Oct
18
2005

UTP lunch

First things first, I just overheard someone on their phone saying “yeah, I’m in the library”….umm, no your not, your in a computer room, I would know because I’m here. The nearest library is well over 200meters away and in another building across a car-park and small park with water feature….I do wonder at times how some people manage to direct food into their mouths.

Anyway, to the matter in hand. I didn’t have the heart to make this entry yesterday, I was far too sleepy (not that I feel any more awake now, but I do have a 4 hour gap between lectures today).
Yesterday is my day off from Uni, and as such, I go to work. Work for me means run the network of a small primary school.

The network consists of about 30 desktop machines (1 for each classroom, a room with 17 of them in, a library machine and a few in the admin block) it also has around 35 laptops (maybe 10 of these are teacher laptops and are stand alones, the rest are either held by admin staff, or are part of the recent batch we were given which I yet to do anything with bar stack).

Now most of the network machines are on a workgroup based network with a variety of shared drives (soon to be NAS) providing files. The desktops run win98 and RM window box (which is like an attempt at a shell replacement, but RM style, so pants). Yes, I know this is a crap setup, but it has to stay, as these machines are used by children starting at 4years old (and it was like that when I got there). The laptops all run either XP pro or 2000pro bar one machine which I have on fedora core 4 for kicks.

Now yesterday was an inset day so the only people in were staff (and they were doing training in the hall), so I came in as normal to do 3 hours or so. When I entered the building I was informed that one of our switched was down (we have 3, 2 shit ones and one very nice cisco). Well, when I wandered into the store and had a look at my nice cabinet I could not help but notice that all the switches were on and the one in question (a 36 port beast) had a lot of lights on. So after about an hours worth of routing around etc I found, under a desk in the computer room the cable I keep plugged into a spare port (which I had there for when I’m working on laptops (pre wireless network)). When I followed this cable to its other end (which is normally meant to be free) I found some little bugger had plugged it into another spare port. Suffice to say, on of the little buggers had created a loop-back on one of my shit switches. But because it had been done the other side of my patching it had been very hard to trace.

It was at this point I thought “fuck it” and I took apart my whole network (pulled every jack out of every plug in my cabinet and spent 3 hours putting it all back in again). This achieved several things

a) my network was plugged together the way it should have been done had it not been pissed on by several engineers over a period of 3 months which they installed out fibre line and terminators for out internet link.
b) I allowed me to move around a few items in there (about 8U’s worth of kit in the end, just to give it a more logical layout.
c) I managed to have the cables neatly done using the cable management, as apposed to just run everywhere.

If anyone ever considers doing this to their network, don’t! and if you have no choice, do so much work beforehand. I went round with a laptop and drew up an excel spreadsheet of every port in the school, what room it was in, if it was used, what it was normally used for etc. I haven now have which port on which switch each item patches to….

Ok, I think that is enough for now. Although I will add, it did work after I did all this and I even managed to get the right lines going to the right IP phones…..I was so happy, so was reception…

Oct
11
2005

Let the war begineth

Ok, I can’t take it anymore, I have to write something about this, just to vent at least. I am currently on the computing floor of the watts building (Brighton University). I am sitting/working in the section with all the dual screen computers (there are about 50-60 of them). Now as I look around this section, and in fact, every time I have looked round this section I have noticed that I seem to be the only person that has either noticed there is another monitor or who knows how to actually use it. This is driving me up the bloody wall. Why can these people just piss off and use other computers, ones that their pea sized intellects can comprehend fully….ok, so as yet there haven’t been enough of them to stop me using a PC, but one day I tell you it will happen, and I shall hit the roof. I seem to be one of a rare breed that understands the beasts and actually uses them to make my life easier and faster (in stead of the growing number for whom the other monitor just provides yet more space to loose the mouse).

While I’m having a go at them (and as I still have 3 hours till my next tutorial) I shall take this chance the note down my other pet peeve with them. As far as I am aware, we have actually advanced beyond the 60Hz refresh rate these buggers insist on providing us with. I have never understood this. The machines on this floor are in identical groups and there is a different build for each group, so there is no skin off any sys admin’s nose if they set the refresh to the highest the monitor can handle at its chosen resolution. Now, granted, for many machines this does bugger all as they are TFT’s, but for those on CRT’s (which is the higher spec machines (as they tend to be for graphics)) they have just left them on default. These machines are for top end graphics for Gods sake; these people will never notice the benefit of having a CRT if some tart cant set it up correctly.

