I ordered via their eBay shop, and the package arrived the next morning! Installation was a breeze: just pair the display unit with the sensor (for the wireless communication), attach the sensor ring around one of the main cables feeding electricity into your house, and away it goes! Once the basics were up and running it was time for the fun part: connecting it to a PC! This feature was the main reason I went with CC over the other units. The connection is made using a standard RJ-45 cable via a port on the display unit. Using a serial-to-USB cable I’ve connected it to my Linksys NSLU. Like most people, when I first got the NSLU (AKA the slug) I flashed it and installed an alternative Linux OS (SlugOS/BE). This allows you to then use the slug for just about anything you want from a networked PC. In my case I installed TwonkyMedia to turn it into a nice little UPnP AV server, storing files and serving photos and music to a digital photo frame and the PS3. But I digress. So with the CC connected to one of the slug’s USB ports I just had to write a little python script to parse the data, which the CC spits out in XML format every few seconds. Rich Cumbers has been kind enough to document a description of the XML format, which made it easy to identify the bits I needed.

Now on to the data consumption! When I started looking into the whole CurrentCost thing I stumbled across a new site called Pachube, “a service that enables you to connect, tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments around the world.” There are already quite a few interesting feeds set up on the site, such as the UK’s electricity usage, an automatic weather station in the Ross sea, and a musical swing in a Swedish park, as well as several current cost feeds, as well as my own. The service also allows you to generate a dynamic image for various feeds, so here’s mine:

Now to start adding more sensors to the house. I’m sure Hanne will be pleased!

A decision by a number of UK internet providers to block a Wikipedia page showing an image of a naked girl has angered users of the popular site.

The wikipedia page in question, regarding the Scorpions album “Virgin Killer,” appears to be blocked by my ISP (Virgin Media)… all I get is a blank page, however I can access the page from work (can’t remember which ISP we use). But in the words of Kim Jong Il: Congwatulations… you have stopped nothing!

Update (10/12/2008): The IWF have now removed the wikipedia page from their list. Hooray for the Streisand effect!

So hearing about what he’s done has inspired me to create a bot of my own. I’m steering clear of Betfair as knowing my luck all my spare money would disappear within a month, so instead I’m gonna have a go at creating a WAR BOT! Or, more specifically, a WEEWAR bot! Hmm… weewar used to have a wikipedia page, however it looks like it’s been deleted (“reason was ‘Non-notable game, no citations from multiple reliable, third-party published sources.”…. pah!). Basically, weewar is a turn-based strategy game based on maps composed of hexagons representing different terrain types. Once a player controls a base he is able to produce more units (troopers, tanks, ships, aircraft), which can be used to capture / destroy enemy units. The game is won once a single player has eliminated all enemy units. So far this sounds fairly ordinary, and it will continue to do so… unless you’re the kind of person that has an interest in WEB SERVICES, because weewar has it’s own “RESTFul” API (ok, technically it might not be RESTful in the strictest sense, but it’s the buzzword of the year so I’ll go with it)!

And so the idea for gazbot was born! So far all I’ve really done is create a crude implementation of Dijkstra’s algorithm in order for units to follow the shortest path to any given coordinate. Next I’ll need to create some form of strategy for choosing which coordinate to head for, and some way of determining how to behave according to the situation. No, this isn’t going to be easy, and yes, it will probably be next to useless against any half-decent human player, but it should still be a fun experiment and hopefully it’ll beat a couple of the other weewar bots already out there!

