOB file, it actually works well (since it is just MPEG-2 video).

* The VOB file is likely to be very big. If you have slow connection / bandwidth limit / can’t wait, then you will be much better off by encoding the video to H.264 first

CentOS came with an older version of PHP 5.1 and it doesn’t offer some of the newer features offered by PHP 5.2+ (I need json support as then I don’t need to write my own data structure, or parsing xml…). Upgrade it is non-trivial as you will most likely to get this:

yum install php53
…
--> php53-common conflicts with php-common
Error: php53-common conflicts with php-common
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
package-cleanup --dupes
rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest
The program package-cleanup is found in the yum-utils package.


If you can afford to remove php completely then that is the best way to give your system a refreshed version of php. Take a backup/snapshot of the system before doing so, though. Just in case

yum remove php*

This will remove all the php packages, including php-common (the conflicting one) and any other extensions you may have installed previously. Take a note of these and you will need them when you install php53. Yum will backup your previous php.ini file.

yum install php53

This will give you php53, php53-cli and php53-common as the base install. Check the version with php -v

service httpd restart

Now test with phpinfo()!

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I decided to make this evil switch, as I am quite happy with Sky’s broadband (BB) service. However switching will enable me have new customer benefits which will produce a saving of 7 GBP per month. By switching to a cheap ISP (and somewhat poor quality one).

I am documenting the whole process here to provide future switchers a point of reference

Day 0 - 07/11/2012:

• Called Sky, asked to leave. They didn’t even try to offer me a better deal even though I mentioned the switcher is purely for cost reasons. However they suggest me to contact the new ISP for anything related to the switch. Also advised me not to close the Sky account yet.
• Signed up to TalkTalk (TT) using their switching page (you can get cashback from cashback websites, so please make good use of the switching). It seems that TT doesn’t like Sky’s LLU (somewhat expected) and requite a new telephone line with a new number. That’s okay for me as I don’t even have a telephone connected at all! (I don’t even know my landline number….). But if the same telephone number is important to you, then well… maybe you should stop here…
• The online calendar show the appointment date of the BT Openreach engineer visit, pretty good on paper as you get earliest date in 7 days and you can choose AM or PM for the appointment.
• Normal new line charge is 50 GBP, and TT charge you 25 GBP.

Let’s see what is going to happen next, I should receive all the paperwork. And the BB should be alive 24 hrs after the engineer visit. Not sure what will happen on the Sky side, though. TT’s website still says that you need to cancel your existing one first, and that contradicts the switching page.

Day 9 - 16/11/2012

• Got an email saying that I will received the welcome package by post soon (even though I have the direct debit setup already…) and the engineer visit will be on 30th!!!!!! This is ridiculous, as when I booked online the appoint is 19th, now with my day booked off from work, they are going to postpone it to a further 11 days? Once I got time I WILL complain to them for ruining my busy schedule by cheating!

http://visionwidget.com/toolz/8-web-development/379-open-source-microblogging-applications.html

My Comments:

5. Mini Twitter Private | Demo | Download

(PHP) BETA 0.3 - Rubbish, poor design, error when signin…

8. sweetter Better Implementation of Twitter | Demo | Download

(Django) Ver. 3 - not pretty design

7. Floopo Free Twitter Clone | Demo | Download

(PHP) v0.9

Now read this to understand what is going on here: http://research.swtch.com/qart

Very good article, but I still don’t quite understand the science…. so…

Try this tool instead, it adds your pictures into QR! http://research.swtch.com/qr/draw

The only drawback is that with my QuickMagic QR scanner, the code decoded contains lots of digits trailing my URL, possible due to the introduced noise - i.e. the picture… It is still very usable, though

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Can’t help, sorry…

I just noticed this problem in the interop database project. Thought it was my new code that messed up but it was actually there all the time!!!

Symptom:

• If I repeatedly edit the text using the same tinyMCE instance, after the second time. The textarea fails to be updated with the text…. as a result $(”#textarea_id”).val() will give you old value!!!!

Fix:

• Having realised that my code initTinyMCE every time someone clicks the edit button. I came up with this solution:

function initTinyMce(iid)
{
if (typeof(tinyMCE) != "undefined") // ="object" means alreaedy init'd
{
// now check if this iid is already init'd
if ($.inArray($("#issuesField" + iid).tinymce(), tinyMCE.editors) == 0) // found, this one already init'd
return; // to avoid multi-init causing textarea not updated problem
}
// my code to actually init the tinyMCE instance

It works!

I bought this one from Millets sale for £15, thought it would be a crap one but it is actually cheap & cheerful

Product link: http://www.millets.co.uk/brand/Peter_Storm/product/033055/mens-active-zip-offs.html

Notable Features:

• Zip off bottom half to convert to shorts (not very useful to me in UK, I have only used it in Yosemite when it get very hot….)
• Waist is partially elastic (I like this design)
• Pockets: 2 cargo side (velcro), 2 “hard-warmer” front, 2 rear (velcro), 1 zipped front
• A mysterious plastic ring on the top of the left front pocket, I don’t know what this is for, keys maybe? Since I can fit a karabiner in it… I am sure I can have some use of it…
• Not waterproof! (This is only “splash proof”, 5mins in heavy rain it will be soaked!)

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Especially this “touching the ground” one  here ———-^———–

More here, from the GriGri page….