Bestows Blog

The coming LAN on friday to saturday will be my last LAN i intend on hosting. It’s now too hard to find a day when everyone is free from work, and so i’m stopping altogether. It was a good run of LAN’s, except now people have jobs to go to and so the LAN’s are stopping. It’s something im not happy about, but ive just given up. So goodbye LANtastic, you will be missed.

I was watching National Treasure the other day with laura and one comment got my mind ticking:

“They set up clues to stop the British getting to it”

Now it got me thinking that in the majority of films, the English are always portrayed as the bad guys. I mean, what have we done thats so bad? It might be that nearly all films are made in America, and they cant exactly bitch about themselves easily. Also there’s the whole history of war with America blah blah blah. Or, more likely, it is just because everyone hates Britain (as the Eurovision song contest proved). Though why does everyone hate Britain? What have we done wrong to deserve the worlds hate apart from suck up to America? Anyway, back to my original point, Films. There are quite a few films that are Anti-British. To state an obvious one, The Patriot. Which makes all British seem to be posh upper class snobs who care more for their personal belongings than anything else, or blood thirsty reckless maniacs. However all England was trying to do at the time was defend one of Her colonies, something America would have done in exactly the same position. Even the James Bond movies could be seen as having an Anti-British under layer in which Britain meddles in everything all over the world and kills people on a whim. Can’t someone else be the villain and Hero for once? I mean there’s few Blockbuster films in which America is not the Hero, saviour etc. Of course a part of me thinks “fuck everyone else, i mean, what the hell has the EU done except quibble over nothing?” and “What other country has done anything more noteworthy in Europe apart from England?”. To prove this, England ruled the waves pretty much from 1000 to 1914, Even beating that crappy Napoleon (i should know, i wrote my History coursework on it). England ruled something like 1/4 of the world at one point and retained it the longest as well. We even gave birth to America, the most powerful country in the world. Australia, Canada, America, Parts of Africa, New Zealand etc all used to be our colonies. Even now, at least we’re trying to do SOMETHING about Afghanistan or Iraq rather than other European countries. Or maybe its BECAUSE we’ve achieved so much that people Hate Britain, as most countries dont have much to compare it too. Anyway, historical/political rant over, (i hope it didn’t sound too much like something Marshall would rant about when he’s drunk )

As i mentioned in my last post, i have upgraded my computer, except a few minor problems were encountered under the upgrade. Ill run it step by step what happened, including a frustrat-o-meter out of 10, i’ll try and keep it short for those who don’t care but these steps span 2 days. If you can’t be bothered to read, skip to Blarglewargle.
Step 1: Uninstalled previous sound card drivers and turned off computer. Installed the upgrades into the computer (except for the new sound card). Frustrat-o-meter: 0/10

Step 2: Booted up computer successful and logged into windows, no mishaps or reboots and no ’significant hardware change’. Restarted computer to enter the BIOS. Frustrat-o-meter: -1/10

Step 3: Entered BIOS and set the RAM to ‘SLI Ready’. Turned off computer and plugged in new sound card. Frustrat-o-meter: -1/10

Step 4: Booted computer and entered windows successful, received one ‘This program has an error and must close’ message. Loaded up 3dMark to test the computer, 3dMark loads, and system crashes. Frustrat-o-meter: 1/10

Step 5: Repeat Step 4. Frustrat-o-meter: 2/10

Step 6: Reloaded sound card drivers and graphics card drivers. Repeated ‘program error’ messages on almost every program, including the debugger used to find the errors in the programs. Frustrat-o-meter: 4/10

Step 7: Attempted to run 3dMark again, system crashes again. Frustrat-o-meter: 5/10

Step 8: Booted into safe mode and back-tracked windows to the previous week. Rebooted successfully into windows. Numerous system errors and after 45 minutes of running, system crashes, cursing computer commences. Frustrat-o-meter: 7/10

Step 9: Restored defaults on motherboard BIOS and booted into windows. No Program errors on booting, 3dMark attempted again, system crashes. Frustrat-o-meter: 7/10

