Life

Things that have happened in my life

It’s getting ever closer

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It’s less than 24 hours to go now until I get my A-level results. I’ve already starting getting the ‘good luck’ text messages from some of my friends. What’s mildly annoying is that the universities that I’ve applied for already know how well I’ve done, and have done since Monday. Though I suppose that does mean I can get a reasonably prompt answer…

The bank also sent along my PIN number for my new bank account. Despite what it says on the letter I haven’t destroyed the number yet because I need to be able to remember it first. I know I can change it, but I don’t want it to be anything too obvious, or anything that is the same as my existing passwords (I use alphanumeric passwords since some places require them).

Officially an adult

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It’s my 18th birthday!!!

Yup, I’ve turned the big 1-8 today. Marissa (my new laptop) is now up and running, though admittedly not under Windows. I decided to go ahead and install Mandrake 8.2, and I’m very impressed. The CD autoran in Windows, and gave me the option of either booting from the CD (didn’t work) or creating a boot disk and using that. Although the boot disk creation was a little difficult (I had to read the documentation to find out what to do), it was done quickly and I was able to boot into the installer.

The installer was great – the ‘express’ option take about 30 minutes and was nice and easy to understand – there was plenty of help available and no confusing dialogs. The partition manager was excellent, though I did have to say goodbye to Windows XP due to the fact that Samsung had chosen to use NTFS, which, although it is recognised by Linux, isn’t supported. But it is a new system so I wasn’t going to lose anything.
I’m using KDE as my desktop – not KDE3, since this isn’t yet included – but 2.2.2 (I think). It also comes with a full office suite, more web browsers than you can shake a stick at (including Mozilla, which loads much more quickly than its Win32 counterpart) and various other tools.

There are down sides – I couldn’t get the sound to work, and I won’t be able to use the internet for a couple of days until NTL get their act together (I’m on Marianna, the old machine), but on the whole, I’m pleased with what the Open Source community has done here.

My other presents included a laptop backpack – or rather the money for it, though I got one today from PC World. It’s great – not only will it carry the laptop but the transformer, extra mouse (which also works in Linux, despite the fact that it is USB and has a wheel) and Ethernet lead, and a great deal else. I also got a wallet (to complement my proof of age card, which arrived this morning – nice one, Portman Group) and more money. The rest of my presents will be here tomorrow when my grandparents and cousins come over for dinner.
Anyway, I’m off out for my birthday party. See you later!

Okay, so here’s the explanation

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Okay, so here’s the explanation for the lack of updates: I’ve been busy. And here’s what I’ve been doing:

Tuesday

Not much to report, though I did stay back at college a little later than usual to get some help from the Maths department, about a rather nasty piece of homework. The afternoon was then spent working on the help file for X-Setup 6.2 (the latest beta uses the 6.0 help file I wrote over a year ago), and although I did type out a blog entry, a system crash wiped it.

Yes, briefly, my computer returned to its pre-fixed stage, whereby it would randomly crash if left on standby and thus require a reboot. I do believe it had something to do with Optimizer XP which uses the Inno Setup routine to optimise your system settings. However, I fear it may have tripped a setting, so I did a system restore and everything appears to be okay now. Despite what people say about System Restore hogging resources, it really is a life saver.

Wednesday

Today was the last of my university open days – this time it was the turn of Bradford. My dad decided to accompany me – probably because mum and dad came with me to Manchester on Sunday and mum became all nostalgic, and with dad being a Bradford graduate he obviously wanted to see how things had changed (or not). All in all it was a good day – it is now my second choice (since Newcastle is out of the running due to my potentially disappointing Maths results) and was better than Northumbria. The accommodation left a little to be desired, but there were good computing facilities – all rooms have phone sockets and dial-up net access is £40 a year unlimited (to put it into context, that’s how much you pay monthly for broadband at home), which also includes free internal phone calls. Okay, so UMIST has ethernet, but this isn’t bad. Better than Newcastle anyway, which is supposed to be one of the best Computing places in the country…

Wednesday night is Ventures night, and so we went swimming at Archbishop Holgate’s school. We got plenty of time in the pool, and I enjoyed myself quite a lot – I’m still recovering from tiredness though – I really did exert myself. Unfortunately yesterday I missed the Student union elections at college, so I couldn’t vote. I couldn’t nominate myself since I’m in the upper sixth (and therefore not around next year), but would have liked to have voted given the chance. Darn open days.

Thursday

So, today. It was my last day at college before the Easter break (wahey!), and Computing was cancelled so I only had two lessons. Though I did have to drop buy Tesco to buy a French stick for lunch – we were out of bread, though it smells like mum has made some more. Yes, we have a breadmaker, and yes, it’s great. It makes really nice loaves, actually, and it works out cheaper for making specialist breads. And it’s healthier since you don’t need to add preservatives. Other than being at college, I’ve spent the day working on Blankbusters at the ODP – it’s a project to rid the directory of web sites with blank descriptions, by adding them. I seem to have ended up with a load of education websites from Walsall (a lot of the UK education sites are without descriptions, I think because they were added in bulk and never sorted) – although I realise it is making a positive difference it can get a little repetitive. And I was amazed at how many schools have sites that are under construction – some haven’t been finished in 3 years or more. In fact, one personal home page hadn’t been updated in nearly 4 years, and was offering audio to stream in… wait for it… RealAudio 3.0! How times change… though at least back then it wouldn’t have had all of the spyware in it. I’m sticking with 8 – I’m in no hurry to upgrade to RealOne.

