Birthday

Well, my day started out fairly badly and went downhill from there, at least for a while. The weather has been miserable all day (rain, wind and hailstones in varying combinations and intensities throughout), I had trouble concentrating in any of my classes for no discernible reason, some of my closest friends had to be reminded about my birthday by an acquaintance and, once word did spread around, all most people were interested in was when I was getting my first driving lesson and what car I would use.

Basically, I was just feeling a bit down and the fact that it should have been a good day made it that much worse.

Things got a bit better when I got home. I put on some nice, warm clothes. I turned on my computer and went through my strangely comforting routine of checking webcomics, blogs and forums. I chucked my school uniform out to the wash. I went downstairs to get something to eat and returned with a mug of Ribena and a mixing bowl of excess chocolate icing. Then, having settled in my chair, I ran Adium and read Garfield while it logged me in.

Aside from the chocolate icing, it was entirely normal. Then, the moment I logged on, I got a message saying “happy birthday!”. It was a genuine surprise and it seemed to me, in my admittedly depressed state, that it was the only birthday greetings I had received where it wasn't someone just going through the motions.

So I spent the next two hours talking to the friend who had sent it, leaving reluctantly to go and have my tea and open my presents.

I got the usual assortment of cards and cash from the usual assortment of relatives. Mum insisted that I keep a careful note of who gave me what for the purposes of writing thank you letters – an annoying reminder of that outdated practice that I truly hate having to perform. After tea – fish and chips, again nothing unusual and I wouldn't want it any other way – it was time to work my way through my pile of presents.

I got a few gadgets that I asked for, minus a couple that were still in the post, along with some DVDs, books and games that I had also asked for. There were some surprises – a little book on the iPhone and a slight variation on a top I already had, with buttons rather than a zip. I didn't really have anything against it but I prefer the zip version to the buttons and didn't see the point in having what was essentially two of the same thing. When I said something to that effect, the whole discussion devolved into an argument for some reason.

I also got some L plates to put in the car, another reminder of something I wasn't really looking forward to, and a book on space exploration from my grandparents, who also gave me £20 in case I didn't particularly want a large, hardback book on space exploration. Which, to be brutally honest, I didn't

And that was that. I returned to my room, laid my assorted gifts out on the bed, where they still sit now, and went about the continuing my normal, happy activities. There was a minor interruption when Skippy phoned, one of the very few calls I've ever had on my iPhone, to ask about some arrangements for a party I'm not even sure I'll be going to but, other than that, my day just continued slowly until we arrive at this point here.

This point being the point where I've probably spent over an hour composing this relatively short little blog post that I half hope no one will ever read. I'm finding it hard to figure out what kind of mood I'm in – it doesn't seem to fall into either happy or sad, usually the two most basic possibilities. I think I'll settle for pensive. It's reasonably accurate and it's a word that I don't use nearly often enough.

So. I think I'm going to go and unwrap a couple of things. The wrapping paper obviously came off a few hours ago but I'm actually going to properly open them now. I'll play the new Advance Wars first, I think. Then maybe read a book on Doctor Who, or browse the Mass Effect instruction manual.

Yes. That ought to cheer me up

On seventeen and surgery

My mum just said that 17 years ago tonight, she was in hospital, giving birth to me.

Tomorrow I will wake up 17 years old. And I just realised that now.

I mean, I've obviously known the fact of it for a long time. I could easily have worked out precisely when I would be 17 at any time since I learned simple arithmetic but, due to one thing and another, it's still kind of crept up on me.

Other than the whole learning to drive thing, there's nothing particularly special about turning 17. And I'm not hugely enthusiastic about driving so I'm at a loss to explain why it seems significant. Maybe it's the realisation that, over the course of my seventeenth year, I will leave behind my school and my home, the two greatest forces in my life so far. I'll probably lose touch with all but close friends, I'll have to adapt to an entirely new walk of life, I'll have to meet new people and do new things...

That's a lot to think about. And I suppose I've been putting off thinking about that because I also have a lot to think about now. I have to choose that new walk of life as well as deal with my current one.


Bah. It's too late at night for me to get philosophical about all this. Maybe I will tomorrow.

In other news... It looks like I'm going to be going into hospital every day for a couple of weeks yet. On the bright side, my brother's done with his treatment, so that's good for him and it means I don't have to hang around to wait for him to be done. It only makes a small difference but I'll take whatever I can get at this point.

If the nurse's estimate was right, it'll definitely cut into the half term holiday and maybe even the start of my prelims. I'm hoping that it'll heal sufficiently that it won't need packing and they can just give me a supply of dressings to put on myself before too long but I'm not really expecting that to happen.

I'm not sure quite what I'm going to do at the weekend, since I might be staying at a friend's house for most of it. And when the holiday arrives there was apparently some plan to go up and stay in Edinburgh, which my medical problems may have scuppered* or, at the very least, complicated.

All in all, I'm not really sure what's going on now or will be at any point in the future.

I can figure it out as I go, I suppose, and wait for the pressure to ease up a bit. It has to eventually.





*Why is “scupper” fine but not in the past tense? Answer me, spell check!

Too Little Time to Title

You know you're procrastinating when, instead of creating the next slide in your presentation, you spend ten minutes fiddling with the toolbars so that the “New Slide” option is visible when you shrink the window to fit in a DVD player.


Nuts. I started early, too. And now it's a quarter to midnight.

Still not got much of that Computing presentation done. I intend to read over all the notes tonight, save some images and then put it all together on my laptop tomorrow. It'll be close but I reckon I can pull it off.

Other than that, I've no idea what I've spent the evening doing. I had an interesting conversation with a girl who was putting off doing her Geography (if I remember correctly) as much as I was putting off my Computing. I agreed with a friend that another friend was Dodongo, the Zelda boss, specifically the one from Ocarina of Time.

I accidently saw through the rather flimsy GAME bag on the kitchen table to see what games I was getting for my birthday. So far, so good. Still no word on my laptop though but I wasn't exactly expecting it to be on time.

The Maths test that I was going to have tomorrow got delayed, which is very useful. I was thinking about asking my teacher to delay it and spend some more time on revision but I was worried that it would get put off to Friday and I'd have to spend my birthday studying. As it is, it looks like I won't have any homework that night.

I was talking to one of the nurses at the hospital this morning and they said my wound may take another 2 to 3 weeks to heal. Which is odd, since another nurse said, somewhere between last week and two weeks ago, that it would take 1 to 2 weeks to heal. I'm truly getting sick of this now – not just the not knowing when it'll end but the actual necessity of the appointments themselves.

My friends are doing various things at the weekend which I would've liked to take part in. Nothing hugely special or anything but it's the first time I've really felt like I'm missing out on something because of this crap. That and I'm not doing anything for my birthday. I may yet, particularly since I tend to invite round a couple of old friends that I rarely see at any other time, but I've really got no idea.

Wow. When I let myself just rattle off thoughts and complaints, I can really write an awful lot.

Shame I can't turn that into something more productive... Maybe I will over the half term holiday and my study leave. I still want to make a fresh start on The Grey Line and I've been developing this old idea for a sitcom which may or may not amount to anything.

Anyway, I really need to wrap this up or I'll miss my deadline.

Have a nice day. I think I might have, but I'm not entirely sure.


Oh, one last thing. Better deal for iPhone users. Awesome.

Very little to say, thus very little said

Once again, time is not on my side. Once again, that's entirely my fault.

I really don't have much to say... It seems like all my posts lately have been fairly lacklustre and concerned with my general activities and the various misfortunes that have befallen me, primarily my hospital trips. At least those are getting closer to an end. Possibly not before by birthday on Thursday but I'm hoping that I won't have to make any more trips on the weekend.

Speaking of my birthday, I have no idea what I'll be getting. I've given some suggestions to my parents and I know I'm getting an Eee PC but I've left it all so late that I have no idea what I'll actually be getting on the day. Strange thought that, and kind of depressing.

And now I'm basically out of ideas. I could go on about homework and revision I've not done but, if I'm not interested in it, I expect that no one else will be. Not that I'm sure if anyone would read it anyway. I really need to remember to ask Skippy about those visitor numbers this time.

In the immortal words of Porky Pig, “th-th-th-that's all, folks”.

More whining but now with mildly amusing videos to follow

Another day, another hour and forty five minutes after I get out of bed before I can properly start it.

