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Blog: The Life Of A Supreme Ruler
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!
Happy birthday, site!
Filed under: — orudge @ 29/11/2007 5:20 pm
Yes, I missed the actual birthday again, but yesterday, owenrudge.net turned eight! Eight years… time does fly! Eight years and one day ago, back in 1999, I launched “Owen’s Visual Basic Workshop”, and, after many changes indeed, here we are today, with a nice new design, and the odd bit of updated content too! It’s also funny to think that some of the content on the site is now 11 years old (the 1996 archived stuff in the blog) – madness! And apparently, I can’t end a sentence without an exclamation mark!
Anyway, who knows where the site will go over the next year? Probably not too far, admittedly, as I’m rather busy with real life, although I’ll hopefully find some time to finish up the new Repository at some point. We’ll have to see… some exciting things in the pipeline, potentially.
Happy birthday, owenrudge.net!
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!
The return of the guestbook
Filed under: — orudge @ 17/08/2007 3:16 pm
After being absent from this site for about a year, the guestbook is now back, with a significantly lower level of spam than previously. There’s still a bit kicking around, as I haven’t got rid of it all yet, but compared with before, there’s quite a bit less! Feel free to leave a comment if you have anything to say! I’ll work on the theme for the main owenrudge.net guestbook soon – the TT Station guestbook is fully-integrated into the site design, though. Have fun!
The Ultimate Transport Tycoon Game Repository: version 2
Filed under: — orudge @ 16/08/2007 10:50 pm
Well, the other day, GoneWacko inspired me to start working again on the new version of the Repository. The old version hasn’t really been updated since it was written back in 2001, and it really shows. Particularly the fact that most of the links to scenarios are broken. The new site works rather nicely, and can analyse saved games to pull up a ridiculous amount of data, all nicely accessible from within the site. Hopefully, the inspiration will last long enough for me to finish it and get the site out sometime in the next few weeks. We will see. Got any suggestions for features for the new site? Let me know!
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.
TT station update: new version of soundtrack MP3s uploaded
Filed under: — orudge @ 20/07/2007 6:55 pm
Some news from the Transport Tycoon Station: as well as a few assorted minor updates, I have uploaded an updated version of Mircea Pavîlcu’s rendition of the Transport Tycoon Deluxe soundtrack to the site. This fixes some issues with the bass in the previous version. You can download the MP3s here. There’s also a new download available that contains all the MP3s in a single zip file. Give the music a try, it’s good. 😉
Updated version of soundtrack MP3s uploaded
Filed under: — orudge @ 12:00 pm
I have uploaded an updated version of Mircea Pavîlcu’s rendition of the Transport Tycoon Deluxe soundtrack. You can download the MP3s here.
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.
It’s my birthday!
Filed under: — orudge @ 09/07/2007 12:56 am
Well, 20 years old today, I was brought into this world. And today, I’m no longer a teenager. I guess this is where life starts getting a bit more “serious”. Maybe not for a couple of years, though…
The rain
Filed under: — orudge @ 06/07/2007 5:28 pm
When will it end?
The TT-Forums Meet
Filed under: — orudge @ 30/06/2007 8:36 pm
Well, today was the day of the first official Transport Tycoon Forums meet, in Birmingham. It was a bit of a struggle for me to get there, due to the car deciding it didn’t want to start, but I eventually got there, an hour late and £15 out of pocket. Anyway, much fun was had by all – there were a good 14 or so of us there, I believe, and it was an enjoyable affair. Pictures to follow later (they’re already up on Facebook – I nicked the one you can see tagged with this article from DominionSpy), and video to follow in the next few days likely enough, once I’ve edited it all together. 🙂