Protons, Neutrons, Electrons!

Now look

2006-12-07T20:57:00.000Z

I know that I haven't posted since August. Unfortunately my life atm does not leave me the inspiration to maintain this blog. In future I hope to get back into it.

Mmmafrica

2006-08-28T00:26:00.001+01:00

What can I say?
The boy is lame.
I'll endevour to stay on top this better in the future.

MmmmEPIS

2006-07-03T22:26:00.000+01:00

Indeed

Something different

2006-06-30T10:50:00.000+01:00

I fancied a change. 108 emerged programs later and here is GNOME. Nice.

Bloom's Taxonomy

2006-06-28T20:45:00.000+01:00

These six stages for cognitive taxonomy are clearly seen in the assessment of pupil's work at school. SCHOOL CRITERIA for assessment clearly follow a similar system for deciding the grade to be awarded for a piece of work. The following comes from something I found on a train: BLAH BLAH BLAH, YADA YADA YADA.

For Helios

2006-06-28T19:49:00.000+01:00

Today's 'shot

2006-06-18T13:03:00.000+01:00

Today's screenshot. (Another KDE one I'm afraid)
In case you want to know, this is actually Gentoo. I'll write the Gentoo story soon, but can't be arsed right now.

Blah

2006-06-10T22:27:00.000+01:00

I've had enough of all that. Simplicity is the way to go. Here's XFCE-4.3.9 with no panel, I've had enough of panels. This is nice, simple, plain. I'm using a QNX GTK theme, which, with that window decoration, creates a nice retro effect.

Well, well, well...

2006-06-08T14:46:00.000+01:00

It has come to my attention that I haven't blogged for a while.
I also noticed that I haven't put any screenshots for a while.
Last night I installed a stripped-down version of KDE 3.3, which is working nicely. KDE 3.3 shared all the functionality of more recent versions, but without a lot of the newer gui effects to chew up my memory. I only installed kdelibs and kdebase at first, but since then I've also installed kdenetwork, so that I can use kopete.

Starbucks

2006-05-26T09:59:00.000+01:00

Mmm, coffee...

Emo shots

2006-05-22T23:14:00.000+01:00

Went to the pub with Jamie, Steve and Zoe last night like we usually do on a Sunday.
We had my camera and took some "Emo shots". An Emo shot requires that the subject looks depressed, the photo is taken from above the subject and they're looking in another direction.
I chose to do them in black + white just to make it more effective.
Unfortunately I look like a bit of a chav in these pics because of my hat...

Still at it...

2006-05-21T12:13:00.000+01:00

I went to bed at approximately 1pm.
I carried on sorting through new music files 90 minutes ago, I have 23 left to go...

Music Collection

2006-05-20T23:46:00.000+01:00

I think I've downloaded more music today than I have in the last month!
I was on a mission to update my DJ Rankin songs and discovered DJs Cammy, Pulse and Zitkus in the process. My Shared folder (which I empty as I listen to stuff and sort it into my music collection) has got 53 new files in it. For the last three hours I've been moving files out of that folder and every time I do a count there are still 53 files to sort through... I could be up all night doing this unless I stop downloading new songs...

First impressions

2006-05-19T01:18:00.000+01:00

are very good. Quick and easy install. Very fast boot up sequence (compared to SuSE, Fedora + Ubuntu) XFCE 4.3 (which I didn't know was out) is absolutely lush, especially the new file manager.
CLI is a la Slackware, which is great. I'm about to go install graphics card drivers...

Zenwalk

2006-05-19T00:16:00.000+01:00

As you may be able to tell by now, I have a bit of an obsession with trying to find the perfect Linux distribution for me. I used Slackware for over a year so I like the hands on approach, but I'm also quite fond of some things being done for me. In particular, by this, I mean that I don't like messing around installing hundreds of dependencies by hand when compiling software. I briefly touched on the source-based distro around xmas when I was using Sourcemage, which was nice, but I couldn't get absolutely everything configured right.
Recently I've been messing with RPM-based distros, which are nice, and easy to use, but I feel that sometimes in the process of simplifying their use that they take awat command-line tools, which is annoying.
I would go back tu using Slackware, but they insist on giving you an old 2.4 kernel, which is frankly nasty. Old kernels don't like my USB Hard disk, so I need at least a 2.6.4.
I am currently downloading Zenwalk Linux, which is based on Slackware. I'm hoping that I'll have the functionality I want, but with the easy of plug-n-play usb device detection that they boast about.
I'll let you know how I get on. Maybe this one is it...

