Been a while since my last post. Finished an assignment on tapestry (Jakarta, not weaving). There is a report on generating a sample app if anyone is interested. If there is anyone else out there learning tapestry, let me know, its hard to find resources.

Started implementing security into timeshare, its an uphill task, so many things to be redone/fixed to work with the new changes. Hopefully a chance to fix old bugs, but probably an opportunity to generate new ones.

Bought a cheap KVM switch box (finally), and as a result have started using my Linux box much more (I don't have to crawl around to swap cables any more). Have moved my php editing environment across, and moved GAIM across. Not game to move my mail (thunderbird) across yet, think I'll set up a dedicated hard drive for my home directory first.

Few interesting finds recently. PostSecret is a rather interesting project. Also Katrina has started a new comic.
Have started using GIM (Googles new Instance Messaging service). Installed the client and had a quick (30 sec) look, but have been otherwise running it under GAIM (username: trevor_peacock at you-know-where).

Next few days: gotta get over this cold, knock over the last few assignments for this term, and make arrangements for the holidays. Fun fun...

Battle of the bands comp tonight at the crow bar, the standard much higher than previous years. Completely blown away by the second band, "Jennifer Will Drown", mostly by the guitarist who effortlessly played complex and beautiful melodies. Hadrien was most impressed by the drummer, who he saw perform with another band recently. The guitarist (band comprised of guitar, bass, drums, vocals) used a standard effects pedal, as well as a MIDI pickup, which he used masterfully. I've seen them before, but have only really been a novelty, but this guy made it fit in and work. His frequent transitions between effects were flawless.
Satyricon (I think) was the 3rd band, who have performed the last 3 years, definitely deserved to win the first year I saw them, but last year they replaced they're drummer and have since lost co-ordination between members. They also haven't really progressed in any way since the first time I saw them, pretty much the same old routine. A nice surprise was the female vocals provided by the keyboardist.

Just about ready to tie up my ITC382 assignment, want to get the bulk of that out of the way tomorrow. Also have to investigate where to find ear plugs for the next concert I go to, and try and get a copy of JWDs CD.

Made it to brunch today, for the first time in a long time. Spent most of the day looking at tapestry. Also got TeamTalk working between here and home. Remains to be seen how well it will work. Runs quite quickly, there is only one hop copared to two when i talk to Alan, so it runs a little smoother. As long as i'm not using the modem for anything else on this end, it could almost replace the phone.

Been (very) busy the last few days, although I don't have a lot to show for it. Installed MediaWiki on my Apache server (about my only success). Tried to get WikiPDF working. Its obviously designed to run on Linux. After a bit of tweaking I got it to generate latex, but it failed to convert that to PDF. Tried to get PHP working atop Tomcat. This seemed the most promising lead, and it did work on Tomcat 5.5, but not 4.1, and MySQL didn't work. Perhaps I should learn how to set up PHP normally, might explain how to get MySQL to work.
Also started a few days ago upgrading tomcat 4.1 to 5.5, all going fairly well, except getting manager and admin modules to work. The Admin module now has to be installed manually, but it doesn't work on a virtual host, it must be running in the default app.

Continuing to work back through Dream Theaters discography, I'm quite impressed by their 1997 album "Falling Into Infinity". Quite a relaxing mix of songs, plenty of different styles, every song is unique.

Last few days have been pretty quiet. Class still uninteresting, 555 is still a disappointment, did pick up one useful thing though, did some reading after one class and figured out how to use the Linux route command. managed to set up my firewall to route local traffic locally, rather than just shoving everything down the modem link. It worked until the modem re-dialled, and I haven't been able to get it to work since, haven't tried much though.

The text book for operating systems arrived (surprisingly), so I can now make a start on that.

Working back through Dream Theatres albums, I found a very nice piece in Train of Thoughts called Vacant. It starts with a familiar piece of music, which I haven't yet been able to identify. I think John Williams may have played it somewhere, or it could be a classical piece from somewhere else. I don't know my composers well enough to narrow it down any. Vacant introduces a well worked vocal melody over the original piece. The 2:57 piece is followed by the instrumental Stream of Consciousness (11:16) which presents variations on the original melody, I've been playing the two most of the day on repeat, and starting to work out some of the pieces on piano/flute.

Nice day, after yesterdays hellish events. Caught up on sleep, and played some guitar. Figured out a few Bread (alt) songs (their more up-beat electric guitar tracks).

