the Impending Doom

There's only a week to go until study leave begins, but that doesn’t mean that the exam period starts then.

For me, the impending Doom of exams starts this coming Monday.

On Monday morning I have my Computing COMP1 Practical exam. This basically consists of a small amount of theory, paired with a set of tasks to code into a supplied program. I'm good at coming up with programming solutions, so this should be a breeze; the following Friday morning contains the Computing COMP2 Theory paper.

The papers I’m worried about are the maths CORE3 and CORE 4 as the topic they cover are difficult and I know I won’t get my B target. The physics, Decision Maths, and Systems papers are OK, but I still worry about them to a degree. I also have a Maths Mechanics re-sit, which the only problem with last time was that the questions were lethal.

Even though it’s supposed to be study leave, I’m going to enjoy myself a bit, I’m going to be ordering some trading cards to improve my game, so that during the revision breaks I’ll have, I'll be able to go out and play against the community that gathers regularly in the town library.

After buying those cards, I won’t be buying anything for a while, as I’ll be using any money I get for putting money back into my bank account, in order to re-fill it after buying my laptop.

Lots about my LAN

I have been trying to get a Local Area Network in our house for ages, today it finally happened.

This is thanks to Mr. Tarrant and my good friend Scud.

I should explain.

For those who don’t know, a LAN or Local Area Network is a means of connecting computers together which are close together. LANs give a wealth of bonuses to a system, the most useful is the ability to share files and printers, another bonus is for PC gamers, LANs give the ability to host networked multiplayer games via TCP/IP, allowing the dispense of hot-seat gaming or the ability to actually play a multiplayer of the game.

Mine was brought about originally by Scud, my computer needed to be connected to his home network in order for us to transfer a large file across, so when he connected it, I watched and learnt how to set up the wired connection and how to share. It turned out in the end that the sharing was the main part of scuds part, as I still couldn’t connect the computers together through our ADSL2+ Modem/Router which was supplied to us by O2, I knew that it was possible as some of the techies at O2 had said they had done it quite simply, this made me more determined to get it to work.

The turning point was in computing today, when I mentioned it to Mr. Tarrant, who said that the computers needed to be part of the same workgroup. This got me thinking, what were the computers’ workgroups? I got home, and found that they were all different, so if they were to see each other I had to change them to the same.

As soon as I had done this and rebooted, I was greeted by a load of printer installation boxes, meaning that the computers had found each others printers and were trying to install them, meaning that the network was up and running.

I have spent all of tonight configuring it with some games (so far I’ve managed Freedom Force and Worms Armageddon), and configuring the sharing so that I can access the files of other networked computers, then mapping the shared folders as drives.

Things can’t get much better on the computers at the moment.

Building And Booting The Brand Spanking New

IT’S FINALLY HAPPENED! My computer has been built and is running like a dream except for the occasional hiccup, but that’s the same with any PC.

I went over to the friend who’d be helping me do it at about 11am, where after a trip to the shops, we set out building the beast.

Before we could start building we needed to remove all the old parts and vacuum the case, ready for the new parts.

After cleaning we built the computer as we’d expected to do so, fitting the CPU, RAM and drives to the motherboard, then attaching the Graphics card and Power supply. This is as far as our luck went, the problems started from here on.

We installed windows as we had expected to. We installed it on the new SATA hard disk I’d bought but we had also fitted my old IDE Hard disk as it was still big enough to be of some use. 3 hours after installing XP we discovered that the installer had installed windows on the SATA drive (as we had told it to), but it had seen the IDE drive as the first drive and so had put the boot data on that drive instead of the intended target (not what we wanted). So after we thought we’d sorted everything, we set out having to re-install XP but with the added challenge of having to get it so that it wouldn’t use the IDE drive. We ended up removing the IDE drive, reinstalling XP, then re-formatting the IDE drive from within the XP installer; this meant all the time we’d taken sorting out the computer after installing the OS had been wasted as this meant that we had to wipe the drives and start form scratch.

After getting it installed properly and the drivers installed properly, we put my computer aside as it was getting late and I could do the rest on my own, we also had to see to my mums computer.

The only problems I've had with it were a reluctance to install XP Service pack 3, a couple of graphics problems (but that was my own doing, I'd set it to a setting incompatible with one of my games), and that fact that the front audio ports wouldn’t work without be mucking about with a setting. Luckily they were all easily fixed.

The computer isn’t top-of-the-range, but it’s a damn sight better than the crap you can buy off the shelf for the same amount of money which are lower spec in regards to CPU, RAM and graphics and have vista and a load of manufacturer crap installed on them. As it is now my computer blasts through all of my current games, reaching about 130 frames per second on guildwars at maximum detail; against the 15-32 fps that my old system could manage, and that wasn’t even at full detail. So overall I’m ecstatic with my new system.

Driving to Distraction

My life feels like swings and roundabouts at the moment, I don’t seem to know whether it’ll go my way or not at the moment.

I’ve finally got all the pieces to re-build my PC, I lost count of the cost ages ago, but it all seems to be coming together; all I have to do now is save up enough to pay the person who’ll be guiding me through the process. What a learning curve that’ll be.