Actually, that's not technically true. It's been longer.

The nurse today, who had never seen my wound until yesterday, decided to put a smaller dressing on over it, in addition to about five times as much packing as the regular nurses do. As soon as I left the room and sat down, I realised that it was a lot less flexible than the usual one, resulting in pain when I sat down or walked.

It wasn't exactly agony but, since I like tend to spend most of my time either moving or not moving, I could tell that it was going to be a problem. I didn't say anything because I figured it would just loosen up a bit over a while, like the tape they sometimes have to put on does.

Well, it didn't. After an uncomfortable car journey, I got home to find that I couldn't sit at my desk and type, exactly as I'm doing now, without being in pain. When I went to have a look at this new bandage, I discovered that it had more or less fallen off already. Fortunately, I had a spare proper dressing that I managed to put on, losing a significant chunk of the overabundant wound packing in the process.


I probably shouldn't be complaining so much. The end is in sight but it's still infuriating when I'm in pain not because of my surgery but because someone screwed up.

I've spent most of the day, once I managed to get it started, poking around with my Computing project, trying to get it to work. I've made some progress but so far I've just been working around the fundamental problem, trying to build something that will at least work in theory. Sort of a proof of concept thing.

With any luck, I've made enough progress to satisfy my teacher until I can get some more work on this done.

Of course, with my birthday and another big Maths test coming up this week, plus my usual laziness, that may take some time.

It's not so much a lack of free time thing. I'm not really planning on doing anything on my birthday, it's just that I happen to include “work” under the heading of anything. The Maths test, however, I will have to revise for. I managed to do fairly well on the lower difficulty test for this unit (the pass or fail one) but those always come in a fairly standard form – one question of this type, then one of this, then one on these, etc. – so they're never too hard if you just practice.

Where was I going with this?

Oh, yeah. Busy week ahead. Nothing much else going on.

In lieu of having anything interesting to say, I'll link you to a couple of videos.

First, here's EXPENDABLE, a short film by David Malki! (yes, the exclamation point is part of his name; he's just that awesome) and Todd Croak-Falen, who I'd never heard of before. I know of Malki! from references to his comic and from his previous short film, where he battled Comicon for some reason. Anyway, EXPENDABLE is about a day in the life of a temp working for the world's fifth largest evil organisation, A.R.A.C.H.N.I.D. That should be all you need to know.

The second video is just a silly little song by the guy who played Biff in the Back to the Future films. He's a funny guy, apparently. I'll have to see what else he does.

Anyway, that's it for today. I actually ended up linking to three movies, so you should be extra grateful and thus willing to sit through tomorrow's post, which will no doubt be more whining.

Have a nice day.

No Time to Title

You know what really annoys me sometimes? Copyright warnings on DVDs. Back in ye olde days of analogue cassettes, it was a simple matter to skip past them but that's now rendered impossible. What makes the whole thing worse is that I'm seeing them for countries I've never been to and in languages I'll likely never understand.

These are Region 2 DVDs in PAL format with English speech. Why am I seeing copyright laws for Australia in Swiss? For all I know, those Swiss ones aren't even actual copyright law. It's just some really bored guy who happens to know Swiss saying “Ha ha! You silly person who doesn't speak Swiss, I am wasting your time and there's nothing you can do about it! I crack me up sometimes, you know.”


Moving on. I promised yesterday that I would have a well thought out post that I would take my time with over the course of today. That's not worked out.

I have my excuses though. I've been wracking my brains trying to come up with some solution to my Computing project problems. I have a couple that I plan to test tomorrow and, if they don't work, I can always resort to just cutting the feature altogether and carrying on.

Actually, now that I write that down, I'm basically exactly where I was yesterday, give or take a few scribbled notes and a diagram or two.

What's really wasting my time these days is these stupid hospital appointments. I was thinking about it this morning and I realised that the whole thing takes over an hour on average. While I can handle getting up early, I then have to have a shower as well as deal with removing the bandages, etc. That second bit may not take long but it's hardly pleasant. That takes up to half an hour.

Then, after a rushed breakfast, it's about a twenty minute drive to the hospital, another ten minutes (again, on average) sitting around waiting and then a twenty minute drive back home.

By the end of all of this, I've basically been awake for an hour and a half before I can start my day.

It's more tolerable during the weekdays. I'm not making the trip just to go there – it's more of a detour on my way to school, a detour that at least lets me miss Life Skills occasionally. The staff on weekdays also know me and what to do by now, so everything there goes smoothly.

What makes it worse is that, as each day goes by, it becomes more and more apparent that I don't really need all this. That's overall a good sign but the wound packing today fell out before lunch and the only discomfort I've felt is from the now largely useless dressing. It just makes me wonder why I'm still going in there every morning.


Enough of that. I dislike complaining so much but the whole point of this blog is to give me somewhere to solidify and write down my thoughts and this whole situation has been weighing on my thoughts pretty heavily. The end is in sight but every time I seem to be getting closer, it moves a vague distance forwards.

Anyway, I really have to post this now. No time left. More tomorrow. Actually, here's some development about that Mass Effect debacle. The vapid “psychologist” actually apologised. Still waiting on Fox though.

More Mass Effect and More of My Life

Another late night post, I'm afraid. I really have to get out of the habit of doing these.

I'll begin with a brief update on the whole Mass Effect/Fox News situation that I've been talking about for the past few days. First of all, Joystiq has an excellent article from GamePolitics.com's Dennis McCauley that goes over the whole debacle and looks into just what Fox's attack and EA's stand means for gamers and the industry as a whole. While you're there, look through some of the comments for further insights.

The latest piece of action has been Fox's claim that they invited EA to appear on the offending show to provide a counter-argument, saying that they have heard nothing back and somehow trying to paint EA as the bad guy in all of this. EA has no reason to go on the show – they have done nothing wrong and so don't need to defend themselves, they could probably expect the exact same treatment that Geoff Keighley got on the original segment (being ignored and cut-off literally mid-sentence) and they have already made their point.

Let's face it, if you wanted to make a public statement that Fox News had made a huge mistake, insulted your company and several others along with hundred of thousands of gamers, would you want to make that statement on a Fox News program? No, of course not.

I'll keep my eye on this; I don't think it's over yet.


Anyway, not much else going on today. Managed to get into school fairly early, before lessons started. That meant that I got the whole of Computing in but I still didn't manage to make a huge amount of progress with my project. I now know exactly what the problem is and I've got two possible ways to tackle it – one I know will work but which will require a lot of work and another which is theoretically simpler but I'm not quite sure how the details would work yet. Sorting that'll probably take up a chunk of the weekend.

Other than that, it's just been a regular school day, except for the fact that I found my Maths lesson easy, which is good but fairly unusual. I spent most of my time playing Street Fighter or one of several N64 games that I brought in for the console that I finally managed to hook up. Now that I think about, the table that holds all the games and TVs is probably newer than anything sitting on it – neither the consoles nor the TVs are post-2000. Maybe I'll bring in a Gamecube again.

I'll have to wrap things up now, though I promise to have a better and more timely post up tomorrow. Anything to put off doing that Computing project.

On Torchwood, Life and the Gaming Community

So I was talking to my dad and my brother about Torchwood, which they each caught some of last night as well. We all agreed that the concept was pretty good but that the execution was flawed. There was some discussion about the quality of the actors, though I happen to think they're all okay, given a decent script. See, for example, any episode of Doctor Who, the show where Jack isn't regularly treated like a emotionally distant nymphomaniac.

The overall consensus was that it was all a bit rubbish but I think I'm going to stick with it – partly because I know it's going to impact on Doctor Who again at some point and partly because, as I said before, I like the concept and want to see if they can actually take it somewhere. If next week's episode is back up to the standard set by last week's (this week's being a bit too violent and melodramatic for my tastes) then I'll know the show stands a good chance.


Anyway, more of that some other time. I would normally just run through my day at this point in the post... so that's what I'll do. Got in more or less on time. Went over the Physics test I did a couple of days ago – managed to get an A but my marks were still a bit lower than I would've liked. It was apparently a hard test though, so I guess that's okay.

