Taken at Chester University around dusk, I made this in Photoshop last year. The full size version is available at deviantArt.

Full Size [deviantArt]

I've just finished my review of Dell's XPS M1330. The wait time was longer than I expected, but it was worth it.

Read the full review

I've just renewed my hosting with Dreamhost, and have created a unique promotional code to give two free domains for life when you take out a Dreamhost package. To claim your free domains, you just need enter the code HJ01 when you sign up, or use this link. Dreamhost give you:

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I haven't had much tome to post recently, because most of my time has been taken up with developing LiveZeit, an online organizer. It's similar to google calendar, only better.

LiveZeit offers loads of features, including recurring events, multiple users, your own subdomain, themes, AJAX and much more. I'm looking for testers at the moment, so if you're looking for an online task manager and you want to contribute, please sign up at the link below.

LiveZeit Homepage (Signup)

Chester cathedral at sunset, took about six hours in Photoshop to make.

Download (1920×1200 / 1600×1200) @ deviantART

I checked my server logs last night, just to see if there was anything interesting. I use two different domains, one for my blog and one for images I use on forums and the like, so the logs for mi6.nu, my images domain are like a breadcrumb trail of my last month's browsing. I was pretty surprised to see a few URLs I'd never heard of as the referrers. A finnish site about Lordi was one and MySpace.com was the other. I hate MySpace, and there's no way I'd have wasted my bandwidth hosting pictures for it. The images being linked was Contemplating Existence, a wallpaper I made last year. Some Idiot was using the image as his background. It's great that he liked my wallpaper but firstly it's my property, he can't use it without my permission, and secondly, it's over 200KB, and was loaded 350 times in December. That's 65MB of bandwidth I've paid for!

I decided to teach the leech a lesson using .htaccess (info in read more), which lets you serve up a different image for specified referrers. Inspired by a recent blog post I'd read, I thought the Goatse pic would be a good choice. For anyone that doesn't know, Goatse was a site available at the turn of the millenium which scarred millions of impressionable AOL kiddies. Now whenever someone from an external site tries to use one of those images, they'll get a nice surprise. Let that be a lesson to anyone else who's thinking of leeching my bandwidth!

Read more »

A small PHP script that scrambles a URL. Useful for bypassing surfcontrol and other censoring proxies that censor by URL. Eg. Google.com can also be accesed by any of the following:
http://0×40E9A763/
http://1089054563/
http://1089054597/
http://0×40.0xe9.0xa7.0×63/
http://0100.0351.0247.0143/
http://%67%6f%6f%67%6c%65%2e%63%6f%6d/

URL Obfuscator
23/02/2007: Seems the script's gone missing. Dead link removed.

I've switched hosts to DreamHost due to CircleHosting not fixing my ongoing DNS problems. Hopefully the new site should be quicker, and I now have better control of email and DNS.

I know I haven't posted much, but I got back from Disney World in Florida today so I've been offline for the last two weeks. I'm glad to be back in the UK, the US was one of the most upside down countries I've ever visited. What kind of government lets anyone buy a gun, but doesn't let you drink until you're 21? I'd rather be attacked by a drunk hippy than a maniac with a gun. I even saw one guy get asked for ID who easily looked 35. They seem to be so strict on it, it's as though they have their priorites wrong.

American food is a nice novelty at first, but after a few days of hot dogs, burgers and nachos I'd had enough and I've been waiting for the english breakfast I had this morning for two weeks! It was definately a great holiday though, we spent most of the the time visiting the Disney parks, Universal studios and the Kennedy Space Centre, which was good to do, but I wouldn't recommend. Once you've seen one rocket, they're all the same.

View Flickr gallery

I had my last ever A-Level exam today, which officially means no more school/sixth form or crazy rules. I need grades BBC to get into Sheffield University to study German and Russian.

Ever thought it would look cool if you had a custom image displayed when you turn on your laptop instead of the Dell logo? I found a utility from Dell which seems to work on most models, and replaces the default logo with a BMP of your choice. I've bundled the utility with a few splash screens, all you need to do is either follow the instructions to create a bootable USB key or burn the included ISO image and type 'spl2 imagename' at the prompt.

A few splash screens are included with this release, but I'll probably add more later.

Download bootsector
Read more

My 300Gb HD died this morning. I have a feeling it was brought on by the IcyBox external enclosure I bought for it. It lasted about five years I think, which is pretty much average as far as drives go. I've never had a drive fail on me before, and the first time hurt's the most

I've decided to go with SATA II drives, even though my Mobo doesn't have any SATA II ports. The whole setup cost me £200 for 500Gb (2×250Gb, 2MOLEX->SATA power convertors, 2xSATA data connectors). I have my eye on a really nice case for £200. Now I just have to have one of those arguments with myself and try to persuade myself to let me buy it…

4th April 2006: Turns out my motherboard does have SATA ports. Kind of suprising that they'd bother using a motherboard with SATA ports but not include any SATA hard drives the the PC.

9th April 2006: This has actually turned out for the better. Now I have an excuse to buy a new case with a side window and a new PSU.

I have a Holux GR-213 for sale. It’s brand new and unused, the only reason I’m selling it is because I bought it to use with Tomtom, but my PDA isn’t compatible with cabled GPSs, only Bluetooth. I’m just looking to break even really, so it’s half the price that Holux sell at.

eBay UK

I've finished my review of the Inpsiron 9400, it's under the reviews section. If you have any comments, please leave them in the forums.

Review: Dell Inspiron 9400

So I got my new Laptop, a Dell Inspiron 9400. Expect a review by the end of the week.

I've been using TrueLaunchBar for years, and never used the battery monitor plug-in for it. The skin that comes with it looks too Win98-ish, so I created a better one using UVAcav47's icons. All credit for the icons goes to him, I just compiled them together into a skin.

Download @ deviantART