tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-262766292011-12-15T02:41:12.844ZA Lemming wandering around the world doing whatever takes his fancy.<br><br> Watch me walk the road less travelled. Gasp in horror while I try to change the world. Be awestruck when I find yet another damn fool hobby. Wonder who dropped me on my head as a baby when I find something new to jump out of or off of. <br><br> Stay a while and share my madness.Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comBlogger371100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-57865554557322542442008-01-20T13:19:00.001Z2008-01-20T20:05:30.392Z

Welcome to the new home of the most anonymous lemming in town. I've had a good long look at what options are out there, and wordpress looks like it's the best suited to my needs. So from now on, you'll find me over at http://blog.penguinpowered.org/ I hope you'll follow me over there real soon!

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-8441623205958541322008-01-17T21:07:00.001Z2008-01-17T21:17:30.242Z

Looks like I'm late with this week's edition, but Max is still not well, and we've been running him back and forth to vet. My kitty is not happy, so I'm not happy!Anyway, without further ado, lets have a look at what has been running around my head this past week. As a species, we seem to have an instinctive need to place blame. This, combined with a desire to avoid conflict seems to make for a

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-80841275485080178962008-01-07T22:14:00.001Z2008-01-07T22:14:42.990Z

There's been a lot of data leakage in the UK lately. The same lot who want us to trust them with a central database linking all of our data and include some irrevocable biometric markers don't seem to understand the Data Protection Act or have the ability to install Gnu Privacy Guard. As a result, they managed to lose 25 million records containing data that they had been expressly asked not to

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-59263327664613735562007-12-26T20:39:00.001Z2007-12-26T20:39:41.237Z

... are pretty damn good if you're married to my wife! To digress for a few moments, I'd like to head over to the tale of the tortoise and the hare. I hope I'm not spoiling this story for anyone, but basically, there's this race, see? It's a tortoise vs. a hare. Everyone puts their money on the hare, because, hey, hare's are fast, right? But in the end, the tortoise wins through its slow but

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-32916607705738071192007-12-19T10:59:00.000Z2007-12-20T10:35:29.383Z

Becoming a terrorist in the UK is quite involved. For starters, you need to get your head around the Terrorism Act 2000, Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 and the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. And I might have missed a few.Ok, so reading all of that is going to be a bit too much like work, let's rather find some of the people charged under the terrorism act - maybe that will give

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-73413150607458635712007-12-14T23:14:00.001Z2007-12-14T23:30:00.694Z

I was a Be Internet subscriber for just under 24 hours. I got my line up and running at 10:20 today, and I requested cancellation at 23:10 tonight. While their bandwidth and line speed are amazing (I was downloading at around 768kb/s consistently as opposed to around 425kb/s with Zen), their technical support and ability  seemed sincerely lacking.While a 'ludicrously fast internet connection' is

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-48404240782407609682007-12-03T17:36:00.000Z2007-12-03T17:45:47.879Z

Why is it that people feel the need to keep coding up their own e-mail validation libraries? Everyone seems to think that this is a simple task, but many sites fail miserably at it. That might be acceptable if there weren't libraries that do it correctly for almost every language I've ever used, but since we solved this problem years ago, it's not acceptable any more.Today's case in point is

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-9030506335666290522007-11-28T22:11:00.000Z2007-11-28T22:22:53.276Z

I got to visit Notre Dame de Paris again last Friday, and I'm still in love with the building. In fact, I believe it's my absolute favorite out of every building I've ever seen.Don't get me wrong, I've not suddenly gone soft on the corporation that built and operates it, and I'd still dearly love to see the entire senior management team in this realm brought up on genocide charges for their 'good

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-48547179918817085922007-10-29T18:23:00.000Z2007-10-29T18:33:21.887Z

Remember when I contemplated what the theme tune of my last 4 months would be? What song would be the one that I associated with my time on the road and what I'd seen and done ? Well, the votes are in, and Metallica's Turn the Page is the hands-down winner. And as with most of the music on my previous list, it's associated with bittersweet times and it was the first song to hit the iPod after I

