Countdown Timer

Spent a fair few hours today designing a countdown timer in C#. Admittedly, I could have had a working product within about 10 minutes if all I'd wanted was a nice little string that told me how many days, hours, minutes and seconds we were currently away from a certain deadline, but I decided I might as well do a nice job of it as I was bored.

As such, I've coded a nice, robust app, with pretty code (no hacking!) behind it all. I won't put it up for download just yet as I'm still getting people to send in picture themes for it to be customised - I might try and do it as a Vista gadget next too.

I've never had an application run from the system tray before, so that took a bit of getting used to - I had to code up my own ApplicationContext instead of just relying on Application.Run()'s default, which took a fair bit of playing around with.

Two great things I found whilst making this app:

1) QTam's free Bitmap to Icon converter.

2) An ingenious AlphaBlendTextBox control for VS, which allows for transparent backgrounds to textboxes. It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn close, very impressed.

Here's a screenie of the program, skinned with a crappy picture theme I made:



I'm hoping to get some good picture themes sent in soon, to replace my rubbish :)

If you fancy submitting a theme, then I need 10 pictures for the numbers, each 50 x 50 pixels, and one background image, preferably 450x300, unless you think it would look good tiled/stretched.

Need more for you!?

When on the intorweb it is important to ensure win is presente in sufficinent velocitanties. A lack of win will course for ultimate fail which means you loose and 'ahve no life'.

My advise of the first is for typing with capital letters are humour. When it say you to make otehrs think that you are angry is especialyl for happy time but also for use in ironic make good looking.

Nextingly, you must excel with emoticons by using not only theirs but also using yours. When applied gently but with great vigour into the messege slot Fortune awaits for all thrilling at your witts.

Making of the erros in your typing ok, but you must be pretend it is intentional and then they think again ironic is your pose and laugh much accordingly.

Following these rules will result in many win and for you super hapyp good time!

You're going to regret hosting that midget-porn site...

One of the many, many features I like about Gmail is that you get a link to some interesting news feeds at the top of your inbox, most of which are worth a click if you have time. Today's example was the following:

Want a job? Clean up your Web act - from ZDNet.

Now, I already know that this is completely true, as the prospective employers I'd applied to for my placement had all gone and read this blog, and some had even dug a little deeper - looking, for example, at CompSoc's website.

I've got no problem with any prospective employer looking at this blog - in fact I'd quite welcome it, because although it does, at times, show off the less responsible parts of my life, it also shows that I'm intelligent, that I can write and gives a full flavour of who I am. I wouldn't want to be employed by someone who wasn't happy with who I am, because that's not going to lead to a happy work environment.

I really hope that employers start doing this a lot more often too - if I found a candidate for one of my jobs with a myspace page, full of bad spelling, poor web design and stupid comments, I'd bin their application form in a second. Actually, scrap most of that last sentence, I'd bin them if they had a myspace page full-stop.

Seriously, if you don't have the common decency and intelligence to express yourself on a public forum (in the more general meaning of the word, not just a messageboard) with proper grammar, spelling and opinions that are well-thought out and backed up, you don't deserve to get a decent job, and I hope people start to find that out the hard way.

An example would be the retard who tried to post an intelligent response to the newspost I linked above, and ended up just making a complete arse of himself - awfully formed sentences, incorrect usages of words (loose/lose, etc) and points that were half irrelevant and half made-up.

So, please, no more talking like a 12 year old with a mobile phone on msn, no more static backgrounds on your pages, no more embedded mp3s or midis on your websites and no more Comic Sans on your blog. You'll pay for it in the end.

Practical joke of the day

Requirements:

1 x Phone
1 x Female (younger the better)
1 x Male
No sense of decency

Plan:

The female should ring ChildLine on 0800 1111. When the phone is answered, she should start screaming as though in distress. Continue this for half a minute and then the male should shout angrily, before hanging up.

When ChildLine ring back, the male should answer, saying that everything is completely fine. At some point, the female should start screaming again. Then hang up and don't answer again. Probably best if you do this from a public phone..

--

Incidentally, when researching this, I noticed that ChildLine have a textphone number - how many abused children have access to a textphone?

'Improved' internet banking from HSBC

Internet banking is evil. Instead of just finding out once a month how much money you wasted on crap and gadgets, you can now see it in pretty much real-time.

Obviously, something like your internet banking is going to find a place on your toolbar/bookmarks bar/favourites bar. And, as we all know, when you're feeling a bit bored, a bit meh, you click through your favourites looking for something to do. I'd hardly advise watching the money pour away as a method for cheering yourself up...

Anyhow, onto this wonderful 'upgrade'. Whilst I was still on the familiar login screen, I noticed an odd new message written in shockingly red font. It read:

"IMPORTANT - You should pay particular attention when entering your security details as we may now ask you for your "SECOND TO LAST" number.

Please do not contact our CTS Helpdesk with general comments on this change."

Now I, along with everyone I've pasted this to, have no idea what 'second to last' is meant to mean. Is it the penultimate number, or is it the number before that? Seemingly, everyone else using the site is also unsure, thus the flood of messages they've been getting. In their own words:

"Feedback to date suggests we may need to change this and we are currently considering alternative wording. In the meantime please pay particular attention when entering your security details."

You don't say. Fortunately, my particular attention will prevail over your ambiguity. Though, it would possibly have been a bit more useful were you to use that sentence to give an example of what you mean by 'second to last'. Oh well, good job guys.

So, having sidestepped that tricky conundrum by not having been asked for my 'second to last' digit, I got into the new look site. Wow. One analogy springs to mind, and I think it fits pretty much perfectly:

Consider the old internet banking site as a beautiful lady you meet whilst out for the night - stylish, sophisticated, simple yet elegant and utterly responsive to everything you want, to everything you do.

Consider the new internet banking as that same lady, but 9 hours later, as you wake up with your head on the pillow next to hers. Shabby, plain, ugly, boring and completely uninterested in what you want or what you're doing. Finally, let's not forget that she/it really rubs in the fact that you've wasted your money on that last night out.

Time to leave some 'feedback' methinkst.

