Happy New Year

I want to wish everyone I know a happy new year. I hope it's better than the year just gone by :)

Connection Problems

I'm currently having problems with my internet connection if anyone was wondering why I haven't been online as much as I usually am. It started on Wednesday evening with the adsl dropping out every now and then, and it continued all through Thursday and into the evening. The adsl drops out, then when it comes back, I tell the router to connect again, which it does (well, some of the time), but then when I attempt to load a webpage the adsl drops out again and I have to repeat the process over again. Sometimes I can't get the router to connect, so I spend ages rebooting the router or pulling out the phoneline and putting it back in to force a new connection. It's starting to get annoying now though!

UPDATE: It seems to be fixed now, hopefully. I phoned up about it and the guy on the line had me on hold for a few minutes while he was checking the exchange and he flicked a switch that reset something (something about a build up). This fixed it for a few hours but then it started playing up again. I then received a reply email from the support people saying that they had taken a closer look at my connection in the exchange and noticed that the exchange was sending at a faster speed than I was connected at (sending at 14.5 mbps when I was connected at 13 mbps) which was causing data loss and corruption. They changed the speeds to match and it has been fine so far. Lets hope it stays fine for a while now as I want to check if the other problem has been fixed (about people phoning causing the connection to be dropped; possibly caused by extra line noise).

Christmas Presents

Quite a decent haul this year and even things that I wanted :) I got the usual clothes that I ask for (t-shirts, socks, jogging bottoms) as well as a few other bits like a long sleeved t-shirt (I only have two of them, now three) and a khaki type pair of black trousers (although I need to lose a bit of weight before I can get into them! woopsy!). I also got a 4-port Doctor Who Tardis usb hub for my computer which is great, an electronic sudoku pad, a microwavable duck bed warmer (heat it in the microwave for 90 seconds and it warms up and you can use it like a hot water bottle), and a few other bits that I can't remember right at this moment in time. The main part of my presents was an exercise set which is made up of a mini-trampoline, a skipping rope, an exercise mat, a stepping machine and a set of dumbbells. I also got a wrist exercise squeezers set, but I'm not sure if they were part of the exercise set or if they came seperately. Oh, I also got a fluid bottle and three juggling balls, not that I can juggle!

For my sister I bought a 16 piece cutlery set (eight forks and eight knives) as hers always seem to bend, an indoor aerial for her bedroom tv, a set of seven socks, and a pink steering wheel cover.

For my mum I bought a set of two gas lighters (for lighting things like ovens and candles, the long reach one, not a cigarette lighter) as she sometimes has trouble lighting the oven, a red jumper (picked out by my sister as I didn't know what type she wanted), and a set of seven socks (same as my sisters).

Finally, for my dad I bought a 16 ounce rubber mallet and a stanley knife set with 18 spare blades.

Now you'll understand when I said that my presents might have been cheap to buy, but at least they'll be used!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!

New Server

On Friday evening I took in three computers that were going to be dumped. I've since installed Ubuntu Linux (Edgy version) on it, as well as the necessary server software (Apache etc.). As of a few hours ago the server was visible to the world, but I'm going to be making a few changes to it to make it a bit more usable for me. At the moment it's only running one website (my health one), and I want to do a few more websites, but it can only support one in the state that it's in. I know what to do to change it but it's a lot more harder than what I've done to get it working so far, so I'm going to leave it for a few days to make sure that it's working fine as it is now before attempting to change anything. Hopefully it'll be up and running by the end of the week, and then I just have to make sure that the website looks ok (which I've also been changing).

Opera 9.10 released

Just in time for Christmas, Opera have released Opera 9.10 for download. It's the same build as the latest weekly beta (8679 if you were wondering), so if you're running the weeklies (like me) then you don't really need to install it.

The bleary eyed monster

Ever wake up in the morning really groggy and bleary eyed and it takes you some time to become alert? As it gets dark your brain releases melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate your sleep cycle, which also makes you tired in the evenings so that you can get to sleep more easily. It is also produced while you're sleeping, so when you wake up your body is still full of melatonin which makes you really sleepy and groggy when you wake up.

There's a simple solution. Within a few minutes of waking, all you have to do is expose your eyes to natural sunshine for a minute or two. The sunshine burns away the melatonin and makes you feel alert in a lot less time than it would take normally. Most people usually drag themselves to the kitchen to have their morning cereal and to drink coffee to make them alert, but they do this in the dull light, so the melatonin doesn't get burnt away quickly. Just look towards the morning sun with your eyes closed and let the sun take care of your morning need, then you won't need to pollute your body with caffeine that gives you a stronger downer than it does an upper!

Dancing Christmas Tree

Qnext

I saw a link to Qnext today so I decided to check it out. It's a communications bit of software and lets you do VoIP, video conferencing, chatting, file transfers, remote access, and more. It looks quite nice, although it doesn't have much fancy graphics stuff like some applications (I prefer functionality over funky!).

