radiac.net

Yes, those of you who guessed radiac.net was going into Christmas mode guessed right! Those who didnt, guessed wrong!

Not one for breaking with tradition, this is the fourth year in a row my homesite has gone into christmas mode on the 1st of December... Also took the opportunity to update a few pages here and there.

So, enjoy the christmas lights, and Merry Christmas Everybody :)

Check out the TCMI (Tacky Christmas Music Interface). Doesn't it rule. I trawled the net for Christmas MIDI files, ended up with 202 of the little buggers (3.06MB worth... that's 7 hours, 50 minutes and 39 seconds, folks...), spent many many hours whittling them down to 32 of the best on the net (you have NO IDEA how many bad versions of 'White Christmas' there are out there... but I've got at least 20 of them...) so that you can surf my site while listening to your favourite tune loop over and over and over and over and over...

And if you think that's silly, you should see the code in TCMI...

As usual, I'll probably keep adding things to the theme over the next few weeks, so keep checking back!

I need help :p

Oh yeh, and the next Stargate DVD arrived today. I've got 17 of them now - that's scary. What's slightly more scary is the number of empty jiffy bags from play247 I have sitting here... I really shouldn't be able to afford this. Will have to cut back on the food intake, methinks :p

And thanks to BenC for pointing me at this.

BenC's on a roll:

Saddam Hussein and Bill Clinton meet up in Baghdad for the first round of talks in a new peace process.

When Bill sits down, he notices 3 buttons on the side of Saddam's chair. They begin talking. After about 5 minutes Saddam
presses the first button. A boxing glove springs out of a box on the desk and punches Clinton in the face. Confused, Clinton carries on talking as Saddam laughs. A few minutes later the second button is pressed. This time a big boot comes out and kicks Clinton in the shin. Again Saddam laughs, and again Clinton carries on talking, not wanting to put off the bigger issue of peace between the 2 countries. But when the third button is pressed and another boot comes out and kicks Clinton in the privates, he's finally had enough, knowing that he can't do much without them functioning well. "I'm going back home!" he tells the Iraqi. "We'll finish these talks in two weeks!"

A fortnight passes and Saddam flies to the United States for talks.

As the 2 men sit down, Hussein notices 3 buttons on Clinton's chair and prepares himself for the Yank's revenge. They begin talking and Bill presses the first button. Saddam ducks, butnothing happens. Clinton snickers. A few
seconds later he presses the second button. Saddam jumps up, but again nothing happens. Clinton roars with laughter. When the third button is pressed, Saddam jumps up again, and again nothing happens. Clinton falls on the floor in a fit of hysterics.

"Forget this," says Saddam. "I'm going back to Baghdad!"

Clinton then says through tears of laughter, "What Baghdad?"

You know, sometimes I just wanna give up with all these websites? Little example of why: 6 months ago I write a script to read the sizes of images and save them into a file, it works fine. 3 months ago, I run the script (havent touched it), and it only does the first 18 images. Today I run the script (again, havent touched it), and it just fails completely.

*Sigh*

Still, BUCS (Bath University Computer Services IIRC) have given us a firewall now, so at least my internet connection is fast. As in before, it took me over an hour to ftp a 5k file. Now it's about what it was at 9600 over my mobile...

Oh yeh, and some fag0t (go look at this, it's funny) has harvested just about every single email address I've got on the internet, spanning just about every domain I have. I'm averaging 10 spams a day now.

Aloha. Have plugged in the radicam and got it all working, fixed a couple of bugs with the archive script, updated a couple more pages, and decided to call it a night early for once.

And FYI, the radicam will probably be on most of the time my computer is on, ie roughly about 11am -> 4am, but to those of you who are sicko fat-fetishists, you're not going to get to see me naked, now get the *&%$ off my site.

In addition, in the past I have had to set it online or offline manually using one of my admin scripts, and of course I always forget to turn it off. But I have now automated it; the radicam is only online if the image has been updated in the past minute, so now you'll know if it's really on. And since it is so much better, and will be on a lot more, I've moved it into the root menu. Woo.

And remember, the url you want (if you're using a decent browser) is radicam.radiac.net/popup

I quote from Ananova:

Rock legend Sir Elton John has vowed never to make another record in protest at the state of the music industry

Conclusive proof that there is a god, and he/she/it runs the music industry.

