I am The Fingerless Pianist!

Hehe, I love this place. I made some more friends today. One's Welsh and cute and claims to wear PVC and proclaimed an interest in going to Rios (I believe he went tonight). I didn't go tonight as I was role-playing. No, not of the Final Fantasy, etc variety. Of the sitting round a table with die and a piece of paper.

The game was called Underpants on the Outside and was about comic-book superheros. I was The Fingerless Pianist! My powers involved being able to eat bombs... and not die, see through paper and soemthing else. My skills were snake-foo, which generally involved using snakes to whatever end and hacking.

It was so fun. I have to go again.

And after our lab time (which consisted of reading a piece of paper that told us how to log-in and send email - I was locating a dot file that made Red Hat/whatever display manager it was running bugger itself, exec bash in .cshrc was causing it for no apparent reason) we (me, Will, Niall, Wendy, Stuart and John) went to some focus group thing where she asked us about how top-up fees would affect students. We all got £10 Virgin vouchers.

Turns out Jacksons are doing a promotion... where there are free items to be had. Actual free items. I now have a bottle of Lucazade, American Chip Spice, and a pack of Rizlas. They also have free batteries (if they have any) and free non-vegan and/or non-ethical products.

Now, tomorrow. I have to vaguely understand the pieces of paper I have regarding discrete mathematics and answer some questions before 10am tomorrow morning. After an hour of that it's `software development' lab time. So that may consist of something harder. Like logging out.

I just realised something about today. I never went to my driving lesson. So that's some of Davina's money I have managed to waste. Fuckity fuck. Damnit. If I'm in all the time then I'll see it on my calendar (KOrangizer) or remember `oh, I have driving today, I wonder what time'. Fuck. I'm so good at forgetting things. `Yeah, I'll go to Rios on Friday', then I text back and say `Oh, sorry, I just remember I'm babysitting'. Davina will not be happy. She'll probably want paying back as it cost her money. However... and this is a big however. Why didn't he call me? He has my number (how did I mis-type that as money?). Surely he'd think `oh, he's forgotton, I'll give him a ring'. However, technically it is my fault. I really don't want to drive anyway. For a start it's un-ecologically sound.

I've spent like 20 hours now. Theoretically I'd only need about another 20 more before I could pass my test. Theoretically. But I really don't care for driving. I'd sooner wash-up than drive (I have some washing-up to be done left from the night before last...).

Oh yeah, I was going to cook for Davina before we went to the pub. But Will's friend Jenny from his sort of area in his halls is going to some LGBT thing (I haven't worked out what it is yet). And now I'm going with her to . I'll go to the pub, but after whatever. Since I'm meeting her at 6:45 outside the library, that would leave Davina about half an hour for making and eating tea (i.e. I'm cooking for her). So I'll have to reschedule that.

The more I talk to people the more I tend to get busier. And I can't remember what I'm doing and when. Well, I do. I just don't register any connection between `yes, I'll babysit your kid(s) at 7 on friday' and `yeah, I'll come to Rios on friday'.

At least the lab part of the course is easy-peasy. One of the recommended books was `Red Hat Linux' or something. Hahahaha! Red Hat sucks dick... it sucks Debian's dick because RH wants to be good by association.

I shall probably take something to do when I `baby'-sit in Thornton (they're all over 6). I finish at 4 so I should have time to get some quick tea before I go. For the first two weeks we don't have a lecture on Friday afternoon. So after that I'll have to take a bag with stuff to do while babysitting and some sandwiches. It takes about 30 minutes to get to Thornton at a peak time. And that is how long I have to get from my lecture to Davina's house.

On Wednesday I shall be going to Manchester with Summer to see Slipknot. I'll find out what time she finishes on wednesday as I wouldn't mind meeting Owen (I'll have to find out what time he finishes too). Yes, I checked my time-table. I finish at 2 (if we spend 2 hours in `software development' - doubtful, but possible).

And then I believe I shall be going to Rios next friday. With Summer. And I believe other people I know are going too. I think I recognised a few people at BURPS from Rios.

I tried out Mambo OS today it's at /~holizz/Mambo/ if you have access to my IP address at some point. It was cool. I learnt how to add a user to MySQL and stuff. It's kind of weird. I'll play around with it at some point. See what it can do.

Happy Hacking Keyboard

Here's an interesting article from BME about somebody who got an anti-Bush picture tattooed on the back of her head and got paid a small amount of money for it.

The top 10 `technologists' have been announced... according to some website I've never heard of.

I think I know what piercing I may want next. It's so sexy. But if I got it it may not be too cosy in my mouth at night with a big barbell and my retainers. We'll see. It could also interfere with plans to get a tongue splitting (in the sense that I would lose my big barbell if I got my tongue split).

Ah yes, I should also mention that I've been disappointed with Firefox's `find' feature. It was kind of crappy. Now, in version 1.0PR, they have a slightly Emacs-like search facility. A bar appears at the bottom with your search term and some buttons. Like Emacs, it searches as you type. I'm happy with it. However, a future improvement could add an ability to move the focus to and from chrome in an easier way. At the moment, you'd have to tab through an entire document to get back to the location bar.

I made some friends today. Niall and Will. Well, I met Niall last Tuesday on enrollment day. But I didn't know his name until now. I went into the Biko bar (up until now I thought it was Bilko as in Sgt. Bilko, well whatever). They're on my course, well, Niall is on Multimedia Computing. But we're all A-K in terms of surnames so we'll be sharing labtime in Software Development. Four hours tomorrow. Computer & Architectures & Systems Software for 1 hour (times two) and two hours of Software Development - all lab time. We had an hour lecture today on Formal Foundations, which was on descrete mathematics today.

Will told me about the Happy Hacking Keyboard (Lite 2). It looks like a great keyboard. Only £30ish. Aha! I found a UK reseller of the keyboard. Hoorah! Buy nay, it's £61. So no Happy Hacking keyboard for me.

Oh yeah, there's a new European geek shop now. Nerdorama. It's Slashdotted at the time of writing but I'll check it out ASAP.

