Originally broadcast on Tuesday 9th February, this week Seb Payne and I talk about a whole host of things, including full body scanning at airports, sex robots, Microsoft history of failures, Chrome OS, how you should back up your data, and a whole load more!
You can download the podcast by visiting the Tech 107 website or by using the iTunes store.
My ancient old knackered laptop (recently upgraded with a brand new 1Gb stick of RAM) had been running Ubuntu for a number of years, and was getting to the point where a OS re-install was necessary. I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed with the university wireless not playing nicely – so decided to give Windows 7 a try (since I can get it nice and free!)
Install was a breeze, OS booted fine first time, all drivers found and installed by Windows Update – apart from one…
Seems I was stuck with the 640×480 VGA resolution driver, Intel doesn’t think their 8XXGM series drivers work well with 7. Never fear – a bit of Googling revealed this site: http://www.groundstate.net/855GMWin7.html, which contains instructions for tricking 7 into installing the old drivers! Result! Although Seb may have had a slight point on this weeks Tech 107 (episode 3) about Macs being easier due to them not needing separate driver install. Ah well.
So – I’m now officially off Linux and 100% Windows again. Lets see how long it lasts this time!
Over Christmas, myself and Seb Payne came up with an idea for a brand new student radio show – Tech 107. Essentially, we wanted to create a show where we could publicly discuss the latest technological developments of the week in a relaxed atmosphere, that would hopefully appeal to a few people!
The show goes out live on Purple Radio every Tuesday at 1pm, with a podcast available on our website (when Seb gets round to posting it!). You can listen now to episodes #1 and #2.
Well, at long last I’ve got rid of the old website and moved onto WordPress.
Hopefully this should make it a bit easier to browse around, and will definitely make it a lot easier for me to maintain!
I’ve tried to redirect all old links where possible, and for the time being the original site can be accessed here.
Cross-posted with I’m glad it burnt
As a poor student, I’m always on the lookout for ways of making cheap alcohol more appealing to the palate. With a house party approaching, and wallets thin as usual, my housemates and myself decided to experiment with Tesco Value Vodka and Skittles. The recipe (as one would imagine) is ridiculously simple – you stick a load of Skittles into the vodka, let them dissolve, and then drink it.
To get the best flavour, we found that there were enough of each colour Skittles in 5 large bags. To begin with, simply separate the Skittles into the different colours (trying not to eat too many!), and drop them into a bottle of vodka (we used the 90cl Tesco Value). Shake vigorously, and then leave overnight to dissolve – the result should look something like this:
Filtering the sediment from the bottom of the bottle is a rather tedious process – made much easier if you have spare bottles and funnels lying around the house. I have it on good authority that a folded piece of kitchen paper makes a good filter, however we splashed out and a used a mixture of coffee filters, and proper chemical filters ‘acquired’ from the university chemistry labs.
The filtering process took us several hours, since each funnel would only hold a small amount of the mixture at a time. It’s important not to rush this stage, as getting sediment into the final drink does not look particularly attractive! That said – the end product will never be completely clear, however it is worth filtering 2 or 3 times until the worst has been removed.
Your Skittles vodka is ready to consume! Be warned – it is very easy to drink this stuff neat without tasting the vodka. Enjoy at your own peril, or mix with lemonade to save on the hangover.
As part of my Software Applications module this year, I have a sub-module called Digital Imaging. Basically, we learned how to use Java3D to model things and then animate them.
The assignment set for this term was to create a wind turbine…
Above is what I created! Obviously you cannot see here, but the blades move round the appropriate axis, and the entire head of the turbine rotates around the Y-axis when you click on the mast. Pretty impressive – huh?! I didn’t think so either! If, for whatever reason, you do think it’s impressive – you may download the .jar file here. It will need Java3D and possibly some other stuff installed to run.
The main thing I learnt doing this was how much of a pain J3D really is – it’s a completely obsolete extension of Java that doesn’t really have much use, apart from for making simple animations such as this one. I can’t think of anyone who would use Java to make a serious 3D game, the processing power just isn’t there to allow decent use of physics, lighting or anything else essential to make an immersive environment. For example, when I was trying to make the turbine cast a shadow on its environment, I found it wasn’t just as simple as allowing the light source to throw a shadow onto the grass object – oh no – I had to calculate the exact shape that the shadow would be, based on the position of the light relative to the turbine, then draw it manually to the floor. As you can imagine, this would be a huge task – and lets not even get started on running this 40+ times a second to get the moving blades, or even considering the opacity of the shadow in different places, or the fact that multiple light sources exist, or that the turbine would shadow itself in parts…
I’ve used programs before (GameMaker stirs a memory?) that will do all that for you in 2 or 3 lines of code, however in J3D I was looking at separate classes, and 2 or 3 times the existing code I had to make the turbine work. No thanks, I’ll just pretend it was a very bright day!
