This is where things start to get a little weird… June 2, 2009
Posted by metritutus in : Uncategorized , add a commentIt is time to explain, I think a little about what I have been up to.
Whilst I was in school, my life mainly consisted of playing computer games and doing school work (with talking to friends online, etcetera, and other minor things like eating).
As I explained in the previous post, following the end of school I decided to try and get a job, and that proved long and tedious. Many months of unemployment.
I started going on a free IT course to gain IT qualifications three days a week.
However, that was still four days where I am doing little. Unlike some people in the world, whilst I might be able to do it once or twice, playing games throughout the whole day proved to be both unappealing, and ultimately boring.
I became very demoralised over where my life was going. This, is where the obsessiveness kicks in. Or rather, just before that. What follows will probably sound quite odd, it does to me. Why do you think I’m posting about it?
First, some background information. Basically, for those (if any) who read this blog who do not know, I can play the piano. I passed my Grade 7 practical exam in the Summer of last year. And then, I kind of let my piano drift and stagnate. Sure, I was still having lessons, but there was no real effort. I am, unfortunately, a rather lazy person. I was much more interested in playing computer games. However, I did not wish to give up playing piano. Sure, I considered it, but it felt like such a shame. It was not so much that I did not like to play, more that I just was not really trying. It’s hard to explain.
Anyway, in the midst of me getting more and more miserable (and moaning at my friends way too much), I started talking to someone who I found could also play the piano. They can play it very well, and are also blessed with an ability known as absolute/perfect pitch. The party trick with that is to be able to name any note from the pitch of the sound they hear. The more useful aspects include being able to compose from the music they hear in their head, or just knowing what notes comprise part of a song they hear.
Anyway, in learning about this person, it fascinated me. It also sparked something, made something click. I don’t know, but on top of all the negativity with feeling sorry for myself, I suddenly felt a very strong feeling of guilt. Guilt at letting my piano drift as it had, guilt at letting myself become so pathetically miserable, and yet seemingly being unable to lift myself out from that.
Still, as I said, something clicked. I wanted to do something. It was the want that had appeared, the feeling of need. However, coupled to that for anything to happen is motivation. Like I said, I am lazy. Anyone can want to do something, but they can sit in a chair all day and do nothing. It just makes them miserable, wanting and never doing. That was kind of like my position.
However, I then started to do things. Little things. A terrible thing is to become over-ambitious. And yet, I have made plans. I know more what I want to do.
I have started to do more on my piano. Still not as much as I would like, and there are bad habits that I have yet to purge, but it is progress which I hope to improve upon.
Along with this there have come tiny things that I have become quite obsessive over. They have served as another kind of hobby, perhaps it could be viewed that way. I term them ‘research points’.
It began with trying to learn about absolute/perfect pitch. I read every possible aspect on the internet about it that I could find. What was it like, what caused it, is it learnable or are you born with it, what are the scams? And there are scams. I may start making blog posts on my ‘research points’ based on what I have found an my opinions formed. I do not claim to be educated in these things, I have no qualifications to back up my opinions. Because they are my opinions, and no one, absolutely no one can take them away from me, regardless of how intelligent or advanced they are.
Anyway, it has developed from absolute pitch to other things, all mainly psychological, things to do with the mind. As I said, I may post about all of these.
Somehow this has all led on to me considering University again. And generally feeling a bit brighter, I’ll post more about this later.
So what happened? May 29, 2009
Posted by metritutus in : Uncategorized , add a commentToday I signed on at the Job Centre for what I hope will be the last time.
As I was leaving, I had a thought about just what I have been doing these past months (since Summer last year, no less).
The main thing obviously has been hunting for a job. I originally decided I would not go to University. I ruled it out because I feared the debt, I feared that I would not be able to cope with University life, and above all I thought I could get a job and work my way up from there.
Needless to say, things…did not go according to plan. I do think that the economic recession was one significant factor that contributed to me remaining unemployed without a job, however there’s no use dwelling on this, no doubt there were other factors.
University is not for everyone (although it is geared as such towards people in their final year of A-Level). Drop out rates are apparently quite high.
However, what I failed to some how comprehend, was that whilst University is not for everyone, it was probably the right choice for me. I must strongly urge anyone who is reading this blog who has decided not to go to University after A-Level to strongly reconsider their decision. A recent deciding factor for me, was that the University course you do does not necessarilly have to be the path you get a job in later. What getting a degree does, is that it demonstrates that you have the will and dedication to study and work hard.
Anyway, it has been a long few months. There have been many downs, a few times where I almost thought life was not worth living. I am still here though.
I will post another entry in the coming days about more specific things that I have been up to.
You’re hired! May 28, 2009
Posted by metritutus in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farOr so it would seem, at the local Budgens no less.
I’ll be working on weekends.
Next step is to consider University. And I will be going. This job should provide a good start for bulking up my store of money for this and the future.
