Paul Nicholls

This week, on the advice of a friend I am embarking on a journey into Quintessence’s “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die“.

Originally published as a book, the list is also available on their website in a handy searchable table.

It’s going to be a long task, but I’m looking forward to exploring some new music  as well as revisiting some classics; many of the albums are outside of my normal ‘comfort zone’ and I’m painfully aware that Durham’s bubble doesn’t do much for expanding my auditory horizons these days…

I’ll list all the albums and chart my progress in this post, I’ll also be tweeting my thoughts along the way.

• View The List
• Buy The Book
• Follow my Progress

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Quick bit of example php code to pull people’s details out of the Durham University user database (not LDAP, this is a separate database with slightly different details) – this database is just sitting on the mysql server without a password!

The applications of this database are endless, in this simple example the script grabs everyone from one college and turns it into a handy CSV file you could import into your address book, etc…

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Had a strange problem with a machine at work failing to do a clean install of the latest version (v6.01.223) of Iris Exchequer (Pervasive edition) running on Windows XP… Windows reported the installer as not responding in its final stages and it crashed out.

Running the installer to upgrade other machines to the latest worked fine, but I couldn’t get it to clean install. Couldn’t find any support for this on the internet but after some investigation it turns out those ‘final stages’ are making changes to the registry — the solution it turns out is to manually override the permissions of the Exchequer registry key in HKLM and give all users full access.  (Run regsvr, browse to HKEY_LocalMachine->Software->Exchequer, right click->Permissions).

A public statement issued as the previous JCR Secretary of Van Mildert College, part of the University of Durham

Dearest Mildertians,

I send you this e-mail tonight with a heavy heart, and I hope you don’t consider my sending this under the “Really Important Stuff” mailing list in any way presumptuous. It is however my duty to inform you that, as of 8pm this evening, I have resigned entirely from my position as Van Mildert College JCR Secretary.

I have not taken this decision lightly and the events leading up to this are not straightforward. I will attempt to outline the key points now in the remainder of this e-mail, but I am willing to discuss these matters in more depth with any of you individually as I believe you have the right to fully understand my reasoning.

As some of you may be aware the JCR Chair recently nullified the internal appointments within PA Committee. This decision was taken without informing the individual JCR members involved, and without even knowledge of who the affected members were.

As a member of Exec, as a member of PA Committee and as someone whose position was nullified in this way I am extremely unhappy. In fact I am disappointed with the way this took place and most importantly the JCR Chair’s unwillingness to fully explain the reasoning behind their decision, especially when the decision doesn’t appear to be properly supported by the Constitution and Standing Orders.

Last Wednesday I issued a statement to the JCR Chair and JCR President informing them that unless a satisfactory reason was given for the necessity of this decision, and the matter resolved in a manner myself and the rest of PA Committee were satisfied with then I would have no choice but to resign from my position as JCR Secretary and from the Executive Committee. In a meeting today it became apparent we would not get such a response, and therefore I have made my resignation official.

I cannot be seen to endorse a JCR Executive which refuses to account for its decisions, and refuses to properly support its fellow JCR members.

This is not a decision I have taken lightly. Ultimately the job of JCR Secretary is to keep our members informed of the actions of the JCR. The moment the JCR believes it does not have to account for its actions the role becomes redundant.

If anyone has any questions about this matter, please feel free to contact me on my personal account paul.nicholls@durham.ac.uk

Kindest Regards,

Paul Nicholls

(paul.nicholls@durham.ac.uk)

Returning to college residence might mean the end of bittorrent, but at least we can have ultra-fast internal file sharing again…

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