Jamie R

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.

Enter Shikari on 6th November was bloody awesome. I couldn’t keep up with the fast moving energetic crowd and had to get out of the pit a few times. I lost Weston, but then found him again, he couldn’t survive it either. After getting lots of free water from the bar we went back in for a bit and endured a load more 14 year old wannabe-emo kids smashing into me. It was an awesome concert, but I don’t think I’ll see them again for a while. Don’t get me wrong, they are a FANTASTIC band live, who play FANTASTIC stuff and the atmosphere at the gig was awesome, it was just too violent in a way! I can survive a Metallica gig no problem, but 4,000 young people crammed into the Brixton Academy isn’t really a nice thing, especially if you’re at an ES gig! Too hot!

For you lampie folk out there, this page describes the technical side of the concert. Equipment includes High End Systems Studio Beam washes, Martin Mac 2000’s, Martin Atomic 3k DMX strobes and a Flying Pig Systems Hog 3 iPC for control.

Christmas is, at writing 20 days away. Laura’s off to Australia for Christmas and New Year, she’s leaving on the 14th, so no Laura for 3 weeks. I wish I could fit in her suitcase. Meh ah well – I’d happily trade in most things to go out there with her! What are all you lot doing for Christmas? Going out and getting sloshed? Staying at home with typically-Christmassy chestnuts and mulled wine? Going to Florida or Sydney or wherever? I reckon I’ll just be staying at home – might go and get my pipe and slippers as Nick would say – “fetch me my pipe and slippers young chap, I am a MAN now!” lol.

I found a really embarrassing photo of me at PLASA 2007 on the Avolites website earlier today. Man I look awful. It’s alright though, I found an equally bad one of Ricky at PLASA 2004 (I didn’t find any of us at PLASA 2006)…he’ll hate me

My college’s sixth form revue is on Wednesday 19th, which will be fun. I’ve been busy getting things ready for the lighting side of things. Should be good. This year’s theme is aliens and sci-fi, so I’m thinking lots of green/purple/strobes/whatever I can get my paws on. Hopefully everything will go to plan.

In terms of site news, I’ve added a donations page. Anyone who likes what I do and would like to contribute something to my PayPal account, they can do so through my site. Anything, however small will be greatly appreciated. I’ve also added a new section called “Essex Stage Crew” which is an area of the site which will be detailing more of my theatre work in the future. It’s not up yet but it will be soon!

Over and out

Jamie.

Hey

Today (October 8th) is mine and LJ’s first anniversary. We’ve officially been going out a year It’s awesome, I’m really surprised she has stayed with me for a year, lol (given my obscure ways sometimes!), but she has, and we’re really happy. I took a trip up to Colchester and met her after college which was cool – we wandered about for a bit, did the usual Monday afternoon ritual of going into Costa or Starbucks and drinking Frapuccino (iced coffee).

The last year with Miss Laura-Jade Klée has been fantastic LJ spent the last three months making me an anniversary gift which was a complete secret until all was revealed today. She made me a story book, with pictures and paintings of us and our adventures over the last year. She also wrote a song which accompanied the book – each page has some lyrics on it. The whole idea is that you listen to the song and turn the pages in accordance to the lyrics. The Story Book Song is fantastic, and it really brought a tear to my eye when I saw what she’d spend the last three sold months making! I’m so grateful, she’s just fantastic. Thank you so much babes! I love you

I have more than one reason to be happy. My hosting company emailed me earlier and notified me that my web space has been increased from 500mb to 1GB without any extra charge. I’m damn happy, cos they wanted a shed load of cash for extra space (£10+ vat per year for 100mb!).

I’ve uploaded PLASA 2006 and 2007 pictures to the gallery. I went to PLASA last month. I went for 2 days out of the 4 days that the show was on. The opening day was DJ day, so there were a lot of kids etc there who were DJs. I wanted some kind of T-shirt that said “I’m not a DJ!” I also went back on the closing day (Wed 12th Sep) to find a much quieter exhibition – just what I wanted. I actually had a chance to talk to company reps about stuff, meet people etc and get decent practice/play time on different products. I got over an hour on the Avolites Diamond 4 Vision, which I was pretty happy about seeing as I didn’t get much of a looking on Sunday 9th. For people wondering “WTF has he just gone on about”, the PLASA show is the Professional Lighting and Sound Association’s annual trade show up at Earls Court. It’s where exhibitors from the entertainment industry all come together to show off their new products. It’s a fantastic show, and I recommend anyone who’s interested in lighting, sound, AV etc to take a treck along to next years show.