Computing proved to be a bit of a problem since I still haven't made much progress with my project, despite reassuring my teacher that I was doing exactly that every time he asked. Technically, it's not working right now, but I'm confident I can fix it fairly easily now that I've figured out the problem. If needs be, I can just remove the feature that's causing the problem. Seems like a bit of a waste but it might just be necessary for the sake of simplicity and speed.

Last three lessons were all taken up with Maths of some sort. I picked up some revision sheets that I had rather foolishly left behind yesterday and spent a while going through them until I was fairly confident. I then sat the test and I reckon I did well enough. I'll probably find out tomorrow.


Okay, that's that little record of my life updated for today. On to something more important and interesting.

You may recall that, a few days ago, I provided a link to a Fox News piece about Mass Effect which not only managed to completely misrepresent the game but also to prove just how incredibly stupid all the people on it were, except for the one reasonable guy who got cut off in the middle of his rebuttal.

Well, EA, parent company of Mass Effect's developer BioWare, has written a letter to Fox specifically addressing all the points raised in the segment and systematically shooting down each repetitive and equally incorrect one. In my opinion, Jeff Brown, the man who wrote it, has taken exactly the right tone – he comes across as calm, as opposed to the sensationalist piece itself, and he doesn't make any demands or accusations.

He basically tells them that they were wrong and that they should know better before politely asking for an apology and some clarification. He makes his point eloquently and presents a far more intelligent and dignified image than the supposed journalists and experts responsible. I rarely find myself in agreement with the yearly-incrementing sports franchise factory that is EA but in this case I have to say that I'm delighted to see them taking a stand.

Yes, they are defending their own product, but they have every right to do that and in doing so they send a clear message that the video games industry and gamers themselves are not the depraved fools that the media often suggest them to be and that, if attacked, they can and will defend themselves on the public stage.

On another note, even ordinary, non-corporate giant gamers are making a stand. Just take a look at the reviews of the so-called expert's book on Amazon.com. She was the one who laughed when asked if she had even played the game she was on national television attacking – I very much doubt that she's laughing now, or that she'll be so eager to make similarly unfounded claims any time soon.

The whole thing makes me proud to call myself a gamer.

Basically, it's just a rambling description of my day

It 's been a busy day. I got in later than normal because a new nurse was watching over my dressing change for training or something so that took twice as long. The when I did get in, I had to look over some Maths problems for a kid I'm mentoring, so that I knew the answers and didn't have to work them out as he did them.

Second lesson was just plain old Maths as normal but third I had to do that mentoring. Wasn't too much of a problem and I at least managed to take the computer that was in the room and work on my Computing presentation. Wouldn't have minded having a proper free period instead though. Fourth was Maths again but I got stuck doing some practice test instead of the revision work that I wanted to do.

Also, I meant to collect some revision sheets from my teacher at some point today and completely forgot. And the test is tomorrow. Anyway, lunch was Computing club – nothing hugely taxing, Sam and I just chatted with one of the teachers about movies and TV shows that we'd each downloaded, occasionally stopping to help some kid with a program I didn't know how to work. Still solved the problem though.

Fifth period, straight after lunch, panic set in because I had Computing next and hadn't finished my presentation. Thus, I quickly dug out my Beaten Up Old Laptop^TM and worked through my notes on Processor Architecture for 55 minutes straight. I managed to produce something that looked reasonable so we went through that in Computing. We ended up interrupting each other and chatting so much that it took us the bulk of the lesson to get through four presentations.

And that was my day. Add in some Maths revision and an episode of Torchwood and you've reached the present moment.

I'm trying to think what I've learned from today, if anything, because that seems like the kind of thing I ought to do on a blog supposedly dedicated to my random musings on life.

Doing those junior Maths problems and seeing the kid, apparently one of the brightest in his class (hence the separate tutoring), struggling with them reminded me that I was probably doing the same at his stage. Makes me think about just how far my education has come since then, how much my knowledge has expanded in all directions... Doesn't really help me with that Maths test tomorrow but at least I can now expect to look back on this stuff once I complete university and laugh.

All evidence above suggests that I'm still a forgetful procrastinator extraordinaire, but I'm hoping the panic has scared me enough to get back on track.

Not that I've done any more of my Computing project tonight. I'm really starting to fall behind on that. Now that my shoulder's largely recovered and I have nothing much else to focus on, I'll have to put some serious work in on that at the weekend.

On the bright side, Torchwood was pretty good. Quite a lot of violence and death but it did have an effect on the plot and characters and there was no random sex or swearing. Previously, solid helpings of all three were a requirement of each script so that's an improvement. I also liked the injection of more dark humour into the show – it particularly helped lighten up the formerly dull and depressing character of Ianto.

Anyway, that's all I've got time for. I may yet do some revision before going to bed but I doubt it.

Have a nice day. I can't decide if I have or not but it was good to write it all down, I think.

Fretting and Facepalms

Well, I left this late again but I'm not in such a rush. I just have to finish a Computing presentation that I've half done...


I really need to get on top of this whole procrastination thing. I still need to do my Computing project, I'm regularly lax about getting work done in school, either in class or in the common room (where it's nearly impossible anyway), I have two Maths tests coming up that I've hardly revised for, I was meant to go over some questions before I tutor some kid with them tomorrow and haven't, that I managed to get past today's Physics test seemed to be pure fluke, not to mention my Physics project, where I still feel like I've no idea what I'm meant to be doing... Then there's prelims.

And that's just school. I've got my usual array of lengthy to do lists lying around at home but my main priorities probably ought to be choosing a university course and thinking about driving lessons. My current excuse for both is that prelims are coming up.

With universities, I'll admit that I'm a little scared to make a final decision. It's a huge thing to decide and so far my only thought on the matter is that I shouldn't deal with it right now. Part of it may yet come down to, effectively, where everyone else is going.

As for driving, my parents, and, in fact, most of the people around, seem to expect me to basically just hop into a car and on to the road the moment I hit 17 but I'm not to happy about it – I know I need to learn and that I'll have to do it sometime, I just don't really want the pressure and the timing, right before prelims, doesn't help in the slightest.

So that's most of what's on my plate right now and I suppose it feels good to get it off my chest... I'm not sure how it was on my chest and plate simultaneously in the first place so solving that paradox has probably lifted the weight of my shoulders... Yeah, enough metaphors. Especially since that last one just served to remind me of my ongoing shoulder pain. That seems to be clearing up though, which is good.


In other news, there's a brand new video game controversy going around between people who have no understanding of video games but love a good bit of controversy – the mainstream news media. Just check out these Joystiq articles and the related ones they link to.

There's this one, linking to a Times article that I haven't yet forced myself to even skim through. The quotes on the page where enough to tell me just how much utter rubbish it was.

It's definitely a bad sign when you want to punch everyone in a news broadcast except for the guy who gets cut off in the middle of his rebuttal but, nevertheless, Fox News seems to be doing all right for itself. If you can make it to the end of this video without feeling an unbridled hatred for everyone but Geoff Keighley then you deserve a sainthood. If you manage to hunt down and bitchslap everyone in that video but Geoff Keighley, you are equally deserving.

If you followed the links, you'd know that it's all been sparked off by Mass Effect, an Xbox 360 RPG that's caused controversy because of it's depiction of sex... by which I mean implication of sex and partial nudity... for less than two minutes in a 30+ hour game... in an optional section...

The whole thing was inspired by the article, which I won't link to, that inspired this Penny Arcade comic, which I just did link to.

The whole thing just gets me so incredibly mad – it's not just that my hobbies are being vilified and grossly misrepresented, it's also that this vilification and misrepresentation is par for the course in most media outlets today, which seemed to be staffed by talking heads and attractive bimbos with no concept of journalism or proper research.

But enough about that. I still have work to do and I have no doubt whatsoever that another opportunity to rant about this will appear very soon.

Have a nice day.

I don't have time to think of a title relating time pressure and Guitar Hero!

I've said before, I believe, that I enjoy working under pressure. This goes some way towards explaining why I've only just begun to type tonight's post at twenty to midnight. It also factors into the tale I'm about to tell you, concerning a particular event, and the series of further events that it sparked off, which occurred during my school day today.

The latest craze in the common room is Guitar Hero III on my friend Joss's Xbox 360. Now, I've nothing against Guitar Hero – I haven't played it very much but by all accounts it's a good series and I was considering getting either it or the related game Rock Band for my birthday. Guitar Hero is of course a music rhythm game, based primarily around rock songs.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of said genre but I do find it annoying when it's constantly being played, often badly, throughout the entire day – something made worse by the limited selection of people's favourite songs. But, nevertheless, it gets played all day.

