Chris Worfolk's Blog

I missed Britney.

Hmm, it’s been an interesting day. I’ve actually really enjoyed the one day off I’ve had between finishing my exams and starting work again tomorrow. It’s been a day of generally lazing around, in between sleeping for long periods of time. Then at 8 we kicked off with a Wendy pre-party hosted by yours truely. Wasn’t too bad. Limited about of spills and not much broken that I know of.

We hit Wendy about 11 and by this point people were pretty drunk. I mean, even I was feeling it. We got in there and I saw quite a few people including Stefan, Theaks and Jay. I got talking to a few other people that I was going to have a more in-depth chat with (or saw people I was going to have a chat with) but that plan was somewhat curbed by my premature exit.

I also ran into Andy (see this post it’s not exactly in detail but it gives a very brief account) who started by hitting on a very drunk Sophie, started chatting to me and seemed to be alright with me (bare in mind the last time we spoke was when we parted on bad terms in May and his last words were “I’ll never forget this Chris”). I was going to let it go but then Claire comes over and says he has then been badmouthing me to her. Seriously, what is that about?

By this point we had lost Sophie and so myself and Verity spent some time looking for her. She was eventually found passed out in the toilets and so me and Verity took her home. Well, I say home, we took her to mine as I was putting them up for the night. This I can live with but now I’ve lost both halves of by bed, I was hoping to keep hold of one half at least.

While I’m fine with the premature exit as I left Claire to tell everyone that we had made a swift exit to get Sophie out, I did leave quite a few situations trailing loose ends across the dance floor. I had resolved to make sure I had a word with Andy at the end of the night as well as making sure I talked to a few other people which I don’t want to disclose on a public blog but whatever, it happened.

I was reading over the paper about how Windows Vista cripples PCs by increasing system resources, delivering reducing quality video, blocking hardware that doesn’t support DRM and so forth. I’ve never been particularly angry at Microsoft, they are a big evil corporation, that is their job but this is so far beyond that, this is just a joke.

The bottom line is, though: who is going to save us? Where are the nice corporations? I mean, we can all switch to Linux and that would be all good but what distro comes with support for playing DRM’ed DVDs. None that are not in a shady legal position and this is just going to get worse when the Vista problems take hold. The problem is that Linux doesn’t have the corporations to mount any kind of resistance against this. They are all random groups of developers occasionally formed into companies like Redhat and Canonical which are simply drops in the ocean on a worldwide scale.

Apple perhaps? The issue there is they are even worse than Microsoft. Take a look at something like the iTunes copy protection (http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=191000408&pgno=3&queryText=). Microsoft forced other people out of the market using various tactics that could be considered underhand but at the end of the day it was market forces – people could choose to go elsewhere, it would just put them at a disadvantage. Apple is just locking people in with iTunes, only they can play it and iPod’s don’t support any other DRM.

I sit here thinking, when I’m the guy at the head of the massive corporation making these decisions, things are going to be different. Of course, right now I have a lot of dreams and only a pittance of success. Did Mr. Gates sit on his bed in his Harvard dorm room and think when he made it, he would get rid of all this crap? How about Mr. Jobs? Howard Stringer or Nobuyuki Idei perhaps (CEO and ex-CEO of Sony, switching over around the notable time that Sony’s optical drive crippling malware was discovered)?

/cheer

CNet have been busy again. Last month they very quietly launched FilmSpot which is basically the same as there current properties MP3.com and TV.com but with even more Web 2.0. I only strumbled across it today and was unable to find any other blog posts about it nor a press release (they’re a very strange company, they never put out press releases about new site launches but put plenty out about things people don’t care about).

I’ve spent my day upgrading web application after web application as well as pruning hundreds upon hundreds of spam posts that have hit several forums I own. You just reach a point where you almost want to become Christian in order that you can believe the people behind this work can actually burn in hell. It is my fond hope that at minimum they will burn in this life. I hate them, I really do. With a pure dark passion. I hope they suffer. I hope they are suffering.

As ever my inbox is one of my mortal enemies. Every time I check it there are more emails from various hippies that require me to respond or take some action or sort out some problem. For once I would like to open it and a gentle carming voice to say “you have no new mail.”

