That price was in Brighton. I nearly found a contract there. I looked at flats, and every place was up in the 800's. Not that they were even anything to look at. One place was right next to a woodyard, another had recesses in the walls for tenants to leave their rubbish, In another,the owner had crammed all the furniture into one room, locked the door and rented the place out as a one-bedroom flat.
Fortunately, I'm up in Edinburgh and can rent a two-bedroom for 500 pounds. Although in areas close to Ed. Uni, a two-bedroom goes for 2000 pounds/month ($3000/month).
>Did your figures perhaps refer to Cambridgeshire, the county, rather than just Cambridge, the city?
I read a news report talking about the housing shortage, and how thousands of people were commuting from Huntingdon to Cambridge. By graduates I would assume they meant anyone with a degree.
A google keyword search on "Huntingdon Cambridge commute" brings up a good few web-pages.
Several web pages definitely describe there being 50,000 people commuting into Cambridge each day.
Although I do find it hard to believe there are 13,000 companies.
Are there many Internet TV stations playing original material out there?
They all seemed to have gone.
After getting broadband I remember watching a couple of channels. The first was this hippy couple in a real flower-power studio.
The other was a channel playing short plays. One particular play was about these two Mormons who meet a patient who claims to be an angel who is lost on the planet. Interesting outcome.
My only other entertainment is getting my fix of Mad TV from Kazaa.
That's very much the experience I had while searching for employment across the UK.
After going through many agencies, and getting
over 15 interviews, I couldn't find employment. All but two were just looking for entry level graduates to do software development, with anyone over 28 working as a project manager.
Two required me to sign NCA's promising to not work for any similar company anywhere else in the world. Too bad they've both downsized a year later!
Otherwise, the salaries advertised were nowhere the figure actually offered. Given the fact the monthly rents for a flat in the
South of England starts(!) at 850 p/m that doesn't leave much out of 20K/year.
The outcome of each interview was always the same. If I got all the questions right in the technical interview, then it's "Well done, how would you like to be a manager". Otherwise, it's "Oh, you got several questions wrong, you're getting rusty, how would you like to be a manager instead?).
Other replies included "Undoubtably you could do the work of two or even three graduates, but in this current situation, we can only offer you the position as a manager" or "What else can you do that a graduate can't do?". Some were even downright abusive. On stating that I enjoyed working out at a fitness centre, the director became abusive and asked "What's wrong with running in the street?"
Some agencies also asked really stupid questions: "Do you want to rent a flat or buy a house?". After replying "Rent initially, buy a house later", the agent became confused.
Fortunately, I managed to find a vacancy for a Ph.D studentship and was offered the position without having to attend an interview.
Who you know, not just what you know seems to be
very true these days.
Becoming self-employed is my goal. I read that Cambridge UK employs over 55,000 graduates in 15,000 companies.
What amazes me is the number of people who use Morpheus and Kazaa, and still keep their CV's resumes, reports, documents, cover letters, bank statements, sales figures, visa applications in their shared directories.
The same thing happened to me once. The electricity in my apartment complex was always a bit iffy. Especially on cold mornings, the first electrical appliance switched on (light bulb usually) risked being killed by a power surge.
Unfortunately, one morning my PC was the first appliance to be switched on, my secondary hard disk drive started up, made a load 'pop' noise, and ground to a halt.
Opening up the PC and inspecting the disk drive I noticed one of the surface mount capacitors/resistors on the controller board had burnt out. That really, really got me down, 40 Megabytes of stuff gone. I'd used 'fastback' to keep my system files backup, but not downloaded stuff.
Fortunately, there was a happy ending to this story, as I managed to find a spare controller board in one of the junk boxes of my employer.
My employer stored all the old bits of PC hardware in boxes for anyone to scavenge. Whenever an old PC was to be thrown out, it was cannabalised into it's component parts. As luck would have it, there was a spare controller minus the disk drive sitting on top of a pile of old hard and floppy disk drives.
I took the card home and installed on the disk drive and re-assembled my PC. Powering up the PC
I crossed my finger and hoped everything would be
OK again.
And it was.
