Last Day in December

So what have I achieved this year?

I passed my Higher exams and did very well, English notwithstanding. I won the Cup for Higher Computing and I've been helping out at the school's Computer club, educating the younglings in the way of the Force basic computer programming and animation. I entered Sixth Year at school and everything there seems to be going fine. I applied to and was accepted by several universities for the course of my choice.

Outside schoolwork, I managed to keep going with this whole once-a-day post thing, minus a few uploading problems and holidays. The important thing is that it averages out properly. I at least made a start on some of my writing projects and have plans for plenty more.


What have I failed to achieve?

I've not done nearly as much writing as I'd hoped to have done. I also had plans for working on a few game designs and prototypes but not much has happened there so far. Progress on my little sketch show comedy project has been... non-existent. The VersusCOM podcast, along with my plan for VersusCOM in general, is still on hiatus.


That's a fairly short and blunt summary but it marks out a few goals to work on come the new year. I'll try to write them down into some actual resolutions tomorrow. Maybe if I call it a list of resolutions instead of a to do list, I'll actually do some of it. Or resolve some of it. Whatever.

I got dragged out of bed fairly early this morning to go to the hospital for a dressing change. It was a real shock to my system for some reason, possibly because I'd just had a couple of days where I could actually lie in because the district nurse was coming in later than normal. I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to need these daily dressing changes – everyone who examines it keeps saying how quickly it's healing up and how small it's getting but no one will give me even an approximate time until I can stop.

Anyway, the point is that the lack of sleep is starting to catch up to me now so I'll try to keep this short.

Not much success so far, unless you're only comparing it to the last two days' posts.

I expect that there'll be a lot of people staying up late and letting off fireworks and so on once midnight rolls around. That'll probably be annoying for a few minutes and then subside so that I can get some rest. I've never been one to do anything special at the end of the year. It's always been just another night, arbitrary calendar designations notwithstanding.

Wow, that's twice I've got to use notwithstanding in one post.

Thrice.

And I got to use thrice as well. Awesome.

That's enough I think. More tomorrow next year.

From July to December

I believe that yesterday, after some problems getting the stupid post to publish on time, I had just finished June. Over the last 16 years, I've noticed that June is usually followed by July so we may as well follow that pattern here.


July was of course in the summer holidays. I alternated between lazing around, buying stuff on eBay and occasionally producing something of merit. I went driving for the first time at that off-road place that'll show you the basics before you can go on the road. Sam and I went a couple of times but I didn't enjoy it much and I thought it was a waste. Now I have a copy of the Highway Code sitting on my floor and I'm going to need to start reading it at the beginning of February.

July was also when I first received the NESi along with a load of other eBay stuff as Sam and I entered our seasonal pattern of buying loads of crap to tinker with in the summer. We still need to sell those NESi, along with... well, the loads of crap we bought to tinker with and never used.


August... More of the same, really. Summer would have been drawing to a close but the only truly significant event to differentiate it from July and the couple of holiday days in June was that I got my exam results. Despite my confidence at the time and my A in the prelim, I somehow managed only a C in English. I hadn't been expecting to do brilliantly but given my track record I thought I would manage a B at least.

Fortunately, it turned out that I wasn't alone. Many of my classmates and, indeed, many students around the whole of Scotland had got English results that were much lower than they or there teachers had predicted. The teachers said that they were doing their best and that the course was useless and the SQA said that the course was fine and the teachers were useless.

I'm paraphrasing slightly but over the next few weeks and months, the slagging match subsided and a couple of official investigations were launched. I eventually got up to a B on appeal which seems to have served me fine, looking at my university offers, but I know a lot of people who got really screwed over by that exam and none of the investigations and changes for the future were going to fix that.


We returned to school in the last few days of August but most of the interesting stuff took place in September. Those first few days, all we had was a beaten up old SNES that we used for huge Street Fighter II tournaments. The class hadn't divided itself up into rooms as it has now. I know this was only a few months ago but it all seems so strange.

September was also when we first had to start thinking seriously about university applications. I'd always had some ideas about doing Computer Science but I really didn't know where or even if I definitely wanted to do it at all. Nevertheless, I made some progress towards making choices and writing my personal statement.

That month was also when I first made some posts on Corbett's Fiction. Unsurprisingly, I've done almost nothing since then. I suppose the concepts have become a bit clearer in my head if that's any help.


All these recent months now begin to blur together so I get the feeling that I'm going to have to refer to a lot of posts from October to get my facts and memories straight. Don't expect me to link to them; that's far too much like hard work.

So many things happened then that seem so long ago... I apparently got my new chair then but I'm so used to it now that it seems like it's always been here. It was Erin's birthday and so we used Citizen Cane again. You know, I think I forgot to mention that big ol' cane anywhere else? Looking back it seems we built him in March. It felt so much more recent than that...


Moving on, it was in late November that I had my surgery. That's still bugging me now but, again, the surgery seems so distant. I'm not sure why. We had our annual fireworks party in November as well. I remember talking to Sam a lot because I didn't like anybody else there. We watched The Muppet Show while everyone else was downstairs eating a meal together, proving once again how anti-social and geeky we are. Oh, and after a long wait, both in a queue outside the store and in the many months beforehand, I got my iPhone. Well worth it, I believe.


December... do I even really need to go into that? Last week and a bit of term, if memory serves; not much going on – watched some films in the common room, cleared out the common room, went to last ever Christmas service, went home, had holidays, had Christmas, ended up here, doing this.

That's pretty much it.


And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my year. It seems like there's a lot I haven't mentioned - going to the computer club each week and helping out the kids there. Sam finally asking out that girl he'd had a crush on for months. All the stuff we did to Jimerson's locker.

It's strange how my recent memory blurs together. Perhaps I only remember the best bits in the long term, making the short term feel a lot more cluttered and connected. Major events like picking a university and doing projects each take so much time that I can't put a precise date to them or relate the details of a single event.

Maybe it was a mistake to go through the year chronologically rather than just think of the highlights. I think tomorrow I'll pick out my favourite bits and put off sharing my resolutions until January 1st.

Yes, that sounds like a plan.

From January to June

I said I was going to do something where I looked back on the year, didn't I? Well, I've got nothing better to do, I guess.


January seems like a good place to start. I expect that at that time I was still getting to grips with my new iMac, as strange as that may seem now that my Mighty Mouse feels like an extra limb. I can't remember what games and so on I would've been playing at the time. It wouldn't have been too long after the release of the Wii and my acquisition of one, so I might have still been playing Twilight Princess. I could have finished it, but I recall I was still thinking about it and discussing it as it took Sam a lot longer to do.


