Life

One large mug, two Yorkshire tea bags, steeped in freshly boiled water for 2 minutes, squeeze and remove the bags, generous splash of milk. The weather has finally felt like it’s changing from the sweltering summer we’ve had, and the nights are closing in. Rain against the window, the rumble of thunder, the room lit by lamps. Having and enjoying a nice cup of tea feels comfy. It’s a hot drink but it doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable. The bitterness of the tea hangs on my tongue. The thick mouthfeel of each gulp is satisfying. I’ve been drinking coffee throughout the mornings as always, but now being able to enjoy a nice cup of tea in the evening lets me know the autumn is coming.

My default for making coffee for two is a cafetière. French press if you insist. It requires almost no thought, produces a consistent result, and has no moving parts to break. When I’ve got a bit more time and want a cleaner cup for two or more, I’ll reach for a Bodum pour-over instead. When it’s just me, I’ve been using a Clever Dripper more lately (it suits the days where I want slightly more control without committing to the full V60 ritual). The Hario V60 was my main single-cup pour-over for a long time before that.

Hyde from lazybea.rs runs a blog interview series called Over/Under, where bloggers rate a mix of topics as overrated or underrated, then pass a question along to the next person. I’m issue 61.

If you were familiar with Dingoonity, you might have noticed by now that I’ve made the decision to shut down the website.

The amount of personal data that we give away these days is insane. It’s true of a huge number of online services that “free isn’t free”, and that your personal data is the virtual currency by which you’re able to use so many great services for “free”.

Recently I was contacted to provide a short quote about why CSS preprocessors are awesome. This wasn’t a hard task as I spend a lot of time evangelising the use of preprocessors, specifically Sass.

These are based on my experience of organising SusHack in 2013 and 2014. For more information about SusHack, check out https://sushack.github.io

This past weekend was the second SusHack. Following on from the success of the first SusHack there was some demand for a second one, so a little later than planned (I had promised an April SusHack!), on the 28th of June SusHack #2 happened.

This is a Q/A article in the style of “The Setup”.

This past weekend I held my first hack day. This is a recollection of why/how SusHack came to be, and how the day went.

I ordered a nice Wills & Kate royal engagement commemorative mug by Chris Shipton (www.chrisshipton.com) from Zazzle. It arrived today. The mug quality is really nice. Some unpacking shots will follow, just to keep Chris happy - I think I’m the first person to have one of these!

Today my Pacman Moleskine arrived - I’m pretty excited, but I won’t be using it until I fill my regular lined Moleskine. I’ve been learning Objective-C along with @tmayr, so far covering just basic things such as processing user input and displaying output, using Cocoa/Interface Builder. Most recently we’ve been looking at filesystem things. I’ll probably post some of the haphazard things I’ve put together here eventually. Some pictures of the Pacman Moleskine… Unable to recover the image :(

A typical weekday for me: 7:30 wake up 7:31 check email 7:32 shower, eat, leave the house 8:30 arrive at work 12:30 lunch 1:30 work some more 5:00 leave work 6:00 get home, eat 7:00 - 12:16 start up minecraft … … 1:00 go to sleep Today would have been no different, except I’ve had to be productive this evening. Anyway, productivity as it is, procrastination rearing its ugly head I decided to try out some new plugins on my minecraft server.. The server is already running Hey0’s amazing server GUI/wrapper, which adds plugin functionality and a whole host of other awesomeness (such as kits and spawns) This plugin I was using (WorldEdit) allows you to edit areas of the map en masse - so after generating a bunch of huge glass spheres, making floating biodomes containing water, and even making underwater glass biodomes containing trees, I got bored and decided to mess with TNT. Now, by default TNT mass spawning is (quite rightfully) disabled with this plugin - but I figured out where to enable it, and so went about creating a region that was 20 blocks wide, 200 blocks long, and 3 blocks deep, filled with TNT.. …and then I set it all off: Unable to recover the image :( It took 10 minutes for Mac OS X to recover from this - which was ample time for me to make a cafetiere of cinnamon coffee.

