Ben Francis

iMen seems to be kicking off again – what with DeepDown having a new lease of life. Also we’ve started more in depth discussion of a report which I wrote a foreword for a while back. The document was by a sixth former in Hertfordshire and was given to the head teacher of his school as a suggestion to the goveners that the school should adopt Free and Open Source Software. The reason the discussion started was that some changes that slef suggested didn’t get included in the final document, and the general feeling was that it was all far too rushed (and factually incorrect) and could hae a damaging effect.

A new version is being discussed which may be developed on the iMen site. Apparently the document was discussed at an ALUG meeting in Norwich too. We’ll see where that heads. J and I are currently working on revising the definitions in the Glossary. I also found out some of J’s opinions on copyright for documentaiton which I’d like to discuss further.

Some progress was made on computing coursework. I’ve got my tables set up in phpmyadmin the way I *think* they should be and some sample data too. I’ve been playing around with queries and text primary keys – I abandoned the latter because it was a bad idea.

Mr C got a parcel from firebox.com containing a funny looking frisbee, an “orgasmatron” which he tried on Mr T amongst other people, a free bag of sweets(!) and some bags of air for packing which were christened “Lily’s breasts” but were then all popped because Ruth’s reaction to the bangs was priceless!

I got in a mard with laura because she yelled something obscene about me across the school hall, but then we made up 😛 When Mrs Ch caught up with Wez about his UCAS form he promptly ran through the school – ran across the dining hall yelling “I hate personal statements and I hate life” (much to the amusement of some members of the lower school) before running outside and jumping up and down. We all blew kisses to him from the IT Annexe window and he hugged paula before walking into a door on the way back in,

Argh, it’s tomorrow again.

mmm, cold pizza.

Let’s give this a try. Logjam – just apt-get installed it. Not sure quite why having a separate app to update my journal with is particularly useful, but let’s suck it and see. Might try a command line one later or maybe even try to get one to run on my phone… except I really don’t have time.

The good news is that I got an offer today for CS at Nottingham. The bad news is that they want AAB. From a U to a B in maths. Hmm. So. Do I slog my guts out for even a remote chance of getting there, or do I relax a bit and put UEA as my first choice. May even find out that I wouldn’t like Nottingham anyway.

My current thinking is to put Nottingham as a first choice and UEA as my insurance offer – but I know I’ll still be disappointed if I don’t make my first choice. I haven’t even told them I’m thinking of shifting my year of entry yet! Well we’ll see how all the other offers come through – wonder what will happen with “Philosophy and Computer Science” at Warwick (don’t ask). I’m not even sure if Computer Science is what I want to be doing – still worrying I should have chosen something more engineering or even design. Sheesh, what a lot of uncertainty.

After the stress of all that I went to a games lesson last period and played badminton for about an hour and a half. Not content with the battering my body had taken from that (hey, I’m not used to all this exercise) I went and amused a load of year sevens by joining in their dance practice in the hall for a laugh. Loud music, lights, strobe, smoke – what more could you ask for? Oh I do miss stage crew. Yup you guessed it, time wasting again.

I’ve just about organised sitting in on some lower sixth stats lessons after christmas, so I’ll be doing even more maths. To be honest maths is making quite a lot of sense recently – it’s just there’s so much of it to remember. I’ve just got to learn not to blank out when it comes to an exam.

I’ve just watched Swordfish again, excellent film, although not quite as gripping as I remember. Certainly doesn’t have the re-watchability of the Matrix Triology. I finally found out why all three books in the Schrodinger’s Cat Triology all say Part One.

Got stuck on some SQL again today, but J is coming to the rescue with a book.

Quadruple free in the morning, think I’m going to get out of bed? Think again.

Well OK I got up at 10, tried to fix the stylesheets on hippygeek but not doing too brilliantly and still won’t validate. I don’t think I can do much about the stylesheet on livejournal without a paid account. I’ve picked the template I like but the fonts are too damned small 😛 and conflict with my hippygeek stylesheet.

I spent a large amount of time today discussing the bus timetabling system for my computing coursework with Mr M. mchicago got me a bit further on track but there are still things I don’t know how to do in SQL, think I may need to read up a bit. My entity relationships are getting nearer to vaguely correct now – the data entry for this thing is going to be phenomenal.

I got a conditional offer from UEA for computing science on Saturday, 280 points – with my physics AS I reckon that translates to BBE! Not sure they’d accept an E in maths though 😉 Hopefully more offers soon.

