Sunday 30th May 2004
Song: The Starting Line - Playing Favourites
This acoustic EP rocks... I wanna buy it.
Short update, just on site progress. A bit back, I decided that it was pointless to keep a record of every referral that came through this site, because as well as the referring URL, I was recording the client's host, their browser info, and the time. Information I never made publically available. So I deleted it, thinking it would make no harm as only I knew about it anyway. Not long after this, I remembered that I was infact using *some* of the data that I'd stored, for my Google page. So I then had to delete that, as it was now broken.
So anyway... today, the Google page was reborn. It's now being stored in my MySQL database, and it only stores the string that the user typed into Google. It doesn't store the whole URL, nor the client's browser info. Just the search string.
Doing this also involved my first ever use of a regular expression. Regular expressions have been on my list of things to learn for a long time, and I'm starting to like them already. For this, I had to use the following expression: "/[Qq]=(.*)&/". Perhaps now you can all see why I'd put off learning it for quite so long. Anyway... no one really cares about all this, 'cause it's boring.
If any of my loyal readers go off now to click on the google link, and notice it's empty... do not be alarmed, it has been tested, and it does work. It's just that it's starting out blank today, as I deleted all my old ones.
Wednesday 26th May 2004
Song: Avril Lavigne - Take Me Away
New album from Miss Lavigne's been leaked and/or released. On the whole, it seems to be fairly good (I realise at this point that no one really cares and most people mock me for actually liking her music). Track 4, "He Wasn't", should be avoided at all costs. It's more of a tragedy than Sk8er Boi was to her debut. It sounds very much like something from Kelly Osbourne's album (which managed to flop twice, on two different lables, regardless of her father, The Osbournes TV show and a Madonna cover). The track after that though, is thankfully very nice. A slow, acoustic, nicely sung thing, that yuo can be sure will never be a single for fear of losing her "punk" image with the children. Anyway... nice album on the whole. I'm pretty sure my opinion wont influence anyone to listen to it, much like Slipknot's new album, but there ya go...
Just out of curiosity, am I the only person who likes Britney's latest single, the title of which I've forgotten? It just seems like a very nice, peaceful sort'a song... not so much pop/dance/rock or any other thing she's tried to do in the past.
Oh, everyone please admire my clock. It is my first attempt at a Java applet. It took me far too long, but did eventually get done. Many thanks must go to Mac for his help with this. No thanks to Internet Explorer for giving me completely false information when trying to debug it at one point. I was also dissapointed to see that Firefox has no Java console at all. I was originally concerned, as it doesn't have one, and Explorer does... but I'm actually more in favour of Firefox now I know how useless the Explorer one is.
I have an exam tomorrow... and I have absolutely no idea what it's on. I *think* it's my programming one. But either way, it'll be a nice surprise whenever I do find out. Needless to say I plan on doing no revision for it.
Uh, that's about all I think... can't be bothered to write much more.
Friday 21st May 2004
Song: The Ataris - Pretty Pathetic
Today was interesting. As a quick sidenote I'd like to say Matt has now passed his driving test (Hooray!) and has got himself a Ford Ka. Right, so anyway, for one reason or another, he was up bright and breezy at something past 8 this morning. So by the time I got up at 11 he was desperate to do something. So sooner or later he goes out in his broom broom, and a few minutes later, my doorbell rings. Guess who? So I let him in and eat my coco pops, having only been up about 20 minutes. Eventually I'm persuaded to go to Pirbright despite having not been up long, and rain heading our way. So we go off to play basketball, using the pub as our cover if it rains. Anyway... 'cause I'm an idiot and was quite tired, I actually forgot the ball, so we spent an hour or so at the pub for lunch. We didn't stay too long as we had an exam this afternoon. While at the pub I then ate more, and had a nice chat with Rob (barman) whilst eating my burger there. He was talking about rats eating through human flesh, and pear shaped devices that were used to rip apart anus' (for men) or vaginas (for the ladies). Lovely meal time conversation, I felt. He was of course talking about torture methods. English torture methods actually. So after that and a funny story or two, we were on our way to Kingston.
