My day went much better today, probably the best day I have had over the last few weeks. I had a wonderful lunchtime at the lake in the castle park with Charlotte and then had a nice quiet few hours together after college by the castle with Charlotte. I was feeling much happier about today, but unfortunately, bad luck and problems struck again later in the evening. I am looking forward to Charlotte's and my 1 year anniversary on Friday the 10th, hoping to have a nice day, hoping everything can be sorted out. Hoping... that is what I do. This is a public blog and I realise that it's neither the place to talk about personal problem, and not the content that you want to read, but somehow writing about things makes me feel better, so i'll give it a try. I feel very insecure at the moment, I feel a huge black cloud following me around and I think its because I am missing two very important parts of my relationship, respect and time. This is a strange topic, time obviously we all wish we had more of it, but somehow I feel that i'm losing the small amount of time that I have. Respect, this is a difficult one to explain, but the best example i can suggest is this: Imagine being commited to a job, a job that you enjoy doing and WANT to finish, while every time you try to do it, you get nothing but negative feedback, your employer telling you that it's not good enough, or even the opposite, that it's too good and is making everyone else look bad. I don't know, maybe that was a bad example, but it's how I am feeling at the moment. I wish there was some magic button I could press to make everything right, but even after hours of playing around with logic, i cannot structure the code to do it. (For those of you who are totally confused, what i mean is, it doesnt matter how much i think about it, i cant place what is wrong or why). If anyone has any ideas or advise, please do contact me, my details are available on the contact page of this website. Thanks for reading, somehow, every time you read this i feel better inside - yeah, i know, it doesn't make any difference to the problem.

I have recently been working on a new instant messaging system, as an alternative to Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger and other similar IM networks, this system is entirely web based. It uses an SQL database to temporarily store a conversation between 2 or more users. Users are authenticated before accessing the interface, and automatically, names and addresses are added ready for live chat. The system models MSN messenger, except does not have the ability to interact with the user desktop, and has no "status" of users. It is very basic and currently only works with text, but hey, before recent years, that's all IM was about :) It's not great and currently is not a publicly avialable service, but in testing between 2 people or in a group conversation, this is a good alternative that doesn't require anything except a working internet connection and a fiarly modern web browser. If you want to give it a try, there is a guest account open and set up, the username is "guest" and the password is "password" this allows as many users to sign in as guest, although, everyone will appear as guest because the user details are provided on logon.
http://talk.techtoad.co.uk - feel free to give it a try! If i happen to be using it when you try it, i'll say hello :)

While i'm here, i'll give you the latest: Things are going well at college and I am really enjoying all my classes, especially computing. Unfortunatley, things could be better in my personal life, which would make me feel happier in college, but hopefully things will pick up and everything will be "hunky dory" as my mum would say.

I had a job interview at the local PC World today, i sent my CV off before I started college in hope for some part time work, after experiencing the work load of college, i had second thoughts. I went to the interview all the same, and spoke about working only one day per week, maybe on a sunday, i don't really need the money that much, but the experience would be good. The interview went well and I am waiting for a call back to notify me how it went. Not really to worried, it will be a good experience if i get the job and a little bit more money will help me persue my hobbies and desires, but if not, look on the bright side, 9 hours more relaxation at the weekend!

I'm feeling quite upset at the moment, I had a really bad week last week and didn't feel like writing about it because it's not the kind of thing you want to read, but this week is going better, there are still a few things that are making me feel down, but as i mentioned earlier, hopefully things will pick up.

Guess that's it from me, hope everyone is enjoying school/college/work/life/holiday - whatever your doing!

Happy Birthday to my good friend Chris Beck! Hope you had a great day at college! Best wishes for the future from me, Techtoad

I took some pictures yesterday of 2 cars with funny numberplates, one ending "OMG" and the other ending "AWW" the picture can be found in the News Pictures gallery.

It's not been a great week for me, but today was an eventful day. I was just walking past the computing block (next to the astro turf) when i suddenly felt dizzy, i stopped and sat on the wall for a rest... the next thing i know, the medical staff are waking me and helping me get up.

Apparantly, due to a change in heart rate and loss of heart rate control from the brain, i fainted and fell off the wall, landing face down onto the concrete. Nobody was able to tell me for sure, but its estimated that i was out for a good half an hour. Don't know who you are, but whoever found me and got help, THANKYOU!

