Right, I know this was asked before, and I got a few replies, however things just got on top of me and I really didn't get a chance to follow it up. I am going to ask again, as I am sure people have either moved on, got other things to do, or probably still up for it all again...

I am looking for any web programmers (preferably PHP knowledge, working with a MySQL back end), and web designers (well anything really).

Got one very quick and minor project, and one insanely large project I would like to get out of the way, and just looking to try and get things going.

I am not sure what I could offer in return, but the moment I find anything, I will let you know and such, I am just so far behind the times in my knowledge of design that really I have no idea what to do next. It would be a great help to myself, esp over the coming weeks and whatnot...

Any takers?

Col

I have posted up a list of the games coming to the Expo here:

http://www.ddruk.com/forum/post/406179

However, there is a chance for more due to the postal service. Hopefully everything will be posted and it will get here on time, and I will update with more games.

Anyway see you at Expo

C

Today's the day it could all go to pot. 3 hours remain.

I am so not ready for this, right now my stress levels are through the roof :(

See you all on the flip side (I hope)

C

Right, my first moment to myself to actually write this. I am currently on a laptop on an open wifi connection somewhere in a place called Fordingbridge at the moment. Here for the weekend with Naomi :)

The first part of the move is complete, I am completely out of the flat, garage, house and loft.. everything has gone (and there is room to spare!!) We were 2 days late with the garage, but everything else, 9:30am Tueaday morning, I handed over the keys (well the keys I had on me at the time *stares at Royal Mail and their postal strikes*)

We have been spared the cleaning bill for the flat, just because my mum is awesome like that, and came along and cleaned... and cleaned as she does, the flat actually smelt like the carpet has just been layed, and the kitchen was freshly out of the packaging! -- No idea how she did that!

Garage was emptied the easy way... with 3 hours notice I had a skip and 2 men turn up and we threw EVERYTHING (minus the 4 machines) into the skip, (ok the odd thing here and there but other than that EVERYTHING else) -- I feel kidna bad because SAS had put a lot of work into the stuff I had to get rid of, but then again, it had been damaged by being in there, and well, its nice to start a clean fresh again.

I wish to thank everyone that came over to help over the weekend (and beyond!), SpyCho, Cero, Xia, Helen, Garath, Hel, Scott, Michelle, Sarah + Chris, and obviously my Mum!

Naomi and I are now looking at places in the area around here, so hopefully the next part of the move will be a lot easier -- if I had known about this skip company before, a LOT more stuff would have been taken, and quicker too!

Anyway, I have a lot of catching up to do, I have a load of work stacked up, and emails to go through, messages to reply to, the works. I just hope this open wireless stays up long enough for me to complete anything.

Thanks again to everyone!

C

Well it was 7 years ago to this date that DDRUK first opened it's doors to the public, and started serving the community. From the bright yellow front page till now, many things have changed, and DDRUK has evolved from the simple website, designed to get the UK population interested, to the mascots, and the events we run, however we thank you all for supporting us these past 7 years.

Read more (with pictures!) here: http://www.ddruk.com/forum/post/405869

Colin

As you are probably aware (or not), I am moving out of my flat next Tuesday, and have to get the place cleaned up before then. (9:30am check out >.<).

I was wondering if I could generally ask if anyone was about to lend a hand?

Currently I am packing things into boxes, no problems there, but they are stacking up in the front room, and the problem I have is, doing this on my own means taking things down to the van takes ages / and I feel a little odd leaving the van open to save time... (locking up each time just adds un-needed time).

I am going to be about on Sunday with Naomi back (her weekend off and I am making her work :( ) so any additional hands would be nice.

At the same time, as things move, I will be throwing a lot of stuff away, see anything you want or spot anything I have packed to keep you would like, throw me an offer, and I'll see what I can do (even if its "1 can of coke" or something :P)

Anyway I have more boxes to pack, so thank you for listening!

Col

Is because of this... thank you to everyone who made this possible! Committee, Organisers, Gophers and Attendees! You were all great!

( Picture )

I will reply to all the feedback soon!

Right, I have no idea where this has come from, but about 5 people have come to me this morning, so if you have heard anything then read this:

http://www.ddruk.com/forum/post/405458

C

Morning all!

