I was going to complain at my time management skills (or lack of), I find myself doing seemingly nothing all day - and only starting to begin to work at midnight, and even then not on the current priority… Oh well.
Anyway, I’ve just discovered Wordpress 2.7, and all I can say is WOW! Fantastic admin interface. It just works so well!
The new themes are just awesome, I particularly like the touches on “Bus Stop” and “Tree”, they react to the weather and time of day and just look fantastic in my opinion.
Ok, so another month passes by, another one without completing my personal statement, or getting my ucas application off, will it matter?
And so it’s that time of month again, that instinctive feel that I’ve not written here for a long time and should keep up with it.
So, what’s new with me?
Not much to be fully honest. Our team came third in the GLSW night hike. (Route to come when I write that bit of the website…)
My interests are slowly moving back towards OSM from other stuff, although I have got quite a few good books that keep getting in the way of doing work for OPLS… I feel I’m letting Tom down, must really focus on it….
I’ve been attending the lectures at UCL for 6th form science students recently, the first in this term was on Deployable Structures. The lecture was a bit dry, essentially explaining what one is (think umbrella) and why they’re useful (small size for transportation), issues and different types.
The second was on the solar powered car that the engineering department built and raced across austalia. It was a genuinely interesting lecture, giving details on the core aims the car must reach (efficiency being the core priority, which requires low weight, efficient motors, low air resistivity etc)
This week was the magic of computer science, and how the methods used in magic tricks (mostly the card puzzles) is actually highly useful in CS. Many of the shuffling tricks are actually efficient sorting algorithms. More on this to come, once I’ve researched this a bit more to refresh my mind of the terms.
Wow. This week has been unusually quiet, given the insane busyness of the weekend. Time flys too quickly, it just goes missing.
Wednesday last week was the Canning Town OSM mapping party, great fun was had discovering one massive twiddly and insanely boring housing estate in Beckton - I’ve yet to map it up 
Anyways, that’ll be done soon, hopefully, or I’ll get the wrath of smsm1 on me, hell, I also need to organise the Croydon one!
Last weekend was the first UK Geocaching Mega Event it was quite insane, 3 events over the weekend that I was there. I got to met up with loads of people I’ve talked to online through the forums and irc. Particular credit goes to Dave and Mary of the purple_pineapples for essentially being my host for the weekend, I tagged along with them and Helen in Mustardland(+), who I met on the train to Harrogate.
As I was saying, the weekend was great fun and absolutely manic - more than 30 caches in the two days, 22 alone on the Sunday. The Saturday’s fox hunt event was a great twist on geocaching - it adds competition to the sport, especially the aspect of real-time FTF races! I’ll note I got my first 2 FTFs in a close race with TMM and TDW.
So, what now? I left with 180 finds, and on Thursday decided to go out for 17 more to boost my total to 197 - ready for a fun cache for the 200th. Unfortunately, the day went disasterously, finding only 5 of the 10 I attempted, so I dropped it and went back home.
And on the Friday, I purchased a nice (discounted) laptop. In the several years since I built my desktop machine, computer prices have become phenominally low, this laptop is more powerful than my desktop machine and almost as expensive (I never actually did do a full check on the price of it as building it). I’m in two minds now whether to ditch the desktop altogether, as it is a noisy and its performance has really been grinding on me recently. It must be because software demands now expect good powered machines, the 256MB of RAM and 1.4GHz processor must not be enough to run the Gnome desktop anymore, which is a shame, since the one thing I (theoretically) liked about linux was its simplicity. WTF am I talking about? Gnome is anything but simple…
If only OpenBSD were a good desktop system, I really should look at a nice lightweight wm that looks ok, (or just look at the config files closely for some of the not so good looking ones). The only issue I’m likely to have there is with the sound, it’s sound support is lagging behind linux by some way, I found it doesn’t ‘just work’.
So, now onto the laptop, it’s a HP Compaq 6720s, 2GHz Celeron processor, 1GB RAM, a do-everything optical drive and 80GB HDD. I think it is good value for £270, I particularly liked it over the other model eBuyer were doing for the same price, due to it being lighter and having a longer battery life.
