Reading Week (Again!)

Dear me! Look how long it's been since I've last posted! I haven't even got my diary sorted out from South Africa... hopefully I can get that sorted out soon.

So, let me bring you up to speed on what I've been doing since I've returned from the Cape. Well, it's been University as usual up until this week, which happens to be reading week. During the past few weeks, I have done some pretty neat networking Java programs, studied normalising databases, learnt how to do some pretty neat stuff with PHP, and decided my 9-month long 3rd year project: none other then the LCARS Terminal Starship Commander.

This game, based off Star Trek, will allow prospective Captain's around the Alpha Quadrant to take on the position of commanding a starship. They will be able to choose their crew and ship, and then go off on missions whose very ending is affected by the decisions they make. That's right! These missions will provide for multiple endings, all based on the players decisions they make as the proceed through the mission!

Of course, the game wouldn't be complete if it didn't also have a fully operational mission editor, allowing players with good enough imaginations to come up with some pretty interesting stories to put into play. However, it is still a long time in production, so we shall see how far this gets.

In other news, in my online MMORPG EVE Online, my corp has moved. They are now stationed as 7th Sense, to avoid any confusion the old name had with us. Apparently there was another corp called Chaos Industries who were some pretty tough pirates, or something like that. Anyhow, as we are a non-PvP corp, we decided to move away from the name as we don't want to be associated with PvP. At least... not at present.

Now we finally get to his week... Reading Week. As you might have guessed, a lot has been done this week, but they are all trivial things. I spent a busy weekend with my family... went to see The Water Horse which was fantastic (despite mixed reviews, I guess it's a "you either love it or hate it" kind of film). Monday was spent doing a few things around the house, as will be tomorrow (although I will fit some Java in as well). Today was spent at work; catching up, sorting out a few things, and upgrading Firefox with a new look and feel with a new theme and some extra Add-ons.

I have continued to provide updates to the various websites I own. I just want to add here that I will be adding some extra Addons to my recommended Addons page, and removing a few too. I will also be adding a new page: my recommended iTouch programs. I have quite a few!

Well, for now, I will bid you farewell. And hopefully I will have some diary entries soon as to what I got up to in Cape Town!

South Africa... here we come!

I have faced the inevitable and come out victorious!! I have a passport that is valid, working and doesn't need to be replaced until 2018. It's greeeat!

So, I can officially confirm that I am off to Cape Town, South Africa, this Thursday 17th January and returning next Thursday 24th!!

Bon Voyage all!!

Preparing for the Inevitable

Well, I recently posted this on my Facebook account as my status, and I thought it deserved a little bit more then I put. So, I will post this on my blog now, and make this as public as I can.

This Thursday, there is a 50:50 chance that I will be going to South Africa. Why a 50:50 chance? Why not 100%?

It all started sometime last week. With under one week to go until we need to go to South Africa, my brother and I find out that our passports had expired. Not only had they expired, but they were children passports and we were adults. Under new British law, it is required that those needing new adult British passports for the first time have to sit an interview and possibly wait up to 6 weeks for the new passport.

But what was extremely strange was that our passports should have still been valid. We had 4 and a half year passports, and we should have had 5 year passports. A short call to the passport office, and we had an appointment booked for Tuesday (tomorrow).

So, the inevitable is that we are going to fail to get our passports, not be allowed to fly to South Africa, and not turn up for the wedding we are invited to go to. All in all, that's something that needs to be prepared for.

Here's to the inevitable being obliterated!!

Welcome to 2008!

Hello and welcome to 2008! A new year has arrived, a new time frame in the history of humanity, a new society driven time period for us to classify and enjoy!

So I wish you all a Happy New Year and good luck in 2008.

Now, I want to show you my pride and joy lying peacefully in my driveway: my new Honda Civic! Here are some wonderful pictures of my new car...

Some things to note before the pics are shown. Firstly, you have to press that nice shiny red button to start the engine, it's quite fun! There are two closed sunroofs in one of the pictures. The car comes with cruise control, a/c, a radio with CD Player, and various places to hide luggage and the like as standard; with blue underfloor lighting and really useful Bluetooth connectivity (with my mobile phone) added in. And finally, the number plates are digitally hidden ;)

Xmas Time!

