Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

So today has been a long and reasonably interesting day. We drove up to a place never Sunderland this morning stroke afternoon to pick up the new car then I had to drive the old one back. It was cool though. I passed people, they should be ashamed of their speed ;).

So anyway once we got it home and sitting in the drive I decided to take a few photos with the old digital camera (it’s only figuratly old as I don’t have a new one as such, it’s just a phrase but anyway on with the story).
Nissan X-Trail, took us a while to get (13 weeks to be exact) as it’s an import. They are all thumbnailed, I think they go bigger.

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Also for old time sake I took a picture of the old car (well old old now as currently we have three but we are getting rid of this one).

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Unpack the RAM (random access memory) and check with the motherboard’s manual to work out which is the first slot (slot 0). When you insert the memory you want to fill it up numerically: 0, 1, 2, and so on.

To insert the memory push the white clips at the end outwards then simply slot in the memory sticks into the slots. The clips will automatically lock back into place when you have pushed the memory stick far enough into the slot.

Fantabulous news! Well ok, moderately cool news. Objects have arrived on Blair Space. And yes before you ask, I will be explaining what I am talking about. You see until now Blair Space has been pretty much like Rawice, a content portal with channels, no pages for specific movies or games.

Well now that has changed. Thanks to objects. Basically when Celeb Storm came along we needed a celebs table. However as it was working off Rawice which had six channels and each one needed different data we had a problem. The solution was to create an objects system where each channel had its own data table.

This could then be accessed by various sites. For instance Celeb Storm used the celebs table and then took its main features (such as celeb news for Lindsay Lohan on the Lindsay Lohan page) using the information from that object. A similar system is used with a new music site based around Audio Senate.

Now these are accessible on the six Blair Space channels (well there are a lot more but the ones it shares with Rawice which are the main articles, features, news, reviews, et channels). If you go to movies, music, TV, tech, games or celebs, you can now find a link on the left menu saying browse movies or browse TV or whatever.

At the moment this just displays a simple list of all the objects though this will be improved over time. You can then visit the page for that object which will search the news and articles database for relevant content, search the pictures and wallpaper database for images that have been attached to the object (objects have actually been used for a while for the galleries and wallpaper channel to sort the various images into the various topics) as well as picking out individual content from that channel’s database table using the data definitions defined in the database.

Pretty cool huh? Hopefully this should bring in more traffic to the site as you can now find relevant information easily. If you want Kylie news or to find out what is going on with Cheaper by the Dozen 2, you just go the relevant object page (I liked those examples to the right pages) to find all the news on the subject.

I ran the what D&D character are you test over at, here lol. Anyway so my results were as follows: Lawful Evil Human Mage Fighter, Follower Of Velsharoon.

Alignment:

Lawful Evil characters believe that a nice, orderly system of life is perfect for them to abuse for their own advancement. They will work within ‘the system’ to get the best that they can for themselves.

Race:

Humans are the ‘average’ race. They have the shortest life spans, and because of this, they tend to avoid the racial prejudices that other races are known for. They are also very curious and tend to live ‘for the moment’.

Primary Class:
Mages harness the magical energies for their own use. Spells, spell books, and long hours in the library are their loves. While often not physically strong, their mental talents can make up for this.

Secondary Class:
Fighters are the warriors. They use weapons to accomplish their goals. This isn’t to say that they aren’t intelligent, but that they do, in fact, believe that violence is frequently the answer.

Deity:
Velsharoon is the Neutral Evil god of necromancy, liches, and undeath. He is also known as the Vaunted, the Archmage of Necromancy, and the Lord of the Forgotten Crypt. His followers practice the necromantic arts, and raise the dead to do their bidding. His symbol is a crowned skull.

Yesterday I finally finished upgrading all my forums to phpBB 2.0.15 and today I finished patching all the external scripts I thought I had. Huzzah! Like a months work finally finished. I joked with Ceon that I would be seriously annoyed if phpBB released phpBB 2.0.16 tomorrow.

Well I am pretty sure they won’t be doing that. Mainly because they released it today! Yes, I had just finished patching everything and they bring out a new version. And things just kept getting more annoying.

I managed to streamline the phpBB upgrade process however. I managed to update the 16 installs I keep up to date in an hour or two. Deep down I think I wanted the new release to see how fast I could do it and it came off well.

I realised other problems though – I had a version of Coppermine that I hadn’t checked for an update, there had been one which I am doing now. I missed phpAdsNew off the list altogether and have remembered two of those that I haven’t updated, although one I am taking offline. Finally I think I have some Snitz to upgrade.

So I’m not so upgraded after all. But don’t get me wrong I am a lot closer when I was. I had two wikis that needed upgrading which has been done along with upgrading one of my vBulletin‘s from 3.0.3 to 3.0.7, some other script upgrades and of course all my phpBB installs.

