Archive for April, 2007:

For my 23rd birthday, my parents bought me a pair of tickets to go and see Ricky Gervais’ latest stand-up show, Fame. They also threw in a night in the local Hilton and valet parking, which was nice.

Anneka and I set off mid-afternoon from Lincoln, to check-in at the Nottingham Hilton by about 5pm. We arrived in Nottingham at about 4pm, but it took us a further 2 hours to park. If you’ve been to Nottingham you’ll understand me when I say it’s shite for car travellers. Apparently the mayor of Nottingham changed the roads to be a crappy one-way system to put people off driving into the city centre. It’s put me off for life and I’ll be sticking to rail transport from now on.

With that set-back aside, we headed out into the city, once the bags were unpacked, to grab something to eat prior to the start of the show at 7:30pm. We ended up in a large ‘French’ Cafe named Cafe Rouge - though to my disappointment, it wasn’t red. The service was slow, but the food was great.

The doors opened at 6:30pm but they were still queueing as we arrived at about 7:10pm. The show kicked off with Ricky’s usual supporting act, who’s name I always forget. But he was good.

Though Ricky made a dramatic entrance compared to his previous two shows, walking on stage wearing a crown and robe - with Matthew Kelly announcing that the King was here. Staring at the name RICKY for the remainder of the show was different:

It definitely echoed his fame and fortune, especially since making it big in Hollywood.

I know many people who detest the ‘iPodge’ but his humour converted Anneka from a hater to a believer in no time at all. The show just proved to me how hilarious he still is and always will be.

One final point - he did a very brief re-enactment of his dance as he walked off the stage, though on the Jonathan Ross show the week prior, he had a dance-off with Travolta.

I’ve had a bit of success since last posting…

In terms of software, I managed to get the alternate CD to successfully install ubuntu onto the 20GB Maxtor HDD. I spent a few hours last night updating it and checking out the various features - and sometime this week I hope to install the Apache/MySQL and PHP to complete the LAMP setup.

Hardware is pretty much complete too, though as it was updating, the case became very hot to touch. I’ve ordered a couple of 40mm fans from Kustom PCs today, which should sort out any cooling issues. The EPIA 5000 is housed inside a Maplin aluminium project case which was fairly easy to work with, in terms of using a Dremel.

So, I’ll post a few pictures during the Easter holidays and I’ll get a full (albeit, short) project log up on the bit-tech forums.

On a side note, whilst waiting for the updates to download, I started planning my next mod, which will replace R26, or at least put it on the back-burner for a year or so. It’ll be using the Enermax Liberty PSU and Enermax Server case that I won from the Custom PC competition, but the internal hardware will be old-skool, as a linux rig.