Hello friends, I mentioned in a previous post that I was working on a way to allow myself to stream my media, such as Revision3 shows (diggnation ftw) across a wired network because when I’m living in Halls next year at Uni I can’t have a wireless network because there’s a risk that, despite the security I’ll place on it, 1337 people will probably be able to hack a simple WEP key and then I’m opening up myself to gigabytes of pron (and no i didn’t spell that wrong) being downloaded from my room’s network connection. As a result, I mentioned that I was trying to work out a wired connection, which is fairly simple. I managed to find a really inexpensive Cat5e cable at Tesco and set it all up, thanks to UPnP it worked easily, though it felt like a bit of a step down in the tech ladder working with a wired network. Because the only routing device I have at the moment is a wireless router, I had to go into the BIOS to turn off my laptop’s wireless card becuase using the wireless router meant that my laptop ignored the big ethernet cable sticking out of it and went straight for the wireless signal like a fat kid on a cake, and it was far easier to disable my laptop’s wireless than the router’s. All of this is really simple stuff but I’m just glad that I’m not prevented from doing it due to some stupid mistake on my part and the knowledge that I can get basic stuff to work. It’s kind of helping me get over my fear that I chose the wrong course when I applied to Universities.
Speaking of University, I’ve begun the arduous and heart-wrenching task of clearing out 18 years worth of clutter and childhood junk/memories from my room. I found my very first flash drive on my shelf, 256MB and the casing broke years ago. Firstly, for a geek like me it has sentimental value as it was my first memory stick (I now have a 4GB cruzer, and that’s only because I can’t afford larger) and I can never bring myself to throw away any amount of data storage. I’ll probably discard of the old casing and wrap the innards (I’m not sure how to refer to it) in plastic tape or resin or something to protect it and keep it stored away as an emergency drive, though I shudder to think what kind of cataclysm means that my only option is to use a half-working 256MB drive. I wonder how much data storage I have altogether in my entire room, I’ve got a collection of memory sticks and SD cards in various sizes, as well as the solid state on my netbook and the hard-drives on my laptop, PS3 and old laptop means it must be considerable when combined.
I’m still contemplating building a hackintosh, legally of course (Tekzilla did a feature on legal hackintosh’s recently), I have no doubt that I CAN do it, but it’s just the cost involved in building a computer specifically for this and then not being able to install the OS for whatever reason, there’s relatively little I can do repair the fault. Then again, if it doesn’t work I could just stick in Ubuntu (or even buy Windows 7) and let her rip that way, but it’d suck to go to all that effort (including the cost of a now unusable OSX) and it not even work. If anyone has any hackintosh information to share, let me know. If I do it I want to have it done before I go to Uni, though that may be ambitious.
Have finally got around to reading more of 1984, I’m as far as *spoiler alert* Winston explaining how the ‘Ministry of Truth’ works, including his own job there. It is absolutely enrapturing and it left me reeling after I went to bed just about how, when Orwell wrote this in 1949, there was no digital technology and the methods he describes keeps track of paper copies of information, where people specifically track down “incorrect” paper information and destroy it. Now, with the internet and all information being, near enough, centralized (more and more publications are becoming solely web-based), it has to be even easier, and Orwell would have a field day were he alive today. Amazon and the Kindle I’m looking at you, the more I read of 1984 the more I realise the irony of that story (see earlier post).
I’ve seen Transformers 2, it’s an alright film though there are some major moments of “oh bloody hell” and some bits are just plain ridiculous, but it’s worth seeing (even if I won’t buy the DVD). Megan Fox spends a lot of time bent over a motorcycle for no discernible reason but I don’t think anyone except sexually-repressed critics are going to mind that one. Shia LeBoufufuueuf is probably there, and should always remain, an actor for children’s films, given that he has the scream down and is an……..alright…….actor. The critics say it’s terrible, but it’s in their job title to criticise, I say it’s an alright film that’s worth seeing, but it’s not going to win any awards, except perhaps for digital design, which has greatly improved.
Weekend of mindless manual labour and till work ahead, joy.