Sitsofe's diary for June 2002
30 June, 2002 
Dan has managed to reach the third CD of Final Fantasy IX with over 24 hours of game time played. It has to be said that the second CD felt like it was going to go on forever...
Off home. Even though I've already taken large amounts of stuff back home, the stuff I still had nearly didn't fit in the car...
29 June, 2002
Simon Purdy (the person who will be moving into my room when I leave) has turned up. He has so much stuff I'll be amazed if it will all fit in the room...
The longest 20Mb of my life (continued)
I went back to the library to try and finish off the transferring off the files that I had started yesterday and carefully selected a different (and seemingly better behaved) computer to the one I used yesterday.
The equally slow and erratic access of yesterday reoccurred today turning a simple copy into an absolute nightmare. Initially I was continued to copy all my files into one directory on the P drive but after about 10 minutes or so I gave up on this and started moving all my files to my SUCS drive. Once again closing time came round but whoever was organising it was sloppy and after about an hour of watching the progress bar crawl across the window I finally finished.
I am still wondering what caused this terrible performance (20Mb is practically nothing and given that I was initially trying to just move files on what looked like the same logical media). I am going to speculate that my old and infrequently accessed files had been moved off to some tape based storage and it was this that made access so slow. That or the LIS have one heck of a problem...
27 June, 2002
I'm having an extremely bad night/morning — I can't sleep properly and there is
something painful in my right eye.
inet 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.255 media 10baseT mediaopt full-duplex
(I'll explain the above later after I try and get more sleep)
[...] I'm feeling a bit better after some sleep (whatever was in my eye seems to
have been digested by it and is no longer causing trouble). Basically I missed
out some optional settings that were not actually optional in the circumstances
I was using them in. The OpenBSD man page states that everything after the
static IP address (192.168.0.1) is optional so I had
inet 192.168.0.1 media 10baseT mediaopt full-duplex
Which was causing an error like:
ifconfig: bad value: media
when the box started up. This was because the subnet mask (255.255.255.0) and
the broadcast address (192.168.0.255) are not optional
when you use the media option. Only carefully reading an example finally showed
this to me.
While watching the router reboot I noticed the following in the startup
messages:
sysctl: third level name nfs in vfs.mounts.nfs is invalid
It turned out to be a harmless
pf message caused by the system trying to firewall everything as it
starts up.
Lucky break?
The landlord came over today to take a look at the shower (because it wasn't becoming hot enough for tr).
He mentioned that his brother's company were looking for people to hire (programmers were amongst that group) and gave me his card and suggested that I contact him. This really threw me because it was completely out of the blue... You would have thought I could have thought of something more inspired than "Thank you" to say...
The longest 20Mb of my life
I've been clearing up all my files on the various systems I use around the University and popped into the library to move off the files I had stored on the system there.
I noticed Rich sitting at a terminal and joined him and his sister on a terminal nearby. Frustratingly it took a while to log in and the explorer locked up before I could do anything useful. Killing it off failed to bring back my Desktop or start bar so I was forced to log off and log back in again.
After all that, I created a directory and began to copy all the files available into it. The plan was then to zip this directory and quickly copy it off to my SUCS drive. I was in for a shock though — the estimated time for the copy spiralled up to hour mark with even some small 100k files taking 15 - 20 seconds to copy. In the end the library closed their computers and kicked me out before I could even get half way through this operation. Perhaps it was the machine but copying to the same drive should never be this slow...
26 June, 2002
The landlord came over to fix the very leaky shower today. I watched the whole thing but after it was put back together its control was quite different (this was not intentional though — the broken assembly was replaced and the whole thing just put it back together). Instead rotating the dial to make it hot then rotating it more to make it cold (which was always a bit strange given the markings but you could get used to it), rotating the dial either clockwise or anti-clockwise caused (cold) water to run and made it tricky to turn the water off. After tr came in and left looking rather displeased with this I made a suggestion and the control changed to rotating the dial to make the water cold and if you turned it to the maximum then it should get hot. Unfortunately after tr had his shower he had a go at me because it didn't become hot enough (even at full tilt the water was lukewarm).
25 June, 2002
Dan's back and I've introduced him to Final Fantasy IX.
