Jamie R

Microsoft have today released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 to the public.

This is certainly a promising version, with several features that didn’t end up in Firefox 3, such as private browsing. IE8 now supports private browsing natively, a big step for privacy and security on the web. Microsoft have also included safeguards against dodgy addons - IE8 now includes automatic crash recovery. If an addon or a web page becomes unstable and causes IE to lock up, only the actual tab will be affected, not the entire browsers, as such was the case in browsers at the minute. The core of IE8 won’t crash and the other tabs will remain stable.

Although I am primarily a user of Firefox and Safari, from a web developers point of view I am certainly looking forward to what else future incarnations of IE8 has to offer.

You can find IE8 Beta 2 here on Microsoft’s IE8 site.

Jamie.

Well, September is rapidly approaching. This means a few things for me, some nice and some not so nice. Once again, I’m off to the PLASA Show at Earls Court on the 7th and 8th, which is always a good event and gives me an opportunity to play with a lot of new toys.

This year at ABTT (which I went to in June), I was intrigued by the differences in atmosphere between the two trade shows. Whilst PLASA is an event for the whole broad spectrum of the entertainment industry and generally holds exhibitors from a wide range of corners of the industry (such as DJs etc - the first day of PLASA is always full of 16 year old “mobile DJs”), ABTT is specific to the theatre side of the entertainment industry. It was very beneficial going to ABTT, seeing as most of the lighting work that I do is indeed in theatres and the fact that I had never been to ABTT before. ABTT is so different in the respect you can actually sit down and talk to people in a decent, relaxed atmosphere on the stands. Whist I felt the amount of exhibitors were rather disappointing, the whole trade show feels so much more professional. At PLASA, whilst it is a professional event, you can’t as easily communicate with reps and people that you know/don’t know from the industry properly due to every audio company having noisy, competing stands.

However, I am looking forward to the offerings that PLASA has this year across the whole industry. I’m especially looking forward to getting my paws on the new Avolites Pearl 2010 which Avo will be launching at PLASA.

RAF’s 90th Anniversary

On a non-technical note, I am also hoping to show up at Duxford’s RAF 90th Anniversary Air Show, commemorating 90 years of the RAF. This will be the first Duxford airshow to feature XH558, the recently restored Vulcan bomber which I’ve written previous posts about. I saw XH558 for the first time at this year’s Farnborough airshow. XH558 received it’s display authorisation from the CAA no less than 2 weeks before the airshow. Pics are being processed at the minute and will be up soon.

Something closer to the heart…

This September also means something a bit more personal as well. LJ will be moving out of her parents and moving up to Nottingham where she is starting a degree in Art History at the University of Nottingham. The thought of three years not seeing her as often is hell, but I guess we shall see how things go! LJ is also 19 on the 13th, so I think that’s a cause for a big party! Love you

Anyway, on a brighter note, my summer hasn’t been too bad. I’ve been mainly working and just chilling out with friends and everyone who is deserting me and going off to uni (lol).

Clacton Airshow 2008

I went to Clacton’s 2008 seafront airshow last Friday (22nd August) and it was amazingly shite usual. I’ve never seen any glorious about the “glorious” airshow that Tendring District Council try and put on. It was a bit better this year, we didn’t have to wait half an hour between each display.

The main problem with Clacton apart from the fact it’s a seafront airshow so one lonesome aircraft so easily gets lost as the display arena along the seafront is about a mile long, is the choice or aircraft. Again, having several solo aircraft (this year’s roundup included the RAF’s Short Tucano T1 ZF338, BAe Hawk XX325, Grob Tutor G-BYXM and Jonathon Whaley’s beautifully painted Hawker Hunter MK58A “Miss Demeanour” (G-PSST) and the Eurofighter Typhoon (no reg noted sorry!) was nice but meant that the aforementioned did indeed happen.

I was especially interested to see Miss Demeanour G-PSST, as I had never seen her at any airshow before. Mainly based at Kemble, I’ve never been up there and as far as I can tell, has never appeared at any Duxford airshow, so she was a nice sight. I think overall out of every aircraft that participated, Jonathon’s display in  Miss D was the most aesthetically pleasing.

Luckily the weather this year was better than the previous years (with the exception of about half an hour on Friday when it rained heavily). Again, the Red Arrows were this year the victim of bad weather, with most of their display being commenced in rain.

