Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Why is everything we buy today a big file of s***? Surely there must be some manufacturer of an electronic product out there that is capable of building something that will last more than a month. A one year warrenty is a joke as you can’t afford to replace every single piece of electronic equipment you own every year and yet most of the electronic products you get these days don’t even last that.

My phone is now in even deeper problems. I only got it last summer and the little joystick in the middle of it is already stopping functioning properly. Now the batter cover isn’t going on right anymore. It’s just unbelievable how low quality these things are, especially for something A) I paid over £100 for and B) made by Sony. If this is Sony’s product, what the hell is everything else going to be like? Falling apart in my hands? That is bascially what my laptop did.

My MP3 player is all but unusable, my digital camera has been back for repairs, my DVD player has too, my personal CD player that I had before my MP3 player (which I paid £100 for, I went for a good good one is a lost cause, one of the ports on my router just randomly died, I’ve gone through a million guitar leads even though I don’t play it that much, the buttons on my camcorder barely respond and the batteries now last about 25% of the time they should do (which still beats the 90 second I get out of my laptop – yes, 90 seconds!). The list of poor quality electronics goes on and on. It’s almost enough to make you give up and reject technology.

There are three new computers I want to buy. Not that I am going to do at the moment as I’m completely broke and can barely afford to live let alone buy new computers. But hypothetically there are three on my list. Two have been on for a while – a storage server and a Linux test server. But I’m adding a third one to my list now, a replacement laptop.

My current one sucks. You can’t take it anywhere as the battery life is 90 seconds, it gets way too hot and often over heats and turns off, you don’t even what to type on it because of the heat coming off it, plus it’s falling apart, the battery compartment hangs off the bottom because where it locks into place it was broken. Having a laptop wasn’t as cool as I dreamed of before I got it but make no mistake it was VERY cool and now it would be even cooler as my home is wireless so I literally could listen to all my music (which is stored on my desktop) and surf the internet without any wires. Something I couldn’t do even when my current laptop’s battery worked as A) my music was on my external hard drive as I couldn’t fit it on my laptop’s hard drive and B) I didn’t have a wireless network.

The decision to add it to my wishlist came about because my parents have gone on holiday and run off with the TV. So I generally listen to music when I’m cooking. But my current CDs are boring and I don’t have any new blank ones because I ran out and don’t want to spend any money buying new ones. Plus it’s such a hassle to burn them aswell and a waste of money if you are hardly ever going to listen to them. So what I wanted was a laptop I could just take down to the kitchen, wirelessly connect to my network and access all my music.

Although I’ve been toying with the idea of adding one to my wishlist for some time as it would be great to have one I could take out when I needed (with all the problems of my current laptop it simply isn’t worth doing at the moment, especially with me needing to find a power supply and indeed taking my power adapter adds significant weight) and just be able to take round the house. Also as I use my laptop for emails, storing my documents and such (so that if I do go say on holiday or away for a day and need access to my important stuff, I can in theory take my laptop) I want something that boots up really fast, or at least as fast as my desktop so that I can edit things as I do on my desktop over the network. Although if I had a laptop that didn’t take ages to load any program and didn’t burn you’re hands when you touched it I would start editing on my laptop again.

While I was never a mega light weight, obviously uni will have turned me into more of a heavy weight. Although not as much as a lot of people I guess as I drink bottles, but then again, so do a lot of students.

I was looking back through my phone and came across my two drinks lists from the first two Otley runs I did late last year. I did one on a Thursday night with Grant House then did another on the Saturday with Comp Soc. Quite an intense few days as I think I went to Fruity in between then too :D.

Thursday’s list…

1. Reef
2. Baileys
3. Vodka and coke
4. Apple corky shot
5. WKD Blue
6. Half a martini lemonade
7. Vodka and coke

Saturday’s list…

1. Vodka coke
2. WKD Blue
3. Half a pint of Strongbow
4. Reef
5. Coke
6. Vodka lemonaide
7. Terkila
8. Smirnoff Ice
9. Coke

You can see I was wasted by the Saturday from the past few days as I was on coke breaks every now and then :D. I don’t think those were too bad given that I only really started drinking in quantity since I started uni and this was like a month after I first arrived there. These days though I would do that kind of quantity at Bondi in two or three hours. That said, I was trying to mix my drinks to get into the Otley run attitude whereas at Bondi I just drink bottles. I don’t know if that makes a difference or not.

