Death and Destruction Everywhere... and now, the weather...

It seems that the death toll from the destruction caused by the tsunami in asia increases by the minute, as far as I can tell it's gone up by over 50,000 people in the last 24 hours - shocking. My uncle is actually currently there on holiday (if you can call it that any more), and there was a bit of worry, but we got news yesterday that he is fine, apparently he was in a bar at the time (at 6am?) and "it's a bit wet". Hopefully he'll be able to get back relatively soon.

Christmas was good, I got a few DVDs including a Futurama box set and my brother kindly got me a shammy leather-type thing for the car - with the gift tag reading "This won't wipe away dents" grr.

I've been spending a bit of time in the kitchen over the last few days, created quite a nice turkey soup from the remainder of the christmas dinner, and tonight I used a can of some madras stuff (which was a bit dire) to make a BurtCurroi, alright, but I shall stick to what I normally make from now on.

I had a really bizarre dream last night.... I dremt that I was kidnapped, but kept in my own room, with the kidnappers using surveillance to keep me where I was (I could see the camera outside my window). After I'd dismantled all the electronic devices in my room to make sure they didn't have cameras in them, I finally escaped across the road to a friends house to call the police, but it was too late, they already knew that I'd left... The lights went off and the phone line went dead.....

Worryingly, I know exactly what this means.

Season's Greetings

Well, it's that time of year again, so I'd like to wish everyone a very happy christmas and a prosperous new year. I did attempt to send out some sort of mass email, but I think it got stuck in a spam filter somewhere, I'll investigate.

In other news, I've been informed that my diary is a bit boring (I tend to try and keep it employer and future employer safe :P ) so I've got a late night burtblog edition in formulation... Watch this space :)

Shocking News

Teen sentenced for crippling man Utterly shocking news, things like this just shouldn't happen... However, he'll probably get released early after doing three years, at the same time as people are getting three years for breaking speed limits.

Quote of the day

And on christmas day we'll be asking who really wrote the bible

- Channel 4 Announcer
Not entirely sure why this amused, but it did.

Christmas Do Pt II

Well, last night was the second of my work christmas events, this time in the form of a sit down meal. I actually was tasked with organising this one, and I am pleased to say that it seems that everyone enjoyed themselves, I had a bit of a worrying dream last week about what might have occured if some horrid allergy-related mistakes were made, but it all seemed fun in the end :) Apparently I was "a bit well oiled" and had a bit of alcohol fuelled tourettes - like yelling "cunt" at the top of my voice, and insulting a waitress but ho-hum. Roll on next year.

Today was quite a relaxed day, can't really remember what I did apart from have body parts ache.

Got a few bits to do at the weekend, so I may well be back in the office on saturday

Ringtones

I could do with some sort of new ringtone for my phone. All the ones on it are a bit pants, and I don't want a musical one, however that's all the sites seem to have, does anyone know of a good "ring sound" website or alternatively a midi or MP3 that could do the same trick?

Department Christmas Do

Thursday night was utterly splendid, department christmas piss-up with a 1920s theme. Everyone made an effort with their costumes, and the location was really good, quite a lot of gangstery-type outfits. As happens far too often, I got rather drunk, and there are lots of very bad photos of myself (and other people come to think of it) doing the rounds at the moment. Managed to spend at least £40 on drink too :/

There's a team christmas dinner next thursday, so I'd better get myself ready for that one... I guess I'll have to stay vaguely alive, I'm supposed to have organised it...

Quiet weekend, just been eating far too much curry and all these oniony things that were supplied with the popadoms... strangely it seems to have caused some sort of allergic reaction on my tongue, weird.

Brussened

There you go lowey.... Can't really think of a sentence to put it in... happy now? :)

Calendar Geekyness

While looking through the documentation for a software package, I found a rather long-winded description of how it handles dates. Which highlighted this; compare the following:

[burt@lucre burt]$ cal 12 2004
December 2004
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31

[burt@lucre burt]$ cal 9 1752
September 1752
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

This got me thinking... Obviously, this is from when the calendars changed in 1752, but I just thought that it was neat that it was properly handled. Annoyingly, I couldn't even get windows calendar to show me a date before 1980, and Outlook would happily display me the whole of September 1752 without any missing days. I guess this is a bug meaning that all of Outlook's calendar is wrong by two weeks :)

Chav-drop.TV

When I'm bored, I sometimes watch price-drop.tv, merely to smirk at some of the cheap crap that people such as 'Barbara from KESTON' decide that they need to purchase because it's cheaper than the "guide price" which is obviously an unrealistically high value plucked from someone's arse.

Well, the whole system is one story, but this evening, I saw that they are asking people to ring a premium rate number to *pay* for a "dropper on board" car window sign thing "dropper on board". Then again, if people will pay to do your advertising for you, I guess you can't really turn it down.

Mobile Phone Misconceptions - I

If you are having trouble communicating with someone on the end of the phone due to them having bad signal, or perhaps not hearing them properly... SHOUTING DOWN THE PHONE AT THE TOP OF YOUR VOICE WILL NOT HELP THEM HEAR YOU. NO. REALLY, YOU WILL JUST BE SO LOUD THE MICROPHONE WON'T BE ABLE TO PICK YOU UP, IT WILL NOT HELP. Arrgh.

Mac Bore Quote

I don't normally read Slashdot but I just saw this quote regarding OS X :o)

When friends of mine as if OS X is similar to linux on the comand line, I just tell them:

"It's like going to a Korean massage parlor and getting a Chinese girl. Most wouldn't know the difference"

Shit Day

Two spilled cups of coffee, extreme tiredness, one terminally broken piece of frustrating software, general failures, PAT testers putting me out of action for an hour and a half.

Arrgh.

And now, pub

et fin

Whatever happened to my weekend?

There goes another weekend without very much to show for it, I really must make more of an effort to do something useful with my free time...

The "leak" turned out to be a broken overflow from the tank in the loft, meaning that the water was flowing into my roofspace and not outside, great.

I've also started looking at the two pages I have to finish writing for my coursework due in on friday... (this whole schoolwork thing is rater quaint :o) ) Seems like I'm going to have to choose an appropriate case study to do, and I'm not quite sure which case to choose, but I'll think about it some more tomorrow and hopefully I'll come up with something appropriate.

In other news, I've just failed to get to sleep after getting to bed at a reasonable time (again), bah.

Bah

Thursday, night out with usual work croud, rather nice evening, but freezing walk home so I chickened out and hitched a lift...

Have some school work to do this weekend so stayed at home, however, this evening my cieling decided that it was going to start pissing water. Clearly the refelting (it's a flat roof) that we had done a few weeks back wasn't as good as it was said it was going to be. I've had to retreat to the spare room, as my bed is right where the worse of it is dripping at the moment, although I've made two holes to allow it to seep through a bit better without bringing the plaster down with it. The parents are going to love that one when they return.

It's just like $journal

Thanks to Liz' Diary, I came across an automatic journal updater... so if you're bored with my endless drivel, feel free to create your own

Gluttony

Well, this week was certainly a change from the norm, and I finally got [most of] a week away from the office. Firstly, the food was good, perhaps a little too good... Every day there was a full cooked breakfast, followed by a three course lunch (bigger than most evening meals I'd have) and with another large (again three course) evening meal to finish. Coupled with coffee and biscuits on tap all day, and not moving around all that much from being in a lecture/conference room, after a day or so we were all feeling pretty bloated... I'm sure I've actually put on a noticeable amount of weight.

The course title was actually "teamworking and communications", and despite my initial reservations about the slightly fluffy angle the course material took on these things, I think I've actually come away with some useful ideas and tools, plus I've also learned quite a bit about myself from some sort of profiling test they let us all do.

We returned on Thursday evening, by which point I was completely exhausted, but I still managed to find time to play chess in a pub, which is something I don't think I've done before.

Friday was a relatively short day in the office with me tying up a few loose ends and sorting out my time sheet before heading back early afternoon to a nice nap :o) Today has been not particularly productive, with the biggest achievement so far is going to get a few bits from the shops.

Plan for tomorrow is to get the bike out, and also to pop and take this photo I've been meaning to for ages (weather permitting)

Course..

I'm off on a course for a few days - woo! I've been quite looking forward to getting a few days out of town, and I hear the food and drink are excellent (It's residential).

Right, it's time I finished packing... Back Thursday.

Forest person and his jolly gentlemen

Last weekend myself and Mat trundled up the motorway to Nottingham to pay Chris and Pete a visit. Overall it was great weekend, apart from the journey up which took the best part of three hours, mainly due to leaving at 4pm when everyone else decided to do the same thing.

Friday night consisted of several bars, including the oldest pub in England/UK/the world/the universe depending on who you talk to, rather cool as it was partially in a cave. Some biker/rock bar (well, that's the best way I can describe it) the cookie club, which had an 80s and a 90s room :D and then finally, some random bar with a strange bearded barman - somewhat of a caracter.

