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Blog: The Life Of A Supreme Ruler
Server!
Filed under: — orudge @ 14/03/2008 9:27 pm
I’ve just ordered a T2-WHS-A2 (catchy name, eh?)! This will become my main server, taking the responsibility for storing most of my data, as well as running various services. It’ll initially have 1TB of storage, which I shall probably use in a RAID-1 configuration – however, I also intend to take a couple of the hard disks out of this current PC, get some sort of enclosure for them, and use those in the new server (the server has a smattering of eSATA ports). It’s all very exciting, no? Thanks to Brianetta for the recommendation!
Blah blah busy blah blah where did time go etc
Filed under: — orudge @ 12/03/2008 4:29 pm
Yes, it’s another one of those blog posts where I go on about how things have been really hectic over the past month and “is that the date already?” and so on. A new semester began not too long ago (well, over a month ago, now), and as usual, it didn’t take long for things to get very busy. Rag Week went pretty well, lots of money was raised and lots of fun was had. Also, as I mentioned in my last blog, I bought Portal, and completed it, and rather enjoyed it. I also ended up playing rather a lot of Audiosurf (my username is “orudge” if you’re on there, as is my Steam ID) – probably far too much, really. I’ve also been playing through Half-Life 2, having got to the “Highway 17” section of the game. It’s pretty good fun, and the graphics really do look very nice in this game. Back in the real world, my academic mum Rachel was up for a few days last week, which was good fun indeed, and very nice to see her again. I also had a brief trip down to Wales to drop off the car for its MOT, which is due at the end of the month – John, the local mechanic and friend of the family, will be taking care of that, which is good. So now it’s pretty much just back to the usual academic work – lots of work to be done on the team project in particular over the coming weeks before the Easter holiday (well, “spring holiday”, as it doesn’t actually include Easter this year!). And I’ve got an Ents meeting at 5pm to head off to, so I’d best go.
Portal
Filed under: — orudge @ 20/02/2008 8:34 pm
Oh dear, I appear to have been sucked in.
Let me explain.
Some time ago, my good friend Chris Jones bought some game collection known as “The Orange Box”. You may have heard of it. As part of this, he could donate the games he already owned to a friend – in this case, Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One. He chose to donate them to me. This meant I had to go and get Steam, which I duly did. However, the ATI Radeon graphics card I was borrowing from a friend at the time seemed to have problems with the game – it would randomly crash, freeze, stutter and more. So play the games I did not. Fast forward a few months, and my brother has given me his old graphics card, a GeForce 7800 GT (hurrah, back with NVIDIA again). This card happens to work perfectly with HL2. While signed into Steam, I notice a good number of my friends playing something called Audiosurf. So I checked out the demo, found it very addictive, and bought the game. Yes, I’ve bought a game from Steam, something I didn’t think I would ever do! I also discovered an NVIDIA promotion, which gives me a free copy of Peggle Extreme, HL2: Deathmatch, HL2: Lost Coast, and a demo of Portal, entitled “First Slice”. Today I played through said demo, and have now somehow ended up $19.95 less well-off (actually, $23.44, when you include VAT), and with a copy of Portal on my hard disk. Whoops.
The only problem I have now is finding the time to play it – and indeed, these other games that are now sitting in my Steam account. This week is Rag Week, and it’s been a pretty busy week for me already. I have the comedy to run tomorrow, and then I should be going to the Pirates vs Ninjas bop on Friday. I also have some coding to do and lots of comp sci stuff to get on with, amongst other things. But no doubt, I shall be able to squeeze in some Portal. And some Audiosurf.
And yes, I know that the cake is a lie.
To Aegir, re: “Re: Owen”
Filed under: — orudge @ 17/02/2008 5:36 pm
The £1100 is third party, fire and theft insurance, I believe – i.e., if you dent somebody else’s car, they’ll pay for the repairs to their (but not your) car. Fully comprehensive insurance is quite a bit more. Insurance premiums are ridiculously expensive for young drivers over here, it’s rather annoying for those of us who are actually competent drivers and who don’t go about driving like chavs.
To Aegir, re: “Raor. New Car.”
