Thoughtless Paradise

Of New MacBooks

2008-11-06T21:06:00.001+00:00

Well i bought one! And an ipod touch. I must admit im very very pleased with both!

Of MacBooks and Yays

2008-10-09T18:02:00.002+01:00

Well my new computer is on the way. I bought pretty much what I posted a couple of days ago. Except I went for a 2.2 CPU and a better motherboard and a 9600gt graphics card instead of the 8600gt.

Also, Apple have finally sent out the invites for a Notebook centred event next Tuesday! The new macbooks are coming! Sorry Didi, you can keep warning me away but I really want one. I still refuse to become a mac fanboy though. I plan on triple booting it with OSX, Win XP Pro and Ubuntu. As long as I have the HDD space. Otherwise I'll have to leave off Linux :(

Still I'm excited, I love spending money :D

Of Students and Computers

2008-10-05T00:51:00.002+01:00

Well it's back to being a student for me. I start my final year on Monday and I am actually looking forward to it! Going to be doing some exciting things, first week into one of my units we build a 3d model and then go on to textures and animation! I am, however, going to miss the money of working full time. But I'm sure I'll cope!

Unfortunatly though it's made me realise I am in need of a computer upgrade. I have no money but I need one, so trying to keep it to a low, low price. I'm stilling buying a Macbook (just waiting for the new ones to be released) but I need a good desktop as well. At the moment I'm looking at something like:

2.4Ghz Intel E2220 Dual Core

2Gb DDR2

GeForce 8600GT 512Mb

360Gb Barracuda HDD

All for about £280. Which I don't think is too bad really. Any tips from anyone though? Coupled with a MBP I think I should be alright. That way I'll have a powerhorse no matter where I am!

Anyways, sorry I'm not updating. I just don't have much to say these days! Plus no one reads this... so whats the point?

Of The Bucket List

2008-09-21T11:01:00.002+01:00

I've briefly mentioned The Bucket List before. I said it was one of the most beautiful films I've ever watched. To be honest with you I think it pretty much is the most beautiful. I don't care that it's fictitious and not based on a true story. It's an incredibly powerful film and I urge you to watch it. I think I can say with almost certainty that the ending will hit you. The film will make you laugh and possibly cry, it's close to perfect. The acting also is spot on from Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. So go watch the film! Any way you can. You won't regret it.

Of A Random Fix

2008-09-15T12:09:00.003+01:00

I've been having problems recently with Photoshop crashing when I try and open to documents at once. It's really very annoying as you can imagine. I've just done a quick Google on it and found a fix. If you have a networked printer set as the default change it to an un-networked printer and it solves the problem. Well I've tried and it and it does indeed work. That has to be one of the most random fixes ever.

Also, if you are wondering why I haven't posted my disappointment on Apple not announcing new MacBooks last week it's because I died a little inside... no wait, that is making me sound like a Mac FanBoy! Noooo! It's because I didn't see any point as if they had the Intertubes would have died from the amount of blog and forum posting Fanboys would have been doing over new Macs. Thus it seemed fairly obvious to me...

Of Letting You Rock

2008-09-09T11:13:00.003+01:00

Well today is the day of Apple's iPod/iTunes announcement"Let's Rock". While I'm not doing any cover of it, obviously, check out Gizmodo for live coverage on their live blog. As many other people around the world are hoping I am also hoping that they also choose to announce the new macbooks today rather than later this month or even in October. I really need a new laptop and I have definatly decided to get a macbook pro. Annoyingly though because of time difference I shall have to wait until tomorrow to find out what happened as it won't happen until 7pm (ish) here in the UK and then I am out tonight and thus shan't have the intertubes!

On another note I've just come across this, Tikitag. Looks like a great use of RFID tags, which I must admit I am a fan of. Once the kits come out I may give them a whirl if they stick to the $50 for a starter kit.

Of Fibrrrrrre

2008-09-02T13:49:00.003+01:00

So today I got forwarded an awesome story. Bournemouth is, apparently, going to be one of the first towns in the UK to have a fibre networked throughout the area. Hopefully I can get hold of it once it's all installed. I'd love a full fibre connection! I'm hoping that Virgin will be one of the ISP's to pick it up once it's been installed... as I get my connections from them. Anyway, here's the link if you want to know more.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39413758,00.htm?r=5

Of Mythbusters

2008-08-29T12:36:00.002+01:00

I watched the Mythbusters Moon Landing episode recently. Damn interesting program indeed. Basically they were busting certain aspects of the landings that some people think are fake, etc. They made some good arguments against things, also busted a few things (such as non-parallel shadows from a single light source).

