06-07-03

It’s Sunday night and the end of a long week. I started the week feeling very ill indeed and didn’t make it into school until Wednesday. Wednesday night I jumped on a train to Norwich with Sis, spent the night in a “goth flat” above a curry house and had a look around UEA. I have to say it was a lot better than I was expecting. OK, so the main University is a concrete jungle, but if you look beyond the grey monstrosity in the middle you notice that it’s placed in gorgeous countryside with a lake, sorry, a broad. J completely failed to explain the difference between a lake and a broad to me, “I’m no geologist” he claims – at last something he doesn’t claim to know more about than everyone else 😛 Anyway – the concrete monstosity is actually quite nice inside and the computer labs were probably the best I’ve seen so far. Place felt quite homely too, could just be because I’d spent the previous night in the city. At least I didn’t wander into a room I shouldn’t be in and ask the Dean for directions like I did at Lincoln! “I don’t know these things, I’m just the Dean” – oops. After already spending waay too much money on train fares and fast food I bought some guitar strings and went home.

I didn’t sleep too well on Wednesday night, I was programming in my sleep again and kept waking up with an urge to write things down. Everyone I know has tried to convince me that I should do next years computing coursework in MS Access because it fits the syllabus best, AARRGGHH! WHY?! I won’t! I refuse! I’m also even more undecided on whether I want to do Computer Science or Computer Systems Engineering and whether it even matters. Conflicting advice only contributes to me not really knowing what I want to do.

In Norwich I was explaining to J and Sis that one day I’d like to have a Landrover (the old style ones) and a VW hippymobile. J of course pulled down my dreams. The landrover was unsafe and the hippymobile too hard to get hold of. He said they were sooo difficult to get hold of you’d have to pay a fortune for them. Now, if there’s one thing I like doing its proving J wrong – because for some unknown reason it very rarely happens. So, two days later I bought one. A 1979 Volkswagon Camper with a Devon Conversion, for £1650 (after some haggling) which I think was a bargain. It needs a little work but it’s basically sound and has a fridge, two gas rings, a grill, a toilet, lots of lights and a fantastic Denon sound system I can plug my mp3 jukebox into along with a brand new awning only used twice. The adventure has begun! Now as soon as I pass my driving test I can actually drive the thing myself – it’s currently owned half and half between my parents and grandparents whom I bullied into buying it – mum didn’t take much pursuading though! Just means she can’t get a new car to replace the rotting old ellie epic metro for a while 🙁 So, the hippygeek finally has a hippymobile!

Sis went to her prom and thorougly didn’t enjoy the food. She described one of the sauces as tasting very much like “Yack Semen”. Now how exactly she knows what “Yack Semen” tastes like is still undergoing heavy debate, but remains the source of much concern for all involved. J corageously (Oh dear we are struggling with spelling today) got the mail server working and brought the dev server back from the dead earlier. Well done J.

01-07-03

I asked about my problem with my sound card in the weekly ALUG IRC meeting and they managed to get me listening to tunes within about 10 minutes. All I needed to do was disable my onboard sound properly in the BIOS and about two commands in a shell and I had surround sound!

I saw this in a forum on Gnutella.com and thought it was fantastic:


Subject: the matrix has the answer
Date: September 8, 2002 @ 5:15 AM
I wrote this when i was downloading a song and had nothing better to do. i thought it was kinda funny. you won’t understand it if you hav’nt seen the matrix.

Scene 1
I dont know who struck first, us or them, but I know it was us that skorched the sky. throughout human history mankind has relied on the copyright laws to protect thier busineses. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

the RIAA gain a substantial amount of money each year for their efforts to wipe out the abuse of copyright. combined with a form of brain washing. the RIAA had found all the money they would ever need.

Scene 2

Admin:
firts of all you must remember, do not try and bend the copyright laws, instead, only try to realise the truth, there are no copyright laws. its just something the RIAA have in they’re heads.

gnute:
the RIAA, what are they?

Admin:
twats. they can move in and out of any software still hard-wired to “their” system. this means that anyone who spams, is potentially an RIAA agent. we have survived by swearing at them and hacking them, but they are the gate-keepers, they are guarding all the laws and they are holding all the keys, this means that one day, someone will have to fight them.

gnute:
someone?

Admin:
i wont lie to you gnutella, almost every music provider who has prevaled against the RIAA, everyone who has fought them has been taken off the web. but where they have failed, you will succeed.

gnute:
why?

Admin:
i’v seen the RIAA send a guy to Jail, men have written entire books on the subject and affected nothing but paper. but the fact remains that the RIAA is based in a world which is built on laws. because of that they will never, ever, beat you.