Summer's Coming!

Woohey. I was reluctant to go back to school on Monday because the 4-day weekend made it seem like a normal school holiday, but as I do everytime, I dragged myself out of bed and went to school: don't want to spoil my 100% record, now, do I.

I spent the last 2-3 hours of last night setting up my network router and wireless network adaptor. I was recommended these products by someone who already had them and I'm pleased to say that they are bloody excellent. I unpacked the router, followed the instructions and ran the CD provided. The program crashed when it was just about to finish. I called up the Linksys Technical Support line and ended the call 34 seconds later with a website address to a program. I downloaded the program, set up my router and downloaded a heavy file to see what the damage the router had done to my connection speed. No change whatsoever, sometimes a little faster. I then opened my wireless access card and followed the instructions. The card installed properly but I couldn't connect to my network, aptly named 'SUNNY' with WEP 128bit encryption. I then used the live chat facility on the Linksys website. Within 1 minute I was talking to a Linksys agent. We spent around 2 hours setting up my laptop to connect to the network and all it needed was for me to restart it!

Anyway, I'm going to try and map some places in [where I live] where I can get some free internet. I've seen the Wi-Fi website but you never know the private home networks out there with 3mbps.

In other news, Developer Dan is near to completing his Blog system. You'll be able to see it soon at http://blog.everywebhost.com or, if you know his IP address, you can have a look there. I must say it looks good, especially the comments system. Let's hope he actually uses it and keeps it!

If I don't post before Saturday, this is my notice: I won't be here for the first week of the April holiday. Unless I'm lucky and find a wireless network where I am I'll be without the internet. I can't bear the thought!

Sunny Boy

Anger Anonymous

Today was a classic novel plot. It started out with anticipation, went on with subtle disappointment and then it hit an all time low. It slowly got better with joyous anticipation, twas crushed once more, and then it came to the climax and ended with a happy but ambiguous end.

What am I talking about, you ask. Well, I'm talking about my long-awaited wireless router and PCI card. Since Friday morning, the tracking service providing information on my good said that my order had been delivered on Thursday at 6pm. Today, after 3 days of waiting for a delivery van to turn up, and realising the tracking service might not not be wrong, I decided to contact the courier company. Guess what. No reply via email or telephone.
Next step was to contact Amazon, which was also the next logical step. I got a reply to my first email within 40 minutes - I wasn't expecting one at all because it's Easter weekend and Holy Saturday. This first reply gave me the courier's rules about delivering, which shocked me a little bit:

"DHL Express do permit their drivers to release a package provided
that either the parcel was able to be delivered through the letterbox
of the address on the parcel, or a signature was obtained as proof of
delivery. The signature can be requested from a neighbour up to two
houses away, either side of, or in front of a residential address. We
recommend contacting your neighbours."

I took their advice and asked 6 neighbours if they have received my package. All 6 said they hadn't. But, because I had neither received a note from the courier telling me what neighbour they had left it with, I assumed they had just delivered it to the wrong address. I knew that some of my mail went to the same numbered house on the road that attaches onto my close. I went round there, left a note in their letterbox and am still awaiting a reply from them.
I cam back and told Amazon that none of my neighbours had said they had received the package and I also said about the other house on the other road. I also asked them whether they would/could get a statement from the driver as I knew the courier service would have a record like this because they were such a big firm. The email I got back and hour later was surprising but happy. The first thing, which literally made my pupils dilate was:

"It does appear that something may have gone awry with the delivery of your order; the package should have reached you by now."

First thought: Thankyou Captain Obvious!. The next bit was a surprise. The person said she had already ordered what I wanted again, at no extra cost, and up the class on the delivery to 'Next Business Day'. This means I can expect it on Monday or Tuesday next week. To make sure, I'm planting my webcam out my window to record the delivery - that's if the driver can deliver to the right house.

Later today, I had a thought about my neighbours. Two doors down my street on either side of my house are families that, to put it lightly, I don't get on with. I'm suspicious of them and have also had the idea that they might have even stole my package for their own use - even though they're not techies. If they have, the only reason I can think of them keeping it is to sell it. Anyway, can't wait for it to arrive again.

Update soon on other things and have a good Easter!

Sunny Boy

Ubuntu

Well, since yesterday I have managed to partition my drive, install Ubuntu Linux, install Firefox, Thunderbird and endless packages. For most of this I have had the guidence of a near computer genius: Cow - http://cow.neondragon.net. This has been a real experience for me and I have learnt quite a lot from it.