Saturday during the day was nicely chilled, with a pub lunch in the city, and ended up watching football and shopping in the afternoon, I had a bit of a fuzzy head from the previous night... The evening wasn't as mad as the night before, consisting of another pub in a cave, this time rather more damp and clammy, oh and the bartender took offence to soft drink orders. There were several other places too, but the one that stands out was "georges" where the landlady took to deciding on our drinks for us... who are we to argue. Ended up in some club that I'm not entirely sure how to classify, maybe it had an indie influence, but I'm sure I heard some Daft Punk.

Oh, and the blog title comes from me forgetting Robin Hood's name and saying "erm, forest person" instead, which it was decided sounded like someone who couldn't get the rights to real Robin Hood, and so had to be suitably generic to avoid lawsuits.

Overall a good weekend :)

Sunday gave a chance to smirk at my colleague and his witch constume, which was certainly "interesting".

On Monday I got my car back, which now smells new again due to all the paint, and looks extremely shiny :D

Oh and Burt's tip of the week:

Never do bad impressions of Ben off short circuit while in an Indian restaurant.

Current music: Bloodhound Gang - The Ballad of Chasey Lane

Somebody Told Me

The garage have given me a second loan car. The first one was a rather underpowered 1.2 Polo, which really didn't inspire me, so I nicknamed it "the beast". It was quite well kitted out (air con) but I didn't really enjoy driving it, but one can't complain, it was on free loan afterall. On tuesday they rang to ask for it back as they had someone who wanted to look at it to buy *chortle*, I didn't have any objection as they offered to deliver the replacement to my door, which isn't bad. I was kind of expecting them to deliver a lupo or similar, which I wouldn't have minded so I could try one out (I don't think I've ever travelled in one). However, when the guy arrived at my door at some ungodly hour, he said with a slight smirk "here's the keys, this one's a little bit faster..." which had me intreagued. It turned out it's a 130bhp Polo GT Diesel, quite a splendid car, and I'm thoroughly enjoying thrashing it about :P

In other news, I'm off to Nottingham this weekend, where I shall be sampling the various ales and fine drinking establishments available in that neck of the woods. However, I've got to be back home for Sunday evening to wander pubward to smirk at a colleague's fancy dress for halloween. There's also talk of curry on monday too... hmmmmmmmmmmm currrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroi

Current Music: Green Day - Time of your life

Homer Simpson

It seems that Americans would like to see Homer Simpson as fictional president.
Ironically, it doesn't look like they're far of getting someone quite similar in real life.

The Weeked - and AvP

It's been a fairly busy weekend. It all started on Friday, meeting Chris, Pete and Mat in the pub and starting to sort out ideas for next weekend's trip to Notts, it seems like we finally have some floor to kip on, so that's at least a start :)

Saturday was spent in Worcester Chav spotting (I've found there's an optician which has an exclusive Burberry frames section *smirk*) and generally just milling about in the rain. Wandering around the pound shop (for amusement more than anything) I stumbled across a rather lame DVD section... With a particular disc standing out... "Graduation day" and "Nymphoid barbarian in dinosaur hell". Both of which are utterly lame, but in such a way that they are hilarious... I've not managed to watch all of either yet, I think I'll save that pleasure for the weekend.

That evening I went to see Alien vs Predator. Not being in the loop regarding film releases (I'm getting better though) I wasn't even aware that it had only been released on the day before or so, surprisingly, the cinema was fairly empty. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was indeed a good film.. Being the tech geek that I am, I found the opening scene quite fun, there's something cool about technology being used in situations like that :) I would have thought there'd be a bit of product placement there, perhaps there was just too much competition between the phone giants :)

On Sunday I took the parents to see the site where I managed to crash the car... Learned a bit more about how the different parts of the side of the road could correlate to the dents... It rained again. Also found a nice little pub on the way back, dad bought us coffee.

This evening I've generally been milling about, and I've finally managed to tidy my room up. I also saw Little Britain for the first time, can't say I've seen something that funny for ages, I'll certainly be watching the next episode tomorrow :)

Useless Warnings

Mum has a box of pot pourri (the smelly bits of dried flowers). The base of the box is clearly marked "not for consumption". WHO THE FUCK IS GOING TO BE STUPID ENOUGH TO EAT IT?? I mean, even if they were, and took it to court, they would get the case laughed out of court.

Comments

I suspect most people read this via various means involving feeds, so for those of you that don't see the normal blog page very often, I've added comments.

Froogle

I've been waiting for this a while, it seem that Google have launched a UK version of Froogle :)

Getting Old

I had a conversation about mortgages today.
Save me.

Quote

Additional. As the days go by, we face the increasing inevitability that we are alone in a godless, uninhabited, hostile and meaningless universe. Still, you've got to laugh, haven't you? -- Holly (Red Dwarf)

Excellent :)

Consuming Calories, then burning them off

Well, what's been going on in the world of Burt at the moment... Went to the pub on Weds, another random evening involving a few work pople and a few of the guys from school, was nice to see people again etc, had some rather nice ales :)
Somewhat bizarrely for your average geek, I've never seen more than a few bits of the Star Wars films... this was deemed unacceptable, so I've been lent the DVDs... and I've been slowly making my way through them... Its also now apparent why I missed out on the whole thing, I'd seen bits and bobs of IV and VI, but not V, which with some of the cross-references must have just confused the hell out of me, hence I never really continued to watch.

There's also an excellent quote from "the empire strikes back" that still rings true today, over 24 years since the original film:

"R2, you know better than to trust a strange computer" - C3PO

I went to our local Morrisons last night, which used to be a Safeway in days passed. Not all that much has changed really, apart from the signs, a bit of the "store furniture" and a few prices. The eggs are now located below a large sign "HEN HUTCH".. this leads me to think who the fuck do they think they are kidding? "hen hutch" implies something relatively small, wooden, with a nice little area outside where the hens do their hen thing all day and peck away at seeds. We all know full well that the majority those eggs haven't been anywhere near a "hen hutch", most of them were forced from the vaginas of innocent little hens kept in tiny wire boxes at "ideal" laying temperature with the lights on all day. Hardly a "hutch" now is it. They do have a good beer offer, though.

Went to a computer fair this morning, which was an utter waste of £3, all the stalls were selling stuff that was cheaper on Ebuyer after delivery costs, and it was all dodgy makes like "Office Tech" and "Klick". Oh, there was also some 15 year old selling a rather comical array of hooky software. It's not like the old days.

This afternoon, I finally bit the bullet and started with my cycling... went on a little tour of the local area, and stopped for a can of sprite at one of the little newsagents. I don't currently have a cycle computer that works (perhaps something to buy tomorrow) a later check with the car speedo indicates that it was 8 miles, which I'm quite pleased with as I wasn't a complete wreck afterwards this time. Perhaps tomorrow I'll do another one. Also the phone served as an excellent MP3 player for the ride, so I might just justify getting a bigger MMC card for it, maybe.

I've also been listening to The Killers' album "Hot Fuss" quite a bit this week, splendid album.

Current Music: The Killers - Somebody Told Me

Caerdydd

I've just returned from a weekend in Cardiff to see Pete, Dan and Alun who made his way from over in Hampshire where he's working at the moment. Can't really be bothered to write all about it right now, but it was a good few days, we sampled several of Cardiff's bars (including 'Reflex' an 80s themed bar, and the rather nice Richard's) and frequented Creation on Friday night…

While there I noticed that I’m starting to feel separated from being a student now, which is sort of good in a way... not having to worry where the next loan to fund a night out is coming from is certainly a pleasant change. Also spotted a beggar with a Burberry rug, I'm sure that does wonders for their brand image.

Tempted by the 24 box set, need to augment the DVD collection – possibly one to look out for in the new year sales etc. Need to reinstall computer, need to set a date and really do it this time, possibly once I've got some CDRs to put everything on.

I've been listening to my Svenson and Geilen album again, I really like the way that that track 'Fujirama' reminds me of a cold winter's morning driving down icy Welsh country roads. I'm not totally sure where this mental association comes from, but if I remember correctly it might be from my little trip out to Strata Florida in the snow earlier in the year, but who can say.

One more thing, 'riot' 'shot' and 'pint' are all on the same key presses in the T9 predictive text dictionary on my phone. I find this amusing.

A Rubber Chicken With a Pulley in the Middle

This last week or so has flown by. Alas, I've not really had chance to do much in the way of blogging, so this is a catch up.

My weekend started early, I was on leave on Friday, giving time to have a lie in and then make my way over to Ceredigion. This, however, entailed cycling up to town to get my car that I'd abandoned in town when going for drinks that previous evening... During this brief period of activity I managed to have an asthma attack and discover (the hard way) that I really do need to improve my level of fitness. (cue operation BurtFit III) Made my way over Aber and met up with quite a lot of people I'd not seen in a long time, it was a really good night apart from my phone dying on me.

The original plans for Aber that weekend were cut short due to a few people dropping out/not being where they were going to be, however, this worked out for the better as on saturday some friends from school were going to be in the area, and suggested that we meet up for drinks. It was good to see people again, and also good to talk about the old days of school and the various characters that we once knew there... sometimes I'd really like to find out what some of them are up to, then again, I probably wouldn't be all that interested when I did find out.