So, as I was saying, the Solaris server at the University of Bradford (lithium) is really crappy. It seems to have less than half of the utilities a modern GNU/Linux distro comes with. And tools it has, none of them are GNU tools. So they're all crappy and hard to use. It doesn't have emacs, python.

Bash.org

I found an interesting page about `optimising' websites for particular browsers.

Last night I watched Silent Waters (English title), which is one of the Bite the Mango film festival films. It was very good.

Tonight, it's bash.org.

Hahahaha. Bad sectors. I want BME/Hard membership.

This is one of my favourites from bash.org.

Rodeo.

Python.

8ball.

brb.

Now it's tomorrow (I seem to have a problem being able to post to my blog on the day I write a post):

There's now Wind Waker tattoos: So pretty. I hope they post it when it's coloured-in.

And don't forget the JPEG virus.

It's my first lecture at 10. An hour left to eat breakfast and get there.

Fucking hell, this dial-up service is shit. It usually takes me several attempts to connect and it seems to be cutting me off every 15 minutes this morning. I usually get an hour or so. On monday I can put my name down at Dennis Bellamy Halls to change halls... to one with broadband. Then I'll only have to worry about this port-blocking, which I haven't investigated yet.

Pictures!

I have a new photo place (as the uni only gives me 500KB, wankers). There's some nice recent pictures of my block.

I think I shall go see Adminspotting.

America's view of the world.

Linux - Not just an OS kernel.

Where's the Internet? Oh, there it is.

Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot with yet another advert.

Hey, there's another film I want to see: The Bill Witch Project.

If you're reading, here's an alternative to the JGG.

Oh wow! I want this mouse!

I want a portable PC!

I'm getting a new job.

Anyway, that's enough of that.

Hat Man

I got the wire. It works. I'm at home now.

One problem. They've blocked a number of ports. Most notably is 6667 - the most common IRC port. They also block 6668 and 7000, that I've found. I have also found that they do not block port 7070, which is good as one public Bitlbee server operates on that port. I'd like to find out why they block those ports. It's probably the menace of P2P (I'm scared to go online at night... damn filesharers).

So I'll have to find out who's in charge of this, how far the blocking presists (i.e. can I use IRC on the uni computers), if the Student Union know or care about this... Who also uses the ports in question (so I can make a petition).

I just had some tea. Now I'm browsing the WWW. Soon I shall go meet Summer in Centenery Square, take her to see my room, then we're off to Rios.

Now it's the next day.

I met some weird people at Rios. They seemed to know me. One of them had a straw hat on and was called hat man. Maybe he has another name, but that's what we called him.

We had fun singing along to The Final Countdown. I played my air trumpet and Summer played her air drums.

Oh yes, I almost forget. I am now supporting Wikipedia and the Mozilla foundation by buying one Wikipedia T-shirt, one navy Firefox T-shirt and one Mozilla Star T-shirt. All in all, I've probably paid the money that was resting in my account since last Comic Relief to worthy causes.

Secret port-blocking at the University of Bradford

I got the wire. It works. I'm at home now.

One problem. They've blocked a number of ports. Most notably is 6667 - the most common IRC port. They also block 6668 and 7000, that I've found. I have also found that they do not block port 7070, which is good as one public Bitlbee server operates on that port. I'd like to find out why they block those ports. It's probably the menace of P2P (I'm scared to go online at night... damn filesharers).

So I'll have to find out who's in charge of this, how far the blocking presists (i.e. can I use IRC on the uni computers), if the Student Union know or care about this... Who also uses the ports in question (so I can make a petition).

I just had some tea. Now I'm browsing the WWW. Soon I shall go meet Summer in Centenery Square, take her to see my room, then we're off to Rios.

Mmm, GNOME

My blogging's kind of messed-up at the moment. I keep forgetting to `lsync' (a small BASH script to synchronise my keydrive with a set of symlinks to actual files) and as a result I'm constantly blogging half a post. So whatever. Nobody reads it anyway.


How annoying. I spoke to Buncey on Trillian (which looks like MSN and sucks) for a minute then I changed computer because the one I was on didn't have working USB ports. I moved to another room. Then another. Then I was told it was closing. And I'd read the Computer Centre was open 24 hours a day during the week.

I just finished the first chapter of Foundation's Edge. Very interesting. I have also had an idea as to the point of failure regarding my Internet connection. I have no dial-tone... but this may be due to the wire. This is a wire I had lying around at home (untested, I believe). I left the wire I was using before. The one I used before definately worked. This one may not have ever worked. I'm going home tomorrow for tea and Six Feet Under. Then I'm going to the pub, then I can come home and test it.

But for now, I shall retire to bed (and possibly read another chapter). Ta ta, avid blog-readers.

I found the guy who I spoke to at the open day, I asked him where the dual-booting rooms where, he showed me, I spent two hours, mostly on Red Hat. I installed Firefox 1.0PR. I discovered there was only GNOME, KDE or TWM available. Pfft. At least I get to try out GNOME, like I wanted to.

I just came home to get some lunch. Now I shall go to the sports and societies fair, then back to the dual-booting rooms. I got an email saying my webspace was ready. So I made a simple page with a link to my blog and to SSQ.

http://www.student.brad.ac.uk/tadams2/

It's only 500KB but it'll still be nice to have a place with my name on it. Even if it isn't a TLD... and it doesn't appear to have any server-side capabilities.

Then after going back to the Informatics computers, I shall go home and see Davina. To be fed, to watch Six Feet Under, to go to the pub.

Dual-booting!

When I got on the Internet in the Computer Centre I discovered I hadn't updated my flashdrive with the most recent copy of the blog post I had. So here's what I missed this morning:

2004-09-21

Turns out my keydrive didn't `just work' with her MS Windows 95 machine. Ah well. I'm going to see if I can register for my login tomorrow. The library machines should be up-to-date enough to `just work' with the flashstick.