Morals of the story:
1. Always get surge protection for your PC
2. Always keep backups
3. Try and see if you can find spare parts if
anything breaks.
I had to write an in-house report on the history of graphics accelerators. From what I've researched so far, the video bus seems to double every 24 months, while the GPU doubles every 12 months, and the CPU speed doubles every 18 months (Moore's law).
Here's a table of bus speeds I drew up:
Year introduced Bus type Bus data width (Bits) Transfers per bus clock cycle Bus speed (MHz) Data transfer rate (megabytes/second)
1981 PC/XT 8 1 4.77 - 8.3 3.25/7.90
1985 ISA 16 1 8.3 6.50/15.9
1988 EISA 32 1 8.3 31.80
1987 MCA 32 1 8.3 20.00
1991 VL-BUS 32 1 33 to 50 127.2/132.00
1992 PCI 32 1 33 127.2/132.00
1995 PCI 2.1 64 1 66.67 508.60
1996 AGP x1 32 1 66.67 254.30/266.00
1998 AGP x2 32 2 66.67 508.60/533.00
1999 PCI-X 1.0 64 1 133.33 1017.30
2000 AGP x4 32 4 266.67 1017.30
2002 PCI-X 2.0 64 2 (DDR) 266.66 2100.00
2002 AGP x8 32 8(ODR) 533.33 2100.00
2002 PCI-X 2.0 64 4 (QDR) 533.33 4300.00
2003 PCI-X 3.0 64 8(ODR) 1066.66 8500.00
2003 HyperTransport 32 2 (DDR) 800.00 16000.00
The speed increases aren't just marketing. The video bus has to keep being faster than the needs of the graphics card, otherwise board makers will start designing custom bus solutions to solve the bandwidth problem.
However, I don't understand why AGP x8 has been made incompatible with AGP x2. The only reason seems to be to force people to dump perfectly good PC motherboards.
More practical uses could be for a motion capture
system.
Another use would be to attach RFID's to medical equipment (swaps, retractors) etc... and search patients for anything left behind.
Slashdot Mirror
That price was in Brighton. I nearly found a contract there. I looked at flats, and every place was up in the 800's. Not that they were even anything to look at. One place was right next to a woodyard, another had recesses in the walls for tenants to leave their rubbish, In another,the owner had crammed all the furniture into one room, locked the door and rented the place out as a one-bedroom flat. Fortunately, I'm up in Edinburgh and can rent a two-bedroom for 500 pounds. Although in areas close to Ed. Uni, a two-bedroom goes for 2000 pounds/month ($3000/month).
>Did your figures perhaps refer to Cambridgeshire, the county, rather than just Cambridge, the city? I read a news report talking about the housing shortage, and how thousands of people were commuting from Huntingdon to Cambridge. By graduates I would assume they meant anyone with a degree. A google keyword search on "Huntingdon Cambridge commute" brings up a good few web-pages. Several web pages definitely describe there being 50,000 people commuting into Cambridge each day. Although I do find it hard to believe there are 13,000 companies.
Are there many Internet TV stations playing original material out there? They all seemed to have gone. After getting broadband I remember watching a couple of channels. The first was this hippy couple in a real flower-power studio. The other was a channel playing short plays. One particular play was about these two Mormons who meet a patient who claims to be an angel who is lost on the planet. Interesting outcome. My only other entertainment is getting my fix of Mad TV from Kazaa.
