Life in UK!

Friday, September 19th.  I am now in London five days.  Since arriving, my  life consisted of job hunting and searching the length and width of internet advertised accommodation in central London.  Simple as it sounds, it is unbelievably stressful! 

Being a recent graduate of Software Development (Advanced Computing for the non-techie readers), my aim is to gain employment within this sector, and demonstrate my knowledge and desire of the software development process… however, as I do not have a perfect 1st class honors’ degree, options are reduced, and further so as, being an Irish resident all of my life, I do not have GCSE results!  With this in mind, and after moving to London, the third most expensive city in the world, an income was high amongst my priorities!  As a result, I feel I could gain experience in a non-computer related role shortly!

With London, it is a very impressive city.  Between it’s public transport, its tourist attractions, its parks, and its opportunities, one could not help but to eagerly seek out permanent accommodation, and make the most of it for as long as possible!  However, with accommodation comes rent.  Rent requires finances, and a job is required in order to produce finances.  It is a vicious circle, and one which needs to be understood quickly, and sensibly, with minimal delay.  In my situation, I am fortunate enough to have funding to allow survival in England’s capital for four weeks without need of any income.  However, each passing day does not inspire confidence when you see that a basic meal (sandwich, drink and bag of crisps) can set you back almost five pounds sterling… which does not exactly convert equally to the Euro!.. in the majority of places.  Over time you learn that shopping around is unbelievably rewarding, financially, and in terms of pride and sense of achievement, but,.. how many people do you know have the time to devote over half an hour searching for a cheap sandwich??!

London is a very rewarding city, a statement which I aim to prove over the coming years, even if it you have to push your hand a little deeper into your pockets for every little necessity.  From just watching the Ferrari`s and Aston Martin’s glide past, on a daily basis, and notice the tailored Versace suits quickly stroll past, it is clear that London will provide, if you have the desire within.  Even if currently I am travelling on a rocky route at a very slow speed with a great deal of effort, I’m looking forward to a very bright and promising future ahead.

 

mentioned links:

• Finfacts Ireland
• source: http://www.finfacts.com/costofliving.htm
• date: Sept 19th, 2008
• Transport for London
• source: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/
• date: Sept 19th, 2008
• London (VISITLONDON.COM)
• source: http://www.visitlondon.com/
• date: Sept 19th, 2008
• Ferrari
• source: http://www.ferrariworld.com/FWorld/fw/index.jsp
• date: Sept 19th, 2008
• Aston Martin
• source: http://www.astonmartin.com/
• date: Sept 19th, 2008
• Versace
• source: http://www.versace.eu/flash.html
• date: Sept 19th, 2008

Hard Drive Size Smaller than you expected?!

 

This entry has been added as I believe many people are not aware of the fact that hard drive sizes are manufactured according to one metric system, but distributed and retailed advertising another!  This article has been taken from PC Magazine Tip of the Day and written by Neil J. Rubenking.

Q: My Dell PC is running Windows XP SP2 on a 160GB hard drive. While looking in the Disk Management utility, I saw that the C: drive has three partitions: a 71MB FAT healthy (EISA configuration) partition, a 4.27GB FAT32 healthy (unknown) partition, and a 144.67GB NTFS healthy (system) partition. Adding 144.67GB, 4.27GB, and 71MB, I get 149.65GB. There seems to be 10GB unaccounted for. Where did it go? Also, since Windows XP uses NTFS, do I need the 71MB FAT partition and the 4.27GB FAT32 partition? Can I repartition all of this into one NTFS partition?—Kenn Henderson

The mystery of the missing gigabytes will continue to baffle computer users until hard drive makers get in sync with the rest of the computer world. You're not missing any gigabytes—it's just a mix-up in units of measurement. Disk capacity is measured using decimal kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes. In decimal units, 1KB = 1,000 bytes, 1MB = 1,000,000 bytes, and 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. But for file sizes, memory, and just about everything else, we use binary kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes. In binary units 1KB = 1,024 bytes, 1MB = 1,048,576 bytes, and 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes. Looking at it another way, the decimal values are 10³, 10⁶, and 10⁹ bytes, whereas the binary values are 2¹⁰, 2²⁰, and 2³⁰ bytes.

To convert your disk's 160 decimal GB to the units used by the rest of Windows, you have to divide by 1.073741824. The result is about 149GB—close enough to what you calculated. Sorry, there's no missing 10GB for you to recover!

As for the extra partitions, they're part of a system recovery solution installed by Dell. If your system becomes damaged and won't boot Windows, you can invoke system recovery by pressing a keystroke while the system is booting. Be warned, though, that doing so will blow your system back to its just-out-of-box condition, minus any updates, programs, photos, documents, and so on that you may have added.

ref: http://ct2.enews.pcmag.com/rd/cts?d=42-701-575-955-629461-163652-0-0-0-1-9-269

My first blog.. ever!

I knew it had to happen sooner rather than later,.. but today is the day when I finally gave into temptation & created my own personal blog.

I had always delayed it for one reason or another, either I had to finish an assignment, touch up a project, or even just cook the dinner I would always say, "not today, it will be worth it if I just wait until tomorrow!". However, this is the same situation with getting a digital camera. I always wanted one. I remember reading about each camera in the latest Argos catalogue, magazine or even from the slightest whisper in any newspaper article. Then my sister got one!.. and then my mother!... then my sister got a portable printer for her digital camera!! I was starting to wonder how long it would take me... However, yet to this day I still don't have one! Not saying I don't want one, I still want one as much as the day they were released.. but I just never seem to just go any actually buy one. My excuse? They will be more advanced tomorrow!

Anyway, being my first blog entry and all that, today is the start of something new for me... Today is the day I finally got off my rear end and actually did something I actually wanted to do for a long time! Hope you enjoy my future entries. Good luck for now.