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 		The Blob: Ciaran's Journal

Welcome to my journal. This is where I'll be revealing my innermost thoughts and feelings to the world. Occasionally I'll talk about other stuff, but mostly about my experiences.

Are you looking for the journal code?

13 entries shown (most recent first):

[view all entries]
Apr 30, 2002: Thank you, Lord... (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 10:10 - Mood: Thoughtful - Location: Work - Now playing: n/a

There is no other love,
There is no other love like You, oh Lord,
No other brother, no other sister like You,
There is no other friend,
There is no other friend like You, oh Lord,
No other sweeter, no other Fountain but You...

-- David Ruis, "No Other"

I'm feeling worshipful today. :) I just love God soooo much. Other people might wonder what I'm on about, loving a God who I haven't felt, heard, seen, or anything. But the thing is... I have felt Him, I have heard Him in my life... not in the physical sense, but spiritually. God really does work for good in all those who love Him.

I don't really know what to say now. I just want to keep praising God... I guess I'll do that then. :)

Lord, thank you so much for being with me and loving me. I'd love to be able to say that I would do anything for You, but I know that that probably isn't true. :( Lord, help me to overcome that. You know my weaknesses, Lord. You know me; after all, You created me! :) I just want to be Yours. I need You - don't let me believe otherwise. Thank you... in Jesus' name... Amen.
Apr 27, 2002: Are you addicted to the Internet? (link | trackback: 1)
Time: 16:45 - Mood: Happy - Location: Home - Now playing: Microsoft - Windows Welcome music

I just took the "Are you Addicted to the Internet?" quiz (link below), and here's my results:

Are you Addicted to the Internet?
51%

Average@Internet-User.com (41% - 60%)
You seem to have a healthy balance in your life when it comes to the internet and life away from the computer. You know enough to do what you want online without looking like an idiot (most of the time). You even have your own Yahoo club or online journal! But you enjoy seeing your friends and going out to enjoy life away from your computer.

The Are you Addicted to the Internet? Quiz at Stvlive.com!


That sounds about right for me. ;-)

BTW, this music I'm playing comes from Windows XP. I don't have it, nor am I planning to install it, but this music is pretty darn cool. :)
Apr 23, 2002: Yay! (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 16:10 - Mood: Very happy - Location: Work - Now playing: n/a

I wanted to add this earlier, but I couldn't because msw was down. :( Still, it's back up again, so I want to tell you one thing that makes me happy - Neil's been promoted to editall in the ODP! :-D

As for me - well, I've decided to climb back into the saddle and change direction in the ODP - I wasn't really doing any editing before. However, after talking with Vlad on IRC where he gave some very good advice, I decided to resign my West_Sussex category, leaving it in the very capable hands of jimnoble (who had actually only been accepted to the category days before I resigned) and concentrate on the Computers tree. I've kept my privileges in East Grinstead, however, as I live there and so am probably better qualified to edit the cat. :)

I guess Regional's not the tree for me... the Computers tree interests me a lot more. In fact, my plan is to try to become a CatMod for the tree. I have a lot of work to do before that happens, though. :)

See ya later!
Apr 17, 2002: Web Hosting? (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 11:57 - Mood: Happy - Location: Work - Now playing: n/a

And I can see the fingerprints of God, when I look at you,
I can see the fingerprints of God, and I know it's true,
You're a masterpiece that all creation quietly applauds,
And you're covered with the fingerprints of God!

-- Steven Curtis Chapman, "Fingerprints of God"

I like that song. It's so true; God makes each and every one of us the way He wants us to be, with love and care. It probably offends Him when we decide that we can do what we like with our bodies. It would be great if we could serve Him and Him alone, but that's practically impossible in this world. :( Still, we can do our best.

I've signed up with a web hosting service called Hosting Matters on Tim's recommendation - he uses the same service to power Universal Networks' website (uninetsolutions.com). In other words, http://theblob.org/ is now live! There's only one page there at the moment, but at least it works. :)

I signed up with the B500 plan ($24/three months, 20MB, 1.46GB/month), although when my contract expires (3 months), I'll probably step up to the next plan, the B1000 ($31.35/three months, 75MB, 5.85GB/month). It also adds features that aren't in the B500 plan, such as having up to 6 subdomains, 3 MySQL databases, a mailing list, and most importantly for me, shell access. You can see the full range of features at their comparisons page.