The one issue with it is the preinstalled software, and in particular the OS - Windows Vista, I’m wondering if I should give it the benefit of the doubt and see how it goes, or just nuke it and start a cycle of testing Linux and BSD to see which will work with the hardware I have. Again, the issues I forsee are the sound support and possibly also the Wifi, since I’ve not seen this broadcom chipset on the OBSD hardware support pages yet…
I’ll just do a battery drain test on low use to see how long it lasts, Vista recons 3 hrs 30 on a full charge…
And finally - todo:
Great…
Stuff really gets on top of you if you don’t pay attention. OpenBSD 4.4 is now in beta, and I’ve yet to upgrade the server to 4.3 stable! Don’t really want to upgrade until I confirm with Ian.
I’ve just peeked into PythonMOO for the first time in months, looks a bit lonely. Trac is broken (why isnt it coded in MOO anyways?)
What really annoys me is that there’s something wrong with the shell scrollback on the box, and the cursor keys, really annoying when working on it!
And so April closes, not with a bang, but with a whimper. Depressing.
And yet I’m blogging again? Twice in a month, a week even!
Well, yep, I am, why? I don’t fully know, I just felt like it.
Exams rush nearer and I’m feeling less prepared. It is worrying.
I’m sleeping too much, why am I always so tired? Why does time move so quickly?
At least there’s not a coursework rush this year.
Why can nice people be so two faced, say things behind someone’s back? Please tell me if I am, I really don’t want to be.
FeatureServer is a nice little thing, very simple to set up, took me around 15mins to get a working example including a flickr layer running 
Of course, getting the data in and out of it is the hardest part - especially if we want authenticated input.
Ok, so the blog post titles are getting more abstract, but I promised myself to do this, and try to tie it in.
Wasn’t Dr Who this week good? Martha is really becoming a soldier girl.
Right, thats the tie-in done 
Anyway, exams are coming up - everyone panic!
What else, I’ve installed GeoPress for WordPress, it’s rubbish, not suitable for 2.5 yet.
I need to get my head around tagging and categorisation of blog posts - whats the difference?!
The somerset geography fieldtrip was mildly amusing, it really is odd how people react when confronted with (almost vertical hills/short walks across fields/floodplains/mud/rivers/thigh-high wellington boots (Bruce :D)). Great fun!
And even more fun was the Gold DofE practice expedition. The route is visible here, and some pics over on flickr, I should have blogged about it sooner. I’ll have to try an extract the memories otherwise.
Day 0: Familiarisation
We started from the car park near to New Houses, about 2.5km NNW of Middlesmoor, day 1’s start. There was a nice coating of snow here, as there was throughout the day. We crossed the River Nidd, and followed its bank west. We encountered our first narrow gates and our first wildlife of the trek - sheeps and lambs, baby little lambs, cute at the time. We then started climbing the hill to the west of Woo Gill (don’t they have great names here?) at our first false peak we encountered a junction and decided to head off the marked rights of ways. The path steadily degraded, and we had to cross the river at one point, we decided to follow what we thought was the path and ford the river at a narrow point (little did we know we’d be getting used to this!), at this point me and Ben decided to ignore the footpath and breakaway from the group, taking a bearing up an almost vertical hill, to Sportsman’s Rest, a little toppledown shack literally in the middle of nowhere. There was very deep snow, so what better than to make snowmen!
Our explorer map was invaluble for the next stage - straight across the moor on a rough bearing. This was a really wet and cold stage, since the heather was deep, and the snow on top of it just too cold. The Landranger map doesn’t show the fences, or the grouse butts where we had lunch, but it really was a rather bleak place. The short climb to Little Haw was our next target, an easy ‘peak’ for the day.
We headed south back to the car park, losing the bridleway several times.
The terrain was rather tricky as several of us by falling into streams/rivers/deep holes up to our necks (Tony).
I wonder how more dryly I could write my account of the expedition, should I continue?
So, we’ve now almost hit spring break, easter has come, gone, and left me with stuff todo!
