THIS is a cinema display!

(Don't take this post as a commitment to blogging resuming - I just found the idea amusing. Images from here and here.)

Well, it seems I never let you (whomever you may be) know how Attempt 3 went. Following the instructions on the tin (80g of egg replacer - which is a massive amount - and an amount of water that now escapes me), with 8oz of flour, margarine, and sugar + flavourings gave me something bearing a remarkable resemblance to cake! Problems: Lack of flavour (I failed to account for the amount of cocoa required to flavour an extra 80g of egg replacer), lack of height (I might try adding a little baking powder next time), and tasting a little too strongly of egg replacer (maybe more cocoa will solve that). I'm not sure when I'll try the next one.

As my warranty for my laptop expires on the 28th of this month, I decided that sending the machine off for one final warranty repair would be a good idea. The faults I highlighted to Novatech were the intermittent display corruption, USB port instability and the dodgy audio. UPS were a pain (collecting a day later than when they were scheduled to), and Novatech claimed delivery far later than they should technically have received it (not sure who to blame there), but I can't really complain as when I finally received the machine back yesterday (exactly two weeks after it left me, almost to the hour), not only had it had the motherboard and VGA cable replaced (as had been claimed on the phone to me and the repair sheet with it), but it had also had seemingly every other component bar the hard drive replaced. Perhaps a kindly Novatech tech decided to give me an early Christmas present. To whomever was responsible, thank you and a Merry Christmas (or other appropriate holiday greeting) to you too.

I should really have done some (academic) work this vacation, but have so far failed (mainly citing my lack of laptop as the reason, although procrastination was probably another contributing factor). For the first time in a while, I do have set vacation work, as well as trying to catch up with Quantum and revising for collections.

(I think there's a mouse in my keyboard - it's just started squeaking at me!)

Below is possibly the worst cartoon you'll ever see. Richard said it was good (he may have been humouring me), so I decided to inflict it on all 0 of you reading this. Have fun!

And before I forget, to try and give it a kickstart into the Google rankings, here is the website for the Oxford Students' Ice Skating Club - OxIce.

Have a great Christmas (or if you don't want to, don't).

Well, it seems this is turning into a cookery blog! It turned out that the second half of the Accidental Brownies was so burned that it was not worth eating.

Attempt 2 (using more baking powder, a little bit of Xanthan Gum, more oil, less water, and some Stork - as shortening is impossible to get hold of round these parts) was made Wednesday, and was slightly more successful. The cake rose massively at the edges, overspilling the tins, but failed to rise in the middle. It also turned out to be rather greasy (oil needs to be replaced with water, I'd guess). It has less of a tendency to fall apart than did the last attempt, and now it's iced it doesn't taste half-bad. Although it's not the sponge I was going for. I've ordered some Allergycare Egg Replacer from www.goodnessdirect.co.uk; I'll make another stab at the sponge once that arrives.

Well, today I tried to expand my range of allergy-compatible cakes by baking an egg-free cake. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to properly account for the lack of egg, and the cake didn't rise. Well, it rose for about 5 minutes in the oven before it exploded and collapsed back into the base of the tin. As I was scraping the remains out of the tin and wondering whether to throw the other half of the mixture (my college oven can handle only one half of a cake at a time), I tried a crumbling, flaking bit of the residue (which was unable to hold itself together, at all). It was gorgeous! I had, as many before me also had, discovered Accidental Brownies. I'm now going to get very fat, as I've already eaten one entire half; the other is waiting downstairs (although that is a little overcooked, so I'll have to leave it to soften before eating it).

Last week I got a telephone call from Opodo regarding my Summit flight in March, asking me to call back on "0871 277 9852" regarding my schedule change. This is also the number listed at the bottom of my schedule change confirmation received by email. I finally got around to calling back today, and calling that number puts you straight into a recorded loop saying how brilliant Opodo is.

Then, after a while of that, the message switches to an Expedia message, saying that the number is out of service and to ring a different (0870) number instead. So I ring that (naively thinking that Opodo and Expedia have merged, or somesuch), and after an age of waiting on hold, manage to talk to a human (or at least a Glaswegian).

She asks for an itinerary number (which I do not have, only having a Booking Reference, Ticket Number, and various other numbers not calling themselves an itinerary number). She offers to search for my email, which she cannot find. Neither can she find my name on the system. I ask whether this is Opodo, Expedia, or what. She says it's Expedia, and talks to her supervisor. After another while on hold (more cheesy muzak), she comes back and informs me that it's definitely Expedia, and Opodo is a competitor, and that they have been receiving a high volume of calls asking for Opodo, but don't know why (despite the fact that I've already told her that it is because an Opodo number is calling itself Expedia and asking people to ring Expedia).