Anyone familiar with 360s and their design flaws has now no doubt realised what happened not long after lunch today.

We first assumed and hoped that the 360 had simply overheated and that unplugging it and leaving next to an open window would solve the problem. Everyone, their entertainment taken from them, began to filter out of the room, save for a few of us, three to be precise – myself, Sam Potter and a girl called Philippa.

We decided after a time, when the console had evidently cooled down, to try it again. No luck. The Red Ring of Death was still present, mocking us with it's glowing... red ring-ness.

Our first plan of attack was to panic lightly as we tried to think of what to do. Sam and Philippa took turns pressing the power button in the hope that it would fix itself and I decided to pace up and down, occasionally yelling randomly.

We tried various different tactics – hitting it, turning it on and off again, hitting it harder, drawing a poor facsimile on the wall behind it to try and convince Joss it was the real one. The best plan we could come up with was telling him that it was stolen. In broad daylight. By Batman. Who broke it.

I considered trying the “towel” fix – wrapping it up to overheat it further and let the components, distorted by the heat, fall back into place for a short time. It wasn't until Sam Stafford got there that we actually plucked up the courage to try it. We used our blazers and had Stafford sit on it to make it warmer still.

After another half hour or so, we unwrapped it to find only two red lights instead of the three that show a fatal system error. Our joy was short-lived as it quickly returned to where it had been before. We knew we had a problem on our hands as the day was ending and one of us would have to explain what happened. I somehow drew the short straw.

The whole explanation, withheld until he was above me on the stairs and we were heading in opposite directions (me at great speed), took about five seconds and I ran out of there.

To be honest, we knew he wouldn't mind and he didn't. I can't say why but the whole ludicrous exaggeration of the situation made it an awful lot of fun.

I may go on more tomorrow but I've only got five minutes to publish this online so I'll have to stop for now. Still, I've managed over 600 words in fifteen minutes. Not too bad.

Right, nothing more that I can say until tomorrow. Sorry for the rushed post which may or may not be funny. I don't have time for a quality check.

Have a nice day.

A small day spent thinking about big ideas

I'm making an early start on this post because I want to get to bed early and I don't want to have anything else pressuring me while I do Physics revision later. Also, I don't want to do said Physics revision now and this is as good an excuse as any.

It's been another fairly slow day. I haven't got much homework done which is going to be annoying tomorrow but I'll deal with it. The fact that my shoulder's been hurting like hell for some reason hasn't helped. I certainly doubt I could have used the computer constantly enough to make any headway with my Computing project. The deadline for which might be Tuesday. That's not going to work out well.


Okay, so it's an awful lot later now. My shoulder is feeling a bit better, or at least it was until I tried typing this, but I've still not done a lot of my Physics revision. I think I should be able to get by with doing some before I go to bed and some in the morning but I can't be sure. It's not a hugely important test...

Crap, I need to stop rationalising away my laziness like this. I may screw up this test completely but it'll at least provide an incentive to study harder for my prelims...


Anyway, I finally managed to find somewhere online that could get me an Eee PC delivered in time for my birthday. It was slightly more expensive than the other places but I didn't really want it arriving after my birthday since I knew it would probably just distract me while I tried to revise and so on.

I'm still trying to find somewhere that has the accessories for it, particularly the extra battery and the mouse, but I can live without them. I could probably live without the whole thing, to be honest, but it's a birthday present so why not.


As I said above, today's been pretty slow. I moved around my computer setup so that the iMac is now at the better desk, which is a lot more comfortable and gives it better lighting. It's not a final fix but it'll do for now.

I got some stuff in the mail from the University of Edinburgh either this morning or yesterday morning. Can't really remember, which speaks volumes for the attention I've paid it. I also have some stuff from St Andrews lying around from weeks ago that I need to take half an hour and read through but I just haven't had enough time.

I'm also trying to put the whole university thing out of my mind, at least until after the prelims are over. Otherwise, I'd be dealing with four “big” things at the same time – prelims, learning to drive, deciding on my entire academic future and, of course, the only pain in my ass that isn't metaphorical.

All falling around my birthday.

Well, no sense whining about it here. I've got to go and do that Physics revision as well as do my whole “shifting all the crap off my bed that gets put there during the day because I have no freaking storage space in my room because all the shelves were either taken down when it was redecorated or are taken up by other people's unwanted junk I mean honestly why do we keep that giant box full of McDonald's toys in my wardrobe of all places not to mention the old printer that's up there why do we hang on to that thing I don't know if we even have a computer that'll connect to it” routine.

So have a nice day.

Nothing Worth Saying

There's nothing quite like getting out of bed at noon and having a breakfast of a bar of chocolate to start the day.

While I did greatly enjoy sleeping in for the first time in ages, it did remind me why I used to hate it in the first place – it totally throws off my day so I don't get any work done.

So now I have to do all of my homework tomorrow as well as rearrange my room. I'll be moving my iMac to the other desk because this one has been making my shoulder hurt like hell for the past week or so.

Bah. Enough whining.


Nothing much else going on today. Went to PC World to see if they had any Eee PCs in stock, with no success. Looks like I'll end up ordering one online, which means it'll probably arrive more than a week after my birthday.


I really don't think I have anything else to say... I'm tempted to make this my first “crappy post” (as their tagged) in a while now. Well, the first one I've tagged as such.

I'm whining again, aren't I?

Nuts to it. I was trying to find something to link to here but I can't seem to come up with anything...

Here's a neat search engine.

Have a nice day.

Sleeping on the Weekend

I'm leaving this very late again (thirty minutes to randomly self-imposed midnight deadline) but I'm not really bothered because I'm in such a good mood. Why am I in such a good mood, you ask?

Simple. Tomorrow, for the first time in pretty much eight solid weeks, I will get to lie in bed past eight o'clock.

Other than that, the weekend doesn't hold huge amounts to look forward to – I have an awful lot of homework and nothing much else to do. I still need to finish my Computing project, preferably quickly, and I have some Maths that I need to practice. And five Physics topics to revise.

On the bright side (well, the other bright side, since the sleeping late thing probably counts as a bright side of its own), I have managed to make some progress with my Physics project. I was having some trouble determining what parts I would need for the experiments that I haven't actually devised yet.

All I'd been able to discern from my research on the internet was that large amounts of wire were necessary. I told one of my Physics teachers this and he agreed – in fact, he said I wouldn't really need much else, other than some wood and sticky tape to hold it all together. Thus, the problem was solved.


I'm not sure if this is good news or bad but I was told this morning, after a ten second appointment with a consultant for which I waited forty minutes, that I may only need to have my dressing changed for another week, possibly two. If viewed optimistically, this could mean I'll be done with this crap before my birthday, which would be good. Even if I'm not, at least I know the end is in sight.

I've not really got much else to write about and I want to get to bed so I'll stop writing and... go to bed. Obviously.

Well, once I post this. Which may take a few minutes since Firefox has decided to freeze. Again.

...

Have a nice – wait, it's working again, huzzah! – day.

I think this might just be the first notes post of the new year

Okay, twenty-five minutes to my self-imposed midnight deadline. Probably ought to get on with this post.


First of all, I mentioned yesterday that I thought I would have a bit of trouble finding my Physics class this morning. I was right – nobody knew where they'd been redirected to and the labs don't even appear on the redirection timetable on the bulletin board. Eventually, after exhausting all my other options, I managed to wander past my class and get in for the last ten minutes of the lesson.

I suppose I'll have to do some reading to catch up on what I missed but that might be tricky since we apparently covered several different things and I've no idea what stuff it was I missed.

Oh, well.


In other news that affects me and pretty much no one else, my wound has been hurting a bit more than usual lately. I'm not sure if that's a good sign, implying that it's healing closer to the surface or something, or bad because, you know, it hurts more.

I'm seeing the consultant who did the operation again tomorrow and, while I don't expect him to sign off on it just yet, he'll hopefully be able to give me some more definite information. Unfortunately, this means that I'll be in even later than normal (and that I'll have to kill at least half an hour of time on top of the usual wait in the morning) so that I miss Computing.