On the plus side I have my floor space back now, or at least, as much of it as I am going to get back. I got some new shelving from Argos yesterday which has cleared some of the crap off the floor which was previously without a home and once you add on the effect of the room re-arranging I did I have got the amount of stuff that is on the floor simply because it has no other home due to lack of space down to a minimum.

It’s rare that my computers get turned off. It’s almost an even these days. Tonight is one such of those events. I got my UPS at the start of January and on Friday my extention cables finally arrived for it along with yet another massive surge protected multi-socket, so having picked them up today I’m going to be wiring everything in tonight.

While everything is off I will be completely re-arranging my electronics, turning everything off and swapping everything round (on top of my UPS I now have 2 4-ways that come off the UPS, 3 regular 8-way multi-sockets and another 2 regular 4-way multi-sockets due to the fact I’ve currently lost one of them or it would be 3 and of course everything is a surge protector).

I’ll also be bringing my server back online (if I can lol; I don’t know why it won’t come online as I don’t have a monitor for it) and giving everything a good clean as it’s hard to get in and dust when everything is plugged in, let alone turned on.

It’s a shame really as I was doing so well. Mr. O’Shea still has the edge with his now 100 days of uptime but I’ve now reached 69 days which I like to think is quite impressive for a Windows machine. It’s wierd to think it’s been on since October. Still, I’ve now add Windows moaning at me to install some updates for over a month now.

So, where was I? The bulk of exams are over but stress levels are still running high – AI22 isn’t going to be an easy exam, housing still needs to be sorted for next year, Atheist Soc needs some quality time spent with it and my online ventures are also desperate to get some development time.

While many people have taken the weekend off to relax I was working yesterday and I’m closing tonight so that will probably take out most of monday. That gives me Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to get a bit of work done before the exam on Friday, then we’ll probably go out Friday, sleep through most of Saturday before Wendy then I’m working again on Sunday. Bring on term time.

Akismet is getting beaten. Still I guess it’s still quite a small percentage that are getting through compared to how many I get hit with.

Since my DB exam I had two on Thursday, AI21 which didn’t go well at all, border line pass if that and then SE20 in the afternoon which went fine. I managed to start a question with “No, you’re wrong, I’m the developer here!” so it’s all good. Then this morning I had SY21 which went without problem. So just one more exam to go now.

It would be nice to not have to do anything for a week now but sadly I’m not in that situation. I have work tomorrow which will take up most of the day (and looks like my other plans for tomorrow may have fallen through) and I’m working Sunday which is a close so I’ll probably sleep through most of Monday. Then by the time I’ve revised for AI22 it will be the exam itself, I’m doing a close on the Sunday after that and then I’m back in lectures for semester.

Had the work’s Chrismukka party last night. Was alright, won at MP3 player as part of the star of the shift competition. Didn’t win it, came joint 4th and obviously it’s not going to be an ultra-quality MP3 player but it can hold a gigabyte of stuff so it’s decent enough if only as an extra UMS device.

Just got back from my first exam, DB21. It went quite well, there was some topics I knew we had covered and I didn’t really know but for the most part I think I managed to struggle through it and get the important parts. What mark I will get I don’t know but I’m sure I’ve done more than enough to keep me well clear of the failure line.

Most people were still working when I left, about an hour and twenty into a two hour exam. I wasn’t the first to leave by any means but people were either writing a hell of a lot or really struggling. I’m hoping for the really struggling option though I don’t put too much faith in that being the case.

Ah well, only four more to go.

They are upon us! As in, I start my first one in less than an hour. I don’t really care though, I just want to get it out of the way. That’s not true, I do care, but I’m struggling to care enough to really get motivated for it. Trying to map out my final revision sessions is interesting. I have tomorrow off and two exams on Thursday but I also need to go over the material for Friday’s exam. That’s in the afternoon though but I am going out with work the night before so it’s also add it on to Wednesday or last thing before the exam when I get up on Friday.

Then at least we have a nice long gap before AI22, not that anybody has a clue what is going to be on that exam.

All in all, once they are over and done with I will be pleased. I have several coding projects I am iching to get on with but I’m trying to keep away from them as I know if I start coding I’m just going to forget about my exams completely.