mjprice.net

The Fantastic Machine

2009-02-07T02:17:00.001Z

Two years in a loft.
A massive gap at the back where the expansion pane is missing

Boots first time. No fuss. They really do not make them how they used to

Windows 7 Beta

2009-01-31T15:41:00.000Z

Surprisingly stable!

Phantom City of Pripyat: Chernobyl's Alienation Zone [PICS]

2008-07-20T14:55:00.001+01:00

Prypiat is an abandoned city in the Zone of alienation in northern Ukraine, Kiev Oblast, near the border with Belarus. It was home to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers. The city was abandoned in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster.

read more | digg story

BBC iPlayer on Xbox Media Center

2008-05-18T01:09:00.004+01:00

A developing project for the Xbox Media Center is the ability to download selected programmes from BBC iPlayer.

They are downloaded in the MP4 format for iPhones/iPod, but they have the same quality on a large TV as the Flash streams. So not too bad.

The project is a Python script for XBMC and the project is located here

Old optical media

2008-03-09T00:12:00.000Z

I've just been "sorting" my CD/DVD collection.

The older media I purchased between 2000 and 2005 has begun to degrade badly.

If anyone has any crucial data on any older media, I'd suggest you give it whirl if you haven't for sometime and make sure everything is OK.

If you are UK based avoid Tesco branded CD-Rs. I've had some for under a year and they are already turning transparent! That's 20GB of TechNet downloads!

On the flip side the following older media of mine appears to weathering it's age well:

Orange BulkPaq DVD-Rs (4x speed),
Grey Quazar coroprate branded DVD-Rs (4x speed - bulk bought cheaply after they entered administration),
Datawrite Silver CD-Rs (48x speed),
Bulkpaq Silver CD-Rs (52x speed),
TDK Metallic CD-Rs (52x speed),
Purple BenQ CD-Rs (52x speed)

My current media of choice, which is currently available, and appears to age well are:

Datasafe Silver CD-Rs (52x speed),
Memorex Silver DVD-Rs (16x speed),
Datawrite Blue DVD-RS (16x speed),
AOne White Dual Layer DVD+Rs (8x speed),
Datawrite Titanium DVD-Rs (16x speed)

I recommend the above as age resistant, direct sun resistant, and cat resistant media!

Be* Unlimited - Migration Minefields

2008-02-29T23:57:00.002Z

More accurately minefields have been averted, totally. This has surprised me, as anything I have changed with my internet service over the past four years, has always finished with a frustrated phone call to my ISP.

I have left Freedom2Surf after four years of loyal service. Sadly after two corporate take overs (first Pipex, then Tiscali) with a third being rumored (Virgin Media), and a steady decrease in the quality of both internet and customer service.

I received my MAC - Migration Code - after a couple of phone calls, as the automated system let me down. Apparently my line was being moved from the BT IPStream package to Tiscali's LLU, which had to be canceled first.

I chose Be* Unlimited, as they offered ADSL2+ (up to 24MBps down and 2.5MBps up) for £6UKP pcm less than my 8Mbps package.

Migration was successful, and to be fair to Freedom2Surf, they tried hard to address my issues, offer me a service with no monthly bandwidth limits and promises of service improvements. Sadly they wanted a new 12 month contract, which I declined as I have the possibility of moving my entire home package of TV, Phone, Mobile and Internet over to cable in July.

Be provided a wireless router, a re-badged SpeedTouch, which according to my Geek Guru is a good device.

I have sync'ed with Be at 15Mbps, which after 15 days of testing I can possibly get up to 20MBps. The package is unlimited bandwidth and most importantly - no traffic shaping. This means I can download (legal Linux ISOs and Creative Commons media) via BitTorrent at 1.2MBps compared to 20KBps.

Be however, do not offer a free email service and charge £2UKP pcm for POP, Webmail and SMTP - although they do offer a free SMTP server. As all my incoming mail is handled through my domain registrar, Gmail and my hosting company, this isn't an issue.

Vista Service Pack 1 - A week on

2008-02-29T23:54:00.002Z

A week on, and I've re-imaged to RTM Vista.

I have experienced several blue screens a night, initially believing it was Service Pack 1 causing it.

However, after a hunch I ran MemTest86+ last night, and discovered one of the two new 1GB RAM modules I installed a short while back was faulty.

Obviously I shall be going back to Service Pack 1 this weekend, and will post when I start using it daily.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (RTM)

2008-02-24T02:20:00.005Z

Installation took a little over 50 minutes. Norton AV is now complaining a full system scan hasn't taken place, when it has.