However, as there would be, some people are saying that it's all a load of pants. I'm not really bothered about whether we went to the moon or not really. My answer to why we haven't been back in 40 years? Health and Safety. That ruins everyone's fun.

Of Beautiful Days

2008-08-20T17:44:00.003+01:00

Well I got back from the Beautiful Days festival on Monday. It was just a weekend affair, Friday to Monday, and what a weekend it was! Friday started lovely, nice weather, excellent opening set from the Levellers, awesome cider and a goodnights sleep ready for Saturday and Sunday. Then it rained. Oh boy did it rain! The beautiful green grass soon gave way to an endless sea of mud and people changed from (in some cases) not wearing much to donning bomb shelters to stay dry.

However, the rain and mud and wind didn't stop an amazing weekend. There were some amazing bands playing such as Seth Lakeman, Xavier Rudd, Supergrass, Idlewild, Flogging Molly (yays!) and the Levellers. The comedian Ross Noble also had a stint on stage and I must say he was incredibly funny.

Sunday was a little better weather wise until the evening when it started raining again. Though thankfully no where near as hard as the Saturday. The finishing acts were Idlewild, Flogging Molly (the best performance for me) and the Levellers (best for Claire) and it was a fantastic way to end the festival. Flogging Molly and the Levllers got everyone dancing and the atmospher was simply fantastic. Even three inchs of liquid mud couldn't dampen (no pun intended) everyones spirits.

However, we did get stuck in the mud trying to leave the car park Monday morning. For about three hours! While the festival did provide tractors to tow people out and we waited an hour for one to come our way, it never happened. So we enlisted some help (Thanks to the first guy, you helped push a silver Civic) and we managed to get about half way down the field. Then we stopped and a chap from Plymouth and myself helped aload of other cars escape before getting ourselves out. So thanks to him and his girlfriend (or just friend? (Who was Australian I believe)) for helping us our there as well!

All in all it was amazing and I am definatly going again next year, though maybe with a group of friends instead of just Claire and I. So we can make some more noise!

Of Books

2008-08-04T10:59:00.002+01:00

Well I've pretty much decided on getting a MacBook Pro. Only I have to wait two months or so before I get one because I want to wait for the new versions that are supposed to be coming out. It just sucks that I have to wait and that there is no information on them yet. However I can only hope that the spec's go up and the price goes down. Obviously looks of the thing will be sweeeeeeeeeet but I just wish I didn't have to wait to buy one. I really really want one.

Of Silence

2008-07-30T17:10:00.002+01:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a sad day. My Toshiba Tecra M4 laptop has died. Please hold a minute's silence for it.

Thank you.

As to what happened... well I'm not sure. Was working fine one day, not booting the next. I hit the power switch, get a second of HDD activity then nothing. I don't get the Toshiba boot screen or a POST, just a black screen. I've had it apart and checked all connections. Disconnected and reconnected the the RTC battery. Made sure the power connections are ok. But it seems to have died a strange and mysterious death.

I can't even find any info on the intertubes on the problem or how I might fix it. And I refuse to pay stupid prices to get it repaired, just doesn't seem worth it for a two year old laptop that's completely outdated really now.

So it's laptop hunting time! If I'm honest I have my eyes on a MacBook Pro, but we'll see what we can find! If there are any suggestions for mid range laptops then please let me know. Needs to be more than capable of handling web design software, image editing software and some gaming once in a while. HL2 level.

Mmm MacBook...

Of Design Block and Stargates

2008-07-25T14:55:00.003+01:00

Whoa, I'm on Season 8 of Stargate SG-1. Never watched all the way through before and it's soooooo good. Can't wait to watch Atlantis and the new films, The Art of Truth and Continuum. I guess by watching all this it does kinda prove that I am a geek. Still, I can live with that.

