It feels like forever since I updated, as is often the case, on the few occasions I have anything to blog about I’m too busy to actually write anything!

Sooo what have I been up to? Well I finished my OU course at last! It was an experience that’s for sure. I don’t think Arts & the Humanities are for me. I loved the chapters on Architecture but the OU doesn’t do any architecture specific courses. So from October I’ll be doing an Engineering degree instead. Annoyingly starting at Level 1 again, but it should be a lot easier and won’t be full of essays!

My PC went a bit screwy so I decided to rebuild it, but then decided it’s worth doing an upgrade so it’s actually still not in use. It does work, but I’ve not been using it because I don’t want to have to back up any new data from it again and also because I’ve been using… my sparkly new Samsung NC10.

Yeah, I finally bought myself a netbook. With the main PC playing up and my final OU course assessment looming it became more and more desirable. I mentioned to my Dad that I really wanted one and he ended up giving me half the cash! Then there was a code for 15% off as well I love it, it’s lots nicer than most of the other netbooks around which are either built like fisher price toys or have terrible battery life. I do take issue with the weird keyboard layout though. I’d have preferred the right shift key to be the bigger of the two and the back-slash key to be before the Z not after the forward-slash which just confuses me.

Being nice and small I’ll probably be taking it out and about with me when I’m likely to be sat bored somewhere for any length of time and thanks to yet another code on-line I now have a PAYG 3G dongle from Three which I only had to pay postage for. looking forward to testing that out. It’s also easily un-lockable so I don’t have to end up stuck using Three forever.

On the baking side of things I finally bit the bullet and bought myself some food colouring gels and some food glitter. The stuff is amazing! A little goes a long, long way and makes even really simple cakes look that little bit better

To go with the Engineering degree I’m getting back into coding. Well I say coding… I never feel very confident with it because I know so many people who are capable of such great things and I feel very insignificant, but hell, I know more than some people out there making websites so sod it! I’ve given myself some projects as the basis of my learning. I’ve created a little page to grab my current location from Google Latitude (updates via my Blackberry Bold), find the nearest weather forecast to me and display an image and text for the weather (I’ve added it to my start page). I ended up using PHP as it’s something I already knew and worked well with JSON (which is awesome isn’t it?!). Once I get it working exactly how I want I shall play around at porting it. I’ve looked at the GeoRuby things out there and they look pretty good. Rails is set up on my host already and I wanted a reason to try it out. To get myself ready for all this I went through my website and made sure all the pages are valid XHTML (strict) and valid CSS (up to v3.0).

So apart from baking, coding, wishing the heatwave would leave me alone, getting pre-storm migraines and playing about on the netbook I’ve been watching the baby Buzzards out back. There’s three that fledged a month or so ago and an unknown number of newer babies who only just fledged. They’re really cute and strangely cat-like! If only I had a camera lens long enough to take pictures of them…

I’m going to attempt to write more often, it’s part of my to-do list. We’ll just have to see how it goes…

I have a new obsession, staring into my lavatory. I can’t help it. It’s fascinating. I bought some of those Toilet Duck Fresh Discs that you fire onto the inside of the loo and they work like those hideous old rim-block things that my Dad’s always had a vendetta against as they can easily get flushed and clog up the pipes. They’re also a haven for germs and how anyone could touch one to clean/replace it, well… eugh! These things, though, are fantastic! You push the tube towards the bowl, press the button and push. SPLAT! It leaves a jewel like disk of fresh smelling disinfectant in the bowl. It lasts about a week, you don’t have to touch it to replace it, just zap another disk on, and there’s no risk of it clogging up the plumbing. Such a wonderful idea. (I am easily pleased.)

I recently found a place on eBay selling PSUs for old SFF PCs like my old Shuttle SpaceWalker SV25. I bought one and although the dimensions are perfect, it’s not set out in the same way as the original meaning I’ll have to cut a hole in the side of the case which is not ideal.

I really thought that once I’d plugged the PSU in it’d just be a case of sticking an OS on and away I’d go. I never envisaged the nightmares! I’ve built so many machines now I’ve lost count. Both for work and home. I just wanted a nice lightweight OS like FreeBSD or Fluxbuntu. Nothing would install! FreeBSD gives me a Fatal Trap 12 and reboots every time. All Ubuntu variants have kernel panic at installing files. DSL ran fine from CD but refused to install yesterday.

Today I managed a frugal install, but it wouldn’t boot without the CD. I’ve just given up and tried Windows 2000 (which was on the machine previously) and it did get to the configuration which is further than anything else, but then it crashed. I tried about 4 times. Same outcome. I’m giving XP a go now, more for a laugh than anything else. I’m not even sure it could run XP without the hardware problems! I’ve narrowed the issue down to the HDD, but sadly it’s the only spare IDE HDD I have. I’m not buying another as it completely ruins the whole point of rebuilding this out of spares.

As for my OU Coursework, I was 3 chapters behind due to being ill, playing some time-consuming 360 games(!) and general apathy. I finished reading all about Faraday last night and went though the DVD on him today. So now I’m only 2 chapters behind, but I reckon I can get the Stalin chapter read tonight as there aren’t any other exercises for that one. Then I’m on to ‘The Diva’ from Monday getting me right back up to date again. Phew!

