Google is a good search engine; in fact, it’s the best search engine. It is popular – so popular in fact, that it rakes in the majority of all web searches; it’s unstoppable. Bing farted but failed to entice an audience of web searchers. Hay, why try and fix something that isn’t broken?

I use Google a lot – I’ve done about 12000 searches on it. Yes, I use Google exclusively.

So if we place quality behind the reason for a monopoly then no one complains, right? Sure, but quality isn’t the only reason monopolies exist. I mean, look at Microsoft…

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA AAAHH HAHAHAHAHA.

The iPhone; fuck that shit.

Pbatenghyngvbaf vs lbh pna ernq guvf, lbh’er cebonoyl bar bs nobhg 200 gb npghnyyl svther bhg ebg13. V bapr qrongrq nobhg rapelcgvba znal zbbaf ntb bire ba RSArg naq fbzr thl wbxvatyl fnvq ebg13(ebg13(fgevat)) vf PVN fuvg. V gubhtug nobhg vg sbe n zbzrag naq fnvq, gung jvyy erghea bevtvany fgevat! Gung orpnzr gur punaary gbcvp sbe n juvyr… Uru.

V’z tbvat nf n tubfg gb Unyybjrra qb ng gur FH gbavtug. V cyna ba trggvat shpx unzzrerq naq fuvggvat zlfrys guebhtu Fhaqnl, V unira’g orra cynfgrerq sbe jryy bire 3 jrrxf, fubhyq or sha. V arrq gb tb gb Pynver’f Npprffbevrf yngre naq ohl fbzr unve fcenl naq snpr cnvag, zl tveysevraq qvfpbirerq guvf abg zr, V’z abg tnl.

V unir n pbhefr grfg arkg jrrx juvpu jvyy qrgrezvar jub tbrf naq jub fgnlf. Nccneragyl vgf vafhygvatyl rnfl vs lbh’ir nggraqrq nyy pynffrf, juvpu V unir. Va snpg, gur ragver pbhefr guhf snve unf orra vafhygvatyl rnfl. V’z qbvat sbhe zbqhyrf juvpu vapyhqr, P cebtenzzvat, ryrzragf bs pbzchgvat, gbcvpf va sberafvp pbzchgvat (bar bs zl snibevgrf) naq rguvpf naq ynj (zl yrnfg snibevgr). Rirel jrrx fb sne jr’ir unq gb qb n cncre sbe rguvpf naq ynj juvpu pbafhzrf zl Zbaqnl, Ghrfqnl, Jrqarfqnl naq Guhefqnl va gnxvat abgrf naq npghnyyl fhzznevmvat gur cncre. V’z abg ovgpuvat naq zbnavat nobhg zl pbhefr orvat rnfl, V’z whfg fnlvat vgf ernyyl abg jbegu £3225 cyhf nppbzzbqngvba.

Fcrnxvat bs juvpu, gur sver nynez jrag bss gur bgure avtug va zl nppbzzbqngvba. V qvqa’g pner zhpu orpnhfr vg jnf ng zvqavtug naq zbfg crbcyr jrer fgvyy njnxr. Jr jrag bhgfvqr, nqzverq gur sver gehpxf naq gurve evqvphybhfyl oevtug yvtugf naq zbnarq nobhg vs guvf jrer n qevyy, V’q shpx gur gneq jub neenatrq vg. Nsgre unys ubhe jr jrag onpx hcfgnvef gb bhe ebbzf naq onpx gb fyrrc. Ng 0345, V jnf ehqryl njbxra ol n irel ybhq abvfr gung jnf, lrc, lbh thrffrq vg, gur sver nynez. Ybfvat zl frafr bs uhzbe bire gur jubyr guvat V fghzoyr bhg bs orq naq fpenzoyrq sbe fbzr pybgurf. N tvey va bhe syng jub jnf jvgu hf sbe gur svefg qevyy zhfg unir gubhtug gur shpx jvgu vg V qvqa’g rira obgure trggvat hc; tbbq vqrn. Jr npphzhyngrq bhgfvqr ntnva, fyvtugyl zber cvffrq guna gur ynfg gvzr naq gur sver gehpxf ghearq hc ntnva. Ornevat va zvaq vg pbfgf £2000 rnpu gvzr gur gehpxf pbzr bhg, ab bar jnf tbvat gb nqzvg gb qbvat vg. Gheaf bhg vg jnf n snhygl nynez fb ab bar tbg punetrq £4000 gung avtug, V whfg ubcr gb shpx vg qbrfa’g unccra ntnva…

C.F. Vs lbh svther guvf bhg, qebc n pbzzrag jvgu fbzr ebg13 va vg ;)

These tossers just don’t know when to quit. Last I heard they were bitching about modernisation; hay, if this gets my mail to me faster, I don’t give a shit how much shitter it’s going to make the mail man’s life. You couldn’t be more counter-productive and damaging to Royal Mail right now. Companies are turning away, and soon people will start doing the same.