Tomorrow: Fresher's Fair and Driving. I also plan on getting my login, as I mentioned. And I'm going to check out the buildings. I'll work out which building(s) the School of Informatics' computers reside in. Oh yeah, I got a piece of paper from the Student Loans Company today when I went to see Davina. It seems to be the exact one I need to give to the enrolment people. I'll do that tomorrow, most likely. I also have to sort out my insurance (if you plan on burglary, please wait until I'm insured).

I should probably find a leaflet about using the Student phone thing too.

2004-09-22 (technically)

I had a strange dream last night. I met Jonathon Widdop... for like the first time in ages. And he had shoulder-length bleached hair (I mean like all bleached, not like my bleached). And I'm not sure about the rest of the dream. It was weird. I wonder what he's up to. I think he went to Bradford College last year... No idea what he's up to now. He could be going to uni... Maybe I'll meet him one day.

I was thinking today. It's kind of crap that I seem to be sharing a block with only men... and I have no male friends IRL, which leads me to believe that there's something that makes me more likely to make friends with women and this makes me less likely to make friends with anybody in my block. But then I realised that I had no friends on my street back at Davina's. My closest (proximity) friend was Sammy, and she was a few streets away. So it'll be nothing new to not live near any of my friends. It's just now that all my friends in Thornton are slightly further away (especially Owen, who was reportedly in Manchester last night... singing karaoke).

Ah yes! I had a quest to find a UoB student's blog (especially CS students). So while I was at Davina's, I made a quick Google search and found a page in Google's directory, there was one link to a blog of somebody from the UoB studying CS. I was impressed. I haven't spent great detail reading his blog but it was up-to-date. I'll read it when I can. The list of Personal Bloggers was split into 0, 1, 2, 3, A, B, C, etc.. I'll find the directory and search it for the university to find any more.

Night night, avid readers.

2004-09-22 (undisputedly)

I had some breakfast downstairs. Then I went to the library. Turns out my username is tadams2. How demeaning. I browsed for a while, posted the copy of my blog post on my usbstick and explored the system. I didn't find the `M:' drive on the computer so I didn't have a `My Documents' directory at all. I also telnetted into the Sun machine. It's kind of crappy. No GNU tools at all. I was going to register for some WWW space on www.students.brad.ac.uk but nobody was in the office. I'll go back at 2:15. I noticed you were only allowed to use IM (of which Trillian was the only available client) between 20:00 and 08:00. I never knew the library was open so late/early. I got a sheet telling me where the computer rooms were (they call them clusters, but I'm not sure they are). So I'll see if I can get access to the dual-booting PCs and then I can copy all my dotfiles. I can try out GNOME too. And while I'm exploring I'll find the enrolment people and give them my info from Student Loans Company. But not if I have to que for two hours to do it.

I have to go food shopping today. And also go to the Freshers' Fair.

Oh yeah, and I just had lunch downstairs and chatted to Leo who was cooking pasta. He's from Hong Kong and he lives in the room next to me.

Toodle-oo, avid readers (or listeners... or touchers, depending on your user agent).

So I signed-up for my 500KB webspace (yes, it's very small isn't it, but ah well). And I went shopping and got some stuff. And then I ate 158p worth of grapes. Then I went driving. Now I'm going to cook some pasta with a sauce. Then I shall go the Computer Centre in the library and use the Internet for 12 hours (by then it should be 8pm and I can use Trillian without fear of being told off).

Well I'm on a dual-booting PC now. I can't mount my keydrive from Red Hat/GNOME so I'm on Windows. They have Emacs on Windows on here.

Now I'm off to the Sports and Societies fair... but first I may have lunch.

Just a little home sick

I expect it may be some time before I get online so I'm dating everything.

2004-09-19
I moved in today. I packed the car full of things. Then we went at about 11 something in the morning. I got my key and my mailbox (no, a physical mailbox - yes, I was confused too ;) key. That took several hours. I qued for ages and saw the person on the Shearbridge Green place. They said I needed to a yellow reciept. We found somebody from the Student Union who was very helpful - so I went to another table in the Small Hall in the Richmond Building and filled out some form and got the yellow reciept. I then qued for the Shearbridge Green keys again. And I discovered I didn't need the yellow recipet (turns out the guy on before was just there because the usual people were on a lunch break). Then I went over and got my mailbox key - not sure how useful the concept is as there's one box per first letter of surname in Shearbridge and Longside. It seems the other halls residents get a better service as they have individual addresses. So we went to the refectory (it's where they serve you school lunch-like food, apparently) where we'd booked a traditional sunday lunch and we mentioned we wanted vegan Sunday lunch, but they didn't get our order. So we went off to South Square for lunch (potato wedges, SSQ Special burger, plum and apple sice).
We came back and had a look at my room. The lock didn't work so we changed the key and then they had the joiner come up and fix it as the new key didn't work. Then we moved everything in from the car. Then Davina left.
Then I set my computer up. Even though this hall doesn't have broadband, there's a Cat5 hole in the wall... but no standard phone hole. I think Cat5 plugs are bigger than American telephone holes, so it's probably not that Bradford Uni has moved to America... Hmm, very strange.
My room's much bigger than my old one. A desk, two chairs, a bed, a sink, a wardrobe, a window. It's nice.
So, I got my computer set up and read some incredibly useful documents (``Don't cook when you're drunk''). Then... I went out on a big adventure.
First stop - that place near the cashier's office where the Student Private Telephone Service and dial-in/ResNet (ethernet from halls) people were. They were no longer there. Then I went under some building (Horton, I believe) and found a weird place with a cylindrical thing and stuff. Then I went past the Library to the Student Union place. Bars and stuff there. Then I came back via the road that's near UniPol.
I'm glad I saved a copy of the top 200 IRC quotes from bash.org. It's fun.

Jakefeb3: if i duck tape 2 turtles together they are unstoppable

I also remembered to bring The Naked Sun and my vegan cook books.

I photoblogged my day. I shall certainly upload the pictures at some point. This depends on a number of factors the most important of which being when I get my uni login (i.e. take pictures to uni and upload them to my webspace, or dial-in and upload them slowly).
I also photographed the programmes from the Student Union and opening times of things. Easier than stealing them or writing them down.

