Some people should not be let on the roads, and I wonder why and how they passed. For some, there is no hope.

My driveway to where I am living on placement is off a main road, and on my 21st Birthday I thought I would go get my car checked out (it was making a noise like a drag racer - IE my silencer has gone). Fair enough, a hole had appeared in my exaust, costing me £110 to fix. The parts were not in, so I decided to head back home for a few hours whilst they got the parts from a local dealer.

It wasn't to my suprise that people speed down the main road. Usually motor bikes, high end cars, or stupid drivers decide to do 80mph in a 40mph zone during the night. Thankfully for me, it was during the day, and some cars were cruising 10  over the limit. Nothing major. This is, of course, as long as you still watch the road...

When I was indicating right to get into my driveway, I had to stop on the main road due to oncoming cars. Fair enough, I do this every day. When a blue van drive fast caught my eye, I made nothing of it.  Still catching my eye, it wasn't stopping. It didn't take long before I realised I was fecked.

Put it this way: I am in the middle of the road, stationary with my wheels pointing to the right to get into my driveway. Cars were oncoming at a pace, and a van was about to hit my backside with a thump. It doesn't take a genesis to work out that if I was hit, my velocity would match the van with extended weight and push me into the direction of my wheels. With incoming cars, it didn't look good.


The choices:

a) I hit the breakes hard, wait, and possibly cause a 5 car pileup. Nope...

b) Shoot forward attempting to dart between cars. Only if I had a decent car...

c) abandon car. nice....

d) attempt to avoid... So I did.. try anyway.

i shot forwards to try to minimise the damage if he were to hit. It was the sound of the scrape, the buckling, and the jolting that... well... yea...

It didn't look too bad. A 35mph hit to the break lights, buckled bumper and side, and.. oh. it rippled, folded and buckled the bodywork, the internal chassie, and god-knows-what-else. Just the bodywork alone would cost £1800 to repair. I got specialists to check the car soon for a more detailed inspection to see if its a write off.

Still I should not complain. I know a lot of people that have been in worse. I know people that have died in crashes that were not their fault. I suppose I got of lucky. Just don't blame me if I don't trust the car behind for a while.

[Start drum role with audience screaming, in a stadium and a big boxing ring in the middle}

Its the battle that some of the geeks in this world have been awaiting for - 2 matches, feathuring the Software group, and the Hardware group. I hope you all brought your goggles, becasue this could get messy"

Ok, enough of the role play - I was never good at it, and I probably never will.

Incase the news has crept quietly past you - there is a war going on in the software and hardware devision.

Software:
Internet Explorer 7 vs Firefox 2.0

They both had major releases on the same day (19th of October) made to the general public - and is now a battle to see who is the best out of the bunch. Microsoft still trailing by only just releasing the Tabbing browsers, and Firefox releasing its 2.0 - the step beyond the tabbing (still working out what that is as the 'whats changed and whats new pages are <blank>)

My vote is firefox - whats yours?

By the way - anyone noticed what IE have done? Looks familar to Firefox - with the search panel in the same place, the tabbs in the same place, and oh look - the address bar in the same place.

And if you want to know - Yes, Microsoft are going to force this upgrade on us all. BBC news report stating that microsoft will put IE7 into the upgrade.

Hardware:

HD has come about - some people have HD ready TV's at home, whilst others wait until more movies and channels are availble to make the most out of their TV.

So, heres a dilema - what happens when you get 2 products that are both incompatable, but do the same thing?

Meet Blu-ray and HDDVD

Its going to be interesting to see how things develop - I think the deciding factor is when the Playstation 3 comes out as that is Blu-ray compatable. HD DVD Won't be. Go figure.

Overall:

Theres a war going on. Pick a side - any side. Soon see who the victor will be.

Robin

www.pando.com

fantastic service. Instead of spamming my mail box with 100's of megs of unless files, people can now send large attachments through this service :D and only send me a 23k link to my mail box, which then I can decide to download, or delete. No more logging into the web mail client to delete all the large emails manually, I can download them all.

One catch: Both parties must have pando installed. Which means the people are still going to be sending large emails to me...

*sigh*

Back to downloading this big email. Again. Slowly.

Robinb

PS the NUS card is being noticed for the change to NUS Xtra. Last years colour change did not matter one little bit to most companies. Its a student card. its got NUS on it. The date is so small that no one has time to notice. change the name and *bingo* everyones now noticing. and as some people already have them and using them, this leaves me with about 3/4 of a month overlap time to beg, pleed and annoy managers to give me a discount until it arrives... Joy.

Back to work.

Yep - I made a nickname for myself here at work, 'Boss' and I will explain why.

I was in a meeting with about 55 people from our department. My boss was heading this meeting (and is the most senoir in the room, and probably the whole floor) and as it is a quartly meeting, all the new recuits had to introduce themselves, incuding me.

So my boss said 'lets start with... Robin as I know him'

My reply: 

'Hello, My name is Robin, from the university of Portsmouth doing an intern year, working as David's Boss'  [David being my boss]

Slight error - I just said I was the boss of the most senoir guy in the room, and floor... Everyone went up in hersterics - took 5 minutes to get everyone back to normal! Ment to say 'working as dave's assistant' Well, its one way to break the ice in the meeting, and one way to break the ice of meeting new people. So, walked into the office today, and everyone that was in the morning is now saying 'morning boss'..

Still, you got to laugh!

Robinb

Wow, its that time again... already.. and for me, its going to be hurrendious... Whilst you lot are having fun in tents, flashing your money to clubs to join, making new friends, I will be at work. Coding. Wow, if that does not make someones day, then I don't know what will...

Last year I had a blast with the freshers fair, on the Paintball stand. made some fantastic friends who I will never forget, got people to realise it was a sport as well as recreational, and the atmosphere of it... well, I never been to anything like it with students.

And I am going to miss it. Something I really look forward to, and I have to miss it! Lifes crual in the working world.

In any case, enough about the sad part, now to the boring part of what I am actually doing up at 1am when I have to waky up in 4 hours for work. Well, my TFT decided it would be fun to blow up and flicker anyone who walks past it. So spent a while setting up a new monitor, and installing RealVNC onto all my computers (I have a few in here, and now I am a monitor short, I will need to get the desktop control of all of them. Good thing really, as now instead of running around the place, all I have to do is sit on my bed and shutdown the computers remotly. Make sure they turn off with pings, and presto!). Also going to go into SVN to version all my work. And it ain't just code that I am going to backup :) I have recently learnt it can do all fgiles, therefor I can backup coursework writian parts, version them, and save key parts, without calling them many file names.  Brilliant.

Works still great. The journey is now drilling me. I wake up, and its dark. I get to the underground, and its about to break day. I hit the tube, get to wirk and (thankfully) its light. But, when I get home after, its dark. I don't like it :S But still, I was prepaired. Setting my alarm 15 minutes earlier to make sure I get up. Cannot wait till it snows on the car, thats going to add some time :(

Right. Bed. Going to start that podcast I was talking about (I think) earlier. I have some music files that a great old friend gave to me that I am going to use as backing.  Only problem is, I have not found a great DJ mixer program thats free. Sony's Acid Xpress is ok - not what I need. I require Sourceforge, but it costs $300. If anyone has any great suggestions, then please let me know. I could really use some decent DJ mixing software.

L8R

Robinb