La la la...

2006-05-17T23:14:00.000+01:00

You guessed it...

Stumbled upon...

2006-05-17T12:05:00.000+01:00

...this website, which told me:

Your past life diagnosis: I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.
You were born somewhere in the territory of modern USA South-West around the year 1775.
Your profession was that of a leader, major or captain.Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
Timid, constrained, quiet person. You had creative talents, which waited until this life to be liberated. Sometimes your environment considered you strange.The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
Your main task is to make the world more beautiful. Physical and spiritual deserts are just waiting for your touch. Keep smiling!

A Joke

2006-05-05T12:52:00.000+01:00

For some reason this joke has been stuck in my head ever since I first recieved it a long while ago. I just recieved it again (you know how junk email gets about) so I've posted it here for y'all to read.

THE FROG AT THE BANK

A frog goes into a bank and approaches the teller. He can see from her
nameplate that her name is Patricia Whack.
"Miss Whack, I'd like to get a $30,000 loan to take a holiday."
Patty looks at the frog in disbelief and asks his name. The frog says
his name is Kermit Jagger, his dad is Mick Jagger, and that it's okay,
he knows the bank manager.
Patty explains that he will need to secure the loan with some
collateral.
The frog says, "Sure. I have this," and produces a tiny porcelain
elephant, about an inch tall, bright pink and perfectly formed. Very
confused, Patty explains that she'll have to consult with the bank
manager and disappears into a back office.
She finds the manager and says, "There's a frog called Kermit Jagger
out there who claims to know you and wants to borrow $30,000, and he
wants to use this as collateral."
She holds up the tiny pink elephant. "I mean, what in the world is
this?"

The bank manager looks back at her and says...
"It's a knickknack, Patty Whack. Give the frog a loan. His old man's a
Rolling Stone."

Physical activity

2006-05-01T18:29:00.000+01:00

So I haven't been particularly physically active lately.
I say lately, what I mean is "for about 5 years".
Today I went out for a bike ride with my sister. After spending an hour fixing up my bike my sister rode it and I had to use my old Raleigh Burner (classic). Now, my arse hurts; my arms hurt; my legs hurt; and I'm very tired. It's a shame really. I used to ride my bike a lot and wouldn't worry about riding 8.5 miles to my friend's house, riding about all day then riding back home again at the end of the day. When I was 15 I did this most days for about a month!
I really need to get fit... :(

This is my watch.

2006-04-30T14:49:00.000+01:00

It is on my arm.
It cost me £1.

It didn't last long...

2006-04-30T14:30:00.000+01:00

Actually, by the end of the day I'd had enough of GNOME. Here's a shotty of my fluxbox setup.

Screenshot 2 of 2

2006-04-26T13:46:00.000+01:00

This is my screenshot from today. Yes, I am using GNOME. I just fancied a change.
The only problem I have is that Metacity still wont allow windows to be moved off the top of the screen. This is pathetic! What I don't understand is that at some point someone must have decided to remove this function, because the problem doesn't exist in any other window manager (except for those like YeahWM, EvilWM and Rat Poison, where you don't use the mouse to move windows). It's just rediculous.
Something I do like is the little emblems you can add to folders. You can see that I've done this with my storage drive. Nice.

Screenshot 1 of 2

2006-04-26T13:43:00.000+01:00

I found this old screenshot from when I first started using OpenSUSE so I thought I'd chuck it up here...

A nice photo

2006-04-25T12:09:00.000+01:00

I have a habit of taking these black and white photos and thinking that they're really artistic... maybe they are... I don't know; I just like the realism of it.

