Tuesday 30th November 2004
Song: Vonda Shepard - Lost My Way
According to the latest study by USA Today and Avantgarde, it takes less than 4 minutes for an unpatched Windows XP SP1 system to become part of a botnet. Avantgarde has the statistics in their abstract. Stats of note: Although Macs and PC's got hit with equal opportunity, the XP SP1 machine was hit with 5 LSASS and 4 DCOM exploits while the Mac remained clean. The Linux desktop also was impenetrable, but only was only targeted by 0.26% of all attacks.
Be afraid kids...
Monday 29th November 2004
I've come to uni today without my iPod. I feel kind'a naked without it. If all goes to plan though, I wont be going home alone, so I wont need it.
I bought Busted's DVD today... The good thing about buying Busted stuff at this time of year is that hopefull it just looks like I'm buying it for a younger sister for Christmas. :)
I'm bored... got 40 mins to kill before I have to start talking to people who have no idea what a variable is. In some ways I should make the most of these 40 mins, heh.
Sunday 28th November 2004
Redone the songs page, it now takes them out of the database in two columns, and orders them by artist. SQL is nice, HTML isn't. Now I need bed.
Sunday 28th November 2004
Song: Limp Bizkit - Hot Dog
Kate Thornton used to be so pretty. Every Saturday when I sit and watch the X-Factor (whilst questioning my credibility) I am reminded of why expensive makeup artists and glamorous dresses don't make a lady more attractive. I still remember the Kate and Jono show on VH1. I had no idea who she was at the time, heh. I don't even know if she'd done anything in the music industry before that. I was too young.
So some time this week, my dad came home in the new Discovery 3 (for those wondering, my Dad is a criminal, and steals cars...). Today, we went out in it. It's huuuge. I'm not a car person, cars do not generally interest me. Because of this, when I actually form an opinion, it must be something special. (You may all recall my excitement over the Jaguar he acquired a while back.) I've seen far too many Ford Escorts (I believe the term is: 'scorts, if you move in the right circles) modified ("modded") to a state where they look pants, perform worse than standard, can't enter car parks, and are seriously decreased in value. I've been asked a hundred times what I think of any particular modification, to which I have no interest. I've always said that I'd rather buy a car that can happily provide x bhp, rather than buying one that does x - 50, and adding some sort of air filter, exhaust ('zorst... *ahem*) or whatever. Same applies to people who overclock their computer's CPUs. Just buy a CPU that can do that extra 20MHz, or accept the fact you can't even tell the difference. Anyway... this all came back to me today, when I was thrown back into my seat as this 2.5 ton vehicle accelerated down my road. It impressed me not only mechanically, but also technologically. In short, I was impressed. I can't be bothered to get into every detail here, it's not like I'm trying to sell you one. Just thought I'd share my excitement. Though they apparently cost a little under £50,000, so it's gonna be a while before I drive one anyway, heh.
Though at the rate my driving is improving, I may have enough money saved up by the time I can legally drive.
Further to that point, I learnt today that apparently to buy one (at least from my Dad) you need to be over 25, with 1 or 2 years clean licence. Apparently it's also the same for the Range Rovers, and some Aston Martins, and I think jags too. Mainly because they're so bloody powerful.
The fact I managed to maintain a conversation with my dad about his work and cars in general, should be enough explanation as to how captivated I was by this vehicle.
My mum's gone away for the night, it seems weird, being gone 1 am, all lights in the house are on, and music's coming out speakers, not headphones. It's nice... :)
Saturday 27th November 2004
I watched snooker earlier, and noticed ol' JV comentating. It doesn't ever bother me anymore, which is cool... though it's hard to take him seriously after an on going joke with my mum that's not worth explaining. I'm not best pleased with some decisions that his daughter has made in the past, but I'm not the sort to hold grudges. I'd quite like to see her again, but I think it'll be a while before I decorate her Christmas tree and feed her rabbit.
In other news, I hate Microsoft. Spent hours today playing around with our template class in C++ for a list and a node... then it all came down to this. Here's me, taken from IRC:
12:18AM <BloodNose> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/239436/EN-US/
12:18AM � BloodNose shakes fist
12:18AM <BloodNose> "The compiler does not support the use of the "export" keyword as specified in the C++ standard"
12:18AM <BloodNose> But for the love of God Bill... why does it not?!
