Grated Cheese

Employed

2006-06-14T06:50:00.000Z

Again another appology for a late update, life has gotten very busy and I havn't had the time to write a big interesting article for you all to read.

Quick update on the work from though, I have been having a great time working in all sorts of places doing things ranging from putting up speakers in a pub to moving staging for drama groups to setting up PA systems.

The only downside is the crazy hot weather we have been having. Don't get me wrong I quite like it, but not when you are inside (and so therefore out of the breeze) its very sweaty and not so much fun.

Anyways, I have to go get ready for work, but for all you audio people, check out http://www.reaper.fm Now I know I have mentioned it before, but it has grown so very much since I last mentioned it and its deffinatly worth checking again. By the time people read this, I expect that version 0.963 will be out which will be even more awesome than before.

Right, I'm off, have a good day everyone

Dave

(short and late post? me? never!)

The working man

2006-06-04T21:54:00.000Z

Hey guys, sorry for the late update, I mean to write this yesterday but just got too busy and then too tired, but I’m here now so no worries.

So this last week has been an interesting one to say the least. Last Sunday I said goodbye for the last time to lots of people at church, I had my first exam and my last cell group meeting on Tuesday, on Wednesday I arranged for Dad to come and help me take me and all my junk back to Dunstable (to happen on the Friday) and on Thursday I handed in my last piece of coursework and did my last ever exam.
However, also on Thursday, I got a job!
Now I have known for quite a while that I would be working back at LUVIC over the summer, but that doesn’t start till mid July, which left me with 6 (ish) weeks to fill with some form of money making.
To cut quite a long and complicated story short, tomorrow (Monday) I start work hiring out PA, helping with installs, engineering live events and doing general gear maintenance just outside of Cambridge.

There isn’t much else to say at the moment except expect a rare midweek update this week about how its going (but no promises)

Content on Demand

2006-05-28T16:55:00.000Z

Recently I discovered podcasts. I mean I knew they existed a long time ago but it only recently that I have started to listen to them.

I was curious as to what kind of content there was to download and listen to so I went for a bit of a search. A lot of the casts that I listened to were nothing overly special, but what struck me was that it is nearly all just radio on demand.

As I started my foray into listening to podcast I was sceptical as I have never been a huge radio listener. Usually because I have such a vast music collection and/or the radio program that I want to listen to is on a station I can’t get or at a time I can’t listen to it.
The things about these podcasts is that I can listen to them when ever I want. Too busy doing work or going out to see a friend? No problem, just listen to it another time. Got half an hour to kill, travelling somewhere? Just listen to a podcast!

We are living in a world of content on demand, where we can get what we want when and how we want it. Our radio has become obsolete as we download our radio programs for listening when it suits us, we use magic boxes such as the TIVO to auto record live television at a high quality, we have our iPods which have our entire music collection stored in a tiny box so we are never without a soundtrack to our lives. Our websites are becoming more tailored to our preferences, news sites filtering articles for just the ones that might interest us. Where is it all going?

I have kind of scared myself writing this, I wonder if I am loosing the ability to watch/hear/read new things outside of my current interests. What have I missed out on though my self-indulgent highly-personalised media intake?

For example I don’t even know what is in the charts at the moment and for all I know there could be some really good music in there that I would really like (I doubt it, but…)

So this week is the start of a new resolve to try to be more explorative in what I listen to and watch and thus broadening my horizons.

Three kinds of bloggers

2006-05-19T23:13:00.000Z

Quite a while ago I read a blog post http://www.kottke.org/remainder/06/04/10803.html by Greg Knauss who had been a guest blogger for two weeks on http://www.kottke.org
Around the same time several people had written their own articles on why and how we blog but this was the most concise.

“The theory: There are two kinds of bloggers, referential and experiential. Kottke is one. I, now two weeks too late in realizing this, am another.

The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this. Referential bloggers are reporters, delivering pointers to and snippets of information, insight or entertainment happening out there, on the Intraweb. They can, and do, add their own information, insight and entertainment to the links they unearth -- extrapolations, juxtapositions, even lengthy and personal anecdotes -- but the outward direction of their focus remains their distinguishing feature.

The experiential blogger is inwardly directed, drawing entries from personal experience and opinion: How about this. They are storytellers (and/or bores), drawing whatever they have to offer from their own perspective. They can, and do, add links to supporting or explanatory information, even unique and undercited external sources. But their motivation, their impetus, comes from a desire to supply narrative, not reference it.

There's nothing here to imply that one type of blogger is better than the other. There are literally thousands -- OK, hundreds... OK, at least a dozen -- of both kinds that are valuable additions to the on-going conversation/food-fight/furry-cuddle that is the Internet. My point is that Jason Kottke is a very, very good referential blogger and I am a very, very bad one.”

While I very much agree with the above comments, I put it to you that there is a 3rd type of blogger, the newscast blogger. “Just so you know.” They are the people who have started up a blog without anything to blog about and so just inform people about their lives. Their posts are few and far between, often forgetting to post anything for months on end before doing a massive blog dump. Their friends check it occasionally to find out what is happening in the bloggers life. Very quickly these blogs get checked only by those who use feed burners and so check about a billion sites with one click. Usually the newscast blogger has referential and experiential blogger traits but primarily they tell the world what is happening to them one huge monthly blog dump at a time.

Self-reflection time: Looking back through my archives, I would say that I am the newscaster type, and when I can be bothered a referential blogger. Recently most of my posts are either B.dumps or posts linking to websites, programs or articles that I find and want to share. (For example this post!)

The problem is that most of my referential posts are quite boring to practically everyone else even if I find them really interesting. This then causes people to stop reading my boring and geeky post, and then they never see all the newscast posts.

In my opinion, the most interesting blogs are the experiential ones and I would like to be one myself. Its just my writing skills are a bit poor at the best of times (just ask my mum) which makes it a little tough. I will however try to blog a bit more regularly.

What kind of blogger are you?

Long update

2006-05-13T19:24:00.000Z

Well, its been quite busy lately and haven’t really had the time to stop and think about having a good old blog so my apologies to Simon who is probably the only one who checks here regularly.

Lets wind back to Spring Harvest. I spent 10 days up in Skeggy pointing video cameras for the 11-14s age group. It was great fun, got to play with some very nice gear, met some famous (in Christian circles) people and met several important (well for me anyway) people. More on this later.
Anyway I got back from Spring Harvest and pretty much came straight back to Cambridge.

I got back with two whole weeks to finish off my dissertation and get it all handed in, so for two final weeks, that was pretty much all I have been doing. Hence no time to think about anything else. My apologies go out to all my housemates who have put up with me and my moaning these last two weeks.

Not long now before there is nothing else to do, lectures till the 21st May and then 2 exams with the last one on the 1st June.

Now going back to the important people I met at Spring Harvest. It was all decided way back before Easter now, but I needed to make it all official and sort several bits and pieces out before I told the world on here, but finally all (well most) can be revealed.

6 years ago I had been playing guitar for about a year and had a career goal to become a full time worship leader. It was gonna be sweet! I was asking people how they managed it and one guy (Alan Rose current Phatfish guitarist of the time) suggested that I went to Nexus Trust (http://www.nexustrust.co.uk/) . (yeah the college Joely Joel of http://joelyjoel.blogspot.com/ went to)
Sadly that never took off, I spent more time at the back of the concert hall than at the front and I found that I preferred it there. I was never going to end up being the big name worship leader at the next big Christian festival.
I went to college, took up Music Tech in my second year and then went on to uni to do more of the same.
Part way though my second year, while studying Optimal Phase Binning, I was considering a Masters. Good job the lecturer I wanted to study under left else that’s what I would be doing next.
Instead, as of September, I will be studying again, in Coventry, at Nexus, on their Live Sound Engineering course!

BANG! Now hands up all those who saw this one coming?
Anyone? Nope not me either.

There is a long story explaining it all but somehow I want to bring this story back to the important people I mentioned twice now.
They were all people from my future. Now before you get all excited and think that time travel has been invented, let me explain. The Big Top band on the third week of Skeggy and the live sound engineer in the Big Top were all lecturers from Nexus!
It was very strange to see them and know that soon they would be my teachers. What a long post just to mention something that was weird and sounded much cooler in my head but looks pretty dumb on paper/screen.

So, what is everyone else doing next?

I'm going away

2006-04-07T22:07:00.000Z

Thats pretty much all there is to this post. I am heading up to Skegness for 10 days as of early tomorrow morning and so there is almost no chance of any more posts till I get back. I promise I will try to put some interesting news then.

I had been doing so well and then it all started to go down hill again. 6 Posts in Feb, 4 in March and now only 1 so far in April. I'm so very sorry, I promise exciting times to come.

I must go to bed, I need to try to get up in the morning!!

Dave

Actual news post here! (part 2)

2006-03-27T20:51:00.000Z

Urrrggggghhhhh! How does it happen? You write a news post and then WAM! its like 2 weeks later. Despite this terrible ordeal is seem to be still alive, just.

All I can really remember is that I am 3 of 6 projects later which is good. (that is dependant on my lecturers saying that my work is good enough, we hope to find that out tomorrow) My desktop PC is currently making backups of all my work so that I don't loose it all and then break down and cry.

*think think think, this is meant to be a news post*

ooo I'm going to Sping Harvest, Skegness, 8th to the 18th. Video in the 11-14 tent. Should be fun. Anyone able to help get me there? or get back?

(61% of backup complete)

Not other news that I can think of at the moment but more will come eventually I'm sure.

g.night all

Actual news post here! (part 1)

2006-03-15T16:35:00.000Z

Part 1 of an unknown number of parts.

Ok of all the news posts this is going to be the most boring, the longest and probably has the most "geek" factor.