February brought with it my Higher prelims, in which I managed to get all As. Somehow. I do recall that English was rather close but it was the same for everyone else who got an A in my class so we just assumed it was a really hard prelim. Oh, if only we had known what was to come.

It must have been sometime in February that Skippy suggested that we start doing a blog together. I'd had various ideas and projects swirling around in my head for months by then but I was having trouble actually following through so I agreed in order to prove to myself that I could keep something like that going. We put it off until after the prelims, at which point Skippy sent me a rough draft of an introductory post. I almost completely rewrote it and then published it in late February.


My regular posting didn't start until the 1st of March, when I challenged myself to keep up daily posts on a variety of topics for exactly one year. So far, I've made a pretty good job of that, I think. Skimming over some of those posts now, they seem to be a bit more light-hearted and relaxed than what I write now. I can't be sure, although one of these days I'm going to read through everything I've written here and find out for certain how it's changed.

March was the month I went up to Edinburgh to do a Chemistry competition of some kind. I'd completely forgotten about it until I read up on it right now. I've forgotten a lot of what happened in Chemistry, since I dropped it before going into Sixth Year. English, the other subject I dropped, and a whole lot of other stuff that happened in S5 seems like the distant past now. I'm not sure why.

Oh, and it was in March that I was playing the first Phoenix Wright game as well, having borrowed it from Sam... It's still on my shelf.


April... April... what happened then? Easter holidays, I suppose, and the build-up to the exams in May. I went through my general gripes about holidays though I did concede that that particular one had been quite fun – especially the bits that didn't involve anything that holidays are generally supposed to involve. While away, I made fun of the Street Fighter movie and watched House and then when I got back I had to panic about doing holiday homework.

It's remarkable how similar all my holidays from school turn out to be.


May held the dreaded Higher exams. I can distinctly recall the day before the English exam: I spent it lying on the bed in the guest room, highlighted chunks from essays and pages of quotes lying around me and my DS in sleep mode at my side. I somehow found the mental strength to study for most of the day, occasional snatches of Final Fantasy III the only thing keeping me sane.

As far as I knew, the English exam itself went fine. That afternoon, I headed into town with Sam and Sam to pick up imported copies of the new Pokemon games. We'd planned to spend the rest of the day there but it began bucketing down so we headed back to the school, hoping it would pass while we found shelter. It eventually did but by that time Potter had already started jogging home and Stafford and I had called my mum to come and pick us up. It sounds fairly miserable but it was a fun experience.

Interestingly, I suspect it may have been that brief stint of getting caught in the rain with Stafford's infamously unreliable mobile phone my only lifeline that truly convinced me I needed a phone of my own.

The rest of the exams... I don't have such clear memories of. I recall going down to the play park near the school several times and I think that that was this year. It might have been at Standard Grade, when we also did it. Who knows? I'm slightly annoyed that the exams next year, with their greater length and my smaller classes, aren't likely to lead to a similar situation of giving up revision en masse in order to play on swings.


With exams out of the way, June was a breath of fresh air. It also seems so very long ago, when we were trapped in that strange limbo between Fifth and Sixth Year, using our old form rooms but having three study periods a day and spending half of them just lying outside on the grass. That was absolutely fantastic. I think we eventually got told to stop but I can't remember if we actually did.

Then came the end of the term and the last time I would see certain classmates and teachers. I remember Speech Day being held in a local sports hall instead of the town hall, which was being renovated. I went up to collect my prize then I just went back down to my seat to sit through the proceedings. Luck and random chance had placed me next to my two best friends so I was able to pass the time talking to them. Well, during the rehearsals and before the event itself anyway.

At the end, I suppose the departing Sixth Year would have been doing what the departing Sixth Year always do, though I can't recall seeing them directly. They would have been hugging each other and some would have been crying. For many years, I'd never really understood why – I knew they were leaving but the friends would stay in touch. Now, I think I have some better idea.

That'll be me in six months. I doubt I'll be hugging anyone or crying but I'm honestly not sure how I'll handle that final moment of school life, knowing that I'll never again share a classroom with that diverse bunch of people, some of whom I've known for most of my life. Sure, I'll keep in touch with my friends and there's a good number I'll be glad never to see again but it's those ones in between that just sort of make up the background of my life without being close...

I'm not quite sure how to express it. I hope I'll have found a way in six months time. Even if the challenge I started in March has come to a close, I'll still keep putting my thoughts up here and, well, there'll be a lot of stuff going on then that'll give me some interesting thoughts.


And that's half of the year done in over 1200 words. Tomorrow, I'll do the other half and then New Year's Eve will give me some time for reflection and resolutions.


You know what? I feel good. I'll leave it to you to imagine why.

Almost forgot to publish this

Uh-oh. Rapidly approaching midnight with a blank NeoOffice document staring me in the face again. I personally blame season 4 of House and the ease with which one can acquire it on the internet.

I'm not entirely sure what I've been doing all day. I can recall doing a wide variety of tasks that generally involve DVDs and video games but I'm not sure how they add up to the fact that I've apparently not had time to either write this post or even read my daily dose of webcomics. Seriously, I just skimmed through all the dailies and closed the tabs for the ones that won't be updating tomorrow so I could read them then. I just don't have the time or the patience right now.

I still have a whole bunch of open tabs for the Half Life wiki but I'll deal with that in a little while, after I've dealt with this.

Actually, that's something I have to say. Well, I don't have to say it but I have it and I wish to say something about it... it being a thought or experience of some kind.

What was I talking about?

Ah, yes. I completed Half Life 2: Episode 2 with the developer commentary today. As I've often noted and stated, I'm a glutton for trivia of all kinds and I wanted to find out more about the game development process. It was fairly interesting although I wouldn't have minded something slightly more in-depth. I'll have to dig back into some of my game design books, see if I can find one that's actually vaguely intriguing and readable.

Who knows, maybe I'll write a book like that someday. I hope to go into video game design and I hope to write a book at some point so it would seem fairly efficient.

I also got round to playing the first episode of Sam & Max Season One that I got off Steam a couple of days ago and so far I'm quite impressed. The humour hits the mark more often than not and there's a distinct shortage of good point and clicks out there, as far as I know. I'll play more of it tomorrow, along with Psychonauts.

Speaking of point and click games, my copy of Starship Titanic arrived from eBay today. Tomorrow's task is to make it work on one of my computers. It should be compatible with XP but it may still require a little (more probably, a lot, knowing my luck) fiddling.

I still haven't made a start on a whole load of other things but at least I'm enjoying myself while I waste time.

This post really has been very video game oriented, hasn't it? I don't think I really set out to do that. Of course, I didn't really set out with any topic in mind... Maybe there's something psychiatric-ish in there.

