Halloween Stuff...

16:59: Ahh, Halloween.

Well, I'm hard at work, studying (no, really!) for wednesday's exam, my dad is hard at work getting the kitchen ready to be redecorated, and going by the shrieking outside, it looks like tonight's first group of trick or treaters are musically and noisily wandering down the road. Though they haven't gone into any houses yet. Maybe they're trick trick or treaters, meant to trick people.

17:05 Yep, and we've just had our first group of trick or treaters! And it looks like I'm not going to get much studying done heh. I'm currently creating a miniature presentation on "Administrative distance and equal cost paths (and why the two don't mix)". It's quite shiny. Maybe I'll even show it you one day.

Temporary Wild Tangent:

The thing I love about writing this blog is that while in a few months or even a few years I can reread this thing and smile at the memories, this is all happening now! It's really happening, the real halloween wind keeps blowing my door closed, trick and treaters are wandering up and down, and it's all actually really happening :-).

and I think one thing that my blog has taught me, is to enjoy life more :-). I hope that doesn't sound too weird. I'm going to take the opportunity to go out and enjoy it later, too :-).

Back to Normal:

The dog is making distinctly weird grawr grawr noises, and is currently doing an oscar-winning impression of a tauntaun. She's our furry alarm system.

17:47 Well the trick or treaters are coming regularly now. My ickle nephew is here getting changed, and the dog is giving herself a sore throat and everyone else a headache. :-).

20:45: We've been back for a while now. My ickle nephew got plenty of stuff, and we all had a pretty cool time. He seemed to turn the halloween thing into some kind of racket with a "You knock on the door and I ask for the sweets" motto heh.

Rather endearingly though, every bunty (bounty) he got, he passed to my mum, every mars bar he got, he passed to me. Really sweet of him :-).

We've since returned, examined his stash, and now he's busy watching cartoons while I've resumed my revision.

Halloween Weirdness (Halloween Eve)

Part One: Prologue. Sort of. Halloween Sunday, I suppose.

Part One of Sunday Bit.

Crappy halloween/bonfire night flavoured joke. What do bonfires (perhaps creepy bonfires with cauldrons and stuff on) and my halloween weekend have in common?

Answer? They both feature lots of kindling. Haha, hoho hehe etc.
Yep, after the astounding success of my most recent technological awesomeness, or getting a second free printer, I have now returned from the outside world to my cosy little lair, with yet another piece of sparkly technology. Don't panic though, I paid for this one. That's not to say that I should have paid for the last ones, no, they were gratis and therefore no payment was required :-).

At college, Jim (the one who fights with shrubberies) has gotten into the habit of bringing E-textbooks and other course materials to college to read on his shiny Kindle Keyboard. I instantly thought "Hey, something like that would be really useful for my course".

Of course, I've always used my ipod to read ebooks, but I fancied something with a bigger screen, something that wouldn't become impossible to read as soon as the sun came out, and the kindle seemed like an obvious choice, and so, digging into my miniscule overdraft, off I went into town to look for one.

I had quite a nice time, wandering around the bookshops, little gadget shops, expertly ducking and weaving around to avoid being emotionally blackmailed by the various "hello-sir-can-I-talk-to-you-for-a-minute-did-you-know-that-processed-food-is-radioactive-and-the-animals-don't-get-colour-tv-either-it-will-only-cost-you-10p-a-day-to-provide-chickens-with-sky-digital" folks.

Eventually, after ages of wandering around, I found my way to one of the larger department stores in town (its windows already filled with hanging snowflakes and christmassy scenes), where surely I'd be able to find one. And I found two.

Initially, I fancied one with a keyboard, but these things aren't really cheap, and I didn't really want to pay £40 extra for a keyboard. Instead, I bought this shiny little one. It seems to work fine, it looks great even when it's turned off, and it has 1.2Gb (which sounds like a miniscule amount until you remember that most ebooks take up anywhere from 100KB to a couple of MB a piece. Even the four largest ebooks I have, great big reference texts of 1100 pages plus, only take up 97Mb in total. Perhaps in time I may run out of space, but not for the forseeable future.
I even bought a nice leather wallet thingie to keep it in decent condition in my pocket. £6.50 on ebay :-). So yeah, it's sparkly, it's easy on the eyes (ever tried reading an ipod or an ipad display in direct sunlight? Whereas their LCDs become bright, glary and impossible to read, the rather cool E-ink display of the kindle absolutely and blatantly does not. If anything it's even easier to read the sharp contrasty display in bright sun). I'm glad I bought it.

I've done my mock exam for the end of semester 2 final exam, and the result was an encouraging 85.1%. Now I know what I need to read up on, the real exam should end with a higher score.
I hope so at least. We lost another student this week - having been off due to health issues, he has since decided that he has fallen too far behind to continue with the course. Shame.
Those of us that are staying the course though, are looking forward to our cool Christmas party thingie. We're predicting pizza, lots of lovely fireballs, cider, beer and whatnot, and lots of fun to be had.

Prologue Part 2 - Halloween. And Fireworks.

I'm not sure why, but Halloween seems to have turned into a weekend long thing. I don't mind, I like festivities. I was zooming about at work last night in the lovely autumn rain, and saw my first band of trick or treating folks attending a party. On the 29th! I suppose if you like beer on halloween parties, it makes sense to have it on a day that isn't the night before going to work first thing in the morning.

I'm expecting to see substantially more trick or treating folks out and about today, as the weather is better, and a few more folks might have put up their scary decorations.
I've got work in a couple of hours, I suppose I'll be able to find out for myself.

As for my ickle nephew, he has a cool bat costume, and he's also (now) got some cool glowstick thingies, and we're all looking forward to going out tomorrow, which I have off.

Unfortunately, I don't have bonfire night (the 5th) off. But it's not such a big problem. Since I'll be out and about all night, I'll get to see plenty of fireworks anyway.

So yeah, that's it for now. I've got some studying to do :-).

Hot CPUs, Cool Printers

Part One: College Bit

Argh, typing without my wrist rest (it snapped off :-\) is really uncomfortable.

2 minutes later...

How embarrasing. My expensive shiny G19 keyboard's wrist rest is now stuck to it with blu-tack. Still, that's what you get if all the little clips snap off I suppose.

Well, things are once again proceeding apace at college, as the dreaded Semester 2 final exam is tiptoeing its way towards us at the rate of approximately 7 days each week, which has got more than a couple of people hot under the collar. In preparation, I've been busy cracking on with as many of the online curriculum modules as I could cope with.

10,400 words and an online exam (100%) later, I'm now thoroughly sick of reading about EIGRP, and looking forward to a couple of nice easy modules. The next one is an introduction to Link-State protocols, and then we apply what we learn there, to the one after, which teaches us about OSPF.

Of course, we've already summarised both chapters at college, so it's more a case of cementing our understanding, than it is a case of being introduced to new stuff. If we all pass, I imagine that we're going to be getting on with another end of semester exam. Hopefully Jim can avoid drunkenly getting into a fight with vegetation this time, as apparently when the bush beat him last time, he was injured.

We're already planning our college christmas party, and even ickle Jack (who has since left the course) has said he will come. We might even be able to get our tutor to turn up for a couple of drinks. So yeah.