I’m quite glad I’m rid of J3D now – I’ll be even happier when I’m rid of Java completely. I’d be really happy if I never had to see a wind turbine ever again… but they had to go and drop that into our Software Engineering project as well. More to follow on that…
Or more specifically – the never ending list of things to do that seems to dictate my life more than I do.
Over the last 3 months, I’ve watched said list grow and grow as my department shoved more and more assignment deadlines towards me, and watched the things I really want to do get moved gradually towards the bottom. This term has been a rather bumpy ride in terms of deadlines, assignments and exams – and I’m told it’s downhill from here! I’ll write some follow up posts soon showing off what I’ve achieved in creating recently (I’m actually proud of some of it!).
The happiest moment of my life occurred last week, when said list of ‘essentials’ finally reached zero, when the final assignment had been sent to the abyss that is known as ‘DUO’, and the end of term benchtest was over. I’m told that after spending a night out marking this occasion, I was heard celebrating in my room… Which involves me yelling a lot, before your minds jumped elsewhere!
Anyway – I get home, having promised myself a fortnight to enjoy Christmas before getting stuck down to work, and I find myself unable to even get started on that list of ‘want to do’ items. Congratulations to the CompSci department – they’ve killed my work ethic even for things that I enjoy!
… back in 3 weeks!
Heading out tomorrow morning (at the airport for 5am :’-[) to fly to Pisa, couple of days getting used to the weather then travelling down the coast to Rome by whatever means possible, hopefully achieving our Explorer Belt!
I’m going to try and keep a diary of what we do each day, then post on here when I get back. However we may end up too lost/drunk/dead to actually bother writing!
Anyway – see you all in 3 weeks!
P.S. Twit2MSN V1.3 now released – should appear in the database some time whilst I’m away!
I’m pleased to announce that work on the next iteration of Twit2MSN is well under way, with a couple of the major issues already addressed, and hopefully all of the high/critical priority issues being sorted for the final version.
For a preview (alpha status), you can download the appropriate files from http://code.google.com/p/twit2msn/source/browse/#svn/branches/1-3 and then compile into a .plsc file as described in the Messenger+ scripting API.
I’m looking for a dedicated bunch of beta testers – drop me a email if you’re interested!
This article, headlining on the Daily Mail tomorrow I believe, has particularly annoyed me this evening.
From my experience, this kind of event happens pretty much every night on university campuses up and down the country without making headline news – just because this happened to be an official gathering of Scout Network members makes it wrong? Everyone at the event had to be over 18, all licensing laws were adhered to, no-one started smashing up a kebab shop afterwards. The only damage caused was a few dead brain cells!
I don’t have a particularly strong view on posting such photos on Facebook – but I presume they were posted with some privacy, which the Daily Mail has now breached by publishing them in a national newspaper. Those people did not ask to have their photo plastered on Facebook, nor was permission sought (a grey area), but using these as published material attributing the source to ‘Facebook’ is very very dodgy practice.
A comment from a parent cited in the article also pissed me off
The father of one of the revellers said: ‘It’s really let their image down so badly, the fact there’s a seedy side to scouting. I can’t believe HQ didn’t put a stop to this whole sorry mess.’
I think that is put into perspective by one of the comments left on the article
Looks like a great party. I never knew Scouts were so "with it!" Where can I join?
18-25 year olds don’t necessarily want to spend every night “gathering round the campfire and singing Ging Gang Goolie†– Scout Network wouldn’t exist if that’s all we did! That said though – the Mail didn’t notice the photos published on the MAD UK website of people – wait for it – gathering around the campfire and singing Ging Gang Goolie!! Do your research!
The best comment so far sums up my argument completely…
They are young people enjoying themselves. What is wrong with that?
I await a response from Gilwell with bated breath – I hope they don’t cower down under media pressure, and instead defend what Scouting is all about – letting us “take acceptable risks and think for themselves†(Official Scout Association description)