Life As A Penguin

The new University season is in full swing, and I have had little time to update the blog (apologies for that – even if I do warn about infrequency ;-)).

The economic downturn is hitting hard across the western world it seems. However, this has had a profound effect on our University enrollment statistics: our number of first-year students has more than doubled, and that’s great news of course! Coupled with the additional interest generated by our slick new Game Development degree, you guessed it: we’re working very hard!

I’m also spending a lot of time ironing out the usual first-quarter IT kinks. So, to those reading this blog, perhaps you can suggest & help out?

- We’re looking for an image deployment (preferably ISO-images) solution that will netboot off PXE/TFTP and then access the specified image over Samba/CIFS, NFS, FTP, etc. The process should be automated.

- Our VMware Cluster is getting big, with lots of users.  Anyone know of a web-based solution that allows users to generate change their own passwords, and allows admins to automatically a new set of passwords for existing users? This would make it less time-consuming to clean up old project VMs…

Anyways, until next time!

Yeah, I’m back! I’ve been counting down to i37 ever since I left i34 last year. For those of you who don’t know: the summer edition of the i-Series is the largest LAN party in the UK: http://iseries.multiplay.co.uk/. I went there with the same group of friends as last year. We’re all volunteer admins for Jolt’s Team Fortress servers or know each other from our (former) clan Nemesis Gamers (http://www.nemesisgamers.co.uk). An event like this is the ideal opportunity to meet the people behind the nicknames ;)

I took the ferry from Europoort to Hull, a fairly uneventful crossing except for some loudmouth drunken English who came stumbling down the corridors in the middle of the night. In the morning I drove to Howden, a nice little town where ‘The Cheese Shop’ has offers up excellent breakfasts to start off the day. After waking up with a nice coffee, it was basically an incredibly boring, traffic-jam-filled drive across England’s M62 to pick up my good friend in Birkenhead. We packed his gear into the car and went off to Coventry. The weather was terrible once we got close to Stoneleigh. In fact, it would do nothing but moderately or heavily rain until the next day: extremely unfavorable conditions for a campsite. The ground around our campsite never really dried up as a result, and I still have the dirt on my shoes to prove it! Regardless, we made it with plenty of time to spare before the event’s Early Arrival Service started, and set up shop.

The event itself was brilliant; spent a lot of time playing TF2 of course, gave out lots of (Dutch) waffles, the large plush penguin I brought got passed around the campsite / hall, we came 3rd in the pub quiz, lots of BBQ’ing, etc.

On monday, we packed up all the wet gear – of course it was raining again – and I dropped my mate off in Birkenhead. The M62 traffic was horrible as usual, so I made it to the ferry with a whopping 30 mins to spare… At least I had a proper night’s sleep this time!

All in all, a great long weekend. I highly recommend giving the i-Series a go if you’re into gaming; it’s well worth it.

Well I’m back from vacation, and Denmark, Sweden and Norway were just as beautiful as I remember… If you’re in to mountains, fjords, lakes, landscapes, forests, wonderful møøse, then Sweden and Norway are well worth your time ;)

Of course, I manage to get sick 2 days after returning, sigh… Oh well, better now than when I leave for the I-Series in Coventry! Never heard of it? Check it out…!

Today was the last day of work before summer break. It’s been a crazy last few weeks, making up for time elsewhere (see older posts) and finishing some coursework for the next school year. On the whole it was an excellent year, big improvements in multiple areas (which I won’t bore you with on a blog :)).

It’s Nikola Tesla’s birthday today, perhaps one of the most important inventors/engineers ever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Anyways, the blog might receive less updates in the coming days, but I will attempt to keep it update with some pictures while I’m on the road!

– AE

Today the cleanup company arrived to clean & hose down the entire apartment complex I live in. This sends chunks of dirt flying all over the place in a fine mist of water, leaving everything coated with grit. Generally, you’re expected move your vehicles etc. outside of the ‘blast radius’. However, the company actually went around cleaning all the windows, doors, cars and even my bike with a brush & water afterwards.

I’d say that’s rather nice, “De Toekomst” from Assendelft!