Not a huge problem usually since most of what we do there is practical work that I can just catch up on at home but we have a test tomorrow so I'll need to do that at some point.


This is turning into a notes post, isn't it? Haven't done one of them in ages. What else have I got...


Well, my birthday's coming up and I've been thinking about asking for an Asus Eee PC, or at least some money towards one. I'm not sure what use I'll have for it exactly but I'm something of a gadget junky and I've decided that I want one. Maybe, the little rationalising voice in my head says, just maybe I'll use a simple computer that powers on quickly to write more, stopping me from being distracted or from getting bored while waiting for the old laptop to boot up.

Yeah, it sounds silly to me too.


I've just remembered that I assured my Physics teacher that I would decide what materials I needed for my project by the end of tomorrow and I've barely even looked anything up. As I believe I've said before, all the information online seems to be hobbyists stringing huge antennas up between trees. Not really what I'm after...


I might do a bit of that tonight but right now my arm is starting to hurt. I think it's the way I hold the mouse on this crappy desk that's getting to me. Maybe I'll move my computer at the weekend. It's either that or do work or writing or something similarly entirely unproductive.


Speaking of the weekend, I'm going into hospital late on Saturday, probably after lunch, so I'll get to have my first proper lie in in almost two months. Absolutely glorious. Maybe I'll set my alarm for the normal time just so that I can be awake to enjoy not having to get up.


Hey, this actually turned out to be pretty long. I blame the double line spacing and my inability to get to the point of anything quickly.

I'm off to either get some sleep or do some Physics research. With any luck I'll get something more coherent written earlier in the day tomorrow.

I'm trying to thing of some suitable way of concluding this but, now that I think about it, I never really had a proper beginning or middle so no one will mind if it doesn't have a proper end.

Bye.

Torchwood and Timetabling

Well, I watched the first episode of the new series of Torchwood tonight.

I'm impressed.

The first series went a bit overboard when trying to be “darker and edgier” than Doctor Who and often ended up with unlikable heroes and unsympathetic villains shooting at and having sex with each other for no particular reason, usually to the detriment of the character development and plot.

Right from the start, the new series establishes a lighter tone with the now sans Jack Torchwood team chasing a sports car-driving alien through the streets of Cardiff in their trademark SUV. This isn't played for laughs however as we quickly learn that, despite its humorous appearance and introduction, this alien is armed, dangerous and knowledgeable about the team. This whole section also serves to reintroduce all the characters and give Captain Jack a suitably dramatic entrance.

While some witty banter helped a lot, the thing that really made the Torchwood characters more appealing was that they were actually competent at their jobs. Remember in the first series how they didn't notice a half-converted Cyberman in their own basement for months? None of that here, much to my relief.

The team manage to work together and actually save some lives for once rather than just whining and letting a combination of Jack and random chance fix everything. This makes the characters and their role as defenders of the planet so much more believable than it was before.

You could try to chalk it up to character development – everyone had to grow up while Jack was away or else the world wound have imploded – but really this is how it should have been in the first place. There's been a subtle but hugely important shift in the tone of the show and it's all the better for it.


Nothing much going on today. Spent a lot of time watching Firefly in between lessons, to my great delight. Room changes are still going on so we got put in one of the science labs for Maths today. It was the lab where I had Higher Chemistry and it reminded me that, more or less one year ago, I would've been studying like mad for my Chemisty prelim. And now I barely remember any of it. Strange.

I also currently have a problem facing me – I have no idea where my Physics class is going to be tomorrow morning. I know we've been shunted out of our usual room but I think the room we're going to has changed several times, meaning that the schedules posted around the school are probably wrong.

Normally, I'd just go for safety in numbers and hang around with my classmates until we either found the room or collectively gave up, hoping that any blame would be spread thin. Since I'll be coming in late, presumably after everyone else finds the room, I'm more or less screwed.

I was about to ask Sam to leave me a note of some kind when, for the first time I can ever recall, he decides to go to bed early and logs off. Hopefully, someone in my class or, more likely, my teacher will have the common sense to get me the information somehow if the room has indeed changed.

Much Ado About Macworld

Wow. I really left this post late. It's almost half past midnight.

At least I have an excuse this time. I've been busy pouring over all the details coming out of Macworld. For those of you who don't know, the annual Macworld conference is where Apple reveals all their latest and greatest gadgets, hence the deluge of Mac-related articles all over the media.

I can't be bothered tracking down links to articles and so on so I'm just going to link to the main Apple homepage and let anyone interested browse from there. I've not had time to take it all in myself so I'll just go over the major points of interest and then maybe tidy it up for a MacTake article tomorrow.

As I type this, my iPhone is sitting in its dock, waiting for the latest firmware (1.1.3) to finish downloading and install. It's a relatively minor update, merely adding a few neat features such as a locator function on the Google Maps app and some ability to customise the home page. It's this customisation function that I find most revealing – it's very obviously gearing up for the release of the official software development kit in February. I'm still not quite sure what to expect from that myself but at least the company behind it has confidence.

I should note that by installing this update, I'm basically giving up on hacking it anytime soon. I've been considering getting an iPod Touch purely to fiddle around with the various apps that have sprung up semi-illegally on the internet over the past few months.

Oh, and that's another thing. To update the iPod Touch, adding in a number of functions that come as standard on the iPhone, Apple is expecting customers to pay over £10. I'm a little disappointed by this but I expect it to work out quite profitably for Apple.

Still, we'll see how that works out later.

Another big announcement was the MacBook Air, an ultra-portable being touted as the world's smallest laptop. Looking at photos and the guided tour video on the Apple site, I have no reason whatsoever to doubt this. For all the people who will complain about it being a typical “style-over-substance” Apple gadget, there's no denying that some serious engineering and design skills went into this.

The absence of an in-built optical drive comes as no surprise in such a device but Apple's means of getting around it are ingenious. As the “Air” name implies, there's a large focus on wireless technology. If you're on a wireless network with another computer, PC or Mac, all you have to do is install a small program on said computer and your Air can instantly connect to any available optical drives and use them for its own purposes.

There's also a small, USB-powered optical drive for those who insist on watching movies not rented from the new iTunes movie rental system.

The final big thing is the Time Capsule. A wireless device, no larger than an average router, it is essentially a 500Gb or 1Tb server-grade hard drive with a wireless network connection. Any Mac running Leopard can connect to it using Time Machine, which will automatically back up to it. I don't know much about it but it sounds very impressive and keeps with the whole “wireless” theme Apple's had going this year.


So, in summary and in brief, there's nothing hugely revolutionary. To be honest, given the revelation of the iPhone last year, this year's show was almost guaranteed to have fewer surprises. The same thing happened to the first few E3s and other video game trade shows after all the new consoles had been released – all the secrets were out and it was just a matter of improving things.

Well, that's getting kind of late now and I still need to finish some Computing homework and discuss some of this Macworld news with Sam. I have a feeling Skippy will have a lot to say on all this tomorrow, in one medium or another, as will my other technology-inclined (or, as they are more commonly known, geeky) friends.

I can't think of anything conclusive to say so... Have a nice day.

Not a great post but it shall suffice

Another day of nothing much going on. This being Monday, almost nothing happened at school for me, save for a short Physics lesson. I just dug out my Beaten Up Old Laptop^TM and played Half Life for a bit, in between arguing with people about why they should play Half Life 2 and getting soaked by drizzle on a walk to the shops.

Also, we watched some episodes of The A-Team and Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It was widely agreed that, while Fresh Prince's comedy and morality has not aged as badly as the characters' fashion sense, The A-Team remains hugely more awesome. This was mostly due to the presence of Mr. T, though copious amounts of cigar smoking, shooting around people's feet and tossing rednecks over things also helped.

You know, personally, I've always liked Hannibal more than BA. I guess I'm weird.

After school, we all had to go along to my grandmother's house to see her on her birthday. It wasn't too bad, although hearing all about my cousin who failed to get into Oxford for five minutes was more than a little aggravating.


But enough complaining and whinging. I don't have time for that. I need to need to get to bed early, as always, but before I do that, I want to try and... well, do some rather important Physics homework that I probably should have done a lot earlier in the evening.

I reckon I can get away with not doing it but I'm going to feel bad about it and it's just going to get worse as I let it all pile up...

Right, that's it, I'm gone. This is a low quality mini post but I won't call it a crappy post.