It’s fucking typical these strikes happen when I, for once, actually need the mail system to work. I’m going back home on the 20th November and I need my Railcard to travel. If I don’t get it by the 20th November and its because of the Royal Mail’s, I swear I will never use their ’service’ again.

Karmic Koala comes out today. I’ll probably just do an “update -d” as opposed to burning the ISO and installing from scratch. Then again, the new installation offers encryption so I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet. Since about last week I’ve had my /home and /etc directories backed up to an external hdd whenever I shutdown so its not like I’ve got anything to lose. Along with Karmic comes the much needed update for aMSN. Webcam support exists in aMSN, but that’s all I’m gonna say.

My girlfriend and I have been dating for 3 months now. I can honestly say it’s now the longest relationship I’ve ever been, and we’re still going strong. Still sucks that at the moment it’s an LDR, but she’s worth it :) Love you honey.

My course is going really well. Te be honest, it’s a piece of piss at the moment. 3 of the 4 topics require virtually no work outside of the classroom (but I do some anyway) and the 4th topic, Ethics and Law, is such a bitch I could kill myself. We’ve had to do a paper a week for 3 weeks now, and it’s not going to stop there. I have a paper due today which is partly why I’m up so ridiculously early. No, I didn’t save it until the last minute, I’ve been reading the paper for the last 2-3 days, its just how I roll.

I’m not going to spell/grammar check this post just to see how bad it goes. I’m in Uni so obviously some nights I’m going to be a bit tipsy. I’ve just got back from a friends house where their was free pizza so obviously I attended :) It was good night, cycling back tipsy was weird. I think it’s illegal but meh.

I managed to get two screens working from laptop. I didn’t know you could do that. I assumed you if you plugged monitor into vga out it would blank laptop screen, obviously not. I think it’s awesome but it’s going to cost more on the electricity bill for the people who own the halls of residence. Meh, if I cared I wouldn’t do it, right?

Was bitching about how we could hack people’s computers on the LAN. Due to the fact that halls are LANs (naturally), we managed to scare this multimedia student when we said we could hack their computer if we wanted too. Quite funny to see her ‘omfg no fucking way’ reaction. Yeah, like Vista is solid.

I’m bored of writing now so I’m gonna stop.

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(Pssst dipshit, you’re supposed to click facepalm)

So I’m in halls with no TV and an embarrassingly slow Internet connection. I mean come on, what’s with 100KB/s, I could transmit faster than that. For £24.99pm I get 25GB bandwidth and 100KB/s cap. Beginning to wonder why I bothered with 25GB, you couldn’t download that much rocking shit 24/7 at 100KB/s. It’s shocking. I’m pretty sure its capped because 100KB/s is a fairly round number. It’s also not my only technical worry…

At 96C my laptop says goodnight. Since this happened the first time (given it was rested on a soft surface) I installed the sensors-applet available under Linux which warns me when laptop gets to 92C. It’s done this a couple times and sits at 82C average. That was until I took my copy of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and applied to the back of my laptop, providing a buffer between the laptop and the table. The difference? 10C. It sits at 72C now with a comfortable slant on the keyboard, which I’m happy about. But the problem here is/was, I shouldn’t have had to do that in the first place. Stupid design.

Purchased a TB external HDD today. I like it very much but did the rather stupid thing of plugging it in whilst holding it, then whilst the disc was reading, moving it around to settle it on the floor. Fuck I said when I read the instructions. It also said not to pull the plug when it was rw, but I think I did anyway! It’s all good I think, the first thing I did to it was replace the NTFS with the ext3 file system. There, much better.

I also bought a TV aerial for indoor use which turned out to be shit. I’ll return it as faulty tomorrow and get my money back. I worked out that if I go for Usenet for $11pm (£7), I’m actually saving money. I won’t need a TV license and for $11 I get unlimited downloads and bandwidth, as well as SSL (apparently, haven’t got this working yet). If this sounds sexy to you, check out Astraweb. Of course the only problem with this is the awesomeness of 100KB/s, I know I keep repeating this, but I want some fucking sympathy for this monstrosity.