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-51222730117811607282007-10-24T10:31:00.000Z2007-10-24T10:44:26.430Z

We left the house on Saturday 20/10/2007 at some ungodly early hour and the weather was perfect; blue skies and a light wind just managing to turn the windmills at the Ford plant.By the time we turned off of the M20, we were driving under a steel grey sky, watching the hot air balloons drift and as we turned around the corner to Leeds Castle, the trusty iPod in the car dock selected Megadeth's

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-40086675586634990852007-10-18T08:16:00.001Z2007-10-18T08:19:07.559Z

Scan.co.uk allow you to pick a date and a time for your delivery. I picked 'before 10:30 on 18/10' so that I would have time to install it before going to Benin.At 20:16 on 17/10, I get a mail telling me it is delayed and won't arrive today. So I phoned Scan and found out that it will still be delivered tomorrow. But they can't refund the £15 that they charged me for delivery because the dates

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-81151820758836461612007-10-16T11:23:00.001Z2007-10-16T11:31:23.943Z

As far as I am concerned, it's a done deal. England will win this cup on Saturday night, mostly because South Africa have decided that they want to lose it. This BBC article explains how the Springbok coach's job is up for grabs and the current coach has to reapply if he wants to keep his job. Instead of doing the smart thing and waiting until the cup was over, his application has to be in by

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-57520247513582811342007-09-23T15:26:00.000Z2007-09-23T15:35:45.015Z

So here I am, sitting in another airport, this time being detained and waiting for deportation. Not quite how I intended to spend my Sunday, but hey...Because very little was prepared for me in Lome, and because pretty much all of the resources that I needed to complete my work are out in Benin, I've hit a wall there. So I hopped a plane to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in the hopes of being able to

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-56762242313025198032007-09-22T09:29:00.000Z2007-09-22T09:33:49.714Z

It's been a while, hasn't it? In my defense, Bangui pretty much sapped any creative spirit I had, and even now it doesn't feel like I'm back to my old self yet. Hell, I couldn't even come up with individual names for all of my fleas, so I settled on just calling them all Bob... Who knew that the collective name for fleas was "Bobs"? Well, now you do!Bangui was rough. I'm not talking Essex rough

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-43317046317579175892007-09-08T08:01:00.000Z2007-09-08T16:31:25.423Z

No, wait... I got one. kthxbye!When I am a stranger in a strange land, I will keep my council and watch and learn. I will not judge until I have had time for the culture shock to wear off and I have had time to make an objective decision.That's the plan anyway, but sometimes it's hard to stick to it. Good intentions and all that...My first impression of the Central African Republic was 'Damn,

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-90547648062538330172007-09-07T09:19:00.000Z2007-09-07T09:23:05.464Z

Ok, I think I've just hit upon my new career. I want to be a correspondent... It seems like the easiest job in the world after reading this article at the BBC. My favourite comment isBut correspondents say that as long as Zimbabwe has a shortage of staple foods, including maize, food shortages are likely to continue.Yah, ok... so as long as there is a shortage of food, food shortages will

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-50290526524612797432007-08-05T13:57:00.000Z2007-08-05T14:04:10.481Z

So... It's been just over a month that I've been on the road now, and I guess it's time for an honest review. What have we learned here?Well, for starters, next time I build a successful career and a comfortable life, I think I might just hang onto it rather than pissing it away to follow some silly dream. But don't go thinking that means I regret this run, au contraire!Besides the 'training'

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-27538795842663386952007-08-04T10:15:00.000Z2007-08-04T10:36:24.051Z

The main thing putting me off the UK lately isn't the politics, it's not the small minded sheeple who infect the isles eroding my civil liberties and it isn't the xenophobic mentality that more and more inhabitants are displaying.My big gripe is the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the mindset that it is creating within the country. A man misses his own funeral because the HSE doesn't

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-85293464122422099352007-08-01T13:49:00.000Z2007-08-01T13:53:01.928Z