I haven’t written anything in ages because I am a rubbish person! That’s about the only excuse I have, not like I’ve been busy…

I’ve decided I’m not going to be a very social person, at least for a while. Almost every time I’ve been out in the last few months I’ve been let down at the last minute and I really don’t think people appreciate what a big deal it is for me to get into town. It’s not just a 10 minute bus ride for £1.50 for me. If I walk, it’s a 45 minute walk then a 15 minute train journey for £3 (also, I can’t walk down my road when it’s dark as there are no lights and no real surface to my road). If I get a lift it’s 25 minutes, but I can only get lifts when it’s convenient for other people, so it has to be arranged in advance and can’t be spontaneous. Getting back is even worse as I can get a train back to Wokingham before 22:30, but taxis there know my road and refuse to drive there. Leaving me stranded. This means I have to fork out £25 for a black cab back from Reading. I just can’t justify it a lot of the time, especially when I’ve spent the evening sat in a pub all on my own because no-one can be bothered to let me know they’re no longer coming out.

I’ll probably go out more during the day when I can walk back from the station in the light or get a lift when my Dad’s on his way back from work. Evenings are saved for special occasions now though. Xmas and NYE don’t count as taxis are like £50 for that and that’s ridiculous!

Sooo… as I have no money at the moment I decided to buy a pair of shoes. I know, bad Jo! They were only £39.99 though and then I got 10% off with my NUS card – wheeee! I love them though, they have brought me joy. Shoe joy. They’re a pair of T.U.K. Black/Red Skull/Bow medium heels. So comfortable and easy to walk in, and they make me tall.

I wore them out on Monday when we went for Tony’s birthday meal at Xen. Very nice food. Wish I’d worn my trousers though as my skirt was a little tight so I shared Claire’s rice rather than getting my own. I had Thai Chicken Satay and Thai Green Curry. Yummy! I really wanted Indian food (they do Thai/Indian/Japanese), but as I can cook it so well myself now I’m loathe to pay for something that I don’t like as much! Can’t wait to make my onion bhajees at Christmas, they’re so lovely!

I updated my 360 today, the NXE update didn’t take too long. I hate the avatars though. I was annoyed when my Mii could only have natural hair colours and Microsoft have gone the same way. Seems so silly as surely it can’t be that hard to have a wider palette?! So my avatar looks more like Abby Sciuto than me now as I’ve given it black hair. Gonna see if I get any hassle, if I do I’m making a male avatar. Best thing about NXE though is definitely being able to transfer the games to the HDD so you don’t have to listen to the loud DVD drive. It’s bliss Played around with it a little more and it seems it keeps on crashing in the friends list which is well annoying. Lots of other people having this issue too. Hopefully they’ll sort it.

Well it seems the iPod is well and truly b0rked. I put RockBox on it and it still refuses to play anything. I do now have a spangly theme on it and loads of games though. Whee!

Decided I’ll probably buy myself the iPod Touch. 8Gb is a hell of a difference to 80Gb, but it has wifi-ness. Which my phone doesn’t have. So at the Turtle internets will be free. I am tempted by the 120Gb iPod Classic. But they’re both pretty much the same price and also the only 2 that are cheaper than getting mine repaired.

Current plan is to call up Apple and ask to get on the Higher Education discount. See what I can get it for. Might end up going for the 32Gb Touch if haggling goes well.

First off thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes, presents, etc. I had a pretty good birthday this year. Dyed my hair stupidly bright orange and purple. Went to the Turtle, met up with some friends for drinks and then headed on over to ZeroDegrees for yummy pizzas. Checked out the new Rising landlords too. They’ve cleaned the place up a lot, but insist on having all the lights on full brightness all the time and they’ve taken the side shades off the strip light above the table football table. I spent most of the time blinded and my mates were all silhouettes.

Got most of my OU stuff through. I’ve managed to read all my set texts, in fact I only have the DVD of ‘Bhaji on the Beach‘ left to watch. Looked through my Assignment questions and got terrified! Looked at the student forums and saw almost everyone doing AA100 is equally terrified – felt much better! Got my Tutorial dates through as well, was a bit miffed at first as I’m meant to get to Oxford (for the record, bloody miles away) for 09:30 on a few Saturdays which is never gonna happen. Luckily an e-mail from my Tutor confirms these aren’t mandatory – phew! I’m hoping to OD on the on-line aids provided so I don’t miss out too much from not attending the day schools.

Went to listen to my iPod (5.5G 80Gb) on Saturday and it refused to play. It whirrs up but just sits at 00:00. Video seems to crash it completely. Reset it about 8 or 9 times with no joy. Did a full restore, still dead. Found quite a few others have had this happen since the latest firmware update (v1.3). Downgraded the firmware to v1.2.3, still no joy. Going to try putting RockBox on it and see if that works. It’s out of warranty and getting it fixed would cost as much as getting a new one. I don’t mind getting a new one so much, but I hate the thought of getting rid of this when everything except music/video works on it! Even if it’s just an expensive Mah Jongg player, it’s something!