Kingston University apparently has no room big enough to fit us into. So any formal exams are done outside of the uni, at a test center in Chessington (which is hidden in amongst a small housing estate). Because of the inconvenience this causes, the uni nicely provide a coach service from the university, to the test center. For free, I should add. This proved to be very handy last time. The coaches were nice, comfortable, and punctual. So once again, we make it to uni with ample time and awaited the coach. We then got on the coach, and we were off. All was looking well. On top of this, I was fairly confident about the exam.
It was a one hour exam, all multiple choice. The deal was that if you finished between 30 and 45 minutes, you could leave. You weren't allowed out before 30 mins, or after 45. I had finished, and checked my paper in about 29 mins, so I was happy, and soon left the room. So we then had half an hour to kill before the coach, so we sat around ate 10p packets of crisps, and read some fun alien facts. *ahem* So anyway, by around half past (which was now an hour after the exam started) we went outside, and waited. Coach was not there. Around 5 minutes later, some one came up to us, and pointed out that there was infact no return trip. So we all got out our tickets and checked. Sure enough, for the 15:30 exams, there was a key thing that said there was no return trip. So here we were... somewhere in Chessington, with no car, and no knowledge of where we were, or where Kingston was in relation to where we were. I at this point felt that it would have been nice of the people that we got our coach tickets from, or even the lecturers, to let us know that there was no return trip. So anyway, we began our walk. We started off in the direction that the coaches went, and just sort'a kept walking down this road. When we came to a junction, Daniel said we should go right, claiming to have remembered the coach went that way. As we approached a roundabout (with no sign posts facing us) some passing kid sensed our loss of direction and asked where we wanted to go (He appeared to be about 10 years of age or something). He told us which direction to go, to get to a bus stop, and then which bus to get (I was impressed). So we got there and hopped on the next bus that was heading for Kingston, and about 10 mins later, we were at Surbiton, where Matt and I alighted.
Oh, I was also gonna share my joy about this server now having been on (even though not online) for over 100 days now. At the point of writing this, it's 109 days, 2 hours. I felt it was exciting anyway...
Tuesday 18th May 2004
Song: Evanescence - Even In Death
In the interest of picking on Microsoft, I thought I'd share this. It's a quick explanation of how Microsoft purposely made MSN.com to not work so well with the Opera browser.
For those who may be interested to know quite why I so frequently disfavour Microsoft, read this (it may seem long, but it's worth it). In the event you actually were bothered enough to read that, then I suggest this, where you can read more.
Monday 17th May 2004
Song: Slipknot - The Blister Exists
Well well, what do we have here? I have a "msnbot" looking at my site. May the search engine war begin. It will be interesting if Microsoft do come out on top. I do strongly favour google of course, and believe they'll be the stronger one, but we all know how MS are bullies and will lie, cheat and illegally force their way to the top (no, really). The thing is though, that if MS win, it seems very likely that their search engine's results will be prioritised not by the popularity of a site (like google does), but by whatever company's willing to pay to have their site ranked higher. Google does of course also allow paid sponsers to have their links put on results, but it puts them to one side and out of the way of the legit search results.
So the new Slipknot album is out. I fully intended to listen to it with an open mind (something I failed to do with their last one) and I'm actually quite impressed. They seem to've grown up a bit. I would say "a lot", but they have a title with "maggots" in it. Oh, they have also redone their masks for this album. Though I don't blame them for sticking with their masks in some ways, I can't help but think the novelty has worn off. Everyone knows that Joey doesn't really look like a serial killer, and Corey has ginger hair. A frightening prospect for some, maybe, but that's how it is. This album is actually quite good though. A definate improvement over their debut, and I don't know their last well enough to say. It does have a nice mixture of Corey's "proper" singing (which in my opinion, is very nice) as well as the essential yelling. Though it is still sung, I feel. It's not just like "RROOAAAHHH" for no good reason. It's just shouted lyrics. I'm quite fond of it anyway. They also slow down every now and again, and bring out the acoustic guitar. Something I feel they would have been too scared to have done many years ago when they started out. I'm not sure if Ross Robinson produced this album or not, but my guess is not. Like he did for Korn, he got the noisest, heaviest thing out of the band he could. For Korn he tried to get their singer to take his mind back to what the songs were about and relive the pain. For Slipknot, he threw furniture at them (no, really). Both times though, the albums he came out with were mighty impressive (he also mixes by hand apparently, not electronically). Anyway, it would be nice to see that he did produce this one, but I've not yet heard. So anyway... Duality is the first single off of this album, give it a listen. See what you think.