I will assess the performance of my system, and see if the SP is worth all the hype!

KB943899 causes Vista to hang on Configuring Updates

2008-01-20T16:33:00.000Z

An update on my last post, it does appear the KB943899 windows update sent out on 8th January 2008 is the cause of certain systems locking.

The update is listed as Recommended not Important or Critical. Microsoft has stated this update is an update that improves the performance, responsiveness, and reliability of Windows Vista.

The technical data of the patch is available from the Microsoft Knowledge Base, direct link is here

If you have a system affected, and have decided for stabilities sake to re-install the operating system, this is the method I have used to avoid the problem re-occurring.

First, disable all automatic updates during setup when given the option. This will at least stop Windows Update automatically pulling the update down when you first enter the desktop.

Secondly, hide the update so if you do re-enable auto updates, it should not be installed on your system.

Find the update in the list of available patches, right click and select Hide:

Install everything else, and your system should behave as normal.

I'll keep an eye on the KB article and TechNet forum thread for a Microsoft fix.

I'll probably be going back to having a Ghost image of my system, after abandoning the idea as a bit of a waste of time and effort!

Windows Vista locks on "Configuring Updates"

2008-01-20T01:01:00.000Z

It appears Patch Tuesday for January 2008 has given some users an unexpected New Year's gift.

For those with custom machines with the ASUS P5N-E SLI motherboards, or some Dell models an update causes the machine to lock on shutdown with the "Configuring Updates" screen.

If you hard reset the machine, it will also lock on startup with the same message.

There does appear to be a solution, which I have tried successfully.

You need your Windows Vista installation media, and have your motherboard set to boot from the optical drive first.

Boot from the Windows DVD and select your language on the first screen.

Next choose the "Repair" option, this should be on the bottom left hand corner of the second screen.

Setup will present you some options. Select the option to open a command line window.

Enter the following: ren C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution.old and reboot.

You will be presented again with the configuring updates message on startup, but this should clear within five minutes and allow you log on to your machine.

You could also try the System Restore option, from the same recovery console.

I would suggest turning off Automatic Updates completely until Microsoft resolve this issue.

I shall be re-installing Vista tomorrow, as this is far from a healthy installation and shall try a couple of work arounds.

For the time being keep an eye on this TechNet forum thread, located here. Hopefully an MVP or Microsoft spokesbot will respond.

Vista Again

2007-12-31T03:34:00.002Z

I really can't make up my mind, even a year on, whether I like this OS or not.

I'll keep using it until Service Pack 1, and see what happens.

EM64T

2007-12-28T01:01:00.002Z

So, it's taken me five months to realise the CPU for my new PC is 64 bit.

Oh well, at least I can play with x64 Windows Server and Exchange 2007.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T00:03:00.000Z

Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope you all have a great time, and a good long rest.

Import Complete

2007-09-30T18:59:00.000+01:00

The import of old posts from my home hosted Movable Type journal is complete.

Thank God I didn't write hundreds of entries, as it had to imported by hand

New Journal System

2007-09-23T11:39:00.000+01:00

Now on Blogger, as it is far easier, and frankly I'm too lazy to manage these things myself anymore.

Going to take a while to import the old CSS template to Bloggers fancy XML format.

Does anything work on Vista

2007-02-13T15:13:00.000Z

I'm not one to complain, but does anything actually work on Windows Vista?

Test case: My Microsoft branded Laser Mouse refuses to work, although my Microsoft branded keyboard will work occasionally.

My Windows Mobile 2002 device is not supported by the new Mobile Centre, and ActiveSync will not install on Vista.

Visual Studio .net 2003 is not supported on Vista. Microsoft suggest I upgrade to 2005. Good sales ploy, but I'm not falling for it.

Firefox fetches pages slower than a 33k baud modem unless you perform a bit of voodoo: netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

You could say that these are the pains of an early adopter, but this operating system has been out in the business environment since November, and in beta for Christ knows how long. I just wish Apple would release Mac OS for x86 processors.

An apology:

Rob! Sorry I missed you off the list :(

Rubbish

2007-01-29T01:20:00.000Z

Yes I truly am at updating these things.

Couple of new bits of information:

1) I'm engaged, woo!

2) I've got a new job as an IT Technician at a local school. Double woo!

That's about it!

If Adam, Alex, Andrea, Lindsay, John or Neil read this, drop me a line.

Still Alive

2006-09-17T21:42:00.000+01:00

House hunting, job hunting etc etc.

Long time since the last update as I arsed up the MySQL database and it took me three months to get around to fixing it :p

Well, you know what I'm like.

