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.

It is my 16th birthday today, I had alot of fun in town with Charlotte and then went back home to see my sister who was unable to make it to my party last Saturday. Had a great time and really enjoyed myself.

I had my birthday party early as it was the best date for everyone else, I had great fun playing the Family Guy game with my friend Dug and my girlfriend Charlotte. My family came over to see me, but my sister was unable to join us as she was at a festival. We had alot of fun and I had a great time.

All Techtoad websites and services will be down on the 15th of June 2008 for maintenance. No mail will be lost, but mail will be inaccessible for several hours. Techtoad will work as fast as possible to get the servers up and running ready for use. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

I have been doing my GCSE exams at The Gilberd School over the last month or so, I have 3 more to do. Physics, Statistics and Graphics - hopefully they will go well, i'm fairly confident that i am doing "okay" with all my other exams. It's been a long month, but it will soon be over! Been spending my time between exams seeing my girlfriend Charlotte, seeing my friend Dug and working on all my websites.

Please note that i am currently upgrading all Techtoad.co.uk™ websites. You may experience errors or construction pages. Website downtime and slow network speeds are expected. Thank you for your co-operation during this upgrade.

Toadtube.co.uk is now online and ready to use! Thank you to Dug for all the help in development of Toadtube. I will add more features as time goes on, but for now ToadTube is a simple video sharing website allowing anyone to upload videos, no registration required! Please take a look and let me know if you have any suggestions or complaints.

Today I had my Chemistry exam in the morning, I went to fix a problem on someones computer after my exam, then went back to Charlotte's for a nice rest before my English exam in the afternoon. Charlotte kept annoying me as i was trying to write this but i love her anyway :)

Dug came round today, we had great fun playing around with Linux and PHP, Techtoad.co.uk is now hosted on a linux server, running Gentoo. I just want to thank Dug specifically for helping me set up MySQL and teaching me about databases, it is a big improvement to this website! We went down to Sainsburys to buy some Relentless energy drink because i had never tried it before and i really wanted to try some! Had a great day and got alot done. Thanks again  dude! As an additonal note, I have made alot of changes to this website recently, so please allow for erros and bugs, please feel free to report them to me using the contact page.

Thats right, no exams today! Instead, i had a wonderful day with Charlotte. We watched Alice in Wonderland because we ARE cool, and had some great fun arguing about who sits in "the seat" (even though the seat was a corner of a sofa and there were two sofas in the room, we were the only people there.) Despite the argument, it was great fun and just what i needed as a little break between my exams. Pretty much completed the new design tonight, just a few more things to code and a bit more testing before i release it!

Spent my morning with Charlotte before my biology exam in the afternoon, the exam was alright, i dont think i have done great, but i think i did ok. The paper was really shiney and it was difficult for me to write clearly on the paper because my handwriting is already bad, and the shiney paper just made it worse. Never mind. Went home and did some more work on the new design which I plan to release some time next week.

Had my english lit exam today, i'm not great at english as you can probably tell by the poor spelling and grammar on this website... i dont think i did that well, but i am hoping i did enough for a pass. Charlotte had her ICT exam in the afternoon, so i got the bus home again, and continued working on my new site design.

Had my non-calc maths exam thismorning, I was quite surprised to sit down to what i thought was a rather easy paper, i'm farley confident that i did well, and felt quite relaxed afterwards. I got the bus back home and then had a quiet evening making a new design for Techtoad.co.uk™

Had my R.E. exam today, as i expected, the exam was long, slow and boring. I think i have probably scraped a pass, i finished the exam rather early, but still had to sit around waiting for the full 2 hours. After that exam, I am rather looking foward to my Maths exam on Monday.

Today I went into school for the leaving assembly, everyone was shirt signing, where as i chose not to mess up a good shirt, so instead had my face signed instead (view picture). The assembly was really good, very emotional in places and brought a tear to most people. I have now left The Gilberd School, but will soon be going back to do my GCSE exams. Dug picked me up after the assembly and we went home to try and clean my face, which needed alot of alchohol (which stung) hot water, soap and some hard scrubbing - but finally we got all the ink off. My new 24 port 3com superstack switch arrived today and i am very please with it. Had a great day, goining to miss The Gilberd, but now its time to move on in life... I will be attending the Colchester Sixth-Form College where i will study Computing (with additional CISCO), Electronics, Psychology and Business Studeis. Best luck for all my mates for the future!

Tonight was the night of our Gilberd School year 11 leavers party. The venue was a secret and unknown until arrival, by bus. We arrived in Halstead at The Scene Nightclub at around 7:30pm. The venue looked really good, lasers, lights, disco smoke, dancing floor and stage, tables, sofa sitting areas, bar, bar stools, VIP room (air conditioned) and LOUD music. The year group went crazy about it dancing all over the place, well, i suppose "jumping" could be a better description. I went with my girlfriend Charlotte, we tried to"dance" and join in, we probably looked like a right couple of idiots, but at least we had a good time! Nobody was quite sure what to wear on the evening as we did not know where we would be going, but overall, a smart casual look for the boys, and a fashion show for the girls (nothing new there). I have uploaded some photos i took during the party, but they have not come out great. You can find the pictures in the techtoad galleries, or alternativley, click here.