Pass The Conch (by alaric)

In The Lord of the Flies, the children (marooned on an island and working out how to organise themselves to survive) develop a technique for managing debate: they use a conch shell as a token to represent who currently holds the floor. Without the conch, you can't talk; you have to wait your turn.

Cut to the Real World of Commerce and Industry: in various places I've worked, there's been a number of shared resources which can only be used by one person or agent at a time. Mainly, these have been testing servers - if you are doing performance analyses, or looking for timing-related bugs, you can't have anyone else running jobs on the same server as you, or they'll compete for resources and interfere with your results. Or perhaps there's only one "data area" of some kind, and two attempts to use it at once will lead to catastrophe.

This is usually handed by asking around the office or in IRC: "Is anyone using X?", hoping that anybody who is is still around (as opposed to too busy doing something to notice the request, or leaving a job going while out to lunch). Because of the unreliability of this system, and the inability to integrate it with automatic systems that need to claim resources (such as automatic test systems), I have often wished for a software tool to manage it. Which would, naturally, be called "conch".

Here's my feature wishlist:

• Network-based. A central conch server tracks a set of conches, accessed via a Web interface or a direct protocol. The direct protocol should have a command-line client for scripting, and be trivial to write native client libraries for in programming languages.

• Authenticated. No need for super security, but we want to keep out casual mischief-makers, so require authentication to use the server; to enable easy integration with other workflow apps, support htaccess files, "trust the upstream proxy" (eg, accept HTTP auth usernames and ignore any passwords sent), or running an arbitrary shell command to validate a username/password pair. It might be used across the public Internet, so allow for SSL wrapping the connection. The command line client should, by default, use the username and password from ~/.conch or prompt for them (and save them in ~/.conch) if not specified.

• The ability to create or delete resources, to claim a currently-free resource, to release a resource you hold, or to "force" the release of a resource that somebody else holds (if they forget and go home, etc).

• The ability to list the status of a resource, to list the resources held by a specific user, to list the resources held by yourself, to list all users with resources held, and to list all resources.

• Fine-grained access control (per-user rights limitation) might be handy, but probably not useful for the first draft.

• An IRC bot might be cool - at least for logging resource claims/releases and commands to list current state; maybe for resource claims/releases as well, if users are either trusted by nick or authenticate via a private message.

If this doesn't already exist, it should be easy to build (something could be knocked up with awful and sql-de-lite in a day or two, I bet!)...

One Year of Guitar Playing… (by sarah)

So it is a year since I decided to actually learn the guitar properlly and to practice each day rather than having a guitar sitting there gathering dust with like three strings on it - on which I could pluck (when it had all the strings obviously) the intro to Nothing Else Matters and play one Tori Amos song very slowly and very badly.

I was going to upload several videos but then Alaric pointed out that I might as well just up load the only one of my songs I have guitar stuff worked out for - it is the one I played at the open mike earlier this year.

I'm afraid the singing (and indeed in many places the guitar playing) is a little iffy, and no doubt the song will have song writers rolling their eyes. But I'm proud of having written this song and having guitar music for it 🙂

I also happen to have a small seven month old person trying to rip my boot off whilst I am playing!

Still Bleeding (by sarah)

Yep seven months on and I'm still bleeding - doubling the hormone tablets didn't work so they suggested the Mirina coil which I had fitted about two weeks ago - it was horrible and ouchy and then cramps had me wacked for the rest of that day.

And... well the bleedings gotten worse - I'm still taking the hormone tablets and it could take 6 months for the coil to work/settle down. I'm feeling exhorsted again and being thick so assuming I'm anemic again so have restarted the suppliments.

At this rate I'm going to have been bleeding for over a year before it settles down - which is not good - mainly though because I know I can go swimming with a tampon in but euw and yuck and I'm not going to be doing that. Now in my original plan for after birth fitness I should have been swimming from the point my c-section wound had heeled enough - and as swimming is the only excersise I can do without incredible amounts of pain this is a problem.

There are other health issues going on as well with my eyes and stuff which is making me feel a little angry with the world again but on the plus side - my pelvis is so much better which frees me up alot.

September Challenges/To-Do’s (by sarah)

September has snuck up on me and sees me papier mache-ing like a mad thing - my aim? To create a piece of textural science art for the visually impaired and the blind.

This piece of art work does not just involve papier mache though - it involves knitting, sewing, clay sculpting, sugru, polymer clay, wire work, metal casting, wood carving, stone carving, geology and acrylic paints not too mention lots of recycled pots and tubs and our mountain of graze boxes.

This all needs to be ready for the 24th of September for the Centre Arts Exhibition in Braille. And yes I am panicking - it is a play on the tree of life but I have gone for a more coral/byozoan feel and hope to have life in various forms sitting in the polyp tubes (what I have instead of branches). A relief of the scientific creation of life will hopefully be feelable along the base along with an audio poem/story of life.

Apart from that I am researching stuff for my Punk in Pink series and generally trying to take the musical me forward.

Milestone (by sarah)

So yesterday Alaric picked me and the girls up in his lunch break and dropped us off in Gloucester at the nearest he could to the City Museum. I had a crutch shoved in the basket and handle and limped my way painfully and slowely to the museum with Jean chatting. We went in and I was relieved to find seats liberally spread out though I really could have done with more but understand that they don't want to clutter the exhibitions.

We coloured dinosuars and Jean investigated urban night life and put a Roman helmet on and so on. We even went for a drink in the cafe before attempting the lift and going upstairs - this is where it went a bit wrong - it appears that my pushchair is too long for the wheelchair platform lift thingy (which mainly gets used for pushchairs). Part of me does wonder if they just expect parents to carry the puchchairs up the stairs because Al struggles with that one :/ Baby plus supplies plus decent pushchair/pram that doesn't tip over and that I can use as a psuedo frame is heavy!

Anyway it had only cost me £2 to get in so I wasn't too disheartened but the faffing with the lift had acted the pelvis up so we walked very slowely to Jean's choice of lunch Mac Donalds where I spent the rest of the afternoon knitting whilst Jean played with her happy meal toy and Mary mainly slept.

It is a milestone because though painful and one leg ended up just dragging and having to be then man handled into the car - I did it and know that this can now only improve.

And actually it was easier than when I was first attempting this with Jeany as I had a helpful Jeany there who was incredibly helpful.