I decided to move this blog to my own domain lackingthewords.com as I’d like to have the extra layer of control over my blog and its not like domains are expensive.  Since I already have hosting for tehdurka it was easy enough to add it on to that and although setting things up has taken a little while everything has been going ok.  I’m hoping to write some stuff people might actually want to read in the future (wow, think of that!) and hopefully develop some steady traffic. Maybe I’ll see you there, metaphorically speaking, of course…

Well the BBC opened up the beta for the new iPlayer a few days ago, I signed up for it on the day it came out and got accepted yesterday. I’ve been excited about it for a while, the idea of on-demand BBC programming is a very nice one in my mind. Having given it a bit of a spin I guess I can talk about it a bit.

When I was accepted I got an email telling me my username and password, which are both rather awkward and pretty much impossible to remember (and I think impossible to change). I headed to the website on IE (since its not firefox or any OS other than XP friendly) and logged in, through what seems like a bit of a strange pop-up box similar to what you get when logging into FTP. I had to run a few activeX controls but it seemed to be working.

When it came to downloading the first show I first had to download the library which is the part of the program on my computer which manages all the downloading and viewing of the material. After dealing with some connection problems (Firewall etc) I finally got into downloading the first show. It was kinda difficult to tell whether it was actually doing anything though as everything seemed very inactive for a while. You don’t get any info about your kb/s or how many peers you are connected to (it uses P2P technology, presumably to lower strain on the BBC servers) so its difficult to know whether its not working or whether its just slow.

As well as the snails pace downloading my computer had basically ground to a halt as well and I couldn’t really do anything. I tried to close the iPlayer but it wasn’t working. I just got pissed off and reset the computer and didn’t start it back up until a while later. When I did start it up I was pleasently surprised to see that the first of the shows had finished and the others were getting there.  This is pretty strange considering that the program hadn’t even been running but I guess it was a blessing really.

At this point the app seems to be quite clunky and slow but otherwise ok after the original crushing of my computer responsiveness. To be honest I think the whole system needs a complete re-write as it seems completely incompatible with other browsers and operating systems in its current form. The BBC are getting a lot of flak for having it only available for windows XP users and although I didn’t think it was such a big deal since they have basically just targeted the biggest demographic to get it ready sooner the way it seems to operate doesn’t seem to be very multi format friendly. Ultimately it needs to turn into something a bit more like Joost, with no need to go fiddling around in IE to download the shows. I think this will make it easier to put it across different formats and hopefully make the application a bit better in itself.

I just finished watching last weeks episode of mock the week, which I missed. The iPlayer uses windows media play to play the shows, its not exactly the greatest player ever made but it works and I’m familiar with it, which is something.  At the moment the iPlayer is a bit bare and clunky but I’m hoping with time it will turn into something more enjoyable to use.

Well, I finished the final instalment of Harry Potter only about 20mins ago.  It is such a great relief to have finished it and I don’t think I could be more satisfied with the ending.  I agree with what Rowling said – it really does finish the whole story very nicely.  The only other time a story has finished so much my way was Life on Mars, which felt so extremely satisfying that I could hardly believe it even existed but this feel like so much more than that.  Having been given so long to read and re-read the books getting to know and love these characters the ending just felt so right.  I’m just so pleased

Similarly now I feel I can go back to doing things I normally do which I had put on hold to make sure that I didn’t collide with any spoilers. I don’t think I can do anything but be pleased at the moment.

How lovely.

Just got home and spotted that Harry Potter 7 has been leaked onto bit torrent. That really makes my fucking day.

I had already planned it out, I wouldn’t dare look at the internet once the book was out, or even leave the house, or anything for fear of getting hit with a spoiler. Now I have to live in fear until I can finally get my hands on it, or I torrent the book and start reading. But I really don’t want to do that.

It was only just a couple of days ago that I read that it was surprising it hadn’t been leaked yet and now it has. I’m not sure that there is anything I can do without finding spoilers. There are fucking bastards on the internet and given that this is the last book there are going to be some uber ripe and juicy spoilers just ready to spread onto the net. I really don’t know what I’m gonna do.

