I was in Carlisle yesterday morning for a T175 tutorial. Unfortunately, only the tutor, one other student and I turned up. It seems that with Cumbria being a fairly sparse region the OU places foreign-based students in Cumbrian tutor groups to make up the numbers. This obviously means that the foreign students are more than likely going to be unable to attend tutorials.
Anyway, even though there was only the tutor and 2 students in attendance I still felt it was a useful exercise. I got to know a bit about both the tutor and other student and they managed to allay my concerns about getting back into a study mindset. It would appear that Lynn, the other student, started doing M150 back in October and had similar concerns. We also briefly discussed time management issues and the first TMA and got a clearer idea of what sorts of things we should be doing.
It seems that Chelsea's Russian owner has once again lost patience/faith with the man appointed to run the football club. Roman Abramovich has now seen four managers depart since his arrival in 2003. Claudio Ranieri was sacked in 2004, Jose Mourinho in September 2007, Avrram Grant in May 2008 and now Luis Felipe Scolari. You could understand if Chelsea were languishing in the lower reaches of the table and out of all the cup competitions. Hoiwever, they're not. They're fourth in the Premier League and are still in the Champions League and FA Cup. I would imagine that the next manager they appoint may be a bit wary of Abramovich. Russia coach Gus Hiddink seems to be the front runner at the moment. We shall just have to wait and see.
Have you ever looked at a piece of commercial software and thought "That'd be handy if it wasn't so expensive." Then, I may just have a link to a website that might be of interest to you. Take a trip to osalt.com, a quick guide to the best open source software. The software listed on the site is split into categories and whenever you select a commercial application the site will display a list and brief summary of open source applications that offer similar functionality and might be of interest.
As mentioned previously, I haven't been at all well the last couple of weeks. I've still managaed to keep up with all the little jobs and odds and ends I have to do but I haven't been feeling at all well. I haven't gone out of my way to court sympathy but have nontheless received some, which is always nice.
I've had a headache almost constantly for the past two week along with a sore throat, some abdonimal pains and a persistently annoying cough. After struggling with these symptons for about a week I started using a vapour rub and taking Blackcurrant Lemsips to ease them and ended up feeling better over the weekend.
Sunday evening, however, I was back to being as bad as I had at any point previously. Anyway, doing some shopping for Dad on Monday I stocked up on some medication for myself. I spent most of yesterday and all day today sipping Hot Lemon & Honey Beechams, taking doses of a mentholated bronchial balsam, sucking cherry flavoured Olbas menthol lozenges and Ibuprofen.
I feel better now than I have any point in the last fortnight. I won't tempt fate but will continue to self-medicate the rest of this evening and tomorrow and hope that I have finally beaten the dreaded lurgy.
After more than a week of feeling like absolute crap I am finally starting, bit by bit, to feel better; just in time for the annual RPG club party. Chrissy, however, seems to have gotten off a lot worse than I and has spent most of the last 48 hours with a temperature of about 103-104°C. I still have a bit of a sore throat but Lemsips seem to be helping with that. My headaches are back under control, and seem to be normal run of the mill, well for me anyway, headaches. I've even managed to go do some shopping today and did some baking for the party. Although, I played safe and actually supervised my kid sister baking. She's done an excellent job.
I've been thinking for quite a while now that I would really like to try my hand at studying towards a degree with the Open University. Back in November I decided that with being out of work for a year and having no luck at interviews that now was the time to do something about it. I ordered a prospectus and sifted through the courses on offer. I'm not really an Arts kind of guy and tend to lean more towards Sciene and Technology. Anyway, I orginally liked the look of the BSc (Honours) Information and Communication Technologies degree and signed up for the 2 courses that they suggest you start with. Thinking on what sort of optional courses I could bring into the degree to make up the 60 point shortfall led me to some of the Astronomy courses. After a bit more digging I came across the BA/BSc Open degree, which allows you much greater flexibility to tailor the degree to your own liking. You still have to take courses at levels 1, 2 & 3 to meet the point requirements but the choice of courses are virtually wide open. This has given me much greater flexibilty in how I structure my degree and I have come up with the following plan:
Level 1
Data, computing and information (M150)30
Networked living: exploring information and communication technologies (T175)30
How the Universe works (S197)10
Introducing astronomy (S194)10
Planets: an introduction (S196)10
Using mathematics (MST121)30
Level 2
Computers and processors (T224)30
Exploring mathematics (MS221)30
Planetary science and the search for life (S283)30
Astronomy (S282)30
Observing the Universe (SXR208)15
Level 3
Computer algebra, chaos and simulations (MS325)30
Graphs, networks and design (MT365)30
Natural and artificial intelligence (M366)30
The energetic Universe (S381)30
Total points in this qualification plan: 375
This is 15 points over the 360 total that I need but includes the two courses that I originally signed up for, and an optional residential course based at an observatory in Mallorca; an opportunity not to be missed. The main bulk of the course is Astronomy and Computing but with the addition of the complementary Mathematics that I am going to need for the level 2 & 3 Astronomy and Computing courses. I have concerns that S381 appears to have been pulled from the prospectus and I may need to pick another level 3 course but nothing is set in stone yet.