I am going to try and gather as much feedback as possible from everyone about how Tokonastu '09 went.

Please be honest, and open about what you think, and what we can do to improve, what you found you liked, and what you did not like.

With all this feedback the commitee can move forward to make next years Tokonastu even better than this one!

(Anonymous comments have been switched on for people not wanting to be public, and I can unhide the anonymous ones at request too)

Colin

Just a note to people on here, I'll do a proper offical write up later on.. however

If you have Swine Flu, then do the nice thing, inform the committee, and don't come to Toko.. we will issue a refund if you can prove that you do have it...

Not being funny but 250 people at a camp site, one person gets it, passes it along.. we have enclosed areas, kitchens and what not... it wouldn't be good.

On top of that the majority of people will be going to Aya two weeks later.. you can see where this is going.

All we can do is wish you the best of luck with recovery, but in the case of normal flu the same thing would be said as well, just its more common than Swine Flu...

(Note I say Flu here, not a cold, or the sniffles or Man/Woman Flu or whatever its called!)

Sorry to sound blunt, but it wouldn't be good for the Anime Community if suddenly everyone came down with it!

Before anyone goes and points fingers, this isnt directed at anyone, its a general thing, which to be honest, its common sense.. right >.> <.

As some of you are aware I have had some very bad news recently, and I am trying to rectify it as quickly as possible... the words "it has financially ruined me" come to mind..

Anyway past all of that, I was given a bit of good news yesterday..

As of the 3rd of August, I have been given a promotion at work... for a 3 month probation I will be "Manager of Infrastructure and Security". I was a little surprised they sprung this on me, I have to work VERY damn hard for it, and have 3 months to prove myself. *fingers crossed*

On top of that I have been invited onto the VMware VCDX qualification track, after my review of skills was completed. I have a major exam in September and then reviews and another exam.. if all goes well I then have to design a VMware system and defend it infront of a board... possibly in San Fransico!

Currently there are only 13 VCDX's in the world...

Its going to be a busy couple of months!

C

Right this will be a little controversial, but its what 2:30am and I am in a BAD mood right now.

Call centres... everyone knows a company which has moved their UK call centre to one in India or a place like that (I am saying India here cause I am dealing with one)... now at the end of the day, it is a shame they do this, however I have no problem with them choosing a place like India (ok maybe not for the people in the UK) but still I am trying to be nice.

I ****HATE*** (I can t write enough here to show how angry I am) it when they bring in an Indian call centre which have NO FUCKING CLUE what on earth they are supporting.

I have called foreign call centres before, and in the case of IBM's out of hours call centre, the men and women are technical, they know what they are talking about, they have systems there which they can work with. They have an accent, but they try to be as clear as possible, but I can talk to them about technical things and get problems resolved quickly. Mainboards going, is a good example, explaining to them what I have gone through and having a healthy discussion and a fantastic resolution, in a very short space of time. I was very happy at the outcome. Note in this case it was an Indian call centre, and I am happy and will use them again.

HP -- right this is where I am fucked off right now.

Their day time call centre is a little technical, at least to a point, they seem to be stuck using scripts so can't "leave" the path, even though they agree with what I say they have to follow their procedure. -- This is all fine till 6pm.. then it all falls down.

To keep you up to date, we have a 4 hour response and repair 24/7 care pack on a product, which states that if the item breaks, we will have a working item within 4 hours. A very nice, and expensive deal.

Now a particular server has been going up and down, and at about 11:30am the data centre and us, worked out it was a power supply or main board issue. We explain this to HP and they request " more diagnosis as there is too much hardware involved "... and feel that if they send the parts at that point it will take too long to get working. Server comes back up at about 4:30pm after poking it a few times. 5:30, it goes down again.

Request back to HP to go with the next steps, and they request more diagnosis... 8:30pm the Data Centre (not even I could) convinced them to send an engineer out with replacement Mainbaord and power supplies.

8:45, the data centre get a phone call from HP asking to check the heatsink on the CPU... (this is the confusing part)

10pm we finally get notification that an engineer is going out, and him and the parts will arrive at 1:30am

Had some admin work to do to allow him on site, and to update the customer so about 11:30pm I am done with all of that... I drop off on the couch with my laptop (noting I had set an alarm to wake me up if I do fall asleep)

Accidentally woke a co-worker up cause I forgot to switch off the alerts (sorry!) at half midnight.