The airshow commentary was crap as person usual, lacking in any decent technical detail about any of the aircraft flying (but there again, this is a family airshow and is generally attended by people who don’t know shit all about aviation) so I guess everything being in layman’s terms for Joe Public is adequate. Fortunately I couldn’t hear it for most of the afternoon.

Anyway, you may be thinking that after reading the above, I am no more than an ungrateful bastard who slates a free seafront airshow. That’s what I’ve technically done yes. However, Clacton airshow *is* a good airshow, just it lacks any decent depth of character. TDC and the companies who sponsor the displays work tremendously hard to actually put the display on, so in that respect I am very grateful for the work that they put in, because otherwise we wouldn’t have an airshow in Clacton every year. What I want to say is that from my point of view, because the display arena is so large (over a mile/mile and a half across the seafront), a single display aircraft will easily get lost.

I feel every decent seafront airshow needs a wide variety of aircraft -whist Clacton does have a good variation, it could be a lot better. I am aware of the operational and financial restrictions that the organisers have and they do a bloody good job with what resources the do have. I was hoping to see Vulcan XH558 this year at Clacton, but wasn’t on the cards. I was also hoping to see a rescue demonstration, which is was a feature of the Lowestoft Seafront Air Festival, as was XH558.

Maybe it’s just me, I dunno…

Anyway, a good day out with a pile of decent pics - I’ll get them sorted out and they’ll be up here soon.

I’m gonna sign off and go and watch TV or something. Catch ya later.

Cheers

Jamie.

Well for those who noticed, my site was down for the best part of a week. Anyone trying to access would have been greeted with a “Account expired” page on Web Mania’s website. That is exactly what happened, the site’s hosting contract expired and I didn’t renew it.

I didn’t renew it because I was planning to get my own dedicated web server from 1and1, which this site (and several others) are all now running on. Two friends and I have purchased equals shares in our own dedicated server to accommodate all of our hosting needs.

It is also with great pleasure that I wish to formally launch a new development company, or imitative as I should say. Called Winchester Technologies (website is not fully developed yet), we will be providing high quality website development services in Essex, UK along with fast, reliable hosting as well as domain registration services.

We will be offering web hosting properly in the next few weeks. We won’t be offering our hosting services to everyone as we don’t want to expand too quickly at this stage and we want our server to stay as free as possible in terms of resources for our clients. We will be however offering hosting to a small amount of people, at a fairly competitive price for what you’re getting. Therefore, if you’re looking for a fast, reliable Linux (CentOS) host which you know won’t let you down (or me for that matter) then please get in touch (quickly).

I am still putting the finishing touches to the site’s migration over to our new server, so if you see any problems which haven’t been resolved within a few days, please get in contact with me.

All for now

Jamie.

Only a quickie…
Well, I’ve now officially left TTC - leavers day was today and I got my yellow form signed. No more TTC! Now off to have some fun

On another note, Trivium yesterday announced the name of their new album. Called “Shogun (??)”, I feel it’s sure to be good. Well, atleast hopefully…please please… better than The Crusade. It’s being released on September 30th. Can’t wait.

Jamie.

Well, it’s now June 2008, which is half way through 2008. I feel like I’ve done sod all this year so far but I guess that’s most likely just my own convoluted opinion. Who knows.

Me and Hannah are seeing lostprophets next weekwhich should be good. Missed several chances to see them last year, bad mistake on my part, but sorted now. Anyone coming to the Astoria next week? 11th? It’s not a “proper” tour gig as such, it’s one of several gigs that lostprophets are doing as “warmup” gigs for the big festivals that they’re playing at this summer - Download etc. Should be good laugh.

Me and Miss LJ have been together for 20 months on the 8th. Heck, almost 2 years. You know what? I’ve loved pretty much every minute of it, except from a few little niggles which we’ve passed now. She’s awesome and we’re awesome. Love you

Ermm…ooh and yeah, before I forget. For you IE7 users (I still pity you but I guess it’s better than IE6 and below), I’ll get the main navigation on the site fixed at some point during this week. I’ve been bogged down with all sorts so haven’t been able to get it done.

I’ve started my third and final IT Applied exam today, a day earlier than I first thought, so getting out of bed early was a bit of a shock! Finishes on the 11th though, then TTC sixth form is finished. Leaving TTC will be strange, but I guess it’s gotta be be done at some point in my life. I’ve had a good laugh there and I’ve met some fantastic people, but I guess it’s time to move on and leave Tendring Technology College in the past.