Wez brought his new disco speakers into school today to try out in the hall, niiiiice. Pranced around the hall to the sound of ghostbusters and bohemian rhapsody… Hopefully the school should be getting its new PA by Christmas, not that I’ll have time to play with it.

dev was being exceptionally slow earlier, but I think mchicago may have fixed it.

Right, maths.

So here it is, my first LiVEJOURNAL post.

I’ve been keeping a web log by various ugly methods for a couple of years at http://hippygeek.co.uk (hmm, wonder how you do hyperlinks on this thing), but hopefully now posts are easier there will be more of them.

I’ve always thought web logs are an interesting concept. We have this huge computer network called the Internet with terabytes of free space so we have to find something to fill it all with. Perhaps keeping your diary online is a little… extrovert – or perhaps it just means you think people might actually be interested in the mundane things you do on a daily basis. Maybe we want to tell the world what we think of it, or maybe it’s to keep our friends from far and wide up to date with what we’re up to and hope they won’t forget us. Who cares tola, just type.

Thank you mchicago for the code I shamelessly stole from you to put this livejournal on my web page and thanks for the access code I needed to create an account. And bouncykaz, I still love you whether you like it or not, so deal with it.

Let us blog our way into the future together.

Oops, long time no post. So what’s been happening for the past couple of months? Well in summary…

• Went to Lucy’s 18th Birthday which was great, live bands and Guinness. We also played pass the parcel (!). Photos to follow.
• Worked at the Royal Albert Hall again as a sound engineer, this time for two days. Long old slog. Left Peterborough on the Friday afternoon, stopped off at a church in London on the way to help with a recording. Got to the hotel at 11pm after a pizza in Pizza Hut, in central London, on Halloween night. Got up at 6am the following morning, went to the Albert Hall. Recorded two brass bands and a 2000 person choir. The multitrack hard disk recorder (which runs on BeOS) crashed for the first time, ever in the middle of the recording! Didn’t leave the hall until 1am the following morning after loading up the lorry. Also photos to follow.
• Went to see Matrix Revolutions at the Broadway in Peterborough. Amazing. I will say no more.
• Had a dinner with the Round Table who are organising the Beer Festival for this coming summer. Had an argument over the date, it clashes with GCSE and A-level exams! They’re going to have to find three new sound engineers I think. Lovely evening other than that though, free Guinness 🙂
• With Mr C. (trivia king) on our team, we won the pub quiz in dyke, twice. More free Guinness.
• Saw Sigh, Lou, Paul et. al in Smiths, no Kaz though 🙁 Lou and Paul have dropped out of Uni! Both working at the leisure centre.
• Been litter picking in the park a fair few times with some great girls from school. Gained some press attention which was nice – doing our bit to keep out town tidy. Me, in paper, in wellies 🙂
• Played with NetOp and the open source VNC at school. Mr C gets carried away with being able to control desktops remotely :S But have some interesting ideas for spreading Linux around a bit more.
• Played with Damn Small Linux, a 48Mb Live! CD derived from Knoppix, amazing!
• Installed Debian (Potato) on my 486 laptop with 8Mb RAM and 160Mb HDD (which according to the documentation isn’t possible). It’s now connected to the internet! Only took me six hours…
• Spoke to J and Kaz on the phone! Yey!
• Got quoted nearly £90 for 16Mb of RAM for the laptop!! That’s including £15 for postage for something twice the size of a postage stamp…
• tralk (tralk.hippygeek.co.uk) has now been running for 115 days, rock solid. Just waiting for a power cut!
• Bought a Siemens SL45i on ebay. Bit disappointed with condition, but brilliant phone.
• Fixed my Nokia 5210. Had to order a screwdriver especially (t6) and buy a new microphone on ebay.
• Got dad’s credit card bill which I had to pay…
• Spent the past three nights drinking in town. Smiths are charging £2.60 for a pint of Guinness now! I’m going to have to change my drinking habits.
• Spent a lot of time worrying about things I haven’t done for school, and trying to prove, by contradiction, that root three is an irrational number

That’s about it I think 🙂

Woohoo! We finally got round to blocking net send on Windows NT/2000! That’ll fool ’em. Just hope we haven’t broken anything else in the process that’s all.

Someone asked for a Knoppix disk today! looks like the penguins are paying off. On the subject of Linux, according to silicon.com, “Rumour has it [Linus Torvalds is] a Guinness man as well.” Oh yes! The man has taste.

MChicago’s Live Journal is a little quiet recently, he must be distracted 🙂 Missing Kaz.

Let’s keep this post short, and get on with some work.