In other news, soon you’ll be seeing the launch of a new part of my site. I’m gonna add a section about the theatre work that I do and the kind of things that I have lit and done technical stuff for before. Wait and see.

Anyway, take care!

Jamie.

Hey

Well where to start – as you might have noticed, and as one person actually emailed me to ask me why (thanks Roy), my site has been off line for the past week. This has been due to the unforeseen fact that I hadn’t renewed my hosting account (domain and hosting were both up for renewal at the same time) and so my site went off line. I couldn’t renew anything before due to lack of money. I guess my host is pretty cheap at £30 a year for hosting for an *alright* hosting spec and because my site doesn’t use a great deal of server resources (only about 4 or 5 gig a month on average traffic) my current host suffices.

In other news apart from hosting, I’ve been pretty busy in the last week. I like being busy, except last weak was*really* tiring. Saturday 7th July I went to the annual war bird gathering up at Duxford – the Flying Legends air show. I’ve upload shed loads of pics (only a few compared to the amount I did take, most of which were crap) to my gallery. You can find the album here. I was really looking forward to the airs how seeing as the star of the show would be a Lockheed P-38 Lightning nicknamed “Glacier Girl” which was part of a flight of 6 P-38 Lightnings and 2 B-17 Flying Fortresses flying from North America to the UK in 1942. The pilots of the mission, called “Operation Bolero” downed over Greenland due to bad weather and ended up landing on the ice. The crew were rescued after several days of being on the ice; however the aircraft were left there. In 1992 however, an expedition to the site of the crash landings resulted in one (and the least damaged) P-38 being lifted from 268 foot of ice. A ten year restoration project began and on 26th October 2002 P-38 41-7630 took to the skies for the first time, 60 years after being ditched over Greenland.

“Operation Bolero II” was finally organized, and preparations were made for the second attempt at the mission. This time, just with the P-38, which by now had been dubbed “Glacier Girl” and a recently restored P-51D Mustang (TF-51D 44-84847) called “Miss Velma” which was being flown over to the UK to become The Fighter Collection’s latest acquisition. However, Glacier Girl’s involvement in Operation Bolero II ended abruptly on 26th June when coasting out of Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada with “Miss Velma”, she started trailing coolant. Steve Hinton (pilot of Glacier Girl who had also flow every previous post-restoration flight in her) managed to get her back to Goose Bay where she was inspected. The problem turned out to be major – a cooling vent had popped off the right engine. All 4 aircraft returned to Goose Bay (P-38 and P-51 with support aircraft in the form of a Cessna Citation Sovereign and a Pilatus PC-12) and so the flight continued once more without Glacier Girl. The right engine will now need a massive overhaul, and there are rumors that both engines might be replaced. Miss Velma eventually made it to Duxford on July 4th after being weathered in Scotland for a few days. Hopefully Glacier Girl will make an appearance at Duxford soon – Operation Bolero III is in talks, so hopefully we’ll see her at Legends 2008.

In other news away from air shows, I saw Metallica at Wembley Stadium on Sunday 8th July. It was a really long, tiring day seeing as I’d been up to Cambridge a day before and been at Legends all day. However, it was a GREAT concert – Metallica are far better live than I thought they would be. The supports were Mastodon, Machine Head and HIM. I can safely say that I didn’t really like Mastodon, and HIM were pretty much hated throughout their set. With the crowd all shouting “fuck off back to Finland”, I’m kinda assuming a lot of people didn’t like them. Ah well, I personally quite like HIM. I think they’re a good band – everyone’s different though. I went with a few mates and we got on a coach organized by our local newspaper which picked us up at Clacton Station and took us straight to Wembley. Was a good day! I’ve put pictures up here.

Gonna go and book my driving test now, going to see when they have dates etc!

