Complaining and etcetera...

Another rushed post I'm afraid, due to further arguments.

I think I had a topic for tonight but it'll have to be brushed aside as if I stay awake much longer I suspect that my mother will burst my eardrums and then give herself an aneurysm. She's doing that thing that mothers (or is it just mine?) do where she continues to point out the obvious and, whenever you agree with her, she just reiterates and narrows down her argument.

She starts out telling you that turning left is better than turning right at a particular corner and then, ten minutes later, she's giving a detailed explanation of why, if you end up in Saudi Arabia with a beaver punched through your torso by a rampaging hot air balloonist, you shouldn't expect any help from her. And then, when you get home and out of hospital after a six hour beaverectomy, why she'll put you on the bus to school.

I've taken to just not responding because it takes less effort than trying to argue and has the same effect on the conversation as a whole anyway.


But enough about that. I'll just link you to a few things then be on my way to bed. I don't even get to have a lie in tomorrow morning since I have to go into hospital again. Apparently, I may have to be doing that for several bloody weeks. Just great. I said I wouldn't go on about that. I'm stopping now. Here are the links.

As one of the five Pokemon Snap fans in the northern hemisphere, I find this immensely interesting.

While the topic is quite funny in and of itself, the comments over at this Joystiq post are hilarious. It's either idiot Americans essentially just yelling “FOOTBALL!!!!” at the top of their lungs before complaining about the rest of the world or it's people from elsewhere (and, let's be fair, a good number of smart Americans) ripping the hell out of the former group.

Wonderful.

I'm going to bed before I worry much more about the whininess quotient of this post being too high.

Slightly rushed due to pain and yelling

So I actually did end up going back to school for that Christmas trade fair thing, having spent most of last lesson dashing around (likely to the detriment of my health) setting up consoles in the Maths room.

It was quite a lot of fun and I would have liked to stay for longer but I don't think I could have actually handled much more walking and standing around. There were a few of us in charge of the video games room, minus the people who just came in there to skive off from doing actual work. We had three 360s running, two system-linked for Halo 3 competitions and one for Guitar Hero, a Gamecube connected to the smartboard's projector (when it wasn't overheating) and a Wii with various titles going as well.

I was mostly responsible for getting money from people (50p for whatever constituted one “go” on the game of their choice) but I ended up being the one who dealt with a lot of the younger kids as well. They all seemed to be having great fun.

There was one kid in particular, probably wasn't more than about 5, that wanted to have a shot on the Halo multiplayer setup. I sat next to him, coaching him through the controls and occasionally giving him a hand while a friends sat at the other Xbox, taking note of when I was talking and when the kid was trying to aim, letting him do some damage, even a few kills, while making a show of taking some potshots at me.

I'd go into more detail, and I might do so tomorrow, but I'm getting into deeper and deeper shit every night trying to stay up beyond my recommended bedtime. I get it bad enough normally but this wound has just made getting to bed early that much more sacred.

The funniest part is all the reminders about how serious this is, how bad it will be if I don't ge it fixed, etc., etc. I have no idea why my parents feel the need to tell me this when I'm the one who can't bend down or take a seat without a cushion thanks %£@*&^$! giant incision in my ass.

Anyway, I'm going to take my painkillers and go to bed before this turns into another whiny post and I get yelled at some more. Have a nice day.

Trade Fairs and Toothbrushes

I've seen CSI get a lot of stuff wrong but I don't quite know how the visual effects guys managed to screw up how contrast works.


My wound is definitely healing a bit now. I'm finding it easier to walk and the new bandage isn't nearly as complex or as large as the previous one. I'm still in bad enough shape to get out of doing any kind of heavy lifting in preparation for the school's Christmas trade fair. Actually, I don't think I even have to help out at all; I'm certainly not hanging around after school until it starts like the rest of my class.

My mum and my sister are heading along anyway so I figure I'll go along (in my own clothes rather than school uniform, so that I can just blend into the crowd if I see any teachers looking like they want helpers) and give a hand to my friends who are running the video games room. They've apparently had a lot of “volunteers” for that section but since they are trying to make money, they're going to have to turn most of them away. Still, they actually asked me to help out so I figure I should do what I can.

I'm also kind of screwed in that I haven't done a rather large chunk of Physics homework. In my defence, I didn't actually have the necessary sheet but I feel like I probably should have noticed that before tonight.

Not much I can do now.


I've got something I'd like to show you tonight. What do you reckon this is?


That's right, it's a toothbrush. Above it is the Apple Remote that I couldn't be bothered moving off my desk, but that isn't really important for the matter at hand.

Now, what do you reckon this is?


It, too, is a toothbrush. My new electric toothbrush, to be precise.

As you can see, it comes with a wide assortment of gadgets and gizmos, some of which wouldn't look out of place on the Starship Enterprise. In the centre are the various heads that can be attached – the ones on the right look semi-sensible, aside from the one in the top left-hand corner, which seems to be for people with... I have no idea. Probably useful for the Enterprise's dental hygienist to have all the same, given the number of different species onboard.

The heads to the left seem to be required for either flossing, scraping or detecting the tachyon signatures of cloaked Romulan ships. Then to the right, past the first set of heads, is some kind of strange and tiny comb that looks a bit like a stylised Blooper from the Mario games.

My personal favourite part is the “number pad” on the far left. Each of those numbers is a sticker which, as the diagram shows, you are meant to affix to the front of the holder. You should pick the number that represents the month three months from now, which is the time after which you're supposed to choose a new head. Never mind that those things last way longer than that and that such a system couldn't possibly work for more than a year with the stickers provided. You get free stickers!

Woo!


Anyway, I need to get up early tomorrow to pack some gaming gear as well as do my usual morning wound washing routine, so I'm off to bed.

Have a nice day.

The Good, the Bad and the Bloody Painful

It's been a long day so I'm going to keep this short.

First of all, my wound seems to be healing up a bit. The pain seems to be a bit milder, which means I've been able to cut back on painkillers, which is good in itself because I generally dislike taking painkillers, as much as they help in this particular situation. Also, one of the side-effects of these painkillers is constipation, which also makes cutting back a nice prospect.

Today was another largely mediocre day at school – there's still the occasional joke (in good taste from my friends and bad from the assholes in the school, also known as “nearly everybody else”) about my joggers and my surgery and trekking around my classes has proven to be a bit of a hassle. Still, I got my Computing project more or less working, simply by overcoming a silly mistake that I should have noticed days ago.

In other news, Billie Piper and her character of Rose Tyler are apparently making a comeback (more here) in the next series of Doctor Who. This should be quite good because, unlike a lot of other characters, Rose and her family had plenty of time and effort put in to develop them and I quite like each of them. And, of course, if the Doctor can finally get some closure then maybe he can quit whining about everything that isn't Rose and start saving the universe in his inimitable happy-go-lucky style again.

It'll be tricky to do, since there was so much emotional investment put into her final scenes and the whole arc was wrapped up so well and tidily that I have a hard time believing that they can pull it off again. Not to mention that with three female companions, at least two of whom are explicitly in love with the Doctor, in the TARDIS at once, there are going to be a lot of ridiculously emotional scenes going on and I don't much like them. I'm not against them as such, it's just that they often seem to jar with the rest of the show.

Still, all I can do is keep an eye out for new information and hope that they manage to pull it off properly.

But this “short” post has, thanks to various angry interruptions, taken almost half an hour, so I reckon that I probably ought to end it now. My final point for today, and one that rather cheered me up, is that I have had an unconditional offer to study Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh next year, not more than a couple of weeks after sending my application away.

Of course, I also got an email telling me that UCAS had just set up a new web tool that let you compare information and ratings for different establishments to help you before you apply. Thanks a load, guys...

