Adrian Hayter’s Blog

A while back I purchased the domain name atheistforums.org and set up a MyBB forum on it aimed towards discussion of atheism by atheists and other religious groups. I showcased it in the MyBB Community Forum and through that action, labrocca found it and posted a reply that he had been planning to make such a forum with the domain atheistforum.com:

“Interesting. I actually own atheistforum.com and plan to launch it eventually but goodluck on your site. Atheism is surely a topic you can discuss and gain members with.”

I contacted him via PM and proposed that instead of creating two competing sites of the same nature, we should combine the sites and create one large Atheist discussion board. Now, labrocca and I have not got on well in the past, which is mainly my fault and has led to certain jests and “pokes” at one another. At the end of it all, I apologised and we sorted things out between us. He decided to take me up on my offer, and even host the forum on his server.

Now it is slowly growing and we hope that once the site is discovered by people, we can start debating and discussing everything related to Atheism. If you are Atheist or Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish, you can join and debate for your religion, or discuss Atheism with the people that support it.

Atheist Forum

Hopefully this will end up a large and popular community for Atheist discussion!

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It arrived! It finally arrived!

I’m currently typing this blog post whilst lying (sat up) on my bed, and it feels sooooo relaxing! I wonder if it is in fact too relaxing, because I have been using my laptop like this for the past 2 days (it arrived on Friday) and it was only this morning that I realised I hadn’t turned on my computer at all for the past 2 days either.

Now I did promise a picture of the laptop, so here is a photo I took whilst writing this blog post:

My Laptop

When I first got it out the box I was really shocked at the size of it. I knew it had a 17″ screen, but it looked so much bigger in real life than it did on the website. Having said that, the extra width means that I can reposition programs to to more things at once, and the keyboard has a numpad which I use a lot (I work in banking…it becomes a habit).

The mousepad has a great design as well. It’s metal (rather than plastic) plated so it feels smoother on your finger, and it has a special “scroller” on the right, which allows you to scroll up and down documents / websites by just flicking your finger in either direction. There is also a button at the top which can turn the pad off / on in case you don’t want to move the mouse by accident.

You can tell by looking at either side of the laptop that hp tried to pack as much into it as possible. All in all I count 15 slots / ports for different items, including CD / DVD Drive, 4 USB ports, a 5-in-1 card reader, and all manner of others. I found out after some research that PC World rated this laptop 14th out of their “20 Best Products of 2007″, the only actual personal computer system to get into the top 20…and after using it you can tell why.

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Right about now I should be relaxing on the sofa, or maybe lying on my bed, writing this blog post from my new laptop. That was the plan anyway. A laptop would mean I could get out of my computer chair (which although comfy is not the best position to be in for a length of time) and still be able to do the things I can with a computer. I could surf the web, talk to friends, listen to music, do pretty much anything I want…

…if the couriers actually had half a brain cell between them, but no, they don’t. My laptop was meant to arrive last Thursday, and to tell you the truth, I was looking forward to getting back from work and playing around with it. However, no delivery had come that day at all, so I phoned up Comet and complained. Comet said they handle all “small” shipments with external couriers, and these couriers hadn’t been able to find my house, and therefore unable to make the delivery.

Well let me explain something to you. I live in a small hamlet which is really just a small series of tracks that come of a main road. I would say there were about 15 houses altogether, and on one of the large and longer tracks you find my house, about 200 yards down. It’s not like we are hard to find!

So the weekend passed by without delivery (seems they don’t do weekends either…jeez) and on Monday, to make absolutely sure they found us, we put our house name outside on a piece of card. Anyone driving past would see it…or at least you would assume, but no. The van in question (which we maintain was the delivery van) drove straight past, turned around, and drove back to the main road. Of course we couldn’t catch up with it in time so it escaped again.

Today (after many complaints) they agreed to deliver it in the morning, but of course we received a phone call saying they were stuck in Portsmouth, and would get it to us in the afternoon. Suffice to say, it’s now almost 10PM, and I am still sat at my computer *sigh*.

*Adrian wonders whether he will ever see his laptop…

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My last blog post covered some clever ways of avoiding bringing a television to University (due to the costs of TV licenses). I mentioned that TV episodes can be watched online, which can be good, but it does have it’s drawbacks such as poor picture quality and a small screen size.

I recently stumbled upon a free service called Joost, which is a free online TV. I signed up for the beta, and today I got an acceptance email, inviting me to download and try it out.

Essentially, Joost tackles the problem of illegal viewings of TV shows by acting like a normal TV service. It shows the content to the user for free, but puts an advert at the start and end of each show to generate revenue (which in turn pays for the shows people are watching). The adverts are about 5 seconds long so they don’t get annoying, and they never appear in the middle of a show.

