06.28.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:24 am by GaZ
A few weeks ago I signed up for an Aventuremail account, which offers 2GB of free storage space, however after playing around with it I’ve decided the service is too unreliable. Most of the time the servers are very slow, and on several occasions I haven’t been able to log in at all, getting messages telling me that my account has been temporarily suspended! Also, after reading several other reviews on the Web, it was also pointed out that Aventuremail does not mention anything about a privacy policy at any time, which is slightly disconcerting. Oh well… moral of the story: if it looks too good to be true then it probably is.
An article on the BBC website reports that, from July, Hotmail will be increasing the amount of storage space for ‘basic’ free users to 250MB (and 10MB attachments), while members of Hotmail plus ($19.95/year) will be allowed 2GB and the ability to send / receive attachments up to 20MB in size. This move has been made to counter the new Gmail service, which, I have to admit, would have drawn me away from the crappy old 2MB Hotmail. However, this new increase in space allowance means i’ll stick with Hotmail for a bit longer. The article also mentions the other major players that are increasing their storage space. I think 250MB should be more than enough. Who really keeps 2GB of e-mail?? I guess the @gmail.com thing is just more of a status symbol. Who needs it?! (yeah, ok, i’m just jealous I never got an invite… :-p j/k). But it’s good to see how Google has sparked off these (storage) space wars.
… and if you’re wondering why I’m posting news at 3:30am while I’m on holiday with my girlfriend, it’s coz I can’t sleep with excitement. I found out what the ’surprise’ for me is: Hanne bought us tickets to go to Tusenfryd in the morning… woohoo! Plus my mind is way too active thinking about everything that’s gonna happen over the next 4 weeks… the future is scary.
I’ll post some pictures from Tusenfryd and the remainder of my holiday once i’m back in England. Now i’ll get back to trying to sleep. Ta ta for now!
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06.27.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:46 pm by GaZ
Last night we had the BBQ. In the end it wasn’t much of one, because everyone that came to the party had already eaten… not that many people came. Most made their lame excuses about having worked all day and being too tired 
But Torill, Stian and his lady friend (also called Hanne) showed up, so we sat outside chatting and drinking.
At about midnight we decided to go to Martin’s pub in Lillestrøm, of which I have heard so much from Hanne. It’s quite cool that it never actually gets dark here, during the summer. The closest it comes is a sort of twilight. A short 130 NOK (about 11 GBP!!) taxi ride later and we were in the town, at which point I realised I had left my wallet back at home, including my ID, meaning I wouldn’t be able to get in to the pub. Well, I sure as hell wasn’t going to pay another fortune to go back to get it… so we joined the queue to get in. Then, just as we got to the bouncers at the front and Hanne was about to explain what I had done, a fight broke out on the other side of the line, so the bouncers all had to rush over there to sort it out, leaving us free to walk in! Proof that my guardian angel is still watching over me!
That’s about it, in a nutshell. Pictures from the trip so far can be found here (note: i screwed up the captions and the photo resizing a bit, so only the ‘low-res’ (640 x 480) versions are available. I might redo the whole album section soon anyway, just to standardise everything and add captions / descriptions… if I can be bothered).
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06.25.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:58 pm by GaZ
Hanne and I just got back from her grandparents cabin, located on the shores of Lake Mjøsa! It was a great couple of days, even though it rained for most of the time. Although the cabin is right next to a busy train line (with trains running all through the night) it was still very calm and picturesque, as shown in the photos Hanne took.
So i’ve now met all of Hanne’s immediate relatives. True to the grandmother code, hers ensured our stomachs were never less than completely stuffed, and I soon learned another important Norwegian phrase: “Jeg er mett” (”I am full”)! There’s nothing like being immersed in a foreign language to help learning (her grandparents don’t speak very much English). So neste gang vil jeg snakke norsk.
Either Hanne or I will publish the newer pictures from the cabin sometime soon.
Unfortunately, we also witnessed England’s departure from the European cup. It was a white-knuckle, pants-on-the-edge-of-the-seat kind of game, all the way from Owen’s goal in the first 3 minutes to Portugal’s equaliser in the 83rd, soon followed by two silver goals (one from each team) in the 2nd half of overtime, and, ultimately, to Beckham’s field goal and Ricardo’s save of Vassel’s penalty. But, to cheer us up a little, today Greece beat France 1-0… misery loves company. All our hopes now ride on Holland!
Hanne’s parents and sister are all away this weekend, so tomorrow Hanne and I are having a BBQ at her house to celebrate life, the universe and the end of university. Then on Monday I’ve got a surprise coming to me! Oooh I can’t wait
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06.22.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:04 pm by GaZ
Rah! I’m in Norway.
As mentioned a couple of posts ago, I’m spending a week or so over here to finally see my princess again. We’re off to her grandparents cabin tomorrow, followed by a party at the weekend and ‘a surprise’ on Monday. I can’t wait, but right now i’m just so happy to be with Hanne again.
Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee *pop*
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06.20.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:25 pm by GaZ
Last night was the University of Bath Summer Ball. This years imaginative title: “Summer Lovin’” supposedly with a Grease theme, though I didn’t see anything to do with that at any point during the night.
All in all it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. The University normally holds the summer ball at Cheltenham race course, however something went wrong with the booking this year, so it was held on our own prestigious campus. Various tents were erected around the campus… here is a little interactive map (of the campus sans tents). The fair ground was good fun, even though it only stayed open until midnight… I won a Budweiser t-shirt by winning a racing game on some arcade machines that had been set up in Choices (where there was also a band playing latino music all evening… Claire and Arash had a go at that ;-))… and the Darkness tribute band (called “The Likeness”) was pretty decent too, despite only playing a 45 minute set. We ended the night in the plug and the Venue, before heading home as the first rays of light breached the night sky.