Some of the events looked interesting, such as the Allsorts night which is an LGTB event. I think I'll go. Maybe drag Summer or somebody along.

It's weird... I have all my stuff but I'm not at home... I'm sure it'll get better when I get the dial-in access.

It's very light compared to my old room. Like the computer's drowned in light. It was under my bed before.

I think I'm going to have a nice, minimal effort, anti-social tea tonight. The minimum effort refers not to the food-preperation, but to the lack of social interaction - I've had a long day and I need to relax and be alone. I don't think I can cope talking to people right now, I'm kind of tired (not least from the physical and psychological effort required to move and maybe from the psychological trauma of not having had Internet access for at least 23 hours - yes I will continue counting).
It's going to be quite a strain this week. I don't start my course (Computer Science) until next Monday but meeting all these new people (being social is good in small doses, but too much of it is painful) and being in a new place (granted it's only a couple of miles up the road but it's scary) and then on top of it all, I won't have 'Net access in my room till Thursday or something. I'm not sure I'll cope very well without 'Net access. I rely on it almost completely as a fantastic place to learn and to socialise (in a completely non-stressful way).
I hear there's a Cyber Cafe not far from here so I may have to find it and use it at some point soon. The Library (I think) is offering one free phone call or email home (as most first-years have no logins yet). But that's no good, I need to spend a good few hours online to blog this, upload the photos (note: I won't have anywhere to upload them if I use a Cyber Cafe as the webspace (50MB) needs a login (I think you have to apply for it seperately too).

Maybe I should buy a techy book to help me calm down. Although I'm not sure a physical book store would have anything incredibly interesting in stock and ordering would take a while. We'll see. Maybe I should have a wonder round town tomorrow. I should go to the Goth Shop at some point. It's up near Morrisons and the Blood Donor Clinic. I also need to do some food shopping and I should find out what my local shops are and which has what for the cheapest, etc..

TODO list for tomorrow:

• Scheduled: Offical Welcome Meeting


• Scheduled: Meet Davina


• Scheduled: Register with the Health Clinic (it's open all week but I want to go on monday and get it over with)


• Locate the Cyber Cafe Davina told me about


• Buy some food


• Wonder round town


• Browse for techy books (and maybe non-techy)


• Socialise (argh! I don't want to, I want to stay at my old home and program or something)


• Do some more photoblogging


• Find out about the Cat5 hole in my wall


• If I do use the Cyber Cafe I shall blog this file and continue my search for the blog of a first-year student here. Then I'll try and contact them and make friends (to me this seems a very good way of meeting people)


• Learn about the options available to me in terms of local syncronysation between two block devices (i.e. sticking files on and off my keydrive)

I like the whole sink in my room thing, I can do `things' (like stretch piercings then rinse them after or getting myself a drink) without leaving my room. If I was feeling really anti-social I could pee in it rather than leave my room (it's nice and low down ;).

One thing I've noticed is that even though this room is larger than my last bedroom, (I keep wanting to say `my room') it seems there are fewer places to put things so it seems like there's less space. Annoying. At the moment it shall just have to be messy.

It certainly seems easier to get into bed when it's half a metre off the ground as opposed to 2 metres. The stains on my sheets are easier to see, too. I just put my light blue bed thing on the bed (the thing that goes on the matress below the douvet) and it's covered with stains. Mostly suspicious-looking stains but some blood, which is either apadravya blood or cat tumour blood.

I think I'm going to go to bed now and read a chapter or two of The Naked Sun. I set my alarm for 8am as I have to attend the offical welcome meeting at 10.

It's just starting to sink in that this is my home now and I no longer live with Davina :( It's scary).

Night night, avid readers (or not as this hasn't been published yet).

2004-09-20
I went to the Offical Welcome Meeting held by the Student Union. Boring.

I saw Davina and Roisin and we went to Cafe East for lunch. Rice, chips and samosas. Yummy. I'm going to Davina's tomorrow for tea with the kids then I'm going online and setting the VCR. She also gave me my toothbrushes (which fell out of the bag at home) and my wheely chair. The chairs they gave me were useless for computing - arm rests, no wheels, legs kept catching on the carpet so it tilted when I tried to push it back.

Then I went home for a bit and read another chapter of The Naked Sun. Then I went to explore the library. It's big. Really big. So unimaginably big... (Yes, I'm rewriting the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). Where was I? Yes, well, the Library is big. First I went to see the person sitting infront of a `telephone and networking' banner and got a free adaptor for my Cat5-shaped phone hole.
I found one book about Python (of the two existing in the library - I used the computer to locate the second one). It was good. It said it was a beginner's book (Davina said she wanted to learn a programming language at some point, it seems like a good book on a good language) but it got really in-depth by the end. The last two chapters were on Tkinter and LiveWire (a PyGame wrapper), respectively.
Near the entrance to the library were eight locked-down Windows PCs with only Internet Explorer available for first-year students whose Internet connections hadn't been set-up yet (i.e. everybody) and nobody has logins yet so nobody can use the library computers (except the catalogue ones). I was surprised that there was no que whatsoever. I used one for a short while to check my Gmail account - Warbutons had emailed me about my enquiry as to the source of the calcium in their bread. They were incredibly defensive about it. It went something like ``We can only divulge such information for legitimate reasons.'' So I went to their website and told them my reason (being vegan and needing to know if it came from an animal product) and told them I'd take my business elsewhere if they don't care to tell me exactly what could enter by body (I didn't actually eat it - I was waiting to hear from them). Proprietary bastards.