I always find it hard to find things to write about when I have a blog. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, it’s just I don’t like writing. I’ve been busy this past week, creating a new community for the Dingoo A320 portable game device. The community is called “Dingoonity” and is available at http://dingoonity.org I’ve been constantly working on improving Dingoonity since it launched on Friday at 7pm, and so I’ve had little time to work on much else. Dingoonity features a Simple Machines Forum powered BBS, and since today a SMF powered news page which I wrote using SMF’s SSI.php functions. Working on this project has been a great experience so far. The Dingoo community is very much alive and crunching out new homebrew releases for both the Dingoo official firmware, and the “Dingux” linux port for the Dingoo. I will probably post some more Dingoonity-related posts later, aswell as updating my portfolio with the Dingoonity designs when I finish the tweaks.

Got hold of a DS Lite, and some games last week. Mario Kart, and Animal Crossing: Wild World. fun games, This will be my excuse if I don’t update the site much, in the next few weeks.

so all of a sudden everything costs money, eh?

I’ve not been doing a lot with the site lately, mostly because i’ve been pre-occupied with other things.. Just had a holiday in spain, in the mountain village of Darrical - good stuff! I’ve got various projects on the go at the moment, commision work, work for favours, just straight work.. and to top it off, i go back to college in a week!

i’m taking an IT course, right? - i am? ok.. well, since when does IT consist of maths art design technology

All the Whos down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did not. The Grinch hated Christmas - the whole Christmas season. Oh, please don’t ask why, no one quite knows the reason. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight. Or maybe his head wasn’t screwed on just right. But I think that the best reason of all may have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

i’ve been playing half-life 2 a lot this weekend, it’s an amazing game, kudos goes out to valve for their amazing work on the game

i’m finding myself with less and less time lately.. college, homework, work, it’s all eating at my time.. if and when i do (any of) it.

it was my nephews birthday today, his name is Morgan, and hes 4. it feels like only last week he was a baby, and was, as he would, cling to me whenever he was around - now hes all grown up, goes to nursery school, and aspires to being spider man in his free time - no thanks to the spider man suit he got today. “i’m spider man, and you’re my friend Hulk. we have to get the goblin” he’d say… good times. we all went out for a meal for his birthday, this evening, it was fun and i’m stuffed. it’s amazing how much that kid can eat, half of a 9” pizza, a slice of birthday cake, and a huge bowl of ice cream covered in sweets, myself - i had a 12” stuffed-crust pizza, and couldnt even finish it, but still had room for some ice cream, and a few glasses of pepsi

so, college started, as i’ve said already - it has been good so far, we haven’t really started much or any work, so i guess my opinion on the college is biased at the moment, because of that. in the last week, we’ve had some timetable changes - for good? for worse? well, we made some requests, like longer lunch, shorter break, and they were fulfilled, so i’m happy about that, and thursdays, today, i start at 1:30pm, and finish by 5pm - which in my opinion is a good thing. no college tommorow, i guess i can work on the current xhtml/css things im working on - need to learn some more PHP so i can help phill with his site a little..

Well, Tommorow college starts, for me, should be my second year, but it will be my first, as im starting fresh at a new college. AVCE Information Technology Yr 1 heh, i hope its as fun as they made out that it would be.. ‘coz if it isn’t .. waves fist ah well, i guess theres only one thing to do..

the worst part to summer, is how boring it is.. yeah, ok most of the time the weather is great, and theres always someone willing to go on a bike ride, or what have you, but otherwise, i find myself sat at home, doing .. well, doing really nothing. oh, its all good in the fact that i have time to do things such as my site, or some pixel art, stuff that interests me.. but i find myself in a timezone-less state. I didn’t sleep last night, i slept today 1pm - 7pm, and its only then, in my absence of time, that i realised how out of sync i am. i’m gonna need to get back into GMT +0 pretty damn soon.. intime for college on september 6th.

a little over a week late, and at a time inconvenient to my night dwelling self.. this morning my pc stuff arrived.

damn, i’m broke at the moment. spent £70 (incl. vat & postage) last monday on a new 120gb hard drive.. that was ok, as:

i have the next two weeks off of school, its easter break.. rejoice. im running linux on my pc now, redhat 9 infact.. its something good to start out with, and eventually i plan on changing to debian or gentoo linux im gonna start messing with the site now, so if you stumble across it, and it looks like it was created by a 12 year old AOLer .. thats why.

i’m bored.. you wouldn’t think i could be, considering i have my new pc and all, but i am… played any and all games i installed (halo, q3, cs, dflw, etc..) and now i am at a loss for things to do… work on the site is slow.. i have a lot of free time, but not enough time to sit down and work on the site.. although, today i added a new 404 page hmm, i’ll have to see what i can get done saturday, inbetween sleep and going to my sisters partay…