I'm going down with a cold. How rubbish. Every time I got a cold am supprised at just how much snot comes out of your nose! I'm not all that good at my biology n all that, but really? If my body spent more time trying to get better instead of making bogies we would never get colds.

Hmm boring bits first I think, university life and work.

My University course has been progressivly getting worse as the years have gone by, as some may have gathered already. I agree with the idea that in your final year you have to do more "independant learning" but when your lectures just say "Go do a project." with no constraints or guide lines, its pushing it a bit. So I am have made up and now am working on 6 projects all at once. An interesting review of some of the DSP effects in Adobe Audition 2, which Adobe have made look very shiny. A DVD which has a 5.1 surround sound music track on it. A 2000 word report on Music Recommendation systems such as Last.fm/AudioScrobbler. An 8000 word (or equivalent with practical work) report on NINJAM, an online music collaboration project (including a poster). Another 8000 word (or euquivalent) on how to set up a home server for streaming music and finally a Flash presentation on a CD-ROM.

But once I have done all of that (and I am actually probably close to half way through now) and done 2 whole exams I have finished university!! Woooooooo! When you put it in that perspective, I deserve some time off from doing any work I think.

Shiny things I have seen lately

Its not overly a new thing (ie has been around since just before Christmas) but I found a new audio editing application that is for all you people who are currently using Audacity (you poor poor people) Reaper http://www.cockos.com/reaper/ is a fast developing and currently free multi-tracking piece of software. Not much more to say there, but even if you use something like Cubase or Logic, check it out. Its amazingly good for a 1mb download.

I don't watch a huge ammount of telly these days, despite having access to cable because there isn't really much worth watching. However, there are 3 programs that I am currently keeping tabs on. Lost (was a bit late on the uptake for that one and season 1 was just finishing on UK telly when I started) 24, now just over halfway though Day 5, its good to see that it has improved after the dip in Day 4. Lastly there is the new Prison Break, like 24 its less of a soap and more of a film in lots of parts. Its on Chanel 5 (never thought i would recommend a program on that station!) on Mondays at 10pm. Check it out, its highly addictive.

Finally and most exciting of all

I'm going to Finland! Yup, Dave is actually going to be leaving the country! A good friend of mine, Dave Skipper is getting married over there so I am getting me a passport and will be jetting over to Finland for a nice weekend! I can't wait!

Enough news for now. Tune in for more soon (maybe)

Actual news post to follow

2006-03-07T23:53:00.000Z

The phrase "Making sandwiches" is not a rude euphamism and shouldn't be laughed at. Apparently.

So its been a while since I last informed the world of my comings and goings and to be honest there isn't much to tell, yet. There are many things, changes and bits of news in the pipeline that I want to share with you all, yet I need to confirm them all first. To whet your appeties there is going to be news on what I am doing at the moment (about my coursework and some silly projects I am planning) news on what I am doing and where I am going in the summer AND (big huge drumroll) what I am doing next September!!!

To be honest, by the time most of you read it on here you will already know, just it will make it offically public knowledge.

Looking at it, this post is a bit rubbish really. No real bits of information, no interesting links to follow, just a tantalizing hint that one day I might actually bring something of worth to the table.

I really can't think of anything else to say so its good night from me. La Fin.

Blogging from Flock

2006-02-25T12:05:00.000Z

So here we are using yet another web browser, Flock http://www.flock.com which is trying to offer all the standard needs of the average web user.

It is based on the open source Mozilla code base so it feels very similar to Firefox yet has some interesting features. It Including blogging facilities (as demonstrated by this post) photo uploading (thanks to Flickr) and map searching (from Yahoo but only covers the US)

Flock has been around for a while but I avoided it before because its was in early development stages. It still is in developer preview and is at version 0.5 but its pretty good and possibly will become my browser of choice over firefox when it hits v 1.0 and in public release.

I don't recommend you ditch your current browser for this (unless you are silly enough to still be a regular IE user) but do keep an eye open for it as I can see this becoming big

Dave out for now

technorati tags: Flock, Blogging, Experimental

What? you read comics? online?

2006-02-24T19:00:00.000Z

Yeah, so I read comics online and I think they are great. (well some of them)
For example check out Questionable Content Its updated every day Monday to Friday and is probably my favorite out of all the ones I have found so far.
obviously I would recommend you read from the start of the archives (Note: if you look at comic #1 you will see that Jephs art has improved a lot since then) but if you don't want to do that (though you should to really understand the significance of todays comic) start about here (its about eight comics ago)

Well, go get addicted
oh and let me know of any good sites

Out for now

Time Wasting

2006-02-23T12:22:00.000Z

I can't believe that I got up today and Cycled though snow to get to my 9am lecture!

There was so many wrong, incorrect or "well duh!" statements with my lecture today that I thought you might like to hear some of them. (and it feels good to rant about it)

The Microsoft Media Player (he meant Windows Media Player http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.mspx) comes installed with every copy of Windows XP (he meant if you don't live in Europe... Breaking news in 2001 to 2005 from the EU) and is currently at version 9.5 (he meant 10 but he was only half a version out...) plays most media with the right codecs installed but currently cannot play DVDs (unless you have the right codecs installed)
"DVD-ROM, an alternative to the CD-ROM with greater storage capacity than a CD-ROM" Well done, you have correctly informed a class of 3rd year science and technology degree students about the existence of DVDs.
"The V stands for Versatile, which is useful because it is versatile."
Apparently some DVD burners are starting to have the ability to burn dual-layer discs, but not many. (He meant here that it was becoming a standard feature when I bought my laptop 14 months ago and that you would be doing will to find a DVD burner that couldn't do it in the shops today)
Apparently in 4 years everyone will be using BlueRay or HD-DVD technology and will have thrown away all their CDs and DVDs. Apparently. (I acknowledge that I, Dave, could be wrong about this point, but really?)
USB! (now he started to get interesting)
"The first version of USB had a very low data rate and was hopelessly ineffective - design cock-up" But it was still better than parallel and serial for the majority of users, and has been improved by USB 2.
In my notes here I have three lovely photos of some USB connectors, just in case I had never seen one before.
A useful bit of information, that one day you might need to know is that on the USB connector pin 1 is the power line, 2 and 3 are "signal" and 4 is ground.
"There are occasions when it's necessary to increase the number of physical USB connectors on a PC- use a hub"
"Modern PCs only have up to 2 USB connectors so if you add a 4 port hub you increase the number of ports by 3."
You'd think that he would end his torture here but no, he plowed right on into "Memory Cards"
Which to summarize his 3 sides of A4 lecture notes,
Memory cards come in 5 types,

xD - used by Fuji and the max size is " 128Mbyte" (he means 1Gb)
Memory Stick - made by Sony, available in 128Mb and 256Mb sizes (he means up to 4Gb)
Multi Media Card - available in 128, 256 and 512Mb sizes (or 2Gb)
Smart Media Memory - He actually gets it correct here, I can't find anything bigger than a 128Mb card for sale.
sD Card - Stands for Secure Digital and has a little write-protect switch, and available in up to 1Gb in size (or 4Gb)

(A quick thank you here to Flash Memory Store for providing me with latest card sizes)

All of the above specify many thousands of insertion cycles and can be used in digital cameras, digital camcorders, handheld PCs, digital audio players, smart phones, electronic toys, PDAs, pagers and sD even can be used in Rolands KN7000 keyboard.

This all took an hour to get through. And at the end he announced that this was just a brief introduction to memory cards, I would hate to see him go on at length about it.

Grrrrr. I think I might not be getting up on Thursday mornings any more.

On a slightly more humorous note, at the bottom of both sides of one of the biggest hills (read bridges) there is an advertisement for electric bicycles. Clever strategic adverting.
Lunch time

See ya

Procrastination

2006-02-22T19:35:00.000Z

"Procrastination is the deferment or putting-off of an action or task, usually by focusing on some other distraction (compare temporisation). It is Latin for "foremorrowing," or making some such of tomorrow. "
Link into the wikipedia is todays related link, its very tempting to add at the bottom of the wiki page "I was procrastinating as I wrote this..."

So, things I HAVE achieved today, registered a domain name http://www.dh291.co.uk (all the suitable Heath and Dave ones were already taken grrrr) Downloaded Ubuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/ a linux distribution (and installed it on my spare machine) nipped over to Maplins to buy a 20 pin to 24 pin power adapter to fix my main machine, done some "house keeping" of all my files on my PC - specifically rounding up all my uni work from the last 2 and 1/2 years and removing old out of date copies, had bacon sandwiches for lunch and soup for tea/dinner/evening grub whatever you want to call it and have managed to avoid all work that might actually be called university work.

I had set a goal this week to complete one piece of coursework and do a good section on another, however I am currently not even close to that. Might pull a late one tonight, I don't need to be awake for my 9am lecture, its all about "Multimedia Platforms" (pages 5 to 10 of the ~~sermon notes~~ Module Guide) covering Windows Media Player, M-PEG2, DVDs and USB. Oo I am so looking forward to it.

Well on that note, I think I shall go and try to start on some work
Toodle-oo

Uninspired

2006-02-21T10:09:00.000Z

So I have been feeling a bit uninspired lately to put anything on here. It has probably meant that everyone has given up hope that I would ever put any news on here at all.
Truth of the matter is that I don't have a lot of news to tell. I gained a nephew, Joel, at the very end of Jan (but that isn't really my news, its my brothers. See http://www.wordandspirit.co.uk for pictures)
I have got a nice big pile of projects to be getting on with. Essays on the FX in Adobe Audition, a guide on setting up a home web server, a flash presentation, an essay on NINJAM and its development and finally getting back to the related link at the top an essay on Last.fm

Last.fm is a social music network (we getting a lot of social networks online...) Basically you install a plugin for your music player of choice (iTunes for me then) and get playing music. The plug-in lets a database know what music you are listening to and then based on what other users listen to recommends songs, albums and artists to you.
Its full of interesting stats and facts, showing graphs and charts of all users, groups of people or individual users. Hence the link above which will show you the last 10 songs I played, my current most played artists and most played songs.