I checked Slashdot and Newsforge too. There was a link on Slashdot to an interesting blog. Somebody had found a keydrive or similar and were making up a life of the person who lost it by posting one photo each day and writing something about it. Teehee. I have a README in the root of my dongle with my name and address and other contact details, etc. so nice people can email me and say ``I have your dongle here, in my hands. It's very big.''
One thing I noticed was that the page full of photos loaded in seconds. VERY impressed. Also VERY jelous. Fucking bastards not in Shearbridge Green with their ethernet connectivity. I may go back to the library and email some people later on, like after it's stopped pouring it down outside.
I was just thinking of visiting Cat's and Owen's boards then I remembered I couldn't remember their URLs because ezboard are morons and use stupid subdomains then I remembered I could write them down as I had my bookmarks in Firefox. ezBoard is so crap. I Googled for the two boards but I found no good results. Rediculus.
I briefly flirted with the idea of posting my blog from the library computers. I decided it may be too much hassle and I'd already spent a while emailing and Slashdotting. I'm not even sure it would work - opening a local UNIX-ended file on a mass storage device from a locked-down IE.

I'm planning on plucking up the courage to warm my tin of curry in one of my sourcepans... in the kitchen. I suppose I'll have to go to the kitchen at some point...

I checked just now with my modem and there's no dial-tone. I assume the phone line in this block/hall isn't connected yet. That's okay, I haven't got my login. I overheard the receptionist tell somebody in front of me that we can get our logins when we have our uni cards or something... Which reminds me, they said there was a passport booth at the Student Union (it's just a big hole in the ground - it's cool, I'll have to take a photo at some point) and I need about 8 passport photos this week (and I need photos and my passport tomorrow morning to enroll).

I stretched the other half (top) of my apadravya late last night when I couldn't get to bed. It now has my 10ga acrylic purple captive in it. Soo painful. I'm sure it'll get better soon. It's mostly okay when I'm sitting down but walking is a problem.

I need a coaster (of the plastic, rather than roller variety). I wonder if ThinkGeek will have any. That'll be something to check next time.

I can't wait to get my login. I'll be able to log into library computers and in theory they will be less locked down and I'll be able to publish this (or later bloggings as I'm going to Davina's tomorrow). And I certainly can't wait to get access to the dual-booting PCs. While the Windows lusers are still figuring out what Linux is I'll be happily transferring my dotfiles from my dongle and exploring what's on the system.

I'm planning on playing with GMOME when I get access to the dual-booting machines. It didn't come with Knoppix as it's a KDE-based distro. Maybe I should order a copy of Gnoppix (like Knoppix but based on GNOME rather than KDE).

I may go explore the Student Union again (but this time actually go in somewhere - i.e. the shop to get change and maybe a small ammount of food, like apples, and then find this photo booth.

Maybe in a minute... it's started raining again. It's nice having a usable window, I can watch the rain fall. So pretty. I'm starting to enjoy this... rain outside (yes, I love rain) and music inside (relatively loud because of the traffic).

Nah, it never happened. Now it's 8:21pm and it's dark.

So. I'd say about 80% of my socialising goes on via the Internet. For two days now I have been deprived the Internet (or more specifically - Instant Messaging).

I'm dreading actually going downstairs and preparing food in the kitchen. Or for that matter, meeting more than one person I'm sharing accomodation with at once. I'm sure I could live off warmish (rather than cold or hot) food that doesn't require cooking and eat out every day. If I meet anybody I'm sharing accomodation with there's a kind of assumption that we should introduce ourselves (as far as I can see at least). I know the name of one person and he lives next to me and Davina's talked to him more than I have.

I have a terrible headache right now. Presumably for some reason related to me moving house. I'm not enjoying this at all. I'm sure it'll be better when I get Internet access. I'll be able to have a conversation with a human being other than my mother again.

So, of the TODO list I made yesterday, I fulfilled the following:

• Scheduled: Offical Welcome Meeting - done


• Scheduled: Meet Davina - done


• Scheduled: Register with the Health Clinic (it's open all week but I want to go on monday and get it over with) - didn't do


• Locate the Cyber Cafe Davina told me about - didn't do


• Buy some food - didn't do


• Wonder round town - didn't do


• Browse for techy books (and maybe non-techy) - done


• Socialise (argh! I don't want to, I want to stay at my old home and program or something) - didn't do


• Do some more photoblogging - didn't do


• Find out about the Cat5 hole in my wall - done


• If I do use the Cyber Cafe I shall blog this file and continue my search for the blog of a first-year student here. Then I'll try and contact them and make friends (to me this seems a very good way of meeting people) - didn't do


• Learn about the options available to me in terms of local syncronysation between two block devices (i.e. sticking files on and off my keydrive) - done

I did less than half of the things I planned.

I didn't actually manage to go to the kitchen and warm some tinned curry up today. I'm planning on having a sandwich... again. The same type of sandwich... again. I hate this. Oh yes, and on the same plate using the same knife.

I hope to be able to get to sleep soon after eating my sandwich. I think I mentioned earlier that it took the stretching of the top half of my apadravya (an incredibly painful procedure whether using `proper' equipment of not) to get me to sleep.

It's so depressing not having Internet access. I was depressed when I went to my dad's for a week. He wouldn't let me use the Internet because I didn't do enough manual labour for him, which he didn't once thank me for (not mentioning the fact that I'm not used to manual labour). I bet Emma's so happy, she's probably at whatever university she went to being very happy about the fact that she's away from my father, or genetic contributor as I like to call him.

I may have to go to Rios on Wednesday. I don't think I can stand another night here alone. I'll be seeing a film with Davina tomorrow night but Rios is good too. I have no idea if anybody else I know is planning on going or not. I'll ask. But I think I'll go whether or not anybody else goes. I have to get back to a familiar situation. I also have to find this cybercafe Davina told me about tomorrow. I have to. Then I'll spend as much as is neccessary, in time and in money.

I think I'm going to read as much of The Naked Sun as I need to before I start falling asleep... then fall asleep. I hope it works.

2004-09-21
I'm much happier today. Probably because I've been doing lots of things.

I woke up at 8 or something, had a shower and then went to the Student Union Shop to get a couple of padlocks for the personal cupboards in the kitchen, then I got some photos using the change from the padlocks. Then I went to the Horton Building to fill out a form. Then I took that form to the Small Hall in the Richmond Building and they gave me a piece of paper with my name and a barcode on it. I then took that to the Great Hall and they took my picture and I had my card printed out for me! How amazing. They clicked a few buttons and yellow, magenta, cyan and black later, out popped my card. It has a magnetic strip too. I was impressed, I thought they'd have to send it off to have a batch printed... but enough of my thoughts on card-printing. Then I went and got my NUS card. I accidentally gave the guy both my 4x4 photos and so I have two photos in my NUS card.

