Arrival

The Manics wrote in their song Australia "you fly for so long it hurts" and well it's pretty apt as after flying I really felt like death. Meeting up with Paul was surreal we missed each other at the airport and finally met at central station. Really good to see him again though even though I wasn't unto much after the flight I had a good evening though. It had been ages since I had last seen Paul so I was really suprised and grateful that he met me at the airport. It was great to see him again and to meet Lisa for the first time and I was really sorry that this was going to be such a breif meeting. Sydney was good although I was still a bit zombified, I will have a better look around when I arrive back there at the end of my tour.

Paul and Lisa

Paul and I

Paul and Lisa

Paul playing some tunes

Lisa looking lovely

Close up of Lisa

Going Tommorrow

It's 12:40 and my flight leaves tomorrow morning I cant sleep. I'm wondering whether I'm doing the right thing. I am going to miss my graduation leaving behind everyone and going on an adventure.
I'm really worried about the flight, 21 hours sounds like hell to me. I'm scared about the first night alone in Sydney 15,000 miles from home. I must be made. Either my next journal will be very happy as I enjoy my adventure goes well or depressed alone in a foreign land.

Australia here I come!

Going Away

Only 5 more weeks and I've finished uni, that's it, all done! Most of my life has been spent in education and now its coming to an end. I'm happy and a little worried at the same time. To celebrate I am off to Australia for two months I can't wait. Going to visit friends check out Aires Rock and the barrier reef, learn to dive.
All I've got too do is pass my remaining exams, oh why couldn't HCI (Human computer interface) be more interesting!

Printer woes

Due to a pressing need to print out many copies of high quality images (for my dissertation) I decided that it would be cheaper and easier to buy my own photo printer. To tell the truth I have wanted one for a while. I own a digital camera and though I don't mind looking at images on the web others keep requesting pictures I've taken as hard copy. Anyway I digress yesterday on finding a massive queue for the colour printer at uni I decided it was time to take the plunge and buy a printer.

On my way home I stopped at Micro Direct and purchased a brand new HP 5500 photo inkjet printer. Got home to find it wouldn't work, spent an hour on the phone to HP Technical support who gave me a reference and suggested I return it to the store. So I got my dad to give me a lift back to Micro Direct where I waited for nearly an hour in a queue. Only for some little tech-monkey to tell me it was a driver related problem. I thought this was a bit odd as the HP tech (who was really helpful) seemed to blame the printer mechanism. After much arguing a more senior bod tested the printer and confirm it was b0rked, half an hour later after filling in various return forms I had a replacement and was on my way home.

Once I unpacked the new printer I noticed that it had much more packaging, than the previous one. Firstly there were lots of bits of tape securing bits of the printer. The other one didn't have any of these taped pieces. It then dawned on me although the box was new the previous printer was not, I wonder how many other people it will be sold to or how many broken items are re-boxed in this manner? I don't know whether it was Micro Direct, or one of there importers but I was not happy to have wasted most of the day buying a printer. At least I managed to get everything printed off in the end, actually its quite a good printer if you get a working one!

Are Amateur Theatres Open Source?

First Published Slashdot Journal
Tonight I did something I have never done before, I volunteered to help back stage at a local theatre group YUTG (Youth Unlimited Theatre Group). While I was carrying bits of props back and forth I noticed a parallel between this group and open source. The Theatre group is run almost entirely by volunteers who give up their time and offer all sorts of skills (some professional in the case of the light and sound bod's). After seeing the level of dedication it makes me wonder why people find it so hard to understand the success and drive of the open source community.

Hacked :-(

First published on Slashdot Journal
Yesterday my server got hacked into, probably by some 14 year old armed with a hacking tool (as yet unknown). They managed to get onto my server and disable Quickshells. I feel terrible, I thought I was reasonably secure obviously not. At this stage I think a user account was compromised then a root kit installed. The hack wasnt bad (although I at this point I cannot be sure) so now I am going to have to rebuild the server pushig the quickshells launch back futher.
I was angry at first but now I am resigned that these things can happen and I must try harder to make everything secure

Browsers

First published on Slashdot Journal
I was pondering something today after reading a Slashdot artical about browsers. Microsoft licenced MSCA Mosiac and famously offered to pay royalties for every copy of interent explorer sold. They then opted to deliver Internet Explorer free and therefore never paid any royalties. Microsoft now argue IE is so embedded into Windows so deeply it cannot be removed. If this is true shouldnt they be paying royalites to Netscape for every copy of Windows with Internet Explorer sold?