Year: 2007

End of Year Quiz 2007

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It’s time once again to do the end of year quiz – you can also read answers from 2006, 2005, 2004 and 2003.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?

The one that sticks out in my mind is that I DJ’d in a nightclub for the first time this year. There’s other things, such as take my driving test (which happened twice and I failed both times, go me…) but DJ’ing was a happier memory.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Last year’s resolutions were:

  1. Eat more healthily. Though I had a bad start to the year in this regard, my food consumption has improved over the past six months, with Hari mostly to thank for that.
  2. Do more work. I did do some more work, could have probably done more, but I’ve finished the course anyway now so it doesn’t matter.
  3. Do more exercise. Managed to go walking more often this year so that’s something, but as per usual there’s room for improvement.
  4. Keep my room tidy. Erm, yeah… less said about this the better really. I blame all the decorating.

One of the resolutions I took off for 2007 was ‘don’t binge drink’ and you’ll be pleased to know I didn’t binge at all last year. That might sound boring but neither Hari nor my friends go out to get blathered anymore.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Nobody close to me, although a work colleague did.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Thankfully no, not this year.

5. What countries did you visit?

I managed almost a week in Wales in May, but other than that I’ve once again been rooted in England. Hopefully next year we’ll have the money for a weekend in Paris or somewhere.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?

A permanent job and a car. I managed the ‘proper job’ bit that I wanted last year, albeit on a temporary basis, and Hari and I are now living together as just the two of us.

7. What date(s) from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Our great weekend in London in February.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Getting to our second anniversary of being together (Hari and I). After that, blogging for 5 years straight.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Failing my driving test. Twice.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

No physical injuries, just one hell of an asthma attack. Thankfully I’m now on new medication that works like a dream.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

I didn’t buy any new Apple products this year, other than Leopard, and though it’s nice it’s not the best thing. Technically we’re renting it, but having our own house has been the best thing we’ve ‘bought’ this year.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

Again Hari for sticking with me, and my friends for being there. I know it’s basically the same as last year, but meh.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, annoyed me yet again, as did Robert Mugabe (surprised I haven’t mentioned him before actually…)

14. Where did most of your money go?

Mostly on driving lessons and rent. It’s a nice house but it’s not as cheap as where I was living last year, unfortunately.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Going to see Avenue Q in London.

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?

“Through the Fire and the Flames” by Dragonforce (aka the really hard song from Guitar Hero). It’s one of my most-played songs of the past few months.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

  • happier or sadder? Almost certainly happier.
  • thinner or fatter? About the same.
  • richer or poorer? About the same, still.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Work on my dissertation…

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Arguing over nothing of any particular importance.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

At home with my parents. Will also be spending some time with Hari’s parents and my friends at New Year.

21. Who deleted question 21?

The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe

22. Did you fall in love in 2007?

I’m already in love with Hari and intend for it to stay that way.

23. How many one-night stands?

None.

24. What was your favourite TV programme?

Again, another good series of Doctor Who, but I’ve also enjoyed Top Gear this year too.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Not really. There’s a few people that I don’t really get on with but hate is too strong an emotion.

26. What was the best book you read?

The Guardian Book of April Fool’s Day. But other than that I didn’t read much, other than Wikipedia.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Dragonforce and Paramore are both bands that I want to hear a lot more of.

28. What did you want and get?

A better-paid, proper job.

29. What did you want and not get?

I’m still waiting for that pony…

30. What was your favourite film of this year?

The Simpsons Movie was very good, as was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Haven’t seen The Golden Compass yet.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I was 23 – “nobody likes you when you’re 23…” – and we sat out in the sunshine and had a barbecue.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Money.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?

Same as usual, but a little bit smarter for work.

34. What kept you sane?

Hari and my friends. They also kept me sufficiently insane too.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Had a bit of a thing for Sophia Myles, David Tennant’s ex, and Kate Winslet.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Probably the state of emergency in Pakistan. When the head of the organisation you work for is incarcerated purely for political reasons, it does stir you a bit.

37. Who did you miss?

Some of my friends who have moved away after finishing university.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Some of the new members of the university Hiking club are good, though I wouldn’t really count any of them as close friends unfortunately.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.

Never take a driving test in the late afternoon.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

“Through the Fire and the Flames we carry on”, I suppose. No matter what life has thrown at me I’ve carried on.

