Steampunk
Firstly, you can tell my exams finished on the 2nd of June can’t you? No posts since the 1st of June. It has been some busy times since then. A lot to write if I was planning on giving another life update post but for today something simple…
Steam. No, not vapourised water. Something much more dangerous in my opinion.
What I am talking about is the game and content deilvery service by Valve. Steam is a very dangerous thing.
The danger lies in how easy it is to use (ironically, usally it’s things being really hard to use that is the dangerous thing). With just a few clicks I can easily spend a lot of money on games that I am not very likely to play. BOOM! £50+ spent on a PopCap games pack and I can just download and play them straight away.
Most would say the fact that you can download the game and then play it straight away is an advancement. It is. The problem is; it is too good! When I go out and buy a game, I may not hand over any actual cash and see it leaving my hand, but at least I have a physical object in my hand afterwards. The more I buy, the more phyical objects I aquire and it will get too a point where there will be enough of these objects in my room that I stop buying things!
Not with steam, you just keep buying and buying and soon you have a page full of games to play, no hard drive space left (you get to order a new one with Amazon Prime then, another devil in disguise for similar reasons) and no cash in the account. Balls.
Guess who has been playing Team Fortress 2 and Portal all day 
Quite scary isn’t it?
As I have mentioned in my last few posts I have some more time on my hands these days. Yesterday I was browsing Wikipedia, and in the news section I came across this.
I must be honest, I knew this was possible and all those crazy Hollywood films like Eagle Eye make it look like the government is spying on us with insane amounts of technology that the average citizen can’t even comprehend. It may be possible that the government are doing this, I wouldn’t be surprised if I am honest. On the other hand, neither would I be bothered, I can’t say I have a lot to hide…
I just never would have thought that something on such an international scale could exist and not have been found out by now. It just makes me wonder a few things like how do they do it? and am I being monitored right now?
The answers are probably not as interesting as the questions but it does seem like one step closer to something from 1984 or V for Vendetta.
Just getting things done
I must admit, as much as I love them computers can sometimes be very annoying. For instance, yesterday my laptop (which I am currently writing this from) decided that the touchpad shouldn’t work while I’m using Linux and that it shouldn’t boot at all should I choose Windows. Quite annoying as you can imagine.
As annoying and frustrating as all of that was, it is kind of nice when something goes wrong just for the challenge of fixing it. Yes, this isn’t the best use of my time and I have a whole stack (notice the Comp Sci term there, eh?) of coursework that I could/should be doing right now on this less than snowy Saturday. Ah well, so far in the lest 24 hours I have:
- Installed a wireless card into my desktop
- Updated the desktop with everything it was needing
- Fixed my touchpad on my laptop by disabling the touchpad service in openSuSE startup
- Re-installed the sound card drivers on my desktop as they just disappeared
- Somehow disabled and then re-enabled my wireless on my laptop
- (In progress) Getting Windows to boot
See, good fun isn’t it? I wonder who it was who said that computers will make us all that much more productive/intelligent/better because it seems the only thing that I’m getting productive at is fixing my computer…
Never mind, it beats doing my laundry.
Batman and BlueJ
I can see why there is a huge hype behind Batman: The Dark Knight, the Sequel to Batman Begins. The first was good, this one looks even darker and I don’t really want to delve too much into Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker as many more-respected reviewers can probably do him better justice than I can (especially since I am yet to see the film). But, as always when I write here, I feel something is being over-looked. (more…)
Facebook is the root of all knowledge
I’m back from sunny Benidorm (no, I didn’t see it as somewhere that I would enjoy either, but it was fun). Not much of a tan because I dont like too much sun but I have been on holiday all the same.
When coming back from holiday you feel strange, you partly feel like you need a holiday to recover from your holiday and you also feel that normal life is very mundane.
Sabotage
Someone has just logged onto my Windows Live Messenger (not hacked, they probably just guessed the password, there is a difference) and changed my name and deleted, by the looks of things, all of my contacts that were online at the time. Specifically, I have lost a few of my Uni friend’s addresses. If any of you read this, could you re-add me please so I can speak to you again.
Very strange…
SUCS is twenty
Being a Computer Science student at Swansea University, I couldn’t help but joining the Swansea University Computer Society (I love funny acronyms). I thought it would be a great way to further my knowledge, meet new people and its the only place that you can play most online games. A fiver for the year? Thank you very much.
As boasted on the SUCS homepage, the society is one of the largest and oldest societys and Swansea Uni. This year is very special for SUCS though, as they are twenty this summer (making them a few months older than me)!
If you’re interested have a look at the section on the twenty years of SUCS, and to SUCS I wish you a happy birthday and hope that there are many more to come!
EDIT: also forgot to mention, thank you to SUCS for my hosting too!
Analogue samurai in a digital world
After a frustrating day day at work (no, I’m not even going to rant about it, eventhough on other days I would just post a rant instead of this) in the bank, I had a thought; what would happen if in Britain if we did away with physical cash all together? All money just being a number on a computer? (more…)