With the final term of University comes the big push, exams are nigh! I hate exams, as I feel they are not a good indicator of ability; instead they reward memory skills more than actual ability or comprehension. Anyway, I have 3 exams in the space of 5 days in the middle of May, then one all alone in June. It’s not hard to guess where I will score my highest mark. I will be getting around two weeks of hardcore memorising for the last exam, meaning a high mark is, without major calamity, almost assured.

Bah, off to be grumpy and revise…

It seems by predictions for today were almost right, with Chelsea narrowly beating Arsenal 2-1 and Manchester United - helped by a slightly controversial sending off - thrashing Liverpool 3-0.

Right now I am still feeling the effects of Wednesday/Thursdays all nighter. I have felt sleepy ever since that crazy night of Java, I’ve even ran out of milk so I can’t keep myself going with cups of tea or coffee :(  What’s even more depressing is the fact I still have two assignments and revision to look forward to over the next 5 weeks, then exams after that. So I won’t get much time to relax over the ‘Easter holidays’ which basically started after easter, so really aren’t easter holidays at all.

Is not very productive. So far we’ve fixed 4 bugs, ate pizza, broke it, fixed it, one of us went to the gym, others slept, ate more crisps,  messed about by stealing monitors and keyboards to make the eee pc into a desktop,  did some overclocking, thought about java, and sulked over the lack of a kettle. So all in all a good use of time!

The group project is nearing the deadline and the coding side of the work seems to be complete (bar the guaranteed major bug.) I’ll be pulling another all-nighter tomorrow to help finish off the testing and written work.

After numerous last minute revisions to the protocol and the server everything back working again! Loving it when someone recodes the server, client, or protocol then comes up to you and says: “By the way, your Gui is broke.” Really? It was working when I updated and went to bed >:( Perhaps that has happened too many times in the last 5 days for me to care anymore…

Since I am knacked, heres a lovely (Java ish related) comic from xkcd to keep you entertained:

Ever noticed how the updates for this week are all getting really close to the end of the day?

Well it’s because I am just that busy right now with University work, that I have little time to do anything else, even to hate SQL… Hopefully things will smoothen out and I’ll have some time to write some proper posts, as I’ve only got one article saved away in my drafts… so I need to use some free time to get some more drafts written up. I don’t like making posts like this, as their is little point in even posting them. There really is little different between a filler post and no post at all; I guess Naruto fans might even agree with that.

Oh thanks for all the comments recently, it’s nice to get some, I even enjoy watching the Askimet counter rise.

All the universities in Birmingham are currently ’spamming’ the city with advertisements. Now for the smaller Universities — read “fake universities” these places are really just revamped sixth forms that now offer courses for over 18s — this is probably necessary; however, the big boys are at it too.

What I don’t Understand is the University of Birmingham, the oldest and most prestigious university in the city, is advertising just as much as these ‘unknown’ universities. I wonder how many people you would have to ask who live in Birminham, or the surrounding areas, if they have heard of the university before you find someone who hasn’t?

This is as dumb as an advertisement for the Eiffel tower in Paris…

Remember this blog does have a lighter side!

This is what the Spar on the University of Birmingham’s campus think a ‘large croissant’ is, and would like to charge us poor students 45p ($1) for:

Maybe for an insect that’s a large croissant… another example of rip-off Britain, or just rip-off campus. Everywhere on campus is really expensive; for example, a cruddy (pretty much stale) sandwich costs around £2 ($4) when you could go to subway for just £3 (or £1.99 for the sub of the day.) Sometimes I wonder why my credit card isn’t maxed out yet.

For reference, the milk carton next to the croissants is a 500ml carton (just under a pint,) for you Americans it’s just a tiny bit bigger than your ordinary can of Pepsi.

