Trusting imported GPG keys

I had to export a GPG key from one Linux host to another today. While that is not something that's particularly difficult, it is one
of those tasks that I do frequently enough to be worth remembering, but not enough to actually remember. So, it makes sense to document the process somewhere, and since it may help others, here it is ;)

Parliamentary birthday wishes

So it's my birthday next week, and I'm pretty excited about it (taking a short holiday next week, and having a small party this weekend). And a couple of days ago I was surprised to receive my first birthday card (for the year) in the mail... not from one of my family members, nor from one of my close friends; not even from a distant relative, or not-so-close friend (I'm sure those are still coming).

FF3 world record

For what its worth (probably not much), I was part of the Firefox 3 Download Day 2008 world record.

And to prove it (undeniably), here's my certificate :)

A gaming injury

So I went to game on on Friday, which was quite a lot of fun... I got nauseous from playing Doom, and watching Halo Wars, but I think the best part for me was looking at some of the amazingly old prototypes, like an old Odyssey wrapped completely in timber, and a wire-wrapped Atari 2600!!!

DB2 Net Search Extender with optional CONTAINS search parameters

I have a number of DB2 stored procedures that must use the NSE CONTAINS scalar function with optional search parameters. It turns out, that if you write such stored procedures in the most obvious way, then the performance is terrible. However, with a little insight, and some resulting tweaks, such stored procedures can be sped up immensely - eg more than 1,000 times!!

A company that's still innovating?

It's not everyday that you see evidence that a company is actually being innovative with their product designs... it's for that reason, I was pleasantly surprised by this BMW GINA video.

Why aren't games getting better?

So, I finished Assassin's Creed over the weekend. Yeah, I know it's been out for ages, and the anticlimactic ending is old news.
Moreover, I understand that most people who played it are familiar the major floors in the games design. The repetition of the missions, as well as the typical detachedness of narrative from the essence of the game-play, which we've come to expect from games.
I did enjoy the game, though. Don’t get me wrong! Even with the repetitive nature of the game I still found myself strapping into the Animus and battling the hordes of guards whilst searching for the illusive flags… Well, until I finally completed the game. (I may go back to it to complete the flag collection… but that’s beside the point).
The burning question I’ve had building up within my mind since I’ve played Assassin’s Creed and other current games is this:

Why haven’t games progressed much beyond the mid to late 90’s?

35 watt dual-core Athlon 64

I'm very excited about having just won a ADD3800IAA5CU processor on eBay for just AUD$42. So what's so special about this processor? Well, put simply, its the only 35 watt dual-core 64-bit processor ever made (yet) for standard desktop motherboard sockets (AM2 in this case).

Maxtor hard drive dominos

1,320 Maxtor HDDs... 660TB... poor camera work... but I just love the sound!! ;)

Importing PST files into Thunderbird using libpst

For a number of reasons, I've finally switched from the hopeless Outlook Express to Mozilla Thunderbird... and so far, I really like the change. However, now that I've got Thunderbird, I find myself wanting to import my old Outlook PST file from a couple of years ago...