Part Two: Christmas Bit

So it looks like I've got a busy Christmas calendar. Yep, lots of people still think it's too early for that sort of thing, however, friends tell me they've already arranged their work Christmas parties, pubs and restaurants are taking bookings for Christmas dinners, and advent calendars are already on sale in the shops (surely, the chocolate inside them must expire before you even open it?). I might get myself an advent calendar with chocolates this year, as I miss having one to open every morning heh. The lil dude tells me he has a Lego calendar (Star Wars lego maybe?) this year, which should be fun for him. Until either his or our dog eats the bits, which seems to have become the new natural end of the life cycle of the Lego piece, in our respective houses.

But yeah. So far, this year, my preliminary christmas calendar includes (in some semblance of an approximate order, and subject to weather):

*Trip to Winter Wonderland in London
*Trip to Gainsborough old Hall
*Trip to Kelham Island Christmas Fair Thingy (which we missed last year cos of the snow)
*Trip to Wentworth to look round their Christmas department
*Trip to Castleton to wander round (they have illuminated christmas trees lining the streets in winter)
*Trip to Christmas Concert type thing again.
*Solo trip to local christmassy supermarket to buy some Christmas necessities (shortbread, beer, mexicana cheese, etc. I'll probably need to get some medication of some type as well, as I generally have a cold around Xmas time)
*College Xmas Party
*Work Xmas Party (generally just a few drinks at a pub near work, or even closing early and drinking in the shop)
*Family shopping trip for Xmas food
*Xmas Day
*Boxing Day

There may be others in there as well, such as taking the ickle dude round the "Magical Christmas Kingdom".

But yeah, lots of stuff to be getting on with, but first, lots of studying and whatnot.

I still need to start buying presents.

Part Three: Technological Bit

Well, I've been settling into the routine with my shiny new computer, and apart from one or two blips, it's been working fine.
One blip occured the other night. See, because of a chipset incompatibility (I think), my cooler will only draw power from the motherboard 3 boots out of every 5. The other 2 times it will refuse to power on.

"Send the cooler back" you might say. Doesn't work, if one cooler will do it, the replacement will do it. It's an incompatibility, not a hardware failure.

Anyway, last weekend, I came back proceeded to put Need for Speed on, and spent a happy hour racing around, earning money, and generally beating all comers. At some point, I wondered what the cpu temp would be after an hour of gaming.
Finding the LCD Display to be dark, I realised that I'd effectively been racing an hour on passive cooling only!
Restarting the machine, I checked to make sure the cooler had come on, and it did straight away, shrieking overtemp warnings at me, and flashing a coolant temperature of 89C! Coolant temperature is generally lower than CPU core temp, so I have no IDEA what the cpu temp was at that time. (It turns out that the max working temp for my processor is 75C, and the CPU's emergency shutdown temp is 125C. In retrospect, I hadn't damaged the CPU, and hadn't really run the risk of damaging it, but it was still a scary moment).

I set the cooler to Extreme cooling mode, which pushed the fan and pump up to max rpms, and the coolant temp took maybe a minute or so to drop from 89c to 29c. That's a good cooler! Phew, what a scare.
I'll get a cable so I can connect the cooler directly to the PSU in future. Should stop this happening again.

Part Three And A Bit: New Technological Friend

As I am wont to do, on my lunch break, I wandered into the lab at college to see what was what. While there, I examined the scrap shelf to see if there was anything interesting. Was there? Of course not. A few defunct laptops stacked like house bricks, a huge box of loose parts which some 16 year old created from what was once a working computer, and a huge slab sided thing which looked like a broken fax machine, that had been there since february, and hadn't been thrown in a skip yet.
Out of idle curiosity (it had been there since I first started college, I wondered what it was), I cleared the stacked crap off it and pulled it off the shelf onto the workbench. It turned out to be one of those all in one scanner printer thingumies that seem popular these days.

"What is this? What's wrong with it? It's been on the shelf at least since february"
The tutor wandered over. "Nothing's wrong with it".
"Well, why is it on a shelf, it's just taking up space".
"Take it if you want it", he replies.

Umm. Wow. After establishing if he was being serious, I scooted around until I found the power brick for it. I plugged the device in and turned it on, at which point it immediately started doing a sort of POST, checking all its functions, and making various clicking and clunking noises. Hmm, not broken then.
Later in my lunch break, I continued to play with it, and had a closer look at it. It was a scanner, printer, fax and copier, all in one. Awesome, since my scanner doesn't want to work with Windows 7 any more.

I managed to get a lift to take the thing home, and spent the rest of the night playing with it. 4 ink cartridges, 3 of which were almost full, the scanner worked flawlessly, and the print quality was fantastic. Wow.

So yeah, for anyone who's remotely bothered, it's an HP L7580 all-in-one type thing, designed mainly for small businesses rather than homes, which explains why it is freaking huge (it weights 32 pounds and dwarfs my lil laser printer). It copies, faxes, scans up to 4800DPI and can spit out awesome quality colour prints to the tune of about 5 a minute (best quality photos) or 34 pages (decent quality text) a minute.
Since printing monochrome on a laser printer is a hell of a lot cheaper than printing in colour on an inkjet, I'm tempted to use the Laser printer for high volume stuff like college coursework, and use the inkjet for more colourful and intricate stuff, as well as photos. Also, it has an internal speaker so it makes happy little beep boop noises as you use it, heh. Oh, and it prints directly from memory card :-D.





Having a scanner that works is awesome, and at 1200dpi (which isn't even beginning to push the scanner's capabilities), this one can turn a DVD cover into a picture which if you printed it out at its new resolution would measure 4 and a half meters by three meters! So yeah. Very very happy.

I wonder at this point if I should come up with cute little names for my printers. Write your suggestions on a postcard, and then scan the postcard and email it to me at an undisclosed address :-).

Anyway, really running out of time now, got to get ready for work, so I'd best get busy :-).

Here is a shiny picture of my new printer dwarfing my cute ickle laser printer :-).

Weather Weirdness...

Part One - Familyness:

...Yep, the nights are definitely drawing again, and the weather for the start of October has been weeeirrdd. A few weeks ago, the news reported that we should be expecting snow for the end of october. Amid the general cries of "oh no, not again", were one or two "I spose it's that time of year again then?"
So far, the snow hasn't materialised, but then we are only a little way through October. What has materialised though, is a rather unexpected, rather temporary but thoroughly enjoyable (apart from the night when you can't sleep) mini heatwave. Yep, even as late as early October, we had three or four of those "don't go outside you'll get sunburned" days.

All that seems to have come to a very definite cold and wet end though, as in the past couple of days, the temperature has dropped sharply, and the lovely sun has now been replaced with rainy rain. Fair enough, it's good for the plants I suppose.

At this point it occurse to me to wonder why I always seem fixated on the weather. I don't think it's a uniquely English thing, rahter, I suspect it's my way of pointing out (to our collective subconcious (do we have a collective subconcious? are we Borg? Perhaps I meant "Collective Sub-Conciouses-plural")) without labouring the point, that my favourite time of year is beginning to approach again. Which is awesome, actually, though I do now have to start buying Xmas pressies.