Another reason to hate the French

As I'm sure most of you are aware, I'm a bit of a Nazi when it comes to other people's spelling, grammar and general usage of the English language.

Sorry, that's not very PC is it.

As I'm sure most of you are aware, I'm a bit of a German when it comes to other people's spelling, grammar and general usage of the English language.

There, that's better.

Anyhow, recently I was made to look a bit foolish in an online chatroom. Someone was typing away, but would put two spaces after each full stop. Naturally I called them up on this and asked why on earth they kept on making this most elementary of mistakes. When they told me that it was a common typographical convention I naturally laughed in their e-face and continued to insist that they revoke their foolish behaviour.

However, unfortunately for me, Wikipedia, master of all knowledge, is in vague agreement that this practice exists, and I've now been made to seem wrong. So, don't go telling me that my burning desire to see the entirety of France and the French population obliterated by a large-scale nuclear attack is completely unfounded, it's not.

That is all.

Fear not The Internet, I will be with you soon

It's been a pretty tough day all round back here in Cardiff, but all should be well soon. I knew connecting to the net might be a slight problem when I saw how far the wireless router was from my room, and so I put on a fake mustache and headed into the horrors of PC World.

Bought myself a Belkin Wireless G Desktop Network Card (mouthful eh?), stuck it in and installed it...and a couple of bluescreens later realised that the drivers most certainly weren't meant for Vista - as their support site has now confirmed.

Shouldn't be too much of an issue, got my mum's laptop for now and I imagine I can swap the card for a USB adaptor tomorrow (hopefully), but I'm still feeling pretty dirty after buying a Belkin product from PC World. Ew.

Hooome

Back home in Cardiff now, which is both good and bad. I'll miss people at Uni, and more importantly I'll miss Guitar Hero - but I've got Sky and Lucie and Smudge here so...yeah.

On my mother's PC at the moment though, as I need wireless for the new setup here and haven't got anything set up at the moment, I need to pop out to (shudder) PC World in a bit, think I'll get a PCI card if I can find room inside my computer for it.

Just been watching Valiant, which was absolute class. Great cast & soundtrack in it too, highly recommended. Off for a real shower now..woo!

Downstairs

So, I just got up and wandered downstairs (and for a Saturday after term ends, I'd like to point out that this is a pretty early start) to find a few...oddities.

Firstly, the door to the living room is, as you'd expect, in the doorway from the hall to the living room. However, it's at right angles to the door frame, sticking out to block most of the hall and topped with something large and silver..

Secondly, in the kitchen, there's a fairly high and precariously balanced muffin/tupperware tower. I vaguely recall thinking that the muffins needed to be kept fresh, and putting a small pile of them on a chopping board and then covering that with a large bowl. Then putting some more muffins on that, and covering them with something else. And on, and on. On the plus side, I think they all actually have stayed fresh..

Finally, in the living room there's a 'man' laid out on the floor. He has cups for feet, Guitar Hero guitars for legs, empty & full spirits bottles for a body, DVD cases for arms and a wok for a head, with muffin cases and a shot glass for the features.

It's that shot glass I'm blaming for all the above, by the way. Julie-oh brought back some Austrian Schnapps after Tim arrived home pretty drunk and myself & her had a couple of shots of that each. Except that one filling of the shot glass was 50ml, not 25ml, and this stuff is 50% proof and unbelievably pure.

No hangover from it too...

Muffins

Well today's been possibly the laziest I've had in my second year of Uni. Got up quite late, a little bit hungover from the night before, and decided to go back to bed for a while.

I think I eventually stumbled out of my room at the impressive time of 4pm and proceeded to go lounge about downstairs for a short while. I took my daily trip outside (never to be missed) with Julie-oh to get some ingredients and then she shared with me the secrets of...making muffins!

I've got some gorgeous corn & bacon muffins sitting in the fridge now, and there's a ton of gluten-free chocolate muffins cooling in the kitchen, which should keep the house fed for about a week.

She's making me fajitas now, and then we're going to watch a film. How awesome is she eh?

BOTB over

Well that one was a pretty fun night again - congrats to everyone who played!

First up (in case anyone needed proof the draw was random) were Babagau and Friends. Babagau is a crazy Greek bassist, and his friends were Marc, myself, Terra and Ronan for that night. Normally we just get together and jam for a couple of hours at a time, without stopping or talking - but as the LMS demanded a half hour set and two disparate songs, we swapped some instruments after 25 minutes, paused for a couple of seconds, and then carried on. Two guitars with effects, one fretless bass with a load of effects, and a full digital keyboard with an effects pedal, you get the idea.

The music was a bit less fun to play than normal, and I literally could not hear my keyboard on stage for the entire half hour, but it was still pretty amusing watching the reactions of the usual LMS crowd to some experimental prog. I think the overall opinion was; "Good, but not my style" - which is fair. Oh, did I mention I was half naked and coated in varying bits of body paint? Pics when I get them..

Following that was Allucinere - Terra's 'hardcore' lot, and the only Aston band at the moment who are properly recording, gigging and making a lot of their own original stuff. It's not quite my sort of thing but I do really like a couple of their tracks - normally the ones led by Rob Moore, their keyboardist, who's ace.

Bit early in the night, and a bit of a rubbish crowd for their needs meant that there wasn't too much rocking out or anything, but they still put on a good show - and I do have one photo of Terra doing his little Busted jump from a pretty impressive height:



On third (I think) were The Clerks, who ended up winning the night. Very improved from last year, playing some proper rock mixed in with some indie. They were very tight and had a nice groove to what they did, and clearly enjoyed playing the music too, which is important. When they led in the intro to Sultans of Swing myself & Gib almost cried, thinking they'd screw it up beyond belief, but I only managed to count 3 mistakes during the guitar solos, so I'm pretty happy with that. Good job.

After (or before) The Clerks came The Queue, Aston's ultimate pub band, playing a nice mix of pop rock and um, rocky pop. Tony seemed a bit confused (ie: drunk) as they came on stage, and at first thought he was a crowd member, and then a keyboardist, before being persuaded to play the drums. Nothing massively special from these guys, but good fun music all the way through - and an awesome techno intro to one of their originals from keyboardist Matt - loved it.