Nuts to it. I have a headache now. And a whole load of paragraphs on Vortigaunt culture to read before I go to bed.

Another annoyingly short post

I realised immediately after publishing last night that I'd missed yet another chance to make a reference to The 300. Curses.


So today's come and gone. I've left today's post too late again, though so I'll have to hurry. Not that that's unusual but you know what I mean. Maybe.

Anyway, saw my cousins today. Gave the little ones their presents – Hamish seemed to really like his Doctor Who set but he didn't get to play it as it needs 12, I repeat, 12 triple A batteries and Tristan loved his Airzooka. He doesn't quite have enough strength to work it properly without someone bracing it and something to hold on to, but he loves it all the same.

My day was otherwise occupied by various mundane activities – trying out the Spaces feature in Leopard (very useful), replaying Half Life 2: Ep. 2 with the developer commentary turned on (very interesting, particularly for a trivia and tech info glutton such as myself), finishing season 3 of House (very entertaining), starting season 4 of House (also very entertaining, though I've only watched half an episode thus far) and a whole load of other unproductive things.

You know what? It's been a long but dull day, my arm seems to have developed an allergy to my desk and I want to go to bed. So that's what I'm going to do.

Here's a funny picture of something recreated in LEGO. Have a nice day.

Routines and Milestones

I'm a person who loves routines. It's the day after Christmas but as far as anyone could tell by observing me, it could be any day of the year. Aside from Christmas day.

Christmas came. Christmas went. And here I am straight back to watching the House boxset I was engrossed in when I stayed up on Christmas Eve, straight through into the next morning as well, to buy an old PC game on eBay. Oh, there are a few changes. I'm now using OS X Leopard instead of Tiger. It works great and I'll have to write it up for the MacTake but it's not made a huge difference.

I haven't made a start on any of the books I got though I have some nice rationalisations for that – I'm still in the middle of another book as well as several magazines I want to go through. Oh, and I don't have anywhere nice to sit and read. Comfy chairs and I aren't getting along so well right now.

Tomorrow I'm going to have to get back into gear. Well, after I've spent most of the day dealing with my little cousins. But if I still have the strength left, I've got a big list of things I need to do before I can even think of making a start on all my big priorities.

I need to get in touch with various friends to find out how their Christmas was and see how the trip to India that many of them went on was. I'm just speaking to Sam right now, which is a start. I need to sort through my presents and tidy my room. I need to do all that day-to-day stuff that I really ought to have done...

Meh. I don't know. I'll figure it out as I go along, I'm sure.

For now, I need to get to bed because it's back to going to the hospital in the mornings tomorrow. Got to have a bit of a lie in this morning at least.

Sorry for the short post. Got a bit sidetracked.

Have a nice day.



Oh, and this is the 350th post on TWToday and my 300th personally. Go me.

I can't decide if I'm more like Scrooge or the Grinch

Merry Christmas, then, I suppose.

I'm a big fan of Christmas. I'm a big fan of anything that promotes goodwill, kindness, etc., and which results in me getting free stuff.

There are two things about Christmas that are important to me – presents and family. I'm not religious so I tend to pass over all those bits and focus on the things that do interest me. You can call me shallow for the whole liking gifts thing but, let's face it, what's the point in the gift-giving if everyone goes all preachy and spiritual and turns them down?

This year I ended up getting a huge number of sci-fi books. I knew I'd asked for a lot but it never struck me until I was actually sitting downstairs unwrapping them just how many I'd got in comparison to everything else. I found it especially strange that I didn't get any video games, given that I'm normally more of a gamer than a reader.

I guess it's because I've been getting most of the games I want at launch and I've been avoiding getting others because I still need to complete the ones I have. Though that said, I did notice that Steam (Valve's online games distribution doohickey) was having a sale so I went on and got Psychonauts. Took ages to download but it was only £5 and it's supposed to be brilliant. I may get a couple of other things off there later.

Actually, now that I think about it, I did get one game-related thing for Christmas:


Yeah, it was Erin's idea. She got a Toad for herself.

I also picked up some large chunks of chocolate, a few comedy CDs, some DVDs (including the Key To Time and Davros Doctor Who boxsets which together add up to... I'm not really sure but several days constant viewing at least) and the usual array of calendars, book tokens and so on.


So, the other thing about Christmas. Family. We had my mother's parents and my father's mother round for lunch, as we normally do. Unfortunately, this time, my little cousins weren't there as well. Now, I love those guys but I'm not above using them and the ease with which they get bored to my advantage. Nobody wants to have a meal around bored children who've finished their food. Nobody wants to let said children run around the house.

The solution? Let big cousin Alasdair take them to go play games. Everybody's happy.

This year I basically just ate my food as fast as I could* and kept making excuses about going to check on various downloads and backups that I had running. On a side note, that seems to have become something of a tradition – last year I had some hefty OS X updates to download and this year I was getting Psychonauts and backing up my iMac in preparation of installing Leopard tomorrow.

But back to the whole family lunch thing. I'm not someone who ritualises eating and the conversation at this sort of thing tends not to interest me. It's nothing personal but when everyone else gets to talking about the new roads or old friends' back problems or anything I don't really care about I tend to find it dull.

And if anyone tries to engage me in small talk, it's always about either how I'm doing after the surgery or what my plans are for university.

Bah. I could go on all night about my hatred of chatting and small talk and I'd never get any sleep. I think I'm going to call it a night here so that I can go to bed and hope that the district nurse shows up late tomorrow so that I can lie in.

As always, I'll have more to say tomorrow.

Hope you had a nice day.






*Rhyming entirely unintentional

TWToday Christmas Eve Special

My body clock is all thrown off because I went for a nap in the middle of the afternoon. On the bright side, it seems to have got rid of my headache for a while. I should now be able to wait up until midnight in order to catch Santa. I'll get him this year, I can sense it...

I'm joking, by the way. I'm not actually sad enough to stay up until midnight to catch a glimpse of Santa. That would be ridiculous.

I'm staying up past midnight to bid on an old PC adventure game by Douglas Adams that's being sold on eBay. I'm hoping that that's so ridiculous that no one else will have stayed up to bid against me.


Not much else going on today. Taking it kind of easy, as evidenced by the nap. I bought an old Doctor Who game (Destiny of the Doctors) on eBay earlier today and that might require a bit of fiddling to get working on XP but we'll see about that once it arrives. I've also been looking at various bits of import equipment for the Gamecube (FreeLoader and a Japanese memory card) for Erin, who finally completed Donkey Konga 2 today and wants to move on to the Japan-only sequel.