Lots of boring ranting

You know, for weeks, maybe months, I thought that this sore bit on my butt was a result of sitting down too much. I figured it'd go away once the school term started (this was back in the summer holidays) and I moved around a bit more. Then, not only did it not go away, it burst and started... well, doing what such things do when they burst. I thought that maybe that was the end of it – the spot or boil or whatever was burst, it would go away now.

But it didn't. It go steadily worse until I eventually talked to my parents about it and got a doctor's appointment. I thought the first round of antibiotics would get rid of it. The fact that that was the “first” round should make it clear that this was not to be. The second, stronger bunch of pills didn't help either.

So then I went into hospital and I was told that I could have it cut out in a minor surgical procedure, that could probably be done under a local anaesthetic and meant at most a one night stay in hospital. I'm not sure if I was being lied to, being dismissed as a fool or if it really was that easy and something went horrifically astray as I lay on the operating table, but none of this “ease” was to ever come about.


I'm not sure where I'm going with this exactly but my point is that a few months back, I had a sore bottom. Now, I'm sitting here being told to take my painkillers and go to bed early so that I can have a salt bath in the morning before having my dressings changed in hospital and showing up an hour late to school.

And I've just had to delete another chunk of text that was just me ranting and raging about people telling me what to do and not accepting yes for an answer.

Fortunately, that was a few minutes ago and I think I've since calmed down. Unfortunately, those few minutes have led me up to the arbitrary half-past ten deadline, meaning that I may well have another infuriating visit in just a few moments.


So anyway, I went into school today for the full day, complete with my little pillow (though I managed to get away with not using it) and a quickly worn down willingness to put up with jokes about my ass and the grey joggers I had to wear for comfort. All the teachers knew about it and most of my classmates quickly got bored and carried on as usual. I got a couple of funny looks as I walked from class to class as well as the odd smart-ass (no pun intended) comment from pupils in the years below.

Of course, unanimous opinion and, more importantly, my personal opinion, is that most of that lot are idiots anyway, so I didn't really pay much attention to them.

The whole thing may get worse tomorrow as I have more classes and thus more walking around, which is bad for both my wound and my patience with getting funny looks but I suppose I'll just have to put up with it.


Skimming back over it, this post has been fairly incoherent and disjointed. That's probably due to constant interruptions as well as tiredness. I do need to get some sleep, I just don't need to have that fact yelled at me for five minutes or more. Thus, I'm going to head off to bed. I'll end by linking you to this story from Worse Than Failure, which is still providing me with much amusement as I trawl through the archives.

An improvement on yesterday's post, at the very least

I left this a bit late again, considering it's eleven o'clock now. And I "promised" (translation: "was told that") I would be in bed by half past. This makes some sense, since I have to be up early tomorrow in order to have a bath, complete with salt, to loosen up my wound padding before it's removed and to have the first shower I've had since Thursday night.

On the bright side, the combination of some strong painkillers and a binary covered cushion that I never thought I'd have a use for is seemingly enough to let me sit here and surf through my favourite locations on the interwebs without too much trouble.

It should also mean that I can get into school tomorrow, though I'll probably be taking both painkillers and cushion with me as well as wearing some old joggers instead of the school's mandated dark grey trousers. To be fair, joggers are a kind of trousers and these particular ones are light grey, so I get by on two out of three points, which isn't bad.

I may also not go in for the whole day. I'll definitely be missing first lesson since I need to go and get the dressing changed again, as I did this morning and will be doing daily until Wednesday and probably every other day for a few days after that. Regular readers will know that I enjoy Mondays because I only have one lesson, Physics, second period, so I can spend most of the day in the common room messing around.

My mother thinks that sitting around there may be a bad idea, but on the basis that the alternative is just sitting around at home instead, I've convinced her that I'll go in and phone if things get unbearable. So we'll see how that goes.

Anyway, I've taken a large number of breaks from writing this post so it's now almost half past. Thus, I need to wrap this up, finish reading some random internet trivia and then get to bed.

I'll leave you with one final point, from the perspective of someone who's spend the larger (I would normally have said "better" there, but it seemed inaccurate somehow) part of the last three days with a large bandage covering much of his buttocks.

That point is this. Despite the ridiculous number of synonyms for “evacuating your bowels” that exist in the English language, very, very few are appropriate for discussion with your doctor.

Have a nice day.

You really don't want to read this.

One of the first things you learn upon having a large wound dressing being put over your ass is that, despite the ridiculous number of synonyms for “evacuating your bowels” there are in the English language, very, very few are appropriate for discussion with you doctor.


Well, I apparently need to go to bed now so I don't have time for a long post. Well, I do but I'm not being allowed it by my mother, who seems to think that 20 minutes of sitting on it instead of lying on it will make my now-removed pilonidal sinus turn into exploding cancer or something.

I really hate doing posts when I'm angry, particularly if I did have something interesting to say before. Okay, so I could blame myself for not doing this earlier in the day, but let's face it, I figured I'd have time now. I planned to do it now. My mother coming into my room and repeating the same bloody points about sleep being good and bleeding copiously being bad for ten* minutes interfered with those plans.

This is why I hate doing posts while angry. Everything I type sounds whiny or irrelevant and like it should be yelled in a nasally voice by someone covered in spots while they run upstairs to their room to cut themselves and listen to music written by people who think they're vampires.

And now I'm getting so ridiculously stressed that I'm actually having trouble breathing. I had no problems like this before but one conversation with my mother, in so far as one person standing in a doorway and shouting at another person can be considered conversation, and I'm near hyper-ventilating. Any second now, she's going to... she just came in through the door and started complaining again.


I'm ending this now while I still have my sanity. I apologise to anyone who sat and read through that. I don't even have time to proofread it, let alone edit it for any kind of tone other than angry and whiny. Like I said, I hate trying to write anything when I'm angry. As always, I'll try to have something better for tomorrow. Possibly even the post that I would have been writing now if I hadn't been chased off to get an extra 20 minutes sleep. And I'll probably not even get that, considering that being ridiculously angry and stress is hardly a state conductive to restfulness.

That's it.





*In my opinion, I am showing incredible self restraint by not putting a swear word here.

My earliest post ever

5 minutes to midnight on Thursday now and I'm making a start on this, Friday's post.

A rather novel system, I think. I may use it again or I may not. I apparently only have 98 more posts, after this one, with which to try it. After that, I can give up my whole one post a day thing. I think I called in challenge.exe for no particular reason back when I started. I've been thinking and I reckon that I'll probably keep fairly regular updates, though maybe not daily. Certainly I won't mind if I don't get a post up, just so long as I produce something each day.

Like getting more of The Grey Line written. I'm taking a notepad and pen into hospital with me tomorrow so I might write a little bit then. Or I may get sidetracked by watching Heroes on my iPhone or playing Phoenix Wright or Phantom Hourglass on my DS. Or maybe I'll react badly to the anaesthetic (got the spelling right in one go, thank you very much) and spend the whole time being sick until I get home on Saturday without the strength to do anything more till Monday. Who knows.


Well, that's midnight now. If I were talking to someone on MSN, I'd probably sign out and then back in again around now, for no particular reason. It's happened several times with different people and it always happens if I'm talking dead on midnight. I don't think it's something to do with MSN (or Windows Live or whatever it's been rebranded as this week) itself, since nobody else I was talking to experienced the problem. Even Sam, who's also using Adium as his chat client, didn't suffer from the same bug.

Very odd.


Well, I'm determined to finish watching an episode of Numb3rs before I go to bed tonight since I've got all the episodes after it up to the end of the first season ready to transfer to my iPhone for later viewing, so I'd better be wrapping this up soon.

I may make an additional post tomorrow if I get home, thus making use of the “al additional” tag that's only ever been used once before. Until then, or until Saturday (when I might manage to get a Woodle up but I promise nothing), have a nice day.