This summer should be good, I hope. Lots of good weather, I HOPE…lots of beaching it with everyone, I HOPE and spending it with the people dearest to me.

Anyway, I’m gonna go get eat my lasagne. For anyone taking school/college exams/driving tests/whatever else, GOOD LUCK!

Jamie.

Firstly, for anyone who noticed, my site has been down for the best part of the afternoon and has only just come back up as of about 10PM due to the power supply dying on the server that my site is being hosted on. In truth, according to WM’s support, several of their servers had power supply failures. The whole event seems rather percurliar to me, seeing as Web Mania have their servers in a data centre which I am believed to have protection against power spikes etc. My host usually isn’t that willing to give out too many details about things.

My site wasn’t the only affected. Bryn’s East Coast Dubs site was also offline for about 8 hours. All appears to be well and stable again now though.

So the long awaited Service Pack 3 for Windows XP has finally been released. However, this release hasn’t been rosy for everyone. Pretty much every Windows Service Pack is bound to cause problems for some people with various configurations (look at XP’s SP2 for instance), so it’s hardly a surprise that SP3 has been reaping havoc on some people’s computers, in particularly AMD based HP machines with HP OEM installations of XP.

Jesper Johansson has written up a detailed insight into the problem of SP3 + HP AMD hardware + HP OEM installation of XP = dud copy of XP that doesn’t boot. If you’re having a problem of this description, then head over to his site and have a read.

I’ve installed SP3 on the few last remaining XP boxes that I have running and I haven’t had any problems whatsoever. I’ve also installed it on a couple of customer computers and haven’t had any adverse effects either, so on the whole so far it’s been a fairly positive result.

Jamie.

Well, I’m now officially 6570 days old Which means I’m now 18!

Happy birthday me!

Yesterday my friend Ross and I made the trek up from Colchester up to Birmingham to attend Microsoft’s “Heroes Happen Here” launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 at Birmingham’s ICC. Aside from the 4 hour train journey and getting up at 4:30AM, it was a great day. I learned a lot and the seminars I found pretty useful.

However, although the day was good with a lot of free stuff (including free lunch and beer), I am pretty disappointed in some areas:

• The promise of “full” promotional versions of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio turned out to be untrue. The promotional software delegates were given included a 365 day trial of Server 2008 Enterprise, a copy of the SQL Server 2008 Standard CTP (full version hasn’t been released yet but we will get a 365 day trial of it when it has) and a full copy of Visual Studio 2008 Standard. I’m annoyed by this, because there was no word from MS or anyone before the event stating that we would receive evaluation copies of the software. With previous launch events, delegates have received full copies of the products being launched.
• The organisation of the whole event I thought was pretty shoddy. Some staff didn’t know what another did (communication was bad) as well as about 12:30 the upstairs entrance to Hall 3 (the upstairs gallery), was closed off due to “the hall being prepared for lunch”. However, my lunch as a delegate on the IT Pro track was between 12pm and 1pm. I went in another door to find the whole of Hall 3 packed with people.
• There wasn’t enough time between the seminars. At one point, I got into one of the seminars I wanted to go late because I had to get through a lot of people doing pretty much the same thing as me.

It was a really good day overall. However, I would like to see a separate event for delegates attending as “IT Pros” rather than developers. If there were two different events rather than one event trying to satisfy what both camps want, then there would be a lot more focus on what each camp wants to see and do. The seminars were good and I thought were fairly thought out. Having said that, one of the seminars started late and things over ran and the whole presentation wasn’t delivered in it’s full entirety. Some of the seminars I wanted to go to I couldn’t because they coincided with another one I wanted to go to or was already in, so this was a shame.The closing session talk was by Simon Peyton Jones, and looked into the need for today’s applications needing to be able to support multicore processing architecture. ‘Twas really interesting.

The whole event was free (with the exception of the train ticket), so I can’t really complain in a sense. It was a good day and I’m really glad I went.

Jamie.

I have just learnt on the BBC news website earlier today of the death of Leon Greenman. Leon was one of the last surviving survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War Two. He lost his wife and son in the camp, and after the camp was liberated returned to England and has dedicated his life to telling people about his story in Auschwitz and campainging for equality. I met him in 2004, and I really wish I could have met him again. He really was an inspriation.

Rest in peace Leon.

[I'm sorry for the length of this post, it just got a bit out of control!]