24 June, 2002
Link day
I'm not exactly sure why Hixie is complaining about presentational classes (I even found it via a Googlewhack). Of course I would say that because I myself use lots of DIVs with presentational classes (like the bar that underlines the title because CSS with HR was not reliable enough in the modern browsers).
I keep ending up at Simon Wilson's Weblog even though I'm doing general browsing. It's kinda interesting seeing him implement all the tips in 30 days to a more accessible weblog though. On a slightly related note it actually it took me a while to find the link to the page with all the tips on it because I didn't realise it was counted as a category. I kind of expected to find a link within each of the individual days...
Why Software Is So Bad (from Slashdot). The fact that there are so many articles discussing this very topic is itself a bad sign but I don't see things getting any better while demand for it's rapid delivery is still strong.
I've heard that OpenSSH was going to implement something called privilege separation but hadn't didn't really know the details. Well someone has written a good comment on What privilege separation is/does in OpenSSH on Slashdot.
I found the story part of XML and academia struck a chord with me. My own limited experience has shown me that theoreticians look down their noses on engineers within the field of Computer Science itself.
Last link — Interview with Jordan Hubbard (found from Slashdot). I'm not sure why I find articles related to kernel hacking so interesting but it's something I've always admired from afar (I've compiled various kernels but I've never hacked on them). I guess I was always disappointed that Swansea's Computer Science course touched on something so interesting so briefly (we never even got to modify any kernel code despite the large number of Opensource projects out there).
No change on the shower problem (the landlord replaced all the rubber rings inside the the mixer but that hasn't helped).
23 June, 2002
A quiet day browsing various websites.
The landlord came over to inspect the leak in the bathroom shower (leaky bathroom showers seem to follow me around) but it went from leaking to running by the time he had left.
Discussion about the next version of the SUCS BBS, Milliways 4 (the SOAP/Jabber/Client-Server edition) was taking place on Milliways 3 with amongst various people.
22 June, 2002
The washing machine saga
Woke up far too early this morning and went down and inspected the still errant washing machine. Peeking inside the top I could not work out how the lock mechanism worked so I tested whether it would fill and drain water correctly. It did but the door still would not open.
Later in the day I phoned up a few washing machine repair places and was informed that nothing could be done until Monday due to a lack of parts. However the bloke down at Direct Supplies (01792 813493) said he would pop over and at least get my washing out of the machine.
When he turned up he jigged the door open and after inspecting the lock on the door frame he went on to replace something called a pecker (which is hooked up to the door lock cable). So it turned out that my alleged overloading of the machine had comparatively little do with the fault (haha!). The whole repair came to £25 which was lower than the £45 estimates I had been given (although the repairman pointed out that if he had needed to go back to the shop then it would have cost £45).
On the way out the repair blokey caught sight of the blinkenlights on the hub which gave me the opportunity to chat about how the whole house was networked.
In the evening I went over to Justin's house and played various board games (Illuminati was good whereas Robot Wars was absolutely dire) and then started chatting about construction toys until the early hours of the morning.
21 June, 2002
Well this morning I was lying in bed listening to Radio 4 and thinking that I would get up and washed for the second half of the England vs Brazil match. Then someone said something had happened in the game which of course meant that I couldn't hang about in bed and I went upstairs to watch the match. The event that had happened was England scoring but they couldn't hold on to the lead and Brazil hit back just before and after half time. You know, for a brief period I thought England could just about win...
Today Sonic's mother arrived and he too has vanished off home leaving only myself and tr in the house (but Dan moves in next week).
Well I went in today hoping to find out my exam results (I haven't handed in my dissertation so I knew I would not receive my final result). I had heard that the final results would be coming out at 10am and then 12pm. I got there about quarter past 12 and people were still waiting but not for much longer — the results were finally given out in envelopes at half past. After queuing to see if there was one for me I was told by Sarah (the secretary) to find Oliver Kullman. After waiting outside his room for a few minutes, he turned up (a bit flustered I suppose) and told myself and one other person and I that he would be back and for us to wait. After about another quarter of an hour wait in the corridor he came back and explained that (obviously) I didn't have a result because I hadn't handed in my dissertation and the exam results would be posted to us next week.