I don’t think there has been a massive change. Some change yeah but it doesn’t take that much more to get me drunk than it did back then.

Does Easter Sunday have any real significance? My understanding is that it doesn’t, it’s just the closed Sunday to both Good Friday and Easter Monday which do have real significance. Interestingly enough, Jews are currently celebrating Passover. It’s convienient the way religions schedule their holidays and celebrations at the same time.

I managed to get up at around 10 today which isn’t too bad. Later than I was planning on but then I did end up watching the first half of the Family Guy movie so I didn’t get to bed until maybe 1, possibly a little later, add 9 hours sleep to that and 10 is the time I should be getting up. I got up to find Michelle had been chatting to me for half an hour while I was asleep. It’s always nice to have something you read when you first get up.

I got thinking about what I could do today to make this a productive day and I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t really sure. I could work on specific projects but then I would have to work out what projects I actually have going at the moment :D. Ok, number one task, contact PowerVPS about my stats problem. I’m going to do that right now actually…

…ok that is a job well done, just have to wait for them to get back to me now. Cleaning up my desktops would be quite a useful job too do. To a lesser extend, my room too. Oh and more than anything my email backlog. And backup my new music that hasn’t been backed up yet. And some other backups would be useful. Also practising starting sentences without and and ;).

I think I may write my list retrospectively, that will make it easier and mean that I won’t have failed to achieve anything :D.

I’ve been notified that my Kristin Kreuk fan site is going to be named Celebrity Site of the Day in just over a week. Seemed a little weird at first but it’s cool that they give you a heads up I guess. I wonder what percentage of sites in the directory has been named celebrity site of the day.

Shame there is no cash prize. Although speaking of money, my situation is looking a little better than it was at the start of the day. I finished work on a job that was done via Particle Soft via a client and cancelled a hosting account at JodoHost (say bye bye to Avril forums on WorfolkHosting.com) which will cut down some of the monthly outgoings. Although my next billing date is in like 2 days and tomorrow is Sunday so I hope it happens in time. If it doesn’t and they pull my account just after it I will not be pleased.

Where does the sex come into it you may ask? Well, I was flicking around my sites and I’m toying with the idea of expanding Girl Session and putting some actual promotion into it as it’s a good resource. There is a banner on each page but it’s the same one and it’s direct linked rather than in a frame so it caches and loads really fast so minimal advertising and loads of free content. I am sure people would use it if they knew it was there.

I’m hoping I can generate at least some traffic for more of my sites to save them from the chop which I am still resolute in carrying out as there really is no point in keeping sites going that don’t receive any traffic, especially given my habbit of buying new domains.

I was also toying with the idea of some kind of daily goals list to show that I have actually done something productive each day. I don’t want to be posting it on my blog though as it would create a lot of posts. Then again, I blog so much, it wouldn’t be massive.

Ok, today’s daily goal list is to get myself to bed soon so that I can get up early tomorrow. Well, early is quite an amusing term as what I really mean is student early. Maybe 9 am tomorrow. That’s not that early, a lot of people get up hours earlier than that but then I got up at like 1 pm today. I was really tired from going to Flock but then that kind of time is pretty usual at the moment. So yeah, 9 am is student early. Then I can get up and write a proper daily goal list and have time to get it done too.

Ah the post night out round-up, always a classic. Today has been an interesting day. Fonze came round and brought his dance mat so we spent much time working our way up to the eventual aim of beating Chris (which we have little chance of ever achieving as Chris is just inhumanly good on dance machines) before heading out at 7, getting some food on the way to Fonze’s and then, actually getting to Fonze’s.

I was going for a different look this time but then the only other appropriate t-shirts I have are my Green Day one (too colourful) and my Av one (which is well, Av) so I ended up going for the classic Millencolin tee. I don’t know what I would do without it :D. I managed to tear some of the skin under my eye trying to perfect my look too, not pretty.