Making my way back from Aber, I decided to take the mountain road, as there were a lot of people moving into town that day, and I thought that it might make the journey a bit more bearable to drive through the Elan valleys. However, in true mid Wales style, there was thick fog up there and I couldn't really see much further than the side of the road. this proved to be interesting when a startled sheep decided to run out in front of the car, luckily I managed to avoid it, but it did startle me as I was quite spaced out from driving through thick fog with very loud JMJ playing :)

I got Monkey Island running with the help of ScummVM which allows you to run other lucasarts games too :) Oh, does anyone have a decent MI ringtone? All the ones I've seen are shit.

There's been a few cockups with pay at work, and after also having my phone temporarily disconnected, I pointed out it was a bit like Milton in "office space" (they stop paying him after he's fired and just hope that he stops coming of his own accord). This prompted me to watch the film again tonight, and this little gem is so true, they've clearly worked where I do...

"We don't have a lot of time on this earth! We weren't meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day... filling out useless forms... and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements." - Peter Gibbons

Well, that's more than enough for one evening, it looks like I'm off to Cardiff again tomorrow, however this time Al is coming along too :D There's clubs, pubs and dodgy 80s bars on the cards, woo!


Current music: Svenson & Gielen - Fujirama

Only on the internet...

Apparently, some guy in Japan is making a mint selling a Breast Enlarging Ringtone. Only on the Internet.

Internet Deprivation Study

This Article makes me wonder how long I could go without 'net access :)

Spaced

Watched series one of Spaced this evening, which kept me entertained for an evening... I had heard a few people mention this series recently vaguely in passing, however, I had never seen an episode of it, nor glimpsed at a trailer before. It came up in conversation a while ago, and I was offered a loan of the DVDs to fill me in. This is strange as I normally have at least a vague idea of what comes streaming down the gogglebox, or indeed, what has come down it, but it would seem that this one managed to completely pass me by.

Current Music: Elgar - Nimrod, Strangely
Mood: Marginally Less Bored

Retro Computing

I've been having a bit of a retro computing evening. Was digging around trying to find a DVD earlier, and found the box of floppies from when we got our first Pentium PC back in 1995 I think it was.

Such relics were found as:

• The Secret of Monkey Island
  On three floppy discs, unfortunately Windows XP won't touch it with a bargepole, also I'm not so sure that it gets on with hyperthreading.


• Lotus Smartsuite
  On about fourty floppies - had we ever installed this from floppy it would have been hell


• Instructions for Meridian '59
  Hmm, I don't think I ever got this to acutally work on our internet connection back then

In looking for a way to get Monkey island to install, I found that it was also released for Mac, so I might have more luck getting hold of a version for that instead.

Sleep is overrated

Cabin fever is starting to set in, which is also possibly why I've been having trouble getting enough sleep recently... Starting to look at photography courses again, as I need something to keep me at least vaguely sane and in human contact.

On the positive side, I'm all being well off to aber for the weekend... I've got friday off, and this is really the first time I've stopped since graduation, so I'm looking forward to a break, even if it is a little on the short side.

Getting rather fed up with all the annoying bug things that seem to buzz around in my room at night... I'm quite sure that the damned little bastards are feeding off me or something, so I could do with investigating suitable devices for instigating MASS CHEMICAL GENOCIDE.

In other news, I've finally started sorting through all my files on my main PC so that I can start the blat-and-reinstall process... it has been over 18 months now, so its quite overdue. Oh, and I also ordered a copy of Jeanne Michel Jarre's new album "Aero"... It is apparently a 5.1 recording (on the DVD, you get both a CD and DVD in the case). I think I can hook up another set of speakers as rear ones for my PC, so that could give me something to do.

Weekend

Well, another not particularly exciting weekend. Town is starting to feel rather quiet now the students have made their merry way back to uni. Went for a quiet pint or two in town with Mat on Friday night, and walked back in a record 26 minutes. I don't mind walking how the weather is at the moment, but as winter draws in, it could get a little inconvenient.

Washed the car on Saturday morning, just as the weather was starting to look really rather nice, vaccumed the car, then sorted out a bucket of water and various products needed and started to wash the wheels. As I did so, the heavens opened and completely drenched me, as I wasn't going to stop mid wash... I suppose that'll teach me to comment to the neighbours about how nice the weather is.

Strangely, I never seem to get any energy for web design until about 11.30pm, and in a slight forray of activity, I've sorted out my right hand bar on my site... It now sports links to the last ten blog entries - officially my first dabble with RSS/Feeds/Whatever.

Thought I'd start adding the mood/music tags again, also.

Mood: Bored
Music: Chicane - Overture

Dreams and Working Life

Had a really strange one this morning, sort of in that time when you are just waking up and nothing really makes sense… I dreamt that I had a "nice" meter for my bike (i.e showing the scheduling priority of my bike compared to the other people on the road) and I was riding around using this meter. Hmm, possibly one for the dreams book, but I don't think it'll cover that.. When I was finally awake this really puzzled me, and in the end I reckoned I must have misheard something on the radio which my dreamy mind had warped into something rather strange, ah well. (my first alarm clock is the radio, followed by a second alarm clock that goes off 15 minutes later, and then finally as a backup, my phone goes off)

Social life is still annoyingly scant, not really been up to much the last few evenings apart from working through the ales I picked up the other night, which have now unfortunately finished. I guess this is just the “culture shock” of not being a student anymore, and whatever people may think it is strange, as I've pretty much been in education continuously since I was four, and here, 18 years later, I've only just drawn a line under that.

Been fairly busy at work, and been spending some time in the server room, however what I’m working on is directly underneath one of the main air conditioning vents, meaning you are frozen after about ten minutes :/ Can't really think what happened to the rest of the week, apart from me being designated “social secretary”, which equates to being the person who has to organise the Christmas meal… which means I’m going to have to do it quick before everything books up, due to the usual hysteria regarding such arrangements. However, there is talk of a free bar, so I can't really complain.

New Website

Version 2.0 of my website has just been uploaded. There are a few teething problems and I have to upload the rest of my content tomorrow, but it's good to finally get rid of the old one :o)

Back From Visting

Overall, weekend visiting was good apart from the 5.04am phone call from Dad to say he'd arrived safely (I think I'll get him a time zone watch for christmas). Had a splendid meal on saturday night, and I think my gran really enjoyed herself, which is good.

Strangely, I think it was the first time I've taken my Mum out for a meal myself, and it was quite strange to be fighting against what seemed to be some sort of internal 'provider instinct' within herself. Ah well, it's all fun.

Visting

Dropped dad off at the airport this morning after getting up at stupid o'clock, so we've taken the opportunity to visit family ooopp noooorf. Had rather nice breakfast in little french café type thing, hmmmmm.

Work on new website is underway, hoping to release at some point next week.

Also in two minds about taking some leave soon, there's a possiblility of me needing it for a couple of possible holiday type events in the new year.

Right, will blog more later.

Weekend

Saturday was the wedding of Kurt (one of the guys who did the Year in Industry at the same time as me) to his fiancé Rosemary. Antony came down from Shrewsbury and took me and Richard down there, meeting Louise in the village beforehand. A great day was had by all, and I feel honoured to have been invited to share in their very special day. All the very best wishes to you both and enjoy your trip to Canada!

Strangely there wasn’t anywhere we could get a cup of tea in the little village where the wedding was held, the YINI crew and I ended up having a cuppa beforehand in the station, classy.

After travelling back home on Saturday night, Antony stayed the night and the next day me, Antony and Richard went for a trip out and a pub lunch. We went to a lovely place fairly close by called the horseshoe or something, we sat about outside enjoying the fine weather, the food was excellent and I'll certainly be going there again.

The air conditioning is certainly coming in handy, arriving places not having a back driping wet despite all the windows being open on a day like today is great :)

Some Issues (2)

Also, there’s another issue I was thinking about the other week…

Vulnerabilities And The Embedded Device

It seems that there have been a number of different vulnerabilities involving the Bluetooth stacks of various makes of mobile phone recently.

I’ve also been having a few issues with my 6230 such as crashing when using Bluetooth connections, and also there are various reports that it may well have been vulnerable to some sort of Bluetooth attack, so I decided to get its software updated at my local Nokia service centre. This was a surprisingly painless process, I just found the address off the Nokia website and popped in and dropped the phone off (it happened to be a Carphonewarehouse store) picking it up an hour later with its software updated and the crashing issues rectified, all covered under warranty.

Ok, so under the warranty period, its easy to get updates and Nokia at least will fix any problems with their firmware in that time… However, what if my phone wasn’t in warranty? And what if it needed a software update for security reasons (I.e a serious widely exploitable vulnerability)?

I asked about getting my old phone updated, as my brother now uses it, and has some strange issues with it crashing every now and then. They replied it would cost £30 to upgrade it. Now, I know it might be cheaper to get it done elsewhere, but £30 for what might be a critical security vulnerability is not really on (although I appreciate my old phone doesn’t have such problems). As more and more consumer devices are mainly based on software, vulnerabilities will always happen, so getting updates distributed to consumers is getting more and more important, and it might be that the manufacturers have to support phones outside their warranty also in order to stop a mass breakout of any sort of mass exploit (in a similar way to the myriad of Windows worms). I just hope that this potential issue is being addressed by the people who make these decisions.