Oh and I had to go back to an old copy of the database so it looks like I haven't updated at all in a year, when actually I did TWICE :D

/Matt

Not Dead

2006-05-18T22:14:00.000+01:00

Really I'm not :D

Me and Nat are fine, and thing's are going alright. Drop me a line sometime, and I promise (really this time) to reply :)

Happy New Year!

2006-01-05T12:02:00.000Z

I haven't posed for a wee while now, well almost five months. Sorry, I've just been a bit busy (lazy).

Hope you all had a good Christmas etc!

Note - After logging in to my journal control panel I found 600 spam based comments awaiting approval. Needless to say they didnt get it :)

Fuel Crisis

2005-09-13T12:46:00.000+01:00

Everyone seems caught up in the fuel crisis this week. Calling it a crisis is unwise of course. I had a good laugh at the BBC News site yesterday stating that no one is panic buying only to have my Dad phone up and say the queues for Sainsburys garage back home were half a mile long.

As I'd been on the low fuel warning light for two days I thought it best to fill up last night. I thought I was being clever, going at half nine. I was wrong, every other bugger thought they'd be clever too.

A 50 minute wait to fill up only to find the pump was on its last legs and I could only squeeze half a tank out of it. This morning I went to our local BP, its just round the corner but right next to the motorway so our friends at British Petroleum add an extra 2 pence to each lite. Another 20 minute queue, and that garage is going to be dry tonight.

My salute to the Great British Panicking Public comes from our Irish cousins, and photo I took back in the summer of 2002. At least they've got the right idea.

Disaster!

2005-09-11T19:34:00.000+01:00

No political post, just something stolen from El Reg:

Kudo to Sky News, WOOOO Murdoch

Reports

2005-08-21T09:30:00.000+01:00

<-------

Waste five minutes of your time, for free!

YAAAAR!

2005-08-19T17:56:00.000+01:00

It's conclusive I tell thee! (Trust me I have a faux degree in Geography and History)

Just how dumb are they?

2005-08-12T13:52:00.000+01:00

Some American's seem to think this is real.

For those too young to remember its Stephen Tomkinson as the unethical reporter Damien Day from Drop the Dead Donkey"

This isn't going to come soon enough

2005-08-02T14:11:00.000+01:00

Blair is apparantly going to stand down as an MP after sitting a full third term as PM.

It's really quite sad that instead of mourning the end of an unprecedented three term Labour premiership, alot of people are celebrating. His tenure will probably been seen in years to come as one which took Britain into an expensive and needless war, brought Al-Qaedia terrorism to English shores, and moved the Labour party more to the centre right.

Let's hope good sense prevails and he resigns four years in to let Brown build up momentum for the next General Election.

IE 7 Beta 1

2005-08-01T13:06:00.000+01:00

Some images here.

I'm seeing some disturbing similarities to Firefox and Safari. Well done Microsoft after five years you've come up with a half decent browser after borrowing from the competition. Kudos!

He's dead, Jim

2005-07-21T01:56:00.000+01:00

Get Google Earth

2005-07-20T03:59:00.000+01:00

Google Earth, its just awesome.

This guy is a little bit up himself

2005-07-13T07:13:00.000+01:00

http://www.riscos.info/posting/

Mmmm funky

2005-07-04T02:45:00.000+01:00

I've finally banished the easy web server solution EasyPHP. For those who haven't come across this before it basically comes with Apache, PHP, MySQL and PHPMyAdmin all installed and ready to go. Sadly all the distributions are almost 18 months out of date.

Spurred on by a good friends attempt to completely redesign his site I decided now was the time to do things properly.

And I have. It all works, well mostly. I feel far more secure!

Movin' on back

2005-06-22T05:26:00.000+01:00

Well my attempts at turning the old server into a kick ass homebrew PVR failed. Couple of reasons 1) Windows 2000 refused to acknowledge the drivers for either the on board or Creative PCI 128 sound cards; 2) Any useful PVR software (that doesnt require more than a Duron and PC133 memory) is Linux based, my TV card has no Linux support; finally 3) The PSU is completely knackered, the sound totally overshadows the TV.

So its going back to a Windows Server 2003 SP1 machine and the entire website is going to be moved back. Other reasons for the move are my second workstation just can't handle every day activities and running a webserver, and finally since it was moved to an XP machine the number of attempted hacks has increased several fold. Damn you l33t script kiddies.

Its too damn hot in my office too, I want to be able to turn both workstations off at night.

Fed up of Apple's DRM?