I lost out to my mum this year, this time she earned the "person who bought the first Christmas present of 2011" title. My ickle nephew for his part has been pointing at every other TV ad saying "I want that" heh. I have been giving some thought to getting him some of these, however, I have disturbing visions of him either wrapping them round his head, or whacking himself in the eye with them, or going a little crazy, kinda like this, so I'll make a decision under advisement, I think.

Before any of that stuff though, we have dun dun dunnnn, Halloween. I'm trying to get my mum to make a gold-edged blue cape/cloak thingie for my ickle nephew, so he can wear it with his Armouron and his blue Lightsaber, and all-in-all look way cooler than all the other kids. It might be an idea to attach a glowstick or two to him as well, as not only does it seem to have become fashionable, but it helps make him more visible at night as well.

(Actually, my parents have just come back from Toys'r'us with big bags of sweets for the kiddehs at halloween).

Part Two - Computeryness:

Well, it seems that my computer is now finally actually finished. I had a couple of little parts to put in it,but now they've arrived and seem to be working okay, I can crack on with reinstalling all the lovely shiny software and whatnot. The GPU means I can now run all games I have on insanely maximum graphics settings (apart from Xplane, amusingly, which I've had for years. Since it was designed to run across a network with the load being spread across multiple machines, turning the settings as high as they would go still resulted in 4-6 frames a second. But then I suppose I was being slightly daft :P. Big gap here because pictures mess the formatting up!




The other clever bit that arrived seems to be working quite nicely in reducing my program load times, but cos of its capacity limitations I haven't installed a great deal to it at the minute.
I've managed to carry over some of my software from the old install, so stuff like X-plane (all 80Gb of it!) thankfully doesn't need reinstalling (I'm keeping it on an "old fashioned" drive though).
I haven't yet finished configuring all thefeatures that windows is supposed to use to support SSDs, but apparently I can expect several small performance increases as and when I figure out how to enable said features, by arsing about in registry.

I've had a few problems with the system refusing to boot at all, the drives would spin up, the fans would spin, and then noooothiiing would happen. I think I've traced the problem to a standoff post which wasn't fitted properly (because it was crossthreaded), which could apparently have resulted in the motherboard not being grounded to the case properly.


As I mentioned in my last entry, the coolit ECO cooler that I was using was diagnosed as faulty by Coolit. In the end, I sent the cooler back to them, and they sent me a shiny new Coolit Vantage, which aside from looking awesome, is also very quiet, and works very well. Major thumbs up to coolit for their awesome customer service.

Now I have another teeny problem, which is that the motherboard only gives power to the CPU cooler 3 boots out of every 5. Apparently I can get round this by connecting the cooler to the PSU instead, as it's the cooler, not the mobo, that controls the cooler fan speed. The whole issue may be something to do with a partial incompatibility rather than a hardware failure, as it's a common problem on most gigabyte boards also.
But yeah. To summarise: Computer now finished, now working, not perfect, but almost :-).

Part Three - Meal Stuffs:

A while ago I made a really crappy job of creating some pasta sauce, which for some reason my mum really loved. I suggested that I'd be happy to try again and cook some pasta for the family, and so they went and bought loads of stuff with which to make a meal.
And would you know, it actually turned out really well. The sauce was lovely, the pasta was just right, and the garlic bread was incredible. Even the table looked nice. A nice time was had by all.

I mention this fleetingly, as it looks like me cooking might become a regular thing :-). I've been asked to do the pasta again actually, so I'm pretty pleased with that.

So yeah, quite a pleasant occasion.

Here are some picatures, as is traditional. I will no doubt be on again going on about my ickle nephew's halloween experiences. I believe he's going to some halloween event or other. Looks fun!

Ciao! Better start buying those presents ;-).

Sheets of rain and other liquid cooling...

Well, the weather seens to have turned very quickly. With Autumn having waited all summer for the chance to do its thing, now it's here it's definitely making its presence felt. The sky is all shades from the light "can't really be bothered" grey, to the very dark "I'd better get inside" grey. There's also a lovely patch of blue, of course, and while the rain has temporarily stopped completely, a couple of minutes ago, I was watching rain come down in sheets onto my neighbour's garage (everywhere else as well, but I was watching my neighbour's garage) where the wind blasted them from the roof against the neighbour's house wall. So yeah, summer seems to have had its chance.

Well, five minutes later and that temporary storm seems to have ended. It's all bright sunshine again.

Sooo, yeah.
A few days ago, wednesday or perhaps thursday, at 9:19PM, my computer, having been put in its new case, and fully assembled, booted into Windows for the first time, making it the first official (non testing) time this new computer has booted up. Yay, happy 0th birthday, computer. At this point I'd like to thank my big bro for generously donating many of the components now sitting inside the PC. In the end I used a donated motherboard and power supply (and cpu cooler - see below), new RAM, CPU and Case, and a GPU that I already owned.

I finally managed to grab a Coolit ECO ALC and install it, and for a short time it worked great. Now the pump is making a weird droning noise.
The seller is very apologetic and has promised a refund if that is what I wish, however, I went to check with the manufacturers whether the noise was a symptom of something serious (i.e. possible pump failure) or something beningn (possible trapped air bubble), first. No point going to the trouble of replacing it if it's just something that's going to go away.
The manufacturer for their part have suggested that the pump may be faulty and have "opened a support case". I'm not sure what that means but I guess it will all become clear. If coolit resolve the issue it might just be a case of replacing the defective ECO ALC with a working one. If on the other hand I have to deal with the seller and get a refund, I suppose I can always take the money from the refund and put it towards a shiny Corsair H80 (also made by coolit).

Time will tell. I've gone back to air cooling for a while until it all gets sorted out. I would say that CPU temps are unchanged, but I actually have no way of telling, since Speedfan seems to be a complete mess that doesn't seem to have a clue what it's doing. At least I don't have to worry about the pump exploding and splashing coolant all over my system anymore.

So, what else have I been doing? Well, I've been studying lots, and taking online exams and whatnot. I've also been playing lots of games with all the settings turned up to high, which is always fun.

I've also started looking online for gifts to buy for the end of year present festival that shall not be named yet. Yes, QVC's Endofyearpresentfestivalthatshallnotbenamedyet In July was quite well received by my mum (who loves Endofyearpresentfestivalthatshallnotbenamedyet) and I've heard on the internet that some stores are already stocking Xmas (oops there I go) stuff, including the local store which now stocks 2 varieties of mince pies (If you don't know what they are then go to your specialist food store (I've just had a quick look and they seem really hard to find in the US, which is a shame because they're really nice).

So yeah, I've got a few ideas for things to buy people, but we'll have to see what happens between now and then :-).

Apropos of nothing, I have been spending a hell of a lot of time listening to this album. I'd never heard of the band until a friend recommended them, though I think they're rather good :-).

As an aside, reading about mince pies on that site has lead me to read some more of it, and it seems to be perfect for my sense of humour. Here you go, for all you overseas folks who wondered what weird and awesome things we eat. There's some stuff on there that even i've never heard of.

I leave ye with some pickatures of various computer related things that I have been doing recently :-). Heh, or at least I will try to. The tabling seemed to work out okay this time round :-).

Have fun, I've got loads of revision to do. Meh.

We Have Liftoff... (New computer begins shakedown)...

It's official. As of a couple of seconds past 11pm, a little over 20 minutes ago, my new computer just booted into Windows for the first time.