The data here is currently a bit wonky as since getting the plug in I haven't listened to all my music and I have been listening to the new Dramagods album, Love. Nuno Bettencourt fan or Population 1 fan (though possibly the same thing) you will like Dramagods. Its a Japan-Only release which is annoying but you can get it imported via Ebay (HMV possibly could get it for you if you really wanted)
alternatively check out http://www.youtube.com for 2 of their music videos.

Well I was planning on getting up at 10 today and now that its 10:30 I probably should.

As a closing note, if there is anything people would actually like to read about on here, please let me know. I am always looking for inspiration.

Dave out

Oh! yeah. Its 2006.

2006-01-09T21:21:00.000Z

Well its 2006.
Already.
Stacks of resolutions. (insert 800*600 joke here)
Some already broken. (oh well)
Some that we will have to wait an see about.
Some big changes coming up this year. Example: I hope to graduate, which means finding a job of sorts or something else to fill my time with. Maybe full time blogging. Anyone want to sponsor me for a year? You give me money, I sit here and blog for your pleasure. No? Oh well.

Well everyone seems to be doing these "7 things..." lists so I thought I would steal some and edit them. Note: There may not be exactly 7 in each catagory, I know. Deal with it.

Things I did last year:
I started this blog.
Survived a second academic year of uni.
Spent too much money.
Celebrated Winter-een-mas. (more notes on that in a few weeks)
Started buying DVDs. (see films section further down)

Things I didn't do last year:
Kill anyone.
Die.
Learn to drive.
Manage to read all the New Testament.
Date the girl for me.
Blog as often as I wanted to.
Buy all the music I wanted to

Favourite CDs I bought last year:
Delirious – World Service
Depeche Mode – Playing the Angel
John Petrucci – An Evening With John Petrucci & Jordan Rudess
John Petrucci – Suspended Animation
Switchfoot – Nothing Is Sound
Vertical Horizon – Go

Favourite Films/DVDs of last year: (and pretty much ever)
Shawn of the Dead
Pulp Fiction
Kill Bill Vols 1 and 2
Reservoir Dogs
Donnie Darko
Ross Noble – Unrealtime

Books I read last year: (not a complete list)
The Bible (obviously)
Catch-22 (twice)
i-Robot
1984
Shock of Your Life – Adrian Holloway
AfterShock - Adrian Holloway

Things to do this year:
Graduate.
Finish learning to drive.
Get a real job.
Blog more often. (and update the design a bit)
Date the girl for me.
Manage to read all the New Testament.
Celebrate Winter-een-mas.
Save money
Spend all the money I save.
Get me a piano and learn to play it.
Read lots more books. Including my new Bible Speaks Today books on Acts and Romans.

Well I best be off, Dad has got me soldering cables for him and it has to be done by Wednesday when I head off Cambridge for my exams.

I promise that when I am back in Cambridge I will start work on the re-design, as I have a few ideas up my sleve.

Dave out for now.

Who I am in Christ (and a general update)

2005-12-04T22:28:00.000Z

In Christ I am born again. 100% FACT See John 3 for more info. (Link goes to BibleGateway.com)

So, whats that all about eh? And where has Dave been for the last 3 months pretty much? What has he been doing with his life?

Well, weekend ending today I was on the church student weekend with lots of folks from Cambridge Uni. It was, as always ace, yet this year was slightly different. While I didn't have an agenda, I did, for the first time, go expecting God to do something right from day 1. In the past I have had my mind set on far to many other things, and had to be "warmed up" to the idea that God was gonna speak to me.
This year however God had started doing stuff in the week leading up to the weekend, making me more and more aware of things in my life that I needed to address and things in that I wanted him to do.
Ooh boy did He speak or what! Once again God blows me away with just how mysteriously He works. I would be sitting in a meeting and there would be a time for praying and I would be writing in a little notebook I carry round (My mum would be proud, its the most actually writing I do these days, but she would hate how messy it is) things that God was saying to me, or offering things up to Him, and suddenly someone up the front would start talking about exactly what I had written down but even more "weird" I would then go up for prayer and some guys would come to pray for me and it was like they were reading my notebook and praying it for me too! It was so amazing. I was shown just how much God loves me. (Will give you a clue, its lots more than lots)

Anyway I have come away from that weekend massively changed, a new view on life, love and happiness. (and the Holy Ghost) One of the other things I got from the weekend was a really handy list of some of the things we are and have in Christ. I plan to list some of them and some links to verses that show it in the Bible. Just so you know whats going on.

In other news now,
Its week 11 of 12! Nooooo, I have so much more work to do and I really should be catching up on sleep, but no I am on here writting in my "memoires" oh well

Ohh yeah, the other week 3 guys and a girl all got baptised at my home church which was fantastic. Some of them I have watched grow up (as I know thier older brothers) so it was extra cool in many ways. That weekend my bro, his wife and kids, my sister and her husband and I were all at my parents house which was really cool as we havn't had a huge get together for ages. Was really good.

I have ditched open office almost completely, the PowerPoint in it isn't very good, and of all the packages available PowerPoint was the one I needed to work the best. So I ditched it completely (cause I didn't want the hassle of running two office suites at the same time)

Grr, my mind has broken now. I have lost all ability to think what else has happened/is happening/going to happen that I want to tell you all about (yes thats both of you) more tomorrow maybe (must stop making promises about what else I am going to be doing tomorrow)
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

OOo

2005-10-23T20:33:00.000Z

Just a short post really, stating that Open Office 2 is now available, with more save as options, so I have started using it instead of MS Office 2k3
Will let you all know how I get on.

Click the related link for easy access

How many ways can you spend all your money?

2005-10-12T20:43:00.000Z

So the other day, my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday which really is quite a simple question, yet so very hard to answer.

There are so many ways that I currently want to spend all my money it hurts.

Things such as a Apple Powerbook, or a Mini or both
An iPod, one of the new 30Gb Video ones with the bigger screens, in Black.
A compact digital camera plus a huge memory card.
A piano, something I will touch on later.
A desktop PC upgrade, its gonna need to be a big one, I want to play Quake 4 and F.E.A.R.
A second TFT, matching my current one.
Millions of DVDs, CDs and Books (including lots of cult, classic and just plain bizarre ones)

Currently of the above list, I think I want the piano the most, which is kind of strange really.
When I was younger, my parents made me have piano lessons, which meant I had to practice, had to learn these stupid tunes that I didn't care for and learn all this weird Latin theory stuff.
So as soon as they let me, I quit. Now I didn't really play the piano again for quite a long time, mostly because I couldn't stand the sight of it. But over the last 2-3 years, it has been something I have kind of turned back to, not playing anything overly properly or accurately, just putting on the headphones and bashing keys.
Making up tunes, "discovering" chords and sequences, working out songs by ear, its all quite theraputic really, similar to how/why I play the guitar. Not forced to do it, don't have to practice for anyone, I can play what I want to play and generally have fun with it.
Now being at uni means that I have problems getting all my junk in my room, and this semester I didn't bring back any guitars as I didn't think I would have room. I was pretty much right, but I think it possibly would have been a good idea to have had them anyway as I miss it.
HOLD UP! WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH PIANOS??
Sorry, got all a bit nostalgic (thats probably the wrong word but I can't think of the right one)
What I also miss is having open access to a piano at nearly anytime that I wanted to. Now being at a slightly less academic and more practical university (NOTE: now called Anglia Ruskin University) we have a HUGE music department, which just got itself a whole new block just for the practice rooms, with lots of nice shiny upright pianos. This is good news you would think, but NOOOOOO, only music students have access to said rooms, and no-one else is allowed in. HOW MUCH DOES THAT STINK!!!!
So anyway, I was looking into getting a piano for myself, but they are a bit expensive really. £300 upwards for an 88 weighted keys jobbie. (Picky I know, but I don't like the cheap non-weighted keyboards from argos) But then I had a brainwave of an idea.
Why not get a big midi controller, a la this, and use my PC to provide the piano sound. They are about half the price! Fantastic. They say "semi-weighted keys" and I am gonna go into town tomorrow to try to find out if there is any playing difference between that and fully weighted keys.
There are very few drawbacks to this senario, one of which (and probably the biggest) is that I would have to have a PC on and something like a VST host (see related link for a real nifty standalone one) in order to play, but considering my PC is on pretty much all the time I don't see that as too much of a problem. The other is if ever I want to go and play a gig or something, I would have to take loads of extra stuff, but this isn't a concern really as I am not good enough for that.

*plonk* I have just completely lost my train of thought. *re-reads* Yeah, I want a piano but can't afford to spend the money. Thats about all there is to that point really.

On a quick closing note, my mate Joe Benn has just joined in the blogging society that is, and you can read is few words here.

G.night all

Monday Week 1 of 12, Semester 5 of 6

2005-09-26T19:23:00.000Z

Yes, I'm back. Oh yes I am.
After a long summer of working hard, no university related work mind, just money earning work, I'm back.

*has a quick look at what I have said previously*
*pop!* New font.
Ok so what have I done since I was last on here...not a lot. Moved into my newly painted room in Cambs, sorted out my uni timetable (which is pretty good actually), got ill (going to the docs on Thursday) seem to have broken the install of windows on my laptop :(
This is bad because I can't seem to be able to get back in to repair it and have had to format in order to use it, it also means that I have then used up one of my "authorisations" of my iTunes accounts.

