Boiling A Frog

JobQuest

2005-11-25T09:51:00.000Z

09/08/05
Start registering with job websites. Over a two month period I received daily or weekly emails from Jobs.ac.uk, The Guardian, Jobsite, Monster, Reed, YourTopJob, TotalJobs, Jobserve, s1jobs, Milkround, CWJobs, Progressive, Castle Careers, Search, Graduate Jobs and perhaps others.

One of the most annoying aspects of "jobs by email" is that recruitment agencies seem to resubmit the same listings once or twice a week, so you're constantly sifting through what you've already seen. Another point worth making is that as a recent graduate I had little commercial experience. Most job adverts specify a minimum amount of experience (commercial or otherwise), and this was one item I would scan adverts for before reading them fully. If the job sites could add more structure to adverts so that I could restrict jobs emailed based on experience required, my inbox would have been lighter.

02/09/05
InPractice Systems
The Company: A Dundee-based company that produces software for GPs to use in medical centres.
The Job: Work on the new version of their system, which will have a thinner client than previous versions. System is uses Oracle, Java and Flex.
The Verdict: Offered the job the next day. I asked to delay making my decision for a couple of days due to the Civic Computing interview I had lined up, which I was more interested in.

12/09/05
Civic Computing
The Company: Website and content manager developers based in Edinburgh. Main clients are the Scottish Executive.
The Job: Join the development team.
The Verdict: Denied second stage of recruitment process the day after turning down INPS.

13/09/05
InPractice Systems ends
I phoned the recruitment agency responsible for the INPS job and declined the job offer. The job was quite interesting, but I was still waiting to hear from Civic. Also, it was my first interview of the year and it had gone very well. I decided that if I was offered a job based on an interview where I was trying to get experience for the coming months, I would be offered jobs at interviews I was fully commited to.

16/09/05
Wood Group
The Company: Energy services supplier based in Aberdeen.
The Job: Join a small development team building reports from large databases.
The Verdict: Turned down for job.

10/10/05
Mobiqa
The Company: Deliver bar codes and passes to mobile phones for clients. Dominate their market.
The Job: Join the development team
The Verdict: This interview was with the recruitment agency. I think I was offered a proper interview during the following week, but turned it down since I had found employment...

Company Net
The Company: Website developers, with a sub-company building E-Learning sites.
The Job: Join the E-Learning development team to update the framework that all the company's E-Learning sites are based on.
The Verdict: Offered the job that day. I am thrilled to have found a job which is appealing, and start looking into moving to the South of Edinburgh.

First NZ
The Company: Financial services company setting up new teams in the UK.
The Job: Join the development team. Early stages of job would be doing menial tasks.
The Verdict: Offered a second interview, which I turned down. I decided based on the interview that I didn't want to work in finance.

14/10/05
Company Net ends
The job falls through for reasons previously described.

18/10/05
Amazing (Phone Interview)
The Company: You should know this by now!
The Job: Join the Edinburgh-based development team adding new features to the site.
A 30 minute phone call with the recruitment agency for this job. I'm asked all the standard team role and communication questions. Compared with two phone interviews I had last year for jobs with large companies I do quite well, not leaving large pauses.
The Verdict: Offered a second interview.

02/11/05
ANMarts
The Company: Local auctioneers dealing mainly with cattle and motors.
The Job: Develop and maintain the company's website.
The Verdict: Turned down for job. During the interview it was explained that 50% of the job would be adding new content to the site. I suggested that during the job I would write a content management system to speed up this process, but apparently that would leave me with nothing to do instead. Also, the pay wasn't what I was hoping for.

03/11/05
Amazing (Recruitment Agency Interview)
I spent four hours in Linlithgow with the recruitment agency, together with 4 others in my group. We were tested for programming knowledge, verbal, numerical and logical reasoning, and given psychometric tests. We were also interviewed in an unusual way: the interviewer would ask a set list of questions, and write furiously while you stare at the top of his head and give your answer. You have to stare at his head because you are being filmed for future viewing. The interview also included choosing a topic from 5 options and giving a 5 minute presentation about it. I chose to speak about the Factory design pattern.
The Verdict: Offered a third interview.

17/11/05
Amazing
A slightly shorter interview, only three hours long this time. I was interviewed separately by 4 members of staff, each asking different styles of questions.
The Verdict: Offered a job!

My House

2005-11-24T11:05:00.000Z

Just five days after getting my new job, I went down to South Queensferry to look at flats. I viewed four properties, one of which was apparently the old Admiral's House out in the sticks. One of the flats was really nice, so I've paid for the agency to hold it for me until I get paperwork for my new job through.

My current plan is to move down the road next Thursday and start work the Monday after (I get to choose my start dates for flat and job).

To help with my flat search I found a nice Google Maps extension called Tagzania that lets you add arbitrary items to a personal map. The system's a bit tricky to use (you need to enter latitude and longitude instead of a post code), doesn't seem to work in Internet Explorer, and has some formatting issues, but it was better than sticking pins in my Edinburgh map.

Anyway, the map I made is on Tagzania, and you can quickly find my work and new flat.

Proper Job!

2005-11-18T16:51:00.000Z

After two months of relatively hard slog, I've managed to secure a job. It's with a very well known e-commerce company. I'm sure you know them. But I don't want to stick their name up for fear of being found amid search results. Trust me, this job will be AMAZing actiON.

I'm well chuffed!

Ships That Sink

2005-10-17T15:15:00.000Z

A lot has happened since my last post. I've been spending a lot of time trying to find a job, and have also been working for my dad doing basic accounting and data entry.

The job front went quiet for a while, but when I started working for my dad things suddenly took off. I managed to get 4 interviews within a week, 3 of them in Edinburgh. Since two of these interviews were arranged by the same recruitment agency, they managed to get them on the same day and to drive me between the offices (which were about 6 miles apart). In fact, all 3 Edinburgh interviews fell on Monday of last week.

So I drove to a Park & Ride just above the Forth (Ferrytoll in case you're wondering), then bussed into the city centre. One interview in particular went really well, with the boss saying he was really impressed with me. By the time I had reached the Park & Ride car park again on the way home, I'd been offered the job, and given a day to think about the position.

Given the long day spent travelling and talking, by the time I got home I was pretty shattered, but still managed to decide that I would take the job, so I phoned the next day to accept. The position was set to start on the 31st of October, so I had just over 2 weeks to find a flat or a room in a flat.

The process of unregistering from countless job websites is not an easy one. I spent much of Tuesday doing this, helping to lighten the load on my inbox and RSS reader. I also turned down a second interview with an Aberdeen company, and cancelled registrations with local agencies.

I spent the weekend (from Thursday to Sunday) down South with Fiona, celebrating her parents' anniversary. While there, I got 2 phone calls from recruiters looking to set up phone interviews with me, which I turned down. One was with Amazon.

On Friday, my soon-to-be-boss phoned with bad news. The company had just lost 2 big contracts, and have to lay off some of their existing programmers. Bad news for the company, and bad news for me, since they can't take me on if they're making redundancies.

I was thankfully able to get some emails out swiftly to some recruiters, most notable Amazon, and get myself back into the job market, though I couldn't do much without my laptop and a decent connection. I'm now back in the market fully, and have caught up on most of what passed me by in the past week.

Another saving grace was that I hadn't had enough time to find a flat and sign a lease, as that could have been extremely costly. Also, the company was able to give me a week's salary to soften the blow.

Outside the working world, I managed to catch up briefly with some old friends in Glasgow. I managed a 30 minute meet-up with Paul and Joe in the afternoon, and met up with a large number of people from my Glasgow course and Summer jobs in the evening. Meetings were too brief, though, and I aim to make it down again soon, jobs and everything else permitting.

Cold Patootie Tango

2005-09-21T17:05:00.000Z

I've had a music-fuelled time of late. I spent the weekend getting to and from Scarborough for the Rock in the Castle festival, of sorts. And yesterday I was in Glasgow for 3 Colours Red's last tour (though I've heard that one before - I've already seen 2 of Terrorvision's "last ever gigs").

Scarborough was quite a trial to get to. I drove Fiona and I to Glasgow on Friday, and picked up my sister, who drove us to Carlisle. I'd booked us into a guest house for only £17 each. I wasn't sure if the place would be habitable at that price, but it turned out to be in pretty good condition, except for the decor which was circa 1930, with the ceiling, curtains and walls all matching, and scary ornaments on the mantlepiece. But we got that room (which was huge) and a cooked breakfast for £17, so it was easily worth the money and the unusual decor.

On Saturday we travelled to a second hotel, this one just outside Scarborough, where the owner told us that The Wildhearts were staying at the same hotel. He got us excited for a bit, then we started having doubts. I'm still not sure he was telling the truth, but I can't figure out why he'd lie about it.

The concert/festival/day on a cliff itself was quite good, though the festival site was quite barren. In total there was the main stage (a mini stage compared to T in the Park) and the second stage opposite. When a band finished on one stage, another would start playing on the other. This was quite a good setup as you were sure to see everyone that played, but did mean that delays were costly, causing The Wildhearts to play for less time than they wanted to. Aside from the stage, there was a single beer tent (with a queue that never died, and was an hour long for a lot of the day), a couple of burger vans, and a bouncy castle. That was about it.

The 3 bands I'd gone to see (Plan A, Terrorvision and The Wildhearts) were all really good, and worth the stupid distance travelled, and the bitter cold we had to endure. I wasn't impressed enough with any other acts to consider buying their songs.

The defining moment of the day was when Ginger was on stage, alone with his banjo, and got the crowd to sing "Geordie In Wonderland" without any help from him. As Chris said afterwards, not even Robbie Williams can get a crowd to sing for him without helping out near the end.

QuoteEngine Mark 2

2005-09-15T11:00:00.000Z

I've done more work on the QuoteEngine. I've made it so that you can register a set of movies with the system, then a quote will be selected at random from that list. The idea is that people with personal websites could include a small piece of script (which I'll write next) that requests a quote and adds it to their site. I've also to look into making a stylesheet for the XML created so you can see the quote given. I'm quite happy with it anyway.

QuoteEngine

2005-09-12T14:41:00.000Z

Another addition to my website: the QuoteEngine. It's a simpler version to what I did as part of the Masters group project this year, and is in PHP instead of Java.

I'll hopefully add to this soon to allow people to register a set of films to select a quote from, so that a URL of the form QuoteEngine/user/me/ gives a quote in XML that can be planted in someone's website with ease. I'll also add the code required by Amazon to delay requests so that they only happen at most once per second (so please don't flood it before then!).

Masters Of Reality

2005-09-09T11:55:00.000Z

Wednesday was the last day of my Masters course at Aberdeen. All that remains is the mark for my project, and graduation in November.

The hand-in time for the dissertation was 12pm, so the fun started soon after. Lunch at the Bobbin, crazy night-time bowling at the beach, dinner at TGI Fridays, nightcap at Slains. Not much to report on from that night, just a last chance to have fun with the guys from the course.

I've really enjoyed my year at Aberdeen. The social side of the course was brilliant, and I'll miss that lab and all that went on there.

Familiar Realm

2005-09-04T20:30:00.000Z

Since I've pretty much finished my project (the hand in date for the dissertation is Wednesday, and I'm just waiting for my supervisor to finish his final proof-read) I decided to spend a bit of time on my website, just in case I need to give the address out in interviews.

So I updated the style, making it actually display reasonably well in Firefox. I also added my first assessment from the masters course - SilverStream. I thought setting up an account on MyJavaServer would be simple, but their architecture doesn't seem to meet any standards at all, so there was a lot of fickering about involved. I've not tested it fully yet, so there's bound to be a few links not pointing in the right direction.

Last.fm Hoffed

2005-08-09T21:18:00.000Z

I've been waiting for the new Audioscrobbler site to appear since Saturday, when they took the old version down. All of today the home page has said that today would be the launch day, but I didn't see anything change until just a few minutes ago.

I'm not that keen on the new pink style, and the charts are harder to read now, but I can live with that. I've still to investigate all the new features, but feel that it's important to point out that they've been hoffed! The page might have been fixed since I saw it, so here it is:

I'll no doubt get even more hoff-related traffic on this blog now!

Sporadic Movement

2005-08-07T22:09:00.000Z

I've just changed domain names for my website. I decided to do this a while back. I don't like the "rebootmenow" moniker much anymore, and thought it a bit childish to take into the more professional world I'll hopefully reach soon.

So, once the DNS servers catch up, my site will be at sgmorrison.com. I don't have time just now to redo the content, but it should improve over time. I hope to redesign what already exists, and add a working copy of the system I used in many assessments this year. I'll put it up in Java then in PHP assuming I find time to rewrite it.

Idea: Collaborative Jukebox

2005-07-19T13:53:00.000Z

I owe this idea to Emma, who mentioned last night having listened to a lot of Stereophonics recently, and had then heard it in 3 consecutive pubs she'd been to in the last week. I think I might've also heard the idea somewhere else before, though I'm not sure.

The idea is for everyone to store on their mobile phone a list of their favourite bands or songs. Obviously space is an issue but there's far too many obstacles to this idea at the moment for it to work yet. Give it a few years!

So, everyone in a pub has their favourite songs listed on their phone, and the pub's jukebox is able to discover devices (eg. through bluetooth) and retrieve these lists. It then builds a profile of the audience from this, and uses this information and some general genre info supplied by the bar (ie. the type of music they normally play) to choose what songs to play.

Whatever gets played is almost guaranteed to please someone in the bar, and it could be a great ice-breaker: when Britney Spears starts playing in the local biker bar, the secret pop fans can be singled out and chucked out. Everyone wins!

Nine Miles High

2005-07-16T18:05:00.000Z

I spent the last two days taking yet another break from work to watch Nine Inch Nails play their last UK date on the current tour. I'm quite glad I took two full days off for this because travelling from Heathrow to my friend's house in Greenwich took 3 hours, then another hour to get to Brixton from there for the gig, with similar times needed for return journeys.

Notable highlights: getting to see Julie again, although very briefly and after making her wait for an hour on her own in Brixton because I had her ticket. Sorry once again!

Tavelling across a large portion of London City without seeing any of it, by using the tubes. I did get to see some of the docklands area but not much, and it was far too hot to do any real tourism.

The concert itself. Some choice song selections like Hurt and Dead Souls. I was half-expecting Trent to be a bit introvert, and not really willing to interact with the audience, but he was very energetic and open.

A lady in the queue in front of us using a self check-in machine at Heathrow on the way home. I'd love to be able to slate the poor user interface design, but it was reasonably usable. Some points:

A screen appears asking if I'm travelling alone or in a party. Select "party". A list of all people I've paid for tickets for then appears, each with a tick icon beside it to allow you to checki the person in. On my first use of the machine I tried to hit 2 ticks, but the second press wasn't registered - I had to check in one person before doing the rest. That wasn't obvious, especially since the name list remained on screen long enough for me to hit two ticks.

The woman at Heathrow mentioned above was asked to enter her destination or flight number. On the given touch-screen keyboard she carefully typed "Edinburgh", but the last two characters were dropped (a rather arbitrary choice of a 7 letter limit on destination names). When "Edinbur" wasn't found, the woman checked her flights itenary for what I assumed would be her flight number, then typed "Glasgow". Keith and I struggled to keep straight faces. Perhaps the system knows that all of its desinations have 7 or less letters, but it might be nice to let the user know when the limit is reached and what's wrong with what they're doing.

The same woman's next job was to pick her seat on the plan. The screen displays a floor plan of the plane, with taken seats shaded red, free seats in green. The woman tried to select a couple of red seats, gave a two finger salute to the machine, then chose a green seat. A wee message saying "Red means you can't sit there" might have helped her out.

Idea: Music Listening History

2005-07-16T15:28:00.000Z

I am still addicted to Audioscrobbler, or as addicted as someone can be to a page of statistics. Just about every time I listen to music on my laptop I go there to see my recent listening habits. I was chuffed when I hit 2000 song plays, and when all 50 of my Top Artists had been played at least 10 times. I visit the page so much I actually donated to it. All very sad, I know!

Anyway, you can download the data for everyone's past listening stats from the site, and I'm toying with the idea of yet another graphics-related project. This one would use SVG (a nice graphics format) to display the relative popularity of an artist for a given user over time. It would show, for example, how I listened to Nine Inch Nails a lot more when their new album came out, and again in the days around the concert in London on Thursday (I'll write up about that soon, I'm sure).

You could select 10 artists from your history and get a comparative line graph of when you listened to them. And since everyone's data is open to the public, you could combine this with a comparison against general trends. Using SVG would allow you to update the graphs really quickly.

Just to clarify, I'm still working on my Masters (honest). These ideas are just floating around my brain, so I may as well write them down in case I forget them.