On other breaking news. I have a complete design block. I have several websites I need to come up with a design for, including my own, yet I can't find anything. I try and design and it just looks terrible. I look around for inspiration, and I'm finding some fantastic stuff, but no lightening blots are striking me with amazing ideas. And that just sucks! Ah well, I'll just keep trying and I'm sure I'll find something eventually. It's what happened with version 4 of WindFall, I went through several idea iterations before I found something that worked. Maybe it will happen again!

Of Websites

2008-07-22T10:53:00.003+01:00

It's amazing. I start talking about setting up a web design company with a friend and all of a sudden I get a few offers given to me! I'm not complaining, just surprised! All fairly small ones, but then that's what we need at the moment until we are ready. We haven't even got a design of our own at the moment so we have a lot to work on.

So hopefully we can get these done and looking good and working well and then we have a few sites under our belt and something we can show then hopefully we can get some more to do and we can make some monies! Yays!

I'll update as and when with the progress of our company. I may even document what we go through to get up and running, what it costs etc. Might be interesting for anyone else who is thinking about setting up a company.

Who knows if it would be any use or not but I'll do it anyway and then I can just carry on getting ignored by the majority of the intertubes like I do anyway.

Yays.

Of Simply Noise

2008-07-07T09:51:00.002+01:00

Today I read a post on LifeHacker about the website SimplyNoise. It's a white noise generator that you can listen to through you browser. At first I thought it would just be annoying and low and behold it was. However, after listening to it for a few minutes it's become quite soothing. It's really very strange that such a rough noise, you might call it, can actually become soothing and nice to listen to. I have some chill out music on in the back ground as well. Currently Caradmar - No More Sleep running of Last.fm so all in all, this morning isn't feeling that bad even with the shite weather outside!

Jump to: LifeHacker
Jump to: SimpleNoise

Of Many Things

2008-07-02T13:24:00.004+01:00

I've been told to get my arse in gear and start posting again on here. I was going to do some quick photo posts the other day but phone (SE K850i) has died on me and is currently being repaired by small monkeys with large tools. And thus I haven't been able to do it. The phone I have been using is my old Nokia 3410! It's about 8 years old or so I think. I can't remember when I bought it!

Moving on though, the things I were going to photo-blog about are...

I have the new Final Fantasy! Crisis Core for the PSP. It's fantastic and I was going to take a couple of photos of it because I have the limited edition version which comes with a hardback artwork book. Fantastic game, completed it in 21.5 hours so not anywhere near the length of the full games, but it is for a hand held console. Still, it is amazing and I recommend playing it.

The second thing I was going to blog about is the new sculpture the university has erected in the library courtyard. It's... reflective. The entire thing is chromed up apart from a couple of stone looking touches. I will grab a couple of photos at some point and post them. I actually quite like it and it's better than the other lumps of rusty metal that are plonked on the front end of the university.

In other news I have been racking my brains for a new webdesign company name. As I blogged a little while ago, someone else is using WindFall Designs now so I'm having to change. A friend and I are going to team up as we are good at different things. He's a much better PHP, etc coder than I and I'd like to think I'm a better designer then he. So fingers crossed, working together we may actually get somewhere!

Now, I hope this satisfies my friend Richard (the one who told me to get my arse in gear) and if he doesn't comment then I shall break out my l33t hax0r skillz on his pasty white ass.

For now... bai!

Of Wow and I Want One!

2008-06-02T11:06:00.003+01:00

I've just seen a video that has utterly blown me away. It's a video of Cisco's Telepresence technology.

Oh yes, the presenter is talking to a hologram in real time. I have got to get me one of these!

I would love to know how it all works, what projection technology is used for a start and what recording equipment are they using on the other end. When I have a spare 10 minutes I'll do some digging for it. Unless anyone can point me in the right direction?

What would be awesome is if Bournemouth Uni would get one of these... oh no they won't because they've stopped using Cisco's experimental stuff now! ARGH!

Of More Videos

2008-05-28T10:51:00.003+01:00

I present two awesome videos from cracked.com. I'll warn now, not for the little ones really. Bloody funny though.

The Internet Party -- powered by Cracked.com

Internet Party 2: An Intervention for MySpace -- powered by Cracked.com

Creepiest Blind Date Ever -- powered by Cracked.com

What's Worse Than Getting Caught Watching Porn at Work? -- powered by Cracked.com

Of Definate Last Days

2008-05-20T14:43:00.002+01:00

Well today really is my last day of placement! I can't believe how fast 40 weeks has gone by. From now until I finish I shall consider myself a proper member of staff and as such I feel I deserve a payrise and a bigger desk...?