Digital Lifestyles: Some Issues

There's a few points that I've thought about recently, while they aren't big issues at the moment I can see them becoming more important points of discussion quite soon.

Here's the first:

Digital Rights

So called "Copy protection" measures on CDs are now more and more commonplace, and from what I understand, most of these work by corrupting the CD standard, the "Red Book" standard et al (More info).

This is all very well and good, and the people selling these protection technologies all claim that their "Audio Discs" work in 90 something percent of CD drives (they can't label them as Compact Discs as that would infrige a whole lot of trade marks etc, protected discs just don't follow the standards so aren't CDs).

So I accept that there are a few current CD players that don't accept them (usually car CD players or similar) and a few Macs that get stuck. However, the disc vendors don't seem to have taken account of the fact that the standard is there so that all CD players, and all CD players that are currently being designed can work with the CDs around today, including those created years ago (the CD standards are now over 20 years old!).

How can they possibly guarantee that a "copy protected" "Audio disc" will work in the players of the future? I don't think they can. Especially with the convergence of the home entertainment devices so common today, CD players are also becoming DVD players, getting functionality to play the family digital photos on the TV. In fact the "media centre" as Microsoft call it, is becoming a reality, and broken discs are not going to help this technology progress.

More importantly, copy protection like this don't even work

Personally I question the legality of these discs being sold on the shelves with other real (non-corrupt) CDs, as their placement alongside the genuine article may have trades descriptions or similar implications in UK law at least.

I certainly won't be buying any corrupt discs.

Erk

Really must stop pissing money out of my arse... :|

oh yeah, excellent website for searching for car insurance quotes (remeber to make sure that the web sites it searches are open at the time)

www.insure121.com

Funny old world

Well, it’s been a funny old few days… Paperwork for new permanent contract taking longer than expected, however, I am assured that everything will be sorted out in time. I’m not so sure to be honest, so we’ll just have to wait and see with that one.

Everything seems to be failing at the moment too. After work on Tuesday, I returned home just as a thunderstorm was brewing, so I decided to go up to my room and unplug my PC, just in case (I’ve known people have all sorts of hell claiming on insurance for lightening damage). So I went downstairs, watched TV for a bit and had my dinner… I returned upstairs as the storm was dying down to go and check my email, only to find a puddle of water on the floor in my room, and a patch of the ceiling dripping down into the top of my TV! Luckily my TV was turned off when I unplugged my computer, and after drying out it’s now working fine, but this was not the end of it…

While sitting waiting for the thunder to subside, I also noticed that the fridge is making a _really_ dodgy noise, and is probably going to pack up at some point soon. To top that off on Thursday morning when I hopped into the shower I found out the hard way that it wasn’t heating the water… fuck.

Work at the moment is very interesting, currently working on a system which I will be going down south to install in the next couple of weeks, so it’ll be nice to get some travel in :-)

Rather worryingly I’ve started looking at getting another car, don’t think I can afford it yet, but there are some rather major costs coming up on the fiesta, so its looking more attractive every day. Unfortuately I’m a fussy bugger.

Splendid Weekend

I write this on a lovely summers evening, watching the last of the sun set, sat on the garden swing, listening to some random streaming chillout music, with a bottle of lager... almost bliss

Had a really splendid weekend, headed down to cardiff after work, and headed to a massive club with nermal and dan... it turned out that they played what might have been the best music line up that I've ever heard, second only to the Judge Jules.... Must got to proper clubs more often... The next day was also superbly relaxed, heading into town about 2pm and not getting back until 11pm after spending 6 hours in Cardiff bay generally milling about and stuff. :)

Recieved my properjob [tm] contract today too, so need to sort that out tomorrow... now I'd better go inside, the moths are being attracted to my screen light...

Working Life...

Well, after a moment of weakness in Birmingham, and wanting something to fill the void of my previous laptop.... I am now the proud owner of a Powerbook G4 12". It's an extremely nice piece of equipment, and I can't really fault it, apart from the half sized enter key which sort of gets on my nerves.

Otherwise, it was a quiet weekend, and since then I've been installing random bits and bobs and generally playing with the machine... *geek*

Its now tuesday night, and I've been quite busy at work today sorting out various things... All being well by this time next week I'll have a permanent contract sitting on my desk ready to sign...... Personally I'd be quite surprised if everything went so smoothly, as I spent this afternoon sorting out my job description :S...

Currently investigating a few projects for me to be getting on with while I'm not at work... This is kind of strange for me as for the previous part of my life I've had some sort of education based project to be getting on with in the background, however, now that I don't its like I have a bit of a void to fill... but that's also good, if you know what I mean..

Last night I didn't get much sleep, so tonight I've promised myself that I'll get to bed a reasonable time, as I need to be vaguely awake tomorrow - the project I'm working on has to be delivered next week, so all hands to the guns

6 Weeks on

It's now six weeks since I finished uni...  It turns out that I somehow managed to get myself a first, which I'm very pleased about, I really wasn't expecting it, so it was a very nice surprise. 

Graduation was this friday, with the graduation ball on the wednesday, so I finished work early at lunchtime on wednesday, went into Worcester to pick up my suit (I now own a suit - *horror*) and then trundled over to good old aber...   The weather in Worcestershire was great, however, by the time I got to Ceredigion it was misty and cloudy, which was a bit sucky considering it was my graduation and everything.

The ball was quite good, however,  I think I perhaps drank a bit too much, I've got bruises down my back and I don't remember taking half the photos I've found on my camera since.  Was quite strange that there were so many people about, I never really got to talk to anyone properly, but that might have just been me being drunk *cough*

Stayed in one of the last remaining unrenovated blocks of cwrt mawr, and my room smelt of dead things, which wasn't all that nice, but it did the job, and I spent a hell of a lot of time out and about anyway, so for £12 per night it wasn't bad

Thursday was a really nice chilled day, and I met up with lots of people that night, it was all a bit(well, acutally a lot) random, and it was really great to see everyone again and catch up

Friday saw the actual day of the graduation, my family, and I think my gran especially had a really nice day (photos here), but then again the ceremony is really for them anyway, in my mind.

Friday evening was another night in town, seeing more people, it turned out random again, and I got to see a lot of people, but there were some people that I still missed, so I'd like to say sorry to anyone I didn't get chance to meet up with, hopefully we can meet up sometime soon, and no doubt I'll be in Aber at some not so distant time in the future, drop me a mail.

Saturday morning after moving out of halls, spent quite some time doing a few rounds of people, after going to see Matt, met for breakfast with Danni, felt a bit ill, then went for coffee with Mark, Mike and James.  Saying goodbye to Danni was really hard, I've known her ever since my first day of Uni, and although I will definately see her again, it really messed with my head. 

After a quick stop off at James' place, I headed back off accross the mountains back to Worcestershire.  Anyway, goodbye for now everyone, and I will see you all again soon.

On the job front, I'm officially back as a "Vacation Student" for the time being - long story on that one - but I've decided that a Masters' most likely isn't for me at this exact time, so I'm going to ask for a proper job [tm]

Sold my laptop to Lowey, look after her eh :)  Have since been toying with the idea of getting an iBook or a PowerBook, but we'll have to see - these things are a lot of money

Current Music: Green Day - Time of your life

Three Days In

There we go, Uni has now been finished over two weeks, and I'm back at work again. Even though I'm all done with uni, I'm only on a summer placement for the time being while I decide what my options are, and try and make some sort of decision about my life direction.

Work is good, the old team have amalgamated with another one that I would have liked to work for before, so I'm currently playing with lots of firewalls which is pretty much exactly what I wanted to be doing this summer :)

In other news, we finally got broadband last friday, the ISDN was removed and the line tested for ADSL compatability and all was well - not much line loss either meaning we could support 2mb theoretically. We decided on the eclipse flex service, mainly as it doesn't tie us down for any minimum contract period, and also allows us to to be completely flexible between 256k and a 1mb connection, which is ideal as things are rather uncertain at the moment regarding where we are going to be etc.

Being back home is again very different from last summer.. last summer I really had to be alright about being back home I suppose, but this time I really don't have any pressures to either be here or whatever, all very odd.

Boringly, its my bedtime now, busy day tomorrow

Freedom from america

"And so, sir, we're honored to be here. Perhaps the best way I can express my country's gratitude to you, and our respect to you, is to present to you the Medal of Freedom from America."
-- George Bush 2004 (Vist to see the pope)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040604-3.html

Oh, can we all get a freedom from America medal?

End of an era

Well, I've just awoken rediculously early after my final night in aber. According to my contract I have to be out of halls by 10am... Almost everything is packed now, just a few bits in the kitchen remain to be sorted out, so all I have to do is tidy them up and then clean out my room.

Dad came on wednesday to pick up a car load of stuff, it seems that he has himself a nice new car as the last one finally gave up after doing 300,000 miles or something. I have to ask myself if the new one knows what it has coming for itself.

On thursday I met up with a few friends from the house last year for lunch, it was great to see them again, however our food didn't turn up and Jaz had to go for an interview at 2.30. All credit to varsity, they gave us a refund, however, it was cut very fine, and we ended up getting her to the door of the place where her interview was with three minutes to go - close!

