Monthly Archive for April, 2000

Overview: Weetabix

Published on 30/4/2000 in General. 4 Comments

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I am a member of the World Wide Worshippers of Weetabix.

If you’re not from Ireland or the UK, you may well ask what on earth is Weetabix?

Weetabix is a breakfast cereal that is enjoyed by many all over the planet. It consists of flaked wheat formed into round-ended rectangular biscuits, and as with most cereals, it is eaten in the morning with either hot or cold milk and some sugar.

Although it originated in England, Weetabix is also made in Canada (as a slightly more golden version due to the different wheat grade) and distributed from there to the USA.

The UK Weetabix company has released a number of new cereals recently. The most notable of these to Weetabix lovers is Frutibix. As shown in the picture on the right, these are mini-sized Weetabixes filled with nuts and raisins. I’ll leave it up to your own imagination to guess as to the content of the latest addition to the family, Bananabix!

Weetabix have also marketed a cereal called Advantage, a kind of a wheaty-flake thing, which tastes a whole lot better than those boring Branny Flakes (TM).

As far as I can see, there are two Weetabix internet domain names, one in the UK (www.weetabix.co.uk), and the other in the US, (www.weetabix.com). Neither of these features any Weetabix information as of yet. Weetabix Ltd. in the UK have also registered the domain names for alpen.co.uk, blmarketing.co.uk, blmarketing.com, bran-fare.co.uk, bran-fare.com, crunchy-bran.co.uk, crunchy-bran.com, country-home.co.uk, country-home.com, country-mills.co.uk, country-mills.com, frutibix.co.uk, frutibix.com, ready-brek.co.uk, ready-brek.com, vibixa.co.uk, vibixa.com, weetabix-golf.co.uk, weetabix-golf.com, weeta-flakes.co.uk, weeta-flakes.com, weetos.co.uk, and weetos.com. Strangely enough, the Mr. Bean domain name at www.mrbean.com seems to point to the same server as the US Weetabix site…

Joan Lim in the US also sent me some images of a cereal called “Bran Bix” from New Zealand (1, 2). It’s made by the same people who do the Weetabix-like “Weet Bix”, Sanitarium.

Beware of imitations!

I also had a message from Paul Brocklehurst telling me about the Weetabix “Hell Driver” advert he appeared in, check out the link for pictures or download the .mov file!

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Overview: PLANT»>

Published on 30/4/2000 in Internet. 0 Comments

Introduction

WebPLANT»> was a UNIX-based utility for monitoring users logged into a VAX machine in NUI, Galway called ORBSEN. The picture below was a plan view of a terminal room in the Civil Engineering Block of NUI, Galway.

If there were any people logged in to ORBSEN from this terminal room, their names appeared highlighted on the corresponding terminals in the room below and clicking on them produced a finger output.

This program, known to NUI, Galway VAX users as PLANT»>, has gone through many reincarnations over the past few years, from BASIC to FORTRAN to C. Sadly, WebPLANT»>’s lifespan has come to an end with the replacement of the last DEC terminal room in NUI, Galway with a Novell LAN.

Sample Output

 ____DOOR_________WebPLANT»> Civil Engineering Terminal Room_________________ 
|           __      __      __      __      __      __      __               |
|      DS501/LC-2-13  |DS501/LC-2-5|  |DS501/LC-2-3|  |DS501/LC-2-12         |
|          |  |DS501/LC-2-6|  |DS501/LC-2-4|  |DS501/LC-2-7|  |              |
|          |__|    |__|    |__|    |__|    |__|    |__|    |__|              |
|                           __      __      __      __      __      __       |
|      DS501/LC-3-11   John Breslin|  |DS501/LC-2-8|  |DS501/LC-2-11  |      |
|DOOR      |__|            |  |DS501/LC-2-1|  |DS501/LC-2-9|  |DS501/LC-2-10 |
     | DS501/LC-3-12       |__|    |__|    |__|    |__|    |__|    |__|      |
     |     |__|                             __      __      __      __       |
     | DS501/LC-3-10                   DS501/LC-2-15  |DS501/LC-3-1|  |      |
     |     |__|                            |  |DS501/LC-2-14  |DS501/LC-2-16 |
     | DS501/LC-3-9                        |__|    |__|    |__|    |__|      |
     |     |__|                     __      __      __      __      __       |
     | DS501/LC-3-8            DS501/LC-3-6|  |DS501/LC-3-4|  |DS501/LC-3-3  |
     |     |__|                    |  |DS501/LC-3-5|  |DS501/LC-3-2|  |      |
     | DS501/LC-3-7                |__|    |__|    |__|    |__|    |__|      |
     |     |__|                                                              |
     |_______________________________________________________________________|

How Was It Done?

With a little bit of help from unix’s awk and sed commands, the “source” of the program is given below.

finger @orbsen|grep DS501|awk '{print "s/<b >" substr($0,index($0,"DS501"),5) "\/" substr($0,index($0,"LC-"),length($0)-index($0,"LC-")) "<\/b>/<a href="\/cgi-bin\/finger.cgi?" substr($0,1,8) "@orbsen.nuigalway.ie">" substr($0,10,length($0)-index($0,"DS501")) "<\/a>/"}'>plant.temp
sed -f plant.temp plant.html

History

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