I think there must have been at least six firsts this year (Jo, Alfie, Chris Miller, Laura, Rhyddian) and those are just the ones I know about...
In the evening Gareth phoned up and we arranged for himself, Jon Harvey and I to meet up to watch a DVD. It was only when I put the phone down that I remembered the room upstairs was an absolute tip and then spent the next two hours cleaning up the dirty plates, plastic bottles, beer caps and general junk lying around.
During all of this I was having trouble getting my washing out the washing machine because the door would not open. I speculated that it could be because there was some safety temperature gauge (although on reflection I had opened the door when it was still very hot in the past and burnt myself on the drum).
Anyhow, despite the above we ended up hiring Bandits which turned out to be fairly inoffensive movie While there's a slight twist it wasn't anything too spectacular.
(DaveB asks: "Did the bandits manage to get the door open?" — No they didn't :)).
Just before Gareth and John left I got them to lift up the washing machine so I could pull out and clean the filter in the hope that clearing it would allow the door to open. Unfortunately even after the clean filter was replaced the door still would not open...
According to this washing machine repair site the two main reasons for door not to open are:
- There is still water trapped inside.
- The door lock is broken.
Attempts to drain every last drop of water from the washing machine did not help and it was not clear whether there was actually all that much water left inside.
20 June, 2002
There seems to be some construction work going on in the garden of the house next door which has been waking me up in the mornings (I think they start work a bit before eight in the morning).
Push the tempo!
A few weeks ago I came across the video for Fatboy Slim's Ya Mama. Kinda weird but then again, aren't all the Fatboy Slim videos a bit different?
19 June, 2002
Seeing as I was giving Justin's digital camera back and I had drained the batteries in my Game Boy Advance dry I figured I'd just swap the batteries over and eke out a bit more playing time. I managed to finish the Final Battle level in Advance Wars on the first set but mere seconds after I had blown up the last unit the Game Boy turned itself off. With the second set I finished it again but made sure that I actually saved the game mid way through. The batteries died shortly after I finished watching the end credits. Each set (which the camera had said were quite healthy) lasted less than an hour.
While taking the camera over to Justin's office I bumped into Gareth and had a brief chat with him about his malfunctioning printer. It's odd for it to go wrong in under a year...
I did some hasty cleaning of the shower because the Landlord came over to take a look at the leak. I only noticed it this morning but there was mould growing out of the sand that people brought in with them from the beach party. I think I've got a photo of it somewhere...
It also looks like Dan will be moving into my house for a week. He had arranged to stay with some other friends but received a mysterious text message saying that it wouldn't be possible.
18 June, 2002
Spamassassin is working well and has correctly filtered out the day's spam. Thus far, I recommended it to all Unix mail users — it's certainly made my inbox usable again.
Tried to give Justin his camera back but while I was going over his house he came over to mine to pick it up so we missed each other...
Dan came over in a hired van in the evening and said that he had diesel to burn so he, tr and I went up to Three Cliffs and walked down to the beach and hiked back up and stopped off at a pub on the way back.
17 June, 2002
Got back to Swansea early in the morning in time for an appointment. I hope I don't have to get up as early as I did for quite some time. Has to be said the journey flew by given that I had Advance Wars (and yet another fresh set of batteries) to occupy me. I'm still battling on the last map though.
A quick note to managers of shopping centres/restaurants — someone who cannot get to a decent toilet will not spend money in your establishment. Cordoning off the upstairs toilets and so forcing people to use the disabled toilet or worse still, closing the Men's toilets and telling customers to go to other shops is a good way to encourage shoppers to go home and use the loo there.
Discovered that Omniweb on MacOS X has incomplete CSS 2 support and messes up slightly when using padding to space things out and it can't align backgrounds either. I guess you just can't win them all eh? The damage isn't too disastrous though.
Spam begone! I've installed Spamassassin on SUCS to try and filter out the spams that I receive from the admin mailing list. Thus far it seems to be working fairly well.
Caught up with Alfie down at the University and went shopping for shoes and Birthday cards with her. After convincing her (she said she was bored) to come back to my house she commented that Men in Black 2 was coming out and that she hadn't seen the first one. So I borrowed tr's two DVD version of the first one and put one of the DVDs into the computer we have hooked up to the TV.