Crank Cranker/The Reacharound Agenda came on fifth - they're anything but poppy. Marc Harvey (who also played as Babagau's friend) jammed on a bass with a bunch of effects whilst John Guy laid down some nice beats. I really liked the way that Marc would drop into the background sometimes and you'd actually hear the drums leading - don't think anyone else managed that on the night, and John's a good drummer too. I enjoyed it, not entirely sure the majority of the crowd did though, I think they wanted something a bit more danceable by that time of night.

Penultimate band on was my own lot - the gorgeous Tie-Dye Quartet, and I'm pretty sure if there was a 'best dressed band' award then we deserved it. Terra looked smart, Tim & myself wore suits and Julie-oh wore the fantastic dress that we bought earlier in the week for her.

We played three originals (catchily titled 'Julie's Song', 'Tim's Jam' and 'Ina's Jam') and two covers (Ain't No Sunshine [Eva Cassidy style] and Just The Two Of Us [Grover Washington Jr. Style]) - which seemed to go down pretty well. We got a round of applause after each song, and even got the odd one after what the crowd thought was a particularly good solo from whichever of us.

Ju's song was a little bit odd to play, as for some reason we managed to start it at about twice the normal speed, so I'm not sure how that sounded, but being nice and professional we worked around it - just meant I had to play walking bass instead of the nice groove I'd worked out. We'd only practised Julie's song and my jam twice, within the space of an hour or two a couple of days before the gig, before that we hadn't even heard them. Tim's jam we knew a little better, as we'd made it up that time we played at Boots, and that went well - the theme's so haunting. My jam's pretty much just an excuse for a 5 minute bass solo, but I noticed Julie doing some funky stuff on the trumpet in the breaks - can't wait to hear that one!

Final band on was The Hookahs.

Anyhow, great night was had by all, well done to the Clerks, and as soon as I get photos and mp3s, I'll post them up on here :)

Sofa & Job

Just got a call from Nikki Wakefield at Microsoft, checking that I wanted to accept their job offer and giving me some details on the role I'll be in. I'll be in the Developer Platform Evangelism group, and my job title is about 20 words long and I've already forgotten that, but it certainly sounds fun. There's an open day in May to meet all the other interns (and presumably, get yet another tour of the campus), and I'll be starting in July - contract being sent out to me now.

On an unrelated note; whilst walking home, Terra noticed a sofa was being disposed of fairly nearby. As such, he went to get me and we had a wonderful time wheeling it home over the roads, I even got to lie down on it and be transported about for a while (which I'm aiming to make my new regular mode of transport). Hooray for free stuff!

Another record broken!

(22:40:59) (Psepha) Well. Impressively, Ina has just shattered all records for random procedings.
(22:41:38) (Psepha) He knocked on my door, came into the room, asked me to pause my DVD, and proceeded to sit on my bed and read out the ENTIRETY of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"

BOTB

Well, battle of the bands is coming up again, and it should be pretty damn fun.

I'm opening up the night with Babagau and Friends - our prog jam group, which is going to be interesting. We've never prepared any material or played to any sort of pattern - whenever we get together we just jam for 2 hours straight with no talking or other communication at all.

As it's a live performance though, we're going to have to cut down to half an hour, and in order to qualify as participants we need two 'songs', so we're just going to stop halfway through and then start again, creating two separate pieces. I think I'll read The Raven by Poe during the first quarter hour, and then just solo on keyboard/harmonica/vocals for the other quarter hour. Oh, and I'll also be mostly naked and covered in body paint - probably blindfolded too. Should be fun.

The other band I'll be competing with is of course, my lovely Tie-Dye Quartet (which oddly enough, has actually been a Quartet recently) - and we'll be dressed up smart and playing something a bit more 'normal'. Julie's written a lovely vocal song, we've got a haunting jam Tim made up when we played at Boots and there's a very bass-led (obviously) jam of mine we'll be performing too, along with two standards (Ain't No Sunshine and Just The Two Of Us). We had a get together today and went over the three originals (learning Julie's and my own from scratch, in about half an hour, not bad eh?)

So, if you're about on Thursday, I'll be onstage at 8pm and 10.30pm, and the rest of the night should be great too :)

Coursework free!

Just finishing up my last coursework (Software Engineering) now, and then I can relax for a few weeks. I've somehow managed to double the recommended page-limit for this coursework, but that's after I decided to forego submitting final drafts of 10 of the full-page diagrams I've scribbled down, so I don't feel too bad about it.

In other news, UML has finally killed off my last remaining pleasure sensors. I'm pretty sure I have no idea how to smile any more.

Reading Festival

Well, as I'm going to be in Reading anyway, I thought it would be churlish to give the festival a miss this year - I just hope I can get the time off work.

Lu somehow managed to get us a pair of weekend camping tickets with Wednesday passes, so if you're coming, I'll see you there. And no, you can't stay in my house, I'll be camping too.

Xx

Fun by the lake

Played a gig at the Relay For Life down by the lake at Uni today, which was pretty fun.

When they'd said it was a 24 hour relay around the lake, with teams of people taking shifts, I'd imagined something a bit more strenuous than people strolling about in the sun with cans of Carling. I would have gone in for it, planning to run for the entire time I was on duty, except that anyone participating had to collect sponsorship, and I'm not a fan of RAG at the best of times.

So instead we played some ska at them for a while, to a total crowd of about 20. Not the most auspicious gig I've ever played at, but still pretty fun. Terra managed to do an entire lap of the lake whilst still playing, thanks to the amazing range on his wireless pack, and I managed to forget two of our songs and just improvise them instead.

Off to the cinema now, with two of my ladies ;)

Good news all round!

I have a job at Microsoft! Got a phone call today (finally!) from someone there telling me that I'd definitely have an offer of a placement, with a salary of £14,500 and EDIT: Something else that I'm apparently not allowed to reveal ;)

Got my exam results today too, 70% in Data Structures & Algorithms, 77% in Software for AI, 76% in Computer Graphics and 58% in PSAC. Happy all round, given that PSAC is [name edited out]'s module, and everyone's currently lodging complaints against him (as happens every year) which should bump the marks up. That and the fact that the average mark in his exam is about 20% lower than any other.

