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BBC: Billions stolen in online robberySpace trading game Eve Online has suffered a virtual version of the credit crunch.
One of the game's biggest financial institutions lost a significant chunk of its deposits as a huge theft started a run on the bank.
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Well, note to self: don't try doing tech support when late at night.
That ADSL modem router WiFi firewall box thingy that apparently wouldn't work anymore?
It does work.
It did come up on its default address of 192.168.1.1, but there was a reason I'd failed to be able to connect to it. Now, I'm perfectly aware that a /24 netmask on my PC would prevent my machine on 192.168.0.5 being able to see it, so I'd widened the netmask to a /16.
What I'd forgotten, at 01:00, is that the router would then receive the packets, but be unable to return them, because its netmask was still a /24.
Last night, I switched my IP address to 192.168.1.5, and suddenly the router was there after all. In a totally virgin state, admittedly, but that's why I have a backup of its configuration. Uploaded that, let it restart, reverted my IP address, and it was all hunky dorey again.
Oh well, it's nice to know that we have a spare working router if it does decide to die (and £25 is not a lot of money for that peace of mind). And that I know where all the password and logon details are.
In other news, the graphics card, the one that wants a minimum 450W PSU and that had been somewhat flaky when run with a 430W PSU, didn't get any more reliable when hooked up to a 700W PSU. So we also have a spare PSU for next time one dies.
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We'd flown into Japan, and were actually on a tram into the city when I realised that everything was still on the plane. Wallet, passport, money, luggage, everything except the clothes we were wearing.
And we'd passed the first junction in the tram lines, so I wasn't sure that just catching a tram back in the opposite direction would even take us back to the airport.
At this point, I realised we were in a real mess.
And then, logic came to my rescue. If the passport was still back on the plane, then there was no way I could have cleared immigration. And if I couldn't have cleared immigration, then ipso facto, I couldn't be where I was. Therefore, this was a dream, and I could wake up, please?
So I did.
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Last night's recipe, serves two 350g bison, diced 500g potato, diced 2 medium onions, chopped 3 cloves garlic, finely sliced (I have a small mandolin which is excellent for this) Handful of frozen sweetcorn kernels Half handful of frozen broad beans 2 tbsp mushroom ketchup 1 dash of balsamic vinegar Handful of dried sliced mushrooms 2 glasses red wine 1 bouquet garni Olive oil as required Water as required Sweat the onions and garlic in a little olive oil in a casserole pan. When soft, put to one side. Brown the diced bison chunks in a little olive oil. Return the onion and garlic, and add the remainder of the ingredients. Add sufficient water to just cover the food. Bring to the boil, cover, and then simmer over a low heat for 90 minutes. Remove the bouquet garni, and serve the rest Works nicely with a Cote du Rhone Villages red. Ver', ver' nice Tags: recipe
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A question for those of you who play World of Warcraft (and those who don't may stop reading right now). Marcia Chase in Dalaran doesn't seem to be interested in telling my character Mardia about the daily fishing quests. Anyone know what I might be missing? Level - 80. Fishing - 440. Kirin Tor - friendly. Have done three different Shattrath daily fishing quests. Done all the fountain coin achievements. No sign of any quest giving though. She's perfectly willing to trade, and she even trained Mardia to Grand Mastership in fishing. ETA: Well, duh! I seem to have picked up Monsterbelly Appetite at some point. And since that's the quest which doesn't involve her as the end point, she didn't have the question mark over her head that would have been a clue. Tags: world of warcraft
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OK, this is to note a variation in the recipé, so I know what I've done (and it's only just gone into the over): 500g potatoes, steamed then mashed 75 ml olive oil 1000g plain flour 3 tsp salt 75 g fresh yeast 250 ml water Mixing the flour and mashed potato, and adding more flour and water as I go until I've got a stiffer dough. The rising is nothing like as explosive (about 90 minutes to double in volume) and I'm baking for 40 minutes rather than 30. ETA: Note that these are the changes: the loaf is still steam baked, as per previous post. See comments for picture of the result. Also, I moistened the top and added poppy seed to the top. Conclusion: a bit more water (this was half the previous amount) next time, and maybe a 35 minute bake. Tags: bread
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The trilogy Lark Rise to Candleford is set at the end of the nineteenth century on the Oxfordshire/Northamptonshire/Buckinghams hire borders. Although written in a memoir form, Flora Thompson fictionalised some names, most notably the title place-names and the young Laura. A few other places aren't named, though it's interesting to see which places she gives the proper names to. ( out in the English countryside ) It's odd going back to a place that one effectively left three decades earlier. It's carried on its own way, oblivious to my life, and I to its. The old centre is much the same (with, happily, somewhat less traffic, since it's no longer a through road), and I felt a twinge of longing for it. But I've lived many other places since, and though when I left, I'd spent the then-majority of my life there, that period is now so long ago. Tags: lark rise, nostalgia