The University of Birmingham offers three wireless networks to connect to: EDUROAM (where the same settings can be used at different Universities), the Guest network, and UOBWLAN (the University’s own network.) Since official support is limited to just Windows and Mac users, there is no guide on how to connect an S60 based mobile phone such as the Nokia N95 or N82 to any of the networks. UOBWLAN uses an extremely secure setup, which makes configuring external devices (even Windows based Laptops) rather difficult; thus, getting my Nokia N82 to connect to UOBWLAN took a lot of time and effort. As even though I had a good grounding on the settings from using the Linux and Windows instructions, I needed to run a number of configurations before I got it working. Thus if you would like to use this information on your own site, please give this site credit for the information, as this is — at the time of writing — the only site with this information. (Now I know of one more site with the information.)

Sadly I only own one device with a digital camera — my mobile phone, so I cannot offer any images to help set this up on your device. Matthew has kindly let me use the images from his site, I’ve uploaded them on here as his site is hosted by his ISP… and they could get grumpy with bandwidth if I hot link them

The key security features/methods used on UOBWLAN are listed below, obviously if your device does not support all of them you will not be able to connect to the UOBWLAN network. As far as I know all of the Nokia S60 devices with wireless networking support all of these features. Both N95, N95 black, and the N82 are confirmed to work, so I would presume any newer phones by Nokia will support all of these standards and more.

• WPA Enterprise
• PEAP
• Authority certificates
• MSCHAPv2

To set up the connection, it would be best to be in an area where you get signal for the wireless network. Then define the access point and edit the access point using my settings.

On the main page for the connection

Connection name: UOBWLAN

Data bearer: Wireless LAN

WLAN network name: UOBWLAN

Network status: Public

WLAN network mode: Infrastructure

WPA security mode: WPA/WPA2

Homepage: None (Not really important)

Now go to WLAN security settings, this is underneath WPA security mode.

Set this up as follows:

WPA/WPA2: EAP

WPA2 only mode: off

Now go to EAP plug-in settings, this is underneath WPA/WPA2

Make sure there is only a tick next to EAP-PEAP. To enable and disable different EAP choices use Options (most likely your left main button) then choose disable the item will no longer have a tick by its name. Now select EAP-PEAP use Options and choose edit, alternatively your main button (depressing the joystick/d-pad) will do this. You should now be in a screen titled EAP-PEAP Settings. This has two tabs Settings and EAPs, in settings you need to choose:

Personal Certificate: Not defined

Authority certificate: Cybertrust Education… (This is all my phone displays of the name, the full name is probably Cybertrust Educational Certificate, or something to that extent. If you do not have this certificate, you need to follow the Linux instructions to get the certificate in *.per format. You can download the certificate in Windows and right click it and their should be an option to open the cerficate [it might be manage I am running Ubuntu, but I will update this later,] and export it to *.ber and *.per your phone accepts one of these modes.)

User name is use: User defined

User name: Your adf user name goes here, it is usually in the form abc123 where abc are your initials and then three random numbers. It is the same user name you use to log in to my.bham.ac.uk.

Realm in use: User defined

Realm: Adf.bham.ac.uk

Allow PEAPv0: No

Allow PEAPv1: Yes

Allow PEAPv2: No

Now press right on your phones joystick/pad to go to the EAPs tab. Disable all the EAP options apart from EAP-MSCHAPv2 (so that there is only a tick beside EAP-MSCHAPv2.) This is done in exactly the same way as you disabled all the settings bar PEAP earlier. Now click on EAP-MSCHAPv2 to edit the settings for this and use:

User name: Your adf user name, this should be the same as what you entered in the Settings tab. Remember it is what you use to login to my.bham.ac.uk

Prompt password: No

Password: Here enter your adf password, remember it is what you use to login to my.bham.ac.uk.

Now if you exit everything, provided the phone saved the information (double check after leaving,) you should be able to connect to the UOBWLAN network. Sometimes my phones built in browser messes up and can’t connect, I find using Opera Mini solves this and it is better than the built in browser anyway. If you’re having any troubles with this, please use the comments for support.