.. i read an article the other day, amongst my web browsing.. the article was about how the author was so against “blogging” you know, and he even went as far as to describing the types of blog, and the mind behind the blogee… .. it kind made me think, whats the point in having a blog.. a few people will read it, a few people will comment, but at the end of the day.. its a kind of self-voyeurism.. well, i may not get sexual gratification from reading my blog entries.. but i do read them, and as i type this, i type as if its to an audience. i think i’m gonna discontinue a personal blog.. .. i’m working on a redesign (what’s that? 3 weeks into your current design) and i am yet to finish my portfolio. aah, we will see.

random entry subject.. meh. yesterday i spent six hours out, yes out of my house… (oh my! max got away from the pc!) .. no, not quite, i was called upon to fix a family friends’ pc… they were using Win98 :| successfully managed to sort out their problems (evidently it had a couple of viruses, loadsa spyware, and Word wouldn’t run…) now, they have Office 2000, AVG Antivirus, and Windows XP ;) you know, it has been snowing here in oxford, it’s been a while since it last snowed… i remember it snowing while i was at school, or at the weekends, resulting in a very slippery hike to school… never once did they close the school. us kids, We were hard. heh, well, no. im in 6th form (college) now.. at the same place as my secondary (high) school. this week, its exam week, i have one exam, well.. had.. the maths on tuesday. and now, i have a whole week off :) .. you wouldn’t believe… they’ve closed the school, because of the snow :| paranoia tells me that this is all a result of some personal grudge that the world has against me… but i’m not paranoid ;) gonna send the motherboard from the new “pc” back today… i give/gave up on trying to make it work… i can just sit and wait for “less than a week” for the new motherboard to arrive.. yes, thats “less than a week” their time. :| (almost a month for 3 day delivery…)

okey, change of plan yesterday… … my nephews were brought around my house too late, so i couldn’t take morgan to town :( instead, we watched finding nemo.. fun. (you try watching it 5 times and still liking it..) so, today i had my math exam.. i think it went well, was easier than i thought it would be, there was only one question that i had a slight problem with.. i answered half of it, and was then stumped.. so i should get 1 of the 2 points for that question.. .. but it went by pretty smoothly. they give you, say, 1hour 15mins .. and the exam, without rushing, took me 25mins .. hmm 90% of the people in the room were sat twiddling their thumbs for half of the exam. i actually went to town today, with my good friend spok (aka steven… ..) i bought some jeans :D a rage against the machine cd.. (renegades.. to be exact) and, looked around town for a while… ;)

had a kinda refreshing sleep last night… its great going to bed knowing you dont have to wake up before 8am in the morning :) gonna be looking after my newphews today.. taking the oldest, morgan, to town or something… should be fun :D anyways, im gonna go eat and get ready before they come over…

ok.. no entry for friday.. i was too: pissed off tired pissed off tired… you get the idea? i’m in an alright mood today.. taking to the blog now, as more of a blog.. you know.. i think i will leave the complaints about my new computer for another time/place/page. after i write each entry to this blog of mine, i sit back, read over what i have just written .. and think “fuck. how do i manage to write so much for this.. and yet struggle to write stuff up when i have to” you know, it could just be because this site is more of a hobby than work, and you know.. now that i’ve got it, and its up and running (minus a portfolio.. uhmm.. shh) .. i actually have something to say to someone “yeah, i made this” … rather smuggly, infact. don’t you just love these lazy saturdays? well, not exactly lazy.. i attacked my room with a hoover today.. poor thing :( .. the hoover i mean, having to experience my bedroom… surprised it still works, to be honest with you ;) listening to:- Red Hot Chili Peppers - Fortune Faded that song is great. fin.

well, i got the memory problem sorted out.. now all i need is a different graphics card… it turns out the old tnt2 is incompatible with my current setup.. so until i buy a new card… … or find someone nice enough to lend me one… … i can’t use the new pc :( :| poo.