I'm at the initial "sodding about" phase at the moment, and there's a lot of work to be done. Loads of applications, software, games etc to install, loads of drivers to be added, settings to be changed etc, and all of it is going to wait until my bro has salvaged what data he needs from the rather shiny and lovely primary SATA drive he has promised me.

At the moment, the machine is in a temporary case, using an IDE hard drive from one machine, an IDE CD drive from another, the tower case from a third and a spare cooling fan from a fourth. I suppose you could say I'm temporarily loaning a racehorse the legs from another animal, to see if it can run :-).

Once I get the SATA drive, I'll start from scratch and reinstall everything, and here's why:

The Motherboard I am using uses only one IDE channel, which is fair enough. I mean it's not the 80s anymore, right? The downside is that since I only have two SATA drives, one of which is too small to use as a primary, and the other of which has already been designated a secondary, I have to use two PATA devices on the same channel at the same time, which apparently causes bottlenecking on the PATA bus.

Not only that, but where sata cables are sleek, slim and curvy, IDE "ribbons" are bulky, crumply, ugly, and, let's just face it, they look really bad and attract dust like a magnet. They're difficult to fold around corners of the case, difficult to route round things, and they act like a great big long electronic tarpaulin strung from one side of your case to the other to obstruct air flow.
So the sooner the SATA drive (which uses sleek slim cables) is in there, the better.

Speaking of air flow, my new computer is happily "hooing" (that's the noise it makes, seriously, it's a quiet "Hooooooooo" sound (at 100% RPM and silent at anything less than about 60%) to itself, as I try to see how low I can get the core temp to go.
Considering that the side of the case is off, and the fact that aside from an 80mm fan I balanced on one of the aforementioned IDE cables to cool the chipset (and the PSU fan which has its own job to do), the solitary 120mm fan of my new and sparkly Coolit ECO ALC cooler is the only fan in the case, it is doing a damn good job of holding my CPU at a steady 32 degrees C. The Zalman air cooler in my other (this) computer can only manage 36c, and that's in a cool case surrounded by other fans, on a CPU that is slower by some 400Mhz. Okay, 4 degrees isn't a big difference, but both machines are effectively idling, and apparently it's under heavy load that the ECO struts its stuff.

Of course, my new rig isn't ready to strut its stuff yet. It doesn't have DirectX installed, and it is currently packing a lowly 256mb Geforce 7600GT in its digital pants. A card which would probably not suffice for hardcore gaming these days, even if it weren't damaged, which it is. Having suffered a hefty dose of heat damage a while back, any black screen is now liberally dotted with pretty red, green and blue pixels. I'll replace the 7600 with my GTX260 when I move the machine to its permanent home in the lovely new case I've bought.

Amusingly, the little 50mm (maybe?) fan of the gpu is making far, far noise than the ECO's 120. In fact, since I haven't installed any drivers other than the default, it was only four minutes after the computer booted to desktop for the first time that it lost its bluescreen virginity, with some kind of Nvidia driver error that is apparently popular among later versions of Windows. I don't expect this error to be a problem once the latest drivers are installed of course.

So yeah. I'm not doing anything hugely in depth, but it'd be nice to remember the very first time that my computer went online.

Ciao!

Excuse the dreadful mess, the case is my "It's the only spare case that will take 120mm fans" case.
The camera is my "I'm sorry I've lost my tripod mounting plate" camera.

When the day of the big build comes I will borrow a tripod if needs be and take some better pics :-).

Is this an Autumn I see before me?

I dunno, let me check.
No it's not. But I suspect that as summer occasionally appears early for 24 hours at a time in April, Autumn probably does much the same thing. Last night for example. Very cloudy and quite rainy, for most of the night actually.
And today, weirdly seems to be one of those Autumnal bright-sunshine/cold-breeze days, where the shadows are 10 degrees cooler than the light. I like days like this. They bring back happy memories, though I'm not sure what of. More a memory of a general sensation of happiness perhaps. Not sure why. Oh well.

So yes, computing.Well, my new case arrived a short time ago and I wasted no time in putting my system into it. It feels like a different computer, which is bizarre because the only thing that's changed is the case. But that's not going to be the case for long :-).

I've been on the receiving end of remarkable amounts of generosity from various people actually, where computer hardware is concerned. I guess college was coming up to the end of its budgetary year or something, and wanted to spend what little money they had left so they weren't under-budget, as at one point in the lab they had piles of stuff in what has since become known as "freebie corner".

Among the items which I claimed (I was given first dibs) were a trio of Cisco wireless access points, which I figured would come in useful for my CCNA (though I suspect they might need power over Ethernet which may be a small issue because I might not be able to power them!), an old (it had gone beige!) but fully functioning monochrome laser printer, and a shiny, mint-condition (but apparently obsolete and incompatible with windows 7) 600dpi flatbed CIS Scanner.
Having told my colleages of the bounty available in the lab, they came along and took the two remaining scanners, and I traded one of my wireless access points with a friend in return for a load of goodwill and a clear conscience (I don't need three of them anyway)*.

The laser printer worked flawlessly, and even works over USB so I don't need to sod about with serial cables and whatnot. The scanner on the other hand came with zero windows 7 support, with the manufacturers and Microsoft insisting that the scanner was incompatible with windows 7. It looks like the manufacturers just gave up on the scanner and its owners altogether.
Fortunately, other owners of the scanners weren't so willing to be left high and dry, and eventually with their help I was actually able to get the scanner working properly. Here is an incredible picture to prove it, courtesy of my ickle nephew:

I think he's coming on as an artist - he's certainly good when it comes to attention to detail. So yeah, the scanner now works, which I'm pleased about. I'm pretty happy with the laser printer as well, as it prints pretty fast, and 1200dpi printouts look pretty cool.
The only downside is that it's gone slightly beige, which is a bit annoying, but hey, it didn't cost me anything so I have no moral authority to complain whatsoever hehe. I'm still wondering how I might get it slightly less beige though. Maybe some oven cleanery stuff would work, I don't know. I'm not sure I want to risk destroying the printer to find out, heh.

Finally, the rebuilding of my computer received a huge boost earlier this week when my bro brought over most of an entire system that he had been using before he went over to the dark side. I'm ordering some new shiny bits from ebay, and in the next week or two I hope to rebuild my machine completely. The only thing left in it that's in it now will be the optical drive (one on the "new" machine doesn't work) and the secondary storage drive (which has all my documents on).

Once my bro brings over the sata drive he's combing through for any useful left-over bits, I am going to use it as my primary drive, and I can crack on with reinstalling everything to the new machine, which should be quite a lot of fun. So yeah.

Oh, and as for the spider, I ended up running out of the local shop carrying one of our old friends in my hands, to stop the spider from freaking out/being squished by the hordes of local kids that hang around outside the local shop for no good reason.
Said spider was then dumped around the corner out of sight and last seen wandering indignantly (but 3-dimensionally) off. I then wandered back in and paid for my shopping, as if nothing had happened hehe.
So yeah, revising for exams, rescuing spiders and planning new computers. It's been a fun week :-).

Some pickatures.












*Said friend is apparently keeping the still-unused wireless access point in a box in his cellar, having found out to his disappointment that while on a very superficial level, his wireless internet dongle and a wireless access point could be said to work along the same incredibly broad lines, he would not be able to substitute one for the other, and in fact the wireless access point would be of no use to him whatsoever.