Last two days have been pretty slow however. The myBU stuff is just tinkering really. Copy one item, delete another. Create a folder here, pop a link in it. It's pants. Easy pants too. I want to be working on a project again!

I've also finally managed to get a decent stripped down copy of Windows running as my secondary OS on my laptop. Dedicated to Steam of course. I've also got a virtualised version within Ubuntu now using VirtualBox. Works really well, it's just a shame it doesn't have USB support and everything I've tried so far hasn't worked. Still, I'll keep looking. Maybe I'll get Didi to have a look when he gets back from his placement. I also have Lucy Lui as my wallpaper looking rather seductive. She is hot as hell. I would certainly like to meet Miss Lui!

Of Last Days and Rolling On

2008-05-16T09:43:00.004+01:00

Well today is my last official day of placement. A whole 40 weeks. It's gone by in a blast. So henceforth this blog will start to become a little less work orientated and a little more about my ramblings.

Actually I thought I would just check that today is my last day and it turns out it's not. It's Tuesday. Ah well. Close enough.

As work goes it's been pretty quiet, Andy has had the last two weeks off so I've been a little lonesome. Though I have started hanging out with Kristen a little more. We are the only young people left her now really. Our 'Under 30's Club' is very exclusive!

The myBU project I'm working on is still plodding along. Apart from the e-dropboxes the placement area is completely finished. Started reworking the rest of SM Students now. This is my life for the foreseeable future. Tinkering with myBU units. Oh the Joy. I shall dance the Merry Jig of Joy later. Maybe even the fabled Jolly Jig of Joy. It all depends on how Joyful I feel.

Still, I am pleased I have a job here over the summer. It's good money and while it might be a little on the easy side and repetitive it beats the hell out of Tesco's and I get to work with some great people. It will be a shame when I have to leave and go back to being a Full Time Student again.

On a more awesome note, I finally got my new phone the other day. An SE K850i. It's damn nice. The only problem I have with it is the camera can be a little odd in certain lighting conditions. But otherwise, it's a pretty solid phone. And it glows. Blue no less.

Of My Remotes

2008-05-13T22:23:00.003+01:00

Model: Theo
My first lolcat

Of Videos

2008-05-08T11:31:00.003+01:00

I wanted to share a couple of videos with you today, bit random but I think you will enjoy some of them.

First, the Gamespot review of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. I have this baby on pre-order ready for when it comes out at the end of the month. I can't wait.

Second is something that.... well it just confuses the mind really. I'm not sure when it came out but... it's just shocking. They seem to have gone back to their old ways...

Most people, I imagine, have seen a "quarter bouncing" video on YouTube. The ones where the nerds bounce coins off tables into shot glasses? This one is awesome. I think it's real. Can't see any video editing, but then with the low quality you can get away with it easier.

Enjoy.

Of Ubuntu and Whiteboards

2008-05-06T12:51:00.001+01:00

I apologise again for not writing much. I can't say I've been very busy but I can't say I've had the time to sit and blog either, it's all been a bit odd. I've been doing the sort of work that doesn't seem to take much time but seems to take all your time. Very odd. Still, at least I'm doing things!

So work update is pretty much same old. MyBU stuff. Finished working through the dissertations, now it's just sorting out the names and then getting the new area sorted out and ready to roll. Then, or maybe before, I have to sort out some e-dropboxes for the placement area. No that's not dead yet. Also got to have a few meetings and do some IT Inductions, fun fun.

Not working on projects any more which sucks big time but still got the write ups to do for them. Which sucks even more.

Still, happy days I now have a white board in my room thus allowing me to scribble to my hearts content in an array of colours limited to Black, Red and Green.

Finally on my personal notes, I've decided to take on Ubuntu as my main operating system on my laptop instead of "i want to be a geek today" OS. The only reason I am keeping Windows is to play Steam games as I haven't been able to get it to run under linux properly. Managed to start up HL2 but it ran far too slowly. But still, one day who knows? Maybe we shall all be able to play and run what we like under what OS we like. One day.