I'm currently paying for three months, which in the M250 and B500 plans doesn't really make a difference, as there are no discounts for paying for longer terms. In the B1000 plan, you can save up to $19.80 by paying annually rather than per month. Yes, this does sound like an advert, but I'd like to point out that I've only just started with them and don't know how good they are. I was really just stating the facts. The hype will come later if they're that good. :-D

Anyway, I'm signing off now. See ya. :)
Apr 15, 2002: Blogs or journals? (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 14:16 - Mood: Thoughtful - Location: Home - Now playing: n/a

After I read a web page on diarist.net explaining the difference between blogs and journals, I've updated this CGI to show what it really is - a journal. I even went so far as to change the filename from "blog.cgi" to "journal.cgi", although I also set up a redirect so you should still get to this page even if you use the old name. :)

So what is the difference? Well, apparently blogs tend to focus more on things that happen outside the author's life, whereas journals focus more on the author and his/her thoughts and feelings. The term "blog", of course is an abbreviated form of "web log", ie. a log of web sites that the author finds interesting. The term's expanded a bit since that original definition, which is why it's hard to distinguish between blogs and journals sometimes. But this is definitely a journal more than a blog, so... it's done. :)

God bless!
Apr 15, 2002: Tha Compo (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 08:30 - Mood: Happy - Location: Work - Now playing: n/a

I don't know if I told you this or not, but recently I've been getting into tracked music. Tracked music is kind of a cross between MIDI and normal sound files... ungh, it's hard to explain. But it's been around a looooong time. :)

Anyway, I took part in my first music compo last night, a OHC (One Hour Compo). It's called "Tha Compo", and is basically an effort to host OHCs on IRC, because there aren't a lot around these days. They hold one every week in #thacompo on DALnet (IIRC), and if it's the same time as this week (which I expect), then it's a perfect time for me - Sunday at 7:00pm (6:00pm GMT) - so I hope to be there next week. :) I would post Tha Compo's URL, but I can't remember what it is and for once, Google doesn't turn up anything.

In other news, I've changed my DNS service for theblob.org from ZoneEdit to EveryDNS.net on the recommendation of a friend. They seem to be very good. The only problem I have with it is that the "parked" page says:

---
You are seeing this for one of two reasons:

1) we disabled a spammer account and pointed it here
or
2) someone delegated a domain to us but hasn't deleted the default records.

If it is because of a spammer we probably already know, but you can tell abuse@everydns.net if you want. We hate spammers and we tend to be able to find out who they are -- We'll start posting their addresses and phone numbers, don't worry. ;-)
---

Yikes! It makes it look like I'm a spammer, when in actual fact I just haven't changed the default page yet. I think I'll be doing that pretty fast now. (:

Oh, and a couple of nights ago I got a text message from Neil, one of the regulars in #odp. He told me to say hi to all the people in #odp and "tell YK not 2 edit in Anime". There's a long story behind that, but I thought it was funny. :)

Anyway, I'm off now. See ya...
Apr 14, 2002: Late nights, and stuff (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 01:31 - Mood: Happy - Location: Home - Now playing: n/a

Hi. I've come back from a friend's 18th birthday party, which was really cool. :)

I'm twiddling around with the theblob.org domain. If you see weird things happening, don't panic. :)

I've also been refining the OpenMoz code to make it better. I'll explain more later.

Anyway, off to bed now...
Apr 13, 2002: Domain registering... (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 00:33 - Mood: Happy - Location: Home - Now playing: n/a

Well, I've gone ahead and ordered a domain, but not for the church. This one's for my own use - I've ordered theblob.org, although it hasn't completely gone through yet, so there isn't any match for it at the moment. I registered it at http://www.joker.com/. They're the same people who newwave chose to register mystationwagon.com. I checked them out myself, too, and they seem pretty good.

theblob.org... I like that domain. It's a happy, bouncy type of name. Or something.
Apr 11, 2002: Old MODs (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 20:20 - Mood: Happy - Location: Home - Now playing: virgill - vite and plack (interference)

Hi.

