We’ve been out for a couple of nights to a nice new bar in town called, strangely enough, Mymou. It’s a lovely little place that’s got room to seat maybe 35 people or so, decorated in a very modern sort-of-unfinished look with a mish-mash of nice furniture and a great atmosphere. The first time we went they were playing Kung Fu Hustle on their plasma screens, which freaked me out a little, and last time it was (we think) House of Flying Daggers, but I was facing away.

Of course, the sound was down and they were playing some good music. One particular track caught my attention, which has led to me buying Mind Elevation by Nightmares on Wax (not off iTMS but in town, was cheaper).

They are also one of the few places in town that serves Hoegaarden on tap, which is particularly nice but does tend to lead to some particularly nasty hangovers. I was lucky enough to escape this morning, but some people were not (no not Jess)! They also have a lovely cider called Olde English and plenty of other bevvies for a reasonable price.

OK, enough of that, it’s starting to sound like they’ve paid me to write all this… Shame we can’t take this place down South with us tho.

Pending firm confirmation—and paying the deposit!—we have a nice place to live in Barnstaple. Jess’s parents were kind enough to visit a couple of places that we flagged up and it sounds good. It’s a 2 bedroom terraced house behind a church (we seem to be making a habit of this…) that’s been recently refurbished. It’s unfurnished so we’ll have to get all our own stuff, nice and personal like, except a sofabed that’s been given to us.

As you might expect, while Jess has been looking at furniture and other things on IKEA’s web site, I’ve been busy trying to scout out the ideal broadband ISP! Even with the help of ADSLguide, there’s just a huge number of ISPs to choose from and even more differing opinion about them all. And that’s not to mention the ISPs that resell connectivity to other ISPs, with different packages and prices. Where does one even start?! Having gone through the incredible palaver of getting a phone and ADSL set up two years ago in Reading, we’re going to try and get it mostly all done before we move in. Ha!

Everyone important has been told now (unless we’ve forgotten someone), so I might as well brag about my new job online! I’ve been employed as a Linux Systems Administrator at Abacus Tree, in charge of a farm of Linux servers in a couple of locations. I don’t know all the details of the job yet, but I obviously can’t speak about it all anyway!

The job description is nigh-on perfect for me, especially since it’s a medium-sized company where I may be roped in to help out in a few other areas as well. For some reason I quite like the idea of that. Add to the mix that we’ll be down in North Devon, a positively beautiful area of the country, and it’s an offer I couldn’t possibly refuse. Lots of seaside activities and generally much better weather than up north usually means lots more fun! I’ll have to give that whole surfing thing a shot.

I start on the 5^th of June, so I’ve got about 2.5 weeks left up in Huddersfield before I have to say my bye-byes. Jess and I will go down the weekend before I start, but Jess will come back up here to finish up a few things in York. Once we’ve found a nice place to rent I’ll use one of my long weekends (two and a half days! yesss!) to move all our stuff down.

So here begins step 2 of my life.

I only just got out of my last exam, and boy does it feel strange. I don’t think I’ve ever quite felt like this actually, it’s like moving on to another stage in life, my education basically being over and done with. Of course there’s still results day and graduation (that I most likely won’t go to), but that’s that: all that’s left is a lifetime of work. My not quite 22 years of preparation for the rest of my life is over, and I can now look forward to 43 years (probably gonna change!) of work. What a strange, peculiar feeling. I’ve been through a lot of changes over the years, including finishing school, leaving home, going to Uni, and more recently meeting my true love Jess, but none has felt quite like this. It seems as though every time the feeling gets weirder and more intense as I move along.

I’ll be the first one to say meeting Jess was probably one of the biggest events of my life, and this has definitely moulded and shaped my life into what I am now, and for this I will be ever grateful. As you all know Jess and I will be formally tying the knot, as it were, just a little under a year from now. I am looking forward to this day more than anything in my life at the moment, even more so than starting work.

And as for graduation, it’s all a big farce! We’ve got Patrick Stewart as our Vice Chancellor, so going to the ceremony would maybe (if it’s on the right day) let me shake hands with a Trekkie God, but it’s not as if I’m a Trekkie in any way and I’m not one to name-drop. What else happens there? You parade about in a crummy graduation gown and get handed a rolled-up piece of card that isn’t even your diploma, that gets sent in the post… Oh, and anyone who goes is sat so far away they can hardly see you without binoculars. It’s really rather crap. So I won’t be going.

Now one reason we’re getting married on the 5^th of May 2007 is that it’s the closest Saturday to the 7^th of May, which happens to be our anniversary! Today marks the 3^rd year we’ve been ‘going together’ as some may say.

