So its a Monday, just like any other - but today, Dug came into town to meet Jed and me. After he arrived, we spent a while decing *what* to do, but ended up going for a walk in the castle park. That lead us to the McDonnalds at Colchester Lesuire World. We went to get some lunch, Jed had a coupon for a big mac meal, but they declined it and said "you can only use it at a restaraunt that doesn't have a drive through" which sounds like total rubbish to me. Either way, we got lunch and Jed found a helium balloon on the roof, grabed it, and you can guess - that's right, inhaled it. It was all rather funny! We headed back towards town and went to Sainsbury's to buy some Relentless and Cookies. Later on, we were walking past Spicer McColl Estate  Agents and noticed a "Windows Automatic Updates have been installed, you must reboot" message on one of their shop-window display screens - we found it hilarious and took a picture which can be found here, but some guy from the shop came out asking what we were laughing at, when we explained, he didnt find it funny, he said "I dont really need people pointing and laughing outside my shop" we said he had no sense of humour, and as he went back inside he commented "Yeah... I don't think you have a sense of humour" - we just LOLed and then walked off. Dug took me back home and we just had a relaxing evening discussing things and looking at random videos, it was great fun!

There has been a lot of content removed from this website that was cluttering my database and directories. I have new content to add to the website, but it will take me a while to get round to adding it all. Please feel free to make suggestions.

Today was quite a regular day really, but at lunch time, Kichimi and I were walking down north hill and we saw a spanish restaraunt with helium balloons tied to their sign. Kichi used a key to hack the balloon off (by cutting the plastic string-tie stuff), and one shot of into the air... we didnt get it back. Many people inside the restaraunt could see us, but none the less, we tried again - this time, successfully obtaining two helium balloons. When we got back to college (with the balloons), Kichi decided to inhale the helium, just for fun - it was pretty funny, although the moment didn't last long. Been an alright day, just planning to relax a bit for now!

Monday's are always tiring, I start at 9am (which means leaving before 8am) and finish college at 5:45pm (which means I don't get home until after 6:30pm). However, today was rather interesting. I went into town with Jed and Elton and somehow we ended up in iceland. A crazy idea was brewing in Jed's mind, we could tell... the next thing we know, we are sat in the college refectory, eating Nesquik with whole milk out of disposable bowls using plastic spoons - with the breakfast song playing on Jed's laptop. We attracted quite a lot of attention, several people came to join us asking for a bowl, complementing us on our idea, even the cleaning staff joined in! Jed had about 7 full bowls of nesquik, both Elton and I were full after 2 or 3. When we had to go to our next lesson, CISCO (where no food or drink is allowed in the building, despite the vending machine next to the sign that says this) Kichi decided to take the remaining box of Nesquik and pour some milk straight into the box - he then tried to drink/eat it with various alternatives to a spoon, including but not limited to, folded paper and a hole-punch! He was told to finish it outside of the building, Jed found him a spoon. Jed ended up wearing the box on his head after Kichi had whacked him with it about 6 times. Madness, utter madness!

Today was great fun! Dug arrived some time in the morning, I forget when, must have been around 11:30am though - It would seem that last night, trying to get the printer working, I accidentally chmod 777 / -R the whole server (for those of you who don't know, that means change the permissions to full read/write/execute on every file and folder on the server) which resulted in everything breaking! Dug managed to fix it for me, thanks bro! I would not reccomend trying it - not even for a joke!

We went out to Clacton, Tesco where we bought 2 cans of RockStar each, which happens to be a total of 320mg of Caffine, which is about equivilant to 10 cups of coffee. After looking around for a chip shop other than our regular (which was closed) we finally found a nice place and got some chips in what looked like a hard drive box. We had a long walk up and down the coast, catching up on events and generally relaxing - I had a great time!

We got back to my place around 7:30pm ish, and tried again to get the printer working. After a long night of trying different things, we finally got it working on Arch Linux with a trial print driver/server package. It should last long enough until I change my server back to Gentoo.

It was a really great day and at about 4am the following morning, Dug made his way home. I really enjoyed it, but time went so fast!

Today I went on a College trip to Essex University to see the Computer-Science department. I really liked the environment, it was very calm and relaxed, and the views were amazing! First we had a demonstration of some robotic research, it was very interesting and looks rather impressive! We moved on to look at the electronics/hardware department which was exactly how I was expecting it to look - the tutor showing us around gave us some really useful information about the courses offered at Uni.

Next, we went to the Library specifically to see the non-stop, walk-in, walk-out lift. The lift is a continuos stream of platforms that you just hop onto and hop out of when you arrive at the floor you want to stop at. We were advised not to stay in the lift while it went up into the loft area ready to come down the other side, but someone had to... didnt they Jed?

We did a small programming excercise, which I found really easy and honestly, quite pathetic. At college I am learning VB, which is a very easy "basic" coding language. At uni, we were using a program called "scratch" which is a algorithm based program where you drag commands from a list into a flow-diagram. They are limited to moving items around a scree, drawing lines, making sounds etc - much like a logo program or "turtle". I wasn't very impressed, I was also put off by the fact that they were running Windows Vista Business on the Uni network - and even though the machines we were using we very up-to-date, it still took around 10 minutes to get everyone logged on (to the domain).

After a short tour of the different departments around the campus, we had a break and were free to explore for a while. I was shocked to find that the university is like a village of its own, with a complete set of shops, banks and on-site accomodation. Jed asked how fast the university internet speed was, aparantly 3Gbps (375MB/s) per Portal, and they have several portals. Obviously, this throughput is throttled and uses load-balancing to ensure a fast connection for everyone, probably between 8mbps and 80mbps (1MB/s to 10MB/s).