I was in a bit of a bad way when yesterday's missive went out, so apologies for that. I'm not sure I'm doing any better today, but I have things to tell, so you'll all just have to listen. Or run screaming from your computers, whichever. If you choose the latter, please send pictures - I could use the laugh!I'm in Niamey in Niger. It's officially the poorest country in the world, and hitting the

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-70630397631537538862007-07-25T07:50:00.000Z2007-07-25T07:52:07.275Z

...some days you're the windshield. Some days you're just the car in the ditch on the side of the road.Today you're the poor shmoe reading an extra long edition of the Lemming's travels. But in my defense, it's been a while since I had the time to sit down and write.It's been an emotional couple of days. The go-live in Kenya went mostly OK. There was one small argument with the operator because

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-79954450886701335492007-07-20T06:04:00.001Z2007-07-20T06:14:59.451Z

Ahhhhh.... another shit day in Africa.Last night I was forcefully dragged from my hotel (after a mild earthquake earlier in the evening) to the office at around 23:00. By 03:00 I was back in my hotel with my first system live on an operator network.I was woken at 07:00 by a baby screaming and lay dozing peacefully in a comfortable bed until the alarm kicked me out at 07:50. I had a nice soak in

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-65745048380678048722007-07-12T14:09:00.000Z2007-07-12T14:12:44.071Z

Gotta love this story on the BBC... Most importantly though, you have to love the tongue in cheek responses by people quite a way up the chain of command in the British military:UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."Priceless!

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-17627934187487141742007-07-11T06:58:00.001Z2007-07-11T06:59:28.858Z

Ok, so I lied about the guitars - get your own.When traveling abroad, always carry plenty of immodium. And avoid the Black Steer on Hans Strydom.Thank you, that is all.

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-88222224573333413042007-07-10T11:32:00.000Z2007-07-10T11:57:32.671Z

Well, it's not really a briefcase... More of a shoulder bag thingy, but the lyrics still work :) I'm 9000KMs away from home, but so what? Gravity still needs testing you know! According to the 'merkins, evolution is just a theory, so I figure that if gravity is also just a theory, I should test it rigorously and often. Newton would appreciate all my hard work even if you ingrates don't!To this

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-86972373857973183412007-07-04T19:04:00.000Z2007-07-04T19:05:49.164Z

Well, I'm on the ground 9000KMs from home. The main things I learnt during the trip over are...1. It's hard to use the facilities when you have two suitcases and a shoulder bag that you don't want blowed up. Sorry to any disabled people who had to wait while I abused your bigger room so I could keep my stuff close.2. Airlines lie. I knew I was going to be at least 2 hours late, but they kept

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-25841775853766546762007-06-29T06:36:00.000Z2007-06-29T07:17:14.761Z

Chaos is just another word for opportunity, and by that yardstick I'm off to a bountiful land of opportunity.Two weeks ago, I had a promising looking career ahead of me in a good bank. Today I have a suitcase and a rucksack. Two weeks ago, I had an easy life with a half hour commute to the office. Today I'm 9000KMs from the main office and don't even know where the other offices are. Two weeks

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-78951403245305874482007-06-02T21:37:00.000Z2007-06-02T21:46:25.464Z

It's funny to think how much I've got out of skydiving in the last year. Today I logged jumps 86 and 87 from the ever so sexy turbolet at Sibson.Sibson's a nice dropzone. Not a huge amount of facilities or anything, but a nice vibe and packing outside on the grass has a certain appeal that I really enjoyed.I didn't do anything too exciting (besides falling out of a plane of course!). My first

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-5568061517324589062007-04-18T16:56:00.000Z2007-04-18T17:03:22.881Z

Well, I've not posted in a while, but in my defense, I've been busy. I've wrecked the car, jumped a Skyvan, got some great medication to sort out the car wreck and just generally been all over the place. But that's not what I'm here to talk about today.Today, I want to discuss my diet... I hereby quit my long standing membership of the fat bastards club. I've dropped just over 10KG since I kicked