So yeah, we headed out at about 8:20 and got to Mixing Tin before 9pm so free entry to Friday Flock (you can’t go wrong). Met Mark getting off the bus too, we was heading there before going on to an all night rave in Bradford.

They had a band on, Screaming Banshee Aircrew, at 9 although the difference between the band and the DJ was minimal as we spent most of the time at the back where we couldn’t see anything. Myself and Claire didn’t manage to drag everyone else onto the dance floor until around 1.

Drinks were sooo expensive there. £3 for a Smirnoff Ice, £2.75 for a vodka coke! Still it worked out a cheap night as we got the 921 Nightrider bus back. So my total costs were just over a £10…

1. Bus into town – £1.40
2. Smirnoff Ice – £3.00
3. Vodka coke – £2.75
4. Coke – £1.40
5. Bus home – £2.00

That comes to a grand total of £10.55. Not bad at all. Friday Flock itself was ok but not great though. It was packed with locals and only about half the people in there looked like they were around the same age as me. I’m a much bigger fan of student targetted events. Still I got to see Sarahann, George and Claire so that was cool. And as it’s past midnight we’re only 7 days away from Wendy House!

Microsoft should burn! I leave my computer on as I normally do as I have some things I wanted to leave going over night and I have my music on too. It wasn’t on this morning though, I presumed the volume was just too low. Then when I turned my monitor on, all my programs had been wiped, my desktop had bee completely re-arranged in some retarded order and I had a little bubble at the bottom saying my updates had been successfully installed!

I got an email yesterday from someone who was selling the number plate 4XD which I thought was pretty cool.

Worfolk Online could use it’s own official blog really but then that would mean another installation of WordPress and I really do have too many already. I don’t want them to reach an unmanagable level. Plus it already has a blog on Blogger that keeps track of new sites.

Anyway, while it’s generally our policy to keep all sites online, I’ve decided that it’s just not work it for some of the sites we keep running and therefore we’re moving towards a policy of, “if a site doesn’t perform, it’s gone.” This will allow us to invest in new sites which I think will provide some new and exciting opportunities.

Back in January, Old M World became the first site to be officially closed down by the network and that was because the site was finally terminated by the host. Today though, TradeConfederacy.com (a World of Warcraft guild site) and SkateForge.com (a skating video site that never finished development) we’re added to that list. They have been removed from the listings, links from the network and generally vanished from the net.

This is just the start of a series of closures though. Not that we have a big series planned but over time as domains come up for renewal or maintenance needs to be done on a site – it’s just not going to happen, the site is just going to be taken offline instead.

Sites that are also heading for the chop in the next three months include…

• Maze Radio (maybe)
• Maze Times
• Dean Is A Gimp
• Mispelling Guide
• Avril forums

We’re also deeply considering the future of…

• Server Admin Newbie
• Pitiful Fish
• 4xd.net

It’s sooooo hard to let a site go but some sites are just draining resources and are either never going to get off the ground or we just don’t have time to develop them (which is even harder to let go when you see a site that has potential but you just don’t have time to do).

More problems with RegisterFly. StormPay have now cut off all payments that are not auctions or something so you can’t pay via StormPay anymore. As usual RegisterFly are not on the ball and have just left the link up so you can follow the link to pay via StormPay only to be told by the StormPay website you can’t pay.

So I went on the live chat thing and asked what was happening with StormPay and whether it would be back. The answer I got was…

We do not support StormPay anymore

Real useful there. So I decided that I would have to go back to Moneybookers or it would mean giving my credit card details to RegisterFly. That means going to the site, clicking the “I already have an account actually” link, logging in, selecting pay via account balance, logging in again, transfering money from my credit card and then going to pay.

But this wasn’t the end of it. They charge you a 1% fee on sending money so you have to have 1% more in you’re account than you need to cover the payment. Of course it keeps this fact hidden when you are loading you’re account and indeed, doesn’t tell you it won’t let you make the payment anywhere on the site – you have to email support to find out that.

So I had to go back and move more money from my credit card to my account and the minimum is £0.69 and I only needed about £0.09 so now they have another £0.60 of mine sitting in their account. It’s a complete scam, stay away from Moneybookers as much as possible.