Now, since my last post a lot has happened, I can’t remember it all, but here’s a basic run-down of it all:
Red Flare - the Ruskin team came 9th, which is ok. I won’t do a close look at the stats yet, I’ll leave that for some other time. (GLSW Scouts.org.uk)
My first exam results for AS levels were good, as expected, a quick rundown: C1 99/100 S1 96/100 P1 88/90 Ch1 78/100 GS was a B overall (100/100 for GS2)
Maths coursework was also ok, dropped a mark or half somewhere, doesn’t bother me too much…
OpenStreetMap is coming to Sutton! Come, map, be geeky! And why not preview the OPL Sutton OSM map?
This upcoming week is the AS Geog fieldtrip, we’ll be staying at the ‘Magdalen project‘, in Dorset (not Somerset, as they claim). They also claim to have changed the name of the hamlet to Magdalen from the original Maudlin (as is shown on OS maps)
And then, the week after is the Duke of Edinburgh Award Gold (50mi/80km) expedition! How fun! If you’re interested in how this looks on a map - just look at the wiggles!
Anyway, I guess I should probably finish up now - my blog entry for the month 
Aand since I’ve not blogged here for so long, here’s a news review:
Anything else? Maybe, can I remember? No.
Ah, wait, yes. The reason I originally started writing this post. The sports hall has failed planning application for 8 reasons, yes 8! Rather disgraceful, I think.
…sometimes.
I cycled in a nice ’shower’ yesterday, strong gusty winds and horizontal heavy cold wind. I hadn’t experienced such difficult weather since on top of a moor in the Peak District. (I guess cycling at high velocity over the brow of the hill had a slight impact on the severity of the weather, though)
So, exams, 2 to go. C1 was simple, GS1&2 were odd, S1 was also ok, PHY1 had some quirky questions.
So, its a fail.
I wish… Too cold and windy at the moment, even for me.
I tuned into BBC Radio 1 early this morning, and was very surprised to hear Debussy’s Clair de Lune. But, listening for a while, it slowly morphed into other music. A very good ambient music show by Rob da Bank. I think I’ll rip it for future listening.
Here’s a tracklisting:
Rob da Bank and Friends 07 01 2008 - ‘The Sound of Silence’
2.00 am
Boards of Canada – ‘Over The Horizon Radar’ (Warp)
Claude Debussy – ‘Clair De Lune’
Claude Debussy played by Boston Symphony Orchestra – ‘Prelude A L’Apres-midi d’un Faune’
Brian Eno – ‘Another Green World’
Brian Eno & Harold Budd – ‘Wind In Lonely Fences’
Ryuichi Sakamoto – ‘Dawn’
Erik Satie – ‘Gymnopedies, No 1’
Vangelis – ‘Albedo 0.39’
Tangerine Dream – ‘Sequent C’
Dr Timothy Leary – ‘The Incredible Lightness Ov Being Molecular’
Penguin Café – ‘Telephone & Rubber Band’
Ry Cooder – ‘Theme From Southern Comfort’
Boards of Canada – ‘Heard From Telegraph Lines’
Aphex Twin – ‘On’
The Orb – ‘Falkenbruck’
Dub Tractor – ‘Untitled’
Future Sound of London – ‘Papua New Guinea’
Global Communications – ‘1431’
Coldcut – ‘Autumn Leaves’ Irresistible Force Mix
Air – ‘Alone In Kyoto’
Alan Howarth & John Carpenter - ‘Romero & The President’3.00 am
Thomas Newman – ‘Any Other Name’
Autechre – ‘Nine’
U-ziq – ‘Sick Porter’
John Cage (performed by Glen Freeman) – ‘Inlets 1977’
Biosphere – ‘Dissolving Clouds’
Cocteau Twins – ‘Cheery Funk’ - Seefeel Mix
Seefeel – ‘Imperial’
PVH – ‘White’
Starseed Transmissions – ‘Metamorphic Illumination’
Sigur Ros – ‘Takk’
Tangerine Dream – ‘The Dream Is Always The Same’
Pass Into Silence – ‘Hanabatake’
Aphex Twin – ‘#3’
David Bowie – ‘Moss Garden’
John Fahey – ‘Sharks’
Bark Psychosis – ‘Pendulum Man’
Kraftwerk – ‘Kometenmelodie’
Harold Budd – ‘The Kiss’
Boards of Canada – ‘Zoetrope’
Peter Gabriel – ‘At Night’
Every time I want to write something serious on here, either ranting publicly or privately, I’m usually either walking or riding home, when I actually get home, I can no longer put my private soliloquies to words and write down my thoughts. It’s so annoying.
