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Another tiresome weekend passes

Matt 29 November 2010 Blog 6

This last weekend has been well, tiring and fun. Cold as well.

As usual, my weekend starts bright and early at 4am. Hour to get up, get dressed, have something to eat and get out to walk 2.5 miles to work. I was initially expecting it to be freezing cold, it was surprisingly alright. Cold it was, but no chilling wind. Walking for 40 mins in –2C whilst trying not to go ice skating (it had snowed the previous night as well) was more boring than expected.

And there starts my superextended shift at Tesco. Usually lasting from 6-12, I was begged pretty much to stay on until 2pm. By then I’m worn out. It’s then another 40 minute walk back to the flat since the Ulink bus wouldn’t be much quicker than me walking. This time I was listening to Hub Radio on my phone, listening to me being mocked about my lack of taste for Christmas music (*shudders*).

3pm, thought now I’m back at the flat I could relax. Nope. My MacBook, which I got back from repair #5 just last week developed another problem. This time the CTRL key on the keyboard was jammed. This effectively made my MacBook redundant and useless since on OS X, holding the CTRL key acts as a right click, so anything on the mouse is right click and right click + scroll = zoom etc, and I couldn’t type properly. Windows, can’t even get past the password prompt so that’s that.

An hour or two later, I’m on the bus back into Bristol centre to the Apple store to moan and grumble about the latest problem with my doomed MacBook. Some good news at last, the MacBook is being replaced for free since the number of problems I’ve had to deal with has been one (or five) too many. Only snag is due to the ordering process, and because my MacBook is the second newest model, not the newest, they’ve got to order a new one in. By new one, I mean a brand new latest MacBook. They just can’t give me one from the store. They have to order it in. It sucks. It’s the middle of the Christmas Shopping Pavlava. It’s going to be a big wait. Meanwhile I have a Macbook that I can’t use. I’m so glad I took out that Three mobile broadband and netbook offer! Go go impulse.

To finish things off for that day, I’m “producing” (Quoted from Alex Wyatt) Alex’s radio show. By that I mean I’m on his show, but for the first hour he doesn’t put my mic on, my netbook decides to disconnect from the internet half way through a song ruining a track live (I blame Dell) and other random mockery as per the norm.

Hello Sunday, 7.44am. Phone call to ask where am I in 10 mins. Whoops. Today I went gliding for the first time. Fun experience, also an opportunity for me to go home since the gliding club UWE uses is near my hometown. (http://www.cotswoldgliding.co.uk/). Didn’t know what to expect from the day, but I enjoyed myself and got into the air fine. I also had the rents (parents) watch me as well since they were nearby.

Come back around 6pm, thought I could relax. Nope. I’m dragged into playing Call of Duty Zombies and Left 4 Dead. Fun.

Final Note: A blog post where I’m actually blogging and not really ranting about my sh*t life. Life will never be the same!

flupl 2: A work in progress

Matt 5 August 2010 flupl Comments Off

For anyone who didn’t know, I have a simple online file uploader called flupl (http://flupl.com). Very simple, you just upload a file, and you get given a direct link, with forum icons or thumbnails. That’s it in essence.

Now the backend PHP code is a bit of a mess and a hackjob really. There’s a lot of things which can be really simplified, and a few things that have been duplicated which can be cut down. As I’ve got nothing until university starts I decided to have a little work on the clean up. End result: flupl2 – which is coming along nicely.

Given it a slightly new look. One warning: I’m not brilliant at graphic design as I like to be, so this interface may change.

flupl2_scrn1

Slightly different interface, but essentially the same layout. At the top your links to login and logout, to access your account information and to access your files. Direct link can now be shrunk by using j.mp. Clicking any of the link text area’s will highlight the whole link.

Uploading files box hasn’t changed much, apart from a customised button which I may change back. Can’t really customise the actual choose file button unless I use flash, which I’m refusing to. Working on getting an upload progress bar.

Recent files that an account has uploaded has gone a bit of a makeover. Instead of a list of the last eight files, you get thumbails of the last eight files. Hover over them with your mouse, and you can see the filename, type, size and md5 hash. Click on the thumbnail and you can view the links to those files.

To open the file, click on either the thumbnail or icon in the top right and it will open in a new tab.

That’s the main interface getting there. With account information, you can now change your email address! A feature I keep forgetting to do. You can see other stats as well. File listing won’t change much, but what I will do is allow the feature of deleting files. Other things I’m thinking of is custom file names. I’m still thinking.

It’s a work in progress, but it’s only happening because I have time to waste.

From ISP’s with love. PS, it’s a Speedtouch.

Matt 27 May 2010 Rant Comments Off
I could really rant on all day about AOL TalkTalk’s useless and irritating service, but instead I’m going to moan about one aspect, and it doesn’t just imply TalkTalk, there’s a lot of other ISP’s who do the same thing.
When you sign up to your beloved ISP, you typically (unless your ISP is really cheap) send you a router (that big black/white box with an antenna or three, or none). You expect it to work and that’s that. Wrong!
The quality of the units (and probably any junk that comes out of China) are really shocking. Two years ago the Speedtouch 576 (which came with an Easy Setup CD which really didn’t work) decides to no longer connect to the internet no longer than three nanoseconds. After my Dad arguing with the indian person at the other end of the phone, managed to get a new ‘Netgear DG834G wireless router’, only it turned out to be another Speedtouch router, lovely. Two years later that’s on the verge of giving up, and AOL won’t replace it unless we sign up for a new contract. Not a chance.
Nothing is built to last longer than two years it seems. It also doesn’t help that half the ISP’s send out friggin’ SpeedShit Speedtouch (They’re now Thompson branded the newer ones) 585’s. TalkTalk do it, Tiscali now do it, O2 do it under the name Wireless Box II, even BT! Yes, your beloved BT Home Hub is infact a Speedtouch inside. Congratulations, expect it to pack up within six months.
I wouldn’t be making this post if Speedtouch routers weren’t so naff. Granted the web interface and that is very good, much better than BT, but even then, the reliability is shocking! The current 585 I use for internet at the moment, recently went through a spell of ‘I’m going to reboot every 5-20 minutes ha ha ha ha’. Had to reset the thing, oh it works again.
Probably the only router that’s ever worked, well it isn’t even a router, it’s a ADSL USB Modem which we got when we first got AOL Broadband. Still works well, and that’s going seven years now!
Well, I’ve now ordered a Netgear DGN2000 wireless router to replace the speedtouch, and we’ll see how that goes. Hoping better.