*sighs* I'm going to bed now
Sunday 21st November 2004
Song: Sum 41 - No Reason
Saw Bridget Jones yesterday... was pretty good on the whole. Particularly amused once again by the guy's pathetic fighting. :)
Before that, popped into Banquet Records to buy Straylight Run's album, at last. I've always quite liked that shop, and this time got talking to the guy who I assume owns it about Dave House, and his producer Mr Dan Sloan (Hi Dan, if you google your name and find this). Kind'a regret not going to see Dave House on Thursday, as I was listening to the album in the shop and it seemed pretty good.
The Straylight Run CD gave much excitement when I saw 20 mins of video footage. Some studio, some just them playing around in a super market. The studio stuff was cool. They appeared to be recording all the parts live, which to the best of my understanding, not many bands do these days.
Today then led me to much boredom, so much so that I wanted go into town with my Dad. We were heading for Harpers, where my brother works. Ended up having a quick chat with Jenny (one of the people who works there), and then I moved over to Amy. Amy's another member of staff, and also Matt's cousin. Stood there talking to her for quite a while while my dad spoke to my brother, and then came home. On the way home, bumped into Charlotte in the car park. Not seen her in quite a while, so that was quite nice. Didn't even recognise her at first. So in the end, it wasn't a bad trip out.
Earlier today I read more of my "Advanced Unix Programming" book which is somewhat complicated. I think I'll read more later. I wanna learn more about sockets. :)
In yet more news that no one gives a shit about, I got Windows XP on Friday. After talking to the IT people at uni who were useless, I thought I'd give up and stick with Windows 2000, but then I got an e-mail from some part of the MSDN who deal with the academic alliance. Gave me access to a website from which I can download ISO's for lots of MS programs. Including but not limited to Windows XP, Windows 2000, VS.NET, Visio, and a few others. I'm now going to make a concious effort to keep all of my software on all three computers completely legal. I can get Visual Studio 6 from uni tomorrow, Tortiose SVN is free (speech), iTunes is also free (beer) and that's about all I use Windows for. So s'all good.
Now I'm gonna sit on my bed and watch the Smash Hits Awards, because I'm cool.
Thursday 18th November 2004
Today's been a very good day. Lots of talking, and not just to the same people all day; I learnt a bit about PL/SQL from an evil lecturer; I wrote my overloaded operators in C++, which worked first time (I did the following: <, >, =, ==, ++, +=).
That is the extent of my explanation, I will just say in my defence that the talking to different groups of friends was a much bigger contribution to my sentiments, than overloaded operators, and PL/SQL.
:)
Thursday 18th November 2004
Song: Garbage - Temptation Waits
3715940 bytes received in 2 seconds (1779.92 Kbytes/s)
I love having access to an .ac.uk. Sooo speedy
Wednesday 17th November 2004
Song: Busted - Why
I found out on Monday, that Stephanie had offered to run an extra session for those first year programming students who she thought'd benefit from extra help. Today was pretty much wasted, and then I remembered that it was today that she was doing that, so I thought I'd tag along, and see who turns up, and how it goes.
It was very interesting, to say the least. The hearing impared student (not trying to be PC so much. He can hear, AFAIK, just not very well) was there, and he's really hard to work with, for obvious reasons. It's a shame, as he really does seem to understand Java. We ended up writing alternate paragraphs into a MS Word file, heh. It was by far the most efficient way of communicating.
I had yet another couple who wanted to talk to me about me... "So how long've you been programming?". I don't mind too much when they are curious, but I often feel like I let them down.
"So how long've you been programming?"
"Oh, about three years now..."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I did Pascal and C in college, and then C++ last year, here"
"So you've never done Java before?!"
"uh, no..."
"..."
Too many times now, I've had to break it to people that I am infact new to Java. I worry that they'll think I'm useless. :\ I basically jump straight into a little speach about how they'll actually learn to program, more so than Java specifically. And the once they've mastered programming as a concent that they'll see how easy it is to learn new languages. Especially languages as similar as C++ and Java are. Of course they're still in denial about the fact that they'll ever understand the structure of a Java program.