Step 10: Turned off computer and took out new sound card and new ram, installing the old RAM. Booted into safe mode and uninstalled all sound card drivers, turned off computer for a while. Frustrat-o-meter: 7/10

Step 11: Booted computer, failed to load windows as it couldn’t find a system file, yelled cursing commences. Frustrat-o-meter: 9/10

Step 12: Checked connections and unplugged everything unneeded (cd drives, only one graphics card etc). Still missing a system file, Computer turned off and yelled at before leaving alone. Frustrat-o-meter: 10/10

Step 13: Installed new hard drive and power supply, reinstalled windows. Installed new sound card and sound card drivers, system crashes upon reboot, numerous obscenities and death threats. Frustrat-o-meter: 11/10

Step 14: Re-installed windows AGAIN, without sound card. All goes well, crisis averted and computer functions well.

Blarglewargle
So after all that it was the damn sound card drivers and the SLI ready RAM setting on the motherboard. Causing no end of stress and making me spend £100 to cover the cost of a new PSU and Hard drive, as well as loosing most of my data that i hadn’t backed up recently.

Anyway, exams are finished (thank god) leaving many people happy. Everyone seems glad they have 3 months to do nothing. My exams went……alright. The History questions were good, the General studies questions were just random and the computing papers went…..computery. So 3 months of nothing but holiday, computer games and seeing laura commences. Speaking of computer games….

I got sins of a solar empire the other day, and it is brilliant i find. Even though it takes more than a few hours to get over 1 game, i don’t mind, its not as though i have anything else to do. The LAN is drawing ever nearer as well, its something which i half dread sometimes as it means trying to keep 15 loud boys in check as well as feeding them, but then again, as long as everyone is happy then i’m happy. Its also the Largest LAN yet, with 16 people:

1. Me
2. James
3. Simon
4. Comber
5. Marshall
6. Gooding
7. Jack
8. Sam
9. Dom
10. Herman
11. Laurence
12. Ben
13. Richard
14. Robins
15. Booth
16. Joe

Friday was the Prom, and what a Prom! far better than the Year 11 Prom (no under cooked chicken this time). Smivy sang, people danced and drank and a fun time was had by all i think. The DJ was much better as well, playing a WIDE selection of songs ranging from R&B shite to Classic goodness like The YMCA and Celebration. Anyway, i really enjoyed it, it was nice seeing everyone together, the Video by Ms Warfield was nice, albeit showing the same 10 people and over. The Speech by Sam was…..random, again with the same 10 people mentioned again.

Its also my last proper Exam this Thursday, being History, which i don’t feel prepared for at all, even if i revised for 3 months solidly i probably wouldn’t feel prepared. So yeah, very nervous about that. So its the end of exams this week (general studies doesn’t count ).

Its not only the end of exams but the end of something which you will think is very sad. Its the end….of my computer. Its not what you think . Everything from my original computer bought 3 years ago has just this week been replaced. Both things have served me well, but are now broken. If you remember my birthday party, my computer was used to play the music, at full volume for about 4 hours straight, this sorta…..fried my sound card , well it still works, just you cant turn the volume up unless you like distortion. This is something which very rarely happens in my computers, bits failing. Its something im very proud of as well, that nearly all of my computer parts still are in use after 3 years. For example, my original motherboard, processor and graphics card are still working, and working well in the PC i built for Matt Gooding. Every computer i have built has (so far) stayed working steadily throughout its use. My Grandparents computer, Sams computer, Goodings, My Other computer, all still work. Its something that i am truly proud of and its something i consider an accomplishment. Every computer part i have ever bought still works, mainly due to me researching everything i buy, i don’t look for good reviews, i look for bad ones which give reasons why. No bad reviews, its a good thing. My friends might say that i have had computers fail in the past, but thats only been Software issues, not hardware issues. The reason i find it an accomplishment is that my other friends who’ve built computers, have had a hardware issue of some kind. Herman for example….well lets just say ‘Its Herman’ and be done with, Comber’s heatsink didn’t stay on, James has had head crashes on his Hard drive. Anyway, techno-babble over.