After the usual medical proceedure, I was helped back to the first aid room and my mum was contacted and asked to pick me up, i missed my last lesson of the day, Business Studies, despite saying that i was fine to attend, the college wanted me to go to a doctor to be checked.

The doctor explained the problem with the heart rate, which could have been caused by numerous things, but thankfully, there is no serious harm done and i should be fit for college tomorrow :)

I am feeling fine now, even though my week has been bad, things have been rocky between me and Charlotte but i think we have sorted it out :)
 

I was going to have my hair dyed blue today, but unfortunatley, we could not get hold of the dye. It should be in some time this week, but after having my hair cut, i think its now too short to dye, i am going to wait for it to grow back a bit before i have it dyed, otherwise i cant see much point! Will keep my news updated with whats happening.

Happy Birthday to Dug from Techtoad.co.uk! Hope you have a great day bro!

I have either gone totally insane, or I am doing something very cool! This time next week I will be getting my hair dyed entirely electric blue! Will upload some pictures once i have had it done, if anyone has any thoughts on this, contact me! (Using the contact page)

Happy 17th Birthday Charlotte! Hope you have a great day! Best wishes from Techtoad.co.uk (and all your mates) ;)

That's right, i even advertise on my news page now! I just thought these guys were so cool that they deserved a mention on Techtoad :)

Please take a look at CodaRed at http://www.myspace.com/codaredband

Colchester traditional Rock and Funk band, i know these guys ;) one of them is an old best buddie! Check them out, seriously!

What can I say about today? Not exactly a great day for alot of people, but if you are a all-time regular techtoad news reader, you will remember September the 11th last year, when I seemed particully depressed. For those of you who can't remember, here is a link to that old news article:

September 11th 2007 (Archive)

Well, this year I wont be depressing you again! This has been a much better year! Since i have been with Charlotte everything has been so much more fun! I have made friends with Dug again and now my exams are out the way, I am under alot less stress. I feel much happier now and I just want to say that if you ever feel depressed, never do anything stupid, i kept going and I am so glad that i did!

Take care everyone! This was a special news update to celebrate how much things have changed.

It has been 11 months that me and Charlotte have been together to this day, in celebration, after college we went to Funderworld (The Traveling Theme Park) in the evening. We had great fun, despite being stuck on a ride that broke down and having to wait 30 mins to get off, being helped off with a ladder... the ride opened again later on though, so we didn't miss out! :) I stayed at Charlotte's house for the night and will be off to college again tomorrow. Had a great time :) Lots of work to catch up with now though :(

Today is the start of my second week of college :) Everything is going well so far and I really like it here :) I have uplaoded a copy of my timetable for anyone who is interested, you can find it by clicking here.

Had a long wait today, finished Psychology at 13:25 (Lunch Time) and had to wait until 16:15 before my final class, CISCO. Used my time to get lunch, had a walk around town with Kichimi and then sat down with my laptop to check my emails and write this news entry :)

Today was my first day at college. Everything seems to be going well, i enjoyed my first lesson of the day which was Psychology followed by Business Studies which was also good. I had a nice introductory lesson to Electronics and i look forward to future projects. CISCO was my last lesson of the day, which I am glad to say was exactly what I was hoping for. Other than the long travel home, today went well :)

I have just been enrolled at the Colchester Sixth Form College and I got all the subjects i wanted to do :)

CISCO Networking
Computing
Web Design
Electronics
Psychology
Business Studies

I am looking forward to starting next Tuesday, I am quite nervous though!

I got my GCSE results today! Been muttering on about it for a while, but it's good news! So here we go:

Electronics: Grade A
Full Course ICT: Grade A
Mathematics: Grade B
Statistics: Grade B
Business Studies: Grade B
Science: Grade B
Additional Science: Grade B
English: Grade C
English Literature: Grade C
Religious Studies: Grade D
Graphic Products: EPIC FAIL

Well, as you can see, the important subjects (for me) i am very pleased with! I didn't expect to do that well in English, always found that difficult. Religion  was worth it for a pass, but to be perfectly honest, I focused my priorities on my other subjects which i thought were more important. Not sure what happened with Graphics! I guess i could have done better, but fortunatley, I don't intend to take Graphics furthur, and shouldnt need the GCSE grade :)

Very pleased overall, was proud of my girfriend Charlotte who did extremerly well, i hope that everyone else gets the grades they wanted too!

