Sorry I haven’t written a post for ages! I thought I had better keep you up to date with Blog Friends - we have (finally!) released version 1 beta (Blog Friends v1 Beta), which is (according to subversion) revision 816 of Blog Friends! We have had a lot of positive feedback on the new release, but also a lot of confusion over the new features and the perceived "lack of control" (you can find lots of the options, such as how many posts to put in each section of your profile box, on the settings page). After reading all of the comments from our users we found that a common complaint was that of finding "strangers" in their Facebook profile boxes. We quickly made some simple changes to get these strangers out, and are currently working on doing a much improved profile box, incorporating a lot of the ideas we have gained from users feedback. You can see a preview of this new profile box here, and we would appreciate your comments on it - we read every piece of Blog Friends feedback we can get our hands on!

On a finishing note, you can read a great post by Allan Cockerill on Blog Friends and the Blog Friends Blog here. It is worth noting that we intend to use the Blog Friends Blog as a place to keep our users updated with changes, and also a place for feedback, so if you have opinions on the posts there, please tell us through the comments! (Even if someone has already said what you were going to say, there is no harm reiterating it!)

Well, it has been a busy couple of weeks! First I went on summer camp with my Scout Group (3^rd Ringwood) and then I went to the Jamboree for a few days in Essex! It was a fantastic break and I am very glad I did it – gave the old brain some time to refresh!

I finally got back to Southampton on Wednesday afternoon – sorry I have not had chance to post since then, I have been very busy working on Blog Friends which now has over 2,200 users! It is still growing fairly steadily – we have lots of new features in the pipeline which we will be working on over the next couple of weeks and releasing on a rolling schedule.

At the moment I am on the coach writing this – I am going to London to flat-sit my friend and co-worker Luke Razzell’s house! Unfortunately I do not have one of these mobile datacards (they are so expensive!) so I will have to post this when I get in…

Yes, that is right - I have graduated!

I graduated on Monday, but have been sooooooo busy working on the facebook application: Blog Friends that I have not had time to post!

It was a great experience seeing all my friends go up and graduate (and myself of course), though I found it nerve wracking at the start of the ceremony as I had not had time to fully read the graduation website telling me what I should be doing - and to make matters worse, I was seated right at the bottom corner of the students seating area (there was a larger seating area for family & friends) - nearer than any student to the centre of the graduation hall! This made me think that it was likely that I would be first, and I was worried I would do something wrong, what with not having anyone to follow! Fortunately, the people at the very back of the hall were the first to graduate so I did not have to lead whilst knowing nothing of what I was meant to be doing!

The queues to get photos of me in graduation gear were pretty long, but after queuing for 30 minutes or so, we went to the party where there was enough food for everyone to have a whole meal! (I was expecting just nibbles and champagne!) I ate well and enjoyed their desserts whilst talking to my fellow students and some lecturers. It was a good evening. By the time I got home I was exhausted, so just curled up on the sofa with Jem and watched a horror movie .

Chapter 3 - Life

I think that graduation marked the end of a chapter of my life - Education. It seems so long ago that I started infant school (in fact I barely remember it at all - just the recurring dream of myself being able to fly like a leaf… but let’s not go into that… [it seemed so real!]) - and it is amazing to think that I have been being educated formally for more than the last three quarters of my life! Thats partly why I thought, upon graduating:

Today, I am an adult

It is worth noting that although I have finished education, I have not finished learning (as many people love to point out, over and over again…). Nope, I will be learning new things every day of my life! That is especially true with my job - where staying up with the forefront of internet technology is extremely important!

Anyway I have lots left to do by this weekend, so I had best get back to work! I will try and start posting more frequently, starting in a couple of weeks or so… Have fun, all!

Less than 24 hours after release, Blog Friends has reached 100 users!

Blognation have done a review of Blog Friends here.

If you haven’t already, why not read my previous article: Blog Friends RELEASED!

Brain Bakery Ltd. have been working for the last two weeks on a facebook application called Blog Friends, and finally it has been released! I have been logging the hours I spent on the project and it appears that in the last 14 days I have worked the equivalent of almost 4 standard 40-hour weeks - and that’s just me, the others at Brain Bakery have also worked quite a bit! Thats pretty hardcore, I think, so I will be chilling out a bit now…

Anyway - if you have a blog, and you would like your friends blog posts filtered for you according to a list of your interests/dislikes, why not give Blog Friends a try? If you have problems with the software, please leave a comment or email me and I will get back to you ASAP. Also, if you have suggestions for version two, feel free to post them here, though Blog Friends has absolutely loads of features in the pipeline…

Hope you enjoy it!

