Busy Busy Busy

As you may know, I have been a Pay as You Go Consultant for Phones 4 U Bournemouth for about a week now, and tomorrow will be my third day on the shop floor. Overall, it’s going well so far and I have done pretty well. I have sold about 7 phones in the last two days, and numerous top-ups.

The process of selling a phone can be either relatively easy or hard, depending on a number of factors. There are many customers that are “Just looking”, but there are a few occasions when “Just looking”, is really a potential sale and it is my job to find them. Both today and yesterday I have had a nice couple looking for presents and have sold them a phone (two in one case) and they were very happy – Something that makes a sale a lot more rewarding.

The job can be quite tough on the legs, as I am pretty much on my feet the whole day. The bus is £1.50 return, which I have had to make good use of the last two days, as it has been harder to get up than first thought :/ Unfortunately, it eats away at any free time I have at weekends, which is a bit of a pain, but it’s what I was expecting, so I’m not surprised.

I received my new contract phone today. It’s the Sony Ericsson K850i and is a pretty nifty little phone. It features a 5 megapixel camera, with flash, multiple ISO settings, panoramic shots (takes three shots and merges them, multiple scene settings (landscape, sports, portrait, beach/snow, document, etc), macro mode, infinite focus mode, auto focus, flash and red-eye reduction, exposure settings, self-timer, white balance, effects and numerous other settings, such as picture quality and stabilizer. So that’s just the camera ; it also features the usuals, such as an mp3 player, upgradeable memory (came with free 512mb micro-SD card), radio, alarm clock, etc. etc.

The price of this comes to £16 per month with 500 mins and unlimited texts, which for someone that mostly texts, should be sufficient All other phones would have the same price, so after comparing 3 or 4 phones, I chose this one, primarily for the camera quality compared to others available, but overall, I do like the layout, setup and things. Mobile Sift give the K850i a review score of 8.2, which I agree with.

I thought about the LG Viewty at one point, but after comparing it myself, I wasn’t overly impressed and the fact I had an iPod touch meant there was little point to it. I looked at a Nokia 6500 Slide, which I liked, but it wasn’t as powerful as the K850i.

Here is a lovely photo I took with my phone of my desk. It is night, so pic quality may not be it’s best, but it seemed to turn out ok. I’m pleased anyway ^_^

Speeeeedy PC!

Yesterday I received all the rest of my new PC parts from Komplett. I got home about 14:30 or so, and took the package upstairs and started to unwrap with joy, like a child with a chocolate bar ^_^

As I looked through each mini-package inside, there is that happy feeling where you know that what you have purchased is going to be awesome. After leaving packages strewn across my bedroom, I plunged in and took the side panel off my case. I then proceeded to take out all my old components; memory, hard drives, wi-fi card, tv card, graphics card and motherboard. I then proceeded to retrieve my motherboard from the box it has resided in for the past week and place it on the floor in front of me. The first thing to be installed was the Intel Q6600 CPU. I took it out looked at it and thought, “Er, which way does it go in?”

Usually, I am good with building a pc, but I have never actually had the joy of using an Intel CPU, so that was the first trip to the manual set. Fastening in the CPU, it was now time for the heatsink-fan (HSF). I bought a Thermaltake Blue Orb II and crikey is this thing big!! It’s about twice the size of my old CPU heatsink (that was a zalman custom fan). I dolloped a sufficient amount of thermal paste on the cpu, and then proceeded to attempt to fit the fan onto the cpu. I had to install two brackets (Which I put on the opposite way, so that was the first reason I thought it wouldn’t fit on), then attach the HSF to those brackets. This was the tricky part. The first time, the fan power cable was unknowingly getting in the way. This was another reason for me to believe it wouldn’t fit. Finally, my motherboard has very large copper heatsinks surrounding the CPU, which made it slightly more difficult than I expected to attach the HSF. I did, finally, manage to attach it, but it took more force than I’d usually like to apply.