Have a nice day, I guess.

A Wasted Day In Darkest Glasgow

Well, I lived through the ordeal that was my grandma's 80th birthday party. Not that I really saw much of my grandma – we “children” (which, rather insultingly to him, included my 20 year-old brother) were sent off to eat in a separate room. Since we see the two cousins we were left with about once every five years*, the conversation was predictably dull. Actually, it was a lot more than that. It was, for about four and a half hours of the five hours we were there, non-existent.

Seriously. The only thing we have in common with these two is one living grandparent and vaguely similar age brackets. James, brave and mostly sociable soul that he is, tried to engage them in conversation a few times but it quickly petered out again. I can't remember Erin speaking a single word for the whole time we were in the same room as the cousins, except to politely decline the occasional offer of something to drink.

The only thing keeping me sane was my iPhone, which served as an excuse not to talk or eat the unidentified food in front of me as I tried to appear engrossed in writing an email that I never even bothered to send. Erin and James had no such excuse and while they each made at least a token effort to toy with their food, neither of them ate much either. The one thing that I was glad about during the whole experience was that no one asked why or pressed us to eat more.

I later learned that my dad, having foreseen exactly these events, had asked my aunt not to leave us alone with our cousins but the decision had, alas, been made and there could be no changing it. For some reason.

So the whole thing was really a very unpleasant waste of time. I later described it to Skippy as “four hours of uncomfortable silence while wearing uncomfortable shoes”. Shoes that, incidentally, I didn't even know I had until Mum pulled them out of the bottom of my wardrobe a couple of days ago. I doubt I'll wear them again.

On the way home and for hours afterwards, we were all complaining about it and congratulating ourselves on getting through it without yelling at anyone for offering us wine for the umpteenth time.


Anyway, I think I've got most of the complaints out of my system now. Unfortunately, between hospital in the morning, going up to Glasgow and coming back exhausted I've not really done anything else all day. I haven't even done the homework that I was planning to do. I can probably get away with doing it in the morning if needs be, though I now have to rethink my plans for finishing my Computing project.

Ah, well. That's enough for now. I'm going to go to bed, where I plan to fall asleep as quickly as possible and not wake up for as long as possible. Of course, as long as possible will probably be about seven hours.

Damn.




*That wasn't an exaggeration. Thinking back, I can only recall meeting them one other time. I don't remember talking to them very much but I do remember playing TimeSplitters 2 instead of talking to them, so it must have been a few years ago now. Before that, I know I had met them, it's just too long ago to remember.

Customs duty, inaccessible audio plays and other banes of my existence

You remember I bought a load of stuff from ThinkGeek back in November? We just got a bill in the post for various customs duties and taxes which adds £40 to the price. I've no idea why it's that much and I also don't know why it's taken three months to get here after the items arrived. I've apparently now been banned from ordering any more stuff from there, though I fully intend to look into what of this stuff actually requires customs duty.

It's all a bit ridiculous, to be honest.


You know what really bugs me? The way all audio players are geared towards music. Okay, so music is probably the most common use for them but what about audio books and plays? As far as I know, and please correct me if I'm wrong, all the major audio programs are geared towards music. Everything is referred to as a track and default settings merge the end of one track into the beginning of the next – a cool effect for fading finishes and intros but a pain in the ass for dialogue.

Yes, I know such things can be switched off. But it's not what's there that's the problem, it's what's missing. Compare your average DVD player program to a CD/audio equivalent. When watching a DVD, hardware players will remember where you were so long as they don't lose power and software ones will remember it for as long as needs be. Most have some form of bookmarking as well, should you wish to jump to a specific point that isn't near a chapter.

Not so with audio players though. If you want to stop in the middle of your arcane, sound-based story, you darned better have a piece of paper handy to write down how far into the track you are. Same thing goes for podcasts as well, which are even less likely to have any form of division between start and end.


That's probably one of those things I should think about more and write about when it's not twenty to midnight. I'll give it some consideration and maybe try finding out if such programs exist.

The whole thing was sparked off when I discovered that the audio plays on the last disc of my Davros DVD boxset couldn't simply be taken off the disc. I wasn't expecting to be able to play it in a CD player or with iTunes, it is still a DVD after all, but some plain audio files on the disc would have made everything a lot easier. As it is, you put it in and it's just hours of audio with a still image of the relevant CD boxart changing once in a while.

It would have been even better if they'd made some basic animations to go along with it, such as they did for the unfinished-serial-remade-as-an-audio-play Shada.


This post is pretty rushed and incoherent and I apologise for that, as usual. Between going back to school, this being the first weekend off again and still going into hospital in the morning, my whole sense of timing has been thrown off.

It's a better excuse than normal.

On the bright side, I've managed to find some time to start a short story based on The Grey Line. It introduces a few secondary characters and a few background points. It started off as a minor thing to solidify a particular character in my head but by the time I reached the fourth paragraph or so, it had taken on a life of it's own.

It's now a key part of the arc and helps form some of the scientific principles behind the operation of the Grey universe.

Awesome.

I might not get it finished tomorrow because I'll be going to that lunch at my aunt and uncle's for a large part of the day. At least I'll have plenty of quiet time to think about it, though, because I'll be going to that lunch at my aunt and uncle's for a large part of the day.

That's all I've got time for and a reasonable amount of all I've got to say.

Have a nice day.

In which I describe some stuff that happened

Left it late again. I'd really like to start a post without having to say that.

Well, that's the first most-of-a-week back and I'm kind of looking forward to the weekend. On the one hand, it's not school. On the other hand, I have a load of homework to do, I still can't lie in in the mornings and I have that visit to my aunt and uncle in Glasgow to “look forward to” on Sunday. My only hope is to rip all of the Davros audio plays off the disc in my boxset and try to listen to them surreptitiously.

I doubt it'll work.

On the bright side though, I've managed to convince my mother that I don't need to buy new shoes or clothes or anything specially for the occasion. I'm hoping that by the time the day in question rolls around, I'll have convinced her that I can just wear a t-shirt instead of a “proper” shirt. Just for the record, I hate wearing shirts, ties, uncomfortable shoes and generally anything I deem impractical or uncomfortable.

I forget where I was going with this but I fully expect the whole thing to be annoying, awkward and, above all, mind-numbingly dull. It will also eat into the time that could have better been spent working on my homework – finishing off my Computing project, working out what I need for Physics, finishing some Maths exercises and... some other stuff, the details of which escape me now. One thing might require a PowerPoint presentation.

Nothing much else going on today. Someone brought a 360 into school a couple of days ago so we were using it to play Halo 3 and watch some DVDs today. I also spent a fair chunk of time playing the original Sonic the Hedgehog on the Mega Drive I'd taken in. No particular reason, I just felt like it.

What else is there to say...

A couple of reminders to myself. Play all those games you have piling up. Seriously. Also... actually, no, it was just one reminder to myself.

Screw it. It's too late at night and I'm getting little enough sleep as it is, as always. I'm going to bed.

So get lost.


Wait! I just remembered another thing I need to do! Check with Skippy about TWToday visitor numbers.

That's seriously it now.

Go away.

Projects, Panic and Precipitation

Another quick post I think. I'm going to try to get this all done in under fifteen minutes so that I can spend the remaining half an hour before midnight doing some Computing homework. I probably should have done it earlier but it mostly just involves editing some documents so that the initial design I made in about twenty minutes three months ago reflects the program I've actually created since then.

I might draw some diagrams as well, just for good luck.


The effects of the weather are still being felt around here. Rain this morning either made or revealed a number holes in the roofs of some school buildings. A room on the top floor of the main building had to be cleared out, along with the eight or so computers it held, due to a leak. The biggest one, however, was the first one I noticed. Upon walking into the Advanced Higher science lab this morning I was greeted by, not my Physics class, but by half a dozen buckets and a steady stream of water.

My class had just moved into the next lab over though, so that wasn't really a problem. Other than the fact that the next lab over isn't really designed to be used for teaching. Or as a lab. It's basically a big long corridor with workbenches along each wall, all covered in complicated looking Physics equipment that gets used once a decade.

That reminds me. I have to figure out what I need to construct a half-wavelength dipole antenna so that my teachers can order in the right supplies. I've tried looking it up but everything online involves serious hobbyists trying to recreate the VLA in their back gardens using nothing but coils of wire with very complicated serial numbers.

