The Need To Blog23/08/10 - 22:39I randomly had a massive urge to update my blog yesterday after finding out that
PJ had read it. Kinda makes you feel like its not so much of a waste of time if someone pays attention and reads your "story" as it were. I had so much to talk about and now I cant remember any of it damnit.
In any case, had a cool mini Lan at
Toms again in Cardiff. It was, as it is mostly lately, a complete spure of the moment thing after texting him at work. Ended up just driving home straight from work, grabbed my kit and drove straight up to Cardiff. Turnt out to be pretty good and I actually changed my opinion on
StarCraft II as well. After playing through the Campaign, which is a must if you have the game (or even if you havent actually :P), I was a little disappointed by the versus and multiplayer. Without giving too much away; the thing that made part of the Campaign so awesome was the huge variety of units available to you. This allowed you to make armies that included some pretty decent support units so you could crush your enemies in some epic fights. Not only this, but there were some great extras to do with research and extra abilities etc. None of these are available in the versus and multiplayer modes however, which I found kinda annoying. I understand the reason behind it all. Since the game is a trilogy these specialisations and extras are only for the Terrans. If they were included in normal versus gameplay, they would be completely unbalanced.
In any case, after playing it all Friday night and most of Saturday day with
Tom, it grew on me and its turnt out to be a much better and enjoyable game than I gave it credit for. The AI is much smarter and complex so its more fun working out your next strategic move since its not so predictable. Saving the replays as well is actually a pretty good idea since you get a better feel for what went on during the game. In one particular example, my complete success and dominance over two of the players was down to them running half way across to the other side of the map to attack
Tom instead of attacking me when I was literally right next to them. Poor bastard.
Work was a bit of a bitch today and I arrived home after a 12 hour shift with the worst headache ever. It was borderline the type you get with a really bad hangover where any loud sound just pierces your ears and causes rediculous pain. I was down in Dorset helping to begin the deployment of our kit for the Great Dorset Steam Fair thats coming up this September. Its apparently one of the largest in Europe that I think it may well be due to a categorised system of some sort. Still, they expect about 150,000-250,000 during the event, which is pretty huge.
Just remember another thing thats been going on lately as well. My main site,
Imperial Empire SE, has randomly gained back some old school veterans from the classic days. Its good to see some people back after a couple of solid months of no one around. This has also got me interested in development of the site again, so naturally I stayed up too late last night writing a new script. Im doing this a lot lately; staying up too late. Im regretting it every morning as I feel terrible and manage to wake up about 5 minutes before I have to leave the house which has made things interesting to say the least. But every evening its the same story; "ill just stay up a little longer". So here I am, supposed to be in bed, but writing up another Blog entry. At least this one I can firmly blame on
PJ since I heard
Xfire beep and I have an OCD for reading messages that come through straight away :P So, im off to bed a little earlier this evening, but not as early as id hoped for. Good night Bristol and ill see you in the morning :)
TV is AWESOME!17/08/10 - 21:58Yeah, so I kinda noticed that my blog currently SUCKS ASS majorly. Sorry for the previous one, that was a particularly bad day.
In any case, work got a lot better, entertainment got a lot better and I got a lot better (whoop whoop!) I'll admit that I am a little hyper at current and thats likely due to multiple cookies and Ben & Jerrys :P I resumed my love for
Chuck and restarted Season 3 and found it to be absolutely brilliant and amazing; really cant wait for Season 4 to start this fall. Unfortunately, that means that I finished it for now,
but it does mean ive found a new show.
How I Met Your Mother is quite possibly the best thing
ever right now. Id been tempted to see it since it was advertised here in the UK and I dont watch TV on the TV (since when have I made sense?) and after watching it a bit round
PJ and
Pearls place I decided to download it a couple of months back. I've finally gotten round to watching it and am instantly hooked. I just spent the past 22 hours watching and finishing the first season and im really looking forward to watching the rest. Im completely psyched about it and have never laughed and enjoyed a show so much before.
The Big Bang Theory and
Chuck get damn close and these three shows I think make up the best of current TV. I should note there are definitely some other contenders in my library, but then id end up listing every one...