My first 2 course, M150 and T175 both start next month and I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into them. My only real concern is trying to ensure that I don't get too distracted to study.
I've been struggling on and off with a headache since yesterday morning. Medication has failed to completely deal with it and I have spent most of today also suffering with a sore throat. And to top everything off my N95 is bust. I must've had the phone in the same pocket as my keys and the LCD screen has cracked. I've sourced a replacement and am awaiting delivery. In the meantime I have no idea who is phoning me and cannot send or receive text messages.
If you've ever come across the unknown device listing in Window's Device Manager then this may well be of interest to you. Every PC device has a Vendor and Device ID associated with it and the PCI Database website will help you identify those pesky devices.
1. Open Device Manager (Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager)
2. Right click on the Unknown Device and click on Properties.
3. Under the Properties window click on Details tab and select Device Instance Id from the drop down box.
4. You should see a code similar to this
PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_7280&SUBSYS_E190174B&REV_9A\4&2E2DECCC&0&0058
5. The portion of the code highlighted in RED is the Vendor ID and the portion highlighted in GREEN is the Device ID. In this example:
Vendor ID = 1002
Device ID = 7280
6. Visit PCI Database, where you can either search by the vendor ID or by searching with the device ID.
7. Once you have the description of the device it should be a simple matter of searching for a driver for that device with Google, Yahoo or any other mass market search engine.
Long-time children's TV presenter Tony Hart has died, at the age of 83. After serving as an officer in the 1st Gurkha Rifles in World War II, he later attended Maidstone College of Art before joining the BBC in 1952. He became the resident artist on Saturday Special in that year before subsequently appearing in Playbox, Titch and Quackers, Vision On, Take Hart, Hartbeat and Smart Hart.
Morph joined Tony in 1977 and they were later joined by Chas; both animated clay figures. He received two Bafta awards, won a lifetime achievement award in 1998, and also created the original design for the Blue Peter badge.
I've not been able to get much done today. First thing this morning I had to take my brother-in-law to the dentist to have a tooth pulled. After that I had to pop into the job centre so that they can keep an eye on me now that I've been out of work for a year. Chrissy dropped a couple of things off at lunch time and then I took Jim into Whitehaven to do some shopping. Michael was supposed to take me to the hospital for my retina scans but he forgot so I had to get my sister to do that. I've had to sit twiddling my thumbs for most of today as a result of the eye drops I was given. My pupils have been widely dilated all day and I haven't been able to focus close up or able to drive. In fact I've only just got home now after picking the car back up.
Patrick McGoohan, the star of cult 1960s TV show The Prisoner, has died, after a short illness. He was 80 years old. Alongside the fame his portrayal of Six brought him, he also won two Emmy awards for his work on TV detective series Columbo, first in 1974 and then again in 1990. He also won a Bafta award for best television actor in 1959 for his role in The Greatest Man In The World.
Ricardo Montalban, star of 1970s & 80s US TV show Fantasy Island, has aslo died. He was 88 years old and is probably also well remembered for playing the villain, Khan Noonien Singh, in Star Trek, both in the TV episode 'Space Seed' and the second feature film 'The Wrath Of Khan.'
I've been at Chrissy's for most of this afternoon. We've been making Chocolate Cookies and Truffles. Amazingly easy to make and the truffles are decadently rich.
Today has been another busy day. I had lunch in Egremont with Chrissy and whilst Geoff took her to Carlisle for her pain clinic appointment I picked up their kids from school. After having something to eat it was off to the swimming baths for her daughter's swimming lesson. Her son was extremely disappointed to discover that he wouldn't be swimming; although his activity book calmed him down somewhat. Geoff and Chrissy turned up at the swimming baths just as the lesson was ending. I took my leave and headed homewards.
Spent almost 5 hours looking at PCs this afternoon. Phil's PC more or less turned out to be a 10 minute job. When he'd last cleaned it he hadn't fully reattached the cpu heatsink so it'd get warm and power down. A nice, quick fix. Sarah's laptop however, which I didn't know I was going to look at until I landed, proved to be a pain in the neck. She's doing Graphic Design at Uni and everytime she'd boot up the PC would get to the Vista login screen and reboot. Hitting F8 and loading Last Known Good Configuration would solve the problem until the next reboot. It transpires that a failed update of Adobe CS 3 was probably responsible. After redownloading and attempting to install updates it still wouldn't work correctly. Eventually decided to uninstall CS3 and see if that would help. Again to no avail. Eventually backed up all her college work and other bits and bobs onto an external USB HDD and restored the laptop back to factory default. When I left she was about to start reinstalling software.
Manchester United beat Chelsea 3-0 at Old Trafford this afternoon. In a game that United dominated Chelsea never looked to be a real danger. The win pulls United within 5 points of the leaders, Liverpool, with 2 games in hand. United play Wigan on Wednesday before visiting Bolton next weekend; and could in theory overtake Liverpool, who don't play in the league again until Monday 19th.