St George's day

2006-04-25T12:06:00.000+01:00

Did some busking in Wells Market Place on Sunday for St. George's day.We sold quite a few CD's, which was good. The old dears loved it.

Like this...

2006-04-17T23:31:00.000+01:00

I am 48% Goth.

Goth ny night, normal by day. Deep in my heart I know I am evil, but not on the company's time. I do need to eat.

Take the
Goth Test
@ FualiDotCom

That's right

2006-04-17T23:22:00.000+01:00

I am 13% Idiot.

I am not annoying at all. In fact most people come to me for advice. Of course they annoy the hell out of me. But what can I do? I am smarter than most people.

Take the
Idiot Test
@ FualiDotCom

About time...

2006-04-16T19:39:00.000+01:00

...that I put another of these on, methinks.

Rune Stones

2006-04-01T14:44:00.000+01:00

I gave my rune stones an overhaul this week. I think they're looking pretty nice, and definately more personal than they were before.

A mini adventure

2006-03-28T20:46:00.000+01:00

Well, I did it again... mess up my computer that is.
I was getting fed up with my Kernel, which was a 2.4.31 linux kernel, not hotplugging my usb harddrive properly so I compiled a 2.6.15 kernel instead. Something wasn't right with the new kernel but because I'm a dumbass I hadn't made a backup of my old one (thinking that it's still on the Slackware install disc anyway...). Well I tried to fix it using Knoppix and failed. I felt a bit better when I discovered that Steve couldn't convice it to work either.
So I set about finding something new to try, because if I reinstalled Slackware I'd only have to go through a ton of shit trying to sort out a new kernel again. Problem is... I only have one CD drive in my computer so I couldn't use Knoppix to write a new boot disc so I decided to try SUSE 10.0 OSS, which was on the cover of a magazine a few months back. So far I'm impressed. I didn't think I'd like it actually but it seems to be fast enough; I just tried glxgears and got 2045fps, which isn't too bad considering I'm in KDE and I've got music playing and 2 torrents incoming and I'm chatting on Kopete. I'll see if I can get more out of it later. On Slackware I used to average 2600fps, so it's not a massive difference. Screenshots to follow, obviously.. but I haven't changed anything yet really and a standard OpenSUSE screenshot can be found on their website.

New toy...

2006-03-27T23:40:00.000+01:00

I bought a flugel horn on Friday. I was in Bristol with my mum and I popped into Trevor Jones Brass and Woodwind shop just to see if they had any sencond hand flugel horns. There was one there that I liked so much that I bought it! It is an Olds, which is a good solid make and it is really free blowing.

Random?

2006-03-25T16:37:00.000Z

Something I've contemplated occasionally is the human ability to be random, or lack of it. I usually that if someone attempts to act in a random way then they'd simply do something that the people around them would not see as normal behaviour. This, however, is not random; it is just un-usual. I have found that in an attempt to be surreal that I have only produced some kind of story or situation that simply doesn't make sense rather than something that is possible and truely bizarre.
I have chosen to mention this now because I was testing a calcultor program on my computer and in an attempt to pick random numbers I chose numbers that were related to each other.
I typed the following:
(312-133)*(179/27)
When I typed it I was completely unaware that 312-133 is infact 179, and that 179 is a multiple of 27. I found this result surprising and worth making a note of.

Guess what...

2006-03-23T14:39:00.000Z

...here's an update:

Which Nigerian spammer are You?

2006-03-22T23:32:00.000Z

Which Nigerian spammer are You?

Which Website are You?

2006-03-22T23:28:00.000Z

Which Website are You?

Interview

2006-03-22T23:18:00.000Z

I had an interview for the Graduate Teaching Programme yesterday. It went well and I've be short-listed. I've got another interview next Thursday. Safe.