Filed under: — orudge @ 2:41 am
I was going to comment on your latest blog, with the text:
Hmm, $271 for 3rd party insurance for, what, a year, and you’ve only been driving a year or two, haven’t you? That’s, hmm, £124/year… in my first year driving, insurance was around £1100/year – you crazy Australian bogan drivers. ;P
However, your silly Vox site insists I sign up before I post a comment, which is not something I am going to do. Don’t suppose you can disable that in any way? Don’t expect many comments on your blog if you can’t, anyway, I daresay most people can’t be bothered to sign up for some random site in order to post. And this concludes my message.
Photos from Brazil up
Filed under: — orudge @ 12/02/2008 12:46 am
As a little followup to my last post, my photos from Brazil are now up.
Back in town
Filed under: — orudge @ 10/02/2008 8:02 pm
Well, the past few days have involved lots of travelling. Thursday was the day of our flight back to Britain, with the flight leaving Natal at about 6.30pm. However, I was awoken on Thursday morning with a couple of messages that did not seem to bode well: there was a problem with the car (which was thankfully fixed fairly quickly), and there was a demonstration of sorts on the main BR-101 road up to Natal, which meant that no traffic could get through. As a result, our taxi was going to be delayed. The estimate was for the demonstration to finish by 1pm, which meant our taxi would be an hour or so late, at 2pm. (The intention was to get the taxi at 1pm, arrive at the airport by about 3.30pm, in plenty of time for the 6.30pm flight.) Fortunately, the taxi did indeed arrive at 2pm, and we got to the airport by around 4.30pm, only to be confronted by what’s probably the longest queue I’ve ever seen (well, actually, the queue for the Blackpool concert in August was probably longer). I’m not quite sure why, but it was taking an awful long time to check everybody in for the flight (seemingly, the flight was the only one leaving the airport at that time, as all the other check-in desks were closed). After about an hour, we got to the front of the queue and checked in, as well as having to stump up money for the departure tax (which seemed to be included in the flight price the last time I flew from Brazil, but apparently not this time). Once we finally got into the departure lounge, it turns out the plane was late due to it being late setting off from London earlier in the day. Anyway, eventually, we got on the plane, and the plane took off, and we flew back over to Britain. As usual, I didn’t manage to get any sleep on the flight, which made the 250 mile drive back up to North Wales fun. Particularly fun when the M40 ground to a halt due to an earlier accident. Thankfully, we were only delayed for perhaps half an hour there, and the rest of the drive was fine enough. Yesterday, after 14 hours sleep, I then drove up to St Andrews, which was really rather pleasant – the weather was lovely and there weren’t many cars on the road (and even less lorries). So that’s me back in St Andrews, with semester 2 starting tomorrow.
I’ve now flown a total of just under 56,000 miles in my life, it seems. The map is below (click for more details):
Still got to cover Africa, Asia and Australasia!
The most dangerous roads in the world
Filed under: — orudge @ 05/02/2008 7:21 pm
Came across this link earlier today… some rather scary-looking roads there! In the winter (wet season), the track down to my Dad’s house in Brazil can be a bit wet – indeed, very wet – but it’s nothing compared to that Siberian road!
Speaking of Brazil, I shall be heading back to the UK on Thursday, arriving on Friday. It’s been a nice couple of weeks out here, and the weather has been lovely (although I did get fairly badly sunburnt the other day at the beach). Photos will follow on when I get home. Exam results should be out tonight, and semester 2 starts next Monday. All very exciting!
Until next time…
An observation
Filed under: — orudge @ 26/01/2008 6:55 pm
How come, with my T-Mobile pay-as-you-go SIM card, it costs me 40p to send a text message when I’m abroad (or 50p to send one to a non-UK number), compared with just 20p to send a picture message? At home, the picture message (still 20p) is the most expensive thing (texts are 10p). Surely, with it containing more data, the picture message should be more expensive to send? Perhaps I should do as Prof. Frink (no, not the Simpsons character) suggests and write out my note on a piece of paper, take a photo of it, and send that?