You can download it here and install it (it uses Java). Once it has installed let it start and it will probably want to update its messages, so let it do that then click the restart button to start it again. Now you will be able to pick a username and password. I didn't bother entering any information in the three optional screens as I just wanted to try the program, but I might go back and fill them in at a later time. Once that is done the program will start properly and log you in. In the top left corner of the screen is your UID number, and a connection icon to the right of it. Hopefully this will be green, but if not then you need to open some ports in your router or firewall (it does support uPnP though, so if you have a proper working uPnP firewall or router then it will automatically open the ports that it needs; yay). You just need to open ports 5235 to 5237 (which is funny, as my router shows 5238 being open!).

After it has started you can get to use the program. You can add other QNext users, or you can connect to various IM networks (Yahoo, AIM, MSN and ICQ) and chat on them. The main things like file sharing and video and audio conferencing seem to only work with QNext users, but I could be wrong (it's logical though that they'd only do it with their own users). You can also browse for things, but I haven't used that yet to see what it does.

That's all the information I can give you so far! I don't have any friends added on there (I don't know anyway else who uses it) so I can't do some of the funky things like the file sharing, photo sharing, music streaming (jukebox style), or video/audio conferencing. If anyone wants to get it and try it out with me then that would be great! My UID is 221971.

London Weather

I was about to go to the shops earlier when it started hailstoning so I took a video of it.



There was also a tornado in North London! Several people were hurt but there were no deaths.

Design limbo

I got tired of the design for my health website so I decided to give it a proper overhaul. I started with a background image to go in the top right corner and knew that I wanted some kind of gym picture. I took a stroll through a bunch of "stock" photos but I couldn't find anything that I really liked. I ended up doing a google image search and going page after page until I found one (on about the 18th page). So I saved the image, opened up photoshop, and set about trying to make it fit.

I'm not that great at editing images, mainly because I don't really know how photoshop works and how to do different effects. I took a stab at it anyway and ended up searching on google for fading effects, as the picture cuts off on the left and bottom and I wanted it to blend in with my sites white background. I tried doing a mask layer and drawing a gradiant, but that only worked for one edge, and I couldn't find a way to have two mask layers on two duplicate layers of the treadmill picture. I eventually found an easy way to do what I wanted: make the background layer editable, fill it with white, then select an outline on the treadmill layer, feather it, inverse the selection (so you select the left and bottom bits), then just hit delete. It automatically fades out and looks ok.

That's all I've done with it so far. I'm not sure if I like the fading though as it still stops a bit abruptly. I might have a play and see if I can come up with something a little better. I still have a main logo to create (using the existing apple logo though) and then it's just twiddling with the style of the page to get things looking nice. I won't take a screenshot of it just yet though, as I have borders turned on for a few bits of the page so that I can see where they're going, and it doesn't exactly look nice. Plus I've started on a top navigational bar which isn't finished yet, plus I'll be moving a few bits around and re-thinking some other bits.

Christmas Decorations

I put the christmas decorations up for this year. Started late afternoon, had nearly finished the living room by dinner time, did the kitchen after dinner, then finished the living room off and did the passage. I took some pictures of the decoorations on the floor (both kitchen and living room, but not the passage) and then when the decorations were actually on the ceiling and walls. I created a photo set of the pictures, which is fun as it's the first time I've got a photo set working with zooomr!. There are 13 photos in total and some of the "after" photos are a bit dark as I took them in the dark with only the flash. You can still see the picture perfectly though.

Big Kahuna Reef 2: Chain Reaction

I've been a big fan of Big Kahuna Reef since I first played it a few years ago. I recently found out that there is a Big Kahuna Reef 2! I downloaded the trial, started playing it and I was instantly hooked. You can now make powerups when you clear blocks and these powerups make it a lot more fun to clear the board. Powerups I've seen so far are single sticks of dynomite, bombs, groups of dynomite sticks, and nukes. I'm not sure if there are any others in there, but these are pretty fun to start with if there are more! There are over 750 levels in the standard game plus you can download more level addons from the website, making this one enjoyable game to while away the time!

Update: I meant to say this earlier, but the tiki now actually does something! In BKR1 when you filled the tiki bar it wouldn't really do anything, other than it counting as a bonus on the win screen. In BKR2, when the tiki bar fills it spews out a couple of sticks of dynomite to places that need it (where you have unbroken blocks). This also happens if you're keeping the tiki bar full as the combo goes up (it's full at 100, then it's "full" again at 200, and 300, etc.), so it comes in handy for when you're getting a bit stuck with locks and covered blocks. It's also great fun when you get the tiki bonus, use some of the dynomite to clear some paths, make a 6 combo, get a bunch of dynomite, use that, then you've filled the tiki bar again and you get more dynomite. You can probably guess that I like this game ;)

Update 2: I just finished the quest game (100 levels) which unlocks the tiki bonus pack (not sure how many levels; it was 50 in the first game). Here's the win screen for the quest mode (note this is just my first go at the game. will probably get sub 6 hours in a few games time).