Merry Christmas to One and All! I hope you all got what you wanted for Christmas :) I certainly did!

I got an iPod iTouch, quite a few DVDs including Princess Mononoke, a few games including Trainz Railway Simulator 2004, and a large poster detailing the inside of the USS Enterprise-D.

Brilliant!

The week before Christmas took a wonderful turn when on Saturday, we went down to the Honda garage and they announced the car had arrived! It is available to be picked up on Friday, so I will have a new car for Christmas too!

I have been quite busy during the week, doing some work for work and Uni, as well as playing EVE a lot. On EVE, I bought a new Thorax and an Iteron IV (a Cruiser and a Trading vessel) with the Thorax being a great EVE Christmas present!

Anyhow, I will finish off this bizarre blog post by adding that over the next couple of days I will be online on MSN, so if you want to catch me you can.

Christmas Hols: The Beginning

Long time no post, I know... but the weeks after Operation Gold were extensively busy. For starters, I had two assignments to deliver by Tuesday last week. One was a Database systems coursework, and another was a Data Communications assignment.

The Database coursework was mostly easy, if long, except for two particular questions that were designed to be extremely difficult, and a challenge for even those skilled at SQL. The Data Communications coursework involved analysing PING packets sent to ten different hosts in South Africa and the Middle East (supposedly) and took a lot of time to complete to perfection.

Add on top of that the biggest Java lab of all (GooChristmas), as well as all the other stuff that goes on, and things just got in the way.

The Christmas holidays began early on Friday after the Java lecture was cancelled. The day after was spent mainly out in Guildford at the LaserQuest (and Burger King for lunch) for my brothers late birthday party. Saturday evening, my brother hijacked my laptop for a 'through-the-night' gaming session, that ended at midday the next day. As would be expected, he has since slept for the past two days.

Sunday's highlight was a trip into Redhill to visit Honda. I planned on getting a new Honda Civic Hybrid, but when comparing it with what the original Honda Civic offered, the latter was chosen. Other then that, Sunday was quite a relaxed day, and I found out that our Corp had been declared war on in EVE. Magical!

Today I went for a test drive of the Honda Civic. It drives beautifully; feeling like a manual car turned auto rather then an ordinary automatic. In that respect, you get to feel the gear changes the car makes, and Honda's intuitive 'paddle sticks' on the steering wheel, in conjunction with the gear stick, allow you to switch between controlling the gears manually and letting the car do the hard work. Not to mention the car looks like something out of, say, Star Trek... and I love the dashboard! (Similar but not quite right picture). Enough said!

Tomorrow is also going to be a busy day, but that's for a future post!

I also want to announce here that I intend to release GooChristmas on my website over the next few days, as well as put more work for my group up on the dotProject site, do some work for work (my job), and carry on playing EVE. So the fun never stops!

Operation Gold: Result!

Operation Gold (that of my grandparents 50th Anniversary surprise party, (yep that's right, 50 years married)) was a huge success! People who I haven't even met before came to celebrate and enjoy the company of everyone else who came, and we've got some fantastic pictures to share soon!

The theme of the party was Only Fools and Horses, and we saw some interesting stuff! My family (and by that I mean my close family) all dressed up in clothing to represent the theme, complete with hat, jacket and bling!

We had a huge banner in the hallway which contained the text "Congratulations! Shirley and Bill! Only Fools and Horses Last 50 years!" and a rather digitally enhanced (you could say digitally edited) picture of the two standing together against a rather picturesque background.

For food, we had a huge buffet that included simple foods and Indian snacks, and when evening came had curry too! And for drink, we had everything, even a small bar filled with all sorts of spirits and stuff!!

Everyone enjoyed themselves, and even my grandparents (despite their dazed shock; they thought they were coming to Christmas dinner!) who couldn't stop smiling as they met old and current friends alike!

Overall, super!

Will post a separate blog entry containing pictures.