To be honest, the last week or so has been a near-constant stream of goodbyes, I don't like goodbyes (I've been thinking of them as the start of everything else), but needless to say I've met many really great people over my last few years hear at Aber, and its certainly a shame that they won't be just 10 minutes walk away ever again. I might formulate a goodbye blog at some point, but stalkers would have a field day with that one.

I've had a good few nights out over the last week, being me, all with several different groups of people, but I've managed to get a pint in with most people. The union on friday was indeed very strange, there were a lot of tears shed, lots of hugging, and lots of borderline music followed by the downright depressing goodbye sort of tunes. So perhaps all in all a good "last" night out, again, I saw and said goodbye to many many people.

However, last night aber threw a complete surprise at me. I went for a drink with Nermal and Lowey and we ended up going to Bar Essential initially just for a few quiet ones. However, the pub was packed, and strangely with only one other student-looking person in sight, while we were having our pint, there were a few good songs being played and it was really good sort of club-like mixes of some older stuff mixed with new, but after our pint we did actually walk out the door. However, they started playing a remix of Eminem - without me (Drunken Munkey - E) and it was quite loud, so we stood just outside the doorway while we decided where to go next and pondered. It turns out that all three of us actually liked this song, so it prompted us to stay, and we went back in and had another drink, where we were eventually treated to a dance remix of the old favourite "popcorn". This arrangement sounded like a single album, so I decided to ask what it was... The guy (i think the landlord) said it was Clubland 4 but it was on the third "bonus" CD. In a few hours when woolworths opens I'm going to go and try and buy it for the journey home :).

That's the first time that the music alone has got me to walk back into a pub I was leaving, and certainly the first time it's happened in aber - there's just not enough dance played in this town unfortunately, even in the pier, which is just a cheesefest these days. All this and it's my last day in Aber. Typical.

Tasks for this week when I get home:

• Continue with new website
• Reduce amount of clutter - parents are moving house so need to be minimal
• Sort out hard disc - I've got an "unsorted" folder that's been unsorted for three years now

That's far too much for this time of morning - I'm off for a bit of kip!

Test

Test


Erk

Birmingham, it's not shit

Ok, slightly random... Decided to go to Birmingham yesterday after learning that the Birmingham Orange shop had some 6230s in stock - so now one happy Burt :D

It's quite a splendid phone, and Its nice to be vaguely in the 21st century phone wise again - all that remains to be proven is the battery life! - video and all that jaz suck battery power, and its the same battery unit as the 6100

Lots of lasts...

It seems to be the time of year for lots of 'lasts'. Most CompSci had their last exam today (except me, damn those DILS modules), and people generally are in an end of term frame of mind. A friend said this before which made me smile:

[name witheld] says: about 2 delete java from my machine!
[name witheld] says: been looking forward to this for months!

I guess I'm sad... I've not removed it off mine completely yet - I'd like to finish off tweaking my final year project

Feedback

Also, it occured to me today that it'd be nice to get something of an idea of how my dissertation is fairing in the marking process. I'm not sure how much they can reveal (probably not much) but might prod tutor about it tomorrow.

Continued Exam Horror

This morning was my CS312 exam, not as bad as I was dreading, but I seemed to have a similar experience to others who took the exam so I am not too worried. Also got the assignment grades and I have a provisional B+ (subject to moderation)... That means that I've already got the 40% for the entire module required to pass - wooo!

Two weeks tomorrow will be my last day in Aber as a student, which seems strange, exciting and scary all at once when I acutally think about it, but really I feel sort of strangely indifferent to it all. It will certainly be a shame not to be in daily contact with all my friends here again, but I guess that's just a symptom of life moving on the way it does. One thing I definitely know is that I shall return to Aber, everyone always does :o)

Yesterday went to visit the careers service, they were quite helpful, however only really as a sounding board more than anything.. Came away with two URLs and a small booklet on IT employers

Not sure if I mentioned it, but in order to do the master's course that I am considering it really is going to have to be totally self funded or some sort of corporate sponsorship if I can organise that - we'll see. Other option is a PHD, but I have yet to see anything that interests, and I am not sure if I want to commit myself to another 3(?) years of education at this stage.

AFter coming out from the careers appointment sat on the grass outside and used the wireless network around the CompSci department, they've installed another access point meaning that I don't have to use my external antenna.

Tomorrow morning (today?) is my third exam, "Network Technologies" to be honest, it could go either way and I've not done nearly anything like the revision I should have done.

One down three to go...

That's it.. the first exam out of the way. Potentially not too worried, think that it will hopefully make up for the other two main exams which I'm not so confident about. Ran out of time which is a shame, but hopefully I at least picked up a reasonable amount of marks for the last question.

Exams

It's my first exam later...

Just a note to people who might be asking, I won't tell you when any exams are from now on*... You'll have to look for yourself and then ask me if the time/place you have matches, for checking purposes only.

* I don't want to give you wrong information about when exams are, so its better for everyone concerned mmkay

BBC NEWS | England | Southern Counties | Six killed in seven-car pile-up

BBC NEWS | England | Southern Counties | Six killed in seven-car pile-up

Ouch!

Procrastination

In attempts to avoid revision (I'm never particularly good at that) I've been contemplating my website again, not entirely sure what format to take yet, and if perhaps a database backend would be the best option or not.

Also, it seems that the 6230 Bug list is growing. Most of them seem petty (for instance, I'd prefer it if phones didn't dial 999 with the keypad lock on anyway!), and when I'm back home I live 10 minutes from a place that will do Nokia sofware upgrades there and then under warranty. It took them 4 months to get my 8310 right anyway...

Finally, slept for 13 hours solid last night, for one reason or other my sleep patterns have been getting a bit bizarre, was up at 9 this morning and I actually feel awake.

Tehnical Note

Also, I got proper blog titles working finally, didn't see the setting.

Not Long Left

Three weeks today I shall be moving back home. It all seems to have come about rather quickly, and I can't think what's happened to the last 9 months here in Aber.

Still not sure what I'm going to do this summer, but starting to get more of an idea that a masters at this stage is going to be expensive - one of the funding sources that had been described to me has apparently dried up, which is a shame.

It's been a bit of an uneventful week really, since the Java project has been handed in I've sort of started on revision (well, ish) and also been contemplating a new design for burt.me.uk, however, I'm not really much of a web designer, so we'll have to see how things go.

Still got a cough from tuesday, too.

Hmm

Another not particularly productive day, spent most of today fiddling with web stuff (yes, I've acutally started re-working burt.me.uk (I want to make it look a bit less tellitubbie(sp?))), generally being ill (I'm still coughing from this cold thing I've had all week) and just fiddling, really.

This week is reading week, and really, all I want to do at this stage is relax a bit, and perhaps quietly go through some past exam papers

Testing blockquotes

Reaching Normality

Things are again starting to go back to normality. Orange agreed on friday to send me out a new sim card, for free, and seemed confident that I'd be able to upgrade to the 6230 on the 31st.... Starting to look forward to having some modern phonefeatures for a change :)

Went for a bit of a drive early this evening, and stopped to take a photo of what I thought was an old schoolhouse, however, when I was there, noticed a whole load of sheep staring at me throught a low fence... As I crept forward they all moved away, however, they were _all_ staring at me... took a couple of photos, kinda hope they come out like I want them to... (Using quaint film camera)

Also, it's getting to the time of year when I'm going to have to start to think seriously about next year's options. Need to decide if I want more education or a job, and at the moment I'm sort of erring towards a job.... maybe.....

In other news

Orange have just decided that they can forward my calls and set up my answerphone, so i'm happy for the time being while they organise a new SIM for me... which is apparently with their technical people...

Also, my printer has just been replaced by samsung after that started playing up (but that's another story)

Shit Day

Oh what a crap day today has been.... At about 3-4pm ish my phone decied to display "sim card rejected" which it sometimes does due to some sort of software error, so I restarted the phone in the hope that it would get it back to normal, however, on being re-booted it decided that once i had enetered my PIN number I should not be allowed in.. After trying the SIM in another phone and getting the same error I noted that it was probably the SIM card that was bust, and so accordingly borrowed (nermal's phone and called orange customer services...

The bloke I then spoke to at customer services tried to blame the fact that my sim card was supplied with my old phone (an orange SPV that I didn't have very long about this time last year) and therefore might not be compatable with my 8310 (at this point I was scratching my chin) ok, they had to refer this to their "technical department" which is fair enough, but they wern't able to tell me when they would get back to me, they said they couldn't forward my calls (a tad inconvient when I'm on the look out for jobs) and they couldn't set me up a PIN so I could activate my voicemail to say that I was temporarily not on this number (ditto). During the call, the "customer service" agent also mentioned that it might help if I could put my sim in an SPV and see if the error occured, so I scoured the local phone shops.. one of which luckily had an SPV and instantly diagnosed my SIM as faulty after trying it and getting error 262144 - convenient

I then phoned customer services again using my old pay as you go sim from my post contract days in 1999, with which they told me that I should redial "07973 100 150" - their contract customer support line, however, upon trying it this number is not available from pay as you go phones!... at this point i was getting rather pissed off as you can imagine... ok fair enough it takes them a few days to sort out a sim failure, but -

• They can't forward calls from my contract phone to another without the phone being operative


• They won't allow me to change my answer phone greeting on my contract phone by calling CS - it has to be done from the phone - which I can't do with a broken phone

At this point I was quite pissed off, and after my 5th call (intially to PAYG customer services) telling them I was unable to call customer services, asked for a Port Authorisation Code (PAK number) so I could transfer my phone number to another operator (...O2 offer the 6230 now, unlike Orange).. and was told "sorry, the PAK team close at 8pm"... at this point I went very silent and I know the person I was talking to realised I was pissed off, however, due to their shit system she was unable to help me...