I need to finally settle on what I want to do. Originally I thought music, but I really don’t have the necessary qualifications or experience for it, sadly. So I’m back at something in computing, possibly artificial intelligence (because AI rocks). I’m not really interested in business.
Ah well, hopefully things really are going to keep getting better now (which means more blog posts).
So I’ve got a PC with Vista on it… January 26, 2009
Posted by metritutus in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farWell, my first thought (and this was coupled with me using a monitor larger than 17″ for the first time) was “SHINEY”. It is very shiny. I actually had to lower my monitor brightness.
Of course, being the maniac that I am, I had to immediately work out how to move my ‘Users’ directory (the equivilent of ’Documents and Settings’ for XP) to my specially created 75gb partition.
After much googling I found an awesome guide here:
http://joshmouch.wordpress.com/2007/04/07/change-user-profile-folder-location-in-vista/
And, for your convenience, copied and pasted here in case that site goes missing for some strange and highly implausible reason:
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Here lies my experience moving my entire User Profile folder structure, including Default, Public, and any local users.
In my search for a solution, the only two easy ways I found to move the user profile directory locations from the system drive is to
- Set the User Profile folder during setup using an unattended install file.
- Move the individual folders inside your user profile, which can be done using explorer (which will update the registry keys HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders).
However, this was not good enough for me, I wanted my actual user profile folder to be moved to a seperate partition/volume, including registry settings. I discovered that it is not actually that hard, provided you’re comfortable with mass replacing registry keys and values.
Here is how I moved my user profile location. Please note that I wanted all of the profiles moved, included Public and Default, so some of these steps can be skipped if you do not want that:
- Make sure you have a complete backup of your system!
- Copy the original Default Profile directory to the new location (e.g. from C:\Users\Default to D:\Users\Default).
- Copy the original Public Profile directory to the new location (e.g. from C:\Users\Public to D:\Users\Public).
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.
- Change the value of the Default key to the new user profile location (e.g. D:\Users\Default).
- Change the value of the Public key to the new user profile location (e.g. D:\Users\Public).
- Change the value of the ProfilesDirectory to the new user profile location (e.g. D:\Users).
- At this point, you need to restart and log back in as a different user that has never logged in before and therefore does not have a profile created. In my case, the Administrator user had never logged in before so I enabled it so that Administrator could log in and used that. You can enable Administrator login by loading Computer Management and then go to User Accounts, edit the properties for Administrator, and then uncheck Disable Login.
- After logging in for the first time with the new user account, you will see “Creating Desktop” and other things like that while Windows is creating your profile. Note that the new profile should be created in the new location.
- After logging in, try to close as many applications as possible. This will prevent most files from being locked so that you cannot copy them.
- Copy the entire original user profiles folder from the original location to the new location (e.g. C:\Users\* to D:\Users\). (See next step after copy starts).
- There are a few things to note during this copy. There were thousands of .TMP files that were locked and would not copy. I just skipped these files. I held down Alt-S so that I could see all of the skipped files and make sure that there were only .TMP files being skipped. Yes, this took a little while, but at least I was confident that I got all of my files copied. This process could probably be made easier using the command prompt or powershell.
- If, in your case, there are some files that will not copy, you can run procexp.exe, which is file provided by sysinternals. Then do a Find Handle and search for part of the filename. procexp will tell you which programs are locking the file. As long as you closed as many programs as you could, though, this should not happen.
- Find and download a program that will do a Search & Replace on the registry. I will not suggest one because I did not find one single program that worked perfectly. I ended up downloading a few different freeware applications and using all of them.
- Using the Registry Search & Replace program, do a search for the original user profile folder and replace it with the new user profile folder (e.g. search for “C:\Users” and replace with “D:\Users”. Note that some of the applications I used would only change values and not key names. However, the keys that needed to be chagned were all related to MuiCache. I do not know if these actually need to be updated. I did just to make sure.
- Log out. Log back in with the same user. Repeat step 14 until there is nothing left to replace. The reason for this step is that on logout, some programs seem to update the registry using the old user profile path.
- Run regedit.exe and do a search for the original user profile path and make sure it does not exist. The reason for this step is because (as noted in step 13), I did not trust any of the Registry Search & Replace programs I used. I ended up needing to update about a dozen of the keys and values manually, since the search & replace missed them.
- So that you can easily find programs that do not use the registry and hard-coded profile paths, rename your original profile folder (e.g. rename C:\Users to C:\~Users).
- Log out. Log back in as your usual user. Everything should be working correctly except for programs that use a “hardcoded” user profile location.
- There are two easy methods that can be used to find programs that use a “hardcoded” profile location and are still looking for the original user profile path. You can use the procexp.exe trick mentioned above and search for handles in the original profile location. You can also monitor the oringal profile location to see if any new folders or files were created. For example, in my case, FolderShare created some folders and files in the directory C:\Users\MyUsername\AppData\Local\FolderShare\. So, I updated the FolderShare settings to point to the different path and then deleted the C:\Users directory (note that C:\~Users still existed as a backup).