[Reader discretion advised, this is gonna get ugly]

So yeah, I was in Student Services yesterday at a computer waiting to be seen about accommodation (I’m no longer in a hotel yay). I was sitting there, browsing Reddit, doing my rounds, when suddenly, abruptly, bowl movements made me succumb to the most unpleasant ‘YOU NEED A SHIT’ warning I’ve ever experienced. This shit wanted out, and it wanted out *NOW* You know you need a shit you let it linger a bit because you like the feeling or whatever, no, not with this shit, I wanted this out, this didn’t feel right.

I went to the front desk and waited for the douchebags behind the desk to finish what seemed an eternal long conversation about something far less important than me locating a toilet to unload. As I asked where the nearest dumper was, a long, deep groan rumbled from my stomach. This was now an emergency, my ass needed fucking attention. They directed me to the nearest sorry bastard that would house my soon-to-be born shit and I headed off.

As I lined the infested toilet with tissue paper I knew I only had a few seconds left. With that, I began to prop my ass down on the seat. As my ass approached its final destination, it *exploded* all over the show. Actually, it all hit the bottom, but still. I had the runs, big time. I won’t detail what I saw that day, but lets just say, I *couldn’t* see anything…

So I’m feeling a little pathetic in a heap on the chair, trying to resist moaning and groaning to an otherwise empty hotel room. To be honest I don’t know how I’m still alive, I’ve had hangovers less painful than this. I need my gf here so she can look after me :@

Starting the first module Monday; we’re doing C programming and UNIX commands, easy as piss as far as I’m concerned. I’m currently downloading OpenSolaris so I can familiarise myself with UNIX and not its clone (Linux :)) I think my first lecture is on Monday at 11am, so it’s not too bad. Fuck knows how I’m going to get through Big Cheese tonight, we’ll see…

I’ve been using my mobile broadband vigorously for the last few days. The hotel doesn’t have wireless in the hotel room which is a bit gay. Friends around Leicester report net speeds of 50mb – 150mb so hopefully I won’t be stuck with this dial up shit for too much longer (actually I get download rates of 200kb/s normally but in comparison…)

P.S. Fuck my computer just rebooted, I think it overheated and now the 3-500mb file I was downloading is lost (and I have a 5GB cap), fucking world.

I’ve settled into a hotel not too far away from campus until the 6th October. It costs £150 a week to live in the flat I’m going to, but the University is going to subsidise this so I’ll only be paying £100 pw. I’ve heard it’s a nice place I’m going to, but it’s 2-3 miles away from campus, I’m going to get my bike at some point.

Checked out the night life last night for the first time, I now consider myself a ‘proper’ fresher. The SU (Students Union) is awesome, they have a bar, a dance floor, very loud music and places to sit. ‘Fashion’ didn’t start ’til 10pm, we left at 2 – 2:30, I think. I normally don’t dance to the likes of Dizzee Rascal and 50 cent, but I guess we can make exceptions on fresher’s week.

Had in introductory session to the course yesterday, we have our first exam in 4 weeks to assess how we’re doing so far. It’ll be make or break for some students. They say for every hour we do in class, we should dedicate two hours outside of class. This means I’ll be studying 40 hours a week, or, 8 hours a day if I don’t do weekends. I’m only in ‘classes’ (lectures, tutorials, practicals, or discussions) for 2-3 hours a day, which is less than I thought. I think I’ll be hanging out in the library a lot after classes :) When I get my timetable I’m going to assign my private study so I know what to do and when. I want to do well in this course so I’m going to make sure I stick to my timetable.

Today we’re going to be touring around the University and talking about health and safety and student support services bla bla bla. Not very interesting, which I’m slightly relieved about seeing as I only fetched 6 hours sleep last night.

My room mate is cool; his name is Mike, he’s Polish, and he speaks fluent English. He’s like 7 foot tall which should come as no surprise as I always seem to wind up befriending the tallest buggers wherever I go… I’m not complaining :)

When I get my timetable I’m going to arrange my visits back down to the South East. I’m sticking to my guns with the girlfriend situation (hi Luc ;), it was our second month anniversary yesterday, which I didn’t forget! :P

And so, all in all, I can confidently say that Uni is going well for me so far. I’ve made friends, done the club scene, got a whiff of what’s to come academically, and had fun! I do miss home and the people down there, but I think Uni is something everyone should do and I’m glad, so far, that I have :)