2005-06-21T04:52:00.000+01:00

Sadly not a post about Apple's Intel move, or the hoax version of Tiger that appeared about three days afterwards.
If you've bought any music off the iTunes store and would like to quickly and easily batch covert the whole lot to nice, safe, unencrypted MP3s check this shit out.

You could of course write each and every album to disc and rip from there, but that'd just waste precious CDs :D

Auctions

2005-06-07T04:06:00.000+01:00

Anyone fancy buying some goodies?

Laptop
Playstation
A7000

Go on :P

(waves hand) Go see Episode III

2005-05-27T19:27:00.000+01:00

Well to be honest with you all I wasn't expecting much. Considering any Geek worth his salt (even one like me who isn't the greatest fan of Star Wars) knows to fairly high degree of accuracy what happens and how, I still enjoyed this film. Alot.

I won't bore anyone with what went on, chances are a good 80% of people have seen it, or intend to fairly soon.

In all honesty I have to say that I thought this was the best film out of all six. Just bare with me whilst I hide from the "Original trilogy was far better Geeks" :P

Hell even the direction and alot of the dialogue was better in this film than any of the others. Barely any of those crappy wipes! Only a few bits of cringing dialogue! ("Your breaking my heart!" and "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" come to mind).

Personally I loved the dark atmosphere of the film, shit that was the point of this one. First fifteen minutes you have Christopher Lee getting his hands chopped off and decapitated execution style with twin light sabers. Cool, but not one for the kids.

All in all Lucas you finally did good. Now leave it the hell alone. No sequels to Episode VI, it's done, get over it.

These Are The Voyages....

2005-05-15T01:52:00.000+01:00

I was going to write something poignant about the final episode of new Trek in 18 years, until I watched it.

What an utter pile of crap. I won't bore people with a huge venimous rant just a few points:

1) Jonathan Frakes cannot be rejuvenated by 11 years. Apart from being fat and grey he even sounds different. Marina Sirtis again looks haggard and unable to find the TNG Troi accent

2) Why set it when they did? Did anyone, anywhere ever wonder what happened off screen during TNG's Season 7 episode "The Peagasus"? I know I bloody didn't.

3) The obvious "fuck you" from Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. Why kill off the single best character in the show, for no reason, ten minutes before the end. AND then completely ignore the "sacrifice" in the last five. Connor Trinneer should sue.

Look what arrived in the post today

2005-05-06T02:19:00.000+01:00

Good timing eh?

I feel the geek grip weakening

2005-04-21T16:21:00.000+01:00

Before being sent home today for being a bit too wobbly (and also almost clocking a member of the public mid fall) I had a disturbing chat with a co-worker.

The conversation moved onto DVD burning. I with a sense of pride talked about my second generation DVD writer still proudly pulling its weight after 18 months before being dumbstruck. I was told I use obselete technology and if I wanted he could burn anything I wanted several times faster.

Apparantly with a nice new Dell desktop (ugh) a 16x Dual layer burner was supplied. Compared to my single layer four speeder I felt almost ashamed. Until I remembered the utter stupidity in buying new DVD+-R technology. If you go above 4x the media is expensive, when you start heading into 16x dual layer discs it's ridiculous. The new Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war is close to starting, which given the quatum leap in storage capacity is going to make DVD-+Rs was dead as the floppy disc in two years time.

Trying to explain this however was troublesome and in the end I gave up. People need to wake up to the concept that DVD-+Rs are an evolutionary cul de sac. CDs will remain for many more years, they've been around too long, and are cheap and plentiful enough to still be useful. Floppies are now almost dead, USB sticks are far more useful. The short lived Zip/Jazz/LS-120 disc format was another cul de sac. Useful as a stop gap until CD writers entered the mass market at a cheap enough level.

The big tech firms are releasing these new formats too soon for my liking. DVDs are now starting to take over from VHS, hell even my parents want to replace the good old VCR with one of those funky DVD-RW plus HDD devices. People are going to get confused. "I thought DVDs were the new big thing, I've just bought this recorder" - Actually no, their now junk with the crappy 4/8GB capacity. Take this nice new Blu-Ray disc with 25/50GB of space.

In other news (shocker) pulling into a car park earlier today I was met by a fuck off massive white transit van. The driver, a cock for oh so many reasons, wouldnt back off to let me through. I couldn't reverse out onto a busy road so I had to stay put. Van driver aka Cocksucking Bastard decide to ram, yes people RAM his way past. I now have a nice long, deep stratch along the side of my car. Fucker dropped into first and raced around the corner before I got all his reg number (almost hitting another car). So if you drive a big white transit van that starts with S420 xxx, you may want to hide.