got the heatsink yesterday… :D .. fitted it, that was easy enough, plugged everything in, turned on the pc and then… beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep a BIOS stop code error.. could be one of two things.. bad GFX card.. or bad RAM. well, i managed to rule the first thing (the GFX) out.. evidently it beeps even without the card in (although that could just be it bitching that there isnt a card) and so, after reading the manual, decided it was the RAM. apparently the chipset on my motherboard (chipset: SIS, mobo: ASUS ASRock) requires certain things from certain ram speeds.. as follows: on the motherboard there are three DIMM slots.. PC2100 (DDR266) 1 stick in each of the three DIMM slots, Max. 3GB PC2700 (DDR333) 1 stick in two of the three DIMM slots, Max. 2GB PC3200 (DDR400) 1 stick in one of the three DIMM slots, Max. 1GB basically, if i read that right.. i need 3 sticks of this DDR266 .. not 2.. like i ordered. :| you’d think they’d tell you this, eh? bastids. … sooo.. in an hour or so, i’m off to the hospital for my quarterly diabetes clinic.. yay! :| … but after that, me and dad are gonna go buy another stick of RAM.. so my new pc should be up and running tonight.. hopefully.

monday night.. i went to bed at 1:30 am and awoke at around 7:25am .. .. curses :| damned low blood sugar. i’m hella tired.. yesterday, aside from college, i was sat here.. well not here, more to my left on the other pc.. and i was tryin gout some new code for the mogblog..(trying to get his head around redesigning a b2 blog) - the result of which is so far successful.. but i’m debating wether or not i need links to previous log archives.. one never knows. so, i was sat there coding, well.. i say “coding” i had a couple of instances of notepad open.. and i was porting my design over to the b2 php code.. and as i’m there, typing one handed, leaning on my other (you know how you perch your head on your hand or whatever) and i kept dozing off.. .. i’ve never been that tired, well not for a while.. it was literally torture to stay awake. :| so anyways, that was what most of yesterday evening was like.. until i decided that only 4GB of space in the pc i was using (P2 233 180mb ram) wasn’t enough, so i put another one of my hard drives in there.. and i thought all was well.. booted up, went to format the harddrive with windows’ own formatting tool.. and it wouldnt let me… so i decided to try deleting the partitions and creating some fresh ones, using Partition Magic 8 - to no avail. so, i restarted.. and my intention was to grab an old bootdisk and try FDISK on the harddrive… well, i thought i’d pop into the bios first.. just to double check that i had the IDE settings set to “auto detect” .. for convenience.. and they weren’t.. i haev no idea why, but they weren’t. i fixed that, and thought that perhaps now that it was set properly in the bios.. i might be able to format in windows.. so i let the pc boot.. and i get an “ntldr not found” message… .. i decided to leave it there.. it was 12am.. and i was hella tired, so i went to bed. aah.. this morning… nothing beats being woken up by the ringing of a phone… aaah this morning.. nothing beats realising you’ve slept in an hour too late, and have missed your only lesson of the day. :| i suppose that means more time to fix these pc’s eh as we speak, i managed to fdisk that harddrive… and am reinstalling windows on that p2 .. but, installing it to the harddrive i fitted.. as i have no intention of formatting the 4GB.. it contains all of my website and documents … .. god, i miss the 40GB.. its only a metre away from me, and the poor sucker is useless… until i get a heatsink on that AMD2200+ - dads gonna see if he can get hold of one for me today.. so hopefully, i will have it up and going tonight :D okey, wow. long entry - hand cramp iminent.

wow, today has been fun.. well, kinda… my PC hardware arrived for my new PC.. amd2200+ cpu 512mb ram asus asrock motherboard dvd drive q-tec case (black with a side window, and a whole collection of LED’s to play with :D) so, it all arrived, and i put it together.. sucker took an hour and a half to put together, and if it works.. i will be happy. see, i can’t actually use it yet.. as i said, it all arrived.. but one thing didn’t.. the heatsinc and cooler for my cpu.. so, unless i want to, in the simplest explanation, kill my cpu.. well, i cant use it yet :( kinda sad really :( i’ve waited three weeks longer than i should have for my order, it arrives.. i get all excited, build it, its nice and stuff.. and i can’t use it :| site update: last night, as i said i would, i added the “about me” page.. i have still yet to finish the portfolio portion of my site.. i planned on releasing it tomorrow.. but i can’t see myself having it done.. i havent touched the code for a few days. i noticed a bug in the php for this portion of the site.. whenever i post an entry, it reads the time from the server… this is a problem, because the server is located in canada.. i think (6 hours minus my time zone) and i’m located in england.. so this entry time may say “17:30” but, infact its more like “23:30” my time.. .. if i decide not to finish the portfolio tomorrow, then i will work on the code for the time on this. school good news.. i got a B on one of my math exams.. meh, it’ll do for me :)