Pretty happy, in case you hadn't guessed :)

Religious Networking

I'm sure that the creators of MySpace, of YouTube and lately, of Facebook are all raking in a pile of cash, and quite frankly, I think the marketplace is still wide open.

You see, the problem with those sites, is that they're open to pretty much anyone. This means that they're missing out on custom from all the religious fanatics who refuse to mix with people of other religions, or at least, severely frown upon such mixing. So I’m thinking, a good way to be among the next wave of .com millionaires is...religious networking!

The structuring would be simple, the site would be open to registration for anyone, but instead of sending out a confirmation email, you’d be required to provide the details of a cleric of your particular order, who could then vouch for you.
This would also discourage the many Jedi Knights from signing up, because, as far as I’m aware, George Lucas is holding all the holy men of that order at ransom in his basement and refusing to release them (at least, until he’s screwed with them some more).

Once you’d signed up to the site, you’d be able to meet like-minded believers from around the globe, and add them to your friends list. Like Facebook, the site would be divided up into ‘Networks’ based on religion, with only small degrees of interaction between networks allowed. For example, I’m sure there wouldn’t be too much problem in allowing Orthodox and Roman Catholics to message one another, but I wouldn’t even let those guys see the pictures of someone of the Islamic faith. Obviously, you could only add friends of the exact same religion.

However, here’s where I envision the first problem – I really can’t stand the MySpace trend of having a thousand friends you barely even know the names of, and I’m pretty sure that would crop up without some intervention. As such, I think we could kill two birds with one stone, by implementing a feature which I’m currently calling ‘Crusade’.
Basically, once every fortnight, people are matched together into teams with those in their friend list. These are then sent off to a certain location where they’ll meet a team from another network (aka, religion) and attempt to win points for their religion. I’m still tweaking the scoring system, but here are my initial ideas:

• Proving your God exists – 100 points


• Proving their God doesn’t exist – 75 points


• Making their entire team doubt their faith – 50 points


• Converting one of their members to your religion – 50 points


• Making three of their members act outside the rules of their religion – 25 points


• Killing one of their clerics – 10 points


• Turning up dressed so blasphemously (to their religion) that they’re unable to even look at you – 10 points


• Killing one of their regular members – 5 points

Obviously, the points stack up – so if you manage to kill the 9 regular members in their team and their cleric then you get an easy 55 points without even having to debate anything.

Every month or so, the top religion will get to choose the text to go in the ‘Faithbar’. This will be a bar going across the profile page of every single member of the site, regardless of their network, which will have a message printed on it. Naturally, I’m hoping for some classy stuff to be hosted on here, something that’ll really piss off the members of other faiths and get them interested in the competition.

Obviously, these bi-weekly crusades won’t be the only way to win points, and the site will be running competitions every now and then. I’m not yet decided on what forms these competitions will take – I was thinking of ‘most blasphemous picture & caption’ but most of the religions could score a lot of easy points by just drawing the prophet Muhammad and writing “Hi” on the bottom, so that one might need reconsidering.

Finally, and most importantly, what am I going to call this website, you ask? Well, I’m still stuck between Faithbook and HisSpace...

Xx

Edit: Looks like HisSpace is already taken. guess I'll go with Faithbook then.

My fine is...

Another of those facebook-style things, found it on the IC forums, and I'm pretty bored =p

Just read the 'offence' and if you've done it, you owe that fine.

You don't have to confess your answers, just the amount of your fine.

Note: fines to be added once, not for how ever many times you have done it.

Smoked weed -- £10

Did acid or pills -- £5

Ever had sex at church -- £25

Woke up in the morning and did not know the person who was next to you -- £40

Had sex with someone on MySpace/Facebook/Bebo etc -- £25

Had sex for money -- £100

Ever had sex with a Puerto Rican -- £20

Vandalized something -- £20

Had sex on your parents' bed -- £10

Beat up someone -- £20

Been jumped -- £10

Cross dressed -- £10

Given money to stripper -- £25

Been in love with a stripper -- £20

Kissed someone who's name you didn't know -- £0.10

Hit on some one of the same sex while at work -- £15

Ever drive and drank -- £20

Ever got drunk at work, or went to work while still drunk -- £50

Used toys while having sex -- £30

Got drunk, passed out and don't remember the night before -- £20

Went skinny dipping -- £5

Had sex in a pool -- £20

Kissed someone of the same sex -- £10

Had sex with someone of the same sex -- £20

Cheated on your significant other -- £10

Masturbated -- £10

Cheated on your significant other with their relative or close friend -- £20

Done oral -- £5

Got oral -- £5

Done / got oral in a vehicle while it was moving -- £25

Stole something -- £10

Had sex with someone in jail -- £25

Made a nasty home video or took pictures -- £15

Had a threesome -- £50

Had sex in public -- £20

Been in the same room while someone was having sex --£25

Stole something worth over more than a hundred quid-- £20

Had sex with someone 10 years older -- £20

Had sex with someone under the age accepted by rule of thumb (half your age plus 7) -- £25

Been in love with two people or more at the same time-- £50

Said you love someone but didn't mean it -- £25

Went streaking -- £5

Went streaking in broad daylight -- £15

Been arrested -- £5

Spent time in jail -- £15

Pissed in the pool -- £0.50

Played spin the bottle -- £5

Done something you regret -- £20

Had sex with your best friend -- £20

Had sex with someone you work with at work -- £25

Had anal sex -- £80

Lied to your mate -- £5

Lied to your mate about the sex being good -- £25


My fine is £430.10.

Pretty glad this thing is fake. Good luck guessing what my fines are for (except that obvious 10p)

Microsoft Knowledge Base

The knowledgebase can sometimes be a wealth of useful information, and teach you how to fix a problem or get a feature working.

Other times, it can just be simply bizarre. This is one of those times:
Sometimes Barney starts playing peekaboo on his own.

Dear Internet

Dear Internet,

Hi there, I've been a fan for a while, but I've never gotten around to writing to you. Recently though, I feel you're not putting all your effort into the show, and I'm starting to get a bit concerned.

