I have decided to stop being tight and spend some money on my place in Bath rather than just using it entirely for gaming or technology. As a result, I managed to pick up a cheap print on canvas from some really iffy place in Kingswood that was run down and had people that would mug you if it were dark.
After that, the next few I got from the much safer Amazon website from a company called DagaCanvas. Pictures below… Continue Reading
Over the past few weeks I have slowly been getting back into video editing as I just reinstalled Adobe Premier on to my computer and cleared the hard drive to make room for more source video files. Below are details of a couple of videos posted on YouTube. Continue Reading
Below are a few more photos from Delhi… Some from the Crown Plaza Hotel, some from when I was out with Nitin on Monday, plus some exam results. Continue Reading
Below should be a few photos I have taken from Delhi. Continue Reading
So far, I have settled in, gotten to know fellow students also staying in this apartment as well as some of the staff and taken a little walk round and figure out what Delhi is like.
First up… Delhi contrasts everywhere in buildings, landscapes and people. Its neat but even with the chaos of the traffic, everything seems more relaxed. When we checked the local shops, it was all very slow paced. Continue Reading
Over the past few months I have been running a Minecraft multiplayer server for various friends, mostly from Eve Online. Recently a load of new players brought the game and joined and after just a few weeks many new projects appeared.
Those projects are below along with there annotations. If I have many any errors on who constructed what, let me know.
Over the past few weeks I have been pretty distracted by a new game called Minecraft. Still in development so it has its bugs, but for 10 euros its good value for money considering how much time I have enjoyed it.
Within the game you basically have this massive randomly generated world that has no boundary’s and allows you to mine resources and build whatever you can imagine. Sounds good, but you also have some great “redstone” mechanics to makes things complicated too.
Various objects you can craft can generate or receive power via redstone and this allows you to create anything from simple switches to open doors to computational machines capable of performing mathematics.
We run a private multiplayer server where a few of us from the Volition Cult community create things on a single world, below are some of the things we have created so far. (Click images for descriptions.)
I have to get back to playing Eve tomorrow though as I have neglected her. But its hard as I just don’t have the time to play all the games I need to play. With the new World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion coming soon, new Assassins Creed and Call of Duty games due really soon its really tough to keep up with everything.
Even with these problems, its still been a great weekend as I got to enjoy more Krusty Kreme donuts. One of my work colleague from our London office came to Bath. Normally this is bad as they tend to bring me work to do, but this time I was bribed with Krusty Kreme donuts! Technically as I get paid to manage IT, that includes helping users anyway but sugar brides work too.
I have noticed that some of my colleagues in Bath have started to learn that if they offer to make me hot chocolate, I prioritise there requests over others… I fall for that “trap” every time it seems.
Anyway… Merlin has finally appeared on iPlayer so that’s all for now.
/me is afk.
As I am leaving for Denmark in under a week I have been working on getting decent camera software on my mobile.
First job was getting a decent video recorder, and it seems because I installed CyanogenMod 6 on my phone, my Nexus One is now capible of recording video at 720p which was a nice side effect so that should be fine for the Volition Cult meet in Denmark next weekend.
Having tried a few camera appliactions, I have come to like Camera 360 for now though. One of the things I have been testing is the HDR Simulation, which seems to be best suited for landscape photos, or photos of open scenery where stuff is far away.
Example 1: Original (Left) / HDR (Right)
The test images I took, are not quite perfect. They do need a little more cleaning up perhaps as the effect is a little to harsh but Camera 360 can also save the original photo before processing so you have the source photo if needed.
Example 2: Original (Left) / HDR (Right)
Not something I would use for taking photos of people drinking at the meetup, but for taking shots of the landscapes, it might be artistic and interesting. I need to test the other camera modes later and find one that’s good at capturing people.
Now and again, I have to head out to the London office the Art Loss Register has to do various on site IT related things. Bit of a pain, as I end up spending about five hours of the day travelling. Very different to the 10 minute walk to the Bath Office I am used too.
There are a few nifty things about London I enjoy that make it worth while though. First off, they sell tasty doughnut in Paddington Station! There is a small store I finally found hidden in the corner called Krispy Kreme, and for £10 you can get sick on 12 doughnuts.
I realise that 12 doughnuts are probably not meant to be eaten by one person in a single day, but they are just so tasty.
The other handy thing was while waiting for the next train at Paddington, its only a ten minute walk to Hyde Park, so if like me you have to wait for the cheaper off-peak train at 7pm you can spend time at Hyde Park rather than waiting in station. Its a huge park, to the point that you can’t actually hear or see the busy city its in the middle of. I don’t often have time to wonder too much, but over a few trips I am slowly exploring it all.
On another work related note, I have also been very impressed by our HP Servers. Until recently all of our servers have been working fine in the server racks I installed them in and because I am new to being a sysadmin, I have not had to diagnose server hardware problems until now.
We had a couple of blinking amber lights on the front of the front of Nyx, our most powerful ESXi server. Unlike desktops which are often a nightmare to diagnose what piece of hardware has died, this server simply has 50 LED lights all over the place that show you where faults are.
Its hard to see in the above picture because I had flash on, but the two LED’s that are amber show which stick of ram is failing in the bottom right and the fact its doing clever stuff to work around the errors and fault in the top left. Very handy, and something I wish desktops had.
The other fault, was one of the hard drives was apparently starting to fail. This turned out to be my first hot swap! While the server is still running, you pull out the hard drive and then slide the new one in. Job done, albeit a bit anticlimactic. Its unnerving the first time, but cool.
I imagine this kind of thing is normal for all servers since forever but using it for the first time makes me appreciate it.
Its been annoyingly hot lately at work. Our office lacks air conditioning so its been a nightmare, and even my poor servers are starting to feel the strain. Had to shut one Aeon on Monday morning to give it a well deserved break. Nyx and Hel picked up the slack to let it cool down for a day. (Ah, the power of virtualization!)
Temperatures at home in my flat have been very cool though. Lifehacker had a load of useful posts on how to survive the heat lately and one of them worked well for me. During the day, you keep the curtains and windows closed to keep the hot air out, while during the night you open all of your windows and let the cool air in.
However I have taken this a step further, as I am on the top floor of my building there is plenty of cool air and wind in the evening but sometimes the wind stops, so I had to rig a way to keep the cool air pumping in so enough cool air is in to last the whole day.
During the night I rig a fan up as shown in the picture, when the sun has set and air outside is cooler. I recommend people give it a try, works well for me.
The chairs actually were not stable, so I did move my coffee table next to them to hold them in place so my fan would not fall out of the window, as it would have been a very noisy four story drop! Not sure this is rain proof either…
