mac

waiting for my g5 to be delivered. it is exciting. i hope it comes before christmas though

Conveyancing

This may appear a s a shameless plug for a company but here is a link to a website I made which I am quite proud of NBM Solicitors

3

oh yeah and i had to pay over £100 for a "cancellation fee"

3

I have finally cancelled my 3 contract. It turned out they hadn't even set it up as a business account! When I joined them I phoned their business sales line and kept reminding them that I wanted it to be a business account! They are the worst pile of shit

g5

i really want to buy the new g5 as it is so sexy but need to make sure it does all the things i can do on linux eg ssh, word processing, spreadsheet, eclipse, tomcat, eXist, email, web browsing, bzflag.

fedora core 4

i am really happy with my setup on fedora 4 now. i have cured the overheating problem now. there is a daemon called microcode which is supposed to be something to do with the processor. i turned it on and now it seems to run better. don't ask me!

i am getting a little bit addicted to this tank game called bzflag. there are some really funny people who play and the game is so much fun. you drive around shooting other tanks and you form teams (with humans over internet) to capture the other teams flags. when you pick up white flags they give you a special weapon. lasers and guided missiles are the most fun. the game was donated to the open source movement from silicon graphics i think. they used it to show off their hardware. it is hard to believe it is a free game.

painting

my painting is taking a while but it is very relaxing

painting

i have started doing a massive painting of the church in plaza alta in algeciras. it is fun and looks like it may turn out ok.

tomcat

finally got tomcat to work with my old configuration. had some troubles due to using the new version of mysql with new connector. i hope the new setup runs ok on the old server. they have changed a few things in the new version of mysql - namely tinyint(1) has become a boolean which returns true or false. had to change to tinyint(2) to make it work. seems to be ok. also blank dates i.e. 0000-00-00 are not returned as null anymore so do not parse well. this is fixed in the jdbc connection string by using ?zeroDateTimeBehavior=convertToNull.

i have a bad feeling about the outcome next time i do a web system update...

aftermath of upgrade to fc4

i haven't been able to do any development since upgrading to fc4 as i cannot get my project to run on tomcat. it runs fine but torque cannot connect to mysql for some reason. i keep thinking i will sort it out soon but can't find out how!

3

I have found the '3' experience utterly dumb founding.

I have been with many mobile phone companies before (vodafone, orange, t-mobile) and had got used to their most common practises and stumbled into '3' thinking I was a fairly savvy consumer. It turns out '3' isn't a normal mobile phone company.

Everything started OK when I got the phone quickly and my number was transferred over without a hitch.

Then things started to go wrong.

Sometimes my landline would ring and people would say 'Haven't you got your mobile switched on?'. The phone line seems to be intermittent at best. Regularly when attempting to make or receive calls the line is not functioning. When dialling '333' however it works fine and the operator says 'Well if you can dial me there can't be a problem, can there?'.

The web browser only seems to have coverage when you are close to the centre of cities. Forget using on a train or in a car (the only places I ever used to use WAP).

All my Motorola phones have had bluetooth as standard since years ago. I assumed (wrongly) that the V975 would have bluetooth - why shouldn't it? When I tried to connect it to my friend's car bluetooth system I found out it didn't. Turns out '3' doesn't like bluetooth as they don't want anyone getting hold of their 'secrets' inside the phone!

Most mobile operators offer international calling at the time of setting up the contract. I found out to my peril that '3' does not. When I arrived in Poland I called '3' to activate my international roaming (you would have thought it was simple in this day and age) I was told it was not allowed to be activated while I was abroad.

I activated the international roaming when I returned from Poland and was soon off again to Spain. I am always wary of making too many calls while abroad when I don't know the operator. When I was with Orange I knew the calls were relatively OK and could judge my phone bill. I made 2-3 calls from Spain to England, short calls too. My bill was £103. Explain that!

The other day I lost my telephone at the gym. I called '3' to report it lost and was told that I would not get another handset as I was not insured. At no point was I offered insurance by '3' and usually I am used to getting a years free insurance from my mobile company. After the fact I went to '3's website and found a small footnote saying 'Sorry, but if you've only just joined us, we can't offer you phone insurance at the moment. We are working on it though, so watch this space for details.'. Thanks for being so polite! Nice to know I missed the boat on that one, I guess I will have to suffer then!

