Ian's blog

Well, I should have known better. I upgraded to tiger and Apple screwed me. With 10.3 I was able to subscribe to a calendar using http, then edit a text file and flip it to https. Now the text file com.apple.iCal.sources.plist is nolonger there and my https calendars are not being synced. The entry url is still listed as https in the subscription but it isn’t being pulled down. fuck. Guess I am just going to have to check in two places now, phpIcalendar and ical

Ok, I watched the new episode of rebus and I am think the ones with John Hanna were better. Physically I think Ken Stott is a better fit but I am not sure he got he matched the character in the books. I didn’t see much anger in the character Rebus always struck me as angry bitter man who didn’t like dealing with authority. I also think they got the rebus and Siobhan mixed up. Siobhan is the hibs fan not rebus. I also don’t think rebus would have an expensive sony wide screen tv in his house. Ancient record player is more his style.

For shits and giggle I was curious how the price of flights change from August to November. Here are the prices in US $ for flights starting at washington (DCA, IAD, BWI) and going to glasgow. The dates go from Monday to monday

8-Aug 14-Aug 911
14-Aug 21-Aug 884
21-Aug 28-Aug 911
28-Aug 4-Sep 684
4-Sep 11-Sep 684
11-Sep 18-Sep 684
18-Sep 25-Sep 684
25-Sep 2-Oct 684
2-Oct 9-Oct 847
9-Oct 16-Oct 684
16-Oct 23-Oct 684
23-Oct 30-Oct 634
30-Oct 6-Nov 564
6-Nov 13-Nov 564
13-Nov 20-Nov 564
20-Nov 27-Nov 702
27-Nov 4-Dec 579
4-Dec 11-Dec 564

Here is the same deal except thursday to thursday
10-Aug 17-Aug 977
17-Aug 24-Aug 884
24-Aug 31-Aug 936
31-Aug 7-Sep 764
7-Sep 14-Sep 681
14-Sep 21-Sep 681
21-Sep 28-Sep 681
28-Sep 5-Oct 681
5-Oct 12-Oct 681
12-Oct 19-Oct 681
19-Oct 26-Oct 681
26-Oct 2-Nov 561
2-Nov 9-Nov 561
9-Nov 16-Nov 561

And here is a closer look at the changes in the week starting thursday 17th. Looks like Mondays and Tuesdays are the cheapest days to fly.
17-Aug 4-Sep 883 Thurs
18-Aug 4-Sep 834 Fri
19-Aug 4-Sep 834 Sat
20-Aug 4-Sep 724 Sun
21-Aug 4-Sep 684 Mon
22-Aug 4-Sep 684 Tues
23-Aug 4-Sep 853 Wed
24-Aug 4-Sep 883 Thurs
25-Aug 4-Sep 684 Fri
26-Aug 4-Sep 724 Sat
27-Aug 4-Sep 726 Sun
28-Aug 4-Sep 684 Mon

Maybe Google isn’t evil afterall. after all

Also a south park episode will never air again. I wonder how many people have this on bit torrent 🙂

I noticed that BBCA is showing the new episodes of Rebus, and the Tivo had an episode waiting for me tonight. They have changed the cast since the last version. I read online that Ian Rankin thought John Hanna was little out of character for rebus. This one is staring Ken Stott

Here is some info from the Scottish TV site

Rebus’ sidekick, DS Siobhan Clarke, is played by Claire Price (Poirot: The Hollow, The Whistle-Blower, London’s Burning) and Jennifer Black (Local Hero) is his boss Chief Super Gill Templar.

Set in the seedy criminal underworld of Edinburgh, the films are based on Rankin’s novels The Falls, in which a killer leaves distinctive clues by the butchered bodies of his victims, and Fleshmarket Close, involving murder in the immigrant population of the Knoxland Estate.

I have asterix up and running and talking to Free world dialup, my FWD number is 738451, voice mail works. This is all running from a VM on my XP machine so it might not be up all the time.

I have been playing with a couple new things over the last couple weeks. VMware released the vmplayer for free which allows you to run virtual machines on your computer. If you do a little digging you can also create new virtual machines. I started off with there borwser application which is based on the ubuntu version of linux. I then hacked it so all the volitile data is stored on encrypted disk.
I have also been reading up on VOIP, I installed a copy of asterix on a machine at work to see what it looks like. I am now creating a Virtural machine for my home network. If I think it is going to be usefull then I may dedicate a machine to it. I also ordered a couple sipura ata adapters to convert my analogue phones to sip phones.
I asked my parents to look into how much they are being charged for call to the US. I am not sure if it would be cheaper to get a UK number that forwards to my voip account in the US.

The general thought is that none of the VOIP providers appear to be prime time, but this is just to play around and investigate.

I saw the cingular version of the HTC apache and here is the verizon version. I think this might be a phone upgrade for me. I will want to see what the antenea on the verzion one looks like in real life.

I head this last week on the pod cast of on the media. If you haven’t heard of this then it is worth watching the original flash as well. It talks about the possible future of News with google, amazon, microsoft, blogster and other technology companies.

Curly and I have come to an arrangement. I feed her and she gets to sleep in front of the keyboard and sleep as I type :). I wonder where sarah is.