Windows 7

We got my mum a Acer ONE for Christmas and I spent one whole day trying to set it up so that it would sort of work, as it came with Windows 7. After removing all the shit that Acer seam to think you need I spent another few hours going to different web-sites and downloading flash, acrobat, etc ... and mostly waiting. As a last task I wanted to replace the background image with a picture of my family. How would you go about of doing this? I spend 30 min looking in different menu items and trying to find this one thing. After doubting my intelligence I asked Google and guess what. It is not possible, in Windows starter it is not possible to replace the background image. Hahah how about that? You spend 400 Euros on a PC and you can't even change the background image. Money well spend I would say. Now my mum will enjoy Ubuntu. What a stupid decision, I was really thinking Mic$osft was on the right way but this just blows it. Only retards would use something like that.

Do backups

I took my laptop to a very remote location to actually get some work done. As I am noticing that when I work at home the internet is to big a distraction. So while I was happily working away I wanted to save my done work. At home I normally save all files see if everything builds and then '{svn,cvs,git} commit'. As my server is in Holland and my backup server in the US I need the internet to access them. But what do I do somewhere without internet (Yes these places exist). Every normal person would just continue with his work and commit when he comes home. But let's consider this scenario for a moment. While on the car my laptop wakes up out of suspend because something has pressed the button or I didn't close the lid properly. Now the hard drive is turning but exactly now I driver over a bump => headcrash. One week of work gone. Hard drives are something so liable you should never rely on them. My friend Edd breaks about one every week. So what to do. Risk it, no way. I remembered that while at a conference last week I was given a USB drive (Thank you Microsoft Research) so I pooped it in and now save all my data on this.

$ cp -ruv uni/ /media/disk/

does the trick. Now 2 things would have to break for me to lose my work. And if everything works out OK I format the Dongle and everyone is happy. But if my laptop decides to be funny I still have all my work.
I can not stress enough how important it is to think about backups. If you want your data to be reasonably secure you should always have a backup in a different physical location and secured with a different password. Loads of my friends and lecturers (that call them selves IT specialists) do no such thing. I can only hope they don't have to learn the hard way. I think this is a really understated problem. I know loads of people that say "Ah I do regular backups. I have a external hard drive next to my pc". And how much security does that give you? A robber taking your pc will also take the drive and your data is gone. At least use a service like dropbox for your important data. Taking away all the crap (mp3, videos etc..) you can download again normally you don't have that much "really vital" data. I have about 1 GB of files I really really don't want to lose.

Professor Michael Worton thinks UCL students are stupid

As some of you may know I am a student at UCL and as you can see from my previous posts I get a lot of mail. So I get really annoyed when people think I am to stupid to see something the first time they send it to me. Especially if people just resend the same mail over and over gain. It looks like Professor Michael Worton and Claire Underwood seam to think that all students at UCL (all-postgraduates|at|ucl.ac.uk, all-undergraduates|al|ucl.ac.uk) are morons and to stupid to read their email the first time they get it. And apparently we are not able to read and respond properly (to our own judgment) the second time. Ahhh because we really haven't figured out what a email is, just send it again the third time. The same mail.

Message from Professor Michael Worton Vice Provost (Academic & International)

I agree that some student survey is really vital for my success at UCL and important but still I emailed the sender and informed here that I was already getting enough mail and that I don't want this spam. And guess what, to further insult the students at UCL they are sending out a fourth reminder. Now that makes me wonder. If we get FOUR reminders about another student survey how many do we get about something that is really going to influence my student life (Exams, etc ..). I will be expecting someone to call me personally from UCL as some people seem to think that we are to stupid to read and think.