1:30am comes around, I get up and brighten myself up...

1:50am I get a call from the engineer on site, he had been there since 1:30am... he tells me no parts have arrived and he is chasing it

2am, HP call me to say "their system is down and no parts were ordered" -- and that "they will be manually ordering parts, it wont get here till 5am"

2:15: Engineer finds out they ordered a single CPU (its a dual CPU box) and nothing else

2:30am: I get an ETA from HP that the CPU will arrive at 6:15am, and that they are attempting to order the other parts.. however "because its coming from afar" they dont know if we can get the missing parts (HP are meant to have parts available to cover all care packs). I ask why things were not ordered, he said "I am not technical, I just get told what to order by the diagnosis department, so not my problem"

**started to write this LJ about then**

Currently waiting for a manager to call me.

AR*(&^£$*(&£*("&*(£&"£*(&*("&*("&*(&£*("£*("£ "£

I have to take my VAN to the MOT centre tomorrow for 8am, I am so screwed..


FFS

Just a quick message (forgot to post here!) -- Anyone on the Faereal servers Yuki or Hikaru currently, it's down, I am trying to talk to the Datacentre now as it is the whole place that has vanished off the internet.

All other servers / services are aright however. I will update once everything is back online.

(Note this does include ddruk.com)

Col

(For those waiting for Words, I have not forgotten they are on they way ASAP):

However this one is a happy one for me :P -- I am not sure if the formatting is going to work.

---------------
Hello Mr Colin Barker


Thanks for your order from woolworths.co.uk
Your order number is: ******
You ordered:
Description Unit Price Qty Total
Sweets Jelly Babies 0.99 1.00 0.99
Sweets Large Pear Drops 0.99 1.00 0.99
Sweets Juicy Strawberries 0.99 2.00 1.98
Sweets White Mice 0.99 1.00 0.99
Sweets Snowies 0.99 1.00 0.99
Sweets Vanilla Fudge 0.99 2.00 1.98
Sweets Wine Gums 0.99 1.00 0.99
Sweets Swiz'ls Refreshers 0.05 2.00 0.10
Sweets Mallow Twists 0.15 1.00 0.15
Sweets Chocolate Eclairs 0.99 1.00 0.99
Sweets Dolly Mixtures 0.99 2.00 1.98
Sweets Fizzy Cola Bottles 0.99 1.00 0.99
Sweets Fried Eggs 0.99 1.00 0.99
Sweets Jelly Beans 0.99 1.00 0.99
You asked us to deliver it to:
**MY WORK PLACE**
The Billing address you gave us is:
**MY HOME ADDRESS***

We'll email you again when your order is on its way
Thanks again for shopping with Woolies. Hope you enjoy your item.
woolworths.co.uk customer services team

See what else is in store at woolworths.co.uk
--

I am going to be on such a sugar high! -- Each one is 100g each :P (OK its probably expensive but hell I had to :P)

C

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.


From ninjasteve

Stress
The reason I am going to pass away at age 30, with white hair, gibbering in the corner! I guess that a lot of people see me stressed most of the time, I don't even notice it mostly. To me its a challenge to get over and to rise above it. Once day I will have no stresses, one day!

London
Funny thing about Surbiton is, that it is so far out of Central London, that I have nice parks and it is nice and quiet.... most of the time :P -- Having experienced what it is like in the country side, I can say I am being swayed there! -- It is a great place which I have not been to half of the tourist places. Things like the London Eye are still amazing to me when I go on, as it still feels new! It's where I was born, grown up and live right now, there is no place like it, but each place has its own uniqueness... London has the world famous Underground (the one that never works / on strike .. ok probably not a good thing to be famous for!)