Then I went to the library and swiped my card to get in. I went down one floor to floor 01, the one with all the computers. I spent about 20 minutes there, just wandering. I checked if I could register for a login on one of the computers, but alas, the piece of paper I got telling me I had to wait 24-48 hours after registering as a student was correct. I noticed a huge room full of server boxes. Then I came home, had that tinned curry for lunch (yes, I went downstairs and cooked it) and I had apricots in juice and Multigrain hoops in Rice Dream brand rice milk for pudding. Oh, and not to forget the Kernel Peanut brand bombay mix. I did a little Python/Tkinter programming - my Os and Xs game is starting to take shape (in the sense that I managed to get the boxes to go in the right places). Then I finished The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov, fantastic book. And now I'm off to visit my lovely mother to eat her food and use her Internet.

Toodles.


Yahaha! I'm logged-in at the Computer Centre in the Library now!

Wikiphilia

I was looking for existing Brainfuck interpreters for Python and I found this amusing blog post

Brainfuck is an estoteric programming language... and not much use for everyday tasks.

Wikiphilia!

I'm moving out tomorrow. I'm not sure what's going to happen or how long I'll be without Internet access in my room. I'm not sure I'll be able to use the library computers without a login, either. Hopefully we get logins and access cards for the computing facilities (i.e. a game room and rooms with dual-booting PCs, which are only available to students of Computing - and yes, it's Linux and Windows, specifically Red Hat).

Monday it's the start of freshers' week, the next is the start of the first term.

I'll post pictures of my new abode and other miscellaneous images and information as soon as I can get to the Internet. I'm excited.

I should be able to manage without for a few days with my programming and The Naked Sun. It won't stop the withdrawal symptoms but it ought to be slightly distracting. Freshers' week should be fun too. They say there are lots of parties. I'll have to explore the uni bars with Summer and other people. Next time I go to Rios (Friday in theory), I can walk home.

So wow... Should be fun. See you when I see you, avid readers.

xmagic strikes again!

I went to Rios last night with Cat, Jenny and Katie (B). It was rather eventful.

First thing I noticed was that I missed Summer the goth and Simon the DJ. The music in the goth room started out shitty and got better as the night went on. And the music in the main room was terrible all night.

I saw something that would have made my Homestar Runner-loving friend Erik jelous - somebody wearing a Strong Bad T-shirt.

Then I met Rick from Owen's party (`scary guy') and another of Owen's friends, Kate. Rick's nice. He gave me Eurasia in his new world order.

In the taxi home Cat told me about Jenny's house and the ornaments (on every surface) and the computers (two of them, very big monitors). She also told me packing takes longer than it may seem, so I may start that today.

Then I came home and went to bed. But before I did, I put the TV on, in case there was anything worth watching on the Learning Zone or Sign Zone. And I noticed that ITV had beach volleyball on at 2:30 am. I laughed. Then I went to bed.

Today I shall... read more of The Naked Sun, start packing... I expect I'll do some kind of programing. There are a few things I want to find out about relating to Programming paradigms on Wikipedia.

... Some time later in the day...
Google advertises: {first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e}.com

So far no packing or reading of The Naked Sun has been done. However I did get a small piece of code to get the content of an XML element working. I also made xmagic.py - just some comments, mostly. But I have the basic shape of the script and I've started at the beginning - parsing the command-line arguments. I intend it to be a very concise piece of code in the end.

Letters and Firefox

A letter arrived through the post for Mr Malcolm Adams from Lloyds TSB, asking for his date of birth. So I told them he didn't live here and that they may have meant me (Tom Malcolm John Adams). But they said my credit card application required it. But I already have my credit card. And I hold two accounts with them so they should already have my DOB. Morons.

Looks like Firefox is getting more popular.

I had a driving lesson today. I did a turn in the road. It went okayish. His temporary car (one of his other students did a little damage to it the other week) is a petrol rather than his usual diesel. It stalls more easily, apparently, but I didn't manage it today and it just keeps going when you take your foot off the gas. On the diesel it stops if you take your foot off the gas. It was interesting.

Debian Sarge was due to become stable today. I must check back later on. I need to order it from UseLinux.co.uk as soon as they have the i386 DVDs of it written. Hopefully I'll get a fresh install of the latest stable version of my OS before freshers week starts. Mmm, new installer, Linux 2.6, two DVDs worth of stable software (I think there was a 2-DVD version of Sarge/testing available on UseLinux).

I was also thinking about a Tux hoodie from ThinkGeek. My current Smashing Pumpkins one is getting a little old. I have no idea how long its previous owner had it for (it was stolen... but not by me - it's okay because it's a rare hoodie ;).

I started reading The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov recently. I'm only on the third or fouth chapter but it's quite interesting. It seems to be one of his robot stories.

I was doing some Tkinter stuff in Python today. Fun... but kind of complicated. I'd have thought Python would have had more than one toolkit available in its global modules. But I guess not. Maybe I should learn Tcl/Tk first and do some stuff in the WISH. Or maybe not. I was doing it in the non-OO way (function-orientated? I'll look it up), but I noticed an interesting OO way to do it in the Tkinter section of the Python Documentation - extend the Tkinter.Frame class and do funky things like that...

I noticed Wikipedia seemed to either be down or simply slow today. Strange. Maybe they're more in need of the £15/£20 that I owe Comic Relief (yes, I'll take my money away from the starving kids in Africa and put it towards the Wikimedia Foundation). I'm sure it'll be easier sending an international postal money thing (I have no idea...) than giving money to the secretive (except in March) Comic Relief people. It's working now.

6ga pink captive

``Tonight on Cosmetic Surgery Live: vaginal tightening surgery.'' ~ voice over
``It will make you a virgin again.'' ~ a `surgeon' or just somebody wearing a white coat

Morons.