When I had finally had enough a friend said: "Why not reduce to line rental and pay them off in one go? It is usually only about £7 a month". I have 6 1/2 months to go so that would equate to about £40. Fine. But don't forget '3' isn't a normal phone company. Apparently their minimum 'line rental' is £20 a month which is extortionate. That leaves me paying £120+ to be rid of them.

weights

oh yeah i am in so much pain after my first weights session since getting back from spain. ouch!

fc4

have upgraded to fc4 via yum. it has made the system a bit raw (as i had it almost perfect with fc3). i have installed eclipse and it seems fine - although under fc3 the jdk consumed 250MB of memory and the gcj version seems to consume twice as much!

need to get tomcat working and see if it will run the software ok. also seems to be an ldap module which comes with eclipse. i can test whether it would be a good time to switch to ldap authentication.

there is also a bugzilla module with eclipse but i cannot moke it work very well. it seems to be browser based and a bit resource heavy.

the new kernels along with the latest bios update seem to make my fan stop being so noisy and allowing the chip to ramp up to full speed. it cannot be a hyperthreading processor as specified when i bought it as the smp kernel did not detect two chips even with acpi=ht.

volume control back

after all this time finally managed to get volume control to work again in fedora gnome. i think a new version of the volume control made the settings in my home directory invalid. running gst-register-0.8 as root makes it reregister all the settings.

when are they going to finish

uploading the internet?

motorbikes

my dad bought a new r1 last weekend. it is pretty sexy with the exhausts running under the seat. looks like a bit of a rip off of the moto guzzi that my mum was on. met mum dad richard and vicky last night at the 'diner' for a belt buster. they are off to the races at donnington park and had a group of about 6 bikers with them.

spain

off to spain on sunday which should be fun. graham is borrowing the house which will take a weight off our minds and hopefully help him out. also i want to get used to the idea that when we go travelling we can rent our house out to get a bit of income (or at least to cover our mortgage).

now ely has internet access i should be able to carry on with most of my duties while i am away. still a bit worried about billing full amount while away so i am going to make sure i communicate constantly with everyone and keep a list of what i do so that i can justify the bill if it is necessary.

poorly

i have been feeling a bit under the weather the past few days. slightly better today though. might be all the strenuous weight lifting i am doing which is causing me to feel low!

free weights

i am acheing today after trying out free weights yesterday. weights machines are good for a quick tone up but free weights really make the muscles tired and shaking. they get right into the sinews rather than isolating the muscle and trying to bulk it. it is easier to lift the weight as it is just an object you are trying to lift instead of a straight motion which makes it difficult to push properly.

weather

i wish it would make its bloody mind up! hopefully it is going to get better for the weekend...

xml is the dogs nads

i have been playing with transforming xml documents a lot recently and have come to the conclusion that xml is the dogs nads. most data tables in a database could very simply be turned into small xml files and referred to directly in xsl transformations reducing a lot of need for heavy database coding which becomes extremely complex. prototyping is made super fast in xml and i am sure if archiving could be made efficient even large tables could be turned into a large number of smaller xml docs.

very impressed!

fedora core 3

i keep updating fedora with yum. it updated my kernel but there were no updates for nvidia or ntfs kernel modules. so i stayed with the kernel-smp-2.6.11-1.27_FC3 release instead of moving onto the kernel-smp-2.6.11-1.35_FC3. Then they delivered an "upgrade" for the 27 version security module selinux. This prevented my system from booting as security was too tight. So I had to boot into the newer kernel which luckily worked but had to use the VESA drivers. Had to wait ages for the nvidia drivers. But anyway the volume control applet has just stopped working (in the 27 and 35 releases).

Surely someone at fedora must test the most basic functions of the OS (like the volume control) before upgrading the whole kernel? I would like to get more into reporting these bugs myself but with something this basic it seems staggering!

kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.11-1.35_FC3

aaaaaaaaarrrgggghhhhhh

weather

i am loving this hot weather. lounging around by the pool, going to the gym, having barbecues. i don't hate living in this country so much at the moment.

fedora core 4 released

whoopee!

fedora core 3 yum upgrade broke ndiswrapper

the strangest thing happened over the weekend. i did a yum update and when i rebooted the wireless card wouldn't load. the only major packages that were replaced were the livna nvidia rpms as far as i can tell. oh yeah, and selinux. i had to readd the modprobe ndiswrapper kernel module onto the modprobe.conf file. i wonder what package this is a part of?

