Nothing new for Palmnet really. I've almost done all the updates for the new system and plan to roll them out sometime in the coming weeks.

On a lighter note, I was 18 on Thursday, June the 21st, also the day of my last ever exam, woo!
Thus I have some interesting* news for you. (*May not be interesting at all)



I got a new MP3 player, which is like pr0n for all the gadget geeks who might read this.
A 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M is now what fills my pocket since the demise of the Sansa. I was going to buy another Sansa but Phil got himself one and I could hardly have a matching MP3 player, so the creative was the other choice for me.
And I'm glad I took it!
This MP3 player kicks some serious ass. It's screen is better than most full size HD monitors I've seen, the sound is awesome and the controls and general usage aspects are great. So far only crashed it once, and that was just after a firmware update, so not half as bad as the Sansa!



For my new Creative Zen I needed some swanky ear buds as my old ones were beginning to show their age (About 3 years old now).
I've always wanted some Skullcandy ones because the name sounds so cool, so I went to the only shop that sells them in my town, the Orange shop, and got me a pair of the "Smokin' Buds", they don't sound quite so good as the £50 Sony ones I had, but they're still mighty good.



On a less techy note, now I'm 18 I can legally buy fireworks.
Unfortunately the firework shop in town went out of business, shockingly nobody wants lots of fireworks in mid June.
So instead we got some sparklers. Not quite as manly but still needed to be 18, no footage of the sparkling action though, but there's the lighter we used to try and make up for it.



I also got reminded of yo-yo'ing back in the 90's, and how I hadn't done it for so long, so I went out and got myself a yo-yo.
Unfortunately I couldn't find the cheap tacky ones I used to have as a little kid so I ended up spending £7 on a pro yo-yo. Hardly the most expensive, but still a bit advanced for me.
Got it to sleep now, and rocking the cradle is easy, must learn some new tricks over the summer though and end up a yo-yo pro!

Long time no post isn't it.
Well, I'm in my final year at college, in case you didn't already know, and it's exam season
Luckilly for me though my last exam is tomorrow, also midsummers day, and also the birthday of a really woosome person

Exam boredom:
During my exams I always take a graphical calculator in with me, and when I finish the paper and have spare time till the end of the exam I usually write a program.
Last year I made a guess the number game, Pong and a start on Space invaders. (Note: I use a Sharp EL9900, so it's only a really simple basic, runs slow as hell! )
This year however I decided on a change. I started with making a windows-screensaver clone. The Starfield looked a bit nifty, but so slow with hundreds of 'stars' being blitted to the screen in a giant GOTO loop!
So in the end I tarted up an old drawing tool I made. Kinda like an etch-a-sketch. Only it has a rubber too:

As you can see, I may just have failed that Computing unit 5 exam!

Polarized light fun:
I read this a while back and gave it a go today, using my old Sandisk Sansa's screen as a filter on the camera lens:


Nifty effect, like oil on water.

Speaking of the Sansa
I finally got me a new MP3 player, in the mail as we speak!
So what to do with the old one I hear you ask. Well, dismantle if of course!
Once the broken screen was gone I had to think of a cool plan, so after a bit of thought about plans ranging from glorified paperweights to a nifty blue night-light I chose the idea of plain USB storage. It is 6GB after all!
But the gap where the screen was seemed a bit un-sightly, untill Phil suggested I use the sticker that came on the Sansa when I first bought it to cover the hole. A bit of celotape later and It's a vision of beauty!


In other non-tech news:
There was rather a large storm here last night. I only sustained one tech victim all evening, which is good as I have no surge protection!
So lets have a minute of silence for my ADSL line filter:

Well it's been many moons since I last posted, but since then there has been much greatness.

• The CodeBox system is here.
• Server updated to cPanel 11.
• Interviewed by PWnet.
• Nifty Signature Rate-O-Matic.
• Twitter signature.

CodeBox
Still in the early days of development, this is a rival system to PasteBin.
Basically it's a web 2.0-feeling place to post snippets of code and get help. You can post a snippet, reply to snippets, download snippets, and best of all, it's free!
It's also got the nifty little famfamfam Silk icons
Check it here, still in the sandbox: http://sandbox.palmnet.me.uk/testbox/codebox/
Cpanel 11
Not much to say here. It's nifty though!
Check Phil's blog to see what's new.

Interview
Phil was in a very bloggy mood lately! So much so that he ran out of content, so he probed me about CodeBox and my views on Web 2.0
Read it over at his blog.

Rate-O-Matic
Not very interesting, or pretty. So I won't say much or link you unless you ask.
Basically Rydian wanted a new signature, one where people could rate certain things. So I knocked one up over the course of a few days when I wasn't trying to revise.
It's pretty ugly, but it works smoothly and has a slick backend code. Might even make it OSS if I could pretty it up!

Twitter Signature
One thing twitter is missing is a nice image output of my latest tweets.
They have Flash output, JavaScript output and RSS, but not in an image.
So last night I made my own!
To use it change the user: http://sandbox.palmnet.me.uk/twitter/image.php?user=palmer
There are themes and such, and I do plan to make it a little better soon. So until then I won't bother to give much explanation on its 'Features'.

Anyway, that's all the latest news for now. A fair bit, if I do say so myself.