I remember back when you were starting out, when I could only see you at 12.8kbps - you didn't have too many tricks, but at least you put your heart into it every day. Sure there weren't any games, and no jokes that I could understand, but it was enough, and I was happy.

I understand it was a bit of a shock to your system when heartless corporations decided to exploit you by pinning naked women all over your fragile circuits and surrounding them with flashy banner adverts. Until the doctors got rid of that <marquee> tag I seriously thought you were going to die.

Then, almost as soon as that traumatic experience was over, the RIAA declared war on you and came in hacking and slashing with their machetes of +1 evil, but I think your solution was the diplomatic coup of the century - showing them how they can make money from the very thing they were trying to stop! Genius!

Since then it's been a pretty great time for all, there's new games every day, free music and video for all, and social networking sites that will soon put every bar and pub out of business forever.

But now there's a problem. You see, you're putting on new clothes and accessories every day, but it's like I've seen it all before. Sure your latest hat or webpage may be brand new, but it's nothing original and I'm starting to get bored. I've already seen all of the good stuff now and quite frankly, I'm starting to look at other women..erm, I mean publicly accessible networks of interconnected computer networks. Ok, I'm starting to look at other alternatives. Like real life, and human contact, and other such things.

Yes, I'm serious, this isn't just a cry for attention. So you need to start making some changes pretty quick, here's a list of things I'd recommend:

1) Enough with the MySpace - we get it, they don't have any real friends and so they make up for it by adding 20,000 people, bands, shops and adverts as their 'friends' instead.

2) Not everyone has a volume mixer on their volume control - so please, no more flash games without the option to turn the annoying music off.

3) The concept of taking pictures of cats, other animals, or people in funny positions, and then adding a caption related to internet slang can only be taken so far. Enough of this.

4) AOL is evil. Seriously, I was round their house the other day and they had these four African slaves who they made eat off the floor. And AOL's got a horrible floor. Please remove them from your gorgeous circuits immediately.

5) There's been a dramatic fall in the publication of literature and web-content related to pie. Please improve this, through any schemes or promotional activities you think neccessary. You have my full support on this one.

6) Replacing letters with numbers was cool, once. However, the species known as 'chav' have since adopted this for their own ends under the SMS protocol. I think you should look at either developing something even more elitist, or abandoning the whole thing altogether. The same goes for intentional typos such as 'teh' - since girls have been allowed on the internet, you can't tell whether they're intentional or not.

7) We need a reduction in the number of girls you're playing host to. Also, we need an increse in the number of girls you're playing host to. I'll let you figure out the semantics I'm going for.

8) I love Google, and I love Wikipedia, but I'm starting to get the impression that Google's in love with Wikipedia but the feelings aren't returned. It's getting a bit awkward recently, perhaps you could ask Google not to rank Ms. Pedia highest for every search, tone it down a bit?

9) When I want to order vast quantities of meat, I find it quite often takes me up to 10 clicks to do so. Clearly, this is completely unacceptable, and I demand that you improve this process dramatically.

10) Standards. In this free moral culture we've been living in ever since those hippies decided to get together in the 60's, standards have fallen dramatically and pretty much anything goes. Now, I don't want you to get too upset about this, but I do want you to take me seriously when I tell you that I was looking at one of your pages the other day, and I noticed an unclosed break tag. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you that, but atrocities such as this are being perpetrated daily and if we don't put a stop to them, soon there'll be anarchy all around. As such, my final suggestion would be that you not only implement a spelling, grammar, and 'is not French' check on all content before displaying it, but that you also demand that w3c standards are followed in every case before anything is displayed.

Thanks very much for your time. I'm having a party next Saturday if you fancy coming by the way - there'll be loads of cool people there.

Love and cuddles,
Ina.

Vista/Office '07 Launch Event

Gave my Office 2007 and Vista launch event presentation today, and I think it went quite well overall. To entice people into the room (not easy on a Wednesday afternoon with a coursework deadline at 3pm) I popped out to Tesco with Alex in the morning and loaded up on a bunch of junk food for everyone - party rings, kettle chips, jammie dodgers...you see where this is going.

Got somewhere between 40 and 50 people turning up to listen to me, which I was pretty pleased with. I'm sure I saw one or two people sneak in at the end just to get the free food though, tut tut. Microsoft had also given me a bagful of goodies to hand out, most of which went in a little mini-raffle sort of thing, but I did give out a couple of the better prizes for people who asked good questions.

Everyone was naturally impressed with the pretty shiny features of Vista - it was a pity I couldn't have gotten Ultimate up and running for features like Dreamscene, but Business showed off most of the power, and I did try to concentrate on actual features rather than just looks anyway.

Office came next, again, this wasn't so much a presentation as just me demo'ing the product, which I thought would be far more effective. I gave it a bit of a relevant theme to half the people in the room - I showed how that afternoon's coursework could be made to look really professional with the use of just a few clicks in Word and Excel '07. The web fanboys also enjoyed seeing the .docx opened up as xml instead of the horrible compressed format you used to get with .doc.

Obviously, I had to end by pimping the Student Partner scheme, and I think I've got a couple of proteges lined up to take over from me next year, along with a few reps too.

Thanks to everyone who turned up, hope you had a good time (or at least enjoyed the goodies and the food) :) Here's some photos of me looking like a tit, and of some of the nice stuff given away ;)

Someone remind me why the screen is approximately 40 feet away from the microphone?


"Hi, is this the OSX presentation?".


The goodies (minus those I gave out during the presentation).


The food (minus that nabbed by some over-eager students).


They seem oddly interested in two sheets of paper...

Coursework

Well, got three of them back today and gave one of them in.

HCI's finally over, thank God. Well, except for the exam, but no-one's going to look at the course again until a few days before that. I created a facebook group entitled '[name edited out] has stolen my will to live' yesterday. It now has 40 members, half of whom I've never even heard of. That man sure knows how to leave an impact.

Got my lisp back, only 80% (only? you say) - I was after 100% in that, unfortunately the feedback is one big illegible scrawl so I have no idea what was good or bad about it =/ Oh well.

The Data Structures & Algorithms coursework was 63%, which I wasn't too dissapointed with, given how much of a hindrance it was not speaking chinese during that coursework - I'll take it.