I may also have lost some files on there, but hopfully I didn't have anything important on there (I doubt it, I usually have two copies of stuff)

*uggg* Drivers galore!! I wish Dell would provide a single download bundle with all the necesary drivers.

ANYWAY, I was, before the whole laptop issue came up, having a good (ish) day. Got up for my 9am lecture, which I don't actually mind because it is one of my lecturers that will actually turn up himself and teach us things that are useful/interesting. Then went into town, got me a new umbrella (I have this nack for loosing them) some work folders for this year, and then home for lunch. My afternoon lecture sucked a bit more though, really boring one about "Digital Technology for Music" which is really vague. Oh well.

Watched the first episode of Space Series 2 today! Hurrar! One of my house mates borrowed it from a co-orker which is great.

*several hours later* So Windows is nearly beaten into a working form at last. Took long enough.

This semester I will be doing 20 credits of "choose-your-own-module" which shall be fun. I plan to learn how to set up an "open-source" server which has streamable content on it, or something.
Also I am gonna start work on a database which can be used for searching this server and call it a final year project. So thats all for now, I really need to concentrate now on my laptop and finish getting it ready for this coming term.
*Reaches for pirate discs*
PS its 23:07 now!

The last month

2005-08-09T17:27:00.000Z

Appologies to all for a lack of being on here for the last month but I think it has been a busy month for a lot of people.

For me the last few weeks have contained 2 weddings, a stag weekend, shifting several hundred computer monitors (mostly 15" CRT ones too) moving several hundred desktop PCs, taking to cycling 12 miles Mondays to Fridays, learning to drive, spending lots of (read that as too much) money, re-organising my music collection into iTunes better, the painting of my new Cambridge bedroom, not enough sleep and the start of the upload of my old photos up onto Flickr.
I know I should have started straight after I broke my digital camera and had the spare upload bandwidth, but I didn't. So there.

Anyway there are now piccies of me up, and slowly pics from the last 2 years or so.

Enjoy
Dave out

Who wants free spam?

2005-07-14T18:26:00.000Z

Click me!
And then come back and read this post.
Now normally I don't do these as I think they are just a load of junk. However, this is the first one I have seen for people in the UK.
There are some simple instructions.
Use the refer link in this post
Sign up with an email adress (i can provide you with a gmail account if you don't already have 50 invites)
"Complete" one of the offers
--to do this sign up for 5 days to the Screen Select which is at the bottom of the list, its a free 14 day trial so it will not cost you anything, just remeber to cancel once ipodshufflegiveaway have confirmed your subscription
Sent out your referal link to other people and get them to sign up
anyway, click here and get started

More later when I can be bothered

PS I will buy beer for all who sign up and help me get on

Rain rain rain

2005-06-28T21:37:00.000Z

Ho hum, its raining quite heavy round here at the moment and there is a nice huge thunderstorm that has been going on for ages!

Anyway, enough about the weather, its time for "Programs and/or websites that Dave thinks are great"

Website one: So just how good is Dave at Counter Strike Source?? Well its good for a laugh anyway.

Program one: Like Risk? Love taking over the world? Got a thing for killing everyone else? me neither! However, Lux is a very good little port of Risk to the computer without taking over your whole PC. Available from Sillysoft here.

Website two: http://www.flickr.com Quality photo/image hosting with upload limits rather than storage limits

Program two: Do you have a long blog roll? Read hundreds of online comics every day? Like to get the breaking news as it happens? Then a news feeder/feed burner/RSS reader/whatever you want to call them, is what you need. Sharpreader is just fantastic and I use it to keep taps on over 30 sites all day every day. Get it. (As a small note, I have been working on some batch files which allow you to run Sharpreader off a memory stick, which is useful if you use more than one pc but want to take your feeds with you simpily. More on those when they are finished I think.)

Program three!!! Whoah this list is getting long. This one goes out to all those who are too poor to own a Mac with Tiger installed. Konfabulator. Its effectivly a Dashboard for Windows (and OS X actually) Again, check out the website and you will see what its all about. But its so cool and very handy. All that needs to be done is to create a Blogger widget and I will be a jolly happy bunny.

Well I think thats all for now.

See you guys later
Dave

431

2005-06-27T10:37:00.000Z

431 searches in Google in the last 2 months. Thanks to the new(ish) Google accounts, you can get Google to remeber all you searches and count them. While I currently can't think of a use for this feature, its still funny so there you go.

As an aside, this figure should actually be higher but I have only just got round to setting my work PC to be logged into my account.

Well I hope you enjoyed that little foray into silly facts.

Back to sitting on the helpdesk hoping that the phone doesn't ring for another hour and 20 mins

Dave

Hmm

2005-06-16T09:07:00.000Z

Ok, so I didn't manage to get Whoppix to work properly on my laptop yet, though I possibly need to pass some commands at boot for it to work. Will have to look into that.

Its been a bit of a quiet day so far in the office, so I am currently fiddling around with the styles and tags for this site. At the same time, I am happily listening to the Oasis album (which, as I have mentioned before, is very good) and am about to start an install of Windows XP within Virtual PC 2004.
This may seem like a crazy idea, as I am running Windows XP normally anyway, but what I am going to do is create a clean install of XP with all updates and small useful apps like Winar. Once I have done that, I will back that up to CD (or possibly a DVD) and then procede to use it as a test intstall, because if I break it, get it full of viruses or install spyware or something, I can just delete the virtual machine file and copy a fresh one off my CD/DVD. I already have a Windows 98 machine which I sometimes use to play old games on.

Anyway, I'm gonna have to go and actually do some work now.
More later

An experiment...

2005-06-13T13:41:00.000Z

Kind of a geeky post here, so none computery types, you can stop reading here if you want.

Linux: (live on CD)
Last summer I was introduced to Knoppix. A distro of linux which you could boot and run off CD. It was fun to play with, but was a but sketchy running on my desktop.
Recently I was having a peak as some of the newer variants which deal with network security such as the Auditor
However, this flavour and most others don't support the Intel Centrino wireless card in my Dell :( Not discouraged I continued my quest. Then this article appeared. "Cracking WEP in 10 minutes"
Its quite worrying really, watching it done. I decided to have a look at Whoppix (the distro used in the video)
Recently they released 2.7.1 minor release which as it states on their home page
"fixes several issues, such as support for Centrino wifi 2100 and 2200 drivers..."

That includes me!! So guess who is using the college 10Mb connection to suck down the ISO and is going to be having a play tonight!!

Thats all for now
Dave

Honest Music

2005-06-12T21:11:00.000Z

I don't seem to have blogged about this yet so here goes.
About a year and a half ago I decided that I should make my music collection legal, ie having paid for it, was given it or legally downloaded it for free, and I deleted near 10 Gb of an accumulated collection.
Sad times, I missed a lot of the music that I had amassed because obviously some if it was awesome. Anyway skip forward to last week, digging around in my piles of old computer bits for some spare hard drives and what do I find? My old hard drive, one which I was using before I deleted most of my music but then upgraded to a newer drive, copied all my music across and neglected to delete. Woo! Talk about a trip down memory lane. Approx 3,000 songs, over 250 hours of music, some epic tunes, some silly clips from the Simpsons, Budweiser adverts and some stuff that I can't even remember where or why I have it.
Now, while before I would have just deleted it all again, I had a better idea. Buy it all!

Okay, you can breath again now, I'm not actually going to buy it all, as some if it is either not available on CD (live bootlegs) or was free anyway (film clips) or I have since bought it anyway, but I am going to go though it all (a lot of it will be fairly easy as I was quite organised) and decide on if I if I enjoyed my (slightly over) "30 day trial" of the tracks I have, then search iTunes (and others) and start to purchase the songs. I am also going though making a list of just artists to "explore" and albums to check out. Hopefully this way, my music collection will again grow and become a fuller, and better collection and have my old cool music too.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this post makes complete sense because I have been going though the music even as I type, so every 3 mins or so I have to stop and edit my lists.

Right well I need to stop here so that I can get ready for bed as I need to start getting to bed earlier (ie like 11pm not 1am)

Dave out

PS Coldplay “X&Y” and Oasis “Don’t believe the truth” are two must buy albums

Crazy code

2005-06-10T12:29:00.000Z

Hey guys, just a quick message to prove that I do update here every so often.
Very quickly before I have to dash off to fix some printer or other, check out the related link and some of the links surrounding it. Some very interesting material about web code. Now anyone who has looked at the source for this site will see that I went div mad. Oh well, I plan to go though and clear up a bit eventually, I'm just a bit busy at the moment.
Ohh and I am probably going to be buying some hosting soon in prep for next year, so expect weird and wonderful things.

Dave out

Its finished

2005-05-30T21:01:00.000Z

Check out the new style! (press ctrl+F5 if you can't see them yet)

Let me know what you think, also if you think its displaying incorrectly/badly or your seeing somthing you think you shouldn't, take a screen shot and email it to me. Cheers

Enjoy while I go off to study the second-order partial differential equation governing wave propagation in one-dimention also known as the non-dispersive wave equation...great

Dave

Revision

2005-05-30T16:10:00.000Z

Well then, so its been a few days again but now I have some more news n talky stuff about whats been happening to me. (after all this is all about me anyway)

First off, the other weekend (20th May-ish) me and a few mates went on down to Bournemouth for me mates birthday and to watch the FA Cup final. It was all good, especially the footy score, hehehe.

This last week I have been mostly trying to do revision for my exams which start tomorrow. I have one every day Tuesday to Friday, but once they are done, I have finished for the summer!!

