Post from Blogger API

Don’t You Just Hate itDon’t you just hate it when something beeps or makes a noise very briefly, and you have no idea what it was?

Something in my room just made a three tone jingle. My phone doesn’t show signs of activity. My computer shouldn’t have made any noises at the time, and there are a billion other electrical gadgets in here that – until now – haven’t made a peep. This is annoying.

Post from Blogger API

HiThought I’d just post to give people feedback on how im doing. The hotel is very nice and im thoroughly enjoying the environment. The other 19 students are great company and not at all like the stereotypical computer science students we get at uni. The workshop sessions are very interesting and extremely worthwhile. Tonight we went to pizza express which was a rather lovely pizza restaurant in Winchester, which concluded an evening out at the bowling alley. Tomorrow we meet the uk managing director of ibm, Larry Flint and have a bbq at the lovely IBM club house, as well as another day of workshop. More soon!


This post was made with a trial version of BlogPlanet, a photo blog client for mobile phones. For more information visit www.blogplanet.net
.

Off to IBM

I’m going to be away for a few days at a rather tasty four-star hotel in Winchester, for an IBM E-Business Workshop (which looks very interesting!). IBM are paying for board + meals, etc. so I’m going to thoroughly enjoy it 😀

I’m not looking forward to my email collection Thursday morning 🙁

Post from Blogger API

The Linux graphical environment just confuses me sometimes. I’ve installed Redhat 9 on my shiny new computer, and windows seem to take ages to load – Mozilla is incredibly slow to load, as are most other apps and Terminal (which I’m admittedly more comfortable in anyway) won’t load. It just says “Starting Terminal” on the taskbar for about 10 seconds then disappears with no error. I’ve heard (from m’learned Linux-friendly colleagues) that I’m using the wrong ‘window manager’ – I’m using KDE I think – it was one of the two default options so I’d assume it would be fast/reasonable enough!

Help!? Should it really be this slow?

Post from Blogger API

Randomness

Last night, while in Portsmouth, a friend suggested that we visit the sweet shop. It was 12:30am. I thought he’d finally lost it, but lo and behold, the shop was open. This, in my books, is amazing.

So, if you’re in Portsmouth in the middle of the night with a sudden craving for licquorice allsorts or Murray Mints, go to Albert Road (I think), between the King’s Theatre and the pub on the corner. The people there are very friendly and there is a huge selection of confectionary.

We call it the Vampire sweet shop. It’s open freakishly late. Tell your friends.

Post from Blogger API

As if Five were Enough

I decided to get a new computer the other day. I also finally bit the bullet and got a DVD Writer (something I’ve been meaning to do for ages but the price was prohibitively high). Part of the new computer’s tasks, alongside menial backups and websurfing when main PC was busy, was to write DVDs.

I’ve gotta say, I’m impressed! The PC Chips Motherboard with onboard everything (including CPU) works quite well. The CPU is 734Mhz, but since I’m not using it for games it works fine. it has 256Mb and an 80Gb hard disk, totalling something like £150 – inc. VAT. Hooray for eBuyer.

As is mentioned countless times in the reviews (although I misread them slightly) – you need to swap the ‘Clear CMOS’ jumpers over so it’s off. I also discovered (I’ve never built a computer before) that you need RAM installed before the computer agrees to power up 🙂

If anything goes tits-up I’ll reveal, but so far I’m quite impressed.

Post from Blogger API

Okay. The rather unexpected traffic from Slashdot has subsided now – that was fun 🙂 and I’m happy to report that my site stayed up throughout! Excellent.

So… what else has been happening in the world of Sven lately? I went to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play at the Southampton Rosebowl on the 31st Aug with my friend, Sarah. That was very good and we had a great evening. I have a few photos from my phone, but they aren’t too good (also, note to self: next time take something to sit on).

Speaking of phones I have a new one. Nokia 3650. Java and GPRS enabled so I can blog on the move (although doing so too often brings cries of ‘you sad muppet’ from those around me…). I wouldn’t have gone for such a big phone but the four requirements I had (infrared, bluetooth, vibrating alert and voice dialling) were only satisfied by that phone, and some awful other Nokia….. I also switched to Vodafone since Orange were really starting to piss me off with their flaky coverage and Pay as you Go’s expensive calls.

The Blogger API is now at a stage where I can post to the blog from one of many applications (also, as above, from mobile devices too…) – I just want to add MetaWeblog support now, then wait for the Echo/Atom API to come around and get to work on that as well.

In the near future, I’m looking forward to going to IBM for five days near the end of this month, for an E-Business course. Sounds great, and it’s all paid for.

Finally, in the immediate future, tomorrow I’ll be calling up my university to find out whether my Theory of Computing retake went well. I could have an entire set of posts dedicated to my gripes about the system….. but I’ll leave it for now 😉

I realise as well, I really need to get categorisation sorted out. You’ve probably just read through that entire article hoping for some interesting gossip about RSS or Coronation Street, and have had to read through my life story instead 😛

Post from Blogger API

After being Slashdotted the other day I’d decided to avoid posting for a bit (they’d not used the permalink so the latest post was the most visible) but I’ll post more v. soon now!


This post was made with a trial version of BlogPlanet, a photo blog client for mobile phones. For more information visit www.blogplanet.net
.

Number Crunching on the Beeb

From the BBC:

"In a market estimated to be worth £7.6bn in total, £6.1bn is e-commerce – something the BBC isn’t involved in.

Another £1.6bn is accounted for by internet service providers – again, a market the BBC isn’t in. "

…am I reading it wrong or do those numbers not add up properly?