A Frantic Disposition...

23:03 Monday 22nd August - 34 and a half hours before turning up for the exam...

This is just a little placekeeper that another - two or three day older - version of me is going to write an addition to in two or three days time.

Hi older me, I hope you passed the super mega important exam on wednesday.

Yes folks, I'm frantically revising for a very important exam, and to say I'm nervous is an understatement.
Actually it's not.

I am nervous, but I am also quietly confident. It is very very very important that I pass this exam, but I've done the practice test (which is apparently harder) and scored 15% higher than the pass mark, so hopefully I'll have something to celebrate on wednesday. If I do celebrate on wednesday, I may not write an addition to this after all. I might be too busy consuming alcoholic beverages and listening to music. Who can say?

If all goes well I'll get back to you on the thursday, with a hangover, some computer related stuff, and a story about a spider :-).

Wish me luck!

UPDATE: 19:01, the following day. 14 and a half hours before turning up for the exam...

I just finished my second attempt of the practice exam after two nights and a day of revision.
It's not very often I throw my hands in the air and scream "YES, HAHAHAHA!!" at the top of my voice, but after a mock exam score of 98.1%, I have probably crossed the line to "loudly confident", heh.
Still nervous though. But hey, let's see how it goes.

PART TWO - 15:08, 26th August...

Well, the day eventually crept up on me, and off I went. We spent most of the morning going over the questions in the practice test that a lot of people found difficult. After a quick break, we started all working together on one particularly problematic problem that - although I got right in the test exam - was a source of concern for me.

A short time later, we went through who wanted to do the exam that day, and who wanted to leave it until the day after.
Surprisingly only one of us decided to leave it until the day after, and the rest of us cracked on with it.

A cursory initial look over the questions revealed that despite assurances to the contrary, the real exam would be much harder than the practice test. But now I'd said I'd do t, it was a timed exam and I couldn't sit feeling sorry for myself. I ended up really struggling with a couple. You know how it is, the revision materials prepare you to answer any one of a thousand questions, and you just have to hope that the 50 they ask are among the ones you've prepared for.

Fortunately, quite a lot of the ones I got right are indeed ones that I'd studied in the days leading up to the exam, and although I was stumped by a couple of questions for a while and even had a couple of "What is this I don't even?" questions that continued to infuriate me all the way to the end of the exam.

A minute before the timed end of the exam I figured that the two remaining questions that I had guessed answers for had got me for the past hour and a half and wouldn't be solved with a last minute flash of inspiration, so I submitted the exam and resigned myself to the inevitable score that didn't reflect how hard I'd studied over the past couple of days.

Except I guess it did, because I got 90%. A healthy pass :-). So that's okay then. The stuff about the spider will have to wait :P.

Beer Madness

PART 1 - THE START (WHAT ELSE?)

So, Jack's birthday went pretty well. The day before the "do", our tutor says "oh by the way, tomorrow is a catching-up day where you all get together, sit around, read dilbert comics and complain at how unreasonable customers can be".
Actually he didn't, but now he's getting to know us as a class, I have a feeling that's what he will say in future.

PART 1A - BACKGROUNDY BIT OF KNOWLEDGE

You see, as part of our course, alongside our CCNA, we have another couple of, well, sub courses if you like, that we have to do as well.
The problem is, to actually do the coursework for these sub-courses, we need to demonstrate things like; "Using screenshots where appropriate, demonstrate the ability to search for, find, download and rename a software patch". Yes, really. On wednesday we were learning the intricacies of Manchester/Phase Encoding, and on the thursday we progressed to the lofty heights of "and then I clicked on 'rename' on the menu and here is a screenshot to prove it".
I would actually say that correctly creating, editing, saving and inserting a screenshot into a word document requires more skill than renaming a downloaded file, but hey.

Further to this, we don't actually have download privileges at college, so we can't demonstrate anything except our failure to l334 h4x a firewall. So instead of getting on with our sub-course courseworkyness, when the CCNA tutor isn't CCNA tutoring us, we sit around, read dilbert, and moan about bad experiences with customers.

Except this time we didn't. Being thursday, we set off to one of the local pubs.
And there we stayed, having a wide variety of interesting drinks including (for me) beer, cider, corvoisier (brandy), and a rather stunning cocktail called a fireball.

50ml of finest cinnamon whisky in a pint glass, topped up with apple juice. The result is an alcoholic drink that tastes (and smells) like raw liquid Christmas :-).

So the night turned out quite well. Lots of alcohol was consumed, lots of pizza was eaten (mine was liberally covered in the hottest chilli sauce I have ever tasted - alcohol seemed to take the edge off the discomfort, and while I don't like hot food, you'll do anything to impress your mates after 4 hours of drinking - so while I was sat there with my hot pizza grinning like a cheshire cat, the other guys were backing away from the table to stop the chilli fumes corroding their drinks glasses), and no one got into trouble despite the fact that one of the elders of our party made the mistake of turning up with an empty stomach after very little sleep, and quickly became the most intoxicated person I've seen outside of a cop show as a result.
To stop him from drunkenly losing them, other members of the party went home with his watch/mobile phone/sunglasses/backpack/expensive multitool/mountain bike, and apparently the poor dude woke up in absolute panic the day after wondering where all his stuff was.
He has it all back now and has promised not to drink on an empty stomach again :-).

PART TWO, OTHER STUFF...

So the course is coming on quite well, though I'd be lying if I said that anyone was finding it easy. I do however, seem to be coping quite well and have already got the practical part of the end of semester exam down to a fine art.

I had wanted this entry to be longer, but I've left it hanging in mid air for so long that I've forgotten most of what I wanted to write about, so busy have I been with college work (no really).

Hopefully, the next entry will include more computery type stuff :-). Let's see how things go hey.

Shuttles, Bikes and Climbing Frames...

PART ONE: BIKEY STUFF

I would yawn, but I'm not that sleepy.

I'm tired, yes, extremely physically tired, my legs, arms and lower back ache from 3 hours of cycling up, down, around, across, over, between, and well, I'm sure you get the idea.
See, one of the things that I like about my job, is that when people are in a nice mood, they give me lovely gifts of money or tips.
These tips go in a Jar (a plastic bag actually), until they accumulate enough to represent a decent amount of money.

Back at the start of the year, or even as late as the end of last year, you may have seen me mention that I was saving up for a new bike, one with suspension, that didn't jiggle me about so much when it came to kerbs and suchlike. But for whatever reason, no sooner would I start saving, than some personal financial crisis would appear and devour my money. Whether college fees or bus fare or whatever, despite the generous and substantial help from my parents, money seems to have been really tight for the past few months.
It's only recently that I've started to have a disposable income again.

Eventually, the tips built up to the right amount, and after weeks of agonising, I chose and ordered a new bike to replace my cool but slightly rusty (with finnicky gears that didn't work properly) and kinda uncomfortable other bike, with something more suited to my style of riding.
I ride on the pavement a fair bit, but I also enjoy riding dirt tracks and whathave you, and so the various potholes, kerbs, tree roots, protuding stones etc made a ride without suspension kinda tough on some sensitive areas.
So I ordered a spangly shiny new one, with suspension, and also with a cool paintjob, and lovely disc brakes instead of standard v brakes.
And today, after putting it together, I went on a lovely zoom around.
After hurting my naughty parts, I carefully rode home, put it together again with a larger spanner, and went on another zoom around, a few hours in length, cycling around all these weird little woodland paths that I've always been curious about.