Last Friday my Dads HDD died. In a "nope, I'm not going to read anything anymore, ever" kinda death. So a new HDD was bought, a fresh install and update of most stuff later, everything is ok.
Roll on Saturday morning, hmmm gets stuck booting up. Even in Safe Mode. Stops at a file called mup.sys
The internet said that the file was corrupt and that you had to replace it with a fresh copy, but the computer was being a pain and wouldn't let me in to do the swap. To cut an already long story a bit shorter, I eventually took a little 2Gb HDD and installed XP on it, put the 120Gb corrupt install HDD in that PC, copied the file, plugged everything back in how it should be, and voila. It worked. Whole day taken up to do all that. Grrrrr Micro-Gates

New style should be out soon. Just got a few changes to the style sheet left to do and some files to upload. Maybe at the weekend. (or before if I get sick of revision)

I have managed to set up Remote Desktop Connection between my laptop and my desktop which is cool, which means that I can use iTunes and stuff while using my desktop. Hooray.

I also have started to frequent the Counter Strike Source Server used by The Peace Keepers. Its a good friendly server and has a good player rank system setup. See related link for link to their site.

I think thats all for now

see you guys later

The last 4 weeks of my life

2005-05-24T09:45:00.000Z

Ok, so its been nearly a month since I last posted on here, and for that I am sorry for all of you who check on here regularly. Life just got far too busy and I negleted quite a lot of stuff, this being one of them.

Anyway, I am now six university projects lighter, one Phatfish gig later, may cups of tea heavier, and overly tired, but I am here to rant and rave.

University report: I have now finished lectures for this academic year, but I do have exams starting a week today. But my last exam is on the 3rd of June, so soon I will have lots of free time...

Current projects report: "The six week project" - FAILED - boo, I missed a day right near the end of the project which was really annoying, one of my housemates demanded that I took one of the photos off Flickr too so Flickr was 2 photos short and then on Friday, my camera died. I turned it on, the lens came half out and then the mechanism jammed. Just two days short of the end of the project and I managed to use my camera to death!
Donations for a new camera are more than welcome, all proceeds will go towards getting me a Canon Powershot A520 cause its a really good camera.
When I get the new camera I will probably start a new photo project to go with it.

Job report: On the 6th of June (two weeks yesterday) I start back at my old 6th form college, working in the IT Support department again! Alrighty!! Lots of work, lots of pay, I hope to be in the black by the end of the summer.

Computer games report: Ohh I found Red Alert in my wardrobe yesterday, I my have to try to get that running again (I think I need to run it in DOS though) and Black and White, an interesting God sim. There are still no sign as to when STALKER comes out, but we play Counter Strike Source to pass the time.

Film Report: Reservoir Dogs - Definatly one of my favorites, very funny, brilliant directing and an unconventional ending, which is what I like.

Operating Systems report: I am currently downloading Fedora Core 3, and plan to try to get it to run in Virutal PC so that I can spend some time getting to learn how it all works, which may become useful for my dissertation. (more on that in the weeks to come)

I think that is all for now.
I plan to write some more soon, just as long as I have somthing to write about.

Dave

Opps

2005-04-25T22:34:00.000Z

Hey guys, its been a busy week, and I have not really had a moment when I could be bothered. I probably shouldn't try to do what Jason is trying to do and live off my blog.
So whats new in my life? Well I have changed my dissertation for definite now, its going to be a summer of learning Apache, PHP and MySQL now.

See the related link for my latest project, "The 6 Week Project"
A photo a day, trying to get some sort of glimps into my life though the medium of photo. At the moment I am still trying to get the hang of it and often forget to take my (slightly dodgy now) Canon Powershot A70 with me. You will be able to tell which days I have done that on by the fact that the picture is taken in my room, and usually about 11-12pm.

Cambridge students finally got back to uni this weekend, at last!!
My desktop PC is on its last legs I think. Not sure how, but something has gone in it which is really annoying, and frequently like now I am typing faster that its appearing on the screen in front of me.
I have started trying out using Open Office (OOo) on my laptop and am quite liking it, also as I don't use the outlook calendar on my laptop I have installed Thunderbird and synced it with my spam gmail account. Its quite nice.

In a crazy attempt to avoid doing more work, I might come up with a new design for this site, or at least make it more standards and browser happy. This site for example is the kind of theme I am aiming for, something that is nice to read and look at.

Anyways, I need to be in bed BEFORE midnight tongith, as I havn't managed that for days now.
Soo good night all
Might (and its only a might) blog some during tomorrows lecture (if I can get a connection in there that is)

Urg

2005-04-18T22:49:00.000Z

Short post, very tired, much crazieness since last post, blog more tomorrow, but I am still alive, honest.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Annoying

2005-04-11T19:10:00.000Z

Grr, what a mad day I have had.
Bought a new phone (a Nokia 1100) as my old phone (the nokia 3330) would die about 30 seconds into any call made on it. It had finally become unusable, so it had to go.

But then when I got back into uni for my 12 noon lecture, I find out that the guy taking the module has resigned from the uni for personal reasons and wasn't coming back. Which is annoying on many levels, firstly it means that the uni now has to find a replacement lecturer to cover this module, and the replacement certainly will not know what we have done or what was planned. The other problem, and by far the biggest, is that the guy who has left was the guy I had planned to have as my dissertation leader. This is a problem as I am now without a leader and without a project (because the project was in his specialised subject) Yay!
No worries, pressure or stress though, I only have to hand in a draft propsal for said project by Friday!
I have a few ideas that I could possibly use, but I have to decide far to soon.

Ohh I said that I would do some quick movie reviews, (and here is hey I am not doing media studies)
Shaun of the Dead-Hilarious, comedy and zombie film in once. One to watch.
The Job-Looked good, was really rubbish. Simple as that. Don't watch this, its poo.
Jet Li-The Legend - The name says it all.
Kill Bill-Vol1 - Loved it. Sweary, violent, funny, over top in the right places. Quality. Only watch if you don't mind gory.
Kill Bill Vol 2 - Possibly better than the first, but a different type of film. Great ending to the whole story. Also very gory (like someones eye being pulled out) but awesome.
Layer Cake - I loved "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and I loved "Snatch" and I love "Layer Cake" all in the same kind of vein. A must watch.

I think they are all the films I watched and I can't think of much else to write, but I have one or two little projects in the pipe line that I might get to announce in the coming weeks.
Dave out for now

Movie Reviewer

2005-03-31T18:42:00.000Z

weee! Guess who has just signed up to get free movie rentals from Blockbusters for 2 weeks!
So for the next short while I will be reviewing my free films, starting with Jet Li - The Legend, The Job and Shawn Of The Dead. 3 completely different films, all hopfully quite good. The only question is, how many films can I get through in 2 weeks? And will I think the service good enough to pay £13.99 (per month) for the same deal? Who know, but I might get me some culture at last.

In other news, I am deffinatly moving into the downstairs bedroom next year, and so will be saving £20 per month. Hmmm so maybe I can afford those film rentals...

Right I have to go help out with a website for my sister
I'm sure I have some more stuff to "blog" later

Tra for now

Housing Phones and Internet

2005-03-24T15:03:00.000Z

Ho hum and where to start?
NTL have given free internet upgrades to all broadband users. Horay! This means that Dunstable home now has a 2mb connection and Cambridge home (when I get round to it) will have a 1mb connection! At last a speed that 5 students can all use together.
The only question now is, will I be living in the same house? Having two people move out and only 1 definite move in, means that we need to find someone else. Now we do have a prospective 5th but we are still not sure if she will be moving in. To ensure she does I may have to move rooms, going from the ensuite at the back upstairs to the downstairs room at the front. It would be a good room for me in a way as its downstairs which means that when I come back from gigs n things at small o'clock I am less likely to disturb people. Its also cheaper by £20 a month, which would be nice as I could do with the money, especially as I am looking at getting a new mobile phone.
See now I want to stay on my O2 tariff where I top up with £10 every month and get 300 free texts. Because thats pretty good deal, and I don't have to topup each month. But there are no cheap phones that I can get with O2. But IF I decide that its time to go contract, the phone I want (see rel link) is only available from Orange and to get it free I need a contract of over £25 per month.
Now the question is, can I afford it? and will I get £25 worth every month out of it? Bearing in mind that currently I spend about £10 every 3 months. Gah! Its so mind boggling. I think that in light of the above move, I will be able to afford it, and that if I had it I would use it.
I just have to hope that my current mobile doesn't die before then. Its going to be close.

And another thing, NTL are currently getting a good deal out of us at Thoday Street. Currently we are paying just over £40 p/m for internet and phone, and it would appear that for about £2.50 extra (or 50p each) we should be getting cable tv too!!! I am going to have to sort things out over the summer I think.

Well enough ranting for now, see ya
Dave out

Is this love?

2005-03-23T22:12:00.000Z

Good news people! I seem to have falling in love. Perfect in nearly every way. So easy to get on with. Pleasing to the eye. Curvaceous all over. Beautiful skin. Excellent taste in music.
However, I am not inclined to spend any money on my new found love.
"HOLD UP!" I hear you yell, "You can't be that much in love if you are not willing to part with money for your beloved!"
BUT when stoopid Apple are going to put DRM all over any music you buy from them, I'm just not willing to put up with that yet. So sorry iTunes, but NO I am not going to spend any money, how ever much you tempt me with your 79p songs.

Anyways see the related link (if the site is back up yet, i think it too a HUGE hit today) for the newest loophole round the DRM. Just need to wait for them to release a win32 build (cause I am too lazy to fiddle around with python stuff)

Well I hope you enjoyed reading this (and didn't get to excited)

Dave out
(listening to music on iTunes even now)

Opps!

2005-03-13T22:09:00.000Z

Hey, for all of you who may have noticed, I am trying to use a bit of java to make my site a little bit more funky. In theory it changes the "banner"/photo thingy every time the page loads.

But annoyingly I am having difficulty using an external CSS. Sometimes it seems to show and sometimes it doesn't. I have my hunches, and am going to experiment.