anyway, got it working but it is interesting that i was reading an article about how the linux development cycle is too fast and blaming the distributions for releasing the experimental code before it has been tested.

now i take objection to this. the community is all the developers in the world and we are supposed to be using linux as our OS and also helping to develop it. now if i didn't experience this problem and report it how would it be discovered (i.e. how many people are going to have my config?). the development team can't be arsed to check every little thing before they release much needed updates to the community. they are always quick to release new patches if they accidentally break something else.

i think the only motivation behind attacking linux is jealousy of the vast and experienced user base and speedy, no-nonsense development cycle.

weather

i am getting a little tired of this shitty weather!

station mac filter

i didn't want to enable wep on my wireless router as it slows the connection down due to the overhead of encryption. also, i could not be bothered to find out how to configure wep with ndiswrapper. i also thought that i find it exciting when i manage to connect to the net with my laptop in unexpected places and thought i would leave it open for other people.

i had a change of heart however when my neighbour came up and asked if i had a wireless network. i said yes and he started blathering on about wep etc. i tried to explain that i knew all about it but these tech savvy people these days *yawn*. last thing he said was if i didn't mind it not being secure he would start using it.

so i added the station mac filter so only the pcs on my network can use it. so there!

i have realised maybe we don't really want to share our stuff with everyone. what an ideal world it would be if we did!

poland

just got back from poland. it is a really cool place - cheap beer and really nice home cooked food. you get around 6 szlotty to the pound and a beer will cost about 5 of those as will a meal!

you can still see the socialist influance but they have already come a long way to eradicating any sign of it. they are very romantic people - they tend to go out in couples and be very quiet and touchy feely. the people are amazingly good looking - you could spend a day in a bar just watching the women walk past and never have to look away!

on the down side they do not seem to sell macdonalds breakfasts - it is only big macs for breakfast when you are desperate enough to need a macdonalds i am afraid!

eclipse user library

cool! i always had loads of jars listed in my eclipse projects which got in the way and now i have figured out how to package them into a user library. what i need to do next is get tomcat to link to this user library and then it will be able to run the appz. this should make deployment a bit easier too. who knows, my war files may actually deploy automatically!

detergents in petrol

my car manual says that i need to make sure i use petrol which doesn't have detergents in it. on close examination all fuels now contains 'engine cleaning detergents' even asda shite petrol.

now why this stupid rise in adding detergents to petrol? i don't remember engines getting their insides all dirty before. i thought engines were meant to be a bit dirty (like christina aguilera).

could it be that instead of selling us the product we want at the lowest price they are 'adding value' by diluting the product with cheap shit detergents which degrade the fuel economy of the car etc.

wankers

co-op fairy cakes

i am going to blow the lid off this whole corporate scandal. co-op are selling fairy cakes which have not been cooked right and the bottom half of the fairy cake is getting stuck to the paper.

they have the cheek to charge twice as much as asda for their fairy cakes based on the 'convenience' of their stores (as if anyone doesn't have a car these days) then they sell inferior products like this.

i've got my eye on you co-op you evil evil faceless corporation

macdonalds sauces

when i used to drive thru macdonalds i got used to asking for the sauce at the first window. they were always happy to provide whatever sauces you want no questions asked. then one day the reply became 'they will give you the sauces at the 3rd window'. after driving to the window, parking, waiting for them to get this and that and shove it at you i have completely forgotten about the sauces.

when i get home i realise i have forgotten the sauces and its too late. if i were 'eating in' i would just ask for the sauce and get it so what reason would they have for trying to deprive the 'drive thru' customer of sauce?

especially when a 'chicken mcnugget' meal depends almost entirely on sauce and they don't even do the 'what sauce do you want with your chicken mcnugget' shit any more.

and macdonalds wonder why they are going down the shit tube. they invented consistent food and now they are trying to change it. way to cripple a winning formula bud.

updated nbm site

nbm solicitors

3 phone

finally activated my 3 phone which has been sitting idle for a month, waiting for my orange contract to expire. i made a video call to my brother and was instantly surprised at the quality. suddenly it went from being a voice call to a face to face conversation!

i am quite glad to be rid of that strange phone that i had to buy to run out the last of my orange contract. i got a really strange lump in my ear from using it. i am sure it was cooking me with radio waves or something.

ntl cable

found out that 2Mb connection is the same price as my 512Kb connection. went online to find out if i could upgrade and i could. now my connection is 2Mb but i am left wondering why they didn't upgrade their existing customers or at least let them know and how long i have could have been upgraded. now i am tempted to "downgrade" to the 1Mb connection as this is still faster than what i had but will save me a tenner a month. hmmm...

i am getting a bit sick of companies treating existing customers like shit and only wowing their new customers.