Got 73% for my software engineering too - along with a note saying "You're lucky to have such a great girlfriend" - I showed my classmates the note, but haven't told them why the lecturer wrote it, which is turning out quite amusing. Got software engineering part 2 in for next week, and then I'm done for a while!

Whoop.
Xx

1337

Date: 13/3/7
Time: 13:37

That is all.

MSP applications now open

As I'm sure most of you already know, I've spent the year as a Student Partner for Microsoft. It's been a fantastic experience - I've made some great friends, gotten a lot of good industry contacts, received a ton of free goodies and gained a lot of really good practical experience.

I'd highly recommend the program to anyone who's ambitious and proactive - but I'd hate to see any of the places wasted on someone who's lazy and not prepared to go out there and make the most of it.

If you're interested in applying, then you can download the form and find out a bit more here. There's a section on the form entitled 'Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) Reference:' - so if you want one from me, then just drop me a line before putting my name in the box. Applications close Saturday 26 May 2007 so make sure you get in before then, it's not an opportunity to be missed.

Also on that website, you can find a quote I don't recall making and three pictures of events I was at that don't have me in them! Whoop :)

Need supports?

Just as I was leaving a lab class today, I noticed a sign stuck to one of the walls, here it is:



You may have noticed that I've highlighted certain bits.

Anyhow, this picture has led me to deduce that only one of two unpleasant conclusions can be true.

1. Someone has usurped my position as Lord of practical jokes involving signs.
2. Someone from UCE has gone utterly insane, and believes that despite their not knowing English (and, given that they're from UCE, presumably not knowing I.T. or maths either), they can offer some help to students of a wonderful university like Aston. Once they realise the truth their brain will implode, and although the world will be richer for having one UCE student/faculty member less, I may eventually slip and fall in the slimy brain goo and look slightly foolish. This will lead the member of UCE walking past me to feel smugly superior, gain delusions of grandeur and soon the entirety of Birmingham will be comprised of brain goop, leading to a crash in the UK economy, and death for the chavs whose natural habitat will have been irreparably damaged.

I'm guessing it's the first.

Pictures of last night

So, you've read the story, here's some pics courtesy of Imogen & Gib:

Myself posing before the gig (Gib).


Another pose (Gib).


I'm really hoping this pic is post-drugs (Gib).


Imogen & Terra gracefully air me away from the car (Imo).


Gib's new msn subline.

I went to see Electric 6 and all I got were these lousy drugs...

Well I got drugged last night, how 'bout you?

Yesterday started off pretty fine, played Ultimate Frisbee in the afternoon, followed by a bit of Guitar Hero and then set off to see Electric 6 - a pretty idyllic and non-productive day I'm sure you'll agree.

I was wonderfully dressed for the night - tight, lace-up, flared bright red trousers, a mostly open tie-dyed blue jacket, a multicoloured cravat/scarf and of course, my blue suede shoes. It also looked as though someone had stuffed a tango bottle down the inside of one of my legs, in true 70's style. Probably because they had. If there's any pictures, I'll post 'em once I get them.

The first act, Hey Pablo! were kickass, I was especially a fan of the bassist. They said this was their last gig, but no-one really believed them so I suggest you go check them out if you find them playing again anywhere.

Next up were an electro band called Ping Pong Bitches - and I think I was the only one in the venue who even remotely liked them. Problem was, I popped off to the toilets after their second song, and I don't remember much more than that.

I do vaguely recall taking a glass of water from a trio of girls, which I'm sure you're all calling me an idiot for now, but in the circumstance it seemed pretty harmless and I'm still pretty sure they were drinking from it too. So, it wasn't definitely those three, as I did have other drinks during the night and although I didn't leave them unattended, I'm sure someone brushing past could have dropped something in - it was a gig after all.

Apparently Electric 6 were great, and I'm told I seemed to be having a great time, albeit blindfolded. At this point it was fairly reasonable for Imogen & Gib to assume I was just being me and having a bunch of fun, but I'd have thought that one of the following later events would have tipped them off:

I remained blindfolded for the entire way home.
This resulted in me falling over and walking into things.
I had to be carried most of the distance to the car because I was unable to walk.
When I got in the car I passed out.

Though, to be fair, that does seem a little bit like a very good night at karaoke, so I suppose it's fair enough. No-one's up to give me full details of how I got from the car to the house; I'm presuming Imogen and/or Terra carried me in. My next recollections are from the pretty scary time after I woke up on Terra's bed.

First off it seemed a bit like a dream, my eyes were open (apparently Terra opened them for me, and it was a few minutes till I began to focus on anything) and I could vaguely see movement but I couldn't move them to follow it. I also couldn't move anything else, but I wasn't particularly worried, it didn't have any sense of realism.

After another short while I could follow the two of them about with my eyes and my head, but it took a bit more time for any sound-recognition to come through. Steven Hawkings came in handy yet again by lending us his system of 'two blinks for yes, one blink for no' (although I think he's refined his system to a slightly better version nowadays) which allowed for a very frustrating conversation. Imo & Terra are shite at charades =p

Next to come back was the use of my hands - or my fingers at least. Once I had my wrists too I had a go at writing, but I couldn't remember:

How to hold a pen.
How to make any hand shapes at all (ie: a thumbs up).
Which hand I wrote with.
How to write.
Where to find a particular letter in the alphabet.

The first two problems were eventually overcome to a degree by getting Imo & Terra to make the hand shape I wanted and then copying them exactly. It took a while longer for me to be able to write anything legibly which is why Imogen copied out the entire alphabet for me to point to. That took a while to get anywhere, especially as I had for some reason decided to spell everything phonetically, and was having real trouble grasping the difference between 'to', 'two' and 'too'. It doesn't help that I'm a language nazi and insisted on correcting myself when one of those two noted an error I'd made =D

Over the next hour or so I gradually remembered how to move each of my muscles (so weird, it wasn't as though the muscles were dead or anything, I just literally couldn't remember what to do with my brain to make them move), and then decided to try walking. For those of you with 20+ years of practise in the field of walking, you might not grasp quite what a hard concept it is to pick up, given only a small set of verbal instructions and a couple of demos.