This tune that's playing is awesome. I've heard it before on the coverdisc of a really old edition of What PC?, along with a whole load of other great MODs. Unfortunately, I don't have the disc any more, and I know there was a lot of great songs on it. It came with a Windows player called UltiMOD, and another player called Inertia. I would love to get hold of that disc, or at least a directory listing so I can download the MODs myself. If anybody out there has a clue where I can find it, please let me know! :)
Apr 10, 2002: Random DMOZ category generator (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 16:42 - Mood: Happy - Location: Work - Now playing: n/a

I've just come across a script I made some time ago for generating a random DMOZ category. It's not a real category, and it only knows of three sites to put in there. Hopefully I'll be able to add more stuff later.

You can find it at http://nobody.wrecked.mystationwagon.com:20000/dmoz/dmozcat.cgi. It basically takes the DMOZ template and puts random things in, but ties it all together to make it look believable. Here's what gets randomly generated:

  • The category path.
    • Title is changed to match.
    • Drop-down box is changed to match.
    • The category name in the search options at the bottom is changed to match.

  • The subcategories/@links presented.
    • A random number between 1-4 is generated, and that many subcats generated.
    • There is a 50% chance that the subcat will actually be an @link, and as such will have another randomly-generated cat name.
    • The count of links in a subcategory is random between 1-20.

  • The listed editors.
    • Picks 1-4 random names from the last profiles.rdf.u8 dump, which has been discontinued.

  • The listings.
    • Currently generates 3-4 "random" listings, using 1 of 3 random URL/title pairs, and picking out of a grand total of 1 random description - "Blarg." :)

  • The mozzie displayed.
    • Randomly picks from 1 of 69 random mozzie images.

It randomises quite a few other aspects, too. Check it out. :)
Apr 8, 2002: Ack... (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 16:30 - Mood: Thoughtful - Location: Work - Now playing: n/a

...I made a mistake in my previous blog entry. I didn't think too much about the domain name, but obviously we would want trinity-methodist.org.uk rather than trinity-methodist.co.uk. After all, we're not a business. :)

Luckily, the .org.uk one is available too. :)
Apr 8, 2002: I will rise up... (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 10:58 - Mood: Happy - Location: Work - Now playing: n/a

There's a stirring deep within me,
could it be my time has come?
When I'll see my gracious Saviour,
face to face when all is done.
Is that His voice I am hearing?
"Come away, My precious one..."

Is He calling me?
Is He calling me?...

I will rise up,
rise up,
and bow down,
and lay my crown,
at His wounded feet...

-- Heels To Heaven, "There's a Stirring"

Okay, okay. So it isn't really a Heels To Heaven song, it's Caedmon's Call. But the first time I heard it was because of a post in CS-FSLUG with a link to the MP3 (fully legal, I hasten to add). It's a great song, and so are the other songs Heels To Heaven have done. Take a look - you'll enjoy it.

So, what's been up with my life? Well, I'm taking up the challenge of revamping the Trinity Methodist Church website. This is the site of the church I go to, and it's quite out-of-date in some places, and very out-of-date in others. Plus, I plan to give it a new look, and maybe do some CGI magic - static sites are boring.

The problem was that I needed to download the site from the FTP server before I could do anything with it, obviously. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but the Freeserve FTP server rejects your connection if you're not connected via Freeserve itself, so I had to forego my ADSL connection, connect using the 56K modem and download it from there. Argh! I had almost forgotten how slow 56K is compared to ADSL. Luckily it was a local rate number (0845) and it was at the weekend, so it only cost 1p/minute. The whole thing was about 9-10MB, and on ADSL that would have taken about 3-4 minutes. On 56K it took the better part of an hour. :(

But I have the whole thing downloaded now, so I can make changes. And you can bet one thing; if possible, I'm going to try and move the site to a new host. There's no way I'm going to keep connecting via Freeserve to update the site. :) While I'm at it, it would be nice to get the site its own domain name, too. Maybe something like trinity-methodist.co.uk, which according to the whois, is currently available (no match). If everybody agrees, I'm quite happy to pay for the hosting and domain registration myself. I'll ask Tim what he thinks.

See ya!
Apr 3, 2002: Neil's World (link | trackback: 0)
Time: 19:33 - Mood: Happy - Location: Home - Now playing: [NDR] virt - forgotten tides town theme and battle

...has moved! Neil's World is now available at http://totalxs.dbpoweramp.com/ . If you're wondering why he hasn't updated for ages, that's why.

On the Windows 98 front, it's been nearly a week, and I haven't found myself missing anything from Windows Me yet. :) It's actually pretty cool. It's faster than before, that's for sure. I think I'll easily get used to this. :)

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