h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...for having signed our card at the h2g2 meet!

twas very kind.

I hope we both looked like we type, and I hope that we weren't /too/ scary, even on paper.

Our love to you!





- Njan & Poet

No probs, man!

Pity you couldn't be there. Still, I had to leave at about 9pm anyway, so I probably wouldn't have had time to see you.

But you'd have the advantage that I wouldn't have drunk very much.

Well, by my standards.

Because when I drink a lot, I hug a lot.



...haven't talked for a while.. how are you?

No, we haven't. I'm fine, fine... working a bit too much for my own good, what with college work an' all.
You?

Working very hard indeed. Mostly networking everything in sight, hooking up speakers, webdesigning for huge fees, fixing security holes, and talking to people.

The pre-university workfest is a bit of a misnomer: I'm not doing any of the work, and I feel fine. Ahem. Bad joke.

I'm sure it'll catch up on me, but still.. ..other work and other pursuits are taking the driving seat at the moment.

What subjects are you doing?

I'm not networking yet, but I'm after new computer equipment. A GeForce3 of some kind is next on my list.

But I am doing website work, albeit only for myself.

Let's see... computing, German, maths and physics. I'll only take computing, maths and physics on to A2 though. I don't think a whole A-Level in German will get me very far.

Ah. I've been networking and webdesigning almost since I could walk... I started in about '91, and haven't looked back. I'm rather good at it, scarily, so my house is full of network cable and hugs. I also have a predilection for having more than one monitor on each machine.

Webdesign's a good thing to keep your finger in, because it pays well if you get good. Networking isn't hard at all to get into.. get yourself a pair of old network cards, a piece of cable, two T-Pieces and two terminators. I can give you cable and cards. I don't have any spare terminators, and I keep the T-Pieces for emergencies.

Computer fairs are good for picking old bits like that up, too...

I wouldn't advise taking either of those three. I've tried all of them, and they're all sucky. Particularly computing. It's all theory and no actual computing.

Unless you're interested in reverse polish notation, linked lists, accumulators, and data structure, A-Level computing is dire.

I also don't like the minimalism involved in the topics for A-Level Physics. Having worked at a laser lab, the "lasers" part of the syllabus is absolutely laughable. It shocked me. .. the jump from a multi-petawatt pulsed femtosecond laser to "laser stands for..." is quite harsh. They don't go into any detail at all, which really defies the point of modules.

You could walk in '91? Not bad, not bad...

Yeah, I enjoy webdesign. I usually end up redesigning my sites soon after the last change. I've begun to implement a skinning system in my sites now, though, so I can keep all my designs online and switch between them at will.

A computer fair was where I got all the parts for my first computer. Very cheap, that was.

Yes, I agree. I enjoy computing practical lessons (I can program(me), at last!), but after just my first theory lesson I realised I'd gone over that in information studies last year.

And physics is rather... patronising to say the least. Still, I need that and maths to go on to any sort of astrophysics course at university.

yup yup.

I see. What template engine do you use? IT[x]?

Skinning is evil.

Ah. No, you see, assembling computers is bad. Because you get no warranty. And besides, if you know what you're doing, who to talk to, and where to go, you can get a prebuild (built to your spec) cheaper, anyway.

Whatever you do, don't do Computing for A-Level. Trust me.

And physics you will /not/ find patronising at A-Level. Trust me.

How good are you at maths?

Skinning's easy using PHP. Easy, of course, assuming you keep it simple.

Well, I got a warranty on all the seperate parts. I think.

I am gonna do it, so there!

I thought you said it was minimalistic? Or am I getting my adjectives mixed up again?

Well, I got an A* for it at GCSE, and have had As in all my progress reviews so far.

You do. But when your motherboard fries your harddrive because you didn't know that a particular motherboard didn't like a particular hard drive, neither company will accept responsibility for it. That's one of the only things stopping the entire population from building machines. This has happened 7 times in a row to a friend of mine who runs a computing company which designs remote access solutions (which include hardware), so don't take it too lightly.

Oh, go for it. Just don't expect it to be the smoothest boat in the water.

It is, in terms of actual physics. It just isn't in terms of maths.

I'll be fine. I do read the reviews before I buy stuff, you know.

We shall soon see.

Ah, right-ho. Well, I'm enjoying the subject right now, however lacking in advanced facts it may be.

*shrugs*... no, don't listen to me. I don't work in the industry or anything.

Fine then!

*shrugs*

I still don't know why this doesn't work. This is really beginning to annoy me.

In order to network one side of my house with the other, I decided I'd be adventurous and try to use some of the wires left over from the security wiring they put in when they built the house (They put in 4 per room, I need 2)... so I've clipped oscilloscope BNC --> crocodile cables on the one that goes to where the base unit should be, so that I can network my backup machine to my second hub by BNC (one supports BNC and UTP) whereas the second hub's daisychained to the first by UTP, the other half of the network there all being UTP. Admittedly it's precarious and only 10mbit, but it works as a backup machine, and overnight 10mbit is more than enough for me.

At some point, I decided I wanted to make the far machine detachable, so that it could become a subnet all on its own if needs be, so I duly stuck another machine inbetween this one (a cutdown machine) with a relay box plugged into it, so that I could disconnect the far machine.

This worked fine.

Then I made the mistake of trying to network the printer directly rather than just sharing it. This took days to sort out.

After the addition of a proxy, a fileserver, a domain server, and numerous workstations, something along the line BROKE. And now none of the UTP network works.

I'm having to use the network that I erected for the relay machine and my backup machine as my primary network, which means that two hubs are currently sitting wondering what they did wrong, and the network's only running at 10mbit.

I've spent hours trying to pin down the problem, but whenever I confine it, it suddenly appears to be somewhere else.

Something's wrong. Somewhere. Really, really, badly wrong.

Something I've completely missed.

*grrr*

Hmm, sorry to hear you're having troubles.

I won't pretend to know much about networks, but I have been in similar situations where something's wrong and it's impossible to trace. I usually find it's a software problem actually. Last time my computer failed to boot because I'd deleted (well, renamed, so it couldn't be run) a program that seemed to slow my computer down.

I'm not sure whether the problem you describe could be in any way related to such a happening, though.