I was just helping my father-in-law-to-be to install MythTV on his old computer to run through his TV. It took quite a while to get the computer (with an AGP MX440) to get running under ubuntu through the TV, but we did it in the end. Read on for details.

Here is the XOrg config file:

Section "Files"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
# path to defoma fonts
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "bitmap"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "uk"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "stylus"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option "Type" "stylus"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "eraser"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option "Type" "eraser"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "cursor"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option "Type" "cursor"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "MX440"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "UseFBDev" "true"
Option "TwinView" "True"
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT,TV"
Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "30-50"
Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "60"
#Option "MetaModes" "1280×1024, 640×480; 1024×768, 640×480; 800×600, 640×480; 640×480, 640×480;"
Option "MetaModes" "800×600,800×600;"
Option "TVStandard" "PAL-I"
Option "Xinerama" "0"
# Option "UseInt10Module" "true"

EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 28-38
VertRefresh 43-72
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "MX440"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "800×600" "640×480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "800×600" "640×480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "800×600" "640×480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "800×600" "640×480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "800×600" "640×480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "800×600" "640×480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

Not quite sure why but I had to disable the int10 thing. Ubuntu seems to have a bug that won’t let it load. Also, I could not get it running on monitor and tv at same time, but it was only the TV we wanted anyway, so shrugs meh.

Currently we are installing MythTV, wish us luck! I’m not even sure if the freeview (DVB-T in the UK) card I gave him works…

If this post helps you (or if it doesn’t…), please leave a message.

On Thursday night, I went to a networking event in London called "Chinwag." The idea of this was to get to know some of the people "in the business" and make some links that later we could form a kind of symbiotic business relationship. It also gives us a better feel for the scope of technology, and we get to talk about what’s hot and whats not in the tech/design/media world.

It was a good event, with around 2,000 attendees. There was free booze (well, for a long while there was…) and free food. I met many interesting people, though I must admit it was Jof who did most of the forging ahead and meeting new people, I opted to follow a short while later and talk specifics.

As I already said - it was a good event. It would have been brilliant if it wasn’t for the poor organisation of the door. We queued to get in for the best part of a hour! They were checking people off against their registered email addresses, which were printed onto paper (yes you heard me - dead trees!), which they had to flick through to check, at around 50 email addresses per sheet. The sheets were in mostly alphabetical order, but it still took a while to look through - I think part of the reason might have been the time taken to actually understand what the visitor was saying their email address was. One pile of paper was email addresses starting A-M and the other N-Z. For some reason the N-Z queue seemed to move a lot later, I wonder if that says something about English email addresses/first names.

We finally got back to Jof’s house in Kent at around 1am, and I slept in the latest that I had in a good while - 9:30am!

It is hailing. In July. Not 2 weeks after the "longest day." Global warming… That’s what I blame.

I like IBM. I have even visited them a couple of times if you look at my homepage. Well, whilst reading LifeHacker, I saw a link to the following article on the IBM website: Whistle while you work to run commands on your computer. Well, the title sounded like fun so I read on a little. They say it may take around an hour to set up, so perhaps I will do it on a weekend. What made me smile was the following excerpt:

"Note that you will have to be running this program in a relatively noise-free environment, so plug in your headphones and make sure your CD drive is spun down. If your laptop’s battery is on fire, try unplugging the smoke detector before running this program."

I might try and stick more subtle humour like this into the stuff I make for Brain Bakery.

That’s right! It’s Uni results day! I’m sure you are all on the edge of your seat, so I shall put you out of your misery swiftly!

I got a first!

And a strong one at that: I averaged 83.2%! To see my individual results, see my main site, but basically my highest grade last semester was 90% and my lowest 62 (second lowest 82…). I also got the

"School Applied Prize"

That means I got the highest grade this year in applied mathematics at Southampton University!

Out of the 112 people on the mathematics board, I was one of 7 to get a prize! Quite an honour. Here are the prizes, with the other winner’s names smudged out to protect their privacy:

And here is my line on the results page:

That’s Benjamin Gillam, course: Mathematics with Physics (BSc), grade: First, and a prize.

Rumour has it the prize is £50, which would be nice!

I’m very happy with my grade, though I was aiming for 85%. Still, best grade in applied mathematics is pretty good!

I have enjoyed my stay at Uni, but now I really want to get into doing some really cool new technologies for Brain Bakery Ltd, and fortunately, that is what I will be doing!