Sunday, December 24, 2006

Happy Rawr

Happy Rawr everyone! Rawr is the new alternative to Christmas, Hanukkah, etc. It rules. You will celebrate it a lot. LOADS. Happy Rawr everyone.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

It's over!

So, I'm done with lectures/lab time for the year. Happy? Damn right. I'm heading back home on Tuesday, if all goes well, and I should be back about midnight. Sure, I've got this coursework booklet thing to do, but that shouldn't be a problem.
Feelings on going back home? Should be fun. Going to have the standard parent problems, but oh well, I'll get over that. Should be able to head down the pub at least once, and hopefully I won't try and kill anyone over Christmas. Or the other way round...

Firefox!

Firefox! Yay! I'd expect just about every windows user to get it, except maybe those who use Opera. Maybe. Forked from the mozilla code (which, if I remember correctly, was in turn forked from the netscape code), Firefox is a lightweight, yet powerful browser with plenty of customisation options. You've also got superb tabbed browsing, and it's finally being supported by people doing major sites. Sadly though, my bank still doesn't see it as a supported browser. Bastards.
What customisation options, I hear you scream? Extensions, themes and search integration are the three categories that pop into mind, although I generally find that the default theme and search engine do pretty well for me. Extensions, however, I use a lot. Yarr, time for a list of the extensions worth meantioning that I've got at the moment.
  • Adblock Plus
    It blocks ads. What more can I say? Lots, actually. It's very useful for getting rid of image and flash based adverts, as well as blocking bits of javascript and the like. Certainly cleans the web for most.
  • Browse Images
    Let's you... Browse... Images... Yeah. Self explanatory, up to a point. Most useful when you're browsing galleries. Has functions to save images, open them all in one/separate tabs, and a few other things.
  • DownThemAll!
    Great little download manager, supports resuming far better than the built-in one, as well as mass-downloading of stuff, multichunk downloads, the works. Get it.
  • FireFTP
    Nice little FTP client, means I don't need a separate program to do it.
  • Google Browser Sync
    Essential if ye've got more than one PC. Syncs browser settings, bookmarks and all that between instances of Firefox. And it's Google.
  • StumbleUpon
    Click stumble, see a site, rate it. Etc.
  • Stylish
    Lets you add custom CSS snippets for specific (or all) sites. My personal favourite is cleaning up the google custom homepage.
  • Web Developer
    The web developer toolbar! Very useful on its own to find little problems with sites. Allows you to do stuff like outlining block level elements, labelling classes and IDs and putting the site through a verifier. Very useful for coming up with CSS for Stylish, I find.
All of the above should be findable at the Firefox addons site, or are at most a quick google away.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Free Software I Couldn't Live Without

I was stumbling around the net today and I happened upon a blog entry regarding someone's list of "essential" open source software for windows. Feeling rather argumentative, I'd like to point out that this guy puts on his list several items that do the same thing. That, and some of them are just a bit crap in my opinion. So here's my top 10 pieces of free software I couldn't live without:
Well, there's GMail too. But that's hardly actual software. And I hit my 10 anyway. So there. GET THEM ALL.

Monday, December 11, 2006

It's almost christmas...

Ok, I'll admit it. It's getting close to christmas. Season of goodwill and all that. So who, you may ask*, is going to get a present from me? As it stands, nobody. I'm a tight bastard. Christmas cards you might get. But nothing else.

Last week up here before said christmas. Woo.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Lectures


I'm in a lecture. There's a guy at the front of the room and he's boring the hell out of me. Probably boring the people around me too. Very boring. At this point, I'm thankful that I've got my wireless intarweb working. that means I can actually sit here and do something. Like post to my blog. How interesting.


What to think, what to blog...


Well, erm, I haven't been drunk for a while. That sucks. And I've noticed my bank balance is getting low. And erm. Some other stuff. Too. Oh yeah, I just lost.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Re-written post

I wrote this post a couple of minutes ago, but it vanished quite suddenly. How rare.