Idea: Open Source Image Suite

2005-07-16T14:32:00.000Z

I've been thinking over an idea in my mind for a few days now for a project that is probably beyond what I could do, due to having done very little work with graphics before, but which I still think would be a great benefit to the world of computing. I'll go slowly so that non-geeks can hopefully follow this.

Consider two software packages: Firefox and Eclipse. Firefox is an open source web browser that if you have not tried, you really should. It's far ahead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer with security, and allows for adding extensions written by anyone to give you far more power and more features than you can imagine. Seriously, you need to go and try it out. It's really lightweight (it doesn't use lots of memory) and is just so nice.

Eclipse may be less familiar, especially if you're not a coder. It's an IDE (Integrated Development Environment), which means it lets you write code, run it, debug it, and lots more from within a single program. Eclipse is quite special because it's open source too and so is free to download, and it's designed to allow anyone to write plug-ins for it, similar to Firefox's extensions.

Open source software is becoming more and more common in IT, and there's good reason for this beyond penny-pinching. If more people can see the code behind the scenes, there's more chance of bugs being spotted and fixed. This makes the software more robust and secure. This is all very good, and there's far more to be said for OS software that I won't go into, but it fails to address the financial side of things: how do the people who wrote and maintain Eclipse get paid?

One source of revenue for the Eclipse team comes from the plug-ins written for the system. If someone wants to charge people to use their plug-in, Eclipse get a cut of whatever they charge. Using this model, everyone can use Eclipse for free, and if you want extra functionality, you can get that too, and you might have to pay for it, but you only pay for the plug-ins you want.

As a counter example, consider Microsoft Word. Around the 2000 version Microsoft added Auto-complete (suggesting how to finish a half-typed word) to Word. The cost of coding and testing that feature would be included in the price of every copy of Word 2000 sold. Auto-complete was probably a feature requested by some of Word's previous users, but not all of them. A lot of people would be happy to pay a little less for Word if it came without Auto-complete, but that isn't an option. So with Eclipse's model, users pay for exactly the features they want, and plug-ins are only made for features there is a demand for, not for pointless additions like a talking paperclip that no-one would pay money for (unless you have a passion for living stationery and want to let others share your passion, in which case you'd make the "Talking Staple" plug-in open source too).

So where is all this going? Well I've always wanted a fairly powerful Image/Photo editing suite, but don't want to pay hundreds of pounds for it. I'm not asking for much functionality: something above MS Paint (which I don't think has changed significantly since Windows 95), but not with all the fancy filters and effects available with Photoshop.

I started looking for an open source image suite but only found Gimp (for Linux). I've used Gimp before and found it to be a very different style of interaction to most other image editors, and with a steep learning curve. What the world needs is an open source image editor that has a base level similar to Paint, and with the option to add plug-ins/extensions that give you all the extra flair that the likes of Photoshop offer.

As I stated earlier, I doubt I could create such a system, or even the architecture behind it, without some serious research into plug-in frameworks and the inner workings of image editors. Until then, it will simply be an idea. Still, I think it would be quite fun to try to get a business loan for this project: I can imagine giving a bank manager a guided tour of Firefox, then Paint and Photoshop, and letting him join the dots.

Park Life

2005-07-12T15:48:00.000Z

Work on my project has been put on pause for the last few days while I took in the sights and sounds at T In The Park. Getting back into my work is proving difficult, not least because I'm still quite tired from the weekend.

Here's a list of things to remember if you go to a festival. I personally would do well to remember these:

1. If you pitch your tent beside a perimeter fence, you might benefit from a quieter neighbourhood, but expect every guy within a mile to use the fence as a urinal. Also expect little sleep due to what seems like hundreds of people either jumping the fence or breaking through it, and the fence being replaced on an hourly basis.

2. Expect anything: on Sunday night, after watching Green Day, Fiona and I went back to our tent to find the front door's zip slightly open.

Me: "We didn't leave the tent like that."

I'd been really paranoid for most of last week about thieving, but had calmed down by Friday night, so this was a bit of a surprise. We opened the door fully, to find the inner door fully open.

Me: "We definitely didn't leave it like that."
Fiona: "That's because there's someone in our tent."

Some random guy was passed out in the tent. A shout of "Oi!" didn't get any response, so I started prodding his back. He stirred, looked around a bit, but still didn't seem to have all his wheels turning. I was pretty angry, shouting at him to get out of the tent, while still unsure if he would sooner attack us than give up his new-found bed, though the longer he took to move, the less likely a beating seemed.

Eventually he emerged, wearing only shorts and socks, with one trainer lying nearby and the other missing. By this time we were starting to feel sorry for the guy, since he hadn't touched anything in the tent (except my sleeping bag which he was lying under), and he was so wasted he's probably still today in that campsite, yet to be discovered by his "friends". So I try to work out where his friends might be:

Me: "Where do you stay?"
Random: "Coatbridge"
Me: "No, I mean where is your tent pitched?"

3. When you park your car, try to remember where you've parked it. Look for obvious cars parked nearby, or count rows, or something. We spent 30 minutes walking around a field of cars on Sunday morning. It's just as well we packed up that morning rather than at night, or we'd never have found the car.

Now for a quick review of the bands I saw:

Death From Above 1979: I missed their first song due to the huge queues from getting into the festival area. I could just make out the tunes I know from within what they played - the bass was too loud for and not really geared for an open stage, especially for a band whose sound relies so heavily on bass riffs. Not impressed was I.

Joss Stone: As expected, fairly entertaining, though she did swear a fair bit - I didn't think that was a good idea for someone I'd expect to have a lot of very young fans in the audience.

Audioslave: The best act of the weekend, by quite a distance. They played their own tracks with a lot of enthusiasum, and the covers were well done too. I would never have expected to hear "Spoonman" played, since it wasn't one Soundgarden's biggest hits, but it sounded really good with the Rage backing. They also played "Black Hole Sun" (Chris on his own with an acoustic guitar), a short instrumental version of "Bulls on Parade" followed by "Sleep Now In The Fire" in full, and "Killing In The Name".

The Killers: Seen from a distance but still within a really packed crowd. Basically, the annoying idiots around us made The Killers difficult to enjoy. All main stage acts watched after that were seen from further back to avoid the same happening again.

Foo Fighters: Still on form, thankfully. Dave was on fire for the first two songs especially, and played far more from the first two albums than expected.

Nine Black Alps: Added to the list of those I wanted to see late on, after pointed me in their direction. Their album "Everything Is" is really good, and they can pull off their material on stage with ease.

Eagles Of Death Metal: Just plain fun. They got the whole crowd going with "Stuck In The Metal (Middle) With You". And they had Dave Catching on guitar, though I doubt anyone else cares about that.

QOTSA: A very good show, but not quite of the quality I've seen them produce before. Perhaps suffering from Nick Oliveri's absence onstage, or from Josh singing songs originally recorded with Mark Lanegan on vocals, though Natasha Shneider did a good job on backing vocals and keyboard.

Green Day: Very much a stadium-style show - lots of crowd participation. They only managed about 10 songs in two hours onstage. Still very entertaining, and made some of their recent songs seem less annoying.

Also seen: Jimmy Eat World, The Streets (briefly), The Bravery

Tonight the BMI Shines

2005-07-04T17:37:00.000Z

I'm just off the phone with BMI, who have surprised me by having decent customer care.

I booked flights for to and from London for the Nine Inch Nails concert at the end of next week. Iain Wood's been kind enough to give my 3 friends and me some floor space for the night of the concert, and I gave him details of the flights so he could help us get around. He pointed out that our return flight was far too early (8:55am), and we'd be hard pushed to make it.

Very true - I'd obviously forgotten about 1 hour advanced check in at airports, the sheer size of London, and that I might like some sleep after the concert. So I went about changing the return flight time.

BMI's website: select a new time, get a bit shocked by their hidden costs at every turn, enter credit card details, get confirm... No, technical difficulties, come back later or tech support

BMI's tech support: "We can make the booking for you." Great, but the price quoted is more than what's on the website. "You should call the booking line."

BMI's booking line: "Tech support gave you the right price. If you want the website price, use the website(!). Wait a day or two then try again."

BMI's website: select the same time, get a bit shocked by the jump in price by over £100. Panic a bit.

BMI's customer care: I phoned to explain the situation and sweet-talk a discount from them, but the phone's battery died while on hold!

Email customer care: "All the above has happened, can I still get the original price? I have screenshots as evidence(!)"

And after all that, a phone call to say that they will only charge me the standard change of flight charge, so I'm quite well off for that. Commendable practice by BMI.

Head Like A Hole

2005-06-17T12:52:00.000Z

There is a certain lecturer, who also holds a position of power, at Aberdeen Uni that seems to have a real problem with the concept of time. When lecturing he would arrive late for every lecture, then started giving us grief about us turning up late.

Our course has a rule that all assessments are given back to the students with marks and comments attached within 3 weeks. Most of the time lecturers missed this mark by a week or two, but our friend was 10 weeks late, returning marks one day before the module's exam (so if my understanding of some basic part of the course was wrong, and he told me so in his assessment comments, I'd have one day to re-learn it).

His latest dive into temporal obscurity was an email sent today to inform us that we must attend a seminar on Monday morning. Normally you could expect our class to be around on a Monday, but only during taught modules. I'd imagine a few people on the course are taking a break this weekend and don't plan on being in the country on Monday. I'm actually heading to Glasgow for the weekend and had considered staying until Monday. Others might have arranged meetings with people for their individual projects at the time of the seminar. One working day is not enough time to set a compulsory seminar for.

Of course the seminar's speaker has probably known for weeks if not months when they are going to be talking to us, so there's no reason we couldn't have been given more warning.

In Radiohead's Honour

2005-06-16T19:43:00.000Z

I picked up a copy of the new Foo Fighter's album earlier this week, but am only now getting around to my third listen. It's been pushed aside by my need to listen to a lot of The Wildhearts before this weekend's Ginger show in Glasgow.

Anyway, I'd heard part of the In Your Honour a couple of weeks ago at Gaz's house, and as soon as it came on I thought I knew the first song. The starting riff was definitely stolen from somewhere, but I couldn't place it. The song was played again a bit later on and I tried really hard to focus on what my mind told me should follow it, but failed.

After being pained by this for two weeks, the answer finally revealed itself, and I'm annoyed I'm not the first to spot it. The riff is stolen from Sulk by Radiohead (from The Bends). Go away and think about it. Stick your dusty Bends CD/MP3 (if they can get dusty) on if you must, then realise I am right. Warning: this totally taints the quality of the first song on the Foos' new album.

I was expecting something different from the Foo Fighters this time: "One loud, one not so loud" is what the CD case proclaims. Having heard the first Foos album, and Dave's recent Probot adventures in metal, I was expecting the first CD to be really heavy, rough-edged thrashy songs, and the second to be at the same pitch as One By One or The Colour And The Shape. Instead, the first CD reflects the old style and the second CD is even quieter than that. Not so good.

It's not all bad though - the second CD actually works quite well, and Taylor seems to be able to handle singing fairly well. Will be interesting to see if he switches places with Dave at T In The Park for a song or two.

I Take Out His Weapons, Both Of Them

2005-06-08T23:47:00.000Z

Just seen Sin City with KG and Pete. They didn't seem fully convinced by it, but I thought it was supreme. Absolutely oosing with comic book style and something on the edge of stupid but still conceivably ludicrous. Or something.

Go See It! (Assuming you can stomach it - it is quite gory)

Recommended Dose

2005-06-07T19:22:00.000Z

It's just over a week until I will be in a very large field enjoying T In The Park 2005. I saw the near-complete line-up advertised the other day, so I've sketched out who I'm planning to see from the three main stages. The style on this blog is extremely annoying (I planned to change it ages ago but never managed it), so the simple act of making a table had to be put in a separate file: Chosen Acts.

Feel free to belittle my choices!

Maroon Shark Gives You Wings

2005-06-02T22:28:00.000Z

I bought my first game in months a few days ago: Metal Gear Solid 3. I've not really had time for anything beyond 24 recently, but the end of exams is the perfect excuse to spend £30.

I'd played MGS2 to death a couple of years ago, so thought I'd jump straight into the third instalment and get straight into strafing, but not so: it's all change. All the high-tech equipment I was used to, like the companion of a motion sensor overlaid on a map which was pretty much invaluable, has been shed since the game is set during the Cold War.

So I've had to get used to when to use the Motion Sensor, Sonar and Thermogoggles to detect enemies. It makes the game much more enveloping if you let it.

It was probably quite ironic that I'd read the Gamers' Manifesto just before buying MGS3, but I did get quite frustrated with my first couple of plays. For one thing, most of the locations so far have been jungle, with gentle slopes you can run across, near-vertical slopes you can climb over, and anything in between that totally confuses Snake. And I can remember being able to climb trees without the aid of vines, so why should these guys need it?

The other main annoyance was that I had to watch 20 minutes of storyline before getting to do anything more than kill alligators. I watch this stuff so that I don't miss out on the important things, like what I actually have to do in the game. I'm just about to be told where to head next and who I've got to speak to for 10 minutes about the rain in Moscow, when the phone rings or the doorbell goes. Quick, hit pause. Oh no, pause for the rest of the game (the Start button) means skip the rest of the dialogue scene and dump me in front of some nasty guy covered in bees (how does he like his coffee!?) while I tell Random Telecoms I'm still not interested in being given gold bullion to leave BT.

Speaking of ingenious marketing techniques(!), a lady came to my door today doing marketing research on soft drinks. She seemed to have a single sheet of questions to ask, so I agreed to it. She then pulled out a 10 page pack of questions. And not simple True/False, but Likert scales (scale of 1-5 for your answers - ah, memories of my fourth year project). The "soft drinks" intro soon became quite obviously "energy drinks", or more accurately, Red Bull versus Lucozade. Some sample questions:

Do you think Red Bull are on the way up and doing well, keeping steady, or going downhill?

If you see someone drinking Red Bull, do you think that person goes against the norms of society and does what he/she wants? (It's just a drink!)

How often do you drink Red Bull when at home relaxing? (NB. As far as I know, caffeine does not relax you)

Which of these drinks do you drink while at work?
Optons include Red Bull, Lucozade Energy, Coke, Bottle Water, Fruit Juice, and Beer / Wine.

Did you know that Red Bull gives you wings and do you agree with this?

Did you know that Red Bull increases your energy, and do you agree with this? (I completely disagree since Red Bull are banned from saying so in adverts, which must make it a false claim)

Having investigated RB just now, I almost wish she'd asked me "Did you know Red Bull is banned in France and Norway because of deaths relating to its consumption?"

Anti-Hoff Device

2005-05-28T18:43:00.000Z

Tired of being hoffed all the time at work or uni? Or do you have a family member / friend / Gaz that is always getting hoffed? Then you need the USB Wireless Security Lock to lock your machine automatically when you move 2 metres away from it.

I can see this being a really useful thing to have, and to be left in your bag / jacket beside your laptop all day so it's actually just wasting cycles and interfering with Northsound Two.

Close Yet Far

2005-05-28T12:32:00.000Z

As if the stress of the group project wasn't enough, my exams started 11 days later. Eleven Days. I remember having 6 weeks to revise for my fourth year exams, and feeling like it was only just enough time to do everything I wanted to.

This is another way (there are many, far to many to get into) in which my course gets it wrong. The people taking the masters are all studying the same modules, and we can't study anything else (to my knowledge), so there's no chance of exam timetable conflicts with other modules. They could put our exams in September and no other department would be concerned. Instead, we get exams on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday of the same week, and get only 11 days (10 days when you count the hangover that has to come with the end of a module) to revise for them.

So I've had little time to get up to much other than work for the last month. I did get a chance to say goodbye to Claire last week though, as she's leaving for Canada for a year.

Yesterday was the last exam, and it finished at 11:30. 20 minutes later around 13 people from my course were all crammed into the Bobbin. A lot of us got food, and Gaz brought to the table a stupid amount of sauce packets, which were then used as ammo for aiming at pints for about 30 minutes. The loud "Oh"s and "Aww"s must have been confusing the people downstairs, but it's all fun and games until someone sabotages a brown sauce packet, causing it to burst open over Paul S.

Not much else to tell really. Went bowling at the beach, played pool and table football (I didn't do all that well at any of them), after which our group had dwindled to 5, so those that remained went to Chi for some quite expensive but very good chinese cuisine.

The group began to grow again afterwards at Slains, with Westhill kids joining in. After Slains came the Bassment and Moshulu. Stayed awake for 22 hours and had a drink in my hand for 14 of them. Slept for 5. I'm very tired! Just as well I have a week off to recover.

Much more to come I hope, including my new individual project idea (it's good, honest).

Hate Kill Destroy

2005-05-28T12:01:00.000Z

It has been a long long time since my last post (as some will not let me forget). I've been exceptionally busy for the last month, more so than I should have been.