Uni's been pretty shitty lately, work wise. I much prefer helping these first years. :)
Sunday 14th November 2004
Song: Finch - Awake
I despair, I really do...
We've had a whole week without heating in our living room, but we can't go a single night without a TV. It's so bloody stupid. We've also lost four coasters because of it.
When I came down for dinner, as I entered the room, my dad immediately apologised. To him, it was sincerely a loss that we wouldn't be able to have the TV on while we eat.
It's awful, it really is. I have to move out.
Sunday 14th November 2004
Yaaaay! After 5 months that have felt like an eternity, I can finally move my left hand in all directions without any pain or feelings of discomfort. I'm so terrified of screwing it all up again though.
Last night, I realised how easy Don't Look Back In Anger would be to play on piano... so I had a little sit down, and sure enough, it was quite easy. I just now need to figure out the easiest way if playing it, using inversions.
On Friday, it occured to me that I've technically now seen in person, two out of the three members of Busted. How cool am I?
Saturday 13th November 2004
Song: The Corrs - Give It All Up
Friday 12th November 2004
Song: Mest - Rooftops
Who wants to come see Bridget Jones with me? :)
Friday 12th November 2004
Song: Delta Goodrem - This It Not Me
hah, christ... this is so biased it's not even funny...
http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=%22more+evil+than+satan%22&FORM=QBHP
Friday 12th November 2004
Song: Delta Goodrem - In My Own Time
Well kids, the day has finally come... the beta of the Microsoft search engine has gone public: Click.
Search for, "More evil than god" without the quote marks. The second and third results are very interesting indeed. The only thing that pisses me off about it, is that it's such a blatant rip off of google. As if the tiny front page (something MS don't ever do) wasn't enough, you've got the plain side bar with sponsored ads (to be fair, it has them at the top too). It gets worse when you look at the image and cached pages. On the images one, it loads a frames page, with the website in the bottom page, and information about the image at the top; and on the cached pages, it has a box at the top of the page saying that this is the cached one blah blah. Where've we seen this before? Oh yes! Google.
It also supports the "site:" option thing, but not inurl:, which is a shame as the inurl thing I find very handy at times.
Anyway, enough of this. I've not got much more to moan about. I've got a cold and I lost my voice on Monday, since then I've had about half of my voice, which is interesting. This is all for now.
Saturday 6th November 2004
Ooh ooh! Look at this! :)
Saturday 6th November 2004
Like any good home fireworks display, the most exciting part of my evening at Charlotte's house was the continual fear that death or serious injury was right round the corner...
It was quite nice, like I'd hoped. I like feeling like a friend of the family. Not just with them, but with any of my friends' families. I guess this is particularly nice as Charlotte and I are so close. Anyway, most of the fireworks they had were just fountains that didn't do much, but every now and again there was one that made a very loud bang making us all jump.
There was one they had that was a typically fireworks display type of firework, that went up high and then went *bang!* so I was just looking up instead of watching them all leave the ground (it was one of these box looking things with about 10 individual things in). After two or three though, they stopped appearing, but I could still hear them. So I look down, and the box has fallen over, and they're just being shot into the fence (thank God it fell away from us). The funny part to this once the initial shock was over was how there was a little ball of flame by the fence that kept getting added to just as it was going out, each time another one was shot. Eventually it came to an end and it just fizzled out. It was quite exciting though.
The other highlight was the catherine wheels. I watched as Charlotte's mum nailed it on to this bit of wood that they had, and was worried the nail would fall out. But she hit it in quite a few times, so I was happy... and stood back as it got lit. And so it was lit with a wooosh noise like they do, but... it didn't spin. It was just stuck there, with this huge flame coming out the back, on this bit of wood resting against a wooden fence. Again, nothing too exciting happened, but it was interesting to wonder how much longer the fence would last. Up next... another one! And again... it didn't spin. And again, this fence was being attacked by a huge flame (it must've been at least a foot long, because that's of course why they look pretty when they spin). What followed that one really surprised me actually... *dun dun dun* There was another one! What happened next surprised me more. I was a bit weary by this point, wondering how much more this fence would take... but no, this one was spinning. The problem... it had fallen to the floor immediately after being lit, and was spinning freely on the ground. Thankfully it was stuck between the fence and this paving slab that was sitting there for some reason. It was all quite exciting though! :)
Anyway, my arm aches loads, so I'm gonna stop typing now.
