Hello 
I'm Siobhan Curran/Kisa Naumova, and this is my weblog. I tend to write about stuff like crossdressing, Macs, code, cats, wine and Second Life, but in general it's just an ongoing conversation about all sorts of stuff. If you'd like to know a little bit more about what this all is, I recommend starting on this page which has a little bit of info on who I am, and what I'm trying to do — or you could dive into my five years worth of archives if you like.
Otherwise, feel free to close this box and explore...
The Worst Sandwich In The World, EVER
(via flickr.com/people/si08han) 
It looked so tasty on the shelf, but smoked salmon isn't supposed to be chewy is it?
Thank God Though For Cake
(via flickr.com/people/si08han)
Pah, stupid spambot 
I'm so going to block you...
I'm so going to block you...
Don't you just wish you could trap 'em in a cage and torture them with hot irons for a week or two, before pulling their legs off, one at a time?
Or it that just me?
Alli' Cat'
Whats the Problem with salomon? It's better than my morning after my dentist-trip. brrrr 
More Toys Arrived At Work Today
(via flickr.com/people/si08han)
Wow, you got windows!
Whats the Problem with salomon?
Nothing at all Zoe — it's just that this salmon seemed a little off to me. Which narked me because I paid through the nose for it.
Wow, you got windows!
No, I think you'll find that's a Mac.
Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha 
Seriously though, I need some blinds in that room. I was prattling about with my new projector earlier, wondering what all the people in the block opposite were thinking. I could see some of them staring across with whistful looks in their eyes 
Serendipity x 2
In keeping with what's becoming a well-established, and possibly expected tradition, this post will (a) make no sense, (b) contain repeatedly tedious references to bits of code and Things That I Am Working On™, (c) be proliferated with self-congratulatory nonsense, and (d) only at the very end will it have anything that remotely would suggest that you're reading the weblog of a transvestite.
And quite frankly, do I care? Nah 
(Because I am drunk)
Three notable things happened today — all relating to work, and the site I've been putting together. It's a very nice site — and one that I hope to share in some limited fashion because I'm rather proud of it. Not least because it looks particularly nice, but also because it's a single-handed rip-off homage to Flickr.
But with audio and video too
Notable Thing One
I got praise
Having spent so bloody long doing it — and (she says, apologising) so bloody long going on about it, ensuring that anyone who reads this shite is probably bored to tears about it already — it was nice to see some rather smiley faces on the students I was demonstrating it to today It was also nice to get metaphorical pats-on-the-back from colleagues too.
Days Of Praise™ (Like "Songs of Praise" — but with less of that triple-jumping guy) happen infrequently. I think they should be savoured.
Notable Thing Two
Coding on-the-fly is fun. It's especially fun when you're under pressure. Granted, it doesn't seem like fun at the time, but when you glance back, fifteen seconds after you just made everything work properly by lowering the threshold of something in a sea of code in front of a group of students, then it seems like fun.
I was trying to demonstrate the WYSIWYG html editor I'd shoe-horned into the site — and managed to realise just a little too late that I'd set it so that only staff could use it.
Jumping into a terminal (projected nice and big across the room), I change a couple of numbers and "Lo!" everything worked.
I think I earnt some Kudos Points™ with that one
Notable Thing Three
Remember when I was demonstrating the Joy Of Flickr™ to some MA students a while back? The time that by a sheer fluke of timing, Miss K happened to leave a note on one of my pictures that I'd just posted — thereby ensuring I could emphasise the immediacy of interaction online?
No? OK. Here's a link
Anyway, I was talking to them about the possiblity of uploading images and movies using their phones, and told them to look at the main stream of stuff to show them an image I'd surreptitiously uploaded when they weren't looking...
...only to see that one of my colleagues — who is currently over in New York on a trip with some of our lot — had uploaded one seconds earlier.
How cool was that?! "Here guys, you can upload picture to the website using your phone ... Oh ... From the other side of the world"
...
Anyway, permit me to pat myself on the back for a second, because (a) I've made it so they can now rotate their images (but not their films), and (b) I've just been an evil BOFH.
As I might have vaguely explained in the past, the way this new site works is through various scripts and functions on Erin. All the Stuff™ and the normal pages is on some Big Server™ (one that you might have come into contact the other day with, if you'd been curious about my films), but the actual processing happens here.
It seemed a perfectly simple thing to implement — someone uploads a film/image/audio/whatever, and Erin and CuChulainn between them process it into different formats and ftp it to the other server.
And on the main, it is — except for one thing. A thing that I didn't really consider...
When one of them uploads a large file, it takes a while to ftp it from here. And it grinds my internet connection down to a halt.
I noticed this happening a few times this evening. One of them was trying to upload some commercial dance track — and kept retrying it. I'm not sure exactly why it wasn't working, but it wasn't. But instead of thinking to himself "Ack, I'll ask Siobhan when I see her tomorrow", he just kept on hitting "Post".
As a result, I was practically crawling at 1bps earlier.
I wouldn't have minded, I guess, if it had been something fabulous that he'd created himself — but it was just some dance track. And it was narking me.
A bit of detective work later, I knew who it was, and made sure that whenever he logged into the site, he got the words "STOP CLOGGING MY SERVER WITH PIRATE MP3S FFS" in large black letters instead of the site.
Well, it made me feel good OK?
In the meantime, and for want of me Googling (because I am lazy), is there a way to limit the bandwidth of an ftp connection when you call it from the command line?
Anyone?
...
So yeah, total bollocksy post, rambling to the point of banality, and just a smidgen of vague techiness to justify my existence tonight.
But do I care, really?
Well, yes.
But that's not going to stop me wearing the most ludicrously frilly thing in the house and prattling around like a princess when no-one's looking, is it?
(Told you it wouldn't come until the end)
You just sooo keep us in suspenders.
I miss talking to you, it sucks that we have grown so far apart
message me sometime you are online if you feel like it, catch up on things,
xoxo
Kat
Kat
Since FTP was invented in The Dreamtime, I would not be surprised if there's a way, but back when it started, there was nothing else except the command line.
Susan
is there a way to limit the bandwidth of an ftp connection when you call it from the command line?
Pureftpd has support for bandwidth limiting if you can control the server end of things... As far as bandwidth limiting from the client end... nahh
ftp bandwidth: nope, not on standard UNIX. But if you're willing to write your own in etc. perl, then you should be able to write a self-throttling poster; like, it posts 20K, then pauses for a bit. The receiver will just assume it's a slow connection. You could even make it a proper daemon, so that it uploads everything it can, but spreads all the files out over the bandwidth? (so no need for pauses) That would also allow you to reject multiple submits of the same thing in a more elegant way?
And keep you busy for another day or so?
Array