Hi there. Finished my programming coursework. I've got a neato playlist on at the moment. And my barclaycard arrived today. Time to work on that credit limit...

Tristan doesnt think Transformers could have evolved. He thinks someone must have created them. What a dork.

I just watched Cinema Paradiso. It has to be one of the best films I have ever seen. Sure, it is in italian with subtitles, but it is something that you need to watch, at least once. And £15 on the DVD is certainly not a waste of money. Buy it. Now.

Well, my mission to max out my barclaycard within 24 hours of getting it has failed miserably.

I made it to £125, but then ran out of things I wanted.

I placed two sainsburys online orders today. One's coming tomorrow between 1 and 3, the other is coming tomorrow between 3 and 5 (they wouldn't let me cancel or change the first one). Among the stuff I'm getting are 34 bottles of (non-alcoholic) drink, 31 cartons of juice... the delivery people are going to hurt me. When they come with the first stuff, I'll wave them off saying "thanks, see you soon!". Then when they come back with the next lot (for everyone else), i'll say something like "cool, thanks, i was getting thirsty again".

Yeh, cos that'll be so funny.

*Sigh*

I'm going to some dance thing in Bristol in about an hour. That'll be fun.

I'm really getting into the festive mood now - I wore my santa hat for 5 minutes. Someone archived it on the radicam if you're retarded enough to be interested, but hey, you're reading this, so you'll find the 'radicam' link on the left.

And you're still reading. You must be pretty bored, so lets tie up the loose ends from yesterday's post.

I went to The Works in Bristol. I had a couple of smirnoff ices before i left, spent about £30 on more smirnoff ices @ £3.50 each (woo, ain't student life great, folks), got back experiencing mild side effects of the alcoholic content of the aforementioned beverage. All in all, it was pleasant. Not exactly what you'd class as a great night out, but it made a change.

Got back at 3. Sat in the kitchen eating muffins and drinking someone else's orange juice till 4, when I remembered I had a lecture in 5 hours time. Which was nice. So in an attempt to keep up my attendance record for the Wednesday morning 9.15 tutorial session, I stayed up for another hour or so before I collapsed on my bed. However, my attempt failed miserably, since I was woken at 8.30 by the dulcet tones of my mobile blaring the first few lines of 'Get A Bloomin Move On' (Italian Job theme) over and over and over and over and over again, until it stopped. And then, after a few moments for the offender to check the number was right, it started again. The fourth time this happened, I actually looked at the phone to see who it was, only to discover that they had disabled CLI. Which limited it to either a prank call or a call from some company's phone centre, so I smothered the phone under my pillow. The seventh time it started ringing, I decided to answer it. You know, they kinda seemed to want to talk to me. So, I pick up the phone:

Radiac: uhnnnnnnnnnnnng haalllow?
Bright And Cheerful Sainsburys Representative: Hello, this is Sainsburys Online, your local store tells us that you have two orders placed for this afternoon in two different time slots, and we would just like to check with you why?
Radiac: uhnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng yuh, that's me, I placed the orders.
BACSR: Oooo-k... would it be ok if we combined the orders into the 1 till 3 slot?
Radiac: uhhnnng yeh, whatever
BACSR: Tha*click*

However, I was now awake, so I got up and got dressed, silently noting how my underwear still doesn't smell too bad after 4 weeks. I got up, and realised that I was really thirsty, so I stole some more orange juice. Went off to my 9.15 software engineering. That was fun. Then went to my 10.15 software engineering. That was also fun. I fell asleep twice, which was good, because each time I did, the lecture got significantly shorter. I'll have to remember that one. I swear, if I have to sit through another one of those, I'm going to turn into a dribbling drooling moron. Oh, wait... never mind.

