Monthly Archive for May, 2008

Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land

Published
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Balazs
on Friday, May 30, 2008
in Gaming, Life, School and Technology
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

back of hoody
See all the photos on the Flickr page.

I haven’t posted in a few days, mainly because I’ve been enjoying the days off, as well as having to go into school (on the first two days as well) to revise Biology and Chemistry. I’m glad I went though, because I can assure you that I would not be revising at home during this time. I’d most likely be preoccupied infront of the TV or the Internet (watching the West Wing – hence the title of this post).

It was nice and weird being back in school again. I liked being able to leave at any time I wanted though. We had roast for lunch on Wednesday, which was lovely as always.

We got to pick up our Leaver’s Hoodies as well. They look absolutely awesome! You can see the reverse side above. The school logo is on the front, and I’m glad they chose the old school logo, it suits it much better, as well as showing the nostalgia during our time at BW. They were well worth the money, and I’ll enjoy wearing it to school and on results day!

In other news, I put Ubuntu on my sister’s old laptop, and it seems to be working fine. For a while it seemed to restart and never make it past the boot screen, so I took it apart and put it back together and it seems to have done the trick. I think the BIOS battery might have been a bit loose. I got WiFi working through ndiswrapper, it took far less time to get it running than I thought it would have. Sadly there are no visual effects, even the minimal ones don’t work. It is an aged machine, with the Video RAM taken from system memory so I can’t say I was too surprised.

I am getting a MacBook for University though, and after long deliberations with myself and the wider internet, I have decided to get a white one! ^_^ I think it looks far better and I think it would be unique as compared to the other black laptops out there. Plus this way we won’t have three MacBooks within the family. Luckily it seems I can get the educational discount with a conditional firm choice. My sister rang up and asked them, so I won’t have to wait until September to get it. Woop!

I have been around James’ house and I got to play on his PS3. I can say that the PS3 is as ugly as it looks, but the UI is nice, and I want GTA IV. That is one mad game, though I’m a bit skint on cash at the moment so it’s a no go for me, yet anyway.

Upgraded the external hard drive

Published
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Balazs
on Thursday, May 22, 2008
in Life and Technology
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rubik hard drive

I’ve been keeping all my iphone converted videos and movies, as well as lots of other things on my external hard drive ‘Rubik’. It was getting pretty low on space, and without keeping anything on my main hard drive that also was quite low (20GB out of 80GB).

So I decided to replace the previous 40GB hard drive with the 80GB one from my sister’s old laptop that no longer works. But then dad suggested I replace the music network drive which is 100GB with the 80GB one so I could have the 100GB one. There is only 10 or so GB of music so the space won’t be missed and now I’ve got plenty of breathing room in mine. The process didn’t take that long, it was just a bit messy replacing the external drives, reformatting and making sure all the data was intact.

Anyhoo, now that means I’ve got space for more bittorrenting! :-)

Woo! Maths is over forever!

Published
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Balazs
on Wednesday, May 21, 2008
in Life and School
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latin squares
Latin squares taken from Wikipedia

The C4 exam is over, which means that there is no more Maths for me forever! Woooo!

The actual exam went really well. The first paper was good, with nothing I couldn’t do. There was a question with a trig identity, but I remembered that correctly ^_^. The integration and general algebra questions were rather simple. The vectors question was lovely (shocking that I used that word to describe anything to do with vectors!) I actually knew how to do it and I seem to have got the same answers as my friends.

The comprehension paper was also rather nice talking about Sudoku and Latin squares. You didn’t actually have to read much of the paper to understand the question. There was quite a bit of filling in the squares and then some stuff on a formula for the numbers given, etc. Nearly everyone finished early and we were let out early by like 10 minutes. I sat there for a while though before we were allowed to leave.

Now there are 7 exams left, a mix of Physics, Chemistry and Biology. No doubt Biology will be the hardest out of them all. 

Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology a cult!

