Projects

Martin and I are on the verge of buying a pallet of 6 Dell Poweredge servers, watch this space for more info, will know by tomorrow afternoon if we’re getting them or not!

‘llo again, what have i been up to this week i hear you ask? (well no, because none of you are that sad to find my life all that interesting!) I tried to buy a dell 20″ widescreen the other day but no, aria’s website was wrong and they didn’t have any, so the novelty quickly wore off. I did buy a few days later another 1703FP matching 17″ ultrasharp so i have two of those now, and eventually will get the widescreen to go in the middle.

Went to view the nice flat in liverpool on saturday – it’s really really nice, in a lovely area surrounded by trees and all sorts, i’m in the process of sorting out the paperwork for it now, might be able to get in in as little as two weeks then i can get moving in.

I spent most of the weekend helping Holly move house to Didsbury, that’s a nice area too. Managed to squeeze in a BBQ on sunday afternoon which rounded the weekend off nicely before launching back into lectures today. Have two pretty major assignments due in this week – Digital Audio and Audio Production so that will be keeping me busy although i havn’t been 100% today, not sure why, i did get into town to cash my Tax Rebate Cheque and extend my overdraft. I thought by going to the big barclays would mean i could get everything sorted – but even they didn’t have the right type of senior person to allow it up to the maximum i wanted so its limited somewhat at the moment.

Still have bluetooth to fit into the car, no progress on the monitoring controller yet either and no fun WAN suff either, the rallying has also quietened down, just that time of year i guess – exams, coursework and whatnot.

I did get a letter from Bramall site manager requesting to see me RE the whole CCTV nonsense, i simply sent a lengthy letter back – if i am forced to see her at this time i will be claiming PMC against the university and submitting a formal complaint as it will interfere with my degree. The letter i sent is as follows (i have no problems with publishing my letters)

Dear [REMOVED],

Thank you for taking the time to write to me, I am sure you appreciate that this time of year is extremely busy for any student and that it is extremely difficult for me to take time out of my busy schedule of exams, lectures, coursework and revision to arrange a meeting.

Although there was a clear warning stating to any entrants to the room that CCTV was in operation, I did not state that I may publish the images; therefore as soon as I was alerted to this genuine lapse in judgement I removed the images from the public domain.

I accept that I should not have published the images but that I did remove them as soon as I was notified of this error.

A time lapse of 7 hours and 23 minutes occurred on the 29^th March between being notified via e-mail (without a read receipt so there was no guarantee that I would have received the e-mail) to removal of the images. This time was due to working in a 9-5 job and being unable to gain access to a computer to rectify this error.

The reasoning behind the lengths I went to in order to ensure my room was secure is down to the fact I use several thousands of pounds worth of audio electronics and computing equipment in order for me to study my course effectively. This coupled with the fact that the letter I received stating there would be people entering room advised I should clear floors and desks of items which could be damaged forced me to make sure if anything happened I could prove who was responsible. There was absolutely no malicious intent behind my actions, purely to protect my personal property and ensure that if accusations of damage or theft were made they could be substantiated.

As a result, I was forced to make an additional trip back to this area, at my own financial cost, in order to check the room. Although the room was untouched, the door had not been locked properly, which would have allowed anyone to easily get into the room should they have wanted to. It is also highly likely that this invalidates the block halls insurance cover.

As this occurred over 3 weeks ago I do believe that was more than enough time for any concerns held by the people involved to be brought up. I believe the matter now to be closed and will not discuss it any further. As I have already said, publishing of the imagery without having the right to was a genuine error.

Furthermore, due to my dissatisfaction with the accommodation service this year (there were no problems at all last year on this site, I was very happy with the service which is why I chose to stay here again, I do not understand what has caused this change), I will be moving out at my earliest convenience.

Yours Sincerely
David Lewthwaite

So there we go, i think thats resonable, i’ve had no response in 7 days so i will assume the matter to be closed. I’ll be sure to update should anything further occur but for now ttfn!

….the downward spiral of non-blogging. This is happening for a number of reasons – mostly becuase i’m not doing anything interesting, i don’t have the time. I’ve spent the last few days trudging through coursework and the next 3 weeks doing more coursework and exams!

I might be buying a new PC, somthing based around a Pentium D Dual Core 3GHz, either that or a 20″ DELL widescreen plus another identical 17″ DELL to match the one i have. We’ll have to see as money will be a struggle until i start getting paid from my placement.