That's very much the experience I had while searching for employment across the UK. After going through many agencies, and getting over 15 interviews, I couldn't find employment. All but two were just looking for entry level graduates to do software development, with anyone over 28 working as a project manager. Two required me to sign NCA's promising to not work for any similar company anywhere else in the world. Too bad they've both downsized a year later! Otherwise, the salaries advertised were nowhere the figure actually offered. Given the fact the monthly rents for a flat in the South of England starts(!) at 850 p/m that doesn't leave much out of 20K/year. The outcome of each interview was always the same. If I got all the questions right in the technical interview, then it's "Well done, how would you like to be a manager". Otherwise, it's "Oh, you got several questions wrong, you're getting rusty, how would you like to be a manager instead?). Other replies included "Undoubtably you could do the work of two or even three graduates, but in this current situation, we can only offer you the position as a manager" or "What else can you do that a graduate can't do?". Some were even downright abusive. On stating that I enjoyed working out at a fitness centre, the director became abusive and asked "What's wrong with running in the street?" Some agencies also asked really stupid questions: "Do you want to rent a flat or buy a house?". After replying "Rent initially, buy a house later", the agent became confused. Fortunately, I managed to find a vacancy for a Ph.D studentship and was offered the position without having to attend an interview. Who you know, not just what you know seems to be very true these days. Becoming self-employed is my goal. I read that Cambridge UK employs over 55,000 graduates in 15,000 companies.
What amazes me is the number of people who use Morpheus and Kazaa, and still keep their CV's resumes, reports, documents, cover letters, bank statements, sales figures, visa applications in their shared directories.
:)
(Those are all useful keywords to search for
The same thing happened to me once. The electricity in my apartment complex was always a bit iffy. Especially on cold mornings, the first electrical appliance switched on (light bulb usually) risked being killed by a power surge. Unfortunately, one morning my PC was the first appliance to be switched on, my secondary hard disk drive started up, made a load 'pop' noise, and ground to a halt. Opening up the PC and inspecting the disk drive I noticed one of the surface mount capacitors/resistors on the controller board had burnt out. That really, really got me down, 40 Megabytes of stuff gone. I'd used 'fastback' to keep my system files backup, but not downloaded stuff. Fortunately, there was a happy ending to this story, as I managed to find a spare controller board in one of the junk boxes of my employer. My employer stored all the old bits of PC hardware in boxes for anyone to scavenge. Whenever an old PC was to be thrown out, it was cannabalised into it's component parts. As luck would have it, there was a spare controller minus the disk drive sitting on top of a pile of old hard and floppy disk drives. I took the card home and installed on the disk drive and re-assembled my PC. Powering up the PC I crossed my finger and hoped everything would be OK again. And it was. Morals of the story: 1. Always get surge protection for your PC 2. Always keep backups 3. Try and see if you can find spare parts if anything breaks.
I had to write an in-house report on the history of graphics accelerators. From what I've researched so far, the video bus seems to double every 24 months, while the GPU doubles every 12 months, and the CPU speed doubles every 18 months (Moore's law). Here's a table of bus speeds I drew up: Year introduced Bus type Bus data width (Bits) Transfers per bus clock cycle Bus speed (MHz) Data transfer rate (megabytes/second) 1981 PC/XT 8 1 4.77 - 8.3 3.25/7.90 1985 ISA 16 1 8.3 6.50/15.9 1988 EISA 32 1 8.3 31.80 1987 MCA 32 1 8.3 20.00 1991 VL-BUS 32 1 33 to 50 127.2/132.00 1992 PCI 32 1 33 127.2/132.00 1995 PCI 2.1 64 1 66.67 508.60 1996 AGP x1 32 1 66.67 254.30/266.00 1998 AGP x2 32 2 66.67 508.60/533.00 1999 PCI-X 1.0 64 1 133.33 1017.30 2000 AGP x4 32 4 266.67 1017.30 2002 PCI-X 2.0 64 2 (DDR) 266.66 2100.00 2002 AGP x8 32 8(ODR) 533.33 2100.00 2002 PCI-X 2.0 64 4 (QDR) 533.33 4300.00 2003 PCI-X 3.0 64 8(ODR) 1066.66 8500.00 2003 HyperTransport 32 2 (DDR) 800.00 16000.00 The speed increases aren't just marketing. The video bus has to keep being faster than the needs of the graphics card, otherwise board makers will start designing custom bus solutions to solve the bandwidth problem. However, I don't understand why AGP x8 has been made incompatible with AGP x2. The only reason seems to be to force people to dump perfectly good PC motherboards.
More practical uses could be for a motion capture system. Another use would be to attach RFID's to medical equipment (swaps, retractors) etc... and search patients for anything left behind.
Just wondering... Did you ever have to microwave a microwave?