EDIT: ok, ive been at this computer for almost 3 hours and i have yet to see another person use their other monitor (many of these people have been using flash and photoshop….) *grinds teeth*

Oct
03
2005

Keep paddling

Why is it people just have to “go with the flow”? Actually, while I think about it, that’s a silly statement, as there are so many people in the world that you cant help but go with the flow. Even those who are supposedly “going against the grain” are in fact doing nothing more than going along with all the other millions of people doing that self same thing. Perhaps a little more needs adding to that then. Perhaps it should read “why do people have to go with the flow without knowing which way it is flowing, let alone why its flowing that way”.

This rather neatly brings me onto the ipod (question my judgment you may, but if I don’t get distracted for the next 10 mins all will be revealed). Now the ipod is a wonderful product, have no fear ipod lovers, I have little in the way of problems with it (bar the ipod nano, but most people should have problems with by now). It is for the most part a very nice little bit of technology wrapped up in a box that most people seem to nye-on faint over. What however I do hate in leaps and bounds is your typical ipod owner. Now although I have not seen any demographics charts for the sales (well, end users) of ipods, I think I can make a fairly educated guess that there are a good number of teens and adults in their early twenties with them bashing against their leg in their trouser pockets. Your typical ipod owner seems to think that they hold the solution to all the worlds problems in the palm of their hand. I regularly see posts in forums saying merely “get an ipod” when people are talking about a completely different mp3 (well, music is more fitting) player. Do they not understand that this is not the greatest invention since sliced bread, just a fairly featureless hard drive that costs more because its white and has fruit on it.

Myself I think apple is no longer the same from this ordeal. From what it has gained in popularity and sales, I think it has lost in diluting its own brand and removing some of the “class” and exclusivity that has surrounded the company for years. Now a few years ago, they got away with it because apple were not quite ready for the impact the ipod would have when it was released upon the masses so they were quite hard to come by. But as apple has sold more of the little white bundles of joy, they cease to fill people with amazement when they see them. Now of course the rose tinted glasses have begun to come off and people have started to see that there are better, more advanced, more interesting players out there on the market. They have now started to see the ipod for what it really is, a very nice looking mp3 player, but nothing more. It can’t even claim the “style icon” badge anymore, as to be stylish, you have to “go against the grain”, not with the masses. This just leaves us with probably over a million people trying to hold on to “the glory days” of the ipods early life, thinking they still have a style icon, thinking they are still being the rebel and gone against the grain when they are in fact just “going with the flow”.

Sep
22
2005

Roaches

Ok, I have been brewing rants about several things over the last few days, so I now feel I can’t hold it in any longer.

Norton vs McAfee

Now I know this is an age-old battle, which one better. I see this old chestnut brought up all the time in the tech section in my forum of choice. The problem is, no one seems to really know. I have seen horror stories from both sides. Just today I saw someone saying that McAfee had let in 1000’s of virus’s. I also saw another one by some one saying they had to turn Norton off just to surf the web. I myself do no understand this. How on earth can this be? I mean, they are both major products in consumer land and have a huge following on either side. But there is no way one can be deemed better than the other, as there are glowing reports and stinking rants for both widely available. I have therefore concluded that this has nothing to do with the product at all and they are both perfectly capable applications (I have Norton and have used McAfee with no problems) and it is entirely (yes, not just a little, but entirely) the fault of the stupid people using them. Therefore, new rule #1 people who post a problem with them on a forum should have their browsers redirected to a simple, easy to follow guide to how to turn of their computer and then disable the on/off switch.