Next I plugged in the memory, fairly straight forward – just a matter of plugging them in and fastening them – and they look great. I never thought memory could be so stylish. I have 2GB of Corsair PC2-6400 C4 PRO installed – they each have a heatsink, fitted with activity LED’s for each memory bank.

After I had attached these, I continued to place the motherboard inside the case itself. There were no problems here and it fitted well. Using the bundled sound card from ASUS, I installed that and then installed my XFX 8800gt graphics card. Now I had already heard about the ridiculous length of the 8800 series cards, but, even though mine was a GT, it was still surprisingly long (about 10 inches). I was surprised to see the graphics card’s length span the whole motherboard, and was thankful there was nothing to get in the way.

Now I had all the main components fitted, I screwed in my new hard drive into the HDD cage and then went around plugging all the components into the board and the power supply. This took about 5-10 minutes (Had a small problem with the sata cable on my hard drive. I had plugged it in, not realising it was the wrong way round : /)

Happy with the overall ease of installation of all the components, I then powered up the PC. It booted, which is the best sign and I went to the BIOS screen. The BIOS itself is brilliant – probably the best I have seen or used for a long time, and the numerous options leave nothing out to be configured. There is even an alarm you can set that runs a music cd from your cd drive!!

Installing Vista was a breeze and took less than 10 minutes. Once into the OS, everything was running smoothly, just as I expected. Updates were done, drivers were installed, and in about an hour overall, things are back to the way they are… with a bonus. Vista score sits at 5.0, with the memory taking the 5.0 spot, and everything else (Hard Drive, CPU, 3d Graphic, etc) scoring a nice 5.9.

Games – Now here’s the good part. With the power of the 8800gt I bought, I can run any Valve Source game (Half-Life 2, CS:S, Ep. 1, Ep. 2 and Portal, etc. – Only ones I have tested at the moment) at my max resolution of 1280×1024 and crank up every graphics setting to high. That means 16x Anti-aliasing, 16x Anisotropic Filtering, High quality textures, shadows and models!! HDR is on, Colour Correction is on – Everything!! And, what’s best is that I can still achieve 100+ frames per second So as you can tell, I am immensely pleased.

In EVE news, the new expansion pack comes out, offering a bundle of new ships and items, as well as the new graphical overhaul and, I assume, DirectX10 support I’m also back up to 5 million ISK, and skill training goes well.

For Uni, I have just completed the first assignment and had it handed in on Tuesday. I have four left, each due in at a different date over the coming months.

Went into Phones4U today to sort out my personal details so they can properly add me to the employee payroll. I also sorted out my working hours (I’ll start tomorrow to catch up some hours) which are all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I am contracted at a minimum 21 hours a week, but nearing the Christmas sales period, this will most likely increase.

A 6 Mile Walk to Success

Today was the day of my interview for my third year placement at a local company in Bournemouth. The company is called Web Host Directory (http://www.webhostdir.com) and has been running for ten years, as a directory for hosting needs all over the world, including the UK, US, Australia and Canada. It allows customers to search through their large directory, filtering through a number of options to find the solution they are looking for, at the price they need.

Their base of operations in the UK, luckily, happens to be located in Bournemouth near, about 6 miles from where I am living this year. I woke up this morning, with my alarm nicely annoying me as usual, to the sound of a thunderstorm. Hearing that, I decided that I could have an extra hour in bed and that I’d get a taxi if the weather continued in its current state. At about 10.30, I awoke and slowly raised myself from the bed, a task that I never find easy, and I looked out the window, pleasantly surprised by the brighter looking atmosphere around the house and even a blue sky.

I was ready and out the door by 12:05 and starting the semi-arduous 6 mile walk to my destination at Basepoint Business Centre in Aviation Park West near Bournemouth International Airport. The walk was an interesting one; I passed a number of shops and restaurants which could prove useful in future, however walking all that way for a particular shop is a bit overkill. I also passed Pizza Hut – the one you can sit in and eat, rather than the numerous walk-in-take-away Pizza Hut shops in the town centre.