From one extreme to the other... I saw a program about Busted the other day. It was a half an hour thing, typically aimed at 12 y/old girls I expect, but obviously I was interested in watching it. It wasn't overly interesting, to be fair. Not enough to talk about anyway. It was just pretty much a documentary of their recent tour. Charlie (you had to know that name was gonna appear sooner or later) had a quite nice looking black shirt with white tie, which he wore at most shows... except one. Mary will remember my excitement about this at the time, after seeing a picture of him in a newspaper. At their London show(s) he wore a Victory Records t-shirt. I'm still not entirely sure on the problem most people have with Busted. But I expect it's marketing and image. Their songs are no more catchy than The Darkness'; on technical merit/musical talent, I'd rate them above Blink 182; their song's structures are no more or less simple than Nirvana's; and even Marilyn Manson has appeared on Top Of The Pops more than once. I think it's much more likely that it's due to the masses of early or pre teens that line up outside their sould out arena tours' venues with thier mothers. Of course I must admit that the only reason I ever bothered listening to them originally was because I recognised Matt. Before realising who it was I wasn't too impressed by What I Go To School For. Though even now I don't think that it's quite the best song they've ever written. Their second album is a much better collection of song writing, in my opinion. Anyway... I don't think anyone cares. On slightly related news, Fightstar are working on an EP. It will be very interesting to hear that when it's ready.
So uni is all over. Three exams (which aren't done in Kingston) are all that's left. Can't honestly say I'm glad, but I don't really have a lot of say in it. I am very glad that one particular module is over though. I'm just now looking forward to next year. Java in particular. Apparently there weren't enough people who took the algorithms option for the uni to be willing to run it, which means my third choice will be going ahead instead, which I'm not so thrilled about. Having never really done much with algorithms past bubblesort, I was looking forward to doing more complicated things. Now instead I get to do some ASM. It's complicated... but not in quite the same way. ASM's more likely to end up with me looking to kill someone. But... oh well, nevermind.
Oh and I recently found out that Avril Lavigne's latest single (Avril's another one who's suffered in the same way as Busted, where technical merit is going ignored 'cause of image and typical fan base) and the chorus of everyone's favourite The Darkness song, Friday Night, infact share the same chords. A, E, B, C#m. I dunno if anyone will find that interesting or not, but there we go. In some ways that comes back to my point about technical ability. If her (or the band's guitarist) is coming out with the same chords as Dan Hawkins. Hrm.
Tuesday 11th May 2004
Song: The Smoking Popes - Pretty Pathetic
Heh, this evening was interesting. Myself, Matt, my brother, and a friend of his from work (Matt's cousin (small world. eh?)) went to the pub. As it's been such a nice day, I suggested to Matt that him and I go to play basketball first (it's about a one minute walk from there to the pub). So anyway, we're aimlessly throwing the ball at the hoop and talking about Microsoft (as you do...). About 20 mins after we got there, an adult man and five or six girls turned up and stopped to watch us. They didn't have a ball, so didn't seem to wanna join in, and after a minute or so they split up. Some sat down, the rest went to the kids play area bit. So anyway, we continue talking and missing the hoop, and after a bit, one of these girls came back and asked if she could play too. So I just thought she wanted to take a few shots, so I shrugged and said yes, then she went off to talk to the guy she came with (who I later discovered to be her father). So then this girl, her dad, and another one of these girls came over, and they wanted a game. Those three, against Matt and myself. So we just sort'a got into it. So here we were... 18 and 19 y/old males in fairly good physical condition, playing basketball against two young girls (around 7 or 8 years old... definately less than half our age) and their father, who was clearly over 45. To keep it brief... they kicked our arses. This guy was a lot taller than both Matt and I, but both girls were below our waists. What's worse though, is that we were both completely knackered. These girls were sooo full of energy (which I realise is just because they're kids). What's amazing though, was one of these girls' accuracy. She missed only a hanful in the 30 mins or so that we were playing, and even rarer than missing, was that the ball would hit the ring before going in. I kid you not when I say nearly every shot she took went straight through the hoop. One thing I will say in our defence though. Because they were so young, and wanted to just have a good time, I was a bit careful. When they had the ball, they made no effort to protect it from a tackle, as they stood facing us with it. However, I couldn't really just slap it out of their hands and run with it and try to get it in. Matt said he did once, and felt really bad. Same goes for when they were shooting, I didn't wanna let the fact that I was twice as tall ruin the game for them. But that I aside... it was all good. The girls seemed to have had a good time, and we were exhausted.