In other news, you may have heard that the jet dragster Richard Hammond crashed while filming for Top Gear has gone up for sale on eBay. It's not working (obviously) but people are still bidding for what the seller describes as “a genuine piece of UK automotive history” that's “a little the worse for wear after its much-publicised excursion into the weeds”. It's technically being sold as scrap but the owner says he hopes it'll get him about £5,000-10,000.

As I write this, the auction is at just under £19,000 with 69 bids so far and over five days left to go. Impressive.

I'll keep an eye on that as it goes on. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes over £100,000. Might even get closer to one million. Who knows?


In other news that's more related to me, my grandparents, who are coming round for lunch tomorrow and with whom my cousins will be staying later in the week, are under the impression that my brother and I are infectious.

I'm not entirely sure how they came to this conclusion, especially given that the entire point of my surgery was to remove the infected tissue completely. Maybe they thought it odd that my brother gets it so soon after I did but I'm still half expecting them to claim that my humours are out of balance. Mum seems to have convinced them that we're safe enough to have lunch with and let the cousins see. Not that they could really stop us from the latter.

Speaking of humorism, I made that same joke about my grandparents with Sam and Erin a couple of days ago and only Sam laughed. (Un)Surprisingly few people get jokes based on classical and medieval medical theory.

And yet, as Sam noted later on, we did. Neither of us had any reason to know about it. We hadn't discussed the subject before. But we both knew enough about these obscure little facts to make jokes about them at the expense of old people. Strange.


Anyway, I'm going to wrap things up now. For once, I can say that I'm not going to bed. Unless my headache gets worse and I can't be bothered staying up any later. As always, we shall just have to wait and see what happens.

Have a merry Christmas.

Bah. Another headache.

Just a little post tonight because I have a killer headache and I want to get to bed. Last year I was ill on Christmas day and I don't wish to repeat the experience, meaning that I want to get plenty of sleep. I should be able to get up a little later tomorrow morning because I no longer need a bath but that's only about ten minutes. And I may be staying up late on Christmas Eve to finish an eBay auction.

How sad is that?


Anyway, let's see what I can find to link you to... Nah, I've got nothing. Haven't done much beyond my ordinary web browsing today. I really feel that I need to make this a little longer, though.

Say.

Another.

Few.

Paragraphs.

No, I won't let myself get away with that. I'll just mention that I've started to feel a bit more Christmassy* lately, which I suppose is appropriate given that it's two days until Christmas. I finally got to give Sam his present, as well as use the ending of Portal to screw with his brain. We're not much closer to selling our surplus retro consoles on eBay but we've made a start and hopefully gathered some momentum.


Now, my headache is steadfastly refusing to go away, so I'm going to clear the usual layer of junk off my bed and crawl into it.

I really hate all these posts that end with me saying I'm going to bed... I need something more original...


Brain-eating squirrels have hijacked my paper plane! Run for your lives!!!







*Yes, it is a word. Trust me, I was as surprised as you are.

I wish the gun from Portal was real

I don't think I mentioned this yesterday but I finally completed Portal. The fact that it took so long is mostly a product of my own laziness and my computer's tendency to blue-screen when running it after ten minutes of startup and loading so I'll stick to the common criticism that it was too short.

Otherwise, it was excellent. The game somehow managed to make me laugh and chill me to the bone at the same time, all while providing mind-bending but logical puzzles on a proper difficulty curve. Like seemingly every other person on the planet who's played it, I can't praise this game enough.

Oh, and if I ever have to fake my death or pretend that an assassination attempt was successful, I'm sending my enemies or would-be killers a link to the ending on YouTube. You'll know what I'm talking about if you've completed it.

My next goal is to complete Half Life 2: Episode 2 so that I can re-immerse myself in the stories and rumours sites surrounding the HL mythos without fear of spoilers.

That likely won't be done tomorrow though, since Sam's coming round and we'll hopefully be working on getting various old consoles sorted and made ready for sale on eBay. Theoretically. Or we may just end up watching Planet of Evil. Who knows.


Nothing much else going on today. Got my new issue of NGamer with a full update on upcoming games in 2008 – some real gems by the looks of things. I'll go into more detail once I've looked over some of the reviews and I'm maybe doing some sort of general “looking forward” post. It also came with a glow in the dark Wii remote sleeve, by the way, which I just found lying on my bed, covered underneath all the other stuff I tend to heap on there in the morning.

I really need to tidy my room.

But that's at the lower end of my list of priorities. Currently at the top is going to bed and getting some sleep because I apparently need to get up even earlier tomorrow. Not sure why but more yelling will doubtless ensue if I don't.

First, though, I think I'll go and put an mp3 of that song from Portal on my iPhone. Just in case I ever need to amuse myself or scare small children.

Have a nice day.

All these long posts can't be a coincidence

Coincidences are strange things. On the one hand, we cannot be too quick to assume that something is a coincidence or else we may miss some vital clue that links events and results. But we must accept that sometime they exist for otherwise we would waste time trying to solve mysteries that simply don't exist.

A couple of coincidences occurred recently, both of which, unfortunately, have to do with my pilonidal sinus and the operation I had to remove it. I'll start with the one that occurred today – my brother's diagnosis with the exact same problem. A couple of days ago, he began to feel a great deal of pain in the appropriate area but we dismissed this as “coincidence” and assumed he must have something else, largely because he was in immediate and near constant pain, as opposed to my (relatively) mild pain and irritation, caused by a single spot.

He started taking antibiotics and some painkillers but today, after more consultation with doctors and the same specialist that I saw, it was found to indeed be an unusual presentation of a pilonidal sinus.*

In some ways, this is a coincidence, in others it isn't. While it's not infectious, related individuals have a greater chance of both experiencing it. This isn't due to a genetic disposition towards it directly but factors such as hair colour and type, which are decided genetically and are likely to be close in siblings, do contribute to the likelihood. So do the facts that we are both male, in the right age bracket and lead, let's say, “sedentary” lifestyles.

The timing, however, is entirely random. While the appearance of each of our ailments can perhaps be tied into our own pasts (mine came on during a long, rainy holiday which I spent much of sitting indoors and one nurse suggested that my brother's new gym regime may have contributed to his), nothing medically relevant links the two.

Thus, we are forced to accept this as a coincidence, though not a hugely unlikely one.


The second coincidence is more unlikely and pretty much entirely timing based. I've no doubt mentioned over the past few weeks that I've been having to sit on a cushion in most environments. These include all but the comfy chairs in the common room, the chairs in classrooms, car seats and even the chair I'm sitting on now. As such, my binary covered pillow has been my constant companion for about a month now.

