tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72469799406372643822011-10-30T12:47:55.280Zopinions.tech.rantssysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.comBlogger221100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-55649445173553515892011-04-11T19:45:00.000+01:002011-04-11T19:45:14.281+01:00

So, I got my car back last Wednesday after I finished at work. By Saturday it had voided itself of most of its oil. The culprit ... a dodgy cam shaft seal which had been newly fitted with the replacement cam belt on Wednesday. As you would expect, the mechanic who fitted the parts fitted a new seal free of charge and got the car back to me pretty quickly; making the oil in the car the third set

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-7491823370156823172011-04-06T21:29:00.001+01:002011-04-06T21:29:31.657+01:00

A perfect example of what happens to your wallet when you snap a cam belt. Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-57854686264270436592011-02-21T19:34:00.002Z2011-02-22T12:53:52.422Z

Last Saturday saw the annual running of the Bill Cammack rally at Manby Showground. I was fortunate enough to attend as one of the service crew supporting car number 30. The day started at 03:00 to begin packing our supplies and loading up the car to set off to the venue. We eventually arrived at the venue through pouring rain around 07:00, optimistic that the rain would stop. 20 minutes or

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-79252441213495907962011-02-09T22:07:00.001Z2011-02-09T22:15:45.913Z

Many of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I have recently started a new job. So far all seems to be going very well, I am enjoying a change of scenery and am enjoying actually being challenged at work (not like my old job). Some bits of the job aren't always fun (but no job is 100% fun), however I do get plenty of "tinkering time". A lot of my time recently has been taken up with the

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-20995193205940746692011-01-03T22:18:00.000Z2011-01-03T23:12:37.248Z

Anybody who follows me on twitter will know that over the past few months I have been having no end of trouble with my car, or more specifically with my mechanic. Approximately three months ago I suffered a cracked rear disk. The rear disks and pads were replaced, which should have seen the end of any issues. It turned out that the brakes fitted by my mechanic were "faulty" in his opinion as

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-44352678113392134792010-11-24T21:19:00.001Z2010-11-24T21:25:07.087Z

So this is my first real post on this blog all year. Lots of things have gone on this year, some of which were a little unexpected; such as the surprise cracking of my rear brake disk on my car, which left a nice dent in my wallet. I have recently rekindled my love of climbing having gone on a couple of trips in the midlands. Much fun was had by all, with the exception of me falling over on

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-3073108971710180002010-11-16T22:08:00.001Z2010-11-24T20:35:35.382Z

Finally after a massive absence from the blog I am back. My absence from here was primarily due to the volume of work that I had during the final year of my degree, which meant I had very little time to dedicate to anything other than uni work. On a positive note, I have since graduated from university with a 2:1 in Secure and Forensic Computing. I was a little disappointed with the result, as

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-41261510118155469682009-11-10T09:53:00.001Z2009-11-10T09:53:38.281Z

I realise I haven't updated here for a while, I have been overtaken by the mass of work coming my way from uni. However, the next three days will be free of uni work and full of interesting new people. Later today I will be heading down to F3, courtesy of a very generous gentleman. The next few days should prove to be an excellent opportunity to meet people I may potentially work with or see

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-28413648816219258842009-10-08T21:06:00.004+01:002009-10-18T14:02:04.875+01:00

Up until now I have been searching in vain for a suitable final year project. The problem I have faced is that my suggestions have lacked a real sense of purpose or an actual real world purpose. However that has changed now, I have finally decided upon a project direction. The problem I am facing now is that I may be in over my head. I have been conducting some preliminary research and have

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-51735485300803738542009-09-28T20:15:00.002+01:002009-09-28T20:24:10.483+01:00

Today was my first day back at uni, which was surprisingly rather fun.I didn't have much to do in the way of work, as I only had a single tutorial in the afternoon, which turned out to be a big chat in the new "ubuntu lab" which has replaced the "sun lab" at long last.Ther rest of the day was spend wandering town, visiting greggs for some early morning food and a cup of tea. Who knew greggs sold

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-23675833450823857652009-09-17T19:41:00.002+01:002009-09-17T19:47:02.925+01:00

This week has seen a couple of fails for me, the most prominent of them was the failure of my Ubuntu installation and then my Windows installation.For some reason I noticed bits of my panels had gone missing and things weren't working quite right. Since Ubuntu doesn't take long to install, I opted to go for a reinstall which took me about an hour and a half to completely reinstall, update and