I kind'a long for that innocence in a way... looking at them smile (trying very hard not to sound like a pedophile here). Kids have this amazing innocence about them that I'll admit that I still wish I had. After the Sept 11th attacks on New York, and the wars that followed, it kind'a made me generally hate the human race on the whole more than I did before. Along with other issues that you generally learn as you grow up, about how harsh life can be. There are a lot of young girls (probably 10 or 12 years old... hell I dunno) in our road. Sometimes when outside talking to my family or whatever, on a sunny day, I'll watch how they happily run around, smiling and so carefree. Eh... I dunno, I just think it's sad to think they'll have to grow up and learn a lot of saddening things. Hrm.
On a slightly brighter note, I got to witness something quite amusing the other day which I thought I'd share. Although it probably won't sound as funny as it was to see, but humour me. We were walking along, and there was a lady with a dog on a leash. As they always do, this dog decided it wanted to walk up to me for whatever reason, but as it was approaching us, it for some reason got distracted and started chasing it's tail. So it started spinning around and pretty quickly it got it's tail caught in the leash. So it's now stretching it's neck round even further as it probably had a better view of the tail, now that it was pushed to the side. So while still spinning around, it somehow got one of it's hind legs caught in the leash too. So it was now sort of hopping around in circles with it's tail being pushed to the side, as myself and the people I was with stood there smiling at it. I didn't wanna laugh out loud incase it's owner was really stuck up and rude and would have taken offence, but luckily she smiled and laughed herself about it. She then came to it's rescue and untied it. It was quite amusing though.
Hm, this was only gonna be a quick update about getting beaten at basketball. I've got some posh looking document here from someone my dad knows who wants a network installed in his office. Apparently this guy is happier to pay us to do it, than a "professional". So I told my dad I'd have a read through it. I'm struggling to take it serious though... I see here that it says: "The office machines will be upgraded to Windows 98". All Microsoft jokes aside here (and no way in hell am I gonna recommend Linux), I really wanna try and talk them out of that. Not only was Windows 98 a tragedy to the world of computing, but it's no longer even supported by Microsoft. I'm pretty sure that you can't buy it anymore either. So... they may actually be forced to upgrade. I'll try and get Windows 2000 on there. Anyway... off to read this now.
Saturday 8th May 2004
Song: Easyworld - Goodnight
Well, well, well... I've not typed in this box for quite some time now. There are several reasons for this, including uni work, personal shit, and hard drives. I will still keep this updated from time to time though, so keep checking back!