Slightly later edit, at about 10 past midnight: I just correctly predicted the killer in Numb3rs again because they had no other reason to be in the story. I'll get really annoyed if that keeps happening, since it ruins the whole thing if you know who did it from the moment you meet them. And it makes the cast seem really stupid somehow, even though they obviously don't have the same knowledge as the viewer.

Surgery, Scrolling and Schoolwork

Would you believe that there were people playing chess in the common room at school today? I barely believe it, and I was there.


Anyway, it's now 11 o'clock, I'm going into hospital tomorrow and I need to write two blog posts as well as fiddle around with some other stuff. Such as converting some AVIs to iPod format so I can watch them on my iPhone tomorrow while waiting before and after my surgery. Don't worry, I'll put it in aeroplane mode so it doesn't send any signals and screw up some life-saving equipment.

I've had to pack a bag for heading off, since it's possible that, as I've said many times before, I'll have to stay in overnight, meaning I need pyjamas and my toothbrush and so on. I really hope I don't have to since it just adds to the inconvenience, not to mention the fact that I'm not particularly fond of hospitals or the food and beds they have their.

I don't have some irrational phobia stemming from childhood trauma in a hospital or anything, I just have no reason to like them. By necessity and design, they're very clinical and sparse. And, as everyone knows, I very much dislike being away from my stuff for any length of time.


I think that's enough of that for now, though I could continue. Actually, I still might since I'll have to mention it in about 15 minutes when I'm writing tomorrow's blog post...

An idea has just occurred to me. I'm going to be awake past midnight anyway, in all likelihood. So why not just write the post now and post it at 00:01 or something similar? I've actually considered doing this before now, particularly if I wanted a day off. Yeah, I reckon I'll do that. It means I don't have to worry about it going up properly tomorrow and I don't have to rely on Skippy to do something requiring a small degree of competence and timing. Always a good combination.


On an unrelated note, my mouse scroll ball is still acting up. I guess I'll just have to give it a good clean with a damp cloth then turn it upside down and hope that this somehow solves the problem. It might have worked in the past, but I can't be sure.


On yet another unrelated note, my Advanced Higher projects are both coming along quite nicely. I'm definitely getting somewhere with the programming for my Computing project. It's not exactly pretty and it only works in theory right now, but I reckon I can have it finished before the deadline. Unless I get really tied up in all the documentation and testing stuff, which is never nearly as fun as the programming.

I think I've finally figured out what I need to do for my Physics project on antennas. I just need to get a bit more information and then I can make a start on my first experiment. The advantage to my chosen topic, how the strength of a wave varies according to the distance from different types of transmitters, is that I can essentially just repeat the same experiment multiple times for the different antennas and have it still count as separate experiments.

I will get different results that I can use for the theory part, it saves some time and effort in the practical part and the calculation of various tedious but necessary things like uncertainties. I'll still have to do it but since all the data will be the same type, I can essentially just repeat the same method again and again once I figure it out.


That's about it. I think I have time to watch another episode of Numb3rs now as I slowly write my second post of the night and wait for downloads to finish and conversions to stop running. And pack my bag...

My mouse isn't scrolling properly. Again.

Another day passing by far too quickly. I'm fairly sure that I stuffed up at least part of a Maths test but I did manage to get my Computing homework done as well as getting a significant (not exactly large, but significant) chunk of my Computing project completed.

Now all I need to worry about is my Physics project. I'm meant to be doing something on wavelengths and dipole antennas but I really have no idea how or where to go from the basic notes I've got so far. I guess I'll just have to figure it out as I go along.


I really have nothing to say. I just deleted two big paragraphs that I wasn't happy with and I can't be bothered reattempting them. All they said was that, due to a chance that I may be in hospital overnight on Friday, I'll need to write two posts tomorrow and have Skippy upload the second if it looks like I won't be getting out. Also, I'm annoyed that I have to miss school, especially non-uniform day, for the surgery. Just my luck, I guess.


I'll leave with one final thought. Depending on how eloquent and interesting I find it after I've written it, I'll call this either a crappy post or a mini-post.

I've been watching a few crime mystery shows lately, Numb3rs and CSI: New York in particular and, while I like both of these shows, they do sometimes have rather formulaic plots*. Roger Ebert once said (referenced here) that you can often tell who a murderer is in a mystery fiction simply because they have no other reason to be there.

For example, in an early episode of Numb3rs that I watched tonight, I could tell instantly that a character was significant, probably behind it all, because all they did was drop in once or twice to tell their boss, who was being interviewed by the FBI, that they were late for a meeting or needed to sign something.

That may seem fairly insignificant but consider that this role could simply have been ignored. The viewer doesn't need to know what documents need signed. If the boss were late for his meeting, he could simply have looked at his watch before excusing himself. But the writers created this character and the production team hired and paid an actor instead, implying that they had a solid reason to do so.

Sure enough, she was paying for hired hits and had committed some rather nasty (and potentially dangerous) fraud.


Anyway, I'll end this here. And I think it's actually long enough to count as a proper post. Hurray. Now, I could go and watch another episode of Numb3rs or I could go to bed... where's that Rapidshare link?






*Come to think of it, you could say that the whole concept of Numb3rs relies on formulas, if you were really into puns.

Speed Blogging

Okay, bad news, then good news. Bad news is that I still have to do at least some of my Computing homework before I go to bed. Also, I need to do some more Maths revision, including several practice questions. And my toe is infected again. I don't think I've mentioned this here before, but I often fall prone to infection in either of my big toes. It's not a big deal and it mostly goes away if I leave it open to the air and have a few salt foot baths, but it stings like hell when I walk and it's pretty damned inconvenient.

Now, the good news. I've started writing something. I just started thinking about this scene I've had in my head for a good while now and then, all of a sudden, plot elements started clicking into place. I can't promise much, but I do hope to have something to show for it eventually, probably put up on here.

Of course, all that means that I have to get back to work soon so I can only spend about five more minutes on this post. I wonder what I can achieve in five minutes of solid typing.

First up, the new Firefox beta. Keeping up Firefox's well-deserved reputation of being faster and better than Internet Explorer in ever way, the first version 3 beta is out just 13 months after the official launch version 2. Microsoft managed the same feat with Internet Explorer after four years.

There's a whole host of new features being added (as seen here) but you probably won't get to play with any of them. As I said before, this is just the first beta and it's being recommended that no one but experienced testers and web developers play around with it, though there's really nothing stopping you. I just wouldn't recommend it as your primary browser.

Skippy more or less qualifies as a web developer, so I might get him to try running it to see how it works with some of his sites and projects. Personally, I'll wait till something a bit more stable and then try out some of those new features, like the ability to resume downloads, sort my bookmarks in a jillion different ways and... use parental controls. Okay, that last one's not much of a big deal but it should still be awesome.

That's coming up on five minutes now... is their anything else?

I'll take a moment to recommend that you start watching Numb3rs. This show completely passed me by until recently, meaning I now have three seasons worth of episodes to catch up on. And by the time I'm done with that, probably most of the fourth as well. Solving crimes using complex maths may not seem very interesting (it may even sound educational) but, from what I've seen so far, it manages to keep the maths and science believable, unlike certain other shows.

Well, that's my time up. Maybe I'll try some “speed blogging” some other time, since it's been a rather interesting experience. I've got to go do this Computing homework or else my teacher will kill me about, oh, three times. He's already up to twice because I'll be handing it in late and, due to trips (I might talk about that tomorrow but I might not, since it was today and I'll have lost interest in the memories of it by tomorrow) and my surgery, I'll only be having two of my intended five Computing lessons this week.

Don't be surprised if you hear me complaining about my crappy Windows laptop and how I have to do loads of Visual BASIC on it over the next few days.

