Sam - thoughts, photos and pie

where its at

2006-07-03T12:44:00.000Z

This is my new location :

http://www.metalsam.wordpress.com

Im moving!

2006-01-05T14:01:00.000Z

For hte very few of you that read this, im moving my blog to wordpress

Im using a wordpress blog because it seems to be more user friendly, easier to custimise (sp?) and easier to leave commments on.

Rock Out.

Yay! New guitar =)

2006-01-03T16:03:00.000Z

Ordered my new guitar today, and found out why my last order was cancelled - i put hte wrong numbers in !

Should arrive by friday (hopefully).

School starts tomorrow.... =(
and i have 2 maths AS exams a week today...talking of which i should be revising....laters!

Unhappy new year

2006-01-01T14:08:00.000Z

This new year is not going well. The bank told me that my cheques had clearedd, so I ordered my new guitar, only to find out that they havent cleared :(

And how did I spend my new year? Unconcious.......and that really sucked......sick for 12 hours :(

Christmas!!!

2005-12-28T15:46:00.000Z

Had a good xmas this year.

My family decided to try something different so we had goose for xmas dinner. Quite nice, but an extremely fatty animal - a kilo of fat came of in the oven.
Presents consited of a minifridge (how cool!),cheques, and DVD RW drive for my comp.

Fucking Dell.

Put fucking tamper proof screws on the back of my pc, so i cant get teh fucking cover off to install my drive. Fuck.

Getting a new guitar soon partly funded from my xmas cheques, Ibanez S470 =D

I cant wait!

Testing....

2005-12-11T12:03:00.000Z

ooooh....im using flock.

Its a new web browser based on firefox. The first time I used it I was like WTF, this is firefox with a new theme.After downloading it, Ive noticed some cool features:

1. You can make posts to your blogspot account from flock

So thats all ive found so far, but it is quite useful if i cant be arsed to goto the blogspot homepage.

It also does something with your favourites, shares them online....I dont quite fully understand why you would want to do that....who would really give a toss about my favourite websites?

Still trying to work out how the RSS feeds work, but only out of curiosity as I would rather use my bloglines account for feeds.

NB - My previous post woo, drama students suck is NOT meant to sound anywhere near as dodgy as it does. Go hindsight.

2005-12-08T22:29:00.000Z

The A40, up close

2005-12-08T22:28:00.000Z

Took this tonight, long time, tripod, A40

Blogs and the world

2005-12-07T18:45:00.000Z

After browsing though some blogs recently, it became apperant that blogs are written in two languages. English and Spanish.

I suppose it makes sense seeming as english and spannish are the most widely used languages in the world.

But why arent the french and the italiens blogging as much? I know that there is a blogging conference in France at the moment, but I dont recall ever seeing a french blog. Do they just use english? (Would make sense as there language is pointless and annoying).

I would have thought the chinese would start blogging, but they probably have laws against it.

Doesnt excuse the Japanese though....maybe its just a cultural thing.

And while your here my band has got some songs up on the net:

Incognito

And before you say yes the guitar is too queit and the drums are too loud....I screwed up.

Hmmm

2005-12-04T23:11:00.000Z

So Im sitting on my ass at 11:10 editing the stuff my abdn has recorded.
Attempting to use EQs and effects to edit certain instruments aint fun.

So to kill time while listening to the final copies, I read my firend's myspace (puke) acounts.

And i notice

that emo kids dont use puntuation.

WTF?

Wooo! Drama students suck.

2005-12-02T16:06:00.000Z

My band has now finished recording our demo CD :D

Took 6 hours and a lot of work by everyone (well done guys/gals).

Didnt go without a few hitches.

Firstly, the mixer took a bit longer than we expected to setup. In the end we had to get an amp and put it thought that and back. So we finished with that, setup the mics for the drums, soundchecked everything, and then it was the end of lunch and time to go.

Secondly, we come back after school and find some fag-headed drama students have stolen the room that we BOOKED a week ago.seemiing as their drama students, the drama teacher gave htem prioty and we had to go. They were practising their performance. Why couldnt htey have used a different room? The only reasonable that I could come to is that theyre complete twats.
So we move all our instruments and electronics, and re setup in a different room.
Another few hours pass while we setup everything again. Then, finally, we can start recording.
Everyone gave 110% and it was the best session weve had yet. Took several times to get each song done without one of us screwing up!

Eventually, at 60 o'clock, we were finished, and went home.

The songs will be available for download next week sometime.

Incognito

Rockets

2005-11-30T13:29:00.000Z

So im building myself a solid fuel rocket - wooo!

Im intending to use 3 estes E9 rockets. Assuming i can keep the total weight of the rocket under a kilogram, it will accelerate at over 30m/s/s. If i can get the weight of the rocket to around 500 grams it will accelerate at 60m/s/s.

Using a 500 gram rocket, it will reach a max speed of 1800 m/s. with a 30 second burn time, it will reach 5400 verticle metres.

wow!

Nuclear Power

2005-11-21T20:52:00.000Z

Nuclear Power - The way forward?