I suppose I should recap recent events, our team came 3rd in Nitex of 7 teams competing, 3 finished. It was a nice evening for a walk, dry, but a bit breezy on the hills. We arrived back at 6am, the birdsong had just started as we were on the home straight. The last section of the walk was the worst of the lot, most of the paths were deeply eroded and filled with water from the morning’s rain. It was literally like walking down rivers, not the nicest finish to the hike.
I’m also finally going to be hopefully doing my Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award, I went to a (county) meeting regarding it this weekend.
I’m going to have issues with fulfilling my Service and Phys Rec sections, Phys Rec will be fairly easy - Orienteering is allowed, I just need to research it some more and send some intro emails to the local clubs. Service will be the sticking point. I did help with the group’s Beaver section until around the start of this year (poor memory here), my poor self-reasoning was that I wasn’t being treated as a young-leader. I felt nervous all the time around the beavers, especially when all the warranted leaders were out of the hall.In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been worried, Maureen is a very talented leader (even if Salem is a little disorganised). In hindsight, I regret my decision to leave without informing them much (can’t remember for certain), I think it would be difficult to rejoin the helper team, especially now because (little) Charlie has filled my role there. It might just be jealousy, but I don’t mind, she’s much better with children.
Enough ranting and putting myself down, I need to find something positive to think about myself. But that gets so much harder when I look.
I should stop self-contradicting, I do have things to be positive about - nitex went well, we didn’t get (too) lost, and I was wanted for Red Flare (although only 1 team will be put into it). I’m not wanted often. I should also be happy that I have good friends, after all, Ben invited me onto the GDoE expeditions.
Hell, this post has probably gone far too deep into my thoughts to be public, but I cba to split and privatise it.
…or maybe I won’t post an update the next day.
Anyway, this is my post for December, to claim I have blogged almost every month since Dec 04! (Although, much of it really isn’t worth reading)
What have I been up to? Researching what’s needed for a Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s award, looking at orienteering club websites, and also worrying about the impending Nitex competition - a 14 mile night (7pm-3amish) hike from a town just inside Kent to Croydon.
I even bothered to check possible routes for annoying parts:
I’ve also been messing about with some GIMP rendering tools, this is my new desktop background:
There’s also a rather nice abstract Π image that I made for Alex’s birthday card, he’s not mentioned the error in it yet…
As always I have a todo list to complete, and tons of mock exams in preparation for the January AS modules. Phy1 went fairly well, as did the Maths(ish) - it helps if you complete all the questions that are set.
I often say that the world is oddly ‘loopy’ - people know other people in unexpected ways, all that six degrees of freedom stuff. (My facebook friend wheel sorta demonstrates that). Anyway, back in Jan 06, I pondered what it would be like to work at BBC R&D, skip forward to Feb 06, and I spot a work experience placement there, skip further forward to Jun 06, and I’m on a week’s placement at BBC R&D, working under Steve Jolly. Skip further forward to last week, a physics lesson with Mr Bain, in the usual off-topic sciencey chat, the topic of holograms came up, he noted the BBC was working on them, and I mentioned I worked there with Steve. It turns out that Mr Bain and Mr Jolly went to university together, (I won’t link to the photographic proof, but he may regret it being on the net since Stephen Mann linked me to it originally).
The STUFF club being planned sounds fun - it needs a good set of words to fit the acronym.