Got a very quick response from my query on the forum, probably enough to infer the answers to my major queries, I'm a lot more confident about starting the assignment now.

TV Production screenings are on tonight, always good to watch. I don't know anyone else who is planning to see them tonight, probably be some of the ButlerC proddies from first year there.

A coding session has been planned for tomorrow in JCCC working on out 307 project. Will be good to get the ball rolling again in session, I don't think any work has been done on it the last 2 weeks.

Been listening to Dream Theaters (wiki) new album Octavarium (wiki). As much as I have read about Dream Theatre, this is the first I've heard, and I'm impressed, very well balanced, and plenty of progressive elements. Listening to it I can hear a lot of Jeff Wayne, Pink Floyd, Andrew Lloyd Webber and a little Korn, System of a Down, and even U2. I was going to start playing some (more seriously than just picking out bits by ear), but powertabs.net is temporarily off-line, so will have to wait till another day.

Sat down and properly read through the assignment 1 for 382. Didn't help :| Its confusing and sometimes contradictory, or lacking explanation. I'm also confused as to the bounds of what the blog (Learning journal and Research journal) is meant to achieve. I will have to sit down today, and try and summarise the assignment, post it to the forums and see if I'm making the same conclusions everyone else is, and perhaps get some input from the lecturer.

Alan and I set up software for voice communication. It works quite nicely. We are using Team Talk 3. We used it last year (older version) to communicate during network games, as we were having problems with the in-game voice chat in UT2k4. Running on the 10Mb network there was a noticeable delay, but it was quite usable, and we could run it at high quality, however with a dialup(me)-adsl(server)-adsl(Alan) setup there is a 1-2 second lag, but it is still useful. I set up my server with a new domain and software as a permanent hub for us to use.

Another 382 lecture, nothing terribly exciting, mostly business centred stuff, not too bad though (not my favourite field).
Had an idea today of what I might be able to focus on in this subject. I haven't re-read the criteria yet to understand it better, so I don't know if this will suit, but... I once had planned to write a webapp to allow Java students to learn and interact together, through a number of forms (wiki philosophy), primarily through the use of problems (questions) that students can attempt, and post their answers online to be "marked" and critiqued by other students. This is not so much conforming to a business model, more a non-profit organisation or community. Again, I don't know if it will fit the criteria, but I'll check over the next few days.
Another thought, as an application of the XML tutorials, I may be able to write an interface in ZOPE on the ISPG server to show this blog, via RSS (or other) from the ZOPE site. Learn about XML, learn about ZOPE, and have a good excuse to play with python (I looooove python, but rarely have time or reason to use it)

Bought text books today, the one for my distance subject (262, Operating systems) is on back-order, and isn't expected for at least a month. Shame, was looking forward to getting my hands dirty in that subject. I'll have to see if the library has a copy, and chase up the recommended resources. There should be plenty of online resources too.

Was supposed to take the bass back today, couldn't find dave tonight, so I'll take it back tomorrow (after another quick play :D ).
Found a page providing a nice definition of "progressive rock". It has a list of progressive metal bands, many of which I'm not familiar with, so I have found myself some research to do. Pain of Salvation and Opeth (who I saw last year in Melbourne) are big favourites, also know tool, but the rest are largely unfamiliar. Its always fun to explore.

Alan and I today looked into CSS. Al wanted to "customise" his blog. Decided to have a look too, as i previously knew nothing about CSS. Tweaked my page, from this to this, by changeing only the CSS (and adding a few jpgs). Clayton reccomended oswd (this in particular) as a source of quality css to learn from. Think i still need to learn more about how CSS fundamentally works first.

Found a useful screen capture program today. Windows XP will do captures to clipboard by pressing print-scn on the keyboard, however i'm not sure if older versions of windows will. CapturePlus saves shots to a file (bmp or jpg), and also allows captures from a single window rather than the entire screen. Personally i'll stick with the old faithful Corel Capture (comes with corel draw suite, i only have the ancient version 7). Its much more flexible, but capture plus is a tiny (90k) but functional free alternative.

Wore out my fingers again today playing Opeth on bass. Only 30 days until their next album. I have it pre-ordered, but not sure what to expect. For a band described as a "classical, jazz, folk, progressive rock, death metal band" (original site no longer available), theyre a bit hard to predict.