New Books!

After an otherwise dull day, my mum returned home from work bearing gifts and they were for me! Regular readers will know that I like to do a bit of baking now and again (usually with at least one mistake each time). No excuse now though because I have two new hardback cookery books. The first is something I was considering buying at the time it was published - Mum's Know Best: The Hairy Bikers' Family Cookbook. I posted many a time about the Hairy Bikers and this book is a real testament to the hard work they (and their team) must have put in over that series to organise the food fairs and collate all of the recipes.

Music Time

I think it's time for a long overdue single of the week. I have been using the Last.fm audio scrobbler plugin again recently to play my recommended radio having gotten bored with my library again. I came across a couple of candidates and this was the only one that passed my criteria for being commercially available. The band are called Music Go Music. As this is the first time I have come across them, I know very little about them other than what I have read on their Last.fm page. I certainly agree that they have a very mid-seventies feel (this song in particular is very reminiscent of that era). I'm not sure whether it is the production, the vocals or the instruments (or perhaps a combination of the three) that give that 70's vibe but whatever it is, I like it.

Disaster Strikes

Two house related hiccups today, the first came from a mis-reading of the electricity meter. I only discovered this thanks to a very helpful telephone operative who thankfully noticed that it was about 10 000 units higher than the previous reading that had been given by an authorised meter reader. We had one of those horrible old-fashioned dial meters so I'm not especially surprised that it was read incorrectly. It took me a while to get the hang of it the first time I did it and I have a feeling this was also done in a rush.

The Return of Top Gear

Without meaning to go back to the old days of weekly TV reviews, I made an exception for yesterday's finale of Dr Who and I shall make another today for the beginning of a new series of Top Gear. Not any old Top Gear however, the new - more serious - Top Gear (supposedly).

All is Revealed (ish)

Tonight marks the finale of the latest series of Dr Who. As I mentioned last week, it has been a mixed series in my opinion but I really enjoyed the conclusion. There was a vague hint that the whole thing might be in some way related to memories but I think they pulled it off in such a way that the solution to the seemingly impossible situation didn't seem like a cop out.

More Tinkering

After waiting overnight for some of the problems to remedy themselves, some of them indeed did. I managed to delete all reference to davwil00.co.uk so that I could start again from fresh. I reset all of the DNS settings but somewhere there is still a reference to it and I cannot see where. In the end I gave up and have filled in the help form on the website. Rather worryingly, I received a copy of the email with a note added to the top stating that a contact could not be found and so the email has been sent to the server administrator. It's almost as if it would have sent the help request to me if I had added my email in the communication preferences box.

Spur of the Moment Decison

It seems like everyone I know these days has a personal website. Okay so that's a massive overstatement but a lot of people I know have one. Following on from designing my friend's website yesterday, I decided to start designing my own for the domain name I now own.

Project Number 2

The second project I have for this summer is to update and redesign my friend's website. He is currently studying acting at the University of Northampton and has had his website for almost a year now. As he only knows some basic HTML, he used templates and pre-designed applications to make up the content for his website including a gallery and a blog.

An Impulse Buy

I have decided to take the plunge and buy my domain name. I'm sure no-one else would ever want it but I get a bit panicky with these things and assume I have to snap them up before they get taken by someone else - as if someone else would dare steal my moniker. This same thought process is now why I have two Hotmail addresses and it is only laziness and lack of need that have prevented me from acquiring the @live.com extension as well.

Not as Easy as I'd Thought

There are advantages and disadvantages to being at home, the advantages generally outweigh the disadvantages but sometimes the disadvantages seem more important. The main advantages come from things like an expansive tool kit and a loft full of computer components, cables and various other only very occasionally useful bits of technology that have been accumulated and kept from years of electronics. The disadvantages come from those things that have been replaced by modern equivalents that I have gone out and purchased and left in Sheffield.

A Summer Project

Hurrah! I have something to do over the summer! With a bit of luck, it won't actually involve that much effort but it might earn me a bit of money (provided I can deal with my conscience telling me that I can't charge my friends for my time). The same people also came round to the house not once but twice (three times even for one of them).