Hospital visit

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I had my first ever emergency admission and overnight stay in hospital on Monday night. Basically it was an asthma attack, but one that was so serious that my own medication couldn’t tame it, so Hari and I took a taxi to the A & E department at Bradford Royal Infirmary, where I was nebulised and stabilised.

I ended up spending the night, and most of the following day, at the hospital, and for a lot of the time I was on oxygen. But thankfully by yesterday afternoon I was good to go home and was discharged in the evening. I’m now feeling much, much better and my asthma symptoms have subsided dramatically, so I’m all well again.

As this was my first hospital visit, here’s the good and bad things about my visit:

Good:

  • A lot has been said about hygiene in NHS hospitals. All the rooms I was in looked very clean, and there were anti-bacterial handwash dispensers quite literally everywhere you looked. Hygiene is obviously taken seriously here.
  • The staff were, for the most, part very friendly and helpful – the A & E staff especially.
  • Food wasn’t bad – better than I expected at least.
  • All the beds had Patientline terminals, so a payment of £5 for the day got me my own personal phone number, about 20 Sky TV channels plus some radio channels, and internet access. It certainly helped to pass the time and let me update my friends via Facebook.
  • And this is the NHS so all of my treatment was free. When you’re hyperventilating and waiting to be seen, at least you only have to worry about getting better and not whether you can afford the treatment, or whether your insurance will cover your treatment. We’re very fortunate to have the NHS in this country and I don’t think everyone appreciates just how lucky we are to have it.

Bad

  • There was a shortage of beds, so when the decision was made to keep me in at about 1am, it wasn’t until 3am that I was on a ward. And then I got woken up by the ward doctor at 4:30am to go through my symptoms, and with all the beeping machinery and people being moved around I didn’t get an awful lot of sleep while I was there.
  • There were about 25 people on my ward, all in the same room, and it was a mixed ward. I’m not too worried about this but there was a patient who was being quite loud and abusive, which isn’t quite what I wanted. But hey, it’s free treatment – can’t have everything.
  • It took about 3 hours from the doctor saying I could be discharged to me actually being able to get my coat on and leave. Admittedly the staff were busy, but it would have been nicer to be back home at 5pm, not 8pm.

Still, on the whole I had a good first hospital experience, and I’d like to thank all the staff there who helped me get better. Especially the A & E staff who were very friendly and helpful. And thanks to Hari who was very supporting during my time of need.

Not quite there

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Last week, I said:

So, with a bit of luck, within the next couple of weeks I could have a full driving license and a proper, decently-paid full-time job on the cards. We’ll see.

Unfortunately, I failed my driving test (although I dispute my score) and came ‘a close second’ in the job interview. Which isn’t much when there’s only one job position available. So I’m still a learner driver with part-time casual work.

Missing .vxd files

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I mentioned back in June that Hari and I inherited a spare computer, which until now has been sat in our house serving no purpose. However, I now have a reason to use it – I joined a new guild in World of Warcraft and need to run Ventrilo 2.1 to be able to take part in raids, and I can’t for the life of me get it to work properly on my Mac using Crossover.

I mentioned that the computer lacked a network card so I bought one today, and fitted it. Alas this machine is not running a nice operating system like Windows 2000 or XP, but Windows 98SE which doesn’t ship with the relevant drivers. Worse, as this machine had never been used on a network before, it was missing all of the Windows network components. Worse still, I didn’t have the Windows 98 CD, and even worse than that, the relevant files were not saved somewhere on the hard disk. Big problem.

Of course I was busy installing the network card drivers by this point and so upon rebooting I received a series of errors to do with missing .vxd files, namely vnetsup.vxd, vredir.vxd and dfs.vxd, the latter of which gives me a mental image of a double discount sofa sales. Anyway, I found a forum post on some site which I can’t seem to find again which pointed to these technical support files, namely ‘Directory Services client for Windows 95/98’ which includes these files and will happily install them for you. You can then get rid of the program through Add/Remove Programs and it’ll be nice and leave the .vxd files there for you.

Alas, these were only some of the missing files needed for networking, so while they did remove the horrible errors I was getting they didn’t actually get me on the network, so I’ve had to resort to downloading some files from a shady torrent site in the hope that I can get things going.

Ideally I would have liked to have been able to wipe the hard drive and stick Linux on this machine, but unfortunately its primary role as a Ventrilo machine means that it’s Windows or nuthin.

