29
Mar
181 Days Until I’m Back At Staffs
Just checked Uni email to find I was suppose to have filled in my option module form for next year by Friday 26th. Well that has been and gone. I must get a few emails a month to my uni email address while on placement so I pretty much check it every couple of weeks. I dislike going on there as the uni still uses Exchange2003 with its ever so featureless weboutlook in anything other than IE.
Anyway I had a look at the booklet for my course and it gave a start date. 27th September, seems ages away but honestly I bet that won’t take too long to come around.
The modules are not very good this year. In the list they include options like 3D Computer Graphics. Although it sounds awesome being on a network course it is no use to me. Even if I wanted to go on that module I would have had to have done related modules the during the past too years, which I haven’t.. because I’m on a networking course.
A cisco module caught my eye, Advanced Wireless but I’ve decided not to go for that as I’d rather not do too many cisco modules. I feel like it would restrict my horizons too much plus I didn’t do the second year wireless module as I took Network and Grid Computing instead. That was a good choice I think I bagged a 1st in that module and really enjoyed the work, would recommend it to anyone. Anyway another module, the only one that seems justifiable to be honest caught my other eye, Ubiquitous Computing. The description sounds interesting…
This subject looks at the current and future of anytime, anyplace, anywhere computing. It includes areas such as pervasise computing, mobile devices, located based services, and allows the student to look at the future of computing.
I did wonder the other day as the weather was warming up that I could actually take my iPhone get a few apps, SSH, RDP, etc and sit on a nice park bench or even the beach working remotely from the office…
Seems I’ll be back to Stafford this weekend to get some books for some backgrounding reading and also maybe a house party or two what with it being a 4 day weekend for the 9-5 type.
24
Mar
Up’ed The Game on BOINC
I’ve boosted my grid crunching this week so I should be seeing I few extra credits each week. I’ve reinstalled the BOINC client on a few PCs and quite easily configured them with the BAM account manager, it really is very quick and simple to use.
I found one host that wasn’t reporting jobs, not sure why but it wasn’t setup to connect very often. This has resulted in about 15 work units being completely but never reported. I caught this too late and the deadline has past, so some lost credits there.. I’ve also restarted crunching for Rosetta@Home as it appears Seti:Home is running low on jobs.
You can check out my stats here
21
Mar
What Happened Firefox?
I’ve finally come to the end of the line with Firefox. Recently I’ve become very aware that it isn’t what it used to be and as a result I broke tradition and it was not the first thing I installed when I formatted my computer last week. Google Chrome was.
On Windows, 7 and XP, after a while I find Firefox takes more than 4 seconds to open, 4 seconds is an acceptable time for me to wait anything longer then I start clicking icons again or lossing my train of thought, yeah I know, repeatedly clicking on it doesn’t help anyone and when its finally woken up it makes the situation worse by opening all the windows at once yadda, yadda…
Anywho, what happened? I can remember the days when I could ask my sister what Firefox was and she would not have a clue, same with most people that don’t know so much about computers. Since then however Firefox is very much in the limelight and probably more so with the EU browser choice screen. Back in the day however Firefox was fast, quick, speedy! You clicked on the icon to open it up and it would open! Now though, it takes forever to load, its not even funny.
Anyway I have finally come to an end and have opted for a new browser, a young, thinner one. Google Chrome. Its pretty speedy and it cross platform on Windows and Ubuntu, although I’ve just downloaded the beta on Ubuntu. Its what I can remember Firefox used to be!
Firefox finally pushed me over the edge with its crashing/hanging in Ubuntu.. I’ve just been reading the Garrys Blog recommended by my friend Andrew, I would scroll down to read the rest of the post on Google Reader and not only would be jump to far, it would also keep scrolling down and when it wasn’t doing that it would be hanging.. At work, again on Ubuntu it seems to have randomly lost Flash support.. Not sure if that is Firefox or Ubuntu, I suppose the team at Ubuntu have taken the same stance as Apple have and don’t give a monkeys about supporting Flash… Roll on HTML5 I say.. Oh wait doesn’t Chrome support that?
What happened Firefox? you used to be cool!
/rant
17
Mar
New Servo
Having already shredded the gears in two servos in my buggy a new hi-torque metal geared one arrived in the post at work! I’ll be back tearing up fields quite soon.
Back to installing Opensolaris though now.
15
Mar
New Toy, HPI Trophy 3.5
On Saturday I went to collect a new toy I got off eBay. A pretty much new HPI Trophy 3.5 buggy, similar to the one in the image below. It was pretty much an impulse buy but there is nothing wrong with that. Since racing 1/10 scale cars back in the day I had always wanted a nitro car and now I have one.
Its pretty awesome, I’m a little surprised that the fuel tank isn’t bigger or the fuel doesn’t last as long as I expected but I’m very heavy on the throttle. I had a little problem with it, the steering servo was a little knackered, I’m not sure why but I replaced it with one I had from my 1/10 scale car, I’ve also replaced the radio gear as I can’t be doing with a steering wheel, its all about the joy sticks in RC cars.
I’ve not yet had a chance to take a picture of it but I’ve done plenty of bashing over the week end. I found a nice park quite close to where I live which is awesome and has quite a few good spots for catching some air, think the best I’ve had it was about a metre off the ground, pretty awesome.
Boys and there toys eh?
11
Mar
Google Street View
I’m not sure weather to be concerned about the privacy issues that Google’s Street view brings about or to embrace it with open arms. I have to say it is pretty awesome that you can now pretty much view any street in the UK for free. Stuff that is free is always awesome. I can view my work place online now, my home, my old home, my other home and pretty much anything else, I’ve even found my car (twice). I have to say it is pretty cool and quite useful I suspect, I can’t imagine people actually using this with to rob your house, I can’t see how it would benefit, what stops them from going to your street and checking it out in person.
It’s a pretty cool tool. I can remember using it when I first heard I had an interview in Birmingham, about a year ago, and using to find out how to walk to the office and finding out that Google didn’t drive down the street the office was on, annoying! It was pretty useful though using it to view the City and areas that I thought about moving too, saves me driving there and checking it out myself.
All in all I think its pretty awesome!