PART TWO: NEPHEW-Y STUFF

As for the ickle guy, well I managed to see a poster in the local store advertising an Emergency Services Open Day. As the name suggests, lots of police, ambulances and firetrucks in attendance, lots of fun activities for all the family etc, and I even got to sit in the driving seat of a Police 4X4 (It looked like that <--- one, but not a model) which was cool. The fire fighters were doing demonstrations of fighting fires, the drugs dog was doing a demonstration of searching for drugs, morris dancers were doing impressions of dancers, and the speed camera dudes were trying to convince everyone not to hate them. We saw some awesome birds of prey, some cute rabbits, some strange chickens and rather skinny ducks, the biggest horses that I have ever seen, and 1001 dogs. My mum helpfully got me some helpful information about securing my possessions with the police, which she then helpfully tucked away somewhere where I can't get it.
Whereas my sister seems to throw stuff away if she can't immediately justify keeping it, my mum just seems to hide stuff away if she can't immediately justify not doing so. And since she's a compulsive hide-stuff-away-er, the end results of her interactions with items of property are depressingly similar and predictable. Oh well.

Last week, I took the ickle guy to the a park in another part of town. The area was lucky enough to have some money ploughed into it, (which is ironic given that the area's main block of flats is about to be ploughed into rubble), and as it has only been up a short time, the new park is therefore in decent condition, the local kids not having had enough time to smash the stuff up yet.
They have a couple of slides, a weird cross between a swing and, well, a round thing. It's like a huge dinnerplate attached to a swing, and you sit in it and swing.
They also have a rather terrifyingly tall climbing frame with a slide at the top. This thing is huge. I could climb off the roof of our extension onto it with little trouble.
It is made, instead of rungs, of very taut nylon ropes cunningly arranged so as to be a complete devil to climb. Never mind worrying about falling onto the ground, when I was up there I worried just as much about falling from one part of the construction onto another. Shame - I could have climbed to the top and had a nice view of my nephew being weird.

Or I could if I didn't hate heights, which is why while my nephew was busy climbing like a little climbing spider monkey, I was relaxing in the swinging thing, while keeping a careful eye on him :-).
But again, he seemed to like it. He made a new friend, who gave him a muffin for some reason, and I had a nice time walking him round the little alleyways and suchlike.

OTHER STUFF

That's it really. College has been proceeding apace, with the lessons getting harder and harder, we spend the days examining incrementally smaller and smaller parts of the curriculum, trying to nail out the facts in some semblance of order, before moving onto the next mind-warping revelation.
Today, we did subnetting. Next week we will do it as well, and possibly the week after. It's a confuzzling (and yet kinda awesome and clever and interesting) topic. The occasional giddy rush of fulfilment when the pieces suddenly snap into place, makes the grinding through the facts and texts worth it, I think :-).
Today, we also watched the shuttle land, live. I asked the tutor to let me watch it as a favour (the student computers don't have flash), and to my surprise, a crowd gathered pretty quickly, all evidently keen to watch Atlantis land for the last time. And land she did, without incident thankfully. While she goes on display at Kennedy, NASA and other organisations promise that they are working hard to deliver her replacement.

And that's about it really. Next week should be fun. I've booked 2 days off, so we can take the youngest member of our class out to the pub for his 18th birthday. There are about 8 of us going, and Jack (the kid) insists - get this - that he has things to do, the day after [his 18th birthday celebration!]. How irresponsible is that! He should just cancel those activities, instead of performing them with a huge hangover.
We did all agree not to get him too drunk however, as one of us would have to put him up for the night, and no one wants a sickeningly drunk kid falling around their house.

Of course, how reasoned and sensible we are about it after several beers, remains to be seen. Given the fact that the last time we went for "a quick pint", and that the more we drank, the more drinking more seemed like an awesome idea, I think someone is going to have to show extraordinary presence of mind to make sure, at half 11 at night, that ickle Jack doesn't get left to sleep in a skip somewhere, as is traditional birthday celebration activity, apparently.

But hey. Let's see.

And now, that this is over, I'm going to backup some stuff, and then sod off to bed.
I seem to have become more sleepy in the past few minutes. Very tired actually. I will have to have an early night to ensure I have enough energy to zoom around on my bike again tomorrow.

Byeee.

End of an era...

T minus 1:08.
Yep, I'm sitting here with my dad on a what has turned out to be a very rainy day, watching what is officially the last ever launch of the Space Shuttle, and I have to admit, I think it's a sad occasion. The thing has worked pretty damn well for the past 30 years, it and seems a shame to get rid of the shuttle, especially as there's no immediate replacemen for her. As I said to my dad, it's like the retirement of Concorde all over again.

(Launch countdown is paused at 31 seconds, while they check if something or other has retracted properly).
*Countdown resumes, less than 20 seconds to go*

And the engines have started...

And up she goes. The final liftoff of the space shuttle.
An amazing piece of kit, the Shuttle, I've got, somewhere, a huge framed photo of it that my neighbour brought me back from the space center when I was a little kid, so yeah, it's sad for me to know it's her last flight.

16:31 And the boosters have seperated.

Still on her way up, and apparently she's gonna be up there for 12 days.
But yeah,, she's been off the pad for about 5 minutes, and the shuttle's high enough for the curvature of the earth to be pretty visible

16:38 And the tank has just seperated.

Aaaand, the news has moved on to the news of the world scandal.

So yeah, I'm gonna get ready for work and suchlike, but I figured I should take time out to watch Atlantis go up one last time. Call me sentimental, I don't care.

Have fun, all :-).

Summertime! An actual real one...

...Always the way isn't it. You can read a news article two or three times the night before, and when you actually try to find the bloody thing, it's nowhere to be found.

(BING, Formula one is just finishing, 14:43 GMT. No prizes for guessing who wins).

Ah, here it is :-).

Yep, the weather, while not great, has at least avoided being downright crappy recently. Yesterday was actually quite nice, but today, wow. I went outside (as I am wont do do when not interfaced with my computer), and wow, would you believe it, it's one of those "get in the shade because you'll get sunburned otherwise and by the way don't touch anything made of metal or else you'll burn yourself" days.

However I need to adjust the (presently non-existent) brakes on my mountain bike so that isn't really an option for me.

However, on a completely unrelated note, I have found all 219 (including spares) of my ickle magnets that I did get for my brifday, a short while ago. So that's also good.

So yeah, what have I been up to in the past week? Well, not a whole lot.
Working, eating, sleeping, college, running out of money, drinking almost-but-not-quite ice cold cider (difficult when our fridge has stopped working), and lots of 3d stuff.

My level 2 college course has officially finished, which is a relief in one way and a shame in another as I can't really pillage the parts bin for free processors and stuff anymore :P. But hey.

Later this summer I'm hoping to upgrade my computer quite nicely, replacing the motherboard, cpu and ram at the same time. Bizarrely, DDR2 ram seems more expensive than DDR3, which is quite annoying.

But yeah, that's about it really, not a whole lot to report after a week, but I figured the weather was worth commenting on :-).