So appologies for if it looks a bit rubbish at the moment. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Also if people think there is a problem with how the site displays, please let me know I have only tested this site on this (my desktop) pc. I'm also curious as to how fast the page loads.

*extended phone here*

now where was I? Yeah if you have any comments on the site, "its too slow" "its ugly, make it all orange" "I can see little green aliens" let me know. It would be much appreciated.
erm I can't think what else I was going to say now, so I think I will go to bed.

G.Night one and all
Dave

Speedy clicker

2005-03-13T20:55:00.000Z

Beginner: 8 Seconds
Intermediate: 56 Seconds
Expert: 198 Seconds

I am happy. I broke all my current targets for minesweeper today. Under 10, 60 and 200 seconds. Idealy I want to do inter. and exp. in less than 40 and 100, but I have a long way to go to manage that.

In the meantime I am off to watch Super Volcano or somthing like that on BBC1

Go watch (if its not too late)

Bye

And there we have it

2005-03-11T20:03:00.000Z

Its finished, as long as you don't look at the comments section yet.

My my, what a fun week it has been, what with working in the theatre, leading bible studies, eating lots of food at CU (we need more pudding parties I think) writings silly songs about not a lot and finishing this website and one for coursework, I am quite tired.
Its has been a good week though, I feel like I have acomplished much.

I was recently reading this when as you can see on the 4th of March mentions this! This is quite an addictive game, which you feel should be simple, yet its fiendishly hard. Now there are funny squeaks and cheers and other random noises from one of my housemates as she stuggles to complete the levels.

Anyway, I think I am going to go to be as I desrve to.

Night all

Cries

2005-03-07T00:02:00.000Z

User- "omg this is funny! *URL DELETED*/cute.pif"
Me- "Did one of your friends send you a message saying this recently? 'omg this is funny! *URL DELETED*/cute.pif'"
User- "yes...how did you know?"
Me- "Did you click on it?"
User- "Yes...how did you know?"
Me- "Did you know your pc now has a worm installed on it that goes by the name ofW32/Kelvir-A"
User- "No...is that bad?"
Me- "Take a guess"

Actual conversation. 4 times. 1 Afternoon.
Buy this!! click here
Or this!! click here
Its not hard, and the software is so very good and so very easy to use. PLEASE!
*added note* If you have actually been infected please find your local friendly computer geek who will love the challenge of fixing your pc for you, while cursing you under his breath.

Today has not been a good day in many respects.
But in others it has been good. More news on that to follow another time.

Happy Birthday

2005-03-03T02:45:00.000Z

its my big brothers birthday
so Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to my only reader!!
Happy Birthday to you

PS: Your pressie is on its way and should arrive today (but you know how the royal mail are)

Mr. Slow

2005-03-02T11:48:00.000Z

Firstly, a comedy link to a Google mirror. and yes it really does work.

Ah yes, last time I surfaced, I anounced I was seeing how quickly it would take to format and reinstall windows.

Well, it has turned out to be about a week. My chuffing CD drive died on my about half way through copying the windows files, which left me with a big useless metal case under my desk.
Oh well, by thursday I had a nice new shiny DVD reader/writer but by then I had lost the will to see how quickly it takes so its not untill now that I am happy with how its running again.

Over the last few days there have been a few interesting articles about overclocking your mini-mac, and once again I realise how much I want to get one. They only cost £600 for a decent one. So if there are any really generous people out there, I would be extremly grateful.

(break at 12:30 lunchtime)
(short intermission, while i continue to have a busy busy life)
(starting again at 2:30 next morning)

Ohh Ipod, actually even better than I thought. Got to play with one today. I just need to be convinced about the DRM and the price now, and I will get one. (thought if someone buys me a mac mini, then I might "have" to get one to complete the package.

Well, I have eaten quite a lot today, including a cooked lunch of rice n chicken and far to much cheesecake to top that off. The medium pizza to myself from pizza hut was probably abit to much, but tasted nice and company was most excellent.

But upon getting home I find that one of my lovely housemates has burn her arm with boiling water (not deliberatly) and now have gone to the hospital, the note says they reacon to be back by 10:30, but I am not sure if this means morning or evening.

This isn't a live journal but
Mood: hjaljfnalsfjdnaluiflibwvljablvaue

The last week

2005-02-21T20:29:00.000Z

Evening, this must be the third time I have tried to write this.

Items on the agenda today are:

The fact that I had tonsilitus last week, closly followed by the flu
The fact that I don't want to sign up to the bebo online address book. I am perfectly capable of keeping my own address book upto date
While I am writting this, I am currently attempting to see how fast I can format and reinstall windows on my desktop PC. It was in a very sorry state

Hmm I need to go, sort out my desktop now
More later or tomorrow

Finished-ish

2005-02-16T12:23:00.000Z

Ta-da!!!

Its finally finished-ish. I have a few issues with it displaying differently in IE and Firefox, and am working out how to remove the funny see-though bits.
I am happy enough with it for now though, and will get round to fixing the few little problems later.

Thats all for now.

Dave out

Updates

2005-02-15T16:49:00.000Z

Ok, so I have spent the afternoon doing lots of updates to the web design. I have practically done a full re-write of the CSS. Now before you shout at me, saying what a bad idea it is/was let me explain.
I had pretty much got my design into place with the old version, but it was rather messy and I wasn't all too clear about what was going on. So I went though the XHTML listing all the possible bits of code I needed to define and about halfway though, I realised I had been using the id and the class tags incorrectly which meant that I had done some pretty interesting CSS. (this wasn't the only mistake I found, but it was one of the more major ones)
This meant that I practically had to start again anyway, but with most of the style completely useable, just a copy and paste jobby.
If you check out the related link you will find a nifty site which I used so that now I can include the "footer" that I wasn't expecting to be able to use.

Anyways, I still got some work to go on the change over, but I have spent an afternoon feeling all smug because now the template is a neat efficient bit of coding. (oh and its easially adaptable, as all good CSS should be)

oh and finally click this Tis some of the shiny smoothest website designs I have seen in a while, and the content is an interesting read too

Thats all for now
Off to the pub with friends tonight

Dave out

802.11g-tastic!

2005-02-14T11:50:00.000Z

Mwahahaha, we love APU (pretty much)

Their library is wireless enabled for free, which is dead handy, the only problem with it is that Gaim/MSN doesn't work (unless you use MSNs webmessenger) and you can't connect to ftp sites. Unless anyone knows a clever work around I am going to have to wait till I get home before I can download the newest edition of EditPlus, text editor of choice.

Ohh time to go to a lecture, Audio electronics, such fun *cough cough*

Shocking!

2005-02-09T23:20:00.000Z

My dearest (and only) brother hath written a new song. Its quite good, if a little risque.
I wonder if I can get away with playing it in CU...

Quick update on my rather nice timetable for this semester. It RULES!! Tuesdays I will be finished by 11am at the latest which is most excellent. On Wednesdays I was expecting to have a module taught by one of my more "boring" lectures, but this year the uni changed it all round and now we have a better lecturer. Doesn't sound like lots but it makes a huge difference to the module. Not a lot else has happened as of late, Christian Union start meeting up again on Thursday evenings, I start officially thinking about my dissertation tomorrow which is quite scary and I am not really thinking about what I am typing, so I think I will leave it till tomorrow, when I might make some sence

First day of lectures

2005-02-07T17:37:00.000Z

Well my first day of lectures are over and on the whole I am happy with how my mondays are going to be.

A lazy start with a 10 o'clock lecture for an hour and then an hours practical "lab" session. Brief few moments to nip across campus to my 12 o'clock lecture which is a lesson in magnetic tape and recorders (ohh fun) for two hours with a short break in the middle for lunch.
After that I have the rest of the day to do as I please, which in todays case, re-arrange my bedroom.

Now I am in a bit of a creative mood and think I will have a go at developing one of my "songs" I created over Christmas

Toodle-oo

Back to work

2005-02-07T01:27:00.000Z

Well, back to uni life, lectures, coursework, projects, dissertations etc
I need to get back into a proper sleeping pattern again but that will take a few days I think

Today I found out that my church here in Cambridge has finally bought the new mixing desk, an Allen & Heath GL2200. Hurrar! A real mixer at last. We also got a few Shermann MRL1 wedges which sound great, new amps and a new backline monitor wedges too. All very exciting and sounding great.
It is nice to have switchable pre/post aux channels and 4 band parametric eq at last.

well I am quite tired, so its off to bed for me
May do some talk during lectures tomorrow

Busy?

2005-02-05T13:49:00.000Z

Evening folks, I am blogging from my bed tonight, but will not be posting this till morning, when I can get online.

Well I am going back to Cambridge probably as you read this, and now I am going to sum up how I have coped these last few weeks

Annoyingly I can't get online to look at that big list I made up 2 weeks ago to directly compare, but I will sum up anyway

I layed down some of my "ideas" on piano, recording direct to laptop, which was cool. Listening to them now is quite interesting, as some of those ideas have already changed as I played them through out these few weeks

I heard from some sound companies saying "sorry we have no work, but we will keep you in mind" which could be useful or it could just be an easy way to forget about me, but we will see.

Bashed through, nearly but not all the way, HL2 on medium (in celebration of Wintereenmas) and played an insane amount of CounterStrike:Source

Did a lot of work on my website which, soon I promise, will be going live here

Started emailing lots of people about cells for the CU

Sorted out my printer

Found out that Dell can't make good USB ports for laptops, and therefore my Lacie HDD (designed to be powered over USB2 or 6-pin firewire) is like a little grey box. It works fine on other laptops but not mine. Curses upon you Dell!!!

Just today I helped a friend move into a nice big new house, Good luck with that Nat and Shazz.