Random

Next, in reference to this, I have decided that actually, the sending the money collected to open office is more a of a long-term scheme (as 1.1.5 only just came out today, so 2 is a long way off). So I think as a nice fast (labour style) quick recovery solution we should send all the money into the porn industry, helping them get better listings on their sites so they are not so badly beaten by “random”.

floor

I now have a wooden floor in my room (well, now = as in for the last half a year and wooden = as in laminate) and the dirt on it is driving me up the wall. I would love to know where it comes from because I’m really not sure. I mean it has no distinctive look or feel to it, its just dark and there. It does make me dread what my old carpet was like underneath the top layer of fibres. On another not about dirt. I would also love to know why may fan blades seems to have some black scum on the blades (it takes in air from the window). I am slightly concerned as to how much of that stuff is in my lungs since my fan has only been here for about 3months, and I’ve been on this pair of lungs for over 19 years…hmm

Thumb twiddling

What the hell is my computer doing with all its spare time? I saw all about this the other day (a project where you download their little prog and when your PC is idle it goes off and works for them doing something productive (or so they tell you) with its time). So since I saw about this I’ve been trying to come up with what my computer actually does. I’ve now settled on two idea’s. The first is that my files are playing hide-and-seek on my harddrive (which would explain this) or my computer is actually working on a cunning plan to lower it self out of my window to freedom (which would explain why I cant find my bag of salvaged DC motors anywhere).

Tell me what’s really going on

Oh I do so hate politically correctness. I went to an event for beaver scouts (which I helped out at) where at the end they were told that the winners were $foo and the runners-up were $bar and the rest had done well for taking part and so had also won…WTF! So now, these kids a) think that they are great at everything as they win all the time and b) think that other people are better winners , so however hard they try, even if they win, they still loose. What kind of twisted world is this?

Sep
21
2005

Munch Munch

Ok, that’s it! I swear my computer has taken to eating my files! There was one particular file I was looking for that I’m sure I’ve seen in the last few days, that today I just could not find. I looked in all the places it should have been in, I then looked in all the places it could have been in, and then I looked everywhere else (via some searches) but all to no avail. So I ended up getting the friend who gave me the file in the first place to send it to me again ( for the record). Now I worked on it earlier in Photoshop, so just now, when I go back to the folder where it should have been and discover its gone, I go into Photoshop and try and find it in the recent list, but no, its not in there, and there are items that should have been above and below it. So I start the normal trundle through the places it could be….but once again, no luck. So next I go into my msn logs to confirm the name of the file and where it should be. This reports back to me that it should be where I have looked (yes, I am viewing hidden files). So in an act of desperation I just ran a search for the filename and low and behold, as I’m writing this LJ entry, it pops up….where of all places…my desktop! What the hell, I didn’t put you there! Argh, you stupid file, stay where I tell you to. Ok, either this machine is past it, or I require a straight jacket.

Sep
20
2005

Red eye

Ah the wonders of photoshop. I am all very new to this great art, but already I’m enjoying it. I was asked a short while ago by a friend to see what I could come up with in terms of modifications to this image. I was told it was for a band (gridlock’s) front cover and that it had to be “cool”. Hmm, well, lets see what I can do with this beastie then…and I set to work. 20mins later, the following images were made:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

well, that was fun.

Sep
08
2005

Posidrive

Please, for the love of all things good will you just stop suing each other! Why is it that every time there is a ruling in America, someone has to be sued? It seems like it almost become the norm. I mean, in the end it does little to no good, because if you sue them, they sue you back for damages from the original sue. So you might as well put a few layers out of jobs and NOT FUCKING START! Suing never proves a point, or damages anyone other than shareholders of insurance companies (as said companies end up paying the sues anyway). In fact, because the insurance companies end up paying (if the company doesn’t have the money) there is no real punishment either. Now yes, I agree there are times when suing is a sensible course of action to pursue. These are times like when someone has invented something, copyrighted it and then another company makes money from that idea (in effect stealing that idea), so suing for damages I think is quite appropriate. However, once that sue has gone through, that’s it, no more….put an end to it.

I mean, you end up starting a blame culture if you just allow people to sue for virtually any reason (normally because they are greedy bastards). Think about it for a moment, if companies are being sued a lot (as they often do by the afore mentioned greedy bastards) then to pay for all these claims, they are going to need money. Well, that money is going to have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is most likely going to be their customers. Therefore, as the companies put up their prices, they are going to force everyone who buys things from them to pay more. Now of course this isn’t going to bother the greedy bastards as they have shed loads of money from all the suing they have done, but it may well bother our hard working customer who has done nothing but earn their decent, honest living. So now, you end up with the rather odd situation where the company is screwing the people who have chosen not to screw it, yet not screwing the people who have chosen to screw it.