The Pandorica Opens

Tonight sees the beginning of the end of the current series of Dr Who. There have been highs and lows this series with only a couple of the episodes meeting my high expectations. There have been some very good decisions - such as casting Karen Gillan as Amy Pond (the Doctor's assistant) as I think she has done a marvellous job at bringing something new to the role. There have also been some - not so much bad but questionable - decisions such as revamping the Daleks who now look more like a child's toy than an evil super-villain. On the whole I have enjoyed watching it and with this final episode, the writers have really pulled their socks up. It is by far the best episode of the series, closely followed by the episodes with the weeping angels and I cannot wait to see what happens this time next week. With a bit of luck it won't just turn out to be all part of Amy's imagination and that they will employ a clever trick to get the Doctor out of this sticky situation.

Cake and CV

I think the title pretty much sums today up. Obviously the cake came first - at the moment I'll find anything to do other than writing this blasted CV. It wouldn't be so bad if there was some sort of standard structure to them; but they are all so different depending on age, experience, industry etc that you almost have to make it up as you go along.

Unpacking

As much as I like living out of a box, the summer is long time to be in one place and with some pressure from the parents also, I reluctantly spent most of today unpacking. For the most part it makes living easier - especially not having to drag the huge suitcase out from underneath my bed each morning; but for other things, knowing that the answer to the question "Where is..." is always "in the box" is quite reassuring. In some cases, that object may be fairly small and so tracking it down amongst all of the other stuff can be somewhat time-consuming but it's better than not being able to find it at all because it has been hidden away somewhere sensible.

Home Time

Today is the last day I will see the inside of this house. It has been fairly good to us without too many problems and overall I think we preferred it to the previous house we had. The kitchen was smaller but the hobs were gas not electric, I was stuck in the attic and in a much smaller room but all of the nooks and crannies meant that I still had plenty of storage space for all of my junk.

Errands

I had a few lose ends to tie up today and first up was a meeting with the societies development coordinator (or some title to that effect) about the Computer Science Society's ambitious intro week mini festival. The outcome of the half an hour or so conversation was that the idea was far too grandiose for a new society with no money and to attempt to organise it over the summer with limited face-to-face contact and limited staff support was very bad timing. It was also noted that having an event during onto/freshers week was simply madness and would be a huge drain on the scarce resources.

I was always sceptical about such a alrge event but was starting to believe that with the right help and support both from the committee and the expert staff at the university, we could just pull this off but this was a big reality check. Not to be disheartened, she did say that if we wanted to have something similar later on in the year once we had some more members and more importantly more time and funding, she would be more than happy to help us with the logistics of organising such a large event.

Next up on the agenda was to give blood. I was half expecting for it to be shut but to my surprise, it was open although a notice on the door did say that it would be shutting for lunch in a couple of hours due to staffing shortages (which they have had for the last 6-12 months it seems). Alas, I had celebrated soon as they were operating on an appointment only basis because of these staff shortages. I managed to get a slot in an hour and a half which gave me just enough time to go back to uni and spend my food voucher that otherwise would have expired over the summer. I am going to have to remember to start booking appointments for giving blood because it always takes far longer than I hope it will either due to it being shut or simply long waits. Saying that, once I returned, I was in and out in under an hour with the majority of that being my the fault of my stupidly slow veins.

More Packing

Today was a much more productive day packing wise. Four boxes and a whole host of other bits of kitchen equipment and white goods that are all staying in Sheffield courtesy of my good friend who has some room in her garage. If I'd have had to take all of my stuff home then I would have definitely needed two trips but as luck had it, I should just about manage to squeeze what I have left into my car.

The Beginning of the End

Now that I have finished my third year of university and have no more lectures and assignments, I also find myself having finished TSC work as well. Today marks the beginning of the end of this academic year and over the course of the next three days I will be slowly packing my life away into boxes and bags ready to return to Birmingham for the summer.

Summer Social Part 2

Continuing on from yesterday / this morning, we headed back to the union at about 10:50am to be there for the opening of the café for breakfast. Amazingly, there were several people there before us but we clearly dominated the outside and I'm amazed the kitchen kept up with the orders. About thirty meaty breakfasts were cooked very promptly and eaten just as quickly. I had reached the point at which I didn't feel great and couuldn;t work out whether that was from eating something dodgy or lack of food. I put it down to lack of food as I'd not managed to eat a lot of dinner and had been playing on the sea-saw swing rather a lot which wouldn't have helped.