Of GPR's and Soul Destroying

2008-04-25T09:58:00.008+01:00

Not posted in a while so allow me to summarize what I have been up to. Not a huge amount. This week kicked off with the placement briefings for the second years here at SM. That's going ok, after doing the myBU inductions at the start of the year it's a piece of pie now. Plus it takes me like two minutes to do.

However I have received a little criticism from two people who shall remain nameless in case an angry mob decides to hunt them down. I've been told that I wasn't positive enough. See, it's hard to be positive about things when you know that it's not going to get used a lot. I mean, I take pride in all my work, even this. But it was incredibly easy to set up, easy to populate and now I know, because I hate myBU too, that hardly any of the students are going to use it simply because they won't think they need it. They have the hard copies of everything and even if they lose them they will only go hunting for another copy if they think they need to.

So how can I be positive? At the end of the day, I'm showing them it's their and making them aware just in case.

Other than that barrel of laughs I've been playing with another large barrel of laughs, dissertations. I've been given a little stack to go through (electronic versions) and take out all the pictures, etc that haven't been sourced properly or aren't needed. Soul Destroying. And just crap to be honest. I'm an IT student, not a typing monkey. If I knew that I didn't have to do it I wouldn't. But we need to keep our jobs don't we? Still it's not taking me too long to do them and I only have a few left, though those few are PDF's so I'm having to convert them to DOC's first. Honestly, why can't it be specified to hand in in both formates? Bah.

Finally, Half Life 2 is awesome. It's taken me a long time to play it (3 years...) but I have finally bought it and wow. It's completely amazing. I think it's an almost perfect game. The graphics are spot on, the physics are amazing. Voice acting is good. And the episodic releases after the main game is a brilliant idea. It's only of those games where you need to know what happens after the main game ends. We can only hope (and pray, we have to pray) that Ep.3 comes out fairly soon!

Then of course we will be waiting over half a decade for HL3 of course... hahaha.

Btw, if you don't get GPR it stands for Gordon Propelled Rocket. It's an achievement in HL2:Ep2.

Of Future and Work

2008-04-18T11:12:00.002+01:00

Good news, found out yesterday that I've had my contract extended until the 31st of August! Which is good, plenty of money over the summer which hopefully means I shall be able to put some money aside to fix my car and go on holiday. I need a holiday.

If I hadn't of gotten the extension then my placement would have finished on the 16th of May. 40 weeks has gone so so quick. Just can't believe it. Ah well, at least they like me enough to keep me on. Hopefully I can play my cards right and get a part timer here next year as well. Then I can avoid places like Tesco and no offence to any one who works there, I already have, and I will not be going back!

The placement site has gone very well. It's pretty much finished now, if not finished. Just a couple of tweaks and rewording here and there. First placement briefing next Tuesday with students so that should be fun. I can show them exactly how useless it is. Nah, it should be fairly useful and if I'm honest I wish DEC had something like it for us. But never mind eh.

Anyways, thought I'd share the good news with the bouncers that come on this site because of my misleading tags and Google's amazing ability to put me on page one of a search.

Of Road Rage and Disappointment

2008-04-15T09:04:00.004+01:00

Wasn't even 9am when the excitement of today started! I was sat at the head of some traffic at a junction this morning, got a little room in front of me to roll into the road I was joining. So fat man in the passenger seat of his Mrs's car has noticed this, gets her to beep at me and then starts flapping around at me trying to get me to go forwards. I don't take well to suffocating walrus's flapping around at me so I middle fingered them. She just sort of ignores it and rolls her eyes, but he sticks his thumbs up at me then decides to get out the car. Comes storming up to my passenger side only to find me smug in my knowledge that I have central locking. At which point he starts kicking my car and I roll away smoothly. All in all, I wish I had gotten their bloody license plate and I would now be taking it to the cops and also posting it on here. Still, never mind. No harm done though I really hope he hurt his foot. At least he will have used a few extra calories today.

Now with some disappointment, talking to Andy yesterday it looks like I won't be able to help him with this web project he's looking at getting. Because it would be too much work along side my dissertation. Which sucks big time, guess it's back to the drawing board! Luckily I did come up with a title and little idea for a dissertation, The Impact of Web 2.0 on E-Learning. Dibs by the way. I like that title, it sounds... like I know what I might be talking about...