stringfellow’s thread

Friday 28th…
The long awaited PDA arrives.
My my is it shiny.
It is VERY shiny. But Microsoft being Microsoft (no predjudice here, honest), the OS has some major … icky bits…
Everything is huge. Ok, so the screen resolution is ridiculously pretty but why is everything so chuncky?!!!
The behaviour of the applications is weird- you click the ‘X’ button and it just backgrounds. How do you reactivate it? Run an application (which, incidentally, is background-able) to retrieve them, or use the system info thingy to tell you what progs are running then activate them from there… What happened to the taskbar?!!
Even OPIE has a taskbar.
Speaking of which, OPIE is FAR nicer. sure you have to piss about configuring it and trying to work around the brokeness, but it really is well made.. well, well thought out anyhow. It turns out the charger for my iPaq fits the Zaurus which is good because my power supple got lost in transit…
So what else?
Whenever you are not connected to WiFi, but the card is turned on and a network appears it covers the screen with this massive dialog saying theres a network blah blah, if you ignore it it just keeps coming back. INFURIATING.
Why not just turn the card off? Cos then you cant scan for networks

Sigh.

But it is kinda cool. Looking forward to getting my GPS Unit, and going for a little war-cycle (assuming my leg mends).

Started coding the project, Dave and I spent the best part of the weekend just trying to get a track to play… turned out to be something simple (i.e. the example of FMOD that we used was calling completely the wrong function names in its DLL wrapper… sigh.)
But hey, its all go now. Just have to battle all the little idiosyncracies that exist in .NET / CE etc… but we’ll get there… :S

My my does time fly…
And at all the wrong times. You want it to go fast, it sloooooooows…. you want it to slow down anditfrickinwhizzesby!

So an update concerning the life of Steve:

Third Year Project
Wow. I kinda thought this would never happen. Like when you’re in year 6 and someone mentions GCSE’s … “A-hahahahaha, GCSWhatnows?”
I hesitate to use the word `Dissertation’… but thats what it is… the last great hill to climb, the final push over the top of the trench, a final gasping breath before … drowning in the Real World?!! Well thats all a bit negative isn’t it. Must be the codeine talkgin (hahaha… more on that later…)
So this is where it’s at:
Initial Document completed (21st October)… next deadline? well right about now really. I’m supposed to have implemented a data probe, which has to include a fully working media player in C#.NET. Other than the fact that I don’t know where to start, don’t know C# and dont have a PDA to test it on, everything is just swell.
Waaah
ok next one is 21st November. That would be Gregynog. EEk is all i havfe to say- public speaking? no thankyou sir.
But hey at least the initial Doc is done, ey?!

House
The house this year is fab. Clean tidy friendly clean and not forgetting clean. Yes its wonderful. As are all my wonderful housemates.
I do rather miss the chaos that was last year though… 2am and everyone still awake, getting bolloxed or playing poker or something going on. It’s all a bit quiet now… I think the only thing I dont miss is Kate. uhhhhhm PSYCHO!!!!!!

Life
Life? Don’t talk to me about life, as a wise maaaaa…robot once said.
Falling off your bike at possibly the busiest time of year is not the best idea, Steve. This is what i expect to be told by people next time before it happens.
Cripple am I! Left leg is a mess, hobbling liek a freak. Dosed up on codeine which serves to make me a little hyper-sensitive to things (had a bit of a horrible moment with Waking the dead whilst eating pizza… work that one out…)
Beccy visits in 6 days. Can’t wait- some relief from work and a friend who makes me smile.
I’m a little bothered by the fact that I might still be less mobile- we are supposed to be missioning it round wales (Well not quite, but who knows!)

Everything is going too fast. My home made wall planner is slowly counting away the days to go to Australia, and various other events such as going to see The Prodigy live (Birthday present from Dave - The man is a legend, genious, and more besides!) and its just going tooooo fastttt!!!!
Was hobbling about in the torrential rain today smiling to myself as everyone else darted about. It was actually quite nice to know that i was getting soaked because i couldnt move fast enough. Life had sloweeeedddd dowwwwnnn… Maybe that’s Fate’s way of saying “CHILL THE FR’K OUT DUDE”. Hmm, or maybe its just me being a prat and falling off my bike (Incidentally, that was Pendulum’s fault- Listening to Hold Your Colour (OMFGLOLKTHXBYE go get the album, it will blow your head off) and was going to fast. ran out of cycle-path room)
And what else?

Hmm.. bills i am NOT looking forward to. Seems from my phone’s bill lookup thingy i owe £64 to 3. WTF?! how does that happen?!! I have free minutes and free texts. there is no way i use it that much!
*CRY*

this is all too much for one month.

Right and its late again. Time for some codeine and sleep.

sigh.

PS- go and see Wallace and Gromit, it is truly amazing.

So it has been a loooong time since i’ve written anything on here… i think thats testament to how busy i am at the moment.
Anyhow, this deserves mention, and as I’m currently reclining in the coffee shop with wifi, i thought i may as well note it down now….

Yesterday Dave and I went for a cycle, which turned out to be rather longer than we intended. We ended up in Gowerton (lord only knows how far that is, though if anyone wants to figure it out on google maps, be my guest and comment below ;))
So, following signs back to Swansea (5 Miles, this way type thing) and thinking “oh downhill, jolly good” we duly followed.
On the way i noticed a bus going the other way and the info panel said :

404 - Swansea

*geek sense tingling*
I had a giggle about that and we carried on following signs…
until we hit a de-restricted ‘no-pedestrians allowed’ A road, leading to the M4, going up a hill…

only one word came to mind and that isnt repeatable here.

so we turned around and as we passed the place we saw the bus, Dave realised that far from a strange geeky occurance, the bus had in fact been trying to tell us something…..

404 - Swansea (NOT FOUND)

a-hahahahahahahahahahahhahahaa…..

oh dear.