In other exceptionally good news Natalie's managed to get an uber library assistant job. So the mantle of top household bread winner has been passed to her (you do know I need car tax next month, dont you?), whilst continuing with her masters at a different university remotely.

UCE have decided to sack all the lecturers for her course and close it down. However they can stay on there for the last year, however they dont who will teach it, and even if at the end of it the degree will be accredited. Apparantly everyones jumping ship.
The worst part? They will reopen it in a couple of years for forigen students only, it'll make them much more money.

Fuckers.

....and we're back

2005-04-09T12:05:00.000+01:00

Sorry about the downtime. The server PSU is a bit buggered, its making an horrific headache making noise. Cleaned it out, and nothing happened, so I've moved the whole lot into another room.

However, now I can say I have my very own server room :P

Work = Shit.

That is all

Czech time

2005-03-28T05:14:00.000+01:00

Managed to increase the number of entries on the index page, which is cool.

A side effect is, and don't even think of asking me how, all the dates are now in Czech.

Arse

Its all gone blank!

2005-03-26T18:15:00.000Z

I need to fix that, don't know how to.

New Server Statistics program, stolen from Rob <-

Quickie

2005-03-11T17:50:00.000Z

Just a quick maintaince entry. I've rejigged the remnants of my RISC OS software and styled it inline with the rest of the site. Link is on the side <-

For those interested in trying it out again theres a free emulator located here. You will need the rom sets however (ahem)

Damn you Rick Berman, NOES.......

2005-03-08T01:41:00.000Z

From a reliable source, and a "No comment" from Rick "Rape Trek" Berman:

Enterprise series finale, last scene:

RIKER
Computer, end program.
(Enterprise bridge and crew vanish to reveal the inside of a holodeck occupied only by Riker and Troi)
RIKER
She was a good ship.
TROI
They were a good crew.
(Riker gives single nod with a grin)
(Fade to credits)

The Whiskey Web Dev

2005-03-07T04:32:00.000Z

A busy intellectual weekend you might say. Of course by that statement I mean instead of gawping at the monitor playing World of Warcraft I actually got round to some web developing. Nothing huge, just something out of sheer respect I had to do.

My old SG-1 site I discovered a few days ago from an old web counter, that is actually still tracking, hit around 40,000 unique hits recently. Not alot considering its been around since late 1999, but the crowning achievement of the projects I have messed around with. Since discovered that I decided to give the whole thing a rehash. Sadly coding each page lovingly with notepad just to add a quick news flash just wasn't feasible anymore. Anyway the links on the side, so take a look.

I've also added an ancient version of my personal site I found on an old archive CD, you know when I such a small amount of HDD space I used to back things up.

Have also spent the past few days (apart the work thing) downloading and watching DS9s final season, and in my opinion the ultimate triumph of Trek.
Disturbingly I have noticed the final episodes of each series seem to be getting bloodier as time goes on.

Example:

TOS ending: Cheesy laughs and knee slapping
TNG ending: Cheesy officers poker game
VOY ending: Returns home, new child born
DS9 ending: Weyon killed, Damaar killed, Dukat killed, Winn killed, Sisko killed
ENT (alleged) ending: Trip killed, its all just a holodeck recreation of Rikers.

*Disclaimer: I do realise VOY came after DS9, however ordering it properly would make me look foolish

My head hurts, I need sleep.

All Fixed

2005-03-05T19:21:00.000Z

All iTunes materials have been recovered, and I've fixed my style sheets so when I post they aren't rebuilt from the default.

Go me

Apple stole my money :(

2005-03-04T02:34:00.000Z

Apple stole my money :(

Fancied some music so I fired up iTunes. After a quick upgrade and install I began to wonder "where's all my music gone". All the music I'd actually paid for.

Then it dawned on me after searching where it should be, the whole lot had been deleted. The folder structure was still there, just no music. At all.

Apple of course only let you download music once, and thats it.

Running EasyRecovery as I type this.

Bloody hell.

Update:

A-ha!

All recovered.

I love EasyRecovery Pro.

May even pay for it......nah

More Tweaking

2005-02-28T00:22:00.000Z

Tweaked the theme a bit more, and with the help of the new gallery program I found I've managed to create a consistent theme through out the site.

The new gallery can be accessed from the navigation pane.

Comments?

Damn you Medion

2005-02-27T05:05:00.000Z

After a few weeks absence from my life I discovered my PDA needed a recharge. After fiddling around with my USB connections to power its cradle back up again imagine the horror on my face when I discovered the following. Cradled, powered on "Welcome to Windows Pocket PC 2002".