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-23199319255574260402009-09-01T17:23:00.002+01:002009-09-01T17:38:18.820+01:00

I was talking with a friend recently about the need for physical device security.This then strangely lead onto cracking safes, which resulted in pondering whether or not it would be possible to design, build and program a Lego Mindstorms device to crack a combination safe.I then did a bit of research and found that his has already been done in python using an arduino and a few other electronic

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-44714842695436984522009-08-01T22:39:00.005+01:002009-08-03T22:37:56.653+01:00

It's been some time since I last posted, not that I have been busy, more that I have been preoccupied with other things.I am still on the hunt for both a job and car, the car status may change tomorrow though. :)So far my luck with cars has been rather poor, all but one of the cars I have seen that caught my eye have been sold the day before I enquired about them.My job luck has been just as poor

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-23411619056180608162009-07-01T10:45:00.003+01:002009-07-17T20:35:00.887+01:00

The year in Italy has come to an end. Now back in cold rainy England.A large portion of the year was spent complaining about it being too hot, and now I am home I will complain about it being too cold. There is no winning with the weather.First night at home was bliss, having all my stuff back and my lovely comfy bed.I also managed to finally get round to throwing out a load of old computer

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-52387314330866404472009-06-15T19:09:00.004+01:002009-06-16T17:11:54.339+01:00

On Sunday some of us decided to venture out to a new beach rather than going to our usual place in Viareggio.We ended up (in the right place) at Rosignano. The beach was a short walk from the train station, although we did exit the train station into the car park the first time.When we arrived at the beach we were greeted by hundreds of people already there, a short walk up the beach however

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-86131870343787758782009-06-10T09:06:00.002+01:002009-06-11T09:27:03.218+01:00

So it has come to an end, almost as quickly as it started.The E-1337s have been bundled out of the Coppa Pavone after only two games, following two fairly convincing defeats.It probably is a good thing that we went out so quickly, since from the start we were under prepared and all carrying injuries after just a few training sessions.Had we stayed any longer we would have definitely lost in the

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-81026835879224607722009-06-03T13:10:00.007+01:002009-06-04T10:53:07.000+01:00

Recently Microsoft launched their own search engine called Bing.To me this seems like a very late attempt to spread the Microsoft name a little more on the web by essentially copying a service that has been run by the likes of Google and Yahoo for several years now.It is probably a bid to try to associate the Microsoft brand with web search engines in the same way that Google has become

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-32681129943853371692009-05-29T08:39:00.003+01:002009-05-29T08:58:27.576+01:00

Yesterday evening was match two for the E-1337s. It was definitely a tougher game than the first, but we came through and after 40 minutes we were winning.In the actual tournament that would have given us the win, but since this was just a friendly we continued playing which ultimately resulted in our defeat.In our defence, we were missing a number of players so could not make any substitutions,

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-36714754520942574002009-05-26T09:35:00.005+01:002009-05-29T08:58:47.254+01:00

Last night was the first training session for the "E-1337s" computing services 5 a side team, which really showed us what sitting at a desk all day does to the fitness.Having said that though we didn't do too badly and we did win in the end.We did however end up with injuries to almost every player.Not put off by the injuries, we will be training again on Thursday against the Library team, which

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-38515614979066986702009-05-18T18:27:00.005+01:002009-05-18T20:57:59.249+01:00

So now I have my E71 and have been playing with it a bit over the weekend.At first it was a bit tricky getting used to a few things, such as locating where particular settings were hidden.Once I finished my personalising of the phone and having dug through the menus for a while things became clearer.This is probably the first phone where I have actually liked one of the built in themes.I've had

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-77990318229719156482009-05-12T14:27:00.011+01:002009-05-15T10:54:23.601+01:00

I had previously had no gripes with Freecom at all. I owned an 8gb pendrive and a 16gb by them, both of which functioned perfectly for some time.Today however, I found that my 16gb pendrive is totally dead, formatting does not fix it as the partition shortly disappears again. Fortunately the 8gb of data that was on there is mostly backed up in other locations (thank you dropbox).I will probably

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7246979940637264382.post-22943474814503121622009-05-11T14:05:00.003+01:002009-05-15T10:50:15.997+01:00

At the end of the week I will be obtaining a new Nokia E71.Hopefully this will be much more reliable and feature rich than my current phone.My thoughts and opinion early next week ...

sysop_hosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13267421526611022402noreply@blogger.com0