Herein lies a big long rant about homework, with a surprise twist ending

I'm at that really annoying point in a cold where the problem is less about an occasionally dripping or blocked up nose and more about the fact that said nose hurts like hell because you've been rubbing it with a tissue every five minutes for days on end.


Hmmm. I got distracted by Worse Than Failure again, as well as checking TV Tropes. Which means it's now half past eleven and I've got practically nothing written. Also, I've not done my Computing homework. On the bright side, I have an excuse. I mentioned a while back a sheet that pretty much everyone had lost, in our class of four. By some mad panicking and scannicking, we managed to get copies and more or less get it done.

Well, we got the bit we needed to do done, anyway. There were some more questions that were due for today for half the class and tomorrow for Sam and I (who don't have Computing on Mondays, due to a scheduling problem), that came from the same set of sheets.

Picture the scene. Most of my Physics class is sitting in the study room, madly scrambling to get a piece of homework finished. All the non-Physics people are alternating between laughing at us and having stuff thrown at them. Potter and Jimerson, the other half of the AH Computing quartet, were among them. Then Sam casually asked Potter if he had done the Computing homework that we both knew we would have to do for Tuesday. Jimerson, standing nearby, overheard.

Is it possible to get two priceless looks for the price of one?

Someone, somehow, dug out a copy of the sheets, with ten minutes to go. Those ten minutes were spent in two ways – either doing the newly discovered homework or playing with a toy drum McDonalds toy as near to those in the former camp's ears as possible.

I chose to help with the homework and Sam had to give up on his choice after a while, when Potter broke the electronic drumstick in half. They ended up with some half-assed answers and I shall greatly enjoy watching them both squirm even more when we get that homework back.

Well, I would except for the fact that I haven't even done any of the work. I didn't realise until I got back home that I still didn't have the sheets and neither did my only reliable contact, Sam. I'd normally be able to do them in the morning but there's some kind of school trip going on at precisely the time of my free periods, so that's out of the question.

I suppose I can take solace in the fact that the trip is to the town hall of my home town, meaning that I get to sleep in and meet the school bus party when they arrive. Oh, and I get to wear casual clothes on the trip and for the remainder of the day.


Well, I apologise for that big long rant, which I presume made little or no sense, but I can't be bothered proof-reading it. Partly due to time, partly due to tiredness but also due to the fact that I've just realised something rather depressing. This coming Friday is a non-uniform day at school, which is always good fun.

This coming Friday is also the day I have some minor surgery, meaning that I'm barely in at school at all.

Crap.

...

I wonder if this means I can get away with paying only £1 instead of the usual £2....

Zappers and CSI

My cold's still keeping up. With any luck, it'll be gone by Friday, since I'm having some minor surgery and I'm not sure what'll happen if I'm ill.

Anyway, it's been another passable day in the wonderful world of Alasdair Corbett. What to do for a post... how about some notes?

First off, I've been watching some more of CSI: New York and I've now got into the third series. I'm slightly worried that there hasn't been a single episode without girls in skimpy outfits. I'm not necessarily opposed to the basic principle, it just worries me when a show I like starts showing similarities to CSI: Miami. A show I most definitely [put on glasses dramatically here for no reason whatsoever] don't like. The introduction of uninteresting love interests and apparent mummy issues that appear out of thin air don't help either.

What does help is that mentioning CSI: Miami means that I can link to the everyday happenings of Justice Shades and sometimes Justice's friend, Boberto Consuarlez.

Other amusing things that I feel like sharing are this video, showing a 360 game that gets you a full 1000 achievement points for all of 2 minutes work. What do you reckon the rentals on that go up a bit in the next wee while?

Sticking with a game theme, the Washington Post's views on the Wii Zapper (follow the link on the GamePolitics article) seem a little... odd. I've read the article through and, while it does seem to give the views of some extremely paranoid people (“Why don't they enclose an application to the NRA in every box as well? ... The marketing person who came up with this brainchild of an idea should be fired,” quipped one member of the public) and the usual video game article suspects (a couple of teenagers who like FPSs and don't like trying to string together sentences), it concludes rather well.

Of course, that doesn't explain the big long section about the history of toy guns, particularly water guns being filled with ammonia and other dangerous substances. Since the Zapper is, as one person interviewed pointed out, a bit of “plastic that clips to a video game controller”, you'd have a hard time filling it with any liquid, let alone getting it to fire out of the infrared receiver. I didn't really need to highlight “receiver” there but it does help point out the absurdity of the whole thing.

Hmmm.... I seem to have started off a rant on one of my larger pet peeves, the idea (and the people who support said idea) that video game and simulated violence instantly translates into every problem the world has ever faced.

I'll have to cut it short for now. Maybe once I get out of this depressing little routine of late night posting that I've worked myself into, I'll write something longer on the whole subject. Hell, I could probably write a book on it.


But for now, I need to pack my bag for the morning, move some files around, watch some more CSI and then go to bed. Have a nice day.

Too ill. Can't type.

Ugh. I've had a nasty cold all freaking day. There's nothing quite like a cold (and a CSI: New York DVD box set) to kill your productivity. And your ability to type. Or, as that sentence originally read: “kill your producitivity. And yor abilityt o typi.”

Seriously.

So I reckon I'm just going to make a mini-post and then head to bed, hopefully in order to wake up before 11am tomorrow. If I can achieve that, then I can achieve anything. Except coherent sentences. Damned spontaneous, cold/tiredness-induced inability to type.

All that's left to do now is to point you in the direction of Worse Than Failure (note the initials), an incredibly hilarious site documenting many, many bizarre stories of idiocy and incompetence in IT. Some of the stories require knowledge of programming languages and most need you to have a good degree of computer knowledge in order to get the joke, but if you do, it's great fun.

I really, really hope I never end up working with people like the ones described on that site. Well, okay, I partly hope I do work with some, if only for the comedy value. But I'd hate to be stuck in a company full of them.

That's it for now. Sorry if I missed any spelling errors*. I need to start doing these things earlier in the day. And when I'm healthy.




*No, the ones in the first paragraph don't count, you imbecile.

I had no idea how geeky this entire post was until I re-read it

So, I'm sitting here watching Children in Need while Super Mario Galaxy is sitting downstairs. Why? Simple. A short sketch that may be on sometime in the next hour or two involving both Peter Davison and David Tennant in their roles as their respective Doctors.

Since I don't give a toss about the rest of the Children in Need* and they've just started a segment featuring the Spice Girls, I figure I'll talk a little about my brief experience with Galaxy. So far, I've played it for maybe an hour and a half, tops. And I'm hooked.

It's the first game I've played in a long while when I decide that I'm going to stop, glance at the clock and then do everything in my power to rationalise my decision to grab just one more star. I love this game. It puts a wonderful twist on every trope and formula you've come to expect from the platforming genre, in much the same way as Super Mario 64 did 10 years before it.

I don't know if it'll leave quite as large a stamp on the genre as SM64 did, though. It's not quite that big of a leap from what came before it as that famous wall-jump from 2D to 3D was. It's still an incredible game though and I'd recommend it to anyone who can get their hands on a Wii.

I expect I'll have more to say on the game as a whole once I've played it more. And when I don't have B-list Celebrity Pillock No. 12 crooning away in the background. I don't care about singing or celebrity chefs or dancing news-readers! I want Doctor Who!!!


Okay, just watched Time Crash. Not entirely serious and a few flaws that means that it might be tricky to fit into canon but, hey, timey wimey balls in action.


It's now a few hours later. You know, one of the first things I did after watching Time Crash was discuss it with Sam, one of the few people I know with a knowledge of Doctor Who that's as good as mine, possibly even better.... All right, the only person. Anyway, we were discussing fascinating things, such as how shorting out the time differential between the two incarnations also helps explain Patrick Troughton's aged appearance in The Two Doctors, assuming you don't want to accept the Season 6B theory.