First thing tomorrow morning this is going to be expressed in a formal complaint letter.... It's a shame to be on bad terms with Orange after so many years of faultless service... :/

Post-Dissertation Celebrations

• Still no burt.me.uk - will ring nominet tommorrow


• Still no 6230 release - current reports are next month


• Still not out of the woods as regards work

Yeah, the summary above pretty much says it all, although disseration is bound and handed in, I still haven't got very far with the enterprise java beans of doom. Last night was sort of an impromptue post-dissertation piss-up, I started drinking before my last lecture of the day, and spent most of the lecture being amused by the girl we dragged along to randomly come to a compsci lecture... Afterwards a friend was cooking for a whole load of us, so we had a proper roast dinner, accompanied by copious quantities vodka and lucozade - don't ask :)

Then there was the trip down town, where a generally good time was had, however, it took 1.5 hours to walk back up the hill after losing my phone twice and collapsing into bushes lots - all very urrgh...

Hmm

Another lovely today, and I really wish I had the time to lounge in the sun instead of sat in here panicing over Enterprise Java beans, the bank project I mentioned before. The dissertation was bound and is now sat safely at the back of my wadrobe awaiting handin on monday, when I can hang around in a smug manner ;)
It's strange, today there's a sort of fog over the centre of Aber, possibly due to the effect of the sea and the warm weather, it's now made its way up to the village, all rather strange. Tried to get a good photo of it, but by the time i got around to taking it, the fog had worked it's way up the hill soo there wasn't much to see.

Contacted nominet about burt.me.uk, apparently they are waiting for my previous registrant to confirm my details - this could be a tedious process.

Still no 6230 release - grr!

Relief

Finally, this evening I finished off a final draft of my dissertation ? all 88 pages and 21,000 words of it. All that remains now is to get up at a reasonable hour tomorrow morning and hand it to my tutor for a final check over before hand in (a week on Monday), and I?m already feeling very relieved it?s out of the way, and really I want to go out and get horrifically drunk in celebration.

Unfortunately, the software project we have to do (implement an online bank) in the next two weeks and those ?life tasks? such as buying food and having to clean my room (it?s getting in a bit of a state after two weeks of essentially being locked in here) has go in the way that idea.

In geek news, I was having problems using the version of ghostscript I have on my server to convert my dissertation to PDF, either there was some sort of fault, or it just refused to process a postscript file bigger than the system?s memory? Also the computer systems installations all didn?t seem to like my nice Microsoft word font embedding. Tried out the GhostScript for windows package, and it works surprisingly nicely.

Suddenly realised it?s 0400, must be bedtime :o)

Bah

Just looked at the assignment i have to complete 10 days after the major project and it looks to be a complete whore :(

Some serious productivity required in the next 7 days.

Also woke up this morning and my left eye was all swollen, possibly an infection or possibly an allergy I reckon... It was hurting a bit last night, but was quite bad this morning - had to sit with some peas on it first thing :|

Oh and the 6230 hasn't yet been released - watch this space

Quote

Just saw a great line in someone's MSN name that made me smile:

"The early bird catches the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese"

:o)

Home
Well, I'm now home for a few days as a sort of "break" from my mountain of work at the moment. Currently typing up the ideas behind my project design, and how I diligently decided how certain classes were formulated, and I'm generally indicating that I was an all-round good egg.

Set off about 10.30 this morning, and after a relatively pain free journey (aside from the near RTA involving a volvo and a caravan) arrived at home about 12.30pm. After lunch went into Worcester on a mission to find out about the release of the Nokia 6230 which is the first nokia phone in about two years that I actually want... Yes it has all the w@w features such as video, picture messaging, "voice messaging" and all that shit, but it also has some useful attributes such as bluetooth, long battery life (12 days standby) and its not much bigger than my 8310... Ok, I'm a bit obsessive about phones when I find one I like, and this one is bloody great IMHO, especially after playing about with the one they had in carphone warehouse :)

However, its not yet available on Orange (my current provider) and I'm due an upgrade (I've had my 8310 for about 2 years now, if we ignore the whole SPV incident). After talking to the guy in carphone warehouse, there is nothing on their computer system about it, and after a call to customer services it is being released on monday, and they may well be able to dispatch me one then, if not then tthere's a chance that carphonewarehouse will have sorted themselves out and be able to offer it instead.. The problem with the latter option being that I'm planning on being back in aber come sunday :S

Ah well, nothing to do with acquiring technology is ever simple for me.

Regarding being home for the weekend, currently typing this in bed when i should really be doing project and disconnected from any form of internet access due to a guest sleeping in the same room as the gateway machine :) Even a quick wireless scan in the hope of broadband-enabled neighbours getting wirless has proved fruitless.

Anyway, time I did some design then hit the sack.

Oh dear

Shit, meet fan... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3608315.stm

Surely this is a very silly thing for them to be doing?

Website

Ah yes, www.burt.me.uk will be down for the time being until I can find alternative hosting arrangements. Watch this space.

Bah

Yesterday I got up to roughly half way through the write up, however, today I just don't seem to have the motivation. I think it's because the sun is out again, and earlier giving a friend a lift down the hill I really noticed that by rights I should be outside and not stuck in my cell doing work :)

Things are starting to draw to a close now, projects are starting to look something like finished, people are starting to look at jobs, masters courses etc for next year. Personally, I still don't know what I'm going to do do, it really is totally up to me I guess.. however, to get some options open I'm in communcations with a few different people about applying to do the Information Security MSc at royal holloway, which would certainly be in the subject area I want to work, and would be a good academic foundation.

But anyway, I guess I'm procrastinating, If only I had typed so much into my disseration in the last 10 minutes :)

Lovely Day

At last it feels like summer is returning to aber, spent this morning finishing off an outline dissertation to hand to my supervisor, however I didn't really get as much done as i wanted to.

Spent this afternoon sat on the grass outside the library using the wireless access point, so thanks to these guys i can acutally do some useful work while away from my computer enjoying the nice weather.

Thursday

Well, today was, as the blog title, and Indeed the date below will confirm, Thursday. Now I think It was Lowey who first said that Thursdays always seem to be crap, and I can honestly say that this year has been no exception... my timetable sucks, as I have a two hour lecture with a one hour gap in the middle, meaning that that's three hours out of my day for just 100 minutes of content, and to be honest, it's quiet possibly the most boring content i've experienced in a while.

Again, motivation is low, but Its aproaching the end of term where there are going to be less distractions, meaning I should get some bloody work done.

I'm trying to look to the future and sort myself out some sort of work or a postgrad option, to be honest I really don't have time to sort this out, but it looks like if i want to go to an open day I really need to sort myself out and make some enquiries.

In other (good) news, this afternoon the AUT council elected to accept the pay offer, and the Industrial action previously mentioned that was causing results not to be released will be coming to an end. My tutor, who happens to be the head of the exam board for the deparment said this afternoon that this means that the examination board that was delayed will in fact be held tommorrow, meaning that the results should be confirmed soon. I'm also reasonably confident that this means that graduation and other dependant events this year will not be affected/delayed... *moot celebration*

Quiet Reflection

Well, It's now 0230, the depressing classical music stream is playing, and I appear to have done next to no useful work today. And shit, I forgot to do my washing like I was going to do also.. Also I've not put that job application in that I was going to either... Hmm.

On the up side, I've had my hair cut and taken a few photos (see yesterday's blog). However, that is by no stretch of the imagination the 2000 words of dissertation I wanted to have written by today, as my supervisor needs some sort of draft by next tuesday at the latest to mark I really need to get my skates on...

I'd be alright if I didn't have to live and do this degree at the same time... I think I need a nice french maid/slave type to do all the chores for me and rub my back while I code/document... I'll get my coat....

Aber Sunsets

On the way back from my lecture, once again, the Aber coastline produced a wonderful sunset, unfortunately, I wasn't carrying my camera. So I went home, grabbed it and went back to the main road which looks down onto the bay. Unfortunately I missed the best of it, but I quite enjoyed producing another few nice images.


Larger resolution available on request

What I have noticed is that putting content on the web is still a chore, really I could do with some automated one click process that lets me decide what sizes I want the source converted to and then puts the resized versions on the web, and then provides me links to paste etc. Computers are here to automate processess afterall.

One thing I've also promised myself is that after I've finished all my university work I will put my photo album on the web. This will be a huge task, but worth it in the long run I think, in the first and second years I did experiment with gallery on a local network, but the server I had it hosted on was very slow so had problems resizing images.

In other news, not a particularly productive day, and I didn't end up going for a run. Now I have to sort myself out some dinner!