The last module of my masters course was a group project - no exam, just build a system with 4 other people and try to market it to people invited to a Trade Fair. This should've been one of the better modules - no need to try to listen to lectures (the amount of my Agents course I didn't get the first time around became clear when revising, but I'll get to that later), just code all day.

The problem is that you don't get to choose your team - it is allocated based on giving each team the same average CAS marks for the first term, and making sure that there was a good mix of nationals and internationals in each team. Having said that I didn't originally mind my team allocation, but that was before the module began.

Paul Ritchie and I got a head start with the project, brainstorming and putting together a database and framework for the system over Easter. When the project started properly, we were already jogging if not running with the system, and the others did a poor job of getting up to pace.

We just got no commitment from the rest of the team. One guy was alright - you could give him work to do (I was the team leader) and it would get done well - but the other two did very little that could actually be included in the final submission.

"Do this part of the system for 2 days time." Wait a week. Get back a partial implementation borrowed heavily from a rival business' site.

"Prepare the outline of our marketing brochure so we can all write a section and we know exactly what needs to be said and with how many words/pages." Wait 10 days. Get back sketchy notes, written once and never read, borrowed heavily from the course website, adding very little to what we already know and not actually helping to divide the writing task.

I think my favourite let down can be summed up with a quote from my individual report:

The day before the Trade Fair I asked X to follow the Roadmap document to see if it was missing anything. He instead had to leave to buy a shed.

As you can see I didn't let them get away with it. I was more than civil until the project was over - the Trade Fair would've failed if I was to busy with my Spanner! I'm even being nice now by preserving some anonymity.

It's hard to get across just how difficult it was to work with these guys. After about half of the module had passed Paul and I had to basically carry the whole thing to completion - coding the vast majority of the system, making a huge poster, editing the brochure, demonstrating the system, all of it.

This is where a course can fall over: I've been getting really good marks for almost everything I've submitted apart from assessments where I'm in a team. And it's not because I'm poor in a team, it's because team's are allocated based on averaging grades, and that means the team's overall mark is bound to be near that average. (Yes that sounds selfish and all the rest but I've been working damn hard on this course.)

Stop The Bus

2005-04-19T13:45:00.000Z

I have just returned from a long weekend in Leeds and Glasgow, watching Terrorvision's last ever concert and visiting friends.

It's only been a few months since I started getting back into Terrorvision's music (my iPod doing its best to help out here), and it's hard to see why I stopped listening to it. I guess it's because I only ever had taped copies of their albums off my sister's CDs, and I don't listen to tapes anymore. I only have 4 tapes that I actually keep in circulation since I don't have the albums in any other form.

Since Fiona's also a TV fan, she came with me to Edinburgh by train, which was quite a tiring trip in itself, with two oil execs sat beside us talking endlessly about everything and anything that came to mind, including spyware and microbiology. They got everything almost completely wrong and yet seemed so sure of themselves. Hopefully if I mention the "Godzilla browser" they'll find this page sometime soon and feel quite small!

In Edinburgh we met my sister and headed for Leeds by another train. The train switch was a bit hectic since the first train ran late and we had to run for the second one, only to find it hadn't arrived on time either. This scene was repeated in Newcastle getting to train number 3.

After 6 hours in transit we made it to Leeds, crashed for a bit in our hotel, got some food then headed to Leeds Uni Union for the concert. The union's in amongst the uni campus, which all looks very impressive and well-preserved, and the union itself was massive. Comparable in size to Aberdeen's music hall and very modern, with a basement area housing offices, a hairdressers and a retro shop (plus more I didn't see at a guess). I could imagine going to Leeds Uni would be pretty good, especially since the venue must attract a lot of big acts.

The concert itself was fantastic. I'd been a bit worried that after so long out of the picture the band had become stiff-jointed and mellow, but they were as lively and pumped up as ever. They really set the crowd on fire (except 3 gothed-up kids in front of us who were determined not to enjoy themselves) and made the whole trip worthwhile.

The 3 of us headed back to Glasgow the next day, and met Derek (former student-colleague) and his girlfriend Morag for drinks and pool. The next day Fiona and I met a friend of hers for coffee, then had lunch with her brother, Rachel and Craig (more CompSci students) in the Loft (very pricey unfortunately).

We'd left our trip back to Aberdeen unbooked so we could decide when to head back. When we did go, it was a 4 hour bus, stopping at every town/lamp-post on the way. Four hours on the winding coastal route, feeling every bend thanks to the huge lunch I didn't even try to finish, and listening to whining little brats - not the two babies on the bus, but the quines behind us that couldn't stand the thought of silence, or loved their own voices too much to stop talking/singing. This is what the iPod was invented for!

Beaten To It Again

2005-04-06T10:50:00.000Z

I'm forever coming up with ideas for little apps/services that I want to write, but most are pretty poor or would only cater for a very small group of people, so I don't get very far with them. I'm also not all that imaginative which doesn't help much, so it's usually easier to find an idea implemented poorly somewhere then try to find ways to improve it.

Today I found a service that was just crying out to have been thought up by me eventually, only to find that it's already been done pretty well: Audioscrobbler. It plugs in to most media players and updates your profile with every song you play. I'm just waiting for my RSS feed of recently played tracks to come to life before adding it to the side bar of this site.

I'm sure if I'd thought of that first, it could be sitting among a pile of half-started projects including the Firefox English US -> English UK translation extension and the webmail backup tool.

Order Of The Day

2005-03-20T23:46:00.000Z

I've had the same small bedroom in Aberdeenshire all my life, and have been happy to stay there, even after my sister moved out, freeing the largest bedroom (we shared this as kids so we were given the most space). This is partly because we have a back room in the house that acts as a second living room (or, more accurately, my living room) with a TV and the computers, so I've always had enough space there.

A few weeks ago I decided that moving rooms might actually be a good idea. This idea was partly spurred by the thought of storing all my CDs in my sister's big bookcase, which I thought would handle my large collection easily. Today, while recovering from the previous night's drinking, I decided to clear and clean the bookcase, and transfer all my CDs to it. This didn't take too long, though I ended up running out of space and having to use two extra Swedish-CD-storage-solution-type-hingmies as well - one lying horizontal on top of the bookcase, the other vertical beside the bookcase and on top of a desk (I do have a photo of this on my phone, but it's poor quality and I've no energy for getting a shot with my dad's camera, so apologies for the wordy explanation).

All looks well, but it's not quite looking as good as it could. Something's wrong and I know exactly what it is: my CDs had originally been stored in 2 towers (for the "In Current Use" stuff) and a small cupboard (for the rest), and the towers had been alphabetically ordered. This makes it easy to for me to find a CD, but difficult to add a new purchase. Anyway, I like my CDs this way, and I've nothing else to spend my afternoon on, so I sorted the whole lot.

Over 600 CDs, in order, spanning 7 rows and half a column of storage. My Mansun to Muse collection (inc Massive Attack, Metallica, etc) takes a single row on its own. It all looks good. I even left a bit of space on each row for future purchases.

You Got A Killer App

2005-03-18T12:55:00.000Z

It's been very quiet around here, and there's not much to report on, except that this is my first post from Linux. With a bit of help from Joe (well, a lot of help), I got Gentoo installed on my new laptop. This process involved wiping Windows and starting again, and this made me realise that Dell had neglected to send me an XP installation CD, even though it's part of my order.

This was not the first mistake Dell had made with my laptop order, so I phoned them up and complained about this and that I had twice sent complaints to them and not been given a response. I got the CD (plus 3 more I already had) sent out yesterday, and regarding the past complaints only wanted to know why I hadn't heard anything and if complaints submitted online fall into a black hole or actually appear in someone's inbox.

Dell managed to cost themselves a bit of cash by outsourcing their call centre to India: the guy I spoke to didn't understand my request and so I had to explain myself many times. Eventually he offered £50 to make up for the trouble. That was easy! Think I'll phone again next week! Though it's been a couple of days no and no sign of the money yet.

I Can Be Anything I Want To Be, Anything You Hate In Me Multiplied By 23

2005-03-02T01:21:00.000Z

I have now been 23 for about an hour. My birthday snuck up on me a bit this year, what with my mum having a landmark birthday (that I won't qualify) just 4 days ago.

I've just returned from an enjoyable pub quiz at one of Aberdeen's Hog's Head pubs. Usually this is just Pete, Keith and myself, and usually we finish second last. This week, however, we enlisted the help of Al, Kim, Clay, Clay's wee brother David and his friend Paul. Our boosted numbers seemed to really improve our performance: we finished fourth last.

Anyway, in celebration of my ageing I've got two meals lined up for tomorrow (lunch with the parentals then dinner with Fiona), plus a night out with all that wish to join in on Saturday (venues tbc). The night out was originally going to be thrown open to my Glasgow-based friends, but I figured that gaining accommodation and transport for the weekend would be a lot to ask for a wee night out in Aberdeen. (Of course all Weegies are welcome to come up anytime!) Besides which I'll be back in Glasca on the 26th and hope to catch up with many people that weekend.

On another note, this is my first post on my new laptop. I talked myself into some new kit after a recent potential job offer and many successive Blue Screens Of Death lead me to think that my existing Acer was not up to what I was asking of it. So a bit of net shopping and some advice from Kostas led me to Dell's factory outlet - cheap systems at good specs. After a lot of trouble with the order process (Dell should shortly be receiving a formal complaint about this) I've ended up with a very nice, if quite large, laptop. I finally have enough disk space to house Windows, Linux and my music library, and enough speed to build apps in less than a minute. Very nice.

The laptop was a slightly early birthday present to myself, as was getting my marks for the first half of my masters (all very pleasing and beyond what I expected).

Back in the world of work, my course is still in part enjoyable. The lectures aren't all-enticing, especially since last week we were being taught Information Retrieval (the subject I have spent 2 Summers and my 4th year project working on). Our current assessment is to add recommendation solutions to an existing online shop, which is quite challenging since we are quite constricted in what we can do. At the same time it's a bit too constricting, since a bit more leeway would have allowed me to make far more elaborate and unusual solutions. I suppose that's getting us closer to real world tasks though.

Playlist: "Lullabies To Paralyze" by QOTSA. The soon to be released 4th album that I somehow have managed to hear on many ocassions recently. It is still Queens on top form, despite Nick's departure. Make sure you get it in 3 weeks time.

I Used To Be A Respected Scottish Actor

2005-02-17T19:59:00.000Z

QOTSA are set to return with a new album in March, and they've got a new single on the go just now. I've now seen "Little Sister" 3 times on TV, and am already sold on it (not that I would have taken much persuading where QOTSA are involved).

Sounds to me like a song that would fit nicely on their first album, if it weren't just that bit crisper. Can't wait to hear the rest of it.

On another note, any fans of Fork Kiernan (one of the Chewin' The Fat and Still Game cast and writers, who was also in the Broadband for Scotland ads (and then was charged for road rage)) might be interested in a programme showing on BBC2 in the mornings. Spook Squad lets a team of kids complete Crystal Maze-style games to defeat a ghost. The main ghost in the castle is played in a very laughable way by Ford.

The show is worth mention even without Ford's appearances, as this morning the host had to find out more about their enemy spirit, so he typed her name into "Ghoul-Gle" (like Google). Well I thought it was funny (more funny than a case-sensitive search engine).

A Very Non-PC Solution

2005-02-10T15:15:00.000Z

After recent device creativity, and a seminar today on iTunes, I've come up with a new product idea - the iPod CD-Dock.

The look of it would be a simple CD walkman (though a bit bigger) with an iPod dock set above it. When you dock the iPod, you can play any music from it (with a screen showing details of the current song and allowing scrolling & selection, much like the iPod's screen) through the connected speakers.

If the iPod isn't present, you can put a CD in the unit (either audio or MP3/WMV/AIFF/etc files) and play the content in much the same way.

But when the iPod is present and a CD is put in, you are given the option of uploading the songs to the iPod. The unit would essentially have a cut-down version of iTunes within it to handle iPod updates and music playback.

This would essentially allow someone who doesn't own a PC to buy an iPod and get near-full use of it. It also means that an iPod can be listened to with a proper stereo (which is also possible with a PC, but adds yet more cost to the system, especially adding remote control support, etc).

The main obstacle that comes to my mind for this is song label creation. The best solution would be to download song names from Gracenote or another CDDB, but getting a net connection is required. Alternatively, ask the user to enter the details (not much fun with a phone-type interface on a remote control!).

Silence Is Not Golden

2005-01-28T11:15:00.000Z

Two days ago I installed the latest update for my iPod. It told me to charge the iPod so that the update would happen, but on returning it to my laptop, iTunes told me the update had failed, try again.

So I did, and this time iTunes said that it couldn't read the iPod and I'd have to Restore Factory Settings. Since this means losing ALL data on the iPod, I'm guessing this is a nice way of saying "rewrite the table of contents and stick basic files back on".

Obviously I'm in no hurry to wipe the iPod - unlike some of the kids I was out with on Tuesday, my laptop can't hold my entire iPod collection - it's hard disk is smaller than the iPod's (just). So for me to rebuild my music collection on it would take a long, long time.

I think of a solution: take the iPod into the lab at uni, dump its content onto one of the laptops there, then get iTunes to import all the songs again. I may lose some track information (I'm not sure if all data is stored in ID3 tags or elsewhere), but that can be fixed over time.

But before I waste a day doing that, maybe I should check with Apple, see if they've got any better ideas. I called tech support last night and got an intelligent Irish guy who gave me a few unnofficial tips that might work, including installing an older version of iTunes to see if it has problems accessing the iPod.

Good idea. Wish I'd thought of that. It's not like a fresh install of iTunes is going to Restore Factory Settings on an iPod WITHOUT ASKING ME FIRST, is it? That would be idiocy. Apple are smarter than that, or so I'm told.

10 minutes later and my iPod is blank.

So this morning I'm in the lab, having just spent £18 on the only file recovery software I could find that was able to recover my MP3s. I don't like throwing money at stupid problems like this, and I like paying for software even less (not that I steal any, just that it's been a long time since I had to buy any). All I can say is this better work!

Burn "The Big Picture" Night

2005-01-27T13:25:00.000Z

I have now just about recovered from Tuesday's activities. A 9am exam, the hardest of the course (Glasgow folk: think DAS4) was followed quickly by a trip to the Bobbin for drinks and lunch (the smallest "Big Kahuna Burger" ever), then a trip to the beach for bowling (via Joe's flat).

The bowling was good fun, with much alcohol consumption, my scoring a turkey and still failing to win a game, and Gaz's unusual bowling style. Had a few games of pool with Jon afterwards (had to win that, obviously).

Next stop was Archie Simpson's (back in the city centre) for a fine haggis, neeps and tatties (my second helping in a week, but I felt the need to assert some scottishness among so many border-jumpers). By this time it must have been around 7pm, and there wasn't any danger of the drink flow ceasing. There were a couple of Liverpool supporters in our crowd, so we all headed on to Stadio to watch them play Watford. Some more drink helped pass the time until about 10pm, when I left the group to meet Keith and Pete in Slains, but made the schoolboy error of telling the others where I was going - they joined us in Slains about half an hour later.

So by now I've been drinking since midday with no real pacing involved (besides having to walk between venues), so when I went to the toilet at one point I was a bit unsteady on my feet. In fact I was all over the shop. So much so that on my way out I cracked my head off the corner of a wall. There was another guy in the loos so I thought "Play it cool, keep walking, act like it didn't happen", but had to turn back to the sinks when I realised my head was bleeding. Great stuff.

As an encore, Keith, Pete and I were heading to Moshulu (to discover it was closed) after Slains, and I'm told I said something along the lines of "Careful, it's slippy", before going my length and taking some skin off my hand. I'd say Windmill Brae is a pretty good street to have clubs on, as the bouncers can gauge how pissed you are by whether you make it to a club door on a wet night without injury.

We ended the night in Exodus, with me drinking water, watching a guy waste £20 on a bandit, and getting annoyed with the boys for continuing to drink when I was feeling tired.

I Am Honestly Honoured

2005-01-27T11:28:00.000Z

Ever since I've joined the realm of authors, I've been receiving emails from other organisers inviting me to attend their conferences. The following is by far the best I've had, as it seems to have been translated to English for free by AltaVista or some such tool.

A quite academic and splendid international conference ICCI2005 will be held from June 26th to 29th, 2005 in Beijing, Capital of China. We honestly invite you to attend this worldwide conference covering almost all communication and information topics. Your attendance is our honour. In addition, famous professionals, professors, companies and high-tech promotion organization, telecommunication operators, local government will also be our respected guests.
For the most recent progress about ICCI2005, please see the website at http://www.bupt.edu.cn/ICCI2005/, and http://www.confcenter.cn/
As you know, 3G could be a hardly start in China while our conference, the future of 3G is still very fuzzy. Near observation will let you know the truth. Broad band wireless, terrestrial wireless HDTV standard could reach the final, NGN an NGI infrasture could be further clear. Many things are related to the time while our conference.
Finally, honestly invite you to make your contribution to the conference, come to see around this quite fast-developing country to find your opportunities, travel along the old but extremely modern and beautiful cities and landscape.