- Since you are now confident that all of your data has been moved (right??????), you can deleted the backup of the original user profile location (e.g. C:\~Users).
This procedure worked flawlessly for me. Everything user-related is now on a completely different volume, and I can sleep a little better at night! 
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However, there is one step in that little guide that does not work if you are not running Vista Ultimate. I’m running Vista Home Premium. The step that does not work is Step 8. There is no User Accounts section under the Computer Management tab.
Fortunately the simple and obvious work-around was to simply create a new user normally. Thus, after lots of messing around and users being created and deleted, I finally had my whole users folder onto the new partition. 
Now all I need to do is to work out how to get the damned thing to network properly. :/
A more positive entry January 7, 2009
Posted by metritutus in : Uncategorized , add a commentOn my site!
It passes the W3 validator! Which is amazing for me.
It’s all been typed out in notepad 2. Go visit and spam it when I add a comments system (as if, this involves me kind of learning php. >.< ).
Still, I’m quite proud of it. It’s not the best looking site ever by a long shot, but it works.
http://metirilucasitus.freesitespace.net
This was going to be… November 25, 2008
Posted by metritutus in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farAn entry about my little website, but I’ll do that later.
Right now, I suck. I totally suck. I just seem to cock everything up when it comes to finding a job.
There seems to be nothing out there for me. I’m a school-leaver with A-Levels and no employment experience. Maybe I am not doing enough to search? I myself see mindless searching on job sites as pointless. There’s nothing out there, it’s all fail and suck.
And I just mess stuff up. I feel like a complete dumb absent-minded twit. There’s so many better things I’d like to be doing now and I’m not doing any of them.
I got a letter from Avon Vail training dated 6th of Novemeber telling me to send away the attached form to keep me on their books and show I was still looking for work. Only I forgot, and just had a phone call about it (which I sucked at as I forgot to ask them for vacancies).
And I’ve got an interview this afternoon, only I’ve forgotten the name of the person interviewing me because I forgot to write down his name.
I suck, life sucks, I suck at life. :’(
I’m 18 dammed years old, and my parents go on about them having to do everything for me. I’m an incompetent swine, and I shall continue to wallow in self-pity and misery.
Hidden October 24, 2008
Posted by metritutus in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farOr, to be more precise, The Hidden.
It’s an excellent mod for the Source engine, which I had a cracking time playing with friends last night.
The paranoia was probably the best part, both invoking it as the Hidden, and watching your whole team shoot at nothingness, or blasting away at boxes as IRIS (the soldiers trying to kill the Hidden) because ‘it looked like the Hidden’, who, as the name suggests, is ‘hidden’, ie invisible.
I hope to play this again soon, it was awesome.
Using the Hammer October 7, 2008
Posted by metritutus in : Uncategorized , add a commentI can’t exactly say I’m very good with Hammer.
This makes me feel proud that I actually got a payload cart working!
I followed the instructions on how to do one off the Valve Developer wiki, but I made mine simple with only one point rather than two. The result is thus:
It looks so simple, but you can check out the dev page:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/TF2/Creating_a_Payload_Map
I found that quite hard to pull off, but at least I understand it.
To begin with there were a few bugs, namely the cart moved backwards, and floated, and every time the cart started moving the end capture point made a sound. Oh, and I forgot the skybox the first time I compiled. 
Still, all these were corrected, and it worked! For the first, the cart has to be facing a certain way when you compile (not straight forward, it must be facing to the right of where it will be going). I lowered the path_track entities to stop the cart floating. I also disabled the sounds for the final point, instead setting the sound for it to make when it gets captured by blue only. And of course, I added the skybox. 
We must keep on track! September 29, 2008
Posted by metritutus in : Uncategorized , 3commentsWell, the times right now seem to be much full of change. Most of my friends have now gone to Uni, and my main fear is that the forum and clan of Techious will fall into disarray and lack of use. I intend to try my hardest to not let this occur.
Of course there’s little I can really do other than drumming up support and trying to post lots (even in sections that I would not normally post in ). After all, one would say that it’s the admins who should be ultimately responsible for control, posting, management, etc. Regardless, I will attempt to keep the forums and clan active (and hope things won’t be bad enough that I am the only person posting quite a bit).
I’m sure it probably won’t be as bad as that, but I will be vigilant.
Moar job centre September 19, 2008
Posted by metritutus in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farWell my visit some time back to the Job Centre went ok, but I now have another visit due TODAY!
I also failed my driving test on Wednesday, again. 
Still, I’ve finally got my map to load the skybox for everyone properly, and it works!
Now to start work on the next version, as well as to try and do some more on my tf2 map in the works.
I might post a second entry today on the Job Centre meeting as well if I get round to it.