For those that are interested, the route I took (A) is below (omitting my house) as well as the route in relation to the whole of Bournemouth (B):

(A)                    (B)

The interview itself went well and they were pleased that they had found someone who understood the languages and web development concepts that I have learned over my schooling years. They said that I would fit in well with the team and were pleased with how I had presented myself in the interview. The other benefit of taking this placement, is that they have offered me an opportunity to start some part time work before the placements starts in June, meaning that I could be part of the team as soon as Christmas, and my contract at Phones4U, have ended. So overall, I was pleased with the way things went. The only thing they said I would have to sort out is transport, and luckily I have found a bus service that goes that way (Number 13 – Wilts and Dorset). I took the bus home, after stopping off at the co-op for a bottle of coke and a packet of jaffa cakes. I was starting to get hungry and thirsty after all that walking as well as my feet starting to really let me know how much I had walked, so taking the bus home was a good option. The bus stopped just outside the train station, which is only about 20 minutes walk from home so that was a bonus. The job description is at the end of the post.

In other news, my hard work in EVE Online; doing missions, training skills and earning money over the past few days, led me to the purchase of a new Moa, a cruiser class ship, which was an impressive upgrade from my current ship. Unfortunately, my idea to go hunting pirates around low-security space led to the demise of my hard-earned and brand new ship. Myself and a friend from my seminar group, Jason, were happily travelling across the Aunenen system from asteroid field to asteroid field picking off as many pirates we could, collecting bounties and earning ourselves gains in security status from CONCORD, the security enforcement corporation, when we, well Jason, found ourselves suddenly under attack by another player. There are a number of players that live a life of crime, picking off unsuspecting players in low security space. Jason alerted me to the attack as I was warping in to his location, at which point I quickly warped out before I could get caught in a firefight.

I managed to get a look at the ship, and then researched it to see if I could enact some sort of revenge for the merciless destruction of my friend’s ship. After finding out it was obviously weaker, I returned to the system and began the hunt for the pirate. He warped in soon after I arrived in an asteroid field and targeted me. I went to attack, but unfortunately, he also had support in the form of another player with a cruiser, loaded with heavy missiles. This was a problem, as my shields had already been lowered from attacking an npc (non-player character) pirate moments before, and the shields on my ship take a year to recharge. So I tried to warp out. Wasn’t going to happen. One of them was using a warp scrambler, so, in effect, my ship was like a wanted man walking through a police station with a gun in his hand – he gonna get shot.

Yeah, that was a disappointment, but in the end, it’s experience to be more careful the next time. Oh and have bigger guns.

Job Description Document

Training Day at Phones4U Southampton

Today started early, very early. My 5:30am rise was not the happiest time I’ve ever had to wake up, but it wasn’t so bad after I was on two feet. The training, in a way, began yesterday, as I received an e-mail regarding a number of documents, of which I had to print off, read through and sign. These included the contract, an induction handbook, a P46, a welcome letter and a benefits page.

By 6:20am, I was ready and out the door. It wasn’t too cold this morning, which is a plus, but I wore gloves anyway to stay warm The main thing to notice was how dark it was, and how amazingly quiet the roads were. The house we live in is near to, I believe, a B road, so it can get quite busy from time-to-time. The next thing a noticed was a distinctive droning sound in the distance. To my amazement, in the next five minutes after it began to and took off, I confirmed to myself that it was, in fact, a Hercules. This may not sound that amazing to some, but hearing that plane even once in this place is surprising, especially when Hurn airport is primarily commercial flights.

The walk to the train station took 35 minutes, which went quite quickly, and once again, I had hit the 3 use limit of a chip and pin machine not connected to a phone line. To those that do not know, there is a security limit on credit/debit card machines. It declines your debit card if you have used it (about) 3 times, possibly in a weekly period, in one of those handheld chip and pin machines. If it is a machine connected to a phoneline, then you will be fine.

