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JUNE 2003 |
29th June 2003
Making my way back home on the train again now. I was technically supposed to be going back with my parents so I could take back some stuff yesterday. This didn't really happen, so I'll be taking the rest of my stuff back on graduation day instead. Just watched the end of Animatrix with some dodgy Indian guy sitting next to me who smelt weird and couldn't take his eyes off my screen. He also had a loud and immensely annoying ringtone that he couldn't hear because he was playing some odd music at crazy volume with cheap headphones so everyone in the carriage could hear it. Most of Animatrix is really awesome, and nicely fills in little gaps between the movies. Some of is is just abstract and crazy. I love daytime trains - the countryside between Nottingham and London is gorgeous in the sunshine, especially around the Market Harborough area.
Track of the day: Placebo - This Picture
28th June 2003
Spent some of the day packing my stuff up into boxes in my room. It looks sooo bare now with nothing on the shelves and no posters on the walls. Looks like my parents won't be able to pick me up today anyway. Oh well. I went out for an awesome dinner with Jo and Jon. We also saw 'Identity' which was supprisingly good, if a little disturbing.
Track of the day: Incubus - Consequence
27th June 2003
It rained hugely, like some kind of monsoon. Still, I cycled around a lot and got totally soaked in a very satisfying way. Spent much of the day with Michelle, and we went to see 'Bruce Almighty' at the Savoy. It was a good film, very hilarious in places but the ending was not so good and overall the story was not too great. Worth watching though for the brilliant comedy.
Track of the day: Blackstreet - No Diggity Allstar
26th June 2003
Went to the LinuxUser Expo 2003 today with Jon, Jo and Tom. It was a nice day out, the Alan Cox talk on Kernel 2.6 was very interesting and the highlight of the day (though I wish we hadn't missed the first 15-20 mins of it). Getting free OpenBSD stickers was also quite neat. By the end of the day I was pretty shattered and almost immediately got into a coma-esque sleep when I got back.
Track of the day: Vanderslice - Bill Gates
19th June 2003
My Gentoo installation didn't quite work out, it was compiling for many many hours, and when I got back to it in the morning there was a compilation error of some sort, and things were a little buggered. Ah well. After all that I temporarily installed Redhat 9 to see what it was like and whether it lived up to the hype. It is actually really cool! Installed in about 45mins, it detected my nForce 2, my Geforce 3, my Firewire and USB2 controllers... everything down to my monitor. Schweet, and then it all configured itself and was ready to use. Anaconda (the Redhat installer) is very advanced. Knowing me, I'll get bored of it in a while and try a Gentoo Stage 3 install.
Track of the day: Jamiroquai - You Give Me Something
18th June 2003
Started installing Gentoo Linux from stage 1 on the computer at home. I think its going to take a while to install, but it seems worth it. Anyway, I'm going to be at the LinuxUser Expo in the Birmingham NEC on Thursday (26th June). Going to be in Nottingham on Friday. Bringing the rest of my stuff back from Notts on Saturday. Installing my dads network at his shop until then.
Track of the day: Sixpence None The Richer - Kiss Me
17th June 2003
Used the shiny album-generating script to create this album of the Red Bull Bike Battle photos that Sid took the other day in a couple of minutes. Its all good.
Track of the day: Jurassic 5 - A Day At The Races
16th June 2003
I modified my Perl album-generating script today so that it uses Perlmagick to resize images and create thumbnails as well as making the pages. Its pretty cool now, as it inputs a folder of named images, asks a couple of questions and outputs a PHP photo album. Its a bit slow, but it works pretty well (stop laughing at my lame Perl skills you guys). I'll tidy it up and release it soon - I'll also get around to tidying up and releasing the PHP/MySQL stats package soon too.
Track of the day: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Universally Speaking
14th June 2003
Going back to Harrow for a while today. Packed up most of my stuff in about an hour and trundled over to market square with Jon. We met Sid, Kenny, Paddy, Ceri and Mike at the Red Bull Bike Battle in Market Square. It was awesome and made me really want a ultra-light BMX. The guys in the competition were amazing, showing some serious skill. I thought motorbike trials were cool, but self-powered tricks are even more amazing to watch. Sid took some photos with my camera, that I'll upload later when I get some time. Jon and I left in the early afternoon just after the final to get a train to London. By the time I got home my hands were hurting a fair bit - at least I won't have to carry all that stuff home ever again. Hopefully I'll be taking a trip back soon to meet the people I missed and pick up the rest of my stuff.