The Russ Hill
Filed under: — orudge @ 23/01/2008 7:34 pm
Well, I’m sitting here in my room in the Russ Hill hotel, near Gatwick Airport. Tomorrow I have to get up at the awful time of 6am, for myself and Grandad are heading to Brazil! It’s quite a novelty being in a proper hotel, in nearly all of my recent travels, I’ve been staying in hostels (or with people I know), so things like having tea and coffee making facilities in my room are quite funky. Anyway, the past couple of weeks have been quite busy – I started my exams last Monday, and finished them this Monday. For the most part they went pretty well, although one could have been better. Drove down to North Wales on Monday – it was generally quite wet (very wet, even), and combined with darkness and lots of lorries, it did not equal a pleasant experience. The drive down to Gatwick today was fairly decent – decided to take the M6 Toll, what a lovely motorway. It was basically empty, and very nice to drive along. The M42 with all its “Active Traffic Management” was a bit less fun, if only because they have speed cameras every few hundred yards. Although I was doing under the speed limit, it’s still somewhat unnerving. The M25 wasn’t bad – it was actually moving, so that’s something. Overall, today’s journey went quite well, and hopefully tomorrow’s flight to Natal will be fine too. See you in Brazil!
Checking whether build environment is sane … build environment is grinning and holding a spatula
Filed under: — orudge @ 16/01/2008 1:49 pm
Best xkcd title text I’ve seen in a while.
And now it’s 2008
Filed under: — orudge @ 02/01/2008 7:01 pm
It’s the 2nd of January 2008, and it seems everybody on Planet TT-Forums has been posting new year posts, so I shall do the same! (I intended to anyway, but was away at my Mum’s in Mid-Wales on a somewhat unreliable 56K connection). I’ve been down here in North Wales over the festive period, and it’s been enjoyable enough. Christmas Day was spent at a relative’s (a second cousin, I believe), where various distantly-related bits of family gathered and had a merry old day. Since then, the days have been not too exciting, and they won’t be too exciting for a while yet, although, as mentioned, I did head down to Powys to see Mum for a few days, and to see in the New Year, which was quite fun. I have exams coming up soon, so this Sunday I shall probably be heading back up to St Andrews to revise for those. Once exams are finished though, I shall be heading with Grandad to Brazil, to see Dad, for a couple of weeks, so I’m looking forward to that. 🙂 Shall have to drive down from North Wales to Gatwick airport though, which will be fun – I’ve not been on the M6 further south than Stoke-on-Trent before, so having that (although I may take the M6 Toll), plus the likes of the M42 and the M25, will no doubt be an enjoyable experience. But anyway, exams to get through first, so I’d best get back to doing some sort of work…
C’est decembre!
Filed under: — orudge @ 09/12/2007 5:18 pm
Oh, how time flies! All of a sudden, it’s December, and a very hectic week indeed is upon me. I have three practicals due in in the next 5 days, two of which still need finishing, and then another one, plus an essay, due next week. Not only that, but the end of this week is going to be incredibly busy in terms of events – rigging for the Christmas ball all Thursday and Saturday, the Dark Room techno night on Thursday (whether I go to that will depend on how tired I am!), Karl Kennedy rigging and show on Friday, for which I’m the lighting director, and then the Christmas ball itself on Saturday night. Then the Union staff party on the Sunday! Oh, and group presentations and demonstrations on the Friday afternoon for the software team project. I’m not quite sure where I’ll get all the hours, to be honest…
This is probably going to be the last week of proper lectures, next week there may be some revision tutorials instead. At the end of next week, there’s the Christmas bop on Friday, which is basically obligatory to attend. Saturday will be used to recover from that, if need be, and then Sunday I intend to head down to North Wales for the Christmas period. It’ll be nice to get away for a bit! I’ll be at Grandad’s for Christmas, and then shall head down to mid-Wales to see Mum over New Year. Then, it’ll be back up to St Andrews at some point before the 14th of January, as that’s when I have my first exam! The exam timetable has been shuffled around a bit since the provisional timetable was published. The original provisional timetable was quite good from the point of view of maximising post-exam free time, but not quite so good from the point of view of actually taking the exams! The finalised timetable is better there – there’s at least a day between each exam, except between Machines and Computation and Databases. Databases shouldn’t be too bad, though, I hope! My last exam is on the 21st, and then I have a couple of weeks free until the 11th of February, when semester two starts. Hopefully, if we can find a suitably inexpensive flight, myself and Grandad shall be heading out to see Dad in Brazil then!