I'm Off To Join The Writer's Guild

2005-01-19T20:13:00.000Z

I got home from studying at uni to be greeted by a rather large parcel from America. It was from my supervisor of old, and contained 2 copies of the proceedings of the conference where my paper was presented.

I am now a published author.

Anyone who feels the strong desire to own a copy of my work can buy it from IEEE, or view it for free if you're in a uni with an IEEE subscription.

I Want An Alien For Christmas

2004-12-22T15:06:00.000Z

My uni term ended on Friday, and the majority of the class has now travelled home for the holidays/exam stress period. I have been revising the last few days, although with little conviction, but I've now stopped until after Christmas at least. I now realise the benefit of having all exams in May/June - revising at this time of year isn't easy to fit in, especially with the libraries not being open normal hours until a week before my first exam.

Fiona went back down south today for the next week (or less), so I'm likely to have more time on my hands over the festive period. Maybe I should take up a new hobby. I spent a good 20 minutes today correcting someone's graffiti in the QM library for grammatical errors and generally talking crap (someone was trying to assert that The Bible is entirely factual because there are 6 billion copies of it and our dating system is based in part on its content - this reminds me that my homework assignment is to find out when computer system clocks start counting from: 00:00 01/01/1970 UTC for JVM).

Things to look forward to: A few drinks on Christmas Eve, family dinner on Christmas day; family+paternal grandparents dinner on Boxing Day, Fiona's return, some fairly heavy drinking on Hogmanay (for a change!).

Oh, and the LOTR 12 disc set for Christmas - I've shown a fair amount of restraint by not buying any of the separate films yet, since I knew this boxed set would appear eventually (I'm also almost as certain that another boxed set will appear in 6 months time, with "brand new extras", but I'll live with that - it's far too common an occurence to bother with).

Playlist:
"I Dream Of Dynamite" - Deckard, who I saw play acoustic a few months ago, but only recently got a copy of this album. A very fine piece of work it is, and difficult to shift from your conscious stream.
"Through The Ashes Of Empires" - Machine Head, with many thanks to Fiona for getting me this. "Days Turn Blue To Gray" has been on Scuzz for a couple of weeks now and is simply thrashing fantastic.

Kill Vampires to UNKLE!

2004-12-16T12:19:00.000Z

It's taken a while for me to get round to saying this, but I saw Blade Trinity on Saturday night, and it was just plain awful.

They've managed to include a few decent fight scenes (NOT the five minutes of wrestling they wrote in to justify having Triple H as a bad guy), but there was just far too much about the story that was totally unbelievable. Like keeping a guy alive while he makes bad jokes instead of just killing him - how is anyone supposed to believe that?

But the worst part of the film was that it was interspersed with Apple adverts. Every computer on show was an Apple, so they achieved product placement with this alone and should have stopped. Instead, there is a tool-up scene where the new female Blade groupy is making playlists on her iPod using her iBook (while pressing buttons on her iPod - surely these are disabled while connected to a Mac as they are for a Windows PC), because she likes to listen to music while killing vampires.

This is cringeworthy. This is worse than Will Smith putting on his brand new "Classic 2004 Converse" sneakers at the start of I, Robot. This is so out of place. Everyone - bad and good - is wearing blacks and dark colours, except for these pure white headphones. How is she going to hear stuff going on in the distance with Jurassic 5 in her inner ears?

Apple: The iPod is selling well through word of mouth alone. You don't need to perform this kind of marketing to get it noticed.

Blade Trinity makers: I'd say you could do better, but clearly you can't.

U2: Why are you making iPod adverts, and why is there a limited edition U2 iPod? I would have thought that your new album would be selling very well just now, just like the last 20 did. You don't need to sell out like this.

RadioGaGa

2004-12-11T16:08:00.000Z

Instead of doing something productive with my afternoon, I've instead been trying to find MP3s of The*Ga*Ga*s (their choice of name added to their relative obscurity helps show how difficult this has been). Even their official site holds no song clips, and buying their sole release so far seems to be very difficult.

Last week, while suffering from a hideous hangover that turned into a week-long virus, I bought a copy of Metal Hammer for the sole purpose of getting a copy of their single, "Replica", from the cover DVD. A quick search for DVD audio ripping later, and I've found a tool that lets you get up to 5 minutes of audio from a DVD without paying for the privilege. So I know finally have this fantastic song, and the only thing I've yet heard of theirs, on my iPod.

I have tried to make a one-minute clip of the song so I could let you all hear it without annoying copyright holders too much, but my sound editing software seems to dislike the file, so I'll simply say that an mp3 on my website of a song called "Replica" would be quite easy to conceive existing, but of course it doesn't.

Anyway, during my mp3 search I discovered a set of tour dates for The*Ga*Ga*s for next year, including a date in Glasgow. So expect to see me in town for that.

It may seem odd that I'm quite so interested in a band I've heard 3 minutes and 50 seconds from, and it is conceivable that they become some kind of underground one-hit-wonder, with all future songs sounding gash, but I doubt that very seriously. "Replica" is a damn good tune, the song is reminiscent of The Wildhearts' style (never a bad thing), and these kids are just that: kids. They've got years and years to make truly great tunes.

When I was ill last week, I spent a lot of time watching music videos on TV. I've become very good at flicking to the next channel after half a second of hearing whatever crap the current channel is playing. Something decent being played is a welcome break from all the bands following the current trend of screaming half of a song, singing the other half, and basically sounding like everyone else on Scuzz.

This is becoming a bit of a rant, so I'll switch topics: I veered towards talking about copying/downloading music earlier, and just want to state my view on this. Back in the not-too-distant past, when I still used dial-up access to the net, I would download rare tracks by bands I already owned everything else by, and songs I'd recently heard and liked. I'd also get other songs from a new album to see if I would want to buy the album.

In the former case, there is no way for me to purchase songs that are years old and only appeared as b-sides, except through the likes of eil.com, and even then the record company sees none of the hideous markup put on such items. Some bands like 3 Colours Red have been smart enough to notice that their fans want to hear their b-sides, and have made them available for free download from their website. In my opinion, many more bands should follow this trend. The purpose of singles is essentially to heighten interest in an album, where the real money is. Once a single has been released, charted then faded from memory and music shop, it is no longer a revenue or publicity source for the band, so its b-sides should become available to the masses.

The Catch 22 in downloading rare tracks is their rarity - few people have copies of "Shandy Bang" on their PCs, and once you found one, you'd need them to stay online for 30 minutes while the file downloaded. Painful.

ShortSharpShock

2004-12-11T15:00:00.000Z

Welcome back to a very neglected blog. Much time has passed, but I'll be brief.

Flofe (who I may from now on name properly as Fiona, as Google gives this blog as the top hit for her nickname) and I are now together, and very happy to be so. I recently got a new SIM card for my phone, giving me 300 free texts a month. Most of this month's allocation has already been used up, though I can't imagine how ;-)

As I've said before, this blog was never intended to contain personal details, and will probably continue to follow that idea for the most part. Just accept that I will be purposefully vague about such things, while being tediously graphic describing the more mundane. It's how I'm comfortable writing this.

I have recently finished reading "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" by Douglas Adams, and can confirm I will soon be reading much more of Adams' work - a very good book.

Uni is getting a bit better once more. I mentioned previously that my course wasn't as involved as I'd hoped it would be. About two days after that the lecturer changed gear and the course became taxing. So my last module ended with an 10am to 11pm session in the lab (the closest I can get to an all-nighter, despite what many a computing student would tell you is possible in the Glasgow labs) that I enjoyed except for WinZip freezing on me twice, each time requiring a slow system boot - at 10pm such a problem can make violence against your laptop screen seem reasonable.

My latest module, Security and Privacy, also started slowly but turned to programming practices for writing secure code - something that I was very interested in, and probably helped push me towards wanting to buy a book called "Hackers and Painters", which talks about the elegance of programming and how it's an artistic talent. That statement may include some artistic license, but it's self-supporting since I'm an artist!

How To Destroy A Country In 10 Days

2004-11-30T13:01:00.000Z

First off, apologies for not yet posting about Saturday night - there is much to say, but I'm not ready to say it out loud for all to read.

Last night I went with a few peeps from my course to see The Corporation at the Belmont Cinema (which reached temperatures beyond 100F at the end of the film - I don't think the Belmont manages many sell-outs). I wish I'd written this post last night, as I managed to let my mind wander over the film for a while last night.

The film basically told the history of the American corporation, how they are soulless, destructive forces and how we're all basically fucked because of them (thanks!).

I remember roughly this time last year going to a few careers presentations by companies like IBM, Microsoft and BAE. At BAE's talk, they mentioned about 10 minutes in that they made military aircraft (their slideshow seemed to focus on "cutting edge technology", not on burning buildings or corpses), and this revelation was enough to convince me that I never wanted to work for BAE. At the time I basically swore off prospective employers if they were involved in war funding, research and the like.

After last night, the list of companies to avoid has grown. Considerably.

Once again about a year ago a careers advisor told me that I should investigate a companies financial background, etc. if I was considering working for them, to get an idea of how well the company has done recently, where it began, that sort of thing. I did this for the few companies I had interviews with, but never with any conviction.

I shall from now on be checking, long and hard, the background of any large business for the kind of deceitful and disgusting things discussed in The Corporation.

I think part of the problem for my previous lack of interest in who I could end up working for is that I've always taken the path of least resistence in employment and education. During summer breaks, I took the first job offered (partly because getting an offer at all was not easy). At the start of Uni, I took physics to take up credits because I'd done well at it at school, and was fairly confident of getting a good grade with it in first year. I wish now I'd taken German - something I've wanted to pick up again for a good while - even if it meant that my GPA was dragged down a bit.

What no one told me before Uni was that first year doesn't matter. As long as you get a high enough GPA to make it into second year, you're set. There's also the whole learning side to it, but quite a lot of the computing, maths and physics I was taught in first year was repeating te Sixth Year Studies courses from school.

It's probably better that I didn't write this post last night - I've managed to forget some of the train of thought that spawned it, so be thankful that I'm not feeling 100% at the moment - I had a monster of a hangover on Sunday (all day long), that's still with me now.

This is bad news as I'm potentially travelling to Glasgow again this weekend for Lauren's birthday on Friday, then my sister's flatwarming on Saturday. If I still feel off tomorrow, I don't think I'll make it: I'm quite close to boarding the wagon until I feel better, and two drinking sessions without drink may affect that.

Maybe I just need to learn how to enjoy a night out without drink, but that'll never happen, so instead learning when to stop drinking before I get to bedlam status would have to do.

More Daftness

2004-11-30T11:06:00.000Z

A quick post to help explain the last one, made in a bit of a rush:

I went to see The Darkness on Friday night with my sister, and met the happy couple during the show. It was a really good show, even Ash played well as ever (though still failing themselves with the soppy numbers).

As for my last post, I can't take all the credit, as the lyrics were written by Ginger of The Wildhearts, and used on his acoustic album Great White Monkeys. I would recommend that you go out and buy this, but you can't. Nor can you get a signed copy like I have!

More to come shortly...

And Now Things Get Complicated

2004-11-28T14:24:00.000Z

On Saturday night I went to the Therapy? concert with my sister and a group of the kids I know from Aberdeen: Fiona+Colin, Flofe, Sarah, Suzanne+Ben and Emily (a new face from down the road somewhere).

The gig was in Moshulu (my normal weekend haunt, only recently offering live acts, perhaps trying to head for Cathouse status), and was very good. Andy Cairns appeared to be heading even further towards being a cartoon version of himself, Michael McKeegan said "fan-fucking-tastic", which is always enough to put a smile on my face, and the set basically rocked. They did neglect Shameless and played much of Troublegum, but I could forgive this since Troublegum is such a masterpiece.

I sang along to many songs, though chose not to join in with chants of "James Joyce is fucking my sister" during Potato Junkie, since Christine was a bit annoyed at me singing it the last time we saw Therapy? in Glasgow!

After the show my sister headed home (still against alcohol after a heavy Garage night out two days earlier), I bought myself a Therapy? beanie to replace the beanie I can't seem to find anywhere, then went next door to The Bassment with the rest of the gang to meet Keith and Peter (they were kicking us out of Moshulu to clear the stage anyway).

About an hour later we went back to Moshulu, but found a queue of people outside waiting for the door to be unlocked. I, like others from the concert, had left my jacket in Moshulu's cloak room, and so was freezing in the nippy Aberdeen drizzle. After 5 minutes my tough-guy facade broke, and I went back to The Bassment for another drink.

I ordered a Jack and Coke, and was given a double for the same price because the barman made me wait while he changed bottles of JD. A nice change to find a pleasant barman, but the glass he gave me was miniscule, and I had only meant to go there for 2 minutes, so the double was downed quickly and painfully.

Eventually we were back in Moshulu (minus Suzanne and Ben, and shortly after Fiona and Colin, as both females had work to do the next day). There were one or two other guys with us at our table, but I never spoke to them, nor could I now pick them out of a line up.

While I'm still cognitive, I should mention I bought a round for the boys and myself at one point, and cleverly chose to go to the bar beside where Andy and Michael from Therapy? were standing. And I got speaking to Andy. And I bought Michael a drink. And they're really nice guys and a refreshing change to the last time I met a band member (Ginger from the Wildhearts - I couldn't think of a damn thing to say to him!).

It was quite funny that I managed to meet these guys without even trying, and the night before I'd seen kids waiting in the cold outside the SECC for autographs from The Darkness that they never got.

And now things get complicated. I was sat at the table in Moshulu next to Flofe, and she was being her usual flirty self. I should perhaps point out that I've known Flofe for about a year, and she's always been quite a sexually aggressive person to meet when she's had a couple of drinks. I didn't really know her well until the start of my new course, obviously because I wasn't in Aberdeen as much as I am now.

So Flofe's being flirtatious, and directing much of this at me. Eventually Peter says "get a room", and so I'm dragged into the chill-out room in Moshulu by Flofe, apparently to freak Peter out.

Instead Flofe and I talked for a while longer, then started kissing.

Aside: This is not easy for me to write. I said when I first started this blog that I probably wouldn't write very personal posts like this because I don't like the idea of the whole world having access to my thoughts like that. Also, I don't yet know what Flofe would say if she found out I posted this - hence it won't get posted until I tell her it's written.

I did not see this coming. Despite us casually flirting all night, I hadn't suspected that Flofe liked me in that way. But here we were, altering our friendship and perhaps getting something more and better from it.

In short, a very good night was had by many, especially me.

The Daftness

2004-11-28T10:42:00.000Z

To be sung to the tune of "Prince Charming" by Adam and the Ants:

Justin Hawkins, Justin Hawkins, Justin Hawkins and his brother Dannie
Don't you ever, Don't you ever, lower yourself, forgetting all your standards
Justin Hawkins, Justin Hawkins, Justin Hawkins and his brother Dannie
Don't you ever, Don't you ever, lower yourself, forgetting all your standards
Frank Poullain, Frank Poullain, and the drummer no-one know the name of
Prince Charming, Prince Charming, ridicule is nothing to be scared of
Justin Hawkins, Justin Hawkins, Justin Hawkins and his brother Dannie
Don't you ever, Don't you ever, lower yourself, forgetting all your standards

Oh, it was good!

Technically-Challenged

2004-11-24T10:30:00.000Z

I hereby vow to never again phone a tech support line unless I have already tried everything I can think of twice, including a complete reformatting of my hard disk (even if the problem is a broken screen or dead battery). What morons!

A bit of background first: I've been taking my laptop (a two year old Acer Aspire 1300) into uni every day to do all my work on. For the last couple of weeks it has been giving me the blue screen of death at least twice a day, often blaming tcpip.sys for the problem.

I'm used to seeing blue screens - I frankly expect it from any machine I use for more than a week - but the frequency of the errors was far too great for me to ignore, so I tried to sort the problem by downloading a BIOS update from Acer's site. Trouble is, the file didn't come with any installation instructions.

Normally I'd just throw caution to the wind and run the program, but this is a BIOS upgrade, and not something to be done without care. After trying to hunt down instructions for a while, I gave up hope and ran the EXE file.

Nothing of note happened.

So I sent Acer an email asking for installation instructions. That was a week ago and I still haven't heard back.

So this morning I phoned their support line, where the recorded voice lets me know that they are aiming for 24-hour response times to all emails. Aiming is good, but if I aimed to hit a window with a stone from 50 feet away, I'd probably miss because I throw like a girl.

