Bridging the Gap

Happy New Year.

For a while I’ve used a USB Wi-Fi dongle to connect my main PC to the internet, unfortunately the one I currently use started going faulty a couple of months ago. What it did was overheat, disconnect itself from the PC, and then reconnect to the PC as an unidentified device. Every time this happened I had to unplug it, cool it, and plug it back in.

At first I could live with it, it was a minor annoyance that only occurred every so often, but in early December it got plain ridiculous, by taking less than 5 minutes before it overheated the first time and repeated the process 3 times in a couple of minutes. Well I sent it off to Belkin before Christmas and decided I’d use my computer offline while waiting for a replacement; this didn’t last long as the lack of an internet connection on my PC got very old, very fast.

Even though I could just use my laptop to use the internet, I would lose out on the better online gaming on my PC, the better performance it offers and many other internet based activities, so I was not going to sit around waiting for Belkin to get its arse in gear; I decided I’d get my PC on the net in some way or other.
At first, I brought my PC’s tower downstairs and put it in place of my mums PC, and connected it to the router with a wire. But once my mum started complaining that she couldn’t access her files on her normal PC, I decided I’d have to find an alternative way from upstairs.

In the end, I've managed to improvise a connection; I'm using my laptop as a bridge. The laptop is wirelessly connecting to the router as normal, and is also connected to the PC via Ethernet. I then bridged the wired and wireless connections on my laptop (meaning it acts as a link between the PC and the router). The first time I tried this, it didn't work, and I couldn't find out why; that was until mum came off a game she had been playing on the computer downstairs and found she had got an "IP conflict" error. I then knew what had caused the error; my PC had assigned itself the same IP as my Mum’s PC, but this was easily solved by manually setting the IP on my PC.

Everything then slotted into place, the PC connected and I was able to use it as normal.
The only disadvantages to this method are that the laptop must always be on when the PC wants to connect to the internet, and that the Wi-Fi receiver on my laptop isn't as good as the one in the dongle I sent off
But hey, it works, and it'll do until I get a replacement dongle back from Belkin.

Until Next Time

Hungry this Christmas

Those who have spoken to me since the last Tuesday of term, seen my Facebook page or heard about it some other way will know that I haven’t been well recently. But for those who didn't know, you know now.

I’ve had some sort of vomiting bug, and I’m even less pleased about it than usual.

That may seem like a weird thing to say, but it annoys me purely as it causes my diet to become limited, in order to reduce the amount that I throw up. I’m ticked off more this time as it means that I won’t be pigging-out over Christmas. The “being ill” thing doesn’t really bother me as it gives me an excuse to lounge around without the “haven’t you got anything more constructive to do?” parent nag.

I was getting better, and had increased the amounts I was eating to near my usual portions. But today it came back with a vengeance; it’s been so bad today, that I haven’t had any sleep yet tonight due to going back-and-forth to the toilet in order to lose what remains of my last meal.

And this all means that I won’t be eating any chocolate that’s given to me over Christmas. Wonderful…

Merry Christmas; and make sure the juices run clear from your turkey, or you could be joining me.

Does Not Compute

At the beginning of the year, I was pleased that we were getting Mr. Etisoy as our computing teacher, but now I’m not so sure.

We’ve got to do a practical project for A2, and we got started on it a week ago last Wednesday. Mr. Etisoy told us to find a Client, who we could work with throughout the project; I am not lucky enough to know someone who would fit the bill easily enough, and after talking to my dad on the following Saturday, we came up with a couple of ideas.

The first was for my dad, he wanted a program to keep track of the stocks and shares he had inherited from my Great Uncle Les, but the idea was quashed by Mr. Etisoy when I told him that the program wouldn’t be for a business. WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE!?

The other was a stock control program for a pub; my dad knows the landlords of The Bridge End Inn, and while he was talking about my problem over a pint, they offered to be my clients. This was turned down by Mr. Etisoy after he deemed it “not complex enough”. As a result of this, I texted dad saying it was a no go, so he told the landlords the same.

After having both ideas turned down, I got my dad on the case; he phoned up Mr. Etisoy, asking about the ideas that had been turned down and why the subject wasn’t being taught as effectively (as at this point Mike Jamieson and I were worried about our grades slipping). As a result, Mr. Etisoy finally accepted the Pub Idea, but it was too late, the landlords had been turned down and it was their day off.

This forced us to find another client, I thought of an educational game that could be used in a primary school, so I approached a local primary school asking if they would be willing to help me, they took a note down that night, and I got a call the next day at around 2pm saying “no”. This meant I had to try another school; it was Thursday at this point, so if this school said no I would be in deep shit. I tried my old primary school this time hoping that as I was an ex-pupil they would be more co-operative, I sent an e-mail to them and awaited a reply; I gave them until 12:30pm the next day to reply, but as I had no reply I phoned them to find out that the person I was writing to didn’t work on Fridays.