But why do I even have a binary covered cushion? More than a few people at school have asked me that and I've wondered it myself. The truth is that I just wanted a pillow that said “pillow” in 0s and 1s. It was an impulse buy when ordering various other items from ThinkGeek in early November.

Note that early November is before I knew that I would need a pillow after the surgery. In fact, I'm not even sure that I knew about the surgery then – I may still have been hoping that antibiotics were the answer when I placed the order. And I've mentioned before that, even as I went in for the surgery, I had no idea that I was going to need quite so much care and appropriate seating afterwards.

So my need for a cushion so soon after I had randomly decided to buy one was a coincidence. I think it odd when really it's just a quirk of timing. And of course, I had no need for this specific cushion, beyond my addiction to geek paraphernalia. If I hadn't had it, I would just have grabbed one from a cupboard somewhere and likely not have had quite such a hard time from people who don't understand binary. And those who do.

Therefore, my purchase of the cushion is just another coincidence, though without any of the contributing factors of the first. I saw what I thought was a curious pattern but I knew straight away that there was no connection of any sort.


That's enough rambling about coincidence and happenstance for now, I think. I'm going to head off to bed because I need to get up even earlier tomorrow morning. My brother now requires the same early morning wound-disinfecting salt bath as I do and there's only one bath in the house. With any luck, there'll only be about a week's overlap, given the way mine's healing up.

Probably won't be better for Christmas though, which is a shame, but it could be worse.


Oh, and also, that one bath in the house? It leaks.






*I've been told that mine was a “textbook case”. Go me, I guess.

Too Late for Coherency

Another late night post. A brief update on my day, first, I think.

[insert random news program intro theme here – preferably somewhere between the two versions presented here]

In the headlines today...

No, I can't keep this up. It was really just an excuse to link to that Bill Bailey video. That man is incredibly hilarious, as Never Mind the Buzzcocks will not let me forget. Also, watch that show.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. Things I did today. The rest of my deliveries arrived and I worked out who was getting what and wrapped most of it up. Since it was basically just two things to wrap around (one big thing and one little for each of my two little cousins) this should not have been a difficult task.

And yet, somehow, it was. There seems to be some kind of knack to wrapping up presents that always escapes me. I suppose it's one of those things that people thing everyone knows how to do and is just common sense but I don't think I've ever actually paid attention to anyone else wrapping presents so I have no idea.

The rest of the human race seems to have formed some sort of present wrapping hive mind to which they won't allow me access. As such, I have never been able to satisfactorily perform this basic task to the same level as... well, whoever's wrapped all the other presents I see everywhere. I suspect that the conspiracy also extends to tying balloons and clicking my fingers.


But enough of that. I must have something else to say. Hmmm...

I've been thinking about the future of this blog lately, trying to plan ahead a bit and get some solid topics ready. I think that towards the end of the year, I'm going to just relax a bit and look back at the year behind me, seeing what's happened and what's changed. One of the original purposes of TWToday was just to give me somewhere to muse on the happenings of my life... I can't decide whether that's changed or stayed the same.

I might also come up with some New Years Resolutions. And Christmas should give me something to talk about for a while. Sort of already has, come to think of it.

I'll try to think of something better for tomorrow. I've instructed my sister not to stop bugging me until I write some kind of fiction or comedy or anything that isn't this, really. And I'll try to write this earlier in the day.


Bah. I can't be bothered proof-reading it but I worry that this has come across a bit complainy. It's too late to change it now, I suppose. Got to take my painkillers (yup, still on them) and get to bed. On the bright side, I'm seeing a hospital consultant tomorrow instead of just the regular dressing change, so the appointment's a bit later, meaning I can lie in in the morning.

Well, when I say “a bit”, I mean “half an hour” but I still don't have to get up until eight instead of half seven.

Except I'll probably get up earlier anyway, since the traffic's always a pain around that time and we were almost late this morning.


Hey, if I add this paragraph here, then this post goes on to a second page in size 12 font on NeoOffice. Awesome. These things are getting longer again. Shame about the lack of actual content.

A Good Day

There is nothing quite like the feeling you get when you finally rip apart someone's testimony in Phoenix Wright. And there's nothing more infuriating than knowing where the contradiction is but not knowing what exact combination of evidence the game thinks will prove it.


Today's been a damned good day, actually. I'm hugely enjoying playing Phoenix Wright (we'll go with that title now, for the sake of simplicity) and I'd recommend it to any fool who hasn't tried the series yet. I'll undoubtedly play more tomorrow and I'll have to try to pick up another game with which to pass the time.

Most of the gifts I ordered for Christmas were delivered today. I'm still waiting on a book and some action figures for my little cousin but among the things that did arrive were the Master's laser screwdriver and the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. I was planning to give the laser screwdriver to the elder of my two little cousins and the sonic one to the younger, but it occurred to me that, since this model of sonic screwdriver doubles as a UV pen, it might make more sense to give it to the one that can write.

Doesn't matter much in the long run – I'm sure they'll share whatever they get anyway. Assuming I don't give in to temptation and keep the toys for myself... I've been trying my hardest not to rip open the packages and run around shoving the psychic paper wallet in people's faces before ageing them until they look like a house elf.

...What?


Further brightening my day was the fact that I received another confirmation of an unconditional university place. This time, it was Computer Science at St Andrews, the course I was really hoping for. That's me got all my offers back save for the Comp. Sci. and Physics joint course at St Andrews, which will presumably take longer as it has to pass through two departments.

And that's more or less been my day, apart from the usual humdrum existence and the daily morning trip to the hospital. That's become ridiculously routine now, so much so that I can be halfway to the hospital before I properly wake up. As inconvenient as the whole thing has been, it does get me up a lot earlier in the holidays, which makes me feel better, given my usual tendency to sleep in annoyingly late.

That said, once it's all over, the first thing I'm going to do the next morning is lie in until it's the afternoon.


Oh, a couple of other things. It looks like Duke Nukem is still alive, as are his “unique” brand of humour and his liberal interpretation of the word “deadline”. This isn't the first time a trailer for the game has been released so it's not worth anyone getting their hopes up. To be brutally honest, I'm hoping it's never released, just so I can keep making jokes about it.

And while we're on the subject, here's The Duke Nukem Forever List again. Always worth a look and a laugh.

This, as with all such stories about politicians not doing their research before jumping on the video game hatred bandwagon, both depresses and amuses me.

I bought some USB rechargeable batteries in the same order as all my Christmas presents and they just finished charging, so I'll give them a go tomorrow and then report on that.

Yes, reviewing batteries. I really can stoop so low.

