Invader! (by alaric)

When I arrived back at home from dropping Jean and Sarah off in Cheltenham, I was greeted by Helium as I got out of the van. She was rubbing against my ankles and all the usual "Please let me in!" cat behaviour.

But as I approached our front door, I saw another cat run away and dart into the stable. It was the tabby and white one we sometimes see.

Intrigued, I went into the stable, with Helium still following me. All was quiet in there, but the other cat could be hiding anywhere amongst all the furniture, boxes, buckets and gardening tools, so I stood quiet and still for a few minutes. Helium sniffed at the floor a bit, but otherwise just kept rubbing against me, until we both heard a small noise from behind a pile of boxes; her head snapped round and her ears pricked up. She quietly advanced on the place, then she froze, and her back slowly rose into an arch. There was a few seconds of stalemate, then the cat bolted out of hiding. Helium leapt to attack and the other cat tried to jump over her so she only caught its legs, resulting in them both sprawling on the floor, but then the invader was up and away, leaping for the open window. Helium caught up and grabbed its hind legs as it scrabbled through the gap, clawing and biting, but then it squeezed through and was off, Helium in hot pursuit.

I caught up with her in the garden, standing in the middle of the lawn, head raised and ears pricked, scanning the bushes suspiciously, having successfully repelled the invader.

Fault tolerant Web hosting (by alaric)

As Sarah reminded me, I should blog my article:

Fault-tolerant Web hosting on a shoestring

24-core CPU (by alaric)

Hurrah:

SEAforthâ„¢-24A Embedded Array Processor

I'd been hoping something would come of this since I first came across the original design.

I still think much more RAM is needed, though. As it stands it'd be great for processing most kinds of streamed data, where you don't need to store much context, but for more general purpose applications, much more RAM is required, and with a high-bandwidth link to the processors that need it, too...

Annoying visual flaw (by alaric)

Grrr, it's a little thing, but it somehow really bugs me that there's a graphical flaw in one of the icons in Mac OS X's Software Update utility:

(I added the red arrow)

You can tell how it happened, too - somebody was using Photoshop or whatnot to fade the ends of the arrows, and didn't finish the job properly.

Government Bureaucracy (by alaric)

I created a limited company in... 2000 or so, for various reasons. At the time, I was advised that a director and shareholder would probably be expected to fill in self-assessment tax returns, but that I needn't worry, HMRC would send me one when they wanted me to do it.

Anyway, apart from a latter in 2004 or so saying that they might be sending me one, I've never been sent one yet.

But last week I got a letter saying I'd not sent in my 2005/2006 one (due in by the end of Jan 2007), all demanding it and threatening fines, so I went to the local tax enquiry office to enquire. The nice lady there said I'd need to ring the order line to get the tax return form to send in, and pointed me at a phone in the corner.

So I rang up, and the person at the far end said they couldn't send out return forms for previous years, so I'd have to ask at my local tax office for one. I explained I was already there and that they'd asked me to ring her. "Well, I can't. Talk to them," she said. So I went back to the lady I'd been talking to and explained. "Oh, OK, I'll get you one," she says, and produces a tax return form and gives it to me.

If she could have done that in the first place, why send me to the phone?!?