Stoobie's patented 5am rant.

I suppose it's at these times when your sleep patterns are out of sync with the rest of your timezone, your house mates are asleep with their girlfriends (I am assuming they're asleep here, I mean it is 5am after all), that you sit back and think to yourself. Need I remind you that pondering to yourself in these situations is always the wrong thing to do because it always serves as the harsh backhand of reality. Also, never watch Scrubs whilst thinking. John Dorian's internal monologues only encourage your own to develop, hence my sudden need to blog.

Thinking to myself the issue of being single comes to mind, but I won't go on about that because everyone's heard that story a thousand times. The issue of friends being so thinly spread once you're living in a borough of London and they're either working, back in their homes of origin or just busy. The social life becomes harder to arrange when your hours at work can vary between 4pm starts all the way through to 3am finishes and anything in between. Last week for example I was particularly lucky. My mate Phil, the final house mate to move in was around for a week, settling in and sorting his room and seeing how I only worked 3 days that week, I got to spend a lot of my time hanging out. Heck, I even went to the cinema... twice! Die Hard 4 was pretty damn awesome and considering I loathe Harry Potter with an absolute passion, my friends managed to drag me along to see the Order of the Pheonix. It was better than my pessimism predicted, but it was still pretty dire.

Speaking of the git-wizard, his new book came out tonight. Chris and Aoife scuttled to Waterstone's midnight opening like lambs to the slaughter in order to get their hands on J.K. Rowlings latest piece of *cough* literacy *cough*. Seriously, why not at least pre-order the book and get it in the post first thing in the morning rather than give me further reason to doubt their sanity? At least I can take comfort in the fact some like-minded hackers, thieves and contract breakers have already spread the word of who dies. It will make for excellent leverage in turning the conversation off Harry Potter and onto more serious matters like... heck... the best way to open a can of shook-up coke without getting it all over you. To all the people who I have wound up and angered over the adolescent boy who enjoys playing with his wand far too much I must take a moment to apologise. Whilst I see you look forward to, though don't understand why, the fact remains I hate the whole franchise and it brings me great pleasure to poke fun at it and unfortunately some of my friends don't see eye-to-eye on the matter. Sparks will fly when the issue is raised. Live by the sword, die by the cynic.

In more positive news I have been making lots of progress with the Smoke Radio website thanks to my recent bout of insomniac-behavior. The website now has a Newsletter that can be signed up to on the site as well as the website now having the ability to finally show off them shiny YouTube videos we've had to link to for so long. Joomla sure is a handy tool, but can be a bit infuriating when you haven't got the plugins to do the job you want. A job that can usually be solved with a flurry of HTML. I am considering putting Joomla on my stoobie-land.co.uk website so I can teach myself to build a site from scratch on it.

I also received the cheque for my Uni Halls of Residence deposit-return this morning. £247 back from the initial £250 meaning I only had £3 taken from it, which is pretty sweet all things considering. I have heard of worse flats than mine receiving as much back. I hope the Chinese students are fined for waking everyone up at ungodly hours of the morning. How I love living in a house.

Sorry about the rant, blame Scrubs, then watch it. It is awesome.

Overclocking, Clocking-off.

Ah, nothing beats these lazy Saturdays. All is well in the world when you have a day off. Especially when you're a geek like me with even bigger geeks to talk to on the Internet on Computer upgrades. When you have Live earth playing in the next room, and a summer breeze coming in through the window.

The only downside to talking to people who know their shit is that what you thought you knew suddenly becomes very very wrong, or at least, very out-of-date. Buying new memory on top of everything else looks like an increasingly likely probability.

But in the mean time, PC Gamer #177 has a nice feature this month all about overclocking, so I could have what I already own running at faster speeds by the end of the week. Next week of course is looking particularly attractive as I am only working 3 days. Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday, which unless they get sneaky and change in the next few days, will give me plenty of time of to spend with Phil, who moves in either tomorrow or Monday and is about for a week or so before buggering off to Australia for a month. I shall assist him in getting hooked up to the Internet on our network and in getting his Smoke Radio emails direct to his computer in that time. Hopefully do some fun stuff too with the guys, Charlotte and Danielle. I guess we'll find out within the next few days.

Where there's 'Smoke', there's fire.

The rumour mill has been ablaze with stories from the University of Westminster's Harrow campus during the past 48 hours, with two fires breaking out causing severe damage to two campus buildings.

The first fire broke out late on Friday night in the fine arts, ceramics and fashion blocks. A hazard zone was set up around the University of Westminster site after gas cylinders were found inside.

At its height, about 100 firefighters were in attendance. About 30 firefighters remained at the scene on Saturday morning, cooling the acetylene cylinders and damping down.

The second fire however broke out on Sunday night, with another turn out of a 100 firefighters. The brigade said there were no reports of casualties but 30% of a three-floor classroom block was damaged after the fire was braught back under control at 2am.

The undergraduate and school offices, art and design studios, video edit and photo facilities, photo science labs, ceramics studios and workshops, the fashion area, the newsroom, animation, graphic information design, music and informatics, illustration and the post room were all affected by the fire.

A London Fire Brigade spokesman said: "There was a second fire at the same University last night, a 20 pump fire involving around 100 firefighters... It was in a University Building of three floors, and 30 per cent of the ground and second floors were damaged by fire... Due to the size and severity of the blaze it is expected to take some time to establish the cause of the fire."
He said there was no indication as yet as to whether the two fires were linked.

The University Website states "Despite damage that has caused the closure of one block (J) at the Campus, every effort is being made to ensure that teaching continues as normal. Damage to areas used by the School of Media, Arts and Design (MAD) means that students of that school are being asked to contact the University to get more information.
"MAD students should ring 020 7911 5974 for the latest information on teaching and coursework. Regular bulletins will also be posted on Blackboard."

I for one am merely greatful that the Media Block, or at least Radio, hasn't been effected by fire. I also hope that the fire doesn't cause any disruptions to students awaiting to start on the courses effected in September, or those students already studying them as many of them are my friends.

Sources:
BBC - Firefighters tackle campus blaze 30/06/07
BBC - Second fire at university campus 02/07/07
Harrow Times - Blaze at university 02/07/06
Life Style Extra - Probe As Uni Campus Hit By Two Mystery Fires 02/07/07
WMIN Website - Fire at Harrow Campus 02/07/07