It would appear three weeks without charge for this little machine means it will WIPE ALL YOUR DATA off the inbuilt memory card.

All my themes, eBooks, notes and sound recordings wiped out because the battery lost all charge. Surely this shouldn't happen.

Just goes to show if you buy things cheap from Makro you get burned.

All Change

2005-02-20T02:37:00.000Z

I'm currently moving around my lounge. Creating more space, less wires and less mess. A plus of this is having Natalie's PC back in the lounge connected to the TV. I see WoW being played from the couch :D

I spent the day at work with some pseduo authoritah, asking if I could be trained for the information desk. Its not a degree level job by any stretch, but at least you get to complete semi-complicated tasks and actually use some grey matter for a change. I got to organise the floor for an hour, so the feeling of authoritah did run high.

Two days off now anyway, time to enjoy some relaxation time, and good sleep. Not waking up at 9am this morning, startled and shouting to Natalie "Baby Elephants" which I vividly remember doing before snoozing off again. I don't quite know why I'd say that phrase, but comedy all round.

Monday = Free meal day is its Natalie's sisters eighteenth. Mmmm free food.

Twiddling

2005-02-19T02:28:00.000Z

I'm twiddling with the stylsheets at the moment, so expect some garish results. The current one I sadly have to say has been shamelessly stolen from WoW Europe. A past time which has stolen the last week of my life.

Damn Blizzard.

Anyway must dash I here chav's screaming outside the house, and I know they destroyed my car window last week.

Umm its Wednesday already?

2005-02-16T06:53:00.000Z

Car's fixed. Good

Have played WoW almost solidly since Saturday, and didnt even notice it was Wednesday and thus back to work day. Bad.

Got to go back on.....urge....is....too....great....to....resist

Perhaps that article was right

World of Warcraft

2005-02-13T05:50:00.000Z

Its here and it rocks.

Just a quickie I'm on a break. I've now had it for 23 hours and have played for 15. Thats how good it is, I've only beaten that once with Civilization 1 years ago.

So pissed off right now

2005-02-13T04:56:00.000Z

Awoken suddenly by the neighbour:
N: "Have you seen the back of your car"

Me: "Erm not since last night"

N: "You'd better take a look then"

Can you find any of the so called 24/7 windscreen replacement services in the countries second largest city to fix this on a Sunday? Can you bollocks, unless you want to pay the RAC £250.

Titter

2005-02-08T06:11:00.000Z

This always makes me laugh

Of Bailiffs and The Force

2005-02-08T05:43:00.000Z

Just a quick summary as I dont think I've gotten round to telling anyone this.

The previous tenants of this house apparantly left the country in June in quite a hurry. It turns out that they've got around £12,000 worth of debt to quite a few different companies: Barclary Card, O2, Orange, Capital One (aka Satan), British Gas, Birmingham City Council. Thats just a few of them.

Threatening letters and phone calls later, a postcard came last week addressed to the previous tenants, but as it was a postcard you could actually see what the contents were. Most of their "We demand money now, or we break legs" correspondance we've chucked back in the mail with Unknown at this Address on. This postcard stated one of the debt collecting agencies (we think theres five right now) will be coming round on the 7th between 8am and 8pm. Apparantly the previous tenants now have a CCJ against them. Sadly (seeing as I was looking forward to screaming "FUCK OFF" at them, showing passports and tenacy agreements and getting this whole lot sorted) they didn't turn up.

What amazes me is out of the dozens and dozens of "Pay now or else letters" that have appeared since October only one CCJ has been issued and we haven't had any bailiffs come round. Furthermore for Birmingham City Council, they've offered them a settlement which is half the original debt. Not to mention we pay fucking council tax, and they haven't noticed that the tax is being paid for this address, but by different people.

The letting agency has been trying to "sort this out". Obviously they haven't got very far. I feel with the amount of money we're paying per month for this house we should get better service off them, than the ass raping we're getting now

Being in alot of debt appears to be pretty cool. You get plea offers for half the amount, the bailiffs dont actually turn up, and when they do, as long as you say "No you cannot come in", they cant do jack shit. All the fear has been substantially over rated.

On a more cheery note I'm at the beginning of my "holiday" at work. I've only actually got two days worth, but thanks to ingenuity and a lucky couple of weekends I only have to work two days out of the next 10. And their short shifts too, so its only eight hours in total. So I've been keeping busy watching the original trilogy, playing Planetside and rediscovering an old Acorn flight sim, which rocks in a righteous fashion, through emulation.