Well at the end of the day a blog is somewhere where one can convey his thoughts, so I thought I’d do just that. Some would say I’m far too open about stuff, and randomly post it on the Internet. However, I’m me. I’m just me…

Christmas…

My Christmas was fairly boring in parts. I can’t really say I did much, other than just the usual Christmassy things of seeing family and friends, unwrapping a few presents and indulging in far too much food and alcohol. Ah well. Now I’ve got to loose it all.

I got some really awesome presents for Christmas. Laura made me a really fantastic little boxy thing with lots of lovely bits in there. She also gave me a new lava lamp (just what I needed cos I’d broken my old one) as well as a hand decorated cup and mug. It was really, really awesome of her. It’s all so awesome. She’s really creative creative like that. Danke

New Year…

I spent new year round Nick’s house in Frinton. Me, Nick, Alex, Lloyd, Kris, Graeme, Jamie, Alarick and Ross had a proper good time and saw the new year in with lots of booze and loud music. It had to be done. Some of the antics we got upto were rather amusing. Let’s just say, J knows not to be the first one to fall asleep at a party

New Years Day was welcomed by a trip down to a cafe in Frinton. Full English breakfast (it’s bad, read below) all round was duly deserved after the drinking that went on during the previous evening. All sorted lads.

New Years Resolutions…

I’ve been thinking about what I would class as a “New Year Resolution”, and I can’t think of one single thing - I can think of lots of things. With most people breaking them within a month, I guess there’s no real point in actually making a few. However, I am going to do so. There are a few suspects which I guess I could call a suitable candidate for being a NYR. Unfortunately, it won’t be anything that special or fancy, but they are connected with me, and only me in a way. I guess, for the 5th or so year running, the main one that I would call NYR is to loose weight. I’m pretty annoyed with myself, because in the last two months (well, counting from the beginning of November), I seem to have put on about a stone. Now, due to lack of decent scales I haven’t weighed myself yet. I’ve been about 16 stone for the last couple of years (yeah, it’s scary), but I think it’s increased. I can no longer get into *three* pairs of jeans that I could fit into 2 months ago, nor can I get into my Vans t-shirt.

Now the thing is, I’ve said that I will try and diet countless times in the last few years. Yes, I have lost small amounts of weight here and there. However, I’ve never really properly dieted. I guess one would call me a bit of the lazy side. However, I want this to be the last year that I have to say “I’ve said that I will loose weight as a new year’s resolution for the last 5 years and it hasn’t worked”. I want to actually make a go at it. I don’t want to loose much, only probably a stone or two. I want to be able to get back into them jeans. I want to be able to bike around without feeling out of breath. I want to do it for myself.

I really want to make a go of it. Anyone who will know me knows that I can be a bit of a slacker at times. I have motivation to do things that other people have told me to do (for instance, if someones needs help with something), and all that kinda stuff. I however have little motivation most of the time to actually do anything that concerns me. I guess you could call it that I’m slowly pushing a self destruct button.

I’ve been saying that I’ll try and loose weight for ages. I’ve also been saying I’ll try and get a job for ages. I really need to actually change my attitude towards all of this, because at the end of the day, no one else can. Only me. I guess this blog post is a way of trying to kick myself into actually doing something about it rather than sitting on my arse and doing nothing about any of it.

Self motivation?

Self motivation is one of the demons of Jamie R. I battle with it. Half of me says, stuff it. Do it tomorrow, and I’ll go back to the forum that I’m currently browsing or continue a half witted (or sometimes deep, complex) conversation with someone. The other half of me tells me to get on with it. It’s like college work. I’m in the middle of getting my examination prep. work done for Tuesday. I have a 20 hour examination (over 2 weeks) on Microsoft Excel (of all things…) starting on Tuesday. I guess I shouldn’t be here now writing this blog post, but to be honest, I’d rather do this.

What I’m really like…

I guess for the people who have never met me and don’t know me personally, their only idea of my personality would be through my website - predominantly the content of my website of my blog, and the style of my writing. You will probably see that the website doesn’t get updated much and that there are things which say “will be done soon” or whatever. I’m not gonna make any excuses, like I’ve done in the past. This website doesn’t get as much attention as it should. This website doesn’t have half the stuff on it that I like it to have. However, I just don’t have the time anymore. I don’t have the time, and to be honest, I stopped doing most of my web development related stuff coming up for 2 years ago. I guess you could say that was my old life. I’ve moved on.