I arrived at the station earlier than I expected so I had the freedom to choose which train I took. I opted to miss the first train and travel on the 7.27 to Winchester. The train journey itself was pleasant, and South West Trains are comfortable and provide a good service. It was still quite quiet, so there were a number of seats to choose. The trained stopped at Southampton at about half past eight, a little later than expected, yet still in-time enough for me to get to Phones4U.

After departing the station, finding my way there was a little tricky, but I managed to get there in the end and in good time. The overall day at Phones4U lasted from 9am to 3.45pm, so it was shorter than expected (it said 9-5 in our welcome letter), but we still had a good time. There were 6 of us there from numerous areas of the country, including but not limited to Salisbury, Maidenhead and Portsmouth.

The training itself to me, although intended to be specific to this line of employment, generally opened my eyes to a number of concepts, allowing me to think upon and improve/change the way I think about dealing with customers. I am starting to feel more confident with a number of things, and feel that this Christmas position will help a lot, enabling me to deal with people more effectively, as well as applying things I have learned to serve them more efficiently. After the training, I felt more understanding of the way mobile phones sales in general works, and that, the number one priority is to ensure that the customer is being talked to open and honestly, as well as making certain they know what they are buying, and what it will cost them, in order to keep Phones4U’s reputation as a, mobile sales group, high in customer satisfaction polls, for which they won a highly esteemed award in 2005 (Just under 10 years since the company first started trading as Phones4U).

Delays and EVE Online

My recent purchase at Komplett has been delayed due to the shortages in supply of the 8800GT. It was supposed to ship last Friday, but Komplett didn’t receive any stock in. I’m not too worried, as it’s due to ship this Friday, and it’s not their fault if NVidia or whoever aren’t supplying enough of these highly demanded cards.

Uni is going ok. Been mostly working on my programming assignment over the last week and a half. I finally managed to work out how to retrieve data from a HashSet, and most likely will be able to do the same with a TreeSet, so there is nothing there now to prevent me finishing the project, which is a bonus. I’m hoping I’ll get a high mark for this, as I’m starting to understand and get quite good at programming Java.

I have just re-activated my two week trial account that I had on EVE Online in 2004. I re-activated it for a month to try it out again and, already, I’m loving it again. For those that do not know, “EVE Online is a player-driven persistent-world and a massively multiplayer online game set in a science fiction space setting. Players pilot a wide array of customizable ships through a universe comprising over five thousand solar systems. Most solar systems are connected to one or more other solar systems by means of jump gates. The solar systems can contain several entities including but not limited to: moons, planets, stations, asteroid belts and complexes.” This means that the scope of the game is not only huge, but awesome.

“Players of EVE Online are able to participate in any number of in-game professions and activities, including mining, manufacturing, trade and combat (both player versus non player characters and player versus player).The range of activities available to the player is facilitated by a character advancement system based upon training skills in real time, even whilst not logged in to the game.” [ - Wikipedia]

The re-activation wasn’t that expensive, and should I choose to increase my subscription, the longer, the cheaper. My main character is called Kalrath Ugaaran (Something I just made up) and you can add me if you need help and such. My knowledge of EVE Online is pretty good, although sometimes I’ll have to ask others about things. When I re-activated, I’d forgotten how far I actually got in my two-week trial (If you want a two week trial, I can send one via e-mail then leave a comment and I’ll send one along ). I had over 1.1 mil ISK (Interstellar Kredits – the game’s currency), five caldari frigates (kind of a basic ship, but my merlin, the best frigate is pretty good when kitted out well ) and finally a bunch of items.

I’ve mostly been doing a few missions, but have been helping out a few people with their combat missions, as they can be a little overwhelming at first. I have found one person that I’m getting on specifically well with, and we’ve decided that, once we have the money, we are going to build a corporation ourselves and start an interplanetary empire, so to speak. I think we’ll stay on the good side of people – combat wise – as we don’t want to see our investment lost in a sweeping firefight from another corporation

New PC

Ok so I took the plunge and bought some new components for m’puder, essentially making a new PC, minus the PSU and case I had bought previously. I bought a new CPU, fan, memory, graphics card, motherboard and hard drive. The following is a list of the components I have purchased, bearing in mind I was trying to keep to a budget of around £650-750:

CPU – Intel Core 2 Quad – Q6600 – 95W G0 stepping – OEM – £150
Motherboard – Asus Striker Extreme 680i 775 ATX MOTHERBOARD – £158
Delivery – £6.95

Memory – Corsair TWIN2X 6400PRO DDR2 2048MB CL4 – £97
Hard Drive – Western Digital Raptor 74GB SATA 16MB 10K RPM – £90
Graphics Card – XFX GeForce 8800GT 670M 512MB XXX GDDR3 Alpha Dog Edition – £210
CPU Fan – Thermaltake Blue Orb II CPU Cooler – £18
Delivery – £6.75

Overall – ~£737

I bought the components from two sellers, as it worked out cheaper than buying from just the one. Aria seem to have the Striker Extreme £20-50 cheaper than other sellers. I ignored eBay for this project, as I want the security and peace of mind you get from e-tailers. Komplett had some good deals on too – the memory for example. The reasons for not buying at usual e-tailers, such as Dabs (who I recently found are part of BT) , Microdirect, Ebuyer, Scan, etc. is down to overall prices, including delivery costs etc.

I have been wanting to upgrade my machine for over a year now, and have decided to upgrade now. My reasoning behind it is, because I want a faster machine generally (for uni, etc), want a faster machine for gaming (No longer will have to play at 1024×768 to get a decent frame rate D: ) and I don’t see the point in waiting a little longer for something new to come along and prices of other things to drop. That is the problem with this kind of technology – It comes out new and expensive, and is replaced by something newer and “expensiver” a few months down the line. It doesn’t matter when I decide to buy a new machine, because the same thing happens over and over. I could wait ’til Christmas, but then the next newest thing will come out, I’ll want it and then wait for it to go down in price. By the time it’s come down to a level I can afford, the next best things come out, and repeat.

When I have received my new pc parts, I’ll write about how they are or are not working and why they are awesome. I had my motherboard and CPU delivered on Friday – Now, i’m just waiting for the rest so I can assemble the whole lot. Then comes the fun part of re-installing Windows and Drivers and Software, etc. etc.

Can’t wait. Watch this space

Good News

Today has been a good day. I’ve had good news, average news and no bad news, which is good news.
The good news is that I received a text message this morning from Phones4U. The message read:
“Congratulations,” (Always a good start) “following on from your recent interview at Phones 4U .
We would like to join our Xmas Team. Please call [number removed] to arrange a start date.”

Odd wording and odd choice of delivery, but oh well, I have a job and that’s all that matters. However, I also received a call later that day. It was a Phones 4U representative asking me if I’d received the message. It was hard to hear her, due to the noise around me (called me on my mobile), but I was then informed that I will be on £4.60 an hour. As I couldn’t really hear properly, I was acknowledging with “OK’s”, but not really thinking about was I was listening too. I’m not one to complain, but for the kind of work I’ll be involved with, the (18-21 minimum wage) figure that I was given, was a surprise to me. I’m happy with any pay, within reason, and I may receive commission and things, so for now, I’m not going to worry about it and just be pleased I actually have a job at all.

I was then told I’d need to attend a training day. This is all well and good. The closest venue for the training day will be Southampton (>_<). I was asked if I’d like to attend on the Monday (12th), but I decided not to and asked if a later date was available. The next was on the Saturday, which suited me fine, so I scheduled that date. I’m going to have to call them again anyway, as I am not sure exactly where I am supposed to be going, or the time – it was hard to hear due to the surrounding noise :/

So all in all that was good news. I’m happy that my interview was successful. I forgot to write that on Wednesday, after getting my contact lenses, that the right eye prescription of my lenses is too strong and that they would order a replacement. The replacement has arrived and I said I’d come to collect it on Monday. The lenses themselves are fine and I’m still having no problems, which is good. The putting them in/taking them out can be a chore, but oh well

