Learning, coding, exploring, living.
Look at the bottom of here:
www.akademy.co.uk
UPDATE: The code is in a much better condition now, so please feel free to check it out..
I’m bloging from my n93 phone wirelessly with the help from my wireless cable router. It’s very nice and essential for my wii. Oh, did i not mention i’ve got one of those!
Just released news from J. K. Rowlings website is that the next, but final :0( book is due for release on the 21st of July, just a couple of weeks after the next Movie comes out.
Think I’ll be taking a couple of weeks off then to read through all the books at a nice gentle pace, it’ll have to be this long because unfortunately I’ll have to eat, drink and sleep as well. (Darn it all!)
Usually, I support taxes, at least in principle or until something better comes along. But this story (below) REALLY gets me going…
You win a prize, an amazing astonishing superb prize of flying into space, of becoming an astronaunt. But then it hits you, that’s got to be expensive for someone… but wait, that means…
http://www.space.com/news/ap_070129_spacetourist_contest.html
Un – believe – able.
But on much better news, A new competition has just opened up and this one’s in England, so, as far as I know, shouldn’t have the hidden costs attached…
http://www.winatriptospace.co.uk/blogs/patent/index.html?DCMP=OTC-mc_ns
The UK goverment now lets people create online petitions which amongst others, the prime minister will see. Not a bad idea.
If you want to have a look click here:
http://petitions.
Also note that these few petitions are for solutions to the problem of light pollution, something which I get quite annoyed about, so please go ahead and support these ideas, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to.
Some people don’t even realise that there should be 1000’s of stars visible in the night sky, a view which makes us far to inward looking. Also, less light pollution equals less electricity used, so less greenhouses gases released as well as less pollution. It’s a no lose decision!
#flag: “Light pollution”, Petitions
Yesterday will officially be called “Powercut” day from now on, at least around oxfordshire anyway. High winds knocked several trees over on to the pylons producing a spectacular, if brief, display of lights.
Unfortunately (snigger, snigger) my office had no power so there was little work that could be done. “Why doesn’t everyone go home now”, eventually came after waiting an hour, “well OK” , I said, “I think there’s work I can be doing at home anyway” (snigger, snigger).
So, I get in my car and “Top 10 at 10” is playing on the radio and it starts with “Fantastic Day” by Haircut100, and I find my self think this really is a great day, (at least from my perspective), I get to go home on a work day, a free holiday if you will, and no one pestering my with questions of demands and I’m getting payed for it.
Then the thought of all the power that would have been used during this day hit me, so how much was that:
there was about 45’000 house holds without power (from here: bbc news)
Average emissons from home electricity use 1693.62 kg of CO2 per year (from here: Scottish electricty couldn’t find english one)
Which is about 4.5 kg per day, now we have to assume that some houses had their electricity back quicker than others, so lets say each house had on average no power for half a day.
So our total carbon saving number is = 45’000 * (4.5 kg * 0.5)
thats 5000 kgs of carbon not sent into the atmosphere (Or more than three households woth of carbon)
Not bad, but really a drop in the ocean, what we really need is more powercuts… (enter the “Ecowarriors”?)
Note, that this is just a bit of fun. (I doubt any of this is accurate!)
#flag: Powercut, “Day of work”, “Carbon saving”
Continued from earlier post.
So my broadband lasted only four hours before it stopped working. I didn’t realise it had gone down because I was busy trying to get my wireless router to connect – I thought it was a problem with that – I spent several hours trying to get it to work then gave up and left it for another day.
The following day I tried to connect again, but now I noticed the “ready” light was flashing – there’s no information anywhere about what that means, no documentation or scribbles on the modem – anyway, I thought that can’t be good, so I phoned them again (Call number 4). They said there was a problem and it would be fixed by 15:00 the following day. Great, I thought, but there’s nothing I can do about that now, so I was forced to wait.
The next day at around 17:00 I get a call on my mobile from NTL, stating “When would be a good day for us to come around to install broadband?“, “What?!” I thought, and told them I already had it. “Oh”, he said, then I told him about the problem I had yesterday,
“Ah, he said, are you at home now? “
“no”
“when would be a good time”
“I’ll be home at 6”
“Oh, unfortunately I can’t come out then, but I might be able to find a evening engineer to come in”
“OK, that would be good”
“I’ll ring you back in 5 to 10 minutes then”
“OK, thanks”
Later that evening (19:00) still not heard anything back broadband still not working. I have the last guys mobile number (which I was seriously thinking of posting here…) so I ring him – no answer, but I leave a message even though I doubt he’d phone – (he hasn’t a week later). So then I phone NTL Broadband again (call 5). They say,
“Yes there’s a fault on the line it will be fixed by 15:00 tomorrow” (And I’m sure this is the same guy I spoke to yesterday)
“OK, I had a call from a guy earlier who said he was going to come around”
“We never send engineer people around to houses sir.” (So then I’m thinking some guy phoned me pretending to be an engineer, but the guy on the end didn’t seem to care in the slightest.”)
