I’m hunting houses…

Well flats mostly to be honest. After a week of trying to study for CCIE and viewing wedding venues and prices, I find myself in the Holiday Inn in Reading with my colleague while we look for a place to base ourselves when the next phase of our work begins. While we will be working in two different teams, the scope of work will be roughly the same, so we will benefit from the shared knowledge and at the same time, it means I don’t have to pay a fortune to live somewhere on my own over here (I can imagine it costing me £2/300 more than sharing.

We’ve seen some nice places and some..no so great ones. The housing market in Reading actually seems to be pretty limited so we really need to jump on something once we find it. Out of the 5 places we have viewed today, there was two that we have both liked, although we seem to be revolving around one in particular, but there is still plenty to view in the next day so we shall see how the rest of the time pans out.

Meanwhile, CCIE study is starting to scare me a little. There are some parts which I am really confident about but at the same time it is far to easy to forget simple little things – like neighbour statements on non-broadcast multiple access frame relay networks using OSPF – this stumped me for about two hours the other night, even though I had used them on a previous lab.

Other tricky things I  have come across include Layer 2 protocol tunnelling – something I had never heard of before but is required to run ODR between two routers connected via a switch. So there is a lot still to learn and a lot still to practice. I will keep trying for the exam but part of me is pretty certain that I won’t get it the first time.

Time to wrap this up as there is another property to view – not many pictures I’m afraid as most of the apartments were actually occupied but keep checking out the photoblog.

With Wikipedia announcing its complete opposition the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) it has also announced that tomorrow, the 18th January 2012, it will remove its English language website from the Internet for 24 hours. Several other websites such as Boing Boing and Tucows will also be joining in the strike. The website http://sopastrike.com/ has been rallying website owners, bloggers and anyone in opposition to SOPA to join together and blackout their sites from the internet for 12 hours between 8am and 8pm EST. Super-Zero will be participating. Both Super-Zero and the Super-Zero PhotoBlog will go offline at 00:00 GMT+1 and remain offline for 24 hours.

For those not familiar with SOPA, it is a bill introduced in the US which will allow domains associated with copyright infringement or file sharing to be erased from the internet, regardless of whether or not the site is US based. The bill also gives the US Justice department the power to instruct ISP’s to block the domain, stop advertisers from affiliating themselves with the sites, and stops paymnent services, such as PayPal, from doing business with the website in question.

THIS IS A POWER NO-ONE SHOULD POSSES.

The internet is a free medium. It always has been, and it always should be. It is the personification of our freedom of speech, thought and actions as human beings and to have that controlled by ANYONE is an infringement of our human rights, the right to share knowledge, experiences, msuic, ANYTHING. No-one should have the power to stop that.

The vote for the bill to be passed will occur on January the 24th 2012 - I urge you all, anyone who reads this, to please head over to http://sopastrike.com/ and register your support. If you have a website, blog, even a Tumlr – take it down in a show of what damage a censored internet can have. and tomorrow, the 18th January, Tweet, Facebook and share as much as you can about SOPA, the SOPA strike, using the #SOPASTRIKE on all your tweets.

It’s not often I believe in something enough to take strike action, so I urge you all to join in and support this movement. Keep the internet a free and open media!!

The Super-Zero PhotoBlog has launched today!!

So I have been hyping this up for the last few days, but what exactly it? Well the photoblog is a daily updated blog consisting mainly of pictures It will be a day-to-day journey through my photography, influences and hobbies. Some posts will have blogs or small explanations accompanying them while others might just be pictures, or a gallery of images.  I spent quite some time getting everything up and running  as stable as possible, so I really hope you enjoy it.

Check out the photoblog at http://photoblog.super-zero.co.uk/ – Also keep an eye out for post on twitter with the tag #SuperZeroPhotoblog

Also, to accompany the launch of the site and to keep me actively photographing, I have upgraded my Canon IXUS 70 to a Canon IXUS 220HS which should be with me this week. Expect a full review!

From the world of reddit, this was passed onto me today (Thanks Bill). It’s an amazing story (in rage styling) of a 86 year old’s man journey through life – War, Alcoholism, Family and Internet. What struck me most is that it shows how much there is to discover and how you are only as old as you feel. Seriously, I encourage you to take the time to read it. Well worth it.