Thursday 30th June 2005
Heh, wow... This morning I received an e-mail from the current intern at Sun who I'll be replacing. He was forwarding an e-mail that was sent to him outlining "the week of the Guillemont Games". At 12pm each day next week (my first week), stuff is happening:
Monday: Quiz
Tuesday: Treasure hunt
Wednesday, Tug Of War
Thursday: Team Challenge (Not sure what this is)
Friday: Volleyball Tournament
I like my job already.
Monday 27th June 2005
I've just got back from seeing Brian McFadden (with my mum!). Now like when I went to see The Corrs, I'm sure you're all wondering why the hell I bothered going; but also like The Corrs, I came home thinking that it was absolutely outstanding, and exactly how I think live music should sound.
What I hadn't anticipated though, was how funny he is, but before that, a story about how stupid I am. When we got there, it wasn't too long before a support band came on. They were nothing special, not bad I thought, but certainly the wrong audience. Anyway, from the merch stand, we knew there were two support bands. So after a bit longer the lights go down, and everyone stands up. Now I'd never heard of this other support band (Zoo, I think) but everyone stood up for it and then my mum did too, and I told her not to. Reluctantly I stand up too as I couldn't really see much, and the band start playing some music, basically just one chord over and over. Then a guy appears from the back and walks to the front. He's wearing a wooly hat and a mac. Then he started singing the opening lines to Irish Son. Then, and only then did I realise... that's Brian McFadden!
So anyway, on the whole it was really good, but like I said, I hadn't anticipated how funny he was going to be. At one point, there was this girl shouting "I love you Brian!" and he said something like "you don't know me... I would say 'I love you' back, but you know what happened with Michael Jackson. You stay in your bed, and I'll stay in mine", and pointed at her when he said it. :)
There were this group of girls there who we heard talking before Brian came on, saying they'd been to every show on the tour. Anyway, when Brian was talking between songs at one point, they kept shouting stuff at him (don't really know what, but probably that they love him) and he basically went: "Oh will you please SHUT UP! Sorry, but you have no idea how annoying it is to have an eight year old with a budweiser going <some annoying noise>". It made me laugh, as they'd been annoying the hell out of me before Brian came on. It was good though, as it seemed like he was genuinely wanting them to just shut up.
Sadly, there were Westlife Covers done. Flying Without Wings, I actually really enjoyed. It sounded nothing like the original, and he performed by himself with an acoustic guitar. I was impressed, as I'd gone in with the expectation that the Westlife covers would be pants. A bit later came World Of Our Own. Sadly, this wasn't so good. They'd added the Brian McFadden sound to it, lots of guitars and keyboards, but still wasn't too good. Luckily though, the rest of the set seemed to be going well. Then came the encore. This was when it all went wrong. I thought it was odd that he was doing an encore as he'd already done Real To Me, Irish Son, Demons, and Almost Here, so he was out of singles to do. But the lights weren't coming on, and eventually he did indeed come back. And then he did it, he crossed a line... the encore was: Uptown Girl. I was very distraught, and even my mum agreed that as far as encore's go, it was rubbish. Honestly ruined the whole set for me.
Only other sad thing (though not hugely shocking) was that there was no sign of Delta Goodrem. I thought it would have been really cool if she's turned up for Almost Here, but nevermind. He did Almost Here by himself again with an acoustic guitar, which actually sounded really nice. He got the crowd to sing Delta's bits and then insulted us for being rubbish. It was good.
That's enough of that, I think. I've just seen the UK Pimp My Ride, it was awful. The American one is so cool I think, anyone could watch it and find it entertaining as all the people have really funny personalities and strong characters which come through. The UK one was just rubbish though. Wont talk more about this.
Friday 24th June 2005
Song: Joss Stone - For The Love Of You
Absolutely ages ago, I thought it would be cool if I could search my blog entries on here. Then I decided it was far too hard and couldn't be bothered. Then I thought I could make a page that uses Google. Then I thought that it would look bad. More recently I tried to get MySQL to return substrings of entries, which match what I'm looking for and a few words around it. Then I lost interest. Then today I decided to try again, and have now done it properly...
So I can proudly say that it's now done. It also seems shockingly quick. As with all things I make for this site, there's no promise it'll work 100% of the time. But as usual, please do let me know if it's broken, as I will try and fix it.
For thos that care (ie, stop reading now), it's using MySQL to return relevant results based on the search string(MATCH()... WHERE()), then it's thrown into my PHP script which uses a perl regular expression (the PHP ones were sloooow) to remove all the rubbish and makes the line out of the 30 characters before the word, and 100 that follow it. Then it just underlines the search term (there is a small bug there, go find!).
So hopefully... it'll work well. It may even have some practical use, unlike most things on here. You can all search to see how many times I've written your names. :)
Wednesday 22nd June 2005
Song: Joss Stone - I've Fallen In Love
I understand I have a new (occasional) reader... Hi Tonie!
Monday 20th June 2005
Song: No Use For A Name - Chasing Rainbows
Well kids, I passed... watch out for a filthy silver Escort flying recklessly around the Woking area. :)
Sunday 19th June 2005
Song: Hoobastank - Better
I seem to have developed a cold today, on what I believe is the hottest day of the year. Ridiculous.