On desktops, Christmas and fictional legal proceedings

I've finally managed to clean up all the files that have been clogging up my desktop for months. Only took me about 10 minutes, not including the time I spent listening to and watching some of the stuff I came across. A lot of it was just dragged into other folders but none of them were quite as bad as the desktop to begin with so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Now I just need to try the same thing with my thousands of bookmarks.


I can't quite believe that it's only a week until Christmas. Doesn't feel that way at all.

I've been finding myself somewhat bored recently, mostly because I've finished all the DVDs I was watching and won't be getting any more until Christmas. I've still got some books to finish, as well as various games, but none of them are really helping shake the monotony.

Though Ace Attorney: Justice For All (or maybe Phoenix Wright: Justice For All... or Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright: Justice for All... or about half a dozen other combinations) is doing its best. I got pretty well hooked on the first game but I haven't picked up the second since my sister got it... I can't even remember when. Months ago anyway, maybe for her birthday in October. It's shaping up to be as good as the first, at least.

My problem seems to be less about actually playing the games once I get going and more about breaking out of my little rut of just watching TV and reading websites. The fact that I've now seen most of the TV shows and movies available to me along with my running out of good websites to browse where I haven't seen all but the latest content means that I'll probably be forced into doing something else I enjoy.

Curses.

That might also help me start writing or maybe it'll just give me another excuse not to but we shall see. It's only twenty to eleven now, so I suppose that if I end this now, I can actually get to bed relatively early which should hopefully lead to more sleep and fewer late night headaches. Which is good.


Damn. I was just looking through my bookmarks and I realised that I completely forgot to watch that Segway polo match on Sunday. The video will hopefully be up for download somewhere. And with that minor disappointment, I say farewell and have a nice day. I'm off to bed.

So much of what I do involves Doctor Who...

Trying to write a bit earlier tonight – it's around seven o'clock.

I've noticed I've been doing a lot of diary style entries recently, probably because they're easy to do and I've been leaving everything very late. I've also noticed that I'm using the word “probably” a lot. It'll have something to do with my deep personal insecurity and low self esteem, probably. Damn.

Oh, and by the way, it's ten to eleven now.

So my earlier plan was to do another entry about my day but there's nothing really special to talk about. In fact, I could do it all in this paragraph. I watched the whole current series of Never Mind the Buzzcocks so far on YouTube with my brother and sister (the latter of whom had got hooked when I showed her an episode last night, when she came in wanting to see this Bill Bailey clip).

Actually, stuff the one paragraph thing. I have a rather verbose writing style and it'd just get unwieldy.

The only other thing of note today was that I finally ordered all the various Christmas presents I've been meaning to buy for my little cousins and Sam. I managed to get Sam something roughly equivalent in price and geekiness to what he got me (which was a Doctor Who DVD and a book examining the physics of Who, so the latter proved tricky) and I picked up various bits and bobs for my cousins.

It's mostly either Doctor Who toys or relatively harmless weaponry. I suspect my aunt's going to hate me for the Airzooka... assuming the sound effects from the laser and sonic screwdrivers (one each, with which to do battle through all of space and time) don't drive her insane first. But I'm confident that the little kids will like them, so there you go.


My other point for tonight is something curious I noticed when looking at the Wikipedia article on the portrayal of Mars in fiction. Don't look at me like that, I had a good reason. I just don't want to tell it to you.

Anyway, the whole thing is divided into two sections – before and after the Mariner 4 spacecraft reached Mars and dispelled various myths about its surface and habitability. Notice under the film and television section (secondary references) the Doctor Who examples.

The Ice Warriors were enemies of the Second and Third Doctors who originated on Mars and appeared repeatedly over that era, in the late 60s to early 70s. Mariner 4 sent back its findings beginning it 1965 and the idea of civilisation on Mars started faltering then and there in the minds of even hopeful scientists. By the early 70s, this perception would have filtered down into the public consciousness, making serious stories about Martians harder and harder to pull off.

Thus, despite Doctor Who's relatively lax attitude to scientific fact compared to other shows, the Ice Warriors were slowly phased out and the last adventure set on Mars was Pyramids of Mars, featuring the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith trying to stop Sutekh the Destroyer escaping his prison on Mars – he hadn't come from there originally.

The new series only mentions Mars in passing, as a brief gag. Rumours of the Ice Warriors coming back keep cropping up but it would require either a retcon or a handwave, at least. Or maybe they'll go the The War of the Worlds route – the original book and many early adaptations had the aliens coming from Mars, a dried up and dying world, as the popular theory was at the time. Later versions usually chose to ignore the aliens' origins altogether.


That's it for now. Let's see if I can get to bed before midnight again. I'll have to try and work my way through some of that to do list tomorrow, assuming I get a good night's sleep and my cold clears up a bit.

Did I mention I have a cold?

I have a cold.

And I'm going to bed. Have a nice day.

Things to do

Some day, I'm going to make a computer with an inbuilt cup holder, just to see if people try putting CDs in it.


Well, that'll teach me to spend all day looking at Computer Stupidities instead of... well, anything more productive really. On the bright side, I did manage to figure out what's being done about various Christmas presents and I should be able to order them tomorrow.

Of course, I told myself I'd have them ordered by last Friday at the latest. Ho-hum.

Anyway, I'm hoping that I might be a bit more useful tomorrow. I've been really tired all day today, most likely because, despite my best intentions and average effort, I still went to bed after midnight... yesterday? This morning? Let's go with last night.

I've been meaning to make an informal little to do list for some time now so I may as well do it now. I'm unsure as to how I could make an official to do list but that's beside the point. Here's what I reckon I need to get done over the coming days and weeks, in no particular order. Unless there's some kind of sub-conscious thing going on, determining the order in which they enter my mind.


Write some of The Grey Line

Write some comedy stuff

Get the VersusCOM podcast going again

Sell any retrogaming stuff that I have duplicates of (ie, the 7 NESi)

Tidy my room so that I've got more space and some breathable air

Finish up my Computing project to a respectable standard (should try to do this fairly soon, so I don't forget how everything works)

Complete other schoolwork such as Maths questions and Physics research

Order those Christmas presents

Work on my Linux box, as well as the family computer

Complete various games, inc. HL2: Ep 2, Portal, Phantom Hourglass and about half a dozen others


That's more or less it for now. Surprisingly/depressingly it's not unlike the lists I made at the start of the summer holidays, almost six months ago. And the Easter holidays before them.

Oh, well. I'm going to head off to bed. And I've just realised that I didn't bring up my usual dose of painkillers to have before bed and everyone else is already asleep, so it looks like I'll be going without tonight. I've been cutting back anyway, I guess. Only problem is, it's been slightly worse than normal today since the dressing's been loose and packing's fallen out.