So now I have no idea what to do. I can't remember my account settings (why does every single website have different requirements for lengths and allowed characters for usernames and passswords?!) for the online website, so can't check my details there. I guess I'll have to ring the main line and try to get put through to somewhere.

. I hate phones.

If anyone else has had this problem, feel free to comment. I'll update with a solution if I find one.

After much fretting, I finally decided to risk booting from CD to install the 8355H BIOS. After much waiting whilst the machine hummed and harred with unreadable error messages, the screen turned blue (with gibberish) - the colour of the flash program. A progress bar counted down backwards in red, then faster in green (indicating that the update was a success), and the machine powered itself off. Restarting, it started fine!

Unfortunately, now I get a "PREVIEW VERSION - NOT FOR RESALE" message and a date flashing on the POST screen every time I boot, and the new BIOS still didn't allow Vista to progress past its ACPI BSOD.

For those of you who want to know how to flash a BIOS using a boot CD without touching a floppy drive, there is a basic tutorial here. Instead of using the floppy image provided, download a basic Win98SE floppy image from here, and add the BIOS flash utility and the new BIOS image using WinImage. Then use the tutorial linked above to burn using Nero, selecting the floppy image file you've created instead of using the floppy drive. If you want to be fancy, you can replace the default autoexec.bat with a new one that automagically runs the BIOS flash.

To those of you who are getting the same problems as me attempting to install Vista on a laptop, I'm sorry that I don't have a solution (save trying the x86 version instead - worked for me during Beta 2). I've reported the problem to MS and am waiting for a response.

I was trying to install Vista RC1 x64 last night, but was getting an error before setup even began about a missing ACPI controller. After some research the problem appeared to be solvable by a new system BIOS. So this morning I head over to the Novatech Forum and see that my machine (Crossfire 3400) is actually a MiTAC, and BIOS updates can be found there.

Happily, I visit the MiTAC site. I locate updates for both the system and the kbc BIOS, and after a little bit of Google, instructions on how to install both. I download these and the flashing tools, and (lacking a floppy drive) use Nero to make a DOS boot CD that will run them. I boot to this.

Installing the KBC BIOS is a breeze (if a little surreal, with little smiley faces filling up a progress bar, and the notebook then switching itself off with NO lights - not even the battery status. In addition, whilst flashing, the mother of all fans that I have never heard before kicked in. The machine sounded like a jet engine. I boot the machine back into Windows (XP x86 SP2), just to check that nothing was borked, then go back to the boot CD to install the system BIOS.

I type the requested instructions, and the BIOS flasher appears, does its job, then verifies and shows the green text to show that the update was successfully installed. Little did I know that that would be the last coherent text my notebook displayed. THe machine shut itself down, and upon pressing the power button again, I see scrolling vertical lines of gibberish (rather reminiscent of The Matrix, but in white rather than green). After a short length I see what looks like the prompt for my BIOS password (yes, I'm paranoid). Thinking if I can get past this screen, I might be able to make some progress, I type in my password and press return, and the machine even beeps to say it's accepted, but then I see (hidden behind the garbage lines) what looks like DOS error messages. No beef.

It turns out from the Forum that my machine is in fact a MiTAC 8355H. The only difference is the graphics card, but apparently that necessitates a different driver (in stark contrast to desktop machines, where you can use whatever the hell AGP or PCI-E graphics card you like and still use the same driver).

MiTAC service have yet to get back to me, but let this serve as a warning to all Novatech Crossfire users: do not install the O1.09 system bios flash for the MiTAC 8355 unless you fancy hosing your machine. The 1.09 BIOS for the 8355H might be worth a try, but I wouldn't put money on it, as I haven't tried it myself.

As if that wasn't enough, by that point in the morning I'd already acquired a bitchin' headache within a quarter of an hour of getting up, and I spent the first hour of work this afternoon re-shelving books to accommodate someone else's flagrant shelving error.

And to top it off, the Novatech forums are censoring the word "Bugger", making it look like I'm being profane when I'm just being mildly vulgar.

Today is definitely not my day. I hope it's yours.

Just a quick post to show off my 8-tier tower. I ran out of Diet Pepsi cans, so the third tier from the top is not quite symmetric, unfortunately. You can barely see that from this angle, though...