Tonight I went to the pub with the normal people, and there seemed to be these two police cars that went past a few times (we were sat outside by the road). Then a few minutes later, a van labelled "bomb disposal unit" went by. Bit strange... a bit later on, the bomb disposal van came from the direction it was going, this time followed by three (!) police cars. I got a bit scared at this point. None of the police cars had their lights or sirens on at all at any point though, which was strange. But anyway... about 30 minutes later, a fire engine went past, too. Very strange. Pirbright may be a quiet place near army camps, and populated solely by the elderly, but evidently isn't as safe as we thought! Then, on the way home, we saw two more police cars. Very strange indeed. Though these were more around the Knaphill area.
I've got my first (and hopefully only) driving test. I'm getting a bit nervous now it's so close. I've been having the dreams for about a week now, though not every night. But knowing me, this isn't really too shocking. I can't parellel park for shit, but I can reverse round a corner like a champ. Ideally, I'd like a turn in the road, and reverse round a corner, as my two manouvers. Which means, owing to sod's law, that I shall be asked to do a bay park (where I'll end up on the line between two) and a parallel park (where I'll stop about 3 feet away from the curb).
It's been said a few times that I shouldn't really fail as I've had many more hours driving experience than most of my friends as I'm insured on my mum's car. So if I do fail, I wont be too impressed. However... if I only fail on a manouver, I feel that I should be cut some slack. I decided to not even bother trying any manouvers in my mum's car as it's big and sluggish (petrol, 1.8 litre Escort). In some ways it may have helped, but the way manouvers are taught (as I'm sure you all know) you generally learn how to do stuff with relation to parts of your car. So when the car you're in is suddenly 1/3 bigger, things no longer work so well. Of course one day I will have to learn to park properly...
Also as I have a cold for some reason, I expect I'll have to sneeze while doing my test which will cause me to crash into a lamppost or something.
Wish me luck folks!
Friday 17th June 2005
Song: Tegan And Sara - My Number
Google seem to have added more stuff to their search engine. Click here to see. Obviously you can change the person's name. Funny how google never advertise when they add new features like that.
Went to see Tegan and Sara last night with Mary. I was actually a bit more impressed with David Ford's set though. I think it's mainly because I knew what to expect from T&S, but David was a mystery, and has a box of magic. From where we were standing it certainly seemed like he was slowly winning the crowd over, which was nice. I'm still very impressed by the way he plays a bit of the song on one instrument, and then loops that and runs over to another instrument and records a bit and it loops that, then he grabs another, and so on.
Tegan and Sara's on stage banter was as interesting as always. Sara's electric guitar didn't seem to work, and she was clearly getting very pissed off. In the end she used Tegan's. Felt a bit sorry for her though. I always think it must be the worst thing for a band to be on stage and have equipment fail. Oh, and I think Tegan's fringe still isn't straight, which bothers me still.
Had less than 1 square foot to stand in due to silly girl who put a huge bag on the floor by her feet, so was stuck leaning against the stage. Then the girls behind me kept wanting to me to move to take pictures. I think they insulted me at one point but did thank me for everytime I leaned out the way to take a picture, so I think I'll let them off.
I think that's all for now...
Thursday 16th June 2005
Song: Fightstar - Paint Your Target
Well I phoned this shop in Eastbourne, they said it's been cancelled. Then I read last night that apparently neither Charlie nor Al (other guitarist) knew about doing these in store things on Thursday or Friday at all. Alas.
Apparently also at the mid week sales count thing, the Paint Your Target single is at number 2. I think you all should go out and buy it try and get that fucking frog off of number 1.
I started writing a (hopefully half) interesting thing on here last night, but thought it was getting a bit controversial and possibly offensive to some, so I stopped. If I can find a nicer way of writing it, I may well try...
Wednesday 15th June 2005
There is a glimmer of hope!
There is a slight chance (I don't yet know how big) that Fightstar are doing another in store signing and performance thing in Eastbourne on Friday. You may be thinking, "Eastbourne, wth?!" but for those who don't know, I have grandparents there, and my mum has been trying to talk me into driving down there for general driving practice anyway!
Gonna call the place tomorrow to confirm it, to be safe. Cross your fingers people.
Tuesday 14th June 2005
Song: Fightstar - Cross Out The Stars
Aah, I'm sooo annoyed. At 4:28pm this afternoon, I learned something. That something, was that at 4pm this afternoon, Fightstar were playing a small acoustic set in a shop in Camberly. I know how to get to Camberly, and I know where the shop is. But I had to hear about this an hour too late didn't I? Yes.
*sighs*
Saturday 11th June 2005
Song: Alkaline Trio - Dethbed
I don't want to put posters back up, as blue tack ruins the walls... but my walls look so plain without posters. :(
Just read that Microsoft have dropped yet another huge feature from Longhorn, the next version of Windows. I really do worry that it's going to come out as being like XP SP3. And we all know how much fun SP2 was!