Kool Desktop Environment

2006-03-10T12:45:00.000Z

I don't know if you can tell (lol) but I've been quite into KDE lately.
I didn't used to be this way. For ages I was a gnome user but used to switch between that and minimalistic window managers like IceWM and Fluxbox. I was always in search of the perfect window manager and spent hours and hours configuring and tweaking desktop menus and playing with file managers but was never particularly satisfied. I didn't like the idea of KDE with all it's integrated programs and huge Control Center and I was also put off thinking that it would be very RAM consuming. I spent some time over the last year playing with various different distros, e.g. Fedora Core, Ubuntu, Debian, SourceMage and even tried FreeBSD for a week, and during this time I've always been able to turn to KDE to get things running the way I wanted. Without sifting through setup documention and configuration scripts it's been the easiest way to get everything running quickly and smoothly. Another important factor that really swayed me in the end was Konqueror. I think it's an excellent app to use for file management, FTP, and web browsing all in one! (I do also use Firefox a lot though) I figured that if I'm going to be using Konqueror and loading all of the stuff that it needs in the background then I may as well use KDE.
Since retreating back to the trusty distribution of Slackware I've been using KDE solidly and having gotten used to hunting down kwin themes and gui styles I'm really pleased with all of the crazy stuff you can do, and how easy it is to make look really nice.
Recently I found a link on wikipedia to the original forum post of the guy who thought up KDE (in those days he called it the 'Kool Desktop Environment'). Take a look.

Korilla!

2006-03-09T20:31:00.000Z

I found some icons on KDE-look.org that are a copy of the gnome icon theme "Gorilla" and a nice couple backdrops, here's how it all looks.

KDE as Gnome

2006-03-07T01:24:00.000Z

I felt like making KDE look a bit GTK-ish so armed with the QtCurve theme and Klearbox kwin theme I've created this.
The second hdd (sda1) is my new 160Gb external hard drive, nice!

Kids

2006-03-06T20:38:00.000Z

I was at school today, (I do work experience in a school as I'm aiming to do a Graduate Teaching course next year) and one of the children said that Miles Davis's So What "lacks passion" (in those exact words) and I was quite shocked by it. I'm quite used to comments like "I don't like it because it's old" or simply "It's crap", etc, but this opinion really put a damper on my day for some reason and I'm not sure why.
I don't particularly care if people don't want to listen to and appreciate the same music as me, but for some for some reason this choice of words really disturbed me.
I guess I'm just a music geek.

Fame! I want to live forever...

2006-03-05T23:34:00.000Z

Today I had a rehearsal for a show I'm playing in in a couple of weeks. It was really fun. I was a bit worried that my playing wouldn't be up to standard, but I was fine. I really enjoyed it and it's made me feel really good. I love playing music, it's what I'm good at.
Safe.

Visionary huh?

2006-03-01T00:45:00.000Z

You Are a Visionary Soul

You are a curious person, always in a state of awareness.
Connected to all things spiritual, you are very connected to your soul.
You are wise and bright: able to reason and be reasonable.
Occasionally, you get quite depressed and have dark feelings.

You have great vision and can be very insightful.
In fact, you are often profound in a way that surprises yourself.
Visionary souls like you can be the best type of friend.
You are intuitive, understanding, sympathetic, and a good healer.

Souls you are most compatible with: Old Soul and Peacemaker Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Black and White

2006-03-01T00:22:00.000Z

Just found this old screenshot on my website, I think it's quite a good effect. I had it set up so that when you moved the mouse over the icons they turned colour. Nice.

Soundtrack to your life

2006-02-26T11:30:00.000Z

I've always contemplated the idea of having a soundtrack to your life. If my life was a film, what music would I chose? There are very specific albums that relate to different times in my life, like with anyone I guess. I suppose really that it's just albums that I own. I think the reason that I see it as more than that is because I've never really been much of one for buying music, which is stupid considering that I'm a musician. Anyway, This is bound to be an incomplete list, but here are the albums that all, for one reason or another, are in my mind as being important albums to me.

