Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Today I am a man of few words…

Sorry, this image is no longer available, but for reference it was a photo of my driving test pass certificate.

You know, you would think this would be the best news I would have had all day. But The Bourne Identity arrived on DVD so I’m torn now ;).

I am not sure how I got on the subject, but the idea came
into my head that I should purchase the pro version of Trillian, the instant
messenger that I use. It is far better than any of the software that you losers
use as I can connect to all my accounts at once. MSN, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, the list
goes on. Actually that is pretty much it but it also supports IRC.

Anyway at $25 for the software and a years worth of support
and upgrades it would take considerable skill to go wrong. Plus on top of that,
Trillian 3 is now out sporting a whole new load of features so I am thinking
that it is going to be worth my money once I get it installed.

One of the most notable features is the video options. It supports both audio and video conversations, I presume just to people with MSN and Yahoo as these are the only ones I know support it. But the options available in it rock – you can have side by side video, picture in picture, pause and rewind video it looks awesome.

Still the real test will come when I get everything installed and setup. I will probably install some plugins to play around with them and maybe the odd skin although usually I just prefer the default. Anyway I will post more when I’ve played around with it.

I am currently flicking though issue 109 of the SitePoint Tech Times newsletter that arrived in my inbox in the early hours of this morning. The first feature in this issue was details leaked about what features Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer 7 browser will feature. Most importantly, tabs. Well, well, looks who has come crawling back :D.

You can try and ignore the other browsers if you wish but it won’t get anywhere. That said, I didn’t expect Microsoft to make the move. I mean sure all the other browsers are doing it and tabs are good. But Microsoft has never been one to follow others. Wait what I am I saying, this software runs on an operating system that basically cloned Mac’s graphical interface. Ok this is turning into Microsoft bashing, time to get back on my thoughts about the browser.

The thing is, no tabs set Internet Explorer apart from other browsers, it made it different. I don’t want yet another identical browser. I would prefer it if they spent the time making the browser standards compliant, I’m tired of having to write cross browser compatible sites – if the software creators would get their act together I wouldn’t have to.

An RSS reader is also welcome. Mozilla doesn’t even have one (well actually I don’t know about the full Mozilla suite but Firefox doesn’t). I had to go install Sage to read my RSS in Firefox. It does display RSS feeds pretty well though; I can’t remember how Internet Explorer deals with them. Hopefully though IE7 will be more standards compliant, there have been some questions raised over CSS2 support.

I’m tired. I need sleep! Too much to do though. I managed to drag myself away from WoW at around 8 pm to get some work done on a new script though I didn’t start doing my real world until about 10 or something. I needed to sort some screen captures for Hex Series out and a load of other jobs. Only some of them got done.

I still have loads to do though. I was hoping to get to bed before midnight though I am not holding out too much hope anymore. Bah, why did I have to create so many daily news sites? This is somehow everyone’s fault but mine. Possibly Ms Wood’s, I do need a good old fashioned lawsuit against someone.

I got my exam results today. For my law exam which was the important one, I got a B – not a good thing. I need at least 1 A to get into the university I want to go to. For the two re-sits I did, I got a C in media though at least it is an improvement on my old mark and I got an A in law. Not brilliant but what can you do.

Still I guess I could do something in the form of work. I have loads of coursework to do and loads going on at the moment. I have a day at Central Lancashire coming up this Saturday and the Saturday after I have yet another driving test. Fun.

Ok so it’s Mothers Day. Panic. Actually I’m half sorted, myself and my sister got my mother Alfie on DVD. The twist here – she doesn’t have a DVD player. Not our fault though, she was dropping hints. A VHS transfer would be nice but all the VCR’s in our house are messed up and none can produce a watchable quality video.

That’s the state of crap electronics these days. Nobody builds stuff to last. That is another rant but let’s just say that I hope certain people at certain companies get hit by cars and killed. Anyway, there is a lot of other stuff going on at the moment. I have coursework deadlines in like 2 weeks for units that we have only just started. That is traditional Temple Moor planning for you.

I also have this big to-do list. The new script that I am developing as part of Particle Soft’s range of cool web applications and stuff will be finished soon, hopefully by the end of today. That said I also have a lot of other websites to work on.

There are several domains I have registered ready for development although I plan to use the new script to power them which gives me an excuse why they haven’t got anything done on them yet. Still, I also need to finish off Hex Series which is now in public beta but still has a few pages that need doing.

Sitting at a school computer earlier today, I found my attempts to do the research assignment we were carrying out in the lesson thwarted once again by DDR – that stands for dynamic document filter. The automated internet censorship board of Leeds Learning Network. It stops us researching "violence" in media, the legality of "prostitution" in law and "sexual" harassment in business studies.

The most ironic thing about it – it can be turned off. It will be disabled at the schools request. This would seem to fit in nicely with the recently formed school council. An internal exercise in democracy that allows for pupils to put their views forward and raise the issues important to them. I don’t think so.

In reality the school council is one of two things. It is either a good idea with an execution that is simply beyond bad and backed up my traditional Temple Moor competence. Or it is nothing more than a PR operation designed to show outsiders how innovated the school is when in fact it is nothing more than a debate group with a set agenda coming from the powers that be.