Thursday 4th November 2004
Song: Catatonia - Goldfish And Paracetamol
For another interesting review of last night, clickety here. It made me laugh, so I figured it may entertain someone else.
Also look at this from Bob. It made me laugh out loud. :)
Wednesday 3rd November 2004
Bob... you were right.
For those who don't know, I spent tonight in Camden, sharing a room with one Charlie Simpson. Oh, and no... not a hotel room. First up were Brigade, a band that I've wanted to see for a while, as they're fronted by Will Simpson, Charlie's brother, who co-wrote (with Charlie) Busted's song "Why". In addition to this, I knew they have played with Fightstar before. I was not dissaointed. I don't know when their first release will be, but I suggest you all go and buy it.
Next up were "Youth Movie Soundtrack Strategies". Their performance was perhaps the most boring thing I've had to endure in a while. They're very much thinking outside the box, but it didn't work at all. In the first song they played, the singer decided to sing what can only be assumed to be a verse (their songs had no obvious structure) without the mic. Novel indeed. Another song or two down the line, him and the other guitarist decided to sing a-capella... again without the microphones. This time we could at least hear them, as there was no music. But you can't help but think it's still a bit strange. Can't help but think that wont work so well in a bigger venue, too. Anyway, all their songs appeared to be between 10 and 15 minutes long, none showed any form of structure, and one even changed time signatures as it went. It was... odd. I didn't enjoy it at all.
Thankfully I knew what was next. Charlie is a *lot* bigger than I ever realised, and I now understand why Jonathan Ross was so frightened. The guy who set up his mic did so, and then raised it up above his head. He then came back shortly after, pulled it down to talk into it to test, and then pushed it back above his head. And I mean, his head... not his mouth. It was above his head. It also looked about 2 feet higher than the other mic. Then when Charlie came out, it lined up nicely with his mouth. Scary...
One thing that did really annoy me, was the feeling that some of Busted's crowd were in attendance. Charlie was the last of the band to make it onto the stage, and there was a lot of girly whistles that soon followed. However their performace, I felt, was outstanding. Much heavier than I'd anticipated (not quite Korn with their drop A, but close...), but all their songs sounded so good. It was hard to actually invision, "You're what I go to school for, even though it is a real bore..." and the infamous "busted jump". The guy on stage tonight was most certainly not "Charlie from Busted". For those that care (I saw them mentioned on Mary's LJ) he had a My Chemical Romance t-shirt on.
Anyway... there was a reason for the opening line of this update, and I hope Bob that you've not yet given up on my ramblings. As I mentioned above, there were a few teeny girls there, who I struggle to believe enjoyed the music. I think you were right, so far as what he's doing could be damaging for the "scene", as it were, in that a lot of silly teenagers with no real interest in music will suddenly latch on to "proper" bands. With this thought in mind, I seriously hope Busted split, or at least Charlie leaves, once their contract with the label is up. I have enough faith in these teens to trust that after a few weeks of Charlie having left Busted they'll give up on Fightstar in favour of some new manufactured teen sensation. I do however still hope you give Fightstar a chance. I truly enjoyed their performance tonight. Even though our musical interests may differ, it'd be cool to at least know what you think.
For anyone who cares (probably only Mary and Bob by this point), I just found this interview with Will Simpson. Unsuprisingly Charlie is mentioned a few times, with his ties to the pop world, and Fightstar and how it affects Brigade and the like. Worth a read anyway, I thought.
I didn't know before that Will and Charlie were both Korn fans... this pleases me, as Korn were the first "proper" band I ever got into, and still to this day I love listening to their older stuff.
This week's been quite good. Tomorrow, like Tuesday is looking to be boring, but Friday's looking good. I'm going to Charlotte's house for some fireworks. Her sister, nephew and niece are coming round, so I expect it'll be a family kind'a thing. Which I actually quite like. Despite the fact I don't spend that much time with her, I feel really comfortable with her family, and I know the like me, so it's all good.
I think I've said all that I wanted to say. Now I think I'll go to bed. Goodnight.