The partitioning process was one of the toughest stages in installing Ubuntu. After 4 failed tries using the partitioner provided by the Ubuntu CD, I reverted to usuing the suite on the Knoppix Live CD. This worked fine. I resized my Windows partition, created a fat32 partition, a SWAP area and a ext3 partition. Again, I went to install Ubuntu under the advice that it 'was not a n00b-friendly' OS. Still, I wanted to try this OS out for a few months now and I didnt want this to stop me. After this hassle, I went on with the rest of the installation without a hitch.

I set up a user account as well as the root account and logged in. First thing I though was: 'brown'. Why? Because it was brown. The background was brown and the default theme was also brown. Never the less, the GNOME environment was pretty pleasing. The first thing I did was make sure I could log in as root. I changed the account persmissions, also with the help of Cow. After that I configured most apps that needed configuring to my liking, such as XChat, Theme etc.

The last thing I did last night took me around 2-3 hours. This was to allow my USB cable modem to be recognised and allow me to use my connection. This was a toughy. After about 30-40 minutes disscussing it with Cow and playing about, we got to the point of setting up a new connection. I was on my own. In enemy territory. But, after playing about with my network tools for an hour, rebooting 5 times, turning my modem off and on 3 times and entering my IP and subnet mask about what seemed 50 times, it finally worked. The only downside? It was ethernet. So, I replaced the ethernet connection with a USB, rebooted and now it thinks the USB connection is in fact an Ethernet on eth0. The connection worked and I went to bed cheerful that I got it to work on USB.

Today I did many things. The first was to install the K Desktop Environment so I could use both GNOME and KDE with my Ubuntu install. I played with KDE for about an hour. My opinion is that KDE was a little too 'bulky' and big for my liking and reverted back to GNOME.

Since then I have installed Firefox, Thunderbird, some more packages and attempted to install Amarok, but to no avail.

Sunny Boy

Hallo!

Hello again. I've been on my monthly book-buying spree last night and ordered 4 books; 1 I had been meaning to get for over 2 months now. I also threw in 2 gadgets that I had been looking at for some time. Also, from now into the near future, I will be fitting into the craze that's sweeping the Evolution IRC community: Linux distros. I am currently looking into some distros, recommended by some friends, such as Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Vida (VLOS) and maybe, if I'm felling good, Knoppix. From Monday it's a two week wait until I finally get away from Didcot and school and go to our regular caravan spot in Westward Ho! Can't wait.

Well, last night I ordered 4 books. These were: 'The American Boy', 'Entombed', 'The Timewaster Letters' and 'The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory'. The latter I have been meaning to buy for such a long time now after my interest on the subject blossomed. I, personally, enjoy buying books over the internet. They should be arriving on Tuesday.

As well as those books I also ordered a wireless broadband router reccomneded by someone and a PCI card for my laptop. They should also be arriving on Tuesday and I cant wait to set them up. As it's coming up to summer, I thought I'd do a lot more work downstairs and in the garden and over my neighbours so it would really help me. But I'm going to make sure no one else can leech off my connection, so don't even try!

Over the next few weeks and months I'm going to be trying out some of the different Lunix/Linux distributions that are out there. Today I am going to try and install Ubuntu (without screwing my master boot record again) and have a play. Then I'm going to move on to Kubuntu if there's another release besides the preview. I can't wait for Ubuntu 5.04 that's coming in the form of 70 CD's to me this April. As I said I want to play around with a few distros, but not Mandrake because of a bad experience). Wish me luck but with the guiding help of Khlo, I'm sure I'll be up and running within hours ;).

On Monday and Tuesday this week coming, it is exam hell with nearly a full day's worth of exams on those days. Personally, I don't mind exams in place of lessons because it's a change. I really need to do well on my maths exam, technology exam and geography exam because those are most important to me. Also, it's a 4-day week so that nearly makes up for it.

Anyway. "Know me when we meet again."

Sunny Boy

New Design

I've changed the design of my blog because the blue was getting a bit tiring. I'm not completely designing one from scratch, just mildly editing one provided by Blogger. I hope it's a little easier to read. Please keep commenting and tell your friends.

I've changed the way my posts are archived from daily archiving to monthly to save space and to improve loading time. I will be continually making improvements with the constraints I have, but I'll appreciate any ideas for this new design you have - leave a comment.

Don't forget to keep commenting on my last post about London. Thankyou much.

Sunny Boy

Shibby

Today, I took time out of my regular Saturday schedule to take a trip to London, the greatest capital in the world. I woke up at 6:30am by accident because I left my school-day alarm on and then I had to wait until 8:30am to get to the train station - I squeezed in a little Wolfenstein ET in that 2 hours, of course.

The train journey was fairly simple and quite quick. It took us about 40 minutes to get to London Paddington and I picked up the Underground (Tube) map and was away to Waterloo Station within 3 minutes. We walked out of Waterloo Station, down the road and saw the gigantic circle of steel know as the London Eye. We had some gift vouchers for it so we went to the County Hall, exchanged them for boarding passes and then walked around a bit more, crossing Westminster Bridge and then the millennium Bridge back towards the Eye.