I also have my first driving lesson on Saturday; to be honest I’m not sure what to think of it at the moment. I tend to be able to live without items or skills that others seem to think are mandatory, like a mobile for instance – I only have one as I was given it, I seem to be swaying towards the same mind frame with driving. I know it’ll help me a lot more than a mobile ever will and that I'll need it at some point, but, to be totally frank, the prospect of being on the road scares me, as I've had masses of near misses as a pedestrian. Most were the drivers fault rather than mine as they all seem to happen on pelican crossings; but I just can’t shake this feeling that at one point I'll lose concentration and be the cause rather than the victim, and have it turn out a lot worse than a “near-miss”.

The work at school is a bit lighter at the moment, but the subjects are getting more complicated. Maths has a lot more to remember than any subject (I’m also sick of adults who did O-levels, where everything had to be remembered, harping on about how things are easier, I’d like to see them go through all this again, as it certainly doesn’t seem easier). Physics is also both boring and complicated, the Mechanics is boring as I've done it all before and the Waves is complicated as I've just skipped half the questions in a homework as I didn't understand it.

My fatigue is also getting worse, I write my entries at this time of night as I can’t sleep, then because I've been up late I'm tired in school, the lessons where you’re just talked at make this worse, as I dozed off in maths today during Mrs Ball’s explanation. It also happens in Physics and select systems lessons with Mr Finn.

I also seem to be distracted a lot more recently. Be it some discussion that sparks my interest, or just the usual Wednesday afternoon maths degeneration. I think it’s fair to say my concentration is shot to bits.

Builders, Bikes, Broadband and Booting-up

This half term has not been going well.

For the first few days we were still tidying ready for the builders to come and install our new heating. On Tuesday they came and started ripping out the radiators and boiler.

It just so happened that a couple of other things were due to happen that day.

One was the fact that the police were marking bikes down at Currock house, in an attempt to reduce bike theft, or to at least re-unite the bikes with their owners.

The other was that our broadband was changing over that day, so I’d have to install the new router.

At about 5pm, when the builders had left, Mum and Stuart went out to Currock house to get his bike marked. I didn’t go, even though I own a bike, I hardly use it as my sense of balance is bad, really bad. After they had gone I set about setting the new router up, it was quick and trouble free. But that was not to last.

After the laptop and the cupboard computer were linked to the router, I installed the Anti-virus software that came with the broadband, and updated it. This worked flawlessly on the PC, but it went catastrophically wrong on the laptop. After the update had finished the laptop needed to restart itself, when it got to the point of starting back up, it failed.

I was presented with an error message, which reads something to the tune of: “cannot boot from WINDOWS\CONFIG\SYSTEM . The file may be corrupted or missing. Boot from Windows XP disk and press ‘R’ to attempt repair” For those who didn’t understand any of that, the computer was basically saying “can’t start, shove a disk in me to help me.” The problem was I couldn’t shove said disk in, as the netbook I use lacks a CD/DVD drive.

This spurred a flurry of calls to my good friend Scud, who has helped me out when updating hardware, or sorting problems I haven’t got a clue how to sort. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get through to him at that time, so I was stuck with only one option: - buy a USB drive and attempt recovery myself. Unfortunately this wasn’t going to happen at that time as it was about 9pm at this time.

As my room was in disarray due to the heating upgrade, it meant I’d have to go and sleep at Dales. This proved good for a couple of reasons, the main one was that it gave me somewhere more comfortable to sleep; the other was that as the bottom had just dropped out my world due to the laptop failure, I had a lot of pent up aggression. It was at dales I found how soothing shooting zombies with a shotgun can be, due to trying out “Left 4 Dead”. I’m not usually into 1st person shooters, or more gory games, but I needed a let-out and didn’t care, but I found that I actually enjoyed it, and I was a little better at FPS’ than I thought (but not great).

I arrived home at around lunchtime the next day, to find that the builders had laid waste to the old fire.

The rest of the day really didn’t go my way, first, the wire in my brace come loose, and we have to make arrangements to get a temporary fix for it. At the same time, I’m looking on every computer site I know for a USB CD drive, I find one on PC world which claims to be quite good for the price and has Lightscribe. We decide to reserve it, and collect it on the way back from the orthodontists after getting my brace fixed.

After collecting the drive, I notice that there's something missing from its capabilities, the Lightscribe is missing. It appears as thought the description of the drive online is wrong. On finding this out, I go into legal mode, phoning up PC world, and stating that they violated the “trade of goods description act” meaning that a full refund or trade must happen. As I am hell bent on getting my laptop back on it’s feet tonight, we go out to PC world again to get it exchanged, but this is at 7:40pm, when PC world shuts at 8pm. Mum raced up the motorway, and reaches PC world with only a few minutes to spare. After I explain about the wrong description, the assistant is happy to change it with no extra charge even if the one I was meant to get was about £5 dearer.

On getting home, I try phoning Scud again and get through to him this time, so with his help, get my laptop back into working order, with no loss of data.

Tonight I'm back over at Dale's as there is no way I'm able to find anywhere to sleep back home. At least everything is working again, but even though I get the feeling I've just tempted fate, I can live with it for now as what lies ahead can’t be as bad as what’s happened the last two days, can it?