Monthly Archives: September 2008

No man is an island (but getting your own room is pretty damn cool)

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I moved into my accommodation last yesterday! It’s really nice. I’m living on my own (well, three other flat mates) and so I get to be all kinds of inventive. I’ve decided to use orange peel as pot pouri, and today I microwaved tomato!

You don’t need to buy a pack of four, by the way. I single one lasts a few days.

My bedroom has a weird smelling sink, which I’ve used bleach on and now I have the nicest smelling room, I think. Pictures can be found here. My other flat mates are cool too. Though, they’re experienced drinkers, and so I need to try and not keep up.

I don’t think my heater works.

Lessons start next week. Got registration and stuff to do this week. Good times.

Dropbox back-up and sync.

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Before I thought SQL was just a small language which just fetched and updated rows, however turns out it has tonnes of stuff I never realised. I just found out about CASE, which is like an IF statement within the SQL. Just an FYI.

I just found out about Dropbox too. It’s a back-up and syncronise software which is awesome, and you can control which computers are synced remotely. You can also get to all your files from the web interface, so you don’t need to install anything for simple backing up. I’m using it to store my pirvate key – more as a back up really. But I’m storing KoA on there so I can edit it on Alex’s computer too, and make sure all the files are the lastest versions of the file. Drop box also save revisions, so it’s like a mini-svn. It doesn’t use that much bandwidth, since it only uploads changes to files, and not the entire file again.

2Gb for free, but I might end up putting my music on there and upgrading to 50Gb. I dunno how much that costs, or where to upgrade though…

I was worried at first, since it’s a student project. But I found out that they’re storing everything on S3, which makes me feel better about stability, and I guess I just have to trust them not to give out all my data… Everything you upload though is private, unless you put it in the Public folder.

11 days and counting

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I’m bored and I’ve been to sleep all day, so don’t feel that tired. I’d like some toast, but I dunno how everyone else in Alex’s house would feel about me making food at this time of night.

Here’s a list of things I need to do for university:

  • Send back my accommodation confirmation by Wednesday, but I’ll have that done tomorrow. It says on the forms that you can do it online but… you can’t. It’ll be cool if I can get a job on the web team of DMU and help them fix their bugs.
  • Find a suitcase or two. I need to get vacuum bags too, to put my duvet in. I’d rather take one, than buy one there, but carrying it’ll be hard unless it’s small. Alex is coming on the train with me though. Speaking of the train, a single to Leicester was £8.70, and return was £8.80… We both got returns, even though I don’t need one. I could though.

I think that’s it really. I can’t believe there’s only about eleven days before I leave. Moving home for at least a year. Whoa. This is incredibly exciting. I can’t wait.

Coder of Alrond

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I’ve been working on Kingdom of Alrond quite a bit. I’ve rewrote the fight system so that it’s more like Heroes of Might and Magic is, with the hex grid. It’s also more off an AJAX application now, which has added a new real-time dimension to my programming that I’ve never had to deal with in a big way before as a PHP developer.

There are tiny bugs in place, and some big ones, that I just can’t bring myself to fix. I guess I’m going through a stretch of unenthusiasticness for it. I know exactly what needs to be done though. I suppose I could get someone else in on the programming, but then I’d have to share all the ideas that until then would only have ever been in my head. And I’d have to make sure they had the same philosophy as me with PvP and funding the game. So, no. I guess I won’t bring someone else on.

I sometimes find that even if I don’t want to code, I write a line – only intending to do that line – and then can’t seem to stop, like WoW really. Maybe I’ll try that in a second.

I’m going to start leaving my localhost Apace running when I’m online, so people can play (if they can find my IP address). Obviously, the game’s still pre-alpha, so there’s not much they can do at the moment. But it couldn’t hurt to let them fool around and give me their ideas. I can’t seem to find a way to get PHP to get my IP address though (the closest I can get to anything is 127.0.0.1), and then there’s the problem of if I’m behind a router. I suppose I could grab IPChicken and then cut out all the junk…

Uni-excited

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I don’t think I’ll be able to get to sleep just yet so I thought I’d come and write here.

Although I’ve still not heard back from DMU about accommodation, I’m hoping I’ll get a place to live with them. In an email they said they guarantee every first year accommodation, and I hope they stick to that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’ll have my student loans and grants come through in time. Fortunately, HSBC have given me a zero-charge, £1000 overdraft which I’ll use to pay my deposit and any up-front rent that has to be paid. Then, that should get paid back into my account the week or so after when my grant gets put into there.

I need to send DMU a photo, so that they can make my ID card too.

I’m incredibly excited. I seem to have started to get a few spots again though…

The forty minute train ride to Leicester is only gonna cost about £8.70, I think. That’s if I book in advance, a train leaving today was £12, which is still okay. If I really want to, I guess there’s nothing stopping me hopping back here for the weekend. Or even just an evening.

Not that I have much stuff to take, but Alex says he’ll come and help carry stuff.

On the form DMU sent me it says I should turn up a few days before enrolment week, which is 22nd of September. I’m going to go up on the Sunday (21st) because my sister’s birthday is on the 20th. That’s… 19 days now! Less than three weeks. Two weeks ago I was expecting to have another year, and now it’s less than a few weeks!?

Excited.