I watched all of season 3 of 24, was about as believeable as the first two, and I am intrigued as to how they have any characters left to make a 4th series (which is now on the telly)

Found my old PCG mag that had info about Stalker (found it while packing)

Did a lot of reading, inc. this

Saw nearly nothing of a good friend, who by the way need a good fish slapping, because of his lady friend

Blinded people with science and evoked "dummy mode" on non-computer/non-techical people just by using accronyms

And much more that I can't think of right now, but will remeber when I look at my big list

anyways, I am pretty tired and I have an early (for me anyways) start

Dave out

HDDs Football and DVDs

2005-02-01T23:18:00.000Z

Ok so its been a mixed day, Arsenal lost the title due to some shocking desicions by the "best ref" in the country, savastore inform me that my shiny HDD is on its way at last, and I got my hands on 24 season 3

This means that tomorrow (providing the drive comes) I will be backing everything up on the drive, checking all my passwords, and reinstalling windows on this PC
All while trying to watch all of 24 before I head back to Cambridge

I think that is all for now, I plan to watch at least one episode before bed
so bye for now

Dave

Future Thanks

2005-01-31T18:45:00.000Z

Quite a while ago, PC Gamer ran a preview of a game that went by the name S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
I was in WHSmiths today and see that its the cover game this month, so I came home and looked up the website...

It does look so very good. It is most likely going to be my Half Life 2 beating game.

So in advance of its alleged release date (May this year) I am going to thank GSC for their very awesome game and engine (yeah they wrote their own)

Ohh look what I just found! http://stalker.myexp.de/en/index.php Its got a count down to may.

Not a lot has happened today, I got my "2 ports USB 2.0 PCI Card + 3 ports Front Bay" today, only to remeber that because I have a funny (annoying) case, I can't actually mount the front bay. Doh!! Oh well its a good excuse for finally buying a new case.

Thats about it
Check out stalker, it looks so very good

Dave

Proof!

2005-01-31T01:56:00.000Z

For those of you who are interested, today/nights link is to my test blog, its just an old blog I used to keep, just before I went off to uni. Now it is relegated to millions of republishes as I try to mold somthing nice.

I am quite pleased with it so far, I eventually will probably link to CSS (if I can)
There are a few images still to be created and to go up, and I have to decide where/how I am going to host a "links" page as proposed. I also have to decided on where exactly I want the text, padded? margined? floated? I dunno, but thats somthing I can do later.

I think overall I am on track for the start of semester release date that I had planned for, but who knows.

Eidos!

2005-01-30T17:08:00.000Z

Todays thanks goes to Eidos. Them being the people that brought us Champ Manager 1 to about 7 billion and the polygon lady Lara Croft.

Many hours were spent playing Champ Man 2 - The German Leagues (and using the secret escape key when you lost matches)
Thankyou very much for the most excellent chance to play as a real footy manager, its just a shame that for me it got a bit too indepth, I found it quite hard to just sit down and play a few games without having to spend hours first understanding all the little things you could/needed to do.

And as for the tomb raider sets, jump-die-load game-jump-duck-die-load game-jump-duck-roll-die-load game-etc was bizzarly addictive.

Anyway, time for me to go
Dave out

How to get A-head in navigating

2005-01-29T22:45:00.000Z

Yarr!! Avast!!
Yes Monkey Island (1 and 2) are one of the many reasons that Lucas Arts gets my many thanks.
Puzzle games galore, including Grim Fandango, wasted many hours of my life working out and then "performing" the necessary clicks to complete the games.

So thankyou Lucas Arts (and Mr Lucas himself for some film thingy he did once)

Now to other matters at hand. Its a baptism again tomorrow at my church, which is very cool. Yes we did have one three weeks ago, but we are have another one, which brings the 2005 total to 5!! Already! God rules.

Sadly there is no news on if and when my external hdd will arrive, and I for one am quite inpatient now. My desktop PC is seriously in need of a format and reinstall.

I say this seemingly everyday, but the new theme is coming along nicly now. I am very happy with it. Not long now I don't think before it gets "implemented" Just a few IE vs CSS snags which are quite annoying, but I think I know how to work around those.

Well thats about all for now, I might post again later tonight after my next "coding" session

Dave out (for now)

Westwood/Rockstar

2005-01-28T10:58:00.000Z

Every so often blogger seems to crash on me while trying to publish a new post, it obviously did so yesterday and thus there wasn't anything up, so here goes...

"Westwood.

Command and Conqueror and C&C:Red Alert were both many hours of frustration and enjoyment for me in my younger years.
I remeber my big brother getting C&C in a bargain box set once and being hooked on it ever since. I got Red Alert almost as soon as it came out. Somtimes I wish I had an old win 98/dos box on which to play some of these games properly. Even with the Compatability mode in XP it doesn't play right.

What can I say? if you have never played any of the games i mention this week, you are missing out on some of the finest games ever, games that have set benchmarks in my life.

Well enough ramblings I got people to see and places to go

Dave"

Hurrar for postin it on a forum too so that I can just copy/paste

and in to todays...

Rockstar Games

where would we be without you?
probably sitting in big fields playing with bunny rabbits or somthing
instead we can run around big cities, stealing cars, preforming drive-bys generally killing people and working with the mafia.

so thankyou very much for the whole GTA series, and all the work you have done to prove computer games cause violence in children...even if your games have an 18+ rating on them

Right I'm off to run some people over and then maybe blow up some police cars, for fun

Dave *twitch* out

Thankyou ID software

2005-01-27T01:43:00.000Z

Opps, just realised that I didn't post anything on here this morning (despite updating else where) so...

"Today we will be thanking ID Software for providing us with Wolfenstein 3D!
Probably the first game I every seriously played and completed.

Oh yeah, they also brought Doom and Quake into the scene too
Cheers for that"

Thats all for today, I fired up my Virtual Win 98 PC and had a quick roam on the demo of Wolf 3D again, oh the hours I spent playing this game. I can still get 100% on the first 3 levels on the hardest settings with ease. oh well

Briefly, I am making steaming progress with the new style, but the fact that IE and FF read CSS differently is flaming annoying!!! AUGH! (and yes I am using valid XHTML/CSS before you say anything)

Happy Winter-een-mas

2005-01-25T16:00:00.000Z

Yes, like so many other people, I will be spending this week celebrating a new (ish) holiday.
This year, I plan to spend the week spreading the word about said holiday and thanking a different game company each day for a week.

Today I would like to thank Valve for their stunning contributions of the HalfLife series.

In other news my big brother has a blog in which he linked to me so its only fair that I link him back. Go read it, its more interesting than this one.

I am making more progress on the new style for the blog, and have kinda endeavoured to look into MySQL and PHP and other more complicated site thingys when I am finished.

Thats all for now, I am off to shoot zombies for a while in HL2
May post some more in the wee hours of tomorrow

Dave

Sunday Evening mumble

2005-01-23T23:48:00.000Z

eeep! having watched this a few times now, it is even more believeable than before
As I sit here using Blogger and tell my friends on MSN to "Stop asking me stupid questions, go bother Google!!"
I realise that Google is slowly taking over my life.
Google Labs has become a place of interest and fun, seeing and testing what is up and coming.
Google Suggest has been my home page since it came out, and true it has one or two annoying quirks, I still love it.

In other news, Church was good today, was nice to be home and in my home church. It does feel a bit weird though, as there are hardly any people university age there at the moment, so I feel a little bit odd and left out. But its all good, Mark preached an ace sermon this evening all about Nehemiah 4.

Can you believe I actually WANT it to be term time at uni now. I want to just get back into the swing of things. (I may also want to see certain people but I don't think its wise to talk lots about it here, just a mention that there is a secret will drive anyone mad :) hehehe)

ouh! i am all sleepy. how nice
i think i will go to bed in a bit
G.night

1:28AM

2005-01-23T23:32:00.000Z

Ok major update now, I have discovered my prime webcoding time is around 12-2 AM

I seem to make more progress or learn more about how CSS and XHTML work in that period than at any other time of day. Its quite disconcerting.
We have had a minor setback in the release of the new style/site in that I found the template I was using far too compliated and am now re-writting it. Not from scratch but going through it and trying to workout why certain lines are there.
I need to find a page on Blogger which explains its coding system to me, but it seems very similar to CityDesk and I really should go and buy this book by Eric Meyer as its very useful.

As for living arrangements for the next 2 weeks, I currently plan on staying here at my parents house, spending as little money as possible. However, this could all change if I can get engineerin work anywhere, I might go back to Cambridge or be trying to find floorspace in Reading or Londen.

As most people who know me now know, my sister is getting married (hurrar!) and the date is looking like its around the end of the summer. Now back many eons ago, when my brother got married, my mum made me grow my hair and have the classic "curtains" look. I wasn't too hot on the look and pretty much as soon as I could I shaved it back to a #3 all over and its pretty much stayed that way ever since. Until these last 4 months (well Sepember to Christmas) when it didn't get cut at all. True it was getting pretty long (by my standards) and not all that neat (due to it just growing with no "styling" going on) but it was getting close to a point when I could have gone into a stylist hair place thingy and asked them to do somthing with it. I reacon that I have around 6-7 months before my sisters wedding and plan to see if i can get my hair trimmed (neatened up) every few weeks, partly to encourage it to grow, partly to stay respectable, and to then get it made all funky at the last minute. If I like it, I guess it will stay. Whos up for bets on it all coming off again though?