Jess and I were going to have a nice romantic picnic up on Castle Hill since the weather has been so nice the last few days, but just to spite us today is really cloudy and dingy. Apparently, the rest of next week is going to be really lovely as well, so we’re really disappointed in the weather. Instead we’re cooking a nice pissaladière, one of our favourite dishes.

In case you don’t read Jess’s blog, or haven’t spoken to us for a while, we have a bit of an announcement. Jess and I will be getting married in May 2007, most likely on Saturday the 5^th. Everyone keep your calendar clear that weekend!

I realise there hasn’t been a post on this blog for a very long time… We’ve had a bit of a busy time really, so no time to write blog entries. Let’s have a recap since the last post:

• Went for an interview with a small company down in Devon. The job sounds ideal and I’m really excited about it.
• Spent 4 nights in Paris! We went up the Eiffel Tower, had a boat trip on the Seine, and did lots of other touristy things. Great!
• Worked my a*se off finishing an assignment and my final year project (dissertation), both due last week.
• Went back to France last weekend for my dad’s birthday party (his birthday was actually in December). Good fun and saw most of the family.
• Had my first exam, for my Artificial Neural Networks module, yesterday.

How’s that for a lineup of happenings in a two week period?! And there’s more to come!

• Tomorrow I have my Computing Mathematics exam.
• On Friday I give my project presentation.
• On Monday I have my Language Specification & Implementation exam.
• Next Thursday I have another interview down in Devon.
• The Monday after that, my final exam, for Artificial Intelligence.

Maybe after all that I’ll be able to have a break, who knows…

And in the mean time, here’s an article that may make you think twice about throwing innocent pieces of paper away: Q. What could a boarding pass tell an identity fraudster about you? A. Way too much.

Just as I was showing off the stability of my server to Aram (his host’s server keeps falling over), what should happen? You guessed it, my server crashes.

It looks as though the kernel panicked for some reason, although I can’t really tell why since nothing was written to the logs. It then proceeded to reboot, but for some reason the bootloader, grub, decided to break just at that point. Not being able to get the machine to boot from anything but the hard drives (both with the broken grub), I had to call in some helping hands from 49pence. At roughly 00:30 on a Saturday morning.

After waiting for about an hour for a call from them, I went to bed, and could hardly sleep. I take this all too seriously… Anyway, I gave ’em another call this morning and quickly jumped in the shower. This time the call came in while I was still in the shower. I jumped out and got the ball rolling again. I got them to turn on serial console redirection (so I could work on the box remotely), and pop in a Debian install CD. Using that, and some cunning, I managed to roll back to a working version of grub and reboot. Problem solved, about 11.5 hours after the initial crash.

Lessons learned:

• Do not upgrade anything as critical as a bootloader if it works and has no security holes. Just don’t do it. No matter how much better the new one is.
• Keep an install CD (or other rescue CD) in the drive to boot off in emergencies. I could have had the machine back up again within 30 minutes.
• Keep serial console redirection on all the time.
• Don’t brag.

So, problem solved, and I won’t be needing helping hands again unless hardware breaks. Oh, and I got the helping hands free since they missed my first call somehow.

The price of natural gas has risen by 300% in the last few years. That translates directly to a rise in price of electricity. What does that mean? That means that RedBus, the company that provides space to 49pence (my colo provider), has had to increase its prices. By 122%. From £350/month to £780/month. What that means is the price of running this server has gone up from £29/month to £39/month (34%). Phew, I was expecting much, much more of a rise.

49pence, however, haven’t just raised the price of colocation. No. They decided to sweeten the deal quite a bit. How did they do that? Rise the bandwidth limit from 100GB/month to 2000GB/month. Yes, that’s two terabytes bandwidth allowance per month. Isn’t that just insane? That’s a 1,900% increase.

So, while I was previously slightly worried that I would be placed on a slightly more expensive pay bracket for going quite close to 100GB, I can now rest easy knowing I can blow my current limit through the roof and not get charged extra.

Anyone need a mirror?

Still, I need to figure out where to pluck the extra £120/year from.

I suppose I had better write something about the Students’ Union saga, which I now consider over. Basically, the President (John Goodwin) decided it would be a good idea to start a weekly blog journalling what he has done that week, so that his activities are more transparent. This is a great move in my opinion, and very interesting, so let’s hope this continues. He has also suggested that other members of the Union Exec follow suit, but I have yet to see any of their blogs.

That doesn’t resolve the issue of my posts being deleted, for which I still haven’t received an apology, only denial that is ever happened. Ah well, you can’t get everything you ask for I suppose…