Never once have I had one of the issues successfully raised. Not that I would know if I had. The meetings are closed to all but the select few who were assigned to it, nobody else can even sit at the sidelines and watch. As for outflow, the group seems to be somewhat of a black hole of information, leaving no trace of the decisions that were made.

I cannot say with certainly which of the possible thoughts the school council was a product of. But either way it is lacking the infrastructure and motivation needed for success. Our own democracy takes criticism at the best of time. So what good will a mere attempt at the system do?

Parliament struggle to get through all the legislation and issues that need to be debated. So how can the council debate everything in a 30 minute meeting every few months? MP’s take up the issues of their constituents. Yet why would the counsel representatives when there is no elections of wish to stay in power? How will they even know the views of the students when there are no channels set-up to provide them with this information?

I saw another example of the incompetency of the council recently. A few A4 posters appeared about "lunch survey week." But there was no information on them. No information passed down through our forms or through our representatives. Just a poster with half a dozen words on it. What is the point?

To be frank, the school council is a joke. It is badly organised, badly run and exists to do nothing more than to make us feel like our voices are heard when really we have never suffered such an oppressive attitude. It is a PR exercise for the school to make it look like it is listening when our issues are never heard. It is an actual fact for us – a complete waste of time.

About time I should say. My Hex fan site has been in production for like months now. It started off as an ICT project. And indeed ended as it too. Basically it is for my coursework. Although I wasn’t going to build a website and not put it on the internet.

Due to the fact I didn’t want to create it one weekend and have nothing to do in ICT for several months though I have found myself in the strange situation of actually doing work in the class.

End result, I am pretty happy with the site. It actually half looked better in Internet Explorer 5.5 as that supported width tags for the hyperlinks. Everyone is getting standards compliment now though so it doesn’t work in modern browsers.

The influence of ICT can be seen on the site though. Features like a guestbook that you wouldn’t find on regular sites are there. It allowed me to get soe development on things like a poll class though which was pretty cool.

I remember going to the bank on Thursday. Something about a network problem on Friday (although I had to check it happened Friday and not Saturday) and then I just found myself here. After getting World of Warcraft on Thursday the real world has basically been on hold for me.

At the moment I am level 15. I am not really sure what level I was this morning, I think it was 15. I should really stop thinking about it though before I get pulled back into the game. I have serious work to do that is pretty much not getting done. It is just so tempting though!

Maybe I have been on it a little too much. But there are people way ahead of me. I think. And there are so many quests to do, I need to do them all! All I tell you, I can’t just sit around. I need to kill things.

Still I don’t need WoW to enjoy life. I can just eat these cool refreshing ice pops. I’ve been on a break 10 minutes or so and gone through 7 of them so everything is under control there.

I am not on about World of Warcraft here. I actually had one of those fatality moments, almost 2 hours ago. I have been trying to get my network back online since around 18:15 when I was disconnected while partying with some great people I met on the game. I tell ya, you will never see me move so fast as when my network goes offline!

This actually happened in a different form recently when NTL suffed a network cable and left me without internet access. You can usually tell when something like this happens as I cam rushing down the stairs at light speed checking connections, resetting boxes and screaming to myself.

The end solution? Turn the router off. I usually just reset it using the reset switch but this time I had to actually go to the mains and turn it off for a minute or two to make sure that everything in it’s current memory was deleted. The problem? I am not sure although I did get a network cable unplugged error just before my laptop went offline.

Anyway it is all back online now. The Windows ME machine needs a reset before anything happens which is why I am glad I have XP on the laptops to do immediate testing. It is fixed though providing it all works when I move my primary laptop back upstairs (or just mine as the other one is my mums lol, therefore I shall move on.

It looks like Carl will get on World of Warcraft after all. His 512mb memory didn’t work, so he orded 2 x 256mb memory sticks and paid £7 for next day delivery – they didn’t work either. That really sucks! Luckily Deni stepped in and his laptop will plug the hole until Carl gets a Dell (which are like the most awesome computers ever, second only to maybe Alienware that just look cool and suck inside the box).

So we are only one day away from the launch of World of Warcraft! Huzzah, it is awesome close and I can’t wait although technically I have to. Anyway so I need something to fill the void and I beleive I have found it on Sky Mix in the form of Dr. Phil. For those in the dark, Dr. Phil is a chat show where he gives people councilling and gets them to cry live on air.

Today is a follow up from the desperate housewives episode that was on a while ago. I didn’t see it so I am kind of in the dark and Dr. Phil won’t even show the tape this time as the mother is so self distructive. So basically he has an entire show and none of the TV audience has a clue what is going on lol.

It got my thinking about different chat show topics that I want to do. There are some cool ideas although it is not quite as outragous of some of the Jenny Jones shows. Still, who can compete with the almighty Jenny?

"My daugher has two kids and she is only 7 years old"
"I’ve killed 14 people and I’m worried that I might shoplift"
"A future version of myself travelled back in time and tried to kill me"

I welcome your input on other show topics I should do, post them in the comments section below.