Interesting 2 weeks ahead

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Well it’s October now (already…) and the first 2 weeks of it look to be quite interesting. On Wednesday this week I have my driving test – my second attempt, after narrowly failing my first attempt back in May – and then next Monday I have a job interview.

So, with a bit of luck, within the next couple of weeks I could have a full driving license and a proper, decently-paid full-time job on the cards. We’ll see.

Bradford good for transport links?

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According to this article, Bradford is the best British city for business due to its transport links. It’s a little scant on details, but it claims Bradford has good transport links and low levels of congestion.

Now I live in Bradford, and this surprises me. To start with, here’s what is good about transport in Bradford:

  • Roads – Bradford has good links with the M62, via the M606 and the A650/A641, and the bits of the central ring road that have been completed make for a good bypass of the city centre. The signposting is generally good and even at peak times traffic generally keeps moving.
  • Buses – Bradford Interchange is a large, modern bus station with both short and mid-distance bus services and long distance coach services serving a wide variety of destinations, including many airports. It’s also connected to the railway station. Bus services are frequent and reasonably cheap.
  • Trains – Bradford has two railway stations, with trains at least every 15 minutes to Leeds all day and regular local services. A couple of trains run direct to London each day.

But there’s a lot that needs improving.

Roads

The central ring road isn’t finished, and probably never will be. Part of the missing bit requires demolishing listed buildings around the university, or tunnelling underneath it, which would be prohibitively expensive. The missing section therefore uses older roads in the city centre, which makes for a confusing one-way system on roads not designed for the level of traffic they now take.

And while the road connections to the south and to Leeds are adequate, to the north the road quality falls sharply. Anyone who’s ever wanted to drive from Bradford to north Lancashire would testify to this, as you crawl through places like Saltaire and Keighley. Leeds Bradford Airport, for example, is only accessible via a single carriageway A-road, which passes through suburbs and villages on the way. And the outer ring road is mostly a joke – it’s a series of existing roads roughly forming a ring around the city that were designated a number. Most sections are not designed for the amount of traffic they now carry, and so it’s often quicker to use the central ring road rather than try to avoid the city altogether.

Buses

To be honest I don’t have a lot to fault Bradford’s bus services on – compared to other cities they’re pretty good.

Trains

One of the local sayings here is on the lines of ‘Bradford may have 2 railway stations, but you still need to change at Leeds to go anywhere’. Unfortunately this is quite true – the direct service to London is only twice a day, and there are no long distance services, just hourly mid-distance trains which stretch out to York, Manchester, Wakefield, Blackpool and Preston.

To go anywhere else, and you have to change at Leeds or Manchester, and since the trains call at Manchester Victoria and not Piccadilly, you might as well just go via Leeds. Leeds Bradford Airport is one of the few airports in the country that doesn’t have a railway station or concrete plans for one, despite its proximity to the Leeds-Harrogate railway line. Most of the trains which run into Bradford Interchange are at least 15 years old and tend to be handed down from other companies when they get new trains – the only ‘new’ trains running into Bradford are those which serve Ilkley, Skipton and Leeds from Bradford Forster Square.

Bradford’s transport links aren’t bad on the whole, but to call them the best is laughable. There is so much that can be done to improve transport here, especially the railways.

openoffice.virginmedia.com

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A screenshot of openoffice.virginmedia.com showing folders and files to download.

I know there’s at least one other person here who uses OpenOffice.org as their office suite and Virgin Media as their ISP, so you may be pleased to know that Virgin mirrors OpenOffice downloads at openoffice.virginmedia.com. If you’re a Virgin Media customer, then this is the fastest way of downloading it as it should require the least number of hops.

Virgin also mirror all downloads from Tucows and possibly some other sites so it may well be worth checking out before you download, especially if it’s a big download and you’re lucky enough to have Virgin’s 20 MB broadband offering, as you’ll be able to make the most of your bandwidth.

Films of 2007

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Back in April, I wrote a list of 8 films I was intending to see this year. Of those, I haven’t seen Hot Fuzz or 28 Weeks Later, though I should be getting the former to rent sometime soon, and I haven’t seen The Simpsons Movie because it isn’t out yet.