Chow!

Posted for a while, so here I am. I guess it’ll be a long one, but I’m bored and I think I might as well write something here. Post a comment if you’re gonna read it!

I’ve been doing a fair bit of stuff lately to be honest, which probably kinda explains the lack of work on the site and blog posts. Right now I’m watching Panorama on BBC One into the whole “computer revolution” and a study looking into whether there is a clear link between WiFi and health problems. Roughly every school, a lot of homes and work places are now installing wireless networks etc. It’s looking into whether there’s an impact on our health caused by mobile phone technology and wireless network technology. There are a lot of debates either side of the argument – should we have and use WiFi (particularly in schools) or not? I think we should, from what I’ve seen, there have no adverse effects to the use of WiFi, however I do see both sides of the argument.

There might be a few people around who “have” been affected by the use WiFi about, however there amount of use and coverage it has now, it’s pretty much unavoidable. If there was really a problem, then surely there would be a far bigger outcry and public response from it? Maybe my view is wrong, but it’s what I think. Surely, if there was a problem, a *lot* of people would have symptoms and problems about it. One woman on the show is apparently sensitive to WiFi and has undergone tests. It’s true, there are electro-sensitive people, however the UK doesn’t recognise it as a disability, whereas for instance, Sweden do. Also, don’t you think that they would be affected by standard phone masts and radio stations?

In terms of what I’ve been up to, I guess it’s a fair bit. Last month (well, 22nd April,) LJ took me to see Trivium at Ipswich’s Regent Theatre. It was an awesome concert, and although it was in a theatre, really exceeded my expectations. I really enjoyed myself and have uploaded a few photos to my picture gallery. Also, me and three of my buddies have gone and got tickets for Metallica’s July 8th concert at the new Wembley Stadium as well, which will be extremely good seeing as it’s Metallica’s only gig in the UK in over 16 years I believe.

College is going ok. We’ve signed off media now because we’ve done all the work for this year and have no summer exams in it. I had a general studies exam today, as I did last Monday. I’ve only got IT left now, which will be a 15 hour exam spread over 2 weeks.

I also went upto Duxford at the weekend (Sunday 20th May) and went to their Spring Air show. It was the first air show I’ve been to this season so far, and hope to go to a lot more. The theme of the airshow was to commenenrate the 25th ending of the Falklands War, so it was a rather moving and rememrable display. I was surprised to see a Bell UH-1H Helicopter there, which to be honest, was unknown to me before the airshow. The UH-1H Iroquois, more commonly known as G-HUEY or “IROQUOIS” – serial number “ 13560″ was the star of the show. It was a “trophy” of the Falklands, seeing as it was captured from the Argentine Army and brought back to the UK at the end of the war. Now it’s owned by three Huey enthusiasts and looks forward to a good display season. A full write-up and pictures are coming, I’m in the process of sorting the photos out.

My driving lessons are going rather good at the moment, got another one on Wednesday after college and then I’ve got my theory test booked for Saturday 2nd of June. I’m happy with the way it’s going at the moment, my driving instructor Paul says that he reckons I can do my test at the end of June. I’ll get it booked up soon when he thinks I’m ready for it, and will see whether the little men at the DSA wanna give me a licence or not! Laura’s also started driving now, so hopefully we’ll be both soon be driving about!

The summer is on the way, and I hope will be fantastic. As you can probs gather from blog posts last summer, summer 06 was the best summer I’ve ever had, and I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to beat that experience again. It really did rock – I hope this summer will be just as good, if not better. People will be driving and it’ll be good. Me, Bryn, Dean, Ricky and whoever hope to go on a few roadtrips etc, which will be schweet! If I pass my test that is.

Anyway, I better go. Have fun people!

Jamie.