And all the other multi-Doctor specials involved direct intervention by Time Lords, implying that they have a way of circumventing this little anomlay.

Every day, something happens to me to reaffirm my geekiness. It's actually Sam's birthday tomorrow, so I picked up an “I void warranties” t-shirt and some Zelda: Twilight Princess figurines from ThinkGeek and presented them to him at school, where Jimerson also provided him with a Twilight Princess wall-scroll. He seemed to greatly enjoy both and had much fun putting together the figures while he was meant to be doing... well, probably something more school-related.

Every day, something happens to me to reaffirm my friends' geekiness. There are some fairly distinct divides in my year group at school and the lines are drawn roughly along the walls of the common room. The “other” room contains an Xbox and a whole load of people playing FIFA. “My” room contains four consoles from a variety of different decades along with two TVs fitting the same criteria and a whole load of people alternating between Mario Kart, Donkey Kong 64 and co-op Probotector.

There's no real point to any of this ranting. I just find it mildly amusing.

Anyway, my throat's starting to hurt again, as is my head, so that's probably time for me to go to bed. Tomorrow, I'll... wait, I still haven't done last week's woodle, have I? Oh, well. No big deal. It just means I can use the same little Post-It note to remind me.





*Just to clarify, I care about needy children. I just don't like watching celebrities butcher perfectly good songs.

Today was good, tomorrow should be even better

You know what I've decided the best thing about the iPhone is? The internet capability. Sure, it's a great phone and does all kinds of other neat phone-like things (except games, which is the one place that I feel it lets me down), the ability to just pull up any website I want and browse without restriction is incredible.

Take an example from today. I was walking down to the corner shop near the school, as we're allowed to do, with a bunch of my friends. One started talking about his WoW guild* and how everyone hated one particular person, who had recently posted a hilarious photo of themselves on the forums which he wanted to show us so we could mock it.

Ordinarily, this would mean going through the arduous task of waiting until we were back at school with our junk food, going into the common room kitchen, plugging in my USB flash drive, running the browser that lets us get past the filters and then waiting while the page loaded.

Ordinarily.

But, as soon as he started mentioning this possibility, I simply took out my iPhone, punched in the URL and bingo, we were laughing our heads off at some fat and angry-looking Canadian guy that one of us knew from an MMO. If you can think of a better use for instant internet access, then I tip my hat to you, good sir.


So that's my day, so far. There's only half an hour of it left and I intend to spend that doing several things. These are, in rough order of descending importance, Computing revision, Maths homework and Physics homework. The first is the most important simply because Computing is first lesson tomorrow. The latter two are a bit more flexible, though perhaps more important to me personally, since if I can get them done, then I have the whole of tomorrow afternoon off.

And then I come home to play Super Mario Galaxy and watch a multi-Doctor mini-episode of Doctor Who (in the name of charity and all, too).

Tomorrow's going to be awesome. And it starts in 25 minutes... I'm going to post this now, apologies for the brevity.






*Note: anytime I say “a bunch of my friends” you can pretty much just substitute it with “a bunch of geeks” and it still means the same thing.

Nothing Much

So, right now, I'm looking up possible Christmas presents. Is it really that time of year again?


You know, I think I truly have nothing to say. Today was just an average day. We tidied the common room only because failing to do so would result in [insert dramatic music here] consequences. I did a Maths test. We accidentally discovered that the Street Fight EX 2 Plus character Sharon can use a gun. Almost nothing happened in computer club, other than me slightly tweaking a Game Maker game I've been working on each week.

Nothing particularly profound or even particularly interesting happened, as far as I can recall. It was just an ordinary day.

I like ordinary days.

Other people might prefer to do something special or go on a holiday every once in a while to get away from ordinary days, finding them boring. My view on this is that if you find your ordinary days boring, you should change what you do on an ordinary day.

Like most philosophies, it might not hold up brilliantly under close inspection but it works well enough for me.

I'm really just rambling now, making short statements that seem impressive until you think about them. Well, maybe they do. I wouldn't know since I'm not really thinking of them. I'm also trying a little trick of adding a small, single sentence paragraph after some of my longer ramblings in order to add weight to the final statement.

I learned that from Higher English.


So anyway, the throbbing in the back of my head seems to be trying to tell me that I should go to bed. I'll see what I can do about having something more to show for tomorrow's post. Maybe I'll do some more fiction writing. You'll just have to wait and see.

Have a nice day.

I wonder if I could study procrastination at university...

My computer keeps bleeping at random intervals. What is it trying to tell me? That some unknown download is finished? That there's an error somewhere? That someone's stuck down a well? Who knows.


Well, it's twenty five to eleven now and I still have some Maths revision to do... for a test I have second lesson tomorrow... and I don't have first period free... So I really need to wrap this up pretty quickly. What should I do... how about little whining, possibly with some whinging and a touch of complaining and self-doubt?

Okay, so that'd be a bit much. But I would like to apologise to both my readers for the rather lousy updates recently. I seem to go through these periodical cycles where I just go into a slump and can't produce anything. I was hoping that it might have let up after I finally dealt with my university applications but a series of tests as well as an awareness that I'm falling behind on some school projects (Physics in particular, though I'm actually a bit ahead of schedule in Computing) has meant that I'm still feeling pressure.

And pressure, for some reason, leads to procrastination. On a rather random side note, I put up a poster in the common room today that dealt with procrastination. I got it from ThinkGeek along with a recent order of t-shirts (I got three, effectively doubling my extremely limited wardrobe). It was that quite well known one about procrastination; “Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now.” I think it's been adopted as a kind of motto.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh, yes. My procrastinating and lack of effort on various fronts. I need to do more on The Grey Line and the MacTake as well as getting the VersusCOM podcast back up and running. Then I've got half a dozen other little side projects to carry on with. It seems like I've not only bitten off more than I can chew but I've also realised it and now I'm just not bothering to eat at all.

That was a terrible metaphor but it hopefully gets the point across.

Now, I've just had a rather unpleasant conversation (as tends to happen at this time of night, for some reason) and I still need to do that Maths revision so I'm going to call it quits here just as soon as I find a funny link.

Hmm... the treatment of video games in this TV show clip is hilarious. Note towards the end how they load Excel spreadsheets on an apparently unmodified Xbox.

Corbett's guide to arranging tables

Super Mario Galaxy comes out on Friday. I can't believe that. A true new Mario game for the first time in years. With any luck, it'll be just the little push I need to get me into playing more games. Cause there's no way I'm not playing this one. No freaking way. If I stop for several days part way through, you have my full permission to hit me with any blunt instrument you may choose until I start playing again.


Today was a rather interesting day at school, which I'm going to talk about because I have nothing better. I've been meaning for a while now to rearrange some of the consoles and so on in the common room, since they were pretty much just stuck wherever as they were brought in. I've also been meaning to recover a table that went missing (no idea how) a few weeks back, since we kind of needed the surface area.

Since today was the day I have only one lesson (or, as I prefer to call it, part three of my three day weekend) and that was done with by second, I took the opportunity to put the plan into action. With a bit of assistance from some friends (mostly in the area of actually carrying the stuff we needed to move), I managed to get all the consoles plugged in alongside two TVs on the one table. We now have a fully functioning and well planned gaming alcove. I love sixth year.

Someone also told us where we could steal a table from, so we immediately went and got that. It's slightly smaller than the original one but it still serves its purpose well enough. All the room needs now is a bit of dusting and a going over with an industrial strength vacuum cleaner and it will no longer be classified as a slum.

My iPhone, which I just love to talk about, proved pretty popular at school. By the end of the day, the battery was pretty much dead from people toying with it. And that was with about 2/3rds of the year away at some Young Enterprise conference.