I do really hope this rather stupid system doesn’t fully make its way into the UK. For the moment, cases like this are rare, but I fear they will not be for much longer.

Sep
05
2005

What wheel? I can’t find it

I guess this kind of relates to this entry, but that’s not the point, I still feel like another on the subject. I am searching for a nice gallery script to use for websites/general image storage/photo’s etc and I have been looking through all the free/opensource ones (not that there is a huge option on the latter part when it comes to php scripts). Now as pretty as they all look and as many functions as they have, they still don’t do what I want. Now this is not because the feature I want is so advanced or so obscure that most people don’t see a need for it. Oh no, it’s far simpler than that. The feature I am so desperately looking for is simplicity itself. I want something that shows pictures, on pages and has an admin section to add them with, and that’s it. It however seems that to have something with just this is impossible. The people making these things want to be known for having the most features filled, advanced script on the web, not for making one that does what people want it to. It seems that they have re-invented the wheel so many times that they are no longer left with just a wheel. The problem is, I want the wheel, nothing more. Just something that rolls. I am now at the point where I am looking at building my own wheel (and from having hunted around on the web a bit, everyone else how has looked for a wheel has ended up building one too). Onwards dear friends, for now we must make it roll….

Aug
29
2005

This is a carefuly planned post

I say it’s carefully planned because it is most certainly not random. Where ever I go in the internet I am always seeing the word random.
For example, on my regular forum (www.golivewire.com) I regularly see topics starting off by saying something like “whats your favourite number?!?!?!?!?!?!?! WOW IM SO RANDOM” NO YOU’RE FUCKING NOT! ARGH. You are a 15 year old who thinks they are cool on the internet. Or the other one that really bugs me is the personal site (something that should really be culled) that starts of with some cheesy intro saying “hi, welcome to my new site. Its not really finished yet, its just full of loads of random stuff, hope you like it, sign my guestbook!!!!!!!!!!”. What is it with you people? Its not random, its just stuff that you thought was either funny or interesting, that is all. I did a Google fight to see quite how bad the damage to the beloved internet was….its worse than I could have possible imagined….

Just look what happened.

I would now like to see a £10 charge every time the word random is used on a website when whatever it is referring to is not truly random. All funds collected should go to OpenOffice as the new beta looks rather cool.

Aug
25
2005

Let the mass cull beginith

I would like to see an end to all free hosting with adverts. That means no more tripod, no more freewebs, no more lycos, no more angelfire, no more msn spaces ….nothing. It could then act like a mass cull of all the sites online that do nothing more than create money for people in advertising (who deserve nothing from this earth), allow so many people (mainly in their teens) to think they can do web design (frontpage has had a similar effect on the world) and just generally slow the whole place down. Google searches would become faster and more up-to-date (as less content would be there to index). The web as we know it was intended as a means for research material to be shared for global collaboration on projects etc. Just look at what it has become though as you stare out into a sea of trolls, pointless information, webcam shots and adverts. If people really want to have a personal site online, fine, I have no problem with that, but we should make them use proper hosting. That way that will stop millions of people who would just put shit up doing so.

Aug
24
2005

Recent Observations

Its seems that all the snails across the town where I live have got together and decided to have a “get in everyone’s way day”. From walking around outside for the past few hours I heard at least 4 crush beneath my feet and narrowly avoided those numbering in tens (I would guess in the region of 30). There was even an incident where the surface I was walking on suddenly had gravel on, which once stepped upon gave a sound very much like that that is given out by a crushed snail. I did move back several paces and confirm that this was not a snail (in the interest of keeping the numbers accurate). This does however make sense, as 2 days ago I was driving across town taking a friend home (a round trip of 10mins) when I had to avoid 2 hedgehogs. I have never before seen 1 hedgehog on the road before, let alone 2. The most plausible reason for these past events that I can conclude from this are that each type of animal throughout this area is taking a turn each day in a bid to reduce their numbers given the large quantities of our natural resources that they are taking up (namely in oxygen). I therefore thank the animals of this area in their bid to do something for the environment.