Big shoutout to those of you reading this from Radica Broadcast and Ledwood Technology (i know you’re reading!) I do have DNS resolving webstats and all that…. Feel free to leave comments on this stream of increasingly boring posts about how crap the world is!

I was supposed to view a flat in liverpool on saturday but my estate agent cancelled on me because they couldnt get hold of the keys! They’re really not making an effort to get anywhere letted to me. Spent the weekend chilling out after a nightmare 3 days getting the Electroacoustics groupwork done, did manage to see Fracture on friday with Anthony Hopkins, was OK but i was expecting it to be more of a horror like most of his other films. Ended up at IKEA both saturday and sunday, i have a nice uplighter and a bag i can use for uni notes/books etc now though.

Well thats it really, got tons of exams coming up, loads of coursework and then some time off (which may be spent working back at Fellside on an IT job) before starting my placement at Ledwood in July, looking forward to it now, will be good to get away (living on my own will be good) and where im looking to live is just around the corner from Martin so we can still get off to the pub and whatnot which will be good.

See you all very soon im sure.

It’s been a manic few days being back here at uni – it’s been great catching up with people…and spending the all important student loan!

I only bought a new 80gig HDD and a bluetooth dongle so thats not too bad, Matt bought himself an all new PC, i’m going to too soon – dual core P4 3Ghz – thats fairly beasty really, should be a decent machine.

I tried out LinuxMCE after Matts failure with it – it needs a lot of work before it’s properly useable, given a year or two i think it’ll be an excellent piece of software – it does a lot of things including full home automation integration.

Will be viewing a flat on saturday which if i like im just going to take because its one less hassle then, a nice trip out to the Wirral – it’s not too far from Martin’s so when he’s home for the summer will be able to pop round.

Work is steadily catching up now – i have two big assignments to do myself aswell as two big group projects so that will be keeping me busy the next few weeks – on top of all that there is exams! Nevermind im sure it’ll all be ok, but roll on mid-may when they all finish and i can enjoy 6 weeks off of doing absolutely nothing! (well….moving house, but still, pretty much nothing).

Isn’t much else to say really but i’ll keep you all posted if there is. TTFN

Thought i’d best blog, as i havn’t in a while. Not all that much has been happening, i’m back at uni and sorted out more stuff to go in the ‘big free box’ – i dont want any of it but i would like it to be used by someone rather than be thrown away (so feel free to come and have a ratch through it).

I’ve set up the client end of the OpenVPN link to home, now off hamachi, it seems ok and at least doesnt rely on Hamachi servers for resilience, so all being well this will be a permant solution – had a few problems with routing but thats because the server is pushing routes for the local network and all the firewall rules were wrong! No matter, all sorted now and its working fine.

I’ve given my flat a bit of a clean (more antibacterial cleaning products) as it was a complete tip when i got back – my flatmate had left stuff everywhere. Kitchen and bathroom floors want bleached but other than that, it’s fairly tidy.

It would also appear that it’s all kicked off RE the SU, i went onto the forum this morning (not signed in as i refuse to – i’m having nothing to do with the SU anymore) and there is a while host of deleted threads – including my little tiff with accomodation services, it would appear one of the users was verbally abusive to the accomodation staff and was arrested because of it (a tad extreme i thought – what happened to a nice sit down and warning – most people are fairly reasonable, but i spose its this sue-everyone culture we live in thats come across from America), but isn’t the only thing to have happened in what is fast becoming a long line of dispute between the students and accomodation services – i think it’s only a matter of time before the students break away and are running their own ‘union’ (isn’t that the basic premise of the actual SU anyway?) but who will obviously have no responsibility to the university.

It all just seems very silly, fair enough, verbal abuse (or any form of abuse) isn’t really acceptable, but it’s a little petty to get the police involved when its a bit of online name calling and not face to face, i mean to say, i probably had worse at school as a kid through bullying! Hence the old adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words shall never hurt me”

I don’t know, i’m just staying out of it and i’m never going to go back into halls at this university again, it’s just one thing after another it’s rediculous – and it’s obviously not just me that it’s personal with!