Young Enterprise is basically this scheme whereby those who want to can form a “company”, decide on and produce a product, sell shares, create a marketing campaign, etc. Basically, it serves as an introduction to the world of business. The world of business apparently involves a lot of complaining about what your idiot team-mates have chosen as a product, blaming delays on your project leader crying a lot and staying behind after school occasionally. Also, spreadsheets. Lots of spreadsheets.

I'm extremely glad that I didn't decide to do it.


Well, it's getting kind of cold in here and I want to go to bed, so I'm just going to finish this up with a link to something funny... how about a web page dealing with annoyingly common mistakes that people make about the Zelda series? Yeah, that'd do. Here it is.

It's like a commentary track for my life

11:02 Woke up late, annoyingly, and can't be bothered doing much. I've still got to do all that homework and other stuff that I mentioned yesterday, so to free up some time, I'm going to do one of these “blogging throughout the day” posts. Haven't done one of these in a while.

11:52 I've just been looking at the Apple website to try and find some sort of cover for my iPhone, since I'm paranoid about scratches on the screen. One case I found said it offered “full protection” for your phone but apparently left the screen entirely open. So I guess “full protection” means “everything but the most important two fifths of the surface area.

13:13 Looking at university courses right now. I need one more as a back-up in case I don't get into the courses I actually want to do. Problem is, I'm having to go solely by their websites and those are... well, pretty useless. The UCAS course searching system doesn't give a huge amount of detail either. Meh. I'll probably just end up choosing one at random.

14:08 Doing these really reminds me how little I actually do in any given day. I'm doing some Physics revision right now, if anyone cares.

14:46 Decided on my final course choices and tried to send away my application form but the UCAS sites is apparently having some sort of internal error. No idea what that means but it isn't exactly reassuring. I'll try again later. For now, I still haven't done much of my Physics stuff.

16:33 UCAS is still having problems of some kind. I'm basically just sitting here doing nothing while my brother plays Halo 3. I've recently become a little disillusioned with Halo. The first game was excellent and the second added some nice touches and the oh-so-important online multiplayer. But the third... I don't know. Good, but a little samey. Maybe that's why I don't find myself playing it a lot.

Anyway, I still need to do some of that Physics, don't I?

16:43 Just had to unplug one of my precious 6-socket power strips so that I could take it into school tomorrow for the consoles in the common room. Kind of annoying but I can live with it for a while, I guess. Haven't done any Physics yet.

19:25 There was a question on the Wii's Everybody Votes channel that asked which futuristic thing you'd like to have – flying cars or robots. Robots already exist. I voted for flying cars. Based on a different spelling of a slight variation on a typo I just made, I'd also like to point out that I wouldn't be averse to flaying Tsars.

19:43 I can't find my slippers.

19:44 I found my slippers.

21:08 Top Gear just finished a few minutes ago. They were racing from one side of London to another by various methods this week, as well as all the other usual stuff. One of these days, I'm determined to do some crazy stunt like those guys do every week. Schemes may well already be forming.

Also, I have just now discovered that the extendible shaving mirror doohickey in the bathroom next door has two differents modes, accessed by rotating it along the central axis. The one on the other side is all crazy and fun-mirrory. And I still need to do more Physics. And try sending off my UCAS stuff.

21:31 UCAS system is apparently back up and running. So that's my university applications dealt with then. Now, I guess all I can do is wait.

22:52 Well, I reckon that's my day pretty much complete. I'm just going to paste this into Blogger, agonise over the formatting for a couple of minutes and then... do my Physics revision... yeah. Not good. You know what's kind of ironic about this unit? I can understand all the quantum mechanics, but “simple” harmonic motion annoys the hell out of me.

Not about the iPhone. Mostly.

Uh-oh. Haven't done a woodle... and I actually have an idea for one, too. I'll go do that. It's a Stick Guys so it'll take me about two minutes. And most of that will be waiting for Comic Life to load. On an unrelated note, I was just about to write “explode” (or possibly “a splode”) there instead of “load”. I have no idea why.


Okay, change of plans. I got distracted so I'm just going to do this first.

Wish I had some idea of what I was going to do.


Okay, I just tried to do something about my iPhone but I just can't seem to talk about it in a way I'm happy with. Maybe I'm tired. That, and it seems a bit boring. If you're interested in it (or you've seen some sort of UK news source in the last few days), you'll probably know all you need to and you don't much care about my experience of it. Which I'll be writing up for the MacTake anyway.

So, another unproductive Saturday has passed. Tomorrow, I'll probably have to do some homework or something. Actually, I'll have to do a lot of Physics revision, since I didn't do too well in the last test. I was still one of the better ones in the class, it's just that nobody in the class did too well. Kind of a long story. I'll also need to catch up on my Physics and Computing projects, mostly just doing some research for the former and a little bit of programming for the latter.

I'll also need to buy a new 8-socket power strip as part of a Nefarious Scheme^TM to rearrange to the games console/study room in the common room.

It's been a while since I took stock and did a to do list, hasn't it? Depressingly little has changed I suppose, but I do feel I'm closer to getting on track with The Grey Line and I've managed to play some of the games I've been meaning to play. Nothing huge. Oh, and if everything goes according to plan, tomorrow should see me finally send off my university applications. That means that the work ends and the waiting begins.

It should be quite a busy day then. I'll just have to see how that turns out. Right now, I'm going to finish up that woodle I mentioned and go to bed. I'm hoping that if I get up early, I'll be more productive. No idea why. I'm just like that.

I have an iPhone. That is all.

The worst part about getting a brand new iPhone? People insisting on calling you on the home phone from downstairs.


Of course, that's more than balanced out by the various great things about it. As it turns out, only abut five or six people were actually queuing up outside the O2 shop in Ayr so there wasn't too much hanging around. I basically just met up with mum after school and then we passed the time by getting something to eat and walking around shops until they started to shut at around half five. Then we just stood around outside the shop in the little crowd that had formed and talked to the people there. Well, my mum talked. I read Doctor Who Magazine.

But, you're not interested in how I got the iPhone. You're interested in what it's like. Well, maybe you're not, considering it's been out elsewhere for ages, but I'll assume that you are only so I can disappoint you by saying that I'm not going to tell you. I will tell you that, so far, it's an excellent little device but I'll save the full write-up/fanboy gushings for a MacTake article some time tomorrow.


On an different topic completely, today was photo day at school. I dislike photo day, in kind of the same way that dodongo dislikes smoke*. Now that I'm in Sixth Year, I got drafted in on all my free periods to either stand in the hall and wait around or be sent off to some classroom to locate some small child whose smaller sibling was having their photo taken.

It also meant that I had to get my photo taken at some point. Now, I'm not exactly photogenic, partly because I can't just sit there and smile. It always seems really forced. If I laugh or I'm genuinely happy, I'll smile slightly. I can't say that sitting on a stool getting my photo taken is much of an enjoyable experience. But, I got it over with and that's the end of it. Well, until they need to take a photo of the whole Sixth Year as they are apparently planning to do. “They” being the school. Did I make that clear? Doesn't matter, really.

That's pretty much it for today. I had some other stuff to mention which I may talk about tomorrow. For now, I've got to go memorise a new phone number then get some sleep. It might be a busy day tomorrow, depending on what I decide to do.






*This is an obscure gaming reference. Don't worry if you don't get it. Actually, you might want to start worrying if you do get it.

Two days ago was SPARTA!!!!

With any luck, this time tomorrow I'll have an iPhone. My whole plan of hanging around in Ayr with Sam and Skippy has kind of gone bad, after we realised that none of us want to wait outside in gale force winds and biting cold. So, I should still be getting one... I just don't know how, precisely. I'll figure it out.


So anyway, two days ago was the 300th post on TWToday and I'm annoyed that I missed the obvious gag, hence the title today. The day before that was also my 250th post and I didn't mention that either.