Woo…it’s that time of year again. It’s gotten cold again, winters set in and we’re getting the good ol’ dark evenings early. Meh, I hate this time of year…it really pisses me off. Why can’t it just be nice and sunny again? I mean, coming home from college and then two hours later it’s pitch dark…

Ah well, I guess there’s no point ranting over the weather, afterall the weather’s the weather. My life’s been pretty dull these last few months really. I get outta bed, get clothes on, go to college, come home from college, piss around till late then collapse into bed. Really old plain boring life! I’ve been doing the odd bit of lx work lately – mainly disco work but did a talent show last night, which admittily cocked up *(on the sound side of things)* and been working at the Mercury helping out on re-rigs and shit. I really like working at the Mercury, it’s a nice place to gain experience and they’ve got some alright gear there as well. I also lit an amaetur theatre production of “Something’s afoot” over the October half term for a small theatre group called Saxons.

Anyway, everyone looking forward to christmas? I’m gonna be looking forward to unwrapping whatever I’ve been given. Will probably get bloody socks or something, but nevermind..it’s only christmas! (yeah, as you might be able to tell, I don’t really give a shit about religion..I’m technically Christian but it doesn’t mean I have to be all Christiany, lol)

I don’t hate Christmas, but it’s not one of the best times of the year for me. I’m not gonna go into details, it’s just not exactly a good time. I don’t like the way that Christmas has been commercialsed so much over the last few years. I’m not that religious as I aforementioned, but I do think that all the little electronics walking santa, dancing polar bears and other fuck-up toys which are in toyshops are a little silly at times…

If Paul’s gonna read this (mate of mine), then here’s something for him…”Sorry mate, I’m Jewish” – he’ll understand…basically, had a little fun with a guy who was dressed up as Santa last year..hehe.

When it comes to the web nowadays, I’m still following the development of the XHTML and CSS specifications and hand coding all sites to W3C specifications. However, big ironic point coming up here. You’re more likely to catch me on my MySpace “page” than on here. Some W3C compliant devs completly shun MySpace for the simple fact about how badly MySpace abuses webstandards and generally lets anyone do *anything* with their MySpace “page”. I don’t think like that. I’ll code all my own shit to proper specs, but it doesn’t make me not want to use MySpace as a social networking tool just because of that one pure fact. MySpace is a great innovation I think, and an awesome service to have available on the internet. If I wanna post a blog, I come here..I don’t post stuff on the MySpace blog bit. No one would read it and it’d be shit….like anyone reads this blog anyway (well, if you’re reading this sentence then you’re one of a small amount of people who do!)

I can generally found on MySpace more in terms of “being online” than on MySpace (by that I mean I spend more time on MySpace than on this site updating it and shit.) Call me a deserter if you like, but for some reason that’s what’s happen. Maybe MySpace has taken me away from devoting time to my own website..the one I actually have to pay to host, I don’t know.

Ah well, Myspace is a good tool..that’s all I’m saying. Most of the people I know has one (I guess that’s *not* always a good thing) – even my other half, LJ!

Well anyway, I’m probably boring you..I’m gonna go and do whatever.

ttyl,
J.

Well I haven’t been doing much on my site of late cos of other commitments which have arisen and stuff, but now I’ve got some free time I’ll spend it sorting this place out

I’ve been upto a lot recently. With the end of GCSEs us year 11’s decided to celebrate, several times in the forms of rather large parties. Parties are fun and I’ve been really enjoying it! There’s nothing better than seeing friends which are drunk getting vandalised (hehe, long story but let’s just say Alex got Ownnneeeeed.) Mitch’s party was really good, and alot of our “crowd” turned up over the course of the week (yeah, ’twas a week long party .) Networked Halo matches on xbox across the house and stuff was really good. I bloody suck at Halo tho, ah well :/

I got my GCSE results, and I did better than I expected in some areas. Although other areas I’ve flopped in. Ah well – I got:

• English Language: B
• English Lit: B
• Science Double Award: A A
• Maths: C
• Systems and Control: C
• Edexcel DIDA (IT): 4 A’s (A A A A)
• RE: E
• German: E

I’m fairly happy, they’re not the worst grades but at the same time they’re not the best. If I hadn’t been so lazy I mightta got better grades, but ah well! I’ve signed up for TVIC (Tendring Technology College’s Sixth Form) and I’ve decided that I want to take Double IT, Media and Chemistry. I hope it’ll be a fun 2 years, better than the last 2…

The rest of the summer, well what is gonna be the last 2 weeks before I start sixth form I’m gonna be spending having funnnnn! Going to a few more parties which are on during the next 2 weeks which should be good. I’m also still helping out over in IT at TTC and have been for a few weeks of the summer so far.