Here are some shiny shots of my 3d stuff that I've been messing around with. It's been a weird one this one because I've been spending loads of time messing around with textures - probably just as much as I've been spending on the modelling.

But yeah, there we go. I'm off to tighten the brakes on my bike :-).

EPILOGUE: 27th June

Well, it's official, it's summer. How can I tell? Well, the air has that traditional summer smell (a combination of garden fire smoke and the it's-about-to-rain smell). Apparently we're due for some thunder, and it has been trying to rain for the past hour or so.

One part of summer is getting moths flying into my room, attracted by the light. One such creature came in yesterday, and had to be released outside :-). I mention it because it's the biggest moth I've ever seen, and quite an attractive creature it was, too :-).

Apparently, Swallowtailed Moths are quite common, but somehow, they're only seen rarely. I suppose I should feel priveliged that one decided to fly into this very room, hehe.
Anyway, here are the pickatures :-).

Much Ado about Nothing...

Yes, for someone who tends to lead a fairly sedentary lifestyle, I seem to spend a lot of it worrying that I'm running out of time to do things.

My level 2 college course has just about come to an end, and while half of my portfolio work has been marked as accomplishing about 85% of what is needed to pass the course, The other half (that I'm confident will accomplish the other 15% quite handsomely) hasn't yet been marked. So I'm dangling around a little.

Work seems to be picking up too, and the tips are stacking up reasonably well. You can imagine how it is; some nights you make £10, other nights you make nothing whatsoever. There's no way to predict how you'll do, and the weather (including severe snow) seems to have no bearing on it whatsoever.

Earlier this month, my mum decided that we were going to Ripon again. Well we've been there before, but this time we sort of went without the intention of actually going anywhere, which was a bit strange.

As with last time, where we went to Fountains Abbey, we once again popped into the Warehouse for an awesome salad. Now of this salad I remember writing last time:

"This thing was fantastic - I didn't wanna take a photo cos people would have looked at me weird, but it was easily the best salad I've ever had".

Well I took a photo this time :P. I had a quiche salad with a cheese and tomato quiche, and lots of fresh TEGH, with lemon which was quite nice (I bought a lemon when I got back, but it made my tea taste like lemsip), and the meal was fantastic.

Besides the only other family in the place had one guy that was taking photos out of the window and stuff.

So yeah. After wandering aimlessly around Ripon for a while, we went down to Knaresborough, for a quick wander round. I had to giggle because it seemed at the time that the town centers of both towns look pretty similar.

Knaresborough was a pretty nice place too though, nice and scenic and lots of hills and suchlike. They even had a beer and spirits type place near (go to the knaresborough street view and pan left. The place is "Beer Ritz" next to Blind Jack's) the town center that sold mead. Now I've always wanted to try mead, because apparently it was quite popular back in the day, but for some reason the smallest bottle you can get it about the size of a large bottle of wine, and sells for about £13.

Now at the moment, £13 is a little too much to spend on something I may or may not like, so I'll stick to beer for the time being.

But yeah. That's about it for now. I've got work at 5:15 and I'm sure I'll have a whale of a time zooming here there and everywhere, but hey you never know, I might think of something to write about when I get back.

Before I go for now however, this guy's "Pachelbel Rant" has been doing the rounds recently. Now I suspect I'm probably the last out of 100 million squillion to come across it, but if you've not already seen it, have a look. It made me giggle :-).

Scoot-ays, Tiredness, and Cake...

14:26 Thursday: Eek, I'm tired.

Yep, another bumper week at college, where I've been able to have plenty of fun zooming around with computers and whatnot. More on this later.

In 20 minutes or so I have to zoom down to Pizza hut to have a little riding assessment, so that they can make sure I can be trusted to ride a scooter without mowing down hordes of people. Hopefully I'll be doing this little assessment thing on one of their two stroke scooters (that I'm used to) instead of their new spangly four-stroke ones (that I'm not).

Actually, I suppose I'd best get moving. I'm due down there at three!
More later!

21:53: Minor excuse making and teeny update...

Right, um, I'm back, and have been so for a while.
However, I'm absolutely incredibly tired, so I'm going to have an early night soon and I'll probably pick this up tomorrow :-).

16:59: Saturday...

Ahem. Well, a solid day's sleep, and a solid night's sleep later, and I don't actually feel any less tired.
So yeah, the ride.
I turned up at work to notice that the riding instructor was conspicuous by his absence. Half an hour later and I was in a severely bad mood. It seems that this place say they'll call me, don't call me, ask me to come down to meet someone, and then when I get there, there's no one there.

After a short time of being in a nasty mood though, in walks the riding instructor, having turned up on his rather lovely and shiny bike. A short chat and whatnot later, and off I go one one of the shiny new (<1000 miles) 2011 plate four-stroke scoots. Time to try something new I guess. Off for a couple of hours of riding.

And would you know, despite the scooter's miserable lack of power (artificially restricted to exactly 30mph, whether uphill or down), I had quite a nice time. The scooter's engine, while tiny, provided sufficient uh, [I don't want to say "grunt" or "power" because that implies that the engine has some amount of performance] uh, force to ride happily up hills in the bottom end of the rev range. The engine idled happily without threatening to cut out, like the two-stroke bikes do, and the automatic transmission had enough finesse to allow me to ride at much less than walking pace, without being jerked backwards or forwards. So yes, an absolutely puny 50cc engine, but quite a pleasant and relaxing ride, nevertheless.

Halfway through, we stopped at a local bike dealers, where I saw one bike I'd quite like to buy (£3,200), and one that, though weird-looking (or perhaps because it was weird looking), I'd really like to buy because it looks fun (£5,500). Of course, that sort of thing will have to wait a year or so.

A quick ride back, and I got all my paperwork signed. Out of 30 road-riding-competency criteria, I scored an A in 25, and a B in 5, so I guess I haven't forgotten too much in my time on two feet.

OTHER STUFF:

So what else has been going on? Well, not a lot. The financial tide of unstoppable brokeness is beginning to recede, and I'm no longer hugely overdrawn which is a big plus. My dad's on the mend from his rather worrying time in hospital, though we'll be keeping an eye on him for the duration just to be on the safe side. The dog continues to be cute and playful, and her behavior might actually be beginning to calm down. Time will tell as far as that's concerned I guess.

College is proceeding pretty much as expected, and I'm learning some fun stuff.

TECHY BIT (that's not really funny unless you're techy so I'll make it small so you don't have to read it if you're not interested)

At college, we're now using the systems there to create virtual servers and clients, so we can practice setting servers up and getting the two systems talking to each other. This week, as with last week, we've been focusing on DHCP servers, so we've been setting a DHCP server up (with a static IP), and using it to assign a dynamic IP address to the client.

Of course, when we set the virtual machines up, we have to configure them to "Host Only", so they don't attempt to interact with anything except other virtual machines.

Except, one guy didn't set his DHCP server to host only, he left it at the default setting, which allows the virtual machines to interact with physical machines across the network.

As a result, this guy's virtual DHCP server went onto the college network and started assigning dynamic IP addresses to any college PCs that asked for one, which produced a certain amount of mirth.
Oh well, I suppose you had to be there. Ahem...