Conventions
Minami8, I went to and sat in EVERY video room I could, looked at the schedule and from Friday when we got there, till Sunday when it was all over, the only time we were not in a video room was this thing called a "masquerade" which sounded interesting, and the Opening / Closing. Go me! AyaCon was the first one where I started meeting people, by standing about looking like a looser! Kinda glad people came up to me and dragged me off, otherwise I would have looked like a real prat! -- Minami 9 was when I saw my first rhythm action game, and my first game got a 100% combo :) -- It what got me into rhythm action games... and most people think it was DDR -- nah some Chinese guy on a PPP home version in the Games Room of its time! Then it all kinda goes down hill from there ;) Well not really, I ended up helping out, and that's what I enjoy helping out, getting it running, stand there at the end and say to myself, I feel happy that I had some part to do with the execution of the event, and that it all went well. I contributed as much as I could to assist those running the events...

DDR:UK
Four guys at an arcade in Feltam come up with the idea for a place for UK Dancing Stage fans to go to... its been through its highs and lows, trying to keep up pace with the rest of the world, I am thankful for what it has bought me, and what it has achieved over the years. I just hope that it can continue, and that thing will get better. One can only hope.

Auchinawa
What's this, I have no idea what this is ;) -- Joke! -- This to me was a goal post reached for me, getting my van all the way to Scotland without it blowing up! -- Now it has done it twice! *pets van*. Yes Auchi has been through some rough times, but you know what, I wouldn't want to change that for the world, it has given us all experience, and it has made everyone grow stronger that has ever had anything to do with its organisation. I am very lucky to be where I am now, and I hope to be able to take Auchi through its next events, plus I want to see how long before my van melts down! To all the committee, and those that were committee, I thank you for this event, and thank you for running it!

---

Enough rambling from me, only minor update, cancelled the contract on my personal phone, will update people once I port the number to a Pay and Go sim.

C

There is always a good side to when the tube goes on strike, the three lines that service the station for my work, always seem to be affected.

Kinda glad that we have the ability to work remotely, cause I do not wish to be plodding my way through the crowds of people heading up that way.

To anyone heading up to or through London, good luck to you all!

On a side note, RMT I would love a 5% pay rise.. really I would... however if I did the math correctly (and seeing as I am crap at that), it would cost TFL more to give you a pay rise than to go on stike... -- well we shall see how today pans out I guess

C

I have been asked by a friend of mine to take over the hosting of a website, because the TOS of the place they are at currently does not work for them (or something along those lines)

However this will put be directly in the firing line of bits and peices happening at the moment, specifically to do with an art group and a larger anime group.

So the question is, do I -- Don't I?

C

Completely random topic there :) Well not really

First off, Congratulations to Lawrence ;) -- See Good news is coming in good and fast! Good luck to you both :)

Secondly, those that like Duke Nukem, are probably aware that 3d Realms, the company behind it has shutdown :( (Just found the BBC news link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8037688.stm)

Shows that no one is safe in this day and age...

Well Duke Nukem Forever would have been good if it came out, IF it came out! It's always been put behind and such, well we shall see if Take-Two continue it really.

Well to end on bad news is never good, but at least the good news for today out weighs it all :)

C

Been thinking alot about this recently, the whole Phorm thing.. and I was wondering, what do you think of it.

Those that do not know, http://www.phorm.com, best described as a company that gives you content based advertising over what you look at on the internet.. (here is their slideshow http://www.phorm.com/about/introducing/phorm_priv_rev4.html)

Personally I have been reading a lot about it, and want to avoid this as much as possible, I have also been telling friends and family when I can to change providers if they can, to make a point about this technology. But am I being too over the top? What do you think?

The ones I know off the top of my head which are going to or have interest ing Phorm, are Virgin, BT (well obvsiouly they were the ones that ran the pilot without telling anyone that they were monitoring your browsing habits), there are a few others, but they are the ones that stick out.

I have nothing to hide on the internet, but I would rather if I went online, someone isn't spying over every page I go to, or as they intend to do it, pop up every once in a while to ask if you want to join the system, and you opt out by having a cookie on your system (or have they changed it, its never clear).

Then again, what I am interested in, is if you have heard this before. There is all this talk on websites and news sites about the privacy concerns, but I see the same group of people reply to posts and news reports... so I was wondering if it was just a select few people that knew.

Thankfully for the moment Be* are not currently thinking about joining in on this silly little endevour... but still.

Anyway what are your thoughts?

Colin