The question is are you a computer geek or a computer user? It's simple yes but in my opinion lots of so called geeks simply aren't so. For example, on my Uni course there should be an overflow of geeks, this simply isn't so. Most people in the class are users. They are happy to learn how to use a computer and have no interest in programming one, that's fine because not all of the people in my class are on the Software Engineering course or the Games Development course. However for those who are, and even for those who do want to program they still don't seem "geeky" enough. Start talking about a command line interface and they'd look at you like you had come from the eighties. Mention Linux to them and they turn their nose up, it's "too hard" for them to use or they "can't run games on it so it sucks". For me geek, Linux and Open Source go hand in hand, what self respecting geek runs an OS that doesn't alow for total control of their computer?

Perhaps I am biased towards Linux however after learning so much from using it, but given that nearly every non-Linux user I have met has had knowlege vastly inferior than mine perhaps not?

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Misc, the best title I could come up with for this mixed post sorry.

I got round to installing Ubuntu Dapper on my laptop, Dapper is a great version of Ubuntu, much to my surprise my WiFi card worked out of the box. After installing NetworkManager (a util that allows for WiFi profile selection) and figuring out that the file /etc/network/interfaces needed a few lines commenting out so NetworkManager could take over my WiFi device, my laptop is finally getting some use again esp as the weather is getting better. Messing around on my laptop in the garden is indeed fun, as I have become quite addicted to the Linux command line I thought I'd play about with eLinks a text based browser. To my surprise my blog looks great in it, still I shall be creating a CSS file to tweak it a little.

On another topic, the release of the DS Lite and the Wii is drawing near. When it comes to consoles I have only ever owned Nintendo consoles and it looks like that's not going to change with the next generation of consoles. If Sony and Microsoft think graphics are the way to go they are sadly mistaken. Gaming has been stale for quite some time, I want innovation not recreation! Graphics are nice but there's no way I'd pay the price for either an Xbox 360 or PS3 for graphics. I'll part with my money for games and there's few games these consoles offer which I would like to play or couldn't play on my PC. I'm still sceptical about the Wii, it's looks great and fun indeed but whether it's a better way to control games remains to be seen. If it works as I imagine and as well as I hope it could indeed be a revolution.

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Well it would seem an entire year of Uni has flown by, it went pretty quickly. All that's left to do are two exams, but all lectures have finished. That leaves me with a bit of time on my hands, from now until late September. I think I'm going to have to get a job I could do with the money and it's better than doing nothing for months.

The first year of Uni has been mostly uninteresting with exception to two lectures namely Operating Systems and Networks and the harder Computer Architecture. Everything else has been stuff I already know such as Web Dev with HTML and Web Dev with PHP, incredibly basic and boring stuff like an Introduction to Programming with Java and Introduction to Object Orientated Programming with Java and stuff I just really didn't want to know like Systems in Organisations and Systems Analysis.

In defence the first year is a common year that all computer and computer science student take regardless of course. Next year should hopefully be more tailored to my chosen degree software engineering.

Performance wise I have been doing rather well, mostly A's with a few B's so far but then again like I said before, it's a common year and it's designed with the purpose of bringing everyone up to scratch - even those who can't use computers. So nothing too hard has been thrown at us yet but I expect that to change next year.

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Since this site is running on a small (about the size of a four DVD cases) server with a meer 275 MHz ARM processor or the equivalent of a 120 MHz x86 processor I decided to install "Lighty" (LightTPD), a web server focused on speed and having a small footprint. My little b0xen needs all the help it can get to serve my blog so I have also installed eAccelerator to help things along aswell as enabling caching from images and css and also compressing the output in gzip format which should mean the site reaches you faster. The site certainly feels a lot faster though I still need to tweak PHP and perhaps go over some of my code checking for bottlenecks.

I really like Lighty, it was very easy to set up and has a nice config file, despite the hours I spent getting it up and running due to lack of knowledge in a few areas, also the lack of Debian specific instructions caused a few frustrations, now that I know what I'm doing setting it up again would be a much quicker process. I'm considering writing a HOWTO, I know I could have done with one

I have tweaked the main font colour, made it a tad darker. It dawned on me last night at 3AM that it was too light and hard to read. Now I can read it well into the night

I have a PHP test tomorrow at University, not that I have done any revision if all the work I have done with PHP does not ensure a pass I don't know what does.

To add to the randomness of this post, I have fixed the content (that's the pages down the side under the main menu) and updated the About Me page, the other pages are also in need of an overhaul. Also I fixed the RSS Feed thanks to Lee for pointing this problem out. Last but not least there is now a server stats page with fancy graphics should anyone be inclined to check it out

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It's here at last, Summer-Daze v3 in all it's summery glory. As you may have noticed I have had to put posting on hold for a while due to the fact that any further posts made would require porting to the new DB so I decided to hold off.

Well that's the good new, so now for the bad. The system might not be 100% stable, in fact I'm pretty sure it wont be so don't be surprised if you see the odd bug here and there. I'm working through it though and have tested the main parts of the system and found them to be working well enough.

The design isn't quite what I wanted, instead of a new design I simply revamped the old one, but I think/hope you'll agree it's nicer than the last.

UPDATE: Just noticed a tiny problem with the logins, namely no one but my self could actually login lol. My fault sorry, messed up the porting of the database but have now fixed it and logins should be working fine once more.

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