You know what? I'm really sorry and all, but I'm talking to someone on MSN as well as trying to do Computing revision and I consider both of them more important than this. So... here's a funny link to something funny that I haven't decided on at the time of writing.

I'm calling this a crappy post and then going back to my sorting algorithms. The title should have been enough for you.

Have a nice day, all 15 minutes that's left of it.

The Writing on the Wall

Our form class took the assembly at school this morning. Thanks to the suggestion of some imbecile in the year below us, our topic for the assembly was... ABBA. Yeah. I don't know either. I just had to read some sentence about the Eurovision Song Contest then stand on stage looking awkward until it was all over. We hadn't done so much as a full rehearsal and it was widely agreed afterwards that on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being craptastic and 10 being craptacular, we were a solid 5.


A funny thing happened in school today. We have one wall of our room (i.e. the room with all the consoles in it) in the Sixth Year common room that's blank, the others having all been painted on in some way. I came in this morning and, while I was doing my usual tidying up of all the cables that somehow get tangled up every day, I noticed that Skippy had written his timetable on the wall. Actually on the wall. In pen.

Philippa, a friend of mine who normally takes up responsibility for keeping the room tidy, asked me about it, since she had been off school for the previous two days. I had to admit that I had no idea and so we questioned Skippy about it when he came in. Well, maybe questioning is the wrong word. I pointed at the wall and said “WTF, Skippy?”, but the end result is the same.

It transpired that somebody had thought yesterday that, since it was a pain in the neck always having to look up your timetable when you forgot what lesson you were missing the first five minutes of to play just one more lap of Mario Kart, they may as well write their timetable on the wall.

There's now about a dozen of the things up there, mine included.

The strange thing is how we each did our own one in a kind of unique way. Mine, as Sam pointed out, was probably the neatest one up there, clearly marked with more or less straight lines and room numbers in the corners of the boxes. His own was a more or less illegible scrawl with half the lessons filled in by trial-and-error and wild guesswork. Sam Potter's was barely visible but written in large letters and with the rows and columns reversed from everyone else's. Skippy's was fairly organised and in a convenient spot by the door, neatly arranged along with several other people's that I think he had also put up.

Other people that I don't mention so much did their timetables in their own way too. Philippa quickly just wrote up one that, while practical and visible, took up about five times as much space as any of the others. Joss's (I've never mentioned him before and probably won't ever again) was left unfinished and mostly blank until Sam Stafford came along and randomly wrote “Biology” in a few places. I have mentioned Jimerson before and his... well, I didn't get a good look at it, but it was near to Skippy's and some of it was probably wrong.

I'm not entirely sure what all this says about each person and I wouldn't want anyone to draw any conclusions based on how my friends draw their timetables on a wall, but, in context, all of them make some kind of sense for each person. Of course, writing your timetable on a wall might not seem to make much sense to begin with but... somehow, for my little crowd of friends and non-hated acquaintances, it does. Otherwise, I don't think I could count them as friends.

iPhones, etc.

Tuesday's aren't my best day. The lessons aren't anything too hard and I have about half the day off (more if you count lunch) but my sister has art club after school, so I have to hang around in Ayr with my mum for an hour or so and then sit in the car while we also take home my sister's friend.

This is a surprisingly tiring experience and it throws off my whole daily routine. Which is bad.

On the bright side, I got to go into an O2 shop and find out some details about the iPhone. It's going on sale at 2 minutes past 6 on Friday evening and I'll hopefully be in the queue to buy one, possibly along with Sam and Skippy. And one of my parental units wielding a credit card.

But like I said, Tuesday is not my most productive day and I didn't get much sleep last night, so I'm going to find some funny stuff to link to then call it a night.

I've been reading more reviews at the Agony Booth and this look at Alone in the Dark has had me in stitches several times. Which, as anyone who knows me will tell you, is no easy thing to do.

Also, here's a funny trailer that some guys put together for a Contra movie. Have I linked to this before? Never mind. Just watch it again.

And here's a nice summary of Google's new Android mobile phone platform. I was dismayed when no one at school had heard of this the day after it was annunced.

That's about it. I'm going to post this now (assuming Blogger is being more co-operative than it was yesterday) and then go back to concentrating on a conversation I'm having with Sam about his dream Volkswagen camper van.


Slightly later edit: Although yesterday's post was up when I looked last night, it isn't there now and Blogger is apparently refusing to publish to some FTP servers. However, I do have a post written and I'll take a screenshot as proof, as I did last night. Hopefully the maintenance will be completed overnight and I can republish everything in the morning.

Muppets, Mondays and Musings

Ever find yourself losing track of time whilst singing Muppet tunes in your head? No? Just me then? Fair enough, I suppose that's better for everyone. It has given me an interesting idea for a machinima though. Might explore that in the future.


I don't think that I can really write much tonight since my hand is killing me. I tripped on some stairs this morning and reached out to grab the banister. Unfortunately, I had my hand spread out in just the right way that I only caught one finger on it, which got bent back a bit. It seemed okay for most of the day, but it is the finger I tend to use for typing and scrolling, which may explain why it seems worse now.

I'm also being forced to go to bed slightly earlier than normal since I was once again caught being up at half past midnight by my dad. Curiously, as with my supposedly bloodshot and sore-looking eyes, my parents are the only ones who notice any adverse effect on my health from this behaviour. How curious.

Anyway, enough teenage whining. I don't really have much to say so I'll run through a couple of things and finish with an interesting thought.

I'm now pretty sure that I want an iPhone for Christmas and I'm seriously considering waiting in line for one at midnight outside the Glasgow Apple Store. May or may not happen, but if it does then I expect that Sam and Skippy will want to tag along.

Of course, this means I won't be able to try out a phone with Google's new OS any time soon. Oh, well. I can only have so many gadgets at once. At least until I get super rich somehow.

I've mentioned before that I was having a hospital appointment today to do with my having a pilonidal sinus (don't Google it, seriously). I had the appointment and it seems that I'm going to need minor surgery to excise it. This will be under a general anaesthetic (meaning I'll be unconscious) and I'll have to take a day off school, possibly two if I'm held overnight, unlikely as that may be.

While I don't really have much control over what day it is that I have the surgery, my mum wants to go with a Monday if possible, since that's the day when I only have one lesson. I'd really rather do it some other day because I very much enjoy my easy Mondays, sitting in the common room with Sam, who has a similar scheduling peculiarity, and watching people come and go. While it would obviously take time to catch up on missed work, it wouldn't really be that hard and I'd rather do that than miss some of the bizarre stuff that happens amongst my friends every day.

Basically, I can catch up on lessons but not on life. Which is a very odd thing for me, of all people, to say. I shall have to ponder that some more.

For now, however, I'm going to bed. Not because I'm listening to my parents but because my finger is hurting like hell.

If someone invented chocolate chip video games, my life would be complete

After going through my usual Sunday routine of waking up late, reading my webcomics (only about eight out of a hundred or so update on Sundays, so it's fairly easy), downloading some software updates and having a mug of Ribena and some chocolate chip cookies in lieu of an actual breakfast, I finally got around to playing Portal today.

I haven't finished it yet, but I got very close to the end before failing a challenge and restarting before I'd even done the previous one. That was the only time I disliked anything about the game and the checkpoint system had worked fine until then. Of course, the fact that I got so far in one sitting does highlight just how short the game is and, as with most puzzle-based games, there's very limited replay value unless you want to do some speed-running.

It's brilliantly atmospheric though and you'll often find that a statement by the slightly creepy computerised voice will make you laugh at the same time as shivers pass down your spine.