The Vorbis Petition is now at a whopping 752 signatures… the only way is up :). And if you’re wondering, my French coursework went in on Tuesday – I was just over the target of 700 words, and I think it was a reasonable attempt in the end. Let’s just hope my French teacher and the exam board agrees :).

Anyway, since I’m still recovering from Wednesday, I’d better sign off for the night – see you tomorrow morning, the first day of the Easter Hols! Woo!

Reviewing Newcastle

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Whew! What a day! College was interesting – since I was going onto Newcastle later on I had to was forced by mum to wear my suit… you wouldn’t believe the number of funny looks I got. Especially since I was more smartly dressed than most of the teachers…

After I finished Maths I jumped on a Park & Ride bus – this is York’s 10 minute shuttle bus between car parks on the edge of the city and the city centre – not cheap (£1.50 for a single – £1.60 for return) but generally quite reliable, especially off-peak. And one of the termini (?) is just next to college, and it stops at the railway station too.

Once at the railway station I walked over to platform 9 where the train was due – as I did a Doncaster test train pulled in, hauled by one of the Royal class 47s (named “Waverley”). It then departed, and a Virgin HST pulled in. Originally it was going to be 6 minutes late, then 3 minutes, then on-time, and finally 2 minutes late. But considering it had come from Bristol it was doing okay for time. Ask anyone about the reliability of Virgin Trains and you’ll get some kind of negative response…

I was in Newcastle by 12:20pm, so I had time to do a spot of shopping, though I didn’t actually buy anything. The advantage of Newcastle University, and in particular the building that I was due to meet in, was that it is right next to the main shopping area (next to Haymarket Metro station, if that means anything to anyone).

The course I’m applying for there, BSc Joint Honours in Mathematics and Computing Science looks like a good course, and the university itself isn’t bad either; the accommodation certainly looked better than Northumbria. Verdict: probably my second choice behind UMIST, but since I have yet to visit UMIST that may change. Though on paper at least, UMIST looks the better all-round university. I also got my AS6R letter from UCAS – this is the final form that I use for confirming my university choices, though fortunately the deadline isn’t until 26th April, so I have plenty of time. It also confirmed my declination from Edinburgh.

Oh well, it’s off to Ventures I go. See you later!

Oh no it isn’t…

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What? No updates for two days? Yes, I know – I was a wee bit busy yesterday, what with visiting Northumbria University and then watching the pantomime at The Theatre Royal. That, and Blogger suddenly stopped working, so what I had spent 10 minutes typing never got posted. So here’s what should have been posted yesterday:

Just posting since I have a few free minutes. Northumbria was okay, though the accommodation didn’t impress me – the catered accommodation looked okay but being a slightly picky eater (I don’t go for junk food) I wanted to go self-catering, and their offerings looked rather too basic. And there are no in-room facilities for accessing the university network/internet – not even a phone socket. That means a trek over to the computer work areas – a minimum of a 10 minute walk, and there you have little freedom about what you do (checking a Hotmail account was specifically mentioned as being banned…. great…).

The course looked good, though; like most university computing courses it concentrates on Java but seems to offer experience with Windows NT 4.0 (which is what the University network uses) and some form of Linux – it used the KDE desktop environment anyway. It’s quite industry based too, and the third year is a compulsory work placement (I’ve applied for a four-year sandwich course).

I’ll be able to give a better judgement once I’ve been to a few more universities though – Newcastle is next. I also need to apply for my student loan pretty soon too, to make sure it’ll be there in September.

The pantomime was very good too – unlike most other pantos in this country it doesn’t rely on D-list celebrities and gladiators to use what little acting talent they have to prance around doing the same regurgitated plays every year. This one uses the same 3 actors and 2 actresses it uses every year (plus a few extras) and is written by Berwick Kaler (who always plays the dame); although it loosely placed on a traditional panto, it never truly follows the story.

Take this years, for example – Jack and the Beanstalk. Although there was Jack, a beanstalk and a giant (also played by Berwick) who said “Fe fi fo fum”, it was based on a mountain in Skipwith (note: there are no mountains in Skipwith – in fact its almost totally flat). Most of the jokes have a local theme (some of the jokes made reference to the A64 roadworks and the selling of York City) and Berwick rarely takes it seriously (spraying water at the people inside the pantomime cow, for example). Overall, three and a half hours of great entertainment – and only £8. What’s more – it runs from the beginning of December to the end of February, so you have little excuse to miss it, though on most nights the theatre is full, so you need to have your skates on and book in advance if necessary. Oh no you won’t. Oh yes you will. It’s behind you…

Manchester University gave me an offer of a place for next year, taking my total number of offers up to 5 (out of a possible 6 – Edinburgh have yet to get back to me). Although it is the university I most want to go to, I may have to turn it down since they require an ‘A’ grade in Maths – something which I don’t expect I’ll be able to offer them. At the moment, UMIST (the neighbouring university to Manchester) is my first choice, followed by Newcastle, but this may change since I have yet to visit either university. But at least both have achievable entry requirements.