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I've been playing around with a recipe from my late godfather, which was published twice that I know of, firstly in a book on Bakery by his mother, and then in his own book on Cakes. The Florises were a family of bakers, based in Soho (on Brewer Street, you may still be able to find a door lintel with the name 'Floris' carved into it), having immigrated from Hungary in the 1930s. They liked this bread well enough to sell it under their family name, and my mother remembers it fondly from when she was young. It's unusual in making use of potato, as well as plain (not bread) flour. The result is a soft, light bread that gets eaten before it has a chance to go stale, but stays fresh much longer than any other bread I've made. This is the version of the recipe I used on Saturday. It's a little modified from the original, which actually uses twice as much salt, and a little more yeast. ( the recipé )Tags: bread
Current Music: Bat For Lashes: Good Love
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Looking at the photographic view of our house, I see that the picture has been updated. It was taken last year: the yellow lines are fresh on the road, so it was no earlier than last year, yet the trees are in full leaf, the cherry not in bloom, so it's not this year. My car is there, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bellinghwoman's is not (and my manager's one is in his parking space at work - he normally uses the space next to mine in the overflow carpark, and yes, this is probably the same scan). So it's a weekday, approximately 9:00, give or take 45 minutes. It's not Monday: the bins aren't out. The trees are casting shadows, so the weather is good. Aha: the harvest has been done, with the last of the bales still in the fields. So probably September last year. All the people parked down our street, only light traffic on the roads: the rush hour period is definitely over, it's probably closer to 9:30, give or take 15 minutes. So, there's only 2 hours a week in which it is likely to have been, and probably only a half-dozen or so weeks that it could have been. That's a total of twelve hours, admittedly spread out, during which it is probable that the aerial view was taken. With full weather records, plus my manager's time sheets, I could probably narrow it down further if I really wanted to.
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I screen anonymous posts to this journal.
Almost all anonymous posts to date are junk. I just removed two, from the same IP, the first of which was in Japanese (most are), and the second which, in English, asked me to contact the poster.
(No links in either)
Now, what is the point of the latter? With no ID, I can hardly friend them, email, them, go to a web site, or anything except just ignore it.
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Or MFUs, as Steve McConnell of Microsoft so aptly christened them. (For Major Fuck Ups) No, I'm not talking about the Amazon case, which seems to have come together in a perfect storm of awful timing and disastrous applicability. I'm talking about World of Warcraft. So far, I've seen two particular bugs. The first is that, if you pay your GP1000 and dual spec your talent tree, your talent trees get terribly confused (though the underlying data seems correct - I can still do a Corpse Explosion, even though the Talent Tree for my DK shows it greyed out). The second it that, having put my screen into windowed mode, I can't get it out again. Oh, it selects non-windowed in the UI. But it isn't non-windowed, and the moment you go back in, the 'Windowed Mode' tickbox is ticked again. Oops. I expect a bugfix next update day. Tags: world of warcraft
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As we were about to join the A1 on the way up to Bradford for Eastercon, bellinghwoman commented that although the A1 is probably a less saturated transport link than the M1, it does have a number of roundabouts on it. We then proceeded to encounter a grand total of one roundabout between there and the southern outskirts of Bradford, and that one was being swarmed by traffic cones. In two places, our SmartNav asked us to negotiate now-non-existent roundabouts, and there were two other places that roundabouts had disappeared since I last drove that way about two years ago. That's an 80% reduction in the 110 miles that we covered. However, you should not take that as indicating an imminent death of the species. Oh no, far from it, for as roundabouts have been disappearing from some places, they've been appearing in others. On the A1198, we crossed 15 roundabouts on our way home, 75% of the count for the entire journey in a mere 20 or so miles. The bypasses for Papworth and Caxton each add three previously non-existent rotary interchanges. I suspect that although roundabouts are being taken off the longer, faster routes, they're being added in large numbers elsewhere with the creation of village bypasses. Since such a bypass usually has a roundabout at each end, and with many villages being effectively based on crossroads, I would guess that the modal number of roundabouts per such bypass is three. (Towns tend to have more roads meeting, so for a town bypass, I'd guess four.) Tags: roads
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Previous 
(from 
Flora Thompson: Lark Rise to Candleford