I also get to stay up stupidly late and wake up stupidly late.

Finally, has anyone seen the pilot of American Dad? The new animated series from Seth MacFarlane (the creator of Family Guy)? Its interesting. Kinda Family Guy, with more political satire and not quite as funny. I'm amazed he's even doing this with the Second Coming of Family Guy in a few months time.

That makes me laugh, when it first aired it never had a fixed time or day, so the ratings were low and the network cancelled it. Then the DVD release came, and they realised it was worth alot of money. So for the first time in television history they resurrected a show based on consumer sales.

iTunes

2005-02-05T04:03:00.000Z

I resisted as long as I could. I was going to buy an album on Amazon, but once again seeing the postage prices decided to take a looksee on iTunes. Uncertain of it, because I wasnt sure I could actually *keep* the music I'd bought. Apparantly you can (burn, rip, chill). SO I stupidly went and bought three albums. One I wanted and is cheaper than Amazon, the second I wasnt looking for, but it sounded good. The third however you cant actually buy anywhere. Its that obscure, and now I've got it. I blame my misspent youth of very few CD singles with their "snippets of our album" and a certain flight sim for buying it.

In other news work has been quite hellish this week. The HR Manager is off on berevement and each day this week 4-6 staff members have been off ill. No HR Manager = no cover staff = Hell for anyone stupid enough to turn up.

On the bright I got to talk (well a few words) to Shefali. For those not in the know she does the weather on Midlands Today. Hey, I said it had been a bad week for that to be the good point.

The big bad news this week of course is the cancellation of Enterprise. I liked it, and I think the ratings-whores at Paramount should be castrated. Not happy at all by that news. Still it was on the cards this time last year, at least they mananged an extra season

What does annoy me about its cancellation is this crap. Ok so it stars Bruce Boxleitner (Sheridan from Babylon 5) and Michael Ironside (awww right). But c'mon, it sounds shit. It sounds cheesy American Sunday afternoon TV. And thats worse than what we had oop North on Sunday afternoons (Bullseye).

Good shows go out (Enterprise, Firefly, Farscape), crap cheesey aimed-at-retarded-American-youth stay on the air.

Ahhh the 60's

2005-01-30T17:30:00.000Z

I've come across a series called "NASA 50 Years of Space Exploration" most of the episodes are the public announcement film reels they sent out to the cinemas. Currently I'm on the Mercury programme, so we're talking early 1960s here. You know the really cheesy 1960s sci-fi shows? The language they use, the feel of them? It must have been something with that decade. Its quite wierd, its very forward looking, very escapist, but also extremely straight laced. The narrator sounds like he's wearing a cardigan. They all must have been high.

Not much going on this week really. Have had two days off work from a stomach bug, having to balance either taking the days off and being repremanded for my absence, or going in and being repremanded for being retarded. Going into a foodhall with a stomach bug.

At least with taking the days off you aren't going to get sacked for misconduct and killing people.

So on top of my four day weekend, I've had two sick days. Thats almost of week off work. My time has been spent experience whoring on Planetside and watching Scrubs. Thats aboot it.

I'm interested to see that the Iraqi elections have been declared a success. Strange seeing dozens of people have been killed in the run up to that. I'd hardly call that a success. Or that the candidates are hand picked American puppets. Gah, freedom and democracy my arse.

Gallery

2005-01-23T04:46:00.000Z

Yay! Its back online again. Still that alpha version, but the last stable release takes alot more configuring (I'm lazy) and doesn't look as nice.

Enjoy

Snow!

2005-01-23T03:38:00.000Z

Finally Birmingham gets some, hopefully it will settle. I've been told by all and sundry at work that Birmingham usually gets a fair amount of deep, settled uber snow. Hopefully this is it.

Woo!

Robert Kennedy

2005-01-22T03:40:00.000Z

Its rare these days that I actually get to sit down and watch TV, most of the programmes I watch happen by chance. Such an occurance happened tonight when I was randomly flipping between channels and came across a documentary on BBC 4.

My past knowledge of the life and untimely demise of Robert Kennedy was severely limited to comments made about his brothers assination, and as I've just discovered almost completely false.

I find his legacy to be quite poinent at the moment given the conclusions draw of President Bush's second term inauguration speech. In the modern day the U.S. and us sadly tagging along seem to be obsessed with promoting "liberty" to the rest of the world. Indeed the new Secretary of State Condelezza Rice has listed five countries, or as some commetators have described as "targets" who are "anti-liberty" North Korea, China and Iran being amongst them. The situation now is in a limited way comparable to the late 1960s when RFK made his belated bid on the presidency. The President at the time Lydon Johnson had spent the past three years esclating the war in Vietnam also in the name of freedom and liberty (then disgusing the fear of Communist Russia), whilst Kennedy had found his place in the political world in helping newly founded civil rights, race relations and the prospect of peace in Vietnam.