You know what I've just realised? I forgot to do a woodle again this week. I'll try to remember for next week, but I really need to just get into a routine, like I have done with my daily posts here. Unfortunately, I seem to have fallen into a subroutine (I'm trying not to make any programming jokes, I really am) where I do them really late at night.

Well, at least I've now pretty much got my university application done. It just needs to get checked over by a teacher tomorrow and then I should have it sent away by the end of Tuesday. I may well spend a whole lot of time worrying about getting information back but I suspect it'll be more like my exams, when I just got them over with and more or less forgot about them until the envelope got tossed on my desk.

I also managed to play a bit more of Half Life 2: Episode 2 today and was hugely impressed by it as well. More than any other game, Half Life's plot always manages to keep me interested and guessing. My only grievance is that so far, at about halfway through this expansion pack, I've fought a lot of ant lions and relatively few enemy soldiers.

It's really a very minor problem and I'm sure I wouldn't even have noticed it if it weren't for Halo 3, where I rapidly tired of fighting the Flood and rarely replay those levels. I prefer having more options when attacking my enemies than “AAAAARGH!!!! Where's the shotgun?! I need another energy sword!!”. Half Life does add a slightly tactical edge with different variations of ant lions, “thumpers” which hit the ground and drive them away, providing a temporary safe haven, and the ability to command the creatures at points. But in Halo, the Flood always disappoint me after I've just found the fifth way to kill the Scarab walker in the previous level.

I wonder if that type of enemy is worth writing up for TV Tropes... Might give it a shot, see if anybody else has some ideas. But that's all from me tonight. I may put up a short-ish post tomorrow before I go for a hospital appointment and then edit it later, just in case. I doubt it'll be a problem, but the appointment's relatively late and it's a bit of a drive... and I've got some homework to do then as well... Yeah, I'll figure it out as I got along.

Have a nice day.

Too... wow, I've started a lot of titles with the word "too"

My parents were having their annual fireworks party tonight so I got stuck dealing with various people that I don't know and didn't like talking to very much. Fortunately, they all left me alone after a while so Sam and I just sat around doing our usual thing – viewing Flash cartoons, discussing anime and watching The Best of the Muppet Show, Volume 1.

Unfortunately, that took a while and now it's half past 11 and I haven't really got anything written. Now, I need to go eat cereal for 10 minutes (don't ask, it's a weird habit and a long story) so I'll finish this as best I can when I get back and just post it as is. Even if I mention Weebl and Bob or that Weird Al movie that I keep meaning to get on DVD, I won't even bother to add in my usual hyperlinks to the text, as much as it may pain me not to do so.

And I'm back. I always think that that's a really weird thing to do, considering you have no way of knowing how long, or even if, I was actually gone. Maybe one of these days I'll say that I'm going to take a break and then just keep writing so that you'll think I took time away when in fact I just wrote everything at once.

Or maybe I won't. Because that's a terrible idea and it's way too late at night for me to trust anything that I think of. So, as I always do at the end of these posts, I'm going to bed. If you're really lucky, I might bother to do some basic formatting before uploading this. No promises.

Not much to say

You remember yesterday that I wrote about my “weird day” and all the stuff that happened in it? That originally came about because I wanted to write about the strangely ironic situation of trying to choose new glasses while your old ones are getting mended – you can't see the frames you're meant to be looking at. Even if you have your actual glasses, it's still impossible to see what you look like with the new pair without leaning in ridiculously close to a mirror. Assuming you're near-sighted, as I am.


I haven't much to say today. I'm feeling slightly more up to writing some of The Grey Line and maybe a few sketches, since my homework load has lightened a bit and university applications are almost behind me, just a few technicalities to sort out. I've also been working on designing a small puzzle game in Game Maker, which I started fiddling around with when only a couple of people turned up to Computing club. If it happens again next week, we're just installing some game demos (it's been done before) and playing them instead.

I'll see if I can get some of that done tomorrow, in between working on a couple of school projects and preparing for a fireworks thingy my parents are having. That could be amusing, hypothetically. Oh, and I've also got to play Phantom Hourglass, Metroid Prime 3, Half Life 2: Episode 2 and Portal. I've really fallen behind on my gaming, damn it.

Like I said, not much for today. School was fairly uninteresting, on the whole. It wasn't bad, I just can't remember there being much to talk about. Well, I can remember a couple of things but it's late and night and my hands hurt for some reason so I'm just going to quit now.


But one final note. Nobody ever really leaves comments here but I've been having some trouble with spam comments on a few posts. To save me some effort, the comments are now being moderated, so if yours doesn't appear instantly, don't give up hope. I'll get to it eventually. Or dismiss it as spam. Whatever.

Now that I come to think about it, it's not really all that weird

Today has been a weird day. It started off fairly normally with some meeting about my class arranging part of the school's Christmas trade fair followed by Physics first lesson, part one of a double period.

I guess the weirdness started with an animated character in a short DVD bit we were watching looking and sounding surprisingly like Dr Breen from Half Life 2. Well, the faces look similar – the DVD character was wearing some kind of superhero outfit with a large “Q” on it, which I can only presume stands for quantum, the subject of the short.

The second Physics lesson supposedly consisted of research into our course projects but ended up as more of a discussion on how to break through the firewall (we succeeded, by the way) and what was the best way to get TV programs and movies off the internet. Our teacher tends to use BitTorrent, apparently.

I spent a fair chunk of an afternoon study period not playing Street Fighter, which is weird in and of itself. Instead, my friend Sam Stafford (you'll see why we need to use the Stafford in just a second) was giving out some riddles. One in particular had a few people stumped but, between us, myself and Sam Potter (there you go) managed to crack it. Half of the rest of the year stormed in in quick succession demanding the answer and promptly being given it.

All except one, the first person Stafford had given the riddle to. She agonised over it for an hour or so, eventually drawing a small crowd of those who had beaten the answer out of others. She got closer and closer until someone finally just revealed the answer so we could all go to next lesson. There were no survivors.

Give or take a few survivors.

Also, at some point, several people started to play “the game”. This arcane ritual, spawned somewhere in the depths of the internet, cannot be won except in exceptional circumstances. The only way to lose is to think about the game and loss is generally assumed (by our rules, there may be others out there) to occur if you just hear about the game or see it written down somewhere. Thus, we all spent a great deal of time telling each other about it.

We once used about 20 sheets of paper and managed to get one guy coming into the room (it was on a note held to a dartboard with magnetic darts in front of the door) and when he opened his locker immediately afterwards (this was where another 18 sheets were). The final sheet would have been the clincher, but people aren't polite enough to shut the door behind them, so he didn't see it.

It sounds simple and bizarre (and, really, it is) but it can provide distraction for a surprising amount of time.

The final example of weirdness to occur today, that I can be bothered to remember right now, involves some Computing homework. You see, I had been planning on doing said homework tonight. Then I got home and discovered that I didn't have the sheets that I needed. This, I thought, was strange, since I'd already used the same bundle of sheets to do two previous pieces of homework. I applied my impeccable logic skills and determined that I must have lent it to someone.

There are four people in my class, all of whom are absent-minded and lazy enough to be candidates. I pretty much gave up hope, mostly because I couldn't be bothered, and went on with whatever I was doing at the time until Sam Potter got in touch asking for help with one of the questions. I told him that I hadn't got them so he scanned his sheets in and sent them to me.

While he was doing that, Jimerson got in touch with him to ask if he had the sheets, since Jimer evidently didn't. As both Potter and I laughed at this, I joked that he should ask Sam Stafford if he had them. Turns out he didn't.

The final twist in this little tale? The scanned sheets that got distributed around weren't actually Sam Potter's. They were mine – he was the one who had borrowed them for the last piece of homework.

Actually, I lied. The final twist in the tale is that I got sidetracked a little and haven't done that homework yet. Or done any revision for the test we have tomorrow. So I'm going to go do that. Seriously.