I know, I know. It's disgusting and unpleasant to read about. Trust me, it's worse if you're sitting on it and writing about it.

Another untitled post

I'd like to get a sombre point out of the way first, if I may. Terry Pratchett, a great man and one of my favourite authors, has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, which was apparently responsible for an earlier mysterious stroke. He remains optimistic about his situation and doesn't expect it to impact his work in the foreseeable future.

The whole thing is a big shock but the fact that he's taking it so well is presumably a good sign, for both him and his fans. I like Pratchett for many reasons – his sense of humour, his brilliant writing style, his ability to craft tales and characters so believable that you can forget the whole thing is set on the back of a giant turtle...

If I had to summarise what I liked about Terry Pratchett, it would be that he's the kind of man who describes being diagnosed with Alzheimer's as “An Embuggerance”.


I realised something this morning – I really love lying in in the mornings. On the first day of a normal holiday, I'd normally not be awake before noon but today I had to be up before eight to get ready and go to hospital to have my dressing changed.

Now, I know there are far worse things in life than being forced out of bed earlier than normal but, thankfully, I don't have to really deal with them. In fact, I'm actually fairly lucky, since I'll likely be healed by the New Year at the latest whereas it apparently takes some people several months to fully recover. Though I'm told that the end of the dressing isn't the end of the problem entirely but I won't go into that now.


It's getting kind of late and I want to go to bed early (i.e. before midnight) to compensate for my inability to sleep in so I think I'll try to wrap up this oddly medical and depressing post now. I'll point you in the direction of The Grand List of Console RPG Cliches, a favourite text of mine. Worth browsing through, especially if you're into RPGs and more than a bit cynical.

Also, I'll write this as a reminder to myself. Remember to watch that Segway polo match with Woz in it tomorrow. That is all.

Have a nice day.

Let the holidays begin

Eep. It's half past eleven at night and I haven't done the post for tonight. So, mini-post then.

Today was, as I have mentioned before, the last day of term. This essentially involved hanging around at school, getting on a bus, hanging around in a church (while playing hangman on the programme) and then listening to some hymns, some prayers and something about a box. Okay, so maybe “listening” is a bit of an exaggeration there.

Walked away with some rather neat doodles though, alongside various hangman solutions. These included “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (my friend Joss's), “Remembrance of the Daleks” (mine) and “I have a girlfriend and you do not” (my former friend Sam's). After that everybody eventually got past the crowd and out of the church, some heading home like myself and others to go and get lunch in town. I believe Sam was going to hang around for a first date with the aforementioned girlfriend.*


I just got a message from Jimerson saying “well im off to bed, cya in 10 days”, reminding me that he's heading off to India on a school trip, along with many others. I opted out at the time, partly because of the potential for price and error (they're due to come back the day before Christmas – delays would not be well received, I suspect) but mostly because I just don't like such things. Later needs to get vaccinations and warnings about not touching damned near everything haven't made me regret this decision.

Still, I wish them the best of luck. They may be up early tomorrow, but at least they have the chance to sleep on the plane.

Unlike me, who still has to get up before eight in the morning for the next week at least to head into hospital. As such, I probably ought to head off to bed. Have a nice day.







*Note to self: remember to find out how disastrously wrong this inevitably went.

The End of Term as We Know it

And that was the last full day I'm going to have at school until January.

Tomorrow I just go in for the Christmas service and then that's the term over and I can do anything I want for the next three weeks, free of schoolwork. Well, except holiday homework. Which is just my Computing project, which I actually enjoy working on somewhat. And my Physics project, which isn't great but doesn't require too much work.

And several Maths exercises and prelims...

Okay, so I've got some schoolwork, but nothing that can't be easily done if I pace myself and just do a little each day. Or maybe I'll leave it right up until the last couple of days then madly scramble to get everything done.


Enough of that for now, I think. School today was another easy day – half an hour of actual Physics work* followed by a couple of Simpsons episodes (classic from series four: Mr Plow and Whacking Day) in the morning then we skipped Computing because the teacher wasn't going to be there. Funny story, actually. My good friend and constant source of amusement, Jimerson, was planning to show up five minutes late for his Accounts class to finish a song on Guitar Hero. But, being Jimerson, he got distracted and ended up not realising the time until his class only had five minutes left.

The interhouse public speaking competition took place in the afternoon. A couple of friends of mine, Sam Potter and Sam Stafford, were speaking for their respective houses. Potter had an interesting talk on intelligent design that won him a prize last year and Stafford had a surprisingly deep look at the idea of free will. Stafford's talk was also completely, unceasingly hilarious.

He didn't really have many planned jokes so most of it was either spontaneous or purely in his delivery. He could easily have got just as many laughs by standing up their and reading the dictionary. Unfortunately, he lost out to some boring talk that managed to confuse body language with medical symptoms. Even those on the winning team agreed that he should probably have got it.

And that was that, aside from the scramble at the end of the day to clear out the common room of all our various bits of electronic junk. I'm fairly sure I got everything but I may yet end up going to church tomorrow with a couple of N64 games stuffed in my pocket.

I've never been quite sure why the school always has to have a church Christmas service. I suspect that it's now more out of tradition than any overriding religious concern.

But it shouldn't take long and it's always a good feeling to walk out at the end of the whole thing knowing that it marks the end of a school term. My last Christmas term, come to think of it. A yearly event in my life for over a decade and tomorrow will be my last one... a strange thought.


Well, I'm going to head off to bed now. Maybe once the holidays come I'll have the time and energy to write posts that don't always end that way...





*By which I mean, moving a microwave probe back and forth along a desk and writing down some readings from a voltmeter.

Near-Midnight Ramblings

Uh-oh. Left the post a bit late again. Well, really late.

So, a mini-post is in order, I think.

Nothing much happening today. Got a couple of Christmas presents from Sam (who was wearing a bow in his hair at the time for some reason; he also wore it to his English class); a Doctor Who DVD and book. I was thinking of getting him something and I guess I probably should now.

That means I need to find something for him and both my cousins still. I'll have to do that over the next couple of days.

Computing today was a lot of fun – all of us have given up hope of getting our projects finished before the end of term so we were a little bit more relaxed than usual. Which is pretty damned relaxed. Our teacher actually yelled “Kaching!” when he managed to beat Sam at something (he thought a function Jimerson was looking for was “Append” but Sam thought it was “Amend”; turned out to be the former).

He also laughed his head off when looking at Sam's iPod Touch. Not because of the music library (which was amusing for different reasons) but because the “desktop” picture that you see when you bring it out of standby was a photo of Sam's new girlfriend in facepaint at the Christmas trade fair. When told this story, she too was fairly embarrassed.