10 minutes of extremely loud musak and I'm through to a real person, who was less intelligent than most voice recognition phone systems. I told him that all I needed was installation instructions, but was happy enough to hand over my serial number. He couldn't find the number on his system, so had to enter my laptop's details manually. He asked what warranty I had (no idea, probably none), so I told him 1 year's worth and he replied that I'd have to pay for any repairs.

Right.

I'm not asking for repairs. I'm asking for installation instructions. Look it up on your dumb-terminal (for dumb-asses) or tell me where to hunt them down on the net. This doesn't require me sending my laptop to you.

Now that he's (finally) getting the drift, he tells me to run the file. I did try, but nothing happened. Hmm. Maybe you downloaded it "wrongly". No, it's a Zip file, and if you download a Zip "wrongly", it won't do very much for you. Neither would an Exe on its own, you cretin.

Long pause...

I'm getting tired of his stupidity and concerned for the phone bill, so I suggest that the program may need to be run from a boot disk so that the BIOS gets what it needs directly.

His response: Yes, if running the file in Windows doesn't work, try putting it on a "normal" disk and booting the machine with that in the drive.

Thanks, I'm glad I was such a help to myself. It's nice to have someone to sound ideas off. Next time I'll try a wall. I would say goodbye, but I'm not feeling very good anymore.

When Two Worlds Collide

2004-11-23T16:30:00.000Z

Last weekend I managed to end up in the same place as always, but by taking a very different route.

On Friday morning I slept in a bit, took my time showering and dressing, then opened my curtains to discover an inch of snow had fallen overnight. I was certain that I'd be late for uni, but managed to make it in on time (I'm usually about 15 minutes early so that helped).

Anyway, the layer of ice that was developing on the ground during Friday, as well as the chill in the air, meant that a night out in Aberdeen wasn't very appealing. I instead went out on Saturday, with a very vague idea of where I'd end up and with whom.

Pete and I went to the Ambassador for a spot of pool, leaving Keith at home since he was complaining of some kind of illness (wimp). All night long we were trying to arrange to meet people in town, and eventually we headed to The Monkey House (which seemed quite nice, though apparently expensive) to meet Al, Elly and their friends. 2 minutes later we were out the door, heading for Justice Mill which was absolutely packed, and not very inticing anyway (too much disco on the decks). After forcing our way to the bar, we turned back and forced our way to the exit. Such fun!

The next pub chosen was Frankenstein's, which was much quieter and relaxed. We got a quick drink here before Al and Elly went home, leaving Pete and I with their extremely drunk, all-female crowd. I think you know what's coming...

(No you dont.) Pete and I left 5 minutes later and headed for Belmont Street, hoping to find his sister. Unfortunately we couldn't raise her by phone, so instead headed for a swift drink at the Hog's Head while we decided what to do next. Pete had been texting Vicki and Rhona to arrange to meet them for a few hours by now, and I'd been texting Flofe and somehow swayed her and Suzanne into heading out for the night as well.

With the bottled swill drunk, there was still no word from anyone but Flofe, so the next logical step was to meet up with her and Suzanne in Moshulu. A couple more texts took us to Kef in an attempt to see some folk from my course briefly, but a scan of the place left us shaking our heads. Apparently we just didn't see them (a group of about 8 people!).

The choice of Moshulu had been tempting me all night: if we'd stayed with Al's friends we'd have ended up in the Cotton Club or somewhere else unappetising; with Rhona and Vicki the final destination would have been a proper club; Pete's sister would almost certainly have gone to Exodus, which I was in the week before and was pretty bored with it.

By this point, I've been in Aberdeen for about 3 hours and drank 3 pints.

So to Moshulu we went, met the ladies, got a seat and a drink, then we were overrun with computing students! After trying to find them in Kef, I'd told my coursemates I was heading to Moshulu, so they decided to join us. I felt a bit awkward at first, having thrown a bunch of male strangers at Flofe and Suzanne without warning (Pete could fend for himself!), but we all settled down fairly quickly. The boys seemed a bit down, or maybe just less willing to get enthused about Air Guitar night than whatever Liquid was playing that night.

Drinking regime: Jack, Double Jack, Double Jack .. Double Jack, Jack, Water.

I only got up on the floor for one song (a testament to the amount of pish that gets played in Moshulu these days - all the decent tunes are played early in the night when I'm too sober to "dance" and the floor too empty for me to even consider it), but had a pretty good night anyway, chatting to everyone.

After Moshulu, Pete and I went back to Flofe and Suzanne's flat to "continue drinking", a phrase that later was altered to "drinking tea". I crashed on the floor (which was the most comfortable floor I've slept on in many years), and Pete took the mini-couch. In the morning Suzanne made us cheese on toast and we all watched Red Dwarf for while.

A very good night, despite the slow build-up. A lesson to you all is that mixing with two groups of friends at once is nothing to fear, unless you're a particularly two-faced person. For me I think that only extends to my wandering accent that makes me use the word "man" a lot in front of some people, swear a lot in front of others, and use Doric around another group.

Full iPod Review

2004-11-16T09:51:00.000Z

I've now owned my iPod (4th generation, 20Gb) for a few months, and think it's time to give my personal opinion on this device. This might be of use to people looking for a review that they know is not from an Apple employee (I would say a review that is reputable, but that would mean I was reputable) - I know personally that my decision to buy the iTrip radio transmitter for the iPod was influenced by Matt's posts regarding it.

First off are the good points: The sound quality when using earphones (my own, not the white iPod ones - I prefer anti-theft over style) is high quality. Using the ClickWheel to speed through all my artists is very quick, if a little tricky for fast access to the J-T range (the speed of cycling increases over time, so you often fly past this section and end up at the end before you know it, unless you go slow or use short, sharp bursts).

Carrying 4568 songs in your pocket is undeniably fantastic - during my first 2 years of uni I would listen to my MD walkman going to and from uni, and in the second 2 years at any time I was walking around on my own for a while (like in town). Before leaving my flat I would stare at my MD collection for a while, then decide what to listen to based on my mood and predicted background noise (slow songs don't work well on the SPT's Underground).

Now I can sidestep the choice stage with the Shuffle Songs option, which is almost guaranteed to please since the song range is my personal collection (I say almost please because I still need to do clean out some poorer songs). Once a song comes on that catches my ear I can choose to listen to the album its from, or all songs from the artist on random.

As a Music Management System, iTunes is very easy to use. After 2 hours with it I had effectively dropped Windows Media Player and Winamp as my players of choice. The search facility in iTunes (which I am reliably informed is based on the search system in Mac OS-X) is impressively quick and more usable than the browse facility (where you're given a list of all artists and albums). Even the built-in visualisation is impressive.

Apple deserve high praise for integrating CD ripping into iTunes, and equally high levels of scorn for not allowing you to take songs back off the iPod. When I first learned this restriction I began burning CDs of MP3s as a backup of my iPod should anything happen to it (which it almost did - see below). I continued this until I realised the number of CDs I'd need for a full backup, the time it would take and the fact that I wouldn't be able to find the album I wanted amongst the CDs with any ease.

I am nearing my iPod's full capacity, and wish I had sprung for the 40Gb version (which I wouldn't fill, but would be more likely to deal with the amount of music I buy).

I am still curious to know the algorithm used to randomise the songs on the iPod. I initially assumed that it was genuine randomness, but it seems to have certain songs that are very often chosen for early play. Also, the randomiser seems to favour newly-added songs over older, frequently played songs.

One of the most annoying quirks of the iPod is that the Clicker option (which causes the iPod to emit a click whenever you scroll between options) setting is forgotten whenever the iPod is reset. This is the only setting I have found that is reset - my equaliser preset and other options all survive a reset. Clicker was one of the first things I disabled on the iPod, as it holds almost no use at all and is simply annoying. If only I didn't have to specify this every other day!

Regarding the settings on the iPod, I still feel that the ability to upload your own equaliser presets would be useful. I am currenty using the Rock setting, which is close to what I want as I can get, but still makes vocals too loud compared to bass and treble. iTunes lets you fix this easily, but the iPod's own presets for use outwith iTunes are fixed.

With winter closing in, the days are darker and I find myself trying to use the iPod in my car with low light. A nice feature would be a Backlight button to quickly switch this on or off without using the menus that you can't see if the light is off!

Now that I drive to uni every day, I have to use iTrip to listen to music in the mornings (my ma's car only has a CD player, so my tape-walkman converter is no longer any use to me). The iTrip sound quality is very good (not as full as straight-from-CD in the car, but still good), except when I reach the Lang Stracht where suddenly gear changes, drumming a beat on the steering wheel or even the position of my arm are all causes of interference in the signal. If only the hissing was more like a heavy snare drum hit - I could remix 70's songs into industrial versions in the comfort of my car!

And now the stinger - the iPod's battery life is not as strong as I'd like it to be. I've had portable music players with battery life measured in days, not hours. Last weekend I played the iPod+iTrip at 3/4 volume from Glasgow to Aberdeen, starting with a full battery. Once I got to Aberdeen, the battery was down to about 10%.

After this I considered buying an adapter to allow the iPod to charge from my car's cigarrette lighter, but since the Gla-Abz trip is as far as I ever travel, I doubt I'll need it. It is just annoying that I have to get into a habit of charging it every night.

Enough fish on your plate?

2004-11-10T11:58:00.000Z

I'm now into the third module of the Masters at Aberdeen (the course here is structured so that you get one module at a time, each for 3 weeks), and it's apparently the most difficult of the course. We're being taught RMI (in the most bizarre way), web services and J2ME.

I remember back in February or thereabouts, when I got an email about the Masters course, I was quite interested, so I looked through its website at the course content, and asked a friend at Aberdeen Uni to send me copies of past exam papers (which can't be accessed outside the uni's network). In short, I did research into the course, and from what I saw I thought it would be an extension of what I already knew from DBIT and SC.

Which is true. Except I thought I'd be learning more. So far the content doesn't go far beyond what I already knew. I could always blame DBIT for demanding so much of me in the exam (where we had to write DOM and SAX parsers), and having spent the last year using servlets was a help too. I think I just wanted something more taxing.

I was speaking to Ross at the weekend about the MSci at Glasgow, and it sounds like hell compared to what I'm doing - constantly high workload and no coding. In the latter respect I think I'm quite lucky to be in a Masters course where I get to code a lot.

Something I keep coming back to is Peter Dickman's talk to prospective students over the summer. He spoke about the various merits of different universities, not trying to exhibit bias, but finished by saying that 3 years at Glasgow is equivalent to 4 years elsewhere. I think now that 4 years at Glasgow is almost equivalent to this Masters.

But on the bright side, I've time to go out frequently, I've made new friends, getting to see the old ones more, and I'm getting paid handsomely for this.

Title This?

2004-11-08T19:12:00.000Z

Just spent a slightly unusual weekend down in Glasgow. It started off horribly, with me leaving my phone charging in my bedroom (schoolboy error, as Craig noted). Fortunately, my folks joined me in Glasgow on Saturday to help move my sister from her old flat in Dennistoun to her new flat in Shawlands. Anyway, that meant I managed to get my phone back the next day.

Friday was quite relaxed: got to see Stephen, Ross and Elin, and to catch Alfie at the pics with Rachel and Craig. After the film, we headed for the underground to get back to the West End, but we found a large queue of people getting refunds for their tickets. According to the couple behind us in the queue, there was "an incident" at Kelvinbridge, and staff were waiting for the police to arrive, but all trains were stopped indefinately. The couple then asked (not in unison, but you get the idea) how they could get to Hillhead, and Craig quickly deduced that a taxi would do for us all. So we did, and it did.

Saturday was spent mainly dismantling my sister's very large bed, loading a van full of her furniture, then unpacking it all and rebuilding said bed (there was some driving in between, but you're expected to fill in the holes yourself. Include a high-speed chase with a Renault van and a battered Peugout 106 if you wish - the 106 won).

At night I met Julie for a couple of drinks in the most loud and busy version of Solid Rock I've ever seen or heard. Derek was supposed to join us, but things got complicated and rushed, and phones wouldn't work.

The next day I went climbing with many computing kids, and my dad. He'd mentioned an interest in wall climbing the last time I went, and since he was in the neighbourhood, decided to join us (despite being a bit sore from the previous day's flitting). So that was basically the first time my dad had met a lot of the people climbing that day, and everyone got along fine. I didn't manage as many climbs as I had the last time - perhaps a combination of trying too many tricky walls and lifting big bookcases the day before. Still good fun though.

I've learned that there is a climbing wall in Aboyne (a town about 25 minutes West of me), so I'll probably investigate that quite soon.

Broadbantastic

2004-11-02T20:31:00.000Z

I've just had broadband setup at home. After 8 years of dialup, I'm not sure if I can get used to this. I still feel like I'm tying up the phone line; I always have this itch that I'm burning money by leaving the connection idle (I used to pay per minute); earlier I shouted at my mum for using the phone, totally forgetting it wouldn't disconnect me.

Does anyone know of a Dialup Detox program?

Singalong to Caffeine Bomb

2004-11-02T20:29:00.000Z

Another weekend of drink-fueled madness that I'm only just getting round to writing about.

Friday: There were plans to meet some of my course-mates and go to see Bubba Ho Tep, a horror film with Bruce Campbell playing a guy who thinks he's Elvis. Sounded great, but wasn't on at any cinemas by Friday, so we sprung for Coffee and Cigarrettes instead.

And with some last minute drop outs, I ended up at the cinema with only Jamie. We saw the film (a set of short stories, some good, some bad, one totally random), then met up with more people at Slains, where we drank until about 11pm.

Jamie had asked me about Cafe Drummonds before: he'd heard it was a good place for live music, and my experience with the place would agree with that. So when we left Slains, Drummonds was suggested as a place to relax for a while.

Oops.

There was live music, but it was a heavy metal band. Four guitarists thrashing away; a balding guy with long hair going nuts, singing badly and running around the 50-strong crowd; not quite what the assembled masses were expecting. We stayed for one quick drink, then left for...

The Ministry. Not since I was 17 have I been to this place. They'd revamped it to look better, but it still played nothing but dance and bad remixes. Not my normal choice by any means, but I suggested it so that the other folk would have a good time - there was talk of going to Moshulu but that didn't suit the majority.

I left around 2am to get the next bus home. The place was due to shut at 3, but I'd already been standing at the edge of the dancefloor waiting for something remotely decent to dance to. Plus my friends were up by the wall (essentially a podium for 20 people), so joining them would've required a bravery transfusion (about 7 straight shots of it).

Saturday: A slightly different tack for tonight - proper music for a start!

KG, Pete and I went by Vicki and Rhona's flat, where we had a very sweet VK each, met their dug Mack (the most hyper Westie I've ever met), and got a cheap taxi into town care of Mark.

The ladies and Pedro were dressed for the ocassion, and so felt they would be more at home in Slains (a gothic pub with Halloween stuff on all week) than in Hog's Head (who weren't doing anything special for the weekend).

While in Slains, Keith was propositioned by an amazingly drunk woman. I'd elaborate more, but he's already threatened to post embarrasing comments about my past, so I'll leave it there. Anyway, we stayed in Slains for a while, went to Revolution for a bit, then on to Moshulu, where we met Sarah, Fiona and Susanne.

I'm pretty sure everyone had a really good night, even Vicki and Rhona who were first-timers at Moshulu, and enjoyed the Air Guitar selection played. They also enjoyed pole-dancing with Pete, but that's another story!

Pop Quiz, Hotshot

2004-10-28T16:04:00.000Z

In the last two weeks I've spent just a bit too much time in pub quizzes...

Last Monday I was at Key West (a wee pub in Westhill) for a music quiz, which sounds really good, but I'm only useful for songs in the 80's and 90's, leaving the earlier stuff for my parents to argue over.

Then the day after I was at Hog's Head in Aberdeen for their quiz, with Keith, Keven and Peter, where we managed to finish 13/15, though we've never really done that well there. We went back this week with Iain W and Danielle, but the regular quizmaster was away, leaving some joker with extremely difficult questions. So we finished 5th, with a score of 14/40.

Last night was more successful - Slains Castle's Halloween-themed quiz. Myself and 6 guys from my course were there, together with several WAP-enabled phones. It's safe to say we wouldn't have finished second without a little help from Google and IMDB, but considering the guys who came first dropped about 3 points in the whole quiz suggests that cheating was common that night. Still, I'd prefer to just go with what we know and avoid WAP/text aides.

Outside of pubs for a change, I've finally started the assessment for my second module. Basically we have to make a website using XSLT (XML stylesheets), XSP (JSP/ASP/PHP for XML) and ESQL (SQL for XSPs). Sorry for drowning you in acronyms. I've basically sat through many XML/XHTML lectures, waiting for XSP and ESQL to be taught, which it finally has been. I'm sticking with the same site design from my first module, so I can keep the same design and logic, and concentrate on coding.

