Olympic Tickets Fail

So today marks a year before the start of the London 2012 Olympics,  lots of documentaries on TV about the building of the site and preparations.  All very interesting and I love a bit of Olympics me  but, all this is just serving to wind me up....why?  well because I didn't manage to get any blinking tickets.  Come to think of it, out of all the people that I know that applied for tickets I only know 1 person who managed to get any (even then only for beach volley ball). 

This bugs me,  I mean whilst I didn't think I would get tickets for either the opening or closing ceremonies,  I had hoped for tickets to the stadium for one of the minor track and field days  and was really crossing my fingers that I'd get some velodrome tickets.

Sigh.....

I hope its like when buying concert tickets when they have sold out but all of a sudden closer to the event more become available.

At the very least I hope they have an area near the Olympic village where they will show the games.  I know I can watch at home but I want to get some of the atmosphere.


I can take some solace in the fact that I can at least stand by the road for the road cycling / time trial events.

Google Brain - A potential future product?

I love my Google products and the whole creativity that seems to surround the company I really admire. The 80/20% rule where their employees spend 20% of their time working on personal projects and new ideas is a great idea and its fruit can be seen by looking at Labs. 
I heavily use GMail and Google Reader which are both labs graduates.  The product I am waiting for which I think would be right up Googles alleyway is Google Brain.

Let me elaborate.....

As part of my BSc (Hons) Computer Science at Portsmouth Uni I undertook modules in AI,Intelligent Systems and Theoretical Computer Science  a topic that cropped up in these courses is the whole notion of AI, Heuristics, Mind and Machine.  One little annecdote I remember from one of those lessons is the idea that "the essential problem with the human brain is not one of storage but the lack of a good index".  You see as humans go we are very good an knowing what we know  but, not knowing it.

Think about it...... how many times have you struggled to remember something ...."oh its on the tip of my tongue" or perhaps when your out and about you see something that triggers a nugget o knowledge you learnt at school or maybe your on holiday and a bit of your school lesson French springs to mind.

Given Googles prime business of searching and how well it can search the web, shops, text in books, images etc...  now expand that a little.....  what about searching that massive depth of knowledge that you have with a search engine?

We can scan brain activity now  so its down to determining the APIs.
So how long do we reckon?  Lets be generous...20 years?

As I said on Twitter the other day...given sufficient renumeration I'd happily help out?

Learning to not be afraid of switching off Auto.

Ever since I got my Sony DSC W200  compact camera I have really got into taking pictures.  So when said trusty compact decided to give up the ghost I decided to treat myself to a DSLR.  Along came my Canon 550D (including 30 quid cash back -which was a bonus), it was love at first sight.  The camera is great and took equally great pictures  but, one thing bugged me...my reliance on Auto,  that lovely green icon setting which does everything for you.  For me I just felt that the relationship with my camera could not reach the deep and meaningful level untill I ventured into those other settings....manual, Av, Tv etc....

Vaguely aware of such terms as Aperture, F Stops and ISO and that they contributed to taking a picture that is as far as it went.  I resolved to lose my fear of these terms and go on a beginners photography course.
Lo! and behold GroupOn  came to my rescue offering a Beginners course for £29 at a local photography studio!

So I happily paid, booked and attended a 4 hour Saturday afternoon course at Cherry Red Studios in Camberley.  Aimed at Beginners (though equally handy for those more experienced) the course was led by an enthusiastic photographer who clearly explained all those mysterious terms us Auto junkies are scared off.  The course followed a format but, was very much student led and much time was taken to help us all out individually with our various questions and different cameras.  As the weather was good we also ventured outside to practice and test out some of the techniques we had learnt.

I can now say that whilst I am not a master of all those strange settings, I am not afraid to work with them and have resolved to not use automatic.

So, a big thank you to Cherry Red  and in particular Chantal Storrs-Barbor for opening my eyes to the wonderful world of non-Auto photography.

Belated Happy Star Wars Day

Wishing you all a belated happy Star Wars day and a very merry May the 4th be with you!

I hope that you all celebrated by doing something Star Wars related.  Actually due to the double bank holidays I had quite for got the day  but,  by chance Love Film had sent me Star Wars Force Unleashed 2 and had started to play it.

Sigh,  having to play single player games rather that whoring the multiplayer side of things like I normally is just not as much fun but, hey ho!  surely it cant be that long now?  Come on Sony fix the damn PSN.

Olympic tickets

Well we've been registered for over a year and got the email about applying for tickets a couple of weeks before hand but, we still left it to the last min to apply!

The tickets we applied for were for the

• Opening & closing ceremony (gotta try right!) 
• Track cycling (Men's Omnium 4km Individual Pursuit
  Women's Sprint Qualifying)
• Track cycling (Men's Keirin First Round
  Women's Omnium 3km Individual Pursuit
  Men's Keirin First Round Repechages)
• Athletics (Men's Shot Put Qualifying Rounds - Groups A & B
  Women's Heptathlon 100m Hurdles
  Women's Triple Jump Qualifying Rounds - Groups A & B
  Women's 100m Classification Heats
  Men's 400m Hurdles Round 1
  Women's Heptathlon High Jump - Groups A & B
  Men's Hammer Throw Qualifying Round - Group A
  Women's 400m Round 1
  Men's Hammer Throw Qualifying Round - Group B
  Men's 3000m Steeplechase Round 1)
• Athletics(Men's Decathlon 110m Hurdles
  Women's High Jump Qualifying Round - Groups A & B
  Men's Decathlon Discus Throw - Group A
  Men's Decathlon Discus Throw - Group B
  Men's 4 x 400m Relay Round 1
  Men's Decathlon Pole Vault - Groups A & B)

According to the news the tickets are massively oversubscribed so I really hope we get something but I guess we will have to wait.

PS3 Hard drive installed

Blimey,  how easy was that!

The longest part was the actual backup and restore.

Flip off the flap at the side of the PS3, unscrew the screw with the arrow pointing to it, pull the HD & cradle out, unscrew cable attaching screws, pop in new HD, screw in the screws, slot it back it and boom thats it!

Thats the easiest hardware install I have ever done.

Upgrading my PS3 hard drive.

For whatever reason this has been on my list of things to do for  over a year and I have just not got arround to doing it.  Stupid thing is I have a 340gb laptop hard drive just sitting in a drawer waiting for me.

So,  supposed to be pretty easy and only takes 10 mins or so.

Basically,  I'll use my WD elements external HD (the one that hasn't died that isn't being used as a time machine backup drive)  to backup my PS3.  Following that I think I just have to open the HD bay, pop out the existing 60gb drive,  pop the new one in then restore my system from the backup.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  So lets get on an do it then….