I also attended Farnborough International Airshow 2006 (the last day – Sunday 23rd July) as well as the 2006 Clacton Airshow. I have posted photos of FI2k6 but not Clacton, beause of the fact that I didn’t get good photos.A lthough I don’t know if a proper review of both events will come for a while because of time constraints with starting sixth form and things. I want to but I just don’t know at the moment.

All for now, stay cool!

Jamie.

Well after a long time (well 2 years to be exact), I’ve now got a decent, consistent looking website . I kinda cheated, because I got Mark Aylward (a guy I know from Coding Forums to design the site rather than having another one of my own shitty designs..woo.

I’ve done a fair bit to the whole site. In terms of aircraft, the “aviation” section has been renamed aircraft – sounds a little but more subtle eh and all photos are now over at the gallery (or will be with I get round to putting them up there.)

In terms of exams, exams started on Monday 5th and have been going alright so far. So far I’ve completed 2 out of 2 English exams, 1 out of 2 maths exams, all 4 german exams, 1 out of 2 RE exams and 1 out of 3 Science exams. Next week I’ve got Electronics, Maths, Science and RE. I’m suprised at how I’ve done so far I guess, I thought I’d be really struggling cos I’m a dweebish dipshit, but apart from Maths everything has been pretty kind to me

Back on Monday for Maths, so fun – good luck as I say to anyone who’s doing exams this summer. Short blog post ’cause I’ve gotta go and do work!

Jamie.

So here I am, staring this computer screen in the face looking for something [worthwhile] to do. Also here I am staring something else in the face, exams…GCSEs to be exact – and I’m also staring the probable essence of failure in the face as well. Well let’s not think about that – I’m hoping I won’t but you never know. Work hard I’m told, work hard is what I try and do – with the distractions of Slashdot, MSNM and whatever else taking preference most of the time. Maybe I need to have more self discipline.

Anyway, on the web/air show scene, I have news. For one, a new website is coming soon and this will hopefully be up within the next 2 months (exams permitting. I’ll be improving the main site in terms of design and content (finished design + content that is) as well as sorting the Gallery out and properly implementing it into the website and adding more photos and info to it.) Once I’ve got exams outta the way I’ll have time to do whatever I want. Hmm schleep…

So far I’ve got most of it done – I’m going to just have a small site rather than a big one full of crap that is crap and no one is going to be interested in. The Gallery and my blog will be the two areas that I focus on the most.

In terms of my air show calendar, I would really like to attend Duxford’s AirSpace air show (which was on the 21st,) which featured a lot of classic examples of aircraft that is part of Duxford’s AirSPace exhibition. Classic types include the Gloster Metoer, Hawker Nimrod, Westland Scout and a Miles Magister. However, I couldn’t due to exams and I had to do revision + get prepared for this shit….

Naturally I’m pissed off but what can I do? Oh well, I guess in a way it’s a worthwhile sacrifice. You can’t always get what you want in life, I’ve learnt that

Anyway yeah: in short, new site’s coming soon and I’m gonna try to get good grades – GOOD LUCK TO ANYONE WHO IS TAKING GCSES OR A-LEVELS THIS SUMMER!

-Jamie.

I’ve now added a new part of my site. Called simply “The Gallery“, it will serve as my own online photo gallery. I could have built my own photo gallery, however I couldn’t be bothered so instead I found the answer to my problems. Called zenphoto, it is exactly what I needed from a online photo gallery – XHTML/CSS valid, semantic, customizable, nicely designed by default, easy to manage as well as being powered by PHP and mySQL. You can find The Gallery here. I will be adding photos to it over the forthcoming week.

In other news:

• Got my phone nicked….MEH, BASTARDS!…but got a new one
• Targa laptop is well and truly kaput…it doesn’t even turn on, so you can discount that “How pleased I am with it review” I did a while back with a minor update in April. Ah well, time to start saving for my 17″ Powerbook :p
• My brother’s (Tim’s) birthday on 24th – he’ll be 14 – gawd!

Jamie.