Not to mention people are going to start shouting random fake spoilers, at least if you know that no one other than Rowling knows the spoilers you don’t have to worry about random people making comments as you know its all bullshit. Now anything could be true but its not even going to be as fair as that. Enough people will say the real spoilers that it will be obvious.

AGGGHHHH.

I really don’t know what to do here, I don’t want the book spoiled but at the same time I don’t want an internet lockdown for the rest of the week. I’m not sure anything is safe, I can’t stumble or look at digg or anything. It’s all at risk now.

Damn it.

If only nobody cared I wouldn’t be at risk.

And yes, I am writing as though it is some kind of contagious disease – because it is. You only have to look once and that’s it everything gets ruined, its like how you can’t un-see anything (and hence why you should never click any links), you can’t un-read anything either, or un-hear for that matter.

I feel like I can’t do ANYTHING. There’s a reasonable chance that people at school will have found the spoilers, probably just to go around shouting them just to fucking piss people off.

I can’t even do things that would normally take my mind off impending doom such as play Wow, or…yeah…browse the internet.

I guess I either have to accept that its going to be ruined for me, hide till it comes out or torrent it and do nothing but read until I finish it. UGGHH!

That is really not the kind of decision I want to be making.

I was talking about this earlier today because the village where I live has posters up about her disappearance, however long ago it was. This kinda pisses me off on a few different levels.

1. I seem to remember at the beginning of this whole media frenzy it was mentioned that she had been left alone whilst the parents were having a meal. Woah, wait a minute right there! The parents just went off and had a meal whilst they left their four year old alone in the hotel room? Right from that minute I felt it would be very difficult to feel sympathy for these parents. I still feel that way now.
2. Shit happens all the fucking time, there really is no reason whatsoever why this particular case deserves so much attention, along with all the other stuff the parents have gotten out of it (I can’t really give examples other than a visit to the Pope but since they got that I think they probably got more).
3. Since they going and visiting the Pope, who can do fuck all about finding their daughter, I can’t really come to any other conclusion other than they are enjoying the attention from the media and the apparent privileges that come from that. I personally find that sickening.
4. I’m generally quite apathetic to the suffering of individuals unless I know them. You might think this as harsh but I more see it this way: I can’t be sympathetic to all the bad shit going on for the millions of people I don’t know, at least if I care about none of them I’m not discriminating. Worrying about individuals in such a manner doesn’t do anything, I can’t help them but maybe I can make a difference in general such as helping to end poverty and improving education. The people around me maybe I can help so they are the only people worth devoting my energy to, not because they are “better people” but because they are people I personally know and care about and more primarily I can actually maybe do something to help.

Ultimately this pretty young white girl thing just pisses me off. The media will keep it up until more people change their attitude and see how much bullshit it is.

My copy of the new Turisas album The Varangian Way arrived yesterday, only the day after it was released so I’m pleased about that for starters. I bought their first album on a whim but it pretty much blew my mind, what they dub as “battle metal” is a sort aggressive folk metal with orchestration. I wouldn’t really expect many people to like it if they didn’t give it a shot but personally I think its awesome.

This new album is much more varied than the previous one, there are areas with much more use of the acordian and violin as well as quieter and louder areas with more aggressive stuff that resembles more of the bulk of the metal genre I suppose. For me that’s great as I really love the folky stuff but it also has variation that I really appreciate and given that I enjoy other areas of metal it all fits together nicely. My first listen gave me a good feeling about it, I’m listening again at the moment and enjoying it even more. I would advise people to buy it (and the first one, totally mind blowing) but

1. No one reads my crappy blog
2. No one cares what I have to say about this album

Didn’t stop me writing this post though eh?

The site I mentioned I was working on in a previous post is still being worked on albeit more slowly. The actual news is that I decided to buy hosting and a domain for pretty dirt cheap from tengun.net and go daddy respectively. Go daddy are having a sale on .info domains so I grabbed tehdurka.info for about £0.64 in total for a year. I don’t really think you can get a better deal than that. Hosting equates to about £1.04 per month with PHP and MySQL although register_globals is off so I have to change quite a lot of code to make it work properly but at the same time it makes my code better and more secure so its all good really. I reckon that it costs a lot more than £1.04 a month just to leave my computer on during the day (electricity costs) so it seems like a very good deal for me and it means the site will always be online and working at a good speed so its good for the users as well.