(Oh, and I've just noticed that the bottom tier is not quite perfect; some modification will be done later!)

Doctor Who in 20 minutes, followed by G&D's for ice cream cake. The weather is scorching, and apparently England won the football. (I'm grudgingly supporting them, seeing as Wales didn't manage to qualify.) Does life get any better?

Well, I tried to blog this last night, but DasBlog decided to time my session out and not let me use the Back button to take a copy of my entry.

I've finished compulsory exams - have one short option paper on Tuesday left. They didn't go as well as the past papers I was doing would have implied they would have. Damn examiners!

Now I'll attempt to answer questions Google users have been asking me by means of my referrer entries:

• Referrerspam doesn't work on this site. The only person that sees it is me, and I ignore it.
• This site does not contain the Wycliffe theme music, any MIDI files, or the Worms Armageddon theme music. Keep Googling, you'll find it eventually.
• I have no idea what happens if you drink too much Pepsi. I just know that I do.
• I have no pictures of individual Pepsi cans on here, only towers.
• "Lightning" is spelled "lightning". Lightning is an electrostatic phenomenon appearing as a forked flash of light, normally accompanied by thunder. Lightening is what happens when soemthing is lightened; when adding white paint to blue paint, you are lightening the blue paint. The two similar words can be used for amusing or poignant wordplay, as is done by Lazlo Zalezac.
• There are no tutorials on dasBlog on this site. Check the dasBlog website and fiddle with the settings files - that's what I did.
• If the same person as compained about diary-esque blogs on OxGoss is the one who found this blog by a search for OxGoss a while back, I don't care. I'm not forcing you to read my ramblings; if you don't want to read about my boring life, then don't bother visiting my website. I write for me, not for you.
• I don't think Diet Pepsi causes cancer; a recent independent study (not sponsored by soft drinks companies and acclaimed by consumer groups for its impartiality) showed no link between drinking beverages containing aspartame and cancer.
• Edit: To whomever Googled "abbreviation of someone who doesnt want something happening near there home" (should be their, not there, silly billy; and for some reason, I'm #2 in a search for that), I believe the acronym you're looking for is "NIMBY", short for "Not In My Back Yard".
• Edit2: To whomever Googled "zero wing band", email me. I might be able to help you ^_^
  

Wow, I'm #1 on a Google search for "I am Farscape" (with quotes); on the 7th page of MSN search results for 'Johnnny English' (no quotes); and bizarrely #1 for 'utc facebook registry' (no quotes - although why someone would search for that is beyond me!).

My lappy is out of action, so I have to satisfy all my computing needs in the JCR. The problem appears to be a head crash on my hard drive, although I can't affirmatively diagnose the clicking as the click of death, as I don't have a computer with sound facilities on which to listen to the sound clips. I'm leaving it well alone until I have a machine with which I can recover all the data I can to a new drive, and will then send the machine back to Novatech for the drive to be replaced under warranty. And if they don't do that, I shall be most annoyed.

Well, lots has been happening, and I've ended up not having the chance to blog it. So now I am, in roughly reverse order.

Today, I finished enough cans of Diet Pepsi to finish my 7-tier can tower, pictured below.

I am very proud, and very, very sad. But not quite as awesome and sad as the dude who is half-way through a 13-tier tower, also shown.

I got 81% on the Maths paper I got back today. I was hoping for more. Once again, lack of concentration was my downfall. That, and general ignorance. I frustrate myself immensely. I've done nowhere near as much work over the past few days as I should have, and wish I could make myself work harder.

I need to visit Krispy Kreme tomorrow, as otherwise the voucher I have for 24-for-the-price-of-12 will expire. And I don't want that to happen.

I also discovered today that my website (at the time of query) was #1 on a Google search for lectures finished. Someone has even arrived at my site from that query (which was how I discovered it). I'm so proud. I'm also getting numerous referrals per day looking for information on 'too much pepsi' and similar.

Monday, nothing much happened. I got up very late, having been up until 3:30.

Sunday night, I went out to Port Meadow to help Hannah with her art project. There was a tiny foal with its mother when we were on our way into the meadow, but I couldn't photograph it without a flash, and flash photography would have risked spooking the horses. Three wooden frames in the shapes of mounds were set on fire, in the dark. I took 220 photos; before, during, and after. Hannah videod. I got some aweesome pictures. Got back at 1 - 1:30ish; had cake in the Bev9 kitchen, came back home and posted all the photos on Facebook, and got to bed at about 3:30.