So, as you can see, I have a pretty busy two months ahead of me. If you don’t see too much of me online (eg, on tt-forums), then that’s why!
You’ll find me in the matinée, the dark of the matinée
Filed under: — orudge @ 20/11/2007 8:20 pm
First off, Bill Bailey was awesome. As I mentioned in my last blog, Michelle and I went to see him perform in Glasgow. It was his first performance of the tour, and a great night indeed. I’ll never be able to think of the Friends theme in the same way again! And his renditions of the Imperial March and God Save The Queen were really quite funky. Or should that be jazzy? Excellent stuff, anyway.
On Monday, I headed off to Amsterdam for a few days, getting back on Saturday. The photos are up, although I still have to add the photos I took on my phone of the Friday night in Sneek (I’d forgotten to take my proper camera out that night). It was a good week, I saw all the usual touristy sights, and met up with a couple of chaps I know over there. My only complaint would have been about the person who snored incredibly loudly (it sounded vaguely like a wild boar being tortured, or at least, what I imagine that would sound like) for three of the four nights I was in the hostel. I didn’t get much sleep.
Since then, well, it’s been a busy few days. I had a practical for Databases due in last night, so was busy finishing that off the past couple of days. Another practical is due on Friday, this time for Machines and Computation. In addition, we have the Distinguished Lecture series on Thursday, which we have to write a report on in the near future. A third practical is due on Monday (conveniently enough, that’s Raisin Monday), and a fourth on Tuesday! Lots to be doing, that’s for sure. There’s also comedy tomorrow night which I was planning on attending (and, indeed, working on), and Rocksoc on Thursday. I could do with a few extra hours in the day. Perhaps double the length of the week and have each other day a day off?
Anyway, I shall go and watch Heroes, I think. And then work on one of these practicals, perhaps.
I’m still vaguely alive
Filed under: — orudge @ 06/11/2007 11:41 pm
Did I mention I was busy? What’s that? I mention it in every post? Well, it’s no different here, alas. It’s been a while since I wrote a blog entry, simply because I haven’t really had the time or inclination, or much to talk about, to be honest. It wasn’t even freshers week when I wrote my last post… hmm. It’s now week 6, I believe, and time’s just flying by, as seems to be the case generally. I’m off to Amsterdam next week, as it’s reading week, but not before I see Bill Bailey at the SECC tomorrow. 😀 Looking forward to that a lot. Also got all sorts of things to do for comp sci – practicals, team project, presentations, and suchlike, as well as a few entsy things. Lots to do, and not much time to do it in!
Freshers week went rather well – the union was mobbed, as usual, and the events were good fun to work (and on occasions, attend as a punter!). I did catch freshers flu towards the end of the week though, unfortunately, as I did last year, which persisted in some form for the following week. The Computer Science reading party at the Burn was in week 3 or so, which I rather enjoyed – most of Junior Honours, a few other students, and an assortment of staff went away to an old country house near Edzell for a few days, for presentations and general amusement. I got my computer working back in week 1 or so, too – the graphics card was somewhat dead, so borrowed a friend’s and that’s working nicely enough.
Hmm, I’m quite tired. Bed for me, I think. I’ll give you an update sometime after Amsterdam, I expect!
Busyness
Filed under: — orudge @ 20/09/2007 10:03 pm
Well, it’s been a busy few weeks. I moved up to St Andrews last Wednesday, and got the house sorted out nicely. It’s a very pleasant house, roomy, and suchlike. All good so far. On that night, a friend came over, and unfortunately, a drink got spilled over the power supply of my computer. Whoops. It didn’t like it very much. It’s pretty much dead, although thankfully, the hard disks are still working, and hopefully some other bits too. Ended up having a fairly relaxed few days after that, though. On the Friday, I ordered new parts for a PC, including an Intel Core 2 Extreme Q6600 quad-core processor, Asus P5B motherboard, a new case, 700W power supply, and suchlike. These parts arrived on Monday, and I got the PC built. However, Windows XP gives a BSOD when installing when the BIOS is in IDE emulation mode for the hard disks, and crashes before it even lets me pick the hard disk when I use the proper SATA (AHCI) drivers. So that’s not so good. I tried installing Vista just now, but it gives me a somewhat odd “Cannot find D:\sources\install.wim” error, which I have a feeling isn’t simply a bad disc, but something more serious. I’m running memtest right now to see if there’s a problem with the RAM. It’s all a bit annoying when things don’t work, isn’t it?