I'm not sure what's on the cards for this weekend. I know there'll be a Friday night out with the course as always, and there's word of 2 different Halloween gatherings, but I'm not sure what I'll want to do - I'd rather get through a fair chunk of my assessment before spending 3 days in a drunken stupor.

Next weekend I'll be back in Glasgow, to help my sister move flat, to go climbing again hopefully, and to see the kids I left behind once more. So look out!

Discuzzting Language

2004-10-24T15:27:00.000Z

I've just finished my community-minded stint for the day, sending the following email to the Scuzz TV channel. For those who don't know, Scuzz is a music channel on Sky (pretty much the best one going for its selection - no one else is playing Therapy? or The Ga Ga's, and they even play The Wildhearts).

I have a small concern to air regarding your recent playlist additions. A few days ago I saw "Paranoid" performed live by Ozzy Osbourne on Scuzz, and just now I watched "Anthem" by The Wildhearts (a most welcome sight I must say).

The problem is that both videos contained swearing, and were shown during the afternoon (i.e. before the watershed). Danny says "fucking" in the chorus of "Anthem", and Ozzy kept shouting "fuck" between verses.

Personally, I find listening to censored versions of songs a bit irritating, so certainly prefer the uncensored versions you've been playing. However, I don't think the ITC would hold the same view.

It may be that you have permission to play uncensored lyrics throughout the day, in the same way that Sky Movies can show 15 certificate films from 8pm onwards, though if this is true I'm surprised that there isn't some mention of this to let parents know what channels to let their kids roam free through.

What I think is more likely is that you have added these videos to your playlist and not thought to check their content first ("Paranoid" would certainly pass normally, and I've seen VH1 play a live version recently that was clean, so I'd understand if your version was assumed to be clean).

The point of this email is simply to alert you to the fact that these uncensored videos are being shown during the day, and that you should try to avoid this in the future - it would be a great shame for your channel to be terminated because of angry letters to the ITC from concerned viewers.

Thanks for your time, and keep up the good work.

It might not come across from that very well, but I'm only concerned about the channel potentially being axed, and not about the vile language being aimed at the kids of Britain. Nothing is going to shield kids from bad language, and I don't see any need for keeping it from them. I've just remembered hearing people say that as kids they listened to Guns N' Roses or Cypress Hill because they swore a lot, and you can imagine a lot of today's youth doing the same with Eminem due to the amount of censorship in his videos. That's not the way I've ever chosen a particular band for attention, but I guess whatever makes you happy and all that.

Chunderbus

2004-10-24T15:26:00.000Z

Last night I went to various pubs with Keith, Peter and Pete's sisters Dawn and Claire. Not much to comment on except the bus ride home:

The bus was packed, with far more folk on than normal. Keith was sitting next to me by the window, with Pete and Claire in front of us. We got on at Micky D's, and the bus stopped again at Burger King to get pick up more people. Which is when Keith was sick.

He just angled his head towards the wall and let forth his night's intake. He said that he'd have been fine if the bus hadn't stopped. Anyway, he didn't get much on the wall (and managed to clean it up with a tissue), and no one else seemed to notice, so we just stayed there.

When the bus got to Hazelhead (about 15 minutes later), he threw up again, and again no one noticed.

Thankfully it didn't smell (apart from of Irn Bru), and didn't seem to spread anywhere. I spent a good 5 minutes laughing uncontrollably at Keith, which probably didn't help him much, but it was funny how he got away with it (assuming he did - he got off the bus later than me). If only I'd had a camera with me.

Not Climbing Up Those Walls

2004-10-20T11:29:00.000Z

After a little investigation yesterday I found out that there are 2 wall climbing centres in Aberdeen(shire) - one at the Beach Leisure Centre and one out at Peterhead. The Peterhead one's described online as mainly being used for leading (where you attach your rope harness to the wall every few feet while ascending - quite advanced stuff), but the beach sounded promising.

I went down there this morning to find out more (couldn't seem to find a website for the leisure centre, though it's probably buried in the council's site somewhere), and it turns out that it's basically for bored pros/amateurs - there's no renting of equipment, no training/qualified people to help you out, and the wall seems to just be a big slab that was carved up 20 years ago (so it's not easy to improve it if it turns out the original design is poor).

In short, I'm not climbing that in a hurry. I'll bet it's alright for people for know what they're doing (as long as they hug the wall - there's a flat wall opposite it about 5 feet away!), but not for me. I'll just have to wait until my next Glasgow visit.

Climbing Up The Walls

2004-10-18T15:52:00.000Z

My first post in a good few days. Apologies for the absence: I didn't feel like talking for a while. Pain is not for public display. The main topic of the last two posts crashed and burned last Friday, so I am once again looking for the one.

I've just spent the weekend in Glasgow, due to it being Stephen's birthday, and me having just finished my first module on the new course.

SilverStream: For my last assessment I had to build a site with some form of business transaction, for my chosen type of business. To help make things interesting for myself I put a bit of thought into the possible applications I could do, and came up with a movie stream rental service. There's a couple of these around at the moment, but none making much money since connection speeds need to be pretty high to view a stream.

Basically, I thought there was the chance to capitalise on the fact that DVDs come with many sound types (like Dolby Digital and Surround Sound), and audio/subtitled languages and commentaries. But who listens to every track? Anyway, I thought making a site where users could choose the combination of audio, subtitles and sound quality they wanted for a film, then just sit back and watch.

The bad news was that I couldn't put a Shopping Basket in to the system, because it didn't make sense to buy 5 streams at once if a) you can only watch one at a time, b) each stream expires after 48 hours, and c) you have to be connected to the net to watch each one anyway. But I made up for it with a nice advanced search feature, allowing users to search for actors, directors, plot words or film titles, and to limit searches to films offered in particular languages.

Friday: A quick bus journey after my handin and I was in Glasgow. Met my sister in town to get keys for her flat, went back there, had the worst cheeseburger supper of my life in about 5 minutes, then charged out again to meet all the kids in Waxy's.

It was good to catch up with everyone (and to see the faces on those that didn't know I was coming). We drank and talked away for a few hours, and were joined by a man who tried to convince us of his plan to crack the safe in the room next to where we stood (a room I'm almost certain he'd used as a toilet not long before).

For reasons best known to himself, Chris decided not to join in the good times on Friday. If this happens again, it will be treated as dereliction of duty, Mr Miller.

After Waxy's there was a bit of a downturn as people left and we spent a good half hour deciding where to go next. The Shack (of all places) eventually won out so we joined the surprisingly short queue there and entered (Stephen carrying a Bikini Girls calendar and two bottles of ale).

The Shack really isn't my choice of venue for a night out, but I'm happy to go where the party travels. It was quite odd seeing a dance floor with about 200 bodies on it, all essentially standing still for 2 hours. Not so much a cattle market as a butcher's window.

Saturday was a bit quieter. I spent 2 hours looking in clothes shops for a new jacket, which I eventually got as well as a blister from walking so long in new trainers. Shopping at the weekend has recently become necessary since my weekdays are quite busy, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. Listening to my iPod is almost enough to make the sloth of the hoarding masses bearable.

It was yet another chance for me to write off a few shops as not being likely to stock anything I'd like in the next few years, and to become annoyed with the amount of clothing on the racks that looks like it's been made by a home economics class. Why is the current fashion to buy clothes that look so completely knackered? Added to the current obbsession with mo-hawks and it could look to the casual observer that early 90's metal and punk was the current style of choice.

Back to Saturday, and I spent the evening having a couple of drinks and watching Shark Tale with Rachel and Craig. Nice company, shame about the film. It was funny in places, but didn't really pull me in at all, and I think most of the jokes would have totally bypassed the bairns in the cinema.

Sunday: And now for something completely different. On Sunday I went wall climbing with Julie, Iain McGinniss, Irene, Iain McNaught and Alisdair. My first time climbing a wall (I've abseiled before, but going up's always easier than going down, or so I thought), and it was great fun. It's a pretty enjoyable thing where there's not really any competition and it's all about what you want to do yourself and how difficult you want to make the climb. My next plan is to find a climbing centre in Aberdeen and go for a training session.

The Day (Monday): Back to uni. Being taught how to write XHTML. Fun.

Mars Attacks

2004-10-03T16:18:00.000Z

The Work: The style of lecturing at Aberdeen so far has been very different to that of Glasgow. For one thing, the lecturer asks questions regularly. And he gets responses! Over the last 4 years, my lectures have been rooms of muted students with the ocassional exceptions who had to bear the brunt of all questions. But not anymore - even I'm offering up answers!

As I've already told many people (my soundbyte for the week), I have a 4500 word essay due on Tuesday, which I'm glad to say is going quite well so far, though I still need to do more research. We have to write critically about an E-Commerce site, and I've chosen CD Wow, a site that I first thought would be well made, but is actually full of holes (not that I'd do much better).

The Play: On Friday I went out with a few old friends, unfortunately requiring that I drop out of a night out with some of the guys on my new course. I thought I'd have a good time, but instead had to sit through drinking games of questionable worth, and sit next to a guy who'd be on my enemy list if I ever had need for one. No need or wish for elaboration, just note that moving back to where you grew up also means moving to where your growth was also stunted.

The Rest: But not all can be bathed in a poor light this week. My hopes from the last post were confirmed, and I met up with the "sweet lass" from Saturday. We had a good time, we will meet again, and I am a happy man. Remember Marty: if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.

Stairway To Heaven

2004-09-26T04:18:00.000Z

Tonight I went out with a fair few folk (Note to the English teachers - alliteration works!). I went to Slaines with KG and Pete, where we met Fiona and a large group with her, Dawn (Pete's sister) with her mates, Rhona and her man Dave, and Derek (my 1st, 3rd and 4th year flatmate) and his mates. A very large gathering to say the least.

Anyway, a select few of us went on to the Triple Kirks to have a few more drinks, but KG, Pete and I decided (after a bit of arguing) to go on to Moshulu, where we'd originally intended to go (long story - accept that it won't get told!).

So at Moshulu (Aberdeen's slightly poor answer to the Cathouse; Don't get me wrong, it's a great place, just not quite as good), we met Fiona with her assorted buddies, all out to accompany Fiona's cousin Craig who was visiting from Canada. Many people, majoritavely female, in one spot. I was standing beside this meley for a while, talking with KG and Pete, but ocassionally caught the eye of a sweet lass sitting amongst the others.

Cut to 30 minutes later, and I'm sitting next to said sweet lass. We get talking. We get along really well. We talk about all sorts. From my end at least, there's something going on (I think it was mutual, but what do I know?).

About 2 hours later said girl leaves for home, so I catch up with her at the door and exchange numbers. I think all is well, that I have jumped to the next (only slightly higher) stage.

Then on the way home I break the news that I got said number. I am then told by Pete that the girl has a boyfriend. He had gotten her number about a year previously and found out her relationship shortly afterwards.

So I could potentially be climbing a tree already being scaled by another, but no matter - I will still contact this lass, arrange to meet her and see what happens. If she has a boyfriend, then I'll have to accept that in the blink of an eye, and hopefully take her on as a friend, because she seems a really nice girl - someone I would like to know even if I couldn't be with her.

I'll bet there are at least two female readers of this blog who are thinking "about fucking time" or "good on you" - I'll admit it's been a good while since I made any kind of progress with the opposite sex, even if this is pseudo-progress. All I can say is my innate shyness, which may not be obvious among friends, often hinders me, but I am trying.

Pink Ego Box

2004-09-25T15:09:00.000Z

Just a quick note to the kids from DCS I worked with over summer (and any other DCS kids wanting a chat) - check my website's contact page to find my MSN username, and add me to your contacts list. I'd meant to get everyone's usernames before I left, but I'm forgetful at times!

The More Things Change...

2004-09-23T09:29:00.000Z

Yesterday I had my introduction to my new degree, and it went quite well. There were a couple of unusual points brought up:

We're expected to take our own laptops in to uni every day, since there were about 35 people in today, plus a lot more on the list, and only 14 machines. Wonder if I could get used to carrying my laptop around all day.

The department is closed at 11pm, so even though this course is "harder than fourth year", all nighters are not an option

All lectures, seminars and tutorials are held in the same room - our lab

Aside from that, all was well. I ended up in the Bobbin (one of the few pubs near the uni; a place I'd walked by many times but never been in) afterwards with a few of the folk from the course. I'm pretty glad it was quite a relaxed first day - it made it easier to get talking to people. From the people I've met so far, I'm the only one from Aberdeen on the course.

Outside of uni, I've started ripping my CD collection now that I have it in reach, so my iPod should be fit to burst in a couple of days, with many CDs of MP3s waiting for their turn on the white machine.

Show a Little Emotion

2004-09-20T11:23:00.000Z

Well my time in Glasgow has come to an end for now, and here's how Scotland with Style tried to stop me leaving.

Thursday: I met Julie at the train station and we headed to Nice N Sleazy for some drinks, Julie a little fired up for the impending Rico concert. Had a good wee chat and caught up on each other's lives from the past few weeks.

Cut to 8:30 and we're in King Tut's. We watched the first support act, a duo with some of the worst lyrics ever, then the second, a local band called Bad Dancer, who sounded pretty tight though I personally didn't think the lead singer's voice was anything special.

Anyway, they were basically just filling in the gaps until Rico arrived, and he played a really good set. Almost every song was reworked in some way, which can be hard to pull off but it sounded very polished, like a Nine Inch Nails remix album, only less extreme. Also, you could tell Rico was putting all of himself into the performance: often a band can only exude energy if the crowd is giving off energy, but this gig wasn't overly packed, it was in a small room, and few in the crowd were moshing, yet Rico was still on edge all the time.

Friday: During the week I'd been trying to arrange for a small group of friends from my year to meet on Friday night. A few were lined up to join the regulars, but one by one they fell victim to illness and tiredness through work.

So by the start of the night only the regulars (minus Rachel who had to work late) survived the cull and made it to Curlers. Not a whole lot went on here, except the loss from the pack soon after leaving the pub of Matt, for reasons known only to himself. Sorry i couldn't say goodbye to you, Dude.

Around 7pm we were all back at Lauren's flat with a bit of bevvy. What ensued was conversations about army training, mens romm ettiquete and the Britney Spears outfit , not to mention some guitar showmanship from Stevie, Chris and Stewart, Colin doing his best to break one of Lauren's lights, and Stevie running out of loo roll when dropping the kids off at the pool.

To explain, the bog roll in Lauren's WC had run out before tonight, and with no more in the flat, she'd put a box of tissues on the cistern. Stevie had gone to show Mr Whippy how things were done, but made the biggest mistake you can on a toilet visit: not checking the bog roll supply. He didn't want to use the tissues because he felt they were not meant for the purpose at hand, so instead started shouting (and whistling) for assistance!

We were putting off leaving for the shack for a while, but when it came time to go (with our number reduced by Stewart and Colin's earlier departures), Lauren was too tired to come out. Quite a shame since she'd gone to the trouble of getting ready for a night out, but perhaps for the best as will soon be revealed.

So the plan now: head round to Rachel's (which was not "just round the corner", despite what Stephen might tell you) and get a taxi from there to the Shack (not my choice of venue, but I was happy enough to go there rather than splinter off somewhere else and not spend the night with the peeps). Stevie and David left en route, and Iain had stayed behind with Lauren at her flat, so we were reduced to Stephen and Chris.

Speed round: Say hello to Rachel; try to book a taxi: 40 minute wait (sod that for a game of soldiers); try to flag on on a) Argyle Street, b) Sauchiehall Street, c) all of the above, but failed; Decide to retire to Rachel's flat.

Out of place prologue: Way back near the start of my summer placement, Rachel and I were in Starbucks and had a conversation I will now paraphrase to save time:

Steven: I'm staying in my sister's old room. The wardrobe is almost full of her old clothes.
Rachel: Can we expect you to turn up to work in girlie tops?
Steven: It's mostly skirts
Rachel: So you'll be wearing skirts?
Steven: (Reaching for funny excuses) I don't have the legs for that
Rachel: OK, we'll have to get you some tights.

Rachel threatened to buy the tights for quite some time, and finally produced a set of stockings in the lab earlier this Friday. This was all fun and games, but now we were back at her flat, and she was demanding to see them on me! Many drinks and Stephen telling me he'd have done it sent me towards Rachel's room, emerging shortly after wearing the stockings and a wee skirt Rach had found that would fit me. I have no doubt that the photos will be online very shortly, if they aren't already (I have yet to check other blogs), but I was not alone: Stephen also wore the stockings, but this time with a long coat and very little else. He deserved that after "forcing" me into cross-dressing.

Around 6am we said our goodbyes (mine holding a bit more weight than others since I was leaving the city) and headed home.