I got my rings in the mail today. They're cute. I put one of my tiny ex-nipple rings in the top and my new 10ga purple ring in the bottom. I also got a 6ga pink captive, but that's slightly too large for my PA hole. And that's it - I took the other ring and the bar out.

Whoa, what an episode of Six Feet Under...

Anyway, my Grandparents came round last night for tea. It was fun. And then after that I rushed back upstairs and carried on making a simple bot to suck URLs from a webpage in Python. It checked robots.txt then carried on if it was allowed. I tested it on my blog homepage and I got loads of URLs even though at that moment I was only checking for absolute URLs found in the page (i.e. ignoring all the relative URLs in href and src attributes and joining them to the current URL). The urlparse module in Python is really fantastic. You can join an absolute and a relative URL and get the page you'd get if you visited the relative URL from the absolute one (i.e. in an `a href=' kind of way, you know...). So useful.

I got a (one-off) job

Some good stories on /. today. But all the links are Slashdotted.
Here are the permalinks the the stories on Slashdot: Lego-based 3D chocolate printer, and Cooking for Engineers - recipies that geeks understand, apparently. There'd better be lots of vegan food on it and they'd better not be using silly measurements like Americans tend to do.

``The makers of TiVo and ReplayTV digital video recorders have agreed to limit how long consumers can keep pay-for-view movies stored on future versions of the VCR-like devices.'' ~ here
Interesting...
I was pondering re-trying my TV card which never worked under Windows and making myself a PVR. But it's probably too much effort to be worth it.

I decided today that Firefox needs an extension to shell out textareas to my favourite editor.
:!ispell %

Hehe, a fantastic experience on BME. By a six year old who went to a tattoo convention with his mum and dad.

Argh, I cought a bit of a music video on some crap on channel 5. Looks like Robbie Williams has a new song. I had it muted, of course... but still. Anyway, he was dressed in a white sailor suit (like a captain sort of style, not gay cabin boy style) and there are these cheerleaders. And all of the cheerleaders have lots of tattoos. So that's good, for a second I thought tattoos may have stopped being `cool' but if they're in a music video they must be `cool'. I, like, totally want a tattoo now.

But seriously, I still haven't thought of anything I'd like irrevocably emblazoned upon my skin. Although, I did see that Debian swirl tattoo the other day... *drools*

Hey, the latest artist to be displaying her work at South Square Gallery has some good pictures, which are now uploaded to her exhibition page. I hope she's not easilly offended - we didn't know what one of her pictures was called so it's called `dunno.jpg' and the alt text is `Dunno'. I think we got some of Mik Artistik's picture names wrong too.

I don't think I mentioned but I'm doing some paid work at the moment. Very good work. Programming - in Python. It's just a simple thing to email somebody the results of a simple form. It's quite a brute-force affair. It's also very stupid and knows very little of the HTML form that POSTs data to it. If you're unfamiliar with Unix programming, those are good points. Those are also neccessities as my employer (the chairperson of South Square Centre - the website I'm doing) wanted to be able to use it for any form.
But anyway, it's a very good job. Not least because I can boast that I got a job programming Python (when just the other day Erik's friends told him that Java's better than Python because you can't get a job with Python - lusers).

My good friend Buncey accepted an offer of my talents towards the Oddworld Encyclopaedia - i.e. desiging and/or implementing a wiki for it. So I'll do some research on wikis (especially ones that don't need extravogant services such as MySQL as some free hosts offer PHP or ASP but none I've seen offer MySQL - in fact a lot of paid hosts I've noticed don't offer MySQL).

I'm watching BBC Proms right now. Or rather, listening to it. That reminds me, I'm seeing Classical Fantasia on Saturday (next). Should be good.

Yay, stuff!

Today I went to the local Royal Mail sorting office to get my dongle. Yay! It's fantastic! I then came home and found a letter with my credit card for my student account inside. It's a debit card, a credit card, a cashpoint card and a credit card. It also has this new Chip and PIN thing. You can tell because it has ten contacts that looks reminiscant of a SIM card. Yay, I can order body jewelry from America now.

I wanted seperate debit and credit cards for my student account so I could store my credit card in a secure place and keep my debit card with me so I could get money out when I wanted but use my credit card only when I planned on doing so.

This `security through obscurity' (i.e. not security) that everybody's obsessed with is crap. I had to put somebody else's mother's maiden name on my student account application and on my Student telephone thing. My mother's maiden name is MY maiden name so it's really no use at all. I'd rather I had to enter a password via HTTPS/SSL or all correspondance had to be encrypted with 128bit keys.

I feel my Gmail account is more secure than my bank account.

Pub, etc

I'm not very happy with BBC News today. I turned on a few minutes ago to see them talking about some project to kill a lot of moths with poisonous gas (under the guise of `research'). And I turned on just now to see the local news (Look Nrth) and there was a shark (not in water) surrounded what I can only assume to be its own blood. How fucking disgusing. I believe strongly-worded emails are in order.

One shall be titled `Regarding the poisoned moths' and t'other shall be `Regarding the dead shark in a pool of blood'.

So I saw some `breaking news' the other day on Channel 4 and BBC something about something in Russia. It looked boring so I turned it off. And today I saw something about the same thing on Newsround. I can't work out what actually happened. I had to go all the way to the 3000th result, which tool me to the day before the thing happened (I think). And all the first few thousand results are either unrelated or talking about the `aftermath' of the thing that happened. So I didn't learn anything useful. All I can gather is that some `terrorists' (that can mean people wearing Nike trainers in Athens these days) killed a lot of children, in a school. And I saw some of the `aftermath' on Newsround today and it looked all blown-up, or just burnt. So I have no idea what happened there. Maybe they blew themselves up. I don't know. News can be pretty useless when you want to find out what happened the other day.
Update: Found out about it now, from THE Wiki - Beslan hostage crisis.

Looks to me like there's an article in the Wikipedia about the `Beslan hostage crisis'. I'll read that when Davina's done on the internet. Wikipedia saves the day again.