Here is a ~~short~~ long list of things I can think of that I want/need/must do over the next two weeks:

Check out "All Life is Here", a study guide on 1 Timothy from St Matthias Press, with a view to using it for the Christian Union small groups (not home groups cause one of them is held on campus in a room we book out)
Visit friends who still live here at home
Read some more of Terry Virgo's book "Gods Lavish Grace"
Record some of the piano/guitar tunes I have created, or aleast get the basic ideas down for further ammusement.
Get out my clarinet (shhhh don't tell my mum! I may have given up learning it properly but that doesn't mean that I don't want to play it. Just like the piano...)
Order and Change the strings on Dad's 12-string guitar
Sort out all my money and plan ahead as far as possible (because I am that bad with money, and having a plan/timetable makes me feel safe)
Download some more free stuff from the MSDN-AA that my university signed up for (its so cool getting all this free Microsoft stuff!)
Oh yeah, finish the coding for this site and make it with the interests of the next point which is to...
...seriously think about buying some hosting package and getting a domain name and starting to put some of my photos online
take more photso
stop making crazy lists of things to do
fill in a form for a job that i can't actually have at the moment because I am not available on one of the 2 days I apparently "have" to work, but would still like the work/job as its playing with computers, fixing/upgrading/installing etc.
learn to blog quicker (currently 2:05, I started this at 1:28)
purchase an external HDD that I can use powered off the USB ports
when the above is complete, format my desktop and reinstall XP (one of my favorite past times)
try to convince more people to switch over to real and quick alternatives and therefore Windows Media Player Classic
decide on whether I stick with Gaim or not (I like it a lot but it misses some features that MSN has such as webcamming)
Purchase a wireless something, router or AP not sure yet, maybe even both for simplicity sake. Will rant another time on why I want/need both
Solder lots of cables (well about 5) to maintain my cabling collection.
Buy a Kensington Keylock for this laptop
Finally sort out my printer -just a quick recap and update on the HP Printer/Scanner/Copier saga.

Bought a PSC 1315
Tempremental printing habbits
Eventually diagnosed by HP Online Support as Hardware Fault "call this number to get a replacement"
Turns out "this number" is HP Phone Support
Phone support doesn't talk to Email support
Eventually its agreed (again) that I need a replacement
"Yes it will be delievered on the 11th of Jan sir"
It didn't come
I ring HP
"Sorry Sir we meant the 19th"
Grrrr, could have let me know...
19th
It comes
Yay
It doesn't work!
Bummer
Different problem though
"Yes sir that is a hardware fault again, will send you a replacement for tuesday next week"
"but I am not going to be here then"
they send a replacement express and arrange for UPS to collect 2 printers (the duff ones) from me
UPS comes, but has orders to only take 1 printer
OK, someones messup there
printer #3 also faulty
AUGH!!!
ring HP at lunch on the Thursday
"OK will get our Customer Service team to call you this afternoon"
"sorry got an exam, will not be in, how about you ring first thing tomorrow"
"ok"
friday morning come
friday morning goes
i ring HP
do a shouty bit at them
someone calls me back within the hour
offers me brand new upgraded printer for my troubles
that should be arriving Monday
hopfully one sattisfied customer

Anyways, battery is about to die on this (after nearly 3 hours of use) so I will go to bed now and edit this in the morning
g.night/g.morning

Dave

Edit Sunday Evening:
This post was written in the small hours of today, but I didn't get round to posting them online untill now (they also needed a few changes, but it should be ok now)
Happy reading

Home again

2005-01-22T13:55:00.000Z

Ho hum, I am back in Dunstable for a bit now, at least until some nice company decideds to give me a job...

Gonna have to find some projects to keep me busy

Erm thats all for now

Dave

Stylish!

2005-01-21T01:06:00.000Z

Well! It would appear that my extreme funk style is nearly ready to be let loose out onto this edition of the blog!

Oh yeah, my exams are all done now! Hurrar! but it means that I have nothing to do for the next 2 weeks.
If there is anyone out there reading this who wants to give me some paid work, that would be great. In the mean time, I have written to a few companies to see if they will give me more work experience...watch this space.

Not much else to report, I am still thinking about getting a little graphics tablet, like the A6 Wacom ones and creating a sort of "webcomic" by a non-arty type.
*digs around for old paypal account*
soon I will be accepting donations via paypal (i think/hope) though probably not untill i introduce the new theme/site

Anyways enough for now, i am sleepy
Dave out

Um No Title

2005-01-18T21:23:00.000Z

Ok so I was wondering why I am keeping this blog as I am pretty sure that nobody else reads it, (partly as I havn't told anyone about it) and I couldn't think of a good reason.

Most people have a theme to what they write about, be it book reviews, interesting things that happen in their life, personal projects/pet topics etc.

Anyway I realised that this blog has no point to it at the moment, but I am hoping that is because I am just blatantly no doing anything with my life. I am in a kinda limbo between exams and terms (or "semesters" as my uni calls them)

Can't think of much interesting stuff to write at the moment so I will leave it at that
Poss will do a bit more later tonight

Dave out

W-Lan!

2005-01-17T17:02:00.000Z

46 wireless networks between my house and joes house!

17 were open for me to use

I dunno if I should laugh or cry

Anyhoos back to revision, got an exam tomorrow at 1:30, all about MIDI

dave out

Lossy vs. Lossless

2005-01-14T18:13:00.000Z

Yo-ho-um, I am looking to re-create my music collection on my laptop, and I feel that it would be nice to use a good quality ripper with good settings for the whole lot.

There are so many questions to be asked when picking a format to use, do I go lossy or lossless? what apps do I intent to use it on? what bit rates do i use?

Having a look round online to see what there was to use, I have decided that I will still use dB Poweramp. It does what I want and has a huge number of different codecs available.

Do I use mp3? mp4 or ogg? for my lossy format and do i use FLAC or Monkey Audio for my lossLESS format? Bearing in mind that I am firstly using this collection on my laptop which is limited in hdd space at the moment, it is going to be a lossy, but mp4 and ogg both seem to have better compression ratios to mp3.

More digging is required i think, plus audio tests.

Dave Out (for now)

Laptop woo!

2005-01-12T21:28:00.000Z

Oh yes oh yay! My laptop hath come, I am home for a few days and I am a happy bunny.

So this is my first post on the new machine and ohh, I delcare it to be nicer to use than my desktop, and I am pretty happy with that.

I feel its my duty to let you guys know about all the handy software that I have spent the evening installing on here.

First up was Real Alternative and Quick Alternative (including Media Player Classic)
Between these three apps, you pretty much have most video and audio files covered (But you might want to install Winamp 5 anyway

Next is the internet browser of all time Firefox. If you are not using this then you are an idiot. Trust me on this on. Oh and while you are at it, you might want the following extentions for it, IE View, Nuke Anything and Image Zoom

Now for a long time I used MSN Messenger with MSN Plus, but today is the start of a trial run of Gaim, a "multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows". It seems to be quite good, so I am happy to stay with it for a while.

Finally for now, I use Sharp Reader for all the RSS/Atom feeds that I read. If anyone knows of a better aggregatior than this, ie one that also checks newsgroups like Outlook Express, please let me know. (You might wanna add my Atom feed)

I think that is all for now, more tomorrow maybees

Dave out

Frozen Bunnys

2005-01-08T22:11:00.000Z

I just want to let you guys know (or at least remind myself) that Lem, of Bunny fame, has opened a forum. Check it out

Some day I will post up here a complete list of sites that I check each day. It must be close to about 30 different sites thoughout the week!

Well exams begin on Monday. The first being Geoff Sweet and Advanced Recording and Reproduction. Its such a crazy module, anything could be on the paper! Oh well, I just hope he is happy with my coursework I did.

Thats all for now folks

Dave

How annoying!

2005-01-07T14:41:00.000Z

Well, I have gone and ordered my laptop and bits, but I am going to have to wait untill the 17th to get it!!

Annoyingly Dell will only ship to my billing address, so I will be heading home to collect it. Can't wait now, am kinda excited.

Went to tescos today with housemates and bought as much heavy stuff as i could store so that I don't have to do any heavy carrying for quite a while now :)

Gosh! I have run out of things to talk about now.

well maybe more later or tomorrow or somthing

Dave out

I'm feeling spendy

2005-01-06T23:29:00.000Z

Well I am about to blow all my money on a laptop, a good old dell 510m.

The spec. is customised by me for me, so it should do everything i want it to :)

The bad news is, I will be living on a pittance for the next 5 months so that i can pay for it. Oh well

In other news, HP are finally going to swap out my printer, which is nice of them, and eventually i will be able to print from home

Urg, i don't feel so good so i am going to call it a night now

Dave out

Printer Issues!

2005-01-06T11:18:00.000Z

Flipin' heck! what a saga.

i bought a HP all-in-one printer recently (well back at the start of October) and it has been seemingly tempromental. So i contact HP support via emails, very good service, replys within the hour everytime, and the guy there came to the conclusion that I needed to get it replaced and said to contact the shop I got it from about swap outs.

So, I get in touch with Ebuyer about gettting a returns number for it. This is the first time I have been dissapointed in Ebuyer but they took 2 weeks to tell me that HP are the people to speak to about replacements.

So I give HP a ring, ohh thats nice, HP support email and HP support phone don't talk to each other. So troubleshooting again over the phone, with this chap who was very helpful untill suddently he has a brainwave and realises that the PSC 1310 range of printers don't work with Office 2003. Woo! go HP! He then realises that this is a long phonecall and tells me to hang up and he rings me back! Woo go HP! (again)
He then explains that if I use certain drivers off the HP site it should work, but its a 300Mb download so I should go try it and if it doesn't work call back. so I am sitting here waiting for this download to come.

Well thats all for now, I am sure that over the next few days there will be some more exciting tech support stories to come.

Dave out

2005

2005-01-06T10:02:00.000Z

Well here we are, 2005, and I have started another blogging session. Well this should be fun, I plan to code my own site and then fill in the gaps with blogger code. But for now I will just blo straight into here.

Thats all for now, I have to go get me a job or some work or do some work so somthing

Dave out