3 peaks

tried to do the 3 peaks again this weekend. it started snowing though and we had to call it off after whernside. i think 2 out of 3 was not bad considering the conditions. my calf muscles still hurt but apart from that i don't feel too bad.

v70

we have bought a v70. it is really cool - automatic gearbox, 2.4 litre engine, leather seats etc. it is a bit of a beast and has made me enjoy driving again. we are going to drive down to spain over easter to "test" it.

i guess i don't need the v40 towbar anymore!

ntl cable

i keep getting disconnected from ntl cable for short periods of time. it is really annoying

online casino

i wonder if there are any online casino clients that run on fedora?

car

we have gone off the idea of a mondeo or a vectra. now we are looking into v70s. our v40 has been such a good car and we are very attached to volvo. the fords and gm cars seem really plasticy in comparison. if we decide to buy a flat in spain we may need to hang onto our car for a bit.

towbar

i think i am going to offer to pay that guy's listing costs for the towbar. i asked him to send me the wiring instructions before i would send him the money. after a couple of weeks he sent me a bizarre diagram of the lights on the back of a trailer. i hope i don't get a red mark on my ebay account.

livna again

again i am left waiting for livna to update their nvidia packages to be able to use next kernel.

top request

this is my favourite thing that staff say to me when they can't get something to work on their computer - "Can't we just have the old one back?".

v40 towbar

bought a towbar on ebay for 51 quid (although the guy says it will cost 27quid to post it to me!). It looks great - a proper volvo detachable towbar. he says the electrics all work and that he has instructions with it but i have requested that he send me photographic proof as i am a bit wary. i am worried about buying an unfixable part.

i hope he doesn't get cheesed off and sell it to someone else cos i really want it. maybe i should just pay and get on with it. i can always ebay it to someone else. the trouble is he might have stolen it from someones car and i don't want to buy stolen goods because i don't want to deprive anyone of anything. if he has all bits it is certainly bonified.

hooray

livna packages have been released

livna packages

have upgraded to the latest kernel on fedora but the livna nvidia packages have not come out yet. the version is 766 and i am stuck on the older kernel (maybe 741) until they release that package (i am not going back to doing it the hard way!).

why oh why can't nvidia release the source for their graphics cards so it can be included with the kernel and then i wouldn't have to keep installing it. i am sure creating good hardware is more important to a graphics card manufacturer than buggering about with drivers. they could also benefit from a bit of prodding and poking from the open source guys. hey, they may even be smart enough to help with a few optimisations!

flu

i am so ill at the moment. i feel like there is serious pressure inside my head. keep getting phonecalls from work though which is not very relaxing.

volvo v40

sofia and i were thinking about trading the car in for another. we went to look at a ford mondeo automatic diesel but it was nothing special. after the test drive we were just glad to get back into our car. volvos are really nice.

this leaves us with the problem of our trip to spain in the summer. we need to get a towbar fitted on the car so that we can stick all the stuff in a trailer. i have ebayed the roofrack and roofbox. what a waste of time! no space at all in those things!

volvo quoted £372.54 to fit one which is frankly outrageous. a local towbar specialist quoted £200 which seems more reasonable, although i have been trying to investigate what is involved with fitting one myself. there is a towtrust towbar on ebay for £40 but it looks like a bundle of wires that i wouldn't know anything about.

also trailers aren't cheap. i wonder if my dad will let me nick his?

2 months

it has been 2 months since i posted to my blog. time is going so fast at the moment. it doesn't seem that long since i upgraded my computer.

if having fun means that time goes too fast maybe i should start drinking heavily, get into a heavy depression and start arguing constantly with my family in order to make my time on this earth seem a bit longer.

or maybe not...

FC3 blog entry poster

woo hoo! just updated the FC3 blog entry poster and now it actually runs up without error. now i can post to my blog again!