Not too long ago, I was happily downloading the Knoppix (a linux boot CD) ISO when suddenly it stopped... I assumed it was a network problem, maybe it had timed out. So I resumed it, and it stopped again immediately. It turned out, my hard drive was full. Apparently every spare bit was accounted for. So I'd deleted what I'd downloaded so far, so I had about 200MB left, and then started to ponder. To keep it brief, as I was in a rush, I went out to PC World, I'm not hugely proud of that, but it was like £2 more expensive than this website I was looking at and as it was a bank holiday weekend it would've taken like four days before I got it. So anyway, that was the easy bit. The hard bit was choice of operating system. For those who don't know, I've been using Mandrake Linux for a while now, and have been known to have a few problems relating to the installation or uninstalltion of software. Following far too many conversations with Tor (who btw, has a new server that's really cool), I decided to give Debian a go. He promised me that it'll make all the girls want me... or something like that anyway. It's a bit less user friendly than Mandrake/Redhat but arguably more "proper" (not RedHat-ified). I got through the installation quite painlessly. Forgot to make a swap partition, but managed to fix that via a very dodgey approach. But I had this huuuge problem. My £ symbol (shift+3) was not working in any consoles. It worked in all my GUI programs, it worked in a text editor, and an IRC client... but not on a console. The problems this caused me were a lot bigger than most realise, but I wont share them for my own protection. Anyway... so I pretty much spent a night and a whole day solidly trying to get this fucking sterling symbol to appear on my screen. After Tor pointed me at a keyboard related config file and I found a web page that someone had written about linux keyboard stuff, I finally pinpointed the problem. Next... was how to actually fix it. I must confess by this point I was very fed up and so went for trial and error on something, and by magic, it worked. The cause of the problem was that the standard ASCII characters require only 7 bits (giving the values 0 - 127) but the sterling symbol's ASCII value is 156 (10011100), thus it needs an eighth bit. In this file Tor pointed me at, there was an option to allow the use of 8 bit characters so upon enabling that, it all worked, and much happiness ensued. I then had a problem where all my fonts were huge, and my monitor looked like it was more appropriate for a visually impaired person. I did eventually solve this problem too... I then had another problem where I couldn't get my pretty Mac like buttons to work, which I eventually solved with help from someone on IRC and so I've had a lot of troubles. So much so, that I've now lost the will to copy all my old stuff over to my new drive. All I've copied over so far is my MP3s, and I've still got more stuff to configure. Seems Debian is not for the weak hearted, heh. I am very happy with it though, I must say.
I made a small attempt to learn Java recently also... it seems fairly simple, so I'm optimistic about next year at uni, but I still prefer C++ as my language of choice, for several reasons.
I found out yesterday, towards the end of my only lecture of the day, that it was infact my last lecture of the academic year. This came as a bit of a surprise to me. It's all over so soon. I don't want it to be! I had to fill in two stupid questionnaires about the module (and only one was anonymous, which didn't please me). So hrm, I've agreed to go in one day this coming week for some group work, though I've forgotten which day (I need to start writing stuff down), then back on the 17th for the presentation of this slowly and poorly concoted nightmare. After that I have three exams (all of which are in the afternoon, thank God) and then that's it. As far as lectures and workshops go though, I'm all done.
I've been watching far too much Ally McBeal lately. I'm trying not to waste loads of money on DVDs, but it's too hard. That program rocks. I've got bored of Friends, Frasier's not amusing me so much anymore, but Ally McBeal I find hilarious. I grew very fond of Richard Fish very quickly. Here's a few reasons why. Just to let anyone who's concerned know... I'm not a sexist person, I just appreciate good humour.
"Personally, I hate sexual harassment laws. The original force behind them were disgruntled lesbians who felt they were not given the same opportunities - along with ugly women, who were jealous of pretty women who got all the breaks in the work force. My cause to action is simple, women are victims. They need special help. Look, at the evolution of these sexual harassment laws. What we are really saying is women really should qualify under the Federal Disability Act. They are less able. They cannot cope with romance in the office. They cannot contend with having to do a job and have a man smile at them. It is too much. Look where we use to be, first quid pro quo, then hostile environment, and now Seinfeld episodes. Women can't take it; they bruise too easily. The laws are here to protect the weak and most vulnerable in society."
"New firm policy, listen up! Anybody who sues this firm or me, personally, we all drop whatever cases we are working on. We devote all of our intellectual and creative efforts to ruining that person's life. Are we clear? I don't want to stop short with just getting even. Retribution is not strong enough. Ruin, that is the goal. Irreversible, irreparable, irrational ruin! New firm policy!"
I'll leave you with one more... This had me laughing out loud the other day when I was watching it. He was questioned by his girlfriend about why he thought that lesbians are acceptable, but gay men are not (an opinion that many men share).
"Well, in strict anthropological terms, mankind is all about the propagation of the species. Without procreation, mankind would become extinct. To facilitate procreation, the male species must become aroused. Watching two women take their tongues to each other arouses the male species which fosters the urge to procreate and accordingly assures the survival of the human race. To the contrary, watching two butt pirates go at it could make a man go limp for a week. The species becomes threatened."