• Open Source Project Management Tools in Java –
• Only Ubuntu Linux: Fix for SSH slow to ask for password in Ubuntu Feisty Fawn –
• An Introduction to JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) –
• buildr –
• LoadRunner visual tutorials –
• DENON | DHT-FS3 | X-SPACE Surround System –
• PCBGuide for DIY Data Recovery –
• 1: Introduction to The Web Standards Curriculum/Table of Contents – Opera Developer Community –
• Hjem – Den Messinghuset Norskklubben –
• Code Analyzer for Java –
• Useful Tools in JDK 6 that Developer Should Know | Programming Resources –
• In Bloom Flowers – Florist Birmingham –
• Damaged Hard Disk – CGSecurity – /ddrescue -n /dev/old_disk /dev/new_disk rescued.log
• NetBeans Wiki: MavenBestPractices –
• Date/Epoch Time Converter – JavaScript Utilities/Tools –

• InfoQ: Distributed Version Control Systems: A Not-So-Quick Guide Through – Useful reference for when evaluating DVCS options in the future
• Camera Hacks: Turn Your Point-and-Shoot into a Super-Camera – Useful software hack for certain Canon cameras. If only I wasn't such a Sony-whore…
  But I'll seriously consider a Powershot next time I'm thinking of upgrading cameras.
• Ned Batchelder: CSS Homer, animated – An image of homer simpson, using only CSS. Awesome!
• DocWiki2.4: Security – Notes on the the new security model for JSPWiki
• Schema-aware processing with XSLT 2.0 –

• Coding Horror: The Great Dub-Dub-Dub Debate – I mentioned this issue a while back: http://garethwestern.com/archives/2007/02/05/no-www/
• MyP2P.eu :: Live sports and Now Playing overview. –
• Kraken Botnet Infiltration –
• Owning Kraken Zombies, a Detailed Dissection –
• The Emerging Main Street Web –

• How to install RESTful Authentication on a Ruby on Rails 2.0 application –
• SQL Injection Attacks on IIS Web Servers – BillS IIS Blog –
• Google App Engine: One-to-many JOIN –
• Mariah Carey Embarrassed on Good Morning America Live – "Stop singing my part now, baby!" lol
• BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Bush pokes fun at his successors – US President George W Bush poked fun at his potential successors during his last White House Correspondents' Association dinner.
• Why does Brightkite only work for the US? –

• Mystery of the Rising Tune video – The bass notes are going down in pitch while the treble goes up. That way, when you replay it, the bass is high again and your brain registers this is as the 'whole' sound being higher for the next round.
• MediaWiki –
• 10 Tips for After You Install or Upgrade Ubuntu – Useful tips to remember for Ubuntu installs
• Balding penguin given wetsuit – a penguin gets a new waterproof tuxedo. Altogether now: awww
• 5 a side seekers, Birmingham :: crowdstatus.com – could be useful for finding more football games to play in Birmingham
• Robert Scoble Needs to Get Real : The Drama 2.0 Show – oh noes! forget "digital divide"… it's the great "friend divide"!

• Ubuntu 8.04 Brings Power and Polish to the Linux Desktop – must get parents to try this out to see if it's a good alternative to Vista
• SopCast – Free P2P internet TV –
• MythTV for iPhone –
• Reading binary files using Ajax –
• Touch Bionics shows off Fluidhand, i-LIMB hides in shames – Engadget –

Twitter is a sort of micro-blogging / social networking tool that allows you to post short updates via the web, various desktop applications (such as twhirl, or SMS. The ease of use and accessibility makes it so much easier to keep your status a little more “current.” My Twitter username is gareth.

Del.icio.us is a bookmarking website, allowing you to store, tag, and share interesting websites with other users. The Firefox add-on makes adding new bookmarks a snap! My del.icio.us username is gareth_western.

Now the plugins I’ve added to this blog will post daily digest messages containing my tweets and bookmarks of the day! Originally I was thinking of doing something similar to hesam and removing the blog, however I’d still like to throw out a proper blog post every now and then. I may even get around to doing my own Wordpress theme one of these days!… or maybe not .

UPDATE: Ok, after a bit of thought I think I agree with this guy regarding posting tweet digests to a blog. I don’t really need to archive all that crap, and the fact that a lot of the tweets are only half the conversation is annoying. It’s like an IRC log of just yourself! So now I’ll just have my last 3 tweets in the sidebar, thereby decreasing my “new media douchebag” rating slightly.