Summer Social Part 1

And so begins the day that never ends. I somewhat foolishly perhaps, decided to get up early to put the finishing touches to my housemates birthday cake. Officially it was yesterday but I didn't have time to finish it before we went out and as I wasn't going to be back until tomorrow afternoon I thought it best to get it done now.

All Done

Today should have been a much needed - and I think much deserved - day off in preparation for the never ending day that is tomorrow's Summer Social. Instead, I have been stuck in the physics computer lab from 10am until 5:30pm finisheing of this final assignment. It can be very frustrating sometimes working in groups when the skill level is so very different. Working with two non computer science students is hard enough but at least they have an excuse for their ignorance of the more technical elements to the assignment.

Volunteering Showcase

Final event in the hideous run of six today which is the volunteering showcase. This is an awards ceremony that brings together all of the volunteering projects from over the year and invites guests who have been involved in the scheme to make some speeches commending the wonderful work done by the universities volunteering schemes as well as the raising and giving (RAG) committee.

Gazebos

Today's event involved erecting gazebos for some of the outdoor events taking place later in the week. I was expecting a very short couple of hours for this and was expecting some easy money. How wrong could I be? There was a reason that this event was paid - it was more like four and a half hours of heavy lifting and heights.

Oops I Did it Again

Not content with working four days in a row - something most people consider bordering on insanity, I have signed myself up for two more days at the meeting today although on the plus side, they are both paid events and neither of them are in the evening so no late nights!

Last Laugh

Day three and today is slightly different. Rather than a club night, what with it being a Sunday we have a comedy event instead. This one also finishes a lot earlier - 11pm so I will have a chance to catch up on some sleep before the final event in my calendar tomorrow. I am in charge of the lights which would have been great if it weren't for two things. 1) I have never been to a Last Laugh event before and thus have no idea what the setup will be. 2) My job actually involved putting up two Fresnel lights and gelling two of the install PAR cans red for 'atmostophere'. Once these had been focused and dimmed to an acceptable level, that was pretty much my job done for the night other than taking them down at the end.

Next...

I managed to recover fairly quickly from last night's Space and although packing up wasn't quite as quick as it was last week, it was a damn-sight better than when the even is held in the Octagon (and we were one crewman down on last week). That leads me to event number two in the four day run which is Pop Tarts. There is almost nothing new I can say about this any more I have worked that many of them. Nothing especially bad or good happened and it was a fairly standard night. In fact, the only difference was that this evening I didn't come home and watch Dr Who but went straight to bed thanks to the lack of rain and exhaustion from working two days in a row. Roll on tomorrow!

No Laser for Me

Another PC has been fixed! Continuing on from where I left off on Wednesday, I had to track down the logs for Microsoft Security Essentials to find out the name of the virus it had found. Despite not being able to remove the virus automatically, it did give me a name to search for and find an appropriate solution. It turned out to be a nasty rootkit but thankfully not too painful to remove with the right tools.

A Day Off

I am having to make the most of today as a sleep catchup day in preparation for the long four day working weekend ahead. My main aim of today was to restore my VPN access to the university which has recently stopped working. I assumed that it had stopped working after I accidentally reset my password. I was pretty amazed that I actually did reset my password in the first place because I was trying to rest someone else's. Because I was logged in to the university portal, logging into the password management system with another account seemed to confuse the poor thing and so it decided to totally ignore the fact that someone else had just logged in and ended up changing my password instead!

Mr Fixit (again)

I seem to be double if not triple booking myself for these last few weeks of term. I don't know whether I'm being taken advantage of for having no exams, offering out my services because I have no exams or whether I can foresee the potential boredom gap that is the summer holidays. Not that I haven;t got plenty of things be be doing during that four month period but it will be very much based around sitting in front of a computer.

A Tedious Day

Today has been massively tedious, with the occasional joyful interruption of some playing around with Freestyler (a free package for controlling lights). As it is open source, there is a great deal of potential for customising the interface and using the Magic 3D Easy View software to construct a model of the venue so that you can see the output of your programming without having access to the lights.