Track of the day: Morcheeba - World Looking In
13th June 2003
Track of the day: Lauryn Hill - Nothing Even Matters
12th June 2003
Got my degree classification today. Staring at the sheet of paper on the wall at the Science & Engineering faculty that was telling me I got a 2:2 it was kinda indifferent, as if it was telling me something I already knew. It would have been quite suprising if I had actually got something other than that. Well, yay! Soon, I will be Hussein Jodiyawalla BSc (Hons).
Track of the day: Stereophonics - In My Day (Acoustic)
9th June 2003
When I got up this morning, I felt like I was almost 80 years old. My hands still hurt, and my arms are feeling a bit stiff. Those Quads really mess you up if you ride them hard!
Track of the day: Roots Manuva - Motion 500
8th June 2003
Lc came over yesterday :) It was cool, I showed him about Nottingham for a while and we had a nice lunch at El Gordos.
We were off Quad Biking this morning at F1 Karting with Mike. We left fairly early from my house, with plenty of time to get there... but one wrong turn about 2 minutes into the journey and we were on a long road in the wrong direction with no map to figure things out. After driving along for a long while looking for a landmark that did not exist we turned around and headed back the way we came. Randomly coming to the conclusion that we should try the other direction, we drove for another few minutes to see whether we could figure out where to go (right near our house... how could we mess up this early?). We finally end up spotting signs to the road that we were supposed to be heading for, and gun it to try and make up for lost time. We finally get onto the right road, and can't figure out which direction to go in without a map. After much irritating faffing about, I got so frustrated I just went into a newsagent and bought a roadmap. 5 seconds of flicking pages later, I saw where we had been, where we were and where we need to go. Why is there always so much traffic and red lights when you are already late? The roads clear up fairly quickly anyway and we make a b-line for Hoton. Lc's 200BHP V6 comes into its own on the wide clear sweeping country lanes. We were late, but it was no big deal this time.
Just as we parked up, the first drops of rain started to fall from the sky. Then a bit more. And more. Soon enough, as we were getting our overalls on, it was monsoon season outside. This is going to be good! We were kitted up in our helmets, gloves, overalls and stuff, just ready to go out on the Quads when the rain calmed down to a steady spit. It was brilliant! Powerslides at every corner, full throttle mud splattering greatness. Standing up at all times, really shifting weight through corners and lots of leaning about (er, I learn't this after a couple of fairly scary two-wheeled moments) is definately the way to ride quickly - I think I lapped some people a few times. After half an hour of buzzing around the track, perfecting the weight shifting slides through the esses and doughnut-style full throttle piroettes over the hairpin my hands were about to give way. I was in serious pain, my thumbs couldn't really move, and my fingers were hurting. It was amazing fun though. As a bonus we all got totally caked in mud, soaking through trainers, socks, overalls, trousers... Mike and I had mud-beards and he had mud in his teeth. I want to go again! (er, maybe not today).
Track of the day: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Love Roller Coaster
7th June 2003
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Track of the day: Sublime - 40oz to Freedom
6th June 2003
Yes, I am going insane. Went to a recruitment fair on main campus today with Sid and Tom to test the water for graduate opportunities in IT this year. Out of the 20-30 companies that were there, there were only a couple that didn't tell me where to stick my Computer Science degree and less-than-useful A-Level grades. Grr. On a lighter note, I've been playing with MySQL over the past couple of days so now there is a new stats page if you haven't noticed. Anyway, its friday night - and I'm bored out of my mind.
Track of the day: D12 & Eminem - Shit on you
1st June 2003
Finally got around to uploading pictures from our house party and the party on the downs (aka The Summer Party) at uni. There aren't many pictures from the houseparty this time. The Summer Party was so much fun. The Bluetones were really cool, but Invaders From The Planet Funk were simply amazing as always - I had such a great time during their set. I didn't bother going over to the Trevor Nelson tent, it seemed too much effort. My hayfever was pretty bad though, unless I was jumping up and down in the mini-moshpit or singing along to a classic tune I was emptying the contents of my nose into a tissue. Summer is definately here. I can't believe its June already, time is going too fast! I should really:
- Update CV
- Apply for jobs
- Tidy the house
- Reinstall laptop or downgrade from unstable to testing & remove pointless packages
- Tune gears on bike for more precision & install new brake pads
- Plan cycling holiday
- Go quad biking & more photography for F1 Karting
- Play with MySQL, maybe use to gather webstats, log entries and guestbook
- Play with PHP, make album pages auto-generating
- Fill in the gaps for the projects page
- Watch 24 in 24 hours
- Eat a chocolate cookie
Track of the day: Cardigans - Please Sister