Some of these were really old. Like 2.0.6. In fact, Audio Senate was 2.0.5 although what I did there because of the mods was scrap the original script, bring in a whole new set of files and re-mod them. I actually took out several mods so make it easier to update, I’ll be staying on top of them now.

Something that is weird and doesn’t make sense is the idea of crossover cables. Ok, they do make sense but I’m not going to get into that here. Crossover cables are just like regular network cables except, and here is the surprisingly bit, the wires inside them are crossed over.

When to use them

Crossover cables are used when you are linking two computers directly. When using hubs, switches, routers, etc you want regular network cables but if you are linking two computers from one network port to the other you need a crossover cable.

Alternatives

Of course one problem is if you have just wired everything up and taken up half the carpets in your house. Putting a new cable in doesn’t sound like something you will be wanting to do any time soon.

There are two ways to work round this (you could also buy a network hub but that’s expensive and pointless so I won’t be covering that solution). The first is to get a connector and stick two crossover cables together, so the wires crossover twice and therefore cancel each other out.

The second solution is to get a connector that does this for you. You plug one end of the connector into your computer and the other end has a port to slot your regular network cable into. It’s just like a little box that does the crossover for you.

I always considered myself an MSDN person and believe me, I still very much am. Although today I have drifted over to being a TechNet person. I don’t really like the whole techie thing as getting computers to work that aren’t is beyond annoying. But certain developer style developments led me there.

The firm rooting in MSDN here is that to drift over I have been developing two websites. The websites in question are Server Admin Newbie and Hardware Tutorials. The first one I launched today and the latter I have just been working on.

I have been toying with the idea of doing a guide for new server admins as I know how clueless I was when I first got my VPS hosting. I had also been thinking that I don’t have a big enough range of developed sites. I’ve put everything into celeb sites, I have loads of others I guess but it didn’t feel like I did. End result I started that site.

Secondly I am going to be spending some time on Hardware Tutorials as it has plenty of potential. I wrote a new tutorial just now and I have realised it isn’t in any of the search engines or Worfolk Online’s database so I will be letting the world know it is out there this evening.

PCI cards are easy to install. The first thing you obviously need to do is turn everything off, unscrew your case and remove it so you can get in. Your PCI slots will be near the pack of the unit, and will be brown ports (usually). You will have anywhere from three to six.

Next you want to push out the panel on the back of your computer. They put these metal strips on so that you don’t have a hole in the back of your computer when you don’t have a PCI card in there. Keep this safe somewhere as you will need it again if you ever take the PCI card out.

Now get your PCI card and insert it into the spot. Push it firmly until it lines up, you will notice the metal strip end will replace the area where the old metal strip you pushed out used to be.

Once it’s in place and fits nicely lining up with the edge of the case you want to screw the metal strip into place so that it can’t move. Now close your case and switch your PCI back on. Chances are it will be picked up automatically but if not go to install new hardware or use whatever software you were supplied with.

The latest thing to arrive through my letterbox from Screen Select is Dawson’s Creek series 5. They have really slowed down by the way. They seem to take more time to dispatch and Royal Mail seems to take more time to deliver. But that is a different story.

I got watching the first disk. Disk 2 arrived two days ago but disk one only got here today so I thought I would stick the first episode one. End result is by 2 pm I had watched the entire first disk.

It really got to me. I think I had an anxiety attack at first as everything had changed. DC was always a safe insular place for me in Capeside but now everyone is off in different places. Well it’s not that bad, at the moment everyone is in Boston which reassures me a little.

It really got me thinking though. I’ve spent the last 40 minutes, an hour starring out of random windows and walking around. I’m trying to get some revision done but I just keep starring at the page of the book thinking about DC. Dawson is at a crossroads in his life and I think I am at the same point in my own.

Which is what scares me. The series, right from the opening doesn’t seem to be about Dawson and his creek anymore. It’s about Joey and as Dawson put it "this city of yours." It’s almost become a show titled Joey’s Boston. I don’t want that I want the story to be about Dawson and for him to get his happy ending. Because I want my story to be about me and my happy ending.

I’ve always considered Dawson to be my counterpart in the world of fiction. As I think I have explained before we are quite a like. Except obviously he has this perfect life in a beautiful creek and I have, well, Leeds, and currently a life that sucks). So what seems to be a downturn in his fortune has a knock on effect for me.

Dawson has always known what to do. He was going to be a film maker. I know what I am going to do. I took comfort in that. But for the first time I feel that he doesn’t know what to do. Or that he is making the wrong choice. What if I am doing the same?

As Cassie was disappointed that she didn’t come up in the images search, I decided there was only one thing to do – post a pic on Nerd Fed and trying to get it listed.

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