Since this is where my contact with the kids from the lab is temporarily broken, I'll take a minute to say thanks to them all: Chris, Colin, David, Iain, Lauren, Lotr, Matt, Rachel, Stephen, Stevie and Stewart. Thanks for making the summer work easier to take, and I'll see you all soon.

Intermission: Will this week ever end? Please take 5 minutes to blink, make a brew, or wipe that tear from your eye.

Saturday: To help you follow the story, my sister is called Christine, and I've always called her Chris, but we already have one Chris here, so it's Christine for you!

Christine and I met up with wee Graham and his girlfriend Donna at Barfly for Ginger's acoustic gig. We thought that it could be a quiet night since it had only been announced a couple of weeks before, but it seemed packed to the gunnels once the second support act were underway.

But back to the first support: Deckard's lead singer doing a solo set, including a few tracks from his time in Baby Chaos, and a cover of STP's Interstate Love Song. All very good.

Next up were Plan A, fronted by Jeff, formerly of The Wildhearts. Playing their songs acoustically did little to hinder how good they sounded, so I bought one of their EPs, as well as the Gigner acoustic CD on sale at the gig. During and after the Plan A set, Hot Steve, Random Jon Poole and Ginger all walked past us through the crowd, indicating just how small the venue was.

On to their set, which was just phenomenal. It pissed from a great height on the Edinburgh show last year, which Ginger admitted was a "pretend" show. They played many tracks for the first time to my ears, including their first dip into the Endless Nameless album since The Wildhearts split about a year after making it. There were medleys of covers, medleys of their own songs, and in general much more of a show than you'd expect given the small number of shows and the size of each show on the tour.

After the show, Christine and I hung around with her friend Graham (not the wee one, another one), who had heard that the band would sign stuff if you waited long enough. Sure enough, 15 minutes later we were in the dressing room getting our CDs signed. In hindsight, we should've asked Ginger if The Wildhearts were supporting The Darkness on their UK tour (it's not been confirmed or denied at the mo), but instead could think of nothing to say. Ach well!

Epilogue: So that's how my last week living in Glasgow tailed out. I'm now back in Aberdeen, with just 2 days before I have to show up at Uni #2. Here's hoping the kids here are even half as much fun as Glasgow's.

My name is Steven, and I belong to Aberdeen once more.

The End Is Nigh

2004-09-15T16:56:00.000Z

I'm getting close to the end of my summer job - just 2 days, and half an hour, left. I can't say I won't be glad to leave the job, but I will miss the kids in the department over summer.

My workload has decreased since my last work-rant. It turns out that a lot of what I was being asked to do didn't need to be done because I'd already done it when I worked for the uni last year. So I'm a bit more relaxed now.

My work time has mainly been taken up with evaluations on VideoSqueak (by the way, if you catch this post before Friday night you can access the site at the URL I gave a while back to see it for yourself). It's really annoying going through the logs and noting everything down. My own fault for not thinking before stealing someone else's logger.

My evaluation participants included one character referred to by many as Scary Man. He was forced into participating by my supervisor (something I was totally against - it effectively cancels the idea of "volunteering" for the experiment). Anyway, he just questioned everything about my system. "Why use your method when there are other methods out there?" Some really contradictory and stupid ideas in amongst all he spouted. Nice guy!

And as a wee follow up to a previous post, my boss does want to do the Miami presentation instead of me. Grr!

Played on the Big Screen: I went to The Village last week, which was surprisingly good - I'd heard mixed reviews on it, but at the same time thought it couldn't falter much as a Shyamalan film.

It was really refreshing to see a film that barely reflected its trailer. A prime example that I think will be different to this is AVP - the trailer for that film needed very little. Perhaps a shot of Predator, a shot of 1+ aliens, Alien and Predator on screen at the same time, and maybe a bit of witty banter from the human cast. 20 seconds at most. No need to give too much away, because the combined audiences of these film legacies is enough to build a substantial beach head (or initial consumer group for those not from a DEMMS/commercial background), then word of mouth would do the rest (I'm assuming they haven't botched up the film. I mean, how could they?).

And tonight it's off to The Terminal with Rachel, one lass it will be hard to say goodbye to this weekend. Do not fear Rach, I will visit!

I know I had more today, but it's gone.

RSS'ing About

2004-09-13T19:48:00.000Z

I've just altered my home page slightly, by replacing the HTML parsing with RSS parsing (thanks to Matt for the suggestion). This seems to run faster, but only a couple of the blogs I link use RSS (I now realise this doesn't - perhaps another reason to switch to WordPress like all those before me).

Short and sweet today - that chicken isn't going to cook itself (though I'd be well impressed if it did).

Smells Like Yer Maw

2004-09-13T09:55:00.000Z

Friday night last week involved the normal plan - go to Curlers for some scran, then on to the QM for a night-long drinking session.

Aside from one of the nights when Cheesy Pop was held in the Food Factory, last week was the first time I'd remained in possession of control over my body by the time we headed down to the cheese, so I actually had to dance. The reason for my unseasonable near-sobriety was that I was wearing my contacts. I had only worn them when drinking once previously, but on that night 4 drinks had been enough to take my sight away. So on Friday I was drinking slower and adding soft drinks to my system now and then.

At midnight, when we went downstairs, my contacts started drying out again, and I was ready to call it a night, but Chris convinced me to just go to the lab and change to my glasses then come back. Not a bad idea really, as it meant I could get my bag and leave it in the QM's cloakroom, avoiding another trip to the lab at 2:30.

So now back in the QM, watching my friends on the floor, I realised I was near sober and couldn't stand against a wall all night. One of my failings would have to be needing plenty of C₂H₅OH lubrication before I feel comfortable on a dance floor. Something about all the other people in the room seeing you dance like a fool. It's not that my dancing gets better with more drinks, I just care less about the roving eyes.

Anyway, after one of the many Jack and Coke purchases, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit came on, which I could barely turn down. When you like the music I do, you have to accept some things:

i. Most clubs will only play the old standards like Nirvana, Guns 'N' Roses and Rage.
ii. People will expect you to dance to these tracks.

This second point didn't happen last night, but I do have memories of being dragged up for these tracks on many past ocassions. I do like the songs, but overplay combined with them not being the best to dance to in my opinion (with the exception from the above list of Rage) mean I'm not keen on them in a club setting.

So up I get, as Chris leans across and starts singing in my ear. He's making up lyrics as he goes, which are all about him and "yer maw" enjoying each others company. Absolutely hilarious stuff, which I commented on at the time simply with "How come you aren't on television"?

Anyway, a good night was had by many if not all present, and we should get something quite spectacular going on this Friday.

Dampfentlüftungsöffnung (Steam Vent)

2004-09-09T17:48:00.000Z

Isn't the German language great for amazingly long words? Like Welsh, without losing your tongue somewhere near your tonsils (just kidding).

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to vent steam, not discuss foreign linguistics. I'm nearing the end of my summer job, and my boss is really pushing me to get a frankly ridiculous amount of work done in a week.

Earlier in my placement I had little to do, as I'd been left with very little and my boss was away for a couple of weeks. It was annoying having to twiddle my thumbs in a wee office on my own, but I was happy to pay back the wasted time with overtime later on.

So now it's later on, and it's quite clear that the mass of overtime I'm putting in is not going to come close to finishing all set before me.

Today my boss phoned me to go over what I'd done so far, and to give me yet more work. I wrote a paper on my 4th year project, and it's been accepted (on the third attempt) to a conference. The conference is in Miami, and the authors are invited to give a presentation of the paper. My boss wants me to prepare something for this.

I'm quite happy to do this, as a trip to Miami would be nice. It would be in the last week of term which would not be very good timing at all, so it would depend on what the workload at that point was like. Chances are I wouldn't be going at all.

But my boss (apologies for this static referrer to him, but I'm not naming names right now!) is currently in America, and chances are he'd like to go to the conference. I build a system. I write a paper, with input from him in the form of comments after each draft. I write a presentation for the conference. He gives the presentation. Everyone thinks he did all the work. Nice!

So I'm a bit annoyed by that, and will definately check if he intends to give the presentation himself or not before I work on it.

Helping the kiddies: Yesterday I was (after a last minute recruitment) roped into helping out at the uni's open day. It was actually quite enjoyable telling these kids what to expect and generally being looked to for help. Just a shame I didn't know the answers to half the questions! I got a free geek-shirt out of it that will make many jealous, I'm sure.

(I realise the irony of complaining about not having enough time to finish my summer job, after taking hours off to help with the open day, but I'd say it was justified)

This guy's built a glass guitar with a fish in it!

2004-09-08T16:50:00.000Z

Last night it was "announced" - someone on The Wildhearts mailing list leaked - that Ginger will be playing an acoustic show at the Barfly next Saturday. In tow will be Random Jon Poole (The Wildhearts' current bassist) and Hot Steve (roadie with the best name ever).

I've seen the same line-up before in Edinburgh at last year's Fringe, but that was a short set due to it being free (and support for Athlete of all monstrosities). This time around it should be a full-length show. What a way to leave Glasgow (it's my last night in town :-( )!

So in my last week here I have Rico on Thursday, the last ever QM night with the lab folks on Friday, then Ginger on Saturday. Glasgow is trying its best to keep me here! I'm certainly starting to appreciate the lack of bands that tour north Glasgow - I'll be down the road every month just to keep up with the faves.

I'm expecting Soulwax to tour soon for their new album. It's good to hear them going in yet another direction. Chris Goss-licked rock to poppy little tunes to dark electronica.

Things to do: I now have to redo two of my blog parsers on my website, after Chris altered his style and Matt moved his blog. Some people have no consideration for others!

As far as the rest of the website goes, it's been quite static recently. Still to do:

Get the style fully tested in multiple browsers
Force the style on this blog
Get XHTML compliant
Clean everything - I want this to be a quality site (I should've started with this, but nuts to that)
Complete the DB and add more features to it

Quite Ugly Last Night

2004-09-06T20:21:00.001Z

Last night a dramatisation of the Christopher Bookmyre novel Quite Ugly One Morning was shown on ITV. I'd only heard of this earlier in the day, so I didn't have much time to build hopes, but was quite excited by the programme since a) I'm a big Brookmyre fan; b) I always thought his novels would work well as movies; c) I'd half-heartedly tried to right a screenplay for the same book.

I tried to overlook the fact that James Nesbitt was playing the lead: the story is set in Edinburgh, and Nesbitt, and Irishman was playing a Scottish guy. It turned out that he played what was given to him quite well, and even managed a piss-take of a Scottish accent at one point. Anyway, part of the novel's appeal is how steeped in Scottishness it is.

The problem was the word "adaptation". The story on screen wasn't so much adapted as it was a total rewrite. The characters were all still there (in name at least), as was the basic plot, but the most funny, surprising and enjoyable parts had all been replaced with much tamer ideas.

Be warned: If you haven't yet read this book, I'd avoid the rest of this post - I'm about to give some twists away, and it's a really good story that you should get your hands on now.

The Chemistry: Instead of Parlabane chasing Jenny the police officer, being knocked back because she was gay, then hapharzardly falling for Sarah (the ex-wife), he already knew Sarah (in a way never explained) and was all over Jenny. I thought at the time of viewing that the writers had effectively shut out any chance for sequel film works to be made - in subsequent novels by Brookmyre, Parlabane and Sarah are still together, and this relationship is to some extent important. If any of the other Parlabane novels were adapted, a differing girlfriend status would be confusing to the TV-only fans, as well as other features of his character being questionable.

The Gore: Part of the appeal of the novel was the constant barrage of splattermania - people frequently walking into rooms with bodily waste causing carnage everywhere. I know the drama had to be cleaned up to meet a 9pm time slot's tameness requirements, but if they want to make something, they should make it properly. The killer was supposed to enter into a near-final scene with major facial wounds, a missing hand and poor cognition of events. Instead he's buried by the elderly woman, changing her from a wee old dear into a Crimewatch feature.

Form a Band, Learn the Fucker

2004-09-02T09:50:00.000Z

The Velvet Revolver gig was something to remember and no doubt about it. It started off with Backyard Babies (I heard there was another support band earlier, but getting in early enough for them would've been tough with the queue outside). I knew I recognised their name from somewhere - turns out they were meant to support The Wildhearts on their last tour, but pulled out and were replaced by Therapy?. Not a bad thing at all since Therapy? are so good.

But I can see why they were the original support - they have a similar sound to The Wildhearts, and during their set they played a track called Star War. This is their version of Star War Jr from the Super$hit 666 mini-album. SS666 is a band I got into due to Ginger, The Wildhearts' singer, being their singer as well. But the guitarist from Backyard Babies is also in SS666. Hearing the track live was really good.

Then after a fairly long wait, we got VR. You would never believe the Scott Weiland would be so animated on stage, coming from a grunge band, but he really was. They managed to slot in 2 Stone Temple Pilot songs, 2 Guns 'N' Roses songs and what I think was a Nirvana cover too. I'd been expecting GNR, since they're the more popular band, but getting to hear STP was really good.

This is where you notice why I'm not a music reviewer - I can't get more descriptive than "really good"!

Come back here, so that I may brain thee

2004-08-31T14:56:00.000Z

Love at the Docks: On Wednesday night my sis discovered that The Darkness had announced to their mailing list their next UK tour, and were offering pre-sale tickets right then. What wasn't included in the announcement was something which had been leaked earlier - The Wildhearts and Ash would support on this tour.

So after trying to get somewhere with a frankly pathetic website, cclinks.co.uk, I switched from MSIE to Opera (something I would never expect to make a site work better!), we finally got 2 tickets. I'm fair chuffed to say the least.

I may shock some people with the following: I can take or leave The Darkness most of the time. I only know 11 songs by them, and overplay can make them quite grating. But they do have good tunes, and they are extremely good live.

But the real prize is The Wildhearts. This will be the 8th time I will see them live (not including seeing Silver Ginger 5, the lead singer's offshoot, and Ginger himself play an acoustic show at last year's Fringe), and I just can't tire of the experience. Last time I caught a plectrum thrown, quite some distance, by CJ, so I was a happy bunny! (Though "caught" is stretching it a bit - it hit my shoulder and landed beside me. I had to wait for people to move around before I could clock it on the ground.)

Birthday Girls: Apologies must go to Julie and her friends for quitting early on Saturday night. I went to Julie's/Julie's sister Lynsey's/her friend Jenni's birthday bash at Kublai Khan's, then went on to Spy Bar. I had agreed with everyone that Spy was a decent place to go for drinks before the Shack (which I had also agreed to go to), forgetting that they play music. Loud.

Call me an old fart if you like, but I can struggle to follow a one-on-one conversation in a bar at the best of times, but when it's many-on-many with such loud music, I have no chance.

I just lost most of this post (eedjit that I am, I closed Opera when I went to the Velvet Revolver site - there's women with no clothes on in there! Anyway, I'm at uni, and didn't want to lost access in my last 3 weeks).

I said stuff about going to VR tonight, my eyes failing on Saturday night, and probably other stuff too. My paper being accepted for a journal - it'll be published in December, with a conference at the same time in Miami.

I'm a fool. I hate retyping stuff. Damn yous. Damn yous all to hell.

Remember kids: Say no to drugs, stay in school, and backup your data!

7 Mathematical Sins

2004-08-23T01:25:00.000Z

For those of you not attuned to the world of numbers, bear with me hear.

I have often been heard to state (usually when drunk) that maths is the universal language that would be used for communication with aliens, if such things existed. (I also siad that linguistics is what would poison the process, but I know I was being a divot). This can in part explain why I wanted the domain etotheipi.com originally, but someone beat me to it (for those that don't know, check the site for why this name is nice).

Anyway, back in my primary school days, being taught times tables, my teacher at the time told the class that the 9 times table is easy to remember, because if you take the digits of any answer between 1 and 10, they add to give 9.

If you've never noticed this before, check: 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90. It works.

A slight extension to this idea will give the same result for every poistive multiple of 9. Example: 9*11 = 99. Add the digits to get 18. Add those digits together to get 9.

I always thought this was a nice little twist to the world of numbers. Then sometime in secondary school I noticed a little trick with the 7 times table. Adding the digits together for these values gives an odd-even countdown kind of thing. Observe:



07, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 70 GIVES:

7,, 5,, 3,, 1,, 8,, 6,, 4,, 2,, 9,, 7

Again, this sequence repeats for quite a while. Cut to yesterday, when this quirk pops into my head again. I wondered if this would extend to other number bases. If you use hex encoding, you get:



Decimal: 07, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 70

Hex:.... 07, 0E, 15, 1C, 23, 2A, 31, 38, 3F, 46 

Added:.. 7,, E,, 6,, D,, 5,, C,, 4,, B,, 3,, A

A swapping countdown. I haven't tested this further than 10, because Excel on this machine is severely lacking in hex tools.