So yeah… not a bad night, but it would have been so much better if Hanne could have been with me 
A gallery of the few pictures I took can be found here.
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06.18.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:19 am by GaZ
Everyone does stupid things while at University, right?
Well what happened last night is probably a fitting way to end my days as a student… I don’t really wanna go into details right now, but in short it ended with a short swim, me losing my phone and wallet, a friend being paraded down the street stark-naked and a short stay in the back of a riot van.
*sigh*
Oh yeah, but England won 3-0! Woo!
EDIT: Wow!! With an extremely fortuitous twist of fate someone returned my wallet to me this afternoon! All my thanks go out to Nick Jones and may nothing but good karma fall upon him! My phone is still missing, but i’ve already blocked the SIM and IMEI so it’ll be pretty hard to make use of it, and I’m getting a replacement phone on Monday (woo! I knew paying for insurance was a good idea!)… rah!
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06.17.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:51 am by GaZ
Woo! It’s over!!
After four long years (which went by so fast that it’s scary) I have now done everything that is required to obtain my Bachelors of Science (with Honours ;-)) in Computer Science! It’s been a difficult journey at times (this last year in particular) and I’m sure I could have done some bits a lot better, but, as Linkin Park says, in the end it doesn’t really matter.
The last exam was a bit of a doozy. Not only was it a difficult subject (Logic and it’s Applications… crazy stuff like intuitionistic logic, hoare logic (tee hee), natural deduction and sequent calculus), but also the exam hall was was about 900 degrees fahrenheit, I was starving so my stomach was grumbling the entire time and I forgot to buy some water to take into the exam. Oh yeah, and it was really cloudy and grey when I woke up, so I was wearing jeans instead of shorts, which didn’t help matters.
But it’s alllllllllllllll over now!!! I’m off to Norway to visit Hanne next Tuesday, for a week! Then when I get back I might be meeting up with Jacques, Hesam and company, before returning here to finish packing my stuff and moving to my new residence (located about 3 floors down from where I am right now… heh). I’ve got a familiarisation visit booked with the Royal Signals on the 4th and 5th of July, then my parents are coming across for their summer holidays on the 10th of July, I think. Oh yeah, as I mentioned before, my results are posted on the 2nd of July, too! Graduation is on the 15th. And then, at the end of the month, my family, Hanne and I are going on a cycling holiday in southern France (in the Dordogne region)! And in between all this, i’ll be helping Amit & Co. sell OJ, just as a fun aside to fill the time. Oh yeah and I’ll be popping up to Wales sometime soon to visit my grandparents.
Wow… now that i’ve got nothing to do I sure have a busy month ahead. I’d better get started on cleaning/packing!
PS England vs Switzerland at 4pm GMT today! COME ON THE ENGLAND! It can’t go as wrong as last time…
PPS hehehehehe Panda Porn! (don’t worry, it’s safe to click that link in a public place :-p)
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06.13.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:47 pm by GaZ
OH MY GOD!!! GOD DAMNIT!!!!!
ENGLAND ARE LEADING FRANCE 1-0 FOR THE ENTIRE BLOODY GAME AND THEN THOSE RETARDED LIVERPOOL PLAYERS, HESKEY (AKA THE DONKEY) AND GERRARD, GO AND MAKE TWO IDIOTIC MISTAKES IN THE LAST TWO MINUTES OF OVERTIME AND FRANCE WINS 2-1…. AARRRGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
THERE’S NO EMOTICON TO DESCRIBE WHAT I’M FEELING RIGHT NOW!!! I CAN’T EVEN TYPE IN LOWERCASE!!!!!!!!!
WHY, GOD, WHY?!?!??!?!!?!????
Edit: Ok… now that i’ve had a few more minutes to calm down… to be fair, Gerrard did play quite well for the majority of the game, and the defense was, on the whole, pretty good. But I will not forgive Emile Heskey. Why that lumbering ox is still on the squad is a mystery to me and quite a few other Fans by the sound of it. I just hope Sven learns from his mistake and keeps Heskey firmly OFF the pitch, where he (Heskey) can’t do much damage.
But we’re still in with a chance! Come on England!!!
Note: excuse the white bits.. the emoticons were made for MSN and I forgot to make ‘em transparent.
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06.10.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:54 am by GaZ
Bah. All of my housemates have finished their exams. All of you state-side have finshed your exams. And I’ve still got an entire week to go!! Apart from myself and my coursemates, I think Hanne and Ferd are the only people I know still doing exams? As a result I’m finding it increasingly difficult to focus on studying when everyone around me is having fun…
On the plus side, Ben and I figured out our averages thus far, and assuming a 65% for our dissertations we are just about safely in the 2:2 range! The real difficulty for me is to reach the next level (2:1) which is what I really want. In order to be safely in the 2:1 range I need to average something like 68% on these final exams, however I might be able to scrape by if I can average 61%. Of course, it’s all subjective really so there’s no definite line as to what classifies as what… the board of examiners will review each case individually to determine the final classification. Oh yeah, and that assumption of 65% for my dissertation could be completely wrong, but from the amount of work I put into that bloody thing I feel I deserve at LEAST 65%!
Well… only time will tell. Our results will be posted on the 2nd of July!! Stay tuned, folks.
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06.09.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:50 am by GaZ
Oh yeah… I forgot to mention that I’ve also signed up for an Aventuremail.com email account! They’re trying to setup a rival to Google’s new Gmail service, which offers 1GB of storage space!… except Aventure have gone one up and are offering 2 (yes, that’s right, TWO) GB of space!
I don’t have a gmail account but I did manage to get an aventure one (Gareth_Western at Aventuremail.com), so i’ll see if it can live up to the hype.
Don’t wait! Act now!
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