All I need is something a lot smaller, though I think the components may be pretty similar. If only I could find something more specific than “lots of wire”. I'm actually quite worried about this Physics project. I'm not quite sure what I'm meant to be doing but I might have slightly overcomplicated things again, as with my Computing project.

I get this feeling partly because, as I said, I don't know what I'm doing and partly because it requires my teacher to explain to me things that aren't in the course but that he's used before... in his PhD thesis.


Well, I overstepped my time limit slightly but if I hadn't stopped to watch Father Ted every few minutes, I think I would've managed it so I claim the moral victory.

Somehow.

Childhood Nightmares and Roofing Problems

Well, I left this much too late again. Tonight's excuse is that I've spent a good chunk of the last twenty minutes tracking down an X-Files episode that I remember seeing years ago. It all started when I watched this Zero Punctuation review of a new Silent Hill game. Sam said he'd played a demo years ago that scared him for weeks and it reminded me of my own childhood experience with this X-Files episode.

Here's a summary. It doesn't make it sound quite scary enough but imagine watching it all when you were about eight. Yeah. Spooked me for ages afterwards.


Huh. I thought I'd be able to spin more words out of that... Here are some pictures, anyway.

I walked into school this morning to find all this stuff lying on the ground, having fallen due to the high winds the night before. On the way to school, we heard the traffic report on the radio. The list of roads closed due to fallen trees or other wind damage must have gone on for a good two or three minutes.

Also, the common room was freezing all day and we had no games consoles. I'll have to remember to take a sweater, a TV and an N64 tomorrow.

That's all I've got for now. Sorry about the short post again.

No, I'm not going to end the post with my usual catchphrase.


I'll end it with this little postscript. This is awesome beyond all reason.

I should make a joke about the weather here

On a stormy night, there's nothing quite like the lights flickering to make you wrap up your computer-related tasks in a hurry.

Okay, stopped for a couple of minutes there and the lights just flickered again. I'm going, I'm going!

To bed, most likely. I don't know why but I'm having a hard time typing this. I'm going through a strange period where I suddenly become very aware of my own fingernails and how they affect... stuff I press. Like buttons on the keyboard, obviously.

That and I'm really tired anyway... I don't want to do a mini post so I guess I'll briefly extend it by discussing the first day back at school.

For a start, we discovered that Sixth Year is a lot more boring without any games consoles. I had brought in an old Playstation but I realised too late that I'd forgotten the multi-socket adaptor that we always used and which we need to make the power cables stretch from around the TV to the wall plugs.

We could have just temporarily moved the TV but we decided to just move the whole table it was on instead, just for complexity's sake.

Lights dimmed again, just so you know.

After that we noticed that we'd need both sockets to run the Playstation and the TV so we would have to unplug the electric heater and deal with the cold if we wanted to play any games. Any single player games, I should add, as I only have one controller – Sam normally provides the other and he hadn't brought his in.

And again. Holy crap, I want to go to bed. The wind is howling outside.

We may just keep the room as it is now, since it gives us a bit more space and access.

Let's see, what else?

Oh, you know all that homework I didn't do? I got away with not doing it. As I had suspected, there was no official stuff for Maths so that didn't come up. Mr O'Connell, after spending the entire first half hour of the lesson talking to Jimerson about the trip to India before Christmas, just bought our lies about whatever work we had or had not done and let us get on with the usual stuff we do. I played that flash version of the Hitchhiker's Guide game again.

Physics was the big worry of course. Fortunately, due to some communication and some form of hive mind, none of us had done all the homework. Most of us had barely done any, having given up either in the holidays or during the lunch immediately preceding the lesson. Our Physics teacher seemed to have been half expecting this, no doubt because it happens every single time any techer sets holiday homework, so he was okay about it.

He won't be if we fail all our prelims but that's neither hear nor there.


And that's enough of that for now. I'm off to hide under the covers and stick a pillow over my ears to muffle the sound of the wind and rain.

Have a nice day.


Just going to add, lights almost went out there. I heard some kind of electronic thing bleep as well. That's not a good sign. I have to hurry up and post this.

Oh, crap. Sound of branches breaking! Go, go, go!

Written with surprising speed

Working... That was the plan. Didn't quite work out, as I should have guessed. I've got most of the Physics done and I'm confident that I can finish it tomorrow morning. Well, I say “most of the Physics” but what I actually mean is “most of the one paper my classmates and I agreed to do instead of the two that we were supposed to do”.

I've done nothing, nothing, about my Computing project. I'm now hoping that school will kick me out of my holiday slump and I can spend the next few days finishing up the code, rewriting the early and now-irrelevant design (linear time is for suckers) and doing the various bits of paperwork that I need to prove that my program is working.

Maths... Well, I'm not even sure what Maths I had. I expect I'll panic about it some time tomorrow but, right now, all I want is some sleep.

One day, when I have a load of free time on my hands, I'm going to force myself to get up early in the morning and then go back to bed. Seriously, every time I get up these days, I'm wishing I could just crawl back under the covers and I really want to know how it feels.

I'm having to get up particularly early tomorrow morning because of the way things are going with getting to school and James and I both needing hospital appointments. James says he's getting so sick of them that he's planning to give up on them, requesting that he get no more treatment unless it recurs badly. He came to this conclusion after being asked a few days ago “when”, not “if”, he wanted surgery and being told today that his treatment may take another month.

I can certainly sympathise with him. We were talking today and started listing back-and-forth the various woes and problems we've encountered with our pilonidal sinuses. The whole thing ended up reminding us both of a scene from House so the conversation had a punchline of “I got shot!” for reasons that most readers probably won't understand.

Assuming I have any readers.

I need to ask Skippy for some visitor numbers again – it's been months since I last checked.

But, like I was saying, I need to get up early tomorrow so that everything works out time-wise, hopefully leaving me with a couple of minutes to stuff some consoles and so on into a bag to take to school.

Speaking of which, I need to go and pack my actual schoolbag with my actual school books and folders and so on. So I'll call it quits for the night, upload this, close all my Firefox tabs and just leave the computer running for a little while longer to charge up my iPhone via the USB connection.

You can leave now.

Procrastination Plus Random Links

Wow, that's depressing. I haven't done any schoolwork in so long that Firefox has forgotten the URL of Scholar, the online reference thing.


Okay, I've figured out what's distracting me. It's my socks. They're thick, sweaty and uncomfortable but if I take them off, my feet will freeze. It's an awful dilemma. Not as bad as my complete and utter inability to get any work done but still pretty nasty.


Yeah, I took the socks off and now my feet are uncomfortable, sweaty and cold. Not to mention the smell.


When I rub my toe up against this metal panel at the bag of my desk, it makes a sound just like the sound made in Half Life when you're walking through those big metal ventilation shafts.

I have taken procrastination to new heights.


Feet still freezing. Work still not done.


Each double-spaced line represents anywhere from two minutes to two hours by the way.


Okay, this one was slightly more than two hours. It's now ten past eleven and the previous sentence was written around, I don't know, two o'clock-ish. Still haven't got any work done though. I'm hoping that tomorrow the pressure will have built up to the point where I can actually make myself do work.

Wow. I'm finding it surprisingly hard to type. I really need to get more sleep. Normally, I'd hate to make such a short post late at night but luckily, I have that weird habit of writing several opening paragraphs long before I even consider writing the whole thing.

I still feel like I should do more though... let's see, I've been browsing the web a lot today instead of working so there must be a few links and bookmarks I can recommend... These are a few of my favourite strips from the comic PhD, the archive of which I just finished off today.

A few days back, I came across the website for Lit Fuse Films. I highly recommend watching all of their machinima, particularly the nearly-two hours long War of the Servers. I considered doing some machinima once... Still might, in fact. Probably won't, but might.


And that's it for now. I have to clear all the crap off my bed now so that I can get some sleep. It was put up there during an arcane, ritualised process that some call “tidying”, designed to appease vengeful gods and angry mothers. Putting it all back down on the floor is probably going to get me yelled at tomorrow, along with the fact that I haven't done my homework. In all likelihood, the yelling will just annoy and distract me further but there's not much I can do about that.

Okay, angsty teenage rant over now. Go away.