Published
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Balazs
on Tuesday, May 20, 2008
in News
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London Anti-Scientology Protest - Goodge St
Flickr: London Anti-Scientology Protest – Goodge St

This is absolutely outrageous. An unnamed teenager has been served by the City of London police after a peaceful protest in which his poster exclaimed “Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult“. The poster was confiscated by the police from the teenager, who is under-18, and have sent the case file to the Crown Prosecution Service. 

Within five minutes of arriving I was told by a member of the police that I was not allowed to use that word, and that the final decision would be made by the inspector

The teenager accurately cited a 1984 high court ruling, where Justice Latey described Scientology as a “cult” that was “corrupt, sinister and dangerous“. If the Judge is allowed to call it a cult, why isn’t he? The policewoman read him Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 (pdf), which in part says that a person is guilty of an offence if he “displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting” (sec. 5, 1, b), and strongly recommended that he remove the sign.

What’s even more worrying is that an anonymous demonstrator wrote on the anti-Scientology forums that they “protested outside another Scientology building in Tottenham Court Road which is policed by a separate force, the Metropolitan police, who have never tried to stop us using the word cult“. Where’s the fair and balance the police are supposed to be serving?

I didn’t even know that back in 2006 the City of London police got into some heat because it was found that over twenty officers had accepted gifts worth thousands of pounds from Scientology. These weren’t all low-ranking officials either, they ranged from Constable to Chief Superintendent. When the new headquarters opened that year the Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley applauded Scientology for “raising the spiritual wealth of society“. Whilst this may not be bribery, it does display some sort of low-level corruption. Gifts in exchange for speaking good about Scientology perhaps? We can only speculate. What is certain is that the Chief Superintendent has clearly lost his head.

What a load of bollocks. If it’s not clear to you that Scientology is a cult, I’m sorry to inform you that your mind has been warped. It was founded by a bloody science-fiction author for Christ’s sake! How un-realistic can you get?

This pretty much amounts to public censorship. This is not threatening or abusive wording at all. Whilst it may be insulting, it’s hardly a reason to confiscate the poster nor face the teenager with prosecution. This all reminds me of V for Vendetta where Steven Fry shows Natalie Portman all the government banned loot he has stashed around. What word will the government ban us from using next? It was a peaceful protest, no property was damaged, lives weren’t lost and perhaps just some egos were bashed.

I honestly hope this kid doesn’t make it to court, or if it does, some ace barrister will offer his counselling pro bono for him. This is a disgrace. I wouldn’t really expect this here in the UK, at least we don’t class Scientology as a church (unlike the USA).

link (guardian.co.uk)

Ahhh, Vectors!

Published
by
Balazs
on Monday, May 19, 2008
in Blog, Life and School
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

vectors

With my C4 exam the day after tomorrow (wow this time has gone fast!), I’ve been revising a bit going over all the topics, especially the comprehension paper. I really hate vectors! I was looking at the January 2008 C4 paper and that had a section B question on vectors, so I hope this means we won’t get a section B question. I can do simple plane, vector equation and scalar product questions, but I really don’t like doing anything too big to do with planes. I’ll be revising vectors nearly all day tomorrow; I think I’m getting the hang of it now.

I haven’t yet started (proper) revision for any of my other subjects. I’ll start it as soon as maths is over and done with. Sadly the first day back next term I have to go in for Biology revision. I was going to rather enjoy exam leave on the first day. Oh well, I’ll probably get more done there than here at home anyway.

I finally finished the 4th season of the West Wing though. I just started the 5th season, it’s rather interesting with Zoey’s kidnapping, I don’t really remember this well (even though I’ve seen it plenty of times.)

I did also get AWstats working on the blog though. Thank god I have shell access, otherwise there’s no way I could have fixed it. There were so many problems with trying to get the configuration working, and now that it’s done I’ve only got one problem. The times reported by AWstats are US Eastern times, and this is because the server is located in the US, and the log times reported are therefore in US time zone. I can’t figure out for the life of me how to adjust it, so I’ll probably email the dreamhost support staff.