Reading back I have noticed that I haven't mentioned much about my life recently, so I have decided to bore you all once more about what is going on in the world of Kirk. I am due to get my GCSE results on Thursday, I will be posting the news online as soon as I can. Parents have gone away on holiday to Northumberland, I was going to go with them, but did not want to miss collecting my results and risk not having them in time for my enrolment day at the Colchester Sixth Form College.

Instead, this week I will be spending alot of time with my girlfriend Charlotte, haven't seen her much recently as she has been away, so i'm looking forward to that! Everything seems to be going quite well, in my spare time I have finished off a few bits and peices of the website and improved my network design at home.

Would like to say thank you to Dug for helping me out with alot of this, wouldn't have been able to do it without him, so if your reading, thanks bro!

My domains are coming up for renewal next year, so I am putting some money aside for that, i will be renewing 4 domains, the remaining 3 will be left to expire, if anyone wants them transfered over, drop me an email or contact me using the contact page. The domains that are available are:

coolphool.co.uk

staciterry.co.uk

thelolz.com

The other domains that point to my server, such as Kichimi.com and Techtoad.net are not in my control, please do not ask me about these domains.

I am looking forward to starting at college in September and will keep you updated on how it goes. I guess i have run out of stuff to say now, except, hope everyone is doing ok!

Techtoad started a few years back at the end of 2006. In the time that techtoad has been online, the server has been upgraded, changed, modified and moved. In 2006 techtoad started off on a Viglen P450 desktop computer, a 450Mhz Intel CPU, 64MB of SD 266Mhz SDRAM and a pathetic 20GB hard drive, It was just about able to cope running Windows XP Professional on an ADSL Broadband line via a USB modem. When I became more serious about Techtoad and bought the domain, Techtoad.co.uk, I decided to upgrade to a very slightly better server. I got hold of a Viglen C700, this had a 700Mhz Intel Celeron CPU, 128MB of 266Mhz SDRAM, a total storage space of 180GB and was running, a much more optimised configuration of Windows XP Professional SP2. I also got a better ISP with a higher internet speed and more bandwidth, as well as a brand new Netgear router. After 6 months of perfect running, I decided to convert my Windows server to a Linux server on an identical machine, this would give me a chance to learn more about Linux and provide a much more efficient server - this didnt go too well as I hardly knew what I was doing and was unable to configure a mail server properly - I went back to good old Windows XP Pro SP2. After doing alot more research about Linux, and with great help from my friend Dug, we converted it, again, back to Linux, but not just one machine, I had another identical machine, so we had one deal with Web and SQL, while the other dealt with Email and other various internal network facilities. Both servers were running Gentoo Linux and after alot of tweaking and testing, I finally had the servers I was looking for. That's when I realised that over all this time, my knowlege and imagination had also built up, I now have several websites demanding advanced server-side features which my current servers can only just handel. I noticed i was running out of space and thought - it's time to upgrade again.

So that is what I have done, I have gone and bought all the parts for a brand new server, a 2.6Ghz Dual Core AMD Athlon 64 CPU, 2GB of DDR 400Mhz RAM, 750GB of SATAII storage split over 2 drives and I will soon be ready to put it all together and install Arch Linux on it. This will become my new server and will hopefully be a huge improvement. Now that the servers are for my company, xcns.co.uk - I thought this upgrade was quite critical.

During the upgrade, I will be doing several tests and will be transporting all the original data (websites, email, files) from my old system, to the new system. This will be direct implimentation, there could be some down time, but I will try my best not to lose any data. Downtime will be scheduled around non-prime times, such as late at night. After the new server has been implimented, there may be small problems that I havent noticed, if you notice any, please let me know in any means possible, and I will work on it ASAP. I ask that you please co-operate with this upgrade. If you are unable to access a service that I provide, please try again later.

Wish me luck! Upgrading will begin this week. I would also like to thank my good friend Dug for all his support and help throughout this upgrade! Thanks man!

The techtoad mail server is back up and running. The problem occurred due to a bug in an anti-virus update. All systems are back online.

00:06 - Techtoad mail server has fallen over. The heat smacked it and it suffered a horrible, horrible death. Trying my best to get it back online, having difficulty. Due to build a new server soon, this one only needs to hold out for a few more weeks. You may not be able to access email services during this period, if you experience problems, please wait 10-15 minutes and try again.