Well instead of an object for my birthday, my parents paid for my to go Tank Driving at a place called Tanks Alot. It was frikin AWESOME. Heres the full list of activities in order:

1. APC Driving and Tank Driving
2. Talk from an SAS Dude, funny as, lots of explosions
3. Clay Pigeon shooting
4. Talk about guns and the development of them
5. Musket and 15th Century mortar firing
6. Missile Carrier Driving and Humvee driving

Now to cover them in a bit more detail, to get a general look at what i did, go look at the Youtube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4hxNH2MbdU

Anyway, the APC and Tank Driving. The APC was your generic APC and was really, really easy to drive. It had an Automatic gearbox, and just one peddle, the accelerator. Then you had 2 levers to steer, pull the left one and it puts the breaks on the left hand track, so steering it left, and vice versa. If you wanted to stop you pulled both levers back at once. Dead easy and very fun. Anything with tracks has a really smooth ride compared to a car, its comparable to being in the sea with a small boat. The Tank was a Russian tank and was a bit more complicated, in that it was manual transmission. But as the gears didn’t really work that well in the tank, all the instructors did was put it in gear 3 to start you off. This time you had a clutch though, so you have to lift it up slowly and give it more power when the revs drop, same as a car really…..cept your in a war machine weighing 40 tons. The first few people stalled it, but luckily i managed to pull away first time! Steering is the same as the APC with the Levers and such, so much the same.

The Talk with the SAS dude was funny, he told us about what hes done and hes done enough to write a series comparable to the Chris Ryan book series. Then he took us on ‘Patrol’ were we had to point out things, and if we didn’t notice them he had a gun which fired something like a firecracker to make us jump and then pointed it out. It didn’t help that he randomly chucked firecrackers everywhere, which made a helluva bang, as in, your ears were ringing afterwards.

The Clay Pigeon shooting was the first time i had fired a gun. It simply consisted of, “heres how you hold the gun, lead the clay pigeon slightly and aim below it”. Then, a test run, with no ammunition, then straight in. It was split into two sets of 3 shots. All in all i managed to score 3 out of 6, which i’m quite proud of for my first time, and shotguns have a bloody hard kick to them.

The talk about guns was when a hippie (thats the only way i could describe him, the glasses, the hair, the stoned way of talking and acting) told us all about guns and their development. My mum fell asleep and it wasn’t all that great (i knew most of it already). But the fun part was being in a room full of de-commisioned guns and getting to see what they were like. For example, the AK is much heavier than it looks, the M16 is dead light, and bolt action rifles are hard to move the bolt. The most satisfying one though was the MP44 and the bolt action, dead cool (as all girls roll their eyes).

The Musket shooting was slightly disappointing, in that we didnt get to load the muskets, and we had a smaller charge than normal. We had to shoot at a ‘frenchman’ with paintballs, was quite fun and random. The mortar firing was good as well, just for the fun of blowing something into the air.

The Missile carrier driving was much similar to the APC driving, in that there was just 2 levers and one peddle. If you’ve watched the video, you’ll notice it looks much like a ’skip on tracks’. It may not look like a missile carrier, but thats because the one i was driving was fitted out to be a service vehicle (the cranes in the middle). One thing to note which may shock you, all of the vehicles except for the Humvee which i drove were amphibious. Yes all those metal monsters can actually FLOAT and SWIM across a river. Anyway the Humvee was brilliant. It was one of the Humvee’s taken from Black Hawk Down (one of them still had bullet holes in the back). The thing is HUGE as well, and the seats are about a meter apart. Its noisy as well as the engine is just to the right of the Driver. However it was immensly FUN. The steering, which you would expect to be really heavy, was actually extremely light, as in, my Cars steering is heavier than the Humvee’s. The Humvee also has an automatic gearbox, so all you had to do was floor it (which i did at several points). It also slides everywhere, but that was probably because of the mud it was on.

A very fun day and all for £220! If i find the cable for the camera ill post the photos on Facebook as well.