News Archives - April 2006

26/4/2006

Weird old day today... Ofsted (the poeple who write reports about how horrible schools are) have made it their mission to inspect my school this week (that's right, my own personal school ;-) ). I got a scarey chappy in my chemistry lesson, which is a tricky subject at the best of times, so when some fellow comes along and asks you what you're going to learn from an experiment it's not really appreciated - how am I supposed to know what I'm going to learn? If I knew that I wouldn't be learning for feck's sake.

After lunch I was selected to go and have a bit of a chat with another ofsted blokey. Mercifully, this was as part of a group of about 10-12, so when I had nothing I really wanted to say (which turned out to be most of the time) it wasn't too obvious. In the end it only lasted about 15 minutes, and I had the rest of that lesson off (as I normally do on wednesday after lunch). The problem was that the interrogation had made me feel as if I deserved a break, so I didn't keep my brain in gear during the free period (normally I'd have a game of chess if there wasn't any work which needed doing, but not today). The problem with switching off your brain in the period after lunch is that it's then almost impossible to start again for the final lesson. True to form, I realised about half way through last period that while I wasn't looking my body had caught up with me, and then decided that it should catch up on some sleep. I managed to stay awake, but it wasn't really worth the effort - I don't think anything went either in or out of my brain that lesson, and all I can remember is staring blankly at trigonometric equations.

The rest of the day followed the trend, as well. Taking a half-hour break after lunch really shouldn't fuck my mind for the rest of the day, but it does seem to work like that. I probably need more sleep, but then I always need more sleep... Night night ;-)

19/4/2006

I feel a strange rant comming on today. It's a piece of language which seems to be everywhere at the moment: "I'm going to try and do something". No you're not, you're going to try to do something, unless you're so supremely confident that you'll succeed that you can predict now that first you'll try and then you'll do it, in which case it's rather unneccessary to mention that you'll try.

What's even more nonsensical is that this only pops up in the future tense: no-one ever says "I'm trying and getting some work done" or "I tried and went for a walk yesterday", because in those cases the phrasing sounds as absurd as it is. Unless of course it's a deep psychological insight, revealing that people are genuinely hugely confident about their futures, but can't have that same confidence in the past or present because it's already been shown that such confidence would be misplaced - an example perhaps of the triumph of hope over experience...

Now I'm well aware that when reading this the fist thing that would occur to many is the needlessly pedantic, fundamentally pointless nature of my argument. I'd like to point out that I do realise that this is hardly an issue that one should get enormously concerned by, but sometimes it's refreshing to ignore the bigger pictures and give yourself a break from worrying about nuclear war or the development of a surveillence state that the current ID card fiasco - if you're going to worry anyway, why not worry about little things.

18/4/2006

Apologies to anyone who tried to get to the site that's on my server (probably via one of the contact links on this page) between (some unknown time) and about 7:15pm today. My network was down for unkonwn reasons - I feel I may need to work on the stability of my network hub before the site goes live...

16/4/2006

Oh go on, someone send me an email. I'm all bored, and it'd be dreadful if that shiney web form that I've gone to all the trouble to create (yeah right - just got the perl script off Lee and plugged it in really) was to be wasted ;-)

Happy Easter!

11/4/2006

More or less the final stage in getting my server, and thus my new website, up and running seems to be changing from tiscali to an ISP which (a) isn't crap, and (b) lets me have a static IP address (essentially so that the world knows from one day to the next where to find the server). I did have a masterplan of switching to Zen, but I've waited so long that they've changed all their packages, so I wouldn't get what I'm after.

So yesterday I researched alternatives, and came up with a "short" list, with which I'd like to ask for help: has anyone had experience with any of these companies? (more or less in my order of preference):

All of them seem to offer the key features I'm after - uncapped usage, the ability to migrate from another ISP and one or more static IPs - so right now all I'm using to chose between them is price and how professional their websites look. If anyone has info on any of the companies, or indeed can think of other features I should look for to differentiate between them, please do let me know. BTW, that contact page is hosted on the new server - feel free to have a look round, and apologies if my IP address has changed by the time you try to get there (hopefully you wont run into any trouble as I'm watching the situation fairly closely for now, so I think I'll be able to make the appropriate changes fairly quickly).

8/4/2006

Had great fun this week :-D Mostly quite geeky fun, but excellent nonetheless. We're now the proud owners of a very shexy laptop (even if it did arrice a couple of weeks late - the bloke we brought it from on ebay sent out not one but two others, neither of which ever got to us). I fear it's probably horribly materialistic to be this pleased with a completely unnecessary possession, but right now I don't much care. I get to check my emails in bed :-D

The downside of this was long and complicated, but involved hours of completely unneccessary queueing in Maplin and a waste of a friday afternoon :-( However, the upside of this downside [:-)] is that there's also now a network card in Mummy's computer that'll actually work with Linux, because ralink are a wonderful company who have basically open sourced their driver code, God bless 'em. Now I just need to replace the buggered CD drive in that computer and I can really play Linux on it (it's pretty difficult to install a new operating system from CDs when the drive is completely fecked).

The other great thing this week was the arrival of my new Maglite (anyone who doesn't know about maglites, they're the ultimate torch, the sort of torch hat makes you feel like a Real Man) which is also a recommended bit of kit for Greenbelt stewarding (according to a renowed DOATS - defender of all things stewardly). This is a Good Thing, since I've also finally got round to sending of my steward's application form. <playground chant>I'm gonna have super-powers, I'm gonna have super powers, and you're not, nerr nerr na nerr nerr</playground chant>.

BTW, for anyone who hadn't realised, the last post was my obligatory April fool's wind-up. I have this hope that someone in the states or somewhere else miles from civilisation will've believed me, and perhaps I've started something that'll go at least part of the way round the world. It'd be nice to think I'd had some impact, anyway.

1/4/2006

I've just heard on news24 that Prince Charles has renounced his claim to the throne in the event of the death of Elizabeth II. Having waited for more than half a century, Charles said he felt it was in the best interests of the country for him to step back from public life, rather than appear to be constantly looking over his mother's shoulder. Prince William is now the heir to the British crown.

There's been speculation that the true reason for Charles' move is the influence of Camilla, who's known to resent the scale of media intrusion into her life, a situation only likely to worsen were she to become the ruler's wife. However, when a palace spokesman was questioned on this he merely repeated that Charles was acting in the nation's, rather than his personal, interests.

However, regardless of the true reason, I guess it may be a good thing. Whilst it's sad for Charles to have been kept in suspense for so long only to give up now, he has become rather irrelevant over the last few years, and perhaps the change will rejuvinate the monarchy - certainly the youthful new heir will appeal to the tabloids. Of course, whether that should really be taken into account by an institution with the amount of history that our royal family has is highly questionable. Perhaps the move will be seen as a desperate stunt, and just turn out to be one of the final nails in the royals' coffin, leaving us in a republic. The times they are a-changin'...