My 3D Design and Animation lecturer reckons he’ll be able to disable firefox’s text zoom feature on his “widescreen” site. Ha. Ha I say. Like I think I told him, the only way to do that would either be easy to reverse or done as an extension to firefox. So basically, pretty impossible to do.
His site by the way, uses iframes for layout and flash for navigation. Ha.
Last time I checked, JS wasn’t a protocol, it was a language. Also, we’re/I’m still getting taught to do things incorrectly. wooooooo. Quotation marks are apparently optional on (x)html, attributes are camel-cased, and it’s okay to put typos in presentations.
The refund has been received. I won’t be shopping with them again.
My sources tell me 3 Novatech laptops went up for sale recently on eBay. They said that the laptops possibly were (the previous 2 fault ones, plus the final one i sent back) mine, and that they’ll be looking into it. I don’t think there’s anything dodgy going on, it’s just an interesting thing to find. Apparently not many people want to keep their Novatech laptops once they’re done with them, but Novatech will try to take yours off you before you are.
A friend of mine sourced me an iBook. Tweaked to the core. This baby will last a full days’ study on a single charge, and a whole day if I do bugger all. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Novatech, laptop batteries do last more than two hours on a single charge when they’re used for things as simple as recording audio and word processing.
I’ll be keeping it till I get a new one next term.
So I’ll be moving into my own place soon. Yay for me. I sign for the keys on Monday, assuming the guy from the Uni did what I asked him and he emailed the people.
I am annoyed and frustrated about being taught obsolete and semantically incorrect techniques.
Here’s the situation: I need medication otherwise I have to be in constant pain all day.
Here’s the problem: I can’t afford to buy my prescriptions.
Here’s why the Government are Arseholes: The people from the NHS told me that the Government has a fixed limit across all courses for how much they think students should be spending on books (not materials or software or hardware), regardless of what course they are on.
Here’s what this means to me: According to what the Government think I need to spend on books (not materials or software or hardware) I am earning more money than I need, even though my only source of income is my Student Loans. It also means I have to pay for pretty much any medical thing I’d get off the NHS (although some of it is subsidised I still have to pay money), and I have pay for the full amount of my prescriptions.
Why I can’t afford to pay for my prescriptions:
So my laptop got delivered while I was at Uni today, but there’s a problem. The laptop don’t work.
I ordered the laptop without an OS installed, and the computer just refuses to boot from any CDs (Ubuntu, Win98). There also appears to be a bit missing off the front, but I’m not sure if it is actually missing or if it’s just weird design.
Tech Support is closed at the moment, but if what I try doesn’t fix it (I am not going to open the case, I’ve had it less than a day and it’s still in warranty so I’ve no need to) I can’t get it to work, so I’ll be ringing them in the morning, or having them ring me.
I claim this blog in the name of me.
DGIC 2005-10-11,
originally uploaded by SignpostMarv.
Helpdesk staff hard at work.
David Goldman Informatics Centre 640×480,
originally uploaded by SignpostMarv.
First photo of Uni, although technically I didn’t take it- at least not in the sense of holding the camera.
Technically it’s the second, but the first one sucked.
I’m switching, not because I want to, but because I have to. Windows 98SE just doesn’t cut it anymore. The kickass music player foobar2000 looks to be requiring Win2K or WinXP for the unicode support (and other things I presume). 3D Studio Max, which I need for my BSc course, requires them as well.
Also it turns out Second Life requires XP or 2K. Since M$ is dropping support for the 2000 OS soon, I thought it’d be a better idea to go straight for XP Pro instead of Win2k or XP Home, since I needed that extra flexibility with regards to screwing up the around with the system. Plus the Uni would be happier if I had XP.
My copy of the Academic Upgrade license still hasn’t arrived from Genstar yet, so it’s all prep work at the mo’. My laptop hasn’t arrived either, but thats besides the point as it’ll be blank and useless without XP Pro anyway.
Before I’m reading to migrate I’ll need to get all my Firefox and Thunderbird files in order. All the latest software updates need to be on hand as well. I’ve got an ethernet card on order with my laptop so that I can transfer files between the computer I’m on at the moment and my laptop. The entire contents of my music collection, my video collection, my image library and the software library probably won’t be going with me, as it takes up most of a 40GB hard disc already (the laptop is 60GB, but with XP’s bloat there’ll not be much room left.
The plan is to use the laptop as the main computer (possibly getting a keyboard+monitor switch, and the current computer as a storage and development server till next term.
I know I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but I thought I’d let you know what I’m planning:
This term my money is going on:
Most of the stuff for term one is to help with my Uni work, or is required for it. The only exception is the subscription to Second Life. The reason I’m putting it on the list at all is that it’s the perfect place to showcase 3D modelling, and it has it’s own scripting language. The idea is the more computer languages I learn, the easier my mind will be able to handle coding projects in one specific language. Kind of how driving different types of vehicles improves your handling of others.
The reason I’m subscribing as opposed to having just a basic account is for project I’ve had in mind for a while- I’ll not say exactly what it is, but it’s the kind of thing a geek/nerd might find really cool, but my girlfriend thinks is just ridiculous. I’m not sure if it even exists already in Second Life, but that’ll be one of the things I’ll be finding out when I play.
It involves scripting, 3D modelling, photography and texturing- project management as well of course- all of these are part of the core modules for my course. So while I’m spending my recreation time in Second Life I’ll be learning and improving my ability to complete the course (and hopefully get a distinction at the end of it). Who knows, if it doesn’t exist already, I might make some money of it if other people want it. But I’m not in it for the money, I think the finished product would be really cool to have on my own house/back yard (I’m not sure how big I’ll be making it).
So I had some free time between lectures at Uni today, so I thought I’d spend some time migrating the posts over from here to there. Aside from the issues I’ve been having with server time outs, that are- in fact- still present. My inability to access the WordPress.com server is the reason why I haven’t gotten anywhere near migrating and why I’ve missed two weekly news roundups. I’m getting thoroughly pissed off at this delay which is outside of my control- so much so that I’m actually regretting migrating in the first place.
Yes, I know WordPress is by far a superior blogging platform to BlogSpot, but BlogSpot rarely, if ever made it impossible for me to post. WordPress.com on the other hand has decided to think that it needs reinstalling. Every single blog hosted on WordPress.com, and the main site appears to have decided it needs reinstalling. While I was writing that sentence the problem appears to have gone. The timeouts are still there though, so I can’t update my wishlist to show that I’ve actually bought, received and installed the 512MB module on my system, and that I’ve bought but still waiting to receive most of what’s left. The timeout problems seem to have disapeared, although I don’t have the time to fool around migrating tonight.