The bbc has published an article on the PM giving serious thought to nuclear power.
Nuclear power ooks very attractive - small amount of uranium, lots of heat, some steam, turbines, wooptey doo we have electricity.

Only problem is the radioactiation left behind, as it takes 200 years to fade to background levels. If it is low level waste.

High level waste would take 1000s of years to reach safe levels. Man made containers would fail after a few 100.
Ideas?
One is to store the waste a few km underground. This is unpractable, as the world record for deepest hole was set by the Russians at 2km before running out of funding.
Another is to reuse high level uranium, as this reduces the waste problem, and also lowers the need to mine fresh uranium.

Another problem facing the nuclear industry is the imenent closure of its power plants, causing a knock on effect - the highlevel waste

Where does it go?

Meh

2005-11-14T13:21:00.000Z

Not been up to much recently...

Been having lots of band pratices - we didnt get the gig that we were getting revved up for which is good as it gives us mroe time to get some more songs done. Writing a main riff doesnt seem to be too tricky for me, writing solos can take a bit more effort though. We are doing some decent recordings on 1st December which will be good. aolmost managed to blag my band a gig supporting CPR fpr new years....should be quite good, as theyre an awesome band.

Home of incognito

Apart from that im supposed to be revising for my retakes and assorted units in January :(

Some photos I took in London

The EU

2005-10-18T17:43:00.000Z

There seems to be lots of bitching in/about the EU. Turkey wants to join, but isnt agreeing to all the EU policies. So what? Dont let them in.
Also, people within the EU are worried about hte EU being a 'christian based state' - as the predominant religion within the member countries is mainly christian. I think this is mainly due to chance rather than anything else.

Also, if Turkey joins the EU, it will give the EU a border with Syria and Iraq. One of the EU's policies is for people of member countries to be able to easilly move between them. So could this mean that the EU will become more suscuptible to inusurgents and terrorists from Iraq and Syria? Almost certainly.

All of the recent countries to join the EU are poor countries, after a slice of the EU development fund. This is going to fuel controversy over EU allocation of funds, as people in the rich countries are not going to wont to spend funding on people on the other side of Europe.

The EU at the moment, along with potential members:

Something to think about.....

2005-10-05T04:03:00.000Z

There seems to be alot of worry at the moment about pensions.

The state pension sucks. Why? There is not enough in taxes. Why? It all goes on benefits - DSS is one of the biggest public sectors. If people stopped claiming benefits they shouldnt, or dont need, or got off their lazy buts and got a job, then more money could go into pensions...

...and into a lot of other things....

Space Race

2005-10-05T04:00:00.000Z

I read an interesting article on the bbc website today (thanks to Lizzie for sending me this)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4307538.stm

Aperantly, a man called Peter Diamandis has set up a new competition in order to accelerate space rocket technology by setting up a new race, the Rocket Racing League, RRL.

It will have Grand Prix style races acrossthe US and Mexico. There will be a virtual tack that the pilot can see with a computer. The crowd can see the rockets via GPS and smoke plumes.

The aim is for many companies to enter in order to accelerate space rocket technology, eg airframes and efficient engines.

Looks like a laugh, and something interesting for all the physicists to do!!!

The first rocket is set to go off next year.

Nightwish!!

2005-10-03T09:54:00.000Z

Last sunday I saw Nightwish and they were amasing!!
Started off with Dark chest off wonders and ended with Wish I had an angel. The tour was to promote their new album 'once' , so they had a lot of songs off that (Ghost Love Score was my favourite)!.

Slowly getting to grips with Linux, Ive satarted editing and programming bash shells now :), and ive mastered most of the basic commands.

Currently downloading tunes off Metal.it, they got some great underground music, but a lot of the links are broken :( Just goto the MP3 section.

atm

2005-09-28T17:02:00.000Z

Grrr, I dont like personal statements. But, unfortunately, theyre kinda important, so I have to so it :@

Helped out at open evening last night, helping with the physics department. Got to play with static electricity for a while which is always fun. The kids seemed quite stunned by my ability to have electricty flowing out of my finger onto a steel tube. Looked quite cool. Afterwards teh physics teacher showed me and James how to create an incredibly effective fuse for our Malteser cannon. Test firing tonight at 1600.

So my quest goes on....

Linux

2005-09-25T21:12:00.000Z

So yesterday I installed linux (ubuntu 5.4 the hoary hedgehog)on the screwed computer i have...and now it seems to be fine :D

Only problem is adjusting to linux. Im slowly getting used to the concept of bash shells. However my misguided views of linux not crashing drowned this morning after i plugged my guitar in, ran the sound receorder program and....nothing!?

Had a poke with the music options but nothing. oh well. It even crashed when I clicked the record sound button :S

I cant even make nmap work :(

But im sure Ill get it with time.

In other news....HIGHTWISH IN 5 HOURS!!!!!

DRAGONFORCE!!