The Sainsburys delivery monkey arrived at 2.30, and got the right house this time, which is an improvement. Last time the halfwit went to quarry 5 11-20, even though my address is clearly entered as quarry 5 room 7, the sign on the door to the other building says in big letters '11-20', and there's a guy standing at the other end of the building waving and yelling 'Oi, bring it here you moron'. I went back upstairs and waved at him through the window in the little door separating 1-10 and 11-20 while I waited for him to realise that the door was locked and he'd have to go back down, round and up. With 12 orange juices and 7 volvics. Anyway, this time he rang me first to check which side. See, people can learn from their mistakes. Fortunately for him, I'd forgotten to add my extra volvics to the second order, so I only had 8 this week, but he still had to make 10 journeys. And for some reason, I got a complimentary box of Bounty Caliper things. I assume it's because I'm such an outstanding customer, rather than the fact that Sainsburys did a little bulk-buying and filled a few warehouses with them, before management tried one and found out that they're actually foul-tasting balls of god-knows-what which are covered in toe-nail clippings, so now they can't shift them. Anyway, I generously gave the box to my kitchen group.

Well, amazing as it is, I'm getting more bored of telling you what I spent my day doing than it actually was doing it. And nobody's going to read down this far anyway - half of you probably surfed in looking for hardcore paedonecrobestiality photos and left as soon as you realised I'm not small, furry, scraped off a road and kept in a bucket for a couple of months to season. Yes, I've seen the google searches you waist-size-bigger-than-your-IQ social rejects get here with.

Well, I'm off to listen to more crap Christmas tunes and drink my way through someone else's alcohol collection. See you tomorrow.

I've been playing scientist hunt for a bit, but I quit after 900 frags.

Woke up at 9:11. Got to my 9.15 at 9.16. Woke up at 10.10 and came back for some breakfast. Went to the 11.15 system architecture 'tutorial', where we kick people out of a computer room, sit down and answer retarded questions on paper about logic using some dumbass variation on the lecturer's notation that we've never seen before. And then we leave, saying that the past two hours were a wonderful learning experience and how we look forward to it again next week. Or something. And the lazy merkin across the hall didn’t appear till 12.15, even though I started banging on his door after my breakfast and I heard him say 'Yeh, look, I'll be down in a bit' at about 11. So god knows (but wishes he didnt) what he was doing till 12.15. Oh, then he decided he should get on with the programming coursework due in tomorrow rather than come to the programming lecture. Probably a good idea, seeing as it was even more boring than the programming coursework I did. Woo, let's write nim for one pile, that'll be fun! More fun than spending 2 hours being told how to read from a text file.

Still no more dvds from Play, which is annoying. I want them now, but I'm going to have to wait till next week.

I'm going home tomorrow, and then I'm going to the pub, where I'll be getting extremely drunk, beating on some brain-dead Tonbridge lower-6th test-tube accident after they start taking the piss (they always do it – for some inexplicable reason, I am to morons what those big blue butchers lights are to flies), before being dragged outside by the bouncers and driving myself into the nearest building after I've found my car.

And as you may have noticed, I changed the site a bit, and made a gay little animation of me jigging from side to side. I need help. I've been playing scientist hunt for most of the day, and I got 900 frags. With the crowbar and chainsaw.

I am releasing the Tacky Christmas Music Interface today on the uzeweb perl store.

It took me four and a half hours to get from bath to sevenoaks, and a further half an hour to get to the pub.

*Sigh*

5 hours.

Never mind. I got my alcohol, there were no mutant lab experiments on the loose, and I didn't embarass myself; the evening was a resounding success.

Went to Nick's party on Saturday. It was good. However ,I didnt get any sleep; I sat on a sofa in the freezing cold till people started waking up again. Anton drove me home and then it was time to leave for Bath. And once again, it took me four or five hours to get here, although no trains broke down this time, which was nice. So I just woke up. Which was also nice.

My neck hurts. It could be due to the way I 'slept' on the sofa, but I think it might have more to do with an online voodoo doll someone sent me.

Hmm, seeing as I haven't washed since Saturday morning, and as a result I probably smell, I think I'd better go have a shower.

My DVDs have still not been dispatched. Might go home this weekend, haven't decided yet. It's tempting, get an extra 6 days holiday... I have 3 weeks holiday and then have exams starting the day I return. Which is nice.

I've got a project due in at the end of the week, which means that I should probably pause work on the websites. Nah...

When radiac.net leaves christmas mode, I'll hopefully have got round to implementing at least a few of my ideas.

And I know there are lots of people visiting my site... go sign the guestbook to make it look like I have some friends, dammit!