It occurred to me as we were driving through France on the most recent family holiday that we should try and introduce a genetically modified fly into the fly population of the world. Its most important attribute (other than killing off current flies to make it self the dominant species) is to be water-soluble. This way when you have several flies splattered across your windscreen your windscreen washer will be more effective at removing the annoying smears left by their innards.

The “baby on board” has been about the only “iconic” thing ever sold by Mothercare. It has been copied the country over by manufactures and I have no doubt has infiltrated itself into the cars of most well developed countries. It is however a sign that to this day I still see no purpose for. The best guess I have (which does seem to be the only real possible answer) is that it is there to inform drivers behind you to be careful (i.e not to crash into them). However, this makes little sense for several reasons. Firstly, if I were going to crash it is quite probable that I can do nothing to avoid that car. Am I sure like most people, I don’t want to crash the car. Secondly, if I were to crash, surely it makes more sense that I kill a baby (baby lovers of the world hold your horses, have no fear, there is logic). With a baby there is no certainty that it will reach the age of say 20, however, if I hit a car with a 20yearold in, we know full well they will get to 20, as they have done it. As the purpose of a race is to further itself (numbers wise) then we want the greatest chance to multiply, and that means knocking off the child that is less likely to reach the age where it can multiply. Surly if this is the case, we should now (like many boyracers already seem to) target these cars. My advice, remove these signs now.

Jul
22
2005

Quit while your ahead

Why cant you just let it alone? As I see it the world is always being pushed on, well, style wise. Why is this? Why do we have to see next years fashions and told we are wearing the previous years? Does this have a purpose (that’s a rhetorical question). I don’t understand why we are always looking to change a good thing and then force ourselves to learn a whole new thing. Now I know that people do need to re-evaluate products and ideas as someone will at some stage come up with an improvement for most things. But that’s the key, “most things”. There are some things that however hard you try you just will not be able to make any worthwhile modification on. I mean its like we just don’t know when to quit. Now I’m a great fan of cars, but when on of the major reasons I should have “this car” over “that car” is that “this car” does 0-60 0.1seconds faster than “that car” I get the feeling it just taking the piss. I mean who really gives a shit for that much of an improvement? No one, but yet we are convinced that we do and are now too willing to pay every drop of our well earned cash for something that will be seen as better in a few years time yet rarely is. This strikes me as all very twisted.

Jul
17
2005

Typo after typo afyer typo

Argh, my typo’s are pissing me off at the moment. Every time I look through my LJ I notice not miss spelt words, but just the wrong words. For e.g in the entry below this one I put “and” as apposed to “an”. I HATE doing that. It just makes people think I can’t talk/type and I don’t understand my own bloody language!

Right, now for more entry worthy err, entries. Having been hosting 7 sites for people over the last few months and having built a few, I am finally realising my mini dream! To actually have the reason for my journal title and my username online!
These two rather odd things have spurred for the name of the website I am now finally building. So of all the sites I have built, this is actually the first for me.

For those who care (which isn’t many) it is here Now I agree that it is just an “under construction” picture, but this is never-the-less a big step as this site has been planned for almost 2 years!

While I’m in a typing mood, I was listening to some Christians complaining about the shops being open through more and more Christian “events” such as Christmas and Easter. Now as I though about this, I don’t ever remember a shop being closed for any holidays of other religions…isn’t this just the country being a built more even handed about things. Now its fair to say that if they were to close for all holidays then the shops would never be open much, so the only other way to deal with this is to treat each day as any other.

Hmm, I paused just there for 10 minutes and now I really cant be bothered to get back in to “entry mode” so that will have to do it for now. I’m sure I was just at the rambling stage anyway.

Jul
17
2005

Idea disintegration

Whenever you watch the extra’s section of a DVD you will always find an interview with the “brains behind the film”. Now in these interviews I have heard thinking time varying from 2 years to 5 years. Now this is the time between when they first started thinking about that film idea to the time when they make it. Now just imagine you are in this time period and then you see a trailer for a film just like the one you are working on. How depressing must that be!

Jun
24
2005

Nope, it seems im still just a number

Take the MIT Weblog Survey
and its as boring as i thought it would be