Oh and premonitions - another favourite topic of mine, I forgot to note that it happened again. The corner of Butter Hill and Leechcroft Road has recently had a new bollard installed to stop cars driving onto the pavement of the narrow road. I walked past on my way home and thought to myself, “oh, that’s new, i wonder how long that will stay in perfect condition?”. I continued walking up Leechcroft Rd, as I got close to the junction with Burleigh Road, I saw a large road surfacing lorry coming towards me, it passed and continued to turn into Butter Hill. It hit the pillar as it was turning the tight corner, and almost got stuck. In the end, only the fresh paint on the pillar was removed. (Oh, and it proves ineffective - cars mount the pavement immediately after it, now, I’ll try and get photos soon!)
Any more ramblings? I don’t think so…
Greenshaw is getting solar panels
And Carshalton Boys is getting a Judo hall
And, the sewage works at Beddington is now also a landfill
Edits:
More recently, permission for a greenhouse
Interestingly, in the past, they were refused permission for the front fence, but they re-applied (presumably with different design) and got it.
Also interestingly, I can find no history of application for planning permission for any sports hall.
Yes
It is
And busy
Very
Seen my msn screen name? Talk to me
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.325709768750656&lon=5.635299338929307&zoom=16&layers=B0F
Part 2 of my 3-part MSN screen-name oddness for this week.
When you get down to a veeeeery tiny scale, odd things start happening. Think about this:
If the nucleus of an atom was the size of a football, its electrons would be the size of peas, and orbiting 1/2 a mile away.
Now, that is quite unbelievable, most of every atom is literally empty space - yet how come everything isn’t see through, and I can’t just put my hand through a table.
The world is an odd place, when studying physics it’s good to ask these questions, but don’t become too absorbed - we live at a high scale - reality to us is what we have always known it as, just because much of the stuff around us is 99% nothing, its nothing much to worry about.
Listening to Huw Stephens’ Radio 1 show this evening, there’s some very good tracks from unsigned bands. One particularly happy, and slightly odd tune is Heartbeat by Kate Goes, very interesting use of squeaky toy noises. HMF by Brandon Steep was also quite good. I need to listen again to this show, some good stuff here.
Update: linkified music.
Edit: Miaoux Miaoux is very relaxing, too.
I’ve discovered that someone who has been in hospital has suddenly worsened, they’re in a bad situation. I liked her, will always remember her, great person.
It’s depressing when people you know are literally on the brink, due to whatever cause.
Get well soon, I’m thinking.
Well, blogging has slowed again, and I’m behind with news.
School began this week. Mr Moran is my form tutor, he’s ok I s’pose. School, as always, messed up with organisation.
Teachers expect us to have books we order after term begins - odd.
Went caching with Phil on Tuesday, good haul, 8 finds. We got the train to Epsom and then cycled home to Sutton via Esher - nice long route Unfortunately, my hand got bitten by some flies or something - it swelled up overnight, nasty look. It eventually returned to normal on Friday after being on an antihistamine for a few days. Blurry photos, if you really want to see.
School played move all the rooms around to confuse people again this year,
IT3 downgraded to EC1
EC1 now ML1
ML1 now ML2
ML2 now EC2
EC2 now PY1 (if the small classroom off the common room was EC2, that is)
The two geography rooms have swapped numbers
SC3 renamed to MA7 (illogical choice, should really be MA0 :D)
The nametags on the physics rooms are still missing, makes it very confusing until you know for certain which rooms you’re in.
Enough ranting about school, some good points:
Turns out although my Eng Lit was a C, it was almost a B, I’ve been offered a remark. I don’t really want to pay for the possibility of a useless B, when I already have a useless C.
Teachers who’ve congratulated me on results: Miss Cooke, Miss Johnson, Dr Stewart, Mrs Jaffer (RS, French, general/RS, general/RS)
Teachers who’ve moaned at me about results: Mr Grindrod - “why aren’t you doing Geography” “I am” “..and why didn’t you get an A*” explanation that I messed up both exams *fumbling with a list of exam marks that he happened to be carrying…*
*sigh*
I’ll be in London tomorrow evening for a geocache event, looks good - the top people in the UK and the top person of the company that runs the site are attending.