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JANUARY 2003 |
28th January 2003
I've been playing with XHTML and CSS3, making my pages all very fancy and nice since the end of exams. Its all good. I picked some modules to do over the next semester (I'm doing IAW, DDB, OPS and SEC). Went out for an all-you-can-eat at New Ocean City for dinner this evening with some friends to fill up on amazing food. It was great. Tonight, I'm leaving for Prague with Sid. Its going to be an immense holiday, and I'm going to take so many photos! We'll be back on Saturday, so I'll fill in the gaps then.
Track of the day: Greenday - Waiting
23rd January 2003
All my exams are over, all my coursework is done, and everything is in, yet I don't really feel like I can relax at all. Probably cos its time to start the end of my university life. Damn. </reality crisis>
Track of the day: Reindeer Section - Strikes Me Down
19th January 2003
AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggggghhhhHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just had to get that out.
Track of the day: Stereophonics - I Stopped To Fill My car Up
17th January 2003
Still lots and lots of work to do. I've got a report to write for GEM (started the LaTeX today... I'm still working on the content) and tons of revision to do for a VIP exam on Wednesday. Apart from all that stuff, I've been playing with FLAC (the Free Lossless Audio Codec) and I think it rocks! In a world full of MP3s, I think Lossless encoding is important for serious audio, and for hooking up to nice systems. I'm kinda in the process of slowly FLACing my CDs as I listen to them, but I think I will have to try and fix my stupid SV25 Linux VIA IDE problem (see the rant from a couple of days ago) and then rip stuff at 52x, which is much more convenient then 4x from the Pioneer drive in my router over my LAN.
Track of the day: Mr Scruff - Come on Grandad
16th January 2003
Happy Birthday Raveen!
Track of the day: Mr Scruff - Shelf Wobbler
15th January 2003
Had a MVR exam today, it was not pretty. Was playing with VRML for the coursework I handed in yesterday too. VRML is a pretty cool language, but implementation-wise it has a few issues. Cortona is the best VRML viewer for Windows, but even that has major issues with viewpoint changing actions... well either that or my VRML is really badly written :D Also, I can't figure out at all how to do relative movements of objects... which mean't that my coursework was quite broken. Ah well, never mind, it still did what it said on the tin, which is ok, and I could document the flaws so it gave me something to write about in my report. Always look on the bright side...
Track of the day: System of a Down - Deer Dance
14th January 2003
<hardware rant>
The Linux drivers for my VIA VT82C686B IDE Chipset in my Shuttle SV25 in 2.4.20 suck. They mean that I can't rip audio (straight copy audio CDs, RAW read anything...) and I have to do silly blackmagic over my network to get anything working. Its well documented here. My CD writing performance is slightly borked too. Dammit, its really annoying and even though its well documented, it still doesn't seem to be being worked on in 2.5.x kernels. I think I will have to shell out for an external firewire to IDE enclosure, take it apart and mod it into my SV25 to make the POS work properly. *sigh* those things are expensive. I'm also getting a little tired of the noise of my SV25. The fans are not tooo bad (still loud, but not quite the issue) but the IBM Deskstar 120GXP is one whiney mutha. IBM said they would swap it out, which is nice of them, but where exactly am I supposed to shove ~60GBs of used data meanwhile? I was seriously considering a new replacement box... a mini-itx 600MHz fanless C3 machine in a CF-7989 or CF-S668W. That would be well sweet. Apart from the fact that its a VIA board with a VIA chipset and a VIA processor.
</hardware rant>
Track of the day: Ludacris - Keep it on the Hush
7th January 2003
Track of the day: Fugees - No Woman No Cry
4th January 2003
After sleeping for a long time the intense migrane I had from yesterday has gone :) Sid and Raveen come back from Malaysia today, which means our house is complete. Sid got me the greatest Xmas present from Malaysia, a micro remote control car! Its the most fun toy I've had for such a long time.
Track of the day: Hoobastank - Too Little Too Late
3rd January 2003
Didn't get a lot of sleep last night for some reason. My camera arrived this morning! Yay! It is great. The picture quality is awesome, the cam is small, feels high quality, looks gorgeous, the battery lasts a while, it has an outboard charger, zoom, orientation sensor and lots of crazy features! It really is quite powerful, and has lots of settings (more than the Sony DSC-P1s that I'm used to playing with). It takes CompactFlash (cheap!) memory and accessories like extra battery packs, cases and the like are not too outrageously expensive like Sonyware. I'm quite glad I decided against the U20 in the end, sure it has the oooh and aaah factor, but this Canon has so many options and settings to take great pictures no matter what the situation not to mention having sound with the movie clips, zoom, a faster charger (2 hours vs 13 hours), bigger rear screen, stitch assist, orientation sensor, an AF illuminator and more. Even though I have a Vaio with a memorystick slot, I still hate the things. Its all so propietary and Sony specific. Smartmedia is too fragile, MMC/SD Cards are too small (128MB Max ATM), xD cards are too new, but CompactFlash is large, cheap, fast and great.
Track of the day: Cardigans - Celia Inside
2nd January 2003
Spoke to Sid in Malaysia early this morning, and made sure he didn't pick up the Sony DSC-U20 camera that I wanted, since I'd found a Canon IXUS V2 going cheap at John Lewis. As soon as I'd spoken to him I called John Lewis to see whether they had it in any of their stores, and the answer was No. Bummer. It was not the end of the world, I found another one going at internetcamerasdirect.co.uk for a couple of quid more, which came with some cool free stuff (mini tripod, prints, and a 35mm film camera). I ordered it straight away. Packed up all my stuff and left for Nottingham today. Got back at about 5:30 or 6pm after carting all my worldly possessions in a monster suitcase, a laptop bag and a SV25 box. I was ok until I got to St. Pancras station when my arms and shoulders felt like they were going to be ripped off. Never mind, I managed to get it all back in one piece, even if my arms are a little longer than they used to be. Its good to be back, and I really gotta get some work on.
Track of the day: Coldplay - Trouble
1st January 2003
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Saw the new year come in with my sisters and my cousin at his house. It was fun, we saw 51st State on video. Any resolutions? Well, I gotta get a job this year. Thats one hell of a scary thought.
Track of the day: Zero 7 - In the Waiting Line
