atomicvindaloo.com – the occasionally drunken ramblings of an urban philosopher

Christmas 2008

Ξ December 29th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Family |

The photos are all up now, and here’s a little clip of the gang busting a move on Christmas Eve ;

JavaScript password revealer

Ξ December 18th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Me |

Now this is a seriously nice little trick – and will work in most browsers:

Firstly, open this txt file and copy (CTRL-A, CTRL-C) the code.

Now, navigate to a website where your password is auto-filled (stars, blobs – whatever) and paste (CTRL-V) the code into the address bar.

Hit enter and, voila, a pop-up with your password revealed.

Lovely!

The Carol of the Christmas Pickle

Ξ December 18th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Life |

And they said it would never happen …..

Ξ December 18th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Atomic |

As I pottered past the thieving gits in the Taj Mahal garage this morning (diesel 101.99) to the Jet garage, I was greeted with the impossible sight of diesel 99.9 a litre!

Now that may mean nothing to my American visitors who are still bleating about fuel being a peppercorn a gallon over there, but that represents a drop of 33% in the last month and a bit.

Roll out the barrels!

Bestchoice furniture of Wakefield

Ξ December 10th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Me, Review |

Well, a little update-ette here. I’ve been contacted by an alleged ex-member of staff from Bestchoice. Note, I’m putting alleged all over the place here, as I have no way of knowing of this person is telling the truth or not – though I have no reason whatsoever to doubt them.

This person allegedly worked for Bestchoice for a grand total of four days before being made “redundant”. Kevin Steel – the alleged owner of the company – who allegedly likes to be called Paul Smith to customers, does have a house where I pointed out. However, he allegedly has three others and three other business too – a tyre and breakdown place and Memory Foam in Ossett.

He also allegedly tries to charge staff £50 for their uniforms and then %15 per cent on any charge-backs ….. so it’s no wonder that we are all getting such awful service.

Allegedly, the story about delivery is a pack of lies too – as they only deliver on Tues/Wed or Sat/Sun.

Many thanks to my alleged insider for this info. If I can get any proof of all this, then I’d be glad to remove the a-words.

Again though, avoid Bestchoice Furniture of Wakefield like the plague!

Supercover phone insurance

Ξ December 10th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Life, Me, Review |

So near ….. yet so far.

True to their word, Supercover have sent a replacement phone through on next-day delivery. Sadly though, they didn’t send the SIM card too – so that should arrive tomorrow.

Since dealing with the Operations Director (who was extremely helpful), imagine that her moniker is on the claim itself – as the claims folks are jumping to attention at every juncture.

If the company were able to operate like this across the board, then I would have no hesitation in recommending them. It’s just a shame that some public-facing staff don’t realise that they are not only employees of Supercover (or any other company for that matter), but also the first impression that us public receive of said company.

Laverne. Take three demerits.

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex – fix for audio in .FLV problems

Ξ December 5th, 2008 | → 4 Comments | ∇ Ubuntu |

That’s a succinct title isn’t it!

Since upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10, I’ve been plagued with a problem encoding videos to .flv format. The video stream is fine and dandy, but the audio content is always missing.

After a lot of digging about, I’ve managed to find a solution, the long and short of which is to use the medibuntu version of ffmpeg. Here’s how you do it;

1.) You’ll need to enable the medibuntu repository

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

2.) You now need to add the GPD key

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

3) Next, remove your existing FFMPEG installation

sudo apt-get remove ffmpeg

4) Install the medibuntu version

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

5) Now install the necessary tools

sudo apt-get install libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libavutil1d libpostproc-dev libpostproc1d libswscale-dev libswscale1d

And you’re ready to go!

Try this to test;

ffmpeg -i -b 700k -r 25 -ab 256k -ar 4400 -f flv -y

Supercover mobile phone insurance

Ξ December 4th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Life, Me, Review |

I have an update!

Last night – about six-ish – I received a phone-call from one of the aforementioned directors. She was extremely apologetic about the scenario and agreed to replace the phone.

She advised that someone (who’s name I have already forgotten) would call me first thing this morning.

Nothing yet, but I’m hopeful. I could be upgrading the company to a decent score.

Old skool video for today

Ξ December 4th, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Site |

Stapelfahrer Klaus:

Supercover mobile phone insurance

Ξ December 3rd, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Life, Me, Review |

I have a delivery and read receipt from one of the Managing Directors of the company.