I might see if I can get some Google adsense going to pay these little costs, I dunno whether they would accept me though. I also would like to revamp the site both visually and code wise but I’m going to put most of that off till after my exams since I’ve been told teachers go very easy on us for the remainder of the term. I also ought to do some more university research as well and try and pick out some more places to apply to, I’d like to feel ready by the time it comes to writing personal statements etc. I also need to go on some open days but they tend to be during the holidays so I can’t do that yet.

Ok that really is it for today, I seem to have gone a bit overdrive for some reason.

So yeah I’m on exams at the moment, not much fun. I had my critical thinking exam on Friday which I think went well, particularly the argument paper as I am more inclined to the analysis of arguments given how many there are on this big ol internet. Today was my psychology exam which was pretty tough actually, a few days ago I realised how unprepared I was for this exam and I really wasn’t the only one. I didn’t hear anyone saying they felt good about the exam before or after. To me I’m just glad to have gotten rid of it and I’m just not going to worry about it anyway, which is quite a relief.

My next exam is English literature on Friday, which should be er…fun? I somewhat doubt that I will do particularly well but there isn’t that much I can do about that, except reading the texts and learning quotes. In reality I don’t really care that much about it, I will make some effort to learn some quote for the poetry as I can already remember quotes for the play (Cat on a Hot tin roof). Other than that I will be doing some reading with a bit of daily lit. Quite a helpful website, shame it doesn’t have more books that I am interested in.

It was my sixth form’s may ball on Friday, meaning that lots of people got drunk (including one of my best friends) and it was generally a lot of fun, raving and such. Although I enjoyed having some alcohol and was sort of on the verge of being drunk at one point I managed to avoid it despite having drunk nearly a bottle of wine, a baileys and a malibu with coke (the latter two being one of my friend’s suggestions that I just went along with). The idea behind it is generally a leaving do for the year 13 so it will be “ours” next year. I look forward to it.

Well, I’ve been feeling ill today and yesterday which has just contributed to the general crazy-feeling of today. I guess the most important thing would be finding out that instead of the C I thought I got in my first Chemistry module I actually got a B. This really pissed me off in some ways since I really wouldn’t have retaken the module had someone actually told me I had gotten a B, I assumed that for the score I got the grade boundaries were the same across all the subjects and modules, which would be logical since they are scaled up from the actual mark you get on the paper. Finding out that was wrong made me check the AQA website and after some digging found the grade boundaries, revealing that I had in fact gotten a B.

Another part of it lies in that I was asked for another £5 for the May ball. Now I’m absolutely certain that I had paid enough (I was giving in the money for me and a friend, we both owed £25 and so I gave over £50) but as I walked into my first lesson I was told I was £5 short. I didn’t really want to argue at the time because I figured my friend must have owed more than he thought so I just paid it. Later however, in Chemistry, my friend was asked for £5 as well. He told them he had already paid and they went away but I don’t think they will drop this. Now we’re completely sure that we owed £25 each and I’m absolutely sure I handed over £50 (I didn’t have any money left afterwards, I know that for sure). I figure £10 of that must have been lost in transit or something, so essentially I’ve been scammed out of £5. I guess I’ve got to have the grace to let it go, I want the ball to go ahead and if my paying extra £5 helps that happen then I should be happy, I suppose it makes up a bit for my lack of enthusiasm towards fund raising.  I guess I just don’t like getting ripped off in such a way.

At least writing it down seems to have helped me get over those little things, what with feeling pretty ill it hasn’t been a great day really. I’m off to bed now, tommorow I just have one lesson first period then I’m going shopping to sort of piece together a suit for the previously mentioned may ball…

The kid who didn’t realise I am a guy briefly talked to me today. He seemed genuinely surprised that I am actually a man. Not a great boost to the old self-esteem there. Of course, its actually just funny that he seems to have difficulty recognising my…err…being a male.

Today has been quite a hazy day, feels a bit like a dream. Pretty crap really. Nothing really happened bad or anything it just feels sort of strange. Everything is pretty much on target otherwise, not much to report to the all seeing internet, although I do have the joy of “looking forward” to the may ball next Friday, no idea how that is going to go, I guess we’ll see.