The 9 rule is also adaptable. Using hex again, and F instead of 9, all positive multiples of F give answers whose digits add to give F.

Right, I'm sure that bored the hell out you, but you've read it, and you can't unread it!

Putting Bad Meat to Good Use

2004-08-22T01:50:00.000Z

More ambling around the internet has unearthed this little gem: Spamusement. While being almost unbearingly funny, it makes you realise just how quick you can be to dismiss emails as spam from their subjects. I'm always telling people to make sure their emails don't look like spam just in case I chuck them automatically.

What does Terry Pratchett say SGM stands for?

2004-08-21T12:14:00.000Z

After a mention last night of the Geek Test, I went and took the test today. My score was 20%, classing me as a standard geek. This seems fair enough - I know people who fit the geek bill far better than myself. Especially since the site referred to Geek Code, which I looked up, and tried to follow but the page of instructions was too long for me to continue caring.

The site also included a few definitions of the word Geek, and a link to Wikipedia's definition. It turns out that most geeks are thought to have something called Asperger's syndrome, a weak form of autism. Some of the description of this was quite startling:

"Asperger's Syndrome involves an intense level of focus on things of interest and is often characterized by special (and possibly peculiar) gifts"

Sounds a bit familiar!

Arbeiten fur Alles

2004-08-19T12:32:00.000Z

Some good news from the fray this week is that Julie got a job. She's working for at least 3 months in Carlisle, and getting paid handsomely for it too.

Meanwhile Rachel is in Germany, erm, enjoying the Germans I imagine. I've failed to teach her any German with my crypticity (is that a word? Dictionary.com say's no, but I'll keep using it until Oxford have no choice but to include it) in emails, so it's just as well most German's speak English anyway.

Back in my world, I had a fairly good time at the weekend. Friday was Craig's birthday, which involved a curry at Ashoka (haggis pakora rule!), drinks in Oran Mor, some korma-coloured projectiles from Craig shortly after 2 Sambucas and shortly before his exit, and the remaining sailors (and me) drinking on, at the same table beside Craig's work of art on the floor, until closing.

One thing I must mention about Friday night is that one of the (few) lasses there, Sam, told me she was vegetarian except for fish "because they don't have feelings". This comment flew totally over my head until Monday lunchtime, when Nirvana Unplugged arose on my iPod, and the lyric "It's okay to eat fish cause the don't have any feelings" came up.

It annoyed me that someone had done what I always want to do (work song lyrics into conversation), and I didn't even realise. If I tried to do it I'd just spout out whatever song was in my head. ("You know that you can and will lick my doo.")

On Saturday I went out in Aberdeen for a few drinks with Keith and Peter, but I for one was shattered after trying to catch up on sleep for the last week, so we didn't last long. We ended up in Exodus, listening to the most hideous collection of indie I can remember hearing a DJ subject people to. This is why it's always better to go home on a Friday - Saturday's suck in Aberdeen.

Sunday came along, and I got to see my mother's side of the family, including the new addition, Liam Thomas Arris (this may well earn Liam his first Google hit). Cute doesn't quite describe him! Aww, aww, aww.

This week's been quite quiet so far. I got contact lenses on Monday, after swithering about them for about a year. They're a trial set for a week, and I can only wear them a few hours a day, but they seem to be improving. The only problem is that I've been told I can't wear them for more than 10 hours even when my eyes are used to them, so I don't see much point in keeping them unless perhaps toric lenses are different in this respect (I have an astigmatism so may need funcy (translate: expensive) lenses!).

Happy Black Days, Here's The Summer

2004-08-13T16:12:00.000Z

I took a stand against the stifling summer (it stifles me - I'm from Aberdeen, and not used to positive figures on a thermometer) in Glasgow the other day, by buying a little desk fan for my office. Now all is breezy.

I know that I've always been good at getting song lyrics wrong, and Manics songs are a prime example of a singer I generally can't understand. But near at the end of the song Epicenter is a little piece I was certain I had pegged, and was going to title this post with:

Happy Birthday, Here's the Summer

This seemed perfect for Craig's birthday being today (HB2U), and for the fan purchase. But I try to avoid eggy faces, so checked the lyrics first. Damn.

The Site: I've managed to get a bit more work done on my website, though it's still not close to finished - I need some serious time with a decent connection and a decent machine, which is not an easy combination to find these days. Broadband may seem a fantastic thing, but if it's connected to a machine that would have trouble keeping up with hair growth, it's not so good. And the uni has the admin IP for my host blocked, so I'm scunnered there as well.

Anyway, since the site's domain is now registered, here comes a link: rebootmenow.com.

Weekend (5 Long Days): Looks like my weekend is going to be busy. Tonight is Craig's birthday bash, with dinner at Ashoka (a curry house, which thankfully does a sweet and sour dish, as I'm not a curry man) then some drinks afterwards. The drinking can't be too heavy for me since: a) I got tanked last week and ended up with my head in Stephen Strowes' lap (there are photos to prove this! When I get copies, they will be made available here); b) I have to get up early on Saturday for...

A trip to Aberdeen to see the boys, and maybe the girls too if I actually remember to get some texts out. But the main reason for going up North is...

A visit to Inverness on Sunday. My cousin Gail just had a baby boy, named Liam, so I'm going up to visit with my sister (who's heading up the road to Aberdeen with me,a and so giving me a lift) and the folks. The bad news is my sister is staying in the North until Monday, but I can't get Monday off, so I have to get a 3.5 hour bus from Inverness to Glasgow on Sunday.

Teenage Mutant Mocking Turtles: Last night I went to Waxy's with my flatmates Kristen and Hogie for a friend of their's birthday, and to see the Mock Turtlenecks - a duo who play loads of upbeat covers on acoustic guitar. They came out with a few decent tunes, but concentrated too much on Barenaked Ladies. Apart from that, and sitting right in front of a speaker, they were pretty good. The big problem with sitting in front of a speaker is I couldn't hear anyone else around me, and I'm generally poor at hearing in pubs at the best of times.

I'm sure I'll start blaming my iPod for this - it would have been nice if you could program your own equalizer settings, but you can't, so I'm stuck with the Rock EQ which seems to lose almost all the bass.

PS: I found out last night that I got funding for my Masters in Aberdeen. So I'll definately be getting paid a fair chunk of cash for the year. Yay for me!

This Drinking Will Kill Me

2004-08-09T11:50:00.000Z

My iPod arrived on Friday while I was at work. As per usual, I went to Curlers then the QM straight after work with all the other poor shmoes working in the department this summer, so I didn't get to see the iPod til around 4am. I'm not sure what I did to it at that time, but all the menus were in Japanese by morning. Luckily Apple give instructions on how to change the language when you can't understand what you see (though these instructions were a little off, I could still follow them with a hellish hangover).

From what I remember of Friday night, I was quite merry from an early stage, even acting drunk when playing John at pool around 7pm. Despite this, I continued drinking into the wee hours (I think we stayed at the QM til 3am, thanks to their new license). I then proceeded to collect my bag from my office in Lilybank (which I was amazed to find today was not trashed - I had fears of a casual spiage (sp?) in the building somewhere).

I'm not sure if much happened that night, beyond the end of BB (a welcome addition of an extra free hour every night!), and me stotting about so much that it took quite some time for a taxi to take me on. I'm sure if I did anything of note, I'll be reminded at lunch.

So all of this pointed to the inevitable hangover on Saturday - and what a monster it was. My worst for a long time. I was out at Rev on Tuesday night, and headed back to Neil's flat afterwards. Gus was there, and spoke about how he'd given up drinking because the hangovers were too much for him. Maybe there's something in that. It's been a while since I last spewed my ringer, but if I did again in the near future I might head to partial wagon-riding. For one thing it might stop me making a tit of myself at the weekends (or at least thinking I did).

So now I have an iPod, something that frustrated me for much of Saturday until I realised my new Firewire card must be buggered. Thankfully one of my flatmates has a PC with USB 2.0, so I've been able to make speedy transfers of music. After copying all songs from my MP3 CDs, my laptop and a large bulk of my sister's CD collection (since my CDs are almost all in Aberdeen), I've managed to nearly reach half capacity (10 Gig).

Aside from my Firewire card (which only cost £13, when I was expecting to pay about £40) not working, it seems iTunes, while being just about the best media library program I've seen, likes to hang when you try to do a lot at once, or if it simply feels like it. And the hanging requires a total reboot of the PC and the iPod to let you back in. Also, the iPod almost always needs rebooting when I disconnect it from a PC. It seems that the reset only switches a few settings to default (like the clicker sound being diverted to speaker), but that's bad enough - if you can store some settings like the chosen equaliser permanently, why not store everything? It's not like they're tapped for space.

It would also be nice if the volume went low before muting. When out and about on Glasgow's noisy streets, having a high volume range is very useful. But when in a minaiture office, with dead air all around, the lowest volume setting is too loud!

All I have to do now is shell out on the headphone remote (taking the iPod out of your pocket every 30 seconds is just plain annoying, as is the size of the hold switch), and perhaps the carry case too. Serves me right for buying the latest model I guess - no extras with it. And finding the accessories in town will be tough since no one stocks it yet.

So other than getting tanked and copying music, I've had a really quiet weekend. I finished reading Quite Ugle One Morning again, and started A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away again, both by Christopher Brookmyre. I reread Quite Ugly because when I'd first read it, I thought it was a prime candidate for being adapted for the big screen, and had sketched out how I would rearrange the chapters for a screenplay - about as close as I've gotten to written creativity in many years. Anyway, after a second reading it seems less suited for film, mainly because the story is about character development and gore humour, both of which would reduce public interest in the film.

A far more suited candidate would be One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night, which I intended to read next, but it must be in Aberdeen, so I settled for a story set partially in (and very scathing of) Aberdeen instead.

Playlist: Absolutely everything!

Terms, Conditions, and a Sizeable Wait Apply

2004-08-03T15:55:00.000Z

This morning I won a console game with a bottle of Lucozade! They don't specify the console or games selection the prize is from, and the delivery deadline is April, so it could be a while till I get my Sonic game for the Megadrive! Ideally I'd have won Driver 3, though I'd settle for anything half decent for the PS2.

My work-time listening has changed quite a bit recently - instead of listening to minidiscs and burned CD collections, I've been on TotalRock a lot.

I decided yesterday that going to the gym after work just to use a treadmill (as I have done a couple of times recently) was a bit of a waste considering the good weather and the distance between work and home (about 3 miles as the crow flies). So yesterday I changed into shorts in my office and jogged home (with frequent breaks into walking). A few things to note from this:

1. I take ages to cool down after exercise - even after a cool shower I'm still beetroot and feeling the heat
2. Even though it was overcast yesterday, I was quite hot running home so I doubt I'll chance it when it's sunny (I even ended up with a minor layer of sunburn)
3. A lot of Glaswegians find the idea of a pale-white/blue skinned man jogging and looking fair puggled rather funny, and will discuss this with friends. But never mind them - I'm getting fit(?), they're getting fat.

iWill have a iPod, oh yes, iWill have an iPod

2004-08-01T17:31:00.000Z

I have just started eating into my recent paycheck with a purchase at apple.com. It seems strange that Amazon and Apple are the only places I could find the fourth generation model. It took me a while to decide on buying the iPod, but I'm sure it'll be worth it - it's just a shame that most of my CDs are still back in Aberdeen. Plus I hope I can handle a mere 12 hour battery life - I'm used to leaving my MD walkman for a week without charging it.

I've finally got webspace and a domain for my website sorted out. I hadn't planned on spending money on it (I've not spent money on software in many years, only hardware and net access), but caved when every host I came across offering PHP and MySQL either rejected my hosting request or turned out to be really poor.

The domain isn't fully registered yet, so there's no point giving out the address. Also, the content needs serious work! Instead, I'll let you peruse the deaths of many teddy bears:

Ready, Teddy, Death

I just remembered seeing a news report about the upcoming US election, and Kerry's tour of select states. There was some muppet in the crowd who was holding a home-made sign which read "Thats my boy". It's probably the first time that person had been on TV, they'd made international broadcasts, and they had such poor grammar!

Playlist: Machine Head, Mark Lanegan Band, Eleven. Expect this to become much fuller once the iPod arrives!

Angel Biscuit

2004-07-30T13:40:00.000Z

I'm starting to miss having a stereo, or a multitude of music channels, to flick to when adverts come on TV. I'm getting very bored and sick of the sight of Pampers, BMW and every other object I'm not likely to be spending cash on any time soon!

Speaking of cash, I was paid in full for my 10 weeks of work today, after working for less than 3. How trusting of the department!

Since my blog is getting most traffic from DCS, I might as well give out my project URL:

VideoSqueak

If the link doesn't work it means that the server isn't running. The most recent interface is Tabbed (hence why there isn't a screenshot for it).

If you're looking for something to blame the colour scheme on, see Mondo Generator's site.

Who knew PHP was so powerful? I managed to write a parser for my website to include the latest blog post in it, and it only took about 10 minutes.

Getting spun today: Martine Topley-Bird, Nickelback, Devin Townsend (he ain't heavy, he's Devy), Depeche Mode, Slipknot, Foo Fighters, NINs, and whatever gets chosen in the QM after work (hopefully some Talking Heads and something with a bit of bite).
How do I manage to listen to such a weird collection in the span of a day?

Money Cannot Buy This Round

2004-07-29T15:02:00.000Z

Finally got some work to do (now that my supervisor's back, I've suddenly realised I could've been working and not dossing about), though seeing others doing Scottish Football Association helps ease the conScience.

I should maybe mention 2 other things that will appear in this blog:
1. Me being totally conceited with the words I use - words like conceited, procured and stotter will appear often and without any guidance to the reader of their meaning: some will be proper English, so a quick trip to Dictionary.com will help you there; others will be Scots/Doric, and there's very little in the way of online representation for this beautiful, soon to die language. If you're sickin' a meaning, wheech yer haun up and the teacher will gie ye a belter o' a kleip roon' the lug. Sorry!

2. Lots of references to music and lyrics - chances are every post will have a title following this idea. I'm afraid it's the way my mind works - always wanting to work lyrics into a conversation, but I can't think that quickly. But when typing a post, I have plenty of time to be annoying!

Today's tunes: Deftones, Cecil, Manics, Kyuss, Rico and some Garbage later.

Found a host for my website at 50free.com, but their control panel is hideous and I can't get anything to work yet.

Starbucks is evil (or How to get Tagged by Government Crawlers, by the Paranoid People)

2004-07-29T00:17:00.000Z

Quick intro: I'm working for 10 weeks at Glasgow Uni in the Computing department, but at the moment my supervisor/boss is at a conference, and has left me with nothing to do. So today I got to work at 1pm (I was out last night and felt no great need to live through a hangover at my desk), and did nothing but check emails and read blogs.

Cut to 4pm, and I head for a coffee break (break from?) with Rachel and Stephen, where I'm convinced over a creamy mocha to make my own blog.

So here we are.

A bit more of an intro: Check my About Me page (which will exist at some point I'm sure!) to find out what you probably already know. I've just finished a degree in Computing Science at Glasgow Uni, and have signed up to spend 10 weeks doing evaluations on my fourth year project. I'm into the third week, and not making too much progress, but I will at some point! I'll post here links to the system as and when it's available to the wide world.

What to expect: The usual blog capers - What I've done recently, etc. This is likely to be a censored version of that though, as I've always been sceptical of airing deep and meaningfuls to the masses.

You're more likely to find out here how drunk I was during the weekend, what's on my playlist at the moment and what's keeping me busy in the real world.

Playlist: As I just said, this is likely to be a regular feature, since I'm quite the music man. Currently playing are:

Violent Silences: Rico - Recently released second album from the waxing weegie.
The Union of Souls: 3 Colours Red - Another new release, getting extra heavy play since I was at their gig at King Tut's last night, which I enjoyed more than usual. Pete's gone and grown himself a beard, putting him halfway between a tramp and Dave Navarro! A quick scan of the net shows that photos of this aren't yet available.
Grace: Jeff Buckley - Procured from my sister for a debut listen finally.
Cultura: Breed 77 - Hispanic flavoured metal. Very good album
Coral Fang: The Distillers - Punk with style for a change. I'm not into much in the way of punk, but these guys (and girl - who could forget Brodie) know what they're doing now. Also feeds my love of strange 10 min+ songs attached to the end of CDs.

Coming Soon: My musicSite - a database of all my CDs, records, etc. and all the concerts I've ever been to. The DB is nearly complete, but I'm still trying to find a host for it.

Since I've run low on things to say, plus it's 17:06 and I haven't even registered on a blog site yet (this post is brought to you by Notepad (btw, why did they change the font used in Notepad?)), I'll stop now.