Construction of the mounds:

The mounds aren't lit:

The mounds are lit:

Playing with fire:

The third mound collapses (I missed the first two, but got lucky third time):

The fires burn down:

Embers:

Ashes:

Earlier on in the day, I got frustrated because Bev9/10 were all nagging me to get rid of my cooking equipment. Hence my being there to tag along to Port Meadow.

Saturday night I went out for Allan's and Chris's birthdays. We went to a very nice French restaurant on Little Clarendon Street; our chef was named Pascal, and the steak was cooked fantastically. We then went to see The Da Vinci Code, which was highly entertaining. Unfortunately the very emotional ending with sweeping music was a little difficult to get wrapped up in, as I was desperate for the loo. I had a large bucket of Diet Pepsi and had misjudged the length of the film. D'oh!
On getting back, it was decided that cake-eating was not going to occur. Some cream buns were had as I moved them between Bev9 kitchen and Bev1 fridge, though.

Saturday afternoon I spent 5 hours cooking. Two cakes (which ended up not being eaten in their intended fashions), and supposed Choux buns (for which the recipe failed miserably, so I ended up having to use far too much flour, and having rather unleavened cream buns. Most of the cream went on top of the chocolate, rather than in the middle.).

Friday I can't remember what happened, so it can't have been that interesting.

Thursday I went skating. Someone was having his first lesson, and went as far in about an hour as I did in 2 months on my own. I want lessons :-(. I think someone called me a woman AGAIN, too.

Wednesday I can't remember anything interesting, either.

Today's concert went well, although I split a few high notes in my solo because I was shaking so much. Free OJ afterwards was good. Didn't see Laura there, but didn't actually look at anyone in the audience whilst I was on stage, and if she was there she probably slipped away quietly at the end, so I probably wouldn't have seen her either way. Anyway, playing solo in front of an audience was certainly a learning experience, hopefully I can take something away from it to my next performance (when ARE auditions for music bursaries, anyway?

Not having lectures is weird. I actually have to get up in the morning, as I promised my scout I'd let her hoover my room. Probably means I should clear my floor, too. It's looking a bit... invisible at the moment.

Got 81% in the CP3 past paper I had back today. Not quite as good as I'd hoped; some areas I need to work on (such as not being careless - the age-old problem).

I made a cool site modification today. I'm not allowed to mention what it is or where it can be found, as that would be drawing attention to it which is against the TOS of the modification I've installed. Hopefully it will trickle me in some money.

Meant to practise for concert tomorrow today, but did not. Didn't have time. Sentence fragments again. Had a 1½-hour class with The Fonz, didn't do too badly (although not perfectly) on the tute sheet. Hopefully tomorrow's tute will be better.

SASJO concert tomorrow (Tuesday), 8pm, St John's Auditorium. Entry is free, I believe. Please come!

Having no lectures is weird. Also scary. I spent a few hours this evening reformatting Allan's laptop and XP-ising it. It is now much cooler, and more secure to boot.

Another weekend, another late night doing tute work for The Fonz.

I intended to watch Doctor Who last night. We're in the middle of a two-parter. The TV room was closed, so I went to the JCR. Two people had just started watching a DVD. Most frustrating. So after some ranting and raving, I checked the Radio Times for when tonight's repeat would be on. 7pm on BBC3. It was a date. Until I looked at my watch and saw it was 7:10. Grr. No point going then, as I'd already missed the resolution to the cliffhanger (the best and worst bit about Doctor Who two-parters).

Anyway, after more ranting and raving, I decided to search radiotimes.com for other repeats. Turns out the episode I missed a few weeks ago is being repeated on Thursday on BBC3, and the one I missed today is being shown on Friday. Perfect!

The Physicists'/Engineers' football match was due to happen today, but got called off (not before I'd gone to the uni parks looking for it, failed, and come home though!). I'd misread the email about the SASJO social, so that wasn't today either; leaving me with an empty afternoon of tute work. And procrastination.

I added donation buttons in various places over the last few days. Feel free to use them. I needs moneys!

5th week. Exams in 2 weeks today (today now being Monday). PANIC! Along with 5th week comes 5th week blues (not that I haven't had them in 3rd and 4th week, too, mind you). *sigh*

I bought four chocolate doughnuts in the Coop today. Two looked as though they had mould on, and one had raspberry jam in the middle. I was not amused. I still haven't received my new Coop card, either (after 6 weeks wait since I emailed asking for a new one). I live in hope.

Edit: If anyone can tell me why I'm getting referrerspam saying "yeast phots as fungi", feel free to let me know!