Life is tough at the top. Apparently. I wouldn't really know.

My nose is running. A lot. It hasnt run this much since the compsci exam where I had to resort to using my shirt as a tissue to stop it messing up my answer sheets. I have sat through two lectures today with a running nose, and both times I forgot to bring a tissue. It was very uncomfortable.

And it's really really really really really really cold outside. Like, really cold. There's like "as cold as a table in a cold place", "as cold as the inside of my computer case", "as cold as my luggage gets on a cross-atlantic 747", "as cold as the north pole", "as cold as the dark side of the moon", and then there's "as cold as Bath University". It hurts it's so cold. However, I do have my computer to keep my room warm. In fact, my room is too hot with my computer on... so hot that I have to open the window. But then it gets too cold, so I have to turn the radiator on. I think I've got it just about right... apart from the wind from outside blows in over my hands and makes them very cold. Very very cold. I need gloves. Then I'll be sorted :)

I'm going home again tomorrow. It's the Welldon House supper. See some friends again etc. Then I'm coming back at around midnight. Which will be nice. And then I'll get back here and it will be very very very cold. I'm thinking about coming home at the weekend and coming back sometime during the week. I haven't decided yet... we don't really have much to do next week, so I'm tempted to pop back and see friends etc. My flat are having a meal on Thursday 20th, so I want to be here for that though. We'll see.

This is far too early

I got up at 4.30 today so that I could go to a tutorial. Now that's dedication.

Or extremely stupid. I'm too tired to decide right now.

So, why the early rise?

Yesterday, I woke at 9, went to 9.15 lecture, went to 10.15 lecture, got on a bus at 11.30, got on a train at 12.15, got home at about 3, and I went to the Welldon House dinner.

The dinner was not unusual; the same tasteless turkey, disgusting wine and room full of people chanting my name. It's nice to be liked by so many people... The speeches were their usual blend of tactless insults and regurgitated jokes, and the funniest part of the "Entertainment" (note that is a quote) was when some braindead morons ate a spoonful of the hottest (spiciest) substance known to man. Don't ask me what it was, I can't really say that I was paying attention; I was more interested in pushing my cuticles down.

After the festivities, we went back to Mr Wallersteiner's house for drinks. Knowing I needed to get a train, I attempted to say goodbye at about 10.30. Conversations dragged on, and I ended up getting home at 11.10. I made it to the station at approximately 11.17, only to find that the 11.20 had been delayed by approximately half an hour, which would have made me 10 minutes late for the 12.45 to Bath. Thanks go to Anton for getting me to the station in time, just a shame I decided I didnt want to sleep on Paddington station, so went back home, had 3 hours sleep, got up at the ungodly hour of 4.15, got to the station at 4.50, got the 5.09 train to Charing Cross, then the underground to Paddington.

You have no idea how busy the underground isn't at 6am.

It's actually kinda fun. I wanna do it again.

Or at least I would, if it wasnt for the fact that today I had no delays, and missed my Bath train by 2 minutes. And of course, the next one was 58 minutes later. *Sigh*

Never mind. I made it back to Bath in time for my 9.15 lecture, and then I decided I'd come and moan on here for a bit.

Hmm, and I'm probably going home this weekend - school website requires two more photos. And I require the pub. I'll see how I feel after my architecture lab, then I might buy a ticket... third time I'll have been into the travel shop in a week...

Well, must go finish (and start *cough*) the software engineering project due in tomorrow. And if I am going home, I have to also do my numbers and structures coursework.

Ooh, the excitement.

I am going home tomorrow.

By the end of next week, I'll have spent about 40 hours travelling... I've also now been awake for nearly 15 hours. W00t! But the work is going slowly, so I'll probably be up for another 15! W00t! :p

I've been awake for 20 hours now. And the work is still going... *sigh*

I want sleep. I've now been up 22 hours.

... but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need...

I've got a few Rolling Stones tracks on repeat. They've been going since I started this at 3pm... still good though :)

... couldn't drag me away...

but lack of sleep for 23 hours can. Goodnight.

Came home again today. Had a great evening. I'm going to bed now, seeing as I've had 8 hours sleep since 8am wednesday...

I'm back in Bath again. It's about minus 50 degrees and I have a headache. Woo.