Wez and I have resorted to posting messages to each other in binary on the Bourne Forum after Rex Needle wrote in the Bourne Diary “If you wish to find out about youth activities or participate in discussions intended solely for them, then you must go elsewhere.” The plotting continues…

School open day was quite fun although a lot of work for a two hour event! I got to show off my Linux lab to people and try and convert them to free software. The main attractions were the giant tux penguins, the magic CD-ROM drive and networked battleships. In other parts of IT there was mystic meg (a projected face on the wall from a web cam that could answer all of your questions), a Lego Robolab, Computer disassembly, history of computers, VB games and the usual curriculum stuff.

Yesterday on the way home from school I noticed two girls (Britney and Jenny) were picking up the litter in and around the drained St. Peter’s Pool in the Well Head that I have been complaining about for ages, so I went home, got changed and returned with a black bin liner to help them. We may be back next Friday!

At lunchtime on Friday one of the dinner ladies, sorry, Lunchtime Supervisors told me off for walking up the “wrong set of stairs” and not ASKING if I could go up to the IT room… ?!! For some reason it really got to me. I go up there every lunchtime, so why was Friday any different? And what difference does it make to ANYONE which set of stairs I walk up?! If I could spell it, I’d use the term petty beurocracy.

This morning I went to the Post Office to send “The Cathedral and The Bazaar” back to the ALUG library and to post 24 letters for mum who is searching for her grandad. Then I went to the Library where they told me I would have to pay two pounds to renew “A Tour of the Calculus” from the British Library for the second time. Grr, not my fault I’m a slow reader.

This afternoon was mainly taken up taking up floor boards and wall panels, poking holes through ceilings and going in the attic to lay a network cable to connect Ashdaman’s computer to the Internet. Another two lights are now lit up on my hub and there are 5 computers on the network, mostly very low spec machines.

Mr C attempted to teach our computing class how to convert a floating point binary number into a denary one on Friday. He NEARLY managed it 😛 Oh and I found out the connection between the 12 days of Christmas and Binomial Expansion.

I have an inhuman amount of work to do this weekend so it’s about time I got started.

Wez is a nutter. This morning he got up at about 5:00am, drove to Skegness, went on a rollercoaster (twice) and drove back again, before school started. Why? “Stress Relief” !!!!!!! What a legend.

I posted on the Bourne Forum yesterday, but the words “James Wearing Smells” were edited out of my post by Rex Needle. Hmm. A little censor-happy me thinks.

Wez and I manufactured our very own fully XML compliant geek, end geek shirt today in textiles. Very much like the T-shirts seen on thinkgeek.com, only ours are real shirts and a hell of a lot cheaper. I’m sure some photos will follow open evening on Thursday.

Got a lovely email from ma KT today which cheered me up considerably. My DVD drive hasn’t arrived from DABS yet, they’re still trying to find me a power splitter, grr.

I’ve finally made Ben a web site, albeit not a very good one, to put his amazing flash animations on. wonchop.hippygeek.co.uk. Hopefully someone will spot his talent 😀

Still missing Kaz.

School is going OK, I got a decent mark in a recent maths test which is a good sign – still a long long way to go though. I’ve been pondering over what to do in my gap year if I take one, a couple of jobs in mind although the one in Dublin isn’t being advertised any more :'(

This weekend went to pot as it turned out I couldn’t get to Norwich. That means I missed the ALUG meeting and couldn’t return the book I borrowed and much worse, I probably won’t be able to visit Kaz until half term now. Major Bummer.

I’ve spent most of today fiddling with pointless things on my computer like wallpapers, getting GKrellM to look pretty and say “mmm, you’ve got mail’ in a sexy british woman’s voice and give me a live news feed. When I got bored with that, I started making my aterm colours (or should I say colors) just right with the tinting so I can see the text on top of the background, then another half an hour changing the colour blue it uses to display HTML text!! Get the impression I’m avoiding doing work? Yes, well.

Had a visit from two cousins today, one of whom I hadn’t seen for months. That was a nice distraction from my (non)work.

It’s school open evening next thursday which may be fun or may be a pain in the arse. Between watching A Beautiful Mind and reading more of A Tour of the Calculus I’ve been trying to sustain my enthusiasm for maths. I bought two DVDs for £7.99 from Blockbuster, which is a little odd as I don’t have a DVD drive… so I ordered one on dabs, and a power splitter cable to go with it… then realised I couldn’t afford to go to the Ceilidh in Rippingale.

GKrellM tells me that tralk has now been running for 50 days and it’s still running like a dream 😀 Considering I could only ever get windows XP to run for 10 days at a time before it became unusable I think that’s pretty impressive.

Oh, and this is very very very very very very very cool… Magnatune.