Moving on…

On the subject of moving on and change. I was thinking the other day about how things are generally in my life now, and from about the beginning of 2006. That’s a whole 2 years ago now. Thinking retrospectively, a heck of a lot has changed. Not just with my life, but with people and their attitudes in general. At the end of the day though, it has to be said. People get older and people move on. Maybe that’s what I don’t like. I don’t like people moving away from me. I like the people who are close to me to stay close to me. I don’t like drifting apart from people. I guess the whole talk of university and everyone going their separate ways puts me in that frame of mind, I don’t know.

Laurababes…

This year, Laura will be off to university. I don’t know what’ll happen between us after then. All I can say is that I hope we stay together. She means the world to me, I don’t know what I would do without her. She’s just everything to me right now. I guess the three weeks apart from her while she’s been in Australia has done me some good. Whilst I’ve hated it because I’ve missed her, it just makes me realise how good the last 15 months has been with her. She’s back from Australia soon, so I’ll be able to hear all the tales she has to tell. I really can’t want to see her, she’s back on the 7th. Maybe that’s why I’m so happy atm. Ily

10 years time…

I wonder what my life will be like in 10 years time. I’ll find out in 10 years time. Will I be single? Married? Have my own place? Know many of the people I know now? Will my mum and dad still be about? What kind of job will I have? How much money will I have?

Career…

I guess one thing leads to another there. However, I really want a career in IT preferably, doing network administration / management etc. A position in a large company’s IT department as a network administrator / technician would be awesome. At the minute though, I need a contracted job, but I’ve got to start small. I do freelance(ish) IT work for a few small businesses where I live and support a few private people I know. It’s a start in the IT industry and it provides me with valuable experience. Also, when I was helping out at my college, it was really invaluable. I learnt so much there.

Theatre Tech…

I guess I’ve come to the conclusion that although I love doing lighting/sound etc for shows, concerts etc, it probably won’t be a career path for me. I don’t know why in a way. I absolutely love doing it. Something just doesn’t feel right about it. I think I’ll always end up doing it here and there as a hobby, but I don’t think it’ll be a career. There again, I might be doing something totally different in 10 years time!

2008…

I think 2008 will be an extremely important year for me. I will:

1. Turn 18. Will be good,apart from paying tax.
   
2. Start driving (some of you may remember that I took my first driving test in August. I’ve now failed 4 times. I have bad concentration sometimes, and during that kind of test, it flattens me)
3. Finish sixth form education. Do I go to another college? or uni? Depends on the next point
4. Hopefully get a full time job. If I succeed in getting a decent job then I won’t go to university. I’ve applied for the 2009 season anyway.
5. Hopefully shed a few stone, but that down to me I guess. As are 3 of the above points.
6. Hopefully go abroad. I’ve never had a proper holiday abroad, so it’d be nice.
7. A few other bits…which I can’t really discuss here because it’ll just cause problems.
8. Lots of other stuff I can’t think of. It’ll come to me - there are other things, but it’s 3:25am.

A good kick up the arse is just what the doctor ordered…

I’ve had enough of saying to myself that I will do something, and then not do it. I want to actually make a go at doing the things that I keep on kidding myself at. Loosing weight is the main thing. I know I can do it. Everyone says I can do it, it’s just…doing it. If it took 5 minutes, it wouldn’t be a problem, but that’s not the case. It takes will power, iron determination and a good kick up the arse. I start dieting, but then I revert back to when I’m bored or a bit annoyed, I’ll eat. I’ve done that since I was 7 years old. I’m fed up of it. I’ve promised Ems that I will try, so I have to now. I’ve promised…

Why so long?

And for the record, I decided to write this rather long, kinda varied blog post rather than what I did last year because I wanted to do something different for a different year. It’s a new year, and a very different one. A lot of things are going to be different this year. A lot of things are going to change. I’m fairly sure that some of the people I knew last year I won’t know by the end of this year. In the same context, I’ll meet a lot of new cool people this year. 2008 is a new year for new experiences and new challenges. I want to leave the shit behind that’s plagued me over the last few years and start afresh. I find it hard to forget the past, but I want a fresh start in a fresh year.

My friends…

I have a lot of awesome friends and I thank them for being them. The usual sorta thing. You know who you are, I won’t mention names this year.

Learn from the past, look to the future…

Anyway…as my college’s old slogan was “Learn from the past, look to the future”, I’ll take that…and somewhat agree.

Well if anyone actually reads all, or even any, I thank them. Please leave a comment if you want to. I think I can safely say I’ve written the longest blog post ever.

Have a good 2008. Have fun!

Best wishes,

Jamie R.