“So you can guarantee 15:00 tomorrow then?
“15:00 tomorrow”
“Thanks”
That was Thursday night, I know it wasn’t working Friday morning, but I couldn’t try it till Sunday – and I’m glad to say it was working, and still is.
#flag: NTL, Broadband, problems
A nice website from ESA. Real time (or close) pictures of the Earth from an orbiting Satellite. Click on the pictures to the left to see what part of the World they are from, if you click on subsequent photo’s you can trace the path of the satellite.
Click on the little small icon on each picture to see a larger image.
See if you can see England – every time I’ve looked its completly covered in cloud!
#flag: ESA, Earth
Well I’ve now got Broadband – and only £10 per month (Although thats a 12 month contract so if I move it’s going to be expensive. ) And I’ve gone with NTL.
The reason behind the NTL choice this is simple – the flat I’m renting already has an NTL line in, a BT line would cost around £120 to be installed, and as you might guess, I’m not willing to pay any company to install something of their’s in my house, then charge me a fee per month to keep it there…
Here’s what I had to do to get NTL broadband .
– First I went to their website and signed up online.
– Next they phoned me to arrange an appointment.
– They agreed to come round only five days later – but they couldn’t give a time more precise than “between 12.00pm and 5.30pm” (which then changed in a text message they sent to “between 12.00pm and 6.00pm”) – so I had to waste half a day of my holidays to wait at home.
– They turned up at a 1.00pm (and as it was already installed) they stuck a wire in a box on the wall and attached a modem to it, then left. (So, 15 minutes of my lunch break could have covered this…)
– Now all I had to do was install the software and attach the modem.
Installing the software. So the idea is you install from a cd they provide and plug it when your told to. This I did. several installer screens later I got “Error 204, call 0870 48…”, with no other options than “close” available. So, even though I hate calling any tech help I did, and after a lengthy several minutes of “Hello, welcome to NTL Broadband support…” recorded message I got striaght through to a person and they solved my problem by doing something to the registration their end. I just had to reinstall. Great.
Installing the software again. Run through the installer again, and didn’t get any error (horah) so I could now register my details. Click OK – “Error 602. Call 0870…”. Right something else wrong, Suppose I’ve got no choice where’s that phone again, “Hello, welcome to NTL Broadband support…” (blah blah blah). So I explain the new problem (“It say’s Error 602, and nothing else). Now they want me to open up Internet explorer and go to an IP address (which makes me think I alrady have access…) So I go there and I fill my details in again, this time I can’t have my original login name (it must be taken… probably by me…) so I go through this while the lady stays on the phone, everthing seems OK, then they say “SO, I’ll leave you to finish that off now, all you’ll have to do is keep clicking OK” – now if that’s not the kiss of death I don’t know what is… – anyway I hang up and continue.
Registering. I click OK – Horah, every thing seems OK! , I click OK again – “An error has occured please contact technical support…” – you might guess I’m getting a little annoyed now – So I ring technical support again. “Hello, welcome to NTL Broadband support…” (blah blah blah blah bl**dy blah). Now when I get through the first thing I say is “This is the third time I’ve rung you..”, OK now she wants to put me on hold while she checks what the problem is, so I sit listening to “Lift music + Hi, Your call is important + lift music + We are recieving unusally high… + “if you have access to the internet please go to”… ) She comes back and says OK everything should work now – I ask if she can gurantee this, apparently she can and she’s willing to stay on the line while I fix it… I take the risk of believeing her (as I’m paying way to much for these calls from my mobile – I don’t have a landline)
Re-registering (Login name now different again), click OK, click OK, click OK…. the suspense is killing me… click OK. IT WORKED! Time to go to the pub me thinks…
(And just for the record, I did feel the people on the end of the line were trying to help – they were courteous and plesent, even if they were talking from the other side of the world very late at night. The last girl eveb sounded like I really nice person… but thats a different story)
And if your curious of how long it stayed up for: More storys coming soon… (Anyone care to take a guess?
#flag: NTL, broadband, internet