radiac.net

Well, this week seems to be a week of finishing long-term projects. I have now finished the Quarry 5 website (thats what my floor is called - its a website about us :))

Phew

That only took 5 months :p

Just saying hi again. Sorry about the lack of posts, but I've been kinda busy, but with irrelevant stuff so never have anything interesting to post about. So I never do.

Hmm.

Anyway, the next university semester starts tomorrow morning (10.15! AAAARGH!), which will be interesting.

Also noticed today that my RISC OS site, planetriscos.co.uk is still getting a rediculous number of hits every day, despite the fact that I still haven't launched it... but now the base code for the Quarry 5 site is nearly finished, it shouldn't be too long before I can make a start on the real planetriscos site.

Anyway, I'm off to find out what lectures I have tomorrow.

Yet again I have fed my addiction and spent more money on my Barclaycard, and spent £350 on half a computer over at the excellent overclockers.co.uk.

"Why half a computer?", I hear you ask...

Well... I saw this nifty little case and motherboard... I need a new hard drive anyway (yes, the space the four 60GB 60GXPs in RAID 0+1 provided didn't last long), I want a linux machine here, and I was going to build one for my uni house next September anyway, so Mr Credit Card decided to step in and help me get rid of some unwanted cash.

However, the down side of this is that my credit card limit is £500. I have already spent £15 since I last paid it off. And the computer comes to £589.46, excluding the thermal compound that I decided I needed (this machine doesnt have any thermal compound, and as a result the 1.4ghz Tbird is running a little hot at around 50 degrees... for those of you who don't know, 40 would be good), which means that I have to buy half now, pay off my credit card, then buy the second half later. Yes, I know I could buy it with my debit card, but whats the point in having my Barclaycard with its funky internet ordering protection and price guarantee et cetera et cetera if I'm not going to use it? None. Exactly. Hrmph.

So anyway, I just ordered:

• Shuttle SpaceWalker SV24 (mmmmmm)
  
• Celeron II 900Mhz
  
• Another Pioneer DVD-106S (it's my second now, I just can't help myself)
  
• Arctic Silver III thermal compound
  

And I've got 256mb RAM lying around, which means I still need to buy from Dabs:

• Maxtor D540X 160GB UDMA133 (Yeh, 160GB hard drive)
  
• Another Netgear FA311 (Network card - my 6th, I think)
  
• Floppy (Which I hope to replace with a little LCD display which will scroll whatever film or mp3 is playing at that moment :))
  
• VGA cable (I have a dual input monitor)
  
• Keyboard (and possibly mouse) extension lead or switcher (haven't decided yet)
  

Oh, and the second semester started today, I had a lecture at 9.15 followed by two tutorials, and it's very wet and windy outside.

All in all, a very productive day.

The first half of my computer arrived today! Woo! So far I've only put the processor in; the rest of the machine may not get here till the end of next week... oh well.

Also took this opportunity to update my guide to builing computers.

Some photos here.

I have started a new competition... find out about it here...

Runs till Sunday 24th February.

I have done a links script - the links are automatically generated from my IE favourites list. Will order and fill in the ones I always type soon. And if you think you should be on there, let me know.

Also shifted some things around into a new section called 'Fun'. New section, same content.

Woo, I have built my computer. Built it a couple of days ago, actually, just been too busy to come on here and post about it :p



You can see some more photos of it here. Oooh, isn't it lovely.

I've just compiled me debian woody, kernel 2.4.17.

Woo!

Now what...

This evening we went to the cinema to see Monsters Inc. Funny film :)

Am also getting addicted to Starbucks' hot chocolate and their shakey stuff - I've probably shaken at least a jar and a half of chocolate powder over the cream in this week alone...

Oh, and I accidentally deleted something on my linux machine that I shouldn't have. /etc/X11. Reinstalled Debian today, and am now back where I was this morning, plus a driver.

Have also added a cron job to update the favicon images on the links page every day at midnight GMT. Well, I added the cron job at the same time as the links script, but it was today I noticed it didnt work properly (messed up paths)... Why a midnight cron job? It can't be realtime, it'd take too long, and it's not important enough to run every hour or something :p

Anyway, tomorrow brings x, apache, samba and house hunting.

House hunting sucks. This morning we got a call saying that the house we wanted to see had gone. So we called around and went to somewhere else, but we went the wrong way down the road and it was cold and uphill on the way back and aaaargh. And when we got there the house wasn't particularly great either. *Sigh*

On the plus side, I've got debian installed, woody installed, 2.4.17 compiled, and ssh, x, sound, apache installed and working. Now for samba!

My linux machine is nearly ready to swap places and go on the network; samba, apache, ftpd and half-life are running at the moment. I also have X and KDE running on the machine, with MPlayer successfully playing DVDs and DivXs (not that I have any of the latter, of course).

Anyway, I'm in the process of tidying up USML a bit. Finishing off the main features I have planned, so this and the Tonbridge School codebases can finally sit still while I develop a more generic USML for public release...

Oh well, back to the code...

It's snowing at Quarry 5!



It's Christmas all over again!

The radiac.net christmas decorations went back up for four hours while the snow lay on the ground...

Well, another year is almost over, and all in all it's been a pretty good year. I've got OK results at A-level, started to frequent the pub, made it to University, made a year of solo driving without any accidents (although my car has apparently now failed, so probably won't be driving for a little while), met some great people, and made some really really good friends. I could list them, but I know I'd probably leave someone out and they'd get upset... you know who you are :p

Well, I had 4 hours of sleep last night again. This is getting silly.