Sadly at this moment there are no charismatic figures like RFK, whom had be lived may have made an even larger impact than his brother. We had a relative unknown in John Kerry who just did not have the appeal to pull support away from the gun totin' George "Dubwya" Bush during a time of "war". I know I am banging on about the state of American politics after their general election and shortly before ours, but quite frankly if Bush decides to invade Iran and Blair remains PM I guarentee our troops will be amongst the first in. What the Americans needed most was a time of peace and a chance to rebuild their domestic lives. We also need the same, yet again in Britain we don't have any such contender to the leadership of the nation, and quite frankly unlike America with the Kennedy's we ever had. The most revered British Prime Minister of the past century was Churchill and by many contemporay accounts he was a harsh man. A quick history lesson for those who want it, when Britain had the General Strike in 1926 it was the then Chancellor Churchill who had pushed for extreme measures against the workers. Not exactly a social reformer.

The conclusion of this ill concieved ramble is really my frustration with the state of politics at the moment. The American's have elected Bush again. With his second and final term he has nothing to loose. As we saw with Clinton it is almost impossible to remove a President. We are most likely on the verge of electing Blair for a third term, as I do not belive Michael Howard has the public support to do so, nor would I even want him too.

What the world needs is another Robert Kennedy, driven into grief by the death of his brother, and using that to give his support to race equality and peace. Remeber of course during the mid 1960s no other US Senator had even dared come close to this.

"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

Messenger 7 Beta

2005-01-22T03:32:00.000Z

Ugh..

I tried this out for half an hour or so, and to be honest I hate it.

The few nagging irritations that spring to mind, some are Microsoft's fault others are not:

1) The interface isn't as nice and "round"/smooth as 6.2, it all seems a bit angular. Of course its a beta and this might change

2) The Search box at the bottom of your contact list. Search with MSN not someone like Google or MetaCrawler. Proprietary, but expected

3) Billing Information: Trying to persuade poor stupid teenagers into buying emoticons and "nudges"

4) MSN Plus: The latest beta of Plus! for MSN 7 Beta no longer has the remove advertising banner feature, and apparantly it will not return. Somehow I think the authors have been politely told by Microsoft that they'll be the next company to be "aquired" if it stays. I mean, come on, its bloody Microsoft, will loosing perhaps 25% of the MSN messenging communities advertising revenue, when most of those users are geeks and would never click on a link anyway hurt them? The MS fanboi's may say "But they run a free service, they need the revenue". Trillian is able to access all the main chat protocols and there's still a free version.

I believe I may very well stay with the 6.2 version for a long while to come.

Changes

2005-01-22T02:45:00.000Z

Well some changes have occurred. Obviously I've altered part of layout as I pick up exactly how style sheets work. I've also added all the relevenat navigation links from the old site, and also from the servers old index page.

Leads me straight onto the big change which is browsing to mjprice.net, now shows this page, rather than the "I have a server, this is what I can do with it". I believe it looks better.

Theres a problem with the gallery, upon consultation with Natalie I was told that some of the Christmas photos, most notably those including her mum and sister would cause quite an argument if they were discovered online. On attempt to delete the conflicted images the whole bloody lot fell to pieces on me. Well its only an alpha release, so I really should have expected that.

Now for the general business. Work today was really quite awful for three reasons. 1) Short staffed, 2) Inexplicably large numbers of consumers, 3) As usual no managers around. Nothing of note to go into, just a boring, long day.

I was sad to learn last week of the passing of a member of the Keele computer department, Dr. Neil White. As a non-CS student I had really little contact with him, however when faced with a stuck up secretary who refused to give me the documents I needed to pass part of my subsiduary module, he was the academic on hand who got it all sorted for me. Without those documents I would have failed, and been stuck in a difficult situation at the end of my second year. I'm sure those he taught will miss him, and I will remember him as another of the startling kind members of Keele academia who helped me get my degree.

Welcome

2005-01-21T08:30:00.000Z

Welcome to the new journal system! In the past year or so I have made three attemps to get this damn system working, but now thanks to Apache, Perl and a little Googling everything appears to be working!

My old journal is located here: http://www.mjprice.net/old_personal and will be kept as an archive of the past two years.

Once again, welcome!