SO YEAH:

That's about it really. I haven't been to Manchester for aaages, though apparently I am due to go with Nick soon, as there's some new (to us) big stuff operating there now.

And that's about it. Having spent a while playing F1 2010, I seem to have become into it enough to actually sit and watch it on the TV. An amusing side effect of playing is that as I watch the cars race round I can now go "ohh yeah, I know that track". The next one up is Monaco, which is a favourite of mine. Especially since I have a shiny souvenir from there, which my lovely brother and wife (his wife not mine) brought me back. I also have a rather loony looking Bull to go with it.

Other than that, I've been looking after the dog, looking after my ickle nephew, so he can play walking legs, castlevania, and watch his favourite show, and sitting around, hoping that we'll have a really hot summer.

So yeah :-). Here's a picture of my not-so-small puppy.
And another, to show you how lazy she can be :-).

Money Money Money...

PART ONE: DEPRESSING FINANCIAL BIT

I don't have any. Money, that is.

Yep, those were the original lyrics until someone pointed out that they didn't rhyme. Either that, or it's my financial situation in a nutshell.

Argh, I suppose I should explain why I have been putting off writing this one for a while.

Over the past few months, my financial circumstances have gone from bad to worse. Predictably, it started when I left the Army. I lived on my savings for a while, and as these dwindled, I then went to claim unemployment benefit while I searched for a new job. During this time, the lovely people at the job center suggested that I go on a course or two to improve my employment prospects. So I did. New start and all that lot. Of course, when I told the guys at the job center that I was now on a course, their response (in summary) was "If you're on a course you can't be looking for a job (therefore you get no money, haha sucker, you fail etc)". And I've basically been bouncing about ever since looking for another job, trying to carry on with my courses, and trying to get on with life without having one of those "Arrgh sod it I'm pissed off!!!" moments.

A few "Arrgh sod it I'm pissed off!!!" moments, lots of hassle, and plenty of help later, and I'm on the very verge of being able to support myself again. Yep folks, I seem to have finally succeeded in getting my old pizza scoot-ay riding job back. Hopefully this will be the last time I apply for a job there, as when I finish my courses, I may be qualified to apply for other jobs in other industries.
But hey, now I can concentrate on my courses now.

PART TWO: MY COURSE(S)

Yeah, courses plural. I remember a while ago talking about going on Cisco's CCNA course in a sort of weird abstract way, expecting it to be something that I could look forward to in the medium-term future. Well, apparently not. For some reason, the lads on the City and Guilds Level 2 course (the ones that signed up for it anyway), myself included, have now been started on the City and Guilds Level 3 course.
Now the guys at the college seem to be cramming as much as possible into the course, so while it's officially a City and Guilds course, the courses I am now on (including the other one) actually include:

• Cisco CCNA (minus final exam which has to be taken at an official examination center) - four seperate certificates for each semester and a fifth for passing the exam, which results in an official CCNA qualification.
  
• Windows Server 2008 (minus final exam also, same as above), which then leads to either MCP or MCITP qualification.
  
• City and Guilds Level 2 Diploma in ICT Professional Competence
• City and Guilds Level 3 Diploma in ICT Professional Competence
• Cisco I.T. Essentials
• Customer Care Level 3 (a vague name for a course, hey?!)

So that's a rather boggling six seperate certificates I'm studying for at the minute! If I get every certificate on offer, and there's no pressing reason why I wouldn't, I'd be at least vaguely qualified to start looking for jobs in the IT sector. In addition, [Our tutor tells us that] the IT Essentials course includes about 80% of the course material that is required study for the CompTIA+ exam, which is potentially an extra (and valuable) qualification I can get.

So I seem to be moving rather rapidly in a new direction.
As for my technical skills, they're coming on pretty well too. I can disassemble a PC down to its screws, and reassemble it in less time than it takes to watch an episode of star trek (about 45 minutes without adverts) and it always works afterwards.

In addition, and rather awesomely, my college tutor now seems to have gotten into the habit of bringing broken computers into class and saying "Hey andy, have a look at this" (not because he can't fix it himself (because otherwise he wouldn't be a tutor!), but because he has other stuff to do, and apparently I "can be trusted to do it properly" (!)).

Ahem, I've gone all red now.

But I'm pleased to have found something that I seem naturally good at. I make the odd mistake like everyone I guess, but by and large I'm enthusiastic and cheerful, I like to think I do a thorough, neat and tidy job, and everything I do is written up and put in shiny plastic wallets, to go in my portfolio, which is beginning to fill out nicely, considering that we have another 8 weeks to go on the course.

My only quirk is that I attach value to everything. "An old 2.8ghz pentium 4 processor? someone will want that!" Eager to clear out their stock of "worthless" stuff, the dudes at college have given me everything from old hard drives to unwanted LCDs, which has resulted in my new nickname "Magpie". Apparently magpies are unable to resist collecting shiny things. It makes everyone giggle, me included, so hey. And at the end of the day, selling stuff that was going to go in the bin has three advantages.

• Someone who needs a working part gets one.
• I could always do with the extra money.
• It's a huge shame to bin something that still works - this way it gets diverted to a new user instead of the landfill.

And all that aside, College still benefit from the freed-up space. So hey :-).

I'm now at college three days a week, which is pretty cool, and when I actually start work (monday, I believe) I'll be working two/three days a week also, so my time gets divided pretty evenly between the two. As I've said before too, there's a lot of hands on "doing" stuff, as well as theory, which I think is awesome. We spent most of thursday morning installing Server 2008 and configuring our machines to act as DHCP Servers, and learning about default gateways and subnetting, so it's fun and educational at the same time which is pretty cool.

I grip my wooden (well, wobblywood (it's like monkey metal, it's a new word I've invented for wood of unknown provenance)) desk when I say, "things might be beginning to look up for me".

PART THREE: OTHER STUFF

One thing about being incredibly broke is that I've had to find other ways of enjoying myself without spending money. Now this hasn't turned out to be as hard as it sounds, and I've been spending some time in town before/after college walking round the winter gardens/local galleries etc looking at cool things/interesting and weird plants. Also, I've been spending plenty of time with the family, especially my ickle nephew who seems to enjoy going to the park to take his remote control boat for a spin. I think I'm going to have to get one at some point as they look pretty cool, and they're certainly not as easy to damage as RC helicopters.

My ickle nephew continues to love playing Walking Legs (UT3), and seems to enjoy watching me play Silent Hunter 4 as well, so it's all good fun.

So yeah. Things were substantially crappy at one point, and while I'm still terminally short of cash at the moment, things might start to begin looking up in the near future.

here's hoping eh?

EPILOGUE: ADDED AS AN EXTRA, AFTERWARDS...

I never did say why it had been such a long time since my last Blog entry. Well, with all this various unpleasant financial stuff happening to me, I've been stressing about how I'm going to pay for things, how I'm going to pay bills etc etc, and just been having a generally unpleasant and stressy time of it all. I didn't want to dwell on it, as that would have made me more stressed and stuff. Now the crappy bit is (hopefully) on the wane, I can write about it in detail without getting hugely worried and depressed and whatnot :-).

Here are some shiny pictures. One is my ickle nephew's boat, the other is our secret clay mine. For good measure I'll throw in a nice picture of two doves that seem to enjoy staring through my window every summer.

Have fun!