Anyways, as I said, work got a lot better. I was kinda pissed about something that they did and it got me completely wound up and I think I probably took it out of proportion. Regardless, over it and I got back a couple of days ago from spending a week near Portsmouth for the Vintage at Goodwood festival. It actually turnt out to be a lot better than I thought it was going to be. The main stage wasnt too bad, but I actually ended up in the "Let It Rock" 1950s stage since it was more my sort of music. So it was a good experience - I never really know what to do with myself when im by myself which is pretty much all the time now. Im getting better at it and im able to keep myself occupied more and entertained better so im doing ok. Since i've been away, ive managed to get two days off (shh, don't tell Carphone Warehouse or they'll try and make me work :P) so im relaxing and re-igniting my love of some great games such as Mass Effect and the classic Counter-Strike Source though the latter would be better with other people - I just run around on my own server pwning bots, but hey I find it fun.
I've just noticed that im using the word "i've" alot though since this is my blog, I guess that makes a lot of sense and that also im blabbering on about completely random things and just typing what pops straight in to my head. At least from this perspective you can always go back and edit; not so helpful when you accidentally say something in real life and really wish you hadn't. Not that I have...im blabbering again and haven't even said what I was going to at the start of this paragraph (I warned you about the hyperness). Basically, my sentences seem to be stupendously long don't they? Or is that just me? (Except that one, that one was quite short).
So yeah, im back to being me again for the most part. I still miss the guys and wish we could spend more time together, but I understand that it just isnt going to happen. The hardest part will be meeting new people now, I really want to, but im basically a complete social retard and failure - wish me luck. I've also been talking a couple of old friends as well and been trying to make some new cool memorys. I'm hoping to get some spare time soon in line with
Toms obscenely busy and impossible schedule so that me, him and Dani can hang out around Cardiff for a day. Anyways, its been 5 minutes since my last dose of
How I Met Your Mother so its back to slobbing out in front of my PC and enjoying this legen... wait for it and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is
DAIRY!!! show.
Life27/07/10 - 09:35Work is forever a pain in my butt recently. Lots of it, extended hours and the pay does suck. I keep telling myself its all worth it in the end for the experience, which is true enough, but its becoming more and more difficult to believe.
If im perfectly honest, life just seems to be getting harder and harder recently. Ive been thinking -alot- since I technically have a lot of time to think. Dont you find when you are doing a repetitive task that your mind just wonders? Well mine has been in overdrive. Basically just been thinking about my life over the past 4 years. Everything seems to have gone down hill rather steeply since April. For those of you who are close, you probably know why.
I really, really, really miss the old days where life was just simple. I do feel as though ive missed out on a lot of stuff and now its too late. Im not one for change in a way, I just wish that everything could have stayed as it was. My best friends have moved away from Bristol and now have fantastic lives of their own. Dont get me wrong, they are still epic but it just doesnt feel the same being left behind and I dont want to intrude on any of that.
Im fairly confident no one actually reads this, so its more just a diary for me later on I guess. Ive been through this sort of thing before several years back - just find it hard to smile about anything. At the end of the day, im sure ill pull through, I just wish it would be sooner rather than later however this seems unlikely.
Work work work, GAMES05/07/10 - 21:38Time for another update I think ^^ It got a bit busy towards the end of last week since I was once again sent up to the
Masterpiece site in London to help de-rig.
Etherlive have a trailer which we use to basically stash a load of server equipment so that it can be towed to an event and deployed. This meant we had to move the damn thing so that it could be hitched up to be towed back of which I never really expected it to weigh as much as it does - it was not easy trying to push it in the full on hot sun. However, its finally done and I dont believe I need to go back to London for a while now thank god.
Next event now is
WOMAD which im really looking forward to. Ive been put in charge of a new RFID system for the Crew Catering which means kicking our developers ass to do some work (as he was behind schedule) and making sure we actually manage to find a supplier for all the cards we need. Its going well so far and it seems as though we've covered most aspects of the system. Mind you, this entire thing has to go live on Sunday which is only 6 days away.