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-38139023938334768782007-03-04T19:23:00.000Z2007-03-04T19:39:50.742Z

So... I turned 31. That's the bad news. The good news is that I did it with a certain amount of style.On 2 March 2007 at around 17:30 I was standing in the door of a Twin Otter looking at my instructor. 3 seconds later I was in freefall trying to learn to float up instead of just falling down. About 55 seconds later I had the most beautiful canopy in the world above my head and I was enjoying the

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-46693545883707473792007-02-28T09:36:00.000Z2007-02-28T10:03:29.876Z

On 8 December 2006, I was standing in line with about 80 other people at Game in Beckton waiting for the Wii to start selling when I first recognised this syndrome.They were only able to honour the first 60 of the preorders that they had taken money for, so there were a lot of angry people around. There were also the usual crop of people who heard them say that they only had systems for people

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-85598702389384499462007-01-22T22:15:00.000Z2007-01-22T22:59:02.021Z

The idea behind copyright is that we give artists exclusive rights to anything that they create for a limited time. During this time, they get to charge what they like, restrict the use of the art as they like (within established limits) and generally do what they like. In return, when the copyright expires, we as a society get their creation to do with as we please.That's the standard abstract

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-43551295650833978942006-12-20T19:13:00.000Z2006-12-20T19:23:38.440Z

Picture the scene... I'm 13,000 feet above the ground clinging desperately to the outside of a PAC 750XL. There's a gentleman inside the plane giving me a look that says 'Get in or get off, but make up your mind.' Another two second of fighting the propwash, and I give up... I give him one last manic look, roll my eyes and let go. It's not an elegant exit, but I'm in the air again for the first

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-1152294016466660222006-07-07T17:37:00.000Z2006-07-07T17:40:16.476Z

I've been thinking about freefall far too much lately, so late last night I finally came up with a 12 step programme for skydivers. I humbly share this genius with you all...Get in carDrive to dropzoneBuy jump ticketsCheck rigManifestWait for callGear upGet gear checkBoard planeRide to altitudeJump out of planeLand safely and go againWhat? I never said it was to help skydivers quit, just that it

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-1151871930622112492006-07-02T20:01:00.000Z2006-07-02T20:25:30.633Z

After the nightmare I had with David Cowman of FFU, I really wanted to pack skydiving in. But I can't. Despite the negative experiences with him, I'm too addicted to this sport.So this morning just before 6am, I got up, swore at the birds with their incessant birdsong, staggered to the car and slapped some metal in the CD player. One can of Mountain Dew later and I was just about ready to race

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-1151691226192721072006-06-30T18:02:00.000Z2006-06-30T18:13:46.210Z

I guess that makes me a loser because I quit my job yesterday.I've had a really educational time at Rabo, and in a lot of ways I'm going to be sorry to go. Weighing in at 2 years service, it's the second longest job I've had, which isn't bad for something that started as a 3 month contract. But I think from a technical perspective I've learned everything that I'm going to there, and being a small

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-1149620723764801962006-06-06T18:58:00.000Z2006-06-06T19:05:23.773Z

So... my sister Coralie gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Damian, uh sorry, Lyle Davis Pascoe. No, she didn't marry a cousin or anything like that, she's just not married yet.He was born at 09:23 Jo'burg time and weighed 3.06KG, which I'm told is not a bad size for a kurper. He's about the same length as a 3 kilo kurper too, so at least I can visualise that :) Although he apparently has an

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26276629.post-1148719900051748322006-05-27T08:48:00.000Z2006-05-27T08:51:40.060Z

It's good to know that Iraq is free. The people now enjoy such luxuries as the freedom to wear short pants. Unfortunately, as with all freedoms, sometimes there are consequences... Like being shot and killed for wearing short pants.So... we weren't there for the WMDs because there never were any. We weren't there because Saddam was able to 'launch an attack on the UK within 45 minutes' because

Anonymouslemminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04693377613554638959noreply@blogger.com0