Using Joost, you can select from a variety of channels and genres, or do a search for a show. Once selected, Joost downloads the show whilst streaming it, which on a fast connection is just like watching the TV. It has a steadily growing selection of channels to choose from, and is extremely promising for a beta product.

So if you want free TV on your computer, visit: http://www.joost.com and download the beta package.

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An average student will bring some form of television to university, whether they use it to watch actual channels, or videos / DVD’s. However, either way the TV Licensing people demand you pay for a TV license, which costs over £100 per year and for students is quite an expensive item. The main reason for this is that the TV Licensing people have quite literally thrown student rights out of the window. A normal household is expected to pay for one license per TV, but when it comes to university accommodation (where a large number of people share flats) the rules suddenly change. Each student has to pay for a TV license if they own a TV, so pooling together is not an option. Sounds pretty unfair, so I’m not going to let them get me in their little game.

It helps that I don’t watch TV that often, and when I do, it is almost always online. I use sites like TV Links which update with links to TV episodes on a very regular basis. Using that site alone I managed to catch up on the many Doctor Who episodes that I had missed, or just wanted to watch again. Other such sites are All UC and Quick Silver Screen. However if you want to watch something a little more detailed, then the BBC has recently launched it’s “iPlayer” which allows you to watch programmes shown in the last 7 days. It’s alright to use, but you will need Windows XP and Internet Explorer to do it, a sad fact for people like me (who tend more towards Linux and browsers like Firefox and Opera).

So that covers actual channels / programmes, but what about TV components like DVD and Games consoles? This applies to me more, as I watch DVDs and own an Xbox 360. The easiest option for DVD’s is to watch them on you computer. Most students have one, and if you don’t have one that plays DVD’s then it’s time you upgrade your system! DVD drives for computers are very cheap and can be installed easily, but there is a very high chance your computer has one already.

Games consoles are little more tricky, but I have succeeded in getting my Xbox 360 to work with my computer monitor and the setup for the visual side is actually quite simple. You need to get a VGA adapter for your Xbox, which goes into the output port on the back instead of the standard cable (red, white, yellow). Instead of the yellow video cable, there should be a plug that fits into the back of your monitor. For audio, it gets a little tricky. The VGA adapter comes with the standard white and red cables for audio, so if you have a monitor or speakers that support them, then use it!

However, if (like me) your monitor and speakers only accept the headphone audio jack, you will need to use the VGA to Headphone adapter that luckily comes with the Xbox 360 VGA Adapter (at least the official one). Now, if you have a monitor or speaker with this port in it, simply plug the jack into it and the audio should work.

However…if (still like me) you don’t have such a monitor or speaker, you will need to buy a pair of speakers that have the green audio plug coming out of them (mine cost £10). You will also need a female-to-female audio jack coupler (costs around £2). Connect both the VGA audio plug and the green speaker audio plug into each end of the coupler and everything should work!

It is a long winded method, but it only cost me around £25 (VGA adapter, speakers, coupler) and saved me bringing a TV and buying the license.

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After literally weeks of rain, we finally have some sun! Not just a small flicker in the clouds, but full on sunshine right through the day! While everyone is getting excited about a nice hot summer, it couldn’t have come at a worse time for me. The reason being that I was supposed to terminate my work contract yesterday, but I decided last week to extend it to the end of August. At the time of the decision it was chucking it down outside and I really couldn’t think of anything else I would be doing so i chose to get some more hard earned cash in my pocket. Of course now I am stuck in an office when I could have been outside in the sun all day long…grrr!

In other news, apparently the people caught in the recent flooding will have their water supplies back tonight which is good. Although I did find it ironic that being stuck in a flood meant that water supplies were low, especially when you are surrounded by the stuff.

In other more personal news, I have purchased a laptop to take to university in September after loads of searching around in shops and online. In the end I decided on the HP PAVILION DV9385. My previous desktop was a HP brand and served me well for about 5 years before eventually dying, and although my current desktop is a custom built Dell, I have had bad experience with Dell laptops.

I showed the laptop to a load of my friends and they all agreed that it was a very nice machine. The specifications included everything I wanted as well:

Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83 GHz Processor
2GB RAM
240GB Hard drive
17″ Screen (Widescreen)
Wireless, Wired, and Bluetooth Networking
CD & DVD read/write drive
NVidia GF 7600 512MB Graphics Card

Not only that, but it has a built in (5 in 1) card reader and a built in webcam.

It has a few minor disadvantages, the first being the weight which means it will be annoying to carry around, and the second is the battery life of 2.5 hours. Luckily I will only have to carry it around campus which isn’t that far to walk, and since I am living on campus as well, recharging should be easy.

When I get it (9th August) I will upload some pics for you all to enjoy and feel envious about!

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