Now I really was in the shit, there was 2 hours to go until half term and I still had no project, I went to Mrs. Fleming and asked is there anything she could do to help; she got Mr. Winter in as he was the head of the ICT department. After a Quick discussion, we settled on using an idea that Dr Barker had given me about doing a blockbuster game-show simulator that he could add custom questions to. I went to Mr. Etisoy to give him an update, I first told him that the school idea had been screwed, and then pitched the newest idea to him, and he said yes.

At long last, I had a Computing project. All that remained was to get a bit more information from Dr Barker, and then I was set to do the work in the holidays.
While all this was going on, my dad was exchanging e-mails with Mr. Mottershead, due to all the problems there was in class, involving both general teaching and the project. This meant along the way I was also pestered by Mr. McAree asking what was going on.

The result of all this chaos and my dad's e-mail assault is that the staff have sorted thiings so that after the half term we're gaining an hour extra of computing a week, and are getting our lessons split between Mr. Etisoy for the Project, and Mr. Fernihough for the Theory.

I’m glad that’s all sorted out, as during it I was more stressed out than I have been for a while.

Under the Weather

I said I was going to write this about a fortnight ago, but I never got around to it. So I might as well fill you in on the illness that I had.
It all started on the second Wednesday of term.
I wasn’t feeling great when I got up, but I had hoppers’ voice in my mind saying: “It’s not that bad, you can still go to school”. What I had at that time was a minor headache and a nagging cough. My first lesson was computing, and as it went on I started feeling worse. The headache started throbbing, and I started getting the occasional dizzy spell. On Wednesday I also do some volunteering in the town library, so I had to go there as well, during the hour I was there, I stared getting hot and cold flushed and my energy simply left me; I felt dead. There was also the complication that today we were going to PC world to check prices for dales computer (which he never got, someone bought a laptop for him instead, and they didn’t wait for Win 7), when we got to PC world, I was given some Paracetamol by my Mum, who had driven us there. They helped to a degree; it dulled the headache, made the dizzy spells more infrequent, and generally reduced my suffering.
When we got home, I was shattered, and so slept for about 2 hours.
I was kept off school for obvious reasons, and we investigated the possibility of the illness being swine flu. The online questionnaire said I qualified for the Tamiflu drug, so I sent mum to go get it. They had the reverse effect. Thursday was the day my mum went out, so my little brother was left with instructions on what to do if I got worse, they weren’t needed as at about 9pm I started feeling worse and upon recognising the early warning signs (I had thrown up, showing that the Tamiflu had hit my system) I phoned mum to get her home. I had started feeling cold, so had wrapped my self up with everything I could get my hands on: A full set of clothes, jumper, fleece, dressing gown, and duvet. On getting home she found me in bed, wrapped up and shivering, and immediately got me out of all the things I’d wrapped my self in, then took my temperature: 38.5 Degrees C.
The next day, the Tamiflu took a trip to the sewers, via the toilet.
In order to find out what was actually wrong with me, I was taken to CueDoc, and was given 10 days worth of the amoxicillin anti-biotic, as the doctor suspected that I had a chest infection, he also said that he wouldn’t trust Tamiflu at all, and we did well to send it on the porcelain journey.
After taking the anti-biotic for a week, the only symptom I had left was some catarrh and a cough. This lead us to believe that the illness I actually had was bronchitis, and as it was past its infectious state, I could go back to school.
So to anyone who still thinks I had swine flu, get rid of those stupid delusions.

The Final Year

The last part of my holiday consisted of a camping holiday with dad (where my DS game case proved its worth after the car ran over it, while keeping the games inside relatively unscathed) and a trip to Staffordshire university, after which it was the annual ritual of getting all summer work done within the last week.

When school started, there was an unexpected surprise, Mrs McArdle had returned to trinity, and she was attached to my form. She was my form tutor from Y7 to Y10 but left to further her career elsewhere. I also found that I’d lost an hour off of all my lessons except systems, leaving me with 2 days where I have only one lesson, one of which is at the end of the day, meaning I have to stay in school all day doing nothing until last period.

The only bit of summer work I had was research for systems, I’d already done the practical bit of that before i went on the expedition but i still had to write it up, problem was that my printer gave up while printing it, so i was left in the lurch; my solution was to printing it during my free period in the morning, otherwise, Mr Birch would have another excuse to bitch at me. When i presented it to Mr Birch in lesson, I expected him to have his criticisms, like a lack of analysis or conclusions in my work, that’s fair enough, it’s in the mark scheme, but when he said it was “too text heavy” I couldn’t believe it; it was like stepping back into GCSE ICT. Where in the mark scheme does it say that the research can’t have too much text?

This year has to have a silver lining. Wait, it does, it’s the last year, and there’s the ball at the end of it.