Early life:
Queen - Greatest Hits (I & II)
Ace of Base - Happy Nation (re-occuring)

Mid teens:
The Kinks - The best of

End of Senior school:
Radiohead - OK Computer (re-occuring)
The Prodigy - Fat of the land (re-occuring)

Whilst doing A-levels:
B*Witched - B*Witched
Vengaboys - The Party Album
NIN - The downward spiral

My year out:
This is when I got my computer, and hence started gitting into mp3s. So there's a lot of unrecorded music listening here... This is what makes this list inaccurate, but at the same time emphasises the important of the albums involved.

Kittie - Spit (important)
The Offspring - Americana (important)
Train - Drops of Jupiter
HIM - Razorblade romance

First year of college:
The Offspring - Conspiracy of One
Green Day - Dookie (important)

Second year:
Ash - Intergalactic super 7s

Third year:
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - By the way

Forth year:
Dune - Dune/Expedicion
The Cat Empire - Hello

Since the summer:
Korn - Issues
Pendulum - Slam
The Cat Empire - Two Shoes

Let me know if there are things I've forgotten

Enough is enough

2006-02-25T22:37:00.000Z

After some contemplation I have given up on FreeBSD. I've had problems all week with minor and major things but the final straw came when my computer was repeatedly disconnecting itself from the internet and then not allowing me to connect with my modem in order to get back on. After watching Steve (who has considerably more experience than me) trying to solve a similar problem on his computer for an hour and giving up I figured that I wasn't likely to get past this one.
I've gone back to using Slackware Linux because it's what I'm used to.

Interests

2006-02-23T15:51:00.000Z

just in case anyone reading this is wondering, this blog isn't intended to be purely about my computer, it's just that my FreeBSD experience is preventing me from finding anything else to write about. I will write about other things and post photos etc on here at some point in the future.

The saga continues...

2006-02-23T15:48:00.000Z

Well so far I haven't done a Windows job and wiped my hard drive.
Following the advice of someone on forums.bsdnexus.com I have used a different command (portinstall) to start reinstalling glib and gtk. There appear to be a lot of dependencies etc for glib and it's recompiling approximately 100 packages ranging from pango to kde (all of kde...)
Needless to say this is taking some time...

Sure I've done this one before...

2006-02-21T14:52:00.000Z

Ok, so, today I've been enjoying the FreeBSD Ports system. It's a very good package-management style system whereby you have a series of Makefiles on your system (/usr/ports) and you simply type "make build" and "make install" and it automatically downloads and compiles your selected program and it's dependencies. Nice.
Things however have gone a bit tits up and I think I've managed to break things a bit. The one thing I know from past experience with Linux not to go near is glibc. Now I personally didn't touch it, but now loads of programs are complaining that they can't find it and I really don't know how to solve that. I'll look about briefly but I think essentially I'm looking at a full re-install. Shame...

FreeBSD

2006-02-20T20:10:00.000Z

Two days ago I installed FreeBSD 6.0 on my computer. This is the second tim I've done it, but the first time I couldn't give it a decent chance because I was on dial-up and had no way to get a driver for my modem.
I found the installation process logical and quite painless because of the countless Linux installs I've done in the past. It took me a while to get the xorg.conf file configured correctly then just as long again once I installed the NVIDIA driver for my video card.
My next task is to activate my sound card and then I'm going to try to tweak my init settings file (which I believe is something like /etc/defaults/rc.conf, which is a difference system to what I'm used to).
I'm not going to post a screenshot for now because I'm using KDE which looks the same on FreeBSD as it does on Slackware...

Nexuiz v1.5

2006-02-17T01:35:00.000Z

Nexuiz Version 1.5 came out 2 days ago. It's vastly improved on the older versions and it's one of the nicest looking games I've ever played. Go take a look.
Link

Website Updated

2006-02-17T01:26:00.000Z

I just updated my homepage, so go have a look. :)

Start as you mean to go on

2006-02-17T01:06:00.000Z

Well this is my new blog. I thought I'd start off in my typical fashion with a screenshot. I prepared my computer especially for this occasion by installing yeahwm and rox-filer so that I could make it a bit unique.