I failed quite miserably, which I'm sure was pretty amusing, although again, it was rather frustrating for me. They then got me sitting down at a computer which let me type things out (a bit slower than my handwriting was, and presumably not at the ~100wpm I'm typing this at), which was quite amusing. I also managed to pick some jazz to listen to, though I'm not sure why no-one explained to me how to use a mouse one-handed, I was holding it in both hands as I recall.

After calling Lucie so Imo/Terra could tell her what had happened, and so I could hear her voice, I decided to walk upstairs to bed. Oh yeah, wait, can't remember how to walk. That took me a good 5 or 10 minutes and was really quite painful as I recall. Stand on one leg, put your entire body weight on that leg, don't fall over. Don't fall over. Don't fall over. Get caught when you fall over, balance on that one leg again. Then lift the other leg off the floor entirely. Don't fall over. Then move it in front of the first leg, and put your weight on it. Fine. Now, lift up the other leg and balance entirely on the one you just moved. Don't fall over, don't fall over....etc.

Eventually got to bed and I'm feeling pretty fine now, bit of a headache, but no worse than when Ed's given me a couple of yards of ale. Quite hungry though, my plan of having dinner after the gig didn't quite materialise.

So, don't worry too much and ring me up immediately to check I'm ok or anything, for those of you who'll be tempted to do so - I promise I'm pretty fine now, and the symptoms passed progressively exactly as Imogen's doctor mother predicted.

And finally;

Thank you Imogen.
Thank you Terra.
Thank you Gib.
Imogen, you suck at charades.
Terra, you suck at charades.
Gib & Imogen, you think I'm way too hardcore a partier.
It's really hard to teach someone how to use their vocal chords (as I forgot to include in the above, my voice was one of the things we didn't manage to regain last night, remembering how to talk was a bit too far for me).

Anti-anti-piracy

Good news or bad?

Microsoft were clearly feeling a bit musical today, I got a phone call from John Williams, the esteemed composer to schedule a phone conversation between myself and John Mayer, the brilliant blues guitarist. I think that Mr. Mayer also heads up MSTV too - I met those guys yesterday, so I'm not sure if that means that only MSTV want me, and that they're not sure if they really do want me, or if there's a couple of managers arguing over me and they're looking to see what position is most suitable.

More waiting then I suppose...

12/03/07 Edit: It should be noted that half the information in this post is completely incorrect. Apologies to Paul Meyer, who's in ICV, or IVC, or some other such acronym. And not MSTV at all. And not called John.

Music!

Well the AUMS concert yesterday went pretty well, people even seemed to like my little bass solo and didn't notice when I dropped the last page of sheet music for Pirates Of The Caribbean and improvised the ending.

After that I got forced into coming along to karaoke, where the evil Ed Barrow gave me a yard of ale for having the best 'Worst European Dance' in one of his little contests. That and a few other teeny bits of alcohol and I was quite drunk, to the point where I did the entire Titanic flying thing...to 'I Believe I Can Fly' - I wish someone had told me earlier that that song isn't in fact the song from Titanic. Which explains why the people supporting me were a little slow to grasp the idea.

Ended up being awake from 5.30am till 3am so I haven't been up too long today, and I'm not massively looking forward to work tonight...oh well :)

Who would have guessed that 5.30am actually existed?

Phew, I'm pretty tired out and it's only 5.30 in the afternoon, I know people who don't wake up much earlier than this!

Yesterday was another one long, had lectures & labs in the morning, then an orchestra rehearsal in the evening, which I had to leave early so I could get to work. Had a nice surprise at work though when the guy running the place came over to me to say that if I ever wanted a reference, I should put his name down. Must be doing something right eh?

Was up at 5.30 this morning to get to Reading on time for my MS Assessment Day, which is now out of the way. Just got to wait to hear back - I'm so screwed if I don't get this :s

The day was as I'd have expected from MS, professional but quite informal and relaxed. I had two interviews with managers from teams that are looking for students. I didn't get to talk to the DPE guys, who I think I'd most like to work with, but I did meet some interesting folk from MSTV, which I've never really looked at.

We had a fun group exercise (not sure I'm allowed to reveal the details) and I had to give a ten minute presentation at the end on 'If you were general manager of Microsoft UK, what key things would you focus on to ensure Microsoft maintained its current market position?'. Ouch. I spewed a lot of stuff about People, Value and Innovation, stealing MS's own FAB (Feature Advantage Benefit) technique for the Value and backed it all up with some pretty rubbish flipchart drawings.

I think it went well overall though, but I'll find out in 10 days whether or not I've got the gig...speaking of which, got a gig in an hour or so - that AUMS concert I've been rehearsing for this past week. Then I can finally get some sleep!

Better go get ready now then. Xx

One Hand Wonder

So I was playing 'Laid To Rest' on expert on Guitar Hero II tonight, and I managed to play a full two minutes or so of it without picking a single note, all just hammer ons and pull offs. Still haven't quite managed to get 5* on it yet though, and even when I do, there's 7 more songs I need to get up to 5* before I can call myself a true Guitar Hero.

Including Free Bird.

:(

Another Long Day

Been as busy as usual today, but I did manage to find time to go out food shopping with Julie-oh so that means I'm no longer starving - in fact I should hopefully have enough to last me till I go home for Easter now! :) Maybe.

Other than that, I had an AUMS rehearsal for the concert on Thursday. On The Beautiful Blue Danube went pretty well, given that it was the first time I'd played it with them, and I even had an improv bass solo in Rock Around the Clock, which was pretty fun - should be quite entertaining to do on the night.

Had a bit of hassle from Vista today (still having it in fact), it's insisting on caching all my RAM, which leaves me with none for my processes, so even things like writing this post are causing small freezes. I'm going to reinstall as soon as I get a new DVD drive - my pair have packed up and now completely refuse to read DVDs at all - though that's not too unexpected, I've had them a while, ripped them out of my last machine.

Also managed to get my presentation for Thursday for Microsoft finalised, I've even saved the .txt to my DS so I can go over it in my more boring lectures tomorrow. Need some sleeeep now. Busy busy tomorrow.