So I ordered a dongle the other day (of the USB stick variety rather than the copy-protection variety - see the almighty `Pedia if you're confused) from some seller on Amazon. `New', of course. I'll need it as I probably won't be able to use my phone line the first day or two in the halls. I can go to the library computers and download whatever and take it home, in theory. For example I shall be installing Sarge very soon and I might prefer to download the Debian package of Firefox 0.9 via uni rather than at home. Although, I may not as FF 0.9 is rather unstable (hense it being in `unstable' ;). I'll probably download the package (not Debian) of Mozilla Sunbird, which is an iCal-compatible calendar/organiser based on XUL. I've been using KOrganizer for a while to keep track of everything, it's quite good but I just can't help being on the very bleeding edge of Mozilla software. I also use KSpread for working out if I can afford to have Rice Dream brand rice milk at uni or if I have to have own-brand soya milk. I think I'll try GNUmeric when I upgrade. I can't install it at the moment because of some annoying dependancies. So far the number at the bottom is big and positive, but I'm sure that will change as I add important values like food, toiletries and rent.

Just got back from the pub. Me, Cat, Sammy, Jenny, Katie (Bootie), Laura. And Owen buggered off after five minutes.
We played a lot of pool (especially me, yay - what? nobody else wanted to) and poor Katie got ill and fell asleep on Cat's lap. Aww, she's so sweet sometimes.
Jenny was sober compared to some people... which I was surprised about.

Pfft, we're going to uni to give them money and forms at like 9am tomorrow. Crazy! Mmm, I shall read some more Second Foundation tonight before I go to sleep. Only three chapters left! It's so exciting! But I can't tell you anything. Because it would spoil it for anybody who hasn't read it.

I'm listening to Dido right now. But soon I shall tab over to XMMS and press v and then press Mod1 F4. Then I'll do that to everything else and right-click on the desktop, click `Exit' then tab over to `Shutdown...' on KDM and press Enter twice.

Yeah, I know you didn't want to know all the gory details. But you got them...

Taa taa, y'all!

Sorry, no inventive title today

Hahahahahaha. What, they have robots that find "$keyword.$extention" and automatically email the webmasters? Fools.

Gmail's gone blue today and my Gmail invitations are above my inbox.

Ah yes, I forgot to show everybody this lovely Debian swirl.

Mmm, steel eyelets are so pretty. I think I'm going to stretch my ears some more (after a good period of my steel eyelets) and get bigger ones, like 2cm.

Anyway, today I shall mostly be reading and filling out things I got from uni yesterday.

Today I made a find that my good friend Buncey linked to in a recent post in the OddBlog weblog.

Hahahahaha. Funny.

Well look here, the universal operating system shall not be incorperating the patented Sender ID `standard' according to this announcement I recieved from Debian News today.

I found this terrible article by some moron on BBC News.

I then found another terrible article by the same guy which states:
``The first is that computers are fundamentally boring and uninteresting, so we should not pretend to our children that they are anything more than tools.''

I can see he advocates the `black box' paradigm of computing whereby students learn to use current `productivity' applications and not the concepts relating to computing. These days we're meant to learn how to do one particular task (i.e. word processing) with a computer using one particular method (i.e. Word). Moron.

Oh foo!

A nice experience on BME: A septum piercing - the perfect anti-drug.

I got my acceptance letter from UCAS yesterday and plenty of leaflets and stuff from Bradford Uni today. I got into Shearbridge Green - the one without broadband :(. I'll either cope by getting a high-capacity mass storage device (i.e. memory card and reader or USB stick) or I'll get a laptop... It'll probably be the mass storage device as they have cheaper (I think - I'll do research) laptops available for students with all sorts of cool things but they're quite expensive. The cheapest one is £676 pounds (excl. VAT) (hmm, for some reason vim in xterm seems to think I need a Unicode pound sign rather than a Latin-1 one... *uses gvim*).
Laptop promotion page.

I suppose I'll manage somehow... The cheaper laptop (of the very small range they offer) goes as thus: NIC, 256MB DDR, 30GB HDD, 14/1" TFT, 2.6GHz, CDRW (no DVD). As all of them, it has 3 years guarantee and they'll even give you a courtest laptop when you're overbroad. Maybe I should get one from a real shop so I can go there and stick a Knoppix disk in to make sure it all works...

So anyway, I took my UCAS letter and a bank statement to my bank - Lloyds TSB - and I got a student account with a credit card. Aparantly they still use my mother's maiden name as a security thing. Not very secure if you ask me. I asked her if I could change it. So I changed it to somebody else's maiden name. As my mother's maiden name is my maiden name. Quite rediculous, really.

I also got some pretty new earrings - 10mm double flared flesh tubes with a wide rim. Mmm, pretty :)

Ooo, look another one: The Reactions of Children vs Society.

Hello! I am Hambonetaru-chan!

I was doing the bins today as tuesday is bin night. I found this shiny metal rod in Davina's bin. Aparantly she didn't want this immensely useful metal rod... What a waste! Now I just have to find a use for it...

I have some pretty CSS pages. I made them and then I got bored of them. But they were pretty enough to keep.

Uni shall be fun. I'll have no land-line (it's so expensive!) but I will have a mobile. And I'll have broadband. And if my `dealer' is quick about it I'll have Debian Sarge (Stable) before I go to uni. Speaking of my Linux dealer, Uselinux.co.uk, I just ordered Debian and Tux case badges this morning before I went to bed. I can well reccomend Uselinux. I got Woody (Stable) and Knoppix 3.3 from there a while ago. Good prices, good service and the `NOCHEX' payment thing seems to be secure enough. They take Electron, which is good as although I will have a credit card soon I will use it as little as possible for obvious reasons.

I found a new hobby - reading geeky comics. Here's a strip for all those Mac users out there. It's a nice comic strip, it's set in an RP IRC channel. On the subject of Macs... Here's the brand-new iMac G5. It's not as stylish as some previous models but it sure is compact.

Oh, I read a nice article on BMEZine today, about teeth-whitening called Learning to Smile.