Another day of doing nothing

I'm incredibly annoyed at myself. I've done next to no work all day, I haven't a clue how to do half of my Physics homework and I've made no headway at all with my Computing. As it stands now, the first day back is going to be filled with me either panicking or apologising profusely. My only hope now is that everyone else has been as lazy and unproductive as I have, thus diverting attention from my own failings.

Oh, and I gave up on whatever Maths I had many, many days ago.


So now it's twenty to midnight... I made a joke earlier, telling Skippy not to expect TWToday to be updated until ten to midnight, despite my plans to get more sleep.

Normally, I love it when I'm right but this is one instance where I'd really rather not be.


So... I've got nothing else to say really. I've spent most of the day reading this comic which, rather ironically, is about PhD students avoiding doing work, often by reading online comics instead.

I can't really decide if this is a mini post or a crappy post. There's nothing hugely long with it but it has no distinct point either... Bah, I'll stick with mini.


Wow, I really overused ellipses in this post...

Late Night Thoughts on Fiction

Well, I finally managed to complete Half Life. I also managed to get a bit of homework done – enough to tell me that I'm going to have a hard time doing the rest of it. Unfortunately, I've had a headache all day so... something something.

Tomorrow, I plan to finish off the Physics prelim that I started, figure out exactly what I need to do for my Computing project (probably making some headway there as well) and do the first few chapters of Half Life's first expansion pack, Opposing Force.

Though not necessarily in that order.


Actually, since I wrote that earlier, I've played a bit of Opposing Force. Haven't done any homework though.

Right. Another night where I need to hurry through this post all because of my time wasting.

I've been doing some thinking about The Grey Line. My current plan is to have the first few chapters written by... let's say the middle of February. Should give me something to distract myself with when I'm not studying.

It's obviously not apparent from the beginning sections I have up but the universe of The Grey Line contains a number of fantasy and sci-fi elements and my big problem so far has been trying to tie all these together. I wouldn't say that the concept now is “dark” but it certainly used to be a lot lighter and with less need for coherency. That means I have a number of characters and concepts that, while I don't want to let go of them, need to at least be reworked to fit with the story.

I've got a few basic ideas of how all this works in my head but I need to get it all down on paper. I'd like to do that in the next few days but that seems unlikely given the whole homework thing. After that it's back to school where I doubt I'll have the time and then on the weekend it's that blasted trip up to Glasgow and then probably finishing off the homework I didn't do in time for school...

This might take a while. Still, at least my mind is ticking over on it. I'd reveal more but that might ruin the story. And I'd hate to ruin the story before I'd even figured out what it was.


Huh. I was just fiddling with the settings in Adium and now I can't make it stop playing the Doctor Who theme tune. How annoying.

I think that's all I've got for tonight. It's getting quite late and these early morning starts aren't being kind to me. I'm guessing they were the cause of the headache I mentioned earlier and still have.

So I'm just going to go to bed now.

I'm not even going to sign off with my catch phrase.

The Futher Rantings of Alasdair Corbett

It always surprises me just how much of a difference cleaning my glasses once in a while can make. No, really, it's like seeing the world in an entirely new light. Well, it's the same light but somewhat brighter.


Anyway, left things late again tonight. Annoyingly, I've settled into a routine now where I do nothing all day but play Half Life and worry about not doing my homework and then when it reaches around eleven, I'll pull up a NeoOffice document and start trying to hammer something out before it reaches half past. Then I browse the web for a while, realise that it's past midnight and climb into bed. I wake up just before eight in the morning, have a shower while still nine tenths asleep and go to the hospital. Repeat.

The pressure of the homework is really starting to get to me now – reports (or more accurately, instant messages) are coming in that say that even some of the laziest among my friends are well on their way to completing it. This isn't really helped by the lack of sleep.

The hospital appointments aren't likely to stop in the next while. They've been telling me for several weeks that it's healing very quickly and that it all looks well but no one seems to be able to give me even a rough estimate of when it might be good enough to stop needing packing. Not that the packing is staying in for more than a few hours anyway.

I also remember being told that the re-dressing would need to be done daily at first and then less frequently. I should probably have learned by now that everything they told me before cutting into my ass was a lie. It wasn't much of a problem before but now that my brother has developed the same thing, each appointment is taking twice as long. This is going to be a huge pain in the ass when I go back to school.

And I swear, if I'm not done with this by my birthday at the end of the month, there will be hell to pay.

Speaking of hell, I'm apparently going to my aunt and uncle's in Glasgow for lunch sometime this month. It's for my grandmother's 80th birthday and, while I'm very happy for her and everything, I see no reason why we're going up to Glasgow to celebrate her birthday when she lives a mile down the road. But no, my aunt has decided that everyone down here should pack into two cars and go up there and this has been decreed a wonderful idea by my grandma.

I could try using my wound as an excuse to stay out of a cramped car journey and the no doubt uncomfortable seats they'll have there but chances are it'll be healed sufficiently that that won't seem plausible. So I'm seemingly stuck with going up there, being bored and awkward for hours, having my mum get annoyed at me for not eating anything and then coming home to listen to complaints about why we should never have gone in the first place.

No use complaining I suppose. Not here anyway. I shall be doing a lot of complaining where and when it counts for something. I'll also be ripping all the audio dramas that came with my Davros boxset and putting them on my iPhone, just in case.


Well, it's slightly after half past so I missed my random average deadline but who cares? I certainly don't.

Have a nice day.

I haven't done a "lack of a title" title in a while

It's under a week until the end of the holidays now and I still have to do all of my homework. I really need to get on with that tomorrow.

The current problems I'm facing, other than the whole laziness thing, is that I've suddenly become addicted to the original Half Life. Beyond it being a classic and brilliant game, the convenience of just being able to swivel round on my chair, open up my Beaten Up Old Laptop^TM and play it whenever I want within seconds is just great.

Which is why it's been distracting me from my work so much. I need that laptop on in order to do my Computing project but I've done none of that so far. I need to sit at the desk with it to do the Physics practice papers that I only dug out this morning. I just keep using it as an excuse.


Bah. I can't be bothered with much more writing now. I started quite early but then I got distracted by... well, by looking up old text adventure games on eBay and trying to play the online version of the Hitchhiker's Guide game. I ought to play that some more actually.

But not tonight.

Or tomorrow.

Or at any time until I've got my goddamned homework done.

Okay, that's it. This is an actual mini post tonight. To make up for it I'll link you to this... nope, can't find anything.

Oh, well. Have a nice day.

New Year, New Ideas, New Discworld Wall Calendar

So... actually, hold on a sec. I need to put up my new calendar.

Okay, done. Actually, I just need to unwrap my desk calendar as well.

And that's that done as well. No time for much else I'm afraid – it was very well packaged.

I was meaning to do some New Year's resolutions, wasn't I? Might as well do that for ten minutes then go to bed. That isn't actually how I'm going to write this, I was just practising for giving up on all these plans later in the year. Sometime around January 10th.


1. That little Dilbert desk calendar I have but that I never change for months at a time. I've got a new one now and I'm determined to actually use it.

2. Do more writing. Preferably stuff for The Grey Line but if I need to do something else to start with then so be it.

3. Work on that sketch comedy idea I've been mulling over for about a year now.

4. Do something with all those tutorial books I have lying around. Reading them would be best, I suppose.

5. Find some kind of permanent arrangement for all my computer-related gear.

6. Finish all those games I need to finish.

7. Resurrect the VersusCOM podcast and website.

8. Do all the other crap on my many to do lists.


I'd add one about exercising more but I know that it's not going to do anything except make me feel bad for not following through with it.

Okay, that's enough. I know it's not hugely interesting but I want to get to bed so... first post of the new year is a mini post, it seems. It's not my fault. I got distracted by the agony booth and playing the original Half Life on my beaten up old laptop.

Which reminds me, I need to try installing Starship Titanic on that thing tomorrow. Should be fun. It'll hopefully distract me from the mounting pressure of my holiday homework needing to be done before this time next week. I wouldn't call that a good thing precisely but it's better than the alternative.

The alternative being still not doing it but not having anything else to do.

Have a nice day.

Hey, you know what? I think this is now long enough not to count for mini post status. Huzzah!

No, wait. The number of paragraphs is deceptive - it's still under 400 words. That's the new criteria now. Except it's now over 400 words! Huzzah again!

...I really need to get more sleep.