Go Me

I appear to have learned regular expressions, how to do them in Java, and how to create MD5 hashes, all in one evening. Go me.

Light at the end of the tunnel?

Last night as I was formulating plans to make an official complaint about the situation due to the AUT action (mainly as a measure to cover my own arse in case things get difficult legally at a later stage), and just as I was mulling this i came accross this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3524752.stm

This is really encouraging, as its the first time there has been any news at all of progress with regard to the situation, so I'm going to hold off and see how that pans out.

In other news, results wern't too bad... got an average of 68% (marks are unmoderated as the exam boards cannot yet meet due to AUT action)

Progress... At last

I've spent most of this afternoon and evening sorting out the final intricacies of my project, and I reckon I'm more or less back on track, as the documentation is also coming along... Tomorrow I have lots of gaps inbetween lectures so the plan is to sit in the library and type up as much as I can as my tutor will be wanting a draft of some sort to have a look at before the start of the holidays, eep!

Going to do a bit more of what I enjoy tomorrow - Research :) More specifically the history of mobile code usage, and how popular websites have taken on more of it in the last 4 years, which should be a bit of a change from the drudgery of coding java and documentation.

Really got to get back into the habit of keeping fit, I've really just vegetated for the last two weeks :/

Got cooked for for the first time in ages, nice fresh chilli thanks to Nermal. Had a really strange dream last night too, went to bed early (midnight) as I was completely shattered from a few days of not particularly good sleep... Woke up at 2am after dreaming the following things, but I'm not quite sure how they are related:

• Abercrombie and fitch, the US Clothing type store - Random...


• Some random UK shopping centre - possibly related to the Trafford centre in Manchester... from what I remember the Abercrombie was on the top floor of this shopping centre, and for some reason no-one could get there


• The song Poor Leno by Royksopp

Yeah, it's all a bit random, why I woke up with that song in my head (it still is) and wierd thoughts about shopping centres is anybody's guess, I blame the chilli. Come to think of it, I could do with some new t-shirts, and I bloody hate clothes shopping, especially in completely-lacking-shops Aber.

Didn't really do much else, got up early due to 9am practical, and then 1200 lecture on the other campus, sat through two hours of management speak, and then went home. Oh yes, and it was the careers fair (seemed a bit pants this year) got my CV checked out by the CV clinic they were running, I was quite pleased when the only suggestion they could make was that I changed "Page 1" to "Page 1 of 2" at the bottom, clearly I have 31337 CV sk1llz0rz.

Now to fall asleep trying to get my head around a wierd Object Orientation puzzle I have got myself into.

Projects Project

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That sounds strangely aluring at this stage... might even get here quicker than my real degree!

Hmm

Starting to lose patience with the final year project, although in principle it's a great idea, I think i bit off a bit more than i can chew with regard what is possible for a CS390 project!

Found a good site, a bit like the online version of tarrant on TV: www.kontraband.com

Anyway, hoping for a productive day tommorrow, so I'm going to get some kip.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH

Well, it's been an interesting few days, I'm currently again avoiding work, which I've been mostly doing all weekend... This isn't good as my major project is due 7 weeks today, and I think I have a week of solid coding left to do (that's assuming i manage to code 9am-10pm each day, without any procrasitination or further work, then after that I have the acutal write-up to compile, proof read, correct, print and bind! Oh yes, and the other major java assignment which I am yet to fully understand.

Well, anyway, popped to PJM bar tonight for a pint with a couple of coursemates who live in the village, which was good to get out of the house at least once today :/

Oh yes, and last monday I ordered an el-cheapo Laser printer after umming and arring about it for months, realised on friday that it hadn't arrived (1-3) day delivery and sent them (dabs) an email complaining, and got one back this morning saying that it couldn't be sent due to a "picking error" (I.e they couldn't find it) so re-ordered today and it is hopefully going to be with me tommorrow... all being well... then I can print out my DILS assignment.

Right, now to be vaguely productive before bed.

JudgeBurt

Thursday night was Euphoria at the arts centre, with a whole group of DJs and headlining Judge Jules... As a dance fan I really couldn't miss this and I'd been looking forward to it for over a month.

Most people had to finish their professional issues assignment, so the day was a bit mooted with most people having to make an effort to finish that on time ready for a friday morning handin.

Went down town about 8 and met up with a few compsci's for a few pints beforehand, ended up not leaving 'spoons and went straight up to the arts centre. When we got out of the taxi immediately I could hear the music and realised this wasn't a cheese zone :)

The arts centre scrubbed up quite well as a club actually, I was worried beforehand that they would only have the small downstairs bar, but they had set up a bottle bar in the robing area of the great hall.

The music was great, the genera atmosphere of people there to have a good time and enjoy the music was great, and after a few of the cheap vodka redbulls ended up dancing for the best part of four hours.

Highlights of the evening include a glowstick breaking in my mouth, which was unpleasant (which I'm currently awaiting a w@w picturemessage of, orange take their time processing those things) and standing infront of a massive speaker tower and only just gaining my hearing back 20 hours later :o)

Anyway, good venue, good atmosphere and good music all add up to a splendid night, all that remains is to find out when they are back in aber!

arrgh

Hmm, well that was strange....

You know those "recursive dreams" where you dream that you wake up and do your whole morning routine, and thus wake up with a start late for your appointment/whatever?

Well, I've woken up from a doubly recursive dream - *headfuck*

Basically, in the dream, I dreampt my dream morning routine, and woke up at 0910 for my 0900 'dream practical', I then jumped out of bed and attempted to drive to my 'dream practical' which for some reason was in some eastern country, so I had to drive there, park on an industrial estate, where there was one of those annoying outward bound types [who i shall rant about at another time] who took a register and told me that I had 2 minutes to get to the hotel... I then then ran accross the (huge) industrial estate, then over the road to this 'europhotel' they had for this 'practical' [maybe a bit of a flashback to the old days of corporate hospitality there?] where they then bloody served breakfast and luxury coffee after waiting for me, meaning that by the time I arrived (0950) I had to leave for my real world appointment at 1030 in half an hour.

I just woke up, at 0715 with a start, in plenty of time for my "real" practical.

Weird or what?? *sup coffee* *munch pop-tart* - not exactly the luxury breakfast!

Bah

Tonight I'm having another one of those pensive evenings I tend to get every so often, usually when things are looming...
Was quite productive earlier, producing a few new classes for the major project, and solving a few issues, but it occured to me that I've only just really got to the end of the base proxy implementation (which I've since realised I could have used another product and modified it to my needs much more quickly) so i've got a long way to go, aswell as the mountains of documentation, which I shall start in ernest next week regardless of progress with the coding, as that's where all the marks are.

Another thing that's annoying is I have 14 taught hours a week (lectures and practicals), all spread out into one hour sessions, which really affects my productivity as it takes me an hour of coding to really get into it, ok it's nothing compared to a full time job, but having to "context switch" that often just doesn't fit in with the way I work most effectively.

Things seem a bit strange this year, again, people have changed, location has changed (now back in halls) and it's all a bit odd, just talked to the parents, and they've had the house valued and are looking for other houses, luckily not far away from where they are at the moment, but going back home to a different house this summer would probably fuck with my head.

Anwyay, back to the grindstone, got a 9am practical, based mainly on how $lecturer invented $antique_wan_technology. Urrgh.

Note to self

Must do an online photo album - went to strata florida this week and took photos of the church/abbey/whatever ruins all covered in snow

Snow!

Well, starting yesterday evening there has been a downfall of snow in aber, which is quite unusual for a coastal town, there's even snow on the beach!

Been very busy the last week or so, trying to balance work with keeping some sembalance of a social life from time to time. Monday night went to Inn on the Pier, then the snooker club with two coursemates who do my DILS* module, Mark and Mike and my housemate james (he took over their IY job last year), overall was a splendid evening, but having had quite a bit of beer, went to the bay afterwards and i managed to down a few smirnoff ices - which is never a particularly good plan, especially as I'd had a dodgy almost-gone-off stir fry for my dinner. I was fine up until the point where after runnning up the hill i decided to down lots of water to keep myself from being groggy due to dehydration... all i remember is throwing up in the shower :s

Been really trying to be productive this week and ended up not really achieving all that much, one of my deadlines has been extended which is welcome, but the major project is really starting to creep up.


[*DILS = Department for information and library studies, yes I know it's changed it's name, and no, I don't care]

I have five weeks to write an online bank in JavaBeans, that i know nothing about...

IT's all his fault, I'm sure of it.

Will do a catchup blog tommorrow afternoon.

Right, essays on "professional ethics" and "labour law" completed this morning, except a bit of tweaking i need to do to the ethics one.

This afternoon cleaned the bathroom for the inspection tommorrow, and bloody hell did it need it!

Bah,

I've spent all weekend trying to write a bloody essay on ethics of computing, and I've got another employment law one to do next week :(

I get the feeling i'm a bit snowed under :/

Well, it's 3am, and again i'm having trouble sleeping. I think this is due to all the work i've got to do at the moment, which is playing on my mind, but really all the work is only playing on my mind because I'M SO EASILY DISTRACTED and procrastinate most of the day.
Will disable all network access tommorrow afternoon and do some sodding work instead!