I know the London Eye has been around for around 5 years now, but for a person seeing this magnificent monument and tourist attraction for the first time, it's a wonderful experience and one that I have to report. We queued for about 10-20 minutes and then we were finally able to board our pod. 10 tonnes of spheroid viewing was what I was in. Times that by 32 and you get 320 tonnes just by adding the weight of the pods. Adding the weight of the rest of the wheel; steel, wire etc. and the weight of the thing is just awe inspiring. Anyway. The journey.

We boarded the pod and took our places along with other families and couples and we started our decent round and up the wheel. We took photos, as you did, and even took some for other couples wanting this day to be kept not just mentally but physically aswell. We saw about 35km into the distance, seeing Canary Warf, the gherkin building and Buckingham Palace. Our pod reached the top of the wheel, and then, we started to reverse and go back down the way we had just come. After a minute of descending again, we were informed that a person in a pod below us needed help. So, we were kindly given an extra 20 minutes on our trip thanks to the woman who passed out.

Then, after walking around London with the help of the Tube, we went to a Mexican restaurant in Leister Square. It was very nice and the size of the place blew you away. Real Spanish/Mexican employees you couldn't understand and overpriced food. All in all it was great and the food was lovely, though my stomach did not agree with is soon after.

My first realization was that there were less townies than there is where I live. Early in the morning I saw around 2 groups of townies, mostly girls. At about 12:00pm I noticed a lot more had crawled from their s**tholes and a gathering of skaters crowded by the nearest flat surface and steps. Even though I only saw a small part of London, what I saw makes London a chav-free zone compared to here!

Anyway, sat here now, since 10:00pm writing on and off. This is Sunny Boy, reporting for CNN, my bedroom.

Sunny Boy

RND 05

Tomorrow, as you know, is Red Nose Day: in aid of Comic Relief. I will be spraying my hair red for tomorrow's non-school uniform day and do my bit to raise money for this real cause.

For the next month or two I will be busy designing and coding a new website I have the craving for. I'm more hopeful for this project than any other I have done but most of the sites I design either dont get finished or, if they do, serve no purpose whatsoever and just sit on my server. My reasoning for this? Boredom. Whenever I'm bored I think of things the net needs, and give it. Anyway, it's progressing nicely and with help from Uber and Khlo, the site is XHTML Strict and CSS complacent. Thanks guys.

The year 10 exam week has been postponed 1 week because of poor organisation and really bad communication. Teachers took a guess when the exams would be and we wouldn't have known where they'd be 'till the last minute. Good on ya'!

Red Noses
Send me the addresses of pictures with you and your Red Nose or anything else concerning Red Nose Day like your red hair or wigs! Have a fun day yo'll.

The End Is Near

Finally, after 30 odd years, the conspiricy theories about man going to the moon will be proved wrong or right. Europe's moon-orbiting spacecraft, SMART-1, is going to photograph all the Apollo landing sites and maybe, in the process, squash the conspiricy theories that the moon landings were fake. It's reported that the Apollo 11, 16 and 17 landing sites have already been imaged but the images are yet to be released. Could this end the fude and prove conspiricy theorists wrong? Or could it bring NASA shame and apologise to Russia. Whatever happens, we would have finally found out the truth, at last.

My personal opinion is that man did land on the moon and that none of the landings were faked. I have visited numerous websites for and against the idea that we went to the moon and for every arguement the theorists put forward there is an answer. What's your opinion on the Apollo moon landing? Leave a comment.

I want to welcome another memeber to the blog family. This blog is mainly full of total crap but I just read it to read the comments left by unintelligent life forms; townies. The blog is here.

Sunny Boy

Update

I have some spare time so I'll take this time out to update my blog as it hasn't been updated for such a long time.

I've now got a web project to occupy my time and to also help me remember what I haven't used in over 4 months. I am going through my 967 page PHP & MySQL Web Development book and have already improved on multi-dimensional arrays and am currently reading the Object Orientated PHP section. Looks good and hopefully I will be able to use what I'm going to learn.

Since my last post, I have comfirmed my work experience placement at Research Machines (RM) in Milton Park in July of this year. I'm quite chuffed and looking forward to it. Woohey!

I've been listening to Yahoo LaunchCast lately via the Yahoo Messenger client and, to be honest, Yahoo! Messenger totally crushes MSN messenger. My post comes just after 10 years of Yahoo: a dream of college students. Go download the messenger, just make sure you get the UK version and not the US version.

Anyway. Update complete.

Sunny Boy