The lack of computer however hasn’t been too great a hinderance at the moment, as I’ve been very busy since Monday with ents stuff. Freshers week starts on Saturday, and we’ve been busy sorting things out, rigging, and suchlike, with more to come. Also had a good few socials though – went bowling on Monday, had a few drinks yesterday, went out for a meal tonight. I’m lighting the opening bop and the Reggie Yates night on Saturday and Sunday with Greg, so that should be something to look forward to – we have various fancy lights hired in for the week. Anyway, basically, a week and a bit to go with freshers stuff, and then it’s straight back to work, with scary third year modules and suchlike. It should be good fun, if a bit challenging – particularly as I’ll be absolutely shattered from all this stuff so far! I could really do with an extra day between every other pair of days, simply for me to rest…
Anyway, back to this computer. It would be rather a pain if I have to RMA stuff, grr. Hopefully I can figure out what it is.
Blackpool!
Filed under: — orudge @ 01/09/2007 8:02 pm
Well, as some of you who have spoken to me on IRC and suchlike may know, I went to Blackpool yesterday with Ann, Iain and Phil, to see the Illuminations being switched on by none other than David Tennant, aka the current Doctor Who. Good fun was had, and various artists seen, including Natalie Imbruglia and Natasha Bedingfield, with Dale Winton hosting. Also featured some less glamourous acts such as the girls who did the “Sheilas’ Wheels” advert, and McFly. 😛 (Although Ann was really rather excited about the last one.) The best photos are up on Facebook here and here, although various others were taken too. A lot of them were quite blurry though, due to darkness + 20,000 people in a crowd not being an ideal combination when it comes to attempting to take photos. I’ll probably put the rest up on my blog, along with those TT meet pictures, one day. 😛 I also took various videos, a couple of them are up on YouTube now, such as this one of David Tennant arriving, and this one of him turning the lights on:
I’m heading back up to St Andrews a week on Tuesday, so that should be fun. I’ll probably have to take two trips though (which means three journeys altogether, obviously), unless I can manage to get rid of some stuff! Lectures don’t actually start again until the 1st of October though, so still a month to go for that!
And now some puppies will lick your face
Filed under: — orudge @ 07/08/2007 10:21 pm
August already… yes, I make a similar exclamation every month, but time really does seem to fly. Somehow, it’s over half way through the summer holidays already. A month and a bit and I’ll be off up to St Andrews again – probably going to head back around the 12th or so, to give me time to get everything in order. Then there’ll be freshers week preparations to do, followed by freshers week itself. Then, on the first of October (now that seems quite a long way away, I must say), third year will begin properly. It looks like it’ll be a busy year, and quite a step up from second year. Not looking forward to a couple of modules, but we’ll see how they go.
Life isn’t too exciting here in North Wales at the moment. Been doing work in the garden and suchlike recently, when the weather’s been good enough for it. Grandad’s TV died last week, so that’s been replaced with a nice new 32″ widescreen HDTV. Market day in Mold tomorrow, so we’ll head in and do the usual routine. And that’s about it for now. I’m looking forward to getting back up to St Andrews, most definitely.
Harry Potter (no spoilers)
Filed under: — orudge @ 21/07/2007 8:11 pm
Just finished reading the seventh book, which I’ve been doing since it arrived this morning. After all that, I feel a bit dazed. Kind of like I did when I finished the sixth book, really.
Spam
Filed under: — orudge @ 10/07/2007 6:42 pm
“Akismet has caught 56,755 spam for you since you first installed it.”
That’s on the blog alone, in the space of maybe a year or so. I’m very tempted to add support for Akismet to my contact forms and so on – the Comments section on the Ultimate Transport Tycoon Game Repository (in sore need of an update) had many tens of thousands of bits of spam a few months ago when I checked it. The easiest thing for me to do then was just to disable comments, and empty the majority of the comments from the database. I’ve also got a few crude anti-spam methods in my contact forms, but I’ll still get several bits of junk flung at me daily.
Oh, and in the minute or so I’ve been writing this, Akismet’s total spam number has gone up to 56,756.