Yesterday Hari and I killed 2 birds with one stone and saw both Shrek the Third and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on the same day (taking a break in between to go for dinner). Shrek 3 isn’t quite as good as 1 and 2 but it’s still a very good film, and Harry Potter 5 is as least as good as the first 4 films. The fact that this is the fifth film in a series and it doesn’t totally suck is a testament to J K Rowling’s writing and the directors/screenplay writers – pity the same can’t be said for films like Police Academy V…

Hari and I also went to see Wedding Daze (also known as The Pleasure of Your Company) a few weeks ago, mainly because we wanted to go on a date and that was all that was on at the cinema at the time that interested us, but actually it was quite enjoyable, if rather random.

There are, of course, other films that we’re considering going to see this year:

  • Transformers – I’ve heard some very mixed reviews of this film and so we may be renting it rather than going to see it in the cinema.
  • Ratatouille – Pixar make good films and the reviews suggest this is no exception, but alas us Brits have to wait until mid-October before this film is out here.
  • Stardust – saw the trailer for this before Shrek 3 yesterday and it looks pretty good, and it’s based on a Neil Gaiman novel.
  • Evan Almighty – I enjoyed Bruce Almighty so with a bit of luck this won’t disappoint. Again, the US gets this first, it’s not out here until August.
  • The Golden Compass – the film based on Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. Not out until December.

Looks like I’ll be banned from Heathrow

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BAA, the operator of Heathrow Airport (and a number of other big UK airports) wants to get a court injunction against members of 15 organisations who are running Camp for Climate Change in August. The injunction would mean that members of the 15 organisations involved in the camp cannot go into the airport, use the Heathrow Express or its platforms at Paddington station, use parts of the Piccadilly Line on London Underground, or use any of the airport access roads, including parts of the M25 and M4. There’s more from Greenpeace here, link via BoingBoing.

The thing is, these 15 organisations aren’t all loony liberal hippy organisations. Yes, the likes of Greenpeace are there, along with single-issue groups opposed to airport expansion. But you’ve also get well established organisations like The National Trust, RSPB, The Woodland Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England. The combined membership of these organisations is around 5 million people, and if the injunction is worded how Greenpeace say it is, then all 5 million of them will be banned from the airport. And as I’m a proud paid-up member of The National Trust, that includes me, and my parents.

Amusingly, it also includes The Queen, patron of the RSPB and CPRE, and Prince Charles, patron of the National Trust. And whole load of BAA’s own staff.

As it happens I have no real intention of being anywhere near Heathrow at that time, either as a protester or a passenger (although I know of a few friends wanting to do the former). But this injunction is so broad that’s almost amusing in a real head-against-wall way, if that makes any sense.

What would you do with a spare computer?

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With a bit of luck, Hari and I will be picking up the keys for our new place today – we’re well into packing stuff although there’s still lots to do. One of Hari’s current housemates is donating his old computer, which he no longer needs and doesn’t want to sell, mainly because it’s rather old and wouldn’t sell for much and hasn’t got a monitor or keyboard (and isn’t able to take it for recycling). So we’re taking it.

Except I don’t actually know what to do with it.

The computer has an 800Mhz processor, 30 GB hard drive and 32 MB graphics. It’s recent enough to have 2 USB ports and an internal modem, but not recent enough to have a network socket. It also comes with not one, not two, but three optical drives – a CD–ROM drive, a CD-RW drive and a DVD–ROM drive. I have no idea what operating system it has but I’d imagine it’ll be Windows 98.

The lack of a network socket means its usefulness is somewhat limited, but adding one isn’t going to be difficult. Even then, I’m unsure what it can be used for. Its hard drive is a bit too small for a network server, and to make it into a router would require adding 2 network cards and a Wifi card if we wanted that as well. Furthermore, if it was a router it would probably have to go in the living room and I’d prefer not to have a big beige box there if possible – I’d rather have my Mac Mini, given the choice, or preferably a dedicated router which we’ll probably need to buy. A dedicated router would also use up less electricity, seeing as it’ll be on 24/7 essentially.

I can get an old CRT monitor for it and I’m sure I can pick up a cheap keyboard from somewhere so it won’t cost much to make it into a decent computer system, but I can’t imagine there’d be much demand for a computer of that vintage if I were to sell it. Hari and I between us already have 3 computers – my MacBook and Mac Mini, and her XCcube – so we don’t need another system really. So what would you lot do?