Seagate have finally got back to me as well. Turns out we were infact right and one of the old Maxtor drives had packed up so thanks to Manufacture Warranty we have a new one being sent back to us for free ^^ Only downside means I need to spend another couple of hours re-installing and configuring
CentOS for our NAS based system (its not actually a NAS, just an old PC essentially turnt in to one). Cheaper initially since no upfront cost, but the long term running costs are likely to be much higher.
PJ keeps on about the whole fact that a proper NAS does use a lot less power and will infact save you between £100 - £200 per year on electricity alone. Im still quite tempted on getting a NAS, but at £300 for decent 4-bay, its seems totally overpriced for what it actually is. I should probably note that that doesnt even cover the cost of buying the Hard Drives to stick in it anyways.
Ive noticed that im managing to talk about work a fair bit, which I dont really want the aim of this blog to be about, though it could do me a lot of favours towards my reports that I need to write for the Placements guys at
UWE. They managed to contact me the other day and it looks as though ill be able to go ahead and actually do the proper Placement course and have my course as a Sandwhich course. Obviously this means that ill probably finish with
Etherlive around December then bum around for almost 9 months untill I start my 4th year of
Uni ^^
The weekend was actually pretty good as well. I went to Cardiff and spent some time with
Tom and Christel for a mock-up LAN. Wasnt exactly the setup we've had in the past, but it was still good fun even due to the complete lack of any internet. Its strange how much you end up having the tendancy to go "Hmm, I dont know, Ill Google that....ah crap" when you dont have internet access :P
Congratulations to all those who have managed to survive reading through what im sure isnt exactly the most thrilling of blogs. Untill next time, enjoy the sun.
Summer 201029/06/10 - 20:43So its summer at long last and its been stupendously hot outside over the past 4-6 weeks. For once since 2006 it does feel like a proper summer however.
Ive started my placement this year for a company called
Etherlive who are "IT and Event Specialists". Basically, they turn up at an event (be it a festival like
WOMAD or an arts and antiques fair like
Masterpiece) and deploy a whole load of pretty amazing IT kit. I have actually been working on the
Masterpiece site getting everything setup and it has been very hard work. Its been classed as a construction site for the most part so its been high-vis jackets, hard hats and steel toe-cap boots. We were required to provide a WiFi network plus VoIP to most of the stands in the fair which turnt out to be one the largest jobs the company has done. This isnt too surprising since 10-12 -Kilometers- worth of Cat5 Ethernet cable were layed by hand - yes my hands. Needless to say, I am starting to fall to pieces (literally).
In any case,
Masterpiece is now over and we are pulling out which means another one and a half journey on the train to London (I -hate- trains) and then grabbing all our gear and bringing it back to base just outside of Swindon. When im not at
Masterpiece however, the job is a little easier in terms of manual labour. Not so much carrying but a lot more thinking. Ive been thrown in at the deep end with all sorts of projects with terminology that ive never heard of before. Thankfully I think ive done pretty damn well considering and I really do enjoy the challenge if im perfectly honest.
This week its been a case of attempting to repair a rack server, which didnt happen so its now mine (minus the processors damnit). Then we managed to salvage some old desktop PC and stuff some HDDs in it which we then found out are terrible, old and on the edge of death. They have a life-span of 17,000 hours online and were made over 5 years ago, which is what we attribute to the utterly crap 2 MB/s write speed. I should probably mention that they are 2x Western Digital 250 GB drives each with a 16 MB cache. Being so old, this is pretty terrible to start with and then we stuffed them in to a Software RAID 1 group controlled by
CentOS 5.5. I have nothing against
CentOS and should mention that it is definitely not the cause of the problems. In fact I really do like it and its probably my favourite distribution of Linux.
In any case, this is the largest update to my blog ever before and certainly I hope not the last for a while. I do intend to update this as much as possibly over the comming months with all the crazy antics that I get up to. So untill the next update, I bid you faithful reader a due.
