While myself and Zoltan were sitting around in The Terrace last week, RAG came round selling tickets for speed dating and being tired of his moaning about being single I decided to sign him up, which of course meant I had to sign myself up as well.
After all, it’s a fantastic opportunity. 3 minutes to chat to 20 different people about A-Soc, what more could you ask for? I managed to get it into quite a few conversations and Zoltan even had a conversation about it with someone who had already talked to me so that was a nice little double team 😀 .
Less importantly (because let’s face it, it isn’t more importantly as I was going to start this paragraph with :p ) Zoltan seemed to have fun so everything worked out for the best. It was actually quite a lot of fun, you don’t really have time to get bored of someone or run out of things to say because you’re only there for a few minutes and you’re bound to find a few people you really have a good conversation with unless you’re an especially boring person. Plus it’s another thing to tick off my things to do before you die list.
Tuesday saw the long awaited Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster at A-Soc. We got another fairly decent attendance, about 30 people or so turned up in the end I think. We got quite a few new members down again so hopefully they weren’t too freaked out that having been their first meeting 😀 .
The event itself went fairly well, it all seemed to happen so fast at the time though according to the time stamp on the camera it actually went on for about 40 minutes. The video will be up on YouTube as soon as a I get some free time to sort it.
We haven’t really had a post mortem discussion about it yet but it is definitely something that we want to repeat in the future.
October 14th, 2008 |
Life
It’s finally happened. I finally beat everyone else to work.
Only by 2 minutes, Nick turned up with Tom just after I had arrived but never the less. Good job I didn’t turn up really early really, I was going to be in well before I actually made it in but a combination of having to load my car up with more stuff than I was expecting and increased traffic (which is probably what slowed everyone else down though) I was delayed somewhat.
I did however find Craig working drive thru at Oakwood which was a pleasant suprise. Apparently he hadn’t quite sobered up from last night yet, so he was in the right place for a recovery breakfast when he did. Good times.
October 13th, 2008 |
Tech
I came to access the data partion of my hard drive yesterday and received a message informing me that my E: drive was not formatted and would I like to format it now?
Awwww, crap.
Having tried all the usual solutions I installed Partition Table Magic (having shelled out quite a bit for it) to fix everything. Which it didn’t. It did however mess with my partion table so that instead of booting off my main partition it now booted off the small media partition that you can use to play movies and such without booting up the full operating system.
So now I couldn’t get Windows to boot at all.
I downloaded GParted and booted into that with the LiveCD and managed to reset the flag so that it booted off the proper partition. But now the media center partition is visible for the first time and who knows what other damage has been done.
Still, I’ve got past the heart wrenching hours where I thought I was going to have to shell out for professional data recovery so things could be worse.
Having arrived late to the pub quiz due to technical difficulties I will later elaborate on, we headed up for some food and ended up sitting around in the car park when someone pulls out a rugby ball.
I’m going to be honest, playing rugby at half 11 on a Sunday night in a cark park isn’t were I thought my weekend would end up. Not that I’m complaining. We also got a game of football in and by the end of it, well, sport and computer scientists don’t mix. But it makes me feel slightly better about the amount of junk I eat so it all works out for the best in the end I guess.
Following the initial meeting last Tuesday, the Pro Life Through Pro Choice campaign finally launched today. The campaign is to promote the idea that pro choice does not mean anti life (whereas those who traditionally describe themselves as pro life generally are anti choice) and that the abortion issue is a serious one which needs to be approached with an open mind.
Friday night saw the long awaited return of One Life.
We managed 13 people to the session which was a fairly respectable number and it was rather amusing to be just down the hallway from the Christian Union’s Friday Night Live (now re-named to Ignite I believe). The food that Norm cooked based on Sophie’s excellently prepared menu was excellent and we got some good discussions going. Another event to chalk down as a success I recon.
As I previously mentioned, I am now fully caught up with the latest adventures of Doctor Who.
I originally had a rant about the series finale, which I stand by though having talked to Rich last Tuesday I think he nailed it when he said it’s just generally a celebration, especially given it is the last series to be masterminded by Russell T Davis and you just have to talk it with a pinch of salt, sit back and enjoy it.
It’s been a good return for the show. I think the first few series really nailed it as they had consistently good episodes which I was less true of the later series though they never the less featured some very good episodes.
End of the day, it’s good to see we still produce good cult television. Only two months to the Christmas special, that’s something to look forward to in the holiday season at least.
I’m just listening to the news on 6Music and they are talking about the fact the MOD has lost loads of personal data again.
The story leads, “serial incompetance is how the Conservates described it.”
I mean, what is the point? Who cares what the Conversatives think? If you give it some thought, they are obviously going to be condemning it. But why make a big issue that the Conversatives happen to say that? I’m sure most people condemn it. How is such news reporting doing anything than stiring up trouble?
Surely if the BBC wants to report on the issue as unbiased balanced report should be the way forward. Why don’t they get someone on to say “actually, I think it’s great the MOD lost everyone’s personal data.”
Obviously the answer is, because that’s just retarded. Nobody would say that because it’s not an issue, it’s something that happens and the fact that the Conversatives also happen to condemn it along with everyone else in the country, isn’t news. It’s just cheap, intellectually bankrupt journalism.
Last night saw the long awaited return of podcasting. For those who haven’t checked it out yet, the sixth show is due out today and next Friday’s abortion debate is probably the best show we have done.
Yet again though I feel that the quality of the podcast has stepped up with the latest round of shows that we recorded last night. One reason for this was the addition of Dr. Gijsbert to the team which really got some good discussion going alongside the ever talkative Nicola as well as myself, Liz and Fonze.
Between us we managed to get some really good discussion going and managed to stay on topic a little more than normal, with plenty of room still for discussing other matters of course. I haven’t edited them together yet but they will be well worth checking out when they are released. Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until the end of the month to hear them 😉 .