Well, yesterday (Thursday by now) I had an OK lecture, followed by ice skating (saw the most beautiful figure skater I've ever seen - not that she was the prettiest woman off the ice, but on the ice she was the most beautiful thing I've seen all year). Then as I wasn't formalling, I microwaved a ready meal, and killed time. Then on the way back from getting eggs to make a cake for Amanda's birthday today (Friday), I saw Amanda coming out of the house on her way to an obs session (talk about good timing!). Made the cake, iced it once it had cooled, and put it in the cupboard. Got into re-reading Thunder and Lightening (spelling of Lightening intentional, in case you were wondering), finally gave up about 2.

Got up this morning early intending to work for the midday class. Didn't happen. Didn't understand half of the class (knew I should have done the work for it - but will I learn?). Spent most of the afternoon reading Thunder and Lightening, then met everyone to get ready to give Amanda her cake. 19 candles (and only one splash of wax on the cake! Oops!). I think she liked it; she's certainly good at making you feel appreciated if she didn't. I'm guessing the former, I don't think Amanda could be insincere.

I had to dash off to get to Wyrd Sisters at the O'Reilly (Keble). It was damnably funny, and well done. Nothing like how it was described by the OxStu (well, if you're going to send someone who doesn't understand Pratchett humour to review a Pratchett-based play, you're asking for a crap review). Upon getting back, I got straight back into Thunder and Lightening, which I've now finished. Lazlo claimed that this was the edited version with fewer errors (he's been editing it with Drakhan). I can't say I'd noticed that many errors last time around, and there were certainly still a few left. Lazlo has a habit of saying "loose" when he means "lose"; I might let him know about that.

As soon as this MSN transfer completes (damn bandwidth throttling!), I'm going to bed. Ah, it's finished. Good night, all!

I said I'd had a bad hustings. Ah well. I was feeling quite indifferent before the results, but now I'm feeling quite bitter about the whole thing. I guess I'll see how close I was when the results come out. Had really good pizza for dinner. Slightly burned, because our oven is too fierce. Beats Cold Buffet night any day. (Why am I writing in fragments today?)

Added two new tutorials, one of my own and one of Brian's. Spent an hour or two getting internet and web to work on my Windows 3.11 VPC installation. Ooh, and bought my tickets for the MVP Summit! (Travel insurance is a bitch - that, postage and card surcharges brought my costs from £432.40 to £477.77.)

Started working on a past CP3 paper - I want to get as many done as possible before attempting next week's tute one under exam conditions. Got distracted by email and Win3.11. Had quite a good Complex f(x) lecture; halfway through I worked out why questions were being done the way they were, and the light bulb of understanding flicked on. Hopefully that means I'll be able to do the problem set. We shall see.

Clean sheets! That's the day in roughly reverse order (apart from the tickets, which should have been a lot closer to the top).

I have exams in 3 weeks!! That is scary. I don't even know my exam dates yet. Damn schools. Yesterday I finished work at midnight and then read two new chapters of online stories, and was too tired to blog. Tonight I've no idea while I'm still up, as I've not been working. Will go to sleep once I've finished writing this.

I could have booked myself a ticket to the MVP Summit this evening, if I'd known whether or not I have travel insurance (or want it from the airline). I've found a reasonable set of flight dates for only £430ish. Hopefully those won't have all gone by the time I am able to find out the details I need. I now have my new passport, so I'm legal to leave the country again! (Thanks to the advice not to buy travel tickets until you have a passport, I'm now paying probably a hundred more than I would have for my flights.)

I had my last revision lecture today. Three more lectures this week on my short option (Functions of a Complex Variable) and then I'm done with lectures for the year. Two weeks of solid revision (hopefully, more likely to be procrastinating, though, if I'm being honest) later are my Preliminary Examinations. I'm repeating myself. Meh.

This week's new Strong Bad Email is hilarious. I highly advise watching it.

I think I'll go to bed now.

Going into town to meet Nat (who never rang, as she'd promised she would, so I didn't meet her in the end) and JCR Election Hustings (where Vad stole the limelight, so perhaps my lack of coherence wasn't noticed so badly) took up a lot of time today, so doing the problem sheet for 8am this morning got pushed back and back. So here we are, having walked it over to the DWB at half one. I could have walked it over in the morning, but it would have required getting up earlier (and the route is much more pleasant at 1:30am - jaywalking is fun!).

I'll leave it there tonight - I would describe hustings and my upsetness about Nat not ringing me in more detail, but frankly I just want to go to bed.