Blog Update29/06/10 - 19:45Hello world and welcome to another blog update by yours truely. Hopefully this sort of thing will persist and last and go on forever. I do however need to think of a lot to write really :P Im hoping to integrate a lot of stuff in to this site such as a Java updater to make my life easier but also include updates via Twitter which would be pretty damn cool to be honest ^^
University Work04/03/09 - 23:38Ugh, im up at 23.34 atm trying to complete my
Uni Assignments for tomorrow. Only 14 hours left to complete two assignments; this could be interesting. Hopefully ill get it all done, but im getting pestered by people online and am typing to them more than i am working including this Blog post :p
I got reminded of our Blog sites and then couldnt stop thinking about making a new Blog post, so here i am making a new Blog Post :p
As for my New PC, plans are still going ahead with that. The price mark hasnt changed too much tbf which kinda sucks but is hardly surprising. Ive unfortunately become a lot more confused in regards to getting a new Monitor. Ive been looking at so many candidates and there seems to be something wrong with everyone I consider. Most monitors that actually dont have something wrong with them, dont have HDMI which i would really like to have since im considering getting an Xbox 360. Ah well, we shall see, if any one has any input, give me a shout at imperial [at] imperial [-] empire [-] se [dot] com
Monies23/01/09 - 21:19Ugh, money is such a pain when you have none. My plans are still based on my previous Blog Post - to build a Core i7 machine. Unfortunately,
University costs a lot of money. Having said that, my Car Insurance is why I have no money. I finally passed my test and was able to get insurance 4 days later, so ive been driving around for about 6 weeks now. No accidents or incidents etc so its all going well.
In any case, my new PC is looking to cost me around £2,000. Which is £2,000 which i dont have. Spec wise im after the top of the range CPU, the Core i7-965. Probably gonna go for an ASUS Mobo and DDR3 RAM. Along with that im considering moving to ATI for graphics, but im unsure as to whether their Catalyst drivers have improved that much. nVidia have always been really good for graphics cards and supporting them, but unfortunately this means they are very costly and tha ATI can provide the same performance for a significantly lower cost. Since this is probably going to be a build from the ground up, im also considering a Blueray Writer and at least 1TB of storage. Oh and ill finally get rid of my CRT and replace it with around a 22" Dell. I usually dont like Dell as a company, but their Monitors are pretty much first class coupled with the 3 Year Warranty for dead pixels.
OMG OMG OMG11/11/08 - 18:53Ive just been reading over the specs and reviews for Intels newest processor release - the Core i7. All I can say is OMFG!!! Im sooo damn excited. My next system is DEFINATELY going to be based around this; it does mean a complete overhaul of everything i currently have, but im not too worried about that tbh. I was going to do that anyway and upgrade to a Core 2 Quad (maybe the extreme series).
However, after reading alot of info it seems like they are the Worlds fastest commercial processors to be released. They've smashed all records previously recorded by PC Pro. The slowest in the initial series (Core i7-920 at 2.66GHz) beats the QX9770 easily and thats without Overclocking. This was almost mentioned; overclocking appears to be incredibly easy on these chips and allows them to operate blisteringly fast. There fastest (multiplier unlocked) chip, the Core i7-965 operates almost 30% faster when overclocked.
All I can say is that I really CANT wait to get my hands on this new system. Im planning on saving up everything I can after christmas to get hold of all the parts. Ill post up more information along the way including benchmark stats :)
Finalising05/11/08 - 20:48Well, the site is almost finished. The admin system hasnt taken as long as previous attempts have been (on other projects). The first two (of four) sections were completed easily without any hassle. Then the Blog system was improved with new features, so thats cool. But yeah, the Gallery system hasnt been started yet. The code for it exists on a previous blog site, so ill port that across when I get a chance. Other than that its just the CMS system that needs to be completed. Ive been talking with Alan (my host) to try and get issues resolved since permissions are messed up when dealing with data being written to files by PHP. Its kind of annoying, but we're getting somewhere i guess. At the moment, CMS Add works fine, however CMS Edit is another story. It wont allow you to overwrite the file with the new content. What im going to hope is that i can delete files. If so, ill adjust the Edit script so that it deletes the existing file and replaces it with a new file with the same name, but with the adjusted content. If it works, then the site should be operational very soon, however it probably wont. Even if it does work, its not exactly the best solution and i guess it isnt exactly server friendly. Never mind, at least the site will be fully functional in that respect :)