From some guy on slashdot:
For comparison, since Windows XP was released, Apple has made 3 major releases of their OS. In addition to significant performance improvements, they've added Expose and Spotlight. And they plan to ship next year's version for both PPC and x86. Of course, it's not a fair comparison: Apple also has only about 10,000 employees to Microsoft's 50,000+.
Wait a second ... Microsoft has 5x more employees than Apple, haven't released an OS in 4 years, and next year's release promises to have pretty much nothing in it? WTF do they do in Redmond all day?
Seriously kids... go buy a Mac once your Windows computer has collapsed under the weight of worms, virus', and spyware. Of course needing third party firewall, antivirus, popup blockers, three antispyware programs and a registry cleaner don't really keep it running fast either.
Thursday 9th June 2005
Day one is complete. My room is now a lighter shade of blue than before, and I still have pink carpet. Matt came round to help me with the painting and was here for about 11 hours. The help was appreciated. :)
Tomorrow, I've been told, up around 9:30, and we'll do the carpet. This house is just too small. I have no idea how we're going to be able to empty my room for the carpeting. We managed to paint by just moving desk and bed to one side of my room, while we paint, and then let it dry and swap.
Whole house is a mess though, as my dad's doing stuff to our kitchen, too. My room is quite devoid of normal teenagery stuff as it's been spread all over the upstairs of our house. Posters are going back tomorrow. I've decided I'm gonna turn over my poster of The Corrs, as it's double sided. The only reason I picked the side that I did originally, was that I have objections to Andrea's boots on one side, so I had to have the other. However I feel that now is a good time for a change, and although I still am not impressed by her boots, the others look prettier (sorry Jim, not counting you) so I'll allow it. :)
I also found my poster of Emma Bunton when clearing out my room. I think I have too much pride to let myself put that back up though. Better than that, I found all my Spice Girls postcard/photo things. I don't know if anyone remembers them but I think it was when I was in year 8, 9 or 10, everyone was trading them. They're basically photos of the Spice Girls, but I remember we always used to trade them to get rid of any duplicates. Sadly though I've still got some.
I think I appreciate Geri's outfits a lot more than I did back then. But I do still think Emma was by far the cutest. I think I should stop talking about the Spice Girls now.
Wednesday 8th June 2005
Song: Scissor Sisters - Magnifique
I've just spent the last 30 minutes doing all the paper work for my job at Sun. Scary stuff. I'm always slightly scared of forms, and anything that I have to sign my name on. I think it's all done now though... P46, contract, and "proprietry information agreement". All done now though... *whipes brow*
This week is going to be hell. I've got to gut my room as I'm having new carpet. It will be sad to see my pink carpet go, but it is a bit filthy and doesn't actually reach all the walls. We've been here about 2 and a half years now, so I guess it's time for some carpet. My dad's also threatening me with a lampshade... I happen to be quite fond of my naked light bulb. Also gonna paint my walls as the paint we used originally was cheap as hell and subsequently is... crap.
No doubt many an argument will be had amongst the family. Good stuff. Wish me luck! Thank God for iBook and wireless network.
Amen.
Sunday 5th June 2005
Song: The Ataris - Broken Promise Ring
Today, over a month after the initial complaint, I went round Matt's house to check out this server's fan as it was apparently noisy. I couldn't believe what I found when I got there! Sure enough, the case fan on the front was rattling, so for the moment, I unplugged it. But then! The CPU fan... was not working! I then look at the fan at the back of the case, also not working! Better yet, in an attempt to shut it up, Matt had kicked it, so the noisy fan at the front was no longer attached to the case anyway. This seemed like a bit of a non-issue now though, finding the CPU fan not spinning. Despite knowing that it's probably been like that for ages, I thought I should fix it asap. So I took the noisy fan, and sat it above the CPU, and then using brown parcel tape, kind'a stuck it in place. Very loose, but it wasn't gonna be there for long. So we come back to my place, and after some trouble I find another motherboard with the same processor and fan (that's not by chance, I knew we had it). So grabbed that and went back to Matt's. To save time, I just replaced the whole CPU (as the fan and heatsink was attached), and now it seems to be okay. I've removed the noisy and dead fans now, in the hope that this one on the CPU will be okay. Also, since it was there, and spare, I added another 128MB of RAM to it. This server now has 384MB RAM, hooray!
I've just been reading about DeCSS, the little bit of code that cracks DVD encryption. Found a page about distribution of it, with loads of ways to distrubute it, and found one that was absolutely brilliant...
$ for DVDs in Linux screw the MPAA and ; do dig $DVDs.z.zoy.org @ns1.or.com ; done | perl -ne 's/\.//g; print pack("H224",$1) if(/^x([^z]*)/)' | gunzip
If you run the above from a linux shell (sorry Windows users), what comes out is the code for DeCSS. The brilliance of this one though, is that it's coming from the DNS server of the "DVD Copy Control Association". Complete misuse of DNS, I'm sure... but it's fun! Will the geeks ever fail to do cool things.
Also, was this. The DVD logo, written in HTML, but made up of the DeCSS code. Looks quite nice, I thought.
I'm half considering buying a DVD drive for my computer here. How easy is it to pick up a DVD drive without region encoding these days? I don't want to have to fuck around with firmware cracks for it. :\