Procrastination

To aid in my procrastination, I've decided to list my current assignment workload

• CS380 Professional Issues Assignment 3000 words essay, due 4th March


• CS390 Major project - ongoing implementation and starting on the actual dissertation - Due 26th April *panic*


• CS312 Software Engineering Assignement - Released Friday 6th

Bah. I've got too much do to.

Embarrasment

I just almost died of embarrasment. Returning from my first lecture, I was walking accross the paved area outside the arts centre and the union, just near the top of the steps. At the same time as i was walking accross the top of the steps, a blind lady with a stick was walking up them just out of view, and put her stick accross my path just at the wrong time meaning i didn't see her emerge and I then knocked her stick from her hand. I almost died of embarrasment at this point, and instantly picked up her stick and passed it to her, not quite knowing how to apologise as i just wanted to die on the spot. But she luckily was quite cheery when i apologised and asked if she was alright.

I hate it when awkward things like that happen.

The Calm Before the Storm

Right, that's the end of the celebrations for quite some time as far as I can see things. I've done worryingly less than I intended to on my major project, and I've got to pull my finger out in a major way to get back to where i want to be, but then again at the same time i want to enjoy the limited time that I have remaining at the end of uni.

Good weekend all-in-all, if not a bit random. Final exam went well, managed to fill a 12-page answerbook in the two hours, and strangely for me, stayed to the very end of my exam for the first time ever, and I think I said everything that I wanted to say... Even got a quotation from Bruce Shenier in about the security of public-key cryptography (i.e it's all based on our inability to factorise large primes, and if we figure out how to do that, it's all going to go tits up :o) )

Then began the celebrations, and friday was a very manic, but splendid evening. Went to the union at 3pm for a few drinks, and eventually left there at 7pm, (after watching neighbours and the simpsons there) for some dinner and chance to get myself sorted out... Then went downtown, met up with coursemates and wormed our way through the aber pubs, eventually reaching the pier, which wasn't great, but it eventually got to playing quite a few good hip-hop and dance tracks, which was good, and as we'd all been drinking since 3pm there was quite a bit of dancing going on. Towards about 1am, most people were getting bored, and everyone headed home, however, it occured to me that i'd not yet met up with Big Al for his birthday celebrations, so I phoned him and found out they were still in the bay, so headed over there. Got there at 1.10am, got in free, bought al a drink, then realised that the music was quite good... by the time i'd got there they were playing a good mix of what i can only describe as a mix of "indie anthems" and oldies (for example, they played Blink 182 - all the small things, The buggles - video killed the radio star, and Queen - don't stop me now... Basically all the good stuff that you can dance and sing along to when you're a bit pissed :o) All in all a splendid evening, and I had no hangover when I awoke on saturday, so happy birthday Al, and bye-bye exams until June.

Saturday night, I was going to stay in and do some work, however, after making a curry and having a couple of beers with it, i started working out some good arrangements in iTunes, and this sort of got me in the mood for going out again. So I dragged james up from town, and met with the other guys in the union that had talked about going to Reload (sort of 60s thru 80s party mix night, for the uninitiated) had another good night, didn't really drink all that much, but had a good calorie-busting dance, and really did sleep when I got back... Oh yeah, and there was a large contingent of emergency services out - Leggy police women with squeezy batons, a few nurses with fluffy hats, and at least one lara croft lookalike 8-)

Well, anyway, as I said, lots to do over the coming weeks, and I have a few people I want to see over the next month or so, so I shall have to see how the timetable and dissertation pans out... not looking immensely bad at the moment, but I've yet to sort out practicals... urrgh.

Currently listening to the judge jules saturday night warm-up from radio one, quite good music to do odds and sods to, actually (on the bbc radio on demand service).


Have a few things I want to do at some point in the future also (low-priority work stuff)

• Implement a proper online photo album for my photos


• UPDATE MY WEBSITE as I never finished it in the first place


• Get a tripod and take some good photos of aber by night, and perhaps in the fog or similar

Right, well now to complete the seemingly loads of emails I've written today, then get some kip ready for a long day tommorrow... The plan is to get up early and go for a run, but I am not 100% sure if that will happen yet :)
Sheesh, I've been typing for ages!

Right, that's all that exam bollocks out of the way for a few months at least!

Now, to get totally mullered :o)

hello james.

Right, it's about 0250, and my right eye is hurting inexplicably, that's probably nature's way of telling me to GO TO FUCKING BED.

Basically, the rest of the weekend after the exam was spent being i'll.. unfortunately this meant that i couldn't make Reload on saturday night at the union, which means no 100% reload record for me this semester :(

Yes, as I said, cold. Very badly timed, as my worst day was the day of the exam, but now (sunday night) i'm feeling lots better, and I hope that monday will actually be something resembling a normal day so I can catch up with all those chores that people just love doing, such as buying washing powder.

As I mentioned on saturday, I get the paper for CS352 (information society) in advance on tuesday this week, so i will need to schedule an afternoon or so to look up some relevant topics for discussion on the paper, leaving me quite a lot of free time this week. So i plan to get the following done:

1) do some form of update to my website - it's getting beyond a joke
2) complete the filtering architechture part of my major project

Which seems like a reasonable target...

In other news:
WHOEVER IT FUCKING IS WHO KEEPS USING MY FUCKING KITCHEN KNIFE AND NOT WASHING IT UP AFTERWARDS WILL THEY PLEASE STOP DOING IT, IT'S REALLY PISSING ME OFF.

Urrgh, today was my first exam - "CS351 - the internet, architechture and operation". It didn't go too badly in the end, as the questions were on the areas that I expected it to be, however, I had only had three hours sleep - due to a very well timed cold that decided that it wasn't going to let me get any sleep the night before my exam - grr!

Anwyay, that's half the exams gone, and the next one is information society - and we get that paper in advance \o/

In other news, I've been extremely bored all week, mainly due to revision, oh and this guy didn't help much either (one of the videos we watched in lecture)

This is the sort of thing the internet was invented for (please note this link is not office friendly)

Strange Times

Well, i've just failed to get off to sleep after finally doing the finishing touches of my business plan... I've failed to get it to balance properly, but to be honest, at this stage I am past caring!

Rang home this evening and couldn't get through, so rang dad's mobile. It turns out that a friend of the family has had a heart attack (dad was on the way up to visit him), and more shockingly the father of some schoolfriends has died. I knew of his illness previously, but it's a terrible shame for the world to lose such a kind and generous man.

http://www.cosmicrealms.com/coolnessimages/009732.gif how does that work, then?

Phone Woes

I'm starting to look at current phone offerings, as my contract is due for an upgrade in a couple of months... Quite frankly I'm shocked at some of the things on offer at the moment, every single phone seems to have about 100 superflous features such as Video messaging, Picture messaging, text messaging Voice messaging (rather like a phone, then?)

All I want is a phone with a long battery life, that's small and has bluetooth to integrate with some of the newer and more clever car kits that are about to come out.. come on Nokia, give me what i want :) (like an 8910, but not for £400)

Looking at what some of the other companies are coming out with at the moment, there are a wide array of weird and wacky phones to meet every market:

	For the modern housewife... W@WTXT from your steam iron!!!! (yes, I believe you can also make calls)
	Phone devoid of keypad, you won't be able to W@WTXT or call anyone, but rest assured it looks a bit like kenny off south park.
	Yes, it really does have a mirror for putting on your makeup.
	Another phone lacking a keypad, this time for anal use only.

They clearly put something in the coffee at XelibriSiemens... I really don't know what's coming to this world sometimes :)

What's this place coming to?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3378497.stm First we have people sueing supermakets because their dog injured it's back jumping up for leaflets... and now we have the americans telling us how to queue for the toilet. I'm sorry. this is just getting silly :) Is it the 1st of april or am i missing something?

Just got back from a night back home... Met up with Becky and Rigger in Malvern and showed them the "sights" of Malvern and then had Tea in the winter gardens... all very british!

That evening went up to kiddy and had a very nice indian, again, all very british...

Yeah, I've decided after a lot of thought that it's about time i had a photo on the net (there was a time when I wouldn't have dared)... the only issue now is to actually find one!

Genuninely Greatful

Now, I have to admit, I can sometimes find fixing friends/family/neighbour's computers a bit of a chore, mainly because I generally hate fixing computers, as troubleshooting can be a pain in the arse, and my own PCs usually present enough of a challenge, however this time was completely different :D

A few days ago a neighbour asked if I could pop around and help him with a PC problem, at the time I was just on my way out, so I said I'd go the next day... So on NYE just before I set off back for aber, I popped around as I had a few hours spare before I had to leave. Basically, they had a virus so I downloaded the symantech removal tool, and while it was running, we got chatting and I mentioned that I was on the look out for an old SLR (this guy has recently himself into digital photography) and he said, "oh I've got a few in the cupboard, how many do you want?" So i've come away with a camera I was looking to buy on ebay (Olympus OM10) and a Zenit-E russian camera... Bargain!

I think the OM10 has a sticky solenoid as it sometimes seems to have longer exposure times than it should do, so i've got to investigate.