As a side note, they attempted today (Saturday) to take a direct debit accomodation payment (which i expressly did not permit them to do under any circumstances) two days before loan day (though the loan has gone onto the account already, but dated monday) so obviously the payment bounced! What a joke, they paymen will go in, via debit card, on Monday when the payment clears, although my university SIS account says that i don’t owe them any money at all so i’m tempted just to leave it until they say they want it. Not my problem if they say my account is correctly balanced, it leaves me ?600 up.

Re-arranged the car pc in the car – its now velcro’d to the back of the rear seats and seems fairly stable, although the PSU for the USB hub is making lots of noise, but with my 10% off CPC until the end of April i’ll be getting some 3A regulators which means i can take straight off ~12v that is the car which means it should be nice and quiet, same for the wireless AP too.

Somthing really weird happened last night when i got back from Asda, i parked the car, put the windows up, took the keys from the ignition and got out the car – it’s at this point i realised the engine was still running – when i had the keys in my hands! Somthing weird was going on – i put the keys back in and tried to run the starter again (makes that nasty noise when you do) and turned the key back – engine stopped this time. It’s worrying to say the least, i hope it doesn’t happen again!

Thats all for now, as new things happen (which im sure they will given that im back at uni) i’ll get them posted up. TTFN folks!

Not blogged in a few days so i thought it would be best to catch up, but then again, not much has happened – im still at work, still got no money and still househunting!

I did get word from one of the estate agents today, although not useful, im waiting to hear back on a flat that i did like. Going back to uni soon (hurrah) its just too boring up here i’ll be glad to get back.

Food for thought that came up today however was the Mongol Rally – London to Mongolia in a car. Ok, that doesnt sound so bad…

The Rules:

1L Engine Size
Its ALL driven (around 10,000 Miles)
No Support
Costs up to around ?3,000 per team (but this can be raised through sponsorship as it is for charity really)

It still sounds like a fun thing to do, although i would prefer if it were two teams of 3, that way if one breaks down the other can help out. So if you want to volunteer to be on our team drop us a line!

For more info on the mongol rally, check out, http://mongolrally.instituteofadventureresearch.com/ And my brand new sub-site http://mongol-rally.lewty.org.uk

I’ll be amazed if we make it to the starting point, nevermind the finishing post!

Oh and i’ve just remember why i selected ‘WAN Routing’ as a category for this post – i have packed up my laptop in prep for going home and am now using the thin client again, however, it’s not logged onto the mailserver as before – but my desktop at uni – down my lovely VPN tunnel and it still manages to be quicker than the mailserver! I really do need a new server – looking at a Pentium D 2.8GHz Dual Core or so with at least a gig of ram, just have to get the money together for it now!

I fixed the car PC!

One of the wires for the power switch had disconnected itself from the mainboard of the laptop – requiring a full strip down to re-solder it on, but it’s on now and working fine, also on re-assembly added the wifi access point back in – its no longer crashing which is quite odd, though i suspect it was a winamp issue trying to check for updates or somthing. Not that it matters, its all working fine now, took it for a spin and could change tracks using my phone on wifi!!!

I went back to manc yesterday to pick up a TFT for home and check on my room – estates had closed my window (turning the room into an oven) and not locked the door properly, other than that everything seemed to be ok, but those on their own are reason for complaint but i won’t bother unless it all kicks off, in which case i have plenty of ammunition to get them. Met Matt, Martin and Paula for lunch – matt has a new stupidly powerful wifi card which can pick up anything anywhere. Fairly impressive but i’ve yet to see it in action.

Coming back to manc properly on fri, will be good to get back and get my new place sorted out.

I’ve just installed AW stats and the results were surprising to say the least – i have racked up over 1.2 million hits this year. If thats not impressive for a personal site, i don’t know what is!

Hopefully the server can cope with any extra demand now, with the new RAM but we’ll see.

Well, i’ve just upgraded the webserver, theres an extra 256Mb of RAM in there now, and considering there was only 64meg in thats quite a significant upgrade! The site seems much quicker, now that its not thrashing the HDD every time someone visits a page it should be less stress on the system too.

Car PC has gone tits up – the power switch is broke which means stripping the machine back down and re-soldering the connection, and the wifi point crashes the laptop every time its plugged in – i have no idea why. I think im going to get a USB dongly type WIFI and Bluetooth cards which should simplify things a bit, plus having an external soundcard in the glovebox might reduce the noise on the signal a bit.

Have to wait and see, the lack of blogs is because i’ve been at work, but i’ll try and keep posting on. TTFN