And now I'm telling it to the entire internet. Well, the tiny fraction that reads this blog.


I'm finding it rather hard to believe that the school term ends on Friday... Seems like it was barely a few weeks ago that we first played Street Fighter in the common room. And that means Christmas is right around the corner as well. We've got our tree up now, having built it (it's a fake one, which I hate, but understand the need for) a few days beforehand then run into trouble with the fairy lights.


Tomorrow should be an interesting day. A double period of working on my Physics project in the morning followed by either watching Serenity or helping Sam Potter and Sam Stafford with their respective speeches for the afternoon's interhouse public speaking competition.


And I'll call that it for today. I need to go clear a load of crap of my bed and unpack my bag so that I have enough space to carry home a couple more games consoles tomorrow. I'll also need to bring home a TV. That could be problematic but I'm sure I'll figure something out.


You know, this hasn't really been a mini-post. I'm not too sure what it was really... Meh. I'm sure there's a tag for it somewhere.

Late to Today

I've really left this far too late again, for which I apologise. I'm not quite sure why, but I just seemed to keep putting it off and not realising the time. But anyway, on with whatever I have to say for this post.

...

Which isn't much.

I guess I could talk about school. Today's common room movie was Donnie Darko, which I rather enjoyed, though I was disappointed that I didn't get to see the ending. I think we've got it on DVD somewhere so I'll have to dig it out.

I'm happy with my Maths now, more or less, and my Computing is still coming along. No way I'll get it done before the start of the holidays, but it shouldn't be too difficult to get the bulk of the coding done by then. I'll try to do as much as possible, since I hate always having holiday homework hanging over my head. I love alliteration though.

Lunch brought up one of my pet peeves. People who talk over movies. I don't mind the occasional comment, provided it's useful or, at least, funny but some people are just perfectly happy to chatter inanely on in the background no matter how many times you ask. You can turn up the volume all you want and all they'll do is talk louder. When you eventually try to kick them out, they'll act as if you're the one being rude.

Of course, there are worse things in the world. Such as people who constantly ask questions during films. “Where are they?”, “What's it about?”, “Who's he?”... all asked at the worst possible moment and before the audience is even expected to know such things. No one but those actually trying to watch the film and find out the answers themselves realises how ridiculous and annoying this can be, and usually is.

It's like having someone tell you that they're reading a murder mystery novel and then asking who did it. Absurd and bloody annoying; even more so, in the case of the latter, if someone nearby has seen the movie, isn't watching it and takes it upon themselves to explain every plot point in detail.

I really should turn that into a “Things that Bug Alasdair” post.

Anyway, after lunch we went to see the junior department's nativity play. It's usually kind of funny though the seating arrangements left much to be desired. We were on the floor of the gym (fortunately, I'd brought along my cushion, or else I truly wouldn't have been able to take it) and I had the bad luck to be sandwiched between two groups of idiots.

As it became clear that we had more space than we thought, all the rows shuffled forward a bit to give everyone more room. Except the jackasses in front of me, none of whom moved an inch and most of whom took the opportunity to stretch their legs in the metre wide gap now available to them.

Behind me, I could hear a pair of girls who did nothing but complain that they couldn't see. Except when they started to complain about there being songs. In the junior school play. Like there is every single freakin' year.

Other than that, it was mildly entertaining. Not as good as the one our class did at that age, though. And I swear ours was longer. And less gimmicky.

And then last lesson, I was bored out of my skull as other people took over the games area to play Guitar Hero on the 360. Watching someone play that game well is quite impressive for the first wee while. Watching someone play it badly is amusing enough for a few minutes. Listening to the loud, repetitive music as well as hearing an awful lot of “miss” tones for the better part of an hour without being able to play anything, is neither. It is very dull and very likely to induce a headache.

I could probably have had a go if I wanted but, as I remarked later to the agreement of Sam*, I didn't want to have my first go at such a game in the common room because I would, logically, suck at it. Normally, I'd be able to practice but in there, I was fairly sure that someone else would snatch away the controller and I would be forever known as unable to play Guitar Hero.


Still, for all my complaining, it wasn't a completely awful day. It was rounded off quite nicely by some rather impressive kill counts in Halo 3 online. Speaking of which, I've somehow acquired a reputation as being bad at that, too. Not sure how, since I managed to get 25 of the 100 kills my team (of eight) needed to get to win the match, just a couple of hours ago.

Oh, well. That's me off to bed, I suppose. Right after I pack my bag for the morning...





*Who had disappeared for most of the lesson to finally go talk to a girl he had “unofficially” asked out yesterday, after months of everyone knowing about his crush and bugging him to just get it over with. Very nearly including her.

I couldn't think of a good enough pun

You know that feeling that you get when you've just cut your fingernails and the tips of your fingers are kind of tingly, but in an annoying way? I hate that feeling.


As always happens with Mondays, today was a fairly easy day. All we did in Physics, my one lesson, was a neat experiment and some simple calculations to predict and confirm its findings. We even got out early, because it was our last lesson of the term where the whole class would be there, so our teacher didn't want to start the next section.

Someone had brought in a 360 for the last week of term and we decided to use it to watch a DVD rather than play games for once. Due to an argument that apparently started a couple of weeks ago, we wound up watching The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Naturally, I'd heard of the film before but I'd never actually watched it, despite my dad having the whole Dollars trilogy in a boxset.

We spent the first little while, when there were more of us in the room over lunch, making fun of the film, talking over the dialogue. We decided, for instance, that Angel Eyes (the Bad) was not searching for a man who could tell him the location of a huge stash of money, but was actually trying to find his keys.

Despite all the life-threatening situations he got into, we knew that the Man with No Name couldn't die, because he was played by Clint Eastwood. As far as we were concerned, even the doctors in the film knew this and said as much when asked if he was going to die. Hell, the man could attract cannonballs somehow – you don't go through life with that little quirk without being unbelievably badass, or possibly a cross between Magneto and Wolverine.

Tuco's pink parasol was the source of much hilarity.

But as time went by and those who weren't interested went off to do other things, those of us who were hung around. We started complaining, not when people talked over the dialogue, so much as when they distracted us from the brilliant music and the tense and epic scenes. We watched with baited breath as we tried to figure out what the characters would do next. We continued to marvel at the pinnacle of bad-assery that is Clint Eastwood but we also began to like and care for the character.

At least, I did. I really like that film. So much so that I think I'm going to watch it again, probably in conjunction with its prequels and hopefully with some friends, since the experience was much enhanced by the running commentary at times.

You know what? My first purchases from the iTunes store were made tonight, more than a month after setting