2005-09-23T22:57:00.000Z

WOOO!
I saw Dragonforce last night at the Camden Barlfy. It was amasing. I got to shake hands with most of the band and was even singing down the mic at one stage. Managed to steal a set list for at the end of the show. The band played great and Herman was on fire as usual. The support band would have been good, if it hadnt of been for their emo singer :@

The band played all their best songs, Valley of the Dammed, Soldiers of the Wasteland and Heart of a Dragon :D

The journey there was uneventful, but on the way back was talking to some people. One girl said something about banana mountain on the 20th november. Anyone know what this is?

Dragonforce

Oh, and im going to see Nightwish on sunday. WOO!

xstrata cont.

2005-09-14T23:34:00.000Z

Another thing \ive just noticed when looking at that graph is, Xstrata's share value almost exactly follows that of the sector average, It just rises at the same time.

Any thoughts anyone? [If anyone reads this...]

Xstrata

2005-09-13T09:53:00.000Z

Xstrate are a mining company based in Switserland. They are listed on the LSE and the Swiss stock exchange. I heard about them 2 years ago while participating in an economics competition at school - we had to invest £100,000 of virtual money into companies. If only that money had been real:

Theyre share value (the red line), has more than doubled over 2 years. The blue line is the mining sector as a whole. As you can see, Xstrata is doing very well.

There success could be due to their acquisition of MIM holdings last year, and their other various acquisitions of late.

The main contributing factor is probably the decrease in the supply natural resources and increasing demand for them from places like china pushing up prices. Xstrata must be making a tidy sum out of this demand!

Taxes

2005-09-12T21:09:00.000Z

I was taking a look at the bbc (www.bbc.co.uk) website today, and found an interesting graph showing how the amount of tax paid changes over time with the amount the government spends on public transport. According to the first figure, tax paid and government spending in transport used to be equal in 1975, but since then there has been a growing difference, with tax increasing and government spending decreasing. Today, the difference is at £30 billion.

It also shows a set of scales for the US, Germany, France and the UK, giving the ratio of tax to transport spending. Interestingly the US is teh only country with a 1:1 ratio. The other countries, all european, have a greater ratio, of >1:1

The UK has the greatest difference in Europe, with a ratio of 5:1

Just found it interesting....might throw in a bit more analysis later.

Bollocks

2005-09-10T23:41:00.000Z

The above.

2005-09-08T21:09:00.000Z

Took this in Denham County park ageees ago.

UCAS and beyond

2005-09-08T21:07:00.000Z

Got to start with the whole UCAS application thing soon. At the moment im intending to do a gap year as an actuarie for PWC, and then go do physics with a year in Europe at Bath university.

Went to Thorpe pak yesterday with Charlotte, James and Laura. Charlotte drove :) Was going good until I finished off Charlottes chips and then went on Rush. Those negative G's were not good after the chips, so i decided to sit a while on a bench. Charlotte joined me one ride later as she too was not too good. I slept a little and talked for a few hours then James and Laura met up with us and we went back to Uxbridge where sleep ensued.

The joys of sweat shops

2005-09-06T02:29:00.000Z

On the way to plymounth and back I was reading a book of short economic essays.
Yeah I know, sad.
But it had some very interesting points about the 'evils' of sweat shops:

1. Their (the labourers) quality of life has increased. They all used to work on farms just growing enough food to last the until the next crop, and sometimes not even that. So surely low paid bad jobs are better than no jobs at all??

2. 1st world countries have the capital and infrastructure to build the sweat shops. This growth in a countries export industries (the t-shirts and nike (yuck) trainers), causes a measurable improvement in the lives of ordinary people. The new industry has to offer higher wages than they make working on their farms, causing people to actually work there.

3. The growth of manufacturing causes a ripple effect thoughout the economy. The pressure on rural land declines, so rural wages increase.

4. As lots of people in the cities are now employed, there is an increase in competition to get more workers into the factories, so wages rise.

These factories are also causing a measurable improvement in countries where the process has been happening for a while. In 1974 Indonesia, more than half of the countries children were malnourished. Now it is a third. These improvements are throughout the pacific rim and bamgledesh.

Its not aid thats inproving thihrd world countries, its Nike.

So much for those anti globalists....

The book was written by Paul Krugman and is entittled "The accidental theorist". Available on penguin.

2005-09-03T23:19:00.000Z

yeah im in plymouth!

There are loads of chavs here, shame i forgot me shotgun!
Im stayin at me mates luke's house, and we're currently butchering sousages!! tasty.

Podcasts

2005-08-31T23:59:00.000Z

Podcasts - like blogs, but audio. You download them onto your ipod (hence the name) or mp3 player. Useful if you dont like reading!!

Using a client (http://www.dopplerradio.net) you can use the rss feed that the podcast site should provide to keep updated with the latest cast.

Find some podcasts here on: http://www.learnoutloud.com

2005-08-31T16:14:00.000Z

One of my better photos. From some place in wales!

First post!!

2005-08-31T02:36:00.000Z

Just got back from cornwall today and finally decided to get one of these things set up. I will be using this mainly to host photos, but also....well i guess you'll find out.

2005-08-30T18:54:00.000Z

I thought this was hilarious.....