I've been playing the Deer Hunter 5 demo. I can safely say that, without a doubt, this is the most boring game that I have ever played. You run around after deer which are faster than you, you shoot at them through a gun that doesnt aim properly, and then you run over and click on the corpse to add it to your trophy selection. You have time to get one, maybe two deer. However, I've found a neat trick. Get on your quad bike, scare them, and push them into the water. When they're in the water, their heads stick above the surface, they can't move very fast, and you have plenty of time to shoot, reload, shoot etc. The best bit is, halfway across, some of them turn round and swim back towards you. I headshotted 4 on the last game.

I quote, from dabs.com:

Soft Case for Digital Ixus ... Allocated

I also quote, from dabs.com:

Order Date ... 17/08/01 19:23

Over 4 months. A 126 day wait. That's pretty impressive, for something the website said would be 1-3 days... It even beats the letsbuyit.com record. I am very impressed.

The meal last night was very very nice. Big 'thanks' to the girls who cooked it.

It snowed this morning.

And I am packing.

I'm the last person left in Quarry.

I've got my window as far open as it can go, the speakers up as loud as they can go and the christmas tunes are blaring out to the few people who are still on campus :)

Trust me, it's loud :)

And this happens to be the 300th diary entry. Thought you'd all like to know that...

Been out. Got more than a little merry. Had a mediocre time. Came home. Checked slashdot. Read the following:

Quake 2 Source Code Released Under The GPL

Oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby oh baby, w00t!

Thanks mr c!

Went to a friend's house today. We watched 'Road Trip', 'The Beach' and played some football game (on the same team) on his PS2. Every game we played I got 3 people on my team red cards and sent off. Quite a few of the games, I managed to score own-goals (that the term?) - and trust me, that takes skill. Thanks to me, we lost nearly all of the games. Even the ones where we played with the computer on dumbest skill, computer with the worst team, and us with the best...

I now have 8 cyber-carcasses in deer hunter 5. Most of them were poached when they were in the water.

I'm listening to Dido's newest track, 'Christmas Day' (available on 'No Angel - Special Edition' (which also has some videos and live stuff - anyone want to buy me a christmas present?), and the new 'All You Want' single). Yay.

The central heating has broken again. I'm very cold.

And now I have 17 cyber-trophies.

I think I need help.

Merry christmas everyone...

Woo, y'all have a good christmas?

I've halved my collection of smirnoff ice.

You have no idea how long it's taken me to type this.

Have been playing LAN games at a friends house all day. Fun. And to those of you who are thinking 'You are so sad', I have this to say... it beats staring at 1000 or so lines of code for hours on end.

After 133 days, my camera case has arrived!

And, to be honest, it was worth the wait. It is very cool. It has a hole for a belt, and a pocket for the camera. Worth every penny and minute, even though I don't wear a belt.

/me ponders the question of how to take a photo of a camera in a camera case. When you only have one camera.

Hiya... hmm, what's been happening since christmas?

Went to TGI Friday's on Friday - was quite a fun time. Quite an expensive evening (£45), but the food and cocktails were nice. There are a few photos in the photo section.

Speaking of the photo section, at some point I'll sort out a multi-level system which will make it easier to find the pictures. Well, I've done it already, but I haven't done the admin script, so you'll have to wait.

Saturday evening was spent in the Dorset and the Broadwalk. I spent £35, was drunk by 8 (and stayed drunk till 3am), and I actually enjoyed the evening. Woo! I have come to the conclusion that if you get drunk alone/in public and get ignored, you have a bad time, but if you get drunk with people who are talking to you and stuff, you have a good time.

Splendid.

Today was spent playing network games with a friend from a previous school (IIRC i met him when I was 4 :)). Also good fun. Which just goes to show you don't need alcohol to have a good time...

And tomorrow is new years eve. W00t! Going to stay at Jamie's house tomorrow, spend the night in Southborough, Chris will drop me off on new years day, and I will spend the rest of the day programming Trevor and watching bad television. Now that's something to look forward to :p
[Jamie and Chris: the sarcasm only applies to the last bit btw :p]

Hmm, and one of my hard disks has started making a worrying clunk noise. Well, at least it's raided so I won't lose anything... *frantically runs around trying to find some wood to touch*