Xx

First day at work

Well, just back now from my first shift of telemarketing for the Uni and it was pretty fun actually. I had a few people answer the phone with greetings such as 'Yo, wazzup' and a few who could only speak in monosyballic grunts, but overall most of the people I chatted to were pretty fun and friendly. Got some interesting questions from them, and some interesting answers too, I think I'll quite enjoy this job (and of course, enjoy getting paid).

Lots of tea was provided, as it should be in any job, and the people I'm working with seem pretty cool too. Back to work on Wednesday now! Got a final orchestra rehearsal on Tuesday (for the stuff I've never played, and the stuff I've played once...woo), got Microsoft's final assessment day on Thursday (eep) followed by the AUMS concert (also eep), then work again on Friday. Oh, and let's not forget all the coursework and lectures eh? :(

My room would probably be a bit tidier..

..if my method of undress was something other than a disco-striptease to the hits of The Supremes.

Xx

Each of the following would beat France in a fist-fight:

• Cannon Fodder
• Herbie Hancock
• Desperate Housewives
• The Eurythmics
• The letter 'f'. Pronounced 'EFFFFFFFFFF'
• John Coltrane
• Franz Kafka
• Earth Wind & Fire
• The Supremes
• The Eurythmics
• Paul Chambers
• Ernest Hemingway
• Lisp
• Sensible Soccer
• Xenon 2: Megablast
• Hash Browns
• Monty Python
• Harmonicas
• Dave Brubeck
• The Eurythmics
• Me
• Nina Simone
• Hydrozone
• Elite Beat Agents
• Fleetwood Mac
• The Eurythmics
• Oblivion
• Meat
• Jaco Pastorius
• Mars bars
• AC/DC
• Ray Charles

Sword fight in South Carolina

To be honest, the headline is a lot more exciting than the actual story, but it was too good an article not to link you.

So, linky linky.

For the record

Ben May, aka Atarii is brilliant and wonderful and made my DS the sexual icon it currently is.

Fags and Bus Fare

I love blogging so much - I think it's just that I've got a bit of an addictive personality and I've never taken up any drugs/cigarettes etc to satisfy that. As such, I was addicted to Imperial Conflict for years, then came WoW, and now I'm addicted to blogging. I've been trying to limit myself to two posts a day though, which is why this post relates to a bus journey I had last week or so. Anyhow..

Let me set the scene, I'm on a bus in Birmingham, on the upper floor. These don't actually come in-built with a sound system, but you're pretty much guaranteed to hear the latest R'n'B tunez coming from some speakers at the back, whilst a group of chavs discussed who they've shagged recently. It's a good place to go if you're looking to get high and are a bit short on cash too, the air up there's full of marijuana smoke on about 50% of all journeys.

However, due to some freak circumstance (maybe there was an 'ASBOs for ice-cream' scheme running somewhere) the top of this bus contained no narcotics, no bEaTz and only two chavs (of the female variety, so much as chavs have a gender). Deprived of music and second-hand substance abuse, my only source of entertainment was to eavesdrop on the conversation nearby. Here's some of the choicer quotes I jotted down whilst doing so (excuse the language):

Why the fuck would I want to do a 4 hour a day shift? I'd be spending that (ie: what she earned in the day) on fags for my breaks and bus fare.

If I can get £180 a week from child benefits why would I work so I can get £200 a week?

I got this mate right, he got 8 kids now & he doesn't have to bother working at all for ten years - I'm gonna try that one.

They wouldn't let him vote because he kept beating up the guy at the polling station.

I told him, 'You can't call your kid Charmaine, you got to pick something classy, like Velvet'.

No, honestly. That last one is actually a real quote. I didn't mishear or make it up.

I <3 my DS

Before yesterday my DS was pretty cool, it had a couple of games, it was shiny, and the touchscreen worked. Now though, it's a complete work of art. I took it to house 142, home of the geeks, and now it has a megadrive emulator, an IRC client, an MSN Messenger client and a ton of cool games + other fancy stuff ;)

Kickass.

Naturally7

Naturally7 live in the Paris subway. Amazing.

Karry On Up The Oke

Things I recall about last night:

• Thinking a nice bath and some coding would be an ideal night in.


• Refusing a lift to karaoke.


• Getting emotionally blackmailed by multiple people.


• Going to karaoke.


• Sporx and Xander singing Love Shack (awesome).


• Sporx singing Ballroom Blitz (would have been more awesome if there was no 'No nipples in the Guild' rule).


• Lots of dancing.

Things I don't recall about last night but am now informed of:

• Acting as a fervent proponent of physics.


• Attempting to prove the laws of physics by grabbing people by the shoulders, stating loudly that I was the only thing holding them to the floor, releasing them and shouting 'Gravity!' triumphantly.


• Attempting to prove laws relating to resistance, f=ma and centripetal forces using similar methodologies.

Things I don't recall about last night and have no explanation for:

• Grass stains.


• Deciding to sleep with my feet by the headboard and my head mostly off the other side of the bed.


• The precise meaning of the text message sixpbrashs effeffe' is axesnenn graitiz.


• Getting home.

What does this mean? You may ask.


Luckily, it was explained on another part of the sheet of paper:


And, for those of you who don't know what gravity is, or how Sony(?) discovered it:


Also I'm loving the fact that the last drawing has 'P. Diddy' and 'David Hasselhoff' in the top left. Can't plan that.

I'm warning you...

I've killed 27 people this year for not closing their <br /> tags. You could be next.

That is all.

One Down...

Just finished commenting up my code for my Internet Programming With Java coursework. Quite why you'd undertake internet programming with Java I'm not entirely sure, but the module isn't a complete waste, I've learnt a fair bit about internet standards and protocols that I wasn't previously aware of.

The coursework was (for me, at least), to implement a server for trivial protocol for dealing with Business Cards using UDP. Other people will then be making UDP clients for their coursework, and will probably want to get their hands on my server when they're done so that they can do their testing (I did all mine with a tester class).

They won't be so happy when they do get my server however, as I've followed the protocol fanatically, with some pretty hardcore regular expressions. Absolutely no room for error buddy ;) I imagine that none of the client submissions will be good enough to pass muster with my server, and I fully expect (not hope for) 100% for this coursework :)