The first DVD I tried turned out to be the one with all the extras on it. The second one didn't play properly — after putting it in everything started to stutter and break up very badly. After closing the DVD program it turned out that it was an autorun DVD that had tried to launch its own program in the background which was a bit more than Windows 2000 could handle.
After all that though I think she liked the film. She even said she thought it was better than the cartoon series...
16 June, 2002
After England stomped on Denmark yesterday, I was kind of hoping to see another British Isles team win today in the Ireland vs Spain World Cup match. Unfortunately penalties didn't turn out to be Ireland's strong point and seeing them lose that way after playing well for 120 minutes was disappointing.
Looks like the BBC is set to merge steaming media divisions. I liked those Ogg streams and while I freely admit that Windows Media Player gives better quality than Realplayer, since WMP is only available on the Windows and the Mac that more or less decides which one I prefer. However the streaming Oggs are playable on all platforms (and both XMMS and Winamp ship with an Ogg decoder by default). If only Apple's Quicktime supported it by default too...
15 June, 2002
YES! — England are through to the next round of the world cup thanks to sloppy goal keeping and a good attack. NO! — The next match is against Brazil.
12 June, 2002
I went off home again today and bought Advance Wars to keep me occupied on the train journey home. This game is so good I wished that the journey was longer.
9 June, 2002
DaveB went off home today with a cut on his face which (from what I've heard) was delivered by another house mate in a drunken stupor.
Hmm Linux Weekly News has had a redesign and I'm having trouble finding the Linux kernel section.
7 June, 2002
A small improvement to the diary — now there is a most recent entries page so I won't have to keep updating the link on the front page every month.
5 June, 2002
Something of a disastrous day. I really did think that my exam was at 2pm in the afternoon and it was only when I got out of bed at around 10am and went to check the venue that I realised it was really at 9:30am. Panic and misery began to set in but thankfully the University has contingencies for screw-ups like this.
I'm absolutely entranced by Funkstar De Luxe's Ignition rhythmic bleeping which was released as part of Sony's Frequency soundtrack.
Mozilla 1.0 has been released.
4 June, 2002
I'm back in Swansea and revising for my last exam (User Interface Design) and have added the backlog of diary entries. Since I was at home and didn't leave my computer on I hadn't any method to update them until I went back to Swansea (apologies to the mystery cable modem regular reader).
I really need to add those sanity checks to my diary scripts (I added June's entries under May)...
STAROFFICE 6 WAREZ
Crackz and keys for Staroffice 6 are readily downloadable just like they are for are for any piece of commercial software. I would like to ask those who keep visiting my site looking for StarOffice 6 warez to read the following carefully. Sun has given huge code contributions OpenOffice (which is basically StarOffice 6 without all the bells, whistles and polish) free of charge but you persist in trying to rip Sun off. Download and try OpenOffice before you continue your search for pirate copy of StarOffice. When someone provides both commercial and free versions of their software, ripping off the commercial version makes you pretty low. Get a working conscience — use OpenOffice for free or pay up for StarOffice 6.
3 June, 2002
Popped over to Dave Little's house and learned that while I was away he had picked a Playstation 2 (and not an Xbox or Gamecube) along with various great games like Devil May Cry (I love this game!), Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X, Grand Theft Auto 3... I think I went over at 5:30pm and didn't get back home until 10:30pm.
I watched the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations on TV and I don't think I've ever seen such a staggeringly large number of fireworks (even on Guy Fawkes night).
2 June, 2002
I'm going back home because my Mum has locked herself out of the house.
1 June, 2002
Well the Algebraic Specification exam was easy but I did horrendously poorly in it. I'll be lucky to pass that one.
After the exam I decided to drown my woes by testing the diary design in the Mac lab. Despite the pages looking fine in Windows and Linux Opera/Mozilla and IE 5.5SP2 Windows, despite the fact that the CSS and the HTML validated in the W3C validator, despite the fact that IE 5 Mac is supposed to be more standards compliant than IE5/6 Windows, the layout messed up to the point of unreadability.
It took me a little while work out a fix this but in addition to working in Mac IE 5, now my pages should be touch smaller and be displayed fractionally faster than before.
Now I've added this, all those people who have been trying to access the URL for the June 2002 diary will be happy.