We then went for an interesting lecture about Brain Computer Science, all about the possibility of making computers more human, more intelligent. Not just being able to make a decision based on variables, but to actually think for itself and learn on its own. We also saw a demonstration of use of brain signals (voltages that our brains give off as brain waves) which can be interpreted by technology to make something happen - in this case, moving a small robot forward, left or right by *thinking* the direction. It was very interesting!

We got the coach back to college, and after quite a long wait for my bus, I was on my way home. Because we were back earlier than usual college finishing time, I had to get the 65 rather than my usual 88b, which meant about a 2 mile walk home (30 mins).

When I got back, I was delighted to find that my punch-down tool had arrived so I was able to finish installing the network points in my house (ready for when my sister Amanda moves back in on Sunday). After having dinner and getting some things tidied up, I settled down to chat to Dug and tried to get my printer to work with Arch Linux.

My printer is a Canon PIXMA iP1500 InkJet (USB Only). We installed CUPS on my Arch Linux server, plan being to share the printer with all the computers on the network, but we didn't have much luck with drivers. Out of the 100s of drivers available for Canon printers on CUPS, my one wasn't supported! After hours of trying to get it working, hacking our own drivers together, search after search on Google and IRC channels to find a solution, even trying to use similar drivers - we had no luck, and whats worse, during the attempt to get it working, we managed to break several other components of my server, including the Samba file sharing, SSH Deamon and the MySQL database server. Thankfully, I was quickly able to fix Samba and MySQL by re-installing it using the existing configurations, but I still haven't got SSH to work.

Not a huge problem! I will soon be moving this website, and all related services to a new server. Once I have done that, I will change my home server from Arch Linux to Gentoo Linux - It just works with everything!

It's been a really nice day and I enjoyed everything - i'm looking forward to seeing my mate Dug tomorrow, it's been quite a while!

Didn't have to go to college until 13:20 today, and that was only to be registered. My first lesson started at 14:40, so I had a good hour or so to kill. I met my sister (Amanda) in town and helped her move some of her belongings into storage. To thank me for the help, she bought me some lunch at McDonnalds. It was quite funny, we saw a car with "Heart Health and Beauty" written on the side, parked in McDonnalds car-park while the driver enjoyed a McDonnalds meal. You can find a photo here. Amanda gave me a lift back to college for my first and last lesson of the day - Business Studies (Double). The first half, we did a test, which I don't think anyone really bothered to put any effort into, and the secondary part of the lesson we watched a video about ice cream. It was overall a fairly relaxing day.

As you regular readers have noticed, and new readers have read, I have made several changes to this website over the past week. I have finally finished the major changes and don't have much more to do before it's complete. Please remember that reporting errors helps me develop this website which gives a better browsing experience for you.

Some people have pointed out that I haven't written much on here in a while, so I'm going to try and update on a more regular basis! I will start today by writing a little bit about what's been going on this week!

On Monday I had to  come home early from college after getting a text from my mum explaining that my server was making noises and could set the house on fire! I rushed back home to find that nothing was really wrong, just needed a bit of cleaning. I took my server apart and cleaned all the dust out - everything is running as it should be and thankfully, no harm was done!

Tuesday was a long college day, and then straight after college, I went to my friend's house to install a replacement router. It was a simple and quick job and it was nice to see Chris again, it's been a while!

College reviews are taking place today and tomorrow, so a lot of my lessons have been cancelled, shame in some sense, because I enjoy a lot of my lessons, but I have to admit, it's so nice to have a break! I had my review today, looks good overall, just need to work on my exam technique really. My friend Jed bought me some chips for lunch and we had a pleasant walk around town, it's amazing how nice it is to walk around with friends when the weather is nice!

The weather has been pretty good this week, been in a rather good mood really I'm going to Essex University on Friday on a Computer-Science trip with the college. Looking forward to that, should be interesting if nothing else!

As my closer friends will know and some of you may have read, I have recently finished a 16 month relationship. It would be a lie to say i'm not upset about it and am feeling 100% better, but I have to admit that I am starting to see that I'm better off single. I am doing more of the things I enjoy now (like this website reconstruction) and seeing my friends a lot more. I have a bit more time to focus on my college work and am generally feeling a lot less stressed out. I just want to say a really big thank you to a few of my close friends who were really there for me when I needed them, they know who they are - thanks guys!

In other news, my sister Amanda is moving back in with us soon, so on the one hand there could be a lot more arguments - but on the other hand, it will be nice to see Amanda a bit more often, I do miss having my big sis around! The company will be nice and I know she'll always be there to talk to if I need some love! (right Amanda?)

I hope everyone else is having a good time, thanks for taking an interest!

 

During the construction of this new website, we have added some new features:

- Fresh new design
- Easier navigation of pages
- Changable colour scheme + Fixed bug with cookies
- Status Updates (Will show planned downtime, server notifications etc)

We plan to make the following additions/improvements:

- Use valid CSS/HTML
- Resume Techtoad Services
- Improve website loading time

In May 2009, this website (and all related services) will be moved to a new, faster server. Please be patient while we impliment the new website and server. This website is still in construction, so please do report any errors using our contact page.

Many thanks to Dug Stokes of Frag.co.uk for help developing this website, and for use of his server

I decided to make a brand new design for the website, this is not based on a template
I hope everyone likes the new design, there could be a few minor problems that need to be fixed, so if you could please report any faulty pages or mistakes to me, either using the contact form, or by email.

Apologies to those who tried to access the techtoad website over the past 6 days. The website was temporarily unavailable due to a problem with our image server which has now been resolved. All systems and services have been restored to normal operation.