Uni is going OK. Just been set the third assignment. I now have an OOP (Programming) assignment due in on the 20 something, an Internet Software Applications/Technologies assignment due in on the 20th and a Management of Software Production assignment due in for December the 3rd. I’m quite far with the programming assignment, yet the ISAT one needs starting and finishing in 10 days. Tomorrow would be a good time to start. The purchase of my new books should definitely help with the ISAT and MSP assignments. Java assignment is pretty straightforward, although a single point is blocking progress, and Google isn’t proving helpful. In Java, an ArrayList has a get() method. This method is good for selecting single items from a collection. The HashSet and TreeSet classes do not have a get() method. This is not useful for selecting single items from a collection, which leads to my dilemma. How do I compare the performance of these three collections, if two of them have no method to retrieve single items? I thought I could perhaps extend the class, but didn’t get too far on this. If anyone passing by has ideas, please post a comment or too.

Moving on, work placement news is stagnant at the moment, as the other companies have only replied with generic e-mails saying my app has been passed to the recruitment team, etc. The only one I am having progress with is the WebHostDir company, here in Bournemouth, which I have a meeting with on the 19th at 11am – Still need to work out how to get there as Windows Live Maps is not proving too useful D:

Finally, I point to FreeRice. Free Rice.com is a charity website designed to help “earn” rice for poverty-stricken families in the third world etc. I did my part today and earned them 2000 grains of free rice. To earn rice, you have to correctly associate words with their correct meaning, of which is another word. If you are correct, you earn 10 grains of rice for the third world. The rice is paid for by the sponsoring companies, advertising at the bottom – There are a number of companies (I saw iTunes there, but can’t remember many more). It calculates your vocabulary level by the number of words you get correct. My 200 correct words saw me with an average vocabulary level of 30 – I was surprised by a number of words I managed to correctly associate, even though I had not heard of them before. I didn’t even use Google or something to cheat, because that would be pointless and would make it boring. Now go forth, expand your vocabulary and help solve poverty. And the total so far from (I believe) October 7th last month to now, is about 100 or 1000 million grains of rice. Now I’d probably say there were about 500 in a kilo of rice, so that sounds like a lotta rice to me.

Cancellations

Today our AI lecture/lab session were cancelled again, because the guy is still ill. The university have still failed to provide a replacement, telling us we should go through the work ourselves, even though there are only the first two week’s worth of work, which is great – if you want to do them again. I wonder sometimes why we pay £3070 for tuition fees, which they don’t mind taking at all, but when it comes to give the tuition, it’s few and far between. Other lessons/lectures/etc. are fine though, for now. I wouldn’t have so much of an issue with it, if the AI block of lectures and lab sessions wasn’t only nine weeks long

My last book came today, I received one yesterday, but forgot to write about it. The one I got yesterday was the High Performance Java book by Sun. Today, I received the “How can I change your mind?” book – it’s all about persuasive writing and using it to your advantage in a number of situations. I’ve read a few pages, about 10 32 or so, into it and already it seems like a very good purchase. I saved four pounds on the cover price too. Talking of cover price, I bought that Sun Java book for £2.43 and then postage was stuck on that brought it £5 something. Considering the cover price was $50, I’d say that was a good saving of £20. I love it when you get something for almost nothing, especially considering the number of books you are recommended to buy. Amazon is your friend.

When I get some time, I’ll start writing a review of my iPod touch and then post it here. So far it’s been awesome and I haven’t found anything I don’t like, which is always good, considering the price :

Google seem to be taking over the world now, and I’m sure it won’t be long before people all over the UK will soon be purchasing Google branded food, because they’ll probably merge with or buy out Tesco or something. Now that would be interesting, although most likely the end of the world. Meanwhile, they’ll just continue with trying to take over our mobile phone networks and launch their new mobile devices.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I got contact lenses fitted. Had an appointment at 14.45 and was in there ’til 16:10 practising putting them in and taking them out :/ They have to make sure you’re not going to damage your eyes etc.
All went well, overall, and my eyes are having no problems with them. I’ll post pics later some time.