What to write about! TP, I think :o

Terry Pratchett, that is. Currently reading Night Watch, one of his discworld novels, about half way through. My second one, actually. First was Thud! - a very good book. Seems I've finally found another author to read - other than 'Clancy.

Clubbing! Went out to liquid last night. Crap music. Reasonable atmosphere. Good drinks. Maybe a little overpriced though... Pretty good evening all in all. Especially liked the Irish place we started off in - great atmosphere and good live music always helps... Oh yeah, and I played poker before that :O How interesting :O

Education :(... Math lectures are starting to get boring as hell. Reminds me of the old Mrs Robinson days. *shudder* Although at least now I can get away with doing other stuff while absorbing what little there is to learn. Like mapping out last night's dreams...

Dreams :O!!! Some weird and/or interesting dreams last night O_o... Mainly involved trying to get rid of a baby (in a pram), having someone turn into a plant and uncovering a secret government plot in a half-underground, half-demolished building. Oh yes, and the lifts were rather dangerous.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

The phantom post...

I was just backing stuff up, and I found a post I'd intended to make the day I arrived on campus. Here goes...

So. I'm at uni now. Got up to Lancaster this (Sunday) morning. First impressions? People seem friendly enough. Room's pretty much what I expected, although there could be slight problems getting my PC hooked up...

Yet I digress. I am now insanely bored. Since I arrived and got everything unpacked (about 11am), I've been sitting around, being bored, doing nothing in particular. So bored, in fact, that I got my laptop out and started writing a blog entry. Sad, eh? Well I do have another reason for hooking my laptop up. Seems I can access computers of anyone nearby on this nice little network. Two so far, and I have a feeling that number will go up greatly...

(It did.)

Sunday, October 08, 2006

A view and some comments

So, I've been here... One week. Here's Lancaster University, in case you didn't know. I'ma be studying Computer Science for 3 years, doing a minor in Maths. Shouldn't be a problem for me, given my background and hobbies. Despite being a lot of foreign people around, life isn't too bad here, for now, but then again the course hasn't started yet...

Oh, the picture? View out of my window. Not too bad, car park sucks though. No yellow car today either. Breakfast fried rice.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Uni!

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...

It seems I'm at uni now. I've met some people. I've had some alcohol. And hell, I can barely stand up at this point due to the last sentence. But hell, I just had quite an enjoyable night :O
Bar crawl, made it to probably half the bars on campus, but at least I survived long enough to get home. Room's small, but it does me quite well. Seems like I've got to be up by 1pm, but I'll probabl try and get up in the AM... So uh... GOOOOOOOODDNIIIIIIIIIIIGTHHHHT D:

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

No more tr00st.co.uk

Seems I've ran out of tr00st.co.uk :'(

If you've found this, then you probably know it's now only at tr00st.blogspot.com

I hope in the future to get tr00st.co.uk back in some manner, probably just redirecting to here!

Friday, September 15, 2006

The Weirdo!

It would be a good idea for you all to look at Svip's webcomic! It is full of awesome. DO IT >:|

Friday, August 11, 2006

10 Things I hate about RL

  1. Screenshots - You have to pay to take screenshots. Then you have to pay to get in-game copies of screenshots. Come on. Flawed system?
  2. Respawn points - Who designs levels with no respawn points? That's just stupid!
  3. Monthly fees - The monthly fees are just excessive. Who'd want to pay £200+ per month when you can play CoH for £8.99?
  4. Modding - Nobody released the source code to modders. Games are so much better when they get modded... Where's CT vs T? Oh wait...
  5. Horribly unbalanced - Certain classes (management) seem to build stats far easier than others D:...
  6. Lamers - Too damn many (*cough*America*cough*)
  7. Physics - They're just too damn restricting! I mean, how am I supposed to build upside down pyramids with gravity set this high?
  8. Not enough professions - What happened space exploration? It was in the beta! D:!
  9. Levelling - Levelling is just too damned slow. I spent over a year getting my PHP stat up one level...
  10. Holland. 

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Bannanaz

Bannanaz, eh? Long. Smooth. Tasty. Yellow. Could be something else, except if it's yellow, you might need to see a doctor... Yet I digress. Banana's are actually my most favourite fruit. They're so yellow and have a nice texture. That, and their immense power as a phallic symbol. That's pretty full of win.

Right. So what can we do with bananas? Well, you could eat them. That would be boring though, wouldn't it? Instead, you could make a smoothie. Loads of ice cream, loads of banana, little milk, blend it up and you're done. Tasty. but still boring. So here are five other things you can do with a banana!
  1. Wear it:
    One obvious way comes to mind... but you could probably also sew banana skins together to make a nice raincoat. Or a shirt. Or something.
  2. Sex toy:
    *cough*
  3. Start a banana-rights group:
    Collect together all the bananas you can find, theft possible if necessary
    *, take some photographs of their terrible conditions (one of them tightly packed together should be enough to bring a tear to the eye of even the most devout opposition) and make a lot of money giving interviews about said terrible conditions on TV.
  4. Make a Pottasium bomb:
    Bananas are high in Pottasium. Pottasium is reactive. Put two and two together and you have a plentiful supply of explosive foodstuffs! Can be used in conjunction with idea 3 - take people hostage and blow them up with the very things they opress!
  5. Start a multinational corporation:
    Use bananas as empoyees! I'm sure their average IQ is greater than that of your
    average American...

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Mmm... Chocolate chips...

I was stumbling around the internet today, and I happened to come across this article, giving a little experiment to show the speed of light. I must remember to do that experiment myself some time. Exclusively for the scientific value, I swear. Nothing to do with having to eat the chocolate afterwards...

Oh yeah, and this is interesting too.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

I call shotgun!

A firm observer of the rules of shotgun, I attempted to call shotgun on a short road trip. A lift home to be precise. However, I was thwarted by someone saying something to the effect of:
"You can't call shotgun! I can't see the car!"
At this point, I was, obviously, disheartened at the fact that I had lost my right to shotgun. Furthermore, I decided to take a good look at the rules, and discovered a passage that shows that I had shotgun rights after all:
The Line-Of-Sight Rule
In the situation of the deed being a hike or other extensive outdoor activity, you may not call Shotgun until the automobile is within your sight. This rule needs only to be used when the passengers are outside for a long time and have traveled long distances from the car, as with a day of snow skiing.
I'd have to say this is quite obviously stating that, as the "deed", specifically an exam, has been done inside, the line-of-sight rule doesn't apply. 'Nuff said.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Jack codes in Delphi!

Jack Bauer, in his infinite wisdom, seems to have learnt some rather impressive coding skills. As commented on here, Jack definitely seems to be a pretty good user of Delphi. Hell, he was able to use a part-written media player he wrote to tell that an EMP was going to go off. Damn. I'm impressed.
What's next? Dieing and coming back to life? Oh wait.

Do a barrel roll!

Was googling around and happened to find a blog entry that intrigued me. Guy doing a barrel roll while pouring ice tea. Works under the laws of physics, but is still pretty damned impressive:

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Gaming in Linux

Wow, seems I'm doing an entry that actually has a point. How rare.

Anyway. Gaming in linux. Although generally not people's preferred gaming platform, Linux is anything but incapable. Generally, there are two ways to go. You can either go for native Linux games - Darwinia is a personal favourite of mine, running on Windows, Linux or Mac OSX - or running Windows games via some sort of emulator*, my personal choice being Wine, or a variant like Cedega. There are, of course, some steps common to getting games working either way, specifically getting drivers for your graphics card working properly. I won't bother explaining about my experiences with this. If you can't use google well enough to find some help, I'm not sure if you're ready to use Linux...

* Wine isn't actually an emulator, more of a compatibility layer. Emulator's easier to explain.

Native linux games? There's a few out there. As I said, Darwinia's my personal favourite, and there are also a couple of other games from the same guys, Uplink, which is available now, and Defcon, which is awesome and coming soon. There's also a couple of the more "mainstream" games, like Quake 3 Arena, Neverwinter Nights and Unreal Tournament 2k3 which have been ported onto linux. Generally, these are pretty easy to install, but if all else fails, you can always google for a howto... There's usually one around for any problem you'll have. Check linuX-gamers for that.

That said, good native linux games are still pretty sparse, at least compared to Windows ones. That's where Wine comes into play. Once again, I'd best point you to linuX-gamers or WineHQ, as I don't feel like going into detail over setup details. Cutting a long story short, Wine lets you run a lot of windows software under Linux. Often badly. And with setup issues. But still, it's better than nothing. And if you're willing to shell out a little, head over and have a look at TransGaming's Cedega program. Designed specifically for gaming, they've got a reasonable list of games that run quite well, Half Life 2, Civilization IV and Guild Wars to name a few. So, um, I guess that's about all I've got to say on the subject. Now go. Install linux and, most importantly, play.

Oh yeah, personal note, another exam over. And another one tomorrow. Bah.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

New Stuff.

 Whether or not anyone's been paying attention, I've been bitching about computing needing something new for quite a while. Well, as I discovered while surfing today, there are a few things you can do. (Just a note for windows users, you're stuck without stuff like this. Serves you right.)
Recently, I moved onto Ubuntu as my operating system. Some linux enthusiasts may disagree, but it's nicely organised, and simplifies a lot of the hard stuff. As default, it's not installed, but I learnt about a very nice music playing app called amaroK. Organises everything very well. That was step one.
Step two. Compiz. What's compiz? Compiz makes your computer look the way it always should've done. Alpha blended title bars, rotating cube desktop, stretchy windows. So many things have been thrown into this window manager. On top of that, it runs pretty smoothly two. Hell, it's usable on the heap I call a PC, so who shouldn't be able to run it?
Other than that, only other thing worth meantioning would be Wine. It lets you run windows software under linux. Sometimes. 'Nuff said.
On a final note, it be the exam period now. Got an exam tomorrow. Damn. Well, goodnight.

Friday, May 12, 2006

I'm tired...

 I'm tired. So I'm going to go to bed soon. But first I'm going to see how well this thing works.
From what I've observed through life, it's probably better to tell people how you feel. Despite this, most people, including myself, never bother. They simply coast through life, getting blown around by the currents of what other people do.
So yeah. I got thinking again. Sucks, doesn't it? Wish people would just tell me what they're thinking... I may be offended, but I'll try hard not to hold it against you. Much.
Oh yeah, and I changed the look of the site. What ye think?

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

What

Damn. I'm confused. Would someone please give me a detailed description of what the hell is going on?

Seriously though. Can someone please tell me what the real story is? No idea if anyone who knows what's going on will even see this. But, in the rare event that someone does, please tell me what the shit is happening. And yes, it involves my personal feelings. Now go. Tell me. Email me or something. 

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Reporting on life

Oh, hi! Looks like someone looked at my site. Possibly not though, you never know.

However, I can say that life looks to be quite happy at the momeny. Happy happy happy. In fact, on this fine evening, I've been bloody ecstatic. Frisbeeing. People. Other happy things. Yay.

Additionally, the hosting's sorted out on this site for about another six months. What does that mean for you? Oh, just a good littering of good space on the intraweb. Yay.

 

Monday, May 01, 2006

A news post

 So, I put some news here! Yay!
Well, life seems to be going on. Some intriguing email going on. Hooray for that.
